Juliet in August (27 page)

Once he gets his face cleaned up, his work shirt looks comparatively dirty and ragged around the collar. He decides to slip into his bedroom and change into a clean one. While he's doing this, he has the thought, once again, that Marian is about to tell him she's leaving, and this is her way of delivering the news. Maybe she needs a shot of alcohol to get the conversation started, or maybe she thinks Willard will need a shot of alcohol to receive the news that he's going to have to look after himself from now on, and run the drive-in alone, and listen to his own voice as he sits at the supper table eating fried eggs and canned pork and beans while the recycling piles up around him, the
Western Producer
and all the flyers that appear in his mailbox, and the dishes pile up in the sink until he's forced to wash them, or maybe he could get into the habit of using just one plate and one knife and fork, and that way he could manage to get them washed up after each meal. He hopes he won't turn into one of those old bachelors who sleeps in the same sheets until they wear out, and then doesn't bother with sheets at all, and eventually doesn't bother washing the one dirty plate, just gives it to the dog to lick and calls it good enough. He's heard the stories; he knows there are a few of those old men around the countryside. Elton Sutter, for example, who had a famous fit when some of the ladies in town decided to surprise him with a clean house. Story was, he came in from the field one night and saw his house all spiffed up. The ladies didn't get a bit of thanks for their trouble, even though they'd left a big pot of beef stew on the stove and a bag of homemade buns on the table. Elton had taken the pot of stew and thrown it to the dogs. Or at least that's what he told people. Willard suspected that he'd eaten it but just didn't want to admit it. What man who cooked for himself could turn down a good homemade stew, no matter what the circumstances?

Once Willard has changed into a clean plaid shirt, he's embarrassed to go out to the living room and join Marian. What will she think when she sees him all cleaned up? She might assume something—the wrong something. Well, maybe not wrong; he wants her to stay, but he knows he has no right to expect that. He gets so self-conscious about having cleaned himself up that he sits on the bed for a while like a kid with a crush when the object of his crush has given some sign that she just might be interested. Willard remembers this from a long time ago. Maybe that's why he never married. He just couldn't stand it—the idea that some pretty little girl might actually like him, and that he'd never be able to live up to whatever idea she had in her head about who he was, but it had to be a wrong idea, because if it were right she'd like someone else and not him. Ed, probably. There was that time when one of the pretty little girls had invited him to dance with her and he'd actually done it and thought of nothing else for days afterward, had dared to dream of marrying this girl, and then found out that she had her sights on Ed and not him, and that he'd been her sly introduction. When she found out that Ed wasn't interested, she turned cold as ice, wouldn't even say hello to Willard on the street. For fear of encouraging him, Willard supposed.

Well, he can't sit here on the bed all day when Marian is sitting out there on the couch waiting for him. She's waited long enough already. What Willard decides to do is put his old work shirt back on, that way the change won't be too drastic, but when he does he can smell the dust and oil on himself and he thinks he can't go out and sit with Marian like that, it wouldn't be right when she's gone to the trouble she has, so he changes once again into the clean shirt. Then he clears his throat and runs his hands through his hair and goes to face the music, whatever that music might be.

When Marian sees him she says, “Don't you look nice,” which throws him completely for a loop and makes him think he should have left the old shirt on after all.

“Sit down, Willard, and give this a try.”

He sits, not beside her on the couch, of course, but in the armchair opposite where she is sitting. Ed's chair. She hands him one of the glasses. “It's supposed to have crushed ice in it,” she says, “but the ice melted. I hope I didn't add too much gin.”

“Sorry,” Willard says, taking the drink. “I guess I took too long.”

“Doesn't matter,” says Marian. “It's worth it to see you clean shaven. I thought you were growing a beard again.”

Willard takes a sip of the drink. It tastes like mint.

“Good,” he says. To tell the truth, it tastes more like peppermint soda than an alcoholic beverage, but he isn't going to say that. He's not sure what to say because he doesn't know what would be the
right thing
.

Marian picks up the plate of pastries and holds it out for Willard.

“Try these,” she says. “They're supposed to be perfect for a summer day, too.”

Willard thinks it's a little strange to be eating dessert before supper, but when he bites into one of the pastries he realizes that it's filled with egg. Cold egg and cheese.

“Umm,” he says, not committing himself, not used to the idea of cold egg in a tart, although it's pretty darned good. He remembers Lynn Trass's green pie and thinks it's his lucky day, as far as sampling home cooking goes.

“Hors d'oeuvres,” says Marian.

“Good,” says Willard. He takes another. Marian looks pleased.

“There's a new movie tonight,” Willard says.

“Yes,” Marian says. “I saw the poster. A love story, I think. I enjoy the love stories.”

“Is that so?” he asks. He didn't think she did.

“I do, although they aren't what they used to be, are they?”

Willard wonders if this is the last movie she'll watch through Ed's picture window. He looks at her hair and wonders what's holding it up there.

“Sometimes I find love stories to be disappointing in the end,” Marian says. “There's something missing. Real life, I suppose that's what's missing. Even when the lovers die in the end. You'd think death would be about as real life as it gets, but death at the end of a movie seems contrived. Don't you think?”

Willard doesn't know what to think. He's still back on the word
lovers
, the way it so easily left Marian's lips and blended in with the rest of her words, as though it's a word you use every day, like
rain
or
mail
or
gasoline
. But it's not one of those words. It's a word you might not say once in your entire life. He's pretty sure he's never said the word
lovers
.

Then she asks him a strange question.

“Willard,” she says, “do you think Ed had any idea he was a dying man?”

“What do you mean?” Willard asks.

“You don't just up and have a heart attack without there being something wrong with your heart. Do you think he knew?”

Willard has never thought about this before. “Ed never went to a doctor,” he says. “So I suppose not. It just hit him like lightning. That would be my guess.”

Marian pauses and then says, “You know, it might not be a bad idea for you to have a checkup. Just to be sure.”

Willard doesn't like doctors any better than Ed did. “I don't think there's anything wrong with me,” he says.

“Will you promise me you'll go to the center if you ever do think something is wrong? If you have chest pain, say, or dizzy spells?”

This is just so strange. Marian is saying things that are getting right under his skin, or maybe even deeper than that. Her words—words like
promise
and
pain
—are burrowing all the way to his heart, the one she seems to be worrying about.

“I promise,” he says.

“Good,” Marian says, “because men are not very careful about their bodies.”

There she goes again. The word
bodies
. It bites at his skin like a tick. How is it that this has never happened before? In all the years they've lived just the two of them in this house, her words have never had this effect. That last one—bodies—
has
made him dizzy. He lifts Marian's special summer drink to his lips and drains it. From far away he hears her saying, “Would you like another?”

“Yes, please,” he says, and he can hear her laughing as she takes his empty glass to the kitchen.

When she returns she places the fresh drink on the coffee table and sits down again.

“We'd best be careful,” she says, still laughing, “or neither of us will be in good enough shape to run the movie.”

Why, Willard wonders, is she so happy? That laugh, a girl's laugh. He allows himself to think,
Please stay,
even though he would never be able to say that out loud. If he could, he would use Marian's words, the potent ones. “
Promise
me . . .” he would say. Or, “It gives me
pain . . .”
But if he could say these things out loud, he would be a different person, and he would have asked her to marry him years ago, and she might even have said yes because he would not be Willard, but someone else more interesting. He can't bear the thought of sitting at the table with her for the last time, eating roast beef—not now, not tonight—and he says, “Perhaps I'd better not,” and stands.

“Perhaps you'd better not what?” Marian asks, a look of alarm crossing her face.

“One drink is about all I can manage,” he says. “It was good, though. Very good. Thank you. I've just remembered . . .” and he leaves without finishing the sentence because he can't think of what he might have just remembered.

He goes back outside and gets in his truck and drives away from the yard. Toward town. The Oasis. He'll go to the Oasis for supper. They're used to him there. He can sit at a table and eat his meal and probably no one will talk to him, but if someone does, it will be about the weather, or grain prices, or football. And he won't have to hear the words
I'm leaving, Willard. I thought you'd better know. . . .

Just go,
he thinks,
just go while I'm not home, and I'll pretend that you've gone to visit relatives somewhere. Eventually, I will get used to the idea that you're not coming back.

Bandito

There's nothing Lee can think of that might mark the southwest corner of the square. How, he wonders, did the Perry cowboys know where to turn east in what would have been unfenced, wide-open prairie? And then he remembers the railway tracks and how they would have been right where they are now, and he decides to go south until he sees the tracks running parallel to Highway One, and then change direction for the last time. There's a picnic area in a shady spot just north of the highway. If he can find it, he'll stop there and rest the horse again before the last leg of the ride. That's how he's thinking of it now: the hundred-mile ride.

Lee's in community pasture again, and to the east he can see a herd of maybe four hundred cows and calves stretched out over the land, the way the buffalo would have grazed in the past. The horse doesn't seem bothered by the cattle, although he has his ears pricked forward and is obviously curious. He's not the kind of horse that Lee would expect to have much experience with cattle.

The bulls are still in with the cows and he can see one lying off by himself in the sun, his sizable head and shoulders giving him away. Lee remembers a story Lester told him about the days of the old cattle ranches, and how thousands of cattle died one winter when the snow and ice came, storm after storm, and the ranch hands couldn't do a thing to help the herds. He imagines what the prairie looked and smelled like in the spring with dead cattle everywhere. Those storms had marked the end of an era.

Lee hears the whinny of a horse behind him. The Arab's ears rotate and his head goes up and he answers. Lee looks back and he sees a small herd coming toward them, heads high, led by a big bay with a white blaze. As they get closer, the bay breaks into a lope and the others follow, eight of them, Lee counts, heading straight for him. The little herd is picking up speed, the bay tossing his head, and when they reach Lee they split and pass him on either side, the bay kicking out in their direction, and then they're all off in a gallop through the pasture, good-looking ranch horses, six sorrels and the bay and a blue roan. At first Lee tries to hold his horse back, but then he lets him go. The horse, with some memory of the wild in his genes, instinctively runs with the herd, not toward a particular place, but away, running from something without knowing what it is, wanting to take his cue from horses rather than the man on his back. And then Lee feels a surge as the gray horse surprises him by trying to get out in front of the bay.
He wants to be in front,
Lee thinks,
the little bugger wants to lead rather than follow,
and Lee feels his heart pounding with the excitement of it, holds on to his hat to keep it from blowing off, exhilarated by the feel of letting go, and the power of the horse, ears flat back, at full gallop beneath him. And they run for a mile before the bay slows and the Arab does get out in front and the bay splits off to the east and his little band follows him.

Lee gets the Arab pulled into a circle and slowed up and then stopped, the two of them panting at the lip of a cactus-covered drop down into another coulee. Lee can see the railway tracks and the highway off in the distance, the trucks and summer RVs passing like dinky toys. He's now at the southern end of the square, he realizes, three-quarters of the way around; just one leg to go and he'll have done the whole hundred. The horse is lathered as they move forward again, and content now to walk. Both horse and man welcome the cooler air as they amble down into the shade of the picnic spot.

The picnic grounds are neat with the garbage cleaned up and wood carefully stacked for the two barbecue pits, although the tables that were once painted red are now the gray color of weather-worn pine boards. Someone has taken a sweep with a mower through the open space along the bank of a shallow, slow-moving stream and several decent-sized poplars provide shade for the picnic area. There are no cars. No people. It's quiet. The coulee is far enough off the highway that you can barely hear the traffic once you're down in the trees. The horse heads for the water and splashes with his nose before drinking.