cleared his throat and began slowly, watching the spiky volume meter jump. “I’m eighty-four years old and most of them involved in the early days has gone on before, so it don’t make much difference what I tell.” He took a nervous swallow of the whiskey and nodded.
“I was fourteen year old in nineteen and thirty-three and there wasn’t a nickel in the world.” The silence of that time before traffic and leaf blowers and the boisterous shouting of television was embedded in his character, and he spoke little, finding it hard to drag out the story. The noiselessness of his youth except for the natural sound of wind, hoofbeats, the snap of the old house logs splitting in winter cold, wild herons crying their way downriver was forever lost. How silent men and women had been in those times, trusting to observational powers. There had been days when a few little mustache clouds moved, and he could imagine them making no more sound than dragging a feather across a wire. The wind got them and the sky was alone.
“When I was a kid we lived hard, let me tell you. Coalie Town, about eight miles from Superior. It’s all gone now,” he said. “Three-room shack, no insulation, kids always sick. My baby sister Goldie died of meningitis in that shack,” he said.
Now he was warming up to his sorry tale. “No water. A truck used to come every week and fill up a couple barrels we had. Mama paid a quarter a barrel. No indoor plumbing. People make jokes about it now but it was miserable to go out there to that outhouse on a bitter morning with the wind screaming up the hole. Christ,” he said. He was silent for so long Beth backed up the tape and pressed the pause button on the recorder. He lit a cigarette, sighed, abruptly started talking again. Beth lost a sentence or two before she got the recorder restarted.
“People thought they was doing all right if they was alive. You can learn to eat dust instead of bread, my mother said many a time. She had a lot a old sayings. Is that thing on?” he said.
“Yes, Grandpa,” she said. “It is on. Just talk.”
“Bacon,” he said. “She’d say if bacon curls in the pan the hog was butchered wrong side of the moon. We didn’t see bacon very often and it could of done corkscrews in the pan, would have been okay with us long as we could eat it,” he said.
“There was a whole bunch a shacks out there near the mines. They called it Coalie Town. Lot of foreigners.
“As I come up,” he said, “I got a pretty good education in fighting, screwing—pardon my French—and more fighting. Every problem was solved with a fight. I remember all them people. Pattersons, Bob Hokker, the Grainblewer twins, Alex Sugar, Forrie Wintka, Harry and Joe Dolan … We had a lot of fun. Kids always have fun,” he said.
“They sure do,” said Beth.
“Kids don’t get all sour thinking about the indoor toilets they don’t have, or moaning because there ain’t no fresh butter. For us everthing was fine the way it was. I had a happy childhood. When we got bigger there was certain girls. Forrie Wintka. Really good looking, long black hair and black eyes,” he said, looking to see if he had shocked her.
“She finally married old man Dolan after his wife died. The Dolan boys was something else. They hated each other, fought, really had bad fights, slugged each other with boards with nails in the end, heaved rocks.”
Beth tried to shift him to a description of his own family, but he went on about the Dolans.
“I’m pretty set in my ways,” he said. She nodded.
“One time Joe knocked Harry out, kicked him into the Platte. He could of drowned, probably would of but Dave Arthur was riding along the river, seen this bundle of rags snarled up in a cottonwood sweeper—it had fell in the river and caught up all sorts of river trash. He thought maybe some clothes. Went to see and pulled Harry out,” he said.
“Harry was about three-quarters dead, never was right after that, neither. But right enough to know that his own brother had meant to kill him. Joe couldn’t never tell if Harry was going to be around the next corner with a chunk of wood or a gun.” There was a long pause after the word “gun.”
“Nervous wreck,” he said. He watched the tape revolve for long seconds.
“Dutchy Green was my best friend in grade school. He was killed when he was twenty-five, twenty-six, shooting at some of them old Indian rock carvings. The ricochet got him through the right temple,” he said.
He took a swallow of whiskey. “Yep, our family. There was my mother. She was tempery, too much to do and no money to do it. Me, the oldest. There was a big brother, Sonny, but he drowned in an irrigation ditch before I come along,” he said.
“Weren’t there girls in the family?” asked Beth. Not content with two sons, she craved a daughter.
“My sisters, Irene and Daisy. Irene lives in Greybull and Daisy is still alive out in California. And I mentioned, the baby Goldie died when I was around six or seven. The youngest survivor was Roger. Mama’s last baby. He went the wrong way. Did time for robbing,” he said. “No idea what happened to him.” Under the weeds, damned and dark.
Abruptly he veered away from the burglar brother. “You got to understand that I loved my dad. We all did. Him and Mother was always kissing and hugging and laughing when he was home. He was a wonderful man with kids, always a big smile and a hug, remembered all your interests, lots of times brought home special little presents. I still got every one he give me.” His voice trembled like that of the old horse catcher in the antique sleet.
“Remembering this stuff makes me tired. I guess I better stop,” he said. “Anymore two new people come in today and the new ones always makes me damn tired.”
“Women or men?” asked Beth, relieved to turn the recorder off as she could see her only tape was on short time. She remembered now she had recorded the junior choir practice.
“Don’t know,” he said. “Find out at supper.”
“I’ll come next week. I think what you are saying is important for this family.” She kissed his dry old man’s forehead, brown age spots.
“Just wait,” he said.
After she left he started talking again as if the tape were still running. “He died age forty-seven. I thought that was real old. Why didn’t he jump?” he said.
Berenice Pann, bearing a still-warm chocolate cupcake, paused outside his door when she heard his voice. She had seen Beth leave a few minutes earlier. Maybe she had forgotten something and come back. Berenice heard something like a strangled sob from Mr. Forkenbrock. “God, it was lousy,” he said. “So we could work. Hell, I liked school. No chance when you start work at thirteen,” he said. “Wasn’t for the Bledsoes I’d ended up a bum,” he said to himself. “Or worse.”
Berenice Pann’s boyfriend, Chad Grills, was the great-grandson of the old Bledsoes. They were still on the ranch where Ray Forkenbrock had worked in his early days, both of them over the century mark. Berenice became an avid eavesdropper, feeling that in a way she was related to Mr. Forkenbrock through the Bledsoes. She owed it to herself and Chad to hear as much as she could about the Bledsoes, good or bad. Inside the room there was silence, then the door flung open.
“Uh!” cried Berenice, the cupcake sliding on its saucer. “I was just bringing you this—”
“That so?” said Mr. Forkenbrock. He took the cupcake from the saucer and instead of taking a sample bite crammed the whole thing
