The Last Ranch (28 page)

“I don't think you really want to do that, Lieutenant,” the sergeant cautioned, staring at the most sorry-ass excuse of an officer he'd ever had the displeasure to meet in his eight years of active duty, including a year of combat in Korea.

“That's an order, Sergeant,” Spence said. “Pick a soldier to accompany you.”

The sergeant paused a beat, deciding whether to try one more time to save the lieutenant from a serious butt-chewing by the post provost marshal.

“What are you waiting for?” Lieutenant Spence snapped.

That sealed it. “We're on our way, Lieutenant.” The sergeant turned on his heel without saluting, motioned to a corporal to accompany him, piled Patrick and Kevin into a jeep, and drove off.

From the front passenger seat, Patrick asked the sergeant why they were going to the hoosegow in town and not the post stockade.

“Because we can't lock up civilians in military prisons,” the sergeant replied with a glance and a laugh.

“What's so funny?” Patrick asked.

“You're not going to the hoosegow anyway,” the sergeant replied. “You see, what the lieutenant forgot or didn't know in the first place, is that I can't charge you with trespassing because I personally didn't witness it. Only the lieutenant can do that.”

“You're gonna let us go?”

The sergeant laughed again and shook his head. “Nope, I'll let the sheriff decide, so it's official that we followed the lieutenant's orders.”

Patrick looked over his shoulder at Kevin sitting in the backseat next to the corporal. “Seems we're not gonna get to be outlaws after all.” He shook his head sadly. “Too bad; going to jail was about the only good excuse we'd had with your ma to stay out of trouble.”

“Being arrested is almost as good as going to jail,” the corporal suggested.

“Have I been arrested?” Kevin asked.

The corporal nodded. “Yep, you could say so because you're in our custody.”

“Then I'm an outlaw,” Kevin announced happily.

“That might calm your ma down some,” Patrick offered, tongue-in-cheek.

In the middle of one of the best adventures of his young life, with the wind from the open jeep in his face, a corporal with a pistol sitting next to him like he was some sort of criminal, and the prospect of being questioned by the sheriff, Kevin smiled and said, “I don't mind if I get in trouble with Ma. It's worth it.”

***

I
n T or C at the Sierra County Sherriff's Office, the MPs and Patrick drank coffee with the deputy on duty while waiting for the sheriff to arrive. At Kevin's request, the deputy let him hang out in the unlocked empty holding cell, where he studied all the names scratched into the walls and came to the conclusion that the county wasn't lacking in outlaws. He thought about adding his name to the list but changed his mind because of a sign above the built-in concrete bunk that read:
ANYONE CAUGHT DEFACING COUNTY PROPE
RTY WILL BE PROSECUT
ED TO THE FULL EXTEN
T OF THE LAW.

The sheriff arrived and rolled his eyes in disbelief when the MP sergeant told him what happened. After the army boys left, he called the missile range to report the incident and had his deputy drive Patrick and Kevin to their cottage in town. For Kevin, a ride in a patrol car was the perfect ending to the day.

As soon as they were inside, Patrick called Al at the Rocking J
and told him about getting arrested and detained by an MP. The news sent Al on horseback over the mountain to tell Mary. Next, Patrick called Matt in Las Cruces, who laughed at hearing the news and talked with Kevin for a spell to make sure he was okay. Before hanging up, he wished Patrick luck getting out of the doghouse with Mary.

By six in the morning, Mary was at the cottage. As soon as the riderless ponies had come home, she'd been out in the truck searching. It had taken Al most of the night to track her down. She was too relieved and too exhausted to give them what-for. Patrick made it all the more difficult for her by fixing her a good, hearty breakfast.

As they were eating, a neighbor came by with the morning newspaper that carried the front-page headline
RANCHE
R AND GRANDSON ON HO
RSEBACK ILLEGALLY DE
TAINED BY ARMY
.

Patrick read the article, which gave an accurate accounting of the events, and chuckled. “I figure the sheriff must have put a bug in the newspaper editor's ear.”

Kevin cut the article out of the paper to keep as proof of his budding outlaw credentials.

Mary, her ire now fully focused on the army, was simply relieved nothing terrible had happened to Kevin and Patrick.

***

A
t White Sands Missile Range headquarters, Maj. Gen. Norbert Schroeder's morning took a bad turn when his public-affairs officer, Capt. Raymond Peck, laid down a copy of the T or C newspaper article that had been picked up by the wire services.

“Probably every paper in the state will carry it,” Peck said.

Schroeder clenched his jaw. “Has the information been verified?”

“It has, sir. I personally and privately spoke by radio to the lieutenant and the sergeant, and they both confirmed the information. The sergeant also noted the lieutenant was not inclined to accept his advice about the matter.”

Schroeder huffed in disgust. The article painted a sympathetic picture of the Kerneys and characterized the army as stumbling buffoons. It was a PR disaster.

“Who is this officer?”

Peck flipped open a notepad. “Second Lieutenant John Spence, age twenty-two, an ROTC graduate who arrived here a little over two weeks ago. His academic record is far from sterling and his MP training scores weren't much better.”

Schroeder held up a hand to stop Peck. “I want him reassigned to the enlisted men's service club handing out Ping-Pong balls until his active-duty obligation expires. And tell him for me, he will remain a second lieutenant until that blessed day comes.”

“Wouldn't offering him a general discharge serve just as well?”

Schroeder shook his head. “He doesn't get off that easy. There's an important lesson for Lieutenant Spence to learn, and the army is exactly the right place for him to learn it.”

Captain Peck closed his notebook and stepped to the door. “I'll ask the provost marshal to send someone to relieve Lieutenant Spence and have personnel cut new orders for him ASAP.”

“Very good. Tell Captain Jaworoski at Special Services, with my apologies, that I'm sending him a dud.”

“I'll fill him in, sir.”

Peck closed the door and Schroeder let out a big sigh as he stared at the white blemish on the wall map of WSMR denoting
the continued existence of the 7-Bar-K Ranch. If the Kerneys were already gone, the incident with the dumbbell lieutenant never would have happened. Short of eviction through the courts, which would certainly be another PR mess, what was it going to take to force them out?

Nineteen Sixty, a year of growing prosperity, saw Eisenhower deep into his second term as president with the general election looming in November. More people were working at decent-paying jobs, going to college, starting families, and entering the burgeoning middle class than ever before. Folks were optimistic about the future, even with the constant overshadowing threat of the Cold War.

For Patrick it began as a year of growing confusion. The more forgetful he became, the more of his painful past he remembered. One late morning out of nowhere, after waking from a dreamless nap, the sudden realization hit him of what a god-awful, sullen, angry child he'd been, refusing to show any appreciation or affection to the father who'd searched for and rescued him, or for Cal Doran, the man who ultimately raised him. He pictured watching John Kerney die in that terrible wagon accident while he stood by mute and unfeeling. The image was immediately replaced by a stab of self-loathing for falsely damning Cal Doran at the time of
his death for his acts of great kindness. The truth of his meanness clutched his heart like a vise.

Several times in early summer he'd mistakenly confused names, thinking Kevin was CJ, Marge was his second wife, Evangelina, and Mary was Anna Lynn. His slipups earned him worried looks and questions from the womenfolk as to the state of his health. He briskly brushed aside all such inquiries as silly, unnecessary pestering.

Embarrassed by his blunders, he took to writing their real names on a piece of paper every morning before breakfast and practicing them so as not to forget. Still, he lapsed occasionally, especially with Kevin, which made him more and more cautious about saying anything that might cause additional probing into the state of his well-being.

He took to mentally measuring his words twice before speaking, much as a carpenter would before sawing a board. It made him appear slow and dull, which drew more thinly veiled looks of sympathy and worried expressions of forbearance from Mary and Marge that only served to further depress him.

One day when he called Kevin CJ by mistake, he had to swallow tears as the memory of his drunken fight with CJ in the corral stampeded through his mind. He'd driven CJ forever from the ranch that day and ultimately to his death in the trenches of France. Pure meanness had killed that wonderful boy just as it had earlier ended his marriage to Emma, the only woman he'd ever truly loved. Fortunately, successfully lying to a nine-year-old about a grain of sand in his eye was easy enough to do.

Since her death, Emma had been fixed like a center post in his head. The woman had endured more pain and suffering than anyone he'd known and yet she'd died impeccably, if there was
such a thing, slipping away with love in her eyes and a beautiful smile on her face.

Until recently, he hadn't given much thought to his own demise, but now he wondered if he could do it as well. In the back of his mind, the idea of nothingness had always annoyed him and he'd quickly shucked it off, but the growing aches and pains in his creaky old body told him that leaving the world might not be such a bad thing.

In preparation, he consoled himself with reminders that he was no longer a drunk, no longer violent in word or deed, that he'd made permanent peace with Matt, had a lady friend in Marge, who genuinely seemed to like him, a grandson who willingly and regularly sought his company, and a daughter-in-law who had shown him only kindness from the very first day they met.

Surely that counted for something in his otherwise self-inflicted ruin of a life. In the shadowland of his existence, he was a better person than he'd ever been before or ever thought he could be.

On one summer morning, a writer fellow came to visit unannounced, hat in hand, uttering apologies and asking for a bit of Patrick's time. He was a professor of some sort at Texas Western College in El Paso with a foreign-sounding last name Patrick couldn't pronounce, and he was interested in interviewing old-timers on the Tularosa for a book he hoped to publish about the territorial years after first putting together a pamphlet for the army on the history of the missile range. Patrick almost sent him packing but changed his mind at the chance to tell a bit of the family story for Kevin and posterity, especially some of the tales maybe he'd forgotten to recount. He also warmed to the idea of setting the record straight about misconceptions folks might have about his life and times.

But it got hard once the questions started coming. To begin, he
couldn't remember if he was born in 1872 or 1875, so he picked the earlier date, which made him eighty-seven years old. He got confused about the location of Double K, thinking it was some forgotten ranch John Kerney had started before the 7-Bar-K. When the writer asked, he couldn't recall that Eugene Manlove Rhodes had ever worked for the spread until he found the copy of the story Gene had written about Emma and let the fellow read it. He did get a story out correctly about meeting up with Oliver Lee when he was chasing down cattle rustlers and coming upon one of the dead men Lee had killed fair and square out on the far reaches of the Tularosa.

The writer really liked that one. It was a good one all right, as was the one about Gene Rhodes hiding some of his pals on the ranch who were wanted for murder. He tried to recall who Gene had sheltered from the law but the names escaped him. However, much to Patrick's relief, the writer knew who he was talking about.

He was asked about the Rough Riders, and Patrick allowed he'd known Teddy Roosevelt and had killed a few men on San Juan Hill, but refused to say more, as the image of Jake Jacobi dying at his feet—an image never far from his mind—choked him up. He still missed that old boy and the good times he had with him wrangling in Arizona.

When talk turned to more recent past events, such as the mysterious disappearance of Vernon Clagett, the killing of army deserter Fred Tyler, and the accidental death of treasure hunter Dalton Moore found trespassing on the ranch, Patrick clammed up tight, thinking the damned army would try any trick to get information of wrongdoing and use it to seize the 7-Bar-K.

No matter how hard the fellow tried, Patrick refused to budge, but when he switched to asking about old-time neighbors now long gone from the basin, Patrick obliged, rambling on about this
and that person. He also talked a lot about the atom bomb that was exploded out on the Jornada, a subject of keen interest to the fella.

After the writer closed up his notepad, put away his pencil, expressed his appreciation, and left, Patrick sat on the veranda wondering why he and Matt had never talked about going to war or what it had done to them. To his way of thinking, it didn't seem unusual; war talk never made for polite or easy conversation.

All told, Matt seemed to have done a good job of getting over it, but you never knew about another man's private thoughts. Patrick still had an occasional Technicolor nightmare about the bloody fighting he'd witnessed in Cuba with shells exploding and body parts flying, and he still got phantom shivers about the terrible stateside hospitals where he recovered from his wounds watching hundreds of scared, delirious men die morning, noon, and night. All that was clear as a bell from more than sixty years ago.

He imagined the same would hold true for Matt. Memories etched in killing and obliteration are indelible, eternal.

As the summer edged on, Patrick took to sleeping more and more, sometimes in the sun on a mild day like an old hound dog spread out to cool his parts in a gentle breeze. He napped pretty much out of boredom. When he felt drowsy he tried to stay awake by tinkering at some easy odd job that needed doing. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Reading didn't help at all; it just put him to sleep faster and he could never remember where he'd left off anyway.

About all he managed to do day in and day out was get himself dressed, clean himself up, eat his meals, putter around a bit, take naps, and stay out of everybody's hair. Even that wasn't enough to
keep worried looks off Mary and Marge's faces or stop them from constantly trying to look after him.

With Matt and Kevin it was different. To the almost-ten-year-old Kevin he was just Gramps. Young'uns by their nature just don't have the time or inclination to worry about old folks getting older. Patrick appreciated that. And Matt's approach of simply checking in to see how he fared, done usually without comment, was a helluva lot more evenhanded than all the unnecessary fussing. He appreciated that as well.

Late in the summer, a week before Labor Day and the start of school for Kevin, Patrick woke with a start in the dark of the night in great need of the bathroom. When he discovered that his legs didn't want to move, he remained motionless and tried not to panic, his eyes fixed on the sliver of moonlight knifing through the open window. Slowly, he threw the bedsheet back, sat upright, and rubbed his hands over his legs, relieved to feel the sensation.

Figuring he wasn't paralyzed, just slow to get things working, he waited a spell before swinging his legs to the floor and standing. He chuckled with delight until he took his first step. His head spun and he almost crashed to the floor. Only his hand on the bedpost saved him.

He waited until the dizziness passed before starting out again, this time on steadier legs, taking small steps but still managing to bump his shoulder against the door frame as he made his way out of his bedroom. He got to the bathroom just in time, happy to have avoided embarrassing himself, and sat on the toilet far longer than he needed, wary his legs might fail him again when he got up.

Finally ready to risk it, he returned to his bedroom feeling ancient, creaky, and out of sorts. He sat on the edge of the bed and
practiced standing up until he was satisfied everything was working as it should. But it didn't relieve his anxiety. He stayed awake until it was time to get up, wondering when his body would fail him next, which part would cause him to take a nosedive.

With Matt at the ranch for a week on vacation from his job with the college, everyone was gathered at the kitchen table for breakfast when Patrick arrived. Of course, other than a smile and a howdy to all, he didn't say a word about his nighttime troubles.

His hopes that the incident with his legs was nothing more than a one-time episode rose throughout the day. His head stayed clear, he walked without difficulty, neither shuffling nor stumbling, and by evening time he was encouraged that it had been merely a freak event.

He turned in for bed optimistic that all was well. Except for one trip to the bathroom, he slept throughout the night, getting out of bed with both legs working, pausing for only a second to remember his name and where he was. Another good day followed. He helped Matt clean and oil saddles in the tack room, rehang several loose railings on the corral, and prune some low-hanging, dead branches on the windbreak cottonwoods. By dinnertime he was tired and hungry, but he felt useful and like his old self. The day had been his best in months.

After supper with the dishes done and put away, Mary asked him to go on a stroll up to the family graveyard. Patrick figured it was mostly to see how he was doing, but he didn't mind at all. They left Matt and Kevin listening to the radio in the living room and Marge relaxing on the veranda, and walked up the hill. He'd been deliberately avoiding Mary lately, scooting around her at a distance so as not to get her worrying about him. But today he felt so damn good, she could badger him with questions about his health to her heart's content and it wouldn't bother him at all. He
felt lucid and energized—hell, even sprightly. The day had eased his aches, pains, and worries.

It had been some time since his last visit to the family plot, and he was pleased to see that Kevin had been keeping up with his chore of maintaining everything in good order. All the markers were upright, the fence enclosing the graveyard had been touched up with paint as needed, all the weeds had been pulled, and the native grass was trimmed back a bit. For his work, Kevin received one dollar a month cash money paid straight out of Patrick's pocket. It pleased him to see how reliable the boy was and how well he met his responsibilities.

Outside the fence next to an old tree was a grassy mound where long ago Patrick's pa had buried one of his favorite ponies. A big rock near the mound served as a bench and they sat looking out on the Tularosa. When once it was a serene desert just beginning to come alive at dusk, the modern world now intruded and disturbed it. Electric lights winked at seemingly random locations across the basin. Concrete buildings, blocky and blind to the outside world, sat on bare unadorned ground surrounded by miles of scrub and sand; signposts of hush-hush research dedicated solely to blowing up cities, maybe even the world, if a few powerful men decided it necessary.

Born well before the marvel of airplanes that touched the sky, Patrick saw little value in the modern world other than for a few conveniences such as his pickup truck, electric lights, and the radio.

They sat together in silence as darkness gathered.

“You seem to be in fine fiddle today,” Mary finally said.

“I am.”

“That's nice to see.”

“It's nice not having you fretting over me.”

Mary laughed. “You'd be happier if I just didn't care?”

Patrick chuckled. “Now, I didn't say that.”

“Earlier today, Kevin told me that years ago you'd been to prison. Did you make up that story for him?”

Speechless, Patrick froze. Nobody alive in the world but Matt knew about his time in the Yuma Territorial Prison. Nobody. “You say Kevin told you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that's a load of bull,” Patrick snorted, trying to understand how the boy had found out.

“Kevin's not the kind to make things up,” Mary replied calmly.

“He's lying,” Patrick thundered, figuring Kevin must have snooped through his things and found the governor's pardon. He grunted in dismay. The boy he believed to be so decent and respectful was nothing more than a worthless, thieving, snot-nosed kid.