Summary
A drouth comes to West Texas in the 1950s threatening devastation of the area around the small town of Rio Seco and the nearby city of San Angelo. The drouth stretches to seven years and radically changes everyone's life, and as it steadily tightens its grip, their strength to endure is tested to the limit. This battle for survival is seen through the life of Charlie Flagg, a middle-aged rancher who gradually loses a little here, a little there, until he has lost most of what he owns, except for his dignity and his self-respect.
Drouth in the Southwest, according to Kelton, does not necessarily mean a total absence of rain. "It is instead a long period when rains are too light and too scattered to sustain a consistent growth of grass or crops," he explained. "The result is a gradual deterioration rather than a sudden and dramatic calamity."
False hopes lead stockmen into deep trouble, and most country banks are inclined to stay with the farmers and ranchers. The economic consequences are disastrous. Kelton writes in his brief prologue: "Just another dry spell, men said at first. Ranchers watched waterholes recede to brown puddles of mud that their livestock would not touch. They watched rank weeds shrivel as the west wind relentlessly sought them out and smothered them with its hot breath. They watched the grass slowly lose its green, then curl and fire up like drying cornstalks...Why worry? they said. It would rain this fall. It always had. But it didn't. And many a boy would become a man before the land was green again."
(Kelton's first draft of The Time It Never Rained was written in the 1950s shortly after the drouth finally ended. Asked what pictures come to mind when he thinks back on the drouth, he says, "I think of cattle and sheep standing in pasture corners by the gate where the feed truck or pickup normally came in. They had nothing else to do because it was a waste of energy to roam around over bare pastures.")
One of the novel's three conflicts matches Charlie against the federal government, which adopts an aid program that lulls the ranchers into thinking they will get help (Clayton, p. 43). But actually it ruins many of them who cannot repay the debt for aid received under poorly understood guidelines. One even commits suicide.
Charlie believes in taking care of himself, his land and his obligations without the government's charity. He can sell his cattle and raise goats, he can cut back on the amount of land he controls, and he can reduce the hired help. He can even endure his son's leaving. But he will not abandon his principles.
The book finally ends with a heart-breaking scene where Charlie, his wife Mary, Manuel Flores and Kathy Mauldin try desperately to save Charlie's shivering goats in a cold rain. Kelton says he's "taken a lot of abuse" from readers through the years for this final scene, but it too is based on a true story, an "all too common incident for people in the goat business."
Kelton added, "It seems that most readers would rather have had the story wrap up with a good rain and everybody happy. But life isn't often that generous. The rest of the book was patterned after life, and I thought it would be a betrayal to have it end with all the loose ends tied up neatly and all the problems solved."
