by April Smith
The café owner, Shirley Hix, delivered heavy plates of chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes with self-importance, a rag wagging from the tight back pocket of her jeans like a suggestive tail. The calamity had not distracted her from putting on lipstick and fluffing up her chiffon hairdo, as she considered herself to be the center of the café, which was essentially the center of town. Baggy-armed Lucille Thurlow’s apple and cherry pies were disappearing as fast as craggy ranchers could stand to wait while she arranged the paper plates with wedges lined up facing north. She was known to screech like a cat if you messed up the order.
Poor Charmin’ Charlie had lost thirty pounds to cancer. His face was white as flour and his bald head flopped over to the side on a weakened neck. Nobody wanted to leave him out, and Cal was one of those who gathered around his wheelchair, along with T.W. with his buttoned-up jacket and unkempt hair, Spanky Larson, and Vaughn Anders, who’d come down from the hills to help out.
“Got a drink?” Charlie croaked.
T.W. giggled. His pockmarked face made him look like a goofy teenager. “Charlie sure ain’t lost his sense of humor,” T.W. said, jerking a thumb toward the dying man.
Vaughn Anders pulled a flask from his overalls and poured his home-brewed moonshine into Charlie’s cup.
“Cure ya or kill ya,” Vaughn said.
Charlie raised a trembling hand in thanks.
Spanky asked, “Will someone help that man to his reward?”
Cal volunteered to bring the cup to Charlie’s grateful lips. Randy Sturgis came over to join them, pulling up a chair. He spread his legs and slapped his knees in frustration.
“I thought I’d heard the worst of it, but this is unbelievable,” Randy Sturgis said.
They all leaned forward with anticipation.
“Dutch Roy lost half his herd.”
Cal felt a double contraction in his chest like a one-two punch. He knew he would always remember where he was when he heard that the Roy family dynasty had come to an end and a new world was opening up. With just a few words everything had changed, like when he’d heard the news that Pearl Harbor was bombed.
“Got any more of that hootch?” Spanky Larson mumbled.
Vaughn Anders poured it, then looked out over the room; his eyes focused nowhere, like he’d gone into a trance, fiddling with the handle on one of the three knives on his belt.
“Roys were way too quick to bring ’em to spring pasture,” Randy Sturgis surmised.
“Were they?” echoed Cal with wonder.
It was a miracle that he hadn’t done the same—moved his own herd from the protection of the hills at Bottlebrush Creek to the open grasslands, where they, too, would have perished in the storm. If the opportunity to go after the legislative seat hadn’t popped up just then, and he hadn’t had to hit the road, he, too, would have made the move. He was as stunned as he’d been in the vacant town of Ardmore, when the kid shooting at prairie dogs just missed Cal’s head. The second time he’d dodged a bullet. And he had to ask: What was the good Lord saving him for?
“I never considered it a sound idea to switch up pastures before Easter,” Vaughn Anders was saying. “Wait until Easter, my granddaddy used to say.”
Again Charlie tried to speak. “Al-ma-nac,” he wheezed.
This time Spanky helped him out. “You’re saying they should’ve checked the weather in the Farmer’s Almanac?”
Charlie nodded.
“Got one right here.” Randy Sturgis whipped the small dun-colored pamphlet from his jacket pocket. “Let’s see what it says about the month of April,” and he read:
The days lengthen and the cold strengthens.
False signs of spring.
Tornadoes West and you keep on your fur-lined vest.
Rains ice cubes!
Randy finished in a tone of chilling irony, like the last lines of a ghost story. The others looked at one another with raised eyebrows and in awed silence of the prophetic warning come to life.
“What advice does it say about dead cows?” Vaughn Anders wondered.
Randy closed the Almanac. “Bury ’em before disease sets in and spreads.”
“Haul ’em to Chicago for rendering,” Spanky Larson said.
“And who’s gonna do that?”
“The government!” T.W. piped up cheerfully, like the smartest kid in class.
The others snickered and made remarks like “You know how long that’ll take?” and “Nobody in Washington cares to pick up the phone.”
“Someone’s got to fix this,” T.W. insisted.
Cal didn’t realize how intently he’d been listening until two ideas banged together like railway cars coupling in his head. A lot had been lost, but not the election. He could still get on that train.
“Would you vote for the man who got those dead cows buried?”
“Who, you?” drawled Vaughn Anders. “You gonna pile a couple hundred dead cows in your brand-new pickup?”
The others laughed.
“Would you vote for a Democrat if I did?”
“Sure I’d vote for you,” T.W. said. “Hell, I’d vote for you anyway.”
Vaughn Anders snorted. “I never knew you was a damn Democrat.”
“I don’t vote for the party,” Spanky announced. “I vote for the man.”
Charlie’s dry, puckered mouth formed the soundless words: “Me, too.”
“It’s a deal,” said Cal. “Now give me your vote.”
All fired up, he went table to table, proposing the same—Give me your vote and I’ll clean up this mess—moving fast, shaking hands, and giving condolences for lost stock. Faces began to look more open and eyes grew bright. By the time Cal reached the door, talk was buzzing, people were all riled up. He’d left these battered men with hope.
And then he was alone with what he’d promised. He stood outside the café in the empty hallway of the auction barn. The bulletin boards had sprouted notices of fund-raisers to help the community. The halls—usually jammed with bidders—were hushed, shutters pulled down over the registration counter, and the doors chained shut to the pit where a week ago bulls were spinning and kicking the old stall boards until they splintered, and buyers played cutthroat competition while the auctioneer droned on. Now there were no bulls to sell and no cash to buy them.
Times were ominous and Cal’s plan was just as dire. He picked up the receiver of the pay phone and kept dumping change into the slot as the operator required, until a male voice answered lazily, “Ellsworth Air Force Base, Master Sergeant Vance.”
“I have a person-to-person call for Master Sergeant Hayley Vance,” the operator announced.
“Who wants to talk to him?”
“Who’s calling, please?” came the operator’s voice.
The stuffed head of the long-horned steer stared across the empty halls of the auction barn as it had for decades, a mute prince of death crowned with useless horns.
Cal Kusek repeated his name to the operator.
—
When Cal had phoned Master Sergeant Hayley Vance from the hallway outside the Bison Café and that flat Missouri voice intoned, “Hello, Cal. This is a terrible day,” with the sincerity of a snake oil salesman, Cal knew that what he was asking for would come with a price. Vance liked to go on about Cal’s war record as if they were comrades in arms, but having the rank of master sergeant hardly made him a soldier; he was a broker who took a cut of every deal involving a government contract.
It wasn’t hard to fathom the scam he had going. Vance lived larger than even his chief commanding officer. Vance was a member of the snootiest country club in town, where he golfed with judges and the owner of a uranium mine that happened to be on national forest land. His wife had been elected to the board of the Sioux Indian Museum as well as the Theater Guild Palace, and his daughters, not the prettiest, were always voted Range Day queens. He’d made a career out of seeming to be a lackadaisical good ol’ boy from across the river, but drove a bargain and enjoyed the kill, prote
cted as he was by a big wooden desk in a compound surrounded by barbed wire and a tangle of regulations that only he could bend at will.
“We’ve got dead cows to bury and we need the equipment to do it,” Cal told him from the pay phone outside the café.
“I’ve seen the carnage. Turns your stomach.”
“Nobody knows how big this is going to be, but as it is, carcasses are out in the open and lying in water supplies. We’re talking in the hundreds that have to be disposed of now.”
Master Sergeant Vance considered. “You’ll need trucks.”
“A lot of trucks,” Cal agreed.
“Bulldozers and cranes, I would guess.”
“That’s correct,” said Cal. “As a concerned citizen and Democratic candidate, I’m asking for the air force to step in and help clean up the mess.”
There was a pause on the other end.
“I sympathize, I truly do,” Vance said with a sigh, “but all our resources are committed.”
“Committed where?”
“The Oahe Dam, upriver from Pierre. They needed heavy earth movers, and the air force sent what we had on base.”
“Bring them back,” said Cal.
Vance chuckled. “Can’t just do that!”
“This is an emergency in the backyard of Ellsworth Air Force Base. Local people need help—local people,” he emphasized, “are hurting. It’s a golden opportunity for the government to do something right. Get them on your side.”
“I like what you’re saying, Cal, but I’m the low man on the totem pole. You really should be talking to the chief master sergeant. The Oahe Dam, that’s a big deal. You’re talking about the army engineers and the Missouri River authority—”
Cal interrupted sharply. “Hayley, I’m willing to sell you my beef.”
“What makes you think I need your beef?”
“Dutch Roy is out of business. The storm hit him hard.”
“I told you, didn’t I? On your first roundup, that place where Custer killed the Indians.”
“I remember,” Cal said quietly.
“I told you Dutch was headed for trouble. I made you an offer, but you turned me down.”
“Yes, I did.”
Hayley was silent, reshuffling his cards. “How’d you all do in the storm?”
“We got lucky.”
“Are you ready to reconsider?” Hayley probed.
“Yes.”
“Forgive me if I’m doubtful. You’re such a man of principle.”
Cal felt like one of his own cows on the gambrel hook. He traded doomed looks with the stuffed steer head. “I want something in exchange, Hayley.”
“Money.”
“Manpower. What will it take to turn those air force trucks around and use them to dispose of all these carcasses? Just tell me what you want.”
Master Sergeant Vance cleared his throat with a note of disbelief. “You told me straight up you’d never betray a friend. Dutch will say you stabbed him in the back.”
“Maybe he’ll say we saved the business. The rest of us won’t survive if the blowflies get started or who knows what other disease. You need beef, I need trucks.”
Cal forced himself to wait through the silence on the other side of the line. He could feel that SOB enjoying this. Finally Master Sergeant Vance spoke.
“You know, after the dust settles, the price of beef will go way up. You’ll get a lot more if you wait.”
“This won’t wait.”
“From where I’m standing, I can’t wait, either. I’ve got to get the burger on the bun no matter what the market says.”
“You’re going to lowball me, I feel it coming,” Cal said.
“As you say, for the common good. I admire your sense of civic duty, sir.”
The price Master Sergeant Vance offered was way below market, plus he would require the same off-the-record “administrative fee” he’d received every month from Dutch Roy. Cal hung up the phone feeling sick and excited at the same time. The following day, the air force ordered a convoy of earth-moving equipment to leave the Oahe Dam flood control project on the Missouri River and head west, in order to provide emergency assistance to storm-struck Pennington County.
—
Doris Roy was upset about losing her eyebrows. They’d all but disappeared, just about the same time she’d lost desire for her husband. She’d wondered: If she penciled them in, would her lust come back to life? Then he’d gotten himself into that foolish tractor accident and come out of the hospital a bent old man, so without anyone putting too fine a point on it, that part of their lives together had fluttered to a close. She leaned toward the oval mirror on the dressing table, not at all fond of the way her face was turning into her grandmother’s, and carefully removed the tiny pink foam rollers that left neat waves in her fine platinum-dyed hair, which was showing up these days more in the brush than on her head. She sprayed the sides with stuff that smelled like paint thinner, so the curls would stay put peeking out underneath the brim of her hat. Let the rest of her hair do whatever. Don’t matter what don’t show.
Dutch was waiting at the landing, resting his weight with both hands on a cane. Despite the curve in his back from the injury, he was still an imposing figure, still a big man, over six feet, wearing his cowboy hat with the cattleman’s crease, a fresh white shirt with a silver bolo tie, a plaid vest with his father’s gold watch chain, and pressed trousers. Freshly shaved that morning. His facial expression, like his wife’s, remained stalwart.
Arm in arm, the Roys made their way carefully down the stairs and out the front door, where their son, Scotty, in clean clothes and his hair plastered down, was waiting to drive them to the lake, all of them looking as sober as if they were going to a funeral in a church about to be demolished.
Now the air force was coming to save what was left of the day. The artificial lake had originally been dug to provide water for the cattle, but it was filled with their carcasses, floating like half-sunk battleships, russet humps in the cold blue surface still marked by ice floes. The first vehicle in the cortege was Master Sergeant Hayley Vance’s jeep, followed by a bus carrying air force cadets to do the heavy work, then a bulldozer, trucks, and a crane. All the vehicles flew American flags.
The ground had dried out, all right, and the cloud raised by the rattling caravan laid a blanket of dust over the new growth of weeds by the side of the road that a few days before had been buried in snow. Master Sergeant Vance expressed his condolences to Dutch and Scotty while his boys positioned the equipment. As usual, Dutch got right to the point.
“Who’d you get to replace my contract?” he asked.
“Cal Kusek jumped into the gap,” Master Sergeant Vance replied.
Scotty was shocked and angered. “Cal did?”
“He’s a smart cattleman. Learned from you, Dutch.”
“Don’t sweet-talk me, Hayley. I paid for that contract. Is he paying you, too?”
“He’s giving me a fair price.”
“Sure he is. He’s one slick East Coast lawyer.”
“You understand, Dutch. I have a base to feed and superiors to answer to. I wanted to show you the respect of coming here first so I could tell you the facts, face-to-face, because that’s what your family deserves.”
“I appreciate it, but this is temporary. We’ll get back on our feet.”
“Sure, Dutch.”
“Don’t write us off, son. We’re up to the job, you ought to know that by now.”
“Look, I wish it could have been a different way.”
“It will be.”
Master Sergeant Vance gave a vague salute and went to supervise the dredging. Caught in the jaws of the crane around her belly, the first cow came out of the water, whole, unblemished, limp, and glistening with water and somehow beautiful, like a bashful Madonna, with her head hanging down in gentle repose.
“Don’t believe what Vance is telling us,” Dutch said. “This didn’t just happen by itself. Cal sold us out.”
“He saw an opportunity,” Scotty agreed bitterly.
“After taking him in, he hits us when we’re down,” Dutch replied, not listening. “Don’t worry. I won’t forget.”
The jaws opened and the cow was dumped in the truck to be taken to a communal burial pit being dug by the air force near the hills. Then the crane swerved back for another. This went on all morning. Doris Roy stayed in the pickup.
—
They came in gratitude for the air force burial convoy, which had stopped at each of their ranches and farms and done their saddest, dirtiest work. Nothing like this had ever happened before, but neither had the government responded so effectively. In taking action, Cal had broken the paralysis of grief and created an uplifted sense of community. Not only did he cut through the bureaucracy, but proved he was a man who, in their day-to-day dealings, showed nothing but good temperament, self-confidence, honesty, and humility. If there were such a thing as a good politician, he might just be Calvin Kusek. The weather had stabilized, and even the flow of blood in their bodies felt like the quickening of spring. The feeling was festive. Somebody brought a trombone.
It was the day of the special election against Bill O’Connell, and Kusek supporters had come to help get out the vote. They had put bridge tables covered with red, white, and blue on the sidewalk in front of the Hotel Alex Johnson on Main Street. They had clipboards so you could register, people to take you to the polls, and free cookies, hot dogs, and lemonade, paid for by Verna Bismark, who arrived with her family and a dozen stalwart Democratic Party members from Cottonwood. Surprisingly present were the parents of Jo and Lance’s school friends, along with 4-H members and Camp Fire Girls—a small but enthusiastic army that spread out to canvass the downtown shops and businesses to “Vote for Kusek!”
“We’re all pulling together!” Cal smiled, selling raffle tickets by the dozen to raise money for families stricken by the storm.