Lions (6 page)

“What do you mean he's gone?” Leigh asked at the front door. Glassy-eyed and drawn, Georgianna stepped out of the doorway onto the little concrete slab that served as a doorstep, wearing the same shirt she'd worn the day before, a small kit of some useless things for John in her hand; she was just back from the clinic. The sun was high overhead, the shadows around the two women knotted up small and tight in the grass. “Where did he go?”

Georgianna drew her lips into her mouth. She shook her head. “I don't know.”

“How can you not know?”

Georgianna sat on the stone step, her shoulders slumped. She put her face in her hands. Leigh sat beside her and suddenly felt sick. Then she understood. It was John, of course. Hadn't she already known? She pulled her knees in close and lowered her head onto her arms. Her throat tightened, forcing her breath high up into her chest. John Walker, never again. Never again with his hair floating up in the wind around him. Never again with peach pie. Never again with storm windows. For a moment she had a picture of him, his back turned away from her and his body small against a rocky, white field as pocked and dusty as the surface of the moon, then she pushed it out of her mind, pulled a chain and the lights came up and she was in the diner serving fried potatoes and hot black coffee and bright yellow eggs, saving her tips. Fifty-seven days, $812.

A breeze rattled the metal screen door behind them. In the high grass and weeds across the dirt road, red-winged blackbirds looped against the blue sky. By early August, the heat would drive all the birds away, and the Queen Anne's lace would shrivel in the sun. The white phlox would never bloom at all, and half the town would be gone, and all the old folks, and the last of the children. It was as if Gordon and John had taken all the familiar world with them that day they left.

Boyd and May pulled up in his big, black pickup and May rushed from the cab to Georgianna and embraced her. Boyd walked across the yard with his head hanging.

Don't make any sense, they said in town.

That man was healthy as could be.

And young. What was he, fifty-five?

Came out of nowhere and took him.

Good things happen to good people, they said, and shook their heads.

He was irresponsible, they said.

Stubborn.

Backward.

Never saw him in church.

Kept his family in poverty.

Boy's the same way.

He'd best take this as a sign.

All night Leigh stayed awake with the light on, turning over the shiny, perfumed pages of a magazine. If she drifted off, John was greeting her in the shop, setting a cold hand on her upper arm and smiling, and asking for a sandwich, and what had she been reading? He could recommend a good cowboy book about true love and good men and mystery, but it was going to cost her.

When she was six and seven and eight, and home alone while May ran the diner, Leigh would cross the yard between her house and the Walkers' and crouch in the grass when the front room was lit, and watch the three of them gathered together, Georgianna and Gordon playing gin rummy or blackjack on the braided rug, and John in his reading chair with his small glass of whiskey on the end table beside him and some old paperback open in his clean, calloused hands. Sometimes, one of them heard her out there, and John or Georgianna would bring her in, and after cards and cocoa put her to bed on the floor in Gordon's room, in his favorite G.I. Joe sleeping bag, covered with the orange and brown living-room afghan. Then sometime just before dawn, John would carry her like a doll in his arms back to her own house. On some of those mornings, she lay in bed and heard John start his truck and drive away, and the truck would be gone for days in a row. When he came back he'd point without a word at his cheek and she'd rush to give him a kiss, and they'd all go together to the diner for dinner. Mashed potatoes and gravy, canned string beans, sugar pie.

“Where'd you go?” she'd ask.

“Looking for gold.”

“Did you find some?”

“Mountains of it, and guess what? It doubles when you give it away.”

“Can I have some?” she'd put out her hand and he'd snatch it, and she'd squeal, laughing.

“That's the catch, Miss Ransom. You can't ask for it.”

One night, two, then three nights and still no Gordon. Outside the Lucy Graves the earth shimmered. New crab apples baked on their branches and fell like stones. A yellow dish of lawn circled the base of each tree. At night in the distance, across the road and a flat pan of dirt so hard it glittered, heat lightning flared. By day it was ninety-nine, then a hundred, then a hundred and six degrees. Ragged cowbirds perched on the rusting spools of fence wire. The house windows and metal gutters blazed. It was still only June.

Leigh ran her fingers through her hair. Drank a Coke at the empty lunch counter, looking out across the empty street. Pressed the cold, sweating glass to her cheek, then inside her skirt, against her thigh. Across the street a stiff, hot wind moved the fingers of a dead cottonwood against a sky so blue it made the backs of her eyeballs ache.

She couldn't bear a whole summer of this. So hot, so bored. So angry she could feel her heart beating in her forehead.

She turned restlessly on the stool toward the kitchen and saw John on the pale, empty moonscape. She turned the other way, toward the street, and saw Gordon walking up behind him.

The sun was too bright. Her stomach hurt. Summer was terrible. Lions was terrible. Her whole life she'd hated it, and Gordon loved it. She knew he did. He was the worst. And she knew exactly where he was, she could see it all. Eventually he'd tell her, too, because he told her everything. Right in line with John's directions, Gordon would've started the old Silverado, left the clinic right after John finished talking, and followed an unpaved county road that cut exactly north between the Altons' field to the west and the Jorgensens' to the east.

Leigh knew the road. They'd been on it together. It was so seldom used that for miles at a time it narrowed into a single lane, disappeared in the weeds altogether, and appeared again like a faint line of chalk drawn through the BLM land littered with white primroses, prickly pear, and cow shit. Gordon would follow it all the way up. He'd drive until the roadsides were crusted with dirty ice, and woofs of snow blew off the tops of the mountains in the distance. It was an arid, rocky country, with naked gray bluffs of stone and small fists of sage and scrappy trees like upended bits of frayed twine. When the road passed between two uplifted planes of granite, he'd slow the truck, look back, then accelerate and speed through.

For hours, no matter how far he'd drive, the horizon would appear no closer, and look no different, unless for a moment it was marked by the dots of ragged horses out to pasture. A scarf of smoke rising in the vacant blue. An abandoned kitchen range, its siding chewed to a rustwork of lace. As he checked the road ahead, the rearview, then the side mirror, shifting his gaze in a triangle of points, he'd see a shadow racing around, just ahead of his vision, like an intuition that's there, and gone. Daylight receding beyond the ridge to the west as he sped north, and from the east a band of darkness slowly closing over him like a lid.

“It's not just you facing this thing,” John would've told him. “It's you and everyone who came before you.”

Eventually in the years to come, after two trips north herself searching for him, or for Boggs, whomever she might find first, Leigh would come to understand it all.

How fast the landscape changes when you pass Horses up there, then Three Bells. How the wind sings and moans like an old song you can neither place nor stand to hear. How Gordon wouldn't have been able to get the picture of his father in a hospital bed out of his mind. How all he'd have thought about was how good life had been, and how it was supposed to have gone.

He'd stay at the North Star that night, a motel planted in the middle of nowhere with an American flag, the whole place pinned to the dirt by a metal pole topped with a neon-green star that rocked in the wind. Inside the motel, the carpet a filthy off-white, smeared with greasy stains. Coffee burnt in its glass globe on a little brown Formica counter beside a basket of bruised, red apples. He'd call out a hello, but nobody would come. He'd ring the rusted silver bell on the desk. Still, no one would come. In truth he'd be afraid of who might respond. There'd be no other cars in the lot of sloping, cracked asphalt. All of the room keys—nine of them—would be hanging on red plastic diamonds behind the desk. He'd take number three because it was Leigh's lucky number, and go back out and around to the room. One soft gray tennis shoe at a time, he'd decide right then to leave cash and strip the bed himself in the morning.

Despite the strangeness and sadness of the circumstances, he'd make a civilized time of it in that motel room—Gordon was like that—arranging his things, settling in. Double bed with a heavy green blanket and two windows that looked out over a flat field of blanched dirt and pale grass whipped by the wind into matted blond whorls. The wind would be huge outside but the room warm and the bed firm and comfortable. He'd fall asleep as soon as he crawled in, and dream the dreams of stones. Morning, and everything it would entail, could wait.

“Let me make you some tea,” Georgianna said, and stood up at the table.

“No, no,” May stepped farther into the house and closed the kitchen door behind her. “Don't move. And tell me where you keep the honey.”

Georgianna sat back down and pointed to the cabinet beside the sink.

“Did you sleep last night?”

Georgianna rubbed her face and nodded.

“Lipton good?”

“That's all there is.”

Both women had red eyes. May brought over cups and tea bags.

“Was he peaceful, Georgie?”

Georgianna looked at May, then back to the table. “Very peaceful, yes.”

“Was he aware of you?” May asked.

“I crawled up in bed with him. Then he was gone.” She turned to the space beside her and touched the open air. “I had my head right there on his chest, where I'd always fall asleep. Every night since we were twenty.”

May's eyes filled again. She took her old friend's hands in her own. “He went easy, then, right beside you.”

Georgianna nodded, mouthed yes.

“Do you know where Gordon is?” May asked.

“Yes and no.” Georgianna took a ragged tissue from her pocket and touched it beneath each nostril.

“When he'll be back?”

“Couple days I'm sure.”

“We're not going to leave you alone until he's back.”

“Oh, I'm OK.”

“And don't you worry about the memorial or funeral—me and Dock and Boyd will take care of it. You just direct us, OK?”

“Thank you, May.”

“Do you know what John wanted?”

She shook her head.

“We'll wait for Gordon.”

May watched her. They'd hand-stitched yellow and blue–checked cloth napkins together for their kitchen tables when they were twenty-three. Quilted for their babies when they were both pregnant, those quilts now faded and soft in Leigh's and Gordon's bedrooms. They'd shared preserves and chicken casserole recipes, been drunk, been furious, been fine.

“And now the children will leave, won't they?” Georgianna gazed out the window over the yard and toward the weedy fields.

“I'm afraid so.”

“I wish they wouldn't.”

“I know it, honey.”

“Maybe they can stay. Run everything for us.”

May laughed. “We'll put little paper umbrellas in our drinks and put our feet up. Can you imagine?”

“Yes, and then they can go, later. Some other time.” They both laughed. “May,” Georgianna said. “It's going to break my heart. Both of them at once. All of them at once.”

“The kids aren't dying. And I'll be right next door.”

“I don't believe Gordon will go,” Georgianna said. “I don't. He has work here. His father. You know how they are. How they were. How John was.”

“Sweetie. Lions isn't like it was even six months ago. And it's always been bad. There's no business for Gordon.”

“I know it.”

“Hardly anyone comes.”

“I know.”

“You think it's temporary. Is that right?”

“There've been times like this. Seven years once when John's grandfather didn't have a single customer. Seven years.”

“I don't know how they got by.”

“They got by.”

“Did he leave you anything? Life insurance?”

Georgianna shook her head.

“Damn it, John,” May said.

Georgianna opened the tissue and blew her nose, crumpled it back into a ball.

“Maybe you can come work in the diner finally, huh? Been trying to get you in there for years. Employees eat free, you know.”

“I'll make my city chicken.”

“From Omaha.”

“And my cousin Julie's corn soufflé.”

“Yes.”

“I didn't think it would be so soon.”

“I know, honey.”

“It's so quiet here now. No one makes a sound.”

“People will be coming by, now.”

“They will?”

“Of course they will.”

“I feel sick.”

“I'll go to Burnsville tomorrow. Get you ginger ale and whatever else you need. Let's make a list.”

“He was almost out of Lava soap.”

“First item.”

Just before ten, after sitting with Georgianna until she drifted off, May found three men at the bar. Chuck Garcia, Dock Sterling, and Erik Jorgensen had quietly taken their places. Boyd had the television off. They could see clearly across the street into the diner, where Leigh sat alone at a table with a melted milkshake and an untouched grilled cheese.

“She's been sitting there since dinner,” May said. “Poor kid.”

“John was like her dad,” Boyd said.

May gave him a look. “I should have been so lucky.”

Boyd glanced up at her sharply and Dock and Chuck laughed.

“She must be sick about it,” Dock said. “That and Gordon.”

For a few minutes, no one spoke. They could feel the weight of the news between their shoulders. John Walker, gone. They lifted their drinks, eyes fixed in the middle distance.

“It doesn't bode well,” Boyd finally said. “Boy leaving as his father's dying.”

“It does seem a little irresponsible,” Chuck said. “Not like Gordon.”

“Aw, give him a break,” May said. “How many of you sat still to watch your own fathers die?”

At the end of the bar, Jorgensen cleared his throat. The old man had dressed up to come into town, as he always did, in a stiff white-collared shirt and a wool vest and ironed Wranglers. His thick, white hair was as bright as a flare in the dim bar. “Never saw that boy without his dad,” he said, his hands trembling around his beer. “Followed John around like a shadow.”

That wasn't natural either, they said.

No young man felt that way about his own father.

Makes you wonder what's wrong with the boy.

“It'd be work,” Dock said. “I'm sure that's where Gordon's gone. They have customers all over the county.”

Boyd made a sound in his nose. “Customers? Around here? No disrespect,” he said, “but I don't understand what all of John's work was for. I mean no offense.” He shook his head.

No one said anything. Dock stared at the black window, dark as film. Jorgensen gripped the bar.

Boyd went on. “Guy from some big fabrication plant in Chicago passed through couple three years ago driving his kid out to college. Said he'd never seen work like John's, and he didn't even have the most up-to-date gear. Said John could have started at a hundred thousand a year in Denver, easy. Aerospace. Military. Hell. Lots of natural gas pipeline getting started up in Wyoming.”

“Heck, Boyd,” Dock said gently. No one really had to explain. John Walker never invested a goal—like finishing a harrowing frame or hog kennel—with the power to give purpose to his day, let alone meaning to his life. Rather, everything he encountered, each drill, each small project, was itself his life for the duration of the project. His was not the work of a man who believed in or even thought about the future. He looked ahead only as each project required planning, even as he worked on the task at hand with a kind of myopic ceremony.

“Five hours he'd have me at rust removal on a piece of steel no larger than my hand,” Dock said, and lifted and opened his huge white hand.

“Maybe he was autistic,” Boyd said.

“That's an ignorant remark,” Dock said.

“Sorry. Sorry, Dock.”

“How was Georgie when you left her, May?” Chuck asked.

“Sleeping in one of his shirts, in his old chair. I invited her to come stay with us, but often as not our house is empty too.”

“What they should call this place,” Jorgensen said, staring straight ahead at the shelves of bottles. “Empty. Whole God-blessed place.” He broke
blessed
into two syllables. “I can't remember ever seeing this town anything other than empty. The past was great, they said. The future will be great, they said.” He gave them a look of wonder. “None of it was true.”

They all grew quiet. Everything was heavy. Their beer glasses. The boots at the ends of their feet. Their own hands.

“You know what I think it is with Gordon,” Boyd said, picking up Dock's empty. Boyd grabbed a clean pint glass and pulled another and set it in front of Dock. “Come on,” he said. “You're all thinking the same thing.”

“Oh, shit,” Chuck said. He drained his own beer and set the glass on the inside of the bar. “There's no Boggs any more than there's a Lucy Graves.”

“Listen,” Boyd said. “Everyone chose that first Walker to get the dead guy out of town and take care of it. And then his son, and his son's son, and his son's son's son.”

May handed Chuck a new beer. “Last one for me, Maybelline,” he said.

“He was an Indian,” Dock said. “Right?”

Chuck shook his head. “You guys are always seeing Indians where there are none, and never see the ones who actually live around here.”

“Name like Boggs?” Boyd ignored Chuck. “He was a trader. He was visiting the territory, and got trampled, or shot. Supposed to have a tombstone somewhere out here. Homesteaders' cemetery maybe. Have you ever seen it?” he asked Chuck.

“Not me.”

“You're all idiots,” May said. “This is the real world, hello.” She knocked on the bar. “There is no Boggs, and Gordon is off grieving somewhere.”

Boyd ignored her. He rubbed his mustache. “So the Walkers picked up the sick guy. Or the dead guy, whatever. Forced to tend him what, five generations? Bring him firewood, blankets, canned food. Maybe, hey,” he raised his glass, “couple beers now and then. And starting this week, it's Gordon's turn.”

“It's why they never leave,” Dock said.

“And they could have. I've heard John has a hundred thousand dollars saved that he never spent.”

“Not true,” Chuck said. “Me and Emily just bought Georgie's groceries. He didn't leave her a thousand dollars. Where would he get the money? No one paid him for his work.”

“People only owe us what we imagine they'll give us,” Dock said. There was a silence. “My father used to say that.”

Boyd pulled another beer for himself. “And what happens,” he went on, “if the Walkers stop? If no one takes care of the guy?”

Chuck pointed his beer at Boyd. “Maybe the task falls to you, Boyd.”

“Hell, I'm not taking care of any dead guy. Someone holds the town together by keeping the demon out, it's not going to be me.”

“Anyway, poor Georgie. Somebody's going to have to look after her.”

Chuck looked at Dock. “You got to make Gordon go,” he said. “He'll be wanting to stay. He'll feel like he has to.”

“Oh, he'll go,” Boyd said. “He won't let that girl head off into the world without him.”

“Gordon will never leave,” Jorgensen said, staring at the label on his beer bottle. They all looked down the bar at the old man. “It's an interesting story,” he said, “for a town like this. In times such as these.”

“What, Boggs?”

Jorgensen raised the bottle and drank, then set his empty on the bar. “But the next man I hear associating that kind of garbage with John Walker and his family, I'm going to break his nose.”

Boyd's face grew hot. “Beg your pardon, Mr. Jorgensen.”

“Heck,” Jorgensen said, “don't beg mine.”

May went down to where the old man was sitting and took the empty bottle. “You want another one?”

He raised his hand. “Not for me.”

“We see you didn't plant any wheat,” she said. The men watched her. “I heard Mrs. Jorgensen wants to go.”

The old man nodded.

“What are you going to do?”

“Know how Dorrie and I have managed fifty-one years of marriage?”

“How's that?” May asked. Everyone was listening.

“Two words: Yes, dear.”

The men laughed.

“Minot, I heard. Is Dewayne there?”

“He and Lisa have an extra room.”

“Well, Mr. Jorgensen,” Chuck said. “We'll be sorry to see you go.”

“Well.” The old man stood, his blue eyes rimmed with red, and looked at each of them in turn. “I can make more leasing my water rights than I can growing wheat,” he said. “There's just too damn much surplus. And too little water. Tell me, how do you figure that?”

Dock made a sound of affirmation.

Jorgensen shook his head. “Here's another riddle for you,” he said. “How long can a man believe he lives in a country that doesn't actually exist, standing in the middle of one that does?”

“Oh, come on now,” May said. “Is it as bad as that?”

“Seventy-one years at least. And I've known older men and women than that around here. Seventy-one years telling myself it's farm country. Or that it's this or that kind of country.” He shook his head again. “When you finally wake up,” he said, “it's too late. You're an old man.” He opened his hands, trembling before him.

“Where would you have gone?” Dock asked him.

“Might have just adapted to what's actually here. That would've been the most sensible thing.”

“Surprised to hear you say that,” Chuck said.

The old man grinned. “Doesn't sound very interesting, does it?”

“Well, come on,” Boyd said. “A man wants to make something of himself.”

“The endless becoming,” the old man said to that. “You become a farmer. You become a businessman. You become a Christian. You become a Democrat. You become a Republican. To hell with it all.” They were all quiet a moment, then Jorgensen raised his hand in farewell. “Well, anyway,” he said, and pushed out through the door. His old Ford pickup was in the street. They watched it pull away.

“God,” Boyd said, “people work themselves to death around here.”

“Perhaps you all didn't know it,” May said, “isolated out here as you are, but the point is no longer to work hard. It's to survive the longest, and the most comfortably.”