signals all around the area. It was always crackling on and burping garbled messages in the vicinity of the garage. Sometimes, he turned it off and pumped out music. I picked up all of the candy wrappers, cigarette butts, loser pull tabs, and other trash that had accumulated in the gravel gas station yard and the weeds down to the road. I got the hose and watered yet another tractor-tire flower bed, this one painted yellow, ringed with silvery sage leaves and red-hot poker flowers, same as I had planted for my mother.
Whitey pumped gas when customers came, checked oil, and gossiped. I washed the car windows. Sonja had bought a Bunn coffeemaker and Whitey had built two wooden booths in the eastern corner of the store. Sonja’s first cup of coffee was a dime and the refills were free, so the booths were always filled with people. Clemence baked for the store every few days and there was banana bread, coffee cake, oatmeal cookies in a jar. Every day at lunchtime, Whitey asked if I wanted a rez steak sandwich and then he made us baloney-whitebread-mayo sandwiches. In the afternoon, Whitey took his break and when he came back Sonja left to go home and take a nap. They’d both work until seven p.m. They were saving payroll for the first couple of years, just to start with. Later on, they planned on hiring a full-timer and staying open until nine. I was paid a dollar an hour, ice cream, soda, milk, and cookies off the bottom of the jar.
When I got home, my father was waiting for me.
How was work?
It was good.
My father looked at his knuckles, flexed his hand, frowned. He started talking to his hand, which was a thing that he did when he didn’t want to be saying what he had to say.
I had to take your mother down to Minot this morning. To the hospital. They’ll keep her a couple of days. I’m going back down tomorrow.
I asked if I could go, but he said there was nothing I could do.
She just has to rest.
She sleeps all the time.
I know. He paused, then finally looked at me, a relief. She knows who it was, he said. Of course, but she still won’t tell me, Joe. She has to overcome his threats.
Do you have an idea?
I can’t say, you know that.
But I should know. Is he from around here, Dad?
It would fit . . . but he won’t show up here. He knows he’ll get caught. There will be someone for your mother to identify, he said, pretty soon. Not soon enough. She’s going to be better once that begins. I feel certain she’ll remember where, too—where it happened. The shock of telling. But then some resolution.
What about Mayla Wolfskin? Did he keep her with him? And that baby? Was that the baby that the governor was trying to adopt?
My father’s face told me yes. But what he said was, I wish you hadn’t heard all that was said, Joe. But I couldn’t stop your mother. I was afraid she might stop talking.
I nodded. All day my mother’s words had seeped up through the surface of all I did, like a dark oil.
In her right mind, she never would have described all that happened in front of you.
I had to know. It’s good I know, I said.
But it was a poison in me. I was just beginning to feel that.
I’ve got to go back down there tomorrow, said my father. Do you want to stay with Aunt Clemence or Uncle Whitey?
I’ll stay with Whitey and Sonja. That way they can bring me to work.
Next day after work, I rode back to the old place with Sonja and Whitey. We had Pearl with us. Clemence was going to check in on the house and water the garden, so everything was locked up and I didn’t have to go there for a while. And that made me happy. Soon we’d have Mooshum’s birthday. Everyone would come for that. I’d see my cousins. But for now, staying with Sonja and Whitey seemed like a vacation to me. Things could be normal. At their house, I would sleep on the couch and watch television. There were different sorts of food that Whitey cooked because he’d been a professional cook; there was the wine or beer at every dinner and the drinks after dinner and music. Noise. I didn’t know how bad I’d needed noise.