The Gillespie Country Fair

by Marc Hess

  “Beautiful country you have here,” Vader said without making eye contact. “In the past, I’ve only been here for the deer season.” Vader was as cold as he was tall—not one who was comfortable with a smile.

  “Well, sir, now you get to experience the hot side of the Hill Country.” Carel got no immediate response from the Houston man. “How long are you going to be here, Howard? Or do they call you Howie?”

  Vader looked him over disdainfully. “‘Mr. Vader’ will be fine.”

  “Just so happens my company has a hunting lease out on Ranger Creek.” Carel put a special emphasis on the last two words and moved in closer to Vader. “Hogs are always in season up here. Maybe you and I should get out there and shoot some while you’re up here.”

  Nose first, Vader turned to him and spoke quite clearly. “You no longer have a company, Mr. Geische.” In a mechanical manner, he returned his attention to the track. “I am sure our branch manager has made that clear to you.”

  A hard man, Carel realized, but he didn’t step away. “I understand that, Mr. Vader. While you’re here, we’ll have to find some time to put our heads together about Ranger Creek.”

  The moneyman focused his attention on the line of horses making their slow walk to the starting gate.

  “You’ll need to do that,” Carel insisted.

  Schrubb elbowed his way between the two men, pushing a smile and cocking his head in a way that suggested Carel should back off.

  Carel ducked around his old classmate’s gesture. “I’m the one who knows how to pull this off. I’m the local boy.”

  Vader turned back to Carel. “We have our minds made up, Mr. Geische. We are not involved with you any longer.”

  “Yes, Carel. Let’s just enjoy the horses.” Schrubb turned to Cora Lynn. “Have you any bets on this race?”

  Carel was disgusted to see how old Chuckie had cowered under Vader’s hand. He saw himself as a lot more Texan than that.

  “Look here, Howard, if you go and quit now, then you’ve just lost your ass on Ranger Creek. Stay in, and y’all can make something out of it.”

  A commotion at the starting gate had Vader’s attention. Some jumpy quarter horse was bucking his handlers and refusing to load.

  “Howie, I can see that you’re not the player who would leave so much money on the table when he still has cards in his hand.”

  That drew Vader back into the conversation. “You’ve got grit, Mr. Geische. I like that in a man.” He put his binoculars to his eyes and turned his attention to the starting gate. “However, you have neither the depth nor the history to pull this off.”

  The starting gun fired. An explosion of raw animal energy shook the ground. At once, everyone in the stands was on their feet, yelling as the horses pounded down the short track. All conversation was drowned by the call of the race, the strain of the crowd, and then the surge of frothy quarter horses crossing the finish line.

  As the dust off the track was settling, it was Carel’s voice that remained loud enough to draw the attention of those in the boxes on either side. “Come on, Howard. I’ve done all the shit work up here. Four years of playing your game, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let your little whining branch manager here screw it up!”

  “Mr. Geische.” Vader had only to cock his head away from his binoculars to stop Carel with the hard edge of his quiet power. “Please remember that you are a guest in my box.”

  A soft hand fell on Carel’s shoulder, and Cora Lynn’s low, honeyed voice said, “Oh, Carel, darling, let’s you and me go downstairs and place some bets.” She took his elbow and led him out of the box.

  Reaching the top of the stairs, she stopped and spoke under her breath. “You are shaming me in public, Carel. Between your drinking and your”—she shook her head to come up with the word—“your little tantrums here.”

  Carel spun on her, his body blocking her at the rail, trapping her movement. “Do you know what these guys are doing? Do you know what these guys are doing to you?”

  Folks on the stairs, neighbors and people they knew, eyed them with concern and seemed ready to step in between them if need be. But Cora Lynn wasn’t the kind that needed rescuing. She slipped out from under his arm and tromped off down the stairs.

  “Whose side are you on, Cora Lynn?” Carel started after her, hollering for all to hear. “Who was it that dragged you out of that trailer park and put you in Geische Manor?”

  Cora Lynn kept a determined stride—not quite a run—out of the grandstands, through the food stalls, and past the crowd at the beer stands, all the way out to the parking lot, with Carel yapping along behind her and ending his rant only when they reached their truck.

  “Damn it, Cora Lynn. Those bastards are trying to take everything we worked for.” He smacked his hand on the hood, hard enough to bruise some fingers and cause Cora Lynn to flinch. “That lien I have on Mari’s house is in that package too. It’s not just us. They’re going to take that away too. These guys are heartless.”

  He watched as she reached up, opened the door, and climbed into the driver’s seat. His seat.

  “I’m not really concerned about your ex-wife at this moment, Carel.” Seated above him now, she spoke to him in a measured tone. “You and your conniption fits … I can’t even show my face in public anymore.”

  Carel kicked his feet in the dust and shouted back, “Well, damn it all! You just get out of my truck.” He lurched toward her, but Cora Lynn pulled the door closed in his face. He kept his thumb on the door latch, frustrating her efforts to lock him out. With one mighty heave, he jerked the door open, bringing Cora Lynn tumbling forward with a puny scream.

  She shoved back at him, but instead of moving him away, the motion threw her back into the seat. “Get away from me, Carel!” She bent down and bit into his forearm.

  He howled and fought back an urge to hit her. Instead he took a step back and stood his ground. “You think I’m going to stand for this? I’m Carel Geische, damn it.”

  She slammed the door and locked him out.

  “You got nothing without me.” His fists pounded the window as she started the engine. “You can’t run out on me!” He winced as the gears ground painfully into reverse, then slammed into drive.

  Cora Lynn glared down on him one more time. Then she left him in a cloud of fairground dust.

  “Damn it, woman!” Carel bellowed. “That’s not even my truck anymore.”

  • • •

  Although he’d sworn he would never go back to that house again, a simple call from his mother was all it took to lure Max back into the family fold. “We will be going to the fair, a family in full,” she declared. “All the grandchildren want a ride in your hot rod, so you will have to be at the house promptly at noon, my kleiner Max. Will they all fit in your car?”

  My hot rod? Max silently reveled in the image of the cool uncle. “Yeah. I can squeeze them all in.”

  “Do you have seat belts for each and every one? All five of them are hankering to ride with you.”

  “Sure,” he fibbed. “They’ll be in good hands.”

  Here he was, being manipulated by his family once again. He’d been staying at the Weshausens’ ranch, earning his keep doing farm chores and running into town with his laptop to use the free wireless at the public library, checking on his network marketing sales. His plans were to join Aubrey and Addy at the fairgrounds, but at his mother’s gentle insistence he found himself back at his parents’ house on Saturday—promptly at noon, as instructed.

  As usual, the old man was a problem. The more the women fussed over him, the more cantankerous he became. He just kept carping at them: hassling about his wheelchair, complaining he didn’t want that hat, barking at them about the oxygen canister. Nothing they did could suit him.

  Max did not interfere. There was no way to apply common sense to either side of this game. Neither his sister nor his brother would have put up with this kind of behavior from their own children, but this—actually taking Maximil
ian out of the house—was a big deal for them.

  On the way out the door Gerdie gave Max the portable oxygen kit. “You put this in your car.”

  “So, I guess we’re talking again?”

  “Just don’t let him know you have it.”

  At the fairgrounds they set up their chairs on the ground level, in the shade, not far from the betting windows and just a few strides from the racetrack rail. Out there in public, the old man showed himself to be downright amiable among his old friends, longtime customers, past employees, and neighbors, who stopped by to visit with him, speculate about horses, and offer him a beer. Gerdie fended off the first few beer offers, but Maximilian finally took one from an old ranching buddy. The opa seemed to get a mean little pleasure out of the way his wife and daughter disapproved.

  The Gillespie County Fair had its stock shows, its tarnished carnival rides, its simple country pageantry, and its band concerts, and there had been races there as long as there had been Germans in the county. The old guys talked about the horses that had been run in the middle of town, at the Marktplatz, until the houses and shops grew up too densely around it. Maximilian and his old geezer buddies cracked jokes and ranted about how, back in their day, the fair was a stock show that had some true meaning to the ranching families ’round here. “Ach, now all the auslanders just comin’ here for that rock-and-roll show.”

  This was a side of his father that Max never saw: a jovial guy grousing and joking with his alte Freunde in their singsong German.

  Jock and Terri herded the children off toward the rusty old rides and doled out money for the carnival games down on the midway. With his father laughing among his old friends, and his mother and sister there to hover over him, Max slipped off to evade the tension that always seemed to well up when he was with his family.

  They jumped him from behind while he was strolling past the concession stands. His old line—Heinie, Rickie, and Buddy—fell on him all at once, joshing around him like teenage pranksters while balancing plastic glasses of foamy lager.

  “So, how you gettin’ on with your new girlfriend?”

  “Haven’t seen you around much since you went out a-dancin’ with Thea.”

  “And don’t ya still have an out-of-state wife? You old dog.”

  “There is nothing going on between me and Thea,” Max protested with an unconvincing grin. “Y’all talking like you never got past junior varsity.”

  “Not yet.” They laughed.

  “Hey, Road Trip. Get yourself a cold one.” Rickie pressed a couple beer tokens into his hand.

  Buddy threw his long arm around Max’s shoulder, and the rest of the gang closed in and mustered him over to the tap line, under a sign that read CASH TRANSACTONS PROHIBITED. A crew of volunteers from the livestock association danced back and forth between the keg works and the long window where patrons paid for their beer with red tokens.

  Hot sun, cold beer: a combination to guarantee an evening headache. With a glass in each of their hands, the jolly foursome ambled away from the concession stands toward the band shell.

  “Band shell?”

  “Yeah.” Buddy nodded eagerly. “Nobody back there now. We’re gonna burn a little homegrown.”

  “What?” Max stopped. “You guys still getting stoned?”

  “Sure, dude.” Heinie gave him a smile and cocked his head. “It’s like a tradition with us.”

  “It’s killer weed, Road Trip,” said Buddy. “We grow it out at—”

  “Oh, I don’t need to know that.” Max put up his hands to cut him off. Who are these guys? he asked himself. Did I come back to get stuck in … what, some juvenile high school tradition?

  “Y’all go ahead.” He motioned with his thumb over his shoulder. “I got to keep an eye on my dad.”

  • • •

  Back at the family cluster, Maximilian had spit up some beer and was having little hacking fits. Gerdie labored over him with a handkerchief as Evelyn frantically fanned him with a racing program. With too many hands fussing over him, Maximilian shoved the women away in a weak but baleful manner. The man’s old chums stood back with concern, and all this activity attracted a crowd of gawkers, which, it occurred to Max, was exactly the spectacle that Maximilian wanted to avoid.

  “We need to get him home.” Gerdie looked up at Max with the desperate eyes of a medic who was about to lose a patient.

  “I’ve got that portable oxygen tank in my car. I’ll pull up right behind the stands over there.” Without awaiting a response, Max went for his car and returned, pulling his newly repainted, pitch-black Challenger coupe through the gate and up by the grandstands—drawing even more attention to the family fuss.

  With considerable effort they got Maximilian into the front seat of Max’s two-door coupe. When the old man was seat-belted into the front seat and sucking in deep draws of oxygen, Max pulled away from the mob of onlookers and drove out of the fairgrounds. The car’s air conditioner struggled to cool against the stifling August heat. As they turned out of the fair traffic onto Tivydale Road, father and son found themselves suddenly alone with each other for the first time since Max had come home.

  Maximilian pulled the oxygen away from his face. “Dat was an embarrassment, for sure. All dose people just gawkin’ on. What were they thinkin’? An’ what ya doin’ driving right up? Show off your pretty black hot rod. Gott im Himmel, son. Ya got no brains?”

  “Hey, you owe me, Papa. I got you out of there.”

  At the hard left turn onto the highway, the old man’s stomach started to heave. He looked like he was getting ready to blow his lunch all over the car seats.

  “Oh, Jesus, man. Not in my car. I just got it out of the shop.” Max started reaching around for something to mop up with. The car swerved.

  “Now, there ya go. Takin’ the Lord’s name …” Maximilian was choked off by the phlegm in his throat.

  Max found a T-shirt behind the seat and pressed it harshly to his father’s face while working to keep his car on the road. A truck behind them honked. Maximilian pushed the T-shirt back at Max, who swerved back into his lane and ran through a yellow caution light.

  Along with spittle, Maximilian spewed unintelligible expletives about his son’s “Gott damn” driving.

  “Just keep your head out the window, Papa. I can pull over up here. Do you need me to pull over?”

  Maximilian wiped his mouth on his sleeve and spit on the floor in disgust. “Don’ you worry here, son. I’m not gonna soil your valuable car.”

  “It’s not just a car. It’s a Dodge Challenger, Papa. A classic coupe.” He wheeled into another left-hand turn. “And I just got it cleaned.”

  At the house, Max let his father make his own way up the porch steps—a feat the old man was fully capable of performing on his own. Like a tired old dog going to his kennel, Maximilian found his way to the La-Z-Boy in the dark corner where Evelyn and Gerdie kept him. Max switched on the oxygen condenser that was parked behind the chair and placed the nasal cannula in his father’s bony hand. If the old man needed oxygen, he could stick that tube in his nose all by himself.

  A cave-like quiet filled the space as the walls squeezed in on the two of them. Maximilian’s right hand crawled over to his Bible and his head tilted up to the ceiling, and from his mouth came fragments of what sounded like scripture, gurgled out between the steady pulses of the oxygen condenser. Sharp spasms lurched through his shoulders. Maybe Jock was right: Max hadn’t been around enough to know whether this was run-of-the-mill dementia or a medical emergency. It would be just his luck to have the old guy pop off on his watch.

  His father was drawing hard on his oxygen and bent so far forward that Max feared he would topple onto the floor. The old man’s face was puckered up in its loose flesh, tears tracing down the weather-worn crevices of his cheeks. Those weren’t body spasms. The old man was crying.

  “Papa?” Max laid an easy hand on Maximilian’s trembling knee. “Are you okay?”

  “Sinner!” the
old man roared. “A sinner, Ich erzähle Sie!”

  Max was blown back by the spray of his words. “Christ! You scared the crap out of me.” He had to shake himself to regain his wits.

  Instead of tumbling to his death, the old man leveled his eyes on his son. It was as if the old man had suddenly come back to earth. “I, too, son. That old turkey buzzard stands upon my chest, too.”

  Those words caught Max like a hook. A chilly curiosity ran through his body, a simple, inexplicable fear. What does this guy know?

  Stifling his anxiety, Max dragged a chair up to his father, the ladder-back chair his mother kept next to the kitchen doorway. He sat himself directly in front of the old man, within an arm’s reach, and leaned forward as if he were speaking to a child. “What turkey buzzard is that, Papa? What is it that you saw?”

  Maximilian sank back inside of himself, his head jiggling in a slow palsy. Words seemed to struggle in his mouth, like they wanted to come out against his will. The gnarled fingers of his right hand stroked the cover of his Bible as if he were petting a cat. It was eerie, something that Max imagined a spiritual possession might look like. Max had never seen anyone die. He braced himself to hear his old man’s last words. Where’s Gerdie? Where’s Mom? They’d be the ones who would want to hear them. Not me.

  The old man’s eyes lifted upwards to fetch a memory. There was a quiver in his body, a rolling under his skin. The old man started to babble and drool, then his breathing calmed and Max could make out his words.

  “Dat be mein own fault dat sat dat curse down on yer chest, my son.”

  Max realized that his words were meant for him alone. No one else knew about the recurring nightmares of his darker days. “The turkey buzzards, you mean?”

  His father’s weathered eyes came back to his son. He raged up once again. “You! You.”

  This was the familiar side of his father—the raving Lutheran mystic. As crazed as the man could be, this was the more predictable personality. Max neither flinched nor responded.

  “My name in de next generation.” His hand was off the Bible and stabbing toward Max’s face. “Where Gertrude gets my house and Jochiem takes my business, you …” He took in a deep breath. “You, kleiner Max, you will carry my sin. Forever. To eternity. And on to your own.”