Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

At two o’clock on a Saturday, Glen drove up into our yard in a car. He had had a big brown Harley-Davidson that he rode most of the year, in his black-and-red irrigators and a baseball cap turned backwards. But this time he had a car, a blue Nash Ambassador. My mother and I went out on the porch when he stopped inside the olive trees my father had planted as a shelter belt, and my mother had a look on her face of not much pleasure. It was starting to be cold in earnest by then. Snow was down already onto the Fairfield Bench, though on this day a chinook was blowing, and it could as easily have been spring, though the sky above the Divide was turning over in silver and blue clouds of winter.

“We haven’t seen you in a long time, I guess,” my mother said coldly.

“My little retarded sister died,” Glen said, standing at the door of his old car. He was wearing his orange VFW jacket and canvas shoes we called wino shoes, something I had never seen him wear before. He seemed to be in a good humor. “We buried her in Florida near the home.”

“That’s a good place,” my mother said in a voice that meant she was a wronged party in something.

“I want to take this boy hunting today, Aileen,” Glen said. “There’s snow geese down now. But we have to go right away or they’ll be gone to Idaho by tomorrow.”

“He doesn’t care to go,” my mother said.

“Yes I do,” I said and looked at her.

My mother frowned at me. “Why do you?”

“Why does he need a reason?” Glen Baxter said and grinned.

“I want him to have one, that’s why.” She looked at me oddly. “I think Glen’s drunk, Les.”

“No, I’m not drinking,” Glen said, which was hardly ever true. He looked at both of us, and my mother bit down on the side of her lower lip and stared at me in a way to make you think she thought something was being put over on her and she didn’t like you for it. She was pretty, though when she was mad her features were sharpened and less pretty by a long way. “All right then, I don’t care,” she said to no one in particular. “Hunt, kill, maim. Your father did that too.” She turned to go back inside.

“Why don’t you come with us, Aileen?” Glen was smiling still, pleased.

“To do what?” my mother said. She stopped and pulled a package of cigarettes out of her dress pocket and put one in her mouth.

“It’s worth seeing.”

“See dead animals?” my mother said.

“These geese are from Siberia, Aileen,” Glen said. “They’re not like a lot of geese. Maybe I’ll buy us dinner later. What do you say?”

“Buy with what?” my mother said. To tell the truth, I didn’t know why she was so mad at him. I would’ve thought she’d be glad to see him. But she just suddenly seemed to hate everything about him.

“I’ve got some money,” Glen said. “Let me spend it on a pretty girl tonight.”

“Find one of those and you’re lucky,” my mother said, turning away toward the front door.

“I’ve already found one,” Glen Baxter said. But the door slammed behind her, and he looked at me then with a look I think now was helplessness, though I could not see a way to change anything.

My mother sat in the back seat of Glen’s Nash and looked out the window while we drove. My double gun was in the seat between us beside Glen’s Belgian pump, which he kept loaded with five shells in case, he said, he saw something beside the road he wanted to shoot. I had hunted rabbits before, and had ground-sluiced pheasants and other birds, but I had never been on an actual hunt before, one where you drove out to some special place and did it formally. And I was excited. I had a feeling that something important was about to happen to me and that this would be a day I would always remember.

My mother did not say anything for a long time, and neither did I. We drove up through Great Falls and out the other side toward Fort Benton, which was on the benchland where wheat was grown.

“Geese mate for life,” my mother said, just out of the blue, as we were driving. “I hope you know that. They’re special birds.”

“I know that,” Glen said in the front seat. “I have every respect for them.”

“So where were you for three months?” she said. “I’m only curious.”

“I was in the Big Hole for a while,” Glen said, “and after that I went over to Douglas, Wyoming.”

“What were you planning to do there?” my mother said.

“I wanted to find a job, but it didn’t work out.”

“I’m going to college,” she said suddenly, and this was something I had never heard about before. I turned to look at her, but she was staring out her window and wouldn’t see me.

“I knew French once,” Glen said. “Rose’s pink. Rouge’s red.” He glanced at me and smiled. “I think that’s a wise idea, Aileen. When are you going to start?”

“I don’t want Les to think he was raised by crazy people all his life,” my mother said.

“Les ought to go himself,” Glen said.

“After I go, he will.”

“What do you say about that, Les?” Glen said, grinning.

“He says it’s just fine,” my mother said.

“It’s just fine,” I said.

Where Glen Baxter took us was out onto the high flat prairie that was disked for wheat and had high, high mountains out to the east, with lower heartbreak hills in between. It was, I remember, a day for blues in the sky, and down in the distance we could see the small town of Floweree and the state highway running past it toward Fort Benton and the high line. We drove out on top of the prairie on a muddy dirt road fenced on both sides, until we had gone about three miles, which is where Glen stopped.

“All right,” he said, looking up in the rearview mirror at my mother. “You wouldn’t think there was anything here, would you?”

“ We’re here,” my mother said. “You brought us here.”

“You’ll be glad, though,” Glen said, and seemed confident to me. I had looked around myself but could not see anything. No water or trees, nothing that seemed like a good place to hunt anything. Just wasted land. “There’s a big lake out there, Les,” Glen said. “You can’t see it now from here because it’s low. But the geese are there. You’ll see.”

“It’s like the moon out here, I recognize that,” my mother said, “only it’s worse.” She was staring out at the flat, disked wheatland as if she could actually see something in particular and wanted to know more about it. “How’d you find this place?”

“I came once on the wheat push,” Glen said.

“And I’m sure the owner told you just to come back and hunt any time you like and bring anybody you wanted. Come one, come all. Is that it?”

“People shouldn’t own land anyway,” Glen said. “Anybody should be able to use it.”

“Les, Glen’s going to poach here,” my mother said. “I just want you to know that, because that’s a crime and the law will get you for it. If you’re a man now, you’re going to have to face the consequences.”

“That’s not true,” Glen Baxter said, and looked gloomily out over the steering wheel down the muddy road toward the mountains. Though for myself I believed it was true, and didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything at that moment except seeing geese fly over me and shooting them down.

“Well, I’m certainly not going out there,” my mother said. “I like towns better, and I already have enough trouble.”

“That’s okay,” Glen said. “When the geese lift up you’ll get to see them. That’s all I wanted. Les and me’ll go shoot them, won’t we, Les?”

“Yes,” I said, and I put my hand on my shotgun, which had been my father’s and was heavy as rocks.

“Then we should go on,” Glen said, “or we’ll waste our light.”