Horseman, Pass By

  “When you-all movin’ out?” he said.

  I was watching the cowboys, and I didn’t understand him. “Hell, I just came in,” I said.

  “Naw,” he said. “I mean Hud’s deal.”

  “You got me,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about”

  “No shit?” he said. He began to fiddle with his belt buckle and kick his boot toe in the dirt. “Maybe I shouldn’t be spreadin’ rumors,” he said.

  “What’d he do?” I said. “Is he in jail?”

  “Not by a long shot. He’s around on the north side of the arena, sittin’ in a new Cadillac. And he ain’t the only one sittin’ in it.”

  “Who else?” I said.

  “The prettiest bitch you ever saw,” he said. “Truman Peters’ wife.”

  I just shook my head. I didn’t doubt it for a minute. “Yeah,” Hermy said. “This’ll knock you on your ass. They say he screwed Truman some way and sold him part of your Granddad’s ranch. Won a lot of money off Truman in a card game and went and bought the car and came back and got Truman a little drunker and sold him some kind of crazy option on the ranch.”

  “Aw, I don’t believe that,” I said. “He couldn’t a sold anything. Even Truman Peters wouldn’t fall for anything like that.” Truman was an oilman, a multimillionaire, reckless as hell with his money. His wife had been a movie star before she married Truman.

  “A lot of ’em say it wasn’t legal,” Hermy said. “But some of ’em say Hud’s just slick enough to get away with it.”

  “Naw, it couldn’t a been legal,” I said. But knowing Hud, I didn’t feel too sure. When he was running wide open he was a hard man to stop, and with Granddad so discouraged over the herd, and old anyway, I didn’t know if he could set Hud down again.

  “Anyhow,” Hermy said, “Hud’s supposed to a won $80,000 dollars from Truman just playin’ cards.”

  “I’m going around an’ see him,” I said. “Come go with me.”

  “No,” he said. “I got a bull to ride in the first go-round. Better be careful. They say Truman’s gonna be after Hud with a gun for runnin’ off with his wife.”

  “You be careful,” I said. “You’re the one’s gonna be on a bull.”

  It didn’t take me long to find the Cadillac. It was a long cream-colored job, parked right next to the bandstand where the little high-school band was warming up. Hud and the woman weren’t even facing the arena.

  “Hey,” I said. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  He turned from her and squinted at me. “Why hello, hotrod,” he said. “What’s with you?”

  “I won’t bother you long,” I said.

  “You goddamn sure won’t,” he said. “Come around here and get in.”

  I got in the front seat, beside them. The car was dark and cool on the inside, smelling of new leather upholstery and whiskey. Hud was smooching the woman, but he broke off when I got in.

  “You remember his dad, don’t you, Lily?” he said. “Dan Bannon. The pride a the fuckin’ prairie.” She and I looked at each other through the dimness. She was an awful pretty woman, I thought. Her long blond hair fell down past her shoulders, and she looked at me without smiling. Hud had unbuttoned the front of her red dress, and I could see the tops of her breasts and the white cups of her brassière, the rodeo lights from above us throwing a strange glow across her on her hair. She had grown up in a little town near Thalia.

  “Aw yea,” she said. “I remember Dan. Me and him was sweethearts about two weeks one time.” She laid her hand on Hud’s leg. Hearing her mention my father made the hair bristle on my neck.

  “If you’re pissed off, get your ass out,” Hud said. “No, I ain’t really sold the ranch, but I got some money for it. When I do get it from Homer, then I’ll see whether Truman can have it or not. The nice thing is, don’t nobody but me know what I’ve done.” The woman’s dress was wadded up in her lap, and Hud was rubbing her long bare leg, his hand sliding up and down.

  “You moving us off?” I asked, and he leaned back and laughed.

  “You ain’t that lucky,” he said. “Hell, no. If I do ever sell Truman the land I got a deal rigged where I can lease it back. It’s the funniest goddamn thing you ever heard. By the time they get this deal unraveled I may be as old an’ worn out as Homer Bannon. Nobody knows whether the place is mine or Truman’s or Homer’s.”

  “Hon, you could sell Truman heaven if you got him drunk enough,” the woman said. She turned toward Hud, and the strange gold glow from the lights fell on the soft tops of her breasts. She put her mouth against Hud’s shirt and giggled. “You better watch little Dan,” she said. “He thinks you’re mean.”

  Hud squeezed her against him and winked at me over her head. “Hell, I am mean,” he said. “Didn’t you know that?” She looked up and kissed him, and I got out and walked away.

  I thought I ought to at least go out and tell Granddad what was going on. Hud was acting so crazy it wouldn’t hurt Granddad to be on his guard. When I went back behind the chutes I saw Hermy, still peeping through the board fence at the bulls. He looked nervous.

  “I kinda wish I’d stayed outa this bull ridin’,” he said.

  “You’ll never learn any younger,” I said. I thought a little hurrahing might cheer him up. “Maybe you won’t have to ride very far.”

  “Eat shit,” he said. “I don’t feel too good.”

  I thought Jesse might want to go to the ranch with me, and I asked a couple of cowboys if they’d seen him. He wasn’t any trouble at all to find, because he was at the concession stand, eating an orange Sno-Cone and talking to the pretty blackheaded woman. It didn’t take field glasses to see that he wasn’t getting any encouragement to go on talking.

  When he saw me he reached out and put his arm around me; he was drunk enough to be a little extra friendly.

  “Did you hear about Hud’s deal?” I said. We walked over to the arena and leaned on the fence.

  “I heard about ten versions of it,” he said. “Looks like somebody showed their ass, but I don’t know who.” The way he was acting made me a little mad. He had entered the colt in the cutting horse contest to give him some experience, and now he was getting too drunk to ride.

  “Look at that boy get busted,” he said, watching the show. I couldn’t even see the show; I kept seeing the woman’s white breasts, and Hud’s hand on the heavy part of her leg.

  “I’m going out to tell Granddad,” I said. “You do what you want to.”

  “No, I wouldn’t go worry that old man,” he said. “Don’t add no more load on him right now. I don’t believe Scott actually sold anything anyway.”

  “I better go tell Granddad,” I said, but Jesse just wasn’t paying me any attention.

  “I need a can a beer,” he said.

  “Are you goin’ get drunk before you ride?” I said, and he laughed. It was a painful kind of laugh, like something has stung him, or torn inside him.

  “I can ride when I’m drunkest,” he said. “Some a these nights I’ll have to tell you about a ride or two I made.”

  He wasn’t talking to me, really, and I walked off from him. I felt like I was smothering in the crowd. The lights and the giggling and the kids with Sno-Cone on their chins and the drunk cowboys-all of it made me feel like I was strangling. Jesse hanging on the fence half-drunk depressed me, and Hermy about to risk his ass on a bull he knew he couldn’t ride depressed me more. It looked like Hud was the only one doing any good for himself. I got in the pickup and drove out of town, and when I was moving down the dark highway, moving on like the song said, I didn’t feel so hemmed up and I kinda relaxed. Driving could do that for me a lot of times.

  The ranch house was dark, and I knew it had been dark ever since I left. Granddad would be sound asleep, and it would be a hard job waking him up and getting him to understand the news I brought. Standing a minute in the kitchen, I missed Halmea. I wished I had her to tell it all to, so I wouldn’t have to wake up Granddad. But I was there, and
I went down the hall and into Granddad’s room before my nerve failed me. Moonlight from an open window fell in a white puddle on his floor. It lay across the old chifforobe, and touched the silver-edged picture of Grandmother that had stood there since I knew the room. Granddad lay in darkness on the bed. I could hear the heavy whistle of his old man’s breath. He was laying on his back, one hand upon his chest.

  I came close to him. “Granddad,” I said. “Granddad, wake up.” I shook his arm gently, and he raised up on one elbow, his eyes open. “That you, Annie?” he said, and for the second time that night my neck hair stood up. He had asked the question to Grandmother. “What is it?” he said, rubbing his eyes with one hand.

  “No, me,” I said. “Lonnie. I want to talk to you a minute.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Let me get my boots on.”

  “You don’t need to get up,” I said. But he got up anyway, scratching himself through the cotton nightshirt.

  “We got to light the lamps,” he said, moving slowly to the dresser. “We can’t do no talking in the dark.” We had electricity, but he had an old kerosene lamp on his dresser that he still used when the power went off. He got it and lit it. The yellow light didn’t fill the room; it left high shadows on the walls.

  “Sit down, son,” he said. “Get you a cheer.” He reached in his pocket for his tobacco, but he had on his nightshirt, and it wasn’t there. In the yellow lamplight he looked a thousand years old. He was thin-armed, and his eyes set back in shadows. I wished then that I had left him asleep.

  “What have you done?” he asked me.

  “Not me,” I said. “Hud did it. He’s trying to sell the ranch.”

  “Huddie?” he said. He leaned his good ear to me. Just the way he said it made me have to swallow, because I could tell that for some sudden reason he wasn’t with me, he was back in another time. I could tell he thought I was my father.

  “Hud,” I said. “He’s tryin’ to sell the ranch.”

  “Is he?” he said. “Oh no, Huddie couldn’t sell it. I’m glad you’re not in no trouble, Dan. Your ma worries about you some.”

  “No, Granddad,” I said. “Hud is trying to sell it to Truman Peters. Really trying to sell it.”

  Granddad smiled at me as if it were a joke. “Huddie’s a wild one,” he said. “His mother’s the same way. Ain’t nobody ever got no rope on him.” He looked at the lamp, and the light made his lined cheeks look yellow. For a minute I think he was with me, in the right night. “He can’t sell it,” he said. “This here land is mine. I may decide to let him run some of it awhile, I don’t know. Right now I just feel like throwing in the sponge and giving up.”

  That was what I had wanted to hear. “Okay, then,” I said. “I’m going on back to the rodeo. You sleep good.” I thought maybe he just hadn’t been awake at first, but then I knew it wasn’t that.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “Just don’t worry your ma; she’s got enough.” He sat on the edge of the bed, smiling at me. Then he took the lamp back to the dresser and blew it out. The moonlight fell back into the room, and Granddad’s shadow moved across it. The springs of the old bed creaked. “Just the boy,” he said, and the room was quiet.

  The talk had been too strange and sad. I thought maybe Granddad had been in a dream, and had stayed in a dream through it all. I saw that the supper dishes were still in the kitchen sink, and for a minute I thought about washing them. But I was feeling like I had in the rodeo crowd, only just the opposite. I wanted to get out of the dark old house with its dreams and ghosts. Granddad was on the other side of a high barbed fence, with each wire a year of life, and I couldn’t go over it and I couldn’t crawl through. But anyway, I had eased myself a little, and I felt like when I got back to town I could enjoy the rodeo. Only, the worst of all, I wanted Halmea. I wanted to talk to her for a little while. I wasn’t as worried about Granddad as I had been; he seemed to be where Hud couldn’t hurt him. But driving through the dark alleyways of mesquite, I thought of Halmea, and wished there had been someway to keep Hud from doing what he had. Then I remembered seeing Irene in the car seat, the morning before the rodeo, her hair spread like a scarf. I knew she was at the rodeo, and I decided to try and find her. She wasn’t as exciting as Lily, sitting in the Cadillac, but she was who I would look for. After the show was all over, after the dancing and the fiddle music, when the gay riders had all gone off to bed, Irene and I might ride out into the heavy-smelling fields, and stay there awhile. Her black hair would be all the cover we’d need.

  CHAPTER 12

  The next day was the last of the rodeo, and I didn’t much care. The whole crazy circle of things got so it tired me out. When I woke up that morning I could see Jesse down in the lots, moving around, and I got up to go talk to him. I had looked for him the night before, after the dance, but he wasn’t around, and I guess he got home on his own.

  There was nobody to cook my breakfast, and I didn’t feel like cooking it myself. I ate a bowl of cereal and did without anything else. When I got to the barn, Jesse was dragging around cleaning out the horse stalls. A friend of ours who had a little pasture in town was keeping the colt during the rodeo. Jesse looked pretty puny.

  “Seen Granddad?” I asked him.

  He stopped raking hay and leaned on his hull fork a minute. “He’s up an’ gone,” he said. “He saddled up about an hour ago and rode off west.”

  “Didn’t say where he was going?”

  “No, he never,” Jesse said. “He said a few other things, though. Said he’d have to let me and Lonzo go. He don’t plan on having much work to do for a while.”

  “Did he mention about Hud?” I said. “I came out an’ told him last night.”

  “Naw, he never,” Jesse said. “He said he was sorry he couldn’t afford to keep us till times got better. I didn’t expect he’d be able to. He ain’t allowed to run no cattle for a year.”

  I remembered how Granddad’s mind had strayed into the past the night before. “Did he seem all right this morning?” I asked. “He acted last night like he might be slippin’ a little.”

  “Well, he didn’t seem very spry,” Jesse said. “But I didn’t notice nothin’ else.”

  I left him to his raking and went up to the house. Grandma met me at the door and lit into me to take her to Thalia, so she could look for some help. She had taken herself the day before, whether she could drive or not, but she wasn’t in the mood to try it again. I finally had to take her. She went to see a lady who had cooked for us years before, and the lady told her of a girl who might help. We chased the girl down and got her to agree to move out the next day, so Granny was satisfied. I wasn’t so happy about it myself. She was a lazy, fattish-looking white girl, and she acted dumber than a turkey.

  When we got back, Granddad was sitting by his radio. I asked him where he’d been, and he said he had just wanted to ride around and have a look at his grass—see how much he had. He talked as sensible and reasonable as he ever had, only he was awful blue and depressed.

  “I don’t know if I got the energy to start it over,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ve got the time. Right now I just feel like I’ve finally wore plumb out. I couldn’t hardly drag a saddle this morning. I may just have to sit here till I rot.”

  “I guess this was the worst thing that ever happened to you, wasn’t it?” I said.

  He rubbed one hand through his hair, and shook his head. “Oh no,” he said. “Not the worst by a long shot. Your grandmother getting killed was a tragedy. Aw, I can get over this here if my health don’t go to failing me.”

  I tried quizzing him about Hud, but he just said he’d have to see him before he’d know anything. He mentioned firing Jesse, but he said he had about changed his mind and decided to keep Lonzo around a little while, if he could. He had decided to build some new fences. Finally Granddad got to where he was paying more attention to the radio than he was to me, and I went upstairs to read. When I came down a little later to eat a bite, I noticed how stiff Granddad
got around. It was like his leg joints were sticking on him all of a sudden.

  2.

  When I left for the rodeo that night, Hud still hadn’t come home. There had been no sign of him, or of the Cadillac, and we had no way of knowing whether Truman Peters had caught up with him or not. Jesse and Lonzo went into town together, in Lonzo’s old car, so I was left with the pickup.

  I was way late getting to the show. On the outskirts of town, like in that song, I saw Buddy Andrews stopped beside the road. He had had some kind of a breakdown, and was out fiddling under his hood. He was as pissed off as he could be. Something had gone wrong with his generator, and he had a hot date for the rodeo. I tied on to him with a chain and pulled him into Thalia, but of course when we got there it turned out all the mechanics had gone to the rodeo, and weren’t to be found. Buddy was in the worst mood of his life. We spent about an hour tracking down a colored mechanic, and then another hour getting the car and the mechanic to a garage where he could go to work on it. When I finally left them, Buddy had got his clean clothes greasy, and was trying his best to get the man to hurry. The final performance of the Thalia rodeo was almost over before I even got to the parking area.

  I could tell there wasn’t much show left, because the musicians were already over on the concrete slab, tuning their fiddles and guitars. The people who didn’t like rodeo and just came to dance were filing out of the grandstand and heading for the slab. I went on inside, anyway. The cutting horses were in the arena working, and our colt wasn’t with them. I stood by the fence and watched. While I was standing there a kid named Pin came up to me; he was wearing a big black Stetson, and he had a can of beer in one hand. He looked like the rodeo, about nine tenths done.

  “Hey, cowboy,” he said. “Did you see Hermy?”

  “Not tonight,” I said. “I just got here. I been helping Andrews fix his car.”

  “Oh, goddamn, you shoulda been here,” he said, belching. “A bull stepped on Hermy. God, he was hollerin’ and cussin’.”