I stand at my bedroom window, dressed for the day, and look out on my town at dawn. Outside, the dry creek bed flows with plastic grocery bags. More garbage collects along the barbed-wire fences and metal windbreaks. Soon all the neighbors will be out, picking up the trash and tending to vacant properties or the whole place looks like a dump.
Robert Golden’s truck sits in the driveway across the street and it’s hard to know what his return to Petroleum means. I don’t expect many to make him feel welcome. And maybe that doesn’t matter; visitors never stay long. Most take a look at this place and these miles and miles of treeless prairie and see a whole lot of nothing.
But look, how could you see nothing while you stare at this fluid painting in the sky? Watch it deepen to a muddy purple, so everything beneath it seems to glow. And closer, hidden among the pale grass and tiny shrubs and pincushion cactuses and patches of snow, see the mule deer, almost the same color as their surroundings, and elk wearing their winter coats?
I turn my head toward a sudden flap of wings. Crows and snow geese holler, Morning. Morning! Get up! And the town begins to awaken.
I like the view from here, where I feel in harmony with these early risers, stoics, and hard workers. The beautiful boys from my childhood have grown into men in flannel and work boots. So many redheads, so many named after trees and horses. Colt. Trotter. Ash. Birch.
Fathers and sons pile into trucks with thermoses and packed lunches. Sometimes I wave as they head out to the local ranches, but mostly not. I understand that our relationship is this, watching each other go about our lives, needing each other’s businesses to survive if we are to survive. And mostly, sharing a love of this land that is not for everyone.
Out here, you are never separate from the weather or wildlife. Open your door in the morning and there are tracks of bobcats and coyotes that walked through your garden while you slept. Some fear being flung so far into nature without a nearby hospital, firehouse, or cell-phone tower. You have to be willing to look after yourself, scrub out your own wounds and sew them up with fishing line. There are plenty in town with impressive scars, limps, missing fingers, glass eyes.
And yet, some of us can’t bear to leave this place. We like waking to the call of geese, and dwelling among more animals than people. At night, there are no streetlights, no lights on this expanse of highway. When you stand out on the prairie, you can open or shut your eyes and it’s just as black.
But this is as much as we share. I don’t pretend to have any illusions. I know we’ll get along easiest when I see them on the embalming table.
Two more trucks head toward the highway as the sun pushes higher and color bursts beneath the clouds—salmon pink, egg-yolk gold. The air comes alive with the rumble of machinery and the bawling and bleating and clucking of animals waiting to be fed and let out to roam.
I hear the swish of boots through the weeds as neighbors begin to pick up trash. Women with scarves tied under their chins, men holding caps in place, squint into the wind with crosshatched faces and hair that never looks brushed. It’s time to wake my father.
I clomp down the hallway in untied boots and find Pop in the recliner under a blanket. From this angle, he has more scalp than hair, his skin freckled and shiny. He looks older when he sleeps, mouth slack, cheek squished into the side of the chair.
When I look closely at my father’s face, it is like a map of the journey he won’t talk about. I like the lines by his eyes that I imagine come from my mother making him smile. I like the nick under his chin from a ski accident he had on their honeymoon. I like the turned front tooth that makes him look a little happier than he actually is.
It seems, for my whole life, I’ve wanted to know the side he keeps hidden. Does he cry, and if so, about what? And when he fishes, quietly as you’re supposed to, casting out again and again, where does his mind travel?
I straighten a stack of magazines on the table beside him, mostly expired TV schedules, and make gentle noises to let him know I’m here.
Pop is something of a local celebrity with his television ad that has run unchanged for a decade. But this is not the man the community sees—not with his oily hair, what’s left of it, the stained undershirt, the checkered pajama bottoms with rice stuck to them.
“Morning,” I say, finally, and pat his leg. “Come on, Pop. Time to get up.”
I open the blinds to let in the sun as he moves a bit in his chair.
“Come on, time to get a move on. Everyone’s outside cleaning up from the storm.”
“I’m up. I’m up,” he says, struggling to open his eyes.
He tries to stand too quickly. The remote control falls from his lap, and then the blanket. He seems embarrassed that I’ve bent down to help untangle it from his ankles.
“Did you hear the wind last night?” I ask.
“I must have had the TV up too loud.”
“Well, everyone’s getting to work out there,” I say. “You didn’t hear the wind?”
I’m making a point. I do it this way, never directly. I can’t make the words in my head come out of my mouth: You could talk to someone instead of making yourself pass out. You could talk to me. Instead, I fold the blanket as he reaches out to the chair for balance.
“I could use a quick shower,” he says.
“Are you feeling all right?” I ask.
“I’m just fine.”
He’s never been one to talk about his troubles. Not about losing Mom, not about the tragic stories we absorb in our line of work. He fusses about money but never says he’s afraid. Ask how he’s doing, he’s always fine.
“I’ll meet you outside,” he calls, as he closes the door.
I hear the sweep of the shower curtain. The faucet squeaks and water rumbles through the pipes. I remember when my father used to sing in the shower.
As I walk down our driveway, I hope no one says hello. Our trash can has rolled to the bumper of Pop’s hearse, spilling its contents. Most of the garbage has caught under the back wheel. I reach for a page of newspaper covered in grease stains—fried potatoes I cooked earlier in the week.
“Mary, can you give me a hand?”
I look up to find Fritz Berg, owner of the Petroleum Hotel, who stared so long at our porch last night. He stands across the street, leaning on his cane. His clothes, all variations of blue, look two sizes too big. I cross the street, suddenly aware of the greasy newsprint on my hands.
“That was a lot of wind,” he calls.
“Yes.”
My voice comes out weird and high—I get nervous around most people—and my shoulders rise in embarrassment.
“Any damage at your place?” he asks.
“No.”
“Well, I’ve got a problem here,” he says.
“Yes. I see.”
We both look up to the hinge, where the hotel sign has ripped from the pole. Then we follow the long drop that left it at his feet.
“Do you have gloves?” he asks.
I pull the pair from my pocket and put them on as I walk across the lawn. Up close, the sign is bigger than I would have guessed. The metal is so corroded, it’s hardly readable.
“Don’t know if you can use it again,” I say.
“Oh, we don’t need a sign,” he says. “Who doesn’t know this is the hotel? I just want it off my property.”
It’s heavy enough to have dented the ground.
“Try to pick up that end,” he says.
I lift it to my knees, but I doubt the two of us could haul it anywhere.
“I saw that guy with the long hair on your porch last night,” he says. “I was worried I’d have to come over and drag him away.”
“He just needed some paperwork,” I say.
“You know who he is?”
“Yes.”
“He should know better than to pay a visit so late at night.”
“I’m usually up late,” I say.
“Well, I don’t trust him,” Fritz says. “Guy’s gone for decades. Comes back just in time to collect his mother’s money.”
I set the rusted metal back on the ground.
“What did you think of his outfit?” he asks. “Strange, wasn’t it?”
“I guess.”
I hear the front door to my house shut, and I’m relieved to see Pop. He’s wearing what we both refer to as his happy suit—the green one he used in the commercial where he famously said, “Don’t be afraid to stop by Cramptons’—this is a happy place.”
There is only one other funeral home reasonably close to Petroleum, and Pop fights hard for this small pool of customers. He believes that what people see of you during your off-hours, as you go about your business, is how they decide whether, in a time of need, they can rely on you.
Pop raises a hand. “Fritz,” he says.
And Fritz answers, “Allen.”
My father crosses the street as the businessman with an easy smile and firm handshake. The men stare at the sign.
“I’d like to put it in the Dumpster,” Fritz says.
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
He puts on his gloves and crouches beside it, the green fabric of his suit straining.
“Quite a wind last night,” Pop says.
He’s good at using the information I give him.
“Kept me up most of the night,” Fritz says. “That and seeing the younger brother on your porch.”
“What’s this?”
“He wants to start making plans for his mother,” I say, turning to Pop. “He needed the preplanning package.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t mention this to me.”
“I still need to drop the papers off.”
“Let me handle it,” Pop says.
“I don’t mind.”
“Let me handle it,” he says sharply.
“He’s right,” Fritz says. “Why have a thing to do with him if you don’t need to?”
He sets his cane on the lawn. Now that there are three of us, we lift. The nearest Dumpster is behind our house, so we cross the street in shuffling steps, Fritz grimacing whenever he puts weight on the weak hip. Pop and I try to hold our ends high to take the burden.
As we grunt and huff to the middle of the street, I see Robert leave his mother’s side door.
Pop lifts his chin. “First time I’ve seen him grown up,” he says.
“Who?” Fritz asks, looking over his shoulder, then he cries out. “Oh, goddamnit! I’ve got to put my end down.”
We lower the sign and Fritz grabs one of his wrists and squeezes.
“Are you hurt?” Pop asks.
Fritz stares at his glove. A metal sliver has cut through it.
Robert drives slowly past.
“Hey!” Fritz shouts. “Can’t you see!”
“He wasn’t going to hit us,” I say.
Fritz takes off his glove and examines his finger.
Pop leans over for a look. “Any metal in there?”
“I don’t know. If there is, I ought to send him the medical bill.”
“You need a doctor?” Pop asks.
“No, I don’t have time for that.”
Our town has never had a hospital, but until three years ago, we had a doctor who could treat a mild snake bite, manage diabetes, and at least stabilize a broken bone before sending you on a two hour drive to get proper help. Most don’t bother about the little stuff anymore.
“I don’t know how that guy can show his face here again,” Fritz says as if Robert had inserted the metal splinter himself.
“Well,” says Pop, “he ought to say good-bye to his mother.”
We help Fritz to our lawn and set him down gently, adjusting our grip each time we see him wince.
“Comes all the way here,” Fritz says. “And he can’t pick up a piece of trash or wait for people to get out of the road before he practically runs them over.”
I sit beside him.
“And look at that,” he says.
The curtains open to the Goldens’ living room, and there is Doris, setting up her easel, tubes in her nose to help her breathe. Most neighbors cover their windows in tinfoil and towels to insulate during the cold weather, but Doris needs the light to paint.
“You say he’s here to look after his mother,” Fritz says. “But he’s left her all alone.”
“I’m sure she’s all right painting by herself,” Pop says.
“All I know is Doris has been through enough.”
“She has indeed.”
Fritz studies his palm.
“Can I get you some tweezers?” Pop asks.
“I’ve almost got it.”
Pop stands up, dusts off the seat of his pants, and walks toward the sign in the road.
“I’ll help,” I say.
“Nope. I’ll just drag it.”
This is the image my father loves. The man from the commercial right there in the road helping an elderly neighbor. The kind of man you’d like to do business with. He needs but won’t accept my help, so I simply watch Doris in her window.
Pop has told me about her hobby, how she’s very taken with the former president, the cute one, as she calls him, who paints self-portraits. Inspired by him, Mrs. Golden bought art supplies.
“I’ve never understood that hobby,” Fritz says. “She showed me some of her paintings and they didn’t look anything like her. If you want a picture of yourself, it’ll come out better with a camera.”
“Maybe she likes the feel of a paintbrush in her hands.”
“I just don’t see the point of it,” he says. “We all have mirrors.”
I watch my father, face reddening, as he hauls the sign closer.
“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore,” I say. “Now she paints by numbers.”
Fritz nods his head slowly as if this idea makes better sense. There’s no staring at a blank canvas, no wondering what color to choose or where to put it. It’s all there for you: one, two, three.
I’m sorry Doris gave up on her self-portraits. She would make a great subject for a painting with her long nose that tilts hard to the right and her pale green housedress covered with daisies. I notice the resemblance now, how Robert has the same delicate features, the long, narrow nose, though his mother’s looks Old World with a bulge you only see from the side and a crook you only see from the front. They share long slender fingers, a slim frame. I know from the game Eddie that the younger brother was derided for being small boned. Boys here are praised for being tall, broad shouldered, with a toughness about them.
The sign gouges the road as Pop walks backward, heaving it over the curb so forcefully he nearly slips. Once he lets it go, he straightens again, face moist. There’s a rust stain on one of the pant legs.
“Well,” he says, as if he isn’t struggling to catch his breath, “let’s get you up on your feet.”
My father links arms with Fritz at the elbow, and I do the same. I’m glad he stopped talking. Sometimes, the more people talk, the more removed I feel. It’s early morning and I’m already tired of the day.
We walk Fritz to his side of the street. Pop hands him his cane and then pulls a large plastic bag from each pocket. I take one and we set off through town, Pop a little winded but walking with his only-in-public posture. I turn to look at the rusted sign lying across the lawn, our problem now.