Canada

  What I know firsthand about bad things—seriously bad things—was that late in the first week of August my father came home one evening, and though I didn’t see him, I knew something unusual was going on in the house. You become sensitized to such things by the sound of a porch door slapping closed too hard, or the thump of someone’s heavy boot heels hitting the floorboards, or the creak of a bedroom door opening and a voice beginning to speak, then that door quickly closing, leaving only muffled noises audible.

  It was hot and dry and dusty in our house in midsummer, which affected Berner’s allergies. (It was always drafty and cold in winter.) My mother kept the attic fan turned on and liked to sit in the cool bath in the early evening before she cooked dinner, when pastel light shone in through the tiny, square bathroom window. She burned a sandalwood candle on the toilet top and stayed in until the water was cold. My father had been out of the house, supposedly learning about land sales. But when he got home, he went right into the bathroom where our mother was and started talking in a forceful, animated way. The door closed on what he was saying. But I heard him say, “I’ve bumped into some trouble with this . . .” I didn’t hear the rest. I was in my room reading about bees and listening to my radio. I felt the need to perfect my strategy for getting to the State Fair. We had never gone in the four years we’d been there. My mother saw little reason for it, since she didn’t like the rides or the smells, and Berner wasn’t interested.

  My father stayed talking to my mother in the bathroom for a long time. It began to get dark outside, and my sister came out of her room and turned on the lights in the living room, closed the curtains and turned off the attic fan so that the house became still.

  In a little while the bathroom door opened and my father said, “I can worry about all this later. Just not now.” My mother said, “Of course. I guess I don’t blame you.” He came to the door of my room, which was open. He was wearing his black Acme boots and a white shirt with arrow-slit pockets and pearl buttons and his rattlesnake belt. He liked to dress well after being in a uniform most of his life. Learning to sell ranches had persuaded him he needed to look like a rancher even if he didn’t know anything about ranches. He asked what I was doing. I told him I was learning about bees and intended to visit the State Fair, which I’d mentioned already. There would be a 4-H tent there, and boys my age would be demonstrating the fine points of beekeeping and honey harvesting. “Sounds like a large-size undertaking to me,” he said. “You have to be careful you don’t get stung to death. Bees gang up on you is what I’ve heard.” He walked down to my sister’s door and asked her about her activities and talked about her fish. My mother came out of the bathroom, looking serious, and wearing a green cloth bathrobe and a towel wrapped around her wet hair. She went in the kitchen dressed that way and began taking food out of the refrigerator. My father went in the kitchen after her and said, “I’ll get this straightened out.” She said something I didn’t hear because she said it in a whisper. Then my father walked out onto the front porch, where it was dark and cooler. The street lights were on. He sat in the swing, which had a thin, popping chain, and rocked to the sound of the cicadas. I heard him saying some things to himself, which made me know he was worried. (He talked to himself often—they both did—as if some conversation couldn’t be shared. There was more of such talking when things bothered them.) Once, as he sat rhythmically swinging, he laughed out loud. In a little while he walked out to the street and got in his car and drove off—I guessed—to try to get whatever was worrying him straightened out.

  The next day was Sunday. Again, we didn’t attend any church. My father kept a big family bible, which had his name written in it, in his dresser drawer. He was officially a Church of Christ member and had been saved years before in Alabama. My mother professed to be an “ethical agnostic,” in spite of being Jewish. Berner said she believed everything and also nothing, which explained why she was the way she was. I believed nothing at all that I can remember, not even what belief meant, other than birds flew and fish swam—things you could demonstrate. Sunday, however, was still a day set aside. All day long no one spoke much or loudly, particularly in the morning. My father watched the TV news and later baseball, wearing Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, which he didn’t do on weekdays. My mother read a book, worked on her school plans for the fall, and wrote in her journal, which she’d kept from when she was a teenager. She usually took a long walk by herself after breakfast, up Central Avenue and across the river into town, where nothing was going on and the streets were mostly emptied. Afterward she came home and cooked lunch. I’d designated Sunday as my day for practicing chess moves and learning more of the rules, which the boys in the club had informed me were the keys to everything. If you completely internalized the complex rules, you could then play intuitively and with daring, which was how Bobby Fischer played, even when he was only seventeen—not much older than I was.

  Nothing was discussed that Sunday morning about what needed to be “straightened out” the night before and that our parents had spent an hour in the bathroom discussing. I wasn’t aware what time my father got home from wherever he went that night. He was simply there Sunday morning in his Bermudas, watching TV. The telephone rang several times. I answered it twice, but there was no one on the line—which wasn’t that out of the ordinary. Nobody let on anything was peculiar. My mother went on her walk to town. My father watched Meet the Press. He was interested in the election and believed Communists were taking over Africa but that Kennedy would prevent it. Berner and I went out into the hot, sunny yard and repositioned the poles of the badminton net to give ourselves more room beside the house to play. It was a pretty, vacant morning. Hollyhocks were blooming against the side of the garage. There was nothing to do in Great Falls.

  At eleven, the Zion Lutherans, kitty-corner across the street on the side of the park, began clanging their bell as usual and taking in. Cars and pickups arrived as they always did and parked along the curb opposite our house. Families with children walked up to the gray wood building and disappeared inside. I liked watching them from the front porch swing. They were always in good spirits and talked and laughed about subjects that interested them and that I assumed they agreed about. I’d once walked over on a weekday to look in the doors and see whatever there was to see. But the doors were locked and no one was there. The gray clapboard building felt like a store that had gone out of business.

  It was just when the Lutherans’ bell had begun ringing that an old car pulled up in front of our house and stopped. I thought the driver—a man—was one of the Lutherans and would get out and go across to the church. But he just sat in the old, crudely painted red Plymouth and smoked a cigarette as if he was waiting on something or someone to start paying attention to him. The car was from back in the ’40s and was muddied up and dented, and for some reason seemed familiar—though I couldn’t have said why. It had its rear side window broken out and its tires didn’t match and one on the back lacked a hubcap. It had been in more than one accident and looked out of place in front of our house, parked behind our father’s Bel Air, which was shiny and clean.

  After the man had sat inside smoking for a while—Berner and I watched from the side yard by the badminton net holding our rackets—he looked around at our house and suddenly climbed out, which made the driver’s-side door emit a bang, before he slammed it back.

  At almost that same instant my father came out the front door, still in his Bermudas, and went down the concrete walk as if he’d been watching to see if the man would get out. Now that he had, something immediate needed to be done about it.

  We both heard our father say, “Okay, whoa. Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa,” as the man came slowly up the walk. “You don’t need to be showing up here now. This is my home,” he said. “This is going to get settled.” Our father laughed at the end of saying that, though nothing seemed funny.

  The man just stood on the concrete walk with his chin dramatically lowered, and stared at our father. He
didn’t step back when our father approached saying “Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa”; he didn’t offer to shake hands; he didn’t smile as if anything was funny. He was dressed as if he’d come from someplace cold, because he had on heavy maroon woolen trousers and scuffed brown shoes with no socks, and a bright red cardigan over a dirty gray sweatshirt. It was a strange outfit for August.

  When he’d stepped up onto the sidewalk, it was clear things hurt in his legs. He had to navigate himself using his shoulders, and his knees pointed in. He wasn’t a large man—not as tall as our father—but he was heavy, as if his bones were cumbersome and awkward to move. He had a great growth of oily black hair tied in the back to make a long ponytail, and thick black-rimmed glasses. His complexion looked orangish and roughed up with acne whelps, and he had a Band-Aid on his neck. He wore a wispy goatee and might’ve been fifty years old, but possibly was younger. He was a stark presence to be in our front yard, since he gave the impression of being unhappy to be there. As far away as Berner and I were standing, by the badminton net, I could smell an odor on the man—a meaty smell and a medicine smell at the same time. After he left, I smelled it on our father.

  When the man declined to shake hands or to step back, our father put his hand on the man’s shoulder and stepped close to turn him, and they started talking and walking back toward the Plymouth instead of toward our house. But at a certain point the man took a step sideways off the concrete onto the grass—and away from our father’s grip. He looked away—not toward Berner and me—but away from our father in the other direction, as if he didn’t want to look at him or us. Then he spoke—Berner and I both heard this. “This could turn out real bad for everybody, Cap,” he said. “Cap” was what our father had been called in the Air Force. The man moved his eyes around and focused them on my father. He said something else then, under his breath, as if he knew Berner and I were listening and didn’t want us to hear. After he’d spoken, he crossed his arms, leaned back and set one foot out in front of the other in a way I’d never seen anyone do before. It was as if he wanted to see his own words floating away from him.

  Our father began nodding and put both hands in his Bermuda pockets—not saying anything, just nodding. The man began to talk very intently then, and faster. It was muffled, though I could hear the word you spoken emphatically, and the word risk and the word brother. Our father looked down at his rubber sandals and his bare feet and shook his head and said, “No-no-no-no,” as if he was in agreement with what he was hearing, though the words seemed like he wasn’t. Then he said, “That’s not reasonable, I’m sorry,” and “I understand. Well, all right.” Tautness went out of his body at that point, as if he was relieved, or disappointed. Then the man—we later found out his name was Marvin Williams, though he was called “Mouse” and was a Cree Indian—turned away without a concluding word and walked in his painful, shoulder-navigating, knees-in way back to his Plymouth, banged open the door, cranked the motor noisily, and drove off without looking back at our father, leaving him standing on the concrete walk in his shorts and sandals, watching. The Lutherans’ church bell was ringing again—a last call to worship. A man in a light gray suit was closing both front doors. He looked over at our house and waved a hand, but our father didn’t see him.

  Later that morning our mother returned from her walk and cooked blinis—our favorite. During the meal our father didn’t say much. He told a joke about a camel that had three humps and said moo. He said Berner and I should learn how to tell jokes, because it would make people like to have us around. Afterward, he and our mother went in their bedroom and closed the door and stayed a very long time—much longer than they’d stayed in the bathroom the previous night. Before our mother got home from her walk, our father had taken off his sandals and played badminton in the yard—us against his one. He cavorted all around, sweating his upper lip and getting out of breath, trying spiritedly to strike the shuttlecock and laughing and having a wonderful time. It was as if things couldn’t be better, and the Indian’s visit hadn’t been about anything important. Berner asked the man’s name, which was when we found out it was Marvin Williams, and that he was a Cree. He was “a businessman,” our father said. He was “honest but demanding.” At one point in our game, he just stood in the warm grassy yard, hands on his hips, smiling, his face red and sweaty. He took a deep breath and said he thought things would soon be better for us all. We might not necessarily be staying in Great Falls but might be experiencing a move to a more promising town he didn’t name—which shocked and instantly worried me, because the start of school was just weeks away and I had made my plans for chess and raising bees and learning a great number of other things. I was happy with the direction things were going—which in retrospect was crazy, because I had no idea about the direction things were going. It was probably, I came to think, in the hours after the Indian, Williams-Mouse, stood in our yard and threatened to kill our father, and possibly kill all of us if he wasn’t paid (which was what I found out he’d said in his menacing, soft voice), that our father began putting together thoughts of needing to do something extraordinary to save us, which turned out to be thoughts about robbing a bank—about which bank to rob, and when, and how he could enlist our mother so he could lessen the likelihood anyone would find out, therefore keeping them out of jail. Which didn’t happen.

  Chapter 8

  Later, when I knew the whole story, as much as I’d ever know, I found out that the Friday before the Saturday my father talked to my mother when she was in the bathtub, then drove off into the night, the Indians had delivered four butchered Hereford carcasses to Digby at the Great Northern loading dock and had gone away expecting to be paid the next day by our father. Digby had decided that because the stolen beef arrangement worked so seamlessly, he could now take receipt of even more beef, which he would supply to a friend who was the head waiter on another Great Northern train, a concession for which he, Digby, would be well paid. Our father had considered this an excellent development for everyone. But when he went on Saturday night to Digby’s little bungalow in Black Eagle to collect the money—part of which was our father’s for dreaming up the scheme—Digby told him two of the carcasses had arrived in a rancid state (it was summer, and too hot to transport dead meat in an unrefrigerated carpet truck) and weren’t fit to serve to other Indians, much less to dining car passengers luxuriating between Seattle and Chicago. Digby said he wasn’t about to pay our father for meat like that. He’d in fact already had the beeves trucked off and dumped downstream in the Missouri in case anybody—the railroad police, for instance—found him with it, uninspected, without a bill of sale or any explanation for it being in the depot’s cold box.

  This was an unwelcome surprise to our father, who told Digby in no uncertain terms that he ought not have taken delivery if the meat was “off.” But since he had taken it, the meat and its cost ($400) was his—Digby’s—responsibility.

  What our father believed was that Digby, who was a spindly, bug-eyed, little-girlish-voiced character in a bow tie and white jacket, had become frightened of the Indians—whom he already distrusted and who distrusted him—so that his elaborate plan to buy more beef had begun all at once to seem like the bad idea it was. This realization expanded into an even greater fear of being caught and losing his high-paying dining car job. There was other illegal activity, it later came to light, that Digby was embroiled in, for which the Great Falls police would’ve loved to put him in jail. Dining car employees and Pullman porters were known to run strings of girls all along the main line. A girl climbed on in one town, transacted business during the ride, then climbed off the next morning.

  Our father didn’t for an instant believe the meat had arrived spoiled. That had never happened before and he saw no reason it ever should. But when he returned to Digby’s house (after he’d counseled with my mother in her bathtub), to again demand his $400, and ready to pound it out of Digby with his fists (which was not like him, except he was desperate), Digby had already left town
on the Western Star and was on his way to Chicago, where he had another separate life, leaving our father to contend with the Indians.

  Our father was then in the exact predicament he might’ve known he could land in and ought to have taken precautions about. (For example, being present when the meat changed hands would’ve been such a precaution; having an amount of cash in his pocket sufficient to indemnify the sale should something go wrong would’ve been another.) However, all he had in his possession at that moment that could ensure the deal was whatever was left from his monthly Air Force pension, whatever little money our mother had from teaching nine months a year in Fort Shaw, and our Chevrolet. Our parents had nothing set aside for an emergency, which this had become. They had never even had a checking account. They paid for everything with cash.