In Reach Read online

  “That all you’re taking?” Dave asked, when he pulled into the driveway. Jason sat on the front step, a backpack at his feet. Sticking up out of it were his sketchpad and two books he was currently reading, The Catcher in the Rye and The End of Nature.

  “What else do I need?” Jason didn’t get up. He didn’t look at his dad. He scuffed his Birkenstock sandal against the sidewalk and pushed his John Lennon rimless glasses up on his nose. He wore a tattered Grateful Dead T-shirt and cutoffs. “You got the big gun, don’t you?”

  “I hope you brought some long pants. You’ll need them for riding.”

  Jason didn’t answer, just heaved his pack into the rear seat of the black Jeep and climbed into the front. He looked over at his dad and stifled a laugh. Dave had exchanged his stockbroker image for the Marlboro man: tight Levi’s, white yoked shirt with pearl inlaid snaps, snakeskin cowboy boots. His belly was shelved on a belt buckle the size of Rhode Island. Jason glanced in the backseat; sure enough, there was a cowboy hat, black with a pheasant feather sticking up from the band.

  “Don’t you think you’re going to be hot? It’s July. Must be a hundred degrees.”

  “That’s why you wear this stuff.” Dave sped across two lanes of traffic. “To keep the sun off.”

  “Mom sent sunscreen,” Jason said.

  Before they got outside the city limits, Dave had laid out his plans for the trip. They were on a buffalo hunt. He’d set it all up from his bachelor apartment. He called Cabela’s, a big Western store out in Sidney where Nebraska bumps into Colorado. A guy named Shorty knew a rancher down by Lewellen who had wild buffalo on his rangeland.

  “I drove over yesterday from Chicago,” Dave said. “I’d have called you, but I figured you were busy.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said.

  They rode in silence. Interstate 80 stretched out like film off a reel. Jason stuck the earphones that hung around his neck into his ears and tuned into his music. He liked the old masters, Coltrane and Davis, guys he was sure his dad had never heard of. His dad had lived through the Sixties without even changing his hairstyle. Once, when Jason asked him how come he hadn’t paid attention to Dylan or the Stones or the Dead, his dad said he guessed he’d listened to the wrong radio stations. “Besides,” he said, as Jason should have known he would, “I had to work my way through school.”

  Eventually Dave tapped on Jason’s arm to get his attention. “Why don’t you park that thing?” He motioned to Jason’s Walkman and hitched his thumb toward the backseat.

  Jason took off the earphones, but let them rest in his lap. He turned to look out the window. Miles and miles of cornfields. A few trees sheltering scattered farmhouses. All the way from Omaha to the panhandle, where his dad was from, the road stretched flat and endless, a line extending into nothing. There were no traces of the family left out there. His dad had taken him to Reach once when he was younger. Jason’s parents were still married then, and they’d stayed together in the downtown Deluxe Motel, six ramshackle side-by-side units. A sign in the manager’s office boasted of running water and TV in every room. “This is where I grew up, Son,” his dad had said. “This is the town that made a man out of me.”

  Dave drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. After a few more miles, he cleared his throat. “How’s your mother?”

  “Mom’s fine.” Neither turned their heads away from the road in front of them.

  “Thought maybe she’d say hello this morning.”

  Sometimes Jason couldn’t believe his father. Where he got off. “She was at work.”

  Dave flipped a cigarette pack out of his shirt pocket. With practiced moves, he tucked a Marlboro between his lips, found the lighter in the bin between the seats, lit the cigarette, and slid the package home. He was blowing out the first puff as Jason rolled down his window.

  “I got the air on,” Dave said.

  “Yeah, well, you’re contaminating it.” The wind blew his longish blond hair across his face. One end caught the corner of his mouth; another smacked his eye. Still, he kept his window down.

  Dave took two more long draws. “Shit.” Dave stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “In my day, it was the kids who smoked, and the parents who told them not to.”

  “Maybe we’re smarter now.”

  “Than what?”

  Jason shrugged his shoulders. Rolled up the window.

  “Smarter now than then or smarter than your parents? Which is it?”

  Jason did not answer. He knew his dad in this mood.

  “Let me tell you something, kid. You don’t know everything. And you’re not the first kid who thought he did.”

  They rode a few more miles in silence. Then, without turning his head, Jason said, “Don’t call me kid.”

  They stopped in Grand Island for gas, Kearney for lunch at McDonald’s. Dave ordered a Big Mac Meal Deal, dipped his French fries first in mayonnaise, then ketchup. Jason had a salad and chicken nuggets, no sauce.

  Once they were headed west again, driving straight into the amber sun, Jason took out The Catcher in the Rye.

  “I read that,” Dave said.

  “What’d you think?”

  Dave shrugged. “Don’t remember much about it. Except it’s about a kid who’s kind of lost.”

  Jason thumbed down the page corner. “Holden Caulfield.”

  “What?”

  “The kid you think was lost. His name is Holden Caulfield.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s right.”

  “Except it’s the culture that’s lost.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s the point. Of the book.”

  Dave didn’t say anything for a mile or two. “It’s not normal,” he finally said.

  Jason grunted, hoping his dad would shut the fuck up.

  “The way you see things. You’re kind of twisted.”

  Jason squinted, pictured an eagle in flight, soaring, soaring, up and away.

  “Not that it’s your fault.”

  “Leave Mom alone.” He made his voice hard, flinty.

  After a few more miles, Dave said, “Remember that time we went on that baseball tour?”

  Jason looked up from his book. It was two years after his father walked out on them. Jason was eleven, and they’d gone on a whirlwind tour of major league baseball games. Each night in a different motel room identical to the one from the night before, reeking of cigarettes and chlorine, Jason endured a quiz. He recited players’ names, ERAs, and analyzed what went wrong on second base in the third inning. He kept the baseball cards stuffed in his bottom desk drawer, hidden under snapshots and debris. Every time he chanced upon them, he knew he should throw them away. But then he’d remember hot dogs and pretzels and sitting by his dad, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  Now he said, “Not really.”

  “You had your nose in a book most of that whole trip,” Dave said.

  Jason shifted in his seat. His legs seemed to have gotten too long for the car, and he didn’t know what to do with his elbows. The air in the Jeep felt close, clammy on his skin. He actually put his palm on the roof over his head, as if he might shove the top open and find some relief.

  Jason dropped Holden Caulfield on the floor and reached for his sketchpad. With quick strokes of a soft-leaded pencil, he drew a boxy car, high-wheeled. He drew a sun, oversized and glaring, and a long, white ribbon of road. Sticking out the windows of the boxy car, he drew twigs. They jutted and poked at crazy angles, twisted one over another, completely jammed the car. Then, he turned the twigs into French fries, the ends drenched with drippings. He added spokes to the high wheels, and between the spokes, he inserted chrome emblems that looked something like baseball cards. His father might have said something to him, or he might not. Jason was out of reach.

  The farther they went across Nebraska, the longer the road seemed to get. It stretched like taffy, like time when there’s nothing to do. They decided to stay overnight in Ogallala. Dave pulled up to a Super 8 along the in
terstate. They had supper across the viaduct in a tourist trap called Front Street: saloon with swinging doors, red lights, sawdust on a wood floor, honky-tonk piano player, and a menu that offered beef or buffalo. In one corner, on a raised stage, a poker game was shrouded in heavy smoke. Satin-and-lace women draped over the arms of fringe-vested men wearing holsters and chaps. Jason looked at the crowd and tried to guess which were tourists and which were locals. Some of the men looked tanned and leathery, some were even bowlegged. But then, Jason knew most modern ranchers drove sports vehicles and sat around in computerized offices. For all he knew, the guys in the crowd who looked like real cowboys might be actors. Or stockbrokers in disguise like his dad.

  Dave plopped his beer down on the table, sloshing the foam over the side. “I’d buy you one, kid, but I don’t want to get arrested.” He set a root beer in front of Jason, frosty mug.

  Dave lowered himself to the straight-backed chair, stuck one booted leg out in front of him, tipped the chair back on its heels. “You’re probably the only guy in here wearing an earring.”

  Jason tossed his head to lift a blond wave off his eye.

  “What’s next? A tattoo?”

  Jason felt Dave looking at him. He wanted something from him, Jason didn’t know what. He picked up his mug of root beer. He’d have preferred a Coke. His dad—fake costume, fake beer. The fake poker game over in the corner was heating up to a staged gunfight. Pretty soon they’d be caught in a fake crossfire.

  “Look at that big guy.” Dave pointed to a mounted buffalo head that loomed over the bar. “Once king of the prairie. Here’s to you, you poor sonofabitch.” Dave lifted his glass to the buffalo and drank.

  Jason wished his dad would just eat so he could get out of here. He felt sick to his stomach. One of the cowboys in the poker game accused another one of cheating.

  “My dad was one of those guys who couldn’t adapt. Happy growing sugar beets on a few acres, then the war came along. After that, the name of the game was progress.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “Can’t accommodate, you’re obsolete.

  Jason said nothing. He’d heard this sob story before.

  Dave took a swig of beer, ran his tongue over his lips. He gazed into the glass eyes of the buffalo. “I was just about your age, full of myself.” He paused. “Told my mother that if I ever had kids and couldn’t provide a decent living, I hoped somebody’d take a shotgun to my head. I was quite the little hard-ass.”

  Jason thought about the checks his mom got every month in the mail. Maybe they bought his dad peace of mind, but they didn’t mean squat. He dropped his buffalo burger into the red plastic basket and shoved it across the table. “I can’t eat this stuff,” he said. The basket collided with his dad’s beer, then dangled precariously on the edge of the table before falling to the floor.

  Dave leaned his head forward and surveyed the damage. He picked up his beer and raised it to his lips. Holding the beer suspended, he looked at Jason. “Suit yourself,” he said.

  After supper, Dave insisted that they drive ten miles north to the Kingsley Dam. The landscape shifted as they moved out of the town limits. Cornfields gave way to yuccas and sage. The air was drier, the sun more insistent, the trees huddled around low places or watering troughs. In the distance Jason spotted a lone windmill keeping vigil on the prairie.

  “I remember fishing in Lake McConaughy,” Dave said, driving north. “One time, our whole family went. Camped out right on the sand. White bass every time we threw in the line. We must’ve hit a school. Caught so many we ran out of bait. Mom had a couple shiny buttons, so we tried those. Worked just like a minnow. Dad decided we should use fish eyes. Damned if they didn’t strike at those. A guy up around the bend wasn’t catching a thing, yelled at us, wanted to know what we were using for bait. I asked Dad what I should say. He said, ‘Tell them the truth, Son.’ So I yelled back, ‘Fish eyes.’” Dave snorted. “’Course the guy didn’t believe me. Let out a blue streak.”

  Jason was silent. He was thinking about fish eyes, iridescent silver and green. He saw the empty sockets of the eyeless, dying fish.

  They stretched their legs by walking across the dam. The lake itself was narrow and twenty-six miles long, east to west. The sun squatted low on the horizon, orange and coral fanned above it like a peacock’s tail. Buttons of color shimmered in the sun-streaked water. Along the shoreline sprouted pockets of willow trees, here and there a cottonwood. Cattails waved in the marshes. Jason and his dad stood and propped their arms on the railing.

  “Beautiful,” Dave said.

  “Nobody fishes with fish eyes,” Jason said.

  After breakfast next morning, they set out to find the ranch. Jason wore his jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. His dad wore his Western regalia with a clean red plaid shirt. They drove to Lewellen, all the way around the south side of the lake, its waters glistening now and then through a gap in the hills. They passed Ash Hollow and Windlass Hill. Dave told Jason a lot of pioneers died there until they figured out a pulley system to get their wagons safely up and over the ridge. They went past a hillside cemetery, boots upside down on every fencepost.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Pointing home,” Dave said.

  When they got to Lewellen, they couldn’t find the cutoff to the Porter Ranch. Dave circled through the three-block town, then turned back and circled again.

  “There’s a gas station back there,” Jason said.

  “It’s got to be here,” Dave said. “I know Shorty said out of Lewellen.”

  Dave U-turned the Jeep to make another swipe through town.

  “Dad, it’s not here. Why don’t you stop and ask?”

  “Don’t tell me how to drive. This is my car and my trip.”

  Jason pushed down on the door handle. The door flew open. Even though they were moving slowly, a gust of air caused the car to careen to the side. Dave lurched the Jeep to a halt in the gravel alongside the gas station. “What the hell is the matter with you?” Dave shouted.

  Jason already had one leg out the door. By the time Dave followed him into the gas station, Jason had gotten directions from the attendant. Turns out the ranch wasn’t exactly out of Lewellen.

  “Let me see the map,” Jason said, when they got back to the Jeep.

  “You heard the guy. Porter Ranch is out of Arthur, and Arthur is north of the other end of the lake. We’ll have to go all the way back.” Still, Dave waited until Jason had wrestled open the map.

  “There’s a different road around the north side,” Jason said, his finger pointing at the map. “It’s closer.”

  “I forgot about that road,” Dave said, leaning over. Jason could feel his dad’s breath on his face. “Goes right through Lemoyne. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.”

  By now, the weekend traffic had picked up. Progress was slow because the road was narrow and hilly, crammed with campers and pickup trucks.

  “Christ,” Dave said. “We’ll be lucky to get there by noon.” He thumped his hand on the steering wheel, took chances passing, dove in and out of the traffic. Jason hung on to the dashboard with one hand.

  “My dad used to drive us out in these parts. There’s a town north of Arthur, way up there in the Sandhills, where several millionaires lived. Hyannis, I think it’s called.”

  Jason tried to picture his dad as a boy, thumping along in the backseat of some washed-out Chevy. “What was your dad like?”

  Dave did not take his eyes off the road. “Stubborn. And weak.” Dave snorted. “Now that, right there, is a lethal combination.”

  They made it to the Porter Ranch by 10:00 a.m. Shorty was waiting for them. He’d driven down from Cabela’s to make sure the transaction went smoothly.

  Shorty wore jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, boots. After shaking their hands, guffawing, pats on the back all around, Shorty introduced them to the other two guys. Leo, the owner of the ranch, may have had some Indian blood in him; he had the coloring and high cheekbones. Amos, Leo’s friend, was
tall and lean, like Jimmy Stewart in My Darling Clementine. Jason guessed he was the oldest of the three, maybe in his sixties. Amos lifted his dad’s rifle out of the back of the Jeep and spoke in a slow Southern drawl.

  “Nice little piece you got here.”

  “It was my dad’s,” Dave answered. “He used to hunt deer with it.” Dave was buckling on a bandolier that held rifle shells. The brass casings glistened in the hot sun.

  “I reckon it’ll take down a buffalo, all right.” Amos handed the rifle to Dave.

  “Shorty,” Leo instructed. “Take these two cowboys out to the barn and get them acquainted with their horses. Amos and I are going up to the house to get the packs.”

  “Do you know how to ride, Son?” Shorty asked Jason, as they trailed him to the barn.

  “Sure he does,” Dave answered, clapping Jason on the shoulder.

  Jason had been on a horse before, trail rides and scout camp, but he’d never ridden a range horse across open country. He shrugged off his father’s hand. “I guess so,” Jason said to Shorty.

  “We’ll give you Frieda here.” Shorty pointed out a roan-colored mare. “She’s as good as they come.”

  “How about you?” Shorty said to Dave. “Ride?”

  “Hell, yes,” Dave said. “Been a while, but it’s like riding a bicycle, right?”

  Shorty saddled up Frieda for Jason and then helped Dave with Billy, a gray gelding with a long sloping back.

  “Is there a bathroom somewhere?” Jason asked. “Before we head out?”

  “Sure, Son,” Shorty said. “Go on up to the house.”