Anyway, as I was walking by an empty store that I had noticed was being renovated, which piqued my curiosity, a light-brown-skinned man in a huge turban stepped out the door. I smiled and said good morning, expecting to exchange a few friendly words and maybe learn what was going on. But he looked over my head and past me, not deigning to acknowledge my existence. My greeting lingered on the silent air and died forlorn.
I went with my mother to visit relatives in the next county and on the way back we stopped at a non-franchise, old-fashioned burger joint. The roadside sign advertising it said, "Open every day since 1942. Try our garlic fries!" We placed our order at the window and then sat at one of the picnic tables out back under a shade tree waiting for our meal to be brought to us. There was a mosquito coil on the table and a book of matches, so we lit it and watched the smoke curl up in the still air. A woodpecker hammered away nearby, but we couldn't spot him.
While we were waiting, we saw the girl who had taken our order dash out the back door to a vegetable patch, pick a head of lettuce and a couple of tomatoes and dash back inside. A few minutes later she brought us our burgers, served with the freshest lettuce and tomato toppings anyone every got. And she apologized for having taken so long. I felt like asking her to sit down and join us, but other customers arrived and she headed back inside, wiping her hands on her apron. The garlic fries were good, and, noticing potato plants in the garden, knew they were made from the freshest potatoes.
While visiting the relatives that morning, my mother's aunts, still spry though they would never see 90 again, and a cousin, I sat quietly in an ancient overstuffed horsehair chair and listened to them talk, once in a while taking a sip of my Jackson's English Breakfast Tea and nibbling on a homemade English muffin served with Frank Cooper's-brand marmalade. I looked around for Paddington Bear. You would think these folks were FOB Limeys, but their most recent ancestor to have lived in Albion would have been born in the middle of the 17th century, a Quaker who took up William Penn's invitation to escape the C of E thugs and make a home in Pennsylvania.
A lot of the conversation consisted of mentioning where someone lived, or had lived and necessitated directions to explain where that was. But to me most of the descriptions meant nothing, nor did the names of the people. "She was a Bright and she married that Schoonover fellow who came up from Scott County to work for the Parker ranch. That was before old man Parker got throwed busting broncs and kicked in the head. They built that house up on Gregg's Hill just past the old Dodge place. To get there you'd have to drive the road out of town that goes past Hixenbaugh's store -- oh, that's right it burned down...when was that? My land, that would have been the spring after the flood that washed out the riverside park...I think that was 1988. Anyway, you take that road and when you come to where the Sinclair Gas station that the Frasers had used to be, slow down and look for a side road on the left that goes down into a hollow and crosses
the creek. There used to be a bridge...no, the bridge I'm thinking of went to the old Tussing ranch. But the bridge is long gone and nobody lives at Tussing's anymore. Jack Currance's youngest bought the grazing rights and ran cattle on it until he got run over by that Jane Wiles. She said a bee flew in the window and she was swatting it away and never saw him. Then the bridge washed out the winter the A&P closed. "What was I saying? Oh, yes. There was never a bridge where I'm talking about, you just have to hope the water is low enough to get across. You'll know you've driven past the turn-off if you come
to where the old roadhouse used to be at Parson's Corners. You know the one, where your Aunt Amelia, home from the state normal school for a visit, met Arthur and he told her he was going to marry her and she said he was the freshest man the Lord every made. But he did marry her. It burned down the day my father bought the Hudson. Grandmother hated that car. She could never get in or out of it without help. So he traded it for the Studebaker convertible that your great uncle Oliver taught me to drive in. He froze to death along with the rest of the crew that winter when the locomotive he was driving got 
stuck and the rescue engine did, too. 
They all froze when they burned up all their coal. They found Jim Hazlett's body four miles from the tracks, trying to make it to Somerfeld's ranch, they figured. It got down to 60 below zero that month and it didn't rise about 30 below for more than a week and never above zero for the whole month. Jim was John Hazlett's only son and he took it hard and turned to drink and wrecked his car down by where...."
And on and on. It was hard for me to keep awake, the voices fading into the sound of bees and hummingbirds buzzing around the roses planted all about the house, their scent wafting through the open windows, an uncertain light breeze fluttering the curtains now and again. Half asleep, I heard a cow lowing and a dog barking in the distance.I must have dozed off for a few minutes because I had a vivid dream about a swarthy man in a turban bursting into the room and ordering us all to get out, the house now was his, as was all the land and we no longer belonged there. I asked where we should go and he said nowhere, we belonged nowhere and no one wanted us anywhere.
On the drive back, I asked which was the relative who had been shot and never knew it. I had a vague memory of such a person that our visit to the old gals had dredged up. "Oh, you must mean great-great Aunt Louise," my mother said, and I wasn't sure if the "great-great" referred to her relationship or mine, but I didn't interrupt her to ask as she told the old story to me again. It seems that in the early 1900s -- my mother thought it was 1909 but wasn't sure -- multiple-great Aunt Margaret, who was heavily pregnant with Louise, was alone at her ranch house just before fly season, a time when all the men would go off to cut and brand the new calves, when the dogs began barking and she heard the horses in the corral kicking up a fuss. Fetching the .44-40 Winchester from above the fireplace, she stepped out onto the porch to see what was going on. Three men were dragging tack out of the stable and saddling the horses, who were not cooperating with these strangers. Margaret shouted at them to get away from her horses. Instead of doing so, at least one of the men drew his pistol. Who fired first is lost, but a gunfight ensued in which Margaret shot and killed all three men, while taking a bullet in her abdomen. Rifle against pistol at about 70 paces. No contest, especially when the woman wielding the rifle was used to dropping running coyotes at greater distances than that.
Fast forward, as they say, many decades into the future and the baby in mommy's tummy that savage day is an old lady who tripped and fell heavily and was taken to the hospital emergency room, where she was X-rayed to see if she had broken any bones. Fortunately she had not, but the X-ray technician discovered something curious in her hip bone, called in her doctor, who examined the X-ray with some puzzlement. Then, as required by law, he notified the police, for on the X-ray, clearly visible, was what appeared to be a .32 caliber bullet embedded in her hip bone. Louise swore she had never been shot in her life, the idea was absurd, and her relatives backed her up. But the bullet was real and it was there, although clearly she had been shot some time ago. Thinking and thinking, she finally recalled having vaguely heard about her mother being shot by horse thieves before she was born. It was the only possible time Louise could herself have been shot, when her mother was still carrying her.
I remembered being shown the newspaper clipping about the incident, the writer treating it as amusing proof that those of pioneer stock were too tough to be killed, and visiting the old ranch on a trip home when 
I was 10, only an old man caretaker living there, a former cowhand, too busted up from a life of hard work to make a living anymore, allowed to finish out his days there, sitting and rocking on the front porch, refilling his pipe with Prince Albert tobacco from time to time, smoking thoughtfully and telling the occasional visitor about how things were in the old days when there was nothing but wind and tumbleweeds, rattlesnakes and coyotes, thunderstorms 
and wild horses, and a determination to make something of the land, tame it and make it useful, just as you did the mustangs and the few abandoned feral cattle that dotted the gullies and hillsides, reminders of a past failed attempt to gentle a hostile and unforgiving Mother Nature.
He recalled the incident, hearing the distant gunshots out there on the branding grounds, faint but unmistakable in all that silence, and the men leaping to their horses and racing for the ranch house. As he told us of that day, he led us over a rise and down into a small coulee, walking slowly, favoring his left leg. He pointed to some water-worn rocks, barely protruding from the soil. Three graves. Unmarked. "Lost souls," he said. "God knew who they were but no one else ever did."
.png)
