Black Angus

by Newton Thornburg

  But that, he was learning, was one of the hidden costs of crime. It might pay in other regards, or at least he hoped it would, but at the same time he had to admit it did little for one’s self-esteem. One just could not commit a crime, it seemed, without feeling like a criminal.

  After finishing the chores, he got Tommy and Shea, and together they loaded the pickup with twenty sacks of feed and a half-dozen portable sheet-metal feedbunks that Blanchard himself had made. Then they got in the truck and drove to the far corner of the small pasture behind the corral, where they unloaded the bunks and filled them with feed. Then they opened the fencegap at the corner of the pasture and drove on into the field that Blanchard called simply “the knob,” one hundred and sixty acres of woods and native grass meadows dominated by a steep limestone hill from which one could see for miles in every direction, in fact all the way to Arkansas toward the south. To most of the old-timers in the area, like Clarence, the hill was known as Newt’s Knob, in honor of some long-dead local hermit who had forsaken the fast pace of the horse-and-wagon valleys for the solitude of the hilltop, subsisting on nuts and berries and the sweet water that still poured from a spring on the west face of the hill. But by whatever name, it was an inhospitable place, suitable only for hermits, goats, and birds, especially the turkey vultures that nested there and used it as an aerie from which they maintained their graceful deathwatch over the countryside. The cattle shunned it, preferring the meadows during the cool of morning and evening, and the woods in between, resting and chewing their cuds in the shade through the long hours of brutal midday heat.

  It was still morning, though, when Blanchard reached the meadows, so the cattle were still out in the open, grazing as the pickup moved among them, bumping over the rough ground. Most ranchers in the area, when they had to move cattle, would simply have saddled up their quarter horses and driven the cows where they wanted them to go. But Blanchard did not enjoy riding and considered the constant care and feeding that horses required too stiff a price to pay for those rare days when their services were needed. So, early on, as he learned how difficult it was to drive cattle on foot or in a pickup, he had opted for a Yamaha trail bike and animal psychology, specifically the wonder of the conditioned response. And it was this last that temporarily anyway had given Clarence his first real proof that his boss was mad, a raving big-city lunatic. First, Blanchard made the light, portable feedbunks, and then he proceeded to take them out to the cattle in the fields, where he would fill the bunks with a grain-and-molasses feed that the animals dearly loved. And as they ate, he would blow a whistle, over and over, a shrill and tuneless accompaniment to their unexpected repast. Clarence had not understood at all—not until Blanchard began placing the feedbunks where he wanted them, and then blew the whistle. The cattle of course had come running, indeed sometimes almost stampeded, with the result that in time Blanchard was able to move them anywhere he wanted, sometimes by just blowing the whistle, but usually by feeding them as well.

  So as he drove among the herd now, blowing the whistle out of the truck window, the animals began to follow behind, some running, others jumping and kicking up their heels, knowing what the sound of the whistle promised, a taste of sweetness rare in their lives. When he was confident he had alerted all of the cows, Blanchard headed back toward the corner fencegap and drove through it, to the place where he had left the filled feedbunks, which almost immediately were ringed by cows, over forty of them, mostly Hereford and black-whiteface, with a few dairy-beef crosses Blanchard had picked up cheap. Finally there was the bull, a five-year-old Polled Hereford, predictably the last to arrive, since he never had to worry if there would be a place for him at the feed-bunk or waterhole—the ladies always made room for the boss.

  While the cattle fed, Blanchard led Tommy and Shea back into the knob pasture, where a number of calves had got hung up along the fence. Not seeing the corner gap, they were frantically trying to get through to their mothers beyond the barbed wire. The men circled behind the calves and drove them along the fence line and through the gap, which Shea then closed behind them. And Blanchard was surprised to find him winded by the effort, minimal as it had been.

  “You’re really in shape,” he said.

  Shea mopped at the sweat running down his face. “You actually dig this, don’t you? You’re wacko, you know that?”

  “Susan told me often enough.”

  “Well, she was right.”

  Sitting on the tailgate of the pickup, they both lit cigarettes. Tommy sidled close to his brother.

  “Well, we did okay,” Blanchard said to him. “We’re still smarter than the cows anyway.”

  Tommy beamed. “We sure did it, all right.”

  “Yes sir,” Shea joined in. “A bunch of winners, that’s what we are.”

  Blanchard gave him a despairing look. “That’s the attitude. Whenever we get down, you just keep bucking us up, okay?”

  “No sweat,” Shea said. “I’m your man.”

  When the cattle finished the grain, Blanchard loaded the feeders back on the pickup and then drove to the gap that led to the north pasture, where he kept the yearlings, and where the old loading corral was located. He had Tommy open the gap and then he drove on through and began to blow the whistle again, and in time most of the cattle had followed after him, though not as eagerly now, since they were not as hungry. He and Shea and Tommy drove the few stragglers on through and closed the gap, and then they repeated the entire process with the cattle located in the south pasture, which ran in between Blanchard’s two hay fields and was much more open and level, seeded to fescue and clover.

  By noon they were finished and returned to the house, Shea suffering and sweating in silence while Tommy excitedly carried on about the operation.

  “Boy, we sure did it, didn’t we, Bob? Didn’t we, Shea? How many cows you think we moved, huh? A whole bunch, I know. We sure moved a whole bunch, didn’t we?”

  Nodding wearily, Shea trudged upstairs to shower and change. In the kitchen Blanchard found a note from Ronda, who had slept late, as she usually did at home in her trailer. Have gone to by grosries befor we all starv—be back around one.

  Blanchard crumpled up the note and tossed it in the wastebasket, not sure which irritated him more, her misspellings or his reaction to them. He got out some Cokes for himself and Tommy and then phoned a Rockton man named Ross, who had a small pest-control service and also did custom spraying jobs on the side. Blanchard told him about the condition of two of his pastures, that the brush was coming on faster than he could keep up with it. Brushhogging it only seemed to make it worse, he said, and it was just too much for him to spray by hand, a little over two hundred acres. He figured that a mix of 245-T and diesel fuel would do the job, but it would have to be done soon, he said, within a week if possible. Ross told him that he would have to keep his cattle off the fields for six or seven days after the spraying and Blanchard said that would be no problem. They agreed on doing the job the coming Friday, at a price of one hundred fifty dollars per load, with a maximum of three loads to be used.

  Blanchard hung up and went into the living room to catch the market portion of the noon news. Unsurprisingly he learned that cattle were down. Choice feeder steers were off a full two cents a pound at the Kansas City stockyards. Grain, the Dow Jones, gold, even pork, all were up, all except beef, all except the one thing he had in abundance.

  He turned to the channel that played one of Tommy’s favorite game shows, then he left him and went out onto the porch to have a cigarette and finish his Coke. But even before he sat down he saw Ronda’s car turn in and start up the hill. He went around the house to meet her in the back.

  “This ought to keep the wolf at bay for a while,” she said, opening the car’s trunk on a half-dozen sacks of groceries.

  “I’d say so. How much do I owe you?” He handed her one of the bags and took two himself.

  “Seventy,” she said. “But we can settle later. I’ll trust you.”

&
nbsp; When they finished bringing in the groceries, she looked at the table and sink, still full of dirty dishes, and shrugged. “It was either clean all this up or go buy you some food,” she said. “You should’ve woke me up earlier.”

  “You look too good asleep. Especially with the sheet off.”

  “He didn’t see me, did he?”

  “Who?”

  “Tommy.”

  “No.”

  “Does he ask about me? I mean sleeping in her bed. You know.”

  Blanchard shook his head. “No, I explained it to him. He seems to accept it as a matter of course.”

  As they put away the groceries, she kept looking at him. “You seem worried,” she said finally. “It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.”

  Blanchard forced a smile. “I’d rather go through with it than move the cattle again.”

  “Oh sure—loading them will be such a picnic.”

  “You know about that, do you?”

  “I’ve seen it done now and then. And it was always hairy.”

  “It depends on your equipment. The old corral and chute aren’t the best, but they’ll do. I hope so anyway.”

  “Maybe you’re worried about something else,” she suggested.

  “Like what?”

  “Us. That moonlit beach. Maybe you want to give that part some more thought.”

  “If I did, would you still go through with it? Still go to Kansas City?”

  “I think so. Why? Do you want out?”

  Though her manner was casual, Blanchard knew the question was not. “No, it’s still what I want,” he said. “If we can work it out.”

  She was putting eggs in the refrigerator, four dozen of them. “Why shouldn’t we be able to work it out?”

  “No reason, at least none I can see now. But sometimes things just happen. Things you don’t expect.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, I hope.”

  Standing, she gave him a long, level look. “If we want it to work out, it will,” she said.

  “Then it will.”

  “Sure.” She gave him a perfunctory kiss and moved toward the door. “I’ve got to go now. Wouldn’t want Reagan to fire me.”

  She smiled as she left, a smile as cool as her kiss had been. Alone, Blanchard sat down amid the clutter of the kitchen, feeling exhausted suddenly, and frightened also, like a juggler who had worked one object too many into his act and knew that at any second they could all start raining down on him.

  She was suspicious of him, he knew that now. And knew that she had good reason to be. Why, he wondered, should she take his word that he would do such a turnabout, fly so totally in the face of his entire life, not only stealing but running out on his family and abandoning his work as well, his home and ranch? Well, there was nothing he could do about it. He needed her now and if this was the way to ensure her participation, so be it. Afterward, if she could not accept his staying on the ranch, he could pay her off the same as the others, pay her well for her time. And on the other hand, if she swallowed her disappointment and stuck with him—who could say? If Susan insisted on remaining in Saint Louis, there was no reason Ronda could not move in with him, no reason the two of them could not live together. He liked her well enough for that, didn’t he? But if it turned out she valued her California beach fantasies more than she did him, well that would be her choice. He was not going to worry about it. All that mattered now was the cattle and getting them to Kansas City, getting all the money he could for them, so he could start again.

  Yes, that was right—start again. He not only admitted it to himself but almost said the words out loud, almost shouted them. For in the end that was what this shabby little scheme was all about, was it not, starting again? Why else would he, Shea’s laughable straight arrow, steal? Just for the money? No, there was only one reason for what he was about to do, and that was to keep the ranch, his world and Tommy’s. At the same time he knew that he was not likely to manage it if Ronda backed out on him, for he doubted that he could ever bring himself to hand over his whole herd to Shea and Little, and hope for the best. No, it was imperative that Ronda go along, and that she know nothing about his staying on and starting over. It was the one item he had to keep moving, juggling, all the time.

  As he sat thinking, he heard Shea on the stairs. Then the big man came into the kitchen, looking almost spiffy in a blue pinstripe shirt with his usual chinos.

  “I’m on my way,” he announced. “And without pausing for lunch, I might add.”

  “Gonna stop on the way, huh?”

  “You found me out.”

  “One thing to remember,” Blanchard said. “There’s a warrant out on you.”

  “I’ll drive with consummate care.”

  “And listen to what Little tells this guy Jack. I don’t want him promising anything I don’t know about.”

  “Right on.”

  “And we’ll meet back here tonight, after Ronda gets off. I’ll pick her up.”

  “Good show.” Shea saluted smartly, and left.

  During the afternoon Blanchard put in a phone call to his father-in-law’s home in Saint Louis, and the maid answered. No, Mrs. Blanchard wasn’t there, nor Whit or the doctor either.

  “They all out at the country club,” she said. “Is they any message?”

  “No, just tell Mrs. Blanchard that her husband called. And be sure to tell Whit too, will you do that? Tell him that I’d like very much to talk with him. Ask him to call me sometime, will you do that, please?”

  The maid said that she would. Blanchard thanked her and hung up. Then he helped Tommy round up Spot and Kitty and carry them to the back porch, because it was small and screened, one of the few places he could play with the two pets without having to chase them all over the farmyard.

  While he played, Blanchard cleaned up the kitchen and then took a nap on the sofa in the living room, sleeping almost two hours. When he woke, the first thing he saw was Tommy across the coffee table from him, sitting there with his hands folded and a smile spreading on his face.

  “Hi, Bob,” he said.

  “Hello, Tommy.”

  “You been asleep a long time.”

  “You could’ve wakened me.”

  “I don’t care. Just so you was here. I like to watch you sleep.”

  “Sleeping beauty, huh?”

  “You talk when you sleep,” Tommy said. “You know that?”

  “What’d I say?”

  “Mostly no. You say no a lot.”

  Yawning, Blanchard sat up. “That I can believe.”

  Later, around five, they drove out to the north pasture and fed grain to all the cattle again, a hard, hectic job that left Blanchard tired and dirty as well as worried about what lay ahead, when they would not only have to run all two hundred of the animals into the corral, carefully and gradually, but also drive them up the chute and into the trucks.

  When they got back to the house Blanchard bathed and changed his clothes and helped Tommy do the same. Then he drove to a drive-in at Rockton for some hamburgers, milk shakes, and french fries, once more putting off the elusive tossed salad he wanted so badly. But Tommy enjoyed himself immensely and Blanchard even drove him around the increasingly dilapidated town square three times before heading home, where they watched television together until eight o’clock. Then he helped Tommy get his toys together and brought him a pillow and set him up on the floor in front of the TV, and once again took his leave, hardly able to meet his brother’s eyes in the end, for the benign panic he saw growing there. But he had to go. He had no choice in that. And he was not about to take Tommy with him to the Sweet Creek, not with all its good old boy drunks, who knew a good joke when they saw one.

  The crowd was even smaller than it had been the last time he was at the tavern, the night Shea almost brought the roof down upon them all. A new post stood in place of the one he had broken, and the ceiling had been raised back to its original position. The jukebox was bl
aring its usual tearful fare, and Reagan was glumly drawing beer for his equally glum clientele, just nine men besides Blanchard, who sat alone drinking at one of the tables, joined every so often by Ronda, who did not have enough work to keep her occupied and was not inclined to go looking for busywork. For a while they talked about Kansas City and what she was to do there. He told her he would make up an instruction sheet for her to give to the sales agent, outlining exactly how he wanted the cattle sold, in what groups and in what order. And he went over the procedure for getting the check, making sure it was made out to her, and making sure she used the fake Sarcoxie address when she cashed it. But the subject soon exhausted itself and the two of them sat there in silence waiting for ten o’clock to come around, when Ronda would get off. And they kept glancing across the room at a table where three men sat drinking, one of them the Rockton mechanic and the other Shea’s old nemesis Jiggs, who looked both drunk and filthy, his worn denim outfit festooned with dung stains and clinging bits of straw. His vulturine eyes were pink and his face scarlet, almost maroon when he laughed, which was often. And every time he did, he would look over at Blanchard and Ronda, as though to affirm that they were the butt of his merriment.

  Finally, though, he and the mechanic finished a pitcher of beer and got up to leave, resisting the pleas of the third man that they stay and drink more with him.