In Open Spaces (23 page)

Rita blinked, looking up at Helen with her eyes open wide. All other eyes also turned to Helen, and I thought, hoped, that she’d finally stumbled into such awkward territory that even she couldn’t charm her way out of it.

“I just don’t think I could do as well as you do, Rita, if I were in your shoes.” Helen smiled sweetly at Rita, those bright blue eyes showing limitless compassion. Rita smiled back, but the anger showed in the tight arch of her lips, and in her eyes. Mom looked confused, and Dad was glancing from face to face as if he was wishing someone would explain what was happening.

“You know, it really isn’t my place to say anything, but I just think it’s just so awful that Jack ran off and left you like he did. It must be very hard.” She kept her eyes on her plate, poking a very petite bite of meat into her mouth and chewing with the cool confidence of an assassin. “For all of you,” she added.

The room was as quiet as night, and I sat dumbfounded, wondering what the hell she could be thinking. She had been around our family long enough to know that Jack was a subject we didn’t discuss. And being a local, she also knew that voicing an opinion about another family’s misfortune, so boldly, just wasn’t done. I looked at Bob, whose eyes were glued to his plate. Unfortunately, my suspicion that she was just getting started was quickly confirmed.

“And it must have been terribly hard to find out, after all you’ve had to endure with Jack, that he was never overseas during the war. That must have been such a shock.” She said this in such a sympathetic tone that I almost believed she felt bad about it. Then, in a look that would have fooled even the most perceptive, she scanned the startled faces around the table, then fixed a surprised, perplexed gaze on me. “Blake, you mean you haven’t told the rest of them yet?”

I was completely thrown, humiliated that my secret had been revealed so publicly. My face was hot with shame, crimson, and my hand began to tremble. I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t even
address what was obvious—that Helen had rifled through my things and found the letter. I felt the eyes of my entire family, and although it probably wasn’t true, what I thought those eyes were saying was that I had betrayed them.

“Oh, I feel just horrible,” Helen continued. “Blake talked to me for the longest time one night about a letter he got from the government saying that Jack was never in France. Oh, Blake, I’m so sorry. I just assumed you’d told the others.” She put a hand to her cheek, and her tone was sugar sweet.

I was paralyzed. Helen took another bite and chewed, looking directly at me.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Rita asked Helen, incredulous. “France?”

“Oh dear,” Helen said.

I knew there and then that we were dealing with someone whose skills in the area of manipulation were far and above anything I’d ever imagined. The only mystery now would be what Helen wanted from us, and how far she would go.

I
t didn’t take Helen long to establish a certain hold on the ranch. Ironically, Rita’s decision not to move into the big house, in defiance of Helen’s wishes, ended up working in Helen’s favor. Because when I moved in with Rita and the boys, although we spent most evenings at the big house, a natural separation had formed.

But Helen was smart enough to realize that she had gained an advantage, and that treating Rita or me badly would only arouse suspicions of her motives. So she employed her considerable charm toward planning birthday parties for “the exiles,” as we called ourselves. Because Rita usually worked out in the fields, Helen suggested that we should just plan on coming to the big house for dinner each night, which Helen helped Mom prepare after she finished her day teaching.

It became impossible not to wonder sometimes, despite the fact that Helen had so clearly invaded my territory to find the letter about
Jack, whether I was wrong about her. Rita and I talked about it often.

“Do you think that whole thing with the letter was just a bad decision?” I asked Rita during one of these discussions. “Maybe her family is more ruthless than ours. Maybe she felt like she had to do something dramatic to make a statement or something.”

Rita sighed, looking up from her game of solitaire and shaking her head. “You are a trusting soul, Blake. You really want to believe the best about people, don’t you?”

I raised my brow. “I guess so. I never really thought about it.”

“Just look at it this way, Blake. If you were new to this family, and you wanted to gain an edge, who would you cuddle up to?”

I thought. “Dad,” I said emphatically.

Rita looked surprised. “Really?”

“Sure. Of course. It’s his ranch.”

Rita nodded. “Okay. Yes. That’s true. But…well, Blake, I don’t mean to be callous, but look at it this way…think about your folks. First of all, who looks like they’re going to be around the longest?”

That was easy. Because of Dad’s smaller frame, the decades of work had taken a toll on him. He was stooped, thinner, his face taking on much the same haunted, ravaged, distant look that we saw in many of the disconnected men who drifted through our region looking for a bed for the night. “Mom,” I answered.

“Exactly,” Rita answered. “She’s like the old water pump out there. When the rest of us are dead, and all the buildings have rotted away, somebody’s going to come along and find that water pump still spitting gushes of that stinky alkali water into a bucket, and your mom out gathering the eggs.”

I smiled, nodding in agreement.

“Your mom is the heartbeat of this place.”

Again I nodded.

“And what’s the quickest way to get through to your mom?” Rita then asked. “What is her biggest priority?”

“The ranch,” I said matter-of-factly.

Rita looked at me with a slight grin, and tipped her head toward me, saying with a look, “Try again.”

“No? God, I’m not doing very well on this test, am I?”

“Well, you’re almost right,” Rita said, laughing. “Your family, Blake. The family. Your mom would chop her arms off for her family.”

“Well, maybe one of them,” I replied. “She wouldn’t be able to play cards without at least one.”

Rita smiled. “Oh, if anyone could figure out a way…”

We laughed.

“But am I right?” Rita asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. The family.”

Rita went back to her game. I picked up a newspaper, but my thoughts were still on the topic. “I guess the thing I don’t understand is why she works so damn hard at it? With her charm, and her intelligence, she could have made an impression without turning it into some kind of competition.” I shrugged.

Rita nodded, looking up at me sadly. “That’s just it, Blake. That’s where you’re right, I think. Maybe her family is more ruthless…more…less trusting. If she doesn’t keep trying, maybe she feels like she’s falling behind. Some families are like that.”

Rita’s head dropped back to her cards. Her hair was up, as it usually was, the thick straight brown bands pulled tightly into a ponytail. There were a few gray streaks now, glinting subtly in the lantern’s glow. Rita had never really talked about her family much, and it always made me wonder. Because she had become such a vital, positive influence on our family, it seemed odd to me that she didn’t have more of a connection to them.

“Was yours like that?”

Rita lifted her head one last time, and studied me with an expression I hadn’t seen from her before, a look that was even a bit frightening. I felt like a child who wasn’t quite grasping a math problem.

“They were worse,” she said, and her tone made me regret asking. She dropped her head, and the discussion ended there, abruptly. I never mentioned her family again.

“Frank, you see that?” Art Walters squinted into the sun, pointing just shy of the Finger Buttes. Art, in his increased sense of confusion, had been calling me Frank for several months. I tried correcting him a couple of times, but I soon saw it was pointless.

I shielded my eyes and looked in that direction. “What, Art? I don’t see a thing.”

“See that little bunch of pine trees there?” He pointed again.

I nudged my horse closer to his, then followed his arm. “Okay, yeah. I see those.”

“Left of there.” He waved his finger. “Just to the left and further along.”

“Art, you’re crazy. There’s nothing out there but snow, and maybe part of South Dakota.”

Art laughed and steam rushed from his mouth.

“No, by god, Frank, I swear there’s a herd of antelopes out there. If you look a little harder, you can see a kind of shadow.”

I buried my heels into my horse’s flanks and yelled over my shoulder. “All right, buddy. If you’re sure, let’s give it a look.”

It was warmer than normal for December, and the sun sparkled in shades of pink, blue, and yellow off the snow, which lay quiet and still. No wind. And although our breath showed, I could feel the sweat on my chest. The butt of my rifle, which rocked in its scabbard, bumped against my knee. My saddle creaked as we galloped through a shallow draw toward the buttes. Art caught up with me.

“Frank, if you’re thinkin’ about gettin’ out ahead of me so you can get the first shot off, you got a surprise comin’.”

“Sounds like a challenge, Art.”

“You got that right.”

I had suggested this hunting expedition to Art at a dance the previous weekend. It was common knowledge that Art was in trouble up there in his ramshackle, tucked-away ranch. His brother Bert, the former bootlegger, was dead four years now, one of many who couldn’t wait the Depression out. He blew his head off, probably using the same rifle Art carried with him now. And Art’s older brother Sam, the hardest worker of the three, had caught his arm in a thresher two summers ago. The machine had ripped the arm from its socket, and Sam would have bled to death if Art hadn’t found him that afternoon.

With Sam’s effectiveness diminished, most of the responsibility for keeping the place going lay with Art. And from what we could see, he’d made a hell of an effort. The fight to survive will bring the best out in a guy, I guess. But his efforts weren’t enough, and Steve told me that on his last visit to Art’s place, there was hardly anything to eat.

Art didn’t realize I knew this, of course. In his mind this was nothing more than a couple of friends doing some hunting.

“You see ’em now, Frank?” Art pointed again, in the same direction.

I peered toward the buttes. “Art, I’m sorry, but for the life of me I cannot see what the hell you’re pointing at. Either you’ve got an eagle eye or you’ve been dipping into the moonshine a little early today.”

Art shot me a bit of a hurt look.

“All right, all right, I believe you, but I still don’t see anything.”

Art, who was nearly sixty, showed the strain. His clothes were torn
and threadbare. Even the brim of his felt hat was torn, so that one side hung down close to his ear.

And the wind and worry had worked away at his face, cracking and drying it, pinching the skin around his eyes and mouth. He’d lost half his teeth, and his cheeks hugged his jaw so tightly it looked as though you could break the surface with your fingernail. It was a face common to many during the Depression, and although Dad still had his teeth, he shared many of the same features.

We came up out of the draw and still had several hundred yards to go before we neared the grove Art had pointed out. The heat of the sun’s reflection oozed up from the snow, and I pulled my kerchief up over my nose to avoid getting burned. I kept my eyes glued to the spot where Art claimed to see the antelope, and after a while began to wonder whether he was hallucinating. We were close enough that a big herd would be easily spotted. Then we were close enough that a small herd would be easily spotted. And I expected if we did see any game, it would be a smaller herd, as the drought had also beaten down the wildlife in the region.

“Frank!” Art pointed again, thrusting his finger toward the buttes, a frantic gesture.

I squinted again, shielding my eyes. Finally—still a ways off, behind the trees—I saw, just barely, two antelope facing each other, their noses to the ground, where they fed on a small patch of green.

“Art, how the hell did you see those things from way back there?”

He laughed—a frantic, almost giddy cackle. “I ain’t lost all my senses yet, Frank.”

We decided to circle through the trees, hoping they would shield us. We took it easy, slowing the horses to a walk, and we unholstered our rifles. From the trees, we were just a little out of range, so we’d have to sneak out from our shelter and get closer before we could get a shot off.

Art whispered my name and signaled with his hands, waving and pointing to indicate that he’d wait there while I went ahead, so we could come at them from different angles. I waved and moved on, nudging my horse, wincing whenever she snorted or pawed at the ground. But the antelope weren’t so easily spooked, and when I was as far as I could get from Art without losing ground to the antelope, I raised my arm, and we crept into the meadow.

They saw us immediately and took off, bounding in that four-legged, graceful way that makes most animals look stationary. Just as I started after them, a shot sounded, and I looked over to see Art getting set to fire again.

“Art!” I yelled as loudly as I could. But he shot once more, and I turned my horse toward him, pummeling her flanks. “Art, stop! Jesus, what are you doing?”

The antelope were not only out of range, but nearly out of sight. Art lowered his rifle, laying it across his thighs, then pushed his hat onto the back of his head. I caught up to him, and was about to tear into him, but there was something about his expression that stopped me. Something pathetic. He looked defeated.

“Well, that wa’n’t too smart, was it?” he said quietly.

“It’s all right, Art. Let’s go after ’em.”

He looked up and shrugged, holding his mouth to one side. “Not much use now, Frank.” He threw a hand into the air.

“Come on,” I said. I kicked my horse, and started in the direction the antelope had headed. I didn’t look to see whether Art followed, because I was sure he would.