Moving On (75 page)

“Just kinda make conversation, and give him room,” he said. “I won’t be gone long.”

She sat down at the edge of the hill, the short grass pricking her bare calves. Davey kept looking around for the horse and shook his head irritably when his mother tried to nuzzle him. Finally she saw the cow. She was standing in the edge of the mesquite, to the north. Roger was talking to her as he approached; sounds floated back. He was trotting slowly toward the cow, standing up in his stirrups. The sorrel’s coat was red with sunlight. Suddenly the cow lifted her head and made a short clear bellow. She left the trees in an awkward, heavy run, her full udders swinging. She seemed bent on getting across the long clearing and around the edge of the hill, and because the man and the horse were caught slightly off balance it seemed she might be going to make it. The sorrel whirled and leaped a bush and ran in a straight perfect angle for the spot where the cow would turn the corner of the hill. Patsy was amazed, rapt, involved to the pit of herself, for the race took place just below her, in the clearest evening sunlight, vivid and splendid as some great race in a movie, only, for her, more urgent, for she was straining and did not know whether she strained for the horse or the cow or the old man, whose hat had blown off. He was still up in his stirrups, his eyes on the cow but his body urging the horse. Red cow and red horse converged toward each other, the red horse racing like a horse in myth, one red flowing line from neck to tail. When he left the grass and struck the hard bare earth at the base of the hill his hoofs left small clear identical puffs of dust. And for all the heavy awkwardness of the cow and the grace and beautiful speed of the horse, their two intensities were almost perfectly matched and the cow almost won; would have won had not the horse turned out of his angle slightly, toward the lift of the hill. At the moment of whirling Patsy cried out. The horse and the cow spun head to head, but the horse between the cow and the point of the hill. Davey jumped, frightened by his mother; he began to cry. Patsy tried vainly to soothe him, her eyes on the scene below.

The cow had been headed but she had not been stopped. Immediately she tried to cut behind the horse, and they were so close that again she almost made it. But the sorrel whirled backward and sideways and blocked her again, and with a fling of her tail she left the hill and ran north, still going away from the spot where she had been. There was another race, almost as intense as the first, but the sorrel had the long clearing north to the field to work in, and he caught the cow before she was halfway across it. Then, in the open, he had her, and the cow’s angry, sullen stubbornness was gallant but almost annoying. She turned, stopped, darted one way, was stopped, darted another.

Roger and the horse were no longer really challenged. They stayed far enough from the cow that they could anticipate her, the sorrel pivoting gracefully, sidestepping, neck curved or neck straight, but always between the cow and where she wanted to go. Finally she stopped, head up, and horse and man stopped; all became as still as statues. They looked at each other and looked at each other. Then the cow turned disgustedly and began to move back toward the mesquite. From time to time she would attempt to turn to the right or the left, but Roger and the sorrel kept far off her flank and turned her easily. When she was back amid the trees Roger drew rein, turned away from her completely and rode over to retrieve his hat. The cow had stopped and was watching him. He got off to get his hat and stayed on the ground a minute, talking to his horse. When he mounted again the cow had gone to her calf.

Patsy saw it get up and stumble to its mother, trying to nurse. Roger and the sorrel approached in a slow walk; he looked at the calf a moment and turned back toward the hill. Davey suddenly began to choke. While she had been looking off he had put three small rocks in his mouth. She was frightened for a second but managed to get them out. Roger rode up and reached down for him. “Better go,” he said. The sorrel’s withers were dark with sweat but neither he nor Roger seemed tired or excited. Patsy felt limp.

She mounted the gray and they edged off the hill and jingled back across the weedy field and up the ridge to the barn. The sun had gone down, but the sky still held its light. Once they were unsaddled, the sorrel and the gray stood drinking at the water trough. Patsy and Davey stood watching. Their drinking made a thin sucking sound and when they lifted their heads water dripped off their noses. The gray romped heavily away, down the ridge, bucking and twisting, and the sorrel trotted lightly after him.

The jar of peanut butter she had bought the summer before was still there, and Patsy made supper on it. The bed problem they solved by having Davey sleep on a pallet of quilts on the bedroom floor. “Half the grownups in this part of the country slept on pallets when they was kids,” Roger said, surprised that she considered the arrangement esoteric.

“That’s not necessarily a recommendation,” she said. Roger fried himself a steak for supper, overcooking it by about twenty minutes, to her mind.

“You’ve fried it so hard it looks wooden,” she said. “It’s not necessary to burn your meat, you know. I’m sometimes tempted to move in on you for a month to see if I couldn’t coax some real food down your throat. I honestly don’t see how you survive.”

“You’re as big a puzzle to me as I am to you,” he said. “I never seen you eat nothing but peanut butter. I’d as soon live off burned meat as peanut butter.”

“But peanut butter is extremely nutritious.”

“Burned meat’s so much tastier, though.”

Once the plates were cleared away they went out and sat on the porch listening to the ringing crickets. The subject of land came up again. Patsy sat on the lowest step, where she could enjoy the stars. She stretched one leg out along the step against the cool concrete.

“What would you do if you was to inherit a ranch?” Roger asked. He was whittling, his chair propped against the wall. Once in a while, when he turned the knife blade over, she saw it flash in the light that came through the screen door.

“No possibility is more remote,” she said. “Neither of my folks have any land left. Daddy has a place in East Texas where he takes his friends to play poker, but I doubt it would keep a milk cow. Won’t you cut yourself, whittling in the dark?”

“Oh, this ain’t whittling,” he said. “I’m just smoothing a stick. Reason I asked, I was kinda considering leaving this old place of mine to you and Jim. I was gonna leave it to my sister’s boy, but he got killed in Korea. My sister’s older than me, so there ain’t no point in leaving it to her. I’d kinda like to leave it in the family somewhere. If I don’t my sister would just sell it, and pretty soon the money would be gone and the land too.”

“Goodness. I don’t think you ought to leave it to us,” Patsy said, confused. The suggestion filled her with dismay.

“I know that must sound awful,” she said a minute later. “I don’t know—the idea just surprised me. You don’t really know us very well. If you did I’m not sure you’d think we were the sort of people to be trusted with your land.”

Roger went on smoothing the stick, unperturbed. “I never expected you to jump at it,” he said. “Still, you might talk it over with Jim. It ain’t a bad little ranch. It’s well watered, and the taxes ain’t too high.”

“Please don’t misunderstand,” Patsy said. “I love you for wanting to give it to us—I think it’s wonderful of you. There are just such problems. I wouldn’t know what to do with land.

“It would need you, don’t you see?” she said later, growing even more confused.

Roger chuckled. “Aw, the country could get along without me, I guess,” he said. “Besides, it ain’t really
that
ugly. You might get to liking it, in ten or fifteen years. Be good for old Davey too. And Jim.”

“I guess that’s what really upset me,” Patsy said. “Jim. He and I haven’t been very happy lately. I’m not even sure we’ll be together always.”

“What’s the matter, don’t he want to stay home?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Things don’t seem to be a great deal better when he’s home.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he said, and they fell silent. Stars were thick in the sky—there were almost too many. After a while the mood of confusion passed and she felt better.

“Well, aren’t you going to give me advice?” she said. “I suppose it’s time I went around collecting advice.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Roger said. “I ain’t no expert on the subject. Only reason I never got left in the lurch myself is because it’s so far to the bus station out here.”

“Come on,” she said. “That woman would never have left you. I can tell from her picture.”

“No, I guess not,” he said.

“Did you ever love anyone but her?”

“Not that I remember,” he said. “Flirted around a little when I was young. Thought I wanted to marry a schoolteacher, once. Pretty close shave. She’s an alcoholic now.”

“But she might not have been if you had married her,” Patsy said. “Don’t make her ruin sound so inevitable. I guess what I meant was were you ever in danger of loving anyone else after you married Aunt Mary?”

“Lord, no,” he said. “Wouldn’t never have dared. Mary was downright murderous at times, even without no provocation.

“Course this country don’t exactly teem with women,” he said thoughtfully a little later. “There ain’t a whole lot of temptation between here and Fort Worth.”

“Well, there’s temptation where I live,” she said. “I guess I’m in danger of loving someone besides Jim.”

“Is he a scoundrel?” he asked, so kindly and seriously that she almost cried.

“Not really. Why do you think of people in terms like that?”

“Way I was raised, I guess,” he said mildly.

After a while he went to bed and Patsy bathed and sat in the dark bedroom rocking by the open window, looking out at the moonlit ridge. The mesquite trees in the yard were very dark against the pale grass.

Roger persuaded her to stay a day, and she spent it cleaning. His cabinets had not been cleaned in years, and all the floors needed mopping. She mopped the downstairs but lost her impetus and left the upstairs for another visit. Davey rolled about on the dusty floor until he looked like he had been the mop.

When it grew late and cool they went riding again, back to the same hill. She had no apprehension and the ride was pure pleasure. They loped through the field, a gait that was pleasanter for her than for Davey. It caused him to spit up profusely on the saddle. They slowed to a walk and a flight of crows flew over. The cow and calf were nowhere to be seen. There was no wild chase. They sat on the horses on the edge of the hill, watching the evening land. The late sunlight made everything clear, perfectly defined. The fields and pastures were very bright, the brown burned summer mesquite leaves golden. Strings of doves flew in and out of the field, high as the hill they sat on and so distinct that each bird could be counted. Roger took off his hat and set it on Davey’s head, tilting it back so it wouldn’t blind him. Davey was not sure what to think but managed a lopsided grin. The sun struck the old man’s brown shirt and brightened the rowels of his spurs. She took off her headband and hung it on her saddle horn. When the sun was just above the horizon the colors began to soften. The golds turned to grays and blues.

“The weeds have just about taken this old field,” Roger said as they rode home. The weeds had a thin dry smell. That night they had the same suppers they had had the night before, and afterward sat on the porch talking of light matters. Roger lectured her at length on cows and their ways. She slept well, and the next morning at the airport told Roger she would speak to Jim about the ranch. She stood at the flight gate blinking in the bright sun and clutching Davey and her purse and a diaper bag. She had left her sunglasses at the ranch and had been too embarrassed to ask Roger to go back for them.

“Bring old Davey back to see me before he gets too old to ride double,” he said, kissing her. He smelled dry, of the sun.

“I will, I promise,” she said, half blinded. “Please take care of yourself and learn to do something besides fry. I’m going to send you a cookbook.”

“Send her on,” he said. “Be nice to have something new to read.”

14

W
HEN
E
LEANOR TOLD
L
UCY
there would be a guest for the week, Lucy was immediately apprehensive. Only very occasionally were there guests, and the few who came were usually there on business of one kind or another. Eleanor had never liked bringing her friends to the ranch; there was nothing for them to do there. The three or four women she liked, and the three or four men, she preferred seeing in cities, preferably in the East, where they could shop together and where there were theaters and galleries and shows.

She had learned while in college that it didn’t work, bringing people to the ranch. They were fascinated by it and awed by its scale, and they expected to be given tours and treated as if they were on a dude ranch. They wanted to be taken riding, and to be allowed to watch the work. It made both Eleanor and her cowboys uneasy. Work on the Guthrie ranch had always been work—it was never sport. They had no show cattle, no race horses, no polo field. A few old family friends—doctors and lawyers mostly—were allowed to come and hunt, dove in the fall, quail and geese and duck in their seasons; but other hunters were warned away. The grand medieval hunts which the owners of the great South Texas ranches held seasonally for their hundreds of acquaintances did not appeal to Eleanor. She did not want to be mistress of a hunt. Her ranch was a great ranch, and that was enough.

For years Sonny had been the only regular guest, and he was too restless to stay anywhere for more than a week. Besides, he could join in the work if he chose. He seldom did, but he and the cowboys got on with one another and he was never a problem. When he came he came essentially to rest and eat and see her, and no one was made uncomfortable.

But Jim was a new name, and until she saw him Lucy was apprehensive. He might be a threat—some young man from Hollywood who would do Miss Eleanor harm. Lucy was a worrier, and it did no good to tell her that Jim was just a young man she was fond of. Fond was the word she used in speaking of him, and if it did not convince Lucy it was no wonder. It did not convince Eleanor, either. Lucy held a simple view of young men—they were out to get what they could, and get it free if possible. A young man, finding Eleanor miraculously without a husband, would be out to marry her. If he succeeded there would be no way he could lose. He would either get money or love or both. But the ways Miss Eleanor could lose were various. Lucy was the mother of seven boys—all tacitly assumed to be by her first and only husband, though he had not been seen in the vicinity of the ranch since World War II. She was a woman of position herself, and the wiles of the young were familiar to her.