This was clearly rehearsed and she became angry again: “Well, let me know next time. It is still my house.”
Dolores continued to look away and then Jeannie felt bad; what would it be like to be nearing the end of your life, still being scolded? She came around the counter, intending to hug her, to show this was nothing serious, they were old friends, but if Dolores noticed her intention she didn’t let on. She said, “I’ll go see about your room,” and turned back toward the stairs, giving Jeannie the feeling that she, not Dolores, was the one who ought to be apologizing.
And there was that feeling—that Dolores no longer thought it worth hiding what they both knew, which was that in most important ways she no longer needed J.A. McCullough. Within her own community, Dolores was considered wealthy, a matriarch, people calling on her for favors, at every holiday there were cars parked on both sides of the road to her house.
In the old days it would have been the opposite. Jeannie would have been the one with the house full of lively children, weddings and birthdays and graduations to plan, while Dolores would have lost most of hers—perhaps all of them—to dysentery and malnutrition, to overwork and bad doctoring and the coraje and jealous husbands (they used to butcher each other, she thought, it was always in the paper that some peón had woken up and found he’d cut his wife’s throat). But now . . . now . . .
The sun was bright. Soon it would be summer and the light would extinguish everything, all the colors. But for now it was green and cool. She had a feeling, which became a clear thought, that she would not live to see it. She looked at her hands. Something was moving in the corner. She felt cold.
AFTER HANK DIED, there were times when the face that stared back at her in the mirror meant exactly nothing; given the right circumstance she would have obliterated it like a fly on a window. But they had not let her alone. If there was anything you could say about oilmen, they knew about suffering and loss; most were only a generation or two out of some tarpaper shack and for weeks after Hank died they had not let her alone. No matter how much she wanted silence there were people in the kitchen, living room, guest rooms, there was food out, servants she didn’t recognize, strangers coming and going, the kids going to school, coming back, how she didn’t know.
The Texans had been relentless; they might hate the blacks and Mexicans, they might hate the president enough to kill him, but they had not let her alone, they had cared for her like a mother or daughter, men she barely knew, men whose absence from their offices cost them thousands of dollars an hour, and yet she would come downstairs and find them asleep on her couch, and call their drivers to pick them up.
Though of course it was these same men who had nearly refused to do business with her in the years that followed. It was better not to think about. It was all forgiven, they had all gone back to the earth, they had lived only to die.
TED HAD COME into her life a few years after Hank left it. He was older and he came from an even older family, he spent most of his time playing polo—when he was not running or swimming—though he gave off the aura of someone who had done a lot of drugs, a man going to seed.
Not physically; at fifty he was over six feet, with a thirty-two-inch waist and the rugged looks of his ancestors, though his calluses were particular to polo mallets and dumbbells and he had never broken a bone in his life, most of which he had spent chasing women. But as if a switch had turned, he’d decided to settle down. He was smart, though it took her a long time to realize it, he paid attention to her in many ways that Hank had not and she had slowly come to see that Hank, as good as he was, had lived mostly for himself, though neither one of them had known it at the time.
And Ted, just in this difference, had given her hope, that she had not totally figured out life or people, that things might be different; it was a pleasant feeling. It mattered to Ted how she looked, he noticed all her haircuts and new clothes, he knew the difference between a mood he could talk her out of and one he couldn’t. He didn’t fawn, but he noticed. And yet he was not a serious person. He was an aging playboy who wanted company; who had grown tired, she guessed, of putting on an act for every waitress or stewardess who caught his eye. He’d decided he was old, and he wanted to be around his own people.
The boys liked him well enough. They did not quite take him seriously, though he was good to them, and filled a role she could not, taking them shooting and riding; he was too lazy to hunt deer but enjoyed hunting quail. The boys never seemed to learn anything from him; neither their riding nor their shooting improved in his presence, but he did not demand anything of them, either, and nights she would come home and find them sitting together on the sofa watching television, Ted with a bottle of wine, the boys with their pop, The Avengers or Bonanza, none of them with anything to say, but as happy as a pile of dogs in winter.
As for Susan, she had begun to summer in Maine with Jonas’s children, three months of blessed silence and privacy and after the second summer she came back asking to leave Kincaid and go away to Garrison Forest, like Jonas’s daughters. The idea that her daughter might disappear from her life for eight months was not entirely appealing, though it seemed better—barely—than having to put up with her. By then Susan was not just needy; she was a saboteur. She would go through her mother’s things, she would walk into their bedroom when she knew Ted was there, she would pretend to sneak to the kitchen for a snack, wearing only her T-shirt and underpants.
“That girl is a handful,” Ted told her.
“She will be lucky if she isn’t pregnant by her next birthday,” Jeannie said.
“I think you will be the lucky one.”
Of course he was right. But somehow, even then, it had not felt that way.
Ted didn’t have children of his own; she might have given him one while it was still possible, but neither one of them had been willing to commit to that. Mostly what Ted wanted was a family, without having to raise it himself; a woman who had her own money, a woman who accepted him as part of her pack, but otherwise asked nothing. She would never have guessed it, but she’d been more happy with him, more settled than she’d ever felt. Of course she could not help but be drawn to people like Hank, people with their own fire, but no matter how much they thought they loved you or their family or their country, no matter how they pledged their allegiance, that fire always burned for them alone.
Chapter Fifty-one
Diaries of Peter McCullough
AUGUST 6, 1917
Sally called to say she will be coming to visit. “Don’t worry about your little pelado,” she told me. “I won’t interfere.”
For a moment I saw everything falling in around me. I didn’t say anything. Finally I told her, “There is no reason for you to be here.”
“Except that it is my home. I would like to visit my own home. All sorts of excitement going on, I hear.”
“You are not welcome,” I said, though I knew it was pointless.
“Well, get that idea out of your head. Because I am coming back.”
MY FATHER WAS sitting on the porch with the driller and a few other men.
“I just spoke to Sally,” I said.
He gave me a look.
“And if anything happens, I will make certain things known.”
“I’ll see you boys this evening,” he told the men. They got up as one and left.
“Whatever you are about to say, do not say it. In fact do not even think it.”
“Stop her from coming.”
“I have nothing to do with that,” he said.
I shook my head.
“Anyone but that girl, Pete. In fact I would like it if you got every wetback in town pregnant, because unless I am given a proper Goodnighting, my days of prodding are over, and I could use a few more heirs.”
“We have nothing to worry about from María,” I said.
“I know that.”
“Then tell Sally to stay away.”
“You know, if you were a Comanche you could just cut Sally’s nos
e off, and throw her out, and get married to the new one.”
“Her name is María.”
“Unfortunately you are not a Comanche. You are subject to the laws of America. Which means you should have gotten rid of Sally before signing this other one on.”
“I’m embarrassed for you.”
“The feeling is mutual,” he told me.
“SO YOUR WIFE is returning?”
I look at her; there is no point denying it. “Don’t worry about her,” I say.
She shrugs. I can see she has been crying. “I knew it had to end sometime.”
“It doesn’t,” I say.
She turns from me.
I try to hug her but she shakes me off. “It’s fine,” she says.
“It’s not fine.”
“I will be fine.”
I realize she is not even talking to me.
AFTER SHE FELL asleep I took a bottle of whiskey and walked out into the chaparral until I reached Dog Mountain, which is nothing more than a large hill, though it is the tallest around. At the top is a large rock with a backrest cut or hacked into the stone and I climbed up and lay against it. The house was a mile or so behind me; I could see a few lights, but otherwise, it was dark.
When I had sat long enough I began to get a strange feeling. This has always been a warm place and men had likely sat on this exact rock for ten thousand years at least, as it provides the best view of the surrounding country. How many families had come and gone? Before there were men there was a vast ocean, and I knew that far beneath me there were living creatures turning to stone.
I thought of my brother, who has always pitied me for my temperament, who spends his life inside, obsessed with his papers and bank accounts. When the agarito ripens he can’t smell it, when the first windflowers bloom he will not see them. As for my father, he sees everything. But only so he can destroy it.
AUGUST 7, 1917
Sally arrived this morning. She kissed me politely on the cheek, then greeted María. “Nice to see you again, neighbor.” Then she laughed and said: “This heat can make for strange living arrangements.”
She said she would take a bedroom on the other side of the house and had her things brought up there.
Meanwhile, I was supposed to spend the day with Sullivan, as we have hired a crew to do more cross-fencing.
I intended to tell him he would have to do it without me, but María assured me it would be fine.
“Your wife and I are going to have to be alone at some point. Better sooner than later.”
WE MET THE crew at the gate and drove to the middle of the ranch, explaining what we wanted done. Gates here and here and there . . . after a few hours I was so antsy my hands were shaking. I told Sullivan I had to go.
Back at the house, Phineas’s Pierce Arrow was parked in the driveway. I got a terrible feeling. Phineas, Sally, and my father were all sitting in the parlor, waiting.
I went from room to room, calling for her, the kitchen, the great room, the library, then searched every closet. Consuela was in my bedroom, stripping the sheets off the bed. She would not speak. I went back downstairs and found the three of them still sitting there.
Sally said: “María has decided to go back to her own people.”
“I am her people.”
“Apparently she felt differently.”
“If you hurt her,” I said, “either one of you,” looking at Sally and my father, “I will kill you.”
They looked at each other and something crossed their faces, some expression of humor. If I’d had a pistol, they both would have died an instant later. There was a red mist and I took my jackknife out of its sheath, opened it, and stepped toward my wife.
“I will cut your fucking throat,” I told her. She smiled and I stepped closer and she lost all her color.
“And you,” I said, pointing the knife at my brother. “Did you know about this?”
“Pete,” he said, “we offered her ten thousand dollars to move back with her cousin in Torreón. She decided to take it.”
“Her cousin is dead.”
“She knows other people down there.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s in a car.”
“Son,” said my father, “it’s for the best.”
I went upstairs to my office. I loaded my pistol and was making my way down the hall when I saw the dark figure, leaning on the banister, waiting for me. The sunlight was on him and I stood for a long time watching: first he had a face like my father’s, then it was my own, then it was something else.
I went back to my desk.
Waiting for them to make the car ready. Leave for Torreón in an hour.
Chapter Fifty-two
Eli McCullough
June 1865
The Federals stuck to our tracks all winter and by Christmas we’d lost half our number. It was plain that if we didn’t leave Kansas we would all end up either shot or hanged; Flying Jacket and the remaining Cherokees decided to absquatulate west to the Rockies. The five RMN men—Busque, Showalter, Fisk, Shaw, and me—decided to go with them. The last we’d heard was Sherman had taken Georgia. If there were other bands of Confederates, we’d stopped running into them.
THE CHEROKEES COLLECTED a few Ute scalps but we avoided the Federals entirely, camping at tree line and generally sticking to the owl-hoot trail until one afternoon in the Bayou Salado we chassed into a small regiment. Normally this would have sent us scurrying over the next ridge, but there were two dozen wagons for only a few hundred men, and they all had eight-mule hitches, and this was not lost on Flying Jacket, either. We hunkered in the rocks and watched them.
“They are pulling something heavy,” he said.
I stayed quiet. I knew exactly what they were carrying but unless Flying Jacket agreed with me, it was pointless. He was near fifty and he’d insisted on being called a colonel and that’s why they made me one as well. He wore his jacket with the oak leaves even when it was a hundred degrees out.
“They’re going to the assay office in Denver,” I said. The war had been nothing like I thought—even the judge was nearly bankrupt—but the longer I watched the wagons, the more I wondered if something might yet be saved from the wreckage. I thought about Toshaway and the raid we’d made into Mexico and I could not see why this was any different.
“If they’re not carrying hides,” Flying Jacket was saying. “Or timber. Or, who knows, perhaps they’re simply that strong now. Perhaps they ride this way for fun.”
“Well, they won’t make the pass at that pace. They’ll have to camp on that bench.”
We continued to watch. The men riding the wagons got off to walk as the road got steeper. It was gold country and they were pulling something heavy. Of course, it could have been anything. But Flying Jacket was coming around.
“I hope we don’t go in and find it’s just a pile of rocks.”
“If we do,” said Flying Jacket, “it will just be a continuation of my entire life.”
He called a few Cherokees over and they talked. Then he turned back to me.
“This cannon they are pulling?”
“Probably a mountain howitzer.”
“With canister shot, if they are worried about being robbed.”
“Yes, but they only have one shot, and they will be firing into their own men.”
“And yet it is strange,” he said.
THEY MADE THEIR camp where we thought they would. There were butterflies in the grass, a hundred-mile view of the mountains, a cold stream running past them. We were at the tree line. It was rocks and dust. The Union men were relaxed, taking their time to set up their tents, making bets on the bighorn sheep, which were white dots on cliffs high above them. A few had Sharps rifles. Once in a while one of the white dots would come tumbling off the mountain, looking like a falling snowman.
ALL THE BOYS were against it. Except for Showalter, who was down with the Indians, we were on our bellies in the rocks, passing the field glasses back and for
th.
“This might be a persimmon above our huckleberry,” said Fisk.
“Well,” I said, “it’s what the Indians want, and it’s what Jeff Davis wants, and it’s what we’re going to do.”
“Listen to the fire-eater. The living legend.”
Shaw said: “May I humbly suggest to the boss that his attitude is outdated. By about four years.”
I passed the glasses to Fisk. He was the oldest of us; he had a big family back in Refugio.
“This is a dumb idea.” He began to wiggle back down through the rocks.
“Where are you going?”
“I gotta write a letter,” he said.
“Same here,” said Shaw. “Let me know if y’all change your mind. Otherwise you’ll find me and my horse heading down that draw we came up.”
I looked at him.
“I’ll be back at the camp,” he said. But he wasn’t smiling.
Then it was only Busque and me.
“What do you think,” I said.
“I think it’s stupid.”
“It’ll be high livin’ if it goes off.”
“You know they’ll find some way to take it off us.”
“That is a sorry attitude.”
“It’s time to piss on the fire and call the dogs, Eli. For all we know, Jeff Davis is already a cottonwood blossom.”
I didn’t say anything.
We continued to watch the bluecoats, who had stripped down to their underwear and were lying in the grass, enjoying the sun, gambling on saddle blankets or writing in their journals. Others were skinning the sheep, getting a fire going.
“I feel sorry for those Indians,” said Busque.
WE WATCHED AS the Federals ate their supper, we watched them watch the sunset, we could still see them even as the first stars came out, passing around a bottle, enjoying their jobs, acting like there wasn’t any war.
Most of the tents were in a small depression, their wagons and horses on the outskirts. Around midnight we shot arrows into their pickets. Then we stampeded the horse herd through the tents and it became a proper massacre; the Federals were easy to pick out as they were all wriggling under collapsed sailcloth or looking about confusedly wearing bright white union suits. We came into the bowl from all sides, shooting with our repeaters while the Cherokees raced around, ululating and smashing heads with their flint axes. Most of the Yankees died before they even knew who was tormenting them and I began to feel sorry for them, it was not even an honest fight, and then Flying Jacket was trying to get my attention.