The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair

Cry About a Nickel

Clouds hung like webs in the firs and a fine mist wet the air. Blackberry thickets sprawled wide and high, most of the berries withered past picking. Back home, on an autumn morning like this, we might be sharpening knives and boiling water to butcher a hog. But here I was in the wet Cascades. I pulled my pickup to the side of the road and got out. I looked down the steep slope at the Clackamas River tumbling at a good clip over and around rocks. I made my way down a path to the bank and found it littered with fishermen, shoulder to shoulder, casting lures and dragging them past a great many large fish just sitting in a pool as if parked in a lot. Being sincerely ignorant I figured I was running little risk of sounding so when I asked the man nearest me—

“What kind of fish are those?”

The man let his eyes find me slowly and his smile was a few beats behind. “Why, they’re steelhead.”

“They don’t seem to be very interested,” I said.

The man turned back to his line and said nothing.

I watched a bit longer, then climbed back to the road. In South Carolina fishing was done quietly, in private, for creatures hidden from view. At least a man could say, “Aw, there ain’t no fish here.” But this seemed like premeditated self-humiliation.

A boy at the house told me I’d find his father in one of the stables. I wandered into the near one didn’t see him, but I caught a mare nosing around her hock. I found a halter on a nail outside her stall and put it on her, tied her head up.

“What’re you doing there?” a man yelled at me.

“She was nosin’ around her hock and I saw it was capped and had ointment on it. I raised her head up so she wouldn’t burn her nose.”

“What do you know about capped hocks? Who are you?”

“Are you Mr. Davis?”

“Yeah. I’m waitin’”

“Name’s Cooper. I heard you had a job open.”

“What do you know about horses?”

“I know enough to tie a horse’s head up when I’m trying to blister her.”

“Where’re you from?”

“Carolina.”

“North?”

“No, the good one.”

Davis rubbed his jaw and studied the mare. “We don’t get many blacks around here.”

“The horse said the same thing.”

“Five hundred a month. Includes a two-room trailer and utilities.”

Davis had twenty-three horses, most pretty good, and a lot of land. He rented rides to hunters and to anybody who just wanted to get wet in the woods.

The first thing was to clean out the medicine chest. The box was full of all sorts of old salves and liniments and I just had to say aloud to myself, “Pathetic.”

Davis had stepped into the tack room without me noticing. “What’s pathetic?” he asked.

I sat there on the floor, thinking oh no, but I couldn’t back off. “All this stuff,” I said. “Better to have nothing than all this useless trash.”

He didn’t like this. “What’s wrong with it?”

I looked in the box. “Well, sir, I appreciate the fact that this thermometer is fairly clean, but better to have a roll of string in the chest than keep this crap-crusted one on all the time. This is ugly.”

“So, you’ve got a weak stomach.”

I shook my head. “You’ve got ointments in here twenty years old. Why don’t you grab the good stuff for me. Where’s the colic relief? You’ve got three bottles of Bluestone and they’re all empty.”

He didn’t look directly at me, just sort of flipped me a glance. “Fix it,” he said and left.

There were no crossties, so I had to set up some for grooming. I was currycombing a tall stallion when Davis’s son came into the stable.

“Hey, Joe,” the kid said.

“Charlie.”

“Mind if I help?”

I looked at the teenager. It was really a question. As a boy, I would have been required to work the place. “I don’t know,” I said. “Your father might think I’m not earning my pay. Don’t you have other chores?”

“No.”

I didn’t understand this at all. I looked around. “I tell you what. You comb out the hindquarters on Nib here and then dandy-brush his head. I’m gonna shovel out his stall real quick.”

The boy took the comb, stood behind the horse, and began stroking.

“No,” I said and I pulled him away. “Stand up here next to the shoulder, put your arm over his back, and do it like that. So, he won’t kick the tar out of you.”

Charlie laughed nervously and began working again. I shoveled at the stall and watched him. He was a nice boy. I couldn’t tell if he was bright or not, he was so nervous. I stopped and listened to the rain on the roof.

“Does it ever stop raining?” I asked.

“One day last year.”

I laughed, but he just stared at me. Then I thought he wasn’t joking. “You’re not saying—” Before I finished he was smiling.

“How’d you learn about horses?” he asked.

“Grew up with ’em. You don’t spend much time with the animals?”

“Not really.”

“People say that horses are stupid.” I fanned some hay out of my face. “And they’re right, you know. But at least it’s something you can count on.”

Then Davis showed up. “Charles.”

The boy snapped to attention away from the horse and, glancing at the currycomb in his hand, threw it down. “I asked Joe if I could help, Daddy.”

“Get in the house.”

The boy ran from the stable.

“He’s a good boy,” I said.

Davis picked up the comb and studied it. “I’d appreciate it if from now on you just sent him back to the house.”

“All right.” I leaned the pitchfork against the wall and moved to take the horse from the crossties. “He’s got a bunch of chores in there to take care of, does he? Homework and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

Davis looked around at the stable and at the horses, at the stallion in front of him. “The other stables look this good?”

“Gettin’ there.”

It was a fun-time job, all right, and I went to bed sore every night. Finally, I took a weekend off and drove the hour to Portland. I got a hotel room downtown on Saturday and tried to figure out what I was going to do all day. I went to the zoo and a movie, ate at a restaurant, watched bizarrely made-up kids at Pioneer Square, saw another movie, shot pool at a tavern, and went to bed. I dreamed about women. You work ranches and you talk about women and you talk about going to town to get yourself a woman, but you end up watching movies in dark rooms and shooting pool with men.

After a big breakfast at the hotel restaurant, I headed back to the ranch. The weather in Portland had been nice and, to my surprise, the sun was out all during my drive home. I parked by my trailer. Charlie was splitting wood over beside the house. Seeing him doing this made me feel good. I went inside and stowed my gear. There was a knock.

“Come,” I said.

Davis came in. He had a bottle with him and a couple of glasses. “How was your trip?”

“Oh, it was a trip.”

“Mind if I sit?”

I nodded that he was welcome and watched him fill the glasses. “You like bourbon?”

“You bet.”

“Here you go.” He handed the drink over.

I took it and sat with him at the table. He knocked his back and I followed suit He poured another round.

He cleared his throat and focused on me. He had already had a few. “You’re all right, Cooper.” He leaned back. “Naw, I mean it.” He sipped from his glass. “You want to hear how I lost my wife?”

I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him.

“Killed herself.”

I had a headache.

“Know what she died of?”

“A sudden?”

He frowned off my joke. “She took pills. She was an alcoholic and a diabetic and a Catholic. All three, any one of which is fatal alone.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He drank more. “They said she was manic, too.” He looked out the window at the sky which was growing overcast. “Charles is a good boy.”

“He’s quiet.”

“That’s my fault, I guess.”

“That’s not a problem.”

“He’s small, you know.”

I just looked at him.

“I don’t have a lot of patience. I don’t have a lot of friends either. I guess the two go together.”

“I reckon.”

“Tell me something, Cooper. What do you think of a man who can’t talk to his kid?”

I swirled my whiskey in the glass and held his eyes.

“I’ve got a temper. A bad one.”

I nodded.

“You want to hear what happened at Charlie’s school last year?”

“To tell the truth, no, I don’t.”

Davis pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and fumbled his way through lighting one, blew out a cloud of blue smoke and coughed. He stood and went to the window, watched as his son split wood. “Look at him. He could do that all day. He’s small, though.”

I polished off my drink.

“You think I’m crazy.”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

“Well, I ain’t crazy. He ain’t right.” He was hot and I was beginning to think he was touched. “Don’t tell me how to run things!”

“Sure thing.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about.

He snatched up his bottle and walked out.

I fell on my bunk and looked at the ceiling. I wanted to pack up and leave, but I needed the job and I wasn’t the sort to leave a man in a lurch. He had a mare ready to drop and a couple of horses with thrush real bad. I didn’t like what I had seen in Davis’s eyes. He was slow-boiling and soon there wouldn’t be anything left to scorch but the pot.

I fixed some grits and scrambled eggs and sausages and sat down to dinner by myself. An evening rain came and went and I could see the fuzzy glow of the moon behind the clouds. I felt bad for little Charlie. Funny, I hadn’t thought of him as small before, but he was. I felt sorry for him and I didn’t know why. I wasn’t about to get involved, though. My mother had a number of hobbies, but raising fools wasn’t one of them.

A couple of days later, four fellows rented horses and went into the hills for elk. I knew when they rode out that all they were going to get up there was drunk. They didn’t deserve the weather that day. It was almost hot when they came back. I was trimming hooves. Charlie was in the stable with the pregnant mare.

“Woowee,” said one man, “what a day.”

“That was fun,” said another, groaning and trying to work a kink out of his back as he climbed down. “That was more fun than huntin’ coons.”

They all dismounted and I took the horses. They’d ridden the animals hard right up to the end and they were sweating like crazy.

I called Charlie over. “Take these horses out and walk ’em around, get ’em cool.” As he stepped away, I yelled for him to loosen the girths. His dad had let up a little and he was freer to hang about and help.

The men lined up along the fence and watched Charlie in the corral.

“Ain’t he pretty?” I heard one of the men say. I thought he was talking about a horse, but another spoke up.

“Hey, I heard about that locker-room business,” he said.

“Oh, this was the boy?”

“Yeah.”

I stepped out and saw that Charlie was ignoring them pretty good. They said a few more things and I got fed up, started toward them.

“Looks like we got the nigger riled,” one said.

I stopped at the crack of a rifle shot. Davis was out of his house and just yards from the corral.

“You boys paid?” Davis asked.

The leader, more or less, put his hands up and laughed a little. “Yeah, we paid.”

“Then get along.”

“Okay, Davis. We’ll get along. Nice boy you got there.” The man chuckled again. They got into their car and left.

Davis watched them roll away. “Charles,” he said. “Go on inside.”

I caught Davis by the arm. “Hey, just let him forget about it.”

He pulled away, didn’t even look at me.

I watched him disappear into the house. Things were becoming a little more clear. More reason to ignore it. My motto: Avoid shit.

It was raining real good when I came back from the grocery store. As I swept around the yard I saw Charlie standing by the tree behind the house. I parked at the trailer, got out of my truck, and went inside for lunch. I finished my coffee and shivered against the chill in the air. Outside, I found it warmer than in the trailer. I started to go check the horses when I noticed that Charlie was still standing by that tree. I went to him. At twenty yards l could see that he was tied to it.

“What’s the story?” I asked, looking around.

The boy just cried and I was pretty damn close to it myself. Rain dripped from his hair and ran down his face.

“Your father do this?” I was looking at the house, but I knew Charlie was nodding. “Why? Did he say why?” I was hesitant about untying him. I thought Davis had flipped and might be waiting at a window to blow my head off. I shouted as I reached for the rope. “Davis! I’m untying the boy! Okay!” I undid the knots and led the kid back to the house.

Davis was sitting in a chair in front of the fireplace. He looked really spaced out. “Hey, Davis, you all right?”

He said nothing.

“I brought Charlie inside here.”

“I heard you.” He leaned forward and poked at the burning logs. “He wouldn’t tell me who they were.”

“He’s a strong boy?’ I said.

“You could call it that.” He sat back again. “Earl Pryor has a mare ready, wants to breed her with Nib. Be over tomorrow.”

“I’ll have him ready. What time?”

“Said eight-thirty. Maybe I should have Charlie watch.”

“For the love of God, Davis, stop and think. Listen to yourself. Charlie’s a good kid who got beat up — think of it like that. It’s none of my business, but—”

Davis cut me off. He stood and faced me. “You’re right. It’s none of your business and you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Charlie didn’t do anything.”

“Pack up, drifter.”

I looked at him for a second, but I’d heard him right. “Okay. Fine. But listen up, you’re gonna drive that boy away and for no good reason.”

But he wasn’t listening. He was at his desk. “I’m paying you for this month and next. Fair enough?”

I looked across the room at Charlie. He had settled on the sofa and was looking out the window. Davis waved the check in front of me. I wanted to tell him what he could do with his goddamn money, but I didn’t. I didn’t look at his face. I just took the check, went to the trailer, and started packing.

I kept waiting for a knock on the door; Charlie coming to say goodbye or Davis coming to tell me to have that stallion ready in the morning. But there was no knock. I climbed into my pickup and drove away.