Juliet in August Read online

  They turned away from each other after Lee’s childish reply to Lester’s childish accusation. They went to the house and sat at the table with Astrid and drank tea and ate toast, and then they all went back to bed for a few hours. Lester said nothing to Astrid (who could have provided relief with her common sense) for fear of worrying her, and Lee lay awake wondering why he’d said what he had, convincing himself that there was something wrong with him, that he was not deserving, and worrying that maybe he’d inherited a mean streak from someone in a line of unknown relatives instead of seeing that his little outburst was exactly like Lester’s.

  In the weeks that followed, Lee and Lester rebuilt the barn. They took great pains with each other. Lester was on his best behavior and said not one harsh word throughout the entire construction, even when the trusses fell like dominoes before they could get them anchored in place and they had to untangle the mess and start again. And Lee worked like he’d never worked before to be Lester’s hand, and he held his thirteen-year-old tongue even when he wanted to complain, even as he wondered why Lester couldn’t just hire contractors like everyone else. The barn became known as the new barn, despite there being no other to distinguish it from.

  As Lee stands in the bedroom window looking down on his holdings, the new barn among them, he hears a coyote yip and another answer from somewhere close by. Cracker joins in, not very successfully.

  The hoofbeats have stopped, but Lee is still wide awake, and now there’s no point in even trying to sleep. His jeans are lying on the floor where he left them the night before. In the dark, he grabs them and pulls them on, then reaches for a work shirt from the pile of clean clothes he has stacked on a wooden chair. The shirt is wrinkled; he doesn’t need a light to know that. When Astrid was alive, he never wore a wrinkled shirt, even a work shirt, but ironing is something Lee can’t generate much enthusiasm for, although he would make an effort on a special occasion if one arose. In the bathroom, he studies his face in the mirror. Astrid was right when she said he had a baby face. On the rare occasion that he goes into a strange bar and orders a beer, he still half expects to be asked for ID. He’s reminded that Lester’s father was only nineteen years old and knew barely a word of English when he came to Saskatchewan from Norway and staked his claim to the homestead.

  Lee goes downstairs, buttoning and tucking in his shirt, and finds his boots by the door. The night air, although warm, is a relief from the heat of the day before, still trapped in the house. Cracker can’t believe his luck—company at this unusual hour—and he follows Lee out into the pasture toward the sounds of the cattle. Lee’s small herd of cows watches with curiosity as he approaches. Many of them are lying down and they rise and turn toward him. Cracker keeps looking at Lee for clues as to why they’re here, what’s expected of him, but apparently nothing is. Lee walks quietly so as not to get things stirred up, keeping an eye on the one cow in his herd that he doesn’t trust, who just might choose to take a run at him. Although she’s young, he’s already made the decision to cull her after this year’s calf is weaned. He’s got several cows that he wants to cull now that cattle are moving again and he’s facing a hay shortage. I should have a horse, he thinks.

  Lester wasn’t really a horseman in spite of his attachment to Rip and Tom. His interest in horses was left over from his father’s need for four-legged horsepower (a need made redundant by the tractor), and his cattle, kept close to home, were not wild range cattle. When Rip and Tom died, they weren’t replaced. Lester did buy one horse for next to nothing at a sale, but he turned out to be lame and Lester sold him again right away to prevent Lee from getting attached to an unsound horse that couldn’t earn his keep. Lee had asked if they’d be getting another horse, but Lester said they didn’t really need one anymore, and that he was glad not to have the extra work. One horse, he’d said, is more trouble than a herd of cows.

  If Lee had asked a few more times, told Lester how much he wanted a horse, one that he could rope calves off and ride for miles in the hills, Lester probably would have bought one for him, but Lee, conscious since the barn fire of his self-proclaimed status as a mere relative, didn’t ask for things. Now, as he surveys his herd on foot, he thinks he should have bought that Hancock-bred mare Blaine Dolson was selling a while back. He’d bid on her at Blaine’s sale, but the bids kept going up and Lee still couldn’t bring himself to spend money in a way that Lester would not have.

  Lee approaches the water trough in the dark and checks the hose. His dugouts are dry, but this home pasture has a spring, and a pump keeps a trough full as long as the hose stays put and doesn’t get knocked loose by the cows. Once he’s ascertained that all is working, he takes the long way back toward the farmyard so he can check the fence. He knows there’s a bad spot in the northeast corner where a couple of the posts have rotted out and are pretty much held upright by the strands of wire. It wouldn’t take much for a cow to walk right through. When he gets there, the fence is still standing, but he makes a note to get a couple of posts out here and do a proper repair.

  About halfway back to the yard, Lee realizes his feet hurt and wishes he’d worn running shoes instead of boots. He’s tired now, although the dog doesn’t seem to be and looks at Lee full of anticipation that more of an unusual nature is in the offing. When they get home, Lee disappoints Cracker and walks toward the house, weary and ready for at least a few good hours of sleep.

  “Sorry, pooch,” he says. “If you want more excitement, you’re go-ing to have to find it on your own.”

  Cracker obliges and heads across the yard, and as Lee is about to step into the porch he hears him barking at something near the barn. Lee hopes it’s not another porcupine. The dog is fearless when it comes to porcupines, and having had a nose full of quills on more than one occasion has not deterred him.

  In the kitchen, Lee gets himself a glass of water and his eye lands on the silver tea service behind the glass doors of Astrid’s oak cabinet. It’s looking tarnished and he doesn’t know what to do about it. His wrinkled shirt, spots on the water glass in his hand, rings of blackened grease around the burners on the stove. To Lee, these are domestic mysteries. So too is the stack of mail on the counter by the phone, solicitations from credit card companies and charities and politicians. Astrid always knew which envelopes could be recycled without being opened. Lee lets them pile up until there’s no more room and then he burns the whole works. There was a phone message from Mrs. Bulin at the post office earlier in the day: “Give me a call, Lee. There’s something I need to discuss with you.” Maybe he’d burned a letter that he shouldn’t have, the yearly bill for his mailbox perhaps. He’d erased Mrs. Bulin’s message without writing down her number. He dislikes her. She knows too much, sees his mail every day, and he’s sure that she takes note of exactly where it’s coming from. He’s annoyed that she called him at home. She can easily catch him in the post office if she needs to talk to him.

  Lee places his glass in the sink, turns out the kitchen light, climbs the stairs, and lies on his bed without undressing.

  The dog is still barking. Not from the direction of the barn, but right under Lee’s window. The hoofbeats start up again, only now they’re close by and clear, and not the distant muffled beats of his restless imagination. Lee gets up to look out the window, and in the moonlight he sees a gray horse loping in a wide circle in the yard below, his head high, a lead shank trailing from his halter. Lee recognizes the fine, dished face and arching tail of an Arabian. Cracker is sitting at the edge of the circle, watching. His head moves with the arc of the horse’s path. The horse lopes a few times around in one direction, then stops, reverses, and goes the other way, trotting a few steps and then breaking into a lope again.

  Lee calls down from the open window. “Yo, Cracker,” he says.

  The dog looks up at him and whines, then turns his attention back to the horse. He looks puzzled, like he doesn’t know what to think of this four-leg
ged stranger. The horse stops momentarily at the sound of Lee’s voice, then resumes circling.

  By the time Lee gets outside, pulling on a light jacket now that the air has finally cooled, the gray horse is casually grazing in the moonlight on Astrid’s now overgrown lawn. Lee approaches the horse’s shoulder, talking softly, picks up the lead, and gives him a rub along the crest of his neck. He notes that the horse is a gelding, and assumes from the combination of brown flecks in his coat and faded dapples on his rump that he’s in between young and old. He’s well fed, free of scars. His feet are trimmed. Lee can’t imagine that this horse came to be here the same way that Cracker did. Someone will be looking for this horse.

  “You’re a handsome devil,” he says. “Where did you come from?”

  Cracker watches with interest, waiting for direction from Lee as to how he should proceed. The horse continues to graze, paying not much attention at all to either Lee or the dog, even as Lee runs his hands down a front leg and picks up a foot. Lee leans his face into the animal’s side, closes his eyes, and sucks in the sweet, familiar smell—the blend of dust and grass and warm sweat. The smell of the horse takes him back to when Rip and Tom were there in the pasture, when he was a boy on another hot summer night, when the fences of the farm encompassed his world and he knew every inch of it as well as he knew his own skin.

  He is startled when he hears a choking sob coming from his throat, which is tight, he realizes, aching even. What is this about? He steps back in surprise from the horse, who has swung his head around to stare at him. Cracker is staring, too. Lee tries to stop the sobs, but he can’t. Another, and another. It’s because I’m tired, I’ve been up all night. But it’s not just that. He’s missing the two old horses, as stupid as that might seem, and he’s missing his childhood, not because it was easier, but because there were people in it, Astrid and Lester, and in this moment he’s missing them in a way he hasn’t allowed himself to miss them. Cracker whines and paws at Lee’s leg. Lee pushes him away with his foot, almost cruelly, and then immediately regrets it and reaches down to give the dog’s head a pat. He can hardly see Cracker, his eyes are so watery, and then the emotion passes as quickly as it came upon him.

  He takes a deep breath, gives his head a shake, and wipes his face on the sleeve of his shirt. He can’t remember the last time he cried. It frightens him, the way this feeling, whatever it was, snuck up. It’s not as simple as sadness. This was much more physical in the way it took hold of his body. It’s left him feeling exposed, although only a horse and a dog are watching.

  Lee takes the horse’s lead, and the cooperative animal follows him to the pen on the south side of the barn. When Lee hangs a water bucket from a fence rail and fills it, the horse sniffs, splashes with his nose, and drinks. Lee forks some hay off one of his new round bales and throws it over the rails of the pen. The horse accepts the feed readily.

  In the moonlight, Lee sits on the top rail and watches the horse shove the hay around with his nose, looking for the choicest bits. He would love to get on the back of this horse. There are still a couple of saddles in the barn. He could try them for fit, ride the horse in the pen, see how broke he is. Lee knows he’s not a rodeo cowboy, but he spent a lot of hours on the wily Rip and can ride well enough to help his neighbors out when they need a crew.

  “What do you think, Cracker?” Lee says.

  The dog wags his tail.

  Lee gives up completely on the idea of sleep. He gets down from the fence, crosses the pen, and gives the sliding barn door a shove with his shoulder. He enters the dark interior and heads for the corner stall at the back, where Lester hung the saddles from a beam after he sold the lame horse, saying, “Don’t imagine we’ll be needing these.” Until he died, Lester had taken them down every spring and cleaned them up with Murphy’s Oil Soap. Several springs have now passed without Lester, and Lee is reminded that the saddles are no longer getting their yearly cleaning. He will do this, he thinks, once he’s had his ride around the pen on the horse, maybe a loop around the yard. He’ll do right by Lester, clean off the dust with Murphy’s and polish the leather to a rich shine and then hang the saddles once again in the barn.

  As Lee lowers the smallest of the two saddles in the dark, he hears a barn owl swoop from its perch in the hayloft above and fly out the open loft window, its wings flapping with effort. An owl has lived in the barn, first the old barn and now this one, for as long as Lee can remember. The current occupant screeches as it flies through the yard and lands in its favorite old poplar tree by the house.

  Lee dusts off the saddle and looks around for a saddle pad and headgear. Rip’s old bridle is too big, and anyway the leather is dry and cracked, but Lee finds one made of nylon hanging on a nail, the bridle that Lester bought for the lame horse, its hardware a bit rusty, but it will do. With the pad and bridle in one hand and the saddle in the other, he makes his way to the pen. The owl screeches in the night as Lee approaches the horse with the saddle pad, and the horse makes no fuss at all when Lee throws it on his back. He swings the saddle up and still no protest. The horse takes the bit easily, gets a little anxious when Lee steps up and settles his weight in the saddle, but Lee watches the horse’s ears and sees nothing to be concerned about. The moon shines on the Arab’s light coat. Lee reaches down to rub the horse’s neck.

  “Good buddy,” Lee says aloud.

  He hears himself, his own voice, and it’s a voice from the past, and he’s a boy again talking to Rip.

  He can sense the two old horses watching him.

  It’s that kind of night, rife with the presence of ghosts.

  The Desert Drive-in

  To the west, the faintest hint of a horizon line separates the dark earth and the blue-black sky. The yard lights in this expanse of open country glow softly. A hundred square miles of farms and ranches, pasture and cultivated fields, sand and coulees. Rail lines, some of them abandoned, a network of grid roads and dirt tracks and cattle trails, and the more recent tracks of gas and oil company trucks cutting erratically into the hills.

  Open windows encourage air to circulate, curtains barely moving in what can’t quite be called a breeze. Air conditioners and overhead fans, bedsprings and pillow-top mattresses shifting under the weight of sleepless bodies, radios tuned to all-night talk stations. A rooster crowing, confused about the time of day. The yip of coyotes, cattle bawling, tires spinning on gravel. The ping of a bullet ricocheting off a metal highway sign. A match rasping across a rough surface. The sound of laughter, a whispered shhhhh.

  Lee is not the only one who is restless, awake.

  Several miles to the south of the Torgeson farm, a great horned owl calls in the night. Not with a barn owl’s screech, but with a wise and deep who who whoooo that carries like a radio signal from the dark bones of the Desert Drive-in movie theater—one of the last of its kind, owned and operated by Willard Shoenfeld. The summer Lee turned fourteen (Astrid had designated the date of Lee’s arrival as his birth date), he and a couple of friends rigged up an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys and climbed to the top of the projection screen, newly rebuilt after a twister had blown down the old one. If Willard’s late brother, Ed, had caught the trio messing with the brand-new construction, it’s hard to say what would have happened, but he didn’t. The dog he owned at the time (for a very short time) could be bribed, and while the dog feasted on homegrown beef from Astrid’s freezer, Lee and his friends climbed upward and sprayed WE WERE HERE in bright orange paint in the top left-hand corner of the screen, like a return address on a giant white envelope. The sun has since faded it, but you can still make out the hint of orange.

  A hundred yards south of the movie screen, toward the highway, is the house in which Willard and his sister-in-law, Marian, live—a modest, prefab bungalow constructed in 1960 by Willard and Ed to replace the trailer they’d lived in for so many years, and to provide an incentive for the woman, as yet und
iscovered, whom Ed planned to marry. Its original lap siding has been replaced in recent years with beige-colored, no-paint vinyl, purchased from a traveling salesman who sold the exact same siding to half the homeowners in the district and then disappeared. There’s an old barn on the property that had once housed the brothers’ chick hatchery, and then a hog operation (unpopular with the Juliet town council because of the smell), and then a chainsaw and snowmobile sales and service shop, and, finally, a camel named Antoinette. Since Antoinette, the barn’s been empty except for the odds and ends it stores and the shelter it provides for Willard’s vehicles, which include a shiny new Silverado crew cab, a twenty-year-old Ford Taurus (driven to town twice a week by Marian), and a Massey Ferguson tractor that doesn’t like to start on a cold, blizzardy day when you need it most. There are the remains of an old shed that Willard knows he should tear down, and of course the drive-in ticket booth and concession stand plastered on all sides with its layers of movie-listing flyers and Coca-Cola posters. At night, the white face of the movie screen looms over the sandy lot, a giant relic from a different world. And beyond the fence that is designed to keep out those who don’t want to pay, the sandy hills roll northward. On a windy day, the surface of the land rises and grains of sand hit the back of the movie screen like buckshot.

  Willard Shoenfeld’s current German shepherd dog (this one can’t be bribed) has a number of favorite spots in the yard, but tonight he lies among the movie screen’s elaborate supports, unconcerned, pricking up his ears with only mild interest when the owl hoots above him, or a coyote yips in the hills, or a small nocturnal animal, a skunk perhaps, rustles in the bushes. These sounds are familiar; they tell him that nothing unusual is happening here. No vehicles stopping where they shouldn’t. No kids trying to climb the fence just because it’s there, to do damage for the sake of getting away with it.