- 1950 -
Weld County, Colorado
“You don’t have any idea about any of it, do you?”
Walt shook his head, resigned to pity. “You ain’t been hearin’ nothin’ but what you want to hear – that’s what I think. That damned Jake made your brain go funny and now you don’t know where up is.”
Py jabbed his pitchfork into the wet, moldy hay and ripped a patch loose, defiant in his alleged ignorance. “Well, it’s not fair,” he said, tossing the mulch up onto the trash trailer, piling high with refuse. “Jake worked hard as anybody around here.”
“Well, he put in the hours…” Walt glanced over toward the house, where young Lily Walker watched them from the shade of her daddy’s front porch.
Py looked over at her just as she was impatiently swatting away from her face a fallen hank of hair, escaped from the mass of blonde locks she had casually pinned up on her head in an effort to stay cool in the summer heat. She was a beauty, no question in that. Jake hadn’t been any more immune than anyone else.
Walt looked at Py, looking at Lily. "And that's only the half of it anyway," he said, as if he could see what Py was thinking. "I guess you heard that Jake got caught takin' money out'a Walker's desk."
Py snapped out of his brief mental lock. "He weren't doin' no such thing," he said flatly.
"Well he sure was," Walt said. "He told me his self a week ago. Said then he'd already got over a hundred dollars out'a there -right out'a the middle drawer, where Walker keeps payroll."
Py looked dubious. "You mean he was takin' guys' pay? Jake wouldn't do that
-he wouldn't do another guy that way!"
Walt looked at Py dumbfounded. "You know, Py -you got this notion in your head that Jake is some sort of advanced spiritual being or something. But he's not. I don't even think he's religious."
"Well, maybe not, but I think we'd notice if someone was takin' our pay," Py said. "I only get thirty-eight dollars a week. It ain't so much I can't keep up with it."
"Well I'm telling you -Jake told me this out of his own mouth," Walt said, a little exasperated.
Py was unshakable. "Are you out any?" he asked.
Walt went blank for a moment, then admitted -"No, I guess not."
"I ain't heard nobody say nothin' about bein' out, so if Jake took money -and I don't believe he did -then it was Mr. Walker took the loss." Py straightened himself up, buoyed by his deduction and his defense of his friend.
Walt grumbled a bit and spiked his eyes one way and the next, throwing darts. The possibility that only the boss got hurt did kind of take the devil out of the crime. "Well, I guess he did then. Thing is, Jake did tell me that he took the money. And that's part of the reason he's no longer here to be a part of these conversations. That's all I was saying."
The truth behind why Jake Jobbs had been fired was obscured by the fusillade of rumors surrounding his departure. Jake had run into the ranch foreman, Jarvis Lang, only a minute after Frank Walker ordered him off his property, and Jake told Jarvis he'd been canned for demanding time off. Walt was the only other hand Jake had seen that night, running into him while gathering up his things from the bunkhouse, and he'd told Walt the same partial truth. Between this story, Jake's own strange claims of money pilfering, and the fiasco with Lily, there was all manner of intrigue swirling around Jake Jobbs. It was like dust devils around snake holes, and no one looking on could really tell where the nub of the matter lie.
Walt tried to put his mind back on his work, but he didn't stop talking. "It just comes down to who you got on your side anyway, and who you got again' ya. Jake was already null and void."
"Why?" Py asked.
"Because there's things goin' on with that guy more than what shows," Walt said, with certainty. "People don't like that in a person."
"Everybody likes Jake," Py countered.
"Yeah, everybody who doesn't know him likes him -and that includes everybody who knows him!"
Py thought about it for a moment, then shook himself free from the temptation to ask Walt to explain his thinking. He'd learned from experience that Walt's logic rarely targeted destination points, but instead meandered to the backsides of hard to reach places. It was best to just pretend not to have heard. He looked back over toward Lily, who was now swinging with one bronze-tanned leg pulled up in front of her. "Well, what d'ya suppose he'll do now?"
Walt frowned. "Who -Jake?" He expelled a volume of air, apparently contaminated by the ignorance of the question. "He'll probably go get drunk, run into a
girl, take her father's money and then go get drunk again. It's just an endless cycle of evil, Py. Your boy Jake's a criminal."
Py didn't believe Walt knew what he was talking about, though his seniority made it impossible for Py to dismiss him completely. He'd been places Py had only dreamed about -California, Mexico -and he'd met some types in his time. Py didn't want to believe Walt's take on Jake, though. Fortunately, he was rescued from getting bogged down with heavy questions. "Jake ain't worth givin' no more thought to," Walt said. "I'd drop it if I was you. I'd think about somethin' else."
Worldly or otherwise, Walt didn't realize the size of the void Jake's departure had left in Py's world. Association with Jake had made Py's stay at Walker Ranch the best period of his "adult" life. He'd been lifted by it, in some way. Jake had provided a center to his days. He had regaled Py with tales of broader experience and supplied him with a notion that the world beyond Walker Ranch was accessible to those who knew how to work it. He had given Py, mired in the lowest of social echelons, hope that one day he could have something better, and now it was unsettling for Py to have Jake gone. He had neither the brick nor the mortar to build a vision for himself. All Py had was his work, and whatever kind of a world he could carve for himself out of that. He didn't like thinking about it. He didn't mind the actual labor so much, but thinking about it depressed him. Maybe if he were a real cowboy, a top hand, that'd be different -he'd be kind of like a professional person -but that wasn't the level Py had achieved. He knew he was just a body on a crew of expendables, a scarecrow to position near gates when the real cowboys were driving cattle into pens. Even the dangerous nature of his work didn't assuage his deficit pride. Hell, there wasn't anything to be proud about being a human sacrifice. Any day one of those big beefers might become obstinate, faced with what they were, and express their dissatisfaction by walking right over him rather than giving in to the slaughter. Nobody'd get too upset should young Py be found lying lifeless in the mud. That's why he was the one who was put there, because if something bad did happen to him no one would care. It was pretty tough to feel a lot of pride in that.
The other down side to having Jake gone was that now Morrison, Tate and the other hands wouldn't have anything to do with either he or Walt. Jake had forced the others to accept them -the "nigs" as they were known -into the main circle of guys. The real cowboys had enough respect for Jake that they allowed him his idiosyncrasies, which included his choice of friends. They never pretended that Py and Walt were equals among them, but at least they left them alone and didn't harass them, as they otherwise probably would have. Now, without Jake around to protect them, they were canon fodder, subject to abuses of all kinds.
Py banged his hay fork hard a few times against the trailer, trying to clear it of the wet, rotting compost that underlie the straw they were moving. "I'll be glad when this is done," he said, "this stuff stinks worse than scours."
"You may as well quit your complaining right now -it ain't gonna get better," Walt said. "We got to go pick up a couple truckloads of hay in the morning -just the two of us. Walker wants us to take it out to that forty head over by Niswonger's. They ain't left nothin' out there but dirt." Then he grumbled to himself. "We're gonna be winter feedin' from now to next June."
Py glanced up at the late summer sun and thought for a moment about the daunting task ahead. "If tomorrow's anything like today it's sure gonna be hot for hay bales."
"The hay'll be fine," Walt said. "It's the human element worries me."
"You keep your foot away from that clutch!"
Walt yelled out the directive from his position on the flat-bed of the truck, now stacked six tiers high with bricks of hay tied snugly with coarse twine. He'd been bossy since an incident earlier this morning, when Py had popped the clutch while ascending a terrace and dumped the day's first half-load -and Walt with it. "If it starts to cough, don't try to save it. Just ease in on the clutch and let her coast back."
This whole country was newly landscaped with steep terraces, meant to hold what little water fell on the eastern Colorado plains -usually under nineteen inches a year. When the rains did come they usually came in torrents which in the past had turned these fields into temporary flood plains. The biggest problem with that was that the water quickly drained into the Little Thompson and other small tributaries, and eventually into the South Platte River, which ran on east, supplying irrigation waters for farmers in Nebraska. The government gave Colorado farmers incentives to save what they could by using these deep terraces to trap the run-off and send it down into the aquifer from which it could be recovered. Farming the terraces, however, was a trick. They stayed muddy for days, sometimes weeks, after a rain, long after the rest of the fields they were located in were dry enough to till. And once they were dry they posed a real challenge to farmers who worked them in parallel fashion, steering their plow-pulling tractors along the steeply angled faces, which threatened to tip their rigs. Flatbed trucks, piled high with hay, couldn't take the same route so drivers took the terraces straight on, going up and over the top, though the angle of attack called for steady nerves. And this was Py's problem. His were always a little ragged.
Frank Walker had been the first in Weld County to buy the new technology that made it possible to do an efficient two man haying operation. It consisted of a four- wheeled conveyer that fixed to the side of a flat-bed truck. A broad, double-toothed chain snagged bails up off the ground and pulled them up a chute, inclined at forty-five degrees, which flattened out to a small porch at the top. From there, a man with a hay hook would pull the bails off the loader and place them on the flat-bed in interlocking fashion. Pyand Walt had decided to alternate jobs with each load, one driving the truck, the other pulling the bails off the steel belt and setting them in place. They'd stack the load seven high then rope it down tight and transport the lot over to the north fields, where Walker's cattle were dying for cud. Then Py and Walt would switch places and head back for another load.
Walker's modern technology helped, but it was still exhausting work for whomever was on the back of the truck. Even though he always refused to do the manual part of the job, Jake's being gone was significant, because he did have a feel for the clutch and, driving that truck around the field in granny, he kept the ride smooth and stable. The three of them could get a load in just over an hour and they made a steady team with Walt and Py on the back, however much Walt resented the set-up. "That Jake's a lazy bastard," he'd say. It bugged him that Jake seemed to assume a position of seniority, especially given that Walt was twenty years older. "You ever run tractor- trailers?" Jake would ask. "Eighteen wheelers with dual axle gear boxes?" And Walt would have to admit that he hadn't, though it was a mystery to him what that had to do with driving Walker's old RE0 Speedwagon around a field. "Well, I have," Jake said. "Besides, I'm a cow-hand. I don't do farm labor."
"Jake's no cowboy," Walt would say -an opinion widely shared by those on the spread who were cowboys. But Py didn't mind that Jake was a driver, for Py wasn't and didn't really want to be. He hadn't been licensed to drive a car, mostly because the synchronization of clutch, break and acceleration pedals were mysterious to him and made him nervous. As long as he wasn't alone on the back of the truck, lugging those hay bricks, Py had been satisfied to let Jake drive. Now, however, Jake was gone, and there was no way one man could stand riding that flatbed all day, bucking bales as heavy as these. Py knew he needed the break that driving chores provided, so he reluctantly accepted the idea of sitting behind the wheel.
Py looked up over the dashboard at the approaching terrace. It looked like the Hoover Dam to him, looming so high that it blocked his view of anything on the far side, and he felt a lump grow in his throat at the thought of having to negotiate the grade. He glanced in the side-view mirror, angled in such a way that he could see Walt, high atop the load, rhythmically pulling bales off the loader and packing them into place, glancing up himself occasionally to see where Py was headed. He felt the truck buck a little as Py eased off the gas. "Keep her steady," Walt said, and Py gripped the steering wheel tighter in preparation for what lie ahead. "Remember, if you start to lose her just push the clutch in and let her slide back off the hill. Don't jerk it and lose this load! It's too damned hot out here to be loading everything twice."
Hot and scary -that's the way Py looked at it. It seemed like the whole day had been geared toward something terrible happening. When he and Walt arrived at the hay field about six o'clock this morning they found that more than twenty buzzards had arrived there ahead of them. The large birds stood spaced precisely atop a row of fence posts that lined the field, all facing the rising sun, their wings opened to their sides, as if in tribute to some powerful, inexorable force. It seemed eerie and unspeakable to Py, who had not seen it before. It was as if he had been late to discover an ugly sub-theme underlying all of life, and it had sent a shudder down his spine. Dark birds with naked red heads religiously waited to rend flesh from stilled bones. He looked anew at the purifying dawn.
As Py started up the terrace he again glanced into the side mirror and he could see Walt standing in a crouched position, trying to ready himself atop the load. A bale hung precariously on the edge of the loader platform as another bounced atop the conveyer behind it, pushing at it from the back, trying unsuccessfully to dislodge its predecessor. Walt paid no attention, locked in as he was on the nose of the truck, angling slowly skyward. "Hold her steady," Walt said, trepidation apparent in his voice.
Py could feel the truck losing speed as he started up the grade, then it lurched slightly. Through the back window of his cab he caught a glimpse of the shifting load. "Hold her, Py!" he heard Walt yell, then the truck lurched again, more sharply this time as the engine sputtered to a near stall. "Hold her!" cried Walt, and Py pressed down on the accelerator to keep the truck moving ahead. But it was too late. The truck lurched once again and the engine started to go dead. In a panic Py depressed the clutch pedal, then before he thought about what it would mean, he pressed on the gas to keep the engine going -and he popped the clutch.
The front tires of the truck came up off the ground as the nose lurched skyward, and suddenly Py felt the load shift radically backward. He heard Walt yell as the bales avalanched off the back of the bed and, hearing that, Py depressed the clutch once again. The truck immediately rolled backwards down the terrace. Py realized what was happening and hit the brake, but the abrupt stop only added to the momentum of the load, which now crashed with a tremendous rush of energy off the back of the truck. Horrified, Py looked in the side mirror, hoping to see Walt, but Walt wasn't in view. "Walt!" cried Py. "Walt! Are you okay?" But he heard nothing. Py pulled the lever to set the emergency brake and then killed the engine. He opened the door and jumped out of the cab, tumbling to the ground as he landed on the side of the terrace, looking toward the back of the truck even as he rolled. It was a disaster, one hundred pound bales strewn randomly behind the truck, some crushed up underneath the angled bed, having lodged there when the truck slipped backward.
"Walt! Walt!" Py jumped up off the ground and hurried to the back of the truck. "Walt!" But Walt was nowhere to be seen and Py immediately realized that he was somewhere beneath the mountain of hard-packed hay. He began picking up bales, tossing them aside, looking for Walt, but without success. Then he saw a boot, a glimpse of blue jean, and he frantically unpiled other bales to get to his fallen friend.
Walt was crushed beneath the load, his skin torn, ripped to raw bleeding wounds by the sharp edges of the straw. His eyes were wide open, but lifeless as he stared up at Py from between the blood-soaked hay, his neck swollen and already turning blue from the fracture of his spine.
END OF CHAPTER ONE