Prairie Nocturne Read online

Wes turned from the window, a smile of a more mischievous sort lingering on him as he sized up her reaction. Wondering why she hadn’t changed that door lock, she scrupulously created more distance now between herself and him.

  He surveyed the room’s furnishings again. “I’m glad I wasn’t the one to heft all this up those stairs. Know what I think?”

  “Not without a Ouija board.”

  “You’re treed, up here. No, let me finish. You’ve treed yourself. Chased the Susan Duff that was, right up into this upholstered perch.” He walked back the length of the room to seat himself on the edge of the bed again, letting drop a phrase at a time as he came. “I see make-work. I see pastimes. I believe I see the unfinished musical masterpiece. I see the man-eating diary. What I don’t see is you taking the world on as you always did.” When she made no answer, he shifted to the affectionate mock burr he had never been able to master: “ ’Tis a waste of a bonny woman.”

  “It’s late, is what it is,” she left it at, making a show of checking the clock. “Wes, please. Have your say and take yourself home.”

  “I have the pupil of a lifetime for you.”

  Susan laughed uncertainly at the size of that statement. “I don’t lack for pupils, they’re coming out my ears.” Which was not as true as it once would have been.

  “This one, I want you to put all your time to, for however long it takes.” He lifted a hand, as if taking an oath, to head off the protest she was sure to make. “I’ll pay double for everything—your hours, whatever you need to arrange in the way of accompaniment, all the sheet music you can stand, name it. All right then,” he said after a moment of gauging how she was taking this, “triple.”

  “Where does this come from all of a sudden? I have never wanted your—”

  “There’s no charity to this. You’ll earn your keep with this pupil, Susan, don’t ever worry about that. It’s a voice I’d say is—different. Unformed, maybe you’ll say rough as a cob, but hard to resist somehow. It stays on in the ear, is that any kind of musical term? You’d snap this voice up, if you heard it out of the clear blue, I’m sure you would.”

  His cadences of persuasion tested the walls of the room, as if this familiar floor were a speaking platform over the night-held capital city. Wes himself had a voice the size of an encyclopedia set. Susan knew by heart every gruff note and passionate coax he was capable of, and how effectively the mixture worked. “The copper companies that have looted this state for thirty years think they are immune to fair taxation,” she had heard him send crowds into a rising roar as he uncoiled his campaign tag line, “I promise them an epidemic of it!” No other politician in the state had stung back as fiercely at the Ku Klux Klan as it crept west and its flaming crosses began to flare on the bald hills above Catholic towns and railheads bringing immigrants to Montana land: “This cuckoo Klan, they seem to be scared the Pope will descend on them in their beds, else why do they go around wearing their nighties over their heads?” The cause in her own bones, women’s right to vote, he had furthered at every chance in the state legislature. “Comets attend the death of kings,” his famous words to the 1910 suffrage convention as Halley’s fireball swept across the Britain of the newly deceased Edward VII, “perhaps to see whether they truly fit their filigreed caskets. Across the water, there is a government, with complicit silence from its throne on down, that has fought its suffragists with detention, forced feedings, and truncheons. But this country, this state, with its every voice must greet the women who are pointing out true democracy to us.” There never had been a hairbreadth of difference between him and her on politics, only every other field of life, and she had been all for his gubernatorial bid and the passions he gave such voice to. In his other great campaign, in the bloody mud of France, the words of Wes were known to have made the difference between life and death. Her head swimming, four years out of practice at dealing with the mesmerizing side of him, she carefully chose her way around his entreaty now:

  “If it’s one of your daughters, I wouldn’t feel right about—”

  “Not even close. Fatherly pride isn’t anywhere in this. Promise me you’ll give a listen.”

  “I seem to feel the presence of the Williamson disposition to bargain.”

  He reflected for a moment, as if she had shown him something about himself. Then said only: “I don’t consider I’ve ever lost anything by it. About giving a listen—how can that hurt?”

  She had to grant, “For a singing teacher, hearing is believing. All I ever ask is to be amazed.”

  So I remember, his expression let her know. “Opera, vaudeville,” he went right on, “I don’t know what we’re talking, with this. I honestly don’t. But you, New York and Europe and all, you’ve heard the best and you’ll know where this voice can be made to fit. Oh, and when you start the lessons, it’ll need to be done at the ranch, not here. It’s a shame, but we can’t—well, you’ll see . . .” He furrowed as he came to the next thought. “I’ll work the idea into Whit’s skull, but we’d better be ready to make arrangements around him.”

  Susan scowled, reminding him one more time this was not a woman who could be steered like an ingenue at a tea dance. Wes watched her shake her head no and then some.

  “Your old place, then,” he knew to regroup. Not for nothing was this prideful woman the daughter of Ninian Duff, he always had to keep in mind. Ninian the Calvinian. The fathoms of bloodlines, always treacherously deep. “You could set up shop there at the homestead, why not? It’d be convenient all around. I’ll see that it’s outfitted for you, furniture, groceries, bedding, cat and canary if you want.”

  Scotch Heaven? A Williamson spreading the red carpet there for a Duff? What next, the calendar corrected to come out better? Wary as she was determined to be, all that the Duff place on the North Fork of English Creek held for her flickered up more than a little.

  Wes had been counting on the fact that geography has a habit of kissing people in a way they never get over, and he could tell he had said just enough on that score. Now he paused in that spotlit manner, as if to make sure each of his words would register. “I don’t ask this lightly, Susan. It isn’t some notion that walked up to me in the street. I’ve thought this over, and then thought that over, and it still comes out the same—I need you to pitch in on this.” A tiny stretch of silence he used for emphasis, then: “I’m asking you to do everything you know how for this pupil. The works.”

  “Wes?” Honest bewilderment broke through in her voice. “Wes, who in this world means that much to you?”

  He appeared stunned at hearing it put that way. Sitting there glazed, pale as collector porcelain.

  When Wes at last rose from the bed edge, was it her imagination or did he lurch more than a misbehaving knee would account for? She watched him stiffly navigate the length of the room, biting her tongue against calling out to him. Let him march down her stairs and out of her carefully compartmented existence (Treed!), let him leave that key in the door, let that be the natural end of it.

  But he paused at the gable window and stood there facing out into the night. Over his shoulder he told her: “Monty.”

  WHITEFACE

  · 1914 ·

  THE SOUND ALWAYS gave him a bad time, the slobbery breathing at the lip of the barrel. Then the bawl of fury six inches from his ear. Who said this is easy money? Panting, he stayed jackknifed in the barrel, chest against his knees and chin tucked down, clutching the handgrips next to his ankles. “Hyah, bull!” he could hear Dolph Kuhn, the pickup man, shouting from somewhere in the arena, but Dolph couldn’t ride anywhere close while the animal still was on the prod. A horn tip scraped the metal of the barrel, inches from his other ear; he flinched every time that happened, even though he knew you could go over Niagara in one of these. When the serious butting began and the barrel tipped over and started to roll, the jolt delivered by the bull came as almost a relief; now he could at least concentrate on holding on. “You don’t want to let yourself shake loose in there,” the
wizened rodeo clown up in Calgary who had given him a couple of lessons in this had warned, “or you’ll know what a pair of dice feels like.” Nor, he had found out the hard way, did you want to keep your eyes open during this or you’d end up dizzy as a cat in a churn. His ears told him enough about it anyway: how the crowd loved to be scared at this stunt, the human ball in the barrel and the bull determined to butt the infuriating object until it presented something to gore.

  When the barrel at last seemed to have quit rolling and he opened one eye and cautiously raised his head, he saw the ornery whiteface bull paw the ground one last time, and then its departing rear end, the tail switching slowly back and forth as the critter lost interest. Even so, he waited to hear the whap of lariat on rump as Dolph galloped in to haze the bucking bull out the far end of the arena. “He’s on the run, Snowball,” Dolph called, “better git yourself out of there.”

  Monty gulped air and unkinked himself. Somewhat groggy, but he remembered the routine and tossed his hat out first. Reliably the crowd guffawed. When no harm came to the hat, he stuck his head out the end of the barrel like an inquisitive turtle, gawking this way and that. The rhythm of the laughter built, orchestral, mass chortles of anticipation as the audience waited for his next maneuver; he’d been right about this, rodeo-goers could handle the idea of him fooling around. He clambered out, spun around, and peeked back into the barrel, as if the bull might be in there. Thunder of laughter at that, any more and they’d shake the grandstand to pieces. He quit while he was ahead and picked up his dusty hat, bowing to the announcer with the megaphone who was whipping up a nice round of applause for “our artiste of the barrel after that dosie-doe he just did with the gentleman cow.” Then back to business, kicking the big barrel along until it was in the vicinity of the bucking chutes again and he was standing ready for the next bull rider who needed his neck saved.

  “Artiste” now, am I? Hope they don’t pick that up across town. He drew another deep breath and concentrated on the gate where the bull would rampage out. Only one more rider in this go-round, and wouldn’t you know, there was a hang-up in the chute. Another recalcitrant whiteface with hay on its horns. He watched the rider scramble up off the bull’s back as if it was suddenly too hot a place to sit, while the chute men shoved at the mass of animal. Forced to wait out there centerstage in the arena with only the barrel for company, Monty took the opportunity to mop the back of his neck and under his chin with the red handkerchief. That was another of the jokes, using the red hanky like a matador’s cape when he had to draw the bull away from a bucked-off rider. It occurred to him that it was actually pretty funny to be swabbing at himself this way with the hard-used piece of cloth, because at this point of the rodeo he was an irredeemable mess. The bib overalls six sizes too big drooped on him, and the screaming-red long underwear that was the other part of the costume was darkly wet with sweat. He had fresh wet manure up one pantleg. Angel Momma ought to see me now. Used to worry about me playing in the mud, she’d have kittens over this. But that seemed to be how life generally went, any way but straight, at least since she passed on. Keeping watch on the chute situation—the bull had jammed a horn under one of the fence planks and was resisting the profane persuasion of the chute crew—he checked around on himself to make sure his props were at the ready. Out of his hip pocket dangled the head of the rubber chicken that came into use when he and the announcer had to resort to chicken thief jokes, and handy in the bib pocket was the hairwork braid for the other surefire gag where he grabbed a bull’s tail and it appeared to come off in his hand.

  Weary and filthy as he was, while the action was suspended this way Monty felt almost like he was back at one of the Sunday picnics along Noon Creek, standing around at the edge of the chute crowd like this; something like peace. When he and his mother used to go to those church picnics, they would pause as soon as they were in sight of everybody but just out of hearing. “Well, Montgomery, the two colored people are here,” his mother would say solemnly. He would giggle, without entirely knowing why, and Angel Momma would laugh way down in her throat, and then the two of them would take their dark faces amid all the white ones. Well, that hadn’t changed. The backs of Monty’s hands as he comically put up his dukes in challenge to the reluctant bull in the chute were a burnished dark brown that resembled the oiled saddle leather all around him in this rodeo arena, but he was as aware as ever that his color was not repeated on any face within sight.

  Including his own. From brow to jaw, and ear to ear, Monty’s face was white with theatrical makeup. This of course was the main joke, that he was scared white.

  By now Whitney Williamson was parting the sea of riders and hangers-on who were milling around in front of the chutes, on his way to see why three men could not deal with one bull, and Monty straightened up to his full height. It never hurt to be on your toes when the boss was around. That was how he had cozied into this, when word went around the ranch that the Williamson brother who ran the livestock side of things had bought up a string of bucking stock. The very next morning, quick as he was done with the milking chores, Monty stuck his head in the boss’s office off the kitchen and mentioned that he’d heard Mister Whit was turning into a rodeo producer and if he happened to be hard up for someone to do that clown job, here stood a person fool enough to try. Whit looked him up and down—young enough yet and built on springs; a bit of a cutup on payday since he was off his mother’s apron strings, but it didn’t matter to the ranch how a man behaved in town—and saw no particular reason why the Double W choreboy couldn’t give it a whirl, on rodeo weekends; somebody had to put on the clown getup.

  That had been a dozen rodeos ago and here they were at the last and biggest of them all, in the fairgrounds of the capital of Montana. As was their custom, the Williamsons were using the occasion to play both ends against the middle. Somewhere up there in the shaded side of the stands would be Wesley Williamson with Helena society and the money men from as far away as Boston and New York, while Whit ramrodded the show down here at the level of hooves and horns. The ways of the Williamsons were beyond Monty, the manner in which they divvied up being in charge while leaving the impression it was merely the natural order of things, but it didn’t especially matter to him either. Like the other hands on the WW ranch who’d been chosen to try their luck at putting on rodeos, such as Dolph and the stock handlers and the unfortunates trying to pry that bull loose, he was along for the ride, so to speak.

  Right about now he could have used a sample of that grandstand shade. He mopped himself some more, taking care not to touch the mask of makeup; he figured he knew at least that much about how a woman felt. It was Mister Whit, who had traveled and knew about these things, who decreed the whiteface cosmetic: “Those minstrel shows, they put on blackening. Be kind of funny if you did the opposite, wouldn’t it?” Monty saw the point.

  At last there was hope at the chute; the horn was grating out from between the planks after great contortions by all involved. A minute or so more, and he’d be matching wits with a bull again. He dug himself a starting place with the heel of each boot, stretched down and cleared away pebbles of any size, checked once more that the barrel was sited right. Stood ready again.

  “Hard to wash all that off, ain’t it?”

  There is no known cure for what the human voice can carry. Sickened at the insinuating tone, at having to calculate how to deal with this, even out here with the crowd sunny and contented, Monty turned his head not too fast and not too slow to find where the remark had come from.

  The telltale expression was on one of the calf ropers lounging around the end of the chutes, he and a pal putting rosin on their lariats. Explains it some. Calf ropers didn’t have enough on their minds, their event wasn’t any harder than tying their shoes. He never heard much from the bull riders; they didn’t care what color the man was who let the bull chase him instead of them. With a practiced eye Monty tried to read the frogmouth grins on this pair of lasso twirlers. It always rankled him
, a thing like this, from one of the bunkhouse boys or anybody at large. You get so sick of it you’re a walking piece of resentment, he could have testified to the world. Again now he banked the anger he didn’t dare let flame up. Maybe he was going to be lucky, maybe the show-off one was joshing about the whiteface makeup.

  “Oh, I shine up pretty good when I want to,” Monty put to him past the greasepaint smile.

  “I’m sort of curious about what you use on yourself,” the first roper persisted, the other one looking uneasy. “Stove black?”

  “LIE,” the sound rolled from the depths of Monty’s lungs, surprising him as much as the two of them. Both of the ropers were staring at him now, hard.

  “Lye soap,” Monty sang out, no boom to his voice this time. “Ain’t you heard, us boys who’ve still got the bark on us, we can scrub up good with that and it don’t hurt a bit.”

  The one who’d started this gave him a last narrow look, then grunted and sauntered away. The other roper tagged after him and Monty overheard:

  “You maybe ought to let up on him. He’s the Williamsons’ pet pup.”

  “Aw, hell, I was only funnin’.”

  “You find your check in your plate in the morning and a walk to town with your bedroll, you won’t think fun.”

  “Jesus, what’s life comin’ to.”

  The megaphone of the announcer heralded readiness in the chute at last, and Monty went back to a bullfighter frame of mind.

  This bull erupted sideways from the chute, a side of beef writhing eerily in the air the instant before it struck the ground with all four hooves extended, the rider clinging on but in trouble. Damn. This one would have to be a twister. Monty danced from one foot to the other behind the upright barrel, the red handkerchief held ready behind his back. He wasn’t to make his move until the whistle blew at the end of the ride or the rider was bucked off. This bull’s third jump, the man on his back went flying. Instantly Monty scampered in to draw the animal’s attention before it could wheel around and find the figure pancaked into the arena dirt.