by J P S Brown
"Awww, honey, you didn't need to do that. The cow was getting old, but I know how much you loved Little Buck."
"I needed money; I sold a cow. I sold our whole herd of one milk cow, by God. I'm sure not ever going to milk a cow. And why do I need a horse? I have another kid on the way."
Maggie's tone did not get any nicer when she turned her attention to Mikey. He got, "Hurry up and finish your supper. You're going to bed right after you eat and take a bath, so hurry up. Don't drink so much water. I don't want you having to get up to go to the bathroom all night."
Mikey's folks argued on after he went to bed. Paul finally got mad enough to raise his voice, but Maggie reminded him that Mikey would hear him and would not approve of his father talking mean to his mother and he shut up.
Mikey was on the sleeping porch and Maggie came periodically to spy on him through a window in the door. Then it was, "Quit wiggling. Lie still. Why did you sneeze? Why are you awake?" and "go . ..to . ..sleep," in a low growl. Mikey wondered how in the world he was able to make her growl even as he lay as quiet as any boy could lie in his own bed.
He was at least not worried that his parents would come to blows. When he was hardest pressed, Paul only made exaggerated accusations that were not meant to be believed. Maggie would then pounce on him with taunts and insults that she wanted them both to believe. Most of the time, Paul only made wisecracks that were intended to be enjoyed by them both. They were even attempts to make Maggie laugh. Maggie's cracks always sounded full of hate.
Maggie finally caused Paul to raise his voice again by striking at his parenthood. He had been able to give reasonable answers to the insults she made about his drinking and his staying away and his not bringing enough money home to suit her, but she finally made him angry when she told him that because he was not enough of a father and husband to bring in the money she needed, she would have to get it from Mikey. She told him that she liked the money she got for Little Buck so much, he was going to have to sell his paint horse and Pancho because she could use that money, too.
"There I can't help you, madam, for I don't own the paint,"Paul said.
"Then you'll have to talk to your son about selling Pancho."
"There you are. Pancho's safe in Mexico and I don't know how you'll get him out."
"You want me to believe you've worked for Cabezon all this time and you don't have a horse of your own? You've risked your life a hundred times training horses for Cabezon Woodell, but you haven't made one good horse for yourself?"
"That's right, lady."
"What about that Chamaco horse you're always bragging about?"
"He was mine to ride, but he belonged to Cabezon and he's been sold." Maggie's tirade needed another breath. When she found it, she said, "Well, Pancho isn't Cabezon's."
"No, by God," Paul roared. "And he's not yours either. He's my little son's and you can't make me sell him."
Mikey's chest had begun to hurt when he heard his mother decide that she was willing to sell out her son and his horse because she wanted money, but he was almost sure she was only threatening it to hurt Paul. Now he felt a great, loving gratitude for his dad. The whole family would fall apart if he weakened. If Paul had said he would give in and let Maggie sell Pancho, Mikey would not have wanted to belong to that family anymore.
Then Maggie said, "I want that Pancho sold and the money brought to me and that's that. If you're too weak to do it, bring him home and I'll do it. I know a man who wants to buy a gentle horse to ride in his orchard."
"God have mercy," Paul moaned. "But why do I have to fight for my life every time I come back to my own home? I must have been born under a dark star."
"I don't know if it was dark, but it was darned sure weak. You're so weak, you're almost not even here when you do come home."
Maggie and Paul went to their bedroom and quieted down and Mikey went to sleep. Then a primal scream pierced his slumber and sat him straight up in bed. The sound had come from Maggie as from a wounded mother elephant. After the scream died, she shrieked, "For the love of God and his Blessed Mother in heaven, Paul Summers, where in the hell is your ear?"
SIX
FATHERS AND
MOTHERS
Part of the expertise of men and women who raise cattle is a knowledge of the bloodlines of their stock. They are so practiced, they can look at a calf and tell who his sire is and which cow is his mother. They do the same with people. The DNA of the stock is in the shape of the nose, the sound of the voice, the lift of the chin, and forty or fifty other characteristics plain to see by a practiced stockman.
Maudy Marie, Mikey's little sister, was born in March and Maggie divorced Paul that summer. Mikey was six and had started first grade when Paul came by one day and asked Maggie if he could have his son for a week at Thanksgiving. Maggie said yes, so he promised to come and get the boy the next day. He was in his cups and bragged that he would buy Mikey a new pocketknife and a pair of boots. Mikey did not want him to think he had to sweeten his visit that way. He was drunk, but Mikey did not care about having those things and Paul's drunkenness did not bother Mikey. It bothered him that he never got to see his dad.
Mikey dressed and went outside long before daylight the next morning so he would not miss his dad. He thought that the earlier he made himself available to go, the earlier Paul would come. He climbed into his elderberry tree to wait. The elderberry's perches were close to the ground and he could drop out of the tree when he saw Paul coming, load his warbag, bed, and saddle, and jump into the car. That way his parents would not have to talk to one another. He knew how much they dreaded seeing each other's faces and having to be nice to each other.
From the elderberry tree he could see all the way to the Nogales curve. He watched every car from the moment it came around the curve until it went by. His butt got tired on the perch, but he was afraid that if he did not watch every car come by, he would miss his dad. Baxter waited under the tree. Mikey talked to him about what they would do when Paul arrived. He promised Baxter he would come and get him after he and his dad had some private time to themselves. Baxter was the only one to whom Mikey could talk about Paul. Nobody else wanted to hear how much he loved his dad.
At sunup Mr. Wingo, Granny's next-door neighbor, pulled out of the driveway in his car and stopped at the highway He was the district forest ranger and a real gentleman. He was neat and stocky and his gray hair was always combed. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles. His daughter Nita was Mikey's buddy She was tall and red headed, two years older than he, and a gentle pal. She had taught Mikey how to ride her bike. Mikey dropped out of his tree and caught Mr. Wingo before he drove onto the highway. He said he knew where he could find his dad if Mr. Wingo would give him a ride to town. Mr. Wingo told him to get in the car. The man did not pretend to know where to find Paul, but he lived close enough as a neighbor to respect the boy's mission. Mr. Wingo would never even think of going to the places the cowboys did. Mikey knew where to go because he had been there himself when he cowboyed with Paul. Mikey asked Mr. Wingo to take him to the Morley Avenue ‘ garita and when he arrived there he saw Paul in the door of the International Bar with Cabezon Woodell, Roy Adams, and Herb Cunningham. He jumped out of the car, ran through the customs stations, tackled his dad's leg, and held on.
Paul was only ordinarily glad to see his son, and he dutifully bragged to his cronies that Mikey showed a lot of style in the way he had tracked him down before the rooster even crowed. He looked over his shoulder to see if he could find out how Mikey got there. Mr. Wingo waited by the Mexican garita to see if the boy would be all right.
Mr. Wingo might have been out of place, but that did not bother him. He probably never went across the line even for a cheap haircut, but Mikey could see he did not feel right about leaving a six-year-old boy with that wild bunch in Mexico, even if one of them was the father. Paul sure had not wanted to be caught in his disreputable haunt at that hour by that neat old man who never in a hundred years would have followed anyone
but Mikey across the line.
Paul said that Mikey should go on back home with Mr. Wingo and wait for him a while longer because he still had business to attend to. He tried to get his cronies to affirm that they would make sure he went to pick up Mikey after their business was done. They turned away and did not lie, so he took Mikey by the hand and gave him back to Mr. Wingo and did not make any more promises.
Mikey did not say a word on the way home. Mr. Wingo was not one to stick his nose in other people's business, so he did not say anything either. That day Mikey began to appreciate the truly decent fathers like Mr. Wingo and Uncle Bill Shane who helped him when he was in trouble for a father. He began to learn how lucky he was that those two men lived on both sides of him and did not mind showing how a good father handled himself without saying a word against Paul Summers.
Mikey climbed up to wait in his elderberry tree again when he got home and Maggie did not know he had even been gone. When he did not come down at noon, instead of fighting him to make him come in for his lunch and nap, Maggie took him a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. He did not come down all afternoon.
She was only able to get him out of the tree that evening after he could see for himself that it was so dark even an owl could not see Paul coming. Paul never came, anyway.
After his banishment, Paul missed many chances to see Mikey. He was invited to all of the boy's family fiestas and he always promised to come. That was when Mikey learned the expression "showed up." Paul Summers almost never showed up.
A few months after the time Mikey involved Mr. Wingo in his troubles, Paul came by again and told him he would pick him up at school the next day. This time they would be headed for his camp in the Magdalena Mountains sin falta, without fail. Maggie asked Miss Lewis the principal to let Paul take the boy out of school early, because he had to drive sixty miles back to his camp over dirt roads before dark. She drove Mikey and his gear to school in her car that day.
When Paul had not come for him after noon recess, Mikey ran away to the arroyo bridge to watch for him. One more minute of waiting in school was more than he could stand. Paul would have to cross the arroyo bridge if he came to the school from any direction except from Patagonia. If he tried to come to town or leave town, Mikey would see him. He was supposed to be coming out of Mexico, so he had to cross that bridge over the arroyo or drive by close on the other side. Mikey watched for him in every face in every car that went by. After a while, he began to fear that Paul might have gone to Patagonia early in the day and might have come back to the school from that direction while Mikey was at the bridge. He went back to Miss Lewis's office and asked her if his dad had come.
Miss Lewis was a stocky little woman, very compact, who always wore a blue dress. Mikey thought she was a lot like Madam Katzenjammer, only small. He never saw her smile. She wore the same steely, blue-eyed, poker-faced look of his family's women, probably because she was a cousin through the Parkers. She usually spoke in a loud voice, but when he went in to ask about his dad, she took off her glasses, rubbed the bun on the back of her head round and round to ease its tightness, and answered quietly. Paul had not come yet. Maggie had notified her that he would come and she had been watching for him. She knew Mikey would be no good for the rest of the afternoon in school, so he could go back to the bridge if he wanted to watch for his dad. She promised to keep Paul there and send for Mikey when he came.
School let out while Mikey was still in Miss Lewis's office, so he ran to the bridge to wait again. He watched each car come and go and still no Paul. Then Mr. Clark drove by in the bus on the way home with Mikey's schoolmates. He looked Mikey's way but did not recognize him, and then he thought about what he had seen and looked back and saw that he was Mikey. He had to turn the bus onto the bridge before he could stop. Mikey was sitting on a wall in front of someone's home. He jumped down and hid behind the wall. Mr. Clark waited on the bridge for a long, long time, but Mikey did not show himself and Mr. Clark finally drove away. Mikey had been feeling worthless. Hiding from Mr. Clark made him feel even more worthless. Mr. Clark's strictest rule was that he never waited for anybody at a stop and he would not stop anyplace except at a designated bus stop. He broke two of his rules for Mikey and the boy had hid from him. Mikey knew he had not put anything over on Mr. Clark, and their friendship would never be the same again because the man's rules were his rules. He always remembered Mr. Clark's friendship as the first one he ever sacrificed to an obsession.
After dark Maggie drove up and stopped her car in front of Mikey and he was caught. Mr. Clark had stopped and told her that he saw her boy waiting for his dad by the arroyo bridge. He knew, everybody knew, that Paul was supposed to come for Mikey that day.
Maggie did not scold Mikey because she knew his heart was broken. Mother and son always managed to keep each other from perishing by showing respect when one of their hearts was broken. Sometimes Maggie knew what was right to say and do. They both knew she could not help him with a big show of sympathy. She could not say out loud, "Poor, poor Mikey, you poor little old kid." That would have meant she did not want him to have courage and hope that the situation would get right tomorrow or at least sooner or later.
Maggie made no disparaging remarks about Paul, either. Mikey could not have listened to her run down his dad. He said, "Maybe he came to school, missed me, and went back to Magdalena disgusted. Maybe he thought I hid from him so I would not have to go. Maybe he went by when I was down behind the wall hiding from Mr. Clark or when I left the bridge and went back to talk to Miss Lewis." He could not face it that Paul had broken his word.
"No, Mikey," Maggie said. "If he'd missed you at school, he would have called me. He would have gone to Miss Lewis's office. Miss Lewis even waited for him after school let out. He might only be late. Everybody is late from time to time. He could have been held up with his cattle, or maybe his road washed out. He might be waiting for you at home when we get back. At any rate, he'll probably call you tonight. Honestly, how could I have ever expected you two to make contact unless I sent you out with a police escort to meet him? You're so alike you were bound to mess it up."
Mikey was not sure that he was the one who had messed up. The only way to have a reunion with Paul was to go and find him where he worked or played. When he came out of Mexico he always drank whiskey before he did anything else and he had a lot of friends who liked for him to do that. Mikey loved him more than those friends did, but Paul did not consider anything else when it was time for whiskey.
That same year Paul ran out of work in Mexico for a while and took a job as a jailer in the county courthouse. Even though he was in charge of the jail, he became as much an inmate as the prisoners. His time as a jailer became the only time in his life that Maggie and Mikey could get hold of him when they wanted to. They might not ever be able to get him to help them, but at least they could worry him about it.
Paul's being at the jail was hard on Mikey because he was supposed to catch Mr. Clark's bus and go home every day after school, but the county courthouse was only a fifteen-minute sashay from school. Mikey could do it on one leg and skip every other step. Mr. Clark the bus driver was the grandfather of Sonny Clark, the boy who was Mikey's best friend when he was not with Billy Shane. Mr. Clark was a good friend of Paul's, even though he did not drink whiskey for fun as much as Paul. Even so, he warned Mikey that he would not support him if he missed the bus to steal a visit with Paul. If Mikey was the last person to get on the bus, a worried Mr. Clark gave him a scolding. He wanted to be able to find Mikey when it was time to haul him home from school, no ifs, ands, or buts. That was the first time Mikey ever heard about no ifs, ands, or buts, and that convinced him that Mr. Clark was adamant. Mr. Clark did not make rules that he did not mean to enforce. At the same time, both Mr. Clark and Mikey were absolutely sure that Mikey would skip the bus sooner or later because he knew where he could find his dad.
Mikey considered skipping the bus every single day. What was the use of having h
is dad where he wanted him if he could not visit him? Time with his dad should not count against him. He knew, however, that any unscheduled visit he made would get him in trouble, and maybe even get Mr. Clark in trouble. Time went by and Mikey decided he had the right to visit his father and still be able to take the bus home like everybody else. Nobody got mad when other kids spent time with their dads. Kids got to see their dads every day without landing in trouble. Mikey's uncles were as hard on their wives as Paul had been on his, but their wives did not get divorces. Mikey was learning that in 1936 nobody else in his world got divorced.
He was learning that if a kid's folks divorced, the folks might be happy because they got their rights back, but the kid lost almost every one of his rights for the rest of his life as a kid.
One day when school let out, knowing that he would thereafter be looked upon as an outlaw by people he respected, Mikey headed straight for the courthouse without even a glance toward the school bus. He made such a beeline for his dad that he left his pencil box and tablet somewhere in the school building and never recovered them.
Later, Maggie reminded him that he had showed that he could be as irresponsible and ungrateful as Paul. He had seen fit to chuck everything she had worked hard to get for him, had disregarded the feelings of everyone who cared about him, and had run off to "God knows where." No matter how large the sacrifice, even though Maggie was short of money all the time, she always made sure that Mikey had "first-class things." However, like Paul, he was just not one for "things." He could not understand how anybody could worry about the things a kid lost when he had a chance to sell out everything to go see his dad.
Mikey found Paul in the sheriff's office by himself. Fast Paul's wings had been clipped. He did not grin when he saw his son. His nice smile made an appearance and then quickly disappeared. Mikey read that to mean that he knew the boy would be in Dutch for running away to see him and if Mikey was in Dutch, so was he. Mikey could smell whiskey on Paul's breath under the odor of the Lysol used in the sheriff's office, but that made Mikey the outlaw glad. At least the man's life had not gone completely sour for being in jail.