Testament (10 page)

The last word came out as a sob. He wiped his eyes, lifted Sarah into his arms as the sirens pulled up shrieking in front of the house, and started with her down the back stairs into the rain.

“I don’t want to leave,” Claire said behind him.

It was complicated, but he knew what she meant. She would go. She wasn’t saying she wouldn’t. But she didn’t want to.

“I know,” he said, looking once more at their house. “I don’t want to leave either.”

And then they were going off in the rain across the backyard while he heard someone pounding on the front door. Sarah was in his arms, and he gave her to Claire while he climbed the fence, and then he took her again while Claire climbed over. He moved cautiously through the next yard, down past the side of the house. Its lights were still off. He looked up and down the next street. Sarah was soaking wet, crying against his chest in his arms. His salt tears were mixing with the rain in his mouth. He ran awkwardly with her, crossing the street, Claire hurrying beside him, and when they went past the side of the house over there into the next backyard, as near as he could tell there was no one who had seen to follow them.

PART TWO

1

“Is that it, Daddy?”

“No, sweetheart. Our place is just around the bend up here.”

They were walking south along a dirt road parallel to the foothills, him and Claire and Sarah. To the left was low flat sweeping grassland. To the right were steep thickly wooded slopes of yellowed dogwood and aspen and poplar that rose up tier after tier to the evergreens and beyond them the snowcapped craggy mountains. The afternoon was bright and warm and pleasant walking. He reached up to touch the branches that hung down over the side of the road as he walked beneath them.

In the end he’d decided to go in and talk to the real-estate man by himself. A man, a woman, and a little girl were too easy to remember and identify. There was always the risk that the real-estate man would remember him alone, but there wasn’t any way around that, and in any case he had a beard now and he wasn’t using his own name anymore. He pretended he wanted a place to rent as a base for autumn hunting. That way he could pay the Realtor cash now and at the beginning of each month, and the guy wouldn’t think it unusual. There were just three places. He was ready to take the first one, but he didn’t want to seem too eager, so he went with the Realtor to the others and then back to the office where he gave him the money and signed the papers.

“It’s an exceptional place, Mr. Whittaker,” the Realtor had told him. “I can’t understand why it hasn’t been taken until now, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. Incidentally, what’s your pleasure?”

“Pardon me?”

“Hunting. What is it you like to hunt for?”

“Oh. Elk mostly. I used to try deer, but lately I’ve been wanting something bigger.”

“I know exactly what you mean. I have a friend who won’t settle for anything but moose, but there aren’t too many of them now and you need to put your name in for a few tags that are drawn from a lottery and he keeps losing.”

“Yeah, they’ll all be gone soon.”

Then he had walked out of town to the rock-filled hollow where Claire and Sarah waited, and they had bought some supplies and started along the road toward the cabin, and now five miles later they were rounding the bend, and there was a half-hidden wheel-rutted road going up through the trees, long dusty grass growing up between the ruts, and they took it. Thirty yards later the trees disappeared, and there was just a long windswept slope of grass on both sides, dotted here and there with rocks and sagebrush, and they stood there a moment smelling the fresh clean afternoon air, feeling the sun on their heads.

“That’s something we forgot,” he said. “Something for our heads. We spend much time bareheaded outdoors up here and we’re just begging for a sunstroke.”

“But where is it, Daddy? I don’t see it.”

“You will in a moment, sweetheart, and I’m pretty sure you’re going to like it.”

You’d better, he thought. Because this is it. The best we’re going to get.

Then they were on the move again, working harder because of the steep angle of the slope, out of breath, kicking up dust, him helping Sarah as they neared the top and Claire said suddenly, “Oh,” and he didn’t know how to take that, whether she was happy or disappointed or what.

“You like it?”

“I love it.”

And he was proud. It was on a level, back from the edge of the slope, hidden from the road below, a two-story cabin made of thick stones around the foundations and huge well-mortared logs above them and a porch and a well in front and even a little tower on top. There were windows on either side of the front door, each window subdivided into smaller panes of glass, and a shed to the left, and a path of stones, almost overgrown by the long grass, leading up to the front door, and Sarah was already running through the grass to the well, tugging at the lid, leaning over, looking down.

“Be careful, sweetheart,” Claire said.

“There’s water down here.”

“Sure there is,” he said. “And it’s been tested, and it’s all right to drink. The roof doesn’t leak. The fireplace is good. There’s a big old iron stove in the kitchen. We could live here all year and never miss a thing. You like it?” he asked Claire. “You really like it?”

She swung round to look down the slope of grass to the trees and the road and the rangeland stretching off. She held out her arms and looked up at the bright blue sky and turned back smiling to the house and said, “It’s fine. It’s going to be just fine.” And for the first time since Ethan had died, she held him.

Then she was breaking away, hurrying down the grass-grown stone path toward the house.

“The only thing I don’t like is those trees in back,” he called after her. “The slope here is perfect. It lets us see anybody coming up. But those trees. They give too much cover.”

But she wasn’t listening. She was already at the door, turning the knob, straining to get in. “I can’t get it open. It’s stuck.”

“Try this,” he said, coming up, showing her the key.

The door swung open, and the smell of must was overpowering as she slipped in, pausing a moment to look at the gray dusty sheets over the furniture and the leaves in the fireplace and the cobwebs in the corners, and then she was sliding back the curtains, opening the windows, letting the light in. She was heading for the room in back on the left when he remembered.

“Sarah. Where is she?”

She wasn’t by the well anymore.

He stepped off the porch and went to the side, and she had the door to the shed open, peering in.

“Daddy, there’s a funny kind of seat in here. With a hole in it.”

“Of course,” he said. “That’s the outhouse.”

“The what?”

“That’s where you sit and go to the bathroom.”

“I do?”

“Sure,” he said. “That’s the way they used to do it in the old days.”

“But what about when it’s snowy and cold?”

“You don’t sit there very long.”

He smiled, and once she started giggling, she couldn’t stop.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see what Mommy’s up to.”

She was finished with the room on the left and was already checking out the kitchen when they came in. The floor was smooth stone. There was a big stout wooden table in the middle, cupboards along one wall, a window over the dry sink, a massive eight-lidded cooking stove against another wall. She was rolling up her sleeves as she came back into the living room and started folding up the sheets, dust rising in thick musty clouds.

“Well?” he said.

“Well,” she answered. “I don’t know what you’ve got planned, but while I’m cleaning up this mess, you’re going to bring in some water to fill the heater and light it and then I’m going to have the world’s longest hottest bath. And one more thing.”

“What is it? Anything.”

“As soon as you’re done with the heater, why don’t you pour yourself a drink from the bottle you brought in that pack, sit down, and figure out what you want for supper.”

“Spaghetti,” Sarah said.

“Then that’s what it’ll be,” he told her.

It was in a can. It had to be because when he’d been there with the real-estate man he’d seen there was no refrigerator. How could there be? There wasn’t any electricity. There was an icebox for when the snow came and ice formed in the streams and they could store meat, but in the meantime he’d been careful to buy only cans, and he brought in wood that was stacked against the back of the house for the water heater and the stove, and they sat at the big wooden table that night, light from a coal-oil lantern in the middle, eating spaghetti and Spam with ketchup poured over everything and bread to sop up the sauce, and even Claire who didn’t like spaghetti from a can ate hungrily, and he was so hungry himself that looking at the steaming plateful, knowing it was still too hot, he couldn’t wait, tasting a big forkful, burning the roof of his mouth.

“Christ,” he said happily.

He finished it all before he remembered the bread, mopping the plate shiny.

Then they heated some water and washed the dishes and went into the living room, slumping onto two chairs and the sofa, him pouring another drink from the bottle, liking the good wood smell from the stove in the kitchen.

“Daddy, how long will we stay here?” Sarah asked, stretching out on the sofa.

“Oh, I don’t know. Through the winter I guess. Unless it gets too cold. I haven’t thought that far ahead. Why? Don’t you think you’re going to like it here?”

“No, I was just wondering when the snow comes if we’ll be able to go sledding down that hill out there.”

“You bet we will,” he said. “Don’t you worry. We’ll be able to do a lot of things.”

She struggled not to yawn.

“Right now I think you’d better go to bed.”

“I don’t want to. I want to stay out here with you.”

“We’d only keep you awake. Come on. You’ve got a big day ahead of you tomorrow. You’re going to help me cut down that long grass in front of the house.”

“I don’t want to. Go to bed I mean.”

“You’ll just be in the next room over there. We won’t be far from you. And you don’t need to worry about spending the night alone either. We’ll be coming in shortly to stay with you.”

He got up and walked over.

“Come on,” he said.

And she didn’t move but she didn’t resist either when he picked her up and carried her into the room. The bed was long and wide with a curved metal headstand and a thick quilt over it, and she didn’t have any pajamas but he told her to take her socks off at least and then he tucked her in, kissing her, walking over to the window to close it. He looked out, but he couldn’t see anything in the darkness.

“Daddy?”

He turned.

“Can I have a light in here?”

She was in under the covers, sunk down in the soft bed, peering over at him.

“Of course you can,” he said. “The place is strange to us all. There’s nothing wrong at all with wanting a light in here.”

He raised the top of the kerosene lamp on the table by the bed, striking a match, touching it to the wick, then lowering the top as the flame began to grow, adjusting the knob at the side until the light was yellow and dim.

“In the night, if you have to go out to the bathroom, wake me and I’ll go with you,” he said and leaned down to kiss her again. She nodded, and he went out, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him.

Claire was up and looking out the left front window toward the northeast.

“You can just see the lights from town,” she said.

It was more like one light, a kind of vague gentle glow far off out there he saw as he came up beside her. They stood there a moment in silence, and without thinking, he put his arm around her.

“It’s going to be all right,” he told himself.

“Sure it is,” she said.

But he couldn’t tell if she believed it or not.

She leaned close to him, the side of her breast against his chest, and he brushed aside her hair, kissing her on the back of the neck.

“What about Sarah? She’ll hear.”

“We’ll be quiet,” he said.

Later as he sat in the dark in the living room, staring out the window toward the far-off glow from the town in the night, he thought how if someone wanted to catch them off guard the best thing was to wait outside in the dark until they needed to go out to the bathroom or how if someone had come bursting in while they were making love on the floor they wouldn’t have had a chance.

2

“Have you got any horses for sale?”

“I might have. It depends,” the old man said.

“On what?”

“Oh, on a lot of things I suppose. Like what you need them for and how much you know about horses in the first place and how much you want to spend.”

He was standing on the hard sun-baked ground at the back of the ranch house, looking through the dirty screen door at the old man studying him. He’d been a long time deciding which ranch to go to, this one to the north near town or the other two to the south away from it. Just to be safe he had chosen the two to the south, and they had sent him to this place near town anyway. The house was warped and listing, windows dusty, dead weeds lying in the flower beds.

The old man opened the screen door and stepped outside, and for the first time he saw that the old man was chewing something. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to catch you at your lunch.”

“It’s all right. I was almost finished anyhow.”

He had on cowboy boots and faded jeans and a sweat-stained denim work shirt hanging loose over his belt. His shoulders were stooped and his skin was hanging slack under his chin, but his sleeves were rolled up and the muscles of his arms were hard and stark. “About these horses,” the old man said.

“I need them to pack gear into the mountains. I want to do some hunting.”

“How many?”

“Three. One to ride, the other two for packing.”

“You’re going up by yourself?”

“I’ve done it before.”

“Suit yourself. These horses aren’t like pigeons, you know. You get in trouble up there, they don’t come back with messages.”

He followed the old man toward the barn, its boards as parched and weathered as the house. The corral was in back of the barn, six horses, a water trough, a feed bin. He squinted at the horses as long as he could stand it, and then resting his eyes from the sun, glanced down at the scum on the water in the trough.