Close Range

by Annie Proulx

  “Hey, how come you’re not out at the ranch? How come the ranch number’s disconnected?” He heard the bad stuff coming before Leecil said anything.

  “Aw, I’ll tell you what, that didn’t work out so good. When Dad died they valued the ranch, said we had a pay two million dollars in estate taxes. Two million dollars? That took the rag off the bush. We never had a pot to piss in, where was we supposed a get that kind a money for our own place that wasn’t nothin when Dad took it over? You know what beef is bringin? Fifty-five cents a pound. We went round and round on it. Come down to it we had to sell. Sick about it, hell, I’m red-assed. I’m up here workin in the mines. Tell you, there’s somethin wrong with this country.”

  “That’s a dirty ride.”

  ’Yeah. It is. It’s been a dirty ride sinct I come back. Fuckin government.”

  “But you must have got a bunch of money for the place.”

  “Give my share to my brothers. They went up B.C. lookin for a ranch. It’s goin a take all the money buy it, stock it. Guess I’m thinkin about goin up there with em. Wyomin’s sure pulled out from under us. Hey, you’re doin good with the bulls. Once in a while I think I might git back in it, but I git over that idea quick.”

  “I was doing o.k. until I messed up my knee. So what about your kid, was it a girl or a boy? I never heard. You didn’t pass out cigars.”

  ’You sure do ast the sore questions. That didn’t turn out too good neither and I don’t want to git into it just now. Done some things I regret. So, anyway, that’s what I been doin, goin a funerals, hospitals, divorce court and real estate closins. You make it up here this weekend, get drunk? My birthday. Goin a be twenty-four and I feel like I got mileage on for fifty.”

  “Man, I can’t. My knee’s messed up enough I can’t drive. I’ll call you, I will call you.”

  It could be the worst kind of luck to go near Leecil.

  On Thursday night, sliding the chicken breasts into the microwave, she prodded Pearl to get the silverware. She whipped the dehydrated potatoes with hot water, put the food on the table and sat down, looked at Diamond.

  “I smell sulfur,” she said. “Didn’t you take a shower after the springs?”

  “Not this time,” he said.

  ’You reek.” She shook open her napkin.

  “All rodeo cowboys got a little tang to em.”

  “Cowboy? You’re no more a cowboy than you are a little leather-winged bat. My grandfather was a rancher and he hired cowboys or what passed for them. My father gave that up for cattle sales and hehired ranch hands. My brother was never anything but a son-of-a-bee. None of them were cowboys but all of them were more cowboy than a rodeo bullrider ever will be. After supper,” she said to Diamond, pushing the dish of pallid chicken breasts at him, “after supper I’ve got something I want you to see. We’ll just take us a little ride.”

  “Can I come?” said Pearl.

  “No. This is something I want your brother to see. Watch t.v. We’ll be back in an hour.”

  “What is it,” said Diamond, remembering the dark smear on the street she had brought him to years before. She had pointed, said, he didn’t look both ways. He knew it would be something like that. The chicken breast lay on his plate like an inflated water wing. He should not have come back.

  She drove through marginal streets, past the scrap-metal pile and the bentonite plant and, at the edge of town, crossed the railroad tracks where the road turned into rough dirt cutting through prairie. To the right, under a yellow sunset, stood several low metal buildings. The windows reflected the bright honey-colored west.

  “Nobody here,” said Diamond, “wherever we are,” a kid again sitting in the passenger seat while his mother drove him around.

  “Bar J stables. Don’t worry, there’s somebody here,” said his mother. Gold light poured over her hands on the steering wheel, her arms, splashed the edges of her crimped hair. Her face, in shadow, was private and severe. He saw the withering skin of her throat. She said, “Hondo Gunsch? You know that name?”

  “No.” But he had heard it somewhere.

  “Here,” she said, pulling up in front of the largest building. Thousands of insects barely larger than dust motes floated in the luteous air. She walked quickly, he followed, dotting along.

  “Hello,” she called into the dark hallway. A light snapped on. A man in a white shirt, the pocket stiffened with a piece of plastic to hold his ballpoint pens, came through a door. Under his black hat, brim bent like the wings of a crow, was a face crowded with freckles, spectacles, beard and mustache.

  “Hey there, Kaylee.” The man looked at her as though she were hot buttered toast.

  “This is Shorty, wants to be a rodeo star. Shorty, this is Kerry Moore.”

  Diamond shook the man’s hot hand. It was an exchange of hostilities.

  “Hondo’s out in the tack room,” said the man, looking at her. He laughed. “Always in the tack room. He’d sleep there if we let him. Come on out here.”

  He opened a door into a large, square room at the end of the stables. The last metaled light fell through high windows, gilding bridles and reins hanging on the wall. Along another wall a row of saddle racks projected, folded blankets resting on the shining saddles. A small refrigerator hummed behind the desk, and on the wall above it Diamond saw a framed magazine cover,Boots ‘N Bronks, August 1960, showing a saddle bronc rider straight, square and tucked on a high-twisted horse, spurs raked all the way up to the cantle, his outflung arm in front of him. His hat was gone and his mouth open in a crazy smile. A banner read:Gunsch Takes Cheyenne SB Crown . The horse’s back was humped, his nose pointed down, hind legs straight in a powerful jump and five feet of daylight between the descending front hooves and ground.

  In the middle of the room an elderly man worked leather cream into a saddle; he wore a straw hat with the brim rolled high on the sides in a way that emphasized his long head shape. There was something wrong in the set of the shoulders, the forward slope of his torso from the hips. The room smelled of apples and Diamond saw a basket of them on the floor.

  “Hondo, we got visitors.” The man looked past them at nothing, showing the flat bulb of crushed nose, a dished cheekbone, the great dent above the left eye which seemed sightless. His mouth was still pursed with concentration. There was a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. Emanating from him was a kind of carved-wood quietude common to those who have been a long time without sex, out of the traffic of the world.

  “This here’s Kaylee Felts and Shorty, stopped by to say howdy. Shorty’s into rodeo. Guessyou know something about rodeo, don’t you, Hondo?” He spoke loudly as though the man was deaf.

  The bronc rider said nothing, his blue, sweet gaze returning to the saddle, the right hand holding a piece of lambswool beginning again to move back and forth over the leather.

  “He don’t say much,” said Moore. “He has a lot of difficulty but he keeps tryin. He’s got plenty of try, haven’t you, Hondo?”

  The man was silent, working the leather. How many years since he had spurred a horse’s shoulders, toes pointed east and west?

  “Hondo, looks like you ought a change them sorry old floppy stirrup leathers one day,” said Moore in a commanding tone. The bronc rider gave no sign he had heard.

  “Well,” said Diamond’s mother after a long minute of watching the sinewy hands, “it was wonderful to meet you, Hondo. Good luck.” She glanced at Moore, and Diamond could see a message fly but did not know their language.

  They walked outside, the man and woman together, Diamond following, so deeply angry he staggered.

  ’Yeah. He’s kind a deaf, old Hondo. He was a hot saddle bronc rider on his way to the top. Took the money two years runnin at Cheyenne. Then, some dinky little rodeo up around Meeteetse, his horse threw a fit in the chute, went over backwards, Hondo went down, got his head stepped on. Oh, 1961, and he been cleanin saddles for the Bar J since then. Thirty-seven years. That’s a long, long time. He was twenty-six when it happened.
Smart as anybody. Well, you rodeo, you’re a rooster on Tuesday, feather duster on Wednesday. But like I say, he’s still got all the try in the world. We sure think a lot a Hondo.”

  They stood silently watching Diamond get into the car.

  “I’ll call you,” said the man and she nodded.

  Diamond glared out the car window at the plain, the railroad tracks, the pawnshop, the Safeway, the Broken Arrow bar, Custom Cowboy, the vacuum cleaner shop. The topaz light reddened, played out. The sun was down and a velvety dusk coated the street, the bar neons spelling good times.

  As she turned onto the river road she said, “I would take you to see a corpse to get you out of rodeo.”

  ’You won’t take me to see anything again.”

  The glassy black river flowed between dim willows. She drove very slowly.

  “My god,” she shouted suddenly, “what you’ve cost me!”

  “What!What have I cost you?” The words shot out like flame from the mouth of a fire-eater.

  The low beams of cars coming toward them in the dusk lit the wet run of her tears. There was no answer until she turned into the last street, then, in a guttural, adult woman’s voice, raw and deep, as he had never heard it, she said, ‘You hard little man—everything.”

  He was out of the car before it stopped, limping up the stairs, stuffing clothes in his duffel bag, not answering Pearl.

  “Diamond, you can’t go yet. You were going to stay for two weeks. You only been here four days. We were going to put up a bucking barrel. We didn’t talk about Dad. Not one time.”

  He had told Pearl many lies beginning “Dad and me and you, when you were a baby“—that was the stuff the kid wanted to hear. He never told him what he knew and if he never found out that was a win.

  “I’ll come back pretty soon,” he lied, “and we’ll get her done.” He was sorry for the kid but the sooner he learned it was a tough go the better. But maybe there was nothing for Pearl to know. Maybe the bad news was all his.

  “Momma likes me better than you,” shouted Pearl, saving something from the wreck. He stripped off the T-shirt and threw it at Diamond.

  “This I know.” He called a taxi to take him to the crackerbox airport where he sat for five hours until a flight with connections to Calgary left.

  In his cocky first year he had adopted a wide-legged walk as though there was swinging weight between his thighs. He felt the bull in himself, hadn’t yet discerned the line of inimical difference between roughstock and rider. He dived headlong into the easy girls, making up for the years of nothing. He wanted the tall ones. In that bullish condition he tangled legs with the wife of Myron Sasser, his second traveling partner. They were in Cheyenne in Myron’s truck and she was with them, sitting in the backseat of the club cab. All of them were hungry. Myron pulled into the Burger Bar. He left the truck running, the radio loud, a dark Texas voice entangled in static.

  “How many you want, Diamond, two or three? Londa, you want onions with yours?”

  They had picked her up at Myron’s parents’ house in Pueblo the day before. She was five-eleven, long brown curls like Buffalo Bill, had looked at Diamond and said to Myron, ‘You didn’t say he was hardly fryin size. Hey there, chip,” she said.

  “That’s me,” he said, “smaller than the little end of nothing whittled to a point,” smiled through murder.

  She showed them an old heart-shaped waffle iron she had bought at a yard sale. It was not electric, a gadget from the days of the wood-burning range. The handles were of twisted wire. She promised Myron a Valentine breakfast.

  “I’ll git this,” said Myron and went into the Burger Bar.

  Diamond waited with her in the truck, aroused by her orchidaceous female smell. Through the glass window they could see Myron standing near the end of a long line. He thought of what she’d said, moved out of the front seat and into the back with her and pinned her, wrestled her 36-inseam jeans down to her ankles and got it in, like fucking sandpaper, and his stomach growling with hunger the whole time. She was not willing. She bucked and shoved and struggled and cursed him, she was dry, but he wasn’t going to stop then. Something fell off the seat with a hard sound.

  “My waffle iron,” she said and nearly derailed him-he finished in five or six crashing strokes and it was done. He was back in the front seat before Myron reached the head of the line.

  “I heard it called a lot of things,” he said, “but never a waffle iron,” and laughed until he choked. He felt fine.

  She cried angrily in the seat behind him, pulling at her clothes.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hush up. It didn’t hurt you. I’m too damn small to hurt a big girl like you, right? I’m the one should be crying—could have burred it off.” He couldn’t believe it when she opened the door and jumped down, ran into the Burger Bar, threw herself at Myron. He saw Myron putting his head over to listen to her, glancing out at the parking lot where he could see nothing, wiping the tears from her face with a paper napkin he took from the counter, and then charging toward the door with squared, snarling mouth. Diamond got out of the truck. Might as well meet it head-on.

  “What a you done to Londa.”

  “Same thing you did to that wormy Texas buckle bunny the other night.” He didn’t have anything against Myron Sasser except that he was a humorless fascist who picked his nose and left pliant knobs of snot on the steering wheel, but he wanted the big girl to get it clear and loud.

  ’You little pissant shit,” said Myron and came windmilling at him. Diamond had him flat on the macadam, face in a spilled milk shake, but in seconds more lay beside him knocked colder than a wedge by the waffle iron. He heard later that Myron had sloped off to Hawaii without his amazon wife and was doing island rodeo. Let them both break their necks. The girl had too much mustard and she’d find it out if she came his way again.

  That old day the bottom dropped had been a Sunday, the day they usually had pancakes and black cherry syrup, but she had not made the pancakes, told him to fix himself a bowl of cereal, feed Pearl his baby pears. He was thirteen, excited about the elk hunt coming up in three weekends. Pearl stank and squirmed in full diapers but by then they were seriously fighting. Diamond, sick of hearing the baby roar, had cleaned him up, dropped the dirty diaper in the stinking plastic pail.

  They fought all day, his mother’s voice low and vicious, his father shouting questions that were not answered but turned back at him with vindictive silences as powerful as a swinging bat. Diamond watched television, the sound loud enough to damp the accusations and furious abuse cracking back and forth upstairs. There were rushing footsteps overhead as though they were playing basketball, cries and shouts. It had nothing to do with him. He felt sorry for Pearl who bawled every time he heard their mother’s anguished sobbing in the room above. One or two long silences held but they could not be mistaken for peace. In the late afternoon Pearl fell asleep on the living room couch with his fist knotted in his blanket. Diamond went out in the yard, kicked around, cleaned the car windshield for something to do. It was cold and windy, a cigar cloud poised over the mountain range forty miles west. He picked up rocks and threw them at the cloud pretending they were bullets fired at an elk. He could hear them inside, still at it.

  The door slammed and his father came across the porch carrying the brown suitcase with a tiny red trademark horse in the corner, strode toward the car as if he were late.

  “Dad,” said Diamond. “The elk hunt—”

  His father stared at him. In that twitching face his pupils were black and huge, eating up the hazel color to the rim.

  “Don’t never call me that again. Not your father and never was. Now get the fuck out of the way, you little bastard,” the words high-pitched and tumbling.

  After the breakup with Myron Sasser he bought a third-hand truck, an old Texas hoopy not much better than Leecil’s wreck, traveled alone for a few months, needing the solitary distances, blowing past mesas and red buttes piled like meat, humped and horned, and on the h
ighway chunks of mule deer, hair the buck-skin color of winter grass, flesh like rough breaks in red country, playas of dried blood. He almost always had a girl in the motel bed with him when he could afford a motel, a half-hour painkiller but without the rush and thrill he got from a buUride. There was no sweet time when it was over. He wanted them to get gone. The in-and-out girls wasped it around that he was quick on the trigger, an arrogant little prick and the hell with his star-spangled bandanna.