Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2. Annie Proulx

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СКАЧАТЬ house, had taken in breaths of air that seemed slabs of clear, thin ice. The sunlight all around her flashed with snow crystals that emerged from the empty air rather than falling from clouds, for the sky was blue.

      “I mean, she’s older than you—like, she must be fifty—well, like it’s a pretty nice ranch. Too bad it’s so far out from town.” And the girl squinted at the horizon. Her father was a good-looking man who had played the sexual attraction card well. She understood the game.

      Charlie Parrott caught the drift of these remarks; Linny was figuring the odds on someday inheriting the Brawlses’ ranch but didn’t want to come right out and say it. He’d done the same figuring himself. They were a pair.

      “What’s your mother do these days?”

      “Workin. She got a chambermaid job at one a the casinos. The Big Lucky Palace.” “She still hit the bottle?” “What a you think? Why I’m here.”

      After the dinner dishes were cleared Linny would fire up her old Land Rover and take off for Casper. She would drag in long after midnight, and sometimes, when it was very late, park down near the main road and walk in to the ranch house. The dogs never barked at her. At breakfast she always said she’d been job hunting, that the best place to find out about jobs was not in the newspapers but in the bars.

      “You know,” said Georgina to Charlie in the night, “this trot-tin off to the bars every night is goin a end in number three.” “Number three what?”

      “Number three knocked up,” said Georgina. “You pay for the other abortions?”

      “Yeah. You know, I’m her father and all. She counts on me.” “I can see that.”

      “All she needs is a job. She gets a job she’ll straighten out pretty fast. She’s a good girl.”

      Georgina thought Linny was more of a ripe young slut, but she said nothing.

      “Hey,” said Charlie Parrott. “Come on over here.” And he reached for her, his callused hands catching on the silk of her nightgown.

      Georgina experienced a quick memory of the aging Sage Brawls trying to twist down and put his right hand on the floor behind his left heel.

      A few days later Georgina cornered Linny at noon. The girl, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and sagging, blood-spotted briefs, was at the counter, fixing her breakfast, a plate of tortillas and beans with huge amounts of fiery salsa. Fighting a hangover, Georgina suspected. Doreen was kneading bread, shooting glances at Linny. Georgina waved her out into the garden, then, as Linny sat at the table, Georgina swung her bony behind onto a stool near the counter. Her rough heels scraped the rungs.

      “Got a proposition for you. There’s this buildin down in Casper belonged to Mr. Brawls—the Brawls Commercial. They owned it for years and years. Now I get this notice that the city wants a condemn it, tear it down. They’ll pay somethin for it, but that’s not the point—they want it gone. Casper’s upgradin. So, we got a few weeks, a month, clean out the buildin. I went down there yesterday and took a look. The structure’s in bad shape. And there’s file cabinets full a papers, boxes a papers, rooms a boxes. Some a this paper might be important. The Brawlses had their hand in a lot a things. I talked to some a the State Archives people. They would like to know what’s there. They’ll probly take most of it off our hands. But I don’t just want a turn it over without knowin what we got. So, I need for somebody go through those boxes. Keep a eye out for letters from George Warshinton or whatever. See what turns up, make some kind a list. You want the job?”

      “How’s the pay?”

      She named a good figure, enough money for Linny to pack her suitcases and head for California or Phoenix and lead her own life when the job was done.

      “Works for me,” said the girl, sticking out her hot, dry hand.

      “We’ll go down this afternoon, look it over, make you a key. And you might want a change your underwear.”

      “O.K. if I came in now?” said Doreen at the door in an aggrieved voice. “I got to get that bread goin.”

      The Brawls Commercial building stood slumped and weary, its foundation breached. The interior stank. Even though it was downtown it smelled as if several skunks had got under the floor and died. The plaster, wet and dried for years from a growing leak in the roof, added its own tongue-curling flavor. Dust, peeling wallpaper, dry rot, and rodent tenants gave off an effluvium that made Linny retch.

      “It’s worse than it was yesterday,” Georgina said. “If that’s possible. We’ll get some windows open. Bring some room freshener in. The electricity don’t work so a fan don’t work neither.”

      Upstairs Linny heaved at the windows, finally got a crossdraft whose hot, dry air began sucking the stink away. Sage Brawls’ desk was still littered with his brittle papers. The dust that lay on the arms and back of his chair like fur strips shuddered in the fresh breeze.

      “God knows what the clients did. He didn’t have so many there at the end, I guess.”

      Linny went into the next room, pulling open wooden filing cabinet drawers that stuck and squalled like wildcats when forced. She opened a closet and saw boxes of more papers. None of the boxes were labeled beyond small Roman numerals in the lower left hand corners.

      “They are sort of numbered,” said Linny. “How much is IIC? I hate those old Roman numerals. How did they ever multiply or divide?”

      “Who knows?” said Georgina, who had dropped out of school early and to whom “Latin” meant Tito Puente and margaritas.

      Georgina wanted to stay and watch Linny, tell her what to do, but throttled the urge to control.

      “O.K.,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it.”

      Late that afternoon the old Land Rover rolled in. Charlie Parrott was just closing the tack room door and looked over at his daughter.

      “What the hell you been doin?” he said. “Christ, look at you.” The girl was streaked with sweat-runneled dirt and dust. Her damp hair straggled. There were cuts on her arms, and she sneezed.

      “Dust.” She wept. “Cleanin up the old Brawls files for Georgina. That fuckin buildin’s got more dust and rat turds in it and dead moths and mice glued onto the floor than Nevada’s got sand.”

      “She payin you?”

      “You bet. Good pay, but a stinkin job.”

      “She didn’t say nothing a me about it.” He moved his jaw from side to side, pushed up on his glasses. “What’s them cuts on your arms? Look like hunderd and elevens.”

      “From those old file folders. They’re all dried out and sharp on the edges. What’s hundred and elevens?”

      “Old-timers used a call the spur marks on a hard-rode horse ‘hunderd and elevens.’” He drew the marks /// in the dust to illustrate. “Well, hell, why not bring the vacuum cleaner down there and get rid a that dirt? If you’re goin a do this? Simple enough.”

      “No electricity. Buildin’s dead. They’re gettin ready a tear it down. Pretty soon.”

      “Baby girl, they invented a thing СКАЧАТЬ