The cow in question was a big rangy old girl, experienced in the routine of cowboys, and so you’d think she would have known better. She’d been a dependable breeder and good mama for years, but she might have gotten a little senile in that long, hard head of hers. It happened to cows as well as to people. On that day, she wouldn’t move along, kept turning in the wrong direction, stalling the progress of a bunch of cattle toward a bend in the circular pen. She was bawling for her calf, her eyes rolling wildly, foam spewing from her mouth. The temperature of that September afternoon in 1986 was roasting man and beast as if they were all tied to spits over a Labor Day barbecue pit; both species were overheated, unhappy, angry at each other. The smell of fresh manure and cow bodies filled the dry air with an animal humidity. The noise of the cattle’s hooves on the dirt, the bawling of calves for their mothers, the yells of the men trying to control them, created a thunder of its own on a rainless day.
“Move, you son of a bitch!”
Hugh Senior saw his part-time cowboy poke the cow repeatedly in her side with an electric prod. Billy was one of the rancher’s “projects,” one of the local boys he had put to work on the ranch over the years, because he believed there was nothing like hard work with animals and machinery to straighten out a path that looked as if it was taking a crooked turn.
Billy had proved to be a tougher “save” than the boys preceding him.
Maybe it was because both of his parents were drunks, and not just one of them, as had been the case with a couple of the other kids who turned out pretty well after Hugh and Annabelle Linder got hold of them. Maybe it was because Billy wasn’t the brightest young bull in the herd, or because he had a temper with a trigger so sensitive a speck of dust could set it off. Whatever the cause, the result was that Hugh Linder’s regimen of sweat-labor wasn’t having much effect, in the opinion of the locals. Hadn’t Billy just lost his license again, after his second drunk driving conviction? Didn’t his poor little wife look bruised across her jaw the other day? Wasn’t their little boy more serious and careful than a seven-year-old should be? And wasn’t Billy Crosby drinking just as much, acting as belligerent as ever, chasing after women, and running his dirty mouth off where he shouldn’t? The Linders should have given up on him long ago, people said; anybody else would have thrown up their hands by now, that was for sure.
Hugh Senior saw that the old cow couldn’t possibly respond to Billy’s wishes.
She had gotten herself trapped in the wrong direction. But Billy kept stabbing at her with the prod. It was clear to the rancher that the cowboy had boiled over and was taking it out on the confused, frightened animal. Hugh yelled, but couldn’t be heard over the other noise. He picked up his pace, rushing toward Billy, but not in time before the cowboy climbed the rungs of the metal pen, threw his legs over so he was seated atop of it, and aimed a vicious kick straight at the head of the cow. The heel of his cowboy boot hit her left eye. Even as big as the cow was, the blow staggered her. Her head jerked sideways. Her knees buckled and she stumbled into the side of another cow, then righted herself, shaking her head and bellowing louder than ever. A ruckus broke out in the tight space where she had the other cattle trapped around her.
Billy pulled back his heel to kick her again.
His lips pulled back over his teeth, his eyes bugged with fury.
Hugh Senior grabbed the young man’s shirt and jerked him backward so he tumbled in a twisting fall off the top of the fence, landing hard at the rancher’s feet, sideways, eating dust.
“Go cool off, Billy.” Hugh Senior pointed back toward headquarters.
The rancher’s voice was loud, gravelly, no-nonsense.
“Why’d you do that, Mr. Linder?” The hired hand grabbed one shoulder and winced as he struggled to his feet. The twenty-four-year-old and the fifty-four-year-old stood eye to eye, reminding more than one of the witnesses of a young and old bull challenging each other in a pasture. Nobody could hear what they were saying because of the noise of the cattle, but the body language was clear enough. Even though Billy was six feet tall, the older man had four inches on him, along with a bigger, more muscular frame. The rancher had the light hair and blue eyes of his German forebears; Billy had a dark, sharp-featured resemblance to his own father, whose good looks had long ago dissolved in beer and whiskey. “I didn’t do nothin’!” he protested.
“You were abusing one of my animals, Billy.”
The rancher’s voice rang sharp with disapproval.
“Damned cow’s gonna die anyway!”
Contempt joined disapproval in Hugh Senior’s response to that despicable defense. “Doesn’t mean you get to torture her along the way.”
“Ain’t fair!” Billy whined. “I seen other men do it.”
“If I ever see that, I’ll stop them, too. Maybe you ought to just go on home now, Billy.”
The words were a suggestion, but the tone was commanding.
“How am I supposed to get home when I don’t even have a truck?”
As usual, Billy didn’t know when to shut up.
Hugh Senior lost what patience he had on that irritating day and ordered, “Step away from my pens, Billy. Now. Go get yourself something cool to drink. Stick your hot head in it while you’re at it. You can wait in the barn for Hugh-Jay to come get you and give you a ride home. And don’t be bothering Mrs. Linder up at the house.”
“I need a drink, all right,” Billy mumbled.
“That’s the last thing you need,” the rancher snapped back, knowing he meant alcohol.
Wiping dirt from his face, Billy limped away, observed by the disgusted rancher and the other men working the cattle that day. All of Hugh’s sons were there, Hugh-Jay, Chase, and Bobby, along with neighbors, a veterinarian, and a couple of other part-time hired hands. A few glances were exchanged among them, but only Chase said anything. “Good riddance,” he summed up for every man there.
That was all there was to it, all of them testified later.
It was nothing, and it was everything.
TWO HOURS LATER Hugh-Jay Linder drove Billy Crosby back to Rose, where they both lived with their wives and only children. At the last minute Chase hopped into the backseat of Hugh-Jay’s silver Ford pickup truck to ride along. It was three miles from ranch entrance to town limit, all of it along two-lane county blacktop. The pastures of their own High Rock Ranch spread out on either side of the road for the first two miles, followed then by a cemetery on one side and a ranch with a bison herd to the right, before scattered houses began to appear on the outskirts of Rose.
“What the hell’s eating your dad?” Billy said to the brothers, right off.
It was four-thirty and hotter than ever, although there was a forecast of rain for tomorrow. It was so hot in the truck that Hugh-Jay drove with his work gloves on the steering wheel to keep from burning his hands. It was too hot for the air-conditioning to kick in before they reached town, so he had the windows rolled down while the AC worked its way up to tepid. He cranked its fan up high, so that between that noise and the sound of the tires, and the hot wind whipping in through the windows, the three of them had to raise their voices to hear one another. From their faces to the back of their necks and on down their clothing, they were filthy from the cattle work. Their boots and their jeans stank of cow shit, a smell they barely noticed after a lifetime of breathing it.
“You are,” Chase joked from the backseat. “You’re eating him.”
They’d all gone through the county schools together. Billy had dropped out of high school on his third stab at a junior year, the same year Belle Linder was a senior, Chase was a sophomore, Bobby was still in middle school, and Hugh-Jay was at Kansas State University.