Paul and Bernardo sat in the darkness of the car, staring at the wide ribbon of treeless ground that had materialized in the forest. It stretched from their yard all the way to the rise before the bank, illuminated by the last of the sunlight as it receded along the horizon.
“When did this happen?” Paul said, though the answer was obvious. He felt like he had been away for weeks, instead of days. As they watched, several deer stepped out of the trees to graze in the new clearing.
“They take away the plane,” Bernardo said.
“Oh, yeah.”
Something moved at the edge of his vision, and he turned to find a figure in the illuminated window—Anita, looking out into the yard to see who was there. His heart dropped a notch in his chest. “I suppose I should go in now.”
“Yes.”
He turned. “Thanks for coming.”
“I go again sometime.”
“Do you think you’ll stay in Montana? Or are you going back to Italy?”
Bernardo shook his head. “I cannot go back to Italy.”
Paul pulled the keys from the ignition and dropped them into his jacket pocket. “You really can stay here for a while, if you want. Things are going to be a little strange, but…”
“No, no.” He was waving his hand in the air. “I leave. Maybe I come back to visit.”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely.” Beside him, Bernardo had stiffened, as if steeling himself for the difficulties ahead, but now his eyes softened.
“Paul,” he said. “You go in. You take me to town tomorrow.”
“It’s her car.”
“We, ah, no problem. Tomorrow…”
He nodded, as much to himself as to Bernardo, and opened the door. Bernardo opened his, and they stepped out together and stood in the fading light.
“Go.”
Paul went. Anita was already gone from the front window as he climbed the stairs. A board creaked underfoot—something he should fix—and he pushed open the door.
She was sitting at the kitchen table, waiting, her hands folded before her as if in penance. “I was so worried,” she said.
“We went to Glacier.”
“Jesus, Paul.” She shook her head. Her eyes gleamed. “I didn’t know what you’d done. I thought…”
“What?”
She didn’t answer. Her hands untangled and she held them up, showing him they were empty.
Paul slumped against the door. It felt better to have the wood at his back, supporting him, and he pressed harder, until he felt the grain of the boards impressing itself on his skin. He said, barely loud enough for her to hear, “But you’re leaving.”
“Yes,” she said.
“To be with him.”
She wiped her eyes with her palms, like a child. “No, no. To be on my own. For now.”
“Oh,” he said. “On your own.”
“Paul—” she said, and stopped herself.
“What.”
“Never mind.”
For a moment, he felt himself beginning to lose strength, his bones betraying him and going soft. But he pressed himself harder against the door, letting it bear him until the feeling passed. “I’ll need the car for a few days,” he said. “Then you can take it.”
“You can have the house,” she said into the table. “I won’t fight you for it.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I guess you want me out.”
“I guess I do.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry, Paul. I do love you. I just can’t always be the one taking care. Maybe that’s my great fault, I don’t know.”
Anger rose from the depths of him and burned on his lips, that she would absolve herself and claim blame in the same breath. But he let it drain away. “I’m not cut out for fatherhood,” he said. “Maybe the family line ought to die with me.”
“Oh, Paul,” she said, so quietly that he barely heard.
“Can you leave tonight?”
“I’ll call for a ride,” she said after a minute.
“Not him, please.”
“No. Kathy, from work. She said I could stay with her.”
“You’ll stay in Marshall?” he said.
She nodded.
He went out to the porch to let her call. He could hear her from there through the half-open window, speaking in short sentences, answering questions yes or no and offering little information. The phone clattered back onto the cradle, and there was silence: he pictured her standing, her hand still warming the receiver. Then her quick steps to the back of the house to pack.
* * *
He got up and walked across the yard, to where the still-fresh caterpillar tracks of a backhoe marked the entrance to the new road. The sun was down now, and the moon cast his long shadow over the gnarled remains of dug-up stumps and ragged tire ruts. In the dim distance hunkered the backhoe’s yellow bulk, its bucket arm curled like a sleeping insect’s; behind it lay a truck crane, with its boom folded over its back. He followed their tracks down toward the creek, trying to remember the pattern of trees as they had stood, but he found that for all their familiarity he could not remember what they looked like: in his mind it was only a forest now, one patch no more or less worthy of his attention than any other. He closed his eyes, thinking of Anita’s face. He wondered how long it would take for it too to recede in his memory, until it was only a face like any other. He wondered if it would shock him someday to bump into her in town, if for that accidental second he would recall everything about her, then forget again when she was out of sight.
The creek was swollen and muddy. This was where the workmen had stopped, too tired perhaps to begin building the makeshift bridge they’d need in order to cross. Several stumps remained, clinging to the ground that once fed them, the trees they supported lying shorn nearby. Paul sat on one, listening to the creek’s rushing, trying to coax its flow to enter him, to either make this place as much a part of him as his wife had been—and still was—or wash from him what little claim he had left. But it did nothing. It was only water, and passed him by, fast and cold.
In time, he thought he heard a car engine, the slamming of doors, and soon after someone approached him from behind. He didn’t bother to open his eyes.
“Hello.” It was Bernardo, keeping his distance.
“Hi.”
“It is a beautiful night,” he said.
Paul tasted the air. It was sharp, thick, like a tonic. He said, “She’s gone?”
“She says to tell you she come back in one week. She get a new place.”
“All right.”
The footsteps came toward him and stopped to his left. Paul turned and opened his eyes. Bernardo had his hands in his pockets, his arms pressed against his sides. “It is cold,” he said. “Maybe we go back, eh?”
“I suppose,” Paul said, but he didn’t feel like moving. He rubbed his face and the blood rushed to the surface, pricking him like a pine bough.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “We go.”
“Okay,” he said, and he found himself happy to rise under Bernardo’s firm hand, to let himself be guided back by a benevolent stranger to his home.
* * *
In the morning Paul woke to find Bernardo cooking them breakfast. Omelets. He was wearing a T-shirt Paul had gotten at a rock-and-roll show in Tuscaloosa and a pair of sweatpants. The churning of the washing machine was audible from the next room.
“Sorry. One more wash,” Bernardo said.
“It’s no problem.”
“I find these in the dryer.” He gestured toward the T-shirt and sweats. Paul didn’t remember washing them, and it occurred to him that Anita must have, over the weekend, while she sat here in the house contemplating leaving him.
“You can keep those.”
Bernardo looked down at himself, frowning. “I give them back.”
Paul sat at the table, wondering what she would take with her. These chairs? They had shiny red cushions stretched across metal frames. She’d bought them at a junk shop in Omaha when they moved out here. The bed? That was hers. The curtains, the kitchen supplies. It was of passing interest to him that one of them laid silent claim to every object in the house, that, unlike a lot of couples he’d known or read about, neither ever forgot what was whose. The couch was his, the records and stereo. None were much good if he couldn’t cook or sleep. He wondered what—or where—Bernardo would eat tonight.
“Will you go to your son now? Anthony?” he said.
He didn’t turn, but put down, for a moment, his spatula. “Antonio. Yes.”
Paul pushed his hair from his face and looked around for a rubber band to tie it back. He saw none. Across the room, the phone book lay grimy and dogeared on a small table (hers) under the phone (also hers). He went to it and opened the yellow pages. No listings for barbers. He eventually found them under “Hair.” He picked up the phone and saw Bernardo staring at him, spatula in hand, from across the kitchen. “What?” he said.
Bernardo shook himself as if from sleep. “Nothing. You call.”
He called the first few in the book until he found one sufficiently cheap: six dollars. He hadn’t gone to a barber since he was a kid. He called and made an appointment—one hour from now—with a gruff-sounding middle-aged man. By the time he hung up, Bernardo had put the omelets on the table. They ate them in silence. Bernardo took his plate to the sink and washed it, then took Paul’s too. Paul let him. Then Bernardo sat down.
“So I go after an hour?”
“Sooner now. Half an hour.”
“The house. We don’t finish.”
Paul shrugged. “I can do it myself.”
Bernardo nodded. “Okay, good.” He looked up and met Paul’s eyes. If the line of sight between them, Paul thought, was a rope, it would be frayed and sagging. It would be hanging by a thread.
Bernardo went out to the shed to collect his belongings. He brought in a blanket and a pillow, candles, the pencils and paper Paul had given him, his drawings rolled up in a tube. He dumped these things, save for the drawings, on the table.
“You can keep all that.”
Bernardo shook his head. “I don’t need.” He stared for a second at the pile, then looked up. “Are you ready?”
“Sure.” Paul stood, his joints going off like firecrackers.
They drove to town, the sun weak and ineffective around them. Daytime struggled to assert itself across the valley. Paul’s eyelids felt swollen and sticky, and he rubbed his eyes as they turned onto Cedar Avenue.
“I’m glad you showed up,” he said to Bernardo. He knew it wasn’t enough, but it was all he could think to tell him. “I hope your luck changes.”
“I think so,” Bernardo said. “Soon.”
“I’ll see you again?” He turned to Bernardo, then back to the road.
“When I…” Bernardo said, at a loss.
“When you’re more established.”
“Yes.”
They came to Cherry Street, where downtown began. At the traffic light, Paul said, “You just want to be dropped off downtown?”
“This is good, yes.”
“Are you sure there’s nowhere in particular?”
“No, no. I find him okay, I think.” He hung his head, turning the rolled-up drawings in his hands. “You don’t tell people,” he said. “About the plane.”
“What plane?”
“The plane. That come—” And he noticed Paul’s smile. “Okay, good.”
“You know,” Paul said, after a moment, “I don’t know if I believe you. I hope that’s not insulting to you or anything, but I saw it happen. I don’t think a person could survive that.”
Bernardo didn’t reply.
“However you came here, it doesn’t matter to me. You don’t have to tell me the truth. I think one way or the other you’ll make it here, and what came before that doesn’t matter.”
“It’s good to me you say that.”
“Well,” Paul said, embarrassed. “Whatever.”
Bernardo reached for the door handle. Street sounds rushed in. “Thank you,” he said. “You help me very much.” He looked down at the drawings in his hand, then placed them between the seats, a gift at the last minute.
Paul took his hand. “You helped me too.” And then he let go, and averted his eyes until he heard the door close. He looked up and saw Bernardo crossing the street in a break in the traffic, and before long he had turned the corner and was gone.
* * *
Spruce Barbers seemed, in fact, to be only one barber, who operated in the daylight basement of a dilapidated house, in a residential neighborhood that abutted the railroad tracks. There were no other businesses for blocks around, and the dank little shop appeared to be some sort of zoning accident; either that or it had escaped the city’s notice. The barber was short and bald and fussed over the gray head of a thin old man with a trembling jaw. There was one other barber’s chair, but it was in the dark, apparently unused, half of the shop, and it leaned crazily, like a rickety carnival ride that had suddenly stopped.
Paul read the newspaper. In the back of the local section, there was an article about the crash; an AirAmerica spokesperson said the airline would begin to haul out the wreckage later in the week. The road that was being cut into the forest would be allowed to grow back over when the operation was finished. Paul’s heart lightened at this news, as if the wreckage itself were the cause of his melancholy, the very weight that strained against his ribs in the night. He couldn’t wait until it was gone.
The old man wobbled out, climbing the stairs with some effort. Paul thought he ought to go and help, but he didn’t. He and the barber watched him until he had disappeared from view, then both sighed. Their eyes met.
“Been coming here for twenty-five years,” the barber said. “Used to be mayor.”
“Really?”
“Real mayor died in his sleep. Mr. Visser there was top man in the town council. He filled in.” He shook his head. “Best couple weeks of his life. Used to talk about it all the time.”
When Paul sat down, the barber walked slow circles around him, as if his head were a block of marble he was preparing to carve. “Shampoo?” he said soberly.
“Uh, no.”
“Okay. How d’you want it cut?”
“Short.”
The barber glared at Paul in the mirror. “You gotta give me a little more than that.”
“Maybe leave a little on the sideburns. And the forehead.”
His eyes narrowed. “Whatever you say.”
He cut in silence for a while, spinning the chair with one hand, chopping with a skill that seemed indiscriminate. Heavy sections of hair fell away, and Paul heard them whisper against the barber’s smock. For a long time, Paul was pointed toward the door, and when the barber turned him to face the mirror, he saw that his hair, while short, was messy and uneven. One ear was hidden and the other wasn’t. The hair across his forehead was severely slanted, so that it covered one eyebrow completely and left the other bare. Then he noticed that the barber’s head was gleaming with sweat and he was biting his lower lip.
“This’d be a lot easier if you gave me a particular cut to do. I’m no champ with this freestyle stuff.”
“I don’t know any hairstyles,” Paul said. “I haven’t gotten a haircut in eight years.”
“I’m switching to clippers,” the barber told him, after a moment’s thought.
He plugged the clipper into the wall. It was a curved green thing with nasty-looking teeth on one end. When he switched it on, its buzz filled the room like an avalanche of metal filings. It set Paul’s teeth on edge. The barber plunged it into what was left of Paul’s hair and dragged it across his scalp. The feeling wasn’t too bad. It filled Paul with a sort of nostalgia, as he recalled the buzz cuts of his boyhood. Meanwhile hair came away in graceful clumps and piled up on his chest and shoulders. The barber was sweating even more profusely now. “Okay, now,” he whispered, apparently to himself. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
It wasn’t long before all of Paul’s hair was gone, save for a smooth glaze of fuzz. The barber stood behind him, and they both stared at it in the mirror. For the first time in his adult life, Paul could see his own scalp: he had a prominent ridge that ran from just beyond the hairline to the back of his head. The clippers continued to buzz.
“Why don’t you turn that thing off?” he said, and the noise stopped.
“Well, there you go.”
Paul stared into the mirror. “You cut it all off.”
“Looks good.”
“I could have done that myself.”
The barber didn’t respond. He wiped the hair from Paul’s neck with a soft brush, then whisked off the plastic apron with a flourish. “There you go!” he said again, cheerily. “That’s six bucks.”
“You’re charging me?”
“Whaddya think?” The bather’s hands were planted on his hips, his legs slightly spread, like a sumo wrestler’s.
“But you screwed it up!”
“Six bucks!” the barber repeated.
Paul wanted only to leave now. “Forget it.”
“Look, pal,” the barber said, “you told me short and you got it. Cough up.”
He ran his hand over his hair. Soft. He crossed his arms, uncrossed them, pulled out his wallet and paid.
In the car, he held his hands to his head and worked his jaw, feeling the muscles moving over his ear. They felt like new muscles, freshly grown. He pictured himself as one of his distant ancestors, crouching in the dust, gnawing on the leg of a fallen zebra.
* * *
There was no reason to go home. It was eleven-thirty, and he was driving aimlessly around downtown. He should call Ponty. Then he remembered first seeing Alyssa in Ponty’s office, the phone pinched between her ear and shoulder; he thought of those thin shoulders and neck, seeing them through the rear window of her boyfriend’s truck. How could Ponty sleep at night, knowing his daughter went to school every day, bobbed in a fast current of kids, with their drugs and weapons in their lockers? How could he sleep when she saw boys every minute of the day, leering at her from desks and in hallways, popping off the buttons of her dress in their dreams, reaching for her across a couch with the shades drawn?
He found himself pulling onto Weir, signaling into the lane that would bring him to the high school in time for lunch. Kids had already filled the streets around the school when he arrived, pushing one another, laughing in groups, passing things around. They leaned against trees and sat on cars. They crouched in hedges, smoking cigarettes. Paul drove by slowly, feeling like a fool but unable to tear himself away until he saw her, made sure she was all right.
He found a parking space adjacent to a practice field, where he had a clear view of the school, and slouched down to watch. No Alyssa. He could recognize her walk from a distance, even without the telltale purple hair: it looked like a shuffle but propelled her around with surprising speed, as if she were on skates; her head always down, navigating by some sort of teenage sonar. Even with the boyfriend she did this, a reflex he found profoundly moving. There was beauty in defense.
But she wasn’t there. He was getting ready to leave when he noticed the boyfriend, his cap skewed ever so consciously an inch to the side, walking back toward the building with two others. Both boys. Their strides grew manlier the closer they came to the building.
Maybe she was sick today. Maybe she spent her lunch with other friends, or stayed inside to eat in the cafeteria. What did he know about how they worked things here? He started the car and (looking in the rearview, someone he at first didn’t recognize: himself, without hair) pulled back into the street, drove two blocks to Weir and headed north, toward home. Home, where he had resigned himself to going. He could shingle the roof, or reinstall the insulation. Today could be the day he became a bachelor wilderness-survival type, living inside a healthy aura of self-sufficiency and masculine calm. He would keep to himself, own flannel shirts.
And then he saw her, sitting alone at an outdoor table in front of Taco Treat. Het hair wasn’t purple anymore. She’d dyed it red over the weekend and had it combed down over the shaved sides in a sad approximation of normal hair. Her head was propped up by the V of her hands. She looked glum.
Impulsively, he turned onto Sixth and into the restaurant’s narrow parking lot. He wedged the car between a pickup and a microbus and turned off the ignition.
Now what?
Through the side window and windshield of the microbus, he saw that she had a tray of food in front of her, but had made no move to eat it. He decided to go get some himself—it would be a chance meeting, him stopping here for lunch, her being here, except that he didn’t much like Mexican food and the omelet he’d eaten that morning still sat in his stomach, undigested, like an unwanted guest who has fallen asleep. But he was here, he had parked. He went inside.
He watched her through the window while he waited for his food—just an iced tea and a single fish taco. She was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt zipped up to her chin. Two knotted cinch ropes dangled from the hood, and she played with one of them as she poked her food.
When the taco came, it made him a little queasy. He pushed it to the far edge of his tray and carried the tray out to her table. Nobody else was sitting outside. It was too chilly. Cars raced past on Weir, and their smells drifted over them, faintly toxic.
Alyssa looked up.
“Hey!” Paul said. He put his tray down. “Mind if I join you?”
Her eyes widened. She didn’t recognize him.
Paul touched his head and sat down. “It’s Paul Beveridge.”
Nothing.
“I work for your dad.”
Now she leaned forward, squinting. The ropes from her sweatshirt trailed into her food, a wide, cold-looking plate of red beans and rice. After a moment, she opened her eyes and smiled.
“Oh, you! Hi!”
“Hi.”
“What are you doing here?” she said. And then, soberly: “I think my dad’s looking for you.”
“Is he mad?”
“Not really. Well, maybe a little. I guess your wife called him, looking for you.” She smiled again. “But here you are.”
Your wife called? “I just stopped for lunch, and here you were.”
“Uh-huh. Here I am.” She rolled her eyes.
“So why aren’t you in school?”
She snorted. “Oh, right. You’re an adult.” She hitched her shoulders once, let them sag. “I already learned everything,” she said.
“Lucky you.”
She rolled her eyes again, then shrank back a little. “Can I touch it?” she said.
“What?”
“Your hair.”
“Oh! Right.” He leaned forward, pushing his head across the table at her, until his nose hung just above his taco. His stomach groaned.
“Wow,” she said. He felt her hand tickling across the tops of his hairs; each tingled at the root, starting a chain reaction that careened down his back, setting off every vertebra like a string of Christmas lights. Now she was using both hands, her fingers pressing into his scalp. He felt very warm. And then suddenly it was over, her hands gone. When he looked up they were out of sight, in her lap. “Cool,” she said, and they both laughed.
“You haven’t touched your lunch,” he told her.
“I should have gotten that,” she said, pointing to his tray.
He looked down at the taco and back at her. “Here,” he said, and pushed it toward her. “Take it. I’m not as hungry as I thought.”
* * *
She was eating the taco in the passenger seat of his—Anita’s—car, the paper basket held beneath her hand, catching drippings. They were heading south, toward the strip, toward her father’s office, her house. “So you want to go home?” he said. “Or do you want to go to your dad’s office?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Well, think fast,” he said. “The turn for the office is coming up.” Ponty’s street approached and passed. Paul watched as the office sped by. What would he think, if he knew where his daughter was? “Home it is, then,” he said.
“How about we go somewhere else?” she said.
“Somewhere else.”
“Yeah.” She unzipped the sweatshirt to reveal a white T-shirt with the name of a local rock band on it. “I’m not, you know, expected anywhere,” she said, her voice heavy with mock sophistication, and for a moment, Paul found himself imagining her in his arms, her ribs finding the grooves between his. And then the voice dissolved into giggles and the image disappeared, leaving him embarrassed and his mind soured with guilt.
But he didn’t turn onto South Avenue, which would have brought them to her house, and he didn’t turn onto Merriam Boulevard, which was their last chance to stay in Marshall. The light at Merriam was interminable, but neither of them said anything to the other, because to do so would mean admitting they were leaving town. Paul was so consumed with not speaking that he didn’t notice when the light finally changed, and Alyssa bumped his arm with her shoulder. “Go, already.”
Paul started. She sat up in her seat, alert. Horns blared. He rolled up the window, and they pulled away from the intersection.
And then they were on the highway, moving southwest toward the state line at sixty miles an hour, and neither had mentioned it. Paul pretended interest in the mountains and Alyssa, he could see, stared at the road with real excitement. Ten minutes later, when they’d crossed the Sapphire city line and Paul slowed down for the town’s three lights, Alyssa leaned her crossed arms against the dash. “Up there,” she said. “The second light.”
He could hear the challenge in her voice as she said it, wielded uncertainly, like it was a weapon too large or complicated for her. He got the sudden urge to turn the car around and bring her home, but then there was the problem of the trip back, of what to say in the sullen silence after he backed down. And, of course, he wanted to know where she was taking him. He signaled right and turned onto a smoothly paved two-lane that snaked into the mountains and Idaho. For several minutes they said nothing to each other. And then, as if it were part of a conversation that had been interrupted, she said, “So he dumped me, and I didn’t feel like seeing him.”
“What?”
“This guy,” she said. “He dumped me. And I didn’t want to see him, at school. So I left.”
“Can’t you get in trouble for that?”
She shrugged.
They passed a pasture at the base of a foothill, where some horses stood languidly eating grass. “How come?” Paul said.
“How come what?”
“Why’d he dump you?”
She shrugged again. “No reason, I don’t know.”
It was the sort of thing Paul would have said in high school; in college, even. But if adulthood had taught him anything, it was that there was always a reason. He thought about his mother, the way she used to react to such an answer: she would hold her gaze on him an extra beat, then capitulate to the lie with a tired nod and leave his bedroom without closing the door. And with his friends—none of whose names he could remember now—that kind of answer was de rigueur, so much so that none of them ever really knew one another beyond what drinks each liked, the way each held a cigarette.
He was wondering how he could express this to Alyssa, what he could say that wouldn’t sound…adult, when she chuckled. It was a deep, strangely mature sound. She deadpanned: “Because I wouldn’t.”
“What?”
“He dumped me because I wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t.”
“Do it.”
Paul’s armpits began to itch. “Oh.”
“Oh, geez,” she said. “Does that make you uncomfortable?”
“Well.” He kept his eyes on the road, reluctant even to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the windshield.
“Because, you know, he just wasn’t the one. I mean, everybody does it”—bolder now, enjoying his reaction—“but I don’t think you ought to without a good reason.”
“Well, good,” he said, fatherly.
She fiddled with the seat, adjusting the angle until she was lying on her back, laughing. Then she straightened up a little, and stopped when she was a few degrees farther back than he was. She picked up the roll of drawings from between the seats but didn’t unroll them, only looked through the tube out the windshield. Her voice came from behind him. “So what’s your story? Where were you? Why’d your wife call our house?”
It irritated him that she knew this, and he groped for blame, landing briefly on Ponty and skimming over Anita until he settled, finally, on himself. “I went away for a few days.”
“Why’s that?”
He glared at her. She was leaning back, looking out at the mountaintops and clouds through the rolled drawings.
“She had an affair. She decided to leave me.”
She said nothing for a while, then set the drawings back where she found them. “So I guess we’re in the same boat.”
“No,” he said, as harshly as he could muster. “I’m married.” And immediately he regretted it. Alyssa took a few minutes to absorb this, then curled her legs up under her and leaned against the door.
“Can I put this on?” she asked him quietly, pointing to the heat controls.
“Sure.”
Soon they reached Sapphire Pass, where a sign told them that Lewis and Clark had camped only a few feet away. Those two seemed to have been everywhere. Paul parked at the visitors center to pee, and Alyssa stayed in the car. In the men’s room he worried that this looked funny, like a man plunging into the wilderness with a girl half his age. Which is what it was. When he got back into the car, Alyssa said, as if she had read his mind, “How old are you, Paul?” She bobbled his name on her tongue like a ball tossed to her without warning.
“Thirty-two.”
“Whoa,” she said. “You’re old enough to be my father.”
He calculated. “I guess so.”
“You have kids, you two?”
“No.”
She nodded. “Good.”
Paul paused before he pulled back onto the road. “Home?” he asked her.
“Not yet. A few more miles.”
He obliged her, taking the steep decline in third gear, to save the brakes. When they had gone several miles, she pointed to a graveled lot on the right. “Here,” she said, and he signaled and turned in.
They sat for a moment in silence. “Okay!” she said.
“Okay what?”
“You coming?”
“Where to?” he said. He wondered what a teenage girl could know about the Idaho woods, why she would bring him there. What would Ponty say if he could see them together, pulled over in Anita’s car? She crossed her eyes.
“Don’t be a dork, Paul.”
Maybe this was what fatherhood was like: going along with things. He thought of all the times he’d begged his friends to go along with him—crashing parties, shoplifting, driving around—and how irritating that must have been. Then he pushed open his door and stepped onto the gravel.
A footpath led them through thick, close conifers. Alyssa ran ahead, suddenly childish and happy. The forest was much richer here than near his house, with a healthy dampness in the air and moss hanging from the branches of trees. He wondered briefly if, in the past three years, he had ever even been to Idaho.
No, he hadn’t left Montana.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” she said. Something in her voice was excited and fearful at once, as if they’d come to hunt bears. “I can’t believe you’ve never come here before.”
They were quiet then, and the sounds of the woods mingled with their footfalls: birds and squirrels chattered, and off in the trees, Paul could see deer stepping carefully over logs. Somewhere, out of sight, there was a river running, and its noise grew louder and softer as they changed direction.
And then the path emptied out into a wide clearing that the river rushed through on its way elsewhere. Between the water and the ground beyond its banks, which lay bare except for thin moss and small boulders, were a series of still, clear pools, steam rising off them in thick, wind-twisted curtains. Hot springs. “Wow,” he said, and Alyssa yelped with excitement and ran down to them, her hair tossing side to side like the flag on a child’s bike.
He followed her. For a minute they stood and watched. Bubbles crept up from under rocks in the pools before them, the river running cold only a few feet beyond. The air was warm. Alyssa took off her sweatshirt, and then her shoes and socks: white tennis sneakers, white socks with gray pads.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting in,” she said, seemingly unable to believe the question.
And then, to his astonishment, she pulled her T-shirt up over her head and in almost the same motion pushed down her jeans, revealing a white cotton bra and a pair of underpants with carrots printed on them. The carrots were bright orange, and looked as out of place in this clearing as a tractor-trailer.
He gawked, at this woman’s body exposed to the air, and was almost surprised when he looked to find her face still attached to it. Her eyes were wide, and she was breathing heavy and fast, through her mouth, from the run down the hill.
“What?” she said, but there was no concealing that she knew what effect this had had on him; her voice was full of it.
“You’re not—” he said. “We can’t—”
She turned from him, and brought her hands up behind her, to the hook of her bra, and unclasped it. She held the ends there, waiting, and said over her shoulder, “Either you’re in, or no looking, pal.”
Without thinking, he touched his head. He moved his hand to his face, and rubbed it, and said, “I’ll meet you in the car.” Then he turned and began the walk to the road.
In the trees, beyond where he thought he could see, he stopped and looked back. She was there, sitting in one of the pools, facing the river. Her shoulders were thin and bowed like an old woman’s, as if she were no more substantial than a piece of paper, curled to conceal what was written on it. He thought of the photos he’d taken of her, and realized they were still in the glove compartment of Anita’s car, where he’d left them the day he reported back to Ponty. Alyssa had been sitting inches from them for over an hour.
He jogged back down the path to the lot and took out the photos. He remembered them differently: Alyssa, he thought, was smaller in the frame and only distinguishable by her hair, and he recalled both her and her boyfriend hunched over slightly under the bright sun, shielding their eyes. But in fact Alyssa’s face was clear, and the two of them walked easily, seemingly without worry. In one, Alyssa was punching his arm, and he was recoiling in mock offense.
Paul walked a hundred yards back up the mountain, to where the river met the road. He climbed down the rocky bank and crouched by the water, in the mild, cold breeze the current made, and he thumbed through the photos again. Now he had another picture in his head, this one of himself, walking slumped and alone off the school grounds long before the three-o’clock bell, on his way to meet his dealer so that he could get high in the car and drive our into Mississippi to visit the river. Rivers were different in the South, meandering and slow, and he often imagined he could lie down in one and wend through farms and homesteads and towns for days, wanting for nothing, swallowed by a larger whole that would let him forget who he was. He thought of himself washed out into the Delta, where he would simply vanish, quietly dissolved into the waters of the Gulf.
And if he did that now? He felt, for a split second, what it would be like to be broken on the rocks, and shuddered. Instead, he tore up the photos and scattered the pieces in the water. The river carried them away, and before they had gone a dozen feet they were indistinguishable from the play of light on the current.
He thought he had been spying on a young Paul Beveridge those days outside Alyssa’s high school, but he could see he’d been wrong. She was at home here, and fearless, and needed nothing. The young Paul Beveridge was still him. What was he doing here? Why wasn’t he in Marshall, doing his job? From now on, he decided, he would be an employed adult, and nothing more, and take it from there.
He stood up, his knees cracking. The river rounded the bend, laughing. He wiped the dirt off his hands, climbed the bank and walked back to the car to wait. The torn pictures, he imagined, were sweeping toward Alyssa Ponty, and heading for the ocean. They would reach her, pass her by, any second now.