Backlands (23 page)

O
n graduation day, Matt gave his valedictory speech to the families, friends, and guests gathered to celebrate the Las Cruces High School class of 1928. As expected, Pa didn't come, but Tía Teresa arrived the day before, accompanied by Juan Ignacio, who would spend the summer with her in Tularosa. Boone and Peggy attended as well, as did Nestor, Guadalupe, and Matt's boss from the grocery store, Sam Miller.

Boone and Peggy threw a swell graduation party for Matt in the backyard of the house they rented from the trust. His favorite high school teacher, Mrs. Elizabeth Pickett, came with her daughter Nell, who was the smartest girl in Matt's graduating class. They had been dating since early spring, much to the dismay of Lester Nichols, his best friend from school, who came to the party red-faced, tipsy, and glum after drinking moonshine at another graduation party. When Matt's party wound down, he thanked Boone and Peggy, said good-bye to Tía Teresa and Juan Ignacio, and slipped away to Nell's party. There he found Lester mooning over Nell on the front porch and Mr. Pickett serving up his renowned barbecue brisket and German potato salad to a line of hungry guests. After dark, the celebrating continued at Lester's house, where the class of 1928 gathered with their dates to dance to records, sneak a drink or two, smoke cigarettes, talk about the future, and pet and smooch in the far reaches of the backyard, away from the flickering party lanterns. Darlene Fox, considered the class Goody Two-shoes, helped Lester overcome his unrequited love for Nell with some heavy petting behind a big cottonwood tree. It was the best party of the day.

Starting out, Matt had been miffed that Pa didn't make the effort to attend his graduation and offer his congratulations. But the next morning, he awoke without a twinge of annoyance about Pa's absence. If Pa didn't care a lick, it wasn't worth Matt's time worrying about it. It was as simple as that.

Over the summer on an early July evening, Pa paid a quick visit to inform Matt he'd once again taken the annual profit from the trust to use for the ranch, this time to buy new breeding stock to rebuild the herd he'd been forced to sell during the drought.

“Are you coming out to the ranch this summer?” he asked.

“What for?” Matt replied.

“Nothing, I guess,” Pa answered. “It has pretty much dried up between us, ain't it?”

“Appears so,” Matt said.

Pa turned on his heel and walked away without saying another word.

Matt planned to keep working part-time clerking for Sam Miller when he started the fall term at New Mexico College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts. But once classes began, he found the classwork more challenging than he'd imagined and had to quit the job. He'd enrolled in science and mathematics courses, thinking to pursue an engineering degree, and hadn't counted on such a heavy homework burden. He kept to a rigorous study schedule, never missed a class, and by the middle of the term had high grades on all his papers and tests.

For a short time, Nell wrote to him from the University of Chicago, where she was studying archeology. He faithfully wrote back, but by the end of October he stopped hearing from her. Soon after, Nell's best friend, Ava Tumble, told him Nell had found a new boyfriend. Matt had figured as much and didn't let the news get him down.

On the day after Thanksgiving, he sat on the back step of the house Boone and Peggy rented and listened to the first lusty cries of their newborn son, Kendell. As soon as Peggy and the baby had been made presentable by the midwife, Boone whisked Matt into the bedroom.

“We'd like you to be Kendell's honorary godfather,” he announced.

“What does this high office require of me?” Matt asked as he grinned at the tiny pink baby wrapped in Peggy's arms.

“I'm not real certain,” Boone replied with a grin of his own. “But it starts with us having a drink to celebrate the occasion.”

“You two better not get drunk,” Peggy warned, her voice weak with exhaustion, her face still red from the effort of giving birth.

“We wouldn't dare,” Matt promised.

The arrival of Kendell quickly changed the nature of Matt's friendship with Boone and Peggy. They were fully occupied with the baby, and as time passed Matt saw less and less of them. When Peggy got pregnant again in the early spring of 1929, he hardly saw them at all. That summer, they made a whirlwind move to El Paso so Boone could start a new job as a senior mechanic for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Matt helped them pack and waved good-bye as they drove away in a brand-new Dodge Boone had bought to celebrate his advancement.

On July 4, Teresa Magdalena Armijo Chávez died unexpectedly in her sleep. In Tularosa, Matt grieved with the family, who had arrived from all parts of the state for the services and burial. True to form, Pa didn't show.

Matt sat with Juan Ignacio, Evangelina, and Porter Knox during Mass and walked with them in the procession to the cemetery, where Teresa was laid to rest next to her husband, Ignacio. It was a solemn, sad occasion made more melancholy by the tolling church bell and the mourners' despondent faces. Teresa had been dearly loved.

On the return to the hacienda, where food and drink awaited, Matt wondered when he'd see his six-year-old kid brother again. Would he see any of them again? Tía
Teresa's passing cut his strongest link with her family, and he'd learned the hard way to accept the fact that even the best of friends and the people you care about the most can leave, never to return.

Although it had been sudden, the loss of Tía
Teresa didn't sting Matt with a feeling of bitter loneliness. Instead he felt a sudden urge to make a pilgrimage to Ma's grave. He decided that tomorrow he'd journey to the Double K for that visit.

***

I
n the morning he had breakfast in Teresa's quiet house with Porter, Evangelina, and Juan Ignacio, and they told him of their new life in Albuquerque. Juan had just finished the first grade and had found many new friends at school. Porter had bought a house with some irrigated acreage outside of town in the North Valley and had plans to plant crops after he fixed up the old adobe. Evangelina had a vegetable garden started and was raising a small flock of chickens and selling eggs to make a little extra money for the family. She was pregnant, with the baby due in six months, and hoped for a girl to name Teresa. They were happy and excited about the future. They were a family exactly the way Matt thought a family should be.

After promising to visit them in Albuquerque someday, Matt said good-bye, walked to a garage on Main Street, and used the telephone to call Sam Miller in Las Cruces to ask for a few more days off from his summertime job. He'd hitched a ride to the service on a delivery truck and had planned to hitchhike home right away to return to work. But when he explained why he wanted some extra time, Sam gladly gave his permission.

Matt rented a sturdy pony at the Tularosa livery, bought a small sack of packaged and canned food to tide him over on the long ride to the Double K, and started across the basin. The old wagon trail had been transformed into a graded and graveled state road all the way to the eastern foothills of the San Andres Mountains, where the improvements ended and passage turned rough and rocky in the higher terrain. But when he reached the ranch road, he found it was also much improved. It had been graded, crowned, straightened, and rerouted to avoid some of the dips, curves, and gullies prone to washouts and erosion. Tire tracks showed the frequent passage of a vehicle, which made Matt wonder if Pa had spent some of his trust profits on a truck for the ranch.

He passed through the gate at the horse pasture, to be greeted by some yearlings and colts that trotted over for a closer inspection. Apparently Pa had restocked more than just the cattle he'd mentioned in their last conversation. He likely had the cows grazing on one or more of the high-country pastures.

Eager to see what else Pa was up to, Matt loped the pony across the horse pasture, topped the last rise, and drew rein. A new Chevy stake-bed truck capable of carrying at least a dozen bales of hay or several calves sat parked next to the freshly painted barn. Pa's pony, Calabaza, and a packhorse were in the corral, saddled and ready to go. Matt dismounted and called out to the house. Pa appeared on the veranda and silently watched Matt tie his pony to the hitching post. He was wearing chaps, spurs, and gloves and had his saddlebags slung over a shoulder.

“The place is looking good,” Matt said by way of greeting.

“What brings the college boy out to the backlands?” Pa replied, never one for subtlety.

“Tía
Teresa died. We buried her yesterday.”

“I know it,” Pa replied as he walked past Matt to the corral. “Are you staying the night?”

“Yep, I came to pick up some of my things.”

“I threw out most of that stuff a year ago,” Pa replied as he put a leg over Calabaza. “What's left you'll find in a box in the tack room. Fix yourself some grub when you get hungry. You know where to find it. I'm heading up-country to throw the cattle into fresh pasture.”

Matt thought about questioning Pa about all the recent money spent on the ranch and decided it wasn't worth starting a spat. “Adios,” he said.

Trailing the packhorse, Pa nodded. Matt closed the corral gate behind him and watched as he trotted up the canyon. He waited until he was certain Pa was out of sight before visiting Ma's grave. Half expecting to find it overgrown with weeds, he was pleased to find it neatly tended. He sat by Ma's resting place thinking about how much he missed her. He talked to her for a long time, until the last golden rays of the setting sun cast deep shadows across the basin.

Back at the house, he fed and watered his pony, fixed a plate of beans and bacon, and ate his supper on the veranda. He'd forgotten how quiet, serene, and calming it was and how splendid the basin and the distant Sacramento Mountains looked from the veranda.

He took a quick tour around the house. It was the same as when he left. There was no electricity or indoor plumbing, and while the rooms were untidy, the place wasn't dirty. He didn't see any whiskey bottles around, which made him hope Pa had stopped drinking again. There was no sign that Pa had taken on a hand to help out, which didn't surprise him. Pa was always stingy when it came to hiring help. But to be fair, from what Matt saw, Pa had been telling the truth about putting the annual profits into the ranch operations. That was reassuring.

When dusk turned to dark, he carried a lantern past the empty henhouse to the barn tack room. In a small box on top of the big trunk he found the few things of his that Pa had saved, including the extra copy of “Emma Makes a Hand” Matt had given Pa, two old, dog-eared dime novels, a penknife Ma had given him when he'd turned six, his first pair of spurs, and a notebook filled with drawings he'd made at the ranch the year Ma died. In it were sketches of Ma, Pa, Patches, the ranch house, and views of the basin from the veranda. All in all, they were nothing to crow about, but Matt thought they were fairly decent drawings for a kid. It made him smile to look at them.

One end of the board attached to the wall that held the saddle racks in place had pulled loose, exposing the tattered edge of a yellow, weathered piece of paper. Matt eased the paper free. It was a pardon dated and signed by the governor of the territory of Arizona given to Pat Floyd, an inmate of the Yuma Territorial Prison. Who was Pat Floyd? Why was his pardon hidden away in the Double K barn?

He remembered Mr. Owen, a former lawman who'd come to the ranch years ago asking questions about Vernon Clagett, the hired man who'd quit and walked away around the time Ma had died. Did the pardon have something to do with him? Maybe Pat Floyd was an alias he'd used. If so, why did he hide the pardon? It didn't make any sense.

He thought about leaving the pardon on Pa's desk along with a note asking for an explanation but decided to keep it instead. He wasn't sure why, other than feeling just plain ornery about the way Pa had greeted him when he arrived. He tucked the tattered pardon into one of the dime novels, bundled everything up to carry home in the morning, and headed back to the house, ready for a good night's sleep.

***

F
ascinated by the pardon, Matt's thoughts returned to it time and again after he got home to Las Cruces. Finally, he decided to talk to Mr. Worrell at the bank and the lawyer Alan Lipscomb to see if they knew anything about Pat Floyd. Besides, he would turn eighteen in ten months and it was time for him to get better informed about the trust.

Matt first met with Edgar Worrell at the bank, who smiled at him from behind his office desk, cleared his throat, and said, “Normally, I'd direct you to speak to your father about the trust, but since I know you to be a smart, well-educated young man and the time does draw near for you to take control, I'll answer your questions.”

“May I see the actual document so you can go over it point by point with me?” Matt asked.

“Why, yes, I suppose you can,” Worrell replied. From a file cabinet he brought a thick document packet and placed it on his desk. “Let's start with the assets.”

Within the hour Matt knew that all the rental properties were heavily mortgaged, with the proceeds used to buy stock on margin through a Wall Street broker. Since assuming control of the trust, Pa had approved each new transaction recommended by the broker. To Matt's untrained eye, it all seemed reasonable. Rental income covered the monthly mortgage payments, and the stocks held by the trust were paying a good annual return as well as increasing in value. He was also happy to see that Pa had been using only annual profits from the trust for ranching operations, as he'd promised, not the principal. Even with those costs and what it took to cover Matt's living expenses, including his college tuition, the value of the trust stood at slightly more than twice Ma's original investment.

“You'll be a very well-off young man when you turn eighteen next year,” Worrell predicted.