Ground Money

by Rex Burns

  Under the applause, Wager moved closer to the gate that swung open to let John back into the dark at the edge of the brightly lit arena. He tried to push close enough to reach the man, but waiting contestants crowded in, and Wager felt a hand tap his shoulder. He turned to see a politely smiling face. “Sorry, sir, contestants only back here. You can see everything real good from the seats up there.”

  “Thanks.”

  John’s number disappeared behind a wall of shifting cowboy shirts and hats, and a few moments later Wager saw him talking with James, his hands describing the ride. James grinned at something, and the two laughed, their voices unheard beneath the clamor of amplified music and the steady voice of the announcer describing the current contest. John pulled his spine pad and unstrapped his chaps to let James have them, and the two men worked their way to a chute, where James began to lash a riding glove tightly around his wrist.

  James stayed on for the full eight seconds of his ride, earning a good seventy-three for his score. At halftime the groundsmen cleared the arena and began raking the sand for the Ladies’ Barrel Racing event, and the announcer urged the crowd to stretch and help themselves to some of the good food and beer they could find in the arena arcade. Among the stir and swirl of cowboys, Wager lost sight of them. He climbed to the top row and walked around the edge of the large bowl, searching the tunnels for numbers or faces. But the halftime crowds were too big and constantly shifting. In the arcade it was worse, a carnival of hawkers and gawkers who strolled and stopped and stood talking in loud clusters in the middle of the alley. Once he thought he saw the two flank a girl with curly blond hair, but they were gone before he could elbow through the crowd. Later, he might have seen James disappear behind a pale green post, but he was too far away to be sure. When the distant organ music began to sound over the noise of the crowd, Wager drifted with the flow of bodies back toward the arena. Gradually, he worked his way up and above the chutes to the emptier seating high over the end. His only opportunity now would be the bull riding, the final event.

  The team roping started from the far end. The calf ran hard toward the announcer’s box, and the horsemen galloped fast behind with their ropes whistling in large loops. Halfway through the event, the first six bulls were run through the tunnel and chuted up for the last contest. John rode eleventh out of fifteen, and Wager, restless, worked his way down to the staging area where the cowboys waited. In the first chute, already mounted, a rider drew his grip rope close under the bull’s body and thudded his fist into the animal’s ribs to drive air from its lungs and yank the rope even tighter. Legs high on the bull’s broad back to keep from being crushed against the fences, the rider listened to the cowboys around him: “You got this one, Gene—ain’t no goddam bull mean enough to throw you, boy!” “You can do it, Gene; you can do it, man, you know you can!” “Hang on and give this sucker a ride, Gene. He’s a spinner—he likes to go left, remember.”

  Wager hovered at the edge of the guarded section. A steady stream of cowboys rubbed past, and near the gate to the arena floor the bull-fighting clown and his barrel man gave a few last adjustments to their costumes and props. He searched the faces of the men and boys who pressed toward the chutes, and finally he spotted James. Hatless, the young man paused at the mouth of the tunnel and tried to edge his way around a group of girls flirting with some of the cowboys. He was by himself, and his eyes brushed across Wager without recognition. The crowd opened slightly, and James worked his way through a mob of cowboys who stood and craned up toward the stands for familiar faces.

  “James—I want to talk to you.”

  The boy’s heavy eyebrows pulled together in puzzlement. Then he knew Wager and his face went hard and blank.

  “Let’s go up this way—up the stairs, here.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  Wager grasped the wiry arm that tried to pull away. “It’s about what’s on that ranch—your fall crop—and you’d better hear it.” The arm stopped tugging. “Up here—up where it’s empty.”

  Wager could see angry redness streak the back of James’s neck, and he stayed close behind as they made their way through lines of spectators filing back to their seats with cardboard trays of beer and sandwiches. When the crowd thinned near the upper rows, Wager said, “This way,” and turned him toward the empty seats high behind the announcer’s box.

  “I’m supposed to help Johnny get ready, dammit.”

  “You’ve got plenty of time if you don’t waste it.”

  “What the hell is it you want?”

  “First I want you to hear this: I know about your pot patches out on the ranch. And I know that’s why your father was killed—because he found out, too.”

  “What pot—?”

  “I saw it, James. The reservoir, the irrigation system, the fences. So don’t hand me any crap about not knowing.”

  The youth’s lips tightened, and he stared without seeing at the brightly lit arena where a pair of calf ropers chased their animal and snagged it with ropes. Their horses backed smartly to face each other over the trapped and bawling calf.

  “You arresting me? That what you doing?”

  “I’m interested in something besides the marijuana.”

  “Like what?”

  “Who killed your father?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You and your brother beat him to death, didn’t you? Your own father, and you two beat him to death.”

  “No! It wasn’t Johnny and me—we didn’t do it!”

  “You two drove over to his ranch and took him for a ride, and then because you were so damned scared he would tell someone about your pot farm, you beat him until you broke his skull and then you tossed him out to die—your own father—like a piece of shit onto the road.”

  “He was a piece of shit! You don’t know nothing about it—you didn’t see how he ran off and left Ma with two kids and no money! God, I cried when he left, and that son of a bitch didn’t even turn around to look back—he just walked out and climbed into that goddam pickup truck and pulled out of the driveway and never looked back once!”

  “So you and John killed him.”

  “No—hell no! We weren’t even there, man. We were up at the Culbertson rodeo, up in Montana. By God you can ask anybody: we rode up there!”

  “You knew when it was going to happen. You made sure you’d have an alibi.”

  Silence.

  “Who did it?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You think Tom didn’t give a damn about you and your brother?”

  “I don’t think it, I know it.”

  “Tom was trying to help you. He came to me and said he was worried about you. He thought you two were in some kind of trouble, and he asked me to look into it without making things any worse for you.”

  “We didn’t ask for his help. He should have kept his goddam nose out of our business!”

  “He was worried about his sons.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He told me he never could pull himself together after Elias got killed. But he couldn’t quit rodeoing, either. And that was why he left—your mother blamed him for Elias’s death. And he blamed himself.”

  “That wasn’t nobody’s fault. The horse rolled.”

  “Your mother didn’t look at it that way. She finally told Tom it was her or the rodeo, so he left.”

  “Yeah? Well … well, he sure as hell didn’t try to see us! Johnny and me. He didn’t even come back for Johnny’s graduation. We damn well expected him to show up for that, at least!”

  “He wanted to, but he was afraid.”

  “What?” James looked at Wager for the first time.

  “He was afraid to.”

  “What for?”

  “He didn’t know how you two would treat him.”

  “But we wanted him to come! We thought if anything—”

  “He didn’t know that.”

  James’s shoulders sagged. “He was always bragging about how well
Johnny did in school. About how Johnny would be the first one to get his high school diploma. And then he didn’t even come.”

  “He was proud of John. And of you, too. And worried about both of you.”

  “Hell, when he didn’t come to see Johnny, I figured it wasn’t worth it. I quit school and went to work on the ranch.”

  “Who killed him, Jimmy?”

  Silence.

  “He found out about the marijuana, but he didn’t tell me. Instead, he asked me to back off—he told me there was nothing wrong and wanted me to stop asking around.”

  “Why?”

  “He was trying to protect his sons.” Wager waited, but still the youth said nothing. “He wanted to straighten things out without getting you in trouble. And he got killed for it. Who did it, Jimmy? Who beat your father to death?”

  His profile stayed motionless and staring toward the arena. The announcer and the clowns were going through a routine that involved a lot of shouting back and forth, and James, unhearing, began to blink rapidly. “I told Johnny.”

  “What?”

  “I told Johnny. I told him it wasn’t no damn good getting mixed up with that bunch.”

  “The people at the ranch? Watson and Riggs?”

  “Riggs and some others. I never met Watson. He owns the place, but he don’t come near it.”

  “What others?”

  “You seen them. Up in Leadville—they were at that restaurant where we met you and that lady.”

  Wager remembered. “Jerry Latta?”

  Surprise widened his eyes. “You know him?”

  “I have his rap sheet from California.”

  “Son of a bitch! He always brags about how clean he is—about how nobody knows him.”

  “They’re the ones who market the crop?”

  “Yeah. We grow it and harvest it. They bring in the seeds in the winter and give us the money for fertilizers and equipment, then they take it out in the fall.”

  “And you and Johnny and Riggs and Watkins get a cut.”

  “Maynerd gets his. Then Johnny and me. I guess Watkins gets a lot; I don’t know. I think he put up the money to start with, but I don’t know.”

  “And that’s how you pay for rodeoing.”

  “That’s right. Real good money—God, I never heard of so much money. But we weren’t in it for that. Good money and free time—it’s the only way we could make it rodeoing. These other guys”—his hand wagged toward the crowds behind the chutes—“most of them, they got help. College boys and family and all—they got people helping them pay their way. Me and Johnny, we had to help ourselves.”

  Wager pulled him back to the subject. “Johnny’s the ranch manager. That means if anybody finds out about the marijuana, Watkins stays in the clear and Johnny takes the rap.

  “I guess. I don’t know. Johnny was hired on as manager, that’s all.”

  “Tom figured that out, didn’t he? He saw you two holding the shitty end of the stick, and he wanted you to let go.”

  “He should have stayed out of it!”

  “What does Maynerd Riggs do?”

  “He’s the cook. But he keeps an eye on things, too. He handles the contacts; we take care of the ranch. Any problems that come up, we’re supposed to go through him.”

  “Did he kill Tom?”

  “I don’t think so. He never leaves the ranch. He talked to the others … and … they did it.”

  “Latta?”

  “Him and a couple others. They were all up there in Leadville. But they didn’t know they killed him—they were just trying to …”

  “Why’d they do it?”

  “Because of you, for one thing! We told Maynerd about you looking us up at that rodeo and being a cop and all. We’d just planted the seedlings and stood to lose the whole crop if you found out about it.”

  “But why beat on Tom?”

  “They couldn’t beat on you, could they? I guess …” He sighed and shook his head. “I guess they told Daddy we’d get hurt if somebody tipped the cops to anything.”

  “And they beat him to show him how?”

  “It ain’t that simple. That’s part of it, but it ain’t that simple. Maybe nothing’s simple.” Anger came back. “Maybe I don’t want to tell you no more! Maybe I better talk with Johnny before I talk anymore with you!”

  “You’ve got a little problem, Jimmy. It’s called accessory to murder. And by the time you get out of jail, you might be too old to rodeo.” Wager let that sink in. “Then again, you might get a suspended sentence. A lot of it depends on what I tell the judge—and that depends on what you tell me.”

  The boy pressed a knuckle against his lower lip and chewed it. “Johnny too? You’re going to help him, too?”

  “Sure,” said Wager. “I’m going to help both of you.”

  James’s shoulders rose and fell heavily; then, in a tight voice, he told Wager. “Daddy figured something was wrong when he came out to the ranch to visit. I guess all he had to do was look around and see it wasn’t no cow outfit. Anyway, he got nosy. And we thought he found an overlay. We thought he took it when he left.”

  “What overlay?”

  “A map of the pot fields. Latta wants us to keep records—the fields, how many plants, fertilizer mixes, so on. He wants to be real scientific about it—always talking about quality control and margins and crap like that. You know the kind of things farmers talk about.”

  Wager had a good idea. “What about the overlay?”

  “We have them for each field. You put it on a map and it tells you where the plants are. After Daddy left, we couldn’t find one. We figured he knew what it was, and was going to give it to you.”

  “I never saw it.”

  James drew another long, shaky breath. Even in the white glare of the floodlights reflecting from the arena floor, his face seemed to loose much of its hardness; the tight lines around his eyes and across his forehead faded until he looked as young as his seventeen years. “We didn’t know that. We told Riggs and he told Latta. They went and tried to make him tell what he did with it. But Jerry didn’t mean to kill him—he was as surprised as we were when you told us Daddy was dead.”

  Wager thought differently, but he let it go. “They took Tom’s wallet? They thought he might have the overlay in his wallet?”

  “I guess. They went down to his ranch and—ah—talked to him there, and looked through the place but didn’t find it. So they took him to … ask him some more. But it wasn’t on him, either.”

  “That’s why Latta tried to break into our motel in Leadville? He thought I might have it?”

  “You knew who that was?”

  “I figured it out.”

  “You knocked the shit out of him. He wanted to go back and blow you away, but me and Johnny talked him out of it. I think it was mostly words, anyway; I think he had enough of you for that night.”

  “So then you and Johnny went through our cabin out at the ranch.”

  “Johnny did that, yeah. Why the hell else would you be out there? First you show up in Leadville just after Daddy got beat up, and then you come riding into the ranch hinting around like that. We figured that’s why you came, to check out that overlay.”

  “But Johnny didn’t find it either, did he?”

  “No. Not there, anyway.” He sighed with a mixture of agony and confession. “We found the damn thing a couple days ago when we packed up to come here. It got pushed into a torn seam in Johnny’s ditty bag. It was there all along.” He wagged his head slowly. “Daddy never even had it.”

  Wager, too, drew a deep breath and leaned against the creaking slats of the green seat. Below, the arena boss made the final check with the first rider before the handler pulled open the gate. The organ hit a loud note, and the crowd yelled as the contestant exploded into the arena. The bull jerked its narrow hips high into the air and kicked with a speed and grace that made its size even more frightening. Clinging with one hand and with his raking spurs, the rider spun and leaned against the
twisting flesh below him, trying to keep balance on the shifting, loose skin that threatened to go in all directions at once. Trying to hook the rider, the bull spun in a tight circle, and the cowboy, teeth glinting between drawn lips, slipped sideways toward the horns and then toward the ground as the bull twisted more tightly. Hand still caught in the rope, the rider was flung off to dangle by one arm in the circle formed by the hooking bull as a clown sprinted forward to slap the bull’s muzzle with an orange wiffle-ball bat. The grip rope with its clanging cowbell began to slip and release the dangling cowboy; the bull turned to sprint toward the clown, and its bulging flank tossed the rider like a stuffed doll to roll in the dirt as the other clown, hopping up and down in a bright red barrel, lured the animal away. Two cowboys hopped over the fence and dragged the limp rider toward the gate.

  “He fell in the well,” said James. “That’s what we call it when you’re caught on the inside like that and you can’t get loose—you’re in the well. You can’t outrun him. You can’t get back on. You can’t let go. You just sort of hang there and get beat up until some clown comes along and helps you out.”

  “You put yourself in the well. You and Johnny both.”

  “Don’t I know it. Us and Daddy, too.”

  Wager asked quietly, “Which one of you shot out our raft?”