Part 13 (1/2)

”I liked my school.” I would've liked it, I thought.

”That's nice then,” Florence said.

”Do you know why Mr. Remlinger has me up here?” I asked. I hadn't expected to say that. But I was relieved to talk to someone who seemed to like me.

Florence looked around the side of her easel at the empty street leading to the highway, where the second two-a-day Greyhound was just going by. She looked back at her painting, her brush twitching between her thumb and her index finger. Strands of blond hair went up the pale back of her neck and under her soft hat. She had a mole there that I thought her comb would always catch on. ”Well.” She was talking as she studied her painting. ”Are you worried because he hasn't paid any attention to you?”

”Sometimes.” I wished I'd just said yes, since it was true.

”Well, don't let that bother you,” Florence said, dipping her brush into a tin can on the pavement at her feet. ”People like Arthur don't naturally connect to the world. You can tell that. He probably hasn't even noticed he's ignoring you. He's very smart. He went to Harvard. He may feel it's important for you to get adjusted to being by yourself. On the other hand, people are never going to do just what you want them to. He's doing you a favor. Maybe you're a novelty to him.” She gave me a mischievous grin and looked up at the clouds. ”And I do always loathe a marble sky.” She made a line of X's in the air, using her brush, as if she could paint the sky over. Then she put her brush back in the tin can and left it.

The oil pumper was humming away out in the windy wheat field, not far off, its lever arm smoothly sinking and rising-the only unnatural noise in the air. I'd almost stopped hearing it at night, though I went to sleep listening for it.

I stood behind her and didn't say anything. Florence leaned and set her palette down on the pavement and opened her wooden painter's box, which had s.h.i.+ny bra.s.s fittings and contained clean brushes and silver tubes of paint, several small knives, some white rags and dark bottles of liquid, plus a deck of red-backed playing cards, a package of Export *A's and a small silver flask. High in the sky, inching toward the east, a speck of an airplane appeared out ahead of the moving clouds, the sun against its wings. My father once had sat me in a Scorpion F-89 fighter at the National Guard base, and let me put on the pilot's helmet and move the controls and make believe I could fly it. I wondered what a person would see from an airplane here. The world curving away? The Rocky Mountains and the Missouri River? The Cypress Hills, the Saskatchewan River and Fort Royal and Partreau and Great Falls and everything in between? All in one clear view.

”Arthur told me about the difficulties. Your poor parents and whatnot,” Florence said. She took out one of the dark bottles. Then she dumped the liquid from her tin can right onto Manitoba Street, unscrewed the bottle cap, and poured clear fluid into the can. ”You'll have an interesting life story to tell. Pretty girls'll like you. We like men with dark pasts. My father was put in jail in Manitoba once. But he didn't rob anything, I guess.”

She stuck her brush in the can and waggled it and looked back at her painting in which the post office was the only part that was finished. ”On the second other hand, of course,” Florence said, busy with her cleaning up, ”maybe Arthur sees himself in you. A purer version. I wouldn't think so. But men do that. On the fourth hand, people do things and say things and don't ever know why. Then what they do affects people's lives, and later on they say they knew all about it but they didn't. That's probably why your mother sent you up here. She didn't know what else to do. So. Here you are. That shouldn't discourage you. I'm a mother. It happens. How old are you, dear?”

”Fifteen,” I said.

”And you have a sister who ran away?”

”Yes, ma'am,” I said.

”And what's her name?”

”Berner,” I said.

”I see.” She set her tin can with the brush in it back on the ground, picked up a knife and a cloth out of her painter's box, and set to sc.r.a.ping the knots of paint off her palette and wiping the paint on the cloth. None of this conversation was like a conversation I'd ever had. Berner's conversations, wherever she was, were probably like this one, I thought-about why things were the way they were and what you can do about them. Conversations with adults other than a person's parents had more of an outcome.

”How do you know Mr. Remlinger?” I asked.

Florence leaned her sc.r.a.ped palette against the leg of the tripod her canvas sat on, and squeezed her brush tip gently into the white cotton cloth. She knelt on the pavement to perform these acts. I stayed standing beside her. ”If I can think back that far.” She smiled up at me. Her cloth hat-which was soft black velvet-had been pushed by the wind back off her forehead. The unfinished painting, still on the easel, was also being disturbed. ”I . . . met Arthur in the bar of the Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon, in nineteen fifty. I had a French painter boyfriend at that time. A watercolorist. Jean-Paul or Jean-Claude. We'd been to the football, which I always enjoy. But he got furious at me-for something I said-and departed. And Arthur was right there in the bar. He was blond and handsome and refined and well dressed and smart and slightly eccentric for a younger man, but also something of a gentleman and slightly secretive. He had an interesting dramatic quality. And he seemed angry and bored and out of place-a bit of a confusion-which is always attractive to women. He lived down here for some reason and didn't have any idea what to do about himself. I didn't quite have my car fare back to The Hat. I could've ridden the red bus to Swift Current and switched. But he had a nice car-an Oldsmobile. He didn't own the hotel then. He only worked there. And that was that. What did I say? Nineteen-fifty? He was twenty-something. I was a bit older. And thinner. My mother was still working at Lepke's. I had one child still at home-who's now in Winnipeg. That's my life story in living color.” She smiled up at me again, and went back to arranging the painting articles in her box, her red fingernails moving among the contents. I tried to gain a clearer picture of Arthur Remlinger from what she'd said and fit it to the man I'd only barely met. But I couldn't. He didn't seem distinct to me, even then.

”I'm moving into Fort Royal soon,” I said, not wanting to say nothing, since I'd asked a question and she'd answered it.

”Which was my brilliant suggestion,” Florence said, still on her knees. ”Arthur thinks you're fine out here-in your little wickiup. It's interesting to live all alone out here, I realize. Very romantic. But it won't be a fit place when the hunters come. I can't really look out for you, but I can try to be aware of you. Your mother would thank me.”

That was true. I believed my mother knew something like this would happen-that a person would notice me and see that I was worth something and not leave me to be lost. I didn't think people who were worth something could get lost forever, even if you couldn't explain everything about yourself, why you were where you were, etc. ”Why's Mr. Remlinger here,” I said.

Florence stood up stiffly-she wasn't very tall and wasn't slender like my mother. She brushed off her brown corduroy trousers and shook herself all over and patted her arms and the top of her floppy hat, as if she'd gotten cold. I had on my plaid jacket. It was colder now. ”It must be Canada out here.” She grinned. ”We don't always go to places,” she said, ”sometimes we just end up there. That's what Arthur did. He ended up. *I don't go to America, I leave Paris.' That's what the great artist Duchamp said, who would've thought my painting was a very funny thing.” She looked at her painting of the post office and the empty street leading away-the scene in front of us. ”I like it, though,” she said. ”I don't like 'em all.” She took a step back and regarded her painting out the side of her eyes, then straight on.

”I like it,” I said. I thought if I moved to Fort Royal I would see Florence more, and the events in my life could develop in a more positive way that would include Arthur Remlinger, who I wished I knew better.

”I know this is very strange for you up here, dear,” Florence said. ”But you just go with the Flo. Okay? That was my thing I said to my children. They got tired of hearing it. But it's still true.” She motioned toward her Metropolitan. ”If you help me carry my artistic things to my little car, I'll drive you into town and you can get supper. Charley can bring you back. You're a short-timer out here now. You can move in tomorrow.” She picked up her painter's box. I took her canvas off her easel, picked up her tin can and her wooden stool and the easel, and we went on to her car. It was my last day in Partreau.

Chapter 51.

There were three items of importance in the thick manila envelope-addressed to Mr. A. Remlinger, Esquire, from his sister, Mildred, but intended for me. One was a letter from my sister, Berner, delivered to our empty house and found there by Mildred, who checked our mailbox for days after we'd all gone. There was a short note enclosed in the envelope from Mildred herself, which said: Dear Dell, Enclosed of regrettable interest. I will drive to their trial in N.D. But only so you will know what has happened. They know your mother had nothing to do with anything. But she was in it anyway.

Your old friend, Mildred R.

Along with Mildred's message was an entire copy of the Great Falls Tribune from September 10th, which made the envelope thick. On the front page was another story about my and Berner's parents. This one said that ”an Alabama man” and his wife, who was (again) ”a native of Was.h.i.+ngton State,” had been driven on September 8th, from the Cascade County jail to the Golden Valley County, North Dakota, jail in Beach, North Dakota, after the waiving of their rights. They had been charged with the armed robbery of the Creekmore, North Dakota, Agricultural Bank, in August, following which they had been apprehended by Great Falls detectives, in their home on First Avenue Southwest. The female, Geneva ”Neva” (misspelled) Rachel Parsons, had been employed as a fifth-grade teacher by the Fort Shaw, Montana, school board. The male, ”Sydney Beverly Parsons,” was unemployed at the time of his capture and was retired from the United States Air Force, where he was a decorated veteran of World War Two and had served as a bombardier. The couple's two children-an unnamed boy and girl-were missing and presumed to be with unidentified relatives. Efforts were under way to return the juveniles to Montana authorities. A ”not guilty” plea had been entered for the couple in their first court hearing in Golden Valley County. An attorney had been retained for them. The Great Falls crime rate for the year-the story said-had so far seen a 4 percent rise over 1959.

Printed above the story were the same photographs Berner and I had had left for us by our neighbor, the morning after our parents' arrest, and that made them look like hardened desperadoes. There was also another picture-I took interest in this-showing our parents being led by uniformed officers down a set of steep concrete steps toward a black panel truck with a star on its side. They were in handcuffs-our father was wearing a gaudy, striped, loose-fitting convict suit and looking at the ground where he was stepping so as not to fall. Our mother was wearing the beltless, shapeless dress she'd worn when Berner and I visited her and that made her look extremely small. She was staring straight into the camera, her soft face thin and focused and angry-as if she knew who would see her picture and wanted them to know she hated them (which would not have included Berner and me).

I possess this newspaper still today. I've reread the story and studied the pictures countless times-to remember them. But seated in my cold, drafty, stale-smelling shack, on the side of my cot beside the window, when I saw the second photo and read the story that made our parents sound like any life-long luckless criminals the world would barely notice, then forget (as if this story was all there was to their lives), I felt an odd sensation in my chest, like a pain without an ache. This sensation grew down into my belly the way hunger does, and stayed so that I thought for a while it might stay for a long time, just be there to plague my life in still another way. Of course, my parents looked like themselves, in spite of their prison clothes: my father tall, though thinner, but handsome (he'd shaved and combed his hair for his trip); my mother, impatient, purposeful and intense. Yet they also failed to look exactly familiar to me. Nothing that had happened had been in any way normal. Whatever changes had occurred in them and to them defied any idea I had of familiar. They looked like two people I knew, who I was again seeing across a distance, some unspannable divide, much greater than the border that separated us by then. I could say that their intimate familiarity as my parents, and their ordinary, generalized humanness had become joined, and one quality had neutralized the other and rendered the two of them neither completely familiar nor completely haphazard and indifferent to me. Pa.s.sing carefully down those concrete steps toward the Black Maria that would rumble them away to North Dakota and their future, they had become something of a mystery to me, one I shared (I'm sure) with the other innocent children of criminals. Knowing this didn't make me love them less. But I thought I'd never see them again when I saw this picture. So that who they'd become in such a short amount of time were two people who were completely lost to me. All they seemed to have was each other, but they didn't really have that anymore either.

There was also a satisfaction of a kind to all of this, which may be a surprise to know, but must've made my acheless pain finally go away. I'd worried and worried about our parents' fate over the last month-had waked up worrying. I'd lost weight, grown older and more sober. I sometimes dreamed that they'd come to rescue me in their car, with Berner, but couldn't find me and had driven away. In other words, I'd all but said good-bye to my childhood on the strength of their terrible fall. But now I knew their fate (more or less), and with that could begin to recognize something of my own-which was not a bad thing. Though I was very glad Berner didn't have to see their picture or read the story. Wherever she was, I hoped Mildred hadn't also sent a manila envelope to her. As it turned out she had not.

Chapter 52.

Dear Dell-boy, I am sending you this letter in GF because I don't think you are there but don't know where else to send it. Maybe somebody will give it to you. Mother's funny friend, Mildred somebody, maybe. I hope you are not reading this in the juvenile jail someplace-a terrible outcome if you are. I wonder if you have seen our pathetic parents and what has happened to them these days. I wonder what happened to my fish? I love you to bits, you know! In spite of all. I still have your half of the money you gave me. I thought about you going to their jail cell alone after I flew the coop. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Where are you? I am living in a house with other people. A girl who is also a runaway and who is nice. A handsome boy who left the U.S. Navy without permission because he didn't like a fight. Two other men and a woman are not always here but take care of us just fine and don't ask very much attention in return. This house is on a long street called California Street (naturally). Since I'm in San Francisco. I forgot to say. I have not seen that unfaithful rascal Rudy Red-Daddy. We made a pack to meet in San Francisco on a Sat.u.r.day, in a park called Was.h.i.+ngton Sq. I have not seen him or his mother. If you see him tell him to take care of himself. I don't love him. He could also write to me.

It is strange to write letters to each other like grown-ups isn't it? I wish you would come here if you are able to. I would still boss you around. But you could play chess here. People in the Was.h.i.+ngton Park Sq. also play. You could learn things and be the champion. I have learned that other people (kids) can have problems with their parents too. Not about going off and robbing a bank-not that bad-and maybe committing suicide. But other things. Have you gotten a letter from them? Naturally I haven't. I wonder what they think of me at this point. Do they know I ran away? It's beautiful here and not cold yet and things feel like they are happening. I like being on my own. I've told people about our parents, but no one believes it. Maybe I will quit believing it, too, or quit telling it. I wish I could see you, even though when I left I thought I never would again. I now think we will. I am still on the same earth as you, although I'm glad I'm not in GF, which is a c.r.a.p town and always will be.

Someday I will tell you how I came to get here. I made it without being killed and without being taken too much advantage of or starving to death. Gotta skee-daddle.

Love, Berner Parsons P.S. I thought of some new things. You can write to me at this address, and should. I am glad for the pa.s.sage of time, so you don't have to hurry.

If you saw me you wouldn't recognize it. I have my two ears pierced. I shave my legs and under my pits and have cut my wire mop short and cute. I don't mind my old freckles. I have some b.r.e.a.s.t.s now. The man, Uncle Bob is what we call him, asked me if I was Jewish. I said of course. My complexion has unfortunately blossomed out. I had a job two times as a babysitter if you can believe that for me. I can remember being a baby myself. You still are one, where I'm concerned. I will give you the robbed money you gave me when I see you.

It is too bad we have the parents we have and haven't been luckier. Our life is ruined now, although there is a lot of it left to fill up. Sometimes I miss them. I did-do-have one dream. I killed someone in it, I don't know who, but then forgot all about it. Then it just rises up-the killing I did-and I know I did it and other people do too. It's terrible since I didn't really do it but still have the dream. I wake up later feeling like I've been crying and running a race. Do you have that? Since we are twins I believe we feel the same and see things the same (the world?). I hope it's true. I remember one of mother's poems. I say it out loud to the Navy boy. ”Had I once a lovely youth, heroic, fabulous, to be written on sheets of gold, good luck to spare. Through what crime-” I can't remember it all now. Sorry. It was French. She always thought it was about her, I guess.

Love ya again, Berner Rachel Parsons, your twin

Chapter 53.

The time that began for me in Fort Royal, in the Leonard Hotel, was in every way different from my lonely weeks in Partreau, and superior to them and felt-though it didn't last long and ended in disaster-like a life I was actually living, instead of life at a standstill, the partial life of a person lost on an empty prairie who somehow makes it to shelter but stays lost, and for whom nothing could be right again.

More Sports began arriving. Five or six of them at a time-their big American cars with colorful American license plates parked in the dirt lot out behind, full of their hunting gear that couldn't fit in the tiny rooms. From my little radiator-warm closet down the hall from Remlinger, I'd hear the men's voices up through the floorboards and the pipes, talking to each other in low tones far into the night. I would lie silently in my narrow bed, trying to make out the things they said. Since they were mostly Americans, I felt they might say things I would recognize, and provide me with understandings that would be useful. I don't know what I thought those things could be. I never heard much-people's names spoken-Herman, Winifred, Sonny; complaints about insults or injuries one person or other had suffered. Someone laughing.