by Jonis Agee
Irish Jim’s intense blue eyes with their bright glitter like semiprecious jewels took her in, then relaxed. “Just passin’ the time, ma’am.”
She looked at Larabee, second to Higgs.
“Nobody give us orders,” he said and belatedly remembered to remove his hat, and the others snatched theirs off, too.
She turned to Willie, who looked over his shoulder at Higgs’s house with the front door hanging open. “Higgs, he packed and scooted, ma’am.”
Dulcinea took a deep breath, pulled together the last grains of strength, and stood straight, even though she became light-headed with the effort.
“Me and Willie will just mosey over there and clean up the place, then,” Larabee said.
Irish Jim stood and fixed her in his gaze. “I guess that stallion’s about broke out of the corral. I’ll go fix it if that’s okay with you.” The men looked at each other, replaced their hats, and ambled off the porch like dogs reluctant to leave their comfort.
“You want I should send the Indians up to the house?” Larabee called over his shoulder. She nodded.
She waited until the men walked away before stumbling back into the house. The coffee Rose had made was warm on the stove, and although it tasted like the contents of a spit can, she still drank a cup. When a space yawned unexpectedly in a person’s daily life, she often hastened to fill it, spreading chores to cover the place, as if it were an embarrassment, unseemly, and she must not be seen on its brink. Dulcinea had not spoken in a month for fear of what she might say.
She pushed away from the table, her hands unwilling to release the edge that had been rubbed smooth by men’s bodies over the years. Four months ago her husband lay here. A month ago, her son. Yet they continued to pass the platters of meat, the plates of bread and bacon.
She had held Cullen’s hand those final hours. This living hand, now warm and capable of earnest grasping, and the broken, dirt-lined nails, a boy’s hand still, the tiny scar rising up the thumb, the knuckle that wouldn’t bend on the index finger he’d broken, so young and already his skin grained with dirt, scarred and broken again and again. He was still a boy, palm narrow and delicate as a girl’s, but with thick yellow calluses beneath each finger; another scar crossed his palm, bisecting the fate line. She caressed that hand all night, willing him back to a childhood when he stood at her skirt protected and loved.
This living hand, now warm and capable of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold and in the icy silence of the tomb, so haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights that thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood . . . and thou be conscience-calmed. Oh son, when you read Keats to Markie Eastman, did you know he would write your epitaph?
And now cups sat where his hands had rested, knives and forks outlined his hips, his thighs, his thin boy legs. Was her place at the table where his bare battered feet waited to be bathed? It was scribed over and over, this story, these bodies, this place, this table where she sat those long hours all those years ago waiting for Drum to return and take her young son. Yes, she knew he would convince J.B., knew he would demand and receive the child she had waited so long for, loved so hard as she nursed him through the dangers of being alive, only to lose him. She thought if she put distance between them, if she stayed away as Drum demanded, then she could stand it, because she couldn’t be within a day’s ride without going after him—which she did until Drum laid down the law, and she had to leave. A disguised kindness, she later saw. Your firstborn was always the most loved. Hayward she loved, but he was an afterthought. She lost Cullen years ago, and now she lost him again, resurrected, reclaimed, and then just as she filled with hope once more, snatched away. If Drum Bennett were not out there in the cemetery waiting to die, she would kill him. She hurled her cup against the wall, satisfied by the brown streaks and gouge.
When she heard horses in the barnyard, she forced herself to the porch. Graver on J.B.’s chestnut and Hayward on the gray stallion, so relaxed it shambled like a cart horse, passed by. Graver looked over and touched his finger to the brim of his hat; Hayward ignored her. Fine. He was correct. An annoying hum stirred in her arms, she silenced it. So what if they rode her horse? What on earth good was he now? The person who wanted him was gone. In the old days, she might have slaughtered the stallion to honor her warrior son when he died. Cullen asked for the favor and she refused him. She saw it in his eyes, in the way he watched from the shadows of the barn. Now the stallion seemed a bright toy the boy was denied purely for the opportunity to deny him pleasure. She thought she had time. She thought she would teach him to ride the horse, that they would share him, though she never told him of her vague plans. What a simple, obvious gesture it was, yet she stepped around it like an inconvenient branch fallen in her path.
She watched Graver and Hayward dismount. The boy stroked the stallion’s face and leaned his head against its jaw. She was too exhausted to open to the rush of love she should feel for this boy.
Irish Jim set down the hammer and followed the horses into the barn, where Dulcinea wouldn’t go anymore. Graver reappeared, walked toward the house in her husband’s hat, shirt, and boots. She imagined him wrapping his arms around her from behind, holding her despite herself. She closed her eyes for the briefest of moments and felt his lips touch behind her ear, the place only J.B. knew. How immense was her longing and her dread.
When she opened her eyes, Graver still walked with a stride that should cover the distance easily, yet he seemed suspended, moving toward her but never arriving. The coolness imprisoned her body, pulled her into it. J.B. had found her in the evenings, watching the gold light set the world afire, making the swallows glint like mica as they sailed in and out of the barn, the grass on the hills shining as if sewn with precious thread on an ancient tapestry, the cottonwood leaves rattling like pennies dropped in a collection box, and the horses’ gilded manes and tails shimmering in the falling light. There could be nothing amiss in such a world as her young husband held her, his lips promising the caresses that would bring their naked bodies into one, bathed in the same golden light as it turned orange, then red, and the world burned down around them.
The cool released her and Graver arrived, hat in hand. She pressed her hand over her heart to steady it. Since Cullen, everywhere she looked was specific, as if she were scrubbed clean and free. Graver was unaware that he leaned slightly to the right as he continued to favor the wounded shoulder, and that he tilted his head slightly to the left for balance. His eyes were brighter after his ride into the hills, where they had caught the blue of the sky and lightened. He thought he was an unhandsome man, but his rawboned aspect gave him rugged strength, from the white creases at the corners of his eyes to the strong nose and deep grooves down his cheeks. There was a notch in his chin from an old cut, and his face, as battered as his hands, revealed a life of working to earn his keep. Sweat darkened the front of his shirt, and his jeans, mud-streaked, bore a small tear on the thigh where barbed wire caught the fabric and the white of his leg peered through. She was embarrassed to be caught staring. He banged his hat against his leg to loosen the dust and opened his mouth to speak. She held up her hand to stop him and turned to go inside with an incline of her head. He followed.
“Where is my dog?” She was shocked by how low and whispery her voice sounded after a month of silence, and by her banal question.
He gazed at her, and seemed surprised that this was the sole thing occupying her mind.
“Staying with Jerome and Rose in the tipi.”
“Oh.” She swayed and sat down again. “I want you to take this table and chop it up. Burn it right now!”
He stared at her. “Make it hard for the men to eat.”
“Oh, they can sit on the porch or stand or something . . .”
“Can I get you anything?” he asked in a voice that was warm and cool and confusing.
“I want to thank you for taking Hayward to ride.” She sounded insane.
“Maybe a glass of water?” he said.
>
“And the horses. Yes, that’s kind of you.” She meant the riding, but he pumped her a glass of water, then one for himself. She took it automatically and brought it to her lips. It was rare indeed, fresh and cool, with the crisp mineral taste of the hills. She had missed this water. They said it flowed beneath the hills in a great sea thousands of years old, and that was why it was pure blue when it came to the surface. Oh son, you will miss this world, won’t you? She put her face in her hands but no tears would come. She should be out there with Drum Bennett, letting her tears water her son’s grave. Why did she have to be so very alive when he was so very dead?
“Ma’am?” Graver was like a gnat that wouldn’t let her alone.
“What? What do you want? Why are you still here? Higgs quit. The other men will quit. Go. Just go.” She opened her eyes and found he sat at the end of the table in Higgs’s place, and before him, J.B.’s. He studied her a minute, then gazed at the wall where pine shelves held her new blue dishes. Another bold, useless gesture.
“Now people have let you be for a good while, Mrs. Bennett. You’ve been in your grief and we let you be. Nobody asked a thing of you, and it has been hard. No denying it. But ma’am, it is time for you to stiffen your shoulders and start walking like you own this place again.”
Graver scratched behind his head, and pushed his gray-streaked hair off his face. It had grown over his collar and he grabbed the damp curls and pulled them back. He rubbed his mouth, grimaced, and fixed her with a stare. “I’ll tell you what I think, then you can do what you want—fire me or stand up.”
She hesitated, wound her fingers together in her lap and forced herself to sit very still, the attitude of a child in the schoolroom. As he said, she could fire him.
“I am sick to death of the waste around here. You people act like there’s nothing for it but to throw each other away, kill your animals off for the folly of it, and ruin every piece of land you can get your hands on. Those oil and gas people? Do you have any idea what it looks like when they’re done? Your boys? They needed you and you ran off. Your husband, he didn’t have the nerve to come take you back either. That old man out there? He should be running his own place—that’s what killed Cullen, trying to do a man’s job when the man was in town being played the fool so he could get his hands on more money.” He stood so he towered over her.
She pushed back her chair, ready to slap him hard.
“Sit down, I’m not done yet!” His voice rose and he paced back and forth with his slightly irregular gait. “Speaking of money, the men haven’t been paid and unless you have a trunk full of money upstairs or in the bank, we got nothing to run this place on without shipping cattle or selling off some land.” He stopped, inspecting the room as if seeing her improvements for the first time. “You can’t spend money on pretties when your men are hurting. We need to make the tally, cull the herds, get the hay in, reserve the stock cars with the railroad, contact the buyers and study the market figures. Ma’am, we have not done one thing, and unless we ship it’ll be a mighty lean winter.”
He looked at his hands, turning them over twice before they dropped to his sides. His voice lowered. “I’m not speaking for myself, you understand, I’ve put in the lean years. I’m used to it. It’s you and the boy and what hands you can afford to winter over.”
“I’m broke? How? My husband put money in my account every month. There was always plenty of money.” As she said it, she realized that she hadn’t ever asked how the ranch was doing, if cattle prices were holding, if he lost many head in the early or late blizzards. She just assumed—
Graver nodded and closed his eyes, something J.B. used to do, as if the ignorance of the other person was too embarrassing to witness.
She shivered. The repairs that weren’t done, the state of the linens, for God’s sake. Cullen and Hayward’s poor clothing. Too few men to do all the work on a ranch this size. Oh Christ, what had she done?
“How long since we, since anyone has shipped?” Her voice quivered.
“Couple of years at least. Eighteen ninety-nine winter was coldest we’ve ever had. That and the drought, well, not a good time to be ranching. Some places have just turned the cattle loose, letting them fatten on open range or other people’s land. Better than slaughtering them. Reservations buy some, but government gives bottom dollar, real bottom, and doesn’t care what kind of cow gets sent, sick, skinny, old. Same price per head. According to Higgs, your husband wouldn’t ship those and he couldn’t lose prime stock. Drum didn’t share his sentiments.”
She got up and walked into the living room, jerked the curtain away from the window and peered outside. It was no use. She couldn’t seem to find her dog anywhere.
Graver cleared his throat and when he spoke again, he sounded worn out. “You still have a son out there—a good boy who can grow to be a man in these hills. He’ll do, if he has some backing. Don’t throw him away. And don’t throw away this ranch. You know how lucky you are? My wife and I—we would’ve given the world to have a place like this instead of what we settled for. You’re going through hard times. It’ll change. It always does if you have a place to ride it out. And you do.” He rested his hands on the back of the straight chair at the end of the table and looked at her. “I’m done now.”
She gathered herself, tried to force down the tide of anger and fear before it sheeted her eyes red and black. “You are never to mention my son Cullen again. In fact, you are not to interfere in my dealings with my other son either. Is that clear?”
He nodded and set his mouth in a tight line.
“But, since I am apparently without a foreman, I would appreciate it if you would stay and manage the men until I find a replacement. You may move your things into the foreman’s house.”
He nodded and a smile played at his lips until she held up her hand. “One more thing. You are to teach my son how to ride and care for my horses.” He shrugged and nodded, not meeting her eyes.
“Finally, I want you to go out there, put Drum Bennett on his horse, and take him home. I’ll expect you back in the morning. We’ll discuss the cattle then.”
He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and shook his head.
She hadn’t told the truth about why she had left her husband and children. She’d never told anyone, it was part of their bargain, for what good it did. She collapsed in the chair and gestured for him to sit. “I need you to understand something about Drum and me.
“It was the first break in the weather in mid-March when I tried again to take back Cullen. J.B. had left early to meet with the bank and cattle buyer in town and the hired girl had taken Hayward out to see the new calves in the barn. She’d moved in after Drum stole my boy and I went crazy. I had one of the men hook my half-blind mare to the runabout. I was determined not to fail this time.
“I found the old man at the smithy forge, naked to the waist, holding a red-hot horseshoe in pincers over the coals as he pumped the bellows. The gray horse being shod was tied to one side. My boy nowhere to be seen. I remember that Drum’s skin was only a little loose for a man his age, and his muscles still looked hard as he pounded the shoe into shape, then plunged it into a waiting bucket of water and heated it again.
“‘What can I do you for?’ he asked between ringing blows.
“‘I want my son.’
“Without pausing, he shook his head. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ He held up the shoe to check its shape, turned, raised the horse’s front hoof, and set the shoe against it, releasing acrid smoke.
“I repeated my request and he began to nail the shoe on. When he was done, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of grimy folded paper. ‘Read this. Tell me what it says.’
“I hesitated, and he waved it at me. I took it although I was filled with dread. I knew it was bad.
“The paper was a signed contract giving Cullen to be raised by his grandfather until he was eighteen in exchange for twenty thousand acres. At the bottom of the page, J.B
.’s signature, the same he had signed his letters to me with, flowing and upright so there was no mistaking it. I crumpled the contract and threw it into the forge fire. Drum shook his head and uttered a small curse.
“‘He has a copy, too.’
“I was torn between betrayal and grief, unable to quite grasp how a man could do this. But Drum wasn’t finished with me. He patted the horse, took another shoe from the bin, and began heating it.
“‘Now you and me are going to come to an agreement, missy.’ He pounded the hot shoe into shape.
“‘These hills are a dangerous place, you know, all kinds of accidents happen to a person out here. Hunters shoot a man thinking he’s a deer. Boy gets bit by poisonous snake and nobody there to suck it out. Person falls off and gets dragged by a horse or lost in a blizzard. I tell you, there’s endless danger out here.’ He stopped and held up the shoe, squinting at its form.
“‘Here’s what I’m offering: You leave here and stay away, not a word to my son about it, and I’ll keep your menfolk safe. Boys can grow up and J.B. won’t have any accidents. Long as you skedaddle and keep your word.’
“He thrust the shoe back into the coals, heated it again, lifted it out, and put it on the horse’s back hoof. For the rest of my life I will remember this scene every time I smell that unholy acrid smoke like the depths of hell.
“I couldn’t find words to answer him. The proposal was so outrageous that I didn’t doubt him. As I stumbled across the barnyard and climbed into my runabout, he called after me: ‘Best be gone come May. Dangerous time, branding season.’”
She hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around her body as if she felt the cold March wind again. “So you understand, I can’t have that old man here. He was supposed to keep them safe.” Her head jerked up and she felt her eyes blaze with a kind of madness that both frightened and made her glad. “He killed J.B.! I know he did! He wants the ranch—you’ve heard him—”
Graver waited a moment, then settled his hat on the table and sighed. “That’s a hard tale, ma’am. It makes me sorry to hear it. You been through it all right. But—”
