Let Him Go: A Novel

  Well hell, I might as well come out with it, Adeline says, clapping her hand against her thigh. I might be adding to the problem. I bought a bottle of whiskey and took it in to your husband.

  Margaret finally lifts her trembling chin from her palm. Well, you’re the nurse.

  And I poured him a glass. Then I put the cap back on and put the bottle away. But when you pack him up to go, be sure to check in the drawer of the little cabinet next to the bed.

  You’re the nurse, Margaret says again. You wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t think it would do him some good.

  Hell, I don’t think it does anybody any good. But I suppose I thought it wouldn’t do him any great harm. Unless I misjudged the man, I’m guessing he knows how to keep it under control. Like my Homer in there. Who’s in and out of his bottle all day long. But he’s never more than a little drunk. Of course he’s never more than a little sober, either.

  Well, it got away from George for a while. He scared himself bad enough that he swore off it altogether.

  Was this when you lost your son?

  Before. George handled James’s death the way he’d handle a sickness. Wrapped up tight inside himself and waited for the misery to pass. Margaret pauses and clears her throat. No, his drinking got out of hand a few years earlier. And you’re right: he was like your husband. A little drunk twenty-four hours a day. He was sheriff then, and I said to him, What do you suppose happens when someone smells whiskey on your breath? Don’t you imagine that’s one less vote? And he’d say what he always said about elections: They’re free to vote for who they like. God, getting that man to court a vote was like pulling hens’ teeth. So he kept drinking. I had the feeling he was trying to shut something off that wouldn’t stop any other way, some memory or feeling. Or maybe something he saw on the job. Whatever it was—if there even was an it—he wouldn’t talk to me about it. And then he up and quit drinking. I didn’t notice right away, which I suppose was a good sign. When I finally said something to him on the subject, he said, Oh, I quit that a couple months back. Just like he didn’t tell me he started up again.

  The best I can get out of Homer, says Adeline, is that he likes the taste.

  Which I have trouble believing.

  Margaret rises and walks to the porch railing, grips it tight, then pushes and pulls herself back and forth a few times. But I could never get him to understand what it was about Jimmy and me, either. George said to me, You have to let him go someday. What does it matter whether it’s now or a few years from now? That’s what we raise them for, to go. And I couldn’t argue with him. I knew he was right. I knew. And the knowing didn’t make a damn bit of difference.

  It’s not the same, says Adeline, with women and men. That’s what she says, but in her voice is more politeness than conviction.

  Thank you, says Margaret. Thank you for that.

  Though I have to say, Adeline continues, I’m with your husband on this one. The letting-go business. Of course, I never had a child taken from me before I was ready to say good-bye. Hell, I worry they’re going to come back. And stay.

  The day Lorna took Jimmy away I was scurrying around the house. Trying to find all his toys and things to pack up. I suppose someone might have believed I was eager for him to go. But keeping busy is my way when I can’t. . . when it’s . . .

  Am I remembering right? Adeline asks. You had twins? One of each? How about your daughter? What’s her situation?

  Living in Minneapolis. Working for a company that provides some kind of financial service for farmers, though as near as George and I can tell, nobody in the company ever sets foot on a farm. Janie’s given up on us ever understanding what she does for a living. But that’s not what you’re asking, is it? No, she doesn’t have a husband. Or kids.

  Not that one child can ever replace another.

  Not that they ever can . . . but the ways they resemble each other . . . Did you ever notice, I’m sure you did, how different it feels to pick up and hold different children? Apart from their size, I mean? There wasn’t more than an ounce or two’s difference in the twins’ weight when they were born, and they stayed close until they were nine or ten. But when I picked up James, it was like his weight was distributed differently or something. He’d come up so easily and then arrange himself just right in your arms. I could have hauled him around all day. But Janie—my God. It was like she found a way to turn heavier as soon as you tried to lift her. And she’d squirm and buck in your arms. Then, when Jimmy was born, one of the first things I noticed was how effortlessly he came up into my arms. Like feathers. Like his father . . .

  Margaret pivots sharply back to the street. And your children? she asks. Six of them, did you say? She looks up and down the street as if Adeline’s children could emerge from the warm haze of this autumn night. But none live here, you said?

  Missoula’s the closest. And in his case, that’s plenty close enough.

  The women fall silent again. But the crickets keep on chirping a tune as if they were waiting for the singers to resume. Then Margaret turns to face her friend again, though she keeps her hold on the porch rail. Before long Margaret speaks, and as she does the true source of her voice’s tremolo seems finally revealed, the quaver a result of holding too tightly to these words and for too long a time.

  Oh hell, she says, I might as well get this out. George has got it in his head I was unfaithful to him.

  There are too many questions Adeline could ask, but probably none would be the right one, so she says nothing and waits for Margaret to continue.

  This was—my God, closing in on thirty years ago. We were living on the ranch, and the twins weren’t much older than Jimmy is now. George was in his first term and one night he saw something—or thought he saw something—that gave him a notion he’s carried with him ever since.

  We had a little creek running through our place. Alphabet Creek, we called it, and it watered our stock, and the neighbors’ too, specifically the Hildebrands’. They had a son, Robert, and Robert and I practically grew up together. Our mothers bathed us in the same galvanized tub, and when it was time to start school the two of us trekked off to Winship School, a one-room country school, first grade through eighth, about a mile from our ranch. During the winter we’d walk to and from school by following a fence-line, and when I say following I mean there were a few blizzards when one of us had to keep a hand on the wire every step of the way. High school, we saddled up and rode horseback to Dalton—the cowboy and the cowgirl, some of the town boys called us.

  Anyway, the year I’m talking about, we had a summer about as hot and parched as any that region ever knew. Day after day of bright blue skies and the sun beating down on us like a hammer. The earth got so damn dry it cracked like a dinner plate. But hot as it was, Alphabet Creek was still running, and not far from the house there was a little oxbow, and right there where the creek curled we had water a little deeper, maybe waist-high at its deepest.

  One night I wandered out there late. The twins were sleeping, but I couldn’t, not in that heat. I can handle the cold, but hot weather does me in. Always has. Puts me on edge and wears me out both.

  It was a full moon, or nearly so, and I was out by the creek, the water flashing gold in the moonlight. George used to take turns with his deputy working night shifts. I’d say, You’re the sheriff. You don’t have to work nights. You can order your deputy to do that job. Or let it go. Anyone needing a sheriff at three o’clock in the morning knows how to find you. But he wouldn’t hear of it. Said his deputy had a wife and family too, so it wouldn’t be right to have him working every night.

  There I go, straying from the subject again. But getting old is like climbing up to a great height, and when you look down, all the paths intertwine. You can’t go down one but that sooner or later it’s connected to another.

  So there I am, down by the creek on a moonlit night that’s so damn hot the rocks underfoot still hadn’t cooled down from the day’s sun.

  I couldn’t h
elp myself. I waded into the cool water, and once I was in up to my ankles I knew what I was going to do.

  Soon I was splashing around out there, giddy because I’d finally figured out what to do about the heat. It occurred to me that maybe I should go get the twins and bring them down to the creek too, but if they could sleep, why would I disturb that?

  Anyway, on that sweltering night who should show up down at the creek but Robert? Seems he’d discovered it as a way to beat the heat long before I did.

  Now Robert, he didn’t have the most fortunate of lives. He worked the family ranch, same as George and I did, but his father would not sign the place over to him. And old Mr. Hildebrand held on into his nineties, rotting away in a dark back bedroom, but by God not giving in. And then Robert married a sickly woman, so he had all the ranch duties, plus a wife and a father who needed nursing. I suppose it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that he was down at the creek in the middle of the night—when the hell else would he have a moment for himself?

  So there we both were, Robert and me, and pretty soon we’re whooping it up like the kids we once were. Skinny-dipping, I guess is the name for it. Abruptly Margaret stops her story and looks closely at her friend. Margaret’s waiting, but for what? Encouragement? Understanding? Forgiveness?

  But from Adeline Witt comes only this impassive remark: It’s not for me to say what it was.

  And for another moment, Margaret remains silent, poised between going on and turning back. She goes on, as anyone who has known her for as little as an hour knows she would.

  That’s what it was then. Whatever you’d call it. The two of us naked as when we were babes in the washtub. But I knew it was a grown-up thing to Robert. I could see that. But hell, we were alone out there on private property at two o’clock in the morning. Two people who’d found a little relief from the heat and maybe the drudgery of their lives, too. Going back to easier, younger days.

  Except we weren’t so alone.

  George had been called out that night, a fatal car accident on one of the county roads, and on his way back to the office he decided to stop by the ranch. That was not a usual thing for him. If he was on duty, he was on duty. But the accident was car-train, and there’s nothing more gruesome than that, and it must have shaken him. He knew the young fellow who was killed—Myron Berkshaw. Though it wouldn’t have been like him, maybe George was putting off the worst part of his job: knocking on a door and handing over the hard news that a loved one is dead. Maybe he wanted to look in on his own kids. Or maybe he just wanted a cup of coffee. I never knew, because George never came any closer than that hill road that looked down on the ranch and on Alphabet Creek . . .

  But he never mentioned to me that he saw Robert and me cooling off in the middle of the night. That wasn’t the George Blackledge way. Oh no. He’d figure if I was out there naked in the world with another man it was somehow his own fault. That was George. Still is. Take it all on himself. It was Robert who told me George had seen us. George didn’t say a word for years, and then one day he drove up to the Hildebrands’ place, knocked on the door, and when Robert answered, George grabbed him by the throat and told Robert that if he had designs on me he should come right out and say so instead of sneaking around our place in the middle of the night. Designs! Can you imagine? But that too was George Blackledge. Keep a thing closed up tight inside yourself and let its acid eat away at you. Make yourself miserable with anger and jealousy, but don’t say anything to get the matter out in the open. Robert and I, who as I say had been my friend from childhood, had only one more conversation, and that was so Robert could report to me what my husband had seen, said, and done.

  Then it was up to me to speak to George about what happened that night. Nothing, I told him. Not a damn thing. A couple old friends splashing around on a hot night. Acting foolish. All right, George said. If you say so. And then he walked away. No argument. No accusation. Hell, if I’d asked him to forgive me, he’d have done it in a minute.

  But, Adeline says, I’m guessing you never asked.

  What was I supposed to do—ask him to forgive me for what never happened? For what he imagined?

  For a long moment this question hangs in the warm night air.

  Somewhere in the neighborhood someone is burning leaves. Only where there are lawns are leaves gathered or dispersed or burned by something other than wind and decay, and the smoke from this fire drifts down the street as little more than a haze, the tannic odor as much a part of the season as the sight of trees unburdening themselves.

  Finally Adeline says, You’re asking me about matters that aren’t for me to answer. Then Adeline pushes herself out of her chair and takes the two long steps that bring her alongside her friend. But I don’t suppose, Adeline continues, there’s anything you can say now that will keep him from seeing that sight in his mind. That’s a hard thing for a man.

  Margaret turns once again, leaning over the railing as though she were looking over a precipice. You’re friend enough to me, she says, that I’ll say something to you that I’d never say to another human being: if I never hear again about what’s hard for a man, it’ll be too goddamn soon.

  Though Margaret can’t see this, Adeline nods in agreement.

  32.

  MARGARET LEANS FARTHER OUT FROM THE PORCH. Someone is coming down the walk. And in the same instant she notices a car driving slowly down the street—a blue Ford. Bill Weboy drives a blue Ford! But the man strolling down the sidewalk—is this possible?

  The man stops in front of the Witt home, and the car speeds away. Good evening, ladies, says Bill Weboy. Feels more like July than September, doesn’t it?

  The smoke from his cigar drifts toward the porch and Margaret staggers back as suddenly as if its odor signaled the presence of a poisonous gas. Adeline rises from her chair and stands behind Margaret, ready, it seems, to halt Margaret’s retreat or to prop her up if that becomes necessary.

  Bill Weboy smiles like a man who remembers every joke he’s ever heard. His head of luxuriant hair looks freshly combed. His cheeks and chin glisten as a man’s do when he’s just shaved. His powerful chest makes his white shirt look like a billowing sail, and when he walks forward and places one booted foot on the bottom porch step, he seems as though he could overwhelm these women with nothing but his confidence and his vigor. But when you’ve spent hours inside a hospital’s walls, everyone on the outside can seem preternaturally healthy.

  That’s close enough, says Adeline.

  With an exaggerated motion Bill Weboy removes his boot from the porch step. I tried to pay a call on your husband, Mrs. Blackledge, but when I arrived at the hospital, visiting hours were over.

  If you’d tried to come into his room while I was there, says Margaret, I’d have blocked the door myself.

  By God, it’s getting so a man can’t even shake another’s hand and say no hard feelings.

  For you, sir, I have nothing but feelings hard as granite.

  Bill Weboy laughs, a sound like windswept leaves. Mrs. Blackledge, you can spar with the best of them!

  The front door opens and a short, balding, bandy-legged man steps onto the porch. He’s wearing moccasins, dungarees held up by suspenders, and a flannel shirt.

  Jesus Christ, he says in a soft, high-pitched voice. How come you Weboys keep showing up where you’re not wanted?

  Hello, Homer, says Bill Weboy. How be you? And to answer your question, how the hell are we supposed to know we’re not wanted until we show up?

  In your case, Adeline says, you could just assume.

  Bill Weboy drags deeply on his cigar and then, in a voice that pretends to confidentiality, says to Margaret, One thing about Gladstone. It’s not the most neighborly town.

  But Margaret’s attention is elsewhere. Bill Weboy’s Ford is coming slowly down the street again and staying close to the curb. The car’s pale blue has turned to gray in the darkness.

  Homer Witt sees it too. Who’s that behind the wheel? One of your half-wit nep
hews?

  Homer, I had no idea you kept such close track of the Weboys.

  Or did you think you’d better bring the whole family to help you handle these ladies?

  Give me a minute here, Homer. Bill Weboy exhales cigar smoke toward the night sky. I’m biting my tongue to keep from saying something about the day when I can’t handle two ladies . . . and them grateful to be handled.

  Homer Witt says, By God, and starts toward the porch steps. His wife steps in front of him in a nimble maneuver that could be performed only by someone who has years of practice herding the man without his awareness. She is half a head taller than her husband.

  Adeline says, My husband here is fool enough to think that if he comes down off this porch, the two of you could settle matters fair and square. He doesn’t know he’d be up against your whole goddamn clan in no time. And who knows what they’d bring in the way of knives or hatchets or clubs?

  He’s the one started with the insults—

  But me, I don’t give a damn about what’s fair. Not when it comes to you and yours. Which is why I’m ready to step inside the door and grab the shotgun out of the hall closet and come out here and open up on you and that carload of nephews or whoever the hell you brought with you.

  Bill Weboy raises his hands in mock surrender and takes a step back. Mrs. Witt! You surprise me! And you someone who’s sworn to help the sick and injured!

  You sonofabitch, Homer says, his soft voice rising even higher.

  The Ford has stopped in front of the Witt home. Inside the car three dark heads are turned dumbly in the same direction, as if the porch and its yellow light were what attracted them and not the figures ranged there in a tableau of opposition.

  Bill Weboy says, Good to see you’re as red-hot and ready to scuffle as ever, Homer. Folks have said that heart attack slowed you to a crawl. But I can report, not so, not so at all. Homer is still Homer. He’s just not a fixture at the Elks like he used to be.