Old Enough

The night mountain air coming through the open window cools the house so that my sisters and I cover ourselves with freshly washed white sheets and quilts. Lately, Dad can't sleep at night. He walks outside back and forth across the sagebrush Idaho fields. Then well past midnight, he comes into our room after he thinks we are asleep and stands at the foot of our bed.

I feel a presence. I know he is there because the air smells of him—a stench of fish blood, sweat, and sweet sage. He haunts us. A dark aura of heat surrounds him.

He raises his cracked, red fisherman hands and scans us, eyes fixed. I want to pull the quilt over my head, but I don't move until he leaves the room.

The next morning as we load the car Mother warns: "Remember, Austin, those are your daughters. Your daughters."

Dad is wearing a navy blue serge wool suit with high-water britches, the same suit he wears to work, to church, and to fish in. A suit is required for his job selling subscriptions for the Idaho Statesman Daily Newspaper. The farmers he calls on wear Levi's or bib overalls. Dad has a 1930 Model A Ford. It is thirteen years old. Most of the farmers don't have cars. He sits in it out by their farmhouses until the farmer calls off the barking dogs. He is a good salesman, telling those bits and pieces of news, mostly about Roosevelt's New Deal. He laughs and says, "President Roosevelt added some new letters. We not only have the ccc and the wpa, but now the aaa and the rep. The Rural Electrification Plan means we folks in the rural areas are going to get electricity."

Then he sells a subscription. If they don't have money, Dad will trade for sage honey, peaches and pears from their trees, or sometimes a live chicken, and then he pays for the subscription out of his salary.

My sister Venetta and I are taking our first trip with Dad on his job. She is thirteen. I am six. We head toward Silver City, a mining town. "Forget it, forget it," he mumbles, shaking his head as he winds around the mountains and dirt roads. Collar dirty, tie not right, high-water britches wrinkled, Dad is "working the route," as he calls it. He never gets lost. Dad has an uncanny sense of direction, even on the one-lane dirt roads. "Forget it, forget it," he repeats. Dad has been saying "forget it, forget it" since he became involved with the polygamists out of Short Creek.

We stop for pie and coffee at the Golden Café. The Mormon Church does not allow coffee, but Dad makes an exception whenever we stop for pie or gather around a campfire. He sits down on the stool and asks the waitress and other customers at the bar, "Has anyone read the Statesman this morning? The Statesman is a daily paper." Then he thumps his finger on the counter as he says, "There is only one other daily paper in the whole state of Idaho—the Capitol, out of Boise."

"So, you are a traveling salesman?" a man asks.

"No, sir, I am not a traveling salesman," Dad winks at the waitress in the café as he proudly spreads his arms. "I am a solicitor. I've been working this territory for eighteen years, alone on the road all week. Course this week I got two of my seven children." He points his thumb at us without looking.

Before we leave, Dad asks the waitress if she will marry him. Venetta tugs on Dad's coat and says, "Dad, you're already married."

"Are you some kind of wacky polygamist?" the waitress asks.

"I am a polygamist," Dad brags, sticking his thumbs in his belt, "and God has commanded me to take another wife. I feel you will be perfect."

Venetta and I start pulling on the sleeves of Dad's suit coat. "Come on, Dad. Let's go!" I say as I duck my...