Benediction

19

IN THE NIGHT he lay awake next to Mary in the downstairs bedroom unable to sleep, remembering everything, taking all of his years into account. He decided he wanted to see the nearby physical world once more. He could let go of it if he saw these familiar places again.

They drove out on the Saturday morning in his good car, Lorraine behind the wheel, Dad in the passenger seat and Mary in the back. There was a robe over him and he was wearing his cap.

Now take it slow, he said. There’s no rush about this.

A bright hot windless July day, and they put the car windows down. They began by driving past Berta May’s yellow house and at the south end of the street where it met the highway they turned a block east and went down Date Street past the grade school and the playgrounds and the practice field and then up Cedar past the Methodist church and across to Birch where the banker lived and where the Community Church was located and then up Ash past the old white frame hotel that was only a broken-down rooming house now with a wide sagging porch and on past the Presbyterian church and the Catholic church and over to Main Street. They drove the length of Main without stopping, from the highway north to the juncture where you had to turn east or west. Which way now, Daddy? Lorraine said.

Go over here to the east, he said. I want to look at these streets too.

They went over a block and then south on Albany and over to Boston and Chicago where Rudy lived and onto Detroit where Bob’s house was and then onto the state highway and back to U.S. 34.

You’re going too fast, Dad said.

I can’t go slow on the highway.

Let them go around. It don’t matter.

Where to now?

Back up Main.

They went up the street again past the little houses that were built at the south end and the old water tower on its tall metal riveted legs and past the post office and then the three blocks of businesses.

Let’s go back in the alley here, Dad said.

She turned slowly into the dark alley behind the stores. The mismatched backs of the buildings, the jumble of various things, and only a few cars and pickups parked along the way in the potholed gravel.

Stop here, please, Dad said.

She parked the car and they sat in the alley behind the hardware store. He looked at it all, the old brick wall with white flaking paint and the rusted Dumpster and the telephone pole black with creosote, the old rear entrances of the businesses on either side.

He shook his head. I should of painted that back wall again.

It looks about the same as always to me, Lorraine said.

That’s what I mean.

Wooden pallets were stacked on one another, and there was the scarred wooden door with the window in it that peered out into the alley.

How many times I went in and out that door. Wasn’t that the way, Mary?

How many times do you think, honey?

Fifty-five years times six days a week times fifty-two, he said.

What’s that come to?

It comes to a lifetime.

That’s right. It amounts to a man’s lifetime, Dad said. All right. We’ve been here long enough. Drive us around front now, please.

Lorraine started the car and they came out on Main Street. Should we stop?

Yes, pull in here at the store.

She parked at the curb in the middle of the block. The store was two old brick buildings side by side with high false fronts. Dad sat looking at the plate-glass display windows with the signs touting table saws and generators. The wide front doors propped open on the hot Saturday morning. The new lawn mowers and garden tillers wheeled out on the sidewalk with chains run through them to keep anybody from taking off with them.

A woman came walking toward them, she stopped to peer in through the window, cupping her hands beside her face to block the glare. She glanced up the street and looked inside again and went on.

What did she want? Dad said. We would of had it for her.

She’s got to make up her mind, Mary said. She wants to take her time.

Let her come back then, he said.

From where they were sitting they could see Bob inside behind the front counter waiting on some man. The man paid, they watched him remove his wallet and put money out and Bob take it and ring the sale and make change and tear off the receipt. Then he ducked out of sight behind the counter and he reappeared with a brown paper sack in his hand and put the purchase — something silver, not shiny, a pipe wrench maybe — in the sack, slipping the receipt in with it, speaking to the man, thanking him, nodding his head, then something more, and the man saying something in return, and then the man swung around and came out through the open doors onto the sidewalk with the paper sack in his hand, coming directly toward them in the car, so near that they could see the buttons on his summer shirt, before he turned and went up the block in the bright sun.

Who was that, Daddy?

I can’t think of his name. But I know him. I’ll think of it, he said. His voice sounded odd and then suddenly he began to weep.

Daddy, what is it?

He covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking. Mary leaned forward and put her arms around him.

Dear, it’s all right. What’s wrong? What are you thinking? What happened?

He shook his head. He went on weeping as they sat in the car in front of the hardware store on the hot Saturday morning, with people going by on the sidewalk. Lorraine watched her father and looked forward toward the storefront and Mary kept her arms around him and rested her head against the side of his head. After a while he stopped and wiped his face.

Oh, Lord, he said. Well, we can go on now, if you want. I’m sorry.

Are you all right, honey?

Yeah. I’m going to be.

Where to now, Daddy? Should we go home?

No. Out in the country. Out south. I want to show you something. I was thinking about it last night.

They backed out into Main Street and went around the block and back to the highway, past the Chute Bar and Grill and the grocery store, and turned south on the blacktop. There was wheat stubble shining in the sun and waist-high rows of corn, very green, and then pastures with black cattle scattered out in the native grass and sagebrush and soapweed, and presently Dad said, Slow down. Turn here, please.

Lorraine steered them onto the unpaved road. They could hear the gravel kicking up under the car. There were barrow ditches on both sides and above them the long run of telephone poles and the four-strand barbed-wire fences.

Careful, Dad said. You don’t want to go too fast.

She slowed down and they came to an old place set back off the road behind a front pasture. The road leading back to the house was closed off by a padlocked gate. Below were outbuildings and a horse barn and loafing shed and some stunted cedar trees. Everything looked to be in good repair but it didn’t seem as if anyone were living in the house.

Stop here a minute, Dad said.

Lorraine shut off the engine and they looked out across the hot pasture at the old paintless house.

This here is where those old brothers lived, Dad said. The ones that had that high school girl come out and live with them. She was pregnant, then she had the baby and went off to college, and after that the one old brother got killed by a Angus bull in the corral back there with his brother right there seeing it all and not being able to do a goddamn thing to stop it. They’re both dead now.

I didn’t know this was their place, Mary said.

I knew them a little. They traded at the store. After the one brother got killed the other one went out with a woman in town and he and her stayed together till he died. I believe she’s still in Holt. A nice woman, I understand.

I’ve known all that, Lorraine said. But I never heard what became of the girl and the baby she had.

They’re up in the mountains someplace. The baby’s grown up by now, of course. The neighbors look after the ranch.

Nobody lives here?

No. And she won’t sell it or let anybody else operate it.

But what are we doing here, Daddy?

I just wanted to look at this place one last time. For sentimental reasons, I suppose. We can go on now. I’ll show you where to.

They went farther east on the county road and then he said, Turn in here, if you would.

Right here?

Yeah.

It’s not even a road.

It was no more than two tire trails in the sandy ground going out through pasture grass. After half a mile or so, the track began to rise and twist up onto a sandhill.

Daddy, I don’t know if we should try this.

We’ll make it. Just don’t stop in this sand, you’ll get us stuck. Somebody’ll have to walk out of here and get help.

They drove on, the car bucking and rocking, the grass sweeping underneath, making a whispering noise. Once they got up on top where it was flat, Dad said, All right, we can stop now. This is it.

He opened the door and climbed out with his cane and Mary and Lorraine got out, holding on to him, and the three of them walked away from the car and stood on the windy hill. There were more hills to the east and south, the town far distant to the north, with the grain elevators white above the green of the mass of trees, and elsewhere all the flat open space.

I wanted to tell you what I decided, Dad said. What I was thinking about. I’m going to ask you to bury something up here.

Bury what, honey?

It doesn’t matter what it is. My cap or something. An old pair of my shoes. These eyeglasses here in my pocket if you want.

Why this place here? We’ve never come up here before.

I have. You can see this whole country from this place. I brought you both up here today to look with me.

All right, honey, we can bring something up here. I don’t have any idea what it’ll be.

They stood taking it all in, the wind blowing steadily, but it was still hot at noon.

It was only a simple little goddamn thing, Dad said. That’s all it was.

What was, honey?

Me crying in town back there at the store. That’s what set me off. It was my life I was watching there. That little bit of commerce between me and another fellow on a summer morning at the front counter. Exchanging a few words. Just that. And it wasn’t nothing at all.

No, that’s not right, it wasn’t either nothing, Mary said. It was everything.

Well. It made me cry anyway, seeing it this morning. I cried like a baby.

Daddy, it’s all right, Lorraine said.

I don’t know, he said. I couldn’t seem to help it.

She and Mary took his arms, standing in the wind, looking at the country. Then they returned to the car.

They were halfway back to town when Dad said, Darwin Purdy.

What’s that, dear?

That fellow we saw coming out of the store. If I had a name like that I’d change it to Bill Jones or Bud Smith. He’s a pretty decent fellow, though.

What about changing it to Dad Lewis? Lorraine said.

He smiled. No ma’am, he said. I wouldn’t go so far as that.

Why not?

Look what become of him. Old man crying on Main Street, driving around out in the country making a nuisance of himself.