For the corral would do.
Here, far from any hard road, far from the view of any neighbors or passersby, he would be able to load his cattle and ship them—and claim that someone else had done it, claim that someone had stolen them.
When he had awakened in Ronda’s bed at nine o’clock that morning he had no idea that by noon he would have decided to go through with it, the rustling of his own cattle. He had awakened slowly and groggily, barely aware of her body laced with his own. Then, reaching for his watch on the floor, he learned the time and promptly turned into what Ronda must have perceived as a raving lunatic, jumping out of bed and wrestling into his clothes and answering her baffled inquiries with anguished cries about how late it was, that he was normally up at six, and that now it would be ten before he could even begin his farm chores. For some reason he failed to give her the true reason for his alarm—that Tommy would already be up and around at the ranch, with no one to look after him, with Shea undoubtedly still asleep and Clarence on his day off.
Ronda had followed him to the door, looking bewildered and still half asleep. He kissed her good-bye and said that he would call her later, in the afternoon, to which she nodded a vague comprehension and agreement.
Then he had left, driving as fast as he could over the winding, hilly road back to the ranch. And when he reached it, turning in over the cattleguard, he immediately saw Tommy far up the hill on the porch, a tiny figure jumping up at the sight of the pickup and starting toward it, running with his slow, clumsy, desperate gait, running in fact like an infant toddling toward its mother. And Blanchard would not forget his feeling at that moment, the realization that with Susan gone he was less a free man than ever, that from now on there was almost no decision he could make that would affect only himself. Yet somehow he did not find that feeling frightening. It was like accepting the fact of one’s own mortality, an unpleasant accommodation, that was all. And even before Tommy reached the pickup, Blanchard knew what he would have to do, knew that he really had no choice in the matter anymore. He would have to save his ranch—and Tommy’s world—in any way he could. It was not as he had hoped, like reaching light at the end of the tunnel. Rather it was as if he had reached darkness instead. But at least he had come to the end, he had broken through, and now could breathe, in time perhaps could even stand.
As Tommy reached him, Blanchard stopped the pickup and threw open the door.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he said. “You okay?”
Tommy’s fists smeared the tears running down his face. “I thought you was dead,” he got out. “I thought I never see you no more.”
Starting the truck again, Blanchard reached over and put his arm around his brother’s neck, giving him a playful hug, and Tommy, snuffling still, managed to smile.
“Don’t ever think that,” Blanchard said to him. “I’ll always be here.”
When he got back to the house after checking the corral, Blanchard found Shea in the kitchen frying up his usual ranchhand breakfast of eggs and bacon and fried potatoes. Blanchard told him to throw on some extra portions for him and Tommy, while he tried to find them some fruit, settling finally for a can of freestone peaches and a pitcher of Tang. At the same time he vowed to himself that before the day was over he was going to lighten his and Tommy’s recent heavy diet of animal fat with a huge tossed salad made of every fresh vegetable he could find, for that was his favorite dish, and one Susan had served almost every evening.
But eggs and bacon and potatoes were easy to prepare and easy to eat, and the three men made short work of the meal Shea cooked for them. As he ate, Blanchard was relieved to find his friend in a different mood from that of the night before.
“Yessir, me wounds is healing,” he claimed. “First morning I’ve been able to fart without feeling chest pains.”
“A mixed blessing,” Blanchard said.
“For you maybe, not for me. And then the tinnitus is waning too. Really gonna miss it.”
“What’s tinnitus?”
“Ringing in the ears, you dolt.” Shaking his head, he turned to Tommy. “Your brother’s a dolt, isn’t he?”
Tommy asked what a dolt was, and Shea told him.
“A member of the Blanchard family, I think.”
Tommy frowned thoughtfully at that and went outside, calling for Spot and Kitty.
“So nice you’re feeling better,” Blanchard said to Shea.
“A mixed blessing, that too. Afraid I’m just about fit to travel. Probably cut out of here tomorrow morning.”
Blanchard smiled slightly at the announcement, for he had one of his own to make. “Maybe you won’t have to. Maybe we can find something for you to do here.”
“Bucking hay for two bucks an hour?”
“Something like that.”
“What like that?”
“How about moving some cows? You be interested in that? Say, like tomorrow we move them all to the north pasture, and the next night truck them to Kansas City—you be interested in that?”
Shea gave him a searching look. “You putting me on, old buddy?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. I will be damned.”
“It’s just reached the point where I can’t see any other way out.”
“There ain’t any.”
“I guess not.”
“Well, well, well. My, my, my.” Shea stood up, grinning now, excited. “And I’d drive one of the rigs, I take it.”
Blanchard shrugged. “I guess so. But I don’t know the details yet. In fact I probably haven’t even given it as much thought as you have, you and your little friend. You think he’d be home this afternoon?”
“Why not? I’ll give him a call.”
“Okay. And if he is there, tell him I’ll be driving over for a talk. You stay with Tommy.”
Shea looked surprised. “Why not bring him along with us?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’ll just find out from Little if the thing is feasible, what trucks he can get and so forth. And if it sounds all right, then we can meet here tonight, the three of us, and plan it out in detail.”
“Whatever you say.”
“That’s the attitude.”
“But first, one question. What do you figure your herd is worth? What could you get?”
“Well, I couldn’t ship the blacks that are Bang’s suspects. And I’d be selling everything else by the pound, not as breeders—cows, bulls, all of them. So I wouldn’t figure on much more than forty-eight or fifty thousand.”
“Plus the insurance.”
“Which, as you said, will go straight to the bank.”
Shea made a face, acceptance and dismissal. “Still and all, fifty thousand. And a reasonable percentage of that—well, it ought to come in handy, wouldn’t you say?”
“And here I thought it was my ass you wanted to save.”
“Oh, I do, I do—right after mine.” Grinning, he went to the phone and dialed information. He asked for the number of Mrs. Smith on River Road. Getting it, he dialed the number.
Little answered and Shea asked him if he would be home that afternoon, because Blanchard wanted to talk with him about a little business matter involving cattle. Shea listened for a moment, then turned to Blanchard.
“What time, he wants to know.”
“Two o’clock?”
Shea told Little the time and then said, okay, “the man” would be there. Hanging up, he turned to Blanchard.
“Two o’clock, it is. Your first step in a life of crime.”
When Blanchard drove past Ronda’s trailer he was relieved that she was not outside where she could have observed him turning off the road in the other direction, into the driveway of her grandmother’s place, for he did not doubt that she would have guessed his purpose immediately, known that there was only one reason he would have wanted to see her brother. And he did not want to argue the matter with her at this point, in fact did not even want her to know about it until the op
eration was already in motion, so that her objections would then be academic.
He turned slowly into the driveway and almost coasted to a stop, not even wanting her to hear him from across the road. But when he turned off the engine and stepped out of the pickup he realized how unnecessary his precautions had been, for there was only one sound in the river bottom area and that was a woman’s cloyingly honeyed voice singing about her love of Jesus, and amplified as if for a Woodstock crowd. Blanchard walked toward the source of the din, the small stone house sitting in the shade of a half-dozen black locust trees. He went up onto the rickety wood porch and peered through the screen door into the living room, where he saw the singer’s rococo image on a large color television, in front of which a wraithlike old woman sat rocking and scowling, nervously fingering a battered New Testament while her mouth worked in a fury of silence. Behind her, Little emerged from a back room and came out onto the porch.
“Old Grandma, she just love her Dolly Parton,” he shouted.
“Where could we talk?” Blanchard asked.
Instead of shouting again, Little motioned for Blanchard to follow him, and they went around the house and down a slight hill to an old weathered barn, which leaned to one side as if caught in a perpetual gale. They went inside, into a cobwebbed, dust-covered room cluttered with a small fortune in rusted antique farm and garden tools, milk cans and other miscellany. The only light fell from the haymow, a pillar of golden dust. Little, wearing jeans and a prison T-shirt, leaned back against a dilapidated workbench and lit a cigarette, suddenly the spirit of cocky self-assurance, nothing like the tearful, frightened little man of a few nights before.
“Shea said you was interested in some kind of cattle business,” he said.
Blanchard did not want to play games, especially with Little. “You know what kind. Can you get trucks? Semis?”
Little shrugged. “Well, there’s this guy I know with some big rigs, yeah. How much you figure on shippin’?”
“About a hundred forty cows and yearlings, and seventy calves. I figure about a hundred twenty, hundred thirty thousand pounds.”
“Take four eighteen-wheelers.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s what my man’s got. More than four, matter of fact.”
“Fine.”
“Where would you ship?”
“That I was gonna ask you.”
“Well, K.C.’s always good. Far away, so there won’t be other shippers from around here. And they git lots of loads, do lots of business. So they don’t ask too many questions.”
“There’s also Joplin. And Fort Scott.”
Little shook his head. “Too many truckers from around here goes to them towns.”
“Okay then, Kansas City,” Blanchard agreed. “But about this trucker you know—does he just rent his rigs or what?”
“For the right price, I think he’d rent us a couple, yeah. But I figure he’d probably want to drive the other two hisself, him and his boy. So he’d know what was going down—and could look after his rigs. You know.”
Little dropped his cigarette and stepped on it, and Blanchard lit one of his own, as if the two of them were maintaining some sort of eternal flame there in the dimness of the barn.
“I wouldn’t want my name involved,” Blanchard said. “The deal would have to be between you and him.”
“Naturally.”
“What would he charge?”
“Four big rigs goin’ to K.C.—oh, I imagine about two thousand. Considering the circumstances.”
“And what would you expect? Your cut?”
Little had to think about that for a time. Grimacing as though in pain, he shook his head and scratched his scalp. “Well, Jesus, I’d be the one way out on a limb,” he said. “I’d be the one takin’ the chances.”
Blanchard disabused him. “Bullshit. If there was any trouble, all you’d have to do is say I hired you to transport cattle, that’s all—you didn’t know they were in quarantine or anything.”
But Little went on wagging his head. “Still and all, I’ll be the one settin’ it up and runnin’ it, gettin’ ‘em all to K.C.”
“How much, Little?”
“Well, I’d say ten thousand anyway.”
Blanchard smiled. “I’ll be lucky to gross fifty. And take out stockyard commission and yardage, you get forty-seven. Two more for the trucks is forty-five. I gotta net at least thirty-five, so that leaves ten for you and Shea both. Say, six for you, four for Shea.”
Little was dubious. “Jesus, I don’t know. I just don’t know if I could do it for that. I really don’t.”
“Well, I could always do it on my own if I had to,” Blanchard said. “Rent a couple of Ryder trucks and take the whole herd myself.”
“Be kind of risky. You should be here, at the Sweet Crick, say, settin’ up a alibi, you know?”
“That’s why I’m willing to pay you and Shea ten thousand dollars.”
Little sighed in magnanimous surrender. “Well, okay, all right. Seeing you’re a friend of Ronda and all.”
“And the money would have to come after the cattle were sold.”
Little looked doubtful. “For the trucks, too?”
“No, I’ll pay him in advance.”
“Good. ’Cause Jack wouldn’t do it otherwise.”
“And as far as he’s concerned, you’ll just be hauling cattle, right? A straight business deal.”
Little grinned. “Except he knows better. He knows I ain’t no goatroper.”
“Doesn’t matter. Just so he doesn’t get too curious about me or why I’m shipping the cattle.”
“He could care less.”
Blanchard put out his cigarette and went to the door. Opening it, he heard the distant whine of an electric guitar. “One last thing,” he said. “I want to ship them Tuesday evening.”
“That soon? Just two days from now?”
Blanchard nodded. “The Bang’s problem. I don’t have time to wait.”
“Okay. I’ll call Jack tonight and see.”
“No, this afternoon. I want a meeting at my house tonight. You, me, and Shea. I want this thing to go smooth. I don’t want any surprises.”
“Okay, I’ll try to reach him now. I ain’t sure I can, though.”
“Well, you can try. And let’s make the meeting for nine.”
“Good enough.”
Little smiled at Blanchard then, a broad baring of teeth that he obviously considered irresistible but which Blanchard only found repellent. He walked out. “See you tonight,” he said.
Even before he reached his truck he saw her across the road lying in a bikini on a webbed folding chair in front of her trailer. And he knew she could see him as well, which meant that the problem was already out in the open. He would not have to unfold it carefully for her, like garbage wrapped in old newspapers. No, from where she lay he imagined she could smell it. So he went to her as he was, reeking, but with nothing behind his back—except the fact that in the end he would need her as well as her brother.
Though she had to have heard him pull into her driveway and get out of the truck, she did not acknowledge his arrival with so much as a lifted finger.
“It’s me,” he said.
Her eyes, behind her sunglasses, did not open. “Yeah, I know.”
“Aren’t you afraid lying here like this? Some sex fiend might come along.”
She did not answer.
“I take it you saw me over at your brother’s.”
“My grandma’s,” she corrected.
“Your grandma’s, then. But it was your brother I went to see.”
“Half brother.”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever is right.”
“And I guess you know why.”
“I guess.”
“I just don’t seem to have any other choice,” he said, knowing how stupid it sounded, how lame.
Still she did not move. “What you do is your business.”
“It’s hot out here in the sun. Why don’t we go inside?”
“I’m working on a tan.”
“Maybe a burn.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“That you are. I’ll go inside then and wait for you. Make us a couple of drinks.”
He waited a few seconds, but she did not respond. So he went on into the trailer, which was cool and dry, due to an air conditioner rattling in one of the tiny windows. Uncharacteristically the place was also something of a mess, with towels and clothes lying about, including a brassiere, panty hose, a couple of tank-tops. In the kitchen sink a faucet dripped onto a pile of dirty dishes. The dining table was cluttered too, buried under a pile of pamphlets and brochures celebrating seaside places in the sun: Santa Barbara, La Jolla, Mazatlán, Acapulco. Not just places, he knew, but dreams. Dreams of escape.
Finding the bottle of vodka and some frozen orange juice in the refrigerator, he made a pitcher of screwdrivers and poured himself one. As he sat down to drink it, Ronda came inside.
“Damn Ozarks,” she said. “You don’t tan, you just sweat.”
Blanchard got up to pour her a drink.
“Later,” she told him. “I’m gonna take a shower.”
He watched as she walked down the hallway into the back bedroom, where she picked up a white terry robe before going on into the bathroom, pointedly not looking at him. And it puzzled him somewhat, the intensity of her disapproval. He knew that she had not liked the idea in the first place, judged him above it, “not a thief,” as she had said. And he knew that she disliked his having anything to do with Little. Still, her anger struck him as excessive, especially when he considered her background, the truly fanatical antigovernment, antilaw bias of the hill people she sprang from, and then adding to that her own personal history as a school dropout, a bar-girl and nude dancer. Given all that, he would have expected a more casual acceptance of what he was planning to do. Not that he himself took it very lightly. He knew all too well that he would be committing a crime. Oh, he was aware that a case could be made for it, that stealing from an insurance company was a little like trying to out-herod Herod, or that even if one construed the operation as stealing from the insurance company’s customers, the population at large, there was a certain justification in that too, in that it was that same population which in effect had been stealing Blanchard’s beef for over four years now, paying him less than his cost of production. But he did not feel the need of any such sophistries. He knew exactly what he was going to do, and why. He knew that it was a crime, and that he could live with it. And if he could, then why not Ronda? He was not sure, and it bothered him.
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