“Yes,” he said. “The need was there.” He arose from her and turned on his back and lay beside her.
She spoke sleepily: “It’s in my memory now. Once in my life—once in my life! My whole life approaching it, and after, my whole life backing away hungrily. It was not for you. It seems enough now, perhaps it is, but I am afraid it will bear litters of desires, and each one will grow larger than its mother.” She sat up and kissed his forehead, and for a moment her hair fell about his face “Is there a candle on the table, Joseph? I’ll need a little light.”
“Yes, on the table, in a tin candle-stick, and matches in the tray.”
She got up and put flame to the candle. She looked down at herself and with her finger explored the dark-red bruises on her breast. “I’ve thought of this,” she said. “Often I’ve thought of it. And in my thought we lay together after we had joined, and I asked you a great many questions. Always in my thought that was the way it was.” As though a modesty crept upon her, she shielded the candlelight from her body with her hand. “I think I’ve asked my questions and you have answered them.”
Joseph supported himself on one elbow. “Rama, what do you want of me?” he demanded.
She turned, then, to the door and opened it slowly. “I want nothing now. You are complete again. I wanted to be a part of you, and perhaps I am. But—I do not think so.” Her voice changed then. “Go to sleep now. And in the morning come to breakfast.” She closed the door after her. He heard the rustling of her dressing, but sleep fell so quickly upon him that he did not hear her leave the house.
22
IN JANUARY there was a time of shrill cold winds and mornings when the frost lay on the ground like a light snow. The cattle and horses ranged the hillsides, picking up forgotten wisps of grass, reaching up to nibble the live oak leaves, and finally they moved in and stood all day about the fenced haystacks. Morning and night Joseph and Thomas pitched hay over the fence to them and filled the troughs with water. And when the stock had eaten and drunk, they stood about waiting for the next feeding. The hills were picked clean.
The earth grew more grey and lifeless every week and the haystacks dwindled. One was finished and another started, and it melted, too, under the appetites of the hungry cows. In February an inch of rain fell and the grass started up, grew a few inches and turned yellow. Joseph walked moodily about with his hands knotted and thrust into his pockets.
The children played quietly. They played “Aunt Elizabeth’s Funeral” for weeks, burying a cartridge box over and over. And later in the year they played at gardening, dug tiny plots of ground and planted wheat and watched the long thin blades shoot up under poured water. Rama still cared for Joseph’s baby. She gave more time to it than she had devoted to her own.
But it was Thomas who really grew afraid. When he saw that the cattle could find no more feed in the hills the terror of starvation began to arise in him. When the second haystack was half gone, he came nervously to Joseph.
“What will we do when the other two stacks run out?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. I’ll think what to do.”
“But Joseph, we can’t buy hay.”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think what to do.”
There were showers in March, and a little stand of feed started up and wildflowers began to grow. The cattle moved out from the stacks and nibbled hungrily all day long at the short grass to get their stomachs full. April dried out the ground again, and the hope of the country was gone.
The cattle were thin and laced with ribs. Hip-bones stood out. There were few calves born. Two sows died with a mysterious illness before they littered. Some of the cows took a harsh cough from the dusty air. The game was going away from the hills. The quail came no longer to the house to sing in the evenings. And the nights when the coyotes gibbered were rare. It was an odd thing to see a rabbit.
“The wild things are going away,” Thomas explained.“ Everything that can move is going over the range to the coast. We’ll go there soon, Joseph, just to see it.”
In May the wind blew for three days from the sea, but it had done that so often that no one believed it There was a day of massed clouds, and then the rain fell in torrents. Both Joseph and Thomas walked about, getting wet, gloating a little in the water, although they knew it was too late. Almost overnight the grass sprang up again and clothed the hills and grew furiously. The cattle spread a little fat on their ribs. And then one morning there was a burn in the sunlight, and at noon the weather was hot. The summer had come early. Within a week the grass withered and drooped, and within two weeks the dust was in the air again.
Joseph saddled a horse one morning in June and rode to Nuestra Señora and found the teamster Romas. Romas came out into his chicken yard and sat on a wagon-tongue, and he played with a bull whip while he talked.
“These are the dry years?” Joseph asked sullenly.
“It looks that way, Mr. Wayne.”
“Then these are the years you talked about.”
“This is one of the worst I ever saw, Mr. Wayne. Another like this and there will be trouble in the family.”
Joseph was scowling. “I have one stack of hay left. When that is gone, what do I feed the cattle?” He took off his hat and wiped the sweat out with a handkerchief.
Romas snapped his bull-whip, and the popper spat up the dirt like an explosion. And then he hung the whip over his knee and took tobacco and papers from his vest and rolled a cigarette. “If you can keep your cows until next winter, you may save them. If you haven’t enough hay for that, you’ll have to move them or they’ll starve. This sun won’t leave a straw.”
“Can’t I buy hay?” Joseph asked.
Romas chuckled. “In three months a bale of hay will be worth a cow.”
Joseph sat down on the wagon-tongue beside him and looked at the ground, and picked up a handful of the hot dust. “Where do you people drive the stock?” he asked finally.
Romas smiled. “That’s a good time for me. I drive the cattle. I’ll tell you, Mr. Wayne, this year has hit not only this valley but the Salinas valley, beyond. We won’t find grass this side of the San Joaquin river.”
“But that’s over a hundred miles away.”
Romas picked up the bull-whip from his lap again. “Yes, over a hundred miles,” he said. “And if you haven’t much hay left, you’d better start the herd pretty soon, while they have the guts to go.”
Joseph stood up and walked toward his horse. And Romas walked beside him.
“1 remember when you came,” Romas said quietly. “I remember when I hauled the lumber to your place. You said the drought would never come again. All of us who live here and were born here know it will come again.”
“Suppose I sell all my stock and wait for the good years?”
Romas laughed loudly at that. “Man, you aren’t thinking. What does your stock look like?”
“It’s pretty poor,” Joseph admitted.
“Fat beef is cheap enough, Mr. Wayne. You couldn’t sell Nuestra Señora beef this year.”
Joseph untied his lead rope and slowly mounted. “I see. Drive the cows then, or lose them—”
“Looks that way, Mr. Wayne.”
“And if I drive, how many do I lose?”
Romas scratched his head and pretended to be thinking. “Sometimes half, sometimes two-thirds, and sometimes all of them.”
Joseph’s mouth tightened as though he had been struck. He lifted his reins and moved his spurred boot in toward the horse’s belly.
“Do you remember my boy Willie?” Romas asked. “He drove one of the teams when we brought the lumber.”
“Yes, I remember. How is he?”
“He’s dead,” said Romas. And then, in a shamed voice, “He hung himself.”
“Why, I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry. Why did he do that?”
Romas shook his head bewilderedly. “I don’t know, Mr. Wayne. He never was very strong in the head.” He smiled up at Joseph. “That’s a Hell of a way for a father to talk.” And then, as though he spoke to more than one person, he looked at a spot beside Joseph, “I’m sorry I said a thing like that. Willie was a good boy. He never was very well, Mr. Wayne.”