by Elmer Kelton
Mary nodded gravely. Charlie sensed that this was all the explanation she needed; she understood the rest of it. She said, “You think we ought to ask for help, do you?”
“When a man is drownin’, he grabs any hand that reaches out to him.”
“What if that hand asks a price too high for him to pay?”
“When it comes to a question of life and death, there ain’t no price too high.”
Mary studied Charlie, and he wished he could read what was hidden behind those blue eyes. He guessed she was siding with Tom and trying to figure out how best to say so. There was a time she would have understood Charlie and stuck by him, but he supposed that had been before they got so damn old. They hadn’t talked things out much in recent years.
Mary said, “Son, when a man believes in a thing strongly enough, there is a price too high to pay. There is a point where compromise costs him too much.”
Tom sagged a little. “Mom, he’s wrong and you know it.”
“Maybe I don’t agree with him all the way, but that’s not the point. I understand him. You can’t understand him because you’ve never believed in anything as strong as he does. Maybe that’s not your fault; maybe it’s ours because we failed to teach you how to believe in something.”
Charlie just looked at her and blinked.
Tom declared, “Mom, he’s haulin’ you down the road to the poorhouse.”
She said, “He was a stubborn man when I met him. I’ve never asked him to change. As for the poorhouse, we’ve stood at the gates of it before; we’ve never gone inside.”
Tom looked at his mother in surprise. “Never thought I’d see you take up for him in this. I swear, I believe you’re as stubborn as he is.”
“I always was. You’ll find, son, that the world thinks more of a man who makes a mistake because he believes in it than of one who does the right thing because it comes easy, and without belief.”
Shaking his head, Tom walked to the deep old-fashioned window and stared in the direction of his house. Charlie could see a dim light in the living room. Dolly and that damn television.
At length Tom turned around. “The way I understand partnerships, that means we own everything equal, fifty-fifty.”
Charlie nodded. “That’s the way it is.”
“The way I see it, we don’t agree on this thing now, and we never will. If we keep tryin’ to work together it’s just goin’ to lead to a fight. Better we call a halt now. Divide now, so there won’t be nobody mad.”
Charlie’s mouth went dry. “Divide?”
Tom pulled some folded papers from his shirt pocket. “I been doin’ some figurin’. I tallied up how much livestock is left, and how much land. I figure if I take half the livestock and the O’Barr lease, that’d be fair. You keep the deeded land here and the rest of the lease country. The deeded is worth more than the lease, but I’d overlook that. I wouldn’t want it ever said that I taken any unfair advantage.”
Charlie just stared at him. He couldn’t bring himself to answer.
Tom said, “There won’t be no question of dividin’ up the money, because there ain’t any. I’ll assume my share of the debts. You can run your part the way you want to, and I’ll run mine. No arguments, no hard feelin’s.”
When Charlie said nothing, Mary asked, “Have you talked to Dolly about this? Do you know how she feels?”
Tom said reluctantly, “She’d as soon throw over the whole thing. I told her this way maybe we’d save the place yet.” He looked at his father. “How about it? That suit you?”
The words came with pain. “If it’s what you want . . .”
“Looks to me like the only way. We can go over the tallies and figure how to divide up the livestock without movin’ more of them than necessary. No use chousin’ the stock.”
Charlie only nodded.
Tom said, “Been thinkin’ I’d sell off a bunch of my goats and buy back some cattle. I never did figure you should’ve let them cows go.”
Charlie looked at the floor. He saw no point in saying he had had little choice about it. He could also see that if he had kept the cattle until now he would be in even worse shape than he was, financially. The goats had been the only thing self-supporting. Weakly he said, “You do what suits you.”
“It ain’t that it suits me, Dad, you know that. But this looks to me like the only way to head off a fight. Better we do it like this and shake hands than wait till we’re shakin’ fists.”
Charlie didn’t look up. “There’ll be a right smart of paperwork to do. Stock won’t starve to death in one day. Best we skip feedin’ in the mornin’ and go to town. We’ll need to make things right with Big at the bank.”
“I was thinkin’ I’d see if I could qualify for one of them FHA loans from the government. The interest is cheaper than we can get at the bank.”
“Nothin’ is cheaper. It’s like the government feed . . . if you don’t pay for the interest, somebody else has got to.”
“Then let them. All the income tax we’ve paid through the years . . . we got somethin’ coming’ to us.”
“And it’ll come,” Charlie said, a little bitterness creeping in. “One of these days, sure as all hell, it’ll come.”
Tom frowned. “Dad, I don’t see any point in us arguin’ about that. We ain’t goin’ to agree, so let it go.”
Charlie was inclined to debate, but he saw the uselessness of it.
Tom said, "I’ll have to find me and Dolly a rent house in town. Ought not to be hard, as many people as have left.”
Mary spoke up quickly. “There’s no need in that. Why not keep on living in the Flores house? It’d be less driving than from town, and it wouldn’t cost you anything. It’s a good house, son.”
“It’d be kind of ticklish, don’t you think, livin’ so close after . . . Anyway, Dolly never has liked that house. I expect she’d be better contented living’ in town.”
Charlie rubbed his rough hand across his face, realizing he was beaten but not quite willing to yield. He had a notion Dolly was at the foot of Tom’s discontent. Tom never had been one to let things bother him much. If Dolly hadn’t been punching the needles into him . . . “You sleep on this, son, and make sure it’s what you want to do. We’ll talk about it again in the mornin’.”
“It’ll be the same in the mornin’ as it is tonight.”
“We’ll talk about it anyway.”
When Tom was gone, Charlie got up and limped into the kitchen. He poured a liberal amount of bourbon into a cup and reached for the coffeepot. Then he thought the hell with it and drank the bourbon down straight. It burned like fire.
Turning, he saw Mary standing just inside the kitchen door, quietly staring at him. He saw worry in her eyes. He wondered who the worry was for ... Tom ... himself ... or maybe everybody?
He gave the cup a fast circular motion, bringing together the vagrant drops that had clung to the side, then he turned the cup up and drank the little that was left. He said, “I expected you’d take up for him.”
“Why? When the chips were down, I was always on your side since the first time I met you.”
He nodded, thinking back. She always was. “Been a long time since the chips was last down. I reckon I’d got used to the notion of us pullin’ apart.”
“If we have, I’m sorry. I didn’t ever intend us to.”
“We had good times for too long, I suppose. It takes bad times to pull people together.”
Tears came into Mary’s eyes, but she had too much self-control to let them spill over. “Maybe he’ll come around after a time. Maybe he’ll see for himself what you’ve been trying to say.”
Charlie would like to believe that, but he didn’t. “I thought I’d taught him everything I knew. I taught him how to ride and rope and judge stock. I taught him how to gauge his grass in the fall and how to bring an animal trough a hard winter. But I forgot to teach him the way I think. Now it’s too late for him to learn.”
Chapter Fifteen
&nbs
p; CHARLIE FELT AS THOUGH HE HAD BEEN TO A FUNERAL each time he saw a ranch fall idle somewhere around him, its gates flung open because there was no longer any livestock to confine. Lease contracts expired, or stockmen whittled down to the last thin shaving of their resources and faded away like a summer dew. Here and there some landlords voluntarily cut the lease rates, knowing a bankrupt lessee is no lessee at all. Charlie saw Tom infrequently, occasionally coming upon him unexpectedly on one of the ranch roads. It was unexpected for Tom, at least. For Charlie, it was a result of conscious effort and a certain amount of planning. Any visiting was short and productive of little information. But Charlie could see enough to tell him what he needed to know: Tom was almost to the end of the string.
Charlie cornered Sam O’Barr one day in the domino hall and bought him a beer. Sam’s red-veined face was without expression as he gulped the first bottle. “About time for another payment on that lease, ain’t it, Charlie?”
“That’s how come me here.” Charlie ordered a second beer for Sam. “You know my boy Tom is runnin’ his stock on that land of yours.”
O’Barr shrugged. “That don’t make any difference. It’s your name that’s on the lease, and it’s you I’ll look to for the payment.”
Charlie nodded. “But it’s him that’ll have to raise the money. I don’t want him hurt any worse than he already is. You know, Sam, there’s not enough feed out yonder to wad a shotgun. That whole nine sections of yours is just a big feedlot and little else. They got all the room in the world but nothin’ to eat.”
Sam gave no sign of interest in anything except the beer.
Charlie said, “Lots of landowners been cuttin’ the price. They know their land ain’t fit for much, and a broke leaseholder won’t be worth a continental to them either. There’s even been a few have written off the whole payment if the leaseholder agrees to idle the land and let it rest. God knows it needs it. I was hopin’ you might work out somethin’ for that boy of mine.”
Sam stared across the room at a big calendar that featured a naked girl. He seemed more interested in the calendar than in what Charlie was saying. “Like what?”
“The sheep are cut to a fraction of what they used to be. Tom’s bought him some cows, but nowhere near what that place once carried. It’d be mighty fair if you’d cut the lease rate down to fit the livestock.”
Sam finished his beer and looked expectantly at Charlie. Charlie signaled the dirty-aproned proprietor to fetch Sam a third one. Sam said, “Charlie, the only livin’ I got is what I get off of that land. Now, if I was to charge you or your boy half price, do you think the grocery store would cut my bill in two? Do you think I can live on half as much?”
“Everybody sacrifices at times like this.”
Sam shook his head. “Not me. You signed a contract. Till that contract runs out you’ll keep right on payin’ what you agreed to and not one penny less.”
“But, Sam, the others ...”
“I don’t give a damn what the others are doin’. Me and you, we got a contract.”
“What if that boy goes broke?”
Sam shrugged. “I’d be right sorry about it, but business is business. I’d still have the land, and I’d find me somebody else that wanted it.” Turning his back on Charlie, he picked up the beer bottle and squinted through its brown glass. “Empty again. I swear, they just don’t put as much in these things as they used to.”
In the weeks afterward, Charlie didn’t have to ask anybody how Tom was doing. He could see for himself, watching across the fence. Tom somehow managed to borrow enough money to buy more sheep and cattle on the depressed market, and he concentrated them on the O’Barr land in a desperate attempt to wring more income from it. Charlie knew from experience this would be a futile effort. The more livestock Tom put on the pastures, the more the land would suffer. The more it suffered, the more feed he would be forced to buy to sustain the animals. It was an endless circle, like a man chasing himself around and around a hill and slipping farther into the depths with every round he made.
Charlie regarded this as an inherent evil of long-term leases at high rates. When hard times and high lease backed a lessee against a wall, he felt compelled to overgraze the land in his struggle to meet the payments. Continued long enough, this abuse would make barren desert of pastures that once had grown tall grass. If one blamed the lessee for spoiling the land, he must also blame the landowner who drove him to it.
Charlie looked across the net fence at the trampled barrens that were Tom’s feeding grounds. He felt no obligation to Sam O’Barr, but he felt a deep and binding obligation to the land itself. It mattered little who held the title; the land was a sacred thing. To see it bleed now brought him grief; it was like watching a friend waste away with a terminal cancer.
In his loneliness, Charlie usually took the Flores boys’ black dog on his feeding rounds. He made him sit in the pickup cab where he wouldn’t disturb the dog-fearing sheep. Charlie made it a point every day to drive along the fenceline he shared with Page Mauldin. He never saw Page, but often he came across Diego Escamillo or other Mexican hands burning pear. Talk-hungry, Charlie usually stopped. It didn’t matter that he had to converse in Spanish sometimes, and that his own Spanish was fractured like a watermelon in a cowlot. He would talk with them about anything from women to the red pepper crop in Chihuahua. The subject didn’t matter. The company was what counted.
It pleasured Charlie to pause awhile and watch the Mauldin cows trail in to the pear grounds. Some would follow the Mexicans’ pickup. Others would come when they heard the roar of the burners. His own cows long gone, Charlie liked to feast his eyes on those of Page’s. Page kept only black Angus, while Charlie’s personal preference had always run to whitefaces: But hell, they were cows. Breed was a small matter, something to josh a competitor about—like wrangling over Fords and Chevrolets. It came down in the end to a matter of personal preference rather than any real superiority of one over the other.
Charlie always remembered what old-time cattle buyer E. W. Nicodemus had told him: “There’s more difference within the breeds than there ever was between them.”
Charlie marveled at the way these black cows would move in and start eating the hot pear while it still glowed from the flame. Many had all the hair burned away from around their mouths. They liked the pear, for it was green. Nothing else was.
Sometimes after school or on weekends, Charlie found Kathy Mauldin helping Diego with the feeding. She would be dressed like a boy in washed-out Levi’s and a raveled wool coat, run-over boots and a floppy old hat. The sight of her always brought him a smile.
Good thing Mary can’t see her thisaway. She’d blow a gasket.
Charlie would concede that Page Mauldin’s lithe and slender daughter made no pretense about being a lady, and he would concede that she was not a particularly pretty girl according to the standards people seemed to go by any more. But he figured any man who judged a woman by a tape measure was fifty-seven varieties of a fool. He suspected that was the way Tom had chosen Dolly.
Kathy was, Charlie thought, an open and honest girl who didn’t try to be something she wasn’t; she led nobody down a false trail with phony affectations. You accepted her as she was or let her alone. He decided she had turned out rather well, considering that she had spent years without her mother, and with a father who was always off to hell and gone. Maybe Diego Escamillo’s old mother was a better teacher than Charlie had given her credit for.
But no matter how independent and self-assured she was, it disturbed Charlie to watch Kathy calmly light up a burner and move through the big clumps of green pear, that hellish flame leaping, roaring like something damned.
“That thing could burn you alive,” he warned her. “You ought to leave this job to the Mexicans.”
“Dad says this is my ranch. If I’m to accept the benefits, I ought to accept my share of the work.”
“That sounds like somethin’ Page Mauldin would say.”
She smiled
. “Or you, Uncle Charlie.”
Through the long hot summer Charlie was able to cut his feeding some. He used the time to work on his windmills, releathering every one on the place. He talked of hiring help, but Mary told him they couldn’t afford it. She went with him sometimes, as she had in the long-ago days, helping him rig the block and tackle in the windmill towers, driving the pickup that drew the sucker-rods up out of the wells, even grabbing onto the greasy wrenches and pipe tongs when she needed to. Charlie was surprised to find she hadn’t forgotten much in twenty-odd years. The main difference was that she did jobs with a pickup now that she used to do on horseback. And she did them slower. But so did he.
It was hard work, sweaty work, and Charlie found himself losing more weight. It reached a point he couldn’t wear his old khakis until Mary took up some slack in the seat.
Rain was still scarce as sheepherders at a cowboy convention. Even so, the goats did well. Charlie admitted grudgingly to himself—but to no one else—that they had been a smart buy. They could come as near fattening on nothing as any animal Charlie had ever seen except perhaps a prairie dog. Grass and weeds remained short all summer. Charlie turned out another crop of “jackrabbit” lambs twenty pounds lighter than they ought to be. What they brought him at the market wouldn’t feed a pen of saddlehorses.
By September he saw he would soon have to begin feeding full force again. He hauled down the pear burner from its rack in the barn. By October he was burning pear and chopping live oak. Though he had culled his sheep deeply before, he culled again.
The first fall norther rolled in during the night with a choking pall of dust and a long wind that whipped limbs off Charlie’s trees and shingles off his barn. It picked up his milk bucket from its rack just off the back steps and sent it bouncing and clanking across the yard. In the morning the wind stilled. Now there was an eerie silence, dust hanging so thickly in the air that Charlie could hardly see the barn from his front porch. Tumbleweeds had piled along the fences and against the buildings. It had been one of those high-rolling dusters spawned far to the north, the wind whipping up the plains soil, lifting it so high that airliners had to climb to avoid it. Now with the wind gone the fine dust would be a day or more settling gently to earth, possibly hundreds of miles from where it had lain during the eons before this granddaddy of all drouths had come to despoil the land.
