Chinaberry

Chapter Two | Anson and Lurie

lurie had first laid eyes on Johnnes Anson Winters when she was twelve, and she had resolved to marry him or not marry at all. So she decided to wait for him. There was not a woman in the counties thereabouts, it was commented, who wouldn’t abandon spouse and offspring should the opportunity have blossomed to be his second wife after the death of his first one. He was known, after all, as that cowboy who had carried his afflicted son in his arms from birth until his death at the age of six. The memory of Anson on horseback with a thumb in the baby’s mouth for a pacifier stirred hearts. Anson was the second son of Big Jack Winters, owner of the Bent Y Ranch in one county and half a section of cotton land in another adjoining. The cotton farm was tended by Mexican sharecroppers, with Anson as their casual overseer. Anson insisted on living on the old home place where his father had taken up land in the last years of the past century. This despite the distance he had to drive to the Towerhouse, the name he used to refer to the main house of the ranch and its operations. None of the three brothers were any longer cowboys, and they engaged in various activities along with the affairs of the Bent Y. Anson’s two brothers, Jack and Bronson, operated a farm each, with hired help, on land in the vicinity of the ranch. They Anson and Lurie C H A P T E R two 14 J AM E S STILL raised hay and millet and corn; they reared horses for the remuda ; and they sold the surplus of forage and grain and saddle stock. The Bent Y was a family cooperative, shared by its members . No authority was wrested from Big Jack, only supplemented . Now in his eighties, a bit uncertain on his feet, his word was law, and nobody wished otherwise. In earlier days, before he had left West Tennessee, where he had migrated from North Carolina, Big Jack Winters had married a widow some years his elder, who had not only a halfgrown son, Bronson, but also a sizable acreage of rich land bordering on the Mississippi River. In those pioneer days, women wore out like a cake of soap, and the widow was said to have died within a few months. At her passing, Big Jack sold the land for a sizable amount and headed west, Bronson in tow. He took up land in Texas under the Homestead Act and grew cotton until the windfall of the Towers Ranch came his way. He had the gold certificates in hand to make the deal when the odd chance presented itself. Anson told me his father had said those were the wild years, with claims and counterclaims, and a man’s life was in constant danger. Every man carried a gun as commonly as he packed a pocketknife. In due course, Big Jack married the woman I was to be coached to call grandma, a woman near half his age. Bronson’s age. It was not easy to say “Grandma.” I had to squeeze it out at first. I already had one live grandma back home in Alabama, and the other one had passed on. Because of the striking resemblance of Anson and Jack to their foster brother, Bronson, I long mistook him for their father . Neither had inherited the physical characteristics nor the brittle personality of Big Jack. Lest I mislead, I’ll allow the readers to study on this at their leisure. The Winters family was the soul of honor, their morals Victorian. 15 CH IN ABE R R Y “Anson’s heart is pure,” Lurie told me frequently. I believe that she meant he was vulnerable. She could never forget that she had been his third choice. There had been his first wife, of course. And there was the possibility of a liaison after the death of the first wife, which haunted her. Anson had married a childhood sweetheart after two years of college in Austin indulging in agricultural training. There had been some delay in his betrothal because he had loved two sisters and had trouble choosing between them. He was twentyfour years old. The sisters were not twins although they appeared to be, beauties the both, dressing in identical gowns and flowered...