John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

Brian wasn't used to adults asking him hangover questions. "Yeah."

"That's the kind of bag I got on. Rubber-toothed."

He stopped at another trailer with no luck. This one hadn't come home overnight.

"Hope he's feelin good now, cause there's an ambush waitin at home for him. I had a big one like that in the kitchen I'd think twice about carryin on. She'll just squeeze all the good time right out of that man."

"Many of these people around here Indian?" Brian asked it noncommittally, fishing. The drill-rigger the night before had gone on and on about how the Indians and the coyotes should have been wiped out long ago.

"Oh sure," said Shangreau, "most of em. Not many purebred though, things being what they are. Most of these boys I'm after is at least half or more Indian. You got your Ogalala around here, your Hunkpapa and the rest. I'm a good quarter Sioux myself. Old Jim Crow who we're headin after now is maybe seven-eighths, fifteen-sixteenths, something like that. It's hard to keep count. Jim has got three or four tribes to start with, his mother was part Flathead as I recall, and then he's got white and I wouldn't be surprised if one of them buffalo soldiers didn't slip in a little black blood way back when. But you won't see too many purebred, less we catch Bad Heart at home, and he's another story altogether. What are you?"

"Irish."

"Me too, a good quarter. Monaghans."

They came to a pair of trailer houses that had been butted up together. A dozen fat little children wearing glasses ran barefoot out front. An older fat boy with extrathick glasses and a silver-sprayed cowboy hat chased them, tossing a lasso at their legs. Brian got out of the pickup with Shangreau and a round, sad-looking man met them at the door to the first trailer.

"I see you're bright-eyed an bushy-tailed as everone else is this mornin," said J.C. "Them horses don't have much competition today, it looks like. Jim Crow, this here's Brian."

"Hey."

Jim Crow nodded. He was wearing nothing but flannel pajama bottoms and his belly hung over. His slant eyes and mournful expression made him kind of Mongoloid-looking.

"You know anyone else could join us? Couple of my possibilities crapped out on me."

"My brother-law's here from over the Rosebud. Sam. I'll ask him. And Raymond could come along. Raymond!"

The boy in the silver cowboy hat turned from where he had just cut a little sister out from the herd.

"You're coming along with us to work J.C.'s horses. Go tell your ma."

Raymond left the little sister to untie herself and ran off looking happy.

Sam was a little older and a little heavier than Jim Crow and had blue eyes. Brian sat in front between J.C. and Crow while Raymond and Sam were open in the back. Raymond's hat blew off almost immediately and they had to stop for him to run get it. His father told him to sit on it till they got to J.C.'s.

They stopped next at a lone trailer still on its wheels to pick up a young man called Jackson Blackroot. All the men got out and went to the door to try and catch a glimpse of Blackroot's new wife, who was supposed to be a looker. She obliged by coming out to say Hello boys and offer to make coffee. They turned it down, suddenly shy. She was dark and thin and reasonably pretty though Brian didn't see anything outstanding. Jackson was a friendly young guy with a big white smile who looked like an Italian. He shook Brian's hand and said he was pleased to meet him.

Bad Heart's trailer was alone too, a little box of a thing sitting on a hill. J.C. stopped out front and honked once.

"Be surprised if he's there," whispered Crow.

"If he is I be surprised if he shows himself."

They waited for a few minutes with the motor running and Shangreau had the pickup in gear when a short, pockscarred man emerged from the trailer and hopped in the rear without a greeting.

It was a long bumpy way up to Shangreau's ranch and he did most of what little talking went on. The other men seemed to know each other and about each other but weren't particularly comfortable riding together.

"Brian," asked J.C., "you in any big hurry to get up there?"

Brian shrugged.

"I mean if you're not you might's well stop for lunch with us, look on when we work the horses. Hell, you can join the party if you're careful, can always use an extra hand when we're cutting."

"Sure." Brian was willing to follow just about anything at this point if there was food in it. He hadn't eaten since yesterday morning. He wondered exactly what cutting was going to be.

The J.C. Ranch wasn't much. A side-listing barn surrounded by a wood-and-wire corral and a medium-sized unpainted shack in a couple of thousand acres of dry-looking open range. The shack squatted on a wood platform, there was a gas tank and a hot water heater on the front porch. J.C. explained that this was the working house, they had another aluminum-sided place farther west on the property. There were wide cracks in the floorboard inside, blankets hung to separate the rooms. Shangreau's broad-faced wife grunted a hello and went back to pouring cornstarch into her stewpot. She had the biggest arms Brian had ever seen on a woman.

The men took turns washing their hands in a pail and sat around the kitchen table. Lunch was a tasteless boiled-beefand-potato stew that the men loaded with salt and shoveled down. There was little talk at the table.

"Well now," said J.C., pushing back in his chair when everyone seemed finished, "let's get at them horses."

The men broke free into work. They readied their ropes and other gear while Brian and Raymond collected wood, old shack boards, and dead scrub for the branding fire. They built up the fire in a far corner of the corral, Jim Crow nursing it with a scuffed old hand-bellows. When there were bright orange coals at the bottom and the irons were all laid out, the men spread with ropes in hand, forming a rough circle around the narrow chute that led into the corral from the barn, what Shangreau called the squeezer.

"And now, pilgrim," he said waving Brian back a little, 49 you gonna see some masculatin."

Raymond went up and started the first horse out through the squeezer and things began to happen fast, Brian struggling to keep up. The horse was not so huge, its back about chin-high to Brian, but it was thick and barrel-chested, its mottled gray sides working fast with suspicion. Raymond flapped his hat and clucked along the chute rail beside it till it was in the open and the men were swinging rope at its hooves, not picture-book lassoing but dropping open nooses on the ground and jerking up when it stepped in or near them. It took a while, plenty of near-misses and times when the horse kicked free or the rope just slipped away, and Bad Heart was closest to Brian cursing a constant chant low on his breath, fuckin horse, goddam horse, hold im, bust the fucker, and Raymond was in the corral trying to get his rope untangled and join the fun and Brian was hustling not to be trampled or roped.

"Bust iml Bust im!" J.C. was yelling and the stocky horse wheeled and crow-hopped but was met in every direction by another snapping rope. Finally Sam forefooted him cleanly and Jim jumped in quick to slip one over the head and jumped back to be clear as they hauled the animal crashing down onto its side.

"Choke im down! Choke im down!" yelled J.C. and they held its head into the ground with the rope while Bad Heart, cursing louder now and grimacing, wrestled its hind legs bent, one at a time, and strapped them back against its belly. They held it on its back now, writhing and lathered, eyes bugged hugely and nostrils wide, the men adding a rope here and there to help them muscle it still. Shangreau motioned Brian up with his head and handed him a rope end.

"Choke im," he said, "don't let him jerk. You let him jerk he's gonna hurt himself."