I’d been rustlin my own grub in the LeisureLife for a good little while when the old lady said it was time for me to eat with the white folks. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The old lady’s knee replacements had begun to fail, and both me and the old sumbitch was half-afraid of her. She cooked good as ever but she was a bomb waitin to go off, standin bowlegged at the stove and talkin ugly about how much she did for us. When she talked, the old sumbitch would move his mouth like he was saying the same words. If the old lady’d caught him at that they’d a been hell to pay.
Both of them was heavy smokers, to where a oxygen bottle was in sight. So they joined a Smoke-Enders deal the Lutherans had, and this required em to put all their butts in a jar and wear the jar around their neck on a string. The old sumbitch liked this okay because he could just tap his ash right under his chin and not get it on the truck seat, but the more that thing filled up and hung around her neck the meaner the old lady got. She had no idea the old sumbitch was cheatin and settin his jar on the woodpile when we was workin outside. She was just honester than him, and in the end she give up smokin and he smoked away, except he wasn’t allowed to in the house no more nor buy readymades, cause the new tax made them too expensive and she wouldn’t let him take it out of the cows, which come first. She said it was just a vice, and if he was half the man she thought he was he’d give it up for a bad deal. “You could have a long and happy old age,” she told him, real sarcastic-like.
One day me and the old sumbitch is in the house hauling soot out of the fireplace on account of they had a chimney fire last winter. Over the mantel is a picture of a beautiful woman in a red dress with her hair piled on top of her head. The old sumbitch tells me that’s the old lady before she joined the motorcycle gang.
“Oh?”
“Them motorcycle gangs,” he says, “all they do is eat and work on their motorcycles. They taught her to smoke too, but she’s shut of that. Probably outlive us all.”
“Oh?”
“And if she ever wants to box you tell her no. She’ll knock you on your ass, I guarantee it. Throw you a damn haymaker, son.”
I couldn’t understand how he could be so casual about the old lady being in a motorcycle gang. When we was smokin in the LeisureLife, I asked him about it. That’s when I found out him and the old lady was brother and sister. I guess that explained it. If your sister joins some motorcycle gang, that’s her business. He said she even had a tattoo—Hounds from Hell — a dog shootin flames out of his nostrils and riding a Harley.
That picture on the mantel kind of stayed in my mind, and I asked the old sumbitch if his sister’d ever had a boyfriend. Well yes, he said, several, quite a few, quite a damn few. “Our folks run em off. They was only after the land.”
By now we was in the barn and he was goin all around the baler, hittin the zerks with his grease gun. “I had a lady friend myself. Do anything. Cook. Gangbusters with a snorty horse and not too damn hard on the eyes. Sis run her off. Said she was just after the land. If she was, I never could see it. Anyway, went on down the road a long time ago.”
Fall come around and when we brought the cavvy down, two of them old-timers who’d worked so hard was lame. One was stifled, the other sweenied, and both had cripplin quarter cracks. I thought they needed to be at the loose-horse sale, but the old sumbitch says, “No mounts of mine is gonna feed no Frenchmen,” and that was that. So we made a hole, led the old-timers to the edge, and shot them with a elk rifle. First one didn’t know what hit him. Second one heard the shot and saw his buddy fall, and the old sumbitch had to chase him all around to kill him. Then he sent me down the hole to get the halters back. Liftin them big heads was some chore.
I enjoyed eatin in the big house that whole summer until the sister started givin me come-hither looks. They was fairly limited except those days when the old sumbitch was in town after supplies. Then she dialed it up and kind of brushed me every time she went past the table. There was always something special on town days, a pie maybe. I tried to think about the picture on the mantel but it was impossible, even though I knew it might get me out of the LeisureLife once and for all. She was gettin more and more wound up while I was pretendin to enjoy the food, or goin crazy over the pie. But she didn’t buy it — called me a queer, and sent me back to the trailer to make my own meals. By callin me a queer, she more or less admitted to what she’d been up to, and I think that embarrassed her, because she covered up by roaring at everyone and everything, including the poor old sumbitch, who had no idea what had gone sideways while he was away. It was two years before she made another pie, and then it was once a year on my birthday. She made me five birthday pies in all, sand cherry, every one of them.
I broke the catch colt, which I didn’t know was no colt as he was the biggest snide in the cavvy. He was four, and it was time. I just got around him for a couple days, then saddled him gentle as I could. The offside stirrup scared him and he looked over at it, but that was all it was to saddlin. I must of had a burst of courage, cause next minute I was on him. That was okay too. I told the old sumbitch to open the corral gate, and we sailed away. The wind blew his tail up under him, and he thought about buckin but rejected the idea, and that was about all they was to breakin Olly, for that was his name. Once I’d rode him two weeks, he was safe for the old sumbitch, and he plumb loved this new horse and complimented me generously for the job I’d did.
We had three hard winters in a row, then lost so many calves to scours we changed our calving grounds. The old sumbitch just come out one day and looked at where he’d calved out for fifty years and said, “The ground’s no good. We’re movin.” So we spent the summer buildin a new corral way off down the creek. When we’s finished, he says, “I meant to do this when I got back from overseas, and now it’s finished and I’m practically done for too. Whoever gets the place next will be glad his calves don’t shit themselves into the next world like mine done.”
Neither one of us had a back that was worth a damn, and if we’d had any money we’d of had the surgery. The least we could do was get rid of the square baler and quit heftin them man-killin five-wire bales. We got a round baler and a DewEze machine that let us pick up a bale from the truck without layin a finger on it. We’d smoke in the cab on those cold winter days and roll out a thousand pounds of hay while them old-time horned Herefords followed the truck sayin nice things about me and the old sumbitch while we told stories. That’s when I let him find out I’d done some time.
“I figured you musta been in the crowbar hotel.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, you’re a pretty good hand. What’s a pretty good hand doin tryin loose horses in the middle of the night at some Podunk sale yard? Folks hang on to a pretty good hand, and nobody was hangin on to you. You want to tell me what you done?”
I’d been with the old sumbitch for three years and out of jail the same amount of time. I wasn’t afraid to tell him what I done, for I was starting to trust him, but I sure didn’t want him tellin nothin to his sister. I trusted him enough to tell him I did the time, but that was about all I was up to. I told him I rustled some yearlins, and he chuckled like everybody understood that. Unfortunately, it was a lie. I rustled some yearlings, all right, but that’s not what I went up for.