Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3. Annie Proulx
over. The backhoe driver jumped down. They all looked salty and in good shape. “Hell,” said Chad, “we’re just out for a Sunday ride. Didn’t expect to see anybody working on Sunday. Thought it was just us ranch types got to do that. Have a good day,” and he trod on the accelerator, peeling out in a burst of dust. Gravel pinged the undercarriage.
Berenice started to say “What was that all about?” but Chad snapped “Shut up” and drove too fast until they got to the blacktop and then he floored it, looking in the rearview all the way. They didn’t speak until they were back at Berenice’s. Chad got out and walked around the truck, looking it over.
“Chad, how come you to let them throw off on you like that?” said Berenice.
“Berenice,” he said carefully, “I guess that you didn’t see one a them guys had a.44 on him and he was taking it out of the holster. It is not a good idea to have a fight on the edge of a ditch with five roustabouts in a remote area. Loser goes in the ditch and the backhoe guy puts in five more minutes of work. Take a look at this,” he said, and he pulled her around to the back of the truck. There was a hole in the tailgate.
“That’s Buddy’s .44 done that,” he said. “Good thing the road was rough. I could be dead and you could still be out there entertaining them.” Berenice shuddered. “Probably,” said Chad, “they thought we were some kind of environmentalists. That camera of yours. Leave it home next time.”
Right then Berenice began to cool toward Chad. He seemed less manly. And she would take her camera wherever she wanted.
On Monday Berenice was in the kitchen looking for the ice cream freezer which hadn’t been used for two years. Mr. Mellowhorn had just come back from Jackson with a recipe for apple pie ice cream and he was anxious for everyone to share his delight. As she fumbled in the dark cupboard Deb Slaver banged in, bumping the cupboard door.
“Ow!” said Berenice.
“Serves you right,” snarled Deb, sweeping out again. There was a sound in the hall as of someone kicking a stuffed dog.
“She’s pretty mad,” said Cook. “Duck didn’t die so she don’t get the million-dollar insurance, but even worse, he’s going to need dedicated care for the rest of his life—hand and foot waiting on, nice smooth pillows. She’s got to take care of him forever. I don’t know if she’ll keep working and try to get an aide to come in or what. Or maybe Mr. Mellowhorn will let him stay here. Then we’ll all get to wait on him hand and foot.”
Saturday came, and out of habit, because she had broken up with Chad and no longer really cared about the Bledsoes or their ranch, Berenice hung around in the hall outside Mr. Forkenbrock’s room. Beth had brought him a dish of chocolate pudding. He said it was good but not as good as whiskey and she poured out his usual glass.
“So,” said Beth. “At the funeral you met the other Forkenbrocks but they didn’t live in Dixon anymore?”
“No. No, no,” he said. “You ain’t heard a thing. The ones at the funeral were not the Dixon Forkenbrocks. They was the LaBarge Forkenbrocks. There was another set in Dixon. When Mother died, me and my sisters had a go through her stuff and sort it all out,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” said Beth. “I guess I misunderstood.”
“She had collected all Dad’s obituaries she could find. She never said a word to us. Kept them in a big envelope marked ‘Our Family.’ I never knew if she meant that sarcastic or not. The usual stuff about how he was born in Nebraska, worked for Union Pacific, then for Ohio Oil and this company and that, how he was a loyal Pathfinder. One said he was survived by Lottie Forkenbrock and six children in Chadron, Nebraska. The boy was named Ray. Another said his grieving family lived in Dixon, Wyoming, and included his wife Sarah-Louise and two sons, Ray and Roger. Then there was one from the Casper Star said he was a well-known Pathfinder survived by wife Alice, sons Ray and Roger, daughters Irene and Daisy. That was us. The last one said his wife was Nancy up in LaBarge and the kids were Daisy, Ray and Irene. That was four sets. What he done, see, was give all the kids the same names so he wouldn’t get mixed up and say ‘Fred’ when it was Ray.”
He was breathless, his voice high and tremulous. “How my mother felt about this surprise he give her I never knew because she didn’t say a word,” he said.
He swallowed his whiskey in a gulp and coughed violently, ending with a retching sound. He mopped tears from his eyes. “My sisters bawled their eyes out when they read those death notices and they cursed him, but when they went back home they never said anything,” he said. “Everybody, the ones in LaBarge and Dixon and Chadron and god knows where else kept real quiet. He got away with it. Until now. I think I’ll have another whiskey. All this talking kind of dries my throat,” he said, and he got the bottle himself.
“Well,” said Beth, trying to make amends for misunderstanding, “at least we’ve got this extended family now. It’s exciting finding out about all the cousins.”
“Beth, they are not cousins. Think about it,” he said. He had thought she was smart. She wasn’t.
“Honestly, I think it’s cool. We could all get together for Thanksgiving. Or Fourth of July.”
Ray Forkenbrock’s shoulders sagged. Time was swinging down like a tire on the end of a rope, slowing, letting the old cat die.
“Grandfather,” said Beth gently. “You have to learn to love your relatives.”
He said nothing, and then, “I loved my father.
“That’s the only one I loved,” he said, knowing it was hopeless, that she was not smart and she didn’t understand any of what he’d said, that the book he thought he was dictating would be regarded as an old man’s senile rubbish. Unbidden, as wind shear hurls a plane down, the memory of the old betrayal broke the prison of his rage and he damned them all, pushed the tape recorder away and told Beth she had better go back home to her husband.
“It’s ridiculous,” Beth said to Kevin. “He got all worked up about his father who died back in the 1930s. You’d think there would have been closure by now.”
“You’d think,” said Kevin, his face seeming to twitch in the alternating dim and dazzle of the television set.
Duane Fork, the Devil’s demon secretary, rushed around readying the suite of offices. He sprinkled grit and dust on the desktops, gravel on the floor, pulled closed the heavy red velvet drapes and sprayed the room with Eau de Fumier. Precisely on the dot of midnight he heard the familiar hoof steps coming down the hallway and drew up to attention.
“Good morning, sir,” said Duane obsequiously.
“Merde,” grunted the Devil, looking around with a peevish eye. “This place is—unspeakable.” He had just come back from the Whole World Design & Garden show in Milan, where he posed as an avant-garden-furniture designer who worked in crushed white paper. “If it gets rain-spotted and grimy, who cares? Just kick it into the barbecue and burn it up,” he advised. But all the while his guts were twisting with jealous desire as he looked at plastic poolside sofas, walkways beneath pleached tree boughs, tropical palm gardens, rock grottoes and cantilevered decks. On the way back to Hell he leafed through half a dozen design glossies, filled out the subscription blank for Dwell and thought briefly of starting a rival publication to be called Dwell in Hell. Studying the magazines, he understood that his need was more for landscaping, riverside parks and monuments than for architectural design.
“Nothing has been done with this damn place for aeons. It’s old-fashioned, it’s passé, people yawn when they think of Hell. Slimy rocks and gloomy forests do not have the negative frisson of yesteryear—there are environmentalists now who love such features. We need to keep up with the times. Modernize. Expand and enlarge. We’ve