11

spring 1938

If it’s raining in Carter County, chances are that it’s spring. Although fall sometimes brings some moisture, and we get an occasional summer shower, seventy-five percent of the yearly rain usually falls in the season of rebirth. And another large percentage of moisture comes in the form of snow, so that we rely on the spring thaw to give us our start on the growing season.

But that is under normal conditions, a term that would never be used to describe the Depression. Instead, year after year, the snow melted, and the sun sucked it out of the ground so fast that it seemed as if something underneath, some fire underground, was also at work. The sky, that beautiful expanse of deep blue, stayed blue and open, closing itself off from the intrusion of anything that would interfere with its blueness, like a cloud, for instance.

The ground withered and split, thirsty. It turned hard and tired, giving up less and less space to those water-sucking plants that tried to stretch their roots into its belly. Tufts of grass found their neighbors moving further away each year. Especially after lumbering beasts chomped at their blades, leaving only sagebrush, broken skeletons, and a few lonely clumps to stare at the empty space between them and far-off fences.

Finally, the dust looked around and, free of its usual restraints, danced. Dusty clouds and swirls frolicked between drooping, solitary plants, mocking and tormenting. The only sign of life.

Most springs, we moved the stock to pastures further from the river, because the creeks were filled with winter runoff. But each year of drought, as more and more creeks dried up, we had to keep the stock closer to the river, until the pastures that bordered it were chewed to nearly nothing. The stock weakened, their bones pushing against thinning hides, and their immunity diminished. Many cows and ewes went sterile. We lost several during labor, leaving so many orphaned calves and lambs that we didn’t have time to feed them. Most of them also died. When the wind blew, and it blew often, it smelled of death.

But we usually couldn’t smell even that, thanks to the dust. Our noses seemed to be constantly clogged with dust. And we had perpetual coughs. For over ten years we coughed, spitting gobs of dust into the dust.

“I’m going to check on the cows.” Rita grabbed her felt cowboy hat from its peg and tugged it over her dark hair, which was in a bun. A few gray strands sparkled in the lantern’s light. I nodded, looking up from my newspaper. It was calving time, and we had moved the few cattle left to calve into the small pasture behind the barn, where we checked them regularly.

“Did you boys feed your lambs?” Rita asked.

George and Teddy were in charge of the bum lambs, the orphans, which they fed by bottle every day. It was an unpleasant, difficult job, and getting bigger all the time.

“Yeah, we fed ’em,” George said impatiently. George had become a source of nearly constant amusement to me. Although he was perpetually surly, it was a disposition that appeared to come more by design than by nature. His stony glare could be easily broken with a good joke, or a teasing comment, and he showed an excellent, dry sense of humor of his own. “We fed ’em and we changed their diapers,” he said without looking up. Rita responded as she usually did, with a smile and a roll of her eyes.

“You think you could put some coffee on?” Rita asked me. “I’ll be ready for some when I get back.”

“Sure.”

“Let me do it.” George grabbed the pan before I could think about saying no, then rummaged through the split logs for some kindling.

Teddy tried to help, but George cocked his fist, ready to bring it down on Teddy’s scarred ears. For once I jumped in before it happened.

“George, you hit him and you’re doing the milking for the next two weeks, every morning. I don’t care if you’re late for school, you will milk the cow every morning.”

George’s hand fell to his side, still clenched. And Teddy shocked the hell out of me, and George, by clocking him right in the chin, a deft, accurate jab.

Even more surprising, George didn’t hit him back. Teddy’s hands immediately flew up to cover his head, but George’s fist opened slowly, and he turned back to the stove, where he started loading wood into it. He wiped a slight trickle of blood from his lip.

It was hard to keep from laughing. Actually, I did laugh, but I kept it quiet, behind my newspaper.

Checking the cows sometimes meant pulling a breech birth, or unfolding a front leg that was hung up inside the mother. If everything was okay, a quick check took about a half hour. So after an hour, I was just about to go out and see whether Rita needed some help when I heard a horse outside. Rita came in, her face troubled.

“Blake, you better come out here.”

She cupped her hands to the wood stove.

“What is it?” I set down my paper and slipped my boots on.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But we should probably hurry.”

I was confused. Despite this statement, she didn’t seem rushed at all, and I couldn’t imagine what problem could come up that she wouldn’t have encountered before.

“You’re not sure?” I wrapped myself in a jacket and tugged on my hat.

“No.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” She sounded terribly sad.

“All right,” I said.

Out in the pasture, Rita wove through the cattle, some standing, some lying down, one licking the fresh afterbirth from her shaky newborn.

“Shoot,” Rita suddenly said.

“What?”

“Oh, she’s moved. She was right around here.” She pointed, then jerked the horse’s reins, guiding him at angles across the pasture. Five minutes later, we came upon a lone cow, standing in a corner of the pasture, facing us with a fearful, confused look. “There she is,” Rita said.

When we approached, the cow bobbed her head as if she was going to run, but Rita pulled the horse up. I looked the cow over and didn’t see anything unusual. Rita seemed hesitant to move.

“What’s wrong with her?”

Rita nudged the horse slowly around to the side, then behind the cow, who turned her head, watching us closely. When the cow’s rear end came into sight, I saw the problem. There, hanging beneath her tail, was a mass of nearly white, bloody flesh. And I knew then why Rita hadn’t been in a hurry to come back out.

“Oh, no,” I said.

“What is it?” Rita’s voice shook.

“She’s prolapsed.” I climbed slowly off the horse.

“Prolapsed?” Rita repeated the word cautiously, as if the sound of it might cause the cow more pain. “What does that mean? Is that her womb?”

“Afraid so.” I started to walk, very deliberately, circling behind the cow. “We’re going to have to get her to the barn. We’re going to have to go easy with her. She’s pretty jumpy.”

The cow lowered her head, still eyeing me, ready to run. I raised my arms and waved them, not quickly, just enough to get her moving.

“I wonder where her calf is,” I said.

Back in the barn, we studied the cow. “God, that looks painful,” Rita said. We had gotten her into a stall, and we sat on the gate. I lit a lantern and hung it above the stall, and its soft glow gave us a clearer view of the cow’s condition.

I recognized the cow by the twisted knob of horn on the left side of her head. She was one of our best mothers, one we could count on to take an orphaned calf each spring. It seemed ironic now. She’d been so anxious to see her new baby, she’d pushed too hard, exposing her womb and who knows what other organs to air they were never intended to see. It was also a strong indication of how much pain she was in that she had left her calf somewhere.

“What do we do?” Rita looked at me.

“We’ve got to push it back inside,” I sighed.

Rita cringed. “Have you ever done that before?”

I shook my head. “I watched Dad do it once when I was a kid. It’s not going to be fun. We’ll need some water and a needle to sew her up.”

“Oh, god,” Rita said, her shoulders rising up to her ears. She shook off the thought. “Okay, I’ll go get that stuff.”

“I need to go out and find her calf.”

Rita nodded, then climbed down from the gate.

With life on the ranch as difficult and strained as it was, Rita and I had come to rely more and more on each other to keep our spirits up. We had an odd arrangement, living like a family in every respect except the obvious. And although we worked well together when it came to planning our days and sharing in the chores, the awkward nature of the situation brought a natural arm’s length to our relationship. We were very cautious about touching; even an accidental brush caused us both to flinch, jumping away from each other as if we’d singed our skin. And although our conversations sometimes veered close to the topic of Jack, we were both quick to make an abrupt change in direction at those moments. But as time passed, we did discuss other people, and politics—safe topics. But I had to be careful not to broach anything that stirred up my personal feelings toward Rita. They were too strong. And as long as Rita was holding out hope that Jack would return, I didn’t want them exposed. I knew she was still thinking of him, because every once in a while she would retreat to her bedroom early some night, telling the boys not to bother her, and we would hear her crying quietly.

So the trust we developed was strong, but incomplete. Because of course the two topics that we never discussed were the most important ones in our lives—how I felt about Rita, and how she felt about Jack.

Because it was so dark, and I had no idea where the cow had given birth, finding the calf proved to be difficult. I started where we’d found the cow, and meandered back and forth across the pasture. I considered waiting until morning, but I knew that once the cold settled in, the calf probably wouldn’t survive the night. So I gave the pasture one more round.

Finally I spotted a small, huddled figure, only twenty or thirty yards from where we’d found the mother. The calf’s rump was in the air, and he was down on his front knees, struggling to pull one of his forelegs out from under him. His coat was slick with afterbirth. I wiped as much of the moisture off him as I could before slinging him over my horse and riding back to the barn. He had some trouble breathing, so I cleaned his nostrils and wiped my hand on my dungarees.

When I got to the barn, Bob was there.

“Where’s Rita?” I asked.

“She went to put the boys to bed. She’ll be back.” Bob turned to the cow, who still looked scared and confused. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Really? Weren’t you there when this happened before, when we were kids?”

Bob shook his head.

“Hm. I could of sworn you were there.” In fact, I remembered Bob being there, because he had been so upset by the whole scene that he had to leave.

“I don’t remember anything like that.”

I opened the gate just enough to squeeze the calf inside. The cow nuzzled him, then licked him clean, her big pink tongue smoothing his shivering hide. The calf kept trying to stand, but his mother’s bath knocked him over each time.

“Did you bring water?” I looked around.

“Yeah. I got a bucket right here.” Bob walked around to the next stall.

“Why did you put it in there?”

Bob shrugged. “Don’t know. I guess I didn’t want it to get knocked over.”

I rubbed my chin. “All right, let’s see what we can do here.”

Replacing a cow’s womb must be a veterinarian’s worst nightmare, and since we weren’t even veterinarians, I guess it would qualify as worse than our worst nightmare. It was like trying to push a balloon through a knothole.

We ducked into the stall, sneaking past the cow so she wouldn’t get too spooked. But her eyes got wild, staring right at us, daring us to come near her.

“Set that bucket down in the corner,” I told Bob.

We walked slowly, making our way behind her. She twisted her neck around to keep an eye on us.

“Mooo,” she said, and I’m pretty sure she meant it as a threat.

I pictured what would happen when we touched the womb.

“We’re going to have to tie her head,” I said. “Otherwise she’ll be all over this stall, and us with her.”

Bob nodded. “I’ll get a rope.” He crept out of the stall and returned with the rope, which he’d already fashioned into a lasso. He straddled the gate and dropped the loop down toward her head.

The cow pushed her nose into the corner when she saw the rope, and Bob had to reach down and slip the loop over her head by hand. He slipped the other end through the gate’s planks and crawled outside the stall, where he leaned back, pulling at the rope. I slapped the cow’s flank, and she moved toward the gate. Bob gave the rope a tug to keep her momentum going. She ended up with her head about a foot from the gate, and Bob tied the rope.

Rita returned to the barn. “How’s it going?”

“Well, we haven’t gotten too far along yet.” I heard the irritation in my voice.

I looked over at Rita, and the pained look had returned to her face as she studied the cow.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It doesn’t hurt as bad as it looks.”

“How do you know?”

I shrugged. “I don’t. I’m just trying to make you feel better.”

Rita smiled. “You don’t have to do that. Besides, I don’t believe you. Speaking of pain, I brought the needle.” She held up a big needle, one we used to sew up the ends of gunnysacks. I cringed, and she shrugged.

“Should do the trick,” she said.

I nodded.

We washed our hands in the bucket and stood in a row behind the cow, staring at the glistening mass of flesh. I wasn’t sure where to start.

“Well, somebody’s got to break the ice here.” Rita stepped to the cow’s side, reached out, and placed her hand along the bottom of the womb, lifting it with slow deliberation. The cow bawled, a strangled, wheezing call, and one hind leg kicked, missing everything.

I stood on the opposite side and cradled what skin was left. We lifted the flesh, which felt like a big lung, up to the opening and held it there. The cow squirmed and grunted, fighting the rope.

“Hold the tail, Bob.”

He pulled the tail to one side.

I slipped my hand inside the cow, taking some of the tissue with me, and Rita did the same. I slid my other hand inside, and a bubble of skin popped out of the opening. The womb slid from the inside hand, then from Rita’s, until the whole thing was hanging down just as it started.

We tried again, moving slower, even more deliberate. I felt my jaw tightening. I pushed a handful of flesh inside, but the cow suddenly clenched. I had expected she might do this, but I wasn’t ready for it to hurt like it did. She clamped down on my forearm, and my sympathies went out to every calf ever born. I groaned, loudly, and Rita looked at me with alarm.

“What?” she asked.

I couldn’t talk. My hand went numb, and I pictured the arm turning blue, stiffening like a corpse. But the cow let up a bit, and I whipped my arm out before she could grab it again.

“Whoa.” Rita jumped. “What are you doing?”

“I guess she thought she needed an arm.” I massaged my forearm.

“Oh, she gave you a little hug, did she?” Bob said, chuckling.

“She likes me, all right.” I shook the arm out.

The calf, inching forward on shaky legs, groped toward his mother’s udders, sniffing through his damp little snout. His tongue slipped out and took hold of an udder, pulling it between his jaws. He began sucking, and we couldn’t have come up with a better anesthetic if we’d tried every drug known to man. After the calf suckled for a half minute, the cow stepped forward, putting a bit of slack in the rope.

Rita and I smiled at each other.

“Okay, let’s try her again,” I said.

We followed the same procedure, with my left arm inside this time. “Bob, why don’t you thread that needle in case we ever get this thing in there.”

Bob stared at the tail, contemplating what to do with it. He let it drop, then came back with a hunk of twine and tied the tail to the stall.

For the next two hours the three of us tried to solve this puzzle. Several times we nearly had the whole womb back inside when the cow squeezed it out. She kicked me once, right in the shin, and she got Rita later, prompting a punch in the flank.

The calf finished nursing, lay down, and slept. I was jealous.

Our arms felt like the muscles had been pulled right out of them. And because we had to stand with our knees bent, to get the right angle, we fought intense, gripping cramps in our legs. It was good there were three of us. One could sit and rest while the other two strained at the birth canal.

Bob was sitting on top of the gate, stretching his legs, when we heard a rustling outside. Then footsteps. Helen appeared. We all looked at her, questioning, wondering if something was wrong.

She fixed an eye on Bob, and he looked down at the ground. Helen showed no interest in what was happening in the stall. Rita and I had about half the womb back inside the cow. Rita looked at me, making a fierce face. I almost laughed.

“I just wondered if everything was all right out here,” Helen said, her tone pleasant on the surface but strained in its core.

I don’t know what she meant by “all right,” but with Rita and me grunting away, and the three of us covered with sweat and blood, and one miserable cow trying to figure out what was going on at her south end, things were clearly not all right. Bob just shrugged. He couldn’t look Helen in the eye, and I wondered whether it was possible that she actually expected him to come inside.

Helen stood squarely facing Bob. He mumbled something we couldn’t hear, something that didn’t satisfy Helen as she made no move to leave. In fact, she didn’t make any move at all.

“How are your legs?” I asked Rita, talking a little louder than necessary.

“Pretty tight.”

Two or three feet of flesh hung from behind the cow. She was getting tired and hadn’t pushed anything out for a while.

“You need a break?” I asked.

Rita took a deep breath. “I think I’ll make it.”

This wasn’t the answer I was looking for, and I tried to get the message across with a look, but Rita was intent on her work.

“You sure?” I asked.

She nodded.

“How much longer you think this will take?” Bob’s question annoyed me. I can’t describe how much Bob’s question annoyed me.

“You know I can’t answer that,” I said after a pause.

“Did you get the needle threaded?” Rita asked Bob.

“It’s right here.”

“Well, if she doesn’t push again, we could be finished before too much longer,” Rita said.

There was a long silence, with only a slight rustling from where Helen was standing.

Bob cleared his throat. “You guys think you can handle it?” His voice sounded as if it would crack.

The silence that followed this question was even longer. Rita and I inched the womb up, sneaking a little at a time back into its cavity. A few inches slipped out. Two steps forward, one back. My legs were burning. Neither of us answered Bob, and I guess it became obvious we weren’t going to.

I heard a brief, guttural “Hmph,” then the crunch of heels against dirt and straw. To my surprise, Bob didn’t follow.

“Need a break, Rita?” He stepped back to where we were. “Whoa, you guys almost got it.”

“Better get the needle ready,” I said, impatient.

Bob, who seemed pleased with himself, was anxious to help. He plucked the needle from his pant leg and stood at the ready.

“So you’re going to stick it out after all, huh, Bob?” I didn’t expect this from Rita, but I guess she was as tired and at least as annoyed as I was.

Bob ignored the remark, directing his attention to the job. Helen’s visit got Rita and me angry enough that it renewed some of our strength. After a few minutes, we worked the last of the womb into the opening and held her closed.

“Ready?” I asked.

“She’s not going to like this,” Rita said.

We braced ourselves, but it didn’t help. Bob inserted the needle, and the cow reacted as if we had shoved a branding iron into her. She cried out, and her body tensed, pulling at the rope. The gate shook. She kicked Bob, and the womb sloshed out, falling to its full length. Rita collapsed, rolling out of range of the cow’s heels, and I sat down myself, exhausted, leaning against the stall.

“Damn!” Rita shouted in a tired, husky voice. Then she repeated herself, several times, harder each time.

Once we recovered, it took another half hour to get the damn thing back inside. This time, we were smart enough to put a few stitches in beforehand so we’d have a start once we got to the end.

Bob kept twisting his neck around, looking out toward the barn door, expecting Helen to show up again. The first few times he did this, I didn’t think twice about it. But after a half hour of Bob turning every minute or two, even in the middle of this job, I lost my patience.

“Bob, why don’t you just leave, get it over with. You’re not doing us any good here.” Once I started talking, I was surprised how angry I was. “If your mind is somewhere else, you might as well go there before someone gets hurt.”

I felt Bob’s eyes on me, and felt his hurt, and probably for that reason, I didn’t look at him. But I was too tired and angry to worry about him. And by that time, I was willing to finish the job with just the two of us, no matter how much longer it took or how painful it was.

Bob walked away wordlessly and climbed from the stall. After several footsteps, we heard a loud smack, and the barn shook. The cow jerked, but not enough to affect our job. Bob had either punched or kicked the wall, and the fact that he knew the sound could have made us lose the womb again made me angrier.

As we huddled behind that poor cow, struggling to stuff this fleshy balloon through the fleshy knothole, we pressed against each other, and I felt Rita’s breath on my cheek. At times our heads touched, and we were so focused on the task at hand that we didn’t pull away. The sweat ran down our faces. Our cheeks slid against each other. Rita’s hair brushed against my neck, and my nose. I smelled her, and felt every movement she made—each time she bent her knees and pushed upward, and each time she twisted to one side with her hip. Physically, it was the closest I had ever been to Rita, and it was distracting. It made my heart race a little, and the blood pounded in my head. And the longer we worked, the more I thought about being so close to her, and the more I liked it. A half hour after Bob left, we finally tied the final stitch into a knot. We sat in the back of the stall, leaning our heads against the wall and looking at the raw, sealed opening. Our breath beat through slack mouths, showing a little in the dim light of the lantern.

“We did it,” Rita said.

I nodded and held out a hand. She pressed hers into mine, and as we shook, our hands slid against each other in blood.

Back at the house, covered with blood and slime, Rita and I were both in need of a bath. We usually alternated evenings, but this was clearly a special case. I heated up the water and filled the tub while Rita warmed the coffee that George had made earlier. I let her go first, and I sat and read a book while listening to the water slosh behind the curtain. I noticed this splashing and the motions of Rita’s body more than usual that night, listening to each ripple of water, and occasionally watching the shadow of Rita’s arm, or the silhouette of her head as she let her hair down from its bun.

“Blake?” Rita asked from behind the curtain.

Her voice was so unexpected that I didn’t answer right away. I had to clear my throat. “Yeah?”

“I forgot a towel.”

“Oh. All right. I’ll get you one.” I stood and fetched one, and held it over the cotton curtain, where it was snatched from my grasp. But the towel got hung up on my thumb somehow, and when Rita pulled a little harder on it, and I simultaneously tried to jerk my thumb loose, we ended up pulling the curtain down. And there stood Rita, naked and wet.

She immediately covered herself with the towel, but for a brief moment, our eyes locked. I had never seen a naked woman before, not even in photographs. Despite the tauntings of my friends, I had passed on the occasional trips to a discreet house in Deadwood. Actually, I had gone once. But when we got there I got so damn nervous, I had to leave. I ended up waiting in a bar down the street, where I was greeted with a razzing that was unmerciful.

Now I stood before Rita, and although she had covered herself, I still pictured her as she had been seconds before. She was solid, her breasts large but still firm, the nipples dark and stimulated by the moisture and the cool air. I was struck by the curves—the way the lines slanted in from her breasts to her waist, then eased out again to form the lovely shape of her hips. It was a vision I would not soon forget, and its impact on me was powerful.

I felt a physical sensation that I had never experienced before. My erection was painful, as if every drop of blood, especially from my head, had rushed to my groin. I was dizzy. I felt as if I was falling toward Rita, and that I had no way of stopping myself. It was overwhelming, and almost entirely physical, as if the lower part of my body had a will of its own, separate from the rest of me. My head, my mind, was irrelevant, completely uninvolved in the process.

“Blake, maybe you ought to put that curtain back up before you faint.” Rita held the towel tightly around herself.

“Yes.” I suddenly jumped into action. “Yeah. Of course.” I fumbled with the curtain while Rita patiently waited, still covered. I didn’t look her way and eventually after much fumbling, I got the curtain hung. But when I went to sit down, the feeling stayed with me. And it got stronger. The image of her moist skin lifted a lump to my throat. It affected my breathing. I felt as if the weight of Montana was pressing down on my chest. And despite all my better judgment, and what I believed, and how much I respected Rita, and everything about my life that spoke against it, I found myself speaking to her.

“Rita?” I said, and I didn’t even know what I was going to say next. I had no idea.

But something about my voice must have revealed all that I was thinking, or all that I was subconsciously thinking, because I wasn’t thinking. There must have been nothing hidden in the way I spoke her name, because Rita didn’t respond. She simply dried herself and disappeared into her room, never coming out from behind that curtain, never acknowledging that I’d spoken to her.

When I lowered myself into the tub after dumping one more bucket of hot water into it, I thought about the fact that this same water had brushed against Rita just moments before. The realization made me hard again, and dizzy. I began scrubbing, rubbing the grime and slime from my skin. I washed quickly, then relaxed for a moment, taking advantage of what heat was left in the water. I flexed my arm, the one that the cow had squeezed earlier, and thought about the fact that the only females I’d ever felt inside were animals. And this thought brought on a chilly loneliness that had become a familiar companion in the time that I’d been living with Rita.

I would sometimes lie in bed, feeling as if Jack was still there, as if no matter how long we lived together, Jack would always interfere, even if we never saw him again. It seemed I would never escape the power he had over some of the things in my life.

I ducked my head under the water one last time, and enjoyed the confined silence for as long as I could hold my breath. And then I came up, brushing the water from my face. My efforts to stifle the vision had failed, and after I finished drying, I ducked into my room and pleasured myself to relieve the pressure. Still, I was awake for another hour.

Two days later, I came back to the house late one night, just past sundown, after a long day tilling. My throat was sore, filled with dust, and my arms were heavy from working the reins all day. When I walked in, Rita was bent over the washtub, scrubbing dishes. George and Teddy hunched over open schoolbooks at the table, scratching math figures onto yellowed paper.

On the floor next to the table, I noticed my worn leather satchel. I didn’t think much about it, as my mind was on the cup of cool water I’d just drawn from the well. But after drinking, as I filled a plate from a panful of roast beef and potatoes, I saw my suit hanging on my bedroom door. I looked at the satchel again and realized it was stuffed with clothes—my clothes.

I turned to Rita, who was watching me, waiting for me to notice. I heard a sniffle, and saw that Teddy was crying. I looked back at Rita.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the other night,” Rita said. “Or you. It just doesn’t seem right anymore, Blake.”

Teddy cried openly, and George slumped off to his room

“You’re probably going to have a family of your own before too long….” Rita took a deep breath and turned away from the washtub, wiping her hands on her apron. Then she held them to her eyes, pressing firmly against the lids with her fingers, so her palms covered her mouth. She held this position for a full minute, then lowered her hands and took another breath. “And the boys and I might as well get used to living alone.”

I stood looking at her for a while, and I felt the corners of my mouth falling. Part of me wanted to argue, to put up a fight. Part of me was thinking about one night when Rita told me she still missed Jack, and realizing that, as impossible as it seemed, this was still true. And I resented the fact that even though I’d been there every night, and listened to her complaints about Helen, and shared some of my own concerns, could it be possible that she still felt more for Jack than for me? I thought about telling her how I felt. But just about that time, she looked up at me with an expression of slight pleading, and I could tell just from this look that she knew, and that she didn’t want me to tell her.

And I knew that I had just been a guest in this house. That this was Rita’s house, and my stay had ended. It seemed I should say good-bye, but that didn’t make sense, considering where I was going. So I picked up my satchel, draped my suit over one arm, put a hand on Teddy’s heaving shoulder, and left.

The big house looked a long ways off that night. It was dark, with the smell of meadows muted by dust, and quiet except for the clicking of locusts. Just before I took that long walk, I decided to pay a visit to some old friends. I headed for the barn, where I dropped my satchel by the door.

The old whitewashed stick figures had faded with age and weather and from animals rubbing up against them. I dug one of my baseballs out of the bin where we kept the oat buckets and spare bridle parts. And I started throwing pitches against the wall. I threw and threw, and the more I threw, and the more my body warmed up and the blood coursed through me, the angrier I got at my brother Jack. I thought about all the anguish he had caused his wife, and my parents, and all the extra work he’d heaped on us all, even when he was home, and I thought about how callously, even after all that, he could just up and run off again.

I started throwing my curveball, but it had been a while since I’d used those muscles, and I began to feel it in my elbow. So I went back to burning fastball after fastball against that wall, belt-high to the stick hitters. And I pictured Jack’s head on the batter, and I gritted my teeth and whipped a fastball, and I don’t know whether it was intentional or not, but that ball went right for that poor stick bastard’s head, and it broke clean through the wall.

As fate would have it, Helen—the reason I’d moved out in the first place—just happened to be walking back to the old homestead house as I headed satchel in hand toward the big house. She looked at the satchel, and I swear her eyes lit up like a goddam forest fire.

“Hello, Blake.” It was the best reception she’d ever given me.

“Helen, do me a favor, will you?” I said. “Mind your own damn business for a change.”

To my dismay, the command had very little effect on her. She just smiled, looked down at the satchel again, and said, “Okay, Blake. Whatever you say.”