Shawn Vestal - Daredevils

When she knocks, there is no answer. She knocks again, and again there is no answer — no grumbling, no moaning. She cracks open the door and peeks in, and then she simply stares at the empty bed, the empty room, without understanding, at first, what isn’t there.

Bradshaw

Bradshaw wakes on the cot in the basement, surrounded by the walls of jarred preserves aligned on new wood shelves, some bright with color, peach yellow, beet red, and others gone gray and furred with dusk. Right where Lori was sleeping, until he showed up. It is winter cold down there, concrete and exposed pipe and invisible shuffling in the corners, and each new morning briefly confuses Bradshaw, who must absorb and remember.

Upstairs, he hears footsteps in the kitchen. Ruth’s making her horse food. They will go now any day, he and Lori. He is ready. He tells Lori they don’t need a thing. He tells her he was wrong, down in The Crick, when he said to wait for money, just as he was wrong to let her tell him no. He mutters and whispers to her whenever he gets a chance, and he knows it now, without a doubt, that Ruth has seen. Loretta says wait, wait, soon now, soon. She knows something, she wants something, but they can never talk much.

He was wrong when he said they should wait for money. Everything had already changed, the landscape shifted, by the time he told her that, but he didn’t realize it until their moment had passed. How had it changed? What had she said? No. No . He had never allowed a girl to tell him no. Never. And there had been plenty of them, starting back in Vegas. High school. His dad off on oil rigs for weeks at a time, his mom who knows where, the house his own. And there were plenty of them in Cedar City later, girls who would do what he wanted them to. Like it or not. The Mormon girls — half were as fast as hell, and the others would keep their mouths shut. At a certain point, limbs and mouths entangled, no was not something Bradshaw was willing to accept.

But with Loretta, he had. She was that kind of Mormon. A whole new territory. He took no for an answer, knowing that yes was up ahead somewhere. What do you call that, if not love? Surely she knows that, Lori does. Surely she knows what he has done for her, what part of himself he has given up, and what she owes him because of it.

Footsteps on the top three stairs, and Ruth’s voice.

“Mr. Baker? Good morning.”

Steps retreating. Upstairs, the sounds of the house: chairs dragging, forks on plates. And then heavier steps and a deeper voice: Dean.

Bradshaw pulls on his jeans and chamois work shirt, and steps into his boots. Sitting on the cot, he ties the boots and considers one of the surprises of this journey: He likes Dean. Kind of admires him. Enjoys the fact that Dean seems to trust and admire him in turn, seems to feel that Bradshaw is becoming a loyal lieutenant in Zion’s Harvest, and maybe in his wider battles — his battles with the brethren down in Short Creek, his constant inner battle with the worldly world. It’s not that Bradshaw won’t do what he’s come here to do. But sometimes he imagines having a life like Dean’s, and the idea draws him in: all those people orbiting you, women and children and women, all yours, all turning toward your light as if you were the sun itself.

• • •

Breakfast is mush. That’s what Ruth calls it, the oatmeal cooked to spongy softness: mush. Raisins and honey for sweetness. Some whole wheat toast with her homemade jam and no butter. Eating these meals makes Bradshaw desperate for a diner, a cafeteria somewhere with coffee and greasy eggs and glistening hash browns, big bowls of sugar, a drift of cigarette smoke. The only consolation is Lori, every morning, ducking her head toward the food, hiding those eyes. Love, he thinks every morning, love, love. He was not one who accepted love — not like that, not the way they say, the giving over, the loss of control — it was not something he sought or even believed in, necessarily, until Lori seeped into his mind.

Only she is not at the table today. The kids are crowded around, slurping and banging. Dean looms above everyone else, knees wide and head bowed, and he spoons mush into his mouth steadily and purposefully, as though he were hammering a nail.

He looks up when Bradshaw enters and says, “Morning,” and turns back to the mush. Samuel — a zitty little shit who Bradshaw can tell will grow into meanness — looks to Bradshaw and nods, but no one else says a word or turns his way. Bradshaw wants more talk than this house provides. He says, “And a fine morning it is, with this lovely spread for breakfast. Thank you, Sister Ruth.”

She says, “You’re welcome,” as she puts a bowl before him. He considers asking where Loretta is, and decides against it.

After several minutes of silent eating, Dean says to Ruth, “Perhaps she needs a little nudging,” and Ruth wipes her hands on a towel and leaves. Bradshaw hears her going up, and then down the small hall, to where he knows Loretta’s room is — the one she moved into when he arrived, displacing the kids into sleeping bags in the living room — and he hears, faintly, a knock and a murmur, another knock and another murmur, and then Ruth’s returning steps, down the hall, down the stairs, into the kitchen. She leans over Dean’s shoulder, whispers in his ear, and they leave together, and Bradshaw knows something has gone rotten. When he learns that Loretta is not in that room and that no one knows where she has gone, he thinks back on how he knew it — how he felt it — when Dean and Ruth left the kitchen together, how the knowledge came to him like a wrenching of the guts, because that, too, was love.

• • •

No one is talking to him. No one is looking at him. Dean and Ruth whisper loudly, the anger audible but not the words. The kids are hustled away to the living room, and Ruth tells Samuel, “I need you all in there and I need you quiet,” and then she turns to Bradshaw, still sitting there before his mush. Ruth seems unsure what to say as she looks at him, face livid, and after forever she simply holds up a hand, as if to say, Stay right there.

Dean stomps upstairs and down, whispers with Ruth, and stomps back up. Soon come four loud pounding sounds, accompanied by some splintering. Bradshaw stands, and Ruth checks him with a glance.

“Can I help with anything?” he asks.

Ruth shakes her head tightly. “Thank you, no. Thank you.”

“I’ll go out, then.”

He pulls on his wool-lined denim jacket, and steps out the back door, letting the screen door slam. He just knows. Not everything. Not the how and why. But he knows, and there is a rot in his chest. His mind moves like a hummingbird, too fast, and he feels strangely exposed — fooled and foolish — and trudges through the fallow hayfield, through frozen clod and chaff.

When he goes back in, Ruth is speaking on the telephone while Dean is seated at the kitchen table, looking calm, meditative. A rush of affection floods Bradshaw; here is how a man holds himself. Here is a right man. Ruth cuts her eyes at Bradshaw, phone tucked against the side of her head, and then turns her back and lowers her voice.

She hangs up and says to Dean, “Jason, too,” and confusion ripples the stillness of Dean’s calm face, and he asks, “What?” and then everything in Dean’s visage — forehead, eyes, beard — contracts around the center of his face, and he says, “What?” again, louder, and Ruth doesn’t answer.

• • •

He’s going after her. It’s the only thing he knows. He walks out and stops in the yard. Considers Dean’s pickup, white with a scurf of dirt splattered upward from below. The tempest in his mind clears and he hears his own voice: What in the fuck is wrong with me? How had she done this to him, and what should he do about it?