Old Border Road

by Susan Froderberg

  Son takes the tin from his hip pocket and fills his lip with a chew, seeming to tame the bumpy ride in his manner. I try to make talk but my words are eclipsed by his silence. He’s quiet as the morning is. He takes his cap off and rubs at the fresh scar on his forehead. Scar over scar. He adjusts the sideview mirror. He doesn’t turn his head my way. When he does look over, he looks not at me but at something that must be past me, over my shoulder, or out the window, or across the field and out toward the mesa somewhere, or off into the ether, or the nether, or the whatever.

  We drive with the dust trailing behind us, and it spirals into our pull and is billowing in through our windows before we can get them rolled closed fast enough. We come to the zanja madre, the mother ditch, flowing with its allotment of channeled upper river water diverted in. Son lowers the hose and I switch the pump switch and we stand in the haze of the start of the day. Even in the morning air, my skin will freckle over and Son’s scar will redden up, both of us not so slowly on our way to leathering together. We move into the shade of the tank and fan ourselves with our hats. We drink our water from gallon waterjugs, swallowing the dust, breathing it into our lungs, where it dissolves into our bloodstreams, this dust of which we are all of us made.

  We dump the water load over the canalbanks, taming the loose dirt for another day. We take the corduroyed road back home, driving past the old adobe house on the way back to the melon shed. Rose’s shadowy figure appears out of a sway of screendoor. She had been talking of taking another visit to the coast, telling us the sea air and salt breezes would be a salve for what ails her. But this time she didn’t go. I had asked her what it is that could be ailing her. She laughed. Age, she said. Will and age.

  Son shifts down so as to lessen the wake of our clamor. He pulls us up onto the concrete slab of the melon shed, where we leave the watertruck steaming with relief in the shade. The dust motes of morning are afloat above, already beginning to settle onto the metal hood and the top of the tank of the watertruck, ready to lay claim to the day again, ready to lay claim to everything.

  The old dog gets up and shakes a burst of dirt off her fur. She comes over to us wagging her dusty shag of a tail and swags on up the front porch steps of the house ahead of us. Git, Son says, and he hazes the dog away with his hat.

  There’s a swing chair stayed by chains hung from the tesota beam of the porch ceiling, a double seat put there for Rose some years ago, and she is alone and asway in it now, fanning the start of the day away from her face with a fan of Mexican lace. In the other hand, her skeleton-thin fingers cling to a delicate china cup.

  He is a new one come to town, Rose says.

  She bats the fan wearily in front of her.

  Lovely morning it is, Dear Girl, she says, and nods to me.

  If only the day wouldn’t get any hotter, I say.

  A new one what? Son says.

  He is to take the place of the Padre of many years here.

  What Padre’s this? Son says.

  The one that of a sudden went and gave up the ghost on us, she says. Standing there right up at the pulpit, he was, and in the middle of Job. He stops reading and we think he is about to add something come to him from heaven on his own for a change, maybe speak some words of divine inspiration, you might say, as his eyes they were rolled upward and his mouth was hung open as if to give us something of a prophecy. But no, instead he just folds up and goes down to the floor in a crumple and heap. He goes and expires on us, is what he does, she says.

  She folds her fan closed and puts it into the pocket of her housecoat.

  Huh, Son says.

  It seems all to have worked out for the best, she says, but I know a person shouldn’t say such a thing as this.

  She turns her head and looks out at the sunrise coming through the grove, as though there were forgiveness within the old lemon trees. She takes a sip of coffee and sets the cup back to tock in the saucer on the table beside her.

  It worked out well for us parishioners, she says, talking into the dawning morning. That is, as this new man has at least a knack for words. And maybe he’ll be able to work some kind of divine miracle to break this plague of heat that’s been cast upon us. As if this were the Wilderness of Sin we are living in. As if some brujo somewhere cast a pyretic spell on us. Or bruja, could be.

  Good. Why not you just go and have him take care of it for us, Son says.

  Why not you two kids come and take a listen to him for yourselves?

  I’m no churchgoer, Son says. Why’m I even telling you what you already know?

  Just give it a try, she says. You’ll like the new Padre. He’s different.

  She looks at me as she says this.

  I’ll get the bacon on and the smell of home going, I say.

  This man’s not your ordinary Padre, she says.

  We got any more aspirins anywheres? Son says.

  He opens the screendoor and I catch it before it slaps closed.

  The man can sing, Rose says.

  I’ll put more coffee on, I say.

  And he’s a healer, she says.

  Her words are whooshed away in a gust-up of dust.

  Dear Dotter,

  Greetings from the Northwest Territories! We have had a good spring, having gotten our firewood in while the weather was dry for a time. We have put much game away for the coming seasons, including a large grizzly from which we rendered much fat. The Indians have proved friendly lately but somewhat short tempered when given spirits. We are planning a feast for the upcoming holiday and it is our plan to invite them to participate. They will no doubt entertain us with one of their quaint dances that would likely involve two or more of the group going at each other with broken whiskey bottles. I hope you are enjoying your new life in the Southwest. Please do not show this letter to any of your in-laws as they may take me seriously, finding me somehow incorrect in humor and opinion. I would like to visit someday but the weather would likely be too much for me. I would like to have you come too for a visit, but the wife’s kids seem to be filling the place up here, and as you surely know, there are jealous tendencies aplenty.

  Good luck, and remember never to take yourself too seriously,

  Love, Yr. Paw

  HAVE YOU NOT ridden alone atop a horse before? Rose’s Daddy says to me. I tell him not really, nothing more than a pony tethered to a pole at an age I was hardly walking at yet. He says to me that is a scantling better than nothing, and do I have some boots. No boots, I say, adding that I care little about taking the habit of riding up so not to worry himself about it anyway. Rose’s boots will do you, he says, and as I’m saying no, I don’t want to go, Rose’s Daddy goes into a closet and retrieves the boots for me. Go on, he says, put these on. I beg him not to make me ride, plead the whole time he’s leading me out to the corral, telling him as I’m following him that I want to go back to the house.

  Lo, the mare is already hitched at the post, he says. She is bridled and saddled and waiting for you. At the very least, he says, you need to come have a look. Here, just come stand next to her. Come put a hand to her withers, he says. But when I get to the horse and take a close look at her, she looks at me and stamps a hoof and whorls her head and snorts.

  She doesn’t like me, I say.

  Girl, he says, you do not in a glance know what the horse does or does not like.

  Well, that might be right, I say. And right to the point, I say, as I don’t like not knowing what might be in the mind of an animal, especially when it’s one I’ve got to be up and staying seated on. Besides, I tell him, maybe I’ve not ridden alone, but I’ve been around the place with Son on the back of his horse a couple of times. That was fine, I say. That was enough.

  Girl, Rose’s Daddy says to me, if you do not ride, do you not know you shall not fit rightly into the family? And how be it, he says, that you think your leaning back on the cantle of a saddle with a hold on Son’s belt is in any manner riding at all?

  So I get up on the horse the way Rose’s Da
ddy tells me to, afraid anyway, just exactly as he says not to be. He pets the horse on the neck to steady her and he gives me a pat on the back to steady me. He gowpens his hands for my boot sole and I step into his handhold, pulling myself up with the pommel as he tells me to, lifting my backside into the saddle, and sliding my feet into the stirrups. He keeps hold of the bridle until I settle, and he waits until the horse settles as well. He keeps a grip on my reins as he mounts the bay, and he leads me out of the corral until we’re partway down the canalbank.

  Now take the reins in your hands thiswise, Girl, he says.

  Like so?

  That would be right. You are doing fine, he says. He keeps his horse in a slow walk ahead, turning around and telling me to keep my heels down and to sit deeper into my saddle. But his words are hopeless, as I’m aware of nothing but the awful weakening now in my knees, of the tremoring in my legs, of the numbing and tingling in my fingers, of the sickening rolling within my belly. Rose’s Daddy breaks into a trot and my horse follows his lead and now my heart races full out. Without my doing a thing, aside from trembling violently, my horse decides to go from a walk to a lope, and why is she rearing her head back? What do I do now? I call out. But the reins are lost from my hands, and the mare breaks pace and moves from a lope to a fast gallop with me holding tight on to the horn in a pound down the ditchbank in nothing but a whip-up of dust all about and the hollers of the old man fading behind.

  I catch the ground hard. I lie with all my breath punched out, splayed in a welter of dust with a mouth full of dirt, waiting for my breathing to right itself, trying to see what I can see through the curdles of light and pockets of grit I’m caught in. I gasp and I cough and I spit. My ears ring loud as the locust shrill. Rose’s Daddy is upon me, tugging me up from under the arms and getting me up to my feet, but the boots are too big and slipping off my heels, and I wobble and fall back down to the ground. He squats down and shoves my boots back on. He handkerchiefs the dirt and the blood from my mouth. He stands me up again and puts the reins back right away into my hands. Ataway, he says, and he lifts my boot into a stirrup and I’m set back into place in the saddle. I yawn to make the ringing stop. I finger for the broken tooth chunk cutting into my tongue.

  After that, we ride every day. I ride the way Rose’s Daddy teaches me to ride. I know that he knows. In time, I will ride Rose’s thoroughbred mare, Son’s cutting horse, the sorrel, the pinto, the old man’s bay. He will teach me dressage and gymkhana and he will have Rose show me the ways of dressing to go riding out in for each. He says I will dress western for the barrels, and I will dress English for the jumps, and I will be ruffled and glittered on rodeo days. You will be holding trophies and showing ribbons of your own. Just wait, he says, someday you shall be waving a white-gloved hand in the parade. And Son will ride behind you in the posse. And he will love you all the better for it all, just you wait and see, Girl. Riding will give you kids something to have in common together, something aside from the common drudgery of what a married life can bring, he says. It will help keep him home some.

  That will keep you happy, will it not?

  THREE

  PEARL HART

  Devil’s rope, Rose’s Daddy says. So such barriers were known, he says, back in the heyday of the open range. Today we ride out to check on the fencing, the barbed wiring having been strung in place by a nearby rancher, a man whose pastures have all but turned to dust on him. He has not the waterways nor the means to bring the water in, Rose’s Daddy says, thus we have sublet and shall let the shepherd girt it.

  The horses’ nostrils flare at the pungent smell of the herd.

  Right there before you, wild grass turns living flesh, the old man says.

  They’re like humps of fleecy clouds sunk to the ground, some of them drifting, nibbling, and bleating. The sheep rise and shy at our approach, but for a couple of rutting males that follow a female at the heels and mind us less. She skitters about as the males stop to joust over her, their heads knocking loudly with a thick wooden sound.

  Thereby be the drives that drive us, he says.

  Why doesn’t she run?

  He answers with a kindly laugh.

  Lo, the comedy, he says, nudging his horse ahead.

  Lo, the tragedy, I say, following after.

  You shall remind me to tell the herders when they be ready to pull stakes and take leave that they best pick up every scantling of the poison meat they put out for those annoying coyotes, Rose’s Daddy says. Lest the dog should run out there after and wolf any of it down, he says. We lost a good heeler that way once and the incident wrought quite an upset. Son was thrown hard when it happened, attached as he was to that animal.

  I twist about in the saddle and see the old dog fagging behind us, her tongue aloll, her paws stirruped in dust, good as she is for neither heel nor head. Up ahead is a ditch that holds a rivulet of water, and I know she will jump down in and lap up what she can and then roll around in what’s left before scrabbling back out.

  Does that dog have a proper name? I say.

  Her name was Shebah when we picked her from the litter.

  How come everyone just calls her Dog?

  What would be wrong with Dog?

  The mare blows, making the sound of bird wings aflutter.

  We fall into the even plod of the horses and the hum of tractor engine in the distance. We’re soon come to the first of the burnt-out patches of newly planted pastureland, and here Rose’s Daddy pulls the reins back. He rests his eyes for a time on the ruin, as if he might bring the grass back into being if he stares at it long enough.

  I should have futured those acres to idle as well, he says.

  He gives a hitch of the shoulder and pivots the bay, and the mare follows. We pass stands of withered grass and crops of failing hay and acres of thirsted and yet-to-be-seeded land as the hum becomes more a roar. Son sits high atop a cultivator in the field ahead, running a disc through the loam. You can see how sullen he is even from here, see it in the way he sits or, more like it, slumps, see it in the way he won’t look over at us though he likely sees us closing in.

  Behold that dandy machine he rides upon, the old man says.

  The lull of it must have put him to daydreaming, I say.

  Son doesn’t turn his head to look our way. He just tractors on. Between the din of the machine and the haze of the day, it’s easy enough to conjure visions up. You can look out and blot the cultivator out and picture instead a yoke of oxen and a single man behind, doing the work by leg and by hand, by muscle and by heart, by need and by will. And you can imagine times before that, back with the Pima and the Quechan and the Cocopah, you can see them here carrying sticks and punching holes into the earth, see the way they will stoop to drop a seed and pat a cover over, the way they will pray the crop up the rest of the way.

  ’Tis not the individual, the old man says, but only the species nature cares for. It be none but she who so declares the truth.

  We ride side by side, the horses settling into their gaits, sky and land and all forms before us undulating in the kindle of the day. The low growl of the tractor fades away in the distance. Aside from the soft pounding of hooves beneath us, it’s back to a simmering quiet again.

  Whooo-ee! he says.

  I look at the old man as the mare slows and the bay takes the lead. He rides over his spread with an attitude of pride and vitality, even in times hard as these. He sits deep and relaxed in the saddle, reins held in a refined manner, with a bit of air under the armpits to give his arms a proper lift, his chest held open and high. Whenever he’s out of doors he wears atop his head of gunpowder-colored hair a high-crowned straw hat of legendary name, and within doors he wears the imprint of the hat ringstraked about his forehead and hair the rest of the day. He wears a white-yoked shirt with pearl snap buttons and he wears sturdy tan canvas pants, western boots with roper heels and more a rounded toe, a belt hand-stamped and engraved with his initials, a great silver buckle won in a long-ago rodeo that l
ooks to keep his belly alift. The outfit is fresh laundered and polished every day and it varies little in style and color. His face is creased with squinting lines, variegated with weather and time. He turns to look back at me, his blue-as-blue-sky eyes lit bright in the shadow of his hat brim.

  Never cluck at your horse, he says.

  When have I?

  Never giddyap a horse either.

  I never thought to.

  Then hereby you are on the right page.

  He takes his handkerchief out and honks his nose into it.

  He passes me the canteen and I take a good long drink, not stopping to breathe to lessen the taste of iron and dust, feeling the liquid funnel down the parch of my throat. The water sploshes about inside my belly as we ride along, sounding like water does inside the tank of the watertruck. I pass the canteen back to Rose’s Daddy. The wind picks up and rustles past, like the sound of gossipy women.

  There’s something in yesterday’s Star about a woman by the name of Hart.

  Pearl Hart, Rose’s Daddy says.

  Yes, that was the one, I say.

  What one is the one? he says.

  IT WOULD MAKE it seem a new start of things. It was our bedroom anyway, wasn’t it? The one room of our own in the old adobe house we could lay total claim to. Rose agreed and went into town with me and helped me buy some things—paint and wallpaper and colorful bedding and drapery—and then we came back to the house and I right away started peeling and scraping. You should have seen me, brushing, covering, hanging, tacking, changing the shades so as to let the light come into the room in a different way, setting lamps to glow warm at the bedside for nighttime, and putting a radio on the nightstand to let the music in for loving. I rugged the floor over with a Navajo weave, hoping to cover the groans and the cricks in the wood. I perfumed the bedding, the sheeting and pillows, the cases and coverlets all, and then opened drawers and sprayed the scent inside there too. I covered the bureau over with a lacy cloth and put photos of us atop it in frames and I nailed pictures of exotic places on the wall, hoping we might someday, in the not-too-far-away, even be able to get to them.