Thalia Read online

  I went on down to the rodeo arena, to watch them unload the bulls and the bucking stock, but I was a little late. By the time I got there the old humpbacked bulls were standing by the hayracks, pulling out long strands of prairie hay. There were a couple of young guys in rodeo clothes sitting on the fence watching the bulls. I climbed up by them and made their acquaintance. They had come from Cimarron, New Mexico, to ride the bulls.

  “Shit, we can’t ride no closer to home,” one of them said. “If my old man found out my ass would be mud.”

  The one that said that was a quiet-looking kid. He didn’t look much like a bull rider. The other one’s name was Sandefer, and he pretty well thought he was it.

  “Wait till I get on one a them big bastards,” he said. “The fur’s gonna fly.”

  “Whose fur?” the other one said. He didn’t really look too thrilled at the prospect of getting on one of the old surlies, and I didn’t blame him. Sandefer popped him on the arm to cheer him up. To the right of us, across the arena, the concession people were moving in their popcorn machines and Sno-Cone stands. Some carpenters were hammering behind the chutes; a couple of bulls had got to fighting and torn the gate down. The old gray and black bulls looked lazy and tame as milk cows out there eating hay, but they wouldn’t look so gentle when you got ’em crowded into a chute.

  I liked to watch the bulls, but I got pretty tired of Sandefer talking like he was Jim Shoulders or Casey Tibbs. I left them on the fence, speculating about which bulls they would draw. There weren’t very many people around the arena, and I went to the grandstand and climbed up to the top seats and sat down to watch. I could see beyond the rodeo pens and watch half of Thalia waking up. I saw a woman stagger out to her clothesline in a bathrobe, to hang out an early washing. In the arena below me a cowgirl was loping her paint horse around and around in circles—she acted like it was the only thing she knew how to do. The sun was getting high enough to make my seat uncomfortable, and I got up to go. Even in the mornings I was restless. Below me, in the parking lot a cowboy was trying to get his girl to come through in broad daylight. But she wouldn’t. She nearly would, but she wouldn’t. Kids were coming down the road to watch the men and horses; they always swarmed around the rodeo people like flies, trying to find someone who would let them ride a horse. I watched the cowboy in the Chevy awhile, and then went down and bought me a plain Sno-Cone before I went back to the ranch.

  2.

  “Telephone’s ringin’,” Willie said. “Mistah Hack.” We had just finished dinner, and were sitting around the table drinking the last cool swallows of ice tea and listening to the radio. Granddad smiled when he heard Willie come on the air.

  “Hack-berry Ho-tel,” Willie said. “Willie speakin’.”

  “Dat niggah,” Halmea said.

  “It’s just a program,” I said. “How do you know he ain’t a white man?”

  “Hell,” Hud said, “a white man don’t sound that worthless.” He was sitting on the wood box picking his teeth. “Turn it over to Fort Worth and get the cattle market.”

  “Too late,” Granddad said. “Nothin’ left but the cotton quotations by now.”

  “That’s all right,” Hud said. “I’d just as soon hear cotton markets as listen to a nigger jabber. I might go into the cotton business one a these days.” He stretched his arms and got up to go to the bathroom. While the program was going on we heard a car rattle the cattle guard and come around to the back of the house. I went to the back door to see who it was.

  “It’s Mr. Burris,” I said.

  “Have him come in,” Granddad said.

  Mr. Burris came to the back door, and I held it open for him. “You missed dinner,” I said. “Your timin’s off.” He nodded and grinned at me, but it was easy to see he was under pretty much of a strain. He didn’t walk as light and reckless as he had that first morning. When he got to the dining room he had to go through a little routine with Granddad: Mr. Burris saying he’d had plenty to eat, and Granddad trying to feed him anyway. Hud came in and Granddad introduced him. He said howdy, but he gave Mr. Burris a pretty hard looking over.

  “Well, if you won’t eat, we may as well move out on the porch,” Granddad said. “I believe it’s a little cooler out there. I guess you got something to tell us or you wouldn’t be here.”

  Mr. Burris rubbed the back of his head and managed not to say anything. Lonzo slipped off by himself, out the back door, but the rest of us filed out and arranged ourselves on the shady porch. Granddad made Mr. Burris take the rocking chair. We all sat and chewed toothpicks awhile before anything was said.

  “Well, I guess the tests are done,” Granddad said, finally. He fished in his Levi’s for his pocketknife.

  “No, sir, actually they aren’t,” the vet said. “Not completely. It will be at least one more day before we can say for sure what your cattle have got. But we’ve got a pretty good indication now, and the way things were looking, I thought I ought to run out and talk to you. There hasn’t been a sign of sickness in the horses and swine we vaccinated, but a couple of the cattle have already developed blisters. I’m afraid it’s going to mean that you’ve got the worst thing you could have.”

  Granddad shook his head, and winced a little. He reached out and cut a twig off one of Grandma’s hedges, and began to trim it with his knife. “I guess I mighta knowed that,” he said. “I guess it didn’t make sense to me how a herd of cattle could look as good as mine does and still be half dead.”

  “I know it’s strange,” the vet said. “But your cattle aren’t half dead, you see. Even if the disease hit ever animal you’ve got it might not kill over thirty per cent, but the thing is, it might get out and kill thirty per cent of the cattle in the whole area. And the ones it didn’t kill wouldn’t be worth keeping.” He stopped and looked out over the pastures. Hud was watching him, the match still in his mouth.

  “And there’s no cure atall?” Granddad said.

  “None we know of,” Mr. Burris said. “It’s like a bolt of lightning. It don’t hurt you till it hits, but then it hurts a lot.”

  “Oh me,” Granddad said. “I was hopin’ it wouldn’t come to this. And you don’t think there’s much chance of anything changing the picture?”

  “Very little,” the vet said. “I’m afraid it’s all but settled now. Technically, we have to wait another day, but I can’t offer you any hope.”

  “Then it’s like I said before,” Granddad went on. “I’ll try an’ cooperate with you any way I can, short of killin’ my cattle. Just anything. You let me know, and I’ll do my best to get it done. If you got any new vaccines you ain’t tried out, you’re welcome to use these cattle to experiment on, even if it kills ever one of ’em. That way you got a chance a doin’ some good. But just drivin’ ’em in a pit an’ shootin’ ’em I can’t abide that.”

  “I know it’s a terrible thing,” Mr. Burris said, facing Granddad. “Even to think about.”

  “Yes, it is,” Granddad said. “I imagine thinkin’ about it’s all you ever done, ain’t it? Well, sir, I’ve seen some of it first hand, durin’ the depression, an’ it’s a sight worse to see than it is to think about.” Granddad looked small and grizzled and determined, but his voice wasn’t as final-sounding as it usually was. He sounded a little old and shaky.

  Mr. Burris waited politely till he was through, and then he went right on with what he was saying. Hud watched him, but he never opened his mouth. “I’m sure you’re right about that,” Mr. Burris said. “I’m sure it is worse to see. But, Mr. Bannon, none of that changes the situation. You got to act how the situation lets you, and in this case you and I are both helpless so far as doing what we’d like to do is concerned.”

  “Maybe so,” Granddad said. “I know there’s a lot a times when a man is helpless—I’ve been in plenty of ’em. But a man’s got to go on and do what he can, that’s the only way he’s got a finding out whether he’s helpless or not. In this case I ain’t convinced I am. I got a lawyer lookin’ into the
legal side of this, and he may turn out to know a thing or two you an’ I don’t.”

  Mr. Burris was quiet a minute. “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed if you expect much help from the law,” he said. “Of course you were right to go see about it. But the law on this has already been argued a good many times, and unless it’s something pretty recent that I don’t know about, the lawyer will just have to tell you what I’m telling you now. The only thing you can do is liquidate.”

  “I can’t have that,” Granddad said. I looked at Hud and noticed a kinda tight grin stretching his mouth. What he was thinking was beyond me to guess.

  “But, Mr. Bannon,” the vet said, “you may have to have it. Your cattle are public enemies now. Bad enough for you to lose your herd, that I’ll grant. You’ll be paid a top price for every animal killed, you know that. I imagine it will be something like $300 or $350 a pair. But whatever it is it won’t pay you for all the years it took you to breed these animals and get them as good as they are—we both know that. But better you lose them, breed or no breed and pay or no pay, than to have this thing spread and eventually have to kill 75,000 cattle, like they did the last time it got out. It could sure happen, and it probably will unless we handle this thing quick; it probably will.”

  After that, the conversation died down for a while. Granddad sat hunched over, like he was straining to get something out. The rest of us were just waiting. Granddad looked up, and let his eyes play over the hot noontime pastures, the gray grasslands stretching before him to the east. Finally Mr. Burris decided to try another tack.

  “But at least you will be paid good money,” he said. “I mentioned that. And after all, Mr. Bannon, you’re getting up in years. You can afford to slow down for a year—that’s the period of quarantine.” Granddad looked up, a little surprised, but Mr. Burris went on. He was trying hard. “Rest won’t hurt your grass,” he said. “It’ll be just that much better for the herd you or these young men put on it. While it’s empty you might sell a few oil leases or something. A ranch is more than just the cattle that’s on it.”

  He should have kept quiet, but he didn’t know. Granddad leaned back and closed his pocketknife. “Oil,” he said, looking down at his hands. “Maybe I could get some, but I don’t believe I will. If there’s oil down there these boys can get it sucked up after I’m under there with it. Something about this sickness, maybe I can’t do much about, but the oil-field stuff I can. I don’t like it an’ I don’t aim to have it. I guess I’m a queer, contrary old bastard, but there’ll be no holes punched in this land while I’m here. They ain’t gonna come in an’ grade no roads, so the wind can blow me away.” He looked up again, across the land. “What good’s oil to me,” he said. “What can I do with it? With a bunch a fuckin’ oil wells. I can’t ride out ever day an’ prowl amongst ’em, like I can my cattle. I can’t breed ’em or tend ’em or rope ’em or chase ’em or nothin’. I can’t feel a smidgen a pride in ’em, cause they ain’t none a my doin’. Money, yes. Piss on that kinda money. I used to think it was all I was after, but I changed my mind. If I’d been in this business just for the money I’d a quit an’ started sellin’ pencils or something back before you were born. I still like money as well as any man, nearly, and I done with it an’ without it as much an’ more than most people have, and I don’t ever intend to let on I don’t want a big share of it. But I want mine to come from something that keeps a man doing for himself.”

  He stopped, and Mr. Burris sat quietly, looking helpless and nervous. There wasn’t much more he could say.

  “We’re much obliged to you for comin’ out an’ tellin’ us how the tests were goin’,” Granddad said. “I wish they were goin’ different, but I don’t think we’ll quit hopin’ just yet. Maybe when we get the final word we can get together an’ do what’s right.”

  “I’m sure we can,” Mr. Burris said, standing up. Granddad walked around to his car with him, and they talked a little more. I stayed with Jesse. Hud disappeared into the house without once opening his mouth.

  “Don’t sound good,” Jesse said. “That talk about lawyers, I guess that’s just bluff.” We sat on the porch, waiting for orders, but we didn’t get any. When Hud came out again he went straight to his car.

  “See you rannies,” he said. “Don’t get sores on your butts.”

  “Where that feller’s going, nobody knows,” Jesse said.

  Nine

  THE NEXT DAY GRANDDAD WENT TO WICHITA, I GUESS to see his lawyers. Lonzo took a notion to enter the saddle-bronc riding contest and hitchhiked into Thalia to sign up. He had an old car, but nine tenths of the time it didn’t run. Hud hadn’t come in the night before, and nobody had any idea where he was. It looked like such a dull day that I went into town about nine in the morning and shot pool till dinner. The whole town had a rodeo look already, paper cups and beer cans everywhere, and piles of horseshit drying in the street. I shot bank shots until I got tired of leaning over, and then went home to dinner.

  The minute we got through eating, Halmea was on Jesse and me to play checkers. She looked kinda worn down, but she claimed to be dying for a game. Jesse kept talking about how he hadn’t played in thirty years, but since it was just Chinese checkers, she talked him into coming along.

  “Dat’s all right,” she said. “I always does de best after I lays off a little while.”

  “Thirty years is a bare bit more than a little while,” he said.

  We went into her room and she pitched her stack of movie magazines off the card table onto the bed. She had a variety-store picture of Lana Turner on her dresser, and an old lumber-yard calendar with a picture of Jesus holding a lamb, hung on the wall. It was two years old.

  “I’ll just kick off dese floppy shoes,” she said. She shoved them under the bed with her bare feet. We scooted the card table in front of the window, so it would catch what breeze there was.

  “Your calendar don’t keep very good time,” I said.

  “It do very well fo’ me,” she said. “It just runs a day a two off.” She got out the Chinese checkerboard and laid it on the old green table. I dropped the marbles in their slots. We decided to play two at a time instead of three, and Jesse elected to watch the first game. He tilted his chair back against the wall. I began to jump Halmea’s marbles right and left.

  “Hellation,” she said. “You movin’ too fast.”

  “I never played that kind,” Jesse said. “I used to play the other kind a good deal, when Granddad was still alive. I remember once we lived outside of Mineral Wells, down close to the Brazos River. It was a wet winter, and all us kids had to stay inside a lot. I did more checker playing that winter than all the rest of my life put together. Anyhow, it kept Granddad in a good humor, the pore old soul.”

  I was moving into Halmea’s triangle with my marbles, in spite of all she could do. She sighed. “I guess I had a grandpappy somewher’,” she said. “But I may not, I don’t know.”

  “I remember mine well,” Jesse said. “He got killed that same winter.” I was about as interested in Jesse’s talk as I was in the checker game, but it didn’t take much concentration to beat Halmea. “We were eatin’ breakfast one mornin’,” he said, “and Grandpa wasn’t around. He was always getting up early and going down to a little grocery store, on the highway, right by the river, and we didn’t pay it no mind if he was gone a few minutes. It was a cold, foggy river that morning, and I was on the side a the table away from the fire, about to freeze. Then a feller that worked in the store came running in and took Pa outside and told him Grandpa was dead, down on the highway. That Brazos River fog was pretty thick, and he was walkin’ along too close to the pavement, and some feller from Arkansas came along in a Chevrolet and hit him without ever seein’ him. Knocked him about a hundred feet off the road, and ’bout drove the man who was drivin’ crazy. That was about the time Pa moved us to Lamesa, just before my oldest bud left home.”

  Halmea shook her head and twisted her feet around the chair legs. “Shee
w,” she said. “White folks families beats me. I ’member seein’ my own pappy just six, seven times. Dey no tellin’ where dat man is now. He may be dead as you grandpappy.”

  “Don’t you keep up?” Jesse said.

  “How you gonna keep up?” she said. “A gal can’t tag him aroun’.”

  And they went on that way, talking back and forth, while I beat Halmea four or five times. After a while they got on the differences between white folks parties and colored folks parties, and Halmea got tickled remembering all the funny things she’d seen, till she couldn’t hold the marbles for giggling and laughing about them. The marbles began to pop off and roll around on the floor, and she kept on laughing, and so finally Jesse had to take her place. He wasn’t as bad about laughing, but he was more interested in the talk than in the checker playing, so when it was all over, about three o’clock, I was the undisputed Chinese-checker champion of the ranch. Halmea and Jesse were in about the best mood of their lives, and all the chuckling and fine friendly talk and the games I won made me feel good too. Finally Halmea had to go hang out a washing, and I went to the house and flopped on the living room couch, feeling loose and lazy. I felt good about Halmea and Jesse, and I dozed off to sleep.