Free Let Him Go: A Novel by Larry Watson

asks. I could put the pot on.
    We’re fine, Margaret replies. Thank you.
    Well, make yourself at home. I’ll call out to the ranch and see what their schedule is like.
    Bill Weboy walks out to the kitchen and soon he canbe heard loudly asking the operator to connect him to a number.
    Margaret whispers to George, No Mrs. Weboy?
    George shrugs.
    Can’t be, she says and sits on the davenport. George joins her. For a moment Margaret’s energy dips, and her eyes close longer than she’d like them to. When she opens them it’s to a man sitting blankly beside her as if he were waiting for the doctor to come in and say whether or not the cancer could be cut out.
    What? Margaret whispers. What is it?
    George gives his head a shake so slight you’d have to be his wife to catch it.
    What ? She puts her hand on his wrist.
    You don’t want this man’s help, he says softly.
    I need someone’s help. We can’t do this on our own.
    George Blackledge turns a slow, cool look on his wife but there are no words behind this expression.
    Bill Weboy reenters the room, rolling the knuckles of one hand in the palm of the other. You two have plans for supper?
    We surely don’t.
    How would you like to be guests of the Weboy clan out at the ranch?
    We don’t want to be any trouble, answers George.
    No trouble at all. My sister-in-law wants to meet you. Says you can swap grandpa-and-grandma stories. And just between me and you, she’s a hell of a cook. Wouldn’t be surprised but that she’s already got her hands in the flour, starting on a pie.
    You’d have to give us directions. Margaret says this toBill Weboy but she looks expectantly at her husband as she speaks.
    Weboy shakes his head. Not a chance. I could be the best damn direction-giver in the world and you still wouldn’t find it. You’d be out there on Four Bridges Road and notice that not only do you not see four bridges, you don’t see a single one. And Ditch Trail is so named because that’s exactly where it ends—in a damn ditch. And you wouldn’t want to take County K, even if it gets you there, because it’d take you twice as long. No, you make your way back here at four o’clock and you can follow me.
    The sun finds a gap in the clouds and a way around the water tower, and light momentarily enters Bill Weboy’s living room and shines on the faces of the aging man and woman on the couch. Light and shadow make them look as timeworn, riven, and hard as the bluffs hovering over this town. But in another moment the clouds shift again, the sharp light vanishes in favor of a general shadow, and a softness returns to Margaret Blackledge’s features. Thank you, she says. We’ll come back. We’ll follow you.

14.
    B ACK IN THE H UDSON , G EORGE SAYS , I’ VE GOT NO USE FOR that man.
    I told you, George. We need him.
    What the hell for? Now we know Donnie’s people are here. We could ask around and see if we can get directions to the place.
    Be sensible. We don’t know our way around this part of the world. We could crisscross the prairie for days and not find them.
    George says nothing but shakes his head slowly. He turns the key in the ignition and, though the engine catches immediately, he keeps turning and lets the gnashing and growling of steel and grinding gears make an argument for him.
    Find me a drugstore, Margaret says. If we’re going to be guests of the Weboys for supper, I need a few supplies.
    Before he drives away, George Blackledge casts a long look back at Bill Weboy’s house. The skies have shifted once again, and a flash of sunlight turns all the house’s windows into mirrors. It’s impossible to determine whether that’s a man staring out from the kitchen or just a cloud shape reflected in the glass.
    .     .     .
    Margaret Blackledge paces back and forth in front of the cosmetic counter of Shaw’s Rexall, Gladstone’s Finest Pharmacy and Sundries, as if its display of creams, powders, lipsticks, and rouges is a puzzlement placed before