Women and Dynamite

by ROBERT EASTON

1

EVERY winter day at one o’clock Dynamite and I took heavy six-tined forks that were meant to shovel feed for cattle and cleaned the barn, leaving our horses saddled in their stalls ready for the afternoon round. This was a day that sometimes in a California winter blows like a blessing from the sea. Dynamite that very morning had put on long underwear, expecting a cold snap, and as he warmed up a little at the end of the fork and began to sweat, the wool tickled his skin and made him itch and swear and blame his wife.

“Woman is a weak-minded outfit, anyway,” he said, boosting a load out the window to the compost pile and grinning his little boy’s grin. He had animal’s teeth, very white and sharp, and eyes the color of blue electric flames that cut through steel. His legs were bowed beyond belief, — many a bronc had felt them on his ribs like iron bands, — and for a lad of twenty-six with a wife and four children Dynamite had a lot to say: “Never did use undy-wear,” he said, “till I got married, nor socks neither. Back home when it come cold we put old newspaper down our boots; they’s all a man needs till he gets a woman.”

Home for Dynamite was any place he happened to be. Once it had been the Utah border, a village in a valley ringed with mountains where the desert went up and the rocks came down and just where they met there was a little room for man.

We worked in shadow. Sea wind blowing in the open door swept dust over us from the gray dirt floor of the barn. Outside, trucks were passing on the road; we could see the backs of cattle in their pens beyond, and then the deep adobe fields, tinged by early rains with a faint green shadow of new grass. Far away the Napa Hills rose up and made a line across the open door just even with the stirrup of the boss’s saddle, hanging on its peg.

Dynamite with an idea was like a chicken with a seed, taking it up, dropping it, clucking over it several times, and finally either swallowing it or walking away.

Now all this sounded like a big seed, so I waited, and in a minute he said, “See this barn?” He was standing at the window, leaning on his fork, looking out across the compost pile. I came along and pitched a load and said yes, I did see the barn.

“Sure pretty, ain’t it?” said Dynamite.

Well, it did look pretty. It stood off there half a mile away across a grassy field that was so thin and green it looked like water and the wind ran on it sparkling. The barn was part in shadow, part in sun; and somebody had cut three black squares out of its side that were windows, like ours, and on a hill beyond there was a mist, as in the spring.

“Yessir,” said Dynamite, “that’s a fine idee of what a barn should be. Makes you want to git up and start over there, don’t it — thinkin’ there is all that makes a good barn good: sweet hay and horses in their stalls, pussycats, saddles, old harness hangin’ smellin’ like last summer. You say, ‘By God, that must be the best barn in all the world,’ but it ain’t, is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it is.”

“Till you get there anyway it is,” said Dynamite, and then he said no more and I didn’t hurry him.

We took our ponies and started on the afternoon round, going first to get the bulling steer and putting him in the hospital. That brought us out on Mill Alley between the pens of cattle, on a knoll above the mill where the wind of forty miles strikes bare and always blows. It took the feed grains from the mangers and stuck them in our eyes and slopped them through our clothes and curled the dust away on a long banner from the ventilator on top the mill.

Dynamite pulled up his pony.

“Hear it?” he said.

“Hear what?” I said.

“That’s what it is,” said Dynamite. “Damn me if it ain’t!”

He held his hat on with one hand, looking right up at the sky where some power lines crossed going to the mill. “Don’tcha hear it?” he said.

I said, “What the devil are you talking about?”

“The wind in the wires,” said Dynamite.

“What about it?” I said.

“Nothing,” said Dynamite, “nothing about it, but about me plenty, ‘cause that’s the sound I heard the night of the twentieth of September, ‘33, when I rode off the top o’ the world to have a drink and see my girl.”

We went on down the knoll and around the hayfield to the big stack, where the wind couldn’t find us, nor the boss, and there Dynamite told me his story.

2

“Every year in May we took cattle in the mountain, earlier sometimes, if the year was good, and always we was champing to get away. Winter in town leaves a feller in the red. Bills here, argy-ments here, some little maiden a-wanting to git married; they’s no profit. You go along with your feet fixed one way and your mind another and if ye get as far as March without meeting the sheriff on the way you’re lucky. March — she’s better than a drink of whiskey! Then your ponies’ hair begins to slip, you’re getting out the packsaddles, a-oiling up old leather, and every guy is friendly again for the first time since Christmas.

“We hit the Mormon trail that comes in out o’ the desert and takes up past town onto the mountain. Our range was all that as was east of west and north of south, and any more we needed. That country’s not like this; we don’t prison our cattle. The rimrocks is our fences.

“ Well, when you first go up she’s hunkydory. The cattle wants to go, the ponies wants to go — they’s sick of valley living. All you’re cravin’ is that feel of hair between your knees and a chance to run and bust him out; you look the other way just a-hoping that pa’tic’lar red steer with the Roman nose and the droop-horn will take a break, ‘cause you see he’s got a run in him, and sure enough he does and then you make old mountain smoke.

“My job was what they call the Tennessee Pass, where cattle drifts in summer when the meadow feed goes short, and sometimes they travels all of Eighty Mile Hill clear down to the River, unless I catch ‘em first, which I usually does.

“I made lone camp on Aspen Crick, by a big old boulder where there was a cedar tree and an ice-cold spring run out of the stone. I made me seats and tables, a corral built of them hairy cedar logs; a bed of boughs; a canvas lean-to for when it rained. I packed in grain for my pony. I had horseshoes, nails, and pounds and pounds of sowbelly, spuds, and beans; and I had all my thoughts of what ‘d been since last I camped on Aspen Crick. To think ‘em I had company. Off south was the Old Man, twelve thousand feet and white with snow all summer long. I could see him there on moonlight nights, hanging off above me like a ghost. I’d sit by the fire then, eating my beans, pounding me some jerky for a stew, and when I had eat I’d go on sitting there just to listen — me all alone, you know, and old pony over there in his corral a-munchin’. I’d watch the firelight run up and down a grove of quakies; quaking aspens, that growed beside the water, thin and white, you know, with del-ycate leaves like they was people’s hair. I’d imagine they was people. It was so awful quiet there, seemed like I had a chance to think for the first time; and them little trees put me in mind of fellers I knowed.

“ When you was a kid, did you ever sit and think who was your best friends? Well, that’s what I done. I’m not ashamed to own it. I wasn’t no more than seventeen, anyways. . . . So I thought of Hap, my pard, who’d been with me through many a scrape and was keepin’ my other horse, a little sorrel with cat-hips. I thought a lot about that cat-hipped sorrel. I needed him to spell old Tony off, and hoped that Hap would take a notion to ride up and see me. Then I thought of Kitty McWilliams and Hoopaloo, both good guys, and of a feller named Harry I met that winter. Handsome Harry, they called him, and he was drunk . . . drunk all the time. Once he was a-gonna meet us at a certain place but never showed and they found him two days later on the Della Road, froze stiff, drunk. Cedar Bill, I thought about, and others, but amongst them aspen trees was one smaller than the rest, with branches like the arms of ferns, and leaves the wind whispered through and made to dance in the firelight, and that one was my girl, Maxine.”

Dynamite put a straw into his mouth and seemed to think of something off the path of his story.

“But that’s all right,” he said, “tha’s all right. I had a good time there three months, and then I began to tire. You get so used to yourself. Everything’s right where you left it. In the morning you go out and at evening you come back, and if a squirrel has walked across the table and kicked at the crumbs you’d know it. And I got tired of hearing nobody’s voice but my own, and tired of working with horseflesh and cowflesh and rope and leather, and tired as hell of eatin’ alone. I wanted to mix with human kind.

“And so it was this night . . . I’d been out late. There was a change in the weather coming. I could see the sun go down orange out here in Californy and I guessed that might mean trouble for cowboys. This was late September, see, and by then anything can happen. If snow comes cattle drift, and you drift with ‘em, whether it’s a mile or eighty. So I’d made a long round and come out just at evening on the Indian Rock. I could see all the valley, all the desert, all the mountain. Oh, she was a panoramic! Old Tony and I set there and watched her. while down in the valley the lights come on one by one, like little stars. A cluster of ‘em made the town; one I knowed was the Café my girl Maxine worked and I wanted to be there awful bad. Now that town didn’t amount to nuthin’! Why, at high noon it wouldn’t make a shadow. And dry, oh man! No water run by that place! ... I don’t know why I wanted to go; I’d lived there all my life, but I had to go.

“I says to Tony, ‘How do you feel?’ and he says, ‘Fine.’ So we piles over the edge.

“I knowed I could make it in three hours going straight down and be there before them little stars went out. I’d go right to the Café and see Maxine; I’d find Hap and get my sorrel horse, and I’d do a lot of things that would be worth telling later.

“Did ye ever start to go anywheres at night? The ‘how’ nor ‘why’ of it don’t matter, ye just go. Well, that was the way with me; and I begun to sing, because I was a silly kid then. I sung that song — you’ve heard me: —

“And so I slid off that mountain and I bet I was something to hear. That country’s funny built. She’s made of sandstone and looks like somebody threw her up on edge, like a deck of cards. Just when I was flyin’ high, one of them cards slipped out from under old Tony, and to me it felt like the whole deck. We just quit the ground and flew a ways, and when we come down I was pinned agin a cedar tree, under the saddle, with old Tony waving his feet at the moon and me a-spittin’ sandstone and trying to git ahold of his head. See, I had one leg under the saddle and agin the tree, and every time he’d move I’d think that leg was goin’ with him.

“We man-o-veered round a bit, and I got my short tug on the off-side undone and the saddle slid ahead and let me go. Well, that was all right. My leg was still there, and pretty quick we was on our way down the mountain. I was feeling no pain; I couldn’t do wrong. Did ye ever feel that way — go through a narrer escape and come out knowing the angels was on your side and you couldn’t miss from there on in? I went, down that mountain, under them big pines, and I was light enough to fly. I was a-gonna see my girl; I was a-gonna have a drink and put my feet under a table and have people bring me things. And I didn’t care how long it took, ‘cause I had music in me and could have rid to the end of the world.

“The old night opened up and let me down like water does a stone. Air rushin’ in my ears was all I heard. I’d watch them little lights go flicker through the trees. They’d been at my feet to start, but now they was pushing away into the desert and I spurred old Tony to catch ‘em. I got thinking of Maxine at the Café. She’d be off at nine. By then my leg would be all swole up and sore, and maybe she’d take me home and rub lineament on it. I’d have a bath first. I knowed a place I could git one for thirty-five cents. They give you medicated soap, too. And then I thought of Hap, my pal, and where I could find him. Probably the Hearty Laugh Saloon; and that made me think of the steaks old Jippy served there and I got hungry as hell. I figured to go there first and have a drink or two and a steak and get the lay of things.

“Just about then I run onto cattle bedded deep in sarvis brush . . . first one scared me, an old cow critter. I thought she was a bear, starting up there in the dark with a stomp and a snoof, but I was through the rest afore they could get out of bed, and by the faint light of the moon I knowed they was outlaws — I could see their white horns rise up around me all in a second, like them yucca flowers blooms on the desert.

“Once I come out onto a bench, and over a dry meadow, and looked back and saw my dust a-risin’ like smoke off’n that black mountain side.

“ Then I run out of the timber into scrub cedars, dwarfs of trees that tried to be a forest but never made it. A cloud come and covered the moon, so I couldn’t see only the big things, and run old Tony right over them little trees and got my face slapped bad. Did you ever git a scrape from pine or cedar . . . oily trees? It’s like somebody cut you open and poured in fire. But after a while we was down onto the desert, where there’s nothing grows but lizards and shad scale, and there I could break old Tony into a lope. It was a mile to the crick bed and I knowed that farms begun on the other side and fences. I never reckoned on anything till I got there. But some fool had run a drift fence right across that desert and Tony hit ‘er at the end of his stride. It was like jumping in a net. I mounted the horn but grabbed leather with both fists and come down. Another horse but Tony would have cut himself in half, and if folks in that country built fences like they does out here I guess even he’d o’ done it, but this guy — this fence builder, I’d say he come from Californy ‘cept he didn’t know how to build a fence — had just got one there and put cedar posts in the desert about every hundred yards and hung some wire on ‘em. I bet that wire had a give of ten yards. I could get enough slack to twist and break it with my hands. Then I lit a match to have a look at Tony and seen he was cut pretty bad on the chest, poor devil. He wasn’t in very good shape anyway after all summer on the mountain.

“But we was goin’ to town, and by God we was a-goin’.

“So we went.

“ Beyond the crick, farms come out and stopped the desert. From there on I knowed where the wire gates was in the fields. I could tell old man Stefans had put in alfalfa with water from his new well; that the widow James was pruning her apricots; that such and such a barking dog belonged to Hanky Hanks. Pretty quick I was out onto the Della Road. Town was only half a mile. I could see the sign of the Hearty Laugh Saloon, but old Tony was a-commencin’ to loosen behind, the way a pony does when he gives out. For a minute I thought I’d git off and walk him, and then I thought hell no, if I can’t ride into town I won’t go at all and I asked old Tony confidential if he thought he could make it, and he said he reckoned he could if I’d give him time, so we cut down to a walk and it was that way we hit Main Street.

“Baker’s Livery Stable happens to be first on your right. The place was all dark but I knowed how to git in. I found some axle grease and doctored old Tony and give him a good feed, and then I went on to the Saloon. But I took a detour on the way. I wanted to see my girl. It was only 8.15 but maybe I could see her. So at the next street I turned off and went down to the café. I didn’t go inside. The place was full and she was running up and down the tables. I waited there across the street where I could see it all, how she’d laugh and smile and make words with her mouth I couldn’t hear to these folks she was a-waitin’ on, and to me they was the luckiest people in the world. Oh, my, she was a sweet-lookin’ maiden in them days! . . . pretty face, pretty figure, her foot so light it never touched the ground. But when I seen her serve a plate, I knowed then why it was I’d come: I was sick of bein’ laid agin the earth at night and bein’ rubbed all day by rope and leather; I wanted them little hands to touch me. And then I looked at my own hands, covered with axle grease and blood, some of Tony’s, some of it mine, and I thought, ‘You dirty hog, you ain’t fit to mix with human kind; go git yourself respectable.’ So I turned round and headed for the Saloon.

“I can’t say just how good that old Saloon looked. Them swingin’ doors was like the heavenly gates to me, ‘cause I come a man a-wearied and blood was on me and my right leg burned like hell’s own fire; but I had my own idees and I was on my way and when you’re that away the rest don’t matter.

“So I swung inside. There was Jippy at the counter rolling the boys for a drink; there was the green tables and the poker games; and I thought, ‘Well, this is good; this is all right.’ As I headed up to the bar I seen an advertisement card saying Jean Harlow was a-gonna play next week in something, and I thought, ‘By God, I’ll do ‘er again next Wednesday and take Maxine to see that.’

“ Then I pounds a fist on the bar and calls for Jippy.

“‘High, Powder Keg,’ he says. ‘With you in a minute,’ and goes on rolling the bones.

“Well, after five minutes he come and I was mad.

“‘What the hell, now,’ I told him. ‘Forgetting old friends?’

“‘Naw,’ he says, ‘naw . . .’ and then, ‘Been away?’

“I says, ‘Gimme a double whiskey.’

“When he come back I told him to git me a steak rare, the best in the house.

“Then I had another whiskey and commenced lookin’ for society.

“A bunch of guys was standing there, so I goes over and asks ‘em to have a drink with me; Jippy lined ‘em up and we downed ‘em and they kept saying ‘okay’ and ‘swell,’ so I had Jippy line ’em up again.

“Then these guys begun to talk, but not to me. They was working on a road some place that was cutting the Rocky Mountains in half, and all they could talk about was dough and WPA and CCC and Roosevelt, Roosevelt. I didn’t hent to hear about any of that, so I looked round again and seen old Hoopaloo over there at one of the card games.

“‘Come out of that, you old coot!' I told him and he come. I set him up a drink and asked him first about Maxine. Yeah, she was fine. Yeah, prettier’n ever. Nope, nobody had beat my time. She’d sure be glad to see me. . . . Been away?

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘the hell with you; here’s my steak and I’m hungry.’

“So I swung round and begun to think better of old Jippy just because he’d brought me that steak.

‘“How’s Hap?’ I asks him.

“‘Dunno,’ he says. ‘Haven’t seen him lately.’

“‘What happened about him and that Seamans girl ... I heard her folks was goin’ to court over it; or that’s what a guy told me last week on the mountain.’

“‘Been on the mountain?’ he says.

“‘Yeah, I’ve been on the mountain,’ I says.

“‘Well, come to think of it,’ he says, ‘Hap did go out of town the other day . . . kind of in a hurry, too.’

“‘ Was he ridin ‘ a little cat-hipped sorrel?’

“‘Yeah,’ says Jippy, ‘believe he was. . . . Say, wasn’t that your horse?’

“‘No,’ I says. ‘No . . . used to be, but I sold him to Hap.’

“The steak was getting cold right there under my eyes, but I don’t know — I’d kindy lost my interest.

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘this looks like a good steak.’ So I cut in, and do you know that steak was just a-turning, just a little bad, like milk, so that you can’t decide whether to quit eating or go on. But I stayed with her, kindy felt I had to.

“I forgot to tell you — all this time somewhere in the back of the room or just outside, I couldn’t say right where, they was a noise rising and falling and passing away, like the sound of the wind in them wires. I’d heard it but I’d been too much on the move to notice; and then it was I made my big mistake: workin’ on that steak I had a chanct to think.

“What the hell was that sound? I stuck my head out the window but there wasn’t no wind. I come back and eat awhile. Somebody put a nickel in the phonygraph and it played a song about ‘I Surrender.’ Then all of a sudden that wailing sound made itself into words, like the radio does when you tune her in square, and I heard it was a nagging woman. That’s all it was: just a woman. I eat awhile and begun to get indigestion. She was after her old man for something back there behind the wall, poor devil. I feel sorrier for him than any man on earth and I never even seen him. While listening I begun to feel the burning of my leg, my face, and a dozen other places I didn’t know I had. I wearied fast but that woman, she never wearied; she kept on forever like the wind does in them wires. I couldn’t eat no more. Then the phonygraph song about ‘I Surrender,’ it run down hill and quit, and everything in that room flattened out with it. I begun to think about my camp on Aspen Crick — just a little thought at first but she got bigger mighty fast, like a train coming down a track, and then it seemed I wasn’t a-getting enough air in that room; and how the others laughed and went on playing cards, right in the face of that woman there behind the wall I couldn’t see. I ordered me another double whiskey, and when I’d drunk it I went out of that place.

“I headed back up Main Street. When I come to the street of my girl’s café I kept a-goin’, but once I looked. I seen the square of light the big window cut out of the sidewalk and there come a sound of dishes, sudden-like, when somebody opened a door and went through into the kitchen, and that almost got me ’cause it meant Maxine. But I kept on. I was sour at the roots and couldn’t change.

“I went and got Bill Baker out of bed and asked about my little cat-hipped horse, and he said Hap had it over to Joe Petrillo’s, so I went and got out Joe, and he told me Jippy was right: Hap had rode him out of town, in a hurry. Then I was mad. I went back to the stable and give old Tony another pail of oats and a rub and told him we’d have to travel again; and he didn’t care much for that, poor devil, ‘cause he was a tired horse.

“As we shook out our bridle on the Della Road, day was trying to git over the mountain but couldn’t make it. Old mountain was too much for him, took up all the sky. Kindy like Jacks, the foreman, in the doorway of the barn, only here I knowed what the mountain had to say ‘cause up on Aspen Crick I’d heard him.”

Dynamite finished his story. It wasn’t like him, but he never asked me if I understood.

As we rode back over the knoll, they switched the lights on in the Mill and I said, pointing, “It’s lucky the power line crosses here or you might never have remembered that story.”

“Oh, yes I would,” he said. “I can’t forget it. I’m married to that girl, Maxine.”