The Son (55 page)

After the burial we went to the jail and took the sutler into custody. The sheriff handed us the keys.

“You ain’t gonna do nothin’?” the man said, as we marched him past the sheriff. “Just let them hang me, is that it?”

As we led him out into the sunlight, he protested that he’d been one of the filibusters to survive Mier, but we pointed out that was a long time ago, and in another country, and it was time to acknowledge the corn.

A few blocks from the capitol we stripped him, cut off everything hanging between his legs, then fixed him with a riata and dragged him up and down Congress. By the time we strung him up he had stopped kicking. I thought we ought to scalp him, but everyone else thought he made a fine blossom just as he was and there was no sense cuttin’ it too fat. We went to the tavern and I was elected captain over McClellan. I waited till they were good and damaged and then went back to scalp the sutler. I had always been fond of the captain.

W
ITH THE EXCEPTION
of N
uu
karu and Escuté, I had no doubts about my loyalties. Which were in the following order: to any other Ranger, and then to myself. Toshaway had been right: you had to love others more than you loved your own body, otherwise you would be destroyed, whether from the inside or out, it didn’t matter. You could butcher and pillage but as long as you did it for people you loved, it never mattered. You did not see any Comanches with the long stare—there was nothing they did that was not to protect their friends, their families, or their band. The war sickness was a disease of the white man, who fought in armies far from his home, for men he didn’t know, and there is a myth about the West, that it was founded and ruled by loners, while the truth is just the opposite; the loner is a mental weakling, and was seen as such, and treated with suspicion. You did not live long without someone watching your back and there were very few people, white or Indian, who did not see a stranger in the night and invite him to join the campfire.

People came and went in the Rangers. I was not always elected captain, but I always had a slot to ride. I looked after the new arrivals, whether they were younger or older, and I was beginning to see my life laid out in front of me, one year no different from the next; the faces around me would change, I would put them into the ground or give them a clap on the back as they mustered out, then I would go and see to my equipment, drop my revolvers off at the gunsmith, my tack at the saddlemaker, buy a new shirt and pants, then trade my land vouchers for a horse or whiskey or something useful.

Then I shaved off my six-month beard, figured out what company was riding out next, and put my name back on the list.

Chapter Forty-four

J.A. McCullough

I
t was dark, it was loud, she could not make out where she was, there was the sound of water, a rushing like standing in the tides. Two people arguing:
it is a girl,
said one,
this one will be a girl,
then another voice, which she recognized as her father’s, saying,
okay
,
honey
. The drumming of a heart, the swell of breathing. She couldn’t move. There were children’s voices.
My brothers,
she thought.

Then she wasn’t sure. There were voices in Spanish and in another language she didn’t recognize, though it made a kind of sense. A burning feeling. The grass was tall and the sun was in her eyes and there was a man with a dark beard and shining helmet looking as if he wasn’t sure what to do. He stepped forward and stuck something into her again. It caught; he pulled it out and tried again and this time it went all the way through and then the man and the sun were nothing but black spots.

She opened her eyes. She was back in the enormous room.
There have been times before this one,
she thought. She felt a relief come over her; it was the beginning of something, not the end, she had been wrong all along, wrong her entire life.

Then it was gone. She’d made it all up. It was nothing but the mind inventing stories. Anything that did not involve its own end. The house vanished, dust blowing, she could see into the stars . . . she willed herself back into her thoughts.

T
HE TRUCK WAS
going too fast, fishtailing through corners, as if the driver thought he was on tarmac instead of dirt. Something was wrong, she knew immediately, though the vehicle was just a speck still, a mile or more away, an immense cloud rising behind it. Someone had been hurt; that was plain.
Do not let it be Hank
. It was more a feeling than a thought. She stood in the great room and watched the dust come closer.
If it is not Hank, I will never miss a day of church.
Then this seemed overdramatic, a ridiculous promise, they had run out of beer for all she knew. Still, she had a feeling.

She picked up the phone and called the doctor before the truck arrived, before she even knew for certain. “This is Jeannie McCullough,” she said. “I think someone’s been hurt at our place here, I think they were bird hunting.”

She went out onto the gallery. One of the hands saw what was happening; he was riding toward the gate to intercept the truck. He rolled off his horse and pushed the gate open just as the truck shot through and then she had a different feeling, that a mistake had been made, that the man should not have let the truck through at all; she was suddenly very cold and wanted to go upstairs.

When the pickup came to a stop near the gallery, she ran down to meet it. There was Hank in the cab with one of the insurance men. All the worry went out of her, she felt foolish, she felt
thank God thank God,
she was smiling, she was a ridiculous person, but then the two men jumped out without looking at her and she saw she’d been wrong.

Then she was behind the truck. There was Hank, his face white, his shirt heavy and dark, bright handprints over the paint, all over the windows, the third man was holding Hank in his arms and crying.
That is okay,
she thought.
There is more blood in him than that.
She climbed into the bed, it was littered with quail, the man did not want to let go, he was holding on to Hank so tightly;
honey,
she was saying,
honey can you hear me
; his eyes were closed but then he opened them. She put her face to his; someone was saying they were sorry they were sorry.
Hank it’s me. Open your eyes.
He did; he saw her. He was trying to smile and then nothing happened. His eyes changed.

A few moments later Hank’s dog arrived; it had run the entire way from the quail fields, it leaped into the truck and began licking Hank’s face and barking, trying to wake him up, tugging at his shirt and barking; it would not be pushed away. “Get this fucking dog out of here”—that was her—“someone get this fucking dog.” The pointer bit someone’s hand, then went back to licking Hank’s face, the barking was never going to stop and finally the insurance men got hold of it and lifted it off the truck. “Shhhhhh,” someone was saying, “shhh shhhh shhh,” but she didn’t know if they were talking to her or Hank’s dog.

No,
she thought now,
no no no
. She did not want to think about this. She wished she had been struck down before she had even looked out the window. The pointer would not leave her side. She flew with it everywhere and eight years later, when it finally died, she had been incapacitated with grief, she had not been able to go to work, it was like losing her husband a second time.

He was a great man. There were men who were born like that, the hand of God all over them, Hank had been one. Losing him . . . she was choking. When people spoke she was underwater. She heard them and didn’t. She would think about something else. She could still feel pain, she knew she was still alive. Was it true what they said, you were like a butterfly stretching its wings, one day you were trapped here, the next you weren’t? She didn’t know. She did not want to forget.
I want to remember,
she thought.
I will remember I will remember I will remember
.

Chapter Forty-five

Diaries of Peter McCullough

J
ULY 22, 1917

Drilling begun in the Reynolds and Midkiff pastures. Not a single room available in town. The streets are packed with men, trucks, carts, stacks of equipment; there are people sleeping in tents and ditches. Niles Gilbert is letting his pig stall for eighty dollars a week. As usual I expect anger at our skyrocketing fortune; of course it is the opposite. They see our prosperity nearly as their own, as if rent for a hog sty is no different from a few million dollars in oil.

And—for the time being—everyone
is
making money. Selling clothes, old tools, food, water, rooms, renting use of their cars, trucks, mules and carts, horse teams, and backyards. Grover Deshields has stopped tending his crops and is instead driving around on his tractor, charging ten dollars (a week’s wages) to pull stuck trucks out of bogholes in the drilling fields. It is rumored he waters the bogholes at night. Someday this boom will end. Though not for us.

There are now four derricks, in various states of assembly, visible from our back ridge. My father’s driller is not impressed. He thinks there will soon be a hundred or so. This despite the fact that the only other oil around here was found at Piedras Pintas. There are the Rieser and Jennings fields, but they are only gas.

A
S FOR
M
ARÍA,
I have stopped even pretending to go out to the pastures. Sullivan finds me in the evening and gives me a report of the day’s activities. He has nearly caught us several times. . . . I expect the novelty of her to wear off but it has only gotten more intense. If I spend even an hour apart from her I can’t think of anything else, I forget the names of people, what I am supposed to be doing, any reason I have for being.

I want to know everything. The way a child learns the world by tasting it . . . I want to take every part of her into my mouth; I find myself wondering about her former lovers, how she was with her sisters, her father, her mother, who she was at university, where the separate parts of her come from.

I
AM UP
before the light and she is still sleeping, relaxed, her hands thrown behind her head, face to one arm, her knees leaning in as if she has fallen asleep on a beach . . . I watch the sun brighten as it touches her, the smooth skin along her neck (a red mark I clumsily left), an ear, the hollow behind her cheek, her chin (slightly pointed), her lips (slightly chapped), while her eyes, which are nearly black except for a few flecks of gold, flicker in a dream. Without waking, she realizes I am not lying next to her and she reaches for me and pulls me over.

Still the shadow has not appeared. Have begun to look in all the dark places, out of the corner of my eye, but . . . nothing. Pedro—I can only recall his face as a younger man, and Lourdes, too, as a younger, more beautiful woman, as if, in my mind, they are aging in reverse.

J
ULY 23, 1917

A rush of air from the north, high of eighty degrees. We wake up alert and clearheaded—we must be outside. As there is an unspoken agreement about spending any time near the Garcia land, we pack a basket into the Chandler and head for Nuevo Laredo. As I drive, she encourages my hands to wander; we make a brief stop along the way. I consider the fact that I have never done this before—never made love to a woman outside the confines of a bedroom. I wonder if she has, feel briefly jealous despite my former sentiment about her old lovers, but the feeling passes and I am content again.

When we reach Nuevo Laredo the ugliness of the city is somehow overwhelming.

“This will not do,” I say.

“We will make it beautiful for everyone else,” she says. She leans her head against my shoulder.

We are looking for a cantina (or hotel, she reminds me) but as we approach the
plaza de toros
there are several drunk Americans, well dressed, calling loudly after the Mexican girls; one of them stares into the car, says something to his friends about María. I nearly stop to have a word, but she tells me to keep driving. We make another slow circle through the town, past the Alma Latina, where a trio of mariachis sit with no one to play for, and then somehow our eyes seem to catch on all the
congales,
and we decide instead to drive along the river.

After we have put a good distance between us and the city we stop where a small hill affords a good view over the savannah. There is an old long-armed oak with soft grass underneath.

We are lying on a blanket, looking out over the endless land and sky, when María says: “I like to imagine this at the beginning of time, when the grass was very tall and there were wild horses.”

“Horses have only been here a few hundred years,” I say.

“I prefer to forget that.”

“It’s buffalo you would see.”

“Except there is little to like about a buffalo,” she says. “What is the point of a buffalo?”

I shrug.

“But you prefer them. Okay, I will imagine buffalo instead, though they are hairy, smelly, inelegant, and have horns.”

“They belong here,” I say.

“In my mind, the horses do as well. And if the horses do not, I do not. And if I do not, you do not. In your world there is nothing but buffalo and sad Indians.”

“And then a gallant Spaniard appears on horseback. And shoots them.”

“It’s true. I’m a hypocrite.”

I kiss her neck.

“My father thought there were still mustangs here. He said he often saw their footprints, without shoes.”

“It’s possible,” I say.

“I used to dream about them.”

I think of all the mustangs we shot. But Pedro had done it too. Everyone had done it.

I look around. At the bottom of the hill is a stream that feeds the Rio Bravo. Along the water are persimmons and hackberries and pecans, cedar elms. I can hear green jays calling.

We lie and make love in the sun, despite the fact that we can see, in the distance, the workers moving in the onion fields along the river. María finds them picturesque; I can’t help feeling sorry for them.