Beef

Out under the blue, the tremendous Texas sun shuns nothing, fills and blurs every sense, plush heat on the skin with the sizzle of flies, the taste of flint and hot orange and cut grass in the air and a distant dead dog reminder of the thirsty earth. Across the searing tarmac with its bottle blonde margin of scratchy vegetation an orchard sings with insects, a green anomaly alive with the hissing pulse of irrigation pumps and ditches, bought with cheap labour and the northern taste for breakfast juice.

We four sit on the porch, speaking staccato undertones, sipping the last lukewarm of our beer. Inside the sound of Blen’s kids playing against the TV cartoons, unaware of the crisis, not thinking about empty stomachs or welfare cheques.

What to do in this midsummer slump? There is nothing here for anyone without work, and the work has gone, evaporated in the heat, withdrawn with the ebb of capital, dried up and hopeless like the salt prune faces of the Mexican wetback labourers at the downtown bustop. For Blen the blow is hard with his tow-headed trio of urchins and his darling wife, and their clapboard bungalow here on the last fringes of town with its yard full of boxcars and bikes and chickens and scorched earth.

Above bleached check and brown beard his bright, pale blue eyes look troubled, and we are troubled too, caught up by the injustice, fearful for our friends and yet, poor but single, unable to contribute more than ideas, a few beers and smokes.

Blen still has his day a week fixing storm screens and fences for the landlord, and who knows, may squeeze another. Jane has her several afternoons at the truckstop on South 77 shovelling eggs and hashbrowns and pouring coffee for windblown teamsters, but still the main money is gone now – the housing project stalled, the Dallas backer folded and this week the men unpaid.

Food’s the thing, says Blen. What's coming in will pay the rent, maybe, but what am I gonna feed ‘em with?

Kit thinks and rolls another joint, thick fingers working oily magic on the single skin, packing its golden contents just so, furling and twisting the ends to make a number. The quick flicker catches and sudden smoke hisses inwards – just one toke and then on to the left between pinched fingers in an America where most ritual is as rare as hens teeth.

It is Dan, I think, who mentions cattle first. Further out of town the sage brush blisters and crackles for mile upon endless mile, criss crossed by dusty trails and half roads. Here is where the white Texans first found wealth, before citrus, before oil; here amongst scorpions and diamond-backs the longhorns graze.

So then we are off, packed into the breathless front of Kit’s green pickup with the windows down and the radio blaring kicker music and it feels good to be alive, good to be doing something real, going somewhere useful.

We stop for slushpuppies at the seven eleven where a fresh faced girl pouts and flutters over-the-counter lashes at Kit’s sun kissed blonde hair and muscles as they always do and for a second I’m almost jealous till I remember Alice and her secret eyes and the soft warmth of her mouth and her quick brown body.

Back in the truck Kit pours Beam into the icy mixture and we pass it round so soon we’re buzzing and zooming and the hot tarmac road gives way to dry dust billowing round the wheels and through the windows as we bounce across the open plain under the blue endless sky and I wonder how Kit knows where we’re going and when we will arrive.

Another mile or so and we’re into scrubby wood and shingle bars next to a shrunken sparkle of stream and suddenly, seriously we’re down amongst the bushes, picking out markers, spotting our small, unknowing target in the half wild group. Dan whispers that they won’t move so far, watches the horizon for dust.

Back home in the boondocks behind the bungalow we take turns at digging. At first it’s hard with scrubby roots and rocks but under the top layer the ground is dry and light and easy to move and soon we have a deepish hole.

The evening conspires unexpectedly to pass time. Well meaning friends arrive to firewalk among the long shadows and coals of the desert sunset whilst over greying charcoal the gifted corn browns and the chicken glistens and spits and jalapenos blacken. At this last conspiratorial supper we desperados keep our peace, say nothing of our plans, sharing a toke, a bottle of bad red wine. Blen strums softly, sings some hippy song about freedom as the sun finally drops away over the hard lip of the earth and maybe we are, maybe this really is as free as you can be.

Inside the children sleep now. The orchard still sings and sizzles in the darkness, showing only slightly against the moonless sky. Dan sashays onto the porch with the rifle, its strange, grey alien barrel gleaming oily and dangerous in the half light. I pick it up and it feels dead and cold and heavy. Somewhere, Blen is arguing quietly with Jane.

And then it’s go, and we’re cruising quietly along sleeping streets skirting the town this time, Blen and Dan in the back with the gun and the gear just gliding and mooching and minding our own business till we reach the junction and turn into the scrub.

It’s real now, and my heart skips and jumps and scurries and we’re waiting, breathing shallow, watching and listening with the engine off for anything at all. One distant light, one noise in the black vastness and we’ll turn tail, but there is nothing but dusty darkness - and then we’re off again, no headlights now, bumping gently towards the drying riverbed not even whispering, not saying anything, each of us with his own thoughts.

Out of the pickup in the still night, senses heightened by fear I see and hear more distinctly than I expect to, and the presence of the cattle is clear to the predator I have suddenly become. Their heads are up and they are looking towards us shuffling and breathing in the darkness. I can see the small one there amongst the others and I kneel. Dan rests the rifle on my shoulder and I point my arm alongside as I have been shown, flip the switch.

For a second the cattle are illuminated starkly, cut out and crisp against the blackest backdrop. The sudden crash of the gun is dreadful, shocking, but the target is down and the light is out and we are running now, running towards the place where the herd had been and there amongst the bushes is the bull calf its eyes already empty and dead thank God, dropped by the single shot.

The fear is really bad. Naked, stripped to the waist under Texas skies with the dead calf dripping warm over us all as we wrestle it onto Kit’s shoulders in this country where they will shoot us too before anything else, before thinking even. Surely they must have heard, must have seen the light, must have sensed us with their cattleherders’ instinct, smelled the stink of our sweat, read the unshaded thoughts in our minds as we plotted?

But the night is vast and dark. Somehow we are back to the road by another track, and there are no waiting vigilantes or cruisers. I am carried along by the others, humbled, brought down by their bravery, their bushcraft. I am astounded by such desperation and skill, that they would even do this thing rather than just talk about it. I am amazed that they knew what it would be like and could plan for it.

Slung over the hole, the horror of the body is bled and gutted and I heave from the sweet sickly warm dead flesh but nobody minds and I remember myself and why I am here, and I steel myself to help flay and hack until I am sticky with blood and hair and sweat like the others and the major cuts lie glistening in the barrow.

We bury the nightmare of gore beneath the dust. Hose out the back of the truck. Indoors we look bestial, barbarous. But though she shivers, Alice strips the clothes from my aching body and washes the blood away beneath the shower tenderly, and there are fresh clothes and coffee ready for us. In the early morning light, we sit on the porch with the girls and share a cigarette and a shot of Beam and we laugh as only campaign veterans can.

And for a while, because there is no other way, Blen’s family will eat, and forever there will be one less calf on the range and shortly the kids will become bored by steak and burgers and chilli and caseroles and will look forward to chicken, and someday I will be a little closer to understanding how it all happened.