two together. I sort of got it, at least I got it that something ugly had happened, but I didn’t really understand until years later. I loved my dad so I didn’t want to understand. I still got a little Buck knife he give me and I wouldn’t part with it for anything in this world,” he said.
There was a pause while he got up to look for the knife, found it, showed it to Beth and carefully put it away in his top drawer.
“So there we all were, filing out of the church on our way to the cars that take us to the graveyard, me holding Mother’s arm, when some lady calls out, “Mrs. Forkenbrock! Oh, Mrs. Forkenbrock!” Mother turns around and we see this big fat lady in black with a wilted lilac pinned on her coat heading for us,” he said.
“But she sails right past, goes over to a thin, homely woman with a boy around my age and offers her condolences. And then she says, looking at the kid, ‘Oh, Ray, you’ll have to be the man of the house now and help your mother every way you can,’” he said. He paused to pour into the whiskey glass.
“I want you to think about that, Beth,” he said. “You are so strong on family ties. I want you to imagine that you are at your father’s funeral with your mother and sisters and somebody calls your mother, then walks right over to another person. And that other person has a kid with her and that kid has your name. I was—all I could think was that they had to be the Dixon Forkenbrocks and that they was related to us after all. Mother didn’t say a word, but I could feel her arm jerk,” he said. He illustrated this by jerking his own elbow.
“At the cemetery I went over to the kid with my name and asked him if they lived in Dixon and if they had a ranch and was they related to my father who we was burying. He gives me a look and says they don’t have a ranch, they don’t live in Dixon but in LaBarge, and that it is his father we are burying. I was so mixed up at this point that I just said ‘You’re crazy!’ and went back to Mother’s side. She never mentioned the incident and finally we went home and got along like usual although with damn little money. Mother got work cooking at the Sump ranch. It was only when she died in 1975 that I put the pieces together,” he said. “All the pieces.”
On Sunday Berenice and Chad went for their weekly ride. Berenice brought her new digital camera. For some reason Chad insisted on going back to the tangle of energy roads, and it was almost the same as before—a spiderweb of wrong-turn gravel roads without signs. Far ahead of them they could see trucks at the side of the road. There was a deep ditch with black pipe in it big enough for a dog to stroll through. They came around a corner and men were feeding a section of pipe into a massive machine that welded the sections together. Berenice thought the machine was interesting and put her camera up. Behind the machine a truck idled, a grubby kid in dark glasses behind the wheel. Thirty feet away another man was filling in the ditch with a backhoe. Chad put his window down, grinned and, in an easy voice, asked the kid how the machine worked.
The kid looked at Berenice’s camera. “What the fuck do you care?” he said. “What are you doin out here anyway?”
“County road,” said Chad, flaring up, “and I live in this county. I was born here. I got more rights to be on this road than you do.”
The kid gave a nasty laugh. “Hey, I don’t care if you was born on top of a flagpole, you got no rights interferin with this work and takin pictures.”
“Interfering?” But before he could say any more the man inside the pipe machine got out and the two who had been handling the pipe walked over. The backhoe driver jumped down. They all looked salty and in good shape. “Hell,” said Chad, “we’re just out for a Sunday ride. Didn’t expect to see anybody working on Sunday. Thought it was just us ranch types got to do that. Have a good day,” and he trod on the accelerator, peeling out in a burst of dust. Gravel pinged the undercarriage.
Berenice started to say “What was that all about?” but Chad snapped “Shut up” and drove too fast until they got to the blacktop and then he floored it, looking in the rearview all the way. They didn’t speak until they were back at Berenice’s. Chad got out and walked around the truck, looking it over.
“Chad, how come you to let them throw off on you like that?” said Berenice.
“Berenice,” he said carefully, “I guess that you didn’t see one a them guys had a.44 on him and he was taking it out of the holster. It is not a good idea to have a fight on the edge of a ditch with five roustabouts in a remote area. Loser goes in the ditch and the backhoe guy puts in five more minutes of work. Take a look at this,” he said, and he pulled her around to the back of the truck. There was a hole in the tailgate.
“That’s Buddy’s .44 done that,” he said. “Good thing the road was rough. I could be dead and you could still be out there entertaining them.” Berenice shuddered. “Probably,” said Chad, “they thought we were some kind of environmentalists. That camera of yours. Leave it home next time.”
Right then Berenice began to cool toward Chad. He seemed less manly. And she would take her camera wherever she wanted.
On Monday Berenice was in the kitchen looking for the ice cream freezer which hadn’t been used for two years. Mr. Mellowhorn had just come back from Jackson with a recipe for apple pie ice cream and he was anxious for everyone to share his delight. As she fumbled in the dark cupboard Deb Slaver banged in, bumping the cupboard door.
“Ow!” said Berenice.
“Serves you right,” snarled Deb, sweeping out again. There was a sound in the hall as of someone kicking a stuffed dog.
“She’s pretty mad,” said Cook. “Duck didn’t die so she don’t get the million-dollar insurance, but even worse, he’s going to need dedicated care for the rest of his life—hand and foot waiting on, nice smooth pillows. She’s got to take care of him forever. I don’t know if she’ll keep working and try to get an aide to come in or what. Or maybe Mr. Mellowhorn will let him stay here. Then we’ll all get to wait on him hand and foot.”
Saturday came, and out of habit, because she had broken up with Chad and no longer really cared about the Bledsoes or their ranch, Berenice hung around in the hall outside Mr. Forkenbrock’s room. Beth had brought him a dish of chocolate pudding. He said it was good but not as good as whiskey and she poured out his usual glass.
“So,” said Beth. “At the funeral you met the other Forkenbrocks but they didn’t live in Dixon anymore?”
“No. No, no,” he said. “You ain’t heard a thing. The ones at the funeral were not the Dixon Forkenbrocks. They was the LaBarge Forkenbrocks. There was another set in Dixon. When Mother died, me and my sisters had a go through her stuff and sort it all out,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” said Beth. “I guess I misunderstood.”
“She had collected all Dad’s obituaries she could find. She never said a word to us. Kept them in a big envelope marked ‘Our Family.’ I never knew if she meant that sarcastic or not. The usual stuff about how he was born in Nebraska, worked for Union Pacific, then for Ohio Oil and this company and that, how he was a loyal Pathfinder. One said he was survived by Lottie Forkenbrock and six children in Chadron, Nebraska. The boy was named Ray. Another said his grieving family lived in Dixon, Wyoming, and included his wife Sarah-Louise and two sons, Ray and Roger. Then there was one from the Casper Star said he was a well-known Pathfinder survived by wife Alice, sons Ray and Roger, daughters Irene and Daisy. That was us. The last one said his wife was Nancy up in LaBarge and the kids were Daisy, Ray and Irene. That was four sets. What he done, see, was give all the kids the same names so he wouldn’t get mixed up and say ‘Fred’
