Thalia Page 10

  Stranger let me slip on his bare back, and we trotted off toward our big valley pasture. When I got through the gate, the dewy grass stretched away in front of me, almost six miles to another fence. The dawn breeze stirred in my face: the sky to the east was brightening. Idiot Ridge was a mile away, breaking the levelness of the plain. I touched Stranger into a steady lope, so we could get there and wait for the sun. Dozens of feeding jack rabbits broke before us, but as we went past they zigzagged off to the side and stopped, their long ears folded against their heads. A big, brown-winged prairie hawk sat on the limb of a dead mesquite, watching for quail. Once Stranger jumped a small mesquite bush when I wasn’t looking, and I almost slid off his slick back. When we got to the ridge I slowed him down, and he picked his way through the loose gray rocks to the top.

  On the north edge of Idiot Ridge I stopped and slid off. Headquarters lay to the northeast, where the sun was about to come up. The whole long line of sky behind the house and barn was orange and red; the wind was driving the layer of summer clouds out of sight to the northwest. I could see the horses we had left at the tank, filing up to the lots for their regular feed. In a few minutes Jesse would tend to them. Farther down the ridge two hawks were gliding low over the rocky hillside, dipping and swooping, then almost steady in the air. Stranger whinnied, then bent his neck and began to graze. The sky was a country of changing colors, like the land: red in the east, still deep night blue in the west. The moon was fading out of sight. Across the thread of highway, in a neighbor’s pasture, an old bull bellowed, the hoarse sound barely reaching me. I could see a few of Granddad’s cows on the flats to the south. Suddenly Stranger raised his head and snorted. Two young dog coyotes were trotting along the edge of the ridge, coming right toward us. When they were about fifty yards away, I whistled and they stopped, their gray heads cocked and alert. Then they loped off the slope over the edge and I lost them among the rocks and chaparral. Fingers of sunlight crept up the ridge, crept over us, and made Stranger’s sorrel coat shine like fire. I watched the light brighten the rangeland a minute; then I got back on and touched Stranger with my heels. I turned him directly toward the barn, so I wouldn’t have to stop and open the horse pasture gate. Sliding off the steep ledges I was afraid to give him much slack, but once we hit bottom, with only level pastureland between us and the homeplace, I let him go. In a hundred yards he went from trot to lope to dead, tearing run, till he was stretched out low to the ground, with his red legs blurred beneath him. I couldn’t see for the wind tears in my eyes, and I was afraid every second I would fall off, but I let him go. It seemed like I had been waiting a week for the thrill and excitement of his speed. We went over the gray-brown grass like it was a race track, Stranger running for all he was worth and me leaning over his neck hanging on to his flying mane. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fence and knew we were nearly there and must stop. It was the fence that led to the lots, I remembered that the lot cornered, that Stranger would whip around it, and I started to slow him down. But it was too late, he was turning without me, slipping away from between my legs, already turned and gone, the reins burning through my hands, the ground somewhere below or behind me. Then I hit it, I was rolling, a rock bumped my hip, there was nothing to grab, then no more rolling and I sat up, wondering if I were hurt. Suddenly Jesse had ahold of my shoulders and was trying to push me back down. “Be still,” he said. “Be still. You may have something broken.” But I wanted to stand up, I felt too good to be still.

  “I’m okay,” I said. His face was pained, like he was the one who was hurt. It must have been a terrible fall to watch. Stranger stood by the lot gate, the bridle reins trailing in the dirt. I grinned, and Jesse’s face relaxed a little. He gripped me under the arms and helped me up.

  “It looked like both your legs would break off,” he said.

  My hip was sore from the rock, but otherwise I didn’t seem to have a scratch on me. I led Stranger through the gate and slipped the bridle off as he went by me to the hayrack.

  “He runs like an antelope,” Jesse said. “All the years I followed rodeo I never seen a harder-lookin’ fall.”

  “It wasn’t as hard as it looked,” I said. Walking to the house for breakfast, I felt as good as I had in weeks. I was even hoping there was a day’s work ahead.

  3.

  By the time I had finished my Post Toasties, everybody else was nearly done eating. Hud had his mouth full of biscuit, and was pouring a dark stream of sorghum over a lump of butter that lay in his plate. He had on slacks and a white shirt, dressed up to go somewhere. Granddad was saucering his coffee, not paying much attention to the breakfast-table conversation. When breakfast was over he got his hat and went out the back door. I ate as quickly as I could and started to the lots, but Halmea stopped me.

  “You in no hurry,” she said. “Help me strain dis milk.”

  The two big buckets of milk Lonzo had brought up stood on the back porch; the yellow layer of cream had already risen to the top. Halmea handed me a piece of cheesecloth, and I spread it over the top of the old milk strainer. She lifted one of the heavy buckets and slowly poured the milk through the cloth into the clean straining basin. The milk ran through in a swirling white stream, leaving the little flecks of dirt and manure stuck to the damp cheesecloth. Clear beads of sweat stood on the black dark skin of Halmea’s throat and neck.

  “Watch what you doin’,” She said. “You let dat rag slip an’ we got it all to do ovah.”

  When we were finished I got my hat and went down to the lots, to see what the day’s assignment was. Granddad was in the tool shed, sharpening the blade of his shovel.

  “What do we do today?” I asked. “I feel almost like workin’ for a change.”

  “Goodness, I wish I had a job for you,” he said, cleaning the file against his pants leg. He put his weight on the shovel handle, to hold the blade steady against the bench, and sharpened a little while he was considering.

  “Oh, son, I wasn’t gonna do much today,” he said. “I’m just gonna cut a few weeds here around the house. I guess this mornin’ you better go with the boys and help ’em patch some of that fence on the west side. I don’t guess we’ll do much this afternoon. Kinda hate to waste work until I find out a little more about the cattle.” The rasp of the file drowned out conversation for a minute, and I stood there watching. Seeing him sweat over the shovel, I wished I could stay and cut weeds with him. I didn’t feel right about leaving him to work alone.

  “You ain’t worried about that scheme of Hud’s, are you?” I asked. He laid the file down and tested the edge of the blade with his finger.

  “Hud?” he said. “What scheme? Oh lordy, I got so many things lined up to worry about I ain’t come to that. I imagine Scott was talkin’ not too serious. I don’t think he’s got much of a scheme in his mind.” He shook his head and picked up the file. “If I don’t get a bill of health on these cattle there won’t be much ranch for him to run,” he said.

  “Aw, I don’t really think they’ll liquidate these cattle,” he said, after he had filed a minute. “But I ain’t young enough to count on what I think bein’ right, either, an’ I ain’t fool enough to figure on things turning out the way I expect ’em to.” He put up the file and started off around the barn. Jesse hollered at me then, and I went over to the post pile and helped him and Lonzo load the fencing tools.

  4.

  None of us worked very hard that morning. There didn’t seem to be any reason to strain ourselves. By eleven-thirty we were sitting on the back porch, waiting for Halmea to call dinner. While we were waiting, Lonzo and Jesse got to talking about the towns they knew. Lonzo’s travels didn’t take long to tell—after he named the times he’d got drunk in Lawton or Ardmore or Oklahoma City, he was about through. But Jesse could have talked all afternoon and on into the night and not have scratched the surface of all the things he’d seen and done. He got to talking about places he’d been on the rodeo circuit, and just hearing the names was enoug
h to make me restless. He’d been to practically ever town in Texas, big or little, Lubbock and Amarillo and Houston, Fort Worth and Dallas and San Antone, Alpine and El Paso, Snyder and Olney, Vernon and Dumas and Newcastle and a hundred more, and then on into New Mexico and Colorado, to Tucumcari and Clovis and Gallup and Cimarron, Raton and Walsenburg and Denver, on up to Cheyenne and Pendleton and Pierre and Calgary, over to St. Louis and Sioux City, Chicago and Kansas City and New York, and a hundred more I couldn’t even remember. I could tell by the way he rolled the names around in his mouth that he must have liked rodeo, or at least have liked seeing places. But he wouldn’t admit it.

  “That’s no life,” he said. “You boys think stayin’ in one place is tiresome, just wait till you see that goddamn road comin’ at you ever mornin’. And still comin’ late that evenin’ and sometimes way into the night. I run that road for ten years and never caught up with nothin’.”

  “I’d like to run that bastard,” Lonzo said. “Long as I could chase down a piece of pussy now and then, to keep me goin’.”

  “If you stayed on it that long, you must a liked it?” I said. He shook his head and spit.

  “Oh, it gets in your blood like anything else you do,” he said. “For a while it’s right excitin’.” He fanned a fly away from his face. “I just wonder, when it’s all said and done,” he went on, “who ends up with the most in this scramble. Them that go in for big shows and big prizes and end up takin’ a bustin’, or them that plug along at what they can kinda handle. Home folks or show people. They’s a lot a difference in ’em.”

  “Which are you?” I said.

  “I kinda split the difference,” he said. “I missed out on the good things a both kinds, loose-horsing like I have.” The way he said it, I couldn’t help noticing how sorry he felt for himself. “I still got some loose horse in me,” he said.

  Halmea called us then, and we went in and ate. After dinner, while everyone was heading for their napping spot, I went out in the front yard and set down under the cedars. I leaned back against one and let the hot wind blow in my face. Sticky cedar sap was oozing out of the trees, and I caught the burning summery smell of the lilac bushes. I thought about all those rich names Jesse had rolled off his tongue, and about what little I had to compare with them myself. Except for trips to the county-line beer joints, those few nights in Fort Worth were all I had. I guess they just amounted to a few evening walks downtown, when the city lights were flashing. But they had seemed like something rich to me. I had left Granddad in the hotel lobby, and prowled through the drugstores for a while, spinning rack after rack of shiny-covered paperbacks, and listening to jukebox music. Gradually I would work my way south, to the beery end of Main Street, where all the weirdos walked around. Old hobos would zigzag along the sidewalk, carrying bottles of wine in brown paper sacks, or else they stood under the yellow lightbulbs of the Penny Arcade, waiting for the rowdies inside to flip out cigarette butts. In the shooting galleries the tough sharpshooters with tattoos and ducktails shot the quiet white ducks that went around and around through years of bullets. Once in a while some ace would hit the bell above the ducks, and a loud piiinng! rang out, mixing with the honking and the talk. About every two doors there would be a bar, dim and dark inside, but pouring loud talk and hillbilly guitar music out on the sidewalks of the town. I walked in one once where three hillbilly musicians in straw hats were standing behind the bar making music for everyone. The guitar player was picking as loud and fast as he could, till finally the bar girls and drillers and truck drivers and wild cowboys, and all the men and women beering and loving in the cool, dim leathery booths turned their heads to listen and clap. Everybody went to laughing and yelling and slapping down silver on the tables, and on the dance floor the dancers hugged and whirled in the blue darkness and the smoke. The only ones who weren’t having a good time were a few lonesome-looking boys at the bar. When the musicians went off to drink beer, the jukebox flared up and played hillbilly dance music the rest of the time I stayed. It played old songs by Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb and Kitty Wells, and it was cold, cold hearts in the darkness with dancers bumping into each other and going on to dance some more. Those that didn’t dance sat in the booths and drank from the sweaty bottles of beer. It was no more work and no more lonesome and all the honky-tonk angels living it up. I slipped out and went on past a few more bars, and past the mission and the shouting preachers, and past the pawnshops with their windows full of switchblades and guitars, all the way down to the Mexican picture show. Next to it was a tattoo parlor where I saw a soldier getting a big blue eye tattooed right in the middle of his forehead. By the time I felt ready to start back to the hotel, it was late, and the street wasn’t so friendly. The colored men would whisper to me from the steps of the run-down hotels, whispering about women upstairs. Some of the hobos I had seen on my way from the hotel would be sitting spraddle-legged against the buildings, coughing. The lonesome boys that had been in the bars would be leaning on telephone poles or standing by their cars, no one to go to and no one coming along. The bars were quieter, but the same sad music, Kitty and Hank and Ernest, reached out of the doors to pull the boys back in. I saw a few fights, saw cops running into bars, once saw blood on the sandy sidewalk, where a boy had been stabbed. But I even enjoyed the shatter of those nights: things were moving around me, and it was exciting. One night a blonde girl in a pink rodeo hat ran by me and jumped in an Oldsmobile convertible, but her boy friend jumped in and grabbed her before she could get away. He jerked her hand off the ignition and shook her till her hat fell off and her white blond hair was tossed and tangled. “I’ll coldcock you, you’re just beggin’ me to,” he said. “Carl, don’t, gimme my purse,” she said, and he shook her some more. “I’ll stomp that bastard’s ass,” he said. I walked away, back toward the hotel. That same night a crowd of rich city kids came out of a fancy eating place and laughed at me. The boys had flowers on their white coats, and the girls wore long lacy evening gowns. “Cowboys are darlin’,” one girl said. That’s all right, I thought. They were too silly even to bother giving them the finger. I went on to my room and went to bed. When I turned over I could see the city lights, still red and green and yellow, blinking through the blind; and later, after I had slept awhile, I heard the far-off sound of an ambulance screaming through old Cowtown’s morning streets.

  It wasn’t like what all Jesse had seen, but it was something. I raised up on one elbow under the cedars and looked over the pastures south, toward Fort Worth. Heat waves rose off the land, so that the cars on the highway were blurred. A loose wire was rattling on the yard fence. The front door slammed, and Granddad came out to empty his tobacco can. When he went back in the house he held on to the porch pillar a minute, to steady himself. I got up and brushed the dirt and the cedar needles off my pants. I was thinking that some night I would talk Granddad out of the Lincoln, and Hermy and I and a few other boys could take a quick trip to Fort Worth. If we left early we could make it down there by nine or ten o’clock, and be back by sunup. That would leave plenty of time to do more than we had ever done.

  Eight

  THE RODEO PEOPLE BEGAN TO MOVE INTO THALIA THE day before the show actually began. That day they brought in the rodeo stock, and the contestants came to town, some of them off the circuit, and some just off the ranches. The poor boys came with nothing but their rigging and a change of clothes, but the winners drove in in big white Lincolns, with fancy horse trailers hitched on behind. The cowgirls came too, wearing big hats, and britches that fitted them like skin fits a snake. I don’t guess they ever slept from the time they hit town until the rodeo was over four days later. During all that time there was nothing but beer drinking and rodeo talk, courting and dancing, and even the merchants in Thalia came out in Western wear. Rodeo was the one big get-together of the year.

  Since it all came like Christmas, only once a year, I was careful not to let any of it pass me by. The morning of the day before the show I got up before anyone and sli
pped out of the house and took off for town in the pickup.

  I didn’t eat any breakfast, so my first stop was Bill’s Café. When I got there the place was already full; there were twenty or thirty cars parked out front and more driving up all the time. People were milling around like cattle in a pen. The sun was starting its long climb, the gold rays flashing on the shiny chrome of the cars. From across the highway there was the wet grassy smell of the pastures that surrounded the town. Cowboys in Stetsons and sleeveless shirts were coming out of the café, and others just like them were crowding in. I wandered around among the cars for a while, thrilled with the sound and the people and the cool morning. I walked by a muddy pink Oldsmobile, ’50 model, and saw a girl I knew sprawled like a doll in the back seat. Her long black hair hid her face, and she still had a can of beer in one hand. She heard my feet on the gravel and raised up, her gray eyes blank. “Sugah?” she said. “Why dint you take me in?” She didn’t recognize me, but I opened the door and sat down by her a minute. “Throw this out,” she said, handing me the beer can. “I’m full.” Her name was Irene. She slumped against me and went back to sleep, and I eased her down in the seat and got out. I could hear music from the café, high, loud jukebox music, and I wanted to go inside.

  I was lucky to get a seat at the counter. All the booths were full and running over. Everybody was finding friends they hadn’t seen for years, or running into people they had seen the night before, and whichever it was, they sat down and talked old times. There were a few thin cowboys at the counter who didn’t look so happy; they reminded me of Jesse, or the lonesome boys in the Fort Worth bars; none of it was very exciting to them. I ordered coffee and eggs, and sat there swinging back and forth on my red-topped stool, listening to the music and the roar. Ever time I swung I saw my reflection on the shiny milk machine; my cowlick was sticking up, and I knew if Hermy had seen it he would have kidded me and sung about Jeanie, with the light brown hair like mine. The big jukebox was never quiet, the voices of Slim and Roy and Kitty and Ernest and Hank helping the cowboys grieve or celebrate. The waitresses in clean morning uniforms wove through the tables with gallons of coffee and big platters of eggs. The cowboys in the booths talked the sleep and the beer out of their voices, telling each other about the ride or the women or the long year’s work just done. They laughed and whittled toothpicks out of matches. One cowboy with a little too much spirit had brought his rope in with him, but when he started to make a loop his buddies swarmed over him and got it away from him before he could do any damage. When they carried him out he was laughing so hard at himself that he couldn’t see. I wished it was rodeo more often, so there’d be more wild breakfasts and strange crowds. I fiddled with my eggs to make it last. A cowboy near me picked his girl up and carried her outside; she laughed and kicked so much her blue shirttail came out of her rodeo pants. When I got outside he was trying to stuff her through the window of his Mercury, and a lot of other fellows were standing around giving him advice and encouragement. He got her in and stood there laughing about it, his hands in his pockets. Then she rolled up the car windows right quick and locked him out.