to the kid.
“This ain’t half,” White said. “I can figure that much.”
Gload levered the car in gear and pulled onto the highway west, the asphalt a ribbon of brass unspooling in the rearview mirror, wherein small birds feeding at the road edge rose like sea spume and tumbled shimmering in their slipstream.
“You were ready to settle for four and you get five,” Gload said. “What you might call a ‘handsome offer.’”
The kid regarded Gload’s profile, adamantine as those granite visages chiseled from the mountain a few miles’ drive south. He fanned the money in his hands—new stiff bills, undreamed-of fortune—and knew it was pointless to argue. As they sped past the array of strip malls and truck stops, he sat with his forehead against the side window. He said, “What a fucked-up town.”
By the time they got to Miles City the kid’s mood had brightened considerably. His head swiveled as they drove through town and he took note of the number of bars and of the garish rodeo posters in shop fronts of bucking and rearing horses and he goggled at teenage girls with books clamped to their chests and their long hair swaying down their backs. Suddenly he turned to Gload and said, “What’s the best hotel in this shithole?”
“Pioneer, I suppose. Used to be anyway.”
“Drop me off there.”
“It was on the other end of town. We passed it.”
The kid seemed not to hear. He sat with his face pressed to the window glass, patting his left breast pocket wherein the folded bills lay, and Gload shook his head. It would not be long, he knew, before the kid and money parted company. He slowed and glanced at his mirrors and U-turned the car in the wide avenue, cranking the wheel around with one finger.
“If I can’t get laid here,” the kid said, “I don’t have a hair on my ass.”
Having retrieved his small gym bag from the trunk, the kid swung open the passenger side door and leaning in made a gun of his thumb and forefinger, aimed it at the old man behind the wheel. He said, “Okay. I’ll catch you back on the home turf, pardner.” Gload bent down to watch him mount the hotel steps, swaggering atop three-inch riding heels with his jeans stuffed bronc rider style into his boot tops. He paused at the door to rake back his snarled hair and turn up his collar and he swept into the lobby like some kind of outland prince come to take the little town by storm. For all that, Gload thought, he was no more than a boy.
Some time later he stopped the car at a small creek which like an oasis in the bald prairieland along its course supported a stand of old cottonwoods. He walked through the tangled ditch weeds into the trees, the trunks gray and immense as menhirs. An incongruous crane labored up from the bracken along the muddy stream, towing its lean shadow through the heeling bluestem toward water rumored in the distance by a slash of green. Gload stood and relieved his swollen bladder against a tree and stared up into branches so high the ragged April scud seemed caught there like wisps of tapestry, a high circling bird caged in a wickerwork of pale spring bud. He stood for a long while, until the earth under his feet became as capricious as the deck of a ship. The line of song in his head was this, from when or where he could not remember: “Above Earth’s Lamentation.”
FOUR
They’d come for Gload in the late afternoon. He’d had time to put things in careful order and he sat for perhaps the last time on his chair, listening to the calls and flutterings of birds just arrived north and looking at the desolate faces of last year’s sunflowers at the orchard’s verge. He felt strangely at peace. He got up once and walked down the little orchard lane, bordered already by senseless weeds woven like basketry and he stared long across the sage where the river was. He kept his eyes there as he walked and soon they appeared, like wind-borne trash, rising and falling from view and appearing
“This ain’t half,” White said. “I can figure that much.”
Gload levered the car in gear and pulled onto the highway west, the asphalt a ribbon of brass unspooling in the rearview mirror, wherein small birds feeding at the road edge rose like sea spume and tumbled shimmering in their slipstream.
“You were ready to settle for four and you get five,” Gload said. “What you might call a ‘handsome offer.’”
The kid regarded Gload’s profile, adamantine as those granite visages chiseled from the mountain a few miles’ drive south. He fanned the money in his hands—new stiff bills, undreamed-of fortune—and knew it was pointless to argue. As they sped past the array of strip malls and truck stops, he sat with his forehead against the side window. He said, “What a fucked-up town.”
By the time they got to Miles City the kid’s mood had brightened considerably. His head swiveled as they drove through town and he took note of the number of bars and of the garish rodeo posters in shop fronts of bucking and rearing horses and he goggled at teenage girls with books clamped to their chests and their long hair swaying down their backs. Suddenly he turned to Gload and said, “What’s the best hotel in this shithole?”
“Pioneer, I suppose. Used to be anyway.”
“Drop me off there.”
“It was on the other end of town. We passed it.”
The kid seemed not to hear. He sat with his face pressed to the window glass, patting his left breast pocket wherein the folded bills lay, and Gload shook his head. It would not be long, he knew, before the kid and money parted company. He slowed and glanced at his mirrors and U-turned the car in the wide avenue, cranking the wheel around with one finger.
“If I can’t get laid here,” the kid said, “I don’t have a hair on my ass.”
Having retrieved his small gym bag from the trunk, the kid swung open the passenger side door and leaning in made a gun of his thumb and forefinger, aimed it at the old man behind the wheel. He said, “Okay. I’ll catch you back on the home turf, pardner.” Gload bent down to watch him mount the hotel steps, swaggering atop three-inch riding heels with his jeans stuffed bronc rider style into his boot tops. He paused at the door to rake back his snarled hair and turn up his collar and he swept into the lobby like some kind of outland prince come to take the little town by storm. For all that, Gload thought, he was no more than a boy.
Some time later he stopped the car at a small creek which like an oasis in the bald prairieland along its course supported a stand of old cottonwoods. He walked through the tangled ditch weeds into the trees, the trunks gray and immense as menhirs. An incongruous crane labored up from the bracken along the muddy stream, towing its lean shadow through the heeling bluestem toward water rumored in the distance by a slash of green. Gload stood and relieved his swollen bladder against a tree and stared up into branches so high the ragged April scud seemed caught there like wisps of tapestry, a high circling bird caged in a wickerwork of pale spring bud. He stood for a long while, until the earth under his feet became as capricious as the deck of a ship. The line of song in his head was this, from when or where he could not remember: “Above Earth’s Lamentation.”
FOUR
They’d come for Gload in the late afternoon. He’d had time to put things in careful order and he sat for perhaps the last time on his chair, listening to the calls and flutterings of birds just arrived north and looking at the desolate faces of last year’s sunflowers at the orchard’s verge. He felt strangely at peace. He got up once and walked down the little orchard lane, bordered already by senseless weeds woven like basketry and he stared long across the sage where the river was. He kept his eyes there as he walked and soon they appeared, like wind-borne trash, rising and falling from view and appearing
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