Bone Fire

Twenty-six

GRIFF HAD BEEN awake thirty-six hours and now it was after midnight again, the surrounding darkness flashing with unexpected bursts of pastel light. Mulberry, rose and amber. She’s been this tired before.

She knelt at one of the buckets of water she’d carried up from the creek and immersed her head until she was out of breath and sat back gasping. She felt raw, jittery, like she might start cackling and not be able to stop.

She stared down at her forearms, expecting the skin to be split and weeping, but it was just spotted with pinesap, charcoal and clay. She pushed herself up against the rim of the bucket and shuffled to the front of the kiln, where the yellow bricks throbbed with heat.

At dawn he’d said: “You can sleep now. It’s my shift. I’ll stay.”

“We already know that’s a lie.” She’d been standing by the hammock pulling her clothes back on. She’d meant it to sting. Then she asked him to leave. Well rested. Well fucked. This firing was hers.

She pulled on the thick canvas gloves, opened the door to the firebox and laid in the split pine for this last stoking. Her shoulders and knees ached and her ears rang with the fresh roar of the fire. The heat made her stagger.

When the box was filled she latched the door and stripped off the gloves and began mixing the sand and fireclay into a wet slop, one bucket at a time.

She circled the kiln, mudding up the spyports and ventholes and finally the firedoor, careful not to burn her hands. She shut the damper down. She could hear the wet clay sizzling against the metal door, the fire huffing for oxygen. Two days to cool, maybe two and a half, and the colors will be set into the ware. She was so tired she drooled, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.

She upended the remaining bucket of water over her head and stood there sputtering, shaking her head, trying for a last burst of clarity. Just enough to get home. She put the lanterns out and picked up her thermos and Einar’s old black lunch pail. The kiln groaned in the dark.

She stumbled down the trail out into the meadow above the house and finally across the porch. She stood leaning into the front door, the exhaustion spreading like a drug, but when she stepped inside she could feel their absence like a second bucket of cold water. She didn’t need to check the rooms, just stepped back onto the porch and swept the beam of her flashlight over the workyard. The truck wasn’t there. Oh, God, she thought.

She stood weaving at the table in the hallway, staring down at the blinking message light. She pressed the button.

“Griff, this is Marin. Your grandfather’s all right. He’s had a stroke, but a very minor one. We’re at Saint V’s. He’s resting now so please don’t call back tonight. I’ll call in the morning. About eight. I love you, and he really is going to be all right.”

She sank to the floor, lying over on her side just a minute to rest. A shower would bring her back, a pot of coffee, and she’d be in Billings in three hours, tops.

She woke with the kitchen linoleum cool against the side of her face, then remembered where she was. It was just starting to get light. Five-thirty. She listened to Marin’s message again and called Paul. There wasn’t anyone else she could think of.

“It doesn’t mean he’s going to die,” he said.

She held the receiver away, pressing it against her thigh, then sat at the kitchen table. She could feel her heart drumming in her chest.

“Are you okay?”

“I had to sneeze.” She didn’t want him to know her whole body was buzzing. Like it was filled with birds trying to fly out in every direction. “Marin said she’d call back this morning.”

“I’m coming over.”

“All right.” And then: “Don’t say anything to anybody. Not even McEban.”

“He’s in Cheyenne.”

“Where’s Kenneth?”

“They’re together. McEban called yesterday afternoon. Said they had plans to tear up the town. He said they’d be home when they were done.”

She could hear the morning downdraft rushing in the trees, the songbirds starting up. “I’m getting off now,” she said.

She was sitting on the porchsteps when he got there, and they went in the house. She picked up the phone to check for a dial tone, then set it back in the cradle. “I need to clean up. I didn’t want to get in the shower until you were here.”

“I’ll come get you if she calls,” he said.

She stripped out of her clothes, and washed her hair twice, soaping and rinsing the woodsmoke away, finally standing braced against the side of the stall, crying until the water turned cold. Her eyes were puffy when she came out in her robe. She sat at the table.

He’d made coffee and poured her a cup, but her throat was so dry she coughed it back up through her nose.

She cleaned her face with a paper napkin, dabbing at the stains on the front of her robe. “Do you ever watch yourself?” she asked.

“Sure. Sometimes I do.”

“I watch myself all the time,” she said, “and right now I’m a fucking mess.”

“I think you’re doing fine.”

She held a hand out between them. It was shaking. “You always think I’m doing fine,” she said.

He took a cribbage board from a drawer and talked her into a game, but she had trouble deciding which cards to play. She folded her arms on the table, resting her cheek against a forearm. He reached over to rub her neck.

“Don’t,” she said.

“I wish you’d tell me why you’re mad.”

“I’m not.” She puffed at her hair and it lifted, falling back against her face.

“Then how come you wouldn’t let me help you finish the firing?”

“I wanted to see if I could do it myself. Straight through.”

He tried to comb his fingers through her hair, moving it away from her eyes, and she sat straight up.

“I was tired of looking at you,” she said. “Okay?”

He studied her face. Mostly she looked just tired. “Okay.”

He took a carton of eggs and a package of bacon from the refrigerator and put a pan on the stovetop.

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“You could try.”

“I tried a piece of toast when I was waiting for you. I felt like I was going to puke.”

The phone rang and she was up and had the receiver even before he could turn toward the sound.

“Are you there? Hello?” Marin’s voice sounded fragile.

“I’m here.”

“I thought I’d call early. I thought you might be worried.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“He’s still asleep, but he’s going to be just fine.”

Paul was staring at her and she turned away, pacing with the phone.

“I can’t picture ‘just fine.’ I don’t know what that looks like.”

“It means we were lucky to be up here in Billings. So close to a hospital. They did a CT scan and put him on a blood thinner right away. An anticoagulant. They don’t think there’ll be any damage. But he needs some rest, and they want to watch him a little bit longer. See how he does on the medication.”

“Is that what the doctor said?”

“He said it was a wake-up call.”

She sat down at the kitchen table. “That’s such a bullshit thing to say. All it means is he’s not dead yet.”

“I think the doctor meant it to be more hopeful than that.” Marin cleared her throat. “I need to lie down. They’ve put a bed in here for me.”

“I’m coming up.”

“You don’t have to do that. Really. We should be home soon enough.”

“Paul’s coming too.”

She looked at Paul and he nodded. She could hear a door open and close on Marin’s end. Water running at a sink.

“The nurse just came in,” she said.

“Do you need us to bring anything?”

“A change of clothes would be nice. A sweater if you can find one. They keep it cool in here.”

“Toothpaste?”

“I got all that at the shop downstairs. But you could call Marlene Silas and see if she’ll keep Sammy awhile longer.” She cleared her throat again and said something to the nurse, but Griff couldn’t distinguish the words. “When you get here,” she said, “if I’m asleep just let me sleep. I haven’t been able to yet.”

The line went dead.

They gassed up Paul’s car at the Mini-Mart, bought cans of Red Bull and a package of powdered doughnuts and didn’t see a single cop on the Wyoming side or in Montana either, making the one-hundred-seven-mile drive to the hospital in an hour and twenty-three minutes.

He dropped her off at reception, and a nurse took her by the elbow and pointed her down the right hallway.

He was awake when she came in, and when she bent to kiss him he rose up out of the bed and wrapped her in his arms, gripping fistfuls of fabric at the yoke of her shirt, as though only the buoyancy of her young body was keeping them afloat. Then he fell away and lay there smiling.

“I thought your face might be crooked,” she said.

The smile moved into his eyes.

“It’s just his left arm that’s weak.” Marin was standing behind her. “And the leg on that side. Did Paul come?”

“He’s parking the car.” She took his left hand in both of hers and he squeezed lightly. Like a small child might.

“See.” He swallowed. “It’s not that bad.”

She smoothed his cheek. “When can we go home?” she asked.

He looked toward Marin.

“We need to make arrangements for physical therapy,” she said. “They’re satisfied with everything else.”

Griff straightened. “The doctor could show me how. Or the nurse could.”

He squeezed her hand. “Marin’s got it taken care of,” he said.

Paul carried their lunches up from the hospital cafeteria and they ate together, and when Marin curled down on the other bed and Einar drifted off she found his doctor, asking enough questions to believe this was something they could do. And that he would improve.

The next morning at Costco, she bought pillows and a blanket and a CD of great performances by the New York Philharmonic, and they got him settled comfortably in the backseat. They played the CD twice on the drive home, Mahler and Vaughan Williams, Barber and Tchaikovsky, Paul following in the one-ton with Marin’s new furniture.

A physical therapist named Shawnee came up from Sheridan on Thursday and by Friday afternoon he could hobble down the hallway without the aluminum walker. Shawnee said she thought a week of that kind of improvement and she could start tapering off. She scribbled down her phone number, insisting it wasn’t a bother to drive up on the weekend if they needed her, and stayed for dinner when she was asked. They learned she was raised on a ranch in Star Valley.

On Saturday morning he fell in the shower. Griff heard his body hit the porcelain, heard him cry out and found him on his side in the tub. He’d dragged the shower curtain off the rod and was holding it over his groin.

“Where are you hurt?” She turned the water off, kneeling on the floor. “Tell me where.”

“Not you,” he said. “Please.”

“Get a chair.” Marin moved her to the side and kneeled down over him, and by the time she returned from the kitchen he was up, sitting on the side of the tub, Marin holding him steady. They got him into the chair with the shower curtain still across his lap.

“I’m going to call Shawnee,” Marin said.

“Nothing’s broke.” He was still having a little trouble getting his breath. “She doesn’t need to drive over here just to look at some clumsy old son of a bitch.”

Marin draped a towel across his shoulders and he tilted his head to the side, digging a finger into his ear.

“I hate getting water in my ears,” he said.

He asked her to leave and Marin helped him into his bathrobe, then down the hallway with his walker. He was only limping.

That night he called for Griff, and when she came in he had the magnifying glass slung around and was holding a book open at his waist. She sat on the side of the bed.

“I’m getting stronger. I can feel that I am,” he said, and when she didn’t respond: “I just fell on my ass. I’ve done that my whole life.”

“You had a stroke.”

“I’ve probably been having them for a year.”

“What am I going to do with you?” Even to her the question sounded like a parent’s.

“Right there’s where I’m going with this,” he said. “I want you to get out and do something with your life.”

“Like what?”

“Whatever in the hell you want to do.” He’d raised his voice, trying to sound mad, but it had no effect. “We’ve talked about this before.”

“I’ve got plenty of time.” She slipped the book from his hands. “It doesn’t have to be this fall.”

“Nobody’s got plenty of time.” He nodded toward the door. “She needs to take care of me,” he said. “We both need it.”

She closed the book and left it on the nightstand.

The next afternoon thunderclouds rolled down off the mountains and the wind picked up and the temperature dropped twenty-five degrees. Four inches of pea-sized hail fell in half an hour and then it rained like a levee had broken in the heavens. An icy mixture filled the borrow ditches.

It cleared overnight and got hot again the next morning, and the nose flies and deerflies swarmed thickly as gnats. The horses bunched in the shade shaking their heads, their eyes swelling from the bites, rubbing their faces into one another’s shoulders. When they couldn’t stand it any longer they pawed at the air and ran.

A den of snakes had been flushed from a dry hillside on Nameit Creek, and the kids there carried hoes when they went out to do their chores, and the clinic called a hospital in Billings to ship down a reserve of antivenom just in case.

She saddled Royal and trailered him over to the corrals and loading chute on Deep Creek. Paul was waiting for her on a well-mannered dappled gelding he called Mister.

They rode the leases up on the mountain, where the cattle were still scattered and edgy, and in the late afternoon they found a heifer and her calf killed by lightning. Their bellies were torn open, and a gang of coyotes sat in ragged order against the skyline just thirty yards away, their muzzles and chests stained with fresh blood. Crowding the treeline was an assortment of raptors and ravens, a pair of golden eagles and a mob of lesser birds drawn to the excitement.

She rested a forearm against the saddlehorn, leaning over it to stare at the dead calf.

“It could’ve been a lot worse.” Paul took a notebook from his shirt pocket and recorded the numbers on their eartags.

“Not for them.” She reined her horse around, and he fell in beside her.

“I took a job with the County Health Department in Billings.”

She stopped the horse, the bird chatter almost making it hard to hear. “No more Africa?”

“You were right. It’s too far away.”

“And you’re bailing on graduate school too?”

“I thought you’d be happy.”

She looked back at the coyotes edging in to finish their meal, and snorted a laugh and spurred her horse forward.

“So we’re done talking about this?”

“I have things to do in my studio,” she said.