Improbable Fortunes

by Jeffrey Price

  As she tearfully left the courtroom, Mary stopped to kiss Buster goodbye. Banged up as she was, Mary was already Looking Better Without Bob—which should have been the title of a country and western song. She hugged Buster and held him close for an embarrassingly long time.

  “You’re my hero,” she said, and slipped something into his hand. When Buster looked down, he saw that she had given him Bob’s championship rodeo buckle.

  “Aw, Jiminy, Mrs. Boyle, Ah cain’t take somethin’ like this… A feller’s gotta earn it.”

  “Believe me,” she said, “…you did.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Stumplehorst Outfit

  The Women’s League of Vanadium was quickly running out of good Christian homes for Buster. Sheriff Dudival, who until now had worked behind the scenes on Buster’s behalf with no less cunning and resourcefulness than a Vatican cardinal-prefect, begged the League to give him one more chance to place Buster before they sent him off to the county orphanage.

  He had one last good idea, the Stumplehorst family. The Sheriff would have to bring to bear all of his powers as a salesman, for this was not an easy sell. What he had in his favor was that it was round-up time, and the Stumplehorst Ranch usually paid for temporary hands. With Buster’s adoption, all it would cost them to have another able-bodied wrangler would be room and board. Sheriff Dudival scribbled that thought down on a napkin as he waited to meet Skylar Stumplehorst for breakfast at the High Grade.

  “Can he ride a horse?” It was obvious that Stumplehorst knew very little about Buster.

  “He’s probably the best rider and roper in this county now that Bob’s dead.”

  “We have some strange hands in the bunkhouse, but I don’t think there’s a killer among ’em.”

  “No one’s been able to prove he’s killed anybody.”

  “I don’t want to die. Is that so unreasonable?”

  “Stumplehorst, you’re not afraid of that boy; you’re afraid of what your wife is going to say if you make a decision without consulting her.” This was a sore point with Skylar Stumplehorst. Skylar Anderson had been a two-bit cowboy until he impregnated Calvina Stumplehorst in the back of his truck at the conclusion of “Rattlesnake Round-Up.” She was from a ranching family that only produced women—which was why her father, Calvin, insisted that Skylar change his surname to Stumplehorst. After Calvina’s mother and father passed, Skylar was sitting pretty. Calvina bore him four daughters, who, like their mother, treated him like the uncouth yokel he was.

  “I call the shots out there.”

  “Prove it.”

  “All right, I’ll take him.” Stumplehorst regretted that statement immediately, but before he could say another word, Sheriff Dudival threw down three bits for his coffee and walked out.

  That afternoon, Sheriff Dudival drove Buster up to the ranch before Skylar could change his mind. Rearing up above the massive timber gates were twin wrought iron rampant colts. They had been copied from the handles of the famous pistols—between them were the letters S-T-U-M-P-L-E-H-O-R-S-T.

  “Cain’t ah just stay with you at the jail, Sheriff?”

  “I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time for that later.”

  As they pulled up the road to the house, Buster could see three of the Stumplehorst daughters hanging laundry in the front yard. Hope, Faith, and Charity were fine examples of sturdy Lame Horse Mesa girls, but it was Destiny Stumplehorst, Buster recognized from the rodeo, who had him in her enthrall. She was in the corral brushing out her mare, Maple, who was named after the syrup and not the tree. Both Maple’s and Destiny’s ponytails had the same tight braid. Destiny had a constellation of freckles across her face as if she had held the wrong end of a can of Rustoleum. Buster had become, since living with the Svendergards, quite adept at imagining what people looked like without their clothing, and he imagined Destiny might just have the best figure of any girl in town, but there was more to his admiration than merely the physical. He liked the meticulous way she combed out her horse’s mane and tail. He liked the way she wore a red bandana in her hair to keep it clean. He liked the way she chewed gum in little inconspicuous movements like she was biting the inside of her cheek thinking about something important. Then, without warning, she turned and looked right at him. Their eyes met, and Buster quickly slumped down in his seat.

  “What is wrong with you?” the sheriff said.

  “Nothin’.”

  “Come on now. Sit up. This is no way for a gentleman to make a first impression.”

  At the head of the driveway stood Skylar and Calvina. Calvina’s father, Calvin Stumplehorst, was one of the most admired men in Vanadium. At nearly 450 pounds, he had to have extra-large saddles custom made by the Botero Leather Company in Valencia, Spain. In a bar fight, he would use his stomach to knock his opponent to the floor and then lay on them—like the famed Flat Rock in Arches National Park. Calvin Stumplehorst was the one who had put money into the refurbishing of the IOOF, the International Order of Odd Fellows. He was the one who had organized the building of a rodeo arena. He had three mistresses, one Chinese, one Mexican, and one albino. He had an extensive collection of Red Skelton records that he would listen to in the tack room and laugh and laugh until tears rolled down his florid face. It was said that Calvin Stumplehorst, until he got himself a bellyful of cancer, could eat a whole mule deer by himself in one sitting. After they removed his stomach and reattached it to his small intestine, his oncologist told him that if he ever ate anything larger than a Le Sueur pea, it would be the end of him. He followed his doctor’s instructions and lost 250 pounds. No longer the imposing figure that he had once been, he adapted to the person he now was. He took up the writing of poetry and chronicled in verse every aspect of the ranch and the land he loved. Some of his stuff made it into the local newspaper because he owned it. One poem was submitted to The Paris Review along with a contribution for $2,500. It was published in the fall edition of 1961. It went like this:

  This is my damn house / This is my damn broke-down tractor / This is my damn dog / This is my damn horse / This is my damn rock / This is my damn ranch

  But in the end, even being the poet laureate of Vanadium was not satisfying for a man of such Herculean appetites. And so, one Saturday night, he put four pounds of short ribs in his personal crock-pot with a bottle of red wine, a can of tomato paste, three onions, fresh thyme, and two bay leaves from his garden. In the morning, he saddled his favorite swayback pony, took one last ride around his property, and went to International Order of Odd Fellows where he hung an oil painting of himself that he had commissioned. Then he returned home, ate all the short ribs, retired to the tack room, put on a Red Skelton record and, unlike Socrates, died an exquisite death.

  As big a life as Calvin lived, his eldest child and inheritor of his lands, Calvina, lived a small one. You could see it in her face, which was pale and indistinct. It was less a face than it was a grave rubbing. When she was a teenager, Calvina had been sent off to Uncle Hebron in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. He was a General in the Salvation Army. There, she was indoctrinated in the ways of sobriety, piety, and parsimony. She saw firsthand what a profligate lifestyle could lead to—drunkenness, venereal disease, illegitimacy, and hopeless destitution. Now, as the baroness of the Stumplehorst Outfit, many of the Army’s principles were embedded in everyday Stumplehorst life. They prayed twice a day in the outbuilding once used to house the Red Skelton collection, now a house of God. No music or television was allowed. The girls were given a dollar a week of spending money. Skylar was given $4.75. Everyone in the family had to carry the traditional Salvation Army Little Black Book—and account for every penny spent. Calvina inspected each and every one for discrepancies on Friday nights before Evensong. And lastly, the children were not sent to the public school. Calvina taught them at home from a curriculum sent by mail from the Thessalonians Home Study Course of Oxford, Mississippi.
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  The Stumplehorst family had twelve hundred irrigated acres bordered by a worm fence that was laid out by old man Stumplehorst in the 1940s. Four hundred head of Angus meandered across the wavy grass like black holes; quarter horses raised for hobby, neat rows of chicken coops and swine pens, and twenty acres of planted vegetables. Not even the fashion designer Ralph Lauren in Ridgway, Colorado, had a ranch like this. And he had money. The Stumplehorsts didn’t have money. They had the US Government.

  When Calvina’s father died, so died his distracted way of managing the ranch. She immediately sought out the government programs that had always been available, but never utilized by her father whose interests, as previously noted, were elsewhere. In short order, she cobbled together a dizzying network of subsidies that increased the Stumplehorst Ranch’s financial wherewithal six-fold. A rancher needs land to graze cattle. By enlisting in the Federal Land Lease Program, she was able to add four thousand acres to the ranch—allowing them to build a bigger herd. And while she was at it, she might as well avail herself of the government’s Risk Management Insurance Program that made it possible to hedge volatility in the beef market. She also helped herself to a USDA Rural Development Subsidy, which paid for the irrigation and soil preparation of their new organic squash and lettuce business. Her husband, Skylar, who was no Andrew Mellon, but a reduce-the-size-of-the-government Republican nonetheless, was uneasy with her high finance shenanigans and told her so.

  “Tell me something, Skylar,” she’d said, when he balked. “If you saw a dollar laying there in the middle of the road, would you, or would you not, pick it up?”

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  Calvina Stumplehorst took one look at the patrol cruiser coming up the driveway and saw the boy in the front seat. It was obvious that Skylar had not told her about his conversation with the sheriff.

  “What’s this about?”

  “It’s nothing,” Skylar said, trying to cast it off. “It’s a kid I said I’d let work here for six months.” The tumble of that deviated syntax set off alarm bells for Calvina. Her eyes narrowed. A partial truth, or worse, a lie, was being told.

  “Is that Buster McCaffrey, the murderer?”

  “Nobody’s ever proved that.”

  “That’s what the sheriff told you.” Calvina was always one step ahead of him.

  “It’s just for six months. We can use him for round up.”

  “You haven’t adopted him.”

  “Of course, not. You think I’m an idiot?”

  Buster got out of the police cruiser and took off his hat. Long, tangled, dirty hair spilled out.

  “Uh, ’lo, Mommy. ’Lo there, Daddy.”

  Faith, Hope, Charity, and Destiny Stumplehorst giggled. Mrs. Stumplehorst turned purple and hissed something in her husband’s ear and stormed back to the house.

  In the barn, Skylar put on his leather sheep shearing chaps and took an electric cutter to Buster’s hair. Unbeknownst to Buster, he had an audience peeking in through the workshop window—Destiny Stumplehorst and her three sisters.

  “The missus doesn’t want you to call her ‘Mommy,’ unnerstan?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You can call me Pop if you want, though.”

  “Okay, Pop.”

  “But don’t call me Pop around the missus.”

  “Whatever you say, Pop.”

  After Skylar had buzzed Buster all the way down to the scalp, Buster reached up, touched the top of his head and whistled.

  “Jiminy Christmas!”

  Skylar then instructed Buster to take off his clothes and stand against the cinder block wall. Skylar let him have it with the fire hose. The girls outside watching had to cover their mouths as they squealed with laughter at the sight of their newly adopted naked brother. Destiny had to pull Charity’s hair to get her out of the way so she could get a good look. The girls were all dumbstruck by the size of Buster’s johnson—which, even under the duress of freezing cold water, gave the impression of a Slinky making its way down a flight of stairs.

  Satisfied he’d loosened all the grime and vermin from Buster, Skylar proceeded to burn his clothes, hat, and boots. Buster was given a new pair of Carthart workman’s pants, a shirt, two pairs of skivvies, two pairs of socks, and a pair of White’s Packers.

  “You’ll sleep with the other fellers in the bunkhouse.”

  As they walked outside, the Stumplehorst girls scrambled out of the way.

  “People in town tell ya we’re rich?”

  “The Dominguezes always tole me not to listen to what people said in town.”

  “Well, we’re not rich. So get that outta your head right now.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And be don’t be goin’ around here losin’ tools or throwin’ em on the ground. And don’t take a whole handful of toilet paper when you wipe your ass. It’s a waste of money and it clogs up the septic.”

  “Yessir.”

  The bunkhouse was a drafty old wooden building that leaned over on its hip as if it had been waiting a long time for a bus. Buster adjusted his clothes in his arms so he could offer his hand to Skylar and say what Sheriff Dudival had told him to say when the time was right.

  “Mr. Stumplehorst…wanna say ah ’ppreciate the op-por-too-nit-ty.”

  Skylar looked at him and didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. He shook his hand without saying anything. It was his wife’s idea to put him in the bunkhouse. If it had been up to him, he would have put him in the house. But it wasn’t up to him. He just hoped that Buster wasn’t going to resent the accommodations.

  The men awoke at four thirty in the morning. They washed and dressed in the dark. They were then made to stand outside in the corral and hold hands while Mrs. Stumplehorst administered the Morning Prayer. Anyone who overslept or dodged the prayers was not eligible for breakfast. Every couple of weeks or so, a man from Delta came down and randomly tested their urine. Any man caught playing a musical instrument, drinking, playing cards, reading an X-rated magazine, or talking to her daughters was summarily fired. The men, of course, hated her, but like her own husband, they had no other place to go.

  Buster opened the bunkhouse door and stepped inside. There was only one electric light bulb hanging from the apex of the rafters. The board and batten structure was heated by a potbelly stove in the corner. Either everyone was too lazy or too tired to stoke it. There were ten men in their cots, ages twenty-five to forty-five. The air was blue from tobacco smoke and stunk from clothes, body crevices, and feet that may not have been washed in months. The men turned to look at Buster then looked away, disinterested. They were doing a variety of things—one cowboy was stitching a torn bridle, another man was sitting on another’s back squeezing a cyst that the other man couldn’t reach himself. Some were just laying there with their eyes open looking at nothing. Buster wandered around the room until he found the only bunk available. It was situated next to a cracked window. The bed was unfortunately missing half of its slats. The mattress showed the tale of its long use with pastel splotches of yellows, ochres, and reds. Buster took the bedding that the old man had given him and patiently fixed things up as best as he could.

  There was a mandatory lights-out at 9:30. Buster had chewed bits of newspaper into pulp and caulked the cracks in the wall that were blowing a steady stream of chilled air into his left eardrum. He tried to go to sleep, but he was too excited about the prospect of being a real working cowboy. As disjointed as his life had been, he felt that there was a direction, an unseen hand guiding him to where he was now—even if he was sleeping on a putrid mattress. Quietly, he slipped out the side of his bed so the other men couldn’t see him and got on his knees and prayed. He prayed for the people who had raised him, living and dead.

  That night, Buster had a dream. He was the boss man on a wagon train that was heading out west to start a new life. It was a heavy responsibility—being the boss ma
n. Some of the people he led were folks he knew—like the Dominguezes, Svendergards, and the Boyles. In each valley they came to, he had to judge the soil, the quantity and quality of the water, whether there was enough timber to build homes, churches, and schools. Each place, so far, had fallen short, and they kept moving—a train of twenty prairie schooners creaking across the slickrock and dry soil. Buster opened his eyes. He was awake, but he could still hear the creaking of the prairie schooners. Then he realized that it was the bunk beds in the room that were creaking from the men masturbating.

  At four thirty the next morning, the cowboys reported outside for prayers in the corral, then shuffled into the dining hall—heavily, as if their feet were shackled. Single file, they stopped to grab coffee from an urn by the door and sat down at a long wood-planked table. Skylar was already seated at the head with his cup of black coffee. The men all said perfunctory g’mornin’s and stared down expectantly at their empty plates. Jared Yankapeed, Stumplehorst’s top hand, sat next to him on his left. Mrs. Stumplehorst sat on his right.

  Spirits lightened when the Stumplehorst daughters appeared from the kitchen with platters heaped with flapjacks. Mrs. Stumplehorst, always on message, had the girls make Jesus cakes—pancake batter that had been poured in the shape of a crucifix. Destiny Stumplehorst, primly and properly, never once making eye contact with the any of the hired hands, finally made her way to Buster’s left and placed his plate in front of him. Unlike the others, his pancake was not in the shape of the cross, but rather, in the shape of a heart. Buster turned and looked at her. Her face was inscrutable. Their eyes met for a brief instant, and then she returned to the kitchen. Destiny, like most teenage girls the same age as boys, was clearly running a furlough ahead of Buster in the sexual education department. He could feel his blood evacuate his extremities and take cover in his cheeks. Suddenly self-conscious, Buster raised his eyes to see if Mrs. Stumplehorst was watching him. Her nostrils dilated slightly as if she was trying to sniff impropriety in the air. Buster took fork to Bisquick and mashed it until it was unrecognizable. There was a quick prayer over the food followed by the distraction of twelve men eating with their mouths open. Buster, on his first day, had so far escaped being fired.