By Tuesday morning, Mary Kerney was the talk of the town. On Wednesday, she was called into the school superintendent’s office and fired. As an assistant principal she served at the pleasure of the school board and had lost all rights to tenure and collective bargaining. There was nothing for her to do but empty her desk and go home. Many of the teachers at her school tearfully hugged her as she left.
Matt and Kevin were waiting for her when she arrived home. She dumped the box of personal stuff from her desk at work on the floor and sunk into a living-room chair. “I never should have gone to that sit-in.”
“It was my fault for giving you the poster,” Kevin said glumly.
“Stop it, both of you,” Matt ordered. “Don’t worry, we’ll do just fine. I’ve got a pot of spaghetti on the stove. How about a glass of wine before we eat?”
Mary smiled weakly. “I’d like that.”
“Maybe it’s time for you to take a break from working anyway,” Matt said.
“I’ve got homework,” Kevin announced, heading for his room. He pretended to close his bedroom door, left it open a crack, and sat on the floor to listen. There was silence while Matt poured the wine, then he heard the glasses clink in a toast.
“How are we going to pay for his college?” Mary asked.
“He’s not in college yet. But if we have to, we can take a mortgage out on this place, or even sell it and move to the ranch when he graduates high school. Neither of us are that attached to living in town, are we?”
“How I miss the ranch.” Mary sighed.
“I do too,” Matt replied.
“I can cash in my retirement from work if we need it.”
“Let’s not be drastic,” Matt said. “We stick to the plan of sending Kevin to college. If he keeps his grades up, he can get a scholarship. Plus, if he goes to State, he qualifies for reduced tuition because I’m on staff.”
“Maybe Erma could take him in if need be. At least when he’s starting out.”
Matt laughed. “She needs to do something for causing you to become a criminal,” he joked. “We’ll make it. We always have, haven’t we?”
“Yes, we have. I feel better already,” Mary said, relief flooding her voice. “Come here and smooch me.”
Quietly, Kevin closed the bedroom door. He felt like a selfish ingrate. Right on the spot he decided to give up rodeoing, make the honor roll every term, and start looking for a part-time job. If times were still tough at home when he graduated, maybe they’d relent and sign the papers to let him enlist. A junior army ROTC program was starting at the high school in the fall and he would have one elective to fill in his senior year. He’d sign up for it. If nothing else, it would help him be ready when it came his time to serve.
He’d talk to his dad about his plans next weekend at the ranch, where the chances were always better that he’d get a fair hearing. It hadn’t truly sunk in how much his parents had given up on his behalf. Both of them were happiest ranching. It was what they loved, and he’d kept them from it.
It was time to be a man, not a kid anymore.
***
Two months after the arrest of the “Las Cruces Fifteen,” as they were called by the media, a district court judge dismissed all charges against the defendants and censured the police department for unlawfully disrupting a peaceful, legal gathering. With a clean slate, Mary petitioned the school board to be reinstated in her job as assistant principal at the elementary school. She submitted a letter signed by all her former colleagues at the elementary school supporting her request.
In a closed personnel hearing, the newly elected school board president, Owen Stewart—local car dealer, foremost Tiger varsity football booster, and Joey’s father—looked Mary in the eye and with the slightest hint of a smirk on his lips said, “It doesn’t matter what the judge ruled in your case, your behavior was unprofessional and reflected badly on this board, our school district, our dedicated staff, and our children. I think I speak for the entire board when I say that we only want true American patriots working in our schools and teaching our children.”
In unison his fellow board members nodded their agreement as he called for the vote. Unanimously, and with the full support of the school superintendent, a twerp universally disliked by the teachers, Mary’s request to get her job back was denied.
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Matt nixed Kevin’s proposal to drop rodeo and look for work after school. He thanked him for the offer, explained there might be some belt tightening with Mary no longer working, but not enough to worry about. They were a ranching family and naturally cautious about money and debt. With a pleased smile he predicted Mary would love being at home for a spell, and it would be a good thing for all of them.
His notion that Mary would enjoy staying home proved true. No longer saddled with the burdensome paperwork she’d carried home daily from work, finding substitutes for teachers who called in sick at the last minute, or dealing with the assorted emergency maintenance problems of a school building long overdue to be replaced, she happily adapted to being a full-time mother and housewife.
Within her first week of not working, she rearranged the living-room furniture, cleaned the house top to bottom, pruned neglected shrubbery at the property line behind the horse barn, and reorganized the pantry. Always a good cook, she put even better meals on the table. Sometimes she used recipes clipped from magazines to make special salads and sauces. Often she whipped up her own version of delicious stews, soups, and casseroles.
When she wasn’t busy with housework or cooking, she got lost in a book, drew up lists of home-improvement ideas, or took on a special project such as—with Kevin’s help—laying a flagstone walk from the driveway at the side of the cottage to the back porch.
It didn’t seem to bother her when the school board refused to hire her back, although as a decorated navy veteran she was put out at being called unpatriotic by Joey Stewart’s father. As time passed, her normal sunny disposition got sunnier. Even when she bossed or nagged him about his homework or her latest new undertaking she needed his help with, she did it with such good humor that Kevin never felt put out.
Some things she’d do on her own when he was at school. He came home to find she’d repainted the bathroom, or rearranged the contents of the kitchen cupboards or was in the midst of cleaning out the junk stored in the small attic. One day, he walked into the kitchen, where she was on a stepladder installing a newly purchased globe-shaped ceiling-light fixture. After she deftly attached it to the fixture base, he jokingly asked her what she planned to do next to the place.
She climbed down from the ladder and ran off a list of things: plant more shade trees, paint the exterior trim, re-roof the horse barn, and make new curtains for the bedrooms. Except for curtain making, she expected his help on the major projects.
“Are you fixing to sell the place?” Kevin asked.
Mary hesitated before answering. “Eventually, someday. I’d love to see your father do what he loves best. If he left his job with the university and returned to raising and training ponies, I know he’d be successful.”
His parents’ wistful conversation he’d overheard about their dream to someday return to ranching popped into his mind. “Then you and Dad should do it.”
His mother smiled pensively. “We’ll see.”
After years in town with only part of the summers and some weekends at the Rocking J, she still missed the vast Tularosa sky, the quiet, peaceful nights, the cradling solitude far from all the hustle-bustle of town, and the feeling of belonging to a place. All of it was lacking in dusty T or C—a cramped, dreary outpost of civilization hunkered down along a tame river that meandered through desolate hills and a busy highway filled with travelers going everyplace else but there.
“You and Dad are just not cut out to be town folks,” he ventured, knowing it was true.
Mary laughed. “I suppose you’re rig
ht. Is that true for you as well?”
“Mostly,” Kevin replied with a grin as he put down his schoolbooks. Outside the kitchen window a truckload of rock sat in a pile at the side of the house next to the driveway. Mary had checked out a library book about farm crafts that gave step-by-step instructions of how to build a freestanding dry stone wall. With Kevin’s assistance, she was about to try her hand at it by building a flowerbed under the kitchen window.
“We’re trenching the footing after you change out of your school clothes,” Mary said, giving him a quick kiss. “So don’t dawdle.”
Kevin eyed the rock pile. “Do we have enough rock?”
“For now,” she said jovially as she stowed her toolbox under the kitchen sink.
***
In the last high school association rodeo before the annual all-state competition, Kevin cracked three ribs in a fall during the saddle-bronc event that ended his chance to make a run at the state title. He didn’t like it but had no choice; without medical clearance he was barred from competing. Besides the pain of missing out, his side hurt like the blazes every time he tried to throw a loop or urged Two-Bits into a gallop. His only small consolation was winning a first both in steer wrestling and team roping with Dale before the bronc sent him flying. Until his wreck, he’d been moving up in the standings and that was something, but certainly not enough worth cheering about yet.
He reluctantly urged Dale to find another partner for the team-roping event. “There are some good ropers around,” he added, “and you could win it.”
Still basking in the glow of being the first-string starting right tackle on the state championship football team, Dale opted to pass on finding another partner. “I can wait until next year, as long as you don’t go and get stove up again,” he replied with his customary lopsided grin. “Anyways, I don’t plan to win the team roping title at state with anyone else but you.”
Kevin punched him affectionately on the arm to signal his delight at having such a good friend.
In reply, Dale punched him back.
***
Depending on her classmates’ political leanings, Jeannie was either heckled or applauded for being part of the Las Cruces Fifteen. Unfortunately, in conservative T or C, the hecklers dominated. Her few friends and supporters at school were ridiculed as well, but they stuck by her. At first she took the name-calling and jeering with forced good humor, but when some of the popular boys on the football team, egged on by Joey Stewart, started spreading rumors that she was having sex with the peacenik weirdos who were part of the local antiwar protest group, the heckling soon turned into taunts.
They called her a slut, a whore, a pussy, and a cunt. Girls who had been somewhat friendly started shying away, and boys who’d never before given her a second look started pathetically buzzing around, hoping to get laid.
Kevin got word of it early from Dale and pushed back at Jeannie’s tormentors hard enough to stop most of the name-calling, but Joey and a few others persisted.
“Don’t let them goad you into doing anything,” Jeannie pleaded as they left school after the dismissal bell. “I don’t care what they think.”
“Joey and his pals won’t let up,” Kevin replied. Just then Jeannie’s major tormentor drove by with a carload of his buddies. Joey slowed down so his passengers could yell, whistle, and make lewd gestures.
Kevin replied in kind as Jeannie stuck her tongue out.
“Don’t start any trouble,” she pleaded.
“Joey’s already started it.”
“My dad said he’ll start picking me up after school if the harassment continues.”
“No need. I’ll walk you home every day.”
“You’d do that?”
Kevin put his arm around Jeannie’s waist. “I would.”
Snuggled close, Jeannie smiled up at him. “Maybe you are my white knight.”
Kevin laughed. “Hardly.”
As they strolled down the hill to Main Street, Jeannie told him that business at her parents’ gift shop had fallen off since she’d started protesting the growing war. Hoping to reverse the trend, they’d put a big sign in the store window supporting the troops fighting in Vietnam.
“That stinks,” Kevin said. “You’d think people wouldn’t be so small-minded.”
“It’s all my fault. I can’t wait to leave this town,” she said fiercely.
“Are your parents mad at you?”
Jeannie shook her head. “No, just worried about their business. It’s hard owning a small retail store.”
They walked the rest of the way to the gift shop talking about a classmate who’d dropped out of school and run away, supposedly to California. Jeannie was jealous of the boy’s courage and wanted to do the same thing. Kevin threatened to go after her and bring her back home if she tried it.
“I’d miss you too much,” he added.
He got a smooch for that.
After leaving Jeannie at the gift shop he hoofed it home and found his mom in the horse barn looking after Billy, one of Dad’s ponies he’d brought down from the Rocking J in preparation for his planned visit to the remote Indigo Ranch in the Black Range, where he was to supervise reseeding a high country pasture. It would take him half a day in the saddle to get there from the ranch headquarters and Billy was his best trail pony.
Kevin put on his boots, and as he mucked out the stalls, he told his mother about his conversation with Jeannie. She scowled at the news, put the empty oat buckets aside, took off her gloves, grabbed her cowboy hat, and started for the house.
“Where are you going?” he called after her.
“I have an errand to run. Won’t be long. Finish up here.”
She was in and out of the cottage in a jiffy and wheeling her car onto the street before Kevin was half-done with the stalls. Within thirty minutes, she was back unloading two large paper bags filled with stuff from the gift shop. She unpacked at the kitchen table, setting out a crystal salt-and-pepper set, a new butter boat that matched her blue-and-white dinner dishes, a package of three deep-blue dish towels, a large pottery flower pot, an electric slow cooker, a bunch of artificial flowers, the newest edition of a Betty Crocker cookbook, and a novel by James Michener.
“There,” she said, gazing with pleasure at her purchases. “Jeannie’s parents say hello.”
Kevin shook his head in amazement. “You’re something else, Mom.”
Gleefully, Mary waved a finger at him. “Don’t you dare forget it, kiddo.”
***
Over time most of the annoying and hostile comments made to Jeannie by other students died down, but Joey Stewart and two of his cronies didn’t let up. More than once it left Jeannie on the verge of tears during their walk home after school. Angry at seeing her browbeaten by three Neanderthal bullies, Kevin confronted Joey in the hallway one morning between classes.
“You and your pals stop badmouthing my girlfriend,” he snapped.
Joey smiled maliciously. “Stuff it, Kerney. Maybe I can’t pick a fight with you, but that doesn’t mean I have to lay off your slut girlfriend.”
“We’ll see about that.” Fuming, Kevin walked away.
That weekend at the ranch while he was helping his dad tune up a windmill, he explained his dilemma about Joey and his desire to protect Jeannie from his bullying name-calling.
“I probably would get my butt kicked if I fought Joey, and I made a promise to Principal Becker not to get in any more trouble, but I can’t just let it go,” he said as he inspected the windmill tail vane from his vantage point on the small platform below the blades.
“Are you seriously considering taking him on?” Matt asked as he tightened the connection to the pull rod that drew water from the well.
“Probably. I’ve got a few inches on him, but he’s way stronger than me. I’ve seen what he can bench-press in the gym. He’s a bull.�
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“How are your ribs?”
“Okay, still a little sore.”
“Then you’ll have to be careful.” Matt thought back to his boyhood days when he’d decided to fight a kid pestering a girl he liked and how his friend Boone Mitchell had showed him some moves. “Kick him in the nuts,” he said.
Surprised, Kevin stopped in the middle of tightening a loose bolt. “Should I?”
Matt nodded. “You’ve got to protect yourself and put him down fast. From what I’ve heard, Joey Stewart isn’t too bright and if he’s like most bullies he’s used to intimidating his victims. Act uncertain and scared at first, draw him in to striking distance, and kick him in the balls hard as you can. Do it again if need be. And if you have to hit him, lay into him with your elbows, not your fists. Use a knee to the gut for good measure if he’s not down for the count.”
Kevin nodded. “I think I can do all that. But, if I’m caught, Principal Becker will suspend me for three days.”
“Just don’t get expelled.”
Kevin smiled. “I won’t.”
“And don’t tell your mother we had this conversation.”
“I won’t.”
Back on solid ground, Matt released the brake and the blades started turning. Soon water began gushing gently into the nearby tank. The sound of it brought a squawking blue jay eager for a drink to a low rung on the windmill ladder.
“Wrap your ribs tight around your midsection before you fight him, so you don’t get re-injured,” Matt advised. “Maybe I should be there.”
Kevin shook his head. “That won’t work. I’ll ask Dale to back me up.”
“Okay.” Matt studied his boy, now almost a man. “I should tell you not to do this. Would that stop you?”
“No.”
Matt threw an arm across Kevin’s shoulders. “I didn’t think so. Be careful, son.”
“Don’t worry, I will.”
Matt flipped Kevin’s cowboy hat down over his eyes. “But I do worry; that’s what fathers do. Let me show you some moves.”
The Last Ranch Page 34