Текст книги "Paradise Sky"

Автор книги: Joe R. Lansdale

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

16

It was a tent dance, and it was a big tent, striped red and yellow, having once belonged to a circus. It was lit up with all manner of lanterns and candles and things that led one to think a fire could get started real easy. The ground had been covered in sawdust and patches of hay around the sides. There was barrels to sit on and stools and assorted chairs and overturned buckets. The tent had a musty smell to it, and I could almost imagine the animals that had paraded beneath it. In fact, on this night a whole different batch of animals paraded about. A band was brought in, one with horns and fiddles and banjos and the like, and there was food and drink and people was dressed up in their finest, which meant there was a lot of color and a rustling of women’s dresses. Even the China folk was there, though except for Wow none of them came to dance. They came to see what this crazy business was about and mostly stood over to one side near the hanging tent wall.

It was a cool night, and the door flaps was wide open and spread back so you could have rode a circus elephant in there without having to duck your head, which was something I’m sure had been done in the past.

Wild Bill and his friend Charlie Utter showed up. I had been introduced to Charlie briefly one night at the Gem, where I was bouncing. He was a dandy, like Wild Bill, only a shorter version. Even Calamity Jane came, and she was all dressed up in women’s clothes. It was the first time I had ever seen her that way. Her hair was fixed a little, and her face was washed. Normally she was dressed in buckskins, her face twisted up in a scowl, hair tucked inside a hat like a caged animal, a revolver stuck in her belt, and foul words flowing out of her mouth like loose sewage.

I had bought myself a new black hat, and it fit me better than the old one. I was tricked out in a fire-red double-breasted shirt with blue buttons, and I was wearing dark blue pants with a thin blue stripe in them. In the style of Hickok I had tucked the pants into my boots, which was shiny with polish. I had on a coat made of dark leather with fringes on it.

By the time I had checked my guns, the music had already started, and people was dancing. It was the dandiest sight you have ever seen. They was flashing elbows and lifting knees and a’gallivanting about the place, kicking up their heels like young horses. The faster the music got, the faster the dancing crowd got. And dang if Wild Bill wasn’t out there dancing himself. He was at first with Charlie, and they was a reeling about like regular fools and starting to wave their arms in all manner of flapdoodle, and then women was dancing together, and then it all switched out, and men and women come together, and then the men. One man did a big jump and tried to land with his legs wide split, but ripped his pants and had to leave, clutching the back of them together with a thumb and forefinger. No one was kind about it. They laughed that poor fellow right out of the tent.

I seen Wow and Cullen, too. Wow was dressed in American clothes and was quite light on her feet, though Cullen danced like he had his shoestrings tied together. He had ended up with a green shirt and orange trousers and some two-tone shoes, brown and white with big red ties in them. It made him look a bit like a circus clown and in some ways reminded me of a painting in Mr. Loving’s book of a court jester called Hop-Frog.

Everyone danced and changed partners, so that it finally come mostly to men and women together, though it didn’t seem to be by design. Just whoever come up in the shuffle was grabbed. This man with that woman and this woman with that man and so on, and pretty soon it ended up that Wild Bill was dancing with Calamity Jane. If they wasn’t having a good time it was the best performance I’ve ever seen. They had big smiles and was starting to hop like rabbits. They was obviously drunk as flies in persimmon wine.

The band started growing. New members with new instruments fell into place. There was a fellow picking up a beat with a pair of spoons and another scratching on a washboard with thimbles, and one guy had two pieces of cow ribs he was snapping together. The band was made up of white folks and black, and even a Chinaman who had a triangle and a stick he was whacking it with. Fortunately the horns, fiddles, banjos, and such covered up the clanging noise. A bit of the music would run off the rails now and again, but it always managed to come back.

I was ready to get out there. I turned to Win, who was lovely in a dress green as sin, with little green shoes and a green pin through her mound of hair. I said, “Would you oblige me a dance?”

“I would, sir,” she said. “Let’s get to it. And I hope you know how.”

“I’ll figure it out as we go.”

Win looked at Madame, who nodded her consent, and away we went.

Now, I am going to brag on myself here and say I am a natural dancer. I caught that music and rode it like a bucking horse. The notes was butterflies, and I had the net. We started prancing a little here, a little there, picking up speed, like we was windup toys. Charlie Utter, drunk as a bull moose and dancing with himself, sashayed by us, totally out of step with the tune, and fell over a barrel and lay on the floor not moving.

We didn’t pay him no mind. He was one of a handful of drunks and dizzy folks who had fallen out. Me and Win was on display for sure. We reeled and spun and bounced and even went vulgar with a hump or two in the air. I don’t know what come over us there, but we did it, and when I looked at Madame she give me the eye, so we quit that foolishness.

Me and Win was the toast of the dance. We caught everyone’s eye, or at least Win did, cause when she’d spin that green dress would fly out and about, and she was moving fast as a child’s top. Around and around she spun, and me with her, us linking arms and kicking, moving sprightly about to such an extent everyone started trying to mimic us; and damned if the band didn’t pick it up a step. It led to some of the kids doing cartwheels and handstands and the like. Everyone had caught the disease. It got even wilder as the drink got to flowing more loosely, and me and Win had to stop finally and take our rest and have some punch that wasn’t spiked with liquor, and that amounted to one bowl that was served up by the Congregational church ladies. It was not a popular bowl. We found ourselves there primarily with the kids and a few women and henpecked husbands, sipping punch from cups and looking sour due to the drink being heavy on the lemon.

As you would expect, with there being drunks and women and music, some fights broke out, and some of the deacons from the Congregational church, following the laws of their creed, just beat the ever-living dog shit out of a couple of them and threw them out of the tent. When I went out once to find a place to relieve myself, I discovered them rowdies in a ditch behind the tent, and in fact found I was making water on one of them. I retreated quickly because the damp seemed to be bringing him around.

On my way back to the tent, I seen that Wild Bill had Calamity Jane bent over an outside water barrel, which he had dragged beneath a tree. Her dress was hiked up, and he was going at it like he was a hammer and she was a nail. It disgusted me, to tell you the truth, not because they was taking their pleasure, but cause they was so drunk I don’t think they even knew they could be seen clear as a hot pie in an open window. I lost a smidgen of respect for Bill after that. Not because of Calamity, but because I seen him then as two-faced and a little too prone to drink. Being a legend was wearing, I reckoned.

Back under the tent, I found Win, and we went at it again, danced to near every song until my legs and feet began to hurt, those new high-heeled boots I had not really being made for that kind of springing about.

It finally come to me that I hadn’t seen Madame in a while, and we went looking for her. We found her passed out on a smattering of hay by the side of the tent wall, a cup hanging on her finger, her tongue dangling out like a drying towel. What she had been drinking had not been provided by the Congregational church.

“She takes a nip now and then,” Win said.

“One nip after the other, it appears.”

“That describes it,” she said.

It was about then I seen that poor man that had been on the stick and then a crutch—the one with his head peeled and his face scarred up from burning and maybe being rough-carved with a dull knife. He was over by one of the punch bowls. He had a dipping cup and was doing some serious dipping, throwing it down like he was trying to put a fire out in his belly. He didn’t have the crutch no more, and in fact had a very fancy cane and expensive clothes and a bowler hat.

Win caught me looking at him, said, “He is mysterious. He never speaks unless he’s got business, and lately his business has been good.”

“Shoveling horse manure?”

“He quit that,” she said. “Way I heard it, he earned enough to buy a claim, and two weeks out he hit it. It was hard work for him, too, having that limp, but it and shoveling what the horses left seems to have been good for him. He’s gotten stronger than he used to be. Hired him three Chinamen and two white men to dig for him. Stands around and watches them, is what I hear.”

I looked at him again. There was something oddly bothersome about him, and he had his eyes laid on me as steady as a man sighting down the barrel of a rifle. But then again, he was that way with everyone. I think had my scalp been peeled, my face worked over like that, and me given a limp, I’d have had a suspicious nature myself. I was glad for him, though. At least he had money, and if he was wise about it, wouldn’t end up begging for coins with a tin cup, which was often the case for such that was in his kind of condition.

I collected my guns, and me and Win went out of the tent, took a walk back along Main Street. We went up to her shack because she wanted to get something there, and that turned out to be a picnic basket and her flute.

“Are we hunting rats?” I asked.

“Not hardly,” she said. “I arranged us a picnic. I figured Madame would be on the ground after a snort or two. As for the flute, I just like it. I was taught by a white girl who didn’t have anything in her life but to play it and the piano, sing, and dress up nice. She was all right. She was Madame’s daughter. Her name was Jane, and she died of diphtheria.”

“Madame’s gonna be mad when she wakes up,” I said.

“Oh, I’ve seen this before,” Win said. “She couldn’t be woke up if you poured a bucket of cold water on her and fired a cannon over her head. She has to come around on her own time, which will be sometime tomorrow morning, well after the birds first sing. Though I suppose we should gather her up before the night wears too thin. We got time for that, though. The dance is just getting wound up.”

We went to the livery, where I kept my horse. There was a colored boy there, around twelve, and he was in charge of things. I gave him a few coins to saddle Satan. I usually came in about once a day to check on him, and when I had time I took him for a ride along Main Street, out and about a bit, without getting too much out in the wilds, where the Sioux and the Cheyenne roamed. Not to mention Blackfoot and Crow.

The boy’s name was Easter, like the Resurrection, and he got Satan ready and hitched him up to a one-horse rig I rented. He had been teaching Satan to pull the rig for me and so far had not lost an eye in the process. Damn horse liked him from the beginning, which is more than I can say for how Satan had treated me.

Easter gave me an apple for Satan, and we took off into the night, under the moonlight, along Main Street and out of town, venturing a little far, but we both felt brave about it.

We took a side trail. It was rugged, but Satan managed it all right, and the buggy held together. We had the buggy top down, and we could see the sky and the source of all that moonlight, a moon so big it filled the eyes, though there was a few drifting clouds, soft ones, almost clear. They tumbled along the heavens like cotton-soft dreams.

I parked the buggy under a tall tree, got out our goods. I gave Satan his apple, proud of the fact he had learned to pull a wagon and a buggy good, and he didn’t try to bite my hand off for a change.

We put out the food. The picnic was simple. It was good bread and sweet cheese, a jar of apple jam, a big bottle of sarsaparilla, glasses to pour it into, and there was a striped ground cloth and some metal plates and forks and spoons. Win had also brought a blanket for us if the air got too nippy. She cut us big slices of bread, slathered them with apple jam. It was delicious. This was my first taste of sarsaparilla, and from that point on it was my desired drink when I could get it. I can’t say as I remember all we talked about, as most of it was kind of silly, as it often is when you’re getting to know someone. But finally we talked about our lives and how it was we wanted more than a hoe and row to use it on. We had dreams, and we both agreed they was big as white people’s. We also agreed that out here in the wilds we was more like everyone else than anywhere we had been before. Yet neither of us was all that set on Deadwood. That’s how the talk ran.

Win said she planned to find some way to take care of Madame, as the old woman had taken care of her all this time, and now she was starting to get old and miss a step. I agreed she should do that. After a while Win brought out the flute and started playing. It was a strange and lonesome tune she played, full of all the sorrowful feeling you could have, and I certainly had me a list of sorrows. My ma and pa was in that song, their deaths, and me being chased by Ruggert, losing my friend Mr. Loving, and the deaths of them soldiers, which I still partly blamed on myself. The more she played, the sadder I got. Pretty soon there was tears in my eyes, but it wasn’t a terrible way to feel. It was like that music, them notes she was playing, was getting down inside of me and taking hold of that sadness and pulling it out and tossing it away from me. At least for the time being. It was both a good feeling and a painful one, kind of like having a bad tooth pulled or a bullet dug out.

After a time she quit that tune, played a livelier one. I got up and danced a little to it. I did it in a funny way, and Win got tickled and couldn’t play no more. I dropped down on the cloth then, and when I did she grabbed my head and pulled my face to hers and kissed me. It was for me the finest moment in my life. That kiss was like fire. It lit my lips. It lit my head. It lit my heart. It lit my soul. I was ablaze with passion.

That first loving kiss, the one that comes out of you from the source of your personal river, and the one that comes from her that is the same, there’s never another moment like it; never another flame that burns so hot. It can never be that good again, ever. All manner of goodness can come after, but it’s different. And that’s a good thing, because if we burned that hot for too long, we’d be nothing but ash.

What followed some might think was better than that kiss, us taking off our clothes and all, bringing ourselves together with excitement on that picnic cloth, under that blanket with the weather turning cooler and cooler and there being the smell of pine and oncoming snow in the air, but it wasn’t better than that kiss.

Don’t misunderstand me. It was well worth doing, and if I was making me a list, it would be listed second in goodness and something that works better in repetition, but everything in my life from that point on lay under the mountain of that single kiss, and try as I might, I have never climbed that high again.

17

We gathered up Madame just as the dance was winding down and the drunks was piling up under the tent and around it. She couldn’t walk, so we hefted her like a tow sack of potatoes out to the buggy. She wasn’t a small woman, so it was something of a strain. We got her in it, and then I rode them home in the buggy. When Win and I had Madame in bed in the one room they shared, Win took the pistol out of Madame’s purse, which had been strapped to her arm, and showed me the pistol wasn’t loaded.

“You’re the first man that she didn’t carry bullets in the gun for,” Win said. “Usually she expects to shoot them, and actually shot at one, but he was swift. With you she felt confident enough to just run a bluff.”

“Well, how many men you seen?” I said.

“Let me say it this way. You seen more of me than any of them.”

“I like that,” I said, and I did, though I will be honest with you and say it wouldn’t have made me no never mind. What had come before for either of us was way back then, far as I was concerned. What we had done and was doing was now.

This was the beginning of a routine, though we was a little less open about it due to Madame. Madame liked to get herself a bottle now and then, though Win made a point not to provide it or encourage it. But when she was in her cups, me and Win seen each other, either in my little room or up on that hill beneath the tree and the big wide sky. It was no trouble for the buggy, if there was enough moon and starlight or if the lanterns on the sides of the buggy would stay lit.

Under our tree it was shady in the day and dark at night, and there was a slope that went off one side of the hill that was covered in green grass when the spring come, the soil around there being tucked full of natural richness.

It was good times, but during them I thought all the while on what Wild Bill had told me. I needed to make some major money or have a real job if I planned to get married. The thought buried itself in my head like a chicken bone in a dog’s throat. I couldn’t cough that thought up no matter how hard I tried.

I thought about it more and more when I had to knock heads over at the Gem Theater and on long days when I was emptying stinky spittoons. I had to keep stashing enough money back for me and Win to light out from Deadwood, set our sights on something better. The better thing seemed to me Mr. Loving’s money he had left me, provided it hadn’t all been stolen from me. I tried to keep in mind that Mr. Loving had a lot of faith in his cousin, but when it come to taking advantage of the money or giving it to a colored man with big ears, I feared he might lose some of his loyalty. But if the money was there, it was a good nest egg, and I was thinking of having my own farm, which was something I knew how to do.

Plans was one thing, life was another.

As a rainy spring moved on and summer limped in, and the muddy streets dried and became spotted with holes deep enough to lose a leg in, I was feeling at the top of my game, having stuffed myself tight with plans and ambition.

One night, working at the Gem, a big man came in. And when I say big, I mean big. You will think I exaggerate when I say he was about seven feet tall. It is your privilege to doubt me. I didn’t wrestle him to the ground and put a ruler to him, but I am a fair judge of height and weight from my time with livestock, and that was my figure. He was broad-shouldered, had a chest like a nail keg and legs like tree trunks. I reckoned him for three hundred pounds, thereabouts, and I might add we’re talking lots of muscle and trim on the fat. His hat seemed to sit on top of his head and was in danger of falling off at any moment. His feet was so big his boots looked like rowboats to me.

What struck me as most interesting, though, was he came in with the fellow that had been scalped, cut, and burned. The busted fellow still had a limp, but as I said before he had abandoned the cane. There was also with him a little man with a sunken chin and a dimple in it like a bullet strike. This man was thin of shoulder and chest. His eyes were always darting about the room, which made me think of a weasel, which was the name he was known by. When he sauntered in he had on a set of guns and a belt full of cartridges.

Like a lot of cowboys and miners, there was them that didn’t like to check their weapons, their manhood being tied so closely to them. This often meant I’d have to beat them about the head and ears with my own pistol, since as bouncer I was allowed to carry mine.

Weasel and Big Boy was among them that wanted to hang on to their goods. They grumbled when I asked for their weapons and promised them a claim check in my best handwriting. I pointed to a sign right by the door that said CHECK YOUR GODDAMN GUNS. AND WE MEAN IT.

“A man’s guns ought to stay on him,” Weasel said.

Like a lot of the others, I believed my manhood was tied to my weapons, too; it was easier to prove it with a pistol than it was with an idea, cause that took brain work and consideration and someone on the other end of it that was willing to listen. Problem with trying to be rational all the time is the other fellow ain’t always concerned with how logical your argument is.

What I said next hit Weasel solid as a brick. “Your johnson stays on you, your guns go behind this counter.”

Weasel leaned over the counter, got close to my face, letting me get the full measure of his breath, which was already wet with alcohol and onions and something that came from deep down inside of him like a mating skunk. His clothes smelled, too, mildewed and musky. Sweat was dripping down from under his hat and onto his forehead.

“I fought for the Confederacy, and now I got a nigger telling me I got to give up my guns?”

“I’m telling you to check them,” I said. “I don’t plan to auction them.”

“You getting smart with me, boy?” said Weasel.

“I’m telling you the rules,” I said.

Big Boy stepped up and loomed over me, even though I was standing behind that counter. He was so tall I felt like I was sitting down. The look on his face was frightening, not because he looked mad but because he didn’t. There was some kind of mark in the center of his forehead made with what looked like fresh chicken shit.

“Fellows,” said Burned Man, and his voice seemed to come from some dark mine shaft in which there had been a cave-in. “This man has rules to follow. Like all servants, he knows his job and his place, don’t you, boy?”

Here I had been feeling sorry for this fellow, burned to a cracker, scalped, and pretty much shit on by life, and now he was making those kind of remarks with his tunnel voice. My job wasn’t to avenge every sour remark that come up on me, because believe me, each night I got a washtub full of them, but any pity I might have felt for his burned-up self flew right out the window. Fact was, something about him made my neck knot up and my spine grow tight.

“It’s my job,” I said.

“Very well,” said Burned Man, and he reached under his very shiny black suit coat into the inside pocket, came out with a lady’s pistol, and laid it on the counter. This led to Big Man pulling his hog leg and smacking it on the counter alongside it, along with a bowie knife about the size of Saint George’s sword, which he thrust into the wood point first, so that it stood up. Weasel just looked at me. He was breathing heavy, and his oily face shone in the lights. As his lips curled back, his twisted yellow teeth came out of his mouth like a groundhog checking for sun. For a moment I thought he was going to pull his pistols. I determined if he should make that motion, I would beat him to it. I laid a hand on the LeMat and watched him, tried to keep one eye on the other two, cause from time to time not all the weapons got corralled; now and again a few got through. I figured Big Man, however, could just fall on me and kill me.

“Now,” Burned Man said, laying a hand on Weasel’s shoulder. “It’s for everyone, and we want to be cooperative.” He was smiling wide enough I could see his gapped and snagged teeth, and he was speaking in that voice I told you about. I sensed deep down inside that tunnel there might actually be some honey, but it was spoiled honey.

Weasel slowly removed his gun belt and placed it on the counter. I gave them all a claim check with a number on it, tied off a tag to the weapons with the same number, and put them under the counter. All the time I’m doing this they gave me their full attention, and Big Man loomed over me like a cloud. Burned Man had a way of holding back, being behind them, letting them be the first line of defense. All that money he had come into had made him powerful.

They wandered off, Weasel the most unhappy of the three, and took a table where a card game was starting. Wild Bill appeared, laid an elbow on the counter, said, “I watched you deal with them fellows. Right nice job.”

“Frankly, Bill, I was a little nervous.”

“Ought to be,” he said. He pulled his revolvers from his pants pockets, laid them on the counter. I knew he had a hideout gun, but thought it prudent not to ask about it. “I was near, though, and I would have come into the fray had the situation called for it.”

“I know that,” I said. “I seen you over to the side, and that gave me comfort.”

I hadn’t really seen him, but I thought it was a nice thing to say. I wanted him to know I trusted him, and in my mind the respect I had lost for him earlier had been regained.

“They were about the business of picking a fight, Nat. I should know; I’ve had many a one picked with me.”

“Suppose you have,” I said.

It had gotten noisy in the Gem. The cigar, pipe, and cigarette smoke had started to fill the air and drift across the room in little gray clouds. The piano player was really loud that night, and no more in tune or aware of what tune he was playing than he was any other time. There was a new girl singing, and she couldn’t hit a note any better than the piano player’s wife—not if she had had a boat paddle and the note was tied to a string just over her head. I put my hands behind the counter so Bill couldn’t see them shake.

“Buy you a drink?” Bill said.

“Sarsaparilla,” I said.

As I mentioned earlier, Wild Bill didn’t much care who said what to whom as long as you didn’t say it to him. He didn’t mind sitting with a colored, and because of his reputation and ability with them pistols, everyone gave him a slide. It was better that way. There was people to cross, but Bill, pleasant as he could be, wasn’t one of them.

“I get a reprieve in about half an hour,” I said, pulling out my pocket watch and reading the face of it.

“That’s when we’ll do it, then,” Bill said. “Well, going to get me a drink, find some cards, and if the night is right, line me up some feminine companionship, preferably before drunkenness has set in, so my choice will be better and cleaner and of a more satisfying nature when I awake in the morning.”

For a married man with a disease, he was pretty cavalier about things. He wandered off into the crowd, them making way before him like he was Moses parting the sea. I went back to my work, and in about a half hour I turned over the gun gathering to another worker, a white fella with a drinking problem and a runny nose. I went out to find Bill.

Bill was holding down a table with three others, playing cards. Bill, as always, sat with his back against the wall. When I seen he was in a game, I started to walk away, but he called out, “Nat, come on over, friend.”

I came and stood by him as he was tossing in his cards. He said, “I’m done with this round.” He said to them others, “I would appreciate it if you would abandon this table so as to leave me and my friend to it for a private conversation.”

Now, I can swear without exaggeration they was studying him and me, trying to put the whole thing together. It wasn’t like the problem was they was all Southern boys, because they wasn’t. There was plenty who fought for the North wouldn’t give a colored man the time of day or piss on him if he was on fire. As I heard one Yankee say one time, “It was more about territory than niggers.”

But this was Wild Bill, and after a moment of consideration they got up and scraped their chairs and went away. Bill watched them lest one should turn on him, cause the truth was, excluding Charlie Utter and a few others, Bill had few friends that was solid, and many of them that he had was really more like suckasses. Some might even be looking for a moment when his back was turned to pop him. Me he trusted cause I had thrown in my hand that night without knowing who he was or caring.

“You may be off duty, but pull your chair around here by me, the back of it against the wall,” he said.

Like I said, he liked his back to the wall. I did that, and he said, “Nat, there’s some that don’t like you hereabout.”

“I suspect they are legion,” I said, “but it ain’t for anything I done.”

“You are a tribute to your race,” Bill said, not realizing there was an insult in that. “But there are some that would shoot a dog that brought them a rabbit, and just because the dog was black. You following my drift, Nat?”

“No insult to you, but I have been in this position before and have been worse off in times past.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “But I tell you now, that big man, he is one of the breed that killed Jesus, and he has your number.”

It took me a moment, and then I got it. The big man was a Jew.

“Furthermore,” Bill said. “The little fellow, he don’t have nothing but dead in his eyes. He likes to kill.”

“Some might say such of you,” I said.

“Some might,” Bill said, his teeth showing slightly beneath his mustache. “They would be wrong. I don’t like to kill, but I’m willing to if the need arises. I prefer to go to bed at night without having killed a man, for it only furthers the desire of others to pull down on me so as to build a rep. But I can sleep with who I am. I have never killed a man that didn’t need killing, except for an unfortunate accident with a deputy once. But I’ll not discuss that. Weasel, though, he’s one of a bad breed, Nat. He was not only a soldier, he used to be a buffalo hunter, and by all estimates a fair shot. He is said to have shot buffalo calves for fun and was known during the war as a man that liked to shoot the wounded; it didn’t matter North or South. He was Northern, but it was for the blood, not for any kind of cause. That could just be a story, but I tend toward believing it because he has the look about him. I am a good evaluator of character, having used my good judgment to avoid being shot by many a scoundrel.”