In Open Spaces (44 page)

“Today’s the day to do that,” I said.

“It’s nice, all right,” Teddy said, smiling.

Teddy was home from Belle Fourche for the weekend. He had started his sophomore year, and had been talking about college, if the war was over by the time he graduated. He roomed with the next generation of the same family in Belle Fourche that I had stayed with.

George had tried to enlist in January, but when they did the physical
evaluation, they had discovered an irregular heartbeat. After so many months of agonizing about whether to take this step, his disappointment had been profound. For a couple of weeks, getting him to do anything was a waste of breath, and not just in the area of work. He hardly ate, or bothered to take a bath.

But once spring rolled around, and work had to be done, he snapped out of it, although any talk about the war sent him out of the room. He stopped reading the newspaper, and when the news came on the radio, if he didn’t leave, he’d change the station or turn it off.

“You guys need something for lunch?” Rita asked.

“No, we’re all set,” George said, patting a paper bag in his hand.

The boys continued along the path toward the barn, George walking with determined strides, head bent, eyes focused on the path. Behind him, Teddy bounced along, loose and looking all around, with the dog and lamb trailing him. I rounded the corner to where Rita was, watching the strange little band of brothers and laughing to myself.

“That goddam lamb kills me,” I said.

Rita turned from her painting. Pup padded along to one side of the boys, smiling, his nose pointed toward Teddy, as if being with him was the best thing he could possibly imagine. Mutt trotted close behind Pup, his ears flopping straight up and down.

The morning passed quickly despite the monotony of spreading paint, moving the ladder, spreading paint. My arms turned white from the elbow down, and my brush stuck to my hand.

“Are you guys going to be ready for some lunch pretty soon?” Rita’s head appeared from inside the house.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “How long?”

“Ten minutes?”

“All right.”

Jack and I soaped up and scrubbed as much of the paint from our
hands as we could before settling into the dining room. The radio blared from the living room, and I knew Dad was in there, probably dozing. His hearing was going, his spirit diminished, and he now spent much of each afternoon napping. He was the only one in the family who hadn’t done any painting.

“How’s it going on your end?” I asked Jack.

“Pretty good.” He nodded. “I think I might be able to finish up this afternoon.”

“Me too,” I said. “Rita?”

She reached for a carrot stick and nodded. “I’m going to finish for sure.”

“Maybe we’ll finally get this damn thing painted.” I yelled into the living room, “Hey, Dad, how do you feel about having your house painted?”

There was no answer, and I knew he must be asleep.

Rita had made roast beef sandwiches and potato salad, and she had sweating glasses of lemonade waiting for us. We ate at a leisurely pace, in no hurry to get back out in the sun. Country music drifted from the living room, the voice of Bob Wills wailing away about trains. An electric fan beat with little effect against the heat.

“How’s that dam coming?” I asked Jack, who was building a dam in a pasture on the far southern meadow, on Hay Creek.

“Pretty good,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll finish it before winter settles in. Depends how long this warm weather lasts.”

Jack looked beat, and I wondered if he’d been getting enough sleep. The incident at Christmas had an interesting effect on Jack’s relationship with the family. In most respects, he was still the same man. But he was doing some great things with the bulldozer. He didn’t bother anyone. He didn’t expect to be included in our family dinners. It had become apparent that he was never going to be concerned about what we thought about him. He was here to stay, unapologetic. But it seemed that having his suspicions about Rita and me out in the open had defused the tension.

Rita, Jack, and I sat eating our lunch, with little thought or residue from all the turmoil the three of us had endured, or caused. I was more comfortable around Jack than I could ever remember. I loved the fact that there were times such as this, when it felt as if we could live this way for a very long time without fear of revisiting all the unpleasant memories that seemed so important when they were happening. I seldom thought about George’s death anymore, or Jack’s role in it.

“Well, I think I’ll get back to it,” I said.

Rita and Jack also stood, stretching their muscles, ready to try and finish up. We moved stiffly, without enthusiasm, limping outside, back to our respective sides of the house. The sun sat mid-sky, like a light-bulb behind a brilliant blue bedsheet, and there was no wind. But a small bank of clouds had moved in along the eastern sky, providing a bit of hope for a break in the heat.

I grabbed my brush, which I’d left drying in the sun, and climbed back up on the ladder. And as I dipped my brush and moved my arm back and forth, back and forth, mindlessly, my thoughts drifted. I was thinking about water. I was thinking about how much our lives had changed since the rains came. And how things had gotten even better when Jack had figured out a way to take control of the water. His ability to reroute it and corral it provided options that had not been available to us in the early, homestead years, or during the Depression, although the technology would have been little use then anyway.

And I was thinking about how much it would help to have the dam that Jack was building now. How we wouldn’t have to rotate our stock as much as we had. I was considering where we should winter the cattle and sheep when I saw a horse riding toward the house from the north.

“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing.

“Looks like Teddy,” Rita said.

“Hm.” I squinted.

It was Teddy. The horse galloped closer, stopping long enough for
Teddy to hop off and open a gate. He didn’t close the gate, which was unusual. There were cattle in the meadow beyond the gate, and he knew as well as anyone that a gate to a meadow containing cattle should always be shut. Instead, he swung back up into the saddle, and slammed his boots into the horse’s ribs. He didn’t stop kicking, even when the horse reached full gallop. This was also unusual, as Teddy was as gentle with horses as any kid I’d ever known. I started to climb down from the ladder, watching Teddy as I went. Pup and Mutt followed behind him, struggling to keep up with the horse’s full gallop. Teddy was waving his hat, which he gripped in his left hand.

“Something’s wrong,” I heard myself saying.

I ran toward Teddy, who was already half off his horse when he reined in. He swung down onto the ground. All he wore were dungarees, which were soaked. His hair was also wet.

“George!” he shouted. “He’s gone down!”

“He’s what?”

“He’s gone down, in the reservoir,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “He went under.”

Jack and Rita came running from opposite sides of the house.

“Oh my god,” Rita said, seeing the fear in Teddy’s face.

I ran toward the car, which we all piled into. I started it up, and took off toward the north meadow.

“Oh god,” Rita said.

Teddy, through his breathless, choking tears, started explaining.

“We were swimming,” he said, “and he swam out into the middle of the reservoir, and he started waving his arms around, and screaming, and he was holding his chest, and I swam out to him….” Teddy ran out of breath, and when he tried to breathe, he started coughing. I thought of George’s heart.

“Easy, Teddy,” Rita said. “Take a deep breath.” She put a hand on his shoulder.

Teddy stopped coughing, holding his chest, and took up where he’d
left off. “I swam out to him, and I tried to get hold of him, but he was swinging his arms around, trying to swim…he kept hitting me when I tried to grab him…not on purpose, but he was just crazy, wild…and I couldn’t…” Teddy stopped, shaking his head. “I couldn’t…” He broke down, and started sobbing out of control, covering his eyes, burying his face into his knees.

I drove as fast as I dared on the dirt road, along the top of one of the dikes, across the river, and through three meadows. Jack jumped out to close the gates, and Teddy stopped crying after a while, sitting with his head in his hands, mumbling to himself.

I wasn’t breathing, I realized. I was so intent on driving and not losing my head, I forgot to breathe. I inhaled deeply, and felt a blockage, like a balloon, in my chest. There was little hope, I knew, with the time that had passed. But no, I thought. Don’t let yourself entertain that possibility.

At the reservoir, the water was still, smooth and silent. This frightened me, and again left little room for hope, but I again tried to push these negative thoughts out of my head. Jack and I both stripped to our underwear and dove in. The reservoir was only a hundred feet across, but in the middle, it was ten feet deep. Teddy said that George had gone down in the middle, so we swam toward that point. My arms tired before I was halfway there. My chest tightened.

I swam beneath the surface, trying to keep my eyes open. But the water was murky, and even when my eyes were open, I could only see a couple of feet in front of me. I floundered through the water, waving my arms around frantically, feeling my way for the touch of flesh. I bumped against earth. When I pushed away from it, I felt air against my back. I lifted my head, and realized that in my desperation, I had swum all the way across. I looked for Jack, saw no sign of him, and went back under, veering back toward the middle.

I felt my way along the bottom, thinking George might have sunk, and as the ground below me got lower and lower, I suddenly felt flesh against my leg. It responded, grabbing me, and I flung my leg out, trying
to spin myself around. I kicked loose of the grip, and a moment later Jack and I came face-to-face, two white masks frightening each other in the depths of a fearful brown pool. We grabbed each other by the shoulders, as if assuring each other that we were not George. Then we turned away, in different directions. I felt his foot hit my own.

My lungs could not sustain me, and I had to come up for air. I gasped, and heard the sound of shouting. I looked over, and Rita and Teddy were pointing, shouting and pointing, but I saw that the foot they pointed at was Jack’s, moving away from me. I dove, sinking again to the bottom and feeling my way toward the middle. And there he was, on his back, lying just a foot or two from the floor of the reservoir. His heels touched bottom, but the rest of his body floated, toes pointing up, his arms drifting at his sides. I couldn’t see his face, nor did I want to, and I swam to his head and grabbed him around the chest with both arms. I started kicking as hard as my tired, burning legs would allow, pushing first off the bottom, then kicking like a frog, struggling to hang on to the limp, heavy torso.

I felt a touch from behind, and Jack was there. He swam under George and pushed, and a second later my head broke the surface, along with George’s. I breathed, sucking huge gulps of air into my lungs, and started stroking with one arm toward shore. I felt Jack pushing from below, and once we got a rhythm, we reached shore in moments.

My knees scraped the ground and I stood, pulling George along until he was completely out of the water, where I laid him on his back and sunk to my knees at his head. Rita hit the ground next to his chest, and Jack fell, burying his face in his hands.

One look at George’s face, and it was clear that he was dead. His mouth hung open, like the beginning of a yawn. His eyes stared, unfocused, and his skin was too white. Rita’s head fell against his ribs, where she cried his name over and over, her body trembling. Teddy knelt beside his mother and rested his head sideways on her back, hanging his arms around her.

I started coughing, and water gushed from my lungs, into my mouth. I tasted the mud. Jack rolled over and sat up, looking over at his son. He breathed heavily, labored, with a pained look on his face. He lifted his knees, and rested his head against them.

Rita stopped sobbing and crawled to George’s head, which she cradled in her lap. Her face was twisted, looking down at her son. She shook her head and stroked George’s cheek, a squeak escaping her throat. Teddy still clung to his mother, kneeling behind her and resting his head in the crook of her neck. His mouth was turned down, and his eyes were squeezed so tight that the tears barely escaped.

I looked at George’s face again, and the skin, which was usually such a dark, healthy brown, had faded to the color of dry earth—pale, dusty gray. His eyes were glazed. And even though it was obvious he was dead, I was taken back to the day I stared at the face of another dead man and saw something less than human. Unlike that day, when my brother looked like a different person, this was definitely George. I felt an urge to reach down and offer him a hand. I had to look away. But I wasn’t willing to lose George yet. I didn’t want this picture of him, lying naked on his back, his arms spread listlessly, his neck twisted slightly to one side.

For the first time in my life, I wanted to fight death. I wanted to prevent it somehow. I wanted to do something. So I threw myself on George. I fell on him and tried to pound life into his heart, to breathe air into him. I tasted the mud on his lips as I emptied my lungs into his. His ribs bruised my hands as I pounded his chest like a steak.

I didn’t realize that I was out of control until my rhythm was interrupted by Rita’s embrace. She wrapped herself around me and whispered softly to stop, that I was hurting him. And I did stop, and slumped exhausted, staring down at George, whose eyes stared dead and glassy at the sky. His chest did not move. His skin remained pale. I rolled off him, onto my hands and knees, and rested for a moment.

Teddy had come to a moment of silent repose, staring down at his
brother with a look that reminded me of my fourteen-year-old self. He wasn’t crying. He studied his brother and held his face steady. Jack had still not moved. His head rested on his knees. Rita left me and returned to her son. She stroked his face. She ran her fingers through his hair. The tears ran steadily down her cheeks.