The City of Lovely Brothers (37 page)

"You don't got but half o' the men living on my land working for you. Not even. I gotta give 'em something to do."

"Let 'em go find work somewhere else. Whatta I care if you got alot o' men sitting on their asses in your damn village? What makes you think I give a damn if they move out and you're left with alot o' empty houses? And don't say I didn't tell you turning your ranch into some kinda la-dee-da town was a stupid idea. You done it, now live with it."

"Look, I'll give you three hundred dollars for it."

"You're lying to me, brother Calvin. I can see right through you. Don't know what your lie is, but if you want 46that strip that bad, there gotta be a reason you ain't telling me, or else you wouldn't pay me three hundred dollars for it. It ain't worth that much, and you know it."

"It ain't worth nothing to you."

"That's right, it ain't, and I woulda sold it if I didn't know you'd 'a just gone and bought it offa whoever I sold it to, so what makes you think I'm gonna sell it to you? Now get the hell outta here."

Calvin took out a bank loan to cover the last

hundred his son owed.

The transfers of land did not stop there. Clay and Jared wanted to get married. They were over forty years old; Clay was five years older than Caleb had been when he married Amanda. The women they were interested in were about fifteen years younger. Calhoun had taken it for granted they would never marry. He thought they were happy to remain single and lead a cowboy's life. Julia had kept after them to find wives and settle down, and although they always answered that married life was not for them, they both would have liked to have a wife and children, not many, maybe one or two. What had held them back was that they lived in the Johnson house with Calhoun and Julia, and they wanted their own homes if they married, although the house had more than enough rooms for three families and Julia would have been more than happy to have her daughters-in-law live with her. She was by nature a sociable person who liked having a lot of people around for company, and she led a lonely life as the only woman in a house with three grown men, two of whom disappeared for four to six weeks every year to drive the herd to Billings. So when they told her they had found women they wanted to marry, she said, "It's about time." "Thing is," Clay said, "we don't wanna go on living here, three families all in the same house."

"You're more'n welcome to."

"That you are," Calhoun said.

"I know we're more'n welcome, but we don't wanna.

And we don't wanna build ourselves houses on this land, neither. We need it for the herd. You seen what happened to Caladelphia when Calvin started putting up houses. Zeke and Lettie's, now that's right by the entrance, so it don't break up the range, but there really ain't no spots next to 'em that's any good for putting up a house. Except on their little rise, everywhere around there becomes a swamp when there's a rainstorm."

"You ain't thinking o' leaving, are ya?" Calhoun asked. "Why, our herd is yours."

"No," Jared said. "We wanna get houses in Calvin's village."

"I don't like the idea o' you living on his land."

"Half the other cowboys working for us live there."

"No sons of mine ain't gonna pay no rent to Calvin."

"They could buy the houses offa him," Julia said.

"You got the money, boys?"

"Not enough. We'd hafta owe 'im."

"And they ain't gonna go into debt to that ruthless bastard, neither!" "Then you buy 'em for 'em."

"I ain't paying 'im a dime. Wouldn't buy a glass o'

water from 'im if I was dying o' thirst."

"Okay, I'll buy 'em."

"Where'll
you
get the money?"

"By selling my two-mile strip to Mr. Pard'ner. The deed to it's in my name, and it don't serve no purpose, now that Calvin's sold Caliban's quarter and half of Caleb's.

Amanda don't need a buffer no more."

"Calvin won't sell his houses. Thinks everything's his."

"Darcie will. She'll make 'im sell."

Calhoun thought it over a minute or two. "Well, I won't stand in your way if you buy the plots they're on, too, and if they're his nicest houses. In fact, I like the idea of them owning plots smack dab in the middle of Calvin's property."

"I'll buy the plots, and we'll build 'em houses. Mr.

Pard'ner'll pay me enough for that to get his hands on that strip. He knows Logan ain't gonna end up living on what him and Brandon own, and Amanda'll sell it off. To him, of course. That worthless strip is like a thorn in his side."

"You go and take care of all that, Julia. I ain't dealing with Calvin. And I ain't going to his village, neither. You wanna see me, boys, you're gonna hafta come 47out here."

"We'll be working here," Clay said. "You'll see plenty of us. You too, Ma."

"And you'll bring your wives to visit, won't you? I'll make Sunday dinner for you, and have Zeke and Lettie over, too. It'll be like Darcie used to do before Caliban went away."

Troilus Pardoner purchased the strip and paid

handsomely for it. Julia bought the plots, which it turned out Calvin was eager to sell. Calvin Jr. was costing him a pretty penny. Clay and Jared may have been Calhoun's sons, but they were not Calhoun.

Clay and Jared built a two-bedroom on one of the plots, had a double wedding, and moved in together while the second house was going up. Clay's daughter and Jared's son were born less than a month apart.

* * * *

A month or two after the wedding, Calhoun rode to the other side of the old ranch to see Amanda, making a wide detour so as not to cross Calvin's property.

Amanda met him on the porch. "Why, Calhoun!

What a pleasant surprise! You come to visit me?"

"What else 'd bring me all this way? Julia was 47saying just the other day how we don't hardly see you no more."

"Come inside and I'll make us some tea. It's wonderful tea, Darjeeling, from India. I found it in Hester's store."

They chatted for a while. Then Calhoun said, "I also come to give you some financial advice, Amanda. I think you should sell. Julia agrees with me. Pard'ner's itching to get 'is hands on this piece o' land and he'll give a good price for it. If you wait much longer, he won't be so interested."

"I can't sell it. It belongs to Brandon and Logan."

"They don't need it and they don't want it. They're only hanging on to it so's you can live here. If you left, they'd sell in a heartbeat, and wouldn't get a price anywhere near what you can."

"Where'd I live if I don't stay here?"

"You could move in with Zeke and Lettie and the kids. They got room and 'd be pleased to have you.

Wouldn't you like to be with your gran'kids?"

"I'd just get in the way."

"How'd you be in the way? You could help Lettie and be company for 'er when Zeke's off on the roundup or a cattle drive. Or you could live with me and Julia or get yourself a little house in Caladelphia. Ain't you lonely here? Ain't it hard living all by yourself?" "I got my chickens and everything else I need to live comfortable. And if I feel like talking to somebody or there's something I need, I hitch up the horse to the shay and go down to Caladelphia."

"How long d'ya think you're gonna be able to harness that horse and pitch hay for it?"

"I'll deal with that when it's a problem. Logan brings me all the hay I need for winter when he stops by in the fall."

"What if something happens to you? You don't even got a telephone like me and Julia, and I don't how you'd get one out here this far from the road."

"Nothing's gonna happen to me. I got my health, and I ain't an old woman, Calhoun; I'm sixteen years younger'n you. I got a few more years to go before I hit fifty. For now I'm happy staying here. I got all the furniture Caleb built for me here. I don't wanna leave my memories behind."

"You can't leave memories behind, Amanda. You got 'em inside your head."

"I got 'em in my heart, too, and my heart tells me to stay here."

"Promise me you'll think about it."

"I appreciate your concern, Calhoun, but I thought about it already." That night Calhoun told Julia, "I can't get 'er to budge. She's too attached to that house, and it ain't even hers, ain't even where she lived with Caleb."

Julia shook her head. "I worry about 'er."

"Me too. She pretends to be happy, but she don't look it."

"Maybe if you took Lettie over to see 'er…"

"I don't think that'd do no good either, long as she got 'er mind and heart set on staying where she is."

Calvin Jr. threw money around as if it were water you pumped from the ground, and had a windmill to do it for you, too. Bills for tailor-made clothes he bought would come in, and his father would pay them. He did not even have them made by the Caladelphia tailor, who could have taken the cost of making them off his rent; he went to the fanciest shops in Billings, and when he went there, he always got himself an expensive haircut and paid the barber to shave him, too, and sometimes had his nails manicured.

The top of the dresser in his room was piled with more toiletries, personal grooming items and scents than any woman in Caladelphia knew existed. His tab at the saloon in town was growing, and he continued to lose at cards, although not as disastrously as the night he had lost eight hundred dollars. Because of the expenses he ran up, Calvin was late in paying off his bank loans, and the interest had begun to pile up. He would lecture his son, and Calvin Jr.

would nod meekly and then go off and do whatever he felt like doing. Darcie said the boy was hopelessly spoiled and they ought to have disinherited him years ago.

Calvin almost did when he bought himself a horse and the most expensive saddle for it he could find. An 47Arabian, he said it was, and it cost them a fortune. He bought an elaborate cowboy outfit to go with it, too, from hat to spurs and even a holster and a shiny six-shooter.

Calvin took out another loan to pay for them. Calvin Jr.

rode the horse a couple of times around Caladelphia to show it off and once into town, after which it stayed in the stables, and he paid one of the ranch hands to feed and curry it and keep it exercised.

Then Calvin Jr. ran his car off the road on his way home from Billings, totaled it and left it there, and took the train home. He arrived after midnight and paid someone to drive him back to the ranch. Calvin bought a new one over Darcie's opposition, which meant yet another loan from the bank. He was so late in paying the others they refused him, so he took out a mortgage on the bunkhouse and a couple of the smaller outbuildings, like the tool and woodsheds.

Before the new car had been bought, Calvin Jr. 'borrowed'

his father's to go to Billings to replace the fancy clothes he had 'ruined' (his word) in the accident.

Calvin had his second stroke when the bill for the clothes arrived. Darcie watched her husband take the mail into his office muttering, "Looks like more dratted bills,"

and close the door behind him. A few minutes later, she heard a crash and found Calvin lying on the floor unconscious, his breathing labored and his eyes open and 47staring.

She telephoned to town for a doctor, who told her it looked like a stroke. Calvin Jr. had gone off somewhere in the family car, so she left him a note and asked one of the ranch hands to drive them to the hospital in Billings.

Calvin stayed in the hospital for three months. The first two weeks he was in a coma. He slowly regained consciousness and afterward, even more slowly, the use of his left arm. Both his legs were paralyzed. His right arm was not, but he could do very little with it except raise it a couple of inches and wiggle his fingers. He eventually learned to speak, but it sounded as if he had his mouth full of mashed potatoes and he mixed up his words. One of the nurses thought she could understand him, but she was wrong most of the time. Only Darcie understood everything he said, and it took her over a week to catch on.

The doctors sent him home when they said there

was no more they could do for him. The medical bills were staggering. Darcie mortgaged the barn, stables, smithy and the outbuildings that were not already mortgaged and took out a second mortgage on the bunkhouse to cover them. "Pa ain't gonna like that," Calvin Jr. told her.

"I'd 'a sold that damn horse o' yours and all your fancy clothes if they'd 'a come close to covering it," she snapped. "I'd 'a sold you if I coulda found a buyer." When they got Calvin home and put to bed, he

mumbled, "My will… in the safe…" He could no longer run the ranch.

Calvin had left everything to his son except their house, which he left to Darcie. By coincidence, it was the only thing they owned except the livestock that had not been sold or mortgaged.

The will would not go into effect as long as Calvin was alive, and he could not use his hands to sign it over to his son, nor did he ever express a wish to do so. If he had, Darcie would not have translated his incomprehensible speech. Still, it was clear that from then on Calvin Jr. would run the ranch and make all the decisions, and Darcie, disgusted and at her wits' end, let him. Her only concern was getting money so they would not go bankrupt, and there she took the initiative and went ahead and did something without telling Calvin Jr. or consulting her husband. It was probably the smartest thing she ever did.

* * * *

She put up notices everywhere she could think of—

in the bunkhouse, the stables, the barn, the general store, the bakery, and so on:

Important meeting on the future of the Caladelphia
47
Ranch. 7:30 Friday night in the schoolhouse. Everyone
invited to attend. Donuts & lemonade, & other eats if
people bring it. Darcie Caldwell

Her idea was to get the people who lived there to incorporate Caladelphia as a city. If the ranch did not belong to Calvin, the bank and their other creditors would be able to confiscate the livestock and repossess the mortgaged buildings for the loans he would inevitably default on, but not the land they were built on.

A large crowd showed up for Darcie's meeting.