by Elmer Kelton
Presently Mary brought in a tray stacked with cups, and half of a chocolate cake. Charlie wondered where in the hell that had come from; he hadn’t seen any of it. The small talk continued as the men sipped their coffee. Charlie noted that Tom took a big slice of the cake and ate it hungrily. Cake is probably as scarce at his house as it is in this one, he thought. He could sense nervousness increasing in Prentice Harpe, and a nagging impatience in Yancy Pike. They kept glancing at Page Mauldin as if waiting for him to start something. Page gave Charlie the strong impression he was putting off something unpleasant.
Finally Harpe said in an effort at humor, “Saw old Arch the other day. Told me anybody who said he’d ever seen a longer drouth than this one was either a liar or a hell of a lot older man than he is.” He looked around expectantly, waiting for someone to laugh. The best he got was a half-hearted smile from Tom. Harpe went on, “Cattle market has sure gone to pieces. Worst it ever was, I guess.”
Charlie didn’t reply. Like a lot of people, Prentice Harpe had gone into cattle while the bloom was on the rose. He hadn’t realized that when the bloom faded, the cattle business had traditionally had thorns that cut to the bone.
Harpe glanced expectantly at Page Mauldin. When Page said nothing, Harpe went on, “You know, Charlie, they’ve got price supports on lots of farm commodities. Cotton . . . wheat . . . tobacco. And look at the feed grains. You go to buy a load of feed on the open market and you’ve got to pay somebody else’s high support price to get it.”
Charlie only nodded, convinced that Harpe was purposely working up to something.
Harpe said, “Then you go out and feed that supported grain to unsupported cattle. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
“No, it sure doesn’t.”
Harpe looked once more at Page, and Charlie saw him jerk his chin as if prompting the old ranchman.
Page cleared his throat. “Charlie, what we come for is, a bunch of people all over the state are gettin’ up a cattle-man’s caravan to go to Washington. We think Rio Seco ought to be represented in it.”
Charlie said, “Sounds like a good idea. If they could get the support taken off of that feed . . .”
Page gulped a big swallow of coffee. “Charlie, that ain’t exactly what the caravan is about. We didn’t intend to ask them to take the support off of feed. We’re goin’ to ask them to put a support price on cattle too.”
Charlie frowned. That put a different complexion on things.
Harpe said quickly, “Charlie, we want you to go for us.”
Charlie put his coffee cup aside and squeezed his hands together until a sharp pain lanced through one of them. He glanced first at Page, then at Pike, and finally back to Harpe. He could see they were not making idle talk. He said, “I got as much business in Washington as a boar hog has with a set of tits.” He turned his attention to Page Mauldin. “Page, you got more cattle than anybody in this part of the country. If this is what you really want, looks to me like you’re the one that ought to go.”
Page said, “That’s the whole trouble of it, Charlie. I got the reputation of bein’ a big rich rancher. That’s a damn lie; you know it and I know it. But them federales, they don’t know it. I owe more money than anybody in this country except the federal government. But anything I was to say, they’d discount because I’m supposed to be rich.”
Charlie looked at Harpe. “Why don’t you go, then?”
“Because I’m a drugstore cowboy. They’d sense it right off. We want somebody who looks the part, somebody who’s always been a cowman, somebody who’s got ranch burned on him like a brand burned on a bull. We want a man who—when he walks in there—will make everybody say, ‘Now, there is the genuine article.’ You’re the one for that, Charlie. You’ve got image.”
Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “Got what?”
“Image, Charlie. You’re colorful.”
Charlie rubbed his chin. “I been accused of lots of things, but this is the first time I’ve ever been accused of bein’ colorful. Mostly what I am is old.”
Page said, “You’d be just right, Charlie. You’re what they call a little rancher. Whatever you said, they’d listen to.”
“I ain’t got no cattle any more. I had to sell them all.”
“So much the better. You’re a perfect example of what’s happenin’ to all of us.”
Yancy Pike had been sitting in the corner nervously rubbing his hands. Charlie noted that Yancy hadn’t eaten much of his cake. “Charlie, we’d take it mighty kind of you. What do you say?”
Charlie looked a moment at Tom, and to his surprise he saw agreement in his son’s face. “You never been to Washington, Dad. You’d enjoy the trip.”
Charlie got up and paced the length of the floor a couple of times. He paused a moment to stare at the Remington painting of the Indian warrior defying the enemies who were about to overrun him. He walked on to the window and gazed out upon the lighted yard; he did not look at anything in particular. “Boys, you got a right to ask for anything you want to. But seems to me like the regular cattlemen’s outfits like the Texas & Southwestern would oppose you on this; it goes against everything they stand for. They’ll say things are bad enough now without gettin’ the government mixed up in it too.”
Harpe said, “The government is mixed up in it already. They’ve got all these drouth programs and support programs. When you’re out, you have to help pay for the ones that are in. You’d just as well be in with the rest of them.”
Charlie kept looking out the window. “Did you-all ever study what’s happened to the ones that’ve been in for a long time?”
Yancy growled, “All I know is that the government keeps their crops from gettin’ cheap the way cattle have done.”
“You think so? Take cotton for instance. Government says, ‘Boys, we’re goin’ to peg you a price and guarantee you prosperity.’ The boys all say, ‘Fine, let ’er rip.’ Then Uncle Sam says, ‘Boys, we’re raisin’ more cotton than the world wants to buy at our price, so we got to cut down.’ This year you whittle off twenty percent and next year thirty percent and the next year forty. You whittle yourself half to death. Now you can’t be trusted, so the government sends out a man with a search warrant—or what amounts to one—to check your place and be damn sure you don’t overplant.
“Pretty soon it’s like the dog chasin’ after his own tail. Government keeps cuttin’ down the acres to cut down the cotton. You wind up gettin’ less money because you’ve got less cotton, so you work harder on what acres you’ve got left. You put on extra fertilizer and raise more cotton on less land, so then the government’s got to cut you down again. And all this time Uncle Sam has got the cotton pegged so high that it’s priced out of the world market. Mexico and them other countries, they say to theirselves, ‘Here’s our chance to get in.’ Every time Uncle Sam whittles off, they add on. One mornin’ the farmer wakes up and finds out somebody else has got his market. He’s worse off than he ever was, and infested with federales that don’t know how to run their own business but are almighty free in tellin’ him how to run his.”
Charlie swung his gaze to Page Mauldin. “We’ve always had our up times and our down times in the cattle business. We take a stiff dose of medicine and then the thing gradually corrects itself. But you let a price-support crop get sick and it stays sick. The day the government goes to supportin’ cattle, the cow business is lost, and the cowman is just another peon with his hand out to Washington.”
Prentice Harpe said, “Charlie, all I know is that I worked for twenty years to save the money I sunk in those cattle. Now unless somebody does something, I’ve lost it. If price supports will bail me out, then price supports are what I want.”
“But what about the future?”
“Let the future take care of itself. It’s the present that’s about to sink me. If I can ever get my money back I’ll sell those cattle and never look at another cow.”
Charlie looked again at Page. “I reckon I can understand Prentice, b
ut I thought you’d see different. You used to.”
Pain stirred in Page’s deep-sunk eyes. “We’re drownin’, Charlie, all of us. We’re grabbin’ at whatever we can catch ahold of.”
Yancy Pike stood up in stiff belligerence. “You got to do it for us, Charlie. You owe it to your friends.”
A defensive anger began rising in Charlie. “If I owe anything to my friends, it’s to do what’s right. And this ain’t right.”
Page said, “Charlie, I know how you’ve always felt about these things. Believe me, I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t feel like it was a case of have-to. But these are hard times. Hard times force a man to do things he might feel like otherwise was a little bit wrong.”
“You can’t be a little bit wrong any more than you can be a little bit pregnant.”
Charlie could remember a few times, back when he was a cowboy kid and did something foolish, that Page Mauldin had shown anger at him. He hadn’t seen that anger in thirty years. Now, here it was. Page said, “Charlie, you always did have a stiff back. But I thought maybe you could bend it a little for us.”
Charlie shook his head. “I’d do anything I thought was right. I’m sorry that we don’t see alike on what right is.”
Yancy Pike stomped across the floor. He stopped at the front door and glowered. “I always said that when hard times come, a man finds out who his friends are.”
Prentice Harpe’s face was red, but he kept his lips sealed tight.
Page Mauldin struggled to his feet. He looked awfully old, pitifully weary. “Charlie, we’ll have to find somebody else to go. I hope you don’t intend to fight us on this thing.”
Charlie shoved his hands deep into his pockets and looked at the floor. “I won’t do nothin’ except what I think is right.”
Page nodded grimly. “Then at least we all know where we stand.”
Charlie followed the men out onto the porch but not into the yard. He wanted to say more, but he feared everything had already been said, and probably too much. He watched numbly as the car lights lanced through the darkness on the town road.
Tom Flagg said behind him, “I’d testify to anything for a free trip to Washington.”
Charlie grumbled, “There’s damn little in this life that ever comes free. One way or another, you pay for what you get.”
Tom shrugged. “But sometimes it pays a man just to kind of play the game, and not go wavin’ a red flag in people’s faces.”
Charlie turned impatiently. “I didn’t wave a red flag, I just told them what I think. I’ve always told people what I think.”
Tom didn’t argue that point. “But there’s times other people disagree with you.”
“There’s times other people are wrong.”
Tom shrugged and walked out into the darkness toward the frame house. Charlie watched him awhile, then closed the door and went back into the living room. Mary’s eyes were on him. Impatiently he said, “Well, you’d just as well speak your piece too.”
Mary just stared. “There’s still a slice of that chocolate cake left. You want it?”
Charlie looked at her a moment, trying vainly to read what was in her mind; he never could tell what she was thinking when she didn’t want him to. He shook his head. “Don’t you know it’s fattenin’?”
Chapter Fourteen
TIME WAS WHEN AN INCH OF RAIN WOULD HAVE brought fresh life, a greening to the land. But there had been grass then, a spongy turf to soak up and hold the moisture, and live roots to draw sustenance from it. Now the bare ground had nothing to soften the impact of rain, to catch and drink up the water. The first burst of precipitation would pack and seal the topsoil. The falling raindrops would strike hard and splash upward, brown with mud. Instead of soaking in, the water would swirl and run away, following the contours of the land, seeking out the draws and swales. Burdened by a heavy load of stolen soil, the rivulets swelled quickly into streams, the dry draws turned to rivers, and the muddy rivers bled away the vitality of a once-generous land.
When it was over, most of the water was gone, lost because the soil which thirsted so desperately could not capture and hold it. The sun and the hot wind would come and quickly steal back what moisture had managed to stay. Those grass roots which had survived the long dry time would drink of the scant moisture and send up fresh green leaves, only to have them wilt and brown and retreat back to earth before they had a decent chance at life. For a few days a thin cast of green would buoy the ranchman’s hopes, give him a fresh surge of enthusiasm and encourage him to take a deeper hold. Then, slowly, the hope would die away under the hot west wind and the merciless pressure of a hostile sun.
When the clouds had passed and the sun burst once again into its accustomed place, Charlie Flagg drove over his pastures, hoping that somewhere he had received and retained enough rain to do some good. At intervals he would stop to stick a knife blade into the ground and take out a plug of soil. An inch or two of mud would stick to the blade. Below that, the dirt was dry. He would look up to the open sky, hoping for a sign that the clouds might come back. But there was no sign. The skies were clear and the sun was hot.
Charlie and Tom managed to summer without feeding in most pastures. But to keep the ewes from drawing thin they had to wean the lambs and send them to market in July, much earlier than Charlie liked. “Damn lambs are so little they wouldn’t make a box lunch for a bobcat,” he complained. They brought little money . . . nowhere near enough to pay for their mothers’ feed bill last winter, or the bill that continued into summer for some of the poor-doers. Wool market was sluggish, too. When Charlie added up the income from lambs and wool it fell far short of what he had paid for feed, taxes, lease, and interest.
Only the mohair goats had paid their way. Those lousy goats! He had nourished a secret hope that they would lose money so he could throw them up to Big Emmett as an example of the banker’s poor judgment. But contrary to other commodities, mohair remained in strong demand. The goats not only more than paid for the little amount of feed Charlie had grudgingly bought for them, but they subsidized a considerable share of the feed bill for the sheep.
It was hard to hate something that continued to pay when all else was going to hell. If they hadn’t been bought at Big’s stubborn insistence, Charlie might have begun to like them.
All summer he worriedly watched Tom. His son’s foot had evidently healed; the limp was long forgotten. Evenings now, Tom would go out to a large pen that served as a practice arena. He had bought a dozen small Brahman calves which he kept around the milk lot, and which he daily crowded into a tight roping chute. Sometimes Shorty Dunn would come out and work the gate, turning the calves loose for him one at a time so Tom could make a run at them on gray Prairie Dog. Other times Dolly did it, though she showed no taste for touching the calves, or stepping into the dirt and fresh manure to crowd them into the chute.
Charlie never volunteered; that would have seemed a tacit approval. Every time he heard that chute gate fly open and the horse race out across the soft earth, he felt Tom slipping away from him a little.
Sitting at the roll-top desk, reading-glasses perched near the end of his nose, Charlie ran his hand through hair which turned grayer with each dusty, barren season. He looked up at Tom, who sat in a rawhide-bottomed chair, absently roping his own foot with a short pigging string.
Charlie knew the wish that lay behind every throw of that string. He riffled through the papers on the desk. “Tom,” he said gravely, “you been partners with me now for a year, pretty near. I think it’s time you taken a look at some figures.”
“I never been very apt with figures.”
“I think you ought to know where we stand.”
“We don’t stand very good; that’s enough for me to know.”
“It’s not enough. You ought to know what we’ve took in and what we’ve put out and where it’s gone. That’s just sound business.”
Tom shrugged and took the papers his father thrust at him. He mused over them and br
ought his finger to rest on a figure near the bottom of the last sheet. “Is this what we owe?”
Charlie nodded.
Tom said, “Goddam!” He tugged at his lower lip a minute. “How much deeper can we go?”
“That’s up to Big, I reckon.”
“Maybe it’d be better if we was to sell out and quit right now before we get in so deep that we never can get out.”
“Look at them figures again. We’re already in too far to quit.”
“You mean we owe more than we could sell out for?”
“We still got an equity in our fee land. Other than that, our debt is bigger than the market value of all the livestock we own.”
Tom began to look a little sick. “Appears to me this ranch life ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“It’s a good life, son, but sometimes a damn thin livin’.”
Tom didn’t seem to believe, not entirely. “But, Dad, you was plumb clear of debt; I remember you sayin’ you didn’t owe a dime to nobody.”
“There was a time I didn’t. That was when it used to rain.”
Tom handed the papers back to his father, his face gone sour. “Partner! Don’t look like I’m a partner in much, does it?”
Severely Charlie said, “Don’t be talkin’ it down. This old country’ll take care of you if you just hang in there with it and fight. Hell, don’t you think I been in debt before? We bought this outfit on a shoestring, me and your mother. We come within an ace of losin’ it . . . two—three times. We just hung and rattled. Times turned around, and we paid out and leased more land and got ahead. Times’ll turn around again some of these days; they always have.”
Tom muttered something about the faith of the mustard-seed. When Charlie demanded to know what he meant, Tom shrugged off an answer. He said, “Now we got another winter starin’ at us pretty soon. What’re we goin’ to do?”
