by Elmer Kelton
“Charlie!” she said, embarrassed. From out in the hallway came the faint sound of a bell, ringing three times to summon the doctor. Fancher left the room. Mary pulled up a chair beside the bed and held onto Charlie’s hand. She asked him many questions about how he felt and whether there was still pain. He only half-answered them and finally raised his free hand in a gesture for her to hush up. “What about the ranch?” he demanded. “What about the goats?”
“Everything is all right. Diego came over the first couple of days. Those goats didn’t even miss you.”
“The first couple of days? But I been here four days, Doc says. What about the rest of the time?”
“I’ve had help.”
The pleasure that showed in her eyes brought him a sudden hope. He tried to raise up a little. “Tom’s come back?”
Mary shook her head. “No. Tom has called, but he hasn’t come home. Ashamed to, I guess.”
Disappointment was keen ... as keen as his hope had been. He slumped back on the bed.
Mary went to the door and beckoned. “Manuel?”
Manuel Flores walked in, holding his hat in his hand. He seemed nervous, unsure of himself. He tried to smile, but it didn’t work.
Charlie stared, incredulous. He had forgotten how tall Manuel had grown. “Manuel? Where did you come from?”
“From San Angelo.”
“But you’re in college ...”
“This is the weekend. You lost track of the days, I guess.”
Charlie couldn’t bring the days into focus. “I’m still a little confused. The whole family with you?”
“Just me, Mister Charlie.”
Charlie frowned. “You’ll have to be gettin’ back for classes. We got to find us somebody ...”
“You don’t have to find anybody. You’ve got somebody. Me.”
“But school ...”
“Semester’s almost over. I can drive back and forth to Angelo the next couple of weeks if your old pickup will stand it. I’ll lay out next semester and stay here till you’re on your feet.”
“You’ve got no call to do that.”
“I want to. I’ve made up my mind.”
“But why? I had a feelin’ you’d given up on me.”
“I decided I was wrong.”
Charlie stared at the boy ... no, not a boy any longer. Manuel was a man. “I’m broke, son. I don’t know how I can pay you.”
“Mister Charlie, don’t you know you’ve already paid me? All those years—even when I didn’t see it—you were payin’ me. However long I stay here, I’m still ahead.”
Charlie’s eyes burned. He turned his head away for a minute. “It’s not the place it was when you knew it, muchacho . It’s shrunk to damn near nothin’ now, and it’s blown away, most of it.”
“It’s home.”
Charlie couldn’t say anything more. He felt choked, and he turned his head away again. When his voice came back he asked about the rest of the Flores family, one by one. Manuel said Lupe didn’t enjoy the stockyards as much as ranch work, but at least it wasn’t hard on him. He and Rosa had bought an old but solidly built house in south Angelo. “The kids are likin’ it. You’d be surprised how many of their old friends from Rio Seco they find in Angelo. There’s lots to do in school, more goin’ on than there used to be here. Candelario’s been goin’ out for track. You ought to see him run.”
“I’d like to, sometime. And what about Anita? She still laugh the way she used to?”
“More, if anything. She’s goin’ with a boy up there now, a real good boy. They talk about gettin’ married when he finishes the university.”
Charlie came near smiling. “I’m glad. I worried about her a long time after José ...” The rest he left unsaid. “This new boy, she known him long?”
“Long enough. Before him, she went with Buddy Thompson awhile. You remember Buddy.”
“Batch Thompson’s boy? Sure, I remember him.” A harsh thought struck Charlie. He remembered Buddy’s father even better.
Manuel’s face creased in remembered anger. “The old man didn’t like it the least bit. Anita and Buddy, they never were serious like he thought in the first place; they just liked each other, is all. But old Batch Thompson, he was scared they’d run off and get married, or somethin’. They broke it up to keep from havin’ trouble with him. Then Johnny Ramirez came along. He was serious and good-lookin’ ... kind of favored José Rivera, I always thought. Old Man Thompson was able to go back to livin’ again.”
“Don’t think too hard of him. Old notions are slow to die. A man carries them to the grave with him, mostly. A thing like that—Buddy and Anita goin’ together—it wouldn’t of happened in his time.”
“It’s not his time any more.”
Charlie grimaced. “No. I get to thinkin’ it’s not mine either.”
“It’ll be better. One of these days everything will turn around.”
“Not all the way. I knew I wasn’t young any more, but it never came to me I’d gone so far down the hill. Long as a man’s young he can take trouble in stride. Time is with him no matter how bad a jam he’s in. Then one day it slaps him in the face. It’s not with him any more, it’s workin’ against him. His friends fall away ... scattered, or dead, or just changed. His kids are grown up and gone from him. All the old principles that he anchored to, they’ve come a-loose; nobody’s payin’ attention to them any more. He’s an old grayheaded man livin’ in a young man’s world, and all his benchmarks are gone.”
“The good benchmarks are still there, Mister Charlie.”
Chapter Nineteen
FOR A WHILE CHARLIE WAS OBLIGED TO LIE AROUND the house. All he could see of the ranch was what was visible through the windows, and the substantial part of it that blew in around the old window casings to settle on the furniture. Gradually, on warm afternoons when the wind held no chill, he began venturing out onto the porch and even into the yard. It was a good day when Mary reluctantly gave her approval for him to walk to the barn with the black dog enthusiastically tagging at his heels. In other times he would have gone whether she liked it or not, but these days he could see the deep and genuine concern in her eyes when she looked at him. He could not bring himself to worry her more than she already was.
For years he had entertained some notion of tearing down that old barn and building a bigger, stronger one of steel. Now he could no longer afford to, and the barn looked good to him; he hadn’t realized how much he was attached to that venerable old structure with its strong smell of horses and leather and alfalfa hay, its wooden floors stained by the long years’ spillings of horse liniment and neat’s-foot oil. It became routine for him to go to the barn late in the afternoons and pet the roan horse while Manuel did the chores. It made Charlie restless to watch someone else work; never in his life had he sat on the sideline. He badgered Doc Fancher until the doctor said it would be all right for him to ride with Manuel in the pickup so long as he didn’t undertake any work, especially any heavy lifting.
It did Charlie good to set his boots on the land again. There had been a couple of light showers, and he could see sign of some winter weeds trying their damnedest to come up. If he squatted to the ground and took a low-angle look across a considerable expanse he could see a faint tinge of green. Standing up and looking straight down he could see no color at all.
“You know,” he said to Manuel, “they always claim Texans are the biggest liars in the world. I believe they’re right. A man has even got to lie to himself to find a reason for stayin’ here.”
“You lyin’ to yourself, Mister Charlie?”
“I’m tellin’ myself I can see somethin’ green.”
Manuel smiled as he looked over the pasture. “One of us needs glasses.”
Manuel chopped a few live oaks for the goats that gathered around. Charlie walked out among the animals, talking to them as if they were children. He patted a couple that had become tame enough to walk up and let him rub them around their curved horns. Charlie had been forbidden to smo
ke, but he rolled a Bull Durham and took a few puffs for old-times’ sake, snuffed out the fire and gave the cigarette to the tamest of the big muttons. The goat chewed up paper, tobacco and all, then rubbed its nose against Charlie’s leg, wanting more.
Manuel said, “You’re fixin’ to corrupt these goats.”
Charlie nodded. “A bad habit or two is good for man or beast. Did you ever know a man who didn’t have any bad habits? I have, and I always hated the son of a bitch.”
When Manuel had finished his job Charlie said, “Let’s drive over by Warrior Hill and down to the fence. I’d like to see some of Kathy’s cattle. Been weeks since I’ve feasted my eyes on a cow-brute.”
Manuel seemed to find merit in the idea. He put the old pickup onto the fenceline road which Charlie had dragged years ago, both for travel and as a guard to prevent a chance grassfire from crossing the fence. It had been a long time since he had had it reworked; there had been nothing here to burn.
Charlie saw none of the black cattle along the fence; Diego and Kathy must be burning pear and feeding somewhere farther inside the pasture now. He could see the charred remnants of old pear-burning grounds, the stumps grubbed up to prevent their resprouting. If there was to be a benefit from this long drouth, it was that a lot of prickly pear would not survive it. When the rains came—if they ever did—the grass would have a chance to grow where prickly pear had once taken the dominant stand. On the other hand, he didn’t know how some people would have survived this long if they had not had pear to burn for their livestock. One weighed the good points against the bad, and the conclusions remained always somewhat uncertain.
“Looks like we drawed a blank,” Charlie observed.
Manuel shook his head. “I see a pickup at that mill yonder.”
Charlie squinted and decided Manuel’s eyes were better than his. He could see the windmill, but that was all.
Manuel drove up to a wire gate and got out to open it. It was one of the old-fashioned jawbuster kind, made with a chain and a length of cedar stake. He laid the gate down, drove through, then got out and stretched the gate back into place, latching it with the stake and a loop of wire. Charlie had long intended to replace all those with modern steel gates, but there had always seemed to be something more important to do with the money. Now he would probably put up with them for however long the good Lord chose to leave him here.
As they clattered along the deep-rutted road, he could see a large pool of muddy water beside a round steel water trough, and someone working in the middle of this bog. He figured it was Diego. Then he recognized Kathy as she heard the rattle of the pickup and turned to look. Hell of a task for a girl, he thought. She wiped a muddy sleeve across her face and grinned as Manuel and Charlie crawled out of the pickup.
“You-all lookin’ for a job?” she asked.
Charlie replied, “I’m retired. You might ask my helper.”
He could see the trouble at a glance. The trough had spilled over, and milling cattle had churned the puddle into a loblolly.
Manuel laughed at the sight of her. “This is an awful mess.”
“The trough, or me?” She looked down at her mud-spattered Levi’s, the wet sleeves of her denim jumper, her boots sunk half-way into the muck. “Some stupid horse didn’t have anything better to do than to stomp a float-pan into smithereens.”
Manuel said, “Get out of that slop. I’ll fix it for you.”
“I’ve got it half done already. But you’re welcome to it.”
Manuel put on an old pair of boots he kept in the back of the pickup. He waded out into the muddy water past Kathy, touching her arm as he went by. He leaned over the control valve for an inspection. “You’re right,” he said, “you’ve almost got it. If we’d come along a few minutes later there wouldn’t have been any use in me gettin’ muddy.”
“Told you,” she said.
Manuel attached heavy new wire to the float lever, slipped the ends of the wire through the center hole of a new pan, then twisted them around a green mesquite stick to hold the pan in place. He untied a wire Kathy had put on to keep the lever up and the water shut off. He eased the float down toward the bottom of the trough to see if the water would run in properly, then raised it slowly to be sure it would shut off when the water reached the proper level.
“Looks like it ought to work. You’re a lot of trouble, little girl.”
“I didn’t say you had to come and help me. I’ve done a pretty good job takin’ care of myself.”
Manuel walked out of the mud and up to the big concrete storage tank which caught the water as it was pumped by the windmill, releasing it on a controlled basis to the outlying water troughs. He peered over the rim. “It’s lost about half of its water.” Some times, some places that would be a tragedy.
Kathy said, “The well is strong, and the wind never stops. It’ll refill.”
Charlie felt tired. He seated himself on the pickup’s bumper, easing his weak leg out straight in front of him. He had quickly decided those two didn’t need him in their conversation.
Manuel looked critically at Kathy and touched the wet sleeve of her old blue jumper. “Look at you ... wet and cold ... mud all the way to your ears. Can’t you let Diego take care of things like this?”
“He’s busy doin’ somethin’ else. I couldn’t let that water go to waste.”
“Then maybe you need more help.”
“I can’t afford more help. Not unless I marry it.”
Charlie looked up sharply. Most of the time he couldn’t tell when Kathy was serious and when she was fooling. She was smiling a little now, but he couldn’t shake a strong suspicion. She had never been bashful that he could remember.
Manuel let the remark pass. “Let’s go to the tank and wash some of that mud off of you. You still won’t look like a lady, but at least you’ll be clean.”
The steel windmill pumped a small gush of water into the concrete tank with each clanking stroke of the sucker-rod, and shuddered like a man swallowing bitter medicine. Manuel soaked a handkerchief and wiped the mud from Kathy’s face. “Even got it in your hair,” he said, trying less successfully to clean that too.
Kathy held her muddy hands under the pipe and rinsed them. She shivered, for the water was like ice.
Manuel caught one of her hands and held it up. “Bleedin’.”
“Cut it on that old float-pan, I guess. It’ll heal.”
Manuel shook his head. “Kathy, you’re ...” He let it go for the moment, staring at her. “You’re not a man, you’re a woman. You shouldn’t always be out doin’ a man’s work. You’ll be old before your time.”
Across the distance, Charlie stared at Kathy. Now that Manuel mentioned it, she did appear thinner than she used to, and a little older perhaps than she really was. He had heard people say Kathy wasn’t a pretty girl, but he guessed he had always been too close to look at her objectively. To Charlie she was pretty, especially when she smiled. He hadn’t seen her smile much since her father died. Usually he saw a dark urgency that reminded him uncomfortably of Page Mauldin.
Manuel put into words the thought that ran through Charlie’s mind. “Kathy, you’ve let this ranch weigh down on you just like it used to weigh down on your papa.”
Kathy’s eyes pinched as she gazed across the pasture at the dust haze lying like a rusty screen before the winter sun. “This drouth ... this miserable drouth. Sometimes I think it’ll last forever. Other kids grow up with a dog or a pony. Seems to me like I just grew up with a drouth.”
“You don’t have to fight it. You could lease this place to somebody else; you could go on to college and let somebody else have the work and the worry awhile.”
Charlie saw a dark frown come over Kathy’s face, and in her expression he saw Page Mauldin the way he had known him years ago. “No, this is my place, and it’ll stay my place. Nobody’s goin’ to beat me out of what’s mine ... not any calculatin’ banker, not any short-weightin’ cow buyer, not any starch-shirted government man
with a satchel full of papers. I’m stayin’ right here.”
Manuel didn’t press the argument; he had as well have talked to a cedar post. “Any time you need help, just holler. I’ll be over.”
She touched Manuel’s arm and looked into his face. Charlie saw her give Manuel a kind of smile he had never seen before. “I’m glad you’re back, Manuel. I’m real glad.”
The two men were still there, Charlie sitting on the bumper, Manuel standing beside him, when Kathy drove away. They watched until she was gone in the dust. Manuel said, “You want to go look for some cattle?”
Charlie shook his head. “Reckon not. I’m tired.”
He sat in silence as Manuel drove. Awhile after they went back through the wire gate Charlie said, “I never been one to poke my nose in where it don’t belong, but sometimes I see things. I seen somethin’ while ago that worries me.”
Manuel asked him no foolish questions; he knew what Charlie was getting at. “We’ve always been friends, ever since we were kids.”
“You’re not kids any more.”
Manuel nodded. “I know. I’ve thought about it a good deal. You think it’s wrong, don’t you?”
Charlie pondered the matter. “No, I wouldn’t say it’s wrong. But it could lead to some awful problems.”
“Because I’m Mexican?”
“I’d be lyin’ if I said it made no difference. A man has got to look at the world the way it is, not the way he wishes it was.”
“Nothin’ has ever happened between us, Mister Charlie. Even if I wanted it to, Kathy’s lady enough to see that it wouldn’t.”
“That’s where you misjudge her. If she decided she wanted you she’d climb up on the housetop and holler it to the world. Those that didn’t like it, she’d tell them to go to hell. She’s got that much of her old daddy in her. If it comes to that, son, it’ll be you that stops it.”
Manuel chewed his lip. “I’ll face that when it comes.”
Charlie said, “You still got a right smart of schoolin’ ahead of you. You wouldn’t want to mess that up.”
Manuel shook his head. “I’m not kiddin’ myself. I can get two years of college in Angelo because it’s cheap; we’re livin’ there anyway, and I find work in my off times. But it’s just a junior college. There won’t be money to go somewhere else and finish. There sure won’t be money for what I really wish I could do.”
