Let Him Go: A Novel (27 page)

B
Y THE TIME
L
ORNA
,
CARRYING
J
IMMY
,
HAS RUN
,
SLID
, and stumbled to the bottom of the long, sloping driveway, flames have filled the back entry of the Weboy house. So fast! But of course that is where all the fuel for a fire—newspapers and magazines, stray pieces of wood, piles of rags—was stored, as well as the kerosene to speed any flames on their way. She stops for a moment to watch—both the blazing house and its billowing smoke stand out against the night sky—and it’s at that very instant that the fire bursts through the roof of the back porch and flickers up toward the second floor. The sight brings a gasp from Lorna, though she’s already breathless with fright and exertion. Anyone trying to escape the burning house will have to go out the front door, the exit she and Jimmy used, but now it looks as if fire is flickering there as well.

And why
has
no one exited the house? By now someone has surely smelled the smoke, if not felt the heat. And where’s Mr. Blackledge? Why would he remain inside a burning house? Shouldn’t he be coming down the hill toward her? Unless . . . is that him? It looks as though someone is outside the front door, but whoever it is, he’s not moving, though surely he can see the flames from where he stands.

Then, just as Lorna is squinting through the darkness, trying to determine whose form that might be in the wavering shadows cast by the firelight, an explosion of sound—like a door banging, banging, banging . . . And now windows are bursting—shattering as if the panes were being dropped on rocks from a great height; the house’s boards and timbers are cracking, and its nails are popping. And in the back entry where the fire burned first and hottest there were boxes of ammunition . . . The acrid smell of smoke is everywhere . . . She can feel it in her nostrils, her lungs . . . She can
taste
it . . .

Lorna doesn’t wait any longer. George Blackledge’s command is still echoing in her ears and she practically throws her son into the car and then climbs in after him. He’s crying now, wide awake, cold, and frightened. His mother pulls him close to her but she makes sure he remains lying down on the car seat.

Lorna turns the key in the ignition. The Hudson’s engine is still warm and turns over immediately. Hot air blows from the heater. As she puts the car into gear and begins to drive away, the weeds in the ditch scratch against the undercarriage and then the gravel from the road clatters against the muffler. In the rearview mirror, the burning house colors the sky like a sunset.

.
   
.
   
.

Despite her tears and the Hudson’s balky, unfamiliar transmission, despite having to drive sometimes with only one hand on the wheel because she has to pat Jimmy with the other, trying to calm him, trying to make him believe with touch what she cannot convince him of with her sobbed
words—Ssh, there, there, it’s going to be all right, it’s going to be fine—despite having to watch the rearview mirror without even being sure what or whom she’s watching for, despite the darkness and the fog that comes and goes, despite all that, Lorna manages to do as George ordered, to maneuver those narrow, unmarked county roads and find the way to Gladstone and then to Good Samaritan Hospital. She travels that distance under those difficult circumstances only to find that once she pulls the Hudson crookedly into the bay usually reserved for the ambulance, she is unable to open the door and climb out of the car. It’s not the lock or the door handle that are preventing her but something inside her, not terror and not panic but perhaps their sudden absence and the relief that takes their place, that paralyzes her, and she can’t do anything but press her face against the window glass and whimper softly, Help, help us.

Carl Skeller, a fair-haired young man no bigger than a jockey, is the orderly on duty, and when he sees the car parked dangerously close to the hospital doors, he draws near to investigate. Then he notices that there’s a woman in the car and runs out to see what this emergency might be. He opens the door for Lorna and she tumbles out of the car. She starts immediately for the hospital’s bright, warm interior but then turns back for her son, grabbing his arm and pulling him from the car as if it were on fire.

Nurse Witt, Lorna says to the orderly. I need to see Nurse Witt!

And though Carl Skeller should no doubt stay with this wild-eyed woman and the little boy—after all, one or both of them must be injured or ill, or else why would she show up at the hospital in the middle of the night in high
heels and pajamas?—something in the urgency of her demand makes him obey and he hurries off.

Almost ten minutes pass before Carl Skeller finds Adeline at the second-floor nurses’ station drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette and visiting with a doctor who’s been called to the hospital on a false alarm. Carl tells Mrs. Witt that a woman down at the emergency room is asking for her.

A tall woman? Adeline asks. With long gray hair?

Carl shakes his head. She’s got a little boy.

Adeline puts out her cigarette. Lead the way, she says, but she’s already walking down the corridor ahead of Carl, and his short legs can’t keep pace with her long strides.

Adeline finds Lorna and Jimmy in the emergency room waiting area. The boy is sitting on his mother’s lap, leaning against her, his thumb in his mouth. He’s looking about warily, and when Adeline comes close he shuts his eyes and burrows his head into his mother’s bosom.

Yes, Adeline says to Lorna. What is it? Who are you?

George Blackledge said I should find you—

And at this Adeline must sit down, herself. Is it Mrs. Blackledge? she asks. Has something happened to Margaret Blackledge?

Lorna’s story rushes out of her but it’s barely a story at all. It’s more like a child’s recitation of an incompletely memorized poem, the words and images neither connecting nor cohering.

Gradually, however, a receptive listener, one who isn’t intent on trying to winnow truth from falsehood or fact from interpretation, hears an account of what has happened out at the Weboy place, confused and disjointed though that account may be.

She’d decided to leave her husband so Mr. Blackledge . . . Donnie . . . she’s married to Donnie Weboy? She and her son lived at the Weboy place . . . but he’s not a Weboy, Jimmy, he’s a Blackledge . . . and his grandfather came to take her back to Dalton, North Dakota . . . and somehow a fire started . . . at the Weboys’ . . . a fire . . . in the house . . . she doesn’t know . . . maybe . . . somebody shot a gun . . . maybe . . . but Mr. Blackledge said come here.

So I came, Lorna says and only now seems to draw a breath.

And in that abrupt silence, the listeners—Adeline Witt and Carl Skeller and Doris Rollag, another night nurse—finally hear what needs to be heard:
a fire at the Weboys!

Calls are immediately made, sleepers awakened, alarms sounded . . . but by then none of the night’s events could be altered any more than the approaching dawn can be hurried or delayed by a single minute.

M
ARGARET
B
LACKLEDGE IS WAITING
. . .

She and Alton Dragswolf agreed they’d leave the valley together, the path being too steep, rocky, and rutted for a climber to navigate safely alone.

Once they reached the top, however, Alton Dragswolf returned to his shack and left Margaret to try to hitch a ride into Gladstone alone, a driver being more likely to stop for a solitary woman than for two hitchhikers, especially when one of them is an Indian.

And alongside the road is where Margaret waits now, dressed in her mackinaw and dungarees, her cut and bruised feet jammed into her boots, and another pair of boots—George’s—slung on a string around her neck like a yoke she must carry through this life. The fog that clung close to the valley floor has thinned to nothing but mist at this height and because of the highway’s light-colored concrete and broken yellow center line, Margaret can see down the road for a ways in both directions. To either side of the road, however, darkness has claimed the distances for its own, and this country that so often seems to promise walkers or riders that they can travel as far and as freely as they wish is now as blank and uninviting as a wall or a precipice.

At least ten minutes pass before a car comes along and it does not slow. As it rushes past, droplets of mist rise and swirl in the air like snowflakes. The next car is traveling in the wrong direction but when its headlights find Margaret waving her arms the driver eases off the accelerator . . . but only for an instant and then the car resumes its speed.

The temptation to start walking in the direction of Gladstone is strong—George is out there, somewhere, the agent or victim of who knows what acts?—but Alton has assured her that eventually someone will come along, someone whose sense of mercy or, hell, maybe curiosity will not allow him to pass a woman standing alone out on the prairie in the middle of the night. An old woman. Alton didn’t say the word, but he didn’t need to.

Then an old Ford truck pulling a horse trailer drives past her, but fifty yards ahead its brake lights blink. The driver makes no attempt to pull over to the side of the road but is obviously waiting for Margaret.

She runs down the highway and when she’s almost at the truck, its passenger door pops open. She climbs in, and as she does she hears the horse behind her, its stamping hooves echoing inside the trailer as if the creature would prefer to keep traveling.

Run into some trouble out here, did you? asks the young cowboy behind the wheel. He’s wearing a sweat-stained hat but his torso is bare.

Are you going to Gladstone?

I ain’t. But I can. He scratches his stomach as if that’s an explanation for being shirtless.

My husband’s there. He’s hurt.

You don’t say. The cowboy’s drunk. He’s still leaning
toward the passenger side and when he tries to sit up straighter he goes too far the other way. The truck’s interior has the smoky-sweet smell of whiskey breath and cigarettes hand-rolled from pipe tobacco. One of those droops from the cowboy’s lips. But you, he says to Margaret, you ain’t. Just nervous, are you? Shook up?

I need to get to Gladstone.

The brim of his hat has been pulled low as if the young man needed to keep his identity secret. He pushes it back now and says, Gladstone it is. He tosses his cigarette out the window.

But the truck doesn’t move. Having unexpectedly stopped in the middle of the highway, the cowboy can’t seem to find the sequence of actions necessary to resume his journey.

Then let’s get rolling, says Margaret.

Her command works. He muscles the truck into gear, lets out the clutch smoothly, and they’re on their way.

He has some difficulty remaining in his own lane but Margaret remains quiet until his front tires touch the gravel shoulder and he jerks too hard, bringing the truck back on course.

Easy, she says. You’re going to make me and your horse sick. You don’t want that.

He grips the steering wheel tighter and leans forward and does a better job of aiming truck and trailer.

You ain’t asked me where I’m headed, he says.

I know. Not to Gladstone.

Wyoming. My buddy Petey French is working on a ranch out there and he says he can get me hired on.

A man with his own horse and a willingness to work can generally do all right for himself in this part of the world.

Me and my old man had words, the young cowboy says.

Did you. Margaret gestures to keep him from drifting over the center line and he takes the correction nicely.

He don’t want to give me my due. So I finally had enough of his bullshit and told him to go to hell and walked off. He knew if he let me go I’d be gone for good but did he give a damn? He did not.

Your story, says Margaret, almost reaching for the steering wheel but then relaxing back into her seat, reminds me of my husband’s. He had a falling out with his father. And it came to more than words. Before George walked away, he knocked his father to the ground.

Good for him, I say. A man’s got his pride. Don’t tell me I didn’t want to do the same. But if I had I’d be watching for the goddamn law every step. This way I’m getting away clean. No looking back.

Did you leave tonight?

This morning, the cowboy says and flashes a quick smile in Margaret’s direction. I sort of made a few stops before I got up a head of steam.

And you’re trying to make it to Wyoming by . . . when?

I’ll get there when I get there. Right now I’m just feeling good being out from under.

The truck veers dangerously close to the center line and this time Margaret limits her correction to a hand signal, five fingers thrust straight out. The cowboy steers them gently back into their lane.

Are you from around here? Margaret asks.

My folks’ place is just outside Wibaux.

Margaret sinks back into her seat again. I know where Wibaux is.

Me too. Behind me. And that’s where it’s going to stay.

She leans forward and peers through the windshield as though she’s trying to see beyond the reach of the headlights. I had a boy not much older than you.

The young man hazards a glance in Margaret’s direction. Had, you say?