The History of Small West Texas Towns
by Brent Wade Smith

I don't want to remember my childhood. That would mean remembering my family. Remembering the small town in West Texas that I still refuse to call home after all these years. When I left Toyah, I made sure I left drunk and on the arm of the first man who said he loved me, a man I didn't love. As we drove away, I tried to picture a sunset ahead of us on the flat horizon just like in a movie. The moonless sky reminded me it was night, filled with embers that seemed to drift down from a fire that had died out. Bill's car wasn't made for the invisible cow grates that reached up to trap the wheels of his new Corvair, sucking them into the clay earth before the car bounced forward again. I wanted to tell him to slow down whenever two fences converged from either side of the road but I didn't. I think now that I wanted my escape to be as unhappy as my years growing up.

Yesterday was Clovis ' birthday. I still remember the dates, and sometimes a memory will attach itself to the calendar and creep up on me however much I open my eyes as wide as possible and stare at the wall to convince myself that I am here now. I asked a friend once, why do memories sometimes refuse to die until we do? She put down her coffee and turned to her two year old son reaching up for her lap. “Evelyn, what do you not want to remember?” She had asked.

September 20ths never sit well with me. I dread them from the morning to the evening. My father came back that day only to bury our dog Wolf in 1951. He and my older brother Clovis took the ragged body back to the field behind the barn. Their boots disappeared in clouds of dust and flies as they dragged Wolf from the gravel driveway. Father dropped his cigarette and swore at the limp, buzzing fur, then at Clovis . I sat on the porch watching, holding my doll against my chest, which had recently become sore now that my breasts were taking shape. My older sisters, Joy and Joanne, stood in the doorway, trying to keep our baby brother John from getting out. I turned around to see his fingers clawing at the screen door, his mouth pressed against the metal mesh. They would've told him to go back to our mother but we all knew that the noises coming from the bedroom were more than the cries of a broken woman. Those were the sounds that sometimes floated across the West Texas deserts at night, the cries of pain of an animal caught in a leg trap that my father had set. Sounds that only faded with the animal's surrender to its fate or when our father finished it off with the bat he'd given Clovis on the Christmas that we kids had all received gifts from the Sears catalog. That was two years before when I was 9. I remember because we had been a family then and I had opened a box to find Elizabeth , the doll I was too old for now. I clutched her cold ceramic body tighter as I listened to my mother's voice. Father was too far away now for me to hear his curses. The flies and dust were like smoke in the distance. I thought I could hear Mother pulling prayers out of the silence around her.

Our farm was only for our benefit. Everything we grew ended up on our dinner table. Occasionally, one of the hogs would be too much for all of us, even over a month, so my father would take the pork belly he'd butchered himself into town, racing as fast as he could to get there before the ice melted. We raised a few other things. There was the small garden near the front porch, fenced off from the dogs and rabbits but always glistening with snails and filled with lazy frogs after a cloud unable to go on any further burst its swollen skin, and rain destined for another part of the country fell on the desert. That was when Joanne would pick up her sketch pad and draw while Joy pulled weeds and stained green the knotted scarf that held her hair up as she wiped her brow. It was one of those special days for both of them, when they didn't have to carry water from the pump or cistern with John sloshing after them with his little bucket, pouring the few drops still remaining over the carrots or okra. His smile would collapse, and he would begin crying until one of the girls poured some water into his bucket.

Clovis took care of the hogs and our two cows. The hogs were a job, and Clovis would complain how his day was spent either in school or lugging water to the sty to keep the big sow and her screaming piglets in a thick pool of cool mud. “These pigs are Texas royalty,” he would say. “I'm going to come back as a lazy pig. And mean too...so mean that no one'll dare butcher me.” The hogs were cruel, ungrateful slabs of fat. General and Wolf, our German shepherds, were leery of getting too close to the pen. Wolf, especially, though his grandfather was a wolf. Our father used to say it was because the natural fear of the boar was still in his genes. The cows were kept in a small pasture across a dry gully that cut through the rear of the farm. A grated bridge without a gate separated it from the dirt road behind the barn and sty. A Mexican girlfriend of mine told me it was an arroyo, and I called it that to make my brothers and sisters laugh, until our parents heard us one day and punished me for speaking brown.

Sometimes we would wake up in the morning to find the cows on the other side. It was always a mystery how they crossed the grate, and getting them back again meant placing a sheet of plywood across the grate's rusty bars and pulling the cows' warm, moist rings or slapping their rears for a good hour while they cried and bellowed, their bellies fat with milk. Mother wouldn't allow us to milk them except at the tin roofed milking station on the pasture side. “They need to learn that they can't go out cavorting in the middle of the night,” Mother said. “Let them suffer a while—teach them a lesson.” But they never learned the lesson for more than a week or two at a time so finally Clovis and Father had to install a gate made from scrap metal. Every morning Clovis wheelbarrowed a clump of hay or a lick of salt out to the pasture and never stopped complaining about having to open the gate, while Joy and Joanne followed behind him with their milk cans and aprons over their shoulders.

Joanne would also bring her sketch pad if she could bribe Joy into doing most of the milking by promising to brush her hair at night. She would sit leaning against the post holding the roof, drawing Joy's thin body as it arched forward toward the cow, her cheek pressed against the hide and the stool tipping onto one leg. Her long black hair falling to one side and down her shoulder, Joy would smile and frown depending on the temperature outside. She told me once that in winter the rough hide against her face was like the warmest blanket she'd ever felt. “Try it, Evie, it's nothing to be scared of. You'll be doing this one day too.” I was frightened but I placed my cheek against the hide and felt its bristles prick my skin in a million places. She was right; it was warm and the hairs grew soft after a few seconds as if they were relaxing against a familiar friend. But I then pushed myself away from the cow. It bellowed and shook its bell, raising its brown and white head to the sky, its slit and scarred ears erect, like giant spoons.

“What's wrong?” Joy cried.

“I heard it,” I screamed.

“What are you talking about?” Joanne asked, sticking her pencil in her hair and walking over to me.

“Her heart. . . I heard her heart.”

They turned to one another and after a moment of silence, burst out laughing. They then put their arms around each other. I stood there until they motioned for me to join them.

I had my own chores but sometimes I would spend a day with Clovis looking for golden rod in the pasture. No one we knew had ever seen a cow get sick eating it but Mother told us not to take any chances. It was the only the time when Clovis and I were alone together after he started high school and became more interested in girls and drinking and the surplus army jeep he was working on. He would sneak a cold bottle of beer out with him from Father's icebox in the garage and let me take a sip every now and then as we walked slowly through the field, sidestepping the patties and keeping an eye out for the golden rod. I always had to kneel down and pull them out of the ground because Clovis had the bottle in one hand, his .22 in the other. I had stopped carrying Elizabeth with me by then and would leave her in the rocking chair in the living room. But Clovis would always ask about her.

“Where's Liz, Eve? We could always use a third hand out here.”

I told him to shut up and give me some beer. He passed the bottle to me and told me to hold it for a moment. There was something moving near the far fence. He raised the rifle and fired. Dirt and clover exploded like a fountain. “Shit, “ he said, and fired again. A white shape flew up into the air and became a jack rabbit as it hit the ground.

“Gotcha!” I yelled.

“My beer, please,” he said with the smile I'll always remember as something grownup. “Beer!” he repeated when I didn't give it to him. He pulled it from my hand. “Empty? Jesus, Evie!” He threw the bottle and then gave me the rifle. “Well, if you think you can drink beer, then you can shoot a weapon.” I smiled and he helped me position the stock on my shoulder and take a bead on the bottle. “And you better not be drunk. My alcoholic sister shooting like a drunk cowboy after a night whoring around.”

I felt an explosion on my cheek and shoulder as the stock flew backwards, and saw the hot gas and smoke rising out of the barrel as the shiny shell casing was ejected and the bullet shattered the bottle. The powder smell was still burning my nose and my breasts hurt as we walked past the shards of glass to pick up the jack rabbit. Clovis held him up by his ears for a moment as dark yellow piss drained out and then carried him the same way back home.

My own chores were taking care of the chickens and my baby brother. John was like one of the little chicks that ran around your feet as you crossed the coop—a chubby clumsy ball that bounced off you, only to come back again. He walked across the yard, picking up feathers and shaking the little shrubs where the chicks would gather for shade. The shrubs would explode in a mass of yellow balls, some two, even three bodies high as they climbed on top of each other to escape the laughing 3 year old. I scolded him and pointed to the two geese at the far end of the yard. “How would you like it if they chased you like a little chick?” His mouth opened wide and he shook his head no and grabbed my dress. “Don't step on my shoes, John!” I had been snapped at by those geese before myself and knew his fear was real. “It's okay.” He quieted down but stopped a few feet ahead of me, squatting to poke at a small, flat mass of feathers.

“Don't touch that.” I said, pulling him up. It was a chick some one had stepped on. John stared at the crushed form as I pulled him away. He was crying. I had felt the same way at his age about the yellow patches scattered throughout the yard. Even at 11, I felt my stomach turn over and grab my heart for a beat when Mother opened the boxes of chicks that were delivered to us every 6 months. There were always so many of the chirping yellow clouds. But that only meant that a good many would never survive, and of those, only some of the hens would live out their lives giving eggs. Mother took care of the roosters and hens that had grown too old or looked fat enough for eating. There was a chopping block in the center of the yard but she always insisted on ringing the bird's neck first with a snap of her wrist, then placing the limp body on the wood. She would tease us and say, “I've seen a live chicken with its head cut off, and that's something I'll never see again.” Sometimes she brought the cleaver down so hard, it stuck in the wood. We always had chicken after a fight between my parents, we kids joked. But I remember the expression on her face now and how her mouth tightened and grew small as if she were sucking in the words of the night before.

Once John and I found a rattlesnake caught halfway in the chicken wire. It had been dead overnight and already the chickens had pecked its eyes out and chewed up its tongue. I shooed the roosters and chickens away and turned it over with a stick.

“Is it a toy?” John asked.

“No, it's real. Just dead,” I said, looking down at its belly and finding the red pin pricks where it had bitten itself. Even snakes could poison themselves. No one has immunity to the poison deep inside them.

Mother pulled it out of the wire and cut its rattler off and gave it me. I had a box of them along with the arrowhead collection Clovis had helped me to start after I eyed his own. Some of my tails had just one button while others were long, dry, yellow cracked shells one after the other like a necklace. I would take one out and shake it when I was bored, wondering what I would do if I heard that sound one day. Mother threw the rest of the snake into the pigsty, and John and I watched as the sow jumped up from nursing and rushed the snake. She grunted loudly and her babies began squealing as she grabbed it in her snout and tossed it in the air. It splashed into the mud and she did it again, ripping into the snake with her teeth and flinging it around the sty like a lasso. The squealing piglets were as much an audience as we were. After a few more tosses, the body began to tear away, showering us with pieces of snake until we stepped back from the railing and ran to the house for breakfast.

Near the coop was the garage where Father worked on his projects. He had a lot of jobs. He worked in town at the scrap yard near the train depot. Toyah was still a stop on the train line out of El Paso then. The neighboring ranchers would drive in their cattle and sheep every other month. The owners always followed their ranch hands in their big Cadillacs, dressed in their new suits and hats to exchange papers with the slaughterhouse representatives. Father was always upset on those days and no one could say a word to him. He would come back from town without any of the groceries Mother had asked him to buy or the pencils or paper Joanne needed. He would even forget the mail.

“He didn't forget,” Mother said, staring at her reflection in the window over the sink. Her eyes were like almonds, narrow slits that fattened out in the middle. They distracted you from the white slab that worked its way out the length of her nose where she'd broken it as a teenager in a car accident that killed her parents. They had been arguing, she told us. My aunt later said their mother had tried to jump out of the car and their father lost control as he pulled her back in.

“Your father would rather make every one unhappy than have to carry his own burdens alone.”

“That's right, honey!” he screamed from the living room. “Let's be a family about this.”

Mother smiled and turned to Joy. “Get your father a beer.”

Father had more than one job. The scrap yard was something he worked at during the week. Weekends, he worked any construction job he could find. Sometimes, he'd just sit in the garage he used as a workshop, drinking beer and wiping his tools. There were little projects he brought home as a contractor, some special decoration or other that he would pencil in on a board with his protractor and French curves. That's when he seemed happiest. Sometimes he would even let Joanne and Joy help him. There was an old cat that never seemed to leave the barn. It slept in an old rusty toolbox near his bench. We heard him talking to it sometimes. He named it Nigra Cat because it was black and fed it bits of his lunch. Joy would get so mad when she saw the cat chewing on a slice of ham from a sandwich she'd made for Father's lunch. “Don't feed that lazy thing,” she said. “It doesn't do anything for you.” Joy said she didn't like cats but I think it was just Nigra Cat she hated.

“Yes, he does,” Father said. He took his pipe out of his mouth and tapped the cat on the head. It stretched as best it could and became a loaf of fur again, slowly closing its eyes and purring loudly for a few moments before the sound trailed off.

When he could, Father also took contract work from the county and was licensed to trap cougars. The cats would sometimes start feeding on farm animals if it had been a hard winter. Father and some of his drinking friends would go out and set a cage trap baited with a rabbit or the leftovers from a slaughter. Then after a week or so, Father would come home with a dazed cat in the back of his pickup. It would take a day or two before it woke up and began prowling back and forth. Then we would all count the days until the county animal control officer arrived to take it away. At night we could hear it whining like a baby, a thin, sharp blade of sound that cut at you in the middle of a dream. I never once heard one roar like a lion. They were afraid, and the muscles that flowed like the waves of the ocean beneath their smooth, tan coats were useless. I would sit watching the cage from the porch, wondering if this is how the first wolf felt on its way to becoming a dog. We didn't know what happened to them after they were taken away by the inspector but we always assumed they would be released back in the wild, further away from the towns where they had hunted livestock as dumb as the garbage cans the cougars sometimes ate from. I didn't want to think of them back in the open desert. I knew they'd changed, and at night when their baby cries no longer woke me up, I dreamed of them starving to death because they could no longer hunt, and then I would see jack rabbits and snakes playing in their skeleton bellies.

One night a cougar broke free from its cage. We heard it crossing the farmyard back and forth all night. Wolf and General had run for the porch when Father turned on the light to find out what the splintering noise was that woke us all up. The cougar had pushed the cage door out until it ripped off the hinges and the bolt. We sat up all night watching from the windows of the house, Father, Mother, and Clovis holding either a rifle or shotgun. They traded throughout the night, aiming the barrels.

“It's going after the coop,” Mother whispered.

“I'm ready,” Clovis said, bracing himself against the window edge.

Father placed his hand on his shoulder. “Not yet. I don't think he's going to do no harm. Once a cat smells a human, he's got no interest in eating. As long as he knows we're watching him, it's okay.”

“Why?” I asked, ducking under the barrels to sit by his legs.

“Wouldn't you feel the same way, Evie, if the one thing you hated the most in this world was watching you? You wouldn't feel like doing anything, just pacing back and forth until they disappeared. Right?”

I looked up at him. We were all looking at him. Mother had moved closer out of the shadow and the darkness flowed away from her face slowly. Her eyes appeared first like dark pits catching the first rays of the morning sun.

Father was right. The cat loped this way and that all night. Toward dawn, he did an amazing thing. Joanne woke me up just in time to see the cat walking right back into the cage and curling up. Father waited an hour to make sure it was asleep and then crept out and walked softly toward the cage, his shoes off, carefully making his way across the gravel drive. He stood in front of the cage and raised his rifle.

The county inspector wouldn't let Father keep the hide. He said it was government property and was angry Father had already skinned the animal. “You can protect your family, I understand that. But your responsibility is to the county, Mr. Nelson. You're an agent of the same when you trap. Take your pay, and I don't want any one knowing about this little incident. And I won't ask what you did with the meat.”

Father wasn't angry from what I could see from the porch. He had that look Clovis got when he was trying to hold in his tears.

“Jesus, Perry, don't look at me like that.” The inspector turned away. “Make sure your cage is strong enough next time,” he said without looking back as he threw the skin into his truck bed. “You've got a family.”

I had trouble sleeping and woke up early on Clovis ' birthday. He was 16 when I opened my eyes and pulled back the covers. Mother wanted me to pull some eggs so she could get an early start on Clovis ' cake. Joy was in the next bed, her head sandwiched between two pillows. Strands of hair crept out and where they tangled together before fanning out again I could see drops of moonlight. The sun wouldn't be up for another hour so I sat at the edge of my bed slowly wriggling my toes into my slippers and brushing my fingers against one breast, and then another to see how much they'd grown in the night. They hurt like hell, a raw numb pain that centered itself beneath each breast. The first time I felt it, I thought it was my heart going bad on me and I cried to Joy. She was 14 and knew about breasts, knew about boys and knew what a stupid little girl I'd always be. I wanted to wake her up right now and tell her that I loved her. Then we could go to Joanne's bedroom and crawl into bed with her. We'd all hold hands like we used to, when we slept together sometimes when we all shared the same room. This was before father built the addition for Joanne, when she was Joy ‘s age. Now she was 17, and I blamed our father as much as her growing up for our separation. We were like the farm, a bunch of buildings now scattered in the smallest place possible.

I was jealous that Joy and Joanne were closer now. They excluded me from their words, their thought, and their looks toward each other. They would let me join them but I always needed permission. They would nod to each other with their eyes and then open their arms to me. Joanne had dreams of being an artist. She didn't just draw the world around, she seemed to let it draw her. I sometimes sneaked into her room and paged through her sketch pad, seeing what she had spent the day doing. It was always so strange to see a picture I'd remembered her drawing earlier in the day. I recognized the thing on the pad but it seemed so different, as if Joanne had drawn herself into the lines and shading. Even a tree or a cactus sitting lonely in a field would give me the feeling that I was looking not just through her eyes, but at her. And sometimes, it was if I was looking at all of us in the family, at me. Joy wanted to be a nurse. She would talk endlessly with Joanne about the things she'd do, the people she'd save. One day when I asked her why, she said that she wanted take all the hurt in the world and place it in her pocket, and then walk away. She would laugh when she told Joanne and me. I would laugh too but not Joanne, who I now realize understood what Joy really meant.

I dressed, throwing on a t-shirt and jeans and crept out of the bedroom as quietly as possible, stumbling as I tried to roll up my pants legs. They were too long and slid across the rough wooden planks of the hallway floor with a gravelly sound. I could hear mother snoring a few doors down. Father was asleep on the couch in the living room. Nearby was a stack of his Zane Greys and a bottle of beer. He made no noise when he slept but I sometimes wondered what sounds we make in our dreams. How would we look at each other if we could hear someone else's dreams?

I stepped through the kitchen and out onto the porch. General was sprawled like a rag across the floor. Older and stronger, Wolf was a black lump of muscle in the dark. He had one paw on General's neck. Even in his sleep, his wildness came out. He always seemed ready to hunt you down. Mother said we wouldn't see the good side of his line until we were old and gray, when we would have one of his great great grand grandchildren for a farm dog. “Remember, the good isn't always so good when you're talking about animals. You want your dog to be a little wild. It ain't right that we've turned wolves into rabbits and made them our pets.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “If only people were the same...you can't take the wild out of them.” Wolf raised his head, his eyes still closed, and smelled the air. He knew it was me, and his head fell slowly back down to the floor.

The air was cool and still damp with the night. It felt like heavy like tar, and as I breathed it slowly in, it tasted sweet. I was used to air that had been boiled dry by the sun. I knew that in less than an hour the sky would begin to split yellow and red beyond the windmill and the pasture, the grass would lose the dark green color that glowed with dew under my lantern, and the world would become normal again. I kicked my shoes off and carefully took a few steps across the small yard around the house. I tried not to think about tarantulas and scorpions as my feet slid through the cool wet blades. Mother would kill me for doing this. I stood there for a long time and turned to look back at the house, darker triangles and rectangles in the black around me. I put my shoes back on and walked toward the chicken yard.

I hung the lantern on the chicken wire and opened the gate. The chicken wire was old, the loops rusty and broken in places. Father would probably stop whatever he was doing soon and work nonstop on fencing it up again. If there was a job to do, it became his life. Nothing else would matter. I wished at the time I was like him. Life would've been simple if I could've put my mind to just one thing, anything. I could hear the soft sounds of the chickens as I quietly pulled the gate shut. They were as lucky as Father. Their only care in the world was to let the roosters sit on top of them and then make eggs. No chicks, nothing. I wondered sometimes if they missed the babies they gave up for us. I doubted it.

I walked around the coop to the door. I was happy that my feet didn't churn up the smelly dust and feathers from the wet ground. As I held out the lantern in front of me to look for the egg basket that always sat by the coop door, I let out a small scream and dropped the lantern. Something was sitting on the stump where Mother butchered the chickens. The lantern rolled toward the stump, kerosene draining out into a pool that shined like silver in the light.

“ Clovis ? Is that you?”

“Pick that lantern up. Do you want to start a fire?” The voice was low, almost a growl.

I picked it up and in the light I saw him hunched over, his elbows on his knees. He held the back of his neck with one hand and in the other was his favorite .22.

“What are you doing up?” I moved closer but he scared me even though I knew it was Clovis . I stopped a few feet away. I could now smell the beer on him. There was a sharp rattle as one of my shoes hit the first empty bottle.

“I'm drinking.” His face was red and puffy. Even though it was cool, he looked feverish. I couldn't tell if the drops on his face were sweat or tears. He cleared his throat. “I want to tell you something, Evie. I love you.” He turned his head, and I saw another drop form in his eye. “I love you. I love Mother and Joanne, Joy, and John. But I hate him.” He was crying. He was gripping the barrel of the rifle, banging the stock down on the edge of the stump. “And sometimes...” He had trouble getting the words out between his sobs. “Sometimes, I hate her too.”

I came near his side and put my hand on the rifle. “ Clovis , why are you saying that?” I could feel him tighten his grip but he seemed to relax when he looked up into my face. “Have you been here all night? Do you want me to get Joanne and Joy?”

“Don't get anyone,” he said looking down at the ground. “It's bad enough that you see me here.”

I followed his eyes and saw his boots covered in dirt. “Where have you been?”

He laughed, and brushed his boots with his free hand.

“Have you been with that girl again? Mother will kill you. Well, first Father'll kill you and then hand you over to Mother for her turn.” I smiled. I took the rifle from him and put it on the ground. It was loaded but there wasn't a bullet in the chamber.

“Father will kill me, huh?” He laughed again and seemed to notice that he no longer had the rifle. “Yes, I went to Margaret's house. That's where I've been all night.”

“ Clovis , you're not going to marry her. You're too young for all that.” I had strange ideas about men and women and sex when I imagined people doing things like the animals around the farm.

His smile was wide now. “Your name isn't Margaret, is it?” His boot tip drew small circles in the dust. “She said no, too. Even when I explained everything to her.”

“What, Clovis ? Explained what?”

“About Father...”

“I don't understand.”

Clovis shook his head. “I shouldn't be telling you any of this, Evie. You don't need to hear it.”

I stood up and looked down at him. “That's why you should tell me.” I tried to make my voice sound like Mother's.

He reached down and picked up a beer bottle and took a gulp. I put my hand out, and hesitating for a moment, he handed it to me. I took a swallow and could taste him on the opening.

“Father is going to make me a man, today, Evie,” Clovis whispered. “He's going to take me over to that Mexican place in Pecos . I didn't want it to be like that.” He was crying again, and I handed him back the bottle. “I wanted Margaret, Evie.” His voice trailed off until all I could hear were a few words before he stood up and dropped the bottle. “I loved her.” He walked back to the house.

I picked up the lantern and the rifle. I placed the rifle in the chicken coop and gathered the eggs from the sleeping chickens. Above me on a roost, a rooster opened his eyes and fluttered down to the floor and walked outside. I followed him with the basket. I saw the last star sparkle like a pearl before it disappeared along the edge of the sun. The rooster crowed, and I began cleaning up the empty beer bottles.

Clovis had a dumb smile on his face as he sat across from me at the dining table. He was between Joy and Joanne. They had helped him to the table from the bathroom where he had been throwing up since waking up around noon . Joy and I spent an hour cleaning up the bathroom while Joanne helped him get dressed and made him wash his mouth out again and again. She even sprayed him with some perfume but I could still smell the sour sweat on his skin. Mother had been too busy in the kitchen with dinner and the cake to notice where he was. Father had just got home from work early and was in a corner tuning in a station on the radio. The music was fuzzy and seemed to sink into your ears like water. It faded and became a low static, and then became the heavy fuzz again. Father squinted and barely touched the knob, and suddenly the room was full of western swing. Mother yelled to turn it up so she could hear it as John came running out of the kitchen, stomping his feet and making up words to the chords that changed so fast my head grew dizzy, and I looked back at Clovis and gave him the same dumb smile. Mother called for us girls to help her. John tried to follow us but I told him to stay with Clovis . I didn't think he wanted to be alone with Father.

Dinner was big and more like a Sunday breakfast, which is what Clovis liked. I knew he was still feeling sick and I felt sad as he tried to eat as much as possible of everything. He dumped his biscuit in the thick grey gravy, took a bite and then added some hash browns or fat ivory kernals of hominey to his mouth. One hand always seemed to be twirling the yolk of his eggs, sliding them across the steak. A bowl of preserves sat at the center of the table and he spooned the bright runny raspberries, spotted with sharp seeds, onto his toast. Every few minutes he would sip his orange juice. My stomach hurt just watching him.

Father was sitting beside Mother and was hardly eating. He kept looking down at his watch. Mother took some toast from the center of the table. It was sweet with sugar and cinnamon and put it on his plate. “Eat something, Perry, before the boy wipes the table clean.”

“He's a man now, honey,” he said, glancing over at Clovis .

“You're right. Clovis is a man but he's your boy.” She looked at us girls and said, “He's my boy too.”

Father picked up the toast and put it on my plate. “What does that mean?” I couldn't tell if he was angry; his eyes were always small beads behind his glasses and his mouth was permanently wrinkled like an old sheet.

“The same thing it's meant these last 16 years.” Mother's voice was calm but the sound was so much bigger than her body and seemed to drop from the air. She got like that when they argued. Her words always seemed to pull Father's down until he shut his mouth and walked away. “And for 9 months before that.”

Joanne was fidgeting in her chair. I knew she wanted to clear the table and get this over with. She and Joy had turned red with Mother's last words. I opened my mouth but immediately bit into the toast and my thoughts seemed to swim in a sea of spice and sugar. I couldn't tell if Clovis had heard. He just continued eating up a storm, his cheek in the palm of his hand, the elbow sliding across the table with every chew. These were the only sounds I could hear now. It was a noise like the static on the radio, untuned and hiding its meaning in the emptiness that kept trying to fill up with words.

Finally Father spoke, pointing at John. “Get me my matches, boy.” His voice was harsh now, without the softness that came when he was speaking to Mother.

We all watched John, even Clovis between bites, jump down from his seat on top of a pair of Sears Christmas catalogs. He ran to Father's rocking chair and picked up a box of matches off the end table. He carefully pulled one out, struck it, and walked slowly to the table, his eyes on the flame creeping down to his fingers. Everything seemed to stop again as we stared at him. He had done this many times before but I always felt my stomach moving up my throat each time. I squeezed the sides of my chair and felt the pressure in my chest as my muscles became tight.

“Hurry, boy,” Father called.

Father craned his neck out and John stood on his toes and put the match up to the cigarette between Father's lips. I could hear the sizzle as the paper caught, and then the tobacco. Father took a drag and blew the flame out. John looked at the smoking, black, twisted skeleton just above his fingers. He pinched it between his thumb and index finger, catching the air as it crumbled to the floor.

“All gone,” he said. “I want some cake.”

Joy and Joanne were in the kitchen getting ready to bring out the cake. Mother was leaning back on her chair, her lips pinched, and moving her eyes across the room. She hadn't spoken one word, even when my sisters and I were cleaning off the table, trying to wrestle Clovis ' plate from him. He was worse than John. Father was asking John if he had a present for his brother. John seemed like he was about to cry.

“Don't tease him, Perry,” Mother said. “My present is his too.” She seemed like she was about to say something else but stopped.

Father grinned halfway. “Not every one has something that can be wrapped up.” His face turned red when he saw I was listening. “Go help your sisters, Evie.”

I walked into the kitchen. Joanne and Joy were whispering over the cake as they counted out the candles. When they saw me, the whispering stopped and Joanne spoke like she was catching her words out of the air. “. . . I think we only have 15 here.”

“The box is empty,” Joy said.

“What else could we use?”
John walked in behind me. He was carrying one of his metal soldiers with him. I knelt down and took his hand. “John, can we use your soldier? It'll be your present for Clovis .”

He held the soldier tighter and looked away from me. A blush spread across his cheeks. He handed it to me. “I'm not eating him though,” he said.

We all laughed and carried the cake out, the soldier stuck right in the middle. The lights were off in the dining room and the soldier seemed to be dancing like a ballerina in the flickering flames.

Everyone sang Happy Birthday to Clovis as he leaned over the table and blew out the candles. He began slicing the cake but his hand was unsteady and the slices were jagged and crumbled on our plates. Joy scooped homemade ice cream from the maker, its icy sides glittering with rock salt. Mother poured fresh milk into our glasses. Father held his out.

“This is his birthday. I hope you understand that he's my son too,” she said.

“You're going to make me ask for something stronger than milk, Mary.” He drank the milk and wiped his mouth. When he took his hand away, the wrinkles around his mouth seemed frozen. “I'm responsible for raising him too.”

Mother put the pitcher down and rubbed at her eyes, and then ran her hand through her hair and along the tight braid that fell down her back. Her eyes had glistened for a moment but now were dry and blank.

“Presents!” John yelled.

I was a little girl then. I like to think that when I remember what happened after we brought out Clovis ' presents. Joanne took out her sketch pad and sat down next to him. Joy came up behind him and held the card she had made for him in front of his face. John stood next to him pointing at the places where he had helped and trying to recite a line from the little poem Joy had copied from a school book. I feel ashamed of myself that I don't remember those four or five lines but even more I hope I never accidentally come across them.

My gift was an arrowhead wrapped in tissue with a red thread bow. It was a point that I had found one afternoon on our neighbor's land. The flutes weren't perfect and the point was broken. I stumbled on it in a pile of rocks and flakes. The Indian had sat in that same spot, chipping away at the rock, but something had gone wrong. Either he had been careless or the rock was brittle but the tip had shattered, and he had tossed it away with the other flakes. Much later I would discover that Clovis was the name of a type of arrowhead but by then collecting things seemed childish.

As hard as I try, I can't remember what Mother gave Clovis . I don't know why now but her gift seemed unimportant, as if there was nothing she could give except herself. The same thing she did everyday for each of us. Even for Father. Even when I knew she was wrong, when she took the hairbrush to us for disobeying her, I understood her reasons. It wasn't out of love or hate. It was because she was there, and that was all there was. We were a family on a farm and poor. It was as if she held those reasons for each of us in her palm, stirred them in her pots, baked them. That's why what happened next was part of us all.

“Evie, I'm not going to ask you or the girls to stay in your rooms,” she said as I helped her wash the dishes while Father paced the living room. Clovis was still sitting for Joanne. Joy was cleaning off the table, bringing in dishes one by one by one into the kitchen. Each time she came in she would say Father was waiting for Joanne to finish.

“I can talk to you,” Mother continued, placing her hand on my cheek. “You know what your father is planning, don't you?” She turned her head as if she was embarrassed herself asking me.

“Yes,” I said. “I think.”

Her eyes narrowed like the sun falling beneath the horizon. They were red and seemed on fire. At first I thought she was about to cry, but her voice was harsh, and I felt its low sound vibrate through my body. “If you don't understand, Evie, tell me. Tell me now that you don't know where they're going in a few minutes.”

I looked down at a plate, scrubbed it hard and dumped it back into the Dutch oven that we used for soaking. I breathed deeply, and then again. “They're going to meet some women,” I whispered.

“Yes,” she said but without any emotion. It was as if she hadn't wanted me to know the answer.

She took a dish from my hand and held it up to the light pouring from the window. It glowed like the gold around her finger. She gave it back to me, and I began scrubbing again.

“Your father and I are alike no matter what he does. We all want the same things but he still thinks he can have it all. Sometimes I think he took the job in town just so he could watch those ranchers and oilmen come in each week.” She wiped her hands on her apron, loosened the string and retied the bow again. “He's a lost man, your father, and he wants to make up for it with Clovis .” She plunged her hands into the Dutch oven and pulled out a bowl. “And he thinks he can do it by giving his son some sort of head start in this world.”

I didn't know whether to say something or just nod. I wanted her to know I was listening, that I understood then as much as I do now. But only my hands moved as I dug my fingernails into a crusty spot on a dish.

“And this is how he does it.” Mother closed her eyes tightly and her face became small as it bunched up into a hundred wrinkles. Her skin was red like she was embarrassed. “A whore,” she said quietly.

I put my arm around her waist as she leaned into the counter. She placed her hand on mine. “You see, he's taking care of Clovis . He expects me to take care of you girls.” She squeezed my hand. “But I know better. I know.” She looked down at me; tears were travelling down her wrinkles. “Forgive me, Evie. Please, forgive me—I don't have any jealousy in my heart. I won't let it eat away at me.”

“I know.”

“No, you don't know that. You don't know what it means.” She wiped a tear that had reached her chin. “I have no plans for you or your sisters.” She raised her head and looked up. “I have nothing. Neither will you.”

She relaxed her grip and I pulled my hand away. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. I put my rag down and passed Joy and Joanne as they came in. Joanne had finished Clovis ' portrait and held the sketch pad up. I walked into the living room. Father was there but Clovis was gone.

“Hurry up, son.” Father called out to Clovis ' bedroom. “It's a rough drive.”

John was lying half-asleep on the sofa. “Can I come?” he asked.

What happened next was no one's fault. If I had to blame anyone it would be Mother. She killed Wolf. It would be so easy for me to say Father was responsible. He knew how to kill a wild animal. He'd done it before. I had seen him split open the belly of a deer and cut out the musk glands. His hands bloody and stinking like piss and death. Mother slaughtered the chickens, and I even watched her once help Father kill an old sow when Clovis was still too young and afraid to jump in the sty. But she never killed with a grin on her face, the satisfied way Father did when he took down an animal.

Clovis said Father had told him the secret of a good hunter is to never kill something because you're angry. Kill it because you respect it. “Like the Apaches?” Clovis asked.

“The Indians knew something, son. They understood what they killed would become a part of them, and the animals knew too. Just like you can't get a good clean bead on a quail when you're distracted or mad. If you do end up putting a bullet through its wing and have to break its neck with your rifle butt, that anger you had spoils the meat.”

When Clovis told me this, I thought about the chickens Mother killed and how the blood that poured out of them was the same color as her face, the same angry red that scared me when I was a little girl. I wondered if we all tasted her feelings.

I was in my bedroom dressing Elizabeth when I heard an engine start up and wheels churning gravel. I squinted and looked through the window fan to see Father and Clovis in the jeep. It always looked like a toy car to me because it was so small compared to our pick-up. Clovis was driving, and across Father's lap I could see his hand pushing and pulling as he tried to put it in gear. I could hear chunks of metal grinding together above the flat hum of the fan. Shadows cut across my face as the blades spun. Wolf and General were chasing each around the jeep. The sound seemed to make them play harder, to make them jump high into the sky and bite the air left behind the one that was being chased. Wolf leaped and ran across the back of the jeep as General swerved around the tailgate, throwing up more rocks than the tires. Father reached across and honked the horn. One of the dogs yelped. I think he may have been hit by a rock. Then suddenly, Clovis found first and the jeep bumped forward and the windshield crashed down. It looked like two doll heads bouncing on top of the little jeep as they flew up the driveway, landing every now and then onto the gravel, followed by Wolf and General. I wondered if Father and Clovis would be gone for the rest of the day.

*

It was Joy who screamed first, I think. I was still standing in the window, leaning forward and letting the cool air whip my hair back. My eyes were closed but my lids fluttered with the air, colors dancing behind them. The inside of my nose burned with the smell of hot oil mixed with dust blowing out from the fan engine.

“Mother!” Joy screamed.

I opened my eyes and saw her holding Mother's arm. Something was on the ground moving, and only after the colors stopped flickering past my face was I able to tell it was Joanne. It was as if Mother was kicking her. I couldn't understand anything they were saying except the screams.

I ran out of the bedroom and through the house. John was sitting up on the sofa with a slice of cake in his hand. He was covered in crumbs and frosting.

“Stay there, John,” I whispered as I passed him. “Don't move.”

I pushed open the porch door and it banged against the screen as I jumped down the steps. I felt my ankle twist as it hit the ground and I fell onto my chest. A deep hollow pain spread out from my breasts as I gasped for air. It was the worst pain I'd ever felt in my life. I couldn't even scream because the pain seemed to be rushing down my chest, keeping me from taking a breath. An invisible hand was over my mouth, and then it was gone. The scream finally came. Along with the tears. I stood up and spit out dust.

There was another scream. This time it was Mother's. Her voice was thick and deep and solid as she shook off Joy's arm. “Let me go!”

Mother walked toward me. Behind her, Joy helped Joanne up. And further away, I could see Wolf and General racing back down the driveway. They were running through waves of heat that parted like thin drapes hung from the sky. My head was still swimming with the pain when Mother ran her hands through my hair and asked me if I was all right. All I could do was ask, “What's happening?”

The back of her hand brushed my cheek. “Make sure your sister is okay,” she said as she turned around and walked between Joy and Joanne.

“Mother?” I said. My knees started to bend. “Mother?” Everything in front of me was a blur. My eyes could only focus on distant objects. I could see down the driveway the dogs and the dust that trailed behind them like smoke.

Joy and Joanne helped me to the porch. I kept shaking my head trying to clear away the pain that had spread across my body, up my neck, into my arms and legs as if it were trying to escape but reached a dead end each time instead. The pain just seemed to sit close to my skin. I sat down, and Joy knelt beside me while Joanne went inside. Mother was walking to the truck. She turned around once to look back but she was so far away now I couldn't make out her face. I wanted her here with me. I wanted her arms around me at this very moment, telling me every thing was okay, that I would stop hurting.

Joanne came back out with a wet wash cloth. John was behind her and cradling Elizabeth in his arms. Joanne pressed the cloth to my forehead, and I felt the pain slowly cool and disappear.

“Where is Mother going?” I asked, watching her climb up the riding board into the truck.

Joanne took my hand and placed it on the cloth. She looked toward the truck. “She's going after them. She says she won't let Father do this.” She stood up and started running, her hands around her mouth shouting, “Mother, stop!' over and over again. Joy took off after her.

I was alone with John now. He had planted himself on the step above me. He held Elizabeth out to me. I took her and placed her next to me. John's face was still covered in frosting and crumbs. “I brought Elizabeth for you, Evie.” He started to stand up but I caught his leg and told him to sit back down.

Joanne and Joy were at the door of the truck now. I knew they wanted to open the door and pull Mother out but they just stood there as she started up the engine. It stalled and she gunned it again. The noise of the engine turning over was the only thing I could hear, a sound that reminded me of her voice. And I knew it wasn't real but I could make out words in that sound that I couldn't understand.

The truck didn't move. It just sat there spluttering. I prayed to myself that my sisters had been able to stop her, to convince her there was nothing any of us could do. I turned to John, and he smiled; it was one of those moments when you remember that someone is your own blood. I took the cloth from my forehead and wiped his mouth. He wrinkled his face, and I realized how small he really was and how much faster I was growing up, and that Elizabeth was something far away from me now.

That is when I wished I could've protected him, that was when everything happened, and I hated myself that he had to see it first. “Look,” he said. The dogs had come back and were chasing the each other around the truck, slipping under the cab and out again. This was a game they played sometimes when we were about to go somewhere. The engine would drive them crazy like it was another animal they were hunting. Afterwards, there would be big black patches of fur across their backs where they had touched the hot engine.

I saw Joanne and Joy step back from the truck as General slid between them and the door. Just then I heard the engine go into gear and the tires spun in the gravel for a moment. The truck rolled backwards but it hesitated again for a moment as the engine whined, and the rear wheels lifted up and fell back down throwing up a cloud of dust. Then we all heard the howl that seemed to suck the air out around us, and it was the only thing we could breathe.

Then it was quiet except for the engine and the sound of John's breath as he squeezed himself into me and wrapped his little fist around the loose fabric of my dress. The only thing that was moving was the dust drifting down. As it cleared, I saw a black shape. It was General staring like all of us at the lump beneath the truck.

“Wolf,” I whispered, and caught my next words when I saw John's face, the way it asked me for this not to be real. I knew I was looking at my own reflection.

I saw Wolf move. He was trying to lift himself it. General crouched down and crawled towards him, burying his muzzle into Wolf's back. Joy later told me that he was licking the blood off. It took me years to realize that it he wasn't trying to eat him and that this is what dogs did to each other when they were hurt. They could care for each other.

I know Mother did what she did next on purpose. I know she had to throw the car in gear to move forward. The truck was part of her. It was her body, her mind, her heart, all the emotion that she held inside her. General jumped backwards as the rear wheels rolled over Wolf again. This time there was no howl.

Joy had started running back towards the house, leaving Joanne alone. She stopped at the porch and bent over, holding her knees, trying to catch her breath. She was crying. “Get him,” she screamed at me. “Get John back in the house.” She grabbed him before I could tell her that I couldn't, that I wouldn't move, and she pulled him off me yelling and kicking. I could almost feel the tip of his hard little shoe dig into her ribs as he fought her, but she carried him away. She had a purple welt for weeks.

Joanne and I were the only witnesses as Mother changed gears again and again, crushing Wolf into the gravel and dirt. I asked Joanne later what Mother's face was like but she said all she remembered was General's eyes, how they grew big as he opened his jaws and bit at the tires, trying to sink his fangs into the hard rubber. He jumped onto the back of the pick up and threw himself at the rear window, trying to get at Mother, then climbed over the roof onto the hood where he barked and snapped at the windshield, not caring how hot the metal was on his paws. When it was all over, the glass was covered in his dirty foam. I can't tell how long it went on for but finally General stopped and calmly trotted off. He couldn't beat Mother. None of us could. It was all over when the black smoke that had been floating out of the tailpipes in little puffs turned into a rolling cloud, and the radiator cap popped off with a rush a steam. The truck had given up. Mother pounded the horn a few times and slumped over the steering wheel.

Joanne waited to approach the truck but finally I think she felt my eyes on her back, felt my thoughts remind her that this was our mother. I picked up Elizabeth and pulled her against me. I sat slowly rocking back and forth like that as I watched Joanne open the door and wrap her arm around Mother's shoulder.

Father left that night after he and Clovis had placed Wolf's body in a hole they dug in the pasture. They had pulled up into the driveway and saw what had happened, saw the blood and fur and pieces of Wolf that stuck to the tires. I remember Father standing quietly on the porch with me waiting for Mother to come out but she never did. Joanne had told him everything but that wasn't enough for him.

“Your mother will forget this, honey,” he said to me. “You'll see.”

The next morning I cleaned up a pile of cigarettes at the foot of the steps while Joanne hosed down the truck and Clovis and John searched for General. Joy sat with Mother. We all took turns. What Father said came true after a while. I had wanted him to say I would forget too.

back to Commencement 2007 Table of Contents

© 2007 The Harvard Advocate
Contact the