All Hat (2 page)

She showered and changed while he ate. Then she went into his room and jotted down the names of the various prescriptions there. He was seeing a new doctor later that morning and she wanted to be sure of everything he'd been taking.

She was hoping for some answers today. Or rather, she was hoping for some different answers today. She still wasn't convinced of his specific ailment. She was confused by the fact that he had good days and bad. On the bad days he was a virtual child; on the good he appeared to be as healthy mentally as he'd ever been, although she reminded herself that that was a qualified statement if ever there was one. She clung to the hope that he—with his short-term memory loss and frequent returns to normal behavior—was suffering from some form of dementia other than Alzheimer's. His chronic alcohol abuse could also point to this, she'd discovered, and as such might mean that his condition was treatable.

Now she sat on his bed and looked out the dormer window to the outbuildings and the fields beyond. The farm had fallen into great disrepair in recent years. There were leaky roofs and sunken foundations, fallen fences and rusted equipment. Homer had never been any great shakes as a farmer in his salad days, and now that his mind was beginning to slide into oblivion it only seemed natural that the farm was following suit.

Etta had moved home three years earlier, and she'd been pretending to be a farmer ever since. Without the proper equipment, though, she'd been forced to hire most work out, and the numbers weren't really supporting the effort. She'd recently taken a job as a nurse's aide at the hospital, three shifts a week, twelve hours each, and the unusual hours had required some adjustment to her inner clock.

What she hadn't anticipated, moving back, was the strange and strong attachment she'd developed for the farm itself. Growing up, she'd rarely considered the land as anything but acreage. In spite of the fact that her family had been here for more than a hundred years, it had never occurred to her that that might account for anything. Hell, everybody had to be somewhere. She had, in fits and starts, begun the long and painstaking task of bringing the place back from the brink. So far, her efforts had manifested themselves in small ways, painting and caulking, cutting grass and raking leaves. Her meager funds and her schedule, at work and with her father, left her with few resources, fiscal and physical, to accomplish much more at this time. Still, the deterioration of the place weighed heavily on her mind.

She suspected that she was equating the farm's state with her father's. If she could restore the place to its—if not magnificent then competent—past, then perhaps the same could be available for her father. It was an absurd notion, she knew, but still she couldn't shake it.

His doctor's appointment was at nine—just enough time to get him showered and dressed, if he was cooperative. When she went downstairs he was sitting stock-still in his chair, and—except for the rivulet of egg yolk on his whiskered chin—his breakfast was gone. She washed the dishes quickly and left them in the drainer to dry.

“Time to get you in the shower, Dad.”

“I just had a bath.”

“That was yesterday.”

“Liar.”

“I'm not a liar,” she told him. “You have an appointment with Doctor Nichols. You have to shower and shave,” she added, throwing the shave in as a bargaining point.

“No.”

“You have to shower and shave.”

“I'll shower, but I'm not gonna shave.”

“Okay,” she said quickly. She turned and started to lead the way to the bathroom, hoping to get him moving while the thought was still fresh in his brain.

“But first I want my breakfast.”

*   *   *

It was a long morning at the medical center. First they had to fill out forms, and then they had to wait, and then there were the standard tests for Homer to undergo—tests that he'd been through before but that the new doctor wanted to administer firsthand. So Homer did the thirty questions again, and he did the memory tests, and he had his heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, ears, eyes, and throat prodded and poked and listened to and studied. Etta was in the examining room for some of it and exiled to the waiting room for the rest. Of course, when all was said and done, more was said than done, and they were sent home with the assurance that they'd hear back from the doctor in a few days.

Homer was tired from all this examining, and when they got back to the farm he lay down on the couch and was asleep in a heartbeat. Etta thought briefly of napping herself, but she found that she wasn't in the least tired. She changed her clothes and retrieved a Swede saw from the shed and then walked down to the orchard.

She'd mounted a campaign the past couple of years to bring the apple trees back from the brink and she had, this fall, experienced at least enough success to convince herself to carry on. There were branches that were weak sisters, though, and now she went to work culling them, using a Swede saw, which she'd bought at Lee's Hardware a year ago, and her grandfather's ancient hatchet, quite possibly purchased at the same store a few decades earlier.

The work quickly warmed her in spite of the cold autumn breeze. She made a pile of the limbs in the corner of the orchard along the fencerow. A friend of Homer's would pick them up later—he used apple chips in his smoker, and one day soon Etta would be repaid with a cured salmon or two.

She lost herself in the menial labor, humming tunelessly as she trimmed and toted and stacked. It was midafternoon when she finished up. Kneeling to place the last of the dead wood on the pile she realized that she was tired at last—it seemed that fatigue had crept up on her.

When she straightened and turned toward the house, Sonny Stanton was standing there, directly in her path.

“Jesus!” she exclaimed.

Sonny smiled at her but he didn't speak. He had his long hair tied back and was wearing jeans and a leather coat. He had on ugly aviator sunglasses, and she couldn't see his eyes. His cane was in his hand.

Etta's heart was pounding. “What the fuck do you think you're doing?”

“I was just out walking my property,” Sonny said, and he nodded toward the fence to the east.

“Well,
this
is my property,” Etta said.

He stepped closer to her and she instinctively moved back. He was wearing cologne, and the smell enveloped him. Something he would deem suitable, she guessed, for traipsing around the countryside. She glanced toward the gate to the orchard, where she'd left her tools.

“Actually, it's your old man's property,” he reminded her.

“The point is, it's not yours,” she said, and she stepped sideways as she spoke, moving tentatively toward the entrance.

He gestured at the farm again. “I was just looking over my crop.”

“Yeah?” Etta said, judging the distance to the gate. “What exactly have you got planted there, Sonny?”

He shrugged. “Why—don't you know?”

“I do. What I don't know is what you're trying to pull,” she said and she moved again. “You're no farmer. And even if you were—you're not getting this place.”

“That'll be up to Homer,” Sonny said. He was walking with her now. “And he's my good buddy. I was just gonna stop at the house and say hello.”

“No, you're not. He's sleeping.”

Sonny took the sunglasses off then. “Etta, why can't we try and get along?”

“I'd settle for half of that,” Etta said, and she pointed her chin toward the fence line. “I'd be happy if you got along.”

He looked where she indicated, and when he did she moved quickly to the gate. When he turned back she had the hatchet in her hand.

He smiled. “Come on, Etta. There's no need for that.”

“Just picking up my tools.”

He shook his head. “You don't know me, Etta.”

“And I'd like to keep it that way. Now, why don't you limp back to wherever you came from?”

He flinched when she made the reference to his leg. “Shouldn't believe everything you hear. You're a smart girl, I thought you'd know that.”

“It's not what I heard. It's what I've seen.”

“And what would that be?” Sonny asked. “A mentally unstable woman talking a lot of unsubstantiated shit.”

“Really? And what was Elizabeth's motive, Sonny? Why would she lie?”

“Christ, I don't know,” he said. “She's fucking crazy.”

He was whining now and his whining made her less afraid. She picked up the saw and walked through the gate. “Funny—all this time I've been thinking that was your excuse.”

She left him standing in the orchard and headed for the house.

3

Ray stood in the mow window and watched the last half dozen of the bales come up the elevator. Pete Culpepper, on the wagon below, removed his hat and wiped the sweatband with his handkerchief, waited until the last bale disappeared into the barn, then climbed stiff-legged to the ground and unplugged the elevator.

Ray stacked the bales near the ladder drop. The hay was good, especially for a fall cutting; it hadn't been rained on, and it was pretty clean, and it smelled the way hay should smell—sweetly green and pungent—an odor that always reminded Ray of the summers he'd spent as a kid on this very farm. The first hay bale he'd ever lifted had belonged to Pete Culpepper. Thinking back, Ray doubted if he'd managed to get the bale six inches off the ground at the time, but he'd carried it the length of the barn while his father and Pete had watched, the muscles in his thin arms screaming at him to drop the load, his pride overruling the notion.

When Ray climbed down, Pete was standing in the front stall with the gelding Fast Market, the gelding's right front hoof between his knees. The bay mare in the next stall had her head over the top rail, watching the proceedings. There was a second broodmare, a roan, in the back stall.

The gelding was a beautiful horse, a shade off chestnut with darker brown in the mane and lower legs. He had a good head, with cheeks like a stud, and he had sharp, intelligent eyes. He wasn't a tall horse, but he was deep in the chest and nicely muscled across the shoulders and haunches. He stood as quiet as could be while Pete examined the hoof.

“When you running him?” Ray asked.

“Claimer in a couple of weeks.”

“What's he done?”

“Well, he won in July. Next time out, he came up with this crack in the hoof. Had to shut him down. I epoxied it a couple times, but it wouldn't hold. I couldn't work him, so I just let him be 'til about ten days ago. I been working him over to Granger's since. It looks all right now, but we'll see.”

Ray walked along the stalls, reaching in to rub the mare's forehead as he passed. The second mare was standing hip-shot in the back corner, sleeping on her feet, her breathing slightly labored. Ray looked her over, then said, “You got a foal coming.”

“I guess I do,” Pete said tersely. He climbed out of the gelding's stall and walked over.

“You're not exactly doing cartwheels about it.”

“Why would I do cartwheels when my thoroughbred mare gets impregnated by a quarter-horse stud?”

“You're kidding.”

“You know Tom Stackwood, down the side road?” Pete said. “Well, he's got this quarter-horse stallion. Black as coal—calls him Smoky.”

“Got one eye,” Ray said, remembering.

“That's the horse. Well, I had these two in that front field last winter. This one came in season, and I don't know—I reckon the wind was just right or something, but that stud ran through a plank fence at the home farm and a wire fence here and jumped my mare, and now I'm gonna end up with a foal whose two halves ain't gonna add up to nothin'.”

Their voices had awakened the mare. She stood blinking at them.

“You could've aborted it,” Ray said.

“No sir, I don't believe I could've.”

Ray walked outside into the midday sun. The hound was sprawled on its stomach on the side porch, its jowls splayed across its front paws. The dog's eyes opened a moment, flicked on Ray, then closed slowly, like a curtain going down.

Ray walked to the paddock, leaned his elbows there, smoking. The barn was failing fast, and the house wasn't far behind. Three horses in the barn, a couple of mares whose running days were past and a nine-year-old gelding with a cracked hoof.

The sport of kings.

Pete came out of the barn, carrying a hackamore with a broken strap.

“How the hell you making a living off this?” Ray asked.

“Who said I was making a living?”

“Then how are you managing?”

“Well,” Pete said, and he pulled the buckle from the halter. “I got my corn to come off, and could be I'll get a couple wins out of that gelding yet this year.”

“Could be he'll break down next time out, too. That's not exactly a young horse you got in there.”

“You're a pessimistic sonofabitch for somebody who just got out of jail.” Pete showed Ray his crooked smile. “I'll have you know I'm fixin' to make a comeback.”

“Yeah?”

“Martin Augustine is selling out. You know the place—next concession over. There's an auction next week—the farm, brood stock, everything.”

“Yeah?”

Pete dropped his voice to a whisper, as if someone might be listening. “He's got a two-year-old colt, out of Canfield Dancer, and the word's out that the colt's damaged goods. Bowed tendon. But I know different. Jack Wilson's been training him in that swimming pool down at Fort Erie, and he says it wasn't never a tendon. He's had him out on the track a couple times, and he says the animal's as sound as a double eagle. Jack's my old pal—Augustine owes him money he's got no intention of paying, so Jack's keeping this to himself.”

“He's still not gonna go cheap, with that blood.”

“Damaged goods, Ray. You know how people are. I figure I can buy him for ten grand, maybe eight or nine if I get lucky.”