by Jim Harrison
In the first half-hour on the wet, glistening blacktop I passed only one car, and another coming toward me. I slowed down a bit when I began to come too close to the storm, entering an area of gusty winds that revealed the pale under-leafs of the windbreaks and shelterbelt trees: I was at the precise back edge of the storm so when I let up on the gas the world became still, and every bird was emerging noiselessly from the quiet aftermath. I listened to a very glum stock-and-grain report, and one of those equally glum and whining “city-billy” songs that had been taking over country music. I punched in a Patsy Cline tape that quickly erased the bad taste of the other, just as I turned onto the road, Route 20, that I had driven on when Grandfather had retrieved me from Chadron after my search for Duane. I felt a thickening of sentiment beneath my breastbone so changed the tape for chamber music by the Pro Musica Antiqua. I was amused by this small battle against sentiment and by something Lundquist had said to the effect that it was a good thing we had time and clocks or everything might happen at once.
At Ainsworth I caught up with the storm again, and stopped for gas, coffee, arid more precise directions. I was helped by two teenage boys in very wet FFA (Future Farmers of America) jackets. When I was getting back in the car in the blustery wind and rain, and they thought I was out of earshot, I heard one say something naughty but complimentary about my body—“What a great ass. I sure would like to fuck that.” There was an errant impulse to march over and tell them I was more than old enough to be their mother, but then that never was part of the game. Some wise soul said that grownups are only deteriorated children.
The entry gate of the ranch was new and ludicrously impressive, but there was also a very large and fresh “For Sale” sign, the listing by a national realtor. These were both indications of a tax shelter gone amiss, probably for someone in the oil business, since they seemed to be the only ones who bought large ranches these days. Scarcely any big ranches had been put together since World War II, and most of them were based on railroad grants before the turn of the century, or in the surge of prosperity during World War I.
I drove a full mile up a blacktop driveway—another absurdity—along a creek, the air sweet with cottonwoods. The house had once been an ordinary Nebraska farmhouse but was now elaborately remodeled and empty: the outbuildings were uniformly painted, and there was a pond with a sunken rowboat still tethered to a dock. The ample number of corrals without cattle chutes showed it had been an expensive horse operation. I circled the pond on a two-track that led to a mobile home perched nakedly against the side of a hill, with a three-quarter-ton pickup parked beside it. I was met by a large, grizzled male Airedale, and a bitch black Labrador who waggled out from under the trailer’s steps. The Airedale bounced up with his paws on my open window to stare at me. I waited for his eyes to soften to get out, wanting to let him do his job. I walked around the side of the trailer where Sam Creekmouth was replacing a tire on a horse trailer. There was a small corral holding three fine-looking quarter horses, two mares, and a gelding. The Airedale barked at Sam to tell him I was there which he doubtless knew, but was either shy, or the sort of man that wanted to finish the job before he chatted, or both. When he stood and I offered my hand I thought he could be anywhere between thirty-five and fifty but I guessed about my age. He was a little over six feet, slender but large-chested, with arms that seemed elongated by too much hard work. His nose was crooked as if badly set after a fracture, his hair coal-black under a feed-store cap, his eyes remote but almost friendly. He was uncommonly dark and beaten by the weather and there was an edge of anger in his gestures.
“I was down at that horse sale. How’s your friend doing?”
“It looked bad at first but he’s OK. They had to wire his jaw together.”
“That Pete always was a bully. I saw him get his butt kicked down in Broken Bow last fall.” He paused and looked off at the ranch house with resignation. If he had been talking to another man he would have said “ass kicked” but the few cowboys left retain an air of the courtly. “Strange to say but me and my brother calf-roped against you and that Injun boy years ago. He had that fine buckskin.”
“I remember. It was too hot. You guys won and we took third.” I flushed at the memory, and followed his eyes off to the empty ranch house.
“Next year you and that other gal won the polka contest at the fair. I remember that. What happened to the Injun boy? He was quite the cowboy.”
“Died in the war. Or after the war from wounds.”
“Not surprised. I was over there a year myself and I’ll be goddamned if I still know what it was about. Your momma called my sister late last night and says I got to force this dog on you.”
“She wants me to stay home. I’ve been gone a long time.”
“You don’t look more than half Nebraska to me. If you’d stayed here you’d be a whole lot bigger. These ladies are feeders.”
“I’m hoping that’s a compliment.”
“Guess it is.”
I followed him into the trailer. He said he had to keep the pup inside while he worked, but would be sad to see him go. Naomi had said I wanted a bitch but this was the last pup and he was a male of ten weeks. The pup was under the formica kitchen table enclosed by chicken wire. He was dark but I knew the Airedale in him would lighten the stomach; his head was large with a terrier’s grizzled hair and reserved eyes. When the wire was loosened he shot out of Sam’s grasp, scooting through the trailer at top speed, and caroming off the furniture, pausing a moment to pee on the couch.
“He’s not too smart but he sure is enthused,” Sam said, cornering the pup on an easy chair.
“What can I give you for him?” This was not an easy question out here.
“About one dime. He’s not the kind of animal you can sell like a horse. Besides, Naomi and my sister figured out we’re seventh cousins by marriage, you know, distant relatives.”
The phone rang and he handed me the pup which growled and struggled furiously, then abruptly went to sleep on my lap. It was said that except for newcomers (since World War II) everyone that ranched in the western two-thirds of Nebraska either knew or knew about each other, but then this didn’t entail all’ that many people. They had been drawn together by the common concerns of cattle, wheat, and horses, and I suspected it was equally true of any of the sparsely populated Western states. Naomi had advised me to offer a bottle of whiskey which I had packed along. She said Sam had had a run of hard luck, some of the bad credit ramifications of which I was hearing on the phone. He finished with “All I can say is I’m sorry it happened.” I didn’t say anything because his face had tightened and his eyes squinted out the small, dirty back window. He stalked out and I waited a few minutes before I put the pup away and followed. I was wondering what an expensive Questar telescope was doing on the kitchen counter but I wasn’t going to ask.
He was saddling the gelding and a mare and when he gestured I adjusted the stirrups on the gelding for myself. The Airedale and Lab were spinning and chasing each other in excitement over the outing. I wanted to ask him why he didn’t have a blue-heeler, the normal cowboy dog, but I didn’t think he was ready for conversation. He mounted in the single, fluid movement that is admired in people who live with horses.
We rode wordlessly a full hour before stopping for a rest, and that was when he noted that the Lab bitch, who had not regained her shape from whelping, was overwinded. It was a breathtaking ranch, and from the way the fences ran I guessed we were on the northeast border. Some of the native grasses had returned from disuse and the coulees and the creek bottom were full of wildflowers. It was deceptively lush, verdant, in June, the graceful prelude to the dry spell that always came. I had to imagine Northridge, and then the Sioux who had owned it all without thinking about the word “own.”
Sam got off the mare and wound up a stretch of rusty barbed wire and hung it on a cottonwood branch. I tethered the gelding and walked over to the creek bank, where the Airedale was excavating a big hole for unkn
own reasons. The Lab was sprawled in the creek on her tummy, cooling the teats which were still enlarged from nursing. I scuffed off my boots and socks and stuck my feet in the cool, muddy water. Without the recent rain there wouldn’t have been more than a trickle.
“Not bad country, it is?” He stood beside me staring down at my feet.
“If I didn’t have a place I’d want to buy it.” I knew it was the wrong thing to say before it was out of my mouth.
“It must be nice to be able to say that.” His voice was soft enough but the hammer was there.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I was only saying it was beautiful.” This was so lame that it deepened the mess.
“Years ago I had a wife who wanted a ranch so bad she ran off with a rancher. By that time we were pretty tired of each other anyway. She was one of those rodeo queens and I was on the circuit doing everything but best at saddle bronc. Now I hear she’s got her own tennis court and twenty pairs of Lucchese boots.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. It’s rare that a cowboy gets a ranch of his own, even when he becomes a top hand or foreman. This was a fact of life. I found myself so upset that I couldn’t draw a clear breath which meant I liked him a great deal and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.
“Where you going next?” It was the most innocent question I could think of.
“I got a good offer in Texas but if I see another oilman I might shoot the son of a bitch. I got a brother with a cow-calf operation over near Hardin, Montana, and I might go over there.”
I asked enough right questions to get rid of his anger for the time being. Since I had never grown up with an angry father it was one thing I didn’t know how to handle or react to in men. He had started three different horse operations for rich people after he quit the rodeo circuit: the first two took four years apiece, and the last five. They all had ended up with a loss of interest, auctions, and a general, inconclusive mess that he was expected to stay behind and clean up before collecting the doubtful severance pay. I suspected he knew more about tax problems, depreciation schedules, and the decline in oil prices than he allowed to, but then those weren’t subjects that bore speaking about along a lovely creek bottom on a June afternoon. The situation eased when we talked of breeding lines, and he told me the story of his trip to Lexington, Kentucky, where his last boss had taken him to investigate the thoroughbred business. By now he was stretched out beside me, leaning on an elbow and chewing on a piece of grass. I asked him about his expensive Questar telescope and he said the owner’s wife had given it to him but with no directions. I said I would show him how to operate it which pleased him. Just before he got up he put his hand on mine for a moment.
“Let’s ride back and work on that bottle of whiskey,” he said. “‘Course you don’t have to help but I’m in a five-drink mood.”
Early the next afternoon, when I drove out the gate, I said to the pup who was chewing on a piece of harness, “Well, I think I’ve got myself a boyfriend.” I had a bourbon headache and was bone tired but otherwise relaxed and happy. The dirty joke about being “rode hard and put away wet” came to mind. When we got back from the ride the trailer was very hot and we both were quite nervous and overly polite. While he made drinks I rinsed my hands and face in the sink and the flies against the window seemed to be buzzing in my ears. We were standing at the counter and I began to explain the telescope in a jittery voice, saying that after dark we could put it on the car hood for stability and look at the stars. I blushed and looked away because that meant I was offering to stay the night before he asked. He understood this and tried to get me off the hook with a joke.
“Sounds good to me. I’m not real up-to-date on the universe. It’s a long ways from feed bills.”
We clicked our overfull glasses and I drank as deeply as possible. “Here’s to horses and dogs,” I said, then traced a finger along two zigzag scars on his hand. “You’re supposed to turn a hay-baler off before you fix it,” he said. We stared out the window at the horses as if they were something new and we hadn’t just been riding them. His face shone with sweat and I felt sweat trickling down between my breasts. The obvious thing was to go outside and catch the breeze. He put a hand on my waist and that was finally all it took. We embraced as if to bruise our ribs, then kissed, and I dropped my drink on the floor. We banged against the table getting our clothes off and making our way to the sofa. The pup was disturbed from its sleep and began yiping and howling, but that didn’t slow us down one bit. The lovemaking on the sofa was awkward and quick, and then we lay there with our hearts pounding hard trying to catch our breath, listening to the pup. “That dog music’s a real mood swinger,” he said. He got up naked, fetched the pup and took it outside where I heard the horse-trailer door close. When he came back in he looked at me on the couch, smiled, and we started laughing as he tried to draw a picture on the sweat on his chest. Then we walked down to the pond and had a cooling swim, talked for a while and made love on our small towels, and went swimming again. Sam remembered the pup and ran up the hill to let it go. We sat on the dock and watched it hunt frogs with its parents. The Lab ate the frogs the Airedale caught. Now it was late afternoon so we dressed and went off to a roadhouse twenty miles down the road. It was blessedly air-conditioned, and we danced to the jukebox, played pool, ate dinner, and danced again. When we got back we simply fell asleep with a fan moaning at the window and made love with hangovers in the first light, then slept again until midmorning.
It was at breakfast that I became quite upset. He was frying bacon at the stove in jeans with no shirt and I was admiring all the muscles in his back which were functional rather than those got from exercise. There was a pale half-moon scar on his shoulder that he said carne from an operation when he was thrown against a fence at the rodeo in Big Timber. My breath shortened and I looked around the trailer thinking, My God, am I with Duane? The similarity might have dawned on me by then but perhaps I didn’t want it to. I walked outside feeling nude in my bra and jeans trying to catch my breath. I thought, I’ll be goddamned if I’ll let this stop me. I won’t let this stop me because I like this man. I deserve this man for however long. I don’t give a good goddamn if he is like Duane and lives in a fucking trailer and smells like a horse. I heard him come outside and turned to where he stood on the porch.
“You OK, darling?” he asked softly.
“I’m fine. I just thought of something, that’s all.” I walked up the porch steps and he gave me a hug. He tried to tease me into a smile.
“You know it’s funny but way back there at the fair when you were dancing in that short dress I was up front and thought about doing this. And now here I am.”
“I saw all you assholes from Ainsworth standing over there but I must say I didn’t plan this.”
So driving home was pleasant, though the pup was a problem until I stopped by a big, unfenced field and chased him around, and then we were both tired. Then he slept and I sorted out my plans, which was simple, because we had agreed that we would meet in a week. Despite our ages there had been the usual uneasiness of new lovers about what to do next, if anything. You can sit there and let time sort it out but time can do a bad job. I had convinced him without too much effort to spend some time at the cabin in Buffalo Gap while he figured out whether to take a job in Texas or go to Montana. I frankly hoped for neither, but I cautioned myself not to look that far ahead. At forty-five we all fear death by suffocation. I tried to remember without success a line by Rilke that I had read in college: how lovers try to swallow each other until there is nothing left of either of them except a peculiar kind of emotional disease.
I took a detour down toward Elsmere and Purdum where the road would cross the North Loup. It wasn’t far from this juncture that Northridge and Aase had spent her last days. I had visited the site that summer after Duane died when the location and the thought of Aase meant a good deal to me. I read and reread the journal passages concerning her and her unimaginable will toward life, or so i
t seemed to me at the time:
She is so thin now that deep in the night with my arms around her it is as if I feel her retreating into the little girl she once was. Her energies in the early morning are cheerful and if the weather is coolish we sit by the fire with our cups of tea and the dictionary, though it now seems doubtful we shall proceed beyond the “a’s”. Yesterday out on her cot she discovered my ruse as I wished to pass over “agony” and she said in her slight, bell-clear voice, “Agony is the struggle before death. I read it when you fetched the water.” Her faith & belief in God & His Son are so direct as to embarrass the theologian in me. To Aase, God is tangible as the sky above & the earth below, the full red moon we saw rising as if burnt by a prairie fire. She is similar to devout Sioux who speak so directly to the Spirits they are doubtless heard. This morning before daylight she was delirious & vomited forth blood & when I lit a candle she touched the blood with a forefinger and held it to the light as if she were studying life itself. I gave her opium, stirred the fire & added wood, then rocked her in my lap before the fire until dawn. She always wakes when the birds begin their singing though it is probable that one morning soon she will not awake. Her favorite is the flutelike sound of the meadowlark & she was quite enthused when I told her these birds are said to migrate to South America with the coming of fall. She fancies that at death her spirit will be allowed to migrate over all the earth so that she may see those places to which her curiosity has become attached. I have assured her that God is just & this will be so. In the trunk she has brought along with our marriage there is a doll she has kept from her childhood & for which she embroidered many small & beautiful dresses. She wishes me to marry again and give this doll to my child as her greatest pain has been not to bear us children. When light entered the cabin & the birds began her pale-blue eyes opened and looked into mine saying all that remains voiceless within us & she touched the tear on my cheek with the finger with the dried blood upon it.