The World in Pancho's Eye - J P S Brown

by J P S Brown

  A year and a half later, he became a national hero for his service with the Marine Corps in the battle of Guadalcanal. He came back from the war yellow with malaria, skinny, haunted, and recovering from serious wounds, but he soon cured himself of what he called "all that war trouble" and went on with his splendid life.

  Mikey became Paul Garcia's hero when he tackled John Peabody in the first game against Harrington Grade School. Peabody was a country boy from a remote New Mexico mountain range. An eighth grader, he stood a foot and a half taller than anybody else on the field that day. He was graceful, strong, and muscular, but he did not know the rules of football or how to pass, kick, or carry the ball. If he could learn to play the game, he would go straight to the Santa Fe High School varsity team his freshman year. He was already as tall as anyone on the Demon varsity team and he ran like a trampling bull. Peabody weighed 15o pounds. Nobody else on the field weighed even 12o pounds, except Saint Michael's big Taos Indian, Eligio Vigil. At eighty-five pounds and four and a half feet tall, Mikey was only a little bigger than Forbes, the waterboy.

  Grade-school tackle football at Saint Michael's was played on a patch of gravel three regulation fields wide. The players wore their school clothes, their school shoes, and no helmets.

  Mikey started the game as safety on the defense that day and Peabody started as fullback for Harrington. The first time Peabody was given the ball, he caught the snap from center for an off-tackle play. Peabody crammed the ball under one arm like a watermelon, straightened, waved his other arm broadly from side to side, and roared, "Get out of my way out of my way, out of my way!" He then launched himself in a straight line for the goal posts. Both the offense and the defense opened a lane for him five yards wide and watched him gallop straight toward the last man on the field, Mikey. Mikey watched him kick up clods of dirt and rocks big enough to brain a boy his size and muttered to himself, "Well, you ain't going to get by me."

  Peabody charged straight at Mikey and roared every time his feet hit the ground. Mikey stood his ground and watched him approach. He veered off course when he saw that Mikey was too dumb to get out of his way Mikey headed him off and dove at his shoelaces with his head and shoulders. Peabody went airborne. The ground cut short his roar as he landed on the ball, fumbled it, and skidded on the side of his head. Mikey's ears rang as he sat up to see if he had stopped the bull again. Peabody lay on his face in the dust with all the air knocked out of him and whimpered. Both teams stood aghast at what Mikey had done. The ball rolled on across the goal line, forgotten. After that, Mikey ran Paul Garcia's team.

  Those kinds of feats were already part of Mikey's experience with cattle and horses. He enjoyed that advantage over most other boys. He already knew how to perform with ordinary cowboy courage. Rojas, the Canada Street bully, did not go out for the team at the start of the season. He bragged that football was not worth his effort. Paul Garcia was strict and a boy had to be tough to play for him, so Mikey figured Rojas was afraid Paul would yell at him and make him sweat, or he might skin his little freckled knees. Halfway through the season, after Paul called him a chicken, Rojas joined the team. On his first day, Porky and Skinny ran out on the field with him. Mikey was already there. At Rojas's suggestion, Mikey went downfield to catch his punts. Skinny faded out of sight behind Mikey while Porky engaged his attention with a stream of talk. Mikey felt strong and ready to knock heads at full speed with anybody.

  He waited under a high punt. As he looked up at the ball, Skinny ran at him from behind and clipped him. He threw himself in a cross-body block against the back of Mikey's knees. That was the best, most effective block he had thrown in the two football seasons Mikey had played with him. The block sprained all the toes on one of Mikey's feet, the knee and ankle of the other leg, and his back.

  Mikey could not run well, but he hid his injuries from Paul Garcia and started every game until he finished the season. He could not outrun a red ant, but he hid the ball from his opponents and did not to run the ball himself except to pull the quarterback sneak. He ran one bootleg that got him out in the clear so far before anyone knew where the ball had gone, that it made him laugh. A boy nicknamed Sapa, Toad, Harvey Grammar School's fullback, the slowest, sloppiest boy on that team, finally saw that Mikey had the ball and headed him off on the sideline and tackled him.

  Paul depended on Mikey for defense because the boy had an instinct for knowing where the ball would go. He made half of his team's tackles. He recovered from his injuries slowly, but he always made it to a tackle. He did not feel pain on the way to a tackle, only joy. He suffered silently and worried a lot, but he did not lose his position on the team. In fact, after the first few minutes that he lay injured after Skinny clipped him, he never again showed the Canada bullies that he was hurt.

  The day Mikey arrived in Nogales on his Christmas vacation, Maggie told him that she and Viv had decided to sell the house and move. He was standing at the picture window in the front room feeling bad when he saw a man ride by on a horse that looked so familiar that he ran outside for a better look. As he burst around the corner of the house, the horse turned his head and looked at him, and he recognized Pancho. He felt shocked, hurt, and jealous, then guilty because he had not tried to find the horse. He had not even asked about Pancho. The last he had known, Pancho had been with the remuda on the Baca Float.

  Viv had promised to give Pancho back to Mikey if he helped on ten drives from Nogales, Sonora, to the Baca Float. He had helped on more than twenty drives, every one of them. As far as he knew, he still owned the horse, but he had been so used to grown-ups doing anything they wanted with him, he had not asked about him. Maybe he just did not want to hear that the horse had been taken back to Mexico or some other godforsaken place out of his reach again.

  He went back in the house and asked Maggie why some stranger was riding his horse. "Oh, did you see Pancho?" Maggie asked. "Since we're moving and the horse was just eating and not doing anything, I sold him to Mr. Karns. You know, the man who owns the public swimming pool. The caretaker of his orchard needed him."

  "You just couldn't wait to sell my horse, could you, mom? Worse than that, you sold him to Karns, who kicked Billy out of his swimming pool for life. Now the caretaker of Karns's orchard, the rat who liked to sic his dog on me and Billy has my horse."

  "Well, Mikey, you don't need him anymore. I needed to clean up our loose ends/'

  "Pancho wasn't yours to sell. You've always wanted to sell him, but my dad kept you from it when you could have. I had to earn him back from Viv after my own father sold him. You had no right to do anything with him anymore. Now you're going to sell the house that me and Maudy were born in. Is there anything you won't sell out from under us? You can't be doing it for the money, because you have all you need from your new husband. What's going to happen to me and Maudy next?"

  "He didn't bring much money. Mr. Karns only paid thirty-five dollars for him. You can have every penny of it. No, I didn't sell him because I needed money. I sold him because we didn't have any use for him anymore, with you away all the time at school, and all. . .I'm sorry, son. I guess I just didn't think."

  "Pancho and Baxter were my best friends. You're just like everybody else outside my world. If you'd sell my oldest living friend for thirty-five dollars, I hate to think how much you'd take for my little sister. Christmas would be the perfect time to put her up for sale. Just think, you can get top dollar for Maudy and ruin our Christmas again in one sweep. All I can say is, you'd better get rid of us quick, before our schooling starts to cost too much. Heck, we're just eating and not doing anything."

  Before he could clabber up and bawl, Maggie said, "I've been saving a surprise for you, son, but I guess I'd better tell you before your heart breaks again and you fall down dead with a conniption. We're moving to a ranch. When you get out of school next spring, your home will be on the High Lonesome in northern Arizona."

  "Oh, that'll be good," Mikey said. "You won't have to sell us, then. You can work us i
n the summer."

  He saw a tear in Maggie's eye, but he went outside before she could say any more.

  FIFTEEN

  THE HIGH

  LONESOME

  When a cowboy throws himself away and goes on a spree that spends all his moral, psychological, and physical resources, he is said to have gone on a High Lonesome. The High Lonesome is also a big, grassy ranch in the Arizona high country once taken from the Navajos and used by cowmen until the Navajos bought it back. Now Navajos own it again, this time forever.

  At the beginning of Mikey's summer vacation, Maggie met his train in Gallup, New Mexico, and drove him fifty miles back into Arizona to the High Lonesome Ranch owned by Adams, Cunningham, and O'Brien. They arrived in the middle of the night. Their shelter was a Navajo hogan, an octagonal mud house that was pillared, shored, and roofed by cedar posts.

  Maggie unrolled Mikey's bed on the floor for him and climbed into the double bed with Viv and Maudy Marie. Mikey did not suspect anything unusual until the next morning when a tall, mean-looking Navajo came in and dippered a drink for himself out of the water bucket. The Navajo looked at Maggie and Mikey out of the corner of his eye, drank another dipperful, and left without a sound. Viv and Maudy were gone.

  Mikey worried that the outfit had started work without him and was anxious to catch up. Now, on his first day, he had been left in camp with his mama. Even Maudy had gone out horseback early with the crew. He dressed, washed, and went outside. A Navajo crew worked to build another hogan in the front yard. The roof of the old hogan in which Mikey had spent the night was round and covered with dirt. Weeds grew out of it.

  The headman of the three-man Navajo crew was Hoskie Kronemeyer. Charlie Redhouse was the fierce-looking one who had come in for a drink of water without knocking. The other was Willie Lynch. Charlie did not speak; he communicated with dirty looks. His job was to peel the bark off a pile of cedar logs with an ax. He held the end of a log down with his foot and wielded the ax in full swing over his head toward his foot. His ax was razor-sharp and with each swing he exposed a new layer of the log's skins. With the first swing, he exposed the white skin inside the bark. With the next, he exposed the tan layer over the red core of the log. He did not leave any of the white skin. If a strip was missed, the next swing got it.

  Willie Lynch said that he wanted Mikey to tell his "daddy" that he wanted work as a cowboy. He said that he was a good helper with cement and was as deft with a sharp ax as Charlie Redhouse, but he wanted to cowboy. Mikey was about to tell him that his daddy lived down in Patagonia and the man's favorite cowboys were Mexicans, but he thought better of it. Viv would have to be his daddy, if everybody at the ranch already thought he was. He wondered why they thought Viv was his daddy even after he told them his name was Michael Paul Summers. He guessed they thought those were his first three names and his last name was O'Brien. That was the first time he became aware of an awkwardness that would arise every time the kid who belonged to Maggie and Vivian O'Brien introduced himself as Michael Paul Summers. He did not intend to change his name. He would leave it as Summers, and if he felt awkward about it, other people could feel awkward about it, too.

  A very tall white man dressed in khaki and sunburned the color of cedar bark named Jim Porter introduced himself as the windmill man, engine mechanic, carpenter, builder, and maintenance man of the ranch. He worked alone. Mikey found him when he went down to look at the windmill and its storage tank. He watched the man saw planks for a new windmill tower. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his long forearms were like posts with his fists as knots on the end. He wore a billed khaki cap sopped with sweat. The uncombed thatches of hair that showed outside the edges of his cap were white as cotton. The hair that showed in the V of his shirt was white against the russet sunburn of his chest, neck, and face. His great, faded eyes did not blink. Mikey imagined that Jim Porter and Charlie Redhouse's stares belonged to madmen and wondered if the High Lonesome had made them mad. He imagined that the stare was probably good to have because it came from being able to make a hand way out where nobody watched. He hoped that he would be on the High Lonesome long enough to acquire it.

  Jim Porter seldom talked to anybody, but he told Mikey in very few words that he had spent all his life, except for his time in the army in World War I, on that ranch.

  Mikey asked Jim where all the cowboys had gone that morning.

  "Aw, they're bringing the herd on the last day's drive from the railroad."

  "Tell me how to find them and I'll go help."

  "Saddle that brown horse in the corral, ride west until you reach an airplane beacon on top of a bluff. From the top of the beacon hill, you'll probably see the herd in the airport pasture below."

  Mikey headed for the corral and Jim said, "There might be an extra saddle in the barn, but I don't know how you'll get it on the horse. I can't drop what I'm doing, but if you can saddle the brown horse, lead him to me and I'll help you get on."

  Mikey unloaded his saddle out of the trunk of Maggie's car and carried it to the barn. The corrals were made of cedar posts that stood side by side. A gentle Holstein milk cow lounged in the corral with her calf. The calf availed himself of all the milk he wanted and that told Mikey that no one had been assigned to milk the cow. He guessed he would be the one given that chore. As far as Mikey knew, nobody else in the whole family knew how to milk a cow. Maggie might know, but nobody had better expect her to milk a cow as long as she lived. She would crystallize before she would stoop down to grab a cow by her leaking titties. Granny was a cow milker and could do everything else that needed to be done on a ranch. Granny could chop the head off a chicken one minute and then get on a horse and turn back a steer the next. Not Maggie. Maggie could do it all, but there were chores that she would not do, not even in anyone's dreams.

  Mikey caught and saddled the brown horse. He did not know the horse, but he knew the brand on his hip. He wore Uncle Herb Cunningham's flowerpot brand. He left the saddled horse tied to a corral post to soak and went back to the house to report to Maggie. He ate two big sourdough biscuits that Maggie said one of the cowboys had baked, put on his spurs, led the horse out of the corral, and boarded him. As he rode by, he told Jim Porter he would see him later.

  Jim looked up with sweat dripping off him and watched Mikey a moment. He said, "Nice spurs," and went back to work. Mikey headed west across a wide, open draw and was soon away from the sounds at headquarters. The creak of his saddle and the plod of his horse's feet were all he could hear. His horse was dark brown with a black mane, tail, and stockings. The only white mark on him was a tiny star on his forehead. His thick mane split in the middle and covered both sides of his neck. He was well broke, easy to handle, and as eager to find the herd and his companion horses as Mikey. Later, Mikey found out that Paul Summers had broken him in the Sierra de San Juan.

  Mikey stopped when he heard a meadowlark sing. He had not heard that song since he left the Haystack. He liked that warbling whistle. He spied the bird on the ground beside a bush and realized that he did not know what the bush was called. Its branches held no menacing spines.

  The country was drier and the air cleaner than any he had known. The sky was broader. He could see farther in every direction than he had ever been able to see. He crossed the headquarters draw and stopped on a ridge to look back. The houses, corrals, and windmill seemed a lot closer than they should. He had ridden a long way. By now, he should have been out of sight of all humans. He could be down under the brown horse in full sight of the house and a search party would only have to ride an hour to find him. The High Lonesome was big country.

  Mikey had noticed that the brown horse was not shod and he worried about it, but now he saw no reason for him to be shod. The soil of the country was a fine, cushiony, sandy loam and the few rocks were round and smooth like river rock. Mikey could not see any rock formations or cliffs. The tops of the ridges were strewn with these small, gemlike rocks, as though God had come along and sprayed handfuls out
of His pocket for decoration. No cattle or horses would ever be able to get away from Mikey as long as his horses enjoyed that kind of footing. Then he saw his first prairie dog town, a community of tunnel-connected burrows.

  A tan rodent feller only four inches tall stood up on his hind legs on the berm of his burrow and barked at him. Another barked from another berm and another ran to the first, stood up beside him, and barked. Mikey had never seen a prairie dog and did not even know what they were called yet. He rode to their town and watched them dust the entrances of their holes with their tails in their hurry to disappear.

  The airplane beacon came in sight a half mile away. The beacon tower was painted red and white, and a red-and-white striped shed housed the beacon's engine. The beacon stood on the edge of a bluff that overlooked a hundred square miles of high, flat, sagebrush and cedar tree desert. The machine that lighted the beacon and rotated its light turned itself off at dawn and back on at twilight.

  When Mikey saw his first antelope, he knew the High Lonesome was a paradise. The first pronghorn buck antelope that Mikey ever saw stood in a draw beneath the beacon. The buck's black, ridged horns seemed to protrude out of his eyebrows. He gazed haughtily down his nose at Mikey, then loped over to a nearby pair of does, moved them around behind Mikey, then back alongside him, then started to cross in front of him again. Mikey closed the distance to the beacon and pinched the antelope close against a fence below the beacon. The antelope did not have all the room they needed, so they switched to fever gear and raced past with all their might. They opened their mouths in fright, pointed their black tongues toward open country, and gave Mikey a good look at their pretty coats. When they knew they were safely out of range, they slowed and gave him a good look at their powder-puff tails as they coasted up another long draw out of sight. They had passed so close that he could still smell them.