by April Smith
Cal grimaced. “Why ruin a nice work of art?”
“This isn’t some petty local race.” Verna turned to him. “This is about the future of the United States. And it’s not just about winning the election but, as your friend Adlai Stevenson says, how it is won. Do we cave to bullies, or fight for our personal freedoms?”
“We have a one-party monopoly in this state,” Cal said. “That’s the problem.”
“The problem is hate. Hate that scares people into hating more. Look at that bigot, Thaddeus Haynes.”
Fletch shrugged Haynes off. “Small potatoes.”
Verna shook her head. “I disagree. He’s popular. He’s a radio personality. He won his seat the first time out and he knows how to rabble-rouse. No, it would be a mistake to underestimate Haynes. He’ll be Cal’s opponent in 1960.”
Cal chuckled. “Holy moly, who is talking about 1960? That’s six years from now.”
“It’s when you’ll be ready to run for the U.S. Senate,” Fletch said with a smile.
Cal blushed with humility. “You guys are way ahead of me.”
Verna took a check out of her purse and gave it to Cal. “For the campaign. Go out and wake up the Democratic Party. And when the going gets tough, remember those faces up there and what is possible in a free country.”
Cal stared at the check. It was for two hundred dollars. He was awfully moved. “You’re taking a crazy risk,” he said.
This drew a small, unwilling smile from the banker lady. “That’s my job,” she told him. “To invest in the futures of the up-and-comers. If you’re afraid of risk, you end up walking in circles, like a half-dead mule. My dad had a mule that he used to turn the mill. He’d take the thing out of the barn and hitch him up. That animal walked in circles my whole life, until I shot him.”
Cal and Fletch recoiled in shock.
“You shot your father’s mule?” Cal said.
Verna’s shoulders lifted in a neutral shrug. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”
Cal looked at Fletch in cautious silence.
“I’m guessing, Cal, that’s not something you would do?” Verna asked.
“No. I don’t think so. I would not shoot an animal that was trapped, with no way to escape, just because I felt like it.” Cal smiled wryly. “Does that disqualify me from politics?”
“I promise you: the other side wouldn’t hesitate.”
—
When the children were asleep, Cal and Betsy closed the door to their bedroom and sat in silence on the edge of the bed.
After a while Cal spoke quietly. “Verna and Fletch make it sound like nothing, but I can’t just pick up and run in his place.”
“Nobody can take his place,” Betsy agreed. “His patients will be devastated. I should have seen the signs when he asked me to change Jolene Johnston’s bandage.”
“Why is that?” asked Cal.
“He couldn’t manage it. I thought it was just old age, but he must have been mortified. It’s just too awful.”
Everything unanswered finally gave way to grief. They clung together forcefully and sobbed; the only reassurance they could find in this unknowable world was in the warm, living body of the other.
Cal removed the small black medicine wheel from his pocket. “He gave me this.”
Betsy gasped. “You’re fooling, aren’t you?” She touched the shiny porcupine quills wrapped around the hoop. “He got that from a Lakota woman. I was there. It’s a charm. It represents the world—the universe!”
“It’s the way he gave it to me that’s troubling,” said Cal.
“When was this?”
“Last Monday. No, Tuesday. That’s the last time I saw him. Tuesday, just before lunch. I came out of the office and he was walking down Saint Charles Street. I said, ‘Let’s get a bite at the Daisy Dell,’ but he said he was busy. He was distracted, but that’s nothing new. Then he starts to go, turns around, comes back, and says, ‘Oh, hey, look—I’ve got something for you.’ He had this in the palm of his hand.” Cal paused. “Now that I think of it, his hand was pretty wobbly. I went after him, but he didn’t want to stop and chat, so I just said, ‘Hey, thanks,’ and watched him cross the street. Like an idiot.”
Betsy hadn’t moved. She was staring it, mesmerized by the simple power of the circle and the two crossed lines.
“It means the center of the earth. You’re always at the center whenever you pray.”
Cal’s fingers closed around the tiny wheel. “He said he wanted me to have it. As if he knew. As if he was already planning it. He said, ‘If you accept your death, then you can be dangerous.’ It just came out of nowhere. He was smiling. I thought he was just being coy.”
Betsy’s eyes rose up to meet Cal’s. “We could not have known. Right?”
Cal had no answer. He laid back on his pillow and she on hers. They loosely held each other’s hand and listened to the wind circling the house, smashing against it, coming back and hitting it again.
She rolled on top of him. “How long will you be gone?”
“Gone where?”
“On the campaign trail.”
“Do you really want this?” he asked.
“I want it for you.”
“We both have to want it, because if this works out, it could be just the beginning.”
“I know that.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“Yes. I’m all for it,” Betsy said. “It’s your calling.”
“My calling,” he reflected.
“I just have to know one thing.”
“What?”
“That you’ll come back to me and the kids.”
He held her eyes. “I’ll always come back for you.”
She nodded, taking it in. “You’ll be running for both of us. I still believe in fighting the good fight, and I’ll support you—”
“Okay.”
“—but on one condition. No matter if you win, we’re going to stay here. On the ranch. With the kids. I don’t want to move back to a city. I don’t want to live in god-awful Pierre.”
Cal agreed vigorously. “Neither do I! This is our home. Something’s bothering you, though.”
“You’ll be back and forth. I’m worried you’ll be gone a lot—”
“I’ll get an airplane.”
“Funny.”
“I do know how to fly,” he reminded her.
“Yes, well, in a month of Sundays,” she said, pretending to ignore the way he was running his fingertips through her hair. “Because this is where my heart is. I love the way we’re living now, the kids at this age, and we’ve just started to make a go. I’ve even decided that I like cows.”
Cal smiled. He cherished that sense of irony that still surfaced now and then. He raised his lips and kissed her. His work-strong arms were tight around her and she rested for a while with her cheek against his chest. She could feel the pulsing of his heart and pushed away the thought that one day it would stop. The wind changed pitch again. It was nameless. It was always there. While he was gone, she would be alone with just the land and the wind. They unbuttoned their clothes and she seized on him. She opened herself to him, and a gentle feeling of trust grew to closeness so overwhelming that she found herself in mystifying tears.
12
“Which one’s the mom?” Lance whispered.
“That one, looking right at you,” said Jo.
They were squatting outside the pen, peering at a newborn calf, fifteen minutes old, motionless as a wet ball of dirt.
“Should we get Mama?”
“We can’t. She’s working at the hospital today,” Jo said.
“I wish Papa was here,” fussed Lance. “What if it ain’t born right?”
“Don’t say ‘ain’t.’ ”
“What about the belly button?”
“I know how,” Jo assured him in her grown-up voice. “We’ll do it together.”
They linked pinkies to prove it.
During calving season, which was just about
over, Jo had been called upon to help in all kinds of situations, like when they had to be pulled out using human hands, or sometimes with chains around their legs to get a better grip. She knew how to iodine the navel to prevent infection, and that when you saw the head it would be okay, but if it came out backward, rump first, that was an emergency and you better call the vet.
“Go on, lady,” Lance urged the cow.
“Shhh! Don’t spook her!”
They crouched behind the lowest plank in the fence and watched with big eyes, spellbound, as the little thing lay helpless in the sun. The light buckskin mother stood a few yards away, rubbing her nose on her foreleg and acting as if nothing had happened. You’d never know a seventy-pound animal had just passed out of her body except for a red string of goop trailing from her rear. On the ground, they could see a little head and eyes looking glassily out of its sack.
“She’s got to lick that off or it’ll die,” Lance said, urgently grabbing Jo’s arm.
“No, look!” said Jo. “She’s going ahead.”
The cow had strolled over and begun to lick the baby. It was so weak it got pushed to the ground. Little by little she licked the membrane from the nose so it could breathe, then kept exposing the hide in widening spots. It would have a good red coat. After several collapses, the baby got up and found its balance on tiny, fairy-like hooves. It tried to get through the mom’s hind legs, then stumbled blindly around to her chest. She stood patiently, turned her head, and gave the newborn a push. Then a holler.
“She’s telling him it’s right there!” Jo said breathlessly.
They waited. Horses neighed to each other in nearby pens. Lois and Bandit, the Australian shepherds, were lying near the house, waiting for orders. The baby was shivering and awfully thin. Flies swarmed around the children, and Jo clutched the jar of iodine as they watched tensely for the moment when the cow would be absorbed with the new baby and least likely to charge. It was still poking under her belly, looking for the teats with pieces of hay stuck to its mouth, while the mother cleaned its butt.
“Now!” whispered Jo, and they both ducked under the fence.
Armed with a stick, Lance took up a position in front of the cow to threaten her if she thought about getting mean, while Jo used an iodine-soaked rag to clean the nub of the baby’s umbilical cord, which had snapped off during birth.
“Roger!” she called, echoing their favorite radio show.
“Over and out!” replied Lance.
They scrambled back to safety. Finally the baby got turned toward the bright pink udders, which Jo prayed were flowing with milk. When at last it began to suckle, Jo and Lance stood triumphantly, brushing dirt from their overalls. They felt important to have made it through the crisis because, as their parents said, every healthy calf meant “money in the bank.”
“Papa will be proud.”
“What should we call him?” wondered Jo.
“Ruby!” said Lance. “Look, he’s already strong. We can show him at 4-H.”
“I bet he’s good enough to be a breeding animal,” Jo declared. “We could start our own herd.”
“And win the state fair!”
They shook on it, which turned into a thumb-wrestle, a tug-of-war, and then Lance sprawling in the dirt. Jo sprinted away before he could get her back.
Lance was big enough to drive the tractor, so he got on board, fired it up, and went around to the vegetable garden, where they still had an acre to disc harrow. Every Saturday he’d show up at Crazy Eights and hang around until Uncle Scotty had a couple of minutes to give him a pointer about calf riding. Scotty had advised him to find a flat-backed horse and ride bareback, in order to build his muscles, so after doing his chores in the garden, Lance would take the big gelding, Junior, into the round pen to painfully stretch his legs over its broad back; anything for Uncle Scotty’s approval.
Jo picked up the bucket where she’d set it when the birth pulled her away from chores. She entered the cattle pen and latched the gate behind her, quietly pouring water into the trough. The sun was hot on the top of her head. Her reflection was dark and elongated. She didn’t look in mirrors much and hardly recognized the cocky eight-year-old who’d learned independence from barrel racing and raising animals, and was bristling with confidence and still immune to boys; who was sturdy and tall like her parents, with a short spring haircut that she hated. Behind her the new mother let out a deep bellow and lifted her nose to the wind. The baby had fallen again and she lay down beside it, peacefully soothing it with her tongue.
A breeze came to Jo with a fresh, grassy smell. She looked toward the house and her gaze found the empty spot where they usually parked the station wagon. Her father had taken it to go on a trip by himself, which was very unusual. He had to go before they moved the last batch of moms and babies to the spring pasture up on Bottlebrush Creek with the rest of the herd. Nobody had explained to the children why he was leaving or when he would return. She’d seen her parents kissing good-bye in the kitchen. Dad picked up the hem of Mama’s skirt and Jo could see the backs of her legs and her white nylon panties. He put his hands over both cheeks of her mother’s behind and spread his big fingers out, and Jo turned away, stricken with a terrible feeling, like unhappiness on the inside that could never come out.
It always made her feel better to be out with the cows with fresh air in her face, ankle-deep in good, fertile muck. Unconcerned, the cattle roved around her in their knowing way. There were so many of them. Bawling constantly, they sounded like the revved-up motors of a thousand cars and tractors and trucks all at once, but Jo barely noticed. To her the blanket of sound meant comfort, away from troubling thoughts. The big, gentle animals pushed toward the trough. She stepped back so they could drink.
—
Cal Kusek had taken Verna Bismark’s advice and written to the chairmen of the Democratic clubs in his district, saying he was running for state legislature and would be stopping by their townships. Only one replied. “Come if you really want to,” he’d written, “but we don’t recommend it.”
That’s because being a Democrat in South Dakota meant putting up with a daily dose of isolation and ridicule. You had to have a strong stomach and an iron-fisted mind, which Cal Kusek found strangely reassuring. One committed individual was better than a dozen undecideds. In the far-flung steppes of his district there would be little competition for the seat vacated by the sudden death of Dr. Avery Saugstad, as his only opponent, Bill O’Connor, counting on a low turnout, wouldn’t bother to leave smug harbor among fat-cat friends in Hot Springs. Like the first pioneers, Cal saw open territory ready to be claimed.
The distances were grueling, the population small and scattered. Fletch explained that if he did win, it would be by a very slight margin, but he’d be building a following, brick by brick, for the next run. Having delayed his start as long as he could because of calving season, Cal now had less than a month to turn strangers into friends before the special election.
He left the ranch and drove straight on hot dogs and coffee toward his first stop on the map, the town of Ardmore. Passing the otherworldly formations of the Badlands, he was awed to think it was wind and water and time that had sandblasted the hills into such fantastic buttes and waves. As he drove on, the landscape changed to dark green hills spotted with ponderosa pine. On the radio there were preachers and country music. Inside Cal’s head, the steady beat of calls to wake up voters played like themes—we are the party of the people…politics is not just for the privileged…what I stand for…agriculture…schools…rights of landowners…freedom of speech…not our goal to annihilate the opposition…democracy, what it really means…in your hands—shifting with the curves in the road, each new vista another idea, another turn in a driving belief in justice and change that was thrumming in his veins like tires on the road of ambition, so that after this, his very first day of campaign travel, Cal rolled into the town of Ardmore with certain knowledge that he had found his true calling as a politician…which
was paradoxical, since there was nothing and nobody there.
There was a sign for Ardmore. A metal sign, punctuated by bullet holes, on a mesa rimmed by jagged hills and clear blue sky, all by itself except for a tiny, weathered gray shack leaning so far over it was comical. The whole thing was comical, Cal had to admit, getting out of the station wagon and relieving himself on a patch of thistle. A couple of feet beyond, he spotted a prairie dog, standing up on its burrow, staring straight at him. Then he realized there were dozens of burrows spread out across the plain, and scores of prairie dogs, darting here and there and yipping at each other. Cal couldn’t help it, he laughed out loud. At their all-too-human antics. At himself, and the fact that he’d driven way out to hell and gone to arrive at a prairie dog town.
“Not many registered voters!” he told the wind.
The crack of a rifle made all his muscles flinch. A bullet whistled past his cheek. He ducked. Three more shots in rapid succession. The prairie dogs disappeared underground and the sound of a wheezing motor became present behind him. Turning cautiously, he found himself looking down the barrel of a .22 resting against the open window of an ancient, rusted-out red pickup in the hands of a fourteen-year-old boy.
“I think you got a few,” Cal said.
The boy shrugged. He didn’t bother to get out and collect the corpses. Ranchers had been fighting prairie dogs for a hundred years—in this war, there would always be more bodies. He was twisted toward the window, one bare foot up on the seat so he could prop the rifle on his knee. His flushed cheeks were coated with powdery dirt—everything about him was coated with powdery dirt. He had ruler-straight yellow corn silk hair, a simple, angelic face, and transparent eyelashes so thick they were like thorns—a beautiful creature, born to dust storms and broiling sun. From the driver’s side came the sharp odors of adolescent sweat and gasoline leaking from somewhere.
Cal told him the name of the Democratic chairman he had come to see.
“That’s my granddad,” said the boy.
“Which way is town?”
“He don’t live in town.”
“How do I get there?”