Crow Fair: Stories

A Long View to the West

The wind funneled down the river valley between the two mountain ranges, picking up speed where the interstate hit its first long straightaway in thirty miles. Clay’s car lot was right on the frontage road, where land was cheap and the wind made its uninterrupted rush whatever the season of the year. Before winter had quite arrived to thicken his blood, while the cattle trucks were still throwing up whirlwinds of cottonwood leaves, the wait between customers seemed endless. He couldn’t even listen to the radio anymore. In the snowy dead of winter it was easier somehow. Now, face close to the window, and one hand leaning against the recycled acoustic tile that lined the walls, he stared down at the roofs and hoods of used vehicles in search of a human form.

When, just before lunch, a rancher came in about a five-year-old three-quarter-ton Dodge that Clay had sold him, Clay was glad even to receive a complaint. Barely over five feet tall in his canvas vest and railroad cap, the rancher held a pair of fencing pliers as an invitation to mayhem. He shouted, “It’s a lemon!” Clay, trying to lighten the mood, said, “The space shuttle was six billion, and it’s a lemon.” But he ended up getting sucked into a retroactive guarantee just to keep the guy’s business. With my luck, thought Clay, I’ll end up throwing a short block into it, or a rear end. Once the rancher, a friend of Clay’s father, had the repair deal in hand, he asked, “How’s the old man? Gonna pull through?”

“He’s just about dead,” said Clay emphatically, and went back into the shack with its telephone, cash drawer, and long view of the vehicle lot. At the end of the frontage road, where it met Main Street, a newspaper tumbling through plastered itself against the boarded-up frozen-yogurt stand. The metal sign on wheels in front of the tire-repair shop was flapping back and forth. The Dodge pulled back onto the road and went by the shack. The rancher, barely able to see over the wheel, gave Clay a wave, and Clay smiled broadly saying, “Eat shit!” behind his teeth.

It was really no longer a hospital, just a place providing emergency care until an ambulance or helicopter could take you to Billings. Three nurses and a doctor were on call. Clay got his father admitted there on the strength of being one of three ranchers who had founded the little hospital when it actually served the rural population then flourishing. It had the advantage of being close to home, with views that meant something to the old man, like the one of the big spring where they’d watered cattle for a century. There was not a lot to be done for him, at least not here. About all anyone could do was listen to his stories, and that seemed enough. Clay of course had heard them all, so there remained only to notice the thickening of detail with each retelling, assuming he could stand to hear his father express yet again his love for the life he’d lived while Clay pondered his own peaked existence at the lot. Should you interrupt the telling, the hard look would return, the face of a man who, throughout his life, had called all the shots that really mattered. Seeing his father in the bed, Clay could hardly help thinking about the ease that lay ahead for him and his sister, even as guilt tore at him. Times had changed all right, but that didn’t excuse much.

Weekdays Clay listened for as long as he could; and on weekends his sister, Karen, came over from Powderville, sometimes with one of her kids. There were three boys, but two were too wild for that long a ride. Karen said that while she was gone they always got up to something obnoxious if their dad couldn’t find time to come in off the place and kick their asses.

The hospital sat right in the middle of the old Matador pasture, where the longhorns coming up from Texas had recovered from the long trail. Clay’s great-grandfather had been one of the cowboys, and the story was that when they first arrived the Indian burials were still in the trees, and the ground was covered with stone tepee rings. A picture of that first roundup crew, with the reps from five outfits lined up in front on their horses, was Bill’s most cherished possession, and he fretted constantly about its safekeeping when he was gone. He seemed to feel that no one in his family cared anything about it. That was probably true. Either that or they were sick of hearing about it.

It had begun to rain, and with the rain came the smell of open country. Karen was supposed to have been there already, and Clay really wanted to get back to the lot. No matter how often intuition betrayed him, he could still convince himself that someone was going to come along and buy a car today. Apart from that he felt a little angry, but at what he wasn’t so sure, maybe everything.

“I don’t know what’s keeping her,” he said to his father.

“Probably had to wait for Lewis to get out of school or find someplace to stash them two other little shits.”

His father couldn’t see as far as the door. So when Karen appeared there, she was able to summon Clay discreetly. For a small brunette, in her jeans and boots and hoodie she could be as emphatic as a trooper telling you to pull over. She was proud to be married to a cowboy.

“I’ve got to take Lewis in for a shot. He got bit by a skunk and, now, the poor little guy is going to have to have that series. So you need to hold the fort.”

“My God, Karen, I can’t stay anymore. I’ve been here all morning.” He couldn’t say he’d been fucked over by that sawed-off rancher just half an hour past breakfast, because Karen had zero sympathy so far as his job was concerned.

Karen said, “You’re going to have to,” and just walked on out. By the time it had occurred to him to offer to take Lewis for the shot, his sister was gone and his father was awake. What good had it been, the old man herding thousands of cattle over all those years only to wind up with his arms like Popsicle sticks and pissing through a tube. Nothing to show for his trouble but stories his son would have to hear all over again, with no relief but the chance of picking up something new about Leo the Illegal or O.C. or Robert Wood or some horse plowed under way back when. Sometimes during these tales, Clay would think about pole dancers or money pouring out of a slot machine or some decent soul appreciating something he’d done, such as that time he acquired the nearly new fire engine the government had bought because the Indians on the Rez didn’t want it, since they already had a bunch just like it they hadn’t gotten around to wrecking. The town enjoyed a lot of use out of that engine, even though no one seemed to remember who found it for them, or even that day the big red beauty first rolled down the street, sirens blazing and blinding chrome all over it. So much for quiet acts of heroism. Maybe it was time to start drawing attention to himself. A Ford dealership in Great Falls was having a Christian fund-raiser with TV stars on Saturday, and something like that might well be in his future. Or just toot his own horn down at the chamber of commerce.

It was the last Mother’s Day before World War II. You and Karen was just little bitty. Your ma and me drove into the ranch yard, and Leo, the illegal who worked for me then (Here we go, thinks Clay), said some old fellow had arrived about sundown on a wild horse and rolled out his bedroll under the loading chute, put his head on his saddle, and gone to sleep. I had this feeling that it was old Robert Wood, and sure enough it was. (Yep!) Of course I caught him before he fell asleep, just caught his eye to tell him I would see him in the a.m. I pretty much knew what he was after. (So do I.) He had a band of mares up on the mesa behind our mares, and they were running out with wild horses there. Folks from town had come out from time to time to chase them around, and they was absolutely wild. I had been hoping for the chance to gather them for Robert when we had enough hands, because it wasn’t going to be easy at all. (And what a bitch it would turn out to be.)

Clay’s only defense against these onslaughts was the things he couldn’t say aloud.

Several months before this, Robert went out into the sagebrush to catch his red roan stud, which was running with some draft horses by the springs. He came with nothing but a little pan of oats and a lariat. (Wait’ll you see how good this trick works.) Just as he got his stud caught, one of the draft horses bites the stud, and Robert gets hung up in the rope and dragged. Your uncle O. C. Drury was plowing up wheat stubble about two miles away and saw the dust cloud from where Robert was being hauled. At his age, Robert really never should have lived, but he did. He was in the hospital all winter.

I ran into him after he’d healed some, and he said to me in his kind of whiny voice, “Bill, I been laid up. Can you carry me to the place?” I went with him into his little shack of a cabin, and he stripped down to his long underwear. He pulled back the covers of his bed, and there was a great big nest of mice, just full of little pink babies. He carefully moved them to one side and got in next to them, pulled up the covers, and nodded thanks for the lift. (Set your watches for hantavirus.)

Gradually, I heard rumors that he was back at work pulling up his poor fence and halfway cowproofing it. He brought back his black baldies and his bulls. He was even seen crawling around the cockleburs packing a sprayer with a full tank and a rag tied across his face. He had always lived and worked alone and was still on the place where he was born. (Same dog bit me.)

Robert was an old-time spade-bit horseman. His horses were quick and bronc-y, and the only safe place around them was on their backs. But they were quiet in a herd of cattle and had the lightest noses in Montana. O. C. Drury hauled cattle as a sideline, and he hated to haul Robert’s calves. Invariably, he’d arrive in the ranch yard mid-October, and Robert would complain, “O.C., I’m so shorthanded just now. Would you catch up that bay and help me bring these cattle in?” O.C. would feel obliged, and he’d crawl on the old bay or the old sorrel, both of which would know right away it wasn’t Robert Wood. So one false move, and the bronc ride was on. (Nice way to treat someone helping you out.)

So I let Robert sleep through the night, and by the time I woke, just before sunup, I could smell his fire and coffee. Then in a bit I could hear Leo’s voice, and I knew the two of them were working on a plan. I threw on the lights and got dressed, went into the kitchen, and started cooking. I knew I didn’t want to put on a breakfast for everyone. I was buying time, and I was still hoping I could talk Robert out of his dangerous plan to bring these horses off the mesa with such a small crew. Leo came in with Robert, who had to be helped up the steps, and we shared a big breakfast, and then we smoked and shot the shit. Leo was a little Indian-looking feller from Sonora, with black bangs over his face. You couldn’t joke with him, because he was always serious, but he could work like nobody’s business and make any kind of a horse do like he said, even the ones you’d rather not get on. (Of course he didn’t have a sense of humor. Wasn’t nothing around there that was funny.)

Robert had an old-fashioned, long-nosed face, and you could see a little blue vein in the thin skin of his forehead. He was a puncher who had outlived his time. (Sound familiar?) He hated farming and especially alfalfa, which he thought was the enemy of the Old West. I suppose he was seventy-five. The hat he wore was just the way it came out of the box — no crease, no nothing. He wore it year-round. He said a straw hat was a farmer’s hat. He said that was what you wore when you went out to view the alfalfa.

We always laid our plans at breakfast, except if I was sitting on the john writing out the day’s work on a matchbook cover. Robert wanted us all to go up the switchback together all the way to the mesa. “When we get there,” he said, “I’ll ride around to the crack.” The crack was a deep washout, and Robert didn’t want the horses to get past it and escape. Instead, he’d hide in the brush and keep them from getting there. Once they were out on the flat, we’d just ride on past them and turn them down toward my corrals.

That crack was deep and steep, and personally I didn’t think Robert was going to be able to turn them there. I felt sure this herd of canners would jump the crack even if it meant breaking their necks and no horse or rider would consider following them. If it had been me, I’d just fog them off toward the neighbors’ and gather them up when we had us a big-enough crew. (Why take a knife to a gunfight?) But Robert didn’t think a lot of our horsemanship after all his years on the N Bar and Niobrara. So I thought better of voicing my doubts.

He looked pretty stove up leading his sorrel mare out of the pen behind the scales and tied her to a plank of the chute, just his kind of horse, sickle hocked, good withers, short pasterns, low crouped, and coon footed, a real mutt of a cow horse you wouldn’t take to a halter class. (In short, the whole reason God invented cars.) Robert looked barely strong enough to throw his old Miles City saddle up on her or reach over to pull the Kelly Brothers grazer into her mouth. He led her around to the front of the chute, threw one rein up around the horn, and looped the other around the corner post. She had her nostrils blowed out and white all around her eyes, but then all his horses looked half loco.

Robert limped around to the holding pen, squeaked open that old gate, went inside, crawled up the chute, out the end, and sorta fell onto his horse. She snorted, backed away stretching out that one rein until he could reach down and retrieve it, plait them both through the fingers of his left hand, which he lifted a tiny bit, and the mare sat down on her hocks and backed across the ranch yard. Robert lifted his hand, and she stopped, straightened up, and looked around for some work to do.

Karen came in with Lewis, who wanted to talk about his rabies shot, but Karen raised a finger to her lips, and now all three of us had to hear this damn thing all over again. Lewis at least had a coloring book, and Karen could tap around on her smartphone. I was dying for a cigarette.

Ramrod straight as we go single file up the trail, Robert had his boots plumb home in iron oxbows; he turned to look us over. It wasn’t long before we were on top. Leo loped out to the west and made a little dust. His small form sank and then nearly disappeared as he made a big ride around the horses. They had wheeled up to watch him and only began to disperse and feed as the circle he made came to seem too grand to concern them. I was able to ride straight back to the far side of the mesa, and by the time I got there, Leo was closing in my direction and those horses, two miles off, had already begun to drift away.

We rode straight at them, and in two jumps they were smoking. Our horses caught their wildness and for a minute or two were pretty hard to handle, kicking out behind and trying to run slap through their bridles until we got the best of them. (I admit this is actually scary.) The mares had such a cloud of dust behind them it just seemed to drift off into that day’s weather, like from a grass fire. We’d seen Robert just float out of there to remind us how coarse broke we had our ponies.

Robert was nowhere in sight, and there was no possible way to turn them down the road the way we had planned. We knew the mares had winded him somewhere because they suddenly slowed down and blew out their nostrils. The crack, which was big enough to be an earthquake fault, was the place to turn them, so long as they didn’t try to jump it. All we could do then would be to throw them down the slope and let them play hell with the farming on all those little ranches along the river. What a mess. (Here comes the part I still like hearing even if I sometimes wish I could have been there.)

Then, everything changed. Way past the crack, Robert broke out of the brush on his horse. Hell, we didn’t even know he was in there, and Leo on the back of his sweaty gelding just looked at me. The mare came out in a flurry, greasewood stobs racking off in the air around her. Those wild horses froze. Either they would leap that crack and fly past him, or Robert could jump it himself and turn them down toward the house. I couldn’t see doing much of anything to save this wad of cayuses, Roman noses, and big feet. Back at the time of the Boer War, some remount outfit had turned draft studs to put some size on them, but it turned up in all the wrong places. Leo looked like they hurt his eyes.

They boiled back toward us, and we whooped and hollered at them. Leo took down his slicker and got them bunched up once more toward the trail, where they didn’t want to go, but Robert kept yelling for us to drive them. They advanced his way like a bright cyclone; and just before they broke around him, Robert spurred his horse straight at the huge crack like he was riding into hell, but the mare just burned a hole in the wind, and when she reached that yawning gap, she just curved up, into the air, Robert easing back into the saddle with his stirrups pushed out in front, the mare’s legs reaching toward the far shore. I saw them land, but Leo had his eyes covered.

I guess when the wild horses challenged Robert to raise them, he just raised them out of their chairs, because as he leaned up in his saddle, deep slack of reins hanging under the sorrel’s neck, taking time to count them, they were just the quietest most well-behaved herd of critters, ready to jog on home to my corrals. When we had them locked in, Robert said, “There, got that out of the way. I was afraid we might have trouble with them.” He rode over to where he left his bedroll and said to me, “Mind if I ask your Mexican to cheek this mare while I slide off? She’s bad to paw at you when you get down. Man’d rather piss down her shoulder than go through that.”

In the hall, Clay admired some of Lewis’s coloring before following Karen to the cemetery to pick out a plot, leaving Lewis in the car with an electronic game he played with his thumbs. They strolled through the old part with a kind of Boot Hill of wild old-timers, before they hit some of the kids they’d gone to school with, Charlie Derby (gored by a rodeo bull), Milly Makkinen, homecoming queen (overdose), and so on.

They selected a plot near two trees and a long view to the west. “Well,” said Karen, “at least we got that out of the way.” Efficiency was always her tonic; Clay felt rotten. He stopped to see his father before he locked up at the car shack. He was surprised to find him back so soon. Clay tried to make light of it. He said, “So, I interrupted something? What’re you doing?” He wished he hadn’t asked.

“Dying. What’s it look like?”

Clay didn’t know what to say, so he said, “And you’re okay with that?”

“How should I know? I’ve never done it before.”

Clay was surprised to feel so shaken. He’d known when he’d brought his father here that it was the end of the trail, but hearing him admit it reminded Clay that he was more frightened than his father was. Soon he would be gone and the stories with him. Maybe he’d be able to remember them during hard times or, really, whenever he needed them. Maybe he needed them now.