Darryl Burke, Joe’s banker, leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. He wore a great blousy pin-striped blue and white shirt. “How’s life on the haunted ranch?”
“Great for me. I’m a ghost myself.”
“Bankers don’t believe in ghosts. Bankers believe in the enforceability of contracts.”
Joe didn’t think this was the time to depict his dream of letting it all go back to the Indians by way of atoning for a century of abuses; nor to unleash his misogyny on family matters.
Darryl, his chair tilted back on two legs, pitched forward on four. “Do you know why Lureen lost her lease with Overstreet?”
“Not really. I figured everybody had all the grass they wanted.”
“They lost their lease because Overstreet heard you were coming back.”
“I’m not following this. What’s that have to do with it?”
“Well, old Smitty had a double deal going there with old man Overstreet. When he couldn’t get that ranch off your dad, he tried to get it off Lureen. Smitty wanted to make a deal but all he could control was the lease. As long as you weren’t around. A lease for Smitty and a lease for Lureen. His was bigger.”
Joe thought for a long moment before saying, “That’s awful. I mean, I know it’s awful. But if you and I were to go dig into it, we’d find out that Lureen was just looking the other way, happy that Smitty was staying busy. Still, you don’t like to hear a thing like that.”
“Of course you don’t. And we’re talking property here, man. When are you going to ship the cattle?”
“Pretty soon. But I’m hesitant.”
“Hesitant? Now is the hour! This is the best the market is ever going to be.”
“I think they’re going to run off with the money.”
“Who?”
“Smitty and Lureen.”
“No, Joe, you don’t think that. You just think you think that. That’s crook time.”
“They already have Hawaiian costumes. I’ve seen them.”
“Come on. You mean that’s where you think they’re headed?”
Joe had his hands close to his chest and he pantomimed the playing of a ukulele. “Surf’s up,” he said grimly. Darryl stood and pulled down part of the venetian blinds so he could look out toward the drive-up tellers.
“Smitty will never run out of ideas,” he said. “He’s a fart in a skillet. But this is way past him. I don’t see him making such a big move.”
“He is concerned about falling on the ice. He wants to be warm.”
“But,” said Darryl, “when you get right down to it, if that’s what they want to do, they can do it. They can. It might be the end of the ranch. But they can do it. If that’s what they want. We covered our bet when we loaned money for the cattle. If Lureen wants to exchange those yearlings, and the money she borrowed for Smitty’s shrimp deal, for the ranch itself, she can do it. Don’t look at me, look at your father. I just keep score.”
Suddenly, it came to Joe. “It’s not fair!” he said. He decided he wouldn’t mention that the deed, together with all its liens and encumbrances and appurtenances thereto, was in his pocket, thick as a week’s worth of junk mail. In some opaque recess within Joe, a worm was turning. Property!
“I better get going,” he said. “Thanks for visiting with me about this.”
“Glad to, Joe. It’s pretty clear, anyway.”
“Try to come out and see us before it snows.”
“What happened to summer? It’s really hard to believe it could snow already.”
“Do you actually notice such things from in here?” Joe asked. Darryl stared.
“I get out once in a while,” he said.
31
In the dream it was summer and when he awakened he remembered the lazy sound of a small airplane and the sight of a little girl too far away to see clearly, picking chokecherries on the side of a ravine. The prairie spread into the distance and its great emptiness was not cheerful. It woke him up with sharp and undefined sadness. He tipped his watch, lying on the table beside the bed, so he could see its dial against the vague light coming in the window. It wasn’t quite five yet. He lay back and felt the warmth of Astrid beside him. He knew he had to see Clara. He couldn’t wait. He had thought his situation with Ellen would sort itself out and an appropriate introduction would ensue. But it seemed now that might never happen. He couldn’t wait any longer.
He would go to the end of the Keltons’ road and watch Clara get on the school bus. He arose slowly and began to dress. His stealth awakened Astrid. “What is it, honey?”
“I’ve got to get receipts for those cattle. I’m meeting the brand inspector at the scale house.”
“When will you be back?”
“Before lunch.” He felt something sharp from the deceit.
Joe left the truck almost two miles away from the Keltons’ road just as the sun began to come up. He hurried along the oiled county road straight toward the lime and orange glow that in a matter of minutes would be the new day. When the sun finally did emerge, Joe was safely concealed in the scrub trees opposite Ellen and Billy’s mailbox. He had a feeling he couldn’t uncover. Waiting for his little girl to catch the school bus, he was as close to whole as he had felt in memory. It was several blissful moments before the absurdity of his situation, his concealment, his uncertain expectations, dissolved his well-being. The chill of morning crept in. Finally, the yellow school bus rose upon the crown of the hill and went right on through without stopping, as though it never stopped here. Did Ellen invent Clara? Joe thought of that first.
He crossed the county road and started up the ranch driveway, walking as quietly as he could so that he could hear if anyone approached. As he went along, presumably getting closer, his nervousness increased and he began to picture alert dogs bounding at him, a family bursting from the front door to confront a stranger.
By the time the house was visible, a modest white frame house, neatly tended, a few yards from its barns and outbuildings, Joe could see in a small grove of wild apple trees the perfect place to hide. A rooster crowed. And when he got inside the trees, his concealment was so perfect that he arranged his sweater against a tree trunk as a pillow and prepared to spend however long it took to watch every single human being who lived in that house, who used its front door, who walked in its yard, who did its chores.
The rooster crowed again and in the near distance a bull bellowed rhythmically. Past the house was a small corral. A solitary paint horse rolled and made a dust cloud, then stood and shook. In the sky above the house, just now ignited by sunrise, were clouds which must have hung there in the windless air all night long. Joe felt himself drift into this serenity as though, not merely hidden, he was incorporeal and free as a spirit.
The door opened and a little girl ran out, pursued by Billy. He overtook her, turned her, and rebuttoned her cloth coat. He pulled her straw hat down close on her head and she tipped it back again. He pulled it down and she tipped it back. He swept her up. He held her at arm’s length where she hung like a rag doll with a grin on her face. She acted almost like a baby with Billy though she was far too old for that. Above all, she clearly resembled her father, Billy Kelton. Joe scarcely had time to track his astonishment. It was enough that Billy’s olive skin was there and the distinctive, inset brown eyes. But the minute Clara spoke, asking Billy to let out some chickens, Joe knew from her crooning voice that Clara was feebleminded. Billy planted her where she stood and went into a low shed. There was an immediate squawking from within and then four or five hens ran into the yard. Clara ran after them. Billy came out and deftly swept up a small speckled hen. Clara took it in her arms. Billy removed her hat, kissed the crown of her head, and replaced the hat. He went back into the shed while Clara stood bundling the hen and rubbing her cheek against it. The little chicken sank her head between the shoulders of her wings. Billy emerged with some eggs held against his stomach with his hand.
“Let’s eat, kid. Put your friend down.”
“I want take my hen!” Clara crooned.
“Mama won’t let us, angel,” said Billy, wincing sympathetically.
“My friend!” she pleaded.
“Okay, go on and take her in the house,” said Billy gently. “What d’you think Mama’s gonna say? I’ll tell you what Mama’s gonna say. Mama’s gonna say take that chicken on out of here.”
Clara shrugged and followed Billy toward the house, defiantly carrying her hen. Billy went in and Clara hesitated. When the coast was clear, she set the hen down and made a haughty entrance to the house. The speckled hen shot erratically back to the shed. Joe didn’t move. He felt compassion sweep over him, not for Clara, whom he did not know, but for Billy in all his isolated, violent ignorance. It was this Joe had waited for: something that would cross his mind like a change of weather and leave a different atmosphere behind.
32
The sun couldn’t quite penetrate the pale gray sky. It looked as if it might rain; if it did, it would be a cold rain, close to snow. Everything about the morning said the season was changing fast. When Joe awoke, he felt a lightness that approached giddiness, almost a gaiety. It seemed so beyond sense that he thought he must immediately put it to use.
He got on the telephone and began calling truckers to haul his yearlings to the sale yard. He got a mileage rate, a loaded rate, and a deadhead surcharge. He arranged a dawn departure. The only thing to slow this cattle drive down was going to be the speed limit.
He spent the next day on horseback. Overstreet’s nephews came up from their ranch as they had done for the branding and helped him gather his pastures. A small herd formed, then grew as he traveled forward, downhill and toward the corrals. The horses loved this and tossed their heads, strained at their bits, ran quartering forward, and generally hurled themselves into the work of sweeping the land of beef. Every now and again, a herd-quitter gave the men the excuse of a wild ride to restore the yearling to the mass of its fellows. By nightfall, the dust-caked nephews with the thin crooked mouths of their grandfather had started down the road home on lathered horses, and the cattle were quiet in the corrals. Overstreet himself was there to count the yearlings, mouthing the numbers and dropping his arm decisively every ten head. Looking at the backs and heads of the crowded cattle, the myriad muzzles and ears, the surge of energy, Joe was reminded of the ocean when it was choppy. He thought he knew why Overstreet was being so helpful.
Joe put his hot horse in a stall out of the wind and gave him a healthy ration of oats, which roared out of the bucket into the tin-lined trough. The little gelding always looked like he was falling asleep while he ate, and Joe watched him a moment before going out to check his gates.
Joe had become so preoccupied with getting the cattle shipped that his communications with Astrid almost came to a stop. She seemed to sense something and they rather politely stayed out of each other’s way.
They loaded the cattle in the morning by the yard light. The metal loading chute rocked and crashed under their running weight. Joe went inside the trailer to help swing the partitions against the crowded animals. Their bawling deafened him. At the end of each load, the rope was released from the pulley and the sliding aluminum door flew down to a silent stop in the manure.
The first truck pulled off while the second one loaded. There were three frozen-footed steers that were crippled and hard to load. They went up last and the two trucks pulled out, their engines straining in low gear at the vast contents of living flesh going down the ranch road in bawling confusion. From beneath the bottom slats, the further green evidence of their terror went on flowing. Joe watched the back of the trailers rocking from side to side with the mass and motion of big trawlers in a seaway. In a moment, the red taillights had curved down past the cottonwoods and disappeared.
By three that afternoon, the cattle went through the sale at seventy-one and a half dollars a hundredweight and the money was sent to Lureen’s account in Deadrock. And of course the ranch was Joe’s. Mainly, it filled in the blanks in the painting of the white hills. A homeowner, a man of property. He sat in the living room with the deed in his lap. He showed it to Astrid. He fanned himself with it. He tried to make it a joke, but she didn’t laugh and neither did he. He wondered what Smitty would do with the money.
Sometime after midnight, Joe was awakened from sleep by someone knocking on the door. Once he saw the clock and knew how late it was, he was filled with sharp panic. He got up without turning on the lights and eased into the kitchen. In the window of the door, he could see the shape of someone standing. He thought first of not answering the door and then wondered if it might not be a traveler, someone with car trouble, or a sick neighbor. And so he went into the kitchen and turned the light on. The minute he did that, the figure outside the door was lost. He opened the door on the darkness and said, “What is it?”
There was no reply. Joe had made out the shape of the figure. It looked like his father. The glow from the yard light, so recently cloudy with insects, was sharply drawn on the cold night. Joe wanted to say, “It’s a clean slate.” Surely this was a dream. It must have been a traveler.
Joe closed the door as quietly as he could but left it unlocked. There was no sound anywhere. He went back to bed and lay awake. He felt the cold from the blackened window over the bed. He had begun to suspect that by coming here at all, he had taken back his name. He remembered the sense of paralysis having a particular name had given him in the first place. He had loved moving into a world of other people’s names. He had even tried other names and had felt a thrill like that of unfamiliar air terminals and railway stations, places where he could abandon himself to discreet crowd control. Finally, this took such vigilance it was wearying. He wanted his own name. And yet, the ride home through spring storms, through unfamiliar districts, had a quality that was independent of where he was coming from and where he was going. He had a brief thrill in thinking that all of life was about two things: either move or resume the full use of your name. But the idea slipped away when he tried to grasp it.
It was still dark when he got in the truck and filled it up at the fuel tank next to the barn. Then he began to drive. He drove to White Sulphur Springs, Checkerboard, Twodot, Judith Gap, Moccasin, Grassrange, Roundup, and home, four hundred miles without stopping.
By the time Joe pulled up in front of the house, he was exhausted. The lights shone domestically in the dark, illuminating parts of trees and the white stones of the driveway. It seemed that a placid, sunshot existence must be passing within.
Joe opened the door and Ivan Slater rose inelegantly from the deep, slumped couch while Astrid, standing a certain distance from one undecorated wall, tried to hang the moon with a smile that was both radiant and realistic.
“What are you doing here?” Joe demanded. “Where did you come from?” He smelled a rat. Ivan had been called in as Astrid’s chief adviser before.
“Joe.” She may have said something before that but Joe didn’t hear it. Then she said, “I need to talk to you.”
“I know,” Joe said, noticing that whatever was in the air suspended Ivan’s promotional bearing so that he stood exactly where he had arisen, taking up room. It was exactly the moment one would ordinarily say, “Stay out of this.”
“Joe, let me run this by you,” said Ivan. “Astrid isn’t suited for this, somehow. She has asked me to help her get resituated. I’m Astrid’s friend and this is what friends are for. P.S. We’re not fucking.”
“That’s fine, I hate her,” said Joe experimentally.
“Now Joe,” Ivan said, “you’ve had a long drive.”
“You knew I wouldn’t stay,” Astrid said. “What’s this about, anyway? I don’t know. But I do know I’m getting out of here. And it’s a joke to claim you hate me.”
“The fucking Cuban geek,” Joe offered.
“Punch him in the nose, Ivan,” said Astrid.
“That will do,” Ivan said to Joe without emphasis.
“Take the dog with y
ou,” said Joe to Astrid. “That’s the worst dog I ever saw. It’ll be perfect for your new home.”
“Okay, but don’t generalize about me. And what is this about a new home?”
“I used to like dogs,” Joe explained maladroitly.
“I had a lot to offer. I still do. Not for you, obviously. But who does? All I need to know is that it’s not me. And I loved you. So, good luck. Good luck with the place. All the luck in the world with the cows. Enjoy yourself with the land. Happy horses, Joe.”
“I used to like women!”
“I’m not like that dog, Joe,” Astrid said.
“Don’t jump to conclusions. I want you both out of here right away. I need a quiet place to sleep.”
“Joe, it’s late,” Ivan said. “You’re not in your right mind. As if you ever were, in fact.”
“This advisory role you cultivate, Ivan, is unwelcome just now. I dislike having my time wasted.”
“You’re not that busy,” sang Ivan. Joe sighed and looked at the floor. He wanted to collect his thoughts and he feared a false tone entering the proceedings. He wanted to leave off on a burnishing fury and empty out the house. It was hard to see that he’d had the intended effect; Ivan was scratching his back against the doorjamb. Astrid was smiling at a spot in midair. She was a fine girl. They had feared all along that they couldn’t survive a real test. It had been lovely, anyway. It was a provisional life.
While they packed Astrid’s things, Joe watched TV. As luck would have it, it was a feature on farm and ranch failures with music by Willie Nelson and John “Cougar” Mellencamp. He remembered leaving the deed in the truck. He might have left the windows open. Pack rats could get in and eat the deed. The wind could get the deed.
They came into the living room with their suitcases.
“This is pretty interesting. It’s about farm and ranch failure,” Joe said. “Can you go during the commercial?”
Keep the Change Page 17