I puzzled over that a minute. Granny went to hang that last pair of pants outside, paying no attention to Willie and me. Willie went on. “I looked high and low in the barn. There wasn’t a single sack of twenty-threes, and he said they was all up by the tool rack, a-hanging on a nail.”
“Sack of twenty-three what?” I asked.
“Number twenty-three postholes. He said he came out there with a sack of eighteens and some twenties, but he was pure out of number twenty-three postholes.”
“They sent you for postholes?”
“Yes’m. To put up the fence.”
I reckon something must have happened where my sons decided they’d get more work done with Willie gone than with him helping. It took me some fast talking to get him settled once I told him what the boys were up to. He was mad enough that he got red in the face, and looked like he did yesterday when I fussed at him and he nearly cried.
“I hate those two. I just hate ’em,” he said.
“You’ve got to not take it so hard,” I said. “Son, they don’t mean any harm in it. They’re just yanking a knot in your tail.”
“They got no right. I’m trying my best.”
“I know you are. You’re doing fine.”
“They hated me the minute I come here.”
“No, they didn’t. If they hated you, they’d ignore you. They wouldn’t bother pulling your leg. Here’s what you’ll do. Your Granny’s just emptied a whole flour sack making these.” I pulled up a plate of doughnuts, moved the towel, and watched his eyes nearly pop from his head. “Have yourself a few. Then you take this sack with you, and tell them you had some fine doughnuts after hunting for the postholes. You toss the sack to ’em and say you brought them some number-nine doughnut holes instead.”
He said, “Doughnuts don’t have holes.”
“That’s right.” I waited while he thought on it.
The side of Willie’s face wrinkled up, and then he laughed in a kind of halted shout, slapping the table. “Number-nine doughnut holes.” He pushed a whole doughnut into his mouth at once.
“You know how bad you felt hunting postholes? Well, Charlie and Gil think that’s a joke, but I guarantee those two take their doughnuts plenty serious. It isn’t going to be funny to them when the joke is turned around, now is it?”
Willie swallowed hard, licking his fingers at the same time. He picked up another doughnut, turned it this way and that, admiring the sugar that coated the brown crust of it. “I like it here, Aint Sair,” he said, and bit half of it off. “I sure do like it here.”
A few minutes later, I watched him ride away, his hat tipped down near to his nose, the empty flour sack held forth. I pictured my boys’ faces and smiled. It wouldn’t hurt to turn the tables on them once in a while. Willie was surely fighting an uphill battle all around. This would just be a level spot for him to remember now and then.
Granny wouldn’t let up then, wanting me to help her finish off her quilt. I had a hundred and one things to do, and that wasn’t one of them, but I figured I’d spare an hour. It’d be good to get off my feet a little before I took to the rest of the days’ chores.
We wheeled the quilt down to a good working height, then tied off the cord to a piece of ironwood that Albert had found rolling down Cienega Creek one day. It had turned in the water until it was smooth, and felt nice to handle, and it was heavy as a piece of iron. I keep it to hold the door ajar when there’s a breeze.
Pulling down a quilt is like opening a package. All you see is the white underneath, and then as soon as you get it down, there are all the colors. We pulled up chairs and took up stitching where we’d set it aside last time. We worked on it for quite a while without saying a word. I’d learned long ago not to say to Granny how pretty it was, for she’d fuss. I used to think I was showing too much pride and boasting, but I have figured out it’s just that she’s embarrassed to take a compliment.
Granny stood up, kind of stiff, and rubbed her back. “I’ve got to go check the sheets. See if they’re dry,” she said, and left for a bit. Then she came and stood right behind my shoulder, watched me take several stitches. When I came to tie off the short thread, she said, “On those white squares, I aim to do a cornflower.”
“That’ll be fine,” I said.
She fingered the pattern of little hexagons. She said, “You know, this boy ain’t really Ernest.”
I turned to her with a start, but she’d already disappeared into the kitchen. I got up and followed her, feeling sheepish. She kept on straight through the kitchen to her bedroom. I said, “We all thought you didn’t know. Willie is Ernest’s son. Not Ernest himself.”
“Ernest had his leg took off in Texas.” Granny was standing over the rug in her little bedroom, staring hard at something on the ceiling.
I said, “Yes, Mama. I remember.”
“That like to killed me. I wished they’d a cut off mine instead.”
I remembered that day. I remembered having to help hold him down. Then, just that quick, instead of my brother, I pictured that it was one of my sons I was holding down, listening to him scream for mercy. I was the mama, standing in her place. After I caught my breath, I said, “That must have been a horror for you.”
She rocked back and forth on her feet a little. Then she turned and stared out the window. The curtain sagged. Not a breath of air stirred, out or in. Granny said, “Rain would be nice. It ain’t rained since last Tuesday.”
It hadn’t rained since last January. I took her hand in mine. It was so bony, so small. It’s a wonder to me she can do the things she does, she seems so frail. I said, “Sometimes I wish I could take the pain off you like you wanted to take the pain off him.” I watched her face for some glimmer of recognition, but she was lost in memories. “Did you know my boys are fixing to marry? Both of them told me they have sweethearts.”
“That boy’s out there teasing that dog of yours. The one with the flop ear.”
Just that quick, she’d come back to the here and now. I went to the porch to get a look at Willie and Nip. I called, “Willie? Why aren’t you down to help the boys?”
“Watch this, Aint Sair. I can make like I’m throwing something, and this stupid dog will run after nothing, ever’ time.”
When he got to the porch, I said, “What are you doing?”
“Being tricky. It’s a joke.”
“Dogs don’t take to jokes. They like it one way or t’other, no fooling around. That dog will work for you until he can hardly walk, and still fight a bobcat to save your hide. He’ll eat what you feed him, and not kill a chicken if it wasn’t enough. All that dog knows is honesty. Cheating the dog will turn it bad, and it’ll think being trustworthy isn’t worth the trouble. What you’re teaching the dog is that you can’t be trusted.”
“I’m getting dang tired of being lectured all the livelong day.”
“I know. You get those bags of feed stacked yet?”
“I want to go riding. Try some shooting. Charlie says I got to ask if’n it’s all right, like I was a little kid.”
“Well, it’s dinnertime.” He shrugged and looked away. Sometimes, it was hard to separate Willie from his father—my brother Ernest. When I wasn’t seeing a resemblance, I could picture Willie as a drifter I’d turn off the place without much to-do. I said, “We’ve got plenty of work to do, so I’m going to say this plain and straight up. I run this place. Not a chicken lays an egg I don’t know about. Not a horse gets ridden or a nail gets driven without my say-so. I don’t know what’s got under your blanket this afternoon, but you best mind your tongue, or you can go talk to your Uncle Albert again.”
He bristled up like a cat in a lightning storm. “You know? My pa’s a-coming home. I come here to meet up with him and be cowboys.”
“That’s another thing. A cowboy is nothing but trash stuck to a saddle. Rustlers, drunkards, no-accounts. You want to call yourself a hand, a rider, or a puncher, or whatever else, that’s fine, but I don’t hire cowboys, nor tolerate the
sort.”
He turned red in the face and stepped off the porch, scuffing one of his bright-colored boots. He walked a few steps, then turned and shouted, “When my pa gets here, he’s the boss o’ this place, and him and me’s gonna be in charge here, and you’ll see who’s slapping the tar outta who.” As he whipped around and stomped off, I saw him wipe quickly at his face with his hand.
Most half-grown boys have got the size of a man, trying to act as grown as they look, and the heart of a five-year-old, all emotion and no sense until they hit at least twenty. That kid was in the hardest part of a boy’s life, and no more idea what to do with himself than a moth flying into a fire. As, I imagine, a boy raised by that gal Felicity would be. Chances are he got away with any kind of hooliganism he wanted with her. Maybe that’s why he’d let a man tell him what for, but no one else. Lands, maybe he thinks all women are like his mother.
Mary Pearl came up and said she’d met Willie heading toward their house. He asked her if her folks would let him live at their place. I said, “Well, he’s acting pretty mettlesome all of a sudden. Come and have dinner with us. What did you tell him?”
“I said he’d have to ask for himself. Then he said there’d be room enough for him and both his folks in Granny’s old house, and they could just all take up living there until they took over the big place. What’s that mean?”
“Lord, that Felicity. She never could get it through her head it was the pecan farm that Ernest had helped to buy.” We Prine children had put our money together to buy those trees after Papa died, and we’d lost everything we had to Comanche Indians. I was no more than seventeen when we did that. Albert and Savannah worked the farm all that time because I up and married Jimmy. Harland worked there while he was a boy, but he went off to school. A full quarter of the money that bought those trees was Ernest’s, yet by rights, it belonged to Albert and Savannah and their children.
Picturing Felicity Prine having a say in decisions on Albert’s pecan farm made me want to choke. Mary Pearl looked troubled. “You mean, he owns part of Mama and Papa’s land? Our farm?” She set plates out and started cutting a pan of corn bread. “Here comes Charlie.”
“Ernest helped buy the trees. He never worked the land a single day. Your folks have the homestead and deed. I’m no lawyer, but I know for certain they’ve got it. If they wanted to share, it would be out of obligation. Ernest never wanted any part of it.”
I told my sons what Willie had said. “It’s that Felicity. She put him up to it.”
“You reckon she’ll be along next?” Charlie asked.
“Lord a mercy,” I said.
Gilbert said, “We could be knee-deep in manure, and it hasn’t started to cure.”
Willie, though, had come empty-handed. Had not written to a soul nor received any mail. If Felicity was fast on his heels, or just waiting for Ernest to arrive to “take over,” it didn’t seem likely she’d be biding her time very far afield. The boy stayed gone a couple of hours, and about the time we’d rest had a couple of hours’ siesta, he came on back, acting like nothing had gone on before. I’ll be the first one to drop a grudge, but not when it’s left up in the air like that. I always want some words said that make it clear we’re on even ground again. Willie just went to the barn and stacked up the oats like I’d asked him, whistling and smiling as he worked.
Late in the afternoon, I called him to the house and said, “We’re heading to Maldonado’s in a couple of days. It’ll be more of the same, but probably take a week, and we’ll be sleeping over some nights. It’s a big spread. You’ll have to hold your own alongside men who’ve been doing it all their lives.” From the corner of my eye, I saw my mama sit back at her quilt and run her fingers over it, tracing the red pathways on the white background.
Willie called, “I get to pick my own horse?”
“You get to pick one of mine to ride.”
“And ride ’im all day?”
Only someone who’d never been in a saddle for fourteen hours straight would say it with that kind of anticipation. “All the livelong day. Now come on up here. You’ve got to learn something every hand knows, because if you ask someone to do it for you when you’re off with that bunch of men, they’ll call you a sissy and a baby, and they’ll never let you forget it. Remember, these are men used to doing for themselves, and they won’t make exception for you.”
“All right, sure. What is it?” he asked, following me into the house. “Howdy, Granny. What is it I got to do, Aint Sair?”
I went to Mama’s sewing kit in the parlor and came back with everything he needed. “Here,” I said, “sew this button back onto your shirt.”
July 19, 1906
Mr. Baker’s wife left this morning with a flatbed wagon loaded up heavy. Jim Baker rode as far as my place to wave her off. He had a worried look on his face, watching her leave. Said to me that she was supposed to wait for him in Tucson, though he’d be surprised to find her there, as he expected she probably wouldn’t stop until she gots to Oklahoma Territory and her folks’ place. Then he said Rudolfo had come to him and insisted he sell him his land. The price Rudolfo offered was not ten cents on the dollar what it was worth. Jim had felt like he’d run flat selling out for half, and didn’t want to sell for a tenth. I told him, “Well, it’s your land. No one’s forcing you to sell it.”
He said, “Maldonado said he wouldn’t keep the offer open if this other buyer doesn’t take it. I really have to sell to someone.” He took off his hat for a moment and wiped his brow with his sleeve. He watched his wife disappear at the bend, then turned and went back to watch the cows until it was time to push them north with the rest of ours.
I told Chess I’d sure love to take up Baker’s land. He’s got 6,400 acres, direction of Sonoita, about half of it real fine. He has a cross-cut canal off a little branch of the San Pedro River, and though it is barely trickling, in better years it will serve fine. Chess and I set to figuring if there’s any way we can get that land. We’ve probably got, when prices are up, close to a hundred thousand dollars worth of stock and land. But we’ve got barely enough cash to keep food in the house and hay on the ground for six months if rain doesn’t set the natural grass. There’s just no extra around. Lands, it torments me to see that grassland lost. I always figured my best investment was putting all our money back into the place, but that theory has worked against me this time.
Then, for the first time since we came here over twenty years ago, I pictured what would happen if I had to sell out, too. Granny’d already went and sold a big part of her section to the railroad. Maybe if things got bad enough, and the railroad man came along and waved a stack of greenbacks under my nose, I might be tempted to take it, too. I reckon if the Lord wanted me to have Baker’s land, I’d have managed to save more money. I couldn’t even pay for my own well.
Chess got kicked by a horse this morning, and while his leg isn’t broken, it’s bruised blue and real touchy to walk on, so in the afternoon he helped mostly with the cooking. That’s all right by me, as he is a right good cook. When we have our roundup, I believe half the boys come on account of the barbeque we have at the end.
I went to the garden to put some water on the choked-looking squash and beans and onions. I don’t think my tomatoes are going to make a single one this year. If it weren’t for my preserves, I’d have little or nothing to set before my neighbors when it comes my time to provide the hungry drovers with a meal. The chilies are starting to come to life, though, setting little green thumbs that make my mouth water just expecting what will come of them in a couple of months.
July 20, 1906
We were just finishing breakfast when there came a wagon moving slow down the road, and a man riding next to it in a uniform. Charlie and Gilbert, even Mason, had joined us. Charlie saw them from the window first, and said, “Looks like a drummer of some kind. No, that there’s some kind of uniform. And there comes Uncle Albert’s two-seater after them a ways, with the cousins following.”
&n
bsp; I’ve about had my fill of characters coming down the pike wanting something. The first thing going through my mind was that this would be the railroad men, coming to take possession of Mama’s place, and just naturally be needing a right-of-way through my chicken coop, and the parlor, too. “Charlie, the shotgun is by the back door,” I said. He went after it and out the back. I saw Willie’s eyes bug right out of his head as I took up my rifle from behind the front door and dropped it over one arm before I went out. Chess, Mama, and, of course, Willie and Gil followed like ducks as I walked toward the wagon and rider. Charlie would be coming up the side, just in case.
At the side of the round corral, the man on horseback held up a hand to stop the wagon, military-style. Instead of riding the rest of the way toward us, he dismounted, held his reins to the wagoner, and walked. He was gray-haired, but he didn’t seem old. Not, at least, as old as Chess, but weathered pretty good. He was heavyset and solid, rather than being tall and lean like the soldier I used to know quite well, and he stood only half a head taller than me. He had brown eyes sunk under permanent squint lines, and a soldier’s gait. He doffed his hat and made a little bow. “I’ve been told by the family up the road that you are Mrs. Elliot. Am I come to the right place?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Sergeant Major Udell Hanna, United States Army, ma’am. On a packet for burial. I bring you the condolences of the President of the United States of America, along with all the worldly goods and remains of Corporal Ernest William Prine, Sixth Cav, Arizona Rough Riders. This soldier’s last letter, unsent, was addressed care of Mrs. Sarah Elliot. And so this box is sent to the care of the same Mrs. Elliot.”
“That’d be me,” I said. “I’m his sister.”
“He had a stack of letters from you, ma’am. Little else.”