Because we lived and worked a long way from the largest towns, we let the war slip up on us. We knew, of course, that sectional bitterness had built for years, but mostly we looked on it as a quarrel between the Southern people who owned slaves and the Northern people who wished they did but couldn’t. Not many folks down in our part of South Texas had slaves, either; they were too poor for that kind of luxury. So long as the Yankees stayed out of our country and left us alone, we didn’t do much except clench our fists a little when we read an occasional angry newspaper editorial. We went right back to our own personal concerns as to whether it would rain, and whether the corn was going to make, and what kind of calf crop would hit the ground. All else was talk, and talk was a surplus commodity without a market.
But war did come, and a lot of us let ourselves get swept up in the emotion of it. We did foolish things, like
volunteer for the Texas companies that were joining the Confederate army.
Thomas seemed immune to that kind of emotion. His was reserved for whoever and whatever belonged to him. A war way off in Virginia was too far from his land to be of deep concern to him. He grieved over the thought of all the suffering, all the wreckage that came out of the first fighting, but he did not anger. He told me it was a long way from Texas, and he saw no reason it should ever affect us.
Even Thomas Canfield could be wrong.
Peace, of a sort, had settled over us. The cart war had ground itself to a standstill. The Texas Rangers and the federal troops—before the bigger war pulled them away—stomped hard on some participants. A few of the worst men on both sides found themselves invited to a quick, quiet hanging, which got everybody else’s attention. Most people involved in the feud decided they did not hate each other enough to risk that kind of rough justice.
I half expected the Rangers to fall on Thomas for what had happened to Johnroe. Talk spread around Stonehill that he was somehow responsible. But the lawmen seemed to figure that the killing of Johnroe by some unknown Mexican probably saved them the trouble of a hanging, sooner or later. Or, perhaps they were simply afraid of Thomas. A lot of people were, by then.
I thought Branch Isom might find some way to continue the trouble at no danger to himself, but he did not. Though I took pains to stay out of Stonehill, I heard enough talk to keep up with what went on there. Some of the Mexicans said Isom had fetched himself a bride from San Antonio. He was building a house in Stonehill larger than the one Thomas had built on the ranch for Maria. I figured this was a show of rivalry, but I never mentioned it to Thomas. Nothing brought anger to his eyes like hearing the name of Branch Isom.
The anger came often enough to its own bidding; I
did not like to be the one who drew it forth. I much preferred Thomas’ company when he sat on the edge of his porch, watching his son take his first faltering steps in the yard, falling over an affectionate pup one of the Fernandez boys had brought to him. Thomas rarely laughed, even with the baby, but the deepening lines in his face would seem to ease, and he would look—for a little while—as young as he really was. He would sit in silence with Maria’s loving arm around him and watch that little boy with a feeling akin to worship.
Thomas had stayed out of the cart war except when his own property was involved, and he was determined to remain out of the Confederacy’s war too. He said little about it, but he leaned toward the views of old Sam Houston, who tried desperately to keep Texas from seceding and, when it did anyway, retired to his home down in Huntsville to live out his days without ever endorsing the Confederacy.
I tried to see it Thomas’ way, but too many things kept pulling at me. I received a letter from home telling me a couple of my brothers had marched out to fight for Jeff Davis. I saw quite a few younger men from around Stonehill and New Silesia do the same thing, laughing and hollering and promising to be home in six months. They could not all be wrong, no matter what Thomas said.
The Polanders avoided being caught up in the war much. They had been in the country too short a time to understand what the fighting was about—if any of us did—and most of them did not know much English. The army recruiters quickly decided they were too dumb to be of much use. The Confederates were so confident about whipping the Yankees in a hurry that they did not want to share the glory with a bunch of foreigners anyway. They saved that honor for the true Southern boys.
My conscience nagged me as more and more men went to war while I stayed home on the ranch. Finally I received a letter telling me one of my brothers had
taken down with the fever and died on the way to the fighting. Though he had not reached the battle, my mother considered him a patriot, a martyr to his country. She said nothing about me picking up my brother’s sword. I got that idea all by myself. When a cowboy named Bill Eskew announced that he was going to San Antonio to join the war, I decided to go with him.
Thomas took the news with a deep frown. “It’s not our fight.”
“It’s mine,” I told him. “I’ve lost a brother.”
“You never could shoot straight. What use will you be?”
But he dropped the argument when he saw I had made up my mind. He shook my hand and told me I would always have a place with him when I came back. Maria—by now beginning to push out in front again—kissed me on the cheek. The old lady Canfield hugged my neck and wet the side of my face with her tears. I tried not to look back as I rode away, but I couldn’t help it. Until we passed over the hill, Bill and me, I spent most of my time twisted around in the saddle, trying to fix it all in my mind as if I might not ever see it again.
I almost didn’t.
We halfway expected to be wined and dined and have a lot of fuss made over us in San Antonio, but the “new” had worn off by that time. They had already seen a lot of men march away, some west to invade New Mexico and Arizona, the rest east to join up with the main Confederate forces off in Virginia and such. Nobody paid much attention to us or bought us any drinks, and the officers didn’t treat us as respectfully as the recruiters had led us to believe. They handled us a lot like we used to treat fresh-caught broncs in teaching them to respect the rope and follow directions. I was considerably disappointed with the war before I ever saw any of it.
I was even more disappointed when I did see it. I had seen blood spilled in Texas, but this was not the same. We didn’t hear the bands play much. Bill Eskew got
shot in the stomach the second battle we got into, and I had to watch him take two days in dying.
There is no point in going on with a lot of detail about my years in the army. Like Thomas had kept saying, it was a long way from Texas and had nothing to do with the Canfields. I got nicked a couple of times, but never anything serious until the last year of the war. A rifle ball struck me in the hip and knocked me off of my horse. When I came back to consciousness I found Yankee soldiers running around me afoot, going the way I had come from. They were too busy to stop either to finish me off or to patch my wound. First time I got the chance I dragged myself into some bushes on my belly and hid. I soaked up most of my coat trying to get the blood stopped. I lay there until almost dark before the Yankees passed me again going the other way, and some good Reb boys came along in pursuit.
My hip was a long time healing. They furloughed me home to Louisiana. That way I was a burden to my family instead of to the Confederacy, which already had more burden than it could carry. The war was over before the healing was. Hobbling around on crutches, not able to do any respectable work except patch harness and such, I watched the straggling remnants of a beaten army come limping home a few men at a time. I watched the grief of families who finally had to admit that some of their own had simply disappeared and would never come home. Another of my brothers was one of these. My mother went to her grave wondering what had become of him. None of us ever knew.
There came a time when I could ride a horse. It wasn’t easy, not like before, and it never would be quite the same again, but I knew I could at least take care of myself and put up a showing of respectable work. I had been thinking of Texas for a long time. After the many years away, the delta was no longer my home. When my grieving old mother breathed her last and we put her under the deep black soil, nothing was left to hold me.
I made my way downriver to New Orleans like before and found a freighter about to set sail for the Texas coast. The captain had seen more than enough of crippled, hungry ex-soldiers, but he decided I could earn a bunk helping the cook. I spent most of that voyage in a hot, steaming galley. But it was worth it all to see old Indianola materialize through the early-morning fog. The town had grown since I had seen it that other time, but I had no difficulty finding the place where I had slept beneath the wharf while awaiting passage inland.
The wharves were sagging beneath the weight of cotton bales consigned to hungry mills back East, and the ships were unloading machinery and other goods for which Texas had starved during the long war and the blockade that had strangled its ports. Nobody in Texas had much solid Union coin, but they bartered cotton and tobacco and corn.
As before, I was dependent upon the generosity of people I had never seen before. Like most Confederate soldiers I had been paid little, and that in a currency no longer worth the paper it was printed on. The ship’s captain gave me a few dollars for my labor, barely enough to buy a few days’ meals and lodging ashore. My heavy limp and the cane I leaned upon made me a poor candidate for employment in a place where many able-bodied men hunted desperately for work. But I owned a little land near New Silesia, and I had Thomas Canfield’s old promise of a job.
As before, I began looking for a freight outfit that might take me inland. I saw a line of big, heavy freight wagons near a wharf and made my way hopefully in their direction. I walked up to a man who appeared to be in charge of loading and asked where his wagons were bound. He looked me over carefully before answering. He probably guessed my situation without being told; a lot of others like me were making their way to an old home or looking for a new one.
“San Antonio,” he said.
“By way of Stonehill or New Silesia?” I asked hopefully.
He frowned. “I don’t remember you from Stonehill, and you don’t talk none like them damned Polanders.”
“I’ve been gone a long time,” I told him.
A heavy voice spoke behind me. “I heard you mention Stonehill.”
I turned and almost fell. There, staring me in the face, was Branch Isom. He carried more weight than when I had last seen him, the red beard was gone, and the lines were cut deeper into that ruddy face. But there was no mistaking the man. My hand tightened instinctively on the cane, and my first thought was that I would have to fight in another minute.
Recognition came much slower to him. I had aged a lot, thinned a lot. But after a long moment he said, “You’re Reed Sawyer.”
I could only nod, waiting for the trouble to come. An angry thought flashed through my mind, that I had outlived the war only to come back here and, more than likely, end my days on the wharf at Indianola.
To my surprise he showed no enmity, no grudge over old battles. If anything, he betrayed a touch of regret. He said, “The war was not kind to you.”
“Kinder than to some,” I told him. “At least I’m here.”
“And looking for a ride home?”
If he had forgotten our first meeting, I had not. My first treatment at his hands was something I would remember to my last day. I said, “You needn’t bother about me. I’ll find one.” I started to turn away.
He touched my shoulder and stopped me. “We’ll be rolling in a couple of hours. I’ll be glad to have the company of an old friend.”
“We never were friends, Branch Isom,” I said.
“That was a long time ago. Things have changed. You’re a soldier home from the war. I’ve tried to bury old enmities.”
You’ve buried a lot of old enemies, too, I thought, but I had the judgment not to say it.
I had no wish to travel with Branch Isom, so I made a couple of excuses and worked my way down into the town, hoping I might find someone else going my way. Luck was not with me. In a couple of hours I saw the wagons moving out in a line and resigned myself to a long stay in the coast town. But a light carriage drawn by a couple of nicely matched bays came down the street. Branch Isom waved to me and pulled the horses to a stop. “Ready to travel, Sawyer?”
I had no more excuses. I had been prepared to argue that a long ride on a heavy freight wagon would probably jolt my knitting hip too much, but I could see he meant for me to ride in the carriage with him. I put old hatreds behind me in the stresses of the moment and joined the devil.
He put the bays out in front of the wagons so we would not have to eat the dust, then slowed them to a walk that would not outpace the train behind us. He wore a good suit, better than any I had seen during my short stay in Indianola. The carriage, though not new, was a symbol of some prosperity. Prosperity, I knew, had long been a stranger to most people in Texas. My first thought, a natural one in view of past history, was that he had stolen it. But again I had the judgment not to ask.
He did most of the talking. He inquired about my war experiences, and I told him in a sketchy way. I had a hundred questions I desperately wanted to ask him, but most were about the Canfields. I could not believe enough time had passed that they would be a welcome subject for him. Perhaps sensing my curiosity about his relative well-being, he volunteered to me that freighting had made him a lot of money during the war. The Union blockade had closed the Texas ports within the first months. Cotton, always one of Texas’ most important money crops, had stacked up by the thousands of bales,
shut out of its traditional markets. But Texan ingenuity had not allowed this condition to become permanent. Soon the bales were on their way to the Mexican border in long, dust-raising wagon trains. Carried across the border, they were sold to European buyers for gold coin or traded outright for munitions and other Confederate needs. Union ships had no authority to prevent the shipment of merchandise in and out of Mexican ports. The great wagon trains wore deep ruts into the trail to Brownsville and Matamoros. Not only had Branch Isom joined his wagons into this trade, but he had bought many more and expanded.
Isom told me, “We put a lot of cotton across that river and brought back a lot of guns and powder and equipment for you boys fighting the war. We did all we could, but I guess it wasn’t enough.”
It appeared to me it had been enough for him. Indirectly he told me as much. “I always took my payment on the Mexican side, in gold. I never did trust that paper money. People who did, like old Linden Hines, they’re broke now.”
“Linden Hines, broke?” That news hit me hard. Stonehill had been his town; he had started it.
“Lost his store, the freight wagons that used to haul goods for him, everything. Had a barrelful of that Richmond money when the war was over. It’s not fit for wallpaper.”
That hurt. I had always had a good feeling about that old man. “What does he do now?”
“Lives in the past, mostly. His daughter keeps books for me. I try to find the old man some things to do. Isn’t much he can do, though. His health broke toward the end of the war, when he saw he was going to lose everything.”
Suspiciously I asked, “Who got it?”
“First one and then another. San Antonio banks, mostly. He borrowed to keep the wagon outfits supplied, trying to help with the war. They lent paper but wanted
gold back. I finally bought his store from him, but the money went to satisfy the banks.”
“It’s not fair if he did it all to help his country.”
“Nothing is fair in this life. A man takes care of himself. Like your friend Thomas Canfield. He pulled into his hole like a badger and didn’t give anything away.”
That gave me the chance to ask what I had wanted to.
“He’s all right? His family’s all right?” I had received a few letters from Thomas’ mother, early. Mail had a hard time finding me later on.
Isom’s voice hardened. “Sure he’s all right. Anything he ever owned, he still owns. Land-poor, maybe, without a dollar of real money to his name, but he’d eat jackrabbits before he’d borrow a dollar on one foot of that land.” Isom grunted. “He can keep his land as far as I’m concerned. Give me a going business anytime, like mine … the town, the freight line. That’s where the money is.”
“Last I heard, a long time ago, Thomas and Maria had a baby girl.”
Isom nodded. “She’d be three now, or maybe four. She was born after my little boy came.”
I don’t know why I should have been surprised at the thought of Branch Isom having children. The meanest dog can sire a litter of pups. But the thought of him bouncing a child on his knee didn’t fit the image I had always carried in my mind. It was even more of a surprise, then, that he set in to telling me all about his boy. His name was James, and he was four. He could ride horseback by himself, and he could name most of the horses and mules in half of Isom’s many freight teams. Once started, Isom seemed unable to stop talking about him. Somewhere in the conversation he told me Mrs. Isom had never been able to have another child. I suppose that was why Isom seemed to put so much store in this one, because there would not be another.
I kept expecting, sooner or later, that old grudges
would surface in Isom’s conversation, that he would turn his anger against me on the trail where nobody but his own men would see or know. But he never did. It was as though the old differences had never existed. In the few words he spoke of Thomas, I knew the angers of the past had not died, but for me personally he betrayed no resentment. Perhaps he took my army service into account, or my crippled hip, and he wiped the slate clean. All the way to Stonehill I remained uneasy, expecting trouble. It never came.
The town looked little different. Some new houses had been built. The streets were moderately busy, mostly with freight wagons engaged in the gradual renewal of normal commerce. I noticed a fair number of Mexican carts, holding their own against the gringo freighters. Isom seemed not even to see them. He pulled the carriage to a halt at his open double gates and watched his freight wagons enter a huge corral, all but the last one in the line. He signaled for the driver to follow him. “That one,” he said, “is for my wife. Things for the house, ordered all the way from England. Even a piano.”
Coming into Stonehill had increased my uneasiness. It had seemed a forbidding town, especially since the death of Kirby Canfield. Even after the many years, I still had that feeling about it.
I said, “I’d better get down here. I’ll find a way to get out to the ranch.”
Isom nodded. “You know I can’t take you. Thomas Canfield and I have not set eyes on one another in years. It is best we keep it that way. I’d be glad to lend you a horse.”
I did not want to arrive at the Canfield ranch riding a horse that belonged to Branch Isom. I thanked him for his generosity and assured him I would find a way. He asked me to come up to his house and meet his wife and see his boy, James. I told him I would, another time. He pulled away and left me in the trailing dust, much relieved to see the last of him even though he had shown
me nothing but friendliness since Indianola. Old suspicions die hard.
I had no idea, at first, what my next move should be. I was not sure who I might still know here. It was in my mind that I could seek out some of the Mexicans who had worked for or dealt with Thomas years ago, if any still lived in Stonehill. I started up the dusty street, one hand holding the carpetbag containing nearly everything I owned, the other holding the cane for support. I looked vainly for a familiar face.
Reading the signs, I learned that Branch Isom had his roots sunk deeply into this town. A dramshop bore the names “Smith & Isom” in small letters beneath the title “Texas Lady.” A blacksmith shop and livery barn proclaimed “A. Dandridge & B. Isom.” I came in a while to the big general store that had been built by Linden Hines. The sign declared,”General Mercantile. Branch Isom, Prop.”
I felt a little as I supposed the Europeans must have felt when a usurper took the throne.
Laura Hines had remained on my mind during the long war years. I had more or less reconciled myself to the idea that there would never be anything between us except friendship, but I knew no other face that appealed to me quite so much, so I let hers be the player in many a fanciful daydream, some of a high order, some I would never have wanted her to know about. Futile or not, the dreams had been a means of lifting me out of intolerable reality and, perhaps, keeping me from losing my mind.
Isom had said she was keeping books for him. I stood in front of the store a minute, bracing up my courage, wondering how far I had let my dreams stray from truth. I had long suspected that I had made over her face to suit myself, so that the one in the dreams was probably at considerable variance with reality.
I made my way past barrels and boxes on the wooden porch and stood in the open double door, trying to accustom
my eyes to the dim interior. I heard Laura before I saw her.
“Reed? Reed Sawyer?” She came out from behind a tall counter in the rear of the store. I could not see her clearly because it was dark in there, and my eyes were filling up, too. “It’s me,” I said.
She threw her arms around me, putting me off balance and almost causing me to fall. My hip shot through with pain, but I tried to hide it. She stood back a little to stare at me, her hands keeping a strong grip on my shoulders.
“We were afraid you were dead,” she declared.
“I wrote.”
“The mail service broke down, toward the last.”
She made a good deal of fuss over me, which I enjoyed, but I sensed that it was friendship, nothing more. All those daydreams had served a purpose at the time, but they were dead now. I felt like crying.
She had changed a lot, or perhaps my creative memory had been at fault. She was mature, a woman well past twenty, face still pretty but eyes sad from the unhappiness she had seen. I realized we were both ten years older than when we had first met.
“You look wonderful,” I said. That was true. She did, to me.
She brought herself to ask about my cane, about my thinness. I admitted that I looked as if I had barely escaped the grave, but I was sure I would get much better now that I was home.
“First thing you need is a good meal,” she said. “I have the books in good shape. I’m going to take you home with me and cook you a real dinner.”
I protested, but weakly. Nothing could have pleased me more.
She said, “It will do Papa good to see you. He hasn’t seen much in a long time to make him smile.”
I thought I knew what to expect, but seeing Linden Hines was like a blow to the stomach. He was an old man, a shell. He smiled at the sight of me, but the smile
lived only a minute. He had given up the will and surrendered to infirmities that he normally might have stood off for many more years.
“I am glad you came back, Reed,” he said. “So many didn’t. It cost us so much …”
The casualties of the war had reached far beyond the battlefields.
I remembered that the old gentleman had been partial to a good toddy. While Laura was busy fixing dinner I thought I might cheer him a little. I said, “It has been a long, hard trip, and I think a drink would do me good. I would be obliged, sir, if you would go with me.”
That faint smile returned. “I would be honored, sir.”
Neither of us moved very fast, me burdened by my bad hip and my cane, he by his health. We went into the place called Lucky Lady, which Mr. Hines indicated was as good as any in town. Business seemed slack, but it was a time of day when most respectable people were working, if most people in Stonehill could be considered respectable. Thomas Canfield had always regarded the Hineses as something akin to Lot’s family, two good people in a town of arch sinners.
We had our drinks, and I laid the coins on the bar. A voice came from the back of the room. “Keep your money, Sawyer. The drinks are on the house.”
Branch Isom had entered the back door. I told him it was not necessary, but he protested that it was an occasion when a soldier came home, especially the friend of an old friend like Linden Hines. He went behind the bar, opened a door somewhere and fetched out a bottle. “This is the best I can buy, too good to sell across the bar.” He poured our glasses full, and one for himself. He held up his glass in a toast: “To the soldiers of Texas, wherever they fought.”
I looked closely at Mr. Hines, expecting him to betray resentment toward this man who now owned all that used to belong to him. But I saw no such emotion there.
He nodded at the toast and downed the whisky and said something about its being good.
Isom said, “And now, gentlemen, I must leave you. I have pressing business all over town. Come in again, Sawyer. Mr. Hines, my compliments.”
Hines thanked him for the whisky, which prompted me to do the same. I had been so surprised by Isom’s generosity that I stood off balance. I could not escape a feeling that I was a calf being fattened for slaughter, though I could not imagine how.
I was not used to whisky and never held it well. It glowed like a comfortable fire in my stomach, though. Mr. Hines seemed ready to go home, so we started. He took the lead, picking his way among a group of teamsters who had just come in. They did not move aside for him. They would have, a few years earlier. My cane brought me no particular respect either. They were used to crippled ex-soldiers coming home.
From the porch down to the street was a fair distance, and I was a little slow negotiating the three steps. Mr. Hines was ahead of me, looking back to be sure I didn’t slip. I heard a rumbling and a loud shout and glanced up the street. A big freight wagon was bearing down on Mr. Hines.
“Look out!” I shouted to him and tried to hurry. I caught one foot on my cane and fell down the steps. I could hear the wagon driver cursing and shouting at his mules. Through the dust and the blur of movement I sensed that Mr. Hines had stepped back quickly enough to be in the clear.
“Why don’t you watch what you’re doing, old man?” the driver shouted back, once the danger was past. “Damned old relics, ought not to be allowed on the street without a guardian.”
I got up angry enough to do battle, even in my condition. I shouted after the driver that an old pioneer like Linden Hines was due respect, but the words were lost in the air. Nobody cared what he had been in the past.
They saw only what he was now, a worn-out old man existing on others’ generosity. The generosity of Branch Isom.
My conscience began nagging me. I knew all my indignation had not been over the general lack of gratitude to Linden Hines. Some was for myself. My being a wounded soldier seemed to have little meaning either; few people exhibited any gratitude. I supposed it was because we had lost the war. I had just as well have stayed home.
Laura put more steak on the table than we could eat, even with the appetite I had saved up through a long lean time. Beef was cheap, she said, even free for those who had a horse and could go get it. The war had blocked most outside markets for years. So many men had gone into Confederate service that herds went untended, unbranded. Cattle had multiplied to a point that South Texas ranges were badly overstocked, the grass short. The unbranded ran wild and free for the taking, with no one to object.
Before the war, cattle had represented wealth. Now, if anything, they were a liability.
“Eat some more,” she said. “You’re doing some rancher a favor.”
I made the sacrifice, to my later discomfort. My thoughts returned then to the Canfield ranch. If I dallied much longer I would be obliged to stay the night. That would be an imposition on the Hineses. Their house was small and had no real place for me. I began making my excuses to leave.
Laura said, “I’ll take you out there. I’ll get a wagon from the company barn.”
I told her I did not want to be any more burden than I had already been. Also, I had let myself become more beholden to Branch Isom than I would ever have imagined in olden times. I felt uncomfortable, owing a debt to a man like that, and I told her so.
She frowned. “That’s Thomas talking, not you. Branch
Isom has many faults, but he’s not a completely forsaken sinner.”
I figured she felt obliged to loyalty because she worked for him, and he occasionally extended cheap courtesies to her father. It struck me as unfair that Isom had enriched himself from the long conflict while soldiers like myself had paid a hard price.
Laura would not accept my refusal. I said my good-byes to her father, then walked with her to the big barn where empty freight wagons stood in a neat line and dozens of horses and mules milled in dusty corrals, pulling hay from crude racks built of mesquite. I looked around uneasily for Branch Isom, hoping not to have to belittle myself by thanking him once again. The stablemen never questioned Laura’s request for a light spring wagon. I could tell she carried weight around here. One of the men confided to me, out of her hearing, that she officiated at the monthly pay table. Bought loyalty was effective, if sometimes shallow.
We rode in silence much of the time. After several years of absence I was busy taking in the country, remembering. It was drier than when I had left it, the grass poor. I could see cattle in every direction, thick as fleas on a butcher’s dog.
When Laura talked it was mostly about Stonehill, which seemed to have prospered more than the average Texas town during the war because of its importance on the freighting roads. I asked about New Silesia, well remembering how nearly it had come to starvation in the beginning. She said it had suffered some harassment early because so many of the people were opposed to the war. It had not grown much but had solidified its position. Unlike Stonehill, it had been largely selfsufficient. What the Polish immigrants could not raise or make for themselves, they managed to do without. For this reason they had not suffered unduly from the collapse of the Confederate currency; they had little of it in the first place. Laura said they had broken out more
fields and strengthened their hold on the little they owned. Like Thomas Canfield, they drew their strength from the land and regarded it as the only thing solid in life. Money was but sterile paper or metal. The land was alive.
When I asked about Mrs. Canfield or Maria or the two children, Laura talked easily. When she spoke of Thomas she was slower and more thoughtful, and she did not look at me. Earlier I had been tempted to ask why she had not found another good man and married him. Before we reached the ranch, I knew without asking.
Approaching the headquarters, I could see little change. There were still four houses of varying size, the double cabin for the old Mrs. Canfield, another for the Fernandez family, a small one for single hired hands, and the big frame house Thomas had built on the slope for Maria. From a distance I could see it needed paint. That, in itself, told me much about financial circumstances.
Two men were in the round bronc-breaking corral, one riding a crow-hopping young horse, the other throwing a sack under its feet to try to make it pitch. I was astounded when Laura told me these were the Fernandez boys. In my mind they should still be as young as when I had left. Now they would pass—at a distance—for grown men. But this was a country that did not tolerate childhood very long. The boys quickly tied the bronc and scaled the fence, then ran to meet us, hollering at me all the way.
It was getting to be a grim joke, everybody saying first off that they had assumed I was dead. I told them I hated to be such a disappointment. They ran ahead of us up to the big house, shouting for the Canfields to come out. The old lady was the first onto the porch. She threw up her hands and came running to meet me. She had grayed more in the nearly four years I had been gone, and the lines had cut deeper into her face, but I thought she had fared far better than Linden Hines.
Maria came out then, her brown eyes shining and beautiful. Like Laura, she had matured into a finelooking woman. Her face was still pretty and fleshed out better than I remembered it. Her waist was fuller, the result of bearing two children, but if anything that was an improvement. Before, she had looked as if a strong wind might carry her away.
A small girl, who had to be past three now, peered shyly out from behind her, keeping one hand full of her mother’s skirt, pulling it out to cover all but one big brown eye, very curious.
The two women both hugged me at the same time, while the little girl ran and threw her arms around Laura’s neck, then clung to her while she looked at me with both curiosity and a little fear. Youngsters like this, growing up far out in the country, were not used to strangers. I heard the girl saying, “Aunt Laura.” I saw the gentle way Laura and Maria looked at each other, and it occurred to me how unusual a friendship theirs really was.
It was a while before I knew the little girl’s name. The old lady called her child, and Maria called her something I never quite understood, then or later. It was in Polish. Eventually Laura spoke of her as Katrina when the girl led her off into another room to show some doll clothes her mother had sewed from scraps.
Maria’s English had improved, though she still spoke with an accent. She looked at me with pity. “We must make for you much food. We must get you fat again.” I never had been given much to weight, but I realized I must look like starvation now.
Not until near dark did Thomas come home. I saw Maria’s eyes light at the sound of the wagon. If I had ever doubted that he had chosen well, that look dispelled all question. The boy Kirby sat beside him on the wagon. The original spring seat was gone, replaced by a flat board that jolted the innards. The two had been shoveling stock salt into troughs at some of the watering
places. The boy’s rough clothing was crusted with it. He was six now, or near it, and as shy of me as the girl had been. Thomas tied off the reins and came up into the yard with a tired but happy step. The boy remained a full pace behind him and eyed me with dark suspicion. I had bounced him on my knee, but he had been too small to remember that.
Thomas stared at me a long moment without a word. He had aged more than the years alone would account for. He was not original with his first words. “Reed, I thought they had killed you,” he said.
I didn’t care what he said so long as there was welcome in it. He gripped my arms in the Mexican style of abrazo; much of his manner had come to him from the Mexicans.
I managed to say, “You told me I would always have a home here.” I wondered, for by the looks of things an extra mouth might be a burden.
“I hope you never doubted that,” he said.
“I probably won’t be much help for a while.”
He glanced at my cane but only shrugged. “You’ve already been a help, just coming back. Now I know things have got to get better.”
One of the Fernandez boys came up, and Thomas asked him to take care of the team and wagon. He put his arm around Maria, and they walked into the house. Laura watched them, then took the girl’s hand and followed.
Only the boy and I were left. I asked, “How about it, Kirby?”
He just stood on the ground and stared in silent distrust.
I turned and went into the house alone, figuring he would open up to me after a while.
But he never did, not completely.