at home.
At one point I looked up to see how my father was reacting to his brother’s speech. My father was not there. He had drifted back through the crowd and was picking up scraps of paper from the grass. With his bad leg, bending was difficult. He had to keep the leg stiff and bend from the waist. Then he carried these bits of paper, a piece at a time, to the fire-blackened incinerator barrel.
Uncle Frank’s talk must not have been enough for my grandfather. He climbed back up on the table and, after urging the crowd on to another minute of applause, held up his hands for silence again. “This man could have gone anywhere,” he said. “With his war record he could be practicing in Billings. In Denver. In Los Angeles. There’s not a community in the country that wouldn’t be proud to have him. But he came back to us. My son. Came back to us.”
My father kept searching for paper to pick up.
Uncle Frank put his black bag on the kitchen table. “How about something to drink, Wes? I was digging postholes this morning and I’ve been dry all day.”
My father opened the refrigerator. “Postholes? Not exactly the kind of surgery I thought you’d be doing.”
“I’m going to fence off the backyard. We’ve got two more houses going up out there. Figured a fence might help us keep what little privacy we’ve got.”
I wondered what Grandpa Hayden would say about that. Though his land was fenced with barbed wire as most ranchers’ were, he still had the nineteenth-century cattleman’s open range mentality and hatred of fences. Our backyard bordered a railroad track (trains passed at least four times a day), but my father refused to put up a fence—as all our neighbors had—separating our property from the tracks.
“I’ve got cold beer in here,” said my father. “It’s old man Norgaard’s brew.” Ole Norgaard lived in a tar-paper shack on the edge of town. He had a huge garden and sold vegetables through the summer and early fall. His true specialty, however, and the business he conducted throughout the year, was brewing and selling beer. My father swore by everything Ole Norgaard produced.
Uncle Frank made a face. “I’ll pass.”
My father brought out a bottle with a rubber stopper and a wire holding it in place. “You can’t buy a better beer.” He held out the bottle.
Uncle Frank laughed and waved my father away. “Just give me a glass of water.”
My father persisted. “Ask Pop. He still drinks Ole Norgaard’s beer.”
“Okay, okay,” Frank said. “It’s great beer. It’s the world’s greatest goddamn beer. But I’ll drink Schlitz, if it’s okay with you.
My father nodded in my direction. “Not in front of the boy.” That was one of my father’s rules: no one was supposed to swear in front of my mother or me.
Uncle Frank picked up his bag. “Okay, Wes. I’ll tell you what. Let me see the patient first and then I’ll drink a bottle of Ole’s beer with you. Maybe I’ll drink two.”
Just then my mother came out of Marie’s room. “She’s in here, Frank.”
“Hello, Gail. How is the patient?”
“She’s awake. Her temperature might be down a bit.”
Frank went in and shut the door behind him. Within a minute we heard Marie shouting, “Mrs.! Mrs.!”
My mother looked quizzically at my father. He shrugged his shoulders. Marie screamed again. “No! Mrs.!”
This time my mother went to the door and knocked. “Frank? Is everything okay?”
My uncle opened the door. “She says she wants you in here, Gail.” He shook his head in disgust. “Come on in. I don’t give a damn.”
This time the door closed and the room remained silent.
“David,” my father said to me. “Why don’t we go out on the porch while the medical profession does its work.”
Our screened-in porch faced the courthouse across the street. When I was younger I used to go out there just before five o’clock on all but the coldest days to watch for my parents.
My father put his bottle of beer down on the table next to the rocking chair. I didn’t sit down; I wanted to be able to maneuver myself into the best position to hear anything coming from Marie’s room. I didn’t have to wait long. I soon heard—muffled but unmistakable—Marie shout another no.
I glanced at my father but he was staring at the courthouse.
Then two more no’s in quick-shouted succession.
My father pointed at one of the large elm trees in our front yard. “Look at that,” he said. “August, and we’ve got leaves coming down already.” He heard her. I knew he did.
Before long Uncle Frank came out to the porch. He put down his bag and stared around the room as if he had never been there before. “Nice and cool out here,” he said, tugging at his white shirt the way men do when their clothes are sticking to them from perspiration. “Maybe I should put up one of these.”
“Faces east,” my father said. “That’s the key.”
“I’ll drink that beer now.”
My father jumped up immediately.
Uncle Frank lowered his head and closed his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose and worked his fingers back and forth as if he were trying to straighten his nose. I heard the smack of the refrigerator door and the clink of bottles. I wanted my father to hurry. After what had just happened with Marie I didn’t want to be alone with Uncle Frank.
Without opening his eyes Frank asked, “You playing any ball this summer, David?”
I was reluctant to answer. My uncle Frank had been a local baseball star, even playing some semipro ball during the summers when he was in college and medical school. I, on the other hand, had been such an inept ball player that I had all but given it up. But since Frank and Gloria had no children I always felt some pressure to please them, to be like the son they didn’t have. I finally said, “I’ve been doing a lot of fishing.”
“Catching anything?”
“Crappies and bluegill and perch out at the lake. Some trout at the river.”
“Any size to the trout?” He finally looked up at me.
“Not really. Nine inches. Maybe a couple twelve-inchers.”
“Well, that’s pan size. You’ll have to take me out some afternoon.”
Before I could answer, my father returned, carrying a bottle of beer. “Now drink it slow,” he said. “Give it a chance.”
Frank made a big show of holding the bottle aloft and examining it before drinking.
“What was the problem with Marie?” asked my father.
