The windows of the old Model T rattled as the mail truck bounced along the winding gravel road from Belle Fourche, South Dakota, to Albion, Montana. It was well past midnight, and I tried to sleep, but my head bonked against the window each time I dozed, until it felt as if I’d grown a corner on my forehead. There was also the matter of Annie Ketchal, the driver, who loved to talk. When I saw that Annie was the driver that night, I cringed, because I knew I wouldn’t get much sleep. Because of her job, she knew everyone, and not only did she know them, but she had a gift for finding out more about them than anyone else knew. At the age of fourteen, I usually found the information she passed on interesting, and sometimes even shocking, but on this night I simply wasn’t interested in lives outside of my own.
“Sorry about your brother, Blake,” she said after a few miles.
“Thanks, Mrs. Ketchal,” I answered, feeling my jaw tighten, my lower teeth settling against the upper.
My heart seemed to press against my chest, as if a strong hand had a firm grip on it, squeezing it tightly, telling it, “Don’t beat…don’t you dare beat.” And I knew as sure as anything that this pain would never go away. I thought I would feel this bad for the rest of my life. My fourteen years hadn’t taught me that you feel this kind of pain sometimes, and that although it may never completely disappear, it does fade. And if anyone had tried to explain that to me then, I would have silently told them to shut up and leave me alone, to let me get a little sleep. Just as I now silently wished that Annie Ketchal, as friendly as she was, would be quiet and let me and my struggling heart be.
I had been standing at the blackboard doing a math problem when the telegram arrived. I was an eighth-grader, just beginning my second year at the Belle Fourche School, fifty miles from the ranch. I boarded with an older couple during the week and caught the mail truck home most weekends to help with the harvest, or haying, or feeding the stock.
Brother George drowned in river.
read the telegram. My mother’s words, as always, would never pass for poetry, but it told me everything I needed to know.
I gave the telegram to my teacher, and standing there as she read it, my mind reviewed all of the immediate concerns of a fourteen-year-old boy. First, I knew that I would be going home immediately. And I knew that there was a good chance that I wouldn’t be coming back. I thought about the dollar a day I could earn if I stayed home, and wondered what I might be able to save up for. And I felt a certain sense of relief about not coming back, because in the year and change that I’d been in Belle Fourche, I had never adjusted to life in town. I didn’t like the pace. I spent most of my time in the classroom wishing I was sitting on a horse in the middle of a broad pasture. I couldn’t keep my mind on the books in front of me, especially when the sun was shining. And although I did well in school, I never felt the same satisfaction from getting a test with a big blue A on it as I did from stepping back and admiring a stack of hay I’d just pitched, or pulling the forelegs of a calf, watching it slosh to the ground and shake its moist head, ears flopping. At my core, I relished the thought of going home.
What I did not think about in the moment was that my life would completely change with this news. I thought about George and his baseball, and how he could scoop a ground ball and whip it to first base with such fluid grace that it seemed as if he caught the ball in the middle of his throwing motion. But I guess I wasn’t ready to think about the fact that I would never see him again.
So when the teacher asked me if I was okay, I nodded without hesitation, and it was true at that particular moment.
“All right,” she said. “You go on ahead then.”
So I walked to the boarders’ house, told them the news, packed my bag, and caught the mail truck home. But after several hours in the truck, the reality started to penetrate. I remembered a day the previous winter—an early morning when we were out feeding the stock. It was colder than hell that morning, and George, Jack, Dad, and I were doing whatever we could think of to keep warm, pounding our gloved hands together, running in place, working our jaws to keep the skin on our faces from freezing. George was talking, as he often did. He was talking about cattle, and sheep.
“People talk about how stupid animals are,” George said, stomping his boots against the ground. “But just look at this. Every morning, we get up and come out here to feed these bastards, who aren’t at all cold. We come out here and risk our lives to wait on these animals, and they’re the stupid ones? I think we’re the stupid ones. Not only that, but we paid money for these sons of bitches. We paid money for the privilege of waiting on these goddam animals.”
He kept along in the same vein, a half grin on his face the whole time, and the rest of us were laughing so hard, we felt warmer than we had all morning. Even Jack, who usually had little tolerance for George’s monologues, was laughing. It was one of those simple moments where the presence of one person made life better for all of us for a time.
“So many youngsters dying,” Annie Ketchal said. “What was he, nineteen?”
“Yes, ma’am, nineteen in July,” I said, taking a deep breath. Besides wishing that Annie Ketchal would let me sleep, I was annoyed that she was breaking the custom of our people, which was not to pursue a potentially unpleasant line of questioning. She knew better, but as I noticed in my previous rides with her, Annie didn’t think much about what she said. I suppose that with such a lonely job, having an audience was more important to her than etiquette.
“So many,” she repeated. “I lost a nephew last year, and another three years ago.” She shook her head. “Smallpox, the first one was, and the other just had a bad cold. That was all it took.” She snapped her fingers, indicating how quickly it happened. “This country is rough on the children,” she said. “The women and the children.” She continued shaking her head. “’Course the men don’t fare much better, but you’d expect to lose a few of them, as hard as they work just to break through this ground.”
I nodded, not knowing what to say—actually, knowing that it didn’t matter what I said, or whether I spoke at all.
“What was he like?” Annie asked. “I started driving after he quit school. So I never really knew him.”
Besides being offended by the indelicacy of the question, by having to explore something I didn’t want to think about, I was also fourteen and answered accordingly, shrugging. “I dunno. He liked baseball.”
But the question echoed in me. I thought of it often over the years, when others died. In terms of George as well as the rest. And it seemed that the answers changed as I grew older. If I were to answer the question now, I would say that George was solid—even-tempered, unusually even-tempered for such a young man. That despite taking his work seriously, he was also extremely capable of enjoying life. He never seemed to be overwhelmed by the more overwhelming aspects of our existence.
I guess my manner told Annie that I didn’t want to pursue this line of questioning, as she did not press for more details.
“You’re not planning to stay and work, are you, Blake?” she asked.
I swallowed hard, thinking to myself that this was none of her business, but not wanting to be rude. “Don’t know. They’re probably going to need me.”
“Oh, Jesus,” she muttered. “I’m sorry, Blake, but I just think that’s a shame, you being as bright as you are and all. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say that.”
That would be the most accurate statement you’ve made all night, I thought to myself.
In the best of conditions, the fifty-mile drive along the winding gravel road from Belle Fourche to our ranch took about three hours. But Annie had to drop a mail sack at each box along the way, an average of every couple of miles. So we traveled all night. And Annie didn’t miss a beat, sawing away hour after hour with her stories, most of which I’d already heard, about the people on each ranch we passed. There was Tex Edwards, whose first wife, the heir to one of the bigger local ranches, mysteriously drowned in a puddle four inches deep. And Lonnie Roberts and his wife Ruth, both of whom Annie claimed to be consistently unfaithful. And finally, there was Art Walters, whose wife Rose had been one of the many locals who fell victim to the “loneliness.” Someone found her wandering along the road one day with her baby son in her arms. Rose, who moved out from Ohio to teach school, had been muttering to herself about bathtubs when they found her. Bathtubs and maple trees. They sent Rose back to Ohio, and no one had heard a word since.
I pointed my eyes straight ahead, at the road, answering questions when asked, but mostly letting my mind drift. I thought about George, and about how my parents would take the loss. Dad would take it more personally, like a punishment from God. He would work even harder, trying to gain favor, trying to get more land to prepare for the inevitability of more tragedy. And he would spout invectives, throwing blame in blind directions—at the government, and the weather, and the “goddam banks.” Mom would turn it more inward, saying things like. “We should have…” or “Maybe if we’d…”
While Dad worried about what we should do, Mom would plan what we would do. And we would follow her plan. It was a system that worked well for them, as Dad worked harder than any man I knew, and Mom was a skilled organizer.
I thought about the fact that I was the second oldest now, behind Jack. How they would need to rely on me. I knew that none of them would be moping around, thinking about George, and that they would have no tolerance for anyone else doing that either. Because it would affect a person’s usefulness.
“You tired, Blake?” Annie asked just a couple of miles from our ranch.
Well, my head was rolling around like a BB in a washtub, so the answer seemed pretty obvious. But I nodded and leaned against my satchel, which sat on the seat between us. It was late fall, a cool night, and lightning had just begun flashing orange off the bottom of a dark cloud cover. The clouds were so thick that my beloved prairie was hidden by darkness, as if a black curtain had been pulled down over my window. But when the lightning flashed, the landscape lit up as if it was late afternoon, if only for a brief moment.
Annie pulled off the road to a solitary mailbox perched on a twisted fence post. We were at Glassers’, our closest neighbors to the south. Cold air blew through the cab as Annie hopped out and plucked Glassers’ canvas mail sack from the truck bed. A clap of thunder rumbled across the horizon. I looked up at the sky, hoping to see lightning. But the flash had already come and gone.
I woke up, my head pounding the window one last time, when Annie wrenched the wheel and turned into our drive, passing under the suspended chunk of driftwood that announced the “Arbuckle Ranch,” followed by our brand, R
(an R and a buckle).
“Here we are,” Annie declared.
I bent stiffly at the waist, retrieving my felt cowboy hat from the floor, where it had fallen on one of the collisions between head and window. I tugged my hat onto my head.
“You tell your folks I’m real sorry about George,” Annie said.
I don’t remember being so happy to put some distance between myself and another person, but I minded my manners, remembering that her intentions were good. “I sure will. Thanks, Mrs. Ketchal.” I pulled my satchel from the cab. “Thanks a bunch for the ride.”
I lugged my bag toward the house. The truck sputtered and clattered behind me, and the cold air bit my face.
“Hey, Blake!” The truck had stopped, and Annie’s head poked from the window. I groaned, wondering what else she could possibly have to tell me. But her hand popped out, a gray bag dangling from her fingers. I dropped my satchel, trotted back to the truck, and grabbed our mail sack. And I thanked her again.
Our sheepdog Nate, a pesky black-and-white Border collie with skewed ears, hopped in front of and between and beside my legs, nearly tripping me as I dragged my satchel toward the house. It wasn’t until I stepped up onto the stoop that it occurred to me that the house was going to feel different. I stopped, standing in front of the door, preparing myself for the fact that George would not be in the tiny bedroom we shared with our other two brothers. I wondered where his body was, and decided it was likely laid out in the barn, that they probably had a coffin built by now.
I swallowed, took a deep breath, pushed Nate to one side with my boot, and wobbled on rubber legs through the squeaky door. I set the mail on the table, and crept through the sleeping household, past my parents’ door, which was open a crack. I saw the outline of their prone figures, and heard their whispered breath.
I smelled the memory of kerosene and the wood stove as I continued past the girls’ room, then to my own, where Jack and our youngest brother Bob were asleep. I squinted toward Jack, who was sixteen. He lay on his back, mouth wide open. Bob was curled up like a baby. I set my satchel on the floor.
Two beds stood empty, and I stopped in front of George’s. I thought of never seeing his spry figure sprawled across the narrow mattress. I sank onto his bed, where I felt a lump under my leg. Under the mattress, I found George’s baseball wedged in a hollow there. I also found some papers, but I stuffed them back where they were, feeling as if I had crossed onto sacred ground. But I kept the ball, cradling it in my palm, and I crossed the room and fell onto my own bed, still fully clothed, and finally, thankfully, slept.
“Blake, wake up. Wake up, son.”
I lifted my head, with difficulty, and saw that the bedroom window was still pitch-black. “What?”
My mother Catherine leaned over me, and I could barely see her face, round and dull white as a full moon behind a cloud. Her light red hair sparkled like stars around her face. She was dressed.
“What?” I asked. “It’s not morning yet, is it?”
“There’s a fire in the buttes over at Glassers’.” Mom spoke as she always did in such situations, with a gentle urgency that made it clear you needed to hurry but didn’t inspire a sense of panic.
I lay staring blankly, my brain stunned by lack of sleep. I felt as if I had just drifted off seconds ago. George’s baseball slept on the blanket next to me.
“Are you all right?” Mom asked, touching my arm.
I nodded. “I think so” was what entered my mind, but I never got around to voicing it.
“Come on, son.” Mom left the room, and I heard her walk outside.
I lifted myself to a sitting position, shook my head, and reached for my hat, which lay open-faced on the floor. Jack’s and Bob’s beds were empty. I stood, groggy, and staggered outside. Mom and Bob sat in the wagon. My dad, George Sr., was hooking the team up to the yoke. The cold air reached in and held my lungs motionless for a moment, and I had to force a deep breath before I could even move. Although it was still dark, the sky had that just-before-dawn glow.
I stumbled over to the well, where Jack waited with two fifty-gallon barrels. Dad pulled the wagon over, and after loading the barrels into the back, we dumped bucket after bucket into them, filling them until they spilled over. Then Jack and I crawled into the bed, laying out between the barrels. He yawned, rubbing his small, dark eyes. His nose hooked down over his tight mouth. I studied my older brother for a sign of how he might be taking George’s death. Although Jack and George had personalities that couldn’t be more different, they were probably closer than any of the rest of the brothers.
Dad flipped the reins, and the team surged forward.
“Are the girls home?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Mom answered.
I worried about the two little ones, who were only four and eight, being home alone. But I didn’t figure it would make much difference if I said anything.
In our country, there is a quietness, a silence that surrounds you and fills you up, beating inside like blood until it becomes a part of you. The prairie is quiet even during the day, except for the sounds of work—the snort of horses, the clang of a plow’s blade against rock, and the rhythm of hooves pounding the ground. But these sounds drift off into the air, finding nothing to contain them. No echoes.
It’s quieter still at night, when you can sit for hours at a stretch and hear nothing except the crickets, or the occasional cluck of a chicken. At night, the darkness seems to add to the silence, making it heavier, somehow more imposing. It is a silence that can be too much for some, especially people who aren’t fond of their own company. And it seems that living in such silence makes you think twice before speaking, or laughing, or crying. Because when sounds are that scarce, they carry more weight.
So like most people I know, we Arbuckles don’t say much, especially in times of tragedy, when no one knows what to say anyway. When something leaves us wondering, we mostly sit and stare off across the prairie, as if somebody might come along and explain a few things. This stoic silence does not come naturally to some people. In those early homestead days, it led to frequent cases of the loneliness, or suicide. And although most of us talked about these afflictions as if they only happened to newcomers, we all knew better. We all lived with a constant awareness of how vulnerable we were. All of us. It didn’t take a genius to notice that some of the sturdiest have been broken down by the pervasive weight of unpredictable weather, and uncooperative livestock, and more than anything, the silent wondering about all these by-products of life on the prairie.
There was only one person in our family who did not possess this stoic nature, and it was George Jr. George took on the silence from a completely different angle, challenging it by doing all he could to fill it up. He talked all the time, but not in a nervous, chattering way. He talked slowly, softly, in a rhythmic, expressive stream, almost like a song. He would pause, chuckle, shake his head, then start again—telling stories, discussing the articles he’d read in the latest newspaper, or plucking a random topic from the air and sorting through the various thoughts he had, moving easily from one side of a debate to the other. I always found the running monologue soothing, and entertaining. But it sometimes got on people’s nerves, especially Jack, who would often tell George to shut up, and give us a little peace. To which George usually responded with a smile and a shake of his head. Then, after honoring Jack’s request for a minute or two, he would start in again. He couldn’t help himself.
Although I didn’t see it then, I assume now that there was something of a nervous energy behind this habit. And I wonder whether the silence did get to George, and that he just hid it better than others. From what I learned later, I eventually had to question how he felt about living out here.
That morning, the quiet was magnified by his absence. With my brother less than twenty-four hours gone, the river seemed louder than usual. It wasn’t, of course. I just noticed it more. I noticed how beautiful and soothing the gentle rush of water sounded, and I was struck by the deception of that sound. I wondered where George had gone down.
I was always amazed when anyone drowned in the Little Missouri River, which was only twenty-five or thirty feet across, not even big enough to rate a name of its own. It just didn’t seem possible that someone, especially an adult, could not find a way to crawl out once they fell in. But every couple of years, some unfortunate soul would plunge into its muddy flow and not emerge until their lungs filled with water.
After about twenty minutes, we could see the soft glow of a blaze along the row of buttes. It was near dawn, and the darkness had just begun to fade along the horizon, as if the fire was leaking into the sky.
I was surprised how wide awake I was, and I wondered how long I’d slept. I wrapped myself tightly in my wool coat, pushing my stiff hands deep into my pockets. Down in the corner of one pocket, I felt a lump. I pulled out a piece of chalk, and realized I must have stuck it there without thinking after I read the telegram. Finally, we reached the base of the buttes, where Dad reined in the team and we hopped from the wagon. Dad, Jack, and I unloaded the barrels, then lugged them up the steep incline, a forty-foot climb. It took us nearly half an hour to carry our awkward cargo one at a time to the top.
“I’m tired, Mom,” I heard Bob say behind us.
“Quiet, son. We’re all tired.”
The buttes cross Carter County like the spine of a bull, sprouting more trees than the flatlands. Spruce and pine stand in rows along the table-like tops like sentries in a watchtower. The fire burned among the dry grass and leaves along the floor, inching its way up an occasional tree. The yellow-orange-red blanket spread slowly but steadily, and it smelled too much like a campfire to feel very dangerous. But from the way people were shouting and racing around, it was clear that the fire posed a real threat, that it could spread further, down into the meadows below, where the grass was dry enough that it would ignite like paper. After the soothing quiet of the prairie on our way to these buttes, the shift to this shouting, rushing activity was a bit startling.
But once we positioned our barrels, I found myself inspired by the spirit of battle. Months of sitting in a classroom had me restless, and I was excited about being back at work again. I grabbed a burlap bag from the pile, dunked it into a barrel, and ran toward the flames.
“Over here, Blake,” someone yelled. “Upwind. You’ll get smoke on that side.”
I rounded the outer edge, beating the ground with the wet burlap, stomping the embers when the flame was gone. My folks and my brothers worked around me, waving their sacks, which sizzled against the fire.
The blaze covered nearly three acres, and about twenty of us surrounded it, with a few shouting directions, pointing, and arguing strategy. It was invigorating to be doing something with my muscles again. I fought hard, thinking I’d be able to maintain the same pace until it was over. The ache in my chest was gone, and in my youthful view of the world, I was convinced that it had disappeared for good, just as I was sure a few hours earlier that it would never go away.
I batted down flames until my gunnysack was dry and useless, then I rushed back and dunked it again—back and forth, back and forth, probably ten or twelve times before my back started to clench. And I felt the heat through my leather soles. Blisters tickled the bottoms of my feet. Soon my body struggled to keep up with my enthusiasm. And then I couldn’t.
As the adults fought to keep the flames under control, I sat with a guilty conscience and watched for a few minutes. The fire showed a maddening persistence as the crew beat it down, only to have it flare up again. But a routine had evolved, and the team moved from battle to post with the efficient pattern of an ant colony, one column going one way, one column the other.
Art Walters found a tree with a jagged black streak running from its tip to its roots.
“Looks like this is where she started,” he announced, pointing. “Lightning, I’d say.”
He got no arguments. For one thing, his discovery was obvious. But also, we all knew Art well enough to see that his real objective was not finding the source but taking a little break. We knew what to expect, and Art delivered. He took some more time to talk about the tree, then he studied it again, came up with a few more theories, and talked about those. Everybody ignored him, and Art took on a meditative expression, as if the job required someone with that quality.
I always found Art baffling. For one thing, nobody in the county ever questioned his devotion to work, or his dependability. There were few people among us who were more willing and eager to help out someone in need than Art Walters. But it seemed that he was so uncomfortable with the notion of resting, so driven, that he couldn’t feel guilty about it alone. He had to make sure everybody noticed.
“This tree wasn’t already like this, was it, Gary?” he asked Gary Glasser.
Gary didn’t answer, but Art didn’t even notice.
“I wonder if this tree was already like this,” he muttered.
I finally got up, gave my gunnysack a good soaking, and rejoined the fight. But it became hard to breathe. The hot air seemed to gather at my lips—thick, like cotton, thick enough to be bitten, and chewed. The sack slipped from my stiff, dry fingers. The heat slowed others, and many of us stood panting, pulling hard, labored breaths, our sacks hanging limp. Some leaned against trees, hands on their thighs.
A wind came up, and the fire began to creep east, pushing the tired, diminished circle away from its core. Weary eyes grew bigger as the finger of flame spread toward Glassers’ grazing land. We ran clumsily in that direction.
And as the fear of losing the battle increased, we all found strength that moments before seemed impossible. Our bodies rose and fell, like wheat bending in the wind. The flames receded, then progressed, receded, progressed. Our effort was punctuated verbally, with groans and shouting, as we did all we could to drown out our screaming muscles. Finally, after a couple of hours, we had tightened the circle to a manageable size.
Little had been said all morning. The danger had focused all of our energy. Other than instructions, talk was not productive. A few people mentioned George, just enough to convey their condolences. Even if we hadn’t been fighting a fire, they would not have asked too many questions. But as the danger passed, I found myself wanting more. I found myself wondering whether people missed George, whether they felt his absence as much as I did.
In our country, most of the work is done alone, in solitary, wide-open expanses of dirt. And although there is a certain pleasure that you get from this kind of work, the opportunity to accomplish something with a group is a welcome break from this routine. When there was little left but smoldering black grass, and a tiny flame here and there, the jokes started flying, and smiles spread beneath the soot that coated everyone’s faces.
“Hey, how come you’re not serving breakfast here, Gary?” Art complained. “We come out here and work our tails off and there’s nothing to eat?”
Gary, who was as serious as any man I’ve known, even made a stiff attempt at a joke. “Tell you what, I’ll let you all be my friends for another year.”
I staggered amid the collective sense of proud accomplishment, feet dragging, to one of the barrels. I held on to opposite sides of the rim and lowered myself headfirst. Water surrounded my boiling skull, then moved up my shoulders and chest. It felt as though the heat eased up from my feet, through my legs, my torso, and then poured from the top of my head into the barrel. I held my breath and stayed under for as long as my lungs would allow. The water’s soothing cool began to seep back up through me just as the heat had departed. But as I started to pull myself out, someone grabbed my legs and jerked me with such force that my chin caught the barrel’s rim. I shouted as I fell to the ground, and I rolled over and jumped to my feet, ready to take a swing at the practical joker. But instead I stood facing my mother, who reached up and took a firm hold of my raised fist.
“Don’t fool around with water at a time like this.” Her eyes were wide and scared, and her head quivered a little, her frizzy red hair shuddering.
I frowned, not sure what she meant by “a time like this,” but then I realized, and nodded. And Mom squeezed my upper arm, conveying her forgiveness, and returned to the fire. I lay on my back and leaned my head against the barrel’s rough planks. I wiped my chin and studied the streak of blood across my palm. But I was too tired to care about a little blood, wondering whether I’d ever be able to stand. I didn’t want to fall asleep in front of the whole community. So I raised myself up to my elbows, shook the water from my hair, and struggled to my feet. I propped myself against the barrel, supporting my tired legs with my tired arms. Water trickled into my clothes, which felt good.
I turned, checking the fire. Five people stamped the last of the flames, kicking the ground to kill any stray embers. My folks were among them. Mom looked as if she could do the whole thing again, then chop down a tree for good measure. She was built, it seemed, for the life of perpetual labor. Thick, with broad shoulders. Most of her children, myself included, inherited her squat, solid torso, and her bowed legs. George Jr. and Jack were the only ones built more like Dad—lithe, sinewy bodies that were strong in their own right but much less durable.
So Dad trudged forward, matching Mom’s resolve. But his stride was not as steady. Most of the crew stretched out on damp burlap, quietly resting. Wisps of smoke drifted along the ground, like fog, its smell saturating our clothes and hair.
I finally tried walking, tilting from one side to another, like a baby, tottering slowly down the slope. My legs held me from memory, my arms dangling at my side. I fell once, rolling headfirst back onto my feet in a fluid motion that felt unremarkable, even practiced, as if that was how one goes down a hill. I crawled into the wagon bed, rolling my burlap bag into a pillow.
But to my surprise, I could not fall asleep. I was so tired my eyelids twitched. Images raced around behind my lids like moths in a jar, bumping together and circling each other. I clenched my eyes tight, trying to stop the flickering pictures, but it did no good.
I remembered George’s last birthday, just months before. Katie, the eight-year-old, had just learned about surprise birthday parties, and she insisted on throwing one for George. The only problem was that she didn’t quite grasp the surprise aspect of a surprise party. So she did all the planning, folding little paper hats out of pages from a Sears catalogue, inviting everyone we happened to see, regardless of whether George was around or not. We all watched with amusement while she pursued this plan, and none of us was more amused than the guest of honor. George smiled, his blue eyes twinkling, while Katie made a chocolate birthday cake the evening before, and arranged all the chairs in the house.
On George’s birthday, which was a Saturday, it became clear that Katie still expected to surprise George. She pulled me aside and instructed me to ask George to go down to the river and plant some willow fishing poles. So we did, catching a few nice frogs and baiting some hooks, then burying the poles as deeply as we could in the mud. We chuckled every time we thought about what would happen when we got home.
“If I ever find another girl that puts this much effort into my birthday, I’ll marry her on the spot,” George said.
A half hour later, we rode back to the house, where there were several vehicles parked out front. And when we walked in the door, and the lights were off, and when everyone jumped out, yelling “Surprise,” George clutched a hand to his heart. His mouth dropped open, and he fell straight back, landing flat on the hardwood floor. Katie squealed, and my brother had made one eight-year-old girl very, very happy.
I was just about to give up trying to sleep and get up to see where everyone was. But thankfully, the rest of the family came along. I heard the thump of barrels being loaded, feeling guilty about not giving them a hand, and I wondered whether someone had helped Dad and Jack carry the barrels. This question was answered when I heard Gary Glasser’s voice.
“Thanks for coming, all of you,” he said. “Especially at a time like this.”
“Well, we know you’d do the same,” Mom said.
“It’s appreciated anyway,” Gary answered. “You know we’ll be at the service. You’ll let us know when it is, right?”
“Of course.” Mom’s dismissive tone surprised me. She wasn’t generally so short with people unless she was upset. And I could tell that Gary felt it, too, as he said another quick thanks, then I heard the crunch of his boots against the ground.
“Now what sense is there in not telling him there’s not going to be a service, Mother?” Dad asked softly.
“He’ll find out soon enough,” she said.
I opened my eyes and twisted toward the front. “No service?”
An awkward silence followed, and I was confused.
“There’s no service…” Dad hesitated, his head tipping from side to side.
“We haven’t found the body,” Mom finished.
I frowned, looking from one parent to the other. I pictured George floating in the water somewhere, or hung up along the shore. I pushed the thought from my mind. And then I wondered how they knew for sure that he’d drowned. My voice was high, thin, when I spoke again. “Can’t we have a service anyway?”
“No,” Mom answered emphatically. “We will not have a service without a body.”
“Easy, Mother,” Dad said.
“Well, now he knows.”
“It’s all right,” I said. Although my mother’s blunt manner sometimes put people off, and was often misinterpreted, I found it comforting somehow to know exactly where I stood with her, even at that age.
Dad set the team in motion, and we moved forward in silence as the facts settled into my mind. But there wasn’t enough. I wanted to know more.
“Where did he go down?” I asked.
Mom and Dad glanced at Jack, who was staring off across the prairie. Then they exchanged a silent look. Dad spoke. “They had a real gully washer up in the Little Missouri Buttes a few days ago, so the river was high….”
Mom turned sideways on the bench. “George and Jack were moving some cattle, and George went to water his horse. He was gone for a while, so Jack went to check on him, and he found George’s horse along the bank. We found his hat later, downstream….” Mom paused, raising her chin, sucking air in through her nose.
I looked at Jack. His felt cowboy hat was pulled down just an inch above his small eyes, which were still aimed directly out, across the prairie, away from us.
I didn’t understand Jack—never have, never will. He seemed to be the unhappiest person I ever met. And the reasons for this unhappiness, just like the reasons for most of his actions, were a complete mystery to us all. Because he rarely spoke. And he had an air about him that gave you the strong message that he had no desire to speak. So I sat looking at him, and wanting to ask him things, wanting to find out whether he knew more about what happened. But he was so far away, I knew any question would go unanswered.
The wagon lurched, dipping through a gully. Dad yelled at the team. “Come on, Pint. Ed.”
“He could still be alive,” Bob said.
A long silence followed, and I felt a small sense of panic at the thought, of how frightening it would be to see someone you thought was dead suddenly walk into the house. Yet it did seem possible.
“You never know,” Dad muttered, voicing my thoughts.
“I don’t see much use thinking like that,” Mom said. “We’ve all suffered enough. No sense having him die twice.”
At first, I felt myself obey this suggestion, surrendering to years of conditioning. After all, logically, it was best to assume George was dead, and be surprised if we were wrong. But a voice somewhere inside me protested loudly, not wanting to give up hope.
I pulled myself to one elbow, and looked around to see how much further we had to go. I groaned when I saw the tiny house in the distance. I turned back, looking in the direction we’d come, at the buttes. There was still a faint hint of smoke drifting just above the tablet ops. And the sun, moving higher into the sky, floated in the smoke like a giant orange balloon.
“Tired, Blake?” Dad asked.
“Mm-hm.”
“When did you get in? I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Don’t know. Way after midnight.”
“It was five,” Mom answered. “You only slept about a half hour before Annie came back and told us about the fire.”
I groaned again. And laid back into the jerking, rolling motion of the wagon.
But any thoughts of rushing into the house and falling into bed died the minute the wagon came to a halt. Mom had to cook breakfast. Bob went to feed and water the team, and Dad and Jack had to get the horses ready for their day in the fields. Which left the milking to me.
If not for the swishing tail of our old milk cow, and the mewing of our mousers rubbing against my legs, I’m sure they would have found me sound asleep against that old cow’s ribs. As it was, I milked her dry, although the teats kept slipping from my weary fingers. And as I milked, I thought about the day, about how much work I’d done in the hours since I’d returned home, and how if I hadn’t been there to do the small things I did, someone else would have had to take the time to do them. Time they didn’t have. And I knew that they needed me. That the ranch was my master now. My teacher. It was time to stay.
I carried two full buckets into the house, where I was so hungry that I gladly delayed sleep for another half hour when I smelled bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes. I realized that I hadn’t eaten dinner the night before. I devoured my first helping, then filled my plate again.
“Hi, Blake.” My sister Katie greeted me as she came from her room and sat up to the table. She rubbed her eyes, which were red. Her cheeks were moist.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I’m fine. I was a little scared when I woke up, because I didn’t know where anybody was. Muriel was the only one here.”
I tousled her curly head. “You’re okay now, though?”
Again she nodded, but she was clearly putting on a brave face. I imagined that Mom had told her to stop her crying, that we had enough to think about without someone crying. I could see she was still scared.
“Are you going to work on your garden today?” I asked her.
This made her face light up. Katie was the worst gardener in the county, but to her credit, she was the only one who didn’t realize it. She was fiercely proud of her tiny formation of drooping, dried plants, and she tended them—digging, weeding, and dumping buckets of water over them—with a devotion we all admired with some degree of amusement.
“I’m gonna see if there’s any potatoes today,” she announced.
“Great,” I said, shoveling food. “Maybe we can go out to the little house later this afternoon.”
Katie’s eyes grew. “Really?” she asked.
I nodded.
Katie bounced in her chair.
A few years before, Katie and I had been rummaging through the old deserted shed behind the original homestead house that Dad had built in 1898. Katie suggested that we pretend that the little structure was our own house, and that we were pioneers. It had become her favorite game. She used whatever knickknacks she could find to set up a tiny household, with a table, and two old tin plates. She adopted Mom’s personality, instructing me to do the same chores she heard Mom give our father. I took an old hammer and pounded on the walls, pretending to put up pictures, and do repairs. We pretended to paint, and Katie set up an old orange crate, using it as a fake stove. As I got older, I had lost interest in the game. But any time Katie needed cheering up, I knew what would do it.
We all ate with ferocious, focused energy, as we usually did after a hard day of work. One chair, next to Dad, stood empty.
“When are you going to go back to school, Blake?” Katie asked.
I cleared my throat. “Well, I don’t think I’m going back,” I said.
All heads rose, and my mom’s hand fell, her fork clanging against her plate. “What?” she asked.
I finished chewing a mouthful of food, and swallowed. “I’m not going back. I’m going to stay.”
Although I could see the confusion in my mother’s face, she looked down at her plate, took a deep breath, and resumed eating.
“He’s right, Mother. We’re going to need him now,” Dad said.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Of course.” She took a bite of eggs and chewed, but her dream of having one child finish high school had been dashed one more time. George had never even considered the possibility, leaving school when he was twelve. And although Jack would have liked to stay in school because it was easier than working, by the time he was fifteen, they needed the extra back. He was barely passing anyway.
“I don’t want to go to Belle Fourche, either,” Katie announced. “I want to stay here, too.”
“Well, you’ve got a few years to think about that, honey,” Dad said.
“I don’t have to think about it,” Katie said. “I already know.”
“I bet you’ll think twice when Audrey goes,” I said, and although Katie said nothing, I could see the wheels turn at the mention of her best friend.
“You’re going, and there will be no more talk about it,” Mom said.
Katie rolled her eyes.
After breakfast, I stumbled to my room, where I stretched my tired limbs and dropped my clothes. The fall air chilled my skin, and I wrapped my arms around my chest. Standing in the middle of the room, I gazed down at George’s bed for the second time that morning.
Just then, a figure swept past the window, swearing. It was Jack, who walked over to dip some water from the well. He had cut his thumb, and he muttered to himself as he washed it off, then studied it. After washing his thumb, Jack shook it in the air, then he suddenly stooped down, grabbed a dirt clod, and flung it with all his strength into the well. Then he stopped, and with his back to me, raised his hands to his head. Both hands landed palm down on top of his head, and rested there for a moment. Then they clamped down, clasping the hair on his head. He raised his eyes toward the sky and stood there like that for a long time, his hands tangled in his hair.
Because my head was still foggy, and because I simply didn’t think about these things much at the time, it didn’t occur to me then that Jack was now next in line to take over the ranch. I’d heard stories through the years of battles for land among siblings. But I thought that would never happen in our family. We were a family first and foremost. Little did I realize that the history of my father’s family was anything but harmonious.
I turned away from the window, and sank onto my bed, where I spotted George’s baseball cradled in a hollow among the blankets. And I struggled to accept the standard practice of my family and the people around me—the pragmatic, realistic approach to death, where you move on and do what’s in front of you, recognizing that there’s little time for mooning around thinking about things you have no control over.
I circled George’s ball with my fingers and laid down, falling immediately into a deep sleep, and when I woke up hours later, still lying in exactly the same position, the ball had fallen from my hand and rolled across the floor, resting against the bedroom door.