The Hour of Lead (33 page)

When she returned to the blanket, Matt offered her a sandwich. Angel read her book. Luke glanced over. Angel waved, knowing it would embarrass him. The two of them remained close. He talked to her first when he was vexed. The girl was reading
The Catcher in the Rye
, a book Wendy purchased for her. They would argue about the meanings when she finished. Matt left the house when they talked books. It wasn't their intellect that disturbed him, it was their vigor.

Luke's team took its at bat then returned to the field. He was a strong boy, but his only other athletic asset was determination. He played harder than the other children. After practices, he would labor with only the street lamp to see by, swinging his bat the way his coach had instructed, or throwing a ball into the sky and tracking it through the light. The thwack of his mitt put the neighborhood to sleep nearly every night.

The coach turned him catcher because he played like every ball was hit to him anyway. This game, he had blocked a wild pitch and flagged two pop fouls. Wendy had held her breath while he took the steps to get under them. An error and he wouldn't sleep and neither would Matt. Luke would mope in his bed and Matt would fret over his moping.

Matt shifted on the blanket. Most fathers, if they were interested at all, hollered at their sons. It embarrassed the boys. Matt, though, had lost interest in games early on; after his father died work filled most his waking hours. Their son, though, took to balls as a toddler, and when the interest stuck, Matt sought out mitts and bats and practiced in the park with him. Wendy had never seen Matt coach him, though Luke would inquire if he was holding the bat or throwing the ball correctly. Matt only laughed. Wendy wondered what he found so funny.

“That there can be a wrong way to play anything,” Matt told her.

Luke came to bat again in the last inning. The score was tied. Matt closed his hands over one another. Angel dog-eared her page
and leaned into his shoulder. The first pitch was a ball, outside. The opposing team chattered in the field.

Luke stepped into the box and the pitcher delivered another pitch. The ball thumped the catcher's mitt and the umpire called it a strike.

Luke settled into a crouch and steadied his bat. The pitcher threw one in the same spot. Luke's eyes grew large at the same time the bat whacked the ball over the left fielder's head. Wendy watched him give chase, Luke lumbering past second. The fielder dropped the ball then retrieved it. He heaved it to the cut-off. Luke rounded third. The cut-off was their best player and he threw a strike to the catcher. The ball arrived at the same time Luke did. He slid and upended the catcher, which separated him from the ball, his mask, and one knee pad. They landed together on home plate. The umpire waved his arms and signaled safe.

Angel stood and screamed. Wendy's hands hurt from clapping. Matt, though, headed for the field. She thought he was going to congratulate Luke until she saw Angel cover her mouth with her hand. Luke stood over the base, a trickle of blood between his eyes—the catcher had crowned him with his mask and after stood, taunting him, Ardith's son. Luke swung his fist and the boy dropped to all fours. Ardith's husband hurried in from the bleachers, Wendy thought to retrieve his boy, but instead, he tackled Luke. Both of them skidded across the base. Luke rose first. The bat still lay on the infield grass. Luke took two steps for it before Matt met him.

“Bully,” Ardith shouted. Matt bent and hoisted Luke in both arms and hugged him there in the middle of the game. It was quiet, except for Luke's sobs, and Ardith and her husband's rants. Angel rose and went to them and Wendy followed. Matt turned the family toward the bench and began walking. Luke was heavier than Wendy, but he held to her like a breeze might take him off if it decided to.

“Your boy's no good, Lawson.” Ardith's husband still stood at home plate, his face red, his finger pointing.

Matt looked to the umpire, but he was just a high school boy in a mask and pad. He and his family continued the other direction. Ardith's husband followed. Matt collected Luke's cap. Ardith's husband circled them and swore. Luke shivered as if in a cold wind. Ardith's husband finally ran past what words could do and spat on Luke.

Matt was into the husband quicker than the man could lift his hands. They tumbled then rose together. Matt held the husband's throat. Ardith screamed and thumped Matt's ribs with a bat. Her husband attempted to box Matt's ears. Matt lifted him higher. The man was gasping. His face went white; his eyes closed and his limbs quit struggling.

“Matt,” Wendy screamed.

Matt threw the man ten feet into a chain link fence. Ardith gave up her bat for her husband. She lifted his head until he began breathing again. She looked at Wendy. Her mouth opened and she seemed to be working at a word, but it did not get past that.

At home, Luke retired to his bedroom and Matt followed. Wendy heard the bed groan with his weight. Angel perched on the mattress next to them. She had Luke's hand and stroked it softly. Blood pasted the boy's brow. Wendy hurried to the bathroom and wet a washrag and returned to Luke's doorway. Angel took the rag from her and began to dab his cut. Matt sat, looking confused, then he began to speak. “I recall hitting when I was coming up,” Matt said. “I don't remember if there were any reasons. I just know I did.”

His words were halting, and he paused between them, like he was hunting the next. “There's nothing wrong with it. If you've got cause. Like if it keeps another safe, but it's a waste of time otherwise. You had a right,” he said. “I'm not saying you didn't.”

He let loose of Luke's hand and touched the boy's chest. Silver light poured over them from the porch lamp outside. Matt glanced
up and recognized Wendy watching. He scooted to one side and patted the boy's bed to make a place for her. They waited for her to join them. They waited for her to join them as they had for years, all three of them. The floor was wood and her stocking feet slid, making her feel light, like she was a ghost of herself, the good one, that was doing the things she'd hoped she could do. She could hear their breathing, see the light play off their wet eyes. Below were her feet taking her into that undiscovered country that was her family.

The boy leaned forward and she hugged him, a mother and her child simple as that. To know their sounds so well seemed a gift she had left unwrapped.

37

I
N
J
ANUARY
1954,
A GENERATOR
in Powerhouse Number Two took on a wobble smaller than a person would notice. The engineers had installed sensors and alarms to monitor such problems, but a power surge no one noticed blew them. Early June it suddenly shook like a failing top. Vibrations rattled the entire dam's structure until the generator shaft snapped and the generator wedged askew in the penstock. Water flooded the powerhouse. Insulators exploded and anyone a half-mile or closer with hair looked like he had suddenly been put upside down. Alarms clanged throughout the surrounding towns and volunteer fire crews trundled the highway toward the disaster. The remaining safety measures held, however, and within a week the powerhouse was pumped dry and the turbine stoppered. The concrete, though compromised, held, aside from a black trickle seeping from the powerhouse wall.

The bigwigs took a lesson from the Dutch Boy, though. August, when the river flow was weakest, they drew down the reservoir to
the original banks for repairs. Matt was not required for the work and he found himself with a week's vacation. At the children's urging, he and Wendy drove them to the site where they grew up.

Miles Road descended from the wheat and scablands into a series of canyons cut by creeks that emptied into the river. Inside the car, the radio played news and advertisements. The windows were open to battle the heat, and the air's hum halted any conversation. They were, instead, pressed by their own thoughts into reverie or nostalgia or anticipation of both or neither as the dry, yellow country passed beside them.

The road followed a wide bluff and the river appeared and disappeared behind the outcroppings, water flashing like coins in the light. When they broke finally into the bottom country, Matt felt first disappointment. The river appeared to have simply shrunk; the current throttled by other dams, upriver, that Canada had constructed in the last twenty years, but moreover, it simply appeared too small for its channel. On each side a quarter mile above the old bank grey mud cracked in the sun. Scattered stumps marked the courses of creeks that once more held aimless trickles. Depressions held standing water too stagnant for the ducks to light or idle. The white sun beat through the cars' front window and bleached all that was before him the color of bone.

Wendy's hand touched his. “Look,” she said.

The road had put them a half mile above Peach. Rectangular and square foundations lined former streets, creating a strange geometry in a place that appeared otherwise without lines, straight or otherwise.

“There.” Wendy pointed. “The store was there.”

The kids peered through the window. Matt slowed the car and pulled out when a wide shoulder permitted. Up the asphalt he recognized others doing the same. Twenty cars, he counted, parents,
grandparents, and children following their extended arms and pointing fingers. His own did the same as Wendy described streets where she had lived and foundations that held the homes of her friends and her father's customers. Matt was impressed with her memory. He had willed himself to discard those years. It seemed chore enough to steer each day across the rails; now, gazing over the vessel that held those years, he wondered if perhaps his fears had multiplied the labor required and subtracted the pleasure he might have taken otherwise. The notion depressed him further.

“Where are my grandpa and grandma from down there?” Luke asked.

Wendy remained quiet awhile. Matt wanted to hear her answer. “Your grandpa is dead. Your grandmother is in Wilbur.”

“The town?”

Wendy nodded.

“It's so close. Why doesn't she come see us?”

“She hasn't been invited,” Wendy said.

Matt chuckled at that.

“How about on your side?” Angel asked.

“My father passed when I was little.”

“How did he die?” Luke asked.

“In a bad storm. Him and my twin brother both.”

“Were you somewhere else?”

“No,” Wendy said. “He was in the storm, too.”

“But he lived,” Luke said.

Wendy nodded. “He did.”

They stayed quiet awhile, then returned to the car. The new road traveled near the school site, which was on high enough ground to have survived the reservoir and instead collapsed upon itself through neglect. They walked together past the foundation to the bluff. Matt directed them to the ranch and the graves next to its foundation.

“You can't leave them flowers on Decoration Day?” Luke asked.

“I don't need to,” Matt told him. “Your mother planted rose bushes there. They had flowers until winter every day.”

“You've known each other that long?” Angel asked.

“You think we just met and had you?” Wendy asked.

They chuckled a little.

“Do we have a grandmother down there, too?” Angel asked.

Matt shook his head. “She moved to the coast. She'd be past eighty if she is still among us.”

“Does she not speak to you?” Angel asked.

“No, she doesn't, but don't dig into to it. Like most holes, there's just more of the same. It's not her fault nor mine, or maybe both ours, but blame is beside the point. I hope she's comfortable and I'd wager she'd like the same for me.” He went on. “None of this matters. I'm not sorry we come, but it's you all in the here and now that counts,” he said.

“Amen,” Wendy said.

“We're like a country with no history,” Luke decided.

“Makes less to study, though, doesn't it?” Matt said.

They returned through the long twilight, quiet once more, though none dwelling on their wounds present or past. Luke fell asleep and Wendy found a station with bobby sox music for Angel to hum with. They passed again through Creston and Wilbur and descended into the coulee. Wendy patted his thigh.

“My old workhorse,” she said.

38

T
HE CHILDREN GREETED
M
ATT'S RETURN
from work each late afternoon as great sport. He had assigned Luke the lunchbox. The boy hurried off the lid for whatever treat Matt had for him. Angel traded him a quart jar of ice water for his coffee and he stood and drank it all, then bent and smooched Wendy on the cheek before going inside to clean up.

It was these moments Wendy began to recall during her walks: the grass and the cool of the sprinklers and the children and Matt and her within it. It appeared to her that when she subtracted the weight to press meaning from days the more she was inclined to enjoy them, and for some time her days had turned lighter and easier to bear. She realized she was in some ways growing young again, attending to what existed rather than what used to or might not. Once, she had considered such a perspective the capitulation that turned people bitter, but recently she determined the opposite might be the case.