Women with Men (15 page)

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought so,” she said.

After a few more minutes, a big man wearing a light-gray suit and western boots and a western hat came in and looked
around the room. He appeared very clean and neat and had pale white skin and thin hair and a bad complexion, and at first he only glanced at us before he looked behind the bar and into the back room, where the sheriff had come from. He stepped down the hall where Barney had been and into the bathroom—though I couldn't see him do that. When he came out he said something to the sheriff, who had put his hat on again, then he brought a chair over to the booth and sat down at the end of the table in front of us.

He took out a little spiral pad and wrote something in it with a ballpoint pen. Then he said, still writing, “I'm Walter Peterson, I'm the lawyer for Toole County. I'd like to find out some things from you people.”

“We don't know anything,” Doris said. “We don't live here. We're on our way to Seattle. We just stopped in.” She had her blanket clutched up to her neck, and her fists were holding the edges together.

“Did you know the deceased man?” the lawyer said without answering Doris. I realized that was what they were calling Barney now. The lawyer had a tiny pin on his lapel—a pair of silver handcuffs—and when he sat down I saw he was wearing a leather holster under his coat. He didn't take off his hat when he was talking to us.

“No,” Doris said, “we didn't.”

“Did
you
know him?” he said to me.

“No, sir,” I said.

“Did either of you talk to him?” the lawyer said, writing something in his little notebook.

“I
tried
to talk to him,” Doris said. “Just practically by accident. But he didn't care to say much.” She looked at me and then looked all around the barroom, which seemed larger and even dirtier with the ceiling lights on. “Was he carrying a gun of some kind?” she said. “I had the feeling he was.”

“He didn't say anything about his wife?” the lawyer said, still not answering her.

“He said she'd been robbed at some point. He admitted that.”

The lawyer stopped writing and looked at Doris as if he expected her to talk some more. Then he said, “Did he say anything else about that?” He began writing again, and I saw that he wrote with his left hand and in the regular way, not turned backward.

“No, sir,” Doris said. “He didn't. Lawrence, of course, wasn't here then. He came in just toward the end.”

“The end of what?” the man said. He had short thick hands with a big gold-and-red ring on one finger.

“At the end of the time we were sitting at the bar beside each other. Before he went to the bathroom.”

“What's your name?” the lawyer said to me, and I told him. He asked Doris her name and wrote it down along with our addresses. He asked us what relation we were to each other, and Doris said she was my aunt and my mother was her sister. He looked at me as if he wanted to ask me something, then he ran the blunt end of his pen across his cheek, where his complexion was bad, and, I guess, changed his mind.

“Did the deceased say anything to either of you after he went to the bathroom?”

“He didn't have time after that,” Doris said. “They shot him.”

“I see,” the lawyer said, though I remembered Barney had said he intended to show me something when he got back. But I didn't mention that. The lawyer wrote something else down and closed his notebook. He nodded and stuck his pen inside his coat. “If we have to call you, we'll call you,” he said. He started to smile at Doris, then didn't. “Okay?” he said. He took two business cards out of his pocket and laid them on the
tabletop. “I want you to keep my card and call me if you think of anything you want to add to your statements.”

“What was the matter with him?” Doris asked. “He said he'd been in Fort Harrison, but I didn't know whether to believe that or not.”

The lawyer stood up and put his notepad in his back pocket. “Him and his wife got in a set-to. That's all I've heard about it. She's missing at the moment.”

“I'm sorry that all happened,” Doris said.

“Are you both going to Seattle?” he said, and he didn't smile, though he said it to me.

“Yes,” Doris said. “His mother lives there.”

“It'll be warmer over there. You'll like that,” he said. He looked around at one of the deputies, who had been waiting for him to finish with us, then he just walked away, just walked toward that man and began talking beside the bar. Once, he looked over as if he was saying something about us, but in a minute he went outside. I could hear his voice, then I heard a car start up and drive away.

DORIS AND
I sat in the booth for ten more minutes while the deputies and a highway patrolman stood at the bar and talked. I thought I might go look at the place where Barney had gotten shot, but I didn't want to get up by myself and I didn't want to ask Doris to go with me. Though after we'd sat there for a while longer Doris said, “I guess we're free to go.” She stood up and folded her blanket and laid it on the table, and I stood up and folded mine the same way. She went to the bar and gathered up her money and her coat and her purse and keys. Barney's work gloves and wine were still on the bar, and I noticed a pint bottle of whiskey on the floor under the stool Barney had been sitting on. One of the deputies was picking
up the empty shotgun shells, and he said something to Doris and laughed, and Doris said, “I just stopped in for a drink, that's all,” and laughed herself. I walked quickly over to where the men with shotguns had aimed down the hallway. And what I saw was the bathroom door knocked off of its top hinge and hanging on the bottom one, and bright light shining out of the bathroom. But nothing else. No holes in the wall or any marks anywhere. There wasn't even any blood I could see, though I was sure there must've been blood someplace, since I'd seen it on the sheet when Barney had been taken out. It was just empty there, almost as if nothing had happened.

Doris walked over to me, putting things in her purse. “Let's break out of this place,” she said and pulled my arm, and then the two of us walked out of the Oil City without saying anything to anybody else, and right out into the cold night, where there was new snow and more still sifting down.

Outside, all the sounds were softened and I could hear better. Across the railroad yard were the dark backs of stores on the main street of Shelby, and through the alleys I could see hanging Christmas lights and a big yellow motel sign and the lights of cars cruising. I could hear car horns blowing and a switch-engine bell ringing in the dark. Two police cars sat parked in front of the bar with their motors running and their lights off, and two women stood in the snow across the street, watching the door to see what would happen next. One of the boys I'd passed in the drugstore when I'd bought my mother's watch was talking to the women, his hands stuck in his jacket pockets. Maybe they thought there would be some more excitement. But what I thought was that someone would come and close the bar soon and that would be all. I thought it might not ever open again.

Doris stopped on the sidewalk then and didn't say anything. She crossed her arms and put her hands under them to
get warm. Her chin was down, her red patent-leather shoes were covered with snow. She seemed to be considering something that hadn't occurred to her until she was outside. We were facing the depot, farther down the street, its windows lit. The taxi that had been in front of the Oil City was parked there now, its green roof light shining. Other cars had arrived, so I couldn't see Doris's car. My own feet were starting to be cold, and I wanted to go on to the depot and wait inside for the train. There was only an hour left until it would come.

“That was
such
a goddamn unlucky thing it just makes me sick,” Doris said, and bunched her shoulders and pulled her elbows in. “Of course it's not what happens, it's what you do with what happens.” She looked around at the two other bars on the block, which looked exactly like the Oil City—dark wood fronts with red bar signs in the windows. “I've got snakes in my boots right now,” she said, “which is what the Irishman says.” And she spit. She spit right in the street in the snow. I had never seen a woman do that. “Did you ever hear your dad say he had snakes in his boots when he was drinking?”

“No,” I said.

“It means you need another drink. But I don't think I can approach another bar tonight. I need to go sit in my car and regain my composition.” In the Oil City the jukebox started up, loud music bursting into the street. “Can you stand to sit with me? You can go wait in the depot if you want to.” She smiled at me, a smile that made me feel sorry for her. I thought she must've felt bad about Barney, and must've thought she was responsible for what happened.

On the platform beside the depot two men in heavy coats were standing talking, shifting from foot to foot. A switch engine moved slowly past them. I wanted to go inside there and get warm. But I said, “No, I'll come with you.”

“We don't have to stay very long,” Doris said. “I just don't want to see anybody for a while. I'll calm down in a minute or two. Okay?” She started walking up the middle of the street. “Everyday acts of heroism are appreciated,” she said as she walked, and she smiled at me again.

Doris's pink car was covered with snow and was down among the other cars that had arrived behind the depot. She started the motor right away and turned the heater up, but didn't wipe the windshield, so that we sat in the cold while the heater blew cold air on our feet, and couldn't see out, could only see the blurred lights of the depot as if they were painted on the frosted window.

Doris put her hands in her lap and shivered and stamped her feet and put her chin down and blew ice smoke. I just sat. I put my hands in my pockets and tried to be still until I could feel the air start to blow warm. The front of my coat was still wet.

“Double shivers,” Doris said, pushing her chin farther down into her coat. She looked pale, as if she'd been sick, and her face seemed small and her eyes tired. “You know when you watch TV on New Year's Day and all the soap-opera characters stop in the middle of their programs and turn to the camera and wish you Happy New Year's? Did you ever see that?”

“No,” I said, because I had never watched soap operas.

“Well, they do it. Take my word for it. But it's my favorite moment of the whole year for the soaps. They just step out for a second, then they step right back in and go on. It's wonderful. I watch it religiously.”

“We watch football that day—when we have a TV,” I said, and clenched my toes down, because I was cold and couldn't help wondering if exhaust fumes were getting inside. I tried to feel if I was getting sleepy, but I wasn't. My jaw was still stiff,
and I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest as if I'd been running, and my legs were tingling above my knees.

“Is that what you care about—football?” Doris said after a while.

“No,” I said. “Not anymore.”

“You're just ready to start life now, I guess.”

“I already started it,” I said.

“You certainly did tonight.” Doris reached for the schnapps bottle, where she'd left it on the floor, and unscrewed the cap and took a drink. “I've got a sour taste,” she said. “You want to drink a toast to poor old Barney?” She handed the bottle to me, and I could smell it.

“No, thanks,” I said, and didn't take it.

“Honor the poor dead and our absent friends,” she said, then took another drink. The heater was blowing warmer now.

“Why did you say to the police that he was in the bathroom?” I said.

Doris held the bottle up to the depot lights. “I didn't mean that to happen. If they'd spoken to him in the Indian tongue, none of it would've ever taken place. They just didn't speak it. It was a matter of mutual distrust.” She said something then in what must've been the Indian tongue—something that sounded like reading words backward, not like something you heard wrong or mistook the meaning of. “Do you know what that means?”

“No,” I said.

“It means: ‘Come out with your hands up and I won't kill you,’ in the Gros Ventre language. Or it means something like that. They don't really have a word for ‘hands up.’ Barney could've understood that if he'd been a Gros Ventre.”

“Why'd you tell them that, though?” I said, because I thought Barney might've survived if he hadn't gotten trapped
in there and maybe gotten scared. He could be in jail now, asleep, instead of dead.

“I didn't mean him to get shot.” Doris looked at me as if she was surprised. “Do you think I'm rotten because I did that?”

“No,” I said, though that wasn't exactly the truth.

“He murdered his wife. I'm sure about that. They'll find her someplace over in Browning tonight, beat to death or stabbed or burned up in a ditch. That's what happens. She probably had a boyfriend. The police were already looking for him, I knew that the instant he sat down beside me. People get a smell on them.” She blew more ice breath in the air. “I don't think the heater's working.” She turned the knob around and back. “Feel my hands.” She put her small hands together and shoved them toward me, and they were cold and hard-feeling. “They're my prettiest feature, I believe,” Doris said, looking at her own hands. She looked at my hands then, and touched the place where her wedding ring had worked into my knuckle. “Your skin's
your
nicest feature,” she said, and looked at my face. “You look like your mother, and you have your father's skin. You'll probably look like him eventually.” She pushed closer to me. “I'm so cold, baby,” she said, holding her two hands still clasped together against my chest and putting her face against my cheek. The skin on her face was cold and stiff and not very soft, and the frames of her glasses were cold too. There was a smell of sweat in her hair. “I feel numb, and you're so warm. Your face is warm.” She kept her cheek against my cheek, so I could feel that mine was warm. “You need to warm me up,” she whispered. “Are you brave enough to do that? Or are you a coward on that subject?” She put her hands around my neck and below my collar, and I didn't know what to do with my hands, though I put them around her and began to pull her close to me and felt her weight come against my weight and her legs press on my cold legs. I felt her ribs and
her back—hard, the way they'd felt when we'd been on the floor in the bar. I felt her breathing under her coat, could smell on her breath what she'd just been drinking. I closed my eyes, and she said to me, almost as if she was sorry about something, “Oh, my. You've just got everything, don't you? You've just got everything.”