Читать книгу Sky Bridge - Laura Pritchett - Страница 7

ONE

It’s true: Every house has a few places that reach out and hold you. Standing spots, Kay calls them, and she says every home has one or two. That’s why I always find myself leaning against the frame of the kitchen door and looking east, toward the alfalfa field that comes up a stone’s throw from our door. In the summer, at least, that’s where I stand, sometimes with my one-cigarette-of-the-day, looking out over the leafy alfalfa in its various stages of growing. Besides that green field and the stretch of blue sky, the only other thing in view is the circle of buildings and cottonwoods that make up Baxter’s place in the distance. And the rutted dirt road that runs along the edge of the alfalfa, the one that connects our two houses.

Up close is the shed and burn barrel and Kay’s car that doesn’t run any more, and Kay’s other car that hasn’t run in so long that yellow-flowered weeds are growing out of it. There’s a concrete birdbath that we once used for cigarette butts, but it fell over in a windstorm a year or so ago and nobody’s picked it up yet. I’m quitting anyway and Kay mostly does her smoking over at Baxter’s, so now it makes a nice little step for me to put my foot on.

Next to the birdbath is a line of wilty-looking yellow marigolds. Who knows why I put them in. I think it was my attempt to make this place seem a little more—I don’t know, hospitable or something. I planted them when Tess was at the hospital in Lamar giving birth. I also put up blue streamers because all along we’d thought the baby was going to be a boy and I’d bought the roll in advance. But the tagboard sign I did in pink letters: WELCOME HOME TESS AND BABY AMBER!

The sign and streamers are in the burn barrel now—I stuffed them in there yesterday, after Tess drove off. If I turn a bit, I can see the streamers hanging over the edge of the black, sooty can. Every once in a while a breeze lifts them and they look like magical arms waving goodbye.

“Maybe I should have saved those for your scrapbook,” I say to Amber.

She blinks her hazy eyes at that and keeps staring at my white T-shirt like it’s the most interesting thing she ever saw. What gets me about her is that she clings to me like a tiny monkey. She’s got her tummy to mine, and her little fingers clutch onto my shirt and her little legs curl against my belly. It almost seems like if I let go—just dropped the hand that’s cupped around her tiny diaper—she’d stay attached to me somehow.

I flick the cigarette butt out at the gravel and rub Amber’s back up and down, up and down. “Well, what the hell. We’ll be fine, won’t we? Basically, I can’t be any worse than Kay, and I guess I turned out all right, even with a mother like that.” I’m tilting my head down, saying this to her blond hair.

Blond hair. Ridiculous. All along, I thought Amber was a boy and I figured he’d look like us. I was hoping he’d take after Tess especially, with her straight dark hair, tan skin, tall body—Tess who doesn’t need glasses, who’s got straight teeth and a true smile. Not like me with my glasses and crooked teeth and dull brown eyes and stupid thick, wavy hair—hair that sounds like a horse’s mane when I brush it.

Amber, though, is fair, just like her father, Simon. She’s got blue eyes and pale blotchy skin, and like her father she seems too wispy and empty to be real. That’s how every day she’ll be reminding me: Libby, things just don’t turn out like you think they will. Daydream if you want, but expect the opposite to come true. And don’t go feeling sorry for your heart when it registers the difference.

“Libby! You deaf or what? Damn.” Kay’s riding up on her horse, and only stupid Kay would be riding a horse. Every other ranch-hand around here drives a four-wheeler but no, not Kay, because Kay is Kay, and Kay says it’ll be a cold day in hell when she sits on anything as noisy and ugly as that.

“Libby, I’ve been hollering. Didn’t you hear me?” She reins the horse in. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Are you crying?”

“No.”

“Because there’s no use in crying.”

“That’s good, because I’m not crying.”

“There isn’t any point.”

There isn’t any point in talking to her, either, so I stare off into the sky behind her.

She squints at me and sighs. Then she takes off her sunglasses and her beat-up fishing hat and slouches down on the horse like I’ve worn her out. She sits there a while, staring at me with that look that means that I’m a sorry excuse for a human and especially for a daughter. I look back. It’s her hair that makes her eyes look so green, because it’s more white than brown now, and she’s got it back in her usual ponytail, low down at the base of her neck, and the wisps hanging around her face are bright white, and I wonder if she knows how beautiful she is—or could be if she didn’t look so continually pissed off. It’s not just her face, it’s her whole body: ready to attack. She’s wearing a maroon T-shirt covered with bleach circles, and her Wranglers are splattered with manure, and even though she’s slouched down it looks like she’s going to leap up and have it out with the world.

After she’s done staring at me, she puts her hat and sunglasses back on. “Come on over. Baxter decided to work cows after all. We need your help.”

I tilt my head toward Amber.

“Good god. Libby, you’re not the one who gave birth. People have been carrying on with their lives with babies since the beginning of time.” Then she adds, “We’ll put her in some shady spot.”

The horse is dancing all over the place, and Kay jerks back on the reins so much that Luz rears back a bit. When she gets the horse quieted down, she says, “She doing all right?”

I shrug.

“Well, that kid’ll get her days and nights straightened out soon enough, then you’ll get some sleep. Luz, you barn-sour old thing, damn, cut it out!” Kay turns the horse in tight circles, fighting the antsy of the horse and the horse fighting back. Kay wins, and finally the horse stands quiet, flaring her nostrils but holding still.

“Mom, I can’t take a newborn baby out with a bunch of cows.”

“You sure as hell can. Go inside and put on some shoes and get Amber a sunbonnet—you keep a hat on that kid—and get over to Baxter’s.”

I don’t say anything at all to that, but still she throws in, “Quit being such a snot.” Then, “Anyway, we’ve got the cows nearly done. Just help with the calves, just the record keeping. You can hold Amber on your lap. Or she can sleep in her car seat. Whatever, just hurry up.”

Well, that’s what I imagined anyway—that I’d be like one of those women in Africa, like you see in magazines, with a baby strapped to me and the two of us doing everything together. So after Kay kicks Luz into a trot, I get us ready and drive over to Baxter’s. This is where Kay has been working as a ranch hand since we moved here, which was right after I was born, and which is why we get free rent in the old, falling-apart brown house that sits on the edge of Baxter’s land, at the corner of his alfalfa field.

I find Kay and Baxter by the corrals, both leaning against the chute and talking over the head of some tame-looking cow that’s standing there, reaching her tongue into one nostril and then into the other. I can’t get over that, how funny cows look licking out their noses. It makes me love them, and that’s love for you—one little detail and your heart turns tender.

I haul Amber and her clunky car seat over to Baxter and Kay.

“Hey, little baby,” says Baxter, reaching down with a stubby finger to touch her nose. “Look at you, you wrinkly sweet thing, you were up all night, your grandma says. Now that ain’t no good. You be a good sleeper for your new ma, how about?” Amber flails her arm and watches all these words coming at her. Her right eye is squished down a bit, so it looks like she’s attempting a wink, or maybe like she’s already being sarcastic and making a face like I do when I’m thinking, As if, or, Yeah, right.

“Pretty as can be,” Baxter says, backing up from her and looking at me.

I snort. That’s a bit of a lie and we both know it. “She looks like a blond lizard, don’t she?”

Baxter tilts his head, considering, and scratches at his white hair, shaved so close it looks like bristles. He’s got a tan face and green eyes, even lighter than Kay’s, and even today, even working cattle, he’s got on clean jeans and a soft blue western shirt with those silver snap buttons, and that’s why I like him, I guess, because he always looks tidy and put together.

“Naw,” he says. “She looks like an angel. You look like an angel, smiling like that. Like a proud mother.”

“Baxter, she doesn’t look nothing of the sort. She looks like a tired mother, scared shitless. Put her here, Libby.” Kay points to a little nook in the corral in between the chute and a water tank. “You have to be at work at four?”

I nod yes to the four o’clock part, no to the dirt in the corral. “She’ll get kicked there.”

“No cow’s gonna get past me into this corner.” Then she sighs. “Please don’t argue. Please try not to be such a brat. Please just do what I say for once.”

I set Amber down. Kay scowls at me, I scowl back.

Baxter watches us and then says, “She’ll be the youngest helper I’ve ever had. She’ll grow up tough. Probably spend a lifetime giving her guardian angel gray hairs.”

Kay thrusts the record-keeping book at me and says, “Let’s get busy.”

Baxter ignores her, though. “When my brother went to war, the Second World War, I asked my guardian angel to follow him. Promised I’d take extra special care of myself. That’s why my brother made it back, you see. He had two beautiful ladies watching out for him. And look here, now I do!” He spreads his arms out toward me and Kay. “No! I got three!” This time he’s raising his eyebrows at Amber and he’s got a big delighted smile on his face.

What can I do except just roll my eyes at that, because that’s Baxter for you, crazy for sure, but in a too cheerful, hokey sort of way, which is the opposite of Kay’s sort of crazy. Most days I can’t take the either of them.

“Libby, cow number is 56-X. Write it down,” Kay says.

I move the syringes and bottles that are sitting on the edge of the stock tank so there’s room for me to sit down. I push my glasses up, open the record-keeping book, and take the pen from the edge, where it’s jammed in those rows of metal circles. I glance at the writing above to remind myself what it is I’m supposed to be writing down: cow number, sex, sire, vaccinations. Baxter needs these records so he can keep track of everything, even though he says the drought’s gonna cause him to sell off the herd anyway, and pretty soon there’s gonna be nothing left for him to record. In the notebook, he keeps a line called Miscellaneous Notes, which is my favorite thing to read, because it’s here that Baxter keeps track of things like who he’s treated for foot rot, who got a rattlesnake bite, what sort of coloring the calves from such-and-such a bull have, or even stuff like, “This cow looks downright sad,” or “Prone to mastitis,” or “Hooliganish,” or “Good mama.”

The notes I leave for him; the rest I’m in charge of and so I get busy writing. Maybe this isn’t the most exciting way to be spending a morning, but Derek’s at work, Tess is suddenly gone, and standing at home with the baby was no good, so I guess it’s better than nothing.

Baxter says, “Live so hard that you give your guardian angel gray hair, that’s how I see it. I like to imagine mine sometimes, blond hair streaked with gray, shaking her head at me and wishing she’d gotten assigned to someone else.”

Kay gives a shot of 7-Way and dusts for mites, and Baxter punches a fly tag in the cow’s ear and rubs some ointment on a ringworm circle. As he works, he leans toward me and talks. “That’s what my mama always said. ‘Child,’ she’d say, ‘Your guardian angel must be exhausted by now. I know I am.’”

I try to give Baxter a real smile, because he deserves that at least, and when he’s satisfied that I’ve been listening he and Kay get to work. For a long time there’s nothing but numbers being voiced into the air, flies buzzing, cows thrashing against the chute. One of Baxter’s peacocks comes walking in the corral, his tail floating out behind him, and Baxter’s donkey he-haws from somewhere far off. I think Baxter might have too much time on his hands; this place is always filled up with weird animals and it basically feels like a small zoo in the middle of nowhere.

When I’m not writing, I watch Amber. She’s just a face, poking out of a blanket and mostly covered in a bonnet. She’s sleeping and her mouth is in the shape of a little O and I hope she won’t grow up ugly and stupid like me. And maybe that blond hair will fall out and grow in dark—that’s what I’m hoping for. But I’d like it if her eyes stayed blue, even though the nurse at the hospital said they’d probably change.

I try to catch the feeling going on inside me. Because catching feelings is something I try to do. I get real quiet and find what I’m feeling and then feel it. Sometimes it’s like, Fuck this!, and I let the zigzag anger crash through my whole body, even in my pelvis and feet and behind my eyeballs, and I feel like I’m going to fly apart. And sometimes it’s the opposite and I think I’m going to sink so deep into myself, like I’m empty, and I start to collapse into this nowhere space that just goes on and on and on. But this time I’m watching a new baby girl asleep, a red face and a white blanket, and the problem is I can’t tell what I feel. I want it to be a Yes, yes, yes! and a Love, love, love! but it’s not. But neither is it Oh shit, shit, shit! or Please no, please. Whatever it is, is darting around so fast that I can’t catch it, I’m just not fast enough.

“Goddamnit, Baxter, hurry up here,” Kay says.

“Guardian angels,” Baxter says. “Pay attention to them.”

“She’s not listening to you,” Kay says. “So will you please give this cow her shot?”

I turn and look at Baxter and wait until he’s pinched the skin on the cow’s shoulder and stuck in the needle. “Baxter,” I say. “Get serious. You don’t really believe in guardian angels. You don’t believe in that stuff.”

I see a half smile flash across Kay’s face, because she’s always wondering too if Baxter is as dopey as he sounds or if he just wants to believe all the happy jabber that comes out of his mouth. It’s a fact of life: It really bothers people when somebody is just too damn cheery; pretty soon you’ve got to wonder about the depth of their thoughts.

“Naw,” Baxter says after a while, his face falling a little. “But I used to. And I wish I did, because I sure could use one right about now.” His body pauses for a second, and then his eyes light up as usual. “And so could you. And so could that baby.”

“And so could Tess,” Kay says.

“And so could Tess,” Baxter agrees. He’s watching Kay walk across the corral with a whip in her hand, ready to chase in the last cow that’s backed out of the chute and is standing by herself in a corner. Baxter’s amused because of what Kay’s mumbling, which is her usual rant about Baxter’s damn corral system and he’s such a cheapskate, it wouldn’t take much to fix it up so things could run smoothly for a change and why’s she always dealing with idiots? Everybody’s pulling her into stupid situations and what the hell did she do to deserve to be surrounded by people without a glimmer of sense?

“Now, now,” Baxter says to me, “Now, now, now. Kay’s got it made and she knows it.” He means that his cows are downright famous for being so calm and that Kay is lucky to be working with such a herd. There’s nobody who loves his cows like Baxter. Everybody wonders why they’re so cooperative and easygoing, and Baxter says it’s an extension of his own calm disposition. That’s how I learned that word, disposition. He’s so darn proud of those cows, and even though he only rounds them up a few times each year he calls lots of them by name.

Kay finally catches this rare ornery cow and she and Baxter prod it forward, through the alley, and Kay twists the cow’s tail and Baxter pounds her on the butt until she steps into the squeeze chute, where they catch her head. The cow stands pretty good after that, getting her shots and tags, though her eyes are rolling backward a bit and she looks not bitchy-mean, like Kay is saying, but downright scared.

Now the cows are done and it’s time for the calves, and while I’m waiting for Baxter and Kay to bring them in, I try some quick sketches in the back of Baxter’s book. First the corral fences from far away, and then a close-up, one weathered fencepost, and I try to capture the way the wood looks with cross-hatching. Then I draw Baxter’s old white farmhouse, and then the eyes of a cow, and then Amber in her car seat, but none of these are good so I tear the pages out and crunch them up and jam them in the pocket of my jeans.

Finally the calves are in, and, as Kay likes to say, calves are a different experience altogether. They twist and back out of the chute, their legs get stuck between bars, and they snort and bawl and scramble out of everyplace they get put. Plus they have to go through so much. Ear tagging isn’t so bad. But if they’re not polled, they got to be dehorned, and right as they’re coping with the pain of that, they’re getting their shots. Then comes the worst part for the young bulls that Baxter don’t want as bulls, and they’ve got some real thrashing to do.

Quite a few of the calves are jammed in one of the corrals and most are pretty big, though a few look new and flimsy and teetery . Kay flicks the whip in the air above the whole mess of them, moving them into the alley. When she gets one group in, she jams a manure-stained fencepost behind the last one’s butt to keep them all from backing out. Then she pats the first one on the rump, trying to make it walk forward, but this bugger is going sideways and backward and Kay’s cussing and I duck my head to hide my smile because it’s nice to see Kay suffer now and then. Baxter’s not helping her either, he’s just leaning against the fence post and watching, a little amused too.

“Libby,” he says. “You’re pretty quiet. You okay?”

I shrug at that.

“Though you never do. Talk much. Look at that baby. All yours! You lucky thing, Tess doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

I’m thinking, I do talk. But I’ve just learned who it’s worth saying something to and who it’s not. And the truth is, anyway, that my mind is flipping back and forth between being dead and screaming at me because what was I thinking, anyway? And I think I better keep myself quiet because it seems like if I tried to say anything I’d just blow apart.

“She’s waking up.” Baxter nods at Amber over the syringe he’s filling up from a brown bottle and then mumbles something about the right number of cc’s.

“I’ll get her a bottle,” I say.

“You will not,” Kay says. “Wait till she cries. You need to stretch out her feeding times. She could go three or four hours. This every half-hour in the middle of the night is ridiculous. Just let her be. And if you hold her every second, you’re never going to be able to put that kid down. I’m telling you, you’re spoiling her.”

“She’s lonely.”

“She’s not lonely. She’s figuring out the world. Leave her be.”

Baxter clears his throat. “Libby, Libby, Libby. Listen here. You shouldn’t go and lose the first thing that makes you smile each day. You hear me? Don’t go and lose the first thing that makes you smile.”

“Okay, Baxter. You’ve told me that a time or two.”

“Which means, you got to pause and think about what it is that makes you smile.”

“All right.”

“I haven’t smiled yet today,” Kay says. “I don’t think I will. I guess I got nothing worth keeping. Are you going to help me here or what?”

Baxter doesn’t move. He says to me in a real quiet voice, “Adeline’s what made me smile. When I woke, I was thinking of her and smiling.” I don’t say anything, but he says what’s on my mind for me. “But I went and lost her anyway, didn’t I?”

I wish I had words for things. Other people do, probably. But I’ve never been able to tell Baxter how sorry I am that his wife died, that I miss her too, that she made the best frog’s-eye salad. Which scared me when I was a kid, till she told me it was made out of tiny pastas and whipped cream and no frogs were involved. When I was little, I used to wish that Adeline was my mom because she seemed warm and soft and calm, like she didn’t have that need to hurt anybody, but mostly, I guess, because she seemed to actually like me. I never said anything about this to Baxter, and I can’t now either. Stupid me, because this is my chance to say something if I only could think of it. Instead, I shrug and stare at Amber, who is staring at the air in front of her.

“I’ve been thinking of selling this place,” Baxter says.

I look up, surprised, and I see that he’s watching me, waiting for my reaction and nodding, like, Yeah, I knew that’d get her.

“That decided it, though—remembering my ma saying, ‘Don’t go losing the first thing that makes you smile.’ This place makes me too happy. I lost too much already. I’ll stick it out for a bit longer. I’m getting old, though. I’m getting old.”

“You’re not old, Baxter.”

“Plus, a person’s just got to rise to the occasion.” He’s always saying that, but he especially started up with that particular phrase right after Adeline died. Kay’d been worried for a bit, because for a while none of the bills were getting paid and the place was starting to fall apart. Kay had said that everyone needs a wife, including wives, and when you don’t have that extra helper all hell breaks loose. But Baxter figured out how the bills got paid and the books got kept, and now it seems he’s adjusted to being alone and I guess he rose to the occasion after all. “You do that, too, Libby,” he says to me now. “Rise to the occasion.”

“Sure,” I say.

“And as long as I got Kay, this place’ll run for a bit longer.” He says it in a whisper, though, because Kay’s coming up the alley with a calf. He winks at me, like this is a secret we should keep, and that’s another thing about Baxter, he’s always trying to make something special or secret when it’s not.

A calf bawls, wanting his mama. The mama bellows back. Flies are landing all over me and, Jesus, it’s like a million degrees out here.

Amber’s staring up toward the sky. I should get her picture taken by a real photographer. Probably she needs a diaper change. I gotta move out of here. I gotta get some money. I wonder what Derek’s doing right now at the rig. I wonder where Tess is, because she sure didn’t tell me where she was heading when she drove off yesterday. I wonder if Amber is getting too much sun, because the doctor said no sunscreen till she’s six months and that I was going to have to work hard at keeping a baby out of the sun in eastern Colorado. I wonder when my heart is going to quit hurting for Tess, and I wonder when I’m going to start feeling wonderful for Amber. I wonder how, exactly, I ended up here, because not in a million daydreams did I ever imagine this.

Last fall, Tess said to me, “Libby? You want to know something funny?” She was ready for school, in her Roper jeans and boots, with her hair curled and her dark eyes made up. It was one of her country-dress days. Other days she dressed up artsy, or scootery, as she called it, with her skirt with pleats at the bottom. She cared about that sort of thing and it drove her insane that I was pretty much a fan of jeans and baggy T-shirts. But anyway, this was one of her country days, and she said, “Lib, I have the funniest thing to tell you. You want to hear something really funny?”

“Sure.” We were leaning against Kay’s truck, and I remember it being warm from the sun, even though the day was cold. The snow was falling in little lazy circles, but neither of us had put a coat on. We were hugging ourselves with sweatered arms, waiting for Kay to come out of the house so she could drive Tess to school and drop me off at the store.

Tess was doing a little bounce number on her feet to get warm and she bounced up and down and she said, “I’m pregnant.”

I think maybe I laughed, because she had said it was supposed to be funny, and also because it was surprising, and also because I didn’t believe her. Then I said, “What?”

She pressed her lips together, blending in the pink lipstick. “I’m pregnant.”

I looked from her face to her belly, where her sweater met the fabric of blue jeans. Her tummy was tiny, as always, and the sliver of it I could see was as tan and muscular as ever. “You’re not pregnant,” I said.

“I am.”

“That’s very funny.”

She rubbed at her nose and looked away from me. “It’s true. We weren’t careful. Don’t freak out. It happens. You know, it just happens. I don’t want to ask him to drive me.”

“Who?”

“Simon. I don’t want him, I want you. To drive me to Denver. Or Pueblo, if they do them there. I’ve got the money, I’ll figure things out. But I want you to drive me.”

“But Tess—”

“I’ve already thought about everything.” She tipped her head up toward the sun and closed her eyes. “I wish I could go back in time. This is the first time I realized what people mean when they want to go back. You understand? I wish I could redo that instant. You remember what that health teacher always said? A moment of pleasure, a lifetime of pain. Only it wasn’t even a moment of pleasure.”

“Tess?”

“He wasn’t worth it. The sex wasn’t worth it. Of course it wasn’t. At least I’m eighteen now, because otherwise everything would be more complicated. How come you never warned me?”

“What?”

“Warned me that just a moment could fuck up so much?” She looked at me and smiled. “I’m just teasing, Libby. Don’t look so surprised. It wasn’t your job to warn me, even if you are my big sister and all. Just joking.”

I was looking at the icicles hanging from the house. They were dripping, and the drips made little plops and dings as they hit the stuff below: a hubcap, an empty five-gallon bucket, the fallen-down birdbath. The ground was muddy and filled with our footprints. The cement pad outside the door had wedges of manure from when Kay scraped her boots on the edge before walking in.

All of a sudden, the icicles quit dripping, like it had gotten cold enough to freeze them up again. I said, “Tess, are you sure?”

“The line was blue, Libby . Both times.”

“No, I mean, that you want an abortion?”

“No, I mean, that you want an abortion?”

“I don’t like that word so much. There needs to be a different word.” She looked at me sideways, squinting her eyes because of the flying snow, which was picking up. “Libby, please?”

A few geese flew above us, honking. Pigs were slamming at their feeder. The phone was ringing inside, which meant Kay would be a bit longer.

I asked her, “Please what?”

She said, “Please help me.”

The sky was an enormous arc of gray-white, like dull metal. White snow spun by and everything got blurry and silenced. The world was hushed, just like the way things quiet down before something big bursts into the air.