Sorrow Floats (7 page)

But Shannon and Auburn loved me without acknowledging flaws. Shannon thought I was okay. I could rest if I was around someone who thought I was okay.

It seemed the right idea to walk the block from the Sagebrush to Kimball’s Food Market. Those two shots might be just enough excuse for Mangum Potter to crucify my ass. Besides, the day was pretty. Living in a land with seven months of winter, a person comes to appreciate spring. Alcohol use and a suicide attempt hadn’t killed off all the fun of fresh air and nifty sunlight.

Mrs. Hinchman’s wild rose bushes sported tiny pink blossoms. The day I lost Auburn the buds had been nothing but green swells. A red-tailed hawk wheeled over the grade school playground, searching for lunch in the jungle gym and teeter-totters. GroVont was a good place to raise kids, compared to Idaho Falls or Utah, anyway. I’d been raised here and I wasn’t evil or anything. Shannon was fine, although she’d left when she was four to go off to college with Sam.

Shannon was more than fine, she was beautiful. Inadvertently, I’d given birth to a bundle of curiosity and compassion. I don’t remember having compassion at her age, at least not for anything other than a horse. If I lived in Greensboro, I could sit on the porch swing as she talked about dolls or cotillions or whatever girls talk about. In the evenings she would kiss my cheek and say “Good night, Mama.” Nobody had ever done that.

It would be nice to hear Sam go on about God’s relationship to baseball or writing stories or something equally as silly. Normally his girlfriends didn’t like me any more than Dothan liked Sam. They couldn’t catch on that we’d had a child together but we’d never dated or felt an iota of romance. This new girlfriend in the letter didn’t sound any better than the last six, although I would bet the ranch she’d moved up the road by now anyway. Sam was too giving to hold a woman more than a month.

Outside Kimball’s, Mary Ellen and Shawn McKenzie played on the painted mechanical horse. Mary Ellen had managed to balance her little brother on the horse’s head while she sat on his stiff tail—born trick riders.

Shawn took his fist out of his mouth. “Nicgel.”

Mary Ellen fleshed out the thought. “Can we have a nickel, Mrs. Talbot? We want a ride, but it takes a nickel.”

“Let’s see if I can find one.” They waited patiently while I fished for change. Mary Ellen wore a pinafore that I know Mabel made from a pattern she cut down, because it had darts. I’d bought Shannon enough birthday presents to know dresses for seven-year-olds don’t come with darts.

“Here you go, kids—two nickels for two rides.”

Shawn held out his chubby hand, but Mary Ellen took the money. “Thank you, Mrs. Talbot.”

Shawn said, “Tang you, Mrs. Talbud.”

“You’re welcome.”

The deal is that Lydia is a personal appearance snob. She sends away to New York or someplace exotic for all her makeup and shampoo and conditioners. Her fingernail polish came from Paris and cost about two dollars a finger. Her shampoo was concocted from edible objects—eggs, aloe, and cucumbers—and made me smell like a salad. Time for some regular green Prell. I also picked up a comb, two Hershey bars, and a picture postcard of two girls in bikinis lying on lawn chairs set in a snowbank. Dad would get a kick out of that.

Reaction from the fellow shoppers was roughly the same as it had been at Zion’s—titters, stares, or embarrassment, each in about equal doses. If you’ve ever been pregnant and thirteen in a small town, you know the vibes. I’d made myself fairly insult proof, but you never completely outgrow the leper thing.

Mr. Betts made a pass at me. On the canned goods aisle, he blocked my path with his shopping cart, held both my hands in his, and did a soul search of my eyes over frozen cranberries and his wife’s Dexatrim.

“If you need anything at all, Maurey, don’t hesitate to call me at the office.”

“Sure, Don.”

“I always told your father that if you ever came to a bad end, I’d be here to help. I think he took comfort in that.”

“I’m certain he did.”

Mr. Betts’s hands gave a squeeze. “I’d do anything for Buddy’s little girl.”

At the checkout counter Lucinda Wright held up my comb for Mr. Kimball to inspect. “Is this a sharp object?”

Mr. Kimball peered down from the glassed-in box where he counts money and adds figures. “It’s a comb, Lucinda.”

“I thought it might be a sharp object.”

“Look at her, she needs a comb.”

Mary Ellen and Shawn still played on the horse that had run the course of its two rides. Mary Ellen had moved up on the horse’s hips, only facing back the wrong way. Shawn smiled when he saw me and held out his hand.

“Sorry,” I said. “Out of nickels.”

Shawn kept smiling as if he’d expected as much.

“Say hello to your mother for me.”

“She’ll say hello back to you,” Mary Ellen said.

I’d just reached the curb and was about to step into the street when Mary Ellen and Shawn broke into song.

How dry I am, hic,

How dry I am, hic,

How wet I’ll be

If I don’t find, hic,

The bathroom key.

Shawn erupted into giggles while Mary Ellen stared at me with defiance, daring me to come back righteous. I looked from his five-year-old innocence to her seven-year-old experience, and I saw what had happened. The town had won.

“If we can’t leave town in twenty minutes, I don’t want to go.”

Lloyd and Shane did a mutual freeze frame. Lloyd was bent along one of the Sagebrush’s crooked cues, the tip of his tongue showing pink between his lips. Shane sat over past the phone with his finger in the pinball machine coin return and a bag of chocolate-chip cookies on his lap.

“It may take a bit more than twenty minutes to organize,” Lloyd said.

Shane pulled a wheelchair 180. “No, it won’t.”

I stalked in, holding my shampoo-and-comb sack. “What’s the scam on the beer?”

The scam was that Buck Fratelli would sell the boys one hundred cases of Coors for four dollars eighty-five cents a case, and a high school friend of Shane’s in Gastonia, North Carolina, would buy it for ten a six-pack.

“Four thousand bucks for a four hundred-eighty-five-dollar investment,” Shane bragged. “You can’t beat that with a stick.”

“You said they’d cough up five a bottle.”

“That’s what my friend retails it for out of his tavern. You can’t expect me to move twenty-four hundred bottles one at a time.”

“You’ll need a trailer.”

The Bobbsey Twins needed more than a trailer and a driver’s license—they needed cash. Lloyd had the beer money, Shane had squat. I was expected to provide gasoline, food, and alcohol—soda pop for the men—for a two-thousand-mile run.

“What about motels?” I asked.

Lloyd looked slighted. “Moby Dick is self-contained, almost. We won’t be stopping at motels.”

“Self-contained means toilet, shower, and stove. Does Dick contain a toilet, shower, and stove?”

Shane hooted, which was the next subject I meant to discuss.

Lloyd rubbed his leg. “We have sleeping bags. There’s a separate bag for you.”

“You bet there is.”

Twenty minutes turned into seven hours, but, by God, we pulled it off. Who would have thought two dried-up ex-drunks and a housewife or whatever I was could get their acts together and bust out of a rut in seven hours?

First stop was the TM ranch for a double-wide horse trailer and cash on the barrel head.

I left the boys up by the house and walked across the west pasture to where Hank Elkrunner stood in a ditch, wearing jeans, leather gloves, and irrigation boots. He’d stripped off his shirt and had his hair down, so he came off all muscles and sweat and brown skin. I could see why Lydia went drippy on sight.

Hank looked up at the ambulance. “Somebody hurt?”

Shane sat shoveling cookies into his mouth while Lloyd lay on his back under the front end, checking something mechanical. “Those are my good examples. They used to be drunks.”

“I figured the hospital expected you back so soon they decided to tag along on your adventures.” The Indian thing about Hank is you never know when he’s joking. Other than that inscrutability stance, he’s fairly white—doesn’t sleep with bird parts next to the bed or drink bad wine or say “my people” like other Indians I’d met.

I said what I forgot to say Friday. “Thanks.”

Hank bent at the knees and grabbed both sides of a head gate with his hands. His muscles bunched up as he lifted. “Arnold found you. I was trimming Charley Chaplain’s nails when Arnold started howling. Thought he had flushed a porcupine.”

With a grunt, the gate came up an inch and brown water swirled under the board, oozing into the sides of the ditch before it filled in around Hank’s boots and started pushing dust downstream.

“Well, I appreciate you and Arnold saving my life.”

“Couldn’t leave a naked woman lying that close to the creek. Might spoil the water.”

I’m way fond of Hank. He’s worked for Dad since Shannon was born, and even though he’s Lydia’s boyfriend, which makes him a generation older than me, we’ve always been able to talk about life and boyfriends and horses and stuff.

Sometimes Hank was more of a dad than Dad. He taught me how to read scat and howl like a wolf and God is Nature/Nature is God. Dad drove me to Sunday school a lot, but he never taught me anything about God.

“Hank, I need to borrow a trailer and three hundred dollars.”

His attention was on the mares next to the barn. “You will have to grant me an advance before I loan you three hundred dollars.”

“Do we have three hundred dollars to advance you to loan me?”

He pulled off his irrigation gloves. “Barely.”

Hank listened without expression while I outlined the Coors-to-Carolina gig. At pertinent points his eyes roamed up the rise to Shane, Lloyd, and Moby Dick.

“Why not call Sam and have him mail you the money to fly back east?”

“I don’t want to owe Sam money.”

Hank slapped the dust off his gloves on his left forearm. He looked over at the Tetons, which is what everybody in the valley does when they’re thinking deep stuff. “Maurey, have you looked at the books since Buddy died? Sam financed the funeral and paid the inheritance taxes. He owns your mama’s house.”

“I don’t get it.”

“This ranch is supporting your mother, brother, me, and most of Lydia, and now it’ll have to do for you. That many people can’t live on horses.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Hank looked right at my face, which, as I understand it, is a very un-Blackfoot thing to do. “You were preoccupied.”

“Drunk.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes you were just depressed.”

You know, when your dad dies you can’t simply stop functioning for six months. I mean, you can—I was the number one example—but you shouldn’t. Somebody has to pay attention. At her sanest, Mom didn’t know which end of a cow shits, and Petey was afraid of animals. That left me, and I’d flopped.

“I should surrender and give the ranch to Sam.”

Hank crammed the gloves in his back pocket so only the tips of the fingers stuck out. “Don’t do that, he might fire me and run the place himself.”

The thought made even Hank smile. I’d seen Sam in a cowboy hat once. He looked like Woody Allen gone hombre. The only time he ever got it up to ride a horse, Mae West threw him into a barbwire fence.

“Still, I’d rather do this without Sam,” I said. “He’s been saving me for ten years. It’s my turn.”

As Hank and I walked through the shin-high grasses up to the house, I thought about why I didn’t want Sam flying me down there. It was like, here in Jackson Hole people watched me. And in Greensboro Sam’s expectations would cause discomfort. If I got drunk, Sam wouldn’t preach or anything, but he would think. Shannon had never seen the Mom-gone-bad either.

I was worn out from disappointing people. I needed a gap, a rest between this and that where no one could pull me up, put me down, or tear off little pieces of my energy. Even though I’d just finished one, I needed a three-day nap, and being out of reach on the road with Laurel and Hardy might be the next best medicine.

***

Shane slid another cookie into his beak. “I don’t see cows. You said there were cows and all I see are horses.”

Hank nodded to the uphill side. “Cattle are on the Forest Service lease till October.”

“I don’t much care for horses. Never have since Katharine Hepburn insisted I copulate with her on one in 1942,” Shane said.

I was dubious. “You nailed Katharine Hepburn?”

“On a stallion. Sweet girl, really, although she went to extremes for sensory experience.” Shane lowered his voice. “She suffered from penis envy.”

“We’ve got a filly named Katharine Hepburn.” Hank waved his arm in the general direction of Frostbite and three or four quarter horse-Thoroughbred combinations.

Shane peered off toward the group. “Kate always was a bit horsey in the thighs.”

I didn’t for a second believe Shane had nailed Katharine Hepburn. Nobody—except possibly Spencer Tracy when she was underage—had ever nailed Katharine Hepburn. She wouldn’t allow it.

Lloyd backed out from under Moby Dick. Some gravel was embedded in his bare shoulder next to the overalls. “Big hole in the exhaust,” he said. “Thought I felt fumes inside.”

Hank dropped to a haunch-squat to peer under Dick’s guts. “Coke cans wrapped around the pipe will fix that. I’ve got some clamps in the barn.”

“Much obliged,” Lloyd said, and
Bingo
, they were male pals on the spot. Men can do that. “Carburetor’s clogged,” a man will say to a complete stranger, and instantly they’re connected by a common language. I don’t share a common language with women. Mildred Barber asked me what I thought of Final Net once and I had to say, “Huh?”

Lloyd and Hank wandered off for clamps and the trailer and left me with Mr. Delusions of Grandeur. Under the fat folds, his ratty eyes glittered. “This was right after
The Philadelphia Story
. She told me Cary Grant had vulture breath.”

“So, if you got laid on one, why do you hate horses?”

He glanced at me. “Kate screamed, ‘Give me more, big boy!’ and the stallion panicked and reared. The end result was a life spent in this chair. It took all the Warner Brothers’ resources to keep the story out of the tabloids. Can you see it?” He held his hand up to scan an imaginary headline. “Katharine Hepburn Cripples Stunt-man While Fucking on Pony.”

“You were a stuntman?”

“Didn’t you know?” He slid through another cookie.

The brown slime was getting deep, so I muttered something vague about checking a colt and walked over to the main corral. One of the mares had come up dry, and Hank had her and her foal penned so he could do the baby bottle deal. I did the baby bottle deal for Shannon, mostly, but Auburn was a breast baby. He’d left my tits tender—I could kind of excite myself by touching them. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a sign of hopeless deprivation when nursing a baby gives you thoughts.

It felt weird to be at the TM getting ready to leave. What if I never made it back? All my innocence was wrapped up in this ranch, and innocence isn’t something to leave on purpose. Things happen outside Jackson Hole; you never know when you’re going to get stuck somewhere and never again see the place that you’d always taken for granted would be the center of your days for life.

The corral poles were part of me, and the watering hole off the creek, and the boneyard where pieces of machinery older than Wyoming rusted into the sage. The ranch cycles were so soaked into my blood that on our land I always knew what time it was and which way was north. You feel those things when your identity becomes a location. The outside world made me nervous.

Back over at the house, Lloyd and Hank had pulled Dad’s old rodeoing trailer over to Moby Dick and were in the process of winching it onto the hitch and hooking up brake and lights wiring. From the corral, I could see a big dent I put in the trailer by backing it into an A&W billboard. The billboard fell on an empty fireworks stand and knocked it flat. Dad laughed until tears dripped off his beard.

I didn’t see any urgent need for Hank to loan us that particular trailer. Self-destructive tendencies can’t possibly benefit from a father memory following your backside across America.

***

Shane had his back to the work, facing the horses and the sun. It was the time of year people liked to face the sun. He looked at me and popped a cookie. “Tonto says you used to ride horses.”

“Used to?” I said.

“Tonto?” Hank said.

“You might think you’re hot stuff, but even before you fell off the deep end you could never have matched Kate at horsemanship. There was a competent woman. You don’t look so very competent.”

I advanced on him. “Maybe it’s time you and me duke it.”

Shane was amused to no end. “I don’t fight helpless women.”

“I do fight fat cripples.”

I could tell calling him a fat cripple earned me a little respect. Most people bend so far over backward not to say the wrong thing around the handicapped, to the point where the bending over becomes obvious and an insult. Shane was one of those cripples who wanted the same abuse given normal men.

He turned the chair so we weren’t facing head on. “I did not mean to upset your feminine sensibilities. All I meant was Katharine Hepburn did things you couldn’t do even before you became a drunk.”

I looked over at Lloyd, who chose to stay noncommittal, then back at Shane, who seemed to be leading with his belly.

“Watch this, Humpty-Dumpty.” Sticking two fingers in my mouth, I let out a whistle. Very little causes me pride, not since college, anyway, but my whistle does call ’em in for lunch. Not a boy in Teton County could out-blow me.

Frostbite’s ears jumped alert and his head swiveled. As he came at a canter, you couldn’t help but admire the skewbald Daddy-killer. The old guy was fourteen now, but he still lifted his feet like a colt, and his eyes still sparked with the glory of performance.

At a twenty-foot gap, I held my hand palm forward and Frostbite stopped on a nickel. A dime. World’s greatest trick horse.

“Nobody’s rode him since Buddy,” Hank said.

Frostbite and I locked brown eyes on blue. Faith in each other leapt between us like lightning between a thunderhead and a mountain spire. Horse and woman became a unit.

Hank stepped next to me. “I advise against it.”

Shane said, “If you break your neck, don’t ask to use my chair.”

I gave the hand signal for Frostbite to turn around. Exhaling calmly, I said, “No problem. We haven’t lost a thing.”

My rear mount was smooth as water over a rock. The instant my jeans touched his back, Frostbite became motion, I became Frostbite. We’re talking exhilaration—the refinding of lost enthusiasm.

I grasped the mane with my left hand and did a right vault, then reversed it and bounced dirt on the other side. For the first time I wished I hadn’t cut my hair. Long hair streaming in the wind is a trip when you go fast. You should see Hank do the arrow-beneath-the-belly Indian trick. On a full-blast horse death doesn’t mean shit.

As he hurled toward the fence I gently tugged Frostbite’s mane and touched him with my left leg. He did a flying leftward U-ey, and ZOOM, we’re charging back toward Moby Dick. I placed both palms on his back between my thighs, straightened my legs, and lifted myself into a rear spin—same trick Mary Ellen McKenzie had been trying on the mechanical horse at Kimball’s before she mocked me.