Richard Ford - Rock Springs

“A son. Or, you know. Didn’t you tell me you almost had one? There was something about that, with Jan.”

“That was a long time ago,” Starling said. “We were idiots.”

“Some people claim they make your life hold together better, though,” Lois said. “You know?”

“Not if you’re broke they don’t,” Starling said. “All they do is make you sorry.”

“Well, we’ll just float on through life together, then, how’s that?” Lois put her hand high on his leg. “No blues today, hon, okay?”

They were at the little dirt street where the ranchette was, at the far end. A fireworks hut had been built in the front yard of the first small house, a chain of bright yellow bulbs strung across the front. An elderly woman was standing in the hut, her face expressionless. She had on a sweater and was holding a little black poodle. All the fireworks but a few Roman candles had been sold off the shelves.

“I never thought I’d live where people sold fireworks right in their front yards,” Lois said and faced front. Starling peered into the lighted hut. The rain was coming down in a slow drizzle, and water shone off the oiled street. He felt the urge to gesture to the woman, but didn’t. “You could just about say we lived in a place where you wouldn’t want to live if you could help it. Funny, isn’t it? That just happens to you.” Lois laughed.

“I guess it’s funny,” Starling said. “It’s true.”

“Whafd you dream up for dinner, Eddie? I’ve built up a hunger all of a sudden.”

“I forgot about it,” Starling said. “There’s some macaroni.”

“Whatever,” Lois said. “It’s fine.”

Starling pulled into the gravel driveway. He could see the pony standing out in the dark where the fenced weed lot extended to the side of the house. The pony looked like a ghost, its white eyes unmoving in the rain.

“Tell me something,” Starling said. “If I ask you something, will you tell me?”

“If there’s something to tell,” Lois said. “Sometimes there isn’t anything, you know. But go ahead.”

“What happened with you and Reiner?” he said. “All that Reno stuff. I never asked you about that. But I want to know.”

“That’s easy,” Lois said and smiled at him in the dark car. “I just realized I didn’t love Reiner, that’s all. Period. I realized I loved you, and I didn’t want to be married to somebody I didn’t love. I wanted to be married to you. It isn’t all that complicated or important.” Lois put her arms around his neck and hugged him hard. “Don’t be cloudy now, sweet. You’ve just had some odd luck is all. Things’ll get better. You’ll get back. Let me make you happy. Let me show you something to be happy, baby doll.” Lois slid across the seat against the door and went down into her purse. Starling could hear wind chimes in the rain. “Let me just show you,” Lois said.

Starling couldn’t see. Lois opened the door out into the drizzle, turned her back to him and struck a match. He could see it brighten. And then there was a sparkling and hissing, and then a brighter one, and Starling smelled the harsh burning and the smell of rain together. Then Lois closed the door and danced out before the car into the rain with the sparklers, waving her arms round in the air, smiling widely and making swirls and patterns and star-falls for him that were brilliant and illuminated the night and the bright rain and the little dark house behind her and, for a moment, caught the world and stopped it, as though something sudden and perfect had come to earth in a furious glowing for him and for him alone — Eddie Starling — and only he could watch and listen. And only he would be there, waiting, when the light was finally gone.

My mother once had a boyfriend named Glen Baxter. This was in 1961. We — my mother and I — were living in the little house my father had left her up the Sun River, near Victory, Montana, west of Great Falls. My mother was thirty-two at the time. I was sixteen. Glen Baxter was somewhere in the middle, between us, though I cannot be exact about it.

We were living then off the proceeds of my father’s life insurance policies, with my mother doing some part-time waitressing work up in Great Falls and going to the bars in the evenings, which I know is where she met Glen Baxter. Sometimes he would come back with her and stay in her room at night, or she would call up from town and explain that she was staying with him in his little place on Lewis Street by the GN yards. She gave me his number every time, but I never called it. I think she probably thought that what she was doing was terrible, but simply couldn’t help herself. I thought it was all right, though. Regular life it seemed, and still does. She was young, and I knew that even then.

Glen Baxter was a Communist and liked hunting, which he talked about a lot. Pheasants. Ducks. Deer. He killed all of them, he said. He had been to Vietnam as far back as then, and when he was in our house he often talked about shooting the animals over there — monkeys and beautiful parrots — using military guns just for sport. We did not know what Vietnam was then, and Glen, when he talked about that, referred to it only as “the Far East.” I think now he must’ve been in the CIA and been disillusioned by something he saw or found out about and been thrown out, but that kind of thing did not matter to us. He was a tall, dark-eyed man with short black hair, and was usually in a good humor. He had gone halfway through college in Peoria, Illinois, he said, where he grew up. But when he was around our life he worked wheat farms as a ditcher, and stayed out of work winters and in the bars drinking with women like my mother, who had work and some money. It is not an uncommon life to lead in Montana.

What I want to explain happened in November. We had not been seeing Glen Baxter for some time. Two months had gone by. My mother knew other men, but she came home most days from work and stayed inside watching television in her bedroom and drinking beers. I asked about Glen once, and she said only that she didn’t know where he was, and I assumed they had had a fight and that he was gone off on a flyer back to Illinois or Massachusetts, where he said he had relatives. I’ll admit that I liked him. He had something on his mind always. He was a labor man as well as a Communist, and liked to say that the country was poisoned by the rich, and strong men would need to bring it to life again, and I liked that because my father had been a labor man, which was why we had a house to live in and money coming through. It was also true that I’d had a few boxing bouts by then — just with town boys and one with an Indian from Choteau — and there were some girlfriends I knew from that. I did not like my mother being around the house so much at night, and I wished Glen Baxter would come back, or that another man would come along and entertain her somewhere else.

At two o’clock on a Saturday, Glen drove up into our yard in a car. He had had a big brown Harley-Davidson that he rode most of the year, in his black-and-red irrigators and a baseball cap turned backwards. But this time he had a car, a blue Nash Ambassador. My mother and I went out on the porch when he stopped inside the olive trees my father had planted as a shelter belt, and my mother had a look on her face of not much pleasure. It was starting to be cold in earnest by then. Snow was down already onto the Fairfield Bench, though on this day a chinook was blowing, and it could as easily have been spring, though the sky above the Divide was turning over in silver and blue clouds of winter.

“We haven’t seen you in a long time, I guess,” my mother said coldly.

“My little retarded sister died,” Glen said, standing at the door of his old car. He was wearing his orange VFW jacket and canvas shoes we called wino shoes, something I had never seen him wear before. He seemed to be in a good humor. “We buried her in Florida near the home.”