Montana 1948. Larry Watson
overheard my grandfather say to my uncle: “Is she too small to have kids? Is that it, Frank? Is the chute too tight?”
In the too-loud voice he always used on the telephone, my father said, “We’ve got a sick Indian girl over here, Frank. Gail wants to know if you can stop by.”
After a pause, my father said to my mother, “Frank wants to know what her symptoms are.”
“A high temperature. Chills. Coughing.”
My father repeated my mother’s words. Then he added, “I might as well tell you, Frank. She doesn’t want to see you. Says she doesn’t need a doctor.”
Another short pause and my father said, “She didn’t say why. My guess is she’s never been to anyone but the tribal medicine man.”
I couldn’t tell if my father was serious or making a joke.
He laughed and hung up the phone. “Frank said maybe he’d do a little dance around the bed. And if that doesn’t work he’ll try beating some drums.”
My mother didn’t laugh. “I’ll go back in with Marie.”
As soon as Uncle Frank arrived, his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled up, I felt sorry for my father. It was the way I always felt when the two of them were together. Brothers naturally invite comparison, and when comparisons were made between those two, my father was bound to suffer. And my father was, in many respects, an impressive man. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and pleasant-looking. But Frank was all this and more. He was handsome—dark, wavy hair, a jaw chiseled on such precise angles it seemed to conform to some geometric law, and he was as tall and well built as my father, but with an athletic grace my father lacked. He had been a star athlete in high school and college, and he was a genuine war hero, complete with decorations and commendations. He had been stationed at an Army field hospital on a Pacific island, and during a battle in which Allied forces were incurring a great many losses, Uncle Frank left the hospital to assist in treating and evacuating casualties. Under heavy enemy fire he carried—carried, just like in the movies—three wounded soldiers from the battlefield to safety. The story made the wire services, and somehow my grandfather got ahold of clippings from close to twenty different newspapers. (After reading one of the clippings, my father muttered, “I wonder if he was supposed to stay at the hospital.”)
Frank was witty, charming, at smiling ease with his life and everything in it. Alongside his brother my father soon seemed somewhat prosaic. Oh, stolid, surely, and steady and dependable. But inevitably, inescapably dull. Nothing glittered in my father’s wake the way it did in Uncle Frank’s.
Soon after the end of the war the town held a picnic to celebrate his homecoming. (Ostensibly the occasion was to honor all returning veterans, but really it was for Uncle Frank.) The park was jammed that day (I’m sure no event has ever gathered as many of the county’s residents in one place), and the amount and variety of food, all donated, was amazing: a roast pig, a barbecued side of beef, pots of beans, brimming bowls of coleslaw and potato salad, an array of garden vegetables, freshly baked pies and cakes, and pitchers of lemonade, urns of coffee, and barrels of beer. Once people had eaten and drunk their fill, my grandfather climbed onto a picnic table.
He didn’t call for silence. That wasn’t his way. He simply stood there, his feet planted wide, his hands on his hips. He was wearing his long buckskin jacket, the one so tanned and aged that it was almost white. He assumed that once people saw him, they would give him their attention. And they did.
He said a few words honoring all the men who served (no one from Mercer County was killed in action—not such an improbability when you consider the county’s small population—though we had our share of wounded, the worst of whom, Harold Branch, came back without his legs). Then after a long, reverent pause, Grandfather announced, “Now I’d like to bring my son up here.”
My father was standing next to me when Grandfather said that. My father did not move. Grandfather did not say, “my son the veteran,” or “my son the war hero,” or “my son the soldier.” He simply said, “my son.” And why wouldn’t the county sheriff be called on to make a small speech?
But my father didn’t move. He just stood there, like every other man in the crowd, smiling and applauding, while his brother stepped up on the table. Uncle Frank had not hesitated either; he knew immediately that Grandfather was referring to him.
Uncle Frank made a suitably brief and modest speech, saying that the war could not have been won without the sacrifices of both soldiers and those who remained at home.
At one point I looked up to see how my father was reacting to his brother’s speech. My father was not there. He had drifted back through the crowd and was picking up scraps of paper from the grass. With his bad leg, bending was difficult. He had to keep the leg stiff and bend from the waist. Then he carried these bits of paper, a piece at a time, to the fire-blackened incinerator barrel.
Uncle Frank’s talk must not have been enough for my grandfather. He climbed back up on the table and, after urging the crowd on to another minute of applause, held up his hands for silence again. “This man could have gone anywhere,” he said. “With his war record he could be practicing in Billings. In Denver. In Los Angeles. There’s not a community in the country that wouldn’t be proud to have him. But he came back to us. My son. Came back to us.”
My father kept searching for paper to pick up.
Uncle Frank put his black bag on the kitchen table. “How about something to drink, Wes? I was digging postholes this morning and I’ve been dry all day.”
My father opened the refrigerator. “Postholes? Not exactly the kind of surgery I thought you’d be doing.”
“I’m going to fence off the backyard. We’ve got two more houses going up out there. Figured a fence might help us keep what little privacy we’ve got.”
I wondered what Grandpa Hayden would say about that. Though his land was fenced with barbed wire as most ranchers’ were, he still had the nineteenth-century cattleman’s open range mentality and hatred of fences. Our backyard bordered a railroad track (trains passed at least four times a day), but my father refused to put up a fence—as all our neighbors had—separating our property from the tracks.
“I’ve got cold beer in here,” said my father. “It’s old man Norgaard’s brew.” Ole Norgaard lived in a tar-paper shack on the edge of town. He had a huge garden and sold vegetables through the summer and early fall. His true specialty, however, and the business he conducted throughout the year, was brewing and selling beer. My father swore by everything Ole Norgaard produced.
Uncle Frank made a face. “I’ll pass.”
My father brought out a bottle with a rubber stopper and a wire holding it in place. “You can’t buy a better beer.” He held out the bottle.
Uncle Frank laughed and waved my father away. “Just give me a glass of water.”
My father persisted. “Ask Pop. He still drinks Ole Norgaard’s beer.”
“Okay, okay,” Frank said. “It’s great beer. It’s the world’s greatest goddamn beer. But I’ll drink Schlitz, if it’s okay with you.
My father nodded in my direction. “Not in front of the boy.” That was one of my father’s rules: no one was supposed to swear in front of my mother or me.
Uncle Frank picked up his bag. “Okay, Wes. I’ll tell you what. Let me see the patient first and then I’ll drink a bottle of Ole’s beer with you. Maybe I’ll drink two.”
Just then my mother came out of Marie’s room. “She’s in here, Frank.”
“Hello, Gail. How is the patient?”
“She’s awake. Her temperature