Black River Part 14

Maybe this ain't a good idea, he says. You going so far just now.

It's only for a few days, Wesley.

I know it, but I hate to think . . .

Afterward Claire will wonder why she does not fill the silence that follows Wesley's words. Maybe fatigue is to blame; she is so often tired now. Maybe fear, or even anger, buried so far down she doesn't recognize it. Maybe she suspects, deep in her bones, that any reunion, any tenuous bond between the two men she loves that is brokered only on her behalf will not sustain. Because Claire knows, in that moment in the driveway, that if she asks Wesley to come with her, to drive her to Black River and stay there with her while she visits Dennis, he will say yes. If she asks, he will go.

But she does not ask. He does not offer. There is a long silence between them, so weighted Claire is later certain Wesley comes as close to offering as she does to asking. Then a car drives past, and Claire blinks, and Wesley looks just slightly away from her. And she says, I'll call you when I get there.

Dennis is more like Wesley than he would like to admit. He, too, knows how ill she is, and Claire thinks he, too, would deny it if asked. He might even believe the denial, but she can see the truth in the way he keeps his voice softer than she knows it to really be, the way he checks his sharper edges and treats her with the gentleness he usually reserves for animals.

They do not discuss it. They talk at lunch and in the evenings, about the news and town gossip and television programs they have both seen. They go to Arthur Farmer's house for dinner one night, and he serves meatloaf Claire recognizes as her sister's recipe, and he calls her sweetheart, the way he did when she was young. Claire goes with Dennis to his horseshoeing appointments, and she sits in the truck with the door open and the heater on and she watches her son work. It is not the life she would have chosen for him-no diploma, outdoors in all weather, work that will break his body in the end-but she can see that what he does with these horses is a reprieve. Here he is focused, he is skillful, he is calm and sure. Here he is all the things he is not in the rest of his life.

I want to go riding, she says on her last day. She can see Dennis working to formulate an objection, so she quickly adds, I was born and raised in Montana, and I've lived my whole life in the West, and I've never been on a horse.

He is silent a moment more and then says, Okay.

He gives her Rio. She stands beside the hitching rack while Dennis goes back to the pasture to get the other horse, and she lets her fingers glide down the long bones of Rio's face and through his mane and up the edge of his ear, along the gentle curve to the tip, where the short hairs stand soft and delicate.

He doesn't usually like people to touch his ears, Dennis says from behind her. Claire takes her hand away, but Dennis says, All I said was he doesn't usually like it. Seems like he's good just now.

A horse's back is higher than Claire expected, and she wraps both hands tightly around the saddle horn. She knows it's a mere few feet of added height, but the house looks different from here, the trees, the pasture, the mountains. She can see the dark glimmer of the river. Dennis mounts the other horse and Rio follows him as he starts off across the pasture at a walk. Claire feels that the slightest breeze might cause her to tumble to the ground, but Rio walks steadily and Claire lets herself settle into the rhythm of his steps. (She will never tell Wesley about this; he would worry even after the fact.) Dennis takes her around the big pasture twice, then leads her through the aspens at the far end, beside the riverbank. They stop at the water's edge, the horses' front hooves just wetted.

So, do you feel like a cowgirl now? Dennis asks.

Ready for the rodeo, Claire tells him, and she is rewarded with the smile she had hoped for. She leans her head back to look up the sharp angle of the slope on the other side of the river. Do you ever ride up in the hills?

Dennis nods.

Next time we'll go up there, Claire says.

Next time, Dennis agrees, but the words grate a little leaving his throat.

Claire looks at him, and he looks at the water. She had hoped that being with the horses would keep that smoldering anger at bay, but Dennis seems unable to keep from feeding it, fanning it. She considers not saying what she means to say, but she should do it now. She must. You know I wish you and Wesley could be family again, she says.

Dennis turns to her so sharply his horse tosses its head and stamps a foot in the water, sending drops into the air. They land back in the river as widening circles that the current steals away almost before Claire can fix her eyes on them.

I won't ask you to go to him, she continues. I know you can't do that, not now and maybe not ever. But Denny, if he comes to you, will you let him?

Dennis doesn't seem to move, but his horse sidesteps one way, then the other, then turns a tight circle at the water's edge. And then he guides the horse past her and his features are set like stone and he does not look at her, but she hears the words as he pa.s.ses, as faint as if they had been borne on the breeze from some distant place.

I will try.

On her way back to Spokane, she pulls off the road at the top of the pa.s.s, nudging the pickup into line beside the long-haul truckers cooling their rigs' engines. She gets out of the cab and walks to the edge of the road, steps just beyond the heavy guardrail. Here she can see for miles both ahead and behind. Always Claire has been aware that whether she is with her husband or her son, she is not with the other. She has tried to think of both places as her homes: Was.h.i.+ngton and Montana, Spokane and Black River, her husband's house and her son's. But instead of feeling that she has two homes, too often she has felt she has none.

Only here do both seem close. Only here are they not unequivocally divided by this landscape that magnifies and emphasizes distance. There, beyond those peaks, is her son, who does not know how to reconcile and may not want to. There, beyond those others, is her husband, who does not know how either, but (Claire has always believed and still believes) does know that it is right. Dennis, there, and Wesley, there. Both hers.

Claire stays on top of the pa.s.s for a long time, looking first one way and then the other, trying to keep both places, both men, in sight at once. To keep them together. It is not quite possible. But Claire knows that even this land-the cradle of canyon, these seemingly immovable mountains, this etched horizon-has not always been this way, and will not always be this way. What she looks upon now is a moment in history, and it will pa.s.s. Claire will not be here to see it, and she cannot say how things will be different, but she is certain: given enough time, even this will change.

There was just one motel in Black River, the sort mostly found on lonely highways in lonely towns that had been long since bypa.s.sed by interstates. This one had hung in there thanks to the prison; when Wes pulled into the gravel lot after midnight, he saw that the other vehicles all bore license plates stamped with county codes from the eastern part of the state. Folks wanting to visit inmates couldn't always make the trip in one day. The experienced ones flocked to the anonymity of the Motel 6 in Elk Fork; the rest came here and holed up in their rooms till it was time to go home again. The place was called the Sapphire Lodge, though there was nothing especially lodge-like about it, unless you counted the lone buck mounted over the registration desk, who'd had the misfortune to be stuffed by a taxidermist who seemed to believe animals ought to look surprised to find themselves dead. Wes talked the bleary-eyed owner into a discount; even so, it left him with a thinner stack of bills in his envelope than he'd have liked.

His room was clean and bland, little different from the half-dozen motel rooms he'd stayed in during Claire's transplant in Seattle. Unlike those, though, this one stood apart, its own small building separated by eight or nine feet from the units on either side. Quieter. He found himself wis.h.i.+ng he were sharing walls. He'd have welcomed the mild irritation of others' voices, the murmurs that rose and fell but never coalesced into distinct words and sentences, the rattles and knocks of movements that weren't his own. In Seattle, he'd found that those things served as a promise that the larger world still existed, that there was something waiting beyond the fear and grief that had so totally absorbed him then, that he might someday get back to that safer and easier place.

He could think now, in this oppressive quiet, of all the things he should have said to Dennis, all the things he couldn't put voice to. That this was the second time in his life he'd been stunned by a suicide he should've seen coming. That he was angry at Scott, yes, that he couldn't explain the horror of knowing Scott had terrorized those people, absolutely, but more than that, he couldn't bear the thought of going to Scott's funeral and seeing his lips shut, his hands idle, forever. It'd be a closed casket-the train, the train, the train-but Wes would know. He'd see it anyway. Still hands. Silent lips.

He felt a familiar rending starting in his chest, small now, slight, as though his heart were tearing slowly, fiber by fiber. G.o.d, he missed her. Wes hadn't always been good about sharing his burdens with Claire. Held back too much. He wished he had all those opportunities back now, all those times he'd known she was yearning to help. Claire wouldn't have been able to make this new loss better, but she'd have known how to help him bear it.

He turned to his Bible instead and flipped through the pages, a book or two at a time. Couldn't find what he was looking for-didn't even know what that was-and he wondered what Williams looked for in these same pages. What he found. In the end, Wes read aloud from Psalms, and Ecclesiastes, and the Gospel of John. Then he read the story of the Fall, because that seemed important somehow, and about Lot's wife turning to salt, because no matter how the preachers tried to explain that one, it'd never seemed just to Wes. And finally he read the first verses of the forty-third chapter of Isaiah, over and over, because he had always understood that these were supposed to be comforting words. When thou pa.s.sest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee . . . But though the words were familiar on his lips and gentle on his ears, they taunted him with the promise of a peace and solace beyond his faithless grasp, and they brought no comfort.

The week pa.s.sed slowly. Wes kept the Do Not Disturb hangtag on the outside doork.n.o.b, and he left the curtains drawn. They didn't close all the way, and during the day he sat on the bed and watched the slim shard of sunlight slowly cross the carpet. He tried not to think of Scott, or Dennis, or Williams, or Claire. He tried not to think about suicides and hearings and mortgage payments he couldn't pay and how much his hands ached. He tried not to think.

Each day he went to the IGA, late, fifteen minutes before closing-the place empty, the teenage clerk glaring at him as he walked up and down the aisles-and then he went back to the dark motel and ate cold chicken or macaroni salad. There was a No Smoking placard on the bedside table where the ashtray would've been a few years back; Wes tapped his ash into a drinking gla.s.s from the bathroom. He sat and smoked, and he watched the light from the streetlamps. It was yellower than the sunlight, but duller, and it did not move.

Sat.u.r.day morning Wes rose early. He showered and shaved painstakingly, then dressed in his best s.h.i.+rt, his suit, his oxfords, his tie. Took him more than an hour, but he'd given himself time. When he was ready, he sat in the chair beside the television and waited until the red numbers on the bedside clock showed him that he'd have to leave now, and then that he'd have to speed, and finally that it was too late to make Scott's service no matter how fast he drove.

The knock came several hours later. It was light, a woman's knock, and Wes knew he was paid up and had left the Do Not Disturb sign on the k.n.o.b, so he wasn't entirely surprised when he opened the door and found Molly Bannon outside. She wore a navy-blue dress and no coat, though Wes had to brace against the cold. Her hair was loose and the wind snapped it into and then away from her face. She was pale, but her eyes were clear, the skin below them smooth and tight, and Wes wondered if maybe she was too deep into grief to cry yet. She held his fiddle case in one hand. "Dennis told me you would probably be here."

"Come in," Wes said, and he brought the door wide. The sun was already below the mountains, and it had snowed without his noticing. The white dusting came halfway down the slopes, an encroaching threat above the town.

Molly shook her head. "I just came to give you this." She nodded to the fiddle case, but made no move to hand it to him. "Scott left a note on it." Wes saw it now, a square of white paper attached to the lid with a piece of tape. When Molly didn't say anything else, Wes leaned down and took the note off the case. The tape lifted the top black layer of the chipboard with it, leaving a pale brown patch behind. He looked down at the paper. A single line in the middle of the sheet. Cursive. He hadn't known they still taught cursive. Please give this back to Mr. Carver. It is his. Wes flipped the paper over. Blank.

"It's the only note he left." Molly's voice was strong, strangely normal, but she was looking somewhere over Wes's shoulder, not really at him. "The only thing that . . . shows he meant to do what he did."

Did she know the gun was his? Wes wondered if this was some kind of test, if he was supposed to say it first. But maybe she didn't know. Maybe all she'd been told was "stolen handgun." He held the note out to Molly, but she looked at it like she didn't know what it was, and the wind tried to cheat it from his hand, so after a minute he took it back and put it in his pocket. "You sure you don't want to come in? There's a coffeepot. Probably ain't any good, but I could make you a cup."

"I just came to give you this," she said again, and this time she moved the fiddle case toward him. Their fingers touched when he took it from her.

Wes adjusted his grip on the handle, glanced down. "I meant for him to keep it."

"I know," Molly said, and met his eyes. "I'm not sure he'd figured that out yet, but I did."

Another sustained gust-arctic air, bearing winter down-and Wes felt gooseflesh rise on his arms beneath his clothes. He set the fiddle case at his feet, took off his suit coat. "If you won't come in, put that on at least."

She took the coat and held it by its collar for a long moment before draping it over her shoulders. Looked him up and down, and seemed to notice his clothes for the first time. "He tried once before," she told him after a minute. "A month after we moved here. I found him sitting in the shower with his wrists cut. It wasn't a 'cry for help,' either. He cut the long way. Deep." She drew one index finger up the inside of her opposite wrist. "If I hadn't come home early . . ." Wes thought about the long sleeves, the knitted arm warmers, the ubiquitous hooded sweats.h.i.+rts. The things he of all people ought to have noticed. "I should have taken him home to Miles City then," Molly said. "I never should have brought him here in the first place. I wanted him to be close to his dad was all."

"You were just trying to do right."

"Maybe I wasn't. Maybe I came here because I was afraid to be alone with my son. Maybe I came here because I was trying too f.u.c.king hard to prove that I still loved my husband." Wes didn't have anything to say to that. He knew what this was. This was Molly saying things she couldn't say to anyone who mattered, Molly saying things to him because she was never going to see him again, because she already knew his secrets. "I should have taken him home before," she said, "but I'm taking him home now. I don't want him buried here."

"You gonna stay with him?" Wes asked. "In Miles City?"

Molly looked down at her shoes. Pretty shoes, open toes, wrong for this weather. Finally she nodded, slow, like she was making the decision right this minute. "Connor doesn't know yet. They didn't let him come to the funeral." She looked directly at Wes again. "What do you think of that?"

"It's a hard thing," he said.

"He's been crazy since they told him about Scott," Molly said softly.

Wes remembered walking inmates down to the warden's office. Sometimes they knew, if they had someone who'd been sick awhile, or old, but mostly they didn't. Wes remembered standing there, retreating behind his stone face, while the warden told the inmate he was so sorry to inform . . . And then the walk back to the cellblock. Always took longer, the walk back.

"I'm sorry," Wes said.

Sorry they didn't let your husband come to your son's funeral.

Sorry I didn't go, either.

Sorry it was my revolver.

Sorry I can do nothing for you but say sorry, sorry, sorry.

Molly took Wes's coat off her shoulders, folded it once the way Claire would have before holding it between them. Wes wanted so much to leave her with something. To offer something she could take with her. But the fiddle would bring no comfort, and Wes had nothing else. He took his coat back and understood that any chance he'd had to give was gone.

He dozed, and when he woke it was dark. Wes changed out of his funeral clothes and put his jeans and flannel s.h.i.+rt and boots back on. He was out of food and cigarettes. Twenty minutes till the IGA closed.

When he went outside, Wes found Arthur Farmer's truck parked in front of his room. Farmer was huddled inside the cab, hat tipped a little over his face. The engine was idling, a white plume of exhaust rising from below the tailgate, and Wes could hear the higher registers of a song playing on the radio. Farmer stepped out of the truck when he saw him. Wes tried to read his expression, but Farmer knew at least as much as he did about controlling one's features. Wes flipped his collar up against the wind-it'd died down a touch since Molly was here, but gone colder to make up for it-and pushed his hands deep into his pockets. "How long you been out here?" he asked.

"Hour or so."

"You didn't knock."

"You wouldn't have answered if I did," Farmer said, and it was just a statement, not an accusation.

Wes leaned against the side of the truck. He, Farmer and Lane had driven all over the state in a truck like this one, all night most of the time, chain-smoking and stopping on the side of the road to take a p.i.s.s and twisting the radio dial trying to find something other than h.e.l.lfire-and-brimstone preaching. They'd gone west to east and west again, from county fair to rodeo to honky-tonk to dive bar, hardly ever getting paid enough to cover their gas. Wes glanced into the bed now, half expecting to see instrument cases. Bags of horse feed, a couple battered buckets, a single frayed rope.

"So how was it?" he asked.

Farmer had let his eyes drift, but he brought them around. "What?"

"The service."

"It was hard," Farmer said, "but good. The preacher had a nice way with words, and the choir sang some. I didn't know Scott all that well, but I think he'd have liked that. The music."

Wes nodded a few too many times. "Many folks there?"

"Not many."

"Any kids?"

"None that I saw."

Wes looked at the gravel beneath his feet, forced his eyes back up to meet Farmer's. "It wasn't because of the suicide," he said.

Farmer smoothed a hand over his mustache but didn't say anything.

"That's not the reason I didn't go to Scott's funeral. It wasn't because it was a suicide, and it didn't have nothing to do with my father."

"I guess I hadn't thought about that part of it," Farmer said. "I just figured you had your reasons."

"Don't tell me you hadn't thought about it. You wouldn't be sitting outside my G.o.dd.a.m.ned motel room for an hour if you didn't believe I was maybe spending too much time thinking about people killing themselves."

"If I was that worried, I wouldn't have waited around outside." He forged ahead. "But I was thinking. You shouldn't be wasting your money on this motel. Come stay at the house."

Wes wanted to say No, h.e.l.l no. The days when such an invitation could be considered casual by either one of them were long gone. Fact was, though, Wes couldn't afford to say no right out. Literally couldn't afford it. He had just enough left in the envelope to get him to the hearing, sure, and probably enough gas to get back to Spokane. No more.

"There's the room upstairs," Farmer said. "I don't hardly ever go up there. I wouldn't be in your business all the time, that's what's worrying you."

Wes blinked hard against the sting of the wind. "It'll get you in hot water with Dennis."

"Dennis doesn't get to decide who my houseguests are."

Wes swallowed. Thought about the money. And the revolver, waiting. "Well, I tell you, Farmer, it'd be a help. Strapped with the medical bills and all."

Farmer waved off the grat.i.tude, like he didn't know exactly how much it cost Wes to accept his offer. "Be good to have a little company," he said.

After church the next day, Wes left a twenty for the maid-Claire had done that work once, before they met-and drove over to Farmer's place. Almost missed the turn, the way to his own house-Dennis's house-was so ingrained. He left his fiddle downstairs in the living room, in the corner beside Farmer's guitar and Lane's banjo. The room upstairs had a single bed with whitewashed wrought iron at the head and foot. A small dressing table next to it, a lamp and Bible resting on a lace doily. A rocking chair beside the window, with a knitted afghan folded neatly over the back. The room was painted a sunny yellow, with white rabbits chasing each other around the perimeter, up near the ceiling. Repurposed as a guest room, Wes realized, but intended as a nursery. He looked again at the rabbits. Each had a green bow painted around its neck.

"You settle in," Farmer said, lingering in the hall. "I was thinking we'd eat at seven-thirty-that all right?"

"Sounds good."

The window faced west. Wes had been hoping it wouldn't, that he'd be in the room across the hall instead, but it was crowded with boxes and loose furniture. He heard Farmer moving downstairs, and he went to the window and looked. The arena was on the far side of the yard, the broodmare pastures beyond that. A half-dozen mares grazing, their coats gone dull and fluffy with the coa.r.s.e winter hair growing in. And past them was a fence, and three more animals. They were far enough off that Wes could pick out the mule only by color; the long ears and spa.r.s.e tail were details lost to distance. He could see the back of the workshop, and a bit of the house, a patch of white through the trees. He'd see Dennis if he caught him walking to his truck or checking on the horses.

Dinner was hamburgers-Farmer was careful; no more steaks-and afterward they went to the living room. Farmer switched on the television, and they watched a cop show set somewhere sunny and colorful. The characters all had lengthy backstories, and Farmer dutifully explained them all to Wes. It satisfied Wes to know that Farmer watched television often enough to know all these details. Seemed a little bit of a flaw in his character, and it made him easier to like. When the show was over, the local news came on; they were still talking about Scott. No new developments, the anchorwoman said.

"What 'new developments' they expect?" Wes asked. "The kid's dead."

Farmer turned the television off. "It's just a slow news time," he said. "They'll be on to something else soon enough."

The riot had dominated the news for weeks. So many reporters called the house that Claire had started leaving the phone off the hook.

"You can play your guitar if you want," Wes said. "I'm guessing that's what you usually do about this time."

Farmer watched him closely for a minute, but didn't ask was he sure, and Wes was grateful. Wasn't sure how convincing he could sound if he had to insist. The old Martin was already out of its case, resting on a guitar stand within reach of Farmer's easy chair. He took it up and tuned it, and even that was devastatingly familiar, the sequence and timing of the plucks, the little ten-note melody Farmer played once he thought he'd tuned right.

He'd gotten better. Of course he had, twenty years gone by, twenty years of daily practice. Farmer had always been a solid rhythm guitarist. It was an underappreciated skill, and vital to the band, but not especially showy. The breaks Farmer had taken on the bluegra.s.s numbers had been competent but fairly simple, anything more than basic fingerpicking beyond his reach. Now he played quickly and clearly, and though there was still a hint of the rote about his playing-Wes would bet good money that Farmer always played a given tune exactly the same way-his fingers were fast and clean on the strings. Even now, he couldn't hold a candle to the way Lane or Wes had played back in the day, but he'd come into his own as a musician. He seemed proud of it, though he was careful to check the pride so it showed only in the slightest satisfied upturn of one corner of his mouth.

Wes didn't recognize the first tune he played, or the second. "Play something I know," he said.

Farmer glanced sideways, and Wes saw he was right; Farmer had been avoiding the old tunes on purpose. He laid his palm flat over the strings, drummed his fingertips against the wood for a minute, then started in on "Blackberry Blossom." It was a bluegra.s.s standard, one they'd played at almost every show. Wes knew it forward, backward, upside down and sideways, but he'd never heard it like this. If he was honest, Wes had never thought much of the guitar. Though he'd only ever loved the fiddle, he could appreciate the allure of the banjo and the mandolin; the guitar, on the other hand, had seemed almost dull. No more. Farmer brought his attention to notes in such a way it was like Wes had never heard them before, and he kept a driving rhythm all the while. Lord, what Wes wouldn't have given to play this onstage again. He could hear where Lane would start in on one of his crazy-fast licks, rolls all up and down the strings, slides and hammer-ons and pull-offs, and then Farmer would come back in, yeah, and do what he was doing right now, and then it would be his turn, Wes's turn, and this is where he'd quit chopping and pull out all his slides and double-stops and slurs, and here came the s.h.i.+ft from G to E minor, then the line he'd play so fast he'd snap a couple horsehairs, and he'd finish his break with a flourish and then blend back into the group, so easy, all together then, all three of them.

"Right nice," Wes said, when Farmer was done. The words choked a little coming out, and they weren't even his; they were Lane's, the understated praise he'd offer after an especially strong practice or performance.

Farmer nodded his thanks, set the guitar back on its stand. "Wish you could play with me." He said it simple, quiet, and despite the fact that Wes sometimes had a hard time with Farmer, Wes was glad to be with someone who knew him as he had been. Without Claire, he realized, there would be no one left back in Spokane who had ever heard him play. No one who knew he'd ever touched wood and horsehair.

"That's really why I got to go to this hearing, you know." Wes crossed one boot over his knee. Thought for a minute. "Those folks on the board, they read the reports and think the riot was a couple days of hard times, bad enough, maybe, but over and done with. They don't know what-all he took."

Farmer looked toward the window, but it was dark and Wes knew he wasn't seeing anything but the reflection of the lights inside the living room. "Try not to take this the wrong way, Wesley," he said, "but I'm gonna call bulls.h.i.+t on that."

Wes set his teeth against each other. "Why's that, exactly?"