My son wanted a house of his own. I wondered if the name Esperanza was going to come into this discussion. I said, “You want me to deed you boys each a share right now? Divide your inheritance?”
Charlie was silent a long while. Then he said, “Hadn’t thought of that.”
I said, “Well, have you thought about who’s going to cook your three squares?” I wondered if all mothers feel like their children have sprouted wings and are too eager to use them before they’ve learned how hard the ground is. I thought of Pillbox, hiding Hunter from me, who meant him no harm, and felt a sad smile inside. I pulled my horse next to Charlie’s. I said, “Reckon we need to sit down one of these nights and talk about the future. Sleep where you please till we get it sorted out.” I thought for a moment he might say something more, but he just smiled.
About the time we passed the Maldonado place, Charlie said, “Mama, there’s something else I’ve been thinking about.”
From where we sat, Maldonado’s place was cheery with light from inside. Savory air came from the place. Rudolfo had worked with us at Baker’s all day, but his daughters would still fix food for their household. I said, “You’ve seen the folly of your ways, I reckon, and are going to go back to school?”
He said, “No, ma’am. I was thinking about getting married.”
I took a deep breath, trying not to let him hear it.
Gil said, “Well, have you got a girl picked out? You’ll need one of those, too. They aren’t just lying around like old horseshoe nails.”
“Her name is Miss Esperanza Von Bracht.” Charlie’s voice was steady and clear, not the least bit hesitant when he said her name.
“I see,” I said. I settled my hat at a different angle. Now Charlie was thinking of marrying, without a hoot-down-a-hole idea what it meant. My hat felt as if it didn’t fit me anymore. I nudged it down at little.
He said, “I want you to meet her. I’d like to know what you think of her.” I pushed my hat up in front. “You want my opinion or simply my approval?” “Well … both.”
“Fair enough,” I said. I took off my hat and fussed with the inside of the brim liner. I said, “What do you think of her?”
“She’s a real nice girl,” Charlie said. “Real nice. Kind of pretty in a way.”
“Do you know the family? Met her folks and all? Is that name Mexican?”
“And German.”
I gave the tired horse a little nudge. “How do you plan to support a wife?”
“Thought I’d run cattle.”
I smiled. “Own some land, do you?” I teased.
“Mama,” Charlie said, “it doesn’t have to get complicated. I just thought I’d buy some stock of my own, put them with yours, and we’d—”
“That doesn’t sound like an invitation a girl with half a mind would take,” I said.
Gilbert laughed and said, “She means, knothead, that a hen wants her own roost. You can’t bring a wife to Mama’s place. You got to build your own. Say, you were going to make me help you build it, and then get married ? If that isn’t the double-crossingest thing I heard ever. Where’m I going to bunk?”
Charlie said, “Well, Miss Von Bracht wouldn’t mind if you stayed there.”
I grinned and put my hat back in place. Whatever adjusting it needed had worked, and it sat fine now. I said, “You’d better learn something about women before long. A wife wants her own house, and one that doesn’t get it, why, you’d be better to live in a turned-over boxcar than put her in the kitchen with your mother. Or, worse yet, have your kid brother picking at her cooking.”
Gil said, “If it was upside down, I believe the iron wheels would get hot enough in the summer that she could save on firewood, and bake your tortillas right on the plates.”
I laughed, saying, “Gilbert? Do you have a sweetheart, too? Reckon we could have a double wedding.” I surely can’t imagine Gilbert married. A puppy in a top hat.
“Haven’t asked her to yet,” he said.
It took a few minutes for words to come to me. For a moment, I was lost in a whirlwind, not able to see my sons clearly, just as it had been on Savannah’s porch in the whirlwind. My voice trembled a bit when I said, “Maybe those girls will want to marry college men. You best not spend the whole summer without a trip or two to town. Maybe they’d like to see you now and then, too. After we get the work done, you better ride to town and pay your respects to their folks.”
Charlie whooped out a shout, spurred his horse, and took off, with his brother fast in his tracks, making his own noise. I was left riding beside Willie. I said, “Reckon you’ve got a girl back home, too?”
“Not to speak of.”
“Well, that’s one left home, then. There’s time enough for that,” I said.
“I’ll get all the girls I want. Soon’s I get me some money.” Willie kicked hard at his horse and bolted up to ride with the boys. My horse followed without my urging, just wanting to be part of the parade.
Willie followed me to the house, where Chess was snoozing in my rocking chair. Granny had gone to bed. Savannah had returned home before dark. In the lamplight, Willie and I barely kicked off our boots, then sprawled on our bunks on the sleeping porch. I didn’t remember my head hitting the pillow. Probably fell asleep somewhere between the words good and night.
July 11, 1906
The dawn was cool and clear. We took care of a stack of flapjacks and sorghum with beefsteaks and coffee. As good as the cool morning felt to our skins, it meant only one thing to me: no chance of rain. “Willie?” I called. “Come on outside, and I’ll show you how to throw a loop before we go.”
He’d no sooner crossed the ground toward me when we saw Zack and Ezra coming down the road together, bareback, on a huge plow horse they’ve got named Big Boy. Big Boy is about the size of my old Dan. The little fellows waved when they saw us in the yard.
Suddenly, Ezra shouted, “Whoa, whoa! Stop, stop, stop!” He jumped right down off the horse while it was still moving. Big Boy plodded onward toward us, unaware. We stared in Ezra’s direction, waiting to see whether we should come running or not.
“Well, what’d you find, knothead?” Zack yelled over his shoulder from the moving horse.
Ezra picked up a stone, held it to the sky, and rolled it around between two fingers. He hollered, “Shooter. For marbles. Almost round, too.” He popped the pebble in the air a few times. “Yep, it’s a good’n.” He grinned from ear to ear and put the stone in his pocket, running toward us. “Old horse is deaf,” Ezra said. “Mary Pearl is on her way over after she finishes prissing around in the mirror. Mama said we was to help out over here before she tans us for life.” Big Boy kept moving at the same tired pace. Zack looked like a flea on the animal’s back.
“Well, what were you up to?” Charlie asked.
“Not doing nothin’,” Zack said, hopping off Big Boy and landing with a thud as he hit the ground. He stepped in front of the seventeen-hand horse and grabbed hold of his halter. Big Boy stopped amiably and went to cropping at some grass among the weeds at the yard fence. The little boys didn’t bother tying him; he was never hard to catch, and not given to wandering far from anything green he could nibble. Zack stuck his hands in his pockets. Hard to believe a little boy could look like a day’s worth of play and dirty roughhousing by half past five in the morning. He was wearing overalls with no shirt, and he looked like a ragamuffin under his shaggy head of hair. “We positively wasn’t doing nothing but having some fun, and Mama says she’s got another tired spell and we’re aggravating her.”
I said, “Well, fancy that. Playing marbles again?”
Ezra said, “Papa fusses at us if we fight, and Mama fusses if we play. Esther says we stink when we just both had a bath two days ago, and Clove says ‘Get out of the way before you get your arm tore off in that machine,’ so we figure”—he stepped toward Willie and glared brazenly up at him—“to run away from home and live at Aunt Sarah’s place.” Ezra made a face at Willie, as if he saw in t
he six-foot-and-some boy something that was more akin to himself than any adult.
“Yeah,” echoed Zack. “Ain’t no harm in playing marbles here. Even if you use your fists now and then to see who won.”
“Well, you’re just in time for roping lesson,” I said. “You two varmints want to be the calf or the bulldogger?”
“Calf!” Ezra put his forefingers to the sides of his head and cut around in circles, trying to hook Zack with the horns he was pretending to have. “Moo-oove, you mule-headed, lank-legged sodbuster. I’m a gonna poke you in the … noggin!” Zack fidgeted, swatting at Ezra. The two of them eyed each other for a minute, then nodded.
Willie watched them for a bit, then said, “’Ere up to something.”
“Don’t mind them,” I said. “We’ll use a barrel.”
Ezra and Zack smoothed themselves a marble ring in the dust outside the fence, and were silent, studying their play like some hard-core gamblers leaning over a bad hand of cards.
I took a hank of rope from my shoulder. “Willie,” I said, “take a turn at this riata. Hold near the honda, let it loose a little, and then roll your hand around and around over your head.” I talked like I was gentling a colt. I said, “See how this is made? Not one you’d tie up something with or go cutting without thinking twice. A good rope is expensive. Look here how I’ve got it in my hand. Turning it over like this.” I let fly with the lariat. It went over the barrel; then I started pulling it toward me. “If you’re on your horse, you dally this quick around the horn. If you’re on the ground, you’ve got to have another hand throw him.”
I handed Willie the rope. He swung, and swung some more. I told him to try without thinking about it so much. When Willie managed to get a loop over it, we all cheered him, and he caught it pretty regular after that.
Then my boys went to feed and saddle up for the day’s work. Willie followed them into the barn. I went to see the old horses. I petted and coaxed my old bunch to the trough, checked all their feet while they drank. Before any time at all, I heard shouting coming from the barn. First it was a cobbled-up noise, then Charlie’s voice saying, “Leave it alone! Get on out of here before I pin you to the wall with it!”
Willie came scooting out of the barn, red in the face, beating his hat against his leg as he walked. He turned around and shouted back toward the building, “I ’as just trying to help. Do it yer own way, then. I can’t do nothin’ to please yer damn hides.”
“Willie!” I said. “Hand me that bucket. No sense getting underfoot.”
“I weren’t under foot. He asked me to toss him the line and I did, but he didn’t say which’n.” He lifted the bucket of oats and held it toward me and I took it. The boy said, “I didn’t mean to hit him with that thing.”
“What thing was that?” I’d hear from Charlie about it.
“Oh, it was nothing,” Willie said. He climbed up on the fence rail and hung on with his elbows, then said, “You know, I’m getting pretty dang good at riding. Say, Aint Sair, you s’pose I could learn me to ride one o’ them horses? They look pretty tame.”
“This bunch is old. Not working anymore, except the colt, and he’s too young.”
“That’n there, he looks all right.” Willie pointed to Pillbox.
“That’s the mare that’s nursing the colt.”
“I like the looks of it.”
“You wouldn’t like the ride. She’s full of vinegar.” I said, “There’re three dozen horses on this ranch you can ride. Take your pick, and try your saddle on one. Best not lay as much as a handkerchief on one of these.”
Here came Charlie with a black eye, Gilbert behind him, leading our mounts. Gilbert said, “He coming with us?”
“What hit your eye?” I asked Charlie.
“I asked him for a tether and he threw me the hay rig. Hook and all.” Willie said he was sorry for knocking him in the head with the cast-iron hay hook. Charlie nodded, and that was that between boys.
When we slowed to eat our packed lunches, Mary Pearl and I happened to be near Charlie and Willie. Gilbert had ridden with one of those Spaniard fellows after some stock down a gully. “You’ll be a pretty good hand in no time,” Charlie said to Willie.
“Show me how to draw a pistol, then,” Willie said. “Don’t I need to carry a pistol?”
Charlie looked from Willie to me and back again. Then he said, “Well, I don’t carry one. Neither does Mama nor Grampa Chess. We keep rifles in the house for varmints. A shotgun for quail or dove hunting. Now and then, we have one in a wagon, I reckon, for putting down a horse or something wounded badly. What you want a pistol for?”
“Well, just like this here. To see if I can. Besides, what’s a cow—I mean, hand, without a gun to tote?”
“One who’s busy earning his pay,” I said. “I don’t mind you plugging some tin cans tonight after chores. But go off to the west and aim toward the mountains. Any other direction, and it’s not safe.”
“Well, I wouldn’t aim at nobody,” Willie said.
Charlie flicked the brim of Willie’s hat with his fingertip. “It’s not what you’re aiming at, bud, it’s what you hit if you don’t hit what you’re aiming at. Day or two, I’ll get Mama’s old pistol and a few shells. You go to the trash and find us three or four tin cans. Square enough?” Willie nodded with that wide-eyed, half-scared, half-eager look he has, and we went back to work. I never have seen a boy as old as that who acted like such a little kid. Don’t know how long it’ll take to get some sand in him.
Mrs. Baker laid out a spread that made yesterday’s feast look as if it had been just a practice run. She must have been up all night baking pies, and turning out roasted meat all day long in the heat, to spread a board like the one we had for supper. Work was done, and while we ate, the Bakers told everyone their thanks and said how they’d be moving on by the end of the week, leaving hired men to work the cattle for the rest of us. Rudolfo made a speech, too, about what great friends and neighbors they’d been. Made me feel sad I hardly knew these folks.
Rudolfo knew pretty much everyone from San Simon to Quartzite and Naco to Holbrook. I got to thinking it was no wonder he thought he could be governor, the way he could go on, as if hearing himself talk was the best music there was.
Chapter Twelve
July 14, 1906
I woke before sunup. Laid there listening to Chess and Willie breathing. Somewhere up on the hills, a band of coyotes was celebrating finding something to eat. I hope and pray it isn’t another steer. Gilbert said he saw a single footprint yesterday with five toes. Wolves or coyotes leave a print like a dog, four toes with claws. The big cats leave five toes and no claw marks.
There was a faint whiff of javelina. No smell of rain. The sky was clear, but the moon was down already, and the stars themselves looked tired, dusty. Granny was up when I made coffee. I took our morning coffee out to the front porch, along with a quilt for her to wrap in, then waited the sunrise, breathing in the only cool air we’d have all day. I made a list of everything I needed to get done today. Chess and Willie stumbled in at the same time I went to refill my cup.
I fixed everyone breakfast and then sent them off to work. If someone didn’t wash some clothes, we’d be reduced to wearing barrels next. Reckon it’d be purely selfish of anyone to have enough clothes they could go a week without washing. There was nothing for it but to drag out the washtubs, set up the wringer cranked onto the kitchen table, and start hauling water. Since I don’t do ironing in the summertime, for fear of roasting myself to death, it didn’t take too long just to hang things on the line and then take them down. In this heat, one load will dry pretty near before the next one is washed.
While I did that work, Granny took down my big yellow crockery bowl and started breaking eggs into it. She worked away without making a sound, and by the time I turned to look, she had made enough doughnuts for the Sixth Cavalry. She said she was counting on me taking some to the boys. I could already picture them wolfing down the sweets like it was t
heir last meal. But, for the most part, she was making them because they’d always been Ernest’s favorite thing.
I just finished hanging out the last load of washing, and Granny and I were having some water and a couple of those doughnuts each, when Albert’s boy Josh got there. Josh had ridden up to get mail, and he’d brought a letter from Mr. Baramon. In a lot of hundred-dollar words, he said he didn’t have a blessed idea who had bought up the land of my mama’s, but it did seem to be a railroad, as rail companies had been “engaging in transactions” in that area. He said he would personally have to lay eyes on the agreement to do any more than that. And, of course, there was a bill from him for ten dollars for that opinion. Well, I’d known right along it would cost me, but I was hoping at least for the money I’d get something. That’s the trouble with lawyers. It’s not like they shoe a horse or hammer you a single blessed nail; you have to pay them just for thinking.
Granny was talking on and on, and I didn’t hear a word of it. She asked me something, and I let out a sigh. I said, “I’m sorry, Mama. What was that? Didn’t I already rinse those?”
She turned the crank on the wringer with one hand, feeding a pair of man’s pants through it from the washtub sitting on the table into the rinse tub set on the floor. Mama said, “Still got soap in the corners. That boy’s pants are so tall, they’re hard to get clean.” Somehow, she’d gotten a pair of Clover’s old trousers, probably meant for Willie to use. “You’re being a flibbertigibbet lately. Leave that alone about the railroad and the money. What’s done is done.”
I just opened my mouth to ask her what she thought I was doing badly when there was the sound of hooves outside, and heavy steps on the porch. The door opened without a knock. It was Willie. “Morning, Granny. Aint Sair? Me and Charlie and Gil was working down by the mud tank, you know.”
“The Little Muddy?” I said.
“Yep, that’s it. Little Muddy. Mr. Baker said as how he’s promised to leave some fence at his boundary on that side to the new owner. Anyway, we was putting up some poles to keep the cows out on account of it’s gone dry, and Gilbert says we’re out of number twenty-threes. All he’s got out there is eighteens and twenties.”