“Look at them shitasses,” he said. “Can’t rope a goddamn goat in a goddamn pen. Pierre! You shitass! Bring me that goddamn rope,” he yelled. All three Mexicans came hustling back, their eyes downcast. Uncle L took the first rope that was offered him and strode off. He was only five feet four—in his fiercer moods he reminded me of Yosemite Sam.
At his approach all the animals stopped dead. They knew who was boss. The fight went out of them and they stood meekly, awaiting their doom. Uncle L slipped the rope over the head of the first goat he came to and led him toward the gate.
The tallest and most desperate-looking of the Mexicans wore yellow chaps. To my surprise, and everyone’s, he suddenly yanked his chaps loose and began to take down his pants. He looked crazed, and apparently was. His companions started toward him, but he shook his fist at them. They backed off and glared.
“You filthy toad, what is it you do?” one of them said. He was a humble little fellow with symmetrically broken front teeth.
“Go away, people!” the crazed Mexican said. “Do not stand in my way.”
Something, perhaps his madness, had given him an erection. Suddenly he flung himself on the mound of earth beside the posthole and began to fuck it passionately. I was amazed and his two companions were profoundly annoyed.
“Antonio, stop this you are doing,” the little one said. “You lizard, where is your religion? What do you think you are doing, fucking this dirt? Do you want me to kick you?”
The man in the yellow chaps paid him absolutely no mind. Finally the others turned their backs on him. They both spat loudly, to show their contempt for his moral standards. I went over to the gate, glancing behind me from time to time to see if the man was still at it. He was. The little goat Uncle L led looked like it might drop dead at any moment, from pure resignation.
Ahead of us, beyond my car, loomed Uncle L’s house. It rose from the floor of the valley like some kind of great tabernacle, not Mormon, not English, not American. Russian, maybe. What it really looked like was a great black Russian church. It had four stories, three turrets, seven porches. On the top was a huge cupola, with a spire rising from it. The wood had long ago been scraped by the sand until it was almost black. When I had driven along the rim of the valley that morning and saw the house, ten miles away, rising out of the desert like a great grotesque mirage, I had thought immediately of Leon O’Reilly. He would buy it on sight, if he ever saw it.
The house had been built before the turn of the century, by an English architect named Lord Montstuart. Lord Montstuart had come to America and gone broke in the cattle business, and had spent the dregs of his fortune and the last ten years of his life building the house. I think it must have been his vengeance on England, or America, or both, but unfortunately it was situated right in the center of an isolated, forty-thousand-acre valley, fifty miles south of Van Horn, Texas, and neither America nor England ever knew what Lord Montstuart had done to them.
On the east side of the house, attached to it by a little catwalk, was a praying tower made of adobe brick. Lord Montstuart had had a fling with Mohammedanism and had sometimes gone out at dawn and bowed toward Mecca. He had had earthly flings, too. One day in an excess of bitterness he had flung both himself and his last mistress, a Mexican woman, to their deaths from the fourth-story porch. The two of them were buried on a small knoll in the horse pasture, as Lord Montstuart had wished it.
The house had twenty-eight rooms, most of which had never been used. It was a kind of bitter, demented parody of everything Victorian, with marble bathtubs, all half full of sand, and quarters below ground for three cooks, two valets, and a laundress. Lord Montstuart’s last mistress had been the laundress. The living room was sixty feet long and contained a grand piano and an orchestra pit, with instruments laid out for a nine-piece orchestra. There was even a bassoon. The instrument cases were half full of sand.
In the center of the living room, snarling eternally at the nonexistent orchestra, was a stuffed lobo wolf. It was Uncle L’s one addition to the house. It was the last wolf killed in the Pecos country, he claimed, and he himself had killed it, after an intermittent hunt that had lasted sixteen years. Uncle L was as obsessed with last things as he was with holes. He never did anything that wasn’t a last thing.
I followed him and the sad little goat around the towering black house to the backyard, where Uncle L had made his permanent camp. He never slept in the house and seldom went in it at all. All his life he had slept around a camp-fire. His ranch was called The Hacienda of the Bitter Waters. Lord Montstuart had named it, and it was a very apt name. The waters were so alkaline that no normal person could drink them without disastrous effect.
As soon as we turned the corner of the house old Lorenzo, the cook, got up and came over. He had always seemed to like me.
“Señor Danny, your hair is beautiful,” he said.
“It ain’t no such a goddamn thing,” Uncle L said, handing Lorenzo the rope that held the goat. Lorenzo was even tinier than Uncle L. He was fifty times as wizened, and claimed to be even older, though their respective ages had been a bone of contention between them for many years.
Lorenzo looked contemptuously at the hopeless little goat.
“This is a terrible goat you have brought me, Jefe,” he said. “I think it has got the worms. Am I supposed to cook a sick goat for Señor Danny? Why didn’t you rope me a nice pig?”
“This goat’ll do,” Uncle L said, sitting down and leaning back against his saddle. Two camels were tied to the windmill—they placidly chewed their cuds. For years Uncle L had ridden nothing but camels. He had had a great studhorse named El Caballo, and when El Caballo died he had sworn off horses.
Lorenzo took the rope off the little goat’s head and gave the goat a kick. “Go away, goat,” he said.
“Cook that goat,” Uncle L said.
The goat itself did not believe it was alive. It only took one step when Lorenzo kicked it.
“No, it is not possible,” Lorenzo said. “Who knows what this goat may have? It may have the cholera.”
“Goddamnit, it don’t have no cholera,” Uncle L said. “The goddamn pigs have probably got cholera. Just cook the sonofabitch. I never asked you to diagnose it.”
Suddenly the goat saw its chance and darted away. It was quick but Uncle L was quicker. His Winchester was right by his saddle and he snatched it up and shot the goat just before it went around the corner of the house. The crack of the gun echoed strangely off the distant ridges. The goat had been right the first time, when it concluded it was dead. Now it was undoubtedly dead. Probably I had inherited my shooting eye from Uncle L. Lorenzo went over and cut the goat’s throat, but he took his defeat with bad grace.
“All right,” he said, dragging the goat to the cook fire. “I will cook this filthy goat. You had to go and shoot it, Jefe, instead of going to rope one that was fat and healthy. I myself am much too old to rope now, or I would have done it gladly. You are young and can still rope well. There was no excuse for what you have done.”
“You never could rope worth a shit,” Uncle L said. “You couldn’t rope a goddamn stump when you was twenty years old.”
“I would not rope a sick goat, that is for sure,” Lorenzo said. “I would have roped a pig, if I had been there.”
He was very grumpy. I could smell some bread, baking in two big Dutch ovens. A pot of frijoles and peppers was already bubbling over the fire. A clothesline strung with jerky stretched from the windmill to the house.
“This goat will probably kill us all! Wipe us out!” Lorenzo yelled. Uncle L ignored him. Lorenzo spitted the goat and soon had it cooking. The three Mexicans slunk around the corner of the house and went to their camp, which was in Uncle L’s extensive junkyard. The junkyard consisted of every machine that Uncle L had ever owned. There were twenty or thirty cars, two broken-down bulldozers, several tractors, a hay baler, a combine, and an old cattle truck. The vaqueros lived in the cattle truck.
When the goat was
cooked we ate. I had brought a case of Dr. Peppers with me, as protection against the water on the ranch. I drank three of them with lunch. Lorenzo’s frijoles were incredibly peppery. I gave Uncle L a Dr. Pepper and he took one sip and poured the rest on an anthill. In the distance, toward Mexico, we could see Uncle L’s camel herd grazing. He had about forty. He hated cattle and wouldn’t have them on his ranch. Besides camels, he kept goats, buffalo, and antelope. He had tried at various times to raise llamas, guanacos, javelinas, and ostriches, but none of those animals had cared for The Hacienda of the Bitter Waters. They had all promptly disappeared. Uncle L was particularly bitter about the ostriches, and referred to them again as we were eating.
“Always wanted an ostrich ranch,” he said, gnawing on the shank of the goat. Might get me in a few cassowaries. They ain’t as fast as ostriches. Been trying to get a couple of giraffe, too. Always wanted a few giraffe.”
“They will just run away, if you get them,” Lorenzo said. “All the good animals run away, when they come here. Only stupid animals and crazy people live on this ranch.”
While we were eating a fight broke out in the camp of the vaqueros. The junkyard began just beyond the windmill, so we got to see it all. The vaquero in the yellow chaps wrenched the hood off an old blue Plymouth and threw it at his companions. It hit the man who had been kicked down by the camel—he had not been having much of a day. He scrambled up and he and his ally took possession of the hood. They refused to leave the field, and actually there was no need for them to. The vaquero in the yellow chaps had lost interest in them. His passion was up, again. His companions screeched at him in Spanish, but he paid them no mind. He unscrewed the gas cap from an old black pickup, dropped his pants again, and began to fuck the gas hole. Old Lorenzo thought it was a hilarious business. He doubled up with laughter. Doubled up, he was only about two feet tall. The other vaqueros were outraged, at seeing a pickup fucked. To them it was unpardonable license. They dropped the blue hood and began to throw handfuls of sand at the vaquero. He continued to hump away.
“Those men must be starving,” Lorenzo said. “They have been cooking the seats out of those old cars. Who wants to eat such things? You should give them a pig, Jefe.”
Uncle Laredo ignored him. The two stumpy Mexicans came over, looking huffy.
“Señor Jefe, we are going to quit now,” the one with the broken teeth said. “We cannot live with this Antonio no more. He has got no morality! These days he is fucking everything. We had better go to town.”
“You should have let him have at that goat I give you last week,” Uncle L said. “You ate it too quickly. It might have taken some of the ginger out of him.”
“Go on to town,” Lorenzo said. “We do not need complainers on his ranch. Go on now. It is only forty-seven miles. Take a piece of my jerky if you haven’t had your breakfast.”
It occurred to me I could take them to town, if they weren’t in too big a hurry. When I told them so they both looked so grateful I was afraid they might cry. They were pulling jerky off the clothesline and stuffing it in their pockets.
“You are a kind man, Señor,” one said. “Can we wait in your car? This is not a safe ranch.”
“Sure,” I said. “Have some Dr. Peppers if you’re thirsty.”
Uncle L clearly didn’t care whether they stayed or went, or lived or died. He was over saddling his camel.
“This here’s a Bactrian,” he said, when I went over to watch. “I can’t stand them goddamn dromedaries. They belch all over a man.”
Behind him, piled up in a heap, was what looked like two or three hundred manhole covers. I had never seen so many manhole covers, if that was what they were. The camel Uncle L was saddling was big and yellow and absolutely expressionless. It was still chewing its cud, and its thoughts were elsewhere.
“Are those manhole covers?” I asked. Uncle L looked at me as if I were simply too much. He was one of the many people who made me feel that everything I said was stupid, that everything I asked was obvious, and that everything I did was ineffectual.
“You better get your ass back to that school you’re supposed to be going to,” he said. “Can’t you even recognize a manhole cover when you see one?”
“I thought that’s what they were,” I said apologetically. I would have bitten my tongue off rather than ask why he happened to have three hundred manhole covers piled behind his windmill. Uncle L didn’t explain. The camel kneeled, Uncle L got on him, and the camel rose again. “I’ll be back about dark,” Uncle L said. The big yellow camel seemed to float away, into the distance.
Old Lorenzo hobbled over and began to milk the other camel.
“The Jefe is getting old, Señor Danny,” he said. “He will not last many more years. His constitution is not so good, you know. Now myself, I am as good as ever, even though I am older than him. I seem to be made of iron. Often I do not even sleep at night.”
When he had finished milking he drank from the foaming bucket and then offered the bucket to me. I took it, thinking of Jill Peel. She had sometimes drunk camel’s milk. I remembered how nice she looked in her windbreaker and pants and blue sneakers. The milk was warm and full of foam and smelled of camel’s hair. I took a swallow and almost gagged. Uncle L and the camel had floated almost out of sight.
To get out of the blazing sun for a minute I went in and reexplored the house. On the third floor there was an exercise room, equipped with a chinning bar, wall weights, and a rowing machine. The rowing machine was in a kind of solarium, from which one could look out across endless miles of desert. I tried a little rowing, but the machine was badly rusted and squeaked horribly.
In one corner of the solarium was the largest medicine ball I had ever seen. I decided at once to steal it. I took a nap in the library, on a lavender Victorian chaise, and when I woke up I kicked the medicine ball down three flights of stairs and lugged it out to the car. The sight of it seemed to delight the two vaqueros. They were stretched out, one in the back seat, one in the front, drinking Dr. Peppers. Relief seemed to have made them giddy.
“You had better steal the wolf, Señor,” one said. “If you don’t steal it Antonio is going to fuck it one of these days. Goddamn he is fucking everything that’s got a hole.”
“I don’t think the wolf has a hole, anymore,” I said.
“If he has got a hole Antonio will fuck him, pretty soon,” the man said.
I went back to the fourth-story porch and sat there with an old spyglass I found, until the sun fell. The great black shadow of the great black house gradually stretched itself across the kitchen pasture. The five spotted pigs were trying to root out a fence post. To the west, the lower sky became purple. It was eerie to imagine how Lord Montstuart must have felt, sitting there evening after evening for ten years, watching the empty land and the great sky. Perhaps his mistress had talked when he hadn’t wanted her to. Perhaps she had had the upper hand, and had given Lord Montstuart a bad time. Perhaps he drank too much brandy, watching the sunsets all alone. In the stillness I heard the clomp of hooves and Uncle L came riding in. From where I sat it was a long drop to the ground. Perhaps Lord Montstuart had fallen in love with the air, or with the distance, or with the thought of the plunge, and had decided to share his new love with his old. The sky was purple, orange, golden, yellow, blue.
Below me, Uncle L was trying to start his jeep. It was an old green army jeep, without a seat. He had piled some of the manhole covers in it, to sit on. Lorenzo was sitting in the back of the jeep, on some firewood, holding a Winchester. Uncle L held a Winchester across his lap. I ran downstairs and grabbed my parka out of the car. The blazing sun was gone. Before I could get to the jeep Uncle L had begun to honk.
“Martha’s particular about when she eats,” he said. Martha was his wife. He had married her only three years before, after eighty-nine years of bachelorhood. I had never met her. She lived on her own ranch, some miles away.
We bounced off into the desert just as the sun was setting. In the th
ree years that he had been married Uncle L had established a traditional route from his ranch to Martha’s, but it was only a route, not a road. He roared down into gullies and across washouts as if he were on El Caballo instead of in an antiquated jeep. We bounced and rattled. The ridges in the far distance were black and the first stars were very bright gold. Neither Uncle L nor Lorenzo had a word to say. We passed Uncle L’s buffalo herd, dull brown shapes in the dusk. There was the smell of dust and sage in the clear air.
Seeing the buffalo reminded me of a story I had always loved. It had to do with Old Man Goodnight. Some Indians had broken off their reservation and come to Goodnight and asked him for a buffalo, and when he reluctantly gave them one they ran it down and killed it with their lances, on the plains in front of his house.
To me it was the true end of the West. A few sad old Indians, on sad skinny ponies, wearing rags and scraps of white man’s clothes and carrying old lances with a few pathetic feathers dangling from them, begging the Old Man of the West for a buffalo, one buffalo of the millions it had once been theirs to hunt. He got tired of being pestered and gave them one, and they flailed their skinny old horses into a run and chased the buffalo and killed it, in the old way. Then all they did was sit on their horses and look at it awhile, the winds of the plains fluttering their rags and their few feathers. It was all over. From then on all they would have was their longing. I wondered what Mr. Goodnight had felt, watching it all from his front porch. I didn’t know. I just knew it was a great story, full of tragedy. I didn’t know exactly whose story it was, but I knew it was great.
We roared up on a high ridge and came out on a kind of plateau. Suddenly Uncle L veered over right to the rim of the plateau and stopped the jeep. Far to the west we could see a light blinking.
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers Page 17