Philipp Meyer - The Son

“I’m sorry,” said Escuté. “I have no right to complain.”

“Ah. For once your lips move and there is truth.”

“On a different matter,” I said, “do you think it’s likely I’ll see Hates Work again?”

“Knowing my brother, no.”

“Impossible to say,” said N uukaru. “But it would be an extremely bad idea to think about her at all, as Fat Wolf might be sensitive about it. That was incredibly generous, what he did, and he may have done it just to look good.”

“She enjoyed herself, I think.”

Escuté shook his head. “Be careful, boy.”

“She enjoyed herself because her husband gave her permission. If it ever happens without his permission, or he even suspects it has happened, he will cut off her nose and ears and slash her face. And you will develop similar problems yourself.”

“In your favor,” said Escuté, holding up a hand, “your accomplishments notwithstanding, he still considers you to be extremely young, and not so much of a threat. So it is possible.”

“You are better off thinking about her sister, Prairie Flower, who is unmarried.”

“Also not as lazy. Or as good-looking, for that matter.”

“But still very pretty. And intelligent.”

“And thus pursued by plenty of men with more to recommend them than you have, who have killed more than one enemy and stolen many horses.”

“Not to mention Escuté fucked her, so she almost certainly has a disease.”

“Perhaps,” said Escuté, “you should concentrate your efforts on your riding and shooting, which are known to need attention, and consider this as you might consider a visit from the Great Spirit.”

“Scalps and horses, my son.”

I didn’t say anything.

“But if some other girl decides to come to your tipi at night, of her own free will, and manages to make it past N uukaru and I, which is unlikely, then you can safely fuck her. While the opposite situation — let’s say you have been talking to a girl, and she has given you certain signals, such as letting you put a finger inside her while she is out gathering firewood, and, being certain she likes you, and being desirous of a respectable place to make love to her, you decide to visit her tipi one night—”

“You will be instantly killed by her father,” said N uukaru. “Or some other family member.”

“Who will then give Toshaway a horse in compensation for your death.”

“In short,” said N uukaru, “until they get married, the women get to be with whomever they want and are the only ones allowed to choose. Afterward, if they behave like that, they get their noses cut off.”

“So what do I do now?”

Escuté was shaking his head. “Listen to the white one. He lost his virginity only eight hours ago.”

“Horse and scalps,” said N uukaru. “Horses and scalps.”

In 1937, when she was twelve, a man named William Blount, along with his two sons, disappeared from his farm near the McCullough ranch. The farm itself was dried up, the family living on relief flour and rabbit meat, and Blount’s wife said her husband and two boys had gone onto the McCullough’s property — which still had plenty of water and grass — to get a deer to feed themselves. Neither Blount nor his sons ever came home and his wife claimed to have heard shots from the direction of the ranch.

Everyone knew what happened if you trespassed on McCullough land. Both roads to town wound through its quarter-million acres and if your car broke down, you were better walking ten miles along the road than cutting through the pastures, where fence riders might take you for a thief. After the Garcia troubles, the ranch had been declared a state game preserve, which meant that in addition to the vaqueros, the McCulloughs had game wardens — technically employees of the state — as additional security. Some said they buried a dozen people a year in the back pastures, poachers and vagrant Mexicans. Others said it was two dozen. Those people are just talking, is what her father said. But she could see that her brothers, who treated the vaqueros as family, were not comfortable around the fence riders.

The day after the Blounts disappeared, Jeannie answered the front door to find the sheriff standing there alone. He was originally from up north; suspected of being a half-breed Indian, he was a tall thin man with a sunburned face and hawk nose. He had been elected over Berger, her father’s man, by pandering to the Mexicans. Berger had hunted their land and borrowed their horses; Van Zandt only came when there was trouble. Or, said her father, when he needed money.

On the staircase landing, right under the big Tiffany window, was a daybed where you could lie and read. You could also hear downstairs without being seen. She lay there, with the sunlight coming through the window, the portraits of her family along the staircase: the Colonel leaning on his sword, in the uniform of the Lost Cause; the Colonel’s dead wife with their three boys. Both the wife and one of the sons (Everett, she knew) were illuminated by an otherwordly light; Peter (disgraced) and Phineas (whom Jeannie liked) looked normal. Also along the stairs were marble cherubs and busts. She listened to her father and the sheriff.

“I didn’t want to call,” said Van Zandt.

Her father said something she couldn’t hear.

“Folks are saying we ought to be searching for these Blounts.”

“Evan, if we let ten deputies on our land ever’time some greaser disappeared…”

“This is a white man and two boys and folks are pretty worked up, even the Mexicans. I haven’t seen anything like it.”

“Well, it is nothing new,” said her father. “There are plenty around here who won’t like me unless I lose money to them in every horse trade.”

Relations between the McCulloughs and the citizenry had been strained for some time. A third of the town was out of work; a few months earlier it had come out that her father had blocked the construction of a new state highway through their lands — the road would have cut thirty miles off the trip between Laredo and Carrizo Springs. The San Antonio Express picked up the story. It was the same thing they were saying about the King and Kenedy ranches: Another Walled Kingdom. Common men not welcome.

“It’s this goddamn Roosevelt,” said her father. “You mark my words, that was the last free election we will ever see in this country. We are on the verge of a dictatorship.”

THE NEXT DAY a crowd gathered at the main gate. They stayed there all day. Her father did not go down to talk to them; instead he distributed the ranch’s half-dozen Thompson guns among the hands who knew how to use them.

“Stay off your porch tonight,” he told her. “Stay away from the windows and don’t turn on any lights.”

“What’s going to happen?” she said.

“Nothing. This has gone on plenty of times before.”

She went to bed early, climbing the stairs to the east wing, where the children slept. All the bedrooms had their own sleeping porches and she turned out the light, debated a few seconds, then, disobeying her father’s orders, went out to her porch and got quietly into bed. The stars were bright as always and she lay listening to the crickets, the hoots of owls, lowing of cattle, whippoorwills, a coyote. There was the creaking of the windmill that fed the house cistern, but she barely noticed. The tree frogs were thrumming, which meant rain. She heard a rustling from the next porch — her brother Paul.

“Is that you?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“What d’you think’s gonna happen?”

“I dunno.”

“It’s nonsense about those Blounts, isn’t it?”