Keep the Change (14 page)

“I just can’t understand why I did that,” said Ellen, “when I’m trying to make a sincere effort to save my marriage.”

They drove on for a while. Joe turned on the radio but it immediately seemed offensive and he shut it off. There was a great long bench at the south end of the Crazy Mountains that looked like a partly opened scallop shell. You could see all the blue of haze and sage and ditch-burning from here and minute sparkles of runoff from a distance, water carrying everything downward.

“Stop someplace,” Ellen said, “I want to do it again.” Joe took the first ranch exit and spiraled up above the interstate until he could see out in all directions for miles. The wind had the grass laid flat and a band of antelope drifted like a shadow of clouds. They undid each other’s clothes and Joe slid toward her away from the wheel. She straddled him and pulled him into herself. “Jesus,” she said, “I can’t seem to stop.”
There was a delicious grotesquery as she pounded into him. He could see his hair and forehead in the rearview mirror jarring with her motion. He was being levitated. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the sky, the distance, out of his memories. “Watch my face,” she said. Her eyes seemed to close and sink as he joined her. He felt a wet circle of bone and sinew stretch down over him. Her mouth fell open and a groan of despair arose from far inside her.

When they got onto the highway again, she said in an exhausted voice, “Just drive.”

This was enough to set Joe on a kind of dream in which the details of the road, the steadily expanding immediate memories, the cornucopia of bright new prospects all flowed together in a sort of narcosis. Joe pictured, in an extremely vague setting, a kind of life with Ellen and Clara. There seemed to be a convenient flow of pavement from the interstate to their exit and from their exit to Ellen’s street. Indeed, they were nearly to the house when she cried, “Stop!” in a voice so startling that Joe slammed on the brakes. “It’s my husband,” she said. Joe expected a sinking feeling but got none. He was actually excited to get a look at Billy again.

But then the car in front of Ellen’s house pulled out.

“I guess we’re safe,” Joe said. “He’s leaving.”

“Follow him,” said Ellen.

“Follow him?”

“You heard me.”

This last seemed so peremptory that Joe started after the car, a Plymouth Valiant, in a very uncertain state. They went down past the city park and turned toward the river. They left the older, prim homes of the town and entered a district of split levels and unfinished wood, of newly sodded lawns with dark green seams where the strips met the day lawn
arrived. Billy’s car stopped and Joe stopped, perhaps a half block behind. Ellen was slumped to dash level.

“He’s after that bitch again,” she hissed. “And look how he’s dressed!”

Billy Kelton threw his legs out, then unreeled himself from the car. He was still the striking-looking, lanky cowboy Joe remembered, and he looked as capable as ever of giving Joe a good thrashing. Joe couldn’t see anything abnormal in the way he was dressed. He loped to the house. He had no chance to knock on the door: a slender arm thrust it open and he vanished without any change in his stride. Ellen unlatched the door to Joe’s car.

“I’ve had it up to here,” she said. “Can’t thank you enough.”

Ellen got out of the car, walked up in front of the house as forthright as a hostess and got into Billy’s car. She started the engine and blew the horn. In a moment, Billy emerged from the house and walked over, eyes downcast. He lifted the straw hat from his head, wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve, and replaced the hat. He stood by the car. He talked without raising his eyes. He rested the tips of his fingers on the side of the car and his eyes started to elevate. Some relief was in sight. He bent slightly and looked inside. He smiled suddenly. He leaned inside for a kiss. Then there was a bit of distress. Ellen had evidently rolled his head up in the electric window. The car pulled forward and Billy was dragged a few yards. Then the car stopped for more negotiation. He was dragged once more and released. Rubbing his neck and turning his head to one side, he walked around to the passenger’s door and got in. As they drove away together, Joe watched the car intensely, certain that it would stop again, and Ellen would get out. But it just didn’t happen. At least, Billy hadn’t spotted him.

That night, Joe reflected on all this as he watched the Miss Universe contest. Miss Chile won. As the other contestants, in their terrible feigned happiness at her victory, covered Miss Chile with kisses, leaving red marks like wounds, her tiara was knocked askew. The camera caught the brief instant in which Miss Chile looked like a buffoon, a moment deftly corrected when Bob Barker rearranged the tiara with a self-deprecating shrug and grin, and with the nonchalance of one who adjusted ten thousand tiaras a day. It was late and Joe was tired.

Ralph of Ralph’s Repair died. Joe couldn’t exactly remember him but evidently he’d repaired some things for him in the past. Lureen called and said that she and Smitty had legal business in Billings and would Joe be kind enough to represent the family at the funeral. Ralph was cremated and an old couple in almost matching light blue pantsuits came out from Yakima for the jar. “Do you know those people?” asked Mary Lynn Anderson, the piano teacher from Rapelje. Mary Lynn had recently been dried out at the Rimrock Foundation in Billings and she had this maddening energy, a real born-again quality that was entirely trained on making up for lost time. She wore a cotton checked shirt of pale green that set off her tanned arms. She used to look religious when she was drinking, spiritually enraptured, but dried out she looked oversexed.

“Who are those people?” she asked Joe specifically, looking at the old people.

“Some kind of connections of Ralph’s,” Joe said.

“His folks?”

“Beats me. Somebody told me when I came in that’s who they were.”

“I sent some flowers to the family. I wonder if they got there.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t want to put them under pressure but I’d sure as heck like to know if my flowers ever got there. There was a note too.”

The memorial service was being held at the little Carnegie library. Joe hadn’t been to one of these since his Uncle Jerry was run over by a uranium truck. There were nine people there and five of them were browsing in the stacks. They had agreed to avoid a conventional service as being unsuited to Ralph’s memory. The result was that nothing was happening. And in fact, Mildred Davis was trying to renew her library card and her husband Charlie was reading
Field and Stream
. Charlie was famous from opening up on his fourteen-year-old son with his fists for being in town without his cowboy hat on. Terry Smith had a Bible but he was completely furtive about it. Billy Kelton came in wearing his yellow slicker. He stared over at Joe, trying to remember him; Joe didn’t help. Then Billy must have recalled their childhood differences, and he looked off in embarrassment. Joe still burned at those memories. Everyone went to the window to watch the new rain. “God, we needed that,” said Alvie Skibstad, his gleaming white forehead contrasting with his dark face. “Take some of the fun out of it for the hoppers.” Jim Carter came in the door soaked. He was only nineteen but his father had Alzheimer’s and Jim had been running the ranch since he was fifteen; he bore the kind of weariness people rarely have at that age. “Headgate burst and run out over Main Street. The dry goods store is flooded.” Charlie Davis looked up from
Field and
Stream
, and said, “It happens every year.” “Naw, it don’t,” said Jim, tired of old-timers’ bullshit, tired in general.

“I hope this doesn’t sound disrespectful,” said Mildred Davis, “but we’re sure going to miss Ralph when things are broken.” The only place she had been able to find to sit was behind the counter where the librarian usually sat. She wore a dark blue dress and a pillbox hat from which a piece of starchy lace projected, as though subtly indicating the prevailing wind. The old couple from Yakima looked around like a pair of immigrants.

“Nope,” said Charlie. He licked the ends of the first two fingers of his right hand and began madly leafing through the magazine as though he’d left his social security card in there somewhere. “It doesn’t sound disrespectful.”

They all sat around vaguely, unmotivated; heads began to hang at odd angles. Nothing is an emergency around here, Joe thought, and I’m not so sure that’s good.

“I wonder if we ought to say something about Ralph?” Joe asked. Billy was now staring at him. Nobody said anything. A couple of people looked like they might have wanted to but couldn’t quite come up with the right idea. “Well,” Joe said, “I don’t mind saying a few words. For all these years, when we have had things broken, little things, important things, things which allowed our lives to flow, Ralph was there to set them spinning along again and with them, our lives too seemed repaired, whether it was a toaster, a television, a tractor, or a tire.”

“You’re thinking of Ralph’s over to Lewistown,” said Billy Kelton.

“I am?”

“Yeah, this one only did appliances.”

“Well, I think appliances have become central to our lives,” Joe said.

“Forget it.”

A silence fell. Billy looked around. He caught the eyes of the connections from Yakima, and then addressed them. There was fire in his eyes.

“The Bible makes us the promise that our dead ones will live,” he told them in a clear and direct voice. “They will rise up. ‘The righteous themselves will possess the earth and they will reside forever upon it.’ I don’t know who exactly you are to Ralph but you may feel the lamentation of King David at the death of Absalom. And if so, we remind you that God did not originally intend for us to die. But because of the Adam and Eve business, he pretty much had to let us all return to dust as a payment for sin. But what we expect around these parts is that at the time of the Resurrection, Ralph’s got a better than even chance of being called and that’s about all you can ask. We knew him fairly well.” It got pleasantly quiet as everyone took this in.

People began to leave. “I’ll lock up,” said Mildred Davis. Joe went out. For some reason, the smell of newly turned gardens along the street reminded him of the ocean and impressions came back of heat and rain, of docks steaming after a cloudburst. He thought of the repairs of Ralph. He couldn’t quite seem to place Ralph. He guessed he had made that fairly clear. I’ve got to get out of this fog, Joe thought. He just couldn’t believe he’d gotten the wrong fucking Ralph.

Dear Joe,

I am really enjoying pursuing our relationship through the U.S. Mail. Your letters are concise. There is the illusion of decision. The dime store Hamlet you so frequently seemed to be is nowhere in sight. Instead of the oscillating and confused so-called thinker, I have the image of a man struggling to hold on to family land, to lend his best efforts to the creation of vast beef herds. Joe, this ties you heart and soul to every hamburger stand in America. And I think you need that. I think it will humanize you to know your life depends on mob whimsy because your poetic detachment is enough to make me throw up. Maybe this will cause it to go away. Maybe arguing with normal people who want to do something different with your family place will help you see that there are other criteria in human relationships than whether or not people agree with you.

If by some remote chance, all of this has the effect of returning
you to the human race, it would make me happy if we could see one another again.

Love,          
Astrid     

Joe let this soak; then, to heat it up, he wrote back a few days later. As he wrote the letter, he felt an inexplicable, mad, tingling ache.

Dear Astrid,

Your letter seems to take the position that it is in reply to a letter from me. I have not written you. But it is nice to have yours anyway. As for here, it is not so bad. I am leading a baffling life but I am suited to that. I have barely had a chance to look into the sort of shooting we may expect this fall; and in fact all the little pleasures have gone by the way, not because I am so busy but because I am apathetic from being unable to completely understand what I am doing all this for. I wonder if you remember the great number of mountain hippies we used to have around here. Well, they are all running tax shelters for environmentalist organizations and I plan to meet with a few to see if we can save a buck or two as well as take the fun out of breaking this thing up for my greedy connections. Why haven’t they moved away? I have found on my return that going out to seek your fortune no longer has the prestige it once had. Now on return they give you that fishy look and ask, “Back for the summer?” This proves to me that it is the rats who
do
stick with a sinking ship. No reference to you of course darling. I have had numerous opportunities to confirm that in fact I trust nobody. Which has its distorting effect. But we all live beneath some sort of lens and no true shapes can be discerned. I think it is quite enough to be able
to tell someone what is on your mind, even if the delivery is nervous and sidelong. Therefore, this letter, my ideal recipient.—Still not getting any. How about yourself?

Joe signed it “With suspicious affection,” licked the envelope, and threw it on the kitchen counter for the next trip to town. But before he could get it into the mail, he received yet another letter from Astrid, a short one. It said, “I hate you. You stole my car. Now I hate all men.” He fired back one more.

Dear Astrid,

God made women because sheep can’t cook.

Joe          

He sent this latest with a gleeful and almost breathless air, reflected in the enormous cost of sending it by overnight mail. He must have known that it would have a big effect. He must have planned this bit of explosive infantilism without a hint of innocence. Because in four days flat Astrid, wearing enormous dark glasses, dragging more luggage than she looked like she had the strength to carry, walked in the front door and said, “Take it back, motherfucker.”