Let Him Go: A Novel (19 page)

O
DORS OF ANTISEPTIC AND FLOOR WAX
. T
HE RATTLE OF
bed rails being lifted into place, of clipboards taken from their hooks and put back on again. The hush of rubber-soled shoes, of a wheelchair pushed down a long corridor. The grunt and groan of an old man trying to find ease in his sleep . . . In the hospital ward, Margaret Blackledge sits at her husband’s bedside, and she’s drawn her chair close enough to hold his unbandaged hand in hers and to be heard as she speaks to him in a voice barely above a whisper. George’s eyes are closed, and it’s impossible to tell whether he’s listening or dozing through her monologue.

You know what I was thinking about today, George? I was remembering when the twins started school, and you and I both drove them into town and watched them walk together into Emerson Elementary. I suppose there’s something in the September sunlight that brought all this on. . . Anyway. Do you remember that day? Just before they stepped through the door, James turned around and waved his sad, brave little wave. None of that for Janie, of course. She marched right in like she expected they’d been waiting for her arrival. Then we drove back to the ranch. We looked at each other like we weren’t sure what we were supposed to do with all those alone hours. Well, it took
us about three seconds to figure that out, didn’t it? As if we didn’t both have work waiting for us. As I recall, we ended up right there on the floor of the parlor. Just like back when we were both a couple of randy, impatient kids.

Uh-oh, George says, his eyes still closed. If you’re whispering in my ear about the happy old days, that can’t be a good sign. Didn’t you say that was the last thing old Strawberry heard before we put her down?

Oh, don’t, George. Don’t joke with me. I’m feeling . . . oh, I don’t know what I’m feeling. Regretful. Remorseful. All I’ve brought us to. And the good, good life I took us away from.

Come on now. He opens his eyes and gives her hand a little shake. Don’t be one of those people who spruces up the past with her imagination.

Are you saying I’m not remembering that parlor floor right, Mr. Blackledge?

No, I’ll testify to that memory.

This conversation takes place during Good Samaritan’s afternoon visiting hours, and the Blackledges fall silent when a jaunty man walks into the ward. He’s wearing a wide-shouldered, double-breasted brown suit flecked with slubs of lighter-colored fabric, two-tone wing tips, and the type of hat favored by the president. He stops at the foot of George Blackledge’s bed and rubs his hands together like a cook who is happily surprised at how the soup has turned out.

Well, well, he says. Can’t enjoy the day’s favors lying in here, can you?

The beds on either side of George are unoccupied. The only other patient on the ward is an emaciated elderly man
in the bed nearest the door. An occasional moan breaks the rhythm of his wheezing breaths.

George says nothing but regards the visitor coolly. Margaret, who remains seated at her husband’s bedside, asks, What can we do for you?

The man removes his hat and begins to bow but then only stiffly dips his head. It’s I who can do for you.

I who can do for you
. The bounce in his step, the barely held-back ebullience—there’s something about this man that suggests he, like Lawrence Wyatt, is not from Gladstone, though he is decades older than the young doctor.

Unless you can make fingers grow back, says George, I doubt that.

The man’s smile, which has been constant since he entered the ward, grows even wider. Mr. and Mrs. Blackledge, my apologies. I thought my visit had been announced, but plainly you have no idea who I am.

Yet you know us, says Margaret.

Indeed I do. It’s my business to do so. I not only know who you are, I know what your business has been in our county. Furthermore, I have something of yours in my possession.

What might that be? George asks the question but his exhaustion is such that he hardly seems to care about the answer.

Sitting on my desk is a .45 caliber automatic that I believe once belonged to you.

You’re welcome to it, says George. I hope it brings you better luck than it brought me.

The man draws himself to his full height. You find some humor in this situation?

George holds up his bandaged hand as if in an obscene gesture. You see me laughing?

Margaret puts a restraining hand on her husband’s wrist. Just who might you be, sir?

Franklin Reese, Gladstone County attorney. He extends his hand to Margaret, who doesn’t take it, and while Mr. Reese could reach out his left hand for George to shake, he doesn’t.

A politician, George says.

I’ve been elected to office. Yes. You know something about that, I gather.

Enough to know it’s court business brought you here.

In a manner of speaking.

George pushes himself up on his elbows and raises himself to a sitting position. Then say it.

Mr. Reese drops his hat on the bed near the mound made by George’s feet. Very well. I’m as capable of direct speech as you, Mr. Blackledge. The sheriff and I have conferred. Once you’re released from the hospital, you’re free to go back to your home in Dickinson.

Dalton.

I beg your pardon?

Dalton. We live in Dalton, North Dakota. Not Dickinson.

Why was I told Dickinson?

Does this matter? Margaret says, lowering her head and shaking it impatiently. What about Sheriff Munson? We were told to expect a visit from him.

Franklin Reese says, I’m speaking for both of us.

And for the court, George says.

Yes, in a manner of speaking.

The point you’re trying to make, George says, is that
I’m free to go wherever. Dickinson or Dalton. Which is a chickenshit way of saying that the son of a bitch who took a hatchet to my hand can also go wherever he pleases.

As with all cases, different sides have different stories to tell.

George shifts in his bed, and Franklin Reese’s hat slides to the floor. The attorney promptly picks it up. And you, George says to the attorney, don’t want to bother sorting them out. Even though it’s your goddamn job to do exactly that.

Give a man a hat and you increase his confidence and put him at ease. Now he can turn the hat in his hands, adjust its crease or brim, run his fingers around the band. I would suggest, the attorney says, continuing to smile, that you accept what is being offered to you. He widens his smile and addresses Margaret. Accept it and go. He puts on his hat and only then does his smile diminish. No need to thank me.

Attorney Reese performs his rigid little bow again and walks away. When he passes a nurse in the doorway, he touches the brim of his hat.

Adeline Witt has been watching the county attorney since he entered the ward, and now she walks out behind him.

George sinks back into his pillow and closes his eyes. I should have spotted him for a politician right from the get-go. Him and his goddamn smile.

Politicians and Indian boys, says Margaret. Young Mr. Dragswolf never stopped smiling either.

A few of those Weboys were smilers too. And the uncle, sure as hell. And now we know why.

Maybe, Margaret says, folks in this part of the world are just so damn happy to be here they can’t stop smiling.

George’s eyes remain closed though there is no movement under the lids. Beneath all the hospital’s other odors is a smell both sweet and sulfuric. It’s the odor that accompanies unconsciousness and release from pain. Ether. After a long silence, George says, Maybe.

And now we’ve had our visit from the sheriff. In a manner of speaking.

He about wore that out, didn’t he?

What I can’t figure, she says, is that everywhere we go, people seem in agreement about what no-good troublesome bastards the Weboys are. Yet here it is—excuses made for them. And they’re out there and we’re in here.

Bastards they may be, but they’re
their
bastards. He opens his eyes and slowly turns his gaze to Margaret. And this isn’t jail. You can walk out of here anytime you like.

Don’t, George.

For that matter, you could have walked out of Jack Nevelsen’s jail. You’re as free now as you’ve ever been.

I’m right where I want to be. And I’ve been thinking, George. About the life we’ll go back to. I’m so sorry I didn’t give more careful thought to what I wanted—to what I thought I wanted. You’re right, of course. A child running around the house—I don’t have the energy for that. I like my routines. We both do. We’re too old and stuck in our ways to start bending our schedules for a little boy’s life.

So you’re ready to give up, then, are you? asks George. That’s not like you. That’s not a goddamn bit like the Margaret Blackledge I’ve been trying to keep up with for forty years.

Well, maybe we were both wrong about who she is, George.

In reply, George pushes himself up on his elbows once again, a maneuver that he performs with more effort than when Franklin Reese was standing over the bed. He reaches across to his wife and with his bandaged hand paws at and then presses against her breast.

Margaret doesn’t lift his hand away or shift out of his reach. She doesn’t look around the ward to determine who might be witnessing her husband’s behavior. She leans into his touch, but gently. Neither of them can be sure yet of what his hand can and cannot bear.

But in its deliberation, George’s gesture has nothing to do with intimacy or desire. George Blackledge is satisfying a curiosity; he is assaying the world in which he will live.

Then he falls back on his pillow and shuts his eyes again.

W
HEN VISITING HOURS ARE OVER
, M
ARGARET
Blackledge walks out into the sunlight and the heat that feels more like August than the end of September. How will she fill the hours until she can return to her husband’s side? A meal for which she has no appetite? Aimless wandering of Gladstone’s streets? She turns a slow, indecisive circle.

And there they are. Looking like mother and daughter on a shopping excursion. Or as though they had a meeting with the minister to discuss the plans for a wedding. Or a funeral. In their Sunday dresses, Blanche and Lorna step out of the building’s shadow where they’ve been waiting.

They come forward and though you can be certain she doesn’t mean to, Margaret takes a step back.

Now don’t scamper off, says Blanche.

You’ve got your nerve. Showing up here.

Blanche Weboy smiles an unapologetic smile. We wanted to pay a visit to the ward. But your guardian Mrs. Witt advised against it. Advised very strongly, I should say.

We came to see, Lorna says softly, how Grandpa George is.

And did she—Margaret jabs her finger in Blanche’s direction—tell you how he came to be in his condition?

Lorna nods meekly.

And you can allow yourself to be seen in her company?

Lorna asks, Will he be all right?

He doesn’t think so. But yes.

Blanche unclasps her purse and gropes through its interior.

Don’t tell me—you’re about to pull a hatchet out of there.

Blanche only smiles and continues her search. In another moment she pulls out a tissue and waves it daintily in the air. Truce?

I’d as soon make peace with a rattlesnake.

Blanche Weboy stops waving the tissue but keeps it poised in the air. Listen to you.

On the oaks and elms hovering over the hospital, enough leaves remain to dapple these women in the afternoon sun.

Lorna looks up and down the street as if she’s hoping someone will come along and take her away. But with a single question Margaret jerks her back to this sunny square of sidewalk. Where’s Jimmy?

Back at the house.

When
do
you spend time with him?

As if this is the purpose she had planned for the tissue all along, Blanche wipes her nose. Still telling people how to run their lives, she says. Some folks never learn.

Am I supposed to learn from you? You haven’t got a damn thing to teach me, unless it’s how to act like a savage.

You’re scaring Lorna, Blanche says calmly. She stuffs the Kleenex back in her purse and clasps it. She scowls at Margaret. But you better make peace with me, missus, if you want to see your grandson again.

Margaret, who had been on the point of walking away, now must stand in place and do nothing while Blanche Weboy says and does what she will. The effort at stillness trembles Margaret.

And it is Blanche who walks away, taking Lorna with her. But they don’t go far. Blanche stops abruptly and returns. She steps up so close to Margaret there’s barely room for sunlight to come between them. The hell of it is, says Blanche, if we were each on the other’s side of the Badlands, we’d probably do exactly what the other’s doing.

.
   
.
   
.

George opens his eyes to find Adeline Witt standing over him with her arms crossed and a cheerless expression on her face.

Before he can speak, she asks, What can I do for you? Force a man to express his desire before he’s ready and you have him at a disadvantage.