Texas Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

knows?”
    “ Ribbon! ” said Granddad, scoffing and snorting. “Well now you just try choppin’ up some of them ribbons, hang ’em in the smokehouse, an’ see how far through the winter they git you!”

V
    L ATE AFTERNOON, C.K. and Harold slowly walked a two-mile length of fence, looking for a break in the barbed wire, where the stock were sometimes getting out. Harold was bored and listless. “Heck, I can’t see where they’re breakin’ through.”
    But C.K. was unperturbed. “Oh ah reckon we come ’cross it sooner or later,” he said. “We just sneak up on it.”
    They reached a section of the fence where it bent slightly, then stretched away, unbroken, as far as the eye could see. Harold sighted along each strand, then straightened up with a disgruntled sigh. “Well, it sure as heck ain’t down that stretch.”
    C.K. leaned over to confirm it. “Naw,” he agreed, “be no use in walkin’ that stretch.” He stared out across the adjacent field. “Reckon we jest as well cut on over...thata ways.”
    Harold looked at him briefly. “I reckon you mean over toward the tank?”
    C.K. frowned and shrugged, not looking at the boy. “Well shoot, if we cain’t find no break, we cain’t find no break — now ain’t that right?”
    “Is that all you ever think about?” asked Harold, trying to sound more responsible. “Catchin’ that old bullhead catfish?”
    C.K. regarded him with mock surprise. “What? You done give up on that bullhead? Shoot, Hal, I sho’ thought you had more gumption than that.”
    They climbed over the fence, and set off into the pasture that bordered the pond. They walked in silence, until Harold stopped to squint into the distance, where a number of cows were grazing; there was one cow, however, apart from the others, lying on its stomach, with its head stretched out on the ground in front of it.
    “What’s wrong with that dang cow?” Harold demanded.
    C.K. shaded his eyes with his hand and took a long look.
    “She do seem to be takin’ it easy, don’t she?”
    They changed direction slightly and began walking toward her. “Look like ole Maybelle,” C.K. said, squinting his eyes at the distance.
    “Well, I ain’t never seen a cow act like that before,” said Harold, mystified. “...layin’ there with her head on the ground like a damned old hound-dog.”
    The cow didn’t move when they reached it, just stared up at them; she was chewing her cud, in a rhythmic and contented manner.
    “Look at that dang cow,” Harold muttered, ever impatient with enigma, “...it is old Maybelle, ain’t it?” He felt her nose and then began kicking her gently on the flank. “Git up, dang it.”
    “Sho’ is,” said C.K., leaning over and patting her neck. “What’s the matter with you, Maybelle?”
    Then C.K. saw it, a bush of it, about twenty feet away, growing in the midst of a patch of dwarf cactus, and he went over and began to examine it with great care.
    “This here is a full-growed plant,” he said, touching it in several places, gently bending it back, almost caressingly. Finally he stood up, hands on his hips, looking back at the prostrate cow.
    “Must be mighty fine gage,” he said.
    “Well, I ain’t never seen no locoweed make a cow act like that,” said Harold, as if his own inexperience in the matter could somehow nullify what had happened to Maybelle, and he began absently kicking at the plant.
    “That ain’t no ordinary locoweed,” said C.K., “...that there is red-dirt marijuana, that’s what that is.”
    Harold spat, frowning. “Shoot,” he said, “I reckon we oughtta pull it up and burn it.”
    “I reckon we oughtta,” said C.K. with a sigh.
    They pulled it up.
    “Don’t gen’lly take to red-dirt,” C.K. remarked casually, brushing his hands. “They say if it do, then it’s mighty fine indeed — they reckon it’s got to be strong to do it, you see.”
    “Must be pretty dang strong awright,” Harold dryly agreed, looking back at the