Philipp Meyer - The Son

HE STAYED ANOTHER week, until they were both sure the estate was in order. By then all the anger had gone out of him. He changed his will to leave her everything in case something happened; he signed a power of attorney. She felt closer to him than she ever had; she had lost her father but regained her brother. And then he got on the train east, toward the war, and she did not see him for three more years.

STARTING THE DAY Jonas left, and continuing for how long she didn’t know, she kept hours like a cat, sleeping three-quarters of the day, waking in the middle of the night, pacing the empty house, crying herself to sleep on the sofa only to wake a few hours later with the sun in her eyes. Going back up to her room with its heavy curtains, finding breakfast or dinner on a tray outside her door, cold eggs, cold meat, visiting the bathroom.

There was nothing for her to do. No job, nothing useful to which she might attach her mind. Once a week, on what she knew must be Thursday, she found a clipboard on the dining room table with all the employee paychecks attached, which she signed individually and left by the door. She thought of her father and cried, she thought of her brothers and cried, she was vaguely aware that time was passing, she wondered why Phineas wasn’t calling her, why he hadn’t invited her to live with him. Often she could not tell if she was crying about this, or about her father, or her brothers, or even her great-grandfather, gone almost a decade but more tender toward her than her father had ever been.

A month might have passed. It might have been two. But she woke up one morning as the sun was rising, and accepted, with total certainty, that no one would ever look after her again.

A WEEK LATER a man from Southern Minerals showed up, wanting to talk about her future.

“I’ve been stopping by awhile, but they always said you were indisposed.”

He acted as if they were old friends but she crossed her arms and stood square in the door. He promptly offered a million dollars plus 12.5 percent to lease her property, with the exception of the acreage that Humble had already drilled. He knew her entire story. He knew her brothers had died in the war, that her father had died in the accident, that Jonas had gone back to Germany.

“You can move to the city.” He quickly adjusted: “Or raise your steers. Life won’t have to be hard anymore.” He gave her a sympathetic look.

She was not looking at him; she was hoping one of the vaqueros would ride past.

“You sound like a minister,” she said.

“Thank you.” He smiled and went back to talking about grass, and the weather, and how the cattle were doing, and after a time, when she had thought of what to say, she interrupted him.

“Do other people still sign at eighth royalties or is it just widows and orphans?”

He smiled again, saw right through her, saw the planning that had gone into her rudeness. He was standing closer now and she resisted the urge to step back — that would mean giving up the threshold — and then there was the heat; the natural thing was to invite him out of the sun. She decided she did not care how close he stood; she would not budge. But at the same time she wondered if this was stupid, if she was misjudging the situation entirely. She wondered if all the maids had left; she wondered how he had gotten through the gate.

He was so close she could smell his breath, and she felt a growing alarm at how alone she was. All the hands were out in the pastures — miles from earshot — and Hugo, the cook, had gone to Carrizo for supplies. She was alone and this man thought nothing of her whatsoever.

“I believe I’m getting tired,” she said.

He nodded but kept right on talking; he took off his hat to mop his forehead and she saw he had no tan line: an office man. He mentioned for a second time that it was no place for a girl to be alone and a tingling began in her neck and spread to her fingers; perhaps it was too late. He would take whatever he wanted. Her mouth went dry and she summoned up the effort to say, “If you do not leave I will call the sheriff.”

He stood as if this statement required further consideration, or maybe just to show that he was only leaving because he felt like it. Then he reached forward and squeezed her shoulder and wished her a good afternoon.

After closing the door she went straight to her father’s office, passing dozens of open windows, French doors with useless locks — there were any number of ways to get into the house — he was likely going around the back.

In her father’s drawer she found his Colt pistol, but after pulling back the slide in the manner she’d been taught, the magazine fell out onto the floor and bounced under the desk.

She unlocked the large closet where the rest of the guns were kept and found the.25–20 she had hunted with as a kid. Her brothers thought it weak medicine but she had killed two deer. She found the proper shells, prepared the rifle, and went back to the hallway. It had taken minutes. It was ridiculous. If the man really had followed her, he would have gotten her ages ago. She felt a fury building at Jonas, at her father, at…

There was something outside — the landman’s Ford — it was already at the front gate. She watched him, a distant speck now, open the gate and drive through. She felt very tired. She wanted to lie down.

Instead she loaded several revolvers (the automatic she no longer trusted), put them into a basket, and walked around the house distributing them as if they were flowers: one in the big vase next to the front door, another on a shelf in the kitchen, a third next to her bed, the fourth next to her favorite couch in the great room.

She went out to the gallery — where she could see a long way over the hills, nearly to the main road — and began to analyze what had happened. Calling the sheriff was wrong. It was the vaqueros you would call. The thought of someone killing the landman made her heart light, cleared her mind in a pleasant manner. She sat and watched the clouds and thought of what it might look like. He would go down like a steer or hog, right on his chin. She wondered why her hands were shaking. I am going crazy, she thought. She left the gallery and wandered through the house, stopping in front of the hall mirror. It was a joke, the guns were a joke, she was a child playing at grown-up things. She wondered again if she was going crazy.

It was a relief when she heard the cook come in and begin chattering to one of the maids. She was not sure if she had been talking to herself or not, if the maids had heard her. Everyone had been right — Jonas, her father, her grandmother — she did not belong here.

She saw the first of the vaqueros’ trucks crest a distant hill, trailering the horses from the pastures. Then the second truck, and the third. She felt everything get lighter. It was as simple as that. She would tell them. What would come of the landman, she didn’t care— I don’t, she thought, I really don’t —this was not the North, where you went around accosting people. Even loading the guns had been wrong; she needed a wall of armor around her, of men, like her father had kept.

Sullivan, the vaqueros, they would all know what to do. She decided to act before any further consideration weakened her; he was probably not such a bad man, she had probably misread the entire thing, she was young and alone ( he accosted you, she reminded herself). Yes, that was it. The man would pay some price. Even Jonas would agree with that. He would not be killed, but it would be something unpleasant. She was not sure what. She didn’t care. She reminded herself of the way he had grabbed her and then, before she could change her mind, she was out the front door, ignoring Hugo’s calls about supper, making her way down the path toward the bunkhouse.