Philipp Meyer - The Son

I ask María what she thinks of all this. She says she is trying not to.

AUGUST 3, 1917

My father sold twenty-eight hundred acres of leases under the old Garcia pastures to Magnolia Oil. Nearly a thousand an acre. Drillers on the Midkiff and Reynolds pastures are getting shows a few hundred feet beneath the surface, and the Colonel’s rig (now staffed professionally) hit a good show of oil at eight hundred feet. That or my father spiked the well corings. Regardless, it appears that our money worries are over for the next ten or so generations. This depresses me enormously.

Naturally Magnolia wants to drill near the house, where my father’s discovery well was (the only one actually flowing), but I said I would not allow it.

That area is now a half-mile pit of stinking black sludge. Sullivan and I rode past it today. He is bitter about the oil, and worried about his job.

“You know I am glad about this oil,” he said. “But I can’t even get a glass of water in town without someone trying to charge me for it.”

“Well, now we can afford to get all this brush cleared off, get these other pastures cross-fenced…”

“What’s the point of getting the brush off if we have to look at this shit all day and listen to those drillers all night. Not to mention they leave every goddamn gate open.”

We continued to look at the oil spill.

“Think he’ll sell the cattle?” he asked.

“I won’t let him.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling the boys. He’s always had his mind on other things but you… you are not the type to let that happen.”

It is quiet and I consider that Sullivan has not said a word against my father in the thirty years I’ve known him.

“We’ve got twice as many head as we did two years ago,” I said. “We’ve got twice the work.” The reason for this occurred to me and I winced. I began to wonder where María was.

“But the cattle won’t make money like this stuff. That’s what everyone is worrying over.”

“Well, they shouldn’t.”

Then I added: “Have you heard about this Garcia girl?”

He didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if he was chewing his thoughts or if he hadn’t heard me. We continued to ride and then he said: “I believe everyone has heard of her, boss. In these three counties, anyway.”

“It’s a difficult situation.”

“That is putting it lightly.”

“What do you reckon about my wife?”

“Maybe she’ll get kicked by a horse. Or fall into a river.”

“My luck has never been that good.”

“That is true,” said Sullivan. “If anyone will fall into a river, it will be you.”

AUGUST 4, 1917

Today, for the first time, we go to McCullough Springs together. At first she keeps a comfortable distance, as if she is an employee, but I take her hand. We have lunch at Almacitas, drink Carta Blancas, linger in the street holding each other. I am not sure I have ever felt better. Though part of me wonders if we are doing this as a bulwark against the tide that is rising around us. As if we might stop it with love. Which, of course, is ridiculous.

TONIGHT WE ARE sitting in the library, my head in her lap, when I say: “Why didn’t you ever get married?”

She shrugs.

“But really.”

“I had lovers, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It isn’t, and it gives me a bad feeling to think about, but I persist.

“I won’t give myself to anyone who doesn’t respect me,” she says. “I would rather be dead.”

“They couldn’t have all been so bad.”

“I should have been born a man,” she says.

I pinch her thigh.

“They expect you to look at them adoringly, regardless of what they have done, and if they don’t expect you to wash their clothes, they expect you to keep after the woman who does.” She shrugs. “And the Mexicans are the worst. A Mexican man will take you to a place, say a nice hotel, or a nice view in the mountains, and show it off as if he made it. And part of him really believes it.”

“It’s bravado,” I say.

“Regardless,” she says. “He believes it. And that is why I never married. And never expect to.”

I give her a hurt look.

She leans over and kisses me. “Except to you, of course.”

I nuzzle into her lap and wrap my arms around her waist. But when I look up at her again, she is staring out the dark window, and doesn’t appear to notice me. “There is another story,” she says.

LONG AGO, HERE in the Wild Horse Desert, there was a young vaquero, very handsome, though very poor, who was in love with the daughter of a Tejano rancher.

This girl, who was almost too beautiful to look at, was desired and courted by every rancher’s son on both sides of the river, though being of pure heart, she was more interested in horses than men, and dreamed only of a certain stallion that ran with the wild mustangs. This horse was unusual in both his pure white color and his size, sixteen hands. In addition to his perfect form, he had the toughness of a paint, the speed of a Thoroughbred, and, like the girl, he was coveted by every man who had ever seen or heard of him. But none could ever catch him.

When the young vaquero learned how much the girl loved this horse, he decided to make her a present. For months he studied its tracks and discovered its secrets. Then he waited all night at a hidden watering hole, and when the stallion came in, he roped it. He fed it plums and persimmons and chunks of piloncillo . He repeated this process for many weeks until the horse allowed himself to be stroked and touched, and then led with a halter, and then saddled. But even then he would stand only in one stirrup, never trying to mount the horse, until he knew the horse would not mind. And in this manner he broke the horse to the saddle without breaking his spirit.

After more gentling, the vaquero brushed and groomed the white stallion and rode him to the house of the Tejano rancher, where he called softly to the rancher’s daughter. When she opened her window she recognized the vaquero instantly, and the horse as well, and knew that this was the man she would marry. They shared one chaste kiss, but agreed to find a priest before they did anything else.

Unfortunately they were not alone. The fat son of an Anglo rancher had seen the entire thing, because when he was not forcing himself upon servant girls he was hiding in the bushes outside the window of this beautiful Tejana, watching her disrobe and doing unspeakable things to himself.

(Was this in your mother’s version of the story, I ask.)

(She ignores me.)

He returned to his father with news that the most beautiful girl anyone had ever seen was about to marry a common vaquero. And then he and his father laid an ambush.

With their specially made rifles they waited until the vaquero’s back was turned and then murdered him, and, for the rest of their days, told all their friends of the beautiful shot they made, at a very great distance, on a Mexican.

But when they reached the body of the young vaquero, the white stallion had returned to protect him. He bit and kicked at the rancher and his son and so they murdered him as well. Then they cut off the vaquero’s head.

The ranchero’s daughter, when her vaquero did not return, took her father’s pistol and murdered herself. But God does not allow noble beings to be separated, and thus the vaquero can be seen on his horse at every full moon, with his head in his lap, riding his ghostly white stallion with the other mustangs, looking for the spirit of his intended.

(I believe you have the story wrong, I tell her.)

(How so?)

(That is an old folktale of ours as well, I say.)

FOR MANY YEARS there was a black stallion, not white, that ran with the mustangs and carried a ghostly rider on its back. The sight of the rider made the mustangs stampede, and thus people always knew when the black stallion appeared, because it sounded like a tornado had touched down in the desert, thousands of mustangs galloping across the caliche.