by April Smith
Betsy glanced at the clock and wiped her forehead with the back of a wrist.
“Holy smokes, look at the time. They’ll be here any minute.”
“When is Robbie coming? And Uncle Scotty? When are they coming, Mommy? When?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
There had been several misfortunes at the Crazy Eights since the Kuseks left. The blizzard of 1951 had upended the Roys’ windmill. The ponds had shrunk by half when the drought set in, which also destroyed natural forage areas. Hungry livestock broke through the fences and ate off chokecherry bushes, sending them into convulsions. Their lips turned ghastly blue and they died. The Roys lost twenty-six sheep and ten mother cows. Then there was an infestation of grasshoppers that stripped their garden in one day. It was as if they were being punished by the plagues.
And then the worst happened. Dutch had an accident. Several weeks ago he’d been driving the tractor on the main road in the middle of the day when he was hit by a car driven by a traveling salesman selling vacuum cleaners. The guy was speeding while at the same time being serviced by a skirt from Potato Creek in exchange for a bottle of carpet cleaner, but on the other hand, Dutch had refused to install warning lights on the back of the tractor—even though it was the law—insisting that farmers have the right of way and the government wasn’t going to tell him what to do. He was tossed off the seat, traveled twenty feet in the air, and landed on his back smack-dab on the centerline of the asphalt, lucky to have shattered only his pelvis. Recovery was slow and questionable. Neighbors were still helping to fill in with chores at the Crazy Eights.
Whether the Roys showed up or not, Betsy’s cooking would be judged. In haste, she showed Jo the instructions in The Good Housekeeping Cookbook. The print was stained and crusty flour had gathered in the cracks between the pages.
“When you finish the eggs, I want you to make these chocolate spice cookies. They need to be in the oven by six.”
Jo looked at the kitchen clock on the wall. Although it was just a plain white clock in the shape of a teapot, it was in charge of everything that happened in the house, and now that she could also read time, she knew everything the same as grown-ups and why things had to get done when they did. The clock said four twenty, and already headlights had begun to show in the dark beyond the window. She started cracking faster, not even stopping to pick out the tiny bits of shell.
Pretty soon a lot of men were standing around the dining room eating bacon, scrambled eggs, biscuits, and thick toast with lots of butter, and drinking mugs of instant coffee. Even though he wasn’t wearing his uniform, she knew the state trooper, Randy Sturgis, who had rescued them from the mud. He was very tall, but he bent down to shake her hand, and smiled and called her “miss.” The others were nice except for the horrible man with the knives. His clothes were dirty and his beard so big and black you couldn’t see his eyes. He looked like an evil monster. When he turned her way, Jo ran into the kitchen.
Lance had dressed himself and put on his straw cowboy hat. He stood on the orange chair in the kitchen, looking out for Scotty Roy’s truck. When he saw it he ran to the front door. The rifts that had grown and mended between the families did not include the children, and nothing had changed an early attachment Lance had formed with Uncle Scotty.
Lance had inherited his parents’ lean, athletic bodies, but unlike his outspoken sister, his disposition was quiet and floaty; you never really knew what was on his mind, unless he had homed in on something, and then he would chase after it until he had it in his teeth—the same disposition as his “uncle.” From the time well-meaning older people began to ask that anesthetizing question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Lance would answer with blazing certainty, “A bull rider, like Scotty Roy.”
“Morning, sprout,” Scotty said, knocking off his cowboy hat.
Lance scooped it up and squared off, feet planted, hands on hips, fierce as a scowling bobcat. “You said you would teach me.”
“I will.”
“Today!”
“Gotta help your folks out today,” Scotty said, sidestepping the boy.
Lance blocked his path. He barely came up to the man’s belt. “We have to start sometime!”
He cocked his head, looking at Scotty with a stare that was both pleading and bold. Scotty didn’t mind someone wanting his company that much, even if it was a four-year-old.
“Next time you’re out at the ranch, me and you will pick out the meanest, nastiest sheep and we’ll see what you can do. Sound good?”
“Yes, sir!”
Riding a sheep was the way you started out. Then you went to calves and steers and finally bulls. Lance felt like he’d just won the Youth Rodeo World Finals. He rushed back and forth, importantly doing his job of putting glasses on the table.
The Fletchers got to come in through the back kitchen door. Robbie’s family was special because his dad worked with their dad. First Stell shouldered inside, carrying a cardboard box, followed by her husband with six-year-old Robbie asleep on his shoulder.
“Have you seen this?” Fletch asked, waving a copy of the Rapid City Journal over the boy’s head. “Hot off the press this morning. Cal’s latest letter to the editor.”
“Cal’s inside. Show it to him. Robbie can lie down in the bunkroom if he wants,” Betsy added.
Miraculously, Robbie woke up. “I don’t want to sleep in the bunkroom!” he said, wiggling out of his dad’s arms.
Instantly, Jo was tired of washing the mixing bowl.
“Do I have to keep doing this?” she whined.
“I’ll help,” Robbie said, and picked up the towel to dry.
Since their first encounter on the mechanical horse outside the Duhamel Company store, Jo and Robbie had become pals. She was in kindergarten and he was in first grade, and they had decided to get married, so washing and drying dishes together was normal.
“Can we go now?” Jo asked when they were done.
The tiny kitchen was hot and overcrowded, and Betsy had forgotten which task she was about to do next. She felt this exotic day getting off to a wobbly start, like a lopsided flying saucer heading off to parts unknown.
“Go!” she said, and the kids ran off.
Stell pulled an ice cream maker from the cardboard carton. “I hardly use this anymore, since we moved to town and Snow’s Ice Cream is right down the street.”
Hand-turned ice cream, like handmade soap, was one of the devotions countrywomen expected of themselves as well as one another. Store-bought was frivolous. Doing anything the hard way gave it higher value; doing it the easy way might even be taken as an insult. Betsy certainly wanted to avoid that, but had no patience for endless cranking, hence a supply of Breyers chocolate and vanilla in the freezer.
“Is Doris coming?” Stell asked.
“I doubt it. Dutch is barely walking.”
Stell had put on an apron and started putting things away. “If Doris does show up, she better behave.”
Betsy smiled, relieved to have an ally in the fray. Although they’d heard each other’s secrets and desires a hundred times, Betsy and Stell couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. Anything was a lot more fun with the other gal around. There were certain intimate things only she would understand, and it was a real plus that both their husbands and their kids got along. The families shared Sunday suppers and cocktails-and-bridge nights that ended with the grown-ups smashed, listening with boozy absorption to records from Cal’s collection of classical music that he spun with gusto on the brand-new Magnavox console, which they’d apparently acquired instead of a kitchen. The four of them had found safe harbor in the land of anti-intellectuals, where everything was tinged with ironclad religious beliefs, even the daily stock report that was coming across the kitchen radio:
“Overnight U.S. stock futures trading changed little from Friday’s closes. By the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, trade was moderate to active on good demand in Kansas and Nebraska,” said a smooth-voiced man.
“Good God,” said Betsy. “Is that Thaddeus Haynes?”
“Did you know he’s up for state legislature?”
“Haynes isn’t that bright. Kind of a nincompoop.”
“So is Joe McCarthy,” Stell said. “But people listen to him.”
Haynes had moved on from the stock report. “Are you worried about the Communist plot for the ultimate takeover of America?” he was saying. “Do you know they have plans in place to liquidate thirty million people?”
Stell made a shocked face, mugging indignation. “Gee, I didn’t know that!”
“Nobody told me!”
“Right now,” Haynes went on, “liberals and socialists are secretly working with Moscow to destroy our freedoms. Join like-minded patriots at one of my exciting study groups and get the facts. We’ll send, absolutely free, all the information you need to spot a Communist and turn him in. Let me remind you the election’s coming up. If you want to fight Communism, vote Republican—”
“Get out of my kitchen!” Betsy said, and clicked the radio off.
—
Two Australian sheepdogs, Lois and Bandit, waited outside the barn while the men were saddling up. Lois, named for Superman’s girlfriend on TV, was a blue merle with bright blue eyes, and her brother, Bandit, was tricolored with dark eyes receded in a mask of black and gray. Cal had bought them from a trainer in Wyoming and was pleased. They were intelligent ranch dogs who immediately took a dislike to Master Sergeant Hayley Vance riding up in his air force jeep, barking to save the day, until Cal gave them the word and they quit. The entrance of the air force official was embellished by a swirl of dust from the parched barnyard.
“They trust you with that thing?” Cal joked of the jeep.
Master Sergeant Vance grinned. “One of the perks,” he said, swinging out.
It was the first time Cal had seen Hayley Vance out of uniform. He had come ready to work like the rest of them—Fletch, Scotty Roy, Randy Sturgis, Vaughn Anders and Spanky Larson from the Bison Café—attired in leather chaps, assorted woolen vests, and buckskin jackets, as it was before dawn and near freezing. Their well-worn boots and dusty cowboy hats had seen good service, molded over time to fit their preferences.
A couple of lamps in the barn provided the only light. Trailers in which the others had brought their horses were parked haphazardly. Cal had his favorite paint, Jesse, saddled up, and ready for Master Sergeant Vance was a handsome bay gelding named Junior, who stood sixteen hands high.
“What is he?” Master Sergeant Vance asked, respectful of his size. “Draft?”
“Draft–quarter horse mix.” Its muscles quivered as Cal ran a soothing hand along its shoulder. “Don’t worry, Hayley, he’s a gentle giant. Didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Appreciate that,” said Vance, hoisting his weight into the saddle.
“Although at times he can get fresh.”
“Nothin’ old Hayley ain’t been warned about before,” Scotty shouted. His horse was spinning in restless circles.
“Only about a thousand times,” added Spanky, cleaning his glasses on his dusty shirt.
“His legend precedes him,” Fletch agreed, which the others found a hilarious proposition.
In fact the huge, well-apportioned animal greatly improved the slumped profile of the bureaucrat who was usually bound to his desk.
They sorted into single file and started out slowly around the barn, Lois and Bandit following. You could still see streaks of fireflies over the creek. In the dark everything was alive. You could feel the pine trees breathing in the gloom. There was a fresh, moist wind and the constant calls of roosters and cicadas. Dawn broke, colorless and quiet. Sound stopped. The wind fingered the tops of the trees, and the tender sky of the new day was like a pale blue piece of onionskin paper, fragile and empty.
Fletch trotted up next to Cal, who was wearing his fedora.
“Your latest letter defending Adlai Stevenson was the best thing you’ve written.”
“Every day we get closer to the election, I get madder than hell at the Democratic Party for not coming out guns blazing against McCarthy and his partner in slime, Richard Nixon.”
“You’re not the only one,” Fletch assured him. “Doc Avery called this morning raving his head off about what you said. He thinks you’re a natural politician.”
“That’s flattering.”
“He’s mentioned you to Verna Bismark, Democratic state chair.”
“What for?”
“I know you have political ambitions, Cal.”
“But I’m an outsider here.”
“It’s the West, my friend. Everybody came from somewhere else. It’s open territory. We need someone like you to energize the Democratic Party. Think about it.”
Cal had been thinking about it and listening to people talk about what mattered around here. Honesty. Family. Independence. Land. They wanted to be left alone to follow God’s plan, but when they did need help, they expected it from a government that upheld their way of life. Without being too “egocentric” about it, Cal was coming to the idea that when they had the ranch going, he might be ready to get back into the mix of things. He’d been captain of the debate team at Yale and the competitive juices were stirring. Sometimes talent just won’t let you be.
The men rode on, following a shortcut to the pasture along a chalky path beside a river so overflowing they were covered with spray and so loud they had to shout above the rapids. Then the forest opened up to a sun-drenched meadow called Bottlebrush Creek, where the trail mingled with bunchgrass until it disappeared, becoming nothing more than a forgotten direction in the wild plain. A vista opened out of the trees, and they were met by a warm, tranquil breeze that escorted them over rich slopes of wheatgrass high as the horses’ bellies, then down through lowland gulches choked with greasewood, where they sighted cattle drinking from a stream.
The rhythmic shuffle of hooves brought them steadily closer to the center of a widening bowl where the herd was scattered, shrunk by distance to brown grubs in the tawny grass. They stopped to take in the breadth of the valley, ridges of pine and the blue-gray mountains behind.
“This was once a Lakota village that was burned to the ground by Custer,” Cal told the party. “They have photographs of the ones who survived in the Hotel Alex Johnson. Little kids wrapped in blankets, big sad eyes. Miles of corpses of dead buffalo.”
“That’s what happens when you’ve got demagogues and bullies,” Fletch said meaningfully. “Slaughter of the innocent.”
Scotty pulled a flask from his saddlebag and passed it around.
“The meek do not inherit the earth,” Master Sergeant Vance commented.
“What does that mean?” Cal asked.
“You gotta be out front and way ahead.” He shrugged. “You know what you got here, don’t you? Water. Lots and lots of water, while the rest of the county’s dying of thirst.”
“The grass at our place is this high,” Scotty said worriedly, pinching two inches of air between thumb and forefinger.
Master Sergeant Vance smiled amiably at Cal. “You got real lucky when you bought this place, Lieutenant.”
Custer’s men would have recognized the lone column of westerners moving across the grassland accompanied by cow dogs, horses plodding dreamlike under heavy saddles and coiled lariats, eyes drooping, sometimes sighing deeply from their chests or sprinting to get up a rise. Fletch’s gelding wore a bridle with turquoise and silver studs on the brow band. Vaughn had worked hand-tooled crucifixes on the flaps of his saddle. After several tries, Master Sergeant Vance got his big horse into a trot. Tipping and bouncing, he caught up with Cal, and for a while they rode side by side ahead of the others.
“I want you to listen, because I see it coming plain as day,” Master Sergeant Vance began. “This drought cycle is going to put a lot of folks out of business. Over the next few years it’ll happen because it’s nature’s way. Slowly and surely, ranches will fail, but not yours, for two reasons.
You’ve got water, and you’re smart about management. In my job, I have to look ahead to the next generation of calves, understand? I want to make you a proposition. I’m offering you a contract to supply the Ellsworth Air Force Base with beef.”
“Along with Dutch Roy?”
“I wouldn’t just let him go. I’d keep him on another year.”
“Hold it, Hayley. I don’t know about that. Scotty and I served together. He brought us out here. Dutch opened his home to us.”
“I understand.” Master Sergeant Vance nodded sympathetically. “But the Crazy Eights Ranch ain’t gonna make it,” he said with finality. “They do not have a rich enough water source. It’s a sad fact of life, but somebody else will profit from their hardship. Might as well be you.”
Cal shook his head. “I can’t take away a friend’s livelihood.”
“Any one of these nice Christian boys would steal food off your table if they had to.”
“I appreciate it, but I can’t live like that.”
“I’m not sure you understand.” Master Sergeant Vance sounded deeply peeved. “I’m willing to bet on your future. That’s a hell of a vote of faith. Try borrowing off the future from the Cottonwood National Bank!”
“If the time comes when Dutch can no longer meet your needs, I’d be more than happy to supply the air force. Until that happens, I’m indebted for the offer, but that’s not why we came here. I’ll take my chances. Okay? No hard feelings?”
Cal offered his hand across the trail between them, but Master Sergeant Vance was too unsteady in the saddle or too furious to shake, so Cal scooched his horse forward and it exploded into a gallop, eager to finally go to work, and then the rest broke the line, scattering to gather up the cows that were sheltered under trees or had wandered half a mile away. The men and horses instinctively knew how to spread out and work together, coming up from behind the animals to urge them toward the center.
The cows were not surprised. They picked up their heads and quickly trotted along, mothers and babies side by side, long-horned bulls standing where they were. Then it was an adrenaline-charged game to anticipate one another’s moves as the men and dogs, without signals, without speech—riding high on pure confidence—caused the herd to converge and funnel through a pass that would take it over flatland and back to the Lucky Clover Ranch. In an hour they’d gotten all the cows ahead of them and they were looking at a horde of red-and-white-spotted hindquarters running for home.