by Jory Sherman
“Here’s where you’ll stay,” Anson said.
“I could stay in the bunkhouse,” Peebo said.
Anson opened the door, pushed Peebo inside. The leather hinges did not creak; Anson had oiled them recently.
“No, I don’t want you bunking with the other hands. The men who stay there are mostly drifters. They come and go with the seasons, don’t have no particular loyalty to the Box B.”
“You’ve got loyal people working here?”
“Most of the hands are married and they live in adobes like this one.”
“Looks like someone still lives here,” Peebo said, looking around the room.
Clothes hung on pegs driven into the wall; there was a burnt coffeepot, a pair of tin cups and a cold cooking pot on the sideboard near the small cookstove, an old pair of shoes under the bunk, with holes in their soles, some tobacco and rolling papers on a table, an old rusty knife with a bone handle, an old Bible written in Spanish, and a couple of plates covered with a thin patina of dust, with spoons and forks lying atop them.
“This is where Jorge Camacho lived,” Anson said.
“Oh.”
“I’ll get Esperanza to come down and pick up his clothes. You can eat with us in the big house. We’ll give you a holler.”
“That Esperanza makes a mighty fine supper,” Peebo said an hour later, rubbing his full belly.
“Don’t get too used to it. We won’t be here that long.”
“More branding?”
“We have to go back and get those irons I left at the jacal those Apaches burnt to the ground.”
“Then what?”
“Then, we brand every head of beef we come across, wild or tame.”
“Jesus. There must be millions of acres in this part of the country.”
“Millions upon millions,” Anson said.
“And how many head of cattle?”
“Thousands.”
“And none claimed.”
“Few claimed.”
“But, no roundup,” Peebo said.
“No roundup yet. We have men planting grass, clearing fields, building corrals. It all takes time.”
“A lifetime, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Anson said.
“Christ.”
Anson headed for the door. “I’ll be back,” he said. “Something I got to do.”
“Your head feel all right?”
“Feels like it’s full of feathers,” Anson said.
“You might have got concussed.”
“Concussed?”
“Scrambled brains.”
Anson laughed, but not loudly. His head still hurt. He walked outside, headed toward the big house. The flames had died on the western horizon, leaving only ashes hanging in the sky, the clouds transformed from gold back to lead. He went in through the back door, into the kitchen. The lamp was still lit. Esperanza was wiping the counters. All the cupboards were closed, the hanging pots and pans glancing light as if they were treasures.
“Where is Lazaro?” Anson asked, in Spanish.
“Listen,” she said.
The faint chords of a guitar drifted into the kitchen. They were not unmusical, but had no discernible pattern.
“Lazaro?”
“Yes. He plays.”
“He is trying to play. No toca. No todavía.”
“No, not yet. He is in his room.”
“I will speak to him,” Anson said.
“You will not strike him?”
“No. Cuanto lamento lo que ha pasado entre nosotros.”
“He is playing his sadness now,” she said. “I think your mother weeps in her room.”
“I will not speak to her this night.”
“You will do what you will do.”
The guitar chords sounded sad. They were all in a minor key, like the darkness.
Anson left the kitchen, walked to Lazaro and Esperanza’s room. The door was open. It was dark inside. Lazaro needed no light. It was eerie, listening to the strings of the guitar vibrate and not seeing either the guitar or the player.
“Lazaro.”
The guitar went silent.
“Quién es?”
“Anson.”
“Oh. Did my playing disturb you? I am just learning.”
“No. You play well.”
“A million of thanks. I can hear the music, but I cannot yet play it.”
“I want to tell you something.”
Anson heard Lazaro put the guitar down, heard his feet shuffling as he made his way to the door. When he got close the boy stopped and Anson could see him, not his eyes, but his shape, the outline of his face and body.
“What is it that you want to tell me?”
“I am sorry I treated you badly today. I am sorry I cursed you.”
“It imports nothing.”
“I was angry at being thrown from the horse.”
“No es necesario para explicar.”
“Well, I am sorry, Lazaro. Good night.”
“Good night, Anson. Ten cuidado.”
“You take care, too, Lazaro. Keep playing. You’ll find the music.”
Lazaro did not answer. Anson walked through the silent house. By the time he reached the kitchen, he heard the guitar strike up again, single notes, this time, in some kind of order, a tune springing from Lazaro’s mind. Anson felt a pang in his heart.
“Good night, Esperanza.”
“Good night, Anson.”
He walked back to Camacho’s house where Peebo was bunking and knocked on the door.
“It’s open.”
Anson went in.
Peebo was shucking off his boots. He sat on the edge of the cot where Camacho had once slept.
“What do you want for that horse that threw me?” Anson asked.
Peebo looked up in surprise. “I don’t know. It’s going to be all right, you know. That bite will heal.”
“I know.”
“Thirty bucks?”
“I’ll give you thirty dollars tomorrow.”
“What do you want with that horse?” Peebo asked.
“I’m going to kill it.”
“Jesus. Why?”
“I won’t have a horse on this ranch that throws its rider.”
“Hell, it was an accident, Anson. It could have been any horse. You’d throw somebody if you got rattlesnake bit.”
“I’ll see you in the morning, Peebo. Early.”
“Goddammit, Anson. Just like that? What if I don’t want to sell the horse?”
“Then, I’ll shoot it anyway.”
“God damn.”
“’Night, Peebo.”
“You are some kind of bastard, Anson.”
“You want to work for me?”
“Why, hell yes, I guess so.”
“When we go back for those branding irons tomorrow, be set for a long ride. We’re going to take rope and catch cows and put the Box B brand on them. But, there’s something else, too.”
“What’s that?” Peebo asked.
“I’m going after that white bull. I mean to have him hump some of my cows or …”
“Or what?”
“Or, I’ll kill him, too.”
Anson left the adobe without another word. Peebo sat there on the side of the bunk, shaking his head.
“Jesus the Christ,” he said as he got up and walked to the lamp. He blew it out and the night came into the room and stayed there in the silence.
35
SOCRATES WAITED UNTIL he heard the Mexican guard begin to snore with a regular rhythm. He had listened to the man fighting off sleep as the night slipped into deeper waters with an agonizing slowness. Most of the others were already asleep, young Fancy chirping softly, the boy Claude whimpering in his dreams, and Sarah moaning through some visions of the dark dreaming country she roamed.
Only he and Elmo were still awake, staring at each other, making signs, pointing in the guard’s direction, not speaking, but knowing there was much to say when they could speak freely. Still
, Socrates waited, wanting to make sure the guard descended to a level where he would float without ears to hear, without eyes to see, without mouth to sound an alarm.
He breathed the heavy musk of the barn, mingled with the honeysuckle breath of summer wafting through the cracks in the barn, and the heavy scent of the hayricks, the spoor of horses and mules thick as the night itself and he knew these creatures slept too, their breathing a faint hum in the air, like the sighs of lions napping after feeding on a fresh kill in the high grasses of the African savannah.
Finally, Socrates spoke in a whisper to Elmo, sliding close to him so only his ears could hear. “Awaken Sarah and Buelah. Let the young ones sleep. I will awaken Caesar, Pluto and Fidelius. We will gather close and talk of what we must do.”
Elmo nodded and crawled to Sarah’s side. He leaned down and blew into her ear. She slapped at the touch as if it were an insect and Elmo caught her wrist and put a hand over her mouth so that she would not cry out. “Go to the corner where Socrates waits,” he whispered.
Sarah blinked and saw that it was still full dark. She could see the pinholes of stars through small fissures in the roof of the barn. She got up quietly and scooted to the corner where Socrates had been sitting. She saw that he was awakening some others as Elmo gently shook Buelah while he spoke so softly in the woman’s ear that Sarah could not hear his words.
Socrates awakened the others and they slid and slithered through the straw on all fours to his corner. He sat in the center and spoke to them, each in turn so that his voice would not carry to the guard’s ears.
“When it becomes night again, the Mexicans and the Frenchman will take us to a place and sell us.”
Those in the circle nodded. Buelah rubbed her eyes and shook her head to throw off the sleepiness that bore down on her.
“That is when we will try to escape. I will tell you all what you must do when that time comes.”
“This is a strange country,” Lucius said. “If we run away, we will be lost. They will hunt us down.”
“You must trust me, son,” Socrates said. “I have been thinking long and hard about how we can gain our freedom. Do you want to be a slave all your life and pick cotton, clean the stalls of horseshit, slop the hogs and eat scraps at the back door of the white man?”
“No,” Lucius breathed.
“Then, we must act as one. We must be as the stalking lion, the silent leopard. We must become the night when we run from these Mexicans and the Frenchman, and I will tell you how to do it and when.”
“The Frenchman will shoot us all,” Pluto said.
“We cannot outrun the lead ball, even at night,” Lucius said.
“They cannot shoot that which they cannot see,” Socrates said.
“We will do it,” Buelah said, looking over at her daughter, Fancy. “We will follow you, Socrates.”
“Are you all in agreement?” Socrates asked.
All of them nodded, each in turn, some after a brief hesitation, some quickly and with eagerness.
“Now, go back to sleep. We wait one more day and then in the night to come we will run for our freedom. Freedom. Is it not a sweet word?”
“We go north?” Elmo asked.
“Yes. We will follow the big stars in the sky. We will follow the drinking gourd as we have heard in the songs of our people.”
“The drinking gourd,” Sarah said, and looked up beyond the rafters to the winking stars.
Socrates shooed them all back to their sleeping places.
“I cannot sleep,” Elmo said, as the others settled down. “My blood is running hot.”
“You must sleep, and so must I. If you dream, dream of freedom.”
“I will dream of the drinking gourd.”
“Yes, yes,” Socrates hissed, and lay down and let the night cloak him and claim him as he drifted away on the flowing ribbon of the whippoorwill’s plaintive cry.
And finally, Elmo, too, went to sleep while staring up at the fractions of stars he could see through the rifts in the roof and it seemed to him he was looking into a river and seeing reflections of lights that would lead him to a sunny happy land where the black people stiil laughed and danced and sang the good songs of his long-ago boyhood.
36
ATHICK FOG hugged the ground, surrounded the big house and masked all that lay beyond in all directions. Anson let himself out the back door and stepped soft on the steps. As he walked through the brume, wisps of gauzy moisture wafted away from him, closed in behind him. He could not see five feet ahead of him, but he knew the way to the adobe beyond the barn.
The adobe lurked behind a thick scrim of fog, but he thought he saw a scrap of orange light coming through one of the windows as he approached. As he stepped up to the door, he confirmed that a lantern burned inside, its feeble light dissipated to a smear on the brumous cloud that cloaked the dwelling.
Anson was surprised to see that Peebo was already awake and dressed. The dawn had just barely broken when he walked from the house to the adobe where he had put Peebo up. The old rooster had not yet crowed and shreds of darkness still lingered around La Loma de Sombra, in the mist of the fields, in the silence of the night birds.
“We got coffee at the house,” Anson said.
“I could drink me some.”
“Lucinda makes some mean eggs and beef and salsa. Can you smell ’em?”
“Yeah,” Peebo said. “Like twistin’ a knife in my innards, that smell. I thought I’d done died and gone to heaven.”
“Well, come on and we’ll get some of her huevos y came asado y tortillas de harina y salsa.”
“That’s pretty damned easy for you to say.”
The two men laughed and walked toward the house.
“I got your money in my pocket,” Anson said.
“Don’t want it,” Peebo said.
“You ain’t givin’ me that horse?”
“No. I ain’t givin’ you nothin’.”
“What do you mean?”
“I ain’t selling that horse what threw you.”
“We made a deal.”
“No, you made a deal. I never did.”
Anson stopped, his anger stretching crimson fingers up his neck.
“That horse in the barn?”
“Nope, it ain’t,” Peebo said.
“Where is it?”
“I put it out to pasture until you cool down.”
“Well, I ain’t cooled down none.”
“Then, it looks like that old crowbait might live another day.”
“Aren’t you the smart son of a buck, though.”
“My horses trust me.”
“Well, I sure as hell don’t.”
Anson still stood there, shrouded in fog. Peebo could feel his glare on him, like a candle down in a deep cave. Cold as wet clay.
“Does this mean I don’t get no breakfast?”
“Shit,” Anson said, and turned toward the house.
“I’ll follow you,” Peebo said, a smirking lilt to his voice.
“I charge a pasturing fee,” Anson said.
“I’ll bet.”
“So, maybe I don’t have to pay you cash money for that bucking horse.”
“No, you don’t have to pay. Because I ain’t sellin’.”
“Room and board will buy him.”
“Maybe he ain’t pastured on Box B land.”
“As far as you can look with those puny little eyes is Box B land.”
“Now, son, don’t go and put up no fence between us over a old horse that just wants to chew some more grass before he goes off to that final pasture.”
“Peebo, there’s a big old fence between us right now. You put it there.”
“No, son, I didn’t. You’re mad because you got throwed. Your dignity got hurt more’n you did.”
Anson had wandered, and now he set his steps toward the lampglow from the kitchen window. The sun rose in the east and turned the fog into a gossamer shadow that glimmered with a soft pale light as eerie as wil
l-o’-the-wisp clinging to a morning bog and the cloth of brume parted for the two men as they waded through it like blinded men making their way.
“My dignity ain’t hurt at all,” Anson said. “I’m just pissed that you went back on your word.”
“Seems to me, son, you are pretty low on forgiveness this fine morning.”
“Ain’t nothing to forgive. A horse that bucks a man off when there’s trouble, isn’t worth the powder to snap a percussion cap. Seems to me you lack the gifts of a horse breaker to allow an animal like that to carry a man on its miserable back.”
They reached the porch and Anson hesitated before climbing the steps. He turned to look at Peebo. “Ain’t that right?”
“Horse was broke to ride. He wasn’t broke to stand still and get snakebit.”
“He got snakebit anyway, didn’t he?”
“Seems to me the rider must have been plumb sawing wood when that snake rose up out of the dirt. An experienced horseman would have rid the horse plumb out of danger.”
“You got all the logic of a pissant, Peebo. You know that?”
“I can smell breakfast in there. Probably be as cold as a miner’s nuts by the time we climb these stairs.”
Anson snorted and turned away from Peebo, clumped up the steps and the fog drifted away from the house as the sun rose in the sky and swept the land like a dim torch fixed to the wall of some deep cavernous place.
The two men walked into the kitchen, Anson scowling, Peebo wearing a pleasant grin on his face and sniffing the aroma of food warming on the woodstove. Lucinda turned away from the counter and smiled.
“Sit yourselves,” she said in Spanish. “Breakfast is ready.”
“Lucinda,” Anson said, also in Spanish, “I present you with Peebo Elves. All he wants is coffee and a hard biscuit.”
“Oh, no, that cannot be true,” Lucinda exclaimed. “A man must eat a good meal to break his fast in the morning .”
“Yes’m,” Peebo said in English, “I surely do believe that. I’m ready to break my fast in six dozen different ways.”
“What does he say?” Lucinda asked Anson.
“He says he has a little bit of hunger.”