Richard Ford - Rock Springs

“You’re not like her,” Sims said. “You’re sympathetic.”

“She probably thinks no one takes her seriously.”

“It’s all right,” Sims said.

“What’s going to happen to Pauline now?” Marge moved closer to him. “Will she be all right? Do you think she will?”

“I think she will,” Sims said.

“We’re out on a frontier here, aren’t we, sweetheart? It feels like that.” Sims didn’t answer. “Are you sleepy, hon,” Marge asked. “You can sleep. I’m awake now. I’ll watch over you.” She reached and pulled down the shade, and everything, all the movement and heat outside, was gone.

He touched Marge with his fingers — the bones in her face and her shoulders, her breasts, her ribs. He touched the scar, smooth and rigid and neat under her arm, like a welt from a mean blow. This can do it, he thought, this can finish you, this small thing. He held her to him, her face against his as his heart beat. And he felt dizzy, and at that moment insufficient, but without a memory of life’s having changed in that particular way.

Outside on the cold air, flames moved and divided and swarmed the sky. And Sims felt alone in a wide empire, removed and afloat, calmed, as if life was far away now, as if blackness was all around, as if stars held the only light.

I had not been back in town long. Maybe a month was all. The work had finally given out for me down at Silver Bow, and I had quit staying down there when the weather turned cold, and come back to my mother’s, on the Bitterroot, to lay up and set my benefits aside for when things got worse.

My mother had her boyfriend then, an old wildcatter named Harley Reeves. And Harley and I did not get along, though I don’t blame him for that. He had been laid off himself down near Gillette, Wyoming, where the boom was finished. And he was just doing what I was doing and had arrived there first. Everyone was laid off then. It was not a good time in that part of Montana, nor was it going to be. The two of them were just giving it a final try, both of them in their sixties, strangers together in the little house my father had left her.

So in a week I moved up to town, into a little misery flat across from the Burlington Northern yards, and began to wait. There was nothing to do. Watch TV. Stop in a bar. Walk down to the Clark Fork and fish where they had built a little park. Just find a way to spend the time. You think you’d like to have all the time be your own, but that is a fantasy. I was feeling my back to the wall then, and didn’t know what would happen to me in a week’s time, which is a feeling to stay with you and make being cheerful hard. And no one can like that.

I was at the Top Hat having a drink with Little Troy Burnham, talking about the deer season, when a woman who had been sitting at the front of the bar got up and came over to us. I had seen this woman other times in other bars in town. She would be there in the afternoons around three, and then sometimes late at night when I would be cruising back. She danced with some men from the air base, then sat drinking and talking late. I suppose she left with someone finally. She wasn’t a bad-looking woman at all — blond, with wide, dark eyes set out, wide hips and dark eyebrows. She could’ve been thirty-four years old, although she could’ve been forty-four or twenty-four, because she was drinking steady, and steady drink can do both to you, especially to women. But I had thought the first time I saw her: Here’s one on the way down. A miner’s wife drifted up from Butte, or a rancher’s daughter just suddenly run off, which can happen. Or worse. And I hadn’t been tempted. Trouble comes cheap and leaves expensive, is a way of thinking about that.

“Do you suppose you could give me a light?” the woman said to us. She was standing at our table. Nola was her name. Nola Foster. I’d heard that around. She wasn’t drunk. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and no one was there but Troy Burnham and me.

“If you’ll tell me a love story, I’d do anything in the world for you,” Troy said. It was what he always said to women. He’d do anything in the world for something. Troy sits in a wheelchair due to a smoke jumper’s injury, and can’t do very much. We had been friends since high school and before. He was always short, and I was tall. But Troy had been an excellent wrestler and won awards in Montana, and I had done little of that — some boxing once was all. We had been living, recently, in the same apartments on Ryman Street, though Troy lived there permanently and drove a Checker cab to earn a living, and I was hoping to pass on to something better. “I would like a little love story,” Troy said, and called out for whatever Nola Foster was drinking.

“Nola, Troy. Troy, Nola,” I said and lit her cigarette.

“Have we met?” Nola said, taking a seat and glancing at me.

“At the East Gate. Some time ago,” I said.

“That’s a very nice bar,” she said in a cool way. “But I hear it’s changed hands.”

“I’m glad to make an acquaintance,” Troy said, grinning and adjusting his glasses. “Now let’s hear that love story.” He pulled up close to the table so that his head and his big shoulders were above the tabletop. Troy’s injury had caused him not to have any hips left. There is something there, but not hips. He needs bars and a special seat in his cab. He is both frail and strong at once, though in most ways he gets on like everybody else.

“I was in love,” Nola said quietly as the bartender set her drink down and she took a sip. “And now I’m not.”

“That’s a short love story,” I said.

“There’s more to it,” Troy said, grinning. “Am I right about that? Here’s cheers to you,” he said, and raised his glass.

Nola glanced at me again. “All right. Cheers,” she said and took another drink.

Two men had started playing a pool game at the far end of the room. They had turned on the table light, and I could hear the balls click and someone say, “Bust ’em up, Craft.” And then the smack.

“You don’t want to hear about that,” Nola said. “You’re drunk men, that’s all.”

“We do too,” Troy said. Troy always has enthusiasm. He could very easily complain, but I have never heard it come up. And I believe he has a good heart.

“What about you? What’s your name?” Nola said to me.

“Les,” I said.

“Les, then,” she said. “You don’t want to hear this, Les.”

“Yes he does,” Troy said, putting his elbows on the table and raising himself. Troy was a little drunk. Maybe we all were a little.

“Why not?” I said.

“See? Sure. Les wants more. He’s like me.”

Nola was actually a pretty woman, with a kind of dignity to her that wasn’t at once so noticeable, and Troy was thrilled by her.

“All right,” Nola said, taking another sip.

“Whattt I tell you?” Troy said.

“I had really thought he was dying,” Nola said.

“Who?” I said.

“My husband. Harry Lyons. I don’t use that name now. Someone’s told you this story before, haven’t they?”

“Not me. Goddamn!” Troy said. “I want to hear this story.”

I said I hadn’t heard it either, though I had heard there was a story.

She had a puff on her cigarette and gave us both a look that said she didn’t believe us. But she went on. Maybe she’d thought about another drink by then.

“He had this death look. Ca-shit-ic, they call it. He was pale, and his mouth turned down like he could see death. His heart had already gone out once in June, and I had the feeling I’d come in the kitchen some morning and he’d be slumped on his toast.”