Old Border Road

by Susan Froderberg

  And the old dog nudges the door open with her nose and comes into the bedroom. She stands there wagging her dusty old tail and looking at me with her kindly milky old eyes. Then she squats on the Navajo and right away just goes and pees on it.

  WE WOULD ALL of us fit right into being a family. Despite the spate of heat, or those hints of parts of the past gone bad, or what animals have died, or what people have left, or whatever other troubles there have been to roughen the days, we would each one of us try to show we were living with our spirits mostly high. Rose would tie her hair up in a headcloth each day and join in with the housekeeper to keep up with the dusting and the scrubbing of the old adobe house, despite you could see she was weary. She would have all our breakfasts and lunches prepared so we could come together as a family and sit at the booth in the kitchen to eat when we were called in. She would be sure to have a proper supper for us, her diningroom every time set with the bright fiesta-ware and fresh linen, her flower arrangements now dried, but lively yet. She would fuss about, usually humming some church hymn. The little bird would flutter about in its cage. She would sit at the head of the table, erect as a caryatid, her pale skin coppered by the evening light coming in through the window, expecting some effort out of us at talking. And this she would get. Son would rally to entertain with reports on the running of the cultivator or the watertruck, or he would tell stories of spill-off from a gopher hole or how a cow died or a horse foaled, livening his telling with accents and voices of different people and a humor that was deadpan. After supper, he might get up and lead us outside to show us one of the new fancy rope tricks he had been working on, which would often as not get a soft applause out of Rose and a hoot and a whistle out of the old man. Son would coil his rope up after and stand there licking at his lips, as if he were trying to tame the smile of pride down with his tongue.

  Some nights, we would sit out poolside. We would be sipping one of Rose’s cordial drinks, all of us aglow in a fluorescenty aquamarine, the light surely making us appear some gathering of alien beings. On one of these nights, Rose brought up the subject of going to church, a suggestion that brought all talk to an abrupt halt. There even seemed to be a sudden lull in the cricket shrill.

  What I mean is, Rose says, is all of us going to church and showing up as a family does.

  Her face is lit green, and pools of dark goggle her eyes.

  Rose’s Daddy stirs in his chair. He clears his throat. He says she ought not go on about a subject that never took any of us anywhere, as a manner of speaking, and that churchgoing was to him strictly a matter of society and the show that goes along with it.

  Son rises from his chair and excuses himself for the evening.

  No, Rose says, and she reaches out and hooks a finger into Son’s beltloop. You’ll not be excused until you promise me, she says. Promise me for my birthday. That’s the one and only gift I want. All of your attendance is all that I am asking for.

  Rose’s Daddy sits there staring at the rise and fall of his belly, not saying yet another word, his nostrils too telling noticeably of his breathing. Then he looks over to his wife and says, You want that for your birthday, Mother, then we shall do as you bid us. All of us shall give you your wish. Is that not right, Son? Rose’s Daddy waits for no response and gets up from his chair. Hence, it is settled, he says. He goes over to Rose and lifts her hand and kisses her spidery thin fingers. Come along hither and take a walk about the place with me, Mother, he says, so that we might enjoy an evening survey of our holdings.

  No, leave me alone, Rose says. I’m tuckered, she says.

  Rose’s Daddy turns Rose’s hand in his and kisses the palm of it this time. Then he gives his britches a hitch-up with a thumb, as is his habit, and walks away humming some dee-dee-la-da-dee-dee-la tune, as is but another one of his ways.

  Sometimes there would even be words to these melodies.

  Oh! lay my spurs upon my breast,

  My rope and my piggin’ string,

  And when ye boys have got me laid to rest,

  Go set my horses free.

  A NEW ROPE will be stiff at the gather until it gets good and broke in, Son says. You got to work it over with a rolling motion of the wrist like this, he says, and then to make it curl with the right kinda bend in it, do it thisaways. When you loop it, you loop it high over your head and with an even swing, see.

  The gyrating lasso makes a thwerping noise above, like some great insect homing in on us.

  Now you need to throw your aim sharp and lay the rope on quick, he says. He licks his lips, throws the toss, and catches the fencepost. He knocks the toss off with a jerk and upswing of the rope, then draws it back in and shakes the loop out.

  Here, he says.

  The rope keeps wanting to bend in the wrong direction, I say.

  No, he says. Gimme it. I didn’t teach you it thataways, he says.

  He takes the rope back and loops it elbow to fist, showing me once again the way to do it. You watching? he says. This is how you make it work easy for you, he says, and he whips the lariat aloft into great whirling circles. Now up over and pull for the head, he says, like this. He casts the rope over the horns of the sawhorse, then undoes the rope and drags it back to coil it up and start working it another time. You want to loop down and time for the feet, he says. He throws and lands the rope under the splayed legs of the sawhorse. Just let the calf run right into the dropped loop, he says, then go for the tug. All in the timing, he says. All in the wrist.

  Here, he says, your turn, Darlin’.

  IS THAT THE same Hart of the early pioneers here? I said. The one with the daughter near my age?

  Naysirree, that would be yet another, Rose’s Daddy said. The Pearl Hart scrived about in yesterday’s Star is a flowery piece of history that passed through these parts, he says, she being a woman from a different family entirely and famed for different reasons. The Hart in the Star is the Hart that made her name as a lady bandit, as she was the first woman to rob a stagecoach and one of the last persons ever to do so. Or so such facts have been documented.

  Rose’s Daddy stood in his saddle and resettled his sit in it.

  Indeed, the Pearl Hart in the Star was quite a damsel, he said. She was famous for being a lady desperado and famous as well for being a looker. And I can bear record to this, as I have seen many of the many pictures of her as a young woman. And she was yet alive and looking fine when I was a boy, he said, even waxing older as she was. People in town stood aside when they saw Pearl Hart coming down the street. A mighty beauty was she, even dressed as a man, which somehow only enhanced her appeal. She was of French descent, dark-haired and almond-eyed, with a shapely figure. Born into a fine and well-to-do family from the Canadian northeast. It was told she had been admirably schooled, at least until the age of sixteen, when the family’s hopes for Pearl’s future were disrupted in the stead of by a man named Frederick Hart, a man said to have been her father’s age at the time of their meeting. It is known that Hart was a gambler and a borracho and an overall ne’er-do-well of scrofulous character. And yet it came to pass that she would gallop off with this fellow, to the great dismay of the family.

  Rose’s Daddy gave a cock of the head in the direction of the old dog over alongside the road, tug-of-warring with one of the hunter cats, a pocket gopher stretched longways between their teeth. Ataway, he said.

  Gallop off to where?

  As it is told, Pearl and Hart went first as far as Chicago, where the legendary Buffalo Bill was staging his Wild West show. There was a famous western horsewoman performed in that show, and it was said Pearl was thereby so inspired by what she saw that she convinced Hart they should make a life betwixt them for good out west. They would raise horses. They would rodeo. They would open a hotel and a saloon and entertain guests by staging floorshows. They would strike it rich in mining, finding turquoise and silver and gold. Lo, they would do all the things young minds think of putting their minds to, getting rich in the meanwhile, of course, as goes
every hopeful story. But it was too soon brought to pass that Pearl conceived, as it is with women, and she did come to bear a girl child. Yet their lives lacked contentment, nor were they healthy, and Pearl sent their baby daughter back east to live thither with her mother. And soon enough after, Frederick Hart would leave Pearl to join in with a pack of Rough Riders and head south with the gang. And that would be the end of the romance between the two of them.

  Watch it on your right side, Rose’s Daddy said. Horse cripplers, he said, nodding at the pricklypear.

  Pearl did what she could do. She found work in the mining camps, cooking, cleaning, and meeting other of men’s needs. Thence she met up with Joe Boot, and she would become his helpmeet from then on. And he for she.

  Joe Boot who? I said.

  Joseph Whipple Boot, another fellow yet inclined to borrow trouble. It was sore times, and she and Boot needed money, as did most everybody. But they wanted to come by it easy. Thus it was their idea to rob the stagecoach that traveled Florence to Globe. And they did so manage to stop the stage and empty the pockets and purses of all the passengers and take what they could take. They rode off after into the dunes with their saddlebags full, whereby the two of them became lost and they wearied too for lack of food and water and shade. The end of their adventure came when the posse found them a few days later, clothed in coats of skins and sleeping on bed ground in a drycamp around the remains of a cookfire.

  Give me a swig from your canteen, the old man said.

  Drink the rest, I said.

  Boot was given thirty years in the territorial prison, served about one before escaping, then likely making his way over the border and where he too may have stayed. Pearl was sentenced to several years, served a few months of the punishment, and was released to make her life over again. She had by then gained fame and was called the Bandit Queen and thus was able to live for a while by such notoriety, hence her interviews in magazines and acting roles in plays, and entering entanglements, as was her way, with men, and women too, I have heard tell. Then as quickly she disappeared, likely having remade herself in another place, using a different name entirely.

  Then what?

  That would be as far as the story goes, far as I know, he said.

  So what does all this have to do with the Pearl Hart that lives here in town?

  None of it does, Rose’s Daddy said. This here Pearl Hart of settler days was not the Pearl Hart of bandit fame. The Pearl Hart we know today was a Charmayne Newby, originally, and born to a family whose power was gained during the era of early claims, some generations ago. They turned water barons, he said. She just took the name Pearl Hart, as the name Newby had been tainted by some low-down wheeling and dealing during the time of water-law changes and huge water-stock trades. And by then the name Pearl Hart had become glamorous and thus catchy, I guess. If she were going to be associated with bandits, she wanted one of her own choosing. Charmayne, you could say, took a new name and made herself into what she wanted to be. Indeed, quite like Pearl Hart did herself, when you ponder it some.

  IT APPEARS FROM out in the distance, like some indomitable biblical creature lumbering down the road and aripple in the heat, with the sun a great ball aflame and sinking into the mesa behind it. The watertruck moves from silhouette into body and frame, from silence into sloshing cargo load, from looming beast to beneficent being, and it sways and it pitches and chugs on through the open gates and into the arena. Son empties a full waterload out of the tank of it, the water pouring out the tail end like torn rags, and the hired man tractors behind, pulling a harrow through the dirt to level the wetted ground out. Then they drive the equipment out of the arena and come back rolling the barrels in, setting them up into a measured isosceles. The sky begins to cool from dust-colored into dusky blue as the two mark the cubits out, the dampness and cooling dimming air cuing a colony of mouse-eared bats out to dance about our heads. The flying rodents move from their roosts of rocky outcroppings and out from the hollows of cactus and cavities of trees, out from under parapets, bridges of canals, footholds of ditches, or wherever it is their middens may be. They swim about and spiral in the sky, the wingbeats like the sound of flapping lips, their sonar’d mouthparts and noseleaves divining the next meal before them—the moths and the gnats and the midges and the other vulnerable insects their tiny canines make ready to clamp down on. And they will somersault at the catch, and some will feed on the wing while others alight to dine.

  Those itty creatures sure do like to bat about after a water spill, Rose’s Daddy says.

  They’re especially pesky when I’m irrigating, Son says.

  They are good for many things.

  Maybe giving you rabies, Son says.

  They are important predators. Nature needs them.

  They should have a better appetite for gophers, Son says.

  Here, Girl, Rose’s Daddy says, take these.

  He hands me a pair of spurs.

  Herein you need to get some time in so you can beat the clock, he says. You need to practice wholeheartedly. So you can beat Pearl Hart’s girl Pearl, he says. Daughter Pearl has taken the purples for too many years now, and the big win money that follows, he says. Money, I am not ashamed to say, we could use these days. Put these blunt rowels on, he says, and get upon the paint there.

  I’ve never ridden the paint before, I say.

  You are riding him today, he says. He is a good-paying horse for the barrels, he says. Trust me, he says. Now make haste and get upon him.

  Son comes out of the tackroom with a new rope. He holds on to the home end, looping what’s paid out elbow to fist, working the stiff of the coil from the braid of it. Hey, Darlin’, he says when he sees me sitting in the saddle atop the paint. His voice and smile are full of expecting something from me. I feel my posture give, thinking of what his disappointment could be.

  This is how it shall be done, the old man says. When I call it, lift up, sink in, and let the head go. Let the horse run like all get-out. Fear not knocking a barrel over just now, as you will in the stead of improve and learn nor to do it. Use your spurs if you must, and do not make a fuss about hurting the horse, as they will nudge him on but not poke into the hide any. Your spurs will prompt the horse to do what he should do. Unless you get to where you can cue him with but your knees or a word. That would be up to you and the paint, and fine indeed if that is how you should do it. But if after a time the horse has not come to give to your touch or listen to your words, or he is yet too stubborn to quicken to your spur, then we need to think about getting you a whip for him. And do not worry either about that causing injury, as it will not. The paint is too costly an animal to be beating damage on him. Meantime, we shall see how you do without the quirt for now.

  What do I do? I say.

  You just let him run. Pick your favorite side to make your eight. Be sure to lean into the horse on the turns. Run the barrels tight. Hold on to the pommel if you need to. That is what it is there and good for. And hold on to your hat too, as some of the old boys may dock you some dollars for losing it.

  How do I not lose my hat? I say.

  You will figure it out, he says. Now gird up your loins and get out there and warm up in a lope around the barrels. Soon enough you and the paint ought to come to understand each other, he says. That should be the main thing. Whereupon we will start the stopwatch.

  What if we don’t understand each other? I say.

  Then we need to sit you upon another horse, Rose’s Daddy says. And listen, he says. Try not to be gaining any weight. Not that it would not suit you any. I talk here for the horse’s sake. I talk for winning’s sake.

  NOW SUNDAY EVENING comes, and Son takes the sorrel and I take the paint, and together we ride out in the reprieve of the cooldown and the calm of the seventh day. We ride with the dust rising up from the earth like mist does, ride over a stretch of dry pan and on through a pitch of tillage, going on into the blaze of day’s end. We come to the cement trenches and skirt along the dirt ban
k that keeps acequia from plowland, braking the horses into a slow walk along the conduits and pipes, all meant to bring life to the pallid valley. We check all the many gates that divide the water into smaller waterways, wanting the presitas full open, wanting no flow to be stanched by weed or clogged by rock, plugged by stob of wood or bunch of plastic or litter of animal, or by what other loose and useless refuse there might be to cause a drawdown. We scan the fields over for gopher holes, punctures that let the water spill from the furrow, wastage that cannot be afforded in the swelter of the days we’ve been pinioned in. We look for water rustled off from us, look for breaks and cutoffs that auger the water away from our acres, turning it instead toward the way of our neighbors. We look at the foothills off in the distance lying aquiver within a drapery of scatter and swell and chafe. In the start of the twilight above lies a canopy of stars, all hidden by the curse of dust that grips us, and those planets and galaxies and otherworlds will yet another night remain unseen. Just as the talk between us is clouded in what we both know, anything near truth not openly spoken.

  Son reaches over to the back of my jockey and uncoils the leather cord from around the bud of the saddlebag. We draw the horses close to pass a drink and we rest the horses and let them drink too. The fill in the ditch rushes by in stellates of water and light, the glints and flecks like a flow of gold before us.

  Son says, Button, you look good in the saddle.

  What’s with Button? I say.