Black River (28 page)

“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 shirt 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 piss and twisting the radio dial trying to find something other than hellfire-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 goddamned 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, hell 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 gratitude, 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 coarse 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 sparse 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 bluegrass 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 bluegrass 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 shift 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 bullshit on that.”

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

“You weren't so hell-bent on going to this hearing till you heard about Williams getting religion. You hadn't done that, I think I'd probably been able to talk you out of going.”

“You saying I don't care that my goddamn hands look like this?” Wes held them up, palms toward his face, the fingers so far from parallel they'd have looked comical if not so grotesque.

“No,” Farmer said. “I'm saying if the question of faith hadn't gotten all mixed up in this, you might've talked yourself into not giving a shit about Williams. I mean, where's he from, Wesley? Dawson County? The hell kind of life you think an ex-con's gonna have out there? He ain't winning anything here, no matter what the parole board decides.”

“He's got to be faking,” Wes said. “The born-again thing. Guys like that are always faking.”

Farmer raised an eyebrow.

“Don't give me that, Farmer!” Wes slammed his hand down on the arm of the chair. The cushion gave, and it wasn't the sharp blow he'd been hoping for. “I walked the tiers for twenty-one years. You think I don't know there are some halfway decent inmates? Sure, some of 'em move forward while they're inside. They study for their GED, they make toys for other inmates' kids at Christmas, they get sober and mean to stay that way, whatever. But I cringe every time I hear someone say one of 'em is a different person. They ain't different. They're still exactly the same person who did whatever the hell landed them in a cell.”

“You telling me you ain't ever seen a sincere conversion? I think I have, now and then.”

Wes stood, paced across the room one way and then the other, ended up near the corner with the instruments. He nudged his fiddle case with the toe of his boot. “Do you remember how I played, Farmer? I mean, really remember?”

“Yes,” he said softly. “I do.”