The Time It Never Rained

by Elmer Kelton

  “You still wantin’ to be a veterinarian?”

  “It takes six or seven years to make a vet. Even when I finish in Angelo I’m still short four or five. I’d just as well wish to go to the moon.”

  “So what’ll you do?”

  Manuel let a little bitterness creep into his voice. “Study animal husbandry, and after two years I go out and hope I can get a ranch job as good as my papa had.”

  “He didn’t have any college. He didn’t even have high school.”

  Manuel nodded grimly. “Makes mine look like a waste, doesn’t it?”

  Teofilo Garcia’s ancient shearing machine sounded as if it was trying to tear its own guts out. Charlie was surprised it even ran any more. He sat upon a freshly filled bag of mohair and watched Manuel and Diego Escamillo drive a fresh set of goats up into the small corral where the machine smoked and shuddered. The west wind was blowing twenty miles an hour. I can sure pick the days, he thought disgustedly. On reconsideration he realized he hadn’t picked this shearing date. Teofilo had let him know when his rig would be available, and Charlie had to accept it on that date, come what may.

  Given his choice, he had rather have waited a little longer, until the danger of cold rain was more nearly past. This was the big risk in keeping Angora goats. When other animals were trying to find a place to lie down and die on drouthy range, the hardy goat walked with head high. The goat could live with a measure of contentment where the cow went to bones and the sheep died. But the reason—the only reason—for keeping Angoras was to shear their silky fine hair. Goats would begin shedding their winter hair early, usually before winter was actually done. To get the mohair at its best, the ranchman had to shear before it started coming loose of its own accord and hanging in the brush. That meant while there was still a risk of bad weather. And though the goat otherwise had a strong constitution, he was poorly fitted to stand cold rain on a freshly shorn skin. A sensitive spine was his Achilles heel. The Angora could chill down and die in minutes.

  That was the reason behind a grim old goat-country joke that shearing time came twice a year—just before the last cold rain in the spring and just before the first cold rain in the fall.

  Charlie saw no sign that he needed to worry. All that appeared ahead of him was another duststorm. Tarps had been lashed to a rough framework of stretched ropes on the west side of the shearing pen to help reduce the wind problem on the shearing floor, but that was by no means a total solution. Wind still cut around the edges of the tarps and tugged at the bottoms, slipping under.

  Mohair was considered one of the finest fibers in the world and went into the richest of fabrics. But Charlie wondered what a French fashion designer would think if he could watch a rancher chasing handfuls of it across a goat pen in a high wind.

  The Angora muttons bleated in fear as one by one they were dragged to the shearing board. Charlie noted with a frown that there were only four shearers, just half as many as the machine could accommodate. Old Teofilo must have seen Charlie counting, for he ambled over and slumped down beside him on the heavy bag. The capitán was not as fat as he used to be, and Charlie saw much gray amid the coarse black hair. It occurred to him that Teofilo looked unwell; he seemed terribly tired.

  Time’s catching up to all of us, he thought regretfully.

  “Four men, Mister Charlie,” Teofilo said. “Hard times.”

  “Mighty hard,” Charlie nodded sympathetically. Teofilo had come to him three months ago to ask for an advance on the spring shearing. For the first time in upwards of twenty years, Charlie had not had it to give him.

  “Teofilo,” Charlie asked, “you been sick?”

  Teofilo shrugged. “Not in bed. But lots of the time any more I don’t feel very good. Too many years, Mister Charlie.”

  The thought came to Charlie that time might be running out for Teofilo; he had that look about him, that dullness of eye. The notion stung hard. For God’s sake, he thought, won’t anything be left, or anybody? Charlie clasped his hands together and looked away, blinking rapidly at the dust that stung his eyes. He had never fully realized before that he counted Teofilo as a friend.

  Teofilo stared out across the pasture, what he could see of it through the pall of gray. “I been thinkin’, Mister Charlie, it is time for me to sell this old machine and maybe go to California.”

  Teofilo had as much business in California as Charlie did. He had been here too long; all his heritage, all his roots were here. He would not willingly leave Rio Seco any more than he would willingly sell this old machine except to replace it with a better one. Like Charlie, he was trapped here by tradition and memories, and by his age.

  His son Chuy, working over there by the sacking frame, was young enough to pack up and leave; Charlie had sometimes wondered why he had not already done so. But Teofilo, like Charlie, was stuck with it. Both would stay and be buried here, even if the hearse had to pick them up at the county poor farm.

  But Charlie did not say all that. He strung along with Teofilo, giving voice to an aborted dream of his own youth. “You could be right, Teofilo. When I was a young man it was always my ambition to move to Wyomin’ or Montana. Lately I been thinkin’ about it. I was up there one summer when I was seventeen or eighteen ... worked for an outfit that ran cattle on an Indian reservation. Prettiest thing ever I seen, the way them prairies grew up so tall and green, and you could look and see an antelope three miles away like it was no more than three hundred yards.”

  Teofilo said, “I have been up there to shear sheep. I have seen the snow up to your belly in Wyoming. Better California, where all the time the sun is shining.”

  Charlie looked at him ruefully. “It shines here all the time too.”

  “But there it is not the same. There it is like a pretty woman’s kiss. There the flowers grow and the wind is cool and everything is pretty and clean. I have seen it with my own eyes, Mister Charlie, when I was young.”

  “There’s a lot of people in California now, from what I read. They’ve probably already beat us to all the good parts.”

  “If I get out there I will find a good place where the flowers bloom and a man can plant himself a garden and grow anything he wants, and the chill will never go to the bone. California is a good place for a Mexican; nobody looks down on us there. Once all of California belonged to us Mexicans.”

  Charlie slowly shook his head. “So did Texas.”

  Manuel shut the gate on a set of freshly shorn goats and picked up a can of black tecole, hanging by its bail on an old fencepost stained by the tecole and paint and blood of fifty other shearings. A paintbrush floated in the heavy liquid. He brushed off a little of the excess against the inside rim and began spotting it against shearing cuts on the goats crowded into the narrow alleyway.

  A shadow fell across the bobbing heads and horns. Chuy Garcia leaned against the fence from the outside, watching. Manuel flashed him a quick grin. “I can get another can if you want to help.”

  Chuy shook his head. “I’m not paid for that.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missin’.”

  Chuy spat an oath. “I’ll survive.” He jerked his chin toward the two men sitting together on the mohair bag, well out of the way of the working crew. “Look at those two old farts. Did you ever see anything so worn-out and worthless?”

  Manuel looked. “Worn-out maybe, but not worthless.”

  “You couldn’t get an hour of honest work out of either one of them.”

  “They’ve worked hard in their time. They’ve earned the right to sit down.”

  Chuy shrugged. “What I can’t understand is why the hell you’re here. You got away from here once. Why didn’t you stay?”

  Manuel pointed the paintbrush toward Charlie. “He was sick and needed help.”

  “That old gabacho? You ought to let him drown in his own sweat. You’ll never see a damn rancher go out of his way to help you when you need it.”

  “Mister Charlie would.”

  “Mister C
harlie.” Chuy spoke the words as if he were spitting a bad taste from his mouth. “Why don’t you take off your hat when you say his name, and bow a little too?”

  Heat began rising to Manuel’s face. “I’ve got work to do, Chuy.”

  “Sure you have. These ranchers will always see that you have work to do. How much is he payin’ you?”

  Manuel hesitated to answer. “Nothin’.”

  Chuy exploded. “Nothin’? You goddam fool!”

  “You always did say I was a fool. This shouldn’t surprise you.”

  Chuy regarded him with disbelief. “You’re lyin’ to me. What’s he really payin’ you?”

  “I sleep in the house where we used to live. Miz Mary feeds me. That’s it.”

  “But why?”

  “I told you. He was sick, and he needed help.”

  “My old man is sick too, and awhile back he needed help. Charlie Flagg didn’t help him.”

  “What happened?”

  “The old man went to him for a regancho. Flagg didn’t give it to him.”

  “Mist...” Manuel caught himself. “Charlie didn’t have it.”

  “These ranchers, they’ve always got it. They give you that poor-mouth so you’ll leave them alone. So the old man, he went to Danny Ortiz.”

  Manuel stiffened. “To Danny?”

  “Old Man Ortiz is dead.”

  Manuel nodded. Old Man Ortiz had died a few months ago, and from the accounts Manuel had heard he had the biggest funeral turnout of any Mexican in the history of Rio Seco. It was generally acknowledged that few came to mourn; most were there to be sure the old bastard was really dead.

  Chuy said, “He got a loan from Danny, at Danny’s interest rates. He’s already paid back over half of what he borrowed, and he still owes more than he did to start with. Everywhere we go, Danny turns up, threatenin’ to take this machine away from him.”

  “What’re you goin’ to do?”

  “Keep stallin’ him, that’s all we can do. The old man has got a cancer eatin’ at his gut. He won’t make the summer. If I can stall Danny while the old man lives, then he can come take the son of a bitch. I don’t want it.”

  Manuel stared open-mouthed at Teofilo, who was moving his hands in broad sweeping motions as he talked to Charlie. He swallowed hard, knowing how painfully his own father would take this news. Manuel couldn’t remember when Teofilo Garcia hadn’t been around; he was a fixture here, like Warrior Hill.

  “I’m sorry about your papa, Chuy. I didn’t know.”

  Chuy shrugged, a gesture of futility. “Nobody did till lately; he didn’t tell a soul. Now you can see it in his eyes when you look at him.”

  “I doubt that Mister Charlie knew.”

  “Wouldn’t have made any difference if he did know; he wouldn’t have lent the old man any money.”

  “If he couldn’t lend it himself I’ll bet he’d have hunted somebody who could. Did you-all try Old Man Rodale?”

  “That gringo banker? We don’t trust any of those.”

  “He would’ve been better than Danny.”

  “Danny is one of us.” Chuy looked down at the goats Manuel was daubing with the black healer and fly repellent. “So here you are back with the rest of us poor Mexicans, workin’ for the white man.”

  “Like I told you ...”

  “I know, he’s sick. And you’re sick, too, in the head.” Chuy turned to stare disapprovingly at his father sitting beside Charlie. The two older men were adrift somewhere in a world of their own. “Look at him,” Chuy complained. “You’d think him and old Flagg was brothers; you’d think he didn’t have sense enough to realize that Flagg and all these others have used him all his life, and now that he’s old and sick they’ll just throw him away like a pair of worn-out boots.”

  “You’re bein’ too hard on Charlie. If he’s ever caused harm to anybody, he didn’t mean to.”

  “Listen to you, talkin’ up for him. I remember when you came to me mad as a whipped pup because he patronized you—treated you like a pet dog.”

  Manuel shrugged. “Turnabout is fair play. Now I can patronize him.”

  “So you help him get back on his feet, and then he’s the same hard-nosed old bigot that he always was.”

  Manuel pondered a moment. “I guess you could call him a bigot. You could call us all bigots, one way or another. But he’s gettin’ better, Chuy. Are you?”

  Manuel looked across the dusty pens at Charlie and Teofilo. Charlie was doing the talking now, using his hands to express himself the way Teofilo had done. It occurred to Manuel that neither of these two viejos ever realized how much they had in common, how much more they were alike than different. “He didn’t ask for my help, Chuy. He didn’t ask for anybody’s help. If he hadn’t gotten sick I think he would have made it all by himself. It wasn’t fair to see him go under just because he was sick. Whatever else he might be, he’s a man.”

  The tail of his eye caught a movement, and he turned. A car was approaching on the road from town, the hard wind quickly floating its trailing dust far out into the pasture. Border patrol, Manuel thought at first. Shearing day drew border patrolmen like sugar draws flies. Well, they wouldn’t get anything here today but a cup of stout coffee.

  Chuy Garcia snarled, “It’s that Danny. He’s come to devil the old man again.”

  Danny. An old, remembered hatred stirred back to life. Fists flexing, Manuel squinted through the dust. He made out a red convertible. Danny had a new car since the last time Manuel had seen him; he had probably had several new cars.

  Manuel glanced at Chuy, coming to a quick decision. “You used to count Dandy as a friend of yours. I don’t suppose you do any more?”

  “Danny’s only got one friend in the world, and that’s himself.”

  “Good. Then you won’t mind if I happen to deck him.”

  “I’d do it myself if the old man didn’t owe him money. I’ll do it anyway when the old man is gone.”

  Manuel hung the tecole can on a post and began climbing over panels. He had climbed over the last one when Charlie Flagg pushed himself to a stand from the mohair bag. Manuel could see anger building in Charlie’s face. Charlie couldn’t afford anger, not in his condition. He was saying, “That damn Danny Ortiz. I told him years ago, if he ever set foot on this place again . . .”

  Manuel said, “Sit down, Mister Charlie. I’ll talk to Danny.”

  Charlie showed no sign he had heard. Sterner, as a grown son might speak to a childish father, Manuel commanded, “You sit yourself down!”

  Charlie blinked in surprise, but he sat down beside Teofilo, who looked suddenly very nervous.

  Danny drove up at high speed and pushed on the brakes at the last possible moment. When the red convertible came to a stop, the front bumper was pushing into Charlie’s netwire fence, stretching it a little. Danny stepped out of the car to find Manuel standing there waiting for him. He looked at Manuel in surprise.

  Manuel said evenly, “You’re not welcome, Danny. Drag it.”

  Danny gave him only contempt. “What are you doin’ here?”

  “I’m here to tell you to get back in that car. Nobody wants you.”

  “Who says?”

  “Me for one. Charlie Flagg for another.”

  Danny snorted. “Who’s Charlie Flagg? Just another broke rancher, flat on his ass. I don’t have to worry about what he says. I could buy and sell him ten times over.”

  Manuel shook his head. “The whole United States government couldn’t buy him. You’ll never come close.”

  “I don’t give a damn about Charlie Flagg anyway. I came to see Teofilo Garcia.”

  Manuel found himself staring hard at Danny. Somehow he had expected what he saw, yet it shocked him a little. Danny was matured, a man now where Manuel remembered him as an overgrown boy. The marks of dissolution were cut deeply into his face. There was a glassiness in his eyes that told Manuel that Danny was either drinking too much or was on narcotics, maybe both. Short of killing him, no one c
ould have done as much damage to Danny as he had obviously done to himself.

  Manuel said, “You’re not goin’ to bother Teofilo.”

  “What are you, some kind of Father Protector?”

  “You’d better not try to find out.”

  Danny’s eyes narrowed. “I’d have whipped you once if it hadn’t been for that Buddy Thompson and his club. Are you movin’ out of the way, or do I have to walk over you?,”

  “Your feet aren’t big enough. The only thing big about you is your mouth.”

  Danny took a step forward, mouth open a little, his teeth set in challenge. Then it was the same face Manuel had always hated. He felt an exhilaration as he crouched a little, starting his fist from way down low and bringing it up, putting the power of his shoulder behind it. When it struck Danny under the chin, Danny’s head snapped. A second later he was stretched out flat on his back, arms spread-eagled.

  Manuel’s knuckles were torn and starting to bleed, but all he felt was a wild soaring of spirit. “Get up from there, Danny. Get up, goddam you, so I can do it again.”

  Danny lay stunned. When he opened his eyes, they had a vacant look, a glassy stare that focused nowhere. Manuel reached down and grasped Danny’s shirt, trying to pull him back to his feet. Danny grabbed desperately at Manuel’s hand.

  “Don’t do it,” he cried. “Don’t do it. I’ll have the law out here. I swear, I’ll have the law out here.”

  It was an empty threat. If the sheriff was still the same as when Manuel knew him, he wouldn’t get up from the supper table to keep someone from killing Danny in the middle of the street outside. Manuel drew back his fist to hit Danny again, but he stopped himself. He looked into Danny’s frightened face and reconsidered. He somehow got Danny to his feet. He shoved him roughly back to the car. He opened the door and pushed Danny in. “Pick up your feet or I’ll slam the door on them!”