The Home Place: A Novel Page 8

  “I’m making you pork chops. They thaw out quick in the microwave and I can fry ’em right up. You haven’t had a decent meal all day. Got some string beans in here too somewhere, that I froze last summer. Here we go.” Maddie shuts the freezer, tosses the bag of garden beans onto the stove, and moves to the microwave with the chops.

  “Really, Grandma, I’m fine.” It’s not the time to tell Maddie that Alma is a vegetarian now. Besides, the girl who learned how to field dress a moose isn’t squeamish about the origins of meat, just scrupulous about what she puts in her body. Maddie’s meat has always come from some friend’s hunting trip or farmyard. “I was just going to do a little work before I go to bed. There’s a lot to keep up with.”

  “Mm-hm,” Maddie mutters. “I think I’ll make up some mashed potatoes too. You always like that pork gravy I make. Go see if Brittany wants some.”

  Alma smiles and shakes her head as Maddie pushes the canister of flour along the counter toward the stove. The word no won’t do any good now. Alma bends to get out pans and utensils, saving Maddie the effort, then pads down the hall to check on Brittany.

  “Sound asleep,” Alma announces, reemerging from the hall.

  “I’m sorry about the instant potatoes,” Maddie says. “It’s easier for me with the bad hand, but I know it don’t taste the same.”

  “It’ll taste better than takeout, I guarantee.”

  Alma takes over the mashed potatoes, and together they soon fill a plate with the classic Terrebonne homecoming meal. Alma sits down over the food and breathes in its moist warmth, the erotic smell of her grandmother’s thick pork gravy. God it’s good.

  “Listen, Grandma, I’ll go out Sarpy tomorrow and make sure everything’s snug around the home place, okay?” Alma breaks the silence as she finishes off the second chop. She hasn’t eaten like this in months, and she hadn’t realized that she was hungry.

  Maddie nods. “That’d be nice. I always liked it out there this time of year. Real peaceful.”

  “You ought to come with me then, along with Brittany. It’ll be good for her to spend time with you too. We can have lunch in Hardin like we used to. If we have time we can stop and see some of your friends.”

  Maddie reaches out and pats Alma’s wiry hand with her scarred, wrinkled, soft one. Her agate rings glitter even in the low-wattage glow of the dusty overhead fixture. Grandpa Al’s hand-polished stones still speak to Alma of days on the river with him and his bamboo fly rod, standing thigh deep in rushing water, casting into dark, glowing pools. They all slept in the camper on the back of his old blue Chevy, or in an army surplus pup tent if he wasn’t too worried about bears. Grandpa knew how to keep the rain out of the tent in a spring storm, clean fish without attracting bears, start a fire in any conditions, and, if necessary, kill a charging moose with a low-caliber bullet through the head at close range, which Alma saw up close once.

  Pete and Vicky were farther downstream, but she’d wandered past Grandpa, almost around the upstream bend. The moose came charging past a shelter of thick pine, suddenly upon her at full speed, and Grandpa, flying faster than the moose, grabbed his old Winchester from shore and downed the massive beast with a single shot. The crack of the rifle ricocheted over the water like thunder after a close strike of lightning. The moose dropped to its front knees in shallow water ten feet from her, let out a long, echoing groan, and died. Blood ran out of its head with the water and she felt the sticky warmth engulf her bare calves.

  Grandpa walked out in his waders and stood over the animal. It was a full-grown bull with a rack on each side wider than Alma’s arm span. It would have killed her. She wanted to go to Grandpa and feel his protective arm around her, but she couldn’t move.

  “It’s a damn shame,” Grandpa said. He levered another bullet into the chamber and walked up around the bend, just to be sure, then came back to pick up Alma and carry her to the pickup. “What did you do to make that moose so mad?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Grandpa. I’m sorry,” Alma didn’t entirely understand what had happened, but she felt Grandpa’s sadness. “I’m sorry you had to kill him.”

  “I didn’t have to kill him. I chose you.”

  Grandpa fished avidly, but he didn’t hunt for sport. He’d hunted as a child, for food, out of genuine hunger. For him, that was the only ethical justification for killing, aside from self-defense. He’d grown up a rejected, beaten-up white boy on the Crow res. For a white man he had an exceptional sense of the sacred, along with a vicious uppercut.

  As Alma and Pete helped Grandpa cantilever the carcass out of the river with ropes and the winch on the pickup’s front bumper, she felt unworthy. Something was born in her that day, a small knot of determination that would one day change the course of her life. They ate moose steaks, sausage, jerky, and stew all through the coming winter, and Alma had to choke down every bite.

  After clearing up, Alma helps Maddie to bed. The bedroom hasn’t changed from the old ranch house, right down to the faded prairie rose sheets that match the china pattern. Maddie gets into her button-down polyester nightgown and sits down on the bed for Alma to unbuckle her leg brace. Alma picks up the hairnet and thick foam headband from the bedside table and settles them around Maddie’s salon-golden hairdo.

  “Grandma,” she says as they struggle, laughing together, to do up the Velcro closure, “what in the world do you do when I’m not around?”

  “Brad Pitt comes by most nights to help me,” Maddie deadpans. “He’s such a nice boy.”

  “Brad Pitt, you don’t say?”

  “Oh my, yes. Your old grandma’s still got it.”

  After leaving Maddie, Alma tiptoes to the door of the tiny back bedroom. The door is shut but not latched. It opens on well-greased hinges to reveal Brittany asleep in the bright light of a waxing gibbous moon. Even in her great-grandmother’s warm house, Brittany has gone to bed in her stained army-navy surplus coat. Alma kneels to help her out of it. Brittany is limp as a baby, allowing Alma to move her limbs without the slightest protest.

  “Poor thing,” Alma murmurs, “no wonder you’re worn out.” As Alma settles Brittany’s arms under the blankets, she notices that even in deepest sleep, Brittany clutches something under the dirty fingernails of her right hand. Alma peels the fingers back enough to see a faded photograph, torn in half but reattached with tape that has begun to dry and yellow, clutched against her own dog-eared business card. She recognizes the photo. It’s Brittany as a toddler, in a Sears portrait paid for by Alma as a Christmas present, posing with Vicky and Dennis, like the cozy nuclear family they never were. They’re all in Christmas sweaters knit by Maddie, scrubbed and combed, a smiling catalog family. Alma claps one hand over her mouth to muffle her sigh. With the other hand, she closes Brittany’s fingers back over the precious photo.

  Settled in the guest room at last, Alma gets out her laptop and begins her day’s work. Her inbox has accumulated dozens of messages just in the last fifteen hours, on a Sunday. She’s been hearing odd things in interviews with administrative staff at the merger target, and follow-up queries aren’t easing her mind. Her fingers fall to the keyboard.

  CHAPTER 7

  MONDAY, 7:30 A.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME

  After a morning jog cold enough to sear her lungs and freeze her nose hairs so solid they tickle, Alma comes around the last corner to find a strange pickup in the carport. Through the windows she sees an unfamiliar man the size of a linebacker emerge from the hall and open the fridge. Alma snatches her cell phone out of the pocket of her jacket, rushes in the front door, and shouts, “Hello!” as forcefully as she can.

  The linebacker comes around the dividing counter between the living room and kitchen with a smile. “Oh, hi there. You must be the other granddaughter. Mrs. Terrebonne is really excited you’re here. I’m Brad, the home health assistant.”

  “Oh!” Alma is already moving across the room with great momentum, so she bounds up to Brad and shakes his hand with vigor to hide the fact that
she’d been considering breaking a lamp over his head. “Hi, nice to meet you. It’s not— It’s not Brad Pitt, is it?”

  Brad barks his laugh. “Brad Pittman. Your grandma thinks it’s quite a joke. Listen, I’m making some real coffee if you want. It’s in the pot. And I brought over those whole-wheat cinnamon rolls from Stella’s. Mrs. Terrebonne loves them and she needs more fiber in her diet. She told me you were coming in yesterday, so I thought I’d stop by to make sure everything’s okay. I’ll just finish helping her get dressed and check her blood pressure and leave you two to start your day.” Brad speaks in a booming baritone, as if he’s addressing the defensive line. He seems accustomed to people who don’t hear very well and require motivational support. Alma is overwhelmed by his presence and at the same time reassured. She had forgotten that Maddie has help.

  “Sure. Thanks.” She edges toward the kitchen. Brad starts a purposeful charge toward the bathroom to help Maddie, then turns back.

  “Listen,” he says in a more subdued tone, “I’m really sorry about your sister. I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s okay,” Alma says. “Thanks.”

  With Brad’s help, Alma gets Maddie into the car for her first trip to the ranch in months. Maddie wears a bright red coat with a matching knitted hat and fairly dances outside. Brittany settles into the back to play games on Alma’s phone. There are a few stops to make before they can leave town. First, Alma pulls into the lot next to the Denny’s on Twenty-Seventh Street, where Vicky worked. The hostess is so young that Alma can’t believe she’s not in school. As they move toward a table, Alma asks in a low voice who would have known Vicky best.

  “We’re all running around all the time. I only really saw her on breaks, and then she was outside with the smokers. I don’t smoke.” The child-hostess twists her freckled nose in distaste. Her light manner makes it obvious that she doesn’t know what’s happened. Yet it’s odd that the girl refers to Vicky in the past tense. Alma moves away from the table with her as Maddie and Brittany sit.

  “Vicky died this weekend,” Alma says in a low monotone. The words feel like something she swallowed accidentally and needs to spit out, fast.

  “Oh my God!” the girl exclaims and bolts for the kitchen. With a quick word to Maddie, Alma follows the flapping tails of the girl’s apron.

  “I know,” a short white cook with a buzz cut is saying to the hostess as Alma enters the kitchen. “The cops were here yesterday. They interviewed everybody. They’ll be back, I figure. Who are you?” He nods in Alma’s direction and she explains who she is. Mumbled condolences rise from the staff like steam off the grill. Nobody stops moving even as they offer sympathetic looks, subtle gestures of condolence over plates and tools. She looks them over with quick, surreptitious glances, hoping for no awkward moment where she recognizes some high school classmate still waiting tables. Luckily, they’re all strangers. The servers leave quickly, carrying plates that cannot wait, but the cooks and prep staff remain, eyeing Alma.

  “Were any of you friends with her?” Alma asks over the noise of pans and the hot dish machine in a doorless room to her left.

  The cook looks up. “Nobody here knew her very well. She didn’t try to make friends unless she wanted something, and the last couple of months she had sketchy guys coming around asking for money. She owed everybody money.” The cook snorts and turns his back to Alma.

  “Including you?”

  He flips a row of bacon as he talks, as casually as if he were playing table tennis. “Yeah. I loaned her a hundred bucks her first week here. She said she needed it to cover until she got her first paycheck. That’ll teach me. Never saw a dime of it back, and she got money out of most of us before we caught on. Nobody who works here has a lot of cash to spare, if you know what I’m saying. Tyler, the manager, suspected her of stealing food, but he could never prove it.”

  “Was there anybody who was really angry at her?”

  “Enough to kill her, you mean? Look, the police are getting into it with everybody. They’re here all the time anyway. They all knew her. I don’t know what everyone’s saying, but I don’t figure it makes much sense to kill somebody who owes you money. That’s a surefire way never to see it again. Besides, she was mixed up with a bad crowd. She had a lot more to worry about with them than us. We’re just working stiffs.”

  “Do you know their names, this ‘bad crowd’?” Alma feels unbearably hot in her long coat, this close to the bubbling grease and dish room. Her skin itches and crawls under the smooth merino sweater that’s never bothered her before. Stealing food. Borrowing money. Doing drugs. Hanging around every lowlife in town. It sounds like a minor miracle that Vicky survived as long as she did. Alma shifts from one foot to the other and fights an urge to run for fresh air as she waits for the cook to answer.

  He fills a few plates, sets them under warming lights, and hangs the tickets before turning to get a better look at Alma. He takes in her long cashmere coat and scarf, shiny boots, and the soft leather bag on her shoulder. “She was your sister, you say?”

  Alma nods.

  “Well if that don’t beat all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just—well, you look like her, but I’m surprised she even knew somebody like you. She was just a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who was gonna meet a bad end pretty soon, and sure enough she did. I could pick out a couple of the guys she hung around with, maybe. There was a guy named Murray—skinny, long hair. They call him the crank pimp.”

  “Crank pimp?” Alma is sure she doesn’t want to hear this. It’s like the moment when a business client mentions that oh, by the way, he’s been embezzling, but he knows she has to keep his secret because she’s his lawyer. Lawyers are paid well to keep secrets, to be sealed receptacles of other people’s evil, and here is more, offered to her freely. She shrugs off her coat and hangs it over one arm as the cook plates a few orders.

  “He gets girls hooked and then gets them started turning tricks to pay him. Real prince. He picked her up here a few times. I warned her to steer clear.”

  “Is that what happened? Was he her pimp?” At enormous cost, Alma manages to get this out like a normal question, like asking the price of the lunch special. Sweat is trickling between her breasts, starting to soak the lace of her bra.

  “Nah, she cut a deal. She talked about letting him use some place her family has out of town, to get him off her back. You probably know what I mean.” He takes a look at Alma over his shoulder, never pausing in scraping the grill with a long metal spatula.

  “I think I do.” It can only be the home place.

  “And her baby daddy—what’s his name? Dave? They met in the parking lot when she needed him to babysit. Lot of screaming matches over money he owed her. He was all mixed up with that scene. And that guy she lived with. I never met him, but they say he was running a medical marijuana dispensary for a while. It all got shut down when the law changed. You know the type: fancy car, house is a dump, you can smell weed from halfway down the block and that’s for sure not all he’s selling. I don’t go near that scene since I got home from the military. I’ve got too much to live for.” The cook wipes his hands on a towel and fishes his wallet out of his hip pocket. He flips it open to show Alma a picture of a smiling little girl.

  “Your daughter? She’s beautiful.”

  “Thanks. One day at a time, you know.”

  Alma turns so that the rest of the kitchen staff can’t see what she’s doing and reaches into her purse to count out five twenties from her wallet. She slips them to the cook, who tucks them into his wallet with a whispered “thank you” as he puts it away. Alma starts to ask his name, but the cook turns back to his tasks as the Indian dishwasher steps out of his steaming alcove. At first he says nothing, just stands there a few feet from Alma, looking uncomfortable, drying his hands more than necessary on a dishcloth tucked into his apron. Alma waits for him to speak, but the silence gets too long.

  “Did you want to te
ll me something?”

  “Your sister walked on?” he asks. Alma feels her face changing as her mind shifts to take in those words. Walked on. Yes, Vicky has walked on, into the spirit world, where the ancestors are waiting. Their parents. Grandpa. All the grandmothers and grandfathers, long skirts, hard hands. That’s right. Those are the words.

  “Yes,” she answers. “I’m Alma.”

  “Arnie. She was a singer, your sister.”

  “A singer?” Alma remembers Vicky as a little choir girl in a blue robe. “Yes,” she agrees.

  Arnie tosses the rag in his hand onto a big dish rack. “She sang for the whole crew while we were doing prep each night. She knew the lyrics to any song we could name, and all these old country songs I’d never heard. Hank Williams, Patsy Cline. She loved that George Strait. The ladies all love him.”

  “My dad loved those songs,” Alma says. “He taught us.”

  She remembers family car trips, singing Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton songs, led by their father’s rich baritone, so like Pete’s, with Vicky’s clear soprano like foam on the waves of their common sound, carrying the high, pure melody. For Alma, since the accident, those songs have always brought tears, because then she was so secure in the riches of her family, their love, their golden circle, no matter how little they possessed. She had no premonition of what would come after, of how quickly and irrevocably the circle could break. To think back on the time before the circle shattered requires more courage than she has at the moment.

  Arnie coughs and turns a little to the left—choosing the proper direction—lifts up his hands, and without warning starts to sing in Crow. His voice rises above the noise of the kitchen. Surely it can be heard out in the restaurant, Alma thinks, and within seconds a man in a tie comes rushing into the kitchen. He halts at the sight of Arnie, singing loud with his eyes closed, and Alma watching him, transfixed. They both stand still until the song is done. Arnie opens his eyes and turns to Alma. “A travel song, for your sister’s journey to the other-side camp.”