Philipp Meyer - The Son

OCTOBER 1, 1915

Woke up in a chair next to Glenn’s hospital bed, thinking if I stayed there long enough my mother would come and rub my neck. I have always depended on other people to drive out the ghosts. When I shaved, the face I saw in the hospital mirror was not quite mine; it was as if there was some defect in the glass, my features crooked, out of proportion, like a dead man’s.

OCTOBER 3, 1915

Back at home. Judge Poole visited from Laredo to tell me Pedro Garcia was eight years delinquent on his taxes. I knew what he was angling for. I was overcome with shame. I could barely hear what he said, my ears were throbbing.

The judge was looking at me.

“That doesn’t sound right,” I said.

“Pete, I hold the Webb County tax register and I have checked with Brewster in Dimmit.”

“Well, I still don’t believe it.”

Poole sat there quivering like a bucket of clabber. He knew I was calling him a liar, but as I’m the Colonel’s son he elected to overlook it. He repeated that the State of Texas was offering to sell us all the Garcia land, nearly two hundred sections, for back taxes. “Sheriff Graham has already taken possession of the property for the court.”

“I thought notice of tax sale had to be posted.”

“It is posted. It is on the courthouse door, in fact, but I do not think anyone will see it, as there are some other things posted on top of it. I do not see why any Yankee speculator ought to get into a bidding war over land that ought rightfully to belong to you.”

Like all adulterers he is as passionate as a drummer, as sure of himself as Christ making his long walk… that the Yankee speculators were scared off long ago by all the shooting meant nothing to him. But there was no way out… I apologized and said my mind was still not right due to worry about Glenn. He nodded and patted my hand with his slippery claw.

I hoped my use of Glenn’s name in such a mercenary fashion would not get me condemned to the flames, though if it allowed me to escape Poole’s company, I might have agreed to it. I excused myself, but before I could leave (my own living room) Poole mentioned that a small consideration for his advocacy might not go unappreciated. I was thinking one hundred dollars but he read my mind. Ten thousand sounded fair, didn’t I think?

Poole could have given the land to anyone, but Reynolds and Midkiff (along with all the other cattlemen in Texas) are known to be having money troubles and with the Colonel spending so much money buying up oil rights, we probably appear rich. Everyone loves the underdog. Until they have to take his side.

I AM CURIOUS if Pedro did miss some tax payments. A year, maybe. Eight is not possible. He knew what happened to Mexicans who didn’t pay their taxes, though he did not know that the same thing might happen to Mexicans who did. I can hear the Colonel — no land was ever acquired honestly in the history of the earth — but it does not make me feel any better.

Total price for the Garcia sections: $103,892.17. About what the land was worth when the Apaches lived here.

OCTOBER 27, 1915

The Colonel insisted I ride with him to the Garcia compound. When we dismounted he produced several jugs of coal oil from his saddlebags.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“I should have done this fifty years ago, Pete. It is like killing all the wolves but leaving a nice den for other wolves to return to.”

“I won’t let you burn their house.”

“Well, I won’t let you stop me.”

“Daddy,” I said.

“Pete, it has been too long since we had a real talk and I know I am hard on you. And you are mad at me for the oil leases. I should not have gone behind your back. I am sorry but it was the only way I saw of doing it.”

“I do not give two shits about the oil leases.”

“Well, they were necessary,” he said.

“We are surviving just fine. Unlike some of our neighbors.”

“You know I was fond of old Pedro.”

“Not fond enough, apparently.”

It was quiet for a long time.

“I don’t have to tell you what this land used to look like,” he said. “And you don’t have to tell me that I am the one who ruined it. Which I did, with my own hands, and ruined forever. You’re old enough to remember when the grass between here and Canada was balls high to a Belgian, and yes it is possible that in a thousand years it will go back to what it once was, though it seems unlikely. But that is the story of the human race. Soil to sand, fertile to barren, fruit to thorns. It is all we know how to do.”

“The brush can be removed.”

“At enormous cost, which used to go into our pockets.”

“And still we are not doing badly.”

He shrugged. “Pete, I love this land, and I love my family, but I do not love cattle. You grew up with them. I will not say I grew up with the buffalo, because while it is true it is also an exaggeration, but I will say that to you there is something sacred in a cow, and in the man who raises and cares for them, but me, I can take them or leave them; it was a business that I undertook to support our family, and I have seen so many things disappear in my lifetime that I cannot bring myself to worry about this one. Which brings me around to my point. What were our losses this year, in one pasture, to the Garcias?”

“Daddy,” I said again, a strange word to come from the mouth of a man who is nearly fifty, but the Colonel continued:

“In the west pasture alone, in this year alone, we lost forty thousand dollars. In the other pastures, maybe eighty thousand. And I would judge they have been robbing us for quite a while, at least since the first of the sons-in-law showed up. Now there has been a drought these four years, but does a drought reduce your calves fifty percent? Not if you’ve been feeding like we did. Do you suddenly lose thirty percent of your momma cows? No, you do not. That is the hand of man. You figure in the increase, they have stolen close to two million dollars from us.”

“Don’t forget the increase on the mules.”

He shook his head and looked off into the distance and it was quiet for a long time. Of course I did not have to acquire this land, as he did. Of course I take it for granted in a manner that seems unthinkable to him. The Garcia sections will double the size of our ranch; this at a time when other cattlemen are struggling. It is an enormous coup, from a certain perspective, and I wonder if he is capable of seeing any other. Then he was talking.

“You’ve never had any problem standing up to your own family, Pete. But you have a hard time standing up to strangers. That has always been your problem.” He wiped his forehead. “I am going to burn out this roach nest. Are you going to help me or not?”

“What’s the point of having all this?” I said.

“Because otherwise it would be someone else. Someone was going to end up with this land, maybe Ira Midkiff or Bill Reynolds or maybe Poole would have gotten half and Graham would have gotten a quarter, and Gilbert would have gotten the other quarter. Or some new oilman. The only sure thing was that Pedro was going to lose it. His time had passed.”

“It did not just pass of its own accord.”

“We are saying the same thing, only you don’t realize it.”

“It did not have to happen that way.”

“Matter of fact it did. That is how the Garcias got the land, by cleaning off the Indians, and that is how we had to get it. And one day that is how someone will get it from us. Which I encourage you not to forget.”

He took up two coal oil jugs, one in each hand, and made his way slowly up the steps. The jugs were heavy and he was struggling; he nearly dropped them.

As I watched him I realized he is not of our time; he is like some fossil come out of a stream bank or a trench in the ocean, from a point in history when you took what you wanted and did not see any reason to justify.