by Kent Haruf
But you take care of yourself too, she said. You hear me?
He turned and went around to the front yard and started up the empty street in the late afternoon. He had the money in his pocket and the bag of green beans and two of the cucumbers.
When he was gone the girls walked out to the edge of the garden to see if he’d eaten the cookies, but they were still in the grass. There were red ants crawling on them now and a line of ants moving away in the grass. Dena picked up the cookies and shook them hard, then threw them out into the alley.
AT HOME HE FRIED HAMBURGER IN AN IRON SKILLET AND boiled some red potatoes and the green beans Mary Wells had given him and set out bread and butter on the table together with the sliced cucumbers on a plate. He made a new pot of coffee and when the potatoes and beans were ready he called his grandfather to the table and they began to eat.
What’d she have you doing over there? the old man said.
Pulling weeds. And picking vegetables.
Did she pay you?
Yes.
What’d she give you?
He drew the folded bills from his pocket and counted them out on the table. Four dollars, he said.
That’s a lot.
Is it?
It’s too much.
I don’t think it is.
Well, you better hang on to it. You might want to buy something someday.
After supper he cleared the table and washed the dishes and set them to dry on a towel on the counter while his grandfather went into the living room and turned on the lamp beside the rocker and read the Holt Mercury newspaper. The boy did his schoolwork at the kitchen table under the overhead light and when he looked in an hour later the old man was sitting with his eyes shut, their paper-thin lids crosshatched by tiny blue veins and his dark mouth lapsed open, breathing harshly, and the newspaper spread across the lap of his overalls.
Grandpa. He touched his arm. You better go to bed.
His grandfather woke and peered at him.
It’s time for bed.
The old man studied him for a moment as if trying to think who he was, then folded the paper together and set it on the floor beside the chair and, pushing against the arms of the rocker, rose slowly and walked into the bathroom, and afterward went back to his bedroom.
The boy drank another cup of coffee at the kitchen sink and dumped the dregs in the drain. He rinsed out the pot and turned off the lights and went back to bed in the little room next to his grandfather’s, where he read for two hours. Through the wall he could hear the old man snoring and coughing and muttering. At ten-thirty he cut the light out and fell asleep and the next morning he got up early to make their breakfast and afterward went to school across the tracks to the new building on the south side of Holt, and at school he did willingly and skillfully all that was required of him but didn’t say much of anything to anybody throughout the day.
4
THEY HAULED THE BLACKBALDY YEARLING STEERS TO town in the gooseneck trailer and jumped them out into the alley at the load-in dock behind the sale barn and the yard crew sorted them into a pen. The veterinarian inspected them and found none of the respiratory diseases he looked for in yearlings, nor the cancer eyes nor Bang’s nor the occasional malformed jaw he might expect in older cattle, and the brand inspector cleared them without question. Afterward they were handed the chit saying the steers were theirs and how many of them there were, and then they drove home again and ate in the kitchen in the quiet and went up to bed, and the next morning in the stilldark they rose from bed and chored out.
Now at noon they were seated at a square table in the little dirty sale barn diner ordering lunch. The waitress came with a pad and stood over them, sweating and red-faced. What are you two going to have today?
You look about like you was flat wore out, Harold said.
I’ve been at this since six this morning. Why wouldn’t I be?
Well, you might just bust something. You better take it easy.
When would I do that?
I don’t know, Harold said. That’s the question. You got any specials going on?
Everything’s special. What have you got in mind?
Well, he said, I’ve been considering the noble pig. I’ve seen about enough of these blackbaldy steers the last couple days to put me off beef for a week.
We have ham steak and there’s bacon if you want that. We could make you up a ham sandwich.
Bring me a ham steak. And mashed potatoes and brown gravy and whatever else comes with it. And black coffee. And some punkin pie if you would.
She wrote rapidly in her pad and looked up. Raymond, what about you?
That sounds about right, he said. Just bring me the same as Harold. Only what other brand of pie you got?
I have apple blueberry butterscotch lemon. She glanced over at the counter. I think I got one piece of chocolate meringue.
Blueberry, Raymond said. But take your time. There isn’t any rush about this.
I just wish he’d hire another girl, she said. That’s all it’d take. You think Ward’s ever going to do that?
I can’t see it happening.
Not in my lifetime, she said, and walked toward the kitchen and said something to two men at another table as she passed by.
She returned balancing two cups of coffee and a bowl of lettuce salad for each of them and a plate of white bread with little pats of butter and set it all down and went away again. The McPheron brothers took up their forks and began to eat. While they were eating, Bob Schramm came over. Anybody sitting here? he said.
You, Harold said. Set down.
Schramm pulled out a chair and sat and took off his black hat and placed it crownside down on the vacant chair and put a finger to each ear and turned up the plastic dials in his hearing aids, then smoothed the hair on the top of his head. He looked around the crowded room. Well, I just heard old John Torres died.
When was this? Harold said.
Last night. Over to the hospital. Cancer, I guess. You knew him, didn’t you.
Yeah.
He was something, old John was. Schramm looked at them, watching them eat. Here he was, what, about eighty-five, he said, and the last time I seen him he’s bent over so bad his chin about catches on his belt buckle and I says how you doing, John, and he says oh, pretty good for a old fucker. That’s good, I say, at least you’re still fuckin, and he says yeah, but I been having trouble splitting this cottonwood, it’s soft in the middle, kind of spongy and you can’t get it to split right. You shove the wedge in and it’s like sticking a fork in a pan of this caliche mud. Well, you can see where I’m going with this, Schramm said. Here’s old John still trying to split firewood at his age of life.
Sounds about like him. Harold reached for a piece of bread and buttered and folded it and bit a large half moon out of the middle.
Well, he smoked two packs of Lucky Strikes every day, Bob Schramm said, and he never mistreated a human being in this world. I always set down with him and when I poured my coffee I poured him one too. This one time he come in and he says how you doing, and I says oh not too good, I got something on my mind, some people upsetting me. And he says who is it, you want me to take care of them, and I says oh no, that’s all right, I’ll take care of things, because I knew what he’d do or have somebody else do for him. They’d wake up with their throats cut, is what I’m talking about. Well, he come out of San Luis Valley. You didn’t want to fool with him. Even if he never hurt nobody before, it don’t mean he couldn’t arrange for it to happen this time, even if he wasn’t going to be the one doing it himself.
The waitress arrived at the table carrying two big platters of ham steak and mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and apple sauce. She placed them in front of the McPherons and turned to Schramm. What about you, what are you going to have?
I haven’t even give it any thought yet.
I’ll have to come back, she said.
Schramm watched her leave and looked around, gazing over at the
next table. Don’t they give you menus here no more?
It’s above the counter, Raymond said. On the wall there.
I thought they used to give you menus.
It’s up there now.
Is menus that expensive?
I don’t know how expensive menus are, Raymond said. You mind if we go ahead and eat?
No. Hell. Don’t wait on me. He studied the menu printed on pasteboard above the counter while the McPheron brothers leaned forward over their plates and began to eat. He reached in the hip pocket of his pants and withdrew a blue handkerchief and blew his nose, shutting his eyes all the while, then folded the handkerchief and put it away.
The waitress came back and refilled the coffee cups. Schramm said: Oh, just bring me a hamburger and fries and some coffee, why don’t you.
If you want any dessert you better say so now.
I don’t guess so.
She walked off to another table and poured coffee there and went on.
When’s the funeral going to be? Harold said.
I don’t know. I don’t even know if they was able to locate his kinfolk yet, Schramm said, to tell them he died. But there’ll be a lot that wants to attend.
People liked him, Raymond said.
Yeah, they did. But here you go. I wonder if you ever heard this one. There was this time old John was carrying on with Lloyd Bailey’s wife. I seen them myself once, they was in her new Buick hid out down in the bar ditch alongside the tracks out at the Diamond T crossing, the car lights all shut off, that Buick bouncing on its springs a little and the radio turned down low playing something Mexican out of Denver. Well, mister, they was having theirselves a good time. Well, so that fall old John and Lloyd’s missus jumped up and run off to Kremmling across the mountains there and holed up in a motel room. Shacked up, living like man and wife. But it wasn’t nothing to do there unless you was a hunter and wanted to take a potshot at a deer or a bull elk. It’s just a little place, you know, along the river, and ruttin in a kingsize motel bed can get tiresome after a while, even if you can lay the room off on somebody else’s credit card. So after a while they come back home and she went back to Lloyd and says to him you going to let me come back or do you want to divorce me? Lloyd, he slapped her so hard it spun her head around, and he says all right then, I guess you can come back. Then Lloyd and her went off on a running drunk. They got about as far as Steamboat Springs, I guess, and turned around. When they come back they was still together. I believe they still are. Lloyd, he said it took him all of a two-week drunk to wash old John Torres out of his system.
How long did it take to wash him out of the wife’s system? Harold said.
That I don’t know. He never said. But that’s one thing about him for sure. Old John could get to you.
I don’t guess he’s getting to nobody now, is he.
No sir. I reckon his day is over.
Still, I guess he had his fun, Raymond said. He had himself a good run.
Oh, he did that, Schramm said. None much better. I always thought a lot of old John Torres.
Everybody did, Raymond said.
I don’t know, Harold said. I don’t imagine Lloyd Bailey thought that much of him. Harold put his fork down and looked around the crowded diner. I wonder what become of that punkin pie she was going to bring me.
WHEN THEY HAD FINISHED LUNCH AND LEFT MONEY ON the table for the waitress the McPherons moved next door into the sale barn for the one o’clock start. They climbed up the concrete steps into the middle of the half circle of stadium seats and sat down and looked around. The pipe-iron corral of the sale ring lay below, with its sand floor and the big steel doors on either side, the auctioneer already in place behind his microphone sitting next to the sale barn clerk in the auctioneer’s block above the ring, both of them facing the ranks of seats across the ring, and all the animals sorted in pens out back.
The seats began to fill with men in their hats or caps and a few women in jeans and western shirts, and at one o’clock the auctioneer cried: Ladies and gentlemen! Well all right now! Let’s get to going!
The ringmen brought in four sheep, all young rams, one with a horn that had splintered in the waiting pen and the blood was trickling from its head. The sheep milled around. Nobody much wanted them and they finally sold the four rams for fifteen dollars each.
Next they brought in three horses one after the other. A big seven-year-old roan gelding came first that had white splashes on its underbelly and more white running down the front of its hind legs. Boys, the older of the ringmen hollered, he’s a well-broke horse. Anybody can ride him but not everybody can stay on him. Boys, he’ll get out there and move. And he understands cattle. Seven hundred dollars!
The auctioneer took it up, chanting, tapping the counter with the handle end of his gavel, keeping time. A man in the front row allowed that he would give three hundred.
The ringman looked at him. You’ll give five hundred.
The auctioneer took that up, and the roan horse sold finally for six hundred twenty-five, bought back by its owner.
They sold an Appaloosa next. Boys, she’s a young mare. Not in foal. Then they sold a black mare. She’s a young thing now, boys. About two years old, not broke. So we’re just going to sell her that way. Three hundred fifty dollars!
After the horses were done the cattle sale began, and it was this that most people had come for. It went on for the rest of the afternoon. They sold the old stuff first, then the cow-calf pairs and the butcher bulls and finally the lots of calves and yearlings. They pushed the cattle in from one side, held them in the ring for the bidding, and moved them about to show them to best advantage, the two ringmen stepping out or tapping them with the white prod-sticks, then pushed them through the other metal door into the outback for the pen-back crew to sort out. Each pen was numbered with white paint to keep the animals separate, and all of them had yellow tags on their hips saying which lot they belonged to. On the wall above the metal doors electronic boards blinked TOTAL LB. and HEAD CT. and AVERAGE WT. There were advertisements on the walls for Purina and Nutrena feeds and Carhartt equipment. And below the auctioneer’s booth this sign: NOTICE ALL GUARANTEES ARE STRICTLY BETWEEN BUYER & SELLER.
The McPheron brothers sat high up in their seats and watched. They had to wait until late in the afternoon for the sale of their yearlings. Around three in the afternoon Raymond went down into the diner and brought back two paper cups of coffee, and sometime later Oscar Strelow sat down in front of them and turned sideways in his chair to talk, remarking on a pen of his cattle that one time sold so poorly he’d driven out and got drunk afterward and when he got home in that sorry state his wife was so mad she wouldn’t talk to him but went straight into town the next morning and bought a brand-new Maytag washing machine, writing out a check for the entire amount right there, and Oscar said he didn’t think it was a good idea to offer any comment about it to his wife just then and he still never had.
They kept running the cattle through. The younger of the ringmen was the one watching the bidders and they looked at him purposefully, making a nod or raising a hand, and he’d holler Yup! looking back and forth from one bidder to the other, Yup! and when the last bidder gave up and looked away the auctioneer up in the block cried: I sold them out at one hundred sixteen dollars to number eighty-eight! and the young ringman released the cattle out of the ring. Then the older ringman in a blue shirt with a big hard belly hanging down above his belt buckle let the next lot in through the steel door on the left and began to holler.
Boys, they’re a nice pair of steers. I’m going to let you all in for ninety-five dollars!
Boys, she’s a long-haul calf. She looks a little like a milk cow. Seventy-four dollars!
The only thing wrong with this one is she’s got a short tail and that’s stupid!
Boys, she’s got a little knot on her jaw. Dry it, it won’t amount to nothing.
A heifer girl and a good one!
All right. Seventy-seven dollars!
Let’s not play games.
The cattle sale went on. And one time there was a big lot, eighty head of them, that the ringmen ran through fifteen and twenty at a time until they came to the last bunch and these they kept back in the ring as representative of the whole lot, and all the while the older ringman was hollering: Boys, they’re a good outfit. Take a good look at them, you’re not going to see them again. They’re a good feeding outfit, boys. Eighty cows. Eighty dollars. Come on!
And there was one other time in the afternoon when Harold, sitting up in his seat above the sale ring, began to bid on a pen of butcher cows. After he bid a second time Raymond turned to look at him. Was that you? He thought that was you trying to bid on them.
It was.
Well what the hell are you doing?
Nothing. Having a little fun.
We don’t need no more cattle. We’re trying to sell some here today.
I ain’t going to buy any. I’m just having some fun raising the price for somebody else.
What if you get stuck with them?
I won’t.
Yeah. But what if you do.
Then I reckon you’ll just have to get your pocketbook out and pay for them.
Raymond turned away. You know something, he said. You’re starting to get a little mushy in the head in your advanced years, did you know that?
Well, we got to have some fun, don’t we? Victoria’s not here no more.
But we don’t need no more cattle.
You already said that.
I’m saying it so you’ll hear me.
I hear you. But I still say we got to have some kind of enjoyment in life.
I know we do. I ain’t arguing with you about that.
AT LAST THE AUCTIONEER CAME TO THE BLACKBALDY yearlings the McPherons had hauled in. The steers came into the sale ring in a swirling mass, their heads down, all moving, trying to turn back into themselves to hide.
The ringman hollered: Boys, they come right off the grass. They’ll do everything you want them to do. Good stretchy steers. These are yearling kind of cattle, boys. And good ones they are!