Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3

Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3
Annie Proulx

The fantastic new collection of stories from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain.Fine Just The Way It Is marks Annie Proulx's return to the Wyoming of Brokeback Mountain and the familiar cast of hardy, unsentimental prairie folk. The stories are cast over centuries, and capture the voices and lives of the settlers this sagebrushed and weatherworn country has known, from the native Indian tribes to the modern day ranch owners and politicians, and their cowboy forebears.In 'A Family Man', an old man nearing the end of his life unburdens himself of the weighty family secrets that were his father's unwelcome legacy. 'Them Old Cowboy Songs' follows Archie and Rosie, a young pioneer couple, and their hardships in their attempt to homestead in the exposed wintry expanses of the prairie, and 'Testimony of the Donkey' finds a young international couple, Marc and Caitlin, struggling with much more modern concerns, and confronting uncertainty as their relationship comes to its end.These are stories of desperation and hard times, often marked by an inescapable sadness, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk tales, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming's traditional character and attitudes - confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty - with the more benign values of the new west. These are bold, elegant and memorable pieces, and once more confirm Annie Proulx as one of the most talented, unique short story writers in the language.

ANNIE PROULX

Fine Just the Way It Is

FOURTH ESTATE • London

Copyright (#u3b464ad1-4d22-56fb-87c2-b85909521042)

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk (http://www.4thestate.co.uk)

Originally published in the United States in 2008 by Scribner

Copyright © Dead Line, Ltd 2008

The right of Annie Proulx to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN 9780007269730

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2008 ISBN:9780007287857

Version 2016-06-13

For Muffy & Geoff

Jon & Gail

Gillis

Morgan

Contents

On the surface, everything was lovely, but when you got into the inside circle you soon found out that the lines of demarcation were plainly marked.

—John Clay, My Life on the Range

Fine Just the Way It Is

Family Man (#u3b464ad1-4d22-56fb-87c2-b85909521042)

The Mellowhorn Home was a rambling one-story log building identifying itself as western—the furniture upholstered in fabrics with geometric “Indian” designs, lampshades sporting buckskin fringe. On the walls hung Mr. Mellowhorn’s mounted mule deer heads and a two-man crosscut saw.

It was the time of year when Berenice Pann became conscious of the earth’s dark turning, not a good time, she thought, to be starting a job, especially one as depressing as caring for elderly ranch widows. But she took what she could get. There were not many men in the Mellowhorn Retirement Home, and those few were so set upon by the women that Berenice pitied them. She had believed the sex drive faded in the elderly, but these crones vied for the favors of palsied men with beef jerky arms. The men could take their pick of shapeless housecoats and flowery skeletons.

Three deceased and stuffed Mellowhorn dogs stood in strategic guard positions—near the front door, at the foot of the stairs, and beside the rustic bar made from old fence posts. Small signs, the product of the pyrographer’s art, preserved their names: Joker, Bugs and Henry. At least, thought Berenice, patting Henry’s head, the Home had a view of the enclosing mountains. It had rained all day and now, in the stiffening gloom, tufts of bunchgrass showed up like bleached hair. Down along an old irrigation ditch willows made a ragged line of somber maroon, and the stock pond at the bottom of the hill was as flat as zinc. She went to another window to look at coming weather. In the northwest a wedge of sky, milk-white and chill, herded the rain before it. An old man sat at the community room window staring out at the grey autumn. Berenice knew his name, knew all their names; Ray Forkenbrock.

“Get you something, Mr. Forkenbrock?” She made a point of prefacing the names of residents with the appropriate honorifics, something the rest of the staff did not do, slinging around first names as though they’d all grown up together. Deb Slaver was familiar to a fault, chumming up with “Sammy,” and “Rita” and “Delia,” punctuated with “Hon,” “Sweetie” and “Babes.”

“Yeah,” he said. He spoke with long pauses between sentences, a slow unfurling of words that made Berenice want to jump in with word suggestions.

“Get me the hell out a here,” he said.

“Get me a horse,” he said.

“Get me seventy year back a ways,” said Mr. Forkenbrock.

“I can’t do that, but I can get you a nice cup of tea. And it’ll be Social Hour in ten minutes,” she said.

She couldn’t quite meet his stare. He was something to look at, despite an ordinary face with infolded lips, a scrawny neck. It was the eyes. They were very large and wide open and of the palest, palest blue, the color of ice chipped with a pick, faint blue with crystalline rays. In photographs they appeared white like the eyes of Roman statues, saved from that blind stare only by the black dots of pupils. When he looked at you, thought Berenice, you could not understand a word he said for being fixed by those strange white eyes. She did not like him but pretended she did. Women had to pretend to like men and to admire the things they liked. Her own sister had married a man who was interested in rocks and now she had to drag around deserts and steep mountains with him.

At Social Hour the residents could have drinks and crackers smeared with cheese paste from the Super Wal-Mart where Cook shopped. They were all lushes, homing in on the whiskey bottle. Chauncey Mellowhorn, who had built the Mellowhorn Retirement Home and set all policy, believed that the last feeble years should be enjoyed, and promoted smoking, drinking, lascivious television programs and plenty of cheap food. Neither teetotalers nor bible thumpers signed up for the Mellowhorn Retirement Home.

Ray Forkenbrock said nothing. Berenice thought he looked sad and she wanted to cheer him up in some way.

“What did you used to do, Mr. Forkenbrock? Were you a rancher?”

The old man glared up at her. “No,” he said. “I wasn’t no goddamn rancher. I was a hand,” he said.

“I worked for them sonsabitches. Cowboyed, ran wild horses, rodeoed, worked in the oil patch, sheared sheep, drove trucks, did whatever,” he said. “Ended up broke.

“Now my granddaughter’s husband pays the bills that keep me here in this nest of old women,” he said. He often wished he had died out in the weather, alone and no trouble to anyone.

Berenice continued, making her voice cheery. “I had a lot a different jobs too since I graduated high school,” she said. “Waitress, day care, housecleaning, Seven-Eleven store clerk, like that.” She was engaged to Chad Grills; they were to be married in the spring and she planned to keep working only for a little while to supplement Chad’s paycheck from Red Bank Power. But before the old man could say anything more Deb Slaver came pushing in, carrying a glass. Berenice could smell the dark whiskey. Deb’s vigorous voice pumped out of her ample chest in jets.

“Here you go, honey-boy! A nice little drinkie for Ray!” she said. “Turn around from that dark old winder and have some fun!” She said, “Don’t you want a watch Cops with Powder Face?” (Powder Face was Deb’s nickname for a painted harridan with hazelnut knuckles and a set of tawny teeth.) “Or is it just one a them days when you want a look out the winder and feel blue? Think of some troubles? You retired folks don’t know what trouble is, just setting here having a nice glass of whiskey and watching teevee,” she said.

She punched the pillows on the settee. “We’re the ones with troubles—bills, cheating husbands, sassy kids, tired feet,” she said. “Trying to scrape up the money for winter tires! My husband says the witch with the green teeth is plaguing us,” she said. “Come on, I’ll set with you and Powder Face awhile,” and she pulled Mr. Forkenbrock by his sweater, threw him onto the settee and sat beside him.

Berenice left the room and went to help in the kitchen, where the cook was smacking out turkey patties. A radio on the windowsill murmured.

“Looks like it is clearing up,” Berenice said. She was a little afraid of the cook.

“Oh good, you’re here. Get them French fry packages out of the freezer,” she said. “Thought I was going to have to do everthing myself. Deb was supposed to help, but she rather tangle up with them old boys. She hopes they’ll put her in their will. Some of them’s got a little property or a mineral-rights check coming in,” she said. “You ever meet her husband, Duck Slaver?” Now she was grating a cabbage into a stainless steel bowl.

Berenice knew only that Duck Slaver drove a tow truck for Ricochet Towing. The radio suddenly caught the cook’s attention and she turned up the volume, hearing that it would be cloudy the next day with gradual clearing, the following day high winds and snow showers.