Heart Earth - Ivan Doig [50]
"What's it a present for?" I'd asked my father when he unveiled this intrigue of his.
That threw him for a moment. Nearly three months yet to Berneta's birthday, and their wedding anniversary had been six, no, already seven weeks ago.
"The first day of summer," he resorted to. "Approximate."
This was good, though. My father feeling relieved enough about the arc of the sheep deal so far, about cabin life and the summer range, to think in gift terms. Berneta has been through a lot, this hobo quintet of months since he fell sick in Alzona Park. Time for her to have a surprise of the decent sort.
My father zeroes in on the merchandise he has in mind. Picks one up and eyes it as if trying to see through it.
"What color would ye say this is, Ivan?"
How to define that it has a kind of off-reddish tint, neither quite one color nor another, stumps me until I think to declare: "Hereford."
"That's no good to us then," he puts it sharply down. "We want straight brown, so it'll go with anything."
I manage to single out undiluted brown, my father decides on the fanciest style, and we're already halfway in business. Away we swagger to another section of the store, for the other item of splurge to go with this one.
There, the saleswoman catches up with us. We feel we don't noticeably need her help, but she seems to think otherwise.
"This brown is close enough to the other one," she undertakes to show us, "to go together nicely."
"Close enough isn't what we're after," my father lets her know.
Down cascade more boxes of the item, the saleswoman displaying one after another until I exercise our proxy on the precise same color.
Dad names the size, and the saleswoman wonders if that doesn't sound too big. My father gives no ground. He knows the size of everything Berneta wears, and barely keeps from telling the snooty salesclerk it was all volunteer arithmetic, too.
The saleswoman wants to know what other assistance she can render us. My father informs her the spree is over, how much are the damages? She adds up the set of purchases, he flips his checkbook out and writes the figure as if it was pocket change. Away, rich in gifts, we go again.
Groceries next, by the boxload. The trunk of the Ford swallows it all away and my father looks twice at his wristwatch. All we need now is Prince Al. Naturally he has not shown up, here at the hour Dad absolutely instructed him to.
My father starts to stew. The thirty-five-mile drive yet ahead, mudholes in ambush; a stop at the Morgans to tell them we've done our own camptending this week; tarping the groceries into slingpacks behind our saddles; the three-mile horseback ride from the mouth of the gulch up to the cabin—he doesn't want added into all that a door-to-door search of Bozeman for Prince goddamn Al.
"Daddy, are you going to can him?"
"To even do that we need to find the sonofabuck." As much to the lengthy main street of Bozeman as to himself or me, he addresses: "Where do ye suppose a bird like him would hang out?"
Choices are plenty, although all in one category. Just from where we stand I can read the twinkling signs of several nominees—the Crystal Bar, the Rocking R Bar, the Park Bar, the Stockman Bar.
My father casts another glance, this time at the sun, midway down the afternoon sky, and starts us toward the nearest of the bars at his racing pace. "Bastard him anyway, we don't have the time—"
***
Time to head down out of here, Berneta can tell from her glance at the sun; start the sheep moving down the mountain toward the place for night.
The sheep, contrary old sisters that they can be, have forgotten their earlier affection for the bedground and want to keep on stuffing grass into themselves. Words fly out over the mountain: "Around them, Flop. Way around them." While the dog makes his rounds, Berneta adds whistling and a clatter chorus of cans. Grudgingly, the ewes shift around and mince slowly down the slope, their lambs skittery