Moving On (74 page)

“I was turned
off!
” she said. “I didn’t want sex! Shut up before you ruin us forever. Can’t you understand? Just shut up. Talking makes it worse.”

She took a pillow and pulled the bedspread off the bed.

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t sleep in this bed tonight,” she said. “You go to sleep and let me alone. I’ll sleep all right.”

“That’s childish,” he said. “Come on.”

“No. You think I need nine thousand doctors. I won’t sleep with you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just talking.”

“I told you not to talk,” she said.

“Shit,” he said. “Come on, you can have the bed.”

“Keep it. Go to sleep. I’m all right.”

“Okay,” he said. “Be stubborn.”

‘I will.” She stayed on the floor, wrapped in the bedspread. She awoke so often that she could not tell if she had really been sleeping. There was a kind of vibrating silence in the room, as if Jim too were awake.

When morning finally came and Davey was awake things improved. They all had breakfast together and were as polite and friendly as if the night had never happened. Both knew that it had, but they ignored the knowledge. Patsy called Roger Wagonner and he insisted that they visit; she decided it might be a good idea. She did not want to rush right back to Houston, to Hank. If she went back in the wake of such discouragement anything might happen. Her marriage ties might snap, and she didn’t want that, at least not on the basis of one bad night. They sat by the pool most of the morning in the bright sunlight. A few cheerful Californians sat around with them drinking Sprites and Frescas and joking about their hangovers. Jim took Davey in the water for a while and Davey loved it. Jim looked very blond and handsome and cheerful, and it seemed so right and so natural that the two of them were playing together that Patsy felt even less like returning to Houston. She knew she ought to think of some way to keep them together more. Soon they would not be able to help loving each other. But Jim was planning to go to California and leave them alone again. It irked her every time she thought about it. It was so inconsistent. He wanted them to love him but he wouldn’t stay around so they could try. Davey gurgled and yelled and after a while Joe Percy emerged, looking truly hung over. He was blinking and holding his sunglasses out before him like a shield.

“Why don’t you put them on?” she asked.

“I like to hold them out like this,” he said. “It gives me satisfaction.”

“Put them on. I can’t bear to look at you when you’re in pain.”

He put them on. “You look lovely again,” he said. “What became of your ravaged countenance?”

“My toenail still hurts,” she said. “We’re going to a ranch this afternoon, Davey and I.”

“A little thoughtless of you, to go off and leave us all at the mercy of Dixie.”

“Where is she?”

“With the director, but it’s nothing that’ll go two nights, if I know them. She’s a kind of Norman Vincent Peale of the boudoir, you know. She believes in everyone she likes absolutely, for a night or two. Then she disbelieves in them absolutely.”

They chatted the morning away, and then Patsy went up and fed Davey and packed. She stopped at Joe’s door and said goodbye to him, and he kissed her on the cheek. A little later, at the airport, Jim kissed her lightly on the mouth as she held Davey. On the way to the airport and while waiting they had been polite; they had left things very vague, for fear of becoming heated. They talked of Davey and of the fall, skipping entirely the ambiguous weeks ahead. He was surprised that she had not seen more of the Duffins, told her to say hello to the Hortons, and didn’t mention Hank at all. On the plane she and Davey took a seat by the window. Jim was still standing by the flight gate, the wind of the plains blowing his hair and making him look happy and rakish. She tried to make Davey wave, but Jim had not spotted them. Davey was gurgling; he liked planes. Patsy tried to smile in response to the stewardesses’ appreciatory remarks, but she felt strange inside. There was her husband—they were going away from each other again. Then Jim turned and went back into the terminal, to do what, to go where, she really didn’t know. She was alone with Davey and didn’t really know where
she
was going, either, or what she was going to do. It was very lonely to be departing after such a short visit, with so little done and so little clear. They ought to be going somewhere together, though she didn’t know where; she could not much blame him for wanting to go without her after the way she had behaved. Then the plane went up. Davey grew very still, his head leaned back against her breastbone, between her breasts. His head was warm and he gripped one of her fingers. A little of the strange feeling went away. She talked to him and held him up so that he could see the small white clouds below them. Then she settled him back in her lap, his head where it had been, and looked out fairly calmly at the brown land and the clouds.

13

T
HE RANCH HOUSE TOO
was without a baby bed. There were only two beds in the whole house. Roger gallantly offered her the use of his marriage bed, but Patsy declined and put Davey down for a nap on the bed in the guest room. He was very tired, and so was she. Once she had made him a kind of pen she took off her dress and lay across the bed in her slip, meaning to wait until she was sure he was asleep before she changed clothes. Though the heat outside was fearsome, the old high-ceilinged room was fairly cool and she too was soon asleep. Davey woke before her, knocked one side of his pen awry, and was in the process of falling off the bed when she awakened. She had been sleeping deeply and could not get herself in motion in time to catch him. His heels disappeared and she heard a loud bump, as of a small boy’s head hitting a floor. It terrified her and she grabbed him up and began trying to comfort him even before he began crying. He cried loudly for a bit, surprised and outraged. Patsy felt terribly guilty and strange and cried too, stroking Davey’s head with her fingers. The shock, the scare, the adrenalin mixed strangely in her with grogginess and a desire to go back to sleep. Her arms trembled.

Fortunately Davey quieted down rather quickly. He looked for a time as if he felt the world had done him a bad turn for no good reason, but then he began to look cheerful again and Patsy felt enormously relieved. She had been imagining permanent brain damage but could not even find a bump, only a small red spot on his forehead. She looked out the window and saw Roger go into the barn. She changed Davey and put on her jeans and a shirt and retrieved Davey from the edge of the fireplace, where he had scooted himself. “Let’s go see some animals,” she said.

They paused for a time in the chicken yard. Davey stared in wonderment at the hens, who walked around pecking at things and chattering. Patsy clucked at them inexpertly and they regarded her with scorn. They were white hens, a few of them fat matriarchs but most of them young and skinny. Davey eventually grew annoyed because none would come in reach; he grabbed a handful of chicken droppings, which he happened to notice before Patsy did. “Oh, shit,” she said, holding his smelly hand away from her. She carried him down to a large water trough and washed the hand under a faucet.

Roger was standing near the lots doing something to the front foot of a large gray horse. He was sweating profusely. When he saw them coming he set the horse’s foot back on the ground and wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeves.

“Up from your snooze?” he said. “How’s he taking to ranch life?”

“He just grabbed a handful of fecal matter,” Patsy said. “It was from a chicken. I would have expected a son of mine to be more discriminating.”

“I ain’t very pleased with this horse, either,” Roger said. “The big idiot just stepped on my toe. Think he weighs a ton. After I worked myself down trimmin’ his toenails too.”

“I stubbed one of mine on a chair last night,” she said. It seemed remarkable that the events of the night before, which had seemed so terrible and so final, already seemed distant and only rather ordinarily sad.

Bob, the big dog, came over and licked her hand. She let Davey pet him and after a while set him on Bob’s back, an experiment that both he and Bob regarded with mixed feelings.

“About time he had a horseback ride,” Roger said. “It’s cooling off. We’ll ride over to the mountain.”

The mountain he meant, apparently, was a long flat-topped hill a mile or so away, to the southwest of the barn. Patsy would have liked a ride, but she felt distinctly apprehensive about the combination of herself, Davey, and a horse.

“I don’t think I ride well enough to carry him,” she said. “Not even that far.”

“No, but I do. Me and him will ride double and you can poke along behind us on this old gray idiot here.”

“But Davey might not ride with you.”

“Course he will. Why wouldn’t he?”

He went in the barn and got a bridle and then went into the lots to catch his own horse, a trim red sorrel. Patsy sat Davey on the edge of the water trough and let him dangle his toes in the water. Their reflections wavered when he made the water ripple. She watched Roger saddling the horses and imagined catastrophe, runaways, horror, screams. It seemed a tremendously perilous undertaking, but she could not get up the will to put her foot down against it. When Roger got the gray saddled he got a sack and carefully wiped the saddle free of dust.

“Mary’s saddle,” he said. “Ain’t been rode since she died. Hop up so I can see if the stirrups need changing.”

He held Davey while she mounted, then handed him up to her while he checked the stirrups. Davey was amazed. Roger fixed the stirrups with dispatch and mounted the sorrel. He rode up beside her, took Davey, and set him firmly between himself and the saddle horn. “Hang on, young feller,” he said and rode off. The gray followed, trotting heavily, and Patsy’s sense of catastrophe deepened. She bounced ungracefully. She could see nothing at all of Davey, only Roger’s back and his brown shirt. She was bouncing so badly she was not sure she would notice a catastrophe if one happened.

Soon, though, they slowed to a walk, and the horses picked their way off the low ridge on which the barn stood. At the foot of the ridge Roger reined in so she could come up beside him. She brushed back her hair and saw that Davey was quite all right. She had expected him to be frantic to come to her, but instead he glanced at her almost with disinterest when she came alongside. Davey’s hands were on Roger’s wrists.

“My goodness, he’s taken up with you,” she said. “What an independent brat.”

“Hum?” Roger said. “Well, you can’t keep him tied to your apron strings all his life. A boy’s got to get out with the men sooner or later.” Davey was trying to hold the saddle horn, but it was broader than his hands.

“That old thing will pace if you make him,” he said. “Whop him with the reins a time or two.”

He set the sorrel in a light, easy trot, and after some more heavy bouncing Patsy took his advice and lashed at the gray awkwardly. It took effect; he slipped suddenly into a comfortable pacing gait that didn’t bounce her at all. The sense of catastrophe left her and the ride became very pleasant. They were crossing an old grown-over field, the two horses side by side, the weeds and taller grasses struck with late sunlight. The wide high sky was very clear and plangent and the evening clouds turned golden in the southwest. Gray mourning doves rose from their feeding in twos and threes and flew south. The air and the grass had one smell. The bridle bits jingled lightly in unison and Patsy found herself watching the sorrel’s delicate strong legs pick their way through the grass, with dusty sunlight filtering under and through them. Davey suddenly made a pleased, emphatic sound, waving one hand.

“He’s giving us his opinion on all this,” Patsy said.

“Oh, is that what he’s doing?” Roger said. “I thought he was calling for more speed.”

When they left the field she fell behind again, sad for a little inside her pleasure. When would he be out with the men again, her son? And with what men? They rode through a short strip of thin mesquite, all dead—sprayed, Roger said—and the doves that had left the field and flown to the trees lifted themselves and flew back to the field, whistling over their heads in passage. As they started up the slope of the hill Patsy shook the little sadness out of her breast and forgot the future. It was so much fun to ride. She had ceased to be nervous about the gray horse, and she liked the sound of horses’ feet and the leathery dusty smell of the saddle. Roger waited for her at the top of the hill and they rode slowly around the edge, Patsy smiling, enjoying the breeze and a sense of great well-being. To the south there seemed to be more ridges, more flat-topped hills, with pastures of mesquite in between. The farthest distances were already blue with evening but the sun was not yet down.

“I always forget how much land there is,” she said. “It goes on and on.”

“Wish I owned more of it,” Roger said, studying the pastures below.

“Goodness, why?” Patsy asked. “Don’t you have enough? It seems to me that this hill and that field and the place where the barn is would be enough.” They could see the field, see the house and the gray barn, see the old pickup sitting at the back-yard gate.

“I never understood this urge you ranchers have to own the whole earth.”

“Well, it would eliminate the fencing problem,” Roger said dryly.

“Actually,” he said a little later, “I wouldn’t want the whole earth. I wouldn’t want nothing east of the Mississippi or north of Albuquerque, and I ain’t got much use for Old Mexico.”

Mention of Albuquerque reminded her of Hank—it seemed to be his favorite town.

“There the hussy is,” Roger said, pointing toward a patch of mesquite to the north of the hill. “You and old Davey get down and sit here a minute while I do a little chore.”

She got down and he handed Davey to her, then dismounted and tied the gray to a small mesquite.

“She’s calving,” he said. “She’s probably got the calf down there somewhere. I’ll jog down and take a look.”

Patsy assumed he was talking about a cow, though she had not seen any. “What do I do if a snake comes along?” she asked as he was mounting.