Actually, Ben said, Carl didn’t talk much about any of the women in the family. “Not until I dropped out of Tulsa after a couple of years to get my rodeo ticket and we sat down with a fifth of Jim Beam.”
He told Kim some of what he remembered of the conversation. Carl, close to eighty at the time, saying the men in the family never had much luck with women. Even Virgil, came back from Cuba and never saw his mother again. She’d gone off to live on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, out at Lame Deer, Montana. Carl said he came out of his own mother, Ben’s great-grandma Grace, bless her heart, and she was already dying from birthing him.
Carl said that time, “Now your grandma Kitty—I can barely remember her face even though I’m still married to the woman. If she died I doubt she’s in Heaven. Boy, Kitty was hot stuff, wore those real skimpy dresses. She’d read about me in the paper and pretend to shiver in a cute way.”
It sounded to Ben like Carl’s idea was to take Kitty out of the honky-tonks and show her a happy home life. Only Kitty found herself living with a couple of guys who dipped Copenhagen, drank a lot, argued and took turns telling stories about fighting the dons in Cuba and chasing after outlaws in Oklahoma. “Kitty saw me as a geezer before my time,” Carl said. “She had Robert, and took off and I never went looking for her.”
This was the occasion Carl said to Ben, “I hope you have better luck with women. We seem to have ’em around for a year or so and they take off or die on us.”
Kim said, “What’s that supposed to mean, a curse?” She said, “Luck has nothing to do with it,” starting to show some temper. “You know what your granddad’s problem was? He saw himself as a ladies’ man without knowing a goddamn thing about women. It was all guy stuff with Carl, and you ate it up. My Lord, raised by an old man with guns and livestock out in the middle of nowhere. Having a jarhead drill instructor for a dad wouldn’t have helped either, even if you never met him. To tell you the truth,” she said, “I’m surprised you’re considerate and know how to please a woman.”
They’d argue over dumb things like how to make chili and Kim would say, “I’m from where they invented it, for Christ sake, hon. We do certain things my way or I’m out of here. Like Kitty, or whatever her name was, your grandma.”
This Kim Hunter, from Del Rio, Texas, down on the border, had come to Hollywood hoping to be a movie star and was told she’d have to change her name, as there already was a Kim Hunter. This Kim Hunter said, “Have the other one change hers,” like she’d never seen her in Streetcar playing Marlon Brando’s wife. She was a physical fitness nut and got into stunt work falling off horses, getting pushed out of moving cars, jumping off the Titanic, stepping in to get beat up in the same dress the star was wearing . . .
He said, “You think you’ll ever leave me?”
She said, “I doubt it.”
Their arguments played like scenes they could turn on and off. Their home in Studio City was aluminum siding with a flagstone patio, a lot of old shrubbery in the backyard and bats that would come in the house through the chimney.
Three weeks ago they’d spent Sunday on the beach at Point Dume, where Charlton Heston kisses the real Kim Hunter playing a monkey chick in Planet of the Apes, and she doesn’t want to kiss him because being a human he’s so ugly—right before he takes off and comes to the head of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand.
“You’d never catch me playing an ape,” Kim said.
That day they walked along the edge of the Pacific Ocean talking about getting married and spending the rest of their lives together.
“You sure you want to?”
Ben said, “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“If we’re gonna have any children—”
“I know, and I want kids. Really.”
They had fallen in love falling off a ladder in a movie, five takes, and were still in love almost two years later. She was slim and liked to wear hiking boots with print dresses.
Crossing the rocks to the path up the cliff—that bed of volcanic rock at Point Dume—Kim twisted her ankle. They got home, she put ice on it and an Ace wrap and said she was fine. They had talked about going to a movie that night, Harry Potter or Ocean’s Eleven. Kim said no problem, she was up for it, and said, “You promised to fix the chimney today.”
Ben was in the kitchen adding mushrooms to the Paul Newman spaghetti sauce. He said, “In a minute.”
She limped out saying she’d take care of it, not sounding mad or upset; it was just that impulsive way she had. He called to her to wait. “Can’t you wait one minute?” No answer from outside. If she thought she could do it—she had done enough climbing and falling gags, she knew how. He thought of the day they fell off the ladder together five times in the LONG SHOT of the couple eloping . . . and now they were getting married. He told Kim and told himself he was all for it and believed he meant it.
She had dragged the ladder out of the garage, laid it against the chimney to climb up and replace the screen over the opening so the bats would quit flying in. She must’ve got right to the top. . . . He heard her scream and found her at the foot of the ladder, on the flagstone.
For the next three days and nights he sat close to the hospital bed taking her hand, touching her face, asking her to please open her eyes. He prayed, having once been a Baptist, see if it would do any good, but she died as he watched her and had to be told by the nurse she was gone.
They let him sit there while he tried to place the blame somewhere, going through ifs.
If he had quit slicing the mushrooms right away.
If Kim wasn’t so—the way she was.
If they hadn’t gone to Point Dume she wouldn’t have twisted her ankle. He was sure it was the ankle caused her to fall.
That evening at home he got out the Jim Beam and it reminded him of his granddad that last time they were together, Carl hoping Ben had better luck with women, having ’em around a year or so and “they take off or die on us.”
He tried to find a way to blame Carl for telling him that, Ben now looking at four generations of bad luck with women. He was afraid it meant that if it wasn’t Kim’s time had come it would’ve been some other girl’s.
The idea was in his head now, stuck there. He didn’t see it as a curse; there was no such thing. Still, there it was and he had to ask himself, You think you can handle it?
They had talked about taking a trip one of these days to show each other where they came from, Kim saying, “A bull rider, I imagine you’ll show me a stock tank on a feed lot, like you’re proud of it.”
Turning off the highway into Okmulgee he was thinking this could be his part of the tour, Kim sitting next to him in her denim jacket, Ben in a wool shirt hanging out of his Levi’s. It was mid-November, the best time of the year to show off his land. They’d be harvesting the pecans and Lydell, his caretaker-foreman, would have a crew out shaking the trees and gathering up the nuts. First, though, a tour through town. And right away he was thinking of Denise again, Denise appearing in his mind ever since he left L.A.
Okmulgee, population: 13,022.
Show Kim some history, the Creek Nation Council House, and tell her about the “Trail of Tears” and how Cherokees and Chickasaws and Creeks were forced to move here from Eastern states. He’d be serious about it and she wouldn’t say anything. He was surprised to see a brand-new jail next to the county courthouse.
Here was a chance to tell about Denise if he wanted to. Say to Kim, “See the courthouse? That whole top floor used to be the jail. I spent a night there when a girl named Denise got me in trouble.” Kim would want to know about it. He’d tell how he and Denise went skinny-dipping late one night in the country club swimming pool and he got caught. Denise ran, leaving her clothes, but he wouldn’t tell on her so they locked him up they said to teach him a lesson.
Kim would want to know more about Denise. He’d tell her that in high school—right up that street, see it? Okmulgee High, Home of the Bulldogs—she was known as Denise the piece.
But now he was thinking it wouldn’t be fair to say that. It was the reputation Denise had, but you couldn’t prove it by him. They had fooled around some but never gone all the way.
Okay, there was Boy Howdy, the variety store where he got his sweatsocks and T-shirts. Ralph’s barbershop, he’d stop in once a month for his crewcut. Marino’s Bar . . .
It was where he last saw Denise, home that time for Carl’s funeral in ’86. She was about to marry a country entertainer Ben had never heard of, Wayne Hostetter and the Wranglers, but kept touching him as they had a few beers and talked about things they did twenty years ago, like yesterday.
His close friend in school, Preston Raincrow, mentioned her only once, Preston on the tribal police now, a Muskogee Nation Lighthorseman. They had played basketball together and would write each other when they felt like it. Ben never asked about Denise, but Preston happened to say in a letter she had left Wayne, the country singer, and Ben would think of her—sometimes even while he was living with Kim—and wonder what she was doing. He didn’t know why he kept thinking of her.
He drove past her parents’ home on Seminole Avenue, but didn’t stop. Denise’s dad was a lawyer. He liked to bird-hunt and Carl used to take him out to their property on the Deep Fork River.
The Orpheum was showing Harry Potter and Monsters Inc. That Sunday they went to Point Dume they were going to see Ocean’s Eleven after Kim talked him out of Harry Potter. And if she were sitting next to him right now . . . they might or might not see Harry Potter, Kim calling it another kid flick.
II.
Ben took 56 out of town, west, up and around Okmulgee Lake to the bottomland of the Deep Fork, the river that ran through his property to water the groves and keep out the pecan weevils. They still had to spray all summer for fungus and casebearer larva. You had to have the right kind of weather for pecans. Carl used to pray for a spring flood. It got too dry the trees’d start throwing off pecans before they were ready to harvest.
Lydell, his caretaker-foreman, had worked here all his life, first for Carl, and now looked after the property for Ben, who’d transfer money to the bank in Okmulgee and Lydell would draw from it with power of attorney to run the pecan business, pay taxes, hire the spraying done and the work crews, keep production records, make deals with brokers to sell the harvest to a sheller in Texas. Lydell, now in his seventies, would send handwritten reports to Ben. “That tornada come thru and took out 4000 trees. It don’t look like we will make our nut this year.” Was he being funny? It was hard to tell. If they sorted and bagged a thousand pounds an acre, they’d load eight to ten semis and make money. With last year’s freeze they loaded three trucks. The tornado was the year before.
Now, if there hadn’t been too much rain Lydell would have already mowed the orchards with a brush hog and raked up the sticks. Ben hoped to see a crew using the shaker today on the trees: mechanical arms gripping the trunk, giving each tree a good shake for half a minute or so, then bringing in the Nut Hustler to gather the pecans from the ground.
Ben turned onto the road that edged along his property and pretty soon there they were off to the left: fifty- and sixty-foot trees on the average looking bare this time of year, a tangle of limbs reaching up to stand dark against the sky, some of the trees growing here seventy years or more.
But no crews in there working, none he could see, only a park of black trees, spiderwebs of limbs and branches, clusters of pecans, untouched. Either the crew started on the other side of the river . . . Wait a minute. Ben raised his foot from the gas pedal to let the SUV coast and slow down. He saw shapes, movement, deep in the trees.
Cattle. A dozen or so cross-Brahmas grazing on papershell pecans.
But there were no cows on the property. Not a one since Carl died.
His great-granddad’s original house stood on this road, where Virgil lived till he made his oil money and built a new one in the 1920s, a big California bungalow that was back in the property, the house where Lydell was now living.
Except Lydell was sitting on the porch of the original house, now weathered gray, its porch roof sagging to one side. Ben turned in past a sign that said NO TRESPASSING, one he’d never seen before, and stopped in the yard next to Lydell’s pickup, Lydell watching him, the old man’s expression taking time to change and now he seemed to be smiling as Ben approached.
“Well, Carl, I’ll be God damn. When’d you get in?”
Ben stepped up on the porch.
“Tell me you’re being funny.”
The old man looked puzzled now. How long had it been since they’d spoken on the phone? Jesus, last Christmas, almost a year. “Lydell, how come you’re not up at the other house?”
“What for? This is where I live.”
“You used to,” Ben said. “Carl died, I said go on live in the new house.” The new house as old as some of the oldest pecan trees. Lydell looked puzzled again. Ben said, “Lydell, I’m Ben.” And saw the old man’s face begin to change again, light coming into his eyes, and Ben heard himself say oh shit.
“Yeah, hell, you’re Ben. But you sure look like your daddy.”
Ben let that one go. “How’re you feeling?”
“Well . . . I don’t know. I seen the doctor. He said I’m as good as can be expected.”
“Why’d you go see him?”
“I get dizzy at times and have to sit down. I think from the chemicals, that spraying every year as long as I can remember. I know a boy that did the spraying had to have all his blood drained out and new blood pumped in and he was fine. Went up to Tulsa to work as a gardener.”
“But why’re you living in this house again?”
“They’s only one of me and they’s three of them. Four when they have a woman there with ’em. They said they oughta have the house and wrote it into the deal, the lease.”
“Lydell, these people leased my house?”
“They leased the property. I musta told you of it in my report. Carl, you can’t hire the labor you used to. These fellas come along, offer to work shares on the pe-cans and their cattle both.”
“Their cows are in the orchard.”
“Again? Goddamn it, I keep telling ’em about that.”
“And nobody’s working.” Ben stepped off the porch to the ruts in the drive to look toward a closed-up barn, a shaker power—hooked to a tractor with a covered cab and a Nut Hustler sitting outside in the weeds and brush. The house where Lydell should be living was a quarter of a mile up this farm road that cut through a grove of pecan trees, the house not in sight from here.
“Lydell, they haven’t touched the equipment.”
“I’ll get on ’em, Carl, don’t worry. The one they call Brother? He’ll go into town and bring me back my supper if I ask him nice. Get it from the Sirloin Stockade or a TV dinner from Git ‘n’ Go.”
“Lydell, they walk up and say they want to lease the place?”
“Their name’s Grooms. A daddy name of Avery and the two boys. Hazen about your age and the younger one they call Brother. Carl, it’s so God damn hard to get labor—Hazen says they’ll work the pe-cans, I won’t have to lift a hand.”
“And they stick you in this shack.”
“Hell, it was my home for years and years.”
“How’d they come to pick this place?”
“We’s related, what they tell me, on my mama’s side. They stop by and we’s talking, I believe they come from Texarkana.”
“Lydell, you have a copy of the lease?”
The old man touched his shirt pocket. “Yeah, it’s somewheres. I have to remember now where I put it.”
“How long they been here?”
“They come by the first time,” Lydell said, “I believe was toward the end of spring, with a real estate woman. Then they come back again and moved in.”
“They’ve been here most of the year,” Ben said, “and you never told me?”
“I thought I did, Carl.”
Ben drove toward the house, a quar
ter mile up the farm road, creeping the SUV through the orchard to look at the trees. None of the grounds had been brush-hogged. He angled off the road to get closer to the trees. None had been picked, some with fungus growing on the limbs.
Now the house was straight ahead past cleared land: the house, the structure back of it where pecans were sorted and bagged, an old red barn, a tractor with a rake attached standing outside. The road continued on to a gate that closed off pasture, where a few cows that weren’t supposed to be here were grazing. A pickup truck and a Cadillac with a good ten years on it stood at the side of the house, stucco with green trim that needed paint.
Carl had called it a California bungalow design, the kind that didn’t look too big till you got up close: the porch in shade, sun shining on bare windows coming out of the steep pitch of the roof. Ben stopped behind the Cadillac and pressed down on the horn to give it a blast. He waited.
Now the screen door swung open and a man in his sixties wearing new bib overalls came out on the porch, his dark hair slicked back, a bottle of beer in his hand. Ben was out of the SUV now walking toward the house. The screen swung open again and a forty-year-old version of the first one appeared. Ben took this one to be Hazen, with the same slicked-back dark hair as his dad but more of it. He wore a striped shirt hanging open with his jeans and what looked like lizard boots. Ben thought Avery, the dad, could stand in for Harry Dean Stanton, looking enough like him to be his twin. Hazen looked like half the stuntmen working today, the kind Kim referred to as rough-trade good-looking, blue-collar guys with an easy slouch to their pose. Trees going to hell and they sat in the house drinking beer.
Ben came to the porch steps and looked up at these Grooms from Arkansas. He said, “I like to know what you’re doing in my house.”
The one, Hazen, raised his eyebrows saying, “Well, you must be the movie star,” sounding glad to see Ben, till he said, “Come to check on us, huh?”