The afternoon sun was burning into the west side of the barn where I was repairing a waterline. The white PVC was a great invention, but sunlight made it brittle. I’d sawn off the cracked section and was trying to couple in a new piece without covering my hands with the blue adhesive that I was certain would poison me somehow. The roof vents were spinning from the heat. I’d sent Wallace home early because of the broken mower blade and so he couldn’t cause any more damage. The break in the blade wasn’t bad, near the back, away from the cutting surface. I was glad for the quiet. I planned to weld the blade back on once the sun was down and the air had cooled some. I finished with the pipe, put my hacksaw, pipe pieces, and glue in the shade and walked through the barn, out and across the yard to the house. Gus was resting on the porch, sitting in a straight-backed chair.
“You forgot to eat lunch again.” The old man lifted a hand and scratched his pathetic beard.
“If you shaved that thing off it wouldn’t itch,” I said. “And a man doesn’t need lunch unless he remembers it.”
“That’s what you cowboys say, eh?” Gus said.
“That’s what we say.”
“Are you starving?” he asked.
“Now that you mention it.” I looked off in the same direction as Gus. “Of course, there’s a pot of elk chili simmering on the stove.”
“No, but there’s a salad in the icebox.” Gus pulled out the pipe he never lit and bit down on it.
“Icebox? Who says icebox anymore?”
“I do. I’m an old man. I also say movie house and dang fool. Want to make something of it?”
“I think I’ll bring my salad out here to eat. Want some?”
“No, thanks.”
“It’s a nice evening,” he said. “Quiet.”
“Very quiet.”
The greenish sparrows under the eave of the little barn weren’t crazy about the roar of the tractor so early and they liked even less the sparking and brightness of the arc welder. I’d forgotten about the blade and so I was up in the pre-dawn, in the cool air, sweating under the welding hood. I’d been careful to take off the mower blade and set it properly, but my seam, as usual, was pathetic. Gus always teased me, telling me I couldn’t weld a straight dot. Zoe looked up from her spot some yards away, then I heard the truck. I lifted the mask and stood. A white, late-seventies Ford dually kicked up dust as it approached. I looked at my watch. The young woman driving skidded more than she’d intended when stopping. A skinny cowboy leaned an unshaven face out the passenger-side window.
“You John Hunt?” the man asked.
I nodded.
“Is Wallace here?”
“It’s five-thirty in the morning, son.” When the kid didn’t say anything, I said, “No, he’s not here. Would you like me to give him a message for you? I expect him at seven.”
“Naw, ain’t no message.”
“Suit yourself.”
The woman put the fat truck in gear and they drove away with a little more decorum.
Gus came out of the house in his robe and walked across the yard. “Who the Sam Hill was that?”
“Some kids looking for Wallace.”
“It’s five-thirty in the morning,” Gus said.
“I pointed that out to them.”
“Well, come on in and have some breakfast, stupid.”
“Okay, captain.”
Gus walked ahead of me. From behind him I studied his khakis and white T-shirt that was his uniform. The old man limped, favoring his left leg. But at seventy-nine, he was still strong and it showed in the way he moved, deliberately, always with conviction. Uncle Gus had spent eleven years in a state prison in Arizona for murder. He killed a man who was raping his wife. The fact that the man had been white was Gus’s explanation for his time in prison. Gus would say that the reason you never saw any black people in the state of Arizona was because they were all in prison. But Gus was never bitter. He was hard, but never bitter. He’d come to live with me after Susie’s death.
In my dream, I spoke to a mirror, telling myself that I was speaking windy nonsense. That was what I said. “You’re speaking windy nonsense.” Then, as if to stop the dream, I wondered whether the windy nonsense was, in fact, a complaint about the expression “windy nonsense.” But then the talk to the mirror turned to the accident and all I could do was swear at myself, call myself stupid. And slow. “You’re a selfish bastard,” I said over and over, until there was no mirror, just another me and I didn’t know which one to believe, even though they were saying the same thing.
I’d lost Susie during a dry spring. It was a hot May day. I’d been in town all morning picking up supplies. My foreman Tad met me as I drove up. He came to the truck’s window, holding the de-worming chart.
“You got the stuff?” he asked, conspiratorially.
“Yeah, here it is.” I handed over a case of de-worming paste from the passenger seat. “I really think we’ve got to put them on a split rotation. There’re getting to be too many horses to do all at once.”
“I’d have to agree with you,” Tad said.
I looked past Tad to the short arena behind the house. My wife Susie was checking the cinch on the new Appaloosa. “Hey, Tad, what’s my wife doing with the App?”
Tad looked back. “Don’t know. Maybe she’s going to lunge him.”
“Well, okay,” I said. I had an uneasy feeling. “I told her to let me work with that horse a few days before she got on him.”
Tad starting telling me that one of the horses had wind puffs.
But I was noticing that Susie was holding a crop and not the lunging whip. “Tad, is she about to get on that horse?”
Tad looked again. “Looks like it.”
I pulled myself out of the truck and started walking toward the arena. Things turned sour in a hurry. Once Susie’s butt settled on the saddle the mare spun to the left and reared slightly. I broke out into a trot. I heard Susie shout “whoa!” to no obvious effect. I was running now and I could hear Tad’s footfalls behind me. I called out to Susie. The horse reared again, this time higher. Susie fell head over hind end off the back of the horse. The horse kicked out and I thought I saw a hoof catch my wife’s helmet as her light body spun just before hitting the ground. I took the fence in a bound and landed on my knees next to Susie’s motionless body. There was dust, nothing but dust, so much dust I couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see where the horse had run. I choked on the dust, holding Susie and trying to find her.
After breakfast, and after finishing the blade, and feeding the horses and riding the new mare, I stood on the porch and looked at the sky. Gus joined me. “It’s nine,” I said, “and where’s Wallace?”
“Probably tied one on last night.”
“Well, I’m not waiting around for him. You ready to go?”
“Yeah, I’m ready. Whatever the hell that means.”
“That means do you have on clean socks and undies?”
“As a matter of fact,” he said.
“Well, let’s go.”
Gus grabbed his jacket and got into the Jeep. He drove out the drive toward the road. “I’ll be damned if I’m paying him for today even if he shows up and works late,” I said. I looked over at my uncle. “And don’t forget to tell the doctor about your shortness of breath.”
“Yes, Mother.”
I followed the dirt road to the highway and turned toward town. I looked up at the mountains. There had been an early dusting of snow up high, but the valley was unseasonably hot. I was eagerly anticipating a free day to go and root around in the caves. I’d discovered them years earlier on the BLM land south of my ranch. I didn’t know what I expected to find or learn in them, but I thought of them often.