The Legend of Sander Grant

by Marc Phillips

  Sander snapped the steering wheel from the dash of Spears’ truck and dropped it. He jerked the bench seat from its bolts and it cartwheeled over his shoulder. He didn’t speak or so much as grunt with effort, but he found that whiskey bottle and stuck it in his back pocket. Jo stayed on the patio, well clear of it all and waited for any opportunity to stop it. Sander glanced up to see that Spears had slowed enough to turn and watch, then he bent and flipped the truck over onto its roof. It teetered and stilled itself. Gasoline trickled from the fender. He dusted off his hands and wiped one bloody knuckle on his jeans as he stepped over the gate and walked toward the barn. Spears turned on another burst of speed and disappeared over the nearest hill.

  Larry and Danny watched Sander approach, deliberating on whether to take flight themselves. Javier appeared in the bay door and kept Anthony behind him.

  Sander asked them, ‘Something funny?’

  Larry said, ‘I told your daddy to break his goddamn neck, Mr Sander. We’d of all said he fell off the hay stacks. Weren’t none of us laughing. None.’

  Danny stood. ‘I’ll go catch the sumbitch now if you want.’

  Sander met eyes with each of them. ‘My father might suffer fools, but I won’t. You hear me?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said each of the men. Anthony said it twice, as he was unsure whether Sander heard him.

  ‘And this,’ Sander pulled out the whiskey bottle. ‘I better not see it again on the job.’ He flung it into the trash barrel where it shattered.

  Sander turned toward the house and Javier called, ‘Mr Sander. Your father told us to leave him alone.’

  Back on the patio, Jo said, ‘He’ll call the sheriff, Sander.’

  ‘Let him. I’ll answer for it.’ He kept walking.

  It seemed like the thing to say to his mother, the thing that would end the discussion, and it did. He knew that Spears wasn’t calling any law, because he knew that somebody like that most likely had a criminal record. Somebody who would behave in such a way might even have warrants out for him. And Sander knew that he should’ve checked on those things before he hired the stranger.

  Jo followed her boy into the dining room, but Dalton was no longer there. Sander sat at the table to catch his breath while Jo brought him a clean linen towel for his bloody hand, then set about taking lunch from the ovens.

  ‘When did dad’s hair start turning gray, mamma?’

  Jo placed the last casserole dish on the range, slammed the oven door and threw her potholders into the sink. She glared at him.

  ‘What!’ Sander said.

  ‘Don’t you take that tone with me,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea how that made your father feel?’

  In fact, he did not, so he ignored her question and reiterated his own. ‘Are you gonna tell me or not?’

  ‘He’s old, Sander. When you get old, everything starts hurting, then you die. Here ends life lesson number one.’ She regretted that before it crossed her lips. Anger roiled within her, though, and no apology bubbled to the top. She carried right on lashing him, because he was there. ‘If you want people to treat you like some kind of beast, you just keep it up. That stunt out there is a fine start. Somebody’s going to listen to me, boy. Sooner or later, somebody will listen.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about, mom?’

  She tried to calm herself. She thought it might help to set the table while she talked. ‘Nothing. Dalton said he would talk to you about this. He was much older than you when we got married and–’ Jo gave it up. Civility was beyond her reach at the moment. She didn’t feel like talking to Sander right then. ‘Here’s an idea – if you have questions about your father, why don’t you go ask him? And after you do, turn that truck back over and get it out of my yard. It better not be there tomorrow.’

  Dalton was in his bedroom. He’d cleaned himself and changed pants.

  ‘Mamma told me,’ Sander said, taking a seat on the bed.

  His dad stood in the closet, bare to the waist, looking at clean shirts. The lateral muscles of his back spread like rippled wings from the tight waist of his jeans. Sander watched him shuffle through hanging clothes and saw the chords and engines in his big arms loll around under the skin like lazy animals beneath a blanket. His skin was thinner now, and darker in places. Even the hair on his chest was going gray. Sander thought those symmetrical rows of muscle down his torso looked different. No longer did he look so much like he did sit-ups several hours a day. Now he looked like he needed to eat and keep on eating.

  ‘What did your mother tell you?’

  ‘How old you are.’

  ‘She doesn’t know how old I am.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Sander. ‘Why would you keep that from me?’

  ‘When you have a son, do it your own way.’ He unbuttoned the shirt and took it from the hanger. ‘I nearly waited too late to see you grow up, and that worried me for a while.’

  ‘How old are you, dad?’

  ‘But love isn’t a thing you can rush. I don’t think it even acknowledges time, you know? I’m glad you and Allie found each other when you did. I hope she’s the one for you.’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘Hang on to her, then.’ Dalton slid his arms into the shirt, then rolled his head in a great circle, his neck cracking in complaint or relief. He adjusted his collar. ‘Did I ever tell you about Beau?’

  ‘Beau who?’

  Dalton sat in his dressing chair and leaned back. He blinked so slowly Sander thought he might go to sleep.

  ‘Beau Grant. Bart’s brother.’

  ‘Bart had a brother? Granddad never said anything about it. I didn’t know we could have brothers.’

  ‘Your granddad tells you what I say he can tell you. It aint his fault. When your kid gets here, I won’t say anything to him you don’t want me to. Not about things like this.’

  ‘I’ll be able to talk to you, though, right?’

  ‘Yes. But not to your granddad anymore. That’s how it works. Anyway, that was the only time any of us could remember there being two boys. Hilda was an incredibly strong woman and Bart, for some reason, was small for a Grant. He weighed less than two stone when he was born and Hilda was hurt, but she healed. Beauregard was born two years later and looked just like his brother, only bigger.’ He rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes for a long moment. ‘I don’t know, son. Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe we shouldn’t each have but one boy, no matter if we’re able to have more. Beau and Bart didn’t get along.’

  ‘Do we ever have girls?’

  ‘None that lived. I won’t say it can’t happen, but it hasn’t in two centuries.’ Getting back to his story, he said, ‘It was like a competition, they say, always with the brothers. Beau ate more, worked harder, lifted things in his spare time. He willed himself to grow and it looked like it was working. When he got to nearly Bartholomew’s size, their tussling turned to fighting. Awful fights. Augustus, their daddy, never would break it up. He believed they would see the foolishness of it soon enough. It would take care of itself. They wouldn’t hurt one another, not really, he thought. But they did. Beau’s aim was to knock his brother’s block off so he could take his place. He wanted the ranch. At first, Bart was only trying to defend himself. That was easy when Beau was smaller. As his brother grew, Bart had to dig in and fight. It was vicious.’ An afterthought occurred to Dalton and he said, ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘In the kitchen.’

  Dalton went on, ‘Augustus still wouldn’t stop the fights. The boys tore through the house and barn, smashing things up and knocking down walls. He made them take it outside, thinking, when one of them gets hurt bad enough, they’ll stop. But we heal fast, son.’

  Dalton pointed to the spot where the shovel had gashed him to the skull. The wound had already closed and looked almost superficial. He looked down and saw his own bloody knuckles had pushed out the bits of glass and they were mending.

  ‘The brothers just got better at fighting,’ said Dalton, ‘
better than anybody could know. Their father feared that another person might see them like that, see them turn like animals on one another.

  ‘They would go to the thicket and have it out once or twice a month. There were a lot more hands on the ranch in those days. Riders to patrol the fence line and all. There wasn’t machinery, so it took more help to run. These guys working here, they would see the treetops moving in the thicket. They would hear a roar and then a pounding wallop as one big pine swayed and bashed against another, limbs breaking. Then the brothers would come out all bloodied up, barely able to walk. You can imagine the talk around town.

  ‘Nothing was ever settled between them. Beau would attack his brother over the slightest thing. By the time Augustus figured he’d better put an end to it, it was too late. He found them in the thicket one day and knew right off he couldn’t get between those boys and survive it. Already they were somehow stronger than him, meaner. Their eyes went a strange yellow and he had never heard such sounds come from a mouth. They swung logs at one another. They threw boulders and stumps trying to buy a breath, then one would fly pell-mell into his brother and pin him and pummel his face. They fought to kill. It horrified their father.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I know. He tried talking to his sons when things calmed down. First together, then separately. But each one swore he loved his brother. It didn’t seem like they even remembered any of it. Like yard dogs drawing blood over a bone, then snuggling together under the house that night. It was more than Augustus could stand. His own father had warned him not to let his boys start fighting. He said that we were bred to do it, way back, and once we started, once we recalled that, we wouldn’t stop. Augustus thought this was, I don’t know, an old folktale or something. He didn’t believe it until he saw it.’

  ‘I’m having a hard time with it myself.’

  ‘Well, believe it. Since he couldn’t stand by and watch one son murder the other one, he decided the only thing to do was split them up. Beau, he reckoned, was more the troublemaker. He was restless, never content. So Augustus sent his youngest son away. He gave him money and some horses, but wouldn’t give him any cattle. Never split the herd. His boy left the state and built him a small place up in Oklahoma where the land was cheaper. He would not see his family again. It hurt Augustus, but he thought he had fixed it where both his sons could have full lives. He was wrong. They both had a taste for it now. It was all Augustus could do to control Bart. The boy wanted to fight thunderheads. It took years to push that rage down where Bart could get hold of it, control it. Even then he was dangerous.

  ‘And Beau, there was nobody to help him control anything. If he thought you looked at him cross, he’d push your house down. If somebody in town tried to raise their prices on supplies and he felt cheated? He’d find their field and kill their livestock one at a time, breaking their necks. You can imagine how well that went over. It didn’t matter that the townspeople tried to leave him be. They had to deal with him, and they weren’t gonna up and move away because of one person, giant or not. So they gathered up one night and went to Beau’s place and shot him down. They burned his house, burned all his stuff, and put him in the ground.’

  Dalton sat a short while and let that sink in. Then he got to the worst part.

  ‘Word of it spread, but none of those people would mention the name Beau Grant after that. Like he never existed. Maybe they were able to forget about it up there, but not here. It was decades before anybody would deal directly with a Grant man again. When Augustus died, you can bet they kept a watchful eye on Bart for every hour of the day. They wouldn’t let it get as bad here as it did up north. Your granddad was the first one of us they halfway trusted since all that happened. For the longest time, the women had to go into town alone and suffer the stares and muttering. Ranch hands had to buy all the supplies and bring them out. We were cheated and robbed all the time because we couldn’t oversee our own affairs.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Dalton nodded. ‘That’s right. Do you see why I told you this? Do you see why you can’t do what you did today, why it scares me so?’

  ‘No, sir. I mean, yes. Where in Oklahoma?’

  ‘Washington County, I think. North of Tulsa.’

  Sander was distracted for a moment, then asked, ‘Do you hurt? You look like you hurt.’

  ‘Naw. Just knocked the pride out of me. That’s all. I’m fine. A little older, a little uglier, but I can still get the job done. A lot better than your mamma thinks, for sure. I kinda like her pampering me, though. Feels nice. I whine every once in a while. Gets me a back rub.’

  ‘Feel like you could eat a bite?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I think it’s ready. I’ll meet you down there.’

  Sander went straight for the Bible under his bed. He pulled out the news article and read it again. There was a driving atlas somewhere on his shelves. Finding it, he turned to the two-page spread on Oklahoma. Vera was a minuscule township about twenty-four miles north of Tulsa. A quarter of a century prior to the article’s 1913 dateline would place the murder sometime around 1888. Beauregard would’ve been about four years older than Sander was now.

  8

  Though his father’s cautionary tale about Beau gnawed at Sander, and the convoluted affairs of late robbed him of sleep for the second night in a row, he feared it might be days before he could get away from the ranch to have a long chat with Roger. That is, if Roger’s offer stood which, after their last meeting, Sander had no way of guessing. However, when Spears’ replacement, Miguel, arrived with Javier and Anthony, Sander was delighted to discover that the new guy had been, among other things, a carpenter. Rough framing was his specialty. And he brought his own tools. Things might go more smoothly than anticipated.

  Sander first explained to his crew what needed doing today where the stock was concerned. Dalton took Anthony and the Smitherman brothers and they went to it, leaving Javier and Miguel awaiting instruction. Sander stood on the new concrete slab and started detailing how the walls of the meat cooler must be framed to allow for insulation, moisture barrier, drainage, and electrical.

  Miguel listened politely until Sander paused, then said something in Spanish.

  ‘He wants to know,’ said Javier, ‘do you have a drawing?’

  ‘Well, no. I’m telling you how I want it.’ Sander walked over to the stack of lumber and said, ‘Here, I’ll show you what I’m talking about,’ and bent to pick up several two-by-sixes.

  Miguel made a beckoning motion for Javier to speak.

  ‘If you draw it, we can build it, Mr Sander. No problem.’

  Sander thought about it. ‘Alright. Come inside for a minute.’

  Pinning McCoy’s materials list to the top corner of his large sketch pad in the studio, Sander took his seat. With both men looking over his shoulder, he began to draw. He quickly laid out the entire structure, stick by stick, two different perspectives and three cross-sections. When he penciled in the door header, refrigeration support, and rafters, he tapped the materials list to indicate which boards were to be used.

  ‘There’s not much waste out there,’ said Sander. ‘We can’t afford it.’

  Javier translated to Miguel, then told Sander, ‘We will need the roof decking day after tomorrow.’

  ‘I think it’s gonna take us a little longer than that,’ Sander told them, as he rose and tore the drawing from the pad, ‘but we’ll see.’

  Javier hesitated. ‘It’s a two-man job, Mr Sander. You have other stuff to do?’

  ‘There’s always other stuff to do, but this has to be done right.’

  ‘Sí, patrón,’ said Miguel. ‘More better than these.’ He took the drawing from Sander, rolled it and stuck it in his tool belt. ‘Por si acaso.’

  ‘No problem,’ Javier told Sander. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Sander did worry, because Sander was a worrier. He poured a cup of coffee and spied on them from the kitchen while they positioned power tools, snapped some chalk
lines and began cutting boards. In fifteen minutes, Sander determined these men knew more of carpentry than he cared to learn. Javier had put it more diplomatically than his brother-in-law but, in truth, Sander would’ve felt about as useful as tits on a boar out there and he doubted he could move fast enough to stay out of their way. This, he realized, was his chance to find Roger.

  Sander parked on the gravel in front of First Unitarian. Roger stood on the porch sucking a Chesterfield. It was a repeat of their previous encounter, except there were no greetings this time.

  ‘How did you know that was a relative of mine?’ Sander asked. ‘The skeleton in Oklahoma.’

  ‘I didn’t. Getting those people around Bartlesville to give up what they’d heard of the incident was like pulling crocodile teeth. It was a good guess, though. Your people seem to spread out. I’ve yet to read of two families of Nephilim within a thousand miles of one another. So there was a good chance he came from here.’

  ‘I see,’ said Sander. ‘Do you feel like telling me what or who Nephilim is?’

  ‘Sure.’ Roger thumped his cigarette at the exact moment a gust of wind came and the butt traveled an impossible distance across the lawn to ricochet off the head of the propane tank in a shower of sparks. Roger either didn’t notice, or didn’t care. ‘Come on in. Watch your head on the stairs.’ He led Sander up to his private study and closed the door behind them.

  ‘Please,’ he told his guest, ‘get as comfortable as you can on that sofa. I’m sorry I don’t have anything bigger.’ Sander did, while Roger produced a decanter of wine and held it up to the shafts of sunlight coming through the blinds.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Sander, ‘but I don’t drink in the morning.’