The Son

Chapter Twenty-seven. Diaries of Peter McCullough, APRIL 17, 1917

“Would you ever go into farming yourself, Colonel?”

“Sure,” he says. “Natural progression of the land.”

There are perhaps fifty of them, all in their Sunday best, eating tenderloin and drinking claret in the great room, listening to the Colonel expound on the wonders of our southern climate. I consider leaving my shady spot on the gallery to tell them that his policy was to shoot at any farmers who tried to toll us on cattle drives. And has said his whole life that grubbing in the dirt is the lowest form of human existence. He blames this on his time with the Indians, though it is common among all horse people, from landed cattleman to poorest vaquero.

“… the winter garden of Texas,” he is saying, “two hundred eighty-eight growing days… you’ll never lift a hand to shovel snow again.” Scattered applause. “Further,” he says, “you will find the proportion of advanced females greatly reduced compared to what you are used to in Illinois.” Laughter and more applause. I close my ears; I decide to go for a walk.

Naturally they will only show the farms that are doing well; none whose water was too salty for irrigation, none of the farms on the old Cross S land, subdivided less than ten years ago, most of which are reverting to the lowest class of scrub rangeland. The soil as dead as anything you might find in Chihuahua.

APRIL 18, 1917

Ran into Midkiff’s son Raymond at the store. He was driving a few critters along the road after the hailstorm this afternoon when he saw the caravan of Illinois farmers pulled over under some trees.

They were standing in the road examining hailstones the size of oranges, remarking how they might have been killed. One of them called to Raymond to ask if this weather was unusual.

“Sure is,” he told them. “But you should have been here last year, when it rained!”

When the Colonel returned he was furious and told me we needed to fire the limp-dicked droop-eyed son of a bitch who was driving brindle calves on the lower road.

Explained we could not fire Raymond Midkiff. He said that was fine — we would shoot him instead. Reminded him the Midkiffs are our neighbors.

Naturally, all the farmers thought Midkiff was joking. The irrigated fields are quite lush. They have no mental ruler to understand the country here; a few of them were overheard repeating the old saw “if you plow, the rains will follow.” I wonder what century they are living in.

ALL OF IT, for some reason, makes me feel almost unbearably lonely… but I have always been a keen student of that emotion.

APRIL 19, 1917

The entire Pinkard Ranch — over one hundred sections — has been sold and divided. The family is moving to Dallas. I went to visit with Eldridge Pinkard. He could barely look at me. We are nearly the same age — his father settled this country not long after the Colonel.

“The bank would have taken it one of these days, Pete.” He shrugged. “Even with beef where it is, this drought… I had to pull the money out before there was none left.”

“Heard you bought a little in the cross timbers.”

He chuckled bitterly: “Two whole sections.”

“Probably run a few head.”

He shrugged and scuffed the dirt, looked out over what had been his pastures. “Before you get to thinking I am too badly looed…”

“I don’t,” I lied.

“You do, but I appreciate it. I wasn’t going to say this to any of you who’s staying, but you and me have known each other since there was Indians.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I was mighty down in the mouth about this until I got to talking to Eustice Caswell. On the draft board?” He shook his head. “Pete, a year from now all the good men’ll be overseas. I can’t even take a piss without some bond salesman drumming me for ten dollars. And… truthfully I am jealous of some of those boys who are shipping out, because by the time they get to France, they will have seen more country than I’ve seen in my whole life. And once I realized that, I got to seeing this as the last clear swing I’d ever get. And that I was a fool if I didn’t take it.”

“I guess.”

“It ain’t like our daddies grew up here, Pete. It ain’t like people have lived here long. This is just the place they happened to stop.”

“The fences got all of us,” I said.

He looked as if he might cry, but he didn’t, and then I saw that he was not happy, but he was not sad, either. The idea of moving away from here appealed to him. “You know if I was staying, I’d build roads through the whole place, get to where I could run it with a quarter of the hands, drive ten minutes instead of riding four hours, eat home every night, do the feeding out of trucks. You could get it pretty well oiled, if you put your mind to it. But even so…” He lifted his boot and ground it down on a mesquite seedling. “Let’s face it, Pete. This land is niggered out. I wish they’d taken pictures when we were kids, because I want to forget it ever looked like this.”

WHEN I GOT home, my father revealed he has known about it for months — he picked up half the minerals underneath the Pinkard land. I asked how we were going to pay for it.

“I decided to sell the pastures across the Nueces.”

“Where are we going to keep the bulls?”

“After the promoter’s cut we’re clearing $31.50 an acre. We can fence off whatever we want. This pays for the minerals under the Pinkard, plus half the Garcia acquisition.”

“You can see those pastures from every high point on our property,” I said.

“So what? We’ll look at the pretty farmer girls.”

“What if I refuse to sign the deed?”

“You can refuse whatever you want,” he said.

Except I cannot. I signed as he knew I would. I console myself with the fact that the Nueces pastures were not exactly convenient, anyway. The Colonel consoled me by pointing out we kept mineral rights. “Anymore, the surface ain’t worth two shits,” he said. “Luckily them ignorant Yankees were too busy carrying on about their college to figure that out.”

Fine except the Nueces pastures were the only sensible place to keep the bulls. It will be much harder to control breeding now, more work for us, more work for the vaqueros, and much more expensive.

As for the minerals, there has been a good deal of drilling along the big river; trucks and roughnecks no longer garner any notice. Lease prices have tripled. But still the closest strikes are at Piedras Pintas, far to the east, which produce only a few hundred barrels a day under pump. The rest is just gas, which for now is useless.

APRIL 26, 1917

The Colonel, who has been gone a week, returned today from Wichita Falls with a nearly new rotary drilling rig on several old trucks. He claims to have gotten a good price. Feller who owned it went bankrupt, he told me, as if this were a selling point.

Accompanying the Colonel is a very drunk man who claims to be a geologist. A second drunk who claims to be a driller. Drunks number three through five are the floor- and derrickmen. They look to have been sleeping in hog wallows.

“Where did you get all that?” I asked him.

“Wichita Falls,” he said, as if I didn’t know where he’d been.

“We puttin’ in more windmills?”

“Don’t you worry about it.”

He and the geologist went to explore in the sandy Garcia pastures. The rig builder, toolie, and driller retired to the Colonel’s porch to drink.

MAY 4, 1917

Having come up with nothing better, they have located a spot to drill, barely half a mile from the house, based on a foggy recollection of a seep my father might have seen fifty years ago, which has not been seen since.

“That’s an interesting spot,” I told him, “where we can see and hear it from the house. I guess you couldn’t find anywhere else in almost four hundred sections.”

“That’s what the doodlebug told me. Always listen to the doodlebug.”

There are times I can’t tell if he thinks I’m a simpleton, or if he really is one himself.

MAY 27, 1917

Panic sweeping through the Mexicans. Six of our top hands, including Aarón and Faustino Rodriquez, informed me they are resigning and returning to Mexico — they do not think it will be safe for their families.

Reason: The good people in Austin just approved funding to expand the Ranger force. Number of Rangers on border will increase to eight hundred (currently forty).

I tried pointing out to the vaqueros that Mexico is a war zone. They don’t care. Safer than here, they say.

Freddy Ramirez (our segundo who first caught the Garcias stealing cattle) also put in his notice. The factories in Michigan are still hiring Mexicans. Or so he has heard.

I tried to make a joke about it: “Michigan? Muy frío!” Rubbing my hands on my arms.

He did not find this funny. “The cold we can survive. The Rinches, maybe not.”

MY FATHER DOES not care that we are losing seven of our best hands. After putting half our employees to work assembling the derrick and getting supplies to the drilling site, the real work has begun. Din is oppressive. Where there was once the sound of cattle, a creaking windmill, it now sounds like a train station, though the train never gets closer, or farther, or quieter. Because of the heat all the windows are open. I walk around with cotton stuffed in my ears.

JUNE 19, 1917

Drilling continues and so far nothing but sand. Meanwhile, because of the sale of the Pinkard Ranch, and other smaller ranches like it, the town is nearly unrecognizable. Trucks and vegetable pickers instead of horses and vaqueros. Gilbert’s store selling fertilizer by the ton. Went there to buy some digging bars, a few shovels, and a case of.30-cal gov’t for the Lewis gun.

“Is that my price as well?” Everything was three times as expensive as it had been.

“Nah. I figure the few of us left ought to stick together.” He pretended to do some figuring on a pad and reduced the bill by half. It was still a 20 percent increase over the previous month. I decided not to mention it.

“Who’s left?” I said.

“Far as the greasers, none of them. About ten families, Vargases, Guzmans, Mendezes, Herreras, Riveras, I don’t even fuckin’ know who else — all happened the same day, it seemed like — they sold their lots to Shaw who owns the rooming house, bought a few old trucks, and headed to Michigan, forty or fifty of them in one caravan. Cleaned me out of coats and blankets. They say Ford hired two thousand Mexicans in one factory. Which is pretty funny when you think about it, greasers building cars and all.”

Considered mentioning that several of the “greasers” (Vargas and Rivera, at least) had gone to college in Mexico City while Gilbert and his cross-eyed brothers were diddling heifers in Eagle Pass.

“Even old Gomez sold out. Everything in his store for cost. I got crates and crates of metates, chorizo, horsehair bridles, and hide ropes. Plus his curandero shit. You believe that? You are looking at the new town curandero, right here.”

The thought of any Mexican trusting Niles Gilbert to sell them medicine was depressing. I paid the bill and tried to hurry out, but not before he added: “Funny thing is, I do miss all those people, which I never thought I would say, given all the trouble they caused.”

Fine sentiments for a murderer. I suppose I am no better.

DESPITE THE DISAPPEARANCE of the last of the original Mexican families (many of whom have been here five or ten generations — longer than any white), a new crop has arrived to fill their places. They speak no English and will be easy prey for men like Gilbert. Still, it is better than northern Mexico, where a state of open warfare persists. Dunno what they’re complaining about, said my father. At least there’s no taxes.

After I got home, I rode out to help rotate the beefs off the number 19 pasture. We are getting everything cross-fenced, and as Pinkard said, this place is beginning to run like a well-oiled machine. But when does the soul go out of it? That is what no one seems to know.

JUNE 20, 1917

Need a new truck. Have settled on a Wichita. The 2.5-ton would be a dream. Cannot decide between the worm drive and the chain drive.

Considered a Ford (they now make the Model T cars in Dallas) but everyone who owns a Ford has had a shoulder dislocated (or broken) when the starting handle kicked back. You can judge a Ford driver by the cast on his arm — that is the old joke.

You cannot build junk and expect to survive in today’s world. People want things that last.

JUNE 21, 1917

A poor Mexican woman came to the door today. Was surprised she was bold enough to come through the gate. She looked familiar but I could not place her, presumed she was the wife or sister of one of the hands. She was thin and pale, wearing only a shift and a thin shawl over top, and when the wind blew her dress against her body I could see her legs were nearly skeletal.

“Buenas noches,” I said.

There was a pause.

“You don’t recognize me.” Her English was perfect.

“I guess not,” I said.

“I am María Garcia.”

I stepped back.

“I am Pedro Garcia’s daughter.”