by Elmer Kelton
“Don’t look at me. I can’t go talk to Bess. What would Dolly think?”
“Does she even know about Bess?”
“She knows there’s a girl here I used to go with a little, that’s all. I reckon that’s enough for her to know.”
“I reckon.” Charlie moved away from the desk but glanced back. “Well, I’ll go talk to her in the mornin’. We just never figured there was any question...” He shrugged, leaving the rest unstated. “This girl must’ve taken a powerful hold on you.”
“She sure did.” Tom could not tell Charlie all of it. He figured his father was too old to understand how a woman could drive a man beyond all endurance by always being there, somewhere in sight but just out of reach, tempting him with her eyes and her voice and the way she moved, seeming always to invite him to reach and take but pulling away just as he tried, managing somehow always to leave the impression that the next time he reached, she might stand still. She had built his hunger until he could stand it no more. In desperation he had presented his proposition, and they had wound up signing a marriage document in Spanish just across the river, where he could have her back at the motel as fast as a Mexican taxi driver could make the run.
Charlie stood by the front window, looking toward the barn. He saw Lupe Flores come out of the horse pen and young Candelario walk out from the milking shed, meeting each other. At the distance Charlie had no idea what they said to each other, but he could tell they both were laughing. As they started toward their white frame home, Anita came to meet them from the chicken house, a basket of eggs on her arm. Candelario shared the joke with her, and all three were laughing when they went up the steps together.
Charlie could not remember when he had last found anything he and Tom could laugh at together. Maybe it was true what some people said, that Mexican families tended to be closer than Anglo families, that they shared a degree of understanding which most Anglos only wished for. He wondered if Manuel or Anita or Candelario would ever come home someday and dump a surprise in Lupe’s and Rosa’s laps like Tom had done here tonight. He doubted it.
Well, there was always a time for patching up past mistakes, or at least for trying to. He turned to face his son. “Tom, since you’re married now, you’ve got to be thinkin’ farther than you used to. It’s time we had a talk, me and you, about this ranch.”
Tom twisted uneasily. “I been lookin’ at it. Looks like the devil’s taken first lien.”
“By rights this place is half yours. I’ve always promised you a partnership. You worked for it all the time you was growin’ up. You got it comin’ to you.”
“We don’t have to talk about that right now, Dad. We’ll sit down someday and work it all out.”
“No use puttin’ it off any more. You’ve got a little woman in yonder now that deserves somethin’ more than a car and a horse trailer. She deserves a home.”
“Dolly won’t worry about that for a while. She’s got a different way of lookin’ at things than most women.”
“I doubt that. Every woman—I don’t care how else she may talk—has got a nestin’ instinct. Minute she gets a man she wants to start buildin’ her a nest. Country woman, city woman, white, black, or brown—they all got that instinct about them. Yours’ll build her a nest right here.”
Tom lifted his hands, then dropped them in helplessness. “Dad . . .”
“I can sure use your help, son. There’s a lot of work needs doin’ on this place that me and Lupe just can’t seem to get to any more. Feedin’ these cattle and sheep takes so much time, and me and Lupe ain’t either one as young as we used to be. I been watchin’ some of the soil work that people have been doin’ to help try to make the most out of the little rain we do get. I been thinkin’ if I had me a little more help I’d run a pittin’ machine over all the bare areas I could get to, and drop some grass seed in. Those pits would catch water from these little floatin’ showers that come by once in a while, and that grass seed might germinate and give the old country a chance to hair over a little. And some of the places where the stock has packed the ground down so hard, I thought we could run a chisel through there and break up the hardpan so the moisture could get on down instead of runnin’ off. Those are all things we could do around here, son, if we just had help. We’ll bring this place back to what it used to be, and we’ll split all the profits down the middle.”
Tom said darkly, “Ain’t been much profit lately, I’d judge.”
“If we could run this place the way it ought to be, and if we’d just get a little rain . . .”
A woman’s voice came from the kitchen doorway. “Mister Flagg, do you know how close Tom came this year to being the world’s champion calf roper?”
Charlie nodded. “I read the papers.”
“Next year he will be the champion,” Dolly said. “I’m going to see to it.”
Charlie said dubiously, “That’d be awful hard. Runnin’ a ranch don’t give a man much time . . .”
“He’s not going to be running a ranch, Mister Flagg, not for a while yet. He’s going to be out getting famous. Everybody is going to know Tom Flagg.”
“Everybody already knows him . . . everybody around Rio Seco.”
“One little bitty town? That’s not enough for us, Mister Flagg. It’s nowhere near enough.”
A touch of anger came to Charlie Flagg, and he struggled to put it down. “It’s been pretty good for me.”
“Everybody has his own standards, Mister Flagg. I married a man who’s going to be a champion. That’s what it’s going to take to be good enough for Tom and me.”
Chapter Twelve
ANOTHER SUMMER CAME. THE BRUSH WAS GREEN—IT reached deep and found moisture when nothing else did—but there was little grass and few weeds that a sheep or a cow would eat. Times, in the long, hot afternoons, a shimmering mirage lay just below the horizon, a silver phantom lake so real it made a man lick his dry lips though he knew it was a cruel lie, a deceit of a Nature adding mockery to injury against a land desperate for water.
Wherever Charlie drove to the accustomed feeding grounds, the cattle and sheep stood waiting. They had little reason to wander off into the pastures, for they found nothing there except exercise. They crowded around the pickup’, bawling and bleating so that Charlie could hardly even hear the old pickup motor knocking. The young cows were thin enough that their hipbones stood out, the pattern of their ribs rippling beneath ragged hides as they walked, and this despite all the money he had borrowed and spent on them.
Charlie had seen poorer cattle, but he had never owned any. He had always said you couldn’t starve a profit out of an animal, and he hadn’t meant to try. But he had waited too long last fall to put the cattle on feed, hoping against hope for rain to bring on some winter picking. When they started downhill, they went fast. He was never able to feed the flesh back onto them. He studied them with hard-bitten eyes and knew nothing but green grass would ever cover those ribs with tallow again. There was no way a man could do it out of a feed sack.
He fed what he could afford, and more. When Jim Sweet suggested he could get it cheaper through drouth disaster relief, Charlie said, “Rain is what we need. Charity we’ve always lived without.”
As summer went on and feeding continued with little slacking off, Charlie began dreading the fall confrontation with banker Big Emmett Rodale. He figured Big would hit him again with that damn foolishness about letting Lupe go and bringing Tom home to help take care of the business. Tom was a grown man; Charlie wouldn’t try to make him do something against his will, even if he thought he could. From what he read of the rodeo standings, Tom was in a good position to move up and take the title this year; all he needed was to knock off two or three of those big-money shows late in the season. There was small chance he would willingly back away from that now and settle down to running a feed route on dusty ranch roads where hungry cattle and sheep made enough racket to drown out a rodeo crowd. Even smaller chance that Dolly would let him. From what little Ch
arlie had seen of her, he judged she had become one of those stop-watch wives who sat in the contestant’s grandstand, keeping her own watch to check the time-judges and to analyze critically every move or gesture her man made that might cost a tenth of a second here or half a second there, lecturing him later about his errors.
One day Big phoned Charlie at dinner to ask him to be there the following morning. Charlie spent a sleepless night trying to find a spot in his mattress that didn’t seem to have a lump in it. Next morning he had his pickup parked in front of the bank before opening time, but he stalled long past nine o’clock, waiting for Big to have plenty of time for his morning elimination. That might not make much over-all difference, but every little bit helped.
As usual Charlie paused to weigh himself on the bank scale. It was about the only thing in town that was still free. To his surprise he found he had lost weight through the summer. There was always a good side to adversity if a man looked hard enough for it.
Big frowned as he beckoned Charlie to come over to the big desk and sit down. They shook hands, and Big said, “Haven’t seen you much.”
“Out of sight, out of mind, they say. I figured the less you thought about me, the better.”
“Oh,” Big grunted, “I been thinkin’ about you, all right. Been doin’ my homework on your financial statement. You remember what I said to you last year?”
“And you remember what I said.”
Big skirted any argument on those points. He pushed his open folder of notes across the desk at Charlie. “I wish you’d look at them figures. Especially the cattle.”
Charlie gave them a perfunctory glance. “Nothin’ in there that’s any news to me.”
“I don’t have to tell you that you’ve lost money on everything you’ve touched. The sheep are bad enough; I doubt you could sell your ewes today and recover the feed bill you’ve got in them. But the cattle are three times worse. A sheep can root-hog for itself on short range better than a cow can. Those cows of yours are as poison as strychnine.”
Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know anything I can do about it.”
“There’s one thing: sell them.”
Charlie’s mouth popped open. “Sell my cows?”
“Sell them. There’s no way a man can swim with a millstone tied around his neck. Those cows are the biggest millstone you ever saw.”
All manner of protest stirred within Charlie, but somehow he managed to contain it. He glumly studied his sore, work-roughened hands. “You remember ’33, don’t you, Big? That was a rough time, roughest I ever had till I run into this one. I didn’t sell my cows in ’33.”
“It finally rained in ’33. It’s beginnin’ to look like it never will rain an end to this one.”
“I was still workin’ for cowboy wages out west of the Pecos River when I got my first cows. Some of these I have now, they’re direct descendants of my first eighteen head. There’s never been a day since I was good grown that I haven’t owned some cattle.”
“Tradition, Charlie. Tradition’s fine as long as a man can afford it. You can’t.”
“What if I sold the last of them heifers and it came a good rain the next week? I’d never get that blood back.”
“Every cow bleeds the same color of red. What goes into her stomach means more than what goes into her bloodline.”
Charlie rubbed his knuckles so hard they turned almost white. “I ain’t arguin’ with you about that. It’s just that I sure hate to part with them. A rancher without any cows is like a man walkin’ down the street without any pants on. He’s just not respectable.” pants
“Would you be any more respectable in the poorhouse?”
“It’s all true what they say about bankers. You’re a hard man, Big.”
Big shook his head. “I’m the kindest man you ever saw, Charlie. I’m trying’ to save you from yourself.” He took back the folder, lifting one sheet of paper from among the rest and handing it to Charlie. “I got a suggestion. You’re goin’ to jump six feet high when I tell you, but I want you to study on it till you see I’m right. There’s one kind of animal that’s kept right on payin’ its way through this drouth, that’s taken less feed and paid more dividends than sheep or cattle either one.”
Charlie glanced at the paper, then looked up in protest. “Big, you tryin’ to tell me to go out and buy me a bunch of goats?”
Big snorted. “Told you you’d jump. But you got to think of it from the money standpoint. That’s no health resort you’re runnin’.”
“But goats! Outside of a few Spanish goats for meat, I never owned a goat in my life and I don’t ever intend to. I’m no Ayrab.”
Rodale’s voice was dry. “You never used to have any gray hair, either. Now it’s the only kind you’ve got. Time changes everything but economics. I know where there’s a string of good young Angora muttons you could buy. Muttons are easier than nannies and kids. These goats’ll shear you a mohair clip twice a year. Mohair’s one of the finest fibers in the world, and it’s outsellin’ wool by a right smart here lately. The money you get out of those heifers will just about pay for the goats, and this bank’ll stand you for the runnin’ of them. You’ll be doin’ a favor for the man that wants to sell them and you’ll be doin’ a favor for yourself. What do you say?”
“What I’d say wouldn’t do for these women to hear. But it looks like you’ve got me whipsawed.” He looked around irritably. “Goats on Brushy Top! I’d about as soon be infected with lice.”
“They’ll grow on you.”
“So will lice.”
“You’ve got to change your attitude, Charlie. These aren’t your old ordinary goats . . . these are mohair goats, Angoras. They’re aristocrat goats, and mortgage-lifters.”
“A goat is a goat.”
Sitting on the corral fence, his bootheels hooked over a lower plank, Charlie looked down gloomily at the Hereford cattle penned inside. He glanced up the road for the dust cloud that would mean the livestock trucks were coming. He didn’t see it yet.
Beside Charlie sat Tooter Thomas, soft-bellied cattle trader out of Rio Seco, holding a tally book in his left hand and thoughtfully chewing a stub pencil. Charlie had phoned him before daylight this morning—told him he had two loads of goats coming in today and that he planned to ship his cattle out on the same trucks.
“I figured on sendin’ them to the San Angelo auction,” Charlie had said, “but I’ll give you first refusal if you’ll put your tradin’ britches on.”
Folks said the trader would buy a one-eyed tomcat if he thought he could resell it for two-bits profit. He jotted figures in the book and mumbled to himself. Charlie let his gaze drift aimlessly across the corrals. These were all the cattle he owned except two milk cows, and they didn’t count. His mind ran back down the hot, dusty, happy years he had worked to build his herd, both in numbers and in the blood. Big Emmett could say what he wanted to about bloodlines, but dammit, a man had to believe in something. Charlie remembered things long forgotten, hardships and joys, and an ache pulled in him at the idea of giving it all up.
These were good cattle, as good as had ever walked these hills. Charlie had always bought registered bulls to run with the cows, though he never kept up the papers. Many was the time Mary had set her heart on a piece of furniture or something else for the house, only to have to give it up because Charlie saw a good bull he thought he couldn’t do without.
He knew most of the individual cattle. He could call to mind the mammies of them, and sometimes the grandmothers and great-grandmothers. That young cow with the stub tail—she had lost it as a calf when Tom had impatiently shut a trailer gate a little too fast. Her old mammy had had the same run of hard luck before her; she had had her tail eaten away in a bad screw-worm year. And her mammy, Charlie remembered, had been a salty old bitch they had to rope almost every time they needed to bring her in. Charlie would have sold her but Tom had been only a boy then, and that old cow was his favorite of all the herd. He had always loved to rope.
Time and memories—so many good things and so many bad—but strange how the bad things seemed to fade so that you remembered mostly the good. Maybe that was one of life’s main compensations, having those memories with the rough edges blunted down and the bright parts polished to a diamond gleam.
He wondered if someday he would even forget this son-of-a-bitching drouth.
Tooter Thomas mumbled louder, nodding in satisfaction. “Decent set of heifers, mostly. Of course, there’s a few that need cullin’, and we’d have to handle those at a packer price.” A trader could not afford to concede perfection in anything, not even in Jesus Christ. “I’ve worked it up careful and been as generous as I could.” He handed the tallybook to Charlie and pointed with a thick, stubby finger. “How does that figger look to you?”
Charlie grunted. “Looks like hell!” Tooter was offering him only about a hundred dollars a head. Before the drouth there was a time they would have brought three times that much. “Give me that pencil.”
He did some figuring of his own and handed back the book. “That’s what it’ll take to buy them.”
Tooter shook his head in exaggerated disbelief. “Charlie, you’re livin’ in the past. They’ve wrote a whole new catalog. Did you hear about that cow thief who got disgusted and gave himself up to the law the other day in Angelo? He stole two heifers and lost eighty dollars on the deal.” Tooter bent over the book and took back his pencil. He chewed on it as if he were cutting teeth. Finally he handed the book to Charlie again.
