< the insomniacs’ lullaby The pickup rolled to a quiet stop. From a front window under the wraparound verandah, the living room glowed with the blue rays of television, casting shadows onto the solid pine planks of the porch. Those phantasms were interrupted by a solider shadow – Marble, who had been waiting for his master. The Australian shepherd walked out of the television light and hopped off the porch to greet Frank. He did not jump excitedly, he did not bark happily, this trimerle dog whose purpose was always and forever to be sensible and work. Frank bent and patted the serious head, feeling sorry for both the dog and himself who seemed destined to sensibility in this latter part of their lives. It was true that he derived great pleasure from routine efficiency, but over the last three years, he’d given less and less time to seeking delight. In fact, he wasn’t even sure if he would be able to recognize it. Just a few months ago, a woman he had met through Ourowntime.com asked him how he’d spend his day if he could do whatever he wanted; he never got past breakfast. She turned down his invitation for a physical meeting. Walking quietly to the window, he peeked in and saw his mother, who appeared to be reading. Why did she read with the tv on? Wasn’t quietude better than Fox News? “Damn,” he whispered. Unconsciously he brushed his legs as he often did to remove chaff or dirt and moved toward the front door, which opened into a flagstone foyer. He hung his coat and hat in the closet as Marble scurried in to lie in front of the fireplace which cast a small flame – just enough to take the chill off the undelivered warmth of a June night. It was the one pleasure the shepherd gave himself, Frank thought, as he came up behind the old leather chair in which Poppy sat dozing. She had a bald spot at the crown of her head. For some reason, even though he’d been looking down on his mother for years, Frank hadn’t noticed it until tonight, and he wondered if it bothered her. Poppy’s hair was done in the typical ranch wife style – springs permed too tightly. She had been wearing her hair this way for as long as he could remember – only now she dyed it lavender, as well. He had seen pictures of her from before his birth, when she had long braids wrapped around each other at the nape of her neck, and she looked beautiful and exotic. Maybe, he thought, she had cut her hair to make herself less appealing to his father. Could Jeanine have done the same? He always assumed it was because when the kids were small, they got their sticky hands in her tresses. “Why do you watch this shit, Mom?” The head beneath him startled. “My lord, Frank, you frightened me.” “Sorry.” He sat down on the couch. “You want this left on?” “No. I’m not watching it.” “Then why have it on?” “For company.” He grabbed the remote control from the coffee table, and the screen flickered to darkness. Poppy watched her son with the split vision that parents of grown children have. Even though he was 55, he was her baby – he would always be. She loved him with the same kind of fierce protectiveness any animal loves her offspring, even as she watched him with detached objectivity, similar to the way she watched shows on television. And usually, she had to admit, he was more boring than those shows, and, if given a good book and better eyesight, she could disregard him very quickly. Her disinterest in him sprang from the fact that he had settled into a routine when he returned home, and he hadn’t varied from it, and while she could blame this on his constant care of her, she blamed his divorce instead for this … she didn’t know quite what to call it … this calcification. He’d gotten stiff in the neck. She felt sorry for him but knew better than to tell him so. Her son was cross tonight. Poppy looked at the old train station clock that hung above the mantle and whose ticking could now be heard in the silence. Not even 11. Old friends had returned to Big Spring for Fran’s funeral, and they had planned to get together for dinner to catch up. Certainly Frank should be out later than that. She 38
high desert journal
looked at her son who stared at the blank screen of the television. “Why do you watch that shit, Frank?” she chided him. “Hmmm?” “You’re watching the tv.” He smiled at her. “How was Lena?” Poppy assumed that Lena had been present at the dinner. “I don’t know. I didn’t talk to her. Carl was with her.” So that was what had soured the evening for him. Poppy had never understood why Frank hadn’t married her when there was a chance. Her musing stemmed from her desire to see her son happy, and she suspected Lena might have been able to do that – at least as much as marriage allowed. But more than wanting her son to be happy, Poppy was a third generation rancher, and she understood demands more important than love. Namely, you had to honor the land and rationalize its ownership. Frank would have been happy enough with Lena – sleeping with a pretty woman, which Lena was, and having children with her, which they of course would have … with no effort at all, then, on Frank’s part, the Fields ranch would have doubled to 6,000 acres owned free and clear, another thousand government leased and most of the water rights on Dry Creek. It was for such a consolidation of land and water rights that Poppy had been married to Frank’s father. And while she had never felt animosity toward her husband, that’s about all she could say. Had she been able to look into the future and see that her son would not stay on the land but rather go off and marry a city girl and have city children, she might have left this valley and found love – or some such thing – elsewhere. She might have done something wonderfully stupid and impulsive. This did not make Poppy bitter, though. She liked a cosmic joke better than most, and as she sat watching her son stare at a blank screen, she was sorry she wouldn’t live long enough to witness god’s punch line: the dissolution of property which took a lifetime – hers – of too much work and too little love to acquire. When she was gone, Frank would carry on alone, toiling to keep the place, but with no children interested in rural life, he would sell it. Or his children would as soon as they could. “I’m going to bed.” Poppy pushed herself out of her chair, feeling her joints first click painfully together and then liquefy beneath her. Momentarily steadying herself on the arm rest, “Enjoy your tv,” she said as she limped off to bed.
When she’d snuck out the front door, Lena had gone to the barn and was opening her mother’s car door when she thought how noisy the engine would be, how it might waken Carl. Though he wouldn’t worry, he would wonder, and Lena coveted her secrecy. She had not, after all, owned a secret in years. Slowly, silently shutting the Jeep’s door, she turned toward her mother’s adult tricycle with the basket that had been filled with pies and produce when Fran was still able to ride to the neighbors’. Lena was proud of her mother, that until the stroke she had worked so hard to be in the present. Forty minutes later, she straddled the trike as she stood halfway up the lane, staring toward the trees where the Fields’ house was hidden. The moon helped her discern the location, for its light reflected off the windows under the big wraparound verandah, making them look like magic boxes of fluorescence scattered amongst the dark cluster of fir and aspen. Lena dismounted and pushed the trike to a rock that glowed radioactively, then walked on silently. It felt odd to partake in this ancient teenage prank: while her parents slept, she would sneak to Frank’s, and he would either be awake and waiting for her, slipping out his window to join her, or asleep, and she would wake him by an owl call at his screen. With cupped hands and a breath of air into them, she would create the nocturnal interrogation – “Who?” And, “It’s Poppy,” he’d always whisper as joke. Within 100 feet of the house, Lena stopped. When they were kids, Frank had Sassy, a border collie. And Lena was so familiar to her that Sassy would not alert Poppy and Earl to her presence when she came calling. But Sassy of course was gone, and to any dog now, Lena would be an intruder. Suddenly, she was full of doubt. The flush that