In the depot I had called my father. I thought I should tell him about Barney and what had happened and say that I was all right, though I knew I could explain it wrong and he could decide to come and get me, and I wouldn't get to Seattle, or ever get to see my mother.
The phone rang a long time, and when my father answered it he seemed out of breath, as if he'd been running or had come in from outside. “It's snowing in Montana, bud,” he said, catching his wind. I heard him stamp his feet on the floor. “It feels like you've been gone a long time already.”
“We're still in Shelby,” I said. “It's snowing here too.” Doris was at the ticket desk, talking to the woman I had talked to — Betty. I knew they were talking about Barney. There were other people in the waiting room now, with suitcases and paper packages, and it was noisy. “We saw a man get shot up in a bar tonight,” I said to my father, just like that.
“What is it?” my father said, as though he hadn't heard me right. “What's it you said?”
“The police did it.”
“Where's Doris?” my father said. “Put her on.” And I knew that what I'd said had shocked him. “Where are you?” he said, and his voice sounded scared.
“In Shelby,” I said. “In the depot. I was on the floor with Doris. Nothing happened to us.”
“Where's she now, son?” my father said and suddenly seemed very calm. “Let me speak to her now.”
“She's talking to somebody,” I said. “She can't come to the phone.”
“Are the police there?” my father said, and I knew he was thinking right then about coming up and getting me and taking me back. But it was snowing too hard, and the train would get there before he could.
“We were in the Oil City bar,” I said, and I said it calmly. “It wasn't somebody we knew. It was an Indian.”
“What in the world's going on now?” my father said, and he said this loudly, so that I wondered if he'd had a drink. “Was she with somebody?”
“No,” I said, “she wasn't. It's all right now. It's finished.”
And then there was a long time on the line during which my father didn't say anything but I could hear his feet moving on the floor and hear him breathing hard, and I knew he was trying to think of what he should do at that moment.
“I can't save you from very much, can I?” he said softly, as if he didn't care if I heard it or maybe didn't even want me to. So I didn't answer, and waited for him to say something he wanted me to hear. I tried thinking of something to ask, but I didn't want to know anything. Telling him what had happened had made anything else not important.
And then he said, and he said it more loudly, as if he had a new idea, “Are you all right?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He waited for a moment. “Your mother called up here tonight.”
“What did she say?”
“She wanted to know if you'd gotten away all right and how you felt. She asked me if I wished I was coming with you, and I told her she'd need to ask me earlier if she wanted that to happen. I said I had other plans.”
“Is Jensen there?” And I called her by her last name. I don't know why.
My father laughed. “Yoyce? No, Miss Yensen's got different visitors tonight. It's just us hounds in the house. I let them both in. They're searching around for you right now.”
“You don't have to worry about me,” I said.
“All right, then, I'll quit.” And he paused again. “Your mother said she might try to keep you out there. So don't be surprised.”
“What did you say to her about it?”
“I said it was up to you. Not me.”
“What did she say then?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Not about that.” And I decided then that he hadn't had a drink. “Before you called I was just sitting thinking about when I was your age. My parents had several big dustups — yelling and everything. Fighting. My dad once got my mother up against a wall in the house and threatened to hit her because he'd invited over some friends of his from Moorhead, and she didn't like them and told them to get out. I had a good seat for that. Nobody moved away, though. That was better than all this foolishness. I don't know what you're supposed to do about it, of course.”
Doris looked at me across the waiting room and smiled and waved. She pointed her finger at herself, but I didn't want her to talk to my father. “Do you remember when you said Doris was sympathetic?” I said, watching her. “You were talking about her one day. I wondered what you meant by that.”
“Oh,” my father said, and I heard one of the dogs bark, and he shouted out, “Hey now! Dogs!” Then he said, “I must've meant she was generous with her affections. With me she was. That's all. Why'd you think about that? Is she nice to you?”
“Yes,” I said, “she is.” Then I said, “Do you think it'd be better if I stay out with Mother?”
“Well, only if you want to,” my father said. “I wouldn't blame you. Seattle's a nice place. But I'm happy to have you come back here. We should talk about that when you've been there. You'll know more about it.”
“Okay,” I said.
I heard a dog's collar jingling, and I thought he was probably petting one of them. “Are you sure you're all right?” my father said.
“I'm fine,” I said. “I am.”
“I love you, Larry. I forgot to tell you that before you left. That's important.”
“I love you,” I said.
“That's good news,” he said. “Thank you.”
And then we hung up.
AFTER AN HOUR of watching the night go by — the town of Cut Bank, Montana, some bright headlights behind a flashing, snowy barricade and a road sign toward Santa Rita and the Canada border, then a long, dark time while the train ran beside the highway and there were no cars, only a farm light or two in the distance and a missile site off in the dark and a few trucks racing to get home by Thanksgiving — after an hour of that, Doris began talking to me, just saying whatever was in her mind, as if she thought I might be interested. Her voice sounded different in the compartment. It had lost a thickness it'd had, and was just a plain voice that only meant one thing.
She remarked again that the town of Shelby had felt very foreign to her, and that it reminded her of Las Vegas, Nevada, where she and Benny had gotten married. She said both were remote from anyplace important and both were unpredictable — unlike Great Falls, which she said was too predictable. She said she knew the sheriff had not intended to shoot Barney, that they would've done anything to avoid it but that they didn't know enough. Then she said again that she was the wrong person for my father, and that there were important things she'd always wanted to say to my mother, things she thought about her — some good, some not — but that she could never express them, because my mother had locked on her as a rival years before. Then she talked about how it would feel to be divorced, that the worst part of that would be your thinking, not being able to control what went through your mind, and that the next day, Thanksgiving Day, she was going to tell my mother to come home right then, or else run the risk of being on her own forever. “Your life'll eat you.” Those were the words she used. And then she leaned back in her seat and looked at me.
“I was involved with another woman for a while. Quite a while, in fact. It was very fulfilling,” she said. “Though I'm not now. Not anymore. Does that shock you? I'm sure it does.”
“No,” I said, although it did. It shocked me very much.
“It shocked me,” Doris said. “But you couldn't admit that. It's not how you're made. You don't really know how to trust people with the truth. You're like your father.” She took her glasses off and smoothed under her eyes with the tips of her fingers.