Will Clayton crawled stiffly out from under the blankets into the chill of the dark room, as tired now as when he had gone to bed. Pulling on his khaki clothes and his high-heeled boots, he caught the familiar aroma of Maude’s coffee and bacon. But he felt no appetite.
He cupped his hands and splashed icy cold water on his wind-toughened face. Glancing up into the mirror, he felt the sudden surprise that hit him so often lately, as if he were looking not at himself but at the face of some troubled stranger. His gray eyes were weary, and the carved lines were deepening day by day.
He hobbled toward the kitchen, through the hall whose walls were covered by pictures of 4-H Club boys with prize-winning steers and lambs. His legs were slow and sore. He had put in a heap of miles yesterday, checking an ailing milk cow for Jeff Alley, helping Buster Cook mark up his early lamb crop, running terrace lines in old Max Pfeiffer’s fallow cotton field. It seemed like the older a county agent got, the more there was to do.
Maude turned away from the stove and glanced at him, her blue eyes soft with concern. She turned his frying egg to harden the yolk the way he used to like it. Lately, nothing seemed to have much taste for him.
“You didn’t sleep much last night,” she said. He shook his head. “You’ve got to start sleeping, Will. You’ll kill yourself this way.”
He didn’t much care. “All I need is work.” Work to keep me busy, he thought, too busy to remember.
His tired gaze touched upon two layers of fresh-baked cake cooling on the cabinet, and he knew Maude had been up a while. Lately, she hadn’t slept much either.
“For the Stevens family,” she said. “Mrs. Stevens is sick.” The fact that the Stevens family lived clear across town wouldn’t mean a thing to Maude. It was a small town, and she knew everyone in it.
Will poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped, immune to the scalding heat. He stared up at the West Texas Feed and Supply calendar, with its bright print of a Charlie Russell cowboy painting. “Real estate man’ll be over this morning,” he said. “Maybe you ought to stay around.”
Lips tight, she set his egg in front of him. “We don’t have to go, Will.”
“But we do have to. And you know why.” He picked up the knife and fork, then laid them down again, seeing the glistening in her eyes before she blinked it away.
“Look, Maude, you know the Prairie Land and Cattle Company has been after me a long time to take that manager job. It’s a good job, the chance of a lifetime.”
“This is your kind of job, Will. That isn’t. You won’t be happy there. And neither will I.” She looked straight at him then, her blue eyes firm. “Why don’t we be honest about it? You’re trying to run away, Will.”
He flinched and looked down. “You know why I haven’t slept, Maude?” he asked huskily. “I lie there and fight it for hours. I know that when I sleep I’ll dream. And there it’ll be, all over again, just the way it was. I’ve dreamed it twenty times.”
“It was an accident, Will. Nobody blames you for it, nobody except yourself.”
“And John McKenna?”
“You don’t know how he feels. You won’t go to see him. Look, Will, he’s been your best friend for twenty years. Why don’t you go talk to him?”
Will stood up and shoved back his chair, leaving his breakfast uneaten. “What do you say to a man when you’ve killed the only son he had?” he asked miserably.
At the 4-H feeding barn, he slowly stepped out of his pickup truck and turned up the collar of his faded plaid Mackinaw against the chill of the January wind. He stopped in the open barn door and heard the bleating of hungry lambs. He listened to the rattle of buckets and the noisy clamor of happy young voices.
The brisk cold weather was a stimulant to the boys. They ran and jumped and cut up as they swept out troughs and poured fresh feed for eager lambs to push their noses into.
“Morning, Mister Clayton.”
“Hi, Will.”
He answered quietly as each boy spoke to him, stepping past him with buckets of grain or chips of hay. He knew each kid by his first name, knew the parents of every one. This was the community barn he had worked to get for so many years, so the kids in town could feed livestock and get to know how to handle them, like the boys on the farms and ranches. He and Maude had never had sons of their own.
That new L off the south end of the barn had been built just last year because of overcrowding. The boys themselves had raised the money for it, selling soft drinks and barbecue at the rodeo and the stock show. And there had been that big 4-H amateur show, with Johnny McKenna as master of ceremonies.
Johnny McKenna. Will Clayton closed his eyes, his fist tightening in the pocket of the Mackinaw. A blowout on a sharp curve … the helpless skid and the crash through the guardrail that had thrown Will out of the pickup truck before it pitched off the embankment and smashed onto the rocks below. Johnny McKenna never had a chance.
Will watched six lambs in a little pen run over each other to get to the feed which a red-haired boy was pouring out. They were Johnny’s lambs.
Will swung his body around and savagely punched his fist against the yielding bulk of a grain sack. Why wasn’t it me? Why wasn’t it me?
Slowly, then, he became conscious of a commotion around the corner, down at the end of the L. He hobbled down the alley between the sheep pens. He found three club boys angrily confronting a fourth youngster in one of the pens.
“I wasn’t gonna hurt nothin’,” the dirty-faced kid protested. “I just come to look at the lambs.”
“You come here to steal somethin’,” one of the boys declared hotly. “That’s all you know how to do, is steal stuff.”
Will studied the boy. He was 12, maybe 13, dressed in patched, faded blue jeans and a thin woolen coat that had been worn out before it was passed on to him. His grimy fists were doubled, tough as mesquite knots. Defiance shone in his brown eyes.
“I can’t place you, son,” Will said. “Who are you?”
“I ain’t done nothin’. I just wanted to see the sheep.”
Patiently Will shook his head. “I didn’t say you’d done anything. Just asked who you are. Where do you live?”
“I’m Bo Magee. I live down yonder by the stockpens.”
An older club boy named Chester Willis said, “His old man runs Blackie’s pool hall. A boozer. His old lady takes in washing to feed them. This Bo’s strictly a foul ball.”
“That’s enough of that kind of talk,” Will said firmly. “Turn him loose.”
“We better search him first,” Chester said.
“Turn him loose!”
Free, Bo Magee stepped back with eyes flashing.
Chester said, “Plays hooky half the time, hangs around them tough guys down on the arroyo. I’d search him, if it was me.”
Will frowned. “You kids better get on to school.”
The other boys gone, Bo Magee stood facing Will, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “You fixin’ to call the law?”
Will shook his head. “Why? You haven’t done anything wrong. You wanted to look at the sheep. You can look at them with me.”
Will slowly started up the alley that divided the L. He stooped down. “Boys left some of their buckets lying around,” he said, picking up one. “Mind helping me gather them?”
Bo Magee didn’t answer, but he pitched in and helped. His eyes were on the lambs, some just beginning to take on that final bloom that meant they were nearly ready for the stock shows.
“You like sheep, Bo?”
The boy was silent a moment. “Yeah, I reckon.” His brown eyes came alive as he watched the lambs eat, and his dirty face seemed to warm.
“Why haven’t you ever joined the 4-H Club, fed some lambs or a calf?”
“I got no money. You can’t buy nothin’ without you got money.”
“The bank lends money to 4-H Club boys, Bo. You could get a loan.”
The boy pondered that a while, then shrugged hopelessly. “Paw wouldn’t let me. I brought home a puppy once. Paw said it costs too much to feed a family, much less an animal. He took it out and killed it.”
Will looked away quickly, a flush of anger rushing to his face. In a moment he said quietly, “Well, you come over and watch the lambs any time you take a notion, Bo.”
A tall man appeared in the alley and stopped there. Going out, Bo Magee gave him a quick, fearful glance and hurried his step. A tiny metal badge on the man’s coat winked a spot of light. Eyes narrowed in suspicion, Deputy Chuck Standefer watched the boy hurry out.
“What’s that Magee button doing around here?”
“He was just looking at the lambs,” Will answered.
Standefer nodded confidently. “I’ll bet. He was casing the outfit to find out what he could pick up. That’s what I came to see you about. You keep this room locked up when there’s nobody around, Will?”
“No,” Will said. “Who’d steal from a bunch of kids?”
Standefer was the kind who watched every stranger as if he suspected him of stealing the county courthouse. But maybe he felt that was necessary to offset the openhanded, easy-going policy of the sheriff, John McKenna.
The deputy said, “You better put you a lock on it. Been some feed stolen around lately. Nothing big, just a little two-bit pilfering. Big store of feed like this, though, they might haul off a truckload.”
When Standefer left, Will finished straightening up around the barn. What he had to do, he did woodenly. He took a final look at Johnny McKenna’s lambs and wished he were already moved out.
Will drove to the tall old sandstone courthouse that had been built in the days of domed clock towers and multiple cupolas. Climbing the stairs, he paused for a quick, nervous glance into the office of Sheriff John McKenna.
He hadn’t seen John since the funeral. He’d tried to talk to him then but he hadn’t been able to speak, and he guessed John wouldn’t have been able to listen. For a long time, then, he had consciously avoided John.
Will found Jeff Alley waiting in the office for him, patiently flipping through one of the college bulletins on the feeding of ensilage. Jeff was a middle-aged stock farmer with gray-shot hair and a smile warm as the stove in an old-fashioned country store. He rolled the bulletin and shoved it in the pocket of his faded shirt. “Taking this,” he said. “Take anything I can get for free, even advice.” He paused. “I still got trouble.”
For 20 years, when the farmers or ranchers around here had troubles, they sent for Will Clayton. He usually knew the answer. And if he didn’t, he knew where to find it.
“That milk cow you looked at,” Jeff said, “she didn’t give any milk again this morning. Not hardly enough for the old woman’s coffee. Derndest thing I ever saw. She gave a barrelful last night.”
Will rubbed his jaw. “Beats me, Jeff,” he said. “You sure her calf’s not getting to her of a night?”
Jeff said, “I doubt it. He’s already wrapped up in my freezer box.”
Walking back downstairs with Jeff, Will anxiously watched the hallways, half hoping, half dreading that he would run into John McKenna.
They got into Jeff’s pickup and drove out away from the courthouse and down through the main street of the little town. Will leaned against the door, looking out the frosty window at the stores, the houses, the people he had known so long.
Jeff Alley’s smile was gone. “It’s not the cow I’m really worried about. It’s you. I can always get me another cow. But there ain’t another Will Clayton.”
Will kept looking out the window, watching the street that was giving way to a graded road, the houses giving way to mesquite pasture and small-grain patches.
Jeff said, “I hear you’re leaving. I reckon I know how you feel. But folks don’t want you to go, Will.”
Will’s voice came tight. “You ought to walk down the street with me, Jeff. See the people looking at me, thinking about that boy. And me knowing they’re thinking it. We’ll all be better off when I’m gone from here.”
Jeff Alley said, “I saw you looking in John McKenna’s office as we came out. You haven’t talked to him, have you?”
Will’s fists clenched in his lap. “No, I haven’t.”
“Then maybe it’s John you’re really worried about. Go talk to him, Will.”
Will sharply shook his head, making it plain that he didn’t want to discuss the subject any further.
Jeff Alley’s farm lay just beyond the city limits. The sight of something green always lifted Will up. He felt better now, seeing the fine stand of small grain, waving its rich deep green in the morning wind, the field seeming to flow in the rhythmic pattern of gently curving terraces.
Jeff slowed down suddenly and grunted. “Another of Vince Yancey’s heifers in my oak patch,” he said. “But I’ll let her get her belly full before I put her out. She looks as poor as a whippoorwill, poor thing. She’s starving.”
Will could see the Yancey ranch from here, where one of the pastures bordered on Jeff Alley’s. Bare as a hardwood floor. Eternally overstocked and grazed off to a nub. Yancey was always having trouble with his sheep and cattle.
Will checked Jeff’s milk cow, and again he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. “Whatever it is, maybe it’ll pass.”
They started back toward the courthouse.
“We’ll stop at the Wagonwheel and have us some coffee,” Jeff said.
They hadn’t driven far before Will spotted a boy walking down the road toward a big brush thicket. It was Bo Magee. Will stepped out of the truck, his left foot still on the running board. “Bo,” he spoke, “I thought you went on to school.”
The boy stopped short at the sight of him. He stood uncertainly a moment, his mouth open. Then he turned and sprinted toward the thicket.
“Bo!” Will called after him. “Come back!”
But the boy disappeared into the brush.
Worriedly shaking his head, Will climbed stiffly into the pickup again. “Some boys,” he said, “you just can’t figure out.”
“You’ve done a good job of figuring them out the last 20 years,” Jeff said. “And you’re needed as much now as you ever were. Don’t quit us, Will.”
The rest of the morning, and all afternoon, he spent running terrace lines for old Max Pfeiffer. But his mind wasn’t on the job. Twice he had to go back and reset some of the stakes.
“Today you don’t look so good, Will,” Max said worriedly. “Look, we got plenty of time. Maybe you go home and rest, we do it another day, yeah?”
“No, Max,” he said, knowing there might not be another day. “We’ll finish it.”
And when he finished, he had made up his mind. He drove by the courthouse to leave the equipment at the office. That done, he walked back down the stairs and stopped in front of Sheriff John McKenna’s door. He stood there bracing himself, the excited rush of blood in his ears as loud as the crackling of the state police radio he could hear inside the office.
A hundred times during the afternoon, he had planned how he would say it. Now suddenly, before he had a chance to go inside, John McKenna stepped out the door.
The two men stared at each other in surprise, almost like strangers. Will felt his mouth go dry. His heart thumped so fast it hurt, like a band tightening around him. “John, I came to tell you—” The words stopped. Will tried, but they wouldn’t come. Then, numbly, he turned away. Head bowed, fists drawn up in knots inside his Mackinaw pockets, he walked down the corridor and into the chilly winter air.
At home, he closed the back door behind him and turned his burning eyes toward Maude, standing over the kitchen stove. “We’re going to finish packing tonight, Maude,” he said hopelessly. “I can’t stay here another day.”
Next morning he’d started stacking things in the borrowed truck as soon as it was light enough. Now, with the morning sun an hour high, he had the suitcase and the cardboard packing boxes ready to put on the truck. He picked up the biggest box and balanced it on his hip. Then he heard the knock on the door.
Will eased the box down again and straightened, rubbing his hip in an effort to work the stiffness out. He pulled the door open and stepped back in surprise. “Morning, Will,” said John McKenna.
Will tried to answer him but he found no words. Maude walked in, and she too stopped in surprise. Self-conscious about the handkerchief tied around her head, she pulled it off and dusted it against her apron. “Come in, John,” she said. “Get out of the cold.”
The sheriff stopped in the middle of the bare room, his hat in his hand, and looked at the packed belongings scattered about. “It’s true, then, what I’ve heard. You’re leaving.”
Will’s voice came back. “It seems like the best thing to do.”
His hands suddenly were shaking. “I tried to tell you yesterday, John. I wanted to explain everything to you. But what could I say? That I’m sorry? That I wish it hadn’t happened?” He shook his head wearily. “I found out there just weren’t any words for what I wanted to say, John. So I couldn’t say anything.”
John McKenna nodded gravely. “I know, Will. For days I’ve wanted to see you. But I haven’t known what to say. Then I saw you last night. I saw your eyes. You’ve been killing yourself for what happened to Johnny. Don’t do it, Will. I don’t blame you. Those things just happen sometimes, and there’s nothing any man on earth can do to stop them. There’s nobody to blame. Least of all you.”
Will felt his knees giving way. He sat down heavily on a packing box.
John McKenna said, “He was my son, Will, but he was one of your boys. You taught him things, gave him things in life that even a father couldn’t. Sure, he died young. But he died rich because of you. I’ll always remember that.”
Will stood up again, walking slowly to the window and looking out into the morning. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.
The sheriff said, “I came here for something else, Will. I’ve got a boy out there in my car. Manny Nixon caught him just before daylight this morning, taking a short sack of feed out of his barn. Boy’s name is Bo Magee.”
Will nodded regretfully. “I know him.”
“Not the first time the kid’s been in trouble,” McKenna said. “Manny was roaring mad and wanted to send him off to the reformatory. But then the boy showed us what he took the feed for—and Manny wouldn’t even press charges. Will, that boy has got him a little pen fixed up out there in a brush thicket. Used old chicken wire and stuff. Built him a shed out of scrap iron and old lumber. He’s got four baby lambs in there. They’re some of Vince Yancey’s dogies that he found starving to death along the fence by the town section.”
The sheriff was shaking his head in admiration. “Sure, he was stealing. But he’s got too much of the makings in him to ship him off. With somebody to guide him a little, he could grow up into a real man, Will. And you’re the one can help him.”
Will was silent a moment. “I’m leaving, John,” he said.
The sheriff ignored that. “The boy loves livestock, and that’s what we’ll work on. If that shiftless old man of his tries to interfere, I’ll lower the boom on him. How about turning Johnny’s lambs over to him, Will? Let him finish them out and show them.”
Will felt a warmth growing inside him. “You mean you’d let him have your son’s lambs, John?”
The sheriff nodded. “Johnny’s gone. But that kid’s here.” He lifted his hand and placed it on Will’s shoulder. “Look, Will, we’ve lost a boy, you and me. Now we’ve got a chance to save one. You coming with me?”
Will looked into McKenna’s deep, friendly eyes, and the weight was gone from his shoulders for the first time in weeks. He turned back to Maude, and he managed a smile. “I’ll be back, Maude, and help you unpack.”
He opened the door and went out with the sheriff toward the car where the boy sat waiting.