Where was the end of it? What would she do when the pain struck again, blinding her, when a walk with Peter was no solace — and she knew certain relief lurked behind a small locked door?
How unnatural that she and George live in the same house with the brother! It never worked out; you read that everywhere, and everywhere saw the results. But how challenge George’s affection for his brother, his family? If Phil would but understand, and build a place of his own. Near, if necessary, and a place much better suited to his needs. She understood why Phil would be no happier with her than she with him — but it was absurd to think of her and George’s building a place on some other part of the ranch and leaving Phil in a house of sixteen rooms. No, no, there was no possibility of Phil’s moving and there was no possibility of their moving. Somehow, she had got to speak to Phil, to offer again her friendship, make him understand. After all, the man was a human being. Wasn’t he a human being?
But what must she make him understand? That he was rude and filthy and insulting? Suppose that after the ‘talk’ with him he was to report to his brother that she had called him rude, filthy and insulting? Would George forgive her? God knew, blood was thicker than water, and a wife was no blood kin to her husband.
In following days it struck her that she might be a little mad, that another woman might have known Phil and been unmoved. It was not Phil she was married to. She began a score of imaginary speeches that she heard in her mind as quiet-voiced and reasonable, and in each she began by saying, ‘Phil, why don’t you like me?’
To which he replied, in her mind, ‘Not like you? I don’t understand …’
George himself had said that Phil’s strange silences were just Phil’s ‘way.’
Then, in imagination, Phil would stare out the window — the conversations were in the living room — and Phil would at last smile, and offer his hand in friendship, and there it was. With his friendship, she would welcome overlooking the uncombed hair, the curious odors he exuded, his yanking that chair out from the table and stepping over it, his curious mocking when she played the piano — and above all — his unwashed hands. Those hands! They were Phil! He had every right to play his banjo! It was nervousness had made her not quite sane. The headaches in themselves …
But when she found herself alone in the living room, the setting precisely so, George gone somewhere, Peter working up in his room — each time she lost heart, teetered on a precipice. Walking that tightwire with no net below, marveling that she’d had the audacity even to consider approaching him.
He’s only a man, she would insist to herself, only another with secret problems; but teetering on the precipice, walking that tightwire, she knew he was a great deal more than a human being, or a great deal less; no human speech would move him.
Safe in the pink room, she regained a tiny confidence and reviewed the conversations. It was the sight and sound of him that drained her courage and left her sick and empty — his glance, his eyes, his power when he closed a door, broke open a book; she feared he might break into the cold, derisive laughter she’d heard burst from the bunkhouse when he visited the help, a laughter as jagged and sharp as glass, as keen as lightning; was it directed at her or at her son? And now she had crossed him because of the Indians.
But my God, what could she have done about the Indians? A little grass for an old horse, a few potatoes, a little beef that would spoil anyway. There was an appalling spoilage of meat in the summertime: an entire quarter regularly spoiled and was thrown out as a feast for magpies, dogs, and cats gone wild. It was that, on the one hand; on the other it was a child’s humiliation, a little boy’s. She’d have been craven indeed not to have spoken up; and to tell the truth, Phil’s attitude toward her was the same as before the Indian question.
She had but one chance of speaking with Phil, and that was if she had the courage. And the courage was behind the same locked door. Not quite that: the last time she had removed a bottle, she wrapped it in a towel and hid it in the clothes hamper in the bathroom, reckoning George would not miss a single bottle. And taking the bottle was safer than the dangerous expedient of watering it. And she would replace it.
When she had spoken to Phil (she told herself) she would never again deceive. Once she had spoken, she would confess her curious little theft to George.
George’s absence at the table always pointed up an awkwardness; present or not, his place was set and the meat of the day placed there. Since the departure of the Old Gent, George carved. There was an unvarying pattern of meat, a rigid sequence of meat at the table, and the alert knew exactly how long since a cow was butchered — a cow, yes, for steers were never butchered; steers were more valuable on the market, and no better eating than cows.
The one meat, they said out there, that you could keep on eating and eating was beef.
Right after butchering, maybe that very night, the liver appeared sliced, fried so the edges curled, and served up with onions and bacon. Next came the heart, stuffed with bread, and baked. The ribs lasted many days, boiled or braised, sunk in molten suet. Then a week of roasts — some weighing thirty pounds. Last came the steaks — fried heartlessly in suet and drowned in catsup. Little of the front quarters came to the table, for when the hindquarters were used the flies had had their way in spite of the white shrouds that covered the meat, out the front quarters went, eager maggots and all, to animals and birds.
In that log house human speech was repugnant, the chattering of nincompoops and the babble of fools. Small wonder the timid talked of cabbages and speed of the wind.
Rose could no longer even talk to Peter, but reasoned that the trouble might be that he was sixteen, and a male; she could not understand his dedication to a doubtful future, and the activities such dedication required. Two gophers he had drowned out from their holes he had put in little boxes covered with screen; she couldn’t imagine them as pets; he seemed to like them, and took them to his room. They startled Lola, gone to make Peter’s bed; she reported the gophers healthy — ‘cute little buggers.’ Later, attracted by a ‘funny smell’ she found both gophers dead, their bodies skinned, on a newspaper lying with their paws to heaven.
‘You shouldn’t do it in the house,’ Rose told Peter. ‘No, I mean it.’
He had smiled and put his arm around her. ‘Where would a man get, if he always listened to his mother?’
How he’s grown up, she thought, and looked at her hands. Could she inquire into the fate of the rabbit he had whisked upstairs?
Not only was human speech repugnant in that house, but any sudden sound; the bright clatter of the triangle beside the door of the back dining room made Rose’s pulse race; now it rang a few hours after George’s departure for the bank meeting.
The hired hands burst into the back dining room and she heard their muffled laughter soaring above the insistent voice of a man Lola reported as crazy, who sometimes lingered in the back dining room and told her pretty things.
‘I like to’ve died,’ Lola reported to Rose. ‘Oh, he’s really crazy.’ His craziness drove her to more meticulous care of her hair and the lamp burned long under the curling tongs, the singed smell drifted down the stairs. By the light of the moon the young man said how he saved his money. He would go to Chicago, Lola reported; at a school in the magazines he would repair radios, and make big money.
Lola opened the door to the front dining room bearing a roast she set at George’s vacant place; the laughter from the back dining room followed her. ‘Everything ready,’ she called, and played the chimes beside the door.
This last time, this very last time, Rose had had a drink for courage — well, three drinks over the course of the morning, while she made up her mind. She had masked the odor with a mint. But when Peter came down she kept her distance. His hair was wet from the water he used for grooming. She felt deliciously calm. ‘What have you been doing up there?’
‘Working on a rabbit,’ he said.
‘Phil hasn’t yet come,’ and she had to decide a
gain whether she and Peter should go in and sit down, or wait for Phil — whether it was to her advantage to be sitting at the table with her son beside her, or whether she should wait out of courtesy or protocol. She killed a sharp little resentment that George hadn’t asked her to go with him, for having left her to make a ridiculous decision. What did it matter whether she did go in or didn’t go in? But the world hung on it. What was her life and George’s and Peter’s that such trivia should loom as crucial? Living was so narrow that she brooded nights about what dress to wear the next day; she looked forward each day to the passing of the stage, watching for the dust; she dreaded Sundays when it didn’t run, and there was nothing to look for, nothing to stop her from thinking of Phil in his room, silent but there, his door closed. She felt choked, and tears suddenly stung her eyes.
When the triangle out back was still and the men had settled to their food, she rose, glanced at Peter who leafed through a magazine. He looked at her strangely.
Why would he look at her so? What had she done? She spoke sharply, to test her authority. ‘Peter, I told you I didn’t want you — doing that to rabbits. Not in the house. It’s not much to ask.’ Then she knew the rabbit business was no more important than the stage business, that what-dress-to-wear business. ‘Let’s go to the table.’
Thus, Phil found them at the table.
He gave them a glance. He pulled back George’s chair. He stepped between it and the table, carved meat, and handed it to Peter who handed it to his mother. Phil pushed a plate to Peter, pulled out his chair, stepped over it and sat. No word was spoken. As Phil chewed, he gazed with day-blue eyes across to mountains twelve thousand feet high. All at that table had been watchers of that mountain; most, embarrassed by the silence and longing for the lilt of human speech, talked of the advance or retreat of the snow above the timberline. Rose parted her lips to speak but in sudden revolt refused to pay the mountain homage. Instead, she looked up, having found the clatter of silver painful. ‘Tomorrow,’ she offered, ‘is the longest day.’
‘That’s right,’ Peter said. ‘The longest day in the year.’
‘I like the longer days,’ Rose said.
‘I’d like a little more meat,’ Peter said. ‘Would you like a little more meat, Rose?’
‘More meat?’ She looked at Peter with astonishment; never before had she heard guests or family demand more meat; George, as a good host, saw to it that he offered meat before a desire for it could be expressed. Not only had Peter defied protocol by expressing his wish for meat before it was offered, but in inquiring whether she wished more meat had suddenly assumed the authority of one able to offer it.
Whether Phil would have risen and gone to George’s place and sliced more meat, Rose never knew; for when Peter spoke, he rose, went to George’s place and carved off two pieces. Before Rose could pass her plate, Phil turned a long, reptilian look on Peter, and then on her. He blinked once, pushed back his chair, rose and left the table. She had never heard him excuse himself from the table. Phil made no excuses. But neither had she seen him leave a meal before dessert. Pulse racing, she watched him choose a magazine from the table in the living room and sit, and read.
She looked across the expanse of white cloth at Peter and smiled, uncertain what her smile might mean; she rang the silver bell.
Dessert was a curious concoction known as ambrosia — sliced oranges sprinkled with boxed coconut. She touched her spoon. Then the dish with the oranges was in her lap, then on the floor.
‘I’ll get it,’ Peter said, beside her.
‘I don’t think I want any dessert,’ she said, ‘just now.’ She got up.
‘I don’t either,’ said Peter, and they left the table, Peter to go upstairs, maybe to his rabbit, she to stand before the bookcase where her eyes roamed the titles. She felt calm. She could choose a title as casually as Phil chose a magazine. Strange how calm and nervousness came and went. She chose a book, opened it, read a sentence, then closed it on her finger, as if keeping the place, wanting something in her hands, something to do with her hands while she spoke, that they might not simply hang at her sides.
She turned and spoke to him.
‘Phil,’ she asked, her smile open, friendly and calm, ‘why do you dislike me so?’
Silence fell like a shadow. She glanced into the face of the clock, as if for a clue. It was minutes from striking. Now she looked back at Phil. His eyes were on her, cold as a reptile’s.
‘Please tell me, Phil.’
He said it before she heard it. She was braced for another pause, and instead his voice came. ‘I dislike you,’ he said, ‘because you’re a cheap little schemer, and because you get into George’s booze.’ He looked back at the face of his magazine.
She reached up to touch her hair. Then she turned. As straight as she could carry herself she drifted to the pink bedroom and closed the door behind her. Inside, her shoulders sagged, and she moved, touching furniture toward the big bed. There she lay face down, trying to refuse the words she’d heard. She was quite dry-eyed, and sick with cold although summer drifted in through the window. She lay like one in shock, passively absorbing the sounds of the ranch outside, the clink of the latch on the bunkhouse door, the report of a small rifle as the men played at the noon game of shooting magpies perched warily on the butcher pen, the shouts of triumph or failure — sounds that for a time kept at bay the sound of Phil’s voice, his brutal calm, his chilly eye, the cruelly expressive word ‘booze,’ the scornful ‘cheap’ and her own wooden smile after he had left the table — meant to telegraph to Peter her ability to protect him. She felt suffocated in the void between her intention and her ability, and shattered by loneliness.
Now she heard Phil’s firm footsteps pass the door, go down the hall. The recent protector of Indians, the erstwhile arranger of flowers, brought her fist to her mouth.
Upstairs Peter stood at the dormer window that looked on the sagebrush hill, his narrow thin hands one on top of the other. Turning, he went to the mirror over the bookcase where he kept his father’s books, and there combed his hair carefully. Finished, he continued to watch himself, and dragged his thumb across the teeth of the comb. His lips formed a single word. ‘Phil …’
12
Just as it was George’s function to sit at the head of the table, to keep the books, to palaver with the buyers, to write letters, answer the telephone and keep the Reo running, so it was Phil’s to oversee haying operations, to inspect the equipment and repair the eight mowing machines — four John Deeres and four McCormack-Deerings — the six buck rakes, the six sulky rakes, the two derricks, the cookshack and the dining shack — little houses on sledges they dragged from camp to camp. He had the twelve big canvas tents removed from the shed and unrolled and inspected for rips and tears. He directed where the water should be turned out of the main creeks in the early summer for irrigation, he inspected the growth of the hay; he set the date for haying to begin — as soon as possible after the Fourth of July — ‘the Glorious Fourth’ as Phil thought of it.
On the Fourth the migrant workers who gathered outside the poolhalls in Herndon had a last fling before hiring out as hay hands on the ranches that fanned out from the town.
One last fling: and to sustain them during the ninety days of haying they held the memory of flags in the streets, the sun glittering on the yellow brass of the Herndon Municipal Band that oomped and tooted on the smooth fragrant lawn beside the railroad station, the rodeo at the fairgrounds, dust and hot dogs, firecrackers popping the night before, bonfires and — if they were lucky — plenty of booze and the whispered excitements of some little lady upstairs. Sure, the law ran them in — the sick and disorderly, those infected with wobbly principles. The law ran them in as vagrants, and for a night or two they sang and wept and fought in the filthy cells in the rear of the courthouse. They came to the ranches pale with celebration, silent and contrite. They dropped off the stage at the Burbank ranch or hitched rides, or walked from Beech where they’d dropped
off a freight. Ready for work, eyes bloodshot, hands trembling, but game and willing. ‘Hello there, old-timer,’ Phil would greet them in front of the house.
‘Hello there, Phil,’ they’d say, and Phil would shake hands with them, touched by their loyalty. Phil was moved by loyalty, and more than once felt a lump in his throat. He handled the men well, and they worked for him well, and said comfortably among themselves that he was common as an old shoe.
‘Well, it’s another year,’ Phil would remind them, proud of the continuity, that there was yet something unchanging in life. He walked with them around the side of the house to the barn where the dogs, whose memories are short, bristled and barked.
‘Pipe down, you mutts,’ Phil would laugh, and shy a stone at them. Ki-yi-ing, the dogs retreated under the barn where their barking was muffled and defiant, and the hay hands unrolled their beds in the hay until all the men had gathered and the outfit moved down to the fields with the machinery, the horses, the tents and the cookshack.
One thing about Phil — he was no snob. He gave credit where credit was due — always had, and so he got the confidence of men who had never before spoken frankly to another human being. Year after year there returned a handsome whitehaired old man who had worked in a circus; he moved and stood like a boy, but his eyes mirrored those tragedies he had confessed to Phil. For all his good looks, he had been the lowliest in the circus: he carted away horse and elephant droppings. Without morals in those bad days, his merry eyes had seduced many young women. The last of them, having borne his child, had died.
This shocking death had brought him to his senses; he adopted a roster of strict new morals that were subject to only fleeting human frailty. He advanced himself to teamster and drew a scarlet cage of lions from town to town. He got himself a Bible and read it by lamplight, preparing himself to resist the next temptation and to become the father he longed to be.
The Power of the Dog Page 19
