Me being three days older than Henry carried a lot of importance when it came to who did what in the games we played. Mattered too, in deciding whose turn it was to keep lookout whenever we raided Clem Randall’s orchard. We must have raided that orchard a hundred times. Then one day Henry busted his leg falling out of an apple tree. It ain’t smart to move someone with a busted leg but Henry feared he’d be skinned alive if his Pa knew what he’d been doing and he begged me to get him out of there before I went for help. So I did, and Pa Grady had no call to be suspicious when I led him to where Henry lay, by the oak tree near the schoolhouse.
Henry didn’t get around so good after that, his leg just never set right, yet as soon as he was able we went back to that apple tree and he kept lookout while I picked it clean. We figured Valance and Grady were the finest apple rustlers in history. Too bad we couldn’t take credit for it. Old Clem came close to catching us a time or two but we were always a step ahead, right up till the day he brought in a couple of guard dogs, only it didn’t much matter by then. We’d grown sick of apples, anyhow.
Henry and I had always been equals, but not anymore, I realized, when we got to thirteen years old. While I’d grown tall and lean, Henry remained stunted and crippled. While I was ready for drinking and smoking, and popping my cork with Florentine Mabbs, the most important thing in Henry’s life was a black and white kitten called Scout. Hell, he took the darned thing everywhere.
Guilt; loyalty; responsibility; all came together on the day Henry came to me with a bloodied nose. He’d been set on by a gang he’d found using our old den in the wood and his mournful tone told me that wasn’t all. He could hardly bring himself to say the rest, but when he finally blurted out that they’d stamped on his kitten, and he turned away to hide his tears, I felt my gut tighten like never before.
Hell was I mad. Marching to the beat of a vengeful heart I hurried to the wood, where the sound of laughter drew me to a clearing. Some hundred yards ahead the gang, a dozen strong of all ages, were smoking and fooling around. Tinkers, I figured.
Then Henry came scuttering up beside me. ‘The big one in the gray pants, he’s the one that did it,’ he said. ‘What we gonna do?’
I didn’t know what to do, but when Gray Pants caught sight of us and started mouthing off and swaggering around, I figured we’d better do something fast.
‘Step out a couple of paces and show them we ain’t scared,’ I said, as the tinkers drew up in a line. Step out we did, though Henry looked at me like I’d gone nuts when I started pointing this way and that through the trees. ‘Give them something to think about,’ I said, as I waved an army of imaginary reinforcements into flanking positions. ‘Let them think they’re outnumbered.’
‘Do you think it’ll work?’ asked Henry, as he waved extra reinforcements in from his side.
‘There’s only one way to find out…. now!’ I yelled, as loud as I could.
As me and Henry charged, the tinkers broke and scattered, leaving Gray Pants all alone. If he didn’t regret standing his ground when I stooped to snatch up a big stick, he surely did when the first blow cracked his arm. A second blow put him down. It’s a measure of my anger that I didn’t stop there. After I’d beaten the daylights out of him, I stood over him while Henry gave him a stomping. Ain’t nothing to be proud of I know, but hell, I ain’t ashamed either.
Funny thing is I never did like cats; I never saw one yet that didn’t stare at me like I was a six foot mouse, but I shared my friend’s pain and I was right by his side when he took his kitten home and gave it a good Christian burial.
At sixteen I ran into trouble at home. Course that was nothing new, Pa and me never did see eye to eye but now that I was big enough to fight my corner, I did. Aunt Mabel says if it hadn’t been for her, one of us could have ended up dead. I ain’t so sure about that. Pa and me might have swapped a bruise or two but the only one that really got hurt was my Ma.
With nothing but a young man’s troubles to run from I left home at eighteen when Henry talked his Pa into taking me on as a ranch hand. I didn’t know Pa Grady so good, only that he skinned apple thieves but when I heard the job came with food and lodgings, I jumped at the chance.
Leaving home gave me the freedom to live and learn by my own mistakes and I made the first one when Pa Grady gave me the choice of bedding down in the bunkhouse with the rest of the hands, or staying with Henry and his brothers in the family home. I liked the idea of the bunkhouse – I was ready to live in a man’s world, but I shied away from hurting Henry’s feelings and moved in with the family.
Pa Grady married late in life and fathered six sons before his wife died in childbirth. In his prime he’d been a bare knuckle fighter, a good one too, and a short fuse on a tinderbox temper ensured everyone trod lightly in his presence. One time I saw him talking to Tucson Charlie, his long time foreman. Smiling through his big bushy beard he appeared to be in good humor, yet I’d no sooner passed them by when I heard a yell. When I turned around Pa Grady was all over Tucson, giving him a hiding. I never figured out what triggered his mean streak. Only that it didn’t take much.
I worked doggone hard, seven days a week, mostly on the range with Henry. I got fed and I got watered, but I never saw any wages and as the weeks slipped by, I got resentful. I’d been there a couple of months when Pa Grady held a birthday supper for his youngest boy, Nathan. He was fourteen…
Sitting at the top of the table, Pa Grady pushed his empty plate aside, wiped the cake crumbs from his mouth, and asked his housekeeper to bring a bottle of whiskey.
‘Fill Nathan’s glass first’ he said, when the housekeeper returned.
So we toasted the birthday boy and everyone laughed when he took an almighty swig and coughed it all back. Pa Grady laughed loudest of all. Yup, the old man was in a good mood, and when he lit a cigar and leaned back in his chair, I saw the chance to ask about my wages. The whiskey steadied my nerve, and though I’d have welcomed another glass before asking the question, I figured the time was right. The words I’d use sounded slick enough in my head, but when it came to saying them they came out awkward and with all eyes on me, I dried up, leaving a awful silence that killed the party stone dead.
‘Wages?’ Pa Grady shook his head and rose slowly from the table. Fearsome tall, he looked bigger and wider than ever. ‘I give you work; work you ain’t up to yet. I give you time and understanding. The roof over your head, the food in your belly, everything you need to grow into a man, you get from me. And you dare to speak of wages? I welcomed you into my home like a son. Maybe it’s time I treated you as one.’
Hell, I sure got a sickly feeling in the gut when Pa Grady rolled up his sleeves.
‘Please don’t Pa,’ pleaded John the eldest son.
Then Henry leapt from the table to challenge his father. ‘No Pa, you can’t!’
Pa Grady slammed Henry against the wall and didn’t raise a damned finger to help when Henry slumped to the floor. Instead, he stood over his trembling son, fists balled and ready. ‘You’d tell me what I can and cannot do in my own home? Go to your room boy, or you’ll get the same. All of you… get to your rooms!’ he barked. ‘This is between him and me.’
I didn’t sleep so good that night. Sure, I took a beating, but I ached just as much for spoiling Nathan’s party and getting Henry hurt. Pa Grady’s attack had taken me by surprise. I hadn’t defended myself, or even tried, but I swore I’d be ready for him next time.
Next time came a month or so later. The result was the same. Sure, I threw a few punches, but I had no heart for fighting Pa Grady. Whatever else he was, he was my best friend’s father. I’d be the loser, whatever happened.
I don’t believe Pa Grady was a bad man. With six boys, a ranch, stock, and upwards of twenty hands working for him, he didn’t have the time or inclination to explain himself to anyone. It came easier to hand out a beating and leave the why for others to work out. Yup, he was mean, but he cared for his boys the best way he could and most times he was right. He treated me like one of his own and though it hurt sometimes, I respected him for that.
Henry didn’t say much when I told him I was moving on. I think he saw it coming. I’d left home to get away from a father like his and the big wide world was calling. Early next morning I said goodbye to everyone and slipped out of the door, only to find Pa Grady waiting for me on the porch. When he asked where I was going, I told him I didn’t know.
‘Then you’re not going home?’
I shook my head. Though I yearned to see my Ma, pride stood in the way.
‘Tucson’s in the corral. He’s got a horse saddled for you. You’ll find your wages in the saddlebag,’ he said. Then he shook my hand, turned around and walked away without looking back.
So, on a bright summer day with the sun high in the sky, I rode into the big wide world. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I was going far.
As the years rolled by I thought about going home plenty of times, but something always came up: another town; another job; another woman. Yup, there was always something, and I ain’t discounting the odd spell behind bars when I made a mistake or two. I told myself there was no hurry. Home was home; I could go back anytime and find it waiting for me, just as it was on the day I left. Well, of all the mistakes I made, that was the biggest of all. Fifteen years passed before I went home.
Ma was long gone by then. Typhus, Aunt Mabel said, in a letter I received in Dodge. But I still had my Pa and my heart beat a little faster when the old house came into view. The things we’d quarreled about didn’t matter anymore and I had high hopes of us making our peace, but it was too late. Like Ma, he was dead and gone with just a wooden cross to mark his existence. I found out later that he’d died of consumption. Whiskey consumption, most likely.
As somber as I felt when I left, I picked up some when I neared Henry’s place. I couldn’t wait to see my old friend and I knew he’d be pleased to see me. In my mind I pictured him hooting and a’hollering, and me being just as excited as I leapt out of the saddle to hug him. Maybe his Pa would be quietly pleased to see me, too.
Nathan was outside the house when I got there. All grown up and broad shouldered, he was fixing a rim on a wheel. Everyone else was out working, he said.
‘Where’s Henry?’ I asked.
I expected him to say my old friend was out in the field, just over the ridge, or someplace else where I could go and surprise him, but Nathan didn’t say anything like that. He just nodded to the side of the house and said ‘he’s over there with Ma and Pa.’
Seeing that headstone almost cut me in two. Henry had been gone nine years, Nathan said. He’d drowned trying to pull a calf from a swollen river. Pa Grady suffered a stroke on hearing the news and died soon after.
I declined Nathan’s invitation to stay awhile. Said I’d better be getting along. Truth is I was all choked up and had to get away. Though I reckoned on oiling my sorrow in town, I didn’t make it past the oak tree by school house, where I got down from my horse and cried my heart out.
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