Driving on the Rim (31 page)

I may have been enduring the same fear, the eventual acknowledgment that in suspending the rules of humanity for the convenience of emotion we gave way to wickedness; at a bare minimum, we were in error. The matching headstones with their chiseled hearts encouraged my view that everything real was eventually reduced to human contrivance. As I walked back through the old cemetery to my car, every inscription seemed lurid with deceit.

I supposed that I was guilty.

I noticed that Jocelyn was limping. Otherwise she had changed little since I’d seen her in the White Sulphur Springs hospital—the same nice crow’s-feet that seemed to intensify her gaze, the same slightly weathered quality of some good-looking women entering middle age. Her expression was, I guess, amusement at our turning up like this. However, she caught my glance. We had stopped at a steak joint, the Trail Head, just off the interstate. “Yes,” she said, “it’s permanent.” We went inside and were given a table.

Jocelyn shrugged off her Windbreaker. Underneath she wore a snap-button shirt that seemed somewhat incongruous with her cotton skirt, but her vitality made it work and would probably have made anything work. If I’d taken her to one of our clinic get-togethers, I would have been afraid the wives would have found her a little tough even as they noticed their husbands’ interest with irritation.

I said, “I’m happy to see you again. But I’m surprised.”

She smiled and didn’t say anything right away. “I expected to be well received. Weren’t you flirting with me at the hospital?”

“Was I?”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, never mind!”

Anyway, our drinks arrived, whatever they were. It didn’t matter what was in them: I was slipping into a trance. But not an entirely guileless trance. I was already trying to imagine how I might avoid telling Jocelyn about my problems. A doctor hoping to have charges reduced to manslaughter didn’t seem like much of a catch. There was hardly anyone in the restaurant on this off night, and the sparseness seemed to isolate us. I felt something happening to me and would have appreciated some background noise.

“I’m not in Texas anymore. I’m back in Two Dot. My father died.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, he was ninety. I think he had long since figured there’s worse things than dying. He wouldn’t leave the place, kept mortgaging it to pay nurses. It was a mess. I couldn’t fly anymore, not ag flying, because I was no longer insurable. So now it’s my place, for better or worse.”

“Well, I’m sorry. It’s always tough.”

“Not in this case. He was a mean old man.”

Our food came, a couple of little steaks and salad. Jocelyn said, “You’re watching me eat!”

“Was I?”

“Yes! You were looking at my mouth! Okay, you try it. I’ll watch your mouth while you try to eat that steak. You’ll never get it down. It’ll just get bigger the longer you chew it.”

We talked about our situations: I suggested that I was on some sort of leave of absence, which went unquestioned; she was struggling with what to do with her dad’s old place. The restaurant began to fill up, and I knew most of the people who came in, though nobody stopped at our table. Several stared at Jocelyn. You could just feel the atmosphere going downhill.

Jocelyn said, “Let’s get out of here. Your neighbors don’t look friendly.” She started toward the front door. I left a few bills on the table as we arose and noticed that the room had nearly filled with other diners and they were staring. The waitress had been somewhat formal, I thought. Several men were observing Jocelyn walk. She had a somewhat grand manner that made the limp somehow fabulous. At least I thought so.

It was still light outside. Main Street with its rows of angle-parked automobiles and old storefronts seemed to frame the snowcapped peaks to the north. A few diners stood in front of the restaurant, hunched up
against the cool air, nervously getting cigarettes out of the way so that they could go back inside and eat. Jocelyn’s truck was parked in front of the bank; it was a small Japanese vehicle with Texas plates, mud right up to the windows.

“Did you forget what you did with your car?” she asked.

“No, no, it’s just over there.”

“Well, hop in it and go home. I’ll see you when I see you.”

I felt myself to be under suspicion at the clinic. My former bravado was gone, and I quickly realized how much I wanted to work, having no other source of income—though I lived cheaply. The savings of course would suffice, but I’d always thought I was saving for some as-yet-undetermined scheme. Still, I had tried for a short time to maintain my practice, and I had been genuinely touched by the patients who persisted in seeing me, because they thought I was either innocent or had good reason to murder Tessa. The latter had its disquieting side, as Tessa had come to seem something of a town pest. I was not reassured when Adelaide Compton, whose dermatitis had forced her to discontinue giving piano lessons, said of Tessa, and in a congratulatory tone, “Good riddance.” I could only smile weakly while writing a prescription for cortisone cream.

In the end, it was out of my hands. The clinic partners were called to a special meeting where Dr. McAllister spoke, ostensibly to the whole group but really to me. He began with a peroration on compliance, expectations, work environment, and duty to the community, which could have applied equally to the space program and the whaling industry, before giving it up and speaking directly to me. Holding one wing of his bow tie between thumb and forefinger, he let it be known that all the clinic partners assumed that I was innocent but that for the good of all it would be best if I awaited the outcome of my trial or hearing before resuming work; and that in the meantime it would be no great matter if the “team”—had we ever used this term before?—took up my patient load.

I guess in my exasperation I had given some flippant advice to my more trying patients and they had gone to the board. A hypochondriac who kept demanding an explanation for all his imaginary ailments I diagnosed
with Saint Vitus’ Dance. A cowboy whose wife had complained of his crude erotic approach I urged to give mounting the same respect it is given in horsemanship. A water bed was no cure for undulant fever. And so forth and so on. I should have kept my mouth shut.

I think my first impulse was to hang on like a bulldog in a thunderstorm, but the folly of that was soon clear and I consented with a show of magnanimity that produced great relief in the room, including not a few audible sighs. Voluble noise filled the room, and everyone gathered around me with our old amiable muddle. When Dr. Haack joshingly punched me in the shoulder and asked, “Well, did you do it or not?” the room fell abruptly still as all eyes turned toward me.

I just smiled.

I got plenty of cold shoulders, but Jinx continued to see me. I don’t think she was explicitly lonely, but she was so opinionated that not everyone considered her good company. We went pretty far back together, back to when my astonishingly callow behavior attracted few allies, let alone social contacts. She had me over for one of her expert suppers, a beautiful
entrecôte de veau
with braised garden vegetables and a bottle of Côte-Rôtie that I don’t think she could have readily afforded. Her small house felt like the most cosmopolitan apartment filled with books, none, so far as I could tell, medical or scientific. The books were in cases except where they were stacked near a worn armchair, places marked with bits of paper. There was just one room where one could sit apart from the dining room, and its floor was nearly covered by a worn but beautiful Samarkand rug. Two rows of old novels were divided by a brown radio.

At table, we clinked glasses and let the unspoken be unspoken, though Jinx signified a little with a prolonged glance. I let it go right by me, not eager to thicken the atmosphere. I was quite resigned to my current fatalism. I had spent too much of my existence at manipulation and had at long last turned myself over to the world, savoring a sort of peace I had never before experienced. This was zeal in its most serene and contradictory form. I was self-sufficient and a good doctor, but this was my greatest achievement. Once I’d accepted that I was guilty and a criminal, the skies cleared.

“Are you making good use of your sabbatical?” Jinx asked while directing a faultfinding gaze at the food she had placed on the table. “I
could use one myself. Later we can discuss whatever saga you are generating at the moment. Tell me what you think of this wine?”

“Didn’t I say anything already?”

“You only peered into it and sniffed.”

“Well, it’s fantastic. I suppose you sent away for it.”

Just then, her world seemed sad and orderly. Jinx could have used some of the disarray that currently lay over my days. Being useful to the end seemed insufficient. Whether this was a proclivity or an excuse I couldn’t have said, so consumingly focused was I on the food and wine. I hoped there would be plenty of the latter, as I planned to get drunk. Very often that gave me the feeling of falling in love with Jinx and at the same time feeling I mustn’t. I wondered why. Already I was feeling something very much like love for her. Sometimes it didn’t wear off, either. I must have been crazy.

Out of work, I took an extreme interest in the newspaper. I spent extraordinary time in one surmise after another based on the minutes of the commissioners’ meetings or the most opaque remarks of the mayor or, best of all, the “courthouse blotter,” where all things human from burglary to skunk removal to missing cats could be found on any given day. And with almost fatal gravity I was drawn as I had not been in many years to the classified ads and finally to that grim, black river of type labeled “Employment Opportunities.” Here was where I discovered Mr. and Mrs. Haines, who wished to have their house painted but, as I learned, had a limited budget to do so. Here also was where I imagined plunging into my own past, since the future was currently impaired.

As I looked the house over while awaiting an answer to the doorbell, I estimated it had not been painted since it was built, and it was a very old house. Mrs. Haines came to the door, opening it just wide enough to see out, then invited me in upon learning my business. She was a tiny white-haired woman, in her seventies I guessed, and quite excited to have a guest. I soon met her husband, a more phlegmatic type, who sat next to his ashtray in the breakfast nook that looked into the small backyard, which contained several well-tended raised flower beds. The house seemed to have had all the care that money couldn’t buy—clean, worn, and orderly—a small sequestered homebody’s niche.

Mrs. Haines did all the talking. Mr. Haines occasionally lifted a hand
to add something but seemed to forget or change his mind, and the hand dropped to the table. Luckily, neither of the Haineses seemed to know who I was. I summarized what painting experience I could remember from long ago days and applied myself to winning their confidence. Within an hour, I was back with paint chips and insincerely applauded the good taste of the Haineses as they selected Chantilly Pearl with Spicy Chrysanthemum for the trim. I declined a deposit. Mrs. Haines was clear about what they were willing to pay. I accepted immediately because, euphoric about the prospect of scraping and painting their house, I was fretful that something beyond my control, like the weather, would delay me.

About a week later, Jocelyn called and asked if I wanted to see her place. I said that I did. It turned out she was already in town, and so she picked me up in her truck. I’m not sure why she wanted me to see it, although I began to suspect that it was to give her some advice about selling it. More than once she said, “You’re from around here.” We went through Big Timber, where the wind was blowing hard and the pedestrians were not only holding on to their hats but clutching themselves with a free hand to keep their coats from blowing open. Some students from the university were working in a vacant lot, what had been the Chinatown in the days of building the railroad. “I love this road to Harlowton,” Jocelyn said as we headed north. “Everything so open. Once you get used to seeing a long way it’s hard to accept anything less.” There was little activity on the ranches—wheel line sprinklers idled in cropped meadows, cows alone, bulls sequestered in corrals now that breeding season was over. I knew the calves were in the Midwest bloating on corn and antibiotics, quite offensive to a doctor accustomed to watching the corn lobby’s assault on American health.

We turned west up the Musselshell Valley toward Martinsdale and Two Dot. It was more tucked-away country, and Jocelyn drove slowly, seeming to examine every hill, every watercourse. She sighed and looked troubled. She reached over and held my hand. I can hardly say how I felt: I stared straight through the windshield and the empty sagebrush hills and sensed my breath was leaving me. She released my hand and returned hers to the wheel. I asked what she was thinking about and she said, “Riding the school bus.”

The road into the ranch left the pavement between two small hills, marked by a rusty mailbox with a cattle brand painted on its side. Once leaving the highway, it descended toward the river bottom, and a sprawl of buildings and worn-out farm machinery was visible around a grove of cottonwoods. An old railroad flatcar served as a bridge across the small river, and beyond was seemingly endless rangeland. She pulled up in front of the house. “I grew up here.”

It was a poor excuse for a single-story house, once white and now something else. On its small and uncovered porch sat an old TV with a kicked-in screen. A large farm thermometer with the profile of a cow gave anyone using the front door the bad news. Several sagging wires led to the house from nearby poles.

As soon as we had parked, the door opened and a lanky male in his thirties stepped out next to the TV and proclaimed that there wasn’t a damn thing to eat in the house except half a jar of peanut butter and one egg and that he hoped Jocelyn had brought groceries “or either” he’d like the car keys now. He wore Wrangler jeans, scuffed boots, and a black T-shirt, and his straight hair hung down to his collarbone. Despite oddly flat lips, he was a distinctive-looking character with a riveting set of crooked teeth.