Half Broke Horses

Helen’s death is not easy for Lily to deal with. After grieving for her sister, Lily realizes that she needs to get back to living. She thinks about how she had been watching the sun rise and set: “It didn’t really care how I felt, it was going to rise and set regardless of whether I noticed it or not, and if I was going to enjoy it, that was up to me.” It is at this point that she realizes she wants to have a family and that Jim would be the best husband for her. She goes to Jim’s garage and proposes to him, but with two conditions: that they will be partners in everything they do and that Jim, a Mormon, won’t take any more wives. Jim accepts, they marry, and then move to Ash Fork where they open a garage together. They build a house with indoor plumbing. Lily quickly becomes pregnant and has a little girl they named Rosemary. When Rosemary was born, the midwife made this prediction: “I see a wanderer.” Eighteen months later, Lily and Jim have a boy and they name him Little Jim.

While Jim and Lily are creating their family, the United States enters the Great Depression. Jim begins to lose money at the garage because he undercharges his customers. To make up for their losses, Lily becomes a “liquor lady” and is soon earning an extra $20 per month. Lily is careful to only sell to people she knew or friends of her friends. One day, a friend of Rooster’s shows up drunk at her door but she refuses to sell him anything. Two days later, officials show up at her door to look for illegal liquor. They don’t find anything, but Jim and Lily decided that it was too close for comfort. Lily and Jim eventually lose their house to foreclosure.

The title of the chapter refers to a moment when some local ranchers lose some sheep. Jim was able to help them get the sheep back to the ranch. His act of kindness leads to Jim and Lily finding work as managers of the ranch, which has recently been sold to British businessmen. The ranch is on extremely dry land, so the Smiths contact the British businessmen to ask for the equipment to build a dam. They approve the Smiths’ request, the dam is built, and its impact on the area is immediate.

As the children grow up on the ranch, Rosemary’s personality increasingly fits the midwife’s prediction. She is a busy girl who plays outside, climbs trees, rides horses, and empathizes with the animals. She always wants the animals to be free and one night she lets the family’s milk cow out of the pen. The cow eats too much grain and dies. In another episode, when Rosemary is playing near a lit Jack-o-lantern her dress catches fire and burns her stomach. Lily quickly realizes how much damage her young daughter could do if left to her own devices.

During this chapter, readers get a sense of the effort Lily and Jim make to save money.  Lily only washed shirts after they have been worn for days and she never washed her family’s Levis. She made food that was simple but hearty and she used ingredients that would feed not only her family, but the cowboys on the ranch, too. Lily worked closely with Rosemary to teach her to read and write, so that she would never have to worry about being “pretty.”

Towards the end of the chapter, Jim buys a long-range radio so he can listen to weather reports. Shortly after he buys the radio, the rains come. Initially, the family enjoys the water in the dam and the cattle flourish. But, late in the year, the rains come in a deluge and they have to rush to secure the dam and the rest of the ranch. Fortunately, everything is saved and after the rain stopped, the entire region was awash with wild flowers. 

As local businesses and ranchers continue to lose money, the British businessmen buy the ranch next door, so that Jim and Lily end up managing one of the largest ranches in the state. With nearly 180,000 acres, they were able to bring almost 10,000 cattle to market annually. The second ranch was called Hackberry and it had its own source of water. Jim and Lily decide to live there during the fall and winter and then move back to the original ranch in spring and summer. The children love Hackberry and Jim and Lily want to buy it for themselves, so they set about trying to make money. Lily sells encyclopedias, collects returnable bottles and cans and ultimately decides to go back to teaching. Just prior to her decision to teach again, Lily fulfills her desire to learn to fly an airplane.

Lily’s new teaching job takes her and her children to a small town with a large Mormon population, many of whom practice polygamy. Lily does not last long in her new position because she decides to teach the children about strong women and the world outside of rural Arizona. The leader of the Mormons asks her to change her teaching methods but Lily replied in her usually spunky way and continued to teach the way she saw fit. Eventually, she is fired.

Fortunately, Lily finds another teaching job in Peach Springs. Here, her duties include picking the children up for school. The school bus no longer works, so Lily finds an old hearse with plenty of room in the back for all of the children. When Lily is not using the hearse as a school bus, she uses it as a taxi to bring people to and from the courthouse and to show tourists around the area. In one episode, the brakes fail during a tour and Lily has to flip the car to avoid careening down the side of a cliff.

In typical Lily-fashion, she only lasts two years in Peach Springs. After punishing the son of a local deputy, his father pressures the school board to end Lily’s contract. The deputy not only loses her job, but also tells the people of the town what a bad person she is. To prove that the deputy could not keep her down, Lily makes a beautiful gown to wear to the town’s premiere viewing of Gone with the Wind.