The Perk (6 page)

Home was eight hundred acres of land on
the Pedernales River three miles south of town.

Beck drove through a black iron gate with a hand-painted
sign that read: I SIC THE PIT BULLS ON ALL REAL ESTATE BROKERS DAMN FOOL
ENOUGH TO TRESPASS ON THIS LAND. He accelerated up the white caliche road that
meandered through oak trees fifty feet tall and two hundred years old, leaving
a cloud of white dust in his wake. He steered hard right then left then right.
When his father had built this road, he had not removed a single oak tree; so
the road zigzagged like a snake crawling across hot ground.

The house sat on the highest point of the land;
you could see the sun rise over the distant hills to the east and set beyond
the distant hills to the west. And every day the sun had fed this land that
had fed the goats that had fed the Hardins for more than a hundred years. The
Hardins were goat ranchers.

But where were the goats?

The herd had numbered five thousand head.
A sea of woolly Angora goats should be grazing in the fields that sloped gently
down to the river. But the fields were empty and the goats were gone. The
barn, pens, and shearing shed, the pine wood weathered to a steel gray, sat
vacant. Beck felt as if he had come home for Christmas only to find that everyone
had moved away.

He glanced out both sides of the car, being
careful not to drive into an oak tree. He didn't see goats, but he saw horses,
a few cows (J.B. Hardin had always raised his own beef), Axis deer, antelope, a
peacock, two wild turkeys flapping their wings at a pot-bellied pig lying in
the shade of a tree, and standing along the fence line as if planning an escape
a …
llama?

Before Beck Hardin had jumped the fence and fled
this land, he had lived his life by the seasons—sports and nature's. Summers
meant swimming in the river and shearing goats with J.B. in the shed. Falls
were filled with football and deer hunting. Winters were basketball and another
round of goat shearing. And each spring—his mother's favorite time of the year
when the color returned to the land—he had run track, played baseball, and
walked with Peggy Hardin through knee-high wildflowers—bluebonnets, Indian
paintbrush, and Mexican hat—wildflowers that turned the land into a canvas of
blue, red, orange, and yellow. His mother had picked roses but never
wildflowers.

Beck braked at a fork in the road. The south fork
continued up to the house; a new west fork led over to a two-story structure that
hadn't been there when Beck had left home. He trailed his father's black Ford pickup
to the house. J.B. got out, followed by a white lab named Butch. Beck parked in
the shade of an oak tree and opened the back door for the kids. Luke didn't
budge, but Meggie jumped out and held the doll up as if to see.

"Look, Mommy. This is where Daddy grew
up."

The home was a one-story structure, simple and
sturdy. The main house was constructed of white limestone two feet thick; it faced
east. On the north and south sides were rock-and-cedar additions; the one on
the north side was new. The house had a porch across the front, a metal
standing-seam roof, and a river-rock fireplace. A windmill stood twenty yards
away.

J.B.'s great-grandfather had moved to Fredericksburg after the Civil War; he hadn't been German but he had married a German
girl—as had every Hardin male until Beck had married a Chicago girl—and had
learned from her father everything there was to know about homebuilding and goat
ranching. The Hardin males had handed down what they knew, father to son,
until J.B.'s son had gone to Notre Dame to play football. The Hardins were
goat ranchers by trade, but they could plumb, wire, roof, and build with the
best of men. J.B. was no exception.

"Added on again," Beck said to his
father.

J.B. regarded the addition on the north side of
the house as if he'd just now noticed it there.

"Bedrooms, for you and the kids."

"J.B., we'll find a place in town."

His father gazed off into the distance. "Eagle's
been making a nest, down by the river." Then, without looking at Beck, he
said, "You didn't come home to live in town."

Beck sighed. J.B. was right.

"Beck, my father told me this land was mine
from the day I was born. I reckon it's been yours since the day you were born.
It's just been waiting for you to come home. Land's patient."

J.B. Hardin had always believed that a house was
a place to sleep, but land was a place to live.

"You really got pit bulls?" Beck said.

"Nah. But those real-estate brokers don't
know it."

"They bothering you?"

"Before I put that sign up, three, four of
'em would come knocking on the door every day, wanting to sell this land. Big
real-estate play out here these days, Beck, everyone hoping to get rich selling
their land to city folk."

"Who's buying?"

"Californians. They come here for a
weekend and think thirty thousand an acre is cheap so they buy a hundred acres like
they're buying lunch."

"
Thirty
thousand an acre?
That's the going price? It was under a thousand when I
left."

"Yep. Land-poor locals barely making ends
meet, all of a sudden they're rich. I was watching TV the other night—"

"You've got a TV?"

"Yep. Anyway, I
was watching
The Beverly Hillbillies
. This ol' boy name of Jed Clampett,
he goes out hunting one day, shoots at a critter but strikes oil. Well, Jed
gets rich and moves the family to California. Struck me, what's going on here
is
The Beverly Hillbillies
in reverse: folks are hoping a Californian
moves here and makes them rich."

J.B. started walking toward the house.

"That's what I figure, anyway."

"Where are the goats?"

"Gone. Sold the herd off ten years back. Kept
a few to eat the cedar shoots. Industry tanked when they killed the mohair incentive—not
that I ever took a dime from those bastards."

Mean philandering Democratic SOB that he was,
LBJ had long been beloved in these parts because he had given the goat ranchers
of Gillespie County something more valued than good character; he had given them
the "mohair incentive." Government money. Every year for forty
years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had mailed checks to Gillespie County goat ranchers totaling tens of millions of dollars. And unlike other farm
subsidies, the mohair incentive didn't phase out at a ceiling price; it kept
going up. The more mohair a rancher produced and the higher the market price,
the bigger his incentive check; at the program's peak, the government paid four
dollars for every dollar a rancher earned. The big goat ranchers got annual
checks for a million dollars. But Bill Clinton killed the mohair incentive in
1996. He was not beloved in these parts.

"I knew it wouldn't hurt you."

"Ain't but maybe a hundred thousand goats left
in the Hill Country," J.B. said.

The mohair incentive had encouraged ranchers to
build goat empires; at the peak, over five million Angora goats had grazed on
Hill Country land and accounted for fifty percent of the world's mohair production.
One legendary goat rancher had even dubbed himself the "Goat King of the
World." J.B. Hardin was one of the few goat ranchers in the county who
didn't take the money.

"Hell, I was ready to try something
different. Something that don't stink."

"Well, the wine business would qualify on
both counts."

"Reckon it does."

"And you can wear that shirt without
risking a stampede."

"That's a fact." J.B. nodded toward
the building down the west fork. "That's my winery, Beck. Vineyards are on
the back side."

"Grapes do okay in a drought?"

"This rocky land and thin soil ain't worth
a damn for cattle or cotton, but it's just about perfect for goats, peaches, turkeys,
and grapevines. Government and drought killed off goat ranching and peaches."

"That leaves turkeys and grapevines."

"Just so happens I've got fifty acres of
the prettiest vines you'll ever see. And they don't need much water—grapes
like it hot and dry in the summer."

"So what, you're a wine expert now?"

"Nope. But Hector is. Me and him, we
partnered up. He makes the wine, I do everything else."

J.B. sniffed the air. The faint scent of smoke rode
the westerly breeze.

"Brush fire out west."

Beck gestured toward the fence line. "Is
that a llama?"

J.B. nodded. "Named Sue. Got eyes like a
woman. Not that we're having any kind of a relationship."

"Llama, peacocks, turkeys, antelope—place
looks like Noah getting ready for the flood."

"Flood would be a nice change of pace after
seven years of drought."

The main room of the house had a high cedar-beamed ceiling and
a longleaf pine floor. At one end was the kitchen; at the other end a leather
recliner and couch fronted a flat-screen TV.

"Had a sale over at the Wal-Mart,"
J.B. said. "Figured the kids might enjoy that."

Beck had grown up
without a television; his father hadn't believed in wasting time watching TV
when there was work to be done—and there had always been work to be done. Luke
plopped down on the couch and pointed the remote at the TV. The screen flashed
on, and Meggie said, "Can we watch
SpongeBob?
"

"The hell's a sponge bob?" J.B. said.

"You've got cable?" Beck said.

"Yep."

"For
The Beverly Hillbillies?
"

"And the cooking shows. Hell of an
invention, the crock pot."

"You've got a crock pot?"

"Yep."

"J.B., you never cooked an egg in your
life. After Mom died, I did all the cooking."

"You left."

Luke found a baseball game, and Meggie started a
tour of the house with the doll. Beck went to the kitchen and opened the
refrigerator; everything inside was organic, just like their refrigerator back
in Chicago.

"Annie?"

J.B. nodded. "Made a run into Austin day before yesterday. Whole Foods. Never seen so many women with tattoos that
don't shave their legs."

"How'd you know we'd come?"

"Annie said you would."

"How'd you know when?"

"Annie said this summer, after school let
out and you …"

"Failed at raising the kids alone?"

"Figured out you needed help. Which ain't a sign of weakness,
Beck. Anyway, I knew you'd have to sell the house, so I checked the listing
online. When it said the sale had closed, I figured a few days to get packed,
few more to get here."

"You always were a figuring man."

Beck walked out of the kitchen and through the
doorway leading to the screened-in back porch that allowed the breeze in but
kept the mosquitoes out. The same wood rockers still sat there, where J.B. and
Peggy Hardin had ended every day of their lives, watching the sun set over the
hills and planning their next day of hard work. After she died, J.B. had sat alone
out here and his son had sat alone down by the river or in his room.

Where Beck now stood.

His trophies still sat on the shelf, free of
dust, and his clothes still hung in the closet, as if he had only left for an
out-of-town game. Beck put on his black Gallopin' Goats letter jacket; it
still fit. He replaced the jacket and picked up his old black cowboy boots.
He had left them when he had left home—he didn't figure on wearing cowboy boots
at Notre Dame and he wasn't coming back. The boots had been freshly polished.
They still fit, too. He pulled the boots off and went over to the window he had
climbed through so many nights to go skinny-dipping in the river by moonlight
with Mary Jo Meier. She had been his high school sweetheart, blonde and blue-eyed,
slim and strong, a goat rancher's daughter. He had asked her to go with him to
Notre Dame, but she said she would never leave home. He told her he wasn't
coming back, but she had said, "You'll be back. You might leave me, Beck
Hardin, but you'll never leave this land."

He wondered if Mary Jo Meier had ever left home.

Beck walked out of
his past and into the new addition. One bedroom had an attached bathroom, a
king-sized bed, and a nightstand with a framed photo of Annie. It was his
favorite one of her, taken on a Hawaiian beach before they had the kids; the
setting sun caught her reddened face and made her glow. She was young, she was
beautiful, and she was alive. She had written across the bottom:
I'll love
you forever from the hereafter.

Beck stared at the image of his dead wife.

Two other bedrooms were joined by a bathroom. Luke's
bedroom had wood floors and a bed with a Chicago Cubs bedspread. Meggie's had
thick carpet and walls painted a sky blue. J.B. had re-created home for the
children.

"I still do good work."

J.B. was standing next to him.

"You still walk like an Indian."

J.B.'s boots were off and the legs of his jeans
rolled up a turn, revealing white socks. Peggy Hardin's rules were few but
absolute: don't pick wildflowers and don't wear dirty boots inside her clean
house, and it had always been clean.

"Figured you'd want to be near the kids."

"You built all this just because Annie said
we'd come home?"

J.B. nodded. "Said she had seen the
future. Said she was gone and y'all were here."

"And that was good enough for you?"

"It was."

Beck glanced at his father and saw that his jaws
were clamped tight. He turned away. After a moment, his father spoke softly.

"I never met her face to face, Beck, but I loved
her like my own daughter."

"Is this our room?"

Meggie was now standing between them with the
doll.

"Yes, darlin'," J.B. said. "It
is."