Black Angus

by Newton Thornburg

  “What about Donald?”

  “He was already after me by then, of course, me not calling him the Old Man and all. And, well, I was assigned one of his precious public service jobs, a campaign to warn niggers about high blood pressure. So I whack together a sweet little print series, the main one built around this picture I found in the photo morgue of a real tough-looking dude staring at the camera like it was white, you know? And the headline I used was This Dude is Carrying a Bomb. Well, Donald wouldn’t hear of it, or Armpit either. Scared them shitless for some reason. So I sneak it by them and let the client see it, some ghetto agency, and they go ape over it. It sells. And finally it wins some goddamn national award, and first thing I know, the two of them, Armpit and Donald, with their wives and two other couples, are all down in New Orleans to accept the award—for three days, all of them, on the old expense account. And naturally I wasn’t invited, and didn’t expect to be—I only made the goddamn series after all. Anyway, when I see it written up in the papers, I tear the story out and take a brush-pen and add my own headline to it and tack it up in my office: The Mad Bomber Strikes Again. Well, Donald sees it and actually tries to rip the thing off the wall. I have to pick him up and carry him outside. I take him across the hall and put him in the elevator, and all the while he’s hitting me and screaming like Doris Day being manhandled by Rock Hudson. ‘This is enough, Shea! Enough! Enough!’ And I guess it was. I sent him down to the basement.”

  Blanchard laughed at the story, again. During the last year he and Susan had heard it from others at Darling, old friends who had kept in touch.

  “I’d say you were overdue,” he said. “Any self-respecting agency would’ve fired you the first week.”

  “I did good work.”

  “And who cared?”

  “Everybody. That was what they couldn’t forgive. The booze and all the rest, they liked that. It was my work they hated.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Yeah, maybe so.”

  As the evening dragged on, Blanchard saw that he had been wrong about Shea. The big man had not by any means forgotten the beating of the previous night or somehow managed to rationalize it away as just one of those things, something he had asked for, something he had deserved. If anything, he seemed merely to have pushed the matter aside temporarily so that now, later, and drunker, he could savor the fullness of his anger and indignation. Twice during the evening, as they moved back and forth between the front porch and the kitchen to refill their drinks, Blanchard had to wait while Shea stopped at the hall mirror to examine his wounds.

  “Ain’t they purty?” he said. “You got to hand it to old Jiggs, you know? It don’t pay to fuck with old Jiggs.”

  “I guess not.”

  “You guess?”

  “Okay, I know.”

  “Me too.” And Shea grinned about it, a big, happy kid’s grin, as though his newfound knowledge pleased him greatly. But Blanchard could see the raw and cold-eyed animus behind the grin, and it occurred to him that Shea could no more resist indulging that animus than he could have refrained from lifting his pinkie for Armpit to pull. That was a prospect Blanchard refused to worry about, however. He had enough problems of his own. And anyway he was beginning to find Shea’s continued presence more than a little oppressive. There was simply too much of the man. He was too big, too volatile, too close.

  As the day began to fade Blanchard wanted to be alone with Ronda, to sit with her on the front porch and have a few drinks and maybe even feel a touch of peace. He had already coaxed Tommy into the living room to watch television and he was hoping Shea might be overcome by a sudden bout of tact and join him there, or even go to bed. But it was not to be. There was a fifth of Cutty Sark in the kitchen and plenty of spring water to mix it with, and there was all that chicken in Shea’s belly as a cushion for the alcohol. So Blanchard knew his friend was not about to stray from right where he was, squeezed into Susan’s wicker rocking chair, with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other and all his bandages somehow glowing brighter as the daylight faded.

  Ronda was sitting next to Blanchard on the couch. She had her feet curled up and her hand was resting on his leg, sending a clear and steady message to his groin. Down the hill he could make out a score of cattle grazing in the twilight, the questionable blacks he had tested for Bang’s the day before. Beyond them and the road the land rose again, and fell again, over and over, forming a small sea of wooded hills stretching to the last blaze of the sun, a forest fire that sprang up each night for a few minutes and then disappeared, expiring in a glow of mauve and gold. And as it died this night, Clarence’s truck rattled past, going home.

  Shea toasted him. “There he goes, old Clarence. Sunup to sundown. You’re a bastard, Blanchard, you know that? Never in the long and lamentable history of human toil has one man gotten so much for so little.”

  “It’s haymaking time.”

  “No excuse. You’re a regular Simon Legree.”

  “I pay what I can.”

  “Turnip’s blood.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “You go to the bank today?”

  Blanchard laughed in exasperation. “Who you been talking to—Clarence?”

  Shea shook his head. “No, Susan told me a couple days ago. She said if you didn’t get an extension, you were cooked.”

  “Yeah, I went,” Blanchard said.

  “And you didn’t get it, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “I sell the yearlings. Not much choice.”

  “What about the Bang’s? You get a report on that yet?”

  Blanchard felt a sudden surge of anger, at himself as much as at Shea, for he knew he had been procrastinating, that he should have called the vet hours earlier. “I didn’t realize you were so interested in my affairs,” he said.

  Shea shrugged. “Well, I knew this was supposed to be the crunch, today or tomorrow. I was just wondering.”

  Now Ronda joined the chorus. “When will the vet know?”

  Blanchard did not answer. He took a final drag on his cigarette and flipped it out into the yard. Then he tossed off the last of his drink.

  “Maybe I’d better be going,” Ronda said. “I don’t want to get home too late.”

  “Why go at all?” Blanchard asked her.

  She smiled in embarrassment. “I don’t know. It just wouldn’t seem right somehow. Staying, I mean.”

  Shea laughed. “Give it the Hemingway test, kid. If you feel good afterwards, then it was right.”

  “Anyway, stay for now, okay?” Blanchard said. Taking her glass and his own, he got up. “Meanwhile I’ll try to restore these.”

  “While he’s gone you can come sit on my knee,” Shea told her. “We can play horsey.”

  She gave him a weary smile.

  Inside, Blanchard found Tommy yawning in front of the television, so he told him it was bedtime and walked him upstairs. He waited while Tommy went to the bathroom and then dressed for bed and got in. And as usual, Blanchard found it hard to get out of the room, as his brother clung to him with his customary litany of goodnights.

  “Goodnight, Bob.”

  “Goodnight, Tommy. See you in the morning.”

  “Goodnight, Bob. Goodnight, Bob.”

  Tommy would keep it up until Blanchard, turning off the light and closing the door, would say the magic words once again.

  “Goodnight, Tommy.”

  Downstairs, Blanchard felt a growing sense of dread as he went into the kitchen and dialed Doc Parnell’s home number. The veterinarian’s wife answered and a few seconds later Parnell himself came on, saying hello in a manner that told Blanchard all he needed to know. Nevertheless he listened to the particulars. Of the fifteen females they had tested, six were reactors, as was the bull. But this was just Parnell’s test, run in his office, the doctor reminded him. It was not the official test the state would run on the blood samples as soon as they got them. Withi
n a week Blanchard would be hearing from the state vet, but the result would be the same of course—the test was a simple one. And then the state vet would come out to the ranch to brand the reactors, which would have to be shipped right away, for destruction. The state vet would also set a date for bloodtesting the whole herd. Meanwhile Blanchard was in quarantine. He was not to buy or sell any cattle.

  “What about nonbreeders?” Blanchard asked. “I’ve got a bunch of yearlings to sell. About half are steers. I don’t see why it’d hurt to sell them. They can’t communicate the disease.”

  “You could, with permission,” Parnell told him. “But only to a packer, on a single-bid basis. You’d take a beating. Probably twenty-five cents a pound.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Yeah, it sure is a mess,” the vet allowed. “I’m sure sorry.”

  Blanchard thanked him and hung up. When he took his hand off the phone he saw that it was shaking. What last night’s violence had not been able to accomplish, this short phone call had. And he did not have to wonder why. Because now, for the first time, he knew that he had reached the end of his rope—and there was nothing there, no alternatives, no hope, no nothing. It crossed his mind how ironic it was that Susan had chosen this particular day to leave him, this uniquely special day when all her hopes would have been realized, all her dire predictions come spectacularly true. But he was glad of that anyway, glad she was not here to see his hand shake as he refilled his glass.

  Back on the porch he gave Ronda her drink and sat down next to her again, saying nothing though he knew she and Shea were both waiting to hear the results of his phone call.

  “Well, what’s the verdict?” Shea asked.

  Blanchard still could not bring himself to speak, probably out of fear of hearing the words himself, hearing his own voice pass sentence on him.

  “You got it, right?” Shea persisted. “You got Bang’s.”

  Blanchard finally managed to look at Ronda, and she squeezed his hand and dropped her face against his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am.”

  “So what happens now?” Shea asked. “You shrug and accept it all, go belly up?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Well, I know I just wouldn’t stand still for it. Not after all the work you’ve put in.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “Spoken like a true square.”

  “What else?”

  “The alternative, kiddo, is as plain as the nose on your Wasp face. They’re your cattle—so sell them.”

  “They’re in quarantine, remember?”

  “Sell them and say they were stolen. That way you get full value for them, plus the insurance.”

  “The bank would get the insurance.”

  “To pay off your loan, yeah. So you’d be free and clear, with the money extra.”

  Blanchard laughed softly and shook his head. “You make it sound so easy. So appealing.”

  “Well, isn’t it?”

  “It’s also illegal.”

  “And you wouldn’t want to do anything illegal, is that it?”

  “Not that illegal, no.”

  Draining his glass, Shea took a mouthful of ice cubes and began to chew on them as if they were popcorn.

  “You are pathetic, you know that, Blanchard?” he said. “But then of course we all are, all us middle-class, white-collar pissants. But me, at least I’m learning. And last night especially, at old Jiggs’s School of Hard Knocks. Drunk as I was, it dawned on me kneeling in front of that goofy bastard and praying he wasn’t gonna shoot me, that he was the one with the standards. I humiliate him over a lousy dog—which is just like me, right? Because I’m used to the ‘civilized’ responses of jerks like Armpit and Little Mack. But old Jiggs—him and the rest of his goatroper band, and for that matter, little Little too—they live right up there on the edge, you know that? Right on the edge, where everything is for keeps. No fucking middle-class games for them, no sir, in fact no kind of games at all, but just life, real and earnest, with the grave most assuredly its goal. So you play for keeps, which is just what I’m gonna do from now on, and what you ought to do here. You’re trapped and broke? So bail out. Rustle your own goddamn cattle and sell them in Kansas City, collect the insurance, and then go out of business. Without being broke. It’s a big difference.”

  Blanchard shook his head in mock admiration. “You learned all that at Jiggs’s feet, huh?”

  “Oh, I guess I’ve been working towards it on my own. Last night just hurried up the process, that’s all.”

  “Funny. Last night at the Sweet Creek, I thought you were already there.”

  “Naw, I was just playing then. Role playing.”

  “But you’re not now?”

  “I ain’t doing nothing but recommending, old buddy. You’re the one with the problem, the one who’s got to fish or cut bait.”

  Ronda had gotten up, evidently feeling restless. She lit a cigarette and leaned back against the porch railing, one side of her lost in darkness while the other was sharply limned by the living room light, which gave her an almost sculpted look, stonelike, her flat belly and breasts seemingly bare to them. And Blanchard thought of later, that he would have to have her again this night, at least that. It would be like compensation, pleasure to balance against all the pain. Idly, he thought how unfair that was, how much more she deserved.

  “What do you think?” he asked her now. “Is he right?”

  “It’d be right for some people, maybe. But not for you.”

  “You’ve switched.”

  “Last night? Oh, that was just talk. But this is beginning to sound like for real.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be right for him?” Shea asked her. “What’s so special about this shitkicker?”

  “He’s not a thief, that’s all.”

  “Who’d he be stealing from?”

  “The insurance company, I guess.”

  “Which wouldn’t even feel it. Wouldn’t even know it. It’d just be part of their business day, an actuarial probability, a statistic.”

  “Well, I don’t know the answers. I just know he wouldn’t do it.” Ronda turned to Blanchard. “Would you?”

  Blanchard shook his head. “I wouldn’t even know how.”

  “Little could do it for you,” Shea said. “Get the trucks and everything.”

  Ronda looked at him with sudden scorn. “Some friend you are, trying to get him tied in with a creep like Little.”

  “What a way to talk about your brother.”

  “Half brother,” she corrected.

  Shea held his empty glass out to her. “Give a cripple a hand, will you, dearie? Half and half.”

  She took his glass and went inside.

  “Poor kid,” Shea said. “She’s really got it bad for you.”

  “Why say that? Just because she doesn’t see me as a criminal?”

  “Don’t be cute.”

  “Was I?”

  Shea gave him a look, long and grave. “You know, Bob, I’m serious about this. I really am. I really think you should do it.”

  “Why’s it so important to you?”

  For a time Shea sat there mauling his face and frowning.

  “Three reasons,” he said finally. “First, I know how hard you’ve worked here, how much you’ve put into it, and I hate to see you lose it. Two, I’d like to have a part in the operation—I need the bread. And three, for moral reasons. I think it’s morally wrong for a man to be so meek he won’t fight for what’s his, even fight dirty. When you get that meek, that civilized and circumspect and inhibited, you might as well give up altogether. And most of us have, you know, most of us Wasps. We’re through, and the enemy knows it. They’re taking us without a fight.”

  “You learn all that from Jiggs, too?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it.” Blanchard had no idea why he said this, for in his mind the matter was closed, out of the question.

  “You do t
hat,” Shea said. “Meanwhile I’m gonna think about Jiggs. It’s getting to be a real passion with me, figuring out the exact, altogether fitting-and-proper way to bust his ass and get my balls back. I really enjoy it, thinking about it—almost as much as I will doing it finally. Which I will. You can count on it.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  Shea shook his head at him, despairingly. “There you go again,” he said.

  In time Shea squeezed himself up out of the rocker and announced that he was both sleepy and full of piss and that once he took care of the latter he was going to crash on the davenport—his “attic cell” was out of the question this night. After he had gone inside, Ronda said that it was probably time for her to leave too, and Blanchard said all right, if she felt she had to go, but he wanted her to stay.

  “Where?” she asked. “Not her bed. I couldn’t do that.”

  “There’s another,” he told her, not adding that it was his son’s.

  And whether it was this unspoken fact or some other thing that affected the two of them, Blanchard was not sure. All he knew was that on this night Ronda’s inhibitions approached frigidity, which in turn made him virtually useless, limp and cold, unable or unwilling even to try to thaw the two of them out. Finally, silent and puzzled, they lay together, with her in his arms, and only then did it begin to come, as slowly as winter heat. He kissed her hair and her forehead and in time her lips, her mouth, her tongue, so long and so deeply that the sex which followed seemed more a part of their kissing than the other way around. And then again they lay there, silent still, as if they feared a sound might drive it all away.