Spoon

by Robert Greer

  It took me a while, after stopping by the house to share my concerns about my dad and Ricky Peterson’s secretiveness with my mom, to find Spoon on that cloudless evening. Summer had waned, and the chill of early fall was in the air. The cottonwoods along Willow Creek were a patchwork of muted greens and yellows as they marched toward their golden zenith.

  I found Spoon in a pasture that had a small corral for breaking horses. He was standing in the middle of the corral, working Smokey on a twenty-foot lead. As I watched him work the big bay horse in a circle, widening the circle with each new pass, I realized he was trying to determine if Smokey had fully recovered from his injury.

  “Move it, Smoke, move it,” Spoon yelled, snapping the lead and stomping his foot.

  When Smokey suddenly shifted gears and broke into a full-out, heads-up gallop, seeming to recognize for the first time that he was injury free, Spoon beamed. It took him several complete circles to break Smokey back down. By then I was sitting on the top rail of the corral, enjoying the show.

  Still smiling and aware now that I was there, Spoon walked up to Smokey, snapped off the lead, and swatted him on the rump. Smokey took off in a blaze of speed, tearing around the corral like a colt.

  “I’m thinkin’ he’s all well,” Spoon said, walking toward me.

  “I’m thinking you’re right. My dad’s gonna be real glad to stop having to ride Thunder.”

  Spoon nodded in agreement. “A man needs a mount that was built for him, and for your pa, that sure ain’t Thunder. Where’s he at anyway? Time for him and Smokey to get reacquainted.”

  “He’s off fly-fishing with Ricky Peterson, or at least pretending to.”

  Spoon stared at me blankly.

  “I don’t like it,” I said, feeding off the look on Spoon’s face. “They shut me out. My mom too. We’re both real worried. I’m not so sure about Ricky’s loyalty at this point. Think he could be tied to Acota?”

  Spoon glanced briefly skyward, as if he might be searching for his answer there. “I’ve told you before, TJ, I ain’t sure where he fits into all this. Haven’t been able to get a real good read on the man. It ain’t that he’s the enemy so much as I tend to think he’s inclined to offer up bad advice. And bad advice to a drownin’ man lookin’ to save his life by grabbin’ on to a log that turns out to be an alligator is worse than no advice at all. Let me scratch around a bit and see if I can’t get a handle on what Ricky and your pa are so busy strategizin’ about.”

  “And what if they won’t budge off their plans?”

  “It’s your pa’s land to do with as he sees fit, TJ. And it’s still him runnin’ the coalition. Can’t make him see or do things a different way if he don’t want to.”

  “Guess so,” I said, aware that if Spoon and I couldn’t get my dad to let us in on what he and Ricky were up to, there was someone who could. I glanced back toward our house. In the fading light the house looked tiny, lost as it was against a towering expanse of cottonwoods. As I turned back and watched Spoon open a gate and send Smokey out to pasture, I wondered exactly what I would say to my mom.

  Ricky and my dad came back from fishing a few minutes before dark. The summer’s-end sound of chirping cicadas ended as they made their way across a meadow and toward the barn. Near the back of the barn they stopped and shook hands. From where I stood, hanging a halter in near darkness a few paces from the barn’s open front door, I couldn’t see their faces. But in the steely quiet, their words were absolutely clear.

  “Sure hope your environmental angle works, Ricky,” my dad said. “I’d hate to go to all this trouble and find out we still can’t stop Acota. We’re bettin’ an awful lot on that twenty-plus-year recollection of yours.”

  “No argument there, Bill, but it’s the soundest solution I can think of right now to keep Acota from gouging out the whole damn valley. That four hundred acres of BLM land you’ve been leasing all these years that’s suddenly and mysteriously no longer available to you would let Acota get their foot right in the door. The law gives them the right to cross you once they have that lease. Next they’ll grab up the adjacent two hundred acres of BLM ground that gives them access to the land they’ve leased from the Demasters, and you’ll find yourself looking down the throat of a mining pit forever. It’s your call, Bill.”

  When the cicadas suddenly started chirping again, it seemed louder than before. But not so loud that I couldn’t make out my dad’s response. “We’ll go with your plan by week’s end.”

  I’m not at all certain what my mom said to my dad that night, or if she even told him about my concerns. I don’t know if they argued, discussed things calmly, or agreed to disagree, but the next morning at breakfast there was an obvious chill in the air. I wondered if she’d mentioned to him that I was the one with concerns about Ricky, or that, based on a conversation I’d had with Spoon of all people, Ricky might be the wrong person to be protecting our interests. I had no real way of knowing, as we sat in silence eating breakfast, where my dad might be placing blame, but from the way he kept casting looks of disappointment my mom’s way, I was certain she was at the core of his upset.

  We finished breakfast with fewer than half a dozen words spoken between us. As my dad and I headed out the kitchen door to meet Spoon, who’d saddled our horses in preparation for a seven-hour round-trip ride to gather 120 head of cattle from our south mesa meadow for sorting that evening and shipment the next day, my dad’s parting words were, “Danged New Yorker!”

  We left headquarters quickly, riding three abreast and barely speaking, toward the south mesa along with my dad’s savvy five-year-old heeler, Duke, and my border collie, Cody. The two dogs streaked out ahead of us each time they caught a new, enticing scent until Spoon, sensing the tension in the air, asked, “Anything new with the Acota problem?” For some reason the dogs immediately stopped their antics.

  My dad glanced over at me before answering. “We’re working things out, me and Mr. Peterson.”

  “What about your coalition folks? Any stragglers?” Spoon asked, pressing the issue.

  “We’re dissolving the coalition. Too many points of view and vested interests to make it work.”

  Dad’s response caught me by surprise. Spoon, however, seemed unfazed. He just shook his head and frowned. “So from here on out it’s gonna be every man for himself?”

  “Pretty close.”

  “Bad way to proceed.”

  “Don’t you start with me, Spoon. I’ve had enough second-guessin’ already. The decision was made on the advice of our attorney.”

  “Okay.”

  Eyeing Spoon sternly as if to say, It better be, dad glanced up at the sun. He could tell time by the sun as accurately as he could with a watch. “We’ve got cattle to gather, and time’s a-wastin’. Let’s get after it,” he said, urging Smokey into a trot.

  As Spoon and I took off after him, I knew there was little or no chance of rebuilding the Willow Creek Ranchers Coalition and that no matter what Ricky Peterson might be planning to take its place or to protect our ranch from Acota, there would be no changing my dad’s mind on the issue.

  Hours later, as we trailed a herd of reluctant-to-head-home mother cows and their calves back to headquarters with Cody and Duke nipping at the heels of the laggards, I reflected on the strange, out-of-character behavior my dad had shown as we’d gathered cattle. Like some tenderfoot bent on proving himself, he’d insisted on chasing down every breakaway calf and pinching every stubborn mother cow back into the herd by himself instead of letting the dogs do the work while we were up on the mesa. He’d barely taken a sip of water from his canteen the entire time, we’d never stopped for lunch, and he’d uttered fewer than a dozen words to Spoon and me in three hours. Only once, when Duke, insistent on doing his job in spite of my dad, lost his battle with a nervous calf who’d charged up a steep, sage-covered ditch bank, did Dad call for help. I ended up roping and dragging the kicking, bawling, five-hundred-pound steer back to the herd.

  “Good
show for a college kid,” Dad had said with a wink. It was the only time all day that I had a normal sense of the man. Now, as I rode alongside him listening to our two cow dogs bark and yelp, I wondered how long it would be before Bill Darley returned.

  By the time we finished dumping and sorting the cattle, a sharp evening chill was in the air. Mom, who’d stayed away from the sorting, unusual for her, surprised us all when she finally came out of the house. She headed directly across the wide swatch of grass that separated the house from the corrals. Dressed in jeans, boots, and a checkered wool shirt, she carried a handful of sweaters. Moving as always with the fluid grace of a dancer, she looked radiant. She was ten yards away from us when she called out, “I’m thinking the three of you must be hungry and a little on the chilly side by now.”

  “You can say that again, Mrs. D.,” said Spoon.

  “I whipped up something that I think will suit you.”

  She walked past Spoon and me toward my dad. “Hungry, Bill?” she asked, handing him one of the sweaters as he dismounted.

  The way my dad said, “Absolutely,” with a home-again air of graciousness, made me realize that whatever ugliness had passed between the two of them the previous evening was gone. Dad looped Smokey’s reins around a fence post, and hugged mom tightly. I swore I heard him say sorry, but I couldn’t be certain because whatever he’d said was cut short by the tender kiss my mom planted on his lips.

  Turning unabashedly back toward me and Spoon and looking like a first-crush schoolgirl, Mom said, “Harriet Rankin came by this afternoon and left something for you, Spoon. Said it was terribly important that I give it to you as soon as you got back.”

  She reached into her shirt pocket, pulled out what was clearly a postcard, and handed it to Spoon. “Harriet said this came to her at the library, but it’s definitely meant for you.”

  Spoon examined the postcard, which I later learned was simply addressed Big Horn County Library, Hardin, Montana, read the back of it, looked up at Mom wide eyed, and shook his head. “Looks like that old Cheyenne boy I spoke with up in Colstrip has had himself a change of heart. Seems like somethin’s got him to admittin’ we’re kin.”

  I glanced at Spoon, then back at my folks. The joyful looks on their faces vanished when my mom said, “Harriet also left the information she said you wanted on Matt Rodue. It’s back in the house. But I’m thinking right now we should all go and eat. Mr. Rodue’s resume can wait, don’t you think?”

  “You’re right on target there,” said Spoon.

  An hour and two slices of pumpkin pie later, I was the last to read Harriet’s summary of what she’d been able to find out about Matt Rodue. Spoon, then my dad, and finally my mom, who was now busy putting away dishes in the kitchen, had already read the two pages of neatly printed notes that Harriet had jotted on Big Horn County Library stationery. Her notes distilled the very essence of Matt Rodue.

  Spoon and my dad were seated opposite one another in the matching wingback chairs that flanked the river-rock fireplace in our front room. Dad had recently taken to jokingly calling it our great room after seeing a similar room pictured on the cover of an exclusive log-homes magazine that featured multimillion-dollar second homes. I was seated on the sandstone hearth that spanned nearly three-quarters of the width of the room.

  According to Harriet’s notes, Matt Clarkson Rodue had been born thirty-seven years earlier in Joplin, Missouri, to a long-established farming family. He’d been a high school football star who’d attended the University of Missouri for a year before blowing out his right knee. Following that injury, Rodue had dropped out of football. He had later dropped out of school and spent the next several years back on the farm outside Joplin before going on to earn himself the reputation that had allowed Harriet to zero in on him so easily.

  After leaving the farm, he hit the pro rodeo circuit and eventually became a highly regarded bull rider. A series of new knee injuries caused him to pack in that career, and he disappeared from the circuit, resurfacing several years later as one of the principals in a business that provided security for America’s grandest pro rodeo events, including the Pendleton Round-Up, Cheyenne Frontier Days, and the Greeley Stampede.

  It didn’t appear that Harriet had had any difficulty unearthing facts about Rodue since, in her neat script near the bottom of the second page, she’d written,

  See what you can find out with a little library research and the help of a friend who’s been a lifelong rodeo fan? (Over)

  I flipped the page to see that Harriet had done some additional homework. In three lines she’d written down three more things she’d unearthed. As I read the three, the muscles in my neck tightened.

  (1) Rodue wears gray because his great-grandfather was a general in Lee’s army.

  (2) He’s been reported to have a terrible, even sadistic disposition that some fans think is related to the fact that knee injuries cost him two careers.

  (3) He’s all about money.

  I sat staring at the page until Spoon asked, “You all done with sizin’ up Rodue, TJ?”

  I choked out, “Yes.”

  “Bad hombre,” Spoon said, enjoying the barest hint of an insightful smile.

  “Sounds like it.”

  “You know what they say?” said Spoon. “The badder they are, the harder they fall.”

  I was all set to correct Spoon and remind him that it’s “the bigger they are, the harder they fall,” but his Cheshire-cat smile told me he was perfectly aware of his mistake.

  “Think Rodue wants to take out any of his bitterness or his badness on us?” Dad asked.

  “I ain’t sure,” said Spoon, massaging the cleft in his chin. “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  The way Spoon said wait, as if the word carried with it some absolute assurance of things to come, caused my dad’s eyes to widen, but not nearly as much or as expectantly as mine.

  Sixteen

  The Willow Creek Ranchers Coalition was dissolved by a show of hands during an early morning meeting that took place in our barn on the third Saturday of September 1991. It had snowed an inch at the ranch and six to eight inches in the surrounding mountains during the night, but an hour after sunrise the ranch’s thirsty meadows were barely moist.

  No one at the meeting seemed to want to call the question until my mom, dressed in jeans and an apron stained with tomato juice from the canning she and Harriet had been busy with back in the house, called out loud and clear, “I move we dissolve the coalition.”

  Ricky Peterson asked for a second to the motion, Maxine Cundiff provided a weak one, and just like that, on the heels of an all-in-favor call from Ricky, the coalition died. I couldn’t say I was unhappy. Disappointed seemed to be a better description. I’d learned from experience what it meant to go up against a force stronger than you and lose. My basketball team’s loss in the state championship final my senior year to a Bozeman team with a high school all-American had shown me the way. But not before I’d learned to fully appreciate the concept of teamwork and what it meant to make it to a place no one ever expected you to get to on the basis of sheer desire rather than skill.

  There was something about the way the ranchers in our valley had thrown up their hands in the face of Acota Energy’s looming presence that bothered me. Something sickening that as much as shouted, Forget about the other guy as long as I get mine.

  As far as I was concerned, only my dad’s reasons for bowing out seemed reasonable. He was tired of being the lightning rod between the coalition and Acota. Tired of driving—sometimes three times a week—to meet with Ricky Peterson in Billings. Tired of trying to defend Willard Johnson’s death as an accident while everyone else continued to whisper that Johnson had more than likely been killed by Matt Rodue. Most of all he seemed tired of the sniping and backbiting. The Cundiffs had suggested that he and Ricky Peterson were working on a separate deal with Acota that would give the energy giant a right to encroach on us in order to mine surrounding government lands
, and that as part of the deal we would earn encroachment royalties that could potentially pay us thirty percent more than anyone else in the valley could get for the right to strip-mine. My dad and Ricky had assured everyone that the encroachment issue was no more than a rumor, probably started by the Acota people themselves, but they’d had one hell of a time trying to get people to believe them.

  With nothing more than a lingering bad taste and bad feelings all around, the meeting ended with everyone shuffling out of the barn, grumbling like a bunch of kids who’d all been in favor of going to see a movie until they had to decide what movie to see.

  Ralph Cundiff was a half step ahead of me and my dad as we moved toward the barn doors. “Guess it’s every man for himself at this point,” he mumbled. “Sure hope nobody ends up with a competitive edge here. Wouldn’t be right, maybe not even legal.” His comment was aimed at Ricky Peterson, but he was looking directly at my dad.

  “No one’s going to have any negotiating advantage with Acota, Ralph,” Ricky said, sounding exasperated.

  “And it wouldn’t matter anyway, since they won’t be diggin’ on this ranch, ever,” said my dad. “As far as I’m concerned, they can start their earth gougin’ with you, Ralph. So negotiate your best deal and let ’em eviscerate your damn place.”

  “No need for all the testiness, Bill,” Cundiff said, holding up a protective hand.

  Looking disgusted, my dad shook his head and walked away.

  I followed him and Ricky from the barn to where Spoon, my mom, and Harriet Rankin stood talking. Dad barely slowed his pace as he brushed past everyone with Ricky still in tow. “I’ve washed my hands of it,” he grumbled. “From now on, every rancher in this valley’s on their own.” He and Ricky disappeared into the house.

  Within five more minutes everyone had said their good-byes and departed, leaving my mom, Spoon, Harriet, and me outside talking. The temperature was in the low forties, and our frosted breaths megaphoned out from our mouths as we talked.