In Open Spaces (45 page)

A hundred yards from us, a small flock of sheep had gathered. They chewed the grass at their feet for a moment, then studied us. And then, as if one of them had sensed the death and signaled the rest, they took off, in unison, their woolly behinds bouncing, each at their own rhythm. And then the land around us was still, quiet—except for the barely audible click of the locusts. The cloud bank that had appeared around noon now lingered just above us. The air felt slightly cooler, as if there was a chance of rain.

Although I felt like lying down, I forced myself to stand, and began pulling my clothes on, starting with my undershirt, then my overalls. The movements felt strange, senseless. I had no notion of touch, or smell. I couldn’t taste. My nerves were dead, and I realized that as much as I felt as if I needed to keep moving, to keep busy, to do something useful, I couldn’t move. I fell to my hands and knees again, pummeled by the pain in my body. I stayed this way for a long time, my head hanging between my arms, the water dripping innocently, darkening the earth.

After long minutes of suspended silence, I looked up. Nobody had moved. Or spoken. Nobody appeared ready to move or speak. I noticed George’s horse for the first time, standing patiently to the side, the reins hanging loose to the ground. He chewed on his bit.

“Someone’s going to have to ride the horse back,” I said, thinking out loud.

“I’ll do it,” Jack said.

“No, no. I can do it,” I said.

“I want to do it,” Jack insisted. “I’ll do it.”

“All right.”

Jack stood slowly as if it hurt his body to do so. He walked over, shoulders bent, and pulled his clothes on, in the unhurried way that one does early in the morning.

I stood near the car, and felt a sudden surge of nervous energy. I started pacing, and my mind searched with manic desperation for something to do, a task. I felt as though I would collapse if I stood still for another moment. Finally, I walked over and put my hand on Rita’s shoulder. She sat motionless for a while longer, then stood up and started toward the car. I knelt at George’s side and began to ease my hands under him, one beneath his knees, the other just below his neck.

“Open the trunk,” I told Teddy.

“No!” Rita said, turning suddenly. “You’re not putting him in the trunk.”

I bristled slightly, then wondered what the hell I was thinking. Of course she wouldn’t want her son, only minutes dead, in the trunk.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Of course not.”

I lifted George and carried him to the car. His head flopped in the crook of my elbow, and I thought of how heavy a skull is. But other than his head, George was light. He was thin. He was too slight, too unfinished, to be dead.

I ducked inside the back door and settled George’s feet onto the floor, then hefted his torso onto the seat, in a sitting position. His mother settled in beside him, first wrapping him up in his overalls, then putting her arms around him. And Teddy got in on the other side, also holding his brother.

As we drove away, I watched Jack in the rearview mirror, staring into the body of water he had created. It is a scene I have recalled many times since—a telling moment. For if there was anything that I believed Jack to be proud of, it was those reservoirs, his reservoirs. And now he pondered his creation, no doubt wondering how something he had worked so hard to build, perhaps the greatest accomplishment of his life, could have betrayed him so thoroughly. I believe it was the
closest Jack came to realizing how much his son meant to him, and the closest he would ever come to expressing his sorrow.

Just before he was out of our sight, he stooped, picked up a large stone, raised it above his head and flung it with unbridled violence into the reservoir. The still surface exploded with water.

Back at the house, I still felt nervous, anxious to keep busy. My knees shook. I had to call the coroner. The call took a while, as Reeves had trouble understanding me. The connection wasn’t good, and he couldn’t make out the word “coroner.” He thought I was saying “corner,” which meant nothing to him. I lost my patience, yelling the word at him until he got it.

Then I made one more call, one I didn’t look forward to.

“Helen?”

“Yes.”

“Is Bob there?”

“Blake?”

“Yes.”

Her voice went cold. “No. He’s in town.”

“Oh. Well, I’m afraid I have some bad news.” My air passage closed up, and I had to clear my throat. I tried to speak, but it was still blocked. Finally, I blurted out in a burst of sound, “George is dead.”

There were several small gasps on the line.

“You mean Dad?”

“No. Little George. He drowned…in the reservoir…just a half hour or so ago.”

Another pause, with some sniffling sounds. “Oh Blake, that’s awful.”

For the first time that I could remember, I believed without a doubt that Helen was sincere, and that her grief was genuine. For that brief instant, I felt a kinship with her. And I was sorry that things couldn’t be this way all the time.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s a damn shame.”

“Oh god,” she said, in a helpless voice I’d never heard from her.

“Will you tell Bob when he gets back?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you for calling, Blake.”

“Well, I thought you should know.”

“Thank you. I mean it.”

I turned from the phone, where Rita stood, staring at me with questioning, tearful eyes. I looked at her, then past her, my mind working, trying to think what needed to be done next. I couldn’t think of anything. I couldn’t think at all, and I looked behind me. The desperation to find something to do overwhelmed me. Then I broke.

Grief, it seems to me, grows much the same way a child does. To begin with, neither can speak, although both are adept at making their presence known—sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. The message may not be clear, but the depth of feeling, the passion, is never in doubt.

As it grows, and ages, grief develops a voice of its own, a voice that needs an attentive, patient ear to express its message clearly. And if it is ignored, the voice will eventually demand attention, until one day you turn around to find yourself looking it squarely in the face.

There is no choice in this progression. The progression happens whether you permit it to or not. The choice comes in how you respond. Some, like Jack, will always run from grief. Others bury it so deep that it makes them weak, and they need someone stronger to rely on.

I think before the day of George’s drowning, I was running in my own way. His death brought me face-to-face with sorrow, and my grief grabbed me by the ears and shook me awake. It forced me to stand still for a moment and notice it, to take it seriously.

Because practicality can only explain death to a point. If a death puts an end to suffering, as with Katie, or with Art, or as the final chapter of
a long, good life, as with Mom, it’s easy to explain it practically and sensibly. But when there’s nothing sensible about a death, such as George’s, it leaves you with nothing to hide behind. The pain is right there. And that day, in a strange way, the pain felt good. It felt right. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t feel like crying. Unlike thirty years before, when my brother died, I wasn’t rebelling against some latent desire to weep. I was sad as hell, but I knew it was right to feel that way. I knew I was supposed to be sad as hell.

And I think that was the one and only day I knew this absolutely. I took one look at Rita, and for the first time I understood why my people don’t talk much. Because in that single look, I recognized that nothing we said to each other could match the feeling of shared experience. We knew, and we didn’t need to speak. Instead, we fell together, holding each other.

And for as long as I stood in Rita’s arms, I surrendered to my sorrow, and allowed my heart to twist into whatever shape it chose. And I knew as I hadn’t thirty years earlier that George’s death, my brother’s death, was just as senseless and tragic as this one. And I knew for the first time that it felt damn good to miss people.

We had to wake up Dad to tell him. He sat forward, and braced himself with one hand on the arm of his chair, tilting his ear toward me as I told him what happened. He looked down, his eyes milky, as if they had been dipped in egg whites. His lips had long ago drawn into his mouth, as if all the words he hadn’t said in his lifetime had pulled them inside. His mouth tightened into a finer, thin line. He said nothing, but his eyes closed, and he simply sank back into his chair.

And I began to miss him too.

T
he war is over. The county is crowded with fresh-faced young men with stubble for hair, eyes bright with the joy of being home, and being alive. But they are also weary, and wary. And I wonder, like I did with Jack when he returned, what they saw—what deep, unexplainable wounds they’ve suffered. Of course, we all read about the things that happened in this war, horrible things that make our own tragedies seem small, and I am sorry for any of these young men who have to keep such secrets.

There are also those who do not return. I see their families at social gatherings, eyeing the survivors with longing, and I feel for them too, because now I know about senseless loss, and what it feels like.

But outside, the fields are ablaze with the green flames of abundance. Everything is more lush than ever, the livestock so fat they seem
to smile. As though the earth is celebrating peace in the best possible way—by creating.

A few weeks ago, I was alone in the barn, trying to doctor the hoof on an old cow, when Bob appeared. A man in a suit followed behind him. Not a western suit, either. He wore a city suit, with one of those hats they wear in cities, with a brim that doesn’t curl up, but dips down in the front and is flat as a flapjack the rest of the way around.

“Blake, this fella came around asking about Jack. I thought you might be able to tell him more than I can.”

I took the blade of my knife and lanced the infected spot, right in the split of the hoof. The wound opened, pouring blood onto the straw. The cow flinched and let out a short, surprised “moo,” but her reaction was nothing like the stranger’s. His face suddenly got longer, and a lighter shade. His mouth twisted, and he turned his head to one side. He was determined not to show that he was bothered by this operation, and he kept trying to look back at it. But each time he saw the blood and pus, he turned away, and he finally just walked a few feet toward the other side of the barn. Bob and I exchanged a discreet smile.

I poured some disinfectant over the wound and lowered her hoof back to the ground, then stood and wiped my hands on my dungarees.

“Well, I don’t know if I can help you any more than my brother here,” I said. “I don’t know where Jack is. I’m Blake, by the way.”

I held a hand out to the man. He shook it, trying not to hesitate or look down at what might be on it.

“Benson,” he said. “Ben Benson.”

“Really? Ben Benson?”

He looked puzzled, as if there was nothing unusual about that.

“Well, urn…like I said, I don’t know much.” I paused. “You interested in some lunch? I’m just about to go in and eat.”

He thought about it, glancing once more at my hand, then at his watch. “All right.”

“I’m going to get back to what I was doin’,” Bob said.

I nodded.

“Thank you, Bob,” Benson said.

Ben Benson and I sat munching sandwiches and baked beans.

“When was the last time you saw Jack?” Benson asked.

I swallowed a bite and wiped the corner of my mouth. “Sorry to ask, Mr. Benson, but who is it that you work for?”

“Oh, I didn’t mention that? Yes. I’m with the AIS,” Benson answered. When he saw that I had no idea what this was, he spelled it out. “Army Investigative Services.”

“Oh.” I nodded, wondering what the army would want with Jack. “No uniform?”

“I’m not actually in the army,” Benson said. “I just work for them.”

“I see.” I took another bite of my sandwich and chewed it up good before addressing his question. “Well, Mr. Benson, Jack disappeared the day his son George drowned in the reservoir out in the north pasture, in the fall of last year…September.”

“And you haven’t seen or heard anything from him since?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“That seems to be a pattern with him,” he said.

I was surprised to find that I took offense to this statement, not because it wasn’t true, but because of his condescending tone. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, the reason I’m looking for him is because he deserted.”

“Deserted?” I shook my head, thinking it was odd that they would be looking for him thirty years later, and wondering how it would possibly take them this long to find him. “When?”

“Back in ’39, about the time the war started.” Benson took a big swig
of lemonade and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “The reason it took us so long to track him down is that he enlisted under a false name.”

I took a minute to absorb this information. I must have looked shocked, because Benson sort of chuckled, shaking his head.

“You didn’t know any of this?”

“Hell no,” I said. “I didn’t even know he’d reenlisted. He was in the army in the first war, but we didn’t know where he was during the thirties.” I looked down at my plate and shook my head. “I’ll be damned.”

“He was in from ’34 until he deserted,” Benson said, wiping his mouth again, very thoroughly.

“I’ll be damned,” I said again. “The goddam army.”

“Bob’s wife said that Jack was something of a scoundrel,” Benson said.

The hair on my neck rose a little at the mention of Helen, but I tried not to show it. “Well…she’s got her own way of seeing things,” I said.

Benson studied me, thinking as he scooped a forkful of beans into his mouth. Then he took a small notepad and pencil from his jacket and set the notebook down on the table. He flipped it open and began writing. “Well, Blake, I might be out again soon, to do a more thorough investigation. But it may not be necessary. It doesn’t appear that any of you know much. Bob took me out to the house where Jack lived, and we didn’t find anything out there. And I talked to Rita, but she didn’t seem to know much either. Your brother seems to have kept a lot of secrets from you folks.” He tore the sheet from his pad and handed it to me. “But here’s the number where I’ll be for the next few days. That’s my home address. If you think of anything that might help us, or if you hear from Jack, please let me know.”