It didn’t take Helen long to establish a certain hold on the ranch. Ironically, Rita’s decision not to move into the big house, in defiance of Helen’s wishes, ended up working in Helen’s favor. Because when I moved in with Rita and the boys, although we spent most evenings at the big house, a natural separation had formed.
But Helen was smart enough to realize that she had gained an advantage, and that treating Rita or me badly would only arouse suspicions of her motives. So she employed her considerable charm toward planning birthday parties for “the exiles,” as we called ourselves. Because Rita usually worked out in the fields, Helen suggested that we should just plan on coming to the big house for dinner each night, which Helen helped Mom prepare after she finished her day teaching.
It became impossible not to wonder sometimes, despite the fact that Helen had so clearly invaded my territory to find the letter about Jack, whether I was wrong about her. Rita and I talked about it often.
“Do you think that whole thing with the letter was just a bad decision?” I asked Rita during one of these discussions. “Maybe her family is more ruthless than ours. Maybe she felt like she had to do something dramatic to make a statement or something.”
Rita sighed, looking up from her game of solitaire and shaking her head. “You are a trusting soul, Blake. You really want to believe the best about people, don’t you?”
I raised my brow. “I guess so. I never really thought about it.”
“Just look at it this way, Blake. If you were new to this family, and you wanted to gain an edge, who would you cuddle up to?”
I thought. “Dad,” I said emphatically.
Rita looked surprised. “Really?”
“Sure. Of course. It’s his ranch.”
Rita nodded. “Okay. Yes. That’s true. But…well, Blake, I don’t mean to be callous, but look at it this way…think about your folks. First of all, who looks like they’re going to be around the longest?”
That was easy. Because of Dad’s smaller frame, the decades of work had taken a toll on him. He was stooped, thinner, his face taking on much the same haunted, ravaged, distant look that we saw in many of the disconnected men who drifted through our region looking for a bed for the night. “Mom,” I answered.
“Exactly,” Rita answered. “She’s like the old water pump out there. When the rest of us are dead, and all the buildings have rotted away, somebody’s going to come along and find that water pump still spitting gushes of that stinky alkali water into a bucket, and your mom out gathering the eggs.”
I smiled, nodding in agreement.
“Your mom is the heartbeat of this place.”
Again I nodded.
“And what’s the quickest way to get through to your mom?” Rita then asked. “What is her biggest priority?”
“The ranch,” I said matter-of-factly.
Rita looked at me with a slight grin, and tipped her head toward me, saying with a look, “Try again.”
“No? God, I’m not doing very well on this test, am I?”
“Well, you’re almost right,” Rita said, laughing. “Your family, Blake. The family. Your mom would chop her arms off for her family.”
“Well, maybe one of them,” I replied. “She wouldn’t be able to play cards without at least one.”
Rita smiled. “Oh, if anyone could figure out a way…”
We laughed.
“But am I right?” Rita asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. The family.”
Rita went back to her game. I picked up a newspaper, but my thoughts were still on the topic. “I guess the thing I don’t understand is why she works so damn hard at it? With her charm, and her intelligence, she could have made an impression without turning it into some kind of competition.” I shrugged.
Rita nodded, looking up at me sadly. “That’s just it, Blake. That’s where you’re right, I think. Maybe her family is more ruthless…more…less trusting. If she doesn’t keep trying, maybe she feels like she’s falling behind. Some families are like that.”
Rita’s head dropped back to her cards. Her hair was up, as it usually was, the thick straight brown bands pulled tightly into a ponytail. There were a few gray streaks now, glinting subtly in the lantern’s glow. Rita had never really talked about her family much, and it always made me wonder. Because she had become such a vital, positive influence on our family, it seemed odd to me that she didn’t have more of a connection to them.
“Was yours like that?”
Rita lifted her head one last time, and studied me with an expression I hadn’t seen from her before, a look that was even a bit frightening. I felt like a child who wasn’t quite grasping a math problem.
“They were worse,” she said, and her tone made me regret asking. She dropped her head, and the discussion ended there, abruptly. I never mentioned her family again.
“Frank, you see that?” Art Walters squinted into the sun, pointing just shy of the Finger Buttes. Art, in his increased sense of confusion, had been calling me Frank for several months. I tried correcting him a couple of times, but I soon saw it was pointless.
I shielded my eyes and looked in that direction. “What, Art? I don’t see a thing.”
“See that little bunch of pine trees there?” He pointed again.
I nudged my horse closer to his, then followed his arm. “Okay, yeah. I see those.”
“Left of there.” He waved his finger. “Just to the left and further along.”
“Art, you’re crazy. There’s nothing out there but snow, and maybe part of South Dakota.”
Art laughed and steam rushed from his mouth.
“No, by god, Frank, I swear there’s a herd of antelopes out there. If you look a little harder, you can see a kind of shadow.”
I buried my heels into my horse’s flanks and yelled over my shoulder. “All right, buddy. If you’re sure, let’s give it a look.”
It was warmer than normal for December, and the sun sparkled in shades of pink, blue, and yellow off the snow, which lay quiet and still. No wind. And although our breath showed, I could feel the sweat on my chest. The butt of my rifle, which rocked in its scabbard, bumped against my knee. My saddle creaked as we galloped through a shallow draw toward the buttes. Art caught up with me.
“Frank, if you’re thinkin’ about gettin’ out ahead of me so you can get the first shot off, you got a surprise comin’.”
“Sounds like a challenge, Art.”
“You got that right.”
I had suggested this hunting expedition to Art at a dance the previous weekend. It was common knowledge that Art was in trouble up there in his ramshackle, tucked-away ranch. His brother Bert, the former bootlegger, was dead four years now, one of many who couldn’t wait the Depression out. He blew his head off, probably using the same rifle Art carried with him now. And Art’s older brother Sam, the hardest worker of the three, had caught his arm in a thresher two summers ago. The machine had ripped the arm from its socket, and Sam would have bled to death if Art hadn’t found him that afternoon.
With Sam’s effectiveness diminished, most of the responsibility for keeping the place going lay with Art. And from what we could see, he’d made a hell of an effort. The fight to survive will bring the best out in a guy, I guess. But his efforts weren’t enough, and Steve told me that on his last visit to Art’s place, there was hardly anything to eat.
Art didn’t realize I knew this, of course. In his mind this was nothing more than a couple of friends doing some hunting.
“You see ’em now, Frank?” Art pointed again, in the same direction.
I peered toward the buttes. “Art, I’m sorry, but for the life of me I cannot see what the hell you’re pointing at. Either you’ve got an eagle eye or you’ve been dipping into the moonshine a little early today.”
Art shot me a bit of a hurt look.
“All right, all right, I believe you, but I still don’t see anything.”
Art, who was nearly sixty, showed the strain. His clothes were torn and threadbare. Even the brim of his felt hat was torn, so that one side hung down close to his ear.
And the wind and worry had worked away at his face, cracking and drying it, pinching the skin around his eyes and mouth. He’d lost half his teeth, and his cheeks hugged his jaw so tightly it looked as though you could break the surface with your fingernail. It was a face common to many during the Depression, and although Dad still had his teeth, he shared many of the same features.
We came up out of the draw and still had several hundred yards to go before we neared the grove Art had pointed out. The heat of the sun’s reflection oozed up from the snow, and I pulled my kerchief up over my nose to avoid getting burned. I kept my eyes glued to the spot where Art claimed to see the antelope, and after a while began to wonder whether he was hallucinating. We were close enough that a big herd would be easily spotted. Then we were close enough that a small herd would be easily spotted. And I expected if we did see any game, it would be a smaller herd, as the drought had also beaten down the wildlife in the region.
“Frank!” Art pointed again, thrusting his finger toward the buttes, a frantic gesture.
I squinted again, shielding my eyes. Finally—still a ways off, behind the trees—I saw, just barely, two antelope facing each other, their noses to the ground, where they fed on a small patch of green.
“Art, how the hell did you see those things from way back there?”
He laughed—a frantic, almost giddy cackle. “I ain’t lost all my senses yet, Frank.”
We decided to circle through the trees, hoping they would shield us. We took it easy, slowing the horses to a walk, and we unholstered our rifles. From the trees, we were just a little out of range, so we’d have to sneak out from our shelter and get closer before we could get a shot off.
Art whispered my name and signaled with his hands, waving and pointing to indicate that he’d wait there while I went ahead, so we could come at them from different angles. I waved and moved on, nudging my horse, wincing whenever she snorted or pawed at the ground. But the antelope weren’t so easily spooked, and when I was as far as I could get from Art without losing ground to the antelope, I raised my arm, and we crept into the meadow.
They saw us immediately and took off, bounding in that four-legged, graceful way that makes most animals look stationary. Just as I started after them, a shot sounded, and I looked over to see Art getting set to fire again.
“Art!” I yelled as loudly as I could. But he shot once more, and I turned my horse toward him, pummeling her flanks. “Art, stop! Jesus, what are you doing?”
The antelope were not only out of range, but nearly out of sight. Art lowered his rifle, laying it across his thighs, then pushed his hat onto the back of his head. I caught up to him, and was about to tear into him, but there was something about his expression that stopped me. Something pathetic. He looked defeated.
“Well, that wa’n’t too smart, was it?” he said quietly.
“It’s all right, Art. Let’s go after ’em.”
He looked up and shrugged, holding his mouth to one side. “Not much use now, Frank.” He threw a hand into the air.
“Come on,” I said. I kicked my horse, and started in the direction the antelope had headed. I didn’t look to see whether Art followed, because I was sure he would.
We followed the tracks until they led to a fence that the antelope had crawled through. We had to take a detour of about a hundred yards to get to a gate.
“Frank, we ain’t never gonna catch up to these bastards,” Art said.
“Art, you got something better to do this morning? We might as well give it a shot.”
“Yeah, well, I guess. But I’m thinkin’ it’s too late.”
“Art, shut up.” I swung a leg off my horse to open the gate. “Just shut up and follow me. We have all day. And if we don’t catch these two, maybe we’ll find a few others.”
Art set his jaw, his lower lip pinched up against the upper, sticking out a little. He nudged his horse through the gate, spitting into the snow once he was on the other side. I closed the gate and mounted my horse.
“You know, Frank…” Art looked thoughtful. He paused for quite a while. “You only talked to me like that one other time that I remember.” He fixed an eye on me as we started back toward the tracks. “It was the day I helped you pull your cow out of the bog.”
“Art, you pulled a gun on me!”
“Well, now, if I’m remembering right, there was some trespassing goin’ on that day….”
I groaned and waved him off.
“You thought I wasn’t goin’ to remember that part,” he said.
“Oh, I remember. There was some trespassing going on, all right. And not only were you the one who was trespassing,” I said, half mad and half amused, “but that was your goddam cow.”
“Oh, no, you’re just not rememberin’ things too clear today, are you?”
I held my breath and decided not to continue the discussion, figuring that by the time we were through arguing, I’d be ready to leave Art out there to starve.
“Art, the last thing I want to do is challenge your fine memory. Of course you’re right.”
“Damn right.”
After a silent half hour, we came up over a rise, and I spotted the antelope three-quarters of a mile away. I pulled up and put my arm out to stop Art, who was riding behind me. There was nothing but white, empty space between us and them, so we had to come up with a strategy.
A line of brush ran along the east side of the meadow. We agreed I would sneak along behind the brush while Art approached from the other direction. We figured he’d scare them toward me if they didn’t see him too soon.
The sun shone nearly straight overhead, and the warm sweat felt good inside my clothes. Tromping through the brush, my horse’s hooves unleashed the aroma of scrubwood and wild plum. I breathed deep. I kept a close eye on Art, trying to stay ahead of him in case the antelope jumped too quickly. I cradled my gun in my right elbow, the weight of its oily barrel heavy on my forearm. About halfway down, still well out of range, I heard a shot.
“Damn,” I muttered. I was behind a thick bush and had to move forward before I saw Art, at full gallop, aiming at the bounding figures, again yards out of his range. He shot, then pulled his horse up. Art’s head jerked forward and back, and I could imagine what he was saying. Or maybe I couldn’t.
I resisted the urge to ask “What the hell has gotten into you today?” until I heard Art’s explanation. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’d been hunting since he could lift a gun, long before I was born, and was actually known as one of the better hunters in our parts.
“Those sons of bitches saw me and took off ’fore I knew what…” His eyes, desperate and wide, darted around me, over and under me, anywhere but at me, and it was then I realized how much Art’s rabid desire to get one of the animals might be affecting his judgment. He looked frantic, hungry for something deeper, more crucial to life than food. He had the look of a man who had to get one of these antelope to prove something, to make things right somehow, to give him a reason to keep on. It scared the living daylights out of me.
“All right, Art. Let’s just take it easy. I think we’re okay. They’re headed up toward that grove of cottonwoods near Hay Creek. If they go in there, it will give us a good chance of sneaking up on them and flushing them out.” I slipped my rifle back into its scabbard. “Let’s rest for a second or two.”
Art nodded, his head bobbing unevenly. “Sons a bitches took off ’fore I even woulda figured they could see me,” he said.
It was possible the antelope really did see him and take off, but the more he talked, the more I was convinced that he’d shot at them first. I decided if we caught up to them again, I’d better make damn sure I shot before Art did. He was in no condition to hit anything.
The tracks led exactly where I thought they would, into a grove of cottonwoods, an ideal spot. The cluster of trees was small and narrow, and it ended forty yards past where the tracks led into it, leaving us plenty of space to move around to the other side.
“All right, Art. I’m going to circle around the end there. Give me about ten minutes to get to the other side and go on in. Try and flush them from the north, so they’re running past me, not away from me.”
“I know, I know, Frank. I been flushin’ since before you knew your name.”
“Okay, Art. Just wanted to make sure.”
Art had his hand on the stock of his rifle, although it was still in its scabbard. He held that thing like he was afraid it would run out on him, and I had a bad feeling I wouldn’t get a shot off all day.
So I rode quickly, hoping to get out there before he did something boneheaded. I made it to the other side, heard nothing, and found a perfect spot to wait, behind a lone bush that was tall enough to hide me and my horse, but not tall enough to block my aim.
I didn’t have to wait long. After a minute, I heard a rustling, then a whoop from Art, and both antelope bolted out into the open, less than fifty yards away. They were headed perfectly, running directly in front of me, from my right to my left. I shouldered my rifle, aimed at the lead, set my sights on his neck, and fired. The pop was echoed by another one, and I saw Art riding wild from the trees, rifle to his shoulder.
The antelope fell, its rear end tumbling forward, over its bowed, grounded neck, straight into the air, then twisting around the legs, following in parallel flight, until the whole torso flopped onto its side and slid forward, pushing the snow in front of it. The other animal darted to its right, angling back into the trees.
Art galloped toward the fallen antelope, whooping and hollering, his rifle above his head like a spear. I trotted toward him.
“I got him, Frank. I got the son of a bitch.” He swung down off his horse and ran toward the animal, limping a little and laughing.
My pride almost got the best of me. I knew I was the one who hit the antelope, especially when I got there and saw the wound in the side of its neck, six inches above my aim. Art’s bullet would have had to make a ninety-degree turn to hit him from where he shot. But he wouldn’t have heard a word of it, and I was going to give the meat to him anyway. So I swallowed my tongue, nearly choking on the damn thing.
The antelope’s side rose and fell, but just for a few seconds. His round, black eyes were wild, then sleepy, then dead, and he twitched, his legs jerking a few last spasms. Then he was still, stiff.
Watching death affects people differently, of course. Bob had never gotten used to it. When he was a boy, around twelve, he held a sheep’s head while Dad slit its throat. Bob lost his breakfast and was never able to do anything like that again. Jack was the opposite, driving the blade of a knife into an animal’s neck without a thought—not cruel, as if he was enjoying it, like some people I’ve known. But nearly heartless. I could butcher without thinking about it too much, but when the knife hit the hide, it always chilled my heart for a second or two.
I found death sad, but so peaceful that the sadness seemed secondary, almost insignificant. Since the night I’d watched Katie come to the end of that agonizing struggle with her body, I’d figured death could sometimes be a good way to end things.
The antelope was a buck, an older one. He was gaunt, his hide hugging his ribs, and he wouldn’t have lived much longer. His meat would be tough, and sour, but Art rejoiced in the kill as if he’d never have to worry about food again.
“Let’s go after the other one,” he shouted. “We got to get one for you.”
I shook my head. “No, Art. Don’t worry about it. We have to haul this thing back to your place, then I have to get home. I don’t want to work my horse any harder. We probably won’t even find it.”
I could see the relief in his eyes, but I appreciated the fact that he’d thought of me. After all, he had what he wanted.
We gutted the antelope and hefted the corpse up over the haunches of Art’s horse, tying its front legs to the back ones. Then we started for his place.
It had warmed up enough that the surface snow was softening. It no longer had the slick sheen of ice, but looked rough, with shades of gray.
“You don’t have to go with me, Frank. Really.”
“I don’t mind keeping you company, Art. Besides, I’m worried you might get lost.” I winked.
“Smart aleck.”
We rode silent the rest of the way. One of the nice things about winters during the Depression was that the snow covered the awful, bare ground, giving you a chance to forget how bad it looked. And the winter was free of the Depression haze of dust that kept us from seeing as far as we were accustomed. I liked to gaze out across the whiteness and picture the miles of waist-high grass that was once common and expected in Carter County. I’d close my eyes and imagine it that way again. But when the snow melted away, I knew that the gray, bald earth would resume its annoying habit of killing that fantasy.
I hadn’t been to Art’s for almost a year. One side of the barn had collapsed, and once we were inside it, I noticed he’d propped beams between the ground and the roof to keep the building from falling in on itself. We hung the antelope from the rafters, which made me nervous, then went into the house for a cup of coffee.
Art’s brother Sam sat in a corner of their shanty, his torso unbalanced and incomplete with the empty shirtsleeve pinned to its shoulder.
It’s a sad fact of life on the land that a large measure of a man’s worth lies in his body, so that a mutilation like Sam’s has the immediate effect of making him less valuable, less of a person than before. There is no way around it, and the results, except in cases of an unusually strong spirit, are predictable. If they don’t move to town, they become exiles, usually hermits, because nobody knows what to say to them.
Sam had always been a loner anyway. He said hello, but that was all he said while I was there. A bottle sat on the table next to him, on the armless side. He didn’t touch it that I noticed, and it seemed to be coated with dust. As though he’d quit drinking once he couldn’t pour with that hand. He didn’t seem to be doing anything, or preparing to do anything, or to have just completed anything. He looked to be in a state of suspension, between life and death, and much closer to the latter.
Art and I sat and drank weak coffee, had a cigarette, which I supplied, and played cribbage with cards that were almost white from wear. We didn’t talk, but if I had said what was on my mind, I would have asked Art why he hadn’t covered the broken window on the east wall, or why there were mice, both dead and alive, all over the floor. And once I saw the reason for that, I might have asked why he hadn’t thrown out the dead cat under the wood stove. The place was freezing, but it stunk anyway, and I couldn’t believe anyone could ignore and live with such a smell.
I kept my stay as short as was polite, thanked Art for the coffee, shook Sam’s left hand, and took off, taking the dead cat with me.
“Oh, thanks, Frank. I kept on meanin’ to get rid of that thing.”
Riding back, I tried to focus on the fact that it felt good to help a friend. And I looked forward to seeing Muriel, who was supposed to be arriving in the next few days for a visit.
But as I approached the house, I had a sense that something was off somehow. For one thing, there was a strange vehicle parked out front. Not that this was unusual during that period. We often had strangers stop by, often families with their belongings loaded onto an old Model A truck, making their escape from failed homesteads. But this car was brand-new, a big black Ford sedan. And any time someone with means came by anybody’s place in those days, it generally meant bad news. Foreclosure, or repossession. Something bad. So I didn’t even bother to unsaddle my horse. I rode over to the car to check it out. It had Montana plates, but I didn’t recognize anything else about it. I tied Ahab to the fence and entered the big house with a slight feeling of anxious irritation.
I entered the front door, and heard lots of activity toward the back of the house, in the kitchen. But there was a man sitting alone in the living room. He stood when I came in. He was tall, wearing a very nice black suit, his hair slick and flat against his head, with a knife-straight white part down one side. This guy was no drifter.
“You must be Blake,” he said.
I’m afraid my assumptions about this man and what he might be there for brought out the mistrust in me.
“Yeah,” I said, and I was just about to say, “Who the hell are you?” when he spoke again.
“There’s been a murder.”
“What?”
“Oh, christ. You scared the hell out of me. I thought you meant here.”
The man shook his head. “Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Yeah. Of course you would assume…”
“I’m sorry, but do I know you?” I asked.
Just then, Muriel appeared from the dining room. I didn’t recognize her for a brief moment. She wore a fashionable navy-blue dress, with a string of pearls dotting her neckline. And her hair had been cut short and curled. It was a dramatic change from the young girl who usually wore nothing but cotton print dresses, with her hair in a bun.
“Blake!” She looked pleased.
“Muriel, what are you doing here?”
“Well, we weren’t planning to get here until Tuesday. But we were in Billings, and we heard about the murder. So we drove right up.”
“What murder? Who got murdered?”
By now, others had begun drifting into the living room—Rita, Mom, Bob, until the whole family had filtered in from various rooms in the house. They all looked concerned, even scared.
“Somebody shot Harold Baldwin,” Mom said.
“Really?” Everybody was looking at me, so I realized I was the last to learn this bit of news. “When?”
“Last night,” Muriel said.
“Do they know who did it?” I asked.
Nobody answered, but several shook their heads. And then everyone dropped their eyes to their shoes.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I never did figure out just who you are.” I addressed the stranger. “Since Muriel keeps saying ‘we,’ I assume you’re with her.”
“Oh my goodness,” Muriel said, stepping forward. “You didn’t meet Stan?”
“It’s my fault,” Stan said. “I was so anxious to tell Blake here about the big news, I didn’t think to introduce myself.” He stepped forward to shake my hand. “I’ve heard so much about all of you that it’s easy to forget that we’ve never met. Stan Grant.” He reached out his hand, and we shook.
“We’re engaged,” Muriel said.
“Engaged?” I couldn’t hide my surprise, as we’d heard nothing about a suitor of any kind, much less a fiancé. “Wow. Well, congratulations.”
“Thanks,” Stan said. “Thanks a lot.”
“Well, dinner’s ready,” Helen announced.
“Yes. Let’s eat,” Muriel said.
We sat up to a table of fried chicken, cooked carrots, potatoes, and pan-stirred gravy. We learned that Stan was an executive for the Amalgamated Copper Company in Butte, and that he and Muriel had met several months before when Stan’s car broke down in Spearfish. Muriel explained that she hadn’t mentioned Stan sooner because she didn’t expect anything to develop with Stan living five hundred miles away. But after traveling to see her several times, Stan had proposed. They were to be married in the spring.
I managed to extract this information despite a nervous energy, a palpable feeling that everyone else had something else on their minds.
“So they haven’t caught the guy who shot Harold?” I asked.
“They don’t have any idea who did it,” Muriel said. “It could be a woman, you know.”
“It probably was a woman,” Dad said, prompting an elbow from Mom.
“No witnesses,” said Stan.
“Did you guys come through Alzada?” Bob asked.
“No!” Muriel said. “Stan wanted to. But I was too scared. My lord, there’s a killer out there.”
“I bet no one’s leaving their houses up that way,” I said.
“No doubt,” Dad seconded.
The discussion continued, spirited and laced with an element of fear. And as speculation bounced around the table, I was struck by two things. First was that Stan seemed to be as charming and likable as he first appeared. He had an unusual but infectious laugh—a singular explosion of joy, a “Ha” that economically conveyed as much delight as most people express in a good long belly laugh. My first impression was of a man who was hard not to like. But despite his natural manner, and the good feeling that both his presence and the news of their impending marriage brought to our table, there appeared to be two people in the room who were not happy. Both Mom and Rita were conspicuously silent in the midst of the banter. But Stan did not know them well enough to notice.
“Mrs. Arbuckle, this is a fine, fine meal,” he declared.
Mom nodded—a single, curt bob of her head.
“We don’t expect anything less from Mom,” Muriel said. “She’s a victim of her own standards.”
“Oh, stop this nonsense,” Mom insisted. “This certainly isn’t anything special. And I didn’t do it alone.”
We who knew her were prepared to close the subject. But not Stan.
“Mrs. Arbuckle, your humility is admirable, but not necessary. I’m used to my mother’s cooking, which I won’t comment on because she’s not here to defend herself.”
We all chuckled, and I even caught a hint of a smile on Mom’s face.
It actually wasn’t hard for me to imagine the source of Mom’s displeasure, although Stan remained blissfully unaware of it for the rest of the evening. Muriel represented the last hope for Mom’s dream of a college graduate in the family. It now appeared she was going to come up just short. I’m sure the suddenness of the announcement was a big concern as well. It was clear that Stan had at least ten years on Muriel.
But for Rita to appear so distant, even depressed, was very unusual. I made several attempts to catch her eye, to question with a look whether she was okay. But she did not look my way.
“Now what exactly is it that you do at the mine, Stan?” Helen put a napkin to the corner of her mouth.
“I’m the business manager.” He finished swallowing before he continued. “It sounds important, but all I really do is take care of the books.”
“Now who’s being humble?” Muriel softly slapped Stan’s upper arm. “Stan started out as a clerk, and worked his way up. He’s very good at what he does.”
Stan tilted his head and smiled shyly. “Well, I also had an advantage. My father has been with the mine pretty much from the start. He’s helped me a lot.”
Muriel again jumped in. “But Stan works very hard.” Then to him: “You didn’t just have this position handed to you because of your father. You always make it sound that way.”
Stan looked as though he needed to be rescued.
“Well, I don’t think anyone here knows enough about mining to even ask an intelligent question about it,” I said.
“I could say the same for ranching,” Stan added.
“It doesn’t seem that anyone knows enough about ranching these days,” Mom said with a trace of anger. “It doesn’t matter what you know when there’s no water.” Although she still sounded angry, I knew it was a good sign that Mom had voluntarily joined in on the conversation.
Stan nodded thoughtfully. “It’s tough. We get more people coming through looking for work than I can ever remember.”
I nodded. “I know what you mean. We have two or three guys stopping in every week, offering to work for pennies.”
Stan turned to me, surprised. “Really? Out here?”
This brought a smile to everyone’s face, except Rita’s.
Stan emitted one of his “Ha” s. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“It does seem strange, I know,” I assured him. “So far from everything.”
Stan nodded. “It’s got to break sometime soon.”
If only he’d been right.
It seems that the laws of nature work against those of us who play cards so that we rarely end up gathered in numbers divisible by four. This was one of those rare occasions, and it was clear to all present that we had no choice but to take advantage of the opportunity. With Stan being a numbers man, I was a little surprised and disappointed that he wasn’t as adept at cards as he was at turning a charming phrase. But the latter skill adds as much to a card game, if not more, than talent, and by the end of the evening, my stomach hurt from laughing, and my tongue was sore from too much coffee and cigarettes. Even Mom was loose after a few games. Stan also broke out a bottle that he had brought along to celebrate their announcement.
But Rita, who was my partner for most of the night, stared at her cards with wide-open, blank eyes. She constantly had to be reminded when it was her turn to bid, or to play a card. Even after downing several drinks, something she rarely did, Rita remained quiet.
Around eleven o’clock, when the black and red cards began to blur together, we stood and straightened our stiff knees, groaning, sticking our chests out and stretching our arms.
“Hey,” Dad said, suddenly looking up at me. “I didn’t think to ask…did you and Art get anything?”
“Yeah. An antelope. An old buck.”
Dad nodded. “Did you go up there?”
I shook my head. “Yeah. Boy.” I just continued shaking my head, and everyone dropped their eyes to the floor, understanding the state of the situation. “It was bad,” I said.
A long pause followed.
“So…” Stan looked around. “Where do you want me to sleep? In the barn?”
Mom smiled, the skin around her eyes pinching. “All right. If that suits you.”
“Hey, as long as there’s a sheep out there that I can use for a pillow.”
When Mom chuckled at his joke, it was clear that a remarkable transformation had taken place. I caught myself smiling broadly.
“More than a pleasure,” Stan said as he shook my hand.
“For us all,” I replied. “I look forward to more nights like this.”
He nodded. “I’ll need some time to practice my five hundred,” he said, referring to our card game.
I carried Teddy out into the clear, clean night, my spirits buoyed by good company and a few glasses of expensive whiskey. A full, white moon dominated the sky. The light was so bright that it shone off the big weathered house, which was still unpainted, making the weathered gray siding also appear white. We walked along the path, just wider than a shoe, Rita in front, Teddy and I just behind, and George in the rear. The crickets called. As ridiculous as it seemed at the time, I couldn’t help but think as we walked the hundred yards from one house to the other that someone had killed a man just fifteen miles from where we were walking. Someone who was still out there somewhere. I kept my ears alert. I also noticed that Rita was walking very unsteadily.
“How about that Stan?” I said to her, hoping to break through her mood. “He’s something else, huh?”
“Yeah.” She answered without enthusiasm. “He’s great.”
We continued wordlessly on to the house as I wondered about the source of Rita’s surliness. Once inside, I sat quietly in the living room, smoking a cigarette, while Rita put the boys to bed. We generally sat and talked for a while before bed, and I hoped that she wouldn’t sneak off to her room without following that ritual.
She did come out, settling into her rocking chair, picking up the socks she was knitting for one of the boys. She held the socks closer to her face than usual, and her eyes were unfocused.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded.
“You sure?”
Again she nodded. But in the next moment, she aimed one of those unfocused eyes toward me, winking through a narrow opening.
“What if it’s him, Blake?”
I blinked. “What if it’s who?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“What if it’s Jack?”
A slight, confused grin came to my face. “You mean the murder? You couldn’t be serious.”
Rita looked up with defiance. “Why not?”
“Oh, come on, Rita. Jack’s not a murderer.”
“No?”
I paused, thinking about what I was saying, realizing that I really didn’t know, that it wasn’t out of the question.
“I need another drink,” Rita said, lifting herself to her feet.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Rita stopped and turned, frowning at me. “Blake.”
“I’m sorry. Actually, maybe I’ll join you.”
I watched Rita teeter toward the kitchen. “I didn’t know you had anything around here.”
She smiled over her shoulder. “Yeah, well…you don’t know everything, you know.”
I smiled.
Rita came back with a bottle and two glasses. She set one on the table next to me and poured, spilling a little. Then she returned to her chair and poured herself a glass. She drank a healthy amount, then turned to me.
“I think it’s him, Blake.”
I sighed, shaking my head, studying Rita. “You don’t really think that.”
Rita nodded. “I do, Blake. I really do.”
She was actually too insistent somehow, as if she was exaggerating in order to convince me, or herself.
“I just don’t think it could possibly be him, Rita. I mean, this is a very different thing than…than…”
“Than George.”
“Exactly.”
Rita drank more. “How? How’s it different?”
“Well,” I said. “I guess I always figured that whatever happened between George and Jack, if anything did happen…well, I just figured it was an accident. Either that, or a fight. I figured maybe they got into an argument, and that Jack…well, that maybe things got out of hand.” I took a drink. “That’s how I always pictured it.”
Rita drained her glass, to my mild alarm, and refilled it. “But what if that isn’t the way it happened, Blake? What if it was uglier than that? Did anyone check George’s body? Did anyone look at it?”
I lowered my head. Of course all of this had occurred to me before. Of course I’d wondered about it. Nobody had checked the body. As far as I knew. But I was hesitant to tell Rita this. Instead, I decided to probe her a little more, for her own ideas about Jack.
“Rita…you know Jack better than anybody. You’ve seen him at his worst.”
She blew a puff of disgust from her pursed lips. “That’s for sure.”
“So can you really say that you think he’s capable of something like that? Honestly?”
Finally, Rita got thoughtful, focusing her eyes on the glass between her ranch-scarred hands. She shook her head slowly, sadly. “I don’t know, Blake. Sometimes I think I know. I remember one time…one night before little George was born…Jack got mad at me for something or other. Of course, you can never remember what started it years later—things that seemed so important at the time. Anyway, he usually started yelling when he was mad. I was never very scared of him, really. It was mostly noise, you know. Like a baby crying. He wanted me to pay attention to him. Anyway…” She waved a dismissive hand. “That night was different. This time he got real quiet.” Rita raised her eyes. “I don’t know if I can explain why, Blake. But it was much more frightening, that quiet. He looked at me, and I don’t even remember what he said. All I remember is that I was really scared, Blake. I was scared just from the way he was looking at me.” Rita dropped her eyes again, back to her glass, which she raised once more, sucking half the contents into her mouth.
I didn’t know what to say. The story sent a chill through me. But Rita wasn’t finished. She raised her head once more, and her eyes had become bleary, drooping from alcohol.
“You know what the scariest part of that is, Blake?” She fixed a gaze on me, as glazed as it was.
I met her eyes, shaking my head.
“I didn’t know about George then. I hadn’t heard yet.”
I held her look for a moment longer, then dropped my eyes. “Mm,” I said, not underestimating the power of this fact, because although I didn’t understand it, I knew how much this woman loved my brother. I could imagine how frightening it must have been to see this side of Jack.
We sat quietly for a while, with the only sound being the familiar click of locust wings outside, the almost clocklike ticking, as if they were measuring the time before the next victim packed up and gave in.
“You know, Blake…”
I raised my head, meeting the now bleary eyes. She had an odd, dreamy expression.
“Sometimes I wish Jack was you.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Sometimes I wish you were Jack. I wish he was himself but also you.”
I shook my head, intrigued but assuming the booze was doing the talking now. “I’m not sure what you mean by that, Rita.”
She smiled, her eyes bathing me with the warmth I had first noticed the day I met her. I couldn’t help but smile back.
“Jack…well, Jack has a lot of…a big sense of adventure…of possibility.”
She paused. I nodded, slightly insulted by the insinuation that I did not.
“But you…well, you, Blake…you are just so damn sweet. You’re always thinking about other people…what might make them a little happier.” She paused, still smiling. I felt my face fill with blood. “Not Jack.” She shook her head. “He’s a taker. He’s a taker. He never thinks about me. Or you. Or these kids.” She gestured vaguely toward the boys’ room.
Although part of me, for some odd reason, wanted to convince Rita that Jack cared about her and her kids, I knew very well that she was right. So I said nothing, looking at my hands.
“I sometimes wish I’d met you first, Blake.” I felt a hand on my own, and it was as if I had just been bitten by a rattler. I jumped to my feet, fumbling with my chair, trying to push it in, but somehow tripping over it, and mumbling about how it was time to get a little shut-eye.
Rita started laughing, a self-conscious chuckle. “Blake, you’re like a shy school kid. You’re as shy as a kid in school.”
“Yeah…well…I think I need to get some sleep. Maybe you should, too. Huh, Rita? It’s late.”
I escaped to my bedroom, and I heard Rita retire to her own room. But I couldn’t sleep, thinking about her. Or more accurately, I couldn’t sleep thinking about what she said. Although it had always been obvious that Rita was fond of me, she had never given any indication, any slight hint, that she was fond of me in the same way that I was fond of her. And it seemed to me a cruel twist that this information would come out when she was in that condition. Now I could only wonder whether she actually meant it.
For the next week, questions of who and where the murderer was took our county hostage. Because we didn’t have telephones yet, and because Annie Ketchal didn’t want to deliver the mail in the middle of the night until they caught the killer, we relied on her to fill us in each day on the news. But there was little to report. In fact, the only reports she did have were rumors, most of which were absurd. It seemed that of the sixty-nine people who made up the population of Alzada, everyone over the age of fifteen was a suspect, whether there was any hint of a motive or not. But apparently, most people thought that Tex Edwards, the man whose first wife drowned in a mud puddle, was the guilty party. Although Tex’s wife said he was home all night, there was much conjecture that she was scared to tell the truth. Johnny Berrenda even claimed that he’d seen Tex out that night, but everyone knew that if Johnny had been sober, it would have been the first night in several years.
It was a rough time for the drifters in the area. They were used to being fed and given a bed without question. But they were now sent on their way with a bundle of food under their arms and an evil eye at their backs until they were out of sight.
Stan and Muriel stayed an extra three days because she was too scared to leave. Stan finally insisted, because he had to get back to work. But they took the back road, through Ekalaka, just to make sure.
It was immediately evident that Rita had no memory of our drunken conversation. Aside from a headache, she acted as if everything was just as it always had been the next day. There was no sign of discomfort after that. So I found myself in the awkward position of living with the question of Rita’s objectivity that night, as well as her revelations about Jack. The situation made me tense, and withdrawn, which only added to the stifling atmosphere.
Exactly one week after the murder, we gathered at the big house for Sunday dinner. The week of intense apprehension had permeated our homes. Every glance was furtive. Any unexpected sound had us all jumping a foot off the ground. We sat down to a table of tough antelope meat. The lettuce was tired, the carrots juvenile, almost yellow.
“Mom, this salad doesn’t taste right,” Teddy complained to Rita.
“You better just learn to appreciate what you have here,” Rita said impatiently. “You better learn we’re lucky to even have a garden right now. A lot of people don’t even have gardens.”
“A lot of people don’t have any food at all,” Mom added. “You’ve seen those men come to the door, Teddy?”
Teddy pouted, picking at his food.
“I think he gets the point,” Dad said.
“George, don’t interrupt now. We don’t want to give the boy two different messages, do we?” Mom said, not looking at Dad, her head tilted.
“I’m not giving him a different message. I agree he should appreciate what we got, but Rita already said it once. We don’t need to beat the kid over the head with it.”
A tear leaked from the corner of Teddy’s eye.
“Mom, Dad,” Rita said in a warning tone. “Is this really necessary?”
There was a brief, fuming silence, during which Teddy ate slowly, the tears still trickling. It was Helen who broke the silence.
“Teddy, you know, I remember one time when I was just about the same age as you are now…we were eating supper, and my mother had cooked up some turnips, and I hated turnips. Oh, I hated turnips so much. I still…well, I shouldn’t say that. But I did not like turnips at all. So I told my mother in no uncertain terms that I was simply not going to eat my turnips.”
Helen had Teddy’s full attention, and he forgot to cry. His eyes were wide, and a slight smile began to curl his lips.
“Well, Teddy, can I tell you what my mother did that night?”
“What?” Teddy asked. “What did she do?”
“My mother got right up out of her chair, right up from the table, and she went down to the root cellar, and she marched right back up into the dining room and she dropped the biggest, ugliest raw turnip on my plate. And she asked me whether I thought I could eat that whole turnip by myself, raw and ugly that way.”
Teddy looked scared to death, imagining the possibility of what would happen next. His brow worried.
“Did you have to?” Teddy asked. “Did she make you eat it?”
“Well, thank goodness, no. But you know what she did? She held that big ugly thing right up to me and said that there were people in the world that would actually kill each other just to have one ugly turnip like that. I never forgot that.”
“Do you think it’s true?” Teddy asked.
“Oh, absolutely,” Helen said. “I’m sure it is.”
“Wow,” Teddy said, and the effect of the story was quite immediate. He lowered his head and started shoveling the salad into his mouth as if it was a birthday cake.
But after a short silence, little George, who was nine and had been his usual mum self during the entire meal, mumbled into his plate, “It’s still not very good.”
At which point my mother stood up in grand fashion, her shoulders thrown back, and stalked out of the house. We heard the root cellar door clunk open, and we all sat in quiet anticipation, waiting to see what hideous foodstuff she would find to instruct her grandson with.
We all sat eating, heads down, Teddy looking wide-eyed around the table, George doing his best to appear indifferent.
“I like turnips,” he said after a minute.
And although it was a great line, we were all aware of the seriousness of the situation. No one laughed.
But Mom did not reappear. Two minutes passed, then three, and there was no sign of her, and we heard nothing. If not for the image of the scathing remark I would have to endure if I went down there and she was fine, I would have gotten up right then and checked to see if she was all right. The worried look on Dad’s face told me that he was thinking the same thing. But I hesitated, and just moments later, we heard the most horrific scream echo from outside. We were out of our chairs and through the back door in a flash. All except Dad.
“I’m going to grab the Winchester,” he called out.
The root cellar was right outside, to the right of the back door. I was the first to turn the sharp corner, and when I stumbled down the steep stairs leading to the cellar, the first thing I saw was Mom’s back. She was squatting on the floor, and a pair of denim-clad legs kicked away behind and beneath her. Mom was rocking a little, and when I got up close, I saw that she had a man pinned to the ground and had her hands around his neck. His face was too dirty to determine whether it was red, but his eyes looked as if they were about to explode out of his head.
“Mom, you’re gonna kill him,” I shouted, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Mom, you’re killing him.”
But she was in a trance, and she continued to rock six inches forward, then back, the muscles in her arms and neck taut, her mouth in a teeth-clenched smile of concentration. The man gasped for air. I dropped to my knees, and threw my arms around her and leaned to one side.
“Somebody get ready to jump on him,” I yelled.
“I got him.” Dad appeared behind me, rifle at his shoulder.
I pulled Mom as gently as I could onto her side and held her there, both of us breathing in steady, full gusts.
The man was choking, holding his own throat, trying to lift himself to his elbow. Dad held his rifle, aiming it right at the guy’s head. There was a pistol lying on the ground, which Bob picked up. Food was strewn everywhere—potatoes, dried fruit, apples, some half-eaten.
“Mom, how did you get the gun from him?” Rita asked.
“What gun?” Mom said. “I didn’t see any gun.”
I chuckled, trying to imagine how this whole scene played itself out, and thinking about how this would only elevate Mom’s reputation around the county.
“Mom?” Teddy peeked out from behind Rita.
“What, honey?”
“Is this one of those people?”
“What people?” Rita turned and looked at Teddy.
“One of those people that Aunt Helen was talking about. One of those people who would kill somebody for a turnip.”
The silence that followed was brief but filled with revelation as we watched the skeletal figure in front of us try to find some air. It was as if we all suddenly realized that this was a human being—that despite the fact that he was a murderer, he was also someone who was simply desperate for food. It excused nothing, of course, but it made me think about how the death we had seen over these desperate years had numbed us. A moment before Teddy brought this to our attention, I wouldn’t have considered this guy for a moment.
“Well…” Rita said. “I guess so, honey. Yes. I guess it is.”