Nobody's Angel

42

ON THE WAY BACK TO SILVER STAKE CREEK, PATRICK STOPPED at his ranch and put the stock rack on his truck. He loaded Leafy and Box L, saddles, picket ropes and a hundred pounds of sweet feed. He went inside to see how his grandfather was doing and found the place in good order. He discovered the old man in the living room watching Houston play Denver.

“Hey, Grandpa, I’m running—”

“Where?”

“I’m spending time with a real great lady.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“But look, I want to make early elk with you. So will you do me a favor? Will you buy us our groceries? I’ll be back to get us packed in four or five days.”

“What do you want to eat?”

“You decide. And get me a box of 270’s. Hundred thirty grain.”

“How long you plan to stay with this young lady?”

“I told you, four or five days. Nothing is forever.”

Then he headed south. He could see Leafy’s mane streaming in the rear-view mirror, Box L turning his forehead into it. Sixty-mile-an-hour horses with a highway unraveling behind them.

The mountains paralleled the valley and the snowy peaks were extending with fall to the valley floor. Patrick wondered seriously if this country had ever been meant to be lived in. Right now he could only imagine small hot spots of survival, winter seemed so imminent. He could imagine lying in bed with Claire and he could imagine seeing after his grandfather on the ranch and diligently looking after his warm animals so that the cold didn’t sweep them away. But the country lacked the detailed human regimen he imagined he could find in his Castilian walk-up, daily human rituals of coffee, cigarettes, wine, newspapers. The Deadrock region was just exactly the dumb fucking dehumanized photogenic district that would require a bunch of American reformed Protestants to invent. His mood had begun to show.

Patrick was getting sour; he was getting ready to cheat. He drove up into the brush once more. There was still some smoke at the head of the chimney; so he’d done that right. He unloaded Leafy, then Box L. He drove picket pins out in the meadow and hobbled them so they wouldn’t cross lines.

And then he went inside. Claire had taken down the Hudson Bay and was curled, undressed, in front of the wood stove.

“Tell me,” she said.

“He’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“It said Tulsa.”

“What said Tulsa?”

“The note. It said he would be back by hunting season. I’m taking my grandfather in the hills then. And you can go. Or whatever you decide.” All Patrick could think in the indescribable panic that touched him was, I’m sure he’s getting the best of care. He’s going to have to live a few days without her at the side of his bed.

Claire smiled. “Then we have some time together,” she said.

“I wish we had a lot of time together.”

“We don’t, darling. Let’s not pine for what we don’t have.”

Patrick thought, I’ve lied my way into this. What ever happened to the officer and the gentleman? He concluded that it had never been the case. The hell with it. “What are we to make of this?”

“I think we’re going to have a perfect time,” said Claire. “I’m real encumbered, but I’m falling in love with you.”

“That’s what’s happening to me.”

“Isn’t it so nice?”

“I don’t know if those are the words,” he said.

Shortly thereafter, packing saddlebags to take some limited supplies to the divide, the horses tied nose to nose at wind-twisted spruce next to the creek, Patrick knew that he was going to have to say something. But he was determined not to say it now. Otherwise the police or the papers or some blind, abstract party would do the work for him. So he was going to have to say something.

When they got to the top of the world where the lichen made free, unearthly effects, as though the rocks were stained by sky, they tied the horses once more, loosened cinches and made love on cold ground where spring flowers were blooming in the mouth of winter. Then they tied a knot at the corners of the Hudson Bay and enclosed themselves in it, though the blanket now smelled of the four-thousand-foot pull just made by Leafy and Box L.

“The thing is this: When I got to the house, the thing is, Tio was there, actually.”

“He was? You say he was there?”

“And at first things seemed quite normal. He just insisted that I be removed from this situation and that way this would never have happened. I didn’t think I saw him overwrought. He showered and changed. And suddenly he’d fallen and it was kind of … a fit.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted the time with you.”

“What’s the matter with him? You liar!”

“I don’t know.” He was stung.

“Did they get him to the hospital?”

“I took him.”

“You were there when he fell apart? He’s not going to like that.”

“Does he always come out of these?”

“Yes. I wish you hadn’t lied to me.”

“Well, I just did,” said Patrick angrily.

“Is he hurt?”

“No, and the doctor on emergency had seen him before. So I thought they’d know what to do.”

“They will. But it doesn’t show up on the brain scan or in blood tests. And it never happened before we married.”

“That could just be coincidence.”

“It’s not. But you didn’t tell me the truth.”

“Are you entirely guilty for these fits? Is that your opinion?”

Patrick’s question sent Claire on a jag, as though somehow it all had to be pinned down immediately or their own fortunes would be swept under by the same malady.

“My family persuaded Tio that I had married beneath myself. I could have prevented Tio from believing that. I assure you he was a very nice boy and he bought what my family had to say. Tio never looked up from the work my father had set him to do until he had proven he was a genuine Tulsa patrón just like my father. It took years. And when Tio returned his attentions to me, I just wasn’t really there anymore. He began saying peculiar things. And when my father was dying, Tio hung around his hospital room. He said he wanted to be in at the death. He succeeded, the only one to see the so-called final gasp. Then, sir, we went on a tear: Ruidoso, Santa Fe, Vail, La Paz. I didn’t know whether he was happy or sad. He didn’t know if I was there with him or not, and it just lingered like that until we started on home from Palm Springs. Tio stood up in front of the in-flight movie and went haywire. He was horrible and superhuman and we had to make an emergency landing in Phoenix. They had this center where they could study him, and let’s see, I think it was there that he asked me whether or not I was going to let him go under. And I said I wouldn’t. Two days later, he was pounding that. WATS line. And like I said, it’s not on the brain scan or in the blood tests. But I did say I wouldn’t let him go under. I hope you’ve got that clear.”

They didn’t come down from the divide until darkness had fallen and the shining mantle of stars had rotated into the night. The stars looked like matches. There was some word for matches that was very close to the word “lucifer.” They looked like lucifers; and the horses picked down over the blasted rocks. You couldn’t see their legs and down in the trees Patrick and Claire couldn’t see each other and the lucifers were hidden behind the branches and even in the cold you waited for the lightning. “It would be hard for us to be much of anything with that hanging over us,” Claire said, almost asking. Patrick felt the sickness overcome him, the sickness he had known, one way or another, would come. “Tio knows me very well. He studied very closely and saw me falling in love with you. And I’m the one who made him so mean.” Leafy slid on the granite veil that caught the vague light of stars; and sparks streamed from her iron shoes. “What do you wish?” Claire asked.

“I wish you’d shut up.”