Dalva (40 page)

The night wasn't kind to me. The breeze had come around to the south, and the darkness was warmer than the day had been. The horses were restless and I went out twice in the night to check them. The geese were upset and I guessed the coyote had made a pass through the barnyard. It was one of those nights when your perceptions are much grander than you want to indulge; instead of having a succession of idle thoughts ending in sleep you are unbalanced, nearly punished, by images with all the logic of snow flurries in the mind. The last moments before sleep went like this: At the fairgrounds when I stooped beside Michael, his jaw made an audible, grating sound. “What did I do?” he asked, and his jaw caught on “what” so that the question was slurred before his eyes fluttered and closed. My lover in Brazil masturbated me with a handful of flowers. I could see the reflection of the sea in a mirror at the end of the room. The ambulance passed a large gray building on the outskirts of town owned by my family that at one time was the Grange Hall. Farmers in their hopeless fight in the 1880s and 1890S against the power of the railroads. So the Chamber of Commerce determined the town could only support a motel with two rooms which no one wanted to build. The school system used the first floor of the Grange building for storage. Upstairs was full of old office furniture and odds and ends from buildings Grandfather had owned in town by default during the Depression. We thought we had the only key to the upstairs, but last summer we were looking for a marble end table and a box of old photographs by Butcher, and we discovered someone had set up a trysting place in an interior room. We hadn't been up there in years. The window was boarded in this room, and there was a bed with a nice bedspread, a radio, some magazines and paperbacks on a night table, three towels, an ashtray with lipstick on a few of the butts. Naomi and I were startled, then amused, then we didn't
quite know what to think. Who could the lovers be? A
McCall's
magazine, a Barbara Cartland romance, and two Elmore Leonards were on the floor. There was a palpable sense of the lovers in the room, and though it was our building we felt we were invading their privacy. The pillowcases were fresh and ironed. We were silent for a minute or two listening to the wind against the tin roof. The woman's scent was nearly undetectable lavender.

In the morning I lingered for an extra half-hour waiting for a smallish thunderstorm to pass. I was pleased at its direction because it meant I could follow it over toward Ainsworth—there was something wonderful about following a squall with the sun at your back in the early morning, shining off the roiling cumulus and stratocumulus clouds.

In the first half-hour on the wet, glistening blacktop I passed only one car, and another coming toward me. I slowed down a bit when I began to come too close to the storm, entering an area of gusty winds that revealed the pale under-leafs of the windbreaks and shelterbelt trees: I was at the precise back edge of the storm so when I let up on the gas the world became still, and every bird was emerging noiselessly from the quiet aftermath. I listened to a very glum stock-and-grain report, and one of those equally glum and whining “city-billy” songs that had been taking over country music. I punched in a Patsy Cline tape that quickly erased the bad taste of the other, just as I turned onto the road, Route 20, that I had driven on when Grandfather had retrieved me from Chadron after my search for Duane. I felt a thickening of sentiment beneath my breastbone so changed the tape for chamber music by the Pro Musica Antiqua. I was amused by this small battle against sentiment and by something Lundquist had said to the effect that it was a good thing we had time and clocks or everything might happen at once.

At Ainsworth I caught up with the storm again, and stopped for gas, coffee, arid more precise directions. I was helped by two teenage boys in very wet FFA (Future Farmers of America) jackets. When I was getting back in the car in the
blustery wind and rain, and they thought I was out of earshot, I heard one say something naughty but complimentary about my body—“What a great ass. I sure would like to fuck that.” There was an errant impulse to march over and tell them I was more than old enough to be their mother, but then that never was part of the game. Some wise soul said that grownups are only deteriorated children.

The entry gate of the ranch was new and ludicrously impressive, but there was also a very large and fresh “For Sale” sign, the listing by a national realtor. These were both indications of a tax shelter gone amiss, probably for someone in the oil business, since they seemed to be the only ones who bought large ranches these days. Scarcely any big ranches had been put together since World War II, and most of them were based on railroad grants before the turn of the century, or in the surge of prosperity during World War I.

I drove a full mile up a blacktop driveway—another absurdity—along a creek, the air sweet with cottonwoods. The house had once been an ordinary Nebraska farmhouse but was now elaborately remodeled and empty: the outbuildings were uniformly painted, and there was a pond with a sunken rowboat still tethered to a dock. The ample number of corrals without cattle chutes showed it had been an expensive horse operation. I circled the pond on a two-track that led to a mobile home perched nakedly against the side of a hill, with a three-quarter-ton pickup parked beside it. I was met by a large, grizzled male Airedale, and a bitch black Labrador who waggled out from under the trailer's steps. The Airedale bounced up with his paws on my open window to stare at me. I waited for his eyes to soften to get out, wanting to let him do his job. I walked around the side of the trailer where Sam Creekmouth was replacing a tire on a horse trailer. There was a small corral holding three fine-looking quarter horses, two mares, and a gelding. The Airedale barked at Sam to tell him I was there which he doubtless knew, but was either shy, or the sort of man that wanted to finish the job before he chatted, or both. When he stood and I offered my hand I thought he could
be anywhere between thirty-five and fifty but I guessed about my age. He was a little over six feet, slender but large-chested, with arms that seemed elongated by too much hard work. His nose was crooked as if badly set after a fracture, his hair coal-black under a feed-store cap, his eyes remote but almost friendly. He was uncommonly dark and beaten by the weather and there was an edge of anger in his gestures.

“I was down at that horse sale. How's your friend doing?”

“It looked bad at first but he's OK. They had to wire his jaw together.”

“That Pete always was a bully. I saw him get his butt kicked down in Broken Bow last fall.” He paused and looked off at the ranch house with resignation. If he had been talking to another man he would have said “ass kicked” but the few cowboys left retain an air of the courtly. “Strange to say but me and my brother calf-roped against you and that Injun boy years ago. He had that fine buckskin.”

“I remember. It was too hot. You guys won and we took third.” I flushed at the memory, and followed his eyes off to the empty ranch house.

“Next year you and that other gal won the polka contest at the fair. I remember that. What happened to the Injun boy? He was quite the cowboy.”

“Died in the war. Or after the war from wounds.”

“Not surprised. I was over there a year myself and I'll be goddamned if I still know what it was about. Your momma called my sister late last night and says I got to force this dog on you.”

“She wants me to stay home. I've been gone a long time.”

“You don't look more than half Nebraska to me. If you'd stayed here you'd be a whole lot bigger. These ladies are feeders.”

“I'm hoping that's a compliment.”

“Guess it is.”

I followed him into the trailer. He said he had to keep the pup inside while he worked, but would be sad to see him go. Naomi had said I wanted a bitch but this was the last pup and he was a male of ten weeks. The pup was under the formica kitchen table enclosed by chicken wire. He was dark but I knew the Airedale in him would lighten the stomach; his head
was large with a terrier's grizzled hair and reserved eyes. When the wire was loosened he shot out of Sam's grasp, scooting through the trailer at top speed, and caroming off the furniture, pausing a moment to pee on the couch.

“He's not too smart but he sure is enthused,” Sam said, cornering the pup on an easy chair.

“What can I give you for him?” This was not an easy question out here.

“About one dime. He's not the kind of animal you can sell like a horse. Besides, Naomi and my sister figured out we're seventh cousins by marriage, you know, distant relatives.”

The phone rang and he handed me the pup which growled and struggled furiously, then abruptly went to sleep on my lap. It was said that except for newcomers (since World War II) everyone that ranched in the western two-thirds of Nebraska either knew or knew about each other, but then this didn't entail all' that many people. They had been drawn together by the common concerns of cattle, wheat, and horses, and I suspected it was equally true of any of the sparsely populated Western states. Naomi had advised me to offer a bottle of whiskey which I had packed along. She said Sam had had a run of hard luck, some of the bad credit ramifications of which I was hearing on the phone. He finished with “All I can say is I'm sorry it happened.” I didn't say anything because his face had tightened and his eyes squinted out the small, dirty back window. He stalked out and I waited a few minutes before I put the pup away and followed. I was wondering what an expensive Questar telescope was doing on the kitchen counter but I wasn't going to ask.

He was saddling the gelding and a mare and when he gestured I adjusted the stirrups on the gelding for myself. The Airedale and Lab were spinning and chasing each other in excitement over the outing. I wanted to ask him why he didn't have a blue-heeler, the normal cowboy dog, but I didn't think he was ready for conversation. He mounted in the single, fluid movement that is admired in people who live with horses.

We rode wordlessly a full hour before stopping for a rest, and that was when he noted that the Lab bitch, who had not regained her shape from whelping, was overwinded. It was a breathtaking ranch, and from the way the fences ran I guessed
we were on the northeast border. Some of the native grasses had returned from disuse and the coulees and the creek bottom were full of wildflowers. It was deceptively lush, verdant, in June, the graceful prelude to the dry spell that always came. I had to imagine Northridge, and then the Sioux who had owned it all without thinking about the word “own.”

Sam got off the mare and wound up a stretch of rusty barbed wire and hung it on a cottonwood branch. I tethered the gelding and walked over to the creek bank, where the Airedale was excavating a big hole for unknown reasons. The Lab was sprawled in the creek on her tummy, cooling the teats which were still enlarged from nursing. I scuffed off my boots and socks and stuck my feet in the cool, muddy water. Without the recent rain there wouldn't have been more than a trickle.

“Not bad country, it is?” He stood beside me staring down at my feet.

“If I didn't have a place I'd want to buy it.” I knew it was the wrong thing to say before it was out of my mouth.

“It must be nice to be able to say that.” His voice was soft enough but the hammer was there.

“I didn't mean it that way. I was only saying it was beautiful.” This was so lame that it deepened the mess.

“Years ago I had a wife who wanted a ranch so bad she ran off with a rancher. By that time we were pretty tired of each other anyway. She was one of those rodeo queens and I was on the circuit doing everything but best at saddle bronc. Now I hear she's got her own tennis court and twenty pairs of Lucchese boots.”

I couldn't think of anything to say. It's rare that a cowboy gets a ranch of his own, even when he becomes a top hand or foreman. This was a fact of life. I found myself so upset that I couldn't draw a clear breath which meant I liked him a great deal and I didn't want to say the wrong thing.