The Work of Wolves (9 page)

Marie thought of the old house as a barren pile of lumber. Walls tacked together. But her son, she knew, would be happy there. It would be enough for him. But how much, Marie wondered, might that limit him? She knew young men who were becoming old men out here—men who stayed on their family ranches because they loved the life, but unless they were very lucky and found a woman who also loved the life, they ended up divorced, like Burt Ramsay, Magnus Yarborough's hired hand, who used to ranch nearby, or they never married at all and either became quirky and silent and almost unable to speak, closed in on themselves with only a vision of sky and horizon in their eyes, or else they spent their nights at the Ruination Bar, excessively loud, with excessively loud men like themselves and women who didn't care for quiet voices.

Charles had found a woman willing to live here. She remembered when he'd first shown her the old house and she'd realized she'd be living in it if she married him. She had already decided to marry him, but the house had been enough to make her ask herself if she was, after all, not entirely sane. But what if Charles hadn't been lucky? He had not told her until they'd been married a full year that he had once thought of being an airplane pilot. When he did tell her, he joked about it. As if to say how naive he once had been. But she heard the serious note beneath.

"Why didn't you?" she asked.

He was embarrassed that she wouldn't just let it go—a revelation he wanted her to have but didn't want her thinking about. He waved his hand.

"The ranch," he said.

"You decided to ranch instead?"

He didn't affirm the statement, didn't deny it.

"Dad needed help," he said.

"I bet he did."

"What do you mean by that?"

She heard defensiveness. But she wasn't accusing him of not resisting his father. She meant it both ways: that there was always work to do on the ranch and that Ves would demand help whether he actually needed it or not. Need was a word with shifting borders. She knew it wasn't easy to say no to a father who put a claim upon that word.

"Nothing, really," she said. "Just there's always work to do."

He nodded. "I used a put together these plastic model airplanes," he said. "Don't know how much time I wasted as a kid gluing those things together. Painting 'em. I'd work on 'em at night when I was supposed to be in bed. Musta had fifteen of 'em or more. And I knew the names and speeds and all of every one of 'em."

"What happened to them?"

"One night when I was about sixteen, the Russians and the Americans got 'n a dogfight. Not a single one of 'em survived."

"You mean you wrecked them?"

"Like I say, a big dogfight."

He laughed.

"I'd like to have seen them," she said.

"Just kid stuff."

She imagined a wastebasket full of painstakingly painted airplane parts, shattered. The kind of thing you don't put back together. But Charles was trying to be cheerful. Pretending it meant nothing. Pretending he'd simply outgrown a childhood hobby.

Now, with Carson before her, turning to the kitchen faucet again, filling another glass of water and draining it, preparing to finish moving into the old house, she wondered, if she told him this story about his father's desire to fly planes and how at sixteen, unable to escape Ves's demands, he'd despaired of it, would that story be enough to counteract the land's pull on Carson? Ves's pull. Enough, at least, to make Carson think? To see possibilities within himself beyond this ranch?

Marie almost thought it might. She had this thing, this story, that might just rivet Carson. Pin him to her. Make him yearn for what he didn't have, as she sometimes wished he would. And maybe, in that yearning, he would turn to her. Need her. For advice at least. For guidance. But she wasn't sure she had a right to tell the story. Carson wanted the land's pull. Wind. Animals. Emptiness. Space. He'd never wanted anything else.

E
IGHT YEARS LATER
Carson sat at the kitchen table in the old house, listening to the wind outside and seeing in his mind the eyes of two hawks cutting amber swaths through air. Those swaths seemed as senseless as the flight of fireflies. As empty. He thought of a piano, never played, so coated with dust it seemed the shape of a piano only, which any touch would shatter. He saw his hand going out to it, but he had no idea what music that hand might play, and it seemed that if it ever reached the keyboard, the world would fall apart. Or already had.

When the phone rang, he started. For just a moment, until he caught his bearings, the ringing seemed to come blaring from that other world. As if the piano in his mind had played of its own accord and visited ruin here. He dropped his feet off the table and reached the phone in two strides. Then he paused, put his hand on the receiver, and caught his breath. He tried to calm his voice.

"Hello. Carson Fielding."

"Carson. This is Willi Schubert."

Carson's mind went blank. He stared at a kinked coil in the phone cord.

"Willi Schubert?" he said.

Then he remembered the German exchange student Allan Druseman had brought out for riding lessons a few months ago. Carson had taught him the basics of riding, but the last thing he wanted to do right now was give another riding lesson. He tilted his head back and shut his eyes and saw again the eyes of the hawks like flaming brands inscribing meaningless messages upon the sudden darkness.

"Oh yeah, Willi," he said. He opened his eyes and fingered the kink in the phone cord to bring himself back to where he was. "Been a while."

"Are you still giving horse riding lessons?"

"Not much. It's a busy time."

He hoped the response would be enough to keep the German kid from asking to resume the lessons.

"I suppose it is always a busy time on a ranch."

"Pretty much."

"I am not, however, calling about riding."

"No?"

"I am calling about some horses."

"Some horses."

"That is right."

"Buying horses, you mean?"

"No. I could not fit them in my luggage when I went back to Germany."

Willi said this so seriously it took Carson a second to laugh, but it broke his mood.

"I guess not," he said. "What's up, then?"

"Some horses that we found," Willi said. "Maybe they are hurt. Maybe you could look at them."

"Hurt how? Sick?"

"There is a limping one."

"That's it? You want me to go look at a limping horse?"

"It is odd. There is a little pasture. There is hot water coming out of the ground. What do you call it?"

"Artesian water?"

"Yes. Artesian. And these horses are penned up. There is not much food, I think, for three horses."

Carson reached blindly for something to steady himself. His hand hit the refrigerator, and he held onto it as the world reeled and his ear's pulse yammered against the receiver.

"Three horses?" he said thickly.

"Yes. It is three horses. And they are penned up."

Carson leaned his forehead against the cool, enameled steel of the refrigerator, felt the motor humming in his skull.

"Where'd you find these horses?"

"Behind Lostman's Lake. It is, how do you say his name? It is a rich rancher."

"Magnus Yarborough," Carson said dully.

"That is right. We found them on Magnus Yarborough's land."

"Jesus!" Carson whispered.

The refrigerator motor shut off, rocking on its loose mountings, and clunked into silence. Carson realized he had his eyes shut, and he opened them and stared at the blank, undifferentiated whiteness of the machine. He turned slowly, put his shoulders against the refrigerator, and stared at the small confines of the house, the dusty drapes covering the windows, the old wooden table he used to sit at, drinking lemonade, watching his grandfather smoke and drink coffee and talk about animals. Carson let his knees go limp. His shoulders slid down the refrigerator. He sat on the floor and stared at the worn wood between his feet.

"Carson?"

"Yeah, Willi," he whispered. "Yeah. I'm here."

HE'D NEVER WANTED TO
train Magnus Yarborough's horses. It had been his father's idea. They were walking through the door of the Quonset machine shed, talking about other things, when his father suddenly said, "Magnus Yarborough called yesterday. Needs some horses trained."

The wind caught the broken rolling door of the shed and banged it against the frame. Steady as a slow drummer. Bang. Bang. Bang. The whole building echoed.

Carson walked to the ancient Case that they'd been using since he was a kid. He checked the oil. "How many's he got?"

"Said three."

Carson stuck the dipstick back into the tube, noticed the fan belt on the tractor was cracking. He hooked his finger in the belt and pulled, pretending to assure himself it would hold for another day. Then he stepped to the ladder and swung up to the tractor's cab.

"When's he wanta bring 'em over?"

He had the door to the cab open and was about to step inside, but his father didn't answer. Carson looked down at him. Charles met his eyes.

"He wants you to go over there," he said.

"You tell 'm I don't do that?"

There were trainers who traveled, but Carson wanted the horses brought to him. His grandfather had often said it was the rider needed training as much as the horse. Carson agreed, and if the rider was willing to come with the horse, he'd train the rider, too. But he wouldn't go where horse and rider both had developed bad habits and by so going fight animal and human and surroundings all. Hard enough, he thought, to work with two of the three. And he had his own ranch to work. He didn't need to beg for jobs. If people didn't want to bring him their animals, they could find someone else.

"I told him," his father said.

"Well, then. Guess that takes care've it." Carson stooped inside the tractor cab and sat down. He reached to pull the door shut.

"It's Magnus Yarborough," his father said.

"If it was the governor, I wouldn't travel to Pierre."

"It's only fifteen miles. Easy to go and come back."

"Easy for him to bring 'em, then."

Carson had started to close the door when he heard his father say, "I already told 'm you'd come."

A blackbird flew in through the open doors and, confused by the sudden loss of sky, fled to the far, dark rafters and flitted in circles there.

"You told 'm I'd come?"

"Dammit, Carson. You looked at beef prices lately?"

"I know what beef's worth."

"Then you know it's piss poor. And wheat ain't much better. We'll be lucky to break even this year."

"Next year might be better."

"And it might be worse."

The blackbird blended into the shadows of the shed's rounded peak. Carson pushed the cab door all the way open. He gazed over his father at the stock pond downhill below the house, a small flock of ducks there leaving intersecting wakes. The broken door banged in the wind.

"Me training a few horses or not ain't gonna make much difference," he said.

"When I told him you don't travel, he offered twice the price. When I still said no, he doubled that. That's four times. That's more 'n just a few horses. I figured it wouldn't hurt you to get off this place for that kind of money."

"Why's he want me?"

"Said he wants the best. Heard you were it."

"He heard that, huh?"

"Says so."

"Well, you told 'm I'd come. Guess I'm bound."

He pulled the cab door shut. He leaned over the steering wheel, found the glow plug button, held it in. He had no desire to go to Magnus Yarborough's ranch. Enough work to do right here. But his father had already made the deal. And maybe he was right. But it wasn't his deal to make. Why was it that every time he and his father talked they seemed to disagree? Carson reached the end of the count, let go the glow plug, turned the ignition. The engine ground, then started.

HE STOOD ON MAGNUS YARBOROUGH'S PORCH
. Twelve years ago he'd been met on the driveway, which hadn't been paved then. He couldn't remember if the brick walkway had been laid; nor could he remember the stained glass panels inserted above the doors and windows of the house. Carson turned his back to the door and looked at the outbuildings: two red-and-white steel machine sheds, chimneys emerging from their roofs and rolling power doors high enough to drive a combine into; a red-and-white metal barn with steel gate corrals; the stock pond beyond it, a small boat with a trolling motor tied to a firm plank dock; and beyond it all, the land, Yarborough's ranch, that went at least as far as Red Medicine Creek. Carson wondered how much land was enough. How much of the world did a person like Yarborough need to have pointing back at him? Everytime a rancher retired, Yarborough was there to make an offer on the land. He owned land in Nebraska and Wyoming as well as South Dakota, and the more he owned, the more he seemed to need. For a guy like him, satisfaction was a horizon slipping away, always visible, never reached. Carson couldn't comprehend it.

He rang the bell and waited, heard footsteps beyond the door. Then it opened, and Magnus Yarborough stood behind the screen. He had a toothpick in his mouth. The morning sunlight through the screen silvered a ring of hair above his ears. The rest of his hair was dark, cut short. He gazed through the screen at Carson for a moment, eyes impassive, gray as distant water. Then he removed the toothpick with his left hand and with his right pushed open the door and stepped onto the porch.

"I'm Carson Fielding."

"We've met."

Carson thought Magnus was referring to a chance meeting in Twisted Tree. He tried to recall the moment. He'd passed Magnus at various times on errands but couldn't remember talking to him.

"How'd that horse treat you?"

With a start Carson realized that Magnus was referring clear back to when he'd bought his first horse. That was years ago. He'd been how old? Fourteen? An age ago. Why would Yarborough remember that?

"Oh," he said. "Worked out OK."

Magnus nodded. "Worth your four-hundred-twenty-five bucks, then?"