Luna (20 page)

“Time to go, Tammy.” Tony said. “Go get your coat.” He turned back to Selena. “We’re staying with Mom and Dad this weekend. I thought it was simpler than trying to set up camp in the old house for just a couple of nights. And Mom was dying to see the kids.” Maybe it would be better if I write it in a letter to Diane, she thought.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mark come in from outside. Jason was already waiting for them, lounging on a chair by the door, and Mark leaned against the wall beside him. She felt a pang of loneliness for Phoebe, not coming out of the kitchen with her friends, not here with them.

On the way home in the car Kent said, “I heard something tonight I can hardly believe.”

“What?” Selena said, thinking immediately it was about Brian and the girl in Swift Current.

“I heard Harry Halvorsen’s bankrupt.”

“Harry!” Selena said, astonished. “Where did you hear that?” And then, thinking back through the evening, “I bet it’s true. Helen’s as thin as a rail.”

In the back seat Mark said, “No kidding! And they always take winter holidays in Florida and Hawaii and everywhere.”

“That don’t mean much,” Kent said. “It’s like Clarence Bradwell used to say: ‘They can take back my land, but they can’t take back my trip to Mexico.’”

“A lot of good that did him,” Selena said disapprovingly. “He’d have been better to spend the money on fertilizer or paying his bills.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kent said. “Maybe he’s right. He lost the land in the end, and all that trip cost him, compared to what he owned, wasn’t even a drop in the bucket.” Selena was surprised to hear Kent say this. Wasn’t he the one always trying to save money? To do without? God knows, she thought, we’ve never been to Hawaii. She changed the subject.

“When Doyle couldn’t raise the money to buy Tony’s place, I knew things were bad, but Harry’s not like Doyle.” Doyle was land-hungry,
always buying. If land went up for sale he was crazy to have it, whether it was close to him or not. But Harry was third geneation, conservative in his habits, hadn’t bought more land or a big new tractor. “I don’t see how it could happen to him.”

“He bought a new combine,” Kent pointed out. “He must’ve spent some money helping Trevor get started on that Carlson place. It can happen. A few years like last year and this year, and the first thing you know, you’re in trouble.”

They could hear a flock of geese flying overhead, although they couldn’t see them. Already there had been two snowstorms on the high plateau to the north of them, although both times the snow had immediately melted or blown away. Selena thought of all the fall work there was yet to be done: rounding up, weaning, selling calves, trailing cattle home from summer pasture. And winter crowding in on them, coming too soon, like it always did. All of them hating even to think about it.

Selena was standing behind the old pole fence, watching the cows as they streamed out into the fields and hills behind the old corrals. They were leaving slowly, reluctantly, stopping occasionally to lift their heads and bawl plaintively, or to turn back to search for their calves. But the main gate had been closed, shutting them out. The calves were left milling in bewilderment in the big corral, bleating, wondering what had happened to their mothers.

Was it snowing a little? Selena held up her palm, her fingers were cold even inside her gloves, and a few small, dry flakes landed on the creased yellow leather. They always waited to wean and sell their calves until the last possible minute before winter struck.

Kent leaned over the fence from the main corral and called to her. She had been watching the cows and didn’t so much hear his words, lost in the wind as they were, as recognize in the tone and then in his face, that he wanted her. While she walked toward him and climbed the fence, he took off his wool cap, pulled down the earflaps and put the cap back on, pulling it down tightly so that it met the edges of his upturned jacket collar.

They had been up since well before daylight, had had breakfast, then waited in their heavy clothes in the kitchen for the first rays of cloud-dulled sun to provide enough light so they could begin the day’s work. Leaving Phoebe in the house, the rest of the family had gone out then, silently crossing the bleak, frozen yard to the barn where their horses were waiting, already fed and watered by Kent while Jason and Mark were still climbing sleepily out of bed and Selena was cooking breakfast in the kitchen. They had saddled the horses, loaded them into the stock trailer, and with Kent driving the four-wheel drive, and Selena following in the half-ton, headed out across the prairie toward their other corrals, which sat in solitude in the basin of the hills fifteen miles west of their home place. They had moved the cows and calves there in late summer, their last pasture before winter set in.

They had arrived by nine o’clock, by ten had coaxed all the cows and calves into the main corral, and by noon had separated the calves from their cows.

“We better stop for dinner now,” he said to her, “before we start separating the steer calves from the heifers.”

“Okay,” she said, and climbed the corral. Kent was already going to the big truck. He climbed in and began to back it around so that the long stock trailer acted as a buffer from the wind, while she took the box of lunch and the thermoses of coffee from the cab of the half-ton. He threw out a couple of hay bales from the stock trailer and using one as a table, she set the lunch out on it. The four of them sat down on the ground, their backs to the stock trailer, out of the wind, and ate the sandwiches she had made the night before. They ate quickly, and drank the coffee scalding hot, anxious to get to the next phase of the work.

“Cattle liners should be here about four,” Kent remarked, looking up at the sky, and then out to the hills that receded slowly against it. “If we don’t have no trouble, it should all work out just right.” He couldn’t seem to stay sitting down to eat, but kept standing up, holding his coffee in one hand and his sandwich in the other. Nervous, she knew, anxious, worried about what their calf crop would bring tomorrow morning in the sale ring. She ate silently and so did the boys, from experience, knowing it was best, to avoid sudden bursts of temper on such a day, for which he would be sorry the next day. She didn’t really blame him, that sale represented their only income for the entire year, everything depended on it, it was no wonder his nerves were stretched taut.

When they had finished, the three men went to the corral while she gathered the remainder of the lunch as quickly as she could and set it back in the truck. Then she hurried over to the corral.

“You take the heifers,” Kent shouted to her. “Jason can take the steer calves.” He pointed to the pen he wanted her to use, then showed Jason where he was to work. Mark stood behind him, swinging his arms to keep warm while he waited. Selena nodded without trying to answer him against the wind and the bawling of the cows, went to the pen he had pointed out, and positioned herself behind the gate, which opened inward. Jason stood behind the gate in the pen next to her, bending to watch Kent and Mark from between the slabs that formed the gate.

She zipped her jacket up as high as the zipper would go, then, holding her gloves under her arm, fumbled with the knot of her silk scarf, tightening it. Pellets of snow hit her bare hands, stinging. It was not so bad when she was working, she usually got too hot, in fact, with the anxiety and the running around, but as soon as she stood still, she always got cold.

More than any other month she hated November, before the bare, hard ground had a covering of snow. It seemed to her the coldest month, the ground, the trees, were bare and frozen, nothing looked nice, even the cow pies in the corral were as hard as rocks, so that if you tripped on one you could break your leg or throw out your knee.

Kent was shouting instructions now to Mark as the two of them moved into position on foot among the calves.

“Call out what you’ve got,” Selena heard him shout. Mark nodded, not taking his eyes off the calves milling around him, and Selena slid back the board that formed the latch on her gate. She turned to Jason, who was still leaning forward, watching.

“Jason” she was anxious he should be ready and not make any mistakes, so that neither Kent nor Mark would yell at him, “Watch!”

“I’m ready,” he said, both hands on his gate, crouching to watch between the planks.

“Heifer!” Mark called, and Kent repeated the cry as he turned the calf Mark had started toward her. Quickly she swung her gate open wide to let the little calf trot through, and then shut it, quick, before any of the others following it could sneak in behind the first. She had to concentrate to hear Mark and Kent’s shouts over the wind, the mooing of the cows in the fields around her, and the bleating of the calves in front of her.

“Heifers!”

“Steers!” The shouts went on, and she and Jason opened and shut their gates rapidly, trying not to let those they had already corralled escape out the open gate, carefully cutting back any calves that followed the one they were trying to corral, watching all the while to avoid being kicked. Selena had begun to sweat, and she let the zipper on her jacket down a few inches and took a crumbling tissue out of her pocket to blow her nose.

In a lull when Kent mounted to ride to the far end of the corral to chase up a stubborn bunch of frightened little animals, Selena thought about the house, where a welcome stream of smoke would be rising into the grey, winter sky. She thought of Phoebe inside, the kitchen clean by now, a roast in the oven for their dinner, the house warm and comfortable, cozy even, in contrast to the harsh day outside.

But she had never been one of those women afraid of the outdoors, hating the work in the corrals and the yard, and neither had Phoebe been, at least not as far as she could tell. Selena had always welcomed the chance to be outside, loved that moment when she opened her kitchen door on the clean, strong outdoor air, was always glad to leave the stuffy house for the sense of freedom and power, yes, that’s what it was, the sense of power to be found outside.

But now Phoebe would be learning how it was to stay inside, learning to draw in her expectations of the day, learning about that inward world bounded by the four walls, the roof, and the floor. How the smell and the
texture of the house became a part of you—you knew the way the nap fell on the rug if you vacuumed it, or if you rubbed it with the palm of your hand, or if you stepped on it with your shoe or with your slipper; the feel of the kitchen floor under your hand when you washed it. She would be getting to know the minute scratches in the stainless steel of the kitchen sink, the patterns of the counter tops, like confetti, and of the tabletop’s gold flecks, and the way the dust gathered in the corner by the door in the kitchen, nearly under the old, wide baseboards, and in the corners of the steps going upstairs, the smudges always coming at a certain spot on the polished door of the fridge, around the light switches, by the doorhandles.

She wondered what the house looked like to Kent. Vague, she supposed, shadowy. If you moved a chair that had always stood in one spot, he asked you if it was new. No wonder they didn’t see eye to eye. They weren’t even seeing the same things.

“Steer!” Mark shouted, and Kent’s cutting horse swerved sharply, then swung its front legs back again, pivoting on its rear legs, to cut off a calf that was trying to double back. Jason swung open his gate and shut it again, fast, catching the last calf by one leg, and quickly releasing it. The calves in Selena’s pen milled and cried, bleating for their lost mothers, and the cows in the field behind them bellowed frantically in reply, and ran along the fence nearest their calves, bumping it with their heavy bodies and making it shake.

It was better not to think about it. We have to eat, she reminded herself. We’re cattle ranchers, we raise cattle, that’s how we make our living. If we didn’t do it, somebody else would. And at least here the cows are free to move around and graze on the open range. They aren’t prisoners in those terrible feedlots, confined in a few square feet with dozens of other cows, standing knee-deep in their own shit all their lives. They don’t even know what grazing is. She glanced down at the calves, then hastily opened her gate to let a bawling heifer through. But I suppose it really isn’t right, she thought. None of it, but I mustn’t think about that. Her cheeks were burning with the wind now, and she blew her nose again.

They were just finishing up when she happened to look out across the main corral and saw Tony. He was leaning on the railing, watching them.
Her first reaction was to look for Diane, but then she saw his empty half-ton parked along the fence. She knew by it, and by the farm clothes he was wearing, as well as by the casual way he leaned on the corral with his hands in his pockets, that Diane hadn’t come. Whenever Diane was nearby there was a kind of tension in him, an eagerness that she had never exactly identified before, although she must have always known it was there. Wondering, she climbed the fence instead of opening the gate and risking the loss of a calf or two, and hurried across the corral toward him.

“Tony!” She hugged him, clumsy in her heavy clothes, and stepped back while he smiled down at her, then pointed out to the east toward the fireguard that served as a road. Puzzled, she followed his hand and saw the two big cattle liners, raising dust even though it was November, slowing on a curve coming down a distant hill, heading toward the corrals. Mark and Jason were coming now, and out of the corner of her eyes, Selena saw Kent leading his horse out of the corral.

“I’ll help you load,” Tony said, and hugged Jason roughly, slapping his shoulder, then putting his other arm out toward Mark, who stood grinning at him.

“Di not with you?” she asked, and when he didn’t answer her, watching first the liners that were rolling heavily up the fireguard to the corrals, and then Kent, who was coming from the corner of the main corral toward him, she added, “I guess they won’t need me to help load.”

Then Kent had come up, was shaking hands with Tony, and all of them were moving aside and opening the main gate so that the first cattle liner could back in to take the first load at the loading chute on the other side of the corral.

Kent came up to her where she was leaning against the half-ton and said, “You might as well wait in the truck. There’s six of us to load, we don’t need you. After, I’m gonna run home and change my shirt and my hat before I follow the liners to town. You can get a ride back with me.” She nodded, and climbed gratefully into the relative warmth of the truck cab. Her legs were aching from being on her feet since five-thirty that morning, and she was sleepy from the wind. She stretched them out and rested her head in the corner between the seat and the door, and for the
first time that day, allowed herself to relax. Protected from the steady roar of the wind, the clamour of the cows and calves, the throbbing rumble of the cattle-liners’ big motors, it seemed quiet in the cab, and she grew drowsy, and drifted off into a light sleep.

Before she knew it Kent was opening the door, waking her without even noticing it, and the two cattle liners were pulling out, roaring slowly down the trail. She sat up and moved over.

“What’s going on?”

“I left the boys to load the stock trailer. They’ll bring it home right away. And Tony’s following in his truck.” She and Kent and Tony would be in the yard in twenty minutes, but it would take the boys, going as slowly as they’d have to on that trail, about an hour to get home, and the cattle liners would have to travel even more slowly until they got onto a proper road. She’d have lots of time to get dinner on the table, and Kent could easily catch up to his calves before they arrived at the stockyards in town. Things had worked out all right—except for the price the calves would bring the next morning. Well, they couldn’t do anything about that.