Chapter 2: Captain Dave moves to Wyoming
Musical theme; Dancer on Ice by Dire Straits
In the morning light, Dave got dressed, and went outside to look at the view. It was mountains and gorgeous. Across the meadow by the house, there was a little creek that must be the trout stream. Morning mist came over the tops of the nearby hills. Jainie came up beside him, wearing insulated Carhartt overalls, and a matching coat in Carhartt brown, with her feet in insulated Red Wing boots.
“You seem to be into a new look.”
“You had better watch that kind of line, Company mathematician, because something could happen to you.”
“You might send Carlos Marcello after me.”
“Well, I think he died, anyway.”
“One less guy lusting after my girl.”
“There is a guy coming today.”
“Who is that?”
“He is Nathanial Blake. When I was a little girl, Nat Blake was the World Champion Cowboy.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t say anything like that. I was a little girl just long enough ago to be with you.”
“You are not a little girl any more?”
“You peanut counter! Don’t ever say anything about my age like that.”
“Accountants are referred to as bean counters. But I’m not an accountant, anyway.”
“Mathematicians eat accountants for breakfast, don’t they?”
“Well, of course we do.”
“That’s all I need to know. We can just forget linear algebra and tensor calculus, matricies, non Euclidean geometry, spherical trigonometry, and hyperbolic spaces. We can just forget all that.”
“If you would like, we can.”
“You even taught some of those courses!”
“That’s true. Is it an accusation?”
“What are you doing with me, when you know things like that? I flunked Algebra in high school.”
“What do we have to do with non Euclidean geometry?”
“I don’t know. I’m just some dumb girl with a ranch in Wyoming!”
“Do you think I want you for your money? Because there is no need for us to get married. You can still be my girl, and just forget about all that.”
“You know a lot about non Euclidean geometry, but you don’t know shit about women.” She walked inside, as Dave thought she was probably right about that.
Kevin came up, and handed him a cup of coffee. “She a treasure, Dave. Don’t give up.”
“I don’t know what to do, Kevin.”
“Ain no man know, we jus guess an see. You get a good one, let her trew you fingahs, and den nex, you got nuttin. An maybe not no more you got somthin like dat.’
“She had me investigated, Kevin. That’s how she knows about me teaching math and all.”
“You din invesgate me, but ya can. Fin out ow a chemical engin’r got a tugboat job, uh? She doan unerstan we go a sea. She tink you too much smart, she some dumb chick, so you can’ love her, not real. She doan see herself like you see. She doan see pretty girl wit she nice, she good chick. She doan. She doan tink she deserve you. She tink you flick de PTO, and pull de lever. She tink that goan happen, Dave.”
“I told her I love her.”
“She doan b’lieve. She tink you ust say dat. She a good girl, but she tink not. She doan tink she good. Tink she not s’much. You cain’ tell her. Ave’ show ‘er. I ain’ never ‘ad a chance like dis, Dave. You bes’ not mess it.”
Kevin left. In a few minutes, Jainie was back. “You don’t love me.”
“Wrong.”
“Here are the keys to the Volvo. And the title. It’s signed. Take the truck and go back to Texas. You can be a fucking bull hauler.”
“Jainie, don’t be like this.”
“I will be any way I want to be, you peanut counter!”
Just then, a badly beat up pickup drove up. A grey haired man got out with some signs of stiffness. “I’m Nathanial Blake. I was told you expected me.”
Dave shook Blake’s hand. “This is Kevin Lake, the foreman. I’m Dave, and I’m not sure who I am at this point.”
Kevin gave Dave a dark look. “He’s one of the owners, Mr. Blake. Let me have the keys to your truck. Paul, can you fuel that truck for Nathanial Blake?”
“You’re Nathanial Blake, the top cowboy in the world?”
“That was some time ago, Son.”
“My name’s Paul. It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Blake.”
“It’s an honor to meet you, Paul.”
“Well, Mr. Blake…”
“Call me Nat, Paul.”
Dave nodded. “Uh, Nat, Kevin and I would like to take you over to the bunkhouse.”
Nathanial Blake smiled. “Oh, of course.”
When they came in, Dave pointed out two crock pots. “Help yourself to some beef stew and beans, Nat. We don’t stand on ceremony. The boys wouldn’t know how.”
As Nat began eating, Jillian came in. ‘Oh, my gosh, it really is Nathanial Blake!”
Dave nodded. “I was going to offer Mr. Blake a half time job for $1,500 a month, and a spot in the bunkhouse.”
“Let’s make it $2,000 a month. What do you say, Mr. Blake?”
“It’s a very generous offer, Ma’am, and I accept.”
“Dave, I have something I need to discuss with you.”
They went into the ranch house. She led him into the bedroom, and then took off her clothes as rapidly as perhaps only she could do. It was almost another ambush, but this time Dave had a few seconds’ warning.
“We’ll just forget about all the mean things I said. A Princess is entitled to take back her nasty words, is she not?”
“I think I did see that somewhere in the manual about the Rights of a Princess.”
“That’s good, because I didn’t want you to demand chapter and verse, not, of course, that I could not have found it.”
“Oh, yes, no doubt you could.”
She pushed him down on the bed and got what she wanted.
“Of course I could find chapter and verse on the rights of a Princess. But this Princess intends to keep you. It says somewhere that when I stake my claim, that’s it. About the truck. Look, you can keep it. I’ll buy you another one like it if you want. But I don’t want you taking it to Texas. At least, you know, not permanently. Not so you miss our wedding. You’re still going to marry me, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah.” He gave her a sidelong look and smile.
“We should go nail the trout. It’s a good morning for it, with the overcast, you know.”
“All right.”
“You know how to fish, don’t you?”
“I imagine.”
“I mean, aside from running a 265 foot midwater trawler.”
“The Clarissa Marlene is 295 feet long.”
“The creek is about 6” deep except the holes.”
“That pretty well lets Clari out. She draws 14 feet six inches fully loaded.”
“How wide is it? Or, you say ‘she?’”
“We do. She is 72 feet abeam.”
“She must have some big engines.”
“She does. She’s a trawler. She has four engines, and they generate a total of 22 thousand shaft horsepower.”
Jillian selected two trout poles from the racks in the mud room. “We won’t be needing anything like that this morning.” She got a cup of worms from the refrigerator. “I’m not real sporting. If I was, I would have dry flies and all that. We’ll have several trout in ten minutes with worms. Real fishermen use dry flies. I just kill fish and eat them.” She tucked a landing net under her arm. She handed Dave a tackle box and creel. “At some point, we will get you a fishing licence.”
“I should already have it.”
“Or what, the big bad game warden will bust you? Trust me on this one; if he comes here, he will kiss my ass. Figuratively, that is. You’re the only person on the planet who can kiss my actual ass, and you can do it any time you like. Now for the exam question: who can kiss your actual ass?”
“Nobody but the Princess, though it may not be dignified enough for her.”
“Wow. You even got the extra credit point there.”
They came to the lowest of the holes. Dave put a worm on his hook, and Jillian pointed to the place where the water came into the hole. Dave cast there, and hooked a good fish. He brought it in, and Jillian took the 16” rainbow trout, and put it in the creel. She put another worm on the hook. “Do it again.” Dave did, this time taking a brook trout of 17-18 inches. Jillian put it in the creel. “Let’s do the hole upstream. Four fish should do it?”
“I think.”
They came to the higher hole. Jillian cast into the deep water near the top of the hole. She got a 20” brook trout. She motioned to the inlet of a small branch stream. Dave cast there, and another brook trout went into the creel.
They went back to the house, and took the fish to a fillet station out back. “We can fillet and skin fillet if you like.” She said.
“I would like to do it that way.”
She went over two fish, skinning the filets after taking them off. There was some meowing, and she threw the carcasses out in the weeds for the cats. “Let me see you do the other two, Dave,” she said, smiling..
Dave’s knife moved so fast it was hard to see. He filleted, skinned the fillets, and boned them out, flinging the carcasses out to the cats.
“Wow! That takes something off the list of things I might be better at than you. I’ve never seen anyone that good.”
“I was taught by a lady named Maria at the processing plant in Fort Bragg, California.”
“Did you, well, do it with her?”
“That’s the past, Princess. But actually, we didn’t. Maria has a mean ugly boyfriend. And she loves him. I kind of like him myself, actually. Maria makes more money than the manager of the plant. They had the idea they would cut her piece rate so she wouldn’t make so much, and she told them to increase it 10% or see her in court. She was cutting at a very good utilization rate, so they gave it to her.”
Jillian took the rib stuff out of the two pairs of fillets she had done, and rinsed them all. She took them in, and breaded them, put them into olive oil, and fried them.
They ate some trout, and when they were done, Jillian rang the bunkhouse. Nathanial Blake came.
Jillian smiled “They let the new guy come in because they think I will want them to do some work. Cowboys are lazy except on their horses. Am I right, Nat? Eat, anyway, and disagree if you like.”
“The hands don’t eat in the house, Ma’am.”
“Well, eat a trout fillet, and then take the others to the bunkhouse. What they don’t know won’t hurt them. If and when I need discipline, Kevin will take care of it. You’re the toughest cowboy in town, but would you want to start some shit with Kevin?”
“No, Ma’am. Only a complete idiot would start shit with Kevin.”
After he had left, Jillian laughed about it with Dave. “I love having a Bete Noir to threaten people with. I am such a mean girl.”
“Nathanial Blake may have had a point. You take away people’s sense of what is acceptable, and then anarchy results. You’re Marie Antoinette. You have to decide if you want to preserve the existing sense of order or not.”
“That is how you think it works.”
“That is how I know it works. People accept an existing system, and even if it sucks, they seldom rebel against it. But if it is unsettled, they are unhappy, because they do not know what to expect. Even the oppressed want stability. They would rather be oppressed than not know what will happen next. Cowboys have a sense of freedom, riding on the range, but they need to have expectations about the social system that they can depend on. That’s why the West was not really all that wild. Stable social mores. It’s the same reason the modern world is so violent and anarchic. Because there is no accepted standard that people are willing to enforce even to the point of killing over it.”
“And they expect me to be the source of this social stability.”
“Absolutely. You can ambush men in their motel rooms, you can act outrageously, royalty often does. But you must set expectations for them and enforce them vigorously. If the cowboys have rules, they will be stable and probably even happy. The rules can be illogical, even pathological, but if they are stable, they will probably work.”
“You are telling me most people do not want to be free.”
“I am. You and I do. We’re not afraid of instability. If you didn’t get seasick, you could be thrilled with the Clarissa Marlene jumping over a 40 foot sea. Smash, crash, splash. You would love to take the wheel, and drive right through seas as big as a four story building. Twenty two thousand horsepower right there under your hand.
“I could get a rush on it laying in my bunk. Tom is quick, and he drives the boat hard, real edgy. Tom can grab a fly out of the air. He whips the Clarissa Marlene around like she was a little outboard. If you went overboard, it’s Tom you would want at the helm. He could point that boat around, and end up with you right at the recovery gate. You can feel Tom making a last fraction of a second change to take a sea a little smoother.”
“Blair, the captain, is much different. He has tremendous foresight. Blair probably won’t be surprised by the next ice age. He can read seas that are so far out you can hardly see them. He docks the Clarissa Marlene in wind and current like it was easy. He puts her alongside so you can step ashore from anywhere on board. He can feel a trailing line, or just about anything, and he says ‘hey, how about this?’ He has an incredible knowledge of the sea, and boats. He can navigate by the feel of the wheel in his hands. He looks at the sky, and sees the stars up there, well, he knows where he is, just like that. Like he was reading a road sign.”
“I knew your shipmates were good, but what does it have to do with freedom?”
“Those guys are free. You can’t make rules for guys like Tom and Blair. You can tell them not to load the boat over the Plimsoll marks, and they will comply, but you don’t really reach them with rules.”
“Yet you think the cowboys need rules.”
“Right. Tom and Blair are willing to take responsibility for the lives of 15 of their friends, and a boat as long as a football field. One man at the wheel of a big steel boat at 0400, the only thing between himself and his friends and death. Those guys are not ordinary. I was second mate, and I took wheel watch too, but when it was really bad, it would always be Tom or Blair.”
“Getting back…”
“Cowboys do not have the responsibility of a ship’s captain. They are out on their own, and if they do not have a stable social system to guide them, they will not do well. Society has guided these guys through history. Cowboys are young men with an extraordinary work ethic, the willingness to get out and do a very hard job with nobody to watch them, and the commitment to do the job without someone watching them. They are successful because of a strong moral code. They live by that code. They ride for the brand. They do the right thing as they understand it.”
“And if I disturb that moral code?”
“You unleash anarchy. The moral code is a fragile thing, and they don’t even know they have it. Make a crack in it, and where that will end is totally unknown. Changes have to come slowly. This year, you grow peppers for their beans. Next year, you start pancakes at breakfast. That’s just a great ranch with better chow.”
“I’ll give that some thought.”
“You will need to learn it. You can skip my course on infinite limits, but you have to understand human expectations.”
“You know a lot about this?”
“Actually, no, I don’t. I’m just telling you the part I do know.”
“What is an infinite limit?”
“Consider the the sum of the series ½ + ¼ and so on. You can see that it is tending toward one. That is the infinite limit of the series.”
“The asymptote.”
“So you do know something about infinite limits.”
“I looked it up in my Funk and Wagnell’s.”
“But you know what the asymptote is.”
“It’s the infinite limit, I think.”
“That’s right. The line the curve will never meet.”
“This is Steve, coming.”
“I suppose you are Dave?” Steve was a short, stocky man of about 40.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“Cain is loose. Bobby asked if you would take the rifle. He thinks you are a shooter.”
“We’re on it, Steve. Dave is a marksman. We’ll be with you real soon.”
She ran to the den with Dave behind her. “Cain is a mean fucking bull I should have put down years ago. Take that old Springfield. It’s sighted for 200 yards. It’s loaded with Remington brass, and Sierra Game King 180 grain. We should have the .375, but the boys might do something dumb before I can get it out of the gun safe.” They ran outside, and she took the wheel of an ancient Chevy pickup with no box. Dave got in the passenger seat.
“They might try to rope him. Dave, kill that bull as soon you get the chance. Shoot him in the eye.”
“How do you think I can do that?”
She jammed on the throttle. “Same guy who told me everything else. Alan Wildethorne. You can flick that bull’s brains out at 200 yards, and I expect you to do it.”
She sent the truck rocketing down a farm road, leaving her cowboys far behind. They cornered Cain at the fence a half mile from the farmhouse. Dave dropped the safety, and laid the rifle on the hood of the truck. He squeezed off a round, and it took the bull in the left eye. The bull went down like a rag doll. Dave put the rifle behind the seats of the truck with the spent round still in it.
“It wasn’t but 125 yards. Anyone could have done it.” She smiled.
Steve rode up. “Nice shot, Mr. Mathematician.”
“Where you got that?”
“You guess.”
“He might not be dead. Be safe, don’t be sorry. He’s groceries.”
“Semper Fi, Lieu.”
“Y’all can have him butchered?”
‘Sure. We’ll take care of it.”
Dave and Jillian drove back to the house, and went in in silence.
Dave turned to Jillian. There isn’t much you don’t know, or haven’t told someone.”
“They also know you have the silver star, and the bronze with oak leaves.”
“They shouldn’t.”
“They are very proud of you, Dave. We need heroes up here in the snow and ice. You’re the real thing. I’m proud of you, too.”
“I’m not proud of killing people. Mary Teresa has something to be proud of, although she would never be.”
“You’re a brave man, Dave. I read the citations.”
“Well, I should have been brave enough to refuse to serve. Or to be a medic, and save people. Somewhere I have a pic of a medic on his knees treating a wounded child. That guy was a hero.”
“I would have admired you for being a hero like that, Dave, but if you had been, I would never have met you, and that would have been terrible.”
“You might have met someone better.”
“If anyone else said that, I would assault him with a large heavy object.”
“Nobody else would say that.”
“Are you sad because of killing Cain?”
“I don’t think.”
“You’re sad. There must be something.”
“Maybe not.”
“There has to be something.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t marry me. I’m too old, not handsome enough, I don’t have any money.”
“Those things don’t mean anything to me, Dave. Please tell me you are not going to take the ground out from under me.”
“I’m not. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I know what a PTO is.”
“You continually amaze me. What does a power take off have to do with anything?”
“You have to start the PTO to actuate a dump truck.”
“And you flunked math.”
“Don’t be smart with me, Mr. Mathematician in Carhartt. I’ve only known you for a little while, Mr. Advanced Mathematics in Red Wing boots, but I love you, and I need you. Maybe you can go back to counting peanuts and driving around in the Gulf of Mexico in your big steel boats, but I’ve crossed the Rubicon. You know what I’m talking about?”
“Yes, Julius. You’re not in Gaul any more.”
“I need to find something you don’t know about, Mr. Carhartt.”
“You could try Sociology or Cultural Anthropology.”
“But most likely you know about the digestive systems of voles.”
“Maybe a little.”
“Really.”
“Voles are rodents like mice.”
“What do you want me for?”
“You’re cute, smart, fun, and there are nice fish in your channel, although it’s pretty shallow.”
She laughed. “Maybe we could dredge it out so the Clarissa Marlene could come in.”
“Might be kind of expensive.”
“I’d like to see the Clarissa Marlene.”
“I imagine I can get you aboard, probably they will let you take the helm.”
“I sometimes have trouble parking the pickups.”
“Well, this is the same problem, but it’s about 280 feet longer.”
“I can’t imagine parking something that big.”
“Well, it’s the same as docking a rowboat, but you need a bigger place to put it.”
“It weighs several thousand tons, though?”
“Yes. But if you docked ships in a simulator, it would not be any harder to dock an aircraft carrier than an outboard. Clarissa Marlene is big, but she’s got the same physics as an outboard, pretty much. She can carry a couple of million pounds of fish, but she’s just bigger is all.”
“I want to see her.”
He sat down at her desk and got on a web site.
“The pix on the laptop don’t show her like she really is, but this is her.”
“She’s beautiful. Maybe some day we will have a boat like that.”
“You want a thirty million dollar heartache?”
“Don’t you?”
“No. My sea fantasies run more to the big salvage tugs, like this Danish one, the Seurat.” He paged in the pic. “590 feet. If you think she’s a looker, check out the Dutch boats. Miss d’eutaine, a 676 foot behemoth. This is the queen of the fleet, the 887 foot Fleurr de Daigne. She came out of the shipyard at six hundred ninety million dollars. She salvaged two supertankers in her first year at sea, and made her owners over a billion dollars.”
“Do you wish you were working on something like this?”
“Not so you’d notice. Fleurr de Daigne’s second salvage was in a hurricane, the winds over 190 knots. You can put a tow cable bigger than a man’s leg from ship to ship in weather like that, but it isn’t easy.”
“What do you really wish you were doing, Dave?”
“Well, I’m kind of nutty for this girl who has a ranch in Wyoming, so I sort of figure on helping out a little bit there.”
She put her arms around him and sort of burrowed in. “That little Wyoming cowgirl? She needs you awful bad, Dave.”
“It might work out all right, because I kind of like her, too.”
“You’d better like her.”
He kissed her neck. “Well, as it happens, I do.”
* * *
When they got out of bed, it was getting late. “We’ll have some of that nasty old bull for dinner.” She said. “Then, in the morning, we start out for IBP in Emporia Kansas.”
“Do I have anything to say about that?”
“Sure. And when we’re done with that, we’re going to Emporia Kansas. The Volvo will be back here some time this evening.”
“I wondered where it was.”
“You don’t call the truck ‘she?”
“Less than a thousand tons. Too small.” He smiled.
“Well, it’s been out getting the sleeper customized, and I got the refrigerator for it, and some stuff like that.”
“Why are we going to Kansas?”
“Take a load of cattle to IBP, and then back to New Orleans.”
“Vince may want me to go back to sea pretty soon.”
“He would probably like that, but I told him you probably are not going to sea again.”
“You just get around to telling me this?”
“Are you mad?”
“Not especially. It makes sense, and I already knew you were going to do whatever you wanted to.”
“I’m a Princess. I always do whatever I want.”
“We can probably roll at first light if the truck is ready.”
“It will be. Can I call it ‘she’?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“If I want to name the truck ‘Princess Baby Doll’ and have my picture painted on the side, that will be all right?”
“It’s your truck.”
“It’s our truck. It’s all right?”
“It is. She is the Princess Baby Doll. Maybe we should make her truck ID ‘baby’.”
“What is a truck ID?”
“Trucking companies call their trucks by numbers, sometimes names. It goes on your fuel receipts, is about all.”