You maybe believe that it was always the way it is today in Kolob, with the old Mormon ranchers on the one side and the newcomers on the other. This is untrue. When the hippies first come, even when the uranium prospectors come through here the years I was in France in the war, the Kolob people was well acquainted with fighting and backbiting. Of course, we was all of our own minds and as spooky and cranky as anyone else anywhere, but I think you can say we was in two groups: there was the few of us that had land and cattle and buildings paid off and the best grass for winter feed, water uphill of us, and so on. Then there was the rest who drew poor land or it was overworked and so did not have cattle or buildings to speak of, and poor water shares and debts, so they worked for us. Those of us who run the place, my family foremost, had our share of hardship. Our boys died of horses and ranching as much as the others. Our wives died of babies the same as the others. But when the droughts come we had the better water. In nineteen fifty-four our ponds dried to chalk and we had to drive our cattle over the mountain to auction. We lost half on the drive and sold the rest at a loss. But the creek this high never run out completely. We got two lean cuttings off the top pastures and kept our breeding stock. But the other group I mention, the poor-land group, they mostly pack up and move away in fifty-four and fifty-five til Kolob was mostly empty, only two children in school. Some of them come back in sixty or thereabouts to claim their land, but most we never seen again. They just didn't have the water or the grass to hold it. Now, these two groups, we had the resentments and suspectings and gossiping you'd expect, but we also had different personalities that got differenter during the drought and after. I am one of the blessed ones to of come from the water and grass families, so of course I have a perspective on this you can suspect of preferring my own people. But the water and grass families, the big ranchers, we was more educated and polite, valued a gentleness and dignity in our business and had debts of gratitude amongst us that cinched us together. Our clothes was storebought and clean. We did not wear skins and our hats was summer straw and winter felt. We had the better horses and gear and the cars and trucks and we went from time to time to the city and our wives had silver and china. The poor-land families just never did prosper. They was just wore-out. And their manners did show just how wore-out they was: they was a loud, fighting, foul-mouthed people who wore the same dirty clothes all year, patched til they fell apart. Just rags. And pelts, even. They was still deerhide shirts and pants common in Kolob before the drought. They was I think a reckless people, without respect for the tender feelings, no love or kindness or sweetness amongst them. You should suspect me of preferring my own people when I say this, but in them days a boy from a good ranching family would be a young gentleman, and a poor boy would be a reckless and careless scoundrel. They was rascals. I suppose they had nothing to lose, and I and my people we had everything to lose, so we had a code of good behavior we held, while them poor families was just wild. I have not missed more than a few meals except fasting in my life and I don't pretend I know what hunger and desperation will do to a person, but same way my horses are fat and shiny on their pasture, on green grass, with a barn and alfalfa hay in the winters, and wont run or kick when you approach them, them poor boys was like a wild, bony mare you run up a canyon gone to give you heck you try to rope her and will never ride proper.
One time my father was down to Larsons' to sign some paper to take Johnny Jepson's top pasture for non-payment. He owed my father for a loan to purchase water shares. This was the Jepsons the grandfather of Shirl, Kade's mother, down across from the Larson's that is now boarded up. So, my father was down there at the old Post Office in Larsons' porch and Joe Nelson's father was witness. Nelsons was and still is owners of the best grassland inside Kolob and in the draw, and the finest ranchers and upstanding in the Ward. So, my father and Joe Nelson's father and Sister Larson was waiting to take Johnny Jepson's deed to that pasture and he didn't show. So they ride over to Jepsons', just a sorry house of raw boards in a patch of sand and a sorry starved mule out back and Jepson come out yelling and lets his two dogs off their chains. So my father and Joe Nelson's father whistled their four dogs from the road and of course there's a dogfight, but four against Jepson's two, so Jepson goes and starts kicking my father's dogs. So my father and Joe Nelson's father get down and chase Johnny Jepson around and he, Jepson, turn on my father and bite him on the arm and on the hand and on the stomach and I think on the knee before they knock him down and tie him in the dirt. This was not just nipping, it was biting to take a bite of. My father had a strip of meat hanging off his arm and Jepson had blood on his chin and shirt. Anyways, this is what I mean saying the poor families was wild: the yelling, the settin the dogs on them, the kicking and biting, the not paying their debts. This was a reckless people, and no tender feelings in them. I guess Jepson had a pasture to lose, but he knew it was already lost and he was cornered. Desperate.
Anyways, so, back to Handy Whitehead. You want to understand that boy you got to understand the temperament of the poor people. They are a wild and fighty people, even the ones who come back after the drought. Some got their houses back, but no good land or water attached. Most just pulled in a trailer and lived in that, or in anything weathertight they had. Same as always, they work for the ranchers. Handy's family, the Whiteheads, always worked for my family, the Youngs, here on the ranch and cowboying on our leases. Handy's father worked for my father. He was as wild as any, but we was friends of a sort. When Whiteheads was losing their land during the drought, I think in fifty-six, my father made him a deal: that Whiteheads could stay in their house on a acre if they deeded the pasture to my father, and he would forgive their debts. My father had more water than he needed and trenched a new ditch to Whitehead's land, now ours, and watered it and then had Whiteheads work it. At my father's orders they planted it in winter rye and watered heavy and disked the rye under and planted again and ran just a few dairy cows, and within a few years that pasture was pretty good again. I think Handy's father was shamed. He lost his land, then worked it for my father, and it greened up only when my father owned it. Of course, it was the water. That land was just blowsand without water, and my father owned the water. But before the drought Whitehead had a few head of his own and had some pride. After, the pasture was almost ready for corn, but Whitehead owned nothing and my father owned more than ever. There was a a few years Handy's father would not look me in the eye or speak to me more than necessary. He still cowboyed with me, but I can't honestly say we was friends. His clothes got shabbier and his horse died one winter all underfed, out there between his house and the road with its ribs showing, a shame on that family. With no horse they cut no heating wood that year, and maybe would of froze in that plank house if my father hadn't sent down a truckload of wood. So my father, with the notes and deeds, the water, the work, even the stovewood, you could say he owned the Whiteheads. Handy grew up in that. Just a skinny, running-nose, yellowhaired boy in poverty. I felt terrible about that. I could hardly look at Whiteheads in them days. But Handy didn't want to live like that, in that sorry house on that little square of sand and goatsheads. One thing you need to understand about Handy is he is much smarter that you and me. I suppose that hunger and cold and humiliation put a pang in his mind. Not that he was good in school. Hardly went. But when they paved 144 in sixty-eight the bookmobile came down from Salt Lake. It was a big event, like the circus come to town. That old schoolbus full of books and the pretty lady that checked out the books. Handy checked out the limit every three months, and he read every word. And when he ran out of his books, he borrowed others and read and re-read every one. It didn't matter hardly what. Adventures, Huckleberry Finn, recipes, how to wire a house, romances, he read all of them. He got several of them committed to memory. Handy is the biggest reader I ever met. You might think he's crazy, but he's just halfbroke. Goes on about every darn thing and you can't half understand him the way he talks wild. But there is not a better-read man in Kolob. When he was I think twelve, still little and ragged and wild, we was at the chapel for the talent show, it was always the good families sent their children up to say a poem or part of the Gettysburg or a Article of Faith or what have you. Sing a song. So, Handy goes up out of turn, unannounced, wearing his gray patched poor clothes, and started reciting. Just looked up and started in with that wild squawking voice you heard, and he had us just spellbound. Ten minutes he said this wonderful poem about black ships and the heroes, and the war between the Trojans and the Greeks. We was thrilled. I can still remember. We was all just gone from the room in our imaginings. That boy would of gone on to the end but my father stopped him to let the other kids have a chance.
