Let Him Go: A Novel
Read Let Him Go: A Novel Online
Authors: Larry Watson
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Literary, #Women's Fiction, #Domestic Life, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Suspense, #Family Life, #Historical Fiction, #Literary Fiction
LET HIM GO
Also by Larry Watson
American Boy
In a Dark Time
Justice
Laura
Leaving Dakota
Montana 1948
Orchard
Sundown, Yellow Moon
White Crosses
LET HIM GO
A Novel
Larry Watson
milkweed
editions
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
© 2013, Text by Larry Watson
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.
(800) 520-6455
Published 2013 by Milkweed Editions
Cover design by Christian Fuenfhausen
Cover image © Ocean/Corbis
Author photo by Susan Watson
13 14 15 16 17
5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from the Bush Foundation; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Foundation; the Dougherty Family Foundation; the Driscoll Foundation; the Jerome Foundation; the Lindquist & Vennum Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Target Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. For a full listing of Milkweed Editions supporters, please visit
www.milkweed.org
.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Watson, Larry, 1947–
Let him go : a novel / Larry Watson. — First edition.
pages
cm
ISBN 978-1-57131-890-9 (e-book)
1. Grandparent and child—Fiction. 2. Parental relocation (Child custody)—Fiction. 3. Visitation rights (Domestic relations)—Fiction. 4. North Dakota—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.A853L48 2013
813'.54—dc23
2013006976
Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship.
We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world’s endangered forests and conserve natural resources.
Let Him Go
was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by Friesens Corporation.
To Susan
LET HIM GO
1.
September 1951
T
HE SIREN ON TOP OF THE
D
ALTON
, N
ORTH
D
AKOTA
, fire station howls, as it does five days a week at this hour. Its wail frightens into flight the starlings that roost on the station roof every day yet never learn how fixed and foreseeable are human lives. The siren tells the town’s working citizens and students what they already know. It’s twelve o’clock, time for you to fly too. Put down your hammer, your pencil; close your books, cover your typewriter. Go home. Your wives and mothers are opening cans of soup and slicing bread and last night’s roast beef for sandwiches. Come back in an hour, ready to put your shoulder to it, to add the figures, parse the sentences, calm the patients, please the customers.
Most drive to their homes, but a man with the width of the town to travel, from Ott’s Livestock Sales out on Highway 41 to Teton Avenue in the town’s northeast corner, walks. The sun is warm on George Blackledge’s back, and he carries his blanket-lined denim coat over his shoulder. But on his way to work that morning in the predawn dark he followed the plumes of his own breath and passed signs of the season’s first hard freeze. Blankets and rugs covering the late tomatoes and squash. Windshields needing to be scraped. Thin spirals of smoke rising from chimneys.
Now only in a house or building’s western shade or in the shadow of a shed or tree does any white remain. Grass blades and weed stalks that earlier were frost-bent and flattened rise again. Ice skins that grew over gutter pools and alley puddles have melted away. When George enters his house, he notices the lingering smell of hot dust and fuel oil, the stale breath of the furnace that came on during the night for the first time in the season.
But on the kitchen table are not the bowl of tomato soup and the summer sausage sandwich that George has rightly come to expect. Instead on the oilcloth are open cardboard boxes filled with the food that recently has been in their cupboards, bread box, and refrigerator. The house’s windows are closed and the curtains drawn, banishing sunlight and, so it seems, sufficient air to breathe.
Into the kitchen comes Margaret Blackledge, about whom people invariably say, Still a handsome woman. Her steel-gray hair is plaited and pinned up. Her chambray shirt is tucked into snug-fitting, faded Levi’s. She’s wearing boots that have been patched, resoled, and re-heeled so many times they’d rebel at any foot but hers. Those heels make her taller than most women. Draped over one kitchen chair is her wool mackinaw, and on the spindle of another chair her hat hangs by the leather loop that she used to tighten under her chin when she was ready to mount up and ride.
George tilts back his own hat. So this is why you wanted the car today.
You said you didn’t mind the exercise.
I don’t. But Jesus, Margaret. You really mean to do this?
I do. Margaret Blackledge’s eyes have not lost their
power to startle—large, liquid, deep blue, and set in a face whose planes and angles could be sculpted from marble.
With me or without me?
With you or without you. It’s your choice. Margaret thrusts her fingers into the back pockets of her jeans and leans against the cupboard. She’s waiting, but she doesn’t have to say it. She won’t wait long.
She nods in the direction of their bedroom. I packed a bag for you, she says. Depending on what you decide.
Nothing fills the silence between them. The Philco on the kitchen counter, which usually squawks livestock prices at this hour, sits mute. The coffeepot whose glass top usually rattles with a percolating fresh brew is emptied, washed, and stored in one of the boxes.
On his way to the bedroom George passes through the living room and he steps over the blankets Margaret has wrapped and tied into tubes to serve as bedrolls.
In the bedroom doorway he pauses, his gaze lingering on both what is there and what is not.
The white chenille bedspread rises over the mound of one pillow but then slopes down to flatness on the other side. The alarm clock ticks on the bedside table. If he stays he’ll need reminders of hours and obligations, while she’ll be traveling to where time obeys human need and not the other way around. On the top of the bureau the perfume bottle sits, as full as the day she took it out of its gift box. Her brush is gone. So is the framed photograph that often made him pause. His son or his grandson? Did they really look so alike as two-year-olds? Or did they confuse him because they occupied the same space in his heart? Did Margaret even hesitate before she packed the photo? Did
she ask herself, Who needs this more, the one who goes or the one who stays?
His suitcase yawns open on the bed, and he walks over to paw through its contents. Clean socks. A few shirts. Two pair of dungarees. Underwear. That old plaid wool railroader’s vest. A bandanna. The bottom layers are cold-weather wear—a wool scarf and knit cap, gloves. His sheepskin-lined coat. Long underwear. He leaves the suitcase open and turns back toward the kitchen, a distance that suddenly seems more exhausting than the miles he’s already walked today.
In the kitchen he looks over the contents of the boxes. Canned goods, flour, beans—dry and canned—oatmeal, evaporated milk, sugar, coffee, potatoes, apples, carrots. Two cans of Spam and a box of Velveeta. Cups, bowls, plates, forks, knives, and spoons, and that all these are in pairs tells him that she’s made all the provisions for him to go. And not much left for him if he decides to stay—she’s packed the cast-iron frying pan and the coffeepot, and George Blackledge loves his coffee. A washbasin. Kitchen matches. A can of lard.
What do you mean to cook on? George asks.
Margaret shrugs. An open campfire, if need be. I’ve got a few camping things set out back. Including that old wire grill you used to set up on rocks over a fire.