Half broke horses: a true-life novel (11 page)

Rooster, however, immediately took a shine to Helen. “She’s real purty,” he confided to me.

But Helen had no interest in Rooster. “He swallows his tobacco juice,” she said. “I get sick every time I see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.”

I didn’t think Helen could afford to be picky at this particular juncture, but it was true that a part-time deputy who’d only just learned to write his name wouldn’t make the best husband for her.

Helen loved my crimson shirt. When she saw me in it, she smiled for the first time since coming to Red Lake. She asked to try it on and seemed so excited while she was buttoning it up that I thought maybe she had shaken off her blues. But as she was tucking the shirt into her skirt, I saw that she was beginning to show. Our story about her coming here to take the desert air wasn’t going to wash much longer, I realized, and regardless of her mood, her problems weren’t going to go away.

HELEN AND I STARTED
attending the Catholic church in Red Lake. It was a dusty little adobe mission, and I didn’t particularly cotton to the priest, Father Cavanaugh, a gaunt, humorless man whose scowl could peel the paint off a barn. But a lot of the local farmers went there, and I thought Helen might meet someone nice.

One day about six weeks after Helen had arrived, we were in the stuffy church, standing then kneeling then sitting then standing again as we listened to the mass. Incense wafted up to the ceiling. Helen had been wearing baggy dresses and a loose coat to hide her condition, but suddenly, she fainted dead away. Father Cavanaugh rushed down from the altar. He felt her forehead, then looked at her for a moment, and something made him touch her stomach. “She’s with child,” he said. He glanced at her ringless fingers. “And unmarried.”

Father Cavanaugh told Helen she must make a full confession. When she did, instead of offering her forgiveness, he warned her that her soul was in mortal danger. Because she had committed the sin of lust, he said, the only place for her in this world was one of the church’s homes for wayward women.

Helen came back from the visit with Father Cavanaugh more distraught than I’d ever seen her. She had no intention of going to any home—and I wouldn’t have let her—but now her secret was out, and the townspeople of Red Lake began regarding both of us differently. Women stared at the ground when they passed us on the street, and cowboys felt free to give us the eye, as if the word had gone around that we were loose women. Once when we walked by a Mexican grandmother sitting on a bench, I looked back, and she was making the sign of the cross.

Early one evening a couple of weeks after Helen made her confession, I heard a knock on the teacherage door. Superintendent MacIntosh—the same man who had given me the boot from my teaching job when the war was over—was standing there.

He tipped his fedora, then looked past me into the room, where Helen was washing the supper plates in a tin pan. “Miss Casey, may I have a word with you in private?” he asked me.

“I’ll go for a walk,” Helen said. She wiped her hands on her apron and made her way past Mr. MacIntosh, who, making a great show of civility, tipped his hat a second time.

Since I didn’t want Mr. MacIntosh looking at the dirty dishes as well as Helen’s suitcase lying open on the floor, I led him through the connecting door into the classroom.

Looking out the window and fingering the brim of his fedora, Mr. MacIntosh cleared his throat nervously. Then he began what was obviously a prepared speech about Helen’s condition, moral standards, school policy, impressionable schoolchildren, the need to set a good example, the reputation of the Arizona Board of Education. I started arguing that Helen had no one else to turn to and stayed well away from the students, but Mr. MacIntosh said there was no room for discussion, he was getting pressure from a lot of the parents, the matter was out of his hands, and while he was sorry he had to say it, the fact was, if I wanted to keep my job, Helen had to go. Then he put on his fedora and left.

I still felt stung and humiliated, and I sat down for a moment at my desk. For the second time in my life, that fish-faced pencil pusher Mr. MacIntosh was telling me I wasn’t wanted. The parents of my schoolkids included cattle rustlers, drunks, land speculators, bootleggers, gamblers, and former prostitutes. They didn’t mind me racing horses, playing poker, or drinking contraband whiskey, but my showing some compassion to a sister who’d been taken advantage of and then abandoned by a smooth-talking scoundrel filled them with moral indignation. It made me want to throttle them all.

I walked back into the teacherage. Helen was sitting on the bed smoking a cigarette. “I didn’t really go for a walk,” she said. “I heard everything.”

I SPENT THE NIGHT
holding Helen in my arms, trying to reassure her that it was all going to work out. We’d write Mom and Dad, I told her. They’d understand. This sort of thing happened to young women all the time, and she could go live at the ranch until the baby was born. I’d start racing horses every weekend, and I’d save all my winnings for her and the baby, and when it was born, Buster and Dorothy could raise the child as theirs and Helen would have money to go start a new life in some fun place like New Orleans or Kansas City. “We have all sorts of options,” I said. “But this one makes the most sense.”

Helen, however, was inconsolable. She was convinced that Mom in particular would never forgive her for bringing shame on the family. Mom and Dad would disown her, she believed, the same way our servant girl Lupe’s parents had kicked her out when she got pregnant. No man would ever want her again, Helen said, she had no place to go. She wasn’t as strong as me, she said, and couldn’t make it on her own.

“Don’t you ever feel like giving up?” Helen asked. “I just feel like giving up.”

“That’s nonsense,” I said. “You’re much stronger than you think. There’s always a way out.” I talked again about the cottonwood tree. I also told her about the time I was sent home from the Sisters of Loretto because Dad wouldn’t pay my tuition, and how Mother Albertina had told me that when God closes a window, he opens a door, and it was up to us to find it.

Helen finally seemed to find some comfort in my words. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Maybe there’s a way.”

I was still awake and lying in bed with Helen when the first gray light of dawn began to appear in the window. Helen had finally fallen asleep, and I studied her face as it emerged from the shadows. That silly platinum hair had fallen forward, and I tucked it behind her ear. Her eyes were swollen from all the crying she’d been doing, but her features were still delicate, her skin still pale and smooth, and as the light filled the room, her face seemed to glow. She looked to me like an angel, a slightly bloated, pregnant angel, but an angel nonetheless.

All of a sudden I felt a lot better about things. It was Saturday. I got out of bed, put on my trousers, and brewed some strong coffee. When it was ready, I brought Helen a cup and told her it was time to rise and shine. A new day was beginning, and we had to get out in the world and make the most of it. What we’d do, I said, was borrow the Flivver from Jim and go for a picnic up to the Grand Canyon. Those mighty cliffs would give us some perspective on our puny little problems.

Helen smiled as she sat there drinking her coffee. I told her I’d go get the car while she got dressed, and we’d get an early start to make the most of the day. “Back in a jiffy,” I said at the door.

“Okay,” Helen said. “And Lily, I’m glad you asked me to come out here.”

It was a beautiful morning, the air so clear and crisp in the sharp light of the November sun that every twig and blade of grass stood out. The range had turned the color of hay. There was not a wisp of cloud to be seen anywhere, and mourning doves were cooing in the cedars. I walked past the old adobe houses and the newer frame houses, past the café and the gas station, past the farm families in town for market day, then all at once I felt like something was choking me.

I put my hand to my throat, and in that instant I was overtaken with a horrible feeling of dread. I turned and ran back as fast as I could, the stores and houses and puzzled farmers all flying by in one big blur, but when I flung open the door, I was too late.

My little sister was dangling from a rafter, a kicked-over chair beneath her. She’d hanged herself.

FATHER CAVANAUGH WOULDN’T LET
me bury Helen in the Catholic cemetery. Suicide was a mortal sin, he said, the worst of all sins, because it was the only one for which it was impossible to repent and receive forgiveness; therefore, suicides were not allowed to be buried in hallowed ground.

So Jim, Rooster, and I drove out onto the range, far from town. We found a beautiful site at the top of a rise overlooking a shallow forested valley—so beautiful that I knew in God’s eyes it must be sacred—and we buried Helen there, in my red silk shirt.

V

LAMBS

Big Jim holding Rosemary

WHEN PEOPLE KILL THEMSELVES,
they think they’re ending the pain, but all they’re doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.

For months after Helen’s death, pain laid so dark and heavy on me, like a big slab of lead, that most days I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed if I hadn’t had kids to teach. The idea of riding horses—much less racing— playing cards, or driving the Flivver out into the country seemed so pointless as to be repulsive. Everything got on my nerves: kids yelling or even just laughing in the school yard, church bells ringing, birds chirping. What the hell was there to chirp about?

I thought of quitting my job, but I was under contract, and anyway, I couldn’t blame the kids for what the parents had done. But I was through with Red Lake, and when the school year was over, I was moving on. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a teacher anymore. I felt like I’d given everything I had to the kids of this town, and when I’d needed a little understanding, their families hadn’t cut me any slack. Maybe I should stop devoting myself to other people’s kids and instead have some kids of my own. I had never particularly wanted kids, but when Helen killed herself, she also killed the little baby inside her, and something about that made me want to bring another baby into the world.

As time passed, and without my even realizing it, this idea of having a baby of my own eased my grief. One day in the spring, I got up early, as usual, and sat on the front step of the teacherage, drinking my coffee as the sun rose over the San Francisco Mountains to the east. The shafts of light gliding across the plateau had that golden color that they get in the spring, and when they reached me, they warmed my face and arms.

I realized that in the months since Helen had died, I hadn’t been paying much attention to things like the sunrise, but that old sun had been coming up anyway. It didn’t really care how I felt, it was going to rise and set regardless of whether I noticed it, and if I was going to enjoy it, that was up to me.

* * *

And if I was going to have a baby, I needed to find a husband. I started looking at Jim Smith in a different light. He had plenty of good qualities, but the most important one was that I felt I could trust that man inside and out. Once I’d made up my mind about this, I didn’t see the need to beat around the bush or make any grand gestures. It was late afternoon in early May with school over for the day when I saddled up Patches and rode over to the garage. Jim was on his back underneath a car, and all I could see were his legs and boots sticking out. I told him I needed to talk to him, so he slowly pushed himself out and stood up, wiping the grease off his hands with a rag.

“Jim Smith, do you want to marry me?” I asked.

He stared at me a moment and then broke into a big grin. “Lily Casey, I wanted to marry you ever since I saw you take that fall off that mustang and then get right back on him. I just been waiting for a good time to ask.”

“Well, this is it,” I said. “Now, I only got two conditions.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The first is that we’ve got to be partners. Whatever we do, we’ll be in it together, each sharing the load.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“The second is, I know you were raised a Mormon, but I don’t want you taking any more wives.”

“Lily Casey, from what I know of you, you’re just about as much woman as any man can handle.”

WHEN I TOLD JIM
how my crumb-bum first husband had given me a fake ring, he got out a Sears, Roebuck catalog and we chose a ring together so I’d know I was getting the genuine article. We got married in my classroom once school was out for the summer. Rooster was the best man. Before the ceremony, he gave me a kiss.

“I knew I was going to smooch you one day, but I didn’t think it would be because you were marrying my buddy,” he said. “Still, I’ll take what I can get.”

Rooster had a friend with an accordion, and since I still had a soft spot for teaching, instead of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” I asked him to play the PTA anthem.

The year was 1930, and I was twenty-nine. A lot of women my age had children who were practically grown, but getting a late start didn’t mean that I wouldn’t enjoy the journey every bit as much—maybe even more. Jim understood why I wanted to leave Red Lake, and he agreed to move his garage to Ash Fork, about thirty miles west, just over the Yavapai County line. Ash Fork was a bustling little town on Route 66 at the base of Williams Mountain. It was a stop on the Santa Fe Railroad, with a roundhouse, and some days the streets were filled with sheep being shipped to market. Ash Fork had a general store run by a descendant of George Washington’s brother, not one but two churches, and a Harvey House restaurant for the railroad passengers, where Harvey Girls in white aprons served you an entire quarter of a pie when you ordered a slice, and diners wiped their mouths with elegant linen napkins.

At the Ash Fork bank, Jim and I took out a loan and built a garage made of Coconino sandstone, laying the stones and spreading the mortar ourselves. We hung the GARAGE sign from Red Lake over the door. With money from the loan, we sent off for a tire pump, a ball-bearing handle jack, and a stack of ribbed tread tires from the same Sears catalog that we’d used to order my ring.

We had also brought the gas pump with us from Red Lake. The big glass cylinder on top was filled with gasoline—dyed red so you could tell it apart from kerosene—and every time you filled a car, air bubbles gurgled up through it.

Business was brisk. Since we were partners, Jim taught me to pump gas. The pump was hand-operated. I’d pump, pump, pump, and the gas would go glug, glug, glug. I also changed oil and fixed flat tires. By that winter, I was pregnant, but I was still pitching in every day, filling up gas tanks and making change while Jim worked on cars.

We built a little house—also made of Coconino sandstone—right on Route 66, which was still a dirt road, and in the dry season, dust kicked up by the wagon wheels and automobile tires sometimes drifted through the windows, coating the furniture. But I loved that house. We ordered the plumbing system from Sears and installed it ourselves. In the kitchen we had running water that gushed out of shiny nickel-plated faucets, and a chain flush toilet—just like the rich people I cleaned for in Chicago—with a porcelain enamel bowl and a lid of mahogany veneer.

When the house was finished, Rooster paid us a visit. Like my dad, he couldn’t believe that anyone would ever want a crapper in the house. “Ain’t it unsanitary?” he asked.

“Everything goes down the pipe,” I said. “If you want to freeze your behind off in an outhouse, that’s fine by me.”

Rooster was just one of those people who didn’t like change regardless of how it might improve his lot. As for me, I was so danged proud of my indoor plumbing that if someone looking for directions knocked at the door, I couldn’t resist the temptation to say, “Would you like a glass of fresh tap water?” or “Do you, by chance, need to use the toilet?”

BY THE TIME I
was eight and a half months pregnant, I had swelled up pretty big. I was happy to continue working at the garage, but Jim thought that in my condition, it might be dangerous. I could slip on an oil spill, he said, or faint from gasoline fumes, or break my water trying to twist off a rusted radiator cap. So he insisted I stay at home, where I’d be safe. For a lot of women, it didn’t get any better than that, lounging around in a housecoat with nothing to do. But after a few days, I started getting cabin fever, cooped up by myself reading books and mending clothes, and maybe that was why I got so irritated with the Jehovah’s Witness who stopped by.

I was usually friendly to folks like Jehovah’s Witnesses, admiring their genuine conviction, but this fellow was particularly persistent, lecturing me, giving me a lot of poppycock about how Armageddon was imminent and for the sake of my unborn baby I needed to seek salvation and convert. Who the hell was he to tell me what I had to believe? I asked. All folks needed to find their own way to heaven. One of the problems of the world today was all the muttonheads— like those Bolshies in Russia—going around convinced they were the only ones who had the answers and killing everyone who didn’t agree with them.

I got so steamed up, pacing back and forth and arguing with the fellow, that without thinking about what I was doing, I sat down on my sewing, and a needle stuck me in my behind. I let out a yelp, started cussing, and tried to work the needle out of my rear, while the Jehovah’s Witness wagged his finger and argued that this was a sure sign from Jesus that I needed to see the error of my way and get right with the Lord.

“What it’s a sign of, mister,” I said, “is that I shouldn’t be staying at home by myself, getting in theological arguments with harebrained strangers.”

I headed back to the garage, where I told Jim what had happened. “I don’t care if I only man the cash register,” I said, “but I’m working until I go into labor. Sitting at home is just too dangerous.”

The baby came two weeks later, on a scorching-hot July day. I gave birth at home with the help of Granny Combs, the best midwife in Yavapai County. One of Granny Combs’s legs was shorter than the other, and she walked with an even worse limp than my dad. She also chewed tobacco, though she was a spitter and not a swallower like Rooster. Still, all the women in the county swore by her. If Granny Combs couldn’t bring your baby into this world, they said, it wasn’t meant to be here.

When I went into labor, the pain started coming in waves. Granny Combs told me that I couldn’t stop the pain, but she could teach me how to get the best of it. What I needed to do was separate the actual pain from the fear that something terrible was happening to my body. “The pain is your body complaining,” she said. “If you listen to the pain and tell your body, ’Yeah, I hear you,’ then you won’t be so afraid of it. I’m not saying the pain goes away, but it ain’t gonna make you crazy, either.”

My labor lasted only a couple of hours, and Granny Combs’s advice did help keep the pain in check—sort of. When the baby came out, Granny Combs said, “It’s a girl,” and held her up. She was purple, and I felt a stab of alarm. But Granny Combs started slapping and kneading her, and the baby let out a cry and gradually turned pink. Granny Combs cut the cord and rubbed the baby’s navel with a burned cork to close up the wound.

Granny Combs had a sixth sense—the way I sometimes felt I did— and could read minds and tell fortunes. While I held the baby and nursed her, Granny Combs tore herself a plug of tobacco and laid out cards to see what the future had in store for my newborn.

“She will have a long life, and it will be eventful,” Granny Combs said.

“Will she be happy?” I asked.

Granny Combs chewed her tobacco and studied the cards. “I see a wanderer.”

I NAMED THE BABY
Rosemary. Roses were my favorite flower, Mary was a good Catholic girl’s name, and Rosemary was a darned useful herb. I was hoping the kid would have a practical side. Most babies looked to me like monkeys or Buddhas, but Rosemary was a beautiful thing. When her hair came in, it was so pale and fine it looked white. By the time she was three months old, she had a wide smile to match her merry green eyes, and even early on it seemed to me she looked a lot like Helen.

Helen’s beauty, as far as I was concerned, had been a curse, and I resolved that I would never tell Rosemary she was beautiful.

A boy followed a year and a half later. A big new hospital had just opened in the town of Williams, forty miles to the east, and I was determined to have my baby there, but as I went into labor, a hellacious winter storm blew in from Canada, covering the roads with drifting snow. We almost didn’t make it through, the Flivver spinning and skidding, but Jim got out the jack and put the chains on the wheels, hunkering down against the driving snow while I sat there taking deep breaths behind the steamed-up windows. We arrived just as my contractions were becoming severe.

Granny Combs’s mind-over-matter method of getting through pain was pretty good when it came to a stubbed toe, and it had helped me get through my first childbirth, but it couldn’t compare to the marvelous modern anesthesia they used to knock me out at the hospital this time.

The doctor put that mask over my face, and I just drifted off to dreamland. When I woke up, I had a son. He was a big bruiser of a boy, the first baby born in that hospital, and the nurses and doctors were as proud as Jim and me. We named him after his dad and from the outset called him Little Jim.

* * *

It was around then that hard times hit northern Arizona. A big part of the problem was that too many farmers and greenhorn ranchers had moved into the area. They didn’t understand that Arizona wasn’t like the land back east, where thousands of years of decaying trees had built up a deep loam. This land had just a thin layer of topsoil that, if plowed, would blow away with the first strong wind. The greenhorns had all made fun of the Navajos for planting each stalk of corn in a little hole three feet from the next, instead of a foot apart in plowed rows, but the Indians understood that was all the soil could bear. Land that God had never intended for the till had been farmed beyond its limit, and too many cattle had grazed the once green range into hard, dry stubble. The grass couldn’t reseed, and when it rained, there wasn’t enough grass to hold the water, so it would run off, eroding the good soil, and the fine land would be ruined forever. When a long drought hit, stretches of countryside all around the state turned to swirling dust, which rose a half mile into the air.