English Creek - Ivan Doig

  "Jick, how do you feel about a trip to town?"

  Inasmuch as we were rained out anyway, he elaborated, I might just as well take the scatter rake in to Grady Tilton’s garage and get the broken bracket welded, stay overnight at the Heaneys’ and in the morning drive the repaired rake back here to the ranch. "I checked all this out with headquarters", meaning my mother, “and she said it’d be okay."

  "Sounds good to me," I told Pete. The full fact was, after the days of trudging back and forth behind the stacker team it sounded like an expedition to Africa.

  * * *

  So I set off for Gros Ventre, about midafternoon. Roving scatter raker Jick McCaskill hitting the road, even if the route only was to town and back.

  The first couple of miles almost flew by, for it was remarkable what a pair of steppers Blanche and Fisheye now seemed to me; speed demons in comparison to Jocko and Pep. My thoughts were nothing special. Wondering what Ray Heaney would have to report. Mulling the rest of the summer. Another week or so of haying. The start of school was—Christamighty, only thirty days away. And my fifteenth birthday, one day less than that. I ask you, how is it that after the Fourth of July each summer, time somehow speeds up.

  I like to believe that even while curlicues of this sort are going on in my head, the rest of me is more or less on the job. Aiming that scatter rake down the Noon Creek road I took note of Dill Egan’s haystacks, which looked to me like poor relations of those Wisdom built. Way over on the tan horizon to the northeast I could see specks that would be Double W cattle, and wondered where Alec was riding or fence-fixing today. And of course one of the things a person always does a lot of in Montana is watching other people’s weather. All that sky and horizon around you, there almost always is some atmospheric event to keep track of. At the top of the county road’s rise from Dill Egan’s place, I studied a dark anvil cloud which was sitting over the area to the northwest of me. My father was not going to like the looks of that one, hovering along the edge of his forest. And our Ramsay hayfield is going to have itself a bath, I told myself.

  In a few more minutes I glanced around again, though, and found that the cloud wasn’t sitting over the Ramsay place. It was on the move. Toward Noon Creek and me. A good thing I was bright enough to bring my slicker along on the rake; the coat was going to save me from some wet.

  But the next time I reconnoitered, rain was pushed off my mental agenda. The cloud was bigger, blacker, and closer. A whole hell of a lot closer. It also was rumbling now like it was the engine of the entire sky. That may sound fancy, but view it from my eyes at the time: a dark block of storm, with pulses of light coming out of it like flame winking from firebox doors. And even as I gawked at it, a jagged rod of lightning stabbed from the cloud to the earth. Pale lightning, nearer white than yellow. The kind a true electrical storm employs.

  As I have told, I am not exactly in love with lightning anyway.

  Balling the reins in both my hands, I slapped Blanche and Fisheye some encouragement across their rumps. “Hyaah, you two! Let’s go !" Which may sound drastic, but try sitting on a ten-foot expanse of metal rake with lightning approaching and then prescribe to me what you would have done.

  Go we did, at a rattling pace, for the next several minutes. I did my best to count distance on the thunder, but it was that grumbling variety that lets loose another thump before you’ve finished hearing the one before. My eyes rather than my ears had to do the weather forecasting, and they said Blanche and Fisheye and the rake and I were not going as fast as the stormcloud was traveling or growing or whatever the hell it was doing.

  The route ahead stretched on and on, for immediately after coming up out of Dill Egan’s place the Noon Creek road abandons the bottomland and arrows along the benchland between Noon Creek and English Creek until it eventually hits the highway north of Gros Ventre. Miles of country as exposed as a tabletop. I tell you, a situation like that reminds a person that skin is damn thin shelter against the universe. One thing the steady thunder and the pace of the anvil cloud did tell me was that I somehow had to abandon that road. Find a place to pull in and get myself and my horses away from this ten-foot lightning rod on wheels. The question was, where? Along the English Creek road I’d have had no problem: within any little way there, a ranch could be pulled into for shelter. But around here the Double W owned everything, and wherever there did happen to be a turnoff into one of the abandoned sets of Noon Creek ranch buildings, the Double W kept the gate padlocked against fishermen. As I verified for myself, by halting my team for a quick scan at the gate into the old Nansen place.

  A lack of choices can make your mind up for you in a hurry. I whapped Blanche and Fisheye again and on down the county road we clattered, heading for a high frame of gateposts about three quarters of a mile off. The main gate into the Double W. It took forever, but at last we pulled up at that gateframe and the Double IV turnoff. From the crosspiece supported by the big gateposts—the size and height of telephone poles, they really werehung the sign:

  WW RANCH

  WENDELL & MEREDICE WILLIAMSON

  The sign was creaking a little, the wind starting to stir in front of the storm.

  Neither the sign nor the wind I gave a whit about just then. What I had forgotten was that this turnoff into the Double W had a cattleguard built in there between the gateposts. A pit overlaid with a grill of pipes, which vehicles could cross but hoofed creatures such as cattle couldn’t. Hoofed creatures such as cattle and horses. To put Blanche and Fisheye through here, I would have to open the barbwire livestock gate beside the cattleguard.

  You know what I was remembering. “GODAMIGHTY, get AWAY from that"—Stanley’s cry as I approached the wire gate at the cabin during our camptending trip. "You happen to be touching that wire and lightning hits that fence—" This coming rumblebelly of a storm made that June one look like a damp washcloth. Every time I glanced in its direction now, lightning winked back. And nowhere around this entrance to the Double W was there a stick of wood, not one sole single goddamn splinter, with which to knock the hoop off the gate stick and flip the wire gate safely aside.

  Holy H. Hell. Sitting here telling this, all the distance of years between that instant and now, I can feel again the prickling that came across the backs of my hands, the sweat of dismay on its way up through my skin there. Grant me three moments which could be erased from my life, and that Double W gate scene would be one.

  I wiped my hands against my pants. Blanche swished her tail, and Fisheye whinnied. They maybe were telling me what I already knew. Delay was my worst possible behavior, for that storm was growing nearer every second that I stood there and stewed. I wiped my hands again. And jumped at the gate as if in combat against it. One arm grappling around the gatepost, the other arm and hand desperately working the wire hoop up off the gatestick. Oh yes, sure, this gate was one of those snug obstinate bastards; I needed to mightily hug the stick and post together to gain enough slack for the hoop to loosen. Meanwhile everyplace my body was touching a strand of barbwire I could feel a kind of target line, ready to sizzle: as if I was trussed up in electrical wiring and somebody was about to throw the switch. I suppose in a fraction of what it takes to tell about it, I wrestled that gate open and slung it wide. Yet it did seem an immense passage of time.

  And I wasn’t on easy street yet. Blanche and Fisheye, I have to say, were taking all of this better than I was, but even so they were getting a little nervous about the storm’s change in the air and the loudening thunder. "Okay, here we go now, nothing to it, here we go," I soothed the team and started them through the gate. I could have stood some soothing myself, for the scatter rake was ten feet wide and this gate was only about eleven. Catch a rake wheel behind a gatepost and you have yourself a first-class hung-up mess. In my case, I then would have the rake in contact with the barbwire fence, inviting lightning right up the seat of my pants, while I backed and maneuvered the rake wheel out of its bind. Never have I aimed anything more carefully than that wide
scatter rake through that just-wide-enough Double W gateway. We squeaked through. Which left me with only one more anxious act to.do. To close the gate, for there were cattle in this field. Even if they were the cattle of the damn Double W, even if it mattered nothing to me that they got out and scattered to Tibet; if you have been brought up in Montana, you close a gate behind you. So I ran back and did the reverse of the wrestling that’d opened the gate. Still scared spitless about touching that wire. Yet maybe not quite as scared as when I’d first done it, for I was able to say to myself all the while, What in the hell have I done to deserve this dose of predicament?

  Again on the rake, I broke all records of driving that Double W approach road, down from the benchland to where the ranch buildings were clustered on the north side of Noon Creek. Across the plank bridge the rake rumbled, my thunder against the storm’s thunder, and I sighted refuge. The Double VV barn.

  In minutes I had my team unhitched—leaving the scatter rake out by a collection of old machinery, so that lightning at least would have to do some sorting to find it—and was ensconcing them in barn stalls. They were lathered enough that I unharnessed them and rubbed them dry with a gunnysack. In fact, I looked around for the granary, went over there, and brought back a hatful of Double W oats apiece to Blanche and Fisheye as their reward.

  Now I could draw a breath and look around for my own benefit. The Double W had buildings and more buildings. This barn was huge and the two-story white Williamson house across the yard could have housed the governor of Montana. You would think this was ranch enough for anybody, yet Wendell Williamson actually owned another one at least as big as this. The Deuce W—its cattle brand was 2w—down in the Highwood Mountains between Great Falls and Lewistown, a hundred or more miles from here. More distance than I’d been in my whole life, and Wendell goddamn Williamson possessed both ends of it. Be that as it may, the Double W was now my port in the storm, and I had better make my presence known.

  No one was in sight. It would take a little while for the rain to bring in Alec and the other riders and the hay crew from the range and the hayfield. But somebody was bound to be in the house, and I hurried over to there before I had to do it during the storm.

  I knocked at the front door.

  The door opened and Meredice Williamson was standing there smiling and saying: "Yes ?"

  “ ’Lo, Mrs. Williamson. I put Blanche and Fisheye in your barn."

  That seemed to be double Dutch to her. But she smiled on and commended: "That was good of you. I’m sure Wendell will be pleased."

  I sought to correct her impression that a delivery of Blanche and Fisheye was involved here. “Well, no, they’ll only be there until it clears up. I mean, what it is, I was driving my scatter rake to town and the storm started coming and I had to head in here on account of lightning, so I unhitched my team and put them in the barn there, I hope that’s all right ?"

  "I’m sure it must be," she acceded, pretty plainly because she had no idea what else to say. Meredice Williamson was a city woman—a lawyer’s widow, it was said—whom Wendell met and married in California a few winters before. The unkind view of her was that she’d had too much sun on the brain down there. But I believe the case honestly was that because Meredice Williamson only came north to spend summers at the Double W, she never got clued in to the Two country; never quite caught up with its rhythms of season and livelihood and lore. At least, standing there within the weathered doorway in her yellow sun frock and with her graying hair in perfect marcelled waves, she looked much like a visitor to her own ranch house.

  Yet maybe Meredice Williamson was not as vague as the general estimate of her, for she now pondered my face a moment more and then asked: "Are you Beth McCaskill’s other boy ?"

  Which wasn’t exactly my most preferred phrasing of it. But she did have genealogical fact on her side. So I bobbed yes and contributed: "Jick. Alec’s brother."

  "Wendell thinks highly of Alec," she confided, as if I gave a hoot in hell about Mr. Double W’s opinion. So far as I could see Wendell Williamson was a main contributor to Alec’s mental delinquency, encouraging him in his damn cowboy notions. The summer’s sunder of my family followed a faultline which led to this doorstep. Fair is fair, though, and I couldn’t really blame Meredice Williamson for Wendell’s doings. Innocent as a bluebird on a manure pile, this lady seemed to be. Thus I only said back: "Yeah. So I savvy."

  Just then the leading edge of rain hit, splatting drops the size of quarters on the flagstones of the walk. Meredice Williamson peered past me in surprise at the blackening sky. "It looks like a shower," she mustered. "Wouldn’t you like to step inside ?"

  I was half tempted. On the other hand, I figured she wouldn’t have the foggiest notion of what to do with me once I was in there. Furnish me tea and ladyfingers? Ask me if I would care for a game of Chinese checkers?

  "No, that’s okay," I replied. "I’ll wait in the bunkhouse. Alec likely will show up there pretty quick. I’ll shoot the hooey with him until the rain’s over and then head on to town." Here Meredice Williamson’s expression showed that she was unsure what hooey was or why we would shoot it. In a hurry I concluded: “Anyway, thanks for the borrow of your barn."

  "You’re quite welcome, Jake," she was saying as I turned and sprinted across the yard. The rain was beginning to pelt in plentiful drops now, pocking the dust. Flashes of light at the south edge of the storm and the immediate rumbles made me thankful again that I was in off the rake, even if the haven was the Double W.

  * * *

  Strange, to be in a bunkhouse when its residents are out on the job. Like one of those sea tales of stepping aboard a ship where everything is intact, sails set and a meal waiting on the galley stove, but the crew has vanished. Any bunkhouse exists only to shelter a crew. There is no feel of it as a home for anybody, although even as I say that I realize many ranch hands spent their lives in a bunkhouse. Alec himself was a full-timer here, and would be until he and Leona tied their knot. Even so, a bunkhouse to me seems a place you can put up with for a season but that would be enough.

  If you are unaccustomed to a bunkhouse, the roomful of beds is a medley of odors. Of tobacco in three incarnations: hand-rolled cigarettes, snoose, and chewing tobacco. The last two, in fact, had a permanent existence in the spit cans beside about half the bunks. These I took special note of, not wanting to kick one of them over. Of too many bodies and not enough baths ; yet I wonder why it is that we now think we have to deodorize the smell of humanness out of existence. Of ashes and creosote; the presence of an elderly stove and stovepipe. All in all, the scent of men and what it takes them to lead the ranch hands’ life.

  I glanced around to try and figure out which bunk was Alec’s. An easy enough mystery. The corner bunk with the snapshot of Leona on the wall above the pillow.

  Naturally the picture deserved a closer look.

  It showed Leona on a horse in a show ring—that would be Tollie Zane’s during one of his horse sales—and wearing a lady Stetson and leather chaps. And a smile that probably fused the camera. But I managed to get past the top of Leona, to where something else was tugging my eyes. Down the length of her chaps, something was spelled out in tooled letters with silver spangles between. I moved in for a closer look yet, my nose almost onto the snapshot, and I was able to make out:

  ENGLISH CREEK

  M

  ●

  O

  ●

  N

  ●

  T

  ●

  A

  ●

  N

  ●

  A

  Well, that wasn’t the message that ordinarily would come to mind from looking along Leona’s leg. But it was interesting.

  I could hear voices, and men began trooping in. The hay crew. And at the tail end of them Alec, who looked flabbergasted to see me sitting on his bunk.

  "Jicker, what in blazes—" he started as he strode over to me. I related to him my scatter rake situation an
d he listened keenly, although he didn’t look perceptibly happier with my presence. "As soon as the rain lets up, I’ll head on to town," I assured him.

  “Yeah, well. Make yourself at home, I guess." Now, to my surprise, my brother seemed short of anything more to say. He was saved from having to, by the arrival of the Double W foreman Cal Petrie and the other two riders, older guys named Thurl Everson and Joe Henty. Both had leather gloves and fencing pliers, so I imagined they were glad to be in away from barbwire for a while, too.

  Cal Petrie spotted me perched on the bunk beside Alec, nodded hello, and steered over to ask: "Looking for a job?" He knew full well I wasn’t, but as foreman it was his responsibility to find out just what brought me here.

  Again I explained the scatter rake-lightning situation, and Cal nodded once more. "A stroke of that could light you up like a Christmas tree, all right. Make yourself to home. Alec can introduce you around." Then Cal announced generally: "After supper I got to go to town for some sickle heads for the mowers, and I can take two of you jaspers in with me in the pickup. I’ll only be in there an hour or so, and you got to be ready to come home when I say. No staying in there to drink the town dry, in other words. So cut cards or Indian rassle or compare dicks or however you want to choose, but only two of you are going." And he went off into the room he had to himself at the far end of the bunkhouse.

  In a hay crew such as the Double W’s there were ten or a dozen guys, putting up two stacks at once, and what struck me as Alec made me known to them was that three of the crew were named Mike. A gangly one called Long Mike, and a mower man naturally called Mike the Mower, and then one who lacked either of those distinctions and so was called Plain Mike. The riders who had come in with Cal Petrie I already knew, Thurl and Joe. Likewise the choreboy, old Dolph Kuhn, one of those codgers who get to be as much a part of a ranch as its ground and grass. So I felt acquainted enough even before somebody chimed out: