“It must be the place,” Dan said. “It’s exactly as Quinn described it to me.” “Hello, Marine,” the man said, shooing the dogs back. “Can I help you?”
“Is this the M/M Ranch?”
The man laughed. “Used to be a long time ago.”
Dan studied the man. His skin was dark and he certainly was full of Mexican blood, but he spoke with no accent.
“I’m looking for the Quinn family. See, uh, Justin Quinn was in my company. He was killed at Saipan. My wife, Siobhan, and I have come to pay respects to his family.”
A nice-looking woman in her mid-twenties emerged from the house and came alongside her husband. He spoke to her in Spanish, and as he did, her face became grim.
“I am Pedro Martinez, the caretaker. And this is my wife, Consuelo.
Will you please come in? Your name?”
“Sergeant .. . rather, Daniel Timothy O’Connell. My wife, Siobhan.”
“Siobhan is a beautiful name,” Consuelo said.
“It’s Irish for Jane. Oh, what a lovely room.”
The ranch house living room was timbered and high ceilinged, with a river stone fireplace to match. The Pedro fellow seemed concerned as he checked his watch.
“Can I offer you drinks?” Consuelo asked.
“No, thanks. I mean, I want to know about Quinn’s mother and father.”
“I have to take you to another part of the ranch,” Pedro said. “The problem is that it will be dark before we return, and I won’t let you go down to Troublesome on that road at night. You are most welcome to stay here overnight.”
Siobhan smiled and nodded to Dan.
“Perhaps, Miss Siobhan, the sergeant and I should make this visit ourselves,” Pedro said. “Uh, there is a stream to cross.”
Pedro was not very good at covering his uneasiness. “Certainly,” Siobhan said.
Dan and the foreman jeeped down a winding dirt road inside the property until they could hear a faint rush of water. They parked at a tentative wooden bridge across the stream from a ramshackle miner’s cabin.
“Is this what I think it is?” Dan asked, sinking.
“I’m afraid so,” Pedro replied.
“I may not be able to cross,” Dan said suddenly. “My leg might give out on that narrow beam.”
“I understand.”
“Like hell you understand! Like hell you do!” Dan told himself.
“Shall we go back to the ranch house, then?”
Dan did not answer. His choice was to turn and go, but he was unable
to. If he walked away, he’d come back. “Let’s cross,”
he whispered.
The shack reeked of mold. Everything inside was broken.
Newspapers had been stuffed in the cracks to keep the cold out. The roof was half down, the windows broken and thick with sludge. Outhouse turned over. It was altogether a place for rats. Dan’s eyes studied a place of disemboweled human life. He could not speak, or barely breathe. Dan staggered outside and stared at it, crazed pain in his eyes.
“The ranch never belonged to the Quinns,” Pedro said.
“Tell me!” Dan cried.
“There is a large settlement of Serbs between here and Crested Butte. This ranch was property of the brothers Tarka and Sinja. Tarka Malkovich was the only man I ever saw who could beat an Irishman to the bottom of a bottle. He and his brother were at war with everyone, and each other. They were troublemakers. It was hard for the valley to live with them. Everyone had a beef going with the Malkoviches: the doctor, the sheriff, the feed store. Tarka died of a heart attack, undoubtedly from drink. That was right before the war. Sinja ran the place into the ground in no time flat. The bank evicted him, and the ranch stood unattended for over a year. The bank made me a deal. I was to get the ranch up and running in good shape. When it was sold, the bank promised to stake me to three hundred acres, my own little ranch.”
“I want to know about Justin Quinn!” Dan interrupted sharply.
“You should only see the way the water gushes down in the springtime after the winter snowmelt,” Pedro said.
“I want to know about Justin Quinn!”
Pedro sighed and said a soft “Amigo.” “His father was Roscoe Quinn, a bad, bad hombre. For a time the Malkovich brothers let him sharecrop and mine a claim. Roscoe was a pig,” he spat. “He beat his wife and children, and played with his daughter, you know how. Anyhow, Justin was the oldest and grew to be able to handle his father. They say their fights were vicious.”
“He was a fighter, all right,” Dan mumbled.
“Roscoe went into Denver to the cattle show and got piss assed drunk and ended up raping a woman and trying to rob a bank. He’s in the state penitentiary in Canon City. Twenty years. The wife and kids went to relatives in Arizona. Justin joined the Marine Corps.”
Dan’s voice cracked, but he knew he had to keep talking, keep thinking. “Well, too bad he didn’t get to play out his scholarship at the University ... or ... have all the valley girls falling all over him.”
“Sergeant Dan, Justin never had a scholarship. He never completed high school. As for the girls, no one wanted to come near the Quinn family.”
Dan sat by the window all night. “Fucking liar,” he said under his voice.
Siobhan felt for him in bed, then propped herself up on an elbow. The betrayal had left Dan robbed of his sacred moment. Nothing had ever clutched him so, not even the word of Quinn’s death. “Fucking liar.”
“Why can’t you feel for the pain in his life that forced him to live a lie?” she challenged.
“I do! Poor Quinn! The sonofabitch! We all lie, but nothing like this. Me? Brooklyn cop. Sure, I exaggerated about cuffing gangsters. We all lie. Impressing each other is a craft. But this was a big fucking lie!”
“Justin had a lot to lie about.”
He felt her hand on his shoulder. Oh, Jaysus, that felt fine enough. He turned around and found her breasts for his head to rest on and breathed uneasily to hold back sobs.
“He lied from day one about his grand house and prize beef. About his football scholarship. Maybe he wasn’t even American. He had kind of dark skin. The Corps was taking in Mexicans and Indians. We had three Navajos. But we never had no blacks in the Corps!”
“Dan, that’s an ugly word, I don’t like it.”
“Well, you never had to walk the beat in the colored neighborhood.”
“Shut up. You sound like a bigot.”
Dan wept.
“I feel for your sorrow,” she said. Siobhan slipped on her bathrobe and went out onto the veranda. For the first time she saw the moonlight up a string of mountaintops. Troublesome Mesa lay at the bottom of a glen in a steep, winding valley. Snow blankets and a silver sliver of a stream. What a land, indeed. She’d never known of a place like this.
“Jesus, I’m sorry,” Dan said, coming from the bedroom. “I’m really sorry. That Martinez fellow has been a good, sensitive man. I guess they import a lot of these people from Mexico. It’s nice to see a good one, I mean, not just another Mexican who would multiply and go on relief.”
“Consuelo told me that Pedro served six years in the Navy. He is from an old Colorado family, and he was wounded at Pearl Harbor, or maybe you didn’t notice that he’s blind in one eye.”
“I seem to have everything upside down,” he said softly.
“That is because your world has been set upside down. We’ll have to set it right, then.”
“Can I touch you, Siobhan? The blow goes away.”
She knew now how to fit into his big, strong arms. “Quinn knew that you would come here,” she said.
“You really think that?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“What does it mean, then?”
“Hard to say what might have gone ‘round in his head. But I know he wanted you to come here.”
LATE 1945 --ONWARD
The banker’s chair from the turn of the century was worn through in several spots, just as the decrepit Firs
t National Bank of Troublesome Mesa had survived the land rushes, the silver crash, and ever-present drought.
Mr. Dancy, a Mormon, knew every tree in the valley and beyond. He was strikingly direct. “I was able to close on the Mal kovich boys just in time. Frankly, I couldn’t have sold the M/M if I threw in the Brooklyn Bridge. Anyhow, Pedro there comes home from the war, one eye and all, and marries the most beautiful girl on the western slopes. I knew his yahoo days were over, right, Pedro?”
“I don’t even miss it,” Pedro answered.
“Pedro talked me into letting him run the place until after the war, when I could find a buyer. We’re going to stake Pedro to a couple hundred acres somewhere.”
“I’ll let you two gentlemen have at it,” Pedro added. “I’ll be down at the diner, Sergeant Dan.”
There was talk between Dan and Dancy about the size of the ranch—well
over two thousand acres with bits and pieces all over the mountain, and
the water rights were clean. The house, worth at least eleven thousand
dollars, would be part of the deal. They shillied and shallied, Dan’s
service and decorations making their own impact. Dancy had hoped to save the ranch for some Mormon boy returning from the war, but this had a hopping good flavor to it.
“What’re the numbers?” Dan gulped.
Dancy studied the ledger. “It’s a good ranch and expandable, except for where those crazy Slavs started fencing each other off and cheating with the water.”
“How much?”
“Can’t tell precisely. There’s almost thirty thousand still on the books. I’d have to research the county records, particularly the government land abutting the south. Forty-some thousand would swing it, I’d say.”
Dan’s heart became a cannonball.
“You were a cop in New York?”
“In the three days I’ve ridden with Pedro, I find I can ride a horse without too much discomfort.”
“Wounded?”
“Yes, sir. Saipan.”
“How much can you put in?”
“I have over nine thousand cash and probably can raise another four or five from my family.”
“But you don’t know doodly egg roll about cattle.”
Dan lowered his eyes and shrugged.
“I have an idea,” Dancy said. “Do you like Pedro Martinez?”
“I’d have him in my platoon any day
“He used to be a hell-raising kid, too generous with money he didn’t have, and Mexicans have no inherited family money. Fact is, Sergeant, we have already turned him down for a large loan. They are not too dependable, if you know what I mean.”
“He’s honest, isn’t he?”
“Honest as Jesus. He was in the hospital for almost a year, mostly
blindfolded with sandbags holding his head still. If you don’t find
God that way, He isn’t there for you. Right now I pay him ten percent
of the net and housing. If you were to, say,
give him twenty percent, you’d have one of the best cattlemen in Colorado.”
“Let me talk it over with the wife.”
“Confidentially, Sergeant, you and I can make a deal, but only if you have someone to train you.” Dancy leaned over close. “I’m a man of God,” he said, “and God tells me the two of you together are well worth the risk.”
It took time for Daniel Timothy O’Connell to transform from Brooklyn cop to rugged Coloradan. All of about a week. His attitude was a force, a force that wakened him every morning, led him to his knees to thank God for bringing them to this place.
Dan loved boots and cowboy hats and leather chaps. He loved to rope and brand and train his new border collie. He loved life during a challenging blizzard.
Dan loved the rodeos and the B.S. that went with cattle trading. He loved the respect. He was a tough man in a tough valley.
Saturday night in the old mining town, Troublesome Mesa came to life at the Bottomless Mine Saloon. For all the hurrahs, it was peaceful enough to bring the women folk. Dan taught the band a repertoire of Irish ballads to augment the sad-ass country and western songs.
“It’s Irish time!” and Christ, Dan O’Connell moved you to tears with his “Danny Boy.” If he only had Justin Quinn singing with him, he always thought.
As trust developed between Dan and Pedro, they made a hardworking, clever, aggressive team. Dan had been a platoon sergeant, and men learned to listen to him. He did not have to be told to listen to Pedro.
For several months the families lived together. Cautious at first, there was space enough to grow easy with each other. Siobhan in particular was ecstatic about the entirely new ways of cooking, and she adored Consuelo.
Come springtime, the top priority was to build onto the caretaker’s cabin a mile toward Troublesome Creek. To add to the urgency, Consuelo was due to have a second baby.
They finished the house in a rush. In the next month or two, every man in the valley pounded nails, making a charming lodgepole log cabin. The Mexican part of the valley pitched in, as did some Mormons and Catholics and Protestants as the finish drew near. A fiesta exploded when they raised the roof! In this time and place they all seemed less threatening to each other. Dan caught the sight of some of the Mormon men nipping booze out of view of their wives. From then on Dan kept a “Mormon” bottle in his cupboard.
The Martinez family no sooner moved into their place than Consuelo went into labor and gave birth to wee Pablo. The joy of a new child was tempered by Dan and Siobhan’s situation.
Once settled, every month for three years Dan waited for her to tell him the good news that she had missed her period. It never happened.
As they grew prosperous, the O’Connells became total Coloradans Both of them flew the ranch’s twin-engine Cessna, inched out their ranch boundaries, sent money home, were magnificently generous to the church, the school, and even the Mormons. Dan was elected state assemblyman. All that was missing was a baby for their waiting nest.
Joy gave way to an ever-present sense of sorrow. Their bed grew colder and colder. When he sang “Danny Boy” these days it was maudlin, and the Bottomless’s owner had to caution Dan about getting mean. The day after an apologetic sheriff dumped Dan off, after putting him in the cooler for the night, Siobhan reached the breaking point.
Their bed held a half-full suitcase, the French one of the set he had bought her for Christmas.
“What the hell’s going on here?”
“I’m going into Denver. I’ll be at the Brown Palace.”
“What for?”
“To get a complete fertility examination.” “It’s about time,” he said. “I pray to God they are able to find out what is wrong with you and cure it.” “I want you to come with me,” she said. “Me? You mean, me?”
({ t
Yes, you.
“I’ll have none of that voodoo black-magic quackery.”
“Very well. I intend to continue on to New York. I’ve been missing everyone sorely. I haven’t seen Father Scan in over three years.”
“Is this a threat?”
“No, I want to see them. But I think it’s time you face up to the fact that something serious is the matter. Are you scared to go to Denver with me? Is that why you’ve never suggested it before?”
Dan started for the door.
“One of these nights you are going off one of the hairpin turns, the way you’re guzzling.”
Dan opened the door.
“Sleep in the guest room,” she commanded.
He slammed the door but remained in the room.
“Are you going to a Catholic hospital?” he asked.
t*/^r
Ur course. “Then maybe, well, pack a bag for me, too.”
The eminent Dr. Leary at St. Anne’s Hospital put Siobhan into a regimen to chart her ovulation. It could be months before they had an accurate reading on her.
Meanwhile, Dr. Leary got access to Dan’s Marine Corps medical records. H
e had had the usual Marine ailments, cat fever in boot camp, jaundice and malaria after Guadalcanal, dengue fever at Tarawa, and a blown hip at Saipan. Dan was shocked when Dr. Leary asked him for a specimen of his semen.
*
“It couldn’t possibly be! I mean, I, the cause?”
“This is routine, Mr. O’Connell.”
Dan grunted in displeasure but did as he was told.
A time later, he was called by Dr. Leary and asked to come to Denver alone.
“I’ve some difficult news,” Dr. Leary said. “It’s taken this long because I had to be certain.”
“She can’t bear children,” Dan moaned.
“Your wife is healthy as a heifer.”
“Then .. .”
“I want to check something here in your medical record. Camp Matthews, January of 1942,” the doctor said.
“Camp Matthews was the rifle range, a long drive from the base. We stayed there several weeks on weapons training.”
“Did you get sent to a quarantine tent?”
“A bunch of us got sick, and there was no regular doctor at Matthews. Yeah, I sure remember now. I had to finish boot camp with a new platoon.”
“All that jibes with what we feel was an outbreak of mumps.”
“My face was swollen, funny-like, and I had a lot of pain around my, you know, private parts. Yeah, it was hard to walk.”
“Did anyone diagnose it as mumps?”
“We’d had all this cat fever and dysentery; we may have joked about mumps, but you know, it’s a kid’s disease. I thought I had already had it as a baby.”
“The record here says, “Possibly mumps.””
“Isn’t that a kid’s disease?”
“It usually is, with no after effects. With an adult there can be.
Your semen is sterile.”
When was it ever more terrible than the day he learned he’d never sire
children? No jungle, no lagoon at Tarawa with the Japs shooting at you
and you in chest-high water holding your rifle over your head, not Red Beach on Saipan watching your battalion blown to shreds, not even Justin Quinn dying .. .