‘If He could make you feel what I did out there on the grass, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Now get out of here. My sheets are starting to smell like a grease pit.’
Sander and Allie talked so much about different ways of approaching her father, different times of day and days of the week versus others, that the scenario inevitably became hypothetical. Early on, in way of concession to her dread over d-day, and to nudge her closer to believing the thing would happen sooner than later, Sander had guaranteed her that he wouldn’t cross the line and even hint at marriage near Jaime before they were both ready. He failed to foresee how such a compromise would negate his newfound head-on way of solving problems. Now he was starting to resent Allie for her indecision. Their discussions about it first fell away from nightly to biweekly, then weekly, and ultimately occurred only when Sander was perturbed about something else and needed to vent. Her procrastination was an easy target, and his tendency to harp on it ruined Christmas between them.
When Sander awoke on the first of January and tore December’s page from his wall calendar, several thoughts bombarded him in succession. Written there in the square of the fourteenth was ‘Argos’. To make this season’s market list with the distribution company, that date absolutely could not be pushed out farther. The cooler was finished and ready, but the slaughterhouse, which they had been relegated to constructing with reclaimed and below-grade materials, was three-quarters done, at best. Thirteen days, thought Sander, and he berated himself for giving his men both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day off. Grant Beef was not a department store and couldn’t, especially now, afford this down time.
Next thing to hit him concerned the wadded calendar page in his hand. He tried to remember how many of these he had tossed in the waste basket since he proposed to Allie. How many since he talked to his mom about God and resolved absolutely nothing? At least a fiscal quarter had gone down in the ranch books since he promised himself he would, first thing tomorrow, visit the hill by the pond. Tomorrows kept coming and he gave a wide berth to that inconspicuous spot in the back field.
He stared at the captioned heading atop the remaining page in the spiral binding on his wall.
Make 1990 Your Best Year Yet!
Visit your local True Value for a new calendar & great
deals to start off right.
This was the first year Sander could remember that he did not feel prepared to handle from the outset. Despite what he had been telling himself of late, all about marching headlong through doubt and taking challenges in hand, he realized that he had steered his attention toward the easier problems and left the rest for another day. Was that day on the last page of this calendar, he asked himself, or was it buried deep in the next?
The Smitherman brothers had taken care of the needs of the herd for a couple of days, and Dalton would be checking the pastures periodically. Anthony had stacked every available scrap of building material in sorted piles near the slaughterhouse site. After seeing what Javier and Miguel made of his plans for the meat cooler, Sander dared not meddle with whatever system they had underway thereabouts. Other than black-eyed peas and cabbage with his folks at lunch and, later, tamales with Allie and her family, his slate was clear for the day. As Jo cleaned the breakfast dishes, Sander announced that he was going to visit his grandfather and might be a while.
‘Tell him I’ll be up there this afternoon,’ said Dalton.
It was cold out and the wind had a razor’s edge that cut wool and cotton alike. Sander decided to drive a half mile of the way and walk the rest. When he parked, he saw the breeding stock of the middle field slowly converging on his truck. They would discover soon enough that he wasn’t there with new mineral licks and they would disperse again to their hay feeders and shelters. The sky was a chalky slate from edge to edge and threatened snow.
He tilted up his seat and reached into the back of the cab for a canvas tarpaulin and a couple of saddle blankets. His hand found Roger’s crumpled copies. Sander had read them, piecemeal, skipping some here and there for time’s sake. He paid close enough attention to all the highlighted parts, then he literally put the stuff behind him. The pages were stained now, with everything from chain rust to Cheetos dust, but they were legible. Sander evened up the stack, folded it and tucked it in his back pocket to get it out of the way.
On the hill, he made a nest against the oak; canvas beneath him to shield against the frozen grass, and he laid the saddle blankets over his legs.
‘Cold out here, granddad.’ Sander shivered.
‘Oh,’ said Will, ‘you’ll survive. We were beginning to doubt there’d be enough frost to kill the mosquitoes this year. So pleasant since October, and all.’
‘Yeah. I haven’t been up in a while. Sorry.’
‘No need, Sander. I’ve told you how time passes for us. Seconds to the day, if that. We’re not sitting around pining for company.’
Sander wasn’t sure if his grandfather was stretching the truth for his benefit. No way to know, he guessed, until he rested under this tree.
‘Reckon dad’s told you how well the ranch is doing.’
‘He aint exactly been a font of information, worried as he is. But, yeah, he gave us the herd numbers. Says the place is turning into a regular compound up near the house. Says you’re responsible for all that.’
‘Worried about what?’ Sander asked.
‘Your mom. You.’
‘Did he tell you last quarter was the most profitable in our history, and that the meat distributor is coming this month?’
A sibilant sound emanated from the ground and Sander thought his granddad might be sucking his teeth or chewing on a sourweed root.
‘That’s great, son,’ said Will. ‘You’re aware, though, that there are things more important than this ranch, right? Cause, if not, you have no business running it.’
‘Mom’s fine. Right as the rain. I can’t imagine why dad would be worried about me.’
‘Got us thinking,’ said Will, and Sander could tell by the change in tone that somebody else, Jed maybe, was bending his ear. ‘You’d be surprised at how some of us acted when we first heard voices in the sod. My daddy brung me up here to talk with Bart and all I could think to do was test him, like you would a two-bit magician at the carnival. Had this old pair of horseshoe pull-offs in my coat and I hid em behind my back. “What’s in my hand?” I said. He didn’t cotton to it, but I clammed up and pouted until he played along. He got it on the first guess. Pretty impressive, to a kid. He made a believer out of me.’
‘It’s gonna snow soon, granddad, and there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.’
Will ignored him. ‘Anyway, lots of funny stories like that and I don’t mind telling on myself. Then there’s this other story. Goes like this. A kid comes up here and hears the voice of his deceased grandfather and asks, “Can you talk to others that aint buried here?” Now, being as we were all in your shoes at one time, we’re fairly accustomed to questions. That one, though, it seems a little far-fetched coming right out of the gate, wouldn’t you say?
‘But we all want to thank you, Sander. Since you started us along that road, we’ve been talking to people we had only heard stories about. Augustus hasn’t spoken with his grandee Liam since the Spanish left the territory. Turns out somebody moved his grave. He’s buried up in Missouri beside Moses Austin himself. Aint that something! I didn’t know we knew the Austins. That was just the beginning, too. We’ve gone back way further than that.’
‘Yeah. I want to hear about it. Thing is –’
‘Couldn’t find Beauregard, though. Bart really wanted to talk to his brother. Lot of things left unsaid there.’
‘Dad told me about all that.’
‘Yeah.’
‘They dug him up, granddad,’ said Sander, an inkling settling upon him that Will might be going somewhere with this. ‘Beau. His skeleton’s in a museum display in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Most of it.’
‘Well, that’s that, I g
uess. Can’t talk to a bunch of bones in a glass case. We sorta figured as much. Anyway,’ he said, ‘you had something you wanted to tell me?’
‘I did. Now I’m wondering what’s behind your back.’
‘Same as yours, most likely.’ Surely he, too, spoke figuratively. Otherwise, Sander thought, he can see those papers in my pocket. ‘Top side and underside of a single story,’ said Will. ‘Similar to how you told us in a snap where Beau was and didn’t even know he existed until a few days ago. So, you wanna start, or should I?’
‘How long has it been since any of you have read the Bible?’
There was a long pause. ‘We haven’t,’ said Will. ‘Not all of it.’
‘Do you believe in God?’
‘That question,’ Will chuckled, ‘always struck me like asking a man on the edge of a cliff if he believes in gravity. It don’t matter what he believes, but he can sense he ought to pick his words carefully. We don’t have the option to believe or not to believe, Sander. Like your mother, for different reasons, God is as plain to us as that tree you’re leaning on. And, like her I would imagine, many of us have thought how nice it would be to make up our own minds, to be able to call it our own decision. Is that what you think you’re doing?’
‘No. He’s there. I realize that. But I have read the Bible, a couple of versions, and I know it pretty well. Well enough, I suppose, to know that a lot of it was originally written about us. Nephilim,’ he said.
Will knew the term. Sander carried on. He told of what he had learned from Roger and what he had found on his own, the stuff that made sense and the greater volume of things that confounded him. He talked for almost an hour while his face got blotchy in the cold and his nose ran. He paused to pull the papers from his pocket so he could be sure he was getting this latest part right. He began reading from Psalms 89, interrupting the scripture with Roger’s footnotes.
‘Please don’t do that,’ said Will. ‘We don’t need a Bible lesson.’
‘You aint read it. I thought you might like to know what it says.’
‘Reading history, if that’s what you wanna call it, is not the only way to know things. The person who wrote that had no more clue what really happened than you do. He got the Assembly of the Holy Ones right, but the rest of it sounds like a heap of “O Lord our Heavenly Father gibberish.”’
‘God’s holy council, Roger calls it. He’s the pastor at that church I was going to. Gave me this stuff. And further on down here it does mention “the council of the holy ones.” Who are they?’
‘We weren’t exactly sure until a few months ago. We were satisfied with what we had, stories or folklore or just ideas. After you gave us the push, though, we started asking the same question ourselves. There are those of us out there who were alive when God still talked to us. They don’t speak English, so it was hard, but we eventually got it worked out.’ He stopped. ‘It’s getting colder. Why don’t you build a little fire?’
Sander drew his collar up to his cheeks and blew on his hands. ‘I’m fine.’
‘These sons of God you mentioned, they make up the Assembly, what your friend calls a council. Same difference. There’s untold numbers of them up there and a few were selected to rule at the right hand of God.’
‘Sounds like angels.’
‘Forget about angels. Think, Congress. God made His heavenly sons long before He made all this stuff.’ Sander felt a bump in the ground beneath him, as though Will had tapped a root on the oak. ‘And in making everything, He was smart enough, maybe leery enough, to know He could use some help. Like your daddy trusts you around here, so God trusted His heavenly sons. He gave the power of oversight to this Assembly of sons and He listened to their ideas. Together, they set about hashing out rules for everything. Then He started creating.
‘People were dandy things. I don’t care what your Bible says God thought about em, He and the Assembly all decided they had done good. I mean, just look at em. People are beautiful. Interesting. Unpredictable. And the sons of God who weren’t elected to the Assembly, they thought so, too. Especially about the women. In all those rules they had decided on, there wasn’t anything at that time to keep God’s sons from coming here. It’s important you see it that way. No law was broken, because no law about it was on the books. None from the Assembly came, that we know of, but their brothers did.’
Sander wasn’t thinking Congress anymore. He had moved on to the British Parliament, then settled on the Roman Senate as the most fitting earthbound analogy.
Will was saying, ‘I realize it’s crude, and I’m not calling us mules nor saying little people are jackasses. But the sons of God aren’t like us. It’s a fact – maybe one they didn’t consider – that when you go mixing two animals that aren’t alike, the stock you end up with can’t always carry on breeding on its own. We have enough of our fathers in us to keep having sons, but we evidently can’t have daughters. We’ve always needed people.
‘The Assembly took note of this. After the ruckus simmered down and they laid out the law that it could never happen again, they were happy to have sons of their own. Nephilim, they called us, sons who were obliged to live in harmony with people for their own survival. No harm, no foul, they told God. We didn’t stand out nearly so much as seventy-ton lizards and we helped God’s people. But that aint how God saw it. Assembly or no, He was the Creator. He made man. Didn’t give birth to them as He had done with His sons. He made them with His own hand. And He considered it His sole prerogative to bring beings into creation, or to take them out.’
‘So He tried to drown us?’ Sander said. ‘That aint right.’
‘Is that what your friend told you? Cause God did a lot more than that, before and since. Century after century He struck us down wherever His armies found us. All the while the Assembly demanded He stop. They pled for our lives, and they did everything they could to make sure we survived. Like you said, it wasn’t right. The Assembly knew we were guilty of nothing. Besides, we were their kids. They talked to us back then and they told us what was going on. Said, “Be patient, God will come around.” It was tough for those old guys, I can hear it in their voices, even in foreign languages, and it hurts me.’
‘That was the war in heaven?’
‘I don’t know about any war in heaven, Sander. Sounds like bullshit to me. All I can tell you is what I know from our kin. Things were always very civil, very orderly up there and full of due process. The war was down here. People outnumbered us by the hundreds of thousands. They slaughtered us when they could and otherwise drove us to places where the land was salt and sulfur and nothing would grow. A Nephilim head on a stick was often enough to make a man a king. None of us are sure the little people have forgotten that.’
‘They don’t hunt us anymore.’
‘No. And they wouldn’t have God’s help if they did. He and the Assembly reached a compromise after a while, like governments always do, and nobody got all they wanted. The upshot is this. Nephilim were cut off. Nobody could speak to us, nobody could help us. That’s what God got. In exchange, the Assembly accepted His word that He would have no hand in harming us. And, since we were denied an audience with our creators, we should be able to speak with our forefathers. That’s the way it came down. I’m not certain of the date, third or fourth century BC. Nephilim were still attacked sometimes, but that was just man being man. I think God probably counted on that. Could be wrong.’
‘It doesn’t jive,’ said Sander. ‘Why is God upset now?’
‘I wasn’t finished. His sons had thrown the written law in His face. God likely took to studying those laws after that. We’re guessing He couldn’t find anything that forbade Him fathering sons with women, so that’s what He did. We think there were several, Jesus being one. Only, for some reason, God’s kids didn’t turn out like us. They were seers and prophets and men of magic, but they looked normal. Other little people flocked to these men because they were great teachers. They knew uncommon things because, we believe, they could h
ear God’s voice like we once heard our fathers. At any rate, God had His loophole. Nephilim started dying in greater numbers.’
‘The New Testament,’ Sander said. His teeth chattered as he shook his head. ‘I don’t think it mentions us.’
‘I would guess not. God found a back door, a way to restore what He thought was right and just. Why would He call attention to it?’
‘Restore,’ mumbled Sander. ‘That’s the word Roger used. I kept thinking reconstruct. He said restoration.’
‘Do what?’
‘Nothing.’ Then, ‘Did the Assembly ever find out?’
‘You’re asking if the folks in heaven know about Christianity. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say they do. Our fathers are keeping their end of the bargain. They haven’t said a word to any of us since the old deal went down, and we’re not seeing too many offspring of God these days, huh? That has us speculating there’s some sort of shaky truce up there.’
‘Since the time of Christ?’ Sander exclaimed. ‘How much of this does dad know?’
‘Me and your father haven’t talked about it. He’s grounded in what he does best and has no need for questions like yours. Might be a lesson there. Try keeping your head down, son. Take care of your family first, then yourself, and lastly the ranch. If you’ve still got time to worry about all this other, get a hobby.’
‘That’s not good enough.’ Sander put both saddle blankets over his shoulder and stood to fold the tarp. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I almost forgot. I’m engaged, granddad. Remember the girl I told you about?’
‘Alejandra,’ said Will.
‘Yeah. We’ll do it this summer, we think. That was my news. I haven’t told mom and dad yet.’
‘Her father approves?’
‘We’re talking about it, how to break it to him. It’ll be soon, though.’
‘So, you don’t have an engagement. You have a proposal. Tell us how that goes, breaking your news to her daddy and all.’
‘Are you upset with me now?’
‘No, Sander. Just worried, like your dad. Not trying to rain on your parade. Premature congratulations to you and Alejandra. Let us know when you have a date.’ As Sander was walking away, Will said, ‘And please be careful where you go from here.’
The Legend of Sander Grant Page 13
