“Yes, sir,” Zachary replied.
Then Zack pumped water, and Albert did the same washing up. There was some little thing in that act—something beyond the forgiveness, something greater and nameless—that my sons would never know. My boys have lived so long without a father. I can only hope they have some memories of their own papa. Some cord that can’t be cut by the hardness of life or worn away by the soil on his grave. I felt hot. There was a burning behind my eyes, a hard place forming in my throat, and I leaned on the broom with my cheek.
Chess came out the door just then and said, “Miss Savannah has supper on the table, and me and the boys are about to lose our foothold in heaven over having to wait for Albert to say the blessing. Land o’ living, what’s ailing you?”
“Dirt in my eyes.”
“Dirt, eh?” Chess held the door wide for me, and he shook his head as I passed him.
I propped the broom against the wall and sniffed back my tears before I went in. I said right out, “You all save a pullie bone for Zachary.”
When Zack entered the room, everyone cheered him.
Charlie said, “We carved you the best, buddy. Beaks and feet—all you can eat.”
“Zachary,” Savannah said, “you may ask the Lord’s blessings on this meal.”
Listening to his tiny voice in prayer, a kind of ache came into my chest, one that didn’t leave me all during supper. I forgave my sons for not caring about the education I wanted for them. I forgave them, too, for not thinking of the future, not seeing it the way I did. How could they know? No more sense about life than little gray Hunter bumping his mama’s belly. I forgave them for busting with energy and thinking they’d already figured out all about things. While Savannah and Albert surely were thinking about Zachary, I was thinking of my own boys. We were plum overflowing with forgiveness at that table.
They piled up plates with chicken, pan-fried steaks, and liver, which were passed around with potatoes bought fresh last week from a wagon out of Phoenix, gravy, vegetables, salad, and Mary Pearl’s best biscuits. The first one went to Zachary’s place.
Finally, Clover said, “Tell us what it felt like, Zack. Did it feel like jumping on the bed? Well, swallow that bite, and then talk. Tell us what it was like to fly.”
Chapter Two
May 3, 1906
Charlie came to the house with a bucket in his hands and a fearful expression on his face.
“What’s that you’ve got?” I said, thinking he was going to show me some two-headed pollywog or something.
“Mud, Mama,” he said. “Nothing but mud.” He slapped his hat to the floor and wiped sweat from his head with a sleeve. “From the well.”
I put my fingertips against my mouth and stared at the mud like it was filth he was fixing to throw on my bed. I asked, “How far down?” Cold shot through my insides, and the look and smell of that pan of off-colored water I’d pumped the other day seemed as fresh a memory as this mud before me.
“All the way. When we hauled out for bathwater last night, the last of it was dark. I reckoned it’d just gotten stirred up or something, but this is all we’re drawing.”
“What do we have?”
“Olla’s half-full. Creek’s dry as a bone. Tucker rode down and back, and he says Little Muddy cattle tank has about two feet of wet silt.”
I sat hard on the kitchen chair. We’d wasted our last drops of clear water on bathing and then put it on the garden and under the shade trees. My throat felt like cotton; my tongue was parched. The thought of having no water made me long for it all the more.
I pondered the work I’d been doing, straining buttermilk, and it gave me an idea. I said, “We’ll set up a sieve with cheesecloth. Get some grease cans, and we’ll tack the cloth on them, start pouring mud through, and then boil it.” If a person could even find a driller in this country, it could cost a thousand dollars or more to sink a well.
“That isn’t going to water the horses and us, both,” Charlie said.
A gust of breeze came just then, rippling through the curtains hanging in the window. “I know it,” I said. “Get your brother, and you ride to Maldonado’s. See how they’re fixed for water. If their tanks are dry, tell them I’ll drive the buckboard with two or three barrels in it. We’ll fill up from the windmill in the southeast section.”
Charlie said, “We thought of that. I already told Gil to go down and check the float, make sure it’s opened all the way, so it can start filling the troughs before we get there. I sent Shorty to Majo Vistoso with a bucket to try the spring-water on the animals, since those antelope were using it. Tomorrow I’ll go to town and find a driller.”
I shook my head. “Let’s see what we can do here, first. We’ll drill if we have to, but I need to be certain that we have to, before I lay out the money. Hand me that. Go get the boys, and get the buckboard ready.”
Mary Pearl was out in the barn, watching Grampa Chess work on a new saddle. I told them what Charlie’d found, then sent her to tell her folks, and to get Esther, along with Zack and Ezra, to help me move my chickens to their place. By the time the children had half the chickens carried up the hill and the buckboard was ready, Shorty rode back with half a bucket of the mineral water from the hot spring. I tried giving a sip to the dogs, but they wouldn’t touch it. I let the boys take a sip, tasted it myself, and like to choked. The horses turned away from it, too. We all agreed there would be no saving ourselves or our animals with this stuff. It was worthless for anything except a bath, and even at that, it turned our skins white with crust that had to be rubbed off. Judging by the salty taste, that water couldn’t be used even to keep the garden alive.
Thank heavens for our other windmill. Toting water from it would save our lives. It had been a difficult decision to make, but since I’d bought those last two sections, some of my range was so far away, I had to get water to the animals there. It would take about three hours to get down and back from the southeast section of land, where the giant windmill brought up water for the range herd. Three hours, if we took our time, not pushing the horses, for an animal might suddenly die in its tracks in this heat, and I’d had to unhitch a dead horse once. I surely didn’t want to have that work to do again.
Charlie rode a paint horse near ahead of the wagon. None of the neighbors had lost water, only us. We talk about water here, rain, acreage, and feed. I remember wondering early last summer whether our well needed to go deeper, as it was only about eighty feet, but the late summer had brought rain, and we never lacked for a drink of water. What we had this year was an empty well full of trouble. Four miles from the windmill, I could see the top of it rising above the trees ahead. Charlie fell quiet. When he stopped in his tracks, he motioned me to stop.
“Whoa,” I said, and pulled up the brake. “You hear something?”
“Rider. Coming fast,” he said.
I stayed put in the middle of the road. Charlie edged off to the side a little ways. A few seconds more, and we saw the man on horseback. It was Gilbert. He pulled up next to the wagon, and Charlie came from the side of the road. “There’s no water there,” Gil said. “Somebody’s bunged up the pump. Shot all three tanks full of holes. Two dead steers in two of them. The third one looks to be just drained from the holes.”
A terrible pain gripped my throat. I said, “Why would anybody—” There was no answer for the question. “We’re more than halfway. You think we can get it running and fill these kegs?”
Gilbert said, “Hard to tell. Those tanks are ruined sure.”
Charlie said, “Seems to me this is recent, if the dead animals aren’t even swelled yet. Like it was just last night or this morning early.”
We found the windmill like Gil had described it; its gears had been wrenched out of place with a pry bar of some sort. The chain used to lock it down had been tossed high up, where it had caught on the blades and twisted around the scaffold. The real nightmare of it was in the troughs. Three steel tubs, each big enough for a grown man to have a sw
im in, stair-stepped down a low hill, one after the other seated on leveled-off ground, set just so that one would overflow into the next, keeping them all full, and any runoff would create a shady, grassy place nearby. It had been a regular oasis before someone ruined it. The two lower tubs had the dead animals in them. The third tub, closest to the windmill itself, had a thick white crust in the bottom. Looked to be salt.
Buzzards circled over us. The boys set about climbing the scaffold to free the chain. They both went up, one on each side, to get a better idea how to pull the chain from the top. I pushed and poked at the pipes below, and near as I could tell, although the pieces were not connected, nothing seemed damaged.
“Stand back, Mama,” Charlie called. “I got this chain loose.”
I stepped back, and he dropped the chain. The big wheel started to revolve. It swung around on the tower, catching the smallest breeze, and the blades started moving. I heard a shout from on high, Charlie hollering something I couldn’t make out, then Gilbert’s voice crying loudly, “Gosh almighty, it’s going to kill me.”
There was a sound like a whop, and a hat whipped down from the windmill and landed beyond the scaffold. Gilbert was holding tight to the scaffold right up at the very top. The blades of the huge mill turned in the space right behind his neck. He’d been too high up when the thing let go.
I sucked in my breath sharply as the machine whipped by Gilbert’s head. It left only the width of his neck between the scaffold and the moving blades. The tail vane was broken, raised straight up, letting the windmill spin around the tower as it turned. If Gilbert drew back to climb down, the blades would crack him in the head and kill him. At the very least, it would knock him off. Forty feet is a long fall. Too long to survive.
“No,” I said, though I don’t know which one I called it to. “Hold tight, Gilbert. Hold!”
“I’m coming. Don’t move,” Charlie said. He edged his way through the wooden rails, close enough to Gilbert to touch his outstretched arm, just out of reach of the turning blades. He held his brother’s arm, steadying him against the frame while keeping himself clear of the blades. I watched him grapple for the spinning wheel as it turned faster and faster. Pulling back his hands because of the stinging, he tried again to grab one, then caught it, but it nearly threw him from the scaffold. “Glory, that hurt! Mama,” he called. “Can you turn it off from the ground?”
The spoke. I knew I’d been searching for something, but I couldn’t immediately figure what was missing. The spoke was a piece of an old wagon wheel that hung from a cable and fit into a notch as high up as my shoulders, above the base of the pump. The frame, when it was caught underneath, pulled up the wind vane and stopped the blades from turning so it could roll around with the wind and not tear itself up. “Hang on, boys,” I said. The cable had been jerked and had snapped clear up into the scaffolding, the way a wire will do when it is stretched and broken. The handle was gone. I pulled up my skirts and started climbing up that ladder, studying all the time where the end of the cable might be. I reached for it and climbed higher, then reached for it again. It was snarled tighter than a rat’s nest and far out of my reach. I hollered up, “I’ll do something, don’t worry,” but I was worried, plenty.
From where I stood on the ladder, the shaft of metal pipe shuttled up and down in the wooden barrel, about a foot over my head. It was greased and slick. I didn’t need anyone to tell me taking hold with my hands would cost me fingers. Higher up, ten feet or so, the pipe connected to another one with a thick band of metal strap and melted lead. I got back to the ground and ran and got a hank of rope from the wagon, then hunted for something that could take the place of the pin. “Hang on, Gilbert!” I called again. I tossed the rope around the moving pipe and pulled it tight, but it just slid in the grease. Next time, I tried lassoing the tangled cable line. It was tied up there, and all it did was creak when I pulled on it and slide the loop off. If I could get something long enough to push against the joint where the pipes met, maybe it would stop.
I pulled the team right up next to the windmill frame and climbed into the wagon. From there, I was only about six feet below the joint. In the bed of the wagon was a five-pound hammer, mixed in with stray hanks of wire and turnbuckle pullers. I took that hammer and beat the top rail right out of its nails. Then, holding it straight up over my head, I leaned into it as the metal joint came down. It nearly sat me down flat. There it came again, and I pushed with all my strength. “Is it slowing, boys?” I hollered.
Time and again, that metal knob beat into the end of the board, and each time I pushed harder. It happened quick and sharp, straining every fiber in me, like birthing pains, coming close to the end and hard. I said, “Wait. I’ll try something else.”
“No, Mama,” Gilbert called. “Just slow it down again. I got it figured. There’s enough time between vanes for me to duck out if you can only slow it down. I’ll count every second, and be ready to pull my head out.”
Then both boys hollered, “Push, Mama, push!” I forced that board upward against the pipe knee, slowing that great wheel. My fingers cramped; my back made a noise. The pipe rose again, and I held my breath. Then down it came again, and I managed to slow it nearly to a stop. I was waiting for a cry, waiting for that horrible whop again, followed by the merciless sound of one or both my sons falling to the ground. Down it came again. I gave a loud groan, driving the board with my whole body, holding fierce against it. Straining. Waiting. My arms burned like fire.
I heard Gilbert’s voice. “Let up, Mama, before you bust. I’m out.”
Charlie gave a whoop of relief. “I’ll get the cable untied from here,” he called.
I dropped the board. My fingers, useless, formed a curl that was hard to open. I stared upward as my youngest son edged his way down the scaffold. Even from where I was, I could see Gilbert’s knees shaking. I had a knot in my side.
When he got to the ground, he was breathing hard, red in the face, and he kept gasping over and over. After a while, he said, “Reckoned you were going to have to buy me a stone, too, Mama.”
“Ornery rascal,” I said, and squeezed him good and tight. That’s why, I reckon, I bought that stone for myself, but no others. Ensuring they wouldn’t need one until long after I’m gone. I’m not putting another one of my children in the ground. No sir. I was shaking so hard, my teeth rattled. I said, “Honey, you went and got your hat dirty.”
“Yes, ma’am, I did,” Gilbert said.
The boys jerked on the gears and shook things back into place, banging on pipes and mashing their fingers. Half an hour of that, and the pump got to hissing, and a minute later, water came from the pipe. It seemed fine. Cool and beautiful. We held our heads under the spit and drank deep and hard. Then we pulled up the wagon and filled the kegs. Charlie found the missing pin when the water started pouring into the whitened first tank. It was corroded, but whole. He rinsed the salt from it, then shut down the windmill. No sense drawing animals to drink their death. No sense rinsing salt into the grass basin we’d made three years ago, and killing it for all time. Though it meant hauling barrels every day, at least we had some water for the house now.
I chucked the reins and headed the wagon homeward, the boys following on their mounts. Charlie tossed Gilbert’s hat to him and said, “Never saw India-rubber legs before. Where’d you get them things?”
“Hush,” Gil said, beating the hat against his leg and then putting it on his head.
“Reckon you could stretch ’em out? Tie ’em in a knot under the horse, and you won’t need a cinch,” said Charlie.
“Why don’t I tie you in a knot instead?”
“Your hat’s got a new yank in it. Reckon it’s a goner.”
Gilbert cleared his throat, a loud noise. He said, “Just my work hat. Reckon it looks like it’s been worked under now.”
“Or worked over.” After a long silence, Charlie said, “You can have mine.”
“You’re giving me the new black Stetson?” He sounded
hopeful.
Charlie laughed and waited just long enough for me to think he was really going to give his brother his best hat. Then he said, “Well, no. I meant the greasy sombrero Sparky used to wear, that one Flores keeps as a tar bucket. It’s black, too, you know.”
“Knothead,” Gilbert said.
I smiled. Sometimes there isn’t any better music than two brothers bickering.
On the road home, I could see a large cloud far, far north of us. It looked dark, but it would be no good anyway. Any storm that forms in the north never brings rain, only dust storms and driving wind. Rain comes from the south. On the southern horizon, there was nothing in the sky but heat shimmers waving in the air.
We spent part of the good water on the horses and animals. I drew up three buckets full of thick gritty water from the well and left them on my front porch. Then I went out to find Chess, and a grease can or three, to begin straining mud. I figured to give the boiled-over water to the animals after this and keep the good in the house. Still, it would take a lot of work to keep a supply going.
I asked Mason to help me keep the fire going under the boiling pot outside. Then I put some lunch on the table and called the boys.
“Where’s Charlie?” I said to Chess.
“Down the well with a shovel,” he said. “He’ll be up directly.”
Charlie took a few minutes to beat the dirt off his clothes. Finally, he put his hat on its hook and sat down.
“Doing any good?” I asked, handing him a cup of water.
“Two inches,” he said. “I cleared out a foot of mud, and there’s two inches of bad water on top of solid rock. Not enough room down there to swing a pick.”
Chess said, “You can’t dig through that. All you’ll do is blunt the shovel. Maybe come evening, some will seep back in. Or we’ll buy some dynamite from one of the mining camps. Until then, we’ll work on not getting thirsty. First thing after lunch, we’ll go back down and get to fixing those water tanks.”