The Lost Get-Back Boogie

“I don’t know what else to do, Beth.”

“Call the sheriff’s office.”

“You’re not thinking.”

“He told you he knew who they were. He’s going to kill someone.”

“You weren’t listening while I was talking,” I said.

“We’ll have to use the phone next door or go to the filling station.”

“Listen a minute. That fat son of a bitch you call a sheriff would love blowing Buddy all over the inside of that truck or welding the door shut on him in Deer Lodge.”

Her eyes were blinking at the darkness beyond the window.

“I’ll talk,” she said. “I’ll tell them he’s drunk and he tore up my house and I want him arrested.”

“That’s no good, kid.”

“Why? What do you offer as an alternative, for God’s sake?”

“He won’t pull over for any dicks, and it’ll get real bad after that.”

She sat back in the chair and rubbed the palm of her hand against her brow. I took the cigarette out of her fingers and lit it for her.

“I can’t sit here,” she said.

I wished I hadn’t come. It was selfish, and now I had included her in my own impotence to do anything in an impossible situation.

“Do you have anything to drink?” I asked.

“I think it’s in the cabinet.”

I found the half bottle of Old Crow and brought back two glasses. I poured into a glass and put it in her hand. She raised it once to her mouth as though she were going to drink, then set it aside on the table.

“I lied to the children for five years about their father,” she said. “They’re too old to lie to now. They’re not going to go through any more because of Frank Riordan and Buddy and all their insane obsessions.”

“Mr. Riordan didn’t choose this.”

“He’s done everything he could for twenty years to leave his stamp on everybody around him. He was never content simply to live. His children always had to know that he wasn’t an ordinary man.”

“He wouldn’t want Buddy out with a gun. You know that.”

“I’m sorry, but you didn’t learn very much living at his place.” That fine strand of wire was starting to tremble in her voice again. “He never thought about what would happen after he did anything. If he raised children to live in the nineteenth century, and if they ended up neurotic or in jail, it was the world’s fault for not recognizing that the Riordans were not

only different but right.”

“You’ve got him down wrong,” I said. “His ball game is pretty well over, and I think he knows it and doesn’t want grief like this for Buddy or anybody else.”

She put her fingers over her eyes, and I saw the wetness began to gleam on her cheeks.

“Don’t let it run away with you,” I said. “He might have gone to the hospital by now.” I stood up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. They were shaking, and she kept her face averted so I couldn’t see it.

It was a time not to say anything more. I rubbed the back of her neck until I felt her composure start to come back and her shoulders straighten. I picked up my whiskey glass and looked out the window while she got up and went into the bath. Behind me I could hear the water running.

The snow was frozen in broken stars around the edge of the window glass, and the shadows of the trees swept back and forth across the banked lawn. High up on the mountain behind the university I could dimly see the red beacon for the airplanes, pulsating against the infinite softness of the sky.

“I’m sorry,” Beth said, behind me, her face clear now.