The City of Lovely Brothers (39 page)

"You didn't know about us then."

"No, I didn't."

"And now you want to show me you aren't afraid that I'll attack you."

"I wouldn't put it that way. Say 'to prove to you nothing's changed'. As for attacking me, you couldn't wrestle anyone even if you wanted to. You're standing a lot more crooked than the last time I saw you."

Hesitantly, Caliban looked at Jake.

"Now tell me if I don't look like my pa," Jake said.

"I never saw Calhoun naked, and I can see the resemblance with your clothes on. I always said you looked a lot like him. But I know why you're doing this, Jake: to show you don't mind about me and Nick," Caliban went on.

"I told both of you that years ago. Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me if you would have preferred women if you and he hadn't fallen in love. You see, I also know it's love."

"You're wrong, Jake. I've always been attracted to men. Caleb was, too."

Jake did not hide his surprise. "I didn't know that."

"No one in the family does; only Nick and I do."

"You and Caleb didn't…" "No. I only found out about a month before he died."

"You don't think his… his interest in other men had anything to do with his suicide?"

"I hope and pray not."

Jake took his change of clothes and went into the bathroom to fill the tub. Caliban telephoned Nick's workplace and left a message that Jake had come to visit and he should pick up something extra nice for supper.

Then he followed Jake into the bathroom, lowered the lid of the toilet seat, and sat next to him with his bad leg resting on the side of the tub.

"I already told you you stand all crooked," Jake said, "and now I see you walk worse. I'm going to make you a promise now. I'll come back after I finish my coursework in Baltimore to have a good look at that hip.

And I mean to learn something about osteopathy, too, by the way, if I can find someone who'll teach me. Right now I don't know any more about bones and muscles than any other physician, probably a lot less, and I imagine you've seen plenty of them."

"Did you decide to go into orthopedics for my sake?"

"No, not exactly, but it's probably because of you that I find the field interesting. We'll have to see if it holds 49my interest once I begin studying it in earnest. This is a very comfortable bathtub you have, by the way."

Jake brought him up to date on news from the

ranch, which was now officially a city. Caliban already knew that. "It's not just a city in name, though," Jake said.

"It's a city —more of a town, really— in the sense that no one would call it anything else. It doesn't operate as a ranch anymore. The old hands all work for my pa, whose ranch
is
a ranch, but most of them live in Caladelphia and pay rent to Calvin Jr. Pa put in a road from our house to the village for them, but he doesn't like having automobiles on his property, so the town cowboys stable their horses in Caladelphia and ride them to work. No one's going to load up into a wagon to drive ten or fifteen miles anymore, especially if it means getting up two or three hours earlier."

So Julia could finally visit Darcie without going clear around the property.

"So the only cars on Calhoun's ranch are his sons'?"

"No, there's just Zeke's, and that gets parked outside their house by the main gate. Clay and Jared live in Caladelphia now that they're married. You knew they were married? Pa has an open-back truck, though, for bringing in hay and things, and Julia drives it to visit Darcie."

"Darcie wrote they were married, but I didn't know they lived on Calvin's quarter. And Calhoun puts up with 49it?"

"He bought them plots on Calvin's land, and they own their houses outright. He got a kick out of my brothers'

owning land that used to be Calvin's."

"And Calhoun still won't set foot on Calvin's property?"

"No, and I doubt he ever will, but it's not Calvin's property anymore. As I was saying, Calvin Jr. only gets rent for the houses Pa's married cowboys live in, and they also pay to keep their horses in his stables, where you used to be in charge. But the stores there belong to the owners now, and they own the land they're on, too. Darcie sold them the properties, to cover Uncle Calvin's debts."

"Calvin went into debt? That's hard to believe."

"Calvin Jr. ran them up, but his pa took

responsibility for them, up to his ears. Nobody's said anything, but I get the idea they're close to bankruptcy."

"Darcie wrote about the men working for Calhoun, but not about the road or the stores."

"She wouldn't write about the stores; Uncle Calvin is still fuming she sold them. Not that he had any better ideas. And the road's new. Just finished in August. I assume you know about Calvin's stroke." Caliban nodded. "You also know that he said he wanted things set up the way he wants them after he dies and had Darcie open his will?" "No, I didn't."

"And that he left it all to Calvin Jr. except the house, which went to Darcie? Hester's house was hers already, of course. She and Charley never paid rent on it."

"That's all he left Darcie? Just the house?"

"And the plot of land it's on. Of course, in getting everything, Calvin Jr. just gets the ranch buildings; the land is city land now. He gets the rent money from the houses, some of which is going to buy the houses from Calvin.

Darcie's idea, of course. But he keeps the rent money and spends most of it on himself, so Darcie doesn't have much coming in. But she makes all the decisions about the so-called ranch and carries them out, and Calvin Jr. goes along with it. He complains about everything she does, but he's too lazy to run the place himself."

Jake had finished his bath. He changed into the

clothes he had taken out of his suitcase, and they moved their conversation into the kitchen. "I can't say what Nick will bring home for supper," Caliban said, "but he won't have bought dessert. We don't have dessert too often, but your being here calls for a celebration. I'll go whip something up now."

"Are you sure should be standing over a stove, Uncle Cal? Won 't it put a strain on your hip?"

"There are fresh blueberries in the icebox. I thought I would mix up some batter and make us a cobbler. I can do that sitting at the table, and then all I have to do is pop it in the oven. But tell me more about Caladelphia. I bet it's grown a lot. Are there any new stores?"

"Well, of course they have a post office, now that it's a real town."

"What about a bank?"

"There's no bank yet, but they have a notary public.

Quite a few families have moved there, bought plots and built themselves houses, families whose work doesn't have anything to do with ranching. There are two teachers now, and Calvin's old church has been done over inside to make 49two classrooms. It's not a church anymore; they have a new one. The congregation got together, bought the land from Darcie, and put it up themselves. Now they're talking about hiring a full-time preacher. And there's a second one going up for the Catholics, with a parish house for the priest next to it, if they can find one. If they do, they'll probably want a school, too, at least for the first two or three grades."

"And a doctor?"

"It's still the same amateur nurses running the clinic, but I can't imagine there not being one before long."

"Have you ever thought of being the doctor there?"

Jake gave him a serious look. "I have to think about Ann and the kids. I'd be a fool to set up a practice in a town that has no future."

"What makes you say Caladelphia has no future?

From what you've told me, it's growing like a cornfield in summer."

"Or like weeds. Didn't you hear what I said about bankruptcy?"

"That was your real news. The rest of it doesn't surprise me."

"Well, there's nothing certain about it, but it's more than a rumor. I could tell Darcie was holding a lot back when I saw her, and I'm pretty sure what's eating at her is money. The feud isn't boiling over, it's barely simmering; 49and I don't think she's having problems at home other than Calvin Jr."

Jake told Caliban another thing he didn't know.

Selling the stores hadn't begun to cover their debts, and Darcie had made the farm communal, like the ones in Russia. The Caladelphians worked it together and divided up the crops and shared in the profits equally.

"What do you think will happen?"

"They'll lose it all. Darcie will sell all the houses, and their only income will come from Hester's general store and renting out stalls in the stables. You're lucky you left when you did."

* * * *

Nick came home with a chicken, all plucked and

cleaned by the butcher, a pound of green beans, and three quart bottles of cold beer, which went straight into the icebox. "Couldn't think o' nothing more special than chicken," he explained.

Caliban remarked that they used to eat a lot of

chicken on the ranch.

"We raised our own then. Chicken's expensive here!"

Nick cut up the chicken, floured the pieces, fried 50them up, made mashed potatoes and gravy to go with it, and set the beans on the stove to boil. They washed it all down with ice-cold glasses of beer. Jake called it a feast.

"Having you over calls for a feast, Jake. What brings you to Davenport?"

Jake told Nick about his plans to study at Johns Hopkins and gave him the news of the ranch. "Yeah, Darcie wrote us about Calvin's stroke. You seen 'im. How bad off is 'e?" Nick asked.

"A lot worse than Uncle Cal. Compared to him, Uncle Cal's an athlete. Calvin can't do anything for himself.

He can't walk, he can't even stand or turn himself over in bed. He can move his left arm, but it's too shaky to do anything with, and his grip isn't strong enough to hold a spoon. And his tongue is like lead in his mouth. It's hard to understand a thing he says."

"Tell Nick about all the new businesses, Jake."

Jake ran down the list of stores that had opened in Caladelphia since they had left. "Sounds like things there're changing mighty quick," Nick said. "Bet we wouldn't recognize it no more. How long's it been? Five years? I lived there more'n twenty-five and didn't see that much change!"

"It's not just the ranch, Uncle Nick. The whole world is changing faster than we can keep pace with it. It 50seems as if every month I read about some new cure and a dozen new medicines. I've learned as much since I left medical school as I did in it. And to think that when I was a kid people were still treating themselves with snake oil!

We've come a long way, I tell you. Would you believe? I read an article in a journal not long ago about something called penicillium, which they think can be used someday to cure any infection and they don't know how many diseases."

"Sounds like some kinda miracle drug."

"It will be, if it works. And then there are vaccines, not just for smallpox; for diphtheria and hydrophobia, too.

The rabies vaccine was discovered before I was born, but where could you get the shots? Now just about every hospital has some on hand."

"Do you think they could have fixed my hip if I had broken it now instead of forty years ago, Jake?"

"Maybe. I won't be able to answer that until I've started my classes."

* * * *

Jake stayed with them the next two days. His last day there was a Saturday, when Nick had the day off.

Caliban was glad to have his company on Friday. It was 50difficult for him to get out, and he was lonely in the apartment when Nick was away. He seldom had the chance to leave the apartment except in warm weather and when he felt he could manage its one flight of stairs. Then he would take a short stroll around the neighborhood on crutches, a block or two at most. He wished they could have found an apartment closer to a park.

Saturday afternoon they took Jake to their favorite bench in a park by the river. Caliban left his crutches in the apartment because he'd have Nick's arm to lean on.

"I can see why you like it here," Jake said. "The river is an empty space, like the prairie around your house on the ranch. It makes the sky look bigger, and you don't feel closed in. Sure, there are boats, and buildings across on the other side, and skyscrapers right behind you, but it still makes you feel you're by yourselves and have all the room in the world."

"Yeah, that's one o' the things we miss living in a city. That, and the quiet. And the way people don't really know each other, even when they live in the same building.

They nod and say hello when they see ya, but that's all."

"It's different when you have a house," Jake said,

"and there are other houses next door and across the street.

Neighbors tend to be more neighborly then. Maybe it's a way of holding on to your privacy when you have a lot of 50people crowded into the same building."

"Could be, but I wonder sometimes where me and Cal'd turn for help if something happens."

"Then you could go and knock on any of their doors, Nick," Caliban said. "People are always willing to lend a hand when you need them, even to strangers, and our neighbors aren't exactly strangers, even if we don't know them well."

"Back on the ranch, the guys I worked with always liked to joke and talk together while we were doing chores or tending the cattle. And at the bunkhouse they eat together and shower together and stay up late to play cards and chew the fat. You really get to know each other that way. It's too noisy at the factory to have a real conversation, and when you only get half an hour for lunch, there ain't time to do much more'n eat it, and after work everybody goes home and we don't see each other again till the next day."

"Maybe I just got used to not seeing people all the time after I had to quit teaching and was by myself at the house all day."

"And where did you feel it more, out on the range or cooped up in our apartment?"

"Here, even though I hear people talking outside in the street and the kids playing in the hall. But there I could 50step outside and breathe, so I didn't feel cooped up. I think Jake is right. What I miss most are the open spaces. But I think it's about time we were heading home. The sun's going to dip behind the buildings soon, and it'll get chilly."