In Open Spaces (29 page)

The previous summer, near the crossing, Dad, George, Teddy, and I had stripped to our underwear for a swim one searing afternoon. At first, because of the heat, and a general lack of energy, we just wallowed around in the shallow water, submerging our torsos beneath the surface. But as our bodies cooled, our slumbering energy stirred. George started splashing water on his brother’s head, and soon an all-out war broke out. Teddy endured his brother’s abuse for thirty seconds, then jumped to his feet and pounced on George, pushing his head underwater.

The next thing I knew, Dad was on his feet, swinging his arms, fists locked together, sending great arcs of water over his grandsons. At that point, I couldn’t just lie there and watch. I got up and grabbed my hat, and started scooping hatfuls, flinging them toward Dad. Soon we were soaked and laughing, in one of the few periods of pure joy we experienced during the thirties. It was a moment I had used to replace other memories of the river whenever I had occasion to maneuver the crossing.

We rode through the pasture where our cattle were wintering. They looked at us, in unison and forever, perhaps wondering why they were seeing us for the second time that day. The broken corpses of the dead lay off on their own, isolated and half covered with snow, like graves that had been uncovered by wind.

The trees that were still alive along the river looked thinner, more alone, because much of the brush at their feet had died during these hard, dry years. And of course the creeks, buried deep beneath the snow now, were dry, as they had been every season during the past fifteen years. The wind blew the dry, powdery snow just above the ground, making the sweeping air appear visible.

Dad and I spoke little, sensing each other’s need to look, and think about what we saw. Although Dad and I had never talked much, it seemed that we had less than ever to say. It wasn’t that we had little to discuss, either. There were plenty of things we should have been talking about. With Jack’s absence, I was the natural choice to take over the ranch when Dad couldn’t do it anymore. But aside from day-to-day operations, we seldom talked about the ranch. Dad kept his thoughts about the future to himself. And it bothered me. I couldn’t help but wonder why. Did he expect Jack to return? Or did he not want to think about the fact that he couldn’t go on forever? Was there something about my abilities that he questioned? As unpleasant as these possibilities were, there was one that was worse. It was hard to admit, but even harder to overlook the coincidence that this distance between us had started when Helen became part of our family.

In some respect, this behavior was consistent with my dad’s attitude. He had always been more interested in doing the work than in discussing it, or planning it out. But he had developed a certain degree of gruff impatience behind his usual indifference. And it was this that led me to an unpleasant theory. Although I hadn’t seen it happen, I could just imagine Helen turning her gift for inquisition toward Dad and his plans for the ranch. And it also wasn’t hard to imagine Dad jumping to the quick and probably accurate conclusion that Helen’s questions were pointed in a specific direction. From there, it was easy to see Dad move to a decision to ignore anybody and everybody’s questions.

I tried not to think about it too much, and I ignored Helen, and she
me, a much easier task than one would expect for two people who live on the same ranch, often sharing the same table.

But there was one occasion when Helen and I found ourselves alone in the big house for most of an afternoon and evening, a day that Rita had asked me for some time alone with her boys. Mom, Dad, and Bob had gone into Belle for some reason. I spent part of the day outside working, but it was very cold, so that didn’t last long. So I sat in front of the radio for the rest of the afternoon, listening to a game between the Yankees and the Red Sox while Helen baked a cake and worked on a dress she was making. But we couldn’t eat dinner separately without being downright rude, so we sat down at the same table. It was the most extensive conversation I ever had with her alone. She had apparently decided to accept the fact that I would never trust her, which I respected somehow, and that evening it seemed that our mutual mistrust could be set aside while nobody else was around.

She sipped quietly at a spoonful of soup.

“It seems we don’t have much to say to each other,” she said.

I rubbed the back of my neck, then broke some crackers into my soup. “That would be true,” I said.

“I sometimes feel, Blake, that you didn’t give me much of a chance.”

I thought, gulping a spoonful of soup to delay my response. I crunched on the crackers, and swallowed. “That may also be true.”

She brightened a bit at this admission, shaking out her napkin, then folding it neatly back into her lap. “I don’t know if you realize it, Blake, but I had a very difficult childhood.”

I studied her, nodding. Although I knew this was true, I didn’t quite know how to respond to this information. It was not something people usually talked about in our world. I was also leery of her trying to use this to elicit some kind of sympathy from me, something I didn’t feel. So other than the small nod, I didn’t respond.

She didn’t seem offended. “Well, no matter,” she said. “The fact is
this—to me, the most important thing in the world is having a good life for my husband and children.”

I raised my brow. I knew that Bob and Helen were still trying desperately to have children. It was something Helen talked about incessantly. I wondered if she was suggesting that they had been successful.

“When we have some,” she added.

I gulped the last of the soup from my bowl, then set it down in front of me. “Well, that sounds about like everyone else who lives out here, doesn’t it?”

“Exactly,” she said.

I eyed her, stopped short for a moment by this admission. It was the closest any of us had ever come to approaching the delicate topic of the future. And it was the closest she had ever come to admitting what she wanted.

“You figured it out, Blake,” she said. “You’re the smart one, you know. You figured this all out a long time ago, didn’t you?” She smiled, and for a moment, I saw what Bob and so many others had fallen prey to. She really could be charming. And I couldn’t help but admire her willingness to put herself right out there like that.

But we didn’t talk that way again, ever.

Nearing Art’s place, there was no smoke coming from the chimney, and a pool of dread started to gather in my belly, like a cold liquid splashing up into my chest. I held my hand over my mouth and nose, trying to warm some air and inhale some of that warmth back inside. It didn’t help.

The rest of the house came into view, and it looked worse than the last time I’d seen it. The barn had given up, lying down on itself, and a big chunk of tin was gone from the roof of the house, leaving a section of the rafters naked. The inside of the house would be as cold as it was outside. Not a good sign.

“Uh-oh,” Dad muttered.

We dismounted and walked to the door, which was ajar. Dad kicked the snow away so we could swing the door open, and our dread was confirmed. Sam was in the same chair as always. His head tilted forward, as if he’d fallen asleep sitting up, except that his eyes were open. His hand rested on his thigh. The dusty bottle still sat on his armless side. He was blue-gray.

Art lay on the bed, curled up like a cat, his knees tucked against his chest, arms folded under his head. He looked surprised, scared, and most of all tired. And he must have been tired, trying to fight off the relentless decay around him.

Things were strewn everywhere: clothes, plates, pans, and bones with the meat picked off. It all lay in a strange sort of arrangement—not like someone had come in and ransacked the place, but as though it had all been laid out to form a message of some kind. A code. Mice were frozen to the dirt floor, everywhere, and the snow had formed a drift in the kitchen. I knew from the look of things that death had been a good way to end things for the Walters brothers.

Dad and I speculated that they’d died when the weather was a little warmer, or that the tin had blown off the roof after they died, because neither of them wore a coat, and Art didn’t have a blanket over him. In fact, he was in his union suit. There were no gunshot wounds, or knife wounds, no signs of a struggle, nor any reason to suspect suicide. It appeared they had simply died, about the same time, probably even the same day.

“We better go check on the horses,” Dad said.

“Mm.” I didn’t look forward to that. The condition of the horses would depend on how long the Walterses had been dead. I almost hoped that the horses were also dead. Because there is nothing more gut-wrenching to me than a starving animal. The broken, fragile frame brings up all kinds of helplessness.

The horses were thin, but not dangerously so, which led us to conclude
that the brothers had been dead less than a week. A few weeks’ extra feed would have the animals back to normal. I tried to pump some water for them, but the pipes were frozen. So back to the house, where I started a fire in the wood stove, and set two pails of snow on top.

The horses drank thirstily, and I had to jerk the pails away from the first two so there would be some left for the team. Dad had dumped small mounds of hay in each stall, enough to fill their stomachs, but not too much, as they would easily founder.

“The milk cow didn’t make it,” he said.

“Where is she?”

“One corner of the barn must have fallen since they died. She was trapped.”

He held a handful of oats to one of the team, who flipped his upper lip open to scoop the oats from Dad’s palm.

What was Art like? The question came to me when we went back inside to retrieve the bodies. And it took me back to the day he’d taken a few potshots at me down by Hay Creek. And looking at him now, it was frightening to remember what he’d said that day, about this land beating hell out of people. It was frightening in its truth. Aside from Art’s mention of it when we were hunting a few years before, Art and I had never really talked about that day until the last time I saw him. We threw a card party one Saturday night just before the blizzard hit that winter, and Art made a rare appearance, to my delight.

Late that night, after several games and probably a few shots from the flask Art had started carrying, he cornered me in the kitchen and looked up at me, pointing a bony finger in my face. His eyes had that vacant, hollow stare of the loneliness, and he worked his mouth a few times, trying to get some moisture going, before he spoke. He still insisted on calling me Frank, a habit I never did determine the source of.

“Frank, I just wanna tell you something, something I been wantin’ to tell you for a while now.” He jabbed the finger, poking, poking, poking. “I knew it was you that day…when I was shooting at you. I knew it all along.”

I chuckled. “Hell, Art, I don’t know how you couldn’t have known. It was our land, and…well…with your eyesight, I figured you knew.”

“Well, now, just wait one minute here, because I want to tell you why now. I want you to know why I was shooting at you. Because I was mad at you, is what it was. I was mad at you, Frank.”

I frowned. “Why? Hell, I was just a kid then. What did I do?”

“You came back, Frank. You came back to this goddam place when you had a chance to…well, maybe you didn’t. I don’t know. But you were young enough that you could’ve…maybe. I just hated to see it, that’s all. ’Course I wasn’t trying to hit you. I just thought maybe I’d scare you a little.”

When we lifted Art off the bed, I found an old cigar box tucked under his arm. When I flipped the lid open, it nearly fell off, as it was connected by a skin-thin layer of paper. Inside, I found Art’s personal papers and about eight dollars in cash. On top was a picture of a thin—skinny, really—woman holding a baby in her arms. I recognized the woman as Rosie, Art’s ex-wife, holding his son, whose name escaped me at the moment. I set the picture back in the box, carefully closed the lid, and tucked it in my saddlebag.

We wrapped Sam in a blanket and tied him onto the back of one of the team horses, who appeared stronger than the other two. This method proved to be difficult in Art’s case because of his fetal position. We couldn’t get a blanket around him, so we decided to take him the way he was. We tried to balance him on his side on the horse’s back, but he kept falling off.

The third time it happened, we both burst out laughing. We couldn’t
help it, and we shared a guilty look, then laughed some more.

“Stubborn as ever,” Dad said, shaking his head.

The only way we could get Art to stay was to balance him sitting sideways on the horse and tie the rope very tightly around the horse’s belly from Art’s waist to his ankles. He looked like a king, perched up there in that position, as if he was ready to review his subjects.

The ride back was cold and somber.

“We’ll go up tomorrow and get his stock…what’s left of it,” Dad said.

I nodded. It was all we said.

Back at the house, we stomped the snow off our boots before going inside. The scene that greeted us when we swung the door open and stepped into the kitchen was confusing. There was half-prepared food strewn across the counters and tables in the kitchen, with no one tending to the food at all. No one was even in the kitchen.

In fact, we couldn’t see anyone within eyeshot, but there were footsteps and bumps and voices echoing throughout the house, a feeling of busyness that felt ominous. There was shouting, and at first I thought someone had turned the radio up too loud. But we could hear Mom’s voice, and she was angry. She was clearly giving implicit instructions to someone.

Dad looked at me with a world-weary sigh. “What a day,” he muttered.

Just then, Helen came roaring through the kitchen, wrapped in her winter coat, sniffling, and carrying a bundle of clothes. Bob was not far behind, also dressed for the cold, satchel in hand. As much as I wanted to know what was going on, I had a feeling from their hurried manner and their wounded looks that they weren’t open to conversation. Helen looked furious, Bob bewildered. Dad and I stepped back, although we were well out of their path.