The Long Valley (27 page)

“More mountains, I guess. Why?”

“And on the other side of them?”

“More mountains. Why?”

“More mountains on and on?”

“Well, no. At last you come to the ocean.”

“But what’s in the mountains?”

“Just cliffs and brush and rocks and dryness.”

“Were you ever there?”

“ No.”

“Has anybody ever been there?”

“A few people, I guess. It’s dangerous, with cliffs and things. Why, I’ve read there’s more unexplored country in the mountains of Monterey County than any place in the United States.” His father seemed proud that this should be so.

“And at last the ocean?”

“At last the ocean.”

“But,” the boy insisted, “but in between? No one knows?”

“Oh, a few people do, I guess. But there’s nothing there to get. And not much water. Just rocks and cliffs and greasewood. Why?”

“It would be good to go.”

“What for? There’s nothing there.”

Jody knew something was there, something very wonderful because it wasn’t known, something secret and mysterious. He could feel within himself that this was so. He said to his mother, “Do you know what’s in the big mountains?”

She looked at him and then back at the ferocious range, and she said, “Only the bear, I guess.”

“What bear?”

“Why the one that went over the mountain to see what he could see.”

Jody questioned Billy Buck, the ranch hand, about the possibility of ancient cities lost in the mountains, but Billy agreed with Jody’s father.

“It ain’t likely,” Billy said. “There’d be nothing to eat unless a kind of people that can eat rocks live there.”

That was all the information Jody ever got, and it made the mountains dear to him, and terrible. He thought often of the miles of ridge after ridge until at last there was the sea. When the peaks were pink in the morning they invited him among them: and when the sun had gone over the edge in the evening and the mountains were a purple-like despair, then Jody was afraid of them; then they were so impersonal and aloof that their very imperturbability was a threat.

Now he turned his head toward the mountains of the east, the Gabilans, and they were jolly mountains, with hill ranches in their creases, and with pine trees growing on the crests. People lived there, and battles had been fought against the Mexicans on the slopes. He looked back for an instant at the Great Ones and shivered a little at the contrast. The foothill cup of the home ranch below him was sunny and safe. The house gleamed with white light and the barn was brown and warm. The red cows on the farther hill ate their way slowly toward the north. Even the dark cypress tree by the bunkhouse was usual and safe. The chickens scratched about in the dust of the farmyard with quick waltzing steps.

 

 

Then a moving figure caught Jody’s eye. A man walked slowly over the brow of the hill, on the road from Salinas, and he was headed toward the house. Jody stood up and moved down toward the house too, for if someone was coming, he wanted to be there to see. By the time the boy had got to the house the walking man was only halfway down the road, a lean man, very straight in the shoulders. Jody could tell he was old only because his heels struck the ground with hard jerks. As he approached nearer, Jody saw that he was dressed in blue jeans and in a coat of the same material. He wore clodhopper shoes and an old flat-brimmed Stetson hat. Over his shoulder he carried a gunny sack, lumpy and full. In a few moments he had trudged close enough so that his face could be seen. And his face was as dark as dried beef. A mustache, blue-white against the dark skin, hovered over his mouth, and his hair was white, too, where it showed at his neck. The skin of his face had shrunk back against the skull until it defined bone, not flesh, and made the nose and chin seem sharp and fragile. The eyes were large and deep and dark, with eyelids stretched tightly over them. Irises and pupils were one, and very black, but the eyeballs were brown. There were no wrinkles in the face at all. This old man wore a blue denim coat buttoned to the throat with brass buttons, as all men do who wear no shirts. Out of the sleeves came strong bony wrists and hands gnarled and knotted and hard as peach branches. The nails were flat and blunt and shiny.

The old man drew close to the gate and swung down his sack when he confronted Jody. His lips fluttered a little and a soft impersonal voice came from between them.

“Do you live here?”

Jody was embarrassed. He turned and looked at the house, and he turned back and looked toward the barn where his father and Billy Buck were. “Yes,” he said, when no help came from either direction.

“I have come back,” the old man said. “I am Gitano, and I have come back.”

Jody could not take all this responsibility. He turned abruptly, and ran into the house for help, and the screen door banged after him. His mother was in the kitchen poking out the clogged holes of a colander with a hairpin, and biting her lower lip with concentration.

 

“It’s an old man,” Jody cried excitedly. “It’s an old
paisano
man, and he says he’s come back.”

His mother put down the colander and stuck the hairpin behind the sink board. “What’s the matter now?” she asked patiently.

“It’s an old man outside. Come on out.”

“Well, what does he want?” She untied the strings of her apron and smoothed her hair with her fingers.

“I don’t know. He came walking.”

His mother smoothed down her dress and went out, and Jody followed her. Gitano had not moved.

“Yes?” Mrs. Tiflin asked.

Gitano took off his old black hat and held it with both hands in front of him. He repeated, “I am Gitano, and I have come back.”

“Come back? Back where?”

Gitano’s whole straight body leaned forward a little. His right hand described the circle of the hills, the sloping fields and the mountains, and ended at his hat again. “Back to the rancho. I was born here, and my father, too.”

“Here?” she demanded. “This isn’t an old place.”

“No, there,” he said, pointing to the western ridge. “On the other side there, in a house that is gone.”

At last she understood. “The old ’dobe that’s washed almost away, you mean?”

“Yes,
senora.
When the rancho broke up they put no more lime on the ’dobe, and the rains washed it down.”

Jody’s mother was silent for a little, and curious homesick thoughts ran through her mind, but quickly she cleared them out. “And what do you want here now, Gitano?”

“I will stay here,” he said quietly, “until I die.”

“But we don’t need an extra man here.”

“I can not work hard any more,
señora.
I can milk a cow, feed chickens, cut a little wood; no more. I will stay here.” He indicated the sack on the ground beside him. “Here are my things.”

She turned to Jody. “Run down to the barn and call your father.”

Jody dashed away, and he returned with Carl Tiflin and Billy Buck behind him. The old man was standing as he had been, but he was resting now. His whole body had sagged into a timeless repose.

“What is it?” Carl Tiflin asked. “What’s Jody so excited about?”

Mrs. Tiflin motioned to the old man. “He wants to stay here. He wants to do a little work and stay here.”

“Well, we can’t have him. We don’t need any more men. He’s too old. Billy does everything we need.”

They had been talking over him as though he did not exist, and now, suddenly, they both hesitated and looked at Gitano and were embarrassed.

He cleared his throat. “I am too old to work. I come back where I was born.”

“You weren’t born here,” Carl said sharply.

“No. In the ’dobe house over the hill. It was all one rancho before you came.”

“In the mud house that’s all melted down?”

“Yes. I and my father. I will stay here now on the rancho.”

“I tell you you won’t stay,” Carl said angrily. “I don’t need an old man. This isn’t a big ranch. I can’t afford food and doctor bills for an old man. You must have relatives and friends. Go to them. It is like begging to come to strangers.”

“I was born here,” Gitano said patiently and inflexibly.

Carl Tiflin didn’t like to be cruel, but he felt he must. “You can eat here tonight,” he said. “You can sleep in the little room of the old bunkhouse. We’ll give you your breakfast in the morning, and then you’ll have to go along. Go to your friends. Don’t come to die with strangers.”

Gitano put on his black hat and stooped for the sack. “Here are my things,” he said.

Carl turned away. “Come on, Billy, we’ll finish down at the barn. Jody, show him the little room in the bunkhouse.”

He and Billy turned back toward the barn. Mrs. Tiflin went into the house, saying over her shoulder, “I’ll send some blankets down.”

Gitano looked questioningly at Jody. “I’ll show you where it is,” Jody said.

There was a cot with a shuck mattress, an apple box holding a tin lantern, and a backless rocking-chair in the little room of the bunkhouse. Gitano laid his sack carefully on the floor and sat down on the bed. Jody stood shyly in the room, hesitating to go. At last he said,

“Did you come out of the big mountains?”

Gitano shook his head slowly. “No, I worked down the Salinas Valley.”

The afternoon thought would not let Jody go. “Did you ever go into the big mountains back there?”

The old dark eyes grew fixed, and their light turned inward on the years that were living in Gitano’s head. “Once—when I was a little boy. I went with my father.”

“Way back, clear into the mountains?”

“Yes.”

“What was there?” Jody cried. “Did you see any people or any houses?”

“No.”

“Well, what was there?”

Gitano’s eyes remained inward. A little wrinkled strain came between his brows.

“What did you see in there?” Jody repeated.

“I don’t know,” Gitano said. “I don’t remember.”

“Was it terrible and dry?”

“I don’t remember.”

In his excitement, Jody had lost his shyness. “Don’t you remember anything about it?”

Gitano’s mouth opened for a word, and remained open while his brain sought the word. “I think it was quiet—I think it was nice.”

Gitano’s eyes seemed to have found something back in the years, for they grew soft and a little smile seemed to come and go in them.

“Didn’t you ever go back in the mountains again?” Jody insisted.

“No.”

“Didn’t you ever want to?”

But now Gitano’s face became impatient. “No,” he said in a tone that told Jody he didn’t want to talk about it any more. The boy was held by a curious fascination. He didn’t want to go away from Gitano. His shyness returned.

“Would you like to come down to the barn and see the stock?” he asked.

Gitano stood up and put on his hat and prepared to follow.

It was almost evening now. They stood near the watering trough while the horses sauntered in from the hillsides for an evening drink. Gitano rested his big twisted hands on the top rail of the fence. Five horses came down and drank, and then stood about, nibbling at the dirt or rubbing their sides against the polished wood of the fence. Long after they had finished drinking an old horse appeared over the brow of the hill and came painfully down. It had long yellow teeth; its hooves were flat and sharp as spades, and its ribs and hip-bones jutted out under its skin. It hobbled up to the trough and drank water with a loud sucking noise.

“That’s old Easter,” Jody explained. “That’s the first horse my father ever had. He’s thirty years old.” He looked up into Gitano’s old eyes for some response.

“No good any more,” Gitano said.

Jody’s father and Billy Buck came out of the barn and walked over.

“Too old to work,” Gitano repeated. “Just eats and pretty soon dies.”

Carl Tiflin caught the last words. He hated his brutality toward old Gitano, and so he became brutal again.

“It’s a shame not to shoot Easter,” he said. “It’d save him a lot of pains and rheumatism.” He looked secretly at Gitano, to see whether he noticed the parallel, but the big bony hands did not move, nor did the dark eyes turn from the horse. “Old things ought to be put out of their misery,” Jody’s father went on. “One shot, a big noise, one big pain in the head maybe, and that’s all. That’s better than stiffness and sore teeth.”

Billy Buck broke in. “They got a right to rest after they worked all of their life. Maybe they like to just walk around.”

Carl had been looking steadily at the skinny horse. “You can’t imagine now what Easter used to look like,” he said softly. “High neck, deep chest, fine barrel. He could jump a five-bar gate in stride. I won a flat race on him when I was fifteen years old. I could of got two hundred dollars for him any time. You wouldn’t think how pretty he was.” He checked himself, for he hated softness. “But he ought to be shot now,” he said.

“He’s got a right to rest,” Billy Buck insisted.

Jody’s father had a humorous thought. He turned to Gitano. “If ham and eggs grew on a side-hill I’d turn you out to pasture too,” he said. “But I can’t afford to pasture you in my kitchen.”

He laughed to Billy Buck about it as they went on toward the house. “Be a good thing for all of us if ham and eggs grew on the side-hills.”

Jody knew how his father was probing for a place to hurt Gitano. He had been probed often. His father knew every place in the boy where a word would fester.

“He’s only talking,” Jody said. “He didn’t mean it about shooting Easter. He likes Easter. That was the first horse he ever owned.”

The sun sank behind the high mountains as they stood there, and the ranch was hushed. Gitano seemed to be more at home in the evening. He made a curious sharp sound with his lips and stretched one of his hands over the fence. Old Easter moved stiffly to him, and Gitano rubbed the lean neck under the mane.