Black Angus

by Newton Thornburg

  “I got a pickup fulla hungry hogs,” Jiggs told him. “I don’t leave soon, they gonna start eatin’ each other.”

  The man asked him what he was doing with hogs.

  “Fer my brother’n-law, the bastard. Next time, I tell him he can jist haul his own fuckin’ hogs, and that’s a fack.”

  Moving past Blanchard’s table, he tipped his cowboy hat and grinned. “Why, how do there, folks. How do.”

  Then he went outside, with his mechanic friend trailing respectfully behind.

  “Must be nice to be a winner,” Blanchard said.

  Ronda made a face. “Winner, hell. Old Jiggs has been a loser all his life.”

  “Except with Shea.”

  “I don’t call that winning.”

  “Maybe not, but I imagine he does. And I got a feeling Shea does too.”

  Blanchard could hardly make himself heard over the din of the jukebox, the big honky voice of the black singer Charlie Pride. So he settled back, lit a cigarette, and drank some more beer. Gradually he became aware of another sound, a high staccato wail breaking through the din. And he was not the only one hearing it. Some of the men were already hurrying to the door to see what it was. Blanchard got up too and followed even though by now he was sure he knew what the sound was—knew not by the timbre of the voice, for it did not really sound human, could have been only a screech owl terrorizing the night—but rather knew it in his gut, remembering Shea’s casual rendition of how much pleasure he found in trying to think of “the exact, altogether fitting-and-proper way” to get revenge on Jiggs. And as Blanchard reached the outside he saw how frighteningly correct he was, for in the neon-lit gloom of the parking lot it looked as if a giant bear had Jiggs in its grip, by the neck again, dragging him screaming across the gravel to his pickup truck, where the giant began to slam him against it, into the door and the front fender and finally onto the hood, as if he were a weapon, a tool Shea was using to batter the truck.

  Moving toward him for a short distance, Blanchard almost fell over the Rockton mechanic, who was writhing in the gravel, holding his groin and making a small whimpering sound inside his mouth and nose, which were both oozing blood.

  “You better git a gun,” someone said to Reagan. “He’s gonna kill him.”

  But Reagan did not move. Like Blanchard, he stood where he was, as if mesmerized by the brutal choreography of Shea’s movements as he tore off Jiggs’s boots and pants and, picking him up by his jacket and one broomstick leg, pitched him up and over his stockrack into the back of the pickup, into the midst of the hogs, which were squealing furiously as they lunged back and forth, terrified of this new creature cast among them.

  “Now he’s a goner sure,” the same man said.

  Shea meanwhile was walking away, not even running, toward his car parked on the river road.

  “Little’s driving. I can see him,” Ronda said to Blanchard. She was standing at his shoulder, holding on to his arm.

  He nodded, for he saw the little man too, angled low, trying to hide behind the wheel as Shea got in with him. Immediately the car roared off, trailing a rooster-tail of dust and gravel.

  The third man, who had been drinking with Jiggs and the mechanic inside, ran to the pickup and drew up the gate on the rack, and the hogs began to spill out of it, squalling and churning. Hesitantly the man peered into the back of the truck.

  “He ain’t movin’,” he said. “I think he’s dead.”

  Going back to the ranch, Blanchard knew that he was driving too fast for the narrow, twisting road, but he did not slow down. It did not seem important. All he could think about was Shea and what he had done, on this, the night before they were to load and ship the cattle.

  “Please slow down,” Ronda said finally.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to get killed, that’s why.”

  He eased his pressure on the accelerator, saying nothing. He had barely spoken to her since they left the Sweet Creek.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You think we can’t go through with it now? You think the police will be after him?”

  “They already were, for Christ sake. Now they’ll have the National Guard out looking for him.”

  “But Reagan didn’t even call them in. They probably don’t even know.”

  Blanchard did not have to argue the point, for at that moment, less than a mile ahead, the flashing red light of a police car erupted into the darkness from around a curve and moved rapidly toward them, growing larger and brighter until finally it shot on past, a dying scream.

  “I wonder how they found out,” Ronda said.

  “The ambulance service. They probably relayed the call.”

  “Well, I know it wasn’t Reagan. He just wouldn’t do it.”

  Blanchard still found it hard to believe, the way Reagan and the others had responded to Shea’s assault on Jiggs and the mechanic. One would have thought there had been a spilled drink and angry words, that was all. Standing over the bloody Jiggs, Reagan had said that as far as he was concerned the matter was purely personal, between Jiggs and “that big horse.” And anyway his joint didn’t need any more bad publicity this year, he said. He’d already had his fair share.

  The others went along, agreeing that “old Jiggs” wouldn’t give the police the time of day, wouldn’t sign a complaint or anything else.

  “He’ll jist handle it hisself, in his own good time,” said his friend, the third man.

  Unfortunately Jiggs was not conscious during most of these deliberations. Occasionally he would sit up in the gravel, leaning back against the rear wheel of his truck. Then he would vomit or retch and promptly pass out again, sliding down the wheel like a broken egg yolk. It appeared that he had a fractured arm and nose as well as the concussion or worse that caused him to keep passing out. And his mechanic friend did not seem to be in much better shape, except that he was conscious, able to articulate his suffering in the same whimper Blanchard had heard when he almost tripped over him. But none of this disturbed the macho aplomb of Reagan and the others, who stood around picking their teeth and spitting and mumbling about the incident, finally allowing that maybe someone ought to go inside and call the county ambulance service. It was Reagan himself who finally took the assignment, probably because he did not trust anyone else near his unattended cashbox.

  As the bar owner ambled back inside, Blanchard motioned for Ronda to get her things. In his pickup he followed her to her mobile home, where she left her car. Then she joined him in his pickup and they started for the ranch.

  Now, as they reached it, turning in over the cattleguard, Blanchard halfway expected to see the porch lit up, with the maroon Continental parked openly in front of it. But the only lights on were the polelight and a lamp burning in the living room. He drove around to the back and parked, relieved to see that the Continental was not there either. But as he opened the back door and followed Ronda inside, his luck ran out—through the door to the living room he saw Shea coolly sitting on the davenport, his hand thrust into a bag of corn chips. Blanchard and Ronda went on in. At the same time the front screen door opened and Little came into the room, evidently abandoning for the moment his lookout post on the porch. Seeing them all, Shea put his finger to his lips, signaling for quiet. Between him and Blanchard Tommy lay stretched out on the carpet, sleeping heavily.

  Blanchard ignored Shea’s signal. “You fucking maniac,” he said.

  Shea gestured helplessness. “I didn’t plan it, Roberto. We were just driving past and there it was, Jiggs’s little old truck. So we stop a second and out he comes, like for an appointment, you know? His own little Samarra. So I met him.”

  “You met him.”

  “So to speak.”

  “You goddamn near killed him, you realize that? In fact, for all we know, he might even be dead by now.”

  “Oh bullshit. All I did was bang him against his truck a few times. A scintilla of what he did to me.”

  “And the timing,” Blanchard s
aid. “Doing it on the night before we ship. I imagine you’ve got that rationalized too.”

  Shea shrugged indifference. “Why get all pissed? It’s over and done. And it had to happen sometime, I told you that. That good old boy damn near killed me.”

  Blanchard suddenly slapped the bag of corn chips out of his hand. “Get the hell out of here,” he said.

  At the crack of the cellophane bag, Tommy awakened. Now he sat up on the floor, blinking, already beginning to look frightened.

  “Are you serious?” Shea asked Blanchard.

  “Bet on it. And don’t play the big innocent with me. You know goddamn well the police were already looking for you two days ago. And now, after your little performance tonight, they’re gonna be coming up the road out there any second.”

  Little, ever the peacemaker, tried to intervene. “Listen, it’s all right,” he said to Blanchard. “We’ve got the car hid out behind the barn. So if they do come up here, we can just—”

  “You can get out too!” Blanchard said. “Both of you. And I mean now.”

  Little smiled imploringly. “But what about the job tomorrow night? We still gonna do it, ain’t we? This don’t change that. He did real good with the truck today.”

  Shea was on his feet now, getting his jacket. He waved Little silent. “Drop it, okay? The man wants us out of here, so be it. We go. And he can just take his two hundred head of cattle and stuff them up his keester, for all I care. Or maybe he can get out his funny little whistle and tootle them all the way to market, like some shitkicker Saint Patrick. You think you could do that, Robert?”

  Blanchard did not answer and Shea made a slight, waving gesture of dismissal and contempt as he went past him on his way to the kitchen and on outside. Little hung back, however, jittering as if he had to go to the bathroom.

  “Listen, you’re makin’ a mistake,” he said. “We can still do it tomorrow night. We can go stay at Jack’s tonight—no one’ll look for us there. And anyway, the police around here—don’t worry about them. Honest to God. This was just a fight. They could care less.”

  “You better get going,” Blanchard told him. “And use the back road, through the north pasture. Shea knows it. And be sure to close the gaps behind you.”

  “Okay, okay, but I’m tellin’ you—we gonna be here tomorrow night at seven, with all four rigs, you hear me? We gonna be here and we gonna load your cattle—I promise. So you be ready too, okay?”

  Blanchard did not answer him. “Don’t use your lights going out,” he said. “The moonlight’s enough.”

  Little, already at the kitchen door, ran on out of the house then, following Shea to wherever it was they had hidden the Continental. On the floor, Tommy was clumsily trying to pick up the spilled corn chips and put them back in the bag. Unable to stop himself, Blanchard vented his leftover fury on him.

  “Leave them be, for Christ sake. You didn’t spill them.”

  Tommy let go of the bag as if it were on fire, and his eyes teared. Immediately Ronda got down on the floor with him and began to pick up the chips herself.

  “Come on, let’s do it together,” she said. “You were right. We don’t want to be stepping on these things all night, do we?”

  Tommy did not move. Like a dog, he sat waiting for a signal from his brother. But Blanchard could not give it. Embarrassed and angry still, he went out the back way. He walked past the polelight toward the sound of a car’s engine quietly turning over. But as he reached the barn, the sound began to die away, and then he saw the car, a glint of moonlight on chrome moving silently down his service road toward the north pasture and the county road beyond. He went around to the front of the house then to see if the police were on the scene yet. He was relieved to find that they were not.

  Going back inside, he encountered something rare in his life. Almost always when he entered a room where Tommy was, his brother’s face would brighten. But in this instance Tommy was already smiling happily, sitting next to Ronda on the davenport watching television: Johnny Carson trading quips with a parrot. But when Tommy saw Blanchard his smile faded and he looked down at his hands in his lap, which immediately began twining nervously.

  Ronda got up. “No police, I take it.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I think Little was right for once,” she said. “They won’t come here. They won’t bother. They wouldn’t go a block out of their way to arrest Charles Manson.”

  Blanchard got out a cigarette and lit it. He dragged and exhaled, looking at the television, not seeing it. “Well, what do you think?” he asked her. “Should we go ahead with it?”

  “It’s up to you. They’re your cattle.” She started for the stairs. “I’m going to take a long hot bath and go to bed.”

  When she was gone, Blanchard took her place on the davenport next to Tommy. “I’m sorry,” he said, putting his hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “I was wrong. I’m the one who needs a chewing-out, not you.”

  “It’s okay,” Tommy said.

  “No, it’s not. Just because I’ve got problems is no reason to take it out on you.”

  Tommy looked at him, worried suddenly. “You got problems, Bob?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “Is it the cows? Are you really gonna get rid of the cows?”

  Blanchard did not know how to answer him. He had pondered before on whether it would be better to keep him in the dark regarding the operation or whether to explain it to him, including giving him careful instructions not to say anything about it to anyone. The first would be trusting to luck, risking the chance that Tommy might one day say the wrong thing to the wrong people. But the second was no better, relying as it did on the guile of a person totally without guile. So in the end Blanchard went the way of habit. If he could not protect himself, at least he could protect his brother.

  “No, we won’t be getting rid of the cattle,” he said.

  “Shea said you was.”

  Blanchard opened his mouth, about to tell him that Shea was wrong. But something in Tommy’s eyes gave him pause, almost a look of fear. And he wondered if it was the fear that his brother was about to lie to him.

  Reluctantly, Blanchard nodded. “I guess you might as well know—yes, we have to get rid of most of the cattle.”

  “Blackie, too?”

  “Him, too. You remember when we tested him the other day? When he tore off the headgate? Well, that test showed he’s sick.”

  “How sick?”

  “With Bang’s, it’s called. A disease. And he’s passed it on to the cows.”

  Tears again began to fill Tommy’s eyes. “We won’t have no cows?”

  “For a while, Tommy. That’s all. Just for a while.”

  “Will we have to leave here? Will I have to go someplace else?” He was crying openly now. “Will I lose Spot and Kitty?”

  Blanchard was so wound up himself, so close to breaking, that he had to choke back tears of his own. He would never get used to it, the crying of this creature who was at once a man, a child, and a brother. The sight always tore at him, for he wanted to comfort the child and the brother, take him into his arms and give him what strength and peace he could. But there was also the man, this bewhiskered thirty-four-year-old male, almost the size of Blanchard himself. And he simply could not comfort him in the same way, both out of inhibition and because he felt there would have been something inherently degrading in it, the emasculation of what little manhood nature had allowed his brother. So as he sat there watching him cry he did what he always did. He tried to hold him and comfort him with words.

  “No one’s taking Spot and Kitty anywhere. And we’re going to be here too, Tommy, for good. This is our home—you understand that? This is your home and my home and we’re going to be here for good. We aren’t going anywhere else, ever. That’s a promise. And as for the cattle—well, we might not have very many for a while. But we’ll start again. We’ll get a few, twenty head maybe, and we’ll keep the heifers each year. And the first thing you kno
w, we’ll have over a hundred again, just like now. Right here. On our ranch. Our home.”

  “You mean it, Bob?”

  “Of course I mean it. This is our home. Our place. And we’re going to stay.” Blanchard realized that he was no longer choking back his tears, that he was crying right along with his brother.

  “We gonna stay right here!” Tommy was saying, smiling now, smearing at his face. “’Cause this is our home.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s our place.”

  “You bet it is.”

  “This is our place.”

  And suddenly the old inhibition did not matter so much to Blanchard. The hand on his brother’s shoulder slipped around his back and Tommy immediately came flying with its slightest pressure, burying his face in Blanchard’s shoulder and hugging him.

  “This is our place!” he said again.

  “That’s right. And Susan’s and Whit’s too, when they come back.”

  “And we together here. You and me. All of us.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We together, on our place. And you won’t leave.”

  “I won’t leave.”

  Tommy continued to hug him so hard Blanchard finally had to pull away. He loosened Tommy’s grip and began to push him back, gently, holding him still. And it was only then he saw Ronda across the room on the stairway, wrapped in a bath towel. She was just standing there, watching them. He had no idea how long she had been there.

  “Forgot the soap,” she said. “I bought some today.”

  As she went into the kitchen, Blanchard got up. Tommy, oblivious of her, did not understand.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”

  Ronda came out of the kitchen with the bar of bath soap and went back upstairs, without looking at him.

  “I think it’s time we go to bed,” he said to Tommy.

  “I ain’t tired.”

  “Sure, you are. We both are.”

  “Okay, Bob.”

  Blanchard had him use the downstairs bathroom, and while he waited for him he closed the doors and turned off the lights and the television. Then he went to the foot of the stairs and listened for Ronda in the upstairs bath—why, he was not sure. But there was no sound, not even of water splashing.