He acted like he didn’t believe me. He sent Johnny off with the boys and the other hands and stayed around the lots all day, doing little chores and watching me out of the corner of his eye.
I didn’t care. I felt real good that morning. The cold didn’t even bother me. I made a good strong hackamore and went after them broncs. By dinnertime I only liked six being done with them, and I got the six in another three hours. I even saddled up a few of the worst ones and rode them agin, just so the old man would really get his money’s worth. By that time he was sitting on the fence. I bet he chewed a whole plug of tobacco that afternoon. When I got done and turned them out in the horse pasture, he walked off to the house without saying a word. But I didn’t care about that, either. I had been throwed seven times and was stiff and sore as hell, but I felt like a million dollars. I felt like I could have ridden fifty horses if I’d just had somebody to do the saddling for me.
That night the old man did a strange thing. He paid me at the supper table.
“By god,” he said, after supper. “Now, Mother, make these boys be quiet.” None of the boys had made a sound anyway. “I want you all to notice,” he said. “This here’s one feller that can do the job. He rode eighteen wild horses today, I seen him myself. And one yesterday.” I was real embarrassed. The old man got up and stomped off to the bedroom and came back jingling a sack full of money. “I’ll pay you right here,” he said. “It might put some ambition into these boys of mine.” And he counted me out nineteen dollars, mostly in silver money. There wasn’t a sound in the room but the money clinking. Even after I gathered it up and put it in my pockets, there still wasn’t a sound. Later that night Ed told me the old man never paid the boys atall, just give them a dollar apiece at Christmastime. That didn’t surprise me much. Mr. Grinsom wasn’t the first tight feller I’d ever seen.
We worked pretty good for about a week. Me and Johnny never had no trouble matching the other hands; by the time the week was over Johnny wasn’t in no danger of getting fired. The old man was funny. He treated us like friends and his own boys like hound dogs.
But there were two things I couldn’t get over: one was making nineteen dollars in one day, and the other was being homesick. If I could make nineteen dollars in one day, I was stupid to work a whole month for fifteen. And besides, I remembered the time in Fort Worth when I’d made four hundred in about two hours. Cowboying was fun, but it wasn’t near enough fun to make fifteen dollars a month worth while. I knew I could beat that.
The homesickness was the worst part of it, though. I didn’t mind the work, and I didn’t mind the company; I didn’t mind the country, or even the cold weather. I just minded feeling like I wasn’t where I belonged. Home was where I belonged, but tell that to Johnny and he would have laughed like hell. He didn’t feel like he belonged to any certain place, and I did. He was born not five miles from where I was, too. When you came right down to it, Dad was right: me and him was a lot different. I couldn’t get over thinking about Dad and Molly and the country and the ranch, the things I knew. The things that were mine. It wasn’t that I liked being in Archer County so much—sometimes I hated it. But I was just tied up with it; whatever happened there was happening to me, even if I wasn’t there to see it. The country might not be very nice and the people might be onery; but it was my country and my people, and no other country was; no other people, either. You do better staying with what’s your own, even if it’s hard. Johnny carried his with him; I didn’t. If you don’t stick with a place, you don’t have it very long.
Me and Johnny argued for ten days. I just plain wanted to go back, and he just plain didn’t. I got so I couldn’t sleep; I would wake up and lie awake for hours. Then one Saturday, Johnny was in Clarendon and run into a man who had a ranch out near the New Mexico line; he wanted a cowboy or two to look after it through the winter; it was so dull he couldn’t stand the winter there himself. He offered double what we were getting, and said besides he had a pretty little Indian woman who would stay out and do the cooking. So Johnny hired on for both of us, but he told the man we had two more weeks to go for Grinsom. I told him right off I wasn’t going any farther west or north, but he thought I’d change my mind. Then on a Tuesday, Mr. Grinsom sent us out in one of his big pastures to look for sicklings—that was all he had for us to do—and I just decided I was through. I pulled up and stopped.
“Hell with it,” I said. “I’m going to Archer County. There ain’t no use in me loafing around here any longer.”
We turned our backs to the wind and watched it whipping across the high open flats. He tried to talk me out of it. “Don’t do nothing rash,” he said. “Wait till we get on the new job. Think of that Indian woman.”
“You go on out there,” I said. “I don’t want to spend no winter in New Mexico. What would I want with an Indian woman when Molly’s just three miles from home?”
“Yes, but Molly’s crazy,” he said.
“I never stopped to argue,” I said. “You coming or staying?”
He hunched his neck down into his collar and frowned. “I hate to see you miss a good winter,” he said. “What’ll I do for company if that woman don’t talk English?”
But he was staying. “There ain’t as much at home for me as there is for you,” he said. “This here’s more the life for me.”
And I was crazy enough to want to stay with him, even when I knew I was going home. We were pretty good buddies.
“Well, I hate to run off and leave you,” I said. “But I got to go. You’ll be coming home next summer, won’t you?”
“Oh sure,” he said. “I just don’t feel like going that direction right now, Gid. I hate to be stuck off out here with no company, though.”
“Well, write me once in a while,” I said. “I believe I’ll lope on back. I might could get to Amarillo tonight.”
“Say hello to the country for me,” he said. “Give old Molly a big kiss and tell her she’s still my girl.”
“I’ll sure do it,” I said. “Don’t let no crazy horse fall on you.”
“Oh hell,” he said. “Won’t nothing hurt me unless I freeze to death. You watch out yourself.”
I guess we should have shook hands, but we never. He kinda nodded, and turned and tucked his head down and trotted off into the wind, headed north. I set there a minute, watching him cross the windy pasture. Then I loped back to the ranch, gave notice, and talked the old man into loaning me a horse to ride to Clarendon.
“Why you running off?” he said. “Too dull? I may buy some more broncs in a week or two.”
“Oh no,” I said. “I just guess I’ll go run my own ranch.”
It was a pretty lonesome trip home. I had to wait till way after dark for a train out of Clarendon, and was the only one on it, then, so I didn’t have a soul to talk to. I never slept a wink all night, I was too excited about going home. Only I wisht old Johnny had come; train riding was dull without him. I got off in Wichita Falls about ten the next morning and found a man with a wagon going to Thalia. We drove in about an hour before dark, and the first person I saw was Mabel Peters, coming out of the dry goods store where she worked.
“Why, if it ain’t Gid,” she said. She had put on a little flesh and was dressed nice and looked real cheerful. In spite of all I could do, she made me go home and have supper with her at the boardinghouse. All the boarders were there, so she didn’t dare ask me up to her room, but she followed me out on the porch after supper and hung on to me for an hour, she was so glad to see me. She asked me four or five times if I would come back and see her.
It was so late when I left Mabel that I had trouble finding anybody to borrow a horse from, but I finally got one and rode home. I was practically sick at my stomach I was so glad to be going home. It was good to ride over some familiar country. I even went by Molly’s, but there wasn’t no light; I sat on my horse by the back fence a minute, thinking about her.
Our place was dark too. When I got in the first thing I did was tiptoe down th
e hall to Dad’s door, to listen a minute. He was snoring like he always did. Once I heard him cough and hawrk. I was glad he was asleep. I guess I was afraid I would find him out in the moonlight, plowing that old oat field.
fourteen
The morning after I got home I remember Dad came in my room real early, but he never woke me up. I was about half-awake and I seen him standing inside the door. But I guess he figured I needed the rest, because he went on out and I stayed in bed till nine o’clock.
When I finally got dressed and outside he was down at the lots filling up the hayracks. It was a cold morning, with a big frost on the ground.
“Well, how’s the Panhandle?” he said. “I guess you got rich quicker than I thought you would, or else you went broke quicker. Which was it?”
“Aw, I just got homesick,” I said. “How’s ever thing here?”
“Run down and wore out,” he said. “Specially me. Why don’t you get the horses up? A couple of them need their shoes pulled off, and I ain’t had the energy.”
Dad sure looked bad. He hadn’t hired no help at all; I knew he wouldn’t. But he wasn’t lying when he said he was worn out. He didn’t have much flesh on him any more, and he had been a big fleshy man. When I first got home I thought it was from working too hard, but it wasn’t. He was just sick; he didn’t have no wind any more, nor much grip in his hands. But he wouldn’t go to a doctor for love nor money.
I felt real bad about having gone off and left him so long. I know it wouldn’t have made any difference to his health if I had stayed, but it would have made some difference to me.
“Hell, you ought to go see a doctor, Dad,” I told him. “You probably just need some kind of pep-up medicine. Why do you want to be so contrary?”
“I ain’t contrary,” he said. “I just don’t want to pay no doctor to tell me what I already know. There ain’t no medicine for old age.”
“You’re just tight,” I said. “You oughtn’t to let a few dollars stand between you and your health.”
“I am tight,” he said. “I’m rich, too.”
“You don’t live like it,” I said.
“No, because I want to stay rich. The best way in the world to get poor is to start living rich.”
I couldn’t do a damn thing with him. He kept on working, day in and day out, warm or cold. And the thing was he wasn’t much help any more, only he didn’t seem to notice it. I was doing nine-tenths of the work, and it kept me busy and worn out and tired. It was just miserable old hard cold work, no fun to it, like loading cake and hay and feeding cattle and building fence and all kinds of winter work like that. I’d been home three weeks before I ever seen Molly.
But then she come over to see me one day and cooked us supper, and I guess she seen right off how Dad was. I think it worried her, but she was real cheerful that day and never mentioned it to me. But she started coming over two or three times a week and cooking for us. Sometimes she even got there in time to ride a pasture with me, or help me with the chores. It was real good of her to come; I was crazier about her than I had ever been. I was pretty lonesome anyway, and worn out and worried about Dad, and it was awful nice to have somebody warm like Molly to be with once in a while. But no matter what I said or how I said it, she wouldn’t marry me.
“I know you want me to, Gid,” she said. “But it might be bad if I did. You might be sorry you ever asked me,” she said.
“That ain’t true,” I said. “I wouldn’t be.”
She thought a minute, and grinned, but a sad grin. “Then I might be,” she said. “That would be just as bad.”
One night after Dad had gone upstairs to bed we sat by the fireplace awhile, and we got to talking about him. Molly was the best person there ever was for sitting by the fire with. Every time she came over we got off by ourselves a little while, and those were about the only times I got unwound.
“You better make him go to the doctor,” she said. “If you don’t, I think he’s going to get real sick.”
“He’s too damn contrary,” I said. “He just won’t go.”
“Don’t talk bad about him,” she said. “He’s a real good man. He treats me better than anybody I know, you included.” I don’t know what that had to do with it, but it was true. Dad always let Molly know he thought she was about tops.
“I don’t reckon he’ll die,” I said. “You don’t, do you?”
She hugged me then. “He might, Gid,” she said. “He’s just getting sicker and sicker.”
I thought that over for a while and it really scared me. I couldn’t imagine Dad not being around to give the orders. Even sick he was just as active as he could be, and never missed a thing. It was hard to think of Dad being any other way than alive.
“Dad couldn’t keep still long enough to die,” I said. Neither one of us thought it was funny, though.
“I sure am glad my dad’s healthy,” she said. “I guess he’ll live to be a hundred. If he was to die, I think I’d just plain go crazy.”
“I don’t guess anybody lasts forever,” I said. “Funny thing, I’ve always been sure Dad would outlive me. I just never thought of it any other way.”
We sat for a long time, thinking about it. But I couldn’t believe it would happen. I guess I knew it had to sometime, but I just couldn’t believe it. Not even in my brain.
“Well, if he’d just quit working and set around and rest up a little,” I said. “I think he’d get all right. He stays on the go too much.”
She shook her head. “That ain’t his trouble. I think that’s good for him. If your dad had to die, I’d want him to do it working, wouldn’t you? Just to go on working till it happens. That’s all he loves to do. If he was to sit around in a rocking chair, he’d get to feeling useless, and that’d be worse than being tired.”
I kissed her and we sat on the couch for another hour or so. I meant to ride her home, but I was too tired, and she wouldn’t let me.
“Much obliged,” I said. “Come back whenever you can. We sure are glad to see you.”
“Why, I enjoy it, Gid,” she said. “Next time Dad goes off I’ll come over.” When she rode off into the wind it reminded me of Johnny, up there on the plains. I missed having him around.
Life is just a hard, mean business, sometimes. Here we were worrying about my dad, and three days after we had that conversation Molly’s own dad staggered into his smokehouse drunk, looking for some whiskey, and picked up a jug of lye by mistake and drank a big swallow of it and it killed him. He never even got out of the smokehouse. Eddie and one of his cronies was over there at the time; he had been drinking with the old man, and he went out and found him. It was a windy, dusty evening. And the first thing Molly said to me when I got there was, “Well, Gid, my poor old daddy never lived to be a hundred after all.” And she just about did go crazy that night.
It was the end of any respect I ever had for Eddie White. I guess he was just scared of dead people. Anyhow he sent his damn oil-field crony over in the car to tell us. Dad had gone to bed, and I didn’t wake him. I left a note on the kitchen table, where he’d see it in the morning. And then I saddled up and got over there on the run, and when I got there Eddie and his buddie were just driving away. I don’t know where they were going in such a hurry, but they left Molly by herself with her dad, and there wasn’t no excuse for that, drunk or not. I rushed in and she was in the kitchen, bawling her head off—she didn’t even know Eddie was gone; the old man was dumped on a bed in his bedroom, with just a quilt thrown over him. I never mentioned Eddie and she never either; maybe she was so torn up she forgot he had been there.
She wanted me to do something for her daddy, clean him up a little; but she didn’t want to go in the room with me and I didn’t want to leave her by herself for fear she’d get to taking on agin. I made her drink some coffee, and I got a towel and wiped her face and kinda dried her eyes, and then we washed the dishes. There was a lot to wash; I guess she had cooked supper for Eddie and his friend. Washing them calmed her down
some. When we had the kitchen good and clean I made her hold the lamp while I went in and straightened the old man out the best I could. He looked terrible, and I didn’t know a thing about what I was doing, but I got his boots off anyway, and got him wiped up some and laid out and covered up neater than he had been. It was a mistake for Molly to come; it made her sick at her stomach. She vomited in the bedroom first, and then I carried her to the bathroom and held her head while she finished emptying her stomach. She was awfully white and shaky. I walked her down to the bedroom and made her take her clothes off and put her nightgown on and get in bed, and she laid there and cried while I went back and cleaned up in the bathroom and the other bedroom. Then I left the lamp on the kitchen table and got in bed with her. She thought some people might come; she thought Eddie must have gone to tell some, when she remembered him. But I didn’t expect him to tell a soul that night, and he didn’t.
“But what will I do, Gid?” she said. “You know I can’t do without Dad.”
“Hush, sugar,” I said. “Let me just hug you tight. Let’s don’t talk for a while.”
And I did hold her. For maybe half an hour her eyes were wide open and she was stiff in the bed, but then she got warm and relaxed and her eyes shut and she was asleep. I stayed awake just about all night, holding her, and she never moved or turned over till morning. She was lucky to be able to sleep, I thought. She was so helpless, in a way. And when it got light and she woke up I was watching her and still holding her. I saw just as plain as day when she remembered what had happened, and I thought she would get bad again, but she never. She looked real serious and then she pulled my head down and kissed me and got up and put up her hair standing by the bed, and she never cried at all until later that morning, when Dad and the other people begin to come.
fifteen
Dad finally did go to a doctor, in fact he went to five of them, but he had been right all along. They never done him no good. One of them kept him in the hospital for two weeks, though, and that threw ever bit of the ranch work on me. It was around the first of April before I got Johnny off a letter, and then I never said much.