The City of Lovely Brothers (12 page)

"Boys, think you could ride on home and borrow your ma's tweezers?" Caleb asked. Clay and Jared roared with laughter.

Caleb frowned at them and put his hands on his

hips. "What d'ya think is so damn funny? If you got anything that can match what your Uncle Caliban got, get 14down from your horses and show us!"

"I ain't ashamed o' my sausage," Clay said with a cocky air. He got off of his horse and pulled his pants down to his knees. Not to be outdone, Jared did, too.

"Harrumph!" Caleb snorted. "Ain't no wonder nobody never catch you two gallivanting across the range without nothing on!"

"Okay, we had our fun," Caliban said. "We can quit joking around. Why don't you three go on ahead and pour yourselves a cold glass of lemonade? I'll catch up with you soon."

Clay hitched up his pants and got on his horse.

"You're safe to run around out here in your birthday suit all you want, Uncle Caliban," he said. "Ma can't ride this far out anyway. She got to stay home to nurse the baby."

* * * *

Julia had conceived her fourth and last child while the house was going up. It was due at the end of February.

After Christmas, she asked Calhoun to ask Darcie to come stay with them the month before the baby came so she would be there to help with the delivery.

"We can send for her when the time comes,"

Calhoun told her. "What if there's a blizzard? What if the pains come on suddenly and the baby comes before she gets here?

What if there're complications?"

"I don't wanna ask no favors of Calvin." The brothers rarely spoke to each other anymore unless it had something to do with the herd.

Julia kept at him for two weeks until he gave in.

Calvin told Darcie he didn't mind her going… "for Julia's sake."

"It ain't up to you whether I go or not," she snapped.

"Why don't you make it up with Calhoun? Julia's baby would be a good excuse to do it."

If Julia had had a girl Calvin might have made up with them, but the baby was a boy. Calvin couldn't bear to think that the empire he had built would go to Calhoun's children.

They named the baby Jacob after the Billings doctor who had saved Caliban's leg. Caliban was touched and asked to stand as godfather for him. The baptism had to be put off until the end of April, because the snow cover was too thick that year for the pastor to come to the ranch.

Caliban could not see enough of the baby, but to get to where they lived he had to drive to the village and then clear around the perimeter to the entrance of the former Johnson ranch. In winter he probably would not get to see it 15at all. So, at the end of summer. he started pressuring Calvin to make it up with Calhoun. He would have pressured Calhoun instead if he saw him more often.

Calvin refused to budge. Caliban argued with him with Darcie standing right there, but it made no difference.

"I want you to do it, Calvin," Darcie said firmly. "If Calhoun ain't man enough to do it, you should. I miss Julia; I miss the kids. Julia's my only friend."

"Julia's welcome to come whenever she pleases, and so're her kids. Calhoun can come too. I ain't stopping him.

But I ain't gonna be friends with him no more, so quit bending my ear about something that ain't gonna happen."

Darcie kept after him, however. She argued that

Caladelphia was more than just a ranch; it was, or ought to be, a family. It was named after the brothers; they had always lived and worked together. Now Caleb and Caliban were living twelve miles away in one direction and Calhoun almost twenty miles away in the other, and there was no road between their houses as there was to Caleb and Caliban's. They may as well have had three different ranches, and in reality they did. The Caladelphia was only a single ranch on paper, if that. Caliban's and Caleb's portions on the west side were essentially unused open range where Calhoun sometimes grazed his cattle. He crossed into it on the north side through land he and Calvin had bought 15jointly. If the hard feelings dividing him and his brother went on much longer, Calhoun would have the deeds to the old Johnson ranch and the quarter their father had left him redrawn and combine the two into one ranch belonging to him and Julia. Then it would be official. He would build his own barns and stables and hire his own workers.

It would go further, too. In order to maintain their neutrality in what they were right to consider a pointless feud, Caleb and Caliban would combine their quarters into yet another ranch. Hadn't they moved away and built themselves a house after Calhoun went to live in the Johnson house? How often would they see each other once the two of them were running a ranch of their own?

Calvin's holding would become a medium-size ranch between two larger ranches.

It must have been her last argument that made

Calvin relent. A week before Christmas Caliban came home from the stables all excited, bursting to tell Caleb the good news.

"Calvin gave in. When he sees him at church in town on Christmas, he's gonna ask Calhoun to make peace.

Darcie's making a big Christmas dinner for everyone to celebrate when we get back."

"Yeah, I heard about that. You know why he's doing it, don't you? Darcie refused to sleep with him until 15he did."

Calvin and Calhoun made it up at Christmas and

promised to put aside their grievances. But the end of the feud did not bring the family together, nor did things go back to how they had been before their argument. They lived in different houses, and the men only saw each other at work.

Caliban was in a happy mood, driving home in the sled with Caleb after Christmas dinner. "Ain't it wonderful we're all friendly-like again?" he said. "Wasn't it great to see 'em shake hands?"

"Yeah," Caleb said. "They shook hands. They didn't hug."

Caliban was twenty-five; Caleb was thirty-eight.

Caliban had seemed depressed for over a week, and Caleb was worried about him. In the middle of one of their late-night chats, he asked point blank what the matter was.

"Ain't nothing the matter. Got a bit of a headache, that's all. Been working too hard. In fact, I think I oughtta turn in now."

Caleb knew he was lying. He was even cutting short their talk in order not have to speak about it. Caleb lay in bed awake for half an hour, and then decided to walk right into Caliban's room and have it out with him. They made free of each other's rooms, and went into them even when the other wasn't there. They hardly ever knocked.

When he put his hand on Caliban's doorknob,

though, Caleb paused. What if his brother was feeling low because he wasn't getting any? What if he walked in on him beating off, and not under the covers, either! So he knocked.

"Caliban, you up?"

"Yeah, I'm up. Been having trouble sleeping lately.

Another reason I'm tired all the time."

Caleb sat on Caliban's bed. "I want ya to tell me 15what's wrong," he said. "I thought you told me everything.

If you can't sleep, there gotta be a reason for it."

"I don't wanna talk about it now."

"You are gonna talk about it now. I ain't getting off this here bed till you tell, and you ain't neither. I'm gonna sit here and you're gonna lay there until you do, even if we're here all tomorrow and the next day and skip out on our chores. Now, out with it!"

"It ain't nothing much. At least, it ain't nothing you can help with. I been facing the facts. The hip's getting worse every year. How much longer will I be able to work the stables? Till I'm thirty? Yeah, maybe, if I'm lucky. I can't even climb up in the loft by myself no more."

"Can't you think of no other kinda work to do?"

"Yeah, I thought about it. I could become a schoolteacher. But it'd take me two years to get a certificate, and I can't do it here. I made up my mind that's what I'm gonna do, but I been putting it off. Working up the nerve to tell the others. Working up the nerve to tell you. You especially."

"Would ya hafta be away two years?"

"I think I could come back for the summer."

"Where'd you go to get this certificate?"

"I don't know. Some city somewhere. I thought maybe Billings, but there ain't no place there I know of to 15earn a teaching certificate."

"Could you do it in Laramie, where Callie is? That way you'd be with family, and you wouldn't feel so bad.

Maybe I could come down and visit."

Caliban suddenly cheered up, as if Caleb's

suggestion had magic in it. "That's a great idea, Caleb! I bet I could get one in Laramie. Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you were too busy moping, I bet."

Calvin said that if Caliban was going to learn a trade, he should learn something that would be useful for the ranch, like becoming a veterinarian.

"You need a high school diploma to get in

veterinary school, Calvin, and I ain't got one. And it takes four years to get a vet's license, not two. Anyways, being a horse doctor's hard work. I don't think I could do it with this hip."

"Well, I don't know what we're gonna do with no schoolteacher. We got Miss Sachs, and she's happy to be here. I think she's sweet on that stable hand friend of yours."

"Nick? Yeah, I think so too, but she's fifteen-sixteen years older'n him. The question is, is he sweet on her?"

"Don't look like he is."

"Then she ain't about to marry him, is she?"

* * * *

Caleb wrote to Callie, and she made inquiries.

There was a place to get a teaching certificate in Laramie.

The course would begin September 1st. She could sign Caliban up for it right now. They had an extra bedroom he could stay in. Her children were growing up. Her oldest was married already and out of the house.

The woman who ran the teachers' school had her

doubts that Caliban could earn his certificate in two years, though he had passed all the entrance exams with flying colors. "You write well enough, Mr. Caldwell," she told him, "but dear Lord! your speech! You can't stand in front of a classroom full of children and say words like ain't and use double negatives."

"I know what's correct, but I've never tried making an effort to speak differently. I grew up talking as I do, so it's an ingrained habit. I do believe I can improve if I set my mind to it, however."

"Well, that was perfect English. If you concentrate on how you say things for two years, it's not unlikely you'll be able to break those bad habits."

By Christmas he was speaking like a schoolteacher or a big-city lawyer.

Caliban soon discovered he learned more quickly than the others in the program, but he liked going to school with people who already knew things, and he thought he would enjoy teaching.

* * * *

Callie was happy to see her brother again, now a grown man. Caliban had always been popular with

everyone, and he got on well with Callie's family. He became fast friends with her husband, Robert. But he missed Caleb, and also Jaggers and his friend Nick, and they missed him. Jaggers was getting very old and might not live through the winter. There was no way he would live long enough for Caliban to earn his degree.

Caliban sent Caleb a letter twice a month to tell him how things were going, and to Callie's surprise, Caleb always answered as soon as he received it. "You really are close, ain't you?" she said. "Like best friends."

He wrote less often to Nick, only three letters

during his first year in Laramie. Of course Nick was only one of his stable hands, and the other workers would have found it odd if the boss had written him more often. That they were fast friends was unusual enough.

Callie fretted about her brother's hip. She had been relieved when he wrote her about a year after he returned 15from Billings that it had healed completely, but then it turned out it had not. When she saw him walk, she would shake her head sadly and ask again, "You say it ain't grown at all since Doctor Brewster set it?"

"No, and my thigh bone stopped growing when I was sixteen; the left not for another year and a half."

"The limp ain't as bad as I thought." She was lying.

It was worse, though not much worse.

"Maybe not, but it ain't getting no… I mean, it isn't getting any better. Every year it hurts a little more and I can do a little less."

They left it at that, but when she took Caliban

shopping for respectable clothes —it would not do to go to the teacher training school in a work shirt, overalls and cowboy boots— her worry increased.

Finding shirts and a vest and a hat and shoes that fit Caliban was easy, but it was impossible to find slacks that sat right around his waist. There would be no problems shortening the right leg half an inch, but all the salesmen agreed that the entire right side needed to be cut differently from the left; taking them in at the seat would not fix them.

Callie had to take him to a tailor.

Neither of them had foreseen that finding a pair of dress slacks would pose a problem. Caliban had always bought ready-to-wear dungarees and overalls. Suspenders 15or tightening his belt did the job for dungarees, and overalls just hung loosely on him. A good pair of slacks, however, had to fit properly.

The tailor took the usual measurements and told

them come back in two days for a fitting. The slacks he made were no better than what was available in the ready-to-wear shops. The tailor took Caliban to the fitting room to take his measurements again, this time with his pants off, and this time the tailor only basted the trial pair he made for him. They fit better, but not well enough, so back they went to the fitting room. Callie waited for close to half an hour while the tailor measured and re-measured every part of Caliban he could think of. "This time it will work," he said, "but I'm only going to make one pair so we can be sure.

And when you wear them, always dress on the right." He had to explain what that meant.

The slacks fit well, and the tailor made two more pair, but the next year Caliban thought they fit less well, and went back to the same tailor. The tailor felt and pulled at them in a few places, twisted them a wee bit to adjust how Caliban had put them on, and said that as far as he could see, they fit just fine.