Chapter 2

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Weddington,” I said as we sat down on one of the wicker couches facing the sun, “it was so long ago, and this house…I’m sorry.”

“Please call me Sarah,” she murmured, then cradled her hands on the crook of her cane. “And please don’t apologize, Bud. I meant it to be a pleasant surprise, not a shock.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “It just took a moment to sort out all the memories.”

“Pleasant ones, I trust.”

“Oh, yes,” I lied, “fond memories.”

“I saw your advertisement in the Yellow Pages when I came back from Europe—what was it?—ten or twelve years ago. I-I can’t recall exactly,” she said, lifting her fingers to gently stroke her temple. “I didn’t know how you would react to hearing from-from the other woman in your father’s life.” She smiled sadly, then forced cheer into her face. “But I suppose your father had many other women in his life.”

“You’re the only one I knew about.”

“Thank you for that kind lie,” she said. “I meant to telephone many times, Bud, but I got involved with the restoration of this old white elephant, and then I-I had this damned stroke”—she clanked her cane against her leg brace—“goddamned stroke…I’m sorry now that I didn’t call. You look so much like your father, you know, nothing at all like that little boy with that fly dangling from his ear. Nothing at all, except for the black eye and the scrape on your forehead. You were always the most beat-up little boy I ever saw.”

“I was always biting off more than I could chew and sticking my nose in somebody’s business,” I said. “Some people never grow up.”

“But we all grow old,” she said, then continued, “I never felt guilty about the affair—you understand that it was a godsend for both of us—but I always felt slightly guilty for leaving you alone that first day, bleeding and so hurt.”

“Don’t,” I said. “I might have been a squirt but I wasn’t a total dope. You guys looked great when you came back. I was pissed but I got over it.”

“I could tell,” she said. “I was charmed…by you, such a brave little boy, and your father, such a bear of a man but so sweet and even more unhappy than I was, and the coffee…Perhaps that was the first time in the long history of the seduction of married women—outside of the Mormon Church, that is—that a wife was ruined by a cup of tepid coffee. Goddamned Harry, every time he went off on one of his dental peregrinations, he locked up the coffee in the toolshed so I wouldn’t have neighbor ladies over for coffee, as if we had any neighbors out there—”

“Dental peregrinations?” I interrupted.

“Oh,” she said, “you didn’t know about any of that, did you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Harry was a traveling dentist. He started out with a chair, a pedal-driven drill, and an old Reo truck. He hit all the small towns and ranches and homesteads in Montana. Did quite well for himself, the old bastard…” She seemed to drift away, into her own past, unshared.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, coming back, misunderstanding, “the old tightwad son of a bitch was changing a tire in a rainstorm over by Roundup and a cattle truck ran over him. Served him right. The old lecher always thought he’d die in the saddle. Or be gunned down by an angry husband…But you were asking about something else, weren’t you? Forgive me, but since the-the stroke, I have a tendency to lose track of the conversation. Your father and I…well, your mother put a detective on him, don’t you know, and she made Chet choose between you and me. She meant to take you back East…”

“I didn’t know.”

“Ironic,” she said, “that you would take up this sort of work.”

“Ironic,” I said, then stood up and walked toward the balcony, cursing all the divorce work I had done over the years.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No problem,” I said. “It was a long time ago.”

But she was still back there. “…then your father had that-that horrible accident. I couldn’t-couldn’t do anything, come to the funeral, cry, I was already cried out, send flowers, throw myself in the grave with him, nothing…Then Harry was killed, and suddenly I was a very wealthy young woman…or perhaps not so young. All those years, being locked in that tiny, cheap little house out at Seven Mile had made an old woman out of me, long before my time.

“At first I spent as much of Harry’s tightly hoarded money as I could—sailed around the world, twice, wore furs and jewels, drank champagne by the gallon, I lived like a queen, or a famous courtesan—the south of France, Scotland, Spain—lived out my revenge, praying that Harry was spinning in his grave like a pin-wheel.

“Then my looks began to fail, the wild nights grew so much like the night before that I couldn’t tell one from another, so I came back home to Montana, came back—and please forgive an old woman’s romantic affectations—came back to be near the memory of the only man I ever loved…

“I’m sorry, Bud, to go on, to stir up foul memories.”

“That’s all right, Mrs. Weddington,” I said. “It’s always seemed as if it happened yesterday to me.”

“How true that is, Bud,” she whispered. “I remember that first day, the smell of the sun on the hayfield, the coffee”—she wiped her watery eyes with a brusque motion of her wrinkled hand, then she laughed—“and the smell of the fish on your father’s hands.” Pausing, she touched her lips with a stiff, knotty finger. “Oh, I remember what I meant to say.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Please call me Sarah, Bud.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I suppose no one calls you Bud anymore.”

“No, ma’am.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She seemed to falter, her hand rising again, touching her temple, her lips, then back up again, as if she could form the words with her fingers. “I know—I know I should know your given name, but I-I just can’t find it in there. So many things are gone, just not there anymore…names, places, the faces of old friends…I’m truly sorry.”

“Most people just call me Milo,” I said.

“Milo,” she said quietly, resting her head on her hands holding the cane; in a minute or two the young girl came barging into the room with a coffee pot and china cups on a silver serving tray, which she placed on the low table in front of us.

“Shall I pour, mum?” she asked in the worst parody of an English accent I had ever heard.

“Thank you very much, Gail,” Mrs. Weddington said, raising her head, “but I’m sure Mr. Milodragovitch will do the honors.”

“As you wish, mum,” she said, then curtsied, holding out the tails of her shirt. In the doorway she stopped, saying, “If you need anything, Sarah, I’ll be in the kitchen making zucchini bread, so just ring.” Then she was off again, waffle-stompers pounding down the stairs.

“Such a sweet child,” Mrs. Weddington said as I poured the dark, rich coffee from the silver pot into delicate china cups.

Neither a child nor all that sweet, I thought as I raised the fragile cup in my trembling hands. I couldn’t tell if the sharp quivering in my blood came from a lack of sleep, drug abuse, or the flood of memories.

“Who is she?” I asked, trying to settle in the present, but Mrs. Weddington was involved with her coffee. She inhaled the warm fragrance for a long time, took a tiny sip, then set the cup back on its saucer and pushed it deliberately to the far side of the table.

“Oh, I do miss my coffee,” she sighed. “I’m sorry, Bud, you were saying something…”

“I just wondered who that girl is.”

“Gail? Oh, she’s my grandniece. I cannot abide nurses or housekeepers, so Gail has lived with me since she was a freshman at college. She has been delightful company these past years, and I will miss her dearly when she finishes her master’s.”

“She takes care of the whole house and goes to graduate school at the same time?” I asked, impressed or amazed.

“Oh, goodness no,” she said, chuckling. “One afternoon a week the two of us go out for a long leisurely lunch while a sanitation crew—’sanitation’? That can’t be right, can it? Doesn’t that mean ‘garbage’ these days?” She touched her forehead with the back of her wrist. “Housecleaning,” she said, “a housecleaning crew comes in, and when we come back—slightly tipsy, I must confess, very much against my doctor’s advice—the house is sparkling again. As if by magic…Sometimes money seems almost magical, doesn’t it?”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,” I said without thinking.

“But you must be quite well off! Your father’s—”

“It’s all tied up.” I said, “But you were telling me about Gail.”

“Gail? Oh, yes,” she said, laughing. “Gail and housecleaning. The poor child might be able to clean up the world when she finishes her degree in environmental engineering, or whatever it is, but I’m afraid she’ll never be a housekeeper. Never.

“Oh, but I will miss her when she goes,” Mrs. Weddington added. “Most of my friends are either dead or old, and Gail has filled that gap. She keeps me young.” Then she laughed again. “However, I fear that the little devil has become rather an evil influence in my life.”

“Ma’am?” I said, afraid that I was in no shape to follow her meandering conversation.

“My politics have become embarrassingly radical,” she said. “You should see some of the groups she makes me support. I know they are the sort of people the FBI watches constantly. And, much to my chagrin, I fear she has— You’re not connected with the police, are you, Bud?”

“Anything but, ma’am.”

“I’ve become something of a ‘pothead,’ ” she said with a sweet smile.

“There are worse vices,” I said, trying not to giggle.

“Quite,” she admitted. “Greed, penury, the lust for power and money that makes men rape this lovely country—quite a number of far more evil vices, I am sure, but still I find myself quite embarrassed about the little bit of pot smoking that I indulge in, quite.” Then she quickly put her fingers to her lips. “Oh,” she whispered, “Bud, you must forgive me. I promised myself that I would not become overexcited by your visit, but it seems I have—seems I have said ‘quite’ nine times in the past ten seconds. Would you kindly excuse an old lady for a few moments.”

“Of course,” I said, standing up, not knowing what to expect. But Mrs. Weddington simply leaned her cane against the arm of the couch, folded her hands in her lap and let the heavily creased lids of her eyes fall softly shut. Within seconds her breathing grew deep and regular, and I assumed she had gone to sleep.

For a minute I stood around dumfounded, confused, like a mourner who has wandered into the wrong funeral parlor, then I picked up my cup and saucer and tiptoed in my squeaking boots outside to the balcony, set my coffee on the rail and lit a cigarette.

The balcony commanded a grand view of the old neighborhood and sat high enough so that I could see over the yellowing trees and up the valley of the Hardrock River as it flowed north into the Meriwether. On the eastern flank of the broad valley, the gently rounded humps of the Agate Range rolled south, and on the western side the mighty broken peaks of the Hardrocks, tough, hungry mountains, loomed stark over the fields and pastures of the wide, pleasant valley.

A case, I thought. I didn’t mind if the old woman had only invited me for coffee and memories, didn’t even mind the chunk of mad money gone to clean up my act. Already my new boots had begun to mold themselves comfortably to the knotty contours of my feet, and the leather jacket smelled sharp and clean like the interior of a new, expensive car. A fair trade, and the view a bonus. Twelve miles up the Hardrock, Seven Mile Creek still babbled merrily in my mind, brimful of pan-sized cutthroats, and the graceful loops of my father’s fly line still hung in the air. Quarts of Lorelei beer still cooled in the arching curves under cut banks, and the print skirt of a lovely young woman still folded around her legs with the wind…Though in truth I knew that an invasion of pastel tract houses cluttered the sides of Seven Mile, that the only trout there were shit-fed stockers, and that the young woman had grown old and crippled and was taking a nap in the solarium behind me. And the kid with the Royal Coachman in his ear, Hottentot that he meant to be…well, God knows what became of the little fart—

“Quite the view,” Mrs. Weddington said behind me, and when I turned she smiled to let me know she meant this “quite.” She looked refreshed, not rumpled and puffy as if after an uneasy sleep, but truly rested, the angles and wrinkles of her face somehow smoothed, softened, filled with peace. “A beautiful view,” she added, “but too often I find myself closing my eyes in hope of seeing the land as it once was back when we knew it.”

“I think I still have a crush on you, Mrs. Weddington,” I said.

“Sarah, please,” she ordered. “And thank you for that charming lie. I take it that you are your father’s son about women.”

“Worse, maybe. I’ve got enough ex-wives to start a basketball team.”

“Something in the blood,” she said softly. “I hope there were no children.”

“Just one,” I said. “He looks like his mother. He doesn’t even have the name. When my wife remarried, her new husband adopted the boy, gave him his name.”

“Does he live here?”

“No, ma’am, he’s a junior at Washington State,” I said and added conversationally, “Did you have a nice nap?” Enough of my sordid past, I thought, enough.

“Not a nap,” she said, “but a few moments of meditation—Gail taught me—and at my age much more relaxing than sleep. I have grown to hate sleep of late, which means, I suppose, that I fear death, which is unseemly in a woman of my years. I let Harry take so much of my life, though, that sometimes it seems as if my life has just begun and now that it is almost over.” She leaned against the rail, easing the weight off her braced leg.

“Would you like to sit down?”

“Not for a bit, thank you. The sun feels so good.” Then she said, “I realize we haven’t discussed our business yet, but if you would indulge the ramblings of an old woman with only half a brain left, I feel that you have a right to know why your father was so important to me.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll listen as long as you want to talk.”

“Thank you, Bud,” she said. “I hope you are not just being polite.” She paused, and I could see her face visibly clench with effort. “My father had a small ranch,” she began, “down along the Missouri on the edge of the Breaks, one of those hard-luck little outfits where the man spends every waking hour trying to stay ahead of the bank notes falling due like some curse each year, and the children grow up as wild and skittish as jack rabbits, and the woman…ah, the woman looks as if she has spent her entire life in a coal mine, or in a root cellar gnawing on seed potatoes and withered apples.

“The only time I ever saw my mother smile was when she was reading Sir Walter Scott aloud to my sisters and me. Every winter she seemed to grow smaller and smaller through the cold months, then she would regain her stature in the spring. One spring, though, she kept getting smaller and smaller until she finally disappeared…into a spring blizzard without a coat.

“The summer I turned sixteen I ran away with the first man who promised to take me as far away from that damn endless horizon as I could get. Or at least the first one who did not arrive on horseback. I had had a bellyful of men on horseback—gawky cowboys, all elbows and Adam’s apples, shy when sober, mean when drunk, and they only talked to cattle, horses and each other, never to their women. So when old Harry Weddington rolled up in that Reo with his torture chair in the back…well, as they say, the rest is history.

“Everybody in eastern Montana assumed that Harry had seduced me—he had that sort of reputation, had been in that sort of trouble before, shot at by irate husbands and angry fathers, even had a piece of his heel shot off by a rancher over by Sidney—but the truth of the matter is that I did all the seduction that morning.

“Harry talked to me,” she said, somehow still amazed after all the years, “he talked to me, and his hands were soft and gentle, his voice low and sweet, crooning…I remember the day perfectly, even remember the dress I was wearing, but have not the slightest notion what he said. Probably just his usual spiel to a frightened young girl in his chair. Whatever he said, though, it reached me. When he tried to take his fingers out of my mouth, I bit down, hard, and held on for dear life. Poor old Harry, he thought he was dead for sure, but then he realized what I wanted and thought all his lecherous dreams had come true.

“Of course,” she said with a bitter grin, “once he had me, he didn’t want me anymore, not as much, but we were already married—at my insistence—but he wanted to make sure that no other man had me, so he kept me locked away like some medieval princess out at Seven Mile…

“And if you hadn’t caught that fly in your ear”—she paused, then patted my hand once softly—“well, I hope you got over it,” she finished, then sighed as if she hadn’t. “Thank you for your indulgence,” she added. “I hope I haven’t presumed too heavily on a rather ancient and tenuous connection.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said, sniffling, hoping it was the coke.

“Old women have little purpose in this world,” she said, “so they usually become either mean or silly. I prefer silly.” She giggled, oddly, and the strength and composure seemed to melt off her face in the warm sunshine. Her hands began to skitter about, moving from the rail to her cane to her face as if she had lost something. “And I fear you will think me even sillier when I-I tell you why I wanted to engage your-your services. It will-will take a moment to explain, you see, a moment…every neighborhood needs—every neighborhood has one—needs-needs one, every neighborhood has a busy-busy-busy…” Then her right hand flew toward her trembling lips, catching the edge of my saucer, flipped it and the cup over, the bone china glistening as it fell, tumbling in slow motion to the brick walk below, where they shattered in a glittering splash of sharp fragments.

“…Body,” she muttered to herself, “body, goddammit, body, busybody, busybody.” Her aching fingers pried at her temple, pleading with the throbbing veins as soundless tears poured down her cheeks.

“Sarah,” I said, taking her arm, “would you like to sit down?”

“Please,” she murmured, “thank you.”

As I led her back to the couch her arm quivered beneath my hand, a frail and pitiful anger trickling through her body. This time she slept. I found an afghan and folded it around her legs, watched her until she fell into the regular sputtering breath of a sleep near death, then I took her cold cup of coffee out on the balcony, where I smoked and stared blindly back up the Hardrock Valley. I would have given anything for a good stiff drink.

In July of 1952 my outfit was making its third assault up the ruined slopes of Old Baldy, the one west of Ch’orwon, when a two-hundred-and-forty-pound Hawaiian staff sergeant from G Company of the 23rd jumped into the shell hole where I had taken cover. He broke three of my ribs and my collarbone, and my left wrist so badly that it had to be pinned. He probably saved my life. In the nine days of fighting over Old Baldy, my outfit took eighty percent casualties.

Six weeks later, when I was at the Oakland Depot waiting for my medical leave to begin, the chaplain came by my bunk to tell me my mother had just died. It wasn’t much of a surprise, since she had been in and out of hospitals for years, at first with imagined complaints but later with liver and stomach complications as a result of her secret drinking. Then the chaplain switched to his Dr. Kildare voice and gave me the kicker: she had hanged herself with a silk stocking at a fat farm in Arizona.

I spent my leave at the Mark Hopkins, smoking cigarettes and staring through the foggy afternoons at the Bay as if I could see the great ocean rolling beyond. Somewhere out there, the war, where I would not go again. Somewhere behind me, back East, my mother’s grave, which I never saw. After my discharge I went to Mexico for the first time, lost myself in a sea of mescal until I felt like an agave grub floating in the clear, fiery liquid.

Standing on Sarah’s balcony, I wanted to fall back into the bottle one last time, bottom-out in some open sewer, but when I went to work for Colonel Haliburton, I had promised him that I would quit trying to kill myself with a whiskey bottle. So I drank schnapps, which I hated, and stayed fairly sober, but right then I longed for an ocean of whiskey, one last chance with self-destruction.

—

Twenty minutes later Sarah woke and excused herself shyly, then limped slowly toward the upstairs hallway. When she came back, she had combed her hair and freshened her light make-up, but the cosmetic changes weren’t even skin-deep. She looked tired, afraid, sick unto death, but she forced a game smile, a sly wink, even a small lilt into the dark huskiness of her voice.

“I know you noticed the binoculars when you came in,” she said, “and I assume you didn’t think I was engaged in bird-watching.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Because of my view of the neighborhood, because of my loneliness, perhaps because of my addled mind—whatever, I have taken to watching my neighbors. It is an ugly habit, true, but I keep what I learn to myself.” She paused. “And I am willing to pay your usual daily rate plus liberal expenses and a substantial bonus…”

“To do what?” I asked, wondering if I had missed something.

“To satisfy an old woman’s curiosity,” she answered, “nothing more than that. Nothing illegal, I assure you, nothing complex or dangerous.”

“How?” I said, surprised that I felt a small pang of loss at the promise of nothing illegal, complex, or dangerous.

“Come with me,” she said as she raised herself slowly from the couch. I took her arm and followed her outside to the balcony. “See that small park?” She pointed south-southeast to a wedge of green between Park and Virginia. “Every Thursday afternoon for the past six weeks, two cars park there, a man in one, a young woman in the other—he looks to be in his forties and rather scruffy, and I would guess she is in her late twenties, an attractive young woman—and they sit in her car for an hour or so, talking, it seems.” Then Sarah turned to me. “I would very much like to know who they are, what they talk about, why they meet like this. Could you do that for me?” When I didn’t answer immediately, she added, “Or more to the point: Will you?”

“Well…ah, I don’t know, I’ve—”

“What these people do is probably none of my business,” she said as she led me back into the solarium, “but I can afford to indulge my curiosity.” She opened the drawer of the small table where the binoculars sat, took out a long white envelope, and set it on the table. “This envelope contains five thousand dollars in cash, an assortment of my credit cards, which have been cleared for your use, and the license-plate number of the man’s car—a Washington plate—the young woman arrives in a different automobile each time, rented, I assume. Are you interested?”

“I don’t know what to say, ma’am. This is a little weird, you know.”

“I’m sorry, my dear boy,” she said, smiling, “but rich old women are eccentric, not weird.”

“Of course.”

“Take a few days to think about it, if you like,” she said, putting the envelope back in the drawer and closing it slowly. “If you would just let me know by Thursday morning what you decide. If you decide against it, perhaps you can recommend one of your colleagues.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“And one last favor?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“See that huge globe in the far corner?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It is, in fact, a liquor cabinet,” she said, smiling again, “and inside you will find a large brandy snifter and a bottle of cognac. Would you please bring me three fingers and the joint sitting beside the snifter.”

Although it wasn’t much past noon, I felt like joining the old woman, but the day had been so crazy already, I knew I wouldn’t stop.

After I settled her in a lounge chair with her drink and the lit joint, she thanked me, and added, “Please think about it seriously, Bud, but whatever you decide, please visit again, whenever you like.”

I promised both things, then kissed her soft old cheek and said goodbye.

—

Downstairs, I wandered toward the rear of the house until I found the large kitchen, where Gail was leaning against the counter, a textbook in one hand, a batter-coated beater in the other. I watched the tip of her pink tongue slide slowly up one of the blades.

“Lose your way, cowboy?” she asked without looking up.

“I need a broom and a dustpan,” I said. “There seems to be a broken cup and saucer on the sidewalk.”

“Clumsy jerk,” she muttered.

“What time do you get out of lab tonight?” I asked.

“About ten. Why?”

“Want to meet someplace for a drink about eleven?”

“You married?” she asked.

“Not now.”

“You as old as you look?”

“Not nearly.”

“You going to wear normal clothes?”

“What’s normal?”

“Okay, why the hell not,” she said, then smiled. “I’ll be at the Deuce about eleven. You know where that is?” Her smile grew wicked. The Deuce of Spades was a mountain-hippie, biker, deadbeat hangout, complete with watered drinks, bluegrass stomping, and aging freaks. Also my cocaine dealer, Raoul, spent most of his free time there.

“Sure,” I said, “it’s a date.”

“It’s a drink,” she said. “I’ll let you know when it’s a date.”

“Okay.”

“And that’s the broom closet,” she said with a motion of her thumb.

When I came back inside to empty the dustpan, Gail asked me how Sarah was feeling.

“Tired,” I said. “Those hikes down memory lane ain’t always easy. But when I left, she had drink and smoke and sunshine.”

“She is one beautiful old lady,” Gail said.

“You should have seen her back when.”

“I’ve seen pictures,” she said. “Do you look anything like your father?”

“Some.”

“Are you anything like him?”

“A lot poorer.”

“That’s probably to your advantage,” she conceded. “Is that your cowboy Cadillac hidden out front behind the lilacs?”

“You got it.”

“How many miles do you get to the gallon?”

“No idea, love,” I said. “When it gets empty, I give some Arab a twenty-dollar bill and he gives me half a tank of gas.”

Gail gave me a sharp frown that should have cut me to the quick, or at least shamed me into a Volkswagen diesel Rabbit.

Outside, when I paused to unlock the door of my pickup, I glanced northwest and saw the high, telltale horsetail haze drifting swiftly south. Gail had been right: weather. The first serious wave of winter forming for an assault on the Meriwether Valley. Even in the sunshine I shivered and thought of Mexico. This winter, for damned certain sure, I would go. Even if I had to finally sell the last and only thing I owned in my name, my grandfather’s three thousand acres of timber up in the Diablos, land he had stolen from the Benniwah Indians—a legal theft, but an outright theft nonetheless. I had had three recent offers: one from a rich kid from Oregon who wanted to horse-log the timber; one from an automobile-parts company in Detroit that wanted to turn it into a corporate hunting lodge; and one from the government, which wanted to include the land in the proposed Dancing Bear Wilderness Area.

The kid struck me as a smart-ass and he tried to impress me with a suitcase full of cash, the people from Detroit seemed bored by the whole deal, and the government…well, to hell with them. Wilderness areas were good ideas, but I still like chain saws and snowmobiles and four-wheel-drive vehicles too much to have them outlawed on my own ground in my own lifetime. As it was now, they had blocked my access to the land, so that I had to drive seventy miles out of my way—up to the Benniwah Reservation in the foothills of the Cathedrals, then across the old C, C&K Railroad sections, up past the abandoned mine to Camas Meadows—seventy miles, just to poach an elk on my own land.

Maybe Gail was right, and bulldozer and cowboy boot mentality had ruined Montana. Or maybe the Indians were right, and the land belonged to itself. Whatever, this particular piece of rough, sidehill timber and open meadow belonged to me. Maybe, I thought as I climbed in my pickup, trying to ignore the cold front coming, maybe I would do Sarah Weddington’s crazy job, grab her money and take the sort of Mexican vacation my father would have loved.