Текст книги "Paradise Sky"

Автор книги: Joe R. Lansdale

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

I dropped back down behind the horse.

“Bad enough they’re going to kill us,” Cullen said, “but they got to act nasty, too.”

“I gave him a bellyache,” I said.

We watched for a long while, but those Indians was as quiet as the dirt. After a short time, I’m ashamed to say I was so exhausted I nodded off. When I awoke it was daylight and my throat wasn’t cut and I still had my hair.

I looked and saw Cullen was awake. He had gone out and got his Spencer and had it laid across the horse. I said, “Damn it, Cullen. I’m sorry. I fell out.”

“I let you. They’re gone.”

I sat up and looked. There was the dead horses with buzzards lighting on them. A few of them birds was eyeballing our horse and us, but I didn’t see any sign of the Apache.

“I been watching close,” he said. “They’re gone. They just picked up like a circus and left. Guess they figured they’d lost enough men over a couple of buffalo soldiers, or maybe it was like the lieutenant said: they saw a bird and figured it was a bad omen, and it told them to take theirselves home.”

“What I figure is they got too drunk to think straight, woke up with hangovers, and went somewhere cool and shaded to sleep it off.”

“Reckon so,” Cullen said. Then: “You meant what you said about me being a top soldier and all?”

“Consider it came from someone left in charge that got everyone killed but you and me. I got the horses wiped out as well, and on top of that I left a lot of army equipment back there and fell asleep on guard duty hanging over a dead horse’s neck. Only thing I didn’t do was join them and lead them on a raid to burn down the fort. Taking all that into consideration, it might mean a little less.”

“Lieutenant shouldn’t have split us up in the first place. I am not Napoleon, but even I know that. It was his fault for leaving a private in charge. But I do appreciate what you said.”

10

The day turned off blazing hot. We made our way back to the trees and the creek to look about. No Apaches was hiding in there, and the soldiers was all cut up and shot up, except for Prickly Pear. We found him standing against a tree, or so it seemed, but he was just propped there, having fallen back against it. He didn’t even look to have been hurt. His eyes was open, and he had an expression like he was about to make some joke or other. I went over and touched him, thinking he might be alive and just stunned, but he wasn’t. He fell over, and I saw a wound right behind his ear, a bullet hole, and from the looks of it, the shot had been fired close. It was my guess he did it to himself. I found his pistol on the ground nearby, so that made it even more likely. Why they hadn’t cut him up like the rest I couldn’t be sure. He didn’t even smell ripe.

We looked about for any of our supplies that was left, but there wasn’t none. The Apaches on their decamping from their horse fort had come back and taken everything but the wagon with the cut wood in it and Prickly Pear’s clothes and gun. Cullen was convinced it was because he had backed up against that tree and put up a brave fight, and it was a sign of respect. But ain’t no one can be sure.

We didn’t even have a shovel to bury the men, and had no choice but to leave them where they fell for fear the hostiles might return. I think about that from time to time and wonder: should we have stacked them up and burned them? But in the end I guess there isn’t any right answer. I hope when they was found, as they was bound to be by others from the fort, there was enough left of them to give them a burial.

Me and Cullen walked back out to the wall of horses the Apache had made, cut off a piece of horse meat, peeled the hide from it, and with some matches we had and some of the wood we had cut earlier, started a fire and cooked it. The meat was a little rank, but we cooked it black and ate it anyway.

We drank some water from the creek, started walking in the general direction of our soldier fort with nothing but our weapons and our good intent. Went on like that for several hours, that sun beating down and us without even a canteen of water to refresh ourselves.

“I hate being a soldier,” Cullen said. “I don’t like getting shot at or chased by Indians. And now we got to go back and tell them how things didn’t go good. It’ll all be put on you, how it all went bad. And my feet hurt. And we always got to get up early in the morning. And I don’t want to cook.”

I was considering on what Cullen was saying when we came upon a pair of binoculars on the ground. I picked those up, and not long after we saw a couple of shiny buttons off cavalry uniforms lying on the ground. Following that we came upon the deer-hunting party, or what was left of them.

Their bodies and those of their horses was dotted over the landscape. The soldiers was stripped and had been scalped and cut up and such; missing eyes, ball sacks, toes, and assorted things deemed necessary for the living. The lieutenant we found partly burned up. A fire of mesquite bush and items from saddlebags had been put on his belly and set ablaze. It had burned right down into his stomach and made a hole, sizzling his innards. His body was still smoking, and there was that horrible smell of burning human flesh in the air, something I recalled from when Ruggert and his friends had burned up my pa. The saddles, bridles, the whole shebang had been taken off the horses. Apaches like leather.

“I guess it worked out best we didn’t go on the deer hunt,” I said.

“Appears that way,” Cullen said.

We looked around cautious-like, but it appeared we was on our own; no Apaches and no survivors. We went around and counted the dead and figured there was the right number there, though most of the troopers you couldn’t tell from a slaughtered steer. Only the lieutenant and one or two others was recognizable, one of them being Tornado. They had chopped his head off, but I knew it was him from the way he was built. They hadn’t taken his shirt and pants and boots, just his belt, and they had cut the buttons off his outfit. That’s all they took from him. And his head, of course.

The flies was something awful, and like the others we didn’t have no easy way to bury them. So there we stood, out in the hot sun amid those stinking bodies, and Cullen said, “Do you see a black horse? Or am I imagining it?”

“I see him,” I said.

“Do you see some dancing soldiers?”

“Nope.”

“Do you still see the horse?”

“I do,” I said.

“Is it Satan?”

“Yes. In more ways than one.”

“Good. Then I’m not imagining it.”

“He looks strong and rested,” I said. “Figure he found a water hole and some grass somewhere and maybe even a piece of horse ass. He has been taking it easy while we’ve been dealing with hellfire and damnation, the bastard.”

“Don’t talk mean,” Cullen said. “He might hear you. Look happy to see him.”

We started smiling, and I tried to whistle, but my mouth was dry as dirt.

Satan lifted his head and put a steely eye on us. I put my rifle and the binoculars down and started walking toward him, holding out my hand like I had a treat. I don’t think he fell for that, but he dropped his head and let me walk up to him. He still had on the bridle, and the reins was hanging down, so I reached out slow and careful and took hold of them.

I swung onto his back with more than a little effort, and as I was about to settle into the stirrups good, he bucked. I went whirling through the air and hit the ground so hard my breath flew out of my mouth like bees from a hive. When my head quit swimming and I could take a breath, Satan was poking me with his nose, making a noise that came as close to a laugh as was possible; a horse laugh, I might add.

Wobbling to my feet, I got hold of his reins and led him over to Cullen, limping slightly.

“He loves a good joke,” Cullen said. “But deep down, I think he likes you.”

“It’s pretty damn deep,” I said.

We gathered our rifles and the binoculars, climbed on Satan’s back, me at the reins, and started out in the direction of the fort, judging its location by the position of the sun. As we rode along, Cullen said, “You know, I right respect the buffalo soldiers, I surely do, and my short time there has been interesting, if not that rewarding. They are a fine bunch of individuals. Them that are still alive.”

I studied on that comment, said, “You saying something between the lines, Cullen?”

“I’m saying everyone is dead, and why not us?”

“I thought we was doing all we could not to be dead,” I said.

“And I’m suggesting we might keep that going for quite a while longer.”

I love these here United States, primarily cause I don’t know nothing else. That said, it turns out, even for thirteen dollars a month, I wasn’t all that in love with the cavalry. I didn’t like taking orders, for one, and I especially didn’t like being nearly killed by Indians. And then there was eating Cullen’s cooking.

“So if they’re all dead,” I said, “it stands to reason that we might be dead, too, just not found.”

“What I was thinking,” Cullen said.

We rode on a piece more, and then without thinking too hard on it, I started turning Satan away from the direction of the fort.

Satan had my canteen strapped on his saddle, and it was near full, and there was a couple bites of jerky in the saddlebags, so we ate that, and along with the fact we was riding, not walking, things was better than they had been shortly before. You could add to that our change of career plans, which was starting to appeal to me.

We had gone for most of a day when we seen something in the distance we couldn’t make out. I lifted the binoculars and seen there was a red-shirted colored fellow lying out there with his leg under a dead horse. A big sombrero lay on the ground nearby.

I assumed he was dead like the horse, or right near it, cause buzzards were circling overhead. One of them had lit down near the horse and was staring in its direction as if waiting for a signal. A little black cloud of flies was buzzing about.

Riding over there, we discovered the colored fellow wasn’t dead at all. Even with his leg trapped, he lifted up slightly on an elbow and pointed the business end of an old Sharps .50 at us.

“Hold up,” I said. “I ain’t got nothing against you.”

“You’re money on the hoof is all,” he said, then sighed and gently laid the Sharps on the ground. “It ain’t like I’m going to spend it, though.”

We dropped off Satan, and I gave Cullen the reins to lead him. I pushed the Sharps aside with my foot. The man didn’t try and stop me. I don’t think he had the strength to lift that heavy old rifle again. He didn’t have a handgun strapped to him.

I squatted by him. He had a face that looked as if it had been chopped out of dried wood. His eyes was so black they looked like blackberries. I said, “Just resting?”

He took a deep breath. “Me and my horse thought we’d stop in the middle of the prairie, under the sun, and take a nap. It seemed like a nice enough day for it. Feeling pleasant, I asked him if he would lay down on my leg.”

“You had on that hat, you might could block out some of the sun.”

“I can’t get my leg out from under this dead bastard,” he said, kicking the horse with his free leg. “Not even enough to reach my hat. I like that hat. I had to kill a Mexican for it.”

Cullen picked up the hat and brought it to him, leading Satan as he came. The man was too weak to lift his hand and take it. I lifted his head, Cullen pushed the hat on him, and I settled his noggin back down on the ground. The back of the hat bent under him, the brim in front tilted so that it covered his face in shadow. I could see now that the horse had a couple of bullet holes in it. Sombrero Man had a hole himself, in his left side, between chest and belt. He was leaking out pretty fast.

“This ain’t how I was expecting things to work out,” he said.

“I reckon not,” I said. “Having a horse fall on you and getting shot up don’t seem like a good plan for nobody.”

“Can’t say as I can recommend it.”

“You’re the one hunting me, aren’t you?”

“I recognize your ears. I was told you had a set.”

“Why would you help those men? They despise colored folks.”

“They hired me because I’m a tracker, part Seminole, out of Florida originally, late of Nacogdoches, Texas. That Ruggert fellow heard about me and my tracking, come and hired me. Money was good.”

“Money’s no kind of reason,” I said.

“Thought I might grow up to do the ballet, but my legs looked bad in tights. So I do what I do. Only profession I got, tracking and killing people. Pays good, and I have a lot of time off.”

“Time to relax and get hold of yourself is always good,” Cullen said. “I didn’t have much of that and always wanted more. I liked my work, and was good at it, but more time off would have been good.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s a holdup on being a slave. Not enough time off.”

“That’s a good point you got there,” Cullen said. “Very true.”

“What I’d like to request is two things,” Sombrero Man said. “Could you get this horse off my leg, for one?”

“I’ll consider it,” I said. “Tell me—has Ruggert given up by now?”

“He took it right bad you raped his wife.”

“I didn’t,” I said.

“Other one told me you just looked at her ass. I can understand that. I’ve had a piece of ever’ color ass I could find that would give out, and the thing is, an ass is an ass when you add it all up. But Ruggert, he didn’t see it that way. He is an odd piece of work, and he ain’t a forgetter.”

“So I’ve figured,” I said.

“We just stayed at it, and he kept paying me with money he got somewhere or another, so I stayed on. We come upon you first out by that abandoned buffalo wagon.”

“I remember.”

“Not much else to tell. We come to the conclusion you was in the army. Thought you’d leave the fort at some point, and we could cut you from the herd.”

“That has been one long wait.”

“I’ll say. But he paid, and I stuck. We camped nearby on the sly. Used a spyglass to see where you were. Followed your troop out when you took to the woodlot, lagged behind on purpose. I don’t know what he planned there, how he wanted to get you away from the others, but as I said, he was a determined cuss. I think he was considering on that when the Apache come upon us. I rode off when I saw it was hopeless. A couple of them redskins followed me on horseback. You walk out that way a piece, you’ll see the blood from one of them. He was the one shot me and killed my horse, brought it down on my leg. I got him, though. Made that shot with this fine horse lying on my leg, me stretched out here in God’s wide open. The one didn’t have a hole in him threw his pal across the dead man’s horse, mounted his own, and led the other after him. I wanted to shoot him, too, but the Sharps got heavy. I don’t know what happened to Ruggert and the other fellow, Hubert, who I figured for a drunk. Didn’t see him take a drink, but he rubbed his lips a lot and looked lonesome plenty. Usually got grumpy at suppertime. I’ll tell you, though, he only called me nigger once. We had an understanding after that.”

“Hubert is dead,” I said. “Apache got him.”

“Can’t say I miss him.”

“You never said the second thing,” Cullen said.

I had forgotten there was a second thing.

“No, I didn’t,” Sombrero Man said. “Number two’s this. Stay with me till I pass on. Take me some place where there’s a real graveyard. I don’t want to lay out here on the prairie. I want to be in God’s soil, have some words said over me.”

“I don’t owe you a thing,” I said.

“I ain’t got no hard feelings. Why should you?”

“Because you were going to kill me,” I said.

“I understand your point of view,” he said. “It’s a clear one.”

I studied on the problem a moment. “I should leave you for the buzzards, but I’ll do it. Ain’t getting you no headstone, though.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “No one would know who I was anyhow. For the record, my name is Cramp, or that’s what I’m called. Man got my Seminole mama’s belly full of me called me that. He run off early. I got a second name, but nobody used it much when I was little, and finally they didn’t use it at all, and now I don’t remember what it was. There ain’t a single person I know of alive that’s kin to me. But I was thinking God might forgive me some things if I was buried proper in his own ground.”

“It’s dirt,” I said. “And that’s all it is.”

“I think I’ve spoken enough for this life,” he said and started to breathe like a dog panting.

We dug around his leg with our hands. It was hard ground. Finally I got my knife out and broke the ground up good enough to slide his leg out from under the horse. The leg was a mess, bones sticking right through his pants, and he had bled out something awful. We dragged him around so he could rest his back against his horse. He closed his eyes, and after a bit he breathed less heavy, and finally he wasn’t breathing at all.

11

We figured as payment for taking him to a graveyard, anything in his saddlebags was ours, which was good, because the meager bits of grub we had was ate up. There was dried jerky in his bags and some pickled eggs in a leather pouch. The eggs was out of the shell, and they had broken up. They not only tasted pickled, they tasted like sweaty leather. We ate them anyway.

There was some oats in a bag on the horse, and we gave that to Satan, and from the dead man’s canteen we poured water in the sombrero and let Satan drink from that. When he finished drinking the water he ate part of the sombrero.

We also found a change of clothes in his possibles, and since the shirt fit me better than Cullen, I threw away my stinking army shirt and put it on, keeping my army coat and pants with the stripe. The extra pants didn’t fit neither of us, so we tossed them.

There was also a book of poetry in one of the saddlebags. It was handwritten, and I figured between tracking and killing, Cramp had liked to rhyme a little. I ain’t no great judge of poems, though Mr. Loving had me read a considerable number of them, but I can tell you these were so bad they hurt my feelings. I threw the book away and had an urge to bury it lest a coyote come across it, read a few lines, and get sick.

“There’s a town I come through on the way here to joining up with the soldiers. Ransack,” I said.

“I come to it myself,” Cullen said.

“We might go there. They’re bound to have a graveyard.”

“We could just leave him here and wouldn’t nobody ever know,” Cullen said.

“I’d know.”

“I think I could know and get over it,” he said.

“Maybe I could in time,” I said, “but a promise is a promise.”

“How we going to do it? We just got the one horse.”

Cramp had a lariat and a bedroll. I stretched the bedroll on the ground, then me and Cullen laid Cramp on it and wrapped him in it along with what was left of his sombrero, which we laid on his chest. I wound the lariat around his body and tied it so we could drag him behind us. We got his Sharps then, climbed on Satan, and started out.

That bedroll idea wasn’t perfect, but it’s what we had. Fact was, once we got loaded up and headed out, the bedroll began to come apart on the boot end, and after a few miles one of Cramp’s boots slipped free of the blanket and thumped along the ground.

In time we come across enough small trees to cut a couple of limbs with my knife and make a travois—and this took some work, I assure you. The travois lifted the body off the ground more and kept what was left of the blanket from wearing. Parts of Cramp, including his face, was starting to peek out of it. He was also growing a mite ripe, and his face, which first swelled up, was now withering like an old potato.

We come to Ransack near nightfall.

Seeing it from a distance, Ransack looked like a series of large fireflies in the midst of shadow shapes, but it was kerosene lamps and fires, and the shapes was buildings.

As we rode in it was as silent as death, us having a very recent companion who belonged to that club, and then suddenly there was sound. At first it was like the hum of a fly, then we could hear clattering and a bit of music coming from one of the bars—a tuba, a piano, a banjo, and some kind of horn that might have been a trumpet or some idiot blowing through a pipe.

We went wide of that, as I was thinking if there was any colored folks around they’d be at the back of the town and wouldn’t be welcome around white folks’ saloons, stores, or women. When we come to the backstreets, it wasn’t my people I seen but China folk. I had seen pictures of them in books Mr. Loving had, but here they was now, in the flesh.

There was four or five Chinamen and a China girl next to a big fire with a metal rack over it and a large, black pot of boiling laundry on it, the likes of which the China girl was stirring with a long, thin board. The firelight was so bright you could see the colors of the shirts in the churning laundry. The men was all about the same size and wore loose clothes. The girl was dressed the same and was almost as thin as the board she was holding. Her hair was long and black and bound behind her head, and the men had a single pigtail hanging off their partly shaved heads. Along with the pigtails they wore curious expressions, like maybe we was the first colored they’d seen, though it may have been on account of we was dragging a body you could smell from about three acres away and Cramp’s boot was hanging out of the blanket along with an arm that had come loose and was dragging in the dirt.

A Chinaman we hadn’t seen before, kind of fat with a greasy pigtail, come out from behind a big barrel that was blazing with enough fire to light up the ground around us. He waved his hands at us. I reined to a stop. He said. “Want girl?”

“Say what, now?” I said.

“Sell girl for cheap, you want.”

The girls came out of the shadows and into the firelight. One was perched on a wooden peg leg and had a crutch to help her, and she was by far the comeliest of the three, though she could have used about ten gallons of water and a bar of lye soap to set her straight. There was two other China girls, and they wasn’t of the appearance to hurt anyone’s feelings, either, though they walked as if they had been horse-hobbled. They wore enough powder and rouge and such to paint the whole Sioux Nation. A fourth showed up, and she was so ugly she could have chased a bobcat up a tree, but then again maybe I wasn’t one to talk. She didn’t have the same kind of stunted walk but moved same as anyone else. I was later to learn this was because them other gals had their feet bound since they was children to make them small and to make their movements littler and their opportunities for running away slimmer. The bobcat chaser had not had the same experience.

“Half woman, she cheaper,” said the Chinaman. “Five penny.”

I realized he meant the woman with the wooden leg.

“Actually, she’s more than half a woman,” I said. “Way more.”

“Then cost more,” he said, leaning toward Cramp, holding his nose as he did. “Friend on blanket, he have to clean first. Stink up girl.”

“We got other plans for him,” Cullen said.

“Yeah, he’s past interest in such things,” I said. “And we’re going to pass on your offer. Though we could use some food.”

“Got chop suey,” he said. “Good. Ten cents.”

“That’s more than the woman,” I said.

“Chop suey not have wooden leg.”

“Thought we were burying Cramp,” Cullen said.

“I haven’t the strength,” I said, and I meant it.

The Chinaman paused to study Cramp. “Man dead.”

“Nothing slides by you, does it?” I said.

“Not going to get better,” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “He won’t.”

The Chinaman studied me for a moment. “Still want food?”

“Sure. But ten penny for two meals.”

The Chinaman studied on my offer. “Okay. Put dead man away. Come eat.”

I looked back at Cullen. He shrugged.

It may seem harsh, but we parked Cramp and his travois over by a sort of lean-to, because the only thing I could think on clearly was getting my stomach wrapped around some chow.

We tended to Satan. He was tired and hungry himself. I was able to buy some oats from the Chinaman at a dear price and will admit to taking some of the money from a bag worn around Cramp’s waist. I had become his gravedigger and his banker.

When Satan was unsaddled, fed, and watered, I combed him down with equipment borrowed from the Chinaman, and then me and Cullen sat down on the ground to eat. We had to pay first, and we did, and the chop suey was only a little better than the horse meat we had eaten after the Apache fight. I came across a chicken foot in the bowl and what I thought might be a mashed calf’s eyeball. I fished these out and ate the rest of it without too much study on it and even paid for seconds for both me and Cullen.

After we chowed down, we saddled Satan and hooked Cramp and the travois up. I turned to the gal that was perched on the wooden leg, said, “Where’s the nearest graveyard?”

She stared at me.

“We need to bury him,” I said, pointing at Cramp.

I waited to see if she spoke American, and she did, or at least understood it enough, because she pointed right down the street. All we had to do was go on forward until we got to it, it seemed. The Chinaman came over and cuffed the cripple alongside the head, knocking her down in the dirt. He said something fast to her in China talk. Then in English to us: “I do talking,” he said.

“There’s no call for that,” Cullen said.

“My woman,” he said. “I give talk. Not her. She for sale. She do as I say.”

“Well, you lighten up there,” I said. “That ain’t called for. I was the one spoke to her.”

To show us who was in charge, he went over to a hunk of wood with an ax in it, pulled the ax out, and came back. “I chop wooden leg off,” he said.

“No, you won’t,” I said.

“I chop your leg off.”

“You won’t do that, neither.”

“His leg,” he said, motioning at Cullen.

Cullen said, “I need these legs.”

I rested a hand on my Colt, measured my words so he could understand me. “You hurt her, I will shoot a hole in you. If you live, you will wake up with that ax lodged in your ass so deep it will take all of the town and a team of big mules to pull it out. You savvy?”

He backed up. I reached down, helped the girl to her feet, and gave her the crutch.

The Chinaman said, “She go to work.”

Away went the China girl on her wooden leg and crutch, under the tenting and into the little hovel. I figured I had done what I could and might have made matters worse for her. The Chinaman smiled at us like it was all a big joke and went back to the chunk of wood and slammed the ax into it. I tried to borrow a shovel and a lantern, but our recent dealings had soured him on us. I ended up paying him two bits to rent both. With those and Cramp in tow, we led Satan up the street toward where the cripple had said the graveyard was.

A little breeze came down off the prairie, and it lifted Cramp’s stink and blew it along the street and gave it some serious authority, and before long a promotion. As we come to the end of the street we seen there was a slight rise at the end of it, and on that rise there was a wood-slat fence, and inside the fence was some crosses and large, flat rocks that had been set on edge for headstones. There was a cluster of trees at the back of the graveyard, inside the fence, and I figured those had been planted there, as they looked to be struggling and not of the land’s nature. Another long, hot summer and they wouldn’t be no better than posts for clotheslines.

I looked back and seen the Chinaman going down the street into the town, chattering loud enough we could hear him all the way up the hill, though what he said didn’t mean a thing to us, as none of it was American.

The front of the fence was open, there not being any gate, as few wanted in and none could come out. We pulled Cramp to the back of the graveyard, where the row of trees was, and picked a spot. Cullen held the lantern while I started digging. It seemed as if the more I dug the more Cramp smelled, and that helped me dig faster.

I had put on my old army jacket as we come into town, hoping that might elevate our status, though it hadn’t, and now I paused and unbuttoned it and went back to my work. I had dug about two feet down and two feet wide when Cullen said, “We got some folks coming, and I don’t think they’re coming to pray over the body.”

They was led by the Chinaman, who had a lantern in one hand and the ax in the other. The men with him was white folks, and they was coming at a good and determined clip. Including the Chinaman, I counted eight.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” Cullen said.

I stuck the shovel in the ground, said, “Set the lantern over to the side. Not in front of us, and not behind us.”

Cullen did just that. Now, Satan was nearby, and so was my loop-cock Winchester, but I didn’t want to make a lunge for it and get the ball rolling when it might not be necessary. I had the Colt and the LeMat on me, both of them fully loaded. I was hoping if blood got stirred they would be enough to calm the situation.

When they was into the graveyard and about twenty feet from us, they stopped walking. The Chinaman took a step forward and waved the ax with one hand. “I tell them no Chinaman, no niggers here.”

“You scoundrel,” I said. “You rented me the shovel and the lantern. You’re just mad because I didn’t want you slapping that crippled girl around.”

“Not bury nigger,” he said.

One of the white men, a tall, bearded fellow with a hat so big you could have hidden a horse under it, and suspenders that pulled his pants near under his armpits, said, “This here is a white graveyard. Christian soil.”

“What if he’s a Christian?” I said.

“He’s got to be a white Christian,” one of the other men said. “You others got your own heavens, if you even go.”

There was a grumbling agreement from the crowd on this matter, as they seemed to have given it some serious speculation at some point or another.

“All right,” I said. “We’ll take our dead man and go. No harm done.”

“You got on a Yankee jacket,” said the tall, bearded man.

“We just got mustered out of the soldiers,” I said. “We ain’t fought in no war except against Indians.” It came to me right then that my idea about status had been a stupid one. A black man in uniform in Texas didn’t have no status. Fact was, that jacket was like painting a bull’s-eye on my back, a fact I should have considered but hadn’t.