IT MAY SURPRISE YOU, AFTER THE GOATS IN THE BATHROOM, THAT ROXANNA Cawley set a pleasant and even cultivated table. Against the grassy barrens she managed to coax forth string beans and acorn squash and to put them up in quantities reaching to late January—though of course everything lasted longer with old Dale gone. She also had sweet corn of a white variety I’d never seen before, a strain she liked for its tenderness and because it froze well right on the cob. Did you ever sit down to white cobbed corn, freshened with butter and salt, snow meantime beating the windows on the coldest evening of a cold new year? Faced with such fare I couldn’t even begrudge Roxanna her advocacy of pickled beets, a bowl of which she set down with restrained pride and expectation. Fortunately Dad proved fond of beets. You never know. We dined beneath a bronzed corona in which remained but one good bulb. We ate roasted chicken, raised out back the previous summer, and tender potatoes brought by train from the Red River Valley, and gravy stirred up from the cracklings. I suppose it was a meal intended to impress, though you don’t think of a woman like Roxanna worrying about how her hospitality comes off; she hadn’t seemed at all ashamed about the goats. But she went to a lot of trouble for us, who were after all just one small family paying a few dollars for a night’s room and board. During that meal I saw Dad lean back in his chair and smile over and over again, an expression that grieved me somehow; Swede looked often at the windows, and I knew she was growing the storm in her mind, abetting it until the world should be slowed and the roads stopped and us buried at some happy length in the warmth and contentment of this house.
And what things we learned around that table, what lessons we had in the ways of independence! For Roxanna Cawley had started life on a ranch in a valley of northern Montana, a ranch like many of its neighbors given up in the Dust Bowl years and sold for the unpaid taxes. While moving into town she’d ridden with her father in the rented truck and watched a maddened ribby steer stagger across the road. The steer was blind with disease and Mr. Cawley evaded it with an artful swerve, but Mrs. Cawley—following in their Chevrolet—struck it broadside and was killed in that moment. Roxanna, seven and waiting in the cab, first believed it was her mother screaming, then that it was her father bellowing in grief, but actually it was the steer, which lived a few more minutes.
Thus did Roxanna grow up motherless, just as we were doing; thus by necessity did she learn from her father the principles of business. Having failed at ranching he borrowed from an uncle to purchase a clapboard theater on the main street of Lawrence, Montana. The previous owner had closed years before, having carelessly screened newsreel footage taken during the Pancho Villa troubles near the Mexican border. The jumpy newsreel displayed a line of dark-skinned peasants falling before a firing squad, citizens Mr. Villa considered to be of faltering loyalty. The people of Lawrence were unprepared for such realities played out before them. Ladies swooned in their seats; husbands began a commotion. A high-placed council of indignants resolved that motion pictures had no business in the community. The local newspaper called it small loss. Therefore Mr. Cawley’s resurrection of the movie house was viewed as a risk, even decades later. Roxanna remembered the care her father practiced in choosing films; he got most of Lawrence on his side with selections like Tarzan the Fearless and Tarzan Escapes. Johnny Weissmuller, Mr. Cawley informed young Roxanna, was a man who could be counted on. Maureen O’Sullivan too, despite all the swimming she did with Tarzan; wives didn’t mind their husbands watching Maureen O’Sullivan. Marlene Dietrich would’ve been another matter.
Swede wondered if running a theater had often put Roxanna in the proximity of movie stars. Roxanna replied not many, but once after a showing of Kitty Foyle her father turned up the lights and there sat Dalton Trumbo, right in the audience. I asked who Dalton Trumbo was and learned he’d written the film. You’ll laugh, but I’d never known films were actually written; weren’t they just actors up there talking? However, Roxanna’s father, whom she called Daddy, seized the attention of the departing crowd and introduced Dalton Trumbo, the great screenwriter. It got in the paper, a superb moment for Mr. Cawley, though it went hard for him later when Dalton got jailed. Had he robbed a bank or shot someone there might’ve been forgiveness, but he got jailed for liking communism, which was a disgrace. Mr. Cawley had to take down the photo of himself and Dalton shaking hands in front of the marquee. It had hung in the lobby for years.
Swede looked disappointed at this, because after all who was Dalton Trumbo? It was only much later we learned he’d also written Spartacus, and by then gladiators had lost some of their shine, at least for me. But Roxanna hated to let Swede down and said that once, talking of movie stars, Lee Van Cleef had showed up. Keep in mind Van Cleef was still several years from his famous badman roles opposite Mr. Eastwood—in fact, Mr. Cawley almost didn’t know him but had screened The Big Combo just a few weeks before. Van Cleef wasn’t threatening in person and as he was vacationing at a mountain cabin seemed relaxed and content. He came for a showing of Tarzan’s Savage Fury. After the movie Mr. Cawley invited Van Cleef for dinner; Roxanna remembered he wore a lavender shirt and a string tie and didn’t think much of Lex Barker—as Tarzans went he was no Johnny Weissmuller.
To this bit of talk Dad added nothing but leaned back in a ticking-covered chair with his hands clasped behind his neck and his legs crossed as though at home. You could see he knew zero about Spartacus or the great screenwriter Trumbo or, for that matter, Lee Van Cleef, and you could see that his ignorance in these matters worried him not at all. Roxanna Cawley was talking to us in a warm fashion we couldn’t have guessed at when we pulled in for gas. To Dad—so long without his wife—the particular formula of meal, woman, and conversation must have seemed like a favorite hymn remembered. I’m ashamed to recall thinking it was too bad Roxanna Cawley was not lovely. I recall believing if she were only beautiful she would somehow come to spend the balance of her life entertaining us in just this way. Wrapping us in just this sort of comfort. My selfishness should no longer surprise you. Rather, the surprise might be that I thought of Dad at all; for it came to me that he was regularly alone after Swede and I went to bed at night. That he would one day be alone when we’d gone away. I watched Dad lean back shuteyed in his chair, looking tired and pleased. We were warm, finally, and I rose to the window, where hard snow was spatting against the glass.
“Reuben,” Dad said, “how’s the breathing?”
“It’s okay.” Boy, I wished he hadn’t mentioned it in front of Roxanna.
“Sounds a little ropy,” he said.
“I’m tired. Can I go to bed now?” I asked, aware Swede would view this as betrayal.
“Of course. I’ll be up soon too. Go on, you two.”
I dreamed a devilish little man came and stole my breath. He stepped through the door with a skin bag strung limp over his shoulder and with dispassionate efficiency crouched back and slugged me in the stomach. Such an incredulous exhale! And so complete; not a wisp of air remained. In that agonized vacuum I rolled my eyes upward and beheld the stranger tying up the bag with a leather thong. He had the opening squeezed shut in one fist and was throwing half-hitches around it and yanking them tight. Now the skin bag was stretched and seamed. It was barrel-sized and taut as a blimp. Inside it was all my breath. The little man crouched again and looked at me closely. He was a pale one, a horror. Years later I would describe him to Swede and she would point him out to me, or his close cousin, in a book containing the works of Francisco Goya. When he straightened and went out the door with the taut bag on his shoulder, I saw that my breath was gone. Anyone would panic. I thrashed and lurched and arched my back. On waking I saw Dad kneeling bedside, holding my upper arms; I heard Swede crying distantly; someone I couldn’t see was thumping my back. I’d never felt such thumps; they were like car wrecks. But I got a little breath back, and with each painful thump a little more. Confused, still afraid of the man with the skin bag, I tried to tear loose; in my perplexity I thought it might be he who was socking my back. You don’t emerge from these episodes thinking clearly. I managed to turn enough to glimpse Roxanna Cawley in a flannel nightgown hammering my corporeal self with the strictest resolve. It was a convincing sight. In fact I felt quite rightly convinced I would live through the night. Dad continued to hold me in place. It was a joyous bruising that bit by bit knocked glue from my lungs. I pictured it coming away in gobs. You need to understand Roxanna was hitting me with the flat of her hands, not her fists, but even so it felt like Sonny Liston was back there dealing it out. I’ll bet she stayed with it twenty minutes. She was panting hard when she stopped. She sat beside me on the bed while Dad asked the usual questions. Yes I was better. Yes I was still wheezy. Yes I thought steam might help. Roxanna asked if she should go heat some water and Dad said to put some baking soda in it and a little white vinegar if she had it. Before leaving she bent and put her cheek to mine. Her hair was in a single thick braid and moist coils of it had come free—they clung to my face as she pulled away.
Next morning all geography lay snowbound. Roxanna’s gas pumps stood hipdeep. The road was an untried guess. Maybe two feet of snow had fallen, or maybe six, you couldn’t say. The wind had whipped it into dunes and cliffs. It was a badlands of snow.
Swede’s bed was empty. I hollered for her even while realizing the whole house sounded empty. Crossing the hall into Dad’s room I heard muffled scrapings and ran to the window. Sure enough, all three of them were out back. The sun was out so hard on the snow I could barely look—it was like we lived on the sun. Dad and Roxanna were clearing a wide path to the barn. They were just finishing. Now Roxanna and Swede were heaving at the big square barn door, trying to slide it open.
“Wait!” I yelled—I ran to my room, hooked my pants and shirt, ran back to the window where I could watch them while I dressed—“Wait for me!” I banged on the glass, but they couldn’t hear. I shouted again: “Wait up!” What were they doing out there in the new snow without me? What a rotten deal! Then, surprise, I had to lean quick on the windowsill. All that yelling had used up my air. It wasn’t like earlier, with the skin bag, but the truth is I had to sit down. I was sweatier than I’d ever got taking down Mr. Layton’s corncrib, and here I hadn’t even got my pants on. Outside I heard the barn door screel open, and Swede’s outcry of wonder and pleasure, and Roxanna laughing. I tell you no one ever felt sorrier for their sorry lot than I for mine there in that empty house. I crawled back in bed under the weight of the sun and joy and adventure happening outdoors, and I thought dangerous things to myself. Back to mind came every hurt I’d endured for my defect, every awaited thing I’d missed. It seemed to me such wrongs were legion in my short life. It seemed that I’d been left alone here by the callousness of my family; that should the man with the skin bag return I might not fight so hard next time; that this house was so empty even God was not inside it. He was out there with the others, having fun.
Late in the morning Swede came in red-cheeked with the news that we would stay at Roxanna’s another night.
“Dad walked out on the road—there’s drifts up to his chest! Roxanna says she never saw this much snow at once in her whole life. She says a couple years ago it snowed a foot and it took the county two days to plow the roads! For one foot, Reuben—and we got four or five!”
It was plain nothing could’ve pleased her more. Nor me under other conditions. But I’d lain the morning in a sump of self-pity, and all I could see of Swede were her blazing oxygenated cheeks, and all I could hear of her was speech gusting forth without constraint.
“We’re not gonna find Davy sitting around here,” I told her.
“Well, we don’t have a choice. We couldn’t get out if we tried.” Swede was wearing a hat of Roxanna’s, a fur hat with a narrow brim. Snow was stuck to it and turning to water. She’d wear it all day if she could. “Reuben, you’ve got to see that barn! There’s the billy goat, and six sheep, one with a black nose and black ears, and a bunch of roosting chickens, we picked eggs, and there’s a rope in the hayloft—I swung around like Tarzan!”
I said, “You tell me what good it does, staying here. Tell me one way it helps Davy.”
She glared. “You don’t care about Davy, you’re mad on account I went out to the barn!”
“Who cares about the barn? Tell me one way.”
Of all facial expressions, which is the worst to have aimed at you? Wouldn’t you agree it’s disgust?
“You fake,” she said. “Lying there all sorry for yourself. You weren’t thinking about Davy, you were thinking about poor widdow Woo-ben.”
So dead center was this that I leapt up and tackled her at the waist and landed half on top of her on the hardwood floor—a consumptive effort and strategic mistake. We scuffed around a little, she getting me twice on the jaw—fist then elbow—before the energy leaked out my muscles. She wiggled away and stood over me, and I was a gasping ruin.
“I win!” she hollered. “Ha, look here!” She took a gigantic, wrathful, chest-filling breath. “Look what I can do!” She blew out the breath and snatched another. She did frantic jumping jacks. She ran in place. “See? I could do this all day! I could do it all year! All my life!”
I couldn’t speak. I rolled my eyes up at her like the betrayed steer at slaughter. I could hear my heart, boy, blacksmithing away in there.
“I win!” Swede shouted. “Come on, Rube, say uncle!”
I shut my eyes and by main strength hauled in air and said uncle.
“Uncle?” she demanded. “What’s that I hear?”
“Uncle.”
She squatted down and looked in my face. I drew back instinctively—she couldn’t have known, but this was exactly what the spooky fellow in my dream had done. Anyway, I didn’t want to look at Swede. It is one thing to be sick of your own infirmities and another to understand that the people you love most are sick of them also. You are very near then to being friendless in this world.
Swede said, “Reuben?”
“Please,” I whispered.
She got hold of my shoulders and made me look at her. “What’s the matter with your lips—Reuben?”
I gathered enough air for a sentence: “You went outside without me.” Which set her off sobbing. She wilted down on the floor next to me. It was hard to fathom after such a fight. She put her arms around my neck, too, which was gratifying, but when it is like breaking cement with a hammer just to breathe, a tight hug isn’t helpful, so I had to shrug her off. We lay there quite some time, a very woebegone set of penitents. At last by lying still and thinking about a brightly lit room made entirely of ice I was able to retrieve basic respiration. I sat up and leaned against the wall. Swede pulled herself over and leaned also. She took my hand and held it while confessing all sorts of things, chiefly related to piggishness, but also the surprising fact that she actually had forgotten about Davy—just for a little while.
“I like being here,” she said, “with Roxanna. Don’t you like her, Reuben? Do you really want to leave?”
“I like her a lot.”
“We really couldn’t go today. Too much snow.”
“How come Dad started the car then?” I’d heard it out there, idling poorly, sounding broke.
“We parked the trailer in the barn. Roxanna thought of it. It’s just a huge barn, Reuben, you have to see.”
I didn’t see it right away, but this was certainly the work of the Lord—the work of providence, for you timid ones. It was a cup running over. Because don’t you think the old state police were ever more interested in us since we’d vanished from pursuit? And wasn’t it fortunate how the blizzard struck before any state cruisers happened past Dale’s Oil? And where else could we have landed, I might ask, that would offer not only gas on Sunday but cheap rooms and warm meals and a hiding place for the Airstream?
“I took that baby goat for a walk this morning,” Swede said, “all around the house. She’s so smart! She followed me all around.”
“Swede?”
“You pretty soon get used to her weird eyes—”
“Where are we gonna go? I mean, when we do leave?”
She looked so blank I knew leaving was way off at the end of things for her.
I said, “Aren’t we going to get arrested as soon as we get back on the road?”
“Say, that’s true! That’s right,” she crowed, “I guess we better lay low a few days! Reuben”—grabbing my arm—“now we’re fugitives too!”
She was so thrilled I feared she might tear off downstairs and tell Roxanna about it. So I hushed her and reminded her how Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry had sworn silence in the matter of Injun Joe, and how running and hiding from the law was a privilege few kids ever had, and how we ought not blow it by bragging to someone we just met.
“Don’t you trust Roxanna?” Swede whispered.
“Well, sure I do. But we just got here yesterday.”
Swede nodded. “Okay. Then let’s sign in blood, like Tom and Huckleberry did. We’ll cut our fingers—and swear an appalling oath.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Swede.” She was already up rummaging for paper, came back with a strip of brown grocery sack.
“Get out your knife.”
I had a castoff Scout of Davy’s—the big blade was only knuckle-long, having been snapped off trying to pry something. I swiped it cautiously. “Swede, it’s really dull.”
“Hm—we’ll use the awl.”
“The awl? No, Swede.” I’d holed innumerable leather belts with that awl; it was blunt as a baby tooth. Also corroded. “We’ll get sick,” I told her. “We’ll get lockjaw and have to go to the hospital, and then we won’t be fugitives anymore.”