Close Range

  “What I thought,” she said. “I knew it. I knew Tyler’d show up.” Shan wrote that Tyler had been living with her and her roommate for a month, that he was trying for a job with the BLM rounding up wild horses and, while he waited to hear, holding down a telephone job for a bill collector. He had bought himself a computer and in the daytime seemed to be studying electronics—the table was covered with bits of wire and tape and springs when she came home from the gym. They had become vegetarians, except Tyler, who ate shrimp and crab legs, foods he had never tasted until Las Vegas. He could not get enough of them. He had, wrote Shan, spent sixty-five dollars for a four-pound box of jumbo shrimp, had cooked and eaten them in solitary gluttony. “Ha-ha, not much has changed. He is still a pig,” the letter ended.

  Aladdin put a parsnip on old Red’s plate.

  “Shrimps’ll make your pecker curl,” said the old man. “Sounds like he’s buildin a bomb with them wires.”

  “He’s not doin no such thing,” said Wauneta.

  After supper Ottaline scraped the dishes, began to snivel. Wauneta slung her hip against her, put her arm around the soft shoulders.

  “What are you cryin about? That weight not comin off? Make up your mind to it, you are one a them meant to be big. My mother was the same.”

  “Not that. It seems like somebody is makin fun a me.”

  “Who? Who is makin fun a you?”

  “I don’t know. Somebody.” She pointed at the ceiling.

  “Well, let me tell you, that Somebody makes fun a everbody. Somebody’s got a be laughin at the joke. Way I look at it.”

  “It’s lonesome here.”

  “There’s no lonesome, you work hard enough.”

  Ottaline went upstairs, set the scanner to rove and seek.

  “Please enter your billing number now. I’m sorry, you have either misdialed or dialed a billing number we cannot accept. Please dial again.”

  “Why would it do that?” “Turn it off turn it off.”

  “Hey, git doughnuts. And don’t be squirtin around with twelve of em. Git a bunch. Don’t be squirtin around, git two boxes.”

  “If that’s fuckin all you have to say—then dang!”

  Every day the tractor unloaded fresh complaints, the voice rough and urgent.

  “Lady-girl, your daddy is a cucklebur. Get up and he don’t get down. Stay in the seat sixteen hours. Aw, come here, I want to show you somethin. Look to the left a the cowl there, yeah, down there. What do you see?”

  “Patch a rust. Big patch a rust.”

  “That’s right. A big patch a rust. I won’t tell you how that got there. I don’t like to tell a girl somethin bad about her daddy. But in all the years I worked for your daddy I only once had a sweet day and that was the day I come here straight off the dealer’s yard, fourth-hand and abused, and you was ten years old, your birthday. You patted me and said, ‘Hello, Mr. Tractor.’ Your daddy put you up in the seat, said, ‘You can be the first one a sit there,’ and your little hand was sticky with frostin and you wiggled around in the seat and I thought—I thought it was goin a be like that ever day and it never happened again, you never touched me again, never come near me, just that damn bony-assed Maurice couldn’t be bothered a use the rockshaft lever, I got him with hydraulic oil under pressure, he got a infection. And your dirty dad. Broke my heart until now. But I’ll tell you the truth. If your daddy was a get up here today I would hurt him for what he done a my brake system. I will tell you sometime about the beer and what he done with it.”

  “What?”

  “I’d tell you, but I think it would disgust you. I won’t turn a lady-girl against her family. I know you’d hold it against me and I don’t want that. Tell you some other time.”

  “You tell me now. Don’t go around talkin blah-blah. I hate that.”

  “All right. You asked for it. Stumblebum never bothered a check nothin. Finally brake fluid’s gone. I’m out there with your daddy, on the slope, we was haulin a horse trailer. He’s got his old six-pack with him, way he drinks he’s alcoholic. He mashes his foot on the brake and we just keep rippin. No way he could stop me, not that I wanted a stop. I didn’t care. Slowed only when we come at a rise. He jumped off before the rollback, kicked a rock under a back wheel. What he done—poured warm beer in my master-brake-cylinder reservoir, pumped that beer down the brake lines. Yeah, he got enough pressure. But it ruined me. That’s why I’m here. You hate me for tellin you, don’t you?”

  “No. I heard a worse crimes. Like killin somebody in a ditch.”

  “You goin a pout?”

  Another day she stormed out to the gravel pit.

  “Shut up,” she said. “Don’t you see I’m fat?”

  “What I like.”

  “Why don’t you fix your attentions on another tractor? Leave me alone.”

  “Now, think about it, lady-girl. Tractors don’t care nothin about tractors. Tractors and people, that’s how it is. Ever tractor craves some human person, usually ends up with some big old farmer.”

  “Are you like an enchanted thing? A damn story where some girl lets a warty old toad sleep in her shoe and in the mornin the toad’s a good-lookin dude makin omelettes?”

  “Naw. I could tell you they had a guy work at Deere a few years ago got fired out a the space program for havin picnics with foreigners and drinkin vodka but they couldn’t prove nothin. He was cross-wired about it. It was around when they started foolin with computers and digital tapes. Remember them cars that told you to shut the door? Like that. Simple. Computers. He worked me up, fifteen languages. I could tell you that. Want a hear me say somethin in Urdu? Skivelly skavelly—”

  “You could tell me that, but I would not believe it. Some lame story.” And it seemed to her that the inbuilt affection for humans the tractor harped on was balanced by vindictive malevolence.

  “That’s right, I was lyin.”

  “You got any kind a sense,” she said, “you’d know people don’t go crazy over tractors.”

  “Where you“re wrong. Famous over in Iowa, Mr. Bob Ladderrung got himself buried with his tractor. Flat-out loved each other, he didn’t care who knew it. And I don’t just mean Iowa farmers. There’s fellas can’t keep away from us. There’s girls fell in love with tractors all over this country. There is girls married tractors.”

  “I’m goin in,” she said, turning away. “I’m goin in.” She looked at the house, her mother’s wedding wheat swaying yellow, old Red’s face like a hanging skull in the window. “Oh, please,” she said to herself, weeping, “not a tractor or nothin like it.”

  After supper, in her room, she wished for a ray gun to erase the brilliant needles of light from the isolate highway, silence the dull humming like bees in a high maybush. She wanted the cows to lie down and die, hoped for a tornado, the Second Coming, violent men in suits driving a fast car into the yard. There was the scanner.

  “You think he’s normal until you start to talk to him.”

  “I should a called the police, as mean and horrible as he is, but I’m not goin a do that. And this is what I’m thinkin. I’m goin ago after him even though we haven’t been married that long. He’s goin a pay. He’s got it! He’s makin two thousand a month. Anyway, I got a headache every day a my life over this. But I’m fine. Just a little insane. Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

  Aladdin lifted a wad of turnip greens from the bowl, lowered it onto Ottaline’s plate.

  “What are you doin out there in the gravel pit with them tractors, I was lookin for you half a hour a hour.”

  “Thinkin,” she said, “of maybe try a fix up that Deere. Like just mess around with it.” That day she had climbed up into the cab, sat on the seat, feeling an awful thrill.

  “I wouldn’t spend a dime on that damn thing. It never run good.”

  “I’d spend my own money on parts. I don’t know, maybe a foolish idea. Thought I might try.”

  “We had trouble with that machine from day one. Damn Morris Gargleguts got done, it wouldn’t g
o much. We hauled that thing to Dig Yant, he replaced some a the wirin, cleaned the fuel tank, blew out the gas line, ten other things, rebuilt the carburetor. Then somethin else went wrong. Ever time they fixed it, it’d blow up somewhere else. They give me a hot iron on that one. I went to raisin heck and the dealer finally admitted it was a lemon. Give me a real good deal on the Case. Now, that’s a tractor that’s held up. You know, that 4030, you will be strippin it down to grit.” He ate his meat loaf. He thought, said, “I could—might give you a hand. Haul it in that blue-door shed. Put a stove out there, run a pipe.” He saw himself rising in the black wintry morning while his family slept, going out to the shed to stoke the fire, take a little smoke, and in the cozy warmth breaking loose rusty bolts, cleaning mucky fittings, pins, studs, screws, nuts soaking in a tub of kerosene while he waited for daylight and the start of the real day. “We’ll get her in there tomorrow.”

  “Him,” said Ottaline.

  “You won’t fix it,” said old Red. “What you are tryin a fix ain’t fixable.”

  “O.k.,” she said, walking up to the tractor. “We are goin a move you into the blue-door shed and operate. My dad is goin a help me and you better stay hunderd percent quiet or it’s all over.”

  “You want a know my problems? Brakes. Belts shot, block cracked, motor seized, everthing rusted hard, sludge, dirt, lifters need replacin, water pump’s shot, camshaft bearins shot, seals shot, magneto, alternator fried—you look inside that clutch housin you’ll see a nightmare. Clutch plate needs a be relined, got a replace the tie-rod ends, the fuel shut-off line is bust, the steerin-gear assembly wrecked, the front axle bushings, spindle bushings all bananas and gone, you want a talk differential you’ll be listin parts for fifteen minutes. The transmission clutch slipped bad before everthing went blank. I don’t want your dirty dad a work on me. He already done that and look at me.”

  “Different now. Anyway, goin a be mostly me. I“m doin this. What gears was that tranny clutch slippin in?”

  “You? You don’t know nothin about tractor repair. I don’t want you workin on me. I want you should take me a Dig Yant—he’s a tractor man. It’s men that fixes tractors, not no woman. First and third.”

  “You don’t got much choice. Tell you one thing, I didn’t take home ec. I took mechanics and I got a B. First and third? Seal on the underdrive brake piston or more likely the disks bad worn.” She had brought a can of penetrating oil with her and began to squirt it on studs, bolts and screws, to rap on the rusted bolts with a heavy wrench.

  “You make a wrong move I might hurt you.”

  “You know what? I was you I’d lay back and enjoy it.” Something Hal Bloom had said.

  The rain quit in September and the prairie began to yellow out. There were a few heated days; then the weather cooled and an early storm hoop-rolled out of the northwest, slinging a hash of snow, before they got the tractor dismantled to frame, motor and transmission.

  “We got a get a engine hoist in here,” said Aladdin, coughing. The first night of the storm he had got wasted and slept out in his pickup, window down, the snow carousing over him. He woke shuddering, drove home and heard they were out of coffee, drank a glass of cold water, told Wauneta he could not eat any breakfast. By noon he was feverish and strangling, took to the bed.

  “That coughin drives me into the water and I don’t swim,” said old Red. “Better off just smother him, be done with it.”

  “There is somebody else at the top a my smotherin list,” said Wauneta. “I knew this was goin a happen. Sleep in a truck.” Aspirin, poultices, glasses of water, steam tent, hot tea were her remedies, but nothing changed. Aladdin roasted in his own dry heat.

  “What’s tomorrow,” he said, rolling his aching head on the hot pillow.

  “Friday.”

  “Bring me my calendar.” With swimming eyes he studied the scrawled notes, called for Ottaline.

  “She’s out feedin. It snowed wet, froze hard crust out there, they can’t hardly get grass. Supposed a warm up this weekend.”

  “God damn it,” he whispered, “when she comes in send her here.” He shivered and retched.

  The snow rattled down on Ottaline in the cab of Aladdin’s big Case tractor, a huge round bale on the hydraulic-lift spear. It could keep snowing until June the way it was coming down. At noon she drove back to the house, ravenous, hoping for macaroni and cheese. She left the Case idling.

  “Dad wants you,” said Wauneta. It was beef and biscuits. Ottaline took a pickle from the cut-glass dish.

  She sidled into her parents’ bedroom. She was one of those who could not bear sick people, who did not know where to look except away from the bloodshot eyes and swollen face.

  “Look,” he said. “It’s first Friday a the month tomorrow. I got Amendinger comin out at eight o’clock. If I ain’t better”—he coughed until he retched—“you are goin a deal with him, take him out there, he can look them over, see what we got, make you a offer.” Amendinger, the cattle buyer, was a dark-complexioned man with sagging eyes, a black mustache whose ends plunged down to his jawline like twin divers. He wore black shirts and a black hat, gave off an air of implacable decision and control. He had no sense of humor and every rancher cursed him behind his back.

  “Dad, I am scared a death a that man. He will get the best a me. He will make us a low offer and I will get rattled and say yes. Why not Ma? Nobody gets on her bad side.”

  “Because you know the animals and she don’t. If Tyler was here—but he ain’t. You’re my little cowgirl. You don’t have to say nothin. Just take him around, hear his offer and tell him we’ll get back to him.” He knew that Amendinger did business on the spot; there was no getting back to him. “I get better of this I am goin a buy a plane I been lookin at. It’s the only way to work this big of a ranch. A truck ain’t no good, windows and all.”

  “I could bring him in here, Dad.”

  “Nobody outside a my family sees me layin flat. God damn it.” He coughed. “Ain’t that how it goes, first your money and then your clothes.”

  She had the poorest kind of night and in the morning rose groggy and in a mood. The snow had quit and a warm chinook blew. Already the plain was bare, the shrinking drifts lingering in cuts and folds of land. They were still out of coffee. Upstairs Aladdin wheezed and panted.

  “He don’t look good,” said Wauneta.

  By eight the cattle dealer had not arrived. Ottaline ate two oatmeal cookies, another slice of ham, drank a glass of milk. It was past nine when the dealer’s black truck pulled in, Amendinger’s black hat bent down as he reached for papers. There were three hound dogs in the back. He got out with the clipboard in his hand, already punching figures on a handheld calculator. Ottaline went outside.

  It was not the cattle dealer but his son, Flyby Amendinger, big-nostriled, heavyset, a cleft in his stubbly chin, as quiet as three in the morning.

  “Mr. Touhey around?” he asked, looking at his boots.

  “I’m showin you the stock,” she said. “He got the flu. Or some kind a thing. We thought you would come at eight. We thought you was goin a be your father.”

  “I missed a couple turns. Dad’s over in Hoyt.” He fished in his shirt pocket, drew out newspaper clippings, showed her an ad, Amendinger & Son Livestock Dealers. “I been workin with Dad almost nine years, guess I got a idea what I am doin by now.”

  “I didn’t mean you didn’t,” she said. “I’m glad it’s you. Your dad’s mustache scares me.” She pictured him driving the red roads to the ranch, roads like heavy red marker traced over the map, cutting the circle of horizon.

  “Scare the hell out a me, too, when I was a little kid.” He looked at the porch, the house, the wedding wheat, the blue-door shed.