The Death of Jim Loney, page 16
He returned to the kitchen and dropped three new twenty-dollar bills on the table before Loney. All three curled cylindrically, as though they had been wrapped around something for some time. “You take this,” Ike said. “Get on the bus and don’t stop until it runs out. It’ll get you to the coast.”
Loney looked at the money. His father’s generosity bewildered him, first with the whiskey, now with the money. He wondered if this was a virtue his father had always possessed.
“I don’t think I’m going to need it.”
“What? You’re so goddamn rich?” Ike was surprised and hurt. “It’s good, it’s real.” He snatched up the bills and put a lengthwise crease in them. “How’s that?”
And Loney said, “I’m not going away.” Then he added, as the thought struck him, “I’m going to the Little Rockies.” Then he added again, “Up Mission Canyon. I’m going to think.”
“Why there? It’s winter, for Christ’s sake.”
But Loney couldn’t answer. He had been to Mission Canyon twice in his life: once with the minister and his wife on a picnic, and once with Rhea. But he thought, That’s where I’ll go, that’s the best place. “Mission Canyon,” he said again to make sure that his father knew. It was part of a dim plan that he didn’t understand. “Mission Canyon,” he said, and he watched his father fold the bills and put them in his shirt pocket. The shirt was so thin that the pocket turned the green of the money.
Ike stood without a word and walked back again to the bedroom. He opened a tall narrow closet and took out a long object wrapped in an army blanket. Then he reached higher in the closet and he had a box in his hand. Loney saw the shells first, and when his father sat down, the army blanket fell away and the object was his father’s sixteen-gauge. “You might need this,” said his father. “There might be some grouse up there.” And Loney watched a familiar grin stretch itself across the old man’s face.
He took the gun. It was a Remington pump and it looked and felt just as it had in his dream, the cold blue barrel, the smooth grip of the forearm and stock. For a moment everything went away and Loney said, “It’s a perfect bird gun,” and he felt foolish and triumphant in saying it.
And his father said, “You might see some grouse,” and he grinned. He felt a part of something bigger than his life.
Loney took four shells out of the box and pushed them up into the magazine. Then he closed the flap of the box and sat with the gun against his left thigh. Under the glaring lamp he saw that much of the bluing had worn off the barrel. It was an old gun, probably twenty-five or thirty years old.
Ike poured the remaining whiskey into their glasses, then threw the empty bottle into the garbage sack. “I guess it ain’t poisont,” he said.
They sat and drank slowly, silently. Once Loney said, “Don’t you think we could have done something together—if you had stuck around, if we had stuck together?” And Ike said, “Shit, what would we have done but drink ourselves to death?”
9
Loney walked across the yard to where the road began. His head was very clear and the night was clear and cold. The wind had died to an icy breeze on his cheek. The shotgun lay in the crook of his arm and he nibbled a piece of tired cheese. As he walked, he found himself longing for summer and the evening breeze that brought with it the odors of dusty growing things. Winters were too harsh and unremitting, and caused people to behave badly.
When he reached the road he pumped a shell into the chamber and turned. He put the gun to his cheek and sighted at the small yellow window. He felt the recoil and his eyes snapped shut. When he opened them, the window was dark and he could see the tattered curtains blowing aimlessly. He pumped another round into the chamber and when the porch light in a house fifty feet away came on, he threw the gun to his shoulder and blew it out. For just an instant he smelled the gunpowder before the wind carried it away. He had heard neither explosion and he knew that the wind had blown the noise toward town. He turned in that direction and hurried down off the road and up over the railroad tracks. He stopped in the lee of a grain elevator and lit a cigarette.
10
She had just gotten into bed. Her thoughts had tired her and she felt she could sleep now. Nothing resolved, she thought, but sleep. And sleep will work. It is magic to close one’s eyes and die for just a little while. A crazy thought. And tomorrow I will be gone.
That’s when she heard the doorbell, the quick bing bong. It was a civilized noise of intrusion, unlike wind or the rattle of trains. Again, bing bong. She had packed her robe, a dumb thing, so she hurried down the hall to the closet by the door. She quietly removed her coat from a hanger and put it on over her nightgown. “Who is it?” she called, and she half expected to hear the voice of the school principal, miserable old Gaetano, who had been enraged by her leaving that morning.
But there was no answer. She opened the door as far as the chain lock would allow and she saw Loney’s thin face in the moonlit night. His nose and cheekbones were silver and his eyes were dark caves. She took the chain off the door and opened it.
Loney looked back toward the street.
“Come in,” she whispered. But she didn’t want him to. Lord, she didn’t want him to. “Come into the bedroom.” And she saw the shotgun, which he held pointed down against his leg.
She closed the door behind them, glanced into the living room, where Colleen still lay sleeping, then led him down the hallway. In the bedroom she said, “Why do you have that gun?”
And he said, “It’s my father’s.”
And she said, “Why?”
“I’m going hunting,” he said. Then he said, “I came to say goodbye.”
Rhea looked into the dresser mirror and ran her hand through her hair. Her eyes looked small to her without mascara. For an instant she thought of putting some on.
But Loney had been glancing around the room. It was bare, except for a beauty bag on the dresser and a shirt and pants hanging in the open closet. “You’re leaving too,” he said.
“Forever. For all time. But you’re not going hunting.” Rhea suddenly felt her shoulders twitch violently, as though she had just understood the implications of the gun, which she had, and she expected the worst. She couldn’t take her eyes off the barrel, which glistened sharply in the yellow light. “Why the gun?” And her voice trembled.
But Loney turned and leaned the gun against the wall by the door. “It belonged to my father. He gave it to me. He wanted me to have it.”
“You talked to your father?”
“Yes.”
“You went to see him?”
“We had a good time. We split a bottle of whiskey and talked and laughed. We had a fine time.”
Rhea sank to the edge of the bed and sighed with relief. She couldn’t have believed that he would use the gun. She couldn’t have believed that of him.
“Everything’s okay now,” said Loney.
“Oh, good,” said Rhea. “Oh, good for you.” She reached for his hand and pulled him down beside her. “I’m so pleased.”
Loney looked at her and she was pleased. He was glad he had lied. Her eyes were bright with pleasure and she touched him on the cheek. She looked cool and perfect to him. If I could have been someone else, Loney thought, if I had some sort of peace, perhaps we could have done it. This room, so clean and warm, we could have slept here every night, and in the morning, in the morning we would wake up and see each other… . He clutched her hand and he knew it was too late, they would both be gone in the morning, and his heart sank as he thought the morning, too, would be gone forever.
Rhea pulled her hand free and put her arm around him and pulled his head down to her small breasts. She felt his cheek, still cold, against the peach-colored gown. She held him and she was glad he had lied to her about his father. In spite of the gun, it had made her feel for a moment that something good could happen in this town.
11
“Have you eaten anything today?” She sat cross-legged on the bed. She was naked, and content for the first time in two weeks to be where she was. She would leave in the morning, nothing had changed, but now there was none of that dreadful anticipation. She felt warm and free of it.
Loney, too, was naked and moonlight touched his body with silver. He was standing, looking out the small high window toward the Little Rockies. He had been thinking he should leave, but he wanted to be with Rhea for a while longer.
“I have a confession to make,” she said.
Loney lay back down on the bed and touched her knee.
“Colleen is passed out in the living room. She came by this afternoon and started drinking. Now I’m afraid she’s dead to the world—and to us.” Rhea giggled.
Loney smiled in the dark. He touched her ribs and she fell on top of him, giggling into his neck, and he loved her breasts on his chest. “You should choose your friends more carefully,” he said.
“Don’t I just know it. And you, Mr. Loney, are a case in point.”
“I do know,” he said.
She bit his neck.
“I would have given more to you if I could,” he said.
“Oh, Jim, you’ve been wonderful,” she said, her voice soft and Southern. “We’ve been wonderful.”
Loney stared up at the ceiling. He felt he was in a dream and he was conscious only of Rhea’s weight on his chest. He heard nothing and he saw nothing and he liked it like that.
“I do love you,” she said, her voice drifting.
And he almost said it too, but there was no place to take it.
“I must make you something to eat. You must be so hungry.” Her voice came from a long way off. He held her tight and he knew that she had loved him. He kissed her hair and closed his eyes. I have to leave, he thought, but he held her as though to prevent her from slipping away.
12
He woke up and it was still dark and he was very hungry, but the idea of food made him sick. Except for a piece of cheese, he hadn’t eaten in the two or three days since killing Pretty Weasel. He lay on his back and felt a pale sweat tingle on his forehead and his upper lip. He would have to try to eat something.
He slipped into his pants and shirt and then, remembering Colleen in the living room, he pulled his socks on. He didn’t feel much toward her, but she made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t believe that they had once made love in her car down at the Dodson fair. But it hadn’t really been an act of love, just a quick coming together, and he had left her sprawled in the back seat while he went to drink beer with his cronies under the rodeo stands. That had been three years ago. He had been a different man then. He never really had friends, but he had cronies, and a couple of women he saw every once in a while, whenever he needed to. And whenever he needed money, he worked, putting up hay for ranchers, fighting fire with an Indian crew, laboring for the railroad, the highway. It wasn’t much of a life, but he had done those things, and when he bathed he had felt clean, and when he walked downtown he had looked forward to something. Maybe that was it. The “something” never happened and he had ceased to look for it. But why couldn’t he have gone on with that life? The others, his cronies, did, and given the wear and tear of years, had survived. Somewhere along the line he had started questioning his life and he had lost forever the secret of survival.
The light above the sink was on. He steadied himself against the counter and looked down into the white basin. He was very weak and he didn’t want to be. He held his hands against the sink and his arms twitched. His knees collapsed forward against the cupboard door beneath the fixture. He stood that way until his arms stopped twitching, and then he found a glass and he drank water. He drank three glasses of water and he felt his stomach tighten and he thought he could eat something. He found a half loaf of bread in the refrigerator. He took a slice and brought it to the light and he remembered the sandwiches he and Kate had made as kids—mustard sandwiches, mayonnaise sandwiches, butter sandwiches, pepper sandwiches—but he remembered most the doughballs. Now he crushed the bread in his fist, kneading it, until it was small and round and moist. He and Kate used to pretend that the doughballs were cookies. Once they ate a whole loaf of doughballs.
He put the doughball in his mouth and chewed, but it tasted like nothing. He needed it to be a game, to pretend that it was something, but it tasted flat and gummy. He washed it down with water. Then he got another slice of bread. The only other thing in the refrigerator was a bowl of eggs. They were large and brown. One of them had a small feather stuck to its shell. Loney pulled the feather free and thought, She gets her eggs from the Hutterites. Many people in town did because the eggs were better and cheaper than store-bought eggs. It didn’t surprise him that Rhea bought her eggs from the Hutterites, but it did interest him and faintly hurt him that he hadn’t known. There were so many simple things about her that he didn’t know, and yet he knew her eyes, her voice, her body. He knew her but he didn’t know much about her. He glanced around the kitchen and he saw two hotpads hanging beside the stove and he realized that he hadn’t seen them before. Of course they had always been there. In many ways, he hadn’t.
And he saw the bottle of Scotch. It was a half gallon with three or four inches left. He poured out his water and poured some of the Scotch into the glass. It tasted harsh and good and he felt it descend and warm him as his wine never had. He had left doughballs and make-believe far behind.
Back in the bedroom he pulled his shoes on and tied them. Then he shrugged into his parka. Suddenly Rhea said, “Tomorrow the world!” She said it clearly and dramatically, the way she did when she was being pompous for him. He looked toward the bed, but she hadn’t moved. Her shoulder and back were satiny in the moonlight. She had been dreaming. Loney smiled as he pulled the covers over her body. He didn’t touch her. He couldn’t let himself touch her again.
He stood in the doorway with the shotgun in the crook of his arm, and in an odd way he felt that he was sparing her life. And more than that, he felt that he was giving her her life. “Goodbye,” he whispered, and he didn’t weep and he didn’t feel corny.
He hurried down the hallway to the kitchen, where he screwed the cap on the Scotch bottle. Then he tucked it up under his parka and left, out of the warmth and into a cold moony night.
13
“You want to tell these fellows exactly what you told me, Mr. Loney?”
“Who are they?”
“Well, we have Chief Hanson of the Harlem police department, a couple of fellows from the Montana highway patrol, and Mr. Doore of the reservation police.”
Ike Loney had a large bandage over his eyes. Beneath the bandage his eyes were open. He couldn’t shut them because of the glass splinters. The public health doctor had removed most of the glass from his face, but he was reluctant to work on Ike’s eyes, so they were waiting for someone to wake up the ambulance driver to take him to Havre.
“You just tell it like it is, Mr. Loney,” said Painter. He had finally calmed down. He had taken the call from the old man’s neighbor that a madman had been shooting up the street with a shotgun. When he got to the scene he found Ike wandering around outside his trailer. His face was a mask of blood, and Painter had thought that the madman had blown it away. He had actually jumped back into his car when the old man approached. He had lost his cool completely. He just wasn’t cut out for the real bad stuff.
“We’re police officers,” said Chief Hanson.
“We’re here to enforce the law,” said one of the highway patrolmen.
“One of you fellows got some chewing gum?” said Ike.
Painter studied the old man’s face. It wasn’t so bad now, except for the white welts where the doctor had removed the shards. He recognized the face. He had seen it several times down at Kennedy’s when he made his bar rounds.
“How about a cigarette?” said Mr. Doore.
“Aw, shit,” said Ike.
“Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight, Mr. Loney—”
“Not so loud, Painter. It’s his eyes, not his ears,” said Chief Hanson.
“Your boy came to visit you, you gave him a couple of drinks, he got rowdy, stole your shotgun and shot the shit out of your trailer.” Painter waited. He knew that Hanson wouldn’t like that little profanity, but it was the old man’s word. Vivid as hell, thought Painter. He had grown to admire old Loney. He hadn’t complained once, hadn’t even said ouch.
Ike had told Painter the whole story during the ride over to the agency hospital, or almost the whole story. He had left out the best part. He was waiting to spring it on them at the right time.
“And then he took off. Where was it, Mr. Loney, that you said he was heading?”
“I don’t know. He said something about the mountains.” Ike felt crafty.
“Did he say which mountains—the Little Rockies, the Bear-paws?”
“Yeah, I think he mentioned something about the Little Rockies.” Ike straightened and shifted his buttocks on the metal examination table. It was cold. “Doc? Is that goddamn doctor around? I need something for the pain, Doc.”
“In a minute,” said Painter. “Now could you be more specific, Mr. Loney?”
“Let me think? For Christ’s sake?” Ike acted disgusted. He liked this game. He had never been seriously interrogated before.
Painter stepped back and glanced at the other men. The two highway patrolmen were standing against the wall by the door. They were a couple of grim-looking customers. Their chocolate-colored coats were covered with emblems and badges. One of them wore a Western hat with a pencil roll. Painter stroked his drooping mustache and winked at them, but neither responded. Talk about a couple of grim sonsabitches, thought Painter.
