In Open Spaces

by Russell Rowland

  In the tradition of our region, we did not speak of George, and a debate raged within me about whether this was the right thing to do. I thought of him every day. Often. In the morning, I would sometimes look at his empty bed before I was fully awake and wonder why he’d gotten up so early. But the time I felt his absence the most was when I was out in the open, where the silence was magnified.

  It wasn’t until a few days after the fire that I remembered the bundle of papers I’d discovered under George’s mattress. One day I tucked the papers under my shirt and snuck off to the barn, making sure I wasn’t followed. I climbed into the hayloft, settled into a comfortable spot, and piled the papers on my lap. On top was a thin paperback book—a book about the fundamentals of baseball. I leafed through it, studying the sketches that displayed proper technique for fielding a grounder, and the correct batting stance. I was drawn to sketches of a hand gripping a ball, with the fingers in different positions along the seams. This chapter explained all the various twists and downward turns you could accomplish with these grips, and by flipping your wrist at just the right moment.

  I was surprised I’d never seen George reading this book, and wondered why he’d kept it hidden, as we all knew how much he loved baseball. But when I got around to the remaining papers, the reason became clear. I unfolded what turned out to be letters, which were stacked in chronological order. They were from a man named Stanley Murphy who lived in St. Louis, Missouri. And he was a baseball scout.

  It seemed that George had met an assistant of Mr. Murphy’s in the fall of 1914, on one of George’s trips to Omaha, where Dad sometimes traveled to sell calves. That year had been the first that he’d allowed George to make the trip for him. Mr. Murphy’s assistant had given George a tryout, and George made a big impression. In the last letter, dated just two weeks before George’s death, Mr. Murphy spoke of George’s pending trip to St. Louis. “You’ll notice I have enclosed a train ticket. That’s how much faith I have that we’re going to like what we see.” The yellow ticket was still tucked into the folds of the letter—its price, $2.10, prominently displayed in one corner.

  I sat with my eyes closed, trying to comprehend what these letters implied. There was no one I knew who seemed more suited to living on the ranch than my brother George. I thought. I thought he loved it out here. Like everyone in our county, I had expected George to take over the ranch when my folks were too old or too tired. No other possibility had ever entered my mind. And I didn’t understand. The mystery haunted me enough that for a short time, I considered going to St. Louis myself. After all, Mr. Murphy had never met George. I could pretend to be George. They would eventually figure out that I wasn’t, of course. But by then, maybe I would understand the attraction.

  A week or so later, I wrote to Mr. Murphy. I explained who I was, and told him that George had drowned. I returned his ticket, and after pondering whether it was appropriate, I asked whether George had told him for sure that he was interested in playing pro ball. A month later, I received this letter:

  Dear Mr. Arbuckle,

  I’m very sorry to hear about George. I believe he had a lot of promise. And I wondered why we hadn’t heard from him. I am returning the ticket. I want you to keep it. And if you ever wonder what being a professional ballplayer might be like, please write to me. I’ll give you a tryout. My condolences to your family.

  Stanley Murphy

  The letter disappointed me. He didn’t answer the most important question. I wanted to hear Mr. Murphy report that George had changed his mind, that he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the ranch. I ended up stashing the letters in a coffee can, along with the ticket. And I buried the can in a corner of the barn.

  “C’mon, boy.” I buried my heels into Ahab’s flanks, and he reared and heaved forward twice. His front hooves caught the bank with the second lunge, and the momentum carried him right up the slope, into the pasture, where he settled into a comfortable trot. A light dew brightened the grass. Blue-white clumps of sagebrush, immune to the moisture, squatted stubbornly, as unchanging as stone.

  I came to the top of a ridge where the view always left me breathless, with our world opening up in front of me. I climbed from Ahab’s back and gazed out across the flowing sea of green. Only the distant, square brown outline of a homestead cabin, an occasional lone tree, and a cluster of cattle broke up the expanse of green. The deserted cabin reminded me of the day that the wife of the young couple marched up to our front door and defiantly dropped a basket of food my mother had prepared for them on the stoop.

  “We don’t need anybody’s charity,” she declared, turning proudly on her heel. We knew then that they wouldn’t last.

  The silence was so strong that when I walked, the rustle of my boots against grass sounded as if my head was right between my feet. I looked at the land around me, at the wheat field I had plowed the previous spring, and at the stack of hay George and I had pitched a month before.

  Even before George’s death, every time I was in this pasture, I recalled an incident that happened when I was ten years old. One day Dad, George, Jack, and I were stacking hay in that pasture. It was a hot day, a rare muggy day in this dry part of the world. After lunch, Dad had shocked the three of us by suggesting we take a little break. We were even more surprised when he pulled a bat and ball from the back of the wagon, meaning that he had planned the diversion ahead of time. So we laid out a couple of bases, and George and I took on Jack and Dad.

  The game started out light, with cutting remarks tossed between each pitch. George had his usual running monologue going, teasing Dad about his swing, which was pretty bad, and telling Jack he threw like a sheep. Jack laughed, and made a bleating noise. But after a few innings, something shifted. Both George and Jack had always been competitive. When we played against other local teams, they were both there to win. But their competitive natures showed in different ways. George was cool but relentless. He never appeared ruffled, and he kept the same patter going on the baseball diamond as he did in the fields. He talked to the first baseman after he’d gotten a single, he talked to the catcher when he was batting—always trying to bait them into an argument, trying to rattle them.

  But Jack was out to prove something. Playing baseball didn’t come as naturally to him as it did George. So he clenched his teeth and turned each play into a personal war. He never spoke. He stood at the plate squeezing his bat until his knuckles turned blue, his lips pursed, eyes raging. And he fought. About once a year, he would get into a fight during a game, and someone would have to tackle him and calm him down.

  But they had rarely been on opposite sides of the field. We usually didn’t have time to play outside of the local fairs. So as the game progressed, their competitive tendencies kicked in, and it was like the weather had changed. George’s banter became more pointed. Jack’s mouth tightened. The laughter stopped.

  With Dad and Jack just a run down, George stepped to the plate with two out and peered out at Jack, who was pitching. “Hey, Jack, you got something between your teeth there.” He pointed to his own teeth. “Something stuck in there.”

  Jack smiled at him and fired a pitch. I was catching, and I was afraid to get in front of the ball, he threw it so hard. But I blocked it and tossed it back.

  “Really, Jack,” George continued. “Right in the front there.” He pointed again to his mouth. “Looks like…I don’t know…”

  Jack threw again, his smile gone now, this time buzzing a fastball close to George’s knees. George dodged the pitch, chuckling calmly to himself. He turned and winked at me. “He’s getting rattled,” he muttered. I didn’t respond. I didn’t want Jack throwing one of his fireballs at me.

  Jack took my toss back, and got set to throw again.

  “Oh, I think I see what it is now,” George said just as Jack began his windup. “It’s chicken, Jack. You got chicken in your teeth.”

  The words left George’s mouth just as Jack was about to throw, and when he let the pitch go, he threw it
as hard as I’d ever seen him throw a ball. The pitch came in so fast that George didn’t have time to get out of the way, and it nailed him right in the ear. The crack of ball against bone flew across the prairie. And George went down.

  Dad rushed in. I shouted, bending over my brother. And Jack rushed up to George, falling on his knees next to George’s head. George was conscious, holding his ear, growling in pain. Blood trickled between his fingers.

  “I’m sorry, George,” Jack muttered. His face was so pale, I thought he was going to faint. The sweat soaked his shirt, and he ran his hand across his forehead so many times that the skin began to turn red. “I didn’t mean to hit you in the head. I was just trying to scare you.”

  “Goddamit, Jack, I was just kidding around,” he muttered.

  “I know,” Jack said. “Like I said, I’m sorry.”

  George had some trouble with his balance for a few weeks after that, and he sometimes couldn’t hear very well from that ear. That was the last time we took a break to play baseball.

  But the incident told me something about the relationship between my brothers. George had always been protective of us all, but particularly Jack. The buffer George provided between Dad and the rest of us was particularly thick in Jack’s case. I don’t think I realized how much this meant to Jack until that day. It was the most frightened I’ve ever seen him.

  I climbed back on Ahab, and we passed through the field where we had planted oats the previous two springs. This experiment—Dad’s idea—had raised a few eyebrows around the county. The general feeling was that we didn’t get enough moisture to support an oat crop. And I could tell by Dad’s pinched brow when we checked on the oats that he wasn’t entirely sure himself. But he had proven to be a prophet, as we’d been blessed with consecutive wet springs. The extra money provided enough to buy the McCarthy place—three thousand acres added to the six thousand we already had.

  I arrived at the big meadow, which formed the northwest corner of our property, and I went to work. I let Ahab drift, free to graze, while I wrestled with the grub hoe, which consists of two handles leading down to a blade across the middle. I hacked away at the solid, twisted plants, trying to break through the hard gumbo to their roots. I rested every now and then, breathing hard, gazing at the scene around me. At my back, the ground was clear except for the drying clumps of sage that I’d extracted from the hard ground.

  By mid-afternoon, I had cleared several acres, and my hands were sore and bleeding inside my gloves. My back felt like a clenched fist. The corn bread and jerky Mom had packed were gone, as were the dried apricots I’d pilfered from the root cellar. I watched the sun closely, wishing it would sink a little faster. I even took a guilty break, pulling George’s baseball from my saddlebag. I threw it at the trunk of a cottonwood a few times, but I got tired of fetching it when I missed. So I started winging rocks instead, winding up and kicking high with my left leg before letting each stone fly. I had been practicing a lot, so I was getting pretty good, and I hit the trunk more often than not.

  I had painted two stick figures on the back barn wall—one right-handed—one left-handed, along with a rectangular strike zone between them. And I threw George’s old worn ball against the gray planks almost every evening, studying his book until I learned to throw a respectable curveball. Occasionally, the old milk cow complained from inside the barn, telling me she needed some sleep.

  Around four o’clock, I heard an odd sound from the direction of Hay Creek. I stopped hoeing. But after waiting a moment, and hearing nothing, I went back to work. A minute passed, and I heard the sound again. It sounded like a cow. The third time, I decided I’d better check on it. So I called Ahab, and we sauntered toward Hay Creek. I dismounted and led Ahab cautiously along the creek’s edge. The ground was soft in places, but I didn’t see anything. We strolled along the bank for several minutes before a low moan filled the air, growing into a rich “mooo” that climbed higher and higher upon itself. The sound was coming from behind us, so I turned Ahab around and stalked, still cautious, toward the noise.

  At a sharp bend, the ground pulled at my boots, and I led Ahab away from the water, around a stand of willows. Behind the willows, a cow held her head just above the mud, where she had sunk to the base of her neck. I approached, leaving Ahab behind. The cow’s head dropped to the ground, weak from the strain of her cry. Her tongue hung loose and dry. Her eyes were wild. The thick gumbo behind her was stirred up and thrown around in a way that indicated she had escaped one trap, only to find herself closer to the water, in still softer mire.

  I didn’t even think for a moment that I had any option about what to do with this cow. I knew it would take several hours to free her. But the value of every single head of livestock to the operation of a ranch like ours was immeasurable. It meant a source of calves for the next several years. It wasn’t just one cow.

  So I filled my sheepskin flask in the creek. The cow rolled her head away from me as I came closer. Although she fought, she was weak, and I cradled the weary skull in my lap and poured water into her mouth. But this made her choke, a deep hollow wheeze that shook the ground around her. I realized that if I didn’t keep her head upright, I could drown her.

  I tried pouring water into my cupped hands, but it leaked through my fingers faster than I could get it to her. I tried my hat, holding my hands underneath, but the water also seeped through the straw. Finally, I swung the saddlebags from Ahab’s back, emptied them, and laid one in front of the cow’s broad, panting nose. I placed my fists in the center of the bag and leaned into it, forming a hollow, which I filled from the flask. The cow pushed her nose into the water, and emptied it in seconds. I trotted back and forth, wearing myself out trying to keep the leather bowl filled. The cow sucked it dry faster than any man could run.

  After many trips, I decided she’d had enough. I rested for a few minutes.

  The cow faced the creek, so I positioned Ahab on the opposite bank. She didn’t have any horns, so I had to tie a rope around her neck. I tied the other end to Ahab’s saddlehorn.

  “Okay, old girl. Get ready.” The cow gazed up at me, her eyes startled, her breath racing. I smacked Ahab’s flank and yelled. He plunged forward, the rope twanged, and the cow squeezed out a strangled “Maaaaaaw.” She rose like a mythical creature, the black mud flying, her bawl climbing. But she managed only a few feet of progress before she was exhausted. And she sank back to her chest.

  Ahab was spooked, and straining at the rope, so I grabbed his reins to calm him, talking softly in his ear. “Easy, boy. Whoa. Easy. Easy.” I stroked his neck, holding the reins taut a foot below his nose.

  When a person can see for miles around them, it’s not often that something unexpected happens. And because you tend to feel as if you can’t be surprised out in the middle of nowhere, the unexpected scares you ten times more than it would if you were in an enclosed space, or in the woods, where you might be on the lookout.

  So when a gunshot rang out from behind, my heart felt as if it would beat right through my ribs and dive into the creek. Ahab reared to full height, and I dropped to the ground, trying to make myself small. Ahab wanted to run, but the rope held him back, so he bucked from one side to the other, his hooves stabbing the earth in frustration each time he came down. On one lunge, I rolled to one side just before his front hoof plunked me in the hip.

  I jumped up and groped for the reins, managing to catch one of them. But another shot sounded, and Ahab reared again, whinnying, trying to bolt, throwing his head from side to side. The rope jerked like a fish line, and I could hear the cow choking. I ran to Ahab’s flank, pulling the single rein as hard as I could to twist his head to one side. I yelled until my throat hurt, not really thinking about what I said, but hoping my shouts would give the sniper something to think about.

  Finally, I was able to pull Ahab back just enough that I could slip the rope from the saddlehorn. Without the rope holding him back, he lunged and jerked the reins free of my aching fingers. He t
ook off, kicking his hind legs high into the air.

  I chased him for a few frantic strides, until I realized how useless that was. Then I stopped, staring after the dust, so caught up in wondering what to do next that I forgot that some bastard was out there shooting at me. Another shot rang out, echoing across the plain, and I fell to the ground. I scrambled back down into the creek bed, my heart pounding into the earth.

  The cow rested her muddy nose on the mud, looking near death. I crept to the top of the bank, scanning the prairie for signs of life. I saw nothing.

  “What are you doin’ on my land?”

  A voice boomed from behind, and I went stiff, expecting a shot in the back. But nothing happened, and I turned slowly, peering across the creek to see the lean, craggy figure of Art Walters.

  Now I’m always amazed at how a person can feel two things at once—two very opposite things at that. When I saw a familiar face, I was so relieved that a part of me could have hugged Art. But at the same time, it was hard to overlook the fact that he’d been shooting at me. But the second emotion was a lot stronger than the first, so I responded to that one.

  “Art, what the hell are you doing?” I walked toward him, right through the creek, arms outstretched.

  Art studied me carefully, eyes scrunched, still aiming the gun right at me. His thick handlebar mustache hung down over his mouth, tickling the barrel of his rifle.

  As I waded through the creek, arms still straight out from my side, I didn’t even consider that he would shoot again. I shook my head, the boil rising in my blood. “Goddamit, Art, you just ran my horse off and scared the hell out of me, and I’m not even on your land. This is our land. What’s gotten into you?”

  Art remained poised as he was, the gun on his shoulder, and to my complete shock, another shot rang out, and a puff of dust jumped from the ground three feet to my right.

  I was paralyzed for a second, but as soon as I recovered, I rushed him. I lowered my head and ran straight at him, and I was just about to take him down when everything went black.