Cottonwood Jesse

By Larrywomack.com

Jesse took one of the wooden barrels off the running board of the old truck and doused a corner of the fire.  The blaze hissed and faded.  “Don’t know why I wasted good water like that,” he murmured; “could have used my boot.”

He sat back down, took one more drink of the cold coffee, and crawled into his bedroll.  “I’m damn lucky this stuff was in the back of the truck,” he said out loud.  There was no one else to talk to.  Most times Jesse liked having no one to talk to, but this was not one of them.

Jesse is a cowboy.  But in these times, being a cowboy isn’t as much fun as it used to be.  Back East, Hoover’s Depression really seems to be taking its toll. Out here in Skellytown, Texas, things in general aren’t so bad, that is unless you’re a cowboy.  But Jesse is a cowboy.  It’s the only thing he’s ever been.

He was on his way across the flats to his brother’s house near McLean when his truck broke down.  Jesse doesn’t like trucks, but these days even a cowboy needs a truck just to find work.  His brother had left a message for Jesse at the general store in Skellytown.  It seems his brother’s boy had hurt himself working in the fields and they needed to go to Amarillo in the morning to see if anything was broken.

The brothers didn’t talk directly, but Jesse’s brother wouldn’t be concerned about him not being there until it was time to go.  And since Jesse wasn’t known for his punctuality anyway, he still wouldn’t be concerned.

Jesse knew he could fix the truck at daylight, so he wasn’t worried about that.  But he was worried about something—the future.  He wanted to get to his brother’s before supper, so he could talk to him about what the future might hold for a fading old cowboy.  That’s why he wasn’t looking forward to being alone.  Thinking about the future made him scared.  Cowboys don’t like being scared.

Besides his bedroll, Jesse had brought along some jerky, flour, and fatback.  The jerky and flour were for just such an emergency.  The fatback was a gift for his brother.  He made some tortillas and a white “jerky” gravy with the provisions.  That was a meal he was usually fond of, but tonight it made him a bit sentimental and sad.  The concoction was basic trail food, but there wasn’t much of a need for trail food anymore.  There isn’t much of a trail left, with the truck lines and the railroads taking over.

Jesse had camped just off the dusty road cut, in case someone might come by.  But he knew better.  The flats were a shortcut, but they were also dangerous.  Most folks took the gravel road that went over to Pampas and down to McLean.  It was about ten miles farther that way than the thirty miles straight across the flats from Skellytown.

The flats are for the most part alkaline—a leathery-looking mud that can look dry.  Dig down about two inches, however, and the ashy surface becomes damp and greasy.  Come a rain and a deer could get mired down to its knees and die there.  What roads there are in the flat are service roads for the few telegraph, telephone, and electric wires strewn across west Texas.

The night sky was velvet.  There are more stars on a clear night in Texas than anyplace else on earth, and from his vantage point in the bedroll Jesse could see them all.  Jesse could also see darkened ramblin’ shapes of cottonwood trees off in the distance.

Jesse closed his eyes and thought about the thick, knurled, and short-lived cottonwood trees that grow along rivers and streams in this part of Texas.  The cottonwood tree grows tall, if the water is free and ever flowing and produce a soft whitish or light brown wood that is well suited for making furniture, crates, and barrels.  Around here though most cottonwoods are short-lived – twisted by the wind, worn down by the dust and dirt, and forever thirsty. A cottonwood can never get enough water.  In fact, ranchers will tell you that when the weather turns dry for a while, it’s necessary to cut down the cottonwoods along the streams to conserve the water for the crops, the cattle and the people.

A rancher once told Jesse that the best way to deal with the future is to get rid of whatever is keeping it from getting here.  That thought plays over and over in Jesse’s mind.  He wanted to do something about the future but he couldn’t figure out what.

Besides the silhouettes of the cottonwoods, Jesse could also see the single strand of a telephone wire, running high alongside the road cut.  The wire knew just where it had been, and just where it was going.  Jesse knew where he had been, but had not a clue as to where he was going.  Jesse looked at the wire with envy.

Figuring out the future, thought Jesse, looking at the stars, is just about as easy as pulling an armadillo out of a hole by its tail.

Jesse turned on his side and went to sleep in the cowboy way—one eye closed and the other partially open to guard against the uncertainties of the night.

He awoke with the first streak of dawn.

Why is it that boiled campfire coffee tastes so much better than home brewed? Jesse wondered as he raised the hood of the truck.

Mornings belong to cowboys, ranchers, vermin, and farmers.  Even at the beginning of a bad dog hot day, there’s a cool time.  A signal that the day can be what you make it; that you don’t have to become consumed by the heat or beat down by the work.  Embracing that philosophy has sustained many a cowboy and others who labor long in the hot Texas sun.

The eastern sky was streaked now with oranges, grays, and yellows.  A light wind ebbed and fanned the fire.  A roadrunner traversed the camp on his way to a rattlesnake breakfast and a coyote howled a final goodbye to the fading moon.  Jesse examined the engine of the five-year-old Dodge truck—rusty from conditions more than from time.  And he tried to think about the future.

Probably just a dirty magneto switch or the plugs, he said to himself, tapping the alternator. Guess I need to take it down. 

About fifteen minutes later, Jesse found a scorpion inside the alternator—fried and mangled.  He took out each sparkplug, scraped the gunk off with his pocket knife, tossed his gear into the truck bed, covered the water barrels on the running board with canvas, and climbed into the cab.  Jesse turned the key, but the spark was low.

Jesse hates trucks.  He is a cowboy.

Never had trouble like this from a horse.  Hell, you can even talk to a horse, he thought.  No way you can talk to a truck.

One more shot, said Jesse, putting the truck in neutral.

He stepped out onto the ground and, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the doorframe, began to push the truck along the road cut.  After about a twenty-five foot running heave from Jesse, the old engine started on compression, jerking and snorting Jesse and the old truck towards McLean.  There were about twenty more miles to go.

On the forty-five minute ride Jesse tried to turn his thoughts to the future.  All he could see was the present, a present swarming with machines.  Machines are changing the world.

I don’t like machines and I don’t know anyone who does. Trucks and trains are putting an end to making a livin’.  Combines are replacing families in farming and automobiles are turning horses into glue.  People are even flying around in machines.

Where is this world going to, he questioned himself, and what’s going to happen to a forty-five years old who don’t know nothin’ but cowboying.

Jesse could see the smoke rising and smell the biscuits when he was more than a mile away from his brother’s farmhouse.  Jesse and John aren’t close.  They help one another out from time to time, but mostly just because they are family.  Cowboys, for the most part, think that becoming a farmer is just one step from becoming city-fide.  So, Jesse and John never talk on the subject of farming.

“Hey, Uncle Jesse, have a good trip?”

“Usual.  How’s your arm, boy?”

“Still hurts a bit,” said the young boy, holding out his arm trussed in a homemade sling.

“We still goin’ to Amarillo?”

“Daddy says so.”

“How old are you now?”

“Twelve years old sir.”

“Come on in, Jesse,” said John. “Sarah’s cooked up some fresh beef in your honor.”

“Hey, Jesse,” hollered Sarah, “I’ll be in there in a minute.”  Sarah came into the room with a cup of home-brewed coffee in a porcelain cup.

“It’s good to see you,” she said, handing him the cup. She gave him a hug.  It was always a surprise when she did that.  He never knew just what to say or do.

“Breakfast will be ready just as soon as the biscuits come out of the oven.”

Jesse couldn’t talk about what was bothering him in front of the woman, so they talked about the trip to Amarillo—how long it would take, when they expected to return, and what they’d do while they were there.  Jesse said mostly, “Yes.”  “No.”   “Don’t know.”  He did thank her for breakfast, and then quietly refilled the water barrels on the running boards from the well in the side yard.

Standing out by the truck, Jesse asked the boy to go back into the house and get four bandannas.  The boy obliged.  They climbed into the cab of the truck with the boy in the middle.

Jesse said, “Now you all take one of them bandannas and tie it around your neck.  Put the other one in your pocket.  It gets too hot to ride with the windows up, but if you don’t cover your mouth and nose, the dust and the sand will choke you.  You’ll know when to put it over your face”

“What’s the other one for, Uncle Jesse?” asked the boy.

“The heat.  You’ll need it just as soon to wipe the sweat off’n you.”

The truck started fine.  The boy waved at his momma and off they went to Amarillo.  The ride to Amarillo was about seventy miles, with Groom a little less than half way.  The boy had been to Amarillo a couple of times in the wagon, but never in the truck.  In fact, he had only ridden in a truck once before, when they’d gone to see Jesse rodeo at Pampas and Jesse took them all for a short ride. That was two years ago in 1934 and the boy remembered it like yesterday.

The Texas sun was hot, the dust was thick, especially until you got to Groom, and conversation was difficult with the windows down.  They rode in silence.  If someone saw something that might be of interest, he’d point.  The others would look, usually without speaking.

The road from McLean to Groom was gravel and dirt.  From Groom to Conway, however, you ran into asphalt and gravel; from there for the next fifteen miles into Amarillo, it turned to concrete.

About fifteen miles out, just past the Alanreed settlement, there is an unusual natural phenomenon that passersby usually stop to see—Cannibal Springs.  Jesse slowed the truck to about ten miles an hour and the dust began to disappear.

“Want to stop at Cannibal Springs?” he asked.

“Never passed it by,” said John.

The boy obviously liked the idea as well, but he didn’t speak.

As the dust cleared, a trail of vapors became visible on the horizon.

“There it is!” exclaimed the boy, “Yonder.”

A Jackrabbit zigged across the road.

It was Jesse who had told John about Cannibal Springs.  He had first seen it on a cattle drive to Abilene.

He stopped the truck about fifty feet from the springs, parking it under a stand of scraggly cottonwood trees that line a bone-dry creek.  They walked down to the springs and into the mist created by the bubbling waters.  The stream is about two feet wide and runs swiftly with hot white rapids randomly scattered about.  You can hear the boiling and rage of the water.  Alongside are lucid green pools lined with mineral deposits.

“The spring is caused by a crack in the earth.  When rainwater or an underground spring hits them hot rocks, it brings up minerals.  You look at a miner’s map and a hot springs map and they’d look pretty much alike,” John lessoned the boy.

“You mean there might be gold here?” asked the boy excitedly.

“Might be,” said, Jesse, “but probably not enough to fool with.  Fall in one of them pools, though, and you’re cowboy stew,” smiled Jesse.

It was his first smile in weeks.  “That’s why they’re called Cannibal Springs.”

The boy had heard the story before, but he enjoyed hearing it from someone other than his dad.

“You ever seen anyone fall in, Uncle Jesse?” asked the boy, knowing the answer.

“Never saw no one fall in directly, but I met a man one time who had fallen in.  It warn’t no pretty sight.”

“What did he look like?”

“Face looked just like a horned toad,” said Jesse. “That’s what he’d come to be named—Toad.”

“Can I walk down there where the stream disappears?”

“Go ‘head, son, but we need to get back on the road.”  Jesse and John turned and headed for the truck.

“John, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Jesse blurted out.

John was taken back with the fear he heard in the statement.  “What do you mean, Jesse?”

“Cowboyin’.  There ain’t no work.”

“Times is changing, Jesse, and they’re changing fast.  It seems like the things that always got you through just don’t work no more.  And, it’s not just Hoover’s Depression. Seem there ain’t no future in hard work and experience any more.  Things ain’t never gonna’ be back like they wuz.  Everything is new.”

“It’s them damn machines.  Everywhere you look, they’re replacing people.”

“Yeah, I’m saving up for a tractor.  The way prices is, I can’t make a livin’ on the twenty acres I farm now; need to be farming thirty!  These days you’ve got to be able to do more with less.  More crops, less help.”

Jesse dipped the tin cup into the water barrel and handed it to John.  “When you’re gettin’ slower and the world’s getting faster, it’s hard to figure out what to do next.  I don’t know nothin’ but cowboyin’.”  John didn’t know what to say.

“Here, boy, have a drink.  We’ve got to get on the road.”  John was glad the boy came up when he did.

Back in the truck, they rode in silence, each with one bandanna tied around his face and the other in his hand to wipe away the sweat.

As they rode, Jesse found comfort in his recollections of the past stimulated by the smells of the sage and the greasewood that dotted the barren landscape along the dusty road.

John was held in the anxieties of the present by the odoriferous emissions of the aging eight-cylinder combustion engine under the hood of the rusty truck.

The boy had closed his eyes in a daydream—hypnotized by the song of the wheels, still captivated by the wonders of nature, and energized by the uncertainty of what the future might hold for him.

As they reached the outskirts of Amarillo, the passing of a big lumber truck loaded with cottonwoods jog them back to the purpose of the trip.

As Jesse slowed truck, John pulled a crumpled paper from his pocket and said, “I think the doctors office is just beyond the courthouse on the left.  How’s the arm boy?”

“It ain’t been hurting so’s I’d notice it.

“Good,” said Jesse. “You’re gonna be just fine.”