Fourth of July Creek (47 page)

Rose closed her eyes, gripped the armrests of her chair.

When was your last period?

I only ever had a couple.

Well, you’re young yet. Would you know if you missed one?

I guess not.

So you might be pregnant. How would you feel about having a baby, Rose?

I dunno.

Would you consider an abortion?

No. The baby didn’t do anything wrong.

How would you take care of a child?

I dunno. You got some services I bet. Or is all you do abortions?

The woman sighed and leaned forward. Sweat was beading over her lip.

You’re getting services right now. One of the services is trying to head off a pregnancy that both of us know you’re not prepared to handle.

Rose couldn’t concentrate on what the woman was saying. Her brain just wouldn’t engage with it.

You got sweat on your lip.

The woman set the clipboard in front of her and didn’t wipe off the sweat or even acknowledge that Rose had noticed it. She handed Rose a packet of pamphlets bound by a rubber band.

This is some literature. Read it and then sign down here. Here’s a box of condoms. Use them.

What about . . . ?

The herpes?

Yeah.

Go to the drugstore and get some aspirin. Take a hot bath.

That’s it?

That’s it.

The woman’s grin was faint, serene, maddening.

J
ust back from dropping Cecil off in Spokane, Pete was stopped at a crosswalk in Tenmile waiting for an old cowboy to shuffle across the street when the judge spotted him from the courthouse lawn. The judge had taken a rake from a groundskeeper and was demonstrating some aspect of lawncraft when he noticed his own car and shouted at him and waddled over on his fat legs. Pete could tell the man had bad news.

“What is it?”

“You haven’t been to your place.”

“No, I was out of town. Why? What’s going on?”

“It’s gone, Pete.”

“What’s gone?”

“Your house.”

When they got there, the earth around the cabin was wet, and everything Pete had owned was now ash or burned beyond recognition in the charred crater. His heat-warped bed frame and coils of mattress springs sat in the dirt and black remnants of the wood floor. He climbed down onto the cast-iron stove where it had fallen into his cellar. He pulled several blackened potatoes from the earthen shelf and touched around the still-warm molten glass of a burst jar of pickles. That was all that was left. His books, his pictures of Rachel, his leather chair. A curl of his daughter’s hair he kept in a small jar on the shelf in his room. Love letters. His baby book. Quilts his mother had made him. His rifles and his great-grandfather’s .22 pistol.

For some reason, he thought of the piece of paper with his brother’s address on it, and then vaguely recalled putting it in his wallet. He looked and there it was, along with a small school picture of his daughter when she was ten, the scrawled phone number of some woman he no longer remembered, and several business cards. This and forty-odd dollars. His possessions entire.

The judge watched him thumbing through his wallet and then told him to come on out of there, and when he did his hands were black all over and he started chuckling.

The judge remarked sarcastically that Pete was taking the fire well.

Pete gripped his knees and shook in his helpless chortling.

“You’ve gone around the goddamn bend,” the judge said. “Come on, let’s get over to the courthouse and have a drink.”

Pete sat on the hood of the Monte Carlo and started to roll a cigarette.

“That’s all right, I’m good.”

“Nonsense. You come with me. You can stay with me.”

Pete smiled.

“Thanks, but no.”

“You gonna stay in Missoula?”

“Nah.”

“Your father’s?”

“God no.”

The judge shoved his hands in his pants pockets and watched Pete roll the cigarette and begin to smoke with diminishing acknowledgment at the things the judge said, how it’d be all right, how these things happen, that Pete would get on his feet again. How it was damn lucky that Jim McGinnis just happened to have his water tenders back from the fires outside of Whitefish. Could’ve lit up the whole mountain.

Pete nodded.

The judge said again that Pete should stay with him, and Pete again begged off. Smoking and grinning like a lunatic. The judge finally said for Pete to go to hell then, and climbed in the car.

Cloninger lived a few miles down the road and Pete was able to visit Katie and never left without a plate of Mrs. Cloninger’s corn bread or a tureen of casserole or soup. He held an old margarine container of corn and pumpkin chowder when his brother’s parole officer rolled by, slow and then suddenly accelerating, kicking up a plume of dust meant for Pete.

Wes Reynolds followed him up to the Pearls’ house. Pete looked on as Wes inspected the Pearls’ home for signs of Luke, opening cupboards and thumbing through dog-eared Bibles and then as he went out and shined a flashlight under the house.

“How many times do I have to tell you I don’t know where he is?”

“No, you said you
did
know. And that you would never tell me.”

Wes crossed the meadow to the burnt-out Airstream trailer and walked to the cliff. Replaying their last exchange up at the Yaak country store made Pete wonder if Wes was the one who’d burned down his cabin.

I’m never going to tell you. And you’ll never find him, I’ll make sure of that.

You just fucked up, man.

That some kind of threat?

It certainly had been some kind of threat. By the time Wes went up the hill behind Pearl’s house, Pete was all but sure he’d set his home afire. Wes spent some time at a pile of loose stones near the empty chicken coop and asked about it when he got back, wanting to know how they got there.

“You torched my house.”

Wes put a thumb through a belt loop and tipped back his hat.

“Maybe your brother left a cigarette going up there.”

“All because you got
beat
up
? Don’t you have a sense of proportion?”

“You should’ve told me where he is.”

“You think I’m going to now?”

“Of course not,” Wes said, heading down the hill. “But the fucker has one less place to rack out.”

He sipped coffee and watched a pair of deer eat in the meadow. The morning had been downright cold and Pete wondered did deer worry about that, were they eating quickly, did they hate the cold. He realized this worry about the deer was a worry for Rachel. Some of the larch shed their needles, showering yellow and orange pins in each brisk, pining gust.

Pete cleared his throat. The deer lifted their heads and ceased chewing. In a brindled blur they leapt into the forest, and then he saw Benjamin jump over a stump, followed by Jeremiah, who stepped on it, surveyed the meadow, the tree line, the sky, and then strode out after his boy.

Pete’s heart lifted, sang a little. He went outside and waved at them and was honestly moved to see them, it felt like such a long time. Grasshoppers sprang away from Benjamin in dozens like a herald in miniature, and when he got to the stream he squatted down and in a moment had something cupped in his hands. Pete asked to see what it was when he got up to the house, and the boy put a green and yellow frog in Pete’s palms. The two of them petted it and felt its frightened, urging heart.

Ben looked good. He had a scrape over his eye that had mostly healed, his hands were filthy, and he reeked of campfire, but he had color in his face, weight too. Pete told him so.

“There’s frogs all down there,” Benjamin said. His eyes were bright as new pennies. “You can get one anytime you want.”

“I will,” Pete said, touching the boy’s head.

Pearl hiked up the rocks to where Pete and Ben stood by the house and scanned the meadow for a moment again, then nodded and grunted a greeting when Pete said hello. Pete handed the frog back to Ben and reached out to shake Pearl’s hand, and the man took it and pumped it succinctly.

“I’m squatting,” Pete said, answering Pearl’s unasked question. “My cabin burned down.”

“How’d it burn down?” Benjamin asked, thrilled.

“I was away. It was cinders when I got back.”

“Maybe lightning hit it.”

“Maybe. Can I get you a cup of coffee, Jeremiah?”

The man had been listening to Pete answer the boy’s questions about the fire and now looked about uneasily.

“There wasn’t no storm.”

“I can be out of here pronto,” Pete said. “I’ll git if you want to winter here.”

“Passing through,” Pearl said.

“You should stay.”

“We most certainly should not.”

“Let me fix you a cup of coffee.”

“It’s all right.”

“I wish you’d visit a little.”

“Well,” he said flatly.

“Let me get you a cup. It’s fresh.”

Benjamin was already back in the meadow for more frogs. A small sigh from Pearl.

“I take it black. Put in a little water to cool it off. I don’t want to wait on it.”

Pete did as the man asked and brought out the coffee and again invited Pearl into his own house. Pearl sat on the ground cross-legged and sipped the coffee.

“There’s a little firewood out behind the chicken coop,” Pearl said. “Not enough for winter, but some.”

Pete thanked him, asked how the coffee was. Pearl grunted.

“I met Stacks,” Pete announced.

Pearl paused briefly, sipping his coffee, and then took a swallow and said, “Pinkerton, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“I assume you had a meeting about me.”

“I was arrested actually. Mistakenly.”

Pearl was surprised by this. Then suspicious. Then he sipped his coffee.

“They don’t make mistakes,” he said.

Pete told what had happened. The raid. The man with the shotgun on Debbie’s porch. Some DEA clusterfuck. The girl he’d been going to see. Getting the shit kicked out of him. Going to the cafe with Pinkerton.

“He asked me to help catch you—”

“I bet he did.”

“—but I told him to fuck off.”

“Wouldn’t matter if you agreed to try and bring us in.”

“I know.”

“There’s no going in.”

“I know.”

Pearl sipped some more coffee and gazed across the meadow to the remains of the trailer. A remote expression like a cloud passing before the sun crossed his face as he entertained some memory.

“What are you thinking?”

“Sarah had a vision that said I had to burn that trailer. Pinkerton and Ruffin and the rest weren’t coming back. We could’ve sold it, had a little money.” He looked into his coffee, closed his eyes, his mouth moved. He seemed to be saying a short prayer. He nodded at something he asked himself or perhaps was just saying amen. “But she was right. She was right.”

“Are they in Alaska now?”

Pearl faced him.

“Every time I see you, you know another piece of my business. How is that?”

“I know Mr. Cloninger.”

“Cloninger. Good man. For a civilian.”

“Why’s Benjamin out here with you?”

“It’s not for us to question why we were chosen, but only to carry the burden.”

“I know you don’t trust me, but you can.”

He looked Pete full in the face. His own was as filthy as if he’d just crawled out of the ground. Lines of grime like black rays around his eyes from times he’d squinted.

“That’s not something I’m ever going to do.”

“All right.”

He handed Pete the empty cup with a nod and stood. His whistle ricocheted off the rocks and across the meadow and Benjamin sat up holding two fat frogs. He set them free and came walking through the grasses toward the house, wiping his hands on his pants.

“We might be up at Deerwater a day or two,” Pearl said, hitching up his rifle. “I know Ben would appreciate it if you’d come play checkers. I just don’t have the patience.”

Pearl headed toward the boy, touched his shoulder, and they walked together to the twisted and overgrown wreckage of the Airstream. Pete wondered was Pearl remembering his wife sending him to commit arson on his own property. Did Pearl go inside with a jerry can of gas and open the windows and did the fuel splash onto the screen in small rainbows. Did he back out the door, pouring. Did he strike a kitchen match against his jeans and drop it on the ground and did the flame hasten into the trailer, the inside light up like Stacks himself had flipped the switch, and did fire dance in obscene chemic colors as the polyester curtains went up in green and cerise flashes like magicians’ smoke.