Philipp Meyer - The Son

He had heard and then seen her jet land yesterday; it was quite a sight, a plane that looked as if it might carry thirty or more people, landing to discharge a single person. It was a Gulfstream. The same one the narcotraficantes preferred. A car picked her up from the runway.

Even watching her from a distance gave him a nervous feeling. He had worked all day, but had not been able to eat lunch.

Later he saw her being driven around the ranch, sitting in the back of her Cadillac. Her chin held high, surveying all she owned. Near dinnertime he had made a point of passing by the house, just to get a glimpse of her, when he noticed an old person sitting by herself on the vast porch, looking at some papers.

He rode up and tipped his hat. “Good evening. I am Ulises Garcia.”

She looked at him. She was annoyed at being interrupted. But he smiled at her and finally she couldn’t help herself. She smiled back and said: “Hello, Mr. Garcia.”

He couldn’t think of anything more to say, so he wished her a good night and rode off cursing himself.

THE NEXT DAY the plane was still there. The sun was going down and he was heading back to the bunkhouse. He supposed it was now or never. Of course if she rejected him, he would have to leave. It was a good job, Bryan Colms liked him, the other hands liked him, even if they thought he was a showoff.

Of course he was a coward if he didn’t try. After dinner, he changed into his good shirt and packed his papers into a small leather bag his grandfather had given him.

OCTOBER 13, 1917

Received two telegrams from Guadalajara asking me to come down, but neither is the real María. Today a letter arrived. Very short.

“Received your note. Good memories but see no way of continuing.”

I wait until I am certain Sally is out of the house, then call Ab Jefferson and tell him what happened.

“We could bring her up here easy,” he says.

“How would you do that?”

“It has been done, Mr. McCullough.”

Then I understand. “No,” I tell him. “Absolutely not.”

IT IS NOT much of a plan. Composed a letter to Charlie and Glenn explaining as best I could. Do not expect they will forgive me — especially Charlie. He is the Colonel’s son as much as mine. Tomorrow is a Sunday so I will have to wait.

OCTOBER 14, 1917

Woke up this morning with a happiness I have not felt since she left, replaced slowly by the old feeling. Did not know I had so much fear in me.

If she consents to see me it will not be the same, she was a refugee then — we will be like old friends who no longer have anything in common. Our bonds revealed as illusion. Better not to see it. Better to hold on to something I know is good.

OCTOBER 15, 1917

Did not sleep last night. Packed three changes of clothes and my revolver. In a few minutes I will pass through the gates of the McCullough ranch for the last time. One way or the other.

The bank in Carrizo will not have what I need so I am going to San Antonio. Ronald Derry has known me twenty years — he will not question me. Unless he does. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars for oil leases. Oil leases, I will say, you know these farmers, they all want to see cash .

Then I will cross the border. Of course the money is not mine. If they decide to call my father…

I HAVE NO illusion about my chance of reaching Guadalajara alive. I am of sound mind and body. This is my testament.

With the surrender of the Comanches, an area as big as the Old States opened to settlement and every easterner who owned a whaling ship or hotel began to fancy himself a cattle baron. There were Frenchmen and Scots, counts and dukes in scissortail coats, peacocked Yankees with their faces shining like new mirrors. They overpaid for range, overpaid for stock, overpaid for horses, they were trying to catch up to the rest of us. Meanwhile the southern grasslands were already run-down; the smart stockmen drove their herds to Montana to get fat on what grass remained.

Half the cowhands were Harvard men in lisle thread socks, with mail-order pistols and silver-decked tack bought straight from a leathershop drummer. They’d come west to grow up with the country. Meaning see the end of it.

I said I would sell out by ’80. The part of me that was still alive hated the sight of cowbrutes, hated chewing every waking minute on how I would profit or lose by them. The rest of me couldn’t think of anything else. How to protect them, how to get the best price for them, and, when the money had gone out of them, how I might make it another way. I was caught in the thorns of my own undertaking, unmaking, I considered the beasts more than my own wife and children, I was no different from Ellen Wilbarger with her laudanum. She had not needed it until she tried it, but soon saw no other way.

MADELINE THOUGHT I was interfering with some senorita. She gave me too much credit. The problem was much bigger than any girl.

BY THEN I had moved them to San Antonio, but I still spent my time in the brasada or along some dusty waterhole and Madeline was not any happier. She told me to get a proper house built on the Nueces or else. I told her I had only a few years left — I could feel it doing something to me.

“Like what?” she said.

I started to tell her, but couldn’t. Old Nicky himself had pinched my jaw shut.

She paced the living room. She’d fallen in with some other grass widows and had taken to wearing paint; just a touch but I noticed it. The servants were off being servants and the boys were in the yard.

“I hate this house,” she said.

“It’s a hell of a nice house,” I said. It was a big white one in the Spanish style, big as the one she’d grown up in, with a good view of the river. It was two years’ wages and a sizable note to match.

“I would rather be living in a hut.”

“We’ll be out soon enough,” I said.

“Why not now?”

“Because.”

“We do not have to live in the biggest house. Now or ever. I believe you have confused me with my sister.”

She smiled but I wanted to keep it serious. “Three years,” I told her. “Come hell or high water I swear I will not touch a cow after that.”

“That is the same as never.”

“There is no school.”

“We will build one. Or hire a teacher. Or we keep this place and go back and forth and hire a teacher half the time.” She threw up her hands. “There are any number of ways,” she said. “We are not exactly building a railroad.”

“Well, it’s a waste of money to build a place and leave it.”

“The fool who buys the land will also buy the house. Meanwhile I am here with your children, who spend all their time pretending they are you when they don’t really know you.”

“It’s not the right place,” I said. “I am sure of it.”

But she was already not listening. I could see her thinking. “The representative is going back to Washington,” she said. The representative was her mother’s new husband. “There is a nice house for sale next door to theirs. Which is where I am taking the children unless you convince me otherwise.”

I walked away from her and stood by the window. The best part of me knew I ought to let her go but I could not get the words to my mouth. Outside, Everett was wearing my old buckskin shirt. He had a feather in his hair and he was stalking the other boys. I had been promising to show him how to make a bow for so long that I realized he had stopped asking me. Pete and Phineas were digging at something in the yard — they didn’t have the fire of a firstborn. I had also promised Everett I would let him ride with me a few days during roundup. In truth I liked that the boys were in school. I had not wanted to start them on the outdoor life; soon it would be fit only for hobbyists and outcasts.