‘A lot of what’s burned, you know, is just understory.’ My father’s hand was on his glass of whiskey, and he was looking at the scarred skin on the back of it. ‘You’ll be able to go in there next spring. You’ll live in a house one of these days made of that timber. A fire’s not always such a bad thing.’ He looked at me and smiled.
‘Were you afraid out there,’ I asked. I was eating my pasty pie.
‘Yes, I was. We only were digging back trenches, but I was afraid. Anything can go on. If you had an enemy he could kill you and no one would know it. I had to stop a man from running straight into the fire once. I dragged him down.’ My father took a drink of his beer and rubbed one hand over the other one. ‘Look at my hands,’ he said. ‘I had smooth hands when I played golf.’ He rubbed his hand harder. ‘Are you proud of me now?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. And that was true. I had told my mother that I was, and I was.
I heard poker chips clatter in the back of the room and a chair squeak as someone got up. ‘You can’t quit now, I’m winning,’ someone said and people laughed.
‘I’d like to live up on the eastern front,’ my father said. ‘That would be a nicer life than down here. Get out of Great Falls.’ His mind was just running then; whatever he thought, he said. It was a strange night in his life.
‘I’d like to live up there,’ I said, though I had never been closer to the eastern front than when I had gone with my mother two days before, and everything there had been on fire.
‘Do you think your mother would take a chance on it?’ he said.
‘She might,’ I said. My father nodded, and I knew he was thinking about the eastern front, someplace where it was not likely he’d be suited for things and my mother wouldn’t be either. They’d lived in houses in towns all their lives and made good with that. He was just taking his mind off the things that he didn’t like and couldn’t help.
My father ordered another glass of whiskey but no beer. I asked for a glass of milk and piece of pie. He turned around on his stool and looked at the men in the back who were playing cards. No one else was in the bar. It was seven o’clock and people would not come in until later when shifts let off.
‘I guess I should’ve known about all this happening,’ my father said, facing the other way. ‘There’s always someone else involved somewhere. Even if it’s just in your mind. You can’t control your mind, I know that. Probably you shouldn’t try.’ I sat without saying anything because I thought he was going to ask me something I did not want to answer. ‘Has this been going on for some time?’ my father said.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘You get into these things and they seem like your whole life,’ my father said. ‘You can’t see out of them. I’m understanding about that.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said again.
‘It’s the money,’ my father said. ‘That’s the big part of it. That’s the way families break up. There’s not enough money. I’m surprised about this Miller, though,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t seem like a man who’d do that. I’ve played golf with him. He has a limp of some kind. I think I won some money once off him.’
‘He said that,’ I said.
‘Do you know him?’ And my father looked at me.
‘I did meet him,’ I said. ‘I met him once.’
‘Isn’t he a married man himself?’ my father said. ‘I thought he was.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He isn’t. He was.’
‘When did you happen to meet him?’ my father said.
And suddenly I felt afraid — afraid of my father, and of what I would say. Because I felt if I said the wrong thing something in me would be ruined and I would never be the same again. I wanted to get up from my seat at that instant and leave. But I couldn’t. I was there with my father, and there was no place I could go that would be far enough away. And what I decided was that what people believed — that I knew nothing about my mother and Warren Miller, for example — didn’t matter as much as it mattered what the truth was. And I decided that that’s what I would tell if I had to tell anything and if I knew the truth, no matter what I’d thought before when I was not face to face with it.
Though I think that was the wrong thing to have done, and my father would have thought so too if he’d had the chance to choose, which he didn’t. Only I did. It was because of me.
My father turned on the barstool and looked at me, his eyes small and hard-looking. He wanted me to tell him the truth. I knew that. But he did not know what the truth would be.
‘I met him at our house,’ I said.
‘When did this take place,’ my father asked.
‘Yesterday,’ I said. ‘Two days ago.’
‘What happened? What happened then?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘And you never met him again?’ my father said.
‘I met him at his house,’ I said.
‘Why did you go there?’ My father was watching me. Maybe he hoped I was lying, and he would catch me at it, lying maybe to make my mother look worse, for some reason he imagined in which I would want to do something for him, to make him feel better by taking his side. ‘Did you go to his house alone?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I went with Mother. We had our dinner over there.’
‘You did?’ he said. ‘Did you stay all night?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We didn’t. We left and went home.’
‘And that’s all?’ he said.
‘That was all then,’ I said.
‘But did you see your mother do something while I was gone that you wouldn’t like to have to tell me?’ my father said. ‘I know it’s odd to know about this. It’s all probably my fault. I’m sorry.’ He looked at me very hard. I think he didn’t want me to say anything, but he also wanted to know the truth and what part in it I’d played, and what part in it my mother had, and what was right or wrong about it. And I did not say anything else because even though I could see it all in my mind again — all those things that had happened in just three days — I didn’t think I knew everything and did not want to pretend I did, or that what I’d seen was the truth.
‘Maybe it doesn’t require an answer,’ my father said after a while. He looked back at the men playing cards at the end of the room. ‘Did your mother tell you anything?’ my father said. ‘I mean, did she say anything that you remember? Not about what she might’ve done. But just anything. I’d like to know what was on her mind.’
‘She said she wasn’t crazy,’ I said. ‘And she said it’s hard to say no to yourself.’
‘Those are both true,’ my father said, watching the men play cards. ‘I’ve felt those myself. Is that all?’
‘She said everybody had to give up things.’
‘Is that so?’ my father said. ‘That’s good to know about. I wonder what she’s given up?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Maybe she’s decided to give us up. Or just me. That’s probably it.’
The bartender brought my pie and my milk and a fork. He set my father’s glass of whiskey on the bar. But my father was looking the other way. He was thinking, and he sat that way without talking for a long time — maybe three minutes — while I sat beside him and waited and did not eat any of my pie or do anything. Just sat.
‘I was only there for three days, but it did feel like a long time,’ he finally said. ‘I can certainly sympathize with people.’
‘Yes,’ I said. I touched my fork with my fingers.