Romance happens one of two ways on the prairie—very fast, or very slow. The reason is simple. When two people meet, they generally live at least a couple of hours away from each other. It makes courtship worse than hard, especially without telephones. The only way around this is to get married and live in the same house. But for those who don’t want to rush into things, getting to know each other takes a long, long time.
This was one reason that, at thirty-eight years old, I had never come close to marriage. I had yet to meet anyone besides Rita whom I would consider marrying in short order. And of course there were a few obstacles there. But I couldn’t see the sense in a quick marriage anyway. Getting to know my wife after the wedding sounded pretty damn frightening. And I was always working too hard to put much time into courting someone who lived far away. The idea of driving to some girl’s house several nights a week, as Bob had done with Helen, didn’t appeal to my sensibility. Sleep and rest were too rare, too valuable.
As the result of all this nonsense, when Jack told me that Sophie Roberts was interested in seeing me, I had no motivation to pursue the possibility, especially with her living in Belle Fourche, more than an hour’s drive away. So for almost a year, despite constant prodding and reminders from Jack, and a couple of encounters with Lonnie Roberts, who confirmed Jack’s reports, I didn’t do a damn thing. Except worry it over.
The road to Belle Fourche was slick and muddy, with light brown puddles dotting the darker brown every few feet. The rain was still coming down, flowing down the windshield in little rivers, right over the wiper blades. I drove Jack’s Chevy pickup, and I was stiff as new leather in my white shirt with pearl snaps and my cleanest dungarees. I kept looking down at my boots, which were fairly worn, and coated with mud.
On the seat next to me sat a fresh-baked chocolate cake Mom had made, insisting I take it with me “for the meeting,” she said with a wink. I hadn’t told anyone except Jack what my intentions were after the REA meeting that afternoon, and although I was convinced he told everyone, I don’t think he had to. I suspect all the attention I paid to my appearance gave me away. I even combed what was left of my hair, which must have been the clincher.
The grass sparkled green with moisture. The fields were still more brown than they were green, but the previous winter had dished out a generous helping of snow, and we already had more rain that spring than we’d been accustomed to getting for an entire year. For the first time in two decades, the air smelled alive, like the skin of a baby just out of its bath.
I peered through the blur of water at the swirling brown and green countryside and smiled a little hopefully. There was no reason to believe this season was anything but a fluke, and that within a year’s time, I would be staring once again at miles of gray dust clouds. But I chose to ignore this possibility for the moment, and enjoy a bit of optimism. I waved gladly to each passing vehicle, not able to see if my greetings were returned, although I assumed they were. Only out-of-staters didn’t know to wave on a country road.
Gravel bounced off the bottom of the pickup’s floor, like an echo of the rain tapping the roof. I came to a muddy stretch, and although I slowed to a crawl, I hit a bump hard enough to send the cake flying. It landed on its side and stuck, on the floor. I swore. But the cloth wrapped around it didn’t come off, and after pulling the pickup off to the side, I lifted the cake with both hands, trying to retain its shape. Still, I could feel it breaking into chunks inside the cloth, and I groaned.
I approached Belle Fourche, where wisps of chimney smoke fought upward through the downpour. The town looked scrubbed, the dry wood buildings sparkling with water, every vehicle free of dust, and dogs romping through the streets, their hair slicked down against their hides. The people outside either held something over their heads or let the water run from the brims of their hats, like the stream from a pump. I didn’t see any umbrellas. Nobody’d had reason to own an umbrella for some time.
It was ten minutes after the scheduled meeting of the Rural Electrification Association, which was generally when they started. I stomped my boots on the porch of the Belle Fourche Town Hall and ducked inside. Sure enough, the president was just calling the meeting to order. I took off my hat and brushed the water from it as I sat down.
My mind was not on electricity that day, and I had a difficult time following the discussion. My concern was with what to say when I got to Sophie’s house. She wasn’t expecting me, so I needed a believable explanation for showing up. But I couldn’t think of anything that made sense. The original plan had been to tell her that Mom had baked the cake for her and the children, but using the cake was out of the question now.
Behind the various ideas jumbling around in my head, I heard something about reports. Members began to stand and talk briefly, turning halfway where they stood, then settling back into the folding chairs. After the third one, I realized that the president of each regional chapter was giving a report on their last meeting. And I was president of the Albion chapter.
I got my thoughts together enough to remember what we’d discussed at our last meeting, and when they called my name, I was able to stand and sputter what I remembered. I sat down, happy I hadn’t been first. Following these presentations, I heard little of what was said. The organization had done wonders during the late thirties, nearly doubling the number of rural homes with electrical services, but for those of us fifty miles from the nearest center, the wait would be a long one. Knowing this sometimes made the meetings an exercise in futility, and I justified my inattention with this knowledge. As they wound down toward the end of the meeting, I pictured myself walking to Sophie’s door, and tried to imagine her expression when she saw me. I envisioned everything from the most beautiful, pleasant smile to frantic confusion.
I heard something about elections. The next thing I knew, my name was called from the back of the room as a nominee for something. I almost asked the guy next to me what I’d been nominated for, but I didn’t want my inattention to be obvious, so instead I listened as I was voted the new vice president of the Black Hills Rural Electrification Association. I nodded when they asked if I accepted the position, and acknowledged the applause. By this time, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. The meeting was adjourned, and I tried to sneak out. But people offered their congratulations, and the next thing I knew the outgoing vice president was at my side, telling me he wanted to go over a few things before I took off.
I tried to dodge him, telling him I was in a hurry, but he insisted it would only take a minute or two. Fifteen minutes later, when he still wasn’t done, I told him I couldn’t stay.
By the time I got back in my pickup, I had forgotten every excuse I invented for showing up at Sophie’s. So on the way over, I decided I had to use the cake. The rain had stopped, for which I was grateful. I hadn’t been to her house before and was worried that I would have a hard time finding it in the rain. Still, I couldn’t find it. Jack had given me directions, but he’d never been there either, and I found myself sitting in front of a house with “Gregory” on the mailbox. I went to the door to ask.
The woman looked me up and down with a slight grin once I told her whose house I was looking for.
“You a friend of Sophie’s?” she asked.
“Well, not exactly. I met her and her husband years ago.”
She stood quiet, and raised her eyebrows, waiting for more of an explanation. I didn’t want to get into it, so I looked down the street, as if I might try another house.
“Her husband passed on, you know,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am, I did know that. I have a cake for her. My mother baked a cake for her and the children.”
“Well, isn’t that nice,” she said, crossing her arms under an ample bosom.
Under the best of conditions, I don’t have much patience for someone who makes people’s business their own. I felt myself about to say something uncharacteristic for me, something rude. But I held my tongue. “Ma’am, I’m in quite a hurry, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“I see.” She chuckled a little, a nasty sort of laugh that irritated me even more. “Well, what you want to do is go to the end of this road…” She gave me the directions, making every effort to not hurry about it, pointing and repeating each thing two or three times. I nodded politely until she finished. But I couldn’t endure her request that I repeat the whole thing back to her.
“Thanks much,” I said, racing back to the pickup.
“Well I never,” I heard her mutter.
And finally I sat in front of Sophie Andrews’s house. My first thought was to leave before she saw me. My second thought was to forget about the cake altogether, and walk up with no plan at all. But I changed my mind about both, cradling the fragile cake in both hands and stepping from the pickup. I swung the door shut with my foot and walked cautiously toward the house, stepping off the muddy path and onto the shining wet grass. I slid my boots through the lawn, trying to wipe the mud off.
The climb up the steps was the worst part. I knew I had most likely been seen by then, that my options were down to one, and I almost ran out of breath, although there were only four steps. I walked across the porch, trying not to let my heels tread too heavily on the wooden floor. But boots against floors only make one noise—loud—and I shivered at the door, wondering how the hell I would knock without half the cake falling out of its wrapping. But I didn’t have to worry, as the door suddenly swung open.
There, just above the lower half of the screen door, was a round head framed in blond hair straight as straw. A little girl smiled, showing a missing tooth. She pushed on the screen, bumping my arm with the frame before I stepped back. She opened it.
“Hi, mister,” she said. “Are you here to see Albert?”
I blinked, holding the cake in front of me like a small puppy. “Albert?” Must be her brother, I thought.
“Yes, Albert. He’s inside if you want to see him, talkin’ to Mother.”
“Oh, all right. Well, I really came to see your mother, not Albert.”
“Well, she’s talking to Albert.” The girl looked to be about five, and wore a blue-and-white cotton gingham dress with a blue sash tied around her waist. She twisted one hand in the other, then lifted her arms in front of her body. One wrist was bent backward in a position only children can manage without breaking a bone.
“Do you think you could tell her that there’s someone here to see her, or do you think she doesn’t want to be bothered?” I asked.
She thought about it, squinting with one eye. “I think she doesn’t want to be bothered,” she said. “Because every time I try to talk to her when she’s talking to Albert, she tells me she doesn’t want to be bothered while Albert is here and that I should wait until Albert leaves to ask her.” She let go of the one hand with the other, and began swinging them at her sides. Then she clasped them behind her back.
It was then that I realized Albert must be another gentleman caller. I was miserable. I wondered if I should leave, just scoot on back to the pickup and drive away. Or if I should somehow let Sophie know I was there, maybe leave the cake with the little girl. But I knew the girl would never be able to manage the cake, which was about to crumble in my hands.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Laurie,” she said. “Laurie Andrews.”
“Okay, Laurie. Do you think you could just show me where the kitchen is, because I have a cake here that my mother baked for you and your mom and your brothers and sisters.”
“I only have one sister,” she said.
“All right, your brothers and sister. Laurie, if you could just show me where the kitchen is, I’ll put the cake in there and then I’ll go.”
“That’s where Mother and Albert are,” Laurie said. “Mother and Albert are in the kitchen.”
“Laurie? Who are you talking to?” A voice came from within the house. It was a woman’s voice—Sophie’s. I whispered to myself, “Please come to the door.”
“A man with a cake,” Laurie shouted.
“Yeah, a cake for me and you and Wade and Andrew and Millie,” she shouted.
And she appeared.
“Blake!” Sophie held her hand to her collar, gripping the lace and reaching with the other hand to push the screen door open wider. “My goodness, what a surprise. Laurie, why didn’t you tell me it was Blake Arbuckle? Blake, I’m so sorry. How long has she kept you waiting out here?”
“He never told me his name was Blake Arbunkle anyways,” Laurie said.
“It wasn’t that long.” I stepped inside and wiped my feet. “I have a cake here from my mother,” I said. “It fell on the drive in, so it’s a little busted up, but it shouldn’t taste any different.”
Sophie reached for it, but I pulled it back.
“Maybe I should just set it down somewhere,” I said. “I’m afraid if I give it to you, it’ll fall apart right there in your hands.”
She looked a little unsure about what to do, and I remembered Albert in the kitchen.
“Listen, Sophie, I know I shouldn’t have dropped in without giving you some notice, so if you have some company, I’ll just come by another time. I’ll leave this cake here and you can worry about it later.” I started to put the cake on a table in the entryway.
“Oh, no no no, Blake. No, please don’t go. It’s only Albert. He’s a friend of the family. No. Come on into the kitchen and we’ll take care of that cake. Have a cup of coffee.” She led me, lightly touching my arm, which tingled, back through the hallway and into a small, crowded-with-chairs kitchen. At the table sat a handsome, black-haired, brown-eyed man about my age. He had a dark mustache that looked to be made of wax. The top of his head was too short, as if someone had ground off a couple inches. He had no forehead. And from the subtle, unfriendly look he gave me, I could see he was not just a friend of the family.
“Albert,” Sophie said, “this is Blake Arbuckle. He lives out by Alzada. Blake, Albert Carroll.”
I set the cake on the counter, then reached out to grip the hand waiting for me. Albert’s hand was soft and a little damp, and he loosened his grip the moment I tightened mine. “How do,” we both said.
Laurie stood on her toes at the counter and with her thumb and forefinger lifted the cloth to look at the cake. A chunk fell out and tumbled onto the floor, first hitting Laurie’s shoe. “Oops,” she said.
Albert laughed, a big, boisterous “ha ha” that had a harsh edge to it. I had a strong notion I was not going to enjoy this man’s company. Laurie bent to pick up the piece of cake, but it crumbled in her small, pudgy hands. This made Albert laugh even harder.
“Albert!” Sophie said.
The more Laurie tried to pick up the lump of chocolate, the more it crumbled, and the more restless I got. I crouched down and began to scoop up the crumbs.
“Let me!” Laurie said.
“Okay. I’ll just help,” I said. “You get the big ones, and I’ll get the little ones.”
As Albert continued to chortle, Laurie carefully plucked a chunk of the fluffy cake in each hand and stood up, keeping her eyes fixed on them, like cups of tea. She set them on the counter. I brushed the remaining crumbs into one hand and dumped them into a slop bucket under the table.
“Thank you, Blake,” Sophie said. “Can you say thank you to Blake, Laurie?”
“Thank you, Blake,” Laurie echoed, without enthusiasm.
“That cake looks like it’s seen better days,” Albert said.
“It had a rough ride into town,” I said through my teeth.
What followed was the most stilted, unnatural half hour of conversation I’ve ever been party to. Sophie did her best to keep things moving, asking each of us questions, but I was so flustered I could hardly talk, and Albert thought himself quite a wit. Each time she asked him something, he made a joke of it, which annoyed the hell out of me. My curiosity and sense of humor were absent, bludgeoned by embarrassment and Albert’s lack of charm.
His smart-alecky remarks made Sophie uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than she already was, and I couldn’t believe Albert didn’t see this. I wondered why she would even be interested in someone like him. But after he told me what he did, that he was the vice president of the First National Bank, which he reminded us of several times, I began to understand. Here was a widow, twice over, with four small children and no visible means of support. How could she not consider the interest of a man of Albert’s position? The thought made me miserable, thinking what little I had to offer.
But I fumbled through the conversation, spending most of the time studying Sophie from the corner of my eye. She looked older, but she hadn’t aged that much considering what she’d been through. Her hair was still crow black, and the creases around her eyes made her look wiser, more worldly. The joints of her slender hands were swollen from farm life, but otherwise she looked much the same. I only wished I could talk to her alone. My discomfort finally got the best of me.
“Well, Sophie, I’ve still got a long drive ahead of me, so I think I best get going,” I said. “Good meeting you, Albert.” I almost choked on this lie, hoping my insincerity showed.
“Oh, do you really have to go already?” Sophie asked. I figured she was just being polite, so I insisted.
“Hey, the poor guy wants to go,” Albert said. “Let him go.”
I glared at him for just a second, not long enough that Sophie would notice, but hoping Albert would get the message that I didn’t appreciate much about him. But he didn’t seem ruffled. He was the kind of guy who wouldn’t catch something so subtle, I decided.
Sophie showed me to the door, and Laurie followed right behind, licking chocolate from her fingers.
“Blake, thank you again for the cake. The kids will love it.”
“Where are the others, anyway?” I asked.
“They’re not home from school yet,” she said.
“Oh, of course.” Just one more reason to feel foolish.
“I’m going to school next year,” Laurie said. “When I’m six.”
“That’s good,” I said. “You should go to school as much as you can. Because you never know when you might have to start working.”
Laurie looked up at me, her blue eyes not comprehending, and I realized I was talking way over her head. I decided I’d said enough.
“Well, see you again,” I said without conviction.
“Yes, please stop by any time you’re in town.” Sophie shook my hand and grabbed the back of it with her other hand.
I nodded, but knew I never would, and I tipped my hat before turning to weave my way through the puddles in the grass.
The last thing in the world I wanted to see at that moment was a rainbow. But when I pulled out onto the main road, every color that had been missing for the last ten years was smeared across the sky in broad, rich strokes. The beauty was blurred by water gathering in my eyes. I wasn’t crying, but I was so angry that my eyes were leaking like an old rusty bucket.
I couldn’t imagine the visit being any worse. Everything had gone wrong, and in my head I listed every reason I’d ever had for not bothering with marriage. First and foremost, I had no time for romance. There was too much to do. This I knew, had always known, and now I was angry at myself for forgetting, for having to learn this lesson once more. I vowed to never forget again.
Besides the rainbow, I failed to appreciate one of the most beautiful spring evenings we’d had since boyhood. I drove home faster than necessary, jaw set in the direction I drove and no other. I did not let myself dwell on the sky as the light faded and the western half caught on fire, glowing a glorious red.
My other senses were also shut down for the night. I ignored the fresh smell of damp grass, and damp ground, and the damp, clean air. And my skin was coated with leather, unable to feel the cool freshness of that moist air. I tried to convince myself that the hope I’d had on my drive in was ridiculous, that it would only be a matter of time before the ugly, gray dryness returned.
At dinner, I averted each question from the family with a scornful glance. Jack was the only one who didn’t give up after the first try.
“What? It couldn’t have been that bad,” he said.
“Guess again.”
He looked at me, head tilted forward, eyebrows raised.
“There was some guy there already,” I said.
“Oh, hell.”
“Yeah.”
Jack shook his head.
To my surprise, Jack’s turnaround had proven to be the real thing. He wasn’t a completely different person, of course, but nobody expected anything that drastic. I wouldn’t even say he was happy. His moods were still unpredictable, changing often and for no apparent reason. But he worked hard and had put a lot of thought into what could be done with the bulldozer. I had yet to see him take a drink since his return. But of course we’d seen a similar turnaround from him before, and I for one assumed he would turn again.
He showed impatience with any skepticism, especially as the months rolled by. But instead of refusing to work when he was insulted, or disappearing, he set his jaw and worked harder, which seemed to me the most impressive change.
The biggest skeptics, predictably, were Rita and George. Mom and Dad didn’t exactly warm to Jack’s return, but they seemed too tired to make anything of it. They appeared ready to put the years of dealing with family drama behind them and concentrate on work. Dad still tended to take things out on Jack, but not often and not as harshly as before.
But Rita would not let Jack near her. Not even in a crowd. She would not sit next to him at the table, she didn’t dance with him at the dances, nor would she ride in the same vehicle unless she had no other choice. She didn’t make a spectacle of it. She just made damn sure these things didn’t happen, and once everyone figured that out, we helped by sitting next to her, or making certain they never ended up in the same room alone. To my delight, Jack didn’t seem to mind any of this. I couldn’t figure out whether he had no desire to regain his status as her husband, or if he was just showing a hell of a lot of patience.
Jack made more of an effort with George, trying to talk to him from time to time, usually with the same results the rest of us had gotten over the years. Teddy seemed immune to the history of the situation, and gave his father every chance to make up for lost time. In fact he insisted Jack take him fishing, something that Jack had never enjoyed much, especially after George drowned. But to his credit, he often went.
The biggest surprise to me was that Bob and Jack did not hit it off. Not because they didn’t try. But Helen didn’t trust Jack, and in her subtle way, she managed to keep them from spending much time alone. I noticed that even when they were together, Bob talked tentatively, as though Helen might be able to hear him.
“All right, here’s what you have to do,” Jack said. We sat in the barn, Jack on a rail, peeling a potato with his pocketknife, slicing off strips thin as shoelaces. “You have to send her a note, some kind of apology, or thank-you note, something like that, just to let her know you’re still interested. ’Cause she’s going to think that because this other son of a bitch was there, you probably don’t want to see her again.”
“She’d be right about that.” I scooped handfuls of oats into a galvanized pail and carried it over to one of the horses.
“I don’t want to hear that.” The peelings gathered at Jack’s feet, a pile of strips that looked like a bird’s nest.
“She sure would be right about that,” I repeated.
The horse dipped her nose into the pail, and a hot snort blew a hollow into the oats. Her upper lip grabbed at the oats and she began munching. Jack stopped his peeling and turned to me, tilting his head and his shoulders and dropping his hands. “Are you serious? You’re ready to give it up because of one bad afternoon?”
I nodded. “It’s not worth it, Jack. I’ve lived almost forty years without a woman.”
Jack turned back to his potato, sliding the silver blade across the rough brown surface and lifting a string of peel. The meat of the potato turned brown from the dirt on Jack’s hands. “There’s some damn nice things about being married, Blake. I know I’m not exactly the one to be giving advice about it, but there’s some things about it that are real nice.”
This was a remarkable statement, I thought, considering how easily Jack had given up on his own marriage. And it made me think. But only for a minute or two. “I guess I’m just not sold on it myself.” I picked up the pail, now empty, and filled it again, ducking into another stall.
“Well, I’m not about to try and talk you into anything,” Jack said.
We sat silent for several minutes, his knife working away at the potato. I stood there wanting to ask him about things—everything. The letter from the army, where he’d been the last ten years, what he’d done, what he’d seen, and of course George. Jack was the only person in our family whose life I knew nothing about. Everyone else had lived their lives in front of each other, unable to hide. But Jack’s secrets were out of reach.
“We all have our secrets, right, Blake?” Jack said, as if he’d read my thoughts. He smiled, then nodded at the barn wall. “Even you. Even the king of morality.”
I was annoyed by this sudden anointing, but also a little amused, and I had to smile.
“I just about swallowed my tongue when David told me about your tryout,” Jack said. “He said you were great.”
I shrugged. “I think I did pretty well, actually.”
“You must have, if the guy offered you a contract.” He chuckled, looking at me and shaking his head. “Damn, I would have liked to have seen Dad’s face if you told him you were going to go play ball. That would have been something.”
I sat soaking this all in. And I thought of questions again, and almost did the same thing I’d always done with Jack—that is, keep it all to myself, just thinking about what I wanted to know, but not asking. Not opening my mouth. But before I could talk myself out of it one more time, I spoke.
“Did you know about George trying out, too? Did you know he tried out with the same scout?”
Jack’s smile disappeared. His head dropped. He went immediately into deep thought, and I suspected he wouldn’t even answer the question. But he did. “George?” he asked. “You mean Junior?”
“Yeah.”
Jack’s narrow eyes opened, then fell, but for the brief moment that they were open, they revealed an emotion I had rarely seen in Jack. It was fear. “No. He did?”
I nodded. “You didn’t know?”
Jack shook his head.
His silence had an impenetrable air, and again, I almost backed down. But I was pleased about going as far as I had, and I went with the momentum. I knew Jack was lying, and suspected there was little hope of getting an admission from him. But I wanted to try. I felt as if I had to try. “So you never knew, huh? He never talked to you about it?”
Jack’s whole body tensed up, and I could almost see his mind working away, old wheels whirling, picking up speed. He started cutting the potatoes into quarters. “He may have mentioned it. I don’t remember.”
The pained look on Jack’s face was hard to read. There were so many things that it could mean. He could be bothered by the mere mention of George, and the reminder of the painful day that he found him. Or he could be bothered that I was treading on an unpleasant secret. Whatever the case, I could see that nothing was going to push this conversation any further along. This suspicion was confirmed when Jack cleared his throat and made an abrupt shift in the conversation.
“Listen, Blake.” Jack dropped his head, locking his fingers together, studying them intensely. “Maybe this is a good time to talk to you about something. I don’t know. Maybe not.”
Jack stared at his hands, thinking, for quite a while. And I sat there wondering whether I wanted him to continue. If this was going to be some kind of confession, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. Although part of me wanted to know what happened the day George drowned, I had my doubts about what purpose this revelation would serve now, nearly twenty-five years later. Would an admission of guilt just drive a bigger wedge between Jack and me? And what would my responsibility be if he told me? Would I be obliged to share this information with anyone? The law? My family? All of these thoughts blew through my mind in a matter of seconds.
“I just wonder, Blake…well, it doesn’t seem like you think much about the future…about how things could play out.” Jack turned toward me, sideways, eyeing me from that angle. “You know what I mean?”
“Well, I think so. Yeah. Actually, I do think about it.”
“You do,” he said—a statement. “Okay. Then tell me something.”
I nodded.
“Let’s say you never get married. Let’s just set up a little scenario here.” Jack held his hands out like he was cradling a baby. “You never get hitched, and Bob knocks up Helen a few times, and Rita stays here, and I stay here.” He looked up at me, still holding his hands in the same position. “Who’s going to take over the ranch in that situation?”
I thought about it. “I don’t know.”
“Exactly.” Jack nodded enthusiastically. “That’s my point.”
The unknown quantity of all this, of course, was him, Jack. What did he want?
Jack threw his hands in the air and let them come to rest in his lap. He shook his head. “As far as I can see, Blake, it’s up to you. I’m not in any position to take charge. But if Bob could get some babies pumped out, he might have an argument there. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about that.”
I couldn’t say I hadn’t, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell Jack this. I sighed. “Well, it’s not that easy to just go out and find a wife, you know.”
Jack snorted, and shook his head. “Goddamit, Blake, you annoy the hell out of me sometimes. You got a prospect all lined up…she’s even got kids. You manage to hook Sophie and you’re set. A wife and four kids? There’s no way Bob can get a hard-on four times in his life.” Jack laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile myself. “Just give it some thought, buddy.”
“I will,” I agreed. “Believe me.”
A week later, I received an invitation to have dinner at Sophie’s home the following Sunday. My throat closed up. I would go, of course. I didn’t think otherwise for a moment, and I was amused by how quickly I discounted all the reasons I had carefully laid out, like Sunday clothes, for never going back.
The appointed day was another rainy one. This time the sky was blue-black, covered with clouds, although the rain didn’t fall as hard—more of a persistent mist, a drizzle, unusual for our region. We were used to two or three hours of driving, roof-pounding drops that left spots the size of quarters in the dust. But this mist started in the early morning, and was still drifting when I left at two o’clock in the afternoon.
Jack gave me a sly smile as I left the house in my suit and oiled hair. “Not worth it, huh,” he said. I blushed and smiled.
Halfway to Belle Fourche, the quiet whisper of rain against the roof was interrupted by a loud tick, followed by another, and another, then several.
“Damn!” I muttered as a gust of wind brought a patter of hail against the windshield. The pellets built up quickly, and a sudden blast poured down onto the pickup, as though a wagonload of corn had been tipped from about ten feet above the roof. I pulled off to the side, waiting for the storm to pass. I rolled a cigarette and tugged at the string of the tobacco pouch with my teeth. I smoked and stared at the little frozen stones beating against the glass. A burning smell filled my nose, and I looked down to see an ember resting in the middle of my tie. “God damn.” I brushed the tiny pellet of orange onto the floor and examined the kernel-sized hole, rimmed with brown, right in the middle of a white stripe.
The storm lasted twenty minutes, blasting the steel roof with unfailing persistence, like a prairie wind. I would be late.
The sky cleared almost immediately, as if the clouds had given everything they had. I drove as quickly as I dared, slowing to forty miles an hour after I slid toward the ditch a couple of times. I was late anyway. I buttoned my coat, trying to cover the hole in my tie.
Sophie came to the door, her lips wet and red with rouge. She wore a navy-blue dress with tiny flowers of different colors, and white lace all around the edges. My chest filled with air, and I felt as if no amount of exhaling would empty my lungs. She smiled, opened the door, and gripped my upper arm. Her touch brought a blush to my cheek and a skittering shiver up my arms.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, my voice pinched.
“I figured you would be. I half expected you to turn around with that storm!”
Not a chance, I thought. She led me to the kitchen and I was happy to see no sign of Albert. Laurie sat at the table, pouting and snapping green beans in half, tossing them angrily into a bowl.
“Have a seat,” Sophie said. “Say hello to Blake, Laurie. You remember Blake?”
Laurie pushed her lower lip out and said nothing, giving me a brief, unpleasant look.
“The children take turns helping me with dinner. Today is Laurie’s day,” Sophie said, winking by way of explanation.
I smiled. “That’s nice of you to help your mother out, Laurie.”
She continued to ignore me.
“Laurie, you’re being very rude,” Sophie said.
“No I’m not.”
Sophie shrugged and sighed, and I smiled at her.
“So are the others outside?” I asked.
“Yes, they couldn’t wait to get out there the minute the storm was over. No doubt they’ll come back all covered with mud.”
I smiled. I was impressed with Sophie’s amused ambivalence about the prospect of her children coming in muddy with a guest in the home. I had a sense that she wasn’t just acting as if it didn’t matter for my sake. A pan of meat sizzled on the stove, crackling and spitting its juices, and Sophie filled another pan with water, dumping the green beans into it, and placing it on another burner, where the flame burned the moisture from the pan.
“Laurie, go call the others,” Sophie said.
The prospect of putting an end to her brothers’ and sister’s fun brought Laurie out of her snit, and she rushed out the back door, yelling before the screen slapped shut.
“Blake, I’m very happy you accepted my invitation,” Sophie said. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to come back after that last visit.”
I had been standing ever since I walked into the house, and I suddenly felt foolish. I sat down. “Oh, no. It wasn’t that bad,” I lied.
She smiled knowingly. “Albert is a very good friend, but he thinks because he is rich and good-looking, he can say anything and everyone will think he’s charming. Let’s just hope it goes better this time.”
I breathed out, a rush of air that came from way down, below my lungs.
It did go considerably better, of course. The food was delicious and Sophie proved to be a gracious hostess. The children were as well behaved as one could expect. I could tell they didn’t like having a strange man at the table. Only the younger boy Andrew, showed any interest in me. However, he also told me that it was time to go home after dinner. I didn’t take it personally. I teased them a little, but they acted bored, or tried to hide their smiles when they couldn’t help but laugh.
“What grade are you in, Millie?”
The older girl, who was tall and shy, also blond, looked at me with indifference, her cheeks reddening. “Seventh,” she said.
“Do you like school?”
She shrugged. I thought of George.
“What about you?” I asked Wade.
He looked serious, thoughtful, as he carefully cut a corner off his steak. I could see the same deliberate, meticulous manner his father had. “I’m in fourth grade. I think I’ll like school better next year,” he said, “when I’m a fifth-grader.”
“I’m in second grade,” Andrew volunteered. “I hate school!”
The other kids giggled, and Sophie gave Andrew a stern look. But she raised her brow and turned up one side of her mouth, looking at me. “He does,” she said. “But I think he’ll get over it.”
“I’m going to school next year,” Laurie said.
“When you’re six?” I asked.
She looked surprised, then mad. “How do you know?”
I smiled and tilted my head. “Just do,” I said.
The rest of the evening was fairly easy, and I felt the muscles in my neck and shoulders loosen as time passed. The kids ran off to play after dessert, and Sophie and I sat in the living room, drinking coffee and talking until dark. It was mostly small talk, about common acquaintances and such. But I couldn’t stop looking at her. I was surprised to find that she was a little bit unsure of herself. She mentioned being twice widowed several times, and it occurred to me that this would probably be a much bigger deal than I imagined. There would be men who wouldn’t come near someone like that, thinking they were jinxed or something. Or worse, there would be those cruel enough to consider her some kind of harlot. I’d heard that kind of ridiculous talk before about other widows. I thought it was strange that none of this had entered my mind before, but I realized later that in my own private view of the world, I probably saw Sophie as the same person I had met nearly twenty years before. It was hard for me to separate that brash, forward young woman from the one who sat before me now, saying things like. “It’s hard to imagine who would want someone like me.”
“Blake, do you think you’d like to come back next Sunday?”
I said yes without hesitation.
“Good,” she said, reaching out and resting her hand on mine. “I’d like that.”
Driving home that night, I understood for the first time in my life why people get married within weeks of meeting. I felt like going home, packing my things, and driving right back. I had to laugh at myself. Was it possible to change your mind about something so quickly, I wondered, or would this feeling pass in a couple of days?
It didn’t, and before long, I was doing just what I’d always found so strange in others—driving to Belle a couple of times a week, sleeping on Sophie’s couch and rising before the sun to drive home in time to get to work.
Sophie was hesitant, cautious. I suspected losing two husbands would give a woman cause to hesitate about talking freely. But she made the effort, fighting the reservations, which I admired. She was very thoughtful about what she said, but it was clear that once she made up her mind, she had strong opinions. She wasn’t saying what she thought I wanted to hear.
I loved her house. It was small, but filled with delicate, decorative things. Nothing fancy, but she’d managed to brighten her home without extravagance. It was quite a contrast to the practical, efficient home my mother had laid out for us. No frills there. I found the difference appealing.
One Sunday afternoon, after we had fixed a fence that a bull had torn up, I sat at the dinner table with the rest of the family and ate as quickly as I could, thinking that I still needed to clean up before the hour-and-a-half drive to Belle Fourche. The clock showed two o’clock. It was an unusual day in that everyone was at the table—even Jack, Helen, and Bob. About the time I planned my getaway, Jack took a look over at me, sensing my intention, and cleared his throat.
“Hey, Blake, before you take off…” Everyone laughed, and I reddened while Jack paused to allow the laughter to fade. “I’ve got something I want to put out here…something I need to tell everyone. Or maybe I should say…well, it doesn’t matter how I say it, actually.”
Everyone stopped eating, although there was little sense of urgency or drama about it. For all we knew, he could be announcing that he was going to buy a new pair of boots. But it was unusual for Jack, or any of us, to request this kind of attention. So our forks hit the table, and we were a captive audience.
Jack cleared his throat again, looked down at his plate, and took a deep breath.
“I been trying to think of a way to ease my way into a little matter that’s been on my mind, but I think it would be best if I just come out with it. I know I’m not the most popular member of this family, and I don’t have any hard feelings about that—I understand the reasons—but I also know this place could use some help. I know that there is a lot of work that hasn’t gotten done just because money’s been a little short—things like painting the house.” Jack seemed to run out of breath about this time. So he took a big gulp of iced tea while we all sat in rapt attention, wondering what he could possibly be leading up to. He cleared his throat one more time. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I put quite a lot of money away while I was out there fooling around, and what I’d like to do is…to buy the ranch. I want to buy it.”
“Are you out of your mind?” The words jumped from my mouth, for once, before I had a chance to even think. “No. Absolutely not. No.” The next thing I knew, I was standing up, my sense of betrayal throwing me into an emotional response that caught me completely off guard. But it was suddenly so clear to me that when Jack talked to me in the barn that day about finding a wife, he wasn’t thinking about me. He didn’t have my interests at heart. He just wanted to make sure he had me on his side. He didn’t want to have to contend with Bob and Helen. He wanted an ally.
“You can’t be serious,” Mom said to Jack.
“I am. I am serious.” Jack’s mouth was slightly open, conveying his shock at our response.
“Do you honestly believe that after all we’ve put into this place, and all the work we’ve done while you were out there doing whatever the hell you were doing, that we would be willing to hand this place over to you just because you’ve got some money tucked away?” I had never been so angry. I couldn’t stop myself. The thought of stopping myself didn’t even enter my mind.
Jack held his hands out, palms up. “But I can help. I can help this place.”
“No.” This final, firm word came from Dad. “No, Jack. You’re out of line here.”
“That’s right,” Mom seconded.
“What makes you think—” I said, but Dad held up a hand.
“Let me finish,” he said, and I nodded, clamping my teeth together, and pressing my tongue against them. It felt as if my tongue might cramp up.
Dad bowed his head for a moment, and closed his eyes. His lips squeezed together. Finally, he looked up, and there was a look in his eye I hadn’t seen in years—a fire, a conviction. “I’m so goddam sick and tired of the games that go on around this house. I’m so goddam sick and tired of it.” Dad’s voice was shaking, he was so angry. His head quivered. “I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t give a damn if none of you get this ranch. I’ve got a good mind to sell it to somebody else…somebody outside of the family because I’m just so goddam sick and tired…I’m sick of it.” He pounded his fist on the table at this last phrase, and we all jumped. Dad stormed out of the house. He slammed the back door with such force that the building quivered.
My family sat in a stunned silence. Nobody’s eyes met. I sank slowly into my chair. I hadn’t seen my father act with such violent force since the day he hit me, and I can only guess that if anyone else was feeling like I was, they were thinking hard about what he said, or maybe more about the way he said it. It was the first indication any of us had ever seen that Dad even noticed what was going on in our family. And it was certainly the first indication we had of how strongly he felt about it.
I left the house as soon as I could get cleaned up and get the hell out of there. Sophie noticed right away that I was distracted, that something was bothering me. And the result of her concern was a very pleasant surprise. She fed the kids, hustled them off to bed early, and came out of the girls’ bedroom pulling the pins from her hair, letting it fall to her shoulders. She came and sat down next to me on the couch, and put her head against my shoulder. Then she touched my chest with one hand, pressing her palm against my heart.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her mouth close to my ear.
I was immediately aroused. “Yeah. Actually, I’ll be fine. This thing with Jack just came out of the blue, you know. It makes me nervous. We never know what to expect.”
Sophie nodded, and the next thing I knew, her lips were brushing against my neck. The muscles in my shoulders collapsed, and my head tilted back involuntarily. I felt the goosebumps spread from my neck, down my arms. My body surrendered to a brief shiver. I let out a soft moan.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.
“You don’t like that?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that at all.” I laughed, an airy exhale of air and sound.
Sophie tugged at my earlobe with her teeth, and her lips lightly touched my cheek.
And then she moved to my mouth, and my insides melted. Of course, this was not the first time we had kissed in this new incarnation of our relationship, but it was the first time we kissed like that, with our mouths grafting together in a meeting of skin and feeling that sank into my chest, flooding me like a blast of sunshine when you come out from under a shade tree. It was also the first time we retired to Sophie’s room, and it was about to be the first time that we made love, except that by the time we had our clothes off and crawled under the covers, I was such a nervous wreck that I could barely stay in the bed. The energy nearly bounced me out of the room.
“Are you okay?” Sophie finally asked after I sighed deeply for the third time.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really not okay.” My hands were trembling, and I suddenly felt a clammy sweat cover my body.
Sophie lifted herself up on one elbow and looked up at me, her expression one of confusion. “Am I doing something? Is there something I can do differently?”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know, actually, if there’s anything you can do. Maybe I just need to relax a little here. Let me just lie here for a second.” I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths.
Sophie pulled her head back from my chest, studying my face. “Blake, don’t tell me you’ve never done this before.”
I turned my face away.
“Really?” she asked. She reached around and pulled my face toward her so she could look at me. “Seriously?”
I smiled shyly. “It’s true. I’m a goddam rookie.”
She measured me, her eyes narrowing to tiny slits. “Really?”
I nodded my head.
“My goodness. I’ve never heard of such a thing. How old are you, Blake?”
Now I was more than embarrassed, and my cheeks flushed. “Well, now, you don’t have to make such a big thing about it,” I said.
“No. I’m not. I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s strange in a…in a…strange way or anything. It’s just so unusual for a man, you know.”
I nodded. “Yes…I know.”
“Oh, I should just shut my mouth. I’m sorry. I’m just making it worse. Here…” She leaned up against me, and the warmth and soft velvet of her skin soothed me, calming my stomach. “We’ll just lie here,” she said, and we did. We held each other into a quiet, calm sleep. And then, in the middle of the night, I woke up to a soft touch, a rhythmic caress, and then the slow descent of a snug, moist embrace lowering down onto me as I lay on my back. Sophie sat still for a moment, sighing when I was as far inside her as I could go. And she leaned forward, resting a breast against my mouth. I licked, then sucked. Her skin looked even whiter in the still darkness, and her eyes seemed to shine as she looked down at me. A smile curled her lips, and then her eyes drifted slowly and peacefully closed.
She moaned, and began moving. The undulation was gentle, perfect, like a dance without music. A perfect dance. The sensation was excruciating in its perfection, and I exploded quickly, of course, although I didn’t know that until later, after more experience. Sophie didn’t seem to mind. She pressed her face into my neck, and sighed happily, opening her mouth and biting gently just below my jaw. “Mm,” was all she said. It was all either of us said.
I learned a few things about myself as time passed and my visits became more comfortable. I learned that I was good with kids—firm but patient. My time with Rita and the boys had no doubt contributed to that. Sophie’s children finally took a liking to me after a few weeks. They were pretty easy kids to like, and Sophie had raised them well, with manners that were admirable, but also a playful sense of fun that was contagious. When I walked in the house, Laurie would run into the room and jump into my lap, squealing my name, and it made my heart swell every damn time.
But most important, I learned I had been lonely. I was amazed I had managed to keep this secret from myself, and it made me wonder what other things I didn’t know about myself. It seemed that my obsession with the ranch had closed off some part of my mind, or my heart. At the same time, I wondered whether I would have been able to enjoy somebody’s company any sooner in my life, whether I would have been too preoccupied with work to appreciate a wife and kids. It was hard to say, of course. I would never know.
All I did know is that six months after my first dinner with Sophie, I drove to Belle Fourche, my mood cheerful but nervous, my heart flooded with clean, pure blood. Because nearly twenty years after first catching Sophie Roberts’s, now Sophie Andrews’s eye, I had decided to pop the question. I knew I was ready, and I felt certain that she would say yes. In fact, I was thinking more about the logistics than I was about asking the big question. I was more consumed with the details of when we should get married, and where we should live, and whether we should have a big wedding. I was thinking about what Jack had said, and how this marriage, and the kids that came with it, would leave no doubt at all about who had the upper hand in taking over the ranch. With my mind so focused on these details, it isn’t surprising that I was too preoccupied to notice that Sophie was also distracted. I was talkative when I arrived, although the topics I brought up were far from what was on my mind. It wasn’t until halfway through dinner that I began to notice a distance in Sophie. In the past, this mood usually indicated that she was having some trouble with one of the kids, so I assumed the same was true this time. But when I mentioned that I was worried about whether the recent hailstorm had ruined our wheat crop for the year, and she answered, “Really? That’s great, Blake,” I knew that she had something on her mind.
So I put all thoughts of a proposal to the side, and I was just about to ask her if something was wrong when she looked up at me with a wide-eyed, fearful expression—so fearful that I stood up, starting toward her.
“Blake…” She dropped her eyes immediately.
“What? What is it?”
A half hour later, on the road out of Belle Fourche, the scene was again blurred by the rainwater flowing down my windshield. I pummeled my steering wheel, slamming one fist then the other against my inflexible, unfeeling victim, yelling as loudly as I could, filling the cab with sound. I finally realized that I was dangerously close to injuring my hands, so I stopped pounding. But I yelled once more, trying to extract the pain of hearing from the woman I thought I loved that she was going to marry Albert Carroll. And as I reviewed her reasons, hearing them as if I was still sitting there in front of her (“I’m too tired, and too old, to live on a ranch again. And I have to think of my kids.”), I cursed the fact that I had allowed myself to stray from what I had always known. I reminded myself yet again that the land had claimed me all those years before, when George got sucked into the current of the Little Missouri River. And I derided myself for getting seduced by the belief that I was able to devote time to anything else.
I suppose I was too angry to admit that I was really mad at Sophie. Or maybe it was just easier to take it out on myself. After all, I was the only one there. But for whatever reason, I didn’t think about this development coming out of the sky, with no sign of Albert, not even a mention of him, in the six months I’d been busting my butt to see Sophie twice a week. All of that finally did hit me after a few days. But what didn’t hit me until weeks later was something about my own motives—something that wasn’t easy to admit. It started when I noticed that my feelings for Sophie actually faded pretty quickly. This confused me. I thought I’d been in love with her. I was certain of it. But when I thought back to that day I planned to propose, recalling my thoughts about positioning myself at the ranch, I realized that even though I liked Sophie well enough, I had probably never been in love with her. I realized to my horror that when Dad made his speech, I had been righteous enough to believe that it didn’t apply to me—that he was talking just about Jack and Helen and Bob. But here I had been plotting to marry a woman I didn’t love. He was also talking about me.