Goshen Road Read online

  Lux knew that Alan Ray had his eye on Calamity Jane for some time, and he knew he would make good use of the Remington. But almost as soon as Alan Ray had loaded CJ into his trailer, Lux began to miss having that mare. CJ was a gift from his Uncle Ron. She was shy and hard to catch when Ron first bought her, but took to Lux right off, trusting in his steady hands as he rode her the four miles back home. A few months later, when she went into season, Lux rode her back to Ron’s house to breed her to Ron’s dark bay Morgan stallion. Uncle Ron was pleased with how CJ had settled down under Lux’s care. Lux was in the paddock eleven months later with CJ when she’d delivered Dakota, waiting up all night, and just after the colt was able to stand, breathing into his nostrils before he was even an hour old.

  LOOKING BACK, Lux would say that those few months after his accident, the world spun faster than it ever had, life had charged past and all he could do was hang on tight, hope for the best, and give pieces of his life a nudge here and there, so they could fit like an unfinished puzzle. There was Pa, a soon-to-be reckoning about his future. There was Dessie, the promises they’d made to each other, the moments of joy at coming together, the pangs of being apart. There was bad news about his eye, a total loss, and with that, setting aside his chainsaw and beginning a new round of training as a millwright. Work days flew by, taking measure, tracking lumber, gaining more know-how and business savvy, the last man each night to leave the shop. Out in the paddock, Dakota thrived, his weight and girth increasing by the day, a dark bay colt with a snap in his step and a star on his forehead. But at his pa’s house, with each day Lux felt more chained down. He could wait to marry Dessie until late August when he turned eighteen, but why? His old man could sign legal consent for him and the wait would be over.

  One evening, about a month after Dessie said yes, and a couple of weeks after he’d received the blessing of Bertram and Rose, Lux could wait no longer. After chores, he joined his old man on the front porch. The breeze picked up as darkness began to fall. The light lingered in the west for what seemed like hours. June bugs crawled up the cabin wall and darted headlong into the screen door to get at the light bulb in the kitchen ceiling. Lux settled back against the porch rail, holding out a tin of Copenhagen tobacco for his old man, taking a pinch for himself.

  “There’s something I been meaning to talk to you about,” Lux said, staring at the darkening features of his old man in his slat-back rocker. Everett tugged at his cap, setting it back on his head, and reached out for the snuff. Lux waited several minutes for a response. “Ain’t that just how your ma used to talk,” Everett said, startling Lux, loneliness in his voice.

  Lux rubbed the snuff between his lower lip and his gums, spit into a coffee can at his feet. It had come to this. “Truth be told, a few months back I got my heart stole by a girl,” Lux said. “I want to do it right, to ask consent and all.”

  “Do ya, then?” Pa said. “So, you’ll be bringing her up here one of these days,” he said. It was a statement more than a question.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know about that,” Lux said, caught a bit off guard, drawing out his words while he figured out his next thought. The tobacco put a sour taste in his mouth. He spat it into the tall grass. “I expect we’ll get us some land of our own, maybe work something out with her pa.”

  In the waning light Lux couldn’t see his pa’s face well. It seemed like his eyes were shut, like he was only halfway listening. Lux wondered if his pa would ask for any more information, or if he was off in his own mind barely heeding Lux’s words. An owl hooted back in the woods, and a pair of bullfrogs called like the twangs of a banjo along the stream banks. Lux heard the creak of his father’s rocking chair on the planks of the porch.

  “Well ain’t that something. Will you, then?” his pa said suddenly.

  Lux nodded slowly. He stared at the tree line. He waited.

  Pa spit into a Coke can. Then he cleared his throat. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

  Lux winced. The air had darkened, the old man had taken his time closing in. He could walk off the porch, head out for the night, he could head for the Jeep and be gone. It could have gone like that. Lux’s legs would not let him move. His fingers gripped the porch rail beside him. His own body did not know how to dodge this question.

  “Dessie, ah, Dorothy Price,” Lux said into the night air. His voice seemed too loud, like it had its own echo. He rubbed at his eyepatch.

  “Taking up with that Price girl?” Everett reached down behind his chair for his knife and sharpening stone. “It’s a wonder she’ll have the likes of you.” Everett slid the old Bowie knife from its leather sheath. He stroked the edge of the thick blade with his thumb, then slid the blade along the stone, a practice so ingrained that he needed no light at all. “So that’s how it goes around here,” said Pa, his eyes cast down at the knife or possibly the round of oak he’d been resting his feet on, or maybe the planks on the porch. “Why you just go on then. You always did follow that son-a-bitch coach of yourn like a pup. You’re to be eighteen in a couple months. Ain’t nothing I can do about it.”

  Some things do not change, Lux knew. Bertram had gotten the better of Pa, and the old man was never going to let it go. Lux had the sudden awareness that he had just stepped across the enemy lines, that both he and Dessie, and Bertram and Rose, too, would stand forever behind a closed a door in his old man’s thoughts. Lux had stepped through that door, he had chosen, and his old man had latched that door behind him. “Well, good riddance to all of you’ns,” his pa said, breaking the silence. Lux wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Reckon I can sell them horses once I’m shed of you for good.”

  His old man never made anything easy. Lux shifted, started to speak, and held back. That ain’t how it is, he wanted to say. It don’t have to go like this. But then he thought, Yes, old man. There ain’t a damn thing you can do about it. Everett moved his feet. He sat forward in his chair, spat into the Coke can, and stabbed the thick-bladed knife into the oak log. A bat circled and wheeled just past the roofline. The steel blade and rivets on the smooth handle of the Bowie knife glinted in the darkness.

  THOUGH HE did not speak of it that night to his old man, Lux had other plans for CJ and Dakota. There was a scrubby quarter-acre section of hayfield on the Price property that was too steep to cut with the tractor, and Lux had already mentioned to Bertram that he would sure appreciate it if he could bring his horses over and set them up on that strip of pasture. Dessie had added that she’d wanted to learn to ride, too. Bertram hadn’t considered keeping horses, but he suggested that if he and Lux made a paddock large enough maybe they could both make use of it, and that way he could also raise a calf for meat.

  Lux gathered some men from A-1, and in no time they dropped off a truckload of locust posts and poplar boards from the mill. With the help of Alan Ray and Bertram, and Uncle Ron’s posthole digger, in a few weekends they built a corral with an open tack shed at the back of the Price property. The paddock was close to where Lux and Dessie soon would set their trailer, and it was easy to drive over to with a bale of hay in the back of the Jeep. The horses moved onto the Price homestead even before Lux did.

  Dessie had taken to riding like a natural. Her long arms and legs made it easy for her to reach up to the pommel and hoist herself into a western saddle, and Calamity Jane responded to Dessie’s steady hands and the light pressure of her knees. Soon Dessie was cantering across her father’s hayfield, her hair in a ponytail flying out behind, one hand on the reins, one hand on the neck of the gray horse just at the base of her mane. Calamity Jane’s head lifted up, her neck arched, and her silver tail waved out as she picked up speed. They were a sight for anyone to behold.

  One of those perfect October afternoons soon after their wedding, the idea came to Lux that he could buy the forty-acre piece of land at the head of the Goshen Road on a land contract from Bertram, and as soon as Dakota was old enough to ride, he and Dessie could spend their spare time on horseback, side by side, exploring t
he lay of the land and planning out a future homestead. Though he hadn’t discussed it yet with Bertram, he mentioned it to Dessie. All she said was “That’s fine, Lux,” with a nod and a wistful smile.

  SO MUCH for those plans, Lux thought. So much for trail riding beside the prettiest girl on the prettiest horse, so much for warm summer nights. Autumn sneaked up on him. He had a sweet little baby daughter, another on the way any time now. He couldn’t ride both of the horses. Yet right away, the trade with Alan Ray began to needle him. Lux thought Dessie would’ve been tickled to have the garden tiller and to get him a good reliable hunting rifle, and happy that their money would stretch a bit further. But lately Dessie never seemed too happy about anything, especially this last month as she got closer to her due date, and she hadn’t even looked at the tiller or at the rifle. All she said was “That’s fine, Lux,” with the same reassuring nod. At least he’d held on to Dakota, Lux thought. The colt needed a firm hand and a training routine. By rigging a makeshift scabbard to his saddle, Lux could take the Remington along as he rode through the woods on old logging roads to the highlands above the farm, crisscrossing the overgrown fields at the head of the Goshen Road, scaring up grouse and turkey, looking for deer sign, and planning for gun-hunting season later in the fall.

  IN THEIR trailer Dessie eased her pregnant body into the rocker, set her feet up on the milk crate they used for a coffee table, and took a few minutes to rest up before starting to put supper on. She placed her hands on her swollen belly, trying to figure out the position of the baby she was carrying. Little body parts, maybe elbows or feet, punched and kicked at her ribs. Each day, her skin felt more stretched and tight, the time closing in.

  She hadn’t wanted to think about this, but she couldn’t keep the memory from flooding back, the strange, glaring white walls of the Fairchance General delivery room, a room of stainless-steel counter tops like large shiny mirrors that she couldn’t quite see herself in, surgical implements she couldn’t figure out, arrayed like silverware next to the metal sink, and male doctors and orderlies that set Lux off into a jealous rant whenever he drove her to the clinic for a checkup. Did that man touch you? Did you let him look at you? She did not know how to talk to Lux at times like that. She knew that she did not trust them all that much herself, strangers all of them, using words that made no sense, epidural, Fallopian tubes, forceps, always in a rush. She remembered the astringent smell of the delivery room, how the double glare of an adjustable spotlight had shone in a young doctor’s glasses; she couldn’t see his eyes or his mouth under the mask.

  Shaking the memory out of her brain, she looked over at the uncooked supper of white beans and collards she’d set out next to the stove. She should get herself up and get started on that. “Michael row the boat ashore,” she heard a voice sing; startled, she realized the voice was her own.

  Fourteen-month-old Elisabeth Rose, Lissy for short, sat at Dessie’s feet, ripping Kleenex into tiny pieces. In her wide, dark eyes and straight black hair, Dessie could see her daughter’s resemblance to Billie, and in her long pudgy legs and fingers she could see hints of Lux’s athletic build. “Michael row the boat ashore, hallelujah,” Dessie sang again, absently. Lissy grabbed hold of a tissue in the box and pulled with both hands until it came up out of the center. Each time she got a tissue out, she squealed and waved it in the air; then, piece by piece, tore it into bits and let the pieces fall like the leaves that blew down from the trees outside the window.

  Dessie leaned forward in the chair and held out her hands. “Come up here to Mama, that’s my big girl.” Lissy clutched more tissues in her right hand, and a wet smile lit up her face. She crawled over, then held up outstretched arms. Dessie gathered Lissy up and settled the child on her hip, careful not to put any extra pressure on her tight, stretched-out belly or her diaphragm. Breathing had become harder, the trailer was stuffy, and the hot spell in the past few days hadn’t helped. Today a throbbing lower backache made it even harder to get out of the chair. At least now that October was here, the air cooled down as night came on. Dessie wondered if she should call her mother over from the farmhouse next door before the pains in her back got any worse. It felt almost like cramps but not quite; the pain shot from her lower back to her hip. Must be all this extra weight, Dessie thought, straining to lean forward in the chair.

  “Are you going to help Mama when the new baby comes? Can you be Daddy’s little girl?” she asked Lissy. “Da, da . . . da, da, da, da” said Lissy, looking up at her mom, her eyes wide, drool running down the center of her pink lower lip, her little swollen gums raw where two bottom teeth had begun to pierce through. Her pudgy fingers held up a full-size tissue. She pushed her face back and forth into it, then held it up to her mother’s nose, and Dessie smiled and sneezed loudly on cue.

  THERE WAS a softness in the damp earth, and Lux had caught the fresh tracks of a large deer. The trail crossed the muddy ruts of the old Goshen Road; horse and rider followed bean-shaped scat and trampled ferns on the forest floor. Then broken stems, the remnants of scrapes on sumac, and more deep two-toe depressions in the mud on the north side of the creek, then the trail narrowed into underbrush. Through the low thicket, Lux held Dakota to a slow walk. Sumac branches scratched at Lux’s arms, blackberry brambles caught against his eyepatch and pulled at the Remington in its scabbard. Lux kept Dakota in the creek bed until they emerged into the sunlight; he had a hard time seeing past the overgrown wild grapevines and scrubby crab apple trees that had sprung up over time in the untended field. Lux pictured clearing this scrub to turn it back into a field: first a machete, then a chainsaw, then piles of brush drying, sinking into themselves. What a job this would be, the landscape a three-dimensional set of problems that needed to be solved correctly. Old tires and brush piles, he thought. They burn good and hot.

  Dakota moved forward, perhaps by instinct or perhaps because his height allowed him to see the remains of an old logging trail. On a knoll between some aging cedar trees and the fence posts that marked a Smith family graveyard, the young stallion braced his front legs, stopped, and shook his head. His brown ears straightened, and his nostrils flared. Lux reached down and stroked his neck. “Easy, boy,” he whispered. “Easy, Dakota.” Across the narrow field of timothy and orchard grass, under a row of scrappy apple trees, Lux heard deer chewing fallen apples. Dakota’s front hoof pawed at the ground and the noise vanished. When horse and rider stepped out from the cover of the cedars and into the sunlit grass, the white warning flag of the deer’s tail waved up out of the scrub; from the saddle, Lux could make out a flash of wide antlers.

  Lux reached back with his right hand to find the Remington, and though the buck was just out of range and he knew he shouldn’t, he gripped the reins with his left hand, then shot the new rifle straight into the air. Startled, Dakota reared up, and the saddle slid back toward the rump of the horse. The rifle sailed out of his right hand, and Lux hung on to the reins with his left, then grabbed for the colt’s long black mane. Dakota came down trembling with his front feet splayed wide.

  “Goddamnit, Dakota, you big asshole. Don’t try that again.” Lux hung onto the horse’s mane long enough to steady himself, then, managing to get his feet out of the stirrups, he jumped free as the saddle kept sliding, sideways now, toward the colt’s belly. Lux jerked down the reins, grappled for the horse’s halter, and glared into Dakota’s eyes. The he lashed the reins to a nearby tree trunk.

  “You little son ‘a’ bitch. I’m just glad for your sake you didn’t bolt.” Grabbing hold of the cinch, Lux reset the saddle blanket and the saddle, cinching it hard against the horse’s belly, making sure this time it was too tight for the saddle to slip. The surprised colt tried to turn his head and bare his teeth, but the bit yanked into his mouth; he breathed out short rapid snorts. “That’ll learn you. Settle down. You might as well get used to it; I’m going to win these battles,” Lux said, picking up his rifle and snapping it back into the scabbard. “Just you wait, little man. We’ll get
a shot at that buck one day soon,” he told the colt. But on the far edge of the narrow field, the large buck had already bounded away into the wooded hillside. Lux thought his white tail waved in triumph and victory, not a bit like surrender.

  DESSIE SAT up in the rocking chair and pulled a blanket over her arms while she waited for her mother to come over from down the driveway. With each pain in her back Dessie had become more on edge. She could not get comfortable. She stood on her front step and rang the dinner bell. That was the family signal. She needed Rose, Billie too. What was taking them so long?

  By now, Lissy’s birth was all Dessie could think about: the white-coated delivery room doctor, the aides and nurses exchanging glances, no one meeting her gaze, but instead staring somewhere below the starched heavy white sheet, between her restrained legs. She’d been half blinded from the bright lights, bathed in sweat, exhausted. Her head pounded, her legs shook from straining, from the effort; it was the hardest thing she’d ever done in her eighteen years. The doctors and nurses told her that she’d delivered a girl, but she couldn’t listen. Her ears were ringing. She wanted her mother, her sister, or Lux, but she didn’t recognize anyone. She couldn’t understand it. She had wanted all along to know what was happening to her, but the strangest thing was, through all that straining and pushing, she’d never really felt the baby coming. She remembered that all she did was follow someone’s orders to push, “push now, now stop pushing, now push again”; and then it was over. Where was her baby? The man in a green mask took it away. Was something wrong with it? With her? Why hadn’t she seen her baby? She remembered how cold her fingers turned, how her teeth began to chatter.