When he finished my legs were jerking. I was thinking of how Granddad really did feel about land, how he was always studying it. A lot of people in the church were crying. As soon as Brother Barstow sat down, the choir got up again and sang “Whispering Hope.” Mrs. Turner sang high and splendid all the way through it, and I was shivery again. Then Brother Barstow got back up and said: “Now dear people may the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ rest and abide with each now and forevermore, Amen.” In a minute the pallbearers came down to the front and stood there looking awkward while the funeral-home man fiddled with the coffin. He made them all stand back, so he could be the center of attention for a while. Then they picked the coffin up and carried it toward the back of the church, and I thought they were taking it away. The funeral man came over and stood by Grandma and motioned for us to stay seated. “The mourners are looking now,” he said. I looked around and saw the coffin sitting right in the door of the church. I saw a man lifting his little girl up, so she could see Granddad.
Then the man motioned for us to get up, and I followed Hud out of the aisle. I could see the coffin again, and it seemed as big as a boat. It was much too big for Granddad. He was just skin and bones. The silver rim around the coffin shone like fire, and when I got closer I saw that all the inside of it was lined with pink satin. Granddad was laying there in it, what was left of him. He had never been in anything as showy as that before. I stopped by the side of it, and then I knew that he was really dead and gone forever; I may not have known it before. They had a slick black suit on him, and a white shirt and a vest, and a dark red necktie with a little gold bird on it. His hands were on his chest, as white as paint. I squeezed the songbook when I looked at his face. They had put paint on him, like a woman wears, red paint. I could see it on his cheeks, and caked around his mouth. I could see slick oil on his hair, and some sticky stuff like honey around his eyes. I wished I could have buried him like he died; he was better that way. I stood there too long, I didn’t want to move away from him, and finally Hud pulled me a step or two. He held my arm.
“Come on,” he said. “Let ’em take him to the graveyard an’ put him down. Let’s get this shit over with.” I went with him to the edge of the people, and we stood there while Grandma looked. She was the last one. Then the man shut the lid so nobody could see, and I was glad. The pallbearers lifted the coffin and set it in the back of the hearse.
“Come on,” Hud said. “You got to ride with us to the graveyard.”
But before he got hold of me I turned and jumped back into the people. I slipped through them and got clear and ran way around to the back of the church. I wasn’t going any farther with that crowd, Hud or no Hud. He didn’t seem to be following me, and I fell on the ground behind a hedge.
Then I heard the cars begin to drive off. The church got quiet, and I sat there in my good clothes, on the ground. I felt like crying a little then, because the day was so bad, because they had finally hit at Granddad when he couldn’t hit back. But my eyes were dry, and I was hot as if I had fever.
I opened the songbook and began to look for the song about the beautiful river, but I couldn’t find it. I hummed a little of it to myself, and then I remembered how Mrs. Turner sang it, how fine it sounded when she sang the words about the beautiful, the beautiful river. It made me remember Granddad, like he was before the cattle sickness, in those days when he had some laughing in him. I remembered a lot of things about him that I hadn’t thought of in a long time: how I used to sneak out of bed early in the mornings and watch out the window as he passed by on his way to the pasture, the wild cowboys following behind. I was always wondering what horse he would take—he might take a bronc or not. Once after he’d been sick he made the cowboys wire him on with baling wire, so he wouldn’t get weak and fall. I looked down at the bare ground behind the hedge, the bare brown ground, and I remembered that they had taken Granddad to put him in it. I guess he had passed me finally and for good, to go to his land. It began to seem like they hadn’t hurt him so much, after all—anyway, he had stayed with the land, like he always intended to do. The coffin and the paint wouldn’t matter once he was deep in the land. I decided then that I wouldn’t need to worry a lot about keeping his ranch, or about losing it, either, because whatever I did about it would just be for me. He had always held the land, and would go on holding what he needed of it forever. I got up then and walked around to the front of the church, looking at the green grass on the ground, and watching the white clouds ease into the sky from the south. I went in the church and laid the songbook on a seat. Then I went back outside and stood on the walk in front of the church house, looking at the grass, at the skim-milk clouds, at those blue church-house windows, thinking of the horseman that had passed.
EPILOGUE
The next afternoon I left Thalia, and nobody but Hud knew I was going. I told him I wanted to go visit Hermy, and that I might go somewhere else and work awhile if I could happen onto a job. He said it would be all right with him, but that they’d probably want me to come back when all the legal business about the killing came up. He said that might be a good while. Hud seemed calm and fairly friendly, and he didn’t act depressed at all. They were going to try to indict him for murder without malice, but he said he didn’t think they’d ever do it. The worst he could get if they did was five years, and that was nearly always suspended. I knew he’d probably come out of it on top. He told me to keep in touch, so they could locate me in a hurry if they needed me.
I took a few clothes and a few of my paperbacks and drove to town in the pickup. I drew my money out of the bank, and left the pickup parked in front of the courthouse, where Hud could find it easy. But it was the middle of the afternoon and hot as fire, and I didn’t feel like just striking off down the highway. I fiddled around the drugstore awhile, and then went to the pool hall and shot snooker till almost dark. I even won about six bits. When I came out it was dusk, and the four street lights around the square were lit. I stood on the curb by the pickup. They had sprinkled the courthouse lawn, and the water and grass and hot day made a good smell. I got my suitcase and decided to make a start. A red cattle truck was stopped by the filling station, and the driver was out checking his tires. I walked over and stood watching him.
“Felt like I had a flat,” he said, coming around the truck. He grinned at me. “Guess I’m feeling things.”
“Where you headed?” I asked. I felt a little silly.
“Raton, New Mexico,” he said. “Goin all the way, an’ comin’ back through here sometime tomorrow night. I truck outa Fort Worth.”
“Could you let me ride to Wichita?” I said. “I got to get there tonight.”
“Why sure, hell yes,” he said. He was a short blackheaded guy with a pot belly and a crazy grin. He waved for me to get in the truck. “I been lonesome as a hound-dog all the way,” he said. “My name’s Bobby Don Brewer.”
I crawled up in the high, bouncy cab, and set my suitcase between my legs. “I’m Lonnie Bannon,” I said, and we shook hands. “A buddy of mine got hurt bull-ridin’ the other night, an’ I thought I’d go see him.”
Bobby Don ground the truck in gear and we started off. “I used to ride them bulls when I was a young fucker,” he said, spitting out the window. “But I got me two boys now. Mama don’t let me rodeo no more. Sometimes I miss it, you know.” He slapped the seat with his hand, and honked at a gasoline truck, looking a little saddened. “I had me some good times, rodeoing,” he said. “Runnin’ aroun’, drinkin’ beer an’ all that. Knew some good ol’ boys I don’t get to see no more. All of us out scratchin’ for a livin’, I guess.”
“Say?” he said. “Bannon, you say? Kin to Homer Bannon?”
“I’m his grandson,” I said. “You know him?”
“Hell, yes, I know him,” he said. “I trucked many a head a cattle off his ranch. Hell, I remember you now, remember seeing you. How is Mister Homer?”
I didn’t want to get in a long conversation about it.
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“Mean as he ever was,” I said.
He grew quiet, and we rode through the outskirts of Thalia. The sun was going into the great western canyons, the cattleland was growing dark. I saw the road and the big sky melt together in the north, above the rope of highway. I was tempted to do like Jesse once said: to lean back and let the truck take me as far as it was going. But I wanted to see Hermy, and I knew Bobby Don wouldn’t have any time to waste. I saw the lights of houses as we flashed by in the darkness, the little houses, the ranches and the farms I knew. Bobby Don hummed some old song whose tune I had forgotten, and I sat thinking about Thalia, making the rounds in my mind. At home it was time for the train to go by, and nobody was sitting on the porch. But for a little while, as the truck rolled on across the darkened range, I had them all, those faces who made my days: Jesse and Granddad, Halmea and Hud.
“Goddamn,” Bobby Don said, turning to me. “It’s sure too bad about your buddy gettin’ hurt. Them bulls can be bad business, I know that.”
The cab was dark and the dash light threw shadows across his face, so that when I looked at him, and saw him pull down his old straw hat and face the road, he reminded me of someone that I cared for, he reminded me of everyone I knew.
Horseman, Pass By Page 18