Joe made it a habit to ride through the yearlings every day. They were pretty well scattered out and it always took an entire morning. But he enjoyed saddling his horse in the dark and then to be rolling along as the day broke to count and check the cattle. Behind this was the knowledge that he really couldn’t afford any death loss. The country had had several dry years; cattle numbers were down across the state, and in the Midwest it was rumored that stored feed was at an all-time high. Unless somebody fooled around with it and the futures boys manipulated things out of all reason, Joe thought his cattle would be right valuable by fall.
The great pleasure came from the grass, traveling through it horseback: the movement of the wind on its surface, the blaze of sunrise across its ocean curves. As the full warmth of day came on, the land took on a humming vitality of cows and grass and hawks, and antelope receded dimly like something caught in your eye. Joe always rode straight into at least one covey of partridges which roared up around his horse. After the first burst, the little brick and gray chickens cast down onto a hillside and resumed feeding. Joe’s horse watched hard, then went on traveling. Instead of being someplace where he waited for the breeze through a window, Joe had gone to where the breeze came from.
One day, walking into a dell in search of the head of a small spring, he sensed something in the chest-high grass and serviceberry patches. He stopped to listen. He looked straight up into the brightness of the afternoon sun as something stirred. Suddenly, two cinnamon cubs sprang upright into the glitter, weaving to scent him. As Joe began to back out the way he’d come in, the mother bear rose on her haunches, swinging her muzzle in an arc. The sun behind her made the edge of her coat ignite in a silvery veil. The cubs hastened to their mother’s side and the three of them went up to the top of the spring and disappeared into the berry bushes. Joe was out of breath. He couldn’t believe his luck in receiving such a gift.
The yearlings began to gain visibly. Joe cut back the chronic pinkeye and hoof-rot cattle until he had them cleaned up and returned to the herd. There was everything in this motley set of cheap cattle: blacks, black baldies, Herefords, Charolais, some Simmental crosses. It didn’t matter. He and Lureen had kept their costs down and if the deer flies and nose flies didn’t run the yearlings through the wire later on, they ought to do all right.
Most of the cattle were concentrated in the north-facing coulees where the snow had lingered late in the spring. Another mile toward the Yellowstone was the end of the property and the beginning of wild short-grass country, intersected by seasonal watercourses and cottonwood breaks. Here, three different times, Joe found his gate open, thrown defiantly out on the ground. He had a feeling Billy Kelton had passed this way. Luckily, the cattle never found the gap.
Astrid got sick to her stomach and then the sickness just went on and on. They both got nervous about it and finally Joe suggested she go in and see a doctor at the hospital. She hadn’t been particularly healthy since she arrived. Nobody was on duty, so, in the end, she stayed at the hospital overnight.
Joe slept poorly, imagining the worst. He picked her up first thing in the morning. She fluttered her fingers in the doorways of other patients she had become acquainted with. In one room, an old man danced around wildly with a smile on his face. “He’s on a natural high,” said Astrid as they passed the room. Another patient, a woman over eighty, had been parked in a wheelchair and left near the pay phone. She stared at a fixed place in front of her and her eyes never moved when people passed before her. There was no way to tell that she was still alive. “She’s so unjudgmental,” Astrid said as she made her way fixedly toward the sunlight. Joe held a hand at her elbow and walked her down the sidewalk along the little dotted plantings of potentilla in the cool yellow sun. “I just can’t tell you,” she said. Joe could feel the thrill of release in her tremulous sighs. “Wouldn’t it be something to go straight to the ocean? It was the last stop for some of those people. I felt it. I felt the time we’re wasting.”
Joe had to navigate the truck intently. The sun shining through the windshield heated up the cab, and the windvane hissed over the country-Western station.
“Have you been in touch with anybody?” Joe asked. There were a lot of phone calls on the bill when he checked Astrid out of the hospital.
“I called a few people last night. Then I quit. They were going to charge out here for a laying on of hands.”
“Anything new?”
“Patti and G.J. got busted.”
“No surprise there,” Joe said.
“Mark Perkins bought a sportfisherman at the federal drug-boat auction. Supposed to have been a good buy.”
“So what did the doctor say?”
“He said I’ve got colitis. He said it’s from stress. They have some cortisone thing they can do but I said forget it, I’ll try to deal with the causes. Big talk. Joe, I don’t have any business being here.”
Joe stared straight at the spot above the road where it all turned blue. “You’re going to see the point of this soon,” he said.
“That’s why I came up here.”
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.”
At the ends of the roads to the small ranches, people stood by their mailboxes looking through the mail. When Joe and Astrid were nearly home, they came upon a band of sheep swarming on the road. An old man with a long white beard followed the sheep on an ancient horse; his dogs swept back and forth keeping the sheep under control. A younger man walking out at the edge of the herd saw Joe and ran over. Swinging his arm for Joe to follow, he went up through the sea of sheep, causing a channel as wide as the road to part through the wool surface. Joe was able to drive through this as the sheep closed behind him, and in a minute he was beyond the band and up to road-speed again. Astrid watched with a smile. You could never tell what Astrid would like.
They drove into the ranch yard. The dog retreated to a juniper and stared indifferently. Joe jumped out of the truck and, crossing in front of the hood, turned to face Astrid through the windshield. Joe felt she’d been away for years. He spread his arms in welcome. A terrific smile consumed his features. Astrid lit a cigarette and pushed the windvane open while she watched Joe.
“Baby, we’re home!” he cried. He thought the pain of his love for Astrid would be more than he could stand.
27
Joe arranged to meet Smitty at the dining room of the Bellwood Hotel and got a table off to themselves. From the lobby, Joe had watched Smitty drive up in a Cadillac. The car was so astonishing and had such power to undermine any subsequent conversation that Joe hurried into the dining room to prevent Smitty’s knowing he had seen it. In this small town, a new Cadillac was an item of almost exaggerated splendor and dimension and had the effect of a cruise liner on remote native populations. Joe feared that Smitty had been unable to live up to this new vehicle, and under Joe’s gaze would slink from its interior in defeat.
But Joe was wrong. Smitty appeared in the doorway to the dining room, chucked the waitress under the chin, and waved the leather tab of his car keys at Joe. “Joe boy,” he called, waltzing toward him. “Am I late?”
“Oh no, Smitty, you’re not late. You’re on time.”
Smitty hung his coat over the back of his chair and sat down with a bounce. “Who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here?” he inquired, letting his eyes drift to the royal elk over the entryway to the kitchen. A waitress emerged and Smitty arrested her with a grin. “My nephew and I would like a sarsaparilla.” The waitress took their orders and when she was gone, Smitty said, “There’s a side to my drinking, I admit it’s small, that I really enjoy. Isn’t that surprising? After all these years? A side to this disease that I’d hate to see changed.” This moment all but took the wind from Joe’s sails. When the drinks arrived, Smitty held his glass of sour mash to the light and said, “You have no idea what this looks like to me. I do not see an instrument of torture. I see something more golden than any casket in the Theban tombs. Knowing that it will kill me in the end, I see the purest, most priceless ambergris of the Arctic cetaceans, the jewel in the crown, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Does it bother me that I will die in abject misery, shaking myself to death in delirium? I have to be honest: not right now it doesn’t. It’s a strong man’s weakness.”