Montana 1948 (11 page)

My mother released me and put her hand on top of Daisy's. “I could have stayed home from work. I could have looked in on her earlier....”

Daisy urgently placed her other hand on top of my mother's so it looked as though they were playing that baby's game of mounding hands, pulling the bottom one out and placing it on top. “You don't talk like that,” Daisy told my mother. “You took good care of that girl.
Good
care.”

Then Daisy must have seen something in my mother's eyes, because she turned to me and said, “David, are you hungry? You must be hungry. . . . Why don't you go over to our house and help yourself to pie. I've got a fresh blueberry pie on the kitchen table. You go get yourself some before Len eats it all.”

I didn't move. The next time Daisy spoke it was not a suggestion but a command. “Go. And help yourself to ice cream. Have all you like.”

Because Daisy kept the curtains drawn and windows closed to keep the heat of the day out, the McAuley house was dark and stuffy. The house always had a strange smell, as though Daisy had found some vegetable to boil that no one else knew about.

I stood over the pie, wondering how I could make myself eat a slice when I had no appetite.

From another room a voice called out, “Who's there?” It was Len.

I went into the living room, where Len sat in an overstuffed chair, his long legs extended. In the room's dimness Daisy's white lace doilies on the sofa and chairs glowed white, as if they were hoarding all the available light.

On the table beside Len was a glass of whiskey. I recognized its brown color and smelled its smoky-sweet odor in the room. This was a bad sign. At one time Len had been a heavy drinker, given especially to week-long benders when he would plunge so deeply into a drunken gloom that it seemed unlikely he would ever climb out. In Bentrock Len McAuley was so well liked and respected that everyone was relieved when he quit drinking. I felt as bad seeing that glass of whiskey as I had when I'd first heard Marie cough.

He turned his gaze to me. It seemed, to my untrained eye, steady and clear. But it remained on me a little too long before he greeted me.

“David. Quite a commotion over at your place.”

“Marie died.” The words—and the fact they conveyed—popped out so easily they startled me.

Len nodded solemnly. “Yes. I believe I'm aware of that. Yes.”

The room's heavy, dusky air seemed to insist on silence, and speaking was a struggle. “My dad's going out to talk to her family.”

Len continued to nod. “Yes. Your father would do that. Yes.”

I wanted to get away, but I couldn't think of anything to say that would serve as an exit line. And then it was hopeless. Len kicked their old horsehair hassock—the first sudden move he had made—and as it tumbled my way he said, “Sit down, David.” I couldn't refuse.

Len stared at me for a long time, and though his gaze was steady there was something unfocused about it, as if an unseen dust in the room was clouding his vision.

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. . . .”