As he passed the equipment shed, he made out first the silhouette of Weldon Case’s Stetson and then, very close, the face of Weldon himself, who gazed at him before speaking in a low voice. “You been in the graves, ain’t you?”
“Yes, to look for beads.”
“You ought not to have done that, feller.”
“Oh? But Morsel said—”
“Look up there at the stars.”
“I don’t understand.”
Weldon reached high over his head. “That’s the crow riding the water snake,” he said, and turned back into the dark.
David was frightened. He went to the house and got into bed as quickly as he could, anxious for the alcohol to fade. He pulled the blanket up under his chin, despite the warmth of the night, and watched a moth batting against an image of the moon in the window. When he was nearly asleep, he saw Morsel’s headlights wheel across the ceiling, then turn off. He listened for the car doors, but it was nearly ten minutes before they opened and closed. He rolled close to the wall and pretended to be asleep, while the front door opened quietly. Once the reverberation of the screen-door spring had died down, there was whispering that came into the bedroom. He felt a shadow cross his face as someone peered down at him. Soon the sound of muffled copulation filled the room, stopped for the time it took to raise a window, then resumed. David listened more and more intently, until Ray said, in a clear voice, “Dave, you want some of this?”
David stuck to his feigned sleep until Morsel laughed, got up, and walked out with her clothes under her arm. “Night, Ray. Sweet dreams.”
The door shut and, after a moment, Ray spoke: “What could I do, Dave? She was after my weenie like a chicken after a june bug.” Snorts, and, soon after, snoring.
* * *
Morsel stood in the doorway of the house, taking in the early sun and smoking a cigarette. She wore an old flannel shirt over what looked like a body stocking that revealed a lazily winking camel toe. Her eyes followed her father while he crossed the yard very slowly. “Look,” she said, as David stepped up. “He’s wetting his pants. When he ain’t wetting his pants, he walks pretty fast. It’s just something he enjoys.”
Weldon came up and looked at David, trying to remember him. He said, “This ain’t much of a place to live. My folks moved us out here. We had a nice little ranch at Coal Bank Landing, on the Missouri, but one day it fell in the river. Morsel, I’m uncomfortable.”
“Go inside, Daddy. I’ll get you a change of clothes.”
Once the door had shut behind him, David said, “Why in the world do you let him fly that airplane?”
“It’s all he knows. He flew in the war and dusted crops. He’ll probably kill himself in the damn thing.”
“What’s he do up there?”
“Looks for his cows.”
“I didn’t know he had cows.”
“He don’t. They all got sold years ago. But he’ll look for them long as he’s got fuel.”
Morsel turned back to David on her way inside. “I can’t make heads or tails of your friend Ray,” she said. “He was coming on to me the whole time at the cage fights, then he takes out a picture of his wife and tells me she’s the greatest piece of ass he ever had.”
“Huh. What’d you say to that?”
“I said, Ray, she must’ve had a snappin’ pussy because she’s got a face that would stop a clock. He didn’t like that too much. So I punched him in the shoulder and told him he hadn’t seen nothing yet. What’d you say your name was?”
“I’m David.”
“Well, Dave, Ray says you mean to throw in with us. Is that a fact?”
“I’m sure giving it some thought.”
David was being less than candid. He would have slipped away the day before if he hadn’t felt opportunity headed his way on silver wings.
“You look like a team player to me. I guess that bitch he’s married to will help out on that end. Long as I never have to see her.”
* * *
David had an unhappy conversation with his mother, but at least it was on the phone, so she couldn’t throw stuff.
“The phone is ringing off the hook! Your ranchers are calling constantly, wanting to know when you’ll get there.”
“Ma, I know, but I got tied up. Tell them not to get their panties in a wad. I’ll be there.”
“David!” she screeched. “This is not an answering service!”
“Ma, listen to me. Ma, I got tied up. I’m sparing you the details but relax.”
“How can I relax with the phone going off every ten seconds?”
“Ma, I’m under pressure. Pull the fucking thing out of the wall.”
“Pressure? You’ve never been under pressure in your life!”
He hung up on her. He couldn’t live with her anymore. She needed to take her pacemaker and get a room.
* * *
That week, Morsel was able to get a custodial order in Miles City, based on the danger to the community presented by Weldon and his airplane. Ray had so much trouble muscling Weldon into Morsel’s sedan for the ride to assisted living that big strong David had to pitch in and help Ray tie him up. Weldon tossed off some frightful curses before collapsing in defeat and crying. But the god he called down on them didn’t hold much water anymore, and they made short work of the old fellow.
* * *
At dinner that night, Morsel was a little blue. The trio’s somewhat obscure toasts were to the future. David looked on with a smile; he felt happy and accepted and believed he was going somewhere. His inquiring looks were met by giddy winks from Morsel and Ray. They told him that he was now a “courier,” and Ray unwound one of his bundles of cash. David was going to California.
“Drive the speed limit,” Ray said. “I’m going to get to know the airplane. Take it down to the oil fields. It’s important to know your customers.”
“Do you know how to fly it?” This was an insincere question, since David had learned from the so-called widow about Ray’s repossessed plane.
“How’s thirteen thousand hours sound to you?”
“I’ll keep the home fires burning,” Morsel said, without taking the cigarette out of her mouth.
David had a perfectly good idea of what he was going to California for, but he didn’t ask. He knew the value of preserving his ignorance. If he could keep his status as a simple courier, he was no guiltier than the United States Postal Service. “Your Honor, I had no idea what was in the trunk, and I am prepared to say that under oath or take a lie-detector test, at your discretion,” he rehearsed.
He drove straight through, or nearly so. He stopped briefly in Idaho, Utah, and Nevada to walk among cows. His manner with cattle was so familiar that they didn’t run from him but gathered around in benign expectation. David sighed and jumped back in the car. He declined to pursue this feeling of regret.
It was late when he got into Modesto, and he was tired. He checked into a Super 8 and woke up when the hot light of a California morning shone through the window onto his face. He ate in the lobby and checked out. The directions Ray had given him proved exact: within ten minutes, he was pulling around the house into the side drive and backing into the open garage.
A woman came out of the house in a bathrobe and walked past his window without a word. He popped the trunk and sat quietly as she loaded it, then closed it. She stopped at his window, pulling the bathrobe up close around her throat. She wasn’t hard to look at, but David could see you wouldn’t want to argue with her. “Tell Ray I said be careful. I’ve heard from two IRS guys already.” David said nothing at all.
He was so cautious that the trip back took longer. He stayed overnight at the Garfield again, so as to arrive in daylight, and got up twice during the night to check on the car. In the morning, he skipped eating at the café for fear he might encounter some of his rancher clients. Plus, he knew that Morsel would take care of his empty stomach. He was so close now that he worried about everything, from misreading the gas gauge to flat tires. H
e even imagined the trunk flying open for no reason.
He had imagined a hearty greeting, an enthusiastic homecoming, but the place was silent. A hawk sat on the wire that ran from the house to the bunkhouse, as though it had the place to itself. It flew off reluctantly when David got out of the car. Inside, there were soiled plates on the dining room table. Light from the television flickered without sound from the living room. David walked in and saw the television first—it was on the Shopping Network, a closeup of a hand dangling a gold bracelet. Then he saw Morsel on the floor with the channel changer in her hand. She’d been shot.
David felt an icy calm. Ray must have done this. He checked the car keys in his pocket and walked out of the house, stopping on the porch to survey everything in front of him. Then he went around to the equipment shed. Where the airplane had been parked in its two shallow ruts lay Ray, also shot, a pool of blood extending from his mouth like a speech balloon without words. He’d lost a shoe. The plane was gone.
David felt as if he were trapped between the two bodies, with no safe way back to the car. When he got to it, a man was waiting for him. “I must have overslept. How long have you been here?” He was David’s age, thin and precise in clean khakis and a Shale Services ball cap. He touched his teeth with his thumbnail as he spoke.
“Oh, just a few minutes.”
“Keys.”
“Yes, I have them here.” David patted his pocket.
“Get the trunk for me, please.” David tried to hand him the keys. “No, you.”
“Not a problem.” David bent to insert the key but his hand was shaking and at first he missed the slot. The lid rose to reveal the contents of the trunk. David didn’t feel a thing.
PART IV
RIVERS RUN
Trailer Trash
by Gwen Florio
Missoula
The graduate writing program at the University of Montana turned Benson down the same day it accepted his friend Gary.
“Me too,” Benson lied into the phone when Gary called with the good news. Gary whooped. Benson held the phone away from his ear and imagined sticking Gary with something thin and sharp, an ice pick—no, too clichéd—or maybe a good fillet knife, freeing all that ego in a single, deflating pffft. “But I’ve decided I’m not going.”
“Dude. The hell?”
“No money. Only way to go was if I got funding.”
“Fuck that. You’re coming with me. Worse comes to worst, you spend the first semester working and start a semester late. I’ll share all my stuff with you, the assignments and everything, give you a leg up.”
So Benson spent the last of his money on gas, horsed his embarrassing pinkish-purple 1998 Chevy Cavalier up and over Snoqualmie Pass, and gambled what was left of his luck on the switchbacks skirting Lookout, engine coughing and complaining, steering wheel juddering in his hand, coasting into Missoula on fumes and a busted transmission, only to find that Gary’s offer to share did not include his digs.
“Dude.” Gary stood barefoot on an unpainted porch dominated by a sprung sofa. Only the most determined rental agent’s squint could have seen Gary’s description—a cool Craftsman, near the U—in that cramped, sagging square. The bones of the same bungalow showed in the homes that flanked it, but those dwellings had been expanded up and out in a sort of Prairie-gone-vertical style, their smooth stuccoed walls crowding the limits of the landscaped lots.
“Lawyer.” Gary jerked his thumb toward the house on the left. Then he pointed right. “Professor. I was lucky to get this place. Doubt it’ll be here next year. Somebody will buy it for the lot, scrape this place and put up one of those. I’ll be out on my ass, just like you.”
Benson’s laugh joined Gary’s a beat late. The naked lightbulb above picked out the goose bumps on his arms, raised by a twilight chill that belied the mid-August date. Blades of wind skated off the bald hills that bordered the town, spearing street trash and depositing it around their feet. Gary kicked it away. “They call it the Hellgate wind. Named after the canyon.”
He gestured to the cliffy walls of gabbro-striped quartzite just to the east. The river running through them widened and flattened once it escaped their grasp, flowing tame past the campus and through downtown, unabashedly picturesque, a chamber of commerce wet dream.
“It funnels the wind right into town. Freezes your ass off soon as it’s dark. Winter should be a treat. Anyway, I got company, man.” He held his hands before his chest, sketching breasts, then moved them down and out. Hips. “What happened to the Dainty Lady?”
The car—its unwelcome nickname bestowed by Gary back in Enumclaw—sat ticking in a miasma of exhaust and something more ominous. “It started making a noise just over the Idaho line. Some red lights came on. And I’m about out of gas. Just a couch, man. That’s all I need.”
“Say no more.” Gary disappeared indoors. The home’s scabby facade, so dispiriting as the car sputtered up to it, now beckoned with the promise of warmth and Benson-sized horizontal surfaces. Benson heard a girl’s high, protesting voice and Gary’s soothing tones. He turned sideways to the wind, his T-shirt and shorts an inadequate defense. Sweats lurked at the bottom of his duffel. He’d retrieve them once he got settled on Gary’s sofa.
The door opened. Benson stepped toward it. Gary’s outstretched hand, a twenty-dollar bill snapping in the wind, stopped him. “This should cover gas, couple of beers besides. This town is crazy friendly. Hit up anybody in a bar, you’ll find that couch. That’s how I got this place. Ask around about jobs, too. That’s the quickest way to get one. Catch you in a few days. Oh, and hey—welcome to Missoula.”
Benson’s hands twitched. He imagined shredding Andrew Jackson’s face, tossing the pieces at Gary like handfuls of dirt flung into an open grave. “Keep your fucking money.” That’s what he should have said.
He took the cash.
* * *
A shit job—lobbing rolled-up newspapers from the Dainty Lady onto the chemically treated lawns of the old folks who were the only ones subscribing to the Missoulian anymore—was easy to find. A shit place to live, not so much. Although the job eventually led to the place.
For the privilege of earning twenty cents an hour over minimum, forget about benefits, Benson rolled out of the backseat at three-dark-thirty. He coaxed the Dainty Lady, with the rebuilt transmission that had maxed out his only credit card, through fog-shrouded streets to the Missoulian’s loading dock, where stacks of newspapers awaited. There, Benson spent a couple of hours rolling and rubber-banding them, leaving his hands sore and swollen and slippery-gray with ink.
He’d have taken longer still but for Harlan, the guy assigned to train him. Papers flipped and spun in Harlan’s hairy hands, rubber bands snapping like a teenager’s gum. “Got to be quicker,” Harlan said. “We ought to’ve hit the road by now.”
The papers were supposed to be on doorsteps by six thirty, latest, but they didn’t even head out until six. Harlan, knowing the route, held out his hand for Benson’s keys. He pointed the Dainty Lady up a hill stair-stepped with asbestos-shingled split-levels showing their age, cars sardining their driveways, the street lined with overflow, as though every house had thrown a party at the same time.
“Students,” Harlan said. “They pack them in there, charge them God knows what. You see all those cars in front of a place, keep driving. Not a one of them takes the paper.”
“Then where are we going?”
“There.” Atop the hill, a sign proclaimed, Mansion Heights.
Benson winced at the violation of show, don’t tell. The homes, steroidal versions of the stuccoed boxes taking over Gary’s neighborhood, told plenty. Wraparound decks that took advantage of the hilltop views nearly doubled the already excessive square footage. Naturally uninhabited at the early hour, the decks gave the appearance of permanent disuse, bereft of chaise longues or barbecue grills or other signs that anyone actually took his ease there. Benson tossed a half-dozen papers in front of three-car garages.
“Who lives here?”
“Nobody who wants to stay.” Faded FOR SALE signs adorned several yards. Unsold lots, thick with weeds, abounded. “Recession hit before they finished this place. It’s hardly worth the drive up here.”
It was nearly eight by the time light spilled like skim milk over the summits, playing catch-up with the Dainty Lady as Benson and Harlan headed for the far side of town, trying to make up time, speeding past the acres of apartment complexes beyond the chain restaurants and big-box stores. A few subscribers lived out by the dump, in the fast-built and faster-falling-down developments that housed the families who’d never make it into the striving neighborhoods closer to the university.
Benson rubbed his pitching arm. He was supposed to work with Harlan for a week, but told him never mind after the guy broke into a rasping fit of giggles on their way back to the newspaper.
Benson thought Harlan was laughing at him because, even after two hours on the route, his papers sailed into aborvitae and petunias, even into the yards next door. But Harlan disabused him of that notion: “Let the biddies walk.”
“Then what’s so funny?”
“That right there.” Harlan jerked his head toward an elementary school. In the playground, slides and swings awaited tiny bottoms. “I’m not supposed to be within a thousand feet of that place. And yet here I am. Bite this, judge!” He grabbed his crotch with both hands.
“Jesus Christ.” Benson caught the wheel just in time to avoid sideswiping a parked car. The Dainty Lady had a wicked pull to the right. Benson knew only one reason a judge would order someone away from places with little kids.
“Heh-heh-heh.” The seat shook with Harlan’s laughter.