Let Him Go: A Novel

  Uh-oh, George says, his eyes still closed. If you’re whispering in my ear about the happy old days, that can’t be a good sign. Didn’t you say that was the last thing old Strawberry heard before we put her down?

  Oh, don’t, George. Don’t joke with me. I’m feeling . . . oh, I don’t know what I’m feeling. Regretful. Remorseful. All I’ve brought us to. And the good, good life I took us away from.

  Come on now. He opens his eyes and gives her hand a little shake. Don’t be one of those people who spruces up the past with her imagination.

  Are you saying I’m not remembering that parlor floor right, Mr. Blackledge?

  No, I’ll testify to that memory.

  This conversation takes place during Good Samaritan’s afternoon visiting hours, and the Blackledges fall silent when a jaunty man walks into the ward. He’s wearing a wide-shouldered, double-breasted brown suit flecked with slubs of lighter-colored fabric, two-tone wing tips, and the type of hat favored by the president. He stops at the foot of George Blackledge’s bed and rubs his hands together like a cook who is happily surprised at how the soup has turned out.

  Well, well, he says. Can’t enjoy the day’s favors lying in here, can you?

  The beds on either side of George are unoccupied. The only other patient on the ward is an emaciated elderly man in the bed nearest the door. An occasional moan breaks the rhythm of his wheezing breaths.

  George says nothing but regards the visitor coolly. Margaret, who remains seated at her husband’s bedside, asks, What can we do for you?

  The man removes his hat and begins to bow but then only stiffly dips his head. It’s I who can do for you.

  I who can do for you. The bounce in his step, the barely held-back ebullience—there’s something about this man that suggests he, like Lawrence Wyatt, is not from Gladstone, though he is decades older than the young doctor.

  Unless you can make fingers grow back, says George, I doubt that.

  The man’s smile, which has been constant since he entered the ward, grows even wider. Mr. and Mrs. Blackledge, my apologies. I thought my visit had been announced, but plainly you have no idea who I am.

  Yet you know us, says Margaret.

  Indeed I do. It’s my business to do so. I not only know who you are, I know what your business has been in our county. Furthermore, I have something of yours in my possession.

  What might that be? George asks the question but his exhaustion is such that he hardly seems to care about the answer.

  Sitting on my desk is a .45 caliber automatic that I believe once belonged to you.

  You’re welcome to it, says George. I hope it brings you better luck than it brought me.

  The man draws himself to his full height. You find some humor in this situation?

  George holds up his bandaged hand as if in an obscene gesture. You see me laughing?

  Margaret puts a restraining hand on her husband’s wrist. Just who might you be, sir?

  Franklin Reese, Gladstone County attorney. He extends his hand to Margaret, who doesn’t take it, and while Mr. Reese could reach out his left hand for George to shake, he doesn’t.

  A politician, George says.

  I’ve been elected to office. Yes. You know something about that, I gather.

  Enough to know it’s court business brought you here.

  In a manner of speaking.

  George pushes himself up on his elbows and raises himself to a sitting position. Then say it.

  Mr. Reese drops his hat on the bed near the mound made by George’s feet. Very well. I’m as capable of direct speech as you, Mr. Blackledge. The sheriff and I have conferred. Once you’re released from the hospital, you’re free to go back to your home in Dickinson.

  Dalton.

  I beg your pardon?

  Dalton. We live in Dalton, North Dakota. Not Dickinson.

  Why was I told Dickinson?

  Does this matter? Margaret says, lowering her head and shaking it impatiently. What about Sheriff Munson? We were told to expect a visit from him.

  Franklin Reese says, I’m speaking for both of us.

  And for the court, George says.

  Yes, in a manner of speaking.

  The point you’re trying to make, George says, is that I’m free to go wherever. Dickinson or Dalton. Which is a chickenshit way of saying that the son of a bitch who took a hatchet to my hand can also go wherever he pleases.

  As with all cases, different sides have different stories to tell.

  George shifts in his bed, and Franklin Reese’s hat slides to the floor. The attorney promptly picks it up. And you, George says to the attorney, don’t want to bother sorting them out. Even though it’s your goddamn job to do exactly that.

  Give a man a hat and you increase his confidence and put him at ease. Now he can turn the hat in his hands, adjust its crease or brim, run his fingers around the band. I would suggest, the attorney says, continuing to smile, that you accept what is being offered to you. He widens his smile and addresses Margaret. Accept it and go. He puts on his hat and only then does his smile diminish. No need to thank me.

  Attorney Reese performs his rigid little bow again and walks away. When he passes a nurse in the doorway, he touches the brim of his hat.

  Adeline Witt has been watching the county attorney since he entered the ward, and now she walks out behind him.

  George sinks back into his pillow and closes his eyes. I should have spotted him for a politician right from the get-go. Him and his goddamn smile.

  Politicians and Indian boys, says Margaret. Young Mr. Dragswolf never stopped smiling either.

  A few of those Weboys were smilers too. And the uncle, sure as hell. And now we know why.

  Maybe, Margaret says, folks in this part of the world are just so damn happy to be here they can’t stop smiling.

  George’s eyes remain closed though there is no movement under the lids. Beneath all the hospital’s other odors is a smell both sweet and sulfuric. It’s the odor that accompanies unconsciousness and release from pain. Ether. After a long silence, George says, Maybe.

  And now we’ve had our visit from the sheriff. In a manner of speaking.

  He about wore that out, didn’t he?

  What I can’t figure, she says, is that everywhere we go, people seem in agreement about what no-good troublesome bastards the Weboys are. Yet here it is—excuses made for them. And they’re out there and we’re in here.

  Bastards they may be, but they’re their bastards. He opens his eyes and slowly turns his gaze to Margaret. And this isn’t jail. You can walk out of here anytime you like.

  Don’t, George.

  For that matter, you could have walked out of Jack Nevelsen’s jail. You’re as free now as you’ve ever been.

  I’m right where I want to be. And I’ve been thinking, George. About the life we’ll go back to. I’m so sorry I didn’t give more careful thought to what I wanted—to what I thought I wanted. You’re right, of course. A child running around the house—I don’t have the energy for that. I like my routines. We both do. We’re too old and stuck in our ways to start bending our schedules for a little boy’s life.

  So you’re ready to give up, then, are you? asks George. That’s not like you. That’s not a goddamn bit like the Margaret Blackledge I’ve been trying to keep up with for forty years.

  Well, maybe we were both wrong about who she is, George.

  In reply, George pushes himself up on his elbows once again, a maneuver that he performs with more effort than when Franklin Reese was standing over the bed. He reaches across to his wife and with his bandaged hand paws at and then presses against her breast.

  Margaret doesn’t lift his hand away or shift out of his reach. She doesn’t look around the ward to determine who might be witnessing her husband’s behavior. She leans into his touch, but gently. Neither of them can be sure yet of what his hand can and cannot bear.

  But in its deliberation, George’s gesture has nothing to do with intimacy or desire.
George Blackledge is satisfying a curiosity; he is assaying the world in which he will live.

  Then he falls back on his pillow and shuts his eyes again.

  30.

  WHEN VISITING HOURS ARE OVER, MARGARET Blackledge walks out into the sunlight and the heat that feels more like August than the end of September. How will she fill the hours until she can return to her husband’s side? A meal for which she has no appetite? Aimless wandering of Gladstone’s streets? She turns a slow, indecisive circle.

  And there they are. Looking like mother and daughter on a shopping excursion. Or as though they had a meeting with the minister to discuss the plans for a wedding. Or a funeral. In their Sunday dresses, Blanche and Lorna step out of the building’s shadow where they’ve been waiting.

  They come forward and though you can be certain she doesn’t mean to, Margaret takes a step back.

  Now don’t scamper off, says Blanche.

  You’ve got your nerve. Showing up here.

  Blanche Weboy smiles an unapologetic smile. We wanted to pay a visit to the ward. But your guardian Mrs. Witt advised against it. Advised very strongly, I should say.

  We came to see, Lorna says softly, how Grandpa George is.

  And did she—Margaret jabs her finger in Blanche’s direction—tell you how he came to be in his condition?

  Lorna nods meekly.

  And you can allow yourself to be seen in her company?

  Lorna asks, Will he be all right?

  He doesn’t think so. But yes.

  Blanche unclasps her purse and gropes through its interior.

  Don’t tell me—you’re about to pull a hatchet out of there.

  Blanche only smiles and continues her search. In another moment she pulls out a tissue and waves it daintily in the air. Truce?

  I’d as soon make peace with a rattlesnake.

  Blanche Weboy stops waving the tissue but keeps it poised in the air. Listen to you.

  On the oaks and elms hovering over the hospital, enough leaves remain to dapple these women in the afternoon sun.

  Lorna looks up and down the street as if she’s hoping someone will come along and take her away. But with a single question Margaret jerks her back to this sunny square of sidewalk. Where’s Jimmy?

  Back at the house.

  When do you spend time with him?

  As if this is the purpose she had planned for the tissue all along, Blanche wipes her nose. Still telling people how to run their lives, she says. Some folks never learn.

  Am I supposed to learn from you? You haven’t got a damn thing to teach me, unless it’s how to act like a savage.

  You’re scaring Lorna, Blanche says calmly. She stuffs the Kleenex back in her purse and clasps it. She scowls at Margaret. But you better make peace with me, missus, if you want to see your grandson again.

  Margaret, who had been on the point of walking away, now must stand in place and do nothing while Blanche Weboy says and does what she will. The effort at stillness trembles Margaret.

  And it is Blanche who walks away, taking Lorna with her. But they don’t go far. Blanche stops abruptly and returns. She steps up so close to Margaret there’s barely room for sunlight to come between them. The hell of it is, says Blanche, if we were each on the other’s side of the Badlands, we’d probably do exactly what the other’s doing.

  ...

  George opens his eyes to find Adeline Witt standing over him with her arms crossed and a cheerless expression on her face.

  Before he can speak, she asks, What can I do for you? Force a man to express his desire before he’s ready and you have him at a disadvantage.

  Bring me my pants.

  Now, if I did that, you’d likely walk out of here.

  That’s the idea.

  The doctor isn’t ready to cut you loose.

  Waiting to see if my fingers will grow back, is he?

  She smiles at him, exposing a few gold-backed teeth in the process, but the effort seems to cost her. I heard you try out that line on Mr. Reese. I know your kind, Mr. Blackledge. You’re so damn good at accepting the harsh realities that you use it to bully other folks. But doctor’s orders or no, I might be tempted to bring you your trousers if I thought you’d pull them on and then you and your missus head right back to North Dakota. What say you? Any chance of that?

  Can I tell you a little story, Mrs. Witt?

  Adeline. But fire away.

  This was shortly after I was sworn in as sheriff. I’d been hearing about a young fellow name of Norman Rugda. Now, Norman grew up on a dirt-poor farm in the southeast corner of the county, and maybe because of that, when he moved to Dalton he couldn’t keep his hands off other people’s goods. Never anything we could prove, however. Then one day someone charged into my office shouting that Norman had just stolen his shotgun, stole it from this fellow’s car, and in broad daylight. Just as I was walking out of the office to investigate, I saw Norman drive past in his old truck. Well, I climbed into the squad car and gave chase, as they say. Once Norman knew I was behind him, he took off into the hills west of Dalton. This was a regular high-speed pursuit, my first, and on a steep dirt road I watched Norman almost lose control when his old truck hit a washout at the bottom of the hill. Quick as you please, I did the adding and subtracting: no shotgun was worth my life. Or Norman’s. Especially since Norman was almost certain to return to Dalton within a week at most. Which is exactly what he did, and he came back boasting that he had outrun the sheriff. When I caught wind of that, I grabbed myself a tire iron and walked up behind Norman Rugda in the Roundup Bar, where he was holding forth, and walloped him across the back of his knees. He folded like a broken sunflower stalk. Later, when Norman was serving his sentence in the county jail, he’d call me to his cell periodically so I could witness the changing colors of the bruises on the back of his legs.

  George raises himself in the hospital bed, a maneuver he has now become adept at performing. He holds up his good hand. Now, he says, before you think I’m nothing but another old mossback who can’t stop talking about his buckaroo days, let me get to the point. When I was following Bill Weboy out to the ranch, it felt a little like I was racing after Norman Rugda. But when I did the arithmetic this time, I came up with a different sum. The law be damned and caution go to hell. That was Margaret Blackledge in the car ahead of me. I was ready to drive off the end of the earth if need be.

  Is that the point you were getting to, Mr. Blackledge? Or are you just going the long way around to persuade me to bring you your trousers?

  What I’m saying is, my wife’s alone out there in a world full of Weboys. I’d like to be by her side, whether she wants to head back home or try to visit her grandson again.

  For a long moment Adeline Witt stares down at George Blackledge, who, for all his white-whiskered pallor, his missing fingers, and muscles rusting from age and disuse, still has eyes that burn with a wild, blue desperation.

  The nurse bends over, lifts his bandaged hand, and examines the underside of his arm. The doctor’s concerned about sepsis, she says. Blood poisoning, to you. So no pants for you, Mr. Blackledge. Not for another day or two. Anything else you need?

  In that case, you could fetch me a bottle of whiskey. And pull the cork for me.

  31.

  ON THE NARROW FRONT PORCH THE TWO WOMEN SIT. Coffee cups steam near at hand. The porch light is off and no illumination from the house finds its way out here. Only a streetlamp breaks up the darkness, and its glow is hemmed in by the leaves of the maples and elms that spread out over this city street. The end of September, yet the women’s arms are bare.

  You haven’t had a frost yet? asks Margaret.

  You should ask Homer, says Adeline. Since he had to quit both the filling station and the volunteer fire department, he’s got nothing better to do than keep records of such things. Working nights, I sometimes even lose track of the seasons.

  Crickets. The reason I asked. You don’t generally hear crickets after a frost.

  Adeline
cocks her head. You don’t say. Well, they’re chirping away now, aren’t they.

  The night before we left, says Margaret, we had a hard freeze. I knew it was coming but I didn’t bother covering anything up. We were leaving—well, I knew I was leaving—and I wasn’t sure when I’d be back so the hell with it, I said. Why bother? And you know, it felt damn good. Now I’m not sure if I’ll ever bother covering a tomato plant or my asters or mums again.

  You mean to say you didn’t know he’d follow you? I find that hard to believe.

  When the women shift in their chairs, the wicker under them creaks and harmonizes with the crickets’ song.

  I suppose I knew, Margaret says.

  I’ve been around the man for less than a day and I could have made that prediction.

  Yes, I knew. I knew.

  They drink their coffee. Somewhere on the block a car grumbles along in a low gear. A screen door slams. Those crickets. Summer sounds, out of season.

  Margaret crosses her arms, then brings her hand up to provide a steadying brace for her chin. You saw what we’d packed in the car—I’d loaded up damn near everything in the house. Everything we’d need to live out of the car for months, if need be. And that was the vision I had—George and me on the road, chasing Donnie, Lorna, and Jimmy, traipsing all over the West. We’d have ourselves a real adventure. By the time we caught up to them we’d have earned Jimmy, as if there is such a thing . . . Yes, I figured they’d run and run. What could I have been thinking? People go home. Simple as that. Hard times come or they need a helping hand, they go home. It’s what George and I did after we were married. No, that’s not exactly right. We didn’t go back. We never left. We stayed on the ranch, helping out at first. Then running the outfit when Dad got too old to climb on a horse. By that time the place was all but ours. And then when my mother passed away, it was. Ours, I mean. Title and deed. So why didn’t I figure right with Donnie? We found him the second place we looked, and that first wrong turn wasn’t that far off . . . and now here we are. A hell of an adventure! No, when George bought himself a pint of bourbon before we left town, it wasn’t so he could deal with all those days and weeks on the road. He bought it so he could abide all the stubborn, foolish decisions his wife was making. Making for both of us . . .