Black Angus (10 page)

“And if you don't have Bang's—if, if, if!”

“Yes,
if
. If I can hang on, Susan, I will. And what happens then? How do we get back together?”

She kept working. “We don't. You'll have made your choice, that's all. Cattle over me and Whit.”

“The cattle be damned,” he said. “It's not that and you know it. This was a way of life, remember? You forgetting all the things that brought us here in the first place?”

“No. Because they're exactly what I want now. They're what I miss, what I've got to have.”

“And Tommy? What about him?”

“He's
your
brother. Your responsibility. If you want him cared for properly, this is hardly the place.”

“But Saint Louis is?”

“Clayton is, yes.”

“Ah yes, daddy's house. Is that what you have in mind, all of us together under his roof?”

“It's big enough.”

Blanchard could not argue the point, for his father-in-law had one of the finest houses in Saint Louis's finest suburb. And he lived there alone, a widower, a rich and successful surgeon rattling about in a fourteen-room house waiting for the day when his beloved daughter would return home and let him
keep her in the style to which he once had so joyously accustomed her. In all the muddle and uncertainty of Blanchard's present life, one of the few things he knew beyond doubt was that he would not live under that roof, ever. And neither would Tommy.

So as he watched Susan work, he felt a growing sense of helplessness and frustration. He wondered how to get through to her, how to impress upon her the peril in what she was doing.

“You want me to sell out,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Sell at whatever price I can get and join you in Clayton.”

“That's right.”

“And whether I come broke or in debt doesn't matter?”

“You can get a job, you know that. You were a good account executive before. You can be one again.”

“It's that simple, is it?”

“To me it is.”

“Well, let me ask you this, then. If you
knew
I couldn't join you, or that I wouldn't—if you
knew
this would be for good, would you still go?”

Even that did not make her pause in her labors. “That's just a rhetorical question,” she said. “Because you
will
leave. The Rockton Bank will see to that.”

“Okay, as a rhetorical question, then—I still want an answer.”

“If you won't leave, what happens then?”

“Yes.”

“Then we live apart.”

“Just like that?”

She turned on him now, with the first show of pain and anger he had seen since he entered the room. “Yes,
just like that!
” she repeated. “Just like it was for you tonight, with your barefoot slut.”

Blanchard said nothing after that. There did not seem to be
anything left to say. He thought of telling her what had happened to Shea, but he imagined the story would only have moved her to scorn and laughter, giving her yet another reason why he should follow her back to “civilization.” Finally he just turned from her and walked out of the room, slowly, feeling drunk with exhaustion and shock. He made it to the bottom of the stairs and went over to the davenport, where Whit lay asleep on his side, in the fetal position, with his mouth open slightly and a frown stitched between his closed and fluttering eyes. Blanchard wondered what the boy was dreaming of, what relentless anxiety pursued him even now, in the middle of the night.

Moving quietly, he went on through the kitchen and out the back way, into the cool Ozark night, into air that felt like the touch of a baby's lips compared to the brutal punch of mid-day, the mailed fist of ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit at ninety percent humidity. Unlike most of the ranchers in the area, he did not have an automatic dusk-to-dawn polelight, for he hated the bluish, sepulchral pall they cast on the night. So when the moon was up, as now, he was able to move across his farmyard without artificial light. But even that pleasure could not lift the sudden weight of fear he felt. It struck him that Susan's decision was but an appropriate end for the whole long lousy day, beginning with the bull breaking out and continuing through the afternoon of backbreaking work and the ruckus at the Sweet Creek followed by the new problems Ronda presented him at her trailer and then the incredible scene outside, Shea almost getting killed by Jiggs and his bunch of rednecks. All of it made Blanchard feel oddly vulnerable, like a child or a woman. Suddenly life seemed beyond his power of control.

It was the best time of the year for the cattle, with the grass plentiful and rich and the nights mild, so the stalls in the barn were empty except for old straw and dung. Blanchard was not
sure where he was headed, probably to that point at the far side of the main corral where he could lean back against the fence and smoke a cigarette and view his land gently falling away toward the huge pond he and Clarence had made two years before, and which, when the moon was right, would shine in the darkness like a great silver tray. Often in the hot summer nights he would see the cattle standing in it, cooling themselves. Why this view, day or night, gave him such pleasure he was not sure, except that it was almost a paradigm of that dream which had nurtured him through his deskbound days, all the monkeyhouse meetings when he had chattered away as mindlessly as everyone else. What he had craved then, he knew now, was silence and substance. That was all he had wanted, just a measure of peace and quiet and the feeling that he was doing man's work, honest labor. The ranch had given him that. It had given him back his manhood. And now Susan somehow thought he could give all that up like a piece of real estate and follow her back to Saint Louis, castrated, ready for silliness and noise. Well, she was wrong. That much he knew. He would not go gentle into that good night.

As he was walking past the corral he heard the bull before he saw him, the soft roar of his breathing coming from the other side of the fence. Moving close, Blanchard was surprised to see the animal standing alone inside the corral, the same place where it had been trapped that morning and had wound up with a headgate locked on its neck. But now, in the darkness, not a trace of that humiliation showed. If anything the bull looked to Blanchard more handsome than ever, more the King of Beasts than any mangy cat ever was.

Leaning over the top of the corral, Blanchard spoke to him—“Bull, hey bull!”—but the animal did not move or respond in any way, just stood there, as tall as a horse, only broader, deeper, with short thick legs planted like fenceposts in the dust. It was the eyes that compelled, however, the old
unblinking bovine glare, somehow both impassive and implacable in its mindless hostility. Meeting that gaze, Blanchard was reminded of a time in Saint Louis over a decade before when he had driven at night to Gaslight Square for a going-away party for an art director who was moving to a Dallas agency. Blanchard had had a new car then, a 1967 Impala hardtop, and he had driven around the picturesque gaslit streets of the area for a while looking for a parking place close to O'Connell's Old Irish Pub, where the small party was to be held. Giving up finally, he had settled for a spot two blocks away, pulling into an empty space in front of some tenements, which surrounded the Square and in time would overrun it, as all the phony, nostalgic gaslights gave way to the darker realities of poverty and crime and fear.

On this night, as Blanchard parked and got out of his car, he found himself gazing into the eyes of three young black men lounging on a stoop not twenty feet away. And he would never forget their look—and
one
look it was too, the same in all three pairs of eyes—a cool, almost somnolent surface amusement, taking in his predicament, the shiny new car he could either leave in their tender care or hastily get back into, like any other motherfucking white bigot, and drive on, to some other, presumably safer, location. But it was what was under the veneer that struck him, a kind of primordial antagonism, a blood hatred that he doubted any amount of time or effort or sweet charity would ever mitigate.

After only a moment's hesitation he had gotten back into the car, to park elsewhere, blocks away.

What he had seen on that hot Saint Louis summer night he saw now, in the eyes of the bull: the same implacability, the same aversion of the spirit. And he wondered if in the end it would be the same for him and the ranch as it had been for Gaslight Square and so many other parts of so many other
American cities. He wondered if this dark, unknowable presence would destroy him in the end. He wondered if all this time, ever since he had brought it to the ranch, the animal unknowingly had been preparing his destruction.

Within a few days he would know. And that, he decided, was soon enough.

He spent the night on the front porch of his house, curled up on the old wicker couch that had come with the place. He woke briefly with the light at dawn but fell back asleep, this time to be awakened by Clarence arriving on the dot of seven o'clock, as he always did. Hearing the truck's engine, Blanchard started to get up, hoping to slip into the house before Clarence gained the top of the hill and a clear view of the porch. But he had heard him too late and was not even on his feet as the old pickup rattled past, with Clarence practically leaning out of the window to get a full, open-mouthed gander at him.

Blanchard angrily went inside, used the bathroom, heated and drank leftover coffee and smoked two cigarettes. Then he went to the phone and called Ronda. She did not answer until the sixth ring. Yes, she'd been asleep, she said. But not all night. As he'd told her to do, she had wakened Shea once and he had seemed all right, normal in every way, in fact too normal, warning her that if she woke him again he was going to go back to sleep
on top
of her. He did look bad, though, she said. His face and ribs were swollen and discolored and his hair was matted with blood. Blanchard told her to take him to a doctor as soon as she could and not to worry about the money because Shea had plenty, had just hit on a friend for five hundred dollars. He told her he would call her again later, probably around five. Then he hung up.

He made himself a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon,
fried potatoes, and, again, coffee, two more cups of it, swallowed black and hot. When he was finished, he went into the living room and over to the davenport, where he found Whit still sound asleep, still dreaming. He went halfway up the stairs then, to see if Susan was up. But the bedroom door was closed, as was Tommy's. Coming back down, he went outside, to the equipment shed, where he knew Clarence would be at work on the hay baler, getting it ready for the long days ahead.

Over the years Blanchard had tired of saying good morning to the old man only to get nothing in return except a squirt of tobacco juice and an occasional grunt, so now there was never any greeting between them, no ceremony at all.

“How's it look?” Blanchard asked.

Clarence spat in contempt. “Like a pile of shit, that's what. We be lucky to git a hunnert bales put up.”

The baler was a fifteen-year-old Allis Chalmers that Blanchard had picked up at a farm auction soon after he had bought the ranch. It broke down often and the bales it made were small and light, bound with twine that tended to snap or come loose. Clarence seemed to consider the machine, like most of Blanchard's equipment, a personal affront.

“Everybody else, they goin' to big bales,” he groused. “They know ya can't make it with little old raggy bales like this thing makes.”

“You buy me a big baler,” Blanchard said, “and we'll use it.”

“
Me?
With what I make? Hell, I can bare afford to eat.”

“So I've heard.”

“Yeah, I figger this old contraption be bustin' down about every tenth bale this year. Old Russell's crew buckin' behind us, they be able to pick their noses full time this year.”

But even as he denigrated the machine, the old man was carefully removing and cleaning the gears in the drive train.
Blanchard asked him if he would need help on the baler and Clarence said no, that he could handle it alone. Blanchard told him that he had to go to town that afternoon and that his wife and Whit were going to leave within a few hours for a visit at her father's in Saint Louis and he'd have to be at the house most of the morning, helping her get off.

“You gonna be batchin' it, huh?” Clarence said.

“For a while.”

“That why you slep' on the porch? Sorta gettin' in practice?”

Blanchard ignored the inquiry. “So I'll just check the herd and feed the yearlings,” he said. “If you need me for anything, give a call.”

Clarence wagged his head in consternation. “I jist didn't figger it was that hot last night, I mean to sleep outside like you done.”

Blanchard smiled. “You're getting nosy in your old age, Clarence,” he said.

The old man bristled. “What in hell you mean,
nosy?
I jist seen ya on yer porch when I come in, and I figured you was hot, that's all.”

“Sure you did.”

“Well, I did, goddamnit!”

Blanchard knew he had him going for a change, and he liked the feeling. “That's what I said.”

“But it ain't what you mean!”

Blanchard started out of the barn. “Remember, just call if you need any help,” he said again, as the baler's steel shell rang out behind him. He did not stop, however, for it was a sound he was used to, Clarence kicking out at a stubborn, stupid world.

It took him almost an hour to check the cattle in the various pastures. When he was finished, he loaded a dozen sacks of
wheat-base feed into the pickup and drove out to the dilapidated corral in the corner of the north field, where he unloaded and ripped the bags, pouring them into the feedbunks there before letting in the eager yearlings, all seventy of them. Normally a rancher like himself would have sold these steers and heifers at weaning the previous fall, but cattle prices had been so poor then that he had gambled on wintering them and selling at improved prices this spring or summer. But so far the gamble had failed. Prices were not much better, and in the meantime he had run through all his own hay and had had to buy extra, over a thousand bales at the larcenous price of a dollar-eighty each. So the yearlings were already at market age, would normally have gone through a feedlot somewhere, five months of free-choice corn and supplement, and would have been ready for slaughter at close to a thousand pounds each. Instead they weighed from six to eight hundred, and were a long way from grading choice. That was what the cheap wheat-base feed was intended to accomplish: to give them enough of a bloom so that if and when the market advanced he could ship them at a profit, enough to meet his bank note anyway. That at least was his hope.