Something decorative. Something that belonged in a suburban yard in Houston, maybe. Where the woman of the house would water it with a garden hose and the children would knock it over while playing ball. They did not look like anything that belonged in a cow pasture in Gonzales County. Where the grass was native bluestem and buffalo grass. Where the mesquite and huisache had to be bulldozed every three years to keep the land open.
Where the cattle were Angus and Brangus and Beefmaster. And where the whole economy of the place ran on one simple calculation. Pounds of beef per acre of grass. Trees were something you cleared. Trees were not something you planted. Every man in Gonzales County knew this. It was as settled a fact as the direction of sunrise. Margaret Holloway had bought four hundred trees to plant in a cow pasture.
Calvin Ruiz himself almost tried to talk her out of it. “Margaret, I don’t think you understood what I was telling you earlier. These trees get big. They get tall. They’ll shade out your grass in places. This is not the usual.” “I understood you,” Margaret said. “You want to plant all four hundred? Not just a few along the fence line?” “In the pastures. Spaced out. Not in rows.”
Calvin looked at her for a long moment. He had been trying to sell these trees for fourteen years. He had sold six or seven here and there to people who wanted a shade tree for a backyard. He had never sold four hundred at once. He had never sold them to someone who was going to put them in a working pasture. “Ma’am,” he said. “I am going to be honest with you. I don’t want your check if this is a mistake. I’ll take these home and try again next year.”
Margaret folded the check and put it in his shirt pocket. “Mr. Ruiz, I know what I’m doing. I spent three summers at a ranch in the province of Corrientes when I was younger. I have seen exactly this arrangement work on native grass in a hotter climate than this one. Your trees are coming home with me.” Calvin didn’t argue again.
Her brother-in-law Ray was there at the sale. He had driven over with her that morning and he had been wandering the other lots while Margaret talked to Calvin. He came back just as Margaret was writing the check. He looked at the saplings. He looked at Margaret. He looked at Calvin. He looked back at the saplings. “Maggie,” he said, “what in the world are you doing?” “Buying trees, Ray.” “For what?” “For the pastures.”
Ray took off his cap. He was fifty-six years old. He had been ranching in Gonzales County his entire adult life. He ran four hundred head of Angus on eight hundred acres east of Smiley. He was her late husband Frank’s older brother. And since Frank had died in February of 1980, Ray had been driving out to her place once a week, whether she asked him to or not.
“Margaret,” he said, “you’re going to shade out half your grass. You know that, right? You know what a tree does to a pasture.” “I know exactly what a tree does to a pasture.” “And why?” “I’ll tell you in seven years, Ray.” Ray looked at Calvin Ruiz, who was watching this exchange without expression. He looked at the four hundred little green things in their little black pots. “Frank would have never done this.” “Frank’s not here to do it,” Margaret said. “And I am.”
The story was at the feed store in Nixon by Tuesday morning. Margaret Holloway bought four hundred shade trees from that Argentine fellow. Going to plant them in her pastures. Every single one of them. It was at the co-op in Smiley by Wednesday afternoon. And by Thursday, it had reached the cattle auction in Cuero, twenty miles south, where a man named Dale Purdy heard the story while buying a replacement heifer.
Dale Purdy had known Frank Holloway since grade school. He didn’t laugh when he heard it. He just shook his head slowly and said, “Frank’s not even cold yet and she’s planting trees in the pasture.” By Friday, the story had made it to the diner in Nixon, the Methodist Church parking lot after the ladies’ Wednesday Bible study, the line at the feed mill, and the booth at the back of the Dairy Queen where four of the older ranchers sat every morning at 7:30 drinking coffee that was too hot and talking about weather that wasn’t cooperating.
At the Dairy Queen, a man named Lowell Watts delivered the definitive verdict. “She’s grieving,” he said. “That’s all this is. Frank’s been dead two years and now she’s lost her mind. Going to be a train wreck out there by fall.” The other three nodded. They had seen this kind of thing before. Widows making strange decisions. It was sad, but it was predictable.