by Elmer Kelton
Chapter Ten
SUMMER WAS A DRY DISAPPOINTMENT. THUNDERHEADS boiled out of nowhere, full of fury but devoid of rain, making their show and drifting away like a teasing girl. The scanty moisture evaporated from hot ground almost before the clouds were gone. Only the low swales showed any cast of green. Even there it faded pitifully through July, an empty promise gone without fulfillment. All summer Charlie had looked forward to the autumnal equinox to bring rain. Now he was saying, “Maybe there’ll come a little moisture before the first hard freeze.”
This morning he could sense the sharp breath of frost in the air. He skirted around the sideroads that let him avoid passing the main square of Rio Seco; it depressed him to see the empty store buildings, a couple of them with their front glass broken out and nobody left with interest enough to replace them or even board up the opening. He parked his pickup by a railroad siding next to the wool warehouse and feedstore. There a couple of dozen ranchmen and farmers stood around with hands shoved deeply into warm pockets, awaiting the opening of a red boxcar.
As always, Rounder Pike had the floor. “Yes sir, grass has got so thin in my country that a cow’s got to graze in a lope to stay ahead of starvation.”
Charlie smiled in spite of himself, and he wondered about the others who laughed. The joke was too nearly true to be all that funny. But times it seemed that if a man couldn’t find it in himself to laugh a little, he would break down and cry instead.
Warehouseman Jim Sweet leaned patiently against the boxcar, waiting. He waved Charlie a greeting and asked him, “You come to take a look at the government hay?”
Charlie shook his head. “Not on purpose; saw all the crowd gathered and thought maybe somebody got run over by a train.”
Sweet slapped the palm of his hand against the boxcar. “Got the first shipment of disaster hay in here, Charlie. Government says it’s goin’ to save all the ranchers from the drouth. You better get your order in.”
Charlie grimaced. “Reckon I’ll wait.” But he was curious now; he made up his mind to stay around and see.
A dust-grayed automobile pulled up to the siding, and square-shouldered Emil Deutscher climbed out stiff-legged, buttoning his coat against the chill. The farmers had elected him head of the county PMA committee for several consecutive years. The county PMA officer, March Nicholson, slid out from the other side of the car, clutching bills of lading and other papers. He paused and gazed at the boxcar, pride in his eyes. “Well, friends,” he said cheerfully, “there it stands. I told you they’d listen up yonder.” He looked over the men who gathered in around him, registering surprise as he saw Charlie. “Well, Mister Flagg, I didn’t expect to see you here.” All the chill was not in the air.
Charlie said, “Surprise to both of us, I reckon. As long as I was here, I thought I’d stay around and watch.”
“You be sure and do that. You could’ve had some of this thirty-four-dollar hay yourself if you had applied. for it.”
Charlie knew everybody was listening. “I can still support myself.”
Nicholson riffled the forms and invoices. He ignored a hoorawing comment from Rounder Pike that he ought to bale the papers along with the hay. Nicholson looked at the warehouseman.
“Jim, you do the honors.”
Jim Sweet declined. “It’s government feed. This is your show.”
Nicholson nodded. “In that case ...” He looked around. “Yancy Pike was the first man to sign up. Yancy, you come and break the seal.”
Beside Charlie’s pickup, Rounder Pike spat a brown tobacco stream and drawled, “Wonder if my big brother’s the first one in line when they’re takin’ up collection for the Community Chest?”
Yancy Pike glared at moment at Rounder. “Some things ain’t to be laughed about. These are hard times.” He took a wrecking bar and twisted the metal seal. Nicholson had to hammer the door latch to work it loose. He put his shoulder against the door and slid it open, straining.
“Well, Yancy,” he said, breathing a little hard, “back your truck up here and we’ll fill your order.”
Pike maneuvered his bobtail truck into place and cut the engine. He climbed up into the truckbed, waiting eagerly. Other men moved in close to see what this cut-rate government hay would look like. Nicholson and Emil Deutscher climbed into the boxcar.
Charlie thought he heard a woeful “Uh-oh” from Emil. Nicholson said, “Here it comes, Yancy.” The two men caught hold of the baling wires and swung out the first bale. It landed with a thump in the bed of the truck, dust flying, the bale breaking open as one of the wires slipped off. Men nearby leaned forward to look, then went silent, disappointment pinching their faces.
Yancy Pike’s voice lifted angrily. “What kind of a gyp is this? Let me into that boxcar! Let me see!”
He climbed up grunting and looked around sharp-eyed. He backed out cursing and shaking his head. “That damn stuff’s five years old if it’s a day! Just look at that crud—half weeds and the other half mold. Even been chickens roostin’ all over it. See them feathers? A starved-out jackrabbit would pewk over that trash!” He jumped down to the bed of his truck and lifted the bale to pitch it back into the car. He could not get hold of it because of the loosened wire.
Nicholson protested, “Yancy, what’re you doing?”
“Givin’ you back this crap you’re callin’ hay.”
“But you ordered it.”
“I ordered hay! Step out of the way there!”
Nicholson moved. Yancy swung the bale up at the boxcar door, the hay stringing out. It balanced precariously. As Yancy angrily pulled his truck away the bale tumbled to the ground and broke wide open, black inside with mold.
“Yancy, you can’t!” Nicholson cried out. But Yancy already had. Nicholson swallowed in agitation, then looked through his papers. “Henry Bunch,” he read. “Henry, you placed the second order. You can take your hay now.”
Henry Bunch was not a man to talk much. He just stood there, looking first at the broken bale on the ground, then up at the open door of the car. “Emil,” he called, “the rest of it look as bad as this?”
Deutscher only nodded. Bunch turned and walked out to his pickup. The rest of the crowd began to scatter slowly, some taking only enough time to file by and look at the bad bale. Shaken, Nicholson stood in the car door and called after them, “There’s bound to be better hay in here, soon’s we get a few of these bad bales off of the top.”
A couple of stragglers paused to examine the hay on the ground, then they too walked away. Finally there were only Nicholson and Emil Deutscher in the boxcar, Jim Sweet on the ground, and Charlie Flagg standing to one side, apart from the rest. Charlie moved up and stirred the hay a little with the toe of his boot. He glanced at Jim Sweet. “They named it right. It’s sure as hell a disaster.”
Bitterly Nicholson said, “How can they know? They wouldn’t even look at the rest of it.”
Jim Sweet replied, “You don’t have to eat a whole egg to tell it’s rotten. Looks like you’re stuck with it.”
“Oh no,” said Nicholson, “you ordered it. If you can’t sell it, I guess it’s your hay.”
Sweet shrugged. “I’m only here to unload it. It never was my hay. It still belongs to the government, and that’s you.”
“We can’t just leave it here and have to pay demurrage on this car. We’ve got to unload it somewhere.”
Sweet conceded reluctantly, “I’ll let you stack it in my shed, but what you do with it is your problem.”
Nicholson’s head was down. “I just never figured on a thing like this. I’ll have to call the state office. Bet they never thought of it either.” He looked up, hope returning. “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll call the state office and dump it in their lap. It was their job to think of things like this, not mine.”
He got in his automobile and drove off, forgetting he had left Emil Deutscher in the boxcar afoot.
Walking toward the bank, Charlie paused to look in the darkened, dust-gathering window of Sp
ruell’s saddle shop. Spruell had moved out last summer after doing business in that location for twenty-five years. Charlie had always found pleasure in loafing around the shop when he had any time to kill in town, running his hands over the new saddles, enjoying the feel of the artistic stamping, savoring the pleasant smell of neat’s-foot oil and new leather. Now the vacant building in the middle of the square was like a missing tooth in a woman’s smile. Because of drouth, people weren’t buying new saddles. They were making do with old boots they otherwise would throw away-—ranch owners because money was tight and ranchhands because they didn’t know how much longer their jobs might last. Charlie knew some small outfits which had played out their string; they had sold every animal they owned and let all the gates stand open.
He ran his hand across the back of his neck and thought about getting a haircut, but he remembered that his favorite barber had closed shop a while back and moved to San Angelo.
“So many people leavin’ town,” Rounder Pike had remarked, “it sure plays hell with our football team.”
Big Emmett Rodale sat at his desk in the corner of the bank. He looked up over his spectacles as Charlie walked in. He offered no greeting beyond a quiet, “Mornin’, Charlie.” None of his customary badgering. Charlie took that as a bad sign.
“You look like they’d lowered the interest rate on you,” he remarked.
Rodale grunted. “Been losin’ collateral. Yancy Pike’s sheep are dyin’. What this town needs is a veterinarian.”
“It don’t take a veterinarian to diagnose the hollow-belly.”
Big motioned for Charlie to sit down. “Good to see you. No, I take it back, it ain’t good to see you, but I felt like I ought to call you in to talk.” His worried manner stirred uneasiness in Charlie. “Been lookin’ over your accounts, Charlie. In fact, I been studyin’ your books for the last three years’ business.”
Charlie frowned. “And you found I made some mistakes?”
“A year like this one, anything you do is a mistake. Just bein’ a rancher is a mistake. Only real difference I see between ranchin’ and poker is, with poker you got some chance.”
Charlie stared somberly at a sheep picture behind Big’s desk. It had been made in better times; it showed a huge flock watering at a big surface tank. Not many ranches around here any more, excepting perhaps Page Mauldin’s, still had that many sheep. “I spent more money for feed this year than I ever did in my life. Looks like if I stay with it this winter I’ll spend even more. I ain’t got it, Big. If I get it, I got to borrow it from you.”
Rodale studied him a long time. Charlie tried in vain to read what lay behind those poker-player eyes; he had always wondered if this inscrutability was born into bankers or was an acquired art.
“Charlie, I’ll tell you same as I’ve told others. Right now, before the winter sets in, you have a chance to make a decision. Go a little farther and there’ll be no backin’ out.”
“What’s the choice?”
“Sell all your livestock now, bank whatever you got left, and wait till the rain comes. Then you can buy back in—maybe. The other choice is: cull deep, then hang and rattle.”
Charlie held his silence a while, squeezing his hands together. “Big, what would you do?”
“It’s not my place to say. If I was smart, I’d be rich.”
The idea was not new to Charlie; he had been considering it since late in the summer. “Either way, it’s a gamble on the weather. If a man thought the drouth was fixin’ to break pretty soon he’d be smart to hang on. If he thought it was goin’ to last he ought to sell out and salvage what he could.” He paused, the long-delayed decision weighing heavily upon him. “What do you think, Big? Reckon it’ll rain?”
Big Emmett shook his bald head. “I was born here. I never predict the weather.”
Charlie’s face was deeply creased. He rubbed his knuckles so hard they popped. “When a cowboy sells his saddle, he’s through.”
Emmett made no comment. Those half-closed eyes were unchanged.
Charlie said, “We been through drouths before. Look at ’33. That was a woolly booger, but we come out of it somehow. We’ll come out of this one. It always rains in this country about ten minutes before everything goes to hell. Emmett, I’m goin’ to hang and rattle!”
A change came to the banker’s eyes, and a faint smile crossed his round face. “I don’t know why you agonized so long over makin’ a decision; I knew all the time what you’d say. It’s the only way Charlie Flagg could go.” The smile slowly faded. “Now, then, that we got the preliminaries out of the way, we’d best get down to the nut-cuttin’.” He thumbed the papers on the desk. “First thing I tell most people is that they got to adjust themselves to a lower standard of livin’—cut out the frills.”
“What can I cut, Big?”
“Damned if I know. You’re like a sick man with no bad habits to give up, a sinkin’ ship with no ballast to throw over.” He scratched his shiny head. “Well, there is one thing that worries me, and that’s Tom. I don’t understand him, Charlie, or you either. He wins big at the rodeos, but still you’re givin’ him money.”
“It costs a right smart to rodeo. Travel, entry fees, eatin’ . . .”
“It don’t cost that much. While you was teachin’ him to rope, you ought to’ve taught him how to count his change, too. He throws it around like it was water and he was in a boat.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
Big nodded. “Now for the ranch expenses. You’ll need to cull deep—dig in for a long fight. Was I you, I’d ship every sheep that’s a day over four years old. Might even trim them down to threes. I’d give the cows a real sharp goin’-over. Bad as the cow business looks, it wouldn’t hurt you to cut that herd by fifty percent.”
Charlie protested, “Big, I been half my life buildin’ that bunch.”
“And you could be one winter in losin’ it. Keep the young ones and you’ll still have the blood. You can hold all the heifer calves when it commences rainin’ again.”
“I got some old pet cows I sure would hate to sell.”
Big showed a flare of impatience. “Why is it that a rancher can get so all-fired sentimental over a bunch of old mossy-horned cows? They never get that way over a set of ewes, and four years out of five the ewes’ll make them more money.”
Charlie said thoughtfully, “I reckon we just keep the ewes so we can afford the cows.”
“Well, right now you can’t afford the cows! Sell them!”
Charlie gave up reluctantly. “It’ll be like pullin’ my own teeth: But I’ll cut the cow herd in two.”
Big leaned back in his chair, looking past Charlie. “One more thing you sure won’t like. I been savin’ it for last.”
Charlie braced himself. “Well, then, pull the trigger.”
“It’s Lupe Flores. He’s taken a chunk out of your ranch income for years. You been payin’ him a white man’s wage.”
“He’s been worth a white man’s wage. Besides, he’s got a big family. Man with a big family, he needs a good wage.”
“All Mexicans have got big families. I know Lupe’s a good man, but I got to forget about men sometimes and look at the balance sheet. You’re gettin’ down to the point where there ain’t no balance.”
Charlie looked at his big hands. “I don’t know how I could ask him to take a cut in wages. Nobody ever gets his wages cut in this country any more.”
Rodale’s voice went quieter. “I wasn’t talkin’ about cuttin’ wages. I was talkin’ about lettin’ him go.”
Charlie stiffened. “Hell’s fire, Big! You know how long I’ve had Lupe with me?”
Big placed his palms together and spread his fingers, the tips touching. He didn’t look at Charlie. “I didn’t say it’d be easy. But consider this: you’re fixin’ to cut your livestock numbers way down. The ones you have left, you’ll have to buy feed for . . . and with borrowed money. Lupe Flores is a luxury you can’t afford.”
Charlie sat in stunned
silence.
Big said, “For a long time you been talkin’ about makin’ Tom a full partner with you. This’d be a good time. He could come home and take Lupe’s place. He’d be a help instead of a drain on you.”
Charlie couldn’t remember when he had ever pleaded with anyone for anything. He was tempted to do so now; he was on the point of it, but he couldn’t find it in him to say please. Instead, he clenched his fist. “Big, are you sayin’ you won’t back me if I don’t get rid of Lupe?”
Big’s eyes narrowed as he studied the resistance in Charlie’s face. “Well . . .”
“I been bankin’ with you since I first went to ranchin’ for myself. I’d hate like hell to have to change banks.”
Big rolled the cigar around in his mouth, his eyes unreadable again. “You threatenin’ me, Charlie?”
“Depends on whether you’re threatenin’ me.”
“I don’t threaten people. I just lay the facts of life out there for them to see.” He stared awhile in irritation, then finally shrugged. “All right, keep Lupe awhile longer and we’ll see what happens. But if it don’t rain, he’s pavin’ the road to the poor-house for you.”
“Thanks, Big.”
Rodale grunted. “I’m not doin’ you no favor, lettin’ you get by with this.” He stared at Charlie a long time. “You was runnin’ a bluff on me. You couldn’t get credit at another bank and you know it. The shape you’re in, they wouldn’t have you.”
“If I’m that bad off, why do you do it?”
“Stupid, I reckon. Hell, Charlie, I couldn’t cut you off any more than you could cut off Lupe. We need you around here like beans need salt. You’re one of the few men I know that’ll stand up and give me an argument.”
“It’ll rain by spring, Big. I got a feelin’.”
“You’ve had that feelin’ the last three-four years.”
Charlie managed a thin smile. “I reckon I have. I bet you think ranchers are a peculiar lot.”
Big nodded gravely. “They have to be, to stay in the business. Everybody around this damn place is peculiar . . . except me.”
