We Begin at the End(43)

*

Summer bled from Montana faster than it had in the Cape, first in small drips, then the deluge of shaded mornings, brooding dusk.

Duchess received a postcard from Walk, just a photo taken from the Cabrillo Highway. He wrote on the back in blue pen, his scrawl in shaking hand, so bad she almost could not read it.

I think of you both.

Walk.

She tacked it to the wall behind her bed.

She still did not speak to the old man, instead muttering to the gray horse. It became an exercise, she’d talk about the things she did not want to, Darke and Vincent, the time she fished vomit from her mother’s mouth with her fingers, the time she and Robin practiced the recovery position beneath the okame cherry at Little Brook.

Some nights she sat on the stairs and listened as Hal spoke to Walk on the telephone.

Robin’s coming along, loves the animals. He sleeps well. He eats well. That shrink, she said he’s doing better. Half hour each week, he doesn’t complain.

And then the change, the swing reaching its high and coming back down, middling the gains. She’s … she’s still here, Walk. She does her jobs and she doesn’t complain. Some days I lose her to the land, she crosses the barley and she’s just gone. I panicked, at first I ran down the lines, crossed the dirt and drove the truck around. I found her on her knees, there’s a spot by the wheat, away from the water and hidden. It’s hollowed out, a space I made for a barn but never needed. And she was there on her knees and I couldn’t see her face but I think she was praying.

She made sure not to go back to that place. She’d already scoped out a new one, a clearing in forest so thick she knew Hal would not find her again.

She looked back at the night when her mother died, and she thought maybe she had been in shock each day since. But the grief came now, slowly, each hour, little by little, catching her out when she needed to be strong.

Some days she screamed.

When she was deep, half hour from the farmhouse, from her brother and his ruddy cheeks as he helped dig the soil, she’d tilt her head back and scream to the clouds. The kind of scream that saw the gray straighten, head up in her field, long neck so graceful. When she was done she’d raise a hand to the horse, tell her go on, eat the grass.

At night, in the dark, they talked.

“Those cops,” Robin said.

“Yeah.”

“They thought I was lying to them.”

“That’s just the way cops look.”

“Walk doesn’t look like that.”

She didn’t argue. But whatever he was, the guy that came and filled their refrigerator and drove them to the movie theater, he was still a cop.

“How did it go today?” she said, same each week.

“She’s nice. She let me call her Clara. She’s got four cats and two dogs, imagine that.”

“Hasn’t found the right man. Did you talk about that night?”

“I couldn’t. It’s just … I try, but there’s nothing there at all. I just remember you reading to me, then sleep, then I think maybe I woke in Walk’s car.”

She leaned up on her elbow as he rolled to the flat of his back. “If you ever do remember hearing something you should tell me first. I’ll decide what we do about it. You can’t trust these cops now. Or Hal. We’ve only got each other.”

Each afternoon she fired the gun. Hal took her to the spot with the wide tree, Robin leading them now, unafraid. She still spoke only when she had to, and when she did she aimed for the gut, something about God or abandonment, but Hal took it different now, the barbs did not grip, the hook slipping harmlessly from his skin. She let him know she did not love him and never would, would never call him anything but his sanitary given name, and would think nothing about taking Robin and leaving him to die alone the second she was old enough.

His response was to teach her to drive.

The old truck bumping along wildly, the flattest acres saw her speed climb and Hal’s hands tighten on the seat. Behind them Robin sat in his booster, watching them, wearing his bicycle helmet and elbow pads because Hal worried she’d roll it. She got the hang of stick, not grinding out the gears so much, feeling the bite like he told her. Some days she got to sixty before he scolded her, when his eyes were on the sky like there was too much of the day now, waiting on first rain. A week in and she could bring the truck to a stop without Hal slamming hard into the dash, cursing for forgetting to belt himself in.

After, they’d walk back toward the house, Duchess holding Robin’s left hand, Hal, his right. Hal would tell her she did good and she would tell him he was a lousy teacher. He would say she handled the runs smoothly and she would say his truck was a piece of shit. He would promise to take her out the next day and she would say nothing to that, because, well, she liked to drive.

Some mornings she’d catch the old man watching Robin eat or watching him with the chickens or climbing on the harrow, and he’d get this look in his eyes that was part love and part regret. And those times she’d fight to hate him, a fight she’d won with ease when they’d arrived, but now a fight she was having to put more and more in to.

She still kept her clothes in a case, folded neat. Sometimes he’d do the laundry and she’d yell at him to leave their shit alone. She’d find their clothes hung in the closet and she’d take them down and return them to the case. He’d buy the wrong kind of toothpaste for Robin and she’d yell at him, the wrong kind of shampoo, the wrong brand of breakfast cereal. She’d yell so much her throat would hurt. Through it Robin would watch. Sometimes he’d ask for quiet and she’d give it, she’d walk the acres and curse at the dropping sun like a fucking mad girl.