The City of Lovely Brothers (10 page)

Had either of them been imbued with a spirit of

cooperation, one brother's vision would not have been incompatible with the other's. Calhoun only wanted to herd cattle; Calvin wanted a ranch that brought in a lot of money and looked grand, so grand it would make the other ranchers in Montana jealous. Caliban sensed that one could have both, and believed they would iron out their 12differences. But it was not in Calvin's nature to consult. He just went ahead and did what he wanted, and as a result, Calhoun opposed him on principle. Darcie could rein her husband in for a while; she was the only one he listened to.

She could not fight him on everything, though, so when she disagreed on something she did not consider particularly important, she kept her opinion to herself and let him have his way. They had needed a school more than a church, but now that they had a school, she saw no harm in their having a church, too. So two years after they brought in Miss Sachs, Calvin built his church over Calhoun's objections and paid the preacher out of all four pockets to ride to the ranch and conduct a second service after the one in town.

"You won't hafta write but one sermon," he said.

"I still have to ride there and back," the preacher answered. "You'll pay me the same as them, if that's what you're thinking. And I ain't having but one service at Christmas and Easter. You come to town for those holidays and be neighborly."

"We'll come Christmas and Easter if the snow ain't too deep."

"If it's too deep, I ain't coming to your ranch on Sunday."

In winter, when the children were not busy all day with farm chores, they used the church for a schoolhouse. The rest of the year it sat vacant Monday through Saturday, and if they had a thunderstorm, on Sunday, too.

* * * *

On one thing Calvin and Calhoun did agree: they

wanted more land, and Calhoun paid half whenever Calvin bought some. So Calvin had the biggest share of the property because of what he had bought with Darcie's money, and since Calhoun and Calvin had each chipped in half for the Johnson ranch, Calhoun's was almost twice the size of Caleb's and Caliban's land combined, who only owned what their father had left them.

After their last purchase, Calvin took it into his head that he would give the ranch a new name when he went to register the property. He announced his idea at the supper table.

"Whattaya wanna go and do that for?" Calhoun complained. "What's wrong with calling it the Caldwell Ranch?" He instinctively distrusted all Calvin's projects.

"Just about every ranch I know of is named for the man that owns it. I think ours oughtta have a special name, like the special place it is. Best ranch in the state, I would think."

"We could give it the name of our brand," Calhoun 12said.

"That ain't special enough. That's what everyone does that don't call it by their own names."

"I like Calvin's idea," Julia said. "Since it's called the Caldwell Ranch, most people think it's Calvin's, on account o' he's the oldest. We should think up a name to let

'em know it belongs to all four brothers." She said it to mollify her husband and to needle Calvin. She knew it irked him that he had three daughters, while she and Calhoun had boys.

"Des Moines means 'monks'. Monks're brothers, ain't they?" Caliban joked.

Caleb guffawed. "These here brothers ain't taking no vows of chastity."

Darcie said, "My first husband was from

Philadelphia. He said it meant 'The City of Brotherly Love'."

Julia bit her lip. Brotherly love were the last words she would have used to describe the Caldwell Ranch.

"Des Moines and Philadelphia are names for cities,"

Calhoun grumbled. "This place's a ranch, and it's gonna stay a ranch, too."

"We could call it Caladelphia," Caliban suggested.

"The Ranch of the Brothers Cal."

"Caladelphia. I like that," Darcie said. "It sounds 12distinguished. Don't you think it sounds distinguished, Calvin?"

"The Caladelphia Ranch?" Calhoun asked.

"No, just plain Caladelphia. All the ranches round here are named the 'This Ranch' and the 'That Ranch.'"

"That's 'cause they're ranches," Calhoun muttered.

Calvin renamed the ranch Caladelphia because he

agreed with Darcie that it sounded distinguished. At the time of the name change, Calvin's share covered the exact same area as the present town.

The property and herd having grown as much as

they had, Calvin took on more hands, and he now had thirty men working under him. They thought Calvin was the boss, and his three brothers their overseers. For a couple of years, it had seemed that Caliban would eventually be able to work like the rest of them after all, but at seventeen he had gone through a growth spurt that left him with one leg shorter than the other. Although he could not ride, Calvin put him in charge of the horses on his eighteenth birthday.

To the hired men, he was head stable boy.

The first addition to the Caldwell house had been a two-bedroom wing attached to the left side of the house in back. You had to walk through one bedroom to get to the other. When the sixth child, Hester, was born, now that Calvin had three girls and Calhoun three boys, the clan undertook a major project to enlarge their living quarters.

They filled in the area bordered by the L with more house, and added a second story to the entire building including the front porch, accessible by a staircase in the new addition. They built the new sections as if they were a separate house, so it all fit together like some three-dimensional geometric puzzle. They had to cut a door in 12the wall to connect them. To do that, they made one of the original bedrooms smaller and turned it into an office so there would be a hallway leading to the door. On the other side was another hallway with two doors on the left that opened into front rooms (I can't think what else to call them) of the same size as the bedrooms in the first wing behind them. The door between those bedrooms had been walled up and each of them divided into two sleeping rooms, one a third larger than the other. The youngest boy and girl had their own rooms, and their older brothers and sisters, who had been born less than two years apart, shared the bigger ones.

Caliban and Caleb took the largest bedroom in the oldest part of the house, and their room was converted to become a kitchen. The two married couples moved into the upstairs bedrooms.

* * * *

The bad feelings between Calvin and Calhoun

continued to smolder for the next two years. Calvin would suggest some improvements —Calhoun called them

changes— he wanted to make on the ranch, or rather, tell the others he was going to make them. Calhoun would grumble, or sometimes argue with him, and Calvin would 12go ahead and make his improvements as if Calhoun had not said anything. At the end of December 1894, a couple of days before the new year, Calhoun said at the supper table that he had "done some figuring in his head" and come to the conclusion that Calvin had not been paying them all a fair share of what the ranch earned. Calvin stood up in the middle of supper and growled between clenched teeth, "I don't let nobody call me a thief!"

"Sit down and finish your supper, Calvin," Darcie said. "I'm sure Calhoun didn't mean it that way."

Calhoun just frowned and said nothing.

"No, I'm gonna settle this here and now," Calvin said, and went into the small room he used as an office to get the account book. He slammed it down on the table in front of Calhoun, opened it, and pointed to the last year's accounts.

"See for yourself. All o' you come and have a look.

This is what the ranch brought in over the past year, and here's what each o' you got, the same amount, allowing for that me and Calhoun own more land on account o' what we bought since Pa died."

"Excepting you take out the cost of them changes you made from my and Caleb's and Caliban's earnings."

"Them improvements are for all of us, so we all pay for 'em equally." "But on paper they belong to you, and you made

'em on your quarter, so its value is increased and ours ain't."

"This is one ranch, and it belongs to all four of us. It don't matter whose quarter we make 'em on."

Caleb said he was satisfied, and Caliban, who at nineteen now had a say in the family business, said he was, too, so Calhoun backed down.

* * * *

At the beginning of September, while Calhoun and Caleb were away driving the herd to market, Calvin called in carpenters to build a row of one-family bungalows for the married workers. Each would have a little garden in back, and its own well and outhouse. He got the architectural designs out of a magazine. He had kept his plan a secret, so no one knew about it until the day the carpenters showed up with their wagonloads of lumber.

When he returned and saw the half-finished houses, Calhoun blew up. "You're turning the ranch into a goddamn town!" he yelled. "I knew you was gonna sooner or later.

You just better keep all the buildings on your share, or, God help me, I'll stampede my whole goddamn herd right through your shithole of a village! Ain't it bad enough I 13gotta drive 'em an extra five or ten miles to circle round them fucking farms and homesteads of yours?"

"If you don't watch your mouth, Calhoun Caldwell, I'll—"

"You'll what? Take me to woodshed and whup my ass like you done when I was a kid? Just you try it!"

Caliban, Darcie and Julia sat listening to them, speechless.

"We need those houses, Calhoun. You know we do," Darcie said.

"I ain't saying we don't. I'm saying that I'm sick and tired of Calvin doing things to the ranch without asking our opinion and listening to it, too, like it's his goddamn ranch and we're goddamn working for him, and using our goddamn money to do it. What makes you think you can just go and take my goddamn money and spend it any goddamn way you like, you goddamn sonofabitch?"

"I ain't sitting down to supper at the same table as you!" Calvin roared. "No more I won't. I done it for the last time. You can take your plate down to the bunkhouse and eat with your cowboy friends."

"And I ain't gonna live in no miniature city! Me and Julia're moving out tonight."

"Where to?"

"We'll go live at the old Johnson place. It's starting 13to fall apart some, but I can get it fixed up easy."

"That's my land!"

"Half of it. I'll buy the rest from you for what you paid for it. You ain't made none o' your goddamn improvements there and you don't never go there anyways.

It's all grazing land. That way I can keep my herd on the east side and won't hafta cross your lousy village every other week."

"Your herd! That herd belongs to all of us."

"Does it? When's the last time you grazed it? Did you ever stop counting your money and get up off your fat ass long enough to corral 'em or take 'em to the stockyards?

And don't you go pretending it's you who pay the herders.

We all chip in for that. I'll let Caleb and Caliban have a part o' the herd if they want it, but the rest is mine."

"You ain't being fair, Calhoun," Darcie said. "We all depend on that herd to keep us alive. It puts food on the table, food that you and Julia and your kids have been eating for fifteen years, and you ain't never paid a penny for it."

"I ain't breaking up Caladelphia," Calvin said.

"No one has to break it up. We all got deeds to different parts of it already. All of 'em together is still Caladelphia, if it makes a difference to you. Nobody needs to know but us." "You'll both feel different in the morning," Caliban said. "Ain't it a good thing we didn't call it Philadelphia?"

Nobody laughed at his joke.

That night the supper table was quieter than it had ever been. Caleb, who had been off working on the farm at the time of the fight, had no idea what was happening.

"Somebody die?" he asked.

"I'll explain tonight when it's bedtime," Caliban whispered.

* * * *

Calhoun and his family remained in the house

another two weeks while he made repairs to the Johnson place. "Hard thing's gonna be bringing in enough wood for winter," he told Julia. Calvin and Darcie were in the room, but Calhoun had taken to speaking to his wife as if they weren't there.

"You can have your quarter of the pile," Darcie said.

"What're you giving away our wood for?" Calvin said. "Now we're gonna hafta go cut down more."

"And Calhoun'll hafta cut three times as much.

Besides, it's his. I ain't giving away our wood. Did you 13chop it down? No, the ranch hands did, and Calhoun pays his share of their wages, same as you."

Darcie had also talked Calvin into selling his

brother the Johnson place. "So he'll live as far from us as possible," Calvin grumbled. What irked him most was that Calhoun would own more land than he did, although the farm and buildings were on Calvin's property, so what he owned was probably five times the value of Calhoun's holdings.

She had also convinced him to make furniture for them and sell it to them at cost.

The night before they left, lying in bed, Julia said to her husband, "I wish you'd be nicer to Darcie. Can't you see she ain't against us?"

* * * *

The wagon was piled high with everything Julia and Calhoun owned. Calvin came out onto the porch and stood there, half scowling, half smirking, to relish the satisfaction of watching his brother leave. Calhoun ignored him. Julia and Darcie went into the kitchen to say goodbye in private.

"I'm just gonna ask for one thing," Darcie said.

"Don't go into town for Sunday church. Come here to be with us so's the whole county won't know we're feuding. Maybe we can make Sunday lunch for the whole family a tradition. Wouldn't that be nice?"

"Calhoun ain't gonna like it. He hates that church.

Says it was the beginning of the end. We know it wasn't, don't we? It goes further back than that."

"Older than the woodshed," Darcie said.

"But I'll make him come on Sundays, Darcie. That's a promise."

* * * *

Despite the additions that had more than doubled the size of the original Caldwell ranch house, the two families and two single men —six adults and six children ranging from four to thirteen years old— had been living on top of one another. With nearly half of them gone, the house suddenly seemed empty and quiet. Not only did fewer people live there, but they were quieter than they had been before, especially Darcie, saddened to have Julia taken away from her. Caleb and Caliban also felt gloomy.