“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 into his mouth, paper cup and all. The paper massed behind his dentures.
At the Social Hour, Mr. Mellowhorn arrived to introduce the new “guests.” Church Bollinger was a younger man, barely sixty-five, but Roy could tell he was a real slacker. He’d obviously come into the Home because he couldn’t get up the gumption to make his own bed or wash his dishes. The other one, Mrs. Terry Taylor, was around his age, early eighties despite the dyed red hair and carmine fingernails. She seemed soft and sagging, somehow like a candle standing in the sun. She kept looking at Ray. Her eyes were khaki-colored, the lashes sparse and short, her thin old lips greased up with enough lipstick to leave red on her buttered roll. Finally he could take her staring no longer.
“Got a question?” he said.
“Are you Ray Forkenknife?” she said.
“Forkenbrock,” he said, startled.
“Oh, right. Forkenbrock. You don’t remember me? Theresa Worley? From Coalie Town? Me and you went to school together except you was a couple grades ahead.”
But he did not remember her.
The next morning, fork poised over the poached egg reclining like a houri on a bed of soggy toast, he glanced up to meet her intense gaze. Her red-slick lips parted to show ocher teeth that were certainly her own, for no dentist would make dentures that looked as though they had been dredged from a sewage pit.
“Don’t you remember Mrs. Wilson?” she said. “The teacher that got froze in a blizzard looking for her cat? The Skeltcher kids that got killed when they fell in a old mine shaft?”
He did remember something about a schoolteacher frozen in a June blizzard but thought it had happened somewhere else, down around Cold Mountain. As for the Skeltcher kids, he denied them and shook his head.
On Saturday Beth came again, and again set out the glass of water, the glass of whiskey and the tape recorder. He had been thinking what he wanted to say. It was clear enough in his head, but putting it into words was difficult. The whole thing had been so subtle and painful it was impossible to present it without sounding like a fool. And Mrs. Terry Taylor, a.k.a. Theresa Worley, had sidelined him. He strove to remember the frozen teacher, the Skeltcher kids in the mine shaft, how Mr. Baker had shot Mr. Dennison over a bushel of potatoes and a dozen other tragedies she had laid out as mnemonic bait. He remembered very different events. He remembered