Beau came in the back door about one o'clock and found Doralice and me sitting at the kitchen table finishing lunch. "Coffee Mr. Beau?" Lily Mae offered, and of course, Beau accepted.
"What did you find out?" I asked.
"Maudie had it right. Benny can't make the mortgage payments, and the bank is getting ready to foreclose on him."
Beau looked like he was ready to explode, and I figured this was no place for the explosion. "Let's go into my office." As soon as we got inside, I closed the doors. It was none too soon.
"Damnit, Bart, why didn't he come to me? We could have avoided all this nonsense about foreclosure. Instead, he goes to the bank and when disaster hits he loses everything! Are they stupid until they're thirty years old?"
"Were we stupid until we were thirty? There's a difference, Beau. We didn't have pa's that could have helped us out, and we didn't have anything to lose but the shirts on our backs."
Beau dropped into a chair by my desk. "Yeah, but we had brains and cunning and imagination. All Benny's got is stubbornness."
"We had that, too, Beau. In abundance, I might add."
"That still doesn't excuse being stupid."
"No, it doesn't."
There was a knock at the door. It was Lily Mae. "Gentlemen, can I bring in some coffee?"
"Yes, please, Lily," I told her.
"And some brandy," Beau added.
We waited until Lily came back in with a tray carrying the coffee and brandy. I poured myself a cup and let Beau pour his own. He ended up with about half and half and it looked more like what Dandy drank. I was hopeful it would calm him down but it didn't have that effect.
"What are you gonna do?" I made the mistake of asking, and it seemed to set him off again.
"I don't know. I should just let him figure this out all by himself. If we would have done something this stupid that's just what our fathers would have done. Especially yours. You saw what yours did to me for the mere act of winning a medal. And mine didn't dare defy Beauregard's pronouncement either."
"Then don't you think we should have learned something? That there has to be a better way to deal with the situation?"
Just about that time, Bret burst thru the doors. Maybe burst isn't the right word but he sure didn't knock.
"Connie came over and told me what happened. What are you gonna do?"
"Oh, I don't know. Killing him comes to mind."
"I was tryin' to remind Beau that we did some pretty stupid things in our day too," I offered.
Bret laughed. "Us? No, we were too smart to get into a situation like this. Weren't we?"
That stopped Beau's ranting and raving, as the sarcasm in Bret's question made him think about some of the things the three of us had done. We all sat there for a few minutes and contemplated some of the scrapes and escapades we'd been through. Bret had brought a cup with him and he poured coffee. So did Beau, but his was minus the brandy this time.
Beau was the next to speak. "Alright, I get your point. I can't kill him, and we probably weren't any brighter. So what should I do?"
"Lend him the money to make the mortgage payments," I suggested.
"Make the mortgage payments yourself," was Bret's idea.
"Both good ideas, but I don't think they would have taught him anything. No, I think it would be cheaper for me to let the ranch go into foreclosure and then buy it back from the bank. They always cut the price down some when they resell the property."
"And what about Benny? What are you gonna do about him?" Bret asked.
"I'm not quite sure. I'm still pissed off at him."
"We got to be pretty close when he worked here," I told them. "Why don't you let me go down to see him and see what he as to say for himself? At least we'd know what he was thinkin' that way."
"That's not a bad idea," my older brother remarked.
"Thanks. I do have them sometimes."
Bret took a swat at me and it finally broke the tension in the room. "Alright, I'll wait to make a decision until I hear what he's gonna do. Then I'll decide what my next move is."
"Good. I think that's a much better idea than killin' him."
XXXXXXXX
I took my time ridin' down to Benny's place. I wanted to make sure I didn't say somethin' that would make him upset or angry, or feel like he'd had his back pushed up against the wall. In other words, I wanted to be the kindly uncle.
I found Benny buryin' the last of his steers. I dismounted and waited for him to finish. "I guess you know by now what happened?"
"With the steers you mean? Yes, Benny, I do."
"Why, Bart? Why did this have to happen to me?"
"Bad things happen to good people all the time," I told him. "The question is, what are you gonna do now?"
"There's more that you don't know."
"What more?"
"Come inside the house for a minute."
It was cooler inside the house, and we sat down at the kitchen table. "I did a really dumb thing, Bart. I mortgaged the ranch to get the money to buy the cattle."
"Now you have no cattle."
"And a mortgage I can't pay."
"They did explain to you what happens when you don't make your mortgage payments, didn't they?"
"Yes."
"So what are you going to do?" I let him think about that for a minute. "You can always borrow the money from your father."
"NO! That's not gonna happen."
I heard the resentment and anger in his voice, but I didn't know why they were there. "Then what?"
"I'll go to the bank and see if I can work somethin' out."
"What? You need money to make the mortgage payments, and you don't have any of that. You're gonna have to get a job and you won't be able to work the ranch. Plus how are you gonna buy cattle with no money? I still think the best thing to do is borrow from your father."
"No. I'll think of something else."
That, it seemed, was his final word on the subject. Rather than risk further alienation, I let it slide and went back to Beau's house. Connie was sittin' out on the front porch and Casandra was playin' in the yard. "He's still in an awful mood," she told me.
"I would be, too," was about all I could think of to say.