The Time It Never Rained

by Elmer Kelton

  Charlie came as near running as he had in a long time. He had to go through a gate, and he left it open in his haste. He heard Manuel crying, “Papa, he’s dyin’! Papa!”

  Breathless, Charlie hauled up beside Manuel and Lupe and the colt. The little bay lay on its side, making a loud noise as it struggled for breath. It had been here awhile. Charlie could see marks on the ground where it had threshed with its feet and had slung its head.

  Tears ran down Manuel’s cheeks. “Papa, what’s the matter with him?”

  Lupe had no answer; he seemed as suddenly stricken as Manuel.

  Charlie couldn’t be sure, but he thought he knew the symptoms. “Poisoned.”

  Manuel seemed lost, bewildered. “But how?”

  Charlie shook his head. “No way to know for sure. Somethin’ the pony ate, some kind of poison weed, I’d judge. Drouth like this, you get all kinds of noxious plants. That kind grows when nothin’ else will.”

  “But what’ll we do?” Manuel pleaded. “We’ve got to do somethin’!”

  Charlie’s throat began to tighten. He could not remember a time he had ever saved an animal as far gone as this colt appeared to be. “You run up to the big house and tell Miz Mary to melt down all the bacon grease she’s got. Hurry!”

  Manuel hesitated. “Couldn’t we take him to a vet?”

  “Ain’t no vet this side of San Angelo,” Charlie said. “He’d never make the trip. You better go get that grease, boy.”

  Manuel took off in a hard run. Lupe Flores dropped to his knees in Manuel’s place and began rubbing the pony’s neck. His mouth was set in a grim line. “Bacon grease don’t save him no more, Mister Charlie.”

  “We’ve got to do somethin’. The boy’s got to know we tried.”

  The pony lifted its head and kicked its forefeet, a terrible noise coming from its throat. Charlie knelt and cradled the head in his lap. “You poor little bastard,” he said softly. “You poor little bastard.”

  Manuel was back shortly, running as fast as he could, carrying a bucket. Charlie could see Mary coming down from the big house, a shawl wrapped around her thin shoulders. “How is he, Mister Charlie?” Manuel demanded, shouting as he came through the gate.

  Charlie didn’t answer. He didn’t think he had to; Manuel could see the answer for himself. He looked at what was in the bucket. “Not enough,” he said. “Better go see what your mother has got. If it’s no more than this, get her to melt down some pure lard. And get here with it while it’s still hot and thin.”

  He wanted to keep Manuel busy, and keep him away from here as much as he could. Lupe forced the pony’s mouth open, grabbing the tongue and holding it while Charlie bent a point on the rim of the bucket and began pouring the heat-thinned grease down the bay’s throat. He did it slowly, trying not to choke the animal. When there were signs of choking, he let up. When the choking stopped, he began pouring again.

  “Grease is hardenin’ up,” he said. “We’ll have to build us a fire and heat it again.”

  That gave him something better to do than stand here and watch the pony die. He gathered up some dead brush from nearby. Candelario had arrived by now, all big eyes and wet tears. Charlie sent him for kerosene. By the time Manuel got back with the extra grease, Charlie had remelted the remnant in the first bucket and had gotten it down the colt’s throat. He started with the new bucket, pouring gently. He was aware that he had a crowd around him now, a grave, silent crowd of Mary and Rosa and Anita and all the Flores children.

  The grease hadn’t helped; Charlie had known it probably wouldn’t. He doubted that anything would have helped, as late as the colt had been found. The breathing was more painful, more labored.

  Manuel sat and cradled the bay’s head and tried to hide his face from the others. Charlie moved quietly over to Mary and Rosa. “There’s nothin’ you-all can do out here. Best everybody goes back to the house and leaves the boy alone. He won’t want everybody to watch him cry.”

  The women and children slowly retreated. Lupe and Charlie stayed, but they had little to do. Lupe kept bringing a little wood periodically to keep the fire going because the night chill was beginning to bite.

  “Why my pony?” Manuel cried. “Why just my pony and none of the others?”

  Charlie studied the question a long time and had no fully satisfactory answer for it. “A colt is like a kid. It’ll try things a grown horse would leave alone.”

  Lupe asked, “What do you think it ate, Mister Charlie?”

  Charlie shrugged. “God knows. If there was a veterinarian here, maybe we could find out. Maybe we could go hunt it down and chop it out so nothin’ else would ever eat it.”

  Manuel said, “Maybe if there had been a vet, we could save my pony.”

  Charlie doubted that, but the easiest thing was to agree. “Maybeso.”

  For a long time Manuel was silent. He broke that silence once to say, “That’s what I’m goin’ to be someday, Papa. I’m goin’ to be a vet.”

  Charlie thought of the time and money it took for a young man to become a veterinarian. Manuel had no more chance than a snowball in hell. But it would be cruel to tell him so.

  Charlie and Lupe sat there, periodically poking new wood into the fire. Hunger gnawed at Charlie, but he didn’t give in to it. He didn’t want to go off and leave this boy alone, to give him the feeling of being abandoned.

  At length he realized he didn’t hear the pony’s heavy breathing any more. He saw no sign of movement. He pushed stiffly to his feet and walked over there, Lupe moving with him. Charlie knelt and put his hand on the pony’s neck.

  “It’s over, boy. Your horse is gone.”

  Manuel nodded. He already knew. He laid the pony’s head down gently, then turned away, still sitting on the ground, covering his face in his arms.

  Chapter Eleven

  TOM FLAGG HAD BEEN SILENT EVER SINCE HE HAD turned onto the ranch road from town. Nothing he had heard had prepared him for the dismal condition in which he found the country; he had seen starving jackrabbits stripping bark from cedar fence posts. He did not think he had been gone long enough to have forgotten how bad it was. Perhaps it had slipped a lot in a short time; or more likely, he had remembered it the way he wanted it to be.

  What brought the realization to him with force was the auburn-haired woman who sat close beside him on the automobile seat. He could imagine how it must look to her. Dolly had held her silence too, and he was sure he knew the reason. He had described Brushy Top to her as he always saw it in his mind’s eye, with perhaps an extra rosy hue. He had not especially intended to exaggerate, but exaggeration came easy when he was so eager to please her. He was afraid the reality now had thrown her into some minor state of shock.

  “It’ll be better,” he said, his first words in ten nervous minutes.

  She made no reply. She kept looking out the side window, so he could not quite see her face.

  “We’re almost there,” he ventured again. “Just around the next curve and you’ll see it.”

  “What’s this I’ve been looking at?”

  “Part of the ranch, since the last two cattleguards. Headquarters is just yonder a ways. You’ll like that.”

  “I’m sure,” she replied quietly, the tone of her voice giving lie to the words.

  He put his big hand on her thigh. “Not nervous, are you?”

  “No. Are you?”

  “Not a bit.”

  She glanced at him, coming as near a smile as she had in an hour. “You’re a damn liar.”

  “All right, I’m nervous, a little bit. I’d sooner take a whippin’ with the double of a rope. But we got to face up to it sooner or later. Might as well be sooner.” He slowed for the turn, then gestured with his hand as the houses and trees came into view. “There it is. What do you think?”

  Dolly seemed to shrink a little. “It’s . . . nice. Way you’ve talked, a girl would think the roofs were made out of gold, or something.”

  “Dry weather, is all. It’d look a
lot different if things was green. Give this country three inches of good slow rain and it’d come alive like a flower garden.”

  Dolly grimaced. “It’s got a long Way to go.”

  “It’ll grow on you.”

  Tom pulled up in front of the barn and sat a moment, letting the dust sweep by and settle before he opened the car door. He frowned. “The tank. I believe the bass tank has gone dry.”

  Dolly frowned at him, not understanding what he was talking about. He pointed to a motte of trees beyond the barns and corrals. “Surface tank down yonder. Dad had it built with mule teams and fresnos when I was just a button. He planted bass in it, and I’ve fished out of that tank almost ever since I can remember. Now it looks to me like the chinaberry trees around it are all dyin’. Tank must’ve dried up.”

  She touched his leg. “You didn’t plan on doing much fishing for a while anyway, did you?”

  He pinched her thigh. “I got better things to spend my time at.”

  “You damn betcha you have.”

  Tom stepped out and unlatched the endgate of the trailer he had gotten from Jason Ellender, the one with TOM FLAGG painted on it in fair-sized letters and ELLENDER TRAILER Co. just a little smaller . . . not as much smaller as Tom had been led to expect. The way the words were put together made it look as if he were a salesman or representative of the company. He backed Prairie Dog out and led him into a corral, where he noted that horses had chewed deep gaps in many of the planks. That was a sign they weren’t getting the minerals they needed from the range feed. Tom wasn’t surprised; he saw no range feed at all. He scooped up a bucketful of oats in the barn and poured them out in a wooden trough for the roping horse, shutting the gate behind him. He paused to unhook the trailer and leave it where it stood.

  Dolly rolled her window down. “You’re taking your sweet time. Stalling?”

  Tom didn’t answer. He got back into the car. Dolly pointed first at the big stone house, then at the white wooden frame. “Which one?”

  “The rock house, of course.”

  “The frame looks the newest.”

  “It’s been added to the most. About every time Rosa came up preñada they added another room to the house. Ol’ Lupe, he was a pretty good carpenter till he finally ran out of buildin’ material.” Tom pointed his chin toward the rock house. “Dad’s pickup is sittin’ out in front. We’d just as well go on up and start the music.”

  Dolly said, “The way you’ve talked ever since I met you, you’ve never been scared of anything in your life. You’re scared now.”

  He tried to laugh, but the effort came to no good result. “They’re gettin’ no younger, Dolly, and it takes older folks awhile to get used to a new idea.”

  “Everybody’s boy comes home married sooner or later. You’ve held out longer than most.”

  Tom had no intention of telling her that Charlie and Mary had expected him to come home someday married to a different woman. He pulled in behind Charlie’s pickup and stopped, sitting a moment with his hands idle on the wheel before he reached down and cut the ignition. He took a deep breath and stepped out onto the ground, walked around and opened Dolly’s door. He caught a quick glimpse of leg far above the knee as she slid out; that was enough to reassure him—for the moment, at least—that he had not made any mistake. Dolly looked around for a minute, taking in Mary’s fallow flower beds, the big rock house.

  “Just how old is this place?” she asked.

  Tom avoided a direct answer. “It was a German built it. Them Germans, they always built everything to last.”

  Dolly frowned. “Whoever he was, he must’ve died before your time . . . of old age.”

  “The place has been well kept. You’ll like it.” Tom stared at the big house as if it were a jail. “We’d just as well go on in.”

  “You don’t act like you think they’ll take it good.”

  “They’ll fall in love with you. I did, didn’t I?”

  “You had a stronger reason.”

  They walked up the steps together. Tom pulled the screen back just as his mother opened the front door. She had seen his car. “Tom?” Her voice was pleased and a little excited. “Is that Bess?” Mary Flagg’s eyes widened as she got a better look at the young woman on the porch. She stammered, “W-w-why, hello.”

  Tom said quickly, “Mom, I want you to meet Dolly. Dolly, this here is her.”

  Mary’s eyes reflected a big and urgent question. She tried to make her voice sound warm, but the surprise was too strong. “It’s nice to know you, Dolly. You-all come on in.” She hugged Tom, but her eyes were on Dolly.

  Charlie Flagg stood in the doorway, a section of newspaper in his hand. He had trailed pages of the San Angelo Standard-Times all the way from his big rocking chair. Grinning, he shoved out his hand and gripped Tom’s hand so hard that Tom flinched. Drouth hadn’t done anything to Charlie’s bone-crunching grip. “It’s not even Christmas, son. What’s the matter, bust your rope?”

  Then he too saw Dolly. His eyes widened even more than Mary’s. He did not yet have so much gray in his hair that he could not appreciate a fine-looking woman.

  Tom fished desperately for words he had been rehearsing in his mind, but the hole had dried up. “Folks, this here is Dolly Ellender. I mean, she was Dolly Ellender. Now she’s Dolly Flagg.” As if he feared they wouldn’t believe him, he lifted Dolly’s left hand. “See the ring? Two hundred and seventy-five dollars in El Paso.” He looked hopefully from one parent to the other. “I’m a pretty good picker, wouldn’t you say?”

  Charlie and Mary stared as if Tom had struck them with a club. Charlie let the rest of the paper trail onto the floor. Finally he blurted, “You always could pick the best-lookin’ horse out of a bunch . . . or filly.” That was not the best thing to have said under the circumstances, but it had to do. He rubbed his hand over his reddening face, floundering. “No use you-all standin’ out here on this chilly porch. We got a house.”

  They moved inside. Tom grinned awkwardly while his parents looked at Dolly. It was not in his nature to feel foolish about anything, and he felt a vague resentment against somebody—he was not sure who—for being forced into that position now. His mother hugged Dolly, then fluttered around her, trying to make her feel at ease though she was lapsing into the German accent which always broke through when she was flustered or excited. Dolly was nervously sizing up the living room and presumably making up her mind about the rest of the place. Now Tom was uncomfortably aware how the room must look to Dolly—big, clean but showing its age, the ceiling high and old-fashioned, the way they were building them when going to the toilet meant a venture outdoors. The furniture was old and gross and overstuffed. The wide mantelpiece was cluttered with photographs and trinkets, mostly dear to Mary Flagg but a mess to anyone else. Nothing like that fancy motel room in El Paso where Tom and Dolly had spent two nights after being married by that Mexican justice of the peace or whatever he was in Juárez.

  He knew he had talked too much about this ranch, building it up in her imagination beyond all reality. But hell’s bells, a woman ought to know a man is going to spread things thick when he is trying to sell her on a proposition; she ought to make allowances. He wouldn’t have lied if it hadn’t looked like he had to, to keep her interested.

  Mary’s old German accent broke out like a rash. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me . . . you must both be hungry. I’ll get something on the table.”

  Tom protested that they had eaten in San Angelo, but his mother seemed not to hear. He decided she needed something to do with her hands while she tried to gather her wits. Mary said, “You want to come in the kitchen with me, Dolly? I’ll throw some little thing together in a hurry. I hope you’re a good cook.”

  Dolly cast a quick and pleading glance at Tom. “Well, not really . . .”

  “You’ll learn. Tom’s a big eater. I’ll teach you some of the things that he always likes . . . the German Mehlspeisen and all that.”

  Tom knew the last t
hing Dolly wanted to do right now was go into that kitchen. But he simply shrugged his shoulders to her silent call for help.

  Charlie Flagg stood in his sock feet, staring after the two women. At length he said, “Well, I’ll be damned. I’ll be damned.”

  Tom studied his father’s face for some indication of what Charlie was really thinking. “How do you like her, Dad?”

  Charlie pondered his answer. “Like I said, you always had a good eye.”

  That was no real answer, certainly not the blanket approval Tom wanted. "You’ll like her, Dad, when you get to know her.”

  “How long have you known her, son? I mean, this ain’t somethin’ that just sprung up all of a sudden, is it?”

  “I’ve known her a good while.”

  “She a rodeo girl . . . a barrel racer or somethin’?”

  “No, her old man . . . her daddy . . . has a big trailer outfit. You’ve seen the name . . . Ellender. He’s the one built the trailer I been haulin’.”

  Charlie nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve seen the name. Rich feller then, I expect?”

  Tom shrugged. “You know how it is with them big businessmen. They take in a lot of money, but they spend a lot too. Big income, big outgo . . . you never know where they stand.”

  “Just the same, she’s probably been used to things awful nice. Reckon how she’ll take to a greasy-sack outfit like this?”

  “She’ll do fine, Dad. She’ll do real fine.”

  Charlie frowned deeply. “She’s a good woman, I expect, else you wouldn’t of married her.” He walked over to the mantel and gently picked up a small framed picture of a woman. He glanced toward the kitchen, then carried the picture to a desk and slipped it into a drawer, face down. “Does Bess know about this?”

  Tom avoided his father’s eyes. “Not hardly anybody knows yet, except you-all and Dolly’s folks. We ain’t been in circulation much.”

  Charlie looked at the closed drawer. “Bess always had the idea . . . we always did . . .” He glanced up. “Somebody’s got to tell her. It ain’t right that she finds out from gossip.”