Bonnie Nadzam - Lamb

“Gary!”

“Oh, ignore me. You should ignore everything I say.”

She made like bearing her fangs when she noticed him staring at her. They finished their sandwiches and juice, and Lamb took a chocolate bar out of his pack and broke it in half.

“Know what we need to really make this perfect?”

She took half the chocolate.

“Binoculars.” He nodded up toward the north end of the plain. “I bet we could see all kinds of mule deer and pronghorn.”

“Those dots?”

“If we go back into town, we’ll get you a pair. They’re expensive.”

“Like how much?”

“Hundreds. Tell you what. We get a pair, they’re yours to keep.”

“Okay.”

“We’re going to need a moving truck to get all your new stuff back to Illinois.”

She laughed.

“Where are you going to hide all of your presents when you get home?”

“My closet.”

“You’ve already figured it out.”

“Yep.”

“Doesn’t anybody go in your closet?”

“Nope.”

“Not even your mom on Saturday mornings when she’s gathering the laundry.”

“I do my own laundry.”

“Do you really?”

“Yep.”

“No, really?”

“For serious.”

“Do you separate the whites and the colors?”

“Whites get hot, colors get cold.”

“You’re a resourceful girl, you know that?”

When they finished and packed up their things, he stood. “I’m going to see a man about a horse. You stay put.” The girl waited and Lamb watched her from a distance, zipping up. When she looked up, he held up his thumbs and index fingers in a rectangle as if he were holing her in the frame of a photograph. He could see the little white flash of her smile, and when he reached her, he went into his pack and handed her a little tuft of toilet tissue. “Your turn. That man wants to know what you think of a red pony.”

“Huh?”

“After you wipe, put this under a rock or use a stick to put some dirt over it.”

“Gary!”

“Don’t get squeamish on me. This is just our bodies, right? Don’t you know how a male body works?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. And I know how a female body works. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. I’m glad we got that out of the way. Now go on and take care of business.”

They hiked in through the valley side by side, two dark figures tracing the grassy inside slope of a pale green parabola, their shadows lengthening before them, the girl in a wreck of sweat and dirt and dust and sunblock and cow shit.

They reached the shop again in late afternoon, the girl carrying the empty canteens, one over each shoulder, canvas straps marking her chest. Lamb was bare chested, his blue work shirt tied into a turban over the girl’s head. He hadn’t known about skin like hers. Even sunblock couldn’t help. He should have spread cow shit all over her face.

“We’ll help you rinse off with cool water and soap you off before it hurts to the touch.”

“It doesn’t feel bad.”

“It will.” He ran his hands under the hose faucet and back through his hair. “If we were out working we’d rinse our hats and shirts in the river and put them back on.”

“Can I get a root beer?”

“Good idea. Get me one of those other beers will you?”

“Do I get a sip?”

“One sip. Take it right off the top and bring me the rest. I’ll get the soap.”

Lamb went into the cabin for towels and bath soap and on his way out saw a flash of Alison Foster’s white hair in the doorway of the shop. In two steps Lamb was through the door, filthy, old ratty towels rolled up beneath his arm, and just in time to see Tommie—her face a terrific ruin—turning around from the workbench and lowering the open beer from her lips, her little mouth pursed in a conspiratorial grin pointed mistakenly at Foster, whose presence she’d taken for Lamb’s.

Lamb stepped past the old man, took the beer from her hand, and slapped her full across the face. His hand stung and for a moment he was afraid she was going over. It was too much. He’d never hit anyone so small. She looked up at no one, stunned. She raised her hand to her face. She made no sound. He loved her for it.

“Go inside.”

“I hate you.” A shaking whisper.

“No you don’t.”

She looked from Lamb to the old man and back again and ran out. Lamb stood still, blood beating hard in the sides of his neck and inside his thighs and rushing hot through his face and the palms of his hands. It was the sun working in him. He let his eyes shut halfway and took a deep, steadying breath. She’d go off in the grass behind the shop, or beyond the outbuildings or to the river. She’d be back. There was nowhere for her to go. He set the full beer on the workbench. The breeze from the open window was cool and the blue sky was beginning to darken. Shadows were already capturing the trees at the river. Box elder leaves paler than they’d been two days ago.

Lamb exhaled. “I’m sorry you had to witness that.”

“Well.” Foster widened his small eyes and looked at the floor. For half a minute neither man spoke.

“She’s never done that before.”

“I guess a little taste of beer never hurt anybody.”

Lamb said nothing.

“You went for a walk,” Foster said. It was not a question.

“We had a little snack out there behind some old homestead.”

“Thought I saw you going north.” Lamb envisioned the old man on his rooftop with binoculars. “You shouldn’t,” Foster said.

“We didn’t. Well, initially we did. But we crossed back and went out that way.” He looked off beyond the old man as if he were pointing through the wall. “How far does that go?”

“Ninety mile.”

“All BLM?”

“Mostly.”

“Not much out there.”

“Beef cows.”

“We saw signs of that.”

“You don’t want to go north,” Foster said again.

“Some unfriendly landowners that way, what?”

The old man watched Lamb. “Ed Granger. Had a metal plate put in his head in eighty-one.”

“That right?”

“Never been right since.”

“Where’s that property start?”

“And he doesn’t like children.”

“I see.”

“Maybe you ought to go see about her.”

Lamb looked up. “Who? Em?”

Foster returned the gaze.

“She’s okay.” Lamb gestured with his head toward the cabin, wondering if Foster had seen her outside, through the window behind him. “She’s got a lot to deal with right now. Her mom gone and all.”

Foster looked at him with eyes Lamb couldn’t read.

“Her own mother was the drunk in that wreck.”

“Shame.”

“I know it.”

“But this is no place for a girl.” The old man surveyed the steel beams crossed above them. “Helped my brother-in-law Calhoun put this place up in seventy-four.”

“I remember you saying.”

“He had a godchild running around here back and forth all over the goddamned place. Just about lost her arm on a square of sheet metal.” He made a slicing motion across the belly of his forearm. “She was just a little thing.” The old man shook his head. “Kind of picture you don’t forget.”

“No, I’m sure.”

“Seventy-eight miles to a hospital. As you would know.”

Lamb looked out the window behind him toward the river and tree line, as if he might find the correct response out there. “I didn’t think things through too well, I guess. I’m not used to having a child around.” He turned back to Foster. “But if that’s the closest hospital, that’s something I should have taken into consideration.”

“You ought to take her home. Your home. Somebody’s home.”

Lamb said nothing.