The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [119]
Belatedly he remembered "She don't much know how to read," but she was nodding appreciatively at the spread-wing symbol on the label. "Thunderbird. Now you're talking." She quick-stepped past him and wrenched the door open. "Come in out of the weather."
The prairie came inside with them, bare dirt of the floor except for a splotch of torn old flowered linoleum under the kitchen table. Boxes of belongings far outnumbered the derelict furniture. A drafty-looking back area that elled off from the one big room must have been where Vic slept and studied, Ben decided. As he glanced around from tattered bedding to cardboard heaps, the woman was fussing at the cookstove. "I'll make a little fire. Usually don't until it gets cold as a witch's tit." Vaguely she gestured toward the table and rickety chairs. "Make yourself to home."
Wasting no time, she fired up the stove with a shot of kerosene, from the smell of it, and joined him. A pair of jelly glasses clinked as she shoved them toward the Thunderbird bottle he had put in the center of the table. "Do the honors."
He poured her a full glass of the sweet red wine and without regret set the bottle aside. "None for me, thanks."
She would not hear of that. "You better have something so I don't drink all alone. Kool-Aid, how about?"
"Sounds good," he fibbed for etiquette's sake.
Grunting, she got up and navigated into the kitchen clutter to try to find the drink mix for him. To keep any kind of conversation going, he called over: "They told me you were at your daughter's."
"She kicked me out. Thinks she is somebody—like her grunny don't stink."
One binge too many, Ben thought. "There are people like that." Still trying to sound conversational, he asked: "Agnes, were you mostly here when Vic was in college?"
Now the anthracite eyes showed a different temperature entirely. "I never went nowhere when Vic was getting his learning."
She followed that statement back to the table and slid a packet of Kool-Aid to Ben. "Here you go." The water bucket and dipper were within reach from the table—a lot of things were—and he mixed the stuff for himself. She waited standing until he was done, then declared: "Bottoms up." Blithe as a bird, she alit into a chair and in the same motion leaned way forward and sipped from her glass where it stood on the table, touching it with only her lips. Not until then did he realize how bad she had the shakes.
Readying with a dry swallow, he kept his end of the bargain with a swig of the Kool-Aid. The flavor was grape, as purple as her sweater, and about as tasty as the wool dye would have been. He sleeved off the bruise-colored stain he suspected was left on his lips. Surprisingly, his drinking companion was sitting back watching him sharp-eyed instead of trying another guzzle. "You're not drinking up," Ben remarked.
She blinked at the extent of his ignorance. "Even Jesus stretched the wine."
This is getting me nowhere. He plunged in. "You remember when that fellow Vic and I played football with died on the hill, across the coulee?" He was not even sure what he was asking with this. "Just before the war?"
"That time." She shook her head, gray hair flopping. "They run that boy too much. I never saw that"—with both hands she managed to lift her glass and take a trembling drink—"before."
Ben felt his heartbeat quicken. "You saw him run up to the letters—the white rocks?"
"Used to watch all of you when I'd be outside. Wasn't anything before like that boy, though. They run him and run him. Made him do it."
"Made him? How?"
"The football boss kept making him run. He'd yell and wave his arm. You know, like when you're herding sheep and send a dog way around them?" She demonstrated the sweeping overhand gesture.
"Up and back one time, I know," Ben prompted. "But then on his own did the boy—"
"Hwah, one time? Where do you get that?" This shake of the head dismissed Ben's arithmetic as silly. "Crazy number of times. Up and back to that first rock thing." Agnes approximated a T in the air over the table. "Then up and back to—what's that next one?" She waved