The Son (30 page)

“It is my money,” he said. “It is not your money; you have no say in this, you are a child.”

“It is the Colonel’s money. You did not earn a dime of it.”

“You will stop.”

“We have not had supper in two weeks. Why? Because you are playing with your horses. Before that it was almost six weeks. The oil is the only thing allowing you to do this.”

She expected to be slapped, but her father seemed to calm down and he said, “The oil pays for improvements to the land, honey. It pays so we don’t have to sleep in the mud at roundup, so we can just drive home and sleep in real beds at night. And that airplane, because we can’t hire enough men to check those pastures from horseback anymore.”

“Then perhaps we should stop doing roundup altogether,” she said. “As it would save us a great deal of money.”

Then he got up. He squared himself and stepped toward her, but nothing happened. He turned and walked out of the room. She could hear his footsteps slow as he reminded himself the house was still his, his boots went down the hall, past the parlor and into the foyer, then out the front door, slamming it behind him.

“That was very stupid,” said her grandmother.

She shrugged, wondered if she’d destroyed everything she knew; then had a feeling it had never mattered anyway. The day before, an hour before, to speak to her father, to speak to anyone like this would have been unthinkable.

“I didn’t realize you were afraid of him,” she said. “Is it because the Colonel didn’t leave you anything?”

Her grandmother ignored her. “You can’t stay here, Jeannie. Especially after this.”

Jeannie had a feeling she would be content if she never spoke to her grandmother again, or to anyone else in the family.

“Your father is not going to let you run this ranch.”

“There
isn’t
any ranch. We’re living on minerals and borrowed money.”

“Did Phineas write you that little speech? Because if you think a woman will have any place in his schemes, you’re mistaken.” She got a nasty look. “In more ways than one.”

“I guess we’ll see.” She was thinking about her father, how thin he was; she knew he no longer slept through the night.

Her grandmother set down her knife and fork, arranging them carefully and smoothing the tablecloth, and took a sip of her sherry. “I have always known that you find me tiresome,” she said. “You think it is my nature, or my disposition, or you have likely never thought about it. But when I decided to move here, I found I had a choice between being liked and having a say. That’s the choice you’ll have to make as well. They will either love you and not respect you, or they will respect you and not love you.”

“Things are changing.”

“It may appear that way, but when the war is over, the men will come back, and it will go back to the way it has always been.”

“I guess we’ll see,” she repeated.

“This place,” said her grandmother. She waved her hand, dismissing not only Jeannie but everything else, the house, the land, their good name. “I’m a member of the wealthiest family in four counties, but they still give me dirty looks when I vote.”

It was quiet. It occurred to Jeannie that for years she had wanted nothing more than this—for her grandmother to treat her like a confidante, a real person—but now she wanted nothing of the sort. She guessed she ought to feel privileged; instead she was embarrassed. Embarrassed that her grandmother was bullied by her own son, embarrassed that she would complain about her sex; what should have been sympathy somehow turned to anger, her grandmother ought to be out among the right people, solving the social problem, for if not her, then who? It was weakness, the entire family, and she felt a lifetime of fear and respect burn off as quickly as it had for her father. She sat up straight, smoothed her dress, she would be alone in life, that was clear, but right now she did not mind.

“You are not going to find a husband here who understands that we are halfway through the twentieth century. Do you understand?”

“I’ll end up like you, you mean.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Married to men like your father or your grandfather or your brothers. To the sort of men who would choose to live out here, you will just be a place to get warm.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“You won’t have a choice, Jeannie.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Diaries of Peter McCullough

M
ARCH 10, 1916

Yesterday Pancho Villa crossed the border into New Mexico, killing twenty. Today, hardly a white man to be seen without a pistol or slung rifle, even to buy groceries.

The Germans have promised to reinforce Mexican troops with German infantry should they choose to cross the border. Whole town in a frenzy; we are only ten miles from the river.

I do not point out there is little likelihood of the Kaiser sending troops to McCullough Springs when he is losing them ten thousand a day in France. I do not point out that the number of Americans killed in Columbus is the same as the number of Tejanos shot in bar ditches on any given night in South Texas. I do not point these things out because everyone seems happy with the news of this new threat; neighbors who didn’t speak are suddenly friendly, wives have new reasons to make love with their husbands, disobedient children do their schoolwork and come home early for dinner.

F
OUR
M
EXICANS FOUND
shot outside town, all teenagers. No one is sure who they are or who killed them. The vaqueros think they are
fuereños,
men from the interior of Mexico, though how they can deduce this from a bloated corpse is beyond me. Incident not mentioned in newspaper. If it were four dead mules, there would have been an investigation, but there is nothing except general grumbling about the burial costs.

M
ARCH 14, 1916

Yet more blood on our hands and Charles has been taken to Carrizo. He was in town buying supplies when he ran into Dutch Hollis. Though it was only noon, Dutch was quite drunk and in front of a lunchtime crowd of onlookers accused our family of various crimes (of which we are certainly guilty), including engineering the death of the Garcias to gain their land.

After a short struggle Dutch got the better of him; Charles went to the truck and returned with his pistol. Dutch may or may not have reached for his knife (a folding jackknife in a pouch, same as all the men here carry). Charles shot him in the face.

Our caporal Garza arrived in time to see the final act:
Madonna, you should have seen it, his hand did not even tremble.
He related this expecting I would be proud.

Shortly after getting home, Charles saddled his horse and rode for Mexico. The Colonel and I caught him a few miles short of the river and convinced him to come back.

“It’ll be all right,” I said to him, as we returned.

He shrugged.

“We’ll muddle through.” He did not say anything. I felt the old impotence rising within me—what was the point of my even existing—or so everyone else seems to think.

“He had it coming,” said Charles. “He’s been talking like that all over town.”

“With his brother dying . . .”

“His brother? How about
my
brother?” He kicked his horse and caught up to the Colonel, who was riding ahead of us. They nodded to each other, did not speak, some wordless understanding, the same as my father and Phineas. My skin began to tingle . . . it occurred to me that I was the one who ought to be fleeing to Mexico. . . .

Was he right? He and Sally seem to think the same way . . . is a near death equal to a death?

When we returned to the house, Sheriff Graham was waiting. Charles, bluffing over, turned white. Graham told us there was no hurry. He was thirsty.

The four of us spent the rest of the evening on the gallery drinking whiskey and watching the sunset, the three of them sitting together and chatting easily about how to best handle the incident, the sky going its typical blood red, which to me alone seemed symbolic, as I was sitting off a small distance from the others.

To listen to the three of them talk about the death of Dutch Hollis, you might have thought there had been some accident, a lightning strike, flash flood, the hand of God. Not my son’s.
Had to do it, acted on instinct,
the sheriff just nodding away, sipping our whiskey, my father refilling his glass.

Considered interrupting them to note that the entire history of humanity is marked by a single inexorable movement—from animal instinct toward rational thought, from inborn behavior toward acquired knowledge. A half-grown panther abandoned in the wilderness will grow up to be a perfectly normal panther. But a half-grown child similarly abandoned will grow up into an unrecognizable savage, unfit for normal society. Yet there are those who insist the opposite: that we are creatures of instinct, like wolves.

Once darkness had fallen and all were convinced of my son’s righteousness, Graham drove Charles back to Carrizo, all agreeing it was best if Charles spent a night in jail for appearance’s sake. Glenn meanwhile has been keeping his distance. He is confused by Charlie’s actions, to say the least.

M
ARCH 15, 1916

Went to see Dutch Hollis’s body before they bury him. He was lying in Graham’s back shed with several blocks of ice. He was unshaven, had not been washed; his face and clothes were filthy and clotted with blood and, like all the dead, he had lost control of his waste. Not long ago, twenty years maybe, he was a child reaching for his mother . . . a boy becoming a man . . . I had a sudden memory of him playing the fiddle, together with his brother, at the Midkiffs’ house. I peered into the dark spot, just at the edge of his eyebrow, an intricate machine, broken forever; there had been words and music . . . we had put a stop to that.

There was something shiny inside his shirt, a woman’s locket . . . I lifted it but could not quite make it out in the dimness. I broke the chain, jerking his head in the process. Then I left the room quickly and walked back into the light.

When I got home (heart racing the entire time, as if I’d committed some great felony, as if the crime was not killing him but taking his locket), there was no picture, no message, no piece of hair: the locket was empty. I took it to the Garcias’ and buried it there, along with our other victims, the whole time expecting I was being followed, the criminal feeling lingering. There are those born to hunt and those born to be hunted . . . I have always known I was the latter.

M
ARCH 16, 1916

Charles has returned, but he is not allowed to leave any of the four counties in which our property extends. He strides about with his chin up; I find it difficult to look at him. Judge Poole assures us there will be no indictment. In fact he and the sheriff and my father went calling at the homes of those likely to be empaneled.

Would like to report I have been torn between a hope he might receive punishment and hope he’ll be exonerated. I have not. I want only for him to be acquitted. And yet his crimes multiply . . . this the son I raised with my own hands.

Have been in to buy supplies, keeping my hat pulled low, terrified the entire time I would run into Esther Hollis, Dutch and Bill’s mother, but this evening, with enormous relief, I remembered that she has been dead several years.

No one seems particularly bothered, least of all the Mexicans. The
coraje,
they say, the heat and dust and thorns. Even horses get it. For the grandson of a great
patrón
—a man with blood—to get the
coraje,
it is only to be expected. Especially when a man slanders his family. And in public . . . In truth it was the only reasonable action.

Meanwhile both Hollis brothers now lie rotting. Impossible to believe we are truly in God’s image. Something of the reptile in us yet, the caveman’s allegiance to the spear. A vestige of our time in the swamps. And yet there are those wish to return. Be more like the reptile, they say. Be more like the snake, lying in wait. Of course they do not say
snake,
they say
lion,
but there is little difference in character between the two, only in appearance.

M
ARCH 24, 1916

Grand jury refused to indict.

A
PRIL 2, 1916

Despite Dutch Hollis, despite the Garcias, our name carries more weight than ever. Where I expect bitterness, I receive respect; where I expect jealousy, I receive encouragement. Do not steal from the McCulloughs—they will kill you; do not slander the McCulloughs—they will kill you. My father thinks this the proper state of affairs. I tell him this is the tenth century of the second millennium.

In the end it is as he says—they think we are made of different stuff. If it ever occurred to them that we eat and bleed the same as they do, they would run us down with torches and pitchforks. Or, more accurately, holy water and wooden stakes.

I
N NEWS OF
the broader suffering, Villa’s men attacked the barracks at Glenn Spring yesterday. My sympathies for the Mexican people aside, my father and I are both anxious for the arrival of our Lewis gun, which fires ten .30-caliber rounds per second. A true blessing for the few holding out against the many. Due to war in Europe they are running a severe backlog.

Serious talk that the Mexican government is planning an assault on Laredo—Carranza’s troops are massing across the river. The Mexicans believe we ought to hew to the original border (the Nueces). Texans believe the border belongs another three hundred miles south, somewhere around Durango.

S
ALLY WANTS TO
move to San Antonio or Dallas or even Austin—anywhere but here.

“We are perfectly safe,” I told her. “Neither the Huns nor the Mexican army will be approaching our gate anytime soon.”

“That is not what I care about,” she said.

“Is this about the boys?”

“It’s about all three of them. The two living and the one buried.”

“They will be fine.”

“Until they do something like this again. Or until someone’s brother finds them.”