by April Smith
It was obvious to Cal from studying law that there was a system to everything; all you had to do was crack the code. Here were diagrams and a chapter called “Troubleshooting.” Why fuss around taking out every screw when you already have a road map? he thought, sitting on the sofa in the cabin to read. After two pages on crankcase ventilation he was dead asleep.
Now he watched Scotty removing bolts from the battery pack under the seat, thick, blackened fingertips oblivious to the cold.
“You said the starter was okay,” Cal said.
“It is okay, but Daddy wants me to take it out and get it tested at the garage. Rebuilt, if necessary.” Scotty puffed out his cheeks and blew air, the frustrated but respectful son. “So that’s what I’m doing instead of training for the Sioux Falls Invitational.”
“Where is Dutch?” Cal asked, surveying the empty yard. “He was adamant about not missing that sale.”
“He should be back. He had to take the truck. The calves in the south pasture need a bale to eat off, but with this sombitch out of commission, we have to feed ’em by the bucketful.”
“Can I do something?”
Scotty paused to wipe his nose on his sleeve. “You could give him a hand with the trailer—unless you want to stop by the library first,” Scotty said, cackling.
By the time Dutch returned from feeding the calves and they got the trailer hitched to the truck, it was almost nine in the morning. Scotty removed the starter and took off in Cal’s wagon for the garage, cursing the slippery ice. Everyone was antsy except for the cattle dog Whiskey, who lay on her belly, still as stone, watching Dutch’s every move with alert amber eyes.
“What’s she up to?” asked Cal.
“She figures I’m thinkin’ about it,” said Dutch.
He climbed into the truck and settled his big frame into the driver’s seat. There was a moment of stillness, and then, without any sign from him, the dog hopped inside.
“How did she know?” Cal wondered.
“Read my mind. A good dog is like five good men,” Dutch pronounced. “A bad dog is like fifteen bad men.”
Cal laughed admiringly. He’d seen how shrewdly Whiskey managed the herd, zipping back and forth to move them through the pens—almost as if the dog and the men had divvied up jobs beforehand, and nothing more needed to be said. He liked these people. He liked the way they treated their animals on an equal basis but, oh boy, he thought, as they drove past the dead tractor, what a lot of punishing work it would take for him and Betsy to keep the balance of nature going on their own place.
Things were always breaking down, which was why the inside of Dutch’s pickup was a hardware store on wheels. Stiff pairs of gloves lay in piles. A wooden box held tools for fixing fences. On the console, a tin of oil was stuck inside a coffee cup. A kit was open to a rusty mash-up of screws, bolts, wrenches, old spark plugs, and duct tape. Pens and pliers had dug themselves into the space where the back of the bench seat met the cushions. Over the windshield was a mounted rifle, and in the back bed rode an electric generator, along with rolls of barbed wire and rope, everything finely talcumed with grit.
“Take a look at that for me, will you?” Dutch pulled a newspaper from the mess and shoved it at Cal. “What time are the catalog bulls?”
It was a publication from the sale barn listing the day’s auctions.
“Eleven o’clock,” said Cal.
Dutch grimaced. “Cutting it close.”
He was so big, the tall crown of his cowboy hat brushed the roof of the truck. Later Cal would learn the secret of the right hat was all in the crease, of which there were particular shapes. Dutch wore a cattleman’s crease, signature of the gentleman cowboy, the big ranch owner who’d earned his personal style. Dutch liked to move in deliberate ways. He paced himself from house to barn to field, half in thought. He ate slowly and was last at the table, taking his time with coffee and a cigarette. Something would have to be way out of the ordinary to get him as agitated as he seemed now.
“Worried about the tractor?” Cal asked.
The question seemed to surprise the older man.
“The tractor? No, that’s something you can fix. But if you miss buying the right bull, you might have to wait a year for the next good one, and I’ve got a picky customer. Most of my beef is sold to the air force at Ellsworth Air Force Base outside Rapid City,” Dutch said, offering a pack of Marlboroughs. He pushed the cigarette lighter into its socket on the dashboard. “The air force is my biggest customer. Ninety percent of my time is spent keeping them happy. They like my beef because it’s quality. We run only purebred Red Angus.”
The lighter popped out, ready. Dutch maneuvered the coil squarely to the tip of his cigarette without taking his eyes from the road, then handed it to Cal, a move that reminded him of his dad, who had driven a string of Buicks filled with cigarette smoke until the day he died. They both lit up, and the chill inside the cab was eased by the satisfaction of the day’s first smoke.
“There’ll be some good-looking yearlings for sale today out of a ranch called Lee Brothers,” Dutch went on. “I’ve been watching those Lee Brothers bulls and promised the air force I would get ’em. The fella we deal with at the base, name’s Hayley Vance, he’ll be at the auction. I need him there like a hole in the head, but he’s an old lady, has to be in the know.”
“So you better look smart,” said Cal, exhaling.
“I have to be smart. There’s a dozen guys in line for this contract.”
“And I’m guessing they’re all your best friends.”
Dutch grinned, showing crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. “Son, you just gotta outlive them.”
The sky was white as paper and snow outlined the hills. During the night it had made striped patterns on the ridges of the plowed fields, like wales in a swath of olive corduroy. Under soft, overcast skies, Cal found the landscape surprisingly subtle. Not flat and colorless, the way he’d pictured it from back east, but delicate and undulant, silver water winding through grassy folds of pale lavenders and gold. He watched a row of black cows follow one another in a perfect line, daintily lifting their feet from the snow, passing with composure beneath the lyrical branches of the cottonwoods, still skeletal in spring.
The snow turned into driving rain. Instead of slowing down, Dutch plowed ahead through deep eddies of water. The empty trailer rattled behind and the front tires kicked up rocks that ricocheted against the windshield. Cal flinched as a fissure appeared down the right side.
“Oh, hell. That will be costly.”
“Not worth fixing,” Dutch said matter-of-factly. “Every windshield in South Dakota’s got cracks.”
Cal now noticed that there were pockmarks and scratches all over the glass.
“Why do it?” he asked impulsively.
“Do what?”
“Live out here. I’m thinking about settling here with the family, and you have to wonder.”
“Well, a lot of people don’t make it. They come with big dreams, or maybe they’re just not suited to the work. A couple of hard winters, and suddenly they can’t pay their taxes and the bank takes the ranch. That’s why land’s so cheap right now. This rain is good, but according to the signs in the Farmer’s Almanac, we’re due for a drought cycle, and that’ll wipe out quite a few. Hang on a while, and you can cash in on the failures of others,” he said with a sour wink.
“I’d hate to think of it like that.”
Curious, Dutch turned to his passenger. “You’re not the type to take advantage, I can tell.”
“I hope not. My wife and I came west to find a decent way of life and to serve the greater good. I come from a line of clergy. At one time I thought about entering the seminary.”
Dutch nodded with approval. “Then you’ll find this to your liking. We’re a Christian community.”
“Well, to profit from another man’s suffering would not fit the family tree. I could have stayed a New York lawyer if I wanted that.”
Dutch laughed apprecia
tively. “Why don’t you all just keep on in the cabin? Long as you want, till you make up your mind where to be. Then, if you like the lay of the land, I’d be happy to sell you good acreage at a fair price.”
“That’s very generous,” said Cal.
“I got all the ground I need. I don’t need to own more ground. I was saving it for Scotty, but Scotty’s different. Far from settled.”
“I wouldn’t want to be the cause of breaking up the family—”
“You are family. I said it, so you are. Scotty don’t want it. He’s gonna get famous riding bulls. Truthfully, I’m just being selfish. You and Betsy would make good neighbors.”
Genuinely pleased, Cal thanked the older man.
“It’s a beautiful way of life,” Dutch said.
“But hard.”
“As long as people are willing to stay, the way of life stays. As far as I’m concerned, we’re blessed to have it.”
They passed a barn with a huge hand-painted sign on the weathered old boards: FISHY FRIENDS? TURN THEM IN!
“What’s that all about?” wondered Cal, imagining it had to do with poaching trout.
“Just a reminder to watch out for Communists.”
“Here?”
“Why not?” said Dutch. “They’re everywhere.”
It was so preposterous that Cal had no reply. The town where they were going was a single intersection where two streets met at a gas station. It had a market and a bank and BADLANDS RANCH RIDES, which persisted only in bleached-out lettering on the side of an empty storefront. Running into a Russian spy was about as likely as meeting Greta Garbo in the do-it-yourself car wash.
“You buy what Joe McCarthy is selling?” Cal asked.
“He ain’t stupid. He knows that carrying on, waving papers, that’ll get notice, but look, they haven’t listened to us all along, and they’re paying attention now.”
“Who is?”
Dutch settled his shoulders and re-gripped the wheel.
“The ordinary farmer gets no help from Washington,” he said. “You’ll see that for yourself, soon enough. McCarthy’s the only person with the guts to stand up to big government and put a stop to it.”
“To what?”
“To the patriotic values of our country being attacked by enemies within—inside our own State Department, for the love of Christ. The Communists have targeted America for destruction by tearing down our churches and poisoning our way of life. They are anti-Christian!” Dutch bellowed, shaking the wheel. “Wall Street and your Washington elites, they’re the ones who caused the Great Depression, now look where we are,” he said, indicating the vacant storefronts.
“Seems to me that FDR and the New Deal got us through the Depression.”
Dutch squinted at the road as if he couldn’t stand the sight of Cal. “Don’t tell me you’re a damn Democrat.”
“I am a damn Democrat,” Cal replied genially. “Not only that, a liberal damn Democrat. Still family?”
“Might have to take that offer under advisement,” Dutch growled, but then turned to Cal and smiled. “Nah, you’re all right. You and Scotty, you’re my boys. Won us the war.”
“Damn straight,” said Cal.
Whatever tiny houses made it through the Great Depression had petered out by the edge of town, and pretty quickly they were thrashing through gullies of mud along a string of Quonset huts that housed hardware and plumbing supply stores, until finally the road dead-ended where the grim sky opened to unfenced plain. Livestock pens sprawled to the west, but the rust-colored roof of the sale barn was visible above the slew of dirt-streaked trucks and trailers that told you it was auction day. Dutch cut the engine and pinched the bridge of his nose with fatigue.
“Well, we got a few extra minutes,” he said. “Would you care for a coffee?”
Whiskey didn’t need to be told to wait in the truck. They made their way around the puddles to the C-A-F-E, spelled out on yellow tiles above a door you couldn’t see from the road. You weren’t meant to. It was for locals only. Inside, the stuffed head of a long-horned steer presided over an empty hallway. Straight ahead was the entrance to the barn where the animals would be shown. The sales counter was shuttered until auction time.
The Bison Café, as it had been called since creation, was accessed by an unmarked door that opened to a plain wood-paneled room that was considerably warmer in temperature than anyplace Cal had experienced since arriving in South Dakota. The heat was as welcome as the smile they got from the cook, Lucille Thurlow, a cheery if lackluster woman in her fifties, who was setting paper plates of homemade cherry and apple pie on a table, making sure they were evenly spaced and the wedges all pointed the same way. The strings of her apron were loosely tied around an ample waist, and a checkered sleeveless shirt showed squashy arms. Her tannish hair was cut short and her cat-eyed glasses had sparkles.
“How are you today, Dutch?” she asked.
“Oh, they felt sorry for me and let me live.”
Lucille laughed. “Tell Doris I’ll see her at the ‘Pink and Blue’ baby shower for Mrs. Ostenberg Sunday afternoon at Legion Hall.”
“Will do,” said Dutch, immediately flushing every word from his mind. He could tolerate very few female preoccupations. Gals were good and necessary, but he didn’t appreciate their meddling. He never approved of the “improvements” made by Shirley Hix, who inherited the whole shebang—the Bison Café and the sale barn—when her husband, Woody Hix, died of leukemia. A good guy, very sad, especially the terrible way he lingered on. Dutch recalled the chili suppers they had right in this room to raise money. Then his widow takes over and does things like putting up those silly curtains made of denim skirts sewn together and the touristy signs—BORN TO RIDE! HAPPY TRAILS! HOWDY!—as if any outsider would dare walk through that door. Couldn’t a woman ever leave well enough alone?
Cal followed Dutch to the table in the center of the room, where hefty men who had not removed their heavy jackets and cowboy hats were holding court on folding chairs, chewing on toothpicks along with the day’s gossip. Like the water that fed the grasslands, this quiet talk among the patriarchs of old-line families was the life source for local ranchers. Disputes were settled and marriages approved over fat-soaked bacon and farm-fresh eggs, judgments were passed on newcomers, and Christian America vehemently defended.
When Dutch took his place at the head of the table, Cal realized the reason for getting there early was not the bulls, as much as the bull being slung by the regulars of the inner sanctum. The others made room for Cal without comment. There were no introductions. They kept their faces down. And yet Cal felt strangely elated.
He’d stumbled into the center of power. Like the back rooms of New York’s Tammany Hall, he recognized this was where real business was conducted—without banks, without middlemen, in cash, and sealed with a handshake. There were rules, a pecking order. He could see by their deference that Dutch Roy was boss. He owned the most land and had that lucrative contract with the air force. The others had to sit on their envy and pick at his crumbs. As for Cal’s plan to open a law practice to augment ranching, he would somehow need to convince these insular, hardened people to trust him with their futures, and his friendship with Dutch would help. It would be uphill, but that’s what drew him to the challenge. He had a strong feeling that one day he would have a seat at this table. He could be of real service here. He didn’t realize it then, but he was already running for public office.
The door opened with a cold draft, and a thin, nervous-looking man without a hat hurried in. He had a pockmarked face and his black hair spiked in all directions from the wet weather. In contrast to his disheveled appearance, he was dressed in a prim, buttoned-up plaid wool coat that looked like something his mother picked out. From the smirks among the insiders, Cal guessed he was the runt of the litter—probably had been all through high school—whose only way to survive was to be the uncomplaining object of their scorn.
“Hey, T.W., you’re late,” said the on
e with glasses and pure white hair, thin as spun sugar. His name was Spanky Larson.
“That was me in the blue pickup,” T.W. said, sighing and taking a seat. “Skidded out and got stuck in the mud.”
“Next time try the brakes,” suggested the one they called Charmin’ Charlie. “See if that’ll help.”
“I got stuck three times!”
The waitress came and laid down plates.
“Why’d I order roast beef?” complained Vaughn Anders, who had the mustache.
You couldn’t miss the mustache.
Vaughn Anders was maybe thirty-five, but he looked like a throwback to the gold rush of the last century. He lived alone in a cabin in the Black Hills, raising a few cows but mainly hunting for a living, while attending to his real devotion, which was working his granddaddy’s claim at an abandoned gold mine. He wore several flannel shirts on top of one another, with an old-fashioned union suit at the skin, and an impressive, hairy, overgrown handlebar mustache—so huge, it looked like he’d run into a beaver and it stuck on his face. But the most unsettling thing about Vaughn Anders, Cal would later tell Betsy, was three nasty-looking knives he wore on his belt. One to throw, one to kill, one to skin.
“Last thing I’ve eaten every day for the past four months at every bull sale is roast beef,” Vaughn said grimly. “Why don’t they have a pork chop?”
Charmin’ Charlie shrugged. His fleshy cheeks were uncommonly pink, and his eyebrows grew into bushy gray tips. He had small brown eyes that were usually downcast or looking sideways for enemies. The dusty black jacket and black cowboy hat, crimped and sat-upon, added to his habitual look of woebegone resignation.
“You can’t get pork at a bull sale,” Charlie chided Vaughn, straight-faced.
“Hard to get,” his sidekick, Spanky, agreed.
“You know beef today is cheaper than chicken?” T.W. announced.
“Is that right, Shirley?” Dutch asked.
“Why would I tell you?” she said with mock offense. “You’ll just complain about my prices.”