A long, wistful look down the callejón

 

By Ma. Eugenia Guerra

 

The luxuriant look of the pasture grasses and the monte foliage is eye candy for those of us who have barely held onto the scintillating, sometimes devastating roller coaster ride that is ranching in South Texas . As a child I was long a witness to that tenuous ride sometimes punctuated by prayers recited into the roaring furnace of hot, dry winds that toasted the countryside brown and bore not a molecule of moisture.

A look at some old photographs confirms that there were times on this ranch when the wind piled the sand up like little dunes on what once must have been the ocean floor. In step-fret bordered Brownie snapshots, we children often looked wind-swept and gritty, our long curls blowing northwest, a hand held up to keep the hair from our eyes to find the face of the aunt holding the camera.

I love the memories of this place, the way the roundups worked, the anticipation of the first head of cattle making it into the callejón in front of my Grandmother's little house where the women cooked and children played nearby in the shaded merendero. The kitchen work and play stopped momentarily as the big push of bawling, bleating cattle made it into the callejón and my uncles, ranch hands, and grown male cousins brought up the rear of the herd and prepared for the long, hot, dusty process of sorting and branding. There was this moment as the cattle came in that my uncles on horseback and my Grandmother María Dionicia in the merendero communicated to each other through the dust and the bleats in the searing mid-day sun what must have been measures of pride and love, love for one another and love for this place.

I was never allowed into the pens but I watched from a perch on the topmost beam of the railroad tie corrales, a little bit jealous and wistful for the hands-on experience of my primos. How could I have known then that the buckles and twists in the lives of those who ran this operation would pull me back to the heart of this place, that my parents would grant me the privilege to care for something so important.

Over the last 15 years, my father and I made adjustments to the scheme of things, to the order of work and tools. These days, men and women cook and men and women bring in the cattle and do the work of branding and medicating.

For more than a year, probably two or three if I really let myself feel the devastating weight of the absence of him from my life, the work has gone on without my father, who has been ravaged by Alzheimer's Disease.

On one of his last visits to the ranch, my father asked me the two things good-mannered ranchers never ask, questions he would invariably answer himself with an exaggerated overstatement meant to silence the offending he or she who had asked -- how many cattle do you have and how big is your ranch? My sister Melissa and our Mother told him they were his cattle and this was his ranch. He smiled impishly, and mused only half-convinced, "Oh, really!"

Just now as I write this and think things through -- even at this high emotional pitch -- I understand that for all the vibrant and dear memories I have of all of us out here on this ranch, loving memories that practically dictate all of my actions, my father has none. As surely as he is leaving us day by day, we are gone from his memory bank. I tell myself that we still live in his heart.

It is conversation I miss most with my father, the exchange back and forth of ideas for how to get work done, a dialogue that was as much about work as it was about the substance of our lives -- love.

There are times on this ranch that I look at things my father fixed or that I come across one of his precise graph paper diagrams for fences or specs for costs for a project, that I understand the fine mind that authored this work, the imagineer who thrilled us, and no doubt himself, by finding ingenious ways to move mind and matter, and as he did, so moved my heart.