Philipp Meyer - The Son

But he could see the foreman was impressed with his appearance, he had not thrown Ulises off the ranch immediately, he’d carefully inspected his tack, his chaps. Ulises threw a few loops for him, caught a calf by the neck and then the foreleg. I roped an eagle in flight once, he said. It was not exactly true — it had been a turkey. But he could see the man liked his face. I can also use a welder .

He spent the rest of the day in the man’s truck, helping with chores, repairing a fence, running a tractor with a bale spike. At the end of it, the man said:

“Two fifty a week. La Migra mostly stays off the property, but if you stick your nose out and get caught you’ll spend a few months in the pokey. Normally we’d never do this but we are shorthanded and getting shorter.”

He noted this, but decided not to ask why.

“If you’re still here after a few months, we can talk about applying for a permit. Though none of us are sure if this place will even be around that long. I lost two guys this week alone. So if you’ve got other prospects, I suggest you follow them.”

HIS SALARY WAS not much by norteamericano standards but he had nothing to spend it on. On smaller ranches the ICE agents came and went daily but the McCulloughs kept their own security and La Migra was rarely around. It was dangerous to leave the property, though: the white-and-green trucks were everywhere; it was a bit like being under house arrest.

He had a bunk and a few nails to hang his shirts. When he wasn’t working he sat around watching TV with the other vaqueros. When they wouldn’t let him watch the American programs — they did not care about their English — he borrowed a rifle and went out into the brasada and shot an occasional javelina or rabbit, or trailed the big-racked deer that were everywhere. They were too valuable to kill; the Americans would pay thousands to shoot them.

He snuck to town once a month and sent his grandparents half his salary and bought a new shirt, though he had to ask for the hanger it came on. At Christmas he spent a long time looking at some Lucchese handmade boots but decided on Ariats, as they were a quarter the price. He also picked out a Leatherman tool. He felt rich. Then a white man with a gun walked into the store and everyone got quiet. Some kind of deputy. Ulises stood by the cash register, waited for his items to be bagged, watching the man’s reflection in the window. He felt disgusted as he walked out. He paused near the trash bin, considered throwing away everything he’d just bought. It could not be worth this.

It will be better when you get your permit, said Romero, when they were back in the truck. No estoy recibiendo mi permiso, said Ulises, but Romero pretended not to hear. He had worked for the McCulloughs five years but still got stopped by the ICE, who pretended not to recognize him. Ulises could see the pride he took in the new white truck, though it was not his any more than the ranch was, and it struck him that Romero was a fool and he was a fool as well.

THE OLD LADY was dying and had no one to take over the business. Her daughter was a drug addict and her son, it was said, was not fully a man. There had been a grandson everyone liked, but he had drowned in three feet of water. The other grandson visited the ranch with his friends: they wore sandals and never shaved and were constantly smoking mota . One look and you knew why the vaqueros were leaving. This place would die with the old lady.

HIS PLAN WAS ridiculous. The old lady rarely visited the ranch and the foreman, who was likely looking for another job himself, forgot his promise to apply for a permit. But still it was better than the Arroyos. So he stayed.

The shadow follows me everywhere; I see him in the corner at supper, biding his time; he stands behind me as I sit at my desk. As if a great fire were burning in front of me. I imagine reaching for it… letting the flames carry me off.

I ride to the casa mayor and put my ear to the rock. I hear the bell of the church, children calling, women’s shoes.

A memory from the day after the killings:

My father postulating, absentmindedly, that María’s survival was a kind of tragedy. Had she died, all the Garcias’ anger and sadness would have disappeared from the earth. His words have become a moving picture, playing over and over in my mind. I imagine putting a revolver to his head while he sleeps. I imagine the well shooter parking his truck next to the house, setting a match to the nitro bottles.

Of course this has always been inside me. It was only waiting for a moment to escape. There is nothing wrong with my father: he is the natural. The problem is those like myself, who hoped we might rise from our instinctive state. Who hoped to go beyond our nature.

SEPTEMBER 4, 1917

It came to me this morning: she is dead. I paced my room but then I was sure of it, she is dead, I have never been so sure of anything in my life.

My father came to find me in my office.

“You know I am sorry,” he said. “You know it hurts me to see you like this.”

I didn’t respond. I have not spoken a word to him since that day.

“There are responsibilities,” he told me. “We don’t just get to act like normal people.”

Still I ignored him. He walked around my office, looking at my shelves.

“All right, partner. I’ll leave you alone.”

He came forward, raised his hand to put it on my shoulder, but something in my face…

“It will get better,” he told me.

He stood there another minute like that. Then I heard him shuffle down the hall.

OF COURSE IN person… the idea of hurting him is repulsive. Because, unlike him, I am weak. He did not mind trading a wife and a few sons to get what he wanted… each of us walks in his own fire for his own sins, lies down in his own torment. Mine the sin of fear, timidity… I might have carried María away from this place… it did not even occur to me. Held by the chains of my own mind.

My sun has set, the journeying ways have darkened. The rest of my life hangs above me like a weight; I remind myself that my heart for a brief time ran feral… my most preposterous thoughts came true.

Perhaps another great ice will come and grind all this into dust. Leaving no trace of our existence, as even fire does.

SEPTEMBER 6, 1917

Sally continues to make overtures. As if I will simply forget what she has done. It is only because I no longer defer to her that she is interested in my company. Today she asked if I would continue looking for María. Then she asked, Would you look for me if I disappeared? She is baffled. She did not see María as entirely human; she does not see herself as having done anything wrong. Like stays with like — that is her only principle.

I content myself to think that one day we will all be nothing but marks in stone. Iron stains of blood, black of our carbon, a hardening clay.

SEPTEMBER 7, 1917

This family must not be allowed to continue.

In 1521 a dozen Spanish cattle were landed in the New World; by 1865 there were four million living wild in Texas alone. They did not take to domestication; they would happily stick a horn through you and go back to chewing grass. Your average hayseed avoided them as he might a grizzly bear.

But they could not help being herd animals. Once you had a big enough bunch even the mossy horns would fall in. Starting from nothing it might take a year to build your brand, roping and cutting and marking seven days a week, and if you weren’t gored or trampled there was always a neighbor who found it more enjoyable to spend that same year grinning up at the sun; all he had to do was come into your pastures one night with ten of his boon companions, where, in a few hours, he could take your entire year’s work and make it his.