The Son

Chapter Forty-eight. Diaries of Peter McCullough, AUGUST 1, 1917

Most of the drillers are progressing twice as fast as the Colonel and his alcoholic henchmen. At least forty rigs visible from the road. Quiet nights are a thing of the past.

The town is overwhelmed not just with drillers and landmen and speculators, but now with the men who build storage tanks and dig trenches, who haul pipe and wood and fuel, who repair tools and other equipment. Everyone is working at twice last year’s wages.

In news of the dead: a man’s body was found behind the Cabot Inn (what Wallace Cabot is now calling his house). A moonshiner’s still exploded in the tent city. A roustabout sleeping under a truck was crushed.

Our driller claims this is nothing. Wait till all the rest of those rigs get running, he said. It will be a river of blood and bodies.

I ask María what she thinks of all this. She says she is trying not to.

AUGUST 3, 1917

My father sold twenty-eight hundred acres of leases under the old Garcia pastures to Magnolia Oil. Nearly a thousand an acre. Drillers on the Midkiff and Reynolds pastures are getting shows a few hundred feet beneath the surface, and the Colonel’s rig (now staffed professionally) hit a good show of oil at eight hundred feet. That or my father spiked the well corings. Regardless, it appears that our money worries are over for the next ten or so generations. This depresses me enormously.

Naturally Magnolia wants to drill near the house, where my father’s discovery well was (the only one actually flowing), but I said I would not allow it.

That area is now a half-mile pit of stinking black sludge. Sullivan and I rode past it today. He is bitter about the oil, and worried about his job.

“You know I am glad about this oil,” he said. “But I can’t even get a glass of water in town without someone trying to charge me for it.”

“Well, now we can afford to get all this brush cleared off, get these other pastures cross-fenced…”

“What’s the point of getting the brush off if we have to look at this shit all day and listen to those drillers all night. Not to mention they leave every goddamn gate open.”

We continued to look at the oil spill.

“Think he’ll sell the cattle?” he asked.

“I won’t let him.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling the boys. He’s always had his mind on other things but you… you are not the type to let that happen.”

It is quiet and I consider that Sullivan has not said a word against my father in the thirty years I’ve known him.

“We’ve got twice as many head as we did two years ago,” I said. “We’ve got twice the work.” The reason for this occurred to me and I winced. I began to wonder where María was.

“But the cattle won’t make money like this stuff. That’s what everyone is worrying over.”

“Well, they shouldn’t.”

Then I added: “Have you heard about this Garcia girl?”

He didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if he was chewing his thoughts or if he hadn’t heard me. We continued to ride and then he said: “I believe everyone has heard of her, boss. In these three counties, anyway.”

“It’s a difficult situation.”

“That is putting it lightly.”

“What do you reckon about my wife?”

“Maybe she’ll get kicked by a horse. Or fall into a river.”

“My luck has never been that good.”

“That is true,” said Sullivan. “If anyone will fall into a river, it will be you.”

AUGUST 4, 1917

Today, for the first time, we go to McCullough Springs together. At first she keeps a comfortable distance, as if she is an employee, but I take her hand. We have lunch at Almacitas, drink Carta Blancas, linger in the street holding each other. I am not sure I have ever felt better. Though part of me wonders if we are doing this as a bulwark against the tide that is rising around us. As if we might stop it with love. Which, of course, is ridiculous.

TONIGHT WE ARE sitting in the library, my head in her lap, when I say: “Why didn’t you ever get married?”

She shrugs.

“But really.”

“I had lovers, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It isn’t, and it gives me a bad feeling to think about, but I persist.

“I won’t give myself to anyone who doesn’t respect me,” she says. “I would rather be dead.”

“They couldn’t have all been so bad.”

“I should have been born a man,” she says.

I pinch her thigh.

“They expect you to look at them adoringly, regardless of what they have done, and if they don’t expect you to wash their clothes, they expect you to keep after the woman who does.” She shrugs. “And the Mexicans are the worst. A Mexican man will take you to a place, say a nice hotel, or a nice view in the mountains, and show it off as if he made it. And part of him really believes it.”

“It’s bravado,” I say.

“Regardless,” she says. “He believes it. And that is why I never married. And never expect to.”

I give her a hurt look.

She leans over and kisses me. “Except to you, of course.”

I nuzzle into her lap and wrap my arms around her waist. But when I look up at her again, she is staring out the dark window, and doesn’t appear to notice me. “There is another story,” she says.

LONG AGO, HERE in the Wild Horse Desert, there was a young vaquero, very handsome, though very poor, who was in love with the daughter of a Tejano rancher.

This girl, who was almost too beautiful to look at, was desired and courted by every rancher’s son on both sides of the river, though being of pure heart, she was more interested in horses than men, and dreamed only of a certain stallion that ran with the wild mustangs. This horse was unusual in both his pure white color and his size, sixteen hands. In addition to his perfect form, he had the toughness of a paint, the speed of a Thoroughbred, and, like the girl, he was coveted by every man who had ever seen or heard of him. But none could ever catch him.

When the young vaquero learned how much the girl loved this horse, he decided to make her a present. For months he studied its tracks and discovered its secrets. Then he waited all night at a hidden watering hole, and when the stallion came in, he roped it. He fed it plums and persimmons and chunks of piloncillo. He repeated this process for many weeks until the horse allowed himself to be stroked and touched, and then led with a halter, and then saddled. But even then he would stand only in one stirrup, never trying to mount the horse, until he knew the horse would not mind. And in this manner he broke the horse to the saddle without breaking his spirit.

After more gentling, the vaquero brushed and groomed the white stallion and rode him to the house of the Tejano rancher, where he called softly to the rancher’s daughter. When she opened her window she recognized the vaquero instantly, and the horse as well, and knew that this was the man she would marry. They shared one chaste kiss, but agreed to find a priest before they did anything else.

Unfortunately they were not alone. The fat son of an Anglo rancher had seen the entire thing, because when he was not forcing himself upon servant girls he was hiding in the bushes outside the window of this beautiful Tejana, watching her disrobe and doing unspeakable things to himself.

(Was this in your mother’s version of the story, I ask.)

(She ignores me.)

He returned to his father with news that the most beautiful girl anyone had ever seen was about to marry a common vaquero. And then he and his father laid an ambush.

With their specially made rifles they waited until the vaquero’s back was turned and then murdered him, and, for the rest of their days, told all their friends of the beautiful shot they made, at a very great distance, on a Mexican.

But when they reached the body of the young vaquero, the white stallion had returned to protect him. He bit and kicked at the rancher and his son and so they murdered him as well. Then they cut off the vaquero’s head.

The ranchero’s daughter, when her vaquero did not return, took her father’s pistol and murdered herself. But God does not allow noble beings to be separated, and thus the vaquero can be seen on his horse at every full moon, with his head in his lap, riding his ghostly white stallion with the other mustangs, looking for the spirit of his intended.

(I believe you have the story wrong, I tell her.)

(How so?)

(That is an old folktale of ours as well, I say.)

FOR MANY YEARS there was a black stallion, not white, that ran with the mustangs and carried a ghostly rider on its back. The sight of the rider made the mustangs stampede, and thus people always knew when the black stallion appeared, because it sounded like a tornado had touched down in the desert, thousands of mustangs galloping across the caliche.

Very few men ever got close to the horse and its rider, but the few who did said he was sitting normally, except that his head was not attached. His head, along with a sombrero, was strapped to his lap. And so for many years, the cowboys shot at the ghostly rider, but the bullets went through his body like a paper target, and he continued to ride.

Finally, a few cowboys decided to solve the mystery. They waited all night at a watering hole, and when the black stallion and the headless rider appeared, they shot the horse.

On the back of this beautiful mustang there was an old dry corpse tied upright with rawhide, the head tightly bound to his lap. After many months of inquiry, it was discovered that a young Mexican by the name of Vidal, who was a notorious womanizer and horse thief, had met his end.

The men who caught him were Creed Taylor and Bigfoot Wallace, legendary Texans about whom many books have been written. They were great practical jokers, and so to make an example out of Vidal, they cut off his head and tied both his head and body to an unbroken black stallion that had been caught in a trap with other mustangs. They released the stallion and his headless rider, who confused and terrorized the populace for over a decade.

“YOURS IS THE true one,” she says.

“It’s an old story,” I say. “It’s well known.”

“Of course,” she says. “There are many convincing details. First, there is a dead Mexican who was a horse thief, as all dead Mexicans are. Second, there are two famous Texans, who decided, after killing a man, that they would decapitate him for fun. Third, they decide that merely decapitating this man is not funny enough. It will be hilarious if, instead of burying him, they tie his body to a wild horse.”

“Hmmm,” I say.

“And the final convincing detail is that a group of Anglo cowboys, when faced with the task of capturing a legendary black stallion, instead of roping him, or building a simple trap, decided to shoot him, because it required the least effort.”

“That is why I don’t tell stories.”

“No, it was educational.”

“Yours is the one our children should hear.”

“No,” she says. “Our children should know the truth.” Then she kisses my forehead and strokes my hair, as if I am a child myself.