“Is that what your price is based on?”
She was too tired to explain.
“Honey,” they said, “what’s wrong?”
She wanted to go to their ranch, she wanted to sit on their patio and drink wine with Walt, she wanted to stop thinking about her son. Instead the driver took her back to the airport.
All of this for money. Money she did not need, money her daughter did not need, money her son did not need. No one she knew needed money. And yet, apparently, she would do anything for it. She would spend her days in Midland and her nights in San Francisco. She was crazy. She agreed to the Bensons’ price.
Walt invited her to the ranch again. They looked at each other a long time, here was her chance, she’d rejected him years earlier, he would not try again. Instead she went back to San Francisco, got a room at the Fairmont, and stayed two months helping Thomas clean out his condo, agonizing over Richard’s awful paintings. And Thomas had lived. He had gone on the drugs and they had saved him. He went back to calling her Mother; he called her Jeannie only when he was mad.
She knew that other people felt sorry for her. She knew that her life looked empty, but it was the opposite. You could not live for yourself while also living for others. Even lying here she was free. She was not in some hospital where they kept you alive when they shouldn’t, where you had no say over your own end.
She was back in the enormous room. The light was blinding now, the sun was shining directly through the roof, the furniture askew, everything in shambles, but she did not mind it.
There was a scent in the air, soothing and oversweet and she recognized it: balm of Gilead. Cottonwood buds. Were they blooming? She couldn’t remember. She could not remember the day or year. She and Hank had planted a row of saplings around the stock tank, they were now enormous, a grove of cottonwoods. She had left things better than she found them. She remembered the Colonel rubbing the sap into her fingers, she remembered how the smell lingered all day, every time you lifted your hands to your face, every sip of water, you drank in that smell. The Colonel had showed her and she had showed it to Hank. Now they were waiting for her. She could feel it.
Chapter Sixty-five
Ulises Garcia
He had heard and then seen her jet land yesterday; it was quite a sight, a plane that looked as if it might carry thirty or more people, landing to discharge a single person. It was a Gulfstream. The same one the narcotraficantes preferred. A car picked her up from the runway.
Even watching her from a distance gave him a nervous feeling. He had worked all day, but had not been able to eat lunch.
Later he saw her being driven around the ranch, sitting in the back of her Cadillac. Her chin held high, surveying all she owned. Near dinnertime he had made a point of passing by the house, just to get a glimpse of her, when he noticed an old person sitting by herself on the vast porch, looking at some papers.
He rode up and tipped his hat. “Good evening. I am Ulises Garcia.”
She looked at him. She was annoyed at being interrupted. But he smiled at her and finally she couldn’t help herself. She smiled back and said: “Hello, Mr. Garcia.”
He couldn’t think of anything more to say, so he wished her a good night and rode off cursing himself.
THE NEXT DAY the plane was still there. The sun was going down and he was heading back to the bunkhouse. He supposed it was now or never. Of course if she rejected him, he would have to leave. It was a good job, Bryan Colms liked him, the other hands liked him, even if they thought he was a showoff.
Of course he was a coward if he didn’t try. After dinner, he changed into his good shirt and packed his papers into a small leather bag his grandfather had given him.
Chapter Sixty-six
Diaries of Peter McCullough
OCTOBER 13, 1917
Received two telegrams from Guadalajara asking me to come down, but neither is the real María. Today a letter arrived. Very short.
“Received your note. Good memories but see no way of continuing.”
I wait until I am certain Sally is out of the house, then call Ab Jefferson and tell him what happened.
“We could bring her up here easy,” he says.
“How would you do that?”
“It has been done, Mr. McCullough.”
Then I understand. “No,” I tell him. “Absolutely not.”
IT IS NOT much of a plan. Composed a letter to Charlie and Glenn explaining as best I could. Do not expect they will forgive me—especially Charlie. He is the Colonel’s son as much as mine. Tomorrow is a Sunday so I will have to wait.
OCTOBER 14, 1917
Woke up this morning with a happiness I have not felt since she left, replaced slowly by the old feeling. Did not know I had so much fear in me.
If she consents to see me it will not be the same, she was a refugee then—we will be like old friends who no longer have anything in common. Our bonds revealed as illusion. Better not to see it. Better to hold on to something I know is good.
OCTOBER 15, 1917
Did not sleep last night. Packed three changes of clothes and my revolver. In a few minutes I will pass through the gates of the McCullough ranch for the last time. One way or the other.
The bank in Carrizo will not have what I need so I am going to San Antonio. Ronald Derry has known me twenty years—he will not question me. Unless he does. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars for oil leases. Oil leases, I will say, you know these farmers, they all want to see cash.
Then I will cross the border. Of course the money is not mine. If they decide to call my father . . .
I HAVE NO illusion about my chance of reaching Guadalajara alive. I am of sound mind and body. This is my testament.
Chapter Sixty-seven
Eli McCullough
With the surrender of the Comanches, an area as big as the Old States opened to settlement and every easterner who owned a whaling ship or hotel began to fancy himself a cattle baron. There were Frenchmen and Scots, counts and dukes in scissortail coats, peacocked Yankees with their faces shining like new mirrors. They overpaid for range, overpaid for stock, overpaid for horses, they were trying to catch up to the rest of us. Meanwhile the southern grasslands were already run-down; the smart stockmen drove their herds to Montana to get fat on what grass remained.
Half the cowhands were Harvard men in lisle thread socks, with mail-order pistols and silver-decked tack bought straight from a leathershop drummer. They’d come west to grow up with the country. Meaning see the end of it.
I said I would sell out by ’80. The part of me that was still alive hated the sight of cowbrutes, hated chewing every waking minute on how I would profit or lose by them. The rest of me couldn’t think of anything else. How to protect them, how to get the best price for them, and, when the money had gone out of them, how I might make it another way. I was caught in the thorns of my own undertaking, unmaking, I considered the beasts more than my own wife and children, I was no different from Ellen Wilbarger with her laudanum. She had not needed it until she tried it, but soon saw no other way.
MADELINE THOUGHT I was interfering with some senorita. She gave me too much credit. The problem was much bigger than any girl.
BY THEN I had moved them to San Antonio, but I still spent my time in the brasada or along some dusty waterhole and Madeline was not any happier. She told me to get a proper house built on the Nueces or else. I told her I had only a few years left—I could feel it doing something to me.
“Like what?” she said.
I started to tell her, but couldn’t. Old Nicky himself had pinched my jaw shut.
She paced the living room. She’d fallen in with some other grass widows and had taken to wearing paint; just a touch but I noticed it. The servants were off being servants and the boys were in the yard.
“I hate this house,” she said.
“It’s a hell of a nice house,” I said. It was a big white one in the Spanish style, big as the one she’d grown up in, with a good
view of the river. It was two years’ wages and a sizable note to match.
“I would rather be living in a hut.”
“We’ll be out soon enough,” I said.
“Why not now?”
“Because.”
“We do not have to live in the biggest house. Now or ever. I believe you have confused me with my sister.”
She smiled but I wanted to keep it serious. “Three years,” I told her. “Come hell or high water I swear I will not touch a cow after that.”
“That is the same as never.”
“There is no school.”
“We will build one. Or hire a teacher. Or we keep this place and go back and forth and hire a teacher half the time.” She threw up her hands. “There are any number of ways,” she said. “We are not exactly building a railroad.”
“Well, it’s a waste of money to build a place and leave it.”
“The fool who buys the land will also buy the house. Meanwhile I am here with your children, who spend all their time pretending they are you when they don’t really know you.”
“It’s not the right place,” I said. “I am sure of it.”
But she was already not listening. I could see her thinking. “The representative is going back to Washington,” she said. The representative was her mother’s new husband. “There is a nice house for sale next door to theirs. Which is where I am taking the children unless you convince me otherwise.”
I walked away from her and stood by the window. The best part of me knew I ought to let her go but I could not get the words to my mouth. Outside, Everett was wearing my old buckskin shirt. He had a feather in his hair and he was stalking the other boys. I had been promising to show him how to make a bow for so long that I realized he had stopped asking me. Pete and Phineas were digging at something in the yard—they didn’t have the fire of a firstborn. I had also promised Everett I would let him ride with me a few days during roundup. In truth I liked that the boys were in school. I had not wanted to start them on the outdoor life; soon it would be fit only for hobbyists and outcasts.
Madeline was still talking. “Or,” she was saying, “you can move us to the Nueces.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Wonderful. September, then.”
“That is barely enough time to build a dugout.”
“Then hire twice as many men. Or ten times as many. I don’t care. But three months from now the children and I will not be living in this house.”
IN ABILENE A new tailor opened shop every week, and, after making a drive, most of the hands would sell their horses, buy suits, and take the train home. The ones who’d seen a Ned Buntline or Bill Cody show would brag on the incident for months, as if the shows were more real than their own lives. The others passed the winter reading Bret Harte.
The drives got shorter. The International and Great Northern surveyed a line through our pastures. The grass was disappearing but it didn’t matter—the railroads brought the farmers and nesters, people who wanted to live in towns—the land I had bought for a quarter was worth forty dollars an acre when they built.
Had it not been for the children I would have moved to the Klondike. The country was ruined, as a woman would have been after riding the cat wagon. I had never known it could fill up. I had never known there were so many people on earth.
Chapter Sixty-eight
J.A. McCullough
She’d come into the great room to see her father sitting next to the fireplace. He didn’t notice her—she remained in the shadows—he was sitting in a chair he had pulled onto the stone hearth, reading from a leather-bound notebook. When he finished a page, he would tear it out, lean forward, and drop it into the flames. There were three other notebooks—they appeared to be some sort of journal—on the floor next to him. She watched for several minutes. Finally she walked over. “What are you doing?” she said.
He was sweating and his face was pale as if he had a fever. For a time he didn’t speak.
“Your grandfather was a liar,” he finally said. He looked as if he would tear up and then sat there like that and she was reminded of the father of her school friend, who had also sat weeping in front of the fire, and she wondered if it was something that fathers did.
He collected himself. “I should get some work done.” He stood and picked up all four of the notebooks and tossed them among the burning logs. Then he kissed her on the head. “Good night, sweetie.”
When she was sure he was gone, she took the poker and pulled the journals out. The flames had barely touched them.
She had not shown her brothers, or anyone else. She had known better. She had known she was the only one who could be trusted with them.
JONAS HAD BEEN acting strangely all day; after school, instead of going out to the pastures to meet their father, he had gone up to his room. She had watched him at dinner, there was something wrong with him, probably the flu. He barely touched his food.
The dishes had been cleared away and Paul and Clint had gone to the library to play cards. She went out to her sleeping porch to read and looked out into the dark and saw a figure walking down the hill toward the stables. His shoulders were hunched and his head was down as if he was embarrassed and she knew immediately it was Jonas.
Even later, she was not sure why she followed him. She walked to the stables and sat in the dark, watching. A light went on. She wondered if her brother was meeting a girl; she wondered who the girl was. But then he was leading all the horses out to the pasture, slapping to get them moving.
She went closer and watched through the cracks in the boards, standing in the dark night, as he dragged hay bales down and stacked them under the loft. When he was satisfied with the pile he’d made, he took a jug of coal oil and poured it over the hay.
“What are you doing?” she said. She opened the door.
He was looking at her and she stepped into the light.
“Jeannie,” he said. He looked stricken.
“What are you doing?” she said again.
“This is the only way he’ll let me leave.”
She had not understood.
“Daddy,” he said. He shrugged. “I thought I would see what happened when I start costing him real money. That’s always been the way to his heart. You can tell on me if you want, I don’t care.”
“I won’t tell,” she said.
“Then go through the stalls and make sure I didn’t leave any of the horses. I’m not thinking straight right now.”
She had walked through the stable, checking each stall.
He had made a torch out of a stick and an old shirt and she watched through the door as he doused it in kerosene and lit it. Then he threw the torch onto the pile. There was a noise and it was bright. He came out and shut the door behind him. They sat on the hill and watched as light began to come through all the cracks in the building, as if a small sun were rising inside it. Smoke began to pour out into the night and her brother stood up and held her to him and then he took her hand and they walked quietly together back up the hill toward their father’s house.
Chapter Sixty-nine
Ulises Garcia
He had shaved and his hair was wet and neatly combed. He was wearing a fresh shirt and pants. The shirt was brand-new, as were the trousers; his boots were polished. He brought his leather bag with all the birth certificates, and his great-grandfather’s old Colt revolver, which no longer worked but was clearly engraved P. McCullough.
He walked around the porch, looking for her, and saw a pair of open glass doors.
He walked up to them and there she was, sitting in a chair, reading.
She recognized him.
“You must be looking for Dolores.”
“No,” he said.
“I like to have a fire when I come here,” she said. “Even if I have to leave the door open so it doesn’t get hot.”
“It seems nice.”
She waited for him to say something else.
“I work for you.”
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“I remember.”
A long time seemed to pass before he could say anything. His head felt light.
“I’m the great-grandson of Peter McCullough,” he said. “I wanted to work for you because . . .” He couldn’t say the rest; it would make him sound like a crazy person.
Her face showed nothing.
From his leather bag, which he had also cleaned and oiled before coming over, he removed all the letters and papers. He took a few steps into the room and handed her everything, then stepped back. He looked around as she read. The room was enormous, thirty meters by forty, he guessed. The ceilings were ten meters tall, a beam construction like an old church. The room itself might have contained three of the houses in which he’d grown up, and he began to think about the Arroyos’ house.
She read the first few pages, but then she was going through the papers faster than she could read them.
“We are family,” he repeated.
Her eyes showed nothing, but he could see that her hands had begun to shake.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave,” she said.
He pointed again to the papers.
“You will leave this house right now,” she said. “Mr. Colms will have your check.”
He was about to say more but she was not paying attention. As if he were not there, she casually pushed herself up from her chair and walked to a low marble table and picked up the phone there.
She dialed and their eyes locked.
“This is Mrs. McCullough. There is a man in my house who refuses to leave. Yes, he is here right now in the room with me.”
She nodded at him and waved him out. He could feel his body begin to move, toward the door.