Richard Ford - Wildlife

‘It’s Warren Miller,’ my mother said flatly.

‘Well, good for him then,’ my father said.

‘Your attitude toward things changes,’ my mother said.

‘I know that,’ my father said. ‘I’m aware of that.’

My mother put her hands down beside her on the couch. It was the first time she had moved in several minutes. She must’ve thought the worst part of this time was over with, and it’s possible that for her it was.

‘I don’t want you to be mad at me,’ my father said, ‘just because I went to a fire. Do you understand?’

‘I understand,’ my mother said. ‘I’m not mad at you.’

‘Love is one thing,’ my father said. And then he just stopped talking. He looked all around the room for an instant as if something had startled him, something he heard or expected to hear, or just something he thought of while he was talking that made the rest of what he was about to say fly out of his mind. ‘Where are you going to move to?’ he said. ‘Are you moving in with Miller?’

‘The Helen Apartments,’ my mother said. ‘They’re down by the river. On First.’

‘I know where they are,’ my father said abruptly. Then he said, ‘Christ almighty, it’s hot in here, Jean.’ His canvas shirt was buttoned all the way to the top, and he suddenly unbuttoned three buttons right down to the middle of his chest. ‘You should turn it down in here,’ he said. I remembered that I was the one who had turned the furnace up earlier that day when I had been alone in the house and cold.

‘That’s true,’ my mother said. ‘I’m sorry.’ But she did not get up. She stayed where she was.

‘Have you had a hard three days?’ my father said.

‘No,’ my mother said. ‘Not very hard.’

‘Good, then.’ My father looked at her. ‘Are we not getting along? Is that it?’

‘I think so,’ my mother said calmly. She touched her neck with her fingers. The mark was below her collar and the white bow, but she must’ve just become aware of it and wondered where it was and if he could see it, which he couldn’t. He knew nothing about it.

‘I’d certainly like to see the world the same way again. Have things be all right.’ My father said this and smiled at her. ‘I feel like everything’s tilting. The whole works.’

‘I’ve felt that way,’ my mother said.

‘Boy,’ my father said. ‘Boy, boy.’ He shook his head and smiled. I know he was amazed to have all this happening to him. He had never dreamed that it could. Maybe he was trying to think what he had done wrong, go back in time to when life was set straight. But he couldn’t think of when that was.

‘Jerry,’ my mother said. ‘Why don’t you go out and take Joe for something to eat. I didn’t cook tonight. I didn’t know you were coming till too late.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ my father said. He looked at me and smiled again. ‘This is a wild life, isn’t it son?’ he said.

‘He doesn’t know what is and isn’t.’ My mother said this crossly, in a scolding way, without any sympathy for him. She got up and stood behind the table with the decks of cards on it. She was waiting for us to leave.

‘I think I’m wasted on you,’ my father said. He was angry again in just that instant. I didn’t blame him.

‘I think you are, too,’ my mother said. And she smiled in a way that was not a smile. She just wanted this moment in her life to be over, and for something else — probably anything — to happen next. ‘We’re all wasted on everything nowadays,’ she said. Then she turned and walked out of the living room, leaving us in it all alone, just me and my father with no place to go but out into the night, and no one to be with but each other.

We drove down to Central Avenue to where there were cafes and some bars I could get a meal in. It had gone on snowing in tiny flakes that swirled in front of the headlights, but the pavement was already damp and shining with water, and the snow had begun to turn to rain by the time we were downtown, so that it seemed more like spring in eastern Washington than the beginning of winter in Montana.

In the car my father acted like things weren’t so bad. He told me he would take me to a movie if I wanted to go to one, or that we could go stay in a hotel for the night. The Rainbow, he’d heard, was a good place. He mentioned that the Yankees were playing well in the World Series so far, but that he hoped Pittsburgh would win. He also said that bad things happened and adults knew it, but that they finally passed by, and I should not think we were all just an accumulation of our worst errors because we were all better than we thought, and that he loved my mother and she loved him, and that he had made mistakes himself and that we all deserved better. And I knew he believed he would make life right between them again.

‘Things can surprise you. I’m aware of that,’ he said to me as we drove down Central in the cold car. ‘When I was in Choteau I saw a moose, if you can believe that. Right down in the middle of town. The fire had driven it out of where it normally roamed. Everybody was amazed.’

‘What happened to it?’ I said.

‘Oh, I don’t know that,’ my father said. ‘Some of them wanted to shoot it but some others didn’t. I didn’t hear about it later. Maybe it did okay.’

We drove down to the end of Central and parked in front of a bar that had bright lights inside, and walls that were painted white and very high ceilings. It was called The Presidential, and I could see through the windows from the street that men were playing cards at two tables in the back, but no one was at the bar drinking. I had looked into this bar on my walks through town and thought that railroad men went there because it was near the train stations and the railroad hotels. ‘This is a fine place here,’ my father said. ‘They have good food and you can hear yourself think a thought.’

The bar was a long, narrow room and had framed pictures of two or three presidents on the wall. Roosevelt was one. Lincoln was another. We sat at the bar, and I ordered navy bean soup and a pasty pie. My father ordered a glass of whiskey and a beer. I had not eaten since morning and I was hungry, though as I sat at the bar with my father I couldn’t help wondering what my mother was doing. Was she packing her suitcase? Was she talking on the telephone to Warren Miller or to someone else? Was she sitting on her bed crying? None of those seemed exactly right. And I decided that when I had eaten my meal, I would ask my father to take me back home. He would understand someone wanting to do that, I thought, especially for your mother, at a bad time.

‘A lot of what’s burned, you know, is just understory.’ My father’s hand was on his glass of whiskey, and he was looking at the scarred skin on the back of it. ‘You’ll be able to go in there next spring. You’ll live in a house one of these days made of that timber. A fire’s not always such a bad thing.’ He looked at me and smiled.

‘Were you afraid out there,’ I asked. I was eating my pasty pie.

‘Yes, I was. We only were digging back trenches, but I was afraid. Anything can go on. If you had an enemy he could kill you and no one would know it. I had to stop a man from running straight into the fire once. I dragged him down.’ My father took a drink of his beer and rubbed one hand over the other one. ‘Look at my hands,’ he said. ‘I had smooth hands when I played golf.’ He rubbed his hand harder. ‘Are you proud of me now?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. And that was true. I had told my mother that I was, and I was.

I heard poker chips clatter in the back of the room and a chair squeak as someone got up. ‘You can’t quit now, I’m winning,’ someone said and people laughed.