In Open Spaces

by Russell Rowland

  Dad and I speculated that they’d died when the weather was a little warmer, or that the tin had blown off the roof after they died, because neither of them wore a coat, and Art didn’t have a blanket over him. In fact, he was in his union suit. There were no gunshot wounds, or knife wounds, no signs of a struggle, nor any reason to suspect suicide. It appeared they had simply died, about the same time, probably even the same day.

  “We better go check on the horses,” Dad said.

  “Mm.” I didn’t look forward to that. The condition of the horses would depend on how long the Walterses had been dead. I almost hoped that the horses were also dead. Because there is nothing more gut-wrenching to me than a starving animal. The broken, fragile frame brings up all kinds of helplessness.

  The horses were thin, but not dangerously so, which led us to conclude that the brothers had been dead less than a week. A few weeks’ extra feed would have the animals back to normal. I tried to pump some water for them, but the pipes were frozen. So back to the house, where I started a fire in the wood stove, and set two pails of snow on top.

  The horses drank thirstily, and I had to jerk the pails away from the first two so there would be some left for the team. Dad had dumped small mounds of hay in each stall, enough to fill their stomachs, but not too much, as they would easily founder.

  “The milk cow didn’t make it,” he said.

  “Where is she?”

  “One corner of the barn must have fallen since they died. She was trapped.”

  He held a handful of oats to one of the team, who flipped his upper lip open to scoop the oats from Dad’s palm.

  What was Art like? The question came to me when we went back inside to retrieve the bodies. And it took me back to the day he’d taken a few potshots at me down by Hay Creek. And looking at him now, it was frightening to remember what he’d said that day, about this land beating hell out of people. It was frightening in its truth. Aside from Art’s mention of it when we were hunting a few years before, Art and I had never really talked about that day until the last time I saw him. We threw a card party one Saturday night just before the blizzard hit that winter, and Art made a rare appearance, to my delight.

  Late that night, after several games and probably a few shots from the flask Art had started carrying, he cornered me in the kitchen and looked up at me, pointing a bony finger in my face. His eyes had that vacant, hollow stare of the loneliness, and he worked his mouth a few times, trying to get some moisture going, before he spoke. He still insisted on calling me Frank, a habit I never did determine the source of.

  “Frank, I just wanna tell you something, something I been wantin’ to tell you for a while now.” He jabbed the finger, poking, poking, poking. “I knew it was you that day…when I was shooting at you. I knew it all along.”

  I chuckled. “Hell, Art, I don’t know how you couldn’t have known. It was our land, and…well…with your eyesight, I figured you knew.”

  “Well, now, just wait one minute here, because I want to tell you why now. I want you to know why I was shooting at you. Because I was mad at you, is what it was. I was mad at you, Frank.”

  I frowned. “Why? Hell, I was just a kid then. What did I do?”

  “You came back, Frank. You came back to this goddam place when you had a chance to…well, maybe you didn’t. I don’t know. But you were young enough that you could’ve…maybe. I just hated to see it, that’s all. ’Course I wasn’t trying to hit you. I just thought maybe I’d scare you a little.”

  When we lifted Art off the bed, I found an old cigar box tucked under his arm. When I flipped the lid open, it nearly fell off, as it was connected by a skin-thin layer of paper. Inside, I found Art’s personal papers and about eight dollars in cash. On top was a picture of a thin—skinny, really—woman holding a baby in her arms. I recognized the woman as Rosie, Art’s ex-wife, holding his son, whose name escaped me at the moment. I set the picture back in the box, carefully closed the lid, and tucked it in my saddlebag.

  We wrapped Sam in a blanket and tied him onto the back of one of the team horses, who appeared stronger than the other two. This method proved to be difficult in Art’s case because of his fetal position. We couldn’t get a blanket around him, so we decided to take him the way he was. We tried to balance him on his side on the horse’s back, but he kept falling off.

  The third time it happened, we both burst out laughing. We couldn’t help it, and we shared a guilty look, then laughed some more.

  “Stubborn as ever,” Dad said, shaking his head.

  The only way we could get Art to stay was to balance him sitting sideways on the horse and tie the rope very tightly around the horse’s belly from Art’s waist to his ankles. He looked like a king, perched up there in that position, as if he was ready to review his subjects.

  The ride back was cold and somber.

  “We’ll go up tomorrow and get his stock…what’s left of it,” Dad said.

  I nodded. It was all we said.

  Back at the house, we stomped the snow off our boots before going inside. The scene that greeted us when we swung the door open and stepped into the kitchen was confusing. There was half-prepared food strewn across the counters and tables in the kitchen, with no one tending to the food at all. No one was even in the kitchen.

  In fact, we couldn’t see anyone within eyeshot, but there were footsteps and bumps and voices echoing throughout the house, a feeling of busyness that felt ominous. There was shouting, and at first I thought someone had turned the radio up too loud. But we could hear Mom’s voice, and she was angry. She was clearly giving implicit instructions to someone.

  Dad looked at me with a world-weary sigh. “What a day,” he muttered.

  Just then, Helen came roaring through the kitchen, wrapped in her winter coat, sniffling, and carrying a bundle of clothes. Bob was not far behind, also dressed for the cold, satchel in hand. As much as I wanted to know what was going on, I had a feeling from their hurried manner and their wounded looks that they weren’t open to conversation. Helen looked furious, Bob bewildered. Dad and I stepped back, although we were well out of their path.

  Soon after they had passed through the kitchen, Mom came charging through, mouth set, eyes ablaze. She didn’t go outside, but went right up to the window and looked out, apparently assuring herself that they were headed wherever they were going. I peeked over Mom’s shoulder, watching Bob and Helen tromp dejectedly toward the old homestead house. Mom seemed satisfied that all was going as planned, so she turned away from the window. Only then did she notice us. But she didn’t speak to us, or even acknowledge us. I felt myself step back one more step, although I hadn’t thought about it. Mom started out of the room.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Dad asked.

  “Nothing,” was all she said. She didn’t break stride, continuing right into the living room.

  Dad and I looked at each other, both trying to decide whether to follow her or run off to Wyoming. He jerked his head toward the living room, and we crept off in that direction.

  “I thought Steve and Jenny were going to stay for dinner,” I said.

  “They are,” Mom said, sharp and dismissive.

  I wondered where they were, but I didn’t dare ask. Dad sat down, holding his head in his hands, and I felt the same way. There appeared to be no hope of a reprieve in store from the constant drama that this day brought, and I think my suspicions about Dad’s withdrawal from the family were confirmed at that moment. It was too hard, it seemed. Too much.

  We heard tromping and slamming outside the back door, and my first thought was that Helen and Bob had returned for more of their belongings. But when the door swung open, Steve and Jenny came in, followed by Rita and the boys.

  Their entrance seemed to remind Mom that she was in the middle of making supper. She roused herself from staring out the window and marched into the kitchen, where the sounds of pans and the stove door and plates soon clattered through the house.

  Rita and Jenny sh
ared a tentative look, then ventured into the kitchen to offer their assistance.

  Dad leaned across the table and said to me in a hushed tone, “You suppose anyone will bother to tell us what’s going on?” He tilted his head. He shrugged, then threw his hands in the air, but I had a sense that he didn’t really want to know. He certainly wasn’t making any more of an effort to find out than I was.

  The smells of supper soon swelled through the house. Steve and the boys joined us in the living room, where we sat talking about everything but what we were dying to talk about. Steve seemed especially eager to tell the story, but we knew it wasn’t the right time. I knew that if Mom caught a drift of us talking, we’d probably be confined to the barn for a week.

  For several days, I didn’t even have time to think about finding out what happened. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Steve. And Rita had no idea what had prompted the move. Mom was tight-lipped about it and always would be. And of course asking Bob was out of the question. So Steve was my only hope.

  I finally made a trip over to his house one evening, telling everyone I needed to discuss some REA business, although I’m sure they weren’t fooled. But I was disappointed. Steve didn’t know what happened. All he could tell me was that at one point during the evening, while the women were in the kitchen and he and Bob were sitting in the living room smoking, he heard a slam “louder than a gunshot,” he said. “The next thing I knew, your mom came charging out of the kitchen, into the living room. She told me to go get Rita and tell her and the boys to come over to dinner. Then she turned to Bob and said, ‘and you’d better pack your things.’ And she walked out.”

  Steve said Jenny wouldn’t breathe a word about what was said. This didn’t surprise me, not as any reflection on Jenny, but because of the code in our country. Some information that passed between women never crosses the gender line. The same holds true for men. We have always held firm to the belief that some facts belong only in one world or the other.

  So with my visit to Glassers’ that night, I had to accept the possibility that I may never know the complete story.

  Once supper was ready, we all sat and waited as Mom whisked the food into the dining room, clunking the pans onto the table and refusing all help. Rita and Jenny somehow managed to set the table without offending Mom, and we dug into the grouse Dad and I had shot a few days before, green beans, and corn bread.

  We ate as if we were late getting somewhere, heads aimed directly at our plates, eyes down but sometimes peering out from the tops at the others around the table. I enjoyed watching George and Teddy, who were wide-eyed with the excitement of the drama. And Rita was clearly pleased about this development. She glanced at faces from time to time, as though expecting someone to share in her subdued excitement.

  I looked around, rejoicing quietly and to myself about having my family again. That was exactly how it felt. Helen had made a mistake, and I had a feeling once Mom came out of her spell, we would be graced with the Catherine Arbuckle we’d known before Helen came.

  It wasn’t until we were nearly finished eating, and several attempts at small talk had fallen flat, that somebody thought to ask how Dad and I had fared that day. The events of that morning hadn’t left me, although they seemed distant. I figured either Dad or I would tell everyone once the drama had died down and everyone finished eating.

  Steve, in the act of bringing a big spoonful of beans to his mouth, stopped suddenly after seeing the basket of food sitting by the kitchen door.

  “Say, how’s Art?” he asked.

  I finished chewing, planning to answer once I’d swallowed, but Dad beat me to the punch.

  “Gone,” he said.

  Everything stopped.

  “So is Sam,” Dad added.

  No one moved. Except for hands lowering their spoons and forks to their plates.

  After a silence of several minutes, a reverence of sorts, Mom was the first to speak. She took her napkin from her lap, and tipped her head back, breathing deeply. “My god, how could we be so thoughtless? I didn’t even think.”

  And we sat quietly again, our heads bowed, so that if someone had come along who didn’t know us, they would have thought we were praying.

  11

  spring 1938

  If it’s raining in Carter County, chances are that it’s spring. Although fall sometimes brings some moisture, and we get an occasional summer shower, seventy-five percent of the yearly rain usually falls in the season of rebirth. And another large percentage of moisture comes in the form of snow, so that we rely on the spring thaw to give us our start on the growing season.

  But that is under normal conditions, a term that would never be used to describe the Depression. Instead, year after year, the snow melted, and the sun sucked it out of the ground so fast that it seemed as if something underneath, some fire underground, was also at work. The sky, that beautiful expanse of deep blue, stayed blue and open, closing itself off from the intrusion of anything that would interfere with its blueness, like a cloud, for instance.

  The ground withered and split, thirsty. It turned hard and tired, giving up less and less space to those water-sucking plants that tried to stretch their roots into its belly. Tufts of grass found their neighbors moving further away each year. Especially after lumbering beasts chomped at their blades, leaving only sagebrush, broken skeletons, and a few lonely clumps to stare at the empty space between them and far-off fences.

  Finally, the dust looked around and, free of its usual restraints, danced. Dusty clouds and swirls frolicked between drooping, solitary plants, mocking and tormenting. The only sign of life.

  Most springs, we moved the stock to pastures further from the river, because the creeks were filled with winter runoff. But each year of drought, as more and more creeks dried up, we had to keep the stock closer to the river, until the pastures that bordered it were chewed to nearly nothing. The stock weakened, their bones pushing against thinning hides, and their immunity diminished. Many cows and ewes went sterile. We lost several during labor, leaving so many orphaned calves and lambs that we didn’t have time to feed them. Most of them also died. When the wind blew, and it blew often, it smelled of death.

  But we usually couldn’t smell even that, thanks to the dust. Our noses seemed to be constantly clogged with dust. And we had perpetual coughs. For over ten years we coughed, spitting gobs of dust into the dust.

  “I’m going to check on the cows.” Rita grabbed her felt cowboy hat from its peg and tugged it over her dark hair, which was in a bun. A few gray strands sparkled in the lantern’s light. I nodded, looking up from my newspaper. It was calving time, and we had moved the few cattle left to calve into the small pasture behind the barn, where we checked them regularly.

  “Did you boys feed your lambs?” Rita asked.

  George and Teddy were in charge of the bum lambs, the orphans, which they fed by bottle every day. It was an unpleasant, difficult job, and getting bigger all the time.

  “Yeah, we fed ’em,” George said impatiently. George had become a source of nearly constant amusement to me. Although he was perpetually surly, it was a disposition that appeared to come more by design than by nature. His stony glare could be easily broken with a good joke, or a teasing comment, and he showed an excellent, dry sense of humor of his own. “We fed ’em and we changed their diapers,” he said without looking up. Rita responded as she usually did, with a smile and a roll of her eyes.

  “You think you could put some coffee on?” Rita asked me. “I’ll be ready for some when I get back.”

  “Sure.”

  “Let me do it.” George grabbed the pan before I could think about saying no, then rummaged through the split logs for some kindling.

  Teddy tried to help, but George cocked his fist, ready to bring it down on Teddy’s scarred ears. For once I jumped in before it happened.

  “George, you hit him and you’re doing the milking for the next two weeks, every morning. I don’t care if you’re late for school, you
will milk the cow every morning.”

  George’s hand fell to his side, still clenched. And Teddy shocked the hell out of me, and George, by clocking him right in the chin, a deft, accurate jab.

  Even more surprising, George didn’t hit him back. Teddy’s hands immediately flew up to cover his head, but George’s fist opened slowly, and he turned back to the stove, where he started loading wood into it. He wiped a slight trickle of blood from his lip.

  It was hard to keep from laughing. Actually, I did laugh, but I kept it quiet, behind my newspaper.

  Checking the cows sometimes meant pulling a breech birth, or unfolding a front leg that was hung up inside the mother. If everything was okay, a quick check took about a half hour. So after an hour, I was just about to go out and see whether Rita needed some help when I heard a horse outside. Rita came in, her face troubled.

  “Blake, you better come out here.”

  She cupped her hands to the wood stove.

  “What is it?” I set down my paper and slipped my boots on.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “But we should probably hurry.”

  I was confused. Despite this statement, she didn’t seem rushed at all, and I couldn’t imagine what problem could come up that she wouldn’t have encountered before.

  “You’re not sure?” I wrapped myself in a jacket and tugged on my hat.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” She sounded terribly sad.

  “All right,” I said.

  Out in the pasture, Rita wove through the cattle, some standing, some lying down, one licking the fresh afterbirth from her shaky newborn.

  “Shoot,” Rita suddenly said.

  “What?”

  “Oh, she’s moved. She was right around here.” She pointed, then jerked the horse’s reins, guiding him at angles across the pasture. Five minutes later, we came upon a lone cow, standing in a corner of the pasture, facing us with a fearful, confused look. “There she is,” Rita said.