“Please, Hank,” the bartender said. “They’re gonna get me in trouble …” His voice trailed off and his eyes widened. A man had come through the door. He stood there, blinking the bright sun out of his eyes. Jeff Anderson felt his heart start to pump heavily, slowly, high in his chest. “Morning, Mr. Svitac,” the bartender mumbled.
Rudy Svitac stood in the doorway, a thick dull man with black hair and brows that met across the bridge of his nose and a forehead that sloped. Jeff saw the rusty suit the man wore on Sundays, the suit that had faint soil stains on the knees because this man could not leave the soil alone, even on Sundays. He had to kneel down and feel the soil with his fingers, feeling the warmth and the life of it; for the soil was his book and his life and it was the only thing he understood completely and perhaps the only thing that understood him. He looked at Jeff, not at Hank Fetterman. “Is no good,” Rudy Svitac said. “My son says I must talk to Billy Lang. I talk to Billy Lang, but he does nothing. Is no good.”
A thick silence settled in the room and the two cowboys who had been scuffling quit it now and stood there looking at the farmer. Hank Fetterman said, “Say what’s on your mind, Svitac.”
“You broke my fence,” Rudy Svitac said. “You drive your cows in my corn and spoil my crop. All winter I wait to plant my crop and now is grow fine and you drive your cows in.”
“Maybe you’re mistaken, Svitac,” Hank Fetterman said.
“My boy says is for judge to decide,” Rudy Svitac said. “My boy tell me to go to Billy Lang and he will make a paper and judge will decide. My boy says is fair. Is America.” Rudy Svitac stared unblinkingly. He shook his head slowly. “Is not so. I want my money. You broke my fence.”
“You’re a liar, Svitac,” Hank Fetterman said. He moved away from the bar, slowly. He looked steadily at Jeff Anderson, then he glanced across the street toward the marshal’s office. The door was still closed, the shade still drawn. Hank Fetterman smiled. He walked forward and gripped Rudy Svitac by the shirtfront. For a moment he held the man that way, pulling him close, then he shoved, and Rudy Svitac stumbled backward, out through the door, and his heel caught on a loose board in the sidewalk. He fell hard and for a long time he lay there, his dull, steady eyes staring at Jeff Anderson; then he turned and pushed himself up and he stood there looking at the dust on his old suit. He dropped his head and looked at the dust and he reached with his fingers and touched it. One of Hank Fetterman’s cowboys started to laugh.
Across the street Jeff Anderson saw the blind on the window of the marshal’s office move aside and then drop back into place, and immediately the door opened and Billy Lang was hurrying across the street. He came directly to Rudy Svitac and put his hand on Svitac’s arm and jerked him around. “What’s going on here?” Billy Lang demanded.
“Svitac came in looking for trouble,” Hank Fetterman said. “I threw him out.” Hank was standing in the doorway, directly alongside Jeff. For a brief moment Hank Fetterman’s amber eyes met Jeff’s gaze and Jeff saw the challenge. If you don’t like it, do something about it, Hank Fetterman was saying. I want to know how you stand in this thing and I want to know now.
There was a dryness in Jeff Anderson’s mouth. He had backed Hank Fetterman down before; he could do it again. But for what? One hundred and fifty dollars a month and a chance to get killed? Jeff had had fifteen years of that. A man had a right to live his own life. He looked up toward the church and the doors were just opening and people were coming out to stand on the porch, a small block of humanity suddenly aware of trouble. Jeff saw his wife Elaine, and he knew her hand was at her throat, twisting the fabric of her dress the way she did. He thought of the little ranch and of the things he and Elaine had planned for the fixture, and then he looked at Billy Lang and he knew Billy wasn’t going to buck Hank Fetterman. So Jeff could make a stand, and it would be his own stand and he would be right back into it again just the way he had been for fifteen years. There was a thick line of perspiration on Jeff’s upper lip. “That’s the way it was, Billy,” Jeff said.
He saw the quick smile cross Hank Fetterman’s face, the dull acceptance and relief in Billy Lang’s eyes. “Get out of town, Svitac,” Billy Lang said. “I’m tired of your troublemaking. If Hank’s cows got in your corn, it was an accident.”
“Is no accident,” Rudy Svitac said stubbornly. “Is for judge to decide. My son says—”
“It was an accident,” Billy Lang said. “Make your fences stronger.” He didn’t look at Jeff. He glanced at Hank Fetterman and made his final capitulation. “Sorry it happened, Hank.”
For a long moment Rudy Svitac stared at Billy Lang, at the star on Billy’s vest, remembering that this star somehow had a connection with the stars in the flag. His son Anton had explained it, saying that Jeff Anderson said it was so, so it must be so. But it wasn’t so. Hank Fetterman wasn’t in jail. They weren’t going to do anything about the ruined corn. The skin wrinkled between Rudy Svitac’s eyes, and there was perspiration on his face and his lips moved thickly but no sound came out. He could not understand. Thirteen years he had lived in this America, but still he could not understand. His son had tried to tell him the things they taught in the schools and the things Jeff Anderson said were so; but Rudy had his soil to work and his crops to plant, and when a man’s back was tired his head did not work so good. Rudy Svitac knew only that if the jimson weed grew in the potato patch, you cut it out. And the wild morning-glory must be pulled out by the roots. No one came to do these things for a man. A man did these chores himself. He turned and walked solidly up the street toward where he had left his spring wagon by the church.
His wife Mary was there, a thick, tired woman who never smiled nor ever complained, and watching them, Jeff saw Anton, their son, a boy of twelve with an old man’s face, a boy who had always believed every word Jeff Anderson said. Jeff saw young Anton looking down the street toward him, and he remembered the boy’s serious brown eyes and the thick, black hair that always stood out above his ears and lay rebelliously far down his neck. He remembered the hundred times he had talked to young Anton, patiently explaining things so Anton would understand, learning his own beliefs from the process of explaining them in simple words. And Anton would listen and then repeat to his parents in Bohemian, telling them this was so because Jeff Anderson said it was so. A bright boy with an unlimited belief in the future, in a household where there was no future. At times it seemed to Jeff almost as if God had looked upon Rudy and Mary Svitac and wanted to compensate in some way, so he had given them Anton.
Jeff saw Rudy reaching into the bed of the wagon. He saw Mary protest once; then Mary stood there, resigned, and now the boy had his father’s arm and there was a brief struggle. The father shook the boy off, and now Rudy had a rifle and he was coming back down the street, walking slowly, down the middle of the street, the rifle in the crook of his arm.
Billy Lang moved. He met Rudy halfway, and he held out his hand. Jeff saw Rudy hesitate, take two more steps; and now Billy was saying something and Rudy dropped his head and let his chin lie on his chest. The boy came running up, and he took the rifle out of his father’s hand and the crowd in front of the saloon expelled its breath. Jeff felt the triumph come into Hank Fetterman. He didn’t need to look at the man. He could feel it.
The slow, wicked anger was inside Hank Fetterman, goaded by his ambition, his sense of power, and the catlike eagerness was in his eyes. “No Bohunk tells lies about me and gets away with it,” he murmured. “No Bohunk comes after me with a gun and gets a second chance.” His hand dropped and rested on the butt of his holstered six-shooter, and then the thumb of his left hand touched Jeff Anderson’s arm. “Have a drink with me, Jeff?”
Jeff saw Elaine standing in front of the church, and he could feel her anxiety reaching through the hot, troubled air. And he saw the boy there in the street, the gun in his hands, his eyes, bewildered, searching Jeff Anderson’s face. “I reckon I won’t have time, Hank,” Jeff said. He walked up the street, and now th
e feeling of being two people was strong in him, and there was a responsibility to Billy Lang that he couldn’t deny. He had talked Billy into taking this job. It was a lonely job, and there was never a lonelier time than when a man was by himself in the middle of the street. He came close to Billy and he said, “Look, Billy, if you can take a gun away from one man, you can take a gun away from another.”
Billy looked at him. Billy’s hands were shaking, and there was sweat on his face. “A two-year-old kid could have taken that gun away from Rudy, and you know it,” he said. He reached up swiftly and unpinned the badge from his vest. He handed it across. “You want it?”
Jeff looked at that familiar piece of metal, and he could feel the boy’s eyes on him; and then he looked up and he saw Elaine there on the church porch, and he thought of his own dreams and of the plans he and Elaine had made for the future. “No, Billy,” he said. “I don’t want it.”
“Then let it lay there,” Billy Lang said. He dropped the badge into the dust of the street and hurried off, a man who had met defeat and accepted it, a man who could now go back to the clothing store and sell shirts and suits and overalls because that was the job he could do best. There was no indignity in Billy Lang’s defeat. He had taken a role that he wasn’t equipped to handle, and he was admitting it.
The boy said, “Mr. Jeff, I don’t understand. You told me once—”
“We’ll talk about it later, Anton,” Jeff said. “Tell your dad to go home.” He walked swiftly toward Elaine, swallowing against the sourness in his throat.
They drove out of town, Jeff and Elaine Anderson, toward their own home and their own life; and now the full heat of the day lay on the yellow slopes, and the dry air crackled with the smell of dust and the cured grass, and the leather seat of the buggy was hot to the touch. A mile out of town Jeff stopped in the shade of a sycamore, and put up the top. He moved with dull efficiency, pausing momentarily to glance up as Hank Fetterman and his two riders passed on their way back to the ranch. He got back into the buggy and unwrapped the lines from the whipstock, and Elaine said, “If there’s anything you want to say, Jeff …”
How could he say it? He couldn’t, for the thing that was most in his mind had nothing to do with the matter at hand, and yet it had everything to do with it and it couldn’t be explained. For he was thinking not of Hank Fetterman nor of Rudy Svitac, but of a colored lithograph, a town promotion picture that had once hung on every wall in this town. It showed wide tree-lined streets, a tremendous townhouse with a flag half as large as the building flying from a mast, and lesser pennants, all mammoth, rippling from every building. Tiny men in cutaway coats and top hats leisurely strolled the avenues, and high-wheeled bicycles rolled elegantly past gleaming black victorias on the street of exclusive shops, while three sleek trains chuffed impatiently at the station. The railroad had put on a large land promotion around here when the road was first built. They had offered excursion trips free so that people could see the charms of New Canaan. They had handed out these lithos of the proposed town by the bushel. For a while New Canaan bustled with activity, and men bought town lots staked out in buffalo grass. And then the bubble burst, and New Canaan settled back to what it was before—a place called Alkali at the edge of open cattle range. And young Anton Svitac had come to see Marshal Jeff Anderson for the first time and he had come about that picture.
Jeff remembered how the boy had looked that day, no more than six years old, his eyes too large for his old-man’s face, his voice a mirror of the seriousness of thought that was so much a part of him. He had come to Jeff Anderson because Jeff Anderson was authority, and already young Anton had learned that in America authority was for everyone. “My father and mother do not understand,” he said. “They do not speak English.” He unrolled the lithograph and put his finger on it, and then indicated the town of Alkali with a spread hand. “Is not the same,” he said. “Is not so.”
There were dreams in that boy’s eyes, and they were about to be snuffed out; and Jeff Anderson didn’t want it to happen. “Sure it’s so, Anton,” he heard himself saying. “It’s not what it is today, it’s what’s going to be tomorrow, see?” He remembered the trouble he had with the words, and then it was all there and he was telling it to Anton, telling it so this boy could go home and tell it to a work-bent man and a tired woman. “It’s like America, see? Some of the things aren’t right where you can touch them. Maybe some of the things you see are ugly. But the picture is always there to look at, and you keep thinking about the picture, and you keep working and making things better all the time, see? America isn’t something you cut off like a piece of cake and say ‘there it is.’ You keep on looking ahead to what it’s going to be, and you keep working hard for it all the time, and you keep right on knowing it’s going to be good because you’ve got the picture there to look at. You never stop working and say, ‘Now the job is done,’ because it never is. You see that, Anton?”
The boy hadn’t smiled. This was a big thing and a boy didn’t smile about big things. He rolled the lithograph carefully. “I see,” he said. “Is good. I will tell my father. We will keep the picture.”
Those were Jeff Anderson’s thoughts, and how could he tell them, even to Elaine; for they had so little to do with the matter at hand and yet they had everything to do with it.
And Elaine, looking at her husband now, respected his silence. She remembered the three long years she was engaged to this man before they were married, years in which she had come to know him so well because she loved him so well. She knew him even better now. He was a man who was born to handle trouble, and a piece of tin on his vest or a wife at his side couldn’t change the man he was born to be. She knew that and she didn’t want to change him, but a woman couldn’t help being what she was either and a woman could be afraid, especially at a time like this when there was so much ahead. She wanted to help him. “Maybe the Svitacs would be better off some place else,” she said. “They never have made the place pay.”
And that was exactly the same argument he had used on himself; but now, hearing it put into words, he didn’t like the sound of it and he wanted to argue back. His voice was rough. “I reckon they look on it as home,” he said. “The boy was born there. I reckon it sort of ties you to a place if your first one is born there.”
She closed her eyes tightly, knowing that she was no longer one person but three, knowing the past was gone and the future would always be ahead, and it was her job to help secure that future as much as it was Jeff’s job. She opened her eyes and looked at her husband, still afraid, for that was her way; but somehow prouder and older now. She folded her hands in her lap and the nervousness was gone. “I suppose we’ll feel that way too, Jeff,” she said. “It will always be our town after our baby is born here. I talked to the doctor yesterday—”
He felt the hard knot in the pit of his stomach. Then the coldness ran up his spine, and it was surprise and fear and a great swelling pride; and the feeling crawled up his neck, and every hair on his head was an individual hair, and the hard lump was in his throat. He moved on the seat, suddenly concerned for her comfort. “You feel all right, honey? Is there anything I can do?”
She didn’t laugh at him any more than Anton had laughed at him that day in the office. She reached over and put her hand on his hand, and she smiled. As they drove down the lane the great pride was inside him, swelling against him until he felt that the seat of the buggy was no longer large enough to contain him. He helped her out of the buggy, his motions exaggerated in their kindness; and he took her arm and helped her up the front steps.
The coolness of the night still lingered in the little ranch house, for she had left the shades drawn; and now she went to the west windows and lifted the shades slightly, and she could see down the lane and across the small calf pasture where a thin drift of dust from their buggy wheels still lingered. There was a loneliness to Sunday after church, a stillness on the ranch. She glanced toward the barn, and Jeff was unharnessing the mare an
d turning her into the corral, his back broad, his movements deliberate; and she saw him stand for a moment and look down the creek toward where Rudy Svitac’s place cornered on Hank Fetterman’s huge, unfenced range.
He came into the house later, into the cool living room, and he sat down in his big chair with a gusty sigh, and pulled off his boots and stretched his legs. “Good to be home,” he said. “Good to have nothing to do.” He raised his eyes to meet hers and they both knew he was lying. There was always something to do.
The moment he was sure, she knew it was easier for him, but he still had to be positive that she understood that now it was different. Once he made this move there would be no turning back. She had to see that. An hour ago the town had been a town, nothing more; and if certain merchants felt business would be better with Hank Fetterman running things, that was their business; and if Billy Lang wanted to go along with that thinking or go back to the clothing store, that was his business. Jeff Anderson hadn’t needed the town. It was a place to shop and nothing more, and a man could shop as well with Hank Fetterman running things as he could with Jeff Anderson running things. But now, suddenly, that had changed, and there was tomorrow to think about, and it was exactly as he had explained it to Anton. Now, one day soon, Jeff Anderson might be explaining the same things to his own son; and a man had to show his son that he believed what he said, for if he didn’t, there was nothing left. “I was wrong about Billy Lang,” Jeff Anderson said. “He’s not going to stand up to Hank Fetterman.”
She looked into his eyes and saw the deep seriousness and knew his every thought, and in this moment they were closer than they had ever been before; and she remembered thinking so many times of men and women who had been married for fifty years or more and of how they always looked alike. She said, “I have some curtains I promised Mary Svitac. Will you take them to her when you go?”
She didn’t trust herself to say more, and she didn’t give him a lingering embrace as a woman might who was watching her man go off to danger; but she pretended to be busy and turned her head so that his lips just brushed her temple, and it was as casual as if he were only going to his regular day’s work. “And thank her for the pickles,” she said.
A Century of Great Western Stories Page 16