Angels of North County

by T. Owen O'Connor

  He stumbled down the porch steps cursing his legs and loping stiffly to the front doors of the stable. The fire had already gotten to the hayloft and a burst of flame flew from the roof and descended in a shower of sparks. The flash of brilliant flames illuminated Toby’s dash toward the barn. Walker could see him throwing open the tall doors. He wanted to yell for Toby to stop and stay back from the flames but he also didn’t want to lose his studs, and he held his tongue as Toby burst through the doors into the midst of the flames.

  Walker could hear the wood of the rafters cracking and sensed the roof structure starting to give. The first stallion bolted from the flames and headed off into the night, hay on fire still clinging to the hair of its tail and then another, Ulysses, came out of the doors and ran off into the night. Walker rushed to the doors but a gust of hot, liquid wind sent him stumbling back. He looked through the open doors and saw Toby naked from the waist up draped between two stallions. He was holding the manes in each of his hands, his feet glancing off the ground as he guided the two stallions out of the fire, a ball of flame engulfing the stable behind him. The horses bolted at the door, and Toby let go of the manes and ran to a stop, not even falling. He turned and headed back toward the stable doors when Walker grabbed him.

  “But, Pa, the gray mare’s still in there.”

  His father held him, one hand clutching hard a handful of his hair and the other arm thrown across his son’s chest, immobilizing him. They both stared in stupefied wonder and listened to the harsh sounds of beams cracking, timber falling, and the groans of the old mare as the agonies emitted from the depths of the fire. Walker glanced heavenward and saw thousands of stars and realized not a single drop of rain had fallen. As he clenched his son, he felt the warm, guilty relief of a man who had gambled recklessly without consequence.

  The next morning, Walker stood with slumped shoulders looking at the smoldering ruins of his new stable. His wife, Molly, came to the porch. “John, it can wait until tomorrow; we need to meet the train. He has been gone seven years; that barn isn’t going anywhere, it’ll still be smoking when we come home tomorrow.”

  Walker mumbled “Goddamn it to hell,” under his breath.

  “I don’t want the girls to hear that talk,” his wife said as she spun and reentered the house.

  He thought the woman must have ears like a dog. Of all days, it had to be today that his elder boy, Wesley, was due back from the east. As he turned to the house, he caught sight of the postal carrier sauntering up on his horse.

  The postman pushed the bill of his cap high on his head and leaning forward, crossing his wrists on the pommel of his saddle. He let the reins dance in his fingertips as he looked at the stable and let loose with a long soft whistle, saying dryly, “Well, Colonel, I hope there’s at least some good news from the post.”

  “I hope so too, Teddy, but I doubt it . . . Hey, Teddy, can you do me a favor?”

  “Of course, Colonel, but I ain’t got no new barn in my satchel. There’s limits even to the post.”

  Walker ignored his comment and said, “Tell Raif I need my long saw back, and tell him why I need it, and also tell Jack Straw that it looks like I’ll need them planks he was selling.”

  “Sure, Colonel, anything else I can do?”

  “Tell any of them farmhands, I’ll pay two dollars a day to work on a new barn.”

  “All right, Colonel, and congratulations on your boy, a real military academy grad. Cavalry?”

  “No, Teddy, he’s an engineer, going to Fort Sill in Oklahoma territory. Never could ride worth a shit, anyhow.” He heard Molly’s sharp response from the inside of his ranch house, “John Walker, stop that talk.” Walker frowned, and added, “All right, Teddy, tell them farmhands I’ll be back day after tomorrow if they’re looking for work.”

  Teddy reined his horse into a turn and as he rode off said, “Sure will do, Colonel. Congratulations again on your boy. A lieutenant, how about that. I never got promoted past private. Every lieutenant I had lasted about an hour into each fight, brave sort mostly, there was only one fool we had to shoot ourselves.”

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  THE MASTODON ON THE PRAIRIE

  * * *

  As Teddy followed his route through the county delivering the post, the roads began to fill with life. An hour after each delivery the folks started to roll in the opposite direction toward Walker’s Nottaway ranch. It was a migration of neighbors: farmers hauling wood in the back of their wagons; ranchers sending their hands in from the prairies with unaccustomed tools; cattlemen donating heifers to feed the folks; grain merchants sending feed for the workhorses; and town merchants riding out with cartloads of nails and shingles. No matter the stripe they all owed Walker, and all knew they would need him again.

  Walker had loaned farmers strong horses for plowing when theirs had dropped dead in the harness. He had floated merchantmen interest-free credit when business was slow, that is, before the railroad spread its reach to the town and they became wealthy in their own right. He allowed cattlemen to water their herds in his streams during spring drives to Tin City. On and on they came in wagons filled with raw materials and families all to help the richest man in North County resurrect his stable. By dawn the next day, the pasture surrounding Walker’s ranch was a swarming tent city filled with North County folk.

  By dusk the next day, the skeletal framing of the new stable rose thirty feet in the air, the roof already framed and ready to be shingled. It stood like the skeleton of a lone mastodon lost on the prairie. As in any gathering, there was also opportunity. In the shadow of the mastodon, the parson raised up his hands and began his sermon, “People, good people, misfortune has beset the Walker family, but rejoice because you see the power of the Almighty in our gathering—a community of the faithful come together to raise a neighbor struck by calamity . . .”

  A few hundred feet away and covered in sawdust and sweat, the three Hanson brothers sat on bales of hay in the back of the crowd. They were part of the gathering, but remained on its fringes.

  Jed Hanson curled his lower lip and spat out a stream of tobacco juice before saying to nobody in particular, “Can you believe these preacher boys? They can look in an ass crack and find a silver lining. And it’s always bent to their purpose. Parson, help me understand the ways of the Lord because I done sat on my horse for hours plow’n my fields and my reward is an empty field and an ass full of sores. Why has the Lord done this? Parson’ll bend you over, look at your crack and say all solemn like: ‘Son, I see the miracle of the Lord in that there crack—your hard work pleases the Lord and your sitting displeasure is a reminder of his love’ . . . or some other such shit. But, if you say, Parson, I done drank beers and tortillas all night and my crack’s as red as a beet from the shits, that same Parson, look’n at that same crack, the same exact ass crack. will say ‘Son, that’s the devil’s work in there, it’s a testament to the evil you been do’n.’ ”

  The youngest Hanson, Abner, said, “Jed, what the hell are you go’n on about?”

  “I’m say’n they always got it straight because they say whatever they feel like. Imagine we sell a horse and some dirt-splitter asks, ‘Is it broke?’ And we say, ‘depends on what you mean by broke,’ that fool look at you like you’re crazy. All I’m saying is if my crack’s full of sores the Almighty ain’t got noth’n to do with it, and I particularly don’t need no parson to tell me otherwise. All these fools out here listen’n to this charlatan jabber on. Ain’t been a parson worth his salt since Graham passed on.”

  Raif Hanson listened on with a detached expressionless look. He was lean and powerful and like the chosen few in North County, he was a horse rancher. He stared at the parson. The farmers had built a raised platform of hay bales and wood slats four feet off the ground, raising the parson over the crowd. Atop the hay stage was a raised dais of two more hay bales. The dais was draped with a red-and-gray-striped horse blanket. The blanket’s edges were singed and blackened. Raif used
every inch of the hay chair formed from the bales, leaning farther into a reclining position and stretching his legs. He glanced around at the dozens of family folk waiting for the parson to finish so the feeding could start. He marveled at the parson’s ability to speak to such a throng in a calm measured voice, realizing he could never speak to such a crowd in such tones. He would rather face fifty renegades alone than stand and speak to such a gathering—the difference amused him.

  As he gazed at the crowd, he caught a small boy staring at him. He felt self-conscious of the vicious scar that rose above his left eye and cut jagged across his cheek and nose. The forehead had the deepest gash and it was only slightly concealed under the flop of his dirty blond hair. The boy’s gaze made him edgy and he was relieved when Jed said in a mockingly threatening tone, “What the hell you look’n at, Blinkton boy? You’re a little Blinkton; I can tell by the mule features. Git, ’fore I tan your hide.” The boy darted off toward the mastodon.

  The Hansons’ parents had died ten years earlier, and the brothers had been considered orphans by the rest of the folks in the county. It was a stigma that still clung to them. Their father had been a horse breeder like Walker, and was as good at it. Death joined the brothers alone, and Raif was fifteen when a tax collector from the county office rode out to the ranch and told Raif that they needed to pay the land tax or he would have to foreclose and evict the brothers. Raif had gone to Walker. The walk from his horse to the Walker front door was the longest of his life. John Walker had helped him ten years ago and like everybody at the stable raising today, he was still repaying that debt. Walker had been there when his family needed it, and now Raif was here returning the favor, helping his competitor raise a mammoth stable from the ashes of foolishness.

  The parson’s voice broke into his daydreaming, and Raif heard the vague snippets of sermon as he continued to eye the crowd. The parson’s voice rose in earnest, “By your neighborly acts we have given succor to the downtrodden . . .”

  Jed erupted in mock indignation, “What the hell did he say? Did he say downtrodden? Walker’s the richest man in this county and he was burned out because he was too lazy or plumb forgot to put up that lightning rod. I seen it over there, the braces still on it, never cut. Downtrodden my ass, shee-it, he could build ten barns ’fore it hurt. Parson knows better than anyone the lining of Walker’s ass crack is filled with silver.”

  Raif looked at his brother out of the corner of his eye.

  Jed said, “Oh, all right.”

  Abner muttered, “It is true, Raif, he ain’t downtrodden.”

  Raif wasn’t listening anymore but was gazing on a mother scolding her seven-year-old boy. The finger of her right hand was wagging in front of his nose as she stretched his collar with her left hand. The boy’s eyes were cast down in a weak attempt to look penitent for his latest prank.

  Jed’s voice piped into Raif’s thoughts again. “Half-buck she cracks him.”

  Raif said, “I’ll take that.”

  The mother lowered her face to meet the boy’s eyes and released his collar. She took his cheeks in her hands, raised his face, kissed him, and sent him off. He raced away to rejoin the gang of boys climbing on the mastodon’s skeleton.

  “Ain’t fair, Raif, you knew what that squirt done. I didn’t see what he did. I only bet because she was wagging that finger in his nose. You must’ve seen what the squirt did and knew it didn’t rate a crack. I’m surprised at you, Raphael, for taking advantage. Ain’t like you.”

  “Half-buck.”

  Jed blew air and said, “All right, all right, I ain’t exactly got it on me. When we get back to the ranch, I’ll get it to you and if I forget, you remind me.”

  The mother wore a bonnet but blond curls billowed beneath it falling in ribbons on her shoulders. She was heavy from child-rearing and her girth gave her a mother’s look, but she was beautiful. She glanced at Raif for a brief moment before turning and melting back into the cluster of folks gathered around the parson.

  Jed asked, “Was that Edda? I remember her; she was sweet on me. Man, but them kids she squeezed out done did a reckoning on ol’ Edda. What she got now, four or five? She was the prettiest girl in Bibbs’s class. Wasn’t she, Raif? You remember her, don’t you? She look like that bigg’n with the curls you always git in Tin City . . .”

  Raif drifted off and was lost in his thoughts.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  RAIF

  * * *

  Ten years before lightning burned Walker’s stable to the earth, Mr. Bibbs’s class was the highlight of young Raif Hanson’s day. The one-room schoolhouse was plain except for an array of books along the far wall. The schoolroom was laid out in columns, four seats across. The youngest sat in the front of the class; the oldest in the back. The boys sat in the right two rows and the girls on the left. The desks were simple, slats of two-by-fours, sanded down so the middle crease didn’t cause your grease pencil to puncture the paper. The pencil still cut, especially for Raif, who no matter how hard he tried, always pressed too hard.

  Raif sat in the back corner; he preferred it there. He could look out at the entire class and only Mr. Bibbs could look directly at him; anybody else who tried to look at him had to go through the effort to turn around. Mr. Bibbs was young with a pretty wife. They lived in the house adjacent to the school with their two girls. Bibbs had replaced the old Potter woman a year ago. Potter had finally kicked and Raif figured it was way past her due date, anyhow. Raif had hated her. Potter’s class had been drudgery: rote spelling, monotonous incantations of prayers, and she used the standard speller same as she used the Testament—no questions asked, lest the ruler across the knuckles. She never strayed from the lessons. He had hated school, detested it with a passion, always longing to return to the horses, so he could sweat out the boredom and idleness of the long school day.

  There had been no school for two months after Potter kicked. When Bibbs arrived in town, Raif had begged his father not to send him back, explaining it was a waste of time and that he was needed full-time on the ranch. His father had almost relented when his mother stepped in and said he had two more years of schooling and wasn’t finished until he was full sixteen, and that was final.

  Raif pondered the notion often in class, how the change of one person could change the way you felt about the same exact thing. It was like that with Bibbs; he had changed it all by simply showing up. Bibbs loved to read classics, and a man he called the forgotten poet, Shakespeare. He loved history and great heroes, as long as they were Christians, and he loved to teach. He had a deft touch with students, finding their weakness and interests, finding what motivated and what bored, and he did it in a classroom of forty kids in varying ages, none of whom were much interested to begin with. Raif drank it in. From complete drudgery, school became a haven to explore new worlds late into the night by candle. Raif would read constantly.

  Bibbs saw potential in him and cultivated it. Bibbs spoke to him of far-off places like Tusculum and Bethel, colleges he called them. Raif’s father was lukewarm to the idea, but his mother was thrilled, saying “The Walkers always talked about Wesley one day going to the academy; Raif’s going to attend a real college, not some Yankee army school.” To Raif, it was all heady stuff.

  In the late afternoon of one spring day, near summer, the light slanted through the windows of the schoolroom. The dust danced on beams giving the room that hazy quality. In the far corner, Raif looked up from his book and stole glances at Edda’s blond locks. He sat there pondering her hair, the way it cascaded down the back of her neck and shoulders. She was toying with a pink ribbon, twisting it in her hands. He fixated on her hands. He stared for what felt like an eternity, until he looked up and realized her hands were on her desk but she had turned her head. She had been staring at him. He had been caught dead to rights, or as his father always liked to say—he had shown his ass. He felt his face flush with the rush of embarrassment until he noticed she was smiling. She simply batted her eyes and
delicately looked away. The shame went to a throbbing of his heart.

  Raif, Jed, and Abner headed home from school. They hitched a ride on a lumber wagon that let them off at the edge of the Hanson ranch. From the north fence line, for no reason at all, Raif starting running toward the main house, his books slung across his shoulder, dangling from an old belt. He felt as if his legs were those of a colt that got the hang of running and he let loose.

  He cut his way across the field, dodging the fresh pies hardening in the sun.

  Jed and Abner struggled to keep up. Jed kept holler’n to slow down and the only thing Raif would remember was Jed calling out, “Ah, Raif, you done made me step in a huge pile of shit, and me with my school shoes on.”

  Raif reached the front porch and bounded up the steps, hardly noticing that Doc Hennon’s wagon was in front. Panic jolted him as he recognized it was the doctor’s long wagon. His mother had been sick, but they didn’t think, they just didn’t think . . . He crossed silently over the threshold of the bedroom and none of the adults in the room knew he was among them. The air was thick with a sweet smell of flowers and bile, like that of fruit left to rot under a hot sun. The scent burned into his nostrils and caused his eyes to tear up. He saw his mother, her head lay canted to one side of the pillow; blood from her coughing had speckled down the side of the pillow and its misting spread down the top of the bedsheet. His father sat on a chair near her, holding her hand and whispering to her. She was delirious, talking about the cloth she needed for kitchen curtains. His father’s head dropped now and again between his knees. His hands were speckled with his wife’s clotted blood. Her eyes were formless, encased in yellowing skin that was stretched thin and run with bright blue veins that cracked in tributaries over her forehead.