by Jory Sherman
* * *
Anson watched as his mother’s coffin was lowered into the ground. He felt a rush of sadness that flooded him until his eyes brimmed with tears. He looked at his father and saw that Martin was overcome with grief. Martin’s head was bowed and he had a hand to his face, two fingers pressing on his eyes.
Ken Richman stepped forward then, carrying a Holy Bible in his hands. He bent over and picked up a handful of the dirt piled by the open grave and tossed it onto the casket. Then, he opened the book and began to read the twenty-third chapter of Psalms:
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.
“He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the path of righteousness for His name’s sake.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over.
“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
“Amen.”
Many in the crowd, including Martin, intoned, “Amen.” “Thank you all for coming,” Ken said. “There will be re freshments served at the Baron house. Won’t you all stop by and share in Martin Baron’s hospitality?”
The crowd began to break up and drift away, walking toward La Loma de Sombra. Martin stepped up to the grave and looked down at the wooden casket. Then he began to weep. Anson walked up behind him and put a hand on his father’s shoulder.
At that moment, his feelings toward his father changed from those he had held just the day before and all that morning. A great sadness enveloped him as he heard his father sobbing out his anguish and grief.
Anson thought about the discussion he and his father had had the night before. They had talked about where Caroline should be buried. Anson thought she should be buried with her parents, to the south.
“We got a cemetery already started,” Martin had said.
“Where…” Anson said.
“We’ll bury her out where Juanito and Jack Killian are. It’s a cemetery, I reckon.”
“Yeah, I reckon.… Peebo, Roy, and I talked last night,” Anson said, after several seconds of silence.
“What about?”
“Matteo Aguilar.”
“That son of a bitch.”
Anson remembered that he and his father had argued about the land.
“We got to take him on, Pa,” Anson said.
“I know. Your mother told me to bring the cannon back out here.”
“It’s in town, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, stored at the livery. Your ma hated it.”
“She wasn’t right in the head.”
“You shut your mouth, Anson.”
“I didn’t mean anything. She…”
“I know. It’s just not right to speak ill of the dead.”
“I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
“Well, she hated that cannon, all right.”
“Yeah,” Anson said, dropping it. “Want me to get some boys and bring it back out?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You know Matteo’s going to go all out,” Anson said.
“Likely.”
“He knows about the cannon.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t know where it’ll be when he comes.”
“There aren’t too many places to hide it.”
“It can’t go in the barn. He’ll expect it to be out there.”
Anson nodded.
“Where, then?”
Martin sighed. “I reckon I’ll set it up in the house.”
“In the house?”
“Yeah. Either right at the front door, or at one of the windows.”
“You’ve got it all figured, I reckon.”
“No, not all of it. You got any ideas?”
“I thought you didn’t like my ideas.”
“Not every one of ’em.”
“Not many.”
“We better skip all that, Anson. I’m talking about the damned cannon.”
“I know what you’re talking about.”
“So?”
“I’ll have to think about it. It’s going to be a hell of a mess, having it in the house. You’ve got to have it far enough back from the door or a window so’s we can load the damned thing.”
“It would be used as a last resort,” Martin said.
“You mean if Matteo and his men come storming into the house itself.”
“Yeah. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless we wanted him to storm the house.”
“Hell, he’d see through that right away. He’s not stupid, you know.”
“I know. But if we kept retreating, drawing him back … toward the house…”
Anson pictured it all in his mind. He could see Matteo and his men circle that hill where the Apaches had attacked from, staying to the low ground, using the barn for cover. He’d come right straight toward the house. But would he hit the front, the side, or swing around in back? One cannon, a couple of doors, front and back, several windows. It was not a simple problem, he could see.
“You know, Pa, I think you can work this out yourself. You don’t need my advice.”
“Oh?” Martin’s eyebrows arched and his eyes flickered wide. “Am I hearing you right? You think I can actually make a decision?” Sarcasm clung like frost to every word in Martin’s last sentence.
“You’re a fighter. You beat Cuchillo and his Apaches without me. You and Ma. You can beat Matteo.”
“Matteo knows too damned much about La Loma de Sombra. And he’s got a passel of Mexicans trained like soldiers to fight. According to Dave Wilhoit.”
“You’re going to have to do it, Pa,” Anson said. “Me and Peebo have got to get the branding done. We’ve got strays all over that basin below the Nueces. Soon as Ma’s buried, we’re heading out.”
“You won’t even take time to grieve for your mother.”
“I can grieve anywhere I am.”
“You sound like you’re running off because you don’t want to be around me. Aren’t you afraid I might put a bullet in Lazaro’s head?”
“I don’t really give a damn. If you did that, you’d have to live with it,” Anson said.
“I ought to, that bastard.”
“Then do it. Just don’t torture him before you kill him.”
“What in hell do you mean by that?”
“I think you’d like to beat the shit out of that blind boy just to rid yourself of your own sack of faults and blame that you’re packing around with you.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you, Anson?”
“I don’t think anything.”
“No, ever since you took up with Juanito, you’ve been riding a high horse, thinking you’re smarter than anyone else. Hell, I knew Juanito a long time before you were even born. He wasn’t nothing but an Argentine cowboy.”
“Juanito was more than a cowhand,” Anson said, his voice dropping to just above a whisper.
“He had brains, some, but his were full of crazy ideas.”
“You treated Juanito worse than any man deserves. Worse, because you treated him as no friend would ever treat anyone.”
“I made a mistake, that’s all.”
“And now you want to make another one, with Lazaro. Blame him for Ma’s death, when he had no more part in it than I did.”
“Lazaro caused your mother’s death.”
“Not on purpose.”
“He ought to know the difference between right and wrong.”
“He worshiped Ma. Whatever he did with her, she told him to do.”
Martin’s face swelled with anger, turned as red as if it had been scalded with boiling water.
Anson looked at his father as though Martin wer
e his son, and he the father. To think that he had once respected his father, before Martin had run away, back to the sea, before he had driven Juanito away, falsely accusing him of raping Anson’s mother, tearing the family apart, ruining everything and everyone that Anson had held so dear. He had tried to excuse his father for his past behavior, but now he saw that nothing had changed. Martin had lost his way along the path of life, had lost those nearest and dearest to him, and now wanted to blame a poor blind boy who was just as much a victim as any of the Barons.
“Anson, I don’t know if you can count on me anymore. I just don’t have the heart to fight for this place with your ma gone.”
“You’ll fight for it, Pa. You’ll do it for Ma and you’ll do it for yourself.”
“Did you meet that Ranger, Al Oltman?”
“Yes.”
“He says there’s going to be a war if Lincoln is elected in November. He wants me to join up with his bunch.”
“Are you going to?”
“I’m thinking hard about it. I just don’t think I can go on here, staying in that big, empty house.”
“Peebo thinks Texas is going to secede from the Union if Lincoln abolishes slavery, and that all of us will be fighting the North.”
“There’s a lot of hatred to go around right now. North and South. Slavers and non-slavers. White and black. Mexican and gringo. I don’t know why we can’t just let those other folks fight it out among themselves and let us be. My hunch is to just tell Oltman to go to hell.”
“You think we could stay out of war?” Anson asked.
“We damned sure ought to. I don’t give a damn about other people’s quarrels. I’ve got all I can handle right here. With you.”
“I’m not fighting you, Pa.”
“We came close this morning.”
“And if we had fought, do you think that would have ended our quarrel? Do you think everybody else around here would have stayed out of it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think about it that way.”
“Beyond the fight between you and me, you mean?”
“Yeah,” Martin said.
“Well, I did. I saw this ranch, all the work you’ve done and I’ve done, just getting taken over by Matteo or whoever comes along, and us left with nothing.”
“You thought that?” Martin looked at his son as if seeing him for the first time.
“And more,” Anson said.
“More?”
“Pa, whatever you think about Juanito, he taught me a hell of a lot. About life, about myself, about this ranch, big as it is, just being a small part of bigger things, part of the whole world.”
“Juanito didn’t always think straight.”
“I think he did. Like now. Like this war we might get ourselves into without wanting to.”
“What about it?” Martin asked.
“Just think of everything we do, you and me, in miniature for a minute.”
“I don’t follow you, Anson.”
“One man fights another, is the same as a war between nations. Only in miniature.”
“Huh?”
“Whatever one man does is a reflection of what all men do. All over the world. All the time.”
“I’m trying to understand what you’re saying, Anson.”
“I mean you and me, all of us here on the Box B, in the whole Rio Grande Valley, we’re all just a pale reflection of something a whole lot bigger. It’s like those slaves Matteo was going to sell. You freed them, but they’re only a handful of the slaves in this country. But, when you freed them, you started something that Mr. Lincoln might finish. He might free all of them.”
“He might. But that has nothing to do with what I did.”
“What we do, big or small, as men, a nation does, for good or bad. So we better make sure we do the right thing. You and me, all of us here, make the nation what it is, good or bad.”
“The Union doesn’t give a damn what we do down here. They don’t even think about us. The men in Washington, or in Austin, for that matter, don’t even know we’re here, don’t know what we’re doing.”
“They may not know they know, but something inside them knows. It’s like chunkin’ a pebble in a pond. It makes ripples and the ripples spread through the water and cover every inch of the pond. And, if the ripples are big enough, they spill over the edge of the pond. If a pond, a lake; if a lake, an ocean; and the waves in the ocean can swamp every boat on the sea all over the world.”
“Seems to me you’re stretching a pebble in a pond to an ocean too far away to even notice you chunked a rock into a little old pond.”
“Well, that’s what I think, Pa. I’m going after that white bull, yes, because I want to build the best herd of cattle, not only in Texas, but in the world. I aim to brand every stray, every maverick I find while I’m huntin’ that big bull and we’ll see what happens with that little chunk of rock.”
“You’ve got big ideas, son. But you leave Matteo Aguilar for me to fight.”
“Only because you are the man to fight him. You bought this land, fair and square. I know Ma gave it to me and I own it, on paper, but it’s your land and you’re going to fight for it.”
“And you’re not.”
“I’m trusting that you will beat Matteo and let me fight for the future. If you don’t have any more children, I’m the last of the Baron line. I want to marry and have children and leave them something, something solid, something bought and paid for, in cash or blood.”
Martin sighed. “I thought I knew you, Anson, but I don’t. You’ve grown up way beyond what I expected.”
“I’ve followed your path, Pa.”
“Mine?”
“That’s right. Even if you turn the wrong way, I learn from it.”
“I reckon you’ve got me there.”
“Let’s put away our anger right now, Pa, and let Ma rest in peace. We’ll save what we can, and begin to build a future.”
“I’m willing, if you are.”
Anson smiled and embraced his father. He felt Martin stiffen for a moment, but he loosed his hold on Martin before it got any more awkward. Now, he looked at his father in another light and knew that they would go on from this place of death and loss and overcome any obstacles in their paths.
It was very quiet after the crowd left. Three of the Mexican hands stood with shovels a short distance away, their backs turned so that they did not have to look at Martin. Finally Martin stopped shaking and sobbing. He wiped a sleeve across his eyes and turned to his son. Anson let his hand fall from his father’s shoulder.
“I miss her so much,” Martin said.
“I know, Pa. I do, too.”
“Are you still going to go out on the range with Peebo?”
“I reckon.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to stay here and fight Matteo.”
“I guess so.”
“What if war breaks out and we have to fight?”
“We’ll fight if we have to, but not against each other.”
“No. We wouldn’t do that, would we? What about us being a reflection of the bigger world? If North against South, why not father against son?”
“That’s what makes the difference in the world. Pa.”
“What?”
“We can learn and make choices. What you and I do will eventually spread like those ripples in a pond. The war will end and people will begin to learn what they should have known before it started.”
“I hope you’re right, son.”
“I hope I am, too, Pa.”
The two men walked toward the house, side by side. The Mexicans turned around and walked over to the open grave. They began shoveling more dirt over the casket. Martin winced at each plop of dirt striking the coffin as if the dirt were striking his own flesh with terrible force.
12
DAWN CRADLED LITTLE Juan in her arms as she sat near the crude table in the casita, feeling the pleasure of his lips on her nipple as he suckled at her breast. His eyes were closed
and his tiny hands cupped the curves of her breast, his fingers light and soft, adding to her pleasure. She crooned to him, trying to remember the words to the ancient cradle song that eluded her memory.
Mickey had gone off on an errand or something for Matteo, she knew, and she felt a longing for him, a wish to share these moments with their son. But since they had come to the Rocking A Ranch, she had seen little of Mickey. And, when he was home, late at night, they seldom spoke. He would have taken his supper with Matteo and Luz and the oily Frenchman, Reynaud, and so she had eaten alone, chewing disconsolately on the dry corn tortillas and the watery frijoles, and the stringy beef that had gone almost rancid from the heat.
There was a sharp rap on the door that startled Dawn. She sat up straight and cupped a hand around the baby’s head to protect it. “Quién es?” she asked.
“Luz. Puedo entrar?”
Dawn’s eyes widened. She glanced around the room as if to straighten all that was out of order, or to see if anything she owned needed to be hidden from view.
“Yes, come in,” she said, her senses bristling as if she were in danger.
The door opened and a flat sheet of light stretched into the darkened room and stayed there, a trapezoidal shape that illuminated the hard-packed dirt.
Luz entered, carrying her child in her arms. She wore a thin shawl that shielded her hair from dust and shaded the child from the bright sunlight.
“Oh, you are feeding your baby. I came to see him and to show you my little one.”
“Yes. I am called Madrugada. In English I am called Dawn.”
“I know. Matteo told me. I am called Luz.”
“Yes, Mickey told me you were called Luz.”
“May I seat myself?” Luz asked.
“At your orders.”
“Please, let us not be formal.” Luz sat down in the chair that was used by Mickey. Her child was asleep, as was Juan.
“What do you call your son?” Luz asked.
Dawn told her.
“I call my son Julio. He sleeps.”
“Yes. Juan sleeps too. He is almost full of my milk.”
“Julio drank himself to sleep.” Luz wiped a trace of milk from her son’s lips.
The two women stared at each other, both protecting their sons while attempting to show them off to the other. They feinted in silence and in motionlessness for several seconds. They measured each other with their eyes and with their minds and Juan finally stopped pulling on Dawn’s nipple and his mouth fell from its perch and was slack and open as he breathed long breaths deep in sleep.
