Dean hangs up and sits next to her on the couch. She does not open her eyes. It is below freezing outside, and the cold seeps upward from the basement, swirls around their ankles. Everything here feels foreign to her. It is but the second time in her life that she has left Short Creek; the first was the raid of the Federal Men who took her from her home, and it is Satan that she feels now just as it was Satan that she felt then, Satan in the atmosphere, in the air and water. She does not open her eyes, even when he speaks.
“Mother,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Her parents are saddened, Mother. If not altogether surprised.”
Ruth nods calmly.
“She has taken the coins?”
“Yes, Mother.” He endures this.
“But not the strongbox?”
“No.”
It doesn’t square. Why would the girl take the sack — that vain, incautious sack of gold coins — and not the locked metal box right behind it in the drawer?
She can tell that he is merely enduring her questions. Bearing them, as an obligation he must meet. It is the same for her. She imagines this conversation is part of the price she will pay to live in the celestial kingdom, in the glory of the Lord. She imagines the Lord’s pleasure in her passage of this trial. Ruth does not know, still, what they are doing here in Idaho, whether they have left Short Creek for good, and when she inquires Dean tells her he doesn’t know, he is still praying about it, and never once does he inquire about her opinion or ask her whether she has prayed about it, though she has, and though she has been answered.
Ruth opens her eyes and says, “Perhaps it is the Lord’s will that she has taken the gold.”
“I cannot see it so, Mother.”
“Perhaps the Lord will use these events to remind us.”
“Remind us of what?”
Ruth whispers, “That we have lost our hold on the iron rod.”
“Forgive me, Mother. Perhaps I was blinded. Perhaps I have erred.”
Ruth knows that Dean does not believe he has erred. She hears his swallowing of grievance, his pride in his humility. His satisfaction with himself, that he is able to so patiently pretend to accept her criticism.
“Erred in which way, Father?”
Dean does not speak for a long time. The darkness in the living room has deepened against the weak light from the kitchen, gleaming on the glass bell of the lamps, on the wood-grained arms of the couch, casting thin shadows in the nap of the carpet. He leans forward, elbows on knees, hands folded together, very nearly in the aspect of prayer. He lowers his head, raises it as if to speak, and lowers it again.
Dean says at last, “Perhaps everything, Mother. Perhaps everything I have ever tried to do,” and this, too, his self-pity, is but another part of her lot in this earthly life.
The girl has never been right. And Dean’s man has never been right. She opposed that from the start as well, and Dean insisted that Mr. Baker was trustworthy, that he had shown his reliability, and Ruth recognized the truth: that was how the world and its values seeped into your life and corroded it, one harmless step at a time, one innocent inch at a time, one arrogant Gentile at a time, until you could not recognize the damned from the saved.
She submits, submits. Dean sleeps beside her. She becomes more alert with each passing minute. It comes to her every night, this wakefulness. She thinks that perhaps the Lord’s will is aligning with her own. Perhaps a humbling is what Dean requires. Perhaps those who have left them now will never return, just as she wishes.
Loretta
Somewhere deep in the rocking recesses of the night, Loretta tells Evel she wants to call him by his real name. She feels this must be a secret that he shares with few people, a talisman, his Sampson hair.
“Come on,” she says. “What is it?
“You don’t know what it is?”
He seems genuinely surprised.
“I know it!” Jason says, erupting like a bubble in thick stew. “Robert Craig Knievel!”
Evel Knievel stares heavily at Jason, as though trying to will him away, and says, “Good for you, kiddo.”
“I’ve seen every one of your jumps but one,” Jason says, head wobbling, eyes misfocused. “I missed the last one. Wembley. My fuckin’ parents wouldn’t let me watch it. They made me go to a family dinner.” He turns to Loretta suddenly. “Dinner with your family. Hey.”
She pretends to smile. For Evel. She and Evel smile, patiently, together at Jason.
“My fuckin’ parents,” Jason says again. “They didn’t want me to watch the Snake River jump.”
“Uh-huh,” Evel Knievel says.
“Are you sure you don’t remember me? You said, ‘Thanks for coming, buddy.’”
“Yeah, no,” Evel says. He grins at Loretta.
“But my parents! Can you believe that? Can you fuckin’ believe it? Greatest thing ever. Biggest day we ever saw.” He looks at Evel, lets it sink in. “Didn’t want me to go. Didn’t want me to do it.”
“It’s not exactly my favorite thing to talk about, bud.”
“Ah, hell,” Jason says. “Man, don’t let that get to you. Everybody makes mistakes.”
They are all wasted, Loretta knows — she is blissfully drunk, protected from the world, narrowed down to the essences — and yet there is something in Jason’s drunkenness that is distasteful, something loose and undisciplined and helpless, as if he were a marionette with half his strings cut. Evel leers at her. No one has ever looked at her so frankly. Not even Bradshaw.
Jason burps, and holds himself urgently still, then takes huge, steadying breaths through his nose. Evel sits back, swirls his drink.
Jason says, “Good Lord, you’re amazing.”
Evel shifts in his seat, frowns at Loretta.
“No, seriously, man, you are,” Jason says. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”
Evel stares hard at him — like, Stop it—then turns toward Loretta, who barks once, a laugh escaping from a herd of laughs within. Evel Knievel smiles at her, and in his smile there seems to be some form of original light, something shining from within. Jason stifles a burp, and looks again like he might be sick, and Evel says, “You okay, buddy? Everything gonna stay inside?” and he smiles at her, a smile of pure light. A sour, sickening smell wafts in. She realizes: this is what her future is like. Not like the magazine ads. Not something static and pretty — but something beautiful and ugly at once. It includes a famous man, a worldly man, just showing up at your table, and it includes the possibility that you might find yourself cleaning up the vomit of a boy.
Loretta starts telling Evel the truth about them, sort of, saying they’d gotten tired of their families and run away. She leaves out Dean and all that. At one point, Jason snaps to attention and slurs, “And that’s not the fuckin’ half of it,” but she reaches under the table, grabs a thick inch of skin above his knee, and twists it, hard.
“Holy crap,” Jason yelps. “Knock that off.”
Loretta smiles sweetly at Evel.
“How old are you kids?” he asks her.
“I’m eighteen,” Loretta says.
He begins to spout advice. Always be true to yourself. Never let the bastards win. Don’t be afraid to fail. Fail your asses off. That is how you will succeed. Be nice. That is the most important thing — be nice.