31
V
ALENTINE’S FELL ON A SATURDAY AND HOYT WORKED
from six in the morning until six in the evening at the feedlot east of town, riding pens in the blowing dirt and cold and doctoring cattle in the sick pen next to the barn, where a blackbaldy steer with bloody scours kicked him in the knee, then loosed itself on his jeans while he was trying to push it into the chute. At the end of the day he caught a ride into town with Elton Chatfield in Elton’s old pickup.
They decided to stop for a beer at the Triple M out on the highway to wash the dust out of their throats, and an hour later they were invited to sit in on a game of ten-point pitch at the card table in the back room. In the following two hours the four old men playing at the table managed to take from Hoyt twenty-five dollars and from Elton nearly fifteen, and afterward bought them each a shot of whiskey out of their own money.
In the meantime Laverne Griffith had been waiting for Hoyt since five-thirty, and she had passed through a number of emotions by the time he arrived at home. She had been sad and blue, and for a while she had worried something might have happened to him, but for much of the time she had simply felt sorry for herself, so by nine o’clock she was mad. She was waiting in the kitchen, drinking gin with the lights off, when she heard him climb the outside stairs and open the front door.
Laverne, you ready, girl? he called.
You son of a bitch, where have you been?
Where are you? How come you haven’t turned any lights on?
I’m out here in the kitchen. For all you care.
He walked back to the kitchen in the dark and felt for the light switch, then looked at her. She was sitting at the table already dressed in her party clothes, a black blouse and white jeans, and her face was rouged and her eyes were made up thickly with mascara. The glass of gin sat before her.
Damn, girl, Hoyt said, you’re looking good. He leaned over and kissed her on the side of the face.
Well, you’re not, she said. And you stink of cow shit.
A steer emptied on me this morning while I was trying to head him. I’ll just grab a shower, then I’ll be ready.
Don’t bother. She looked at him and turned away. I’m not going.
What do you mean you’re not going?
You didn’t even bring me a box of chocolates, did you.
Chocolates?
It’s Valentine’s Day, you son of a bitch. You didn’t even know that. I’m nothing to you. I’m just a place to stay and somebody to fuck in bed when you feel like it. That’s all I mean to you.
Oh hell. You’re all upset. I’ll buy you chocolates tomorrow. I’ll buy you five boxes of chocolates if that’s what you want.
He bent and kissed her again and put his arm around her and poked his hand down into the loose front of her blouse. She slapped at his hand.
Don’t, she said.
Why what’s wrong here?
What do you think is wrong.
Hell, I’m ready to go. Soon as I take a shower.
I’m not going anywhere with you. I told you. You can just get the hell out of here too.
Honey, now this ain’t like you, he said. This don’t sound like my girl.
She took up her glass and took a long drink. He watched her.
You got to quit that drinking. That’s what it is. You’re already drunk and we ain’t even got out of the house yet.
He took her glass away and walked across the kitchen and poured the gin into the sink. Laverne came up out of her chair. She stumbled toward him and slapped him hard in the face.
Don’t ever tell me what I can do in my own goddamn house. Her eyes were wild. She brought her hand up and slapped him again.
You crazy bitch, he said.
He hit her smartly in the face with his open hand, and she spun half around and sat down all at once on the floor.
I’m going to go shower, he said. And you can calm your ass down. Then we’ll get out of here for the night.
When he went back to the bathroom, she stood and grabbed a long metal cooking spoon she’d been stirring their chili with, and lurched after him. He was sitting on the toilet, pulling off his boots, and she began hitting him over the head and about the shoulders with the heavy spoon, spattering chili on his face and shirt and jacket.
Goddamn it, Hoyt shouted. You stupid bitch. Quit it.
He rose up and took hold of her shoulders, spinning her around in the little bathroom, neither of them saying anything at all but both panting furiously, and he grabbed her hand and bent it back until she let go of the spoon. The spoon clattered on the floor. Then he released her, but immediately she scratched desperately at his face, and he shoved her away and she fell backward into the shower curtain, grabbing wildly at anything, and tore the curtain loose from the rod and crashed into the bathtub.
Look what you done, he said. Are you satisfied now?
Help me out of here, she whimpered. Her eyes were wet with tears. She was half wrapped up in the curtain.
You going to quit?
Help me out of here.
Tell me you’re going to quit.
I quit. All right? I quit. You son of a bitch.
You better behave.
He pushed the curtain aside and pulled her by the hand and stepped back, waiting, but she only looked at him. Her makeup had run and her eyes were awash with mascara. Without a word she hurried out of the bathroom and ran through the apartment to the bedroom closet where she grabbed an armful of his shirts, hangers and all, and then rushed back into the front room. He was standing in the kitchen doorway and, when he saw what she was doing, came forward to stop her, but she’d already thrown the door open and flung his shirts through the door out across the stair landing into the night, his flannel work shirts and his good western shirts alike, all drifting and sailing to the ground as in some dream or fantasy.
There, she cried. I did it. Now get out. Get out, you filthy bastard. I’m done with you.
Then Hoyt hit her in the face with his fist.
She fell back against the door and he wrenched it open and went leaping down the stairs to collect his shirts, ducking and bobbing across the yard as he picked them up.
Laverne pulled herself up and shoved the door closed, locked it, and stood looking out the narrow window, panting. She wiped at her nose with her shirt cuff, leaving a smear across her cheek. Her soft woman’s face looked like a Halloween fright mask now. The mass of her maroon hair was all undone.
Hoyt came pounding back up the stairs with his shirts under his arm and tried to turn the knob. Bitch, he said. You better let me in.
Never.
You goddamn bitch. You better open this fucker.
I’ll call the police first.
He hammered on the door, then stepped back and rammed it with his shoulder, glaring back at her through the little window.
You’re going to be sorry for this, he said.
I already am. I’m sorry I ever met you.
He spat at her face in the window and it dribbled slowly down the glass. He stood and watched it for a moment, then walked back down the stairs. He looked around but the houses along the street were all quiet and dark. He walked toward downtown as far as Albany Street, and hid the shirts under a bush across from the courthouse, then went on to the tavern at Third and Main. He was still wearing his work clothes, his flannel shirt, the denim jacket spattered with chili, and his manure-stained jeans. He entered and went directly to the bar.
B
Y MIDNIGHT HE WAS WEAVING DRUNKENLY ON THE STOOL
next to an old local man named Billy Coates who had long dirty white hair and lived alone in a tarpaper house north of the railroad tracks. Hoyt had been telling him his tragic story for an hour and Coates finally said: They’s the davenport if you want it. If you don’t got nowheres else to go.
I don’t have no place else, Hoyt muttered.
I got a dog but you can just push him off. He won’t bother you any.
When the tavern closed, they walked to Albany Street to collect Hoyt’s shirts. The shirts were frozen stiff and Hoyt gathered them up and carried them like boards under his arm, then followed Billy Coates across the tracks to his house, and immediately fell to sleep on the davenport in the front room. The old mongrel dog whined for a while but finally curled up on the floor next to an old coal oil heater, and they each—man and man and dog—slept soundly until Sunday noon.
32
W
HEN THE CALVES CAME IN FEBRUARY, RAYMOND ROSE
two and three times in the freezing night to check on the cattle he had noticed were showing springy and had begun to bag down, having moved the cattle into the corrals and loafing shed next to the barn in the days before. Once he was there he would check that the nose and the front feet were exposed and started out as normal, or he would catch the laboring cow and pull the calf with the calf-chain, ratcheting the calf out, and sew the cow up afterward and doctor her with antibiotics. So, for weeks of these indistinguishable days and nights, he was exhausted, he was worn out almost beyond thinking. He still had the ordinary daily chores and the hay-feeding to do as always, which by themselves would have been almost too much for one man to do and keep up with, but he was doing all of it alone now, since his brother had been killed in the previous fall. He went on regardless. He went on in a kind of daze. He found himself falling asleep at the kitchen table, noon and night and sometimes, though he’d just risen, in the mornings too when he sat down to his meager solitary hurried meal. Then he would wake an hour or two later, with his neck stiff and his hands numb and his tongue as dry as paper from having breathed through his open mouth for too long with his head lolled back against the chair back, and with the food before him already long gone cold on his plate and the black coffee on the table no longer even tepid in his cup. Then he would sit up and rouse himself and look around, study the light or the lack of it in the kitchen window, and push himself up from the old pinewood table and get into his canvas coveralls and overshoes again and pull on his wool cap and step outside into the winter cold once more. And then walk across the drive to the corrals and calving shed to begin it all again. This routine, day and night, lasted for something over a month.
So it was already the start of March before he felt rested enough to think he might allow himself a single night’s vacation in which to drive to town once again to the tavern on Main Street.
H
E SET OUT ON A COOL FRESH NIGHT, DRESSED AGAIN IN
his town clothes and his Bailey hat. He had shaved and washed up and had put on some of the cologne that Victoria had given him at Christmastime. It was a Saturday night, the sky overhead clear of any cloud, the stars as clean and bright as if they were no more distant than the next barbed-wire fence post standing up above the barrow ditch running beside the narrow blacktop highway, everything all around him distinct and unhidden. He loved how it all looked, except he would never have said it in that way. He might have said that this was just how it was supposed to look, out on the high plains at the end of winter, on a clear fresh night.
In Holt he parked at the curb in front of the
Holt Mercury
newspaper offices, closed and darkened for the night, and walked up the block past the unlit stores to the corner. Inside the tavern it was just as before. The same noise and desolate country music, the men shooting pool at the tables in the back and the TV blaring over the bar, the long room just as crowded and smoky as it had been in December—all of it the same, except maybe a little more of it now, a little more gaiety, since it was a Saturday night.
He stood at the door and saw no one that he might sit down with, so he went up to the bar as he had that other time and ordered a draft beer and got it and paid for it and then turned to survey the room. He drank from his glass and wiped the palm of his hand across his mouth. And then he saw that she too was there again, sitting by herself in a booth, looking off to the side. Her short dark hair had grown out a little, but it was Linda May.
He took his glass of beer and walked back past the tables of patrons toward her booth, stopping once to let somebody pass in front of him, then she saw him coming toward her and she sat looking at him without moving, without anything showing in her face. He stood at the booth and removed his hat and held the hat in one hand at his side.
Raymond, she said. Is that you? She spoke too loudly. She was wearing a red blouse that was unbuttoned deeply at the neck, and above the throat of the blouse she wore a silver necklace and there were silver hoops in her ears. Her eyes looked too shiny.
Yes ma’am, he said. I reckon so.
What are you doing?
Well. I come out for a night. I thought I would. Like I done that other time.
She seemed to study him. Have you been here long? she said.
No. Not long.
How have you been?
Okay, I reckon. I guess I’ve been pretty good. I’ve been kind of busy. He looked at her dark hair and shining eyes. How about yourself?
She started to say something but turned to peer toward the back, and then turned forward again and took up her glass and drank.
Ma’am, he said. You okay?
What?
I said, are you okay? You seem a little disturbed.
I’m all right.
How’s your car running?
She looked at him. My car.
Yes ma’am. It wouldn’t start that other time.
Oh, that. No, it’s fine. I thank you for getting me the battery. It starts every time now. She made a little gesture with her glass. Why don’t you sit down.
If you wouldn’t mind.
No. Please do.
He sat opposite her and set his glass of beer on the table and laid his hat on the seat beside him.
How’s that young girl and her baby? she said.
Victoria? They’re both doing pretty good, I believe. They’re back in Fort Collins.
She looked around again, peering toward the back of the room, and this time her eyes changed. Raymond followed her gaze and saw a tall red-haired man with a considerable stomach approaching the booth. He stopped and stood for a moment, then slid in beside Linda May and rested his arm on her shoulder. You attracted you some company while I was gone, he said.
This is a friend, she said. Raymond McPheron. I took care of him at the hospital one time.
I hope you took good care of him.
I did.
How you doing, old buddy?
Raymond looked at him across the table. I don’t believe I know your name, he said.
Why hell, don’t you know me? I thought everybody knew me around here. I’m over at the Ford dealership.
I drive a Dodge, Raymond said.
That would explain it, the man said. Cecil Walton, he said. He lifted his hand into the air above the table and Raymond looked at it and then shook it once, briefly.
Can I buy you a drink—what’d you say your name was?
His name is Raymond, Linda May said. I told you.
That’s right, you did. But I forgot. Is that all right with you?
I didn’t mean it that way.
Okay then. So Ray, can I buy you a drink?
I have one, Raymond said.
How about another? I need one myself. And I know this little lady does. Don’t you. He looked at her.
Yes, she said.
The man looked out across the room and began waving his hand. He kept looking and he waved and whistled once through his teeth. Linda May was sitting close beside him, leaning against the shoulder of his green corduroy shirt. There. She seen me, the man said. She’s coming over.
The young blonde barmaid walked up carrying a bar tray with empty glasses balanced on it. She looked tired. You ready for another round, Cecil? she said.
Does the bear shit in the Vatican?
I don’t know. I’m too wore out. So what’s it going to be?
The same for me and her. And whatever our buddy here wants.
I wouldn’t care for anything, thank you, Raymond said.
Have a drink, Ray.
I don’t think so.
You sure?
Yes.
The blonde woman left and went back through the crowded room toward the bar. The man across from Raymond watched her walk away in her tight jeans, then bent and kissed Linda May on the side of the face. I’ll be right back, he said. I want to talk to this guy over here. He come in the other day looking at new cars and I’m going to sell his ass one of them yet. You go ahead and get caught up with your friend here.
He got up and walked to a nearby table where a fat man was sitting with two women and drew out a chair and sat down. He said something and they laughed. Linda May was watching him closely.
You sure you’re all right? Raymond said.
She turned back. Yes. Why?
No reason, I reckon. I think I’ll head on home.
You just got here.
Yes ma’am, I know.
But is something wrong?
There ain’t nothing wrong. This is the best of all possible worlds, ain’t it.
I don’t understand. What did you come here for? What did you think was going to happen?
I don’t think I had any clear idea about that. I just kind of thought I’d come in and have a drink and see if you was here.
But where have you been? It’s been almost two months.
I got kind of busy.
But my God, did you think I was waiting for you? Is that what you thought? Don’t you know anything?
No ma’am. I don’t believe I do. He stood up out of the booth. Anyway, you take good care of yourself now.
Raymond?
It’s been nice to see you, he said.
He reached for his glass and his hat and walked away. He drank down the rest of the beer and set the glass on the windowsill next to the front door and pulled his hat down tight over his head as though he were expecting high winds and stepped outside. He’d been in the tavern for no more than fifteen minutes.
He walked up the wide sidewalk along the dark storefronts and climbed into his pickup and drove south out of town. There was no car or other vehicle out on the highway. At home he parked in the garage and walked back across the graveled drive.
When he reached the wire gate he stopped and stood looking back toward the horse barn and the cow lots. Then he raised his head and peered up at the stars. He spoke aloud. You dumb old son of a bitch, he said. You dumb old ignorant stupid son of a bitch.
Then he turned again and went through the gate up into the dark quiet house and pulled the door shut behind him.