Black River Part 13

"It's mine." Wes snapped the cylinder out. Empty, of course. "He didn't get the ammunition from me," he said. "I keep it separate, and it's all there. Counted it this morning."

"There was no ammunition," Morrow said. "Not so far as we can tell. The weapon was unloaded when it was recovered. We haven't found any cartridges at the school or at the site of the collision. It's possible, I suppose, that he dumped them somewhere between the two locations, but it hardly seems likely."

Wes pa.s.sed his thumb across the rear of the cylinder, the voids of the chambers. Dennis had loaded the revolver when he'd taken it before their dinner table confrontation so many years ago. Wes had tapped the bullets into his palm after leaving the house that night; they'd rattled against one another in his trembling hand.

"One of the students we interviewed said it looked to him like the chambers were empty during the incident at the school," Morrow continued. He crumpled the paper bag into a tiny ball, clenched it in his fist. "But the sus-Bannon-was threatening him with the weapon at the time, and the student wasn't willing to bet his life on it." Morrow looked up at Wes, something reproachful in his eyes. "Those kids are awfully shook up."

"Don't you try to lay blame on me for this," Wes said.

"I wasn't-"

"I done what I could to help that boy. I know folks want everything to be someone's fault, but you ain't gonna make it mine." Wes turned the revolver around in his hand, extended the grip to Morrow. "I had my doubts about Scott Bannon from the day I met him. I thought for a while that maybe I'd been wrong, but I guess I wasn't. He stole that gun. Busted a lock to get to it. Go look if you want."

Morrow didn't take the revolver. "I came to give that back to you," he said. "What I ought to do is put it into evidence, make you come down and file some paperwork. Maybe you'd get it back someday and maybe you wouldn't. Maybe you'd get a citation. But the way things turned out . . . Bannon didn't hurt anyone but himself. I've worked this county all my life, Mr. Carver. I know who you are, and I know you've had more than your share of trouble in life. Didn't think you needed more. That's all." He turned around, started back toward his truck with the same awkward, ambling gait with which he'd come.

Wes watched him go, felt the burden of the revolver in his hand. He wanted to give it back, wanted to fling it into the river and never see it again. But he couldn't even bring himself to put it down on the porch railing. He loosened and tightened his fingers on the grip, felt metal and wood more firmly against his skin. "Morrow," he called.

The other man slowed, turned like he'd been expecting Wes to stop him.

"I ain't justifying what Scott did," he said. "Not by a long shot. Not ever. But those 'shook-up kids' ain't exactly all sweetness and light, either. Ain't as black and white as it seems."

Morrow nodded. "Never is."

At dinnertime, Wes set two places at the table and heated a can of stew. He kept Dennis's half warm on the stove for a long while, finally emptied it into a plastic container and put it in the refrigerator. There were a handful of business cards on the door of the refrigerator-a veterinarian, a feed merchant, a dentist-a lone, washed-out photograph of a much younger Dennis riding a much younger Rio, and three comic strips cut from a newspaper. Wes lifted the corner of one to look at the underside; it was from the Spokane paper. Claire must have snipped them out and mailed them.

Just before midnight, Wes heard Dennis's truck pull up. A few minutes pa.s.sed between the sound of the cab door slamming and Dennis's tread on the porch steps. Checking on the horses, or finis.h.i.+ng a cigarette. Dennis climbed the steps slowly. When he came inside, he glanced at Wes but didn't speak. He braced one hand on the doorframe while he untied his boots, eased them off his feet. A stiffness to his movements-whether the extra weariness of this day or the regular burden of hard work, Wes couldn't say. Hadn't paid enough attention before. Dennis shrugged off his coat and hooked it over the back of the chair nearest the door. He sat, pulled a second chair away from the table and lifted his feet onto it. "Used to be I could shoe a dozen horses a day, regular," he said. "Did eight today and I'm d.a.m.n near crippled."

"There's stew in the fridge," Wes said, "if you want it."

"I'm not hungry." He was picking at a scab on his wrist, stopped abruptly. "Maybe later."

Silence fell. Wes listened to the clock in the hall count the seconds. Same clock they'd had years ago, but he didn't remember it being so loud.

"I stopped in to see Molly on my way home," Dennis said finally.

"How is she?"

Dennis smiled, that hard, unamused smile he never aimed at anyone in particular. If there was one expression of Dennis's that Wes had always hated, one expression he wished he never had to see again, that was it. "Well, she's not so good, is she?"

"I meant under the circ.u.mstances."

"I don't know, Wes. How do you answer a question like that? I mean, is there a good way to be when your kid's just killed himself?" He pa.s.sed a hand over his face, letting his fingers drag against the skin. "I guess she's hanging in there."

"Does she have someone taking care of her?" Claire had told him there'd been so many people wanting to help Sara after the riot they'd had to make a schedule. Hard to imagine there was any such clamor to look after Molly Bannon.

"One of the nurses from the hospital was there," Dennis said. "Told me she was staying the night."

"That's good."

Dennis took his feet off the chair, leaned forward over the table, fingertips drumming absently on the wood. "The funeral's Sat.u.r.day. It's going to be at some church in Elk Fork. Methodist, I think. Molly asked if you and I would each say a few words."

Wes sighed. He'd hoped not to have to get into this tonight. "I'm not gonna go, Dennis."

Dennis looked up, slow. "How's that?"

"I ain't going to the funeral."

A long moment in which Wes couldn't read Dennis's expression one way or another, and then that d.a.m.ned smirk again.

"Let's just leave it," Wes said. "Let's not get into a big argument right now. Can we do that?"

Dennis shook his head, one corner of his lips still turned up. "I am such an idiot," he said. "A nave f.u.c.king fool."

"Dennis-"

"Here I was just starting to think that maybe I hadn't given you enough credit all these years. I thought-despite a lifetime's worth of evidence to the contrary-that maybe you were more compa.s.sionate than I realized. That maybe-and this is a f.u.c.king laugh-you'd actually changed." He spread his arms wide. "But it turns out you're the exact same rigid, sanctimonious b.a.s.t.a.r.d I remember."

Wes crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back in his chair. Tried to remind himself that his stepson was hurting. "I don't think that's fair."

"Fair?" Dennis stood, started pacing across the living room. It was too small to satisfy: a few steps one way, a few steps back. "Fair would be going to the funeral of a kid you pretended to care about."

"Don't you tell me how I felt about Scott."

Dennis stopped in front of Wes, set both hands on the table, leaned in close. Wes smelled horses on him. Realized he'd always a.s.sociated this scent with him, the coa.r.s.e wildness of it. "I know exactly how you felt about him. You felt about him the same way you felt about me. You never trusted him, you were always waiting for him to f.u.c.k up, you cared about him in a half-a.s.sed way only so long as he was trying his d.a.m.nedest to please you, and now that he's disappointed you, you're abandoning him."

Wes sat silent as long as he could. Kept his hands curled loose on the tabletop. Tried counting his breaths the way Claire was always telling him to do. Even so, he couldn't keep his voice from rising with each word when he finally spoke. "First off, this ain't about you. Did I abandon you? Yeah, Dennis, I guess I did. I know I hurt you, and I know I hurt your momma, and I'm sorry for both those things. If I had it to do over again, I'd try it another way. But I was doing the best I could. I was in pain, too. I guess I can't expect you to understand that, but I sure wish you could."

Dennis leaned against the doorway leading to the kitchen. Looked like a gatekeeper of some kind. Weighing his story. His soul.

"Second, this ain't got nothing to do with being disappointed. Not now, and not back then. You didn't disappoint me; you threatened my life with a loaded firearm. And Scott didn't disappoint me; he terrorized a bunch of schoolkids. He gave himself power over people it wasn't none of his business to have. And that goes way beyond disappointment."

Dennis eyed him critically. He was a little too calm, and that made Wes nervous. Dennis was a live wire, and that could be unpleasant, but Wes was used to that. This calculating, considering Dennis was an unknown. He sighed, pushed himself away from the doorframe. "You need to get the f.u.c.k over the riot, Wes." He turned away and walked into the kitchen. Wes followed after a moment, found him leaning into the cupboard over the sink, stretching his arm into its farthest reaches. He pulled down a bottle hazed with dust, no label, amber liquid churning inside. Rooted around again and brought down two small, squarish gla.s.ses. He poured heavily into one, held the other toward Wes.

Wes shook his head. "I didn't take you for that sort of drinker."

Dennis downed the contents of his gla.s.s in two swallows, poured again. Sloshed a little of the liquid over the rim of the gla.s.s; it spattered into a constellation on the counter. "Only on days good as this one." He lifted his eyes to Wes's; they were sharp and level. "First time I met Scott wasn't at that career day thing I told you about; it was outside Jameson's. He was out there smoking a cigarette and some other kids had cornered him, were saying all this s.h.i.+t about how his father took it up the a.s.s, was the biggest b.i.t.c.h in High Side, that these things ran in families. I came this close to punching one of those boys, Wes. A grown man and I'd have hit some punk teenager. Only thing stopped me was Scott grabbed my sleeve." He shook his head. "Maybe I should've done it anyway. Maybe I'd be in jail and he'd be alive."

"Dennis . . ."

"I loved that kid, I really did. I don't know if you loved him, Wes, but I know you cared. So he f.u.c.ked up! He already paid with his G.o.dd.a.m.ned life. You're really gonna let some misguided sense of justice and righteousness and victimhood keep you from paying your respects?"

Wes held Dennis's gaze. "I wouldn't put it that way myself. But yeah," he said, "I am."

Silence. That f.u.c.king clock.

Dennis balanced his gla.s.s between thumb and forefinger, set the heels of both hands on the edge of the counter on either side of his body. He looked at the floor for a while, cleared his throat once. Glanced up twice before he spoke. "Wes," he said, and his voice carried more gravel than usual, "I'm going to say this real calm. I'm not yelling, I'm not swearing, I'm not storming around. That's because I want you to hear what I'm saying." He sighed deeply, seemed to draw himself straighter as he steeled himself for the words. He looked straight into Wes's eyes, and he said, "I need you out of my house. Tonight. Pack your stuff, get in your truck and get the h.e.l.l out. I don't care where you go. I don't want to know. And I don't want to see you again."

Wes stared at the floor. Maybe there was still a way to salvage this. Maybe there were still words that could fix it. Actions. But how far back would be far enough? How much did he need to undo? The last few minutes? The last few days? Weeks? Years? Might there be a way to reverse all the worst things in his life, all the wrong decisions, all the misfortunes? Were there opportunities he'd missed, chances to save Scott, Dennis, Claire, Lane, his mother, his father, himself? Surely there was a way. Why wasn't there a way?

"Dennis, can't we-"

He hurled the gla.s.s so quickly Wes hardly saw it coming. It shattered against the brick beside his head, and Wes felt bits of gla.s.s rain into his hair, felt a single drop of liquid-liquor, he thought, not blood-slide down the back of his neck. When he raised his head again, he saw that Dennis looked more shocked than Wes felt. His hands trembled slightly, and he crossed his arms and pressed them hard against his chest. He cleared his throat, but when he spoke his voice was husky, and steadier than Wes would have guessed it would be. "You can see," he said, "I need you gone."

PART IV.

DIVIDE.

Claire returns to Black River in the spring, half a year after she and Wesley left. She goes on a Sunday, and before she leaves, Wesley lifts the hood of the truck and checks and rechecks the oil and the brake fluid and the wiper solution, until she says, You're going to be late for church if you don't quit.

He replaces the oil dipstick one last time, then lets the hood down, pressing on it with the heels of his hands to make sure the latch has caught. You drive real careful, now, he tells her.

I will.

And give me a call when you get there.

I will, Wesley.

And you tell Dennis I said . . . He steps away from the truck, from her. Half turns in the driveway and looks toward the horizon, so she sees his profile. Sees the way he lets his head drop a little before he speaks again. You just tell him I said whatever you think he ought to hear.

It is a good day to travel, sunny until she hits the first pa.s.s, and even the clouds over the mountains withhold their rain. Claire finds she has to concentrate on driving more than she used to-these days she gets behind the wheel only to go to the market, or when Wesley's hands trouble him more than usual-but it relaxes her anyway, especially once she has left the city and the largest towns behind.

Halfway up Lookout Pa.s.s, the radio surrenders to static. Claire lets it hiss for a few minutes, then reaches into her purse and pushes the ca.s.sette she finds there into the player in the dash. She left most of the tapes at the house in Black River-though she's not sure Dennis will want them, wonders if he hasn't already thrown them away-but she kept this one for herself. It is one of the first they recorded, no more special than any of the rest: just an afternoon, a token of what she once had in abundance. The warm-up scales, then "Fire on the Mountain" and "Jerusalem Ridge," "Horses in the Canebrake" for Dennis (she can hear her son laugh in the middle), "Abide with Me" for her, and, as ever, "Black River" for himself. The tape has started to warble a bit; each time she plays it, Claire worries it will spill from the dashboard in a tangle of soundless ribbon. Still she presses Play.

She pilots the truck up the steep curves of the pa.s.s, welcomes the embrace of the mountains and listens to the way things used to be.

Her son is outside when she arrives, leaning on the pasture gate. It was off its hinges when she lived here, but now it hangs straight and there is a black horse on the other side. The horse is leggy-young, Claire thinks-and skittish; he spins and trots to the center of the pasture as she steers past the fenceline. Dennis watches him go before he turns toward her. He is seventeen but seems older, his expression inscrutable in a way that is new to her. He is wearing the red s.h.i.+rt she has always liked on him, but she cannot remember ever telling him it is her favorite. As he walks toward the truck, his steps betray a shade of reluctance, and Claire thinks he's trying on the idea of being angry with her. She has prepared herself for this-maybe even longs for it-but when she gets out of the truck he is there to meet her. Hugs, a shy smile, a few clumsy words spoken atop each other. He loves her still.

Dennis does not offer to cook dinner, and Claire is glad. She has yearned to be back in this most familiar kitchen, and even the broken left front burner on the stove sparks a feeling of nostalgic fondness. Dennis has shopped in antic.i.p.ation of her coming (the vegetables in the refrigerator are dotted with the artificial dew of the grocery shelves), but the pantry still reveals what seems to Claire a painful spa.r.s.eness, a dedication to only the barest essentials. She is pleased, at least, to make Dennis a strong meal tonight. (And yet, she cannot help but wonder what Wesley will eat when last night's leftovers run out.) Dennis does most of the talking at the table-Claire eats slowly but finishes while he still has half his meal on his plate-and he tells her about the unusually gentle winter, and a wolf he glimpsed last month down by the river, and most of all about the black horse in the pasture outside. His name is Rio, Dennis tells her, he is four years old, and someday he is going to be his horse. Claire thinks this is probably a wish, the sort of dream that is both necessary and destined to remain unfulfilled (it is not callous to think so, is it?), but her son surprises her.

He's twenty-five percent mine right now, he says, around a bite of potatoes.

How's that?

Uncle Arthur's letting me pay a little bit at a time. Right now I've got him paid up a quarter of the way, but he's still mostly Uncle Arthur's. Dennis grins then, and Claire's heart swells with the sight. I told him I thought that ought to do it, since Rio's a Quarter Horse and he's a quarter paid for and all. He thought that was pretty funny. Said it was a nice try but I still owe him the rest.

I'm glad you have something you love, Claire says. Immediately she wishes she had phrased it differently, or not spoken at all. The words linger uncomfortably.

Dennis c.o.c.ks his head, gives her a peculiar look that seems to Claire to waver between a plain yearning for solace and a resolve to comfort her. I still miss you, her son says.

The summer after Claire moved to Black River-the summer after she met Wesley-they went camping together. He had three days off from the prison, and they left the five-year-old Dennis with Madeline and Arthur and then drove north into the Seeley-Swan Valley. They were almost to the campsite, following a winding logging road high into the mountains, when a deer bounded into the road and out again, and Wesley yelled, Watch it, as though the deer might listen. He braked hard and the truck skidded on dirt and stopped at an angle. He squinted into the woods and said, Ah, would you look at that. It took Claire a moment to find the deer-a small doe-but then she did, there in a stand of trees, and she saw what Wesley had seen. There was a hole in the side of the doe's face, wide and ragged and red, and a glimpse of glistening bone through the torn flesh. Wesley shook his head. They take a shot at her out of season and can't even do her the service of killing her, he said. And then, to her: Stay here.

What surprised Claire was his speed. He was out of the truck and had the rifle at his shoulder in a moment. He fired and the deer fell and the echo came back from the far mountains and Claire still hadn't released the breath she held on first sighting the animal. Wesley staggered down the hill, the rifle held out at his side. He walked to where the doe lay still and looked down at her and came back to the truck. I'll call it in when we get back to town, he said.

Later, at the campsite, when the gold and green of the fields and the blue and silver of the lakes had yielded to darkness, after Wesley had built a fire that lit the edges of his features and sent sparks rising into the air, she said, That deer today.

He looked at her.

Was it hard for you? To kill it?

It was the right thing.

Claire waited, but he seemed to think he had answered the question.

She goes back to Black River for two weeks every year. It seems paltry to her, two weeks out of fifty-two, especially when she lives just four hours away. (Always there is a moment, at the end of the trip, right before she leaves, when she thinks she will not get in the truck.) But soon Dennis is no longer a child by any measure, and Arthur is always there for him. Dennis calls twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays, and Claire sends him envelopes now and then: coupons she has clipped from the Sunday paper, recipes simple enough for him to try, photographs she has taken during walks in the park in which Wesley always seems to be just leaving the frame.

Still Claire has not found the words Wesley has asked her to offer Dennis on his behalf. Sometimes she tries, on a quiet evening during a visit. Dennis begins to fidget as soon as she mentions Wesley's name, will walk away if she doesn't change the subject. She follows him once, outside into the chill night, and he turns on her, his words sharp and much too loud (she will remember the hard bark even after she has forgotten the words themselves), and then he staggers backward, fists clenched, and orders her not to follow. He does not come back to the house that night, and she does not sleep.

In Spokane, Wesley works. He is a security guard at the mall, a job Claire thinks is beneath his dignity, but when she once gently mentions disability benefits, the look he gives her is so desperate she changes the subject at once. So he works, and just as in Black River, he comes home and showers and changes before he talks to her, and then he talks of anything but his job. There are lines at the edges of his eyes she has not noticed before, and sometimes she has to say something two or three times before he hears her. He sinks into his easy chair with a new caution, as though he does not believe he will be allowed to stay there long. Arthur Farmer makes a point of calling now and then, and Wesley makes a point of not being available when he does.

She can talk about Dennis if she wants to. Wesley will listen. At first she mentions her son only rarely, tentatively, when he is so much on her mind she thinks she will shatter if she cannot speak his name. But Wesley does not storm out, does not scorn her. (She wonders sometimes if he even hears her, he is so silent, but if she stops talking, Wesley will very quietly tell her, Go on now.) She tells him about her worries when Dennis quits school, about her pride when he starts his horseshoeing business, about the way he is almost another man entirely when he is with the horses. She talks, and Wesley listens, and he never says anything but, Go on now, and that is both enough and not enough.

There is a point, some years after the journey between Spokane and Black River has become familiar, that Claire begins to notice the exits. It happens in the middle of the drive, usually just shy of the climb toward the pa.s.s. She lets her eyes drift from the centerline and sees all the places she could get off the interstate, all the signs she could follow. All the roads she could take that would lead neither to her son nor to her husband.

But of course she doesn't take them. Doesn't want to do that, doesn't want to see where they go. Not really.

And Claire's blood and bone marrow turn against her. She accepts the medications, and all they bring with them. Once, twice, three times health seems within her grasp before it is again overtaken by disease. A match is found; she endures the transplant. She comes home; she hopes; Wesley prays. Now it is three days since she learned that those detested cells are back again, unvanquished.

When Dennis calls in the evening, Claire cannot talk to him. She has been in bed all day, though what she feels is not exactly illness, not exactly physical. She looks healthier, in fact, than she has in some months, like someone whose trials are close behind her, yes, but behind her nonetheless. But now she knows better, and when Wesley brings her the phone, a hand cupped over the mouthpiece, Claire shakes her head. It must surprise him-she has never missed the chance to speak to Dennis-but he just presses his lips slightly tighter before he nods and goes back down the hall. Claire closes her eyes and tries to drift back into the refuge of half sleep.

Tired is all, Dennis, Wesley says from the other room.

This ain't worth fretting over.

Don't you go thinking that way.

Claire hears him repeating the things her doctor said to them on Thursday, but they sound different coming from Wesley's mouth. Where the doctor said, It's your choice, Claire, though you should know the outcomes at this stage are guarded at best, Wesley says, There's plenty of folks come out okay from situations like this, and your momma's stronger than most.

The doctor said, There is a c.o.c.ktail that has shown some very limited success in post-transplant relapse cases, and Wesley says, There's a new treatment sounds real promising.

The doctor said, I'm sorry I don't have better news for you. Wesley says, You just rest easy, boy.

His voice is closer, and when Claire opens her eyes she sees Wesley in the hall. He leans against the bathroom doorjamb, eyes cast downward. He puts a hand to his face, swipes it beneath his eye, and Claire sees the dashed glimmer of a tear wiped before it can fall. The sight of it shocks her, and his voice as he continues to speak to her son is so calm, so steady, she can almost believe she imagined it.

I ain't worried, Dennis, he says.

(At the clinic, when they got the labs back, Wesley had gasped, a defeated, deflated sound, almost gentle. It was so soft and small Claire thought only she had heard it, so sudden she wasn't sure Wesley even knew he'd voiced it.) And if I ain't worried, he says, you shouldn't be, either.

Claire listens as Wesley offers Dennis gift after gift. She's strong. Just a b.u.mp in the road. I got no doubts. She closes her eyes, and though she knows he is not saying these things for himself, is not saying them for her, just for tonight she lets herself be persuaded.

Does she know that this trip to Black River will be her last? She has started the chemotherapy again (again!), and though she and Wesley are dredging their last reserves of hope, she knows they are close to empty, and so does he. When she is ready to leave, he glances first at the kerchief in her hair (odd that she thinks of it that way, in her hair, when she wears it only to cover what's gone), then at her.