In Open Spaces (37 page)

“Well, see you again,” I said without conviction.

“Yes, please stop by any time you’re in town.” Sophie shook my hand and grabbed the back of it with her other hand.

I nodded, but knew I never would, and I tipped my hat before turning to weave my way through the puddles in the grass.

The last thing in the world I wanted to see at that moment was a rainbow. But when I pulled out onto the main road, every color that had been missing for the last ten years was smeared across the sky in broad, rich strokes. The beauty was blurred by water gathering in my eyes. I wasn’t crying, but I was so angry that my eyes were leaking like an old rusty bucket.

I couldn’t imagine the visit being any worse. Everything had gone wrong, and in my head I listed every reason I’d ever had for not bothering with marriage. First and foremost, I had no time for romance. There was too much to do. This I knew, had always known, and now I was angry at myself for forgetting, for having to learn this lesson once more. I vowed to never forget again.

Besides the rainbow, I failed to appreciate one of the most beautiful
spring evenings we’d had since boyhood. I drove home faster than necessary, jaw set in the direction I drove and no other. I did not let myself dwell on the sky as the light faded and the western half caught on fire, glowing a glorious red.

My other senses were also shut down for the night. I ignored the fresh smell of damp grass, and damp ground, and the damp, clean air. And my skin was coated with leather, unable to feel the cool freshness of that moist air. I tried to convince myself that the hope I’d had on my drive in was ridiculous, that it would only be a matter of time before the ugly, gray dryness returned.

At dinner, I averted each question from the family with a scornful glance. Jack was the only one who didn’t give up after the first try.

“What? It couldn’t have been that bad,” he said.

“Guess again.”

He looked at me, head tilted forward, eyebrows raised.

“There was some guy there already,” I said.

“Oh, hell.”

“Yeah.”

Jack shook his head.

To my surprise, Jack’s turnaround had proven to be the real thing. He wasn’t a completely different person, of course, but nobody expected anything that drastic. I wouldn’t even say he was happy. His moods were still unpredictable, changing often and for no apparent reason. But he worked hard and had put a lot of thought into what could be done with the bulldozer. I had yet to see him take a drink since his return. But of course we’d seen a similar turnaround from him before, and I for one assumed he would turn again.

He showed impatience with any skepticism, especially as the months rolled by. But instead of refusing to work when he was
insulted, or disappearing, he set his jaw and worked harder, which seemed to me the most impressive change.

The biggest skeptics, predictably, were Rita and George. Mom and Dad didn’t exactly warm to Jack’s return, but they seemed too tired to make anything of it. They appeared ready to put the years of dealing with family drama behind them and concentrate on work. Dad still tended to take things out on Jack, but not often and not as harshly as before.

But Rita would not let Jack near her. Not even in a crowd. She would not sit next to him at the table, she didn’t dance with him at the dances, nor would she ride in the same vehicle unless she had no other choice. She didn’t make a spectacle of it. She just made damn sure these things didn’t happen, and once everyone figured that out, we helped by sitting next to her, or making certain they never ended up in the same room alone. To my delight, Jack didn’t seem to mind any of this. I couldn’t figure out whether he had no desire to regain his status as her husband, or if he was just showing a hell of a lot of patience.

Jack made more of an effort with George, trying to talk to him from time to time, usually with the same results the rest of us had gotten over the years. Teddy seemed immune to the history of the situation, and gave his father every chance to make up for lost time. In fact he insisted Jack take him fishing, something that Jack had never enjoyed much, especially after George drowned. But to his credit, he often went.

The biggest surprise to me was that Bob and Jack did not hit it off. Not because they didn’t try. But Helen didn’t trust Jack, and in her subtle way, she managed to keep them from spending much time alone. I noticed that even when they were together, Bob talked tentatively, as though Helen might be able to hear him.

“All right, here’s what you have to do,” Jack said. We sat in the barn, Jack on a rail, peeling a potato with his pocketknife, slicing off strips
thin as shoelaces. “You have to send her a note, some kind of apology, or thank-you note, something like that, just to let her know you’re still interested. ’Cause she’s going to think that because this other son of a bitch was there, you probably don’t want to see her again.”

“She’d be right about that.” I scooped handfuls of oats into a galvanized pail and carried it over to one of the horses.

“I don’t want to hear that.” The peelings gathered at Jack’s feet, a pile of strips that looked like a bird’s nest.

“She sure would be right about that,” I repeated.

The horse dipped her nose into the pail, and a hot snort blew a hollow into the oats. Her upper lip grabbed at the oats and she began munching. Jack stopped his peeling and turned to me, tilting his head and his shoulders and dropping his hands. “Are you serious? You’re ready to give it up because of one bad afternoon?”

I nodded. “It’s not worth it, Jack. I’ve lived almost forty years without a woman.”

Jack turned back to his potato, sliding the silver blade across the rough brown surface and lifting a string of peel. The meat of the potato turned brown from the dirt on Jack’s hands. “There’s some damn nice things about being married, Blake. I know I’m not exactly the one to be giving advice about it, but there’s some things about it that are real nice.”

This was a remarkable statement, I thought, considering how easily Jack had given up on his own marriage. And it made me think. But only for a minute or two. “I guess I’m just not sold on it myself.” I picked up the pail, now empty, and filled it again, ducking into another stall.

“Well, I’m not about to try and talk you into anything,” Jack said.

We sat silent for several minutes, his knife working away at the potato. I stood there wanting to ask him about things—everything. The letter from the army, where he’d been the last ten years, what he’d done, what he’d seen, and of course George. Jack was the only person in our family whose life I knew nothing about. Everyone else had lived
their lives in front of each other, unable to hide. But Jack’s secrets were out of reach.

“We all have our secrets, right, Blake?” Jack said, as if he’d read my thoughts. He smiled, then nodded at the barn wall. “Even you. Even the king of morality.”

I was annoyed by this sudden anointing, but also a little amused, and I had to smile.

“I just about swallowed my tongue when David told me about your tryout,” Jack said. “He said you were great.”

I shrugged. “I think I did pretty well, actually.”

“You must have, if the guy offered you a contract.” He chuckled, looking at me and shaking his head. “Damn, I would have liked to have seen Dad’s face if you told him you were going to go play ball. That would have been something.”

I sat soaking this all in. And I thought of questions again, and almost did the same thing I’d always done with Jack—that is, keep it all to myself, just thinking about what I wanted to know, but not asking. Not opening my mouth. But before I could talk myself out of it one more time, I spoke.

“Did you know about George trying out, too? Did you know he tried out with the same scout?”

Jack’s smile disappeared. His head dropped. He went immediately into deep thought, and I suspected he wouldn’t even answer the question. But he did. “George?” he asked. “You mean Junior?”

“Yeah.”

Jack’s narrow eyes opened, then fell, but for the brief moment that they were open, they revealed an emotion I had rarely seen in Jack. It was fear. “No. He did?”

I nodded. “You didn’t know?”

Jack shook his head.

His silence had an impenetrable air, and again, I almost backed down. But I was pleased about going as far as I had, and I went with
the momentum. I knew Jack was lying, and suspected there was little hope of getting an admission from him. But I wanted to try. I felt as if I had to try. “So you never knew, huh? He never talked to you about it?”

Jack’s whole body tensed up, and I could almost see his mind working away, old wheels whirling, picking up speed. He started cutting the potatoes into quarters. “He may have mentioned it. I don’t remember.”

The pained look on Jack’s face was hard to read. There were so many things that it could mean. He could be bothered by the mere mention of George, and the reminder of the painful day that he found him. Or he could be bothered that I was treading on an unpleasant secret. Whatever the case, I could see that nothing was going to push this conversation any further along. This suspicion was confirmed when Jack cleared his throat and made an abrupt shift in the conversation.

“Listen, Blake.” Jack dropped his head, locking his fingers together, studying them intensely. “Maybe this is a good time to talk to you about something. I don’t know. Maybe not.”

Jack stared at his hands, thinking, for quite a while. And I sat there wondering whether I wanted him to continue. If this was going to be some kind of confession, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. Although part of me wanted to know what happened the day George drowned, I had my doubts about what purpose this revelation would serve now, nearly twenty-five years later. Would an admission of guilt just drive a bigger wedge between Jack and me? And what would my responsibility be if he told me? Would I be obliged to share this information with anyone? The law? My family? All of these thoughts blew through my mind in a matter of seconds.

“I just wonder, Blake…well, it doesn’t seem like you think much about the future…about how things could play out.” Jack turned toward me, sideways, eyeing me from that angle. “You know what I mean?”

“Well, I think so. Yeah. Actually, I do think about it.”

“You do,” he said—a statement. “Okay. Then tell me something.”

I nodded.

“Let’s say you never get married. Let’s just set up a little scenario here.” Jack held his hands out like he was cradling a baby. “You never get hitched, and Bob knocks up Helen a few times, and Rita stays here, and I stay here.” He looked up at me, still holding his hands in the same position. “Who’s going to take over the ranch in that situation?”

I thought about it. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly.” Jack nodded enthusiastically. “That’s my point.”

The unknown quantity of all this, of course, was him, Jack. What did he want?

Jack threw his hands in the air and let them come to rest in his lap. He shook his head. “As far as I can see, Blake, it’s up to you. I’m not in any position to take charge. But if Bob could get some babies pumped out, he might have an argument there. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about that.”

I couldn’t say I hadn’t, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell Jack this. I sighed. “Well, it’s not that easy to just go out and find a wife, you know.”

Jack snorted, and shook his head. “Goddamit, Blake, you annoy the hell out of me sometimes. You got a prospect all lined up…she’s even got kids. You manage to hook Sophie and you’re set. A wife and four kids? There’s no way Bob can get a hard-on four times in his life.” Jack laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile myself. “Just give it some thought, buddy.”

“I will,” I agreed. “Believe me.”

A week later, I received an invitation to have dinner at Sophie’s home the following Sunday. My throat closed up. I would go, of course. I didn’t think otherwise for a moment, and I was amused by how quickly I discounted all the reasons I had carefully laid out, like Sunday clothes, for never going back.

The appointed day was another rainy one. This time the sky was blue-black, covered with clouds, although the rain didn’t fall as hard—more of a persistent mist, a drizzle, unusual for our region. We were used to two or three hours of driving, roof-pounding drops that left spots the size of quarters in the dust. But this mist started in the early morning, and was still drifting when I left at two o’clock in the afternoon.

Jack gave me a sly smile as I left the house in my suit and oiled hair. “Not worth it, huh,” he said. I blushed and smiled.

Halfway to Belle Fourche, the quiet whisper of rain against the roof was interrupted by a loud tick, followed by another, and another, then several.

“Damn!” I muttered as a gust of wind brought a patter of hail against the windshield. The pellets built up quickly, and a sudden blast poured down onto the pickup, as though a wagonload of corn had been tipped from about ten feet above the roof. I pulled off to the side, waiting for the storm to pass. I rolled a cigarette and tugged at the string of the tobacco pouch with my teeth. I smoked and stared at the little frozen stones beating against the glass. A burning smell filled my nose, and I looked down to see an ember resting in the middle of my tie. “God damn.” I brushed the tiny pellet of orange onto the floor and examined the kernel-sized hole, rimmed with brown, right in the middle of a white stripe.

The storm lasted twenty minutes, blasting the steel roof with unfailing persistence, like a prairie wind. I would be late.

The sky cleared almost immediately, as if the clouds had given everything they had. I drove as quickly as I dared, slowing to forty miles an hour after I slid toward the ditch a couple of times. I was late anyway. I buttoned my coat, trying to cover the hole in my tie.

Sophie came to the door, her lips wet and red with rouge. She wore
a navy-blue dress with tiny flowers of different colors, and white lace all around the edges. My chest filled with air, and I felt as if no amount of exhaling would empty my lungs. She smiled, opened the door, and gripped my upper arm. Her touch brought a blush to my cheek and a skittering shiver up my arms.