Authors: Richard Ford
I put on my clothes in a hurry. There didn’t seem time to take a bath. Into the pillowcase I put my balsa-wood box of chess men, my
Chess Master
magazines, my
Chess Fundamentals
, and my
Bee Sense
book I’d checked out of the library and meant to return. I put in two volumes of the
World Book
—the “B” and the “M,” which were thick ones and held more information. I put in a pair of socks, Jockey underpants, a T-shirt, and nothing else, since my father had said we’d be back. I went to the bathroom and cleaned my teeth, washed my face and under my arms (“the airman’s bath,” my father called it). I combed my hair and used the Wildroot my father let me share. I hadn’t seen him, only heard his voice. “These children need to eat,” he’d said. “They can eat on the train,” my mother answered him in a testy way.
Berner was sitting in the living room, waiting, wearing her loose gray-and-blue polka-dot dress and her white tennis shoes and white socks. Her hair was pulled back in the bushy way she usually wore it. She wasn’t wearing lipstick. She was sitting on the davenport with her freckled knees pressed together and looked irritated and pale, as if she still had her stomach ache. Her green overnight case sat between her feet—a present my parents had given to her for our fifteenth birthday. It bore a stamped alligator-skin pattern, and she’d made no bones about hating it. It had been a prize at a raffle at the base. When I passed the hall door, heading to my room, she stared at me from behind her glasses with a dead-eyed expression. The Niagara Falls puzzle, all put together, still lay on the card table, lacking only the piece my father had eaten. It could never be finished and was useless.
Our father walked out of the kitchen then, dressed as he’d been in the middle of the night. He looked large and loose-limbed and in good spirits, though he hadn’t shaved and was gray faced. “You’re a grown-up girl now,” he said to Berner. “You still don’t look like you feel very well. You better stay at home with me.” She was obviously about to say something contrary, but my mother’s voice came out of the kitchen. “Just don’t. Don’t pester her. She feels fine.”
My father gazed around the living room as if a lot of people were in it and were listening to him. He saw me and smiled and winked. “She’s my daughter,” he said loudly. “I’m not pestering her. I’m talking to her. I’ll take care of your fish while you’re gone,” he said.
That was when the doorbell rang out through the house. My father looked at me. He was still smiling. He extended his two arms in a frustrated way I’d seen him do before to express amazement—palms up, as if rain was falling out of the ceiling. “Well, I just wonder who this’ll turn out to be,” he said and began walking across the living room to open the front door. “Maybe it’ll be those Mormons, and they’ll have the good news we’ve been waiting for. We’ll have to just go see, won’t we?”
From the kitchen, my mother said, “Who is that?” She dropped a dish onto the floor then. It broke to bits just as my father was pulling the door back to whatever news was waiting for us.
T
IME HAS TO BE TALLIED DIFFERENTLY NOW. FOR
the next day and a half—until Monday at noon—hours went past in a galloping, confused way. I remember details but few of their connectors. Leading up to then, time had been almost seamless, the durable order of family life. Even now I can sometimes think the next two days didn’t happen, or that I dreamed them, or misremembered them. Though it’s wrong to wish away even bad events, as if you could ever have found your way to the present by any other means.
TWO LARGE MEN
were standing on the porch when our father opened the front door. Our mother walked out of the kitchen and sat down at the dining room table. Her suitcase was beside the davenport, where Berner was still sitting with her green case between her feet. I was in the hallway, holding my pink pillowcase with my chess men and my books inside. Our mother hadn’t bothered to pick up the dish she’d dropped.
“Why hello there, Bev,” one of the men said from outside the door. They were both wearing suits with their front buttons unbuttoned. Both were wearing snap-brim hats made for summer wear. They were heavy-bodied, bigger than my father, but not taller. They were the men who’d been behind us in the black Ford and who’d been in the alley behind our house when I thought I’d been dreaming. The larger and older of the two had a big fleshy-soft reddish face with heavy brows and a fat neck that went up into his chin. He wore glasses. He’d been the one riding, and who had pointed me out. They were the police.
Our father cast a look around behind him toward our mother. He smiled as if the police knowing his name and knowing we lived here was comical.
“What’s all the commotion about, boys?” our father said in an exaggerated way. The two men had moved into the doorway. They were too large to get in side-by-side and had each turned a little.
“Not any commotion, Bev,” the big policeman said and inched farther in, taking a look past our father at whatever else was inside our living room. His mouth seemed to be about to smile but not quite. The other man was younger and slenderer but still big with a broad face and slitted blue eyes. I’d been told this look meant a person was of Finnish extraction. He was looking inside, too. “Who else you got in here, Bev?” the older policeman said. My father took a step back and held his arms away from his sides and looked around the room himself.
“Us chickens.” He seemed relaxed about what was happening.
“Happen to have a pistol on you, do you?” The big policeman extended his large hand and touched my father’s shoulder. Both men were inside our living room now. It felt filled up, all the space gone. Six people. There had never been six people in it before. I could hear the older policeman breathing.
“I sure do not.” My father looked down the front of himself as if this was where a pistol would be. “I don’t own a pistol.” His voice had more of his southern accent in it now.
“Not in the house somewhere?” The policeman’s gaze was casting around. His lenses magnified his pale blue eyes.
“No, sir. Not in this house.” My father shook his head.
“Have you been out visiting in North Dakota recently, Bev?” The big policeman didn’t act very serious, as if this was an ordinary conversation. He stepped by my father toward me, where I was in the hallway door. He leaned past and looked down the hall to the bathroom and our parents’ bedroom. The taller, younger policeman stared at my father as if that was his job.
“How’re you, son?” The big policeman put his big hand on my shoulder. He smelled like a cigar and like leather. He was wearing rubber overshoes that had mud on them. Little mud cleats had already come off on our clean floor.
“Fine,” I said. A gold badge was attached to his trouser belt under his coat. His belly was tight under his white shirt. He had a tiny gold triangle pin on his lapel.
“You going on a trip?” he said in a friendly way.
I looked at our mother. “We’re going to Seattle. On the train today. To see their grandparents,” she said.
“I haven’t been to North Dakota,” my father said.
The big policeman kept his hand on my shoulder. He took an appraising look into the kitchen where the broken dish lay on the linoleum. “Is that your Chevy around back?”
“Yes, it is,” my father said. “I haven’t owned it very long.”
“But you’ve owned it a couple of days, haven’t you?” the policeman said. I didn’t want to move with his hand on me.
“Oh, yes,” my father said. He grinned at my mother like this was an amusing question. His features were alive on his face, his eyes darting, his mouth seeming to move before he spoke. He had a little pill of spit in the corners of his lips. He licked one away and made his jaw muscles jump. Both his hands were swinging at his sides as if he was about to do something unexpected.
“Maybe you children could go sit in your rooms,” our mother said.
Berner immediately stood, picked up her overnight case, and started toward the hall. But the big policeman raised his hand and said, “Better stay in here, I guess.” He pulled me toward him so I felt his pistol under his coat. Berner stopped and looked at our mother. Her mouth made a wrinkled line, which meant she was irritated.
“Do as you’re told,” my mother said. Berner walked stiffly back to the davenport and sat on it with her case on her knees.
The big policeman walked to the piano and leaned to get a close look at my father’s discharge and the picture of President Roosevelt and the metronome.
“You still have your Air Force flight suit?” The policeman pushed his glasses down to the tip of his nose and drew closer to the discharge as if it interested him.
“Gracious no,” my father said. “I’ve got a better wardrobe. I’m in the farm and ranch business now.” I had no idea why he would lie about that.
“What’s your name, young lady?” the big policeman said. He looked around at Berner. The other policeman kept his eyes on my father.
“Berner Parsons,” Berner said. It sounded wrong to hear her say it inside our house.
“Did you go on a trip to North Dakota recently, Berner,” the policeman asked.
“No.” She shook her head.
“Don’t talk to him,” my mother said, suddenly very angry. Though she stayed in her place at the table. “She’s a child.”
“You sure don’t have to talk to me.” The policeman smiled at my father in a way that made his red policeman’s cheeks fatten and his eyebrows rise. He pushed his glasses back up on his nose and put his thumbs under his belt and hitched at his trousers, revealing white socks above his muddy overshoes. He gave out a sigh. “Maybe we can go outside, Bev, and talk a little more. Bishop can entertain everybody till we’re back.” He nodded to the other policeman, who moved away from the door.
“Okay,” our father said. His southern accent was very distinct. He was still swinging his arms back and forth and looking side to side as if everyone was watching him. It wasn’t a good way to see him be. He looked hopeless. I’ve always remembered that.
The policeman, Bishop, reached behind and pushed open the screen door. Sunlight had broken through the trees and warmed the air outside. Last night’s rain was sparkling on our lawn. Lutherans were walking to church. Our father moved toward the door with the big-bellied policeman guiding him, his hand in the small of our father’s back. “What’re we going to talk about?” our father said as he stepped out onto the porch. He ran his hand through his hair and looked down where his boots were going.
“Well, we’ll dream up something,” the big policeman said, following him.
“You don’t have to say anything,” our mother shouted.
“I know I don’t,” our father said.
The other policeman, Bishop, closed the glass front door. I couldn’t see anything else that went on outside, and then we were all four alone together in our house.
I
T COULD’VE BEEN FIVE MINUTES, BUT IT COULD’VE
been fifteen, that we were in the house with the policeman, Bishop. The Lutherans’ bell rang several more times. They’d shut their doors and commenced their service.
Sun was on the roof, and it had become hot and still in the living room. Normally, we would’ve switched on the attic fan, but none of us moved. I set my pillowcase down and sat on the piano bench. My mother kept her eyes on me, as if there was something I needed to be thinking. I didn’t know what. I wondered what it was my father didn’t have to talk about. I assumed the police would leave soon and we would talk about it. We’d missed our train now.
The young policeman stood with his back to the front door, his hands in his coat pockets. He was chewing gum, and at a certain point took off his hat and rubbed his forehead with a white handkerchief out of his pocket. He had short, almost white-blond hair and looked younger with his hat off. I thought he was thirty, although I didn’t know about people’s ages. His hair and his broad face and his slitted eyes didn’t fit together, but seemed natural for a policeman. He looked like the kind of boy Berner might like. His eyes had a wildness that was like Rudy’s.
“Do you go to school?” he said to me. My mother kept staring at me but didn’t speak. I didn’t know what she wanted me to do or not do. Berner was squirming in her clothes. She put her green case down and sighed a deep sigh to indicate she was impatient.
“Yes,” I said.
He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief, folded it and put it inside his coat, then returned his hat to his head. The hat made him look too young to wear a hat.
“Meriwether Lewis,” I said.
“You’re in junior high?” He seemed surprised. “You don’t look big enough.” I looked at my mother. I didn’t know what was going on in her head. “I went there fifteen years ago,” Bishop said. “I got some kids now.” He looked at my mother and let his eyes stay on her. “Are you very well acquainted in Great Falls?” He said this to her. My mother let her eyes move to him, then down to her hands folded on the table top. She suddenly directed her gaze to the front window where she could possibly see my father and the other policeman. “Are you these children’s natural parents?” Bishop said, when she didn’t answer the first question. He leaned against the door jamb, his eyes on my mother as if she was strange-looking to him—which she must’ve been.
“Is that any business of yours?” she said.
“No,” Bishop said. “I wouldn’t say so.” He pulled on the lobe of his left ear and smiled. My mother let her eyes shift toward the window again.
The policeman laughed in the front yard, as if he and our father were enjoying a joke. I could hear them through the glass door. It made me think everything was all right now. The policeman said, “Oh, that’s understandable, Bev. It’s our job.”
“You two don’t seem like bank robbers,” Bishop said. “You look like people who’d work in a grocery store.”
I couldn’t get breath in my lungs for a moment then. My mouth went open to speak. But words didn’t come out. I closed my mouth and tried to breathe a complete breath. I didn’t want to look at Berner.