Bone Fire

Thirty-one

THEY WAITED A WEEK and held the memorial service at the Horse Creek Community Hall off 343, where the borrow ditch was shallow enough that people could line their outfits along the highway’s shoulder once the parking lot filled up. The sky was dark, low-hanging and muggy enough to rain, but it never did. Reverend Harrison from the Missouri Synod Lutheran officiated, invoking the soul’s reunion with the divine so effectively that a good portion of the mourners felt a sense of ease, reasoning that if Jean could be allowed entrance to heaven, they would be as well. Marin selected the hymns. The crowd stood while they sang, the men in freshly pressed jeans and sports jackets faintly smelling of dry-cleaning fluid, their hats held at their waists, their foreheads pale as ivory. Some had ties knotted around their necks. Some had shined their boots. The women wore their best dark dresses and the children fidgeted, stealing sly smiles from one another, their thoughts reeling through the possibilities of a summer afternoon. Einar sat very straight on his folding chair in the front row with his hat turned up in his lap, Marin on one side and Griff and Crane on the other. It was over at three.

Half the crowd followed Crane and Griff back to the house and the women carried in their covered dishes, arranging them on the table in the kitchen, slicing a ham and setting out buns and soft drinks, brewing an urn of coffee. Crane had a keg of beer out on the sunporch, iced down since dawn.

They gathered in knots across the lawn and in the kitchen and living room, talking together about how Crane might get along without her, remembering funny conversations they’d had with Jean, laughing quietly, finally settling into observations about the weather, cattle prices, remodelings. Only Griff stayed back to help clean up.

“I should’ve had something to say.” Crane was sitting at the table, his suit coat hanging on the back of the chair.

Griff was bent at the refrigerator, stacking the last of the casserole dishes inside and smoothing the strips of masking tape with the owner’s last name printed out.

“I could’ve told a story about when we were first dating. Something like that.”

She sat with him at the table. “You want another coffee?”

“Will you stay for one?”

She filled their cups at the urn. “That was a nice-looking woman you were talking to.” She was stirring sugar into her coffee.

“I talked to a lot of women today.”

“The one who was flirting with you. Wearing a blue dress.” She stood and dragged the two black garbage bags leaning against the counter out onto the sunporch and sat down again. “Is she the one?”

“No, it wasn’t her,” he said. “And the one it was isn’t anymore.”

She toed her dress shoes off.

“Anyway, your mother and I lasted longer than you probably thought we would.”

“You were the record,” she said.

He got up, lifting the ham out of the refrigerator and peeling the plastic wrap back. He stood at the counter picking glazed pieces from the rim of the plate, nibbling. “I don’t know why I’m still hungry,” he said.

“Maybe that’s why we never really tried very hard at the father-daughter thing.” She sipped her coffee. “I guess you knew I didn’t think she’d keep you around all that long.”

“I could tell.”

She filled her cup again. It felt good to have her shoes off. There were still red creases where the straps had cut across the tops of her feet. “She thought it would’ve been better if I hadn’t lived out at the ranch.”

“I could’ve made more of an effort, though.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t either.”

“You were just a kid then.”

“I never was,” she said, “not really.”

She stood again, reaching up under her dress, hooking the waistband of her pantyhose and pulling them down over her hips. When he realized what she was doing, he looked out the window.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.” She was sitting now, wadding the hose onto the seat of the chair to her side. She crossed a foot up on her knee and scratched at the arch.

“You think you’d want this house?” he asked.

“Like to live in?”

“Yeah.”

“Where would you go?”

He put the ham back in the refrigerator. “I’m retiring.”

She was staring into the living room as if she’d never noticed it before. “I read somewhere,” she said, “that you shouldn’t make decisions after someone close to you dies. Not for a year. Not big ones, anyway.”

“I was thinking about it before she died.”

She switched feet.

“That would make who, Hank Kosky, the sheriff?”

“You never know who people might vote for.”

She straightened her legs and held her feet together, stretching her toes. “You’d really leave?”

“I’ve been here most of my life.”

She sat up straight in her chair, tucking her legs back along the sides. “I think you should keep it. You could rent it to somebody in case you changed your mind.”

He sat down again. “She said she thought about what it would be like if I died.” He tried his coffee and it had gone cold, so he carried the cup to the sink. “She said it like it wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.”

“That was just Mom.” She lifted her purse from the table, opening it on her lap and stuffing her pantyhose in.

“Will you take some of this food with you?”

She stood up. “Not tonight.”

“It’ll just go bad.”

“I’ll get it tomorrow. I thought I’d come over and box up some things. Her clothes. Some other stuff.”

“That doesn’t have to happen right away.”

“It’ll make me feel like I’m doing something.”

She had her purse slung over her shoulder and her shoes in that hand when she hugged him.

He kept his body very still, willing the tremors out of the muscles in his arms. He thought the beer had probably helped. “I care about you,” he said.

She kissed him on the cheek. “Me too.” She stepped to the door. “I’m not sure what I’m doing either. I don’t think it’s all hit me yet.”

On Monday he talked with his attorney and had Griff made his sole beneficiary. He drew up a living will, called about his pension plan and Social Security, got his meager 401(k) switched over to her. He thought about looking at nursing homes in Billings, then decided he needed to be farther away. The next day he drove to Denver. He found a place in Englewood he thought he could afford. It was clean and the staff looked like they’d seen so many people die it wasn’t a shock anymore. That’s what he wanted. Efficiency with no tears.

He got drunk in a downtown bar that night and had a seizure in the taxi riding back to his motel, then tipped the cabbie more than he needed to.

On the drive home he stopped in Sheridan for dinner and was just finishing when Helen and Larry came in. They turned away, speaking with their heads drawn close together, and then Larry nodded and she took his hand and they walked straight to the table.

“I’m so sorry about Jean,” she said.

Larry shook his hand. “We should have come to the funeral.”

“She drew a big crowd anyway.”

They all nodded. There was laughter from a table by the windows.

“Will you join us?” She was staring down at what was left of his meal.

“I’d better get going.”

“For a drink, then.”

There were voices at the front of the restaurant. They turned and saw a young man in a wheelchair talking with the hostess, explaining something. Both his legs were gone, his jeans folded back at the knees, his haircut still high and tight. The girl pushing the chair stared down at him and didn’t look up.

“I wish Dick Cheney was here,” Helen said. “I wish he had to see a boy like that every day for the rest of his life.”

Larry shook his head. “Know that Jean’s in our prayers,” he said.

“Thank you.”

She hugged him. “I need you to believe how truly sorry I am,” she said.

He nodded. He kept his eyes open, breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t smell her hair. She stepped away,

“Have a good vacation,” he said.

“Buenas noches,” Larry said.

She stood between them with her hands laced at her waist, her jaw clenched, and they both knew this was the stance she took in public when she thought she might cry.