Centennial (142 page)

“Add me to the list,” he said insolently, not bothering to take the cigarette from his mouth. Beeley felt an almost uncontrollable urge to punch him, but he refrained because Calendar had about him an air of absolute authenticity. He was obviously someone who loved the range and knew animals. He was a challenge, and for reasons Beeley could not have explained, he felt drawn toward the youth. Perhaps it was because Calendar represented the real west, a throwback to the great days.

“Tell you what,” Garrett said on the spur of the moment. “I’ll take you. Now you run over to the college and find Professor Gregg and tell him the train’s leaving tonight at six.”

“Ain’t got a car,” Calendar said.

“Use the pickup.”

He watched as the young man slouched over to the Ford, banged open the door and jiggled the gearshift. In a moment the pickup roared, the wheels spun in gravel and the cowboy was off to the college.

At the train Professor Gregg was so profuse in his thanks that Garrett felt ashamed. What a rotten time, he said to himself. College professor with no money to travel.

He was not surprised to see that Dr. Gregg carried a large suitcase, but he was certainly astonished to find that Calendar was lugging along a paper bag with one clean shirt and a razor, plus a large guitar. He had never thought of the Calendars, those outcasts of the prairie, as musical.

Professor Gregg, of the sociology department, and Cisco Calendar, aspirant guitarist, were able to board the cattle train because of the 36-Hour Law. This required any cattlemen shipping livestock a considerable distance to provide attendants to water and exercise the animals if the total trip exceeded thirty-six hours.

This law had been forced through legislatures by animal-protection societies whose agents submitted reports of what had happened in the horrendous days of 1910 through 1928. Then cattlemen would shove huge numbers of animals into unventilated cars and ship them off to Chicago. If all went well, the cattle train reached the stockyards within thirty-six hours, which was about the maximum time cattle could survive without water. But if for any reason the train had to be sidetracked, it might lay over unattended for two or three days in blazing sun or cold wind, and the cattle, with no water and no chance to move, would die by the score.

In accordance with the 36-Hour Law, Dr. Gregg and Cisco Calendar would ride the caboose and during a normal trip might never see the animals they were supposed to be tending. The railroad had every incentive to get the train into Chicago on time, and the evil old habit of sidetracking without regard to the welfare of the animals was forbidden. Of course, if an unavoidable delay occurred, then Gregg and Calendar would become important, for they would have to unload the animals, see that they moved about and provide them with water.

“Nineteen trips out of twenty, nothin’ happens,” the brakemen assured the two guardians. “Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

There were nine men in the large caboose, with sleeping bunks for five. There were four regulars in the train crew and five volunteers like Calendar. It was around this somber young man that the others gathered, for when he unlimbered his guitar and started singing, everyone listened.

He had a reedy voice that spoke of western campfires, and he knew all the songs the old-time cowboys had sung—“Aura Lee,” “Buffalo Gal,” “Old Blue,” “Old Paint”—and the two new songs which were so popular on the radio, “The Last Roundup” and “Wagon Wheels.” But the songs that captivated the men were two that scarcely seemed to be songs at all; they were fragments of human experience, deep and moving.

The first told of a wrangler who allowed that there wasn’t a horse alive he couldn’t ride. So the boss offered him a ten-spot to try his luck with a strawberry roan, a mean-looking cayuse with a battered frame:

“
He
’s
got spavined old legs
and small pigeon toes,

And a pair of
pig eyes and a long Roman nose,

He
’s
got little pin ears, they
’re
all split at the tips,

In the middle he
’s
lean but wide at the hips ...

The wonder of this song was its intimate knowledge of men and horses, the way it spoke lovingly of actual life on the range, and Cisco brought out all the inner essence of the relationships. This was a real cowboy trying his luck with a real horse, and in the end it was the horse that won.

“
When my stirrups I lose and also my hat,

And I starts pull
in’
leather as blind as a bat,

And he makes one
more jump, he is headed up high

Leaves me sett
in’
on air way up in the sky.
”

“I think that must be the best western song I ever heard,” Professor Gregg said; he was interested in the west and intended one day to write about it. He asked Cisco to sing the words again and wrote down passages in a notebook. “It carries its own credentials, a song like that,” he said, and Cisco had no idea what he was talking about.

The trainmen wanted Cisco to sing their favorite, “Red River Valley,” and when he struck the first chords they leaned back in approval. It was a sentimental song, the lament of a cowboy who had known for a short time a girl who must leave the valley. It was hard to know how a young fellow like Calendar could comprehend the longing that an older man felt about a woman, but he made the song his. Again, he was not a singer but a man who had worked in the valleys and who had met an attractive woman, perhaps the only one he had ever known:

“
Come and
sit by my side, if you love me.

Do not hasten to bid me adieu.

Jus
t remember the Red River Valley

And the cowboy who loved you so true
.
”

No one spoke. Each listener was silently comparing the song against his own experience, and no additional comment was necessary.

After a while Dr. Gregg said, “You ought to sing professionally.”

“I aim to.”

“You ought to see what you can do in Chicago.”

“I aim to.”

“I’m really very excited about your potential,” the professor said. “Your voice has an exceptional quality ... an authenticity.” To these words Calendar made no reply whatever, so the professor continued: “To be truly successful, Cisco, you have to visualize what it is you want to convey. You’ll be singing to people who’ve never seen a campfire. You ought to get yourself a Stetson ... Texas-style boots ... a red bandanna.”

“I got no money for such,” Cisco said.

“I know a place in Chicago, they might give it on credit,” Gregg said. “In art you’ve got to give yourself every advantage.”

The train braked to a halt and voices outside the caboose shouted, “This goddamn train is infested with hobos.” And the crew piled out with baseball bats and started knocking drifters from beneath the cars, and Gregg looked out the window and saw one man run past with blood streaming down his face, and for a moment the running man looked up in an appeal for help, but Gregg was powerless.

When the train resumed its trek eastward he could not eat. The four crewmen who ran the caboose were not evil men, but when they had gone after the hobos they had swung their bats with actual glee, as if knocking helpless men over the head were sport. It was sickening.

Calendar was the only one who understood what had happened to Gregg, and he went to him with half a sandwich, but the professor still could not eat. “What’s the matter?” Cisco asked. “You never see a man clubbed before?” He took Gregg’s hand and passed it over his head so the professor could feel the knobs.

These are hateful times,” Gregg said.

“We’ve had worse,” Calendar replied, and he resumed singing.

In the thirty-fourth hour the train pulled into the stockyards, and Dr. Gregg for the first time saw for himself just how hateful the times really were, for when the Venneford Herefords were unloaded and auctioned next day, he found that the handsome animals fetched only $13.87 each.

When word of the sale got back to Centennial, and the various ranchers discovered that they had literally given their animals away, earning no profit whatever for their years of labor—the baling of hay, the wintry rides, the watch over pregnant cows, the dusty roundups—a sullen grief settled over the community. Men grew stubborn and swore revenge against a system that had defrauded them so sorely.

Then came the wintry day in November 1935 when the Grebe family had to admit they could no longer hold on to their farm. It was true that they had paid off their mortgage, but they owed an accumulation of back taxes; the bank was dunning them to repay a small loan they had been forced to make in order to buy food; and the garage would no longer give them gasoline on credit. The debts were trivial—less than a thousand dollars—but paying them was impossible, totally impossible. Earl Grebe did not have one dollar, and with no gasoline for his tractor, he would be unable to produce crops even if the duststorms did abate.

On some days the family ate so little that their survival was a mystery, and if Vesta Volkema had not brought them food, the Grebes would have suffered grievously. But this generosity created its own problem, and one evening when Alice saw her neighbor coming across the prairie, she burst into tears and protested to her husband, “Oh, Earl! It’s so terribly unfair. Vesta’s able to help us because she stole her land and saved her money. We bought ours honestly and used up all our funds.”

Her husband would not tolerate such an accusation against the goodhearted Vesta. “She’s the one person in this world we can trust,” he said. “If these dreadful things are happening to us, it must be God’s will.” And when Vesta reached the kitchen she found the Grebes and their children kneeling in prayer.

The family was prepared, therefore, when Sheriff Bogardus rode up to nail the notice to their front door: “Sheriff’s Sale for Taxes.”

“What will it bring?” Grebe asked.

“If the auctioneer had a good day ... if people come out ... farms like this have been bringing ... maybe fifteen hundred dollars.”

“Jesus!” Grebe cried. “After I pay the debts, it leaves me almost nothing.”

“That’s the way it is, these days,” Bogardus said.

Surprisingly, it was Alice Grebe who showed fortitude in this crisis. She had stayed indoors when the sheriff delivered his message, but she knew what was happening. The land her husband had cultivated with such care was lost. The soddy in which they had known so much love was gone. The new house with its bright curtains would be no more. The animals would be sold and the implements for which they had saved so strenuously. What was worse, the children would be forced to leave the only home they had known. They would gather their things and leave this place ...

“Oh, God!” she whispered to herself before Earl entered the kitchen. “What will happen to that good man?” She felt that she could adjust to this defeat, but what would such a catastrophe do to him?

She moved to the sink, pretending that she was doing dishes, so that she could appear composed when he came into the room, for she was determined to give him support, but when he walked into the kitchen his feet dragged across the linoleum, the slogging drift of a man totally defeated.

She threw herself into his arms and collapsed in tears. “We’ve worked so hard,” she sobbed. “We’ve never wasted money.” She kissed him tenderly and led him to a chair. She poured him a cup of coffee and said gently, “I wonder if I dare take the sign down before the children see it?”

“No,” he said firmly. “It’s the law. We owe the money and there’s no way out.”

“How can a nation support a law which takes away a man’s farm? Especially when it’s the nation that’s gone wrong, not us?”

“The bank has to be paid.”

“But it’s the banks that refuse to circulate their money.” She was not argumentative, merely bewildered by this savage turn.

When the children came home and saw the notice they started to cry, and she felt it her responsibility to shield them from as much pain as possible. “We’ll live somewhere else,” she said brightly as she prepared toast and cocoa. From the bare shelf she took down her last jar of jam and they had a mournful picnic, after which she suggested that they all walk down to the Volkemas’ to discuss what must be done.

“Put on your scarfs,” she said. “We don’t want to freeze.” At this unfortunate word, Victoria remembered Ethan and started to cry, but her mother caught her by the hand and said, “Now, Vicky. Watch the children and we’ll go across the fields.” But as they went past the barn Timmy broke away and ran to where Rodeo was fattening and he flung his arms about the handsome Hereford and stayed there till his mother dragged him away.

“I won’t give up Rodeo,” he mumbled.

“There’s no need to,” she said quietly. “We’ll find a way.”

What a sad procession they formed as they walked across the beautiful low hills that separated them from the Volkemas’: Earl in front walking with slow tread; Alice behind; then Victoria and the two girls; then Larry and in the rear Timmy, looking back now and then toward his steer. Winter hawks accompanied them in the blue sky and to the north they saw a small herd of antelope.

When they reached the Volkemas’, they broke the news abruptly. “We’re being sheriffed,” Alice said matter-of-factly, and Vesta broke into tears.

Not Magnes. He wanted to fight, to destroy something. He started cursing, and when his wife shushed him, he ignored her and cried, “I know the man we need. Jake Calendar.”