The Jump-Off Creek

by Molly Gloss

  “Horsefaced old bitch,” he said running the words together loud and wet. “Stupid old woman.” It was a long-standing comfort. He had used to go out in the corn or down along the rock road below the house when he was twelve years old, fourteen, and swear out loud at his mother. Old bitch cunt slut. Swearing until he had quit crying. The last occasion for it, he had backed one of his sisters up against the barn wall in the shadows under the hay rick and squeezed the small buds of her breasts in both his hands. He remembered suddenly, the look that had come into her face. Her eyes had gone so wide-open that the whites had showed all the way around. He was too old to be whipped by that time, but his mother’s husband had whipped him for it anyway, and afterward he had gone down the road, swearing out loud, and never had gone back. Thinking of that old humbling, now, a heat began to crawl in his face, making the pimply skin itch. “You damn whore!” he shouted out, and got a cold solace from the echo of it in the black trees.

  11

  A south wind came up from the Grande Ronde overnight and pushed the clouds up billowy and white. The sky broke clean and pale blue behind them. In the sunlight, the air was watery, dazzling. Lydia did a quick washing and laid the clothes, the milk rags, the towels out on the brush fence where they steamed faintly and shivered against the hedge whenever the wind gusted. The water after the washing was fawn-colored, tepid, but she wrung a clean rag in it and did a meager washup herself, standing on the little braid-rug barefoot in her shift. The washrag felt cold, sandy. She took long fast swipes, only delaying at her feet, poking scrupulously at the black filth between her toes.

  Afterward, she took the bucksaw and the mattock and froe and went up the Jump-Off Creek, under the trees, where she was about done bucking and making shingles off a windfallen cedar.

  She changed off, sawing through a butt and then splitting it, piling the shingles on a tarp and dragging the hillock behind her back to the house before she bucked the next one. The sawing was tedious, trying. There was a tooth out near the draw end of the saw and when she pulled it back too far, it hung up. But she drove the froe neatly enough, with the blunt end of the mattock, a few blows down through the butt of the log, the shingles peeling off in clean reddish slabs, arm-long, thick as her wrist. It was cold in the shade. She kept the coat buttoned up. Her breath shot out white in a noisy burst whenever the saw hung up.

  The roof was low but she could not clamber up on it ladderless, hauling the long shakes and the nails, the hammer. When she had brought the splitting to an end, she sawed down a thin yellow pine tree and trimmed it and made out of it a homely ladder with four rungs. It was heavy, wide-legged. She horsed it up against the eave of the house and climbed up on it with the shakes pinched under an arm two or three at a time. She piled the shakes up slowly in long, neat ranks below the crown, going down the ladder and up repeatedly. She had to pull her big skirt around out of the way, gather some of it up in the belt, as it kept hanging on the broken shakes and on the nubbin ends of the ladder.

  The nails went up with her last, in the pockets of Lars’s coat, and she laid the shakes from the eave edges, nailing them down on the old rotten roof. The roof was grown over with club moss, the nails went in softly, without getting a hold. She would need to cut long poles afterward and tie them down at either end, across the shakes.

  When she had about finished one pitch up to the crown, she heard a calf bawl faintly and saw Mr. Whiteaker and his dog coming across the long clearing from the North Fork of the Meacham. There was a skinny piebald calf straddled wet across the neck of his horse, on the front of his saddle. It was crying thinly and steadily as he came.

  She climbed down from the roof, with the front of the coat swinging heavily, full of nails. She pulled the dress loose from the belt and smoothed it, standing in front of the house waiting as he came up in the yard.

  “The mother was a CrossTie,” he said, without quite looking at her. “So this here is yours.”

  She stepped up to him and reached to take the slimy calf, staggering a moment beneath the weight and then stiffening to tote it inside the house. She laid it down on the mud and got a clean rag and began to towel off the sticky wet membranes. The man came and stood in the doorway behind her.

  “Is the cow dead then?” she said, looking around at him.

  “Yes, ma’am. I figured if you had a sugar tit you could maybe nurse him along. We do that if we’ve got the time. Or I didn’t know but what one of your goats might let him suckle.”

  She nodded without saying anything. Then she said, looking at him again, “Do you know what it was that killed the cow, Mr. Whiteaker?” She had in mind the carcass of that poor cow, baited with poison, but he said, “I guess maybe the calf was born crosswise. It was already born when I came on it. The cow was down and she died on me before I could get her up.” He was standing in the doorway, turning his hat in both hands, not leaning against the jamb. His head and shoulders looked hunched under the low ceiling. With the light behind him she couldn’t see his face, it was a featureless shadow.

  She nodded again. She looked away from him, around to the calf, but she felt the man standing in the door, not making a move to go.

  “You’ve got a lot done,” he said after a while. He might have meant the stiff new fence, the roof, the cleared brush. But he was standing inside the door of the house, where there was little enough done, most all of her goods still not put away, standing in one pile under the damp tarp. The quilts had been pulled up smooth on the bare frame of the bed, but there were the traps set out under the bed and behind the stove, and a big rat dead in one, along the wall next to the door. So she made a little indifferent sound, without looking toward him. She kept at the calf, wiping the mucus out of its eyes, ears, lifting it by the tail to stand knob-kneed and unsteady. Behind her the man’s shadow moved, she felt the light come in across her back. She stood, gathering up her damp, splintery skirts, and went out after him. She put her hand up flat above her eyes to shade against the thin, bright sunlight.

  “Was it you who left the pie?” she asked him, before he had quite put his boot to the stirrup.

  He turned and looked at her, ducking his chin. “Yes.”

  She had stood under the trees the day before and watched him come up to her house, carrying the parcel wrapped in newspaper and a towel, balanced across the pommel of the saddle. Down the long, cleared valley, when he had hallooed the house, the sound had seemed a faint wordless piping. He had come slowly on afterward and sat a moment on the horse looking at the crooked line of the new brush fence going up the hill behind the house. Then he had gone around past the shut-up window to the door and put his parcel down on a stump, not getting off the horse to do it, just leaning over from the saddle and leaving the towel folded around it so it sat on the stump in a lumpish bundle. She did not know why she had stayed there at the high end of the creek, in the cold damp shadow beneath the trees, not going down to speak to him, just standing holding the bucksaw down in her hands and watching him silently.

  “Wait,” she said, murmuring. “I’ll bring you the tin.” She went in and found it and brought it out to him with his piece of clean towel folded up inside it. He put his hat on his head, settling it carefully, and took the plate from her with both hands.

  “It was a very good pie,” she said, and smiled a little. “I am not able to make a decent one myself, I have a heavy hand with the rolling pin.”

  He ducked his chin again. He turned the plate in his hands. Then he said, looking just past her, “When I was a kid I worked as a cook’s monkey over in Idaho. The cook was named Sweet. He took the time to teach me the trade. He said he’d seen years when a good cowboy couldn’t buy himself a job, but a good cook could pretty much always find work. He was right about that. I guess I spent as many summers cooking as I ever did cowboying. It’s stood me and Blue through a few lean times.”

  She nodded, surprised. Her notion of him felt somewhat undone. “You are lucky, there, Mr. Whiteaker.”

  He shifted
his weight as if he might leave, but then he stood where he was. “We’ve got nine cows of yours,” he said suddenly. “If you’ve got Angell’s branding iron from him, or one of your own, we’d get your calves done along with ours. We’ll be starting up pretty soon.”

  She had watched the branding of a single heifer calf as she had stood on the railroad platform beside the stockyards in North Platte, Nebraska. That was her experience of it. It was not clear, from what Mr. Whiteaker had said, if he meant to do it for her, or show her how it was done.

  “I have got the CrossTie brand from the real estate man,” she said. “I guess it would be good to keep the same.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded and looked at him stoutly. “For fairness sake and for my own instruction, I expect you will let me lend a hand. I am quick to learn, and somewhat stronger than I appear.”

  He dropped his head, hunting for something in the mud. “We have worked a few branding crews with a woman holding down an end,” he said slowly. “On a small outfit it’s usual for the man’s wife to pitch in, or his daughters if he has them.”

  She nodded a second time. “I am used to doing that myself,” she said, smiling slightly.

  He pinched the pie tin in his fingers, turning it. Then he put it inside his kit bag. While he was fiddling with the tie-downs she said, without asking a question of him, “I have not ridden out at all, to get in my calves.”

  He looked at her sidelong. After a while he said, “Claud didn’t get around to a count, or a branding either, last year, and he would’ve lost a few to weather since then. We’ve been over this ground pretty well ourselves. These nine calves might be all there is out of CrossTie cows.”

  She had half expected it. She tightened up her mouth but in a moment let it out, smiling grimly. “I suppose I had better grow squashes then, if I’m not to starve.”

  Mr. Whiteaker gave her a cautious look. “You know where the Walker Ranch is?”

  “No.”

  “Mike Walker has got a place down near the Oberfield Road, a wife and a child or two, a man working summers usually. I don’t know if you’re wanting to sell milk or not, and I don’t guess he’s got any more money than the rest of us, but you might be able to swap him something. I expect his wife would be glad of some milk, and glad to know another woman is up here.”

  “Thank you. I will go over there when I can.”

  “If you can get the way back to the Oberfield Road, you’ll find it all right, it sits on the east end almost to the Ruckel Junction.”

  “Thank you.”

  He lifted his shoulders. He put his boot in the stirrup and raised himself up on the horse in that clumsy-looking way, maneuvering his wide leather chaps. She stood below him, looking up, still holding one hand over her eyes.

  “You’ve made me think of it, Mr. Whiteaker. Please take some milk with you.” She went in the house again. She had left the pans of milk cooling on top of the wooden kitchen box and on the little table. At the smell of the milk poured out into the mason jar, the orphaned calf bawled tiredly.

  She went out again and held the jar up to him. His face had gone bright-colored. She was slow figuring out what he thought, then she reddened a little too.

  “For the pie,” she said. “And the calf.”

  He ducked his chin and finally took the jar from her. “I haven’t had any in a while,” he said, not looking at her. “I make a pretty good bread pudding when I’ve got the milk for it.”

  “Please come and get some whenever you like.” She said this last with some stiffness, a formal sound. He had annoyed her, believing he might be expected to pay.

  She stood with her arms folded on her chest. “Well. Goodbye, Mr. Whiteaker.”

  He looked away. He said, low, “If you need anything, we’re not far off.” Then he turned his horse out of the yard. She stood and watched him. He looked back once, when he had got almost to the edge of the trees. She lifted one hand. He returned her wave silently, in a short clumsy motion, holding on to the milk jar and the reins with the other hand.

  12

  14 April (Sunday) It has been cold and no rain, the puddles frozen at Night. I have leveled the floor in here somewhat with a spade and strewn it with saw chips, hope it will dry out now, and let me have a place to stand not in mud. Also sewed up a Ticking and filled it with boughs & green tips blown down on the wind, and the smell of the wood & the boughs is sweet and clean. Otherwise did not work today, I don’t know if from Devoutness or Dullness. Had a bath as well as I could, the water hot anyway and clean but for the twigs that come down on the creek while the pail fills. Made a poor job of my hair singlehanded standing in the Tub and pouring water over from a pan, but it was done After a Fashion. Also read the nwsppr that was left behind with Mr Whiteaker’s dried apple pie, tho the news was of last Winter’s wheat prices, and wrote a letter tho I know it won’t be posted soon. And so had a Day of Rest. My hair has not dried entirely, I hope it will not freeze overnight.

  13

  A woman rode out of the trees and stopped at the top of the hill to let down the fence rails. Blue saw her before Tim did.

  “Look,” he said.

  Tim was sitting on the ground behind the calf, pulling back on the top leg with both hands, pushing the bottom leg the other way with the hook of his boot. He looked at his horse first, standing on braced legs holding the rope tight that kept the calf’s forelegs from too much squirming. Then he looked over at the dogs facing off the anxious cow, holding her frozen by the straight stare of their yellow eyes.

  “No. Up there.”

  Tim looked up the hill. Then he dropped his look to the calf. “Do it,” he said. “I’m getting tired of holding him.”

  Blue pulled down the calf’s sac until it was tight, slit the end of it with his knife, pulled out the testicles one at a time and cut them from the cord. Then he turned a little, lobbing the testicles toward the clean can. For a moment he stood up straight. He cast a sidelong glance toward the woman. She was coming down across the grass slowly on a big black mule.

  “Come on,” Tim said. He was still sitting, holding the calf.

  Blue bent down for the iron. The end of it was pink and he dragged it across the grass a couple of times to cool it. Then he bent over the calf’s hip and pressed the iron against the hair. The calf bawled, holding a steady drawn-out note as long as the iron touched it. Tim let go the calf after that and it stood wobbly, slinging its head, looking around. Blue waved his arms. “Yo, go on,” he said, and the calf staggered off along the slope toward the cow.

  The woman had come up in the yard by then. She sat very straight on the mule, watching them solemnly. She had a wide mouth and she held it in a flat, firm way. Blue’s own grandmother had had a look like that. He thought it wasn’t stubbornness, exactly, but a sort of staunchness.

  “Mrs. Sanderson,” Tim said. He shifted his feet, turning side-on to her without seeming to know he was doing it. Blue saw he was gathering himself for a stiff little introduction. “Mrs. Sanderson, this is Blue Odell,” with a slight flapping of his hand in Blue’s direction.

  “How do you do, Mr. Odell.” She nodded once, appraising him quickly under cover of the little movement of her head.

  He nodded too, and smiled slowly. “Hello, Mrs. Sanderson,” he said.

  “I have brought the branding iron,” she said after a moment, looking at Tim again.

  “Well good,” he said. He looked over at Blue and then back at her. “We just started,” he said, as if there was a point in that, though Blue didn’t see one.

  The woman made a small adjustment of her position, maybe she sat up straighter. She had coffee-colored hair tied up in a small knot at the back of her neck and then the loose fuzz of it clamped down under a limp man’s hat. The coat she had on was a man’s too, with the greasy cuffs turned back once or twice. She got down abruptly from the mule. Her big plaid skirt was tucked up in some way to ride astride, but she got that undone with a little tug on it and then she pull
ed a branding iron out from under the fender of the saddle. It was wrapped up in an oily rag against rust. She unwrapped it deliberately and stood silent, waiting, with her hands holding the CrossTie brand. She was tall, her shape inside the big coat all long bones, like a boy not done filling out yet.

  “We could use a front-end man,” Blue said, after he’d waited long enough for Tim to say something.

  Tim looked over at his horse, then down at his boots. “Yeah,” he said. He got up on the bay, signed to the dogs, started out to the little knots of cattle. They eddied away from him gently as he walked his horse among them.

  Blue stood not very near the woman, both of them watching Tim and the dogs. She didn’t ask him anything. In a while he glanced toward her. He said, “We been using the horse for the front end, but we mess up a lot of brands with the calf flopping around. The work goes better if we’ve got somebody to put a knee on the neck and hold the calf real flat so it can’t squirm.”

  She cast him a sidelong look. Then she said in a formal way, with her eyes fixed on the calf Tim was bringing down, “Thank you, Mr. Odell.”

  Tim let the dogs do the hard work, cutting a calf away from its mother, and then he came in and dropped a rope on it, towing it bawling behind him while the dogs held off the cow. When he swung down and walked out along the taut rope to the calf, the woman went out quickly too, fumbling clumsily to get a hold on the forelegs as Tim took hold of the tail and a rear leg. The calf twisted as it flopped onto its side, the front end landing hard and late. Tim didn’t look at her, didn’t say anything. He got around behind the calf as he had done before, sitting pulling apart the hind legs. The woman pressed a knee onto the calf’s neck and then wriggled around some, pursing her mouth, getting her other knee and both hands to hold the two front legs still. When Blue set the brand against the hip, the calf bellowed softly, straining his eyes with fear.