Текст книги "Paradise Sky"

Автор книги: Joe R. Lansdale

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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“Move your hand.”

He did, and I turned the brand in that direction. His ear had been cut in two. The bottom half dangled.

“How’s it look?”

“Your ear’s hanging by a strand. I can cut it loose for you.”

“Don’t do that.”

He put his hand back over his ear. “Help me up.”

“Not just yet. You sit.”

“Guess I can’t get no wetter.”

I sauntered over to Doolittle. I waved the burning brand over him. He had collected quite a few bullets. His hat was pushed back on his head, and he had a look of surprise on his face. Part of the cloth gag hung down around his neck.

I checked on Pinocchio Joe. Also dead.

I went back and helped Choctaw up. I said, “Go in the cave. Stay away from that drop-off at the back. Ruggert’s down there. He’s still alive, and he’s got a gun. I’m going to get our horses. Can you make it?”

“I can make it.” I gave him the torch, and I trotted after the horses.

By the time I got back with the horses, Choctaw had built the fire up again. Logs that had been gathered up in the cave had been thrown on the fire. Cows and one of the horses was wandering around outside the cave like they wanted back in. We didn’t let them. The rain had stopped, and there was grass for them to eat. I unsaddled our horses, rubbed them down, hobbled them, fed them some of the grain we had left by putting it in the feed bags again.

Choctaw had tied a white rag over his wounded head and blood was seeping through it. He had started heating up some beans. He never quit thinking about food, even with an ear shot off.

“You cut off that strand of meat?”

“No. I’m going to ask you a favor.”

“First let me check on our friend in the hole.”

I got a fresh brand out of the fire and went to the back of the cave. I said, “How you doing down there, asshole?”

“Well, there’s too many women down here and a lot of free drink, and that’s getting old…How the hell do you think I’m doing?”

“Toss your pistol up.”

“I can’t toss it. I can’t get my legs under me, and it’s too high to just throw it up with my arm, without no leverage.”

“Have it your way, then.”

“I smell beans. Ain’t you going to feed me?”

“Nope.”

I eased back to Choctaw. Ruggert had started bellowing by then, partly in pain but mostly in anger.

“He don’t shut up I’m going to shoot him, Nat, and I don’t never like to get involved in this business. Hell, how did I get shot? I didn’t mean to get into all this.”

“Not very smart is my guess. Let my look at your ear.”

“Listen here, Nat. I want you to sew it back on.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Sew it back on. I got some heavy thread and a needle. I want you to sew it on. You got some whiskey for me, don’t you? You said when the job was finished.”

“I don’t know it’s finished.”

“Ain’t it close enough?”

I got my saddlebags and got a small bottle of whiskey out of one of them. I had wrapped the bottle in a lot of rags to keep it from getting broken easy. I brought it to Choctaw. He had moved closer to the fire and had pulled a needle and thick black thread out of a bag he had tied to his belt under his slicker.

“This is going to hurt,” I said.

“Give me a snort.”

He uncorked the whiskey and took a swig. “Oh, that tastes good. You know what you should tell me before you stick that needle in me?”

“What?”

“What the Irishman tells his wife on their wedding night. Brace yourself.”

I threaded the needle, then poured whiskey over it and stuck the needle over the fire until my finger and thumb started heating up. I dripped whiskey over my fingers and the needle again, leaned in close to Choctaw, and removed the rag from his head.

“No guarantees, Choctaw.”

“Sew it on tight. I was a kid, I had a dog got its ear tore off by a bobcat. My daddy sewed that ear back on, and it grew back.”

“You ain’t a dog,” I said.

“Go on ahead and do it, Nat.”

“Brace yourself, honey. Here I come.”

Choctaw found a stick, put it in his mouth, and leaned his head against the cave wall. I sewed, all the while listening to Ruggert screaming in pain down there in that hole. Choctaw didn’t make a sound.

That stitching made me ill, the way the needle would slide through that near cut-off ear and the flesh on the side of Choctaw’s head, but I tell you I did a right nice job. It took me a long time to do it, though, as I had to make many a stitch to get that sucker back on. It looked a little tighter to his head than his other ear, and that worried me some, but I figured it was better to leave it as it was than to cut it loose and stitch it some more. I was running out of room to poke the needle. I poured whiskey over the whole operation, gave Choctaw some to drink, then wrapped a fresh bandage around his head.

Not for one moment during this entire operation had Ruggert quit caterwauling down there in that hole. It made me sick to hear it, what with a bloody ear to sew back on, and him howling like a dog, I could hardly eat my beans once they was warm. But I did. Choctaw ate his usual three plates full.

Next time I asked Ruggert to toss up his gun, he tried to, and it took him three tries to get it to the edge, where I could catch it. Choctaw felt spry enough to have me tie my rope to him and lower him down. I had a couple of firebrands on the side of the hole, and they gave some light down there. It was a pretty good drop. Twenty feet or more, I reckon.

“Well,” Choctaw called up. “The good news for you is his leg is broken. The bad news for him is his leg is broken.”

“Oh, shut up and pull me out of here,” Ruggert said.

“He wants out,” Choctaw said.

“You bastards,” Ruggert said. “Pull me out of this hole.”

Choctaw tied the rope around him and then helped him as I pulled him up, Ruggert screamed in pain all the way to the top. I dragged him against the wall and looked him over for weapons, but he didn’t have any on him. His leg was like a limp dishrag. I had removed my slicker, and Ruggert looked at the badge on my shirt.

When Ruggert got his breath back, he said, “You really are a marshal.”

“I am,” I said.

I untied the rope from him, used it to pull Choctaw up.

It was bright in the cave with that big fire, and Choctaw used the light to look Ruggert’s leg over. “Well, if you was one that could do the reel on the dance floor, you ain’t going to do it again. You might can skip a little.”

“Up to Judge Parker’s trapdoor,” I said.

Choctaw and I tried to take turns sleeping, but Ruggert was in such pain he moaned and carried on all night. First light Choctaw got his hatchet and went out and cut some limbs to bind up Ruggert’s leg. Ruggert passed out when Choctaw set it straight and tied it up.

In the meantime I went out and caught up two of the stolen horses and was able to herd up Bump’s two milk cows. They was anxious to let me milk them, they was in such pain, and I squatted down and did so, squirting the milk out on the ground. They had lots of it, and when I finished their tits was slack. They followed me like dogs to the mouth of the cave.

The fire had gone out, and the morning was warming up when we put the bodies of Pinocchio Joe and Doolittle side by side across one of the horses I had caught. We got Ruggert mounted on another.

We got our horses out of the tree line, and with the milk cows following us, we started out. We made Bump’s place by nightfall, returned the milk cows, and barely managed to keep him from killing Ruggert with a hoe. What worked to Ruggert’s advantage was Bump was still seeing double. Anyway, we left the cows, which Bump hugged a little too warmly for my taste, and went on a piece and pitched camp. We had thought about staying at Bump’s place but was afraid his vision would clear in the night and he’d chop Ruggert’s head off like a snake, or we would find him and his cows in positions that could embarrass all of us.

Our camp was uncomfortable, as the ground was still wet, but it was what we had—a place under a tree laying on damp bedrolls. Ruggert moaned and cried and started complaining nonstop of how he couldn’t sleep, as he was in too much pain. After a bit Choctaw got his rifle and went over and hit Ruggert a solid blow in the head, said, “That will help him sleep.”

It did, too.

As we roughed that night through, I thought on what Ruggert had told me about his grandfather owning Mama, and you can bet I thought about asking him about that, if he was lying to me, but then I thought there wasn’t no use. If I asked he’d say it was so if it wasn’t, and in the end it didn’t matter. But the idea of Ruggert or his kin having their way with my family in any kind of fashion set on my stomach like spoiled milk. But damn if I was going to give him the satisfaction. And what did it matter? Mama had done all she could, considering the circumstances. What she had been forced to do, or forced to be, was no consideration, really. I looked over at Ruggert lying there, having taken a lick to the head, and to be damn honest, in a small way I felt sorry for him. In that very moment I let go of any kind of anger I might have had about his kin owning her. It didn’t mean a thing now. I had the bastard.

Next morning we started out again, and when Ruggert started moaning too much, Choctaw suggested his pain cure, which would be a short nap with a bad headache on awakening. This caused Ruggert to keep it down considerable until we reached Fort Smith, though that blow to the head caused him to throw up most of the trip there.

34

We dropped Ruggert off at the jail, and a doctor was brought over to look at his leg. We said there was cows and horses that had to be rounded up but me and Choctaw wasn’t the men for it, so there was some herders put together right away, and Choctaw gave them the general location.

I came out of the courthouse feeling as if I was a new man. I can’t explain it exactly, but I think I felt good for not killing Ruggert—not something I would have considered just a short time ago. As it began to get evening, I rode over to Luther’s house, and when they let me in it was to the sound of laughter and the smell of good cooking, which was shared with me.

I told them all that had happened, including the sewing of Choctaw’s ear, and about how when the doctor came to look at Ruggert he looked at Choctaw’s ear, complimented my sewing, said it had about a fifty-fifty chance of reattaching itself, which was about fifty percent more of a chance than I expected. Ruthie joked that if the marshaling didn’t work out, I could take on seamstress work.

We finished up supper, then me and Ruthie took a walk out to the gate, and when I figured Luther or Samson wasn’t looking out the window, I gave Ruthie a kiss, then I gave her some promises. Some of it I had already said, but I felt it deserved repeating. I wanted her for my bride. I wanted a new life. I wanted a calm life and wanted to rethink on being a marshal. I told her I couldn’t give it up right away, but I wanted a farm, as I knew how to do that as well as I knew how to shoot a pistol.

“I say we marry in the fall,” Ruthie said.

“I say that’s fine.”

“I say we have children, but not right away. And we get a dog.”

“I say all right to that, too.”

“I’d like to live near my dad and brother.”

“We can build a house right behind this one if you want.”

“Not that close. But if they’re in Fort Smith, I’d like to be here as well.”

“I like here fine,” I said.

We went on like that for a while, and then I got more sweet, and the way I talked kind of embarrasses me, so I won’t recite what I said here. But it was loving and a little mushy, I can tell you that much, and it had to do with things that wasn’t about farming.

I rode back to the stable, got my horse boarded, then walked over to where I was staying and went to bed. But I didn’t sleep much.

Judge Parker ran a quick court. Ruggert and Kid Red was condemned to hang from their necks until they was dead, dead, dead, and this was set up to happen quickly. On the day before the hanging, I got word from Choctaw, whose ear had begun to heal and attach itself, that the kid wanted to see me over at the jail. I thought about not going, but then decided me and him had been friends once, so I’d oblige.

When I got there he was sitting on the bunk inside his cell, and when he looked up and seen me he smiled. “I wasn’t sure you’d come, Nat.”

I could see Ruggert across the way behind his own set of bars. His head was wrapped from where Choctaw had hit him, and his leg was bound up with slats and fresh bandages, and he looked as if he had just eaten a sour persimmon. At least he wasn’t howling and moaning.

I looked back at Kid Red. “I wasn’t sure I was coming, either.”

Kid Red got up and came over and grasped the bars with both hands.

“I spoke bad to you, Nat.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I didn’t mean it.”

“All right.”

“Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“For what you said to me, yeah. For what you done, no.”

“I don’t blame you for that. I can’t forgive myself. I thought it was all right when I was doing all of it, but now I know it wasn’t right.”

“Little late,” I said.

“But at least I know the difference.”

“You knew the difference then,” I said.

“A preacher come in here and told me I would be forgiven if I admitted my sins. Stood right where you are with a Bible and told me that. You think that’s true?”

“No. But if it’s any comfort, I think when you’re dead you don’t go to hell. You don’t go nowhere. It’s over.”

“I didn’t want to hear that.”

“You asked.”

“But you could be wrong, couldn’t you?”

“I’m wrong about lots of things. I was wrong about you.”

“Shit, Nat. I didn’t want to go out like this. I wanted to be important.”

“Doubt anyone wants to grow up to hang. But you will, son. You will.”

“You don’t have to rub it in. I know I talked bad to you, but I was mad and scared.”

“You’re going to hang not for what you said to me but for all you done.”

“You done some bad things,” he said.

“My killings was justified by self-defense and rescue. You killed because you could. And you raped.”

When I said that, I immediately thought of Win and that empty look in her eyes.

“At least you forgive me for what I said to you. You said you did, right?”

“I did. And Kid, I hope the rope breaks your neck quick.”

“You’ll tell them to tie it right, won’t you?”

“Executioner knows what he’s doing.”

“They say he wears a hood.”

“So will you. That’s how it’s done.”

“I hear when you hang…I hear you mess yourself.”

“Most do.”

“I was thinking if I don’t eat, I won’t have that problem.”

“I’d eat,” I said. “You’ll shit yourself anyway.”

“Jesus, Nat. I don’t want to go out like a coward.”

“Then don’t.”

“Easy to say from your side.”

“True enough,” I said.

“Will you promise to be there?”

“You want me to see you hang?”

“I want to look out and see you. You’re the only person I know.”

“You know me,” Ruggert called out.

“Well, and him. But I don’t like him.”

“You liked me fine before,” Ruggert said.

“I like Nat better.”

Ruggert stirred on his bunk, like he was going to try and get up, but didn’t. He just said, “Nigger lover.”

“He can really hold a grudge,” Kid Red said.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“So you’ll be there?”

“Sure,” I said.

I reached through the bars and shook the kid’s hand.

“I wish I had rode with you instead of Ruggert.”

“Me, too,” I said.

I looked at Ruggert, but he didn’t say another word.

That very day I got word I had a good-sized amount of money coming from the arrest of Ruggert and for the bodies of those other two desperadoes. Even split with Choctaw it was a large amount. A letter arrived from Mr. Loving’s lawyer. It said if I was who I said I was and could prove it, I should come to Abilene, Kansas, and collect my money, which was sizable. That’s why my letter had taken so long to find him and why he took so long to get back to me. He wasn’t in East Texas anymore. He was in Kansas.

I was excited to hear it. I wrote him I couldn’t come right away but would come soon. I went and told Ruthie about the reward money and the money promised in the letter. Her face lit up.

“Do you feel bad some of the money come from dead men and another man that’s going to hang?” she said.

“I feel fine. How about you?”

She shrugged.

“We can buy that farm,” she said.

“And I’m going to get some ducks, too. I want to see you talk to them.”

Next day I went to the hanging, which was the last they had where a crowd could attend. After that they built a fence and hanged them behind that, deciding maybe everyone bringing peanuts and food and such, picnicking on the grounds, set a bad example for justice.

But on this day there was a good crowd, and they was loud and laughing and having a hoot of a time, and there was a fellow telling jokes in the center of the crowd. They gathered around him and laughed. He could do some acrobatic things, too, like walk on his hands, stand on his head, and flip and such. That kept folks entertained until it was time for the main event.

They was hanging not only Ruggert and Kid Red, they was hanging a colored man named Franklin who had got drunk and killed a white woman cause he said he thought she was a deer.

There was a big platform built up for the gallows, and the hanging took place in the early afternoon, about two hours after the crowd gathered. I got my place up front so Kid Red could clearly see me. I started to buy some peanuts from a walking vendor, but thought that might set a bad example for a marshal, and it certainly wouldn’t do Kid Red any good in his last moments watching me enjoy a snack. I had missed lunch, though, and those peanuts was on my mind.

There was two guards per prisoner, and they brought the three out. Franklin stood on the far left of the gallows from the way I was facing. Then came Kid Red to the center, looking small in oversize boots, and on the right side, facing me, was Ruggert, limping on his boarded-up leg, his head still wrapped. None of them wore hats, and they all looked like they was dead already; the bones in their shoulders and chests seemed to have gone thin and slack. Ruggert and the kid seen me right away. The kid sort of perked up when he did, but his knees was shaky.

“I don’t want him standing there,” Ruggert said to the executioner, a plump man with a black hood over his face.

“Well, he’s a marshal, and he can stand where he wants,” said the executioner, being quite clear in spite of the mask over his face.

“Damn you,” he said to the executioner.

“Well, sir, you’ll be damned first,” the executioner said.

Ropes was already draped in place, and nooses was tied. These was put over the three men’s necks, and the knots was pulled tight to the sides of their heads. That way the neck broke better. The three men was told to stand on the trapdoors, and they done it. I guess by that point they didn’t see no reason not to.

Each man was allowed to say his piece.

Franklin said, “I sure thought that woman was a deer. Usually I can tell a woman and a deer apart, but that day I was good and drunk, and I could have swore it was a buck with a big rack. My mama told me not to drink, but I did. And look where it’s got me. That is all.”

The executioner pulled a bag over his head and readjusted the rope.

Kid Red said, “I ain’t never had much of a chance, but when I did, I didn’t take it. I’m sorry for all I done, but I know God is in his heaven, and he’s forgiven me, and he’s waiting on me with a harp.”

“I don’t want to hear you play it,” a man in the crowd yelled out.

Kid Red ignored him, tried to stand in his spot without lowering his head. “I go to see Jesus now,” he said.

“Have him send me a present,” said the man in the audience. I looked around to find who had spoken, but didn’t locate him.

I looked back at the kid. He was still holding his head up. I was proud of him. The executioner put the bag over his face.

Ruggert was next. He spoke in as loud a voice as he could muster.

“My whole life I’ve tried to live the kind of life a white man ought to live, and all that has come to me and brought me here was caused by a nigger who looked boldly at my wife’s bottom while she innocently hung clothes on the line. And there that nigger stands with a marshal badge pinned to his chest, good as a white man. I say to you, take that darky down and free me from this gallows. I’m not to blame for my ways. He is.”

“Ah, shut up,” said the man who had spoken before about the harp. I recognized his voice and spotted him this time. He wore overalls that was as worn as his face. “We don’t care none about you or your nigger or your wife’s ass. Take your goddamn medicine, you burned-up old fart.”

That seemed to sap Ruggert. I think the boards on his bad leg and the rope around his neck was all that was holding him up. I don’t know what he expected, but maybe he thought the white folks in the crowd was going to rise up and pull him down from there and put me in his place and forgive all his killing and robbing. He was one of those that could never see himself wrong, and I figured he hadn’t until that moment truly realized that this was all she wrote and he was a fool.

After a pause, Ruggert said, “All right, then.”

They put the bag over his head.

I was thinking how my life had changed because of that man, the bitter and the sweet, when the traps was dropped and the men fell through with a sound like someone snapping a leather belt between their hands. The kid kicked once, throwing off one of his boots and hitting a man in the head in the front row. The colored man and Ruggert moved not at all. I could smell shit in the air.

I’m tired now. I will say again there was many dime novels written about me by Bronco Bob, but this here is the straight record. There’s more. But I’m too tired to write it out. I spent some time with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, even went to Europe and seen the queen of England. Oh, and I married Ruthie. She went to Europe, too. I had a family. Fortunately, none of the kids got my ears. By the way, Ruthie really did talk to ducks and chickens, but in dedication to honesty as I see it, I never heard a one of them talk back, nor feel anything Ruthie told me they said was all that beneficial.

I had many adventures before I became a porter on this long, black train, where I sit and write in my spare time and read the old dime novels I can find that was written about me. Perhaps those other adventures of mine are for another time. Perhaps in a fashion I did turn out great, way Mama thought I would. I had me some times, that’s for sure.

But this here is what happened to me up to where I’ve told it. It’s how I became Deadwood Dick, and most of it is as true as I know how to make it, keeping in mind nobody likes the dull parts.