Chapter One Monday: Day 1 One Monday in June, the summer I turned fourteen, Daddy drove me over to a seventy-acre pasture he owned in Navarro County. He maneuvered our 1950 Ford sedan down a weed-ridden, double-rut road that led from a barbed wire gap on the north to a barbed wire gap on the south. This seventy acres was chock-full of second-growth mesquite trees--Daddy steered wide of the lacy leafed trees with their tire-spiking thorns. He guided the Ford off the road, easing it across the pasture and to a stop under a bois d'arc grove at the south fence line. "Dadgum mesquites," he said. He pushed open the lid of a tin of tobacco with his thumb, filled his pipe. He clenched it in his jaw, but didn't light it. "Donnie, I want you to wipe 'em out." He looked over at me--a skeptical look as I remember it. I gazed across the field of trees; they seemed to go on forever. "All of them?" I asked. "If you don't get them all, it won't do any good. They'll come right back. A waste of time is all it'll be." Daddy took a kitchen match from a box he kept on the seat beside him, dragged the blue tip across the sandpaper side of the box until the match flared. He lit his pipe, sucked on the stem two or three times until the tobacco glowed red hot, then pulled his wrist watch with its broken band out of the top pocket of his khaki shirt. He held it out and leaned back so he could read it. He shook his head. "Wasted most of a day already," he said. "You better get to work." And I stepped out into the heat and the glare of the Texas sun to begin seven days of work. I didn't realize it then, but I was a poor third choice to fight the mesquite battle. For in 1954 there were a couple of more conventional ways to deal with those invasive, pesky trees. Both smacked of warfare: You could root-plow your field--hire a big dozer that dragged a row of two-foot long dagger-like plows behind. This took care of the mesquite, but the big Cat churned up everything in its path. It lay waste to your topsoil, burying it under waves of heavy clay and gravel. After root-plowing, a field took on the characteristics of the bombed-out strip of ground along the 38th parallel, that sorry piece of land that divided what had just become the two Koreas. The second technique cost just as much, but was quicker. You could hire a wired-together biplane owned by an almost-ace WWII pilot who lived out towards Chatfield. He would, in a few swooping passes, dump enough herbicide on your place from his stubby yellow plane to frizzle every plant that dared to wave a green leaf. Both of these methods took big bucks, and Daddy's cow-and-pasture math at its most optimistic couldn't justify the cost. Besides, quite simply, he didn't have the money. But he had me. And I was cheap. That morning at Athens Feed and Seed north of the square, Daddy had bought me a double-bit axe with a hickory handle for $3.95. The fellow who sold it to him eyed me up and down. His name was Goat; that was all I ever knew. Goat was a big man and appeared even bigger in the dim light of the feed store. With one arm he could swing a hundred-pound sack of horse and mule feed to his shoulder as if it were a pillow, and tote it to a pickup. Goat stood with the open doors at his back, the rays of sun spinning with streams of dust. He bounced the axe like a toy in his hand, then with a grin he spat a wad of Beechnut to one side, kicked it like a dog turd out the door. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hairy hand, then ran his finger down one edge of the axe, testing it for sharpness. "I don't reckon the boy'll wear it out," he said with a grin. I slouched indifferently, but I tensed my right biceps as best I could, hoping Goat would take notice. I don't think he was impressed. I'm fourteen, I wanted to say. I'll be playing football next fall. An Athens Hornet. Maybe "B" team, I conceded to myself, but football. But it wasn't my place to say anything back. Daddy could have. He could have told Goat that I was big for my age--I was almost six feet tall, but awfully skinny--that I was strong or hardworking or at least willing. He could have stood up for me. But Daddy just laughed. Goat started in on some joke, lowering his voice a little. I heard a couple of words--pussy and wiener. I wandered off, embarrassed to be hearing those words with Daddy around, embarrassed that Daddy grinned and leaned closer to listen. Daddy was as decent and honest a man as ever lived in Henderson County, Texas. He was a deacon in the Church of Christ, would never even think to cheat on his income tax. He propped up various brothers-in-law when they were down and out. He was still sending a monthly check to his younger brother, who had been crippled by polio at age twelve and was finally about to get through the university. Daddy was a good man, by any reckoning. But Daddy sure did like to hang around the real men, the profane ones. Not the lawyers and insurance salesmen and bankers and teachers, but the mechanics and weekend cowboys and welders--the men who worked with their hands and cussed and told off-color jokes and in other ways demonstrated an earthiness that Daddy must have always envied, but could never quite act out. Though maybe as a young man he had. For years later, when I was in the midst of a first wife/other woman crisis, he confessed (as a way to talk me back into a bad marriage) to a youthful indiscretion--in a West Texas oil camp before he married my mother. He would never forget how bad he felt afterwards. After the joke, after Goat had done most of the laughing, Daddy, for another fifty cents, picked up a twelve-inch file so I could keep a fine edge on the axe's double blades. Daddy grew up working the cotton fields in Central Texas and preached the virtues of sharp tools. You just flat didn't work with dull tools, whether an axe or a hoe, whether chopping mesquite or chopping cotton. Daddy showed me how to sink that axe in a corner fence post and work one edge of the blade with the file until it gleamed smooth, then work the axe free, and hone the other blade in the same way. He showed me how to hold the lower end of the file tight with one hand, and place my other hand, palm only, on the top end of the file, my fingers held out and away from the blade so not to slice off what someday might become a useful digit. This seventy acres of mesquite-choked pasture that Daddy owned lay across the Trinity River thirty miles west of Athens, the small town I grew up in. At the Trinity River bridge, driving east to west, the land transforms, the deep East Texas sand hills give way to the black gumbo soil of Central Texas. Land that grows watermelons and tomatoes and barely supports bony-assed cows gives way to flat, black cotton land that sucks at your boots when it rains and cracks and curls like gray pieces of a warped puzzle in mid-summer. The new synthetics had just about wiped out the cotton market so the best (and only) use for Daddy's seventy acres was to run a dozen or so brindle cows and a bull of questionable lineage. Lineage, whether for bulls or for kith and kin, was never the focus of our attention. "Sometimes it's better not to know," my mother would say. "Just accept what the Lord has given you." "There's always somebody worse off," she would add as an afterthought. Before the mesquite invaded, this old cotton land had been treeless for generations except for the grove of twisted bois d'arcs entrenched along the south fence line. The story goes that a bois d'arc tree provided the wood for the cross (yes, that cross), and ever since, the species has been cursed with crooked, twisted trunks and limbs so that it will never grow enough straight wood for another cross. Whatever the reason, the trees turned and twisted to create a barrier windbreak in the winter and provide a dense canopy of shade for the small herd of cows in the summer. Each fall, green bumpy-rinded fruit we called "horse apples" swayed heavily from the bois d'arc limbs, then dropped. Nothing grew underneath in the dense shade, the ground barren except for rotting horse apples and rounds of cow patties and swarms of flies. A dug tank sat in one corner of the pasture, its earthen dam bulldozed strategically across a shallow draw. By summer the water level had receded and the dozen cows stood around knee-deep in chocolate-colored muck. Unidentifiable green stuff clung to their legs when they stumbled up and out onto dry ground. In the evenings doves would fly in to water, making a skittish circle or two before lighting on top of the dam. The birds cocked their smooth heads from side to side, pecking at bits of gravel and stray seeds while they made their way down to the water's edge. I loved to watch those doves--their speed and grace, the iridescence of their heads--while I hid, stretched out in the tickle of needle grass, pretending I had a shotgun. A scattering of native grasses and weeds covered the rest of the seventy acres--the needle grass I remember most, for true to its name it stuck and stung like hundreds of needles when it worked its way through my socks. But there were goat weeds, too, and yellow-blossomed bitterweeds and bull nettles. And over the years mesquite trees had spread across the land, brought up from Mexico and into Texas, so the old-timers said, by the droppings of steers on the long cattle drives north. A prior owner of the seventy acres had made a misguided run at clearing the mesquite, and now second-growth shoots and sprouts had grown back from the stumps he had cut and turned the trees into thick bushes. A half-dozen shoots, some as big around as my skinny forearm, curved eight feet or more out and up from each stump. Mesquite may not be all bad--some indigenous and hungry poor of this hemisphere are said to have ground the dried seeds into a flour of sorts--but around where we lived the trees were hated. Mesquite roots run deep--up to fifty feet--and suck the water away from the native grasses, and their thorns puncture even the heaviest of tractor tires. Cattle won't eat the foliage and the wood isn't fit for fence posts. "Worthless dadgum trees," Daddy called them. * * * Daddy dropped me off at the south end of the seventy acres that Monday with my tools and supplies---enough, I hoped, for the week. Besides the axe and file, I had a blanket to sleep on and a cardboard box of food--mostly cans of pork and beans and sardines and Vienna sausages, a giant jar of Peter Pan peanut butter, and a pint of my mother's plum jelly. There was a Crisco can of her crisp tea cakes, a couple of squishy bags of marshmallows and a package of powdered sugar doughnuts. Three or four loaves of Mrs. Baird's sandwich slices drooped across the top of it all. I had a box of kitchen matches and a roll of toilet paper, a stained hand towel and a broken-in half-bar of Ivory soap. Ten gallons of water sloshed in a galvanized insulated can that Daddy tilted on its edge so that he could walk it over to the shade of the bois d'arc grove where I would make my camp. Together, Daddy and I worked a fifty-gallon drum of diesel fuel out of the propped-up trunk of the car and let it slide out, landing with a thump on the black, cracked ground. I had a rusty pump-up sprayer fitted with a shoulder strap that I filled with diesel so I could douse the stumps as I went. I was to cut and spray--the only way we knew to kill the invasive mesquite--then stack and burn the tops, all the while trying not to impale a foot on a two-inch mesquite thorn. Since the sprouts of second-growth mesquite grow out in thick bunches from the cut-over stumps, getting a clear swing with the axe wasn't easy. There was always the danger of the sharp blade glancing off a sprout and slicing your foot, or a mis-hit with the axe whipping a springy branch with its thorns across your face and catching an eye. Daddy took the axe, motioned for me to follow him. He found a mesquite bush to his liking and spread his feet wide, crouched low so that he could swing the axe under the profusion of spindly limbs. Daddy wore his farm clothes--khaki shirt, khaki pants and a scarred-up, worn-out pair of wing tip dress shoes. His shoulders were sloped, but strong. The backs of his hands were splotchy from too many years of working in the sun. He pulled a straw hat--a sweat-stained, discarded dress hat--tight over his brow, and attacked the tree. It didn't have a chance. With six or seven angry swings of the axe, Daddy was down to bare stump. He kicked the limbs into a pile of sorts and handed me the axe. I took it uncertainly. Daddy pointed to the next mesquite tree, pulled his hat back, wiped his sleeve across his high forehead, across the thinness of his straight combed-back hair, and waited. I advanced on the tree, eyeing the curving spraddle of limbs, trying to position myself so that I could get a clean swing at the base of the sprouts. I spread my feet apart, bent low, and swung the axe. Hard. As hard as I could. As if the axe were a baseball bat. The axe blade hit a thick sprout straight on and bounced to the side. I could feel the vibration all through my body, but I managed to hang on to the axe. "Dadgummit, Donnie," Daddy said. He took the axe, held it out. "You have to swing it at an angle. Not so hard. You can't beat a tree down; you have to cut it down." He swung the axe easily at a downward angle and the sprout fell to one side. He looked at me, the look a question. I nodded. "I need to get my gloves," I said. Daddy shook his head and followed me back to the shade of the bols d'arcs. For a few minutes he lectured me on the dangers of working alone out on the seventy acres. Besides the likelihood that I would mangle my foot, there were copperheads and coral snakes lazing, curled in the mesquites' shade, and yellow jacket and red wasp nests hanging from their branches, and hornet and bumblebee nests secreted underground to be accidentally disturbed. Colonies of red ants rose like miniature pyramids across the land, with busy patterns of two-inch wide trails connecting them. Spiders of all sizes and colors stretched their webs from tree to tree and scorpions waited under rocks and dead limbs. While Daddy talked I glanced at the sky where buzzards soared in long, looping circles above me, waiting, I figured, for me to make some last, fatal mistake. Finally, and with obvious relief, Daddy said he would pick me up early next Sunday. He opened his car door and hesitated a minute. He looked at me, then out over the flatness of the seventy acres. I figured he would tell me to be careful, and I was ready to nonchalantly dismiss his concern. "See how much you can get cleared," he said, with a wave of his hand. Skepticism in his voice, skepticism in his eyes. He slid into the car, hit the starter a couple of times before it caught. "You know where the Jenkins' place is." He nodded to the west where I could just see the gray shingled top of a house. "You have a problem, Roy Clyde will give you a hand." He eased into the car, slammed the door shut. He tapped his pipe on the edge of the door. Ashes fell, drifted away. He filled the pipe once more from the flat can of Sir Walter Raleigh, punched the tobacco firm with his thumb. "Keep that axe sharp," he said. I told him I would. Daddy gripped the unlit pipe in his teeth and with a nod pulled away. I waited in the shade until the Ford was out of sight and the dust from the road drifted to the north. I was alone. I turned and stared across the pasture, across the tops of the hundreds and hundreds of mesquite trees. An impossible job, I thought, and felt myself sink. There was no way I could even start to clear all of that mesquite. I groped around in the grocery sack and found the peanut butter and a butcher knife, located my mother's plum jelly. I split open the plastic on a loaf of bread with the point of the knife and smeared a sandwich thick. I found a spot without a fresh cow patty next to a tree and slumped to the ground. I leaned back against the smooth bark and ate. Flies lit on my sandwich while I chewed. I didn't even care. When I finished, I wiped my mouth on my hand, wiped my hand on my jeans. A lizard worked its way down the tree and stopped just above my shoulder. The lizard bobbed its head, puffed out its orange throat, waiting for something. I was thirsty. I knew I should get to work, but I sat there and watched the lizard for a long time. * * * By evening I had cut what I considered a respectable amount of mesquite. I had started out to make one huge stack for a bonfire, but already had abandoned the one-stack method, discovering that dragging the thorny branches through the knee-high weeds got old in a hurry. So now--as I looked back from the shelter of the bois d'arc grove out across the long shadows of dusk--three mounds of scraggly mesquite loomed, hump-like growths on the flat land. Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all. I made a small fire, opened a can of ranch-style beans three-quarters of the way around. I bent the tin lid back for a handle and eased the can into the edge of the fire. In a moment the label flared up in a quick blaze. Charred bits of paper swirled upwards in a smoky circle. I devoured the beans straight from the can with a tin spoon and packed myself with a half-dozen slices of white bread and most of the Crisco can of the tea cakes. The blanket didn't provide much padding, but the accumulation of bois d'arc leaves and crumbled cow patties made it a manageable bed. The fire died down. The stars winked through the branches of the trees. A trio of cows came around. One sniffed at the toes of my socked feet, then jumped back when I wiggled them. Something stirred along the fence row at my back. I bolted upright, tense, straining to hear. But all I heard was the plop, plop, plop, of cow droppings and the swish of cow tails. I lay back down, somehow comforted by the closeness of the cows, the pungency of their smells. I reached out, found my axe and drew it next to me, both hands on the handle. I slept well. Copyright © 1999 Donley Watt. All rights reserved.
