“Get off the rig,” he said again, but she didn’t. He declutched the drill string and dropped the rams. More drilling mud blew out over the traveling block, spattering her dress and shoes.
“Get the fuck off the rig, Jeannie.” He shoved her roughly to the edge of the stairs. She looked back at him and finally went down. He was ignoring her again. She sat on a rock a few yards away. She was scared, though she was not sure of what. On the other hand if something happened . . . it was fine. She would be there with him.
After ten or fifteen minutes, the burping stopped. Mud began to flow into the pits again. The men began to laugh and the way they were clapping each other on the back, all talking very fast and grinning uncontrollably, she knew they had all been afraid. There were hundreds of empty Baroid sacks blowing around in the wind.
Hank waved to the motorman to shut the engine down and the hands all sat by the doghouse. One of them lit a cigarette, but Hank reached over and plucked it out of his mouth and crushed the ash carefully into the dirt.
“Maybe we can hold off on that cowboy shit, you think?”
The man nodded.
Then he turned to Jeannie: “Next time I ask you to leave, you leave.”
“How am I going to learn if I leave when things go wrong?” she said.
“You would not have learned anything. This would have been a fireball they would have seen from town.”
The roughnecks were slumped on a bench in the doghouse. The derrickman was pacing back and forth, cursing the mud pumps.
“What about the rams?” she said.
“Sometimes the gas is coming up no matter what. You can do everything perfect but you can’t always stop it.”
After that she did not want to be away from him. If he was on a well that blew out, she would be on it as well. She would not be alone again.
Chapter Thirty-three
Diaries of Peter McCullough
JUNE 25, 1917
Tonight she found me in my office. I had given her one of the trucks to take to Carrizo, half expecting she would never return.
“Did I scare you?”
“A little,” I said. I realized I had indeed been expecting her to disappear, which had made me feel both relieved and depressed.
She looked around. “All these books. And you sleep here?”
I nodded.
“Because of me?”
“I got in the habit before my wife left,” I told her, which was not entirely a lie.
She took a seat on the sofa. “Look at me,” she said, holding out her hands. “I’m like a dead person. I can’t stand to even look in the mirror.”
“You just need to eat and rest.”
“I can’t stay that long,” she said.
“I already told you I don’t mind.”
“But I do.”
It was quiet and she looked around again.
“How old are you?”
“I am eleven years younger than you are,” she said. “Though I now look older.”
“You are still very pretty.” It was not true, not really, and yet all the blood went to my face. If it is possible to make an improvement in four days, she had. Her skin was no longer dry, her lips less cracked, her hair washed and shining. But she didn’t appear to notice my compliment.
“You know I imagined telling you all these things for years now, but when I see it hurts you, I feel guilty. Then I am angry at myself for feeling guilty. And yet the past two nights, I have slept very well here. Which also makes me feel guilty. I guess I am the coward after all.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said.
“You’re not in a position to judge.”
She continued to look around the room, at all my books, floor to ceiling, and her eyes got soft again but I could not help the feeling she was not long for this earth; I had seen dead people with more weight to their bodies.
“There are many farmers here now?”
“Yes.”
“And the other Mexican families? The ones who were here?”
“Some of them went to Michigan to work. Some disappeared. Some are dead.”
She asked which ones. I opened my journal and told her what I had written, though I mostly knew it from memory.
Killed in the riots: Llewellyn and Morena Pierce, Custodio and Adriana Morales, Fulgencio Ypina, Sandro Viejo, Eduardo Guzman, Adrian and Alba Quireno, all four of the Gonzalo Gomezes, all ten of the Rosario Sotos except the two youngest, who were adopted by the Herreras.
Fled during or after the riots: the Alberto Gomezes, the Claudio Lopezes, the Janeros, the Sapinosos, the Urracas, the Ximenes, the Romeros, the Reyes, Domingo Lopez, unrelated to Claudio, Antonio Guzman, unrelated to Eduardo (killed), Vera Florez, the Vera Cruzes, the Delgados, the Urrabazes.
“There may have been others I have not heard about.”
“Well, you wrote them down,” she said. “That is something.”
“There are more,” I said.
The ones who had moved to Detroit for work: the Adora Ortizes, the Ricardo Gomezes, the Vargases, the Gilberto Guzmans, the Mendezes, the Herreras (including the two daughters of Rosario Soto), the Riveras, Freddy Ramirez and his family.
“Do you own all our land,” she said, “or was it split with the Reynoldses and Midkiffs?”
“Just us. And some farmers from the North.” Which was true, but also a lie, and I was sorry I’d said it.
“For taxes, I guess.”
“They said your father was in arrears.”
“He was not. Obviously.”
I looked out the window.
“There is so much anger in me,” she said, “that I sometimes cannot understand how I still breathe.”
JULY 1, 1917
María Garcia has been here ten days. According to Consuela, when I am gone she wanders the house or sits on the gallery staring out over the land that used to be her family’s or plays the piano that used to be my mother’s. When I come back from the pastures she is usually playing the piano—she seems to know it is a kind of present for me.
After supper I find her in the library. We both like the same places in the house—the library, the parlor, the west side of the gallery. The small protected places where you can see a long way, or hear if someone is coming.
When I ask about her plans she says she would like to continue to eat, and when she is done eating she will make other plans. She is already looking better, gaining weight, the years dropping off.
“When it becomes inconvenient,” she tells me, “I’ll be on my way.”
I don’t tell her it is already inconvenient, that my father has already demanded that she leave. “Where would you go?”
She shrugs.
Then I say, “How’s old Mexico these days?” as if I don’t know the answer.
“They pick you up on the street, or when you are coming out of the movies, or from a cantina, and say here is a gun, you are now a Zapatista or a Carrancista or a Villista, depending on who catches you. If you protest, or if they find out you were on another side, they kill you.”
“You must have friends from university?”
“That was fifteen years ago. And most of them left when things got bad.”
“Michigan?” I regret saying it immediately.
“Those are not my people.” But she shrugs and I can see she forgives me.
I look at the light coming in on her hair, which shines, and the line of her neck, where there is the faintest hint of sweat. It occurs to me that she has very nice skin. She leans back into the stream of air from the fan, kicks her foot up and down, looking at the slipper on it, which she must have gotten somewhere in the house.
“I’ll be fine,” she says. “It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
JULY 2, 1917
Went to see my father to discuss the matter further. The drillers have run out of coal for their boiler and the silence is a relief. Forgot what silence sounded like.
The Colonel was sitting in the shade on the gallery of
his house, which is more like a jacal. It does not have nearly the view of the main house, but it is in a copse of oaks, with a live stream running past it, and is ten degrees cooler than any other place on the ranch. He still sleeps in a brush arbor at night (though he has run an electric wire and keeps his Crocker fan blowing) and refuses to use an indoor toilet, preferring to squat in the bushes. Walking around his house is a bit like walking through a minefield.
“This heat,” he said. “We should have bought on the Llano.”
It was 110 at the big house, 100 at his jacal.
“We’d have to shovel snow,” I said.
“That is the problem with having a family. Take a man like Goodnight, does whatever the hell he wants, moved himself right up to Palo Duro when the Comanches left.”
“Charles Goodnight has a family. A wife, anyway.”
He looked at me.
“Molly.”
“Well, he never talks about them.” Then he changed the subject: “There is a man coming here in the next few weeks, name of Snowball. He’s a Negro I knew from the old days. He may be here awhile.”
I cleared my throat and said: “There is also the matter of this Garcia girl.”
“She is not as good-looking as her mother. I will say that for her.”
“She is pretty enough.”
“I want her making dust as soon as possible.”
“She’s sick.”
“It’s not in the best interest, Pete.”
“The best interest.”
“There are three events regarding this woman. The first is her brother-in-law shot your son. The second is that, with a half-dozen law enforcement officers present, we went to capture the guilty parties. Unfortunately things did not go as hoped.”
“That is an inaccuracy, at best.”
He waved his hand furiously, as if my words were a stale odor. “The final thing is her father’s land was put up in a tax sale by the State of Texas, which would have happened sooner or later, whether they were living on the property or not, as they had not been paying their taxes.”
I snorted.
“It is in the records.”
“Which makes it all the more likely to be a lie.”
“Pete, there are many things I have wanted to save: the Indians, the buffalo, a prairie where you could look twenty miles and not see a fence post. But time has passed those things by.”
How about your wife, I thought, but I remained silent.
“Give her some money and get rid of her. By the weekend.”
“She will leave over my dead body.”
He opened his mouth but nothing came out. By his color, he must have been very hot.
“Now don’t go getting up on your ear,” I heard him start, but I was already walking away, my hands hidden in my pockets as they were shaking. They did not stop shaking until after I got back to the house.
CALLED SALLY, HOPING she might be a voice of reason. We had not spoken in a month—she does her communicating through Consuela—and she was surprised to hear from me. Says she has no interest in returning to McCullough Springs. Greatest mistake of her life. We discussed Charlie and Glenn, who are still in training. We both agreed it was unlikely they would ever make it to the war. I suspected Charlie would be disappointed by this, but I did not say it.
After a time she mentioned that she spent two weeks in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts with a “friend.” She wondered if I had heard anything of it, if perhaps that was the reason I had called. Ridiculousness of asking her opinion about María Garcia suddenly apparent; I became annoyed at myself for calling her, annoyed at my own desperation. But she thought I was annoyed at her tryst and immediately became conciliatory.
“I’m sad you’re not here,” she said. “It would be more fun if you were.”
“I’m just working.”
Silence.
“Are we separated?”
“I don’t know.”
“But we are taking some time away from each other.”
“I don’t care what you do,” I told her.
“I’m just asking. I’m trying to figure out our status.”
“You can do whatever you want.”
“I know you don’t care, Peter. You don’t care about anyone but yourself and your sadness. That is what you care about the most, making sure you are as unhappy as possible.”
“The things you do haven’t bothered me before,” I said. “I don’t know why they would now.”
“I am trying to figure out how it’s possible that I still love you, but I do. I want you to know that. You can still save this whenever you want.”
“That’s nice,” I told her.
Silence.
“Say,” she finally said. “How is that drilling going?”
WENT DOWN TO see about dinner.
“Your father says I am not to cook for her,” said Consuela.
I shrugged.
“I’ll make extra for you,” she said.
Of course there is no one to talk to, even Consuela; I know what her answer will be. What anyone’s answer will be. The right thing is to get rid of her. Perhaps for her own good.
AFTER A TEN-MINUTE search I find her in the library. The nicest spot in the house, as most of the windows face north and there are a few seeps hidden among the rocks to keep the view green.
“What’s wrong?” she says.
I shrug.
“I saw you walking back from your father’s house.”
I shrug again.
“Of course. Consuela’s given me a few things, I’ll get them together.”
“Didn’t your family have a bank account?”
“They did,” she said, “and what little I could withdraw I used to live.”
“Is there really nowhere else?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“He’s always done this,” I say, referring to the Colonel.
“The land makes people crazy.”
“It’s not the land.”
“No, my great-uncle was the same. A person to him was an obstacle, like a drought, or a cow that would not do what he wanted. If you crossed him he might cut your heart out before he came to his senses. If his sons had lived . . .” She shrugs. “Of course we didn’t belong here, my father was two years into university when his uncle died. But . . .” She shrugs again. “He was a romantic.”
“He was a good man,” I say.
“He was vain. He loved the idea of being a hidalgo, he was always telling us how blessed we were to live on the land. But really, there was no we. It was only him. He could not accept that his neighbors might one day kill him, and so he kept us all there, despite the risks, which we were all aware of.”
It gets quiet.
“You don’t belong here, either,” she says. “You’ve probably always known it and here you are.”
Not always, of course, but perhaps since my mother died. Though I cannot tell her that story; it does not compare to her own. Instead I tell her another:
“I remember when I was a kid, we caught this boy who my father thought had stolen cattle from us. He was maybe twelve or so, but he wouldn’t tell my father anything so my father threw a rope over the top of the gate, put it around the boy’s neck, and tied the other end to a horse. When they let him down he started talking. He scratched a map in the dirt and said the men we were looking for were white, that they’d made him come along because they didn’t know the land.”
She nods. I can’t tell if I should continue or not. But I do:
“I was taking the noose off him when my father slapped the horse and the boy went back up in the air.”
“And then?”
“He died.”
“Did they catch the others?”
“He hanged the ones he didn’t shoot.”
“The sheriff?”
“No, my father.”
THERE WERE NINE of them but the last four gave themselves up and my father stripped the saddles off their horses and found a proper
cottonwood and hung them with their own ropes. I held the camphene lamp while Phineas put the nooses on. At first Phineas was nervous but the last man he noosed he told: It’ll all be over in a minute, partner.
That is real kind of you, said the man.
My father said: Either way you’re hanging, Paco. It’s just whether it’s now or in a few weeks in Laredo.
I’ll take the few weeks. Spit popping in his mouth.
You ought to be happy we aren’t skinning you, said my father.
MARÍA HAS COME to sit next to me. The sun is going down, the light in the room is dim. She brushes a hair behind her ear and I swallow. Her eyes are soft. She touches my hand. “You should stop thinking about it,” she says.
I can’t. But that is difficult to explain to people, so I don’t say anything.
PHINEAS STOOD BESIDE one of the horses and slapped it, then moved down the line to slap the next one. When the last man dropped it was quiet except for the ropes creaking and the men gurgling and shitting as they pedaled their legs. They were still kicking when my father said: There’s some nice saddles here.
“PETER?”
Her hand is covering mine and I am afraid to move.
“That is in me somewhere,” I say.
We sit there like that and I wonder if something might happen but we both know there is nothing right about it.
Chapter Thirty-four
Eli McCullough
Early 1852
I arrived in Bastrop and found the address of my new home, a rickety frame house with multiple rooms added, built before statehood when materials were thin. But there was a large front yard with flowers and grass and a whitewashed fence.
My stepmother was in her forties, with a harsh expression and a tightly tied bonnet. She looked like she’d been raised on sour milk and when the Indians thought of white people, she is the person they imagined, from the look she gave, she did not exactly think me nickel-plated, either. Her two sons were both taller than me and they smirked. I made up my mind to bash their heads.
“You must be Eli.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, we found some clothes for you. You can change out of those things. You better give that pistol to Jacob.”