Lamb

“Are you ready? Because this is going to change your life.”

“I’m ready.”

“Get up on your knees in the seat.”

“On my knees?”

“Right. Like that. Keep your eyes closed.”

“Like this?”

“Perfect. Give me a second.”

“What are you doing?”

“Turning off the engine.”

“What?”

“Okay. Open your eyes.”

The truck was parked in front of a sheet-metal outbuilding Lamb would call the shop. He looked at the girl. He loved to make her eyes big. Her mouth was open. Sweet. He gently pressed a finger beneath her chin and shut it. She grinned, up on her knees, and looked all around, three hundred and sixty degrees. In the new quiet, engine off, they could hear the rush of a river. A magpie sat on the rusted weather vane and blinked. No other houses in sight. Grass and a blue sawtooth horizon and trees and somewhere out behind those trees, nothing and nothing and nothing and nothing. Lamb opened the glove compartment and took out a small ring of keys.

“Just like you imagined?”

“But”—she was whispering—“I thought we were pretending.”

“We were.” He got out of the Ford and pointed at the house. He pointed to the water tank off beside the shop. It was all just as he’d said. “Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

She followed him through a brown metal door into a huge shop. He pointed to the woodstove, at the pickle jar on the workbench. She took it all in, looked at him with a huge open-mouthed smile on her little face.

“I know,” he said. He crossed the room and opened the box beside the pickle jar and took out a soft pack of Marlboros and shook one out. He put it in his mouth, held it with his teeth, and led the girl across the shop to a green-painted door. “Go on,” he said, “open it.”

She turned the handle and there it was: the bunk beds, the old, soft sleeping bags, the nightstand.

“I think there might be something up there,” he said, lifting his chin toward the top bunk. He took a matchbook out of his back pocket and lit the cigarette. She went into the small room and climbed up the bunk. On the pillow there was a brown paper package.

“What does it say?”

She kneeled on the mattress, staring. “It says my name.”

“Open it.”

“But Gary.”

“The fewer questions you ask, the more fun this is going to be. Open it.”

She lifted the package. It was a bag folded under, and out slid a blue-and-white striped nightgown. The stripes were strings of blue roses.

She made a crooked smile and climbed down with it.

“Isn’t that pretty,” he said.

“I’ve never had one like this.”

“I didn’t think you had.”

She stood there holding it, then let it unfold and pressed it to her shoulders. “I think it’s a little big.”

“You’ll grow into it.”

She fingered the blue satin ribbon woven around the collar.

“I thought we’d go see the river.”

“Can I wear this?”

He stared at her. “If you want to,” he said. “It’s your week.”

She crossed the tiny room with the nightgown on her arm and put her hand on the door. “Go,” she said. “I’ll change.”

She stepped out of the shop in the blue-and-white flannel nightgown lifting the hem: bare feet.

“Come on,” he said. “Race you to the river.”

The unpaved county road curved northwest in a pale dirt hook, so when Lamb led the girl across toward the river, he could see the white of another house ahead. Just under a mile up the road.

“Gary,” Tommie whispered and stopped. She pointed to the other side of the river, beyond which lay a field of yellow-green and gray grass into which several does and a four-point buck dipped their heads. Lamb nodded as if he knew they’d be there, as if he’d planned the whole thing, the deer, the bend of flyaway grass, the red-branched willow striping the blue sky. He smiled down at her as if to say: didn’t I tell you so? They walked on, stepping over saltbush, their footsteps crackling through the dry grass, scaring up field mice and finally alerting the mule deer, which went tearing off toward the low distant line of foothills.

Our girl stood and looked into the water, the tapering branches of water birch quaking behind her. “Can we swim?” Her belly stuck out a little beneath the clean and bright white flannel, freckles multiplying by the trillion on her cheeks and on the backs of her hands, and he wanted to reach out and freeze her, stop her just as she was. Seize her from the woman who would steal her away a day at a time. The river water was as low and as clear as it would be all year but still broke white over small piles of rocks. Yellow grass blew slowly in the bright shallows. He could see her cracking her head, could imagine too poignantly the turn in the story that would leave him with a dead girl on his hands.

“It’s not deep enough. Look at those rocks.”

“Oh.”

“We can fish, though.”

“Oh.”

“That doesn’t interest you?”

“I don’t like fish.”

“Well, you’ve never had it right out of the river. When you eat it like that, it turns all your skin just the faintest silver.”

“You’re weird.”

“No, I’m serious.”

“Will it cover up my freckles then?”

“It will brighten them into blinding points of light.”

“Can I be like Medusa where it kills people?”

“You don’t get to make up the laws of the universe.”

“I thought that was the game.”

“Oh, my dear.” He stooped and reached into the cold water and pulled out a smooth stone. “This is not a game.” He held it out for her to kiss and skipped it down the river.

“Forget it, then.” She stooped to find a stone. “I don’t want any fish.”

Small drab birds hid in the red willow and tore upward in a flash of blue light. The embarrassing drip and splash of river water. Birds splitting open the quiet with clear and high-pitched calls. The hollow rush of wind. The ruffled hem of her nightgown lifting in the breeze, catching on the grass.

“Do you want to put your feet in the river?” he asked.

Alison Foster saw them standing like that, the knee-high grasses waving and billowing like yards of silk at the backs of their knees. He watched the man run his hand through the girl’s hair and tousle it on top. He watched her run from him, and he heard her high small laugh and the low hum of his response. Sunlight glanced off the child’s hair in a bright ring on the crown of her pale head. Foster cleared his throat. Lifted his trembling face at them. “This is private property,” he said.

The girl started, but Lamb, shielding his eyes with his hand, turned toward the skinny old man. “That’s my property.” He grinned.

Just as Lamb was about to put a hand on the child’s head, she slipped her hand into his. His heart rose in his chest and up into his neck. “My niece Emily,” he told Foster, who offered no comment on either the girl’s nightgown or the bruise on Lamb’s face. He looked down at her, indicating her bare feet. “That ain’t safe.” The girl said nothing. He turned to Lamb. “You here for a while? The place needs some maintenance.”

Lamb smiled. “We’re just here the week. At least, that was the plan. Em was just saying she’d like to stay forever.”

“Not much of a place for a girl.”

“I like it,” Tommie said.

“Well.” He gave her a thin smile. “Girl doesn’t get to choose where she lands, do she?” He looked at Lamb. “How old?”

“Almost twelve,” she answered.

Foster ignored her. Lamb looked at her and back to the old man. “She’s eleven.” Foster nodded. “Em, why don’t you give us a minute? Go on and give those city feet another good rinsing.” The girl nodded and went back to the edge of the river. “Don’t fall in,” he called after her, then lowered his voice. “She just lost her mother,” he said. “We’re just here for a while to. You know. Figure out what’s next.”

“I’m sorry. Your sister?”

“In-law. Thank you.”

“Cancer?”

“Drunk driver.”

“Well, I’m sorry. That’s a shame.”

“She’s having a tough go of it. Even here.”

“Like I said. No place for a girl.” They stood looking out at the river. “Terrible thing, a house in that kind of disrepair.”

“Well, I’ll need to come out sometime more than a week to get it all straight.”

“You’re taking her back east?”

“That’s our plan.” Lamb lifted his gaze from the river, to the nets of birch overhead. “How is Mrs. Foster?”

“We have a nurse coming twice a week from Casper.”

“Oh, good. Glad to hear it.”

The old man put his hands in the pockets of his Wranglers. “You-all need anything.”

“Thanks.”

“The place really needs cleaned. Inside and out.”

“I know.”

“Calhoun used to polish every beam.”

Lamb smiled. “So you say.”

“Gutter’s coming down in the back.”

“I know it. Thanks.”

They shook hands, and as Foster walked back through the grass and brush, the girl looked up at Lamb from the edge of the river where she sat with her nightgown tucked up between her thighs.

“He’s a jerk.”

“Watch your language.”

“Well, he is.”

“I’m sort of the new guy in this area. Best not to ruffle his feathers. You been in a place as long as he has, you start to feel entitled.”

“Entitled.”

“Like everything is yours. Your river, your grass, your business.”

“Since when are we staying forever?”

Lamb sat down beside her, his feet in the grass and his arms stretched out behind him. “We’re not. Four days to go. Then we turn around and deliver you back to your mother. All red cheeked and your hair full of wind and nineteen thousand new freckles on your neck and face.”

“What if I want to stay longer?”

“Too bad.”

“No fair.”

“A minute ago you wanted to go home right away.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Boy.” He whistled. “You’re keeping me on my toes.”

“Do I have to be Emily?”

“Don’t you want to be Emily?” The flowers on the hem of her nightgown were dark blue, wet with river water.

“What is she like?”

“Well for one, she’s extraordinarily beautiful. The wind and the river and open space did wonders for her complexion.” Tommie rolled her eyes. “No, seriously. And the more she ran around outside barefoot and washed her face in the cold spigot water and rubbed dirt into her hair, the more beautiful she became.”

“What else?”

“She also became really, really smart during her time out west. I mean wonderfully bright. Want to know why?”

“Why?”

“She had such brilliant company.”

Slow to get the joke, she smiled. “I’m hungry.”

“I know. I’ve been sitting here wondering how I’m going to feed you. Shall we explore the grounds?”