Richard Ford - Rock Springs

My father looked at Boyd Mitchell and at his wife, as if he hadn’t known they were in the room until then. He did not know them very well, and I thought he might tell them to get out, but he didn’t.

“I saw a man be killed tonight,” he said to my mother, then shook his head and looked down. He said, “We were pushing into that old hump yard on Ninth Avenue. A cut of coal cars. It wasn’t even an hour ago. I was looking out my side, the way you do when you push out a curve. And I could see this one open boxcar in the cut, which isn’t unusual. Only this guy was in it and was trying to get off, sitting in the door, scooting. I guess he was a hobo. Those cars had come in from Glasgow tonight. And just the second he started to go off, the whole cut buckled up. It’s a thing that’ll happen. But he lost his balance just when he hit the gravel, and he fell backwards underneath. I looked right at him. And one set of trucks rolled right over his foot.” My father looked at my mother then. “It hit his foot,” he said.

“My God,” my mother said and looked down at her lap.

My father squinted. “But then he moved, he sort of bucked himself like he was trying to get away. He didn’t yell, and I could see his face. I’ll never forget that. He didn’t look scared, he just looked like a man doing something that was hard for him to do. He looked like he was concentrating on something. But when he bucked he pushed back, and the other trucks caught his hand.” My father looked at his own hands then, and made fists out of them and squeezed them.

“What did you do?” my mother said. She looked terrified.

“I yelled out. And Sherman stopped pushing. But it wasn’t that fast.”

“Did you do anything then,” Boyd Mitchell said.

“I got down,” my father said, “and I went up there. But here’s a man cut in three pieces in front of me. What can you do? You can’t do very much. I squatted down and touched his good hand. And it was like ice. His eyes were open and roaming all up in the sky.”

“Did he say anything?” my mother said.

“He said, ‘Where am I today?’ And I said to him, ‘It’s all right, bud, you’re in Montana. You’ll be all right.’ Though, my God, he wasn’t. I took my jacket off and put it over him. I didn’t want him to see what had happened.”

“You should’ve put tourniquets on,” Boyd Mitchell said gruffly, “That could’ve helped. That could’ve saved his life.”

My father looked at Boyd Mitchell then as if he had forgotten he was there and was surprised that he spoke. “I don’t know about that,” my father said. “I don’t know anything about those things. He was already dead. A boxcar had run over him. He was breathing, but he was already dead to me.”

“That’s only for a licensed doctor to decide,” Boyd Mitchell said. “You’re morally obligated to do all you can.” And I could tell from his tone of voice that he did not like my father. He hardly knew him, but he did not like him. I had no idea why. Boyd Mitchell was a big, husky, red-faced man with curly hair — handsome in a way, but with a big belly — and I knew only that he worked for the Red Cross, and that my mother was a friend of his wife’s, and maybe of his, and that they played cards when my father was gone.

My father looked at my mother in a way I knew was angry. “Why have you got these people over here now, Dorothy? They don’t have any business here.”

“Maybe that’s right,” Penny Mitchell said, and she put down her hand of cards and stood up at the table. My mother looked around the room as though an odd noise had occurred inside of it and she couldn’t find the source.

“Somebody definitely should’ve done something,” Boyd Mitchell said, and he leaned forward on the table toward my father. “That’s all there is to say.” He was shaking his head no. “That man didn’t have to die.” Boyd Mitchell clasped his big hands on top of his playing cards and stared at my father. “The unions’ll cover this up, too, I guess, won’t they? That’s what happens in these things.”

My father stood up then, and his face looked wide, though it looked young, still. He looked like a young man who had been scolded and wasn’t sure how he should act. “You get out of here,” he said in a loud voice. “My God. What a thing to say. I don’t even know you.”

“I know you, though,” Boyd Mitchell said angrily. “You’re another featherbedder. You aren’t good to do anything. You can’t even help a dying man. You’re bad for this country, and you won’t last.”

“Boyd, my goodness,” Penny Mitchell said. “Don’t say that. Don’t say that to him.”

Boyd Mitchell glared up at his wife. “I’ll say anything I want to,” he said. “And he’ll listen, because he’s helpless. He can’t do anything.”

“Stand up,” my father said. “Just stand up on your feet.” His fists were clenched again.

“All right, I will,” Boyd Mitchell said. He glanced up at his wife. And I realized that Boyd Mitchell was drunk, and it was possible that he did not even know what he was saying, or what had happened, and that words just got loose from him this way, and anybody who knew him knew it. Only my father didn’t. He only knew what had been said.

Boyd Mitchell stood up and put his hands in his pockets. He was much taller than my father. He had on a white Western shirt and whipcords and cowboy boots and was wearing a big silver wristwatch. “All right,” he said. “Now I’m standing up. What’s supposed to happen?” He weaved a little. I saw that.

And my father hit Boyd Mitchell then, hit him from across the card table — hit him with his right hand, square into the chest, not a lunging blow, just a hard, hitting blow that threw my father off balance and made him make a chuffing sound with his mouth. Boyd Mitchell groaned, “Oh,” and fell down immediately, his big, thick, heavy body hitting the floor already doubled over. And the sound of him hitting the floor in our house was like no sound I had ever heard before. It was the sound of a man’s body hitting a floor, and it was only that. In my life I have heard it other places, in hotel rooms and in bars, and it is one you do not want to hear.

You can hit a man in a lot of ways, I know that, and I knew that then, because my father had told me. You can hit a man to insult him, or you can hit a man to bloody him, or to knock him down, or lay him out. Or you can hit a man to kill him. Hit him that hard. And that is how my father hit Boyd Mitchell — as hard as he could, in the chest and not in the face, the way someone might think who didn’t know about it.

“Oh my God,” Penny Mitchell said. Boyd Mitchell was lying on his side in front of the TV, and she had gotten down on her knees beside him. “Boyd,” she said. “Are you hurt? Oh, look at this. Stay where you are, Boyd. Stay on the floor.”

“Now then. All right,” my father said. “Now. All right.” He was standing against the wall, over to the side of where he had been when he hit Boyd Mitchell from across the card table. Light was bright in the room, and my father’s eyes were wide and touring around. He seemed out of breath and both his fists were clenched, and I could feel his heart beating in my own chest. “All right, now, you son of a bitch,” my father said, and loudly. I don’t think he was even talking to Boyd Mitchell. He was just saying words that came out of him.

“Roy,” my mother said calmly. “Boyd’s hurt now. He’s hurt.” She was just looking down at Boyd Mitchell. I don’t think she knew what to do.

“Oh, no,” Penny Mitchell said in an excited voice. “Look up, Boyd. Look up at Penny. You’ve been hurt.” She had her hands flat on Boyd Mitchell’s chest, and her skinny shoulders close to him. She wasn’t crying, but I think she was hysterical and couldn’t cry.