The City of Lovely Brothers (2 page)

"Where's Mamma?" twelve-year-old Caleb asked.

"Where d'ya think she is? She's in our room."

"Can we see her?"

"It's okay, you go on in, but don't stay there long 1and don't make no noise. She's had a bad time of it."

They saw Nina Caldwell lying on her bed, her face drenched with sweat and her hair disheveled, her eyes wide and staring, and her mouth open. She didn't move; she didn't even turn her face to look at them.

"Is she dead?" Caleb asked.

"No, she ain't dead."

"Is she gonna die?"

"Only God knows that, son."

"Did the baby kill her?"

"Didn't you hear me say she wasn't dead? And if she does die, it won't be the baby's fault. Lots o' women die having babies. It's what they were made for."

"Dying?"

Clayton Caldwell laughed. "We're all made for that.

I meant they were made for having babies. It's a woman's job to bring new life into the world, and your ma done a fine job. Ain't he beautiful? Ain't never seen a baby that beautiful."

"Is that all women do, make babies?" Callie asked.

"You know better'n that, girl! You do your chores right alongside your ma. A woman's job is to take care o'

the men that put food on her table and give 'em a good life.

Calvin and Caleb, help me move your ma so's Callie can wash the linens. When you done that, Callie, take your 1baby brother to your room and keep 'im there till your ma gets better. Can't have 'im disturbing her when she's ailing."

The house had three bedrooms: the parents' room, one for the three boys, and a smaller one for Callie. Until she married and left the ranch, Callie shared it with baby Caliban. His mother was unable to nurse him, so for a year Callie fed him from a bottle.

"Care for the men and give them a good life." Callie had reason to remember those words. She became the woman of the house, and for almost five years she would take care of the baby and keep house and cook and wash clothes for her father and brothers, and in spring and summer for the men in the bunkhouse as well.

As wife and mother, Nina Caldwell had

commanded respect and exercised authority. As sister and daughter, Callie found herself at the bottom of the totem pole. Clayton Caldwell was used to giving his children orders, and he took it for granted his wife had been in the habit of telling her daughter what to do, as he always did with the boys, and he took over for her. He bossed Callie around, and her brothers followed his example.

One night at the supper table, Caleb told her, "Go get the pan from the stove. I want more stew."

"Get it yourself," Callie snapped. "Who're you to 1give me orders? I ain't no slave here; I'm in charge of this house. If you wanna give orders, give 'em to the hired hands." Caleb was no worse than the others, but since he was her twin, it rankled more.

The three boys laughed in her face.

"Don't sass your brothers, Callie," their father said.

"Caleb, you got legs. Get your own stew."

Mrs. Caldwell felt guilty that all the responsibility for the household had fallen on her twelve-year-old daughter. She did what she could, which was little more than the mending. "I'm sorry you gotta work so hard, Callie," she used to tell her.

"That's okay, Mamma. I don't mind. Ain't your fault you're sick."

But she resented all of them, though she did not admit it to herself. All except Caliban. Caliban she adored; she thought of him as her own. She started taking him into her bed when he was an infant, and at five he was still sleeping there, though the others didn't know about it. "It's our secret," she told him.

She started teaching him his letters when he turned three, less than a month before Nina Caldwell's death. Her father said he was too young, but Caliban was bright and learned quickly, and teaching him gave Callie much pleasure. At five, he was reading as well as twelve-year-old 1Calhoun.

* * * *

Clayton Caldwell went rapidly down hill after his wife died. He moped for the rest of the winter. In spring he perked up a bit and hired the workers for the summer.

While he was alive, they had no permanent ranch hands.

Instead, they took on a half-dozen men for the season and dismissed them in the autumn, except for two or three who drove their small herd to the railhead with him and Calvin, and then they, too, would go their separate ways.

His spirits did not improve for long, however. By mid-June he seemed to be losing interest in the ranch. He would get up in the morning and tell his sons he was feeling poorly and would join them later, maybe after lunch, after his headache or lumbago or whatever he was suffering from that day went away. They should go on ahead of him and take care of the chores; they knew what needed doing. Sometimes he went back to work after lunch, sometimes not. That summer Calvin was the real head of the ranch. His brothers didn't realize he was making the decisions; they thought he was passing on their father's orders. Only Calvin and Callie realized the old man was wasting away. He did go on the drive at the end of summer, 2but when they got back, he began moping again and moped all through the winter.

Where Callie felt imposed on for having to do all the work in the house, at nineteen Calvin felt inadequate to run a ranch, as he saw it, by himself, and he covered up his sense of inadequacy by adopting a domineering manner.

Callie, on whom he made the most demands, noticed it; Caleb, Calhoun and the hired men thought he was in a bad mood.

Mr. Caldwell's spirits rose again in spring, and he hired the ranch hands himself, among them a man in his mid-twenties named Robert Gallagher. The old man worked the ranch for about a week, and then stopped. After a few days, he told Calvin to stay in the kitchen with him when the boys were about to leave for their morning chores. He sat Calvin down and outlined his plans for the ranch that season. They were unreasonably ambitious if he wasn't going to work with the rest of them, but Calvin nodded and promised it would be as he said. Every night he would show his father the books. His father would go over them, see that things were not going according to the plans he had laid out, and blame Calvin. Calvin would take it out on his brothers and the hired help, and Gallagher in particular, because he was too good a worker, so good that early in the summer Calvin had decided he was one of the 2men he would take with him on the cattle drive.

Gallagher was impressed with the hard-working

Callie, whom he saw as a fellow-victim of Calvin's bossiness, and was very attentive to her. When he saw her carrying a heavy pail of water up to the house or a basket of wet laundry out to the line, he would offer to carry it for her. Calvin noticed, and it made him angry. "You keep away from my sister," he said. "Why, she's just seventeen."

"Just trying to be gentlemanly," Gallagher explained, but Calvin's opposition only increased his interest the girl.

As summer wore on, the old man took to his bed

and picked at the food Callie brought to his room. One morning in the middle of August, she came into his room and found him up and rummaging through the dresser drawers and muttering to himself. "Take the tray away," he told her. "I'm busy."

"I'll leave it here so's you can have some later."

"I told you I ain't hungry."

"No, Pa, you said you were busy."

"None of your lip, girl! I ain't hungry, neither. Aha!

That's where I put it!"

Callie had turned to take the tray back to the

kitchen. He called her back.

"You see that strongbox?" he said. "That's where I keep my will. I found the box, but I ain't found the key.

You tell Calvin to break it open after I die."

"Sure, Pa."

"Well, what're you waiting for?"

For a second she thought he had forgotten he wasn't dead yet and meant she should go for Calvin so he could break it open. Then she asked if he wanted her to leave the tray. "I told you to take it away, didn't I?"

A few days later the old man passed away quietly in his sleep. They buried him next to his wife, under a solitary tree about half a mile from the house.

"I wonder where Granddad's buried," Calvin said.

None of them knew.

"Now what happens?" Calhoun asked.

"We go on the same as usual," Calvin told him.

"And the ranch?"

"Like I said. Same as usual."

"Who owns it now?"

"We all do. Me, you, and Caleb."

"And Caliban?"

"Caliban's too young to own anything."

None of them had mentioned Callie. "Pa made a will," she said. "He showed me where it was."

"Then we better read it, right?"

They followed Calvin to the tool shed, and he broke open the box. Clayton Caldwell had left the ranch to his four sons, each of them to get an equal portion. The four were to decide together how to parcel it out, unless he died before Caliban was twelve, in which case the three oldest would decide. All four were to chip in equally for a decent dowry for Callie when she married.

"You thinking of getting married, Callie?" Caleb 2joked.

Callie glared at him. "Yeah, when I find me a millionaire." She was angry with her father for leaving her nothing but a dowry. "Decent," he'd said; not even generous.

"How're we gonna to divide it up?" Caleb asked.

"Like the will says," Calvin told him, "four equal shares."

"Yeah, but who gets what?"

"We ain't gonna do it yet. Gotta finish out the season first, with it looking like it's me in charge, 'cause the hands won't listen to you kids. It don't say we gotta divvy it up right away. Can't cut up six hired hands into four portions, can we?"

Callie was fuming. They were making jokes and

ignoring her. "I'm gonna see to it Caliban gets what's coming to him," she said. "C'mon, sweetie, let's go back to the house."

The older boys stayed behind in the shed. "When we gonna do it, then?" Calhoun asked.

"Not till we get back from the drive. I'll be taking Ma and Pa's room so it'll look like I'm the boss. That'll give you two more space, too."

"Where we sleep don't matter. How we gonna run it when it's all pieced out?" "Same way like always. We can't run each part separately alone. At least you two can't, not twelve thousand acres, not at your age."

"That how big the ranch is?"

"That's how big a quarter of the ranch is, more or less. Ain't you interested in this, Caleb?"

"I'm listening."

"
You
tell me, Calhoun," Calvin went on, "how we're gonna run four ranches. We can't afford for each of us to pay for help and build new stables and stuff. The ranch belongs to the family; we're just gonna own different parts of the land."

"What about the herd?"

"Don't say nothing about the herd."

"Ain't it part of the ranch?"

"No, the herd
belongs
to the ranch. The will is only about the real estate." Calvin wasn't sure it was, but it seemed logical.

"What's real estate?"

"The land."

"Then who gets it?"

"You mean the herd?"

"Yeah, who gets the herd?"

Calvin was starting to lose patience, answering the questions of a boy not yet thirteen who didn't even know 2what real estate meant. "We all do, just like the ranch.

Having four herds on one ranch ain't no less stupid than one herd on four ranches, savvy?"

It didn't take long for news of the will to reach the bunkhouse. While Gallagher was pitching hay the next morning, he saw Callie at the pump through the barn door and went to speak with her. "They're saying you ain't got nothing from your old man. That true?"

"Yeah, it's true. What's it to you?"

"I just think it's damn ungrateful, considering all you done for the ranch. It a gone under without you here."

"It can go under with me here, far as I care."

"So why don't you leave and go somewhere else?"

"Like where?"

"You could marry me, for instance."

"You asking?"

"Yeah, I'm asking."

"Seems a funny way to propose, Mr. Gallagher. Not very romantic. So I should go away with you, just like that."

"That's what I was thinking."

"You treat me good; I ain't denying that. My own brothers don't treat me good as you. How'd I know if you'll go on treating me that way?"

"If you were my wife, I'd treat you better! So like I 2said, you willing to leave the ranch and go away with me?"

"Like
I
said, Mr. Gallagher: Go away where? I can't marry no ranch hand that works someplace different every year. You want me to live like a gypsy?"

"In winter I live in Laramie with my uncle.

Laramie's a town. You'll have it easier there."

"I thought it was a fort. Where do you stay when you're there? In the barracks?"

"It's a town, too, Miss Callie. It got houses, stores…

And I live with my uncle. I take care of him. He ain't well, but he can manage okay when it ain't cold weather. You'd live with him when I was gone in summer. But I wouldn't be going as far away as Montana if I had me a wife in Laramie."

"Ain't there nobody else to take care of him?"

"That's the other thing. I'm his only heir, and he got money. I ain't asking you to marry me for my money; I'm letting you know I can support you. So whattaya say? And whether it's yes or no, call me Robert."

"Yes, Robert."

"Hot damn! We're getting married! Can I kiss you?"

She smiled, and he gave her a peck on the lips.

"Now I'm gonna tell Calvin," he said.

He found Calvin and told him, "I'm marrying Callie." "If you're thinking it'll make you part owner of the ranch, forget it. She didn't get none of it."

"So?"

"Just letting you know."

"Look, Calvin, I asked your
sister
. I didn't ask your goddamn ranch to marry me."

Calvin felt like punching him, but Gallagher was five or six years older and would have probably beaten him to a pulp. "When we finish the drive, Gallagher, I want you outta here, and I don't wanna see you back looking for work in this part of Montana Territory next spring."