Montana 1948 (13 page)

When my mother came home from work, she took one look at my father and asked, “Wes, what's wrong?”

He pointed to the basement door. “Frank's down there.”

Both my mother and I stared at him, waiting for him to go on.

My father took off his hat and sailed it hard against the refrigerator. “He's in the
basement.
Goddamn it! Don't you get it—I've arrested him. He's down there now.”

He stared at us as if there was something wrong with us for being more mystified than ever. Then he turned around, and instead of explaining to us he addressed the rain. “He didn't want to go to jail. Not here in town.”

“Frank's in the
basement?”
my mother asked.

My father turned back to us but didn't speak. He walked over and picked up his hat. He looked it over and began to reshape it, denting it just so with the heel of his hand, pinching the crown, restoring the brim's roll with a loving brush-and-sweep. He dropped his hat in the center of the table and said solemnly to me, “My brother—your uncle—has run afoul of the law. I had to arrest him. You understand that, don't you? That I had no choice?”

He looked close to tears. “I understand,” I said.

My mother had her purse open and was looking frantically through it as though she could find among its contents the solution to this problem. Without looking up from her search, she asked, “Where in the basement?”

“In the laundry room. I've locked that door.” He held up the key for proof.

Our basement was unfinished, but the laundry room and its adjoining root cellar were closed off from the rest of the basement by a heavy wooden door (the door used to be in a rural schoolhouse; my father rescued it when the school was going to be torn down). The room where Uncle Frank was locked had a wringer washer, an old galvanized sink, the shower where I had once seen Marie naked, a toilet, and a couple of old dressers for storing blankets and winter clothes. The root cellar had wooden slats over a dirt floor, and shelves stacked deep with jars of home-canned pickles, tomatoes, rutabagas, applesauce, and plum and cherry jam. In another section of the laundry room was our ancient furnace, a huge,
silver-bellied monster sprouting ductwork like an octopus's tentacles.

“In the basement?” repeated my mother.

“I wheeled the roll-away in there. He can sleep on that. I'll take him something to eat after we've had our supper.”

“You've turned my laundry room into a
jail!”

“Look,” said my father, “Frank said he'd come with me without a fuss. But he'd like to keep this quiet. He didn't want to be locked up in the jail. I said I'd respect that, and he's going to cooperate. Cooperate—hell, he's acting as if this is all some kind of joke.”

“Who knows he's here? Have you talked to Mel?” She was referring to Mel Paddock, the Mercer County state attorney. If my uncle were formally charged with a crime, it would be up to Mr. Paddock to bring those charges on behalf of the state. Mr. Paddock and my father were good friends; during every election they pooled their resources and campaigned together for their respective offices.

“No one knows about this but the people in this house. I talked around it with Mel, but I didn't name any names. First I'm going over to tell Gloria.” He looked at his watch. “I should go over there now. I figure she has a right to know—”

“—that you have her husband locked up in our basement.” My mother groped for a chair as if she were blind. She sat down heavily and let her head rest on the heel of her hand.

“I'm not saying this is the best—”

My mother stopped him with her question. “How long?”

“I'm not sure,” my father replied. “I'm going to call Helena in the morning. Talk to the attorney general's office and see if we can't get him arraigned in another county. Or maybe I'll check with Mel, see if we can do it quickly, get bond set—”

Again my mother interrupted him. “What are you going to tell Gloria?”

“Maybe that Frank's in some trouble. . . .”

“Tell her the truth. She's going to hear it anyway. Don't lie to her.”

He nodded gravely but made no move to leave the kitchen.

“Go
now,
Wesley,” urged my mother. “She has a right to know where her husband is.”

My father took out his handkerchief and blew his nose—had he been crying quietly and I hadn't noticed? He put on his hat and went out the back door.

After a moment he was back, calling me outside. “David, could I see you out here?”

I went out immediately, thinking that now my father was going to tell me, man to man, what Uncle Frank's offense was.

The rain had almost stopped, and my father was waiting for me along the west side of the house. He stood back under the eaves and seemed to be examining the house's wood.

“Look here, David.” He pointed to a section of siding. I looked but couldn't see anything.

“What? ”

“The paint. See how it's blistered and peeling?” With his
fingernail he flicked a small paint chip off the house. “It flakes right off.”

I didn't understand—was there something I was supposed to have done?

“We're going to have to paint the house,” he said. “But before we do, we're going to have to scrape it and sand it right down to bare wood. Then prime it good before we paint it. And we might have to put two coats on.” He picked off another paint chip. “It's going to be hard work. Think you're up to it?”

“I think so.”

He looked closely at me as if he were inspecting me for signs of peeling, chipping, or flaking. I must have passed inspection, because he clapped me on the shoulder and said, “I think so too. As soon as we get this business with your uncle straightened out, you and I are going to tackle this job.” Was this another of his promises—like a trip to Yellowstone—to make me feel better? Was this the best he could do?

Then, as if it really were houses and paint that he wanted to talk about, he turned back to the wall. “Though if it was up to me, I'd probably just let it go. Let it go right down to bare wood. If I had my way, I'd let every house in town go. Let the sun bake ‘em and the north wind freeze ‘em until there isn't a house in town with a spot of paint on it. You'd see this town from a distance and it would look like nothing but fire-wood and gray stone. And maybe you'd keep right on moving because it looked like nothing was living here. Paint. Fresh paint. That's how you find life and civilization. Women come
and they want fresh paint.” He looked up at the eaves and gutters, judging perhaps how tall a ladder we'd need. Then he rapped sharply on the wall, three quick knocks to warn it that Wesley Hayden and his son were coming with scrapers, sandpaper, paintbrushes, and white paint, paint whiter than any bones bleaching out there on the Montana prairie.

“One more thing, David.”

“Yes.”

“If there's any trouble and I'm not here, you run for Len. Understand? Get Len.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Any kind. You'll know.”

“Len's drinking again.”

“You just get him. Drunk or sober. Understand?”

“Yes.”

My father held out his hand to test if the rain was still falling. It came back dry. “No putting it off. I'll go talk to Gloria. Remember what I said.”

“Wait,” I said. “Does Len know?”

“He knows.”

At about nine o'clock that night my grandparents came to our house. My father, mother, and I had been sitting in the living room, paging through the S
aturday Evening Post
or the
Mercer County Gazette,
listening to the radio, trying not to think about the fact that a relative was being held captive in our basement.
When I think now of how calm we all looked, how natural and domestic this scene was, I find it more disturbing than if we had been crawling around on our hands and knees, howling like wild dogs. When the knock came on the front door, all three of us jumped.

“David,” said my mother, “see who's here, please.”

I opened the door and saw my grandparents dressed as though they had just come from church. My grandfather wore a double-breasted brown suit, white shirt, and tie. My grandmother's dress was such a pale yellow that I noticed how deeply tanned she was from working long hours in her garden. She said hello to me, but my grandfather pushed right past me.

My father smiled widely when he saw his parents. “Well, look who's here. This is a nice surprise—”

Grandfather looked swiftly and suspiciously around the room. “Where's Frank?”

My father creased his newspaper and set it gently down on the table. “Gloria told you.”

Grandfather took another step forward. “Where is he? Where have you got him? I want to see him.”

My father simply shook his head. “I don't think that would be a good idea. Not at this point.”

Meekly my grandmother said, “Gloria was concerned. She wanted us to make certain Frankie's all right.”

The muscles of my father's jaw bounced rhythmically. “He's all right. I told Gloria that.”

Without my having noticed her movement, my mother had come around behind me. She rested her hands on my shoulders.

“Bring him out here,” Grandfather demanded. “Now. Right goddamn now.”

My mother's voice rose and cracked as she asked, “Wouldn't you like to sit down? I have some coffee. . . .”

Grandmother smiled sympathetically at my mother. She nodded toward her husband. “He gets so upset.”

“Wesley,” repeated Grandfather. “Get your ass in gear and get your brother out here now.”

I suddenly felt sorry for my father—not as he stood before me at that moment, but as a boy. What must it have been like to have a father capable of speaking to you like that?

“This isn't about family,” my father said. “This is a legal matter.”

“Bull
shit.
Then why have you got him locked up here and not over at the jail? This is your brother here. My
son!”

I looked at my grandmother. Didn't she want to say that Frank was her son too?

My father replied, “I wanted to save Frank some embarrassment. I don't know how long that's going to be possible.”

My grandfather began to dig furiously through his coat pockets, and I suddenly remembered the incident in Minneapolis when he pulled a gun on a stranger. Why was my father just standing there, his hands hanging defenselessly at his sides? Didn't he know that his father was going for a weapon?

“Dad!” I said.

My father turned to look at me. My mother squeezed my shoulders hard, and my grandmother pleaded, “Julian, the boy.”

My grandfather was the only one who wasn't staring at me. He pulled out a cigar and ripped off the cellophane.

My mother whispered sharply in my ear, “Go on upstairs, David. Right away.” She pushed me away from her.

I was glad to get away, and I ran upstairs. But I also wanted to hear how this confrontation would play out, so I hurried to the spare bedroom, the one right over the living room. In that room was a hot-air register in the floor that, when opened, let you hear what was being said in the room below. I crouched down by the register, slowly eased open the metal flap so it wouldn't rattle or squeak, and laid my ear against the grate.

“Sit down, Dad,” my father was saying. “Please. Let's all sit down and talk about this calmly and reasonably. Please.”

They must have agreed, because my father next said, “That's better. There. Gail, why don't you get us some of that coffee. And get Dad an ashtray. We don't want him to have to put his ashes in his pants cuff.”

I could tell my father was trying desperately to put everyone in as good a mood as possible. His voice had risen just as it did when he tried to tell a joke. (He was terrible at it—he'd get the parts out of sequence and often mangle the punch line.) My grandfather was grumbling—it sounds, I know, like a trite thing to say about an older man, but in my grandfather's case it was literally true. When he wasn't talking he continued to
make noise, a sound like a combination of throat-clearing and humming, as though he was keeping himself ready to talk, keeping the apparatus oiled and ready to go.

“Now,” said my father. “Do you want to hear my side of it?”

That struck me as an odd phrase. I hadn't thought of my father as being against his brother, not in any personal way. I preferred to think of it as though the law had taken a curve in its course, and as a result these two brothers had ended up on opposite sides of the road.