54 THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER18, 2021
heard him say, “Lord have mercy, Daddy.
You’d give shit a bad name.”
Cary’s other grandfather, the glow-
ing parent of Cary’s mother, a former
Miss Arkansas—or a runner-up, depend-
ing on who was telling the story—was
a lunatic entrepreneur named J. Lonn
Griggs, who’d made a fortune selling
swamp coolers, reconditioned tractors,
and vitamins. Grandpa Griggs had long
white hair like a preacher’s, and, accord-
ing to Cary’s father, was as crooked as
the back leg of a dog. He adored Cary
and Cary adored him back.
T
o reach the canyon, it was necessary
for Cary to circumvent a property
vehemently marked with “No Trespass-
ing” signs, a house with a circular drive-
way that looked like a West Coast taco
shop. A figure appeared on the lawn as
he passed, a glint of binoculars, and pres-
ently an A.T.V. dashed down toward
him. Cary pressed on, his fanny pack and
its contents jabbing the small of his back,
but encountered more signs. It was hard
to say how far this property extended.
The rider of the A.T.V. stopped at
the line of sagebrush that Cary had
hoped would make him less conspicu-
ous, dismounted, and hung his bino-
culars on the handlebar. He was there,
it was clear, to confront Cary, and though
he seemed in no hurry, Cary sensed that
it might not be appropriate
to go on his way. He waited
as the man approached,
a tall, white-haired fellow
in khaki pants and a blue
checked shirt, with a fierce
smile on his face. The smile
suggested to Cary that the
man was about to introduce
himself, but instead he heard
in bell-like tones, as he drew
closer, “You’re trespassing.”
“I’m so sorry but I’m on my way to
visit my grandfather’s homestead, just”—
Cary pointed—“at the mouth of that
big coulee.”
Without changing his smile, the man
said, “There’s nothing there anymore.
And I own it.”
“Ah,” Cary said, and continued on
his way.
He heard the man call out, “Do you
know our sheriff? He was born here.”
“So was I,” Cary said.
It was a beautiful day for a walk, and
his mind was filled with family memo-
ries and memories of the girl he’d mar-
ried and to whom he should have stayed
married. His father had been displeased
with him for his part in the breakup, a
painful thought just now. Once, he’d sat
with his parents in their kitchen as they
talked without wondering if he should
be listening. Often they were tipsy, with
the mellow look in their eyes that he
would eventually dread. “The cop,” his
father mused, “claimed I had wandered
across the yellow line four times. I told
him I was distracted because I was eat-
ing. The cop says, ‘I don’t see no food.’ I
said, ‘That’s because I ate it.’ The cop
says, ‘Just go home, you’re drunk.’” They
giggled complacently. Cary remembered
how peacefully they’d enjoyed the story;
they had a kind of companionship, he
supposed, one that began when his fa-
ther had the uncertain future of a fighter
pilot and his mother was a pilot’s wife.
Years later, when these two handsome
people had wearied, one of those funny
stories had turned into a quarrel and his
mother had dropped her head to the
counter and wept that she’d been Miss
Arkansas. “The world was my oyster!”
By then, they no longer shared these mo-
ments with Cary, who, twirling a cap pis-
tol, heard this from the top of the stairs.
Then they were in love again, both love
and rage fuelled by alcohol. They found
it irresistible. By late in the
day, you could see how tire-
some life had become with-
out it. Over time, his father
managed better; she went
crazy, with raccoon eyes and
strawlike orange hair. On
nights when she “did her
number”—a frightening
performance of laments and
despair—his father turned
to him to explain, “The sit-
uation is hopeless but not serious.” Soon
she was reminiscing about being the “lady
love” of various Arkansas landowning
boyfriends. Cary caught his father’s eye.
His father smothered a smile, while Cary
fought back a dazed sensation. If it was
funny, he couldn’t bring himself to laugh.
When Cary was twelve, his father
asked him to record her. He thought it
would help if she, sober, could hear how
she sounded. “I was wearing a wire!”
Cary’s former wife, a normal person raised
by normal people, was fascinated by theingenuity of dysfunctional families. “Are
you serious? Record your own mother?”
His parents increasingly relied on elec-
tricity—cardioversion for his father’s un-
reliable heart, shock therapy for his moth-
er’s brain, a wire for self-awareness. “Had
to hook ’em up,” Cary explained to his
therapist. He had little to say to, or to
hear from, the therapist, Dr. Something-
or-Other. Cary was there only to reduce
his meds—not to hear, in so many words,
that there was more to life than getting
even with one’s progenitors. Why pick
on high-functioning basket cases?Y
ou might not know the homestead
had ever existed were it not for the
fragments of foundation, some persistent
hollyhocks, a caved-in stock tank, and a
bit of still diverted creek. When a home-
steader failed, the neighbors swept in to
take anything they could use, even the
log walls. Here they had left a tub and
a wringer and the lid of a washing ma-
chine. Cary knelt to pick it up and saw
the thick gray-green mottled curl of a
rattlesnake. He lowered the lid carefully,
shutting off the sound of the rattle. He
dusted his hands vigorously, raised his
eyebrows, and exhaled.
A hand-dug well was dry, the debris
of its walls filling it. Some of the walls
still stood, and here Cary dropped the
cannister with his father’s ashes and the
Vietnam Air Medal, pushing in the re-
mains of the wall to cover them. His fa-
ther had asked him to do this: “If you
have nothing better to do.” He thought
of putting a memento of the place in his
now collapsed fanny pack, but nothing
caught his eye. Honestly, nothing about
the scene was familiar at all.
The landowner was at the fence as
he passed. “I told you there wasn’t any-
thing left.”
“I wanted to see it.”
“See what?”
Cary winced. “Not much. Just the
lid of an old washing machine. I long
ago hid five perfect arrowheads under-
neath it. They were still there! I didn’t
disturb them.”
Cary kept walking as he heard the
A.T.V. head toward the homestead. When
he got to the county road, his rental car
was missing. “What’ll they think of next?”
he mused. It made for a splendid after-
noon walk in open country past the prai-
rie foothills, a snowy saw edge far away.