Dream Country (19 page)

Chapter Nineteen

W
hile Daisy worked with the wolf bones, strange things began to happen.

The snow fell deeper and faster than any early November storm on record. Wolves circled down from their mountain lairs, howling outside Daisy’s window as if they could free the spirit of their fallen brother. Swallows left the barns and took shelter on the house porch rafters. By night, owls hunted during breaks in the storm, droves of burrowing owls, saw-whet owls, and screech owls flying low across the deep drifts.

The wolves yipped and bayed. Exhausted from working through the storm, James wondered what the hell they were doing so close to the houses. He and Paul had gathered the cattle, and now it was weaning time. The wolves stayed hidden, but James could feel their presence by the way the cows were acting.

Under the snow, mud sucked at everyone’s feet. The semis were parked by the gate, waiting to be loaded up with calves. Two drivers sat in one cab, smoking and telling stories while they waited. They’d been driving stock trucks for a long time, loading up DR cattle and taking them to market.

Those Polaroids were burning up James’s pocket. Who would want to take pictures of DR cattle? He kept looking at the photos, the corners flaking ash, wishing something new would emerge. Louis Shoulderblade and Daisy had talked about spirit pictures, where ghosts and clues to the past would appear in photographs that had been taken long ago. Every time James looked, he half-hoped and half-feared he’d see an image of Sage shimmering out.

“You seen anyone hiking around the canyons?” he had asked Paul.

“Nope,” Paul had answered. “Why?”

James had shown him the pictures, asked if he thought they might have something to do with the dead cows. Paul had stared hard, suggested they show them to the sheriff, but thought it was probably some tourist from the dude ranch taking pictures of life in the Wild West.

James forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. It was time to separate the calves from their mothers. Already the mothers were feeling it. They’d been nervous all morning, and now they were starting to cry. Animals had the same emotions as humans, James was convinced. He hated this part of his job.

The cow dogs were black and slick with mud. They nipped at the calves’ heels, urging them left, into the sorting corrals. The cows were directed right. Confusion reigned. At first the cows thought they’d just lost sight of the babies—nothing drastic, nothing permanent. They looked uneasily from side to side, the panic growing.

The snow had tapered off. Thirty-two inches were on the ground, but the heat of the herd—all packed into this one small area—had melted it clean away. James rode his black horse through the crowd, shouting for the mothers to move away.

“Yah!” he called, waving his arm. “Get on!”

The truck drivers threw their cigarettes down, came around back. The doors opened wide, and suddenly the mood changed. Those trucks had carted many herds off to slaughter, and their walls held the stench of fear and death. The scent carried on the storm wind. The cattle began to shift: The mothers knew.

James heard the bellowing start. The mothers lined the fence of their sorting corral, craning their necks. Their big open faces mooned toward the trucks where the calves were being loaded. The lowing turned to grief.

In their midst, James nearly got knocked off his horse. Chieftain slipped in the mud, banging through the herd. James watched the mothers climbing on top of each other to reach their offspring. But the fence was in the way. The mothers crushed each other, bellowing with unbridled agony.

Thirty times: James had weaned and shipped cattle thirty times. It had never been easy, but he couldn’t remember it ever being this hard. His stomach churned, reacting to the animals’ noise. When Dalton was here, James stayed focused on being a good rancher, making his father proud. This was what it meant to be a Tucker on the Wyoming range: James was just the latest in a long line.

Today he felt sick. He didn’t know why. Maybe it had to do with his father being gone, with Daisy being here. He didn’t want to think of her hearing this. A cow charged in front of him, crying mournfully. Barging straight into the pack, she lost her footing and went down in the mud. The other cows climbed on top of her, as if she wasn’t even there.

James jumped down from his horse. Fighting through the herd, he wrapped his arms around her.

“Come on,” he said. “Stand. Get up.”

She cried, her eyes wild, the herd stepping over and around her. James was in danger himself, but he was tough and his first priority was the cow. He quickly saw he couldn’t yank her to her feet, so he took a few turns of rope around her neck; mounting his horse, he lost a boot in the slurping mud. Taking a turn around his saddle horn, he backed Chieftain into the herd and pulled the cow free.

With all the clamor, he almost didn’t hear the woman’s voice. It was higher than the cows’, but it contained all the grief and terror of someone who was losing her child. Up on his horse again, above the boiling herd, at first James thought he was hearing a bird.

Wearing a dark green jacket, Daisy blended with the stand of pines and cedar at the far end of the corral. She had climbed up one rung on the fence, staring at the cows and stock trucks. With hundreds of calves being led away and four hundred cows bellowing to follow, Daisy had come to watch.

James felt his heart tighten, filled with inexpressible sorrow and rage, and he tried to hide it by kicking his horse, driving him into the mass of cows. He wanted to unknot the herd, keep the cows in the back from trampling the ones in front.

Daisy’s cries came over the herd’s noise, and he couldn’t stand it anymore.

Galloping through the mud, James felt the black spatters all over his face. He pulled up in front of Daisy, but she didn’t even see him. Her arms were outstretched, as if she could embrace all the calves and mothers.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Go inside, Daisy.”

“Listen to them.” She wept.

“It’s weaning time,” he said. “That’s all it is. Happens every year.”

“They’re crying,” she said. “Can’t you hear them?”

“It’s a roundup. They always make a lot of noise. Go inside and close the door. It’ll be over soon. You won’t have to hear them anymore.”

Daisy closed her eyes. Her face was pale and radiant. She threw her head back, as if she was having a vision. James shivered, staring at her bare wrists. They were so delicate and fine, he could see her blue veins through her skin. He had always thought her the most vulnerable creature alive, and it drove him crazy to think of the weight she’d had to withstand.

“For God’s sake, Daisy!” he exploded. “Go inside.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why do you put yourself through it? Isn’t it bad enough we don’t know where Sage is? Do you have to listen to this—”

“I know how they feel,” Daisy said. “I know what they’re going through.”

“And watching them is gonna make you feel better?”

“Nothing’s going to make me feel better till Sage comes home,” she said, gulping. “But I’m not going to leave them alone. I’m staying here till every calf is gone. Till—”

“Till they lose hope?” James asked, tormented and not knowing where the words came from. “That it?”

“I just want to be with them,” Daisy said. “That’s all. I can’t explain it.” She took a deep breath, and suddenly she wasn’t crying anymore. A great calm seemed to have overtaken her, and she looked James straight in the eyes. “This has nothing to do with you,” she said. “I’m fine. I mean it. Go back to work, James.”

“Nothing to do with me.” James furiously turned Chieftain and galloped away. He saw Paul watching him, but he didn’t care. His bare foot—without the boot he had lost in the mud—felt cold and wet. The cows were louder than ever. James didn’t understand the woman who had once been his wife, and he wondered whether he ever had.

The calves stumbled up the ramps into the trucks, bleating like sheep, not knowing what was about to happen. Like life, James thought. Youngsters trusted their parents to take care of them.

“Shit,” James said, just before he got within earshot of Paul. He didn’t feel like explaining anything, and he could see Paul wanting to ask questions. Paul rode over.

“Got a gallery,” he said. “Fans watching the action.”

“No fans here,” James said.

“No? She looks pretty riveted.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t riveted,” James said. “She’s just not a fan.”

“Ladies don’t like this part,” Paul said.

“She wouldn’t like you saying ‘ladies,’ either,” James said. “She’s not very happy.”

“We’re almost done,” Paul said. “The cows’ll be quiet soon. They’ll forget what just happened, and they’ll settle down to a long winter’s rest. Till we get ’em bred again, anyway.”

“Hey, Paul?” James asked, trying to be heard above the cattle.

“Yeah?”

“Would you shut up?” James asked. Then he rode away to pull another downed mother out of the mud.

Driving Dalton’s truck—it had the best traction, in case she got stuck in the snow—Louisa pulled in midway through the weaning operation. She had gotten used to it over the years, the god-awful screaming of the cows—but today it hurt her ears and made her breasts ache. There were James and Paul, leading the cowboys as they separated the herd. And there was Daisy—watching the whole thing from the far end of the main corral.

Louisa shook her head. Daisy knew enough about loss without watching the goddamn cows bellow for their babies. She felt like pulling the girl right off her rung, but if someone wanted to be a martyr, far be it from Louisa to stop them. Folks knew what was best for them, and they followed their own inner compasses. Louisa had never claimed to know what made people tick, but she tried to respect it even when she couldn’t understand.

Once inside the ranch house, she breathed a great sigh of relief. It felt good to be home, instead of cooped up in that awful hospital. Dalton was all medicined up, calling her Rosalind and thinking he’d been shot by sheep men. Then he’d get straight, call her Louisa, ask her when he could go home.

It was enough to drive her crazy. Louisa went to the sideboard, poured herself a glass of neat whiskey. Her father had taught her how to drink a long time ago. Do it like a man, he used to say: nothing sweet, nothing creamy, nothing but straight. She didn’t believe in drinking alone or before sunset—but today was a day to break the rules.

Flopping down on the living room sofa, she looked around the room. Handsome portraits of Tucker ancestors glared down from every wall. Mama Tuckers and Papa Tuckers. Louisa sipped her whiskey, letting her gaze travel to the silver tea service Dalton’s wife had inherited from her dear departed grandmother.

Louisa knew the story. Rosalind had been well-bred. She had come from Boston, from one of those Brahmin families that had sailed over on the
Mayflower
or the goddamned
Santa María
. She had gone to finishing school, she knew which fork to use for every occasion, she spoke with a New England accent.

But the kicker—the thing that had made Dalton fall madly in love with her—was that Rosalind had been a crack shot. She had entered a competition back in Boston, moved into the next round and beaten everyone in New York, traveled by rail out to Cheyenne, where she’d shot an apple off the head of a horse, and won first prize in the competition. Won the gold medal and won Dalton’s heart.

“The gold medal,” Louisa said out loud. She heard the venom in her voice, took a nice long sip of whiskey. By the time she’d drifted across the living room, to the case where Rosalind Tucker’s gold medal was displayed, her voice was softer. “First prize,” she said.

Louisa could afford to be kind. Rosalind was dead, and she had been for many years. Since James was fifteen years old. They had been in the pony barn, mother and son, after a snowstorm just like this one. The snow had been heavy, and the weight had collapsed the roof right on top of them.

James, hurt himself, had pulled his mother out. Oh, what that must have been like. Louisa had imagined it many times: the young boy with his broken leg, holding his dying mother, the life flowing right out of her. Her blood had soaked into the snow—Louisa knew exactly where, because Dalton had placed a stone cross on the spot.

Touching the glass, Louisa couldn’t reach the gold medal. Rosalind had been so many things Louisa was not: eastern, well-born, rich, a champion. Louisa couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a full load of buckshot. Louisa was sex and Rosalind was class. She was the girlfriend; Rosalind had been the wife. Drifting over to Dalton’s desk, Louisa began to casually tidy the papers on top.

As she did, she settled into the comfort of the room. Louisa had decorated the place herself, using pictures as inspiration. She had pored through back issues of
House & Garden,
looked at photographs of great ranches in Texas, Montana, and British Columbia.

She had wanted to keep the flavor of the Old West, using the pieces Dalton had inherited from his parents and his wife. So she had kept the mission tables, the cracked leather armchairs, the portraits and rolltop desk, the big Oriental rug that had lain on the dining room floor of Rosalind’s parents’ Back Bay mansion. But from there, Louisa had veered off.