Texas Summer (2 page)

The pond was like an oasis in a desert, a Shangri-la, with an atmosphere, almost a climate, separate from its immediate surroundings. A shimmering oval of crystalline blue, fringed with weeping willows interwoven in a soft-focus double ring because of their reflection in the water, the pond resembled an exotic blue mirror, its frame intricately filigreed. But there was something else — something curiously, classically, of Texas about the scene — a quality of strange hidden contrasts, something of abrupt mystery...a secret celebration of nature at its most darkly persuasive: the diamondback rattler coiled in a field of bluebonnets, the scorpion beneath the yellow rose.

Quietly now, and at C.K.’s indication, they settled down on the bank near one side of a huge uprooted cottonwood. Its giant trunk jutted up about ten feet out of the water, at an unnatural and challenging angle, sinister in its suggestion of the violence that could have brought it to such a grotesque end.

“This jest where ole bullhead be ’bout now,” said C.K. softly, as he threaded a large, writhing bloodworm onto a big number-2 hook, and Harold did the same, though with somewhat less conviction.

He finished baiting his hook and looked at C.K. “An’ I suppose he ain’t gonna notice these worms got hooks in ’em.”

C.K. didn’t reply, concentrating instead on his own handiwork, intent and fastidious, as if preparing an exquisite trout-fly for a fisherman-king. And finally, with equal deliberateness, and a show of vague reverence, he carefully spat on it, before swinging it out to an exact place in the water, about a foot from the cottonwood log. Only then did he inspect Harold’s baited hook, fingering it gingerly. “He gonna notice
this
one got hook in it,” he said. “Fack is, he may steal this bait, the way you got it on all lopside. Then he be onto us, an’ we say, ‘good-bye, Mistuh Bullhead!’ Lemme fix it, you keep eye on my line.”

And while C.K. rearranged his bait, Harold watched the bobber on C.K.’s line — an ordinary bottle-cork split up the side — how it lay on the still water, absolutely without movement, while the line, visible just below the surface, trailed off and disappeared into the depths beneath the great log itself.

“Don’t try an’ snag ’im,” C.K. cautioned, “till the cork go all the way under.”

Harold scoffed. “Are you crazy? Don’t you think I know how to fish? I probably fished as much as you have — maybe more.”

C.K. nodded. “Uh-huh. But you ain’t study it. Like with this bullhead...Now you see the way ah put that worm right down to the end of the hook?...Well, bullhead got to take that hook-point ’fore he get
any
you worm. That way you set you hook, when you jerk up, you snag his jaw — that call ‘set the hook’ — you know what ah say?”

“Well, everybody knows that, dang it,” said Harold. “What’s wrong with you?”

Although its existence was a matter of common knowledge, neither Harold nor C.K. had actually ever gotten a good look at the giant catfish — except that once when Harold and his friend Big Lawrence had been fooling around at the pond, taking a fruit-jar crammed with fireflies (or “ligh’nin’-bugs” as they called them) and had pushed the sealed jar as far under the water as they could to see what would happen. (“Them bugs are all full of
phosphrus,
” Lawrence had explained. “The pressure will make ’em blow up!”) Harold was gazing down past the jar of pulsating light, and he had seen it — not recognizable at first — resting on the dark bottom: something so big and so still that he thought it was an unfamiliar rock, or a sunken log, like a heavy three-foot piece of firewood. But one part of him must have guessed what it really was, because he continued to stare...beyond the magic lantern of fireflies, mesmerized by the thing that lay beneath it — motionless (or was it?) — in the eerie strobelike swatch of hypnotic light. And then the rock, log, whatever it was, had slowly begun to drift along the bottom, toward the shadowy depths beyond, and finally into them, as though to be obscured forever. (“
God dang...,
” Harold had whispered, realizing what it was, with a gradual shock that had made the back of his neck tingle.) And when he told Big Lawrence that he had just seen the legendary monster-fish, Lawrence seemed to believe him, but said he thought he was “lyin’ ’bout how dang big it was” — so they had gotten into a fight about that, and Big Lawrence had won, but not before getting a front tooth knocked into his upper lip, which had bled with undue profusion so that one sleeve of his shirt was covered with blood from his wiping his mouth on it. But then, instead of trying to wash it out in the pond, he’d let the blood dry on his sleeve and made up a story about how he and Harold had “got jumped by some Mex’cans, an’ one of ’em pulled a knife on us.” In telling this to Tommy Sellers and Ralph Newgate, Big Lawrence added: “Reckon he won’t be pullin’ a knife on nobody else right soon!” then grinned crazily and nodded at Harold for confirmation. But Harold had just looked away, and said later: “Heck, I ain’t gonna back you in a dang lie — not after us gettin’ into it over you callin’
me
one.”

But regarding the existence of the great fish, there were witnesses to prove it. Harold’s Uncle Buck, on his mother’s side — an angler of such excellence and repute that he was habitually entered, and often highly placed, in “The Famous Lake Mead’s Big Texas Bass Tournament” — had driven over from Amarillo one Sunday and spent the entire next week trying to land the big fish, which he hooked three different times — with a loss of lures, lines, rods, and specially prepared flies. “Wal, ah’ll tell you
one
thing,” he had said in conclusion, over the chicken and dressing, hot biscuits, and giblet gravy at Sunday dinner before heading back for Amarillo. “That bullhead is a smart son’bitch!” He told how the hooked fish would burst up through the surface, raging and thrashing to a height of four or five feet above the water, then dive into the depths, head for the nearest stump, wrap around it, and snap the line. A proud and ethical fisherman, who preferred to play the fish, exhaust it, and outsmart it, he had begun by using a four-pound test line and a feather-light bamboo rod, then had gradually moved up to thirty-pound test and a rod made of some kind of new alloy. “Ah ever go after him again,” he said, unsmiling, at the dinner table, “it’ll be with a length of calf-rope or a goddam dog-chain.”

When Harold had first told C.K. about seeing the great bullhead, C.K. had not doubted the fact, nor even questioned the size; instead he nodded solemnly and said: “He be back — we git ’im.” That was two years ago, and they had not seen the fish since — although both Uncle Buck and Harold’s grandfather had hooked it, on separate occasions, the latter as recently as two months ago. “Felt like I had a goddam hog on the line,” he had insisted, “and then he hit them stumps, and it was ‘Katy, bar the door!’ Snapped my rod, snapped my line, and that was all she wrote! Damnest thing I ever seen!”

“Ah got me a feelin’,” said C.K. somberly now, as they gazed at the motionless split-corks floating on the water in front of them, about a foot apart.

Harold gave him a skeptical glance. “Oh yeah? What kind of feelin’?”

C.K. frowned. “Well, it ain’t that easy to say, but it’s like what you might call a church feelin’ — like somethin’ you might feel just ’fore you git ‘teched.’”

“Are you crazy? Since when did you ever go to church?”

But as C.K. prepared to expound on it, a remarkable thing happened: both corks began to move slowly toward them across the water — for about six inches before they were jerked under the surface, with such abruptness as to cause wide concentric circles to ripple out across the pond.

“God dang,” said Harold, “that must be him!”

“Snag up!” C.K. yelled. “Snag up, he done took both hook!”

Almost simultaneously the two rods bent into hairpin shape, and the reels spun with a high singing whine as the lines unspooled.

“Let out!” yelled C.K., quite needlessly. “Play the fish! Play the fish!”

But there was to be no playing this fish; it had taken both baits in one wide-mouth sweeping rush, and when it felt the resistance of the two hooks, caught now between gill and the thick bone of its lower jaw, it went berserk. Turning, twisting, writhing, the great bullhead raged along the bottom — between rock, log, and clump of cattail reed, its body contorting crazily, like a kind of torpedo gone haywire.

“He’s headin’ for the stump!” yelled C.K., as both their lines whined wildly out of the reels and snapped taut and quivering like two bowstrings.

C.K. was now performing a veritable tarantella of panic. “Reel in!” he shrieked. “Reel in!”

“The lines are gonna break off if we do,” said Harold grimly — but they tried it. As for the great fish below, this abrupt and unexpected double tug of restraint drove its fury beyond all tolerance. It seemed to shake its head — like a horse or bull — preparing for a monumental desperate maneuver, which it then executed: pushing off from the bottom with the lower half of its body, it was thrust upward with the propulsion of a dolphin, and it slashed through the still surface of the water, this giant catfish, rising five or six feet above the geyser-churned surface, its body convulsed in shuddering rage. Then, for an instant, it appeared to be suspended in midair, its full length arched like a bucking horse.

On the bank Harold and C.K. could only stand and watch in stone wonder — not so much at the great size of the fish, but at something much more remarkable: like Ahab’s whale, its body was festooned, from gill to tail, with bits of glistening nylon line, hooks, lures, spinners, and trout-flies — many of them rusted dull to be sure, but enough of them enameled and still red-devil bright, some bejeweled, gold and silver, historic trinkets that caught the fading rays of the sun in a breathtaking spangle of multicolored light.

“
Lawd, lawd...,
” whispered C.K.

Then it plummeted — headfirst, again like a dolphin, except for its convulsed writhing — and, as Harold and C.K. plainly saw, seemingly even before it hit the water, it headed for the stumps. Their lines, now quivering with tension a foot above the water, were hopelessly crisscrossed as the fish zigzagged crazily through the maze of stumps, wrapping the lines around one, then another, causing both lines — in their length between rod and the first stump — to go suddenly, sickeningly, slack.

C.K. sighed with great weariness. “Oh mercy, mercy...,” he murmured softly, and he started reeling in his severed line. Harold did likewise.

“Maybe he’s hung up out there on one of them stumps,” the boy suggested hopefully.

“Nope,” C.K. said flatly, “he is long gone.”

And at that instant, as if to verify his observation, on the other side of the pond, in a swatch of sunlight well beyond the stumps, there was a sudden swirl and a widening circle of ripples, at the center of which was momentarily visible not only the dark form of the fish itself, but the small cluster of ornamental lures, glittering now like medallions of honor.

“Take a good look, Hal,” said C.K. softly. “That there is a
Bible
kind of fish.”

Harold was in the depths of dejection as they walked back toward the house. “Shoot,” he muttered, “ain’t nobody ever gonna catch that bullhead.”

But the resilient C.K. was in a jaunty mood. He looked at Harold in mild surprise. “Oh yeah, we git ’im now,” he said with genuine optimism, “we git ’im for sure...now that ah onto his stump-move.”

III

T
HE CATTLE AUCTIONEER
looked like someone who might have been sent from a theatrical casting-agency — but this was part of his authenticity. Rope-lean, and deeply tanned, wearing a small white crimped Stetson, tinted shades, fringed buckskin jacket, drawstring tie, ornamental Spanish-leather boots, with his pant-leg tucked into one of them to reveal its top-of-the-line Tex-Mex quality, he resembled a combination rancher and carnival pitchman, which was, more or less, the fact of the matter. He carried a lightweight walking stick, which he used to point out the characteristics of the animal he was selling, moving the stick quickly from one hand to the other, with consummate skill and dexterity, as though he were performing a complex sleight of hand — all part of his charm and spiel, which was rapid-fire and interspersed with jokes and jibes of a personal nature concerning the crowd — they who sat on the top rail of the corral fence, or stood next to it, most of whom he knew by name.

Assisting the auctioneer, herding the livestock from the stable into the corral, was an ancient Texas wrangler and a ten-year-old Mexican boy. The boy would bring in the calf, or steer, by a rope halter, then pass it to the old wrangler, who would lead the animal around the corral for the crowd to see, while the boy went to get another one as the auctioneer began: “Now then, here’s a fine little — git ’im settled down there, Roy — a mighty fine piece of baby beef, just shy of Grade-A veal — and have you noticed the price of veal lately? All right then, let’s open this one at fifty...fifty dollars for this veal on the hoof...do I have fifty? Do I have —”

“Thirty dollars.”

“I have thirty, who’ll say thirty-five?”

“Thirty-two fifty.”

“Thirty-two fifty from the Ace-High Ranch — howdy, Ed, good to see you, how’s the missus — do I hear thirty-five?”

Inside the livery stable, Harold and C.K. were hanging over the side of a pen that held about twenty head, scrutinizing one six-week-old whiteface calf in particular, until Harold turned to C.K. impatiently.

“Well, god dang it, C.K., ain’t you gonna say anything?”

C.K. half closed his eyes, and shifted a segment of straw protruding between his teeth. “Ah waitin’ for you to tell me,” he said.

Harold stared at him for a minute, frowning in annoyance at having to make the decision himself; then he sighed and looked back at the calf.

“Well, I like ’im...leastways better’n that shorthorn you keep yammerin’ about....I think he’d make more beef, don’t you?”

C.K. remained silently cool, eyes half-closed, blade of grass between his lips; then he pointed to the calf.

“You see where his chest start, and how deep it go?”

“Well, what the heck you think I’m talkin’ about?” Harold demanded.

C.K. continued unfazed: “And you see how his hind-quarter set so full?”

“Well, how come you was carryin’ on like a mad dog ’bout that shorthorn back yonder?”

“’Cause when ah carrin’ on ’bout that shorthorn...ah ain’t seen this one yet. You got to take things as they come — you unnerstan’ what ah say?”

Outside, leaning against the corral fence, they waited for the calf to be brought in.

“Dang,” said Harold, “I done forgot his number!”

“You ain’t buyin’ a number, boy — you buyin’ a calf. Don’t worry, ah tell you when he come up.”

“Well, what the heck was his number, C.K.?”

“Twenty...
seben,
” said C.K., very deliberately, with a look of exaggerated weariness.

“Oh yeah, that’s right — twenty-seven. Listen, C.K., you think Dad ought to see ’im first?”

“Nope.”

“How come?”

“’Cause he tole
you
to pick him.”

“Well, I know that.”

“Now, ain’t that what he said? He said, ‘You pick ’im, Hal.’ Ain’t that right?”

“Well, I just said so, didn’t I? Dang it, C.K., you get crazier all the time!”

“Anyway, here he come now.”

“Our calf?”

“Naw, hee-hee — yoah daddy.”

They watched Harold’s father move along the corral fence, exchanging greetings with acquaintances as he came.

“We found a good ’un, Dad,” said Harold, with enthusiasm and what he hoped was a trace of authority.

“You did, huh?” said Harold’s father, and he turned to C.K. “Is that right, C.K.?”

“Yessuh, look good to me...if they don’t bid ’im up too high.” He nodded his head toward the stable. “They bringin’ him in now.”

“Aw-right,” said the auctioneer, drawing it out for emphasis, “here we are, number twenty-seven...a mighty fine little calf, and prime on the hoof if I ever seen it, courtesy of Big Bill Thompson over at the Aces and Eights, and I can tell you one thing — you can see straight off that this here calf has a mighty lot of
pure Hereford
in him, and that means meat on the table or top dollar in your pocket, and you can’t beat either of them propositions today even if your name is H. L. Hunt. Awright, let’s kick it off with a fifty-dollar bill — do I have fifty?”

Harold’s father leaned over and whispered in his ear: “Bid thirty-five dollars.”

Harold cleared his throat. “Thirty-five dollars.”

“I have thirty-five,” said the auctioneer, “do I hear —”

“Forty,” said someone else.

“Forty, I have forty.”

Harold looked at his father.

“Go forty-two fifty.”

“Forty-two fifty,” said a third bidder, before Harold could speak.

“Forty-two fifty, I have forty-two fifty, do I hear forty-five?”

“Well, go on, Son.”

“Forty-five.”

“Forty-seven fifty.”

“Dang,” said Harold softly.

“I have forty-seven fifty, do I hear fifty dollars? Do I hear fifty? This is prime-on-the-hoof. We are talking Grade-A, it will bring top dollar, do I hear fifty for this part-Hereford calf?”

Harold’s father frowned. “Well, I ain’t never paid fifty dollars for a bull-calf in my life,” he muttered.

“All in at forty-seven fifty?” said the auctioneer. “Going at forty-seven fifty...” He slowly raised his stick.

“Well god damn,” said Harold’s father, “might as well go whole hog.”

Harold gulped. “Fifty,” he said, just loud enough.

Harold and C.K. rode in the cab of the Ford pickup, with Harold’s father at the wheel. Harold, sitting in the middle, kept turning around to look at his calf tethered in the back of the truck. They drove through the dusk of Texas farmland, corn on one side, cotton on the other.

“Ole Newgate corn sure need rain, don’t it,” said C.K. squinting at it as they passed. “Some of it look right stunted.”

“Well,” said Harold’s father, “I
told
him he oughtta put a irrigation ditch down through that stretch. Offered to help him do it...” He shook his head. “Hell, you can’t tell Les Newgate nothin’.”

“Do look like we git some rain though,” said C.K., sniffing the air, “this east wind hold up a spell longer.”

Ahead of them in the distance now, stepping out from the woodlot beyond the cornfield, was a tall man carrying a shotgun. Harold, just turning around, saw him first. “Look,” he said, pointing, “ain’t that him? Ain’t that Les?”

“Well, it looks like ’im, don’t it?” said his father.

“Huntin’ somethin’ outta season, I bet,” said Harold.

“Reckon a man can hunt when and what he’s a mind to on his own land,” said his father.

When Les heard the sound of the pickup, he turned and waited for them.

“You boys git in the back with that fifty-dollar calf,” said Harold’s father when they reached where Les was waiting.

“Well, dang it, Dad,” said Harold, “I reckon I can set up here with you all...”

“Git on now,” said his father.

In the rear of the pickup, Harold and C.K. sat with their backs against the tailgate, opposite the calf, which was tethered to each side of the truck so it wouldn’t fall down.

“Shoot,” said Harold. “I bet that calf is gonna dress out prime. What’ll we call ’im?”

“Well now, Hal, you don’t wantta go gittin’ too
a-
tached to a animal you gonna wind up eatin’ or sellin’.”

Harold gave him a look of exasperation. “Heck, you don’t think I would, do you?”

C.K. nodded. “Uh-huh, ah do.”

“You’re crazy,” said Harold, and after a minute, he added: “I’m gonna enter ’im in the livestock show at the next Onion. Shoot, I bet he could win a ribbon.”

C.K. laughed. “What you gonna do with yoah ole ribbon?”

“Huh?” said Harold in surprise.

“You give it to some little ole gal, ah bet. Hee-hee!”

Harold made a grimace of distaste. “Dang, you really are crazy, C.K.”

“You give it to a gal, she jest tie it in her hair an’ strut her stuff...hee-hee.”

“Shoot,” said Harold, and looked away.