Bum Steer

by Nancy Pickard

  “I have another guest with me,” I warned her when I called. Lilly Ann was in the shower at that moment. “She’s a girl who appears to own only boots, blue jeans, and cowgirl shirts. Will the Century Club let her in dressed like that?”

  “This is Fort Worth, my dear.”

  I took that as assent.

  I didn’t tell her the identity of my guest, saving that for a surprise at lunch.

  “So you’re Cat’s grandbaby,” Miss Rose drawled, looking surprised and pleased. She was seventy years old, and nearly as wide as she was tall, which was only about five feet. Despite her name, there wasn’t anything flowery about the old lady, except maybe for an edge of sweetness about her, the opposite of the way some smiling people have a hard edge to them. In her case, it was like finding a bit of lace trim around a solid block of mesquite. Miss Sachet was reputed to be as tough as that Texas brushwood; I knew from experience that her conversation could be every bit as biting and pungent as the smoke from its burning. But for now she offered her lace-edged smile to the girl. “Well, I don’t suppose that means much in Kansas City, but down here that makes you near royalty, child.”

  Lilly drew back her head and turned her face a bit to the side, looking as skeptical and suspicious as a turtle. I bit back an impulse to laugh and to tell her not to worry, that didn’t mean she had to dress up.

  Miss Rose hadn’t missed the girl’s reaction, either, and now she sent me a shrewd glance. I nearly missed seeing it, because my gaze kept being distracted by the view. We were about thirty-five stories up, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows. Miss Rose had already pointed out to us the old stockyards, an airport, a river, the courthouse, and other landmarks. Outside was a cloudless sky, as clear and bright as water reflected in glass. The city sat on land so flat I felt as if I were sitting atop a map spread on a table. To the east was Dallas, Miss Rose told Lilly Ann, a city better known but nowhere near as well loved as

  Fort Worth, she claimed. To the west, Lubbock and Texas Tech. To the north, the Red River of Oklahoma. To the south, Austin, with its lakes and live oak trees and the University of Texas, and “away on down from there, San Antone and Houston and Galveston, and on across the Rio Grand-ee, Old Mexico.”

  She was a one-woman chamber of commerce for her state, about which it was known that she did not brook criticism gladly. I sat there, looking out at that arid, monotonous, merciless landscape and felt trapped at the center of the earth. I thought longingly of my cool cottage in the woods, of my ocean slapping at my feet, of our azaleas that bloomed so profusely without much watering. It was only a moment of acute homesickness, and maybe a touch of fear, and I hoped it would pass quickly. I said nothing to Lilly Ann or Miss Rose about it, especially not to Rose, since a longing for my own home might imply criticism of hers.

  Our tablecloth was white linen. We had selected food from a three-table buffet that offered black beans and rice in one brass chafing dish and fried okra in another. Lilly’d had to ask what the “fried green stuff” was, which was just as well, since I didn’t recognize it, either, thinking maybe it was chopped broccoli stalks. When Lilly learned it was okra, she made a face and passed it by. I had put some on my plate and was now discovering that I liked it. It went down well with the roast baron of beef, mashed sweet potatoes, corn bread, and jalapeño peppers on the side. We both helped ourselves to the fried chicken nuggets. Miss Rose was drinking Wild Turkey and soda, Lilly had a glass of beer, and I had iced tea. Never could hold my liquor at high altitudes.

  Miss Rose listened as I told her about the bequest and about Benet’s death, and then she said, “Why’d he pick y’all?”

  “Beats me, Miss Rose.”

  She had a smoker’s chuckle, full of phelgm, ending in a cough. “If that don’t sound just like him,” she drawled once she recovered from her coughing jag. “Cat Benet was pullin’ surprises on people ever since his poor mama expected a nice sweet little girl child and got Cat-Boy instead. He was born on April Fools’ Day, which ought to of told the world ever’thaing it ever need to know ’bout Cat Benet.”

  “Could you be more specific, Miss Rose?”

  She snorted, a sound not unlike the one Molly had made when I pulled her reins in a direction she didn’t want to go. “Hah. Charles W. Benet the fourth. Four generations of ranchers, not all that many by our standards, but enough to take his family back to the days when Texas was a territory and the land was up for grabs. Enough to get ’em mineral rights, especially if his great-grandma was a full-blood Osage girl. Those first and last names are French, but anybody tell you what the W stands for?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Whitepaw. There’s a funny mix of blood there, wild and cultured, tamed and untamed. Lot of aggression in that blood, don’t you see? A lot of pride, too, ’cause you got aristocracies on both sides, French and Osage. It’s a name that tells a story, if you’ve an ear to hear it.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “There’s a book you want to read. I ’spect you don’t know this, no reason you should, but most of the big Texas ranching families have their own personal family biographies. Like other families have photo albums, I s’pose. Of course, the King family does, the XIT people do, the Halsells, all the big ones and some of the little ones, and so do the Benets. It’s called—”

  “The Barons of Branchwater” I said.

  “Good for you.” Her weather-beaten face suddenly took on a shrewd look. “Of course, the best way to know a cattleman is to stand on his land and look at his animals. You’ll know the man by the condition of his property and his cows.”

  “What’s that mean?” Lilly said.

  I felt embarrassed over the girl’s rudeness. She had awakened that morning seeming edgy and defensive, and those were still the predominant notes in her voice. Every suggestion I made, from having breakfast at the hotel to walking to the club, was met with ill-humored consent. You’d have thought she was twelve years old and I was dragging her along to church on Sunday, instead of being an eighteen-year-old woman, here of her own choice. She had toyed with her food at breakfast while I tried to amuse her with stories from the family biography, which she had never read. For all the response I got, I might as well have been reciting my annual report to her. Now I was hoping the steak and fries on her plate would cure her cranky attitude.

  “What does it mean?” Miss Rose repeated the silly question, which seemed to me to have such an obvious answer. The girl was being purposely obtuse. “How well did you know your grandpappy, child?”

  “I didn’t know him at all,” Lilly said bitterly.

  Miss Rose’s eyebrows shot up at that, but then she gave a couple of nods that made her look like a wise old gnome. “I could tell you what it means, but I’d rather show you.” She turned to me. “You have time for a drive this afternoon?” When she saw the questioning look on my face, she added, glancing back at Lilly, “I could take you out to the old Benet place, La Segunda. It’s the ranch your grandpappy grew up on, Lilly. Your great-aunt Judy Benet still lives there and her boy, Laddy. She kept the Benet name for both of them, for reasons that would be obvious to you if you ever lived in Texas. It is not a name a person would like to relinquish.” Miss Rose frowned. “Though I don’t rightly know how happy they’ll be to see us …”

  I don’t think Lilly even heard that. For the first time that day, she smiled. It was a small one, but a smile nevertheless, and one that had about it a glow of hope as well as a shadow of nervousness, or maybe even fear. Again, Rose glanced at me. I moved my shoulders in a small shrug and wondered why the worry lines suddenly looked deeper between the old lady’s eyes.

  I said, “Judy’s still living?”

  Rose smiled at that and uttered a laugh like a bark. “I should say she is.”

  Our waitress presented the dessert tray, from which Lilly selected an éclair, I picked a napoleon, and Rose chose a delicate pink petit four. As we ate and drank coffee, Miss Rose accepted the greetings of other diners w
ho stopped by our table to pay homage to her. “How you doin’, Miss Sachet?” the men inquired. They wore cowboy-cut suits with wide lapels and flared trousers (to accommodate their boots), and they held their hats respectfully in their hands as they addressed her. And, “So good to see you lookin’ so well, Miss Rose,” said the women in their big gold jewelry and their beautiful silk dresses. They greeted her with warm smiles and sweet drawls and deference, and they were all properly introduced to Lilly and to me.

  “Cat’s grandbaby!” they exclaimed, wide-eyed.

  It amused me to see that Lilly’s nods of acknowledgment gradually turned regal as she caught on to the respect that tinged their astonishment. Cat Benet’s granddaughter. As Miss Rose had told her, it seemed to mean something down here. It seemed to make her somebody down here, somebody special, even in her blue jeans and boots and cowgirl shirt and ponytail. By the time we finished lunch, the girl’s spine had straightened from its sulky slouch, her head and neck sat on her shoulders like a princess’s. She looked like a young woman who might sit a horse beautifully, or a throne.

  On our way out of the restaurant, we passed by the buffet table, and Lilly picked a fried chicken nugget out of the chafing dish and popped it in her mouth.

  “These are great,” she said.

  “Really,” I agreed.

  “Yep,” Miss Rose said, “some of the best calf fries I ever tasted.”

  32

  On the long drive south out of Fort Worth, I asked Rose why Judy lived at La Segunda.

  “I thought Mr. Benet sold all of his ranches except the Crossbones,” I said.

  “La Segunda wasn’t his to sell,” was the tart reply. “It’s Judy’s, turned over to her by their mother and daddy when she turned twenty-one and they moved to a luxury apartment in Dallas. It was even named after her, the second child. Her folks always had in their minds to give her that ranch. Cat got most everything else, being first and a boy and all. They figured Judy’d marry rich, La Segunda would be a mighty fine dowry, and she wouldn’t want for more. That was a big mistake on their part, I regret to say. Judy has wanted more ever since she was old enough to figure out how much more there was to want. Well, maybe anybody would. When her folks saw she wasn’t goin’ to marry rich, at least not in their lifetimes, their advice to her was, sell the ranch, put the money in a trust, and go live in Palm Beach with young Ladd for the rest of your life. But Judy ain’t the Palm Beach type. So she hung on to the place and got lucky like a lot of us did, ’cause she hit oil back when that meant somethin’. Lived pretty high, like a lot of us, for a good many years. Skiin’ every winter, cruises, fancy dress balls, shoppin’ trips to Europe couple times a year, real good schools for Laddy. I don’t know how’s she managing now the bottom’s dropped out of oil and cattle ain’t sellin’ for practically no more than you can raise ’em for. I’m curious about her myself, kinda glad to be havin’ an excuse to drive on out to see ol’ Judy.”

  Miss Rose was driving her own Lincoln, a massive old black number in mint condition that took the long roads as smoothly and powerfully as a panther on the pampas. I sat in the passenger’s seat up front with her, Lilly sat behind me, staring out the window, not partaking in the conversation. She had plenty to think about and plenty of time for it. Miss Rose’s head barely cleared the back of her seat; she’d had blocks of wood attached to the gas pedal to enable her stubby legs to reach them. She drove stiff-armed, with her hands at nine and three o’clock on the wheel. Every time she turned, I figured we were going into a ditch, but somehow we never did. Clearly, they had never heard of speed limits down here—she passed ninety-five the minute we hit the highway, and cars were still passing us with a toot and a wave. For the first time, I understood why western states howl at national speed limits set by eastern legislators. Out here, there was so much distance to cover and so much of it was sooo monotonous. At fifty-five miles an hour, or even seventy, a person could die of boredom.

  “If this is Judy’s place,” I said as we drove over a cattle guard onto the ranch, “why do you say we’ll learn about Cat from seeing it?”

  “Because this is where he grew up. It formed him and left its mark on him. This is where he learned ranching, and he learned it by doing whatever needed doing here. He was almost a whole generation older than Judy, and so he ran this place for several years before she was old enough to take charge. You might say Cat trained under his dad and Judy trained under Cat.”

  From the backseat, Lilly said, “What happened to Grandfather when his sister took over the ranch?”

  “Got more or less kicked off,” Rose answered. “His folks said, time for you to run our other places, time for Judy to run this one. We’re leavin’ for Dallas, and you’re packin’ your bags, too.”

  “Wasn’t that hard on him?” I asked. “Being dumped from his childhood home and the ranch he’d managed?”

  “Cat knew it was comin’,” Miss Rose said unsympathetically. “He had plenty of time to saddle his horse. The Benets never mollycoddled their kids, neither Cat nor Judy. Gave ’em plenty of responsibility early on, expected ’em to cinch their own saddles.”

  I twisted around to look at Lilly. She had her right elbow on the armrest and was leaning forward, chin on fist, nose to the glass, staring out.

  “So, Lilly,” I said. “What can you tell about him so far?”

  She shrugged as if she weren’t going to answer, but then she muttered a few words into her fist. It was hard to hear her.

  “There’s not much out there,” I thought she said, and she was sure right about that. The land looked empty, almost barren, to me. Evidently there was a car or truck traveling ahead of us on the empty private road, however. I could see its dark funnel of dust rising on the horizon. I expected to hear disappointment in the girl’s voice, but I wasn’t sure I did. There was a stillness about Miss Rose at that moment as she, too, strained to hear what the girl said. Lilly paused between her muttered phrases, as if she was observing and then thinking before committing herself to an opinion. “Hard ground. Hard to grow anything on it. Must take a lot of acres to feed a cow. They must have a hard time keeping the brush down. It’s so dry and brown. It’s not pretty, like Kansas.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe he was a hard man,” his granddaughter muttered. “Or maybe he was a persistent man. Or maybe he was always looking for something softer and easier and prettier. Maybe that’s why he got married so often. Maybe getting kicked out of his childhood home made him feel he didn’t belong anywhere. So maybe he could never stay anywhere for very long.” There was an especially long pause this time before she spoke again. “I wonder if he felt cheated.”

  “Like you?”

  Miss Rose glanced at me without moving her head.

  When Lilly didn’t answer, I turned around to face forward in my seat again. I assumed she was still staring out the window, chin in hand, looking for herself as we sped along the dirt roads of her family’s past, trailing a cloud of dust.

  We were drawing nearer to the vehicle in front of us, which was raising an unbelievable amount of dust.

  “Far,” Miss Rose said.

  It didn’t look so far away to me.

  “Big far,” she said.

  “Far?” I said. “Oh, fire!”

  She pointed to the dark cloud on the horizon and now I saw that it was much too tall and wide to have been raised by any moving vehicle.

  “Funny time to be burnin’ pastures,” she commented. A little farther down the road she said, “That ain’t grass burnin’, that’s woodsmoke. I think ol’ Judy’s got her barn afar.”

  Miss Rose punched that Lincoln into overdrive, and we flew up the rocky dirt road to the ranch headquarters doing sixty miles an hour, spraying rocks the size of doorknobs to every side of us. They banged against the belly of the car and nicked its sides and windows, until I felt sure we’d either bust an oil pan or get brained by one coming through the glass. I clutched the handhold above my door. I heard the click of L
illy’s seat belt.

  When we were close enough to see flames as well as blue-black smoke, we realized it wasn’t a barn that was burning, it was a house, a big one.

  There were a woman and a young man sitting on the ground about a hundred yards away, watching it burn. The woman had a shotgun lying across her lap. At the sound of our approach, she jumped to her feet and leveled that shotgun at our windshield.

  Miss Rose laid her left palm on the horn.

  The young man also jumped up. He tried to wrestle the gun from the woman, but she butted him in the stomach with it and he bent double, then fell back onto the ground.

  Miss Rose continued to lay on the horn. We sounded like a freight train roaring into a crossing.

  I slid down in the front seat, trying to brace my feet against the floor, trying to remove my head as a target.

  “Miss Sachet!” Lilly screamed. “Stop!”

  The old woman took her palm off the horn, but only to give herself a free hand to lower the automatic window on her side. Still barreling like a bat out of hell toward the burning house and the woman with the shotgun, Miss Rose leaned her head out of the window and bellowed, “Y’all cut that out now! Judy! Put that damned shotgun down! It’s Miss Rose, you hear me?”

  We slid to a surprisingly smooth stop right beside the woman. The man was rolling about in the dirt, clutching his abdomen.

  “Miss Rose?”

  The woman, tall and slender and deeply tanned, slowly lowered the gun and stepped close to the car. Her long, dark hair was wild and uncombed, and she wore no makeup, but she was beautiful in a tough way nonetheless. When she saw who was behind the wheel, she grinned and said, “I could of shot you, Miss Rose, you know that? What do you want to come driving up here like that for, like a Mafia moll in a big black Lincoln?” She glanced back. “And look what you made me do to poor Laddy there.”

  I could now hear that the young man was alternately moaning, cussing, and crying “Mother!” in an aggrieved voice.