Richard Ford: Wildlife

‘No,’ my father said, ‘but I’m not hungry.’ He stood for a moment holding his black suitcase. I thought one of them would tell me to leave the room, to go do something for myself, but they didn’t. And I just stood beside the front door feeling a draft seep in over the sill and across my ankles.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ my mother said. ‘You must be tired. You must’ve seen a lot of different things.’

‘I don’t know who I’m waiting to impress here,’ my father said, and set his bag down behind the front door and sat where I had been sitting, in the armchair beside the television. I could see him better. He moved stiffly. The backs of his hands were hard, as if they had been baked, and I could still smell the ash smell that was on him. It was a smell I hadn’t associated with a person before I had smelled it at the cafe where my mother and I had eaten two nights before.

‘You don’t have to impress me,’ my mother said. ‘That’s for sure.’

‘Did you think I’d be killed?’ my father said.

‘I hoped you wouldn’t be,’ my mother said. She smiled at him then in a way to make you think she liked him. ‘We’d have been disappointed here at home,’ she said. ‘Will the fire ever go out?’

My father looked at his hands, where they were red and sore-looking. ‘It’ll smoke and smolder on for a long time. It’s hard to put out.’

‘I had a mystical feeling while you were gone,’ my mother said, and I could see her relax a little. I thought that maybe things were going to be fine now, and there wouldn’t be trouble. ‘I thought,’ she said, ‘that maybe the whole fire was a thing not to be put out at all. And you men just — everybody — went there to invigorate yourselves.’

‘That’s not exactly right,’ my father said. He looked up at me. His eyes were red and small and tired. But he looked fine, and maybe he was invigorated the way my mother had said. There didn’t seem anything wrong with that. ‘It takes you outside yourself is what it does,’ he said. ‘You see everything from outside. You’re up against so big a thing out there.’ He looked up at me again and at my mother, and he blinked his eyes. ‘Everything seems arbitrary. You step outside your life and everything seems like something you choose. Nothing seems very natural. It’s probably hard to understand. I saw flames a hundred feet high suddenly just turn sideways like a blowtorch. Just go out of kilter. A man got blown off his horse just from air blowing past him.’ My father shivered, as though a fright had passed through him. And he shook his head quickly as if he wanted to shake a picture out of it.

‘That’s awful,’ my mother said.

‘I feel strange now,’ my father said. ‘But I’m glad to be home.’

‘I’m glad you came,’ my mother said. She looked at me in a way I thought was confused. She was making a decision. And though I knew what I wished she would decide, I didn’t have the nerve to say so, to try to help her. They had things to say to each other that I had nothing to do with. ‘How did it all start?’ she said then. ‘Do they know how that happened?’

‘Arson,’ my father said, and sat back in his chair. ‘A man did it. I wouldn’t want to be him. Somebody’ll kill him, I know that. It may have been an Indian.’

‘Why would you think that?’ my mother said.

‘I just don’t like them,’ my father said. ‘They leave their own behind, and they’re secretive. I don’t like to trust them.’

‘I see,’ my mother said.

‘What about school?’ my father said to me then, and turned toward me. He seemed to need to turn his whole body when he did. Probably he had been sleeping on the ground, is what I thought, and ached from it.

‘He’s doing fine at that,’ my mother said before I could answer. I think she didn’t want me to lie to him, and she knew that I was about to. The truth wouldn’t have helped anything then.

‘That’s good.’ My father smiled at me. ‘I guess I haven’t been gone that long, have I?’

‘You’ve been gone long enough,’ my mother said. And for a moment neither of them said anything.

‘A man talked to me today about a job with the Forestry. The foresters,’ my father said. He was not paying much attention to my mother. He was feeling better about things, I think. ‘A college degree is a plus with them. Experience isn’t so important. They’ll provide us a house up in Choteau.’

‘Jerry, I have something I have to tell you,’ my mother said. She sat forward on the edge of the couch, with her knees together and her hands on her skirt. My father stopped talking about the Forestry and looked at her. He could tell something was important, though I don’t think he had any idea what it might be. That my mother would leave him was the last thing he could’ve had on his mind. I think he might’ve thought things were going to be better. He had a right to think that, really.

‘Tell me what it is, Jean,’ he said. ‘I’m just running on here. I’m sorry.’

‘I’m going to move into another place. I’m going to move in tomorrow,’ my mother said, and her voice seemed louder than it needed to be. She looked as though she had just said something she hadn’t understood herself, and that had scared her. It is probably not how she thought she would feel.

‘What do you mean by that?’ my father said. ‘What in the world?’ He was staring at her.

‘It’s a surprise, I know,’ my mother said. ‘I’m surprised myself.’ She had not moved, had kept her knees together and her hands very still on her lap.

‘Are you crazy?’ my father said.

‘No,’ my mother said very quietly. ‘I don’t think I am.’

My father suddenly turned and looked out the front window. It was as if he thought someone was there, outside on the porch or in the yard or the street, watching him, somebody he could have reference to, somebody who could give him an idea about what was happening to him. The street was empty, of course. Snow was coming down through the streetlamp light.

He turned and looked at my mother again, quickly. He had forgotten about me. They both had. My father’s face was pale.

‘I’m coming down with something,’ he said, and he clenched his fist on the arm of the chair. ‘Probably a cold.’ My mother just stared at him. ‘Are you stepping out on me?’ he said. He tapped his fist on the chair arm as if he was nervous.

My mother looked at me. Maybe she didn’t even want to have to go through with anything now. But she had gone too far, and I don’t think she saw any choice. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Yes. I am.’

‘Who is it?’ my father said.

‘Oh, just somebody I like,’ my mother said.

‘Somebody from the country club?’ my father said. He was getting furious, and my mother must’ve felt she couldn’t stop it now.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But that’s not what it’s about. That’s just a circumstance.’

‘I know that,’ my father said. ‘I believe that.’ He got up and walked around the room. It was as if he wanted to hear his feet hit the floor, hear the loud noise his boots made on the wood. He walked around behind the couch, then back into the middle of the room. I could smell him, the ashy smell, and I knew my mother could too. Then he sat back down in the chair by the television.

‘I don’t know what makes life hold together at all,’ he said. He did not seem as mad now, only very unhappy. I felt sorry for him.

‘I know,’ my mother said. ‘I don’t either. I’m sorry.’

My father squeezed his hands together tightly in front of him. ‘What in the hell are you thinking about, Jean?’ He looked up at me then. ‘I don’t even care who it is.’ He said this to me, for some reason.