“Why not?” I said.
“See? Sure. Les wants more. He’s like me.”
Nola was actually a pretty woman, with a kind of dignity to her that wasn’t at once so noticeable, and Troy was thrilled by her.
“All right,” Nola said, taking another sip.
“Whattt I tell you?” Troy said.
“I had really thought he was dying,” Nola said.
“Who?” I said.
“My husband. Harry Lyons. I don’t use that name now. Someone’s told you this story before, haven’t they?”
“Not me. Goddamn!” Troy said. “I want to hear this story.”
I said I hadn’t heard it either, though I had heard there was a story.
She had a puff on her cigarette and gave us both a look that said she didn’t believe us. But she went on. Maybe she’d thought about another drink by then.
“He had this death look. Ca-shit-ic, they call it. He was pale, and his mouth turned down like he could see death. His heart had already gone out once in June, and I had the feeling I’d come in the kitchen some morning and he’d be slumped on his toast.”
“How old was this Harry?” Troy said.
“Fifty-three years old. Older than me by a lot.”
“That’s cardiac alley there,” Troy said and nodded at me. Troy has trouble with his own organs now and then. I think they all moved lower when he hit the ground.
“A man gets strange when he’s going to die,” Nola said in a quiet voice. “Like he’s watching it come. Though Harry was still going to work out at Champion’s every day. He was an estimator. Plus he watched me all the time. Watched to see if I was getting ready, I guess. Checking the insurance, balancing the checkbook, locating the safe-deposit key. All that. Though I would, too. Who wouldn’t?”
“Bet your ass,” Troy said and nodded again. Troy was taking this all in, I could see that.
“And I admit it, I was,” Nola said. “I loved Harry. But if he died, where was I going? Was I supposed to die, too? I had to make some plans for myself. I had to think Harry was expendable at some point. To my life, anyway.”
“Probably that’s why he was watching you,” I said. “He might not have felt expendable in his life.”
“I know.” Nola looked at me seriously and smoked her cigarette. “But I had a friend whose husband killed himself. Went into the garage and left the motor running. And his wife was not ready. Not in her mind. She thought he was out putting on brakeshoes. And there he was dead when she went out there. She ended up having to move to Washington, D.C. Lost her balance completely over it. Lost her house, too.”
“All bad things,” Troy agreed.
“And that just wasn’t going to be me, I thought. And if Harry had to get wind of it, well, so be it. Some days I’d wake up and look at him in bed and I’d think, Die, Harry, quit worrying about it.”
“I thought this was a love story,” I said. I looked down at where the two men were playing an eight-ball rack. One man was chalking a cue while the other man was leaning over to shoot.
“It’s coming,” Troy said. “Just be patient, Les.”
Nola drained her drink. “I’ll guarantee it is.”
“Then let’s hear it,” I said. “Get on to the love part.”
Nola looked at me strangely then, as if I really did know what she was going to tell, and thought maybe I might tell it first myself. She raised her chin at me. “Harry came home one evening from work, right?” she said. “Just death as usual. Only he said to me, ‘Nola, I’ve invited some friends over, sweetheart. Why don’t you go out and get a flank steak at Albertson’s.’ I asked when were they coming? He said, in an hour. And I thought, An hour! Because he never brought people home. We went to bars, you know. We didn’t entertain. But I said, ‘All right. I’ll go get a flank steak.’ And I got in the car and went out and bought a flank steak. I thought Harry ought to have what he wants. If he wants to have friends and steak he ought to be able to. Men, before they die, will want strange things.”
“That’s a fact, too,” Troy said seriously. “I was full dead all of four minutes when I hit. And I dreamed about nothing but lobster the whole time. And I’d never even seen a lobster, though I have now. Maybe that’s what they serve in heaven.” Troy grinned at both of us.
“Well, this wasn’t heaven,” Nola said and signaled for another drink. “So when I got back, there was Harry with three Crow Indians, in my house, sitting in the living room drinking mai tais. A man and two women. His friends, he said. From the mill. He wanted to have his friends over, he said. And Harry was raised a strict Mormon. Not that it matters.”
“I guess he had a change of heart,” I said.
“That’ll happen, too,” Troy said gravely. “LDS’s aren’t like they used to be. They used to be bad, but that’s all changed. Though I guess coloreds still can’t get inside the temple all the way.”
“These three were inside my house, though. I’ll just say that. And I’m not prejudiced about it. Leopards with spots, leopards without. All the same to me. But I was nice. I went right in the kitchen and put the flank steak in the oven, put some potatoes in water, got out some frozen peas. And went back in to have a drink. And we sat around and talked for half an hour. Talked about the mill. Talked about Marlon Brando. The man and one of the women were married. He worked with Harry. And the other woman was her sister, Winona. There’s a town in Mississippi with the same name. I looked it up. So after a while—all nice and friends—I went in to peel my potatoes. And this other woman, Bernie, came in with me to help, I guess. And I was standing there cooking over a little range, and this Bernie said to me, ‘I don’t know how you do it, Nola.’ ‘Do what, Bernie?’ I said. ‘Let Harry go with my sister like he does and you stay so happy about it. I couldn’t ever stand that with Claude.’ And I just turned around and looked at her. Winona is what? I thought. That name seemed so unusual for an Indian. And I just started yelling it. Winona, Winona,’ at the top of my lungs right at the stove. I just went crazy a minute, I guess. Screaming, holding a potato in my hand, hot. The man came running into the kitchen. Claude Smart Enemy. Claude was awfully nice. He kept me from harming myself. But when I started yelling, Harry, I guess, figured everything was all up. And he and his Winona woman went right out the door. And he didn’t get even to the car when his heart went. He had a myocardial infarction right out on the sidewalk at this Winona’s feet. I guess he thought everything was going to be just great. We’d all have dinner together. And I’d never know what was what. Except he didn’t count on Bernie saying something.”
“Maybe he was trying to make you appreciate him more,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t like being expendable and was sending you a message.”
Nola looked at me seriously again. “I thought of that,” she said. “I thought about that more than once. But that would’ve been hurtful. And Harry Lyons wasn’t a man to hurt you. He was more of a sneak. I just think he wanted us all to be friends.”
“That makes sense.” Troy nodded and looked at me.
“What happened to Winona,” I asked.
“What happened to Winona?” Nola took a drink and gave me a hard look. “Winona moved herself to Spokane. What happened to me is a better question.”
“Why? You’re here with us,” Troy said enthusiastically. “You’re doing great. Les and me ought to do as well as you’re doing. Les is out of work. And I’m out of luck. You’re doing the best of the three of us, I’d say.”
“I wouldn’t,” Nola said frankly, then turned and stared down at the men playing pool.
“Whafd he leave you?” I said. “Harry.”
“Two thousand,” Nola said coldly.
“That’s a small amount,” I said.
“And it’s a sad love story, too,” Troy said, shaking his head. “You loved him and it ended rotten. That’s like Shakespeare.”
“I loved him enough,” Nola said.
“How about sports. Do you like sports?” Troy said.
Nol
a looked at Troy oddly then. In his chair Troy doesn’t look exactly like a whole man, and sometimes simple things he’ll say will seem surprising. And what he’d said then surprised Nola. I’ve gotten used to it, myself, after all these years.
“Did you want to try skiing?” Nola said and glanced at me.
“Fishing,” Troy said, up on his elbows again. “Let’s all of us go fishing. Put an end to old gloomy.” Troy seemed like he wanted to pound the table. And I wondered when was the last time he had slept with a woman. Fifteen years ago, maybe. And now that was all over for him. But he was excited just to be here and get to talk to Nola Foster, and I wasn’t going to be in his way. “No one’ll be there now,” he said. “We’ll catch a fish and cheer ourselves up. Ask Les. He caught a fish.”
I had been going mornings in those days, when the Today show got over. Just to kill an hour. The river runs through the middle of town, and I could walk over in five minutes and fish downstream below the motels that are there, and could look up at the blue and white mountains up the Bitterroot, toward my mother’s house, and sometimes see the geese coming back up their flyway. It was a strange winter. January was like a spring day, and the Chinook blew down over us a warm wind from the eastern slopes. Some days were cool or cold, but many days were warm, and the only ice you’d see was in the lows where the sun didn’t reach. You could walk right out to the river and make a long cast to where the fish were deep down in the cold pools. And you could even think things might turn out better.
Nola turned and looked at me. The thought of fishing was seeming like a joke to her, I know. Though maybe she didn’t have money for a meal and thought we might buy her one. Or maybe she’d never even been fishing. Or maybe she knew that she was on her way to the bottom, where everything is the same, and here was this something different being offered, and it was worth a try.
“Did you catch a big fish, Les,” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“See?” Troy said. “Am I a liar? Or am I not?”
“You might be.” Nola looked at me oddly then, but I thought sweetly, too. “What kind of fish was it?”
“A brown trout. Caught deep, on a hare’s ear,” I said.
“I don’t know what that is,” Nola said and smiled. I could see that she wasn’t minding any of this because her face was flushed, and she looked pretty.
“Which,” I asked. “A brown trout? Or a hare’s ear?”
“That’s it,” she said.
“A hare’s ear is a kind of fly,” I said.
“I see,” Nola said.
“Let’s get out of the bar for once,” Troy said loudly, running his chair backwards and forwards. “We’ll go fish, then we’ll have chicken-in-the-ruff. Troy’s paying.”
“What’ll I lose?” Nola said and shook her head. She looked at both of us, smiling as though she could think of something that might be lost.
“You got it all to win,” Troy said. “Let’s go.”
“Whatever,” Nola said. “Sure.”
And we went out of the Top Hat, with Nola pushing Troy in his chair and me coming on behind.
On Front Street the evening was as warm as May, though the sun had gone behind the peaks already, and it was nearly dark. The sky was deep blue in the east behind the Sapphires, where the darkness was, but salmon pink above the sun. And we were in the middle of it. Half-drunk, trying to be imaginative in how we killed our time.
Troy’s Checker was parked in front, and Troy rolled over to it and spun around.
“Let me show you this great trick,” he said and grinned. “Get in and drive, Les. Stay there, sweetheart, and watch me.”
Nola had kept her drink in her hand, and she stood by the door of the Top Hat. Troy lifted himself off his chair onto the concrete. I got in beside Troy’s bars and his raised seat, and started the cab with my left hand.
“Ready,” Troy shouted. “Ease forward. Ease up.”
And I eased the car up.
“Oh my God,” I heard Nola say and saw her put her palm to her forehead and look away.
“Yaah. Ya-hah,” Troy yelled.
“Your poor foot,” Nola said.
“It doesn’t hurt me,” Troy yelled. “It’s just like a pressure.” I couldn’t see him from where I was.
“Now I know I’ve seen it all,” Nola said. She was smiling.
“Back up, Les. Just ease it back again,” Troy called out.
“Don’t do it again,” Nola said.
“One time’s enough, Troy,” I said. No one else was in the street. I thought how odd it would be for anyone to see that, without knowing something in advance. A man running over another man’s foot for fun. Just drunks, you’d think, and be right.
“Sure. Okay,” Troy said. I still couldn’t see him. But I put the cab back in park and waited. “Help me, sweetheart, now,” I heard Troy say to Nola. “It’s easy getting down, but old Troy can’t get up again by himself. You have to help him.”
And Nola looked at me in the cab, the glass still in her hand. It was a peculiar look she gave me, a look that seemed to ask something of me, but I did not know what it was and couldn’t answer. And then she put her glass on the pavement and went to put Troy back in his chair.
When we got to the river it was as good as dark, and the river was only a big space you could hear, with the south-of-town lights up behind it and the three bridges and Champion’s Paper downstream a mile. And it was cold with the sun gone, and I thought there would be fog in before morning.
Troy had insisted on driving with us in the back, as if we’d hired a cab to take us fishing. On the way down he sang a smoke jumper’s song, and Nola sat close to me and let her leg be beside mine. And by the time we stopped by the river, below the Lion’s Head motel, I had kissed her twice, and knew all that I could do.
“I think I’ll go fishing,” Troy said from his little raised-up seat in front. “I’m going night fishing. And I’m going to get my own chair out and my rod and all I need. I’ll have a time.”
“How do you ever change a tire?” Nola said. She was not moving. It was just a question she had. People say all kinds of things to cripples.
Troy whipped around suddenly, though, and looked back at us where we sat on the cab seat. I had put my arm around Nola, and we sat there looking at his big head and big shoulders, below which there was only half a body any good to anyone. “Trust Mr. Wheels,” Troy said. “Mr. Wheels can do anything a whole man can.” And he smiled at us a crazy man’s smile.
“I think I’ll just stay in the car,” Nola said. “I’ll wait for chicken-in-the-ruff. That’ll be my fishing.”
“It’s too cold for ladies now anyway,” Troy said gruffly. “Only men. Only men in wheelchairs is the new rule.”
I got out of the cab with Troy then and set up his chair and put him in it. I got his fishing gear out of the trunk and strung it up. Troy was not a man to fish flies, and I put a silver dace on his spin line and told him to hurl it far out and let it flow for a time into the deep current and then to work it, and work it all the way in. I said he would catch a fish with that strategy in five minutes, or ten.
“Les,” Troy said to me in the cold dark behind the cab.
“What?” I said.
“Do you ever just think of just doing a criminal thing sometime? Just do something terrible. Change everything.”
“Yes,” I said. “I think about that.”
Troy had his fishing rod across his chair now, and he was gripping it and looking down the sandy bank toward the dark and sparkling water.
“Why don’t you do it?” he said.
“I don’t know what I’d choose to do,” I said.
“Mayhem,” Troy said. “Commit mayhem.”
“And go to Deer Lodge forever,” I said. “Or maybe they’d hang me and let me dangle. That would be worse than this.”
“Okay, that’s right,” Troy said, still staring. “But I should do it, shouldn’t I? I should do the worst thing there is.”
&nb
sp; “No, you shouldn’t,” I said.
And then he laughed. “Hah. Right. Never do that,” he said. And he wheeled himself down toward the river into the darkness, laughing all the way.
In the cold cab, after that, I held Nola Foster for a long time. Just held her with my arms around her, breathing and waiting. From the back window I could see the Lion’s Head motel, see the restaurant there that faces the river and that is lighted with candles, and where people were eating. I could see the welcome out front, though not who was welcomed. I could see cars on the bridge going home for the night. And it made me think of Harley Reeves in my father’s little house on the Bitterroot. I thought about him in bed with my mother. Warm. I thought about the faded old tattoo on Harley’s shoulder, victory, that said. And I could not connect it easily with what I knew about Harley Reeves, though I thought possibly that he had won a victory of kinds over me just by being where he was.
“A man who isn’t trusted is the worst thing,” Nola Foster said. “You know that, don’t you?” I suppose her mind was wandering. She was cold, I could tell by the way she held me. Troy was gone out in die dark now. We were alone, and her skirt had come up a good ways.
“Yes, that’s bad,” I said, though I couldn’t think at that moment of what trust could mean to me. It was not an issue in my life, and I hoped it never would be. “You’re right,” I said to make her happy.
“What was your name again?”
“Les,” I said. “Lester Snow. Call me Les.”
“Les Snow,” Nola said. “Do you like less snow?”
“Usually I do.” And I put my hand then where I wanted it most.
“How old are you, Les?” she said.
“Thirty-seven.”
“You’re an old man.”
“How old are you?” I said.
“It’s my business, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is,” I said.
“I’ll do this, you know,” Nola said, “and not even care about it. Just do a thing. It means nothing more than how I feel at this time. You know? Do you know what I mean, Les?”