The Animals: A Novel (26 page)

Oh thank god, Nat said. I thought I was screwed.

You still might be. You look awful.

He was still sweating and had begun shivering now. She went home? he said.

To work, Rick said. Jesus, man, I can hear your teeth chattering. I think I should take you to see a doctor.

I can’t afford that.

So don’t pay the bill when it comes. What’s your finger feel like?

A little better. Hurts but it’s also kinda numb.

I think I’d better unwrap it.

No way, Nat said.

Yes way, Rick said.

He stood there for what seemed a long time, his balance seeming to shift in all directions at once. Then he slid down next to Rick on the sofa. A rerun of
M*A*S*H
on Channel 2. Hawkeye speaking in a dim quiet slur. Canned laughter following the punch lines.

Rick unwrapped the toilet paper slowly and while Nat had been sure it would drive him into an agony of pain there was almost no sensation at all. When the last piece came off, the broken pencil stub that Susan had used as a brace fell into his lap and they both sat looking at the finger: a pale, bent, swollen thing that looked more like a ruined sausage than any part of his hand. Through its center, where the break was, a dark bruise mottled his tight swollen skin.

That doesn’t look good, Rick said.

Dang, Nat said. It made him sick to look at it.

We’re definitely going to the doctor, Rick said. Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll give you some Percocet or something.

He nodded but did not move. Neither of them did. I don’t know what I’m gonna to do, he said after a time. He was still looking at his swollen and discolored finger. What am I gonna do?

We’ll figure something out, Rick said. We always do.

It’s serious, Nat said.

I know it is, buddy. I’ve got some weed to sell. That oughta help some.

What about your mom?

Well, like I said, we’ll figure something out.

From the television came Milt Wells’s voice and they both looked toward it in unison. Milt stood in his characteristic Western shirt and bolo tie before a row of gleaming cars and trucks. That’s right, he called out to them. Five hundred dollars cash back on any new car or truck. Five hundred dollars cash back. The man on the screen fanned a stack of bills in his hands as if they were playing cards.

And there’s all the money we need, Nat said wistfully.

Yeah maybe we should start a car dealership, Rick said.

Nat did not respond now, only sitting there, staring as the commercial ended and the next began.

I tell you one thing, Rick said. If I see that motherfucker Mike or Johnny fucking Aguirre I’ll knock his fucking head in.

Don’t do that, Nat said. That’ll make it really bad.

We’ll see, Rick said.

Nat could feel a sharp twisting inside him, like a short thin blade was rotating through his intestines. The geography of the continent seemed to stretch out under his feet, the desert elongating so that the arrowed points between where he was and everywhere he was not fled from each other across that vast and unending plain of sage and cheatgrass and dry dead earth.

11

HE TOLD HER EVERYTHING, BEGINNING WITH THE NIGHT AT
the car dealership and then trying to explain the gambling and Johnny Aguirre and fumbling through what had happened when Rick had been in prison for those thirteen months and he had been left alone in Reno, knowing that none of it really made any sense, not to him and certainly not to Grace, listening to his own story and knowing it was true but feeling, all the while, as if it were the story of a stranger, something he had overheard somewhere and was repeating, like the plot of a movie. When she told him to start over he began in Battle Mountain, his brother with the disassembled bicycle, and the new kid who rented the trailer next to the one he shared with his brother and mother, the sagebrush rolling out in all directions and the flat top of the Sheep Creek Range looming above the bridge under which he would find frogs in the summer and where the teenagers would swim and smoke stolen cigarettes, the two of them—he and Rick—wandering everywhere across that landscape, and, when they were teenagers, stealing into silent empty homes in the midafternoon, taking souvenirs and sometimes selling them at the pawnshop in Winnemucca. How they would talk about taking care of your people. How that had been a kind of credo, something to live by.

Then his brother’s death. That terrible moment and the funeral that followed. He told her that it felt like there was a hole inside his chest that would never be filled, and when she asked him his brother’s name, he could only tell her that he needed to give her the whole story first and she looked confused but mumbled, OK, and he continued, from Battle Mountain to Reno to the moment they both occupied, he and Grace, in her bedroom, the only illumination the pools of yellow light from the nightstands and a faint blur of snow falling beyond the window.

My god, she said when he was silent at last. That’s all true?

It’s all true.

You did that stuff? The robbery and the gambling and … all of it?

Yep.

My god, she said again.

I didn’t want to tell you.

Apparently not, she said.

They were quiet then. The snow was coming heavy outside the window. He thought for a moment of the animals. They would be awake and moving in their enclosures, the snow a source of excitement, sending signals, sending messages of the winter to come.

Is that everything?

No, he said. There’s one more thing.

God, Bill, she said, this is a lot to take in.

I know it is. There’s just one more thing.

OK, let’s hear it. Her voice was devoid of emotion: flat, lifeless.

You know I love you, right?

I love you too.

He exhaled. When I came up here I told my uncle David the whole thing. All of it. Just like I am now. We were pretty sure the police would be looking for me. So he decided I needed a new name.

She was silent then, staring at him.

Bill was my brother’s name, he said softly.

Her mouth trembled and her eyes were glassy with tears. I don’t understand what you’re telling me, she said at last.

It’s not the name I was born with. My name before was Nat. Nathaniel.

Nathaniel? she said.

Nathaniel Timothy Reed. My brother was Bill. William Chester Reed.

She sat there in the long silence that followed, no longer looking at him, instead staring off into the room somewhere, at the falling snow beyond the window glass. The forest was back there, rising up the ridge behind the house. Sometimes they would lie in bed and watch bats swirling through the thick stands of tamarack and bull pine and red cedar. Maybe that would never happen again now. Maybe everything he ever let into his heart would turn to smoke. Most of it already had.

So what am I supposed to call you then?

Bill, he said. That’s who I am. That person I was before is just gone.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? she said.

He did not respond. He thought her next words would be to ask him to leave. She would not look at him, instead only stared into the far side of the room. Then her voice came at last: I’m gonna need a beer.

Me too.

Maybe a whiskey.

Me too.

I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with all of this, she said.

I just want you to know what happened. I don’t need to you to do anything.

So this guy Rick … he’s here. In Bonners.

Yes.

And that safe is the safe on the floor of your closet in the trailer?

Was, he said. I gave it to him.

He told her then that he had kept the safe all those years despite knowing that its serial number could, at any moment, tie him back to Reno, back to that winter of 1984, how he kept it even though his uncle told him that he should be rid of it, that it was evidence of the crime in which he had been involved, but he had kept the safe anyway, that
perhaps it had been a kind of penance to do so, to be reminded of where he had come from, the black box holding a sense of gravity that rippled from where he had been to where he was and he knew, had always known, that he might have turned away from all of it were it not for the need to hold this final talisman, an iron to the knowledge that one day Rick would return and everything he had made of his life would be called into question. And of course that was exactly what had come to pass.

So if you gave him the safe and that’s what he came up here for, then why is he still here? And why is he talking to Jude? She looked at him now, her eyes filled with rage and sadness all at once.

I don’t know, he said.

That’s not good enough.

I don’t have a better answer, he said, his lie twisting inside his chest like a blade. I wish I did but I just don’t. He won’t leave. I don’t know why.

Jesus. She was silent for a long moment. Then she said, You didn’t tell anyone about this, did you? I mean you didn’t tell the sheriff or anything?

I haven’t told anyone at all in twelve years.

Goddammit, Bill. Or Nat. Or whatever I’m supposed to call you now.

Bill, he said.

Whatever, she said. You should have called Earl as soon as Rick called you the first time.

I was hoping he’d just give up and go away.

Christ, Bill. What if he does something? What if he does something to Jude to get to you? Isn’t that what he’s saying? That he can get to Jude?

That’s why I’m telling you, he said. His eyes had brimmed over with tears and they flew hot and fast down his face but his voice was steady. There was that small victory over himself at least.

You should have told me before.

I know.

I mean all of it.

I didn’t want you to know.

She fell silent again. Then she said, I need a drink.

All right.

Come on. She rose from the couch and he followed. The clock in the kitchen read two in the morning. It’s late, she said.

He said nothing in response.

She removed a bottle from the upper cabinet and he pulled out two glasses and cracked a dozen cubes onto the counter and then filled the tray at the sink and returned it to the freezer. She poured both their glasses and then splashed hers with some water from the tap and took a long drink. He did the same.

I’m sorry, Grace.

You lied to me.

I didn’t want you to know.

Why not?

Because it doesn’t matter anymore. I left all of that behind.

Not all of it, she said.

No, I guess not.

Why’d you do all of that?

Honestly, it feels like someone else did all that stuff. I know a lot of it was just flailing around trying to find some way out.

Out of what?

Out of myself, he said. I guess that sounds pretty stupid.

No, she said, I know how that feels. Everybody knows how that feels. She sipped at the whiskey.

I’m just trying to be a good person, Grace. He stopped, faltered, then said, Or a better one.

Good people don’t lie to their girlfriends.

I know that too.

I was already married to a guy who lied to me.

This isn’t the same thing.

She looked at him, her mouth open.

It’s not, he said. I promise. It’s not the same thing.

He promised too.

He was fucking around on you, he said. This isn’t that.

Goddammit, she said then. Is that everything now, or is there more?

Yeah, that’s everything.

She paused a long moment and then blurted out: Christ, gambling?

Yep.

You won’t even put money in the grammar school raffle.

And now you know why.

A silence fell over them. Outside the kitchen window, snow fluttered like moths against the glass.

You want me to go? he said.

No, I need you to stay here.

He looked at her without comprehension.

She set her glass on the counter and wrapped her arms around him and when her head fell to his shoulder she began to weep, huge, racking sobs that shook her against him, his own arms already around her. He whispered in her ear: It’s all right, baby. It’s all right. Everything’s gonna be fine.

What if he does something?

He wanted to tell her that such thinking was absurd but he had the same fear and the best words he could find were to tell her that he would not let that happen.

She was quiet against him now, her breathing slowing into a more natural rhythm. Their bodies rocked together in the center of the room.

I love you so much, he said. I swear I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.

But he’s here, she said.

Yeah, he said. He’s here.

BY MORNING,
the snow covered everything, not with the dry shifting flakes of a cold-weather storm but in heavy wet clumps that fell like packed snowballs from a gray sky. The trucks in the driveway had been already rendered into nearly shapeless masses and he knew it would take a good long while to dig out the short driveway enough to make it onto the road where the snowplow would clear a path.

She had said almost nothing to him that morning and neither of them had slept more than a few quick hours. He felt broken and exhausted and the sight of the snow filled him with dread. So much to do at the rescue and now each task would be so much more difficult to complete.