Big Picture: Stories (13 page)

“What are you doing tonight?” Rick asked.

Lucien laughed. “I’m sitting around the house with my mother. What the hell did you think I’d be doing?”

“After that?”

“Sleeping.”

“Nah, come on, go out with us,” Manny said. “Like old times.”

“I’m kinda beat.”

“We’ll be at the Blue Corn until late if you change your mind,” Rick said. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Well, all right then.”

Lucien watched them leave the store with a handful of grapes each.

He finished shopping, and listened to the Spanish being spoken in the lanes of packaged food. He looked at the brown faces of big-eyed children wanting cookies, wanting to get into carts, wanting to push carts, wanting. He found the ceiling lights of the market harsh.

The clouds of late afternoon were fat and flat-bottomed as if resting on a table of glass. Lucien had not enjoyed his trip to the market. It was good to see his old friends, even though he felt no closeness to them, but after his tour through the aisles he waited in the checkout line behind a woman of high fashion.

He drove the groceries home to his mother, watched her cook for him again, and listened as she told him that his father’s illness had come on quickly and that he had suffered only marginally. That was her word, “marginally,” and he wondered where she had acquired it and just what it meant. She fed him beef brisket, green beans, and posole.

“I saw Rick and Manny at the market.”

His mother nodded, said nothing.

“They look like they’re doing okay.”

“They work at the lumberyard, both of them.” She said it as if it were a bad thing to work at the lumberyard. She had never liked either of them. “All these years at the lumberyard.”

“I guess any job around here is a good one.”

“I suppose.” She drank from her water glass. “That Rick is a strange character, don’t you think?” She paused. “Are you going back to school?”

“I don’t know, Ma.”

“You could wind up where they are.”

“I suppose. Working at the lumberyard wouldn’t be bad work.”

“I guess no work is bad work, but still …” She stopped.

They finished eating without saying much of anything. Lucien cleared the table and got ready to wash the dishes.

“That was really good. And just enough, too. I was a little scared you were going to make a lot of food and I wouldn’t be able to stop eating.”

“Well, I’m trying to establish healthy habits.”

“That’s good.” He turned off the water.

“You know, you’re welcome to go out.”

“I told them I was spending the evening with my best gal. They asked me to share, but I told them I didn’t think they could handle her.”

She slapped his rear with the rag she had used to wipe down the table.

“But maybe after you go to bed.”

“Okay, honey.”

Lucien went through his father’s fly boxes while his mother knitted. She told him she was making a sweater for a new baby down the road. She told him three times. The television was on with the sound low. He could see the meaningless motions and facial expressions and just hear the hum of music and canned laughter. He watched his mother’s fingers making their sure movements with yarn and was mesmerized. He turned his eyes to the television screen, but didn’t see anything, didn’t understand anything.

Lucien sat there and felt angry. He didn’t understand it and felt in no hurry to understand it. He just felt it. It felt good to feel anything. He wasn’t mad at his mother, but as he looked down at the coffee table he knew he could break it in two. His father once told him while they were chopping wood in the backyard that being angry was a part of life. His father had worked up a good sweat and stopped to lean on the axe. “White people don’t understand,” he said. “Your mother’s a good woman, as good a heart as you’ll find, but she can’t know.” Lucien looked at his mother again. He loved her, but she couldn’t know. His father had been right, and he couldn’t explain it because he didn’t know. His father left him with only a vague understanding of his anger, a vague awareness and respect for it. Lucien left the house, but didn’t go to the Blue Corn to join his friends. He drove north toward Questa and then across the mountains to Red River. He just drove.

It was well after three when Lucien coasted into the driveway. He shut down the engine a hundred yards away so as not to wake his mother. He was tired, but he didn’t want to sleep; he didn’t think he could.

Inside, he caught sight of the fly boxes he’d left on the coffee table and decided he’d go fishing. He didn’t go to his room for his rod and reel; instead he went to his father’s gear. He felt good about using it, knowing that the man would want it used. He chose the four-piece pack rod and the Battenkill reel with double-tapered line. He wore his father’s vest and loaded the pockets with a box of terrestrials and another with a bunch of different-sized Royal Wulffs. His father would often fish only one pattern; he insisted that if you presented it correctly a trout would take anything. Lucien put on some coffee and made three cheese and olive sandwiches while it brewed. He poured the coffee into a Thermos, wrote a note to his mother, imagining her smiling as she read it, and left the house quietly. He was sorry he had to start the truck, but his mother would get back to sleep.

It was still dark when Lucien arrived at the parking lot at the head of the trail that led down to the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Red River. It was about a mile hike down the steep path, full of switchbacks, which was easy enough in the light of day, but treacherous in the dark. His light had a good beam though. With it he found the startled eyes of raccoons and other small animals. The trail was still familiar. A couple of deer didn’t hear him until he was very close, and they scared him when they jumped and ran down through the junipers. He thought the animals did well to fear him. First light was appearing when he heard the river. He’d worked up a minor sweat that felt good, although it chilled him slightly. He stopped to take a leak, then slipped out of his pack, sat on a big rock, and drank a little coffee.

By the time Lucien reached the Rio Grande there was enough light to show him the far bank. He came to a clearing in the middle of which was a heavily used firesite. He and his father had caught trout and cooked them at this spot on many occasions. He pulled on his waders and boots, attached the reel to the rod, fed the line through the guides, connected a braided leader butt, and added a length of 5X tippet material. He stepped out into the current. He was rushing, he knew. He could hear his father telling him to study the river first, to note the possible lies in the pools and riffles, but he wanted to start. He roll cast upstream to some slower water. He almost always roll cast for some reason. The flow of the river was strong and as always a little troublesome at first, but soon he felt at home. It was easy to see then, and after a dozen or so casts, he spotted the rise of a trout just upstream from where he had been fishing earlier. He cast to the far side of where he had seen the fish and let the current bring the fly back to him. He cast again, saw the fly disappear, and gave the line a tug to set the hook. He could never get over the excitement of catching a fish, of tricking a fish. His heart fluttered and he played the trout in. It was a ten-inch rainbow, nothing to get crazy about, but it was a decent fish. He removed the fly from the animal’s lip and let it go, first holding it facing the current until it felt strong.

He fished for a couple of hours, catching two more trout of about the same size, then stopped for a sandwich and coffee before working his way upstream to the confluence of the two rivers.

When Lucien got to the place where the rivers met, he was surprised to find another fisherman sitting on the bank. He looked at the man and realized that he knew him. The short, pudgy Indian was Warren Fragua, a deputy sheriff who had been a friend of his father’s.

“Mr. Fragua?”

“Hello.” The man tried to place Lucien.

“Lucien Bradley. Henry Bradley’s son.”

“Oh yeah. You’re in the army.” He shook Lucien’s hand.

“Not anymore.” Lucien hated having people define him by his army association. “I just got home.”

Fragua nodded. “I’m sorry about your father.”

“Yeah.”

They looked at the river.

“He was a hell of a fisherman,” Fragua said.

“Yes sir.” Lucien stretched. “You been doing any good out here?”

“Doing okay. Nothing to write home about.”

“I caught three ten-inchers downriver a ways.”

Fragua yawned. “So you’re home. I know your mother’s happy about that. What are you going to do?”

“Don’t know yet. Get a job, I guess. Go back to school maybe.”

“You’re young. You’ve plenty of time.”

“Are you still with the sheriff’s office?”

“Yep.”

“Must be pretty interesting.”

“Sort of. There’s not much excitement around these parts, as you well know. I think that’s why I keep doing it. It pays the bills and I can fish. What did you do in the army?”

Lucien smiled. “What does anybody do in the army? Waited to get out.”

Fragua laughed softly, his eyes on the river.

“Well,” Lucien said, “I’m going to work my way on up the Red here.”

“Check you later, Lucien.” Fragua called to Lucien when he was some yards away. “It’s good to see you.”

Lucien fished his way up the Red River. Most things didn’t make any sense. He’d been home less than twenty-four hours and already he felt deeply unsettled and anxious and ready to call himself a bum or a vagrant or some kind of freeloader. He was afraid he was going to end up living his life one paycheck to the next like his friends from high school.

He didn’t have any further luck with the trout that morning—even when he floated a Jassid beetle down a riffle, a method he usually considered cheating—but he didn’t care.

He ate his last sandwich, washed it down with water from his canteen, and began the hike back up to his truck.

When Lucien walked into the house at noon he was nearly ready to fall over. Sleep kept nudging him and his mother offered a smile shy of laughter when she saw him. He sighed, walked past her and into his room where he managed to get out of most of his clothes before passing out. He was even sleepy in his dream.

In his dream, he was stumbling through a dense forest following the sound of a woman crying. Birds were screaming, monkeys were speaking from branches, water was dripping from giant leaves of a canopy that let in limited light. He worked to make himself alert, to keep his eyes open, to focus on something, anything, and there in front of him, open-mouthed and silent, nailed to a tree was the figure of Jesus, turning from flesh to wood to carbon. In the woods, he came upon a bed in which his father, missing many pounds and dressed in a hospital gown, lay dying. The dying man swung his legs around, landed his feet on the floor of matted leaves, stood up, and began to pace.

“So, you’ve finally come to see me,” his father said, walking away toward a flowering tree. He turned and walked back.

“I’m sorry.”

The man started for the tree again, then whipped around, clutching his gown. “Ha! Caught you! Didn’t I? Admit it, I caught you peeking at your old man’s crack. Damn these gowns.” He staggered to the bed and sat.

“Dad, I’m sorry.”

“Shut the hell up. Stop apologizing.” He leaned back and put his head on the pillow. “Death is really fucked up, Lucien. It has its downside.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s only temporary. Life goes on forever, but death is only temporary.”

Lucien rubbed his eyes and watched shapes fade in and out. “I don’t get it.”

“What’s your favorite color, son?”

“Dun.”

Lucien watched his father close his eyes and begin to swell, first his face, his cheeks pressing beyond their limits, then his neck and arms. Christ was talking now, strange words that were not clear. Lucien looked at Jesus and said, “But I don’t know you.” And all was silent.

Throwing Earth

Joseph Martin straightened, cracking his back. He winced, and a sigh of release softened his face. Letting the pitchfork rest against the stall wall, he twisted his torso again but heard no sound. He leaned his head and shoulders past the gate and called out to his son.

Wes left the water trough he was watching fill up and walked across the hard-baked ground of the corral toward the barn.

“I want you to finish up in here,” Joseph said, stepping out of the stall and stomping his boots to free the clinging dung and straw. He watched the boy set to work. “I’m going to take a look at your mother’s car.”

The boy paused, particles from a pitched load settling. “She ain’t here.”

Joseph pushed up his hat and raked at the perspiration on his forehead with the back of his hand. “She told me her car was acting up.” He looked toward the house. “Where’d she go? She say?”

“I don’t know, Daddy.”

Joseph looked at the horizon, and the hot, dusty day. “When you finish in here, come get me and we’ll worm the last of the horses.”

The boy nodded and Joseph left him to work.

Joseph went to the house and stopped in the kitchen to pour himself a glass of cold water from the bottle in the refrigerator. He held the glass against his face, looking around for a note that his wife might have left. He thought about replacing the leaky T-pipe at the top of the water heater, but instead went outside and sat beneath the big cottonwood. He soaked up shade and watched the driveway, the road, the magpies, the jays.

Wes came to the front yard and stood by Joseph, stunned momentarily by the shade. “Ready to do the horses?”

Joseph stood up.

“What were you doing, Daddy?”

“Nothing.”

“I got the medicine out.”

“Good.” Joseph slapped a hand on Wes’s shoulder. “Good.”

They walked to the small corral beyond the barn.

“Daddy, you think it’d be all right if I went out for the basketball team this year?”

Joseph smiled. “Sure, why not?”

“Just figured I’d ask. I know there’s a lot to do around here.”

Joseph looked at his son and for the first time actually noticed his height. “When did you get as tall as me?”