by Judy Blunt
When spring came, he might have gone with a short load of culls and canner cows to the sale ring, but he did not. Ajax was destined for our table. The replacement heifers were put to pasture when the grass greened. Ajax and one other culled steer had the feedlot to themselves. The fatter he got, the less motivated he was, but I kept up his riding lessons until early summer. When the weather turned warm, I stopped rather than risk him dropping dead. A trot around the feed bunks left him drooling and heaving for air, jaw hanging open, tongue lolling. He had no way of cooling off once he got overheated. He was fat beef.
Not long after that, Dad called to arrange for the two steers to be butchered. The animals would be killed on the ranch in the cool of the evening, and transported in the butcher's truck to Malta, where he had the facilities to chill and age the carcasses, cut and wrap them for the freezer. His pay would be a percentage of the meat, which he could sell to someone else. I listened with calm balanced on the surface of my skin, turning aside when Mom glanced over, shrugging her off. It was my own fault, my own business. If I didn't let on, then at least I would not have to listen to the lectures and "I told you so's." The butchering was scheduled for the following day; both steers would be taken off food and water and held in a small pen until the butcher arrived.
After supper that evening, I slipped the steer's halter over his head and worked to secure the ends; he had nearly outgrown it again. Leading him out of the catch pen, I stepped up on an empty feed bunk and jumped astride his broad back for the last time. I rode Ajax to the well, tied him to a post away from the tank and turned the hose on him. Although he hadn't been penned up for long, he already acted grateful for the water. His tongue curled around his nose to catch the rivulets as I worked the hose up his spine and over his forehead. I squeezed a thick strip of dish soap over his wet back, then started at his head, working every inch of him into lather with a scrub brush. He leaned into the bristles, grunting with pleasure, and stood patiently under the cold hose for the rinsing. I brushed him dry in the evening sun, turning up cowlicks along his neck and ears, curling the tassel of his tail around my finger until it hung in ringlets. When I turned him loose, he arched his back and bucked a few steps, his black hide glowing with a smell like flowers and leather.
He was clean. It seemed all I could do, and I didn't visit him again. In the course of the next couple of days, we ate the organ meats. I dished up my plate and chewed and swallowed, filling myself with everything except my meal. I concentrated on sounds and smells of the table, the dull click of silverware like fingernails drumming on glass, the pattern on the paper napkins, the texture of the bread, the vomitlike smell of raw butter gone rancid in the summer heat. I made it through meals of fresh liver, of sweetbreads. And heart. In the end, only once did I pull away, mute and nearly choking on the lump in my throat. I could not, I would not, eat his tongue.
The Year of the Horse
Late spring, late fifties, my mother lines three of us up by the front door, moving with tight jerks and tugs down the row of buttons and shoelaces. Tall, with dark eyes and hard, slim muscles, she's a horsewoman who has made the shift from corral to kitchen with quirt-popping efficiency Taken by the hand or ear or lock of hair, we will lead to the gates of hell without pulling back. We turn to face her automatically when she speaks. The words "whoa up" will cause us to slide to a stop, even when escape seems a lucrative option. We stand very still as she works over us, arms held out to present our coat fronts with as little fuss as possible. Mine is itchy wool, material cut from an old dress coat and treadled back together on the Singer sewing machine, and although I'm four, the original buttons are too big for my hands and the new buttonholes too stiff for me to work. The twins are three. She need not tell us to stay in the yard, to stay out of the mud, to keep our clothes clean. Already the bulk of what we know is unspoken.
Our yard is a rough quarter acre shaded by Russian olive trees and a dozen sprawling cottonwoods. From the front step of the house, paths cut across the yard like spokes on a wheel, to the well, to the garden, to the front gate, to the light plant house that houses the generator that feeds power to the wet-cell batteries in our basement. The deepest path hurries due north for twenty yards, then ducks left behind a blowzy thicket of caraganas to the outhouse. Under a full moon, the shadowy path becomes a gauntlet of predators who shift their shapes and lick their lips just beyond the pale dance of the flashlight beam. The rattle of leaves, a rustle in the underbrush could cause an imaginative young girl to wet her shoes in full flight back to the house.
In the daylight, the woven sheep wire fence keeps us safe, circling us like a tired sentinel, pulling to attention at the posts and slouching along between them. It will still turn a cow, though a child drawn by dare might climb it like a ladder or squirm through any of a dozen sags and gaps without touching a strand. It's a boundary drawn like a line in the dirt, but as a colt learns respect for a rope, we have learned respect for the fence. Slow learners earn the smart end of a cotton-wood switch, and by now Mother trusts our memory. We are allowed outside under the sole supervision of Tippy, our ring-necked Border collie, who is a general-purpose snake and skunk dog.
From the front steps, Gary and I survey our territory, eyes automatically falling short at the wire and moving sideways along the boundary. We will stake out a play ranch where the sun hits and bunchgrass is greening, fence pastures with twigs and build windbreaks and barns with palm-sized chunks of Cottonwood bark that litter the ground every spring. Beneath the bulk of knitted mittens, our side pockets bulge with plastic farm animals. The baby pigs and hens have been lost, swallowed up in the mud of previous ranches, and we are forbidden to take the survivors outdoors until the ground dries. We do it anyway. In our narrow range of possible bad deeds, we are in the medium-risk category called "asking for a good licking," which is tied to the facts that we "know better" and if we've been told once we've been "told a million times" not to take these particular toys outside in the mud. We are not terribly worried. Whippings don't result from misbehavior, even deliberate misbehavior, and already Gary and I know this. Whippings result from getting caught.
Gail's pockets are empty. No stiff trotting horses, no cows with heads bent for realistic grazing, for she is a poor accomplice. Tattling comes as easily to her as dimples. While Gary and I perfect the art of deceit to avoid capture, Gail trots guilelessly into enemy camp and disarms her captors, volunteering information to anyone willing to listen to her chatter. She even tells on herself, seeking out our mother to admit an episode of chocolate chip thievery or name-calling, drawn to the absolution of a good confession.
Outside, she tags along while Gary and I select some prime ranchland where the rope swing dangles between two trees. Our toes have scuffed a trough under the swing and it has filled in the runoff. Cattle need water. We tuck our chins and hook our thumbs in our pockets, voices dropping to manly levels to plan the grand system of creeks we will draw down from our natural lake. But the most valuable aspect of our land is the screen offered by the Cottonwood trunks and a frostbitten lilac bush. The house stands to the west, a low-slung white clapboard affair with square windows set up under the eaves and a squat porch that faces us. Behind the lilac we can't be clearly seen from the kitchen window, and the older kids are away at school. Before we set the first corner post, Gary and I turn, shoulder to shoulder, and face Gail. Sometimes she's a coyote, a direct threat to our future calf crop, other times she's a rustler, out to steal our herd. Man or beast, she finds no shelter here, in this small hardpan clearing, and no protection. We are both bigger, and together we are more. She knows if she squalls we will pummel her.
Glancing south through the kitchen window that morning Mother would have seen a landscape limbering up for spring, the faint pastel of budding sage, gray-green over the paler bur of old cactus, a minty breath of willow tips ringing the reservoir. In the distance, three shaggy saddle horses wander the west corner of their pasture searching out the half-buried glacial boulders that
draw the sun's warmth into the soil, rolling back their lips to crop the fringe of grass that greens in fairy rings around each stone. Closer in, the low-lying garden trickles full of snowmelt, the pale stubble of last year's sweet corn afloat in a gravy of dark loam. It will take weeks for the ground to hold a plow
Snowbanks drawing back from the barn leave shadows on the boards. A short distance from there an Angus bull, a recent purchase and nearly full grown, lies on a knoll, forefeet tucked under his brisket. The way his features merge in the sunshine, black on black, he might have passed for a hole in the scenery. Only the silhouette gives him away: sloping face, neck humped a size wider than the head, one smooth line drawn tight around a ton of black bull. Still, a bull soaking up the sun, even a large one, was no novelty in our barnyard. What draws my mother's eyes to this one is Gail, three years old and all of thirty pounds, rolling on the ground in front of him.
Stunned, Mother reaches down and clicks off the burner under a kettle of soup just beginning to simmer. Steam clouds the bottom edge of the glass. In the next deliberate second she fumbles the latch on the window and pulls it wide. A breeze billows the curtains back and she stills them with one hand, listening. No crying. Nothing but the scratchy rant of redwing blackbirds in the cattail slough behind the house.
Easing the door shut, Mother pauses at the front steps, her eyes skipping to Gary and me, counting heads, even as her hand gropes for the hoe leaning against the house. Tippy falls in behind her as she walks rapidly toward the gate. The situation calls for a panic of caution. She cannot yell or run toward the bull, nor can she sic the dog on him. A bull lying down is a far smaller threat than one up stomping around fighting a dog. Slipping through, Mother raps the yard gate shut on the dog's nose and hisses "Go lay down," the only command Tippy knows besides "sic 'em." She slinks back to the front step and collapses.
Leaving the gate slightly ajar, Mother slows her pace and circles to approach on the downwind side. The scene defies logic. Gail has shed her jacket and cap, and her dark pigtails bob on either side of her face as she rocks on her hands and knees in front of the bull. Closer, Mother can hear the sounds of battle, Gail's high-pitched bellows mocking the bull fights we witness at branding time, tongue lolling from her mouth as she bends forward and charges. The bull answers with a slick ripple of hide, tilting his shaggy poll to meet Gail's forehead, butting her back on her heels, nodding as she pushes into him again. Lying with his feet tucked up, his nose brushes the ground in slow arcs as he twists his great head side to side. Then with swift cunning, the bull shifts. Tipping his head in a graceful loop, he hooks the wide bridge of his nose under Gail's chest and flips her like a dime. She shrieks with laughter and is scrambling to all fours for another sally when Mom speaks from a few feet away. "Get back to the house." Her voice is as flat as the head of a nail. She holds the hoe ready to swing.
At three and a half, Gail must have heard those words with the same sinking heart that Tippy had heard hers. They are training words, ones we recognize as a single sound, a single sequence of sound. That particular command is not one to beg questions. Mother poises for action, hoe balanced on one shoulder like a baseball bat. Gail's small coat is sprawled on the hardpan at her feet, one sleeve inside out, the knitted cap a careless ball beside it. Without moving her eyes from the bull, Mother pushes them together with one foot as Gail passes her, heading for the house.
The bull stares after the child for a ways, then his ears flip back and his loud breathing stills, as if he's been struck by a sudden thought. Mother tenses, her eyes unwavering. She listens for the clank of the yard gate. Seconds pass. The spring sun hums around them, drawing grass out of the ground, drying mud. A rumbling, ominous as distant thunder, launches from ground level and gurgles up the bull's throat, erupting in a deep belch. The hoe sags on Mother's arm. The bull settles back squinting with pleasure, his jaw grinding in easy rhythm around a cud of half-digested hay.
By nightfall, I knew the tone of the story by heart as it would be told winter evenings while pinochle cards flicked across the kitchen table and our guests drew long sips of after-supper coffee. There she was, covered with straw, right where I by-God found her, no bigger than a grasshopper, butting heads with an Angus bull Here a pause for the response, the disbelief. A bull, big as the south side of a barn, and her just as happy as if she had good sense. This is the story the neighbors hear. The second part is family business.
The bull was still ruminating when Mom stomped back into the yard, banging the gate behind her. We jump like thieves. If Gail was out of the yard, we should have come and told her. Why wasn't she playing with us? The illegal livestock on the ground at our feet is noted with a glance and dismissed. Later. Now it is Gail's turn. Mom takes her by one shoulder, heads her for the kitchen, punctuating every word with a shake. Gary and I trail a safe distance behind them, our ranch behind the lilac forgotten. Yes, Gail sobs contritely, she knows better than to go outside the fence. Yes, she knows better than to wander off. But on the last and most important issue, she refuses to budge. No one ever told her not to fight with bulls. She's sure of it.
Mom sets her face in a way that makes Gary and me back against the wall. "Anybody with the sense God gave a goose would know better!" These words are often punctuated with slaps, and my hands rise up to cover my ears. Gail settles back on her heels and her arms cross with a touch of defiance.
"Anyways, we weren't fighting," she sniffs. "Me and Bully Wooly were just betending to bump heads." She repeats her explanation, just betending, then gazes upward and gives a go at shrugging, judging the effect. My hands move to protect my cheeks, but the room is quiet. My mother is flummoxed. "Bully Wooly?" she says finally, her mind stuck on the ton of beef under all that winter hair. "Bully Wooly?"
Gail's eyes tear, but her voice steadies. Things are coming around. She drops her hands on her hips and wags her head back and forth. "You know, like Bully Wooly was a bear and Bully Wooly had no hair—" And then a giggle sneaks out around the hiccups that come from hard crying, a terribly wrong sound, like the wrench of violin strings. Who could stand it?
My little sister. The child caught between tears and laughter, a bubbly little girl somehow misborn into this family of sturdy, practical farmers. The summer she was two she drew a standing ovation at Lang's Cafe when the waitress, cooing and clucking, leaned over her to ask, "And what do you want, sweetie?" Gail looked up at her very primly, then closed her eyes, lifted her # chin: "I—want—an—itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie yellow polka-dot bikini—" She belted out the first chorus before Mom got her hauled up and the foot-stomping, hat-waving cowboys sat down. Gail works like magic.
She finishes her bull song now, and all the air goes out of the room in a rush. Mom's mouth twitches at the corners. "Bully Wooly," she says in a wondering voice. "Great galloping gods of war, child. What gets into your head."
Where I grew up, no daily papers shifted our view of the world, and television didn't intrude until the mid-sixties. Radio broadcasts from Havre, Montana, bounced off the Little Rockies and gave all we desired of the outside—market reports, weather forecasts and a little Patsy Cline. When the roads were decent, come Saturday we had mail. Dry summer days I climbed the windbreak after noon to watch for a mare's tail of dust snaking south along the county road, a gray stream that hung for miles on a quiet day and at the last possible second exploded and rose like a mushroom as the mailman slid to a stop. Fuel drums mounted on railroad ties stood like short-barreled cannons wherever a private lane met the county road, mailboxes large enough to keep parcels dry, large enough to be landmarks, signposts, billboards announcing the name of a ranch and the brand stamped on its cattle.
Ours was one of twenty-some families scattered like islands on a hundred square miles of prairie, farm and ranch folks loosely connected by crank telephones and narrow ribbons of gumbo road. Most of the neighbors I knew were the sons and daughters of farmers, a second generation distilled from turn-of-the-century homesteaders who stuck it out. They say
only one in ten made the first decade. In south Phillips County, the high ratio of public to deeded land suggests an even poorer showing, but in our community, for every claim abandoned or turned back to the government, another never left the care of Uncle Sam. Wide swaths through the breaks and hardpan sage were plotted out and passed over, acres where the nearest water lay twenty miles overland or a quarter mile under. Of those who stayed, some started out as Russians, Germans, Norwegians or Swedes—first-generation immigrants. Others came from some direction—up from the south, down from Canada, all of them bearing the sound and taste of other worlds.
The prairie they settled made marginal farmland, and with extended families left behind, they were forced to depend on community. No one worked a homestead alone. To stay required common focus and collective effort, a sharing of labor, machinery and knowledge. By the time their children took over, expanding the original claims and jerking the plow line from a tractor seat instead of behind a work team, families could no longer be sorted by nationality, religion or expectation. Parents still spoke with accents and told stories of city life, of ocean crossings and foxhunts, of sleigh rides and homemade skis, of the way dumplings were made in the Old Country. But their children, my parents' generation, were born on the land and to the land, and they all told the same stories of schoolhouse dances and county fairs, or runaway teams and 'hoppers and dry wells. Theirs was an intimacy born of isolation, rather than blood relation. They told stories on each other, but like a large family living in tight quarters, they obeyed strict rules of privacy, a polite turning of heads at the glimpse of naked skin.
Word from the outside, whether it arrived in a mail sack or a news report, seldom overshadowed the facts of our lives. We talked in facts—work and weather, the logistics of this fence, that field—but stories were how we spoke. A good story rose to the surface of conversation like heavy cream, a thing to be savored and served artfully. Stored in dry wit, wrapped in dark humor, tied together with strings of anecdotes, these stories told the chronology of a family, the history of a piece of land, the hardships of a certain year or a span of years, a series of events that led without pause to the present. If the stories were recent, they filtered through the door of my room late at night, voices hushed around the kitchen table as they sorted out this day and held it against others, their laughter sharp and sad and slow to come. Time was the key. Remember the time . . . and something in the air caught like a whisper. Back when. Back before a summer too fresh and real to talk about, a year's work stripped in a twenty-minute hailstorm; a man's right hand mangled in the belts of a combine, first day of harvest; an only son buried alive in a grain bin, suffocated in a red avalanche of wheat.