by John Maclay
It tossed down the boulder.
He heard the thing crashing and booming all the way. Not being a fool, he took shelter behind the spur of stone just beyond his porch, and risked half an eye to watch the behemoth from on high heading straight for his newly completed home.
Another spur of rock, higher up the slope, stopped the thing— just barely. Now it hung there, teetering insecurely on the ledge, waiting.
It was a threatening housewarming gift. It remained just above his roof, balanced precariously. But when Henry Hammond committed himself, that commitment was total. He had bought this valley, built his house. Now, by God, he was going to live there and write. All the mountains in the world could just go and take a hike, along with critics and editors.
He added the triple-damned publishers to his list while he was at it. He still seethed over their demands for the impossible, even while they reneged on contracts and payments. He’d escaped from that trap, and he was going to make it stick.
Once the house was finished, firewood gathered from the juniper forest in the next valley (he cut only dead wood, for he valued trees a good bit more than people), all ready to weather whatever the winter might send, he lined up his three portable typewriters and said, “Eeny-meeny-minie-mo!” That decided which we would begin using, though he intended to wear all of them out over the next few years.
At the end of about three years, he intended to descend from the high places like some latter-day Moses, bearing with him a body of work so arresting in its originality and strength that it would electrify the publishing world. He would do no more writing to moronic outlines, filling shelves with action/adventure tailored to a bloodthirsty audience. No more choose-your-own-ending books for children who would grow up thinking that sort of idiocy was storytelling.
His grandfather’s bequest made it possible for him to tell his agent to shove it, his editors what he thought of their projects (as well as their ancestry), and his publishers what he thought of their financial chicanery. Having made every enemy he could manage to, he had taken off on his personal quest for the Holy Grail.
One way or the other, he would make it on his own. If his Revealed Truth didn’t make any sort of impact, he would just come up the mountain again and go on writing. He was full of stories that demanded to be told. He had enough money to live for years and years. He’d write just what he wanted to write, and if it never caught on (he sighed at the thought), he’d pump gas when the money ran out. Never again would he write another potboiler.
Now he sat on his front porch, staring out over his own valley, listening to the magpies quarreling (or gossiping) in the willow by the spring. His plans were bright before him. His fingers itched to get to work. He leaned forward, rising, just as the mountain spoke.
A hollow booming filled the air. Another boulder?
It was, but this one caught in a channel of rock and went bounding harmlessly down the slope to raise a line of dust before splashing into the stream that flowed away from his spring. He grinned tightly at the peak above him.
“Yah! Yah! Missed me!” he taunted.
Then he went into the house, filled with glee, and started to work.
Summer waned. Fall, at these altitudes, was early and short. Winter was upon him before he knew what was happening. The ancient fellow who delivered his infrequent loads of necessities arrived with a warning. “If you get sick or run out of food, you’re in trouble,” he said, running his finger along the greasy brim of his weathered hat. “Be almighty careful not to fall. The only way in and out, up here, is by helicopter, if you can get to your radio, which can be doubtful. Then it costs an arm and a leg. You sure and certain you don’t want to go out with me?”
Carl seemed genuinely concerned, but Henry shook his head. “Here is where I stay. I can call out on the radio, if anything goes badly wrong. I was raised in Colorado. That isn’t much different from this country. I’ll make it—thanks, though.”
Carl rolled away up the rollercoaster track over the ridge. His Jeep grew smaller and smaller until it popped over the rise and out of sight. Then Henry listened—there was no sound but the wind. And, of course, the hum of the rock, in its many voices. Every knob on it had its own note, and he had learned them all. By itself, it was a tiny symphony.
The first snow silenced its song. The quiet heightened his intense concentration on his work, for, with firewood stored in the shed attached to his home, he was set for winter.
He worked as if the devil were behind him with a whip. Pages of manuscript piled up in the boxes from which the reams of paper had come. He found himself glad that he had brought so much ribbon and carbon paper, for at the rate he was going he would need more by spring. He went out every morning into a world of snow that was so cold and clean it intoxicated him. He learned again to use the snowshoes he’d brought with him, recalling his boyhood in the Rockies. But he was careful—he had lost, somewhere along the way, his conviction of immortality.
The rock still hung above the house, its cap of snow at a rakish angle. It seemed twice as menacing in its silence now. He wondered how much snow it might take to overcome its precarious balance, but he didn’t worry about it. From now on, he would work. Money or fame or professional respect, not to mention danger, could go chase itself.
The first winter went by fits and starts, dragging when his work slowed, whizzing past when it went well. Spring surprised him with an avalanche down the steep slope to the west of his house. He had chosen his location deliberately, setting his house below the spur that held the rock. The formation also shunted aside snow slides.
The warning sent him into even longer sessions at the typewriter, and the boxes filled even faster. April came, and Carl arrived as soon as the slushy snow was passable for his Jeep, which had studded snow tires. There was a garbage bag full of mail, along with fresh supplies of food, toilet paper, candy, and luxuries like fresh milk and green vegetables. Carl brought cigarettes, but Henry had gone without since he ran out in December, and he didn’t need them any longer. He decided not to start smoking again. He did accept the chocolate with gusto, and later he and Carl tied one on, using the Scotch the old fellow brought with him.
They spent the next day tidying up the winter’s damage. When Carl left, Henry sat down to begin opening his mountain of mail.
The first letter was from his agent. A check for eleven thousand dollars! Royalties, by heaven, for a book the publisher had claimed for years was losing money! Henry sighed, thinking of how much it would have helped only last year, when his wife Celia was so ill. There had been no money for the treatment that might have prolonged her life. Chalk up another one against the System, he thought. Too little and too late again.
The second letter was from Slocum and Lewis. The envelope, a thick manila one, contained fifteen fan letters from children. The juvenile that everyone in the publishing house had tried to dissuade him from writing was making a hit with its intended audience. It was on the William Allen White Award List in Kansas for the past school term! It was up for the Newbery.
Henry laughed. Still chuckling, he dug into the rest. Fan letters, ads, junk—and a note from Celia’s mother. He didn’t even open that, but laid it on the fire and watched it curl to ash. There would be nothing there except vituperation, he knew. She blamed him for being a writer, for letting her daughter die, when he might have just as well have been a businessman and had the money to make her live. She’d never understood that Celia had wanted him to write as much as he did. The thought made him sad.
There were no letters from those who had proclaimed themselves his friends. He was out of sight and mind, that was clear. He sorted out the junk and added it to his fire. He made out a deposit slip to send to the bank with Carl, the next time he came. He tacked the fifteen fan letters up over his rough mantel. Fifteen kids had been excited by his work. That would make a nice epitaph, when the time came.
When h
e had tidied up, he went through the boxes of manuscript he had finished over the winter. There were two novels there that were, without a doubt, the best work he had ever done. He wrote a short letter to his agent and wrapped it in the package with the manuscripts. Might as well send them out into the world to begin getting their feet wet. Carl could take them, when he came.
He turned to stare out of his lone window. The willow tips were turning pink. Before long, the magpies would return. Then he might go down again to see a few people, go through some bookstores, remind himself that he was still at least marginally human.
He would come back here. That was certain. He had learned a lot over the winter, even aside from the fact that a bit of money could buy a lot of freedom.
He had pursued fame and money, and they had fled before him like foxes before hounds. Now that he had turned his back and walked away, they were slinking after him, begging for attention. It was a valuable lesson, though now he found that this made no great difference to him. Perhaps that was a necessary part, that indifference.
Never again would he appear anxious and apologetic, ready to agree to anything in order to get his toe into the tight door of publishing. Now he’d do as he damn well pleased. The people down there in the world could do as they liked about him—with this fresh supply of cash, he could live comfortably as along as he was likely to last, and there might even be more later.
He found that he didn’t give a damn, one way or the other. He stared up at the rock. Its snowy cap had slipped aside, revealing its knobby shape. With that thing up there, waiting its chance, he would never get cocksure and arrogant.
Any day, any hour, he could be squashed like a bug. Until that time came and the mountain won its battle, he would be his own man doing his own thing.
He grinned up at the ugly chunk of rock.
It hummed back in menacing tones, under the warming wind of spring.
WELCOME THE ANGLOS
Although the families mentioned here are fictional, this basic situation occurred in East Texas at the point when Anglo families moved into Mexican territory. The town of Chireno, Texas, was seized in a similar manner, and the Spanish/Mexican inhabitants were forced to move westward from their original homes into less desirable country. Their descendants still live in Nacogdoches County, and many of them are prominent in business, farming, or other areas.
Antonia Lucía Morales y Batista stood at the door of her father’s home, staring out over the long stretch of pine and hardwood forest that sloped down to the southern curve of the river. Not a curl of smoke interrupted the endless blue of the sky. No sound of axe or bark of a neighbor’s dog rang through the morning calm.
Sighing, she turned and went into the house her father had built for her mother, ten years past. Mama had loved it, loved Papa, loved this empty Tejas country and the endless forests. She had even loved the occasional Indio visitors, although both Papa and Antonia disapproved of her gifts of food and tools to the red-skinned people.
But Mama was dead. One of those terrible fevers that lived in the swamps along the river had taken her almost between one breath and the next. Antonia had nursed her desperately, trying to preserve not only her beloved mother but the only other pale-skinned woman nearer than the settlement at Nacogdoches, a hard day’s ride to the west.
Tears filled her eyes, but Antonia wiped them away fiercely. She had not the pioneer spirit her mother possessed. She disliked the mosquitoes that swarmed by day and night, the snakes that slipped unnoticed even into the house, the predators that decimated her poultry. More than anything on earth, Antonia would have loved to return to San Luis Potosí, where her grandmother would have welcomed her into her house and her heart.
The young woman pushed that thought from her mind. Papa was here. He had claimed many hectares of land from the King, and he had Indio slaves working in the older fields, clearing away the great trees from new ones, grubbing out roots, making the land ready for planting. Cotton, tobacco, and corn grew here abundantly, and in time he would be among the wealthiest of the patrones in this new country.
In the meanwhile, his daughter wore away her life at household tasks or embroidering endless bright nothings, as the nuns had taught her back in San Luis Potosí. No woman friend existed with whom to exchange confidences. No acceptable suitor had appeared, and she was nearing twenty-five. Una soltera already, she knew that it was inevitable that she remain unmarried until it was too late to think of marrying at all.
Her chickens squawked amid a flutter and a swirl of dust in the two-track road beyond the front gate. Was that her father returning? She hurried out again and stood shading her eyes against the glare of the sun, which was still low in the east, lighting the mists that hung above the river.
Yes, that was Estrella, the mare he had brought from Spain, still stepping daintily, despite her age, under the slight burden of Don Enrique’s wiry frame. Ordinarily, the chickens never paid the slightest heed to the horse. What was coming behind?
She stepped off the low veranda and peered into the haze of dust and sunlight. The sound of wheels, of jostling metal and leather and wood, came to her ears. Her father was leading a wagon to their door. Sudden excitement sent Antonia toward the gate with unseemly haste. She paused, recovered her control, and moved graciously to welcome the unexpected visitors.
Behind the first wagon trailed three more, each loaded with canvas-covered burdens. Alongside walked three trail-worn women, two young girls, and a gaggle of children, all of them sunburned, bitten, and exhausted. They were not, she thought, people of the best sort, yet they were so obviously in need of rest, food, and washing that she felt her heart go out to them.
“¡Bienvenida!” she called. “¡Señoras, niñitos! Do come into the shade and rest while the men dispose of your wagons. There is cool water from the well, and I have small cakes that I make because my father loves them. Perhaps the small ones would like them, yes?”
The tallest of the women, her skirts flapping in dusty folds about her ankles, looked up beneath the limp brim of her bonnet. Seeing the sprawling house, the shaded walk, and the welcoming woman, she smiled and turned toward Antonia.
Was this woman to be a friend? Antonia wondered. But then she knew that these people were headed farther west. They always were, thinking to find better land beyond the spot where they stood.
The women gathered beneath the white oak tree, gulping water from the tin dipper. Scented by the cedar bucket in which it had been drawn from the well, the water was, Antonia knew, incredibly cold and refreshing. She could see new life pour into children and women alike as they drank their fill.
Luisa, who had served her mother from childhood, came onto the porch, and the young woman turned to her. “Have Rosa prepare more food. Chickens, vegetables from the garden, some of the fresh venison perhaps. These people are hungry, I know. We must feed them before they go on.”
Papa was coming now, with the oldest of the men. She knew they had sent the younger men to unhitch the oxen and mules from the wagons and to water all the livestock that accompanied this small train. The well in the pasture would be busy for a time.
She smiled and curtseyed as the gray-bearded newcomer approached. “Bienvenida, Señor,” she whispered. “We are preparing food for your people. You are more than welcome to our home.”
The man smiled, but his small gray eyes remained chilly. “Thank you, young lady. Don Enrique, we appreciate your help. It’s been a long old way, and I can’t say we’re not tired to death. A bit of rest, some water so the women can wash, and a bite to eat will be mighty welcome.”
Antonia felt odd. Courtesy among her people required more than this, but perhaps these newcomers had different customs. She turned and hurried around to the back, where the servant women had laid planks across trestles to make a long table, which would soon be filled with food.
As she worked, Antonia watched the Anglo women. They p
itched in, tired as they were, to help with preparations for feeding this unexpected number of guests. The tallest one, Melinda, seemed to see what needed doing very quickly, and she had the children fetching and carrying without getting in the way of the rest.
An admirable woman in some ways, Antonia thought, despite her draggled appearance and obvious lack of education. It was possible she could not even read, though she was obviously quick-witted.
Once the meal was served and the litter cleared, Rosa and Luisa shooed everyone away and took over washing up pots and what plates had been available for use. The precious china from Spain had not been risked with this ragtag group.
She led the women to the wide space at the rear of the house, where the niños belonging to their servants kept the grass cut with a scythe. There two great red-oaks and a pine reared their heads at the edge of the ridge on which the house stood, and there was always a grateful breeze, no matter how hot the day.
The women sank onto the grass, their skirts about their ankles, while the children went off to pester chickens or play tag. “You are going west, then?” Antonia asked in her best English. “To make farms, perhaps?”
Melinda shook her head. “Walter’s a carpenter. He’ll build houses and shops, I guess, for other folks that come. Ought to be good business, time they get to be a good many.”
In surprise, Antonia asked, “There are other Anglos coming? I did not know that.”
“Oh, yes,” the woman said. “Since Mr. Austin done the treaty with Mexico, a lot of folks’ll be comin’ to Texas. We get land grants, so much for each couple and more for every child. That’ll give Walt and me a big spread.”
Though the talk turned to other things, Antonia found herself thinking about Melinda’s words. A subtle unease formed in the pit of her stomach. What would happen to the country with all these uncouth people arriving and setting up their own towns? Even Mamá would not approve, she felt.
