by Jonis Agee
By the time he was fifteen Drum couldn’t see why Cullen came back so often. The boy tried living in that shack through winter to learn the lesson Drum was teaching. Frost bit his toes, his fingers, his ears, and it felt like his eyelids would never come unswole. Ran out of kerosene middle of December, and cow chips were impossible to find after the early blizzards that year. He burned the chairs, the table, the bunk, and was starting on the walls of the shack, not an easy thing to pull down those boards, when Stubs rode in to check on him. He was weak as a kitten from having nothing to eat but canned peaches for the past two weeks, and his horse wasn’t in much better shape. Stubs fed them both from the packhorse, loaded them up, and led them back. Drum didn’t have much to say that time.
No beating, Cullen was too tall by then. Soon as the January thaw came, two more hands hit the trail. Guess they figured to take their chances in winter. There was the other thing that happened, of course, and to this day people around there didn’t know for sure that Drum did it. They heard he did and no one would meet their eyes for a few years after that, then it was forgotten, and a pretty tale was spun and kept.
It was right after Cullen came back. He was lying around the house trying to get his strength up, because Stubs said he’d quit and take the rest of the men with him if the boy wasn’t allowed time to recover. For once, Cullen didn’t fight. He was too wrung out. It was one morning after the New Year, and there was a knock on the door. Drum was out with the men moving cattle closer since it looked like yet another storm was coming from the Dakotas: sky had that milky haze and the wind’d been blowing from the south melting snow, but every once in a while, there was a cold gust from the north that slid under the warm, and the birds were restless, circling and crying and grabbing what berries there were on the bushes, and the chickens ran up into their coop, then popped out again and ran down the ramp to scratch at the places where the snow’d blown clear. The dogs whined and were anxious about every little thing. The horses in the corral argued all morning, biting and kicking and turning their butts to the north wind. They could feel it coming. And the air had that peculiar charge to it, the one that made a person’s skin feel like his shirt was cutting into his back where his arms came out, and the last thing Cullen was looking for was a knock at the door.
He shoved the cat aside; he wasn’t about to let that thing out and have to go chasing after it in a snowstorm. Captain Jack was Drum’s favorite, the only animal allowed in the house. Even the dogs had to sneak in after the old man’d shut his bedroom door for the final time. Two people stood on the porch. It took them coming inside and peeling off the layers of clothes for Cullen to realize they were a man and woman, and she’d got something in the brown-and-red carpet satchel she was being mighty careful about. Captain Jack came sniffing and scratching around the bag until it let out a squall that sent him scurrying half across the room, back humped, hair raised, hissing. The woman reached inside for a bundle that turned out to be a tiny baby, red-faced and sick-looking, its eyes never open, like a newborn kitten nuzzling the blind world. They all looked about froze to death so Cullen gave them coffee. They had cream and sugar, and that made it easier to swallow. When he took Cullen, Drum had bought a cow for milk, and got to liking the cream skimmed off the top. More than once he caught Cullen drinking it straight from the pitcher and whipped his hide. Didn’t stop him.
Another look at their faces, gaunt and burned by the wind, and he got out the biscuits from breakfast and a chunk of beef and a can of peaches, which he couldn’t stomach anymore. At first they declined, and then they tucked into that food like they hadn’t eaten in days. Cullen knew how that was. After a while, he realized the baby was too quiet, its breathing patchy, then hoarse, then snorting and silent. The woman ate with one hand while she rested her fingertips on the baby’s skull and cheek.
When they’d eaten all the food, the man cleared his throat and said, “We’d be beholden for a place to sleep. Baby’s too sick to travel and my wife’s all in.” He laid his big raw-looking hands flat on the table and shook his head once, trying not to glance over at the baby, who was mewling now, too sick for a proper cry. The man was about to the end of his rope and his eyes teared. He wiped them away like he got something caught in them.
His wife laid a hand on his arm but didn’t take her eyes off the baby.
“What’s wrong with it?” Cullen asked.
The couple looked at each other and something like guilt passed between, which made Cullen nervous. Finally the man heaved a big sigh and pushed away from the table. His long, angular face looked hand-built from scrap wood, a person could read the bones so clearly and they didn’t exactly line up as they should. There were smallpox scars on his cheeks and the thick thatch of red-blond hair was cut in an uneven bowl around his face. He had yellow-brown eyes that offset everything else. Made Cullen wonder if the baby had the same eyes.
“Diphtheria, might be the diphtheria,” the woman spoke for the first time in a soft voice filled with the kind of yearning that sent a shiver down the back. The boy stared at her and she stared right back. She had a plain oval face, the features set up so regular the eye passed right over them, but the longer he looked the more was revealed. Like the unremarkable nose turned up at the end, the medium brown eyes red-rimmed, and the cheekbones starting to show. A person could tell that when she lost the puppy fat she would have one of those high-toned faces except for the chin that hadn’t decided yet whether to shove out or sink in, or maybe it was the way she didn’t lift her face. She was always looking down at that baby, even when it wasn’t there. She’d been chewing her cracked lips, there was a scab in the corner of her mouth, and her skin was blotched red and white. Cullen spent all that time noticing the details, like the fact there was no wedding band on her finger, and that her nails were rimed black with dirt, and that her clothes were actually ragged layers, men’s and women’s both, and her feet bound with rags to keep the man-sized boots on, as if they’d shared the contents of his wardrobe. Cullen tried not to think of that word she’d used.
“We took off soon as it hit the ranch,” the man said with a sigh. “Thought we’d made it away safe.” He looked at him with those yellow-brown eyes, like a dozy cat’s almost, and Cullen couldn’t look away.
“Don’t mean to bring harm,” he whispered. Cullen nodded and said they could stay. The baby mewled and coughed and its lungs grew thick and it couldn’t seem to bear more than the touch of the woman’s fingertips. When she tried to pick it up, it contorted weakly and bloody spit gurgled from its mouth and nose.
At noon Drum came stomping into the house, slammed the door against the wind, took one look at the couple, and jerked his thumb at the door. They silently gathered themselves. The woman picked up the satchel and held it against her chest as they shuffled out the door. Cullen wanted to send food along, at least a can of peaches, but Drum was there, removing his coat, impatient for them to leave. When the door shut behind them, he gestured toward the dish-strewn table. “Throw it all out.” Later Drum made him scrub the table with salt and lye soap and burn the clothes he wore.
Deep in memory, Cullen didn’t realize how close he was to the one-room church the Sand Hills families shared. He halted his horse and looked to the east where the church stood two hills over.
That spring he’d heard the couple had made it to another ranch and left the baby, which died, and nobody ever had a name for any of them. Cullen sat with them that whole morning and never thought to ask. A storm came up, and it was a miracle the baby lived long enough to die in a house. He hoped the couple didn’t perish until they found safety again. Stubs later told him that Drum heard about the epidemic in town and was terrified when he saw the strange horses. Cullen didn’t speak to him for six months after that.
When the owners of the ranch where the baby died built the church on their land and invited all their neighbors, he and Drum were the only ones who didn’t show. Then they buried the baby, and again, Drum wouldn’t go. Cullen went later.
It was spring and the hills were dotted with brown-and-white cows and new calves, a pretty sight. After all that snow the wildflowers came busting out, and the wind was soft and warm without being hot. It was that kind of spring day when the sky didn’t seem close enough to bother and the horse felt good but not too good. Cullen wished for a person to ride along with. It was a different feeling than being in the line shack, where his anger kept him company. Out in the hills, the land was so endless a person felt himself slipping away if he wasn’t careful. There was so little to butt up against, to give a person shape, to stop or start him or make him turn away. A person in the hills could do just about anything he wanted. Besides that, there was so much to see, to point out to another person in a way that made it better to see it. That was what he remembered, before Drum took him, how his mother would show him a brown-and-yellow butterfly in the grass and stop him holding it too tight before he set it loose. Or a big yellow-and-black spider in a web drawn between the sunflowers she watered. Sometimes he’d say to his horse, Look at that, and point out the flock of red-winged blackbirds turning like a hand, palm up, palm down, then shaking loose over the hillside like pepper.
Drawing up to the church now, he was surprised by the mown grass and the newly painted white walls. Inside smelled of the fresh cedar beams and pews. There was a brand-new pump organ up front, and the brass-lined wood stops gleamed in the shadows. Cullen sat, placed his fingers on the keys, and pumped the pedals until he produced a wheezy squall that was hard on the ears. There was the same potbellied stove to take the chill off come winter and the kerosene lamps along the walls. He never understood how people could bow down to something like the huge rough-hewn cross that towered from the wall up front. The trees had to come from the reservation or were hauled all the way from Chadron, maybe. Cedar. It lasted. He ran his fingers over the axe-chipped surface, wondering that they had not bothered to plane it smooth. The wood felt warm to the touch, and he turned to see if the light streaming in the tall windows bathed the cross.
The little cemetery was out back. From the weathered markers, it was probably where some original settlers had buried their dead. The pink stone slab was larger than most and stood out so the eye couldn’t stop seeking it, OUR BABY chiseled into its smooth surface. The grave itself was short and had sunk a few inches with the years. At least the kid got out before everything went to shit, he thought. But even as he rounded the side of the church, planning to ride the hell out of there for town, he felt drawn back. He tried pushing his legs forward but they slowed and stopped. Glancing at the church, he saw the tiny white skull of a bird, probably a blue jay judging from the hook-shaped beak, sitting on a windowsill. “Okay,” he said, “all right, yes.” He picked it up, careful not to crush it, for it was light and fragile as a locust shell, and placed it in his palm. When he reached the grave again, he turned his hand and let the skull edge onto the top of the pink headstone, and made sure it caught there before he patted the back of the stone and left. A breeze came up as he passed the church with a light sweet smell that stayed with him to the outskirts of town, where he thought, I will not live to tell this story.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
You’re my Telemachus, Hayward,” his mother said, and the words rolled around in his head like marbles. What does that mean, he wondered, and she explained about a poet and a man named Odysseus gone for years to war and a woman named Penelope left at home, and he wanted to say, but he was the one left, and she the one gone, but her eyes were shiny and her face full of happiness of a kind he rarely saw so he let her keep talking though it was mainly nonsense. He wasn’t fighting off suitors and she all but killed his father. Drove him to do what he did by leaving. He thought of that time his father dragged him to see the reservation, and then his father went again without him, and was never the same after that. If she’d been here, his father would have stayed home, not gotten sad. He thought about Star and wondered if she met his father at Wounded Knee, if that was why they were killed together.
“Your mother has a poetic nature,” Father said one of the few times he ever spoke about her other than to assure him that she loved her son. Hayward pondered that for a moment, then asked, “What does that make us?”
He knew what he was. He was the one left behind, but he didn’t feel sorry for himself. Soon as he found Cullen, he got over that. Cullen told him the truth—that Hayward was the one nobody wanted—grandfather, mother, and father by default, since they inhabited the same space and it was too much trouble to stake him out in the hills like a deformed calf to lure the coyotes.
Mother came into the parlor where he was reading a book of poetry Cullen gave him. She stood there like she was waiting for permission to speak. He glanced up from the book, which was about a bunch of weepy men who felt tender and sad all the time, according to Cullen, who preferred poetry to the adventure stories Hayward liked. When she realized what he was reading, she smiled.
“May I join you?” she asked in the overly polite voice that gritted his teeth.
“This poem, ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ by Kates?” he said.
“Keats, with a long ‘e,’” she said apologetically.
“He wants to kill himself, doesn’t he?” He paused for effect and her lips parted slightly like she was about to say something. She nodded instead.
He continued, going line by line explaining the poem as Cullen had explained it to him. “But he hears the nightingale, its beautiful, sad song, and it helps him, doesn’t it? So nature and her beauty, if we pay attention, can save our lives.”
She nodded, the expression on her chiseled face almost afraid to show her astonished happiness. She reached out, patted his arm and nodded, believing she’d found her soul mate, the one the poets were always thinking about instead of the real live people around them. It was Cullen she needed for that, he should tell her.
Instead, he closed the book and tossed it on the table between them. “Pretty simpleminded, don’t you think?”
He stood and pulled up the waist of his trousers and tucked in his shirt. “You didn’t think I could read, did you?”
“I taught you to read, son.” She wouldn’t look at him and he felt a twinge of sadness. He’d made his point and hurt her, but it didn’t feel as good as he’d thought.
Truth was, he didn’t want her mooning around him all the time, trying to show him things, trying to make up for the years she wasn’t there, trying to be a thing she gave up and thought she could just come back and reclaim like a hat from the attic. Besides, he could see it upset Cullen. Hayward had a gun, a horse, and a claim to the ranch. He said these things to himself, then his heart did that sick little trick and he wanted to drop to his knees, bury his head in her lap, and beg her not to leave him again. And that made him mad, too.
Then Graver knocked and entered without waiting for an answer. He removed his hat, J.B.’s, glanced at his mother, at him, and back to her.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked. Thing about the man was he didn’t get nervous around his mother, didn’t hem and haw like a raw hand, or duck his head and turn red when he spoke. He was confident, not like Drum, who couldn’t even see another person unless he knocked into them, more like that lawyer Percival Chance or Judge Foote, men who knew their place in the world, like they’d taken hold and made it something. Hayward watched Graver and tried to square his shoulders and relax his hips and arms the way the older man did. He lifted his chin, but not so high he’d end up strutting around like a rooster. Graver looked over, a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth, and he nodded to him, man to man. Better not be laughing at me, Hayward warned with his eyes narrowed like a gunfighter’s. He dropped his hand to his side where the holstered gun should sit and remembered that he’d left it in the bunkhouse when he cleaned it.
Sympathy appeared in Graver’s eyes, and Hayward wasn’t prepared for it. He vowed then and there never to forget his gun again. And not to tell Cullen.
“You did a good job finding that orphan calf and bri
nging it in,” Graver said, and despite himself, his chest swelled and he risked a glance at his mother. She smiled as if he’d just received good marks in school.
“Have the makings of a good hand, son,” Graver said, and that tipped the whole thing over.
“I’m not your son.”
He did his best imitation of Cullen’s snarl. “Hayward!” His mother stood, fists at her sides, and the boy stepped back.
Graver raised his hand to calm the air, and Hayward studied the gesture at the same time he wanted to knock him down.
She turned her focus to Graver. “Please get my horse ready, we’re going hunting.”
He looked startled, opening his eyes wide and raising his brow. “Not with that horse.”
Her shoulders and back stiffened, and she lifted her chin and looked down her nose at him. “I see no reason.”
“He’s too valuable, ma’am. You have ranch horses trained to stand when there’s gunfire and not spook at the smell of blood.” Graver hurried his explanation and his mother cocked her head like one of the dogs when Hayward gave it a new order.
“We need meat. With all these people, I can’t afford not to bring down a deer or antelope.”
For the first time Hayward agreed with Graver and watched carefully as the man went to work persuading her. J.B. gave orders and kept his head down, so it was hard to learn anything from him. Instead of stepping into the fray, Graver seemed to slouch and lean back, as if the outcome wasn’t as important to him as it was to her. The boy folded his arms across his chest to improve his stance.
“Stud’s not gun trained, is he? Be a shame to lose him.” He kept his voice low and even.
Her shoulders relaxed. “You’re right. Go ahead and get the proper horses ready. We’ll be out shortly.”
Graver put on his hat and turned to leave, then stopped and glanced at him. “Can you help me?”
