Montana 1948 (11 page)

He took a swallow of whiskey and that seemed to start his tongue. “You know, David, how I feel about your family.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I have this job. Deputy sheriff.” He looked down at his shirt as though he expected to see his badge there. “Which I owe to your granddad and your dad. You know what your granddad said it means to be a peace officer in Montana? He said it means knowing when to look and when to look away. Took me a while to learn that.” Len leaned forward and pointed a long, gnarled finger at me. “Your dad hasn’t quite got the hang of it. Not just yet.”

He slumped back in his chair and looked intently around the room at floor level as if he were watching for mice or insects. I had heard about drunks and their pink elephants and I wondered if he was hallucinating. I wanted more than ever to get away, but there was something tightly wound even in Len’s casual posture—slumped shoulders and long legs extended—that made me think he was feigning repose and inattention, and as soon as I made a move to leave, his booted foot would suddenly trip me up or a long-fingered hand would pull me down.

He stopped looking around the room and fixed his eye on the carpet in front of his feet. “Long time ago I wanted to say something to your granddad. . . . I wanted to tell him, don’t let those boys run wild. Just because we’re out here, a thousand miles from nowhere, you think it doesn’t matter. Out here, nothing but rimrock and sagebrush. You think no one’s going to care. But those boys have to live in the world. Rein ‘em in a little. Don’t break them, but pull ‘em back. But I didn’t. Never said a word. Now look at them.” He jerked his head up as if he actually saw my father and uncle in the room. “A lawyer and a doctor. College and the whole kit. Sheriff and a doctor. . . . Your granddad could tell me a thing or two....”

For an instant something parted, as if the wind blew a curtain open and allowed a flash of sunlight into the room. Did Len know what I knew?

I leaned forward. “Did you see something, Len?”

He sat up straight and peered at me as if he weren’t sure of my identity. “Did you?” he asked.

There it was, my opening! Now I could unburden myself, find someone else to carry this freight. Certainly Len could be trusted. But there was that glass of whiskey and its odor of sweet decay on his breath.... What if we
weren’t
talking about the same thing?

I jumped to my feet. “I forgot the pie! I was supposed to get the pie!”

Len smiled wearily. “Look after your mother. This’ll be a hard time for her.”

Was Len in love with my mother? The thought never occurred to me until I wrote those words. But now I remember all the small chores and favors he did for her around our house—planing a sticking door or fixing a leaky faucet, bringing her the pheasants he shot or the fish he caught. The way he removed his hat when he came into our house and fiddled with it, creasing and denting the crown, running his finger around the sweatband. Well, why not. Why not say he loved her? Why not say his was one more heart broken in this sequence of events?

That night I thought I felt death in our house. Grandmother Hayden, a superstitious person, once told me about how, when she was a girl, her brother died and for days after, death lingered in the house. Her brother was trampled by a team of horses, and his blood-and-dirt-streaked body was laid on the kitchen table. From then until the day he was buried my grandmother said she could tell there was another presence in the house. It was nothing she could see, she said, but every time you entered a room it felt as though someone brushed by you as you went in. Every door seemed to require a bit more effort to open and close. There always seemed to be a sound—a whisper—on the edge of your hearing, something you couldn’t quite make out.

As I had so often been advised by my parents, I never believed any of my grandmother’s supernatural stories. Until the day Marie died. That night I lay in bed and couldn’t breathe. The room felt close, full, as though someone else was getting the oxygen I needed.

I turned on the light and got slowly, cautiously, out of bed and opened my window wider. That brought no relief. The curtain stuck tight to the screen as if the wind was in the house blowing out.

Close to panic, I went to my parents’ room. From the doorway I called softly, “Dad?”

In a voice so prompt and calm I wondered if he had really been asleep, my father answered, “What is it, David?”

“I thought I heard something.”

“What is it you thought you heard?”

I peered into the darkened room. My father was still lying down.

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

The sheets rustled and my mother sat up. “Is something wrong?”

“I thought I heard something. Nothing. It wasn’t anything.”

“Come here, David,” said my father.

As I approached the bed he sat up and swung his legs to the floor. He patted the bed beside him. “Sit down.”

I sat down and my father rubbed my back, massaging the thin band of muscle on either side of my spine. “What’s the trouble? Can’t sleep?”

Just that little gentleness, that little thumb-rub below my neck, was all it took, and the words spilled out of me. “I saw something....”

“Really? ” His voice was steady and low. “I thought you said you heard something.”

“I mean earlier. This afternoon.”

“What did you see?”

“Uncle Frank. Uncle Frank was here.”

“Of course he was. Your mother called him right away when she found Marie.”

“No, I mean before. Earlier.”

His hand stopped rubbing. “What time was that, David?” “I’m not sure exactly.”

“A guess. Take a guess, David.”

“Around three.”

My mother crawled quickly across the bed to the other side of me. “What are you saying, David?”

“Shh, Gail. Let David tell it.”

I drew a deep breath and with its exhale let the secret out. “I was going fishing with Charley and Ben and we had just come from Ben’s house and we were riding our bikes along the tracks. We were going out to Fuller’s gravel pit. Then I had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t want to go all the way back to our house to go, so I used Len and Daisy’s outhouse.” (In 1948 most, but not all, of the houses in Bentrock had indoor plumbing, yet many homeowners chose to keep their outhouses operational. They saved water, for one thing, and they were useful in case of emergency—if the pipes froze in the winter, for example.) “I told Charley and Ben to go on ahead and I’d catch up. While I was sitting there I saw someone cutting across our backyard. There’s a knothole you can see out of. I was pretty sure it was Uncle Frank. Then I got out and watched him go down the tracks. He was going toward town. I’m pretty sure it was him.”

“You’re
pretty
sure, David?” my father asked abruptly. “What do you mean, you’re pretty sure?”

“I mean I’m sure. I know it was.”

“Did he have his bag with him?”

“I think so. Yeah. Yes, he had it.”

“Was he in the house? Can you be sure? Did you see him come out of the house?”

Next to me, my mother had pulled together a tangled handful of sheets and bedspread and brought it toward her face.

“I just saw him coming from that direction.”

“So you didn’t actually see him come out of our house?”

“Oh, Wesley,” my mother said in a sobbed half-plea, half-command. “Don’t. You’ve heard enough. No more.”

My father stood stiffly and limped toward the window. His bad leg always bothered him most when he first got up. “And you say this was around three o’clock?”

He had long since stopped being my father. He was now my interrogator, my cross-examiner. The sheriff. My uncle’s brother.

“I think that’s what time it was.”

“Think, David. Think carefully. When did you last notice the time? Work from there.”

“At Ben’s. He had to watch his little brother and couldn’t go until his mom came back. She was supposed to be back at two o’clock, but she was late. So maybe it was a little before three.”

“Did anyone else see Frank? Charley or Ben?”

“No. They didn’t wait for me.”

My father looked at my mother. “And you got home when—at five?”

She got up from the bed and put on her robe. “I told you that before. I came right home at five.”

My father muttered softly to himself. “He could have been looking in on her. Checking on a patient. Doctors look in on their patients.... She was fine when he left her.... Fine. Used the back door because the front was usually locked. . . .”

My mother tried to interrupt him. “Wesley.”

But my father’s reverie continued. “On foot? Truck wasn’t working. Truck was parked down the street at another patient’s house. Gloria dropped him off.”

“Stop, Wesley.”

My father gently rapped his knuckles on the window. He stood like that for a long time, tapping the glass and staring out at the night.

My mother rested her hand on my shoulder, and I took advantage of that kindness to ask, “Is this bad?” I still couldn’t reveal what I knew about Uncle Frank, but again I wanted my parents to let me in. I wanted to know that what I was doing was right and that I wasn’t simply ratting on my uncle. But my mother didn’t answer me. She patted my shoulder reassuringly, and it was my father who finally said, “Bad enough.”

I pushed a little harder. “Does this mean—”

My father cut me off. “Does anyone else know? Are you sure no one else saw him? Did you tell anyone else?”

“I didn’t tell anyone, but. . . .”

“But what, David?”

“Maybe Len saw him.”

My father took a backward step as if he were trying to avoid a punch. “Len?”

I nodded.

“Oh, God. God
damn.
Len saw Frank.”

“Maybe. . . .”

My mother asked me, “What makes you think Len saw, David? ”

“He said ... I don’t know. He was acting funny. I just think he might have.”

“That tears it,” said my father. “If Len saw Frank. . . .”

“It doesn’t change anything,” my mother said. “Not a thing.”

“Oh really? Maybe. If Len knows, he’ll keep his mouth shut if I ask him. Or if Dad asks him. But he’ll know. There he’ll be, day after day. With that look. I’m not going to live with that look.”

My mother turned on the lamp beside the bed. In its sudden brightness the first thing I saw was my father’s bad knee. He was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt, and his knee looked inflamed, swollen, scarred, and misshapen, as if his kneecap had been put back in the wrong spot. I saw my father limping every day but I seldom saw the reason. I realized the pain he must have been in constantly, and that pain seemed strangely to connect with the anguish he felt over his brother.

As if he were suddenly self-conscious in the light, my father put on his trousers.

“One more thing, David,” my father said as he buckled his belt, the only bit of western regalia he wore—a hand-tooled ranger belt with a silver buckle and keeper. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you can go back to bed. Now
you
can get some sleep.” In his voice I thought I heard both jealousy and resentment.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep well either. Half-asleep and half-awake, I lay in bed and thought about Indians. In my daily life in Montana I saw Indians every day. There were Indian children in school, their mothers in the grocery store, their fathers at the filling station. Objects of the most patronizing and debilitating prejudice, the Indians in and around our community were nonetheless a largely passive and benign presence. Even the few who were not—Roy Single Feather, for example, who seemed intent on single-handedly perpetuating the stereotype of the drunken Indian and who, when drunk, walked down the middle of Main Street lecturing passersby, cars, and store windows on the necessity of giving one’s life over to Jesus Christ—were regarded as more comedic or pathetic than dangerous.

But that night Marie’s death and too many cowboy and Indian movies combined to bring me a strange half-dreaming, half-waking vision....

To the east of Bentrock was a grassy butte called Circle Hill, the highest elevation around. It was treeless, easy to climb, and its summit provided a perfect view of town. That night I imagined all the Indians of our region, from town, ranches, or reservation, gathered on top of Circle Hill to do something about Marie’s death. But in my vision, the Indians were not lined up in battle formation as they always were in the movies, that is, mounted on war ponies, streaked with war paint, bristling with feathers, and brandishing bows and arrows, lances, and tomahawks. Instead, just as I did in my daily life I saw them dressed in their jeans and cowboy boots, their cotton print dresses, or their flannel shirts. Instead of shouting war cries to the sky they were simply milling about, talking low, mourning Marie. Would they ever come down from Circle Hill, rampage the streets of Bentrock, looking for her killer, taking revenge wherever they could find it? My vision didn’t extend that far, and finally I fell completely asleep, still watching Ollie Young Bear and Donna Whitman and George Crow Feather and Simon Many Snows and Verna Bull and Thomas Pelletier and Doris Looks Away and Sidney Bordeaux and Iris Trimble all walking the top of Circle Hill.