One day me and the old sumbitch is in the house hauling soot out of the fireplace, on account of they had a chimbley fire last winter. Over the mantel is a picture of a beautiful woman in a red dress with her hair piled on top of her head. The old sumbitch tells me that’s the old lady before she joined the motorcycle gang.
“Oh?”
“Them motorcycle gangs,” he says, “all they do is eat and work on their motorcycles. They taught her to smoke, too, but she’s shut of that. Probably outlive us all.”
“Looks to me she can live long as she wants.”
“And if she ever wants to box you, tell her no. She’ll knock you on your ass. I guarantee it. Throw you a damn haymaker, son.”
I couldn’t understand how he could be so casual-like about the old lady being in a motorcycle gang. When we was smoking in the LeisureLife, I asked him about it. That’s when I found out that him and the old lady was brother and sister. I guess that explained it. If your sister wants to join a motorcycle gang, that’s her business. He said she even had a tattoo—“Hounds from Hell,” with a dog shooting flames out of his nostrils and riding a Harley.
That picture on the mantel kind of stayed in my mind, and I asked the old sumbitch if his sister’d ever had a boyfriend. Well, yes, quite a few, he told me, quite a damn few. “Our folks run them off. They was just after the land.”
He was going all around the baler hitting the zerks with his grease gun. “I had a lady friend myself. She’d do anything. Cook. Gangbusters with a snorty horse, and not too damn hard on the eyes. Sis run her off. Said she was just after the land. If she was, I never could see it. Anyway, went on down the road long time ago.”
Fall come around and when we brought the cavvy down two of them old-timers who’d worked so hard was lame. One was stifled, one was sweenied, and both had crippling quarter cracks. I thought they needed to be at the loose-horse sale, but the old sumbitch says, “No mounts of mine is gonna feed no Frenchman,” and that was that. So we made a hole, led the old-timers to the edge, and shot them with a elk rifle. First one didn’t know what hit him. Second one heard the shot and saw his buddy fall and the old sumbitch had to chase him around to kill him. Then he sent me down the hole to get the halters back. Lifting those big heads was some chore.
I enjoyed eating in the big house that whole summer until the sister started giving me come-hither looks. They was fairly limited except those days when the old sumbitch was in town after supplies. Then she dialled it up and kind of brushed me every time she went past the table. There was always something special on the town days — a pie, maybe. I tried to think about the picture on the mantel, but it was impossible, even though I knew it might get me out of the LeisureLife once and for all. She was getting more and more wound up, while I was pretending to enjoy the food or going crazy over the pie. But she didn’t buy it — called me a queer and sent me back to the trailer to make my own meals. By calling me a queer, she more or less admitted what she’d been up to, and I think that embarrassed her, because she covered up by roaring at everyone and everything, including the poor old sumbitch, who had no idea what had gone sideways while he was away. It was two years before she made another pie, and then it was once a year on my birthday. She made me five birthday pies in all — sand cherry, every one of them.
I broke the catch colt, which I didn’t know was no colt, as he was the biggest snide in the cavvy. He was four, and it was time. I just got around him for a couple of days, then saddled him gently as I could. The offside stirrup scared him, and he looked over at it, but that was all it was to saddling. I must’ve had a burst of courage, ’cause next minute I was on him. That was O.K., too. I told the old sumbitch to open the corral gate, and we sailed away. The wind blew his tail up under him, and he thought about bucking but rejected the idea and that was about all they was to breaking Olly, for that was his name. Once I’d rode him two weeks, he was safe for the old sumbitch, who plumb loved this new horse and complimented me generously for the job I’d did.
We had three hard winters in a row, then lost so many calves to scours we changed our calving grounds. The old sumbitch just come out one day and looked at where he’d calved out for fifty years and said, “The ground’s no good. We’re movin.” So we spent the summer building a new corral way off down the creek. When we’s finished, he says, “I meant to do this when I got back from overseas and now it’s finished and I’m practically done for, too. Whoever gets the place next will be glad his calves don’t shit themselves into the next world like mine done.”
Neither one of us had a back that was worth a damn, and the least we could do was get rid of the square baler and quit hefting them man-killing five-wire bales. We got a round baler and a DewEze machine that let us pick up a bale from the truck without laying a finger on it. We’d tell stories and smoke in the cab on those cold winter days and roll out a thousand pounds of hay while them old-time horned Herefords followed the truck. That’s when I let him find out I’d done some time.
“I figured you musta been in the crowbar hotel.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, you’re a pretty good hand. What’s a pretty good hand doin tryin loose horses in the middle of the night at some Podunk sale yard? Folks hang on to a pretty good hand and nobody was hangin on to you. You want to tell me what you done?”
I’d been with the old sumbitch for three years and out of jail the same amount of time. I wasn’t afraid to tell him what I done ’cause I had started to trust him, but I sure didn’t want him telling nothing to his sister. I told him I rustled some yearlings, and he chuckled like he understood entirely. I had rustled some yearlings, all right, but that’s not what I went up for.
The old man paid me in cash, or, rather, the old lady did, since she handled anything like that. They never paid into workmen’s comp, and there was no reason to go to the records. They didn’t even have my name right. You tell people around here your name is Shane and they’ll always believe you. The important thing is I was working my tail off for that old sumbitch, and he knew it. Nothing else mattered, even the fact that we’d come to like each other. After all, this was a God damn ranch.
The old fella had several peculiarities to him, most of which I’ve forgotten. He was one of the few fellas I ever heard of who would actually jump up and down on his hat if he got mad enough. You can imagine what his hat looked like. One time he did it ’cause I let the swather get away from me on a hill and bent it all to hell. Another time a Mormon tried to run down his breeding program to get a better deal on some replacement heifers, and I’ll be damned if the old sumbitch didn’t throw that hat down and jump on it, right in front of the Mormon, causing the Mormon to get into his Buick and ease on down the road without another word. One time when we was driving ring shanks into corral poles I hit my thumb and tried jumping on my hat, but the old sumbitch gave me such an odd look I never tried it again.
The old lady died sitting down. I went in, and there she was, sitting down, and she was dead. After the first wave of grief, the old sumbitch and me fretted about rigor mortis and not being able to move her in that seated position. So we stretched her onto the couch and called the mortician and he called the coroner and for some reason the coroner called the ambulance, which caused the old sumbitch to state, “It don’t do you no nevermind to tell nobody nothing.” Course he was right.