by Elmer Kelton
Charlie looked at Rodale’s bald head. “Out of what?”
A secretary tittered. Rodale frowned. He took off his reading glasses and wiped them on his necktie. “Set down, Charlie. You’re the only man in Rio Seco who’s got a meaner mind than I have. I’m glad to have you in here where I can be watchin’ you.”
Charlie kept his feet. “Ain’t any use me sittin’ down till I find out if you’re goin’ to do it. If you ain’t, I’d just as soon head for San Angelo and find a banker that will.”
“Do what?”
“Set me up a line of credit so I can buy feed this winter.”
“For you or for them livestock? You could do without.”
“Do I get it or not?”
“You get it. Set down!”
Charlie pulled the straight-backed chair out and seated himself. They talked awhile about the weather and the short grass and the fact that winter was staring them in the face. Charlie passed on Mary’s invitation to dinner, and Emmett said he would be out the first chance he got. Charlie knew he would, too, for Big dearly loved home cooking. And all other forms of cooking.
Charlie asked, “Seen Suds O‘Barr this mornin’?”
The banker shook his head. “Nobody ever sees Suds till afternoon.”
“He’s supposed to meet me here. My lease is runnin’ out. We’re fixin’ to talk terms on a new one.”
“How much does he figure on raisin’ the price this time?”
“Been a spell since I’ve talked to him, but I know he was out the other day, lookin’ to see if my sheep were in good flesh. Lease year is a bad time for sheep to look good. Makes the landlord greedy.”
Sam O’Barr. was the real name, but he was better known—out of earshot—as Suds. His father had been a rancher here in the early times, a hard-working builder and shrewd investor. He had wanted to be sure his son didn’t have to work and sweat the way he did. He had succeeded, for the heaviest thing Sam had lifted in twenty years was a case of beer. Realizing his mistake almost too late, the old man had so arranged his will that Sam could never sell the land. He could only lease it out and live from the income, unless he chose to work the land himself, an unlikely proposition.
The last time Charlie had seen him, Suds O’Barr had come walking unsteadily down the town road toward Charlie’s barn. His breath like the south wind off a brewery, he explained that he had been out driving around, looking at his land, and had let his car run off into the ditch. He had been unable to get it out. “You know,” Suds had said with a surge of pride, “I had just six cans of beer left in the ice chest. I put them in a paper sack and brought them with me. I figured it was two miles to your house, so I divided two by six to see how long to make each can last me. I just missed it by two hundred yards.”
Charlie never knew whether to feel contempt or pity for Suds. Mostly he just avoided him. Once Suds had had all the money a man could reasonably want, pretty women running after him, ready, eager, and willing—everything the average man thinks would be required to provide him the good life. But Charlie figured the most poverty-stricken Mexican in Rio Seco was better off than Suds.
“Big,” Charlie mused, “lots of folks cuss a man who throws his money around the way Suds did when he had it. But the same folks will cuss the miser. Who knows what it takes to suit people?”
Sam O’Barr was trailed by a wispy little man who strained to shut the heavy door behind him. Sam’s step was straight, but his face and hands were nervous. Plainly, he needed a drink. He had probably denied himself for the business conference.
“Mornin’, Charlie.” He extended his hand, which felt cold and had no grip at all. “You-all know my attorney, Gerald Aronson?”
Aronson had been Doc O’Barr’s attorney in happier days. In recent years he had had the unpleasant duty of defending Sam O’Barr in divorce suits, a paternity case and the like, fighting a losing battle to hold together the tattered remnants of the O’Barr inheritance. It was over now. Little was left that anyone could take from Sam.
O’Barr glanced around nervously. “Well, I got things to do, so let’s get her uncorked. Where would you like to go to talk, Charlie?”
Charlie looked at Big Emmett. “If Big can spare the time, I’d like to do it right here with him sittin’ in. He’s my banker.”
Big shrugged. “I got nothin’ to do but work. Set down, fellers.”
Sam and Aronson seated themselves and glanced nervously at each other. Sam turned to Charlie. “Ought not to take but a few minutes. Gerald got the new lease agreement typed up last night.”
Aronson pulled a set of blue-backed contracts out of his briefcase. Charlie fished his spectacles from his shirt pocket and began to scan the papers.
Too quickly, Sam said, “It’s the same contract as last time.”
Charlie frowned. “It would appear to be, except ...”
“We adjusted one or two little details.”
Charlie grunted. “I already found one of them ... the price.”
O’Barr flushed and looked away, his hands shakier. He pulled a silver flask from his coat pocket. “Anybody mind?”
Big’s sharp eyes appraised O’Barr but betrayed no judgment. “Go ahead.” O’Barr turned the flask up and swallowed twice. He coughed, then screwed the cap back into place and looked around furtively to see if any of the women employees had been watching him. “Held off all mornin’,” he said defensively, “but there’s a limit to how long a man can run on the rim. Anybody else care to strike a blow for liberty?”
Nobody did. Charlie said, “We was fixin’ to talk price. Everything in the contract suits me but that. You’re askin’ too much.” He handed the contract to Big for the banker to read, which he did with a frown that would worry even a bank examiner.
The drink relaxed O’Barr a little. “Five years now we been on the old price, Charlie, a dollar an acre. Things was different when we signed that. Livestock prices have gone up, and you’ve had some good years. You’ve done right fine, and all the time I been gettin’ the same old price.”
Evenly Charlie reminded him, “Other times it’s run the opposite. We’ve done a contract when things was good, and I was stuck with a high price when livestock went down.”
“It’s never broke you, Charlie. That old country of mine has been right good to you through the years.”
It struck Charlie funny, O’Barr calling it that old country of mine, as if he felt some affection for it. All it ever meant to Sam was the lease money. Some men like Charlie Flagg and Emil Deutscher derived a strong sense of pride from standing on their land, crumbling the soil through their fingers, smelling the new grass, feeling the ebb and flow of life in the earth as the seasons came and went. Other men like Sam O’Barr regarded land with no more passion than they would figure a rent building or a set of coupons in a safety box at the bank, waiting to be clipped. It was simply a commodity to be used, traded, or sold.
Charlie said, “A dollar and a half an acre is way too much.”
O’Barr shrugged. “Cost of livin’ is goin’ up. If you don’t want to pay it, I got a man who’s spoken for it and said he’d give me that much. Naturally for old times’ sake I’d give you first refusal.”
Momentary alarm brought prickling to Charlie’s skin, an alarm which slowly changed into anger. He stared at Sam O’Barr’s eyes, and Sam looked down at the floor. He suspected Sam was bluffing, but he couldn’t tell by looking; Sam always had this guilty air about him. The way things were today, a vacated lease didn’t go begging for long. Some townsman was always willing to pay more than it was worth, certain he could make a killing in the cow business.
Charlie saw that Big was disturbed by the price, Charlie said, “Sam, I’d sort of expected a little increase—a dime, maybe—but nothin’ like this. Dry as the country is, I can’t pay this price.” He continued to study O’Barr’s face, wishing for a sign whether Suds was “loading” him. Recklessly he decided to see O’Barr’s cards. “If you got a man who can, maybe you better go
see him.”
O’Barr stiffened. “You mean you don’t want the lease?”
“Sure I want it, but not bad enough to commit suicide for it.”
O’Barr began to tap his fingers. He cut his rheumy eyes to the attorney. Aronson said nothing; he obviously had no pride in his mission. O’Barr said, “Charlie, you’ve had that place a good many years. I’d hate to see you give it up. What would you do with the stock you’ve got on it?”
“There’s other land I can lease. Or I might just sell them and put the money on storage in Big’s bank. Sometimes I wonder what a man wants to beat himself to a nub fightin’ a big ranch for anyway. Nine times out of ten his money would earn him more in a savin’s account drawin’ interest, and not take any sweat, worry, or gamble. As a way of makin’ money, ranchin’ is awful highly overrated.”
O’Barr’s hand slid to the pocket where the flask was. He drew the flask half out, changed his mind and let it slide back. “Look, Charlie, just because I like you ... just for the sake of old times and your friendship with my good ol’ daddy ... I’ll whittle the price a little.” Charlie could see him painfully running the totals through his fogged mind, figuring how much a reduction was going to cost him. O’Barr said, “How about a dollar-forty?”
Charlie glanced at the banker. Big winked without otherwise letting his expression change. Charlie had broken O’Barr’s bluff. They would wrangle, but Charlie would wind up getting the place for a dollar-and-a-quarter.
“Sam,” Charlie said, “did you ever stop to figure what would happen to the land if you ever hung a man on it at a price he couldn’t afford to pay?”
“He’d pay if he signed the contract. He’d have to.”
“He’d be forced to take it out of the land. He’d keep pilin’ in more and more cattle and sheep to squeeze out more money to pay the lease.”
O’Barr shrugged. “That’s what the land is for.”
“There’s a limit to what you can take out of it. Treat the land right and it’ll take care of you. Overgraze it ... abuse it ... and in twenty years it’ll look like the Sahara Desert.”
O’Barr shrugged again and looked out the window, his hand in his coat pocket, impatiently rubbing the flask. He said with total indifference, “Twenty years from now I’ll be dead!”
Charlie parked his pickup at the curb in front of the big rambling wool warehouse. The little front door had been a waste of money, for few people used it. By habit Charlie walked around the side to climb up onto the concrete loading dock and enter by the huge roll-up door through which the wool went in and out. It was like stepping into a half-dark cavern, the air cool and heavy with the pleasant odor of raw wool, packed tightly in jute bags and stacked half way to the ceiling.
He lifted his hand in greeting to half a dozen loungers loafing on wool and feed sacks. Some were the same men he had seen earlier in the coffee shop; they hadn’t gotten any closer. to their ranches. They were sitting around discussing solutions to all the world’s problems and wondering why nobody at the top was smart enough to see things the same way. Charlie paused for a look at a stuffed coyote that bore a pained expression. Some wag had lately added a sign: Bitten by a Boston wool buyer.
Warehouseman Jim Sweet pushed to his feet and moved leisurely to meet the ranchman. “Mornin’, Charlie. What can I do for you?”
Charlie said, “Need some wheat seed. Thought I’d get Emil’s oldest boy to dry-plant it for me in that little grain patch of mine. If it comes a rain I’ll have green grazin’ this winter for some cows and calves.”
Jim Sweet lost his grin. “Sure, Charlie. Only, it’s been a long time since I remember sellin’ you any wheat seed.”
“Been usin’ oats. Thought this time I’d try wheat and see if it stands the winter better.”
Uncomfortable, Sweet rubbed the back of his neck. “I can sell you all the seed you want, Charlie, but I’m not sure you can plant it. There’s government regulations on it now. You can’t grow wheat without you got an allotment. On account of the surplus, you know.”
“I just want to graze it. I don’t figure on turnin’ none of it over to the government.”
“Ain’t my doin’, Charlie. Me, I’d as soon cut the whole thing wild aloose and see where it lights. But they got the regulations, and they’ll bear down on you. It just happens that the PMA man is in my office right now, lookin’ up some figures. I’ll get him to tell you what you can do and what you can’t.”
Charlie protested, “I ain’t goin’ to ask nobody ...” But the warehouseman was already gone. In a minute he was back with the official.
March Nicholson nodded at Charlie, his eyes neither friendly nor unfriendly. “Morning, Mister Flagg. What is it you want to know?”
Charlie had a fleeting sense of being trapped, and he was angry at the warehouseman. “I didn’t go to make a federal case out of it. I just wanted to plant a little wheat, is all.”
“For grazing?”
“Sure. I’m not a farmer.”
“It’s all right if you just graze it. But once it starts to head out you’ll have to plow it under. You’re not allowed to cut it without an allotment.”
Charlie felt his face turning red. Nothing nettled him quite so much as for someone to tell him what he could not do. “Supposin’ it was doin’ real good and I decided I wanted to cut some and put it up for feed?”
“We couldn’t allow that. Next spring I’ll come out or send an inspector to be sure it’s plowed under.”
“And what if it isn’t?”
“We’d have to file a complaint against you.”
Charlie swore under his breath. “I been more than twenty years workin’ out that land and payin’ for it. Now it’s mine. If I want to grow wheat on it to feed to my own sheep or cattle, I don’t see where anybody else has got any business pokin’ into it.”
“There is a certain logic, Mister Flagg, if you’ll think about it. If you weren’t allowed to grow that feed for yourself, you’d buy it from somebody who did have an allotment. That would help keep down the surplus.”
“Hell’s fire, if I decide to grow oats or barley and harvest them, I ain’t breakin’ no law, am I?” When Nicholson said no, Charlie went on heatedly, “I’d still be raisin’ my own feed, and I wouldn’t be buyin’ that man’s wheat. So if I’m not goin’ to buy from him anyway, it oughtn’t to make any difference what kind of feed I grow.”
Nicholson’s mouth tightened. “The law is specific. It says you can’t harvest wheat. My job is to carry out the law, not to question it.”
“It’s my land!”
“But harvest wheat from it without an allotment and you’ll pay a fine or go to jail! If you don’t like laws, Mister Flagg, perhaps you should move to some country where they don’t have any.”
“I liked this country before it was saddled down with so many of them.”
Nicholson gave up the argument and stamped away. Charlie’s jaw jutted out as he watched the young man leave the building. “Damn federales, they’re gettin’ worse than the smallpox.”
Jim Sweet mused, “He tried to be civil to you, Charlie. But you got him so stirred up now that he’s gone off and left all his papers in my office. He’ll be back directly and I’ll have to listen to him.” He looked around and saw that the crowd of loafers was supporting Charlie. “You’re no farmer, Charlie, so why raise all the fuss? You wouldn’t cut that wheat. A Russian firin’ squad couldn’t make you cut it.”
“Hell no, I wouldn’t of cut it. But I didn’t want him tellin’ me so. It wasn’t them federales that worked and did without so I could pay for that land. It wasn’t them that drilled the wells and dug the tanks and fought the brush. They’ve taken aplenty from me in taxes, but they ain’t contributed a damn thing, and I don’t want them to.” He turned stiffly toward the seed sacks. “Give me some oat seed.”
“Change your mind about the wheat?”
Charlie nodded grimly. “If I can’t work my own land without some white-collar bureaucrat loo
kin’ over my shoulder, the hell with it!”
Tom Flagg switched off the headlights and stepped out of his pickup in front of Bess Winfield’s small house, carrying a box of candy he had bought at the drugstore. The front of the place was dark, but he could see a light somewhere in the back.
The Winfields—Bess and her mother—lived in an old frame house at the edge of the Anglo section. A man could throw a rock from here to Little Mexico without straining his arm. That helped make the rent cheap. The front steps were of concrete, but the boards on the skimpy front porch were warped and slightly loose beneath Tom’s feet. He tucked the candy under his arm and knocked firmly on the screen door.
Waiting, he wondered what had been eating his father. Charlie had stomped in from town like an old bull on the prod, hooking at everything that moved. Charlie had chewed Tom up one side and down the other about half a dozen things. Not the least of them had been Bess Winfield. “You go see that girl!” he had demanded. “You go see her tonight. And if you don’t tell her you’re sorry, I’ll make you sorry.” Usually Tom could smooth Charlie’s ruffled feathers without much difficulty, but this time he thought he’d leave well enough alone. He had intended to see Bess anyway. He had been working hard. His hands itched for the touch of silk, and the soft skin beneath it.
Through the dim light that came from the back, Tom saw Bess walk out of her bedroom. She wore a faded cotton dress. A wisp of hair hung down in a loose curl on her forehead. Her face looked tired. Tom caught the burned odor of fresh-pressed clothing. He could see the ironing board in the bedroom, a half-finished dress draped across it, the hem moving gently in the good breeze that drew through the bedroom. He had found some time ago that it was the coolest room in the house.
Bess snapped on the living-room light and recognized Tom. She stood uncertainly inside the screen, saying nothing.
Tom spoke first. “Aren’t you even goin’ to say howdy-do?”
