My brother Albert and his sweet wife, Savannah, have nearly finished raising their eight children in their rambling rock-and-siding place a mile up from mine. They have a pecan farm, in which I have a small interest. They expect a meager crop this year, as there has been too little rain, barely a few drops since Thanksgiving last.
Chess lives with me and my two boys, and has since my husband, Jack, died. Chess was Jack’s papa, and he’s tried to take the place of a papa in the lives of my boys and me. Seems he’s tried to take the place of both a ranch hand and my personal tormentor, too, since his son died. My Jack was about the orneriest man to fork himself over a horse, and I miss him every second of my life.
Jack is in the graveyard there on the hill, under the jacaranda tree, next to our little Suzy, who took scarlet fever before she was three. My other two boys are buried in town, too little to have even a marker over their heads. Here in the graveyard are some soldiers who fought the Chiricahua chief Ulzana and his men right here where the round corral is now. Yonder is Mr. Raalle, our neighbor homesteader when we first came here years ago, put there by those same Indians. Harland’s wife, Melissa, was Mr. Raalle’s daughter. Next to Mr. Raalle is my first husband, Jimmy, who died—after being thrown from a horse—with another woman’s name on his lips. And lastly, many pet dogs and cats, baby birds, and lizards that my sons felt needed a funeral.
My mama teases me about the crowded conditions under that jacaranda tree, and where she will lie when her time comes, saying she’d rather be next to the lizards than a strange man, particularly a soldier, as you know what kind of stuff they are. “Well,” I tell her, “Jack was a soldier, and you always set a store by him, so I’ll save a place for myself next to Jack, and you can have a spot next to me.” She seems satisfied with this, and asks me every few days if I’m still saving a place for her. Lordy, you’d think it was the supper table. If I take after my mama, it’ll be forty or fifty years before I need a spot for my eternal rest, and the place could get downright crowded by then. Reckon that’s why I’m planning ahead, too.
Everyone stayed late as “society ne’er-do-wells,” as Savannah put it—near nine o’clock. Then Albert and Savannah’s family walked home, toting kerosene lanterns. Between us, we have enough lanterns to start a business, what with the rut we’ve worn over the years between their house and mine. When we finally put out our last lamp, it was good to hear Gil and Charlie talking past the rhythm of Grampa Chess’s snoring. I drifted to sleep listening to them chatter about people they knew from town.
Out on the porch, every three feet or so along the wall, a nail is tied with a piece of cord long enough to reach to the far side of the porch. The cords are for hanging wash when it rains—if it ever does again—and putting up a sheet for privacy if you have company overnight. That night, I awoke just pure-D hot. I got up and found one of the cords, searching blind in the dark for the eyebolt at the other side turned into the wood. I draped the sheet from my bed across the cord so I could sleep without cover. Sackcloth hung by the screens between the posts, and a pitcher of water stood on a little bench. I drizzled water on the burlap, then took a handful and cooled my face and neck, pushing it into my hair, too. I lay back on the bed behind my wall of sheeting and fanned myself with my nightgown. The porch would get cool as the sackcloth started to dry.
Nights like this, I used to make Jack get up and douse the curtains with water. If we were lucky, the boys would be sound asleep, just like tonight. I think about that now and again. I reckon it’s sinful, but I do. Once a person has been married, it isn’t likely they’ll forget the touch of a man’s hands.
With the boys home, I feel happier and busier than I have in many a day. Chess said I’d been missing someone to peck at. I told him to stop his pecking at me, and I’d mind my own. I’ve got two hired hands, Flores and Shorty, so we have four men working, including Charlie and Gil. Funny how when I think of them working, Charlie and Gilbert are men who will tote a man’s load any day of the week. When I think of them off on their own in school, or making eyes at some sweetheart, they barely seem like overlarge boys. Not a lick of sense about it all.
Chess spends a lot of time doing fancy leatherwork. He makes the finest carved work saddles I’ve ever seen, and he has taken to shaping silver tabs and buttons on, too. He sold one last year for $450 to some traveling dude. He uses our best hides and has gone to lengths to get them tanned at Ronstadt’s Livery so they’ll be just right for a nice saddle. It’s a good thing for Chess to do, now that he’s not able to see far enough away to help with the ranch very much.
My foreman, Mason Sherrill, is an old man, too. He was past fifty when he came here to help me before the boys were born. Trouble is, he’s over eighty now, all but blind, and he forgets so much, things are showing their rust. Still, an old person isn’t the same as a worn-out shoe. They don’t just get tossed on the heap. What with the retired hands, horses, and old dogs, then new puppies, chicks, kittens, and colts, well, it’s a long day’s work for the middle-aged ones of us—Savannah, Albert, and myself—who do the most of it. I have to admit with all the work needs doing, it’s a pure relief to have Charlie and Gil here. It takes up some of the work without much more than adding two plates to the supper table.
About a week after my boys came home, I saw a skunk nearly the size of a dog headed for the barn. Nip and Shiner started barking, but they were whining, too, smart enough not to go toward it. I hurried back to the house and fetched my rifle. I took a good aim and let fire, and the polecat dropped in its tracks. Everyone came running to see what the ruckus was, but no one had to get too close to figure it out. Chess hollered to Charlie to get an old board to scoop the thing on and carry it off away from the place. Reckon it wasn’t as bad as taking a test in school.
Naturally, after all that, Pillbox wouldn’t let me near her baby. I named her Pillbox because she seems all fair and gentle outside, but she has got some kind of bitter stuff inside. Won’t be ridden unless she takes the notion, and every time someone drops a saddle on her, she goes off on a dead run for glory. I leaned on the gate to the stall, hoping she’d settle enough so I could see the colt again. Pillbox isn’t as fair a ride as her mama was. Her dam was my favorite horse, name of Rose. Rose is taking her ease in the east pasture. She gave me seven beautiful foals, and six of them we still have. I have expectations for this new generation. There he was, at last. It made me smile, watching his bright eyes take in his world. He sure is a pretty thing, like the best of every horse I’ve ever seen rolled into one, and all trimmed and neat, with little hooves lighting on the dust like he could almost dance. To get Hunter, I had put Pillbox with Maldonado’s El Rey. I just hope Hunter has his good looks, and Pillbox’s sturdy qualities, too.
Rudolfo Maldonado bought himself two Arabian stallions two years ago. One of them died suddenly, and we don’t know why. That one was about the prettiest thing I’ve seen on hooves. The surviving one, he named El Rey, which means “the King,” or “God,” depending on how it’s used. El Rey is tougher than a mule, but he’s not got much cow sense, so I’m hoping Pillbox’s good quarter horse blood will make a fine colt with some of both traits. Most things that survive here are heavy and rugged, growing thorns, or wearing hopsack-and-barbwire longhandles.
Rudolfo and I swap studs when one or the other of us has some new horse we’d like to try in the line. That man has been my friend since we came to this place, more than twenty years ago. His brother wanted to marry me after Jimmy died. If he hadn’t been so much younger than I was—two years—I probably would have taken him up on it. Rudolfo himself makes mentions of the same nature, now that his wife, Celia, has passed away. Mostly, I pretend that he’s just teasing and will come to his senses at length.
Gilbert says he wants to try hand-raising Hunter and training him. Reckon that’d be a worthwhile thing for a boy to do. I told him I’d think on it until Hunter was a few months old, if he’d promise to think about school, and I’d not nag him if he’d do the sa
me, and we’ll see what we come to at the end of that time. He agreed to it.
Later that morning, I worked the pump handle in my kitchen, and nothing happened. That pump was old, and more times than not needed priming. I found half a cup of water I’d been meaning to drink. With that in the top of the pump, I worked it again. After a bit, water gurgled in the pipe and ran into a tin pan I meant to carry to the dogs. I didn’t like the smell of it, though, and looked closely at the pan. It happens now and then. Something will stir the well water in some way I can neither imagine nor discover. It will taste off for a day or two, and then it will come back fine. I’ve read that there is a whole system of underground rivers and oceans just like on top, but that is a stretch for my mind. All I can picture is the stream here close by, lined with cottonwoods, and I cannot imagine one underground, without trees and blue sky overhead. It makes me wonder about old folk stories of lands under this one with people and everything. I set the pan on the porch and whistled for Nip and Shiner.
Well, I had eggs to gather, and I had just finished that when Mary Pearl, who is seventeen and Savannah’s youngest girl, came with some of their morning’s milking. I knew I’d have to hurry and get it turned to butter and worked into a cake before it ruined in this heat. I’m glad not to have a milk cow myself, as they are a lot of trouble, and we are happy with just a bit of buttermilk now and then for a cake. I’ll be making some sweets to take to Savannah’s for supper tonight. We are having supper with them.
That afternoon, soon as I could, I hurried over to Savannah’s kitchen. She said she was feeling a little better since being down the day before. I took her some liver for supper, along with steaks. The girls hate the liver, but it is a sure cure for the tiredness that seems to tax us all at times. They made up about four kinds of vegetables and a peach cobbler. I made some bread pudding, too, with nice rich cream sauce to give Savannah some strength in her blood.
We girls were all gathered in the kitchen and I was just telling Savannah she ought to put up her feet and let me set the table, when Mary Pearl said in a really loud voice, “Mama, didn’t Mr. Maldonado come by here this morning looking for Aunt Sarah?”
Savannah said, “Mary Pearl, just let it be and don’t meddle.”
“What’d he want?” I asked. “Rudolfo knows where I live.”
Mary Pearl cut her eyes at the ceiling, hummed, and then said, “Oh, I don’t know.”
“Mary Pearl, hush that,” Savannah said. “You are gossiping.”
“Don’t you ever want to marry again, Aunt Sarah?” Mary Pearl asked.
“Mary Pearl!” her mother scolded. “That is far too personal a thing to ask your elders. Sarah, he just brought us a newspaper and asked after you. Simple manners.”
Waving her mother’s worries away with my hand, I said, to Mary Pearl, “That’s why I’ve got all that dust collected under my bed. Planning to ask the Lord to fix me up a new man.”
Savannah and Albert have a boy, Clover, who is older than my Charlie. He finished his studies and came back to work the farm with them. Clove has put together a steam motor that will run a belt through part of the pecan house; it’ll make harvest time much less work. He’s a quiet man, and reminds me a lot of my brother, his papa, Albert.
My boys and Chess were there before the coffee was made. Those three would cross many a hill for a peach cobbler. They and Clove built a toy for Ezra and Zack, just a board on a log that they could balance and play on, and while we made supper, they had contests to see who could stay on longer. Then Clove said he was going to teach Ezra to walk a barrel. They went and fetched an empty one from the barn, and Clove held Ezra’s hands. He walked back and forth on the barrel while Zachary cheered and clapped.
They were all having a bushel of fun, and Savannah rested on the porch and watched them. Their daughter Esther, two years older than Mary Pearl, sat near Savannah with some sewing. Mary Pearl was in the house with me, and she had just handed me a large bowl full of potatoes when we heard Savannah calling, “Look there!”
The girls and I rushed to the door in time to see a whirlwind bigger than our house lumbering up the road. It moved as if a great hand pushed it toward us, weaving back and forth like a drunk man, slowing, carrying dust and bushes and snips of leaves and bits of paper. Well, the boys reckoned it was great fun, and raced off toward it. All five of them, Clove, Ez, and Zack, then Charlie and Gilbert, ran headlong into the whirlwind.
Albert said, “It’s coming toward the house.”
Esther asked, “Is it a tornado, Papa? Will it sweep us away?”
“No,” he said. “Hold your hats, though.”
I’d seen many a duster lifting sand off the desert here, sometimes counting five or six at a time when the heat was bad like this. Still, I’d never seen one this size. A terrible premonition filled me that my boys would be swept away in it, along with Savannah’s boys, too. There they went, running straight into the whirlwind. I said, “Come on out of there, you fellows. I just washed all those clothes you’re wearing,” but I said it softly, and no one seemed to hear me, not even Mary Pearl, who was standing next to me.
Savannah asked, “Is the wash in off the line?” No one answered.
The boys disappeared into the dust devil. Here it came, slowly gaining on the house and swallowing whole all our boys. It seemed to stop, and for just a moment, I could see all five of them. Then, like a mammoth creature interrupted on its path by something it found to eat, it started again, coming for the rest of us.
Albert and Savannah and the girls and I all took cover in the house. Now and then, we saw one of the boys come through the wall of dust or linger behind it as it turned toward the pecan barn. I declare it seemed as if it was thinking which way it wanted to go next. Then it came directly toward us again, leaving the boys standing in the yard. It swept over the house, rattling the windows, and spraying dirt against them. For a few seconds, the sky outside the windows was brown and cottony, then blue again. Quick as that, it was gone, as if it had only come to break itself apart on their house.
We stepped onto the front porch, and saw the biggest mess I’ve ever seen in my life. The entire porch, chairs, plants, and rug, every square inch, was peppered with rabbit dung. It wedged into every little crevice around the windowsills and the floorboards. Little brown balls of dark hail had come out of the cloud of dirt, descending on us thicker than nuts on a cake. Savannah rushed to her chair, where she’d dropped her apron while hurrying to the house. “Look at this,” she said, tipping it up. The pockets overflowed and poured out piles of rabbit drops. They hit the floor, bouncing like marbles dropped from a bag.
Zachary’s voice came to us, shouting, “I rode the wind! I rode the plumbusted wind!” He spun, arms outstretched, then ran toward the porch in sweeping circles, his face skyward, eyes closed. “Mama, Mama! Clove and Charlie held my hands, and it pulled me up like a sure-nuff paper kite. It held me up like a bird. Like a eagle! I rode the wind like a sure-nuff eagle. Damnation!”
Until his last word, we’d all been smiling, sharing his fun. Savannah and Albert turned and stared at him as if he’d been a wolf come for the chickens. Very softly, Savannah said, “Albert. The strap is in the pantry.”
“Zachary Taylor Prine,” Albert said with such sadness in his voice that I knew Zack would never guess how it pained his father, “go to the barn and wait.” He slipped into the house, gone after the old piece of a saddle cinch that served as the binding to the seat of education in their home.
Zack’s face bore his confusion. He clapped his hands over his mouth, stunned at what he’d let fly in the midst of his joy. Tears spurted from his eyes, clear of his hands and face, and hit the rabbit pellet–coated ground. “It was a accident, Papa. I didn’t mean it, Mama.”
“Still,” Savannah said, “we had that talk just two days ago, and you knew the next foul word from your mouth would bring this. A boy who cannot bridle his own tongue will have nothing but the poorest life imaginable. Take thyself to the barn, Zach
ary.”
“Thyself?” he said.
“Go,” she said, and turned away from him.
Poor little old Zack started bawling out loud, suffering his mother’s so gentle rebuff more than he would ever feel Albert’s strapping. For Savannah to have addressed one of her sons in this way, saying “thyself” instead of “yourself,” was the ultimate in rejection. It removed him from the family circle, made him a stranger. Only family members were “you” and “yours.” It dampened all our spirits to see him trod off to his punishment, shoulders heaving, feet scuffing the dust around him so that he left a cloud behind him. Anyone who knew their family knew Zack had already gotten the worst of it, and that if they laid even one switch, it would be drawn back, its purpose more for effect than for a welting.
“Savannah,” I said, “I’ll sweep this porch for you.”
She already had the broom in her hands, but she held it toward me. Tears were in her eyes. She whispered, “He’s got to learn.”
I took the broom and began pushing the brown hail from the doorway and off the porch. “He does,” I said. It wasn’t like Savannah to buckle up over disciplining one of her children. Still, she’d been poorly lately, and he was the baby.
We heard a faint snap and a loud wail. Savannah put a hand to her face and went into the house. I heard Esther calling out, “Mama, Mama? What’s the matter?”
By the time I got the porch clear of the cottontail manure, Albert came from the barn, Zack at his side. The two were talking. Zack’s face, now subdued, was red and streaked with clean lines through the grime left from the whirlwind. I watched them stop by the corral fence and pump clean water at the trough. Zack washed his hands and face, then his whole head. Albert stood over him, working the pump handle at a gentle speed so the water came evenly. I heard Albert say, “Ears, too.”