Philipp Meyer - The Son

Drought is back but cattle remain high due to war. Woke up after a night of vivid thoughts, pulled the curtains expecting the green country of my youth and of my dreams. But with the exception of the area immediately around the house, there was nothing but sparse brittle grass, thorny brush, patches of bare caliche. My father is right: it is ruined forever, and in a single generation.

Meanwhile he has hired promoters to bring in northern farmers. The trains are specially chartered and the Yankees will be shown the best farms (irrigated), the best houses (ours, as it is the most ostentatious), and offered used-up hardpan at five hundred times what the current owners paid for it. I have been ordered to make myself scarce.

For two months the Colonel has been diverting water from the stock tanks onto our lawn (we now have one, instead of a dirt yard) and the stream that runs below the house, past Everett’s pasture, has been dammed to flood the lowlands one looks over from the gallery. Ike Reynolds came to complain that his water dried up, but the Colonel explained his reasons and Ike left convinced.

Even the springs at Carrizo are barely flowing; it is said this is a result of the irrigation. The resacas have all gone dry. The entire earth, it seems, is being slowly transformed into a desert; mankind will die off and something new will replace us. There is no reason that there should only be one human race. I was likely born a thousand years too early, or ten thousand. One day those like my father will seem like the Romans who fed Christians to the lions.

APRIL 6, 1917

Heard Charlie and Glenn and my father talking this evening, walked into the great room to see what was about, they all three looked at me and went silent. Of course I left. The generations pass, nothing seems to change, the silent understanding between the others and my father, wordless looks that have always excluded me. Wilson declared war on Germany today.

APRIL 9, 1917

Charlie and Glenn came to me. They have both decided to join the army. I told them it would be better to wait until the end of the year when it would be easier to find hands to replace them. They were unconvinced. “We have plenty of money to hire people,” said Charlie.

Sally has been in her room all day, unable to get out of bed.

They could not have picked a worse war to join. Machine guns and half-ton shells. I had always thought the Europeans returned to the Stone Age when they landed in America, but apparently they never left it. Seven hundred thousand dead at Verdun alone.

What we need is another great ice to come and sweep us all into the ocean. To give God a second chance.

APRIL 12, 1917

The boys took the train today to San Antonio. Sally is packing a bag to stay with her family in Dallas. Told me this is the reason she wished we had daughters. I told her I agreed with her.

“Come with me,” she said.

Could not explain to her why I could not survive Dallas.

AN OMINOUS SIGN: immediately after seeing Glenn and Charlie off, received a call from the postmaster. The Lewis gun has arrived. After several mint juleps with the Colonel, decided to test the gun.

We took the largest drum — nearly one hundred rounds — and after laboriously loading it and figuring out the winding mechanism, which is much like a pocket watch, we were ready to send some prickly pears to the next world when the most unfortunate group of javelina on earth walked into view.

They were nearly a quarter mile away but the gun was advertised as effective at three times that distance for “area fire.” The Colonel could barely make them out so he suggested I do the shooting while he looked with field glasses. I was lying on the ground behind the gun while he stood next to me. I saw a shadowy figure waving in the distance.

We elevated the sight and I fired a quick burst, perhaps five rounds.

“Son of a bitch, Pete, you missed ’em by near thirty yards.”

“Must be the wind.” My ears were ringing. I pretended to adjust the sight.

“All right, they’re back to rooting. You gonna shoot or piss your pants?”

I aimed into the sounder of pigs — which at that distance looked like a brown patch against the green of the brush — and pulled back the trigger. It was like holding on to a locomotive. One does not aim so much as direct the gun like a fire hose.

“Left,” he was shouting, “right, right, walk ’em right… now left, more left, left left left left !” I did as he asked, seeing the bullets kick up dirt among the running brown shapes.

“Put on that other drum, there are some still kicking.”

I attached the second drum.

“Son of a whore,” he was saying, “I wonder is that really four hundred yards…”

I drowned out his talking with the noise of the gun.

WHEN WE WENT to pack our things, my mare, who is used to me shooting deer, quail, and turkey from her back, was bug-eyed. She knew something unnatural was afoot. My father’s horse was nowhere in sight and it took nearly half an hour to find him.

Before heading home, we rode out to inspect the damage. The javelina were spread over a large flat section of caliche, splayed in all manner of disassembly. It looked as if someone had put dynamite inside them.

“Good,” my father said, surveying the damage. He rode around nodding. Then he said: “You think the Germans have these?”

“They have thousands,” I told him.

The Lewis had cooled enough to strap it to my saddle. Of course the Germans have machine guns. But it is not my father’s nature to look to that side of things. We began to ride back to the house.

“I remember when a five-shot Colt was a weapon of mass destruction. Then you had maybe twenty years and there was the Henry rifle, load it on Sunday and shoot all week. Eighteen shots, I think.”

“Life gets better and better,” I said.

“You know I always thought those books would take you somewhere. I was sad when they didn’t.”

“They have,” I said.

“I mean away from here. You think I don’t sabe but I do. My brother was exactly like you. It runs in the family.”

I shrugged.

“Wrong place, wrong time… wrong something.”

“I like this family and I like this place,” I told him, because for some reason, at that moment, it seemed true.

He started to say something, then didn’t. As we rode back through the sun and the dust, toward our great white house on its hill, he seemed to relax, to settle into his saddle; I could tell his mind was wandering, doubtless over the many things he has done for which the entire world admires him.

I began to think of how often he was home during my childhood (never), my mother making excuses for him. Did she forgive him that day, at the very end? I do not. She was always reading to us, trying to distract us; she gave us very little time to get bored, or to notice he was gone. Some children’s version of the Odyssey, my father being like Odysseus. Him versus the Cyclops, the Lotus Eaters, the Sirens. Everett, being much older, off reading by himself. Later I found his journals, detailed drawings of brown-skinned girls without dresses… My assumption, as my mother told us that my father was like Odysseus, was that I was Telemachus… now it seems more likely I will turn out a Telegonus or some other lost child whose deeds were never recorded. And of course there are other flaws in the story as well.

APRIL 13, 1917

This morning, Sally found me in my office, where I had slept. She had brought a tray of coffee and kolaches. I presumed she wanted something. She has not yet left for Dallas.

“How was your new gun?” she said.