Benediction (12 page)

Come out here, she said.

In the kitchen she removed dirty dishes from the table and put them into the sink
which was already full of dirty dishes, and swiped at the table with a washrag. Sit
down, she said. Don’t be so polite. You don’t have to wait for me.

He sat down. She dropped the washrag in the sink and sat across from him and lit a
cigarette. He looked at her and watched her smoke. Then he removed the wallet from
his back pocket and took out all the bills and stacked them on the table. He had five
hundred dollars to give her. She stared at him.

What’s that? she said.

For you, he said.

How come? Why are you doing this? I don’t even understand why you’re here.

I told you. I want to help you.

You’re giving me this money.

Yes. That’s what I come for.

You don’t want nothing in return.

He shook his head.

She pushed the hair away from her face. I can still do things, she said. We could
go in the back bedroom. I don’t have no disease or
nothing. She put out the cigarette in the ashtray on the table. I don’t look like
much but I could still give you a good time. You’d get your money’s worth.

I’m not doubting that, Dad said. But that’s not what I’m here for.

Are you a homo? she said. I wondered after that other time, when I was naked, when
I still looked okay.

What are you talking about?

Don’t you like women?

Of course I like women. I’m married. I’m still in love with my wife.

That don’t have to stop you, she said. If you’re not queer, are you just stupid?

Well, Dad said, I might be that.

She smiled for the first time and he saw she was missing a tooth. Jesus, I don’t know
about any of this, she said.

How much do you pay for this place? Dad said.

Why?

I’d like to know.

Four hundred dollars.

They pay the utilities?

He does. The old son of a bitch that owns the place.

Dad took out his checkbook. Who do you pay it to? What’s his name?

She told him. He wrote the check in the owner’s name and put it beside the cash. She
watched him suspiciously. He wrote the owner’s name in a little notebook. Then he
told her what he was going to do. There would be a rent check every month and something
extra for them to live on, and she could count on it, he would do these things without
fail.

I still don’t understand why you’re doing this.

I told you.

They talked some more and he learned that she was working at night. The woman across
the hall checked on the children after she got them to bed, after she left the apartment
to start her shift. That isn’t good, he said.

What else do you expect me to do?

You won’t have to do that anymore.

He stood up and looked around the little kitchen and looked once more at her and went
out past the two kids and walked out of the old house, and in the months following
he sent her the two checks at the beginning of each month, and by the end of the year
he decided to make a down payment on a little two-bedroom house in Arvada on the west
side of Denver. After that he sent the house payment to the bank that held the mortgage,
and she and the two children settled down in the new place. She got a daytime job
and paid for regular child care. So things were looking up. She was thin again and
her hair was cut nicely. He visited her once during that time but there was little
now to talk about.

Two years later there was a letter, written on yellow tablet paper. I got married,
I’m writing to tell you. He seems all right to me he’s sixteen years older but that
don’t matter. I don’t care about that now. Don’t send the money for the house no more
he wouldn’t understand. He don’t want somebody else’s help. And don’t contact me again.
We’re on our own now. Forget about me now. You done enough. I thank you for that,
the last part of it.

I
N THE NIGHT
he lay awake next to Mary in the downstairs bedroom unable to sleep, remembering
everything, taking all of his years into account. He decided he wanted to see the
nearby physical world once more. He could let go of it if he saw these familiar places
again.

They drove out on the Saturday morning in his good car, Lorraine behind the wheel,
Dad in the passenger seat and Mary in the back. There was a robe over him and he was
wearing his cap.

Now take it slow, he said. There’s no rush about this.

A bright hot windless July day, and they put the car windows down. They began by driving
past Berta May’s yellow house and at the south end of the street where it met the
highway they turned a block east and went down Date Street past the grade school and
the playgrounds and the practice field and then up Cedar past the Methodist church
and across to Birch where the banker lived and where the Community Church was located
and then up Ash past the old white frame hotel that was only a broken-down rooming
house now with a wide sagging porch and on past the Presbyterian church and the Catholic
church and over to Main Street. They drove the length of Main without stopping, from
the highway north to the juncture where you had to turn east or west. Which way now,
Daddy? Lorraine said.

Go over here to the east, he said. I want to look at these streets too.

They went over a block and then south on Albany and over to Boston and Chicago where
Rudy lived and onto Detroit where Bob’s house was and then onto the state highway
and back to U.S. 34.

You’re going too fast, Dad said.

I can’t go slow on the highway.

Let them go around. It don’t matter.

Where to now?

Back up Main.

They went up the street again past the little houses that were built at the south
end and the old water tower on its tall metal riveted legs and past the post office
and then the three blocks of businesses.

Let’s go back in the alley here, Dad said.

She turned slowly into the dark alley behind the stores. The mismatched backs of the
buildings, the jumble of various things, and only a few cars and pickups parked along
the way in the potholed gravel.

Stop here, please, Dad said.

She parked the car and they sat in the alley behind the hardware store. He looked
at it all, the old brick wall with white flaking paint and the rusted Dumpster and
the telephone pole black with creosote, the old rear entrances of the businesses on
either side.

He shook his head. I should of painted that back wall again.

It looks about the same as always to me, Lorraine said.

That’s what I mean.

Wooden pallets were stacked on one another, and there was the scarred wooden door
with the window in it that peered out into the alley.

How many times I went in and out that door. Wasn’t that the way, Mary?

How many times do you think, honey?

Fifty-five years times six days a week times fifty-two, he said.

What’s that come to?

It comes to a lifetime.

That’s right. It amounts to a man’s lifetime, Dad said. All right. We’ve been here
long enough. Drive us around front now, please.

Lorraine started the car and they came out on Main Street. Should we stop?

Yes, pull in here at the store.

She parked at the curb in the middle of the block. The store was two old brick buildings
side by side with high false fronts. Dad sat looking at the plate-glass display windows
with the signs touting table saws and generators. The wide front doors propped open
on the hot Saturday morning. The new lawn mowers and garden tillers wheeled out on
the sidewalk with chains run through them to keep anybody from taking off with them.

A woman came walking toward them, she stopped to peer in through the window, cupping
her hands beside her face to block the glare. She glanced up the street and looked
inside again and went on.

What did she want? Dad said. We would of had it for her.

She’s got to make up her mind, Mary said. She wants to take her time.

Let her come back then, he said.

From where they were sitting they could see Bob inside behind the front counter waiting
on some man. The man paid, they watched him remove his wallet and put money out and
Bob take it and ring the sale and make change and tear off the receipt. Then he ducked
out of sight behind the counter and he reappeared with a brown paper sack in his hand
and put the purchase—something silver, not shiny, a pipe wrench maybe—in the sack,
slipping the receipt in with it, speaking to the man, thanking him, nodding his head,
then something more, and the man saying something in return, and then the man swung
around and came out through the open doors onto the sidewalk with the paper sack in
his hand, coming directly toward them in the car, so near that they could see the
buttons on his summer shirt, before he turned and went up the block in the bright
sun.

Who was that, Daddy?

I can’t think of his name. But I know him. I’ll think of it, he said. His voice sounded
odd and then suddenly he began to weep.

Daddy, what is it?

He covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking. Mary leaned forward and
put her arms around him.

Dear, it’s all right. What’s wrong? What are you thinking? What happened?

He shook his head. He went on weeping as they sat in the car in front of the hardware
store on the hot Saturday morning, with people going by on the sidewalk. Lorraine
watched her father and looked forward toward the storefront and Mary kept her arms
around him and rested her head against the side of his head. After a while he stopped
and wiped his face.

Oh, Lord, he said. Well, we can go on now, if you want. I’m sorry.

Are you all right, honey?

Yeah. I’m going to be.

Where to now, Daddy? Should we go home?

No. Out in the country. Out south. I want to show you something. I was thinking about
it last night.

They backed out into Main Street and went around the block and back to the highway,
past the Chute Bar and Grill and the grocery store, and turned south on the blacktop.
There was wheat stubble shining in the sun and waist-high rows of corn, very green,
and then pastures with black cattle scattered out in the native grass and sagebrush
and soapweed, and presently Dad said, Slow down. Turn here, please.

Lorraine steered them onto the unpaved road. They could hear the gravel kicking up
under the car. There were barrow ditches on both sides and above them the long run
of telephone poles and the four-strand barbed-wire fences.

Careful, Dad said. You don’t want to go too fast.

She slowed down and they came to an old place set back off the road behind a front
pasture. The road leading back to the house was closed off by a padlocked gate. Below
were outbuildings and a horse barn and loafing shed and some stunted cedar trees.
Everything looked to be in good repair but it didn’t seem as if anyone were living
in the house.

Stop here a minute, Dad said.

Lorraine shut off the engine and they looked out across the hot pasture at the old
paintless house.

This here is where those old brothers lived, Dad said. The ones that had that high
school girl come out and live with them. She was pregnant, then she had the baby and
went off to college, and after that the one old brother got killed by a Angus bull
in the corral back there with his brother right there seeing it all and not being
able to do a goddamn thing to stop it. They’re both dead now.

I didn’t know this was their place, Mary said.

I knew them a little. They traded at the store. After the one brother got killed the
other one went out with a woman in town and he and her stayed together till he died.
I believe she’s still in Holt. A nice woman, I understand.

I’ve known all that, Lorraine said. But I never heard what became of the girl and
the baby she had.

They’re up in the mountains someplace. The baby’s grown up by now, of course. The
neighbors look after the ranch.

Nobody lives here?

No. And she won’t sell it or let anybody else operate it.

But what are we doing here, Daddy?

I just wanted to look at this place one last time. For sentimental reasons, I suppose.
We can go on now. I’ll show you where to.

They went farther east on the county road and then he said, Turn in here, if you would.

Right here?

Yeah.

It’s not even a road.

It was no more than two tire trails in the sandy ground going out through pasture
grass. After half a mile or so, the track began to rise and twist up onto a sandhill.

Daddy, I don’t know if we should try this.

We’ll make it. Just don’t stop in this sand, you’ll get us stuck. Somebody’ll have
to walk out of here and get help.

They drove on, the car bucking and rocking, the grass sweeping underneath, making
a whispering noise. Once they got up on top where it was flat, Dad said, All right,
we can stop now. This is it.

He opened the door and climbed out with his cane and Mary and
Lorraine got out, holding on to him, and the three of them walked away from the car
and stood on the windy hill. There were more hills to the east and south, the town
far distant to the north, with the grain elevators white above the green of the mass
of trees, and elsewhere all the flat open space.

I wanted to tell you what I decided, Dad said. What I was thinking about. I’m going
to ask you to bury something up here.

Bury what, honey?

It doesn’t matter what it is. My cap or something. An old pair of my shoes. These
eyeglasses here in my pocket if you want.

Why this place here? We’ve never come up here before.

I have. You can see this whole country from this place. I brought you both up here
today to look with me.

All right, honey, we can bring something up here. I don’t have any idea what it’ll
be.

They stood taking it all in, the wind blowing steadily, but it was still hot at noon.