Philipp Meyer - The Son

Meanwhile they had no constitution. Working them during the summer was out of the question. July and August were the hottest of hot months, hot as the plains of Africa, a branding fire you could never escape. Clothes soaked through in minutes, a filthy paste over every inch of skin, and while she’d grown up thinking this was normal, unpleasant but normal, her children could not stand it even for an hour. Susan had passed out and fallen off her horse.

J.A. was embarrassed by this, though no one else was. She had begun to doubt herself. It was only later, when the children were grown, that she knew she had been right, that once people grew used to free money, to laboring only when the mood struck them, they began to think there was something low about work. They became desperate to excuse their own laziness. They came to believe that their family property was something inherent to life itself, like water or air or clean sheets.

You ought to give all this money away right now, she thought. But it was too late. She had ruined her daughter; perhaps her son as well. She thought about this and felt sick… the money was not the only thing; she knew what she had done to her children. She could not figure out if leaving them more money was penance or some strange form of additional punishment. You are a bad Christian, she thought.

When her father died she had immediately stopped going to church. If prayer could not even keep your family alive, she did not see what good it was. But after she and Hank moved to Houston, she had started going again. You were marked if you didn’t. She did not really think about whether she believed, though in the past decade, her faith had come back, and they said that was all that mattered. Being old, you had no real choice — salvation or eternal nothingness — and it was no wonder who you saw in church, it was not young people with hangovers and their entire lives ahead of them.

She remembered a sermon in which the minister named some of the interesting people you would meet in heaven: Martin Luther King Jr. (for the blacks), Mahatma Gandhi, Ronald Reagan. Except the minister would not have mentioned Gandhi. John Wayne, maybe. You wondered: all the interesting people in heaven, everyone would want to talk to them. It didn’t take much thinking to realize that there would have to be a separate heaven for famous people, just like on earth, a place they would not be bothered, a private community. She wondered if she would go there. But in heaven there was no such thing as money, so perhaps people would stop caring about her. Trump, Walton, Gates, herself; they would be no more interesting than the garbagemen.

Of course it would be nice to be reunited with Hank, with her boys Tom and Ben, her brothers as well, but what about Ted, who had been her lover for twenty years after Hank? Someone would be jealous. And Thomas — that small detail — would he be there?

If you listened to what they said about heaven, it was a massive city with twelve gates. No eating, bowel movements, or sex; you lay around in a trance listening to harp music. Like a hospice you could never leave. She would sleep with every nice-looking man she met. Which of course meant she would be sent to hell.

Do not let me die, she thought. She opened her eyes. She was still on the floor of her living room, lying on the burgundy rug. The fire was still burning. Was the light growing? She couldn’t tell. She willed her head to move, then her legs, but there was nothing.

The newspapers are already running their version, straight from the mouth of the Colonel. The following will stand as the only true record:

Yesterday our segundo Ramirez was riding in one of the west pastures when he saw men driving whiteface cattle toward the river. As the Garcias still run mostly unimproved stock, it was obvious to whom the cattle belonged.

It was just after sundown when we caught them at the water. Most of the stock had already been crossed and the range was extreme, nearly three hundred yards, but everyone — Glenn, Charles, myself, the Colonel, Ramirez, our caporal Rafael Garza, and a handful of our other vaqueros — began shooting anyway, hoping to scare the thieves into abandoning the herd. Unfortunately they were old hands and instead of leaving the cattle, a few of them dismounted to shoot back while the others continued to drive the beefs into the brasada on the Mexican side. Glenn was hit in the shoulder, a Hail Mary shot from across the water.

Back at the house two Rangers were waiting along with Dr. Pilkington, whom Sally had called when she heard the shooting. The bullet had missed the artery but Glenn would need surgery and Pilkington thought it best to take him to the hospital in San Antonio. While he and Sally patched up Glenn, I spoke to the Ranger sergeant, a hard-faced little blond boy who looks like he escaped from a penitentiary. He is perhaps twenty but the other Ranger is conspicuously afraid of him. Beware the small man in Texas; he must be ten times meaner to survive in this land of giants.

A gang of Mexicans does not just shoot a white teenager without retaliation and I had wanted as many lawmen around as possible, but one look and I knew these Rangers were not going to help things. Still it was better than Niles Gilbert and his friends from the Law and Order League.

“How many more of you are coming?” I asked the sergeant.

“None. You are lucky we are even here. We are supposed to be in Hidalgo County.” He went to spit on the rug but then stopped himself.

Of course the King Ranch has an entire company permanently stationed, but it was not worth mentioning.

We loaded Glenn into the back of Pilkington’s car. Sally climbed in after him. Glenn looked pitiful and I wanted to ride with him but I knew I was the only voice of reason within twenty miles; if I left I did not want to imagine the scene I might return to.

Sally leaned out of the window and whispered: “You need to go kill every one of those bastards.”

I did not say anything. Around here, talk like that turns quickly to action.

“You’re the Colonel’s son, Pete. Tonight you need to act like it.”

“I think it was José and Chico,” Glenn called out. “The way they sat their horses.”

“It was pretty dark, buddy. And we were all pretty worked up.”

“Well, I’m sure of it, Daddy.”

Another kind of man would not be doubting his own son as he lay pale in the back of a car. But of course it was not him I was doubting at all; it was my father.

“All right,” I told him. “You’re a brave man.”

They drove off. I doubted that Glenn really thought that he’d seen José and Chico until he’d heard the Colonel say it. My father can put ideas into other men’s heads without them realizing.

THE MOOD WAS to ride on the Garcias immediately, before they had time to barricade their casa mayor. All the vaqueros had gathered and were waiting outside, smoking cigarettes or chewing tobacco, ready to spill blood for their patrón.

A dozen or so white men had arrived as well: Sheriff Graham from Carrizo, two deputies, another Ranger, the new game warden. Additionally: Niles Gilbert, his two sons, and two members of the Law and Order League visiting from El Paso. Gilbert brought a case of Krag rifles and several thousand rounds of ammunition from his store, as he’d heard that others were coming as well.

“Coming for what?” I said.

“To help you all run them copper-bellies out.”

“The copper-bellies in question are across the river,” I said.

He gave me a look. I nearly pointed out that I have four years of college to his four years of grammar school. But he is one who believes that power is best used for the humiliation of other men. I might as well have explained myself to a donkey.