by Oakley Hall
“You’d better take him back,” he said tiredly.
“Oh, no! He gave him to me!”
“You’d…”
“Oh, please,” V cried softly. “Oh, please, please, Papa!”
“I’ll buy you a horse if I can. We can’t afford anything like that.”
V buried her face in the copper neck. “Oh, please,” she whispered. “He’s so beautiful. I want something to be mine.” Baird didn’t speak, licking the dryness from his lips. Then he heard her whisper, “He’s the only beautiful thing I ever had,” and he almost cried out with pain. He wanted to tell her that he himself had never had anything beautiful; except the land, which was beautiful only at this time of day, and only then if he could forget what it had taken out of him; except Cora, who had died before he had ever known her and of whom he had been jealous and suspicious until the end and even after it; except her, V, who somehow did not belong to him.
But he could not tell her, and he said, “You’d better take him back,” and turned and went inside. Mary was filling the glasses with milk from the dented tin pitcher. She looked up sullenly as he came in. “Put some supper in the oven for her,” he said, and outside he heard the clop of hoofs, slow at first, then hastening, and fading to silence at a gallop.
It was almost an hour before V returned. She went into her room through the kitchen and through her closed door he could hear her crying. He cursed Denton. He couldn’t accept a favor like that, and he couldn’t afford to buy Tony. Finally he went to sit on the porch in the darkness, where he couldn’t hear her crying.
The next morning he was helping Juan clear out one of the irrigation ditches when Denton drove up from the highway in his new Ford pick-up truck. Baird put down his shovel and wiped his mud-caked hands on his trouser legs before they shook hands. Denton was a short, spare man with bushy, iron-gray hair and eyebrows and a long neck. He wore a chamois jacket and tan breeches, and there was a cigarette in a yellow holder between his teeth. Baird had disliked him from the first time they had met, ten years ago now, when Denton had first bought his ranch. He had seen Denton, with one look at Baird’s clothes, ranch buildings and house, decide Baird didn’t amount to much. That first day Denton had talked about his heart trouble, his ranch and the peach orchards near Marysville he had sold to buy it, and about why he had never married. But since he and V had become friends, Denton had dropped his superior manner and seemed strangely anxious that Baird should like him. Baird always had the feeling that Denton had something important to say to him, but could never get around to it.
“Weather’s been fine,” Baird said.
“Hasn’t it? Though I could do with a little less sun.” Denton spoke with a soft, slow, slurring sound, the esses leaking out the corners of his mouth. There was a silence; Baird looked down at Denton’s gleaming riding boots.
“About that horse,” Denton said.
“Yes.”
“I’d like her to have him. I had him broken for the kid, Baird. He’s gentle.”
“It’s not that.”
Denton was silent. He took the holder from his mouth and tapped the cigarette with a yellow-stained forefinger.
“I can’t afford a horse like that,” Baird said. “I wish you’d talked to me first, because…”
“You don’t need to buy him.”
“Well, I couldn’t let you do that.”
“I don’t know why not. Oh, I know how you feel, but… Well, she loves that pony and I’d like to give him to her.”
Baird shook his head. “That horse is worth a lot of money. I can’t let you do me a favor like that.” He shook his head again. But maybe the horse would serve to keep V at home, he thought. He pictured her if he told her he had changed his mind and she could have Tony. He took off his hat and smoothed his hair back.
“I’m not doing you a favor, man,” Denton said. “It’s for her. Why, hell, I’m a lonely old bachelor; it gives me a lift having the kid playing around my place.” He stopped and tapped the cigarette again. They both watched the ashes drift down. “I’d really like to do it for her,” Denton said.
“Well, maybe I could pay you for him after a while. I don’t like to be in debt to anybody.”
“You’re not in debt to me!” Denton protested. “And if you’ll let me I’ll hustle a couple of men over here to put up a corral.”
“No,” Baird said. “Don’t do that. Juan and me…Juan can rig one up.”
He got the tin of Copenhagen from his shirt pocket and bit off a corner of tobacco. “That’s a fine-looking horse,” he said. Looking up, he saw that there were spots of color on Denton’s cheeks, and he was dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. His mouth was half-open, as though he were going to speak.
But he closed it again and looked away. Finally he nodded and said, “Out of one of my mares by Copper McCloud. The kid’ll take good care of him.”
Baird said awkwardly, “Well, I sure want to thank you. V’ll be happy, I know.”
“She’s a great kid. The best there is. She deserves that pony.”
“I wish I could do more for her,” Baird said, as they walked to the pick-up and shook hands. Denton’s eyes suddenly jerked up to his, almost pleadingly.
“Baird…” he began.
Baird looked at him and after a moment Denton smiled foolishly. His cheeks were red. “I wish you’d let me build that corral,” he said.
“No,” Baird said. “Thanks,” and Denton nodded and got quickly into the pick-up. Baird watched him, puzzled, as Denton backed down the hill. He stood for a moment watching the bend in the road where the pick-up had disappeared, then he walked slowly up to the house to tell V.
4
The corral went up quickly. They built it out next to the shed and whitewashed it, set boulders around it and whitewashed them. At the juncture of the shed and the corral they built the stall and V nailed a horseshoe over the door and painted tony beneath it with blue enamel. She was happy and it made him happy to see her so. He knew Juan and Mary felt it as well. The house and the dingy, sunbaked little ranch buildings seemed more alive.
But the horse did not keep V at home, as he had hoped. She spent all her time with Tony now, riding him, or currying and petting him, and she was long hours over at Denton’s. She was learning to jump and teaching Tony tricks, riding in Denton’s ring on one of Denton’s English saddles. Right after breakfast she would be gone, usually not to return until lunch time, and then she would be gone again until supper. And one long, summer evening she went out after supper and returned at dark, laden with packages. Baird heard her snap the lock when she went into her room.
He was sitting in the platform rocker by the window, reading the paper in the funnel of light from the floor lamp. He didn’t look up when he heard her come out but after a moment she turned on the ceiling light and called softly, “Papa!”
He put down the paper. He gasped when he saw her.
She was smiling, turning slowly around, standing directly beneath the dim, dangling light bulb. She had on a jacket and short skirt of white buckskin trimmed with gold, and tasseled white Hessian half-boots. She carried a huge white Stetson in her hand.
He stared at her legs. Bare from thigh to calf, ivory, full-fleshed, they were woman’s legs. He was shocked, and suddenly frightened.
“How do you like me?” she asked in a little voice.
He licked his lips. “What have you got on?”
Again she turned around self-consciously, her free hand on her hip, one leg slightly bent. Her hair, brushed until it shone, hung down her back in two blonde braids.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she cried suddenly, and she ran and knelt beside his chair. “It’s my costume for Frontier Day.” Her hand clutched his arm and he could feel its warmth through his shirtsleeve; her eyes shone. “Oh, Papa, I’m going to ride Tony in the Parade!”
“Not in that!”
“Yes, I am.”
He cleared his throat. “Not in that, you’re not!”
“But Papa, why not?”
“You know why not.” He took off his glasses, folded them nervously and laid them on the window sill. V’s face had paled, but she still smiled, the smile set and meaningless.
“Did he buy that for you?”
She nodded. Her eyes searched his hopefully.
“He ought to know better than that. You’re not going to put on a show for those people down in Bakersfield.” He felt her hand leave his arm. “You look indecent,” he said.
V slowly got to her feet, looking down at her legs. There were goose pimples on them and she was shivering, and when she put the hat on he saw why she had not worn it before. It was too large. The brim slid down almost to her eyes, and when her eyes met his, he looked away.
“Go put your clothes on,” he told her harshly. “Take that outfit back tomorrow.”
She turned away. The boots clumped on the linoleum as she walked to her room. He saw her looking at herself in the mirror and she took off the Stetson hat before she closed the door.
He put his glasses back on, shook out the newspaper and tried to go back to his reading, but he could not concentrate. The lines of type were wavy and jumbled together.
He put the paper down. He wished he had not spoken so harshly. She couldn’t be expected to know such a costume was improper. He supposed he was always too harsh with her, but that was his way and he couldn’t change it. Yet he had hurt V, and that hurt him, and his foot caught in something and he looked down. It was a tear in the rag rug that covered the worn place beneath the rocker.
He could remember when V’s mother had made that rug, and now it was worn out. His throat ached with shame as he remembered Cora, who had been dead twelve years now; a tall, thin schoolteacher with beautiful dark eyes and hair and a consumptive chest. He had met her during the war; somehow he had known that if he asked her to marry him she would accept, and he had never known why. But he had suspected many reasons why she should have married him; he had invented cruel, calculating, insidious reasons, and then for seven years he had been tortured and wrung by emotions he had not known existed and which now he looked back upon as some terrible, secret, shameful disease.
When he thought about it he could almost recapture the ache of the jealousy, so intense had it been; his suspicion of Mr. Burgess, of young John Schuford, who had come to visit with Cora sometimes, of still others whose existence he knew he only imagined. He knew them now as only fantasies of his mind, but he could still feel the torturing emotions that had shaken him. And after each of his outbursts at Cora, when his rage had died, he had had a moment of clarity in which he realized that his imagination had deceived him, only to be enraged again with the surety that he was driving Cora to the very thing of which he had accused her.
He could recapture the ache of jealousy because now he felt it again. It hurt him that he and V could not be friends the way she and Denton were but he could not blame V. It was a lonely, dull life for her with no one her own age within miles; only a horse and a dog for playmates, and both of them somehow unnatural because they had been deprived of the right to reproduce; an old man for her only friend, and a father who was still older and who was harsh and worked out.
He supposed he should go in and talk to her, but what was there to say? He couldn’t let her ride in the Frontier Day Parade in that outfit. It was indecent. He couldn’t have those Bakersfield people ogling his daughter, thinking her a bad girl. It was Denton’s fault, and anger at Denton welled up in him and left him shaking. He pushed the paper from his lap, rose and strode across to V’s door. He knocked. “V?” he called, and he turned the knob and entered.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, her elbows on her knees, hands supporting her chin, staring at the blank wall opposite her. She had taken off the boots; one of them lay flat on the floor and the other stood upright, the top bent limply to one side.
“Put the things back in the boxes, honey,” he said, and he tried to say it gently. “I’ll take them back for you.”
She jumped to her feet. “Papa, you’re not…”
“Hurry, honey,” he said. Boxes and brown wrapping paper and tissue paper were scattered across the table. He picked up the boots and put them in one of the boxes.
“Papa, you’re not going over there and be mad or anything… Papa, listen, please…”
“No,” he said. “I’m just going to take them back.” He packed tissue paper in around the boots and put the cover on the box. V took off the jacket and handed it to him, unzipped the skirt and let it fall in a circle around her feet then picked it up and handed it to him, looking at him with round, frightened eyes. He started for the door carrying the two boxes. At the door he turned. V was holding out a huge hatbox to him. He could see the print of her teeth on her lower lip.
He went out to the shed, stacked the boxes carefully on the front seat of the truck and cranked the motor to life. The truck lights jumped and shivered weirdly over the outbuildings and the house and the trees as he guided the truck out the drive and down the hill to the highway. On the highway he took a deep breath, clinging to the wooden steering wheel with both hands.
A single electric lamp beneath a metal reflector illuminated the stone front of Denton’s house and a stocky Japanese, wearing a white singlet and a long white apron, came to the door. Behind him was a foyer with a concrete floor, and on the wall opposite the door hung a Navajo blanket. “What you want?” the Japanese asked, studying Baird expressionlessly.
“Tell Mr. Denton I’d like to see him,” he said, and then he saw Denton standing in the hall behind the Japanese, wearing a dressing gown and a green eyeshade.
“Good evening,” Denton said. “Come in, won’t you?” He darted a look at the boxes, then smiled nervously at Baird. “Come in, come in,” he said.
Baird handed the boxes to the Japanese and followed Denton down the strip of fiber matting that covered the concrete in the hall. Denton turned into a small office. In it were an enormous roll-top desk, two leather chairs, and a glass case in which two rifles and two shotguns stood upright. A ledger lay open on the desk, and beside it was a decanter and a glass containing an inch of yellow liquor.
“Sit down, won’t you?” Denton said. He was still smiling, and when Baird had seated himself, he said, “Can I give you a drink?”
Baird shook his head. As he looked around the office he was angrily aware of his dusty boots, the worn cuffs of his trousers, V’s imperfect mending of the tear in his shirt sleeve. He said, “I brought back that outfit you gave V.”
“I see,” Denton said. He had taken off his eyeshade and now he closed the ledger and pushed it to one side. He swallowed the remainder of the liquor, and when he lowered the glass his right eye was blinking nervously. Surprised, Baird realized that he was frightened.
“She’s not going to put on a leg show for those people down in Bakersfield,” he said.
“I see,” Denton repeated. “I seem to be in the wrong. I’m sorry.” His smile was fixed, his eyes anxious. The eyeshade had flattened the hair at his temples, but above it sprouted loosely, like a topknot. Baird felt mollified, and then, suddenly embarrassed; he was sorry he had come. He didn’t speak, watching Denton pour more liquor into his glass. “I suppose I stepped out of line,” Denton said, almost to himself. “I should have thought…I didn’t know you would object.”
“Well, that doesn’t matter,” Baird said. “But you see…” He paused and took a deep breath. “I think V’s spending too much time over here. It’s not right. But I don’t want to…”
“Yes, yes,” Denton said. “I understand. You want me to discourage her from coming here so often.” He nodded and raised the glass to his lips and when he looked at Baird once more one side of his mouth was still smiling but the other was not. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that,” and then he was not smiling at all when he said, “You see I love her.”
Baird gasped. His hands tightened on the arms of the chair, and weakly he tried to raise himself. Denton
seemed to whirl in front of his eyes. “Like a daughter,” Baird heard him say.
He subsided. The leather arms of the chair felt cold to his bare wrists, and he was afraid now. He didn’t know what to say, what to do.
“Wait!” Denton said, and he passed his hand in front of his face as though he were brushing away a spider web. “Wait,” he said. “I’m afraid I put that badly. But I may as well tell you this now—I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.” His face was drained of color and the eyelid twitched violently. Baird wondered if the man were drunk.
“You must see I’m very lonely here,” Denton said, “and that girl’s the only thing that…Here, I’ll tell you what I’d like to do. She’s what? Just seventeen now? Next year she’ll finish high school. I want to send her to college. To the University at Berkeley, or to Fresno. Or San Jose. For a year or two, or more, it doesn’t matter. But she’ll be in her twenties then. And of course there will be no mention of this till then.…”
The voice sank, the slurred words came slower, but Baird could not concentrate on what the other said. He felt his mouth gape open; his lips felt dry as he stared at Denton, who was hunched over the desk, hands clasped, lips moving. And then he caught the words, “She won’t have to marry me, of course. There’ll be no compulsion of any kind. But…”
“You’re crazy!” he shouted, half-rising again. “You’re crazy! She’s too young.” Denton must be drunk. “You’re too old!” he cried.
“Wait, now,” Denton said, lifting his hand in a jerky gesture. The half-smile returned to his lips. “I thought of asking you if I could adopt…But of course you’d never permit that. But I want her company very much, you see, and I’d like her to have an education. She might feel better about this if she had. And of course I’d like her to feel she owed me something. Wrong of me, I guess. But you see, I’m lonely, very lonely, and I’ve had one bad heart attack already. The next one, or the one after that…” He snapped his fingers savagely, grimacing, and with the gesture he seemed to recover his composure.