Let Him Go: A Novel (26 page)

Then Alton Dragswolf wakes. Something’s not right. A door open? A woman calling out? He crawls out of his blankets, pushes himself to his feet, and makes his way to the open door.

He arrives in time to see Margaret Blackledge running from his shack and futilely chasing a car that labors up the hill, bouncing and tilting over the rocks and ruts, its engine whining with effort.

Margaret’s nightgown reaches well below her knees and the flannel binds her strides and she reaches down and lifts the hem almost to her waist so she can run, run, run after the Hudson. She’s barefoot and she slips in the
mud and stones cut and bruise her feet and when her path begins to ascend the hill the tough, wiry brush scratches and cuts her bare legs and burs and low branches catch at the flannel and she calls one more time, George! Stop!

And is it juniper brush too that scrapes the finish of the Hudson, or is it an outcropping of rock as George drives too close to the bluff’s wall? No matter. George has never been like some of the men living in this part of the world, who care more for their machinery than their animals, and he keeps the Hudson on its narrow climbing course.

Then the car crests the hill, its headlights sending twin beams into the sky like searchlights. The taillights wink. The engine’s complaint drops an octave and begins to hum a smoother song. The Hudson and her husband vanish from Margaret’s sight.

She drops the hem of her nightgown, and by the time she reaches the valley floor, the bottom half of the garment is wet with the rain she’s swept from the tall grass.

Alton meets her at the base of the hill. Hey, he says.

He’s gone, Alton.

Yeah, I can see.

What can we
do,
Alton? How can we stop him and bring him back?

Maybe he’ll just come back. All on his own. Alton Dragswolf hops up and down. Hey, my feet are freezing. I got to go in.

Margaret is slower to give up, but finally the hopelessness of staring at night and fog overcomes her and she returns to the shack.

Alton has lit the lamp on the table and its light discloses Margaret’s condition—her wet nightgown, her scratched
and mud-streaked legs. Her feet dark not only with dirt but with blood.

Jesus, missus!

What? Oh. She appraises herself. I’m all right. Look how I’m tracking up your floor, she says but doesn’t move.

I’ll fill up my washtub for you, Alton says but he remains in place as well. Where do you suppose he’s going? Probably to town, huh?

The way a woman would respond to her child’s cry, Margaret suddenly hurries to the part of the shack that had served as their bedroom. She opens George’s suitcase and drops to the floor in order to feel frantically around its interior. When she finds the bottle of whiskey she stops searching, rises stiffly, and walks slowly, helplessly, back out to the kitchen area.

There she finds Alton Dragswolf with a boot in each hand and a puzzled expression on his face. He took my tackle box, Alton says. He left his boots and took my tackle box.

.
   
.
   
.

The Hudson’s interior smells hot, of overheated grease or oil or a burning hose or belt or of machine parts gnashing against each other, the result no doubt of George taxing the car not only by making it climb out of the valley in first gear but by remaining in that gear as the trail began to level off. But that was only because he couldn’t work the gearshift, not at first, not with his bandaged hand.

Now, however, he’s learned to manage. Gripping the shift lever is impossible, yet he can maneuver it into second gear with the heel of his hand and pull it down into third by making a sort of claw of his palm and two fingers.

After that rough ascent out of the valley, the highway, smooth and straight as unspooling ribbon, is a relief. The fog has lifted too, adding to the sense of easy rolling. When the road drops down from the second ridge and Gladstone comes into view, its lights are clustered under low clouds whose bottoms have a faint lavender glow. It’s a sight as inviting as a featherbed to a tired man.

But Gladstone is not George Blackledge’s destination. It’s where he’ll start, since only from there can he find the way.

The city is mostly shut down for the night, though much of its neon still blinks and flickers and glows for businesses that won’t unlock their doors again for hours. Here and there a bar is open and maybe in one of them there’s a bartender who wouldn’t ask a man where his boots or his fingers are . . .

But George keeps the Hudson moving, and carefully within the speed limits. Who knows—the sheriff or a deputy might be waiting in that alley between Woolworth’s and the Red Trail Meat Market or behind the statue of the Hereford on the Keogh County Fairgrounds, waiting for someone who doesn’t think the traffic laws apply in the middle of the night. In his lawman days George would let such drivers pass unless they seemed on their way to or from misconduct. And what made him believe he could know such a thing? Perhaps from the frightened, desperate, or determined look of the man behind the wheel.

.
   
.
   
.

The last mile George drives with his lights off, the Hudson slowed to a pace little more than a man’s brisk walk. He’s
traveling by feel and memory now. The roadbed is unevenly distributed gravel, and when those stones no longer crunch under the tires or ping against the muffler, it means he has strayed into the soft dirt between the road and the ditch.

But then he sees enough, just enough. The fence-line. The broken gate hanging open. He eases the car into the ditch and shuts off the engine.

When he climbs out of the car, stubble and stones stab and dig into his stocking feet, but he keeps moving forward. To a man who has set aside his own scruples, a few weeds and rocks present no real obstacle.

Not a light burns in the Weboy house, but its looming shape is enough to steer by. Once George is in the yard, he pauses to be sure of his bearings. Of the cars parked haphazardly between the barn and the house, one is a blue Ford, and at the sight of it, George feels a small shiver of solace. Though the night sky is lightless, the house’s windows glint faintly. He counts windows until he can be sure—yes, in that frame stood the woman and her child.

George’s way is clear now, and he walks to the door. When he tries the knob, it turns easily. Strange, that thieves do not think to lock their doors . . .

D
ONNIE
W
EBOY WAKES GASPING
,
STARVING FOR AIR
, but when he tries to inhale, it feels as though he were breathing in cobwebs, cloth, dust, blood . . . Then he sees. Then he understands. The gun barrel presses hard against his temple.

Don’t make a sound, George Blackledge whispers. His bandaged hand—what’s left of it—is pressing down on Donnie’s nose and mouth. Or I’ll put a bullet in your brain. To make his point he cocks the revolver, and in the sleeping house that hammer click makes a sound like a small bone cracking.

Donnie tries to shake his head. Whether it’s to free his nose and mouth or to indicate his willingness to comply with George Blackledge’s command isn’t clear. But he makes no attempt to bring his hands out from the blankets, and though his eyes widen with fear and comprehension, he keeps still. George takes his hand away from Donnie’s face but keeps the revolver at his head. Donnie takes a deep silent breath.

It’s difficult to believe that the woman at Donnie’s side could sleep through this disturbance, but George has to reach across and shake her shoulder and say softly, Lorna. Wake up, Lorna.

Her slumber has been deep but because she’s a mother, when Lorna wakes she looks in the wrong direction, toward the corner of the bedroom where her son sleeps on his makeshift bed, a twin-size mattress on the floor.

Then she twists around and, like Margaret Blackledge only an hour earlier, Lorna sees George Blackledge standing over her bed.

Ssh. George takes the gun away from Donnie’s head and holds it up for her to see and to understand the situation and its gravity. Quiet, he says. Although the revolver’s nickel plating is chipped and worn away, it has enough shine left to glint in the dark room. He swings the gun back down so it can resume its long-barreled gaze at Donnie Weboy’s head.

George Blackledge leans closer to Lorna. Do you want to go back to Dalton? he asks. You and the boy? He doesn’t say the child’s name.

Lorna looks again to her sleeping son.

You have to decide, George says. Go or stay. It is exactly the choice, down to the very wording, that his wife presented to him not a week ago.

How long can a household’s slumber be expected to hold with a stranger in its midst? Won’t someone soon sense a breath that does not belong? The tread of a foot too heavy, too light, on a creaking board? Won’t a dream veer off its course and into danger?

Right now, Lorna.

Lorna, says Donnie.

George jabs the pistol to within an inch of Donnie’s eye, and he flinches and his shoulder twists upward as if it wanted to take the bullet.

Not you, George says to Donnie. You don’t say a goddamn word. This is up to her. She decides on her own.

Lorna is sitting up now and she’s looking not only to where her son sleeps but into every one of the room’s dark corners. I don’t know . . .

You know what the life will be, George says to her. Here or there, you know. This isn’t something you need to think on.

I’ll go.
I’ll go.
But when she says this she’s staring at the gun and perhaps she’s only making the choice that will allow her to side with the man who has the weapon.

George lowers the hammer on the revolver. Then pick up the boy and go, he says, permitting himself a quick glance toward the bedroom door. You know our car. It’s parked in the ditch at the bottom of the drive. The keys are in it. Get in and drive straight to Gladstone. Go to the hospital and ask for a nurse. Adeline Witt.

To the
hospital
?

That’s right. Adeline Witt. A nurse. At the hospital. That’s who you ask for. Mrs. Witt.

My things . . . Jimmy’s . . . I have to—

No. George shakes his head emphatically. You get out now. You don’t take a goddamn thing. You
go.
As quiet as you can out of the house and then once you’re out, you run like hell to the car. And Lorna—the front door. You go out the front door.

It’s not clear whether understanding or alarm moves Lorna, but now she climbs quickly out of bed. She goes to Jimmy’s bed and crouches next to her son. Without making any attempt to wake him first, she lifts him, and her fear and her mother’s strength allow her to rise up again with the boy clinging to her.

For the first five or six years of their lives, children are accustomed to sleeping in motion, rolled in carriages or rocked in cradles, patted or swayed in a parent’s embrace, carried off to crib or bed, their dreams as continuous as time itself. Jimmy’s eyes open but there’s no reason to believe that he sees this scene as it is. The faces, after all, are familiar. Here’s his mother, his grandfather . . . There’s Donnie . . .

And it’s Donnie who first speaks the boy’s name. Jimmy, he says out loud, half in greeting and half in appeal.

The word is no sooner spoken than George Blackledge jams his fingerless hand against Donnie’s mouth and brings the barrel of the revolver down on his skull. The
thock
is like a rock thrown against a hollow tree.

Not from you, whispers George. And strikes Donnie again. The sound of the second blow is muffled because the barrel skids off Donnie’s forehead and tears loose a flap of his scalp. Blood flows onto the pillowcase and in the dark room the blood is as black as shoe polish.

Donnie’s eyes remain open but he has lost his ability to recognize the moment he’s in. His lips make a breathy popping sound as if he’s trying to pronounce a word that begins with
b
or
p
but no syllable follows those soft plosives.

Jimmy has seen his grandfather’s attack. He sees the blood. But he’s four years old. He’s only a moment removed from dreaming. There’s no reason to think that he’ll remember this act. Not without a photograph or someone reminding him over the years of what he once witnessed on an October night.

The sudden violence hurries Lorna on her way but George stops her before she’s out the door.

Put on a pair of shoes, he says. The driveway is rocky.
And remember—the front door. George’s socks are dark with muck and perhaps blood. Though they are miles apart, husband and wife share an affliction, unbeknownst to the other.

Lorna opens the closet door and steps into a pair of high heels, which she no doubt wore during her day’s long shift. But the discomfort of a pair of shoes is nothing compared to George Blackledge’s frightful, cold fury, and she totters out of the bedroom and toward the stairs. In addition to her high heels, she’s wearing pajamas, the first sold for women in Gladstone’s Montgomery Ward.

Donnie has identified the warm wet flow of his own blood and is trying to press the pillow against his wound. This clumsy effort gives him the appearance of a man attempting to suffocate himself. George does nothing to help him but neither does he stop Donnie’s moans.

George leaves the bedroom, his footsteps a whispering shuffle on the wood floor, unlike the rapid
clock-clock-clock
of Lorna’s steps.