Leon Uris: A God In Ruins

Fooled them! Dan thought to himself as he took a long drink from his purchase from a state bottle store. Actually, a dry state, can you imagine? Must not be many Irish about.

He set the glass on the floor and submerged to the bottom of the tub.

“Ahhhh!”

Siobhan answered his moose call and scrubbed his back as he kept diving and coming up exclaiming “Ahhhh!”

At the steak house, the two stared at the extraordinary size of the meat. “Sure, I’ve never had a piece of meat like this in my icebox,” Siobhan said in wonderment.

“And it cuts with a fork. I wonder what they do to the meat?”

“It’s not what they do,” Siobhan said, “it’s what we do after we get it.”

Dan quickly shifted his brown-bagged bottle of bourbon as the sheriff strolled in and took a stool at the counter. In a few minutes, their waiter came and presented them with two bottles of beer, compliments of the sheriff.

Ah, now this is living, Dan thought.

“Notice how nice people are out here?” she noted.

“Yeah,” Dan said so sadly he croaked. “Yeah.”

“Dan, I’m trying to be patient and understanding. It’s not a case of merely getting rid of the war. It will always be with you, but it can no longer dominate our lives. We’ve big tomorrows to think about, and you have to shift the Marine Corps and hold it in a place close to your heart but out of the mainstream of our marriage.”

Dan nodded and watched the big trucks speed past, their sound muffled by glass.

“Why are we driving south tomorrow?” she asked.

“I went over and over and over a picture in my mind of you and me

standing before that make-believe little rail station in Douglass,

Kansas. Me, with my arms about you, looking past the lawns to those

beautiful doll houses

“You can’t move your hometown because you don’t like its location. You are going to great lengths to fool yourself. If we don’t go, the memory of it will remain perfect.”

“I’m afraid to reach Colorado,” Dan blurted. “I’m scared of seeing Justin Quinn’s parents. My visit might bring them nightmares. They don’t know we’re coming. I avoided writing them. There is something so final about it.”

“Yes,” she said. “It means you are closing the cover of a book. Not that you can ever forget Justin Quinn.”

“We were so close, almost as close as you and me, Siobhan. You cannot say or feel that you actually love a man because that is sinful and unhealthy. But you know, we enjoyed horsing around, jumping each other, goosing each other. Strictly correct, you know. With my baritone and his tenor, we could strike our tent silent. And with the two of us ... well, no one ever did anything to my boys. We cleaned out one bar that was clipping. Busted them down like lumberjacks.”

Her hand slipped into his, and she nodded for him to continue.

“Damned shame. His family has this tremendous spread, as they call it, beyond Denver. Justin Quinn, being the oldest son, was due to take over the ranch. First he was going to the University of Colorado, where he had won a football scholarship.”

“Calm your fears, Dan. Justin’s folks will be eternally grateful for your visit, and we’ll be totally comfortable there.”

No pilgrim’s ride up to Jerusalem was ever more ethereal than the one they experienced as Dan piloted the ‘41 DeSoto around their first taste of an unpaved, washboard, rutted, cliff-side excuse for a road. Every switchback brought more stupendous scenery. Siobhan took her hands from her eyes to look at the vista, gasp, and then take cover again.

At last the township of TROUBLESOME MESA welcomed them. The West was there. All they needed was a pair of gunmen to face each other down in the dirt street.

“M/M Ranch?” the gas station owner said.

Yes, sir.

“Huh. Don’t hear too much about it these days.”

“How far is it?”

“About fifteen miles ... up. Probably take you better part of an hour.

Sure you want to drive it today?”

“Yes.”

“Well, now,” the attendant said, shading his eyes to ascertain the time, “if you get past five o’clock and haven’t reached the ranch, turn on back. Otherwise you’ll be in stone cold darkness, and we’ll probably have to pull you out of a ravine tomorrow.”

A crude map was drawn, and Dan thanked the attendant profusely. Half numb, Daniel Timothy O’Connell girded himself as the attendant filled his water bags.

“If you come back tonight, I have a bed for you over the garage. Damned hotel folded when the molybdenum mine closed.”

Half greeting and half guarding, a pair of border collies held them at bay until a man emerged from a large, fancy house.

“It must be the place,” Dan said. “It’s exactly as Quinn described it to me.” “Hello, Marine,” the man said, shooing the dogs back. “Can I help you?”

“Is this the M/M Ranch?”

The man laughed. “Used to be a long time ago.”

Dan studied the man. His skin was dark and he certainly was full of Mexican blood, but he spoke with no accent.

“I’m looking for the Quinn family. See, uh, Justin Quinn was in my company. He was killed at Saipan. My wife, Siobhan, and I have come to pay respects to his family.”

A nice-looking woman in her mid-twenties emerged from the house and came alongside her husband. He spoke to her in Spanish, and as he did, her face became grim.

“I am Pedro Martinez, the caretaker. And this is my wife, Consuelo.

Will you please come in? Your name?”

“Sergeant .. . rather, Daniel Timothy O’Connell. My wife, Siobhan.”

“Siobhan is a beautiful name,” Consuelo said.

“It’s Irish for Jane. Oh, what a lovely room.”

The ranch house living room was timbered and high ceilinged, with a river stone fireplace to match. The Pedro fellow seemed concerned as he checked his watch.

“Can I offer you drinks?” Consuelo asked.

“No, thanks. I mean, I want to know about Quinn’s mother and father.”

“I have to take you to another part of the ranch,” Pedro said. “The problem is that it will be dark before we return, and I won’t let you go down to Troublesome on that road at night. You are most welcome to stay here overnight.”

Siobhan smiled and nodded to Dan.

“Perhaps, Miss Siobhan, the sergeant and I should make this visit ourselves,” Pedro said. “Uh, there is a stream to cross.”

Pedro was not very good at covering his uneasiness. “Certainly,” Siobhan said.

Dan and the foreman jeeped down a winding dirt road inside the property until they could hear a faint rush of water. They parked at a tentative wooden bridge across the stream from a ramshackle miner’s cabin.

“Is this what I think it is?” Dan asked, sinking.

“I’m afraid so,” Pedro replied.

“I may not be able to cross,” Dan said suddenly. “My leg might give out on that narrow beam.”

“I understand.”

“Like hell you understand! Like hell you do!” Dan told himself.

“Shall we go back to the ranch house, then?”

Dan did not answer. His choice was to turn and go, but he was unable

to. If he walked away, he’d come back. “Let’s cross,”

he whispered.

The shack reeked of mold. Everything inside was broken.

Newspapers had been stuffed in the cracks to keep the cold out. The roof was half down, the windows broken and thick with sludge. Outhouse turned over. It was altogether a place for rats. Dan’s eyes studied a place of disemboweled human life. He could not speak, or barely breathe. Dan staggered outside and stared at it, crazed pain in his eyes.

“The ranch never belonged to the Quinns,” Pedro said.

“Tell me!” Dan cried.

“There is a large settlement of Serbs between here and Crested Butte. This ranch was property of the brothers Tarka and Sinja. Tarka Malkovich was the only man I ever saw who could beat an Irishman to the bottom of a bottle. He and his brother were at war with everyone, and each other. They were troublemakers. It was hard for the valley to live with them. Everyone had a beef going with the Malkoviches: the doctor, the sheriff, the feed store. Tarka died of a heart attack, undoubtedly from drink. That was right before the war. Sinja ran the place into the ground in no time flat. The bank evicted him, and the ranch stood unattended for over a year. The bank made me a deal. I was to get the ranch up and running in good shape. When it was sold, the bank promised to stake me to three hundred acres, my own little ranch.”