Backlands

by Michael McGarrity

  “I’m scared,” Evangelina admitted.

  “Every brave thing we do comes with misgivings. Tomorrow you and my grandson will go home with me.”

  “Sí, we will.”

  In the quiet of the night, Teresa held her niece and thought about Matthew. Patrick had caused both of his wives to flee from him. He deserved neither. Now that he controlled the trust, would Matthew be the next to be driven away?

  ***

  Matt got roused out of bed early by Pa, who told him to hitch the wagon to a team, load it with hay, and meet him in the far horse pasture by the salt lick.

  “Aren’t we gonna have breakfast first?” Matt asked.

  “We can eat later,” Pa replied. “Besides, I’ve no reason to waste time dillydallying at breakfast with Evangelina’s relatives.”

  “That isn’t polite,” Matt said.

  “Don’t try to school me in manners, boy,” Patrick snapped. “Ranch work doesn’t stop when visitors come calling. You should know that by now. Get a move on. I’m gonna need two loads of hay hauled out to the shed by the salt lick, and I want it done pronto.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt grumbled as he reached for his clothes.

  The storm had turned the rutted road through the horse pasture into a muddy mess, with standing water in deep puddles. Matt got the first load through all right, but on the second trip a front wheel sank axle-deep and the team couldn’t pull the wagon free. With Pa out of sight a good two miles away, Matt had no choice but to unhitch one of the horses and ride bareback to tell him that he needed help getting the wagon unstuck.

  “You’re just about useless,” Pa growled as he climbed on his pony and rode back toward the wagon.

  Matt followed, and at the crest of a small rise he saw three riders approaching the wagon from the ranch house at a slow trot. He jigged the horse into a fast lope and caught up with Pa as he drew rein next to Tía Teresa, Juan, and Miguel.

  “What brings you out here?” Pa asked, worried-like. “Is something wrong?”

  “We’re leaving for home,” Teresa said, “and Evangelina and Juan Ignacio are coming with us.”

  “What the hell for?” Pa demanded.

  “They are leaving you, Patricio,” Teresa explained.

  Pa looked at Juan and Miguel, who stared silently back at him. “Is that right?” he asked boldly.

  “It’s what Evangelina wants,” Teresa answered calmly.

  “And you brought two of your boys with you to back your play to take my family from me.”

  “That is insulting,” Teresa said. “You cry of an injustice, yet the truth is you care nothing for them.”

  Pa snorted and scowled at her for a long minute before sneering. “You’re right. Take them with you and be damned. Now, get off my ranch.”

  “Adios,” Teresa said, smiling sadly at Matt.

  “Adios,” Matt replied. His heart sank as she turned and rode away with Juan and Miguel, wondering if he’d ever see her or Evangelina and Juan again.

  “Okay, Matt, let’s get this wagon unstuck,” Pa said.

  “No, sir,” Matt said, half afraid that Pa would take a stick to him for disobeying. “I’m leaving too, back to Las Cruces.”

  “You’re under my care,” Pa thundered, “and you’ll do as you’re told.”

  “No, sir,” Matt said. “This ain’t my home and never was.”

  He started the pony toward the ranch house, expecting Pa to run him down, but there was only silence behind him. When he was far enough away, he turned and looked back. Pa had dismounted and was hitching his pony to the wagon. As he watched, the hard, bare truth that Pa truly didn’t care a lick about him—never had and never would—felt like a kick in the stomach.

  He hurried the pony along, eager to be rid of Pa and the Double K forever.

  16

  For several months after returning to Las Cruces, Matt worried that Pa would come to fetch him back to the ranch or quit paying for his upkeep through the trust. Neither happened, but when school recessed for the summer, he stopped sending Matt his monthly ten-dollar allowance and paying Guadalupe’s salary. Pa’s explanation came in a terse note, telling him to either come back to the ranch or get a job in town.

  Figuring ahead of time that Pa would likely give him some sort of ultimatum, Matt had rented out the spare bedroom to Boone Cavanagh Mitchell, a college man from Detroit, Michigan, who was studying engineering and working as a mechanic at a garage on Main Street. Matt used the rent money from Boone to pay Guadalupe’s salary. To earn pocket money, he started working part-time at Sam Miller’s store, clerking and delivering groceries.

  Boone and Matt became friends over the course of the summer. At six feet two, Boone was four years older and stood four inches taller, but either Matt’s new blue jeans were magically shrinking or he was catching up fast. During their free time, he taught Boone how to horseback ride. Boone repaid the favor by teaching Matt how to drive his jalopy.

  On those evenings when they felt too lazy or worn out to go horseback riding or motoring up and down Main Street in Boone’s car, they stayed home and flirted with the pretty neighborhood señoritas or played baseball with the girls’ brothers in a nearby field. Matt’s favorite gal was Juanita, who was teaching him how to kiss in the alleyway behind her house.

  On a Saturday morning in early August, Pa knocked on the door with whiskey on his breath to tell Matt the trust had increased in value another ten percent and he was going to use that profit—and only the profit—on things that needed fixing at the ranch.

  His hair had turned gray around the temples and his jaw sagged a bit, drawing the corners of his mouth into a permanent scowl. A lifetime out in the desert sun had burned Pa’s face permanently brown, and there were deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that looked like miniature furrows. Matt didn’t exactly know Pa’s age, but he sure looked more and more like an old-timer.

  Pa explained that Matt would get full value back when he inherited the ranch. It would be Matt’s alone to have. He’d divorced Evangelina and given her cash money to drop any future claim on the ranch by her or Johnny. She had signed a paper to make it legal. Matt thought it was downright cheap and mean of Pa to do such a thing but said nothing.

  With the trust fund in the black and the future looking rosy, he was putting Matt back on his monthly allowance right away and raising it ten dollars a month. He’d hired the lawyer Lipscomb on a retainer to visit Matt regularly to make sure he was all right. Finally, he supposed Matt wouldn’t be coming back to the ranch anytime soon. Matt allowed that was right. Pa nodded nonchalantly and said that it was jim-dandy with him if Matt wanted to stay in town.

  Matt watched from the front porch as Pa strode off on his long legs. He still looked bull strong, with his wide back, but he stooped a bit now and wasn’t so upright with his shoulders squared the way they used to be.

  Pa never turned to look back, but Matt watched him until he was out of sight. When Boone got home from his job at the garage, Matt proposed that they take a couple of days off and drive over to Tularosa to visit his tía Teresa, Evangelina, and his kid brother, Juan Ignacio Kerney. Flabbergasted, Boone thought the idea was jake. He wanted to know more right away about the astonishing revelation of Matt’s secret Mexican family.

  “Never was a secret,” Matt replied with a laugh. “And never will be.”

  ***

  The drive to Tularosa got slowed by a flat tire at the bottom of Chalk Hills on the east side of the San Andres. Matt volunteered to change the tire, and he set about the task while Boone wandered down the gravel road a piece. Matt finished to discover that Boone was nowhere to be seen. He waited a few minutes for him to reappear and then tooted the car horn several times. Boone popped over a low northerly rise and waved.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this place,” he called, his voice filled with wonder. “It goes on fore
ver. Mountains everywhere and the valley is so enormous you can’t see the end of it. You lived out here?”

  Matt nodded. “Folks from here call it a pretty slice of country.”

  “Pretty isn’t the word,” Boone replied as he opened the passenger door. “It’s awe-inspiring. You’re driving. I’ve got too much to look at.”

  In Tularosa, Evangelina and Juan Ignacio rushed out of Tía Teresa’s house to greet them as soon as Matt stopped the car. Teresa appeared in the doorway, waving and smiling. There were hugs and kisses and lots of chatter in Spanish from Evangelina and Juan Ignacio that left Boone, who knew maybe a half a dozen words in Spanish, smiling in bewilderment.

  They were hurried inside the house, where more merriment erupted as soon as Teresa’s children and grandchildren arrived to greet Matt and his amigo. All the warm, happy, smiling faces made Matt’s spirits soar, and the next few hours were filled with gossipy family small talk and lots of good, spicy Mexican food. Boone occupied his time repeatedly filling his plate with enchiladas and beans and flirting wordlessly with Evangelina’s sixteen-year-old cousin under Tía Teresa’s watchful eye.

  The conversation soon turned to a widower by the name of Porter Knox, a carpenter in town, who was courting Evangelina. Originally from Iowa, Knox had lost his wife and baby during childbirth and had recently moved west to make a fresh start. He was ten years older than Evangelina and considered a nice man by all the women present. Teresa described him as thin and not too tall, with brown hair and a ready smile. But of more importance, Knox had taken up learning Spanish soon after meeting Evangelina. Because of this exceedingly favorable omen and the happy knowledge that Porter Knox was a practicing Catholic who attended Mass regularly, the Chávez and Armijo womenfolk were already surreptitiously planning a wedding baile.

  In the cool of the evening after the festivities ended, Matt and Evangelina walked to the river. Leaves rustled softly in the trees and the sweet, soothing sound of flowing water was a welcome change from the boisterous chatter and laughter they’d left behind at Teresa’s hacienda.

  “Pa told me what he did to you and Juan,” Matt said as they paused under a big cottonwood. “Giving you some money and cutting Juan off from any inheritance to the ranch was just plain mean of him. I wish I could do something about it.”

  Evangelina patted his arm. “No, no, don’t you worry, it’s all right. He had nothing I wanted other than my freedom.”

  “But Juan shouldn’t be cut off like that.”

  “Juan Ignacio has you as his brother and a loving family here in Tularosa. That is far better than having a father who doesn’t care for him at all.”

  “Maybe he’ll have more brothers someday, and a sister or two,” Matt suggested.

  “He would like that,” Evangelina with a happy lilt to her voice. “So would I.”

  “You seem so happy.”

  “Sí. Tía Teresa says that I am proof that every misfortune in life is replaced by joy. And you?”

  “Since Pa got hold of my money, he pretty much lets me be. He’s using some of it for improvements at the ranch, he says. I’ve only seen him once since you left him. I got on Patches that very day and vamoosed myself. I don’t miss him; that’s for certain.”

  “Will you continue in school as Emma wished?”

  “Just watch me. Next year I’ll start college in the fall. Will you invite me to your wedding?”

  “Sí, if there is one,” Evangelina replied coyly.

  Matt laughed. “From what the womenfolk in the family are saying, I’m betting on it.”

  Evangelina squeezed Matt’s arm and kissed his cheek. “We’re both making your mother proud, no?”

  “I reckon we are,” Matt replied with a grin.

  ***

  Two weeks after school started, Clementine Callaway, recently from Kentucky, joined Matt’s senior class. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. Small and slender, with sparkling, intelligent green eyes and long dark brown hair, she had an oval face and a narrow nose and carried herself with a sophisticated air. Her soft southern drawl only made her more alluring.

  Simultaneously smitten and tongue-tied, Matt did his best not to blush whenever she came near. Although she was polite to everyone, Clementine chose the company of the girls in the class and had little to do with the boys during recess or lunch hour or before or after school. Within a week, some of the other guys, including Jeff Kyle, decided she was stuck-up and took to taunting and teasing her. Jeff soon became the worst of the bunch, sometimes going so far as to harass Clementine on her way home. A stocky boy who liked to pick fights and push other kids around, Jeff had been kept back a grade for failing math twice. He often walked behind Clementine, mocking her for being a southerner, calling her snooty, and tossing pebbles at her. Twice Matt saw Clementine run away from Jeff, clutching her schoolbooks tightly, as she darted across Main Street.

  The next time it happened, Matt grabbed Jeff by the arm and pulled him into the alley behind Main Street. “Leave her alone,” he ordered.

  “Says who?” Jeff growled, breaking Matt’s grasp. “You’d like that skirt all to yourself, wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe she isn’t stuck-up, just scared of you,” Matt ventured.

  Jeff sneered. “She’s got her nose in the air and treats folks like dirt because she thinks she’s better than everyone else.”

  “Just let her be,” Matt repeated.

  “Stay out of my way,” Jeff snapped, “or I’ll give you a good licking.” He turned on his heel and walked away.

  The next day after school, Jeff and his three pals glared hard at Matt as he passed by. They fell in behind him and silently followed him to the corner of Griggs Avenue before veering off. That night, Matt told Boone what had happened and asked for his advice.

  “Is this Jeff fella the ringleader?” Boone asked.

  “Yep,” Matt replied.

  “Describe him to me.”

  “He’s chunky and shorter than me. He’s not too bright and he likes to pick fights. I think I can take him in a fair fight, but not him and his pals all at once.”

  “Whip him and your troubles should be over,” Boone said. “You just need to get him alone.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Do you think they’ll follow you home tomorrow?”

  “It’s likely.”

  “Here’s the plan; I’ll leave class early tomorrow and wait for you in the alley on the corner. When you pass by, give a whistle to let me know they’re following, and then stand pat. I’ll occupy Jeff’s pals while you teach him a lesson. Do you know how to fight?”

  “I’ve never been in one before.”

  “After dinner I’ll give you a few lessons, and we’ll practice again tomorrow before you go to school.”

  In the early morning, Matt fed Patches, gave him fresh water, cleaned out his stall, and went back into the house mulling over what Boone had taught him last night. While Guadalupe made breakfast and shook her head in dismay at their antics, Matt got another fisticuff lesson from Boone. He practiced throwing quick, stinging jabs and putting his hips and shoulders into landing a hard right hand. To test him, Boone held a pillow against his chest and had Matt practice his one-two sequence until he was satisfied.

  “It’s one, two,” Boone reminded him, demonstrating the punches one last time. “If he wants to fight dirty, kick him in the balls; if he tries to bear-hug you, bite his ear. Remember, I’m not going to break it up if you get in trouble.”

  “Where did you learn all this stuff?” Matt asked.

  Boone grinned. “On the streets of Detroit City before a kindhearted judge suggested that I move far away to New Mexico. Tell me what Jeff looks like.”

  “Enough!” Guadalupe said as she brought food to the table. “Stop your he-man silliness and eat your breakfast.”

  At sc
hool, Matt could tell the fight with Jeff was brewing. Before classes started, Jeff scowled at him and made a fist. At lunch recess, he swaggered up to Matt with his pals and said, “Get ready for a whipping after school.”

  Instructed by Boone to act scared, Matt timidly said he didn’t want to fight. If the ploy worked, Jeff would feel cocky and overconfident when the fisticuffs started.

  “I’m gonna have fun whipping you,” Jeff crowed triumphantly.

  Matt forced himself to stay calm, but for the rest of the school day he worried that maybe he didn’t have the grit to fight. When school let out, Jeff was waiting with his gang. Matt squared his shoulders and remembered what Boone said to do as soon as Jeff drew near: say nothing, drop his books, throw the jab, and follow with the right hand; repeat if needed. He started for home with the gang on his heels.

  He saw Boone waiting in the alley and whistled as he passed by. He turned when the footsteps behind him stopped. Jeff and his gang were frozen in place, staring up at Boone, who had a tire iron in his hand.

  “You go on ahead, Jeff,” Boone said genially, tapping him on the chest with the tire iron. “Me and the boys will wait here for you until it’s over. Good luck.”

  Jeff curled his lip, smacked his fist in his open palm, and strolled toward Matt. When he came within arm’s length, Matt dropped his books, threw the jab, and hit him with his right as hard as he could. Jeff didn’t get a lick in. He fell with a thud, faceup. Matt leaned down and hit him again with a solid right for good measure.

  “Show’s over, boys,” Boone announced cheerfully to the gang, who looked astonished by what they’d witnessed. “Take your hero home. He’s gonna have two big shiners by dinnertime.”

  They got a groggy Jeff vertical and walked him slowly away.

  “You okay?” Boone asked.

  “My hand hurts like hell,” Matt replied, his heart thumping in his chest.

  Boone took a look. “Bruised; that’s all. You did real good.”

  Matt grinned. “I did, didn’t I?”

  ***

  Word of the fight spread fast, and at school the next day Clementine approached Matt before the bell rang. “I heard what you did and I want to thank you,” she said. “You’re a true gentleman, as we say back home in Kentucky.”