by Brad Smith
“I was just out walking my property,” Sonny said, and he nodded toward the fence to the east.
“Well, this is my property,” Etta said.
He stepped closer to her and she instinctively moved back. He was wearing cologne, and the smell enveloped him. Something he would deem suitable, she guessed, for traipsing around the countryside. She glanced toward the gate to the orchard, where she’d left her tools.
“Actually, it’s your old man’s property,” he reminded her.
“The point is, it’s not yours,” she said, and she stepped sideways as she spoke, moving tentatively toward the entrance.
He gestured at the farm again. “I was just looking over my crop.”
“Yeah?” Etta said, judging the distance to the gate. “What exactly have you got planted there, Sonny?”
He shrugged. “Why—don’t you know?”
“I do. What I don’t know is what you’re trying to pull,” she said and she moved again. “You’re no farmer. And even if you were—you’re not getting this place.”
“That’ll be up to Homer,” Sonny said. He was walking with her now. “And he’s my good buddy. I was just gonna stop at the house and say hello.”
“No, you’re not. He’s sleeping.”
Sonny took the sunglasses off then. “Etta, why can’t we try and get along?”
“I’d settle for half of that,” Etta said, and she pointed her chin toward the fence line. “I’d be happy if you got along.”
He looked where she indicated, and when he did she moved quickly to the gate. When he turned back she had the hatchet in her hand.
He smiled. “Come on, Etta. There’s no need for that.”
“Just picking up my tools.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know me, Etta.”
“And I’d like to keep it that way. Now, why don’t you limp back to wherever you came from?”
He flinched when she made the reference to his leg. “Shouldn’t believe everything you hear. You’re a smart girl, I thought you’d know that.”
“It’s not what I heard. It’s what I’ve seen.”
“And what would that be?” Sonny asked. “A mentally unstable woman talking a lot of unsubstantiated shit.”
“Really? And what was Elizabeth’s motive, Sonny? Why would she lie?”
“Christ, I don’t know,” he said. “She’s fucking crazy.”
He was whining now and his whining made her less afraid. She picked up the saw and walked through the gate. “Funny—all this time I’ve been thinking that was your excuse.”
She left him standing in the orchard and headed for the house.
3
Ray stood in the mow window and watched the last half dozen of the bales come up the elevator. Pete Culpepper, on the wagon below, removed his hat and wiped the sweatband with his handkerchief, waited until the last bale disappeared into the barn, then climbed stiff-legged to the ground and unplugged the elevator.
Ray stacked the bales near the ladder drop. The hay was good, especially for a fall cutting; it hadn’t been rained on, and it was pretty clean, and it smelled the way hay should smell—sweetly green and pungent—an odor that always reminded Ray of the summers he’d spent as a kid on this very farm. The first hay bale he’d ever lifted had belonged to Pete Culpepper. Thinking back, Ray doubted if he’d managed to get the bale six inches off the ground at the time, but he’d carried it the length of the barn while his father and Pete had watched, the muscles in his thin arms screaming at him to drop the load, his pride overruling the notion.
When Ray climbed down, Pete was standing in the front stall with the gelding Fast Market, the gelding’s right front hoof between his knees. The bay mare in the next stall had her head over the top rail, watching the proceedings. There was a second broodmare, a roan, in the back stall.
The gelding was a beautiful horse, a shade off chestnut with darker brown in the mane and lower legs. He had a good head, with cheeks like a stud, and he had sharp, intelligent eyes. He wasn’t a tall horse, but he was deep in the chest and nicely muscled across the shoulders and haunches. He stood as quiet as could be while Pete examined the hoof.
“When you running him?” Ray asked.
“Claimer in a couple of weeks.”
“What’s he done?”
“Well, he won in July. Next time out, he came up with this crack in the hoof. Had to shut him down. I epoxied it a couple times, but it wouldn’t hold. I couldn’t work him, so I just let him be ’til about ten days ago. I been working him over to Granger’s since. It looks all right now, but we’ll see.”
Ray walked along the stalls, reaching in to rub the mare’s forehead as he passed. The second mare was standing hip-shot in the back corner, sleeping on her feet, her breathing slightly labored. Ray looked her over, then said, “You got a foal coming.”
“I guess I do,” Pete said tersely. He climbed out of the gelding’s stall and walked over.
“You’re not exactly doing cartwheels about it.”
“Why would I do cartwheels when my thoroughbred mare gets impregnated by a quarter-horse stud?”
“You’re kidding.”
“You know Tom Stackwood, down the side road?” Pete said. “Well, he’s got this quarter-horse stallion. Black as coal—calls him Smoky.”
“Got one eye,” Ray said, remembering.
“That’s the horse. Well, I had these two in that front field last winter. This one came in season, and I don’t know—I reckon the wind was just right or something, but that stud ran through a plank fence at the home farm and a wire fence here and jumped my mare, and now I’m gonna end up with a foal whose two halves ain’t gonna add up to nothin’.”
Their voices had awakened the mare. She stood blinking at them.
“You could’ve aborted it,” Ray said.
“No sir, I don’t believe I could’ve.”
Ray walked outside into the midday sun. The hound was sprawled on its stomach on the side porch, its jowls splayed across its front paws. The dog’s eyes opened a moment, flicked on Ray, then closed slowly, like a curtain going down.
Ray walked to the paddock, leaned his elbows there, smoking. The barn was failing fast, and the house wasn’t far behind. Three horses in the barn, a couple of mares whose running days were past and a nine-year-old gelding with a cracked hoof.
The sport of kings.
Pete came out of the barn, carrying a hackamore with a broken strap.
“How the hell you making a living off this?” Ray asked.
“Who said I was making a living?”
“Then how are you managing?”
“Well,” Pete said, and he pulled the buckle from the halter. “I got my corn to come off, and could be I’ll get a couple wins out of that gelding yet this year.”
“Could be he’ll break down next time out, too. That’s not exactly a young horse you got in there.”
“You’re a pessimistic sonofabitch for somebody who just got out of jail.” Pete showed Ray his crooked smile. “I’ll have you know I’m fixin’ to make a comeback.”
“Yeah?”
“Martin Augustine is selling out. You know the place—next concession over. There’s an auction next week—the farm, brood stock, everything.”
“Yeah?”
Pete dropped his voice to a whisper, as if someone might be listening. “He’s got a two-year-old colt, out of Canfield Dancer, and the word’s out that the colt’s damaged goods. Bowed tendon. But I know different. Jack Wilson’s been training him in that swimming pool down at Fort Erie, and he says it wasn’t never a tendon. He’s had him out on the track a couple times, and he says the animal’s as sound as a double eagle. Jack’s my old pal—Augustine owes him money he’s got no intention of paying, so Jack’s keeping this to himself.”
“He’s still not gonna go cheap, with that blood.”
“Damaged goods, Ray. You know how people are. I figure I can buy him for ten grand, maybe eight or nine if I get lucky.”
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“You’re telling me you got ten grand?”
“If I did, it’d go for taxes. But I found a realtor who’ll put up the ten against that little piece of land down front there.” He pointed toward the northeast corner of the farm. “See where the creek angles across there. Well, that’s considered a natural severance. There’s about an acre there.”
“An acre building lot is worth a hell of a lot more than ten grand,” Ray said.
“True, but it takes about three months to get it severed. The sale is next week. I’ll take the bird in the hand. Just think, Ray, I could be running a real nice three-year-old come spring. I could run him against the big boys.”
Ray smiled. “You’re still a dreamer, Pete.”
“Anybody who ain’t,” Pete said, pulling at the hackamore strap, “ain’t worth knowing.”
“How far back are you on the taxes?”
“Don’t you worry ’bout it, Ray. There’s plenty out there worse off than me.”
Ray went to speak but thought better of it. Pete gave him a short look and then walked off toward the house.
“Maybe I’ll nail that eavetrough back on the barn,” Ray called out to him.
“Go see your sister,” Pete said, still walking away. “You’ve put it off long enough.”
* * *
He steered Pete’s Ford pickup south, toward his old hometown. It took him a while to get used to the truck’s handling. There was something wrong with the steering—a bad tie-rod, maybe, or the bushings gone in the control arm—and the vehicle had a habit of a jerking to the left every now and then. It took Ray a number of miles to develop the proper touch on the steering to counteract the motion. He doubted Pete was even aware of the problem; after spending so many years atop fidgety horses, he’d probably expect a pickup truck to buck a little.
The town hadn’t changed, but when had it ever? He drove by the pickle factory on the way in and the pallet factory on the way out and not a whole lot in between. On Main Street he’d watched for familiar faces but saw no one he knew—at least no one he recognized. He couldn’t be sure that the people he saw weren’t acquaintances of old. Time and his own indifferent memory could have rendered them strangers.
It took him the better part of two hours to reach Mary’s house on the north shore of Lake Erie. The place was tucked away on a rocky cove halfway between Port Dover and Long Point. (“About as close to nowhere as you can be, and still get regular mail,” Mary liked to say.)
He hit the lakeshore road south of town and followed it west. The lake was high, pushed up against the shore by a considerable wind from the west. There were whitecaps skipping the surface like sailing ships at sea.
He found himself driving slower as he approached the house. He was not looking forward to arriving.
The yard was neatly trimmed, and the house had been painted since he’d last been there. There was a white Chrysler in the driveway, in front of the open garage. He parked alongside and sat there for a while. Before he got out, he looked at himself in the mirror.
He went in without knocking. Mary was in the kitchen, rolling pastry dough on the counter, a cigarette hanging from her lip, the long ash of which seemed in imminent danger of becoming part of the dough. She looked at him and smiled, and the act of smiling caused the ash to drop.
“How are you, Mary?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m winning, but I’m holding my own,” his aunt said. She looked him over, taking inventory as he had himself minutes before. “It’s good to see you, boy.”
Elizabeth was sitting on a rock outcropping over the short bluff that overlooked the bay. Her hair was loose, whipping in the breeze, cutting across her eyes, catching in her mouth. When she saw him walking across the lawn, she smiled slowly and then looked away, back over the water.
“Hey, Sis.”
She made no reply, just maintained the smile. He sat down beside her; when she didn’t look at him he followed her gaze out over the lake.
“How’re you doing?” he asked.
She reached for his hand, never turning her head. Her fingers in his palm were soft. After a moment he took his free hand and moved the hair away from her face. Finally, she looked at him.
“You know the Bonneville is out there,” she said, and she pointed directly. “In eighty-five feet of water. She went down in a storm in 1847. Ninety people on board, all lost. Europeans mostly—Germans, Poles, headed for the West. Homesteaders.”
Ray took a cigarette from his pocket, lit it one-handed, keeping her fingers in his palm. She smelled of mint, of evergreen.
“I think about them,” she was saying. “It must be so peaceful there on the ship, their belongings all around them. Their families. Must be comforting, permanent. Safe.” Her voice dropped. “They’re talking of salvaging the ship, you know. For the coins, the artifacts. Canada and the States are arguing over ownership. I hope they argue forever. They should leave those people alone.”
“Those people were fish food a long time ago, Sis.”
Later, in the kitchen, Ray had a cup of coffee and a slice of pie, which did not, he noted, taste of cigarette ash. Mary sat across from him, flour in her hair, on her glasses.
“Jesus, Mary,” Ray said. “What do you do out here all day long?”
“What does anybody do?” she replied. “I cook, I clean. I watch bad soap operas and smoke too much. Tuesdays, I play bingo. Fridays, I buy groceries and go to the legion for a beer or two. Once in a blue moon I go to the Savoy on a Saturday night and listen to the country-and-western band.”
“You’ll be taking up square dancing next.”
“My point is, what I do is not any more or less significant than what anybody else does.”
Ray turned toward the lake. “And Elizabeth?”
“She sits out there nearly every day. I kept waiting for her to get stronger, I kept looking for signs that she was getting better. She’s not getting better, Ray. She hasn’t been off the property for months.”
“What’s the doctor say?”
“Which one? They came and went, and they all said the same thing. There’s no response, and without response, there’s no treatment. They were rather … impatient with her.”
Ray finished the pie, pushed back from the table, coffee cup in hand. She watched him quietly.
“Well, I guess I can understand that,” he said. “I guess it’s natural to just shut down. Maybe I’d be the same way.”
“Bullshit.” Mary got up, took the plate from the table, and put it in the sink. “Come with me.”
They went into the sunroom. Elizabeth’s paints were there. There was a watercolor on the easel, a blue-green portrait of the lake, the sky above cloudless, a washed-out blue. There were other paintings scattered about the room, leaning against the walls, sprawled on the floor, propped in corners. All were of the same scene; only the temperament of lake and sky distinguished one painting from another.
Ray walked around the room, examining each painting. Mary stood by the bay window, looking out to where Elizabeth sat on the bluff.
“She’s your sister, Ray, and I know you love her. We know where you’ve spent the past two years.” She turned to him. “But do yourself a favor; don’t try to understand why she is the way she is. Don’t burden yourself with that on top of everything else.”
* * *
An hour later Ray was drinking rye at the bar of the old Queens Hotel in town and talking to Bonnie, who was tending bar and had been tending bar when Ray used to drink there as a teenager. Her hair was blonder now and still in a rigid bouffant, as if she’d found a look she liked in 1969 and never strayed from it.
“Where the hell you been, Ray?”
“Here and there. You know.”
“I thought I heard you were in jail.”
“You know, I seem to recall something like that in my recent past.”
“What was you in for?”
Ray emptied his glass, gestured for another as he considered the question. “I
guess the judge was of the opinion that I didn’t play well with others.”
He was half in the bag when Steve Allman walked in, wearing work boots and coveralls and a Boot Hill Saloon cap. He ordered a draft and looked down the bar.
“Ray,” he said. “When’d you get out?”
“Don’t ask,” Bonnie said. “He’s pretty vague on the whole thing.”
Steve brought his beer over, ordered another rye for Ray, who was to the point where he didn’t need another rye.
“Good to see you,” Steve said.
“Thanks for the drink. How you been?”
“Can’t complain,” Steve said in a voice that said he could. Ray decided to deflect the opportunity. He’d known Steve and his family for years, had worked one summer for Steve’s father, combining oats and wheat, baling the straw afterward. Their farm was just a concession over from Pete Culpepper’s, and Pete and Steve’s father were old euchre buddies.
“How’s your old man?”
“Well, he just retired.”
“Really?” Ray paused to take a drink. “So you’re running the farm?”
“Nope, he sold the farm. Never said a damn word to me. Came home one night and announced he sold it off. Machinery, livestock, everything.”
“Doesn’t sound like Ken.”
“He sold it to Sonny Stanton.”
Ray had the glass to his lips; he hesitated and then took a sip.
“Truth is, I been hoping you’d show up,” Steve said then. “And not just me. Sonny’s up to something.”
Ray put the whiskey on the bar. “Yeah, well, Sonny’s always up to something. If it wasn’t for fucking up, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.”
“He’s set on buying up that whole concession; he’s got better than half of it already.”
“What’s he want with it?”
“He’s talking about building a huge co-op. Telling everybody how they’re not getting fair price for their grain. Figures on growing seed corn, soybeans—says he’s gonna put in dryers and enough storage to hold everybody’s yield until the price is right.”
Ray looked across the bar, to where Bonnie stood under her platinum helmet of hair. “Since when does Sonny give a damn about the farmers, or anything else?”