Generations in Agony...Texas: Chapter Thirty

30) Campfire tails…

Charlie could not remember ever being so hungry. When Carl dished up a plate full of beans and jerky, Charlie’s mouth watered as he dug into it, not caring about what it was, only that it was food. He downed one plate, then, when Carl asked if he wanted more, took another, then one more for good measure.

“Might wanna take ‘er easy there, son. Don’t want you to founder in your sleep.”

“Founder?”

Carl nodded. “When a horse eats too much, it gets all backed up. Can even kill ‘em, if you don’t watch it. Humans, I’ve found, can do perdy much the same, end up rolling around with belly aches, crying for their mommas.”

“I was just hungry. It sure was good.”

“Get used to it. Perdy much the same every night out here. No time for fancy makings and such as that.” As he spoke, Carl was rolling himself a smoke. He lit it and glanced at the boy with one eye closed.

Charlie leaned back against his saddle. The smell of the leather and hard work was soothing, comfortable despite the hard ground below his blanket. He yawned and looked over at Carl. “You were going to tell me about the old days…when you started out being a cowboy.”

Carl nodded. “Good a time as any, I suppose. Dang if you ain’t making me talk more’n I’ve spoken in years.”

“How come you don’t talk to many people?”

“Don’t have much to say, to most folks, I guess.”

“You stay out here a lot, huh?”

“That’s right. I don’t think folks mind, especially. They don’t think too much of me. I guess I make them nervous. I’d just as soon not be around folks if I’m to cause such a reaction.”

“How come they act that way?”

“History…”

“What sort of history?”

Carl chuckled at the boy as he flicked his cigarette nub into the fire. “My history, the history of this town. It ain’t very pretty.”

“I’d sure like to hear it, sir.”

Carl’s eyes bore into the boy. Charlie was staring back, taking note of the man’s features, seeing his father’s eyes, only older, with lines that bespoke of a pain he could not understand.

“Way back in the old days…this had to be…oh, I’d say it was round 1897, or there abouts, me and my brother couldn’t wait to be cowboys. Everybody we knew was one, or somebody that had cowboys working for them. We could hardly sit through school, we wanted to be on horseback, and wearing six guns.”

“You wore pistols still? I thought they quit all that stuff by that time.”

“Who told you that nonsense? I wore my pistols every day till 1925.”

“Wow, did you get to shoot much?”

“Well, me and my brother, we shot at a lot of targets and such. Always working on getting fast on the draw. I guess we got perdy good. We used to do quick-draw shows for a while there, back when they figured they could attract one of them movie outfits to come this way to make a picture show about cowboys. Never happened, but me and my brother, we went on doing our little show, just the same. ‘Course, we used blanks when we did our shoot-outs for spectators. Mostly, it was folks who was already living here. A time or two, might have a sight-seer watching us. We didn’t care, really. We just liked shooting.”

“Were you good shots?”

Carl nodded again. “Perdy good. We’d flip pennies in the air at thirty feet and knock ‘em out of the sky. That ain’t easy.”

“How old were you when you got to start working the range?”

Carl looked up at the star-filled sky. “Reckon I was about your age. My brother was a little younger. We were already good at riding, could do tricks and all that. An old Apache taught us how to ride-for-war, dangling off the horse on the side, or hanging under the neck. We was foolish, doing such things. We didn’t see it that-a-way, though.”

“But, did you get to do this?” Charlie held his hands out, indicating how the two of them were out under the stars on a wide Texas plain.

“Course we did. We started riding fences when we was your age.”

“What is that? Just riding along the fence line?”

“That’s right. We’d ride the fence, mend it when we saw a break. That happened a lot back in them days.”

“Do these cows knock down fences?”

“Well, you see how big they are…one gets a mind of his own and wants in the next paddock…but, mostly it’s idiots that want to cut through and don’t wanna take time to find a gate, which every line out here has at least one of.”

“1897, huh? Man, that must have been something. I’ve read a lot of stuff about those days, but never met anybody who lived then. What was that like?”

“Bout like now, I suppose. Fewer people, at least outside of town. This town ain’t really grown much in all these years. In fact, I’d say it got smaller, as far as folks that actually live here. The Oil Patch comes and goes with the price of fuel. Damn nonsense, you ask me anyhow. Before long, they’ll drift out here in the good grass country and start tearing all that up too.”

“What’s the wildest thing you ever saw out here? I mean did you fight Indians and all that? Or, was that all done by then?”

“My best friend is an Apache,” Carl said. “Ole Emilio Thorn Flower, I hear tell you know his boy Jesus. They don’t come no better. But to answer your question, no, I never fought no Indians. All that was done with by the time I was born, at least around here. I do remember when they hauled old Geronimo off to prison in Florida, although I never understood just why they did that. The nation was beat down perdy good by then. I guess that’s politics for you.

“As far as wild times, we had our share. Life out here is raw, most of the time. I’ve never cared to sleep in a house, not since I was a tad. Soon as I was old enough to sleep out under the sky, there I was, my brother too. Charlie loved it as much as I did.”

“Charlie? Your brother’s name was Charlie?”

“That’s right.”

For a moment, Charlie sat there as the realization hit him. His father had named him for that uncle. “What happened to your brother?”

Carl looked off at the horizon, but the fire let Charlie see how much that question hurt for him to hear it. “He’s dead, son. Long gone now.”

“How’d he die?”

“I think it’s about bed time. Time for me anyhow. We stay up any longer and you’ll be wishing you had an extra day to sleep come morning.”

Charlie sat there with his mouth open as his grandfather abruptly turned over, pulling his blanket around him. Finally, Charlie leaned back and looked up at the stars; so many that he could not look long without an overwhelming sense of awe striking him deeply. Out here, with his eyes aimed straight up, the sky was all you could see, and there was nothing else like it that he could think of. In that instant, he understood what his grandfather was saying about staying under a sky like this.

He let the day run through his mind; this was his first day of work as a cowboy, even though he felt himself to be a long way from that title. Still, the experience had been a thrill. He’d been thrown and bumped and prodded by cattle and horses. He’d eaten cowboy stew on the open range—even though it was not really open any more. He felt the writers of all those stories he had read had not really captured it. How could they? It was more than words could tell, more than the mind could take in at one time. He was sure his grandfather had the answers to a big load of questions he had always had about the West, and probably even answers to questions he did not know to ask yet.

He had an uncle named Charlie. His own father, for some reason, named him for him. Not Carl, like his own, but for a dead uncle. Yet, he never liked the man who had just rolled over to sleep. It was confusing. But, his grandfather obviously did not want to talk about it.

The tiredness crept up on him quickly. As his eyes looked up, his lids fell heavy, closing on him as he fought to keep them open. Thoughts drifted away, try as he might to keep them in front of his mind.

~