The Legend of Sander Grant

by Marc Phillips

  ‘Yeah, I thought I’d go over and–’ He noticed the ranch ledger book on the table in front of his father. It was massive and leather bound. There were several of these books, worn and yellowed, somewhere in his parents’ bedroom, but Sander recognized this as the current one. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Are they expecting you? What I mean to say is, could you skip service today? I’d like to talk to you about something.’

  ‘Sure. No, they aint waiting around for me. Something wrong?’

  ‘After breakfast,’ said Dalton. ‘I’m hungry.’

  Jo began ferrying food to the table. She placed a gallon of milk and a quart Mason jar in front of each of them, then brought her own plate.

  ‘I ran out of eggs,’ she said. She had fried them and it looked like there were only two dozen on the platter. ‘So make em last. I’ll go to the store later.’

  ‘It’s plenty,’ Sander told her, and filled his plate with ham steaks, grits, and waffles while Dalton started on the eggs.

  Jo cleared the table when they were done and stacked the dishes in the sink.

  ‘I’ll do those later,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’

  She knew, Sander thought. Whatever it was his dad wanted to discuss, she knew it was serious. Dalton wiped his mouth and opened the ledger. He studied it a moment before he began.

  ‘We’ve been on your feeding plan now for several months, son. Starting, like you said, with our finishing stock, heifers and steers. You’ll recall that was your doing, and I trusted you on it.’

  ‘It’s too soon to see any tangible results.’

  ‘No it aint. It’s already there, black and white.’ He paused to consider, then, ‘You know we sold fifty head last week. You helped load em.’

  ‘The ones we sold didn’t even go through a whole finishing cycle. Come on, dad. Gimme a break.’

  ‘Full cycle or not, Sander, it’s not panning out like you thought it would.’

  He slid the open book across the table to his son. As always, the pink stockyard receipt was clipped to the top of the page and it itemized weight delivered, percentage lean, and USDA grading. These numbers then carried over to price per pound. Sander could not believe what he was seeing. He flipped back to the previous pink slip. The numbers varied slightly by lot sample, but his rough estimate of the latest sale gave an average of fifty pounds more beef yield per animal and an increase of four percent lean meat.

  ‘I had no idea,’ Sander said. ‘I mean, I knew it would work, but not like this. Not this quick.’

  ‘Well, as long as you can admit when you’re wrong. I hope you got that trait from me, but I doubt it.’ Sander started to say something. Dalton held up his hand. ‘Listen, son. I took control of the place when my father died. He had run it from the day he buried granddad. It’s how we’ve always done it. The business is different now, though. Techniques and things are changing faster than I can keep up. Opportunities don’t linger around until a person decides to grab on. When you miss them, they’re gone.’

  ‘All this,’ Sander pointed to the book, ‘feeding patterns, cycles, ratios – it’s all at the library. I didn’t come up with it.’

  ‘But you went and found it. You badgered me until I listened, and you made it work. That’s because you’re different, too. Bigger, stronger, and a heck of a lot smarter than any of us. So it’s time to part with custom. You’ve already decided to quit school after next year anyway. When you do, I want you to take over as ranch foreman.’

  ‘Dad–’

  ‘I aint going anywhere. I reckon I’ve got a few things left to teach you, and I’ll be right there beside you when you start making our decisions. I won’t see us get passed up by some other operation because my thick-headed ways are holding us back.’

  ‘Alright. I think you’re jumping the gun, but okay.’

  ‘Explain things to me, talk to me and let me know what you’re doing. I’ll do the best I can to understand the why of it all. When I can’t, you just tell me the how part. Will you do that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Can you do it without forgetting I’m your father?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Dalton looked at his watch. ‘Is there time for you to get to church?’

  ‘Not really, but it’s okay. They’ll be there again next Sunday.’

  ‘You wanna burn some calves then?’

  ‘Yeah. Let me change clothes.’

  It was a week before Scott Jacob called from The Paulson Gallery.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, ‘Could I speak to Sander Grant, please?’

  ‘Who’s calling?’ Jo asked.

  ‘Scott Jacob Paulson. I’m an art dealer in New York. I recently purchased one of Mr Grant’s works.’

  ‘Yes, Scott. I remember. I’ll try to find him.’

  ‘Scott Jacob,’ the man corrected, but Jo had already put the phone on the counter.

  Five minutes later, Sander came in from the barn wiping grease from his hands.

  ‘This is Sander.’

  ‘Mr Grant – Scott Jacob Paulson here, from The Paulson Gallery.’ He placed a slight, well-practiced emphasis on ‘the.’ ‘How are you?’

  ‘Busy. No complaints about that.’

  ‘Indeed! It never ends for the gifted few. I love it! Something exciting underway?’

  Sander suppressed a laugh. This guy was too animated, so incredibly absorbed in his own little cosmos.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he told the art dealer. ‘Tractor’s bouncing a little with the new manure spreader. That’s the big thing that slings cow shit to fertilize the alfalfa. I think it’s got too much draft on the lower link of the three-point. Fairly exciting, I guess.’

  Silence on the line.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Paulson. ‘Is this Sander Grant, the artist?’

  ‘No, sir. This is Sander Grant, the rancher. But I think you have one of my paintings.’

  ‘Not anymore, Mr Grant. It sold before I could hang it. Jason was right about you. I won’t keep you from your manure, just calling to see if perhaps you would like to give us a look at your portfolio.’

  ‘I don’t have a portfolio,’ said Sander. ‘I think I have a Polaroid around here somewhere. Is it pictures you’re after?’

  ‘Um, yes, I suppose. Or, better yet, might there be a convenient time we could come view your work? In your studio? I’m concerned that Polaroids wouldn’t do justice to the pieces.’

  ‘If you wanna come all the way down here to see my stuff, I’ll make some time. Just call when you’re on the way.’

  ‘Terribly forward of me. And, thank you.’

  ‘No big deal,’ said Sander. ‘Jason knows where I live. See you soon.’

  It was two more weeks after they left the ranch, Scott Jacob Paulson and the older bespectacled man slinking on his heels, when the press started calling. Paulson had loaded six of Sander’s canvases in his rental van after they agreed on price.

  ‘Start high,’ Jason had told Sander. ‘The man’s flying all the way from New York just to have a peek.’

  He evidently didn’t start high enough, because Scott Jacob began writing the check as soon as ‘fifteen hundred dollars’ came out of Sander’s mouth.

  ‘A piece,’ clarified Sander, which brought a chuckle from Scott Jacob and the slinker.

  Looking at the nine-thousand-dollar check, Sander had to wonder what price these men would put on his work. The first reporter, from The Dallas Morning News, answered that question for him.

  ‘The Paulson has two left, as of yesterday,’ said the reporter. ‘They’re not marked. Presumably they’ll go to the best offer. The last one brought twenty thousand. Did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How does it make you feel?’

  Stupid is what came to mind. Instead, Sander replied, ‘Good. Makes me feel good.’

  ‘Any chance for an interview? In person? Maybe a photograph for the article?’

  There it was. The real question: Twen
ty grand for the painting, or twenty grand for anything painted by a giant? Didn’t really matter, Sander only got fifteen hundred dollars. That was validation enough for the images on the canvas.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he told the reporter. ‘Nobody in Dallas cares what I look like.’

  ‘Pardon me, Sander, but they do. And not just in Dallas. It’s no trouble. I won’t take ten minutes of your time. I’m right here in Dixon, Motel 6.’

  Sander heard a knock on the door. Jo was shopping in town and Dalton was on the back feed lot.

  ‘I’ve gotta go. Thanks for the interest.’

  He looked out the peephole and saw a man holding a tablet, a camera slung over his shoulder. Sander eased out the patio door and disappeared across the field. The articles came out anyway, some of them syndicated and all of them with a mysterious slant regarding the artist. Somebody had dug up some old school pictures, a few shots of him in grade school yearbooks, and it appeared one enterprising photographer with an inordinately heavy lens had managed to capture him lifting a calf over a fence. The shot had been taken from the street.

  Jo took to screening his calls like a trained sentry and they developed the habit of unplugging the telephone before dinner, leaving the cord dangling until after breakfast the following morning. There weren’t many people brazen enough to be bothersome on their doorstep, but the postman occasionally had to bring up those letters that wouldn’t cram into the mailbox. Sander read few of them, and lost interest in the reviews with their repetition of phrases such as ‘neoteric naturalism’ and ‘astonishing magic realism’. These folks had very limited vocabularies and liked to quote one another.

  For the most part, all this buzz thrilled Jo, the annoyance notwithstanding, and Dalton tolerated it remarkably well so long as people stayed out of his pastures. Sander liked the money. He liked the fact that people liked his work, but he could do without the attention. Applying the lesson from his dad’s price control methods with Grant Beef, Sander rationed those remaining pieces, selling exclusively through The Paulson once he renegotiated his price, and otherwise had little to do with painting for a while. Eventually, there trickled in only a call or two and maybe a few letters when a new piece hit the market or an older one resold at auction.

  By midpoint of his ninth grade year, Sander had come to some decisions. He had ninety-seven thousand dollars in the bank and a new truck rigged much the same as his dad’s, except his was built at the factory that way. He had, despite opposition from Dalton, replenished the coffers of Grant Beef to a comfortable level and they steadily built upon that. A herd of over five hundred head was within reach for the first time in two generations. All while the name Sander Grant remained on the lips of artists and aficionados across the country and beyond. High school seemed like a fool’s errand now, to him and his teachers.

  Moreover, though Allie’s father was not impressed by Sander’s notoriety and success as an artist, Jaime had come to respect him as a man of business, a man of integrity, and a man who might support his daughter. The cultural divide was as wide as ever. Yet, in light of Allie’s determination to stick by Sander, Jaime eventually acquiesced to a proper courtship, a public one. Now that he had Jaime’s permission to see her socially, he first told his parents, then told Allie that he wouldn’t be coming back to Dixon High after the Christmas break. Nobody could argue.

  The other decision was not so manifest. At least, not to Dalton.

  His father didn’t care whether Sander finished the ninth grade or the tenth before he took over as ranch foreman. Education wasn’t an issue, he was ready. It was his first proposed act as foreman that Dalton had a few concerns about.

  ‘Since I can remember,’ Sander told his dad, ‘we’ve been busting our rumps around here trying not to fail. As opposed,’ he added, ‘to getting ahead.’

  Dalton looked to see that his boy had the new wheel on the lugs and all the lug nuts finger-tight, then set the front of the truck down. Sander felt around behind him for the tire tool.

  ‘There have been good times,’ Dalton said.

  Sander tightened the nuts while his dad threw the flat tire in the bed.

  ‘Don’t get defensive. Nothing you could’ve done about the weather, and there weren’t as many options back then.’

  He rose from his knees and he kept on rising. He was at least as tall as Dalton now, maybe an inch taller. It was Sander studying his father now with new eyes. Could’ve been an effect of the setting sun, or just some dust, but he thought he noticed a few gray hairs. He wondered if the slight shadows beneath his dad’s cheekbones were always present these days, or just when he was worn out. Come to think of it, how many times had he seen the big man worn out?

  Sander brushed the dirt off his pants. With a sweep of the tire tool, he indicated everything outside their fences.

  ‘They bank on Grant Beef. How many restaurants you reckon we support? How many meat markets set their prices based on our production?’ Dalton took the iron from him and dropped it in the tool box. ‘I’m saying that our stock is a commodity unto itself and I want to capitalize on that.’

  ‘Where I didn’t.’

  ‘Yes you did. You saved the place. And I’m gonna take what you saved and run with it. Isn’t that why you gave me the job?’

  ‘I don’t remember anything about running. Where is it you wanna go?’

  ‘Global,’ said Sander. ‘Lookit, do you know what Kobe beef is?’

  ‘Like Colby cheese?’

  ‘K-o-b-e. It’s from Japan, the black Tajima-ushi breed of Wagyu cattle.’

  ‘Ten bucks says you can’t spell the rest of them words.’

  ‘I’m not kidding, dad. We’ve known for a long time that USDA prime grading doesn’t do us a bit of good. Otto Ritchey over there can get his polled Brangus graded prime if he butchers them early enough.’

  Dalton bristled at the mention of the Ritchey operation. ‘Maybe. He can’t call it Grant Beef, though.’

  ‘No, and neither can anybody else. But do you think there’s anybody over in Japan talking about US Department of Agriculture labels right now?’

  ‘Son, I don’t even know why we’re doing it.’

  ‘I’ll show you why.’ Sander looked at his wristwatch in the fading light and said, ‘Mamma’s in there right now cooking dinner. I got us each a Kobe steak.’

  ‘Just one?’

  ‘Wait a minute. Mamma’s gonna put those on our plates right alongside beef we raised. I’ll kiss your ass if you can tell the difference.’

  Jo called to them from the patio.

  ‘Don’t talk like that around your mother,’ Dalton said.

  Jo took her seat while they washed up. The table was already set and piled high. She was privy to Sander’s game and eager to watch the show. Dalton sat down and prodded the eight steaks before him, thinking about all those foreign words and what a Japanese cow might look like. The cooked meat looked the same, top to bottom. Sander took his seat. They passed the potatoes au gratin and the biscuit platter, then, without another word, began to eat.

  Even for a Grant man, Sander ate fast. He went through food like a herd of goats in a dooryard, so he and Jo finished at about the same time. She had two cobblers staying warm in the oven and they could all smell them, but neither she nor Sander budged until Dalton looked up. There was a single bite of meat left in the center of his plate. He pointed to it with his fork.

  ‘That’s not Grant Beef,’ he said. ‘But other than ours, it’s the best I’ve ever had.’ He tried out the word for himself, ‘Kobe,’ then took his last bite.

  Sander grinned while Jo got up to fetch dessert.

  ‘I’m glad you liked it, dad. Cost me eighty bucks.’

  ‘Oh, there’s more?’

  ‘No, sir. Your steak cost eighty dollars. So did mine.’

  ‘Say that again?’

  ‘You heard me. And it’s not spoiling on the racks. You have to wait your turn when you order it.’ Sander took the last biscuit as Jo picked up
the platter. ‘Global,’ he said, and popped the biscuit in his mouth.

  Sander’s plan was twofold, though it wasn’t complicated. As Dalton should’ve expected, his boy’s research was comprehensive. After the cobbler was gone, Sander presented him with a list of meat distributors he’d already contacted, each company had a longstanding and significant presence overseas. Sander’s notes took into account the cost of outsourced distribution as well as a noticeable hit on tonnage, as they would have to sell younger stock. This was the near-term portion of his plan and the bottom line didn’t suffer much for it. Projecting the numbers out a mere five years showed a three hundred percent profit increase.

  In tandem, Sander insisted they must stay ahead of the curve in the domestic market. This meant dry aging, targeted at the upscale restaurants on the East and West Coasts, and to some extent circumventing the meat packers. Dalton knew about dry aging. Nearly every cattleman did. In the winter, they often hung butchered halves in the barn as a treat. Let it cure, cut it down, and enjoy it over the holidays. But scarce few operations ever sold dry-aged beef because the cost of year-round refrigeration, the manpower required, and the loss of total weight was simply too much to absorb. The way Sander explained it, this would be their longer-term investment, and he was prepared and willing to manage both aspects simultaneously.

  ‘I figure,’ he told Dalton, ‘another ten hired hands would do it.’

  ‘Can I make a suggestion?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Start out hiring three. Try to find Larry and Danny Smitherman, if they’re still around. I had to let them go last year, but they’re real good workers. Add more if it gets where we can’t handle it.’

  7

  Larry Smitherman was looking for work at the time and said he could start the Monday after Sander’s call. His brother Danny would soon be done with his job on an oil rig west of Henderson and sent word he’d be back on the ranch come Friday. Both brothers were elated to get the call. Sander’s third new hire, a thirty-year-old man named Michael Spears, had never worked for the Grants before. He hailed from Fort Worth and his notice pinned to the hardware store bulletin board claimed eleven years experience with cattle. They agreed on wages over the phone and Sander told him to show up Friday.