"I'm just plain sick of that old man," his grandfather muttered. "It's a wonder you kids even got to the shack through that storm, and then for him not to be there to give you a hand when he was supposed to be there—" he made a sound like a growl—"chaps my hide good."
"It wasn't that big of a deal."
The old man glanced at him. "That ain't what Tim said."
He shrugged, turning to the aspen dotted meadow passing outside his opened window.
"You get all the cattle gathered up?" his grandfather asked.
"Yeah."
"Any trouble?"
"One of the old gals is lame."
"Hoof?"
"No. Think it's in her shoulder."
The old man gave him a long look, his gaze penetrating too deeply. "You okay?"
"Yeah." He grinned half-heartedly. "I could use a shower."
The old man chuckled. "Wondered what I was smellin'."
After that, his grandfather drove in silence. He studied the old man from the corner of his eye—the bone bag must have seen some service over the past few days. Weariness and strain lined his grandfather's weathered face and his wide shoulders didn't set as straight as usual.
The truck rattled up to the place where the storm had hit him and Katie, and he spotted his hat caught in a stand of gooseberry bushes a hundred feet off the road. His grandfather stopped and he retrieved it. Brushing the mud and leaves from the black felt, he worked it back into shape, glad to have it back. He'd felt naked without it. The old man drove on around the lake and started down the mountain.
At the site of Dave's accident, his grandfather pulled to the side of the road. "We'll see if we can get Dave's saddle and bridle."
He raised an eyebrow, questioning.
"The horse was busted up, too," the old man said. "Karl had to shoot him."
He followed his grandfather across the hot blacktop to where the asphalt had crumbled away at the edge of the steep gorge. The creek raged far below at the bottom of a slope dotted by sharp granite boulders, scrubby growths of sagebrush and oak, and an occasional tall pine. Shreds of cloth from Dave's clothes and gear from the horse's saddle littered a churned path of destruction ending at Studmuffin on his side against a boulder, big as a car. The horse's black legs stabbed into the air like horizontally aligned tree branches, except for the right fore which thrust down at an odd angle.
Sweating in the heat reflected from the rocky hill, he and his grandfather worked to get the saddle free of the horse's bloated belly. Finally, he used his pocketknife to saw through the straps while the old man rolled the horse off its side. He jerked the saddle loose and dropped it on the ground.
Stepping upwind, he removed his hat and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "The saddle tree's busted."
His grandfather stiffly straightened. "Whew. Poor feller's startin' to stink." The old man moved to stand beside him, wiping his own forehead. "I was hopin' we could salvage it."
"Good saddle maker might be able to fix it." He turned over the saddle and looked up. "You think Dave'll be able to ride again?"
Expression somber, his grandfather shrugged. "I don't know, Son, but he needs to think he will." He heaved a sigh. "He's pretty busted up. Got his eye put out, too."
Gil stooped and pulled Dave's bridle over the horse's stiff black ears and out of the slack mouth. Only a few days before, the sun had rippled on muscle beneath the horse's glossy black hide. Studmuffin's intelligent eyes, gleaming with appreciation for the day, had matched Dave's laughing ones. Now, coyotes and buzzards had been at the corpse and swarms of flies covered the torn flesh of the once magnificent animal.
An unexpected lump filled his throat. He straightened with the bridle in his hand, and glanced at his grandfather. The old man stood with his eyes closed, head bowed, and holding his straw Stetson in one hand. The sunlight glinted on his steely hair while a tear eased down a long crease in his grandfather's sun-browned cheek.
Hesitantly, he removed his hat to bow his head, too. He didn't pray, but standing beside the old man on the hot hillside with the muted roar of the creek below and the soft sighing of the wind in the pines, a sense of peace entered the confused pain inside him.
His grandfather raised his head and replaced his hat then fished in the back pocket of his jeans for his handkerchief and loudly blew his nose.
He cleared his throat. "Why'd you pray for a dead horse?"
The old man folded the square of red cloth. "I was remindin' the Lord that ol' Studmuffin here's been a faithful friend to Dave since he was just a little lad. Prayin' that wherever He sends good horses, He'll see this one's in belly deep grass." He shook out the handkerchief and blew his nose again.
He looked down at the horse. "Horses go to heaven?"
"Beasts don't have souls, so I don't think they go to heaven—" his grandfather wiped his eyes, folded his handkerchief again, and stuffed it back into his pocket—"but, I know there's horses in heaven." He raised his dark gaze to the cleft where the rocky gorge met the sky far up the mountain.
"And I saw heaven opened—" the old man's deep voice boomed the Scripture over the distant roar of water—"and behold a white horse. And he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns. And he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean…"
For just an instant, with his gaze on the cleft of the gorge, too, he beheld the same thing his grandfather did. An image he could understand, an image of mounted armies following the One on the white horse, spilling with a blaze of light and a shout like thunder through the cleft where it met the sky…
He blinked. It was gone.
He was only staring at the sides of a rocky, mountain gorge with a dead horse at his feet.
His grandfather turned, his gaze probing. "What happened to you up there, Son? You're not yourself."
His pain settled into a hollow behind his eyes. Unwilling for the old man to read his life stretching away before him on a long, meaningless road to nowhere…and nobody…he replaced his hat and bent to pick up the saddle. He left the bloody saddle blankets on the ground and spit a stream of tobacco juice.
"Nothin' happened, Gramps."
He started up the hill, his boots slipping on pebbles and small stones. Nothing had happened up there at line camp.
Nothing at all.
Chapter Six
Two weeks later, the mountains across the valley from Jon Campbell's hay field shimmered hazily in afternoon heat. Bees worked purple alfalfa blossoms. The heavy scent mingled with the fragrance of freshly mown hay and rose to Gil sitting on the metal seat of an old Massey Ferguson tractor pulling a sickle mower. An earsplitting metallic chatter suddenly rent the air, louder even than the diesel motor. Swearing, he stomped his boot on the tractor's clutch. That was why he hated farming—he had no aptitude for machinery. Karl was the mechanical one of their too small haying crew.
Since Dave Campbell's condition remained grave, his care consumed all of Jon's time and most of his grandfather's, leaving him, Karl, and Tim on their own to harvest the hundreds of acres of hay on both ranches.
He shut off the tractor, jumped down into the knee-high alfalfa, and swished through it to Jon's ancient mower. The sickle-bar had shattered on a rock. The second one since noon. He swore again, and jerked off his hat to wipe his sweaty forehead with his shirt sleeve. He swatted at a bee with his hat. Karl was going to love that.
He climbed onto the tractor, shifted it into its highest gear and drove back to the ranch yard where Karl handled most of the dilapidated equipment's repairs. Since he had been working with the Campbell brothers, he had avoided the ranch yard as much as possible, and the house completely—he hadn't seen Katie at all.
Lance's old Buick sat und
er a box elder tree near the house for the third time that week…and it was only Thursday.
He scowled and disgustedly spit a stream of tobacco juice over the tractor fender. It must be nice to hang out inside—like a solid, decent, just plain nice guy—while the lower life forms busted their tails outside in the heat. He drove around to the equipment shed without even a hopeful glance toward the house.
Throughout the next days, Tim baled hay and he and Karl hauled and stacked thousands of bales in long sheds. He drank gallons of water each day, wore through three pairs of leather gloves, and kept waiting for his ability to shrug off unpleasant thoughts to kick in.
It never did.
Instead, while dry alfalfa leaves chafed the skin beneath his sweat soaked shirt every day, Katie's words chafed at his pride and disappointment. Why had he just stood there like an idiot and let her slap him down? He could've said or done a million things while she was busting his chops, but he'd just…stood there.
And what had he been thinking, anyway, messing around with a goody two shoes church girl? He'd always left them alone before. Who wanted to tiptoe around like some religious flake all the time? She wasn't even that pretty. He knew plenty of prettier girls. There was Maria. And that one from Couer d'Alene…but she'd had that needy, gooey look in her eyes he despised. Katie certainly couldn't be accused of that, but she was an ungrateful, snippy, stubborn little…princess…with her nose in the air and a tongue like razor wire.
Who needed that? Good riddance to her.
At night, however, in spite of his exhausted, aching muscles, he couldn't sleep. He rolled restlessly on his sagging mattress, causing the springs beneath its ancient iron frame to squall like a dozen catfights, while on the cracked plaster of his ceiling, lightning struck the ground in front of Lucky again and again in vivid detail.
The fragrance from Katie's hair, an indelible part of the memory, haunted him as he relived every moment he had shielded her slender body with his. He remembered every touch from that night, every glance of her eyes, and the brief smile for him. That smile had made her beautiful.
Shifted everything somehow.
He groaned, swearing under his breath. He had to start sleeping….
The three of them finished the Campbell hay crop and Karl and Tim moved to his grandfather's fields with him. Ten days later, Karl pitched the last bale to him at the top of the haystack. Satisfied, he jammed the bale into the corner spot then leaned over to beat it tightly into place with his gloved fists—an even three thousand bales made the haystack like a perfect, rectangular loaf of bread with the crusts cut off.
Afterward, with his evenings free, he shot pool in the Lone Tree Bar with the dark haired waitress from the café next door, and her brother. The girl's gaze on his had that hungry look he hated, but she played pool better than her brother did and the three of them hustled a few drunks. The hustle didn't last long in such a small town…but the brother had some horses he'd just pulled off the range for sale.
He rebuilt the round breaking pen his father had used years before, hauled in a deep layer of sand, and brought home the pool hustler's young horses—a filly and two colts. The bay filly and sorrel gelding with white socks showed promise. Both of them broke to the saddle with no more than half-hearted crow hopping, but the big paint, flashy, wild, and pig-headed, refused to relent.
Every day, the horse gave him a full-fledged ride around the pen, head bogged down between its forelegs, heels in the air, grunting with every violent effort to unseat him. He wore a brace on his knee against the ache throbbing in it after the daily struggles of will, but battling the paint horse released some of the bewildering pain of his own emotions, and he continued to let the horse buck.
Dave Campbell's condition improved over the summer, so his grandfather spent more time at home. Then the old man hassled him about many things—his swearing, his tobacco, the hair curling past his collar, but mostly about spending his time at the bar. Sometimes his grandfather even waited up at night to give him the dickens when he stumbled home after closing time.
Almost every night the two of them argued, their Howard jaws set in a stubborn line, just alike. With ruthless disregard for his frequent hangovers, the haggard and irritable old man routed him from bed each morning before dawn, and then with grim determination preached Jesus over breakfast.
At least once a week he threw his meager possessions into his duffle bag and hurled it into the back of his truck. There was nothing for him there. He could work as an underpaid ranch hand anywhere without having to listen to his grandfather nag him. And if he left, he wouldn't have to hope for a glimpse of Katie in the distance, jogging along the road on her pretty mare. His heartbeat wouldn't quicken at the sight of her walking down the sidewalk in Lone Tree, her swinging ponytail shining in the sun.
If he got away, he'd soon be his usual cocky self inside. He could forget about her.
But he always hauled his duffle back up the stairs and the next day fought the paint horse and the edge of his confused unhappiness…and kept watching for Katie everywhere he went.
One evening in late August, his grandfather received a phone call—a Sister Somebody was about to kick the bucket. The old man left and he headed for the bar, but his grandfather still wasn't home when he returned after closing time. He frowned and glanced at his watch—too late for a geezer to be out running around.
He hung his hat on a hook by the door and kicked off his boots. Padding into the kitchen in his socks, he opened the refrigerator door searching for the bowl of soup Katie's mother had sent home with his grandfather the day before. Gone. He scowled. The aggravating old fart delighted in eating all the good stuff before he could get any of it.
He cut the mold off a piece of cheese and ate it with the last two saltines rattling around in the bottom of the cracker box. Just as he mounted the stairs to his room, his grandfather opened the living room door.
He stopped and turned to lean against the doorframe at the bottom of the stairs. "D'you know what time it is, Boy?" he asked gruffly, mocking the old man's usual late-night greeting.
His grandfather glanced at him, his sagging eyes dark circled with weariness. He slipped off the straps of his suspenders to dangle from the waistband of his jeans then crossed the room to his chair and dropped into the ragged brown velour with a groan and a puff of dust.
"Didn't close the bar down tonight?" the old man grunted.
"Yeah, I did. It's after two."
His grandfather made a growling sound and leaned over to unlace the packer-style boots he wore. Pulling off the right boot and then his sock, the old man wiggled his toes.
He eyed his grandfather's foot with its bunion and thick yellow toenails, like horse hooves. "Did she go ahead and die?"
"Mabel? Yeah. She passed on a few hours ago."
"What was wrong with her?"
"Old age. I grew up with one of her boys."
He chuckled. "I didn't even know people could get that old."
"Not many of 'em do. She was ninety-six. Still livin' on her own." His grandfather unlaced his other boot and pulled off his sock.
"Why do you do this, Gramps?" he asked abruptly.
"Do what?"
"Take care of all these people?"
The old man draped his socks across the tops of his boots. "For the same reason Jesus hung on the cross and died…for the joy that was set before Him in heaven." He looked up. "You ever known a minute's real joy in your life, Son?"
The clock ticked away a long minute, loud in the silence.
"I don't think I know what it is," he said, finally.
"You'd ought to find out." His grandfather rose stiffly. "It'd save you a bunch of money at the bar, if nothin' else." He headed toward his bedroom at the bottom of the stairs.
"Katie won't have me, Gramps." He stood open-mouthed, shocked by his own words.
The old man stopped. "Well, why would she? I told you to leave her be. Told you you didn't have anything to give her."
"She's made me wish I did."
His grandfather sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Your problem ain't a girl problem, Son, it's a God problem. You don't have the Lord and without Him your life won't never amount to a hill of beans whether you got your girl or not."
"I don't know where to start."
"What'd'you think I've been tryin' to tell you all summer? Start by not goin' to the bar every night. Pray. Have some faith."
"I don't have any. You know that."
"Well, get some, Son," his grandfather boomed testily. "I can't give it to you, but I can tell you no matter how hard you look at the bar you ain't never gonna find it there."
***
The next morning over breakfast, instead of preaching Jesus, his grandfather tried to remember the names of all eight of Mabel's offspring even though some of them had been dead for years. Then he started on the army of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Gil finally stood and wiped the egg yolk off his plate with the last bite of his toast. "Sorry to interrupt you halfway up the family tree there, Gramps, but I gotta go before I'm too old to string fence wire."
Unperturbed, his grandfather grinned and glanced at the clock. "I've got to help with funeral arrangements, but I'll move the irrigation water to the next set on the alfalfa before I leave." He swallowed the last of his coffee. "On my way home, I'll stop and check on Dave then we'll get started on the barn roof. Run down to Lone Tree and get the stuff at the hardware before I get back."
At noon, without Becky Campbell's soup, everything in the refrigerator easily qualified for a science experiment on mold growth and unless they involved explosions he'd never been interested in science experiments. He'd eat in town.
At the hardware store, he loaded sheets of galvanized metal for the barn roof into his pickup then walked down the block to the cafe. He entered the building and scanned the pie case—lemon—and then made his way to one of the chairs at the long table in the middle of the room called the liar's table. Only three liars sat there today, but they all grinned at him and spoke.
The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) Page 8
