Текст книги "Paradise Sky"

Автор книги: Joe R. Lansdale

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“I lit out. I just kept going. I started heading north. I stole chickens, killed and ate them to survive.”

“Better dead chickens to eat than alive,” I said.

“That’s the truth. I stole eggs, stole food from houses when no one was about. I even robbed a couple of white men on the road with my six-gun and whipped one of them about the ears just because I could. I was on the road one night, going into Illinois. I had stolen an old swayback horse and was getting bolder as I went. I come upon a colored fellow lying beside the road. He was dead. It appeared his neck was broken. I guess he had fallen off his horse or been thrown by it. The horse was nowhere to be found. That’s what I was thinking then, about the horse. Not thinking there’s a poor man lying dead at my feet, but that he had a horse, most likely. I searched through his pockets, found a flask of whiskey in his coat and two bits in change. I never did find his horse. I wanted to. I figured it had to be better than that old swayback. I left there with that flask, drinking, not thinking one whit about that poor man.

“I went on, and the night turned cloudy. I swear, a bolt of lightning, blue-white and sizzling with fire, came down out of the heavens and hit that swayback smack in the head and gave me the burning trembles. When I woke up that horse was lying on top of me, and I could smell its hide sizzling from the lightning strike. It was then that the clouds parted and I saw the stars. Nat, it was then I saw the face of God. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t seeking vengeance. He was there to let me know I had a chance to turn things around. What do you think about that?”

“That God liked you all right but didn’t have the same feeling for horses.”

I couldn’t help saying that, and feared soon as I said it Luther would take offense. But he laughed. “That’s a good point, Nat. I’ve thought on it. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I don’t have an answer. But what I had from that point on was faith that I was placed here by God for something better than robbing the dead. I worked for a long time to get out from under that horse. That lightning bolt had knocked us to the side of the road, and the ground was soft there. I wasn’t crushed on account of that, as the ground gave with me and made enough of an indentation I was able to slip out from under that dead swayback. I was numb for a while, being stunned from the legs down. I grew a lot of hair after that. My legs and balls got hairy, and so did my chest. It was overnight. That lightning stoked me up inside with the spirit of the Lord.”

“Along with hairy balls,” I said.

“That, too. I walked out, Nat, walked into Illinois, and first colored church I come to I went in during services and dropped to my knees and prayed. I prayed not for ownership of things but for my eternal soul. I prayed to be a better man. A little later I got a job there at the church, cleaning the place, and pretty soon I was doing a bit of preaching, time to time, you know, when the preacher would let me. He didn’t let me for long, because I started getting a following, a big following. He came and told me I was too good at it. I was taking his job altogether. I didn’t want to do that to him, and he didn’t want it done to him. I moved on through the country, stopping at colored churches and preaching when they’d let me be a guest at their pulpit.

“It was heady stuff for me. I went from being a Church of Christ for a while to being a Seventh-day Adventist. All I remember about the Church of Christ is they argued over musical instruments. Some were for it, some weren’t. Adventist I don’t remember anything at all. I met some Catholics and prayed with them some. I was a Baptist for a while, but frankly, I found them too stupid. I know that’s a harsh thing for a preacher to say, but they believed the Bible word for word, and common sense didn’t stir them in the least. If the preacher told them a handful of shit was honey, they’d eat it. They lacked the desire to question. The Methodist I was with a little longer, but they thought they were special because they could go to dances and didn’t see the devil in their soup, meaning they were down on the Baptist, who could service a goat and shoot a man while doing it, and think if you had been baptized, you were forgiven. Catholics had too many beads and such makings. There were some other branches, but they hurt my feelings about the same. That’s why I started my own church and took to my own way of preaching.”

“What’s this church called?” I said.

“It hasn’t any name. It’s just me, and I preach what I think Jesus meant, with the understanding I could be wrong, though not so wrong as the others.”

I smiled at that.

“So you see, Nat, I was once a very bad sinner. I shot a man—”

“He deserved it,” I said.

“Just the same. I shot him and I disrespected my pa for no good reason but pride. I stole. I lied. I actually did service a goat once. I was on the road and I came across it at a farm where I stole some chickens, and one thing led to another. Anyway, that’s not for the children to know.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Do you and the goat write?”

“No. But we parted friends. Later on, when I had religion and my head screwed on tight, I met Geraldine, who was from Fort Smith. We married and were very happy. I continue to be happy because I am thankful I had her and our time together. God took her, for whatever reason, but I feel blessed each day that she was mine. That I have these wonderful children, Ruthie speaking to ducks notwithstanding.”

That night I slept under the wagon, and three or four times the cry of that cougar brought me awake. Last time it did the sound was close, so I didn’t really sleep anymore, just lay there under the wagon, cradling my rifle, eyes open, alert to shapes, thinking about Luther and his religion and his need to be a better man. Me, I was out to shoot a bastard.

28

When we finally came into Fort Smith I saw it was a fairly lively town. There was a lot of bustling about, people on the streets and boardwalks, wandering out of stores and such. We come to the livery, but the man there told Luther there was a colored livery on the edge of town and that he ought to take his animals there.

“I’d take your stock,” he said, “but there’s lots of white folks in town for a hanging, and they come first.”

We didn’t really have no other choice but to rattle onward. At the edge of town there was a big tree where there was some horses tied, and next to it was a ramshackle shed that had three sides closed in. The open end showed us a row of horse and mule asses. There was a bit of open room at the far end. Enough to house five or six animals if they all agreed to be friends. The owner of the shed was a big redbone with one good eye. The other eye had the lid pulled down and sewed shut due to some ancient injury. He said we could go cheap if we wanted to just put them under the tree.

Luther paid up for the shed for his mules, my horse, and the cow. He was allowed to pull the wagon under another tree down from the tied horses and turn it into a camp spot. Me and Luther both saw this as short-term housing and animal boarding. It wasn’t a whole lot better than just having the animals stand out in the rain. Anyway, we pulled the wagon there, then took the animals back to be housed in that shed.

I was supposed to be done with Luther and his family and get my twenty dollars, but I told Luther to forget it. He gave me five dollars anyhow, told me I had a place there in or under the wagon. I thanked him, said I would see him again, but for now I was on my own. Truth was, I didn’t want to stay around Ruthie. She was starting to stir my blood, and I felt guilty about it.

“You ain’t got to go,” Samson said.

“You don’t have to go,” Ruthie corrected Samson. She wasn’t speaking to me. She didn’t seem to care one way or another.

“Guess I do,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come back and have Ruthie teach me how to talk to chickens.”

“Ducks,” she said.

“Ducks, then,” I said.

“I doubt they’ll speak to you,” she said. “I don’t know they’d like your attitude.”

“How do you feel about my attitude?”

“I could probably learn to tolerate it. How do you feel about me talking to ducks?”

“I could probably learn to tolerate it.”

“Actually, I do speak to chickens and other birds, and they speak to me, but I’ve always found ducks to be the most informative.”

“That’s information I can hold to my heart,” I said.

“You do that, Nat Love.”

I must admit she made me feel pretty good and at the same time pretty bad for feeling that way, what with poor Win back there in Deadwood, her head like a cleaned-out room, and me out here flirting with a pretty girl that talked to ducks.

Me and Samson shook hands, and he did it like a grown man. Then I shook Ruthie’s soft little hand, took what money Luther gave me, and walked into town. I needed to figure on what to do next. I hadn’t so much as heard a word about Ruggert, and I feared I had seen the last of him. Golem was out of the way, but the worst of them seemed to be lost on the wind. I figured the best thing I could do was find myself a place to stay and a steady job, at least until I could figure on things. I had left Win alone to kill them, to avenge her, yet being away from her made me feel confused. I thought back on her, and all I could remember was how she looked at me as if I was a stranger.

I come upon some colored boys playing in the street and asked them about a place where I could stay. They gave me directions to a colored boardinghouse, and to get there I had to go back part of the way I had already come. I got a room, and it cost me three dollars for a week. I figured a week would maybe give me time to find a job. I reckoned, too, that I could deal with Luther for a bit of supplies to get me through until I cornered a job.

My little room didn’t have a real bed in it, just a cot, and when I laid down on it I had to bend my feet a little so they didn’t hang off. The room was slanted because the undersupports wasn’t even, and there was cracks in the walls and the wind whistled through like a butcher knife. It was worse than the room I had in Deadwood. I bought some newspapers and looked for job ads, but there wasn’t any, so I used the papers to clog the worst of the cracks in the wall. A couple of blankets came with the room, and there was a small stove with a smoky stovepipe that went up and turned and poked out of the wall.

I was told not to burn the heater too long, else the pipe would catch on fire and burn the place down. They hadn’t even done a good job of putting it in the wall, didn’t surround it with mud or some such that could take the heat and not flame up. I figured I might manage to fix that myself.

It took me three days, but finally I got a job sweeping out the general store. I worked three days a week, about four hours a day, and got paid a dollar a day. The white fellow who did it on the other days made two dollars a day. My employer was a Mr. Jason, a porky fellow with muttonchop sideburns and a patch of hair that was thick on the sides and at the back. It looked as if there had been a brush fire on top. When he first offered me the job, he stood before me holding a broom. He explained to me how it worked, in case I might think it was a horse.

He told me when I went to work that I had to understand he paid white men more, but he felt the War between the States was over and I deserved a chance to work—at half price, as he didn’t believe colored were animals the way some did, but that didn’t mean he felt they were on par with a white man, one of God’s true creations. I guess I was an untrue creation, along with the worm or the traveling salesman. He then told me something about how to hire me he had to cut something at home that he was used to having and really cared for, cause it would mean money was spent on me that couldn’t be spent on items of his desire or some such. I don’t remember exactly. It made about as much sense as believing the moon was made of green cheese.

I did this job for a week, then I got a kind of promotion and was put on six days a week, not just sweeping but unloading supplies and such. I didn’t get any more a day, just more days. Mr. Jason made it clear that he was quite the positive sort of fellow giving me such a position, and I heard his lecture again on how he felt he was the fairest man in Arkansas when it come to niggers. I secretly harbored the view that one night I’d have liked to burn his store down, but since he didn’t live in it, I didn’t see the reasoning.

I managed during this time to write some letters. I wrote one to Cullen, even sent one to Dodge City in hopes Bronco Bob was still there. I wrote that lawyer in East Texas, even though I didn’t have my papers Mr. Loving had given me. I wrote him and told him I had them, and I sent it to his name in care of general delivery.

In the letter to Cullen, I gave very detailed accounts of my travels, though I left Ruthie out of it except for mentioning her name as Luther’s daughter. I put in things for Win, tried to touch on a number of events she might find amusing, even though I didn’t know for a fact any of it would mean a thing to her. I asked about her playing the flute and mentioned our fine place on the hill, in a very modest way; told her I was tight on the trail of Ruggert and had only stopped in Fort Smith for supplies, which was a mild lie. I was neither on Ruggert’s trail nor merely stopping for supplies. I was at a standstill. But that’s how I told it, and then closed out with all my love to all of them. I thought I ought to write Win her own letter but decided against it. If she was still confused, it was better I kept things general, let her hear it from Cullen. Maybe that way some of it would sink in.

In Bronco Bob’s letter I was even more entertaining, and I threw in a couple or three lies to liven up the whole thing where I thought it might be sagging. I mailed the letters with hopes of them all finding their intended, then waited for a reply.

One day as I was sweeping out the store, I came out on the front porch and seen a big colored man riding on a sorrel horse. He sat straight in the saddle, had a bushy mustache, and wore a ten-gallon hat and a shiny badge. He looked firm as an oak tree. He had a rope leading from his saddle horn to another horse behind him, and on the horse was a white man big as the man leading him. He was hatless, riding with his head down, his hands tied together in front of him to the saddle horn. He looked as if he had been chewed on by a cougar.

There was another colored fella working there with me by the name of Washington, and he walked up beside me to see the man ride by. He was somewhat younger than me, a boy, really.

I said, “He’s got on a marshal badge.”

“Marshals wear them,” Washington said.

“They got colored marshals?”

“Judge Parker does. That there’s the toughest and best marshal there is, black or white, red or brown. That’s Bass Reeves. You don’t want him after your ass, cause he’ll sure as hell find you. Want to fight, he’ll fight, and he’ll bring you back lying across that horse if need be. That fella there, looks like he wanted to fight. Lucky he’s alive.”

“A colored marshal. I’ll be damned,” I said.

“Most of us are,” Washington said, “and you going to be damned and without a job you stay out here on the porch too long.”

I went back to work, but by pure chance my stepping out on that porch and seeing Bass Reeves was to change my life more than a little bit. But that was to come.

As time went on I began to save some money back. I visited with Luther, Samson, and Ruthie on a regular basis. Ruthie still said she talked to ducks, or would if she could find one. She said in the meantime she listened to the mockingbirds and took in what they had to say. It wasn’t about much, she explained, but they was upset about how many trees was being cut. I can’t say for sure that was accurate, having never spoken with a mockingbird myself, but I decided to take her word for it.

I missed Win, but all things considered it wasn’t a bad life, and I admit to the fact that I was beginning to notice that, like a flower at spring (though it was still winter), Ruthie was starting to blossom. Her skin was smooth and her eyes were wide and bright, seemed as if they were pools that you could fall into. I told myself what I saw in her was some of the traits Win had, but to be honest the two of them couldn’t have been any further apart. It’s hard to match up anyone with another if one of them talks to birds.

My habit of working and visiting with Luther and his family was spun to the four winds when I went to the post office one Tuesday. I did this daily after the first week of writing those letters. On that day, after waiting a month or more, a letter and a package showed up. The letter was from Cullen, and the package was from Bronco Bob. Both, of course, had come to me general delivery, Fort Smith, Arkansas.

It was noon, and I was on my lunch break. I had a bottle of sarsaparilla and a couple of fresh-cut slices of bread and a slab of cheese. I put the cheese between the bread and sat down under a tree out back of the store. I rested the bottle on the ground, the sandwich on my knee, and held the letters in my hands. The letter from Cullen was the most tempting, as I felt it might hold news of Win. I decided as it was the most important, I’d read it last.

I laid it on the ground beside me and opened the package from Bronco Bob.

Inside was a letter and a dime novel. The novel was titled: The True Life Adventures of Deadwood Dick.

Dear Friend Nat,

It was a pleasure to receive a letter from you and to hear of your time on the trail and your friendship with Luther and Ruthie and Samson.

As I promised you, I have written up your adventures and have managed to place three novels based on them. I am happy to say they are selling well, though by the same token I am not getting rich, and so far I have no money from them for you. I should also add they wouldn’t let my hero be colored, so he has become white. Still, he is based on your adventures, the ones you told me about on the trail when we were with the redheaded boy who is now better known as Kid Red. I will come back to him.

Anyway, if there is any money to be made beyond my expenses on the dime novels, I will see that you get some of it. I will write a new story that will tell of your leading a wagon train through the Ozarks and how you fought a cougar and Indians to get to Fort Smith. In fact I have already started the story. This one, you will see, covers mostly the time we fought those desperadoes that stole your girl and the old woman and wrapped you in a cowhide. I gave the Indians you told me about a bigger part, and just so it would be sure to be exciting, I added more men to the final gunfight. I also gave myself and Cullen bigger roles than we actually had in the gunfight, but not so much that there isn’t some truth to it, though I thought the part about the trained circus lion taught to attack at the use of a foul word (that I left unnamed) was a good addition. I felt the lion was a symbol for the kind of mean things you and me and Cullen fought against, even if there wasn’t any lion present. In other words, it’s a windy, and I’m trying to justify it to you. I became carried away when I was writing it and couldn’t contain myself. That is why they call it art, and that’s why it has a cougar and a lion in it.

I added in a wild dog who only answered to your commands as well, and the dog died bravely while battling the lion, managing to drive itself and the lion off a cliff in the process. I hope that will be okay. I figured if someone figured out the story was actually about you, then you wouldn’t have to explain where the dog was. He has been taken care of.

As for Kid Red. Well, Nat, he has gone bad and become a gunman. He got so good with the pistols, having had good training from me and you, he began to enter shooting contests, as I used to do and as I now and again still do when the money dries up. He acquired quite a name around Dodge. But he also took to carrying his pistols in town, hidden under his coat, and he took to drinking something furious. I regret the day I took him to a saloon to toss back one. That is on me.

Thing is, while drunk, he got in an argument with a man in a saloon and shot and killed him. He also shot a saloon girl who screamed when he shot the man. I guess the scream made him jerk around or something, because he wheeled about and shot her right through the head. He hightailed it, and word around Dodge is that he joined up with a gang of thieves noted for robbing travelers on the trail, and as of late they have taken to a couple of banks and are currently, like Jesse James, robbing trains; it is said he and these men are led by—and I want you to hold on to yourself here—a man scarred by knife and burns. He has four men in his gang at all times and sometimes more. The kid has gone bad, Nat, and that is all there is to it.

I know the man you are after may well be the leader of this gang, as he fits the description, and I hesitated for some time if I should tell you about him. I know how your heart cries out for vengeance, but I don’t want to be the one to lead you into something you might not get out of. As your friend and biographer, I thought it right of me to inform you of this change of events and to inform you I have heard and read in the newspapers that he and his gang have moved into the Indian Nations, where they figure to go about their robbing sprees with greater ease. I know you are near there.

I am living in Dodge and have taken up with a young lady who I might marry if I don’t wear her tail out first. I thought I should try it for a while and see how I feel a year from now. We are, I guess, engaged. She has spent nearly all the money I have gotten from the books. I have two more payments that will be sent to me, and they send me several copies, so if you want these further adventures of Deadwood Dick, all you have to do is let me know, and I will mail them to you wherever your address might be.

If you are back in Dodge, look me up.

Forever, as always, your dear friend,

Bronco Bob, Esquire

P.S. I really am sorry there was no money, but the girl, her name is Beatrice, is expensive and worth it, and surely I will make enough to give you your share in time if we both live long lives.

Now, that was a turn of events, all right.

I hated what I had heard about the kid, but the idea that I might have some kind of lead on Ruggert, vague as it might be, was inspiring. I was thinking on how I might go about hound-dogging that lead when I remembered the letter from Cullen.

I hesitated opening it. I ate my sandwich and drank my sarsaparilla. I looked at the sun, determined I probably had about fifteen minutes before I was supposed to go back to work.

Finally I took a deep breath and tore the letter open.

Dear Nat,

I am glad to have heard from you, and I read your letter with great interest. I should say up front that Wow is doing well, and so are the other China girls. I think the one whose name always seems different was indeed messing with me. I think she finally told me her real name, but you know what? I can’t remember it. It’s harder to remember than the names she made up, so I just call her Peg Leg Pete. She doesn’t seem to mind. She and the other girls come by to see us from time to time, and they have all spent time with Win.

I read aloud to Win what you wrote to her, but she didn’t seem to understand it or who it was from. I’m sorry. But that’s how it was. She asks for water now and again. She never asks for food, though we try to make sure she’s fed. This is not always successful. She doesn’t have much of an appetite, and I must confess she has grown quite thin and pale.

We have had a couple of doctors come to see her, but their verdict is that she has ceased to thrive, which is what they say when they think she has just quit, doesn’t care anymore. I hate to lay it out like that, but here it is, Nat.

Wow and the China girls have been through much of what Win has been through and maybe some worse. I don’t say this to say Win is weak but to say some manage to get past it, and some do not. There is no way of knowing what all experiences were in Win’s background that led to her current state. I was told that by Wow, by the way.

I must be very blunt with you, Nat. The weather here is terrible, and I wouldn’t want you to saddle up and come this way for fear you might not make it. But you must brace yourself to the idea that Win may not see the spring flowers bloom, and if she does she may soon be underneath them. I want you to understand the depth of her despair. She is lost inside her head, and I fear there may be no way back out.

As for your vengeance ride, I would not continue it. I am glad, as of your letter, that you caught up with Golem, and I am glad you and me and Bronco Bob put the burn on those others, but Ruggert, if he has gone on to leave you alone, might be best left alone.

Lastly, I can’t predict the weather, but it might be best to come as far as Dodge and be ready for when the weather changes. I would hope you will be here to see her at least one more time.

Perhaps she will rally. After you left she seemed better for a time and even played her flute. Then she laid it aside, and not a peep since. It seems to me she is having a harder and harder time identifying me, Wow, or any of the girls. She never leaves the house, as the weather is too bad, and she is too ill to leave now. She mentioned the hill once. That’s all she said. “The hill.” And then she said, “Nat.” And neither your name nor mention of the hill has come again. It’s like the last of what she knew of life had gone out with those words.

Forgive me for writing such a sad and direct letter, but when you can, keeping in mind you do no one any good if the weather captures you and kills you, please come back. Forget Ruggert. I can’t say Win needs you, as I can’t say she knows what she needs anymore. Still, I feel you would like to be here for the end, which is undoubtedly coming. Be assured if you cannot make it back, we will take care of her until there is nothing left to do.

With sadness in my heart, but with great memories of you still,

Cullen

Now, I’ve said that I have had some low moments, but not even when I was wrapped in that cowhide and Win and Madame had been taken from me, have I felt lower than I felt in that moment. I could hardly stand up when it came time to go back to work; stunned and confused, I did go, and I put in the rest of the day, though I hardly remember it.

When the day was over I went to the only place I knew to go, Luther and his family. I went there, and they was glad to see me. Luther had some rocks laid in a circle outside his wagon, and it was there they cooked when the weather was dry. As I came up, he stood from where he was squatting near the fire, stirring it up with a stick. Leaning against the wagon was a coffin he was building out of white pine. He had been shaving it down and sanding it, as there was sawdust on the ground by it.

“Nat,” he said. “How are you?”

“I ain’t so good,” I said.

About then Ruthie walked up, as she had been busy about her toilet in the woods, or so I guess. Samson stuck his head out of the wagon. “Hi, Nat.”

I greeted him and Ruthie. They had dragged some logs around the fire spot, and I sat on one of those without being asked. Luther said, “You need to say a thing or two, Nat?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Don’t think on it too hard. Have a cup of coffee and see how you feel then. You haven’t anything to say, don’t say it. If you do, well, I’ll listen. If you prefer the children go off, and you just want to talk to me, that can be arranged.”

“I’m a grown woman,” Ruthie said.

“Maybe just enough in years to call yourself that,” Luther said. “But you’re still a child as far as I’m concerned.”

I looked at Ruthie. Even in my deep bewilderment I had to say she looked womanly to me. She had really come into her own after we had arrived in Fort Smith.

Luther had a pot of coffee on the fire, and he got a rag and lifted it out, poured me a cup. I sipped it. If it was hot, cold, fresh, or old, I couldn’t have told you. It was like my taste quit working.

“Well, then,” Luther said. “Let me tell you our plans. Our relatives, the ones here. They aren’t here now. Least not alive. The influenza killed them well before we arrived.”

That pulled me out of my own pit. I said, “I’m sorry, Luther.”

“Well, it’s not like we knew them that well, but we have brought my dear wife home and our faithful dog, and they are both going to be buried.”

“Together?” I asked.

“Separate holes,” Luther said.

“Of course,” I said. “I see a coffin is almost ready.”

“Wife gets the coffin, dog stays in the barrel. Her relatives have a graveyard, and since there ain’t no one to protest against it, she’ll end up there, I reckon.”

“What about the dog?” I asked.

“I think he should be buried there, too. It’s out a stretch. I rode a mule out there after I was told where it was and was told all her people were dead. Frankly, it’s kind of a relief. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to do with them. Relatives can be a pain in the neck.”

“That’s a rough thing for a preacher to say,” I said.

“Isn’t it?” he said.

“Would you like a top-off on that coffee?” Ruthie asked me.

“I suppose I would, Ruthie, thank you.” I of course didn’t even remember drinking it I was in such a state.

She got the rag, took hold of the pot, and poured me a cup. That cup wasn’t no more than full when I started telling them about the letter I had gotten from Cullen, leaving out what I didn’t want them to know. I had the dime novel with me. I had dropped it on the log beside me. Samson picked it up and was thumbing through the pages. I didn’t mention that it was supposed to be about me. I think Samson might have been reading all the while I was talking. That’s one good thing about being young. You don’t always feel obligated to pay attention to sad stories.