“This evenin’s gonna be a regular bitch,” Jesse said, pulling the brim of his hat down a little farther. He had got in the habit of dreading things. We left the cool sycamore shade and went down to the lots to catch our horses. I led mine to the big water trough and let him drink his fill. He was a worthless, long-legged bay horse that I didn’t much like. The water in the trough was deep and black near the bottom, with little green patches of mossy scum floating on the surface. When we mounted, the sky was high and white, with just a few thin milkweed clouds scattered near the horizons. The horses were sweating before we had gone a mile.
But the rounding that afternoon went better than any of us had expected it to. We were lucky in the big pasture, and found most of the cows in one place, so we didn’t have to waste so much time prowling in the heavy mesquite thickets. They were standing around in the shade, but we stirred them up and pushed them down the brown sandy trails to a tank. The old cows waded in up to their bellies, while the big half-yearling calves farted around on the banks. When we got them all started toward the house Granddad sent Hank and me off to look for those that were missing. I rode my bay hard for a couple of hours, trotting along the brown shelving ridges and shoving through the thick weeds and the blooming green mesquites in the flats. I found two little bunches of cattle and managed to get them to the main herd before it left the pasture, so I felt fairly proud of myself. By five o’clock we had them trailing into the horse-pasture tank. Granddad sent Hank and Lonzo to get a pickup load of hay, to scatter for the cattle, and he and Jesse and I got fresh horses and loped down the road a couple of miles to the little Idiot Ridge pasture, the last one we had to round.
The pasture was open, not many trees on it, and compared to some of the others it was easy gathered. It was our bad luck that all the cattle were on the far side, standing around the windmill, so we had a long drive to make by dark. It was beginning to cool off a little, but Granddad kept his oldest cows in the Idiot Ridge country, and with them we couldn’t make much time. Right at sundown we were driving them along the high ridge toward headquarters, with another mile and a half to go. In front of us the red sun was dropping cleanly down the last few feet of sky, falling into the gold thicket of mesquite on the far hill. There was not a cloud near it, nothing to break the clear spread of light. The pasture lay under the quietest, stillest light of day; it looked as perfect as some ranch picture on a serum calendar. The old cows walked slowly, their red coats gray to the flank with dust, their heads low. Now and then they stopped so a calf could suck a swallow or two of milk before we prodded them on. Some of them still carried their calves. Their sides bulged like barrels, and streams of yellow piss trickled down their hindquarters into the grass and dirt. The little calves waddled along stiff-legged, bawling for their mothers to stop. The old Hereford bull and the two longhorn steers, the cattle that Granddad kept for old time’s sake, were in the herd. The two rangy, brindle steers walked in the front, following the trail down the long slope to the lots. The old bull slouched along behind, twitching the black buzz flies off his back. We all fell back to the rear and let the cattle follow the steers—they knew where they were going as well as we did. The evening air was cool, but heavy with the smells of dust and cattle piss and prairie weed. The grass was already browning under the long days of sun. Before us the trail ran downward like a slack lariat rope, ending at the big water trough.
Granddad was tired; he sat loose in his saddle. “I swear,” he said. “I wonder if the government’s gonna inspect them two long-horns of mine. They’re gonna have a time adoin’ it. Them big horns’ll never go through a chute.”
“Where’d you get them two?” Jesse asked.
“Raised ’em,” Granddad said. “I been keeping ’em to remind me how times was. Cattle like them make me feel like I’m in the cattle business.”
“Hell, I’d let ’em go back in the brush,” Jesse said. “Then if the government wants ’em, let the government go find ’em.”
“Well, I don’t know what to think yet,” Granddad said. “I ain’t gonna try to decide till I find out for sure what’s wrong with my cattle.” He spit tobacco juice into the grass. “Don’t do no good to worry ahead,” he said. “Anyway, I guess I know now what’s the matter with that case of sore-foot we got up in the hospital trap. I didn’t think that looked much like the foul-foot.”
Then we drove the tired cattle through the twilight, and he said no more. We got them to the tank just about the time the new moon lifted its rim above the highway to the east, a big swollen grapefruit of a moon. The cows walked out into the water, but the two big steers stopped and began to tear and shake the blocks of hay that Lonzo and Hank had scattered. We left them there, drinking and eating, pushing in with cattle from the other pastures, and I thought of how much work it would take to get them all separated again. That was enough to put me down on the government myself. After I unsaddled I left Granddad and the men to make plans for the morning, and went on to the house. I wanted to clean up as quick as I could, and get into Thalia for a little while, to shoot some pool. I thought maybe if I got to Halmea when nobody was around, she could help me come up with an excuse.
Halmea turned out to be a help, all right. She figured up what groceries we needed, and it didn’t take much to persuade Granddad to let me go in after them. I bathed and put on some clean Levis and a T-shirt before I ate; then as soon as I was through eating I got in the pickup and drove away from the ranch, through the cool night. As I left I saw Jesse and Lonzo sitting on the steps of the bunkhouse; I didn’t much want them to go, and I didn’t figure they much wanted to, so I didn’t ask them. I drove slow till I got out of the horse pasture, so as not to bump the old cows that stood in the road.
When I got to the highway I turned my little window in and let the cool air swoosh on me as I gunned the old pickup toward Thalia. Just inside the city limits I braked and swung off the pavement onto the crunching gravel driveway of the highway grocery store. I thought I had better get the groceries first, before the old people who ran the store went to bed. A couple of old women were rocking on the porch, in front of the R. C. Cola thermometers and the Garrett snuff signs. I bought some bread and sugar, picked myself up a new pair of work gloves, twirled the paperback rack a time or two, and went out. I had the night to play around with, what there was of it between then and getting-up time.
Thalia was a still, quiet place at night. I drove slowly through the one long main street, now and then hearing a snatch of fiddle music out some open window. Some of the folks were out watering their lawns or visiting with the neighbors. In the summertime, in that country, evening is the peaceful time of day.
I parked on the square and got out. In front of me, under the big courthouse mulberry trees, a few old men were sitting on the wooden benches, talking and whittling and spitting as the night came down. Those old men were always there. On Saturday afternoons when I was younger I used to dirty up my clean weekend Levis, sitting on the ground in the mashed mulberries, listening to the old men swap stories and yarns. But after a while their talk got old. All they knew were stories about old times, and I could hear better ones than they could tell from Granddad. They sat there then, they sit there now, I guess, whittling, spitting, nothing for them but the benches and the mulberry mush, the whittle sticks and the Brown Mule. But it was getting later, and I knew that pretty soon they would wobble home to their daughters’ back rooms and leave the square to we boys.
There were a lot of kids in the pool hall, standing around the eight-ball tables at the back, Cokes and cues in their hands. My buddy Hermy Neal was at one table, shooting eight-ball with a cousin who was visiting him from Oklahoma City. I skirted around the money tables, where the reckless-ass oil drillers were shooting nine-ball at a dollar a throw. They were studs, those drillers: all they cared about was their cars and their work, and now and then their gambling. Dumb Billy, the stupid orphan kid who made what living he had shoveling shit at the local stock pens, was standing by a s
nooker table. He liked to watch the balls roll across the smooth green felt. Lem the Lion, the old nigger who ran the pool hall, was slipping around with his rack waiting for the games to be over so he could take in money.
“Hey, man,” Hermy said. “You got your pickup?”
“It’s on the square,” I said. “Who’s takin’ the winner?”
“Winner’s ass,” he said. “Let’s go get some beer while we got transportation.” He was a tall blackheaded kid, fairly devil-may-care. He was a pretty good athlete when he wanted to be.
I hadn’t meant to go out of town that night, but the more I thought about it the better idea it seemed. And I didn’t really ponder it long. Granddad would be too sound asleep to know when I came in. He hardly ever knew anyway.
“I’m game,” I said, watching Hermy’s four-eyed cousin draw a bead on the four-ball. He hit it head on and missed the pocket about a foot and a half.
“Table’s off level,” he said. “Look at it wobble.”
“You fucked up,” Hermy said. He grinned and bradded in the eight-ball. His cousin drug a dime out of his pocket and pitched it on the table for Lem the Lion. Then he and I and Hermy and a couple more boys cut out and piled in the pickup.
“Make the square a time or two,” Hermy said. “We might scare up some pussy.”
“You’re dreamin’, man,” his cousin said. His cousin thought Thalia was a shitheap of a town, and he was always putting up Oklahoma City. “You could circle this goddamn square a thousand times and not see a good-lookin’ girl,” he said.
“Who said good-lookin’?” Hermy said. “I wouldn’t back away from a gentle heifer, not tonight.” He wouldn’t, either. It hadn’t been long since half the boys in the town had had a wild soiree with a blind heifer, out on a creek one cold night.
But it turned out the cousin was right. I blew out of town and we flew down the road toward the county line, laughing and fighting in the cab, weaving all over the road sometimes. We were all too young to buy beer, but that didn’t matter. If no cops were around the clerk would sell to a six-year-old, and if some were close by you had to look like Granddad even to get inside the store. Hermy’s cousin was the littlest fart in the pickup, but we made him go in. He had to prove he wasn’t completely worthless. Actually, the man would have sold him the store if he’d had any money.
On the way back to Thalia we tore into the six-packs. Hermy was an expert at opening the cans so they’d spew right in somebody’s face, and he gave his cousin a regular beer bath. His cousin was so excited he didn’t mind. We were living it up for once, talking about where we might find some girls when we got back.
But when we got there the drive-ins were closed, and the only person awake in the whole town, it looked like, was old Buttermilk, the night watchman. He was sitting on the curb in front of the grocery store, talking to his scroungy brown dog. There was nothing to do but make the lover’s lanes, and then drive around the square and the two business blocks while we finished the beer.
“Shit, let’s get out, man,” the cousin said. We were all tired of riding, so we took the rest of our beer and went over to the courthouse benches to drink it. In a few minutes Buttermilk shambled over, beginning his rounds. “You boys ain’t jackin’ off, are you?” he asked. That was his favorite question. We hurrahed him a little and he went on. The moon was high and the courthouse lawn was white with light. We watched the one stoplight turn from red to green, from green to red, from red to green, and on and on.
“I’m horny,” Hermy said. He was sitting in the grass fiddling with an empty beer can.
“I wish we could go someplace,” I said. “I’d like to go to Fort Worth or someplace like that.”
“I don’t want no Fort Worth,” Hermy said. He was trying to bend the can between his hands. “I just want some pussy in the next half hour or so.”
His cousin snorted. He was getting pretty drunk, and his glasses had slipped way down on his nose. He looked like he was going to get sick on the beer.
“You boys don’t know what it is,” he said. “You oughta live in Oklahoma City. Man, up there you have to fight to keep your pants on.” He thought he was pretty much of a cocksman.
“Is that how you got so rough?” Buddy said. Buddy was a little guy, but he always acted mean and hustly. If he got his bluff in on somebody he’d run them ragged.
“That’s how,” the cousin said. “How you been making out with the milk cows?” He was a little drunk and a good deal excited. “Man, this town is nowhere,” he said. “Nowhere, U.S.A. Deadass County, Texas.” Everybody had been pestering him for days, and he was getting back.
“By god, I wondered how you got so tough,” Buddy said.
“I’m not the roughest,” the cousin said, pushing his glasses back up in place. “But I know damn well I can whip your ass,” he said, taking his glasses off.
We all perked up a little. It wouldn’t be much fight, but at least something would be happening.
“You got it to whip,” Buddy said.
Both of them were too full of beer to have good sense, and too far gone to back down. They went out in the moonlight to fight, being careful to pick a spot of lawn where there weren’t any water faucets to trip over. When they found one they began to stand and look at one another, with their fists doubled up.
“Start it, you chickenshit,” Buddy said. He was in his Golden Gloves crouch, but he didn’t move toward the cousin.
“You start it,” the cousin said. “I’ll end it.”
Hermy was so disgusted with the whole thing he didn’t even get up off the grass. I felt kinda sorry for the two, actually—it was half funny and half sad, the way they kept walking around and around one another in the moonlight. Neither one was mad at the other, really, and they must have both been wondering how they ended up in such a fix. Finally Buddy got his nerve up enough to run in and hit at the cousin, and they had a little shove fight that lasted about ten shoves. Then they separated and stood there, trying to get chummy so they wouldn’t have to fight any more.
Hermy got up off the ground and knocked the dirt off his ass. “I’m going home before I get killed,” he said. I took him and the cousin home and left Buddy and the others on the square, to talk over the fight. As I drove out of town I noticed the rodeo flags waving in the breeze: the Thalia rodeo was less than a week away. I felt blue as I drove out the empty highway. The silly fight had put me in a lonesome mood, and I couldn’t get the funny, beery feeling out of my stomach. I turned on the radio and got some hillybilly music, but it didn’t cheer me up. I wouldn’t have minded going with Hermy’s cousin to see what it was like in Oklahoma City, at least it would be a change. Thalia was okay, I really liked it, but I just didn’t want it for all the time. The old cows bawling in the horse pasture kept me awake till nearly morning, and I lay in bed with my eyes open, thinking about all the girls I knew in Thalia, and those in Oklahoma City I didn’t know, all of them with nightgowns on, asleep somewhere and breathing in the night.
CHAPTER 5
The early sun shone on Stranger’s sorrel coat, and when he moved his head to look at Mr. Burris, the curb chain on the bridle jingled a little. Granddad had gotten off, to talk, but the rest of us were still on horseback, waiting for orders. The sun was less than half an hour high, but we had already made a circle of the horse pasture, and all the cattle were milling and stirring up dust in the big pen. Mr. Burris stood in front of us, slapping his gloves against his leg. He had shown up that morning in a station wagon, with four men besides Thompson, and a lot of veterinary equipment.
“I think while you’ve got ’em all penned I’ll just have you run ’em all through the chute,” he said to Granddad. “If it won’t be too much trouble. That way we can kinda get an idea of how many’s infected, and how far along they are. Then we can get what specimens we need without any trouble.”
“I see,” Granddad said. He had shaved that morning, and had on a clean shirt and a fresh blue pair of Levis. “That’ll be fine wi
th us. When you-all get done with ’em we may work a few of these calves, if that ain’t against the law.”
“No, sir,” Mr. Burris said. “You do what you want to with ’em. We’re ready to get to work if you are.”
We all turned our horses and rode into the dusty lots. First we separated into two lines of horsemen and let the cattle trickle between us, so we could count them. Then we cut them up into groups, the cows that had calves in one place, the drys in another, the yearlings someplace else. Hank and Jesse and one or two of the neighbors went on with the separating, while Lonzo and I tied our horses and began to run the oldest cows through the squeeze chute so the vets could work on them. Cecil Goad, one of our neighbors, would run a few cows into a little crowding pen, and then it was up to me and Lonzo to put them on in the chute. The vets were waiting. They were all dressed in gray coats, and had a whole conglomeration of bottles and jars set out beside the chute. They turned out to be a quiet, hard-working bunch; they handled their end of it a lot quicker and smoother than Lonzo and I handled ours. It was a mean, tiresome job, any way you went at it. The chute was plenty big enough for calves, but it was a pretty tight squeeze for some of the old cows, and we had the devil of a time getting them to take it. We couldn’t get but ten or twelve in the pen at one bunch, and then they spun and kicked and bellered, started in the chute and backed out, stuck their heads in the corners and wouldn’t move, turned and snorted, did ever aggravating thing they could think of to do. In a few minutes Lonzo and I were covered with dust, and hoarse from yelling at the old cows. The sun got high and the dust rose in a cloud from the sandy pens as the cattle milled and bawled. Granddad was working at the head of the chute, letting the cattle out when the vets were done.
It was past the middle of the morning before we had a real breakdown, but when it came it was a good one. Three cows got to crawling on top of one another in the chute and busted one fence to smithereens. Once it was busted there wasn’t anything we could do but stop and fix it, and that took till nearly dinnertime. So when we went up to eat we hadn’t even finished with the cows, and had all the calves and yearlings to work that afternoon. We ate quick and started in again, in the white heat of twelve-thirty. I was loggy, too full of ice tea and pie, and it got me into trouble. We had the crowding pen almost empty, just one old cow left in it. She was a thin line-backed hussy, with one horn broken off and a long string of foamy slobber hanging from her chin; nothing we could do would make her take the chute. We surrounded her and finally she stuck her head in like she meant to go. When she did I run up behind her to shut the gate. Then she turned back through herself like a bobcat and went charging down the west wall of the pen. As she went by me she threw out a big cracked hoof, and I spun away from it like I had from a thousand others. Only I spun a fraction too slow, and it caught me on the hip. All I felt was a shove, and a splat on my chaps. When I tuned in on things again I was outside the pen, sitting with my back against the red plank railing of the scales, and Granddad was wiping my forehead with a piece of wet cotton he had got from one of the vets. Inside the pens the dust was still swirling.
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