Sorrow Floats Read online

Mangum leaned over to peer down at me. “If you can’t sleep, consider what kind of woman forgets where she put her baby.”

  I rolled up the window and started crying. “Mangum, you cruel asshole.”

  “Go on home, Mrs. Talbot.”

  3

  Because of the jaundice after Auburn was born, the doctor put him next to my bed in a clear plastic box with bilirubin lights. A nurse taped a gauze strip over his eyes, and for some reason they wouldn’t tell me, she stuck an IV needle into the top of his head.

  Then they left Auburn, naked, alone, and blind, where no one could touch him.

  Lydia had brought me a portable eight-track tape player, and I lay there on my side, looking at my baby and listening to the Blue album by Joni Mitchell. I started sobbing and couldn’t stop. For six hours I cried and cried until the front of my hospital gown was soaked. How could that be possible? There aren’t six hours’ worth of tears in the human body. People say crying is good for you and after you let it out you’ll feel better, but after six hours I was hopeless as ever.

  That was the last time I cried until Mangum Potter drove away.

  The afternoon Dad died Hank called Mom and Petey called me. I was giving Auburn a bath when the phone rang, and after I hung up I took Auburn out of the plastic basin to towel him dry. As I rubbed the towel up and down Auburn’s precious body, I went kind of blank and forgot time. I just kept rubbing his legs, then his back and arms. I touched his belly and thought of Dad’s skin. Dad’s neck, his face above his beard, and the backs of his hands were dark as my corral boots, but the rest of his body was the color of banana pulp.

  I talked to Auburn as if he were Dad. Said the stuff we all wish we’d said—I planned to plant a line of aspens at the ranch. The cigarettes he found in my saddlebags were mine. Was he disappointed in me? I asked if he thought we should get Auburn baptized even though we didn’t belong to a church. Then I told Dad he was the only thing solid in my life, nothing would ever be real again. I said “I love you’’—all this time rubbing Auburn up and down with the towel.

  That was the numbest I ever felt, more numb than Yukon Jack ever made me, more numb than the last time I made love to Dothan.

  But all while I dried Auburn I never cried. That night fetal-positioned in bed, and the next day, then the funeral and the days after that—nothing. At times I felt like a monster, but I was just too empty for tears.

  ***

  Someone tapped on the glass. A man I’d never seen before mouthed some words and did a crank-your-window-down motion with his hands. At first I ignored him, but that didn’t work so I cracked the window an inch.

  He spoke distinctly, as if I might be foreign or deaf. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  He pointed to a pickup on the shoulder across the road. A woman with her hair in foam curlers waved. The man said, “We were driving by and thought you might not be okay.”

  “I’m okay.”

  The man wasn’t prepared to leave me alone. He looked at the highway behind the Bronco, then hunched over to squint at me through the crack. “You’re in the middle of the lane.”

  I stared at him.

  “A car coming along might rear-end you.”

  I was too tired to fight back. “Thanks for stopping. I’ll move my car.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m unhappy.”

  His head moved back. “Then nothing’s the matter.”

  “I’m fine.”

  ***

  Two pickups and an ambulance were parked outside the Sagebrush Lounge. Buck Fratelli keeps things way dark inside so a jealous cowboy coming through the door has to adjust long enough for snugglers to move apart or, in extreme cases, break for the back door. What it does is leave you standing up front until everyone present has copped their attitude.

  Faith Fratelli sat on a stool behind the bar, studying Password on a color TV with a purple-soaked picture. The Sagebrush used to be Talbot Taxidermy, and Buck wouldn’t buy the dump unless Dothan’s dad threw in his mutant animal collection. Taxidermists have a unique sense of humor. Along a shelf on both sides of the TV stood an array of jackalopes, fur-bearing trout, unicorns, sage hens with huge breasts. Buck’s prize piece was a Wyoming werewolf, which is a butt mount of a whitetail deer with glass eyes in the hips, the tail made into a nose, and a pair of razorback fangs set in the asshole. Vicious-looking creature when you first see it and disgusting after that.

  A voice on the TV whispered, “The password is ‘swordfish.’”

  Faith blew cigarette smoke out her nostrils. “Why do stupid people smile all the time? This guy looks like a Mormon missionary.”

  Other than the skinny tie and that shit-eater under his nose, the guy didn’t look a bit like a missionary. His shirt was purple.

  Three ancient timber wolves sat on stools nodding over Blue Ribbon beer. The oldest wolf of them all was Oly Pedersen, who’d made a profession of outliving sidekicks. He’d signed up with Grandpa Pierce back in World War I, and they did the blood brothers thing men get into living in trenches with other men, so Dad always went out of his way to take care of Oly—drove him to the doctor, had him over for dinner on Christmas, that sort of thing. When I was a kid Oly’d chain-sawed me a rocking horse that was really neat.

  A kid too young to be in the Sagebrush slapped at a Home Run pinball game while a skinny guy in white overalls and a fat guy in a wheelchair shot pool. The wheelchair guy rammed the cue ball like he wanted to kill it and hollered “Banzai, motherfucker” on every shot.

  I said, “Everclear.”

  Faith glanced at me for the first time. “Your makeup’s a mess, Maurey.”

  “I’m not wearing makeup.”

  The wheelchair man spun around. “Hippy chicks don’t wear makeup. Bras either. And they don’t shave nothin’.”

  “Shut up, Shane,” Faith said with no energy, as if she said it often and didn’t expect to be heard. “You making purple passion, Maurey?”

  “The password is none of your business.”

  Faith missed it—flew right over her head. “Kids buy Everclear cause it’s 180 proof. They mix it with gallons and gallons of Hawaiian Punch, call it purple passion.” Faith pronounced it the same as everyone else in town—High-wayan.

  “I’m in kind of a hurry here.”

  “The boys use it to get the girls drunk.” Faith had pitch-black hair pulled into a ponytail and two turquoise bracelets on her left wrist. She was pleasant and Buck was smart, and between them they made ends meet, which isn’t easy in GroVont.

  I waited while she rang up the fifth and slid it into a sack. The grinner on TV said, “Shark,” and his female partner said, “Lawyer.”

  “What do you want with Everclear, Maurey?” Faith asked. “You’re a Yukon woman.”

  “I’m gonna drink myself to death.”

  Faith laughed without taking her eyes off Password. “Don’t you wish.”

  I dropped two dollar bills on the bar. “Get Oly a Blue Ribbon, Faith, tell him it’s from Dad.”

  The pool players were conferring, and as I left, Shane, the fat one in the chair, wheeled into my path. His head twitched. “We have a wager.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “Lloyd claims that dime in your back pocket is heads facing out, and I maintain it is tails.”

  I stuck my fingers in the pocket in question. There was plenty of room, for fingers, anyway. “How much did you bet?”

  “The next round.”

  “You both lose, it’s a quarter.”

  “Heads or tails quarter?”

  “Isn’t there a rule against leaving an AA meeting and coming straight to a bar?”

  Shane went into a laughter spaz where he bobbed up and down on his hands. “I told you she watches. Every day, sitting in that window, watching and watching.”
r />   Lloyd spoke for the first time. “It’s Coca-Cola.”

  “Yeah, right. At least I put mine in a coffee cup.”

  The flab on Shane’s face arranged itself into a pout. He held the glass toward me. “It is Coca-Cola. Want a taste?”

  “I’d rather die.”

  “We don’t drink alcoholic beverages, ma’am,” Lloyd said.

  “Then why hang out in a bar?”

  The two glanced at each other, and Lloyd kind of shrugged. Shane looked back up at me. “Bars are all we know. We ceased alcohol consumption but can’t decide what to do instead.”

  “When you find out, tell me.”

  Lloyd held his pool cue with one hand and rubbed his overalls with the other. “We’ll do that, ma’am.”

  I stared down at the grinning Shane. “Now, wheel out of my way. I’m busy.”

  4

  Sam Callahan says the only important decision is whether to commit suicide and die now or not commit suicide and die later. He read that in a book. I decided to die now.

  As I drove up the river road to our family place, deep blue plastered the sky all the way to Yellowstone in the north and the Winds in the east. Earlier I had been too drunk to notice the air or the silver-gray sagebrush. On the valley floor the cottonwoods had small, lime green leaves, then as I moved up the mountain the leaves curled in on themselves until, at the ranch itself, each naked twig was tipped by a furry bud.

  I pulled off next to the Miner Creek culvert and dug under the seat for a Flintstones never-tip cup, then I walked over to our buck-and-rail fence. The TM ranch stretched up the rise to the frame ranch house Grandpa built to replace the one-room cabin where Dad and three brothers and a sister were raised. Hank had the mares and foals fenced in the east pasture and the geldings strung along the creek. Frostbite the Dad killer grazed in a bunch feeding on bromegrass near the far irrigation ditch. The pasture was a dull yellow veined by dark green along the ditches where Hank was already moving water.

  I had almost killed my son. Next time he might not be lucky, therefore, I had to stop. Easy logic.

  Only a heartbeat ago Dad made us bull boats by cutting the ends off watermelons and setting in chokecherry masts with bandanna sails. Petey and I squealed up and down the creek, crashing through willows, encasing ourselves in mud from the knees down. We turned pinecones into boat families of a Mom, Dad, two kids, and a horse. Petey’s family usually sank, but mine bobbed clear to the river.

  I lived for horses back then. My mare, Molly, followed me like a beagle, once right into the house and into my room. The night lightning struck her I cried till dawn. I thought I would never feel that bad again.

  Here’s what I couldn’t grab: the string connecting that to this, how the girl who slept in cowgirl boots and played with pinecone dolls became the woman who dressed like a Salt Lake hooker and hid bourbon bottles in vacuum cleaner bags. I pried the lid off Auburn’s cup and poured it to the rim with Everclear. Was the problem nothing but alcohol? I’d been drinking more or less regular since college, although I didn’t drink a bit while I was pregnant with Auburn. I only began drinking on a daily basis after Frostbite killed Dad. Closing my eyes, I tried to call up what I felt like before booze. A few watery images floated past—watermelon boats, Shannon, myself in the mirror in my cheerleading outfit, riding—but I couldn’t hold what I felt like, what I thought about in the gap between going to bed and going to sleep, how I met the morning.

  The first Everclear went down like gasoline. Made me shudder, which alcohol hadn’t done in some time. I’d only tasted Everclear once, and then it was mixed with a washtub of cherry Kool-Aid at a frat party in Laramie. That was my sophomore year after I got hurt by a boy named Park, short for Parker. One day when everything was going dandy he just dropped out of school and went home to Maine. I rebounded into a Phi Delt bed. Randy, the Phi Delt, taught me lost weekend drinking and sex without emotional attachment.

  I tipped the cup and took in as much as possible in one long chug. The stomach burn was amazing. Park popping into my mind was a surprise, since he generally stayed on the fringe, where he belonged. Park had been sad and sensitive, probably my only true emotional attachment even vaguely connected to sex. With Park, I had the friendship of Sam and the teenage romance of Dothan. We talked about it for weeks before I took away Park’s virginity, then when he discovered he wasn’t my first, or second, or even third, something in Park closed.

  Two Swainson’s hawks flew down the river. As I watched, the darker, higher male dived into the female in a feather explosion. The hawks plummeted, fused together, wings beating each other instead of air, until, yards above the river, they broke into separate birds again. If people could mate like hawks—a midair crashing of bodies—I might give passion another try.

  I poured and drank again. The bottle was over a quarter gone and all I felt was belly fire and a little wooziness in my forehead. When Marilyn Monroe committed suicide, Dad sat in his recliner and stared at the wall all morning. He liked movie stars, and I guess he really liked Marilyn. I’d never seen him sad before, never realized grown-ups got sad before that. I made him iced tea with lemon, but he said he wasn’t thirsty. I don’t think he noticed what I was offering.

  Marilyn Monroe was into fucking. She was the symbol of fucking and she died naked; then John Kennedy died, the pill came along, Vietnam, silly drugs and hard alcohol, and suddenly I’m on a fence sending myself into a twenty-two-year-old’s grave. Auburn wouldn’t even know I died on purpose to save him. He’d grow up thinking his mom the lush drank herself to death.

  Couldn’t allow that. Suicide to save a child was brave, but drinking till you died was weak. All I had left that mattered was how Auburn thought of me later on, and I couldn’t die and let him grow up blaming weakness.

  A note. Had to tell Auburn it was for him. Without a note, Dothan could turn the boy against me. Life would have been wasted.

  One more slug, straight from the bottle this time, and a fairly coherent walk back to the Bronco. Only ten, twelve steps, nothing to brag about. Trouble with the door, then big trouble with the glove box. Sunglasses, fuses, unknown key, corkscrew, burnt candle, Don’t Vote button, four-inch bit from a busted bridle—no paper but the Bronco registration and a pink speeding ticket Dothan hadn’t told me about. Eighty-five in a thirty-five zone, Pocatello, Idaho, March 2, 1973.

  “March two,” I said out loud, willing recall. The day was gone. Hell, March was gone, a shadow in the forest of my memory. Month not to eat oysters. In like a lion, out like a lamb; what the heck did that mean?

  The heck.

  I dug a red crayon from under the passenger seat, then barked my head on the rearview mirror. Sent the mirror askew. Askew. Crayon said Scarlet on the side, with evidence of slurpy sucking on the pointy end. God, I tried to keep foreign objects from Auburn’s mouth.

  I two-hand-rubbed the parking ticket across my leg to make it smooth.

  Auburn my son

  I did it to save you from me. Dad lies. I loved you.

  I drew a scarlet line through I loved you, then wrote it again. I love you.

  “Yeah, right,” I said. Now—back to the bottle and down to business.

  I nailed an entire cup of Everclear in one drooly gulp. Gagged. Choked back vomit. Ran my hand through my hair. We’re talking tunnel focus here, an oil filter-loosening tool wrapped around my skull. The stuff was working.

  I sat on the bottom rail and rested my cheek on the top. An infinitely small red speck came from a crack in the wood, then crawled out of vision. The wood texture was beautiful, real, and close. I put out my tongue to taste it. Without emotion, I wondered what death was like. Would it be a nothing, not even knowing I was nothing, or would I exist without need? It didn’t matter. We’re born from zip and go to zip. Born naked.

  Marilyn Monroe died naked. That was the way to go—the way you came in. Marilyn Monroe was t
he symbol of fucking, and when she died naked, people she didn’t know sat in chairs and felt sad. Even the people I knew wouldn’t be sad at me. Sam Callahan, Shannon, Lydia, Hank, Mom—they’d all say “She lived a tragic, useless life. Too bad,” then they’d eat supper and go to bed and get up the next day and nothing would be different. Dothan would have to find a sitter.

  A truck rattled down the road behind me, going toward town. Scared me into pouring another cup of Everclear. What would I have done if the driver stopped? I hit the cup hard.

  I wanted to be Marilyn Monroe and go the way I came. A person of substance would never die in a windbreaker and cutoffs. Had to move up the creek so no one could see me naked. Suicide was embarrassing enough without being laughed at. I held the bottle up to my eye, two-thirds empty. One-third full, said the optimist. Whatever. Could I make it up the creek to privacy? I could do anything requiring balance. I was Rocky Mountain vaulting champion of 1962—same summer Marilyn Monroe got naked and died. If she could do it, so could the vaulting champion.

  Going across the fence, I caught my foot on the rail and flung over on my neck and back. The world spun and the sky was no longer blue, but a dun color with black-and-yellow shifting holes. My legs went bad, as in non-functioning numbness. I turned over but couldn’t stand, which caused frustration. Dad crawled to die with a view; who was I to break tradition?

  The bottle swung below my breasts, held by my teeth. As I crawled things stuck in my palms and I had to go over sagebrush because my head wouldn’t lift to see the path. Must have looked like an anteater. The ground tilted, I went off a drop, and part of me was suddenly wet. Far enough. I crawled out of the creek and spit out the bottle. When I unzipped the windbreaker Charley fell out.

  With the T-shirt pulled half over my head, a wave of nausea struck and I had to lie down. Inside the shirt was safe, all white, like being in a veil. To strip the cutoffs I had to lie on my back and shoulders with my hair in mud. Groveling to get naked. Groveling to die. Tawdry but with the idealism of the nude.