Juliet in August (25 page)

From the side door landing, Norval has the choice of going downstairs into the hall, or up four steps to the chapel door. This is the minister's entrance, and leads to the pulpit and the choir loft, if you can call the ten or so banquet chairs lined up behind the pulpit a choir loft. Because the basement is dark, Norval chooses to go up the steps, but when he enters the chapel, Joe isn't there, either. He decides to wait. He sits in the front row of pews and sees that the list of hymns from last Sunday is still on the board, among them one of his favorites, “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds.” He tries to imagine himself sitting here, in this very spot, having just watched his daughter tie herself to matrimony with Kyle Hoffert. Will he be able to act happy and blessed, for Rachelle's and Lila's sakes?

He looks at the stained-glass windows, two on either side of the church. Although the windows are not at all fancy and are just patterned with simple geometric shapes, mostly green and yellow, they are pretty, especially on the west side with the late-afternoon sun shining through them. He thinks that maybe this is the first time he's ever sat in the chapel by himself. He's practiced his sermon here a few times, but with Lila watching and writing her comments on a pad of paper. Notes, she called them, which she'd learned how to give in her time at theater school.

Norval checks his watch again. He really should call Lila and let her know he's waiting for Joe. She'll have dinner ready. He takes his phone out of his pocket, turns it on, and dials his home number. When Lila says hello, he surprises himself by not saying anything. “Hello?” Lila says again, and again he doesn't answer. He's not sure why. Perhaps he doesn't want to hear the sound of his voice echoing banalities in the empty little church. He does know that he feels quite a sense of satisfaction as he turns his phone off and puts it back in his pocket. And for the next while he loses track of time and sits by himself in the quiet with the sun coming through the west windows, spraying oddly colored light around the room.

CHANGE OF HEART

 

An Empty House

When Blaine pulls into the yard at home, he doesn't see Vicki's car. He calls out as he walks into the house, but there's no answer. Not even Shiloh is home. He checks the voice mail to see if Vicki has phoned, but there's only a message from Hank Trass, wanting to know if by any slim chance Blaine is home, and if so, whether he'd mind giving Hank a hand gathering his yearlings from along the railway tracks. There's no time on the message indicating when Hank called. It's probably too late, Blaine thinks, but he gives Hank a call back to check, and there's no answer.

As Blaine stands by the phone, he sees the tubs of beans on the kitchen floor, and the two blanchers on the counter. There's a white tea towel on the counter, and the way it's been tossed there instead of hung on the towel bar annoys him so much, he feels as though he could strangle someone with it. He picks it up and hangs it where it should be, and as he does so it reminds him of Justine's white T-shirt, and in that moment the towel and the beans and the blanchers and the garden and Vicki and the kids become such a weight, such a terrible crushing weight. He would think he was having a heart attack, except the weight is everywhere: on his chest and his head and his thighs, his whole body. He looks at the tubs of beans and he thinks,
Vicki is right, a crop of beans from a vegetable garden, what's the point?
What's the point of beans when you can't grow anything else? It's all just too fucking pathetic. He's pathetic, worse than the alcoholic foreman, and the thought of how close he came to making a complete ass of himself is humiliating. Justine is probably on her phone right now telling some other girl-engineering-student about the fun she had with him on the way into town, fun with an old hick out here in Hicksville. Or maybe she's on the Internet telling everyone, the whole world. The beans stare up at him from the kitchen floor and he decides to do his wife a favor. He carries them outside, one tub at a time, and he throws them all in a pile behind the house. Then he soaks the beans thoroughly with kerosene and throws a match on the pile. He watches as thick, choking black smoke rises into the air, and when he's sure the beans are going to burn he goes back into the house. On the way in he looks at the rain gauge that's attached to the railing on the step. He does this out of habit. There's nothing in the gauge but dust and bits of chaff. Anyway, what does it matter? Even if it was the right time of year for rain, it wouldn't fix his problems.

Blaine goes inside and lies on the floor in the living room, stretches out and stares at the stippled ceiling. When he was a kid he used to lie on the floor and pretend the sparkles were stars. He looks over at the painting of his parents above the couch, with his father's brand burned into the old-fashioned wooden frame. The painting, a copy of a photograph, had been Vicki's idea for Blaine's parents' anniversary one year. The artist had suggested to Vicki that he do the painting in sepia to give it a Western look and Vicki had liked that idea. When Blaine's mother moved into her condo, she'd returned the painting to Blaine and Vicki. Now his parents—dressed in their Sunday clothes, Blaine's mother with her hair newly curled—stare down at him and remind him of the abysmal job he's done of looking after the place, how he's lost most of it, and might as well give up the remaining quarter for all the good it's doing to hang on to it. He wonders if the same thing will happen to the Torgeson kid. If it does, he hopes it happens quickly, before he's got a wife and a bunch of kids to support. He remembers Vicki telling him that Lee won some kind of scholarship to go to university, and he turned it down to stay home and farm. That's a decision the kid might live to regret.

Blaine closes his eyes and tries to imagine a life somewhere else. In Swift Current maybe, working at the stockyards or the auction, living with Vicki and six kids in a rented house. But could he afford to keep his family in the city? And could they be happy there? The weight on Blaine's body gets heavier and heavier and he doesn't know if it's sleep that's coming on or death, and he doesn't much care. With his luck, he thinks, it'll be sleep, and of course it is, and he dozes off right there on the floor, stretched out on his back like a dead person, but still very much alive whether he likes it or not. He dreams of driving around in the sand dunes. In the dream, the truck skims lightly over the sand like a hydroplane over water. Vicki and the kids are in the truck box under a blanket, all but Shiloh, who is on the seat beside him. They have no possessions but a picnic basket, and they're looking for water. In the dream, Blaine feels in his bones that they're headed in the right direction. Shiloh sits attentively beside him, absorbing whatever it is that Blaine has to teach him about survival.

When Blaine wakes up, he looks around, half expecting Shiloh to be sitting on the couch staring at him. But the house is quiet, still no sign of Vicki and the kids. Blaine hauls himself up off the floor and calls Hank Trass's number again. No answer. He decides to trailer his horse over to Hank's just in case he's needed.

When he's halfway across the yard he can see that there's a problem. The horse is lying down—not in itself unusual—but he's stretched out all wrong, and when Blaine calls, he doesn't lift his head to look. Blaine quickens his steps, and as he enters the pen he can see that the horse is too exhausted to greet him.

“Hey, Buck, hey, buddy,” Blaine says, an urgency in his voice. “Up now, buddy, on your feet.” The horse is wearing a halter and Blaine takes it and tugs, encourages with the toe of his boot. “Up now,” he says over and over, and the horse, willing to please, looks at Blaine and somehow manages to struggle to his feet. The evidence of his frantic kicking and thrashing shows in the patches of skin rubbed raw on his head and belly, and in the sweat marks on his neck and chest. Blaine suspects colic. It's obvious that the horse has been in distress for some time. He places his ear against the horse's belly, listening for gut sounds, and he hears nothing.

There is no home remedy for this. There is no money for a vet bill. The horse must be in incredible pain and it breaks Blaine's heart that he's been suffering, probably all day. Blaine knows what he has to do. It's not that he's never had to put a horse down before, but this horse—the last one—now represents every ambition that he's ever had and his last bit of hope, however unreasonable, that things might turn around. His dark heart, already close to bottom, sinks farther, even as the anger rises. Anger at Vicki. If she'd been home, she would have noticed that something was wrong, or even if she hadn't noticed, one of the kids would have.

Blaine goes to the house for a rifle, kept with several other rifles in a locked cabinet, and then to the bedroom where he keeps the shells hidden in a locked box on the top shelf of the closet. He slips the shells into his pocket and goes back to the pen, where the horse is once again down. Blaine gets him up on his feet and this time he leads him out of the pen. The exhausted horse rallies to follow Blaine on unsteady legs, toward the place on the quarter where the land dips and where, for a hundred years, the bones of the Dolsons' animals have been bleached by the sun.

But Blaine can't do it. Just as he is about to lead the horse through the wire gate, he decides he can't, not yet, not without trying, who cares about the money; they're already so far in debt it won't make any difference. Maybe the vet can work a miracle and save the horse, save Blaine's hope, his very life. He leads the horse away from the gate and toward the trailer, which is parked in the shade of the barn, leaves the horse standing, barely able to keep himself upright, while he backs the truck up to the coupling, and then he swings the trailer door open wide and asks the horse to get in. The quivering horse tries, gets one front leg up, and then the other, but he just doesn't have the strength to lift his back legs. So Blaine lifts for him, lifts one back foot into the trailer and leans all his weight on the horse's hip trying to get him to lift the other and step into the trailer—just one step, so Blaine can close the trailer door. The horse leans against him and for a minute Blaine is sure that the horse is going to fall back on him and he shouts, “Get up there, get ahead,” and finally the horse takes the step up, one is enough, and Blaine quickly swings the door closed and latches it. He sees the gun where he left it leaning against the barn and decides to take it with him, in case there's nothing the vet can do.

And of course there is nothing the vet can do. Just as Blaine is turning onto the service road in Swift Current, he hears a crash in the trailer and feels a sway. When he pulls into the clinic, the vet is outside in the yard and comes over to see what Blaine has for him.

“Not going to be good,” Blaine says as he's unlatching the trailer door.

When Blaine has swung the door wide, the two of them stand looking at the dead horse. The vet shakes his head in a gesture of understanding.

“Sorry, Blaine,” he says.

“Colic,” Blaine says. “Had a hell of a time getting him in the trailer.”

“Probably couldn't have saved him, that far gone,” the vet says. “Anyway, the surgery doesn't always work. Lot of money for a gamble.”

He knows,
Blaine thinks,
everyone knows my financial situation.

“I would have spent the money,” Blaine says, “if there'd been a chance.”

The vet says, “I guess we'd better get him out before he's wedged in. You don't want that.”

And so Blaine's last remaining horse doesn't get to lie with others on his last remaining quarter, and is instead dragged with chains around its hind legs to wait with a dead cow, flies already buzzing around its milky eyes, for sanitary disposal. The two large animals lie in a grassy area behind the clinic, well out of sight of the town families bringing their cats and dogs for rabies shots and neutering and euthanasia.

“No charge,” the vet says to Blaine. “The truck's coming anyway for the cow,” and Blaine doesn't argue.

He doesn't go straight home. He decides to have another look around town for Vicki's car. He drives up Main Street past the post office, turns and drives by the house where Justine lives, past the swimming pool, just as Norval Birch's daughter comes out and gets in her boyfriend's truck—that goddamned Norval Birch, the source of all his problems—a U-turn at the corner and back up Main Street and past the hotel, no sign of Vicki's car in the parking lot. The schoolyard, Blaine thinks, the playground maybe, and on his way there he passes the United church, and who is standing on the sidewalk looking up and down the street, stunned as a rabbit in the headlights, but Norval Birch himself. He's just standing there in a daze, and Blaine takes his foot off the gas and slows to watch as Norval turns and goes around the side of the church.

Blaine has no idea why he stops the truck. What can he say to Norval that he hasn't said twenty times already in Norval's office at the bank? But he does, he parks and opens his door to get out, and when he sees the gun leaning against the seat on the passenger's side, he picks it up. He can't say why. He's hardly aware of it in his hand when he follows the sidewalk to the side door of the church.

When Norval hears footsteps coming down the stairs to the basement, he thinks it's Joe the caretaker and goes to the foot of the stairs to meet him, and who does he see halfway down the narrow staircase but Blaine Dolson, with a rifle in his hand.

“Blaine,” says Norval, trying to sound nonchalant, trying not to stare at the rifle; trying, in fact, to pretend that he's just run into Blaine at the convenience store, and it's not a gun in his hand but rather a quart of milk or a loaf of bread. “Pretty hot day, wasn't it?” he says. “I don't know about you, but I'm ready to go home and put my feet up.”

Blaine just looks at him, not moving up or down the stairs. Norval has never before been afraid of Blaine. He's seen him angry, yes, but he's never once feared that Blaine would cross the line and become a threat to his safety. Not Blaine Dolson.

“So what are you doing here?” Norval asks. “Myself, I'm waiting for Joe. He should be here. Not sure where he's got to. The wife has it in her head that the church needs some upgrades—paint, flooring, that kind of thing. I don't know. There are other more important needs, if you ask me. Take the windows upstairs. A strong wind could do some damage there.” He's babbling, he knows it, but he's unnerved by the gun. He, Norval, doesn't own a gun. Never has. He wouldn't know what to do with one. He'd barely known what to do with a water gun when he was a kid.

“Is that gun loaded?” he asks. He doesn't like the sound of his own voice. He sounds weak and scared.

“No,” says Blaine.

“Can I help you with anything?” Norval asks.

“Coming from you, that's a very funny question.”

Norval feels panic rising. He tries not to be afraid—it's Blaine Dolson, he tells himself—but Blaine is still standing in the stairwell, hardly stirring, just staring down at Norval, and
he has a gun, and it might be for me.
The seconds tick by. The stairwell is not especially well lit (another of Lila's complaints) and Blaine's face is in shadows and it's not hard for Norval to imagine menace in Blaine's eyes. Norval prays that the gun is truly not loaded. He prays that Joe will show up.

He musters the courage to speak again. “What can I do for you, Blaine?” he asks. It's a question he's asked so many times in the comfort of his office chair, trying to sound upbeat and optimistic, trying to sound like an expert on finances and agro-business, but when he asks it here, in the musty church basement, away from his desk and whatever clout his promotion to bank manager has given him, he is shocked by how false it sounds. Just as false as Lila's performance in her long-ago Shakespearean debut. He remembers the pain of sitting in the audience and hearing Lila's struggle to infuse her lines with truth, and that's just what he's doing now, struggling to sound credible, as though there's actually something he can do when he asks Blaine,
What can I do for you?
A man who has lost everything through no real fault of his own, he did all that Norval advised. He remembers Blaine's little girl howling in the hardware store, and he thinks,
This man has mouths to feed,
and he hears himself saying, “I'm sorry, Blaine. I'm sorry I asked that. There's nothing I can do. Not a thing. It's all bullshit.” And he feels himself sitting down on the bottom step of the narrow staircase, and he's afraid—terrified—when he sees Blaine take a bullet out of his pocket and slip it into the gun's chamber. Norval sits at the foot of the stairs in the bad light of the church basement with Blaine and his gun just a few steps away and thinks,
Give it to me. Give me whatever I deserve.