Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [103]
“Well, good,” says Rodman’s voice. “Great. We want him to go on just like he is, as long as he can manage. Where is he, up in his study?”
“Where else?” Ada says. “He’s at that desk all hours. You go ahead on up, it’ll do him good to take his eyes out of a book for a minute. I’ll holler when lunch is ready.”
Hard heels on the thin Beluchi rug, then on wood. He must wear leather heels, maybe with taps. I wonder if he’d begin to doubt his existence if he couldn’t hear himself? He says from the bottom of the stairs, “How’s this lift work? Can I ride up without a ticket?”
“Just stand on the step and push the switch,” Ada says. “I ride it all the time, it’s a real leg saver.”
Murmur of the moving lift, the big laugh rising with it. Then the click of its stopping, the hard heels on bare boards. “Pop? Hey Pop, you there? It’s Rod.”
I push back from the desk, where I have been examining some F. Jay Haynes stereoscopic views of Deadwood in the 1870s, and swing my chair around. “Rodman!” I say. “What’s the idea, sneaking up on me that way?”
Impervious, burly, bearded, beaming, here he comes with his hand out. Now take it easy, you oaf, my hand won’t stand . . . Oh, Jesus.
Contrite, he releases me. “Whoops, sorry. Hurt your hand?”
“No, no.” I let the hand down carelessly on the chair arm. Afterwhile the bones will work back into place, especially if I can catch him looking the other way and flex the fingers a little. “How’s school?” I say. “Classes all over?”
“Classes all over, grades all in. I’m clean. How are you getting on with your book?”
“It keeps me out of mischief.”
“I’ll bet. Ninety years of Grandmother’s life ought to keep you out of mischief till the twenty-first century. How far have you got her by now?”
“I’ve got her back to Milton, New York. Grandfather’s in Deadwood.”
“Deadwood? Wasn’t that kind of a wild camp? Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane and all that?”
“Rodman,” I say, “you’ve been reading history.”
“You never gave me proper credit. I’m not opposed to history if it’s interesting.” Grinning, he leans to look at the stereopticon slides spread along the desk. “Is this Deadwood? Looks like a movie set.”
“It has been, plenty of times.”
“I didn’t know your grandfather ever got into anything like that.” He picks up the stereoscope and slips a picture into the slot, takes it out and slips in another. “It really is like a movie set. Look at all the guns on these guys. Anything exciting happen to him there?”
“He never shot it out with Wild Bill Hickok, if that’s what you mean.”
Lifted viewer, ironic eye. “All right, Pop, all right. What was he doing there?”
“Building a mill ditch for George Hearst’s Homestake mine. Ever hear of the Homestake?”
“I’ve heard of Hearst. Not the Homestake.”
“Last time I looked it had produced a half billion in gold.”
“And Great-grandpa built the mill ditch,” Rodman says. “Good for him.”
He irritates me, he always does. Nothing is interesting to him unless it’s bellowing as loud as he is. I say, “Ever try living in a tent through a Dakota winter? That’s excitement enough to last anybody a while. Ever see Buffalo Bill Cody and Captain Jack Crawford ride their horses onto the stage of the Bella Union Theater to re-create Buffalo Bill’s single-handed killing and scalping of the Oglala chief Yellow Hand?”
He is looking into the viewer again. “The real Buffalo Bill?”
“I don’t know that there were any imitations. Unfortunately Captain Jack’s horse got cutting up, scared of Captain Jack’s warbonnet, and he shot himself through the leg and brought down the curtain.”
“You mean they were putting on an act with live ammunition?”
I say ironically, “The West was not built with blank cartridges.”
“Great,” Rodman says. “Now you’re talking. What else?