“Homer was a friend to God, and God gave him a long life. He gave him material abundance, and He gave him a loving family to watch over him in the days of his feebleness. And now God has taken him, taken him where he will never have to labor in the sun and the sleet again. He has taken him to a range it is not ours to trod, where the grass withereth not, and neither does the water fail. Homer made a date with God, an appointment, and he kept it. Many’s the time, before the days of his infirmities, when I have seen Homer Bannon riding out to tend his herds, and I have thought: ‘There is a good man. There is a man for God.’ And now, he has not perished, he has merely kept his contract with God, and ridden on. And we who are left have a contract with God also, and if we follow Homer’s example we will someday be granted our appointment. When that appointment comes, when we get to that place, that land beyond the river, richer than even this land, finer than even this land, we will find our friend Homer Bannon there ahead of us, ranging on Eternity. ‘And Enoch walked with God; and he was not; for God took him.’”
When he finished my legs were jerking. I was thinking of how Granddad really did feel about land, how he was always studying it. A lot of people in the church were crying. As soon as Brother Barstow sat down, the choir got up again and sang “Whispering Hope.” Mrs. Turner sang high and splendid all the way through it, and I was shivery again. Then Brother Barstow got back up and said: “Now dear people may the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ rest and abide with each now and forevermore, Amen.” In a minute the pallbearers came down to the front and stood there looking awkward while the funeral-home man fiddled with the coffin. He made them all stand back, so he could be the center of attention for a while. Then they picked the coffin up and carried it toward the back of the church, and I thought they were taking it away. The funeral man came over and stood by Grandma and motioned for us to stay seated. “The mourners are looking now,” he said. I looked around and saw the coffin sitting right in the door of the church. I saw a man lifting his little girl up, so she could see Granddad.
Then the man motioned for us to get up, and I followed Hud out of the aisle. I could see the coffin again, and it seemed as big as a boat. It was much too big for Granddad. He was just skin and bones. The silver rim around the coffin shone like fire, and when I got closer I saw that all the inside of it was lined with pink satin. Granddad was laying there in it, what was left of him. He had never been in anything as showy as that before. I stopped by the side of it, and then I knew that he was really dead and gone forever; I may not have known it before. They had a slick black suit on him, and a white shirt and a vest, and a dark red necktie with a little gold bird on it. His hands were on his chest, as white as paint. I squeezed the songbook when I looked at his face. They had put paint on him, like a woman wears, red paint. I could see it on his cheeks, and caked around his mouth. I could see slick oil on his hair, and some sticky stuff like honey around his eyes. I wished I could have buried him like he died; he was better that way. I stood there too long, I didn’t want to move away from him, and finally Hud pulled me a step or two. He held my arm.
“Come on,” he said. “Let ’em take him to the graveyard an’ put him down. Let’s get this shit over with.” I went with him to the edge of the people, and we stood there while Grandma looked. She was the last one. Then the man shut the lid so nobody could see, and I was glad. The pallbearers lifted the coffin and set it in the back of the hearse.
“Come on,” Hud said. “You got to ride with us to the graveyard.”
But before he got hold of me I turned and jumped back into the people. I slipped through them and got clear and ran way around to the back of the church. I wasn’t going any farther with that crowd, Hud or no Hud. He didn’t seem to be following me, and I fell on the ground behind a hedge.
Then I heard the cars begin to drive off. The church got quiet, and I sat there in my good clothes, on the ground. I felt like crying a little then, because the day was so bad, because they had finally hit at Granddad when he couldn’t hit back. But my eyes were dry, and I was hot as if I had fever.
I opened the songbook and began to look for the song about the beautiful river, but I couldn’t find it. I hummed a little of it to myself, and then I remembered how Mrs. Turner sang it, how fine it sounded when she sang the words about the beautiful, the beautiful river. It made me remember Granddad, like he was before the cattle sickness, in those days when he had some laughing in him. I remembered a lot of things about him that I hadn’t thought of in a long time: how I used to sneak out of bed early in the mornings and watch out the window as he passed by on his way to the pasture, the wild cowboys following behind. I was always wondering what horse he would take—he might take a bronc or not. Once after he’d been sick he made the cowboys wire him on with baling wire, so he wouldn’t get weak and fall. I looked down at the bare ground behind the hedge, the bare brown ground, and I remembered that they had taken Granddad to put him in it. I guess he had passed me finally and for good, to go to his land. It began to seem like they hadn’t hurt him so much, after all—anyway, he had stayed with the land, like he always intended to do. The coffin and the paint wouldn’t matter once he was deep in the land. I decided then that I wouldn’t need to worry a lot about keeping his ranch, or about losing it, either, because whatever I did about it would just be for me. He had always held the land, and would go on holding what he needed of it forever. I got up then and walked around to the front of the church, looking at the green grass on the ground, and watching the white clouds ease into the sky from the south. I went in the church and laid the songbook on a seat. Then I went back outside and stood on the walk in front of the church house, looking at the grass, at the skim-milk clouds, at those blue church-house windows, thinking of the horseman that had passed.
Epilogue
The next afternoon I left Thalia, and nobody but Hud knew I was going. I told him I wanted to go visit Hermy, and that I might go somewhere else and work awhile if I could happen onto a job. He said it would be all right with him, but that they’d probably want me to come back when all the legal business about the killing came up. He said that might be a good while. Hud seemed calm and fairly friendly, and he didn’t act depressed at all. They were going to try to indict him for murder without malice, but he said he didn’t think they’d ever do it. The worst he could get if they did was five years, and that was nearly always suspended. I knew he’d probably come out of it on top. He told me to keep in touch, so they could locate me in a hurry if they needed me.
I took a few clothes and a few of my paperbacks and drove to town in the pickup. I drew my money out of the bank, and left the pickup parked in front of the courthouse, where Hud could find it easy. But it was the middle of the afternoon and hot as fire, and I didn’t feel like just striking off down the highway. I fiddled around the drugstore awhile, and then went to the pool hall and shot snooker till almost dark. I even won about six bits. When I came out it was dusk, and the four street lights around the square were lit. I stood on the curb by the pickup. They had sprinkled the courthouse lawn, and the water and grass and hot day made a good smell. I got my suitcase and decided to make a start. A red cattle truck was stopped by the filling station, and the driver was out checking his tires. I walked over and stood watching him.
“Felt like I had a flat,” he said, coming around the truck. He grinned at me. “Guess I’m feeling things.”
“Where you headed?” I asked. I felt a little silly.
“Raton, New Mexico,” he said. “Goin’ all the way, an’ comin’ back through here sometime tomorrow night. I truck outa Fort Worth.”
“Could you let me ride to Wichita?” I said. “I got to get there tonight.”
“Why sure, hell yes,” he said. He was a short blackheaded guy with a pot belly and a crazy grin. He waved for me to get in the truck. “I been lonesome as a hound-dog all the way,” he said. “My name’s Bobby Don Brewer.”
I crawled up in the high, bouncy cab, and set my sui
tcase between my legs. “I’m Lonnie Bannon,” I said, and we shook hands. “A buddy of mine got hurt bull-ridin’ the other night, an’ I thought I’d go see him.”
Bobby Don ground the truck in gear and we started off. “I used to ride them bulls when I was a young fucker,” he said, spitting out the window “But I got me two boys now. Mama don’t let me rodeo no more. Sometimes I miss it, you know.” He slapped the seat with his hand, and honked at a gasoline truck, looking a little saddened. “I had me some good times, rodeoing,” he said. “Runnin’ aroun’, drinkin’ beer an’ all that. Knew some good ol’ boys I don’t get to see no more. All of us out scratchin’ for a livin’, I guess.”
“Say?” he said, “Bannon, you say? Kin to Homer Bannon?”
“I’m his grandson,” I said. “You know him?”
“Hell, yes, I know him,” he said. “I trucked many a head a cattle off his ranch. Hell, I remember you now, remember you now, remember seeing you. How is Mister Homer?”
I didn’t want to get in a long conversation about it.
“Mean as he ever was,” I said.
He grew quiet, and we rode through the outskirts of Thalia. The sun was going into the great western canyons, the cattleland was growing dark. I saw the road and the big sky melt together in the north, above the rope of highway. I was tempted to do like Jesse once said: to lean back and let the truck take me as far as it was going. But I wanted to see Hermy, and I knew Bobby Don wouldn’t have any time to waste. I saw the lights of houses as we flashed by in the darkness, the little houses, the ranches and the farms I knew. Bobby Don hummed some old song whose tune I had forgotten, and I sat thinking about Thalia, making the rounds in my mind. At home it was time for the train to go by, and nobody was sitting on the porch, But for a little while, as the truck rolled on across the darkened range, I had them all, those faces who made my days: Jesse and Granddad, Halmea and Hud.
“Goddamn,” Bobby Don said, turning to me. “It’s sure too bad about your buddy getting’ hurt. Them bulls can be bad business, I know that.”
The cab was dark and the dash light threw shadows across his face, so that when I looked at him, and saw him pull down his old straw hat and face the road, he reminded me of someone that I cared for, he reminded me of everyone I knew.
LEAVING CHEYENNE
My foot’s in the stirrup,
My pony won’t stand;
Goodbye, old partner,
I’m leaving Cheyenne.
The Cheyenne of this book is that part of the cowboy’s day’s circle which is earliest and best: his blood’s country and his heart’s pastureland.
L. M.
I
THE BLOOD’S COUNTRY
South of my days’ circle, part of my blood’s country,
rises that tableland . . . clean, lean,
Hungry country. . . .
I know it dark against the stars, the high lean country,
full of old stories that still go walking in my sleep.
JUDITH WRIGHT, from South of My Days
One
WHEN I WOKE UP DAD WAS STANDING BY THE BED SHAKING my foot. I opened my eyes, but he never stopped shaking it. He shook it like it was a fence post and he was testing it to see if it was in the ground solid enough. All my life that’s the way he’d wake me up—I hated it like poison. Once I offered to set a glass of water by the bed, so he could pour that over me in the mornings and wake me up, but Dad wouldn’t do it. I set the water out for him six or seven times, and he just let it sit and shook my foot anyway. Sometimes though, if he was thirsty, he’d drink the water first.
“Get up from there,” he said. “If you’re big enough to vote, you don’t need to sleep past daylight. You do the chores today. I’m gonna trot off down in the pasture and look around. One of them scrawny heifers might have calved, for all I know.”
And off he went, as usual. The last time Dad done the chores was when I was twelve years old, and the only reason he done them then was because I had let the ax slip and cut my foot nearly off. I never did know what he done down in the pasture every morning; by the time I could get the horses fed and the milking done, he’d be back.
For once though I was kinda glad he woke me up. It was election day, and my sly friend Johnny had worked it around somehow so that he and Molly got to watch the ballot box during the first shift. There was supposed to be at least two people to a shift. What he figured was that nobody would be there to vote till after dinner, so he could do a little courting with Molly on the government’s time. Only I didn’t intend to let him get away with it. I never liked to see a man cheat on the government.
I DONE the chores a little too quick. By six-thirty I didn’t have a thing left to do, and I knew there wasn’t any use getting to the schoolhouse before about eight o’clock. It was just over on Idiot Ridge, about a ten-minute ride. If there’s one thing I can’t do at all, it’s wait. So I got a rag and polished the saddle a little, and that was a mistake. It was a pleasure to polish a saddle like that; the mistake was that Dad walked in and caught me.
“You needn’t jump,” he said. “And you needn’t try to hide it. I found it day before yesterday anyhow. It’s a nice saddle. Why ain’t you been using it?”
I had put the saddle under a tarp, way back in the dark end of an empty oatbin. But you couldn’t hide nothing from Dad.
“Because it ain’t mine,” I said.
“Hell it ain’t,” he said, a little surprised. “What’d you do, steal it?”
“You aggravate the piss out of me,” I said. “I never stole a penny in my life, and you know it.”
“Plenty’s waited longer than you to start. Whose is it then?”
“Didn’t you see the name plate?” I said. “It’s sterling silver looks like you’d have noticed it. I had this saddle made for Johnny, and I just haven’t got around to giving it to him yet.”
For once Dad was flabbergasted. I knew he would be, but didn’t see no sense in lying to him.
“Giving it to him?” he said. “You’re giving a hundred-and-fifty-dollar saddle to a thirty-dollar-a-month cowboy. That wouldn’t make sense to a crazy man. And it sure don’t to me.”
“Well, I can’t help it, Dad,” I said. “Johnny did me a big favor which I ain’t at liberty to talk about. Nobody ever did me that much favor before, and I may live to be older than you without nobody doing me that much favor agin. Johnny never owned a quality piece of equipment his whole life. I had the money and just thought I’d get him something he could use. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Dad had real black eyes, and when he wanted to look fierce he didn’t look it halfway. He looked fierce then.
“Giving a saddle like that to a McCloud is like pinning a diamond stud pin on a goat’s ass,” he said. “Favor or no favor. And besides, whatever money you had come from me.”
“Johnny ain’t sorry,” I said. “Being poor don’t make him no-count. I worked plenty hard for the money I spent on this saddle, and if you think I’m overpaid, hire you another hand.”
“Settle down,” he said. “I ain’t gonna whip you, you’re too old. Let’s go outside . You can polish his saddle some other time.”
We went out and stood by the water trough and looked at the cattle grazing down in the Field pasture, just this side of the River. I washed the saddle soap off my hands.
“Ain’t this a good ranch?” Dad said. “I put a lot of work and a lot of years into it, but by god I’ve got it all back in money and satisfaction.”
“Go on and bawl me out,” I said. “I’ve got some pretty urgent business to get to this morning.”
“You sure have,” he said. “You’ve got to rush over to the schoolhouse and see if you can keep your good friend Johnny from getting in Miss Molly’s pants. If you can keep him out, you figure you’ll eventually get in. Well, suppose you just sit here and listen about five minutes. You might learn something.”
“I don’t like the way you talk about my friends,” I said.
> “Pity,” he said. “I’m gonna have to leave this ranch to you some day; now I want you to get to taking that serious. I ain’t mad about the saddle. But you took off and left, right in the middle of the calving season. You never gave me no warning or nothing, and you took that McCloud kid with you. And you’ve never said one word to me about where you’ve been or why. That don’t add up to very sensible behavior, and I ain’t too happy about leaving this ranch to somebody who ain’t sensible, I don’t care what kin he is to me.”
“Well, I’m sorry as I can be, and you know it,” I said. “But there ain’t nothing I can tell you about that. I just had to leave.”
He set there and looked off down the pasture. Dad was getting quite a bit of age on him.
“Nobody ever did me favor enough in my entire life for me to waste two hundred dollars on them,” he said. “I guess by the time I’m dead ten years you’ll have thrown away what I spent fifty years making. Old age is a worthless damn thing.”
“Oh, hush,” I said. “By the time I’ve run this ranch for ten years it’s liable to be twice the size it is now.”
“Yeah and I’m liable to flap my arms and take off from here and fly like a buzzard any minute now,” he said. “That sure is a good saddle. I’ll tell you one thing, Johnny McCloud ain’t no favorite of mine.”
“Well you ain’t no favorite of his either, that I know of,” I said. I went and put the tarp back over the saddle, and Dad went up to the house to eat.
OF COURSE things never worked like I planned. Dad had found a sick yearling that morning, but he never took time to doctor it himself, so I had to catch a horse and go hunt it up and doctor it before I could go to the voting place. It was after nine o’clock when I got there, and Johnny and Molly had been there since eight. I hated it so bad I could taste it.
They were sitting on the schoolhouse steps when I loped up. She was letting Johnny hold her hand, and they were both grinning. Oh me, Molly looked pretty. She had on a blue and white polka-dot dress, and her long black hair was whipping around in the wind. There wasn’t another soul around. Johnny was looking wild and reckless, so no telling what had went on. Molly was just a sucker when it come to Johnny.
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