They paused for a time in the chicken yard. Davey stared in wonderment at the hens, who walked around pecking at things and chattering. Patsy clucked at them inexpertly and they regarded her with scorn. They were white hens, a few of them fat matriarchs but most of them young and skinny. Davey eventually grew annoyed because none would come in reach; he grabbed a handful of chicken droppings, which he happened to notice before Patsy did. “Oh, shit,” she said, holding his smelly hand away from her. She carried him down to a large water trough and washed the hand under a faucet.
Roger was standing near the lots doing something to the front foot of a large gray horse. He was sweating profusely. When he saw them coming he set the horse’s foot back on the ground and wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeves.
“Up from your snooze?” he said. “How’s he taking to ranch life?”
“He just grabbed a handful of fecal matter,” Patsy said. “It was from a chicken. I would have expected a son of mine to be more discriminating.”
“I ain’t very pleased with this horse, either,” Roger said. “The big idiot just stepped on my toe. Think he weighs a ton. After I worked myself down trimmin’ his toenails too.”
“I stubbed one of mine on a chair last night,” she said. It seemed remarkable that the events of the night before, which had seemed so terrible and so final, already seemed distant and only rather ordinarily sad.
Bob, the big dog, came over and licked her hand. She let Davey pet him and after a while set him on Bob’s back, an experiment that both he and Bob regarded with mixed feelings.
“About time he had a horseback ride,” Roger said. “It’s cooling off. We’ll ride over to the mountain.”
The mountain he meant, apparently, was a long flat-topped hill a mile or so away, to the southwest of the barn. Patsy would have liked a ride, but she felt distinctly apprehensive about the combination of herself, Davey, and a horse.
“I don’t think I ride well enough to carry him,” she said. “Not even that far.”
“No, but I do. Me and him will ride double and you can poke along behind us on this old gray idiot here.”
“But Davey might not ride with you.”
“Course he will. Why wouldn’t he?”
He went in the barn and got a bridle and then went into the lots to catch his own horse, a trim red sorrel. Patsy sat Davey on the edge of the water trough and let him dangle his toes in the water. Their reflections wavered when he made the water ripple. She watched Roger saddling the horses and imagined catastrophe, runaways, horror, screams. It seemed a tremendously perilous undertaking, but she could not get up the will to put her foot down against it. When Roger got the gray saddled he got a sack and carefully wiped the saddle free of dust.
“Mary’s saddle,” he said. “Ain’t been rode since she died. Hop up so I can see if the stirrups need changing.”
He held Davey while she mounted, then handed him up to her while he checked the stirrups. Davey was amazed. Roger fixed the stirrups with dispatch and mounted the sorrel. He rode up beside her, took Davey, and set him firmly between himself and the saddle horn. “Hang on, young feller,” he said and rode off. The gray followed, trotting heavily, and Patsy’s sense of catastrophe deepened. She bounced ungracefully. She could see nothing at all of Davey, only Roger’s back and his brown shirt. She was bouncing so badly she was not sure she would notice a catastrophe if one happened.
Soon, though, they slowed to a walk, and the horses picked their way off the low ridge on which the barn stood. At the foot of the ridge Roger reined in so she could come up beside him. She brushed back her hair and saw that Davey was quite all right. She had expected him to be frantic to come to her, but instead he glanced at her almost with disinterest when she came alongside. Davey’s hands were on Roger’s wrists.
“My goodness, he’s taken up with you,” she said. “What an independent brat.”
“Hum?” Roger said. “Well, you can’t keep him tied to your apron strings all his life. A boy’s got to get out with the men sooner or later.” Davey was trying to hold the saddle horn, but it was broader than his hands.
“That old thing will pace if you make him,” he said. “Whop him with the reins a time or two.”
He set the sorrel in a light, easy trot, and after some more heavy bouncing Patsy took his advice and lashed at the gray awkwardly. It took effect; he slipped suddenly into a comfortable pacing gait that didn’t bounce her at all. The sense of catastrophe left her and the ride became very pleasant. They were crossing an old grown-over field, the two horses side by side, the weeds and taller grasses struck with late sunlight. The wide high sky was very clear and plangent and the evening clouds turned golden in the southwest. Gray mourning doves rose from their feeding in twos and threes and flew south. The air and the grass had one smell. The bridle bits jingled lightly in unison and Patsy found herself watching the sorrel’s delicate strong legs pick their way through the grass, with dusty sunlight filtering under and through them. Davey suddenly made a pleased, emphatic sound, waving one hand.
“He’s giving us his opinion on all this,” Patsy said.
“Oh, is that what he’s doing?” Roger said. “I thought he was calling for more speed.”
When they left the field she fell behind again, sad for a little inside her pleasure. When would he be out with the men again, her son? And with what men? They rode through a short strip of thin mesquite, all dead—sprayed, Roger said—and the doves that had left the field and flown to the trees lifted themselves and flew back to the field, whistling over their heads in passage. As they started up the slope of the hill Patsy shook the little sadness out of her breast and forgot the future. It was so much fun to ride. She had ceased to be nervous about the gray horse, and she liked the sound of horses’ feet and the leathery dusty smell of the saddle. Roger waited for her at the top of the hill and they rode slowly around the edge, Patsy smiling, enjoying the breeze and a sense of great well-being. To the south there seemed to be more ridges, more flat-topped hills, with pastures of mesquite in between. The farthest distances were already blue with evening but the sun was not yet down.
“I always forget how much land there is,” she said. “It goes on and on.”
“Wish I owned more of it,” Roger said, studying the pastures below.
“Goodness, why?” Patsy asked. “Don’t you have enough? It seems to me that this hill and that field and the place where the barn is would be enough.” They could see the field, see the house and the gray barn, see the old pickup sitting at the back-yard gate.
“I never understood this urge you ranchers have to own the whole earth.”
“Well, it would eliminate the fencing problem,” Roger said dryly.
“Actually,” he said a little later, “I wouldn’t want the whole earth. I wouldn’t want nothing east of the Mississippi or north of Albuquerque, and I ain’t got much use for Old Mexico.”
Mention of Albuquerque reminded her of Hank—it seemed to be his favorite town.
“There the hussy is,” Roger said, pointing toward a patch of mesquite to the north of the hill. “You and old Davey get down and sit here a minute while I do a little chore.”
She got down and he handed Davey to her, then dismounted and tied the gray to a small mesquite.
“She’s calving,” he said. “She’s probably got the calf down there somewhere. I’ll jog down and take a look.”
Patsy assumed he was talking about a cow, though she had not seen any. “What do I do if a snake comes along?” she asked as he was mounting.
“Just kinda make conversation, and give him room,” he said. “I won’t be gone long.”
She sat down at the edge of the hill, the short grass pricking her bare calves. Davey kept looking around for the horse and shook his head irritably when his mother tried to nuzzle him. Finally she saw the cow. She was standing in the edge of the mesquite, to the north. Roger was talking to her as he approached; sounds floated back. He was trotting slowly toward th
e cow, standing up in his stirrups. The sorrel’s coat was red with sunlight. Suddenly the cow lifted her head and made a short clear bellow. She left the trees in an awkward, heavy run, her full udders swinging. She seemed bent on getting across the long clearing and around the edge of the hill, and because the man and the horse were caught slightly off balance it seemed she might be going to make it. The sorrel whirled and leaped a bush and ran in a straight perfect angle for the spot where the cow would turn the corner of the hill. Patsy was amazed, rapt, involved to the pit of herself, for the race took place just below her, in the clearest evening sunlight, vivid and splendid as some great race in a movie, only, for her, more urgent, for she was straining and did not know whether she strained for the horse or the cow or the old man, whose hat had blown off. He was still up in his stirrups, his eyes on the cow but his body urging the horse. Red cow and red horse converged toward each other, the red horse racing like a horse in myth, one red flowing line from neck to tail. When he left the grass and struck the hard bare earth at the base of the hill his hoofs left small clear identical puffs of dust. And for all the heavy awkwardness of the cow and the grace and beautiful speed of the horse, their two intensities were almost perfectly matched and the cow almost won; would have won had not the horse turned out of his angle slightly, toward the lift of the hill. At the moment of whirling Patsy cried out. The horse and the cow spun head to head, but the horse between the cow and the point of the hill. Davey jumped, frightened by his mother; he began to cry. Patsy tried vainly to soothe him, her eyes on the scene below.
The cow had been headed but she had not been stopped. Immediately she tried to cut behind the horse, and they were so close that again she almost made it. But the sorrel whirled backward and sideways and blocked her again, and with a fling of her tail she left the hill and ran north, still going away from the spot where she had been. There was another race, almost as intense as the first, but the sorrel had the long clearing north to the field to work in, and he caught the cow before she was halfway across it. Then, in the open, he had her, and the cow’s angry, sullen stubbornness was gallant but almost annoying. She turned, stopped, darted one way, was stopped, darted another.
Roger and the horse were no longer really challenged. They stayed far enough from the cow that they could anticipate her, the sorrel pivoting gracefully, sidestepping, neck curved or neck straight, but always between the cow and where she wanted to go. Finally she stopped, head up, and horse and man stopped; all became as still as statues. They looked at each other and looked at each other. Then the cow turned disgustedly and began to move back toward the mesquite. From time to time she would attempt to turn to the right or the left, but Roger and the sorrel kept far off her flank and turned her easily. When she was back amid the trees Roger drew rein, turned away from her completely and rode over to retrieve his hat. The cow had stopped and was watching him. He got off to get his hat and stayed on the ground a minute, talking to his horse. When he mounted again the cow had gone to her calf.
Patsy saw it get up and stumble to its mother, trying to nurse. Roger and the sorrel approached in a slow walk; he looked at the calf a moment and turned back toward the hill. Davey suddenly began to choke. While she had been looking off he had put three small rocks in his mouth. She was frightened for a second but managed to get them out. Roger rode up and reached down for him. “Better go,” he said. The sorrel’s withers were dark with sweat but neither he nor Roger seemed tired or excited. Patsy felt limp.
She mounted the gray and they edged off the hill and jingled back across the weedy field and up the ridge to the barn. The sun had gone down, but the sky still held its light. Once they were unsaddled, the sorrel and the gray stood drinking at the water trough. Patsy and Davey stood watching. Their drinking made a thin sucking sound and when they lifted their heads water dripped off their noses. The gray romped heavily away, down the ridge, bucking and twisting, and the sorrel trotted lightly after him.
The jar of peanut butter she had bought the summer before was still there, and Patsy made supper on it. The bed problem they solved by having Davey sleep on a pallet of quilts on the bedroom floor. “Half the grownups in this part of the country slept on pallets when they was kids,” Roger said, surprised that she considered the arrangement esoteric.
“That’s not necessarily a recommendation,” she said. Roger fried himself a steak for supper, overcooking it by about twenty minutes, to her mind.
“You’ve fried it so hard it looks wooden,” she said. “It’s not necessary to burn your meat, you know. I’m sometimes tempted to move in on you for a month to see if I couldn’t coax some real food down your throat. I honestly don’t see how you survive.”
“You’re as big a puzzle to me as I am to you,” he said. “I never seen you eat nothing but peanut butter. I’d as soon live off burned meat as peanut butter.”
“But peanut butter is extremely nutritious.”
“Burned meat’s so much tastier, though.”
Once the plates were cleared away they went out and sat on the porch listening to the ringing crickets. The subject of land came up again. Patsy sat on the lowest step, where she could enjoy the stars. She stretched one leg out along the step against the cool concrete.
“What would you do if you was to inherit a ranch?” Roger asked. He was whittling, his chair propped against the wall. Once in a while, when he turned the knife blade over, she saw it flash in the light that came through the screen door.
“No possibility is more remote,” she said. “Neither of my folks have any land left. Daddy has a place in East Texas where he takes his friends to play poker, but I doubt it would keep a milk cow. Won’t you cut yourself, whittling in the dark?”
“Oh, this ain’t whittling,” he said. “I’m just smoothing a stick. Reason I asked, I was kinda considering leaving this old place of mine to you and Jim. I was gonna leave it to my sister’s boy, but he got killed in Korea. My sister’s older than me, so there ain’t no point in leaving it to her. I’d kinda like to leave it in the family somewhere. If I don’t my sister would just sell it, and pretty soon the money would be gone and the land too.”
“Goodness. I don’t think you ought to leave it to us,” Patsy said, confused. The suggestion filled her with dismay.
“I know that must sound awful,” she said a minute later. “I don’t know—the idea just surprised me. You don’t really know us very well. If you did I’m not sure you’d think we were the sort of people to be trusted with your land.”
Roger went on smoothing the stick, unperturbed. “I never expected you to jump at it,” he said. “Still, you might talk it over with Jim. It ain’t a bad little ranch. It’s well watered, and the taxes ain’t too high.”
“Please don’t misunderstand,” Patsy said. “I love you for wanting to give it to us—I think it’s wonderful of you. There are just such problems. I wouldn’t know what to do with land.
“It would need you, don’t you see?” she said later, growing even more confused.
Roger chuckled. “Aw, the country could get along without me, I guess,” he said. “Besides, it ain’t really that ugly. You might get to liking it, in ten or fifteen years. Be good for old Davey too. And Jim.”
“I guess that’s what really upset me,” Patsy said. “Jim. He and I haven’t been very happy lately. I’m not even sure we’ll be together always.”
“What’s the matter, don’t he want to stay home?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Things don’t seem to be a great deal better when he’s home.”
“Sorry to hear that,” he said, and they fell silent. Stars were thick in the sky—there were almost too many. After a while the mood of confusion passed and she felt better.
“Well, aren’t you going to give me advice?” she said. “I suppose it’s time I went around collecting advice.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Roger said. “I ain’t no expert on the subject. Only reason I never got left in the lurch myself is because it’s s
o far to the bus station out here.”
“Come on,” she said. “That woman would never have left you. I can tell from her picture.”
“No, I guess not,” he said.
“Did you ever love anyone but her?”
“Not that I remember,” he said. “Flirted around a little when I was young. Thought I wanted to marry a schoolteacher, once. Pretty close shave. She’s an alcoholic now.”
“But she might not have been if you had married her,” Patsy said. “Don’t make her ruin sound so inevitable. I guess what I meant was were you ever in danger of loving anyone else after you married Aunt Mary?”
“Lord, no,” he said. “Wouldn’t never have dared. Mary was downright murderous at times, even without no provocation.
“Course this country don’t exactly teem with women,” he said thoughtfully a little later. “There ain’t a whole lot of temptation between here and Fort Worth.”
“Well, there’s temptation where I live,” she said. “I guess I’m in danger of loving someone besides Jim.”
“Is he a scoundrel?” he asked, so kindly and seriously that she almost cried.
“Not really. Why do you think of people in terms like that?”
“Way I was raised, I guess,” he said mildly.
After a while he went to bed and Patsy bathed and sat in the dark bedroom rocking by the open window, looking out at the moonlit ridge. The mesquite trees in the yard were very dark against the pale grass.
Roger persuaded her to stay a day, and she spent it cleaning. His cabinets had not been cleaned in years, and all the floors needed mopping. She mopped the downstairs but lost her impetus and left the upstairs for another visit. Davey rolled about on the dusty floor until he looked like he had been the mop.
When it grew late and cool they went riding again, back to the same hill. She had no apprehension and the ride was pure pleasure. They loped through the field, a gait that was pleasanter for her than for Davey. It caused him to spit up profusely on the saddle. They slowed to a walk and a flight of crows flew over. The cow and calf were nowhere to be seen. There was no wild chase. They sat on the horses on the edge of the hill, watching the evening land. The late sunlight made everything clear, perfectly defined. The fields and pastures were very bright, the brown burned summer mesquite leaves golden. Strings of doves flew in and out of the field, high as the hill they sat on and so distinct that each bird could be counted. Roger took off his hat and set it on Davey’s head, tilting it back so it wouldn’t blind him. Davey was not sure what to think but managed a lopsided grin. The sun struck the old man’s brown shirt and brightened the rowels of his spurs. She took off her headband and hung it on her saddle horn. When the sun was just above the horizon the colors began to soften. The golds turned to grays and blues.