Philipp Meyer - The Son

They’d left nothing but tracks and bones. In Australia, frozen into rock, there were the footprints of three people crossing a mudflat. At twenty-seven miles per hour — all three moving as fast as the fastest man on earth today. They were speeding up when the tracks ended.

WHAT SHOULD SHE tell her grandchildren? There were too many facts and you could arrange them in any order you wanted. Eli McCullough had killed Indians. Eli McCullough had killed whites. He had killed, period. It depended on whether you saw things through his eyes or the eyes of his victim as he pulled the trigger. Dead people did not have voices and this made them irrelevant.

She didn’t know. Perhaps he had sown the seeds of his own ruination. He’d provided for all of them, and they’d become soft, they’d become people he never would have respected.

Of course you wanted your children to have it better than you had. But at what point was it not better at all? People needed something to worry about or they would destroy themselves, and she thought of her grandchildren and all the grandchildren yet to come.

The ranch made all its money from oil and gas, and the men from those companies were always driving around checking the wells and tanks and pumps. They were mostly white and their soda cans were always found along the roads. The vaqueros did not care for them and every time they saw a piece of surveyor tape marking some turn, they would stop to cut it down.

But the work was not bad; there was something to be said for air-conditioning when you wanted it, and the money, compared to Mexico, was unbelievable. In late January he’d gone to a rodeo with the other vaqueros, all of whom had work permits. They had been reluctant to take him — a truck full of Mexicans was a prime target and if they were caught they would lose their permits — but he pretended not to notice their hesitation. He quickly realized that three-quarters of the men in the competitions did not live or work on ranches — they competed at rodeos for fun.

He and Fernando got third in the team roping; he was going to collect his ten dollars when he saw a pair of ICE men talking to the promoter. He walked the other way. He waited in the brush outside the parking lot and watched for Fernando and the others to come out.

No one spoke on the ride home. It was no small thing to have a work permit; even being around them, he was putting them in jeopardy.

He was going stir-crazy. He could not even leave the ranch. One Sunday he rode up to the old Garcia place; it was just crumbling walls now, but it had once been a big house, a fortress even. There was still a spring running nearby, and trees and shade, and a view. He entered the ruins of the house and knew instantly, felt in his gut, that his people had lived here. Though Garcia was not exactly an uncommon name.

A truck came up the road, and he slipped out of the ruins and considered hiding; he felt as if he were doing something wrong. Though of course he was not. He might be trailing a lost cow.

The man who got out of the truck was short and baggy, old pants and an old shirt and thick glasses, the look of a person who spent all his time alone. The other hands had mentioned that Mrs. McCullough was paying someone to write a history of the ranch. He had never met a writer, but he thought this man looked like one, like he had not washed his hair or his glasses in a long time. Ulises introduced himself.

“I like to come up here and eat lunch,” said the man. He seemed embarrassed to be breathing. “It’s about the best view on the property, plus”—he indicated the spring—“it’s nice to be near water.”

After they had been sitting and talking, Ulises asked: “So what happened to the people who used to live here?”

“They were killed.”

“Who killed them?”

“The McCulloughs. Who else?”

Feel my heart growing moderate. An even worse punishment. The might-have-beens filling in my years.

I think of my son’s wounding, his near-death, as an excuse for other deaths. Both my children in some barracks, waiting to be sent overseas. This house nothing more than a mausoleum. Just in recorded history the polestar has changed four times. .. yet men insist we will endure on this earth.

SEPTEMBER 18, 1917

Went out to help the vaqueros check the fences after last night’s rain. In an arroyo, sticking out of the bank, I found a bone so ancient it had completely turned to stone; it rang like steel when I struck it.

SEPTEMBER 20, 1917

Ab Jefferson at Pinkerton came by today in person. Pretended it was a social call. We went for a drive and he informed me that in Guadalajara there are three possible María Garcias, all recent arrivals. Gave three addresses.

I had to pull the car over. He patted me on the back.

“It’s one of the most common names in Mexico, Pete. They are probably farm girls.”

“It’s a start,” I said.

“Do you want me to send someone?”

“No,” I said.

Wrote letters to each of them, begging them to take me back. Lay on the sofa all day. The shadow is no longer standing over me. He has retreated to one of the corners.

Beef was up four straight years but in ’73, with the economy falling over, most went back to killing steers for hides.

I would not allow it. By then I owned 118 sections in fee simple with another 70 on lease. I held my stock. Our losses we kept to a minimum as we shot any mounted rider inside our fences. It was all according to Gunter.

Those afoot we let pass: it can never be said I denied an honest man his day’s work. It was known in Carrizo that any man who found his family short rations could entitle himself to one of my calves, so long as he left me the hide. Only bullets and walls make for honest neighbors and a single night in my pastures would net any rustler a year’s wages, a year of my own life. If they had built a cow-proof fence between us and the river…

There are plenty of old pistols still to be found in the brush country. Bone rots faster than iron. It was all according to Gunter.

MADELINE AND THE children had moved to a big house in Austin. The children had schools and tutors and I would have sooner burned the ranch than had them out to it, though Madeline had been asking for a proper house on the Nueces, so that we could all live together. I put it off. There were no schools. And she would not have cottoned to our treatment of fence crossers.

ONE DAY A black mood came over me for no reason, I was ornery as a snake and could not stand for anyone to look at me. I went off by myself. I guessed it was the heat.

The next morning they were shouting it in the streets: Quanah Parker and the last of the Comanches had surrendered. There were barely a thousand left on earth — the same number that had lived in Toshaway’s village — and now the whole of Texas was open to the white man. I told Madeline I needed time alone, saddled my horse and went up the Colorado. I was riding and riding, but no matter how far I got there were hog callers and boatmen. I rode well into the night until finally it was quiet. I climbed a ledge and built a fire and howled out to the wolves. But nothing howled back.

That I had done wrong was plain. I was not thick enough to believe I might have saved the ponies from Ranald Mackenzie’s troopers, but you could never say for certain. A single man can make a difference.

I thought how I might have gone back to the N um un uu when the war started. It hit me that fifteen years had passed since. I could not believe it; I could barely name a thing I’d done. I sat there looking out over the cliff, running it through my mind. It was not that I did not love my family. But there are things no person can give you.