The City of Lovely Brothers (29 page)

"It does, Nick, and it has. You know, I'm pretty sure this is the only part of the diary you've read me where you say you love me."

"Why would I write that I love you? I know that."

"You say it to me."

"You ain't a notebook."

"I'll put on those skivvies now, Nick, and you can 36carry me to the bed. You can read me the rest some other time. Red underneath, right?" Nick nodded. "Do you really think I have ten inches?"

"You might; we ain't never measured it. Funny we ain't, seeing as we played every other game in Creation.

Did what I wrote so far make you randy?"

"No, it made me love you more, if that were possible.
Now
it's up to you to make me randy."

"How come it's up to me? Ain't it my birthday?"

"All you have to do is lie on your back in those smooth and shiny skivvies with the lamp burning so I can see you."

"That all you gonna do, look?"

"That would do it for me, but I plan on doing a lot more."

"You know, Cal, reading what I wrote twenty years ago, about not being able to wait to have it in me, makes me want it in me. You think your hip is up to fucking me tonight?"

"I promised you a baby, didn't I? How am I

supposed to give you one if I don't fuck you? It won't be hard if we do it lying on our left sides."

"That's one of the best ways to do it in, except I like it hard." Nick scooped a couple of shovelfuls of burning

charcoals from the stove into a pail and brought it into the room where they would make love. After Caliban had worked Nick over with both pair on for a few minutes, they decided it was just plain silly and not as good as with only one, so Caliban took his off while Nick's groin was still swathed in lime green, and said Nick should do him two nights running to break in both pair.

By the time Caliban got both pair off Nick, both of them needed laundering. "And I was looking forward to seeing you wearing them around the house tomorrow,"

Caliban said mournfully.

"No reason not to wear 'em with stains on the front except that it's too damn cold. Stove's just about gone out, so whatever we do next, we gotta do it under the blankets."

"Like in the loft. You know what we do next."

"Yeah, you get me pregnant. If it don't work, tomorrow night we'll switch and do it backwards. It'll still be my kid."

"Yes, I love when you do it to me backward."

Caliban reached down and dipped his finger into the jar of lard they always kept under the bed. Nick rolled onto his left side and pushed his ass backward to be greased.

Then Caliban sidled up behind him and drew the covers over them. "Happy birthiversary, lover," he whispered, and 36slowly thrust into him, reaching his right arm around him to grasp his cock and balls and draw him closer. When they were pressed together at the pelvis like sardines, he asked,

"Do you still think I have ten inches?"

"Feels like twice that much. Now turn me on your spit, baby!"

Soon Caliban had forgotten all about his hip and was bucking like a bull rider at the rodeo, but after he came, his hip ached. "We forgot the massage," Caliban said.

"I didn't. I thought it was for when you were wearing yours."

Nick got out of bed and snuffed the oil lamp. The moon shone white on his body in the darkened room.

"I'm not supposed to ask, I know, or they say it won't come true," Caliban said, "but will you tell me what you wished for when you blew out your candles?"

"I didn't make no wish, Cal. Weren't you listening when I read you my diary? Why would I wish for anything when I have you?"

Calvin's statement that the Caldwell family didn't marry their cousins proved untrue. Lettie married Zeke, Calhoun's third son, in the spring of 1922, while she was still a girl, and Calhoun had a cottage built for them near the entrance to the old Johnson property. Caleb opposed the marriage because of her age. Amanda agreed that Lettie was too young to marry, but she overrode her husband's objections. She favored her marrying Zeke because her intuition told her that her sons would leave the ranch when they grew up, and she wanted her daughter close to her.

After they were married, Caleb signed half his

quarter over to Brandon and Logan, now eighteen and sixteen years old, and they built a small two-room bungalow for themselves on the land their father had given them. So Amanda and Caleb now had their house to themselves, and their children were not yet adults. Caleb had only added one room when the twins were born, which they had given to Lettie when she was four, and moved Logan into Brandon's room, so it was a small house, and it didn't feel empty to Caleb and Amanda. For the time being, their sons were only a couple of miles away, and Lettie was still on the ranch, although clear on the other side of it. Jake did not fight in the Great War because he had entered medical school three months before the United States entered the war. Julia's three other boys lived through it and returned to the ranch. Only Jared had sustained a serious wound. He joked that now he limped just like his Uncle Caliban. He ought to have said 'as Uncle Caliban used to', because he did not need a cane, and Caliban's hip had continued to deteriorate, so he was by now not merely lame, but crippled.

Caliban had given up his job teaching at the school the year after the war, four months after Nick's birthday party. Standing had become difficult for him, and he said a teacher could not spend the day sitting behind his desk. He had to stand at the chalkboard; he had to stand next to a pupil's seat and bend down to help the child with his work.

Twenty-five children were attending school in Caladelphia, and soon there would be more. Calvin had advertised in Billings for a schoolteacher but could find no one willing to work, not even a woman, for a house and the two hundred fifty dollars the parents paid to send their children to school. In the end, he was obliged to supplement the teacher's salary out of what the ranch earned, and Caliban's replacement earned considerably more than he had.

Nick still worked with the horses. Calvin paid him, but Nick liked to think that Caliban was his boss, although 36it had been years since Caliban had had anything to do with the stables or any aspect of running the ranch as a ranch.

Now he stayed home, kept house for him and Nick, played his guitar, and read voraciously. Nick would bring home what they needed from Hester's general store. Except for Caleb, who lived only eight miles away and would ride over once a week to visit, the members of the family saw very little of him, but he made a point of going to see Darcie on the rare occasions he drove to the village. He went in the car he and Nick had bought the year he stopped teaching. Having a car was a godsend now that Caliban found it hard to walk half a mile even with his cane. He could not have gone in their wagon; it bounced him around too much and took longer to get there, longer than he could comfortably sit without putting his leg up. Except when he would be bringing something back from the store, Nick rode his horse to work so Caliban would have the car there if he needed it.

* * * *

The herd had grown to its pre-war size. Toward the end of summer, Calhoun invited his three nephews to come on the cattle drive with him. His three sons rode swing or point, Hester's Charley rode flank, and he had a half-dozen 37more cowboys plus the cook for the chuck wagon, now a chuck truck. Calhoun would have liked to have Nick as a wrangler. He had asked him every year while Caliban was still well enough to run the school, and Nick had always refused, saying that he liked doing the roundup, but Caliban could not live alone, not even for a month.

"Caliban can take care of himself. He ain't as frail as you think," Calhoun would say. "And I know you'd like being out on the range on the drive, the way you love horses."

"I'm sure I'd love it. It ain't that I don't wanna go; I just can't on account o' Cal."

"Caleb 'd go check up on 'im every day."

"I told you I ain't going."

Now that Caliban had stopped teaching, Calhoun

did not bother to ask.

Calhoun thought it would probably be his last drive.

He was fifty-six years old, and it was time for his sons to take over what had become a vast herd of cattle. For years he and his cowboys had driven them to the stockyards in Billings. Miles City was a little closer, but the Billings yards were set up better and moved the steers through more efficiently, and there were more places to have a good time there, too. He imagined that once he stopped going, his boys would just drive them to Forsyth, which they could do 37in a day —the steer would not lose weight if you drove them hard for a day— if possible. Forsyth had a railroad station, but no corral big enough for a herd the size of theirs.

Cattle drives no longer gave Calhoun the pleasure they used to. He blamed it on the motorcars. "Time was when you had to cross a road and there was a shay or a wagon on it, folks were content to wait and let the herd go by," he said. "They didn't even mind if it passed 'em on both sides and they found themselves stuck in the middle.

They used to smile and acted all friendly like. Now you hold up someone in a motorcar and they're so damn impatient they start honking their horn. Them assholes could start a goddamn stampede, and before they could turn around, they wouldn't have no car left."

"It don't, Pa," Zeke said. "Makes 'em a little skittish, but they're used to cars from when we bring the truck near

'em."

"But we don't do something dumb like honking the horn, do we?"

Zeke pointed out that the steer wouldn't hear the horn over all their mooing, but Calhoun wasn't listening.

"Folks buy themselves a motorcar and suddenly they're in a big hurry, though they'll get wherever it is they're going to faster than in a wagon, herd or no herd to 37hold 'em up. Got all them hardtop roads now, too. Can't get to the corral down at the stockyards without the steer having to walk on 'em. They can't like the feel of it on their hooves. Horses don't. I tell you, the day ain't far off when there won't be nothing in this country except alot o' roads.

Before you know it, there ain't gonna be no more cattle drives neither. Ranchers'll load 'em all into big trucks to drive 'em to the stockyards. Seen a couple do it already for four or five dairy cows. That ain't ranching!"

"There'll always be grass, Pa," Zeke told him. "A steer's gotta eat if we wanna eat beef."

Clay and Jared tended to agree with their father; they couldn't imagine any life besides being a herder. But they would not have given up their car.

Brandon and Logan were flattered Calhoun asked

them on the drive. Calvin Jr., who considered himself above manual labor, was offended. Calhoun was more than happy the boy refused. He was sure he would have only got in the way and had only asked him as a favor to Calvin.

The boy needed to grow up, and Calvin knew it. Calhoun reflected that Calvin would not have allowed his son to work for him anyway.

Calhoun favored his sons and nephews by not

having them ride drag. He probably would not have done Calvin Jr. the same favor.

* * * *

Billings was just over one hundred miles away as the crow flies, a little farther by the route they would be taking. They drove the herd along the north edge of the ranch into Caleb's quarter, skirting Calvin's property, passed a couple of miles north of Caleb's house, and then down the west side of Caliban's holdings and moved them out onto the open range through a gate. From there the road was another five miles to the south. They crossed it and continued on until they reached the Yellowstone River and followed it upstream to Billings, keeping the cattle a half-mile from the bank except to water them, although the river was low. The usual route was over the range north of the main road, where the grazing was better, but by going along the river they would not see any cars until the last few miles before Billings unless there was one on the road when they crossed it.

They drove the herd slowly, covering no more than ten miles a day so Calhoun could savor his last trail drive.

The chuck wagon truck traveled along a narrow dirt road a few miles north of the river. Calhoun told the cook-driver where to stop and wait for them for lunch and supper. The men went to eat in two shifts, so half of them could keep an 37eye on the herd. At night they camped out around the cook fire. Two of the men owned guitars, which the driver kept beside him in the truck so after supper they could sing the old cowboy songs Calhoun loved.

Late summer and early autumn had been hot and

dry, and the dust kicked up by the cattle hung thick in the air. There were more horse and deerflies closer to the river, and legions of mosquitoes. The men were constantly swatting at insects and scratching the bites, and they had to check the cattle extra carefully for screwworms. Everyone except Calhoun would have preferred to take the northern route.

Having the river nearby was an advantage, though.

When they stopped for the night, the men on the first supper shift would head for the river, strip off their clothes, and wash the day's dirt and dust from their bodies before going to the chuck wagon. They came back after their meal and gave the second shift a chance to splash and horse around in the water before they ate. Then, when everyone had had his supper, the second shift went back to the herd, and together they drove them to the river and let them drink their fill before settling down for the night. Since they were so close to the river, Calhoun put four men on six-hour shifts for the night watch.

Every other day, Julia and Lettie drove Zeke's car to 37the chuck truck, picked up the men's filthy clothes and brought them back laundered two days later, a real luxury on a cattle drive. It became too far to drive when the herd had gone three-quarters of the way to Billings, so the last time they made the trip they brought two changes of clothes and four pair of underwear for each man on the drive.

* * * *

The leisurely pace had kept the cattle sleek and fat, and they got a good price for them. The night before they headed back to the ranch, Calhoun took the members of his family who had come with him —Clay, Jared, Zeke, Brandon, Logan and Charley— out on the town to celebrate a successful and profitable drive. They went from saloon to saloon, staying in each long enough to have one or two drinks, and sometimes put a coin in the jukebox, throw some darts, or play a round of pool.