Old Border Road

by Susan Froderberg

  Someone said, There’s not much of a flock for him to care for in these parts anymore anyways. And there be not enough believers left to believe it worth rebuilding a burnt-down church for too few to come and sit and repent in it. Another said, I heard the church up north is of a different order of faith altogether from the one we had us here—full of a bunch a cricket stompers up there, I hear tell. To this it was added, The Padre always claimed he could preach in any mission or temple or mosque or house a God there be. Yes, so another agreed, the Padre did so profess to speak universally. And atop a that he has the sense to find an otherwheres to go, knowing well enough he has to keep his belly and his billfold full, said yet another.

  The Padre will do just fine. He has a way with people. This, it was said, just about everybody said.

  The Padre had his way with me. This I’ve said to no one.

  Or was it me having my way with the Padre?

  There are ways of telling the story. I would say it all started with his words—the most earnest words I’d heard spoken about love, though what had I ever listened to of such consequence but those lyrics figured and trilled in some overdone song played over the radio? The Padre’s voice, and the melody of his homily, were tender as a caress, is what I would tell him. I sat there in the pew looking up at you and saw you looking right into me. I felt myself lifted upward—levitated, I was, afloat over every other breathing lonely soul in the parish. I was changed that day, I would tell him. I saw you and all the world and me in it differently. I saw you in me and me in me, and I was awake again because of what I was seeing.

  Call it atonement, the Padre would say. At one-ment.

  He would begin our story with the handshake. After the sermon he stood near the front doors, in the light of the archway, next to his wife. Like royalty they were, smiling and greeting the church people, those herded together in the cool of the sanctuary, then to be singlefiled and blessed one by one and sent outside into the rippling heat that awaited each, every figure dissolving into the haze of the dust. I saw you in line with the others and coming near me, the Padre said, and I thought surely the look on my face would give me away. And we touched and it was like a great bolt of electricity moving through my body, he said. He apologized for the cliché. I said, I don’t know why you apologize, and he touched my arm and smiled at this, not seeming to mind how young I was and not nearly as worldly as he, with me being yet in my teen years and too soon married and in need of someone.

  The Padre insisted on making a spectacle of the communion, as I had never been through the ceremony before. After the psalms and the canticles, the readings of the creed and the evensong, I walked down the aisle to receive the sacrament, to repeat an oath of holding in common, to take a vow of opening one to the other, to promise the promise of courage of heart. I walked down the aisle, just as I had done on my wedding day, past all those people I mostly ought to have known by now, sitting too upright in the pews, dabbing kerchiefs at their necks and brows, hats and fans beating like wings—this not too long before most would desert church and town for kinder ground, leaving but dusty imprints of themselves in the church seats. I wore a white dress for this second promenade of mine, though a short one as to the mode of the day, and I had my hair done up with strawflowers pinned into the twist of it. There were vases of buckthorn and blue dicks and scarlet sage placed upon the altar. A woman played the organ and soprano’d a melody that was ancient and mysterious and carried a sound that resounded throughout the body. Shafts of ivory light shone in through the windows, the unearthliness of it making my eyes watery and my chin quivery. Chiseled figures were as witnesses suspended above.

  I didn’t know, was not practiced in, the ways to properly conduct myself to receive the rite. I didn’t believe, really, not in the fable of it, nor did I see the importance of the ritual, and so I acted that day as if I were playing a part in a play, behaving in a way I thought might be expected. I surely didn’t believe I was being saved by some holy man holed up in the sky. It was instead the man standing ahead of me that had lifted me up out of myself and was carrying me away. There he stood before the altar, waiting, and I came to him trembling and willing to believe, willing to believe in him, in us, with all of everything welling up inside me.

  This be His body.

  This be His blood.

  The Padre said the blessing, offering me the bread and the wine.

  There were days and weeks after when I day and night pictured different scenes between us. There were hours of stealing time away to talk on the telephone, and times I went into town in the watertruck to visit him afternoons. I won’t soon forget some of the looks the older church ladies gave me on my way in to see him, the way they would glance over with their heads lowered, slowly blinking their old and wrinkled eyelids, scaly reptilians they seemed. Many of them had been friends of Rose’s, but I didn’t give notice to them, didn’t say hello, didn’t see the need to give reasons as to the whys of my frequent sightings with the Padre. I was thinking only about how this man was something happening to me, bodily and otherwise.

  But why my need to sit here and tell it?

  You might think it made up, or worse, just another old story.

  But you try trying to admit to your life.

  A SHADOW PASSED by the open window. I went to the door to see Ham standing outside. He had come by to explain, he said. That incident in the tackroom. He said he was sorry, deeply sorry, deeply, deeply, he said. He lowered his head and started acting weepy. It would never happen again. Please, he said. He reached his hand out to me, but I didn’t take it.

  You’re like a daughter, he said.

  A daughter, I said. I looked into his old stone-colored eyes.

  What I saw was that Ham was the only person left to me that came anywhere near to trustworthy. There was nothing to lose by giving him the favor of any doubt.

  THERE WAS AND is nothing to do but keep on. So keep on we do, those of us left in the calamity of the heat and the dust. We carry on with our routines, bolsoned all the while within stubborn currents of air, caught in prevailing westerlies. We haven’t the effort or the time to struggle with pity or beseeching, with sentiment or presentiment, with delicacy or the lack of it. We have only to go forward and not get trapped in the stall of looking back. We move ahead in necessity. Call it will. Call it fright. Call it any of these things.

  WE LEAD THE horses out of the stalls and halter them to the post, saddling in the ocherous haze of day’s end. The wind nerves the dust up about us in dervishes, stirring the odor of hay and dung and clay. We switch the power on as a hard dark falls, and walk the animals out of the paddock and into the arena, where little bats swoop about in the light of the floods. Cicadas quit their ruckus of tambourines and maracas. Crickets begin a scratchy calling song.

  We’re an edgy, jumpy bunch only a week away from rodeo day. What is it but the chance of big money and the little spot of glory that comes with the win that spurs us? A reason to keep moving, is what I will say. Braggin’ rights, is what Ham will claim, and a lot more than pocket change to have at that. All I know is it’ll be mucho dinero and onward ho from this, come the win, is the one thing Son will say, over and again.

  Come Rodeo Sunday there will be cowboys and announcers and judges, all drawn to town for the spectacle. There will be pickup men and timers, veterinarians and entertainers, chute bosses, flank men, prodders, and hollerers. There will be tie-down roping and team roping, steer wrestling and barrel racing, saddlebronc riding, bareback, and bull. There will be a day of old ranch sport after the big events are paid, games of branding and penning and doctoring, a show of wild-cow milking and stunt riding and fancy roping to boot. There will be men calling the times and the names out, gold and silver buckles won big enough to shovel with, a rodeo queen to wave a white-gloved hand in the parade. There will be cameras perched on tripods, fenceposts, beefy shoulders. History will be posted for keeping. Win sheets and photos will be framed and displayed.

  I look at So
n in his reverie, wishing to see what he sees.

  I reset my eyes and look again and see him through a choke of road dust, bent over, picking beer cans and candy wrappers out of the pricklypear and knapweed that litter the roadside, a scrim of foothills behind him and aquiver in the distance, a metal-colored sun above. See him in that bright orange jumpsuit they made him wear during his month of penance, the short pant legs come out of the tuck of his boot tops, dust spuming from his bootheels as he scuffs along. The sheriff driving slowly by in his sheriff’s car to check on the guilty on occasion, the sun lighting up like a white cross on the hoodtop, the yellow light flashing slowly like a sorry warning. Son keeping his back turned away from the road all the while, away from the eyes of passersby, those who would put a foot to the brake and idle forward for the show throughout the day. I pulled the watertruck up behind but never called Son’s name out, just watched him moving laggardly down the road in a scorch of coarse light, prodding at the road trash with a poke stick, his hat brim pulled low over his forehead, a filled litterbag dragging behind like a dead animal of some kind. It’s a picture in me that would forever change him. If something by now hadn’t already finished it.

  I never claimed to be Christian. But, then, isn’t it always more complicated than simply forgiving?

  SON AND HAM will pay the entry fee as a team. They need not get off a horse to win at their category of roping, and for this some people call the sport an old man’s sport, but those others who know shrug such comments off. For it takes skill, each on a horse and handling a rope for both, and too the aptitude for the marriage of the two. Son is good at the setup and gets his toss right nearly every one. Ham is precise with the lasso after all his years of mastery, and he still has the reflexes and excels as well in the timing. And there are rules to hold to, rules that define the craft, rules as to barrier and cross fire, rules as to advantage point, heeler breaks, and head catch.

  There is nothing to do but get back to the practice.

  They give me the job of the stopwatch. We give the hired man the job of hotshotting the cows down the pen chutes and undertaking the working of the gate. He undoes the latch at the touch of a hat and throws the barrier back and scrambles clear of the way. The calf bursts from the chute hard and fast, and Son gives it its seconds of yardage before gigging the sorrel and lunging out in pursuit, Ham’s horse pounding out right behind. Son builds the loop open and swings it aloft. He rises to stand in the saddle for the toss, and the lariat falls right over the horns and catches the head—nice!—but there’s a jolt at the dally and Son’s horse brakes and reels and in a sudden he’s catapulting forward, all arms and legs in the air over the horse. Son hits the ground with a thick grunting sound and with it comes a great concussion of earth. Then the sorrel topples and rolls, making its own violent cloud. The animal rises up out of the dust like a vision. It steadies itself and lopes away toward the gate, leaving an eeriness in the emptiness of the saddle, the stirrups kicking out without aim.

  Ham drops his lasso and trots his horse over and I’m ahead in a run to where Son is, pitched facedown in the dirt. I roll him over onto his back and he’s looking up at me, furred with dust and stunned, his mouth open, breathless, soundless. C’mon, I say. Breathe. He breathes. He coughs and spews curses. There, I say. Ham stays mounted beside us, his horse sidling and jerking its head up excitably. Ham looks down at Son and nods his head. Got the wind punched out of you pert bad, young waddy, he says. Son just lies there, looking up to nothing. I reach a hand out to him and he takes it, but his grip is weak and he’s turned all dead weight. C’mon, I say. Get up, I say. All he says is, Can’t.

  Don’t say can’t, I say. The voice of the old man gives me a start when I say it.

  Ham slides out of the saddle and the hired man comes running and we huddle about Son, bent down and heads together as if to discuss some ball game strategy. Tell us what hurts, Ham says. Nothing, Son says. Nothing hurts. The hired man takes his cap off and wipes the sweat on his forehead away with a shirtsleeve. We look at Son. We look up, one at every other. We’ll have to get him on home, I say.

  The hired man takes hold of Son’s shoulders and I pick him up by the legs, and we trundle out awkwardly as Ham trots ahead to open the arena gate. We have to stop a couple of times because of the weight of him. Ham comes back and takes over for me at the heels, the hired man taking the head up again. I hobble alongside Son, teasing him for the work he’s putting us through, and he moans and chokes and spits. We put him down in the dirt again, dragging him out by the legs the rest of the way.

  Ham has gotten his rig turned around so the outside light of the tackroom will shine into the horse trailer. He opens the trailer door and gets inside, shouts to stand clear, and kicks out hard lumps of dung with sideswipes of his boots. He spreads canvas feedbags over the trailer floor, then gets out and lets the ramp down, and he and the hired man lift Son up and pull him in. The old man’s old dog, by now gotten caught up in the commotion, prances about panting and nosing things. I get her by the collar and put her to wheezing to hold her out of the way while Ham and the hired man settle Son inside the trailer and cover him over with a horse blanket, as I wonder, in this heat, what for. They close and latch back the door. Ham and I get into the cabfront and drive around to the front of the old adobe house, a sweep of headlights to guide us, the hired man and the old man’s old dog following behind on foot in the thick dark behind—no moon, no stars, no galaxies, no movement to speak of tonight.

  Ham sides the rig up to the porch, and he and the hired man stretcher Son out of the trailer with the horse blanket and get him up the steps. They slide him across the cement, cutting a slithering wide path through the dust. I fan the moths away from the screen and open the door, and we get Son over the threshold and into the house, stopping to rest in the cool dark parlor. Ham and the hired man stand breathing hard in the quiet, waiting for me to light the place to see what’s next to be done. Outside, the crickets frenzy on in a high-pitched chirr and trill. The old dog skirts about nervously. What I see is that now it’s up to me to decide, that what I say will be done, and that I must believe I know what’s right in order for anyone to believe me too. Let’s get him to bed, I say. They pick Son up and head toward our bedroom, and I say, No, go the other way. We’ll put him in the old man and Rose’s room.

  They get Son onto the bed, and I get the pillow fixed under his head. The old dog goes over to him and licks his hand, and Son balls a fist and knuckles her in the head hard enough to hear the hollow below the skullbone. I give Son a punch back in the shoulder.

  What’s the matter with you? I say.

  The hired man gives me a look, and I tell him he better get back and unsaddle the horses and feed and bed them for the night and shut the arena lights down. He nods, obliges me with a sure-enough and a Missus, and turns and leaves, taking the smell of horse dung and diesel grease with him. Ham comes back in from the kitchen with a pitcher of rust-colored water. He puts it down on the bedside table and fills the glass up and holds it out to me. Here, I say to Son, take this, and I tip his head forward and put the rim to his lips. He sucks the water from the glass and swallows hard and too fast, getting him choking and spitting until he’s suddenly now bawling like a baby would be.

  Sakes alive, Ham says.

  You’re all right, I say. But Son won’t look at me.

  Let’s get rid of these diggers, Ham says, and then I’ll take care of the justins. We unstrap the spurs and Ham acts as a bootjack with each of Son’s feet between his legs to lever the boots off. I unbuckle Son’s belt and go on to opening rivets, and Ham and I each pull on a cuff until we get the dungarees shucked. Son’s legs and thick folds of dust spill out of the casings.

  Could you be of any help here? I say.

  Son doesn’t move and won’t speak. I unsnap the shirt snaps and he tries to shrug me off, but I keep at him. Ham helps me roll him over to one side and then to the other to get his arms out of the sleeves. We get Son back on his back ag
ain and cover him over with a clean sheet and turn his pillow. There’s not a mark on you, I say. Not a scratch or a bruise or a cut. Nothing I can see that’s wrong. Ham’s right, you’re just shoggled-up, is all.

  You were big-holed back there bad, Ham says. But you’ll be up and to tomorrow. You’ll be back horseback and in ace shape come rodeo day. You’ll see. Then we’ll hit us some pay dirt. Don’t think us borasca’d none, he says.

  We stand attending Son and looking down at him, but he keeps his eyes closed.

  I’ll adiós you, then, Ham says.

  I gather the bundle of dusty clothes up and turn the light out.

  Put the light back on, Son says. Now you can both get out.

  HAM HAD BID his good nights and said he would be checking by tomorrow and would see himself out the door. I turned and headed into the kitchen with the load of clothes. The old dog followed close beside, as if in unusual need of me, and as we passed her dish I paused and saw she had water enough. I went on into the backroom to the washing machine and opened the lid, going through Son’s pockets before throwing the clothes in. I found a book of matches, printed with the name of a bar in town, and a crumpled half pack of cigarettes. The watch pocket of his dungarees held a silver timepiece engraved with the old man’s name, this, aside from Rose’s Daddy’s old buck knife, Son’s only keepsake. A deeper pocket held a dirty handkerchief, and there was a tin of chew in one of the backs, a wallet in the other back. I wadded the clothes into the tub and shook the soap grains in on top of the stuff and pushed the start button. In the hum of the fill I began to riffle through what there was inside the wallet—a fold of bills, mostly singles, a gasoline credit card, a receipt. The driver’s license described Son’s hair as blond and his eyes as blue and him as six-foot-two and 160 pounds. The sheriff’s posse card he kept for some reason, and when I came to it, an image of Son came to mind. It was the day he was sworn in, and seeing him afterward, the way he walked up the porch steps looking taller than he even was, his boots saddlesoaped, his denims ironed and creased for him, a new yoked western shirt looking right out of the box and white as to the rules. The tin of the deputy badge stuck on the shirtfront shone like the sun. The old man would have me run get the camera that day to take a snapshot. The old man would take a snapshot of the two of us too—both of us smiling, looking to be trying, or maybe even yet happy.