The City of Lovely Brothers (27 page)

Calvin snorted and stomped angrily to the door he had left wide open. Then he turned and said, "Stop horsing around and get some pants on. Wedding's gonna start any minute," and walked out.

"You shoulda let 'im whip 'im, Nick," Brandon said.

Logan grinned from ear to ear.

"Whattaya mean, let 'im?" Nick snorted. "He wouldn't 'a done it if I'd 'a held a gun to his head."

* * * *

Caliban, Nick and the four boys arrived late. Almost all the benches were already occupied, and the

congregation was singing the opening hymn. They found a spot together at the back of the church.

Charley walked down the aisle and took his place in front of the preacher. Then Calvin walked his daughter down the aisle. The preacher opened his book and began reading, "Dearly beloved…" Darcie began to cry, not because she was marrying off her youngest daughter, but 34because her oldest was going away forever. Calvin turned and gave her an exasperated look. He had not been told that Betsy was leaving. Caliban and Nick knew. Tom had told them.

After the ceremony, Hester and Charley hurried up the aisle under a rain of rice. The congregation followed them out of the church and lined up to congratulate them and also Darcie and Calvin. Then they headed for the picnic tables, where they gossiped about what a handsome couple Hester and Charley made and the promising start of their married life together. Charley was one of Calhoun's chief cowherds, and Hester mistress of the general store.

Calvin Jr. went from table to table telling about his adventure that morning. People smiled and nodded politely, but did not find it particularly interesting since he had obviously survived to tell about it.

The men organized a baseball game after the picnic.

Calvin and Calhoun were captains of the opposing teams.

They each chose twelve men, nine players and three bench-warming replacements.

Calhoun chose Charley first; then he chose Nick.

"Pick Cal next," Nick told him.

"With his bum leg? He can't play baseball."

"It don't keep 'im from swinging a bat. And he can 34be catcher. Choose Abe, too. He can run for Cal, and Cal can hit for him." Abe had crushed three fingers of his left hand a month before and couldn't hold a bat, but his right hand was fine.

"That in the rules?"

"We make our own rules, don't we? Ain't this the same as pinch running and hitting?"

Caliban hit a home run his first time at bat. Hester caught it and wouldn't give it back. She said she would keep it as a souvenir of her wedding. Caliban walked the bases himself at his leisure.

Calhoun was impressed. "How long it been since you played baseball, Caliban?"

"Nick pitches for me and I pitch for him out by the house sometimes. Jaggers Jr. runs after the balls and brings them back."

The men took a break for lemonade at the bottom of the fifth. Calvin Jr. was still making a pest of himself, bragging to everybody about how he had come close to drowning in the pond. He didn't think it important enough to mention that Brandon had saved him.

"You're next, Nick," Darcie told him as she filled his glass.

"Next to do what? Drown or get hitched?"

"Whattaya think? I'd 'a thought you'd 'a been 34married before Hester."

"It looks like I'm gonna stay a bachelor my whole life, Darcie," he answered. "Married life just ain't in the cards for me and Cal. And what about Julia's boys? Clay's just a couple o' years younger'n me."

Nick was right about himself and wrong about Clay.

The next members of the family to marry would be Lettie and Zeke.

* * * *

Hester continued to work at the general store after her marriage. Calvin pretty much left it in her hands and only showed up there every other week. Darcie said they should take down the rustic sign with the one word STORE

nailed over the door and replace it with a nicer one that read HESTER'S GENERAL STORE. It was three times

bigger than the other stores on the row, but from the outside it looked the shabbiest. Calvin grudgingly agreed. Charley made the sign himself. He painted it white with dark green letters.

The Great War had officially ended over five

months earlier, but only a handful of the men who survived it had yet returned to the ranch. Fortunately, no member of the Caldwell clan had been killed.

Julia had taken Calhoun's truck to pick up a few much-needed items at the general store and then stopped by to see her friend, as she always did. Although they lived on what most people believed to be the same ranch, one had to leave it and follow the road around its border from the entrance to what had been the Johnsons' property to the original Caldwell homestead to go from the one's house to the other's. Calhoun obstinately refused to cut a wagon road to "Calvin's village" through his grazing land. Calvin did not particularly long for easy access to his brother, either, and a creek and a steep ridge in the land between could only be crossed on horseback. As a result, the women had few occasions to see each other.

"Now, I'm counting on your help," Darcie told her.

"You didn't hafta ask," Julia said. "I wouldn't 'a dreamed of coming empty handed, and I'm happy to help you cook and make ready."

"I never thought different, and I much appreciate it, 34but it ain't the kinda help I had in mind."

Darcie had just told her that Nick's fortieth birthday was two weeks off, and she wanted to make a surprise party for him. He would not suspect; as far as he knew, only Caliban knew when his birthday was. Caliban had mentioned to her quite by chance that Nick would soon be forty, which had given her the idea, and Caliban thought it a good idea. He promised to find a way to lure Nick to the party without him suspecting.

The help she wanted to enlist from Julia was to see to it that Calhoun came, even if he had another falling out with Calvin before then. He still came grudgingly to some of Darcie's Sunday luncheons, at which Calvin pointedly never welcomed him, but they had not exchanged a word in months except maybe to do ranch business.

"If it's a party for Nick, he'll come. He'd come even if Calvin woulda shot him in the arm that morning. What I can't promise he'll do is act pleasant. But we both have our work cut out for us on that score."

"Don't I know it! Calvin always tells me Calhoun started it, and I imagine Calhoun tells you it was Calvin.

What I think is, when something's been going on this long, it don't matter none who started it. What matters is who picked up on it again that day."

"That's how I feel. But we don't want them ruining 34Nick's party, do we now?"

"Funny thing is, they could ruin it for the rest of us, but not for Nick. Their feud don't mean nothing to him. It's like he's part of the family and not part of it. I think he'd be willing to be one of us if we thought o' him that way, but not all of us do. I gotta admit that I don't, much as I'd like to, though I wouldn't tell anyone that except you. Maybe if more of us did…"

"Some do. Jake got to calling him Uncle Nick before he left, and Amanda and her kids think o' him as family, and so does Hester."

"That's on account o' none o' them can remember when he wasn't here. Even Hester wasn't but three when Caliban hired him. You'd think Caleb would, him being so close to Caliban and all, but I don't think he does."

"Calhoun would, but he don't think there is a family. He says a family's something we think we oughtta be."

"He's right, much as I hate saying it."

"It's hardest on you, ain't it, Darcie? Me and Calhoun and the boys are a family; Caleb and Amanda are, too. But you and Calvin? I worry about that sometimes."

"Me and Calvin don't see eye to eye much anymore, but we're still a family. But it ain't just hard on me. It's hard on Caliban, too. Bad feeling between any of us upsets him. Lucky he don't notice it that much 'cause he's so good natured."

"I'd say he makes himself not notice."

"I'm sure it's why him and Nick keep their distance.

But let me tell you what I plan for the party. I read this cooking article in a magazine about roasting a whole pig over an open pit. Don't that sound special? But can we do that outside in the middle of winter? Ground's frozen solid, if we can even find it under the snow."

"Do you think you could do it in the smokehouse?

Or something like it? If you did, Calvin wouldn't know about it until it was ready to serve. You
have
thought what Calvin might hafta say about you going outta your way to roast a whole pig for Nick."

"I hadn't; but I woulda, soon as it come to doing it. I don't think about that no more, if Calvin's gonna be pleased or not. I settle for his putting up with it."

"How've you lived like this all these years, Darcie?"

"It ain't always been like this. It come on gradual.

And you get used to things. It didn't get real bad till Calvin Jr. come along, and I thought he was gonna mellow 'im!"

"Calvin thinks that boy can do no wrong."

"Calvin ain't blind. He knows his son does plenty wrong; he just don't face up to it. For me, that's the worst of it. He's hurting deep down inside, Julia, 'cause part of him 34feels it's his fault everything's gone wrong, and he thinks everyone blames him for it, and that only makes him stubborner and quicker to fix the blame on someone else.

But like we said, ain't only one person to blame for all this."

"Sounds like you blame yourself too, Darcie."

"I do, and if I had to do it over, I'd do it different, and at the same time, I don't see what I
could
do different. I blame myself for standing up to him and I blame myself for giving in."

"We gotta accept what life brings us. We do our best, and if turns out good, we bless our luck, and if it fails, it fails. It's lonely out there at the Johnson place, Darcie, with Calhoun and the boys gone a couple o' months outta every year."

"A couple o' months ain't nothing compared to before they put in the railway and they hadda drive the herd up into Canada or down the Lonesome Trail to Ogallala."

"They could get it done alot quicker if they didn't spend a week whooping it up in Billings. But back when the fall drive took 'em close to three months you and me lived here in this house. When there was just the two of us without the men around used to be my favorite time o' year.

At the Johnson place, there's just me."

"I miss your company too." "Don't get me wrong. I know how lucky I am.

Things coulda turned out much worse for me, marrying a fifteen-year-old boy."

"He growed up quick."

"Becoming a pa when he was barely sixteen helped.

But Nick ain't the only outsider in the family. Me and you are, too. The family is the brothers, in spite o' their differences. I'm part of it 'cause Calvin thought it was his duty to get help for you, and Calhoun was just a kid who was tickled he'd have a woman to sleep with, which ain't to say he don't love me. And Calvin brought you here thinking it would be your job to help 'im turn the ranch into what he saw it being, not that he don't love you."

"I had the same hopes for the ranch he did then.

You know, I asked Nick once what he thought was wrong.

Despite what I said about not thinking of him as real family, I like him alot. You know, in a way it's Caliban who ended up with the best partner, even if they can't never be more'n friends."

"D'ya think they ever fight?"

"Who ever fights with Caliban? As for Caliban, in spite o' the fact that he's the most good-looking man I ever seen, and smart, and the sweetest human being on God's green earth, he thinks that he'd be all alone by himself when he's an old man if it wasn't for Nick, and he's thankful 34to have him."

"It's a fearsome thought, spending your last years with nobody there with you. The house seemed so empty last spring and summer with only me and Calhoun. I didn't think they'd draft Zeke, too. Thank God they'll all be coming back alive." Zeke's notice had arrived while he was on the cattle drive in the autumn of 1917, so that Calhoun had wondered if it was worth going at all, with the younger, stronger herders gone to fight in Europe, and he had fewer head than he'd had in twenty years.

"There's a chance at least some o' your boys'll be back in time for Nick's party. I thought Jared woulda been here by now."

Jared had recently been discharged from a French military hospital, his right knee cap shattered by shrapnel a month or two before the Armistice.

"You'd think I'd be used to being alone out at the old Johnson place with them all disappearing two months every year, but I ain't," Julia mused. "Calhoun can't go on cattle drives forever, though. It won't be too long before I have him home with me year round."

"Kids grow up and move away, sometimes far

away, but they're always somewhere, so you always got someplace to go. Now, Caliban, he ain't got kids, and he'd be more'n just alone. Already he needs a cane to walk. How 35long till he's on crutches, and after that, in a wheelchair?

We all gotta be grateful to Nick."

"How long d'ya think they can go on living in that little house far away from everyone?"

"I asked Nick that, if they shouldn't move to one of the Caladelphia houses. They're alot nicer than what they got. He said they'd face that when the time comes. But you asked do Caliban and Nick fight? I'm sure they have their disagreements like everyone else, but they know how important it is to resolve them. I'm willing to bet they're the only two here who don't keep secrets from each other."

"And Caleb and Amanda?"

"Amanda's resigned to him disappearing every few weeks, and putting him to bed when he comes home drunk.

She's thinks it's little enough to put up with."

"So what'd Nick say?"

"About what?"

"About what's wrong with the family?"

"He said that what was wrong is that none of the brothers really know each other, not even those that are close, like Caleb and Caliban. They just think they do. I think he's right, too. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see these things, but you hafta find an outsider who can look from inside. Do you think Nick'll stay? Meaning forever. I hope he does. You gotta hope it for Caliban." "Is that why you're making him a party? To keep him here? None of us can do that."