The Other Shoe (9 page)

Galahad walked up close, face to face with Henry, the rifle loaded and armed and its sling wrapped round his forearm. Her father was in a mood. Though he was often angry and always stupid, Karen could not recall seeing him quite so beside himself as this. He'd drawn the sling so taut over his arm that his hand lay bloodless along the rifle
stock. His lips had bled salt. Such a fit, such an upset over his daughter's virtue, which was at any rate intact, and which was in all events a technicality. How did Galahad think her virtue was in any way his to protect? Now she meant life or death to him? Now? Her father seemed to adore the thought that he'd been so betrayed and so wounded that he was free to wander off into a glory of self-pity where, probably, anything he might do should be excused. Karen could not imagine where his judgment might take him next; she only knew that she didn't want to be afraid. Her father would enjoy her fear, and why would she ever want to allow him that pleasure? His throat had constricted, and when he spoke, sincerity and a spray of spittle were evident, and he wheezed like the dented tin teapot unable to contain a head of steam. “Mister,” he said, “I think you're down to just one thing you can decently do here. You better marry this girl in the eyes of my Savior.”

Henry made a visor of his palm and blinked steadily at them from beneath it as if they were at the far end of a field. There were welts on his cheeks from heavy sleeping; he'd had no recent acquaintance with the light of day. This, Karen thought, must be one of those blue periods he'd mentioned by way of explaining the times, the months, when he didn't come around. He'd told her he was prone to burrow in, but this was the first she'd seen of him in hibernation. He was smaller for it. The twist and stiffness in his body were more pronounced. He looked at them, and there was something mechanical in his regard. “Karen? Did I . . . is there something I don't know about?”

“Don't play stupid, Brusett. You know what this is.” Galahad had decided that he might after all be, in the right circumstance, a hard man. If sufficiently wronged, he might even become a hero. Either way, it appeared he was working himself up to some kind of drama with the rifle.

“This is a misunderstanding,” Karen said. “I told him. I told him and told him and told him, he's got it wrong.”

“Yeah,” said Henry. “But what? What'd he get wrong?”

“I told the paper guy I might come up here to live. That's all it was. And now I think, well, I
know
, he's got some misunderstanding out of it. Dad. Dad. I told you. Come on. Please.”

“The paper?” said Henry. “The
new
spaper?”

“You could say it slipped out.”

“What slipped? I think I gotta have a few more details.”

“And where did she come by that idea, Brusett? The two of you up here? Don't that make a cozy arrangement for you?”

“I don't recall that it was ever discussed.”

“I explained that, too,” said Karen. “I told him it was my own idea.
Just
my idea. And I told him that. And it wasn't even an idea, hardly. Just something I said at the moment.”

“She could stay here if she wants,” said Henry. “But where?”

“Right,” said Galahad. “Where? If she got the idea she should come here, then you must've put it there, and if she's coming here, even if she's just been here before with you, that calls for a ceremony in my mind. The ring, the ceremony, the blessing—you better get ready for the whole shitaree . . . I mean the sacrament or whatever it's supposed to be. See how mad this has got me?”

“What're you gonna do, Mr. Dent? Shoot me?”

“You'll do the right thing, Brusett.”

“How could you wish that on your own daughter? Damn. Look at me, would you? You want this for her? What the hell?”

“What do you mean?” said Karen. “What do you mean, ‘Look at you'?”

Henry drew his robe closed. “Let's everybody settle down. First thing, why don't you switch that safety on? Were you gonna shoot me, or what?”

“I think you better say you'll do the right thing.”

“Put the gun down.”

“All it was,” said Karen, “I told the newspaper I worked for you. Not even for you—I told 'em I worked for some
body
. I told the paper I might come up here to live. But I wasn't even thinking. I hadn't thought it through, I just said it.”

“Seems to me,” said Galahad, “that neither one of you has been thinking too much. But you better start now.”

“Something got by me here,” Henry said. “I must be missing something.”

“Yeah. A proposal of marriage. You want her livin' here, that's what it'll take.”

“He never asked me to live anywhere,” Karen repeated. “Or do anything, or . . . ”

“So,” said Galahad, “he didn't even have to ask. Does that make it any better?”

“Hold up,” said Henry. “I think if you keep talkin' like that, then maybe you will have to shoot somebody. 'Cause you're pissin' me off. How you can talk about your own girl this way—poor-mouth her? She's a good girl, and you oughtta know that. What's wrong with you? Fuck you. Shoot me.”

“Think I wouldn't?”

“I think I don't care. Shoot or put it up; don't embarrass yourself. Ah, but it's too late, Dent. Shoot. Go on and shoot me.”

“Wait,” said Karen.

Galahad sent a round into one of the tires under Henry's trailer, which popped, and they all flinched and then stood there looking from one to the other. Galahad leveled the .243 at Henry's chest, and Henry said once again, “Fuck you.”

“He doesn't even use that word around me,” Karen told her father. “Now, see what you're doin'? Stop it. You're crazy. You are crazy, and I don't like you, and I wanted to live anywhere but where you are. Stop it. Henry doesn't even talk that way.”

“Shoot,” said Henry. “Don't stand there shakin', shoot me.”

“Henry,” she said, “would you please shut up? Please?”

“I don't like what he said. This is a good girl, she's your own daughter, and I don't see how you missed it, or didn't know. Why do I have to be the one to tell you she's a good girl? That's what's wrong here—me havin' to tell you.”

“He's crazy, Henry. He can't see anything. He doesn't know anything.” Her father's forefinger, she saw, was snug on the trigger, and the rifle's barrel ended just a foot from Henry Brusett's heart. “Look,” she said, “if it makes you happy, I'll marry him. Why not?”

“You don't have to do one damn thing,” said Henry.

“What if I wanted to? How do you know I wouldn't want to?”

“Karen,” said Henry, “now, this is gettin' out of hand.”

Galahad's lips were crusted white, his breathing shallow but loud.

“I said I'd marry him.”

“No,” said Henry.

“I want to,” she said.

A vein burst in Galahad's nose and splattered his sandy mustache.

“No, I really want to. Who else would I marry, anyway? Who'd suit me better than you would?”

“About anybody,” said Henry. “Anybody, honey. Now, quit it, or you'll get me cryin'.”

“Honey?” said Galahad Dent.

“He doesn't call me that. And he doesn't use bad language, either. Usually. Put down that gun. Come on. Please. Before anything can happen.”

“I guess we could try and make a little sense here,” said Henry. “But Mr. Dent, you have got no business . . . You got a wonderful girl, and you talk like this? You even hear yourself?”

Eyes twitching and raised to heaven, Galahad pleaded, “Master, let me know.” He knelt and they waited an odd amount of time until
he had his answer or was bored with waiting for it, and then Galahad finally unslung the .243 and laid it on the ground before him. He remained on one knee, too tired or too contrite to rise. A crow called to another crow off in the trees, and a gray squirrel capered out over open ground. Henry toed the rifle to point it away from everyone.

“The same thing still goes,” said Karen. “I'd like to marry you. For me, not for him or what he thinks. I'd like to. For me. This is modern times, and I'm the whattayacallit. The age of consent. Anyway, I can propose to somebody, I think, like, legally. Sorry it had to be this way, but that's what I'm doin'. So, do you want to, Henry? Get married? To me, I mean?”

It took her three days to convince him, as she had convinced herself in a moment, that he was her only sufferable option. She asked him to call her, though she knew it meant his coming down off the mountain each time; she asked that he call every night at six, because they really did need to talk, and when they talked she told him that all she wanted in all the world was to be with someone who she could expect to be nice to her. Was that too much to ask? She said she would not be a problem, that she could cook a little and would learn to do better. She could be his legs for him all day every day, and just think what they might accomplish. She said she'd take up very little room because she intended to leave almost everything she had behind with the Dents. She'd bring her clothes and her woods gear and her own shampoo and toothbrush and that was all. She said she needed to go somewhere, anywhere, and she needed to go right now, and she had nowhere else to go, no one else that she could think to ask for any help. All she wanted was food, and all she absolutely needed was shelter under some roof other than the Dents'. Henry said he thought maybe he could buy a second trailer for her, but Karen said that it wasn't necessary, that she was talking about marriage. She was very surprised to find herself in agreement with her father on a point of such
importance, but, truly, if they were going to live together, they might as well live together as man and wife; there were too many advantages in it to ignore. “Actually,” she said, “I think it's a great idea. I mean, don't you?”

“Oh, I'd like it fine, and I wish that was the only thing we had to consider, whether I liked it or not. Problem is—it's ridiculous. Because you could do, you
should
do a lot better for yourself. I just can't tell you how flattered I am, but no.”

“I don't know that. I don't know that at all. In fact, I doubt it very much. You're as good as they come, Henry. Good as I've ever seen, anyway. And, as far as ridiculous goes—everything is ridiculous. Believe me, I'm ready right now.”

One Friday in May, Karen rode with Henry over Thompson Pass, just the two of them, and though by then the road had been open several weeks already, there were still stretches of it where snow lay drifted and plowed into ten-foot berms on either side, and they traveled in those places through a crystal canyon, under a faultless sky. The twenty-fifth of May. At the top of the pass, somewhere along the state line, Henry mentioned a trailhead, buried now, but that trail, he promised, led to a lesser trail, and that trail, about three miles along, came to the biggest huckleberry patch he'd ever seen, a place rarely without a bear in it. He'd show her sometime. They descended into Idaho and drove over the Fourth of July Pass and on into Coeur d'Alene, and before eleven thirty that morning, Pacific Standard Time, they'd bought two plain white gold bands and been to the Kootenai County Courthouse for their license. At the Old Joinery, a pleasant receptionist told them that Justice Quinlevan had committed to unite three couples before them that day, and with that and with a lunch break for the staff, she wondered if they would be willing to come back at four forty-five?

Henry took Karen to Sterner's Family Restaurant for the endless pink lemonade it advertised and for its broasted chicken. They went to
Sears to look at generators and to buy a wheel for his wheelbarrow. He tried to buy her a jacket that was on sale, marked 60 percent off. “For a wedding present?” he thought.

“But it's supposed to be other people who give us presents, isn't it? Which I don't want anyway. I got my wedding present soon as we loaded my stuff in your truck. Soon as we drove outta that yard.” Karen did not wish to seem ungrateful, but it was a girlish garment he was offering, its hood lined with a purple pelt, a thing otherwise white and puffy and not at all her taste. “Anyway,” she said, “I won't hardly have any use for a jacket until it gets cold again. Next fall. I don't wear 'em any more than I have to. You'll be surprised by how little stuff I use.”

Henry bought her instead five hundred rounds for her pistol and some neatsfoot oil for her holster.

Karen wondered how some women stood a wait of months and even years to marry, for it seemed to her that once an agreement was reached, an understanding, then the rest was urgent work. Before sunset, her name would no longer be Dent. At the restaurant, Henry asked her if she was sure, and she said yes. In Sears, he asked her again, and again she said yes. From Sears they walked the mall until they came to a snow cone stand. Karen had a coconut-lime, Henry a raspberry, and, his lips scarlet, he told her, “I wouldn't be a good catch even for a woman my own age. Even for an ugly one. As you say, I'd be nice to you and all, yeah, you could be sure of that. But you can back away from this any old time, and I'd sure understand it if you did. No hard feelings at all.” Karen dismissed this with a face she'd already learned to make at him. Poor dear. Slow learner. Every struggling word made him more completely hers, and if he was trying to get out of it now, he was going about it the wrong way. They went to the bookstore and bought collections of crossword puzzles, and pinochle decks, and some spy novels, and then it was time to go back.