...Last Summer
by
L. Clint Welch
Acknowledgements:
Jessie
first said that I should write this book.
Janeth, Dixie, Kent, Stephanie, and Carol, critically read, and thereby
found numerous errors and suggested beneficial editorial changes, but I must
bear sole responsibility of the final product–for better or worse.
Dedication:
To
my parents and extended family who provided a fertile ground for the growth of
a boy.
Chapter I
On Thursday afternoon, June 7, 1951,
the final bell of the school year rang and the homeroom of the Vaughn
Elementary School fifth grade exploded with flying paper wads, kids erupting
from seats, and school bags being slung over shoulders. Guys yelled and punched each other on the
shoulder. Girls squealed, bounced
about, and hugged each other. A long
and shrill whistle from a student captured the room. Mrs. Chavez, the teacher, sat at her desk, leaning forward
resting on her elbows. Even she, whose
frown at times seemed frozen, smiled.
Last week she mentioned a summer vacation to Yosemite.
I was out of the fifth grade and had
a whole summer with no school and no homework.
Next year will be the sixth grade with, probably, Mrs. Clay. Me, Johnny Baker, in the sixth grade–hard
for me to believe. But first a whole
summer free–a whole summer in two week chunks–a summer in which I would return
to Cuervo and see Cora.
I stuffed my final report card in my
school bag, grabbed my lunch box, and headed for the door. Rushing kids crowded the walls. Those going one way tried to dodge those
going the other. Echoes of steps,
dropped books, and chatter filled the halls.
“Bye,”–“See you next year,”–“Adios,”–“Call me,”–“Hasta Luego.” I joined the flow out the main
entrance of the two-story sandstone building into the bright New Mexico
sun. I walked past the high school
toward the gate of the parking lot where parents waited. Some high school boys drove away with horns
honking and tires spinning, causing gravel to clatter behind and puffy dust
clouds to hang in the air. They were
behaving like idiots and only trying to impress the girls.
Two other students and Davey, my
brother, and myself lived on the far north side of town and rode a school bus,
which was not a bus at all, but a woody station wagon. There were supposed to be five of us, but
Don, who was one grade ahead of me, seldom rode. Don’s big brother, a junior in high school, had his own car, a
Cadillac, and drove the two of them most of the time. Don hadn't ridden this morning.
Don was a bit of a snob. He
never offered to give Davey and me a ride even though we were directly on the
route.
Sam was the school bus driver. He was sort of fat and sank into the seat as
if it were molded to fit him. His arm,
tattooed with a heart and arrow, hung out the window. Sam’s thinning gray hair lay plastered on his head. I never saw him outside the woody.
I was the first to get to the woody
and climbed into the back seat. “Hi,
Sam. No more school. Great, huh?” Sam grunted. I sighed and
leaned back. School was over. I'd miss my friends for the whole summer,
but the free time would be terrific.
Every two weeks we’d move and there would be a new place to hunt
lizards, new places to bicycle, and new things to do.
“The summer will be over 'fore you
know it.” Sam took a last puff from a
cigarette and flicked the butt to the ground.
As the butt lay dying among the dozens of others scattered on the
gravel, a thread of smoke curled up and disappeared.
“Whatta you gonna do in the summer,
Sam?”
“Rest.” Sam tried to sound gruff, but it was an act. I liked Sam a lot. He said wise things sometimes.
“Not me. I'm gonna do a lotta exploring and hunting and things.”
“Youth is wasted on the young.” I wondered what Sam meant by that, but
didn't ask.
Davey and Maria scrambled through
the gate. They were in the second
grade. Davey's shirttail was hanging
out on one side and his hair was all messed up. His shoelaces were untied.
Maria was a Mexican girl whose family worked on a ranch. Last Christmas, Sam gave Maria a big
beautiful doll. Sam said it was a prize
for living the farthest away. I figured
that Sam gave it to her because he knew she wouldn't get much, if anything,
else. Sam did nice things like that
sometimes. Last Easter, he had
chocolate rabbits for all of us. He claimed
they hopped out in front of the bus.
Davey got in the back seat with me,
and Maria climbed in the front seat beside Sam. She would be the last to get off. The only one missing was Sarah, a high school girl.
“School's out. School's out,” Davey sang as he bounced on
the seat.
“Why don't you shut up,” I
hissed. Davey stuck his tongue out at
me. I pretended that I was going to hit
it. Instinctively, he raised his arm
for protection.
At times during the summer, Davey
would be the only kid I'd see for weeks.
We played lots of games, but most of them ended in arguments. We had the most fun doing things like hunting
lizards and bicycling where there wasn't a winner and a loser. But sometimes we'd count the lizards killed
or we'd race the bicycles–then we'd argue and it wasn't fun anymore.
Maria got her report card from her
lunch bag and looked at it. Sam asked,
“Did you get good grades, Maria? You
gonna getta go to the third grade?”
“I thenk so.” I could see mostly C's and a couple of
B's. Maria never spoke much and had
trouble with some English words.
“Looks plenty good to me,” Sam said.
“Hey, your girl friend will still be
with you,” I muttered to Davey.
“She's not my girl friend,” Davey
whispered as he dug his elbow in my ribs.
I pushed him away and looked out the window toward the gate.
“Well as usual, we're waiting for
Sarah. Where is she?” Sarah would be late. She was always late and today would be worse
because she'd have to say good-bye to her friends.
“You might as well get used to it,”
Sam said. “You'll be waiting for women
all your life.”
I watched the dust clouds
settle. It was Thursday–two days before
Dad would come home for the weekend.
We'll have to pack everything and get ready for the train to get us
Saturday. On Monday, we'd be in
Hermanas.
Tomorrow, Mom planned to go to
Tucumcari to visit Aunt Patty, who was sick in bed. Mom tried to visit her often.
I was born in Aunt Patty's house and she was my favorite aunt. Mom told me that Aunt Patty saved my
life. I was born with my cord wrapped
around my throat and the doctor laid me aside because Mom was having
problems. I wasn't breathing and was
very blue. Aunt Patty started rubbing
my back and chest and I just started crying.
The doctor was totally surprised.
That's what Mom and Aunt Patty told me.
The tailgate door opened and Sarah
dropped her French horn next to the spare tire, walked to the side of the
woody, and slid into the seat beside me.
“Finally,” I mumbled loudly.
“Quiet, pip-squeak,” Sarah said as
she settled in causing the car to lean a bit toward her. She was a little bit fat.
“You gonna play that thing this summer?” Sam asked as he turned the key in the
ignition. The engine started.
“What else is there to do way out
there?” Sarah moaned. She complained a lot about living so far
from town. She couldn't go to many parties
and movies with her friends. Sometimes
she'd stay overnight in town with a girl friend. Most of the time she was fun and we teased each other. She'd call me her little boyfriend, Johnny and put her arm around me
sometimes. I would push her arm away
and pretend to be angry.
***
The old woody station wagon bounced
over the Santa Fe tracks and turned left on the way out of town. The dirt road was corduroy and even if Sam
missed the worst spots the ride was rough.
I looked behind at the big cloud of dust we left trailing us. The Southern Pacific, the Santa Fe, and a
couple of highways crossed at Vaughn.
Dad worked on the Southern Pacific Railroad–he called it the SP–as a
signal maintainer. I knew some of what
he did and it was an important job because he kept the signals working. The signals were needed to keep the trains
from running into each other. He had to
know many things. He talked about
insulators and bonds and circuits and rebuilding batteries. Each workday morning he would ride on his
motorcar on the railroad tracks to some signal in his district. In the old days, from what I'd seen in a
movie, motorcars had to be pumped by hand, but Dad's motorcar had a gasoline
engine. If he were going to rebuild a
battery he'd load the motorcar with cans of lye, water, and little bottles of
oil and putt-putt down the railroad track.
I had asked for some lye one time for my chemistry set. He gave me a tobacco can full of the big
white crystals and told me to be careful.
Dad hadn't always worked for the
railroad. After Dad and Mom were
married, they had started out trying to farm like my grandparents, but had to
give up. Dad started to work for the SP
when I was about three years old. He
didn't have enough seniority yet to have a permanent district, so was assigned
where he was needed. Most of the time,
especially during the summer, he moved around to relieve the signal maintainers
who were going on vacation. Two weeks
here–two weeks there. And during the
summer, when school was out, Mom, Davey, and I went along.
We lived on a railroad siding in an
outfit car. An outfit car was a boxcar
made into living quarters. It had a
kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom, all with windows. The kitchen was at one end and the bedroom
at the other. The kitchen had a wood
burning stove and running water from an overhead tank. Davey and I slept in the living room on a
hideaway bed next to a dresser in which we kept our clothes.
Wherever we went, we had to figure
out how to get water to fill the tank, where to set the clothesline, and where
to put the outhouse. Dad usually got
the men from the section gang to dig the hole for the outhouse.
The section gang, bossed by the
section foreman, were the men who make sure the track was in good shape. They replaced rotten ties and made sure
there was enough slag underneath the rails.
They didn’t have anything to do with the signals. Most of them were Mexicans and spoke Spanish
with each other. Dad could speak
Spanish and got along well with them.
When they got letters they couldn't read from the government, Dad would
help them understand.
Dad was handy at solving all sorts
of problems. He could fix cars and
leaky faucets and things like that. He
could do almost anything, but when things went wrong, he had a bad temper and
cussed a blue streak. Mom, Davey, and I
would be very quiet and let him get over it.
Besides the outfit car there was
another boxcar that went with us. The
coupling was never unhooked. We called
it the tool car and it was used mainly to store stuff in–like the washing
machine and other big stuff. When we
moved we'd lay the outhouse and the clothesline poles down in the tool
car. Dad kept most of his tools in
there too. Things like shovels,
wheelbarrows, and picks. At one end of
the tool car there was a little room that Dad called the bachelor's room. It had just enough space for a bed, a
closet, and a little table for a kerosene lamp. It had a small heating stove that served for cooking as well. Davey and I would sleep in the tool car
sometimes in the summer.
During the school year, Dad asked
the SP to park us on a spur at Vaughn so that Davey and I could go to one
school for the whole year. Dad usually
came home on weekends, unless he was close–like Corona or Santa Rosa–and could
return every night. This last year was
the second year that we had gone to Vaughn.
I had gone half of my first grade year at Duran and half at
Cambray. We were in California for my
second grade year because Dad was helping install something called
CTC–centralized traffic control.
Halfway through the year they advanced me from the second grade to the
third. We came back to Vaughn for my
fourth grade. Last summer, Dad was also
on relief duty and we moved around as well, so I was familiar with many of the
towns in which we would live. Now the
fifth grade was over.
***
During the winter, in the midst of a
snowstorm, the outfit car would get very cold.
Snowbanks would form underneath and icy wind would blow through the
walls. To fight against the cold, Mom
would rise and feed the fire several times a night. By the time Davey and I got up, everything would be warm and
cozy. In the morning, Mom would get up
first, light a kerosene lamp, stoke the fire, and cook breakfast. Cream-of-Wheat was my favorite.
My friends were always surprised that
the trains passing thirty feet away on the main track didn't wake me during the
night. You just got used to them. If they blew their whistle I'd awake, but
otherwise, I wouldn't hear a thing.
Usually on the Friday before we were
going to move, we wrapped all the dishes and stuff in towels and put them in
boxes on the floor so they wouldn't break.
Then on Saturday we'd drive to the new place and wait for the
train–usually the local–with our boxcars to arrive and park us on a
siding. Two weeks later we'd do it all
again. Our first move, in two days,
Saturday, was to Hermanas. Hermanas was
isolated about twenty miles west of Columbus close to the Mexican border. It had a population of about thirteen. There wouldn't be any other kids there. We had gone there last summer and there
wasn't much to do, but this year Davey and I had our bikes to ride so we could
explore farther.
I was looking forward to
Cuervo. It was the last place we'd go
in the summer before we came back to Vaughn.
There were a couple of other kids at Cuervo who we spent a lot of time
with last year. Cora is a girl about a
year older than I and she has a younger brother, Ray, about Davey's age. We made picnic lunches and hiked two miles
to Red Hill, a small red mesa with huge rocks and caves. We played pretend games. Davey, Ray, and I played as if we were
soldiers fighting the Korean communists and Cora was a nurse. If we were wounded she always saved us. Sometimes, we'd just explore looking for
rattlesnakes or Spanish gold. It would
be good to see Cora again. She had
sandy blond hair and ice blue eyes. I’m
not sure why, but I liked being near her.
Chapter II
Thinking of Cora, I peered dreamily
out the window of the woody and saw the garbage lady walking on the side of the
road toward town. I nudged Davey,
“There's the garbage lady coming back from the dump.” She walked to the garbage dump every day and returned with a bag
full of stuff slung over her shoulder.
She always dressed in black with a tattered shawl draped over her
head. She wasn't very big and walked
with her head bowed. She was old and
Mexican. She shuffled along looking
down at the road in front of her. Mom
had told us never to bother her and just let her alone and said she was
probably crazy. Davey and I tried to
stay far from her.
The garbage dump was a big hole,
halfway up the side of a hill, beside the road three miles out of town. I don't know if the hole was natural or if
someone had dug it. People drove up,
stop, backup, and dump their garbage or whatever. Sometimes people burned parts of the garbage dump. On a hot summer day, the smoke from the fire
mixed with the smell of rotting garbage and made you gag. If the wind was from the north the whole
town could smell it. Some parts of the
dump smelled worse than other parts.
Sometimes Davey and I hiked to the
dump. There were fun things to do. If we could find any old tires we'd take
them across the road where we'd give them a big push down the hill, aiming to
miss any large boulders. They'd roll
faster and faster and start bouncing higher and higher. If they made it to the bottom of the hill
they rolled for a long way. We weren't
the only ones to roll tires. There must
have been a hundred tires lying on the ground at the bottom of the hill. If you could roll one beyond the farthest
tire you were the Supreme Champion.
Sometimes the tire wouldn't get very far before it'd hit a rock or a
yucca plant and wobble around and fall over.
We couldn't find many tires in the dump, though. When we found the first one we'd argue about
whose turn it was to do the pushing.
We'd see the garbage lady
sometimes. She always searched through
the fresh garbage looking for bits of stuff she could eat. She knew exactly when Aragon's Grocery Store
threw away fruit that was just starting to rot and she'd gather it. She always grabbed any piece of clothing she
could find. I wondered if she had any
family. I never spoke to her and she
ignored us as if we weren't even there.
Wild cats lived in the rocks around
the dump. They weren't actually wild,
but were cats that people had dumped.
Some of the cats may have been born there. The cats acted wild and maybe some of them were. I guess they lived off the rats and
garbage. There were plenty of rats
around. If you were very quiet for
awhile and no one drove up, the cats would think there was no one around and
come out of their holes. They looked
just like ordinary house cats. High
school boys would sometimes bring their 22's and shoot at them.
Davey and I would often bring our
BB's and have target practice. We would
scrounge through the garbage, gather six or so bottles, set them up in a row,
and take turns to see who could break the most of them. We seldom missed. If we saw a rat or a cat we'd shoot at them too, but usually the
rats were too quick and the cats were too far away for a BB gun. Davey and I had Daisy Red Ryder Special BB
guns. The Special had a horse embossed
in the stock and some checkering on the grip.
Dad and Mom had bought them for us for Christmas. We shot a lot of BB's–costing a dime for a
box of hundred BB's. You had to pour
the BB's in a magazine that surrounded the barrel. If you tilted the gun the BB's would rattle as they rolled down
the magazine so you had to be careful not to rock the gun if you were sneaking
up on something. A lever action cocked
the gun. They were accurate to about
ten yards. We hunted lizards mostly.
Sometimes, we would find useful,
good things in the dump, but Mom wouldn't let us keep them. I found a fantastic clock that almost
worked. It would run for a minute or
two and then stop. Mom called it a
piece of junk. Mom didn't like for us
to bring anything home from the dump.
She said we were just like the garbage lady. Davey found a perfectly good hammer one time. I figure it got dragged out accidentally
when someone emptied his pickup. Dad
did keep the hammer. I found a quarter one
time underneath a piece of old roofing.
Davey thought I should share it, so I bought some BB's and gave him some
to shut him up.
***
Our outfit car was parked a
half-mile off the dump road down the depot road. Sam dropped us off and turned around to drive back to the dump
road. Sam warned, “You kids have fun
this summer, but be careful. See you in
the fall.”
“Bye, Sarah. Bye, Maria.
Bye, Sam,” Davey yelled as we both waved. It wouldn't be until the end of summer that we'd see them again. Maria moved her hand back and forth without
bending her wrist. I could barely see
her.
Sarah waved and blew me a kiss. “Bye, my little boyfriend, Johnny.” I waved my fist at her. She winked back.
As Davey and I walked to the outfit
car the woody disappeared behind a cloud of dust. Mom had laundry hung on the clothesline behind the outfit
car. The washer and the washtubs were
still out, waiting to be put away. The
washer had a gasoline engine that churned the clothes. My Grandma Baker thought it was a newfangled
thing and didn't want to have one even though Dad had offered to buy her
one. It would've saved her a lot of
work. She said it was too noisy and
would make her crazy.
Out on the farm where my Dad grew
up, by Corona, my grandma washed clothes once a week in her back yard by
building a large fire underneath a black cast iron washing pot filled with
twenty or thirty gallons of cistern water.
She used a broom handle to stir homemade lye soap and the dirty laundry
together in the boiling water. When
clean, the boiling hot laundry was draped over the stick and put into
galvanized washtubs filled with clean water to be scrubbed on a washboard and
to rinse out the soap. The white things
were given a final rinse in a tub of water that had bluing added. After rinsing, the clothes were wrung dry by
feeding them through a wringer.
Grandma's wringer had to be turned by hand. The clothes were then hung on clotheslines to be sun dried and
wind whipped. When dry, they were taken
inside to be ironed, folded, and put away.
The clothes smelled very fresh.
It was an all day job. Grandma
Baker wasn't big, but she worked extremely hard. She always seemed in a good mood and I never saw her angry at
anything except animals. If the
chickens got into the garden she'd go crazy.
She hated hawks and skunks.
Since Mom's washer had an engine,
she didn't have to do much scrubbing.
Mom heated the water on the cooking stove and then poured it in the
washer. The wringer could be connected
to the engine so that it turned mechanically.
Mom was always afraid that Davey or I would get our hands caught in the
wringer. “It'll pull your arm off,”
she'd warn. The engine made washing a
lot easier. The engine used gas that
Dad got from the railroad.
Davey and I made miniature toy
pistols out of clothespins. We'd use
the spring to propel small rocks, but the heads of kitchen matches were more
fun. Usually when the match head was
shot, the friction ignited it and you'd have a flaming match head flying
through the air. You couldn't aim them
very well so Mom always made us go outside to play.
Mom used laundry bluing for ant
bites as well. There were so many ants
it was impossible, if you played outside, not to get stung. There were black ants and red ants. The stings of red ants hurt more. When Davey and I were little, ant bites
caused us to cry. Mom would remove the
cap–made with a cork stopper–from the bluing bottle and dab bluing on the
bite. The blue circle around the
swelling made us feel better and we'd stop crying. Now that we're older, we still get stung by ants, but not as
often. They don't hurt as much, it
seems, but we still put the bluing on, if we can. It can’t hurt.
A scorpion once bit Dad as he
crawled into a battery box. A battery
box is a large trunk-sized wooden box that is half-buried beside the railroad
signals. It has a hinged lid with a
lock hasp. Inside the box are the
chemical batteries that made the signals work.
The scorpion apparently was on the lid and fell into the collar of Dad's
shirt and stung him on the back of the neck.
Dad's neck had a swelling the size of a softball on it. He went to the doctor and after a week or so
the swelling went down, but it left an ugly scar. Dad never said it hurt.
When I see a scorpion, with its tail curled above its back, I get goose
bumps and cringe imagining one inside my shirt.
***
Davey and I climbed the steps to the
kitchen door of the outfit car. Mom had
already packed most of the stuff and boxes were lying about on the floor. “We're home, Mom,” I yelled as we put our
lunch boxes and school bags on the kitchen table. We got Kool-Aid from the icebox.
“I'm in the bedroom folding sheets.”
Mom and Dad married when Dad was
nineteen and Mom was seventeen. They
eloped. Mom wasn't particularly happy
at home and life was hard for her at times.
Dad had graduated from high school and Mom had finished the sophomore
year.
Mom did all the housework and took
pride in her cooking and how the house looked.
She called the outfit car a house.
I think she was so happy to have a home of her own that she believed it
was her job to keep it as nice as possible and be the best housewife she could
be. The house was always clean and
neat. She was a good cook and baked all
sorts of pies, cakes, and cookies.
She'd always wash the dishes soon after we ate. Davey and I never ran out of clean clothes.
When she had time, Mom crocheted. She made tablecloths, napkins, edging, and
all sorts of doilies. Some doilies had
pineapple designs and some had red roses.
The crocheting instructions for the pattern looked like code. It was abbreviated, Ch 1, sc in same loop, (ch 7, sc in next loop) around. I wanted to learn the code and it looked
like fun, so I asked Mom to teach me to crochet. I started a small doily with some thread that Mom gave me. Variegated, she called it. It had all different colors.
I was crocheting once at Grandma's
and Dad was teasing me that I was doing sissy stuff. Dad had ideas about what proper men's work was and what proper
women's work was. “Why Davey,” Grandma
started. She called Dad, Davey and called Davey, Junior.
It could get confusing sometimes.
“Don't you 'member learnin' tattin' when you were a young'un?” I couldn't believe it. Dad–tatting. I looked at Dad and grinned.
I didn't know what tatting was, but knew it was another way of making
doilies and edging.
“Oh, Mom, you had no need to mention
that,” Dad said and left the house. Dad
didn't tease me anymore, but after I finished the doily I didn't crochet
anymore. Mom said that if she had known
I was going to finish the doily, she'd have given me better thread.
When Mom had her housework done, she
would sit in a rocker, crochet, and listen to the radio. The radio sat on a library table and had
wires running to the batteries that were underneath the table. When the batteries got low, the sound would
get low and soon you couldn't pick up any stations. You had to keep buying batteries. Last year, when Dad wanted to listen to the Sugar Ray Robinson
boxing match, the batteries were too low.
Dad had the section foreman, Mr. Owens–Dad called him Paul–over and they were going to drink a
couple of Coors while they listened to the fight.
“Mary, why didn't you buy some
goddamn batteries?” Dad stormed as he
left the house. He and Mr. Owens sat in
the car and listened to the fight on the car radio. Snow covered the ground and they ran the motor to keep warm. I went and sat in the back seat for awhile,
but it was cold back away from the heater.
Dad hadn't been able to find any American station broadcasting the fight,
so they were listening to a Mexican station from Juarez. I couldn't understand Spanish, so I only
stayed for one round. “Johnny, close
the damn door,” Dad yelled as I left to return to the outfit car. Sugar Ray won in thirteen rounds.
***
“If you're hungry, have some
cereal. How was the last day of
school?” Mom asked from the bedroom.
“Boy, Mom, you're packed, all ready
to go,” I observed as Davey and I went into the living room, sat, and drank our
Kool-Aid.
Mom came out from the bedroom. She was wearing a white dress with large
black polka dots and a wide, black, shiny, plastic belt. She always wore dresses. I never saw her wear trousers or anything
like that. She usually wore an apron
but not now. Her black hair was
naturally curly, like Granddad Henderson's, and cut short. She worried about gaining weight, but I think
she looked beautiful. She had one front
tooth on the left that was crooked a little bit, but you couldn't actually see
it unless she opened her mouth wide–like when she laughed loudly. Her eyes were dark brown–maybe black. She plucked hairs from her chin sometimes
because they were dark and could be seen so easily.
“Had to get it done today, so we can
visit Aunt Patty, tomorrow. How are
your report cards?”
“I gotta B in History and a B in
Music,” I answered.
“The rest A's?”
“Yeah.”
“And you Davey?”
“I gotta A in Arithmetic and in
Reading. Do I gotta go to Aunt
Patty's?”
“Any C's?” Mom asked.
“Yeah–in stupid Art and in dumb
Spelling.”
“I hope you boys keep your grades
up. I never got a chance at good
education. It makes a world of difference. I want you guys to go to college and not
have to do hard work all your life.
Make us proud.”
“Do I gotta go to Aunt Patty's?”
Davey whined again. I think
Davey didn't like to visit Aunt Patty because she sort of favored me.
“I wanna go,” I said.
“Yes, you do,” Mom spoke to Davey,
“What am I gonna do? Leave you here all
by yourself all day long?”
“I'll be OK.”
“Something might happen. You're coming with us. I'm gonna need you guys to help me put the
washing machine away in a bit, so don't go off anywhere.
Chapter
III
The next morning we rose early and
left for Tucumcari on route 54. It was
about a hundred miles away and Mom wanted to get there and back before Dad
returned home. Riding in the back seat
of the Plymouth was boring. Vaughn is
on a flat grassy plain where people grow cattle and sheep, so there isn't much
to look at. The first town we came to
was Pastura–a few railroad houses and a small general store. We had never lived there. The district of the signal maintainer from
Vaughn covered that far. We drove
straight through.
“Why do we gotta go see Aunt Patty
all the time?” Davey whimpered.
“ 'Cause she's very sick and this
will be our last chance before we move to Hermanas.”
“Is she gonna get better?” I asked.
“Probably not. She's got cancer. There's not much that the doctors can do.”
“What's cancer?” Davey asked. “Is it like polio? Will I
get it?”
“No, it's a terrible disease that
mostly old people get. Young people
mostly get polio.”
“Is she gonna die?” Davey asked.
“Sometime, but we hope not soon.”
“Why doesn't she go to the
hospital?”
“She was in the hospital, but they
sent her home. They couldn't help her
none. She goes back from time to time
for a check up.”
“So why do we gotta go see her all
the time?” Davey continued.
“To show her we love her. She's part of the family. She's always been very nice to us. Helped us when we needed help and now we
need to show her that we care. Most of
her family lives far away and Uncle Fred, who works on the railroad too, has to
be gone a lot. We're the family that's
closest and now we're gonna be moving about, mostly far away,” Mom explained.
Uncle Fred was a big man and didn't
talk much. He did like to talk with Dad
about railroading, though. He was a train
engineer. Aunt Patty had some church
people and neighbors who helped her.
She had a couple of grown daughters–Mom's cousins–who lived in
Albuquerque and they came down when they could.
“There's nothing for us to do at
Aunt Patty's,” Davey complained.
“Play in the back.”
Mom got a Pall Mall out and pushed
in the lighter on the dash. Davey
looked at me and grinned. He put his
finger to his grinning mouth to shush me–as if I didn't know. “This cigarette lighter still doesn't
work. I wonder what happened to
it,” Mom mused. Davey and I weren't going to tell. Mom got her Zippo lighter from her purse and
lit her cigarette.
Last fall when Davey and I were
waiting–it seemed like forever–in the car, we were scrounging through the glove
compartment, seeing what was there. We
found a tire-patching kit, a bunch of papers, a flashlight, and a box of 22
shells. Dad kept the shells there in
case he ever ran out when we were rabbit hunting. Davey took a shell out, removed the lighter, and put the shell in
the socket where the lighter went. He
put the lighter on top of the shell and pushed it in with his thumb. It was probably a silly thing to do. There was a loud bang.
“What happened?” I asked Davey. The smell of gunpowder filled the car. I looked for blood.
“I don't know,” Davey answered with
his voice quivering. He was
scared. He was sucking on his thumb.
“Are you shot?”
He looked at his thumb. “No, I don't think so. It sure stung.” His thumb looked OK to me.
I didn’t see any blood.
“Where's the lighter?” I asked, looking around the floor.
“I think it flew in the back seat.”
“Let's roll down some windows.” I wanted to get rid of the smell so Mom
wouldn't be curious. Davey crawled over
the front seats into the back and rolled down the windows.
“I found it. Here it is,” Davey said as he held up the
lighter. I took it. The heating coil was dented, but it looked
OK otherwise. I put it back in the
socket. The cigarette lighter never
worked after that and we never told Mom or Dad why. They wouldn't've liked us going through the glove compartment and
we're not supposed to play with shells and things like that.
***
“We're coming to Santa Rosa. We'll live here later this summer,” Mom
announced. We crossed the bridge over
the Pecos River. We had lived in Santa
Rosa last summer. Santa Rosa was
interesting and different, because the river was there. There weren't many rivers in New
Mexico. On the south side of Santa
Rosa, there was a huge natural spring, an Artesian well that flowed out of a
large hole. The well, the center of a
city park, had had a fence built around it.
The water was very clear and you could look deep in the hole and see
fish swimming. A sign called it the Blue Hole.
“Can we go fishing again?” Davey asked.
“Probably, I'm sure Dad will take
you fishing again.”
“We gonna stop in Cuervo?” I asked wanting to know if we were going to
be able to see Cora and Ray. I wondered
if they knew we'd be coming later in the summer.
“Oh, Johnny, let's drive straight
through so we can get back home before Dad.”
“We wouldn't have to stay long,
Mom. I just wanna tell Ray and Cora
we'll see them later this summer.” I
wanted to see Cora so she would know I was coming back. When I last saw her last summer, I didn't
know if Dad would be doing relief this summer or not. We didn’t know from one summer to the next what we’d be doing or
where we’d be going.
“They probably aren't home. Maybe we'll stop on the way back if we have
time.”
“OK,” I agreed sulking. I always give up arguing too early. I never get what I want. Davey keeps arguing and gets what he wants
lots of times. I flopped back in the
seat and pouted. I knew we wouldn't
have time on the way back. As we drove
through Cuervo, I looked out the window, hoping to see Cora. I didn't see her. Lopez's store and Smith's filling station were almost empty. The Cuervo Bar and Liquor Store had a couple
of Mexican men sitting on the bench in front.
From Cuervo through Newkirk and into Tucumcari the country became wooded
with cedars and junipers on mesas and rolling hills. It was probably good deer hunting country.
It was midmorning when we got to
Tucumcari. Mom turned right onto Ash
Street. Uncle Fred and Aunt Patty lived
in a white house six blocks down on the right.
The house looked cozy from the outside.
A swing hung in a porch that was surrounded with morning-glories,
black-eyed Susans, and hollyhocks.
There were tall trellises at the ends of the porch that gave it a
boxed-in feeling and kept it cool in the summer. The front yard had a lush grass lawn and a brick walkway. Mom stubbed her cigarette out and combed
Davey's and my hair. “Be good and don't
fret.” Mom wanted us to look our best
when we visited anybody.
The front door was open, but the
screen door was held closed by a spring.
“Aunt Patty, it's me, Mary,” Mom shouted as she opened the screen door
and walked in. Davey and I followed
her.
“Come on in, child. Good grief.” Her voice came from a back bedroom. “Is Johnny with you?”
“Both of the boys are here,” Mom
replied as we walked through the living room and down the hall. The window shades were down and the lights
were out so it was dim. Davey and I
were quiet. It was a house that was
hard to talk in.
We walked into her bedroom. She was propped up in a bed and was covered
to her waist by white sheets and a white bedspread. She was wearing a blue silk-looking housecoat. Her gray hair was pulled back and held by a plastic
clip. She had glasses that were
half-moons and perched at the end of her nose.
A pencil was stuck behind her ear.
She looked thin, but I think she looked beautiful–like a queen. A reading light was on and there were books
and crossword magazines scattered around.
The window was open about six inches and a slight breeze was waving the
white lace curtains. A bunch of
medicine bottles and a pitcher of water were on a bedside table. A radio was playing softly. The room smelled like rubbing alcohol. She smiled and held out her hand. I ran into the room and gave her a hug. I could feel the bones in her shoulders. She put an arm around me and squeezed. She stunk.
“Johnny–little Johnny. I remember the day you were born. You came pretty close to dying, you
know? You were as blue as my house
coat, you were.” She told the story
every time I saw her, but I liked hearing her tell it. She tousled my hair.
I had to say something. “Yeah, but you saved me.”
“Me and the good Lord. And look at you now. Did you get good grades again?”
“Pretty good,” I answered.
Mom answered, “They were very
good. All A's except for a couple of
B's.”
“You're the smartest kid I’ve ever
known,” Aunt Patty said. She took a
quarter from the bedside table and put it in my hand. “That's for you and Davey.”
“You're looking good, Aunt Patty,”
Mom said as she bent over and hugged her.
“Sure glad you came. What about you Davey? Don't I get a hug from you?”
Davey then gave her a hug. “Wish I could've been there when you were
born, too. But it looks like you did OK
without me, huh?”
“Yes, ma'am,” Davey answered.
“Why don't you boys look in the
kitchen. There're some cookies in the
cookie jar, and I think Fred left some lemonade in the fridge.” When we had left the bedroom, Davey held his
nose with his fingers.
“She stinks,” Davey whispered.
“She can't help it. She's very sick.”
“What did she give you?”
“A quarter.”
“Can I have my half?”
“How can I cut a quarter in half,
goofball?”
“Well, don't lose my half.”
The fridge ran off electricity and
was taller than our icebox and made ice by itself in the top section. You just had to put water in trays, put them
in the freezer section, and, presto, they'd freeze. Since we didn't have electricity, all we had was an icebox. The SP left us big blocks of ice that we put
in the icebox.
I was pouring the lemonade when Mom
came in. “You boys take your lemonade
out back and stay there for awhile. I'm
gonna give Aunt Patty a bath.”
“There ain't nothing to do in the
back,” Davey said.
“Then, go swing on the porch in
front. Do something and don't come in
till I call you.” Davey and I walked
onto the porch. Each of us had three
cookies in one hand and a glass of lemonade in the other. We sat on the swing. It was like a bench with a back that was
hung by small chains. We couldn't swing
too high because the swing would hit the trellis. We were sitting, swaying back and forth, when a hummingbird
zipped to the morning-glories.
“Shhh,” I cautioned Davey,
“Look.” The bird darted from flower to
flower and sometimes hang suspended in midair.
We stopped the swing.
“Think you could hit one with a BB
gun?” Davey asked.
“You wouldn't wanna shoot a
hummingbird.”
“Why not?”
“They're too little and cute.” I gave the only answer I could think of.
“We shoot cottontails and they're
little and cute.”
“We eat the cottontails. Besides the cottontails are a lot bigger
than a hummingbird.”
“I think I could hit one. ‘Specially when they're hovering,” Davey
said as he pretended to aim a gun.
We finished the lemonade and stayed
quiet. The hummingbirds kept
coming. We saw a couple of dozen,
sometimes three or four at the same time.
“You can bring your glasses in now,”
Mom said through the screen door.
Mom made soup and sandwiches for lunch. Aunt Patty had grapes and peaches that we ate for dessert. After lunch, Davey and I played in the back,
but it was just an empty yard, so there wasn't much to do. We stayed a few more hours. We each hugged Aunt Patty good-bye. She smelled better.
When we left, Mom had a dozen Life magazines that Aunt Patty had given
her. Mom hadn't had much education, but
she liked to keep up with the news and what was happening around the
world. Sometimes, when the family was
sitting around the table at supper time, she'd bring some topic up to talk
about. The Life magazines were interesting to look at. I liked the Campbell Soup advertisements
with the little poems.
Mom's Mom–my Grandmother
Henderson–died when Mom was a small girl.
Aunt Patty was Grandma Henderson's sister and I think that's why Mom
went to her house when I was born. I,
of course, never knew Grandmother Henderson, but I did know most of my great‑aunts
and great‑uncles–the Gaines' family.
Mom tried to see them whenever she could. Uncle Lou had a deep baritone voice and could spin yarns for
hours about fishing and hunting. Uncle
Will had been a sheriff and could talk forever about chasing outlaws. Uncle Hugh had been a mayor, and was a
preacher in a church, but he never talked religion with us. Aunt Mary, for whom Mom was named, lived on
a big ranch and managed it mostly by herself.
She was always on a horse.
When I asked how grandmother died, I
was told that she died of kidney problems.
She died leaving Mom, and Mom's little brother, Johnny, for whom I was
named. A couple of years later, Johnny
died from tonsillitis and was buried beside my grandmother in Duran.
Last fall Mom was finally able to
buy a headstone for her mother's grave.
Her father was too poor to buy the headstone. My grandfather, soon after my grandmother’s death, married
again. My Mom and her stepmother didn't
get along very well. I think that's why
Mom dropped out of school and married so young.
At the head of the mound of dirt in
the middle of the Duran cemetery Dad set the granite headstone in cement. On Memorial Days we visited the
cemetery. Prickly pear cactus and yucca
was overrunning the barbed wire enclosed graveyard. We'd clean the graves, arrange the rock borders, pull weeds, and
fill any holes dug by animals. Going to
the cemetery was an eerie experience when I was a kid. I didn't understand dead people. I had nightmares after Memorial Day. I didn't ever want to be put into a hole in
the ground.
As we left Tucumcari, I looked at
the magazine covers and sort of flipped through them.
“Johnny, don't you start reading
those in the car. You know what
happens.”
“I was just looking at the
pictures.” Mom was referring to the
fact that reading in the car made me carsick.
I'd get sicker than a dog. Had
to do with the motion of the car, I guess.
Once when we were going somewhere–I've forgotten exactly where–I was
reading in the back seat, right behind Dad, and suddenly got violently dizzy
and sick. I puked all over the floor in
the back of the car. I'd eaten
spaghetti. The smell was terrible.
Dad, who was driving, immediately
pulled over to the side of the road. He
was gagging. “Goddamn it, Johnny, it's
always something,” he said as he opened the door, jumped out, and slammed the
door shut. He was five steps from the
car when he started puking. Davey
jumped out. Mom moistened a
handkerchief from the water bag and wiped my face.
“You OK, Johnny?”
“I think so. I feel dizzy.”
We all had to get out of the car
because of the smell. “What the hell
are we gonna do now?” Dad asked. “We're
out here in the middle of nowhere and the goddamn car stinks to high
heaven.” He could get extremely
angry. I felt sorry that I caused so
much trouble. I wish Dad would at least
ask me how I felt.
“Dave, I'll clean up the mess. Just give me a few minutes,” Mom answered
trying to be a voice of reason and calm.
Dad got a drink of water and walked away rolling a cigarette. Davey followed him. I felt ashamed by it all.
“Can I help, Mom?” I asked.
“Why don't you just take it
easy. If you feel like you're gonna get
sick again, say something. Let us
know.” I went and sat on a rock and
held my head in my hands. Things
weren't spinning so much, but my head had a dull aching pain. Mom opened all the doors on the car, got
some old tow-sacks from the trunk, and started cleaning the back seat. She had a very high tolerance for bad smells
and things. Eventually we drove on with
all the windows rolled down. When we
got home, Mom got some ammonia and scrubbed for a couple of hours.
Since then, I haven't read in the
car, which meant that things could get really boring when we're driving.
***
We, as I expected, didn't have time
to stop in Cuervo on the way back.
Seeing Cora again was probably the best thing that would happen this
summer. I wonder if she still wore her
hair in a ponytail. She'd talked about
cutting it real short. At least, she
couldn't change the color of her eyes.
Why did I care?
Chapter IV
As we drove back to Vaughn, I leaned
back, closed my eyes, and daydreamed.
Aunt Patty has known me since I was a baby. I wonder what I was like as a little kid? I tried to remember. My earliest memories aren't clear.
I remember living on a farm at the
foot of Duran Mountain. I remember
lying in bed and looking at the nails holding the cardboard ceiling to the rafters. I remember looking up at a box of Arm &
Hammer baking soda in a cupboard and asking Mom whose arm was on the box. Mom told me that it was Dad's. I remember we had a collie, named Queenie,
on the farm. She was a friendly dog and
wagged her tail a lot when I played with her.
This was before Davey was very big.
When we left the farm to move into town, after Dad got the railroad job,
we left Queenie behind and I remember crying because we didn't bring
Queenie. Mom and Dad said we'd come
back to get Queenie, but we never did.
I remember looking back at Queenie barking at us as we left. Sometimes when I see a collie, for a moment
I think it's Queenie, realize it's not, and get sad. I hope that whoever moved into the farmhouse after us, took good
care of her.
The Christmas after we moved into
town, Aunt Patty sent me a set of twelve brightly colored wooden blocks with
interlocking slots. On the sides they
had the letters of the alphabet and pictures.
The red block had an 'A' with a picture of an apple. The 'E' block was blue and had an elephant
on it. I didn't know what an elephant
was then. I thought it was a sick cow. I wonder what happened to those blocks?
Another gift was a Lionel mechanical
train set powered by a wind-up spring.
Enough track came with it to make a large oval or a figure eight. It had a coal car, a boxcar, a tanker car, a
flat car, and a caboose. The engine was
painted shiny black and the caboose was bright red. I was excited by that train.
When I held it the first time, My hands trembled. The engine had a small stone wheel in the
smokestack that rubbed against a metal flap and produced sparks as the train
moved. After a year or so, the flap
wore away and the sparks stopped. I
lost the key that was used to wind up the spring and Dad showed me how to use
pliers instead. The pliers wore the
shaft to circular shape. In a couple of
years all the cars and most of the track had been lost. But I had the engine for a long time and I
kept it clean and oiled. It was all I
had left of that train and I treasured it.
Last winter, I had taken the engine
apart and soaked its pieces in kerosene to remove dirt and grime. I put it back together and placed it in the
coal bucket to drip until dry. In the
night, to keep the fire going, Mom got up and threw some coal out of the coal
bucket–along with the engine–into the kitchen stove. I got it out of the ashes the next day, but it was melted and
twisted. I had had a lot of fun with
that train. Mom felt bad, but it wasn't
her fault. I shouldn't've put it in the
coal bucket.
***
We returned home from Tucumcari
about five o'clock. Dad would ride the
train and get home about six. He was
working in Alamogordo and he'd catch train 39.
Sometimes Dad would catch the freight trains and ride in the cab. Depended on where they were scheduled to
stop. He rode the trains free, but 39
was the only eastbound passenger train that stopped everywhere. Train 3, the Sunset Limited, was a streamliner passenger train that ran west and
train 4, was the eastbound streamliner, but they didn't stop at most of the
towns. Trains 3 and 4 were very slick
looking with stainless steel cars and brand new diesel engines.
Mom cooked some fried chicken,
gravy, green beans, and fried potatoes and had it ready when 39 stopped at the
depot and blew its whistle. Mom drove
the Plymouth and picked Dad up, leaving Davey and me listening to the
radio. Dad and Mom were always all
kissy and huggy when Dad came home after the week. Both were always in a good mood.
Dad wore his overalls and had a
suitcase in his hand. A Prince Albert
tobacco can was in his front pocket.
His watch chain crossed his chest.
A pencil was stuck in a thin pencil pocket. He had a deep tan–from working outside so much. His hair was freshly combed, parted on one
side, and had a cowlick in front. He
looked like a movie star. I hoped that
I would look like him when I grew up.
Davey and I were glad to see him when he came home. Sometimes, he'd get on the floor and wrestle
with us. He used musk after-shave
lotion and I liked being near him.
“Hi, Dad,” Davey yelled as he jumped
up and ran to him. Dad stooped and held
out his arms. I was a little too grown
up to act that way, but I gave him a hug anyway.
“You guys ready to move in the morning?”
“I'm ready,” Davey answered with a
shrug.
“Got the water tanks emptied? Got the outhouse loaded? Got the hatches battened down and gear
stowed?” Dad was teasing us. “Did both of you guys get promoted? Get good grades?”
“They did pretty good,” Mom answered
as she showed him our report cards.
“What time is the local due in the morning?” Mom asked as she put the food on the table. Dad put our report cards down without saying
anything about them.
“About ten. Won't get into Hermanas until Sunday late,
so we'll have to stay in a motel–probably in Deming.”
“Oh, boy. Oh, boy–a motel!” Davey
cheered.
“Why so late?” Mom asked.
She was always eager to get set up quickly.
“The train stops at El Paso and
there ain't another out till Sunday noon,” Dad answered. Mom sighed.
As we sat, Mom asked, “Well, what
shall we talk about tonight?” None of
us answered. “Let's talk about
television.”
“What's television?” I asked.
“Television is like the movies
except it's in your house like a radio,” Dad answered.
“Where would you put the
screen? We don't have room,” Davey
asked. Dad laughed.
“Oh, it has a much smaller screen,”
Mom answered.
“Can we buy one?” I asked.
“Wouldn't do us much good,” Dad
said. “You need a station like
radio. There ain't no stations out
here. We couldn't pick up anything.”
“But, next year,” Mom continued,
“Albuquerque is gonna get some stations and maybe we can pick ‘em up from out
here.”
“Can we watch Winchester '73?” Davey
asked.
“I don't think so. The magazine said they have programs just
like radio. And now the same program
goes all over the country. And,
besides, you already saw Winchester '73,”
Mom replied.
“It's my most favorite movie,” Davey
announced.
“You liked Shelley Winters?” Dad asked.
“I liked the gun,” Davey smirked.
After supper, Mom washed the dishes
and when she was finished Davey and I took our Friday night bath in the
kitchen. We used the large washtub that
Mom had used yesterday to wash clothes.
Mom would fill it up with warm water and we'd take turns. Sometimes we'd use the same water, sometimes
not. Depended on how dirty the water
became. After our baths we didn’t need
any more water so Dad went outside and emptied the water tanks by opening the
drain faucet on the side of the outfit car.
It took awhile for all the water to drain. Davey and I were in bed in the living room and the sound of the
gurgling water was soothing. Almost
like rain.
The next morning Mom rose
early. We ate cold cereal for
breakfast. Mom stored the last few
dishes and made sure the kerosene lamps were safe. Mom loaded our little trailer that hooked onto the back of the
Plymouth. Dad had built the trailer. It had a single axle and wasn't very big,
but we hauled important stuff, like suitcases, in it. We tied a tarp over the top.
Dad and a couple of the guys who
worked with him on the railroad had taken the outhouse up and stored it in the
tool car with the clothesline posts. I
helped shovel dirt to fill in the holes.
At that point, Davey had to go to the toilet, of course, and went to a
culvert that was hidden.
“Don’t want to forget these,” Dad
said as he pulled up the horseshoe stakes and put them together with the
horseshoes in the tool car.
“If you need anything out of the
outfit car, you better get it now,” Dad cautioned us.
“Oh, I need to get the treasure
map,” Davey said. He hurried into the
outfit car and returned with a folded up sheet of paper in his hand. “Almost forgot it.”
“Don't wanna forget that. Anything else?” Dad asked. No one said
anything so he took the steps to the kitchen door and put them in the tool
car. They were always the last things
to be stored. He, then, locked the
doors.
At about ten o'clock the local
showed up on the main track and Dad walked down to the siding switch. The train stopped in a cloud of white steam
and the switchman got off. “All ready
to go?” he asked Dad.
“Take 'er away.”
The switchman uncoupled the caboose
from a flat car and the train pulled ahead enough to clear the switch. The switchman had some trouble throwing the
switch. It hadn't been moved for almost
a year and was a bit rusty. Dad helped
him and the two of them got it thrown.
The engineer released the brakes with an explosive hiss of steam and the
train backed up onto the siding. The
switchman was using arm signals to show the engineer how close they were to the
outfit car. The train was creeping when
the couplings hit each other. Mom
cringed. The outfit and the tool car
jolted, but the coupling held tight to the flat car. Mom thought they always hit too hard. I guess it was hard to control a whole train.
The switchman checked the couplings
and hooked up the steam hoses for the brakes.
The train pulled onto the main track, stopped, backed up after the
switch was thrown again, and coupled onto the caboose again. The train left as the engine puffed big
clouds of gray smoke from the smokestack and spewing white steam to the
side. The local wasn’t a diesel.
The train disappeared in the
distance and the puffs of smoke got smaller.
I felt strange looking at the spot where our home had been and seeing
nothing. It seemed as if we didn't have
a home anymore. There was a big muddy
spot where the water had been drained.
The school bus path ended at a vacant space. I felt empty. Everything
was gone.
“Well, we might as well get going,”
Dad said and we got into the car. As
Dad drove from Vaughn down route 54, we were all quiet. I felt sad about leaving the things we knew
best. Dad broke the silence, “Mary, did
you remember to go to the post office?”
“Yeah, I told them just to hold any
mail that comes and we'd pick it up when we can.”
“What time is it?” Davey asked.
Dad looked at his watch. “Ten thirty-three. Why? You got medicine to
take?” Dad teased.
“I was just wondering,” Davey
delayed for a moment before continuing, “Dad, why can't we stay in one
place? Why do we gotta move all the
time?”
“We will someday, Davey.”
The union decided who worked which
jobs based on seniority. Sometimes a
district would become open–someone would quit, retire, or die. The other signal maintainers in the division
would then “bid” on the job. The winner
would be whoever had the most seniority.
Whoever had worked in the signal department the longest and wanted the
job got it. This would cause another
vacancy and another bidding process would start. So in time the most senior men would have the best districts–like
Tucumcari, Corona, or Deming. Those
with less seniority had to be satisfied with Cuervo or Animas. At most districts the railroad furnished
housing, running water, kerosene, coal, and ice.
If a job had to be eliminated, the
signal maintainer whose job was eliminated could “bump” anyone with less
seniority–that is, take his district.
The bumped man could bump someone further down the seniority roster
until either the most junior man was out of a job or someone just quit the
railroad. Mom and Dad worried as long
as the bump was ahead of Dad on the seniority list because Dad could be bumped
and we'd have to change jobs and homes.
They relaxed when the bump skipped around Dad. Generally, though, it was known which men wanted which districts
and so we knew ahead of time if Dad was going to have to change jobs before it
became official. We knew that sometime
in the future we would settle down more or less permanently when Dad got enough
seniority.
“I'm thirsty,” Davey complained
about five miles from Carrizozo. Dad
pulled off the road and we got out and passed the water bag around. As I drank from the circular spout, water dribbled
from the corner of my mouth, and ran down my neck. It was cold and refreshing.
I wet my hand and wiped my forehead.
When Dad went out on the motorcar he
had to take drinking water with him and the SP furnished canvas bags. I didn't understand exactly how canvas held
water, but it did. Seems as if the
water should just run right through.
Dad would hang the bag from the front of the motorcar and as he rode,
the water became cooler. I didn't
understand that either, but it sure worked.
Dad said it had to do with evaporation through the bag and that's why it
was made from canvas. If the family
took a car trip, sometimes Dad would hang the water bag from the little boat
that was the hood ornament. Then if we
got thirsty, we could stop and drink from the bag. I think Davey just pretended to be thirsty sometimes.
We got to Deming late in the
afternoon. Deming was twenty miles from
Cambray. Cambray is where we lived
during the last part of my first grade.
The school was at Lewis Flats–about halfway between Cambray and
Deming–and I would have to ride the bus from Cambray to Lewis Flats. The first part of the first grade was at
Duran where I walked to school. It
wasn't very far. I really didn't want
to ride a school bus. I didn't know any
of the other kids at Lewis Flats when we moved there. Mom tried all sorts of arguments to convince me, but I was afraid
of riding the bus twice a day for a long distance. Finally, knowing I enjoyed writing, she bribed me. Remembering the crisp brightly colored
letters on the Christmas blocks, I would try to write the letters perfectly on
a sheet of paper. If I failed at 'E',
I'd start with 'A' again on another sheet of paper. I was as careful as possible.
I used a lot of paper.
Mom said that if I'd ride the bus
she'd buy me a fountain pen for my very own.
With my very own fountain pen–and practice–I’m sure I could get neat
enough to get all the way through all the letters.
Mom drove me into Deming on a
weekend. The drug store had a display
case of beautiful pens–Parkers, Shaeffers–one of which was soon to be
mine. I looked at the black ones, the
blue ones, and the silver ones. I had
to make the right choice. Mom
interrupted my thoughts by showing me something I'd never seen before. She said it was a ballpoint pen. It didn't look like a real pen to me.
“Where do you put the ink?” I asked.
“It doesn't use liquid ink, so you
don't have to worry about spilling it or anything,” Mom explained. “Try it and see how smoothly it
writes.” I knew that Mom wanted me to
choose the ballpoint instead of a real fountain pen. I guess it was cheaper.
If I insisted on the fountain pen, I knew Mom would be upset. It wasn't as nice looking as the real
pens. I agreed to take the
ballpoint. I wish Mom, after promising
me a fountain pen, would've just bought me a fountain pen.
When we returned home, I tried to
form an 'A'. I moved the pen slowly to
the top and lifted the point. A nasty
glob appeared. I drew other lines. When the point left the paper a messy bit of
ink remained. It was ugly. On the second day of school, I threw the
ballpoint out the window of the bus.
When I told Mom that I had lost the ballpoint, she exclaimed how lucky
we were that we hadn't bought an expensive pen. I would still like to have a real fountain pen.
Chapter V
After spending the night at Deming,
we drove to Hermanas on a dirt road.
Dry arroyos and sand dunes wrinkled the country. There were lots of cactus, mesquite, and
yucca. Off in the northeast of
Hermanas, there were three little bare mountain peaks called Tres Hermanas, which Dad told us meant Three Sisters. The road from Deming ended at Hermanas at a 'T' junction with the
road that ran east-west between Columbus and Hachita. The roads were gravel and never had much traffic. Hermanas had three railroad houses–one for
the signal maintainer, one for the section foreman, and a long one divided into
apartments for the section gang. There
was a water tower on a spur beside an unused depot. Dad parked the Plymouth in the shadow of the water tower. The spur was a good place for the outfit car
because one could use a water hose and not have to haul water. We lived there last year.
Davey got out of the car holding the
treasure map. “Let's go to the Indian
graves and see if our treasure is still there.”
“OK, but we gotta walk,” I answered,
regretting that our bikes were in the tool car.
“Take a drink of water before you
go,” Mom ordered. “We're gonna go see
the Wallers.” Mr. Waller was the
section foreman. Mr. and Mrs. Waller
were sort of old. They didn't have any
kids, but they were nice and fun to visit.
He was a tall thin man and she was tiny for a grown woman–not much
bigger than me. He always had a pipe in
his mouth and she always wore an apron.
The Indian graves were about a mile
away–a hundred yards or so from the track beside the Hachita road. Everyone called the spot Indian Graves because someone had found
some Indian bones there long ago, but it was more like a small oasis. A trickle of water came out of the ground
and fed a small bog. There were about
thirty large cottonwood trees around the bog–the only ones for miles around,
except the shade trees in the yards at Hermanas. It was a cool shady secluded spot in the desert. It smelled fresh and humid. If it rained a lot I'd bet that the spring
flowed quite a bit, but usually not much water came out. At night you could hear the bog frogs
croaking. Pieces of broken Indian
pottery and flint chips were scattered on the ground, and someone, a long time
ago, had dug a few big holes.
We walked off while Mom and Dad went
to the Wallers’ to wait for the train.
We didn't have our BB guns. When
Davey and I walked together we'd do silly things sometimes. We started walking backward and, of course,
that led to trying to walk backward faster than each other. We fell down probably a dozen times. When Davey wasn't arguing he was fun to play
with. Dirt covered us. In about a half-hour we got to the Indian
graves.
“The bog is drier than it was last
year,” I observed. Our treasure was a
tobacco can that we had buried last year into which we had put a couple of
pennies, an old rusty key, and some mossy agates. We had the map that showed where the treasure was buried, but we
both remembered and didn't need the map–five steps toward the track from a
large, flat rock that had sparkling quartz crystals in it. All we had to dig with was our pocketknives,
but the dirt was still soft and we dug the tobacco can out quickly. It was rusty, but the stuff was still
inside.
“Let's bury it again for next year,”
I said.
“OK, but let me bury it by myself
and draw a map,” Davey answered. You
won't know where it is and can dig it up next year by using the map.” Davey had some good ideas sometimes. It was sort of dumb to look for a treasure
that you buried yourself, by using a map you didn't need.
“Good idea. What'll you make the map with?” I asked.
“I'll remember where it is and when
I get paper and pencil I'll draw the map.”
“Don't forget, then. I'll go wait by the road,” I said as I
walked back.
“Don't peek.”
I sat underneath a cottonwood at the
edge of the oasis and waited. A breeze
was blowing through the trees and the leaves were rustling. A couple of vultures were lazily circling up
high. I whittled on a twig with my
pocketknife.
Tomorrow, I figured we'd have to go
into Columbus and rent a post office box for the mail and maybe buy some
groceries. Columbus was closer than
Deming and we went to Deming only to buy clothes or large items. Columbus was right on the Mexican border and
wasn't a very big town. It had a grade
school, a filling station, and about ten other buildings. It was once invaded by a Mexican General
named Pancho Villa. Mom talked all
about it once at supper. Some adobe
buildings had almost been destroyed and hadn't been repaired yet. Mom said that the Americans chased him into
Mexico, but he got away. I don't know
where she learned about it.
“OK, I've buried it.”
“Remember where?” I asked as I folded my knife and put it in
my pocket.
“Of course, goofball. I just now buried it.”
We were about halfway back to the
car when we saw the distant smoke of the train coming from El Paso. “Yea, it's here,” Davey shouted as he
started running. Mom and Dad were leaning
on the car watching the train and smoking a cigarette. Davey and I fell panting into the back of
the trailer. Mom and Dad had unloaded
and unhooked the trailer. The suitcases
were beside the track where Dad wanted the outfit car to be.
“You guys are all dirty,” Mom
scolded.
The train stopped and the whole
procedure at Vaughn was reversed. The
train backed the outfit car and the tool car onto the spur beside the water
tower. Dad told them exactly where to
stop so that the water hose would reach.
They uncoupled, reassembled the train, and took off. Dad opened the tool car first and got the
outfit car steps out and propped them up against the kitchen door. He climbed the steps, unlocked the door, and
went inside. Mom, Davey, and I
followed. Things looked in good
shape. Sometimes things really get
battered around and broken. Dad checked
the ice in the icebox.
“Don't look too bad,” Dad said,
“I'll see if I can set up the outhouse and get the water hooked up.” I went with him as he hooked up the water
hose and opened the faucet. The water
sputtered and gurgled through the hose as the tanks filled. “Let's get some help to set up the
outhouse.”
We walked to the section gang
quarters. Dad knocked on a door, a
Mexican man opened it, and Dad started speaking Spanish. I couldn't understand, but the man nodded
his head. “SÃ, sÃ,” he said and as we
walked back to the outfit car, the man gathered a couple of other Mexicans and
they followed us carrying picks, crowbars, and shovels. Dad got his shovel from the tool car and
started digging a hole a few yards from last year’s hole. The section gang helped him and in about an
hour the hole was dug and the outhouse set up.
They talked Spanish while they worked and Dad said things that made them
laugh. They more or less ignored me and
I felt ignored. I wish I could speak
Spanish. Even Dad seemed not to know I
was there.
It's odd that Dad got along so well
with the Mexicans. The Anglos and the
Mexicans never mixed very much. Most of
the Mexicans were Catholics and the Anglos were Methodists or Baptist and
things like that. Mom told me never to
date ‘Mexscans’ when I grew up.
When there were fights in school it was usually between the Mexicans and
the Anglos. Most of the kids in school
were Mexican. I tried to avoid fights,
but couldn't always. I was an easy
target. I was the youngest in the class
because I had skipped a grade and I was small for my age. Usually in the beginning of the school year,
after the school day was over, some bully, accompanied by four or five of his
friends yelling Spanish, would meet me.
He'd knock my books to the ground, push me, and torment me to the point
where I'd lose control. I'd swing my
fists trying to see something to hit through my tear filled eyes. I never understood. Just because I was Anglo.
***
When we went back into the outfit
car, Mom had the kerosene lamps lit, the stove burning, and supper
cooking. It felt as if we hadn't moved,
and, unless you looked outside, you wouldn't know that we weren't at Vaughn.
“Do you know who General MacArthur
is?” Mom asked as Dad took some pork
chops after we had sat.
“Isn't he in the Korean War?” I answered.
I had heard his name on the radio and seen his picture on a Life magazine. He was smoking a pipe.
“He was in the war. He was the
top General–but he got fired,” Dad said.
“Who fired him?” Davey asked.
“President Truman,” Mom answered.
“Why?” I asked.
“Wasn't he a good fighter?” Davey asked.
“He was too good. He wanted to fight the Chinese, the
Russians, the Koreans–all at the same time,” Dad responded.
“I bet he'd've won. America has never lost a war, isn't that
true, Dad?” Davey asked.
“Not yet.”
“And we have the A-bomb and the
H-bomb,” Davey added.
“The Russians have the A-bomb too
and are probably working on the H-bomb,” Dad countered.
“Can the President fire
anybody?” I asked.
“Not anybody. Just certain people. And he can't fire anybody that doesn't work
for the government. And some of the
government people can't be fired either–no matter how much they should be,” Dad
replied grinning.
“Can he fire you, Dad?” Davey questioned.
“No–but he doesn't know me from
Adam. Why would he wanna fire me?”
Davey shrugged, “I don't know.”
“No dessert tonight, unless you want
peanut butter and syrup,” Mom warned.
After supper, Dad took a lamp and
went to the tool car to make sure everything was OK. Davey drew the treasure map and hid it while I read a Life magazine article about General
MacArthur. Mom made us take a bath and
scrub ourselves. “OK, boys, tomorrow we
gotta go to Columbus. I'll give you
your allowance to spend when we get there.
You better get in bed now.”
***
The next morning Mom parked in front
of the post office at Columbus. “I'll
meet you in the grocery store in about fifteen minutes.”
“Mom, can you get a post card so I
can write Aunt Patty?”
“Sure. Whatta good idea, Johnny.
Remember to tell her that we're gonna go to Corona next, in case she
wants to answer.”
Mom gave Davey and me each fifty
cents–Dad called it four-bits–and we sort of hopped, skipped, and jumped our
way to the grocery store. We each
needed some BB's and, of course, we'd get some candy. We entered through a screen door and Davey went directly to the counter
to look at the candy. I started down an
aisle to look around for stuff to ask Mom to buy. There was a box next to the apples, which was empty except for
one brownish-reddish thing. The sign
said 'pomegranates - 10¢'. I had seen a
picture in one of Mom's magazines of a pomegranate that was broken open. It was filled with kernels that looked like
juicy red jewels. It grew in the Sahara
desert or someplace and looked as if it would taste fantastic. I had never seen a real one before. I picked it up. It felt leathery and was heavy for its size. It had an old flower bud on one end. Amazing.
I wondered how it got to Columbus.
It wasn't anything like an apple or an orange. I wondered what it actually tasted like. Ten cents.
I put it back. I walked around
and then returned to the fruit aisle. I
decided to buy it. I'd still have
enough money for BB's and candy.
“What's that ugly thing?” Davey asked when he saw what I was
buying. I felt a bit silly.
“It's a pomegranate. Did you get the BB's?”
“I got my BB's. What's a plum granted?”
“It's the best fruit in the whole-wide-world
when you crack it open,” I sneered.
“How many BB's did you get?”
“I got two tubes. How much does it cost?”
“Ten cents. But this is the last one. They don't have anymore.”
“You gotta share.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Could I please have two tubes of
BB's and a Baby Ruth?” I asked the man
behind the counter.
He placed them on the counter. “Anything else?”
I held up the pomegranate. “Yes, this.”
“OK–the BB's, ten cents each–the
Baby Ruth five cents and the pomegranate, ten cents. With tax, thirty-seven cents.”
I gave him the silver half dollar and got the change.
“You wanna spend the quarter Aunt
Patty gave us?” I asked Davey.
“Yeah–get some more BB's and some
LifeSavers.”
I gave the man the quarter and he
gave me two more tubes of BB's and a roll of LifeSavers just as Mom came
in. I started eating my Baby Ruth.
“Johnny bought a plum granted and he
won't give me any.”
“I didn't say that. Besides it's mine. I bought it with my own money.”
“You bought a what?” I took the pomegranate from the bag and
showed it to her. “Hmmm–maybe he'll
give us a little piece, Davey.” I could
tell Mom was curious about it as well.
“I got you guys some new straw hats.
They're in the car.”
“Goody, goody,” Davey exclaimed,
momentarily forgetting the pomegranate.
After Mom bought the groceries, we
drove back to Hermanas. When I finished
eating my candy bar, Davey got his Three
Musketeers out and ate it very slowly.
I tried not to look, but couldn't help myself. Davey glanced at me to make sure I was watching him. I wanted to stuff the candy down his throat.
***
After we put the groceries away, I
started peeling the pomegranate. I
tried removing the kernels without bursting their delicate skins and collected
a pile of them. I ate the whole pile at
once. They tasted very different from
anything else I had ever eaten. They
were sort of cool and tart.
“Can I have some, please?” Davey pleaded wearing his new hat. I gave him about a half–dozen.
“Mom, do you want some?”
“Sure, if you got plenty.” I gave her a hand full.
“Ever had a pomegranate before,
Mom?”
“Nope, but I have now. Thanks.”
“How did you know what it was?”
“I saw a picture in one of your
magazines,” I answered.
“I'll save some for Dad.”
When Dad came home he tried them. “They taste as sour as hell.”
Chapter VI
“Mom, can we have a couple pie
pans?” Davey gasped as we rushed into
the kitchen. She was washing breakfast
dishes. The smell of fried sausages
lingered.
“Whatta you need pie pans for?”
“We're gonna pan for gold,” Davey
answered.
“Where're you gonna find any
gold?” She wiped her hands on her
apron.
“The dry creek in the big arroyo on
the Columbus road,” I announced.
“You mean where we had the picnic
last year?”
“Yep, and we need something to keep
the gold in.”
“Where're you gonna get the water
for the panning? You have to have
something to slosh the sand around with.”
“We thought we’d take Dad's spare
water bag and the gallon canteen. That
should be enough,” I answered smugly.
“Don't expect to find a lotta
gold. See if there's an empty tobacco
can in the tool car you can take to put it in.
I'll make you some lunch. Don't
forget your canteens. And wear your
hats. It's gonna get blazing hot
today.”
Davey and I stowed our stuff on our
bikes and pedaled off. The road
followed the railroad and after about three miles we turned onto a dirt road
over a cattle guard. When we rode
together on a dirt road, we'd ride in the ruts–Davey in one and I in the
other. In the ruts, we didn't have to
worry so much about prickly pear cactus and we wouldn't get in each other's
way. We each wore our new straw hats
and had our BB guns.
“Whatta we gonna buy with the gold,
Davey?”
“I want a new bike and a new BB
gun.”
Davey's bike was an old one that had
been painted dull black. I don't know
what brand it was. It didn't have
anything except the frame and fenders.
No plastic handles or reflectors or anything. The seat covering was coming off at one corner. The rear tire was new, though.
Uncle Thomas had given me my
bike. He had it when he was
younger. He had had it as long as I
could remember. It was a Schwinn and
when it was new it was fully equipped–headlight, a horn, and red reflectors on
the rear fender. It had plastic handles
with tassels and a bell on the handlebars which you could ring with your right
thumb. There had been bags similar to
saddlebags that you could throw over the rear fender. Of course, most of that equipment was gone now. The compartment for the horn batteries was
empty. Only the screw holes remained
where the headlight had been. I don't
know what had happened to the saddlebags.
The plastic handles on the handlebars were there, but the tassels had
been pulled off. The bell didn't work
anymore. The front tire was getting old
and running over a prickly pear often caused a flat. Even goat-head stickers could be a problem.
“Why do you want a new BB gun?”
“I want one with a telescope on it.”
“They don't make BB guns with
telescopes on them.”
“They do too. I saw one in the Monkey Ward catalog.”
“Why do you want a telescope on a BB
gun? You can't shoot far enough.”
“I can.”
“No, you can't. You need a rifle like a 22 or Dad's 270 to
shoot far enough. BB's just don't go
far enough.”
“You can shoot more accurately with
a telescope.”
Maybe he was right. “What else?”
“A watch just like Dad's.”
Dad had to have an accurate watch to
work on the railroad. He had to know
exactly when the trains were coming so he could get his motorcar off the track
and onto a set-off. The SP sent a watch
inspector around every three months to check that the watch was still on
time. It was important that Dad keep
the watch wound. If he forgot and the
watch stopped, he'd have to go to the depot and reset it by another railroad
watch and fill out a report. He
couldn't put the motorcar on the track until he had done that. Some railroad men kept two watches and had
them both inspected so if one broke they'd have a spare. Dad's watch was a silver Hamilton with a
small second hand at the bottom. There
was a special watch pocket on his coveralls that he carried it in.
“Why do you wanna watch?”
“To tell what time it is, goofball.”
“And exactly why do you need to know
what time it is, twerp?”
“For the school bus and things like
that.”
“Yeah, sure.” We pedaled silently up the last rise before
the arroyo. A covey of quail–a couple
of dozen–crossed the road in front of us and, as we approached, erupted with a
flurry of wings. They flew about a
hundred yards and settled among the mesquite again.
“Me, I'd buy the world's biggest
chemistry set–with real flasks and test tubes.”
“Yeah, and blow your head off!” Davey had heard Mom say that.
We arrived at the edge of the wide
arroyo and I pointed to a large mesquite bush.
“Let's leave our bikes there. No
sense in taking them all the way down and then just have to push them back
up.” The arroyo had near vertical sides
in most places. It was about sixty feet
deep. The bottom was about a hundred
yards across and had gravel, lots of sand, and scattered large rocks on the dry
creek bed.
I carried the lunches, my BB gun,
and the water bag and Davey carried the pie pans, the gallon canteen, and his
BB gun. We left our canteens with
drinking water on the bikes so we'd have them on the trip back. We scurried down the side of the arroyo as
fast as we could without losing our balance.
The gravel cascaded in front of us.
“I'll hold the pan and you pour the
water in,” I suggested.
“Why can't I hold the pan?”
“We'll take turns.”
“I wanna be first.” Davey was a real pip-squeak sometimes.
“You don't know how to slosh it
around,” I warned.
“I do too.”
I knew that if I didn't give in we'd
never get anything done, but stand and argue all day. “OK, you can be first, twerp.”
We threw our loads on the ground and
Davey grabbed a pie pan and ran to the creek bed. I followed with the water bag.
He rammed the pie pan in the sand filling it about half full. I started pouring the water into the pan as
he held it.
“Slosh it around, Davey,” I
commanded.
“Not supposed to till it's full of
water.”
“The water is supposed to come out
gradually and bring the sand with it.
How can it do that if the pan is full?”
“Keep pouring. It's my turn, you know.”
I poured some more water and he
tilted the pan letting the clear water pour onto the ground. It didn't carry away sand or anything else
with it. “This is a waste of
water. We'll never get any gold this
way. Let me show you how.”
Davey threw the pan down. “OK, Mr. Smarty Pants, let's see you do
it.” I picked the pan up and got some
more sand from the bottom of the creek.
“OK, pour the water.”
“No, I'm gonna go hunting.” He picked up his BB gun and started to walk
away.
“Hey, I need your help.”
“You didn't help me.”
“I did, too. I poured water for you. Come on.
It's my turn now.”
“My turn didn't finish,” Davey said
as he walked toward the edge of the arroyo at the bottom of the cliff.
I'd have to do it myself. I poured some water into the pan and sloshed
it as he held the pan at a slight tilt letting the water spill. I continued sloshing until there was just a
little bit of sand left in the bottom.
I tried to see glitter in the bottom.
I had to get the pan in the right position to catch the sunlight.
“Hey, Johnny, a rattlesnake!” Davey yelled from a pile of rocks a hundred
yards away. Ever since we were little
we had been warned about the danger of rattlesnakes. “If you hear the rattle, freeze till you see the snake,” was
Mom's advice. “Rattlers leave you alone
if you leave them alone.” Dad never
left them alone, but killed them and Davey and I learned from him. Rattlesnakes were lots of fun to hunt with
BB guns. They'd coil up and stay put
rather than racing away like a bull snake or a lizard.
Dad said that the snake grew another
segment on its rattles every year. The
rattles often were broken and a complete rattle was hard to find. The largest rattle I remember had thirteen
segments. The largest snake I've seen
was a timber rattler that was about seven feet long. Dad killed it as it tried to swallow a cottontail. Uncle Tom said that timber rattlers could
grow huge and they were darker, sneakier, more deadly, and hard to find.
“Great. Don't kill it yet.” I put
the pan down, grabbed my BB gun, and ran.
When I got next to Davey, I could see the snake coiled up in the sun on
a flat rock. Its rattles were buzzing
so fast its tail was a blur. Its head
was raised and its tongue was flicking in and out. We each lifted out BB guns to our shoulders.
“I go first 'cause I found it.”
“OK, but hurry. It won't wait all day. Aim for its head.”
“I know that.” Davey shot, but missed. I shot and missed. Davey cocked his gun, stepped closer, and shot again. The snake collapsed. Blood ran out from an eye.
“Good shot.” The snake didn't even move. Davey cocked his gun again as I got close
enough to poke the snake with my gun barrel to make sure it was dead. It was dead.
“How many rattles?” Davey asked as he walked up.
“Looks like about seven, but they're
broken off.”
“I'm gonna cut them off,” Davey said
as he took out his pocketknife. We had
a matchbox at home in which we kept rattles.
Probably had a dozen or so.
“Maybe there's another one,” I
speculated. I walked around the rock
pile looking in the crevices. Nothing
rattled.
Davey draped the dead snake over the
end of his BB gun and dropped it on top of the largest rock. “The vultures can find him easier.”
I walked back to the pan and looked
at the grit in the bottom. It wasn't
much and it didn't glitter. I got
another pan full of sand and panned again.
If gold was there, I sure didn't see it. I was disappointed. It
would've been exciting to find just a little bit. I never figured we'd get rich or anything like that unless we
found a nugget or something, but I thought we might find a little bit.
Davey walked up shaking the
rattles. “Find any gold?”
“Naw.” I dropped the pan.
“Let's hunt lizards.”
I picked up my BB gun. “OK.”
There are two types of lizards. There are blue racers and browns–each
growing to about six inches long. The
blue racers had stripes along their length, were shinier, ran faster, and were
more difficult to kill because they always seem to be moving. The browns weren't nearly as careful and
stopped a lot so you could get a good shot.
Usually we also saw lots of horny
toads. We didn't shoot horny toads,
because they ate ants and they were slow as molasses. They didn't even try to run away. We'd just catch them and put them on anthills. The ants would scurry around and try to
sting the horny toad. Zap would go his tongue and an ant would
disappear. It was fun to watch.
Anthills were interesting to
search–if you were careful not to get stung–for turquoise Indian beads. The little round circular beads were just
the right size for the ants to grab by the hole in the center and carry back to
their hill.
When I found a bead, I'd wonder
about the Indian that made it hundreds of years ago–was it an old squaw or a
medicine man's wife? Did a young
warrior or an old chief wear it? How
did the bead get lost? Could they even
guess what would happen to that bead and that I'd find it centuries later? Mysteries like that are annoying because you
can never find out the answer, no matter what.
If one could know the entire story of a bead one would know a lot. We found six or seven sometimes in a single
anthill.
Sometimes, we would find very small
horny toads– the size of a dime. We
found baby lizards, too. Sometimes we'd
see lizards and horny toads and little snakes stuck on the barbs of a barbed
wire fence where the butcher birds had left them.
***
As we were climbing over the rocks
looking for lizards, a cottontail jumped and ran. Davey raised his BB gun and shot, but missed him by a mile. “Do you think we'll ever kill a rabbit with
our BB guns?” Davey asked.
“No. Even if one was standing five yards away and you got a clear
shot, I think it'd just sting the rabbit and it would just run away. BB's don't have enough power.”
“Maybe Dad will let us take the 22's
hunting someday.”
It was mid-afternoon when we grew
bored, ate our sack lunch, and headed home.
When we climbed to the top of the arroyo and stood next to our bikes, I
looked down and saw a vulture stretching the snake taut by holding the tail of
the snake with a claw and pulling the head with its beak. The snake snapped in two. Three more buzzards landed on the rock. We pedaled off.
“Will you be glad to get to
Cuervo?” I asked Davey.
“Yeah, I guess so. We can explore more caves in Red Hill.”
“I'll be glad to see Cora and Ray
again.”
“Yeah, me too.”
As Davey and I pedaled home, I
thought of Cora. Once, the four of us
were playing army and I pretended that a communist had shot me in the arm. Davey and Ray were off somewhere sneaking up
on a submachine gun nest. “I'll make it
well by kissing it,” Cora said. She
bent and kissed my arm before I could react.
She just sort of did it. It was
the first time a girl ever kissed me. I
got goose bumps. Why?
“I've been shot here,” I motioned to
my cheek as I lay on the ground. She
didn't say anything, but leaned and kissed my cheek. I silently put my finger to my lips. She stooped and kissed me fully on the lips. She smelled like roses. Her lips were warm and very soft. She kept her eyes closed. I touched her hair with my arm that wasn't
shot. Were we playing?
“Nurse, nurse,” Ray yelled, “Davey
has been shot. The machine gun got him
right in the gut.”
“Let him die!” I shouted back.
Cora giggled and playfully slapped
me. “I'll be there,” Cora said and ran
off. I lay on the ground not wanting to
move and destroy the tingling in my spine.
God, I'd been kissed–and I seemed to enjoy it.
Why do I get chills when I remember
that kiss and the aroma of roses? I'd
always thought kisses were all smoochy and stupid in the movies. When we return to Cuervo, I wonder if Cora
will try to kiss me again. Maybe Davey
and Ray could find a game just for themselves.
Chapter VII
On Sunday, the local parked us on a
siding at Corona. There was no spur
next to the water tower, so after we set up the outhouse–with the section
gang's help–we put the two empty water barrels from the tool car in the
trailer, drove to the water tower, filled the barrels, and drove back to the
outfit car. Dad had a hand pump mounted
on a long pipe that one could screw into the bunghole on the top of the
barrel. The pipe almost reached the
bottom of the barrel. On the outlet of
the pump we attached a hose that connected to the inlet faucet of the overhead
tanks. Turning the crank pumped the
water from the barrel to the tanks. Dad
could empty a barrel in ten minutes. If
there were time, he'd let Davey and me pump the second barrel. It took us at least forty-five minutes. Davey couldn't pump very long and my arm
would get dead tired. Two barrels of
water lasted about a week. Once the
barrels were emptied, we put them back in the tool car and we'd do the same
thing again next weekend.
Corona lay in the foothills of the
Gallinas Peak among cedar trees. Dad
grew up in Corona. Grandma and Granddad
Baker lived about twenty miles from Corona.
They had immigrated to New Mexico from Texas and homesteaded. They grew pinto beans and had a bunch of
chickens, cattle, pigs, and children.
My grandma's family came from Germany.
My granddad's family had lived in Texas for a couple of
generations. He always seemed angry and
unhappy. He talked a lot about how, if
he had stayed in Texas, he would have been rich from oil. He was a broken old man and liked to sit in
a rocking chair and smoke a pipe.
Often when we visited them, we'd go
arrowhead hunting. After a strong rain,
the hunting was best. A rare find was a
perfect obsidian arrowhead; most of the arrowheads we found were broken.
Dad and his family did a lot of
hunting. Deer hunting was the
favorite. When a boy went deer hunting
for the first time, it was a rite of passage.
He was treated like a man. Dad
let Davey and me go to deer camp last year, but he didn't let us hunt. We stayed in camp and shot lizards and
targets with our BB guns. A couple of
Dad's friends also came along.
I loved deer camp. Before dawn Dad shook us awake to the smell
of coffee perking on the campfire. Even
though Dad never cooked at home he always cooked in camp. Dad let us drink coffee and whiskey in deer
camp. In the chilly morning, a cup of
hot coffee with lots of sugar and milk, followed by eggs, bacon, and cinnamon
rolls hit the spot.
At night before bed, the men sat on
logs around the fire and talked about hunting, cars, pickup trucks, and old
times and shared a bottle of whiskey.
The men drank straight from the bottle and passed the bottle on. If Davey or I were next in line, the bottle
was passed to us. I discovered that if
you drank very fast you wouldn't choke, but I couldn't keep from gasping. I smacked my lips and wiped the back of my
hand across my mouth. My throat felt as
if I had drunk battery acid and my eyes would water. I was afraid someone would think I was crying, so I blinked several
times quickly. One man asked me if
smoke was getting in my eyes. Davey just
took a little sip. The bottle slowly
circled until nobody wanted another drink or the bottle was empty. Dad never drank more than a couple of gulps.
Anyway, deer hunting was in
November–a long time away. Dad hadn't
said definitely yet whether I could carry a rifle and hunt this year. I think he wants to wait until Davey is old
enough too, so that Davey wouldn't be left alone in deer camp. Being the oldest was unfair sometimes.
On Monday, Davey and I started
exploring to see what had changed in Corona from last year. The day was a beautiful day with bright blue
skies. Davey and I were wearing our
straw hats. We found a stack of scrap
lumber that must have fallen off a train and had been thrown by the section
gang against the right-of-way fence underneath a giant cottonwood tree. It was small stuff and most of it was
broken.
“Hey, let's make some swords,” I
suggested. “We can use some of these
slats.”
“I want this one,” Davey claimed as
he picked up a redwood one. I grabbed a
pine slat, which had no knots. The
slats were a couple of inches wide and maybe a half-inch thick. We carried them to the tool car, put them in
a vise, and cut them with a crosscut to about four feet long. We cut a point on one end and used a couple
of short pieces to nail on the other end to make the hilt. Once we had the right shape we used a rasp
to put an edge on the blade and to make the handle round. I swung the sword in a wide arc.
“Take that, you devil,” Davey said
plunging his sword into the stomach of a pretend bad guy. I sliced away the arm holding the gun. “Let's go to the hills,” Davey urged as he
climbed down from the tool car. In the hills
we could yell, play pretend games, and have lots of room without someone seeing
us and thinking we were crazy.
We stopped at the outfit car to tell
Mom where we were going. “Eat your
lunch first. Watch the clouds. The radio says it's supposed to rain this
afternoon.” She had made sandwiches and
pork and beans for lunch.
We whacked our way through a hundred
communists, Indians, and outlaws as we followed a dry arroyo into the rocky
hills north of town. It was early
afternoon and starting to get hot. We
came into a clearing that was filled with cholla cactuses, most of which were
over five feet tall. Some of them
looked like men holding their arms high.
“Shhh–a whole army of communists,” I
cautioned Davey. “You take the ones on
the right and I'll take the ones on the left.
Yell if you need help.”
“Bonsai,” I yelled as I ran at the
nearest cactus, swung my sword, and cut off an arm.
“Take that, you bastard,” Davey
cussed. I turned and gaped at
Davey. Dad and Mom didn’t approve of us
cussing at all. They would wash our
mouths out with soap or give us a spanking or cut our allowance or all
three. Of course, Dad cussed a lot when
he got angry. Davey scowled and turned
to attack the next cactus. “Death to
you, you fucking bastard.”
I swung my sword, “Die, you goddamn
son-a-bitch.” The cactus crumpled,
sliced off at the knees.
“Go to hell, you fucking goddamn
son-a-bitching shitting bastard,” Davey yelled as he mortally wounded a
communist. He swung so violently that
his hat came off. A contest had
started. We each tried to add new cuss
words and string more of them together.
We spent almost two hours yelling
every cuss word we could think of and combining them in clever ways to
discourage the enemy. We were dripping
in sweat. It was fun doing something
that was against the rules. No one was
hurt. We'd probably still be there
cussing and swinging if we hadn't destroyed all the cactuses. All the cactuses were slaughtered and lying
about dismembered. Our swords had
several nicks in the edge from particularly hard opponents, but, generally,
were in good shape.
“Let's go fucking home,” Davey
suggested, “I'm goddamn thirsty.”
“OK, but we better quit cussing.”
We started walking back. My arm was tired from all the swinging. “Do you think we'll go to hell for
cussing?” Davey asked in a soft voice.
I paused. Hell and heaven were scary ideas for me. The idea of God sitting up in the sky
looking down and seeing everything I did was spooky. God would know when I didn't help Mom with the dishes. When I got angry with Davey, God knew. God knew when I wondered if Dad really liked
me. I felt crummy when I thought about
God and heaven and hell and the things I did wrong. I was probably going to hell anyway.
“Dad cusses a lot when he's mad,” I
avoided answering.
“Will Dad go to hell?”
“Dad does a lot of good things,
too. Besides he never says any of the
nasty words–just the normal cuss words.”
Some billowing white summer clouds were gathering. Their bottoms were dark gray. Off in the distance toward the west it was
showering and you could see the rain sheets.
“Maybe he'd only be in hell for a couple of days, or something like
that.”
“Do you believe hell is real?”
“Sure, Mom and Dad told us, and it's
in the Bible,” I answered.
“Only Mom told us.” Davey was right. Dad never talked about religion.
Mom was sort of religious. She
read the Bible sometimes, but we never said grace before a meal. She went to church sometimes in Vaughn and
took us to Sunday school, but I could never remember Dad going to church. I heard a distant deep rumble of
thunder. A breeze stirred and helped
cool us.
“Mom wouldn't lie to us,” I
stated. Davey's sword drug behind him
as he walked.
“What about Santa Claus? Do you believe in Santa Claus?” Davey asked.
“I don't think so. I think Mom and Dad bring the presents.”
“Why do they lie by saying that
Santa Claus brings them?”
“I don't know. Maybe it's just something that kids are
supposed to believe in.”
“Why would Mom lie to us about Santa
Claus and not about God?”
“Maybe because God is too
important.”
After a moment, Davey said, “I think
Santa Claus is important, too.”
“Hey look,” I said pointing to a
piñon tree that was oozing pitch, “We can make some gum.” I found a piece of solid resin about the
size of a nickel and pried it off with my pocketknife. I cleaned the bark off and put it in my
mouth. Davey had found himself a piece
as well. The resin was hard and had a
very strong pine flavor–almost bitter–but if you kept chewing it, it became
soft just like chewing gum. The bitterness
didn't last long, but the pine flavor stayed for a long time.
As we arrived home, it started
sprinkling. A flash of lightning was
followed by a huge thunderclap, which rattled the windows. The rain fell harder.
“Boy, you boys just made it,” Mom
said as she cooked over the wood stove.
“Help me shut the windows before the rain gets in.” When she cooked in the summer, with the hot
stove inside, she opened all the windows and doors to try to get a breeze
through. “I worry about you getting hit
by lightning. I hope Dad isn't caught
out in the middle.” It was starting to
rain hard–a real gully washer. Lots of
thunderclaps and lightning flashes.
Puddles of water collected.
“Oh, Johnny, Aunt Patty sent you a
letter,” Mom said as she pointed to the table.
I opened the letter and was surprised to find a five-dollar bill inside. Aunt Patty didn’t write much. She hoped I was having a good summer and
looked forward to seeing me again. She
was feeling a little bit better. She
said that I should share the money with Davey and not to spend it all in one
place.
“Davey, Aunt Patty sent us some
money. Five dollars!”
“Let me see,” Davey said. I held up the bill, but that wasn't
enough. He wanted to hold it. Finally, Mom told us to quit arguing and put
the money in our bank. Davey, of
course, wanted to be the one to actually put it in the bank.
Two hours later the rain had stopped
and the clouds cleared somewhat. The
sun started to show through. We heard
the putt-putt of Dad's motorcar as he came home at quitting time.
“Did you get caught in the
rain?” Mom asked when Dad got inside.
“I crawled underneath a bridge. Stayed dry as a bone. It looks like Fred left things in fairly
good shape,” Dad said as he entered the kitchen. Fred Barnes was the permanent signal maintainer who was on
vacation. Some signal maintainers, when
they went on vacation, would leave lots of work for the relief. They would delay building some batteries, so
Dad would have to do it when he arrived.
“Dad, Aunt Patty sent Davey and me
five dollars.”
“Five dollars! That's a lotta money. What're you gonna do with it?”
“Save it for something special,” I
replied. I thought of a fountain pen.
“Lotta candy,” Davey said.
Mom had cooked hamburger patties,
mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas. I
took a hamburger patty, some mashed potatoes, and some peas.
“You should take some gravy, son,”
Dad said.
“I don't really like gravy.” I tried to sound respectful.
“It's just milk, flour, and bits of
meat. What's in it you don't like?”
“It feels funny in my mouth.”
“I sure don't understand someone not
liking gravy,” Dad said, shaking his head.
Mom cut in; “I read that some
university president from back east thinks television will turn us all into a
bunch of morons.” The supper topic was
chosen.
“How will it do that?” Davey asked.
“He thinks that people will watch so
much television that they'll stop thinking.”
“I heard,” Dad said, “that they're
working on making color TV.”
“I wish we had a television,” Davey
said.
“You wanna be a moron?” Dad asked.
“I'd keep thinking. I'd think about what I was watching.”
“Some programs are showing the
fighting in Korea,” Mom said.
“Do they show soldiers actually
getting shot and being blown up?” I
asked.
“I hope not. War is bad enough without having to watch
it. Davey, finish your peas and then
you can have some pineapple-upside-down cake.”
“You guys wanna go to Red Cloud on
the weekend?” Dad asked. Red Cloud is a mountain camping and picnic
ground on Gallinas Peak in the middle of tall pines and small streams. We'd gone there a couple of times.
“Yeah. Can we stay overnight?” I
asked.
“I think so. Whatta you think, Mom?”
“Sounds OK. We'll have to see what the weather looks
like.”
“Fourth of July is coming up,
too. You guys bought your fireworks,
yet?” Dad teased us. He knew we hadn't.
“Oh goody, fireworks. When can we get them?” Davey asked. “I want some cherry bombs and Roman candles. We can use the five dollars to buy
fireworks!”
“Sparklers are fun,” Mom said.
“Sparklers are for sissies. Right, Davey?” Dad said. “We'll get some
things and take them out to Grandma and Granddad's. So this weekend we'll go to Red Cloud and next Wednesday we'll go
celebrate the Fourth. Whatta you wanna
get, Johnny?”
“Some rockets and
firecrackers.” Last year Davey and I
had put cherry bombs and firecrackers in tin cans and blew them sky high. It was also fun to put firecrackers in
anthills and pretend you were blowing up communists. I don't know if we ever killed any ants, but we sure wrecked
their home.
Chapter VIII
On Saturday morning, we packed the
trailer with bedrolls, food, and water cans and drove to Red Cloud. “What time is it?” Davey asked as we left.
“Good grief, son. We're gonna have to buy you a watch just to
keep from going crazy.” Dad got his
watch out, “Seven minutes past nine.” The
road was a graded county road that led to a fire ranger's tower 25 miles away
near the top of the mountain. We were
about ten minutes from Corona, driving beside a pasture, when a horse beyond
the barbwire fence started racing us.
The horse was black and was staying beside us easily. Its head was held high and its mane
rippled. Its tail flared behind as it
galloped skirting trees and cactuses.
Dad sped up and the horse sped up.
“That's a beautiful horse,” Dad
said, glancing to the side.
“He can sure goddamn fucking run,”
Davey said and, realizing what he had said, slapped his hand over his
mouth. His eyes opened wide. The cussing in the cactuses had become too
much of a habit.
Mom turned around as Dad stopped the
car abruptly and pulled to the side of the road. Mom looked at Davey.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” Davey mumbled through his
hand.
The horse ran twenty yards farther,
stopped, turned, and watched us. Dad
turned and glared at Davey for a moment.
“You said a cuss word. A very
bad cuss word, son. I heard you.”
“He said more than one,” Mom
added. “Where did you learn words like
that?”
Dad turned off the ignition. “You know better than that. Come with me, Davey,” Dad commanded as he
got out of the car and threw down his cigarette. He put his foot on the cigarette and twisted it.
“I'm sorry.” Davey whimpered, “I won't do it again, I
promise.” Davey slowly climbed out of
the car. “Don't spank me, Dad. I promise I won't ever say it again.”
Standing in the middle of the deserted
road, Dad grabbed Davey's left wrist and with his right hand swatted Davey's
behind. Davey tried to dance and jump
out of the way of Dad's hand, but Dad kept swatting and connecting hard. Davey was squalling. I felt sorry for Davey, but was glad I wasn't
getting the spanking. After a
half-dozen swats, Dad knelt, wiped away a tear from Davey's cheek with his
thumb, and talked softly to Davey. I
couldn't hear what Dad was saying. In a
little bit, Davey stopped crying and nodded his head. He wiped his eyes with his fist.
Dad stood and offered his hand to Davey. Davey put his hand in Dad's, and they walked back to the
car. Davey was sobbing a little bit and
curled up in the corner of the back seat.
I didn't say anything. Dad
silently drove on.
After about five minutes, as the
road started winding up the side of the mountain, Mom said, “I'm glad it’s a
beautiful day.”
“I bet those steaks will taste good
tonight–cooked over an open fire,” Dad said.
“And we brought some
marshmallows.” Mom and Dad were trying
to break the tension.
“Did you remember the horseshoes,
Johnny?” Dad asked. The horseshoes were really mule
shoes–smaller than regular horseshoes–because Davey and I, especially Davey,
had trouble throwing regular sized horseshoes.
Dad had filed notches in them, to avoid arguments about which horseshoe
belonged to whom when they were lying stacked on one another. One set was the 1's and the other set were
the 2's. During the school year, when
the weather was good, Davey and I would practice while we waited for Sam. We were a lot better than we used to
be. We'd usually throw a couple of
ringers in a game.
“Yeah, I put them in the
trunk.” Davey was sitting up with his
nose pressed against the side window.
“Let's see who can see the first
deer,” Dad said as we followed the curved single lane road. The sun was lost in the treetops. Some parts of the road were almost washed
out by rain and Dad had to slow down and ease the trailer across. Soon we were at the campground. There were some outhouses and garbage
barrels set up. A half-dozen picnic
tables and fire pits, filled with black ashes, were spread around. No one else was there so we could choose our
camp spot. Dad drove to the fire pit
the farthest from the road. I breathed
deeply through my nose to smell the coolness of pine. The only sounds were birds chirping, the rustle of a gentle
breeze through the tops of the tall pine trees, and the gurgling of a distant
creek. No dogs barking–no traffic–no
people yelling.
“This is really nice,” Dad said as
he rolled a cigarette and got a Coors from the cooler. “Let's walk to the creek.” He took Mom's hand and they started along
the worn path. Davey, without meaning
to, kicked an old pinecone in front of me.
I kicked it back. He lunged for
it barely stopping it and kicked it back.
We kicked cones back and forth all the way to the creek. I think he had mostly forgotten the
spanking.
The creek didn't have much
water. You could step across it on
stones without getting wet. It was more
like a connection of small pools than a creek.
The water was clear. I knelt
down and wet my hand. The water was
cold as ice. Davey cupped his hand,
filled it with water, and drank.
“Taste good, son?” Dad asked.
“Really good, but it's cold.”
“It's from melted snow. Look here.
See the deer tracks?”
“Yeah, is it a buck?” Davey asked.
“It's a big one. What're those tracks?”
I looked at the scratching in the
mud. “A badger?” I guessed.
“Hmmm–don't think so. Probably a skunk.” Dad said. “Maybe we can
find some wolves' tracks or some mountain lions'.”
“Are there really wolves and
mountain lions here?” I asked.
“Oh, not very many. Just a couple of real big hungry ones.”
“Don't scare the kids, Dad,” Mom
cautioned as she dipped her fingers in the water.
We walked back to camp, unloaded the
bedrolls, and set up camp. Davey and I
put our bedroll in the open so we could see the sky. Mom had made a lunch that she spread out on a table, as Dad
hammered the horseshoe stakes in the ground.
“I get the 1's,” said Davey as he
stooped to pick them up.
“I don't care. You can have the 1's.” Davey thought the 2's were heavier or
something. I couldn't tell the
difference.
“I'll go first,” Davey announced as
he went to the stake.
“You went first yesterday,” I said.
“No, I didn't.”
“Hey, boys. Don't argue, damn it. I'll flip a coin,” Dad said reaching into
his trouser pocket. “Davey, call it.” Dad flipped it up in the air, caught it, and
slapped it on the back of his left hand covering it with his right.
“Heads.”
Dad peeked at it. “Heads it is. Davey goes first.”
“It's not fair. Davey went first last time,” I protested.
Dad raised an eyebrow at me. “Johnny, do you wanna play or not?”
“I guess so,” I muttered.
We played a couple of games as Dad
and Mom sat at the table drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and watching
us. I won the first game and Davey,
with a lucky toss that didn't hit anywhere close to the stake, but bounced onto
it, won the second.
“Time to eat,” Mom yelled.
“Lucky twerp,” I whispered as Davey
gathered the shoes.
“I let you win the first one,” Davey
retorted. There was a big thermos of
iced orange Kool-Aid, a big jar of dill pickles, and a bag of potato
chips. There were sandwiches–baloney,
pickle-pimento loaf, and sliced Vienna sausages. All had mustard and lettuce.
I liked the pickle pimento loaf, Dad liked the Vienna sausages, and
Davey would eat anything. A box of
chocolate chip cookies was dessert.
As we ate, two does and a fawn
walked out of the woods and into the campground about fifty feet away from
us. They were bent over grazing grass
and slowly meandering along. The fawn
had spots on its back.
“I saw them first,” Davey whispered.
“Shush,” Dad commanded. One doe turned, lifted her head high, pointed
her big funnel ears toward us, and watched us.
Her tail twitched a couple of times showing flickers of white. “Watch,” Dad quietly ordered. He loudly clapped his hands. The deer instantly jumped several feet high,
turned in mid-air, and in a couple of large leaps, bounded away into the trees,
with their large white tails flashing high.
We could hear thumps as they bounced into the distance, even though we
could no longer see them. The sounds of
the leaping deer became fainter and disappeared.
Darkness came. For supper, Dad grilled steaks. We roasted potatoes in the fire by wrapping
them in aluminum foil and placing them in the coals. Some skins got a bit burnt, but the inside was done just
right. We smothered them with butter
and salt and pepper. After the meal, we
roasted marshmallows. I found a branch
that had a three-way fork at the end and was able to roast three at a
time. Davey and I were ready to go to
bed when the fire burned down.
The double-sized bedroll consisted
of some blankets and a thin mattress rolled up in a tarp. The mattress lay on the tarp, which was
folded at the foot of the bed to cover the top. The tarp was heavy, stiff, and waterproof. Under the tarp, I took off my clothes and–to
keep the dew off–placed my clothing at the foot of the bed in the fold of the
tarp. I usually stripped to my
undershirt and my shorts. In the
morning, I could get dressed underneath the tarp without having to get out in
the chilly morning air.
Davey and I lay in the bedroll, with
the smell of pine filling our noses, and looked at the sky splattered with
stars. I gazed at the sky and every few
minutes a shooting star would streak across.
Some were tiny, but some would linger and cut across the Milky Way. It was easy to see the Big Dipper and, using
the two end stars, to find the North Star.
During the night, you could tell how late it was by how far the Big
Dipper had rotated around the North Star.
It was a giant clock. Orion's
belt was easy to find, but I had a hard time finding the small dipper. It never looked like a dipper to me. As I looked at the North Star, I imagined
that Cora was, at that instant, in Cuervo looking up and seeing the same star. Maybe she had seen the same shooting star as
I saw. Maybe she was thinking of me at
the same time I was thinking of her.
Cuervo was a long way away.
I pulled the tarp over my head like
a small tent. I wondered what would
become of me. What would I be when I
grew up? Would I have kids? Maybe Cora would be their mother. What kind of a job would I have? I wanted to do something in chemistry or
science. Maybe I could work in a
drugstore making medicine for people. I
wish the future were now, so I'd know.
I fell deeply asleep. Sometime later, suddenly, I was awaken. Some animal was walking on the tarp! Davey was asleep. The animal was on top of my legs and scratching at the tarp. I was terrified and stayed motionless lying
on my stomach. Was it a wolf or a
mountain lion? Did the animal know I
was there? Every moment, I anticipated
feeling sharp teeth sinking into my legs or the searing of claws down my
back. I tried to remain
breathless. My heart was beating like a
drum. The animal walked up to my
shoulders. I trembled and expected to
hear a deep rumbling growl. The animal
turned and sauntered off the bedroll toward the forest causing the dried pine
needles to rustle.
I waited a moment. I jumped up as far as I could and yelled as
loudly as I could, “Help! Help!” I was sure the animal would immediately
return, leap, and grab me by the throat.
I had thrown the tarp off Davey and he sat up, rapidly twisted his head,
and looked around with wide eyes. His
mouth was open.
“What's wrong, Johnny?” Mom asked as she jumped up. “Did you have a nightmare?” Dad had a flashlight and was shining it on
me.
“There was a wolf or a mountain
lion.”
“Where?” Dad asked.
“On top of the bed. He was gonna eat me. He went that way.” Dad pointed the flashlight toward the trees. Fifty or so feet away a porcupine was
ambling with its needles spread in a display like a peacock.
“It's nothing but a porcupine,
Johnny. Damn, you scared the bee-jesuz
outta us,” Dad said. I was standing up,
almost naked, and was shivering from fright and the cold. I clasped my arms around myself. My chin started to quiver.
“A stupid old porcupine. I wanted to see a mountain lion,” Davey
complained as he squirmed back into bed and pulled up the tarp.
“He won't come back. Why don't you get back into bed,
Johnny?” Mom suggested.
“I'm gonna sleep in the car.” I reached for my clothes, and walked
gingerly over the dark ground in my bare feet toward the car.
“Why are you gonna sleep in the
car? He won't come back and it was just
a porcupine,” Dad asked.
“Every man for themselves,” I
answered not wanting to discuss the issue.
I wanted to be alone.
Mom sort of laughed, “There's a
spare blanket behind the back seat.” I
put on my pants, shirt, and socks and curled up comfortably in the back
seat. I made sure the doors were
locked. I stopped shivering. Only a couple of tears escaped. The next morning the porcupine was
gone. We discovered a couple of quills
stuck to the tarp.
We went home early because Davey was
getting a cold and felt terrible. He
had a sore throat and his nose was running.
Mom was afraid that any illness was the start of polio.
Chapter IX
On Monday morning, Dad said, “I'll
come home at lunch and we can go buy the fireworks for Wednesday. OK, boys?”
Mom was feeling Davey's
forehead. He hadn't dressed yet and had
a blanket wrapped around him. He was
drinking a cup of hot cocoa and holding a handkerchief. He looked miserable. “I don't think Davey should go outside
today. He just needs to stay home in
bed and rest,” Mom said.
“How am I gonna get my
fireworks?” Davey asked hoarsely. “Where's my money from Aunt Patty?”
Dad tousled Davey’s hair. “I'll get your fireworks for you. Johnny has your money. Just tell me what you want.”
“Cherry bombs and Roman candles,”
Davey wheezed.
“You need to get well by Wednesday
so you can set them off,” Dad said as he left for work.
“Do your joints hurt?” Mom asked.
“No, just my throat.”
“We have to do something about your
breathing and your throat,” said Mom.
She took a washing pan full of boiling hot water from the stove, set it
on the table, and stirred a couple of teaspoons of Vicks into it. “Bend over this and breath deeply,” Mom
ordered. Davey got on his knees on the
chair and, holding onto the blanket, put his head in the steam above the
pan. Mom covered his head with large
bath towel to capture the vapors. He
noisily inhaled and coughed. “That's
good. Break up the phlegm.” Davey inhaled deeply a dozen more times
before the water became too cool to steam.
Davey went back to bed and slept.
At noon, Dad returned from work. “Get your money, son. Right after we eat, we'll go to McCoy's and
get the fireworks. Davey still asleep?”
“He's tossing and turning. His breathing is easier,” Mom answered.
***
Dad parked the car against the curb
at the east end of town. The stores
were next to each other on the slope of a hill. The sidewalk was elevated from the street and we had to climb
some steps to get to the stores. The
front of the grocery store had a pair of swinging doors between two large bay
windows that came down to about the middle of my chest. A bunch of stuff–soap bars, canned fish,
boxes of corn flakes–was on display in the left window. The right window was full of fireworks. The white paint was flaking off the
windowsills at spots. Above the doors
and windows, McCoy's General Store
was written in big black letters.
As we went in, a bell tied to a
string on the doorknob tinkled. An old
lady rose from a stuffed chair behind the counter. She must've been two hundred years old. Crouched over, she reached out to the counter to steady
herself. Her hand had bulging purple
blood vessels and brown freckles. Her
hair was gray and frizzy. She squinted,
looking at us. Her mouth was slightly
open. She pushed up her glasses. Her mouth opened further.
“Why, if it ain't Davey Baker! I swan!
Lands sake!” God, she thought I
was my brother. How did she know him? I started to explain that I wasn't Davey
when Dad spoke.
“Hello, Mrs. McCoy.”
She was talking to Dad. I had never heard anyone, beside Grandma
Baker, call my dad, “Davey.” Sounded
weird. I wonder if Davey will be called
Dave when he grows up. “Davey Baker. What're you doin' here? I ain't seen you for years!”
The counter had a glass top and
front and candy was on display. There
were Baby Ruths, Hersey bars, Mr. Goodbars, bags of red-hots, peanuts–a whole
bunch of stuff. I could usually talk
Dad into buying candy. He had a sweet
tooth as big as an elephant tusk.
“Working on the railroad. Relieving Fred Barnes while he's on
vacation.”
“Well, I swan. You ain't changed a bit. I'd know you anywhere. You were still in school last time I saw
you.”
“Yes, ma'am, it was some time ago.”
“I see your folks every so
often. They come in sometimes with one
of your brothers and do a little shoppin' every now and then. How are they doin'?”
“They're getting along. Gonna go see them tomorrow and shoot off
some fireworks. This is my son,
Johnny.” I straightened up from looking
at the candy.
“Your son! Lands sake. Looks like
you, too. You married the Henderson
girl from Duran, if I ‘member right.”
She smiled at me. One of her
front teeth was missing.
“Yes–Mary Henderson. We've got two kids. Both boys.”
“Two boys. Well, ain't that nice?”
She paused a moment. “But I
heard your first‑born was a girl. Josie
told me that. I'm sure of it.”
My dad stiffened and paused for a
bit. “Yes, ma'am, that's true. But she didn't live long. Died after four days.”
I jerked my head up and stared at
Dad. I was flabbergasted. Absolutely flabbergasted. What had Dad said? I had expected him to explain how Josie–whoever that was–had been
mistaken. I blinked. I couldn't believe my ears.
“Oh, sorry to hear that. But you've got two real nice boys.”
“Yes, ma'am. Well, I'd better get some fireworks for
tomorrow and get going.” The fireworks
were on a long table against the side wall.
“You do that. Tell your folks hello for me. Let me give the young'un somethin'.” She reached in the counter and got a yellow
jawbreaker and handed it to me. I was
staring and trying to understand what I’d heard. An older sister. I had an
older sister. I wasn't the oldest in
the family after all. How could it be
true? Why hadn't I been told? What was her name? Why hadn't Mom or Dad said something? Anything? I didn't understand.
“You want it?” I jerked my head and looked at Dad. “You want the jawbreaker, son?” I reached out and took it. “Whatta you say?”
“Thank you,” I murmured.
“Oh, you're very welcome. I reckon I knew your dad when he was your
age. He loved jawbreakers.”
“Yes, ma'am. Thank you.”
I followed Dad silently to the fireworks. The questions continued to echo.
How could I have had an older sister and not know about it? Why hadn't anyone told me? How could I've not known? What would it be like to have an older
sister now? A girl I could talk
to. We could've been great
friends. Davey was OK and all, but he
was just my little brother. An older
sister. The whole world would've been
different. Absolutely different. Where was she buried?
We returned to the car and drove
home. I sat in the front seat. I had the bag of fireworks–cherry bombs,
firecrackers, Roman candles, fountains–on the floor between my legs.
“Dad, did I really have a sister?”
“She died long before you were
born.”
“Why didn't anyone ever tell me?”
“Just never got around to it.”
“What was her name?”
“Johnny,” Dad said, “I don't wanna
talk about it any more. It doesn't
concern you.” I sat back in silence.
When we got to the outfit car Dad
said, “I've gotta go back to work. Why
don't you carry the fireworks in? Tell
Mom I'll be late for supper.”
I carried the bag up the steps and
put them on the table. I slumped in a
chair and stared at my hands. Mom was
peeling potatoes. “Did you get the
fireworks? Where's Dad?”
“He had to go back to work. He said he'll be late for supper.” I sighed loudly.
“You OK, Johnny?”
“I guess,” I answered in a down‑tone
that I knew would cause her to ask again.
“Whatta you mean, 'I guess'? You OK or not?” She turned and faked a pout.
“When we were in the store, the old
lady asked Dad about my older sister.”
Mom turned to the sink with her back
to me and peeled potatoes again. She
finished a big one. “What did he say?”
“I couldn't hear.” I don't know why I lied. I just couldn't say what I knew. The words were too big to come out. Mom picked up another potato.
“Did I have a big sister?”
Mom hesitated before answering,
“No. I don't know what she was talking
about. Why don't you go and show Davey
the fireworks.”
Davey was sleeping so I left the bag
beside the bed. I went outside and
walked to the big cottonwood tree. Not
only had I had a big sister, but also Mom lied about it. What was going on? Was Davey my real brother?
I kicked the heck out of an old tin can. Were Dad and Mom my real mom and dad? Maybe I was adopted. I
sat beneath the tree and leaned against it.
I heard some dogs barking. Some
sparrows made a racket above me. An old
pickup slowly drove up the street. I
picked up a pebble and threw it at a rock.
Barely missed. Went a bit high.
***
On Wednesday morning, most of the
stores had flags in front. Davey was
feeling better. He had the sniffles,
but his fever was down according to Mom.
We loaded the fireworks into the car.
Mom took her crocheting and Dad took a six-pack of Coors. Grandma Baker never let any alcohol stay in
the house so if someone wanted a beer or something they had to bring it
themselves.
It was right before lunch when we
pulled up in Granddad and Grandma’s front yard. Uncle Jerry's car was already there. He was Dad's younger brother and lived in Albuquerque by
himself. He must've driven down last
night. As we got out the car, Uncle
Jerry came out of the house followed by Grandma and Granddad.
Uncle Jerry asked with a big grin,
“God, you didn't drive this far in that Plymouth, did you? Don't you think it's dangerous to take women
and children out in a contraption like that?”
“For those of us who know how to
drive there's no danger at all. I guess
if you're an amateur you have to have something like–what is that thing?” Dad asked, looking at Uncle Jerry's
car. “Looks like baling wire and
chewing gum. Oh, it's a Ford.” Grandma and Granddad laughed. I loved to listen to Dad and his family when
they got together. They had fun
together and joked and poked fun at each other. Uncle Jerry picked up Davey.
“He's got a cold, Jerry,” Mom
warned.
“Well, Johnny is too big to pick up,
so I gotta stick to this one.” Everyone
greeted each other. Mom and Grandma put
their arms around each other. Mom was
very close to Grandma and considered her as her own mother. Dad shook Granddad's hand and pretended to
throw a punch at Uncle Jerry's stomach.
Uncle Jerry didn't flinch.
“Still slow as molasses, huh?” Dad said.
“Why bother when you know there's no
oomph–just all show?”
Grandma interrupted, “I was just
settin' the table. Come on in and let's
eat.”
“Who else is coming?” Dad asked.
“Marcey and Clyde should be here
shortly,” Grandma answered. Marcey was
Dad's sister. Clyde was her husband and
they recently had a baby. They lived in
Roswell.
Screen doors covered the open
doorway into the house. A pot of beans
and ham bubbled on the stove. There
were warm biscuits and homemade pickles.
Gooseberry preserves were dessert.
Marcey, Clyde, and the baby arrived
in the middle of the afternoon. We all
went into the front yard to welcome them.
The baby was tiny, wrapped up, and asleep. Grandma Baker took the baby.
“I could squeeze it till it spits,” she said.
Marcey and Dad gave each other a
hug. “Getting a bit of a paunch aren't
you, big brother?” Marcey asked Dad.
“All muscle,” Dad answered.
“Yeah, table muscle,” Uncle Jerry
added.
I was eager to ignite the fireworks,
but the afternoon seemed to drag on forever.
We never set off the fireworks until after dark. Davey and I blew up a few of the
firecrackers, but most would be saved for later. Davey and I counted and re‑counted all the fireworks that
everyone bought. Uncle Jerry had
brought some great big rockets with conical heads and long fuses. Aunt Marcey and Uncle Clyde didn't bring
much–a few sparklers and small fountains.
The four men played 42 with
dominoes. Granddad and Uncle Jerry were
partners and Dad played with Uncle Clyde.
Dad brought his six-pack of Coors in and gave one to Granddad. “Davey, if you need more beer, I can get
some more from an old horse,” Grandma said.
That's the closest I ever heard her say anything nasty. She thought beer was terrible stuff and
always said something against it when someone drank it. Granddad drank his beer and filled his pipe
from a round pound can of Prince Albert.
He lit the pipe with a kitchen match and blue wisps of smoke rose to the
ceiling and lay lazily.
“You old enough to have a
beer?” Dad asked Uncle Jerry as he
handed him one. “You need a straw?”
I watched the game for a time. Dad and Uncle Clyde seemed to be losing more
than they won. “Even my great skill
can't make up for some partners,” Dad teased Uncle Clyde.
“If you could get some dominoes
sometimes, it would help,” Uncle Clyde responded.
***
Supper was over an hour before
dark. Davey started putting a picture
puzzle together. We had put it together
dozens of times before. The picture
showed several war planes–some American and some German–fighting in the
clouds. A German plane had been shot
and was falling nose first, trailing smoke.
A few of the pieces were shaped like objects– a plane, a Christmas tree,
and so on. Five or six pieces were
missing.
As Marcey and Mom washed the dishes,
Grandma asked me, “Johnny, you wanna help me gather the eggs?”
“Sure.” Grandma handed me the egg basket and got a single shot 22 rifle
as we left to go to the chicken house.
“What's the gun for?” I asked.
“Hawks. They got five of the baby chicks this spring.” When we walked towards the chicken house,
beyond the back yard, she peered at the sky.
It was dusk and the clear sky was getting dark. The evening star was barely visible. Up high a hawk slowly circled. Its motionless wings were spread wide.
“There's one,” Grandma hissed as she
put a shell in the gun and raised it.
The end of the gun wiggled as Grandma squinted along the barrel. The gun shot with a small sharp crack. The hawk flapped its wings gracefully a
couple of times and flew out of sight.
“Get you next time, you stinker.”
“Ever hit one, Grandma?”
“No, but I sure scare 'em. I'll get one sometime.” I didn't think the hawk acted very scared.
“Most of the eggs will be in the
chicken house, but we have a couple of hens layin' in the old fender beside the
barn.”
“OK, I'll get them first,” I
answered.
When I returned, Grandma had stacked
the fresh eggs by the door of the chicken house. The chickens inside the house were clucking as they settled on
their roost for the night. A musty smell
drifted out through the door. I sat and
put the eggs in the basket. “Grandma,
did I have an older sister who died?”
Grandma put her hands inside her
apron pockets and glared at me. “Why do
you ask?”
“Mrs. McCoy, in the store, said
something about it.”
“That old gossip. You can't believe anythin' she says.”
“Was she right this time?” I persisted. Grandma turned away.
“You gotta ask your Dad or your
Mom,” Grandma said as she brusquely turned to walk back to the house. I slowly followed her into the kitchen. She took the eggs from the basket and put
them in the icebox.
Nobody was going to tell me
anything. I'd never know anything about
my older sister. I think I deserved to
know something that important.
“Time for the fireworks,” Dad yelled
from the living room.
***
We all had fun setting off the
fireworks. Davey and I got to ignite
most of them. Uncle Jerry made sure we
had things pointed in the right direction.
The grown-ups had brought chairs out and were sitting around
watching. Granddad smoked his
pipe. Uncle Jerry's big rockets,
mounted on long sticks, swooshed high, and exploded in a huge expanding ball of
multicolored flickering bits of fire.
Even the baby's eyes were wide open.
Little clouds of sulfur-smelling smoke floated down. Davey and I shot Roman candles down the
road. Each fireball left with a whomp
and curved higher than the trees before falling and hitting the road. We pretended the Roman candles were bazookas
and we had to stop some communist tanks creeping up the road. We lit a couple of sparklers and waved them
wildly around drawing figure eights and circles. If you went fast enough the circles looked continuous. Davey put a cherry bomb inside an empty beer
can, lit it, and scurried away. The
bomb erupted with a huge blast and the can arched high and flew into the
woods. The baby started crying. “Well,
most of the show is over,” Aunt Marcey said as she bundled the baby to go
inside.
“I reckon we had better get home,”
Dad said.
Chapter X
On Saturday afternoon, the outfit
car was parked on the siding east of Duran.
The drive from Corona to Duran was only nineteen miles. Duran had a population of about thirty
families. Mom had been born and grew up
in Duran and it was almost a hometown for Mom and Dad. She'd gone to school in the Duran grade
school, in the very same room in which I had gone for the first half of the
first grade.
After they were married, Dad and Mom
had tried to farm at the foot of Duran Mountain–a large notched plateau visible
for miles–a few miles northwest of town.
They almost starved and that’s why Dad started working on the
railroad. Granddad Henderson
sharecropped a farm nearby to the northeast.
Grandma Henderson was buried in the Duran cemetery. Her family, named Gaines, had owned a cafe
in Duran a long time ago when there was a railroad roundhouse. Granddad Henderson had remarried to Grandma
Lola about a year after Grandma Henderson died. Grandma Lola was a crotchety old lady.
A grocery store in Duran was owned
by a Turk named Ahmet. It was weird
that someone from Turkey would come to Duran.
He had a tidy and well-stocked store–he even had BB’s–and usually gave
me a piece of penny candy when Mom sent me to the store.
There was a gasoline pump in the
front of the Ahmet store. On top of the
pump there was a large cylindrical glass container marked in gallons. You had to pull back and forth on a long
lever to fill the container with dull red gas to the level you wanted. Then you put the pump hose in the gas tank,
squeezed the handle, and the gas flowed into the car.
Ahmet let people he knew–like Mom
and Dad–get groceries just by signing the bill and then pay at the end of the
month. It was cash and carry. He gave you a copy of each bill so you could
figure out at the end of the month how much you owed. That made it easy for kids to get groceries for the family.
Ahmet–because he had dark skin–was
often mistaken for a Mexican and people passing through would try to speak
Spanish to him. He understood a few
words, but not enough to talk and Mexicans were always surprised when they
found out he couldn't understand them.
***
We didn't have to set up the
clotheslines because we were close enough to the signal maintainer's house to
use his. The outhouse and horseshoe
stakes were set up quickly. We filled
the barrels with water from a water hose connected to a faucet in the signal
maintainer's yard and pumped the tanks on the outfit car full.
The next day, Sunday, was a
beautiful day. “You guys wanna collect
pop bottles?” Dad asked.
“Sure,” I answered. It's an easy way to earn a little extra
money. We had earned over four dollars
last summer. The garage owner would pay
two cents for most empties. People on
the road, when finished drinking a pop, would often just throw the empty out
the window. Some broke, most didn’t.
“Get your tow-sacks–let's go.”
We drove a few miles east of town
and Dad let Davey and me out of the car.
He then drove back about a quarter of a mile and waited on the shoulder
of the road. Dad and Mom lit a
cigarette and talked and listened to the radio while they waited. Davey took one side of the road and I took
the other. We walked toward the car and
looked for any empty pop bottles and gathered them in our tow-sacks. Some bottles were filled with dirt and you
had to bang them to clean them. When we
got to the car, we emptied the tow-sacks into the trunk, and started
again. Some pop bottles weren't
refundable, but we weren't sure which ones, so we collected them all. We found lots of Coke, 7-Up, and Nehi.
Besides pop bottles, we found other
interesting items. There were always
hubcaps, old tires, broken fan belts, and junk like that. We never paid much attention to those things. We found a pair of boots once that were in
good shape except that field mice had made a nest in one and had eaten a hole
through the toe. Mom wouldn't let us
keep the boots. Occasionally, we found
pieces of old broken Indian pottery or arrowheads.
I saw something shiny and walked
toward it. “Hey, Davey, look at this,”
I yelled. There was an old black
leather bag almost covered up with dirt.
The leather was all cracked and dry.
I grabbed one of its handles and pulled. The handle broke off.
“What did you find?” Davey asked as he crossed the road.
“I think it's a doctor's bag.” There was one of those heart‑listening
things, but the rubber tubes were rotten.
There were some stainless steel pliers, clamps, knives, and several
bottles of medicine half-buried in the dirt.
Inside a glass tube there were about a dozen sticks for holding down
your tongue. There was even a needle
that the doctor uses to give shots. We
were poking around when Mom and Dad backed up to see what was holding us up.
“What you got?” Mom yelled from the car.
“Doctor's things,” Davey answered.
“Doctor's things? What sort of doctor's things? Don't fool around with doctor's things,” Mom
commanded as she got out of the car and walked over. “Where did those things come from?”
“I don't know. I just found them here. There's some neat stuff here for my
chemistry set.”
“No. Put it down. You
shouldn't even be touching that stuff.
You'll get polio. Put it down!” I dropped a bottle of pills. “Let's keep going.” Some of the equipment would be fun to play
with, but I didn't want to get polio.
It was a big mystery to me how the bag got there. I wondered if the doctor had been killed and
his bones were lying nearby. Finding
the doctor's bag was like finding a real treasure, but we didn’t get much of a
chance to really look at it.
On the way home, Dad took a detour
onto a little road that crossed over the railroad tracks. “I've heard that there's a little dry creek
up here below the Bell place that's got a touch of gold in it. I'm gonna get some of the bottom sand.”
“You want me to pan it for you,
Dad?” Davey volunteered.
“Nope, we'll just fill the washtub
and pan it later when we get home.”
After about five miles, over a road that looked like a cow trail, Dad
pulled to the side of the road and stopped.
We hiked down the shoulder of the road to the creek bed. “This is it,” Dad said as he put the tub
down. Mom handed him the shovel. He scraped the top sand off and filled the
tub half-full with sand off the bottom.
He and Mom carried the tub to the car and I carried the shovel. Mom’s hands hurt so Mom and Dad had to set
the tub down a couple of times to rest.
When we got home, Dad set the tub beside the front steps.
Davey and I got two dollars and
fifty-eight cents for the bottles we found–money that we got to keep. There were fourteen bottles that we couldn't
trade in. A couple of strange ones from
Texas had pictures of cattle horns on them.
If we went collecting again, we'd have to go farther since we'd cleaned
the sides of the road close to town.
At supper, Mom said, “I hope the
peace talks are going well in Korea.”
She’s been listening to the radio.
“Why are they holding peace
talks?” Davey asked. “Did America win the war?”
“We did what we went to do. We stopped the communists,” Dad answered.
“We should chase them home and
completely destroy them,” Davey said pretending to shoot a machine gun.
“Might be hard to do. It's a long way from here and Asia is very
big. The Chinese and the Russians have
lotta soldiers,” Dad said.
“Besides you don't wanna kill a
bunch of innocent people and babies,” Mom said.
“They shouldn't've started the war,”
I said.
“Well, it's not over yet. They’ll talk and talk. Who knows what will happen,” Dad said,
“What's for dessert?”
“Pineapple-upside-down cake,” Mom
answered.
***
On Tuesday night it rained a summer
gusher. During heavy rains the signal
maintainer–or his relief–has to patrol the district to warn the trains if the
tracks get washed out or get covered with water. There were arroyos that could get flooded by a cloud burst and
wash away bridges. The signal
maintainer rode the motorcar to the bridge or culvert with the heaviest rain
and would wait and watch. Overtime work
meant that Dad got paid time and a half.
If there were lots of rain Dad could get some big paychecks. He got paid every two weeks and one time he
got nearly two hundred dollars.
After working through Tuesday night,
Dad came home early Wednesday afternoon when the rain stopped and the sun
started shining. He was tired and went
straight to bed. Mom told Davey and me
to go outside and play so that Dad could sleep. There wasn't a heck of a lot to do because the ground was all
muddy. We couldn't toss horseshoes or
play mumble peg. The washtub holding
the creek sand had a bunch of rainwater in it.
“Hey, we can pan for gold,” I suggested.
“Do you think if there was gold
there we could find it? We didn't find
any at Hermanas,” Davey asked.
“Sure. I could because I know how to do it right.”
“Just a minute,” Davey said as he
raced to the tool car. He returned with
a file and some copper wire.
“Watch.” He filed the wire over
the tub so that the filings fell into the tub.
The copper was soft and before long, by taking turns, we'd filed away
several inches of the wire and the top of the sand glittered underneath the
water. I reached down and stirred the
filings and the sand together. “Hey,
you can’t see the copper,” Davey said.
I put some sand and water in a pan and swirled it. The water carried the sand away leaving
shining bits of copper in the bottom.
“Look, it works!” I exclaimed.
***
Dad woke after a couple of
hours. “Let's go rabbit hunting. Get something for supper.” We got in the car, drove out of town onto an
isolated dirt road, and stuck our 22 rifles out the windows. As Dad drove along at about 5 miles an hour,
we all looked underneath the cedar and juniper trees and among the cactus
searching for rabbits. When another car
passed us in either direction, we'd pull the guns into the car. Dad said it was the polite thing to do. Sometimes the people in the other car were
also hunting. When someone saw a
rabbit, Dad would stop the car and whoever saw the rabbit would aim, using the
window frame as a rest, and shoot from inside the car. If we killed a jack rabbit, we let it
lie. We never ate a jack rabbit, but we
killed them anyway. “Ten jack rabbits
eat as much as a cow,” Dad said.
If it were a cottontail, we'd get it
and throw in the trunk. We'd stop
hunting when we got about six. When we
returned home we'd hang them by their hind legs to skin and butcher them. They had about as much meat as a
chicken. Mom cut them up, rolled them
in flour, and fried them. Every time we
went hunting we got some. There were
lots of rabbits. They tasted good.
After supper we made some ice cream. Mom sent me to Ahmet's to get some fresh
cream. Mom mixed the cream, eggs,
sugar, and vanilla together to put in the center of the ice cream maker while
Dad, Davey, and I chopped up some ice.
We packed the ice around the cream holder, poured rock salt over the
ice, and covered the ice cream maker with a large towel to keep in the
cold. Davey and I took turns. One of us would sit on the top as the other
turned the handle and then we'd switch around.
It took forever and the handle became harder to turn.
Mom and Dad were sitting on the
steps smoking a cigarette. Dad got up
and walked to the washtub. “Let me see
if I can get any gold,” Dad said as he scooped up some creek sand in a
pan. Davey turned and looked at me and
stopped turning the crank for a moment.
We hadn't thought of this when we filed the copper into the tub. Dad swirled the pan around letting the water
slosh out. He put his finger in the
bottom of the pan and pushed the sand around.
“What the hell is this?” Davey
and I were afraid to say anything.
“Someone salted this sand. Did
you guys put something in this tub?”
Dad asked. He glared at us. Before we could answer, Mom started giggling
with her hand covering her mouth. Dad
turned quickly and looked at her.
“I saw them filing copper in it
while you slept,” Mom said and then laughed.
Dad's face slowly turned from a frown to a grin. He turned and looked at Davey and me.
“Where did you guys get that
idea? You had me going for a second.”
“We didn't do it for a joke. We just wanted to see if we could find
something if it was really there,” I explained as I sat on top of the ice cream
maker. My butt was getting cold.
“It almost worked, but gold is a lot
smaller– tiny little flakes–and a lot brighter. But it's gonna be hard to see now. Guess I'll have to get more sand. And this time leave my gold alone,” Dad said, grinned, and
tousled Davey's hair.
Davey was barely able to turn the
crank. “I think the ice cream is done.”
“Let me see,” said Dad as he took
the crank and gave it a turn. “Getting
there. Let me give it a few last
turns.” Mom went into the kitchen and
returned with some spoons and bowls.
“I think I'll go visit Aunt Patty
tomorrow,” Mom said.
“Oh, not again,” Davey moaned.
“I wanna go,” I said. “Is Aunt Patty better?”
“I don't think so,” Mom
answered. “I got a letter from Uncle
Fred and it didn't sound good.”
“Can we stop in Cuervo this time,
please?” I pleaded.
“What's in Cuervo?” Dad asked.
“Couldn't be a pretty girl, could it?”
My face grew warm and I didn't know how to answer. Dad grinned.
Chapter XI
The next morning, on our way to
Tucumcari, Mom stopped at Vaughn to check the mail and then continued straight
on the rest of the way. Mom promised me
that we'd stop in Cuervo on the way back. The day was terribly hot.
“Supposed to get to a hundred degrees today,” Mom said. Davey had drunk most of the thermos of ice
lemonade.
Alice, the oldest of Aunt Patty's
daughters, met us at the door and came out on the porch. She had blue eyes like Aunt Patty's. She and Mom had played together some as
kids. “Mary, thanks for coming.”
“How's Aunt Patty?” Mom asked.
“Some days she's pretty good–other
days, not so good. Today is not one of
her good days. I just hate to see her
this way.”
“How's Uncle Fred doing? Is he home?”
“He's hiding his feelings. He won't take any time off of work. I think he can’t stand to see her like this
either. He's engineering today. Won't be home until day after tomorrow. Anyway, I just want to warn you, before you
see her, she's not looking very well and she's on pain medication so she's very
drowsy.”
“How long have you been here?” Mom asked.
“Got here a couple of weeks
ago. I'll stay as long as needed.”
“Your job has given you time
off?” Mom asked. Alice worked as a secretary at an Air Force
base in Albuquerque. She wasn't married
yet.
“I took leave without pay. They'll keep my job for me.”
“That's nice of them. Why don't you boys stay here on the porch a
little while? I'll be right back,” Mom
said as she followed Alice into the house.
“Hurry, Mom, I gotta go to the
bathroom,” Davey said fidgeting.
After a minute or two, Mom came
back. “OK, come on in, but stay
quiet.” Davey danced his way to the
bathroom in the hallway as Mom and I went to Aunt Patty's bedroom. The shades and the curtains were
pulled. A floor lamp in the corner was
on. A big bouquet of flowers was on the
night table beside the bed. There
weren't any books or pencils around.
Alice was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed with a bag of
knitting at her feet. Aunt Patty was
lying on her side facing the door. She
was covered by a sheet up to her waist and was wearing a white slip. A fan was blowing by the window. Her hair was frizzled and her glasses were
missing. Her mouth was hanging
open. As we came in, she slowly opened
her eyes. She looked almost dead to me.
“Oh, Mary–and little Johnny. How nice of you to come. Can't get up, I'm afraid. Come and give me a hug, Johnny.” I went to the side of the bed. She weakly raised an arm to touch my
shoulder as I put my cheek to hers and put my arm around her. She was nothing but skin and bones. “I remember the day you were born.” She paused and took a couple of
breaths. “Saved your life, I did.” She blinked slowly and let her eyelids drop.
“I'm sure glad you were there,” I
said. She nodded slightly and made a
small grin. I felt numb. I wanted to do something to help her–make
her get up and walk around. I wanted
her to wear a fancy dress and laugh. I
wanted her to bake some cookies and make Jello. She had always been Aunt Patty to me and now I couldn't do
anything to help her. It was terrible
seeing her now. Tears were forming in
my eyes.
Mom whispered to me, “Get Davey and
go wait on the porch or in the back yard.”
I wiped my eyes when I got into the hall. Davey was just coming out of the bathroom zipping up his pants.
“Come on, we're supposed to wait
outside.”
“Did she give you a quarter?”
“No, twerp, she didn't give me a
quarter. She's too sick to give anybody
anything.”
***
We had brought the horseshoes and
played in the back yard for a long time.
We had our straw hats to keep the sun off and drank ice water from the
kitchen. About mid-afternoon, Mom came
and got us so we could leave. Alice
walked with us to the porch. When we
were seated in the car I said, “Aunt Patty doesn't look very good.”
“No, she sure doesn't. I don't think she'll last much longer unless
the good Lord gives us a miracle. But
she's keeping her spirits up.” Mom lit
a cigarette.
“Do you believe in miracles,
Mom?” Davey asked.
“Sure–you're a miracle.”
“No, I mean a real miracle.”
Mom paused. “I've never seen one myself, but I'm sure
they happen.” Mom stopped at a little
cafe on the way out of town and bought us hamburgers for lunch. Clouds were swelling as we left. The tops of the clouds caught the sun and
looked like huge marshmallows. By the
time we arrived at Cuervo a summer thunderstorm was in full fury. The wind blew the rain around in sheets and
loud claps of thunder followed lightning flashes. Mom drove slowly with her lights on.
“You sure you wanna stop in this
weather, Johnny? We could get some
hail.”
“Yes. I won't take more than a minute.
I just wanna tell Ray and Cora when we're coming.”
“You're gonna get all wet.”
“Mom, you promised. I'll be OK.” Mom silently turned off the highway, crossed the tracks, and
drove into the driveway of Cora's house.
Their car was gone and the house was dark.
“I don't think they're home,” Mom
said.
“I'll go see,” I said, opened the
car door, and ran to the front door before Mom could say anything to stop
me. I opened the screen door and
knocked on the door to the kitchen. As
I stood there, I thought of bad possibilities.
Suppose they went on vacation while we were in Cuervo. I wouldn't get to see Cora at all then. Suppose they'd moved and don't even live in
Cuervo anymore. The cold rain was beating
through the screen door against me and soaked the back of my clothing. I knocked again. I could hear the windshield wipers on the car flapping back and
forth. Mom honked the horn. No one answered the door. I ran halfway back to the car and turned to
look back. The door remained closed and
the house, dark. A lightning flash
reflected off the kitchen window. I ran
through the headlight beams and climbed back into the car. I was wet all over and squeezed my hands
between my knees to try to stop shivering
“No one home,” I announced.
“Look at you. You're gonna catch your death of a cold,”
Mom said. “Bundle up in the
blanket.” I wrapped the blanket around
me, curled up in the corner, and looked out of the window at the rain falling
and the wind whipping the tree branches around. I used the blanket to wipe my hair dry. My chin quivered, but I didn’t want Mom or Davey to see it.
“You don't think they've moved, do
you, Mom?” I asked.
“No, they haven't moved. They are just in town shopping or
something. The same curtains are
up.” Mom leaned over the steering wheel
to peer out the windshield. “It's
really raining. I hope Dad doesn't have
to put in a bunch of overtime again,” Mom said as she pulled back on the
highway.
“Why not? Doesn't he getta lot more money?” Davey asked.
“Yeah, but he gets so tired. It's not good for him.”
The thunderstorm stopped before we
got to Vaughn. Mom looked out the rear
view mirror. “Look at the rainbow
behind us.” Davey and I turned around
and looked. It was double and almost
complete.
“Why are rainbows always so far
away?” I asked.
“I'm not really sure. It has something to do with the reflection
of sunlight.”
“Can we turn around and drive
underneath it?” Davey asked.
“No. As you go toward it, it moves away.”
“We read a story in school about a
boy who looked for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow,” Davey said.
“Did he find it?” Mom asked.
“No. He just got into a lotta trouble. He got a horse and food by promising to pay for them with part of
the gold. But he never got the gold.”
“That's what generally happens when
you try to get something without working for it.”
***
I laid back and looked out the
window at the fence posts as they whizzed by.
I had the blanket around me. It
hadn't been a very good day for me. I
hadn't been able to see Cora and seeing Aunt Patty made me sad. Soon Aunt Patty would be dead just like my
sister. At least I knew Aunt
Patty. I knew what she looked like,
what she sounded like, and what she was like.
I never knew my sister. Of
course, she was only a baby when she died, but there were things I'd like to
know about her. What was her name? What color were her eyes? Why did she die? How would I ever know?
I had an idea. “Mom, when we get home, I wanna write Aunt
Patty a letter,” I said.
“About what, Johnny? She's very sick. She may not even be able to read it.”
“I just wanna write her. Alice said she had some good days. Maybe she can read it.”
“Maybe she'll send you another five
dollars,” Davey said.
“I'm not gonna ask for money.”
“If you wanna write a letter–write a
letter. Try to keep it cheery,” Mom
said as she parked the car in front of the outfit car. When I was inside, I got some paper and a
pencil.
***
Dear Aunt Patty,
I
enjoyed visiting you today and hope you get well soon. I wish I could've visited with you more, but
didn't want to make you tired. Thank
you for the five dollars you sent me. I
bought some fireworks with the money and had lots of fun setting them off at
Granddad and Grandma Baker's.
I
need to ask you something. The other
day Dad and I were in a store and a lady talked to Dad about having a baby girl
older than me. I never knew that I had
an older sister and no one will talk to me about her. Do you know her name? Do
you know why she died? Why won't anyone
talk to me about her?
I
love you.
Johnny
***
After I sealed the letter in an
envelope and addressed it, I sat down for supper. Dad had just arrived home and Mom had fried rabbits, mashed
potatoes, made gravy, and cooked green beans.
There was leftover corn bread.
“I think I'll go out and see Pops
tomorrow, before we move to Carrizozo,” Mom said. “You guys wanna go see Granddad Henderson? You haven't seen him for a while,” Mom asked
Davey and me.
“Sure. Will he have baby calves again,” Davey asked. “Or baby chickens?”
“I don't know. We'll have to wait till we get there to
see.”
“I hope so,” Davey said.
Mom set a pitcher of ice tea on the
table and sat. “I read that the new
cars are gonna have power steering,” Mom said.
I took some green beans and some rabbit.
“What's power steering?” I asked as I spooned mashed potatoes onto my
plate.
“It's a way to use the power of the
engine to help turn the steering wheel,” Dad answered. I passed the gravy to Davey.
“Johnny, I've had enough of this
silliness,” Dad erupted. He was mad and
I didn't know why. “Take some gravy and
put it on your potatoes. If you taste
it you'll like it.”
“I don't like it,” I pleaded.
“You heard me. I want you to eat some gravy.” My chin started to quiver. Davey passed the gravy back. “Take some.
It's good stuff. Tastes
good. Made from good food. You just have a wrong idea in your head
about it.” I poured a couple of ladles
of gravy on the potatoes. “Now eat
it.” Tears slowly fell down my
cheeks. I filled my spoon with potatoes
and gravy and put it in my mouth. “Now,
doesn't it taste good, Johnny?” It was
slimy and felt like paste. There were
lumps and bits of mashed potatoes in the sticky thick liquid. It stuck to the roof of my mouth and I
couldn't get my tongue away from it. It
started to ooze down my throat. I tried
to swallow but gagged instead. I
couldn't help myself. I felt as if I
were going to vomit. I leaned over my
plate. Tears fell on the green
beans. The mashed potatoes and gravy
came out of my mouth and fell on the plate.
I was crying and sobbing.
“Oh, my God,” Dad said. He raised his hand to cover his mouth. “The kid can't eat ordinary good gravy, but
wastes money on fancy things like pomegranates.” Mom rose and removed my plate to the sink.
Mom spoke up, “Dave, he's had a hard
day. Johnny, go to the bedroom and rest
awhile. If you get hungry in a little
bit, you can come get something.”
I stumbled to the back bedroom. I lay on the bed and sobbed in the
pillow. I don't know why gravy was such
a big deal with Dad. Stupid old gravy. I closed my eyes, floated among the puffy
clouds, and flew through the rainbow like a bird. If I accidentally hit the rainbow would the color stick to me?
“Johnny–time for bed,” Mom said as
she shook me awake. “Are you
hungry?” Someone had put a quilt over
me.
“No, I'm OK.” I rose and walked to the living room. Dad passed me and tousled my hair. I looked at him and he started to say
something but didn't. Davey was already
in bed.
The next morning I felt better. Dad tried to make a joke, “I guess different
people have different tastes–thank God.”
He laughed lightly.
***
Granddad Henderson stood in the door
as we drove up scattering the chickens in the front yard. Mom parked next to an ancient black
pickup. “Hi, Pops. How're you doing today?” Mom yelled as she stepped from the car.
“Doing as well as can be expected,
Mary, sweet child. Come on in.” A five-gallon bucket was used as a step into
the house. Granddad and Mom hugged each
other for a long moment. He was tall
and thin. Long black hair completely
covered his head. His sun-tanned face
was deeply wrinkled and a bent roll-your-own cigarette dangled from the corner
of his mouth. He wore a denim shirt and
khaki pants that looked as if they were about to fall off. Dark brown eyes barely showed through his
squint.
“You guys are growing like bean
sprouts,” He said to Davey and me.
“I don't feel any bigger,” Davey
answered.
Granddad Henderson and Grandma Lola
lived in a house that was a shack. The
floors were bare wood with no rugs or linoleum. At some places you could see the ground through the cracks
between the boards. A couple of the
windows were boarded up because the glass was broken. Flies were buzzing everywhere.
A couple of magazine pictures of farm animals were nailed to the exposed
slats of the walls. The couch had some
tow-sacks thrown on it to cover spots where the padding and springs were
sticking through.
Grandma Lola came out of the kitchen
wiping her hands on a dirty apron.
“Well, look who's here.”
“Hi, Lola,” Mom said.
“If'n you're plannin' on stayin' to
eat, all we got is tomato soup and yesterday's biscuits,” Grandma Lola said.
“Nah–we'll go back into town in a
little bit. Just wanted to come out and
see how y’all are doing.”
“If your dad would get off of his
duff once in awhile we'd be doing a lot better.”
“Back's been bothering me a bit,
lately,” Granddad said. “Little hard to
get around.”
Grandma Lola gave a little huff and
returned to the kitchen. “Why don't you
guys go look at the stock pens and see if there are any little calves,” Mom
said.
“You should find a set of twins on
the far side of the barn,” Granddad said.
“Oh boy, really? A set of twins?” Davey asked.
“Go look for yourself,” Granddad
commanded. We found the Hereford twins
and petted them by reaching through the railings. They licked and nuzzled our hands. We gathered up loose pieces of hay and fed them. The cows in the pens were bellowing to the
cattle in the pasture. The cows were
flicking their tails, trying to keep the buzzing flies away.
“Let's go, boys,” Mom yelled
stepping out of the house. I turned to
go to the car and stepped into a wet cow pile.
I looked down and saw the wet brown ooze curl up over the edge of the
sole of my shoe.
“Oh, son, you have to watch where you're
walking,” Mom said as she approached me.
“We have to wipe it off before you can get into the car. Come over here in the barn.” I was scraping my shoe on the ground and
tried to twist my foot to get to the side of the shoe. We walked into the barn filled with the
smell of alfalfa and I sat on a bale of hay.
A cat across the barn awoke and lazily stretched before slowing walking
to us. Mom grabbed a handful of dry
cornhusks and lifted my foot. She wiped
my shoe with the husks and got most of the stuff off. Then she got some dry dirt and rubbed the shoe. “When you get home, use some shoe polish and
it'll be OK.” The cat was purring and
rubbing against Mom's leg.
Granddad Henderson came into the
barn, looked at my shoe, and said, “The older you get, Johnny, the bigger the
piles become that you have to look out for.”
Mom chuckled. “Mary, thanks
again for the money. It's much appreciated,
sweetheart.”
“It wasn't much, Pops. Try to get some help for your back.”
Chapter XII
The road between Duran and Carrizozo
lies beside the railroad track, so on Sunday, as we drove to Carrizozo, we
traveled beside the train that was taking our outfit car. We could see the curtains in the windows
sway with the motion of the train. It
was strange to drive along and see your home moving beside you.
“Can I ride in the outfit car
sometimes when it's being moved?” Davey
asked. “That would be fun.”
“No, the SP won’t let us. It's against the rules. If you don't work for the railroad–and
especially little kids–the only kinda train you can ride is a passenger train,”
Dad answered.
“Shoot,” Davey said.
Everyone became lost in thought and
nobody said anything for a long time. I
wondered if Cora knew we'd be coming to Cuervo. I imagined Cora asking her dad to find out when we'd arrive and
counting the days.
Mom, trying to pass the time, I
suppose, brought up a suppertime topic; “I read that they're making a machine
that does hundreds and hundreds of arithmetic problems in a second. It's called a UNIVAC.”
“Hey, we won't have to study
arithmetic in school anymore. Can we
get one?” Davey asked gleefully.
“I don't think so. It'd fill the whole outfit car. It's really big,” Dad said. “I read the same magazine,” Dad said,
smiling at Mom. “It's made from electronics
by a company called Remington Rand.
Some people call it an electronic brain.”
“What's electronics?” Davey asked.
“Things like radios and
televisions. Stuff that uses vacuum
tubes and resistors and other things to work,” Dad answered.
“Remington–the same company that
makes your 270?” I asked.
“I don't know. Could be a part of the same company. It doesn't seem likely that the same company
that makes guns would make electronics.”
Carrizozo lies in a broad treeless
plain with the Capitan Mountains to the east and The Malpais to the west. The Capitan Mountains were steep and tall
and the peaks were hidden in clouds most of the time. Dad said that bear lived in some secluded valleys up high. The tallest mountain had snow on it as late
as May some years.
The Malpais, on the other hand,
weren't mountains at all. It was an old
black lava flow that was a couple of miles wide and I don't know how many miles
long. There was a paved road going
between Socorro and Carrizozo that cut across The Malpais. The lava was broken up, but you could see
the ripple marks on top. The lava bed
had flowed from the north, but there wasn't any volcano that I could see. When I looked at the lava I wondered if it
caught any animals when it flowed a long ago.
Could you dig down and find a dinosaur?
Of course, it would be almost impossible to dig through the lava because
it was so hard.
Our outfit car was parked on an old
unused spur. We set up the outhouse and
clotheslines and hauled some water.
After supper, Mom and Dad went outside to sit on the steps and smoke a
cigarette. Davey and I got our bicycles
out of the tool car and found a good place to set up the horseshoes. We hadn't been to Carrizozo last year so we
had a lot of exploring to do. As we
were setting up the horseshoes, I found a copper looking crystal on the
ground. I showed it to Dad.
“What's this, Dad?” Dad took it and briefly glanced at it.
“Fool's gold. Iron pyrites. Used to be a big iron mine up in the Capitan Mountains. You'll probably find quite a bit of this
around. They used to park gondolas on
this spur and load them up with the ore.”
“Let's collect a bunch of it and
make a treasure outta it, Davey. If you
find any, keep it,” I said as I put the nugget back in my pocket.
Dad flicked the ashes from his
cigarette. “Tomorrow is the supply
train,” Dad said. “I hope I can find a
copy of the requisition form in the tool shed.” The supply train came every three months. It brought all the material that the signal
maintainer and the section gangs needed to keep the railroad fixed up and in
good shape. The supply train also
picked up some things–like empty gasoline barrels and the used parts of storage
batteries. The watch inspector and,
sometimes, Dad's boss came with it. The
supply train distributed new equipment and tools. It was an exciting day when the supply train came. Sort of like Christmas.
About noon on the next day, the
supply train pulled into town and stopped on the main track positioned so that
the empty gasoline barrels were beside the boxcar that they were supposed to go
into. Everything was lined up at the
right place. The train had five boxcars
and each boxcar was storage for a few items.
A crew in each boxcar unloaded the things from that boxcar that were
ordered for that stop and then loaded in the same boxcar anything that was
supposed to go back. The crews worked
quickly so that the train could move to the next stop or to get off on a siding
so that the streamliners could get by.
The supply train had to cover the entire district in one day.
There were a bunch of five-pound
canisters of lye and boxes of battery parts used in rebuilding the storage
batteries at the signals and switches.
There were several cases of small bottles of yellow heavy oil used to pour
on top of a freshly built battery to prevent evaporation of water. There were three small kegs of bonds–thick
short copper braided wires with lead plugs on the ends–which were used to
connect the rails electrically. Two
boxes of track insulators–made of hard fiber and cut to look like the cross
section of a rail–used to make sure some rails didn't touch each other, were
also left. Barrels of gasoline, cans of
oil, and bundles of rags were left, stacked up, and the empty barrels all
loaded in. Pads of paper and boxes of
indelible pencils, without erasers, were left on the ground. Sometimes even requisition forms were
ordered on a requisition form and would be left.
While the train was stopped, two men
in suits got off and walked up to Dad and Charlie, the section foreman. “Watch inspection time,” Dad said.
“Hello Dave, Charlie,” the railroad
watch inspector said, “I'd like you to meet Herb Mason. He's from the Hamilton Watch Company.” Dad and Charlie handed their pocket watches
to the inspector and shook hands with the watch salesman.
Charlie handed the inspector a
second watch. “Better check my spare,
too.”
“You got a watch to check, young
man?” the inspector asked me.
“Not yet,” I answered.
“How are you guys and how are your
watches?” the salesman asked.
Charlie said, “Doing OK, I
reckon. The watch is still going after
fifteen years. Better than me, but I'm
still ticking.”
The watch inspector compared each
watch with his, wrote something down in a book, filled out a card, and returned
the watch with the card. “Each within a
minute by my watch.”
“I'd like to leave each of you a
copy of our catalog of certified railroad watches. If you need a new watch or a spare one, there's an order form in
the back. Something that's new this
time are railroad approved wrist watches.”
The supply train blew its whistle as a warning that it was ready to
leave. “Well, gotta go, but sir,” the
salesman said to Dad, “If you decide to get a spare like Charlie has, I'm sure
we can fix you up with something in there,” pointing to the catalog.
The whole process of unloading the
supplies, loading the returns, and getting the watches inspected took less than
five minutes. After the train left, Dad
handed me the watch catalog. “Better
hold onto this and take it to the outfit car.
I need to get the supplies to the tool shed.” Dad checked the requisition form to see what hadn't been
delivered and was still needed. Then
everything had to be hauled to the tool shed and stored away. Dad used his motorcar and made many short
trips back and forth.
I walked to the outfit car and sat
on the sofa looking at the catalog.
Davey came and sat beside me. “I
want that one,” Davey said, pointing to one that was identical with Dad's. “Sixty-eight dollars. That's a lotta money.”
“I'd rather have that one,” I said,
pointing to a gold wristwatch. It had
black Roman numerals and a sweep second hand in a rectangular case. The band looked like alligator skin. “It's only fifty-five dollars.”
“It's cheaper because it's littler,”
Davey said. I put the catalog on the
library table next to the radio.
“Maybe. Let's go get our bikes and go riding.”
“OK,” Davey said and we rode to the
west of town. There wasn't much that
was interesting. There were some old
corrals we could see, but we couldn't ride our bikes to them. There were just some rough old cow-trails
leading to them. We put our bikes
behind some cactuses and walked. The
corrals were used to hold cattle before loading them onto cattle cars. There were some chutes and piles of old
ties. It was a great place for lizards
and we spent quite a bit of time hunting them.
As we were hunting, a jack rabbit
jumped from a pile of ties and ran.
Davey, once again, shot at the rabbit with the BB gun with no visible
effect. The rabbit ran inside a big
pipe that was lying on the ground. The
pipe was about eight inches across and ten feet long. It was probably a spare for the water line.
I said, “Hey, we've got it
trapped. It can't get away. Let’s get at each end and the rabbit can't
get away.”
“OK, but be quiet,” Davey said as he
started sneaking up to his end. When we
were close to each end we rushed to close the opening with our hands. We each looked down the pipe. It was dark inside so all I could see was
the silhouette. I could see the rabbit
about halfway. Its ears were sticking
up and were bent over by the top of the pipe, filling most of the pipe.
“We've got it,” I said at about the
time that Davey shot his BB gun. The
rabbit took a couple of steps toward me.
“It can't get away this time,” Davey
said as he cocked his gun. “You shoot
him and made him come back this way.”
I stuck the barrel of my BB gun into
the pipe and pulled the trigger. The
rabbit hopped back toward Davey. Davey
shot again as I cocked my gun. Each of
us started shooting as fast as we could cock another BB into the gun. We didn't even look inside. Just point the gun, pull the trigger,
reload, and do it again.
“Dad will never believe we killed a
rabbit with just a BB gun,” Davey said.
I would have never believed it was possible to kill a rabbit with a BB
gun either, but here we were doing it.
After about fifty shots, Davey asked, “You think it's still alive?”
“Let's look.” We each looked in the pipe. I couldn't see any motion. The ears weren't sticking up anymore. “I think it's dead.”
“How do we get it out?” Davey asked.
“Let's lift one end high enough so
it will slide outta the other end.”
“OK, but first I’ll lift it a little
bit and jerk it to see if it moves.”
“OK,” I said as I crouched down and
looked up the pipe. Davey lifted the
end of the pipe a couple of feet and bounced it up and down. A whole bunch of BB's rolled down and out of
the pipe. I could see the rabbit slide
down a bit without moving. “Keep
bouncing. It's about to come out. I think it's dead.” Each time Davey bounced the pipe the rabbit
slid a couple of inches. When it was
close enough, I reached in, grabbed the rabbit, and pulled him out. It was amazing–with just our BB guns we had
killed a rabbit. I'd seen rabbit shot
with 22's that ran off. I looked down
at the rabbit. It didn't move at all.
Davey dropped the end of the pipe
and ran to my end. “Hooray, we got
him! We finally killed a rabbit with a
BB gun.”
The poor rabbit had been shot in the
eyes–there were little holes through his ears–his nose was bleeding–all over
his body there were tiny blood spots–even his teeth were chipped. I felt sick at my stomach. I imagined what it must have been like for
that rabbit–trapped, no place to go, terrified, and continually getting shot
at.
I had been so excited at the
beginning. It seemed like fun at the
start, but looking at the rabbit, made me want to cry. “Let's take it home to show Dad,” Davey
said.
“Davey, we're gonna bury the rabbit
right here,” I said, taking out my pocketknife. I walked over next to a culvert where the dirt was soft and
started digging a hole. Davey gathered
the BB's that had rolled out of the pipe.
“Why should we bury it? It's just a jack rabbit.”
“That jack rabbit was very
brave. The bravest animal I've ever
seen. It didn't cry or anything. It just slowly died. I think we need to give him a hero's
burial. How would you like to be killed
by a BB gun?” Davey came over and
helped me dig a hole. We didn't dig too
deep, maybe a foot. Then we got the
rabbit and laid him in the hole, covered him with dirt, and piled rocks on top.
“Shouldn't we say something like in
the movies?” Davey asked.
“Take off your hat,” I ordered. Davey and I stood over the pile of rocks, straw
hats in hand. “God, I don't know if
there is a heaven for rabbits, but if there is, please take this rabbit. We killed him and he was very brave. If he has a family please take care of them
and I promise I won't kill any more rabbits with a BB gun.”
“And God,” Davey added, “thanks for
giving us our BB's back.” We rode back
to the outfit car without saying much.
I tried not to think of the rabbit trapped in the pipe.
***
When we got home, Dad asked, “Well,
have you picked out your watches?”
“Can I really have a watch?” I asked.
“I need a spare and we all need
something to keep Davey from asking what the time is, all of the time.”
“Oh, boy. I want one just like yours,” Davey answered.
“Remember, you guys have to take
care of it and if I need it to go to work with because mine is broken or
something I'm gonna have to take yours, OK?”
Dad had the order form.
“I want the wrist watch on page
seven,” I said.
Dad paused and looked up. “You don't really want a wrist watch, do
you? It'll just get broken.”
“I'll take care of it.”
“Johnny, think about it. It'll fly off of your arm. Things will keep hitting it. It'll get broke.” Dad paused. “Why do you
want a wrist watch?”
“It's easy to look at. All I have to do is turn my arm and I can
see what time it is. It looks nice.”
Dad turned silently to page seven
and looked. “Which one?”
“This one,” I said, pointing to the
one I had picked out.
“A watch in a pocket is protected,”
Dad said.
“That's a nice looking watch,” Mom
said. Dad filled out the order form
shaking his head without saying another word.
Chapter XIII
“I've gotta go to the store. You boys wanna come?” Mom yelled from the open door the next
morning as Davey and I were gathering fool's gold.
“Which store?” I asked.
“Gotta go to the five-and-ten and to
the grocery store.” Both stores were on
route 54…the main street of Carrizozo.
“Sure. Let me get my money,” I answered running into the outfit
car. I had two dollars and forty-five
cents in my dresser drawer. Davey followed
me.
“It's too bad the fool's gold isn't
real gold,” Davey said. We had almost a
coffee can full. “We could buy the
whole store.”
While Davey and I went into the
outfit car, Mom waited for us in the car, smoking a cigarette. The sun caught wisps of smoke hanging in the
air making them look like tiny, thin, blue-gray clouds. “Mom,
is it fun to smoke?” I asked as I
returned and settled in the rear seat.
“Not really. It becomes a habit–an expensive habit,” Mom
said as she drove away. “A cigarette
with a cup of coffee in the morning is about the only time it tastes good.”
“Can I smoke a cigarette
sometime? Just to try it?” I asked.
“Me, too,” Davey added.
“You're too young. Wait until you grow up and then if you wanna
smoke, you can. But I warn you. When you start, it's hard to stop. It's better if you don't start. I wish I hadn't. But you're not gonna smoke while you're still at home if I have
anything to do with it.”
We arrived at the five-and-ten. Mom went to the section where they had
crochet thread and doily patterns.
Davey and I went to the toy area.
Since I had a couple of dollars there were lots of things to choose
from. There were Roy Roger yo‑yos that
came with a pamphlet to teach tricks.
There was a dart pistol with four darts and a target. You were supposed to lick the rubber end of
the dart so that it would stick when it hit the target. Davey bought a packet of tattoos. By wetting your skin slightly and then
rubbing the back of the paper you could transfer the picture to your skin. It would remain until washed away. I bought a model F‑80, a Shooting Star. It was about two inches long and made of metal. An F-80 was a jet fighter made by Lockheed
that was being used in Korea. It had
won the first dogfight between jets. It
had a vertical tail and straight wings tipped with fuel pods. The toy had a couple of small rubber wheels
in front. It cost a dollar,
nineteen. I also bought a magnifying
glass. It was three inches in
diameter. I'd seen one used to focus
sunlight to start a fire in sawdust, but I'd never done it.
Davey and I stayed in the car as Mom
went to the grocery store. I held the
F-80 high inside the car and pretended it was flying around. I looked at it with the magnifying glass. It was painted just like a real one. Davey wet his upper arm with a little spit
and covered the spot with a tattoo of a heart with an arrow sticking through
it. “I'll look just like Sam,” he said
as he rubbed on it. The image was
smeared on one edge and wasn't as dark as Sam's. Davey flexed his muscle.
***
After supper, Dad wanted to drive
into the Capitan Mountains just to look at the country. As we drove out of town I was in the seat
right behind Dad. I had the window
rolled down and held the toy plane out the window. If I tilted my hand up the wind would cause it to go higher and
if I tilted it down the wind would make it go lower. Davey had put tattoos on both arms, on the backs of both hands,
and had one of a snake on his forehead.
We hadn’t gone far when Dad said,
“Hey, looky there,” and pointed to the side of the road. I saw a covey of quail fly away. But all of them didn't fly away. One quail followed by about a dozen chicks
darted into the center of a mesquite bush.
The chicks were balls of tuft scurrying in and out of hiding. They bumped into each other and seemed to
run every direction.
“Dad, can we stop so I can catch
some? We could keep them as pets.”
“What do you see?” Davey asked as he leaned over me trying to
look out the window on my side.
“Baby quail–a bunch of them,” I
answered.
Dad stopped off the road. “You think you can catch some? I bet you can't,” Dad said. “Go try.”
“Sure I can catch them. They can't even fly. How many should I get?”
“Oh, don't get more than three,” Dad
said and grinned at Mom as Davey and I got out of the car. We ran to where I had last seen the
quail. The mesquite bush was big and
grew from a mound of drift sand. Inside
you could see the baby quail running around.
They softly peeped to each other.
“Davey, go around to the other side
and make a lotta noise. When they come
out I'll catch some.” I saw one tiny
quail at the edge of the bush. The
mother quail chirped and the chick ran back to the middle.
“Ready?” Davey whispered from the other side of the bush.
“Ready.” Davey yelled and beat the bush with a stick. I was poised, knelt over, legs apart, arms
spread out, and hands open. Suddenly they
were all around me. The mother quail
came out–half flying, half running–beating her wings and chirping loudly. A little one ran between my legs. The ground was covered with zigzagging,
sand-colored balls of down. One paused
in front of me. I dove and at the last
moment it darted a few inches. I had
handfuls of dirt. The mother quail led
her brood to another bigger bush a few yards away. I heard Mom and Dad laughing.
“How many did you get?” Davey asked as he came around the bush and
saw me getting up off the ground.
“None. I almost got one.”
“You didn't get even one? Let me try this time,” he said.
I walked to the far side of the new
bush. “Get ready,” I murmured, paused
briefly, and kicked the bush. Davey
dove. I ran to his side of the mesquite
just in time to see the quail disappear into another bush a few yards
away. “Get any?”
“I almost caught one. I touched it, but he got away,” Davey said
as he brushed dirt off himself.
“Come boys, let's go,” Dad said.
“One more try. I'm sure we could catch one,” I pleaded.
“OK. One more try and then we gotta go. It’s getting late.”
We tried again but missed. As we slowly walked back to the car, we
heard the mother quail chirping to scold us.
We returned to the car and Dad drove away.
“Good try,” Mom said. I picked up my toy plane.
“Once when I was about your age,”
Dad said, “I chased a bunch of quail chicks for a couple of miles. Never caught one. They're fast little devils.
Have to be, to keep away from the coyotes, I guess.”
“I touched one,” Davey said and then
after a moment asked, “What time is
it?” I wished Dad would tell us more
about his chase. Did he actually touch
one? How did he scare them from the
bush?
“I'll be really glad when your
watches come. It's five forty-three,”
Dad answered and returned his watch to his overalls.
We climbed into the mountains and
crossed a wooden bridge over a stream that ran through a glen. Dad parked off the road. “Let's see if there are bear tracks by the
stream.” Tall green grass covered the
moist ground. The breeze brought the
faint smell of wet grass and the sweet scent of wild flowers.
We came to a cedar tree that had
fallen over the creek. It had been
rooted on the mossy bank, but the bank had given way in a recent storm. The creek gurgled as it flowed over a bed of
smooth stones.
“Let's climb across the tree to the
other side,” Davey suggested.
“Be careful and don't fall in the
water,” Mom said as she sat on a stump.
She lit a Pall Mall with her Zippo.
“The water might clean some of the
dust off of them that the quail left,” Dad said as he got a cigarette paper
from a small pack. He curled the thin
paper lengthwise and held it around his left index finger with his thumb and
his big finger. He opened his Prince
Albert can and tapped some tobacco into the tiny paper trough. After putting the tobacco can back into his
overalls he smoothed the tobacco out, lifted the paper to his lips, licked it,
and twisted the ends. He lit the
cigarette as he walked to the edge of the water.
Davey and I straddled the tree trunk
and scooted across. We had to climb
around the limbs. “Deer tracks. All I see are deer tracks,” Dad said.
“Hooray, we made it!” Davey shouted as we jumped off the tree on
the far side. With their backs toward
us, Mom and Dad were looking at the beginnings of the sunset over the valley
below. Davey got out his pocketknife
and whittled some bark off the tree and put it in his pocket. He put his finger to his lips shushing
me. He glanced at Mom and Dad to make
sure they weren't watching him.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Shhh–I'll tell you later.”
“My, what a pretty sunset,” Mom
said.
As it was getting dark, Davey and I
skittered back across the tree. Mom and
Dad flicked cigarette butts into the creek and we walked back to the car and
drove home. I looked for the quail
where we had seen them, but I didn't see anything. We hadn't seen another car on the whole trip.
When we got home Davey put the cedar
bark in his dresser drawer. “Cedar bark
is just like tobacco. We can smoke it
tomorrow,” He explained. “But we'll
have to get some matches,” Davey said as he crawled into bed.
“You wanna smoke cedar bark?” I asked.
“I saw some boys do it at
school. They said it tasted just like
tobacco. Where can we get some
matches?”
“Maybe we can use my magnifying
glass to light it.” I got into bed.
“Let's try that tomorrow.”
***
Mom kept books of matches in the
kitchen in a canister. While she was
making the beds, after breakfast, I took a matchbook that said Vaughn First Bank on it. “Mom, we're going outside,” I said from the
living room as I got my magnifying glass.
Davey and I walked to the corrals.
“You got the bark?”
“In my pocket.”
“What're we gonna use for cigarette
paper? We have to have something to
roll it up in,” I said as we sat on a railroad tie at the edge of the corrals.
“Naw. You light one end and smoke the other end. You don't crumble it up like tobacco.”
“Let's see if my magnifying glass
will work.” I put a strand of cedar
bark on the ground and focused the sun on it.
It was hard to keep from shaking and to keep the focus point still, but
after a half-minute or so a thread of smoke appeared.
“It's too slow. Let's use the matches.” Davey picked the bark up and put it his
mouth. “Light it.” I lit a match and held it to the end as
Davey puffed. The bark caught on fire
and smoldered. Davey sucked hard and
coughed.
“How does it taste?” I asked.
“Not very good,” Davey said as his
eyes watered. He spit on the
ground. “You try it.” I took the smoking bark and sucked just a
little bit. The smoke was very bitter
and stung the inside of my mouth.
“This is horrible. I don't know why people smoke,” I said as I
threw the bark on the ground. I stepped
on it to put out the fire.
“Maybe tobacco is better,” Davey
answered. “I know what we can do. Let's sneak a Pall Mall from Mom's purse.”
“I don't think it'll be any
better.” I was using my magnifying
glass to try to ignite an old yucca blade.
An ant was crawling along the edge.
I moved the focus so that it hit the ant. The ant was fried immediately.
“Hey, see what I did to that ant?”
I asked, pointing to the crisp remains.
Another ant was on the blade.
“Watch,” I said as I moved the spot to the ant. It died instantaneously, shriveled up.
“Let me try,” Davey said.
“You get two and then it's my turn
again. There's the ant hill,” I said,
pointing a few feet away at the bare mound.
“Let's go there.” We stooped at
the edge of the small clearing surrounding the hill. “I wish we didn't have to share my magnifying glass.”
When it was my turn I focused on one
of the holes that the ants used to go in and out. The ants tried to come out and would get burned before they could
escape. There were so many dead ones
they were blocking the hole. “Can you
see any ants on me?”
“A couple. Let me brush them off,” Davey said. We walked a few yards away.
I could see a pair of ants crawling on Davey's pants. As he brushed me, I brushed him.
In the distance I heard the
putt-putt of Dad's motorcar approaching.
He was probably coming home for lunch.
“Let's go stand by the track and wave to him as he goes by,” Davey
said. We arrived at the track when Dad
was about a hundred yards away. We
started waving and he stopped beside us.
“What're you boys doing?”
“Burning ants,” I answered holding
up my magnifying glass.
“Your watches came this
morning. Get on and I'll take you to
the toolshed. We can look at the brand
new watches over lunch.”
“Our watches came!” Davey shouted with delight.
“Yeah. Get on.”
“You mean we can ride the
motorcar?” I asked, not really
believing him.
“It's only a half-mile.” Davey sat in Dad's lap and I sat on the
other side. “Hold on tight,” Dad said
as he engaged the engine. It was fun riding
in the open. There were no doors and no
windows. There was a canvas windscreen
over which you had to look to see where you were going. We'd barely got going when we stopped at the
toolshed.
There was a set-off, made of
railroad ties, which led from the track to inside the toolshed. Two long handles ran underneath the motorcar
and could be pulled out from the front or back. To take the motorcar off the railroad, Dad would pull the handles
out the rear, lift the rear end of the motorcar off the track, and swing it
around so that the motorcar was perpendicular to the railroad and on the
set-off. The handles could then be
shoved to the front, the front of the motorcar lifted, and the motorcar pushed
off the track. To put the motorcar back
on the rails the whole process was reversed.
It took a lot of strength.
“Where're the watches?” I asked.
“In my pocket. Let's go eat lunch and we can look at them.”
***
When Dad sat at the lunch table he
took two small paper bags from his overall pocket and placed them on the
table. “That one is Davey's and that is
Johnny's.” Davey and I grabbed and
opened at the same time. My hands
trembled as they did when I first held the toy train. Each paper bag contained a small box with the words, Hamilton - the Best in Railroad Watches,
written on it and a cellophane window showing the watch inside. My watch looked better than the catalog
picture. The glass crystal was clear
and shiny. The wristband had glossy
black spots separated by brown edging.
The gold colored casing didn't have a scratch on it. The second hand was circling in small
jerks. I opened the box and held the watch
to my ear. I could hear a faint
tick-tick.
“They sure are pretty,” Mom said.
“Mine says twelve twenty-two,” Davey
said.
“Mine too,” I responded.
“Well they should be the same,” Dad
said. “The watch inspector set them and
wound them this morning in El Paso. I
have the watch inspection cards.
Remember to wind them once a day.
And be careful–they're delicate.”
Dad watched me as I put my watch
around my left wrist and tried to buckle the band together. It was too big, even when I tried the first
hole. “I thought that might
happen. The band was made for a grown
man,” Dad said. “Let me cut you a new
hole.” Dad opened his pocketknife and
drilled another hole. It was a little
loose but fit a lot better. I dropped
my arm and swung it a couple of times.
“And for yours, Davey, I got a leather watch fob.” Dad had something that looked like a
shoestring. He tied one end to the watch
and the other end around a belt loop on Davey's pants. “There, you're all fixed up now. I don't wanna hear you ask again what time
it is. You've got your own watch
now.” Davey pulled his watch out,
looked at it, and slipped it back in. I
twisted my arm and looked at my watch.
Dad rolled a cigarette. Mom
cleared the dirty dishes from the table.
“You guys want a job this
Saturday?” Dad asked.
“What kinda job?” I asked.
“Helping brand calves. Lee Clark is having a roundup on his ranch
and could use a couple of hands to help with the calves.”
Mom asked, “You think they're big
enough to help in a roundup? They might
get hurt.”
“Most of the calves are
little.” Dad answered.
“Who's Lee Clark?” Davey asked.
“A guy I went to high school
with. I met him today at the Ancho
crossing. Lee is a great guy. I've known him since we started first grade
together. He got the ranch when his dad
died. If Lee's your friend, he'd die
for you.”
“You gonna be there? What are you gonna do?”
“Lee says he has a horse for me, so
I'll be there. I'll help round up the
cattle from the range. You'll get four
bucks each, if you put in a good day's work.”
“Four dollars!” Davey exclaimed. “I'll be there.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“We'll have to start before the sun
gets up. Breakfast is at sunrise. Can you get up that early?”
“What time?” Davey asked and looked at this watch.
“Four o'clock.”
Chapter XIV
Dad shook us awake. “Get up, guys. Time to go.” Seems as if
I'd just gone to sleep. I had had a
hard time falling asleep. I kept
thinking about the roundup. I'd never
seen real cowboys on a roundup except in the movies. When I finally fell asleep, I had a dream about Cora. We were at Red Hill and she ran behind a
rock. When I ran behind the rock she
had run behind another. I kept chasing,
but she was always one rock beyond.
“Put on old clothes. Bring your straw hats. Leave your watches here.” Dad was dressed in his overalls and had a
cup of coffee and a cigarette.
Inside the car, Dad gave us each a
new pair of gloves. “You'll need
these.” They were stiff and rough.
“Dad, what will we have to do?” I asked.
“Oh, there'll be plenty to do. Help hold the calves down in the corral when
they brand them. They'll tell you. Don't worry.” What if I couldn't do what they tell me? It didn't sound easy.
“I saw a roundup in a movie, once,”
Davey said.
The drive was about forty minutes in
the dark–the last twenty over a dirt road.
We topped a hill and could see, through scattered cedar trees, the ranch
house, barns, and corrals below about a mile away. As we approached, the horizon was just starting to glow from the
sunrise. A dozen or so horses were
bridled and tied to the hitching post.
A big fire burned in the middle of the largest of the corrals and cast
long shadows of the people milling around.
We parked among a half-dozen other cars and pickups.
Breakfast had been prepared by the
women and was spread on wooden picnic tables placed end-to-end and covered with
red and white checkered tablecloths.
Huge piles of scrambled eggs, biscuits, bacon, sausage, and pitchers of
milk and pots of coffee were placed on the tables. The smell of the fried meat filled the air.
A man wearing Levis and a red plaid
shirt with pearl buttons walked up grinning, “So this is Roy Rogers and Gene
Autry?” he asked, stretching his hand out to Davey and me. He had a tan, oily, cowboy hat and was
wearing rough black boots. His belt
buckle was a rectangle of silver that had a picture of an eagle engraved in
it. His belly bulged over the top of
his leather belt.
“Lee, these are my boys, Johnny and
Davey. This is Lee, boys. He's your boss today.”
“So, you guys are the ones getting
the good grades, huh?” How did Lee know
anything about our grades? Dad must've
told him. Dad hadn't said a thing about
our grades to us.
“I guess,” I answered as Davey
shrugged.
“You boys get something to eat and
then I'll introduce you to Pete. He's
got some chores for you to do until we get the cows here. Dave, I've got a horse all ready for you.”
We placed our food on paper
plates. We were introduced to the
people, but I couldn't remember their names except for Pete. Pete was a skinny old man with a limp. He was bald on top, but had long gray hair
on the sides and had a full beard. He
was missing the thumb from his left hand.
He wore black suspenders over a red sweatshirt and had a dark blue
bandanna tied around his neck. Pete's
cheek bulged with a big wad of chewing tobacco and thick brown juice dribbled
from the corner of his mouth that he wiped away with the back of his sleeve
from time to time. “Pete keeps the
records and is the corral boss. If you
guys don't know what to do, ask Pete.
He'll tell you,” Lee directed.
“Pete, they're young and strong.
Work the hell outta 'em,” Lee added as he walked away laughing and
patting Dad on the back. Dad looked
back and winked at us.
Davey and I sat on a bench and ate
off our laps. There was a crew of eight
men and a couple of older boys. After
breakfast, everyone threw his paper plate in the fire. Most mounted horses, and headed for the
range to round up the cattle. Dad
looked a little bit silly. He was
wearing his overalls and a railroad cap.
Everyone else had Levis and a cowboy hat. The sun was rising as they rode off to the north.
Pete motioned to us to follow
him. “OK, boys, I'm no goddamn
babysitter. We need lotta goddamn firewood. Gotta keep the goddamn fire going and mighty
hot. See that pile of wood outside
there. Chop it up and stack it on that
goddamn pile by the fence. I'll be back
in a bit,” Pete said as he spit a wad of brown liquid on the ground and headed
for the barn.
Davey and I went to the woodpile and
each of us took an ax that leaned against the fence. The blocks of wood were ties that had been sawed into lengths of
about a foot. We'd chop five or six
blocks into pieces and then gather the pieces and stack them inside the
corral. Pete returned in about an hour
carrying some big books. My arm was
getting tired. “Need more goddamn wood
on the goddamn fire. Keep it big. How are you guys doing? Pooped out yet?”
“A little bit,” I answered.
“Need to work more, then you
wouldn't get tired so easily. Take a
break. I left the goddamn branding
irons up at the barn door. You guys go
get ‘em and bring ‘em here. Put some
wood on the goddamn fire first.” Davey
and I were working on jobs that needed to be done.
We found the branding irons. Two were shaped like an 'S', two like a 'C',
and a couple were just straight lines.
Pete had cleaned them of cinders and rust. When we returned, Pete had spread the books on the picnic tables.
“What are those?” I asked.
“The goddamn registry books. We have to write down the numbers that we
give to each ornery calf.”
At about ten o'clock I heard the
herd mooing in the distance. I saw
about a hundred cattle slowly walking toward us, winding their way through the
scattered cedar trees. The cowboys were
on both sides of and behind the herd. I
saw Dad on the left. When they got
close, the men herded the cattle against the corral. One cowboy and Dad stayed with the big herd keeping them
close. A couple of the cowboys drove a
dozen cows and their calves into a small holding corral. From the holding corral, a cow and her calf
were separated and driven into the branding corral. Lee and three of the cowboys worked in the branding corral.
“OK,” Pete said, “I'll tell you what
has to be done on the first goddamn calf, but you have to do the rest without
me telling you. I'm no damn
babysitter.” Lee lassoed the calf
around its head and backed his horse until the rope was taut. One cowboy kept his horse between the calf
and the cow. Pete ran to the left side
of the calf, reached over, grabbed the right flank, and threw the calf onto the
ground on its left side.
“Johnny, come here,” he yelled. I ran over.
“You’re gonna be the flanker.
Sit on your goddamn ass behind him.
Grab the top leg and hold it and put your feet on the bottom leg. Spread the hell outta him.” The calf was bellowing and his mother was
circling with her head lowered. He was
kicking and trying to get up. I managed
to get a grip and hold on.
“That's the way,” Pete said. “Davey, get over here. You’re the legger.” Davey was nearby eyeing the cow. “I want you to bend the top front leg back
and curl it around while you put your knee on his goddamn neck. Press down hard.” Davey got a good grip and Pete took the lasso off the calf's
head. Lee pulled the rope back and
curled it around the saddle horn.
Davey and I held the calf down by
ourselves. I worried that the cow would
get around the horse and butt us to rescue her calf. One cowboy got a branding iron from the fire, walked up, and put
his boot on the hindquarter of the calf.
“'Lazy S', right Lee?”
“Yeap. All 'Lazy S' except the bull calves we keep and make those 'Bar
C's,” Lee answered from on top of his horse.
The branding iron, in the shape of an 'S', was turned so that the 'S'
was horizontal.
“Hold on, boys.” In a quick motion the cowboy put the hot
iron on the calf's flank. The calf
bellowed in anguish and thrashed about trying to escape. His tongue hung out of his mouth and his
eyes rolled up. The smell of burning
hair caused my throat to tighten.
Another cowboy walked to the head of
the calf. “One, thirty-eight, 'T',” he
yelled to an older boy who was keeping the register book. The cowboy tattooed the calf's ear with a
device that looked like a pair of pliers.
Letters and numbers, formed by long brad-sized needles, were placed in
the pliers. Thick black ink was spread
on the needles and by clamping the pliers, the ear of the calf was pierced by
the needles and the ink was forced into the hide.
While the tattooing was being done,
another cowboy with a long knife and an open bucket of thick brown paste that
smelled like turpentine walked to my end of the calf, reached between the
calf's legs, and cut off the calf's balls.
The calf let out a short muffled cry.
The cowboy then smeared brown paste on the wound. “I hope I don't slip and get yours by
mistake,” he said to me and smiled. He
was missing two front teeth.
“OK, let him go,” Pete yelled. Davey and I jumped away and the calf rose to
his feet and hobbled to his mother and both of them were driven into a pasture
separated from the rest of the herd.
Lee, by this time, had roped another calf and Pete had thrown it to the
ground. I didn't wait to be told what
to do. I quickly grabbed the top hind
leg, put my feet on the bottom leg, and pulled. When the branding iron hit, the calf let out a stream of brown
shit that covered my pants' leg. I
relaxed my grip for moment trying to move away from the shit and the calf
kicked me in the groin. “Forget the
goddamn shit,” Pete yelled, “Watch out for your fucking balls.” I was in agony and had trouble
breathing. “Hold on.” This calf was a little heifer so the knife
wasn't necessary. By the time the ear
was tattooed, I was able to rise slowly from the ground.
After seven calves came a yearling
heifer–almost as big as a grown cow.
Lee said that they must've missed it last year. Pete told Davey and me to get a drink of
water. A couple of the cowboys did the
flanking and legging, but even they had a hard time holding the yearling when
the branding iron hit.
One little bull calf was held by the
rope and inspected by Lee, Pete, and several other cowboys. “Markings are good. Proportions are right.” They held his head, looked at his eyes, and
forced his mouth open to look at his teeth.
They felt his hip joints and his knees.
“Let's keep him–'Bar C',” Lee said as he mounted his horse. Pete then flanked the calf and I grabbed the
legs when the calf hit the dirt. Two
branding irons had to be used. The 'C'
was put on first and then a straight iron was used to burn a short line above
the 'C'. He kept his balls.
In two hours, we did twenty-three
calves–about a third of the herd–when lunch came. I was dead tired. I had
cow shit all over me. My groin hurt and
the smell of burning hair was making me gag.
Lee walked up with Dad. “Damn,
you guys are good. Dave tells me you
have never done this before, but I don't believe him. You're working your asses off.
I bet you worked last summer in Texas, right?” Davey shook his head. Dad
put his hand on each of our shoulders and squeezed slightly.
“No,” I said, “first time.” Lee's attention and Dad's hand made me feel
better. “Well, I be damned. Grub is here. Better get something to eat before it's all gone.” The women had carried out huge platters of
fried chicken, pots of beans, big buckets of corn-on-the-cob, piles of
biscuits, and quart jars of strawberry jam.
I filled a plate, got a paper cup full of lemonade, and sat on the
ground cross-legged. It felt good just
to sit and not have to do anything. I
bit deeply into a chicken breast. The
sky was clear and the sun was adding to the heat from the fire. Little sweat beads formed on my forehead as
I sat, not even working.
We branded about sixty more calves
in the afternoon. Two more little bull
calves were found that were 'Bar C'. It
was blistering hot and Pete made Davey and me take a drink of cool water after
every couple of calves. I was so tired
that after each calf, I felt I couldn't do another. But Lee would yell, “Good job,” or something similar and I'd try
one more.
***
“That's all the calves,” Lee said.
Pete said to Davey and me, “You
guy's goddamn job is done. Go sit on
your ass.” I had never heard words more
welcomed. I wondered if I could hobble
to the fence. A lady brought me some
lemonade after I sat. The cowboys
continued to work on the rest of the herd, treating the diseased and injured
cows. A few of the cows had huge larvae
underneath their skin. Two cows had
horribly ugly cancerous eyes and had to be shot. Open sores, infested by maggots, were doused with the
turpentine-smelling brown paste and the cow released. Some cattle had their horns cut off by a device that looked like
a pair of giant curved scissors with long handles. The horns have a large artery, that after being cut and before
the tar is applied, would spurt blood a few feet.
Finally, all the work on the cattle
was done. The sun was setting and the
fire was dying. The cattle drifted back
to the range and mooed their movement.
The calves had trouble moving their hind right leg. The horses were led away to be unbridled and
fed. Davey and I scraped the dried cow
shit from our clothes. I was exhausted
from the physical work and emotionally drained. Things happened today that I had never seen or done. The movies don’t show most things that
happen in the roundup.
Lee and Dad walked to where Davey
and I were sprawled against the fence.
Lee asked, “What do you think, Pete?
Did Roy Rogers and Gene Autry earn their wages?” Pete walked over from the registry books.
“They did pretty good for goddamn
kids,” Pete answered. Lee gave Davey
and me each four one-dollar bills.
“Hey, boss,” Pete said, “they did better than that. They didn't goddamn vomit or get themselves
branded.” Lee gave us each another
dollar.
“What about next weekend? Wanna come and help again?” Lee asked.
“We'll be moving,” Davey said.
“Going to Santa Rosa,” I added. We said our good-byes and returned to the
car to drive home.
“I'm sore as hell,” Dad said. “Haven't ridden a horse for that long for
many years.” Davey leaned against the
door and slept. I lifted my pants' legs
to look at the bruises and cuts from the calves' hooves.
“I'm glad I don't have to work that
hard all the time.” I said.
“Get a good education or you'll have
to get used to it.”
“How many roundups have you worked,
Dad?”
“Lotta little ones–thirty head or
less. This is the biggest one.”
“I don't think I ever wanna do
another.”
***
The kerosene lamps were flickering
weakly through the lace curtains in the windows as we parked next to the outfit
car. Davey was sound asleep and Dad
carried him in. Mom had supper
ready. “My God, look at you guys. You're filthy.”
“And bone tired,” Dad said. “I think Davey is too tired to eat. I think he just needs to go to bed. He had a big lunch.” Dad carried Davey to the living room and
laid him on the couch.
I ate supper, took a long warm bath,
and went to bed. I dreamed of Cora
again. She was again running among the
boulders. She'd stop, giggle, and run
again. I chased her and tried to grab
her, but she always barely escaped. Then
she disappeared. I looked for her
everywhere. I called her name. She wasn't there. I went around a rock and there was a huge bear eating quail
chicks. He glared at me, arose, and
came toward me with his forearms spread wide.
I woke up trembling.
Chapter XV
On Saturday, we moved to Santa
Rosa. We left Carrizozo before the
local picked up our outfit car. The
local was late and Dad didn't want to wait.
We drove back through Corona, Duran, and Vaughn. In Corona I saw Mrs. McCoy stooped, in front
of her store, her hair in a net, wearing an apron, and sweeping the
sidewalk. I wonder if she knew any more
about my older sister. I should've gone
back to the store alone and tried to learn more. As we passed through Duran, I saw the pile of dirt beside the
siding where Dad had dumped the salted creek sand. In Vaughn, we stopped at the post office so that Mom could get
any mail being held for us. “Did I
getta letter from Aunt Patty?” I asked.
“No letter from Aunt Patty,
Johnny. Don't get your hopes up that
she'll answer. She's pretty sick. I got a letter from Uncle Fred, though.” Mom opened and read the letter as Dad turned
left onto the highway.
“It's ten past three,” Davey
said. I looked at my wristwatch.
“You're right.” Davey was a pain.
“Uncle Fred says Aunt Patty is
getting worse. He says that she got
your letter and she told him to tell you that she would try to answer you
soon. He also said I should come and
visit her when I can.”
The Pecos River runs through Santa
Rosa and one can fish and stuff like that.
Most of the town is on the east side of the river and the railroad cuts
east-west through the north side of town.
There are artesian springs of cold water, salt cedar flats, and river
overflow bogs. It doesn't seem like a
desert at all. At the center of town is
a courthouse in a plaza. Cuervo is only
sixteen miles away. I know that Cora's
family comes into Santa Rosa to shop. I
would look for her anytime we went to town.
Maybe I'd see her before we moved to Cuervo. I wasn’t really sure why I wanted to.
The train with the outfit car was
due to arrive in town very late. We ate
dinner at a restaurant. We each had
chicken-fried steak and went to a Dairy Queen for dessert. Mom bought a fifteen-cent cone and the rest
of us got giant two-bit cones. We drove
to the depot and waited for the local.
“You guys had better go to the bathroom here. We may not get the outhouse set up tonight,” Dad said. Davey and I fell asleep on the
waiting-benches.
***
The outfit car was parked on the
west side of town between the depot and the bridge over the river. The next afternoon, after Sunday lunch, Dad
asked, “You guys wanna go explore a cave?
I hear there're some caves down by Puerto del Luna.”
“Like Carlsbad?” Davey asked.
“Not that big. But you never know how far back some might
go. Let's take the Savage and the
single-shot 22. Maybe we'll hunt some
cottontails on the way home. Mary,
coming with us?”
“I'll stay and straighten up some.”
The gravel road to Puerto del Luna
followed the river south through limestone hills. The day was hot and the humidity from the river made us sweat
heavily. We had the windows rolled down
and Dad had a country and western station on the radio. I'm so
loooonesome I could cryyyyy . . . I imagined Cora listening to the same
song as she sat at the kitchen table drinking Kool-Aid and listening to her
mom's radio.
We'd gone about ten miles when Dad
pulled off the road to the left and parked.
Empty beer cans and broken bottles lay scattered on the ground. “Up there on the side of the hill is
supposed to be a cave. Bring the
flashlight.”
“Can I carry the single-shot?” Davey asked as Dad picked up the Savage and
filled the magazine.
“You'll have to take turns. Davey can carry it on the way there and then
Johnny can carry it back. Here, you can
each have three shells.” In the
pockmarked sand there was a trace of a path that led up the hillside through
the salt cedar. No one had walked on
the path since the last rain.
Mosquitoes and gnats swarmed around our arms and heads. A blue jay squawked in the distance. Dad took the lead in following the
path. As he walked around a turn, Dad
brushed away a branch. “See there,” he
said and raised the Savage. I looked
ahead and saw a skunk at the edge of the path twenty yards away. The black and white tail was raised in the
air, but the skunk seemed not to hear or see us. Davey opened the bolt of the single-shot and put a shell in the
chamber. Dad shot. The skunk dropped its tail and ran out of sight
up the path. “Damn. Missed.”
Dad worked the bolt ejecting the empty and refilling the chamber.
We walked another fifty yards on the
path and stepped out of the salt cedar facing the base of a small vertical
white cliff. Loose rocks had fallen
from the cliff and made a slope leading to the opening of a cave. As we paused, looking at the cave entrance,
a small skunk scurried from the right and ran into the cave. Dad and Davey instinctively started to raise
their rifles, but the skunk disappeared too quickly to take a shot. As they lowered their rifles another skunk
followed the first. “Damn. There must be a whole family of them,” Dad
said. “Let's go get them.” We climbed the steep rocky slope, sliding
back a step for every two we took. “Let
me have the flashlight,” Dad said as we got to the top. The rocks had fallen into the cave as well,
making a slope into the cavern. The air
from the cave was cool and musky. Dad
shined the light into the cave and swept the floor back and forth between the
walls. When the light lit the far end,
several pairs of glowing yellow eyes could be seen for a moment before they vanished
and reappeared close‑by. “Let's follow
them,” said Dad as he cautiously climbed down the rocks into the cave. Davey and I followed using the daylight
coming through the entrance to see our way.
The farther we went the dimmer the light became and the more we had to
rely on the flashlight. A thin layer of
mud covered the floor of the cave over a bed of flat stone. The chamber had a high ceiling and was much
longer than it was wide. Huge rocks
from the roof had fallen in spots. The
only sound in the cave was that of water dripping from the ceiling into
puddles. We walked farther on the high
part of the floor where it wasn't so damp and slippery. The cavern forked at the back of the
chamber. Both branches of the cave were
almost blocked by fallen rocks and it wasn't clear how far the caves
extended. “The skunks went this way,”
Dad said, pointing the flashlight to the left.
I glanced back at the cave entrance and it looked like a rising
half-moon, flat on the bottom. We
gingerly ducked and climbed down the sloping tunnel by stepping from one fallen
boulder to the next. Dad would stop and
pass the flashlight back when we came to particularly rough spots.
After thirty yards or so the tunnel
widened into a chamber. This chamber
was much smaller than the first, but, unlike the first, had stalactites and
stalagmites. The walls glistened with
moisture. I couldn't see any sunlight
from the entrance. Dad shined the
flashlight at the far end of the chamber.
The light beam reflected from water drops, like crystalline jewels,
suspended at the end of the foot-long stalactites.
“Maybe they didn't come this way,” I
suggested.
“Maybe, but I think they would've
tried to stay in front of us. Let's
keep going to the other end and see if they're there.” We walked in a single file with Dad in the
lead. He bounced the flashlight beam
from immediately in front of us to the far end of the chamber. We had gone about halfway, when he
exclaimed, “Oh, no! Here they
come.” I looked to the spot lit by the
flashlight and could see three skunks briskly walking toward us with their
tails raised. “Johnny, point the
flashlight so that Davey and I can shoot,” Dad commanded as he held out the
flashlight. I grabbed it and shined it
on the skunks. Davey knelt down beside
Dad and I was behind and between them.
“Damn, I can't see the sights,” Dad exclaimed. I shined the light on his gun.
“Now I can't see the skunks.”
“And I can't see anything,” Davey
said. I crouched behind Davey and
shined the flashlight down the barrel at the skunks. When the light hit the skunks, Dad shot. He must've just been pointing the
rifle. The shot in the small chamber of
the cave sounded as if it came from a cannon.
The skunks didn't stop, but the one in the middle ejected a spray of vapor. The misty cloud of stink expanded and filled
the chamber. Davey shot and the skunk
on the left sprawled on its side and kicked vigorously several times and
emptied its load of stench. Dad coughed
and Davey gagged. I held my hand over
my mouth. My eyes burned and watered.
“Good shot. Johnny, help me while Davey reloads.” Dad rested on one knee and I shined the
light along his gun as I had done for Davey.
Dad hesitated, shot, and the skunk in the front was killed. It didn't kick. Dad worked the bolt and reloaded.
“I'm ready,” Davey said. The remaining skunk continued coming at
us. I took a step back so that the
flashlight would shine on both Dad and Davey.
The horrible smell was much worse when I stood. Davey wiped his eyes with his right hand. The skunk was about five yards away. The flashlight showed its bared teeth and
glaring eyes. Dad and Davey both shot
at the same time. The skunk spun around
and tried to escape, but, after a couple of staggering steps, fell down and
didn't get up.
“Let's get outta here,” Dad said and
stood. “Stay down as far as possible,”
Dad commanded as he quickly stooped again.
I was in front and led the way lighting the path in front of me.
“You're losing us, Johnny. Not so fast.” When we got to the connecting tunnel the smell became terribly
sickening. The smell was a concentrated
mist that flowed through the narrow passageway. We all coughed and wiped our eyes. Dad started laughing. “A
fine pickle we got ourselves into, huh?”
“I just wanna get outta here,” Davey
said as we climbed into the dim light of the outer chamber. The air was better and I took a deep
breath. “Whew,” Davey said. The light from the entrance was in front of
us, so climbing out of the cavern was quicker.
The sunlight outside seemed blindingly bright.
“Let's take a break,” Dad said as he
sat on a flat rock. “I can't believe we
got caught like that. That's the first
time I ever saw a skunk go after a man.
I'd thought they'd stay as far away as possible,” he said, shaking his
head and laughing. He leaned the gun
against the rock and rolled a cigarette.
“I shot two of them,” Davey said.
“You think you got that last one,
huh?” Dad asked.
“I had him right in my sights.”
“Maybe we both shot him. I'm just glad someone shot him or otherwise
we'd had to get outta there a lot quicker,” Dad paused. “God, Whatta stink. I wonder if our clothes smell?” I put my shirttail to my nose.
“Seems OK.”
“Your nose is probably so overloaded
it can't smell anything.”
***
“Good God, who got sprayed by a
skunk?” Mom asked when we opened the
door of the outfit car.
“None of us. Is it strong?” Dad asked.
“It's terrible. Whoever it is, go take off your
clothes. You're gonna stink up the
whole house.”
“It's probably all of us. We got caught in a cave with some mad skunks
and they pretty well stunk up the whole cave.”
“Get outside, all of you. I'll get you some clothes and you can go
change in the tool car,” Mom commanded.
“Leave your dirty clothes there.”
We changed clothes–socks, shorts, everything and returned to the outfit
car.
“That's better, but you all need to
take baths tonight. You still stink a
little bit,” Mom said. Davey told her
the whole story about the skunks and the cave–claiming he had shot two of the
three. “What were you doing?” Mom asked me.
“I was holding the flashlight so
they could shoot.”
“I think you were lucky, you didn't
get bit by a rabid skunk,” Mom said, paused, and changed the subject.
“I'm gonna go to Tucumcari tomorrow
to see Aunt Patty.”
“Can I come?” I asked.
Maybe Aunt Patty had answered my letter but hadn't mailed it and I could
get it.
“I don't wanna go,” Davey said.
“I think I'd rather leave you guys
here, if you think you'll be OK. She's
very sick and a whole lotta visitors isn't gonna do her any good.”
“Goody, goody, we getta stay home,”
Davey chanted. I was disappointed and
was thinking how I could ask Mom to ask about the letter. I couldn't think of any way without making a
big deal out of it and being a bother.
“Will you be OK? Not get into any jackpots?”
“Sure. We'll be fine,” Davey declared.
“I'll come home for lunch and check
on them,” Dad said.
“Can you stop at Cuervo and tell Ray
and Cora we're coming?” I asked.
“I'll see.”
Mom had made enchiladas for
supper. Dad had a stack of four topped
with an egg. Davey and I had stacks of
three without eggs.
***
“There's hot‑dog stuff in the
icebox. If you need help, go to the
depot. I'll be home this afternoon
before Dad,” Mom said as she got into the car.
“It's ten before nine. Whatta you wanna do?” Davey asked as he put his watch back in his
pocket. I hadn't put my wristwatch on
yet. It was on the dresser.
“Let's make parachutes,” I
suggested.
“OK. I'll get the bandannas and some string,” Davey answered. Davey returned with two bandannas and a ball
of twine. We tied string to each corner
of the bandannas, cut the string with our pocketknives to a foot long, and then
tied all four ends to a small iron bolt.
We then rolled the string and the bandanna around the bolt forming a
ball.
“OK, let's go. The red bandanna is mine.” Davey said as he went out the door. When he was outside he threw the rolled-up
ball as high as he could. As the ball
came down, it unrolled, formed a little parachute, and floated down. It was hard to throw it high enough and
sometimes the ball would unroll on the way up or not unroll on the way down.
I had an idea. “Why don't we go drop them off of the
bridge,” I suggested.
Davey turned around grinning. “We wouldn't even have to roll them up. We could just drop them. Let's go.”
“They might land in a place we can't
get to.”
“We'll be careful. Let's go!”
Davey urged.
“Let me get my watch. Remember Dad is coming back for lunch.” I ran into the outfit car and to the living
room where our dresser was. I could
imagine the parachutes gently floating down from the bridge and hanging in the
air for a long time. I had put my watch
on the dresser for the night. I was
snapping the buckle on my wristwatch when I slipped. I don't know exactly how it happened but the watch fell to the
floor. I quickly picked it up and
looked at it. The second hand wasn't
moving. I put it to my ear. It was silent. God, I had broken it, just like Dad had said I would. I gently shook it and listened again. No sound.
A chill surrounded me. I sat on
the sofa and looked at the watch. What
had I done to deserve this? Why was God
punishing me? I wondered how much it
would cost to get it fixed. I had about
three dollars. There was no way to get
it fixed without Dad knowing.
“Johnny, let's go. Hurry up,” Davey yelled through the kitchen
screen door. I buckled the watch and
decided to wear it, to pretend it was working, and not say anything for awhile. I needed time to think about what to
do. I grabbed my straw hat from the
dresser.
“I'm coming.”
***
The river had cut a gorge deep in
the prairie so the bridge was high above the water. The railroad was visible for miles from the bridge so no train
could sneak up on us. My watch felt as
if it weighed a ton. I glanced at it
hoping to see it running. Stopped. We ran to the center of the bridge and
looked down. The river was far
below. We could see the tops of trees
and the carpet of salt cedars lining the river. “Where're you gonna drop it so it doesn't get hung up?” I asked.
“On the river bank,” Davey said as
he spread the parachute, leaned over the fence, and dropped it. The bright red bandanna billowed out and the
parachute gently dropped with the bolt hanging down swinging back and forth. The riverbank was a narrow–maybe four feet
wide–strip of bare sand. The parachute
hung in the air for a long time–much longer than anytime when we threw it up. It drifted as it fell.
“It's gonna go into the river,” I
said as it dropped and seemed smaller.
The bolt hit with a small white splash.
The bandanna spread on the surface of the water, hesitated, and sank.
“OK, now we know which direction the
wind is blowing,” Davey said. “We need
to get closer to the end of the bridge.”
“You think we can be accurate
enough? We'll just lose mine, too.”
“If you don't wanna drop it, give it
to me. I can hit the sand.” I held opposite corners, let the bolt hang
loose, and dropped the blue handkerchief.
The parachute billowed and drifted toward the river. Davey leaned over the guardrail to watch the
parachute fall. It might have hit the
river’s edge if it hadn't snagged the top of a cottonwood first. A startled sparrow flew away. As Davey straightened, a guide wire hit the
rim of his hat and knocked it off. The
hat sailed down and followed the parachute into the top of a tree. Davey watched his hat without saying a word.
“Maybe we can climb up the trees and
get them,” Davey said.
“Those trees are really tall. I don't think we can climb them.”
“Come on. Let's see.”
We ran to the end of the bridge and
climbed down the side of the gorge. A
path was worn by fishermen.
“Which trees?” I asked, looking upward. The trees were so full with branches and
leaves that the tops were hidden. Davey
squinted, shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked from tree to tree.
“We couldn't climb any of these
trees anyway.”
***
Dad came home and made lunch from
hot-dogs and pork and beans. I wanted
to tell him about the watch, but I couldn't find the right moment. I knew he would be extremely upset. I worried that I might get a spanking. I tried to keep my wrist turned so that no
one could see it. If my older sister
were here I'd ask her what to do. She'd
know. She'd talk to Dad. She'd make it OK.
“Let's go fishing next Saturday,”
Dad said as he sat.
“Oh, boy! At the reservoir like last year?” Davey asked.
“Sounds good,” Dad said.
Chapter XVI
Davey and I played Authors and War until Mom returned home.
She had some more Life
magazines. I wore my watch and hadn't
told anyone about breaking it–not even Davey.
“How's Aunt Patty?” I asked.
“Not so good. She slept most of the time I was there. She's taking a lotta medicine. Looking very weak.”
“Did she say anything about the
letter I wrote?”
“No. She barely knew who I was.
What did you guys do all day?
Did Dad come home for lunch?”
Davey answered, “Dad came home. We played parachutes. I'm sorry, but we lost a couple of
bandannas.”
“Did you stop at Cuervo?” I asked.
“No, sorry, Johnny. I was running late and didn't wanna take the
time. We'll be there in less than two
weeks and then you can talk to Cora all you want.” Mom started peeling potatoes for supper. “How did you lose the bandannas?”
“They accidentally floated into the
river,” Davey answered. I waited for
Davey to tell about the loss of his hat.
“Well I hope you used the old ones.”
“Dad said we're going fishing next
Saturday,”
***
On Saturday morning we rose
early. I fretted about my watch all
week. I hadn't told anyone and continued
to put it on each morning. No one had
noticed that it wasn't running. I'm
sure that Dad will say, “I told you so,” when he finds out. I hoped I wouldn't get a spanking.
We had to go kill a couple of jack
rabbits for bait. We usually found rabbits
on the way to the reservoir, but, if we didn't, Dad wanted to make sure we had
enough time to go somewhere else. The
reservoir was on the north side of the tracks on the east side of town. You had to go on a little dirt road for a
couple of miles. There wasn't an easy
way to get there, but that meant there weren't many people there usually. Davey and I rode in the back of the car and
looked out the windows for a jack rabbit.
Mom and I looked to the right and Dad and Davey looked to the left. We had each side covered twice. The sun was in front of us and had been up
for about a half-hour. The shadows were
long.
“Can I shoot it Dad, if it's on my
side?” I asked.
“I better do it this time. We wanna get to fishing as quick as we
can. Can't afford any misses.”
“I wouldn't miss,” I defended
myself.
“I think I'd better do it this
time. You'll get your chance when we go
after cottontails again.”
Dad had the Savage 22 in the
front. Dad saw a rabbit crouching
underneath a cactus with its ears laid back.
Dad stopped, propped the gun against the car door, and shot it. “Let me go get it,” Davey said as he jumped
out. As Davey ran to get the rabbit,
Dad opened the trunk.
“Put him in the trunk on the
tow-sack,” Dad said when Davey returned straining to hold the rabbit up by the
hind legs. “Don’t get it tangled up
with the fishing stuff.” The rabbit's
ears were dragging on the ground. We
drove on slowly, continuing to search.
“There's a roadrunner,” Mom said,
looking ahead. The roadrunner was crossing
the road twenty yards ahead. It had a
lizard in its beak.
“Let's shoot it,” Davey said.
“Can't. It's against the law.
They're the state bird. Besides
they kill rattlesnakes. And they never
stop long enough to shoot at,” Dad explained as the roadrunner disappeared
behind a mesquite.
We killed a second rabbit close to
the reservoir. The rabbit was on the
right side, so Dad had to put the gun across the front seat. Mom leaned back to make room. It took only one shot.
When we arrived at the reservoir,
Davey and I each dragged a rabbit and carried our fishing poles over our
shoulders. Dad took the rest of the
fishing gear–a bucket, a tarp, the tackle box, and his fishing pole. Mom brought the water bag and the picnic
basket filled with a thermos, some orange juice, and donuts. We trudged about a hundred yards down a
gravel slope to the edge of the water.
The sky was clear and it looked as
if the day was going to be a scorcher.
“Where's your hat, Davey?” Mom
asked.
“I can't find it.”
“It must be at the house somewhere.”
“I looked everywhere.” Davey hadn't lied, but he hadn't told all he
could either.
Dad cut little chunks of flesh off
the rabbits and baited the hooks for us.
Catfish ate off the bottom so we put a heavy weight with the baited hook
and cast it as far as we could. We
reeled in the slack and sat on a log, waiting for something to pull the
line. Davey pulled out his watch. “Started fishing at ten minutes past
seven.” We set our poles in the fork of
a branch stuck in the ground. Dad and
Mom were sitting together on a tarp, smoking cigarettes, and drinking coffee
from the thermos. They were talking and
laughing. Their poles were also propped
in a branch fork.
Waiting got boring, so after awhile
I walked along the water's edge looking for lost fishing sinkers and
lures. Birds ran before me stopping and
pecking at unseen morsels. Dad yelled,
“Johnny, you got a bite.” I looked at
my pole. The tip was bobbing and
jerking. I ran to it, yanked to set the
hook, and started reeling in the fish.
Catfish don't fight much and feel like a dead weight. Dad let me reel the fish in, but he took the
catfish off the hook. He was afraid
that I'd get stuck by the catfish's whiskers and get blood poisoning. He wore a glove on his left hand and held
the fish right behind the head as he used a pair of pliers to remove the
hook. We put the fish in the bucket
“Did I reel him in OK?” I asked.
“You got him in, didn't you?”
I re-baited and cast my line
again. If the fish weren't biting, we
had to reel in and refresh the bait every half-hour or so. It could get boring. We should’ve brought our BB guns. Davey and I played mumble peg with our
pocketknives. We had fun until I
flipped my knife and the blade partially stuck and the handle leaned against a
dirt clod. We got in a big argument
whether it was stuck. Davey walked away
saying he wasn't going to play with a cheat.
I claimed that since he quit I had won.
We didn't finish the mumble peg game.
We stayed until lunchtime. The donuts had been eaten. The only fish caught was the one I
caught. “Well, I guess we know who the
fisherman is,” I teased.
Dad looked at me and grinned a
bit. “Yeah, sure. Wait until next time, smarty-pants.”
Davey looked at his watch, “Stopped
fishing at twenty past twelve.”
That evening, Mom skinned my fish,
rolled it in corn meal, and fried it for me.
I was the only one eating fish.
Catfish doesn’t have a have a strong fishy taste. After supper I looked at my watch. I had to say something. “My watch isn't running,” I said.
“What? Let me see,” Dad said. I
took it off and handed it to him. He
looked at it, shook it, and put it to his ear.
“When did it stop?”
“Sometime today, I guess,” I lied.
“When was it last running?”
“I remember looking at it this
morning,” I said truthfully.
“Did you drop it or did something
hit it?” Mom asked.
“Not that I remember,” I continued
lying.
“I knew that that damned wrist watch
was a mistake,” Dad said as he stubbed his cigarette out angrily.
“Guess we gotta get it fixed,” Mom
said.
“Damn, probably cost an arm and a
leg. I'll send it to the watch
inspector in El Paso. See what he
says,” Dad said.
I went to bed relieved that at least
I didn't have to hide the watch anymore.
I had lied, but I hadn't got a spanking. Drifting into sleep I thought of Cora and Cuervo. In a week we'd be there. I kept thinking of her blue eyes. Only sixteen miles away.
***
Sunday morning was slow and
lazy. Mom had finished cleaning up
after breakfast and was crocheting a white doily. Dad worked on the car a little bit; changed the oil, gapped the
spark plugs, that sort of thing. Davey
liked to try to help. I don't think
Davey was much help. Mostly ran to get
a tool or something. I stayed inside
and played with the F-80. I practiced
throwing it so it landed properly.
“Let's go to the park,” Dad
announced as he walked in wiping his hands on a rag. Davey followed him.
“What time?” Davey said as he got his watch out and
looked at it. What a twerp. His thing with the watch was getting on my
nerves.
“Let's have a picnic lunch.”
“I gotta go to the store,” Mom said
as she put her crocheting aside.
“Picnic! Picnic!” Davey yelled as
he jumped up and down.
“I looked for your hat, Davey, and I
couldn't find it either. When did you
last have it?”
“I think I had it in the cave.” This wasn't really a lie, I guess.
“You probably left it there with the
skunks.”
“Why don't you get the horseshoes,
Davey, and put ‘em in the car.” Dad
commanded.
“Can we take our BB guns?” I asked.
“Better not. On a pretty Sunday afternoon, there'll
probably be other people around with little kids and all.”
We went to the city park south of
town beside the Pecos River. We carried
the picnic basket to a table in a corner of the park formed by the river and an
overflow pond. The pond looked as if it
was connected to the river only when the river was high. When the river was lower, like now, a boggy
strip of black mud fifty yards long, dotted with pockets of dirty water,
connected it to the river. The pond had
a fishy stink. Dragonflies darted in
and out among the cattails and reeds.
Davey ran to the edge of the river.
“Maybe I can find the bandanna,” he said. Dad set up the horseshoes.
Mom spread lunch on the table. “What're we gonna talk about today?” Mom asked as we sat and grabbed for
sandwiches. Mom had poured glasses of
grape Kool-Aid for Davey and me. Davey
drank his without stopping and motioned for a refill. He had a purple mustache that he didn't quite lick off.
“Do we have to talk about
anything?” Davey sniveled.
“Does anybody know who Holden
Caulfield is?” She asked.
“A senator or something?” I guessed.
“Nope. Anybody else?”
“He's the kid in that new book,” Dad
answered.
“Dad's right. Johnny, do you know what book we're talking
about?” She sounded like a teacher.
“No,” I answered.
“It's written by J. D.
somebody-or-the-other,” Dad volunteered.
“Catcher
in the Rye. It's about a boy just a
bit older than you are. I think you'd
enjoy it.”
I reached for a handful of potato
chips. “What did he do?”
“It's not so much about what he
does, but about what he thinks. Would
you like to read it?”
“What he thinks? How can that be interesting?”
“Read it and find out,” Mom
challenged.
“Does it have pictures of what he's
thinking?” Davey asked.
“No, it doesn't have pictures. It's a grown-up's book,” Mom sneered.
“OK, I'll try, but if it's not
interesting, I'm not gonna read much of it.”
Dad rolled a cigarette from his
Prince Albert can, grabbed a couple of cookies, and strolled toward the
overflow pond. “I'll getta copy from
the library for you,” Mom declared. I
suspect she felt as if she had won a victory.
She means well.
“Jesuz Christ, almighty, look out
there,” Dad yelled from beside the pond, pointing to the middle. Davey jumped up and ran toward Dad. I followed him.
“What is it, Dave? What you see?” Mom asked as she walked behind us.
“A huge catfish. Look at that thing,” Dad answered as he
pointed to about ten yards out in the pond.
I saw the fish. It was huge–four
or five feet long. It was too big to be
covered by the bog water and part of its back fin stuck out. It tried to swim, but there wasn't enough
water and it just slithered and thrashed around.
“It's a whale,” Davey exclaimed.
“It's been stranded there,” Mom said
as she shaded her eyes with her hand.
Davey picked up a rock and threw at the fish. He missed by a mile.
“I ain't never seen a fish that
big,” Dad said as he inched closer.
“Mary, go home and get the washtub.
I'm gonna get that fish.”
“Oh, Dave, you don't want that
fish. What are you gonna do with it?”
“Maybe we'll eat it. Do as I said. Go get the washtub.”
“You want me to drive all the way
home, get the washtub, and bring it back here?” I could tell Mom thought the idea was ridiculous. I could also tell that Dad didn't notice
what Mom thought.
“Yes, and bring the rope, too.” Mom walked toward the car shaking her head.
“Davey, don't throw any more rocks,”
Dad said. Ten minutes later, Mom
returned. Davey took out his watch
every thirty seconds or so. Dad took
the rope and made a lasso loop in one end and handed me the other end. “Johnny, hold onto this,” Dad commanded as
he sat to take off his shoes and socks.
He rolled up his pants' legs and stepped gingerly into the muck and mire
of the pond. He sank to above his
ankles. The farther he went the more he
sank. When he got to the fish, he was
almost up to his knees. He reached down
and touched the fish. The catfish tried
to swim away, but couldn't go far. Dad
took another step and slowly put the loop around the tail and then suddenly
jerked the rope. The loop tightened and
the fish struggled, trying to get away but only made the loop tighter.
“You got it! You got it!” Davey yelled as Dad almost fell taking a quick step back to get
out of the way of the fish. I pulled
the rope tight.
“Oh, good grief,” Mom exclaimed as
Dad retraced his steps.
“Don't let it get away from you,”
Dad ordered as he climbed out of the pool.
His rolled up pants' legs were wet at the bottom and his legs were
coated with black gook. “Let me have
the rope.” I gave it to him and stepped
aside. Dad grabbed the rope and
gradually pulled the fighting fish closer to the edge of the pond where Davey
was bouncing up and down. The fish grew
weaker and struggled less.
“He's huge,” Davey said.
“OK, we gotta get it outta the
pond. Everybody grab the rope and when
I say 'three' pull hard,” Dad said.
“Come on Davey, Mary. Need your
help.” We grabbed on. “One–two–three.” We all pulled and dragged the fish onto the grass. “Gotta get it farther from the pond,” Dad
directed, so we all kept pulling until the fish was ten yards or so up on the
grassy bank away from the bog.
“Damn, look at it. Must be a hundred pounds,” Dad said as he
gently pushed the fish with his bare foot.
The smooth, scaleless skin of the fish was blue-black on top and white
on the bottom. Around its mouth were
about ten long whiskers. Its head was
broad and the size of a bucket. Its
gills were opening and closing weakly.
Dad picked the washtub up and slid
one edge underneath the fish's head as far as it would go. “Johnny, as I lift its tail high, I want you
to push the tub down flat. Understand? And we'll just slide him in.” I grabbed the top edge of the tub. Dad grabbed the rope right next to the fish
and lifted the tail. I pulled down on
the top edge of the tub and Dad swung the tail toward me. The fish plopped into the tub with only its
tail sticking out. “There.”
Dad threw the rope in on top of the
fish and looked at me. “Who's the
fisherman, now, mister smarty pants?” I
didn't say anything. Catching this fish
wasn't the same as catching a fish with a hook.
“Dave, look at yourself. You're a mess and you stink to high
heaven. That fish doesn't smell very
good either,” Mom told Dad. She was
right. The stink, from the muck and
mire of the pond, on Dad and the smell of the fish pushed me back.
“I'll go wash off in the river,” Dad
said as he headed for the riverbank.
When he came back he was clean and
had his pants' legs pulled down. As he
put his shoes and socks on, Mom, Davey, and I gathered the picnic stuff and put
everything in the car. All four of us
lifted the washtub with the fish and put it in the trunk and drove back to the outfit
car. The car smelt like fish.
“Can I roll it in corn meal?” Davey asked. Mom and Dad laughed.
“This is one fish story where the
fish didn't get away. I wanna take a
picture of me and that fish,” Dad said as we set the washtub on the
ground. The catfish wasn't moving and
the stink was sickening. “I wanna hang
the fish from the clothesline pole and I'll stand beside it holding the fishing
rod.” The fishing rod hadn’t had
anything to do with the fish.
“Then what're you gonna do with the
fish?” Mom asked.
“Maybe give it away. Get the camera.” Dad dragged the tub underneath the clothesline pole and strung
the rope over the crossarm and started tugging. The tail of the fish was lifted.
“You guys help.” Davey and I
grabbed the rope and started heaving.
The tail reached the crossarm.
“Pull the tub away.” I took the
handle, tipped the tub, and pulled it so that the fish's head came out. The fish had a lot of black muck smeared on
it. Flies swarmed.
Dad tied the rope as Mom came out
with the Kodak. Dad stood beside the
fish with one hand on the tail of the fish and held his fishing rod
vertical. He grinned widely and Mom
snapped the camera. “OK, let's get it
down,” Dad commanded. As we lowered the
fish, pieces of sun-baked mud flaked off.
“What're you gonna do with it,
now?” Mom asked with a hand on her
hip. Dad sighed, took a step back,
rolled a cigarette, and looked at the fish.
About half of its tail curled above the washtub. Flies were crawling on its eyes and into its
gills. “How am I gonna get the stink
outta my washtub?”
“Help me put it in the car. I'll see if any of the section gang wants
it.” We unloaded the picnic stuff, put
the washtub and fish in, and Dad drove away.
It was an hour before Dad returned.
The fish was gone and the tub was clean.
“Are they gonna eat it?” Davey asked.
“I don't think so,” Dad responded.
“Did you give it to them?” Mom asked.
“No, they didn't want it.”
“What did you do with it?” Davey asked.
“I got rid of it.”
Chapter XVII
Finally, we were driving to
Cuervo. It was Saturday morning and
we'd be in Cuervo in ten minutes. For
the whole summer I'd wished we were in Cuervo and now it was almost true. I hadn't slept well last night. I tossed and turned and waited for
dawn. Two weeks in Cuervo and then back
to Vaughn for the school year to start.
The summer was almost over, but the best part was about to start. Two weeks with Cora.
“It's ten-thirty,” Davey announced.
“Oh, that reminds me. I sent your wrist watch to El Paso yesterday,”
Dad said.
“When will it come back?” I asked.
“A week or so I'd guess.”
“I hope it doesn't cost much,” Mom
said. I looked out the window. The outfit car was supposed to arrive in the
early afternoon. Last year we were
parked about a hundred yards from Cora's house.
“I need to visit Aunt Patty
again. Probably go on Monday,” Mom
said. I still had no answer to my
letter.
“Can we stay home like last
time?” Davey asked.
“I'd like to go if I can,” I said.
“I thought you wanted to spend time
with, uh–what's her name? Oh, Cora,”
Dad said. He glanced back and grinned.
“Maybe Cora and Ray can go with us,”
I said. “Then Davey wouldn’t get
bored.”
“The bunch of you would make too
much noise. It's probably better if you
stay home.” We topped the last ridge
before Cuervo. Red Hill stood alone two
miles to the north. You could see the
big rocks on its side where they had fallen from the top of the sandstone mesa. “Let's stop at Lopez's and I'll get some
stuff to make lunch,” Mom said.
When Dad stopped the car, I jumped
out. “I'll be right back. I'm gonna see Ray and Cora and tell them
we're here.” I ran before anyone could
say anything to stop me. I followed the
path between Lopez's and the liquor store, across the tracks, and down onto the
side road. As I ran, my feet kicked up
wisps of powdery dust from the road.
Pancho, a cocker spaniel who belonged to the section foreman, barked at
me from their yard. I ran to the
kitchen door of Cora's house and knocked.
I heard the radio inside. The
door opened.
Mrs. Jones, Cora's mother, said,
“Well, Johnny Baker. What're you doing
here? Where's your family?” She looked at the driveway and the road
trying to find our car.
“They're at Lopez's. We're moving back for a couple of
weeks. Are Ray and Cora here?”
“I heard your Dad was coming on
relief. Ray is out playing
somewhere. Cora is at her grandmother's
in Clayton.” The words hit me cold. I paused and blinked.
“When's she coming back?” I couldn't believe it. I had waited all summer to see Cora and when
I get to Cuervo, she's gone.
“Oh, she'll be back next weekend, so
you'll get to see her. She's changed a
lot since last summer. Grown up. Become quite the young lady.”
I stood speechless for a
moment. A whole week. I'll have to wait a whole week. But at least I'll see her. Another week of waiting. Mrs. Jones paused for a moment, probably
waiting for me to say something, and said, “Well, tell your Mom and Dad hello
for me. Maybe they can come over
sometime and we can play some more canasta.”
I gathered my wits. “OK, Mrs. Jones. Thanks. Tell Ray we'll
see him in a little bit.”
“OK, Johnny. Good to see you again. Ray will be happy that you're back.” After spending all summer with Davey, it’ll
be fun to spend some time with Ray.
I turned and slowly retraced my
steps. Life can change quickly. Just a couple of minutes ago I was excited
and now I have another long week to wait.
If my older sister were here, I could talk to her and she'd explain it
to me. I could talk to Aunt Patty, too,
and she'd make me laugh. There wasn't
anybody else that would understand and could make me feel better. Dad would tease me. Mom would try to help. A tear fell and made a dark brown dimpled
spot in the dust on the road. I sighed,
wiped my eyes, and ran back to the car.
“I didn't think we'd see you again,”
Dad said as I got in the car.
“Here's a sandwich,” Mom offered.
“Did you see Ray and Cora?” Davey asked.
I took a bite of the sandwich. Pickle‑pimento loaf. “Ray was there, but I didn’t see him. Cora is with her grandmother.”
“Is she coming back soon?” Mom asked.
“Yeah, next week. Mrs. Jones said for y’all to come over and
play canasta sometime.”
***
It was dark when the knocking on the
door awoke me. Dad, wearing only his
pants, had a flashlight as he came through the living room to see who was at
the door. Mom followed him, tying the
cloth belt of her housecoat.
Dad opened the door. “Dave, the dispatcher asked me to bring this
telegram to you. He thought you'd wanna
get it as soon as possible,” somebody said from outside. Mom lit a kerosene lamp on the kitchen
table.
“OK. Tell him I appreciate it.”
Dad shut the door, sat beside the lamp, and tore open the envelope. I sat up in bed and watched Mom and
Dad. Davey was asleep. Mom nervously lit a cigarette.
“What is it, Dave? Is it Aunt Patty?” Mom asked.
“Yeah, afraid so,” Dad said as he
handed the telegram to Mom and took one of Mom's cigarettes.” Mom read the telegram and laid it on the
table. “Stove is still hot. I'll put some coffee on.”
“What is it, Mom? What's happened?” I asked. Mom rose, walked
into the living room, and sat on the edge of my bed. She put her hand on my arm.
“Aunt Patty died yesterday,” she
said softly. Davey rolled over causing
the bed to creak. I shivered. The words sounded empty. I stared at Mom. There were tears in the corners of her eyes.
“How do you know? Are you sure?” I asked and then felt it was a silly thing to ask, but I couldn't
think of anything else to say. My
throat was tight and I could only breath in short breathes.
“Uncle Fred sent a telegram.” I lay back in the bed. I could smell brewing coffee and hear the
perking.
“What's wrong?” Davey asked as he propped himself up on one
elbow.
“Aunt Patty died,” Mom answered.
“Oh,” Davey said quietly.
“You OK, son?” Mom asked me.
“Yeah.”
Mom returned to the kitchen. Davey lay down on his side. I rolled over to look into the kitchen. Cigarette smoke hung layered in the air. “Guess we should go there today,” Mom said
to Dad. Dad poured two cups of
coffee. Davey was asleep again. I couldn't imagine Aunt Patty dead. I had never before seen a dead person. She didn't seem very old to me. She was younger than Grandma or Granddad
Baker. She was younger than Granddad
Henderson. Why did she, instead of one
of them, have to die? A year ago she
was perfectly OK. I knew I was going to
miss the love she always gave me. There
was no one to take her place. Not even
an older sister.
I heard bits of the conversation
from the kitchen–”I knew this day was coming, but...,” “I guess the funeral will be on
Wednesday...,” “Where do you think Fred will bury her?”, “...will Fred live by
himself or....” I dozed and drifted in
and out of a fog of being neither asleep nor awake. I dreamed that Cora came back, but she was really Aunt
Patty. She tried to tousle my hair, but
couldn't quite reach me. She'd try to
step toward me, but it was extremely difficult as if she was in thick mud, and
the distance between us, for some reason, would grow. Her arm was never long enough to touch me. She was looking at me with a half-sad face
that was half-grinning with understanding.
Mom shook me. “Johnny, get up and dressed. We're going to Tucumcari to Uncle
Fred's. Davey wake up. Breakfast is on the table.”
***
There were several cars parked in
front when we arrived. Though it was
daylight, lights were turned on inside.
The front door was open. A
couple of ladies I'd never seen were on the porch. We stepped from the car.
Dad wore a white shirt and Mom wore her dark purple dress. I had seen her wear that dress for her tenth
wedding anniversary. Alice opened the
screen door and ran toward Mom. They
met and hugged each other on the sidewalk.
“Oh, Mary, she's–finally gone.” Alice spoke in snips.
“Was she at peace?”
“She'd had a restless day, but
she–was asleep. She skipped a breath,
then she–skipped a couple, and then she just wasn't–breathing at all.” Alice turned toward Dad. “Hello, Dave. Hello, boys.” She smiled
at us, but her eyes were tearing.
Dad answered, “Alice. Anyone else make it yet?”
“Ellen is here.” Ellen was Alice's younger sister. “I don't think anyone else will come
until–the funeral.”
“How's Uncle Fred?” Mom asked.
“As well as can be expected. He didn't sleep at all last night.” Mom took Alice's hand and led her back into
the house. Dad, Davey, and I followed. The women on the porch were introduced as
church ladies. Uncle Fred was sitting
in a stuffed rocker in the living room.
Ellen was sitting on a stool beside him cupping his left hand in
hers. Uncle Fred was a tall stout man
with straight black hair. His skin was
deeply tanned and wrinkled. He wore
blue denim coveralls. Mom stepped
quickly forward and knelt beside him.
“Uncle Fred, how are you doing?”
“We're doing fine, Mary, bless your
heart. You got my telegram. Good of you to come.”
“Oh, you knew we’d be here,” Mom
answered.
There were a couple more ladies
inside and the table was covered with dishes of food. Ellen's husband, Ned, holding a half-eaten donut, stood next to
the sink. Ned was the shortest grownup
in the room. He had dark brown hair and
bushy eyebrows, which he raised and lowered as he talked. He was thin and his black suit hung
loosely. Dad walked to him and held out
his hand. Ned wiped his hand on a
kitchen towel and shook hands.
“Ned.”
“Dave. Coffee is fresh.”
Mom spoke to Uncle Fred and Ellen;
“Do you know who else is coming?”
Ellen answered, “We sent telegrams
to Uncle Lou, Uncle Will, Aunt Mary, and Uncle Hugh. We got an answer from Uncle Hugh. He wants to speak at the service. Haven't heard from anyone else, yet.”
The door to Aunt Patty's bedroom was shut and I wondered if she
was inside. I felt in the way and
ignored. Aunt Patty was an adult who
really paid attention to me. Without
her I probably wouldn't even be alive.
I felt alone. I went to the
backyard and sat on the steps. I picked
up a handful of gravel from the flowerbed and tossed the stones one at a time
at bees. Cora, older sister, Aunt
Patty–gone.
Davey came out eating a cinnamon
roll. “Wanna play mumble peg?”
I threw the rest of the gravel
back. “Sure.”
***
It was early afternoon when we drove
back to Cuervo. “Where was Aunt
Patty?” I asked Mom.
“The funeral home came and got her
yesterday.”
“What are the plans for the
funeral?” Dad asked Mom.
“The services will be on Wednesday
at ten o'clock and the burial will be in Duran.” After a minute Mom continued, “Ellen is pregnant. She wishes Aunt Patty could've seen her
first grandchild.” I tried to picture
Aunt Patty holding a baby. I don't
think Aunt Patty could like another kid as much as she liked me.
***
On Monday we saw Ray again. He had grown about four inches since last
summer. He had a new hobby. For Christmas he had received a set of
leather working tools. He showed us his
belt. He had bought the belt blank and,
with the tools, made a pattern of roses and stars, but the important detail was
his name stenciled in the back. He said
that his next project was a pair of chaps for his dad, who rode horses a lot.
Mom told him about Aunt Patty when
he asked where we had been on Sunday.
He tried to ride my bicycle with Davey.
He was just learning and he’d fall down, get up, try again, and fall
again. Ray knew a lot about horses and
ranching, but not much about other things.
***
We drove from Uncle Fred's to the
funeral home with five other cars. Ned
drove the first car with Ellen, Alice, and Uncle Fred. Aunt Mary and a couple of her kids, whom I
didn't know, were in the next car followed by a car with Uncle Hugh's
family. Uncle Lou and Uncle Will,
wearing large Stetsons, rode in one car with their wives. The parking lot was big and as I stepped out
of the car I could feel the warmth of the asphalt heated by the sun.
As he walked from the car, Uncle
Hugh, wearing sunglasses, clasped a Bible with both hands in front of him. Uncle Lou and Uncle Will wore black suits,
cowboy boots, and bola ties. They left
their hats in the car. The women all
wore dark dresses. Alice and Ellen were
on either side of Uncle Fred and had their arms hooked in his. Dad wore his suit. He looked awkward and self-conscious. Davey and I wore our good shoes, which Mom had made us
polish. Mom carried a handkerchief.
Ned led the group silently into the
funeral home. Organ music was softly
playing. An usher handed us a white
program. Several strangers were already
seated. In front of the room was an
open casket lined with white satin and surrounded by flower bouquets. Uncle Fred, Alice, and Ellen walked to the
casket. Other people formed a line
behind them. Alice reached inside the
casket, but I couldn't see what she did.
As they left, Ellen was sobbing and dabbing her eyes. Alice was patting Uncle Fred's arm.
“Do you boys wanna see Aunt
Patty?” Mom asked.
I nodded my head. Davey said, “Not unless I gotta.”
“You don't gotta. Stay here until we get back.” Dad led Mom and me to the back of the
line. When we got next to the casket I
could barely see over the top and stepped up on a stool. Aunt Patty was dressed in a blue dress
patterned with bouquets of tiny colored flowers. It had long sleeves that covered her crossed arms. Her pale hands held a single big red
rose. She wore her half-moon
glasses. Her eyes were closed and her
face was thin. Someone had put some
lipstick on her. Her gray hair was
nicely curled and looked very natural.
She was still. I wanted to shake
her awake. I wanted her to get up. I wanted her to talk to me about Cora. I wanted to hear her laugh.
“Let's go, son,” Mom said. We walked back and sat beside Davey.
“Did she look dead?” Davey whispered to me.
“Shhh,” I whispered back and started
crying. I buried my face in Mom's
arm. She put her other hand on the back
of my head.
***
The cars, with their lights on,
followed the hearse from Tucumcari into the cemetery at Duran. Two Mexicans leaned on shovels on the far
side. They removed their hats when the
hearse stopped. A big hole had been dug
beside the grave of Grandma Henderson.
Alice and Ellen led Uncle Fred to four chairs that had been placed next
to the hole. Aunt Mary also took a
seat. Ned stood behind Ellen with his
hands on her shoulders.
“I'm so glad they put her right next
to Mother,” Mom whispered to Dad.
The sun was bright and hot and some
women used umbrellas as sunshades. Six
men from Aunt Patty's church removed a rope harness from the rear of the hearse
and suspended it above the hole. They,
then, returned to the hearse and carried the casket from the hearse and laid it
on the rope harness. A couple of them
wiped their brow with a handkerchief.
The casket lay above the hole.
I wondered if my sister was buried
here. I looked at a headstone. Abner
Smith 1873 - 1942. Above the dates was a motionless lizard. As I watched the lizard, I heard words–”From
dust to dust...”, “...we commend this soul...”, “...a loving wife, mother, and
sister...” and then silence. What about
me? What about “aunt”?
A cloud covered the sun and the
lizard ran to the other side of the headstone.
I blinked and a tear fell. I
looked down. Dust had covered my good
shoes and was sticking to the polish.
The six men stepped forward and
started turning some handles. The
casket slowly sank into the hole. After
the rope harness was removed, Uncle Fred stood, threw a handful of dirt on the
casket, and walked away with Alice and Ellen.
Ned hurried ahead to open the car door.
Did they put my sister in a tiny casket and put her in the ground? I wonder if six men were needed to carry
her. Did Dad throw the first handful of
dirt? Where was she? Was she more alone than I was?
Chapter XVIII
Aunt Patty reached toward me and
just as her hand was about to touch me, I awoke. Mom was gently shaking me.
“Johnny, wake up. Ray is here.” It was late Thursday morning. I had slept deeply through the night. I rolled onto my back and stretched.
“Where's Davey?” I asked.
“He's been up for an hour. Dad's gone to work. You're the lazy bones.”
“Is Davey with Ray?”
“They're in the kitchen
talking. They’re gonna go to Red Hill
or something and wanna know if you wanna go with ‘em?”
“OK. Tell them to wait a minute.”
“You gotta eat some breakfast.”
When I went to the kitchen, Davey
and Ray were outside. I looked out and
saw Ray trying to ride my bicycle. I
crumbled a shredded wheat biscuit into a bowl, added a spoonful of sugar, and
poured some canned milk and some water–to dilute the milk–on it. Mom was in the bedroom sorting clothes to
wash.
Davey stuck his head inside. “Hurry up.
We're gonna set some traps for coyotes.” When I went outside, Ray was sitting on the bike as it wobbled
down the drive. Davey ran along beside,
trying to keep the bicycle balanced.
Ray twisted the handlebars back and forth, but the bike tilted too far,
Davey released his hold, and Ray jumped off.
He hadn't gotten very far.
“You gotta go faster,” Davey
advised.
“Yeah, and get killed when I fall,”
Ray answered as he pushed the bike back.
“A horse keeps its own balance.
You don’t gotta worry about it.”
Ray was wearing Levis and a cowboy hat.
He wore sunglasses. He was
wearing a western shirt with pearl snaps instead of buttons.
There were three steel traps
attached to long chains on the ground at the bottom of the steps. The traps had a V shaped spring on each side
of the jaws. “Whose traps?” I asked.
“My dad let me use ‘em,” Ray
answered.
“You know how to set ‘em?”
“Of course. Dad and I caught a couple of coyotes last
year.”
“Where're we gonna set ‘em?”
“Red Hill. We gotta carry a lotta stuff.
I'll carry the traps, but somebody’s gotta carry the jack rabbits and
the shovel and the hammer and the stakes.”
“Jack rabbits–where are the jack
rabbits? What're they for?” I asked.
“I'll carry the shovel and the
hammer stuff,” Davey said.
“They're in a tow-sack beside the
garage. We shot 'em yesterday. They're bait for the traps.”
Ray walked with the three traps
slung over his shoulder, holding the chains in front of him. The traps rattled against each other. Davey carried a shovel in one hand and a tow
sack holding the hammer and stakes in the other hand. I carried the rabbits and a water canteen. The sky was clear and the sun, hot. No breeze blew. I wore my straw hat, but Davey's head was bare.
When we were a half-mile from Red Hill,
Ray dropped the traps and said, “This is a good spot. Boy, I'm glad we don't have to carry this stuff back. I need a drink of water.” I handed Ray the canteen. Davey dropped his load. Sweat dripped from Davey's nose. He wiped the sweat from his eyes. Davey reached for the canteen as Ray drank.
“OK, we need to dig a hole and bury
a rabbit in it. Then we set the trap on
top. Three holes. One for each of us. I'll dig the first,” Ray said. I took the canteen from Davey. Ray found a big patch of prickly pear cactus
and dug beside it. The ground was hard
and rocky. Ray dug more rocks out than
dirt. “Let's see if it's deep enough. Put a rabbit in.” I opened up the tow sack and pulled out a rabbit. It was stiff and blood coated its hide. Its opened eyes were dimpled and dry. I dropped it in the hole. Ray lay a trap on top, stepped back, and
looked at it. “That'll be good,” he
said. “We need to cut some yucca leaves
to lay on top to hide it.” Ray covered
the hind legs and the ears of the rabbit with rocks and dirt. Davey and I went to a yucca bush and cut off
some leaves with our pocketknives.
“OK, I'm gonna stand on the springs
and someone has to set the trigger. But
don't put your hand between the jaws until I say so or you might get caught.” He lay the trap on level ground and stepped
on one spring making it flat. He, then,
stepped with his other foot on the other spring. When both were compressed, the jaws fell open. “I've got it. Set the trigger.” I knelt
and from underneath the jaws moved the pan up and put the lever over a jaw and
into the lip of the pan.
“It's in,” I said. Ray raised one foot and then the other. The trap stayed open and was set. Ray lifted the trap by a spring and gently
laid it on top of the rabbit and carefully straightened the chain. He drove an iron stake through the last link
and covered the chain with dirt.
“Let me show you how to cover it
up,” Ray said. He cut the yucca leaves
to a foot long and covered the trap, carefully keeping his fingers away from
the jaws. “OK, now we gotta cover it
with dirt.” He sprinkled a handful of
dirt on the yucca leaves. After a
couple handfuls, the yucca leaves were hidden and you couldn't see that there
was a trap there.
“I'm gonna put mine by this
mesquite,” Davey said and started digging.
I sat on a rock and waited for my turn.
The digging reminded me of Aunt Patty's funeral. All the dirt piled up. When we left the cemetery I glanced back and
saw the two Mexicans put on their hats and, carrying their shovels, walk toward
the dirt pile. There was no
headstone. I imagined Aunt Patty with
her eyes open and dry. She was probably
all stiff. The most difficult thing to
believe was that I would never-ever see her again. The memories I had of her now were all I would ever have. No new memories.
“Where're you gonna put yours?” Davey asked. I looked at Davey's trap.
The dirt was smooth and the trap hidden.
“By that yucca.”
***
On Friday morning, we walked back
and checked the traps. We tried not to
get too close. They appeared just as we
left them. We continued to Red Hill and
climbed to the top. We passed the
canteen around and emptied it. It was
the first time I had been on top of Red Hill since last summer. You could see the railroad as a thin black
line coming over the hills in the west, continuing through Cuervo, and becoming
a line again as it disappeared toward Tucumcari.
Vultures circled slowly over the
desert. Whirlwinds appeared, danced,
and disappeared. Cora would be back
tomorrow. Week after next, school would
start again. The summer was almost over
and the best part hadn't even started.
When we returned home, Dad was there
for lunch. Mom filled glasses with
Kool-Aid from the icebox for Davey and me.
“Got your watch back today, “ Dad said as he handed me a small box.
“ You know what was wrong with it?”
I took a last gulp, set my empty
glass down, and took the watch out of the box.
It was running and showed twelve-fifteen. I thought the question was odd.
“Something inside broke?”
“Nope. It wasn't wound.”
“Wasn't wound?” I asked.
I was dumbfounded. I tried to
remember the morning when I dropped it.
When had I wound it last?
“None of us thought to check it,”
Mom said.
“At least it got set to the official
railroad time,” Dad said. “Keep it
wound.”
***
Saturday morning, Davey and Ray
asked me to join them as they left for Red Hill again to check the traps. Cora wasn't supposed to return until early
afternoon, but, in case she came early, I stayed home.
“Johnny, Dad and I are gonna go to
Duran and check on Aunt Patty's grave.
You wanna come or stay here?”
Mom asked.
I hesitated a moment. “I'll stay here.” It seemed disloyal to Aunt Patty to stay, but I wanted to see
Cora as soon as possible. I think Aunt
Patty would understand.
“OK, but stay outta trouble. There's lunch stuff in the icebox. If you need something, ask Ray's mom. We'll be back by supper time.” I looked at my watch, ten-thirty. I played solitaire at the kitchen table so I
could see Cora's front yard. One card
up–six down. One card up–five
down. Time crept. Turn three cards–move up the ace. Play the nine–turn three cards. I made some cold hot-dogs for lunch. I hadn't beat solitaire yet.
I heard the car before I saw
it. I looked up to see a dark blue
Pontiac with Union County license plates drive into Cora's driveway. It sounded as if it needed a new
muffler. I stood at the window. Mrs. Jones came to her kitchen door. The driver's door opened and an old
lady–must be Cora's grandmother–struggled out.
She had short curly gray hair.
She was wearing tight black pants, a wide leather belt with a big silver
buckle, a red western blouse, and boots.
She stretched, walked to the rear of the car, and unlocked the trunk
door. Mrs. Jones came and hugged the
old lady.
Cora got out, but all I could see on
the other side of the car was blond hair.
She didn't have a ponytail any more.
She gathered some bags from the back seat and walked to the rear of the
car. Boy, had she changed! She sure didn't look like she did last
summer. She was about a half-foot
taller and had filled out. She had
tits. She was wearing a short skirt
around hips that weren't there last year.
Her hair was shoulder length and was styled. She looked ten years older than last year and was more
beautiful. I was surprised by the
change. I had intended to go
immediately and say 'hi', but, now, I wasn't sure it was the right thing to do. I wondered if she'd remember me. I probably looked the same–some little kid.
Cora lifted a suitcase out of the
trunk and her Mom got a second one.
They talked, but I couldn't hear anything. The three of them went into the house. What do I do now? I could
see the heat rising from the car hood.
Pancho was barking. She was
home, but she wasn't the Cora I remembered.
As I stood by the window, she came
out of the house and walked to the car.
I opened the kitchen door and ran down the steps. “Hi, Cora,” I yelled and walked toward her. She had opened the rear door of the car and
held a small blue case.
“Hi, Johnny. Mom told me you were here.”
“Yeah. Been here a week.”
“I was at my grandmother's.”
“Yeah. Your mom told me.” I
didn't know what to say next. My mouth
was dry. I swallowed.
“Mom also told me about your
aunt. Sorry.”
“Thanks. ‘Preciate that.” Cora
glanced at her house.
“Where's Davey? With Ray?”
“Yeah. They're at Red Hill checking traps.”
“Oh.” Pancho started barking again.
I heard a train in the distance.
Cora put the strap of the case over her shoulder and played with the
buckle. I shifted my feet.
“Did you have fun at your
grandmother's?”
“Not much to do. I read a lot. She likes the company.” She paused.
“Hey, I better get inside. The
trip was sort of long and I'm tired. It
was nice seeing you again.”
“Yeah. It was nice seeing you again,” I repeated. “Maybe we can get together later and talk or
walk to Red Hill?”
“I'm pretty tired. Maybe.”
She turned and walked to the door and went inside without a look
back. I turned and returned to the
outfit car. What should I do now? I had looked forward to seeing Cora all
summer and now that I have seen her it wasn't as I thought it would be. I went back and played more solitaire. I could see the dark blue car. Three games–no win. Deal. Lose.
The car cooled.
***
It was four o'clock when a red
pickup drove up. It sat still for a
minute or two before the driver inside honked.
Cora came out of the house wearing different clothes. She had red shorts and a halter that left
her stomach bare. She climbed into the
passenger's side. The driver was a boy
who must be in high school to be able to drive. I couldn't see him very well.
They seemed to talk and then Cora slid to the middle of the seat. He put his arm around her and they
kissed. It was a long kiss. I ran to the bedroom and fell on the
bed. My eyes filled with tears and my
chest heaved as I tried to breathe. I
sobbed. I wadded the pillow and buried
my face in it. I turned and slammed my
fist into the pillow. I paused and hit
the pillow again. I cried and hit the
pillow again and again.
I heard Davey and Ray outside. I rose and dried my eyes. Davey and Ray came into the kitchen to get a
drink. I joined them in the kitchen and looked out the window. The pickup was gone.
“Anything in the traps?” I asked.
“Nope. I think we did something wrong,” Ray answered. “We left our scent everywhere. I think the coyotes smell us and don't come
close to the traps. When Dad and I set
traps we spread bacon grease around.”
“You had a visitor. Someone in a red pickup,” I told Ray.
“That's Brad. Cora must be home.”
“Who's Brad?” I asked.
“He's Cora's boyfriend. He's from Santa Rosa,” Ray paused. “I think we might as well pull the traps
up.” I clinched by jaws and tried to
keep the tears in. Mom and Dad drove
up.
***
I didn't do much the next week. The red pickup came each day. I tried not to watch. Mom must’ve thought I was sick because I lay
around so much. Maybe she knew. I wanted the week to end quickly so we could
get away, go back to Vaughn, and start school.
Davey and Ray had a lot of fun.
Ray became steadier on my bike.
On Wednesday, Mom went into Santa
Rosa to shop. Davey and Ray were at Red
Hill. I didn't feel like doing anything
except mope around so I stayed home.
When Mom returned, she said, “I gotta book for you,” and handed me a
brown bag.
“Is it the Catcher book you were talking about?”
“No, it's another book I think
you're ready for. Why don't you take it
to the bedroom and look at it?”
“Take it to the bedroom?” I was puzzled and as I walked to the bedroom
I pulled the book out of the bag. It
was a paperback, You and Your Body–A Manual for Growing Boys.
It told me all about sex and things.
Chapter XIX
We passed the garbage lady and
turned onto the depot road from the dump road.
The outfit car was parked at the same spot as last year. The summer was over. Everything looked as last year. The old car ruts still led to the parking
place. “If we can get everything set
up, let's go to a movie tonight,” Dad said as he parked the car.
“Oh boy, a movie!” Davey said.
“Can we buy some popcorn?”
“What's showing?” Mom asked.
“Bedtime
for Bonzo,” Dad answered. “I
noticed as we drove through town,” Dad paused and turned off the engine. “Well, let's unload the trailer, fill the
water tanks, and set up the outhouse and clothesline poles. Let's hurry so we can go to the movies.”
“Can we have popcorn?” Davey repeated.
“Maybe,” Dad answered. Davey and I carried boxes and suitcases from
the trailer and set them at the base of the outfit car. Dad opened the tool car, got the kitchen
steps, and set them up. Mom opened the
kitchen door and went inside. Dad
lifted the boxes up into the kitchen.
“You guys, getta shovel and the post hole digger to dig the holes for
the clothesline poles.
“I'll dig one hole and you can dig
the other,” I said to Davey. “Which one
do you want?”
***
The digging of the holes was
easy. The location was the same and the
dirt hadn't had time to pack solid. Dad
and the section gang set up the outhouse a few yards away from the old spot,
and then set up the clothesline poles.
Mom had unpacked the boxes. We
went to the depot and filled up the barrel to refill the water tanks.
***
Dad bought four bags of popcorn for
ten cents each as we entered the movie.
The marquee signs showed a monkey and an actor named Ronald Reagan. I had never seen him before. He didn't look as strong as Roy Rogers. “If you find a coupon in your popcorn you
get another bag free,” the guy behind the popcorn machine told Dad.
Before the movie, there was a Porky
Pig and Bugs Bunny cartoon. Bugs was
tying a knot in the barrel of Porky's shotgun when Davey said,” Hey, I gotta
coupon.” The people in the row ahead
turned and grinned.
“Shhh, not so loud,” Mom said.
Dad sat next to the aisle and leaned
over me and whispered to Davey, “Give me the coupon and I'll go get your free
bag for you.” I finished my bag, but
didn't find any coupon. Dad returned,
gave the bag to Davey, and said, “Share with Johnny.”
The cartoon ended and a newsreel
started. It showed some American and
Korean generals sitting around a big table.
It next showed some scenes from an Arabian country where a boy, not much
older than me, had been named king. I
was thinking about what I would do if I were a king when Davey offered me some
popcorn. I reached in, grabbed a
handful, and felt a coupon.
“Another coupon,” I whispered to
Dad.
“It was in my bag!” Davey said.
“Shhh,” Mom cautioned.
“You guys are sure lucky. I'll go get another bag,” Dad said as he
left. He returned and gave the new bag
to Davey. I was eating from the
previous bag. “Remember, share.”
The movie started. It was about a college professor who, as an
experiment, kept a monkey in his home and treated it as if it was a child. Mom reached into Davey's bag.
“Another coupon,” Mom whispered and
looked at Dad. Dad cupped his hand over
his mouth. “We've had enough popcorn.
I'll keep this coupon for next time,” Mom said as she put the coupon
into her purse. I had had enough
popcorn.
Dad whispered over Davey and me,
“Mary, what do you think? Should we
have raised monkeys instead of boys?
Probably been smarter.”
***
The first day of school was Monday,
September 10. Dad had already left for
Alamogordo and wouldn't return until next weekend. Mom had bought new pencils and new tablets of writing paper for
us. The tablet had a red covering with
a picture of an Indian chief. After breakfast, as we waited for Sam, Davey and
I set up the horseshoes and played until he came. I won the first game and we had started the second when we saw
the dust cloud where the woody turned onto the depot road. Davey and I picked up our school bags and
lunch boxes.
“I was ahead. I win the game,” Davey said as he
waved. When Sam stopped, I saw Maria in
the front seat and Sarah in the seat behind her. Another girl with red hair sat
beside Sarah. Davey and I climbed into
the back seat.
“Hello, boys,” Sam said. He was holding a cigarette in his left hand
with his elbow stuck out the window.
“Hello everyone,” I answered.
“Hello, hello,” Davey said as he
bounced in his seat. There was a
mumbling of responses.
“I told you, summer would be over
'fore you knew it,” Sam said as he turned the woody around. “It didn't last very long, did it?”
Sarah turned around. She had lost weight and wasn't heavy
anymore. “This is my cousin,
Alice. She'll be in the sixth grade
with my little boyfriend, Johnny.”
Alice turned and smiled, but didn't say anything. She had dimples and green eyes.
“I'm not your boyfriend,” I
responded to Sarah.
“That's Davey, his brother.”
“Have you been sick?” I asked Sarah.
“No, why?”
“You look like you lost some
weight.”
“I went on a diet. Do I look better?” Sarah asked as she tilted her head and slowly turned it to
profile as she twisted her shoulders back and forth.
Sam answered, “You'll knock 'em
dead. Alice came from Texas and is
gonna live with Sarah this year. What
subjects you like the best, Alice?”
“I like English and spelling,” Alice
said.
“Johnny can show you where to go,
can't you, Johnny?”
“Sure. I think our teacher will be Mrs. Clay. She's OK.” Alice was
about as cute as Cora, but not as old.
***
I sat behind her in the classroom
and whispered the names of the other kids to her as they spoke. Mrs. Clay asked her to stand and introduce
herself to the class. Alice and I ate
lunch together on the gym steps and I learned that her mother had died. Her father thought that some time away would
be good for her. I told her about Aunt
Patty. We each stopped talking for a
few moments. She clutched her lunch bag
tightly. I swallowed and blinked. I
understood some of what she felt.
Losing your mom had to be worse than losing an aunt. I covered her hand with mine just for a
moment and squeezed. I don’t know why.
Seemed OK.
***
The day finished quickly. Alice and I sat next to each other in the
woody on the ride back. “Don't the
trains wake you up at night?” She
asked.
“You get used to them.”
As Sam dropped us off, I was ready
for the next day to start immediately.
“How was the first day of school?”
Mom asked from the living room.
“OK. I'm in Mrs. Clay's room.
Sarah's cousin is riding the woody,” I answered as I poured some
Kool-Aid from the icebox.
“I've already got a spelling list,”
Davey said.
“Something was in the mail for you,
Johnny,” Mom said as she came into the kitchen and handed me a letter. It was from Aunt Patty. I looked questioning at Mom. “She must've mailed it to Vaughn and they
held it here for us.”
“Who's it from?” Davey asked.
“Aunt Patty,” Mom answered as I held
the envelope. The postmark was dated
August 13.
“How can she write a letter? She's dead,” Davey asked.
“She wrote it before she died. Come with me into the living room so that
Johnny can read the letter in private.”
“I want to read it, too.”
“It's Johnny's letter.”
She wrote in blue ink on ivory paper
that had pictures of bluebirds in the upper left-hand corner.
***
August
9
My dear Johnny,
I
got your letter and hope I can finish this answer. I'm feeling a little better today, but may not be able to write
too much.
You
asked about an older sister. Your mom and dad did have a little girl born five
months after they were married. She was
very sickly from birth. They named her Patricia–after me.
Little Patty was born at home in Duran.
They drove to Albuquerque to a hospital, but she lived only for four
days. They buried her there, but I
don't think they ever put up a stone.
Your
parents were very sad and that's why they don't want to talk about it. You'll understand better when you're grown
up.
Your
folks are giving you a life that's much better than the life they had and they
love you very much. There's a lot about
life and raising kids that they don't know, but they try their best. You're a smart kid and you'll have a good
life. When you get married and have
your own kids and if you can improve their lives as much from yours as your
folks improved yours from theirs, you will have done a very good thing. Each generation learns from the last and
should try to improve the next.
I'm
sorry I won't be here to see your life.
Love, Aunt Patty
(PS) You might want to keep this
letter just between you and me.
***
I read the letter again.
I had a hard time because of the tears and kept wiping my eyes. I sat and held the letter. The scene out of the kitchen window was
exactly as it was last spring. The yucca
plants were making long shadows. A
train whistled in the distance. It was as if summer hadn't happened–except Aunt
Patty isn't here. Last spring I didn't
know about my sister–I'll never know her–but now I know she existed, and that
makes a difference. She seems a part of
me–a part forever gone. Everything was
the same–except some important things.©2014 L. Clint Welch