The Son of Katie Domingo

The Son of Katie Domingo
A Short Story by
Tony Killinger

Nobody ever knew how Katie Domingo came to own that section of land on the other side of the arroyo, and if they did they never told me about it. I was just a kid anyway, working on my Granddad’s ranch in South Texas. We had a sizeable operation for those days and Granddad, my father and thirty Mexican vaqueros kept the fences mended and the water holes open. Nevertheless, mesquite and thorn brush have a way of opening wire and inevitably, we would have a few stay cattle mixed in with our own when it came time to bunch them up for some particular reason. I soon came to know that unbranded calves went under the iron and became Rocking K stock anytime we came across them, but we would make an honest effort to return branded cows to their rightful owners. Except for Katie Domingo’s strays, they went home paired up.

When I was fourteen Katie was about thirty-five. I’m not sure when I fell in love with her, around twelve I guess. Katie was not just a strong woman; she had genes that wouldn’t bend for anyone. She had four daughters, every one of them an exact duplicate of their mother. Each of the girls had different fathers and they were spaced about three years apart. One of the men, they say, was a Negro preacher who came around on a wagon from time to time, ministering to the farmers and hired help. Apparently, he had a special ministry for Katie. It didn’t make any difference though, no man ever stayed in Katie’s ranch house long enough for anyone to notice. She wouldn’t expose her girls to any sort of immoral behavior.

Katie was a good equestrian; she rode a big, tall, black gelding that had a long stride when he walked. Katie always wore one of those flat Mexican hats, jeans and a blue chambray shirt with the top two buttons left undone and the rest straining to stay closed. It was a rare sight to see Katie and that gelding on a walk though; she normally kept him in a smooth lope or a brisk trot. It was that trot that had been my undoing. Katie had an ample set of breasts and that trot just sent men’s minds to thinking all sorts of heated thoughts. I couldn’t tell you how many nights I went to sleep wondering what it would be like to be cradled in those arms and blissfully cushioned by those fine breasts. My dad had to backhand me with his hat one time when we stopped to talk to Katie on the road. “Get your mind reined in boy,” he snapped at me. Katie smiled so broadly I thought she might laugh aloud. I felt terribly ashamed, immature and could only tip my hat to Katie as I spurred my horse on down the road.

Emalia Domingo was Katie’s oldest daughter and she was a year younger than I was. We would see each other in school quite often and exchange smiles. She was as beautiful as her mother with eyes as black as coal and long smooth hair, just a shade on the red side of black. She always carried an armload of books and I thought she must be terribly intelligent. We never spoke more than a dozen words to each other, but I felt a strange, strong attraction towards her. I never understood why Katie stopped me one day while I was hauling hay bales up to the pasture and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was not to have anything to do with Emalia from then on.

Granddad died the year I graduated from high school. My dad was his only heir. Dad had a slightly different attitude towards the ranch than Granddad but that was understandable, I suppose. Granddad had cobbled up the ranch out of nothing, building up a herd, going without most years just to be able to make it better than it had been the year before. I never knew my grandmother but everyone told me she was of that same pioneer stock, tougher than beef jerky and as sweet as summer rain. My own mother stood with Dad; she favored a smaller operation directed more towards purebred, high quality stock. I had always thought that I would go to college, get a degree in something and become a jet pilot in the Air Force, so it didn’t make much difference to me either way.

Even in today’s modern world, given all the input by Doctor Spock and innumerable experts at child rearing, it is a rare thing to find a family that can sit down around a table and jointly determine the future direction of that family, but we did it and that was a long time ago. It took us an entire week of studying charts, reading pamphlets and articles from stock magazines, but by Saturday night of that week, we knew what the new Rocking K would look like. I also knew that my plans to be a jet jockey would need to be put on hold for at least a few years.

Within three months, we sent a thousand cattle to market. Every stock buyer in Texas, it seemed, was walking around with a clipboard and pencil, checking out the groups we had temporarily penned in every available corral and pasture we had. Every day huge semi-trailers and trucks pulled up, loaded anywhere from 10 to 50 head and drove off to some unknown feedlot somewhere. The air was filled with the plaintiff bellows and bawls of cows, calves, steers and bulls, all wanting to be somewhere other than where they were. We also sold all but about a dozen of our horses, keeping only the best we had; most of them young mares. Dad made frequent trips to the First National Bank in Laredo, depositing checks. Even the bank president called him “Mister.”

Finally, on a clear, cool Monday morning in early September my mother hung a load of wash on the clothesline, reasonably sure that the batch would remain clean and not be soiled by the billowing dust cloud of a roaring cattle truck. I can remember the eerie silence that filled the barnyard in those few short days of respite. I recall sitting on the front porch of the ranch house, drinking a cold glass of sweet iced tea and listening to Mom’s bunch of spoiled laying hens, hunting crickets in the grass, clucking back and forth and cackling loudly whenever that rasty old rooster came too close.

My dad took a very proprietary attitude about our cowboys. We had decided to keep the seven married hands we had, the others would have to be let go. Dad worked tirelessly; visiting other ranches where they might find work, talking to farmers and merchants, hoping to get them all settled into something before we cut them loose. Five of the boys even went into the various branches of the services where we hoped they might learn a good trade.

The new Rocking K came delivered on two trucks from Kingsville Texas. Inside those trucks were fifty beautiful red Santa Gertrudis heifers and a pair of young bulls. They were a refined lot, quiet, calm and looking quite regal to my eye. Once they were unloaded, they made their way to a water trough, waited patiently while their sisters drank and eventually meandered through the open gate towards a twenty-acre pasture. A few days later, a gleaming red pick-up truck pulling a matching horse trailer pulled in and unloaded a tall bay quarter horse stallion. He was about the finest horse I’d ever seen. He was four years old and big enough to handle those heifers on a tight rope, if the need arose. We were in business.

My mother always called me John, my dad called me Jack. The few times in my life I can recall speaking to Katie, she called me Juanito. About ten pairs of cows and calves from the original stock has been sold to Katie and I was designated to drive them over to her place along with a kid we called Lalo. It was an easy drive, only four or five miles across the arroyo. I felt uneasy with the task. The last time I had seen Katie was when she told me that Amelia was off-limits to me. I was sure I had been measured and found wanting, and that was a hurt to my pride.

When we arrived at the Domingo ranch Katie was there waiting; so were all the girls. Katie smiled and waved while Amelia climbed a fence, removed a twine loop and swung the gate open wide for us. I tried not to look towards Amelia, but our eyes met and I think both of us smiled without meaning to.
“Get down and have a cold drink, Juanito,” Katie called in a friendly voice. She gestured to her next eldest girl, Gabriella. “Bring the boys a coca-cola, Gabby, and button your shirt. The fact that her own shirt was half-open didn’t seem to matter.

Dad had not mentioned any financial arrangements, he just told me to drive the stock to the neighbors place and come on home when we finished. I was a bit uncomfortable, but the coke sounded good and Lalo was already dismounted, so we stayed a few minutes. I swear Gabby batted her eyes at me when she handed me the drink and both other girls besides Amelia giggled. Katie was her old, friendly self and we had a pleasant visit. It confused me, but I was happy that she did not seem upset with me for the moment.
The Following spring we bought an additional fifty heifers and another bull. The year after that we added another thirty; but it was a full four years before we ever sold a significant number of steers. About the only money we had coming in were stud fees from the stallion and a couple of weanling colts we advertized in the Dallas newspapers. Times were tight and all those checks dad had deposited were long gone before we turned the corner.

Just when things were looking up, Dad died from a heart attack. Without siblings, Dad was my pillar of strength. I felt terribly alone and somewhat frightened, even though I knew the ranch would prosper and Mom and I would be okay. I was twenty-three years old, healthy, robust and I knew everything there was to know about the Rocking K. We had the best cattle, the finest horses and the most dedicated hands on any ranch in South-Texas. We kept our breeding records so well that we could predict everything about an expected calf except its sex.

My mother was less devastated by Dad’s death than I expected. She confined her activities to keeping house for me, but I felt it would be better if she wasn’t alone all of the time and I hired the wife of one of the old hands to assist her. They watched a lot of the soap operas on television and were good company for each other. Mom even decided to learn Spanish and insisted on conversing with all the local shopkeepers in Castilian Spanish, which none of them spoke to any degree.

Except for an occasional chance meeting in town, and at my father’s funeral, I hadn’t spoken to Katie Domingo since Lalo and I took those cows to her place several years before. I did know that Amelia was studying law at the University of Texas and I had seen Gabriella’s graduation picture in the local paper. She was a startling beauty, just like all the women of that family. I was quite surprised one day to receive a telephone call from Katie and she asked me if I could drop over to her place some afternoon for a talk. She said she had a favor she wanted to ask of me. I told her I would be there the following day.

By this time, most ranchers were doing their running around chores in a pick-up truck, and I was no exception. The bank was always ready to lend out money, it seemed, and machinery and tools were becoming our greatest financial outlay. Men who had spent their lives taking care of horses and cows now had to deal with broken hay-balers or a tractor that needed mending.

Katie met me at the top of her driveway dressed in a big, flouncy skirt and a white scoop-necked blouse. Her long black hair was combed back and she had tied a colorful ribbon at the back of her head. When I climbed out of the truck, she embraced me and I’m sure I must have looked terribly surprised. She took my arm in hers and started walking me toward the barn. “Come with me,” she said, “I have something I want you to see.”

Katie’s old, tall, black gelding stood in a small paddock, his head hung low, apparently in a lazy warm afternoon nap. “Do you recognize him?” She smiled.

“Of course I do,” I answered. “That’s the horse you’ve ridden ever since I can remember. Ebony? Isn’t that what you called him?”

Katie laughed for a quick moment. “I’ve called him a lot of things, depending on how many evil spirits he had in his head on any particular day.” She breathed a long sigh and squeezed my arm, still locked in her own. “He’s over twenty years now, and he has earned his leisurely days. He’ll rest here for the remainder of his life to remind me of when I was a beauty and drove all the young men wild.”

“You’re still the most beautiful woman in South-Texas,” I blurted out before I could recall the words.

She turned towards me and smiled that broad, happy grin she used on special occasions. “Oh Juanito,” she cooed, “You make me feel young again. But, the truth is I am not so young as I used to be and the time is fast approaching when I won’t be able to catch the eye of a quality stallion any longer.” She hesitated for a long moment before she looked directly into my eyes and spoke, almost in a whisper, “And I want you to give me a son.”

You would think that a young man’s memory would keep an indelible record of the remainder of that afternoon, but I can tell you in all truth that is not the case. I can vaguely remember objecting to the suggestion, even though I felt as thought the world itself had suddenly fallen at my feet. I can also tell you that I drifted somewhere between heaven and earth for a very long time, and when I returned to full consciousness it was nearly dark. I was completely exhausted and blissfully happy with no thought of having done something morally wrong or socially unacceptable. I needed to go home and think this all through so that, somehow, someway, it made logical sense.

As if on cue, Katie walked me to the front door and out into the yard, where the light from a bare bulb on a long pole was beginning to cast shadows onto the red Texas dirt. “Should we be married?” I asked her, not knowing how to say anything close to the right words.

Katie laughed, joyfully. “No, Juanito, this will be our secret from today until forever. I am not the woman for you, even though I love you more tenderly than you will ever know. Gabriella is longing for you; she has loved you since she was a baby. On Saturday, you should ask her to go to the movies with you. I will tell her you came by to ask my permission. Trust me, Juanito; she will never give her heart to anyone else.”

My confusion must have shown like a searchlight in the fading minutes of this miraculous day, and I searched in vain for an answer to a question I had never dare ask. “But Amelia,” I objected, “You forbid me from even seeing her. Why did you do that?”

Katie’s smile was soft and understanding as though she was learning something she had only taken for granted in the past. “Have you not solved the mystery yet? Have you not wondered why you felt such a bond with Amelia?”

I had not ever known there was a mystery to be solved and I was dumbfounded. “Mystery?” I repeated. “What mystery?”

Katie laid her palm along my cheek and her eyes filled with tears. “Amelia is your sister, my heart. I thought both of you knew already and both your father and I were wrong to keep it from you.”

Katie delivered a healthy baby boy the following spring and it was immediately obvious that the genetic safe had been cracked. The boy had blond hair and blue eyes and seemed to be all arms and legs. He was Christened Juan Carlos Domingo, and his sisters fussed over him as though he was a prince.

Gabriella, my precious Gabby, and I were married on the first Saturday of June. The giggling little girl had become a stunningly beautiful woman and she had completely captured my heart. She quickly became my mother’s best friend and confidant although Mom’s health was beginning to deteriorate.

Amelia came home for the Christening of her brother and for our wedding as well. We had few moments when we could really talk, but we knew, at last, where that deep affection we shared had come from. In the years that followed, we were the best of friends. She became a successful lawyer and then a judge. She married a brilliant young man who treated her like the queen I knew she would be.

When mother died, we merged the two ranches in much the same way our lives had been merged. Amelia became part owner, as did all the Domingo children. Katie presided over family gatherings from a high backed chair set out on the lawn in front of the ranch house under a canvas canopy. She had her family, her children and her grandchildren around her in clusters, clamoring for her to tell them stories of what it had been like in the old days. And she delighted in telling them, regaling them with the tales of a strong, beautiful Mexican woman who wore a Flat Spanish hat and rode a prancing black gelding. My own children, two boys and two startling beautiful girls were sure their grandmother was the most wonderful heroine they had ever heard of.

Katie is gone now, quietly asleep in the earth she loved so dearly. It seems like it was all just yesterday and so difficult to believe it all happened nearly a half century ago. But I know the stories are real, my wife, my sisters, and I lived them and they will be forever fresh and new to us. It might all seem to be so very complicated, but it isn’t, really. It is just life, and life isn’t meant to be simple or complex, it is meant to be lived.

Twilight is upon me now, the night awaits my coming. I will walk past the corrals and stock pens just one more time to make sure all is well and then I will go in to my precious Gabby, the beautiful Gabriella and be cradled in those arms and cushioned by those lovely breasts.

The End

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