“I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“All right.”
Inside, Blanchard tried to relax with a couple of scotch and waters while he watched the five-thirty news, Walter Cronkite looking genuinely chagrined at the way the world was turning out. But Blanchard comprehended almost nothing of what he saw and heard, for his mind was on the job ahead. If all went well, within two hours he would be loading the cattle, and two hours after that the trucks would be on their way to Kansas City. By noon of the next day the cattle would be sold and by midnight tomorrow he would have his money, almost fifty thousand dollars. If all went well.
When it came time to leave, he explained to Tommy that he was going to have to take Ronda back to her place.
“So you stay with Spot and Kitty,” he told him. “And if anybody calls or comes up, you just say I’m not here.”
“Okay.”
“And I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“You be back soon.”
“And you’ll be all right.”
“I be all right.”
Blanchard picked up an apple and one of the sandwiches Ronda had made for him and Tommy, and then the two of them left. Blanchard took the long way, following the country road around his ranch to the dirt lane that led back into the north pasture and the loading corral. He ate as he drove, while Ronda, in jeans and a tank-top, sat next to him with her huge denim shoulder bag balanced on her knees. She kept looking straight ahead, her eyes the same as before, and Blanchard knew that if he did not say something, nothing would be said.
“Well, here we go. This is it, as they say.”
She did not respond.
“You be glad to see Kansas City again?”
“The stockyards isn’t exactly Kansas City.”
“No, I guess not.”
“I don’t care anyway. The only K.C. I knew was the dives. The pits.”
He looked at her. “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
When they got to the corral, Blanchard found that most of the cattle outside had wandered off and were grazing again. The ones inside were standing patiently in the still-bright, early evening sunlight, some bawling for their calves or their mothers on the other side of the corral fence. Blanchard got out the trail bike and started it, then shut it off, making sure it would be in running order in case he needed it later in rounding up the last of the herd. For a time he sat with Ronda on the tailgate of the pickup then, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the trucks to arrive. But her reticence got to him finally and he went into the corral to recheck the panels he had wired in place earlier.
Before he finished he heard them in the distance, the sound of the air brakes hissing on the county road beyond the swath of woods that ran along the north side of the ranch. Then one by one the four semis came rumbling out of the trees, moving slowly over the same dirt road Blanchard had taken. Though they were of different makes and colors, the trucks had a certain uniformity in that all of them were old and battered flatnosed tractors pulling forty-foot stock trailers in even worse condition, listing to one side or the other, with slats missing here and there. As they drew near, Blanchard climbed out of the corral and went to meet them, waving the first in line to a stop. Little was the driver.
“You’re early,” Blanchard said.
“Better than late, ain’t it?”
Blanchard motioned for him to proceed to the corral. “I’ll guide you,” he said. “And go easy on the brakes. They might spook the cattle.”
Nodding, Little put the truck in gear and roared slowly forward, swinging past the loading chute and then stopping, shifting into reverse. Blanchard, standing just to the left of the chute opening, gestured for him to start back, and Little did so, expertly kissing the huge trailer up against the chute in one try. Shea and the other two drivers meanwhile had gotten out of their tractors and were coming over. Blanchard went to meet them.
“This is Jack and Junior,” Shea said. “And this, gentlemen, is—”
“Bob,” Blanchard broke in. “That’s all, just Bob.”
The two men obviously were father and son, lean, toughlooking rednecks not comfortable with social amenities. Except for Jack’s wrinkles and crew cut, they could have been twins. The younger man wore his hair shoulder-length, like a hippie. But he also wore a cowboy hat and boots, as did his father, which Blanchard was relieved to see, for it at least suggested they had experience handling cattle.
The father nodded curtly to Blanchard, while Junior did not even do that, just hung back chewing a toothpick as he looked about him with sour hostility.
“Settle up now or after we load?” Jack asked.
“After,” Blanchard said.
“Suit yerself. But I don’t want no hagglin’ on the price then. Little said two thousand, and that’s what she is.”
“That’s understood.”
“Okay then.” Jack walked to the corral and looked in at the cattle. “Look like purty good stock,” he allowed.
“They’re okay,” Blanchard said. “One of you can work the chute and the other get inside with me. That sound all right?”
Jack nodded. Junior made no response.
“Git the hot stick,” his father told him.
“You think we’ll need it?” Blanchard did not like electric prods. They made for nervous cattle.
“It he’ps.” Jack said.
Blanchard got Shea, Little, and Ronda together and positioned them just outside the corral, at those points where the cattle might bunch up and try to burst out. He explained that the three of them were not to get in front of the cattle, which might scare them and break their flow toward the chute, but were to move along the fence with them in a lateral position, talking softly and prodding any who faltered.
Junior, carrying the hotshot, came back and positioned himself at the base of the chute, where the cattle were most likely to balk. With Jack, Blanchard then circled to the far corner of the corral and climbed inside, which made the already frightened cattle surge away from them, flowing along the inside perimeter of the fence. Calling softly—a mirthless ha, ha, ha—the two men pushed the animals like a giant broom across the corral and into the tighter quarters of the crowding pen and then closed the gate before climbing into the pen themselves and beginning the final push, whacking the cattle with their canes and shouting louder now, more and more urgently until the flow really began, the animals charging in their panic up the chute and into the trailer not one by one but more as a chain, a roaring stream of beef and fear. Within a few minutes it was over, without a straggler or a broken board.
“Now how about that!” Shea laughed. “Am I a cowboy or am I a cowboy!”
Over the next two hours that initial run of luck did not repeat itself. Three more times Blanchard refilled the bunks with grain and then blew his whistle while the others moved away from the corral in order not to spook the cattle. In loading the second group, one of the bulls collapsed in the chute and would not budge even for Junior’s eager hotshot. Already limping and bloody, probably from fighting the other bull in the pasture that day, the animal just lay there until Blanchard reached the chute and like the master himself, old Clarence, jumped onto the animal’s back and proceeded to perform a fandango on him, digging and kicking his heels into the thick muscling of his back and chest until the beast finally rose up, like a buckling in the earth itself, and tossed Blanchard over the side of the chute.
During the loading of the third group, one of the corral posts broke off, and if it had not been for the steel panels over a dozen cows and calves would have burst through, with little chance of their being rounded up again. And in corralling the last group, Blanchard had to use his trail bike to round up a number of stragglers. Minutes later this same group proved too much for the old corral, which broke at the corner of the crowding pen, with four animals getting through, two yearlings and a cow and calf. Blanchard decided to leave them. It was almost dark. He wanted the trucks out of there.
In
the headlights of his pickup he counted out two thousand dollars for Jack, which made the man grin for the first time since he had arrived. Little made one of his clumsy attempts at camaraderie, winking at Blanchard and slapping him on the back and telling him not to worry, the rest of the operation would be a “piece of cake.” Blanchard forced a smile, not wanting to alienate him, not at this point anyway. Then he walked with Ronda and Shea to the semi that the big man would be driving, with her as his passenger.
“Christ, that was fun,” Shea said. “I can see why you wanted to be a rancher, Robert. Especially that part where you get to ride the bull until he tosses you twenty feet on your ass. That was nifty.”
“You liked that, huh?”
“Oh yes. Great sport. A masochist’s debauch.”
“It’s not for everyone.”
“I got that feeling.”
“You seem to have cooled off,” Blanchard said to him.
“Naturally, with my sweet nature.”
“You think you can keep it sweet?”
“You mean no more performances like last night?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“No more. I promise. If anyone strikes me, I’ll turn the other cheek.”
“I’m serious.”
“Me too. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Okay?”
Blanchard nodded, and Shea swung up into the cab of the truck. As he started the engine, Blanchard followed Ronda around to the passenger’s side. In the headlights from the other trucks he saw that there had been no change in her. She looked somber, and her eyes avoided his.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine.” She climbed up into the cab.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night at your place,” he said.
She nodded.
“Take care.”
And she looked at him now, even smiled, a kind of smile anyway. “I will,” she said, pulling the door closed.
Then the engine revved and the truck moved forward, following the others. Above the roar of the engines Blanchard could hear the cattle, the angry beller of the cows, the bawling of the calves. Then the sound diminished and finally died as one by one the huge semis lumbered off through the woods, like a column of mastadons.
When they were gone, Blanchard put the metal feedbunks and his trail bike back into the pickup. He started to unwire the panels and then thought better of it, reasoning that they would be one more piece of evidence that the cattle had been loaded out of the corral, and therefore had been stolen. The insurance company, he knew, would not pay off on what it called “mysterious disappearance.” There had to be evidence of theft. And there was no reason to worry that the panels could be traced to him. Every rancher had them, and he himself had at least a dozen more.
So he made one last check, scouring the area in the truck’s headlights, looking for anything he might have forgotten, any items that could have been tied in with him or the others. But there was nothing, only the thousands of hoofprints, the battered corral, and the tire tracks of the semis. Satisfied, he got into his pickup and drove out through the woods lane to the county road, again taking the long way home, almost three miles longer. And he was grateful for the distance, for it gave him time to try to gather up the pieces of himself and stick them back together, in the hope that he could deceive his brother, pass himself off as the same man he was before.
As he drove up to the house, Tommy came running out to greet him so recklessly he stumbled and fell in front of the truck. Blanchard braked in time, but he was still trembling when Tommy clambered inside.
“You okay?” he asked him.
Tommy nodded, smiling. “I sure glad you’re back.”
“Sorry it took so long.”
“I sure glad you’re back,” he said again.
Blanchard drove on to the barn and unloaded the pickup. Then he took the empty feedsacks and burned them in the incinerator, hoping Tommy would not ask how they came to be empty. Instead Tommy asked what had happened to him, why he was so dirty.
“Some guy’s cows got out on the road over near Ronda’s. I helped round them up.”
“And you fell down?”
“Something like that.”
Back in the house, Blanchard took a shower and changed his clothes. Then he made hot cocoa for Tommy. He put marshmallows on top of it and served it with packaged powdered doughnuts.
Tommy smiled happily. “You sure good to me.”
“Yeah, I’m a real prince.”
“You a real prince,” Tommy echoed.
Blanchard made a double scotch and water and sagged into the chair across from his brother. Before he finished it, the phone rang. It was Susan.
She asked how he was and he said he was getting by, nothing more.
“How about you?” he asked. “And Whit?”
“We’re doing fine,” she said. “Except that we miss you. Very much. Do you miss us?”
“Of course I do.”
“When are you coming to see us, then?”
“As soon as I can.”
“And when might that be?”
“You know I’m tied up now, Susan. There’s a lot of hay to be put up yet. And I’ll have to be testing for Bang’s.”
“Then you do have it,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And what about the bank? Did Gideon extend the notes?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She was silent for a few moments. “I have a feeling you do know,” she said finally. “And it’s negative. I have the feeling it’s all over for you there, and you know it, but you’re too stubborn to admit it.”
“What else is new?”
She asked him if he wanted to talk with his son.
“Of course. Put him on.”
The boy spoke haltingly, like a child being forced to speak with a stranger. He told Blanchard about his swimming and that his grandfather had bought him a set of golf clubs and that he was learning to play the game at the country club. Blanchard said that sounded like fun, and then he told the boy that he missed him very much. Whit asked him when he was coming home.
“I am home, son.”
Whit started to cry.
Susan came on again. “Well, you haven’t lost your touch,” she said. “You always make him so happy.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She told him that she had been talking with the new management at Darling and it looked as if she might be able to get her old job back in the broadcast department. “At a very healthy salary,” she added. “Isn’t that good news?”
“Terrific,” he said. “I’m happy for you.”
She told him that she was going to send him a list of the furniture and art objects and other items she wanted, and would he mind having them ready for a mover to come and pick them up. “I’ll pay the mover,” she added.
“Was that all?” he asked.
“I think so. For now anyway. Take care of yourself.”
“You, too.”
After he hung up, Tommy asked him when Susan and Whit would be coming home and he said he was not sure. He finished his drink and then told Tommy that it was time for bed.
“I ain’t tired,” Tommy said.
“Sure you are. We both are.”
Tommy looked at him. “You going out again?”
He was going out of course, to the Sweet Creek to establish an alibi in case the police questioned him later about where he had been and what he had done on the night the cattle were stolen. But he had reached the point where it was getting hard for him to stand there and say yes, he was going out, and then watch his brother fighting to smile instead of cry.
“No, probably not,” he said. “I think I’ll stay home tonight. But listen, Tommy, even if I changed my mind and you woke up later and found I wasn’t here, that’s no reason to be afraid, is it? Because I’ll always come back. I’ll always be here.”
Tommy nodded. “You always be here.”
“So there’d be no reason to be u
pset.”
“No reason.”
“That’s right.”
Tommy smiled hopefully. “But you ain’t going out tonight, huh?”
Blanchard smiled too, in spite of himself. “I don’t think so, Tommy,” he said. “Come on, let’s get you in bed.”
It was almost eleven when he arrived at the Sweet Creek, and he had to wait another five minutes before Reagan deigned to wait on him.
“I don’t s’pose you know where Ronda is,” the bar-owner said, bringing him a beer.
“No, I thought I’d find her here.”
“Well, she ain’t here. And she ain’t to home either. I been callin’ her all night long and no one answers.”
“Maybe she’s at her grandmother’s.”
“I tried the old lady’s number, too.”
“I got no idea, then. If I see her, I’ll tell her you’ve been trying to reach her.”
“You do that.”
Blanchard lit a cigarette. “That was some affair last night,” he said. “How’d Jiggs make out? Is he in a hospital?”
“He’s at home.”
“He’s okay, then?”
Reagan gave a laugh. “Oh sure, he’s just fine—except for a busted arm and nose and a concussion and one eye he cain’t see out of.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“You was, was ya?”
“Yeah. Shea doesn’t know his own strength.”
“Yessir, that’s some buddy you got there. He’s a million laughs, ain’t he?”
“I guess he thinks so.”
Shaking his head, Reagan went back down the bar. He leaned forward and said something to the regulars, something that made them laugh. A couple looked over at Blanchard, grinning, enjoying his isolation. And Blanchard wondered what he was doing there, why he was fighting so hard to remain in this backwoods where he was not wanted, and knew he never would be.
The next morning a storm front moved through the area, darkening the sky at first and then turning it a brief yellow in those dead oppressive moments before the wind came, like a tidal wave of air surging over the distant rim of hills and striking the old farmhouse and the oaks surrounding it, massive trees that bent like saplings, creaking and soughing in the raging air, raining branches and leaves all over the yard. And then just as suddenly the wind was gone and the sky was black again, rumbling and crashing as the first few drops began to fall, splatting in the yard and on the roof like snowballs for a few seconds before the rain began in earnest, a cataract so heavy Blanchard could barely see his black cattle down the hill standing with their heads lowered and their pinbones to the wind and the water.
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