Rhizomania, Part 13

“Did you want me to shoot him in the back?” asked Shorty, shifting the rifle in his arms so he could get at his tobacco pouch.

“You told him to run, you know you did,” said Doran. “We should have kept him at the house and taken him to the sheriff.”

“And told the sheriff that a man came in our barn and moved a horse and tied him up wrong?” Shorty opened the leather pouch, withdrew a cigarette paper and a pinch of tobacco, and began to roll a smoke. “There ain’t any laws against being a just plain stupid person, Doran.”

“They cut the fence!” Doran shouted, curling his hands into fists.  He paced around in a circle, the loose uppers of his mulehide boots rubbing against his bare legs. “They about beat me to death!  They was going to burn the barn down with Redboy and Ben in it!”

Shorty licked the cigarette paper’s edge, finished the tight cylinder, then stuck it in his mouth. He lifted the lantern from its spot on the grassy turf, raised the mantle on it, and applied the hot flame to the end of his filterless cigarette, squinting against the smoke. “Can you prove it?”

Doran found himself angry at Shorty, though he couldn’t say exactly what the older man had done to deserve it. Doran knew he was being unreasonable, but his hot feelings of rage and powerlessness were too much to endure.  

He turned and began to move quickly toward the little stone house, outside the dim circle of  light from the lantern which Shorty, walking behind, carried high over the worn path. In the shadowy pre-dawn dimness,  Doran stepped in little holes and bumped his toes against grassy hillocks as he marched back toward the little house. 

Once inside, he moved to the bunk area, stepped on the backs of each boot in turn to anchor it as he pulled his bare foot free, and otherwise fully dressed, he collapsed onto his side. The crackling mattress was firmly packed within its ticking and it gave very little, badly jostling Doran's injured shoulder. The earliest of the autumn morning’s light was beginning to shine diagonally across the plank floor, but Doran ignored it and shut his eyes.

He had just drifted off when he was jolted awake gain by a knock at the door. He hurriedly jumped from the bed and tucked his shirt into his trousers before carrying his boots into the kitchen. 

Shorty's brother Frank was seated in one of the two cane-bottom chairs. At the wood stove,  Shorty was tapping ground coffee into a saucepan of water which had begun to bubble on the stove top.

“I walked all the way down the path for a cup of cowboy coffee that’s going to be too strong, and not a drop of milk in it, either,” said Frank, grinning at Doran.  He scratched at the side of his bushy mustache with a well-manicured finger.  “Usually my brother has the sense to come up and get some of that good coffee Maybelle brews, and she had some powder biscuits in the oven, too.”

“Some of us lay in the bed and make the lady of the house wait on us hand and foot,” said Shorty, opening the newspaper-wrapped bundle of flour tortillas Hortencia had provided the day before. He carefully inspected the flat bread to see if it was still fit to eat. Shorty pulled one of the tortillas from the middle of the stack and, holding it by one edge, dropped into a blackened iron skillet in which sizzled a puddle of melted lard, right in the center. “But some of us have to stay up half the night chasing off bad characters that wanted to set the barn afire.”

Frank looked startled.  “Our barn?”

"That’s right,” said Shorty, lifting the saucepan of boiling coffee from the top of the stove and shifting the loose grounds by shaking the pan from side to side.  He set the saucepan back on the stove,  then picked the hot tortilla out of the skillet and dropped it, other side down, into the hot lard drippings.

Before the coffee was allowed to boil down to sludge, Doran brought the saucepan to the table and tipped the hot black liquid into three tin cups.  Meanwhile, from a chipped yellow ceramic bowl sitting on the floor near the front door, Shorty gathered up several freshly-laid eggs. He then used the blade of his knife to scramble the eggs in the frying pan in which he’d previously warmed the flour tortillas.  

Next, he took a chunk of salt from a handle-less china cup nestled on the windowsill near the stove, and crushed the salt between thumb and forefinger, liberally sprinkling the eggs.  Shorty then deftly rolled each of the large flour tortillas around a pile of hot scrambled eggs, and brought the plateful of breakfast to the table, where Frank was sipping at his terrible coffee with obvious distaste.

“Next time, boil your old socks and serve that,” said Frank.  He put down his cup, disgusted.

“I don’t wear no stockin’s and you know it,” said Shorty, extending his leg and pulling up his trouser leg to show that his hairy calf rising straight and bare from the leather upper of his boot.  “Stockin’s and belts is for ladies to wear.”  He slipped his thumb under his right suspender, and gave it a loud-popping snap.  “I don’t know what the world’s coming to, all these fancy men with their lady ways.”  He lifted his coffee cup, nearly choked on the contents, and put it down.  “All right, Frank, you got a point.  That coffee ain’t too good, is it?”

Doran had not even considered picking up his own tin cup since placing it on the table.  Focusing on his plate, he picked up the rolled tortilla and took a bite of bread and egg together.  “This is good,” he said around a mouthful.  “And we got good water to drink in the bucket on the porch,” he said, peaceably. 

After the food had been eaten and the remnants scraped into the slop bucket, Frank leaned back in his chair and reached deep into his trouser pocket. He produced a folded sheet of paper.  The paper was obviously of fine quality, and the faint odor of bay rum emanated from the sheet of stationery.  

“Sayre sent Cesario up to the house with the reckoning on Sayre’s cows,” said Frank, placing the paper on the table. He began to press the creases out of the paper with his callused thumb. He did not look at his brother.

“How much?” said Shorty, frowning down at the paper’s figures.

“Well, there’s quite a bit listed on here,” said Frank evenly.  “He’s got seven cows on here at seven dollars the hundredweight, and the veterinarian’s time, and medicine, and the cost of future milk and cows lost, and the cost of burying the dead animals.”

“What, no preacher?” said Shorty.  He rose and carried the pan of undrinkable coffee to the front door, and tossed the black liquid in a dark arc over the silty soil of the dooryard. He turned his ear toward the chair where Frank sat, indicating that he was still listening.

“Sayre's claim is for seven hundred eighty-five dollars,” said Frank, looking down at the paper.  “Including ten dollars for burying the dead stock.”

“What dead stock?” asked Doran.  “I don’t believe he ever lost any stock to start with. Or if he did, it was his own doing “

“He’s put in the claim,” said Frank. “And if he can get Morrison’s brother to enforce it, then that’s all the county knows about the matter and that’s all they want to know.”

“But you and Shorty ain’t got that much money. It's all tied up in the land,” said Doran.  “Well, Shorty’s half, anyway.  And if you sell off your cattle and hogs, and equipment, you’ll go bust.”

“We have to work it off, I reckon,” said Shorty, slowly. “We can’t scrape up eight hundred dollars.”  His eyes strayed to a pair of worn shoes, hanging by their entangled laces, which had hung from the rafters since Doran had first come to stay with Shorty. Doran wondered just what might be tucked into the toes of those shoes. 

“This is how Sayre’s trying to run you off your land,” said Doran.  “Can’t you see it?  If you work his land, you can’t work your own.  You don’t work yours, and you got no money for seed and feed.  Sayre knows what kind of money and work it takes to run this place, and he’s trying to cripple you so you have to sell to him and leave it all behind.”

“If we don’t pay it, he’ll get a judgement on us, sure as shooting,” said Frank.  He smoothed his mustache.  “I didn’t tell Maybelle about the demand yet.  I wanted to see what we want to do about it first.”

“I’ve got to be the one to go work it off,” said Doran.  “It’s the only way to keep the place.”

“You’re not even kin to us,” said Shorty.  His eyes traveled again, guiltily, to the worn black shoes, hanging from their frayed laces.  He looked away from the shoes, fastened his eyes on a set of rough-cut barrel staves in the corner, and moved to these.  He pulled his work bench away from the wall, put the stave onto it, and clamped it down. Then, quickly, Shorty began to use a straight draw-knife to smooth the side of curved wooden slat.

“Good as kin,” said Doran. “Since my mama and Ruth went back east, you and Frank and Maybelle are who I got for family.”

“You don’t have no share in the land,” said Shorty.  “So it ain’t right for you to work off the debt.”

“If we contract Doran in. . .” said Frank slowly, looking down at the boot on his right foot.  He used his thumbnail to dislodge a speck of mud from the outsole, “...that’d be a way to take care of it.”

Shorty unclamped the wooden stave, reversed itas position, and re-clamped it.  He shifted his position astride the wooden bench, then began to work the draw-knife again.  “What kind of terms do you reckon Sayre would take for labor?”

“It don’t matter, does it?” said Doran bitterly.  “Whatever Sayre says is right, well that’s what is considered right, I guess.”

“You don’t have to do it,” said Frank quickly.  “I can talk to Sayre about spreading the money out over three years, maybe five years.”

“It ain’t safe for Doran,” said Shorty suddenly, putting down the draw-knife.  “Sayre's men will like as not find some way to get Doran cornered, two on one or three on one.  They don’t care how they do.”

“They wouldn’t dare,” said Doran.  “Not if it was known that I was there to work out the debt.  Even Sayre wouldn’t murder a man with everybody knowing it.” He wished he felt absolutely sure about what he’d just said.

Shorty unclamped the finished barrel stave, set it against the wall, and selected another one for smoothing.  He carefully adjusted it in the clamp.  “I wish I had some money back that I could spare,” he said.  He stared at the clamp, and fiddled with the wood.  “While you’re working for Sayre, Frank and me can’t pay you.  And that puts you in a bad spot.  I know you like that Barbara Nemecek and her papa won’t let nobody marry her unless they’ve got land of their own.”

“If we contract Doran in on our place. . .” said Frank.

“That’s land he’ll have when we’re gone,” said Shorty.  “Nemecek wants a man that has his own land now.”

“I ain’t ready to marry,” said Doran.  “And you know I need to get some kind of a trade, Shorty.  Or go find me a grist mill and work there, like I used to do.  I’m not suited to all these chores, same thing every day.”

“What would you like to do?” said Frank. “If you could pick and choose?”

“I don’t know,” said Doran. “Wheelwright maybe, or fix watches and clocks. Something where it would be new, each day. New ways to think.”

Frank stood up and stretched.  “We better get the rest of that hay baled, you know it? Maybelle said she thinks it's going to rain in a day or two”

Shorty stood up, brushing shavings from his pants. “I’m ready.  You ready, Doran?”

“I better go ahead and ride over to Sayre’s place,” said Doran.  “The sooner i start, the sooner I finish.”

Frank looked concerned. “I don’t think he wants to receive company without any arrangements made, Doran. You’d best come work with us today, and when Hector comes to help with the hay, we can tell him to send word with Cesario that you want to see Sayre.”


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