Let Him Go: A Novel by Larry Watson
Margaret’s nightgown reaches well below her knees and the flannel binds her strides and she reaches down and lifts the hem almost to her waist so she can run, run, run after the Hudson. She’s barefoot and she slips in the mud and stones cut and bruise her feet and when her path begins to ascend the hill the tough, wiry brush scratches and cuts her bare legs and burs and low branches catch at the flannel and she calls one more time, George! Stop!
And is it juniper brush too that scrapes the finish of the Hudson, or is it an outcropping of rock as George drives too close to the bluff’s wall? No matter. George has never been like some of the men living in this part of the world, who care more for their machinery than their animals, and he keeps the Hudson on its narrow climbing course.
Then the car crests the hill, its headlights sending twin beams into the sky like searchlights. The taillights wink. The engine’s complaint drops an octave and begins to hum a smoother song. The Hudson and her husband vanish from Margaret’s sight.
She drops the hem of her nightgown, and by the time she reaches the valley floor, the bottom half of the garment is wet with the rain she’s swept from the tall grass.
Alton meets her at the base of the hill. Hey, he says.
He’s gone, Alton.
Yeah, I can see.
What can we do, Alton? How can we stop him and bring him back?
Maybe he’ll just come back. All on his own. Alton Dragswolf hops up and down. Hey, my feet are freezing. I got to go in.
Margaret is slower to give up, but finally the hopelessness of staring at night and fog overcomes her and she returns to the shack.
Alton has lit the lamp on the table and its light discloses Margaret’s condition—her wet nightgown, her scratched and mud-streaked legs. Her feet dark not only with dirt but with blood.
Jesus, missus!
What? Oh. She appraises herself. I’m all right. Look how I’m tracking up your floor, she says but doesn’t move.
I’ll fill up my washtub for you, Alton says but he remains in place as well. Where do you suppose he’s going? Probably to town, huh?
The way a woman would respond to her child’s cry, Margaret suddenly hurries to the part of the shack that had served as their bedroom. She opens George’s suitcase and drops to the floor in order to feel frantically around its interior. When she finds the bottle of whiskey she stops searching, rises stiffly, and walks slowly, helplessly, back out to the kitchen area.
There she finds Alton Dragswolf with a boot in each hand and a puzzled expression on his face. He took my tackle box, Alton says. He left his boots and took my tackle box.
...
The Hudson’s interior smells hot, of overheated grease or oil or a burning hose or belt or of machine parts gnashing against each other, the result no doubt of George taxing the car not only by making it climb out of the valley in first gear but by remaining in that gear as the trail began to level off. But that was only because he couldn’t work the gearshift, not at first, not with his bandaged hand.
Now, however, he’s learned to manage. Gripping the shift lever is impossible, yet he can maneuver it into second gear with the heel of his hand and pull it down into third by making a sort of claw of his palm and two fingers.
After that rough ascent out of the valley, the highway, smooth and straight as unspooling ribbon, is a relief. The fog has lifted too, adding to the sense of easy rolling. When the road drops down from the second ridge and Gladstone comes into view, its lights are clustered under low clouds whose bottoms have a faint lavender glow. It’s a sight as inviting as a featherbed to a tired man.
But Gladstone is not George Blackledge’s destination. It’s where he’ll start, since only from there can he find the way.
The city is mostly shut down for the night, though much of its neon still blinks and flickers and glows for businesses that won’t unlock their doors again for hours. Here and there a bar is open and maybe in one of them there’s a bartender who wouldn’t ask a man where his boots or his fingers are . . .
But George keeps the Hudson moving, and carefully within the speed limits. Who knows—the sheriff or a deputy might be waiting in that alley between Woolworth’s and the Red Trail Meat Market or behind the statue of the Hereford on the Keogh County Fairgrounds, waiting for someone who doesn’t think the traffic laws apply in the middle of the night. In his lawman days George would let such drivers pass unless they seemed on their way to or from misconduct. And what made him believe he could know such a thing? Perhaps from the frightened, desperate, or determined look of the man behind the wheel.
...
The last mile George drives with his lights off, the Hudson slowed to a pace little more than a man’s brisk walk. He’s traveling by feel and memory now. The roadbed is unevenly distributed gravel, and when those stones no longer crunch under the tires or ping against the muffler, it means he has strayed into the soft dirt between the road and the ditch.
But then he sees enough, just enough. The fence-line. The broken gate hanging open. He eases the car into the ditch and shuts off the engine.
When he climbs out of the car, stubble and stones stab and dig into his stocking feet, but he keeps moving forward. To a man who has set aside his own scruples, a few weeds and rocks present no real obstacle.
Not a light burns in the Weboy house, but its looming shape is enough to steer by. Once George is in the yard, he pauses to be sure of his bearings. Of the cars parked haphazardly between the barn and the house, one is a blue Ford, and at the sight of it, George feels a small shiver of solace. Though the night sky is lightless, the house’s windows glint faintly. He counts windows until he can be sure—yes, in that frame stood the woman and her child.
George’s way is clear now, and he walks to the door. When he tries the knob, it turns easily. Strange, that thieves do not think to lock their doors . . .
40.
DONNIE WEBOY WAKES GASPING, STARVING FOR AIR, but when he tries to inhale, it feels as though he were breathing in cobwebs, cloth, dust, blood . . . Then he sees. Then he understands. The gun barrel presses hard against his temple.
Don’t make a sound, George Blackledge whispers. His bandaged hand—what’s left of it—is pressing down on Donnie’s nose and mouth. Or I’ll put a bullet in your brain. To make his point he cocks the revolver, and in the sleeping house that hammer click makes a sound like a small bone cracking.
Donnie tries to shake his head. Whether it’s to free his nose and mouth or to indicate his willingness to comply with George Blackledge’s command isn’t clear. But he makes no attempt to bring his hands out from the blankets, and though his eyes widen with fear and comprehension, he keeps still. George takes his hand away from Donnie’s face but keeps the revolver at his head. Donnie takes a deep silent breath.
It’s difficult to believe that the woman at Donnie’s side could sleep through this disturbance, but George has to reach across and shake her shoulder and say softly, Lorna. Wake up, Lorna.
Her slumber has been deep but because she’s a mother, when Lorna wakes she looks in the wrong direction, toward the corner of the bedroom where her son sleeps on his makeshift bed, a twin-size mattress on the floor.
Then she twists around and, like Margaret Blackledge only an hour earlier, Lorna sees George Blackledge standing over her bed.
Ssh. George takes the gun away from Donnie’s head and holds it up for her to see and to understand the situation and its gravity. Quiet, he says. Although the revolver’s nickel plating is chipped and worn away, it has enough shine left to glint in the dark room. He swings the gun back down so it can resume its long-barreled gaze at Donnie Weboy’s head.
George Blackledge leans closer to Lorna. Do you want to go back to Dalton? he asks. You and the boy? He doesn’t say the child’s name.
Lorna looks again to her sleeping son.
You have to decide, George says. Go or stay. It is exactly the choice, down to the very wording, that his wife presented to him not a week ago.
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Right now, Lorna.
Lorna, says Donnie.
George jabs the pistol to within an inch of Donnie’s eye, and he flinches and his shoulder twists upward as if it wanted to take the bullet.
Not you, George says to Donnie. You don’t say a goddamn word. This is up to her. She decides on her own.
Lorna is sitting up now and she’s looking not only to where her son sleeps but into every one of the room’s dark corners. I don’t know . . .
You know what the life will be, George says to her. Here or there, you know. This isn’t something you need to think on.
I’ll go. I’ll go. But when she says this she’s staring at the gun and perhaps she’s only making the choice that will allow her to side with the man who has the weapon.
George lowers the hammer on the revolver. Then pick up the boy and go, he says, permitting himself a quick glance toward the bedroom door. You know our car. It’s parked in the ditch at the bottom of the drive. The keys are in it. Get in and drive straight to Gladstone. Go to the hospital and ask for a nurse. Adeline Witt.
To the hospital?
That’s right. Adeline Witt. A nurse. At the hospital. That’s who you ask for. Mrs. Witt.
My things . . . Jimmy’s . . . I have to—
No. George shakes his head emphatically. You get out now. You don’t take a goddamn thing. You go. As quiet as you can out of the house and then once you’re out, you run like hell to the car. And Lorna—the front door. You go out the front door.
It’s not clear whether understanding or alarm moves Lorna, but now she climbs quickly out of bed. She goes to Jimmy’s bed and crouches next to her son. Without making any attempt to wake him first, she lifts him, and her fear and her mother’s strength allow her to rise up again with the boy clinging to her.
For the first five or six years of their lives, children are accustomed to sleeping in motion, rolled in carriages or rocked in cradles, patted or swayed in a parent’s embrace, carried off to crib or bed, their dreams as continuous as time itself. Jimmy’s eyes open but there’s no reason to believe that he sees this scene as it is. The faces, after all, are familiar. Here’s his mother, his grandfather . . . There’s Donnie . . .
And it’s Donnie who first speaks the boy’s name. Jimmy, he says out loud, half in greeting and half in appeal.
The word is no sooner spoken than George Blackledge jams his fingerless hand against Donnie’s mouth and brings the barrel of the revolver down on his skull. The thock is like a rock thrown against a hollow tree.
Not from you, whispers George. And strikes Donnie again. The sound of the second blow is muffled because the barrel skids off Donnie’s forehead and tears loose a flap of his scalp. Blood flows onto the pillowcase and in the dark room the blood is as black as shoe polish.
Donnie’s eyes remain open but he has lost his ability to recognize the moment he’s in. His lips make a breathy popping sound as if he’s trying to pronounce a word that begins with b or p but no syllable follows those soft plosives.
Jimmy has seen his grandfather’s attack. He sees the blood. But he’s four years old. He’s only a moment removed from dreaming. There’s no reason to think that he’ll remember this act. Not without a photograph or someone reminding him over the years of what he once witnessed on an October night.
The sudden violence hurries Lorna on her way but George stops her before she’s out the door.
Put on a pair of shoes, he says. The driveway is rocky. And remember—the front door. George’s socks are dark with muck and perhaps blood. Though they are miles apart, husband and wife share an affliction, unbeknownst to the other.
Lorna opens the closet door and steps into a pair of high heels, which she no doubt wore during her day’s long shift. But the discomfort of a pair of shoes is nothing compared to George Blackledge’s frightful, cold fury, and she totters out of the bedroom and toward the stairs. In addition to her high heels, she’s wearing pajamas, the first sold for women in Gladstone’s Montgomery Ward.
Donnie has identified the warm wet flow of his own blood and is trying to press the pillow against his wound. This clumsy effort gives him the appearance of a man attempting to suffocate himself. George does nothing to help him but neither does he stop Donnie’s moans.
George leaves the bedroom, his footsteps a whispering shuffle on the wood floor, unlike the rapid clock-clock-clock of Lorna’s steps.
41.
BY THE TIME LORNA, CARRYING JIMMY, HAS RUN, SLID, and stumbled to the bottom of the long, sloping driveway, flames have filled the back entry of the Weboy house. So fast! But of course that is where all the fuel for a fire—newspapers and magazines, stray pieces of wood, piles of rags—was stored, as well as the kerosene to speed any flames on their way. She stops for a moment to watch—both the blazing house and its billowing smoke stand out against the night sky—and it’s at that very instant that the fire bursts through the roof of the back porch and flickers up toward the second floor. The sight brings a gasp from Lorna, though she’s already breathless with fright and exertion. Anyone trying to escape the burning house will have to go out the front door, the exit she and Jimmy used, but now it looks as if fire is flickering there as well.
And why has no one exited the house? By now someone has surely smelled the smoke, if not felt the heat. And where’s Mr. Blackledge? Why would he remain inside a burning house? Shouldn’t he be coming down the hill toward her? Unless . . . is that him? It looks as though someone is outside the front door, but whoever it is, he’s not moving, though surely he can see the flames from where he stands.
Then, just as Lorna is squinting through the darkness, trying to determine whose form that might be in the wavering shadows cast by the firelight, an explosion of sound—like a door banging, banging, banging . . . And now windows are bursting—shattering as if the panes were being dropped on rocks from a great height; the house’s boards and timbers are cracking, and its nails are popping. And in the back entry where the fire burned first and hottest there were boxes of ammunition . . . The acrid smell of smoke is everywhere . . . She can feel it in her nostrils, her lungs . . . She can taste it . . .
Lorna doesn’t wait any longer. George Blackledge’s command is still echoing in her ears and she practically throws her son into the car and then climbs in after him. He’s crying now, wide awake, cold, and frightened. His mother pulls him close to her but she makes sure he remains lying down on the car seat.
Lorna turns the key in the ignition. The Hudson’s engine is still warm and turns over immediately. Hot air blows from the heater. As she puts the car into gear and begins to drive away, the weeds in the ditch scratch against the undercarriage and then the gravel from the road clatters against the muffler. In the rearview mirror, the burning house colors the sky like a sunset.
...
Despite her tears and the Hudson’s balky, unfamiliar transmission, despite having to drive sometimes with only one hand on the wheel because she has to pat Jimmy with the other, trying to calm him, trying to make him believe with touch what she cannot convince him of with her sobbed words—Ssh, there, there, it’s going to be all right, it’s going to be fine—despite having to watch the rearview mirror without even being sure what or whom she’s watching for, despite the darkness and the fog that comes and goes, despite all that, Lorna manages to do as George ordered, to maneuver those narrow, unmarked county roads and find the way to Gladstone and then to Good Samaritan Hospital. She travels that distance under those difficult circumstances only to find that once she pulls the Hudson crookedly into the bay usually reserved for the ambulance, she is unable to open the door and climb out of the car. It’s not the lock or the door handle that are preventing her but something inside her, not terror and not panic but per
Carl Skeller, a fair-haired young man no bigger than a jockey, is the orderly on duty, and when he sees the car parked dangerously close to the hospital doors, he draws near to investigate. Then he notices that there’s a woman in the car and runs out to see what this emergency might be. He opens the door for Lorna and she tumbles out of the car. She starts immediately for the hospital’s bright, warm interior but then turns back for her son, grabbing his arm and pulling him from the car as if it were on fire.
Nurse Witt, Lorna says to the orderly. I need to see Nurse Witt!
And though Carl Skeller should no doubt stay with this wild-eyed woman and the little boy—after all, one or both of them must be injured or ill, or else why would she show up at the hospital in the middle of the night in high heels and pajamas?—something in the urgency of her demand makes him obey and he hurries off.
Almost ten minutes pass before Carl Skeller finds Adeline at the second-floor nurses’ station drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette and visiting with a doctor who’s been called to the hospital on a false alarm. Carl tells Mrs. Witt that a woman down at the emergency room is asking for her.
A tall woman? Adeline asks. With long gray hair?
Carl shakes his head. She’s got a little boy.
Adeline puts out her cigarette. Lead the way, she says, but she’s already walking down the corridor ahead of Carl, and his short legs can’t keep pace with her long strides.
Adeline finds Lorna and Jimmy in the emergency room waiting area. The boy is sitting on his mother’s lap, leaning against her, his thumb in his mouth. He’s looking about warily, and when Adeline comes close he shuts his eyes and burrows his head into his mother’s bosom.
Yes, Adeline says to Lorna. What is it? Who are you?
George Blackledge said I should find you—