“Well, they’re both blond.” He looked uncomfortable, then burst out, “Damn, Claire, that was twenty years ago!”
He had known exactly what she meant, which was provocative in itself. But really, she was merely curious — extremely curious. Sam’s emotional history was a barred and shuttered room. He could tell her with great accuracy where he had been and what he had done, but not how he had felt, and any glimpse into that black box was pursued eagerly. Jealousy had nothing to do with it.
“Oh,” he said, “I almost forgot. We’re invited to the Froelichs for dinner on Thursday.”
2.
The Froelichs lived in a trailer. It was a nice trailer — double-wide, sitting on several acres of dry grassland about ten miles west of Porterville — but still it was a trailer, and as they approached it Thursday evening Claire wondered how Eddie, who had once been married to the richest and most glamorous woman in Kaweah County, felt about that, and concluded that it didn’t improve his temper any.
Neither did a six-pack.
Eddie’s “conversation” consisted of a running indictment of the people who had at various times dedicated their lives to sabotaging his success and happiness — a long list including but not limited to his father, his older brother, his high school basketball coach, and his present boss. And, of course, Glenda. The commentary became increasingly self-pitying and vitriolic as the empty Coors cans accumulated on the table. Sam listened with patient politeness — anything for a first-class shortstop — but Claire was passionately grateful for the interruption of a phone call at about nine. Mary Jo handed Eddie the phone, and as he listened, he seemed to shrink and sharpen like a slide coming into focus.
“Oh my God,” he said huskily. “Did you call Bogosian? Okay, I’ll be right there.” He hung up, white-faced. Mary Jo touched his arm.
“That was Dwayne Patterson,” he said numbly. “Two of his calves have died, and a third is sick. The vet thinks it’s selenium poisoning.”
Mary Jo laughed with relief. “Is that all? I thought your father—”
He whirled on her. “Don’t you understand?” he hissed. “Those are the calves that I was treating!”
“Is this the selenium trial you were telling me about?” asked Sam, and Eddie nodded miserably.
“I have to get over there right away.”
He accepted Sam’s offer of company, and Claire and Sam squeezed into the front seat of the pickup. While Eddie drove with grim concentration, he told Claire about the experimental trials he was conducting with Dwayne Patterson’s stock, testing the effect of administering selenium to calves and to their mothers.
“I thought selenium was poisonous!” Claire said.
“It is,” Sam said, “in large amounts. But it’s also necessary to normal growth, and supplemental injections can increase calf size and milk production. A blood count under — what was it, Eddie—?”
Eddie wasn’t listening. “I’ve done it to dozens of cattle, with no problem,” he said. “I couldn’t have screwed up! Maybe my technician...” He trailed off, and Claire reflected sourly that Eddie’s first response to a crisis always would be to find someone else to blame.
They drove south and west, through the little towns of Poplar and Tipley, where the soil was rich and the people poor, and a church seemed to be paired with every orchard: plums, First Missionary. Oranges, Western Baptist. Walnuts, First Nazarene. Almonds, First Assembly of God. Oranges again, Freewill Baptist. Feedlot, Church of God of the Prophecy. Feedlot... FEEDLOT! WHEW!
“Do people over here ever get used to the smell?” Claire said while holding her breath.
“Yeah,” said Eddie, and, “I never have,” said Sam.
Finally they came to the Kettleman Hills. Here the land was bone-dry, but fertile if irrigated. But water had to be bought from various projects at various prices, so people did what Dwayne Patterson had done: raised cattle, not crops.
Eddie turned up the long dirt road to the Lazy D Ranch, towards a brightly lit modem structure at the end of the road that resembled a hospital. When they entered, two men looked up from their hay-side vigil. With his strong nose, silver-streaked black hair, and deep-set eyes, Armen Bogosian looked like a governor instead of a not-very-bright vet serving an obscure rural county, which was what he was.
Dwayne Patterson, on the other hand, could have been nothing but a rancher: big and capable-looking, eyes alert and humorous in a face weathered to manzanita red, he seemed ageless, but was probably in his mid-fifties. Claire liked him immediately — especially when he began talking in a rich Texas accent, slow as Kern County crude.
“Hey, Eddie,” he said, coolly but without hostility. “Come see what we got here.”
They knelt beside the limp brown animal. The calf didn’t look good, even to Claire’s ignorant eye; its hide was matted with sweat, its eyes open and glazed, and there was no rise and fall of respiration. All in all, Claire would have guessed that it was—
“Dead,” said Bogosian. “Died a couple of minutes ago.” He rose. “I’ve seen one or two cases of chronic selenium poisoning out in the Great Basin—”
“Used to have a fair amount in Texas,” put in Dwayne. “ ‘Blind staggers,’ we called it. But this ain’t nothin’ like that.”
“Nope, these animals have the symptoms of acute poisoning. Never come across it before. Truth is,” he added, “I probably wouldn’t have diagnosed it so fast if Dwayne here hadn’t told me about this experimental treatment.”
“But are you sure that’s what it is?” White-faced and perspiring, Eddie looked a lot like the calf.
“Of course I’m sure,” Bogosian said huffily. “I’ll have to do a postmortem to look for the characteristic lesions, but the symptoms are all present: anorexia... polyuria... dyspnea... coma and death through respiratory and myocardial failure,” he recited haltingly, reading from a fat blue book.
“Wayne, I swear I couldn’t have hurt those calves,” Eddie said pleadingly. “We’ve performed these trials on a hundred animals, and none of them has ever taken sick...”
“Got much of this on your land, Patterson?” Sam interjected suddenly. He held up a trailing bit of greenery.
Patterson squinted at it. “Locoweed?” he said. “Sure, it’s around, my stock gets into it sometimes. Never caused any problems. It ain’t like the Texas variety.”
Locoweed? Now what was the problem with loco weed? wondered Claire. Jimsonweed contained poisonous alkaloids, but all she could remember about locoweed was old wives’, or rather old cowpokes’, tales.
“This soil is selenium-poor,” Eddie commented, further obscuring the issue as far as Claire was concerned. “That’s why Dwayne called us in.”
Sam nodded. “But locoweed on top of the supplemental selenium,” he said tentatively, then snapped his fingers. “The pools!” he exclaimed. “The Westside drainage pools. Doesn’t this land adjoin them?”
“Yeah, but I got fences—”
“Fences break.”
“I’ll bet that’s it!” Eddie said, the color returning to his face. “Armen, can you find out what these critters have been eating?”
The vet shrugged. “Sure.” Then, turning to Sam, “You want me to give you a call, too? You seem to be the botanical expert around here.”
“I’d appreciate it. I’d be real interested.”
They helped the vet load the calves’ carcasses into his van. Patterson made them all come up to his house for coffee — “Least I can do after dragging you all out here for something that may have been my own damn fault” — and as he and Eddie walked on ahead, Sam finally explained the locoweed-selenium connection to Claire.