One evening the college station aired an interview with New Mexico US Senator Dennis Chávez, who discussed the GI Bill of 1944 that he’d helped get passed in Congress. Matt’s interest peaked when the senator explained the educational benefits available to eligible veterans. Not only was tuition fully covered, but every veteran enrolled as a full-time student received a fifty-dollar-a-month subsistence allowance during the school year. Matt wrote the information down and told Patrick he was going to look into it next time he had business in Las Cruces.
Patrick guffawed and said anything other than land that the government gave away for free probably wasn’t worth the bother. And even then, they could come and take it back like they did to McDonald. It made Matt wonder if the entire Tularosa would get permanently swallowed up by the army.
***
On the first Monday in July, Matt drove to the campus of the New Mexico College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts in Las Cruces. He hadn’t been there in years and the changes were dramatic. During the Great Depression, the campus had been used by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and later on, in the early years of the war, it had served as an Army Special Training Center. The main core of the campus, with its array of stately classroom buildings, large gymnasium, dorms, and the grand administration building, remained the same. But the surrounding grounds were dominated by temporary military-style barracks and Quonset huts spread out over once-empty fields and pastures.
In an old single-story CCC administration building propped up on concrete pillars and converted into a veteran’s service center, Matt met with James Kendell, a one-armed navy veteran with a ruptured duck button pin on the lapel of his suit jacket. After introductions, he sat at a small desk in a tiny office and quickly reviewed Matt’s paperwork. When he finished, Kendell took out a lined tablet and started writing, pausing to look up information from a thick binder embossed with a Veterans Administration logo. Matt silently waited.
After a few minutes, Kendell put down his pencil and smiled. “You’re gonna be in good shape. In addition to your service-connected disability pension you’ll get a monthly fifty-dollar subsistence allowance during the school year. That goes up to sixty-five dollars next year.”
“Great,” Matt said, figuring he’d be able to hire a ranch hand who could also keep an eye on Patrick and have enough left over to cover his room and board expenses in town.
Kendell reached for a pack of cigarettes, lit up with a Zippo lighter bearing the navy emblem, and blew a smoke ring. “You’re going to have to provide a copy of your advanced army language training record to the provost’s office so they can determine how much college credit to allow you. But from what I’ve seen so far, guys with foreign-language proficiency rack up the credits. With a year of college already under your belt before your enlistment, you just might be enrolled as an upperclassman. Are you planning to start back in the fall semester?”
“I have some things to work out first,” Matt said.
Kendell pushed blank forms across the desk. “Fill everything out and return it to me so I can get the process started.” He turned to a small file cabinet, pulled out some mimeographed sheets of paper, and handed them to Matt. “Here’s some general information about the college. Who’s who, where to go, and all that important stuff.”
“Thanks.” Matt barely glanced at the material before stuffing it in a back pocket. “Where did you lose the arm?”
“Leyte Gulf,” Kendell answered. “I got shot down.”
“Tough,” Matt said sympathetically.
Kendell chuckled and stood. “From what I understand, Sicily was no picnic. It could have been worse for both of us.”
“Roger that,” Matt said as he shook Kendell’s hand.
“Sooner you get the provost’s office started evaluating your service jacket, the better,” Kendell advised as he handed Matt his file.
“Aye-aye, swabbie,” Matt replied, breaking into a grin.
Kendell grinned in return. “Get lost, dogface.”
***
Matt made his way to the provost’s office on the first floor of the administration building, where an older woman was sitting at a desk in front of an inner door talking to a man wearing a suit and tie. Three students, one boy with thick glasses, another scrawny kid who might have been sixteen, and a rather homey, serious-looking girl in a cotton dress, waited patiently on chairs along one long wall. Matt joined them, feeling very much like an old man. His glass eye earned quick stares. He returned their interest with a friendly smile as each kid looked away. When the man in the suit knocked on the inner door and stepped inside, the woman called the next student to her desk. The boy with the thick glasses hurried over, clutching a notebook in his hand.
Figuring he had a long wait before his turn, Matt got out the mimeographed information about the college that James Kendell had given him. Most of it was stuff he already knew, such as the history of the institution, the various degree-granting departments, the location of faculty offices, and the social clubs on campus. Included was a faculty directory. His old professor and friend Augustus Merton was listed as the college provost.
Augustus Merton had been Matt’s favorite professor during his freshman year and, just as important, the uncle of Matt’s first love, Beth. Augustus and his wife, Consuelo, had welcomed Matt into the family much like a son. During the Great Depression, when Patrick was laid up with a broken leg and Matt was desperate to find work, Gus had hired him to help the Forest Service scout locations for CCC camps in New Mexico and Arizona. Soon after, Gus accepted a temporary appointment with the WPA in Washington and left the college on loan to the government. Matt hadn’t seen him since.
As more students came into the office and filled up the chairs, Matt waited patiently as the woman spoke to each of the kids ahead of him. When his turn came, he asked her if he could first speak with Professor Merton.
The woman shook her head. “He’s very busy. You’ll have to make an appointment.”
“If he knew I was here, I think he might like to see me,” Matt said pleasantly as he handed her the telephone. “Just ask, please. Tell him Matt Kerney would like a minute of his time.”
For a very long minute, the woman glanced at his service records, his old college transcript, and his glass eye before replying. “Very well.”
The telephone was barely back in its cradle when Gus Merton flung open the inner door and grabbed Matt in a bear hug. “My boy,” he boomed, “come in, come in.”
In the office, the man in the suit was bent over a large desk poring over stacks of architectural drawings. He nodded a vague hello as Gus made the introductions.
“When the war is over, there will be much to do,” Gus said by way of explanation for his office clutter. He’d shrunk an inch from his five-foot-eight frame, his mop of curly brown hair had turned gray, and his round face was thicker in the jowls, but liveliness and curiosity still gleamed in his eyes.
“Come to dinner tonight at the hacienda,” he ordered. “Six sharp for drinks.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“Nonsense, Consuelo would horsewhip me if I failed to demand your company tonight. We have much to talk about.” Gus studied Matt’s face. “And stories to tell, I would imagine.”
Matt nodded agreeably. “Six o’clock.”
Gus smiled happily and reached for the telephone on the credenza behind his desk. “I’ll call her right now.” He was gleefully informing Consuelo of their unexpected dinner guest as Matt closed the office door.
***
For Matt, there had been no more enjoyable home to visit than the Merton hacienda in the village of Mesilla. At the same time, memories of the thick adobe walls; the serene, lovely courtyard; the colorful tiled walls of the inviting kitchen; Gus’s comfortable library so perfect for conversation; and the rambling rooms with low-beamed passages, weighed heavily on his heart. For a moment he
hesitated at the hand-carved hacienda door before tapping the forged iron door knocker. Here, at Consuelo’s ancestral home a few steps off the lovely plaza, he’d fallen in love with Beth, won her heart in return, and made plans for a life together, only to have it vanish with her death.
He took a deep breath and knocked. Almost immediately the door opened to reveal Consuelo, her dark hair now lightly streaked with gray, her face still as lovely as ever, her figure still girlishly slender. She greeted him in Spanish with a hug and a kiss, ushered him by the hand into the kitchen, where Gus waited smiling, pouring wine into glasses. Together in silence they raised a toast of reunion before adjourning to the library for conversation that veered away from Matt’s war experiences—he suspected Gus had read his service jacket at his office and shared its contents with Consuelo—or any mention of Beth. Instead, Gus—first and foremost a teacher at heart—asked Matt about his plans to return to college. Matt explained that he definitely wanted to finish his degree, but first needed to get everything in order at the ranch.
Gus raised an eyebrow at the mention of the ranch. “The army didn’t force you off the land for the air corps bombing range?”
“No, except for a small slice on the Alkali Flats, most of the 7-Bar-K is in the high country on the fringe of the bombing range. Besides, thanks to my savvy grandfather and his partner, I own title to most of the land, unlike the other ranchers, who only held title to a section and leased the rest for grazing. The army would have a hard time forcing me out or offering only to pay a paltry amount.”
Gus nodded in approval. “That’s a definite advantage, although there is always the threat of eminent domain proceedings, which I’m sure won’t happen. I’ve heard a number of the displaced ranchers are planning to return after the war ends.”
Matt leaned forward in his chair. “I hope they can, but let me tell you it’s not just a bombing range out there anymore.”
He launched into the strange army doings he’d witnessed at the McDonald ranch, and the topic was carried into the dining room, where, over an excellent meal of tacos, salad, and melon, they speculated about the hush-hush military enterprise on the Jornada. The only conclusion they reached echoed Patrick’s observation that armies, by their nature, specialized in blowing people up.
It was only then that Consuelo asked about Matt’s war wound. He kept his reply brief, but it still brought tears to her eyes.
In the cool of the high-walled courtyard at twilight, Matt asked Gus and Consuelo about their son, Lorenzo, a West Point graduate who’d been a serving officer at the onset of the war. He learned Lorenzo was now a highly decorated brigadier general at the Pentagon after serving in North Africa, Italy, and France. He’d married before the war. Gus fetched snapshots of Lorenzo, his wife, and their three children. In the lamplight of the patio table, Matt declared them to be a handsome bunch.
As the evening wore down, Consuelo advanced the notion that Matt could live at the hacienda as their guest when he returned to school.
“Even when Lorenzo and his family visit, there will be empty bedrooms gathering dust,” she added. “Although I will never give it up, this place is much too big for the two of us and we’d love your company.”
Gus heartily endorsed her offer.
Matt thanked them and said he would give it some thought. Only then did Beth’s presence briefly hover over them.
He left soon after, filled with renewed affection for Gus and Consuelo. Their good company and lively conversation made him realize all that had been missing in his life since the day Anna Lynn left for California. He’d been semi-comatose and hadn’t even noticed it.
Just as Consuelo would never give up her hacienda, Matt could never let go of the 7-Bar-K. He’d worked too hard for too long to save it. Yet he needed more than ranching in his life. Without any clear idea of what to study other than range management or animal husbandry, he resolved to go back to school as soon as possible.
9
Matt returned home to find a package on his desk sent from an army post office in Europe. Inside was an inscribed copy of Bill Mauldin’s book Up Front, along with the two original cartoons Bill had done about Matt’s exploits in Sicily. A typewritten letter read:
Matt:
Just about the time the Nazis threw in the towel I got the Pulitzer Prize for my first book of cartoons. Hell, I didn’t even know what a Pulitzer Prize was until my publisher explained it all to me earlier in the year. I sure didn’t expect to get it but I’m glad I did. My book is selling like hotcakes and my publisher says that I’m gonna be rich and famous, so you’d better hold on to all those drawings I peddled to you when I was a kid in Mountain Park. They’re gonna be worth a lot of money someday.
I thought you’d like to have the original cartoons I did about you in Sicily, so I’ve signed them and sent them along in this package as well.
Anyway, I’ve got to run now because some journalist from the States wants to interview me for his Chicago newspaper. (There’s a bird colonel assigned full-time to handle all my publicity and such. How’s them apples for a lowly buck sergeant from New Mexico?)
Your pal,
Bill
Matt showed the letter to Patrick, and thinking it might be wise to find a better place to keep Bill’s drawings—a bank safe-deposit box, perhaps—he went to the small blanket chest in the casita where he’d tucked them away before leaving for the army. They were all gone—two dozen drawings—along with Anna Lynn’s letters he’d added after returning home.
Steamed, he stomped around the house calling for Patrick and found him in the corral with a pained expression on his face, shoveling horse apples into a wheelbarrow. It was not a chore he took to willingly—further evidence of his guilt.
“What did you do with them, old man?” Matt demanded.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patrick mumbled, his face averted, hidden by the brim of his cowboy hat.
“Yes, you do: Bill Mauldin’s drawings, Anna Lynn’s letters.”
Patrick dropped his shovel into the wheelbarrow. “When Anna Lynn and Ginny quit us, I burned all of it. Jesus, they were just some kid’s drawings. How was I to know?”
“They weren’t yours to burn, dammit,” Matt snapped.
“I was mad at what she’d done to you.”
“What she did to me?” Matt queried sarcastically.
A sad look flickered across his face. “To both of us, I reckon.”
Matt almost felt sympathy for the old man. He’d watched Anna Lynn win him over by the strength of her personality, and lovable little Ginny burrow her way into his heart. But he did not have the goodwill to grant him forgiveness, at least not yet. “You are the most inconsiderate person I know.”
Patrick bit his lip before forcing out the words. “If I’ve done wrong to you I’m sorry.”
Matt stared at his father trying to remember if he’d ever heard such an admission before. As far as he could recall, it was a first. He could either accept the apology or simply acknowledge it. “Let’s leave it at that,” he said sharply, walking away.
At his desk, he put Bill Mauldin’s book, the cartoons, and his letter in a locked drawer along with the framed drawing of Patches, Matt’s pony. It was the first sketch he’d ever bought from young Billy and he’d paid a whole dollar for it. The next time he went to town, he’d rent a safe-deposit box.
***
Breakfast the next morning was a silent affair, with Patrick dour-looking and Matt not quite ready to let him off the hook for his misdeed. After finishing his bowl of hot oatmeal, he left Patrick with the dirty dishes, loaded a salt lick in the pickup, and drove up the canyon where he’d hazed his cattle that were scheduled for market into a pasture near a clear water stream. They’d laze and fatten there for a week before he moved them up higher to the north pasture.
The monsoons were past due and there wasn’t a cloud in th
e sky. Every day, he ranched hoping for moisture while keeping a watchful eye on the parched land. To avoid overgrazing, he routinely threw the cattle from pasture to pasture to let the grasses recover. Most times, he did it on his own and it was downright exhausting work.
He put out the salt lick and rattled back down the poor excuse of a ranch road in time to see two riders approaching the corral leading a packhorse. He sounded the truck horn to announce his pending arrival and the riders drew rein and waited.
Wondering who his unexpected visitors were, Matt punched the accelerator.
***
James Kaytennae sat on his pony, watched the truck slow to a stop, and studied the man who approached on foot. He was tall, broad-shouldered, blue-eyed, with the same features he remembered. But he was much too young to be Patrick Kerney. Perhaps he was a son. He scanned the ranch house, saw no movement, and softly in Apache told his young nephew, Jasper Daklugie, that their journey may have been in vain.
From the shoulder of Kaytennae’s pony, the man looked up at him. Expecting a cool reception from the White Eyes, Kaytennae inwardly tensed.
Instead the man nodded a pleasant greeting, smiled, and said, “You gents are a far piece off the highway. Light and come in for some coffee.”
Relieved by the neighborly reception, James swung off his pony. “Thank you. But first, I must ask, has Walks Alone gone to the Happy Place?”
“Who?”
James gazed up at the ranch house, which he remembered clearly. “Patrick Kerney—is he dead?”
Matt laughed and extended his hand. “No, he’s too contrary to die. I’m his son, Matt.”
The Last Ranch Page 11
