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Wyoming, Spring 1980
Tuesday, 13th May
In the spring, in the evening, while the killdeers that had just returned flew calling out ahead into the coming dark, a woman and a man walked out across the muddy yard toward the sad beginnings of a two-track road whose ruts led off between the hawthorns bristling tight by the edge of the meadows and the cottonwoods along the creek bottom below. It was growing colder: Those earthy odors, soft, fresh, organic hints of springtime, which had been released by the warmth of that afternoon's sun, were being locked away again beneath the freeze winter would use right on into next month to reclaim the season each night. But there were buttercups blooming between the snowdrifts in the bottoms of the draws; green grass already was sprouted next to the buildings' foundations on the south sides. And there were only a few cows left, held prisoner still inside the corral fences, those cows all sprawled together on a knob of high ground where the soil was mostly gravel and stone that let the water sink away so the mud was not quite as deep. They lay groaning, gasping, huge with calf; but they chewed their cuds steadily, rolling their wads and rumbling belches, content, because someone at last had found time to feed them.
The man stopped once to send home the dog, yelled at it--screamed. But the dog ignored him like he didn't exist, padded on past, until the woman spoke once softly to send it slinking back. The man glared after it, hands on hips. Then he turned, and saw how she'd gone on without him; so he hurried, stumbling over the freezing ruts that crisscrossed the yard, intent only upon staying close enough to speak above the roar of the risingcreek.
"Are you cold?"
Karen said, "Not like you think."
There was still light left on the horizon west, though not enough for him to use to tell a shadow from the real thing, that light up there drawing his eyes and then making him blind when he tried to follow her into the tunnel the road made going away beneath the trees. The birds came back, flying into the light, calling, "deer, killdeer," as they came and went. But when he swung to stare up for them he could not find them. And when he turned back and saw her waiting, all he was given to use to try to fathom her mood was the white oval of her face floating framed by her dark hair and the upturned collar of her coat.
Frank said, "If I could really see what I'm doing, I guess I'd know this is all wrong."
"It's that bad then," she said. And she smiled (she smiled like a cynic: lips only).
"Now I didn't mean it that way," he told her, "that's not what I meant at all. What I meant was I only hoped--" He stopped himself there because he heard himself whining. And hadn't she warned against it? Many times. "What I meant was," he said carefully, "it's too bad it can't all be clear before, like it is when you look back after."
"You take your chances," she said wearily, like she'd explained it all too often. She sagged back against the harsh old bark of a cottonwood tree, crossed her arms. She heard the rasping of the stiffened cloth of the old army coat; and when she looked down she saw that last light reflected, shining dully off the amniotic fluids smeared there and dried like egg white mixed with mud and the blood where she'd hugged newborn calves against herself while she'd packed them through the corral slop, night, after night, after night. She smelled the acrid stink of the barnyard about her, and she thought how she hadn't taken time to wash the coat for months. She thought: And I won't, for as long as I can still bend the arms--hah! She grinned, very grim; closed her eyes tight when Frank cleared his throat.
"I had to work hard when I was young: raking hay when I was seven, on a tractor in the sun all day long. When I was nine, from then on, I had to stack baled hay by myself, my father made me. Mother had me wear a wet cloth tied over my head underneath my hat because I'd get these awful headaches." Frank looked down at the woman, once, quickly. But she didn't speak, she did not move, she never even bothered to open her eyes; and the voice of the creek was too loud for him to hear her sigh.
Frank said, "Mother used to warn him how if anything happened because he worked me so hard while I was still so young--"
She pushed with her hands away from the tree; she felt a great, breathless need to be free of him: He stood too close, leaning above her, talking loud into the night so he could be certain she heard him over the rushing of the waters, his breath shoving each word straight into her face, bringing little drops of spittle. She ducked under his arm and walked away with her hands stuck deep inside the pockets of her coat. But she glanced back once; and when she did, Frank's eyes lighted up, for he thought he'd been wrong: Ah, it wasn't me! She just wants us to go on to somewheres else. Frank hurried after her, slipping, sliding--nearly fell flat while crossing the ruts. He wiped the mud from his hands on the seat of his pants, trotted to catch up:
"And I had to--here, wait--had to pick rocks, I hated that: little frost-heaved rocks what popped up every year--best crop we ever raised!" Frank giggled, hurrying along (stepping out ahead so he could glance down at her face to see if she'd found that funny) ... he said, "The big ones, we'd take a star drill, hammer a hole in them and tamp it full of powder, blow them to bits. They were shaped like great teardrops, big end in the ground, the tips of them showing were rusted from the metal they'd knocked off the haying machinery they were constantly making break down. My father used to take me out to the shop, where in a corner was a pile of mower parts and rake teeth and all sorts of busted junk. We'd just stand there looking, not say a word, before we went that day to work at the rocks."
She stopped, shrugged; and he stared down at her, pleased. But she said without looking, like she was speaking to the night: "Are you trying to get somewhere with this, or are you just talking again to shoot the shit?" So then it was Frank who moved off alone, while she stood and looked after him, and played in her mind with just going home. She saw him glance back once, saw how he pretended to try to hide it--she knew already by the slump of his shoulders the wounded, self-pitying, little-boy look on his face. She grimaced, and gazed longingly back along the way ... sighed again, and trailed slowly after him.
