Black Angus (17 page)

“An unbeliever.”

“In what?”

Shea laughed wearily, shaking his head. “You name it, kid, and I won't believe in it. The whole schmeer.”

“And that's hard to take, huh?”

“It seems to be, yeah.”

“And the rest of us, we're all such great believers, is that how it is?”

“Seems to be.”

“Not to me, it doesn't.”

“Then how come you just spent sixteen hours working like some fanatic coolie? Because you don't believe in this thing of yours, this land and your fucking cows?”

Blanchard had no answer for that.

“Now me. The ad biz didn't count of course, because you're not supposed to believe in it. But home and family and Old Glory, Jimmy and Jesus and people and cows and trees—none of it cuts any ice with the Old Unbeliever. All I want to do is get ahold of some booze and get it down fast enough so I can turn it off finally, the censor up here, O him of little faith.” He tapped his bandaged head.

Blanchard lit a cigarette. “So you're a cynic. Big deal.”

“A
cynic
—did I say I was a cynic?”

“I thought you did.”

“Sure. And Jiggs is an
irritable person
.” He lisped the words.

“Maybe you're just an alcoholic. You ever thought of that?”

Shea made a face, the unbeliever again. “I doubt it. I can go days without the stuff, with no real sweat. But I get bored, you know? I hate to just sit here in my fat despising everything and everybody, including me, and so I break open a can or two, and the first thing you know, I don't hate everything quite so much. I just find it ridiculous and amusing. I get a reprieve of sorts.”

“That's something.”

“Oh, you bet. It's my life, that's what it is—a series of reprieves.”

“Well, now you've got another one.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You gonna come down and have supper with us?”

Shea wagged his head admiringly. “Ah, a neat bit of psychological footwork, that, Bobby. The old homey touch. Suicide threat's over, so let's go eat, huh?”

“What do you want me to do, sit here and play shrink?”

“How about some primal therapy? We could let down our hair and scream.”

“That's why it's hard to take you seriously, you know that?”

“My banter, you mean?”

“Your whole attitude. If you really hurt so much, then how come all the laughs?”

Blanchard could see him begin again to answer with raillery, another laugh. But in the end he gave it up. And suddenly he looked almost small sitting there in the bed.

“You know the answer to that,” he said. “It's just a habit. A stupid, defensive habit.”

“What can I do?” Blanchard asked.

Shea held out his hands, gesturing irony and futility. “You've already done it, old buddy. You took me in, you know.”

Blanchard got to his feet. He was trying very hard to think of the right words to say, some sort of lifeline to leave with his friend. But nothing came.

“I'm gonna fry up some steaks,” he said. “You come on down, all right?”

Shea shook his head. “I don't think so. Not tonight anyway.”

At the doorway Blanchard tried again. “Listen, don't give up, you hear? I haven't. And who knows? Maybe between the two of us we might be able to come up with something, maybe even find some light at the end of this goddamn tunnel we're in. It's worth a try, isn't it?”

Shea smiled, whether at the idea or simply at him, Blanchard was not sure.

“I guess so,” the big man said.

“You know so. Anyway, we'll see you later. I'll fry up an extra steak.” Still holding the shotgun, Blanchard left the room.

Later, after a bath and supper, he put Tommy to bed and then went into his room and phoned Susan in Saint Louis, which was considerably closer than her voice made it sound, rather as if it were some distant planet, some asylum utterly beyond his reach and ken. Oh, things were going very well, she said. She and her father and the Doctor Butlers had just returned from a late dinner at Busch's Grove and it had been very nice. In fact, he would be surprised at how nice things were “back in the world.” Whit had spent almost the whole day swimming in the pool and was already in bed. If Blanchard had really wanted to talk with the boy, he could have called earlier. She asked if the cattle had Bang's and he said he didn't know yet, and she asked if the bank had extended his loan and
he lied about that too; Gideon hadn't decided yet, he said. Then he told her about the sheriff coming to the ranch and she readily admitted calling Evelyn Shea and telling her where her husband was. After all, he was a wanted man, she said. He was a criminal. She was only doing her duty as a citizen—certainly he could see that, couldn't he? And on that chilling note the conversation ended, Blanchard mumbling something about haymaking and how tired he was. Only after he had hung up did it occur to him that neither of them had said a word about missing the other; neither of them had said a word about love.

But Blanchard told himself it was not important. He told himself he did not care, that he was too tired, that he was fit only for sleep. And he collapsed almost greedily into the bed, hungry for oblivion. But it would not come. For over an hour he lay there tossing and turning and smoking cigarettes and staring into the darkness. Then finally he got up and dressed and drove the twelve miles to Ronda's trailer.

She came to the door in her frightful blue robe, her hair tumbling over heavy eyes and her face sleep-streaked.

“It's after one o'clock,” she said, closing the door behind him.

“I couldn't sleep.”

She smiled indulgently. “I kind of figured that.”

“Don't ask me why,” he said. “God knows I'm tired enough.”

“Maybe too tired.”

“Maybe so.”

“It's probably the bed. You're not used to it empty.”

“Could be.”

“You miss her.”

“I came here. I came to you.”

“I'm closer.”

“Whatever.”

“You want coffee?” she asked. “You want to talk?”

He shook his head. “I'm too bushed. Really. I just want to collapse.”

She took him by the hand. “Come on. I'll give you a massage. A real one.”

Back in her room she helped him off with his clothes, as if he were a drunk or a child. Taking off her robe, she told him to lie on his stomach. Then she climbed on top of him, straddling him, and he accepted it that within a few seconds he would have to roll over, ready for her. But then her hands touched his shoulders, strong, short-nailed fingers that seemed to reach down into his flesh and take hold of his tension and exhaustion and lift it from him. So he stayed as he was a few moments longer, giving his body to her. And then it was too late and he could feel himself begin to fall, like a stone into deep water.

Late the next morning, a Sunday, Blanchard and Tommy drove out to the various pastures to check the cattle, all except the Angus group bred by the Emulous bull, which were still being kept separate, in the front pasture near the house. It was a task Tommy enjoyed almost as much as he did filling the salt feeders, probably because it kept him almost as busy, jumping out of the pickup at every gate and opening it so Blanchard could drive on through, then closing it and hurrying to get back inside, and finally joining him in the bed of the truck as they counted the cattle. Blanchard would usually call out the final number and ask Tommy if that was the number he had gotten too, which it invariably was.

“Yep, fifty-six,” Tommy would say. “That's what I get too.”

Then Blanchard would jump down and move among the cattle, looking for any signs of trouble—pinkeye, bloat, scours, pneumonia—all but the first rare at this time of year.

On this morning, however, he only went through the motions of a head count and health check, for his real objective was the old corral in the far corner of the north pasture—and not simply to use it to feed grain to the yearlings, which he did again—but to check it out board by board and post by post in the hope that it was not as rickety and useless as it appeared. And he took special care checking out the crowding pen and the loading chute, which looked equally ancient and unserviceable, with weeds and grass coming up through the floorboards of the chute. But the closer he examined it all, the more convinced he became that the decrepitude was only cosmetic,
a veneer of age. And once again he found himself standing in silent awe of the now-dead men who had worked the land before him, without benefit of the gasoline engine or electric power. Whatever they had built, they built to last. In this case, the ax-hewn posts were white oak, as were the planks, and all of them properly cured and carefully joined, for there was no rot in those joints, no place where Blanchard could take hold of the weathered old boards and pull them loose by hand, which unfortunately was already the case with many of the things he himself had built on the ranch in the past few years. And, incredibly, even the posts were sturdy, not yet rotted out underground, which he had difficulty believing, because they were not cemented in but only sunk in the ground, tamped in, with what now-lost technique he could only marvel at and be grateful for.

For the corral would do
.

Here, far from any hard road, far from the view of any neighbors or passersby, he would be able to load his cattle and ship them—and claim that someone else had done it, claim that someone had
stolen
them.

When he had awakened in Ronda's bed at nine o'clock that morning he had no idea that by noon he would have decided to go through with it, the rustling of his own cattle. He had awakened slowly and groggily, barely aware of her body laced with his own. Then, reaching for his watch on the floor, he learned the time and promptly turned into what Ronda must have perceived as a raving lunatic, jumping out of bed and wrestling into his clothes and answering her baffled inquiries with anguished cries about how late it was, that he was normally up at six, and that now it would be ten before he could even
begin
his farm chores. For some reason he failed to give her the true reason for his alarm—that Tommy would already be up and around at the ranch, with no one to look after
him, with Shea undoubtedly still asleep and Clarence on his day off.

Ronda had followed him to the door, looking bewildered and still half asleep. He kissed her good-bye and said that he would call her later, in the afternoon, to which she nodded a vague comprehension and agreement.

Then he had left, driving as fast as he could over the winding, hilly road back to the ranch. And when he reached it, turning in over the cattleguard, he immediately saw Tommy far up the hill on the porch, a tiny figure jumping up at the sight of the pickup and starting toward it, running with his slow, clumsy, desperate gait, running in fact like an infant toddling toward its mother. And Blanchard would not forget his feeling at that moment, the realization that with Susan gone he was less a free man than ever, that from now on there was almost no decision he could make that would affect only himself. Yet somehow he did not find that feeling frightening. It was like accepting the fact of one's own mortality, an unpleasant accommodation, that was all. And even before Tommy reached the pickup, Blanchard knew what he would have to do, knew that he really had no choice in the matter anymore. He would have to save his ranch—and Tommy's world—in any way he could. It was not as he had hoped, like reaching light at the end of the tunnel. Rather it was as if he had reached darkness instead. But at least he had come to the end, he had broken through, and now could breathe, in time perhaps could even stand.

As Tommy reached him, Blanchard stopped the pickup and threw open the door.

“I'm sorry I wasn't here,” he said. “You okay?”

Tommy's fists smeared the tears running down his face. “I thought you was dead,” he got out. “I thought I never see you no more.”

Starting the truck again, Blanchard reached over and put his
arm around his brother's neck, giving him a playful hug, and Tommy, snuffling still, managed to smile.

“Don't ever think that,” Blanchard said to him. “I'll always be here.”

When he got back to the house after checking the corral, Blanchard found Shea in the kitchen frying up his usual ranchhand breakfast of eggs and bacon and fried potatoes. Blanchard told him to throw on some extra portions for him and Tommy, while he tried to find them some fruit, settling finally for a can of freestone peaches and a pitcher of Tang. At the same time he vowed to himself that before the day was over he was going to lighten his and Tommy's recent heavy diet of animal fat with a huge tossed salad made of every fresh vegetable he could find, for that was his favorite dish, and one Susan had served almost every evening.

But eggs and bacon and potatoes were easy to prepare and easy to eat, and the three men made short work of the meal Shea cooked for them. As he ate, Blanchard was relieved to find his friend in a different mood from that of the night before.

“Yessir, me wounds is healing,” he claimed. “First morning I've been able to fart without feeling chest pains.”

“A mixed blessing,” Blanchard said.

“For you maybe, not for me. And then the tinnitus is waning too. Really gonna miss it.”

“What's tinnitus?”

“Ringing in the ears, you dolt.” Shaking his head, he turned to Tommy. “Your brother's a dolt, isn't he?”

Tommy asked what a dolt was, and Shea told him.

“A member of the Blanchard family, I think.”

Tommy frowned thoughtfully at that and went outside, calling for Spot and Kitty.

“So nice you're feeling better,” Blanchard said to Shea.

“A mixed blessing, that too. Afraid I'm just about fit to travel. Probably cut out of here tomorrow morning.”

Blanchard smiled slightly at the announcement, for he had one of his own to make. “Maybe you won't have to. Maybe we can find something for you to do here.”