He drove way out north of Deadrock and up through the sage flats to his trailer house, trying to hit the Maxwell House can with his snoose. The trailer sat on a flat of land under a bright white rim of rock. It seemed to belong there. There was a spring above the place, which Bill had improved with a screen box. There was a chain-link kennel that held his dogs, and a horse corral with shelters and a steel feeder for hay. He had his cutting horse in there and a using horse. The cutting horse was called Red Dust Number Seven and the using horse was called Louie Louie. There was a windowbox with some dope plants and a neat row of mountain ash around the front of the trailer. On the rimrock above the trailer sat the video dish, and it provided great reception for Bill’s favorite shows: Wimbledon, the World Series, the Kentucky Derby, the American’s Cup, prizefights, and elections. He went inside.
He turned on the Turner Superstation for the news loop and called Elizabeth on the phone, and asked her for lunch. He started a small sandwich assembly line. “As against apathy,” he told himself, “I have the change of seasons, the flowing waters, the possible divestiture of my brothers.” Bill had wanted a sensible mix of conservative investments he wouldn’t have to think about. But John and Walter had got them into an RV distributor, a cow herd, a gasohol plant, and a grain elevator. Bill wasn’t interested in these going concerns and he felt guilty about shirking all the fellow feeling. If only he could interest himself in keeping up with the Joneses, he could head off the cloudiness that troubled his days.
From the window over the sink, he could see two irrigators cross the hillside carrying rolled-up dams on their shoulders; the ends of the fabric blew in the drying wind. One man had a shovel, and a small red heeler dog bounced behind them. Maybe Elizabeth and I can make something out of all this, he thought.
Bill made the sandwiches. News briefs from the theatersized screen threw parti-colored shadows around the trailer walls. Quarterlies piled by the recliner chair were wedged inside each other to mark the places Bill had left off. Elizabeth knocked on the door and came in. Bill was putting the lunch on the table. When she closed the door, the aluminum walls shook.
“How are you?”
“I’m great,” she said. She was a strong-featured brunette in her late twenties. Her hands were coarsened by outside work, but it made her more attractive. She was a widow.
She came for lunch fairly often and sat right down and began eating. She and Bill both liked ice water, and Bill put a chiming pitcher of it on the table. He gazed around at the condiments.
“What do you want?”
“Oh, darling,” he said.
“Come on.”
“Hot sauce.”
She reached him the Tabasco from behind the ice-water pitcher. They ate in relaxed silence. This is really nice, thought Bill. “I’m not getting anywhere with my brothers and it’s my fault,” he said.
“What are you trying to do?”
“I don’t know, make a contribution. I’m just not a team player, and it’s killing me.”
“Why is it killing you? You’re getting by.”
“It’s like not being able to get in the mood. I feel something is passing me up and I don’t know what it is. John and Walter are so vigorous compared to me. I see my vital interests drifting into growth areas. It’s platitudinous. I wish I could see myself as subsisting … tied to the land or some God damn thing.”
“You need to be more romantic.”
“I’m not romantic, am I?”
“Not about anything,” Elizabeth said. “It’s your highest limitation.”
“I know you’re right,” said Bill. “But God damn it, this is Big Sky country, this is the American West. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
“It’s a problem if you’re so defeated by it.”
Bill wished they could make love after lunch. All energy would pass to his abdominal nerves. But it was out of the question. Volition would fill the air. And it seemed he didn’t want that.
Bill and Elizabeth had a lot in common, not as much as Bill would wish, but many things: a love of reading, a wryness, superfluous lives on land that had gone up in value while losing its utility. It could seem to him that her bereavement was her real location. She sustained in her actual home the air of a life lived elsewhere just as Bill’s education had removed him. More than that, they faced lives that could be behind them. Bill thought that while it terrified him, it might well have consoled Elizabeth to know that the struggle for love and wholeness did not have to be gone through again. He even thought it was mean-spirited to view her beauty and merit as something wasted because it was not offered up to use. Still, all these considerations produced cloudiness and an irresolute foreground.
“I met a girl at that little gift shop who wanted to meet you. Karen. Said she could come out. I’m sure she’ll sleep with you.”
“I’ll have to look into it,” Bill said wanly. His brothers weren’t like this. They’d show merriment for Karen. They’d want to get them a little and not think it over. Bill reached across and took Elizabeth’s hand. It was strong. It weighed something. He wished she wouldn’t smile when she looked at him. She wasn’t pornographic. Sometimes when he went volitionless, her eyes glittered as though a little victory were at hand. What victory? Watching someone pull himself out of a hole?
A small cloudburst hit the trailer, the kind you can see all the way around in the mountains. Bill got up to look out. It hit so suddenly that the drops of water threw dust in the air. His two horses swiveled their butts into the wind, and their tails blew up along their flanks. Then it stopped and Bill opened the door to let the air, fragrant with cedar, fill the trailer. He sat down and refilled their ice water.
“Let’s do something this year. I feel my life is almost over,” Bill said.
“You always feel your life is almost over. What do you want to do?”
“I’d like to go to Monticello,” said Bill. But suddenly he could not understand why it had to be impossible for him and Elizabeth to be happy in an ordinary way. Then it subsided.
“Why don’t we make a real trip,” he said. “We’ll take the horses and go to Texas. That’ll get us south and sort of east. We’ll be almost there.”
“The Texans will be funny. We can go to the Alamo.”
“If it’s all right, I’d like to visit Bunker Hill.”
“Then let’s leave our horses at home.”
“I don’t feel like eating,” said Bill.
“I really can’t appeal to your needs, can I?” said Elizabeth.
But as the days went by, the trip did acquire some actuality. They bought a road atlas, even though Bill had often said the road atlas had ruined American life. But the road atlas made it clear that their trip was pretty much of a zigzag. Still, they spent frequent evenings in the trailer foreseeing the meaning of their destinations.
John and Walter asked if they could all have a drink at the hotel. When they got there, Bill was already seated next to the pensioners in the lobby. An old cowboy with a tray bolted to his electric wheelchair shot in and out of the bar delivering drinks. The three sat around a table that gave them some distance from others and moved their whiskey thoughtfully on coasters like Ouija styluses. John produced a sentimental appearance in his bow tie, his hair parted closer to the crown than was currently fashionable. Walter, astonished gull-wing eyebrows and dark jowls, looked the power broker he was with his wide tie and grim suit. They weren’t such bad fellows, Bill thought. They have the advantage of the here and now, and Bill was man enough not to blame his slipping gears on them.