Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? Read online

  I said, “But look, Dad. Look what it is.”

  He said, “I don’t want to look.”

  I said, “It’s a gigantic summer steelhead from Birch Creek. Look! Isn’t he something? It’s a monster! I chased him up and down the creek like a madman!” My voice was crazy. But I could not stop. “There was another one, too,” I hurried on. “A green one. I swear! It was green! Have you ever seen a green one?”

  He looked into the creel and his mouth fell open.

  He screamed, “Take that goddamn thing out of here! What in the hell is the matter with you? Take it the hell out of the kitchen and throw it in the goddamn garbage I”

  I went back outside. I looked into the creel. What was there looked silver under the porch light. What was there filled the creel.

  I lifted him out. I held him. I held that half of him.

  SIXTY ACRES

  The call had come an hour ago, when they were eating. Two men were shooting on Lee Waite’s part of Toppenish Creek, down below the bridge on the Cowiche Road. It was the third or fourth time this winter someone had been in there, Joseph Eagle reminded Lee Waite. Joseph Eagle was an old Indian who lived on his government allotment in a little place off the Cowiche Road, with a radio he listened to day and night and a telephone in case he got sick. Lee Waite wished the old Indian would let him be about that land, that Joseph Eagle would do something else about it, if he wanted, besides call.

  Out on the porch, Lee Waite leaned on one leg and picked at a string of meat between his teeth. He was a small thin man with a thin face and long black hair. If it had not been for the phone call, he would have slept awhile this afternoon. He frowned and took his time pulling into his coat; they would be gone anyway when he got there. That was usually the way. The hunters from Toppenish or Yakima could drive the reservation roads like anyone else; they just weren’t allowed to hunt. But they would cruise by that untenanted and irresistible sixty acres of his, two, maybe three times, then, if they were feeling reckless, park down off the road in the trees and hurry through the knee-deep barley and wild oats, down to the creek—maybe getting some ducks, maybe not, but always doing a lot of shooting in the little time before they cleared out. Joseph Eagle sat crippled in his house and watched them plenty of times. Or so he told Lee Waite.

  He cleaned his teeth with his tongue and squinted in the late-afternoon winter half-light. He wasn’t afraid; it wasn’t that, he told himself. He just didn’t want trouble.

  The porch, small and built on just before the war, was almost dark. The one window glass had been knocked out years before, and Waite had nailed a beet sack over the opening. It hung there next to the cabinet, matted-thick and frozen, moving slightly as the cold air from outside came in around the edges. The walls were crowded with old yokes and harnesses, and up on one side, above the window, was a row of rusted hand tools. He made a last sweep with his tongue, tightened the light bulb into the overhead socket, and opened the cabinet. He took out the old double-barrel from in back and reached into the box on the top shelf for a handful of shells. The brass ends of the shells felt cold, and he rolled them in his hand before dropping them into a pocket of the old coat he was wearing.

  “Aren’t you going to load it, Papa?” the boy Benny asked from behind.

  Waite turned, saw Benny and little Jack standing in the kitchen doorway. Ever since the call they had been after him—had wanted to know if this time he was going to shoot somebody. It bothered him, kids talking like that, like they would enjoy it, and now they stood at the door, letting all the cold air in the house and looking at the large gun up under his arm.

  “Get back in that house where the hell you belong,” he said.

  They left the door open and ran back in where his mother and Nina were and on through to the bedroom. He could see Nina at the table trying to coax bites of squash into the baby, who was pulling back and shaking her head. Nina looked up, tried to smile.

  Waite stepped into the kitchen and shut the door, leaned against it. She was plenty tired, he could tell. A beaded line of moisture glistened over her lip, and, as he watched, she stopped to move the hair away from her forehead. She looked up at him again, then back at the baby. It had never bothered her like this when she was carrying before. The other times she could hardly sit still and used to jump up and walk around, even if there wasn’t much to do except cook a meal or sew. He fingered the loose skin around his neck and glanced covertly at his mother, dozing since the meal in a chair by the stove. She squinted her eyes at him and nodded. She was seventy and shriveled, but her hair was still crow-black and hung down in front over her shoulders in two long tight braids. Lee Waite was sure she had something wrong with her because sometimes she went two days without saying something, just sitting in the other room by the window and staring off up the valley. It made him shiver when she did that, and he didn’t know any more what her little signs and signals, her silences, were supposed to mean.

  “Why don’t you say something?” he asked, shaking his head. “How do I know what you mean, Mama, if you don’t say?” Waite looked at her for a minute and watched her tug at the ends of her braids, waited for her to say something. Then he grunted and crossed by in front of her, took his hat off a nail, and went out.

  It was cold. An inch or two of grainy snow from three days past covered everything, made the ground lumpy, and gave a foolish look to the stripped rows of beanpoles in front of the house. The dog came scrabbling out from under the house when it heard the door, started off for the truck without looking back. “Come here!” Waite called sharply, his voice looping in the thin air.

  Leaning over, he took the dog’s cold, dry muzzle in his hand. “You better stay here this time. Yes, yes." He flapped the dogs ear back and forth and looked around. He could not see the Satus Hills across the valley because of the heavy overcast, just the wavy flatness of sugar-beet fields—white, except for black places here and there where the snow had not gotten. One place in sight—Charley Treadwell’s, a long way off—but no lights lit that he could tell. Not a sound anywhere, just the low ceiling of heavy clouds pressing down on everything. He’d thought there was a wind, but it was still.

  “Stay here now. You hear?”

  He started for the truck, wishing again he did not have to go. He had dreamed last night, again—about what he could not remember—but he’d had an uneasy feeling ever since he woke up. He drove in low gear down to the gate, got out and unhooked it, drove past, got out again and hooked it. He did not keep horses any more—but it was a habit he had gotten into, keeping the gate shut.

  Down the road, the grader was scraping toward him, the blade shrieking fiercely every time the metal hit the frozen gravel. He was in no hurry, and he waited the long minutes it took the grader to come up. One of the men in the cab leaned out with a cigaret in his hand and waved as they went by. But Waite looked off. He pulled out onto the road after they passed. He looked over at Charley Treadwell’s when he went by, but there were still no lights, and the car was gone. He remembered what Charley had told him a few days ago, about a fight Charley had had last Sunday with some kid who came over his fence in the afternoon and shot into a pond of ducks, right down by the barn. The ducks came in there every afternoon, Charley said. They trusted him, he said, as if that mattered. He’d run down from the barn where he was milking, waving his arms and shouting, and the kid had pointed the gun at him. If I could’ve just got that gun away from him, Charley had said, staring hard at Waite with his one good eye and nodding slowly. Waite hitched a little in the seat. He did not want any trouble like that. He hoped whoever it was would be gone when he got there, like the other times.

  Out to the left he passed Fort Simcoe, the white-painted tops of the old buildings standing behind the reconstructed palisade. The gates of the place were open, and Lee Waite could see cars parked around inside and a few people in coats, walking. He never bothered to stop. Once the teacher had brought all the kids out here—a field trip, she called it—but Waite had stay
ed home from school that day. He rolled down the window and cleared his throat, hawked it at the gate as he passed.

  He turned onto Lateral B and then came to Joseph Eagle's place—all the lights on, even the porch light. Waite drove past, down to where the Cowiche Road came in, and got out of the truck and listened. He had begun to think they might be gone and he could turn around and go on back when he heard a grouping of dull far-off shots come across the fields. He waited awhile, then took a rag and went around the truck and tried to wipe off some of the snow and ice in the window edges. He kicked the snow off his shoes before getting in, drove a little farther until he could see the bridge, then looked for the tracks that turned off into the trees, where he knew he would find their car. He pulled in behind the gray sedan and switched the ignition off.

  He sat in the truck and waited, squeaking his foot back and forth on the brake and hearing them shoot every now and then. After a few minutes he couldn’t sit still any longer and got out, walked slowly around to the front. He had not been down there to do anything in four or five years. He leaned against the fender and looked out over the land. He could not understand where all the time had gone.

  He remembered when he was little, wanting to grow up. He used to come down here often then and trap this part of the creek for muskrat and set night-lines for German brown. Waite looked around, moved his feet inside his shoes. All that was a long time ago. Growing up, he had heard his father say he intended this land for the three boys. But both brothers had been killed. Lee Waite was the one it came down to, all of it.

  He remembered: deaths. Jimmy first. He remembered waking to the tremendous pounding on the door—dark, the smell of wood pitch from the stove, an automobile outside with the lights on and the motor running, and a crackling voice coming from a speaker inside. His father throws open the door, and the enormous figure of a man in a cowboy hat and wearing a gun—the deputy sheriff—fills the doorway. Waite? Your boy Jimmy been stabbed at a dance in Wapato. Everyone had gone away in the truck and Lee was left by himself. He had crouched, alone the rest of the night, in front of the wood stove, watching the shadows jump across the wall. Later, when he was twelve, another one came, a different sheriff, and only said they’d better come along.

  He pushed off from the truck and walked the few feet over to the edge of the field. Things were different now, that’s all there was to it. He was thirty-two, and Benny and little Jack were growing up. And there was the baby. Waite shook his head. He closed his hand around one of the tall stalks of milkweed. He snapped its neck and looked up when he heard the soft chuckling of ducks overhead. He wiped his hand on his pants and followed them for a moment, watched them set their wings at the same instant and circle once over the creek. Then they flared. He saw three ducks fall before he heard the shots.

  He turned abruptly and started back for the truck.

  He took out his gun, careful not to slam the door. He moved into the trees. It was almost dark. He coughed once and then stood with his lips pressed together.

  They came thrashing through the brush, two of them. Then, jiggling and squeaking the fence, they climbed over into the field and crunched through the snow. They were breathing hard by the time they got up close to the car.

  “My God, there's a truck there!” one of them said and dropped the ducks he was carrying.

  It was a boy’s voice. He had on a heavy hunting coat, and in the game pockets Waite could dimly make out the enormous padding of ducks.

  “Take it easy, will you!” The other boy stood craning his head around, trying to see. “Hurry up! There’s nobody inside. Get the hell in the car!”

  Not moving, trying to keep his voice steady, Waite said, “Stand there. Put your guns right there on the ground." He edged out of the trees and faced them, raised and lowered his gun barrels. “Take off them coats now and empty them out.”

  “O God! God almighty!” one of them said.

  The other did not say anything but took off his coat and began pulling out the ducks, still looking around.

  Waite opened the door of their car, fumbled an arm around inside until he found the headlights. The boys put a hand up to shield their eyes, then turned their backs to the light,

  “Whose land do you think this is?” Waite said. “What do you mean, shooting ducks on my land!”

  One boy turned around cautiously, his hand still in front of his eyes. “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you think I’m going to do?” Waite said. His voice sounded strange to him, light, insubstantial. He could hear the ducks settling on the creek, chattering to other ducks still in the air. “What do you think I’m going to do with you?” he said. “What would you do if you caught boys trespassing on your land?”

  “If they said they was sorry and it was the first time, I'd let them go,” the boy answered.

  “I would too, sir, if they said they was sorry,” the other boy said.

  “You would? You really think that’s what you’d do?” Waite knew he was stalling for time.

  They did not answer. They stood in the glare of the headlights and then turned their backs again.

  “How do I know you wasn’t here before?” Waite said. “The other times I had to come down here?”

  “Word of honor, sir, we never been here before. We just drove by. For godsake,” the boy sobbed.

  “That’s the whole truth,” the other boy said. “Anybody can make a mistake once in his life.”

  It was dark now, and a thin drizzle was coming down in front of the lights. Waite turned up his collar and stared at the boys. From down on the creek the strident quacking of a drake carried up to him. He glanced around at the awful shapes of the trees, then back at the boys again.

  “Maybe so,” he said and moved his feet. He knew he would let them go in a minute. There wasn’t much else he could do. He was putting them off the land; that was what mattered. “What’s your names, anyway? What’s yours? You. Is this here your car or not? What’s your name?”

  “Bob Roberts,” the one boy answered quickly and looked sideways at the other.

  “Williams, sir,” the other boy said. “Bill Williams, sir.”

  Waite was willing to understand that they were kids, that they were lying to him because they were afraid. They stood with their backs to him, and Waite stood looking at them.

  “You’re lying!” he said, shocking himself. “Why you lying to me? You come onto my land and shoot my ducks and then you lie like hell to me!” He laid the gun over the car door to steady the barrels. He could hear branches rubbing in the treetops. He thought of Joseph Eagle sitting up there in his lighted house, his feet on a box, listening to the radio.

  “All right, all right,” Waite said. “Liars! Just stand there, liars.” He walked stiffly around to his truck and got out an old beet sack, shook it open, had them put all the ducks in that. When he stood still, waiting, his knees unaccountably began to shake.

  “Go ahead and go. Go on!”

  He stepped back as they came up to the car. “I’ll back up to the road. You back up along with me.”

  “Yes, sir,” the one boy said as he slid in behind the wheel. “But what if I can’t get this thing started now? The battery might be dead, you know. It wasn’t very strong to begin with.”

  “I don’t know,” Waite said. He looked around. “I guess I’d have to push you out.”

  The boy shut off the lights, stamped on the accelerator, and hit the starter. The engine turned over slowly but caught, and the boy held his foot down on the pedal and raced the engine before firing up the lights again. Waite studied their pale cold faces staring out at him, looking for a sign from him.

  He slung the bag of ducks into his truck and slid the double-barrel across the seat. He got in and backed out carefully onto the road. He waited until they were out, then followed them down to Lateral B and stopped with his motor running, watching their taillights disappear toward Toppenish. He had put them off the land. That was all that mattered. Yet he cou
ld not understand why he felt something crucial had happened, a failure.

  But nothing had happened.

  Patches of fog had blown in from down the valley. He couldn’t see much over toward Charley’s when he stopped to open the gate, only a faint light burning out on the porch that Waite did not remember seeing that afternoon. The dog waited on its belly by the barn, jumped up and began snuffling the ducks as Waite swung them over his shoulder and started up to the house. He stopped on the porch long enough to put the gun away. The ducks he left on the floor beside the cabinet. He would clean them tomorrow or the next day.

  “Lee?” Nina called.

  Waite took off his hat, loosened the light bulb, and before opening the door he paused a moment in the quiet dark.

  Nina was at the kitchen table, the little box with her sewing things beside her on another chair. She held a piece of denim in her hand. Two or three of his shirts were on the table, along with a pair of scissors. He pumped a cup of water and picked up from a shelf over the sink some of the colored rocks the kids were always bringing home. There was a dry pine cone there too and a few big papery maple leaves from the summer. He glanced in the pantry. But he was not hungry. Then he walked over to the doorway and leaned against the jamb.

  It was a small house. There was no place to go.

  In the back, in one room, all of the children slept, and in the room off from this, Waite and Nina and his mother slept, though sometimes, in the summer, Waite and Nina slept outside. There was never a place to go. His mother was still sitting beside the stove, a blanket over her legs now and her tiny eyes open, watching him.

  “The boys wanted to stay up until you came back," Nina said, “but I told them you said they had to go to bed.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” he said. “They had to go to bed, all right.”

  “I was afraid,” she said.