Dear Gilia,
I’m surprised to hear that you don’t know which is worse—what I did with Katrina Prescott or running away afterward. I ran because I had hurt you, I had confirmed all your worst opinions of men, and I didn’t think you wanted to hear my excuses. Not that there are any. I told myself someday I would make a commitment to you and after that I would be true from now on, but in the meantime, it didn’t matter what I did. That, of course, is a lie. Wanting to love someone means loving them now. Or not at all.
I went cross-country skiing today. The snow was beautiful and cold. As I skied, I thought about why I was a dipshit to you, and here, near as I can see, is it:
Before we met I had two wives and an uncountable number of relationships, ranging from twenty minutes to four months, and every woman had this in common—she was desperate. I thought a woman had to be a drunk, crazy, extraordinarily young, unhappily married, or in big trouble before she would want me. She had to need what I have to give—sex and money. I thought no one desirable could love me. I married women I knew it wouldn’t hurt to lose.
Then I met you, and you are desirable. You don’t need me. We simply have fun being together and that scared me so much I had trouble breathing. When you have something that matters, you have something to lose.
Katrina couldn’t touch me, so I slept with her. You could touch me, so I drove you away. And I regret it. And I am sorry.
Sam
Pete relapsed in early December. One evening he was tireder than usual and the next morning he didn’t get out of bed. Maurey, Chet, and a doctor floated in and out of Maurey and Pud’s old bedroom with exaggerated quietness and muffled tones. No one said it aloud, but the general feeling was this time was for keeps.
It was Tuesday, six days before Christmas. Maurey’s son, Auburn, and Roger, who can’t or won’t speak, sat perched on a board, solemnly watching me flake hay off bales. Behind the boys, I could see Hank Elkrunner’s ponytail and part of his right wrist, which snapped up and down as he turned the team toward the Gros Ventre River Road.
“Too fast,” Auburn shouted. “Gristle will hog it all.”
Gristle had two white feet and massive dingleberries hanging off her butt, and she’d appointed herself herd bully. Whenever I came near the equine bitch she would pull her lips off her teeth and lean toward my face. Hank said she smelled my fear, but I think she just enjoyed biting people.
“Let’s shoot her for bear bait,” I said. Auburn’s face turned scared. He can’t tell when I’m kidding yet, so he tends to take me literally, which sure as hell isn’t how I care to be taken.
“Maybe I could read the others
I slid the X-Acto knife under the bale twine and cut up, toward my face. The loose string went into a potato sack at my feet, then, as forty or so horses led by the selfish nag Gristle shuffled in our path, I shoved layers of lime-green-and-yellow grass onto the tracked-over snow. Way off to the south, the sun shone weakly through a smattering of high clouds. Up by the ranch buildings, aspens stood against the hill like gangly white skeletons with oozing joints, while in creases along the foothills spruce and lodgepole pine made a kelly green mosaic on the snow, and way off alone an occasional limber pine declared its independence from everyone—animal or plant.
The propriety of the whole scene kind of got to me, like I was an important piece of a huge jigsaw puzzle or a character in an Amish movie. Working outdoors in weather will do that sometimes—give you the feeling of being minutely small yet still consequential.
I looked at the fenceline and saw 1966. Wyoming women. Broad shoulders, flat bellies, unafraid to look men in the eye. My Dodgers won the pennant, lost the World Series. That summer I’d gotten downwind of a grass fire in Curtis Canyon and the smoke stayed in my nose for weeks, so wherever I went I swore the immediate vicinity was smoldering. I slept with a shovel under the bed. I asked a girl named Tracy Goodman on a date and she said “Okay,” but when I went to pick her up she’d gone shopping in Idaho Falls. I often dreamed of winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and when I stood at the podium to give my speech I would start out, “
Auburn’s voice cut through my vision. “Earth to Sam. Earth to Sam.”
Maurey taught him to say that and he thinks it’s hilarious. He turned to rap Hank on the shoulder. “Sam’s left his body again.”
Hank glanced back at me. “Tell Sam to close his mouth so his spirit can’t escape while he’s gone.”
“Close your mouth so your spirit can’t escape—”
“I heard him, Auburn.”
Maurey doesn’t mind, but Lydia throws a fit when Hank talks about turning into a bird and flying around the universe in front of Auburn. She’s afraid Auburn will take him seriously, which Hank says is the point.
“I was daydreaming,” I said.
Hank gave his Blackfeet chuckle. “Bad practice to daydream with a knife in your hand. It may bite you.”
Auburn laughed and I pretended to. What I actually did was block thoughts of Lydia by studying a lone raven flying toward the red hills across the river.
Hank said, “Pud’s coming.”
Pud’s white van with the Talbot Satellite Dish Systems Repair magnetic sign on the passenger door picked its way through the ruts and slush. We’re always the last county road plowed, so the ice base forms thickest, and when a rare December warm spell comes along it’s like driving through Dairy Queen soft ice cream. Takes four- wheel drive and the faith to keep moving no matter what. Those who stop may not start again.
Hank angled the team—Luci and Desi—toward a semi-solid meeting place along the fence, where Pud wrestled the wheel until the van came to rest against the far snowbank. He opened the door and sat with his legs out of the van, waiting for us to skid up to the fence, then he hefted himself to the ground and crossed over the ruts.
Pud Talbot wears cowboy boots year-round and a yellow cap that reads Dash Roustabout Service. He’s no taller than me and has the famous chin that marks all the Talbots except Auburn. Pud’s brother Dothan is Auburn’s father, and I’m afraid I’ve allowed the deep animosity—read that as hatred—that runs between Dothan and me to color my feelings for Pud. Also Pud sleeps with Maurey, and whether Maurey and I have a brother-sister deal or first-lover nostalgia or we’re simply best friends for life, my chosen role is to quietly resent anyone who sticks himself into her body.
Luci and Desi shuffled to the fence and stopped, and us five males waited there a moment in the winter silence, which is so much more silent than summer silence there ought to be a different word for it.
Pud put one boot up on the snowbank and said, “Pete died.”
I looked away from Pud to the horses with their necks down, eating hay.
Hank said, “The doctors told us he had another month.”
“The doctors missed the call,” Pud said.
More silence. A white mare raised her head and stared directly at me. I couldn’t meet her eyes.
“How’re Maurey and Chet taking it?” Hank asked.
“About how you’d expect. They’ll be along in a couple hours.”
For some reason, I turned to look at Roger. His eyes were huge and terrified, like a panicked deer. His mouth opened and he screamed.
