Jewel Weber Simpson, 1966

Megan Vorm

She left at midmorning with her teenage daughter for the drive to Marlington. A white sun hammered that flattened expanse of irrigated desert dotted by buttes and Idaho batholith. Fields of alfalfa, cut and baled and hauled away, stretched in every direction, watched over by a speckled hawk from a fence post or a telephone pole. Pale dirt roads stamped from a government grid patterned the land in square-mile segments—an effort of forced anonymity—laid out, checked off, disremembered, though that country was full of ambiguities just below its hard and dusty surface.

Jewel Weber Simpson was a substantial woman whose features were round but not soft.  Her hands were large and elliptic, the nails cut short. She had the look of a woman who made her own soap and clothes. Her brown hair started going gray at thirty, making her appear older than she was; now that she was forty-five it had faded to a dull neutral and she stopped looking any age in particular. She always carried a packet of safety pins, a clean handkerchief, and an unshakable faith in her own abilities. She believed she was a shrewd judge of character, with a combination of intuition and common sense about people and the world. As a fixture in the town, she was always included in social gatherings though she was not much of a conversationalist, not especially agreeable, and often not actually friendly.  

Dust and sagebrush licked the car as it shuddered along the gravel road to the highway. The girl, Evie, looked a little green. Her mother noted that she’d skipped breakfast again that morning. Jewel figured she was trying to keep herself slim like the pencil-shaped girls in magazines.  

“You look sickly,” she said.

“A little tired,” replied Evie, gazing out the window. “The heat, I guess.”

When they reached the paved road, they each took a piece of apricot leather to suck on; as the dust cleared from the car, the girl perked up a bit.

Their hometown of Clifford was occupied with dairy farms and sugar beets, potatoes, wheat, and alfalfa. The Simpsons were well-established and known for the neatness of their spread, which meant the family was old and paid their bills on time. Equally well-known was the fact the farm had been run by generations of Boyds. TBut the Boyd family had multiplied and branched all over the county;and their interest in the Simpson place was motivated as much by tradition as anything else. Del joked, calling himself a gentleman farmer after he’d gotten a job in town some years back. Jewel knew she could do worse for a husband, and though he was not opposed to hard work it did seem that he never actually did any. It was plain that the loan office suited his talents more than farming ever did, but her constant irritation was the way he spoiled their daughter.  

Excursions like this were usually reserved for special occasions, such as Christmas. But Evie had no older sisters to hand down clothes and she’d insisted that the Hansens’ Labor Day party deserved something store-bought. It was precisely the type of issue over which the girl’s father would cave-in to her teenage logic, leaving her mother to side against the two of them. Jewel had nearly given up hope of instilling any practical sense in her daughter. Thanks to her husband’s blind indulgence, the girl had acquired a recklessness toward money and Del failed to see the damage he was causing. The man was divorced from reality where that girl was concerned.    

The city of Marlington lay near the rim of the Snake River Canyon. A narrow iron bridge crossed the gorge and the river several hundred feet below. Birds hung on drafts and circled down into black dots above the sparkling water. A half-mile downstream, the green fairways of a golf course could be seen from the bridge; they stood out like a photographer’s trick among the grey twisted sage and scrub bush.  

“They’re building a new restaurant at the Country Club,” Evie said. “Jimmy says he’ll take me there for New Year’s.”  

Her mother looked over at the girl a moment and back out at the road again. “We’re not buying two dresses,” she said.

“I know.”

Downtown Marlington consisted of a dozen city-blocks along a wide main street. The department store was called The Bon Ton, a chunky three-story square of concrete with large windows on the street level and a Tea Room for ladies on top. Evie tried on a light yellow dress with small blue daisies that looked like stars from a distance. It had spaghetti straps and a low back with a fitted bodice. The slightly flared skirt hung a full inch above her knee.  

“A little short, isn’t it?” Jewel said.  

Evie held up a strapless gown of pink silk and tulle that cost twice as much.

“You know that’s never worked on me,” Jewel said, tucking her pocketbook under her elbow and folding her arms across her chest. She gazed at the dresses and at her daughter. Evie was a pretty girl. Her hair was chestnut brown and her eyes were deep blue, a good combination on a cow-dog and equally pleasing on Evie. She had a heart-shaped face and a natural smile. For years Jewel had anticipated that her daughter would land herself in the family way before she hit seventeen, but it hadn’t come to pass. Not before seventeen, anyway.  

“What are you planning to do for a foundation?” she asked Evie.

“It’s already sewn in.”

Jewel considered. “You can get the yellow one, but I don’t know how you’re going to sit down in it. Honestly, you girls.”

* * *

On the day of the party, Evie spent the afternoon in her room getting ready. She’d barely eaten all day, and Jewel stood in her doorway to see if she’d at least have a sandwich before she left. The late-day sun lit Evie’s hair with gold as she dressed it on top of her head. Jewel looked at the soft brown wisps at the nape of her neck and remembered the smell of her daughter’s skin, a perfume printed in her memory. Evie was born with a mess of feathery hair and eyes so deep and blue it looked like you could step inside. As a baby, she stared wide-eyed and unblinking at her mother. Jewel remembered holding her, nuzzling her, and thinking, I can’t wait ‘til you can talk to me. But as soon as she could walk, it was Del she ran to, and he’d drop everything for her. He’d lie in front of a train if it made her happy. She was Daddy’s girl.

The hard smell of hairspray filled the room as Evie concentrated on the mirror.

“You’ve got a straggler in the back,” Jewel said.

“Oh!” Evie gave a little cry and felt for it.

“Let me,” Jewel said. She licked her fingers and pressed the hair into place.

“Thanks, Mama,” Evie said, targeting the back of her head with a final swirl of aerosol.

“Earrings?” Jewel said.

“I borrowed these from Liz.” Evie held up a cheap-looking pair with gold bulbs and dangling chains.

 Her mother frowned. “The pearl studs are better.” She’s got about as much sense as a rabbit, Jewel thought, but she’s young, and she’s pretty, and she’s in love. And until she loses one of those things there’ll be no talking to her.

Jimmy Hansen pulled up at six in a shiny blue Chevy. Through the upstairs window, Jewel watched him emerge from the truck; his limbs looked as if they’d sprouted on him overnight and his face seemed too young for the rest of his body. Jewel doubted if his hands had ever done a full day’s work. She was sure his family’s money had ruined him. In the end that boy’ll amount to no more than a lanky version of his tippling clodpoll father.  

Del shouted, “Romeo’s here!”   

At the bottom of the stairs, Del and Jimmy stood grinning with a mixture of pride and excitement, like two dogs on the opening day of duck season. 

“Well, who is this beautiful woman?” Del asked, wrapping his arms around her. “What have you done with my little girl?” 

“Oh, Daddy, my hair,” Evie said.

Jewel rolled her eyes.  

When the couple left, Jewel and Del watched the truck and the dust move down the road. “There she goes, Ma,” Del said. “There goes our little girl.”  

Jewel went into the kitchen and got out some beans and corn relish. “Hamburger all right?”

 “Didn’t she look pretty tonight?” Del said. He leaned against the refrigerator with a sigh. “Like a princess courted by her prince.”

“Let’s hope she doesn’t drink too much and spill anything on that dress. Be a shame to wreck it the first time out.”

Del kissed her cheek. It startled her, nearly making her jump. She watched him walk away. Good God, she thought. What’s wrong with that man?

* * *  

Jewel couldn’t say she’d actually been courted by anyone. With Del she’d simply decided, that was all. Made her mind. After Frank James, it seemed the next thing to do.  

She felt she’d known Frank since she was born. Their families had always been friends and she’d always admired him, the way he worked alongside his father and older brother, but she knew she loved him that summer in 1931, when she was eleven years old. Frank was handsome and strong and tall, even as a child of fourteen. His hair was thick with dark curls, and his eyes, framed by long lashes, turned color from hazel to green. He wore glasses and read books. His back was freckled from working in the sun.  

That summer was long and dry. She remembered seeing families of strangers pass through, pulling wagons piled high with their possessions. Okies, her father said. People who appeared from nowhere and returned to it; if they stopped to talk they didn’t say much. There was an air of hopelessness around them even when they were cheery, and the odor of loss made Jewel irked and suspicious. At home, wheat had fallen from a dollar-thirty to twenty-six cents a bushel; sugar beets from fifteen to four dollars a ton. Jewel’s mother taught her how to stretch a headcheese casserole by adding grease and onions. She learned to scramble brains and eggs and make a decent soup with whatever was available. It wasn’t that the Depression wasn’t happening to them—there was less money, there was less everything—but theirs was not so much a struggle as a way of life.

Frank and his father left Clifford in August and went to Boise to find work. Frank told Jewel the story after they’d returned—how he and his father had slept on the sidewalk in front of the Forest Service with a hundred other men and boys, in hopes of being hired on to fight the fires ravaging the basin. Everyone knew it was arson but only spoke of drought and lightning. National Guard troops were brought in to patrol the forests and highways. Frank and his father, along with others, had been questioned by the governor’s special committee. Thousands of acres burned that summer, and people were left homeless in Quartzville, Placerville, and Lowman. Frank and his father worked for thirty-five cents an hour until a rainstorm came and doused the fires, and all the men went back to their farms.  

Jewel listened to Frank’s story as if he were Moses on the Mount.  

“There were guys from Wyoming and Montana,” Frank said. “One of them was hired with us and arrested on the same day.”

“Were you scared?” she asked him.

Frank hadn’t answered but looked off into the distance. Jewel imagined men shouting and coughing, their faces streaked with dirt, sweat, and smoke; animals running, eyes bulging with panic; the blazing trees crackling and falling all around. 

“Can I see your hands?” she asked.  

They were burned and calloused. She turned his hands over in hers, examined the dried creases on his palms. Then he kissed her. He kissed her on the cheekbone below her left eye, and she was amazed at the soft warmth of his lips. She held his hands and he kissed her again.  

Over the next few years Jewel rarely saw him. She went to school more often than he did and they were both getting too old to go at all. Then in 1933, Frank’s mother broke her leg. She’d been collecting eggs from the grass roof of their chicken coop and fallen through. Jewel was sent to help Frank’s sister Villa care for Mrs. James and the house. She saw Frank at meals, mostly, and the two would steal glances but were too shy to speak to each other with family around. Several times, Frank came down from the fields or wherever he was working to see her when she fed the chickens and the pigs. These meetings were hardly the trysts she’d hoped for. Frank was never talkative, though once he made a remark about her being a good worker, and another time he put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. 

In the house, he was always polite—offering to bring in wood or water or whatever was needed. After meals, he had the habit of finding a quiet corner or going outside to read. He was intelligent, remote, mysterious. There would be time, Jewel told herself.  

Frank left the next year to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps. He wrote to Jewel; she received the first letter in September, and twenty more over the next five years. The first letter was full of details of life in the camp, and when she read it she could hear the contours of his voice, as if he were right next to her. They were building bridges and roads, and Frank described the miserable experience of working with a scraper called a Johnson Bar.  

“During the first week,” he wrote, “an hour at a time was all I could stand of it. But now I’m good for the better half of a day. Most of the men are from back east and don’t know how to get on with the folks here. Their talk is hard and abrupt, but they don’t mean it. Strange.” 

He told her how they’d planned to attend a Saturday night dance in Riggins but the locals greeted them with pitchforks and sticks. He was reading in his spare time.

Eight months later, he caught a spring cold and suffered ague for weeks. Jewel imagined the men taking turns ladling broth down his throat while he drifted in and out of sleep, lying in his rotten blankets. After that, the letters were strange—not normal letters at all; some were just a few lines long, with no hello or goodbye:

“I am harassed by questions and a desire to understand, much like Eve must have been harassed by the serpent. I fear a worm at my core.”

And:

“The trees are blighted with blister rust fungus. I dream about them.”

Jewel wasn’t sure whether to be concerned or annoyed by these notes so she didn’t mention it. When she wrote to him, she gave newsy but bland reports of Clifford and occasionally, casually, asked when he was coming back.

She saved his letters in a tobacco box, along with her grandmother’s handkerchief and a key she’d found years ago on a boarded sidewalk in Geary. Each Sunday night she allowed herself to take the letters out and re-read them; only Villa knew about them. For reasons she couldn’t explain, Jewel felt that if she talked about Frank or the letters he sent they might suddenly disappear, like a cloud dissolving in the sky, into the atmosphere, into nothing.

Frank came home three times during those years. On Christmas Eve, 1938, when Jewel had just turned nineteen, Frank showed up at the Webers’ house. His shoulders were wider and thicker, and his face was lean and clean-shaven. His hair looked as if it’d just been cut. When she looked at his eyes and his long black lashes, Jewel felt a thin whirling sensation in her chest, almost as if she’d just had a fright.  

Frank asked if she’d like to go to a show.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” she said. “Everything’s closed.”

Frank reached into his coat and brought out a package wrapped in brown paper. It was a copy of Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.  

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

She turned the book over in her hands and pretended to read the cover. “I didn’t know you were back,” she said. She surprised herself with the calmness she could manage. “You look different.”  

He reached for her hand. “Let’s go,” he said.

The clouds hung thick and low that night, and no stars were visible. The day had threatened snow, but none came. They drove for what seemed forever in the James’ Packard with a blanket spread over them. Frank stopped the car below a notched butte at the edge of a frozen field of basalt.  

There were no soft words of love, but his caresses were tender and sincere. When he touched her, it was as if he were handling a flower. She felt a strange impatience, like being hungry and thirsty at the same time but also neither. She buried her face in his neck and breathed against the warmth of his skin. He smelled of wool and aftershave.  

She’d thought the act itself would hurt, but it didn’t. The feeling was peculiar, even strange, but not at all unpleasant. The windows fogged over with their heated breath. Small cries came from her mouth and surprised her; sounds she’d never heard before. She explored, cautiously at first, the muscles in his back, his neck, and shoulders. His skin felt thin and tight, as if it had been stretched quickly over his frame, while her own, she thought, was thicker and deeper, as if it had grown slowly into place. Most curious of all was the idea of what they were doing; he’s inside me, she said to herself, incredulous. Frank is inside me.  

She had crossed a line she hadn’t seen coming, crossed it without thinking. For a moment she had an image of herself like a sleepwalker who inches toward harm but continues, unaware.

She hadn’t asked for a promise, and none was offered.  

On the drive back she asked if he was home to stay.  

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said.

Jewel wrapped the blanket tightly around her body and was silent for the rest of the drive. The clouds were clearing; the night had grown colder. When they arrived back at her house, she said, “Is this the part where you get down on one knee?”

She felt the words roll and fall out of her mouth, and as soon as she said them they sounded ugly and false even to her own ears. But she couldn’t help that.  

Frank said nothing for a moment, then took one of her hands. He squeezed it gently and ran his thumb along the backs of her fingers. The Weber’s dog had come up to the car sniffing expectantly, waiting for someone to get out. Jewel could hear its soft whimpering.

She started to reach for the door but Frank tightened his grip on her hand.

She sighed hard. “Am I just supposed to wait then, is that what you want?” She tried to speak gently; she didn’t want to sound angry or pleading.  

“I don’t want anything.”

“That’s a lie,” she said. 

Frank looked at her and took a breath as if he were about to speak, but then said nothing. She watched his breath come out in a slow white cloud and disappear into the night. Then he said, “I could never make you happy. You know it.”  

“And how do I know that?”  

“Jewel,” he said, reproachful and sad. “You do.”

She studied what she could see of his face in the half-light from the house. “It’s only difficult if you want it to be.”

He smiled weakly. “If only that were true.” 

That Sunday she left Frank’s letters in their box, but the memory of the two of them together crept into her thoughts and her dreams at night. Eventually she read all the letters again and reread them, analyzing each line. He needs time, is all, she thought. Who’ll love him more than I do? And she thought that with Frank’s next letter, she’d have to find a bigger box to store them.

But, as it turned out, she didn’t need a bigger box after all.

* * *

She saw him in the fall, when Villa married Lonnie Boyd. The day was sunny, warm, and crisp, and Villa looked so beautiful that Jewel felt truly happy for her friend, and pushed her own questions out of her mind.  

The reception was held outside in the shade of the giant poplars that lined one side of the park. As Villa’s maid of honor, Jewel brought glasses of punch to the old folks and helped serve the buffet. She wanted Villa’s day to be perfect. She refilled plates of potato salad and chicken and tried not to look at Frank. Karl Boyd played guitar and Heber Turnbull played a fiddle, and at one point, all the unmarried men circled Villa and sang, “Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider,” led by Del Simpson, Lonnie’s best man.    

The dancing was interrupted by the cutting of the cake, and Jewel was sitting with the bride and groom and some others when Frank joined them.

“Well, Frank,” Lonnie’s father said, “I hear you’re leaving us for Uncle Sam.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I’ve joined up.” He took a bite of cake.  

“Congratulations, Frank,” Del said.

Villa gave Jewel a discreet kick as if to say she meant to tell her.

“When do you leave?” Del asked. 

“You think Roosevelt’s going to get us into it then?” asked Lonnie.

“I think he’s just itching to,” said RJ Boyd.

“That thing’s a mess over there,” Lonnie said. “I don’t know if I’d be anxious to get into it.”

“I don’t see how we can’t,” said RJ. “What do you say, Frank?”

Frank dabbed his lip with his napkin. “I’m leaving on Thursday, Del,” he said.

“You boys shut up,” Villa said. “I don’t want any talk about war at my wedding.” She pushed aside her cake. “RJ,” she said, “get your brother and Heber to play something sweet. I want to dance with my husband.”

“Shoot yes, go on,” Jewel said and soon others joined in as well. Jewel sat at the table with Frank and Del, pretending to watch the dancers.

“I’d better get busy,” Jewel said, and started clearing plates.

“Wait, Jewel,” Del said, standing. “How about a dance?”  

“Oh,” she said, “I couldn’t. I have a lot to do.” She gathered plates together.

“Aw, come on now,” he said. “It’s a party.”

She thought for a moment that this would be a perfect time for Frank to step in, to give her some direction, some inkling of his feelings.  

But he did nothing. He was silent. She felt an anger mounting inside her, as if Frank had put her in this situation deliberately, as if he were sitting there amused by it all, watching her humiliation blossom into understanding. As if it were funny. She saw her life stretched out before her, lonely and wasted, waiting for Frank, for him to do something or to say something. And he never would. There was never going to be any more. She was such a fool.

She looked at Del, this boy standing before her with his simple, clear blue eyes. She swallowed and said, “You’re right Del. I’d be delighted.” She was aware of a catch in her voice and the plates clattered when she put them back on the table, but she managed it all without looking at Frank.

While they danced, Jewel kept her eyes on Del’s shoulder or his tie. She was afraid that looking at his face might encourage him to speak. She made an effort to breathe deeply and slowly.

“I know you’re upset,” Del said.

Her face was already flushed. She drew in a breath and held it.  

He cleared his throat a bit. “I’d never treat you that way.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. Her glance jumped around to the other dancing couples, as if someone might be listening.

“Yes, you do. You know exactly what—and who—I mean.”

They kept dancing, but Jewel felt exposed as if everyone were staring at her.  

Then he said, “But I want you to know that we don’t have to talk about it.”

She looked at him and studied his eyes a moment. They were as calm and blue as water.

“I mean, ever,” he said.

He adjusted his hold around her waist and didn’t speak again for the rest of the song. 

* * *

After Frank left for the army, Leland and Lyle Boyd joined up. When the war broke out, Karl Boyd, the youngest, and Del Simpson, and several other men from Clifford who could leave their farms, joined too. To replace the vanishing men, women were welcomed into jobs that weren’t possible before. Jewel went to work in a sugar beet factory in Marlington. In the plant, she relished the long hours of sorting cossettes and the pride of an actual paycheck. There was a grace in sheer productivity, available to her any time she desired. She wasn’t waiting for anybody; she had too much to do to think about that.

The workers inside the plant were all women from surrounding towns. Out in the fields, German POWs worked along with Japanese citizens who’d been relocated from the coast, now stationed in nearby camps. Jewel had little contact with these people. They represented the enemy but she knew the work couldn’t get done without them. Of course the Japanese didn’t look like spies—they looked like families, women and children out of place—but what else would you expect of spies? And the Germans seemed happy enough; they didn’t look like prisoners.

Jewel’s civic pride was bolstered by the prosperity the war brought. Of the world situation, she paid attention only to the news she considered most important. But it was confusing—this business with the Japanese: Governor Clark said they lived and acted like rats. He didn’t want them here because, after a taste of beautiful Idaho, they’d all want to stay. Jewel knew the Minidoka camp was out in the hard desert; not exactly beautiful Idaho. Meanwhile, some farmers admitted the Japanese were honest and hard-working, and the camps were unfair. She heard they were crammed into shacks, fenced in with barbed wire, but also that they had lots of butter and sugar. She thought, as long as they were corralled up safely and helping the effort, all this fussing should quit. They’re just Japs.

Her father told her to set aside a full half of each paycheck. “Prices are good now, but they’ll fall again, sure as hell they will. Just like the last war.” He bought her a metal strong box to lock the money in.

The beet plant seemed to stink more at night than it did during the day, especially on overcast nights when the weather was cold. It reminded her of dung fires that sheepherders made. After three years, she never got used to the smell. During the week, Jewel stayed in the company dorm, but she didn’t care to socialize with the other women; their mindless chatter galled her. They never stopped complaining about the work and how they missed their boyfriends or husbands overseas. Each Saturday, when her father drove her away from the lighted plumes of the smokestacks, she heaved a sigh of relief. She liked the paycheck, but she knew it was temporary, and she longed for the war’s end. And though she wouldn’t admit it even to herself, she longed for Frank to come home. 

* * *

In 1944, she learned Frank was coming back after having been wounded in the Philippines. Then one day she saw him outside the mercantile. He seemed more remote than before—and slighter, dimmer. On that warm autumn afternoon the leaves were shimmering green to yellow and the sun shone in a giant blue sky without clouds. She held two cases of Mason jars in her arms when Frank said, “Let me.” 

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve got it.” She saw that his face was lined hard, and there were circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t been sleeping. He lifted the boxes from her arms.  

“I’m not such an old woman as that, you know,” she said.

Frank put the boxes on the front seat of her family’s truck. “I know.”  

“I heard you were wounded,” she said, noticing his limp.

“Yes.”

Jewel shifted on her feet. One arm crossed her ribs and held the other arm at the elbow, gently fingering a scab there. “But you seem all right now,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I am.”

They stood, not speaking, and Jewel squinted in the sun and itched the scab on her elbow. She wanted to ask how long he’d been back and if he planned to stay. She wanted to ask how he’d survived the war, where he’d fought, and what people and things he’d seen. She wanted to ask how many sleepless nights he’d spent thinking of her, or if he knew—did he even know one?—of the millions of things she had stored in her heart, blossoming again at the sight of him and pushing against its walls.  

She raised her hand to shield her eyes and shifted her feet again. Her hand shook slightly. With the sun shining behind him, Frank’s face was in shadow, and he looked young again.  

“It’s good to see you, Jewel,” he said. He touched his hat and left.

* * *

When Frank married Carol Yakamoto, Jewel said nothing but she felt as if the world had lost its floor and its ceiling. Her suffering went undetected as her neighbors were preoccupied with their own devastation. The Yakamotos had spent the war in the Minidoka camp, and the James family took them in when it closed. Jewel tried to remember if she’d seen Carol in the fields, but they all looked alike to her. At least Frank had had the decency to sneak off to the next county and spare his family and the town the embarrassment of a ceremony. Still, the gossip was bitter. Jewel was afraid of being brought into the scandal, and she received what she thought were several glances of condolence but didn’t hear her name mentioned. The town was livid:  he’d been wounded fighting against them for his country—he was bookish but not sick in the head—how could he marry an ignorant Jap?  

Jewel felt a quiet satisfaction when she heard such things, but the feeling also shamed her. There’d been a shift between the things she understood and the things she didn’t. So maybe Frank didn’t love her, but was that reason enough not to marry her? The question shamed her as well. He didn’t love her, fine—but he couldn’t love Carol Yakamoto. It was a gesture, a challenge. The whole thing. He didn’t care about the townsfolk; he was calling them all bigots. He was throwing it in their faces, showing what a big man he was. She could hardly believe it: he probably thinks he’s in love with an idea of humanity, when he’s really just in love with an idea of himself. 

Then let him, she thought. Let him.

And then one day, there came Del Simpson. One summer afternoon he came to the Weber’s house and, over lemonade, he asked if she’d like to watch him at the rodeo.

If the war had changed him any, Jewel couldn’t see it. A little older, maybe, but that would figure; the same peaceful face and eyes like still blue water. He was never the kind of man in the middle of the action, content to sit on the fence and watch. 

“Are you riding broncs?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, obviously relieved she hadn’t assumed he’d enter the bulls. “And team roping with Lonnie.”

Jewel looked over his sandy features and remembered the day of Villa’s wedding. Here was a man who knew what he wanted, what was important. And he was patient. She hadn’t heard of him going after any other girls, but surely, didn’t he have other prospects? She wondered briefly, what did he see in her? He wasn’t tall, but he wasn’t short; he wasn’t slim or stocky; not brilliant, but not dumb. At twenty-five she still had something of a figure. Practically speaking, hadn’t she better get on with it?

“All right, then,” she said.

In six weeks they were engaged. They went to ice cream socials at the park, had dinner with each other’s parents, or spent the evening listening to the radio. They didn’t have long conversations in the night or gaze dreamily into each other’s eyes, but Del was agreeable and eager to please her. He liked to fish and eat peanuts. She was glad when they married; she felt as if she’d completed a long race and was glad to have crossed this line with intention. Romance was a phase she’d grown out of and thank God it was over. And with that, she sealed off one part of herself from the rest. 

* * *

After Evie drove off with her boyfriend, Jewel and Del had supper. Courting was a field in which Jewel was not an expert, but people, that was something she knew about. Of course Evie would fall for a boy like that—the way he threw money around, the little gifts and traipsing all over God’s green acre. She’s in love, Jewel thought. She thinks love is all she needs.  

And as soon as she thought it, she knew—Evie in love, looking sick everyday—good God, Jewel said to herself. She’s having a baby.     

She let out a long breath and felt a chill run over her shoulders. Del was chewing away at his hamburger, oblivious. He smiled at her.

Look at him, she thought. He’s dying to be a grandpa, he’ll love it. Just wait’ll he hears. What a fool.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. Look at what that boy’s done. A layabout and a shirker. He’ll cheat on her, that’s for sure—everything’s been way too easy for him. He might spoil her with presents but he’ll be faithless as a cur. And Evie will suffer for it, that’s the sad truth. She will certainly suffer. She’s happy now, sure. She’ll have no idea until it all falls apart. Jewell could just see Jimmy out drinking with his friends and grabbing at some woman while Evie lay sleepless in their marriage bed, wondering where he was. She remembered her own sleepless nights wondering about Frank and felt her heart ache. Night after night, the long hours alone in the dark. It was too late to warn Evie now. Her heart was on the block and Jewel couldn’t do a thing about it.

She looked at her husband and felt a biting wind blow through her. The way he pushed Evie at that boy from the start, like he was a catch or something. A prince. “Well, Grandpa,” she said, “how’s your dinner?” She watched him chewing as her words floated across to his simple mind. She smiled a thin smile.

 “Grandpa?” he said a little warily. “Am I looking that old? I guess I am. I guess we’ll both be old Grandma and Grandpa one of these days.”

“Maybe sooner than you think.” She took a small bite of corn relish, a mixture of sweetness and vinegar filling her mouth. 

He looked at her.

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

She hadn’t actually planned to tell him, not until after she talked to Evie, anyway. She just wanted to make him wonder if she knew something that he didn’t.

“If you got something to say, Jewel, just come out with it.”

“All right.” She took a breath and felt something tighten inside her, an old and disappointed knot. She leaned forward and crossed her arms on the table. “Late April, early May. Give or take. First-borns are often late.” She looked at him close, watching the news sink in.

He took a few deep breaths through his nose and his eyes narrowed. He was looking at her but focused on something else, and then his jaw tightened and moved.

“No,” he said slowly, drawing it out. “No. That can’t be.”

 “Well,” she said, “it is.”

They sat that way for a minute, staring at each other over the table. Then Jewel took a quick breath and stood. She carried a few plates to the sink and Del said, “Don’t do that just now.”

She turned on the water.

“I said, don’t do that now. Sit down!”

The force in his voice was unexpected. She turned off the water and wiped her hands calmly. Then she sat down.

“When did she tell you?” Del asked.

“Why didn’t she come to you first—isn’t that what you mean?”

“Dammit, Jewel. I just want to know how long.” His hands were in fists on either side of his plate. “How long has—under my roof, lying to me—”

“The girl’s got no sense! And that boy, Romeo you called him! He’s a lazy skunk!”

“My little girl...”

“Little girl,” Jewel said with disgust. “All the sense of a damn rabbit.”

Del made a sound like laughter, but it wasn’t. He looked at Jewel and shook his head. He sunk back in his chair, took a breath, and swallowed it; his hands fluttered on the table. “You ruined her,” he said.  

“Me? You’re the one who threw her at that boy. ‘Aren’t they cute together? Isn’t he a prince?’ You’re a blind fool!”

“It’s because of you,” he said, turning his face toward her. He looked ill. “She’s just like you. She couldn’t keep her legs together any better than you.”

Jewel felt all the blood drain from her face with a numbing tingle. For a moment she was completely stunned; too shocked, too incensed, too humiliated to speak.  

“I always thought you was used goods. Now I know I was right,” he said. He shook his head slowly. His eyes were filling up with water. “The best thing I had—the only thing I had—and you ruined her.”

As she sat there, it was hard to tell what was worse—what he said or what it did to him to say it. He was blotchy and pale, his eyes red and teary. He wiped at his face roughly. Looking at him was frightening.

“You’re crazy,” she said. “She’s nothing like me at all. She—”  

And then it was obvious. Of all the ways she’d failed her daughter, this was the worst: she never told her what a disappointment love could be, how it could ruin your life. To fall in love with a man who could never love her the way she needed, the way she deserved. To pine away and always wonder—what was so wrong with her? And never have an answer, no choice but to bury herself with a consolation prize of a life.

Del pushed his chair back and stood, startling her with the scrape of wood stuttering on wood. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose, collecting himself. “Get her married then,” he said. “God damn.” He pressed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I don’t want to know when, I don’t want to know where. Just get it done.” 

She listened to his movements as he went into the mudroom and pulled on his jacket. The back door creaked open and shut again. She heard the gravel grind under his feet and then the truck tires as he drove away.  

How long she sat there, she couldn’t tell. The evening sun moved slowly; its weakening rays shone through the kitchen window, slanting through the glass and lighting a stream of dust motes. They hung suspended, turning and flickering even as the light dimmed, as if they lit the passageway to a secret portal. But Jewel knew there was no portal. It was just dust. Sunlight and dust.