The Time It Never Rained

by Elmer Kelton

  If it had to be a dry winter, Charlie was glad it was an open one without undue cold weather to draw the livestock into a knot and make them suffer. True, just about everything the cattle and sheep ate was dry feed dribbled out the back end of Charlie’s or Lupe’s pickups, and paid for with a loan from Big Emmett. The old grass dwindled until Charlie knew he would have to begin feeding hay, at least on the bad days. When a man had to feed three times as much protein supplement as usual, and hay besides, he was burning both ends of the candle. Hay feeding on pasture was considered a shortcut to the poor-house. But he had it to do.

  So once more he limped up the steps and into Jim Sweet’s feedstore. He found Sweet stamping back and forth across the office floor, badly out of sorts.

  “You’ll have to pardon me if I look like I’m about to bite you, Charlie. I’ve spent an hour listenin’ to Yancy Pike bitch at me about how poor the wool market is, like it was my fault. And him wearin’ a nylon coat.”

  Another time Charlie might have smiled; today he didn’t feel like it. He backed up for a minute to the old gas heater sitting near the middle of the linoleum-covered floor. He had always hated linoleum in the wintertime; bare wood seemed less cold. “Jim, I got to have some hay.”

  Sweet nodded. “First thing you do is apply through March Nicholson down at the PMA.”

  “I’ m not talkin’ about government hay. I’m payin’ for my own.”

  Sweet misunderstood. “Charlie, the situation has straightened out some. You can get good hay through the program now, not junk like that first load still moldin’ out yonder in my shed.”

  Charlie’s voice sharpened. “I’ll pick my own hay and pay my own money. You got some hay, ain’t you?”

  “Matter of fact, Charlie, I don’t. I can get you some, but you may have to wait a spell.”

  “How come?”

  “Government program, is why. Most everybody that’s eligible is buyin’ their hay through Uncle Sam. Got so they just about have to. Dealers like me, we can’t afford to lay in a supply; we’d be apt to wind up stuck with it. We can’t compete with Uncle Sam. Another thing, you’ll have to pay a right smart more for it now.”

  Charlie’s face was grim. “On account of the program again?”

  “Yep. Government’s been buyin’ most of the hay and run the price up. Feller outside the program just can’t afford to buy it; he’s got to get in. You can’t whip them, Charlie. You’d just as well join them.”

  Color spread in Charlie’s face. “The hell I will! I’ll just have to find me a substitute.”

  Since the time when Texas was still a part of Mexico, Mexican cart men had fed prickly pear to their oxen on the long trails during the wintertime. They would break off the thorny pads and hold them over a flame on a stick or a pitchfork to burn off the sharp spines. In later years Anglo stockmen had devised more efficient types of prickly pear burners, starting first with kerosene, developing gradually to butane units fueled from a tank on a pickup bed or truck. Resembling a military flamethrower, the device spewed a long, white-hot tongue of flame which in seconds curled the thorns and left only spots of white ash. Sheep and cattle learned to follow the men, eating the hot green pear leaves as a belly-filler in place of grass and hay. Once used to it, they liked it; some cows liked it so much they would even eat it with the thorns on, until their mouths were ruined and they starved from the pain of festering sores.

  Charlie could not bring himself to burn pear. All his life he had fought prickly pear as an enemy to his grass. It strained his credulity that a cow or a sheep could actually eat cactus and get any good out of it. The concept ran counter to all his instincts.

  Though other natural range feed was long since gone, Brushy Top still had tobosa grass on its open flats. Tobosa was highly seasonal in palatability; cattle and sheep liked it only when it was green, and it had not been green much the last few years. After frost and into spring it was of little value for grazing, as sterile as bedding-straw. It stood dry and coarse and tasteless, and nowadays covered by a thick coat of dust. Sometimes sheep would eat even the poisonous yellow bitterweed before they would graze dry tobosa.

  But it stood there in the pastures, wasting, and Charlie Flagg could abide almost anything before he could abide waste. It dwelt heavily on his mind that this dusty-gray tobosa was good filler, if nothing else, to go with the protein pellets he was spilling on the ground at a bankrupting rate every day. The problem was to get the animals to eat it.

  He had his pickup parked by the side of the ranch road in the edge of a large spread of half-brittle tobosa. Hitched behind the pickup was a trailer-mounted livestock sprayer that once had been red but now was sun-faded to a dull orange and had a fresh brown stain streaked down one side.

  Experimenting with the sprayer nozzle, Charlie glanced up the road and saw a heavy cloud of dust. Beneath it was a familiar black Cadillac. Page Mauldin braked to a stop and sat at the roadside a moment, staring at Charlie. They hadn’t seen each other in a month or more. The longer the drouth continued, the more miles Page bullied out of that automobile, rushing from one ranch to the next, from one piece of bad news to another.

  Kathy sat in the front seat. This was Saturday, and school was out. Page opened the door and planted his boots solidly on the ground, then pushed himself to a stand. Kathy waved at Charlie but stayed in the car where it was warm. Page slammed the door shut and strode unhurriedly toward Charlie with his hand outstretched.

  Charlie shook his head and turned his hand over, palm up. “Better not shake with you, Page. I got syrup all over my hands.”

  Mauldin eyed the sprayer critically and sniffed, trying to pin down the sweet smell. “What the Sam Hill you doin’, anyway?”

  Charlie looked smug. “Fixin’ to try out a brainstorm. Looky yonder at all that tobosa grass. I got enough of it on this place to fill every barn in three counties if it was baled. It ain’t worth a Mexican centavo piece the way it stands—like Shredded Wheat without milk or sugar. But I think I figured out how to bribe stock into eatin’ it.”

  The tall old ranchman chewed his unlighted cigar and looked into the sprayer. He sniffed again. “You got molasses in there?”

  “Puredee blackstrap molasses. I taken a bite of some cow cake one mornin’ and got to thinkin’ how they put molasses in feed to make cattle eat it better. You know how an old cow’ll loll her tongue out after molasses. It came to me that a little lick might bribe them into eatin’ this tobosa.”

  Page Mauldin frowned. “You goin’ to put it on with this sprayer?”

  “It’s the only practical way I know to get coverage.”

  “Damn practical way to gum hell out of a good spray rig, if you ask me. But I reckon you didn’t ask me.”

  “I cut the molasses with water to where it’ll go through. I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work.”

  Mauldin studied the sprayer with worried eyes that seemed sunk back into dark shadows. “Doesn’t seem to me like anything works any more. A man struggles and tries, but everything goes to hell in front of him.”

  “So he struggles and tries some more. There’s lots of things we haven’t tried yet.” Charlie looked across the pasture. “I got Lupe and Manuel out yonder roundin’ up some stock. Time they push them over here, this stuff ought to’ve dried. Better stand back, Page, so you don’t get it all over you.”

  Mauldin stepped away from the trailer and got upwind. Charlie climbed onto the sprayer, wrapped a short rope around the starter and pulled. It sputtered but died the first two times. He cursed the man who first invented the gasoline engine, then tried a third time. It kicked off under protest. Charlie walked out into the grass and aimed the nozzle straight forward, then pressed the trigger. The water-thinned molasses began to spray, jerking the nozzle in his hand. As the wind shifted, some of the mixture drifted back onto him. His hands turned sticky. He licked his lips and tasted the raw sweetness. Not bad, not bad at all. Watching the molasses stain the grass, the little droplets rolling sluggis
hly down the stems, he felt proud of himself for the idea.

  He was going to be in an awful mess before he was through, but clothes could be washed.

  Gradually the stream shortened and choked down. He shook the hose and feverishly levered the trigger, but the flow continued to dwindle. He called to Page, “I haven’t emptied that tank already, have I?”

  Mauldin leaned to look down into the sprayer. “Still half full. Like I told you, the molasses has gummed up the works.”

  Charlie cursed a little under his breath. “I reckon next time I’ll have to cut it even thinner, and maybe find a bigger nozzle.”

  Page stood with hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring morosely. “Why, Charlie? Why do you do this?”

  “Like I told you, a cow or a sheep is the same as a kid. Put a little sweetenin’ in their feed and they’ll lap it up.”

  “I don’t mean that; I mean, you don’t have to do it thisaway. You can get feed easier than this.”

  Charlie knew what Page was driving at and tried to head him off. He had had all the argument he wanted on this subject from Jim Sweet. “Tobosa will fill their bellies if I can get them to eat it.”

  “And if this don’t work?”

  “A man’s got to try whatever he can think of. If the first thing don’t work, try the next thing. If that don’t work, go on to somethin’ else. Minute a man quits tryin’, he’s blowed up.”

  Page lifted a water can out of the pickup to pour water over Charlie’s hands. He grunted from its weight. Page didn’t look strong any more. There was little of the cowboy left in him that Charlie remembered from so long ago; Page was grinding himself into the ground.

  Charlie said, “Would you like to drive around a little while we wait for Lupe and Manuel?”

  “I need to be gettin’ on down the road,” Page said. But Charlie sensed that the old ranchman yearned for a little visiting, a little bit of friendship. He hadn’t taken time for much of it.

  Charlie said, “Get in the pickup. I’ll unhitch the sprayer.”

  He asked Kathy if she wanted to go along for a bouncy ride in a dirty old pickup or sit and wait in that nice clean car. She decided to wait.

  There were many things Charlie would like to talk to Page about, but each man held a solemn silence, recognizing the other’s presence, yet wrapped in his own dark worries. There was little about the dry land that made a man feel like talking. There was comfort of sorts simply in silent sharing of the misery.

  Moving across a bare, ashen pasture and remembering how green it used to be, Charlie found himself almost wondering if it was worth the fight. Who knew how long it might be until it rained again? He had read an article by a historian who said this region had known drouths of ten and fifteen years’ duration in the times of the nomadic Indians. They could tell by tree rings and such. An Indian could strike his tepee and take his horses and follow the rivers, the remnants of game, go as far as he needed to escape the clutch of drouth. But the white man by his acquisitive nature was tied to a piece of land.

  Charlie had always believed a man should make his own decisions, then stand by them without question, without regret. Lately he had found himself looking back, wondering if he had been right to stay, yet knowing he could have taken no other course. If he abandoned this land he abandoned hope. Where could he go? What could he do? What else did he know except livestock? This land was no longer something apart from him, it was a part of him like his arms and legs. His sweat and his blood were soaked into it. Like an old tree, his roots went too deeply into this ground for him ever to be transplanted. Pull him up from here now and he could only die.

  A man had to make his try, and when that didn’t work he had to try something else. Try and keep trying. Endure, and try again.

  Page said, “Charlie, there was a time you had your deeded land all paid out clear of debt. Now I hear you’ve used it for security; you’ve gone in debt again.”

  Charlie shrugged. “A man has to, sometimes.”

  “I would; that’s the way I operate. But you’ve told me many a time you’d rather own a little place free and clear than to be a big operator and owe it all.”

  “Times, a man can’t have his druthers. He does what he has to, to stay.”

  “But you were out of debt.” For a moment a dim spot of envy seemed to glow somewhere back in the darkness of those troubled eyes. “God, how I’d like to have that feelin’ just once more in my life—to be free of debt. You don’t know how heavy it can set on a man’s shoulders. You don’t know how it can drive him.”

  I know, thought Charlie. I was there one time. But I was easier satisfied than some people. I quit reaching.

  Page said, “You’re beatin’ your head against the wall. You don’t have to let it cost you this much. There’s an open road ahead of you if you’d throw that fool pride out the window and do what everybody else does.”

  “Go beg for a government handout?”

  “Not a handout. I’m talkin’ about what’s rightfully ours, about takin’ your share before it’s all gone. I’m talkin’ about usin’ your head to think with instead of to butt with. You remind me of an old bunch-quitter horse that can’t get along with the others and always goes it alone. Pride won’t buy you a cup of coffee, much less a barnful of feed.”

  “I don’t believe in it, Page.”

  “That’s all the argument you got?”

  “That’s all the argument there is.”

  “You know, Charlie, you make some of the rest of us look bad.”

  “I don’t mean to do that. I’m not sayin’ any man is wrong because he doesn’t pattern himself after me; what anybody else wants to do is his business, not mine. I just want to live by my own lights and be left the hell alone.”

  They made a few windmills and looked at a few little bunches of cattle and sheep. Neither man needed to say much about them; that they were wintering hard was painfully obvious. No amount of conversation would do much about that.

  When they returned to Page Mauldin’s car, Lupe Flores was sitting on his horse by the spraying machine, his large body slumped, one leg thrown over the saddlehorn. Manuel was standing by the car, where Kathy had rolled the window down. The two were so deeply in conversation that they did not notice the pickup until Charlie came to a stop. Manuel looked around, startled, and Kathy quickly rolled the window up to keep the dust from fogging in.

  Lupe had been loose-herding a little bunch of cattle and sheep on the sprayed tobosa. The animals began running toward Charlie’s pickup; they were used to being fed from it. They crowded around, bleating and bawling as Charlie stepped to the ground.

  He worked his way through them, slapping cows on the rump, pushing sheep out from in front of him. “Well, Lupe, how did it go? Did they like the molasses?”

  Lupe swung his leg down. “Sure enough, Mister Charlie. They did like the molasses pretty good.” He paused, his round face solemn. “But they don’t eat much grass. Mostly they just lick.”

  Heart sinking, Charlie walked out into the tobosa. The animals had tromped a lot of it down as they pushed in to lick up the sweet, sticky spray. But it was evident they had not eaten much.

  Lupe saw the disappointment that fell over Charlie.

  “No /e hace, Mister Charlie,” he said with a naive confidence. “We will think of something else. Me and you, we will try again.”

  Charlie had drained the molasses from the sprayer in the pasture as well as he could. At headquarters he set in to hose down the tank and wash it out. He dreaded going up to the house. Mary had told him the idea wouldn’t work, and she would probably remind him, in words or in look. It took him a long time to get the molasses washed clean and the tank spraying clear water again. By then Lupe and Manuel had ridden in from the pasture. Charlie looked up from his work to acknowledge their arrival. Lupe nodded, but Manuel made no gesture. He didn’t even glance at Charlie.

  Charlie frowned. There had been a strain between him and the boy since that incident with Danny
Ortiz.

  I always treated him good, Charlie thought, trying for the hundredth time to puzzle it out. Must be a phase he’s going through. Boys are that way.

  Anita stepped out onto the front porch of the Flores house, looking for the family menfolks. Probably waiting to start supper, Charlie reasoned. He stretched his aching back and looked at Anita across the distance of the yard. He had watched her worriedly for a time after José had left here, dreading a sign that she might be putting on weight. Eventually he had decided there was no change. Either nothing had happened between her and José, or they had been lucky. It had been a relief to Charlie. He had never spoken to Mary of his fears, but he knew from several guarded remarks that the same worry had weighed on her mind awhile.

  José hadn’t lasted more than three weeks at Rounder Pike’s. The border patrol had picked him up and shipped him back across the river. Anita had grieved a few weeks, but of late she was laughing again.

  Charlie could hear the sound of the horses Manuel and Lupe turned loose; he could hear the drag of girths and buckles across the wooden floor of the saddle shed. He heard Manuel fetching a bucket of oats and pouring them out in a trough for the horses. Then Manuel went whistling for his colt.

  Charlie gave it little thought at first, until it occurred to him that Manuel had been whistling unusually long. Normally about this time of day that colt was up and hanging its head over the fence, looking for Manuel to come pet him, and feed him.

  Manuel’s voice came suddenly, high with alarm. “Papa! Papa!”

  He wasn’t calling Charlie, but Charlie dropped the water hose and stepped down from the sprayer. He trotted quickly to the hydrant and turned off the water because he could not afford to waste any. Then he half walked, half ran in the direction from which he had heard Manuel shout. He saw Lupe hurrying out a little way into the horse pasture. Charlie paused a moment, squinting. He made out something low against the ground . . . the colt, down, and Manuel kneeling beside him.