But it never lasted over two. Molly broke down crying; I knew she would. “That wasn’t a very nice thing to say to me, Gid,” she said. She bent over with her head between her knees and we could only see her hair, and her head shaking. Then all of a sudden she straightened up and looked right at me. “Well, aren’t you going to take up for me?” she said, and went to crying agin.
I didn’t know what to say. None of it made sense. I guess she took it as something against her dad—she always tried to fool herself about him. Gid never could appreciate how hard some people worked to fool themselves.
She cried hard when she cried, but it didn’t last too long. Gid was just flabbergasted. In a minute her back got still, and she looked up. The tears were dripping everywhere, but she was kinda calm agin, and nobody would have believed she had been so upset. I went over and filled her coffee cup and handed it to her. “Thank you,” she said. She rested her elbows on her knees and bent over, sipping coffee, with the tears running off the corner of her mouth and dripping right in the cup. Gid couldn’t stand it—he got up and fished out his handkerchief.
“Here, don’t ruin that good coffee,” he said.
She took it and kinda grinned at him. “What am I going to do with myself?” she said.
“Why, I’m terribly sorry, Molly,” he said. “I never meant a thing by that remark.”
“Oh, I know you didn’t,” she said. “It’s silly. I don’t know why some things upset me so. You ain’t to blame.”
But he was, really. At least he sure thought he was. We sat for about five minutes, all of us a little bit worried, drinking our coffee.
“I thought of something while I was crying,” Molly said. “I hadn’t thought of it in years. It was when all of us kids were at home, when we still used blackstrap molasses for all our sweetening. Daddy went in to Thalia and bought the winter groceries one day.” She stopped and looked out the feedstore door, at the hot, dusty street and the houses of Thalia on the other side of it, with television serials sticking up on their roofs like I don’t know what. She looked like she was looking through a telescope at something as far away as the moon. And I guess they was about that far away, them days. It takes a long memory to sit on a bunch of dogfeed sacks and call up Old Man Cletus Taylor riding off to Thalia in a wagon. I bet he had a whiskey jug on the seat beside him, too.
“When he come back, just before sundown,” she said, “he had a big barrel of sorghum molasses sitting in the front of the wagon. Him and Shep went to unloading the flour and stuff, and the rest of us kids stood there looking at that syrup barrel. I couldn’t hardly imagine that much syrup. It was the sweets for the whole winter. Pretty soon Dad and Shep came back and walked the barrel to the back of the wagon, so they could lift it down.” Her talking quavered a little. “I never did know how it happened,” she said, “but anyway, when they were lifting it out of the wagon, one of them lost his grip and it fell and busted open on the ground. The molasses stood by itself, just a second, and then it all spread out and began to run down the hill toward the chickenhouse. We all just stood there; we couldn’t move for a minute. The first was when Richard stuck his toe in it. It ran real slow, and ants and doodlebugs got caught in it. There wasn’t no way to scoop it up. Then we all begin to cry. Mary Margaret took it the worst. She held her breath and ran all the way around the house before anybody could catch her to pound her on the back; then she went over and began to bang her head on the cellar door. She was the worst to hold her breath and bang her head I ever saw. Even Shep was crying. Richard was the only one that showed good sense. He squatted down and stuck his finger in it and kept licking it up that way till after dark. I couldn’t believe it. Nothing had hurt me that bad before. After a while Richard put a horned toad in it, and it got stuck. I went in the house and got in one of the woodboxes and wouldn’t come out till after supper. Shep and Daddy argued over whose fault it was till Shep just finally left home, and Daddy stayed down in the cellar drinking whiskey nearly that whole winter.”
“My god,” Gid said. “That was a tragedy.”
“Nothing will ever make me forget watching that sorghum run downhill,” she said.
“What was that favor you wanted to ask?” Gid said.
“Oh, Old Roanie got out in the big pasture the other day,” she said. “I can’t get her back.” Roanie was her milk cow. She was a wild old bitch.
“We’ll come right on and get her,” he said, standing up. Molly put up her coffee cup and got in her car, and we got in the pickup “You drive,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “This pickup is the only means of transportation I have. I ain’t anxious to let you under the wheel.”
“I wish we didn’t have to get that cow in,” he said. “We just barely will have time to do the feeding.”
“I’m glad to do it today,” I said. “Another day or two and you’ll be gone to have your operation, and I’d have to do it by myself.”
“Molly needs to be married,” he said. “She ain’t able to run that place by herself. I never meant to get her so upset this morning.”
“She’s too touchy sometimes,” I said.
“I had heard that molasses story before,” he said. “That was awful. I can imagine just how them kids felt.”
When we got to Molly’s house she was just going in the back door. Had her mind on dinner. I went on down to the barn. Gid was out before I got stopped.
“Let’s pen the old hussy and eat dinner and go,” he said. “Which one you want, Chester or Matt?” Molly named her horses after Gunsmoke.
“Chester, I guess,” I said.
“Goddamn,” he said, trying to saddle up. “This old bastard’s so big around it’s like trying to saddle a whiskey keg.”
He didn’t get no sympathy from me. I had reared back to throw my saddle on and heaved and Chester had got one of his big front feet on the girt. It like to broke my back. I dropped the saddle, too.
“Well, I’ve shot my wad,” I said, “I never will get up strength for another throw.”
Gid got a big laugh out of it.
And at that the horses was easier than the cow. She was standing right in plain sight, down by the salt lick. The sight cheered Gid up.
“Well, looky there,” he said. “This won’t take no time. I was afraid the old bitch would be off in the mesquite somewhere.”
“She may be yet,” I said. “I can remember cattle closer to the gate than she is that ended up getting away. How about Mick and Big Shitty?” They were two old outlaw steers Gid had owned for about ten years. We chased them up and down Onion Creek all one summer and finally tricked them into the lot with some hay. We kept Mick, too. But Gid got careless and Big Shitty ran over him and a water trough and tore up three fences and got plumb away.
“Aw, she’s just an old milk cow,” he said. “You sickle around behind her thataway.”
I did. Old Chester loped about as graceful as a roadgrader. At first old Roanie came along fine; actually, I just don’t think she had noticed us. I think she just thought it was Chester and Matt by themselves. Molly just sooked her afoot; she might not have never seen men on horses before.
But when she figured things out, the race was on. She had her head down and her bag swinging from side to side, and she was covering country. I was closest and I whipped up: I knew if I let her get in the brush, it would be my fault from the conception to the resurrection. Chester had no idea what it was all about, but he done his best. We barely got her turned before she hit the brush; then she struck out south, just as fast, and Gid and Matt struck out to head her agin. It was the funniest sight I ever seen. Old Matt didn’t no more care about that cow than if she was the moon, and when it come time to stop and turn her he just went right on into the brush. The brush went to popping and the cuss words come a-flying back. But I took in after Roanie; I didn’t have no time to worry about Gid. Actually, she turned out to have about twice as much speed as Chester, and I was just hoping she’d stop for the south fence whe
n I seen Gid and Matt come flying out of the brush ahead of me, hot on her trail. Them thorny thickets hadn’t helped Gid’s disposition, I knew that; he didn’t have his hat any more, or all his shirt. But he had his rope down. Nobody in their right mind would try to rope off a plowhorse, but Gid would rope an elephant off a Shetland if he took a notion. He was whopping old Matt with the rope about every two steps, and Matt was going to the races. Gid came roaring over a little knoll, swinging his rope and yelling, and pretty soon he let fly and caught him a cow. It was where his troubles began. Any horse with a grain of brains would have stopped when Gid threw the rope: Matt wasn’t in that category. Gid reared back on the reins—he seen his fix immediately—but Matt went right on. I guess he seen the old cow when he run by her, but he sure never dreamed him and her were connected. She was just landscape to him. Roanie got a big surprise. One minute she was headed for the high and lonesome, and the next minute Matt had got to the end of the rope and she was tearing up the land like a plow. Gid, he was just a spectator, but his sympathies were all with the cow. Finally Matt figured out he was dragging an anchor. When I rode up all three of them were panting.
“She’s caught now,” I said. One of her horns was broke, and her front leg stuck out sideways, about as useful as a dishrag.
“Why can’t nothing go right?” he said. Not “Why can’t I do nothing right?” And if I had done it, it would have been “What in the goddamn hell did you mean pulling a stunt like that?”
“One consolation,” I said. “We won’t never have to get her up agin.”
But Gid was too blue to rag.
“Nobody’s fault,” I said.
“No, but I’ll get blamed,” he said. “And I’ll furnish the new cow.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Molly wouldn’t want you to do that. We were just being neighbors. Accidents happen sometimes.”
“Mostly to me,” he said. “Let’s go. She’ll stay till we get back.”
“She won’t be hard to track if she don’t,” I said. “Where did you lose your hat?”
His hand flew up to his head, and he turned a shade bluer. He hadn’t missed it till then. Me and Chester sat on the hill and waited while he went and found it.
OF COURSE Molly was as nice as she could be about it. If it fazed her at all, it didn’t show. She had meat and beans and gravy on the table when we got there, and some roasting ears steaming in a big bowl. Sweat was dripping off the ice-tea glasses.
“I hate to lose her,” she said. “But she was wild as a wolf anyway. I had to hobble her all the time.” She wouldn’t hear of Gid furnishing her another cow, and she wouldn’t even let us go down and kill the old hussy for her. Gid was out of the talking mood, so we ate and loaded our saddles and left. Molly was standing on her back porch tying her sunbonnet strings when we left.
“I shore hate that,” Gid said.
I knew he would have to get over it in his own time, so I never said nothing. Nobody could talk Gid out of feeling bad. When something happened to get his mind off things a minute he was all right, and along came one of Jamison Williams’ kids to do it. He was running right down the road.
“My god, ain’t he running,” Gid said. “Take to the ditch, he don’t see us. Get out of his way and let him go.”
But when he got even with us the boy stopped right quick and went to crying. He stood there in the road crying, picking one foot and then the other out of the hot sand and cooling it against his trousers leg.
“Nelson drowned in the horse trough,” he said. “Just now.”
We grabbed him and went. Judith was sitting in the porch rocker, rocking and crying and hugging the boy so tight he couldn’t have breathed if he had been in perfect health. “Oh St. Peter,” she said, “he’s drowned and gone.” Gid jerked the kid away from her and turned him upside down, and I ran to the back yard and kicked the rain barrel over and got it around there. Me and Gid squeezed the boy over it till about half the horse trough ran out of his mouth, and finally he came to. Gid carried him back and gave him to Judith; she was still hysterical. I don’t think she ever knew it was us that drained him; she might have thought it was St. Peter. Anyhow, we went on.
“What a day,” he said.
When we got to the ranch it was done too late to feed. I unloaded the twelve sacks of feed while Gid was trying to make up his mind what to do.
“I don’t never get nothing done any more,” he said. “These old pens need rebuilding. And that damn fencing ain’t finished. Why does a man even try?”
“I’ve often wondered,” I said.
“Well, you damn sure don’t ever accomplish nothing if you don’t try,” he said. “Let’s sit down in the shade here a minute.”
“Some people get rich without trying,” I said. “Look at Pearl Twass. She used to go in the bushes with just about anybody, and now she drives around in a big Chrysler and send her kids off to fancy schools.”
“Yeah, but that’s just rich,” he said. “That’s just diamonds on a dog’s ass.”
“Maybe so. But Pearl don’t go in the bushes so cheap any more.”
“Now I got to organize,” he said. “Before I go to the hospital. Wisht I never had agreed to this damn operation. No telling how long it will tie me up.”
“I thought it was just a standard operation for kidney trouble,” I said. “Like grinding your valves.”
“Oh it is,” he said. “But you never know. I’m pessimistic, I guess.”
“Well, don’t worry about the ranch,” I said. “I’ve taken care of it for thirty-eight years. I won’t lay down on the job now.”
“That’s what worries me,” he said. “How well you’ve taken care of things. That’s why nothing on this whole outfit works like it ought to.”
“No, it’s because you’re too tight to buy good equipment,” I said.
“Anyhow,” he said, “and be that as it may, I’m going to draw you up enough orders to last you till I get back.”
“Glad to have them,” I said. “Then I’ll at least know what not to do.”
He wet his pencil and went to figuring, and I whittled some. The big white thunderheads were bouncing along on the south wind like tumbleweeds and the lot was a little dusty.
“I guess this will hold you for a while,” he said, handing me four or five pages out of the little book. “I wrote them down so you wouldn’t forget any. Don’t lose them.”
I gave them the once-over. “The first thing I need to do is lose these here,” I said. “I ain’t got no crew of Mexicans working for me.”
“Just a few little chores,” he said.
“I want to straighten one thing out,” I said. “When Mabel took you off on that boat trip, I had a little trouble with your brother-in-law Willy. Now if he shows up this time trying to tell me what to do, he’s liable to get his feelings hurt.” Willy was the state representative from our district, and a fat-ass politician if there ever was one. Every year he’d show up at the town baseball games, passing out little old scrawny peaches. Once he offered me one. “You ain’t too old to vote,” he said. “I will be before I vote for you,” I said. He shut up like I’d poured him full of alum.
“I never told you about him coming out,” I said. “I didn’t see no sense in embarrassing you.”
“Well, by god, I like that,” he said. “Willy trying to give you orders?”
“Just trying to get me to quit,” I said. “Him and Mabel still think I’m a bad influence on you.”
“That fat bastard,” he said. “It’s no wonder to me he’d try something like that.”
“It ain’t to me neither,” I said. “I just wanted to tell you, so you wouldn’t be surprised if he shows up at the hospital to tell you how nasty I was to him.”
“I wouldn’t care if you drowned him,” he said. “Damn I wish Mabel wouldn’t scheme around like that—she’s behind it. Seems like the older I get, the less I know for sure.”
“Well, don’t lose no sleep over Willy,” I said. “I just wanted to
mention it.”
“Just don’t let him make you mad enough to quit,” he said. He was so gloomy all of a sudden; he was practically planning his own funeral.
“I like that,” I said. “We been friends sixty-five years. You don’t think a fat-ass like Willy could run me off, do you?”
“Course not,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
We didn’t say anything for a while.
“Molly takes her age pretty well,” he said then, out of the blue. “I’m half a notion to quit Mabel and go live with her yet. I might have a few years’ peace. If I live over this operation, I might just do it. You don’t need to tell nobody though.”
“Oh, I won’t,” I said, and he looked at me pretty close.
“Would that bother you much?” he said. “If I was to move in with Molly? I hadn’t really thought about it from your angle.”
“Why, it wouldn’t bother me a bit,” I said. “I think it would be good for both of you. Besides serving Mabel and Willy right.” The part about it not bothering me was a plain lie, and he knew it; I kept whittling on my stick and didn’t look at him.
“I guess it would though,” he said, kinda sad. “We’ve kinda split her, haven’t we? Anyhow it’s just one of my crazy ideas. I doubt she’d want to do it anyway.”
We sat there an hour, watching it get dark, and didn’t say another word. He sure was lonesome for Molly. I was too. And neither one of us had the other fooled.
Four
I WAS SURE RIGHT ABOUT WILLY COMING. ABOUT A WEEK after Gid went to the hospital I was out one morning doctoring some puny calves, and I seen Gid’s big Oldsmobile driving up to the lot. Willy got out and came toward me like I was the President. He was peeling off the glove on his handshaking hand.
“Put her there, Johnny,” he said. “By god, it’s been some time.”
“I got screwworm dope on my hands,” I said. “What can I do for you, Willy?”
“Oh, not a thing, not a thing,” he said. “I was just in town staying with Mabel while Gid’s in such a bad way. I thought I’d run out and see if I could be any help. To tell the truth, I could use the exercise.”
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