The City of Lovely Brothers (26 page)

The population of Caladelphia would decrease by

nearly a quarter before the end of the following summer, although no one saw it coming. In April 1917 the United States would declare war on Germany, and most of the younger ranch hands would be mobilized, including Calhoun's three oldest sons. Jake, who had just begun medical school, was excused, and Nick, too, was not called, although he was only three years older than Clay.

* * * *

In July of that year, Hester married at the age of twenty-six. Her wedding would be the last big celebration at the ranch.

She had become engaged to one of Calhoun's

cowherds, his best flank rider on the cattle drives, a man in his late twenties. They arranged the marriage in haste, for he, along with Clay and Jared, had received his orders to report for military service at the beginning of August. The match displeased Calvin, not because the man worked for Calhoun, but because he was a hired hand. He would have liked her to marry the veterinarian, but one of the ranch 32hands' grown daughters hooked him before he had been there three months, and as Hester said, Charley swept her off her feet.

Charley Dix was a broad-shouldered man, almost as tall as her father, and very handsome and easy-going, always laughing and smiling, and not at all bossy, which must have made a welcome change from her father's dour moodiness. Calvin would not openly admit it, but he was dissatisfied with how his son was turning out. He told himself the boy was only nine and would shape up as he got older. Darcie was pleased with Hester's choice. She thought Charley would make her a good husband and they would have a happy marriage.

Calvin had a large house built for the couple near Miss Sachs's old house, a short distance beyond the side-by-side rows of smaller houses for the ranch hands with families, but still close to the village and the original homestead where he, Darcie and Calvin Jr. lived. The house had its own well, with pumps inside over the kitchen sink and in the bathroom. Darcie wanted this daughter to stay on the ranch, so she kept at her husband until he agreed to give them the plot of land it was on as well, with the deed to it made out in their names, and to give them money to have Caladelphia's joiner build them nice furniture. Hester had become more like a friend than a 32daughter to her. Her only other close friend was Julia.

Betsy, Tilda, and their husbands would be coming for their sister's wedding and staying a whole week, and they were bringing the grandchildren Calvin and Darcie had never seen, too. Darcie was ecstatic. Betsy's Tom and Tilda's Mamie and Eliza were the clan's only grandchildren so far. Her daughters had come back to visit only once before, before the children were born and not both at the same time. Finding four rooms to accommodate all of them posed a problem. Until Hester was legally married, there would only be two spare bedrooms in Calvin and Darcie's house, and Hester did not want to move into her new home until she could live there with Charley, who for the time being was still living in the bunkhouse. The house Calvin had had built for them had three bedrooms, but it would not do to have another family there on their wedding night and for three more days after that. Calhoun and Julia could make room for one of the families in their house, and Caleb said Betsy's Tom could stay with his boys, but Darcie was unwilling to let either of her daughters or any of her grandchildren be so far away for the few days they would be at the ranch. They resolved the difficulty by asking the Cutters, one of the married ranchers who had a son Tom's age, to put the boy up for a week. The arrangement worked well and the two boys hit it off right away, but Darcie had 33to prod Calvin into offering the Cutters a little something for taking Tom in.

As it happened, Betsy's and Tilda's visit was not all unmitigated joy. Betsy had news to tell her mother that devastated her. She had not only come to see her sister married, but also to bid her family farewell. She and her husband would be moving to Seattle in a month or two. It had been a tough decision to make, but they had to face facts. The price of silver had not stabilized since it plummeted in 1893, and it had continued to fall steadily as gold soared. Gold had been discovered in Butte, and after that copper, but the veins proved to be small. Although the federal government still bought silver to mint coins, the great Rocky Mountain silver mines did not have much of a future, and Livingston was dying. It was time to get out.

For Darcie, Betsy might as well have chosen to live in China. "And Tilda, is she thinking of going to live halfway around the world, too?" she asked.

"They ain't decided what to do yet," Betsy said, "but they won't go as far as Seattle. Ray won't live in a big city.

If they pull up stakes from Livingston, it'll be to go back to working a ranch."

Darcie made up her mind to shove her sad thoughts aside and enjoy the wedding and make the most of having her daughter and grandson near her while she could. She 33succeeded during the day with her grandchildren and the wedding preparations to keep her occupied, but at night she cried herself to sleep.

It was misleading and perhaps cruel of Betsy to let her mother think that the ranch Ray and Tilda chose might be Caladelphia. She knew that they were talking about leaving Montana and had set their sights on somewhere in Nevada, but had not yet made up their minds. When and if they did, Tilda would tell the family. For the time being, Betsy's decision to go to Seattle had upset Darcie enough.

The preacher came to the ranch in the middle of the week to perform the marriage. Calvin made their wedding day a holiday. The ranch hands' wives set out a long buffet table in front of the main house, piled high with food they had cooked.

To get the kids out from under everyone's feet while the women were setting up, Caliban and Nick took the Caldwell boys for a swim in the morning — five of them, between six and fourteen years old: Brandon, Logan, Calvin Jr., Betsy's Tom, and also Jeremy, the rancher's son Tom was staying with. The swimming hole was off in the middle of Calhoun's pasture land, a large pond about fifteen feet deep with a muddy bottom and thick with weeds at one end. At the shallow end, where the cattle watered, the grass had worn away to create a kind of dirt beach, hard-packed and littered with cow pies.

"How long has it been, Nick, since we were here last?" Caliban asked.

"Seems like forever."

To reach the pond you had to cross a stretch of

terrain too rough for a wagon to manage, and it was almost a four-mile walk from Caladelphia. They had stopped 33coming there when it had got to be too hard on Caliban's hip to sit in front of Nick on his horse. When they went swimming now, they drove to the Yellowstone River, but they did not have time to drive twenty plus miles and back before the wedding. Also, the river current was swift in places, and they had five kids to watch out for, though both Caleb's boys were good swimmers. Eight miles was more than Caliban could manage, but the wagon could get them about two-thirds of the way there.

Brandon and Logan had been swimming in the pond

a few times with their father, and five-year-old Jeremy had gone once with his father, but it was Tom's first time on the ranch, and the only water Calvin Jr. had ever been in was his parents' bathtub.

Brandon and Logan tore off their clothes and ran splashing into the water. Jeremy asked the adults, "Is it okay if I go in?"

"You can go in," Caliban told him, "but just a little ways until Nick and I are ready to join you. There's a drop-off."

Jeremy undressed, and Tom imitated him. Nick and Caliban took off their shirts and sat on them to pull off their boots and socks. Calvin's boy stood by, looking uncertain.

"We supposed to swim in the raw?" he asked.

"Best way I know of," Nick said. "Ain't you never 33been swimming before?"

The eleven-year-old shook his head. "What if some girls come by and see us?"

"How long you been swimming here, Cal?"

"Since I was five."

"Hear that, Calvin Jr.? That's almost thirty-five years. You ever see any gals out here, Cal?"

"Not ever."

"But what if they do come?" Calvin Jr. insisted.

"Then we stay in the water up to our waists till they leave. You ain't ashamed for boys to see you, are ya?"

"'Course not."

"Then what're you waiting for?"

Calvin Jr. reluctantly took off his clothes and

followed Nick and his uncle to the pond. "The water's all dirty," he said. "There's scum floating on top."

"It's cleaner ten-twenty yards out, unless you kick up the muck from the bottom. We'll rinse off in the shower room at the bunkhouse when we get back. You ever been there?" The boy shook his head. "You ain't seen it yet?

Your pa had it built two-three years back. I'd 'a thought he'd

'a showed it to you. It's a real neat place: a big room with four shower heads on the wall attached to a heater, and wood benches across from 'em, and pegs to hang up your clothes. We'll get all cleaned up and get into our Sunday 33clothes, and then we'll go to the church, and from there outside for the picnic lunch."

Calvin Jr. waded doubtfully in up to his shins,

whining that the water was cold, and let the adults wade on ahead. Nick knew the boy got on Caliban's nerves and made himself a kind of interface between the two. "It's s'posed to be cold," he called back. "Makes it refreshing on a hot day like today. You dip in up to your shoulders, and in a second, you're used to it."

The two adults ducked beneath the surface to show him. Tom and Jeremy were playing a few yards off to one side, where the water was about three feet deep. Brandon and Logan had swum out a ways and were horsing around in the deep part.

"You three kids don't know to swim, do you?" Nick said. "Cal and me're gonna have ourselves a little swim, then we'll come back and show you how, if you want. You stay right around here and don't go wandering too far off, 'cause there's a big drop-off a little ways out. Two or three steps and you find yourselves in water over your head."

Caliban and Nick swam another fifty or so yards out where they could be alone and talk without interruption.

Caliban's right leg was a bit of a drag weight, but the buoyancy of the water supported his hip, and it felt good.

Swimming was the best exercise available to him. "I wish we had pond like this one so we could go swimming more often, just the two of us," Nick said. The watering holes on their quarter, though cleaner, were either too small or too shallow.

"We had better keep an eye on Calvin's kid,"

Caliban said. "Tom and Jeremy seem trustworthy, but he's likely to drown himself. You can count on Calvin Jr. not doing what you tell him. Oh, shit! What did I tell you?"

"Hey, Calvin Jr.! You get back to where your cousin Tom and Jeremy are playing!" Nick yelled to a head that had just gone under the water.

Nick swam as fast as he could toward where Calvin Jr. had gone under, with Caliban trying unsuccessfully to keep up with him. Luckily, Brandon and Logan were only twenty yards away, and thanks to Nick's yelling at Calvin Jr., they had seen what happened. Brandon swam a few strokes toward the rising bubbles, performed a neat pike surface dive, and came up dragging Calvin Jr. by the hair.

He carried him up the beach and laid him on the grass.

When Nick saw that Brandon had him, he slowed down to wait for Caliban. "Ain't no big rush," he said. "Takes more'n thirty seconds for a body to drownd."

Brandon was kneeling over Calvin Jr. Logan, Tom

and Jeremy crowded around them to watch. Walking quickly beside Caliban through water up to their shins and 33up onto the beach, Nick called out, "He gonna be alright?"

"He'll be fine," Brandon yelled back. "Just swallowed a couple o' mouthfuls o' water."

"Brandon's getting to be a big grown-up kid,"

Caliban said to Nick.

"He should be. He's fourteen, ain't he?"

"I didn't mean that. I meant how he saved Calvin Jr."

Brandon overheard them. It didn't embarrass him. In fact, he hoped the other kids had heard. He was proud of the fine down that had begun to sprout at the base of his belly and his no-longer-little penis below it.

"You done a good job, Brandon," Nick said, and knelt beside the choking and sputtering Calvin Jr. He sat him up and began slapping him between the shoulder blades with a cupped hand to get him to cough up what he had swallowed.

"Come with me, boys," Caliban said. "Let's give them a little space. Then we had better head back to Caladelphia and get ready for Hester's wedding. What do you think of your brother now, Logan? He's a real hero, isn't he?"

Brandon blushed, and muttered, "Can't help

thinking I'm gonna live to regret saving that brat's life."

Caliban laughed. "Not as much as you'd regret 33having let him drown."

Calvin Jr. refused to go with them to the bunkhouse shower room. "What's wrong with showering at the bunkhouse?" Darcie wanted to know.

"I almost drownded!"

"Well, you ain't gonna drown taking a shower, and I ain't got time to draw you a bath. Take 'im round back and dump a pail o' water over 'im, Nick."

Nick grabbed him by the arm and dragged him

behind the house. "If girls are gonna see you naked, this is where it's gonna happen, not out by the pond," he said.

"Now off with them clothes!"

The water in the pail was colder than the pond.

Calvin Jr. yelled.

"It's your own fault. The water's nice and hot at the bunkhouse. Now you go to your room and get dressed and comb your hair," Nick said. "I'm gonna go shower with the others."

They were laughing under the steaming spray,

playing a game of toss the soap when Calvin came barging into the shower room. "What this I hear about you putting my boy in danger?" he roared.

"We ain't put him in danger. He put himself in danger by wandering off and not staying where we told 'im to," Nick said. "So instead of bawling us out, how about 33you thank Brandon here for saving his goddamn life."

"I s'pose now you're gonna say I oughtta whip 'im for it."

"If the kid ain't learned his lesson yet, hitting 'im won't make no difference."