There ain’t much wrong with Bent-Y livin’ but one thing I ain’t got used to yet. It seems like you just get to knowin’ some folks good, gettin’ used to havin’ them be part of you, and then they’re gone. It happened with Nate and it happened with Qua and now it happened with Spud. Before he left, me and him got to be real good friends and it just ain’t fair; just after you get a good friend, he’s up and gone. Daddy said it ain’t that way just on the Bent-Y. He said that’s life—you got to adjust. Well, I got to tell you: I’m damn tired of adjustin’. I reckon I’ll have to, though. There ain’t nothin’ else you can do.
Even though he’s gone back to San Francisco, we ain’t forgot each other. Me and him do like Susie and Katy now. We’re all the time writin’ letters.
One friend that didn’t go off and leave me though was Emma. Come time for Uncle Sean and them to go back to San Francisco, Emma asked would it be ungrateful after all the kind things the Flynns had done for her, if she quit her job and stayed in Texas. She had the feelin’ she was needed here and she reckoned she was in love. She knew it was all kind of sudden like, but there just wasn’t no question in her mind. She loved Bill Burchheimer and he loved her.
She was so proud of Bill. He hadn’t had a drink since the weddin’ day and now with him bossin’ the Flynn’s new Amarillo Cartage Company, there’d be enough money for supportin’ Mabel and them littler boys and Ira and Reba. Livin’ in Lu’s house, them young ’uns got to thinkin’ they was brothers and sisters anyway. Emma said she ain’t never been so happy.
Our daddy and all our Uncles decided to start the Amarillo Cartage Company ’cause the railroad was bringin’ in a lot of things that had to be got to them smaller towns where the railroad didn’t go to. When they seen the railroad takin’ their business, most of them mule skinners went on south or west where there wasn’t no railroad. They was all long haul men and mostly looked down on short haul work. To them it didn’t take no kind of man to just haul between them towns and go home and sleep in the same bed every night. They was travelin’ men, they reckoned, tough and independent, and they wasn’t gonna be tied down to one place or one woman. They didn’t have the sense the Flynns and Bill Burchheimer did to see that there was a lot of money to be made in the cartage business.
Besides our daddy and our Uncles, I never knew no man who was as lovin’ and funnin’ as Bill after he got to seein’ hisself right again. He took to Ira and you seen the biggest change in that boy. You seen Ira loved Bill almost as much as we loved our daddy. Bill would take Ira on them big wagons with him and, skinny and weak as he looked, Ira could handle them four-horse teams almost like a man. ’Course, he couldn’t do it for too long. A boy just don’t have enough stay for workin’ four horses too long. Them haulin’ horses is real big and you got to be some strong to keep with them all day. But Ira done good for a boy his big. That doin’ good and the lovin’ he got from Bill and Emma made him a different boy even before Bill and Emma was married.
Mabel took right to Emma, but hell, with Emma there wasn’t no way not to take to her. Them littler Burchheimer boys hung on her some like we did our mama. It wasn’t quite the same. They done like a little boy would do it, not like no mostly grown boys done like me and Paco was doin’ our mama. Mabel loved havin’ a sister so her and Reba got on good.
Me and Paco didn’t get near so fussed over their weddin’. When it ain’t yours, it seems like them weddin’s ain’t so much of a mess. Anyway, it give a good feelin’ seein’ things come together for them folks. They come to see us at the Bent-Y often. I’m glad they do. Emma ain’t my mama but she still gives me that feelin’ some. Beside my mama and Aunt Lydia and Grandma Walton, Emma’s the only lady I let hug me anymore.
Come December, me and Paco noticed somethin’ different about our mama. It looked like she was gettin’ a baby belly. We didn’t have to wonder on it too long because on Christmas mornin’ Mama and Daddy told us that come May we was gonna have a new baby. We wanted to know right off how they knew that baby would come in May. Mama explained it to us, but I ain’t gonna tell you here. If you don’t know, you go ask your own mama.
You do all them same things on Christmas but every year it seems new. It’s gettin’ to where if you don’t do the singin’ and the story readin’, even though you got all them presents, it just ain’t Christmas. ’Course, this was the best Christmas since we come to the Bent-Y. We had a mama and we was gettin’ a new baby. I reckon mostly it was the best because, this year, we was doin’ all them Christmas things in our house. What do you say about havin’ all that family there with your mama on one end of the table and your daddy on the other end? What do you say about havin’ Christmas for the first time in your life with a whole family that’s just yours? Ain’t nothin’ to say.
The winter wasn’t too bad and me and Paco was gettin’ to the age where Daddy wanted us with him when he was lookin’ over the herd. We rode out some mostly every evenin’ after school. It gives you a whole new way to look at yourself, your daddy doin’ you like you was a man; askin’ did you think that heifer looked like she was just fresh and where do you think she hid her calf. I liked bein’ a boy but when they treat you like you’re grown up it makes bein’ a boy not quite so much fun. It makes you want to grow up.
The cattle come through the winter in good shape. It looked like a good winter for calving. Spring round up was going to be a big job and me and Paco wasn’t too surprised when Daddy told us that we was big enough now and they needed us for doin’ some cow work. Virgil and Juan was gonna have to help too. Like I said, none of us were surprised but we were sure excited. I reckon we was men now. Paco moved into his own room—- for a week.
When the Indians came back, Daddy told us that three boys was all they needed at the home herd. Virgil would go with his daddy to help with the west herd and they needed Qua there. At first we wanted to fuss with Daddy about Qua not bein’ at the main houses but it come to us that we was cowboys now and a cowboy goes where he’s sent. Round-up or not, most Bent-Y folks didn’t work on Sunday so we got to see Qua then.
Us boys got to do some cow chasin’, tryin’ to find them in them arroyos and such, but mostly we was gatherin’ wood to keep them brandin’ fires goin’. It took a lot of carryin’ and choppin’ to keep them fires goin’. It was hot just from the sun and with workin’ around them fires you was all sweat and dirt and wore out come quittin’ time. Some days it had you thinkin’ that bein’ a man wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
We wanted to throw some calfs for the brandin’ and cuttin’ but them men wouldn’t let us. When you seen some of them grown cowboys tryin’ to throw them calfs you seen they wasn’t as good as some of us boys, but we couldn’t say nothin’. Daddy said this was a busy time and they needed every hand and he wasn’t takin’ no chance gettin’ a boy hurt. By how he said that, you seen that we better not tell him we’d been throwin’ calfs on the range for almost a year. I reckon he’d have wore us out if we’d told him we was startin’ to try ridin’ them yearlin’ steers.
I did get a chance to show Daddy how Hunter was a cuttin’ horse, though. I was mostly ridin’ one of them cow ponies because Hunter was about ready to foal but Daddy said it wouldn’t hurt her did I not keep her out too long. Daddy was real proud of that horse. He asked did I mind if he tried her. ’Course I didn’t. He threw his saddle on her and he was showin’ how she done to all them Uncles and them cowboys. Hunter was lookin’ like she was thinkin’, “This is what I love to do. How the hell has it been so long since I got to do it?”
I about bust, I was so proud of her. I love that horse.
Most evenin’s when we come home we ain’t ready for nothin’ but bathin’, eatin’ and sleepin’. Some nights we go to sleep when we’re sittin’ by our mama gettin’ our huggin’. I can half remember Daddy carryin’ me up to bed more than once. That’s why me and Paco was half mad one evenin’ when Aunt Lydia met us at our door and told us to get to her house. We was gonna spend the night with Danny.
Now we still love Danny real good but we had us a mama now and with her big baby belly, she needed us to do for her some. Even was we real tired of an evenin’, if she asked us to fetch somethin’ for her, we was right there. If you seen her tryin’ to get up out of a chair, you’d know why. We told Aunt Lydia all that but we seen she was in one of her takin’ charge moods and fussin’ with her wasn’t gonna do no good. We didn’t see no sense in it and we didn’t like it none but we went to Danny’s.
Danny don’t work with cows yet but he was bathin’ from his house horse chores. Me and Paco sat on that wood bench and waited until he was out of the tub. We almost went to sleep sittin’ there. We seen our bathrobes hangin’ on a peg so we knew this wasn’t just somethin’ Aunt Lydia thought up at the last minute but we was too tired to think out why somebody would do that. We didn’t think about no baby. It wasn’t even May yet.
When we got to the kitchen it was just Danny and us. Uncle Kevin was in Amarillo and them girls had eaten earlier. I don’t know where the hell they was just then. Them Chinamen was feedin’ just Danny and us.
Danny wanted to talk but we was almost too tired to think. He got kind of mad at us and said, “You’d think you was my daddy the way you’re comin’ in here all tuckered out, not talkin’ and so tired you ain’t even sure what you’re eatin’.”
Paco said, “You try totin’ wood and water and workin’ around them hot fires all day and see how much you got to say.”
I don’t even remember goin’ to bed.
When we come down to breakfast in the mornin’, Aunt Lydia was there and she had a silly grin on her face. Me and Paco didn’t know how to take it. She was one for laughin’ hard but we never seen that grin on her before. She said, “You better run on home before you go to them cows.”
It was then that it kind of come to me what might have happened. I didn’t say nothin’ to Paco but he acted like it come to him too. We went runnin’ home. We was about half way there when we knew for sure. We heard a baby cryin’ and that cryin’ was comin’ from our house.
We run on up to Mama’s and Daddy’s bedroom. Mama was sittin’ up with all them pillows behind her back. She was holdin’ a baby with the blackest hair and the bluest eyes I ever seen. Daddy was standin’ beside her. I’ve seen that man proud before but never like this. He come to us and took us both in his arms. He squeezed us real tight and bent over and kissed each of us on the forehead. He had tears in his eyes.
He walked us over to Mama’s bed. He said, “Meet your baby sister, boys. Meet Maria Rosanna Flynn.”
Maria Rosanna Flynn. That’s a good name for our sister. Maria was Paco’s abuela’s name and Rosanna was Daddy’s Mama’s name. I know how much Paco loves babies so I let him hold Maria first. I don’t know what he was thinkin’ but he was smilin’ real big and he had tears rollin’ down his face. When he give Maria to me, Mama pulled him over to her and kissed him.
When I was holdin’ Maria, I reckon I looked some like Paco. I think I was smilin’ and I know I had tears on my face but I also knew what I was thinkin’. I was thinkin’ about a mama who was all the time drunk and who didn’t seem to love me or even care if I was alive. I was thinkin’ about shit house pits and that preacher man and Jigger. I was thinkin’ on how I found Paco and what a good brother he is. I was thinkin’ about how Daddy found us and how his lovin’ us taught us to love. I was thinkin’ on how our daddy found us our mama. I was thinkin’ on how everything started out and on how it is now. I was thinkin’ that what I was holdin’ in my arms was the only thing our family needed to make it the best family in the world. We had Paco who was part of Mama. We had me who was part of Daddy and now we have Maria who is part of both of them and that makes her part of everybody in the family.
I saw one of my tears fall on Maria’s face. Daddy handed me a cloth so I could wipe that tear off but I didn’t want no cloth. I put my mouth on that tear and kissed it off her little face. I hugged her real gentle to me and I was thinkin’, “What do you say about all this?”
THE END
Copyright © 2003 Gordon L. Klopfenstein