Good Water

by John D. Nesbitt

  “How about people who are just low, like the ones I mentioned?”

  “Some of that comes from what people want to do. My father says it is the nature of people to want to be like brutes. And they invent things to help them be that way, like whiskey and guns.”

  Tommy recalled a pleasant image of Raimundo sitting in the shade with Bill Lockwood. “What about tequila?” he asked.

  Anita smiled. “I know what you mean. A little bit doesn’t make men into brutes. But it is true. Where we come from, there are many strong drinkers among the Mexican people. When we came here, my father and my uncle tried to make sure we didn’t bring any of them with us.”

  “It’s something to look out for, all right. From what I’ve seen, whiskey can bring out the worst in a man.” He thought for a second. “But I guess he has to have it in him to begin with. And even at that, if he’s got it in him, he might not need whiskey to bring it out.” He pictured again the scene at the railroad camp, with coarse men looking on as Red took the money and threw back his head and laughed.

  “You have a look of pain on your face,” she said.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I was thinking of something that happened one time.” In her presence, he felt the urge to confess. He said, “Actually, something I did.”

  Her eyes widened. “Something bad?”

  “Not terrible. But not good. It was something I went along with, and it was against the law.” Now he was afraid of what she would think. He said, “That’s probably as much as I need to say. But it’s something I don’t want to do again—that, or anything like it. I guess that’s why I was saying earlier that I hoped a person could change for the better.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, with the sunlight shining on her dark hair as she nodded. “You can’t change the way God made you, but you can change the things you do. The thing you talk about, it’s in the past.” The two goats had finished drinking and were tugging on the ropes. “I need to take these back,” she said. “They want to find some grass.”

  “I need to do the same,” he said, glancing at the horses. They were still drawing in from the thin flow of water. “I’ll see you later. They’re not quite done.”

  “All right.”

  Tommy watched her walk away with the two goats in the lead, straining. He turned to take in more of the camp, and he saw Faustino pause in his work of setting rocks in the fire pit. Tommy looked away. He did not like Faustino ogling, and he did not like himself seeing it.

  The camp held together in its loosely structured way as it had done the evening before. Dogs, goats, children, and an occasional burro wandered among the wagons as the adults sat in small groups and chatted. The sheep were strung along the creek, crowding in bunches. Smoke drifted on the air, and as night fell, the two large skillets became hot enough that the aroma of fried pork began to drift out. People congregated at the fire as meat came out of the skillets and was portioned out.

  Tommy ate his fill, noting again that the Mexicans never begrudged a person a plate of food. Individual families were cleaning up the last of leftover rice, beans, corn tortillas, and garden vegetables. For his own part, in addition to the cooked pork, Tommy had a shriveled green pepper and a couple of half-grown onions.

  When the skillets came off the fire, Emilio covered the grate with a layer of pork ribs. With his thumb and fingers he spread on salt, pepper, and a third spice that wafted on the warm air and smelled like an herb. Tommy guessed it was the oregano he had heard of earlier, with the pozole. Before long, the pleasing smell of roasting fat, combined with the seasonings, gave a sense of being in a big dining hall or at an outdoor occasion like a wedding. With a long knife and a longer roasting fork, Faustino lifted the cooked pieces and set them on plates that people held forward. No one crowded, and no one complained. In the end, the grate was left empty with thin smoke rising as the last of the embers cooked off the grease. Faustino and Emilio stood side by side, each picking a rib bone.

  Gabriel had come in from tending the sheep. He was sitting cross-legged next to Tommy and eating from a plate his mother had saved for him.

  Tommy said, “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

  “I think we stay here one day, to rest and to let all the animals eat grass. It takes a day to cook beans and make tortillas.”

  “And after that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. That’s in the future. But we need to find more water than we have here.”

  The people had drifted back to their smaller groups, and all of the dogs had disappeared with their bones. Faustino lifted the grate from the fire pit, leaned it on a low, smooth stone, and walked away with his brother. An orange glow showed through the embers as a layer of ash formed on the surface. A low, even tone of people talking in Spanish came from different directions.

  Tommy stared up at the sky and saw the same stars as always. They looked down on every place he had been—Nebraska, the Muleshoe, the White Wings Ranch, the Mexican village, and now this spot out in the middle of a vast rangeland, camped with twenty-seven other people and a hundred sheep, on the edge of a thin little stream with poor grass all around. It seemed to him that he worried more about the past and about the future than these other people did. He would like to know what to expect for the day after tomorrow, on the other side of the creek, just as he would like to know how much of his past was going to determine his future. He hoped he wasn’t fated to be a poor man with a poor way of doing things. At least he wasn’t running from his past, as he had known of others. If he was, this would be a slow way of doing it.

  The fried pork for breakfast weighed heavy in Tommy’s stomach, and the smell of grease struck him as being stronger than the night before. He was used to side pork or bacon in the morning, but the cow outfits usually had spuds or biscuits to go along, to soften or absorb the grease. He reminded himself that this was food, and he was glad to have it.

  After Tommy handed his plate to Gabriel to be set in the dishpan, Raimundo spoke from where he sat on the ground nearby.

  “Today, the women cook beans, and they boil corn for tortillas. We’re gonna use all the wood this morning, so you boys have to go look for some.”

  Tommy said, “I haven’t seen any trees at all. How about if we gather sagebrush? It doesn’t make a big fire, but it burns all right.”

  Raimundo smiled. “You need a lot, and you don’t carry it very well on a horse. I think you need a canvas, and bring it back in a ball.”

  “In a bundle. We can do that. Tie the corners together.”

  “Yeah, try that. They wanna start early with the cookin’. You get some sagebrush, then maybe you go look for wood.”

  Finding sagebrush was not hard, but finding enough dead stuff for a day’s worth of cookfires was going to be slow work. With one corner of the canvas tied by a length of rope to each saddle horn, the horses dragged the tarpaulin between them. The boys gathered faggots and tossed them on, one by one. The dead branches were an inch thick at the best and dwindled into twigs after a foot or less. The pile grew, and the boys tromped it down. It grew more, and pieces began to roll off the back end. Now the boys had to squash down the load more often. After a couple of hours, they had enough for a full bundle. They tied the four corners together, boosted the unwieldy load onto Pete’s saddle, and tied it down.

  Back in camp, half the load disappeared in the time that Tommy and Gabriel ate a bowl of oatmeal mush. The sun had climbed well past midmorning when they set out for the next load.

  On the first excursion they went north. The second time, they traveled northwest, where it looked as if the sagebrush grew thicker. Up close, however, the pickings were sparse as ever, with a dead branch here and another one there. The pile grew at a petty pace like before, and by the time they had a full load, they had a two-mile walk back to camp.

  Anita, Elsa, and Milena were in charge of boiling the corn. They were glad to see more fuel. So were the women cooking the big pot of beans. Faustino and Emilio, who were apparently saving themselves for the
more prestigious job of cooking the meat, were snoozing under their two wagons. A cheerful mood drifted around the camp, with children laughing and the women at the cook pots talking in their singsong cadence. The aromatic scent of burning sagebrush mingled with the steam that floated off the boiling pots.

  Tommy stood next to Anita and said, “What do you call this corn in Spanish?”

  “Maíz,” she said.

  “My-eece.”

  “Pretty close.”

  He nodded in the direction of the pot of beans. “And those are frijoles?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the firewood?”

  “Leña.”

  “That’s a nice word. It sounds like it should be somebody’s name.” He felt the sound as he repeated the word. “Leña. And how do you say ‘moon’?”

  “Luna.”

  “That’s right. I’d heard it before, but couldn’t quite remember. Luna, leña.”

  “That’s good. You’re learning it.”

  “One word at a time. Before long, I’ll be talkin’ as good as Bill Lockwood.”

  She laughed. “Oh, yes. You can tell he enjoys it. Very . . . um, not funny, but very . . . nice.” Again she seemed to be searching for a word in English to express a thought she had in Spanish.

  Milena had turned at the mention of Lockwood’s name.

  Tommy said, “I hope I didn’t say anything wrong.”

  “Oh, no,” said Anita. “We like him. He is very likeable.”

  “Well, who knows if we’ll see him again. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  After they had rolled up the canvas and watered the horses, Tommy and Gabriel sat in the shade of the Villarreal wagon. The sun had passed over the high point, and the shadows were beginning to grow. Tommy took off his hat and fanned himself.

  “I think we should try going south for firewood,” he said. “I didn’t see anything like a tree all the time we were out north of here.”

  Gabriel said, “Where there’s water, you find trees.”

  “That’s true, but this little creek flows down from there, and I didn’t see even a tall bush sticking up.”

  Raimundo appeared from around the corner of the wagon. “Yeah. You go south. Maybe you’ll find something.”

  Eusebia showed up a couple of minutes later with two bowls of beans. As she handed one to Gabriel, she said something in Spanish. She gave the second bowl to Tommy, accepted his thanks, and walked away.

  Gabriel said, “They don’t have any tortillas. They need to finish boiling the corn, then grind it, then press the tortillas. Maybe for supper.”

  “Fine with me.” Tommy tried a spoonful from his bowl. All it consisted of was boiled beans and a pinch of salt. But it, too, was food.

  South of camp, the stream flowed at a bare trickle, which did not surprise Tommy when he thought of the number of humans and animals taking water from it. He did not think it ran much water even in good times. The course did not cut one way or the other, or leave sandbars, or give rise to anything bigger than bullberry bushes. After a couple of miles of not finding firewood, and seeing no trees anywhere ahead, Tommy suggested that they double back.

  Something inside him had told him, all day long, that it wasn’t time to cross the creek or do anything to the west. So he circled around to the east as he led the way back toward camp.

  Out of habit he scanned the ground ahead, always on the lookout for snakes and for gopher or badger holes. Also, as a matter of course, he kept an eye out for cattle or any sign of them. Wherever cattle grazed, they left hoofprints, cow pies, and broken twigs on the brush. Today he had not seen any recent signs of that nature. The part of the country where they were tarrying seemed empty. Now that he thought of it, he had not seen an antelope or a jackrabbit all day, either. As for the lack of cattle, that was not so bad, he figured. Where there were cattle, there were men checking on them. Maybe the Mexican people would be able to hole up in a place where they wouldn’t be bothered until they could find some authority to help them reclaim their land.

  The air was growing heavy in the warmest part of the day, and a drowsiness began to settle on Tommy. From time to time a grasshopper clicked and whirred away, causing Pete to break stride and lift his head, but for the rest of the time, Pete seemed to be drowsing along as well. As the ground flowed along beneath the horse’s feet, Tommy saw things and then registered them in a delayed reaction.

  He stopped the horse. He had seen something. Blinking his eyes and opening them wide, he reined the horse around. He backtracked thirty yards and button-hooked again. He picked up his own trail and followed it, studying the ground as it passed beneath him. There it was. In a patch of rabbit brush, three balls of horse manure had begun to dry and crust over. A horse on the move, but not very fast, had dropped some road apples where there was no road.

  Tommy swung down from the saddle and bent over to study the scene all around him. Some of the twigs of rabbit brush had been crushed by horse hooves, and palm-sized patches of bare ground showed nicks. Someone on a horse had been riding from west to east.

  Gabriel came plodding back on the brown horse. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing much. Just that someone came by here on a horse. Sometime earlier today.”

  Gabriel wrinkled his nose. “Out here?”

  “Sure did. But we’re out here, too, so whoever it is, I guess he’s got a reason.”

  “Hah. Who do you think it is?”

  Tommy looked around at the empty land. “I’d like to think it was Bill Lockwood, but it could be anybody. Well, not anybody. Not the queen of England, and probably not cannibals.”

  “Cannibals? People who eat other people?”

  Tommy laughed. “It’s from a story I read when I was in school. It’s called Robinson Crusoe. He gets shipwrecked on an island. After he’s there by himself for twenty years, one day he’s walking along the beach, and he sees a footprint in the sand. It’s a big moment for him. All of a sudden he realizes he’s not alone on the island, that he’s not safe anymore. So he keeps watch, and sure enough, the cannibals come.”

  “¡Válgame! And they have a fight?”

  “They sure do. He has a gun, so he kills a couple of them and rescues another one that they were going to kill and eat. It happens on a Friday, so he calls this man Friday. After that, Friday becomes his loyal servant.”

  Gabriel laughed. “That’s a good story, but I don’t think it happens around here.”

  “Oh, no. It was a long time ago, and it happened on an island down by South America. It was fiction, of course. It didn’t really happen.”

  Tommy was watering the horses just before sunset when Anita showed up with the two goats. His heartbeat picked up, and he felt a glow, even though it was subdued by the presence of the Romero brothers not far away. As he noted their presence, he thought Anita might have chosen to water the goats when Tommy was there, just to put a damper on Faustino’s interest. The thought made him feel better.

  “Good afternoon,” she said.

  “Good afternoon. It’s good to see you.”

  She smiled. “My brother said you read a story about cannibals.”

  Tommy laughed. “It was about a man who lived all by himself on an island. Just a little of the story was about cannibals. He talks about his goats as much as he does about the savages.”

  “He has goats?”

  “In the story. They live on the island, too. He captures some of them, and he makes them his.”

  “Did you like the story?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s a good story for boys, all about this man who lives alone and has to do things for himself.”

  “Until he has a cannibal for a slave?”

  Tommy laughed. “Oh, no. He’s an Englishman. His man Friday is more like a servant. He learns to speak proper English, and he goes back to England with his master. But the best part is when Robinson Crusoe lives alone, like a king on his own little island, and does everything for himself.”

 
“Is that what you want, to be alone?”

  He laughed again. “Not at all. But the part about being independent—that’s good to read. He has his own world, his own system to run. He raises wheat and grapes, and he builds fences for protection. Like I said, it’s a good story for boys.”

  “Did this man write any stories for girls?”

  “I think he wrote one about a woman, but the teacher said that was not a good one for us to read.”

  Supper came together in an agreeable way. Two of the men from the group had gone upstream and had dragged back a dead tree about twelve feet long and almost a foot wide at the base. They chopped it into firewood and split the thickest pieces. Faustino and Emilio cooked up the last of the pork, including the ribs. Everyone had at least one serving of beans along with three or four fresh corn tortillas. After the meal, as the coals still glowed, the people around the fire began to sing songs. Some were lively, and some were slow and mournful. Tommy could pick out only a word here and there, but he gathered that the songs were about pretty girls, beloved horses, and lost love.

  Raimundo kneeled by Tommy’s side and put his hand on his shoulder. “You can see we are a happy people,” he said. “Just a little while, and things will be right again. Don’t be sad.”

  Tommy glanced at the glow of the firelight on Anita’s face as she sat between her mother and Elsa and joined in the singing. He said, “I’m not sad, and I’m glad the people are singing.” He did not say he was happy, though, because he wasn’t. His thoughts were off to the south in the sunny afternoon, when he had seen the footprint in the sand.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Camp was slow in stirring the next morning. Tommy expected the people to be gathering up their things and making ready for the next move. As he ate a cold tortilla smeared with a pasty jam he did not recognize, Raimundo told him that two burros had gone missing. No one had seen either of them since the evening before.