Sander and Allie looked at it another way. They enjoyed the most durable romance possible, one that assumed a perpetual bond from their first serious kiss and stood resolute somewhere in their future while they worked out the details. They knew it was an unorthodox way of going about this, but they also knew they couldn’t love each other more. Jo thought they were both a little off in the head, and she blamed Sander for most of it.
‘That’s how you proposed to her?’ Jo asked when they told her the story.
‘Yeah,’ said Sander. ‘It worked.’
‘Boy, you botched that good.’ Then she turned to Allie and said, ‘Make him do it again.’
But the couple would not concede that what they shared was anything less than perfect, and Allie sat beside Sander as they informed everyone that the ceremony would reflect their common attitude. They were meant to be together and a grand, theatrical affair would only distract them from that. They would dress up, have the officiating and paperwork done, then move forward as though nothing had changed. Because nothing would change.
‘Besides,’ Allie told Jo, ‘the more you plan, the more things can go wrong. You know?’
‘He’s brainwashed you, dear,’ said Jo.
Clarita agreed, but the two mothers stopped protesting after a while and listened to their kids’ idea of a wedding. They wanted vows, prime rib, country music, beer and cake. In that order. If more than ten people showed up, Sander warned, somebody’s going home. That included the padre and a photographer.
Though he seriously doubted it would cause Allie to reconsider marrying him, Sander felt, in the interest of full disclosure, he needed to tell her about Will. About all of them buried on the hill by the pond. He decided, however, instead of sitting her down at the house and trying to explain it, he would take her there as his dad had taken him. She wouldn’t be able to hear the voices, so it wouldn’t be quite as surreal an experience for her, but he expected a degree of shock. He would let Will speak for himself and he would tell Allie what his granddad said, just as she translated for him when her folks lapsed into Spanish. He hoped her disbelief stopped short of her concluding he was delusional.
When they arrived, Will was uncharacteristically reserved. He didn’t return the greeting for a few minutes. Sander could hear him breathing, though, and he used this time to tell Allie a little about all the men down there, back to Augustus, with the obvious omission of Bart’s brother.
It was not their custom to bring others to this place, but Sander didn’t sense Will minded that. Rather, he suspected his granddad’s reticence might be simple shyness. He bet none of these men had talked to a woman since they died. Allie’s presence likely put them more off balance than she was, since all she heard were the cows in the distance. Other than her fiancé, the only signs of animate life anywhere nearby were the circling shadows from a pair of turkey vultures riding a thermal overhead. She listened to Sander, though, as he passed along Will’s polite salutation.
Then Sander decided better of soft-pedaling the message and told her, ‘Actually, what he said was, “Nice job, kid. Have her thinking you’re nuts before she even moves in.” Then it was, “Good afternoon, Alejandra.”’
‘Is this your way of telling me we’re gonna live with your parents?’ She gave him no time to respond. ‘The ranch is your life, babe. Our life, soon. I always expected to live here. Can we think about building our own little place, separate from the big house, though?’
Sander’s ear was tuned to Will’s voice.
Allie giggled. ‘Has he got something else to spring on me?’
‘No,’ said Sander, after a moment. ‘He wishes us every happiness. And I’ll build you whatever kind of place you want. Let’s go back to the house.’
That would have to be the end of it, for now. Anything Sander might offer to convince her, Will reminded him, would necessarily involve a history lesson. Which, in her case, likely meant documentation of some sort. Was he prepared to go there again?
It was obvious the ninth of June was going to be a beautiful day even before the first orange hint of the sun. Sander’s only lingering worry was the ring he had special ordered, whether it would arrive in time and whether it would be as impressive as he imagined. It came in on Thursday and exceeded his greatest hopes. Allie would love it. Whereas, Sander loved being able to give her something so extravagant. Going on twelve years old, he was master of a business enterprise that would make them rich before his eighteenth birthday, carry the Grant name to distant countries, and provide a life for them none of his ancestors dared wish.
After replacing, at Dalton’s insistence, the portion of his personal savings he had used to finance recent improvements, Sander was well-heeled on all fronts. Aside from a touch of cold feet, which Jo had warned him about, he felt there could be no finer hour to take his bride. Early on his wedding day, having eaten all the breakfast his nervous stomach would tolerate, he retreated to his studio. No longer a place to toil at his craft, the room was his safe harbor now, whatever storms may come. He laid on canvas and paper those burdens too cumbersome to carry and always left with a brighter outlook and a renewed confidence about the future. He often didn’t know what would come out of him when he sat down at his easel. His hands did, though.
Evidently, the heaviest thing on his mind this morning was his father, so that’s what his fingers set out to paint. With his palette knife he mixed a deep walnut brown for Dalton’s hair, and he added more and more Titanium White until it seemed right. When he was satisfied with the color, before making the first stroke, he stared at it and realized what he had done. The smear of paint was dusty gray, the brown in it barely noticeable. Instead of starting with an inch of white and adding just a dab of Translucent Brown, Sander had begun with a ten-year-old memory of his dad and he’d used nearly a whole tube of paint lightening his hair to the color it now was. He dropped the dry brush back into the jar with the others, wiped his palette clean with a paper towel and went to shave and shower. His tuxedo might need a last minute touch-up on the hems, he thought.
Frank didn’t get drunk until late in the afternoon, back at the ranch. When he reached his tipping point, Jaime wasn’t far behind. They all fit around two tables placed end to end in the yard, sweating in their formal clothes and not minding it much, commenting as they wiped their brows that it was better, there being no wind.
Laughter spread down one side of the chairs and returned on the other. If the thing could’ve gone better, none present could imagine how. It was, thought Jo, the best omen for a strong union. At their kids’ request, nobody spent much on gifts. Instead, they shared equally in the work of pulling off the event, and the cleaning up afterward. In between, they enjoyed one another. Sander and Allie, thought Clarita, were too young to know how rare a thing this was. A flawless thing.
The only snag regarding the date, Sander had warned Allie, was that it fell on the start of weaning season. There wouldn’t be time for a honeymoon. She didn’t care. They could take one later, or not at all.
As their parents and Frank and Doris started taking in the dishes from the banquet tables, Sander desired some time alone with his wife. He didn’t have anything special to say. They had said it all. He just wanted to look at her when nobody else was looking. He allowed that selfishness wasn’t only acceptable in this case, but a big part of why he married this lady, Alejandra Grant.
Allie kicked off her heels in the grass, gathered the modest train of her dress, and walked with Sander to the far side of the barn. He leaned back against the plank wall and pulled her close.
‘I’ve made space for you in my bedroom,’ he said.
‘I didn’t even bring my stuff, baby. I thought we could move it all once things slowed down for you.’
‘You don’t need your stuff. Not tonight. My bedroom aint much, but I’m gonna make you a spot in my studio, too. I want you to design us a house.’
‘I can’t draw.’
He tapped her head. ‘If it’s in there, we
’ll get it out. I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘Spend the night with me?’
Dalton had watched them disappear around the corner and he thought about Jo when she was eighteen. His son was so fortunate to begin this part of his life now. He was as happy as a father could be, and more tired than he thought a man could survive. Once Sander and Allie were out of sight, he kissed his wife on her neck and told her he would load up the tables and chairs in the morning to take them back to the rental place. He needed out of his suit and he needed a shower, if he had the energy. Jaime and Frank bid him goodnight. The other women wanted to hug his neck, then he was thankfully inside and loosening his necktie. The doorbell rang.
Dalton found Jason on the doorstep, bearing a gift. Looked about the size of a cutlery set. He might’ve guessed the brash young man would do something like this. He was Sander’s problem, though. Or Jo’s.
‘I just ... I,’ stuttered Jason, ‘wanted to wish the newlyweds well. Have I come at a bad time?’
‘They’re all still out there,’ said Dalton, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I’m done for the day.’
Jason thanked Dalton and offered an awkward congratulations to him, too, as the big man lumbered up the steps. He couldn’t see the bride and groom out the patio door. The folks out there looked to him like they were wrapping things up. There was more light from the porch now than from the setting sun. He put his gift and a card from his pocket on the dining table and thought he would leave them be. Maybe visit another day. On his way past the stairs again, curiosity snared him with a grip he hadn’t felt since he broke the stranglehold of amphetamines.
Jason heard the shower kick on up there and took one more glance out back. Nobody would be the wiser if he had a quick peep in Sander’s studio. No artist, he thought, drops his brushes cold turkey. As Sander’s mentor, surely he had some minuscule remnant of privilege here. At least to see, he reasoned, what his protégé was creating.
11
Jo helped Allie move her things on Sunday, after the Sandovals returned from church. She didn’t have much that she wanted to take with her, preferring to leave behind what she considered childish things. Jo urged her to take enough of her personal items, precious belongings, to make her new space feel like home.
‘There’s plenty of room,’ she told Allie, ‘and Sander would want you to.’
Clarita said she would pack the rest and save it for her daughter, in case she wanted anything else.
Meanwhile, Sander set about organizing his studio. It was in way of a surprise for Allie. He would more than make a spot for her in here. He would make her an equal.
First, there was something he needed to do. He lined the wall with his recent charcoals, propping them up in what he estimated was the order he’d done them. With one more look, he sought some durable guarantee of the purpose served in their creation. Reasons, in the abstract, for the symbols drawn in this little room might get him closer to a fundamental reason, might they not? One way or the other, he felt he must understand something here, and it wasn’t coming readily.
He recalled finishing some of the pieces, but the style was unrecognizable. He had to wonder from whence these images came. Before him was a chronicle of the sordid business between God and giant, stripped to monochrome detail. In places, the black was pressed hard into the paper, layer on layer, until it sweated charcoal, a liquid absence of light that glistened.
They began with the coupling, an angelic figure entangled with the curves of a woman, all reflected in the white of a great eye looking elsewhere. Next was the birth of the half-heavenly, an oversized infant spreading the pelvis of a woman, tearing skin with a veined arm. A divine covey stood watch in this one, ignoring the grotesque agony. The council scene followed; robed and statuesque men defiant in the face of God. Ape teeth bared, tendons of the neck taut like bowstrings, and all mouths were open at once in argument. Then giants were dying. Three separate pieces showed cyclopean bodies in various states of demise, their anatomies spilled over the lines of an earth-like palm or at the tip of an impossible finger. The birth of Jesus was later in the sequence, somehow depicted with spite. And the rest narrated a struggle with no triumph. Death, contention, and compromise were merely a backdrop. The intended feel seemed that of an endless tragedy from the seed of a feckless act. On those terms, the chronicle was an undeniable success. The cause so clearly inadequate to provoke such effect that the whole thing made just as much sense in reverse.
Individually, these pictures weren’t just ugly. They were divested of beauty to an extent as to be aesthetically perfect. The best work he had ever done. And they originated in a place that had no name, no trail leading back. Sander was forced to conclude that an abyss could fall upon a person, or sidle beneath him. It was a sobering thought, that such darkness without bottom could visit him like a posthypnotic suggestion, when and where it chose. It could speak through his practiced hand, then vanish, immune to all thereafter. Then that was the purpose, he decided. Because despair was in the dread of such a trespassing void. Giving over to it renders everything meaningless. Reasons. Depression. The void itself.
As irony would have it, Sander’s morbid epiphany was what enabled him to put the work away, marveling at how he had found the time to do all this drawing. He stacked them, wrapped them in craft paper and crisscrossed the bundle with row after row of tape. For now, he slid it onto the highest shelf in the closet, thinking he would probably put it out with the garbage next time he saw it, or the time after that, or whenever he no longer lusted for control over that kind of talent. He began filling the space around it with everything in the room he didn’t need at the moment.
When he was done, the closet was packed floor to ceiling. He had to put his shoulder into the door to latch it. For the sake of time, and because he didn’t give a shit, he applied no effort whatever to ordering or cataloging the contents. The stuff was out of the way. A few old boxes remained in one corner of the room. Likely garbage as well, but they presently served as shelf space for the few art supplies not stuffed in the closet. Other than that, there was his easel and chair, and the normal-sized ones Jason had used which Sander would bequeath to Allie. He erased both the chalk boards whereon he scrawled random notes to himself, and he scoured the walls of all the paper scraps, photos, and bold quotations he’d pinned there over the years. The studio was ready.
Allie was overjoyed at the trouble he had gone to, and she told him so. But she stared at her empty easel there beside his for a bit too long. Jo stood in the doorway with one of Allie’s suitcases.
‘What?’ Sander asked.
‘I’m telling you I can’t draw,’ said Allie. ‘Not even a little bit. Stick figures and smiley faces, maybe. Right next to the famous Sander Grant.’
‘Don’t be nervous,’ he said. ‘What you need is a big flip pad to start with. Cheap paper and a number two pencil.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’
‘No, listen. It’ll help you get started. Pencil lines can be erased and paper can be thrown away. Whenever you want, just give me the word and I’ll get you any medium you need. Canvas, clay, limestone.’
She laughed then nodded. ‘Okay.’
Allie looked up at Sander for a second, then jumped to kiss him on the cheek, making it only to the middle of his arm. Jo had seen her do this a few other times. How long would it be until her boy learned to feel when his wife wanted to kiss him, and began to bend down for her like Dalton did? She could say something to Sander about it, but she remembered sorting out the little things like that on their own when she first moved out here. She recalled talking with Dalton those first few months, giggling, figuring stuff out. It was part of the wonder of these men, that they didn’t seem to realize their loved ones existed, physically, on a lower plane. Jo decided against reducing it to a lesson on giant etiquette.
‘Mom,’ said Sander, ‘most of my closet is cleared out and half of the drawers. If there aint enough room, box up some more of my stuff and I’ll
go through it later. All I need to get to is my boots and work clothes.’
‘We’ll take care of it,’ she told him. ‘Go help your dad.’ When she saw the wrapped box from Jason and the unopened card on Sander’s dresser, she called, ‘Why didn’t you open this gift?’
‘Because I’m mailing it back to him. Put it wherever,’ Sander hollered on his way downstairs. He went to look for Dalton and found him in the east pasture, bent and checking the back legs on a heifer.
‘What’s up?’ he said, startling his dad.
‘To tell the truth, I don’t know. This one and a few others just seemed a little jumpy when I got close.’ He turned loose the animal and it wobbled, almost imperceptibly, then kicked at the air a couple of times with its back leg, like it had mud stuck in its hoof. ‘Aint nothing wrong with her hooves.’
‘Strange,’ said Sander. ‘You think the heat got to em?’
‘I can’t figure. It aint that hot out here.’ Dalton dusted off his hands. ‘Seth’s coming tomorrow to have a look at a few of the smaller calves we’re about to take off the teat. Let’s see what he says.’
For the remainder of the afternoon, they drove the pastures together and corralled every animal that looked ‘kinda off’, as they took to calling it. There were eight, all of them female, and the men put them together in a holding pen.
Seth Craig, the senior vet at Dixon Animal Hospital and treating physician for Grant cattle, showed up promptly at 8 AM. Though Dr Craig was now in his early sixties, he hadn’t moved to Dixon until shortly before Will died and so wasn’t one of the vets Dalton was used to seeing when he was a kid. Soon after he arrived in town, however, the other vets at the Animal Hospital began qualifying their commentary and delaying their treatment of Grant cattle pending a consultation with this fella Seth Craig. Dalton decided to cut out the middle man and told the others to just send Dr Craig.
The Legend of Sander Grant Page 15
