Duster (9781310020889) (24 page)

The town was only a few years old, but it
made up for the raw newness of the lumber by being so busy. And
there wasn't any doubt about the business that went on there. We
had to be careful of the wind around Rockport. Not that it was
blowing so hard—just fierce. We didn't want to have to smell more
of it than we had to.

When we first come up with the herd, we
could see the hide and tallow plants dotted here and there near the
town. There was a few small ones setting around, and about four big
buildings in the pack, each of them big and new and ugly with the
timber not yet weathered down to a comfortable tone.

But what really got us, of course, was that
smell. Lordy, but it stunk. Great heaps of rendered meat were
stacked high around the buildings. The meat turned into rotting,
gray masses that was alive with maggots and buzzards and a white
bird called a sea gull. From a little ways off, the piles of rotten
stuff looked like a live, black and white spotted animal from the
way they was covered with moving birds in those two colors.

The first time an eddy of
wind shifted to me close to one of them piles, I like to puked. I
did gag a couple of times, and for a second or two, I thought it
was all going to come up. It didn't, but for a spell there, I felt
so punk that I wished it
had
come up and got it over with. I never smelt
anything so bad in my life and never expect to smell anything worse
in the future.

The stink laid over everything, and when a
breeze would come up off the water and sweep it away for a second
the clean smell was so good it just made the other seem that much
the worse after the wind fell off again.

Folks who worked around there told us they
got so they didn't hardly notice it once they got used to it, and I
guess that is so for I got kind of used to it myself. But not
completely. It was always there and even if I could ignore it after
a spell, I knew it was there. Just about the time I thought I was
over it, it would sneak up and grab hold of the inside of my throat
and tighten down until I wanted to gag.

Rockport was the world's biggest carrion
heap. It seemed like it was every cow critter in Texas piled up
under a hot sun to die and rot.

With beeves not worth hardly anything for
meat, some fellows had realized that the Yankees and the foreigners
would still want leather and tallow, and Rockport was their way of
turning Texas cattle into cash money. Oh, a few of the
slaughterhouses packed the meat into barrels of brine and sold
bully beef to the army or for use on ships or whatever. And I
believe one outfit was canning some sort of embalmed beef into tins
to sell to the movers who was hitting west in ox wagons. They
called that stuff meat biscuit.

Most, though, never bothered much with the
meat except to render it down to get the tallow out. The meat, they
would throw away. There wasn't hardly any tallow in the
tenderloins, and I saw one farmer hauling a spring wagon loaded
with beef tenderloins. I asked him about it and he said the
factories give them away to anyone who wanted them. He said him and
his missus would eat a few tenderloins, and the rest he'd feed to
his hogs.

It seemed an awful waste, but I guess there
wasn't any other way. I thought about them children back east, but
there wasn't any way to ship the meat to them. Even if somebody
could of stood the cost to ship it, it would of spoilt before it
got there. But I didn't have to like it, and I could tell none of
the others liked it a bit better than me. It was just something
hateful that had to be done if we was to get along.

The way it worked there in Rockport was that
the cattle would be bought for their worth in hides. The packer
would put them in his pens and then drive them inside a few at a
time, or shoot them outside and drag them in if they wanted to act
up.

The hides would be stripped off and put on
racks for drying. They was sold green, to be tanned by whoever
bought them.

The fat was scraped, and the fattier pieces
of meat was thrown into big vats that was kept going all the time
to render the tallow out of the meat. Once the tallow was
collected, it was poured hot into barrels for shipment out.

The bones was piled separate in big heaps
outdoors so the birds and insects could clean away most of the meat
that was left on them. These would be sold too, to be crushed up
and used for fertilizer. The hooves and some of the other scraps
were useful for glue, so they could be sold too.

About the only thing that was considered
really worthless, like I said, was the meat. And that's about
enough to break a cowman's heart, though I guess there's no real
good reason to feel that way. It wasn't that the animals was being
wasted. They wasn't. But it seemed so when you looked out at those
terrible, vile mounds of decaying cow meat heaped up on the
ground.

You can probably understand why only the
culls, only the most useless cattle, was brought on a drive to
Rockport. The only money a body wanted out of there was what he had
to have for his ranch and his family. Any more would seem almost
sinful, for anyone who would of raised animals with no better hope
than to take them to Rockport oughten to of been in the cow
business. Even I could understand that, and me only fifteen at the
time.

Anyway, we'd got our cattle to the market,
and they would end up as a pile of dried hides in one spot and a
pile of rotting meat in another, and we'd go home with enough money
to see us through until a proper market opened up for our beeves.
There was some who said it would be possible to take the cattle
north and sell them at a decent price, and maybe our McMullen
County men could try that the next year. Some folks were said to be
doing it already, so if it worked for them, maybe Mister Sam Silas
and the rest would be willing next year. I know I never wanted to
bring DD cattle to Rockport again if I could help it.

But right then, we was in Rockport and had
cows to sell.

We put the herd on a big holding pasture
back from town a ways and settled them in. They looked around like
they couldn't figure what was going on, what with sand but no rocks
and clumps of grass but not hardly a thorn in sight. These was
brush country cows from the Brasada, and I think they didn't know
how to eat something that hadn't any spines on it.

It wasn't yet noon, but Bill laid on a feed
thick enough to fill up twice as many hungry hands as was with us.
"Keeps 'em out o' trouble if'n they eats befo' they heads fo' the
city," he explained.

Mister Sam Silas and B.J. Hollis rode into
town after dinner and commenced talking with buyers at the hide
factories, looking for the best price they could get. We was all
hopeful of a good figure since we could see they hadn't many
animals in the holding pens right then.

Jesus and me found an empty pen where we
could put the horses and not have to worry about them except to
water them from time to time. That was a good thing, too, for we'd
already been told we'd have to do most of the work keeping the
cattle on their bed. At least, until the growed folks had had a
chance to get into town and work off steam.

I didn't really mind. I didn't want to be
making any public appearances until I had some coins in my pockets
and could get a hat on my head. I was still wearing that dumb rag
Bill had give me back up the trail.

So me and Jesus stayed in camp the rest of
the day and that night too while the other boys rollicked their way
from one end of Rockport to the other. We didn't get to go along,
but we surely heard about it after they got back.

Crazy Longo was feeling plenty better, we
could tell. Him and Ike Partley, though they was a couple sheets to
the wind their own selves, carried big old Eben Dyer home. It
turned out Eben was just as easygoing drunk as sober, which was a
mighty fine thing in a man his size.

Not everybody stayed the same as usual,
though. Lickety-Split Emmons who was just always ready for a joke
or a laugh came home this night in a fine, foul sulk so that any
comment in his direction was turned back with naught more than a
grump and a growl.

And, oh, did many a word get thrown his way.
I'd never heard the like before, but that Tommy Lucas was talking
and laughing so that you'd of thought him and Split should of
changed names for a spell.

Tommy came in singing loud and clear. So
much so I sure was hoping there wasn't none of the governor's
reconstruction police around or there'd be trouble for fair. For it
was "The Bonnie Blue Flag" he was singing—the only song there was
that'd been more popular than Dixie in the recent war and an
affront well calculated to put any carpetbagger in a blue burn had
any been around to hear.

Then here's to brave Virginny,

The Old Dominion state

With the young Confed'racy at last has
linked her fate.

Impelled by her example now

Other states prepare

To hoist high the Bonnie Blue Flag

That bears a single star!

Hurrah! Hurrah! For southern rights,
hurrah!

Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag

That bears a single star!

Then here's to our Confed'racy

For strong we are and brave.

Like patriots of old we'll fight

Our heritage to save,

An' rather than submit to...

"Hey, Split ole hoss, you ain't singin' with
me now. Come on, boy. Rouse up yore mighty lungs, my friend."

Split glowered at him.

"Well, come on now, boy. You wuz whoopin' it
up real fine jus' a bit ago, right boy? Sure, you wuz. I seen
it...seen it all." Tommy screwed his face up into a ball trying to
wink and he poked an elbow toward Split's ribs. He missed, though,
and near fell down. Tommy's legs looked about as sturdy right then
as a wet rope, but it didn't faze him none.

"I seen you go to put yer brand on that
little heifer in Tully's. Yes, I did. An' I seen her bite you,
too."

Tommy howled out loud with his laughing.
Split growled something in a voice too low for me to hear, which
maybe was just as well.

Since Tommy'd mentioned it, I did notice
that Lickety-Split's lower lip looked puffy and sort of gnawed up.
It might of been that that put him in such a mood.

Next thing, Tommy looked over at Split with
a twinkle in his eye and forced the words of Kathleen Mavourneen to
a gay, light tune.

Kathleen Mavourneen, the gray dawn's
abreaking,

The horn o' the hunter is heerd on the
hill,

The lark from her laht wing the bright dew
is shakin'

Oh, Kathleen Mavourneen, what, slumberin'
still?

Oh, have you forgot how soon we must
sever?

Oh, have you forgot this day we must
part?

It may be for years and it may be
forever,

Then why are you silent, you voice of my
heart?

Tommy shook his head. "Sure hated to see you
have to part from that little gal, boy. Sure did hate it." He
grinned at Split, and Split glared back for all he was worth but he
never said a thing.

"Now, the way I see it," Tommy went on,
"what you shoulda done was to let that little ole gal know what a
fine, important cow rancher you be. What you shoulda done wuz to
cut out a few critters an' make her a present of 'em. That's what
you shoulda done, all right."

Split hunched his shoulders a few times like
he was getting ready to throw a punch at Tommy, but he still
wouldn't say anything.

"No need to be riled," Ike put in. Him and
Crazy Longo had laid Eben down on the ground. "You've handed out
enough hazing that you shouldn't fly off the handle when somebody
else takes it up."

Split, he glared at Ike
then and sort of pulled his head
down to
his shoulders like a big old turtle going into its
shell.

"Yeh, take it easy," Crazy Longo said. "You
too, Tommy."

Tommy grinned some more but this time the
expression kind of got away from him and wandered loose all over
his face. His legs gave out and he flowed straight down into a
sitting position. For a little while, he sat there rocking back and
forth and giggling to himself. Then he fell over backward and went
to sleep.

Split snorted like a horse blowing wind.
Then he laid himself down real, real careful right alongside of
Tommy, and he went to sleep too.

"That takes care of them two," Crazy Longo
observed. He set down nearby and pulled a small, flat bottle from
his coat pocket. "Now, fer me an' you."

Ike set down beside him and they shared what
was in it, whiskey I figured, taking turns at the bottle.

Now, I’d never had a drink
of whiskey, though most of the menfolks around McMullen County were
prone to take a drink from time to time, and I begun to figure I
was too old to go on
saying I'd never
tried it. So I sat myself down next to Crazy Longo and politely
asked, "Can I have some?"

Crazy Longo looked over at Ike. And Ike, he
thought for a minute and then, real solemn-like, he nodded his head
once.

They handed the bottle over to me and I
wiped the top with my wrist like I'd seen them do. I took a good
long pull of it, swished it around in my mouth to admire the taste
a bit and swallowed.

Well now, those as have done the same thing
know the heat treatment my insides got, and those that haven't
wouldn't understand anyway. I'll let those next few minutes go by
explaining that I fetched myself a drink of water and then went off
by myself to go to bed.

Ike and Crazy Longo seemed to think it
funny, but they got no consideration for folks. They at least could
of pounded my back so I could of breathed.

"AY, DUSTER. WHAT we wan' do now?" Jesus
asked. We was walking along the main street of Rockport, both of us
swaggering a bit from the cash money in our pockets.