Ghost Medicine Read online

  I had been working at the ranch for about a week, and nobody bothered me with questions about where I had gone when I ran off, or what I had done, so I was willing to let it go that way. I knew what it was that caused their distance, too, because I saw how their faces slightly changed when they were around their own parents. And what does a kid say to his friend whose mom just died, anyway? Either way, I let it go because all I wanted to do was get rid of that ghost in my head.

  I saw it every day after Will died; she, just looking at me like I was something so fragile and temporary, and me, afraid of scaring her into thinking I might leave her, too. So I made it become a sort of enormous rock I was always pushing uphill, or trying to; trying to make her not afraid anymore, but it was really me who was afraid, unwittingly playing this zero-sum game that she, in vanishing away from me, instead, ended up winning. I tell myself now that I had time to say everything to her that needed to be said; and I heard more from her than probably anyone else in her life. And I always knew what she was thinking, what she was really afraid of.

  We would sit, every day, for an hour or more before my father came home, and we talked. She would ask about school and how I was getting along, and I would tell her about my friends and what they’d said at the fire pit, how Tommy never stopped playing his tricks on us, and she’d laugh sometimes. And I always knew she was listening to me, but I could see that look she had. She hurt about the boy who died. And I sometimes found myself getting angry or feeling cheated by how careful, for her, I had become, and I hated that about myself but I put up with it anyway.

  Working at the Benavidez ranch wasn’t much like work, not like the kinds of chores your dad will put you on that you never want to start. And even though the days could be tiring and I’d come home so sore and dirty, working alongside Tom Buller always made me feel healed and alive.

  “Hey, Stotts.”

  “Tom.”

  “We got to trailer up the horses. We’re going to have some fun stuff to do today. Help me get Arrow out here.”

  “You boys are gonna need ropes,” Carl said.

  I yawned and stretched, following Tom around the house to Arrow’s wood-rail stall, where they kept him during summers. “What’re we supposed to be doing?”

  “CB’s gotta fix the fence at the southwest range. Some of the calves are loose out there on that crazy goat woman’s land. She keeps saying we cut the fences down and kill her goats.”

  Tom always called his dad CB. “Do you?”

  “We cut the fence down once in a while, but we always put it back up in time. I don’t know who the hell’d want to be killing her goats, though. Might be a cat. Might be she’s just crazy anyway. I know she hasn’t taken a bath in all the years we’ve worked on this ranch.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Just wait and you’ll know, too, if we see her out there today.”

  Tommy and I rode in the bed, alongside the spools of barbed wire and clattering tools Carl had hastily thrown in before we left. Tommy pulled his hat down to his nose, as though he would actually be able to sleep in the jostling bed of that rusty and noisy truck.

  As far as I knew, nobody around could say what her last name was. We just always called her Rose or the Goat Woman; everyone knew who you were talking about. She had lived there for longer than most people could remember, on about twenty acres that were pretty much surrounded by Benavidez land or U.S. Forest Service property. She lived in a house made from one of those aluminum half-pipe airplane hangars. She had a well, but no electricity. I really don’t know how she survived there.

  There were at least two dozen strays that had gotten through the break in the fence and onto her property. Tommy and I spent most of the morning herding them back onto the Benavidez ranch. A couple wanderers had gotten pretty far onto the Goat Woman’s property; they would take the longest to get back.

  “The thing to remember,” Tommy said, “is to not get too mad when you realize how completely stupid cows are, and that the last stragglers are probably going to make you just want to give up and shoot ‘em.”

  As the day heated up, Tommy and I rode farther into the oak-forested hills on Rose’s land. Carl stayed behind, pulling fence wire, using the truck to stretch it tight.

  “You think Reno could jump the fence with you on him?”

  “No doubt,” I said. “I’ll show you when we get back.”

  “Especially if CB’s done fixing it. I hope he leaves a hole till I get Arrow back over.”

  “I’d like to see you jump him.”

  “If I tried to jump him, he’d take me down from this saddle, slap me around a bit, get on my back, and say, ‘Now you jump the damn fence, boy.’ “

  “And I bet you would.”

  While we rode, looking for the last of the strays, Tommy pulled out his can of chew and put a new wad of dip into his mouth.

  We saw her shiny house as we came over the rise of a small hill. There were about thirty goats of various sizes and colors, some hornless, some flop-eared, wandering around it; many lying down, bent-kneed, in whatever shade was available. A couple of our cows were drinking from a long steel trough fed by the windmill pump on her well, on the opposite side of the corrugated half-pipe house; and there were dozens of horses. The horses looked wild, and I had never seen a herd like this before. Tommy told me that when Rose moved up here, people said she had a couple horses and then over the years she had picked up a few more and just let them go on her land.

  You could tell none of them was even gentled, much less saddle-broke, but it was a beautiful sight, all those horses—paints, sorrels, roans, old and young, none gelded, just having the run of the place. I stopped Reno at the top of the hill, under a shady oak, and just admired it all in awe.

  “Is that the craziest thing you ever saw?” Tommy said.

  “I don’t know what it is. It almost makes me feel jealous.”

  “Don’t get all romantic on me, Stotts. ‘Cause between cows, goats, and wild horses, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you which is dumber. Let’s go get those cows so we can call it a day.”

  Tom spit. I pushed my hat down tight and we rode toward the house.

  The structure bled rust where the bolts held the skin down to its inner ribs. The door was on the flattened end, in the shade now, and there were two small windows with awnings over them, poking out off the curved sidewalls, and another beside the door. A rusted-out ‘53 Chevrolet pickup sat on its naked wheel hubs in the dirt at the far end, windows down. A loose, tumbled stack of stove-length oak was piled beside it, some spilling from its bed. Beside the wood was a pile of green-glassed wine jugs, the big kind with screw-off metal tops and finger holes alongside their necks. Some were broken, some intact, most had their labels peeling away like dried leaves. As we rode up, the goats turned their heads in our direction, bleating their pathetic hellos or their beggings.

  As we rode past the front of the house to where the cows were, the door opened and Rose came out, propping a shotgun diagonally against the front wall while she looked at Tom and me.

  “Sorry to intrude,” I said. “We’re just rounding up our cows and we’ll be right out of here.”

  I heard Tommy mocking me, under his breath so the woman couldn’t hear.

  “Sorry to intrude? Sorry to intrude? Jeez, Stotts, she’s not the Queen of England.”

  I guess I sounded pretty stupid.

  Rose looked to be about seventy years old. Her hair was gray and clumpy; you could tell she cut it herself because it fell to an uneven line above her shoulders. She was short and heavy and wore a dirty flowered sundress that went past her knees. Her legs were either bruised or grimy, maybe both, and she was barefoot except for fraying, thinly strapped sandals. Her eyes squinted out at us from a face that looked like one of those dolls made from a dried apple.

  “You boys,” she said, “you tell your daddy to stop cutting the fence line and killing my goats. There’s plenty for your Benavidez cows to eat on your own damn s
ide of the fence.”

  “He’s not our dad,” I said. “We just work for him.”

  “I guess he can’t find any full-growed cowboys what don’t wear tennis shoes and T-shirts, then. How old are you boys, anyway?”

  “I’m sixteen,” I said.

  “Old enough,” Tom said at the same time.

  “That’s just children,” she said. She grabbed the gun by its barrel and put it just inside the jamb of the door. “You can get your cows and go. But since they’ve been here on my land all this time, I’m going to ask you boys if I could get you to move some of that cordwood into my house for me.”

  Tom began angling Arrow toward the calves. “We really got to go.”

  “Hell. It’s not like I want the whole pile moved.”

  “We can help,” I offered.

  And then Tom said, just low enough that only I could hear him, “Crud.” He spit. “If it’s not too much of an intrusion.”

  We carried the wood in armloads to the inside of her house and stacked it next to her stove. It was like a cave in there. The floor was dirt, her belongings were strewn down the length of the building, and where there was enough light to see up to the support of the structure, I could see huge spiderwebs.

  “You boys want some milk or something?”

  It had to be goat’s milk. Unrefrigerated.

  “No thanks.”

  Tom spit on her floor. She didn’t even notice.

  “You seen all my horses? I just started with the two. Then I picked up two more from some folk squatting on forest land when they were forced out. That’s it. Ha! They just kept foaling. I never did nothing to care for ‘em, but they sure are nice.

  “You. Tennis Shoes. You got a real big and pretty horse.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You think that’s enough?” And I brushed off my arms.

  “It was enough a few stacks ago, but I wasn’t going to stop you.”

  Tom was looking up at the pitch-black ceiling of the curved house.

  “You got some real nice-looking horses out there, too,” I said.

  “I think we better get going,” Tom said, edging toward the door.

  “I used to have cats, too. Lots of ‘em, but they all got ate. I had a twenty-four-pound cat. Biggest cat I ever seen. He never got ate, though. One time he even got bit by a rattler and that didn’t kill him, neither. He just swolled up as big as a couch, Ha! I swear I thought to make a chair out of him if he died, but he didn’t. You know what happened to that old twenty-four-pound cat? See those spiderwebs? Summers I get the black widows in here big enough to cook and eat like crabmeat. You know what happened? Well, he liked the smell of some old perfumey bug spray I got and he just got into that can and drank it. The whole can! Just like that. Ha! Wouldn’t you know it? Bug spray! And I even seen him eat a newborn kid, one time, like it was nothing.”

  “If Stotts ever gets bit, he’d probly make a decent hat rack.” Then Tommy spit again and I knew Rose saw him do it.

  “But that was a big cat. Ha!” she continued. “Everyone said that who saw him. Big enough to set on.”

  I thought she was funny. Tom was about halfway to the door. The thought of those spiders hanging upside down over my head was weighing on my mind a little.

  “I had to dig a big hole to bury that twenty-four-pound cat in.”

  Tommy said, “How do you know he weighed twenty-four pounds?” Then he spit out the open door and followed it out.

  “Thank you, boy,” Rose said. “Now, mind you tell those ranch hands to quit cutting the fence down and to leave my goats alone.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s messing with your goats, ma’am,” I said. “At least no one’s ever told me anything about it. And we’re fixing the fence right now, which is why we’re kind of in a hurry, ‘cause we don’t want to get stuck this side of it.”

  Rose followed me out into the bright, hot day. Tommy had one foot in his stirrup, about to launch himself up onto Arrow.

  “You. Boy. You, black-haired boy with the boots on.”

  He was up on Arrow now, and looked down at her.

  “You chewing tobacco?”

  Tom spit to answer. “It’s been a real long time since I had any tobacco. Could you spare me some?”

  Tom looked at me and kind of rolled his eyes. I was smiling, though. He pulled the can out of his back pocket and put a fresh wad into his mouth.

  “Here.” He handed her the can.

  Rose opened the can, smelled the tobacco, and messily put some into the side of her cheek. “I knew you boys was nice boys when I saw you come up. That’s why I didn’t shoot you.”

  “Thanks for that,” Tom said as I got up onto Reno.

  “And you. Tennis Shoes. You come back some time and catch one of my horses and I’ll let you keep ‘em.”

  “You mean that?”

  “The both of you can,” Rose said, and spit, every bit as nicely and professionally as I had ever seen Tommy spit. She held the can up for Tommy, but he waved it away and Rose smiled and kept the tobacco.

  We had the last of the strays back to the fence line. One more post had to be strung and Carl would be finished, too.

  “Tommy, if she was about a hundred years younger, I think you’d be in love with that tobacco-chewing woman.”

  “Yeah, Stotts. And I’d have to fight you to get her ‘cause of her horses.”

  “You boys finished yet?” Carl called out.

  “This is the last of ‘em,” his son said.

  SIX

  The next day when Gabe, Tom, and I went shooting started out innocently enough, I guess.

  We met at the Foreman’s house at 6, while the air of the morning held that dry summer coolness that promised scorching heat by noon. Carl was backing the old Ford F-150 into the hitch of a horse trailer when Gabe and I rode up.

  “You want to give me a hand here, Troy?” he said. “Tom’s just getting his butt out of bed. He’ll be out in a minute.”

  I lowered the hitch onto the receiver after Carl Buller stopped the pickup. Then he got out and came around to help with the rest of the hook-ups. He smelled like cigarettes and coffee and alcohol. And although there was never a time I can recall not seeing him drunk or on his way to it, Carl was one of those drinkers who still managed to get out of bed early every day and get his work done. I suppose he had his reasons. Tom’s mother ran away from them when he was just a baby. I talked once or twice about mothers with Tom Buller, and it was probably the only thing we ever talked about that made him uncomfortable and quiet. I understood now what kept my friend from mouthing certain words, and I never for a moment believed I knew anyone in my life who was stronger or more admirable.

  “Moving some horses today, Carl?”

  “Benavidez bought a real pretty Walker for his wife. I’m going to go pick her up out past Leona this morning.”

  I finished closing the bolt on the chain on my side of the hitch and wiped the rust from my hands onto the leg of my blue jeans.

  “CB, I’m gonna use the reloader when we come back today.” Tom came out of the house, pushing his stringy black hair back with his right hand and then placing his hat down on his head to hold it there. “Gabe, can you come in here and help me grab some stuff?”

  “If you’re hungry, Gabriel, you boys can take whatever I got in the kitchen.”

  “Thanks, Carl,” Gabriel said, and vanished behind the dark, slamming screen door.

  Carl lit a cigarette and leaned against the gate of the Ford, looking at me. Then he looked over at Reno.

  “Where you boys going to be shooting today?”

  “Tom says we’re going to ride down to that big south field ‘cause that little hill with the cross on it’s a good enough backstop and there’s no cows down there now.”

  “Just make sure you don’t let that Gabey blow his own head off. Benavidez wouldn’t look kindly on me if that were to happen.”

  “I don’t exactly think he’d want to immediately adopt me, either,” I said,
and Carl looked at me, smiling and wincing in the bitterness of his filterless smoke.

  “Is Tom’s horse around back?”

  “You could get him. Take care.” And then he yelled to the shut screen door, “ ‘Bye, son!”

  I could hear Tom and Gabe both shouting their good-byes from within the house as I walked around back to the wood-fenced stall where Arrow stayed during the warm-weather months. From the front of the house came the rattling clatter of the truck and trailer driving off toward the west.

  Tom and Gabe came out the back door as I was cinching Arrow’s saddle.

  “Hey thanks, Stotts.” I don’t think he ever called me Troy unless he was talking about me to someone else. “You got your gun?”

  “Yeah. It’s on Reno.”

  Tom slung his saddlebag over Arrow and hooked it onto the saddle. He reached into his right back pocket, permanently branded with a faded moon-shaped stress mark where he carried a constant supply of smokeless tobacco and pulled out a black-and-green can of Kodiak. He took the can, label side up with the head of a bear on it, between the thumb and middle finger of his right hand and whipped it down four times, each shake making a cap-gun pop as his index finger snapped against the lid.

  He pried the cap from the can and extracted a small wad of the wet black-brown dip and jammed it down into the lower right corner of his lip. He wiped his fingers off on the butt of his jeans.

  “That’s nasty stuff,” Gabriel said.

  Tom held the can out in his left palm, the lid still off. “Want some, Gabe? Stotts?”

  I don’t know why, but I wanted to try that stuff so bad; all those times being with Tommy and watching him doing it. So I don’t know why, but I just said, “Okay.”

  And Gabe said, “No way!”

  And Tommy laughed and said, “No way, Stottsy!”

  But I took the can from Tom and, feeling like an expert from having watched him do it so many times, cornered a wad between my thumb and finger and only spilled a little bit before I got it down between my lips and teeth.