Philipp Meyer - The Son

She had taken the kit home and given it milk but the next day the dogs got it. She knew she could go back to the brush for more, but the dogs would get them all eventually, so she decided to leave the remaining rabbits where they were, a decision she knew to be very grown-up and merciful. And yet she could not stop thinking about the kit’s fur against her belly, a nearly liquid softness, her great-grandfather’s hand on her shoulder, leaning on her for support.

SHE WAS A small, thin girl with light hair and a snub nose and skin that went brown in the sun, though she imagined that when she grew up, she would have dark hair and pale skin and a long straight nose like her mother. Her father snorted at this. Your mother didn’t look like that at all, he said. She was a towhead, like you. But that was not how Jeannie thought of her. Her mother died young, giving birth to her at twenty-six. There were only a handful of pictures, none of them close up, or good, though there were plenty of pictures of her father’s horses. But in the pictures of her mother, her hair did look dark and long, and her nose was straight, and after thinking on it, she decided that her father was simply wrong, that he had no eye for she-stuff, unless it were cattle or horses. She knew that if she had ever seen her mother alive she would have noticed a thousand things that her father had not.

What her father noticed was if an old cow had been left in the brush during roundup, or if another cow was open a second year, or if a new man, who claimed to be a top hand, missed his throws, or didn’t charge into the brush with proper enthusiasm. Her father noticed if a ladino bull, living wild as an old buck, was mixing with his heifers, and what the Mexicans said about rain, and how much work his sons did, and whether she, Jeannie, was getting in the way. Despite her grandmother’s discouragement, Jeannie rode out every morning with her brothers, so long as it was not a school day. During roundup she rode drag, though she knew she was simply extra; her father did not figure her into the head count, and at the branding fire, while her brothers did their best to rope, learned throwing from the tumbadors or branding from the marcadores, she was only allowed to carry the bucket of lime paste to dab on the fresh brands. Sometimes she would help make the calf fries, scooping them from an overflowing bucket to roast on a bed of coals specially raked out for that purpose. They were sweet and so tender they nearly burst in your mouth, and she would eat them by the handful, ignoring her brothers’ snide comments, which she only half understood, about her enthusiasm for that particular delicacy.

Calf fries were one thing — if she even stood near the tumbadors, her father would be on her immediately. She had taught herself anyway. By the time she was twelve, she could flank and mug as well as her brothers, she could forefoot anything that moved, but it didn’t matter. Her father didn’t want her working among the men and her grandmother found it embarrassing. The Colonel, had he been alive, would have supported her; he had always seen in her what no one else did, her unshakable sense of her own perfectibility, her certainty that if she set her mind to something, she would master it. When the Colonel told her, as he often did, that one day she would do something important, she barely took any notice. It was as if he’d pointed out the grass was green, or her eyes large as a deer’s, or that she was a pretty girl, if a bit small, that men and women alike enjoyed her presence.

So while the cattle drives struck her as boredom incarnate, a slow trudge behind an endless dusty line of steers, her rope flicking at their feet, walking at the slowest of walks toward the holding pens at the rail station — despite all that — she went on every drive she could. Despite the heat and thirst of the branding fire — best done in August, when it was too hot even for blowflies — she went out anyway, throwing calves when her father wasn’t paying attention, her hands covered in their slobber, running the iron if the marcador let her, light pressure if the metal was hot, heavy pressure as the iron cooled; she did not allow herself to make mistakes. The vaqueros found her amusing. They knew what she was doing and while they would never have let their own daughters come to a branding fire, they were happy to let her take their place so they could rest in the shade and escape the heat. As long as she didn’t make mistakes. And so she didn’t.

THERE HAD BEEN a time when this was not unusual. A time when the wealthy were exemplars. When you held yourself to a higher standard, when you lived as an example to others. When you did not parade your inheritance in front of a camera; when you did not accept the spotlight unless you’d done something. But that obligation had been lost. The rich were as anxious for attention as any scullery maid.

Perhaps she was no different. She’d hired a historian to compile a history of the ranch, a history of the family, but in ten years he’d done nothing but notate every letter, receipt, and slip of paper the Colonel had ever touched, scanning them into his little computer, going to Austin to look at microfiche. He was, she saw, incapable of writing the book he’d promised. You can make any story of this you want, he told her. Well, pick the best one, she said. That would be lying, he replied.

He was a pudgy, infuriating little man and she could not remember why she’d ever thought the process should be so mysterious. She’d opened her checkbook and the fund-raisers had picked up the scent, a check here, a mention there, another check, another mention; the Colonel’s name had spread like roots from a mesquite. The next year he’d be appearing in the new state history books, the ones all the liberals had fought against.

IF YOU DID not work, you did not eat. If you did not wake up in the dark, be it ten degrees or a hundred, if you did not spend all day in the dust and thorns, you would not survive, the family would not survive, you had received God’s blessings and been profligate.

Later, when she was old enough to look at the books, she realized the family had been safe all along. But it was too late. She could not sit still without thinking of the coyotes watching her calves, windmills that needed their gearboxes greased or sucker rods checked, fences flattened by weather or animals or careless humans. Later, when she stopped worrying about cattle, it was oil. Which wells were producing more or less than she’d hoped (less, she thought, it was always less), what new fields might be in play and what old plays the majors were giving up on. Which drillers might be hired, who was out of credit, what could be bought on the cheap. All wells went dry — the moment you stopped looking for new ones was the moment your fortunes began to decline.

Why am I on this floor, she thought. She looked around her. There was a haze in the room. She wondered if there was a problem with the flue. And the throbbing in her head; it was not the pain of a stroke. There had been someone in the room with her, she was sure of it.

THE THING THAT had gone wrong in her children… she had always assumed some weakness from Hank’s side, though it might also have been the city, the schools they attended, the friends they had made, their liberal teachers. There were things children did in the city, but work was not one of them, and spending weekends riding with the vaqueros was just another form of entertainment, like dressage or skiing. Making it worse, in order to get to the ranch and back in time for school on Monday, it was necessary to fly there. Her children were not stupid. They knew that real vaqueros did not take private planes to work.