Crow Fair: Stories

Crow Fair

Kurt was closer to Mother than I. I faced that a long time ago, and Mother pretty well devoured all his achievements and self-aggrandizements. But there came a day when the tide shifted, and while this may have marked Mother’s decline, it was a five-alarm fire for Kurt. He had given Mother yet another of his theories, a general theory of life, which was the usual Darwinian dog-eat-dog stuff with power trickling down a human pyramid whose summit was exclusively occupied by discount orthodontists like himself. Kurt had successfully prosecuted this sort of braggadocio with Mother nearly all his life; but this time she described his philosophy as “a crock of shit.” This comment had the same effect on Kurt as a roadside bomb. His rapidly whitening face only emphasized his moist red lips.

Kurt and I put Mother in a rest home a few months back. I don’t think you can add a single thing to putting your mother in the rest home. If ever there was an overcooked topic, popping Ma in the old folks’ home has to be a leading candidate. Ours has been a wonderful mother and, in many ways, all the things Kurt and I aren’t. We are two tough, practical men of the world: Kurt is a cut-rate tooth straightener; I’m a loan officer who looks at his clients with the view that it’s either them or me. The minute they show up at my desk, it’s stand-by-for-the-ram. Banks love guys like me. We get to vice president maybe, but no further. Besides, my bank is family owned, and it’s not my family. Kurt goes on building his estate for Beverly, his wife, and two boys, Jasper and Ferdinand. Jasper and Ferdinand spent years in their high chairs. Beverly thought it was adorable until Ferdinand did a face plant on the linoleum and broke his retainer. What a relief it was not to have them towering over me while I ate Beverly’s wretched cuisine. Her Texas accent absolutely drove me up the wall. Kurt has lots of girlfriends in safe houses who love his successful face. His favorite thing in the world is to make you feel like you’ve asked a stupid question. Beverly has some haute cuisine Mexican recipes no one has ever heard of. She has to send away for some of the ingredients. She says she’d been in Oaxaca before she met Kurt. Some guy with his own plane. It was surprising that Kurt and I turned out like we did. Our dad was a mouse, worked his whole life at the post office. In every transaction, whether with tradespeople or bankers like me, Dad got screwed. To make it even more perfect, his surgeon fucked up his back. Last three, four years of his life, he looked like a corkscrew and was still paying off the orthopod that did it to him.

But Mother — we never called her Mom — was a queen. Kurt said that Dad must have had a ten-inch dick. When we were Cub Scouts, she was our den mother. She volunteered at the school. She read good books and understood classical music. She was beautiful, et cetera. Like I said. This is the sort of shit that happens when kids fall in love in the seventh grade, brutal mismatches that last a lifetime. Dad’s lifetime anyway, and now Mother’s in God’s waiting room and going downhill fast. Kurt and I always said we hoped Mother cheated on Dad, but we knew that could never possibly have happened. She was above it, she was a queen, and despite our modest home and lowly standing, she was the queen of our town. She gave us status, even at school, where Kurt and I had to work at the cafeteria. People used to say, “How could she have had such a couple a thugs?” meaning me and Kurt. Some words are born to be eaten.

Kurt and I have lunch on the days we visit her in assisted living. These are the times we just give in to reminiscence, memories that are often funny, at least to us. In the seventh grade, Mother took all of our friends to the opera, La Bohème, in her disgraceful old Pontiac, five of us in the backseat chanting, “Puccini, Puccini, Puccini.” She was worried as she herded us into our seats under the eyes of frowning opera fans. We stuck our fingers in our ears during the arias. One little girl, Polly Rademacher, was trying to enjoy the show, but Joey Bizeau kept feeling her up in the dark. Mother would’ve liked to have enjoyed herself, but she had her hands full keeping order and succeeded almost to the end. When Mimi dies and Rodolfo runs to her side, we shrieked with laughter. The lights came up, and Mother herded us out under the angry eyes of the opera patrons, tears streaming down her face. It was a riot.

The Parkway was a nice but short-lived restaurant that didn’t make it through the second winter. Before that we just had the so-called rathskeller and its recurrent bratwurst, but it had turned back into a basement tanning parlor with palm-tree and flamingo decals on its small windows. While we still had the Parkway, Kurt was picking at his soufflé as the waiter hovered nearby. Kurt shook his head slightly and sent him away. Kurt has natural authority, and he looks the part with his broad hands and military haircut. He rarely smiles, even when he’s joking: he makes people feel terrible for laughing. I’m more of a weasel. I don’t think I was always a weasel, but I’ve spent my life at a bank; so I may be forgiven. “Remember when she got us paints and easels?” We laughed so hard.

Several diners turned our way in surprise. Kurt didn’t care. He has a big reputation around town as the guy who can get your kid to quit looking like Bugs Bunny; no one is going to cross him. It was a tough call selling our crappy childhood home, but it helped pay for assisted living. Mother would’ve liked to have had in-home care — that is, when she was making sense — but the day was fast arriving when she wouldn’t know where the hell she was, unless it was the chair she was in. Anyway, we’ve got her down there at Cloisters. We just hauled her over there. It’s okay. Kurt calls it Cloaca.

Mother’s days are up and down. Sometimes she recognizes us, sometimes not, but less and less all the time. Or that’s what Kurt thinks. I think she recognizes us but isn’t always glad about what she sees. When she is a little lucid, I sometimes feel she is disgusted at the sight of us. I mean, that’s the look on her face. Or that we’re hopeless. Or that I am: she never could find much wrong with Kurt. This used to come up from time to time, a kind of despair. She once screamed that we were “awful” but only once, and she seemed guilty and apologetic for days, kept making us pies, cookies, whatever. She felt bad. If she’d had any courage, she’d have stuck to it. We were, and are, awful. We will always be awful.

We were in Mother’s room at the center. I won’t describe it: they all have little to do with the occupant. Me and Kurt in chairs facing Mother in hers. Her face is pretty much blank. Someone has done her hair and makeup. She still looks like a queen, keeps her chin raised in that way of hers. But she just stares ahead. Kurt bangs on about a board of supervisors meeting; then I do a little number about small-business loans, naming some places she might recognize. Mother raises her hand to say something.

She says, “I gotta take a leak.”

Kurt and I turn to each other. His eyebrows are halfway to his scalp. We don’t know what to do. Kurt says to Mother, “I’ll get the nurse.” I stole around in front of Mother to get the call button without alerting her. I couldn’t find it at first and found myself crawling down the cord to locate it. I gave the button a quick press and shortly heard the squeak of the approaching nurse’s shoes. Kurt and I were surprised at how hot she was, young with eye-popping bazongas. Kurt explained that Mother needed the little girls’ room. Ms. Lowler winced at the phrase. Kurt saw it, too. He’s quicker to take offense than anyone I know, which is surprising in someone who so enjoys making others feel lousy. When Mother came back from the bathroom, she was refreshed and a little communicative. She knew us, I think, and talked a bit about Dad, but in a way we hadn’t heard before. She talked of him in the present tense, as though Dad were still with us. “I knew right away he wasn’t going anywhere,” she said. We were thunderstruck. Mother yawned and said, “Doozy’s tired now. Doozy needs to rest.”

Outside, Kurt splayed both hands and leaned against the roof of his car. “Doozy? Who the fuck is Doozy?”

“She is. She’s Doozy.”

“Did you ever hear that before?”

The door was open to Ms. Lowler’s office, which was small and efficient and clean, and refreshingly free of filing cabinets. Little uplifting thoughts had been attached to the printer and computer. Have-a-nice-day level. I took the initiative and asked if we could come in. “Of course you can!” she said with a smile and hurried around to find us chairs. Kurt introduced himself, booming out “Doctor” and I made a small show of modesty by just saying, “I’m Earl.”

“Your mom has good and bad days in terms of her cognition generally, but she never seems anxious or unhappy.”

“She got any friends?” said Kurt.

“I think that’s a bit beyond her. Her friends are in the past, and she mostly lives there.”

Kurt was on it. “Who’s this Doozy? That name mean anything to you?”

“Why, yes. Doozy is your mother. That’s her nickname.”

“Really?” I said. “We’ve never heard it.”

“Doozy is the nickname Wowser gave her.”

“Wowser? Who’s Wowser?”

“I thought it might be your dad.”

I just held my head in my hands. Kurt asked if this had gotten out. Ms. Lowler didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, what he was talking about.

Kurt and I love to talk about Mother because we have different memories of her before she lost her marbles, and we enjoy filling out our impressions. For example, Kurt had completely forgotten what a balls-to-the-wall backyard birder Mother was. We went through a lot of birdseed we really couldn’t afford. Dad shot the squirrels when Mother was out of the house. By holding them by the end of the tail, he could throw them like a bolo all the way to the vacant lot on the corner. Naturally, Mother thought the squirrels had decided the birds needed the food more and had moved on.

Kurt remembered her gathering the cotton from milkweed pods to make stuffing for cushions. He was ambivalent about this because we both loved those soft cushions, but it seemed to be a habit of the poor. Dad was the one who made us feel poor, but through her special magic Mother made us understand that we had to bow our heads to no one. By being the queen she transformed Kurt and me into princes. It stuck in Kurt’s case. Wowser and Doozy put all this at risk.

Two weeks later we were summoned back to the home by Ms. Lowler, who this time wore an all-concealing cardigan. She’d had enough. It seems Mother had been loudly free-associating about her amorous adventures in such a way that it wasn’t always best that she occupy the common room during visiting hours. She had a nice room of her own with a view of some trees from her window and a Bible-themed Kinkade on the opposite wall and where she couldn’t ask other old ladies about whisker burn or whatever. That’s where we sat as before, except this time I located the call button. Kurt and I were in coats and ties, having come from work, Kurt shuffling the teeth of the living, me weaseling goobers across my desk. She smiled faintly at each of us, and we helped her into her chair. Kurt started right in. I kind of heard him while I marveled over the passage of time that separated us from when Mother ruled taste and behavior with a light but firm hand and left us, Kurt especially, with a legacy of rectitude that we hated to lose. Kurt was summarizing the best of those days, leaning forward in his chair so that his tie hung like a plumb bob, his crew cut so short that it glowed at its center from the overhead light. Mother’s eyes were wide. Perhaps she was experiencing amazement. As Kurt moved toward what we believed to be Mother’s secret life, her eyes suddenly dropped, and I first thought that this was some acknowledgment that such a thing existed. Kurt asked her if she’d had a special friend she’d like to tell us about. She was silent for a long time before she spoke. She said, “Are those your new shoes?”

I followed Kurt into Ms. Lowler’s office. “I would like to speak to you, Ms. Lowler, about our Mother’s quality of life.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“She’s no longer here at all, Ms. Lowler.”

“Really? I think she’s quite happy.”

“Ms. Lowler, I’m going to be candid with you: there comes a time.”

“Does there? A time for what?”

“Ms. Lowler, have you had the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the principles of the Hemlock Society?”

“I think it’s quite marvelous for pets, don’t you?”

Later, when Mother started thinking Kurt was Wowser, he really got onto the quality-of-life stuff. I waited before asking him the question that was burning inside of me. “Have you ever done it?”

“I’ve never done it but I’ve seen it done.”

There were times when Mother seemed so rational apart from the fact that what she told us fitted poorly with the Mother we used to know. She said, for example, that Wowser always wore Mr. B collars with his zoot suit.

Kurt told me that he never knew what would happen when he visited Mother. Lately she’s shown an occasionally peevish side. Today she suggested that he “get a life.” This was about a week after Mother had started confusing Kurt with Wowser, and a few days after Kurt had started addressing Mother as Doozy in the hopes of finding Wowser before he could add his own stain to our family reputation. “You’re in a different world when your own mother doesn’t recognize you, or thinks you’re the stranger who gave her a hickey.”

This brought up the Hemlock Society all over again. I told Kurt to forget about it. “Why?” said Kurt. “That’s the only way we get our real mother back. The human spirit is imperishable, and Mother would live on through eternity in her original form and not, frankly, as ‘Doozy.’ They really should weigh the spirit just to convince skeptics like you. I see the expression on your face. You could weigh the person just before and just after they die. Then you’d see that the spirit is something real. Scientists have learned how to weigh gravity, haven’t they? It’s time to weigh the spirit.”

I’d give a million dollars to know why Kurt is in such a lather about our “standing” in town. Does anyone actually have “standing” in a shithole? Well, Kurt thinks so. He thinks we have standing because of Mother’s regal presence over the decades, which, I will admit, was widely admired but which seems to be under attack via these revelations about Wowser and Doozy. I shudder to think what would happen if Kurt found out who Wowser is. Sadly, we know who Doozy is. Doozy is our mother.

I said to the shining young couple across my desk, “If you take this loan, at this bank’s rates, at this point in your lives, you could find yourselves in a hole you’d never dig out of.” Was this me speaking? This was an out-of-body experience. I didn’t tell them that if I went down this road I’d be in the same mess I was recommending they avoid. Feeling my heart swell at the prospects of this couple was more than a little disquieting. From their point of view — and it wasn’t hard to see it in their eyes — I was just turning them down. They would have liked me better if I’d hung this albatross around their necks and let them slide until we glommed the house. After they were gone, I slumped in my chair — a butterfly turning back into a caterpillar. I hadn’t felt quite like this since I repeated ninth grade with Mrs. Novacek busting my balls up at the blackboard doing long division.

Kurt has this habit of picking up his napkin between thumb and forefinger as though letting cooties out. It’s his way of showing the restaurant staff that nobody is above suspicion. He was on his third highball when I said, “There were times when Mother could be pretty hard.”

“Where do you come up with this shit?”

I felt heat in my face. “Like when she was den mother.”

“Of course she was hard on you. You were still a Bobcat after two years. What merit badges did you earn?”

“I don’t remember …”

“I do. You earned one. Handyman. You earned a handyman merit badge. I never ever knew anyone who even wanted one. I had athlete, fitness, engineer, forester, and outdoorsman in year one. And Webelos. I didn’t find Mother hard, ever. Unless you mean she had standards. Where are you going? You haven’t even ordered!”

After the lunch I missed, Edwin, our bank president, came to my desk for the first time since spring before last and asked when I would start moving product like I used to. The young couple must have complained.

Visiting Mother with Kurt was getting to be too hard. The last time we tried, Mother got a mellow, dewy look on her face, and at first Kurt thought it was her pleasure at seeing us. Then he seemed to panic: “She calls me Wowser, I jump out the window.”

Mother said, “Wowser.”

Kurt was blinking, his nose making a tiny figure eight, but he didn’t jump out the window. So I started seeing Mother on my own. I didn’t try to make anything happen when I was with her, and we mostly just sat in silence. She would look at me for a long time with a watery unregistering look, and then, once in a while, I’d see her eyes darken and focus on me with a kind of intensity that lasted for a good long time. I think I knew what was going on, but I was darned if I would start yammering at her like Kurt did to get her to put into words what couldn’t be put into words and only produced some crazy non sequitur from her deepest past. Of course if it featured Wowser, Kurt was on the warpath. If she just chattered about this, that, and the other without naming names, then Kurt would announce she was talking about Dad. But mostly he couldn’t handle her obvious mental absence.

“Mother, I just heard the sprinklers go off. Now that’s summertime to me. Mother! Are you listening to the sprinklers? It’s summertime!”

“Kurt,” I said. “It’s not registering.”

“Mom! The sprinklers! Summertime!”

Kurt had a brainstorm, and it turned out very badly. I say this not knowing how it went down, but I know it wasn’t good. He decided that since Mother was mistaking him for Wowser, he would just go ahead and be Wowser—“Wowser for a day.” He came home shattered. I really don’t know what happened, unless it was Mother’s golden boy turning into some vanished adulterer, a role in some ways similar to the one he’d been playing around town and in his safe houses for years. Finally, and without telling me anything, he calmed down. He said, “I think I have a headache. Do I? Do you think I have a headache?” It was getting to him.

When we were young, I was always a little stand-offish. That is, I was a social coward. But not Kurt. By the time he was twelve, he’d be sticking out his big paw and telling grown-ups, “Put ’er there.” They liked it, and it kind of made me sick. Now he revealed an uncertainty I hadn’t seen before; but it didn’t last. He was soon on the muscle again. Kurt: “I see literally — literally — not one thing wrong with my taking on the identity of Wowser in pursuit of truth.”

Mother’s love of excellence was not something I always embraced. It certainly raised Kurt to the pedestal to which he had become accustomed, but it unfairly cast my father in a negative light. Truth be told, I was far more comfortable with Dad than with our exalted mother. What you saw was what you got. He was a sweet man, and a sweet old man later, who was not at war with time. He noticed many things about life, about dogs and cats and birds and weather, which were just so many impediments to Mother. Kurt was right: left to Dad we would have probably not gone very far, nor been nearly so discontented.

I’m on the hot seat looking into the piercing eyes of my boss: “Earl, how long have you been with the bank?”

“Twenty-two years.”

“Like to see twenty-three? Not much coming over your desk except your paycheck. Desks like yours are financial portals. You know that.”

“My, what big teeth you have.” I was fired that day.

Where had I been all my life? I had grown up under so many shadows they were spread over me like the leaves of a book. Only Dad and I were equals, just looking at life without being at war with it. There was no earthly reason I should have been a banker beyond serving the shadows. By all that’s reasonable, I should have been at the post office like Dad, taking packages, affixing stamps. Reciting harmless rules, greeting people. I loved greeting people! In my occupation, you had to screw someone every day, even if it was your own family.

I went to see Mother on my own on a beautiful day with a breeze coming up through the old cottonwoods along the river and cooling the side street where the rest home sat in front of its broad lawn and well-marked parking spaces. The American and Montana flags lifted and fell lazily. It was hard to go indoors. A few patients rested in wheelchairs on the lawn, the morning sun on their faces. I recognized old District Court Judge Russell Collins. He had no idea where he was, but his still-full head of hair danced in the breeze, the only part of Judge Collins moving. The others, two women who seemed to have plenty to talk about, barely glanced at me.

I sat with Mother in her room. It seemed stuffy, and I got up to let in the air. A glance at the spruces crowding the side lawn made me want to run out into the sun as though these were my last days on earth. I was unable to discern if Mother knew I was in the room. She rested her teeth on her lower lip, and each breath caused her cheeks to inflate. It was very hard to look at, which doesn’t say great things about me.

I’d had enough of these visits to feel quite relaxed as I studied her and tried to remember her animation of other days. Why had she married Dad? Well, Dad was handsome and for thirty-one years held the Montana state record for the 440-yard dash. He looked like a sprinter until he died. His luck and happiness as a successful boy lasted all his life. Even Mother’s provocations bounced off his good humor when she attempted to elevate his general cultivation with highbrow events at the Alberta Bair Theater in Billings. Dad liked Spike Jones, “the way he murders the classics.” I remember when he played “Cocktails for Two” on the phonograph when Mother was at a school board meeting. I loved the hiccups, sneezes, gunshots, whistles, and cowbells, but Kurt walked out of the house. I thought Dad held his own with Mother. Kurt thought she made him look like a bum.

Kurt asked me to come over and help him get some things out of his garden, a jungle of organic vegetables that he plundered throughout the season as part of his health paranoia. He said that he intended to share some of this provender, as though to suggest that I would be suitably compensated. He was pouring with sweat when I got there, shirtless, his ample belly spilling over the top of his baggy shorts. He had on some kind of Japanese rocker shoes that had him teetering down the rows and doing something or other, strengthening his calves or his arches, I don’t know. He took me to a cucumber trellis that was sagging with green cylinders of all sizes and told me to take my pick. I had a big brown shopping bag, and I started tossing cukes in there until he insisted on picking them himself, giving me the worst ones, ones with bug holes and brown blemishes.

“Doozy has completely confused me with Wowser.”

“I think you’re encouraging that, aren’t you?”

“I’m learning way too much about Wowser, Earl. All their adventures. Roadhouses, et cetera. God-awful barn dances in the boonies. I imagine Dad is spinning in his grave.”

Maybe Dad strayed, too. I didn’t think so, and it wouldn’t really fit for him. Dad was as plain as a pine board; but Mother, with her art and opera and shiny pumps — well, I could see it. Ambition is never simple. “Kurt, she has dementia. She could be making this all up.”

Then he was right in my face. I could feel his breath as he rapped my elbow with a trowel. “How little you know. Dementia means she can’t make it up.”

Kurt wanted me there to knock down his potato pyramid: he’d start his plants in an old car tire, and as they grew he began stacking tires and adding dirt until the whole assemblage reached eye level. Now was the payoff, and he wanted me there. “Ready?” I said I was, and he pushed over the stack of tires, spilling dirt and hundreds of potatoes at our feet. He put his hands on his hips, panting, and smiled at the results. “Take all you want.” I took a few. He’d be hiking up and down the street giving the damn things away.

I had a sudden insight. “Kurt,” I said, “you seem to be competing with Wowser.”

He slugged me. The cucumbers and potatoes fell from my hand. He must have fetched me a good one because I could hardly find my way out to the street.

I let it go. I can’t believe it, but I did. I just wanted to keep these things at a distance. Kurt continued to press the staff at “Cloaca” about whatever Mother might be saying that others would hear. He was obsessed by the unfamiliar nature of her coarse remarks, which he said reflected the lowlife thrills she had experienced with Wowser. I had dinner with Kurt and his wife at the point that things seemed to be deteriorating. Their two boys were displeased to have me, their uncle, even in the house. These are two weird, pale boys. I don’t think they’ve ever been outdoors. I always ask if they’ve been hiking in the mountains. They hate me. Beverly was quite the little conversationalist, too. She asked why I didn’t have any girlfriends.

“They just haven’t been coming along.”

“They may find you drab. I know I do.”

Beverly had made some desultory attempt at meal preparation. She’d been drinking — nothing new — and there was not much left of her former high Texas sleekness besides her aggressive twang. Kurt always looked a bit sheepish around her and was anxious when, over the sorry little meal, she brought up Mother, a subject Beverly found hilarious. Years ago when Mother was at her best, she had made no secret of her disapproval of Beverly, whom she called a tart. Local wags said that she and Beverly were competing for Kurt, and there may have been something to it, as I could bring around a rough customer with a gold tooth or neck tattoo and Mother would greet her like a queen. Of course I resented it, and of course I was pleased when Beverly, having gotten wind of Mother’s new interest in Junior, said, “Old Doctor Kurt got his tail in a damn crack, ain’t he?” I haven’t really liked Beverly since the day of their marriage, when she called me a disgrace. There’d been a bunch of drugs at the bachelor party, and I had an accident in my pants; the word got out, thanks to Kurt.

“It’s just all part of the aging process, hon,” Kurt said pandering to Beverly. “The sad aging process.”

“That right, Doc? Just don’t drag your mother over here and give her a shot.”

Like I said, she’d been drinking.

Mother had nearly hit bottom. She was still following things with her eyes, like a passing car or a cat, but not much. No, not much. I continued to see her, but I didn’t know why. No, it’s hard to say why I went. I’d say now that she was damn near a heathen idol, propped here or there, in a window or facing something, a picture, a doorway; it didn’t seem to make much difference. It wasn’t pretty at all. But Kurt kept at it until something went wrong. Evidently he broke some furniture, kicked down a door, shouted, cried. Police were involved on the assumption he was drunk. Fought the cops, got Tased, booked, released, and then a day later fucked up his rotator cuff yanking on a venetian blind. It was a week before I felt I could go near him. I thought it might be best to quietly approach Ms. Lowler.

“It has been a nightmare,” she said. “And not just for me. The other residents were terrified. We’ve had the doctor here for them. It’s a full moon, and they don’t sleep well anyway. Ever since your brother started pretending to be your mother’s boyfriend, she has become more and more agitated. I personally think it has been quite cruel. Then he wanted to move her to his own house, which seemed I hardly know what.”

He wanted to put Mother to sleep like an old cocker spaniel. I don’t know why this agitated me so; she was all but asleep anyway — I suppose it was the unexpected memories that rushed back at the thought of her no longer existing — Mother hurtling along in our old Econoline with a carload of kids, bound for a dinosaur exhibit, an opera, a ball game, or off to Crow Fair to watch the Indian dancers and eat fry bread. Crow Fair was right in the middle of when Dad and I liked to fish the Shields, which I would have preferred, while Kurt was happy to drink in all the culture with the possible exception of Crow Fair, which he considered just a bunch of crazy Indians. Maybe not fishing with Dad was why my memory was so sharp.

Or why it came to me: Mother was herding a little mob of us like a border collie through the tepees and concessions, thousands of Indians and spectators, smoke drifting from campfires, Crow elders in lawn chairs talking in sign language, young dancers running past us to the competitions in a rush of feathers. Our guide was Mr. White Clay, who helped Mother lead us to the rodeo grounds, the powwow, the fry-bread stands, and the drumming of the Nighthawk Singers. Mr. White Clay looked more like a cowboy than an Indian in his jeans, snap-button shirt, and straw hat. He was tall and dark like many Crows, and it was surprising how Mother deferred to him and how well they seemed to know each other. He had quickly familiarized himself with our group and was vigilant in rounding up anyone who strayed. It was wonderful to see Mother so relaxed, so willing to let Mr. White Clay handle things. We kids had to call him Mr. White Clay. Mother called him Roland.

My face was burning. I cut my conversation with Ms. Lowler so suddenly she was startled. I went home, burst through my front door, and picked up the phone. I called information for Crow Agency and requested a number for Roland White Clay. He answered. He answered! I told him who I was, who my mother was, who my brother was, how old we were then. Mr. White Clay was silent. I asked if we could come to see him, and he said with odd formality, “As you wish.”

I had found Wowser.

I will never know why I told Kurt, but that’s what I did. It took him a while to absorb this and determine for himself if I was imagining it. But he remembered, too. He remembered. He said that when he was “Wowser,” “Doozy” had given him the impression that after the war Wowser no longer belonged in a tepee. Kurt said, “In case you hadn’t noticed, I have forensic skills.” I told him I hadn’t noticed; but he went on rather plausibly. Evidently Wowser’s stationing in Southern California had briefly transformed him from Plains Indian to Zoot Suiter; and more troublingly, Mother had gone from den mother to tart. Maybe they had fun. But Kurt wasn’t happy. He said it looked like he would have to move. My brother move away? After all these years? I couldn’t possibly face that. Kurt was there at the Grass Dance with Mother on that faraway and now sadly beautiful day. He said, “We’re gonna drag that Indian back up here and let him and Mother have a grand reunion. That’s when this Wowser retires.”

We drove to the Rez in his little MG, which he stores most of the year. I couldn’t think of a worse car to drive on a hot day on the interstate, our hair blowing in the heat, our faces getting redder. Kurt thought it would cheer him up, but by the time we got near Laurel, where fumes from the refinery filled the little two-seater, tears were pouring from his eyes. At first I thought it was the appalling conditions of driving this flivver among the sixteen-wheelers, pickup trucks, and work-bound sedans. But that wasn’t it. He was remembering throwing a fit at assisted living. Surely I knew that. I waited until we slowed for the Hardin exit to ask him what happened. He unexpectedly swerved onto the shoulder. Our dust cloud swept over our heads and dissipated downwind. Kurt stared at me.

“She came on to me.”

“It’s your own fault!” I shouted.

“Searching for the truth about our mother? You’re actually calling that my fault? To my face? You never cared about Mother!”

“Mother never cared about me!”

Kurt lowered his voice. “Earl, there was a problem of course. The problem was that you were uneducable.”

“Ah. I thought Dad was uneducable. That’s what she said. What luck she had you.”

“I think she felt that way,” he said with a slight toss of his head.

“Was this when she was fucking the Indian?”

“You need to be careful, Earl.” I could see violence rising in Kurt’s face. “You need to be very, very careful.”

“Just asking, Kurt. It shouldn’t be controversial. I’m only trying to establish a time frame.”

“ ‘Fucking the Indian’ is not a time frame. It’s ignorant. Remember John Wayne in Hondo where he plays a half-breed army scout? My point is he has a hard time being accepted by Indians and whites, per se.”

“Are you saying we might be half-breeds?”

“Not per se. We just don’t want any questions like that hanging over us.”

“Can we stop for water? What happens if we have mechanical problems on the Rez? You can’t even buy tires for this thing.” I was trying to change the subject, and I guess I was successful because Kurt started the motor and pulled back onto the highway, the tiny four-hanger sneezing under the hood. I knew perfectly well that I didn’t pass inspection around our house except with Dad. Kurt was trying to see himself in the mirror, his hair windmilling around in the heat. Then he’d look at me like a dermatologist. It didn’t take me long to figure out that he was wondering if we were half-breeds.

Roland White Clay was some kind of emeritus tribal chairman. His office was at the end of a corridor past the drinking fountain, and sparsely furnished, a military portrait behind the desk. He wore a sport coat over his jeans and a sky-blue western shirt, his Stetson resting upside down on his desk. He met us with cordial suspicion and occasionally glanced out of his window as we met, seemingly anxious to be outdoors again. Kurt and I sat in front of his desk, as though interviewing for a job.

“Chief — do you mind if I call you Chief?”

“Suit yourself,” said White Clay with a wintry smile.

“Chief, I read all the Montana and Wyoming papers pretty much every day, and I see an issue that affects Indian people very negatively.” Here White Clay perked up. “And that is: rolling cars. My research indicates that with each six inches of wheelbase, the likelihood of rollovers is reduced by eighteen percent.” I spotted this as bullshit from the get-go. “My thought is to appeal to the automobile industry as an altruistic salute to Native American culture to manufacture special editions of their standard vehicles with wider wheelbases to help prevent rollovers.” The acid look in White Clay’s face was a wonder to behold. White Clay spoke after long silence.

“If you think I should,” said White Clay, “I can have tribal council sit in.”

“No,” said Kurt. “We’re just trying to learn more about our mother. She has dementia and she’s slipping away.”

He gazed at us. “Well, we were close.”

“How close?” said Kurt. You could hear the demand in his voice. White Clay mused comfortably as he looked back at him. Finally, he smiled. Just then three little boys ran in: White Clay’s grandchildren. He introduced them. All had short, crisp names, Chip, Skip, and Mick. He reproached them affectionately for their muddy jeans and T-shirts. They tagged White Clay and shot out as quickly as they’d come.

“I never married,” he said.

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

“That’s all I’m going to say.”

The photograph behind the desk, grainy from being blown up, showed a smiling GI on a riverbank, propped against his M1. I couldn’t tell if it was White Clay or just another Indian kid. We had deferments, which Kurt said was the only way to go if there was nothing more to fight than gooks. My asthma exempted me, but Kurt could easily have been drafted if Mother hadn’t gone to the board. She had something on the woman who was running it.

“Is Caroline suffering?”

Caroline. When had someone last called Mother that? “No,” I said. “Except during her so-called good spells when she is confused.” I didn’t say a word about what she might have been going through while Kurt was impersonating him, not when we were sitting across the desk from the genuine Wowser.

“Whose idea was it to come and see me?”

Kurt barked an artificial laugh. “We just thought you might want to see her. Might do her a lot of good.”

A truculent cloud crossed Kurt’s face. “Our mother enjoys an unparalleled and dignified standing in our community that will never change.” All I could think was that if he took a stand at this moment he could plan on being Wowser for the rest of Mother’s life. White Clay picked the Stetson up off his desk and thrust it onto his head. He stood, still tall if bowlegged, but broad shouldered and erect. “Caroline and I were … there wasn’t room for it. I’ll come to see her, if you think it would help. Might help me!”

One look at Kurt’s MG and he said he’d take his pickup. Going back in that hot headwind was awful. It nearly stopped that silly little car, and our faces roasted as we headed into the afternoon sun. “How about the three papooses that showed up in the chief’s office? What’d he call ’em? Snap, Crackle, and Pop? Something like that.”

“Caroline,” said White Clay. “It’s me.” Her eyes moved slightly in White Clay’s direction, and Kurt threw his head back and mouthed some words to the ceiling. For him, it was all over. White Clay just moved his head very slightly from side to side, as if saying no. In a while he got up, bent over, and kissed Mother on the cheek. You couldn’t tell if she noticed. White Clay turned to speak to us. He said, “You were a couple of cute little boys. I understood why your mother wouldn’t go off with me. Now I see you again, and you are grown men. I must tell the truth. There doesn’t seem to be much to either one of you.” He nodded to me and went out. Then Kurt left, leaving me alone. I sat and watched Mother. There was nothing in her face, nothing like life, nothing except the rise and fall of her breathing. It felt safe, after so long, to ask her if she loved me. It was just the two of us. No reply. I didn’t expect one.

I met with Kurt at his clinic in the old ice-cream plant that had been stylishly renovated to house fashionable new businesses, but fashionable new businesses failed to arrive except for a doomed florist and a malodorous brisket palace. I couldn’t wait to speak to him, and sitting in one of his examination chairs, I felt I was confessing after a long interrogation. Kurt, who is never off duty, wandered around in his white tunic inspecting his weird tools while I told him the story.

“I spent almost three hours with Mother, and don’t ask me why, she was pretty lucid.”

“Lucid about what?”

“I’m going to tell you. Maybe the visit from White Clay, I don’t know, but she was kind of excited, kind of agitated, you could say, and I just sat there, and finally I said, ‘What’s on your mind?’ ”

“You think she has one?”

“Kurt, honestly.”

“All right, so go on.”

“Remember when Dad had his gallbladder surgery?”

“And the septicemia?”

“Exactly, and do you remember when it was?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ll tell you when it was. It was the same week as Crow Fair, one year later.”

“Earl, that’s not something I would ever remember. And in some ways it speaks to some of your issues, always looking back, always regretful.”

I ignored this. I felt it was important that Kurt hear the story and that it would maybe change his views of Mother and help him realize she was only human. “Well, when Dad was in the hospital you remember his sister Audrey came out from Spokane to help care for him. And Mom felt it was kind of insulting, and she went off by herself.”

“I vaguely remember. As I recall, Esther was a hell of a cook. But repetitious.”

“Oh, you thought it was a big improvement. That’s another thing that may have gotten Mom, this big fuss over Audrey. Anyway, she left.”

“Where did she go?”

“Crow Fair,” I hissed.

“You heard this today? What did they do?”

“I’ll tell you what they did. They took two horses and went on a day’s ride up the Bighorn River and camped under the stars.”

“They camped under the stars.”

“They camped under the stars. They ate antelope. Mom said it tasted just like chicken.”

“It’s like you’re reading a fucking poem. Antelope doesn’t taste like chicken.”

“They swam in the Bighorn and gathered wild berries. He took her to the secret graves of the warriors. They dried their clothes on the willows.” Kurt winced, clutching a dental tool. “In two days, she was back at Dad’s bedside.”

Kurt said with feeling, “Our mother was a cheating housewife.”

I hoped my story provided a gentler interpretation of our mother and the choices she made. Of course I made the whole thing up. My only regret was some bucktoothed kid coming in and finding himself in the hands of an agitated orthodontist. But. It may have been a mistake. Kurt didn’t take it at all as I had intended. It made him see our dad as a victim. “He’s there recuperating from surgery eating that awful stuff Audrey kept making over and over.” Now Audrey was a bad cook. I thought it would be strategic to egg him on. Dishes we called shit-on-a-shingle and buffalo balls.

“Dad definitely was getting the short end of the stick. Mom out there in the tepee.” What tepee? I could see he was moving his allegiance to Dad. Soon I’d be an orphan.

Kurt had a big job and had all the time in the world to work through our family history. I was broke and out of work. Also, my phone had been turned off. I thought I knew why, but at first I was unwilling to borrow someone’s phone to find out. In the end I put on my game face, borrowed an office at my old bank for a morning, and, braving a gauntlet of smirks, arranged an interview at a bank in Miles City and put several hundred miles of prairie between Kurt and me.

It was my luck that the president of the bank in Miles City, who wore a cowboy hat at all times, regarded the president of the bank that fired me as a “pilgrim and a honyocker.” I didn’t entirely follow this but sensed it was in my favor; and indeed it was. I was offered the job on my word alone. In middle age, I had the chance to move away from home for the first time. I was terrified because it meant leaving Mother in Kurt’s hands. Soon I was at a very similar desk doing very similar things with the same clients but with more cowboy boots. I was clawing for volition and tried to develop a personal algorithm that would predict the date I would be fired all over again. I developed a garish fantasy life for what my last stop would be and came up with cleaning port-a-potties at Ozzfest.

Then Kurt called to tell me that he had instigated a forensic inquest into the finances of Ms. Lowler that revealed minor malfeasance, easily challenged. But Ms. Lowler wouldn’t stand for it and quit. I knew what was next: he was taking Mother to his home. “She gave so much, it’s time to give back.”

“She’ll be lucky to make it a month,” I said. I was paralyzed.

Kurt said, “Never be ruled by hatred.”

“And forfeit the merit badge?”

In the last five weeks of Mother’s life, I really should have been fired, but the staff at the Miles City bank was just fascinated by my torpor, wishing to see how far I might go toward complete ossification. In some way I was kind of fun for them. They were like happy children watching a frog.

I had the oddest feeling going to the funeral and at the funeral itself a kind of helium levitation. Kurt and his loudmouth wife, Beverly, were there gaping with fascination at the sight of me. I never spoke to them. There were lots of people there, lots of elderly people mostly, and some others, too. It was a crowd. It seemed like they were underwater, and I alone had a boat, such a nice little boat. I was pretty much sunning myself and the waves were gentle. Occasionally, I looked over the side. I was sailing away.

I rose rapidly at the bank, if you call five years rapid. I grew fond of Miles City and bought an old Queen Anne house on Pleasant Street. I loved banking so much — funneling the universal lubricant — and led our expansions to five midsize cities. Lately, I’ve been riding a carriage at the annual Bucking Horse Sale, waving to everyone like an old-timer, which I guess is what I’m getting to be.