In Open Spaces (32 page)

Once we recovered, it took another half hour to get the damn thing back inside. This time, we were smart enough to put a few stitches in beforehand so we’d have a start once we got to the end.

Bob kept twisting his neck around, looking out toward the barn door, expecting Helen to show up again. The first few times he did this, I didn’t think twice about it. But after a half hour of Bob turning every minute or two, even in the middle of this job, I lost my patience.

“Bob, why don’t you just leave, get it over with. You’re not doing us any good here.” Once I started talking, I was surprised how angry I was. “If your mind is somewhere else, you might as well go there before someone gets hurt.”

I felt Bob’s eyes on me, and felt his hurt, and probably for that reason, I didn’t look at him. But I was too tired and angry to worry about him. And by that time, I was willing to finish the job with just the two of us, no matter how much longer it took or how painful it was.

Bob walked away wordlessly and climbed from the stall. After several footsteps, we heard a loud smack, and the barn shook. The cow jerked, but not enough to affect our job. Bob had either punched or kicked the wall, and the fact that he knew the sound could have made us lose the womb again made me angrier.

As we huddled behind that poor cow, struggling to stuff this fleshy
balloon through the fleshy knothole, we pressed against each other, and I felt Rita’s breath on my cheek. At times our heads touched, and we were so focused on the task at hand that we didn’t pull away. The sweat ran down our faces. Our cheeks slid against each other. Rita’s hair brushed against my neck, and my nose. I smelled her, and felt every movement she made—each time she bent her knees and pushed upward, and each time she twisted to one side with her hip. Physically, it was the closest I had ever been to Rita, and it was distracting. It made my heart race a little, and the blood pounded in my head. And the longer we worked, the more I thought about being so close to her, and the more I liked it. A half hour after Bob left, we finally tied the final stitch into a knot. We sat in the back of the stall, leaning our heads against the wall and looking at the raw, sealed opening. Our breath beat through slack mouths, showing a little in the dim light of the lantern.

“We did it,” Rita said.

I nodded and held out a hand. She pressed hers into mine, and as we shook, our hands slid against each other in blood.

Back at the house, covered with blood and slime, Rita and I were both in need of a bath. We usually alternated evenings, but this was clearly a special case. I heated up the water and filled the tub while Rita warmed the coffee that George had made earlier. I let her go first, and I sat and read a book while listening to the water slosh behind the curtain. I noticed this splashing and the motions of Rita’s body more than usual that night, listening to each ripple of water, and occasionally watching the shadow of Rita’s arm, or the silhouette of her head as she let her hair down from its bun.

“Blake?” Rita asked from behind the curtain.

Her voice was so unexpected that I didn’t answer right away. I had to clear my throat. “Yeah?”

“I forgot a towel.”

“Oh. All right. I’ll get you one.” I stood and fetched one, and held it over the cotton curtain, where it was snatched from my grasp. But the towel got hung up on my thumb somehow, and when Rita pulled a little harder on it, and I simultaneously tried to jerk my thumb loose, we ended up pulling the curtain down. And there stood Rita, naked and wet.

She immediately covered herself with the towel, but for a brief moment, our eyes locked. I had never seen a naked woman before, not even in photographs. Despite the tauntings of my friends, I had passed on the occasional trips to a discreet house in Deadwood. Actually, I had gone once. But when we got there I got so damn nervous, I had to leave. I ended up waiting in a bar down the street, where I was greeted with a razzing that was unmerciful.

Now I stood before Rita, and although she had covered herself, I still pictured her as she had been seconds before. She was solid, her breasts large but still firm, the nipples dark and stimulated by the moisture and the cool air. I was struck by the curves—the way the lines slanted in from her breasts to her waist, then eased out again to form the lovely shape of her hips. It was a vision I would not soon forget, and its impact on me was powerful.

I felt a physical sensation that I had never experienced before. My erection was painful, as if every drop of blood, especially from my head, had rushed to my groin. I was dizzy. I felt as if I was falling toward Rita, and that I had no way of stopping myself. It was overwhelming, and almost entirely physical, as if the lower part of my body had a will of its own, separate from the rest of me. My head, my mind, was irrelevant, completely uninvolved in the process.

“Blake, maybe you ought to put that curtain back up before you faint.” Rita held the towel tightly around herself.

“Yes.” I suddenly jumped into action. “Yeah. Of course.” I fumbled with the curtain while Rita patiently waited, still covered. I didn’t look
her way and eventually after much fumbling, I got the curtain hung. But when I went to sit down, the feeling stayed with me. And it got stronger. The image of her moist skin lifted a lump to my throat. It affected my breathing. I felt as if the weight of Montana was pressing down on my chest. And despite all my better judgment, and what I believed, and how much I respected Rita, and everything about my life that spoke against it, I found myself speaking to her.

“Rita?” I said, and I didn’t even know what I was going to say next. I had no idea.

But something about my voice must have revealed all that I was thinking, or all that I was subconsciously thinking, because I wasn’t thinking. There must have been nothing hidden in the way I spoke her name, because Rita didn’t respond. She simply dried herself and disappeared into her room, never coming out from behind that curtain, never acknowledging that I’d spoken to her.

When I lowered myself into the tub after dumping one more bucket of hot water into it, I thought about the fact that this same water had brushed against Rita just moments before. The realization made me hard again, and dizzy. I began scrubbing, rubbing the grime and slime from my skin. I washed quickly, then relaxed for a moment, taking advantage of what heat was left in the water. I flexed my arm, the one that the cow had squeezed earlier, and thought about the fact that the only females I’d ever felt inside were animals. And this thought brought on a chilly loneliness that had become a familiar companion in the time that I’d been living with Rita.

I would sometimes lie in bed, feeling as if Jack was still there, as if no matter how long we lived together, Jack would always interfere, even if we never saw him again. It seemed I would never escape the power he had over some of the things in my life.

I ducked my head under the water one last time, and enjoyed the confined silence for as long as I could hold my breath. And then I came up, brushing the water from my face. My efforts to stifle the vision had
failed, and after I finished drying, I ducked into my room and pleasured myself to relieve the pressure. Still, I was awake for another hour.

Two days later, I came back to the house late one night, just past sundown, after a long day tilling. My throat was sore, filled with dust, and my arms were heavy from working the reins all day. When I walked in, Rita was bent over the washtub, scrubbing dishes. George and Teddy hunched over open schoolbooks at the table, scratching math figures onto yellowed paper.

On the floor next to the table, I noticed my worn leather satchel. I didn’t think much about it, as my mind was on the cup of cool water I’d just drawn from the well. But after drinking, as I filled a plate from a panful of roast beef and potatoes, I saw my suit hanging on my bedroom door. I looked at the satchel again and realized it was stuffed with clothes—my clothes.

I turned to Rita, who was watching me, waiting for me to notice. I heard a sniffle, and saw that Teddy was crying. I looked back at Rita.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the other night,” Rita said. “Or you. It just doesn’t seem right anymore, Blake.”

Teddy cried openly, and George slumped off to his room

“You’re probably going to have a family of your own before too long….” Rita took a deep breath and turned away from the washtub, wiping her hands on her apron. Then she held them to her eyes, pressing firmly against the lids with her fingers, so her palms covered her mouth. She held this position for a full minute, then lowered her hands and took another breath. “And the boys and I might as well get used to living alone.”

I stood looking at her for a while, and I felt the corners of my mouth falling. Part of me wanted to argue, to put up a fight. Part of me was thinking about one night when Rita told me she still missed Jack, and realizing that, as impossible as it seemed, this was still true.
And I resented the fact that even though I’d been there every night, and listened to her complaints about Helen, and shared some of my own concerns, could it be possible that she still felt more for Jack than for me? I thought about telling her how I felt. But just about that time, she looked up at me with an expression of slight pleading, and I could tell just from this look that she knew, and that she didn’t want me to tell her.

And I knew that I had just been a guest in this house. That this was Rita’s house, and my stay had ended. It seemed I should say good-bye, but that didn’t make sense, considering where I was going. So I picked up my satchel, draped my suit over one arm, put a hand on Teddy’s heaving shoulder, and left.

The big house looked a long ways off that night. It was dark, with the smell of meadows muted by dust, and quiet except for the clicking of locusts. Just before I took that long walk, I decided to pay a visit to some old friends. I headed for the barn, where I dropped my satchel by the door.

The old whitewashed stick figures had faded with age and weather and from animals rubbing up against them. I dug one of my baseballs out of the bin where we kept the oat buckets and spare bridle parts. And I started throwing pitches against the wall. I threw and threw, and the more I threw, and the more my body warmed up and the blood coursed through me, the angrier I got at my brother Jack. I thought about all the anguish he had caused his wife, and my parents, and all the extra work he’d heaped on us all, even when he was home, and I thought about how callously, even after all that, he could just up and run off again.

I started throwing my curveball, but it had been a while since I’d used those muscles, and I began to feel it in my elbow. So I went back to burning fastball after fastball against that wall, belt-high to the stick hitters. And I pictured Jack’s head on the batter, and I gritted my teeth and whipped a fastball, and I don’t know whether it was intentional or
not, but that ball went right for that poor stick bastard’s head, and it broke clean through the wall.

As fate would have it, Helen—the reason I’d moved out in the first place—just happened to be walking back to the old homestead house as I headed satchel in hand toward the big house. She looked at the satchel, and I swear her eyes lit up like a goddam forest fire.

“Hello, Blake.” It was the best reception she’d ever given me.

“Helen, do me a favor, will you?” I said. “Mind your own damn business for a change.”

To my dismay, the command had very little effect on her. She just smiled, looked down at the satchel again, and said, “Okay, Blake. Whatever you say.”

I
n the absolute middle of a clear blue sky, the sun sat with great satisfaction, spreading its heat and light and a slight, undulating buzz through every square mile of open space in Carter County. The ground lay tired, beaten, surrendering its skin to the feet, hooves, and wheels that trundled over its increasingly bare surface. The topsoil had long drifted away, and what remained was hard, gray clay that, in those rare instances of rain, formed deep, unforgiving ruts. Footprints stayed molded into the earth for months, reminders of a mid-shower trip to the outhouse, or to the pickup for a snort from the bottle under the seat. If you hit a footprint or a rut just right, you could break an ankle. The creek beds curled up like dried leather, and the grass turned yellow, smelling as if cooked.

We, the residents, were also beaten, and tired, and our skin was weary of the sun soaking into it, baking it deep brown and pulling the
moisture from us until we could sleep twelve hours a night, with a nap during the day—along the riverbank, or under one of the few trees still bearing leaves, or under a wagon. We only wanted water. That was all. Everything we needed depended on water.

During the thirties, the banks of the Little Missouri River had lost touch with the flow of water. A thin band of current trickled through the middle of the waterway, leaving a gap of ten feet on either side between the wagon-wide ribbon of brown water and the riverbank. The lowest I ever saw it was the summer of ’37, when the river was below my knee. If it was a foot deep, then it was twelve inches exactly. When we took a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep to the river to water them, you could almost see the level of water drop as they drank. I remember crossing the river once, and wishing it would become the threat it had been when it sucked George beneath its surface. The thought shook me for a moment, although it made perfect sense when I considered it.

As it turned out, the spring of’38 brought some rain, and although we were hopeful, we didn’t get too excited. But ’39 was also wet—still far below average, but better than we’d seen for almost two decades. There was indeed hope.

I drove our tractor around and around, circling the big meadow, pulling a heavy rake with teeth as tall as a child, gathering hay into mounds. The dust followed, also gathering, a cloud that grew as the morning passed. I wore a kerchief over my face to keep the dust from filling my nose and mouth, but nothing could keep it from my eyes, and I had to squint. I could barely see where I was going.