Richard Ford - Wildlife

When school was over I walked to my job at the photographer’s studio, and then I walked home. The weather was changing and there was a breeze blowing, the kind of windy breeze that eventually turns icy in Montana and blows through your skin as if you were made of paper. I knew the same wind would be blowing that day where the fire was burning, and that it would have consequences there. And I wondered if it might snow in the mountains and thought that it would, and that with luck my father would come home sooner than anyone thought.

When I got in our house my mother was standing at the sink in the kitchen. She was looking out toward where the sun was setting. She had on a blue and white dress that looked like a navy dress. Her hair was tied up in back in what she called a French bun. It was a way she fixed herself that I liked. She had been looking at the newspaper, which was open on the countertop.

‘Winter, winter, go away,’ she said, staring out the window. She looked around at me and smiled. ‘You’re not dressed warmly enough. Next you’ll be sick. Then I’ll be sick.’ She looked back outside. ‘Did you have a very enjoyable day today at school?’

‘Not a very good one,’ I said. ‘I missed a test. I forgot.’

‘Well. Do better there, then,’ she said. ‘Harvard only has a few places available for boys from the ends of the earth. Somebody else from Great Falls probably expects to go to Harvard, too. And they won’t want to take both of you. I certainly wouldn’t.’

‘Where did you go so early?’ I said. ‘I was awake.’

‘Were you really?’ my mother said. ‘I could’ve driven you to school.’ She moved away from the window and began refolding the newspaper page by page. ‘Oh, I went outwards,’ she said. ‘I saw in this paper this morning a notice for a job teaching math to boys at the air base. Some of them can’t add out there, I guess. So I filled out an application to be industrious. I have an urge to do good all of a sudden.’ She finished folding the paper and pushed it neatly to the side and turned around toward me. I wanted to ask her about going to work for Warren Miller.

‘Dad called this morning,’ I said. ‘I talked to him.’

‘Where was he?’ my mother said. She did not look surprised, only interested.

‘I don’t know. I thought he was at the fire. He didn’t say where he was.’

‘Where did you say I was?’

‘I said you were gone to town. I thought that was right.’ I did not want to tell her he had asked if she was stepping out on him. I knew she wouldn’t like that.

‘You thought I was gone to work for Mr Miller. Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well, I was. Or I did. I went there and did a few things. It’s just part-time. I still have a son to raise at home, I think.’

‘That’s okay,’ I said. I was glad to hear her say that even if she was only making a joke. ‘Is Miller married?’ I said. And these were words that just said themselves. I hadn’t planned to say them.

‘I already talked about that,’ my mother said. ‘He was.’ She walked to the refrigerator and took out an ice tray and carried that to the sink and ran water over it. ‘He lived in that house with his mother and his little wife. The three of them. For quite some time, I guess. Then the old lady died — his mother. And not long after that his wife, whose name was Marie LaRose or some such thing, ran off somewhere. To California or Colorado — one of those — with an oil wildcatter. Forty-six years old, and off she goes.’

My mother took a white coffee cup out of the cabinet, put one ice cube in it, then took a full bottle of Old Crow whiskey from under the sink, uncapped it, and poured some into the cup. She was talking while she did this and not looking at me. I wondered if she would tell this all to my father if he asked her, and I decided she probably wouldn’t.

‘Do you feel sorry for him,’ I asked.

‘For Warren Miller?’ my mother said, and she looked at me quickly, then back at her cup on the sink top where she was stirring the ice cube with her finger. ‘Indeed-ee-not. I don’t feel sorry for anybody. I don’t feel sorry for myself, so I don’t see why I should feel sorry for these other people. In particular those I don’t know very well.’ She looked at me again, quickly, then lifted the cup up and leaned forward to take a sip. ‘I made this too full,’ she said before she tasted the whiskey, then she drank some.

‘Dad said they can’t control the fire out there now,’ I said. ‘He said they just watch it.’

‘Well, then, he’s perfect for that. He likes golf.’ She held the cup under the faucet and let water trickle into it. ‘Your father has very pretty hands, have you ever noticed them? They’re like a girl’s. He’ll ruin them fighting forest fires. My father’s hands were like big lug nuts. That’s what he used to say.’

‘He said he hoped you weren’t still mad at him,’ I said.

‘He’s a sweet man,’ my mother said. ‘I’m not mad at him. Did you two have a nice chat about me? All my character flaws on parade? Did he talk about his Indian woman he has out there?’ She carried the ice tray back to the refrigerator. It was almost dark outside, and I snapped the light on in the kitchen. It was a dim light and only made the room seem small and dirty.

‘Turn that off,’ my mother said. She was annoyed at me for having talked about her, which I hadn’t done. She took her cup of whiskey and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I went out and looked at an apartment today. I looked at those Helen Apartments over on Second. They have a two-bedroom that’s nice. It’s near the river and it’s close to your school, too.’

‘Why are we going to do that?’ I said.

‘Because,’ my mother said. She put her ring finger through the little cup handle and looked at the cup on the table. She spoke very clearly, and in my memory very slowly. ‘This fire could go on for a long time. Your father may want a new life. I don’t know. I have to be smart about things. I have to think about who pays bills. I have to think about the rent here. Things are different now in case you haven’t noticed. You can get drawn in over your head if you don’t look out. You can lose your peace of mind.’

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ I said, because I thought my father was gone working to put out a fire, and would soon be back. My mother was going too far. She was saying the wrong words and did not even believe them herself.

‘I don’t mind saying that,’ my mother said. ‘He’s not lacking. I told you that before.’ She kept her finger through the cup handle, but did not lift it. She looked tense and tired and unhappy sitting there, trapped in the way she saw the world and her life — a bad way. ‘Maybe we just shouldn’t have moved up here,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should’ve stayed in Lewiston. You can make so many adjustments you don’t know what’s what anymore.’ She wasn’t happy to be saying these words because she did not like to rearrange things, even in her thoughts. And as far as I knew, she hadn’t had to do that in her life. She raised the cup and took a drink of the whiskey. ‘I suppose you think I’m the horrible one now, don’t you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’

‘Well, that’s right,’ my mother said, ‘I’m not. It’d be nice if somebody was in the wrong for a change. It’d make everybody feel better.’

‘I wouldn’t feel better,’ I said.

‘Okay. Then not you,’ my mother said, and nodded. ‘Joe chooses for his only choice in the world to do the absolutely correct best thing. Good luck to him.’ She looked around at me and the expression on her face was an expression of dislike, one I hadn’t seen before but knew right away. Later I would see it turned toward other people. But the first time was looking at me and was because she believed she’d done all she could that was correct and the best thing, and it had only gotten her left with me. And I couldn’t do anything that mattered. Though if I could I would’ve had my father be there, or Warren Miller, or somebody who had the right words that would take the place of hers, anybody she could speak to without just hearing her own voice in a room and having to go to the trouble of pretending she did not feel absolutely alone.