Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

Pete shook his head.

“Well, to hell with you then,” he said, trying to snap the tarp back over the car.

“No, no,” Pete said. “It’s great. It’s too great.”

The judge let the tarp fall from his hands, walked toward the house, picking up stray items between himself and the door. A hand rake, which he tossed toward a small shed that abutted the rear stonewall of the house, then ducked inside. Pete wished the judge would invite him in, but seemed to know too that he would not.

He returned with the car keys attached to a large fob with a picture of a beaver atop a jumbled assembly of sticks. Where did I leave the dam keys?

“Funny,” Pete said.

“Not really.”

“You sure this is all right?”

“It’ll be full of hornets and squirrels, I don’t do something with it.”

“Maybe you should sell it.”

“I’m not giving her to you, Pete.”

“I know.”

“And if she’s comes back scratched, I’ll have your ass.”

“Sure, I know.”

“Damn right you know.”

They stood a minute, Pete looking at the house he’d never set foot in, the judge into the woods.

“How long they gonna keep your car?”

“No idea. Until they find Pearl, I’m thinking. To make my life hard.”

He gripped his back and sighed at the sky.

“Anything on your daughter?”

“Nope.”

“I got every highway patrolman in Montana and Idaho looking for her. If she turns up thisaway, we’ll find her.”

“Thanks,” Pete said. “Have them keep an eye out for Luke too.”

A nuthatch cackled.

“He doesn’t know about your father,” the judge realized.

“I wrote him a letter, but didn’t tell him about it.”

“You know where he is,” the judge said, by way of asking him why Pete didn’t turn him in already.

“He’s my brother,” Pete said, by way of answering. “Besides, after what those DEA pricks did to me, I’m done helping cops.”

“Like you gave them no reason, that mouth of yours.”

“It doesn’t matter. No one should be able to do that to you.”

The judge ran his hands along the lapels of his jacket as if he might thumb his buttonholes and hold forth, but the gesture faded into a mild self-embrace as though he were clenching an empty dress to his chest. He took in his empty house.

“She wanted a new car for a long time,” the judge said. “It was just a thing she wanted to have her whole life. For some damn reason. I didn’t mind she wanted it, I just couldn’t understand why. It took so long for me to get her one. If she could’ve just explained, maybe she’d have had the pleasure of the thing for more than six months.”

The judge shook his head.

“God damn it.”

He headed inside.

“I’ll take good care of her.”

The judge waved him off, and closed the door.

The staff had packed a few things for Katie — pink pajamas, a small tube of toothpaste, a bottle of shampoo, a pink comb and toothbrush — and put them in a paper sack to take with her. The rest of her things were still at the house, which was yet being gone through by law enforcement. She sat with the sack on her lap in the shelter lobby with a staff member waiting for Pete to take her to a foster home. A faulty fluorescent bulb flashed skittishly. How she felt about going to a new home was not any more clear than how she felt about living in a shelter. No one had even asked what she saw happen in her house when the cops busted in and shot the man who was there. She was quiet and untroublesome, and at the shelter she garnered little attention.

When Pete arrived for her, she sat up straight and kicked her legs as a dog might wag its tail. Pete asked the woman sitting with Katie if there was a room where he could be alone with the girl. Katie was in his arms at once and he carried her into the office, sat her on the table, and took a seat near her. She was hoping he would be her father. He had to look up into her eyes, but for a few moments he couldn’t and he just touched her leg.

“I have some very bad news, Katie.”

He said what had happened to her mother.

The girl covered her face.

He said he was sorry and was presently astonished that he shook under hot sobs himself. Now you gotta cry , he said to himself. Now of all times. He was able to think of himself critically in this way, and at the same time seize and nearly hyperventilate in sadness. In fact, it was she who reached across the short distance between them and clutched at the nape of his neck, and in a single swoop he had her in his arms again as they both wept together, the child and her social worker.

His grief kept almost guttering out as it should have but the thought that this was so unfair kept aggravating his sadness afresh. His bruised stomach was sore with the effort. That he’d been beaten wasn’t fair. The girl was undersized and orphaned, that wasn’t fair either. His daughter was gone so long now. That wasn’t fair. Her father had left her in Missoula with an alcoholic mother. His parents were dead. His brother was gone.

Pete was alone.

There was the thing. The total lonesome. How that could be.

He noticed as in a dream that she was petting his head. Her touch helped him put himself back together. Right now, he was necessary. For the girl, vice versa, or both.

Pete carried Katie from his car to the Cloningers’ door and into the house. The children showed her where she would be sleeping and where she could keep her things. Cloninger’s wife suppressed her surprise that the girl had only a paper sack of belongings and wondered aloud what they would need to get for her, and silently began to make a list. The kids emptied out toys from the closet for Katie to partake of.

They all went into the living room for coffee and then out onto the back porch where it was cooler as the late afternoon sun set behind the mountain. The dog came up and as Katie knelt to pet it, Pete and Cloninger shared an awkward glance that bloomed for each into a private grin about Cecil. Time had passed and the boy’s outrageous fondling of the animal now seemed remote and safely amusing.

“Thanks for this,” Pete said.

“How’s the other one?”

Pete covered Katie’s ears as he would when he was talking to her mother.

“He’s in stir. Got in more trouble after his stay with you.”

“I shouldn’t have… I overreacted.”

“Oh, I dunno about that.”

“Is he going to get out?”

A breeze picked up and the weeping willow in the yard shivered its ropes of leaves.

“It’s not fair that he’s locked up. I let him down.”

“He’s welcome back here if you can get him out.”

“That’s kind of you.”

Pete uncovered Katie’s ears and she asked would Pete be staying the night and he said he’d stay until bedtime, which seemed all right to her, but she sat with him as Pete and Cloninger chatted. After a while, though, he quietly nudged her off his lap, and she inspected the porch, the terra-cotta-potted plants, and then the yard, and finally went with Cloninger’s daughter out to the garden, where they picked raspberries and returned with stained fingers and raspberry seeds on their cheeks and chins.

Pete put her to bed himself, and sat on the floor next to her and petted her hair. He found it incredibly difficult to leave her side. When he closed the door behind him and went down the hall, he couldn’t help feeling like he’d forgotten something in the room where she was. He even patted his pockets.

He wanted her. For a moment he even entertained the idea. She could live with him in his cabin.

“You okay?” Cloninger called from the easy chair in his living room, and Pete was startled, as if caught out at something suspicious. He grinned sheepishly and said he’d better be going.