In An Arid Land (15 page)

The wind has shifted and this evening I can hear the pump jack working. Like an animal caught in a trap, it moans as it struggles. Pop is full of questions. He wants to know how the job is going; I tell him fine. And Jackie, how's her work? Fine. He goes on. Are we getting along all right? I avoid him, say, "As well as can be expected," but he picks up something in my voice.

"What is it? Come on, you can tell me."

"It's nothing, Pop."

We stare at the clouds, a brilliant lavender.

"You got to work at a marriage, you know that, Jimbo? Your mother and I, we worked every day for thirty-six years, and I wouldn't have traded her for anything. A man, a woman, they're meant to be together and I mean for life. It's natural that way. That's the way nature meant it, and the home you make is sacred."

I groan, and he looks over from his lawn chair.

"Go ahead, make fun of your old man, but I'm telling you it is. You protect that home with everything you've got. With your life, if need be. A good woman needs protecting."

I sigh, and he must take it wrong.

"That's right, you little" He stops, but then: "You laugh, go ahead, but do you know that I couldn't even imagine taking another woman into my home. Your mother will always be there, and I wouldn't dream of muddying her good memory. You should think about that, Jimbo. Don't risk it."

"That's enough,
huh
!" I don't really mean the emphasis, but it touches something inside him and we stare at each other in a mild anger until it's obvious one of us has to speak or move. So he stands up and slogs through the grass to the fence at the back of his lot. He holds onto the fence, looks out at the horizon, and soon I see his head dip, rise, dip again. His big shoulders heave. I think he is crying. And it's my fault. But there's nothing I can do, so I go inside to leave him to himself. I wander through the house until I come to the sewing cabinet.

Sitting on the cabinet is a picture of Mother in a cheap golden frame. I've seen it a hundred times, but I pick it up anyway. It's a studio shot from during the war, the big war, "My war," he likes to say. They had just been married, though it would be more than a year before he was mustered out in '46 and almost eight before I entered their lives. Mother is beautiful against the dark background, and there is something of a halo around her hair, her face, which is smooth, molded, no sharp angles, no disturbing lines. In her eyes is hope. She is gazing up, and the photographer's light sparkles in her eyelashes. This, and I can see it, this must be what he finds in the clouds.

I take out the thimbles, place each one on my pinky to examine it and then line them up in groups of five along the edge of the cabinet. They are like little hands reaching up to me.

Later, after Pop's in bed, I go back to the Old Mill Cafe.

Charlene is still there, sitting at the counter, eating dinner.

"Oh, hi," she says. "I just got off. Have you had supper?"

I tell her yes, but sit on the stool beside her and we talk. At first we talk about Newton, how small it is, how little there is to do and how the country round about is nothing if it's not dry and hot and boring. I tell her that Pop and I take a lot of naps and she tells me that she has had the time to make herself "an entire new wardrobe." Gradually we get into history, our history, and we talk about the people and things we knew in high school, of old sweethearts and old enemies, of the year we graduated and dispersed. Charlene and I had been close enough to date a few times, talk occasionally on the phone, sign each other's pictures in the yearbook. I remember what I wrote: "Wish we'd gotten to know each other better. But, alas, maybe someday." The "alas" embarrasses me now and I hope she has forgotten it.

"Weren't you in the war?" she says and I nod. "So was John, my husband. He was a Captain."

"I was a private. Private First Class. I was drafted."

She takes her last bite, then I tell her, very abruptly, "My wife and I have split up," and she stares at me with brown eyes so dark and intuitive they seem almost black. They are nice eyes, encouraging eyes. "I wanted you to know, for some reason."

"I sort of thought so," she says. "I could tell, somehow."

Slowly a smile brightens her face until we are both smiling and then grinning and then, very nearly, laughing.

"Listen," I say. "Is there some place we could get a beer?"

Above the entrance to the Cowboy Bar, hanging perpendicular to the brick facade, is a neon cowboy riding a neon bronc. The cowboy's neon spurs spin when the color of the light changes from red to white to red again. Inside it is loud and smoky and thick with cowboys playing pool, or dancing with cowgirls, or looking forlornly into glasses of beer. She tells me, almost yelling over the noise of the juke box, that every town in Wyoming has a Cowboy Bar. "And every one of them is just like this one."

We drink, listen to the music, try to talk between songs. I think that she wants me to ask her to dance, but I don't and eventually I decide that she doesn't want to dance. She doesn't seem the type these people are kicking up heels and cavorting wildly with her sandals and long, homemade skirt, her long, straight hair. I look at her face, which is faintly illuminated by the light of a barroom candle on the table, and I see, at this moment, that she is beautiful against the dark background.

She says, raising her voice, "John loved these joints," and I say, after a moment's thought, "Come on, let's go."

The Wyoming night is soft against the skin; it is warm and dry and somehow nurturing in the way the gentle breeze makes me want to inhale deeply. The sky is almost white now with stars. Once the sound of the music fades behind us I can hear nothing but our own footfalls on the pavement of the sidewalk. We walk slowly but after several blocks I realize that we are very nearly to the edge of town. At a corner we stop and she says, "This is my street. My aunt and uncle live right down the block."

"Do you want to go home?"

"I'm tired. Nine hours today. I'm trying to save money."

Hesitating, I gaze up at the white night sky, but then say, "Savings is all I've got now." She looks at me like she doesn't understand, and I go on, "I'm out of work too. The oil business is slow in Oklahoma right now and I got myself laid off."

Her eyes say, I'm sorry, Jimbo, but there is nothing words can do about something like that, so we turn the corner and start toward the house a few blocks away.

I say, "I've been curious. Do you remember what you wrote in my yearbook, what you said?"

"Oh, yes: 'To thine own self be true.' It was right out of sophomore English."

"Do you remember the rest?"

"Yes." Her face brightens with wonder. "How funny. I thought about it today after you left. But it's embarrassing now."

"You said that we would meet again someday, 'in a place far away, at a time when we both would be longing for love'"

"Each. I said 'each,' not 'both.' But please don't go on."

"Why not? It was good."

"It was prophetic perhaps but not good. I was not a poet and I don't want to admit that I had a horrible crush on you."

We smile to ourselves and go quiet again, walking on. Soon the pavement turns to dirt and my boots kick up little tumbleweeds of dust that float around our knees, cling to our clothes. I can tell she's thinking about something, but, though I hate to intrude, I do want conversation. I say, "Spill it."

She smirks at the old phrase, says, "I was just wondering what you're going to do. I'm talking about work, or whatever."

"I've been wondering that myself. College taught me how to do one thing, but nobody's hiring geologists these days, not even around here. Maybe Alaska, though. I hear there's work up there."

"I'd like Alaska. But could you live in the cold like that?"

I say, "It seems I've been living in the cold for a long time," and she glances up, gives me a sad smile, the sort of smile that two people with nothing in the world to lose except themselves two people like us well, it's the sort of smile you share with each other when you're walking side by side down a dusty road in a little town called Newton, Wyoming, on a warm summer night in the middle of your life.

"What about Oklahoma?"

"No reason, really, to go back. The split's pretty wide."

Again her eyes apologize, and we keep walking, wading in the dust. Her aunt and uncle's house is brick, two bedrooms I would say by its size and configuration, with a low concrete porch and a yellow bug light out front. It's very similar to the house that Jackie and I had in Oklahoma City, but that, too, is gone nowat least for me.

Charlene says, "I'm off tomorrow. If you'd like, we could do something."

I would like, but I'm not sure this should go any further, only because I know enough to know that a man without a job has nothing but trouble to give to anybody, and I know that I should be leaving soon, going somewhere, maybe Alaska. The money I have won't last two weeks, and I can't live off Pop. But I say, "Maybe I'll drop by. We'll see."

She nods, offers me a look that says "No Pressure," and then, appearing a little embarrassed, she stands on tiptoes to kiss me. I like the kiss, hold it for just a moment, gripping her arms in my hands, remembering that it's been many, many years since I kissed lips that didn't belong to Jackie. When I let go of her I see her eyelids fluttering open such an innocent thing. And I feel more for Charlene at this moment than I've felt for anybody in a very long time. It's the sort of thing I want to hold on to right now. It's a feeling of calm, I guess.

"So long, Jimbo," she says, and already I miss her voice.

I walk away across her aunt and uncle's lawn and turn at the street, wave to her, say, "Good night," and she says, "Good night," and again my boots are kicking up dust.

I'm home in ten minutes. Trying to be quiet, I let myself into the kitchen with the key Pop loaned me, then I go to my room. The room is small, just large enough for the bed and dresser he has crammed into it. My old boots slide off easily and I lie down on the bed, but then spring back up, slip into the hall and bring the phone inside. It's Jackie's number I dial, my old number, though it's another man's voice that answers.