All Honest Men

by Claude Stanush

  We had two piles of money, but no food.

  We hit the trail again. There was plenty of game in that brush, if you was a crack shot. And I was. I could blow a rabbit’s eye out at forty steps, and I could shoot a line of three or four quail’s heads off with one bullet. But we had the wrong kinda guns. All that woulda been left’d be a fuzzy tail, or a coupla bloody feathers.

  Finally, when our stomachs was so empty they couldn’t even growl no more, we come across something we could eat: one of them big wild cows with horns more’n a yard long that even the best old cowboys couldn’t get into a corral. They lived out in the brush like they was outlaws. She was grazing in a small, grassy opening, and when she heard us coming, she started to take off. But her curiosity got the best of her, and for a little bit, she stopped to see what was rustling in the brush out in that no-man’s land.

  My bullet hit her just above the shoulder blade. She keeled over.

  I cut a hunk offa her rump and we roasted it over a fire of branches, Red had some matches in his overcoat. And I’ll tell you what, that chuck tasted better’n anything I ever ate in my life. Even better’n Momma Rauss’ fat pork sausages.

  After we ate, we got to feeling drowsy, and while we was letting that food settle in our guts, I told Red stories. Stories all about the cowboys that worked that brush country, and how they was always risking their lives to round up the cows like the one we just’d killed.

  “They call ’em brush-poppers. It’s what they do, pop the brush. Just put their heads down and crash through it. They gotta dodge the limbs, so sometimes they’ll be hanging on their horses one side, sometimes the other side.”

  “I think it’s better to be a cotton picker,” Red said.

  But I was caught up thinking about them brush-poppers that ain’t afraid to take risks. I told Red some more. How to keep from being torn to pieces, they wear thick canvas jackets and bullhide chaps and hog-snoot tapaderos over their stirrups. And wide-brim hats with chin straps. And how lots of times a thorn or limb’ll drive into a brush-popper’s eye or his throat. Or a big limb’ll just plain kill him.

  Red listened hard and then he pulled a harmonica out of his pocket. He played “Red River Valley” and “She’ll be Coming ’Round the Mountain” three or four times. And we both got to feeling lonesome.

  “You got a gal, Little Snakes?” Red asked when he put down his harp.

  I felt something thick hop up from my gut. “Naw. You?”

  “She quit me. Said my hair’s too loud.”

  His hair was loud. “Your hair ain’t loud, Red.”

  “It’s loud. Gal’s don’t like red hair.” His shoulders was slumped.

  “Most gals ain’t worth messing with.”

  “No, they ain’t.”

  “Did’ja know, Red,” I went on, “ain’t hardly no Wild West outlaws that got hair your color? I must know about a hundred of ’em, and only two of ’em had red hair. Most of ’em was towheads. Or brown-headed. And nine outa ten of ’em had blue eyes. Queer thing, ain’t it? Anyhow, you got them green eyes, and that red hair, so I don’t think you’re cut out to be a outlaw. And gals should like that.”

  “Lots of gals like outlaws,” he said.

  “With all that money you got now, Red, you ain’t gonna have to worry about no gals.”

  We didn’t say nothing else.

  We was both lost in our own thoughts. We could hear some bob-white quail calling each other a ways off—ka-loy-kee, ka-loy-kee—and the answer—whoyl-kee, whoyl-kee. And a Harris’ hawk swooped down nearby and we could hear its karrr, karrr, karrr. There was a few rustles and the flap, flap, flap of a tail in the brush.

  That was all.

  At dusk, we covered our loot with our overcoats and dropped to sleep—with our .30-30s by our sides. Next morning, we cut hunks of that chuck to take with us, and that’s all we ate the next couple of days we spent fighting that brush to get to Crystal City. My leg was stiff and achy and throbbing from that javelina gash, but I didn’t let it slow me up. And, thank God, nothing else stabbed us. Or bit us. Or snagged us.

  No rattlers, no laws, no brush-poppers, no nothing.

  If we’d run into any humans, we had a story. We even went over it a coupla times to give us something to do while we was walking.

  “We’re jus’ two bis’ness men from San Angelo,” I said, to try it out, “that’s been robbed blind by that son-of-a-bitch Pancho Villa.”

  “Yeah, we’re jus’ two bis’ness men from San Angelo,” Red said after me, “that’s been robbed blind by that son-of-a-bitch Pancho Villa.”

  They was having a revolution over in Mexico, the poor folks against the rich ones, but Pancho Villa was robbing ever’body, rich people, poor people, he didn’t care, and he was crossing over the Rio Grande into Texas and robbing ever’body over here too. Pancho Villa and his men was cut-throats and we was lucky we didn’t really meet ’em in the brasada.

  There was old white bones scattered all over that brasada. Some of ’em was human bones.

  TEN

  It was late afternoon when me and Red come up to Crystal City. We decided to split up and skirt the town.

  We didn’t figure the laws’d be hunting for the train robbers there, fifty miles from Spofford, across that brasada, but being that we was new to being federal lawbreakers, we didn’t wanta take no chances. Red said he was gonna hop a freight and head west. Maybe we’d meet again; maybe not.

  I watched that red head go trotting off into that red sun, and I almost felt sorry to see it go.

  Then I hit off to Ma’s.

  I went up one dirt road, down another, and took a jog to the east, Ma’d give me directions in that letter. And before I knowed it, there I was. The house wasn’t nothing to look at, just wood-frame, raw lumber, no paint on it, what they call board-and-batten, with slats nailed over ten- or twelve-inch planks to keep out the cold and the wind and the dirt. But it was a house.

  There wasn’t nobody out front, but just as I was walking up, something from the back that didn’t sound human let out the damndest bawl of rage I ever heard. I lit on around and there I seen a square corral made of mesquite posts, and, inside it, good-godamighty!

  You couldn’t tell where the bronc ended and my brother Jess begun.

  The horse was humping like a cat dropping from a tree, all four feet high offa the ground. It was a big old black thing, blacker’n the ace of spades, its whole body was muscles, you could see the power packed in ’em, like it was made of thunder and lightning. After it cat-backed a while, it went to sunfishing, twisting its body into a curve, so the toe fenders of my brother’s saddle was touching the ground. Then it swapped ends, spinning while it jumped, so its head was a-going one way one time, its tail that way the next time. Then it started jerking back and forth, popping Jess like a bull whip, so hard it mighta busted a vessel in my brother’s head ’cause blood come dripping outa his nose.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Grab for leather, boy!”

  That’s what done it.

  Jess took his eyes off the head for just a flash, but long enough. Up he went, higher’n a kite.

  Then KER-THUD!

  The bronc kept right on pitching.

  Jess let out a string of cusswords and picked hisself up offa the ground. Then, wouldn’t you know it, he picked up his sweaty old Stetson, dusted it off on his leggings, put a new dent in the crown, and put it back on. All before he looked up to see who it was that’d hollered. That’s the kind of crazy cowboy he was.

  ’Course, when Jess finally seen who it was, his mouth fell wide open and he come a-running. “Well I’ll be damned! I’ll be damned!”

  “You shoulda grabbed for leather, boy!”

  “Hell, the day I grab for leather is the day they cart me off in a box. Willis, I’ll be damned!” He throwed his arms around me, then he hopped back off, there was so many cactus spikes a-sticking outa my overcoat. Then he looked down and seen my cut-up pants with dried blood around the hole. “What in the hel
l?”

  “Son-of-a-bitch Pancho Villa.”

  “Hell! Pancho? That old son-of-a-bitch that fights for the poor people? You sure it was—”

  “Where’s Ma?”

  What is it about a man and his Ma?

  In all them outlaw stories I knowed, the last word half them Wild West bandits hollered out when they was dying was “Mother.” And back in the penitentiary, I knowed about two dozen cons that had “Mother” tattooed on their arms or legs or chests. I guess it’s because there ain’t no sand or claw or lead in how a good mother loves her boy.

  Ma was inside, stirring a big old iron pot of mustard greens on the stove, humming. And when she looked around, she let out a bawl near as loud as that horse and come a-running. “Sweet Jesus! I can’t believe it!” She hugged me tight, and then the cactus sticks in my coat made her hop back too. Then she seen my cut-up leg. “What in God’s—?”

  “It’s the same old Willis, Ma,” Jess cut in. “Always at the nose of a fight, and the tail end of trouble.”

  Ma give Jess a whack.

  That night, there was more chatter than a bunch of hens around a new rooster. The other ones’d been off visiting neighbors, but when they come home there was so much ruckus that Grandbaby Seth jumped up and down, fell over flat on his face, and come up wailing. Ever’body’d growed up so much I hardly knowed ’em. My little brother Joe was near a man now, about fifteen, he had muscles in his arms and soft whiskers on his cheeks and chin.

  At supper, Ma piled the table high. She’d wrung the necks off three more chickens and fried ’em all up in corn meal. And she’d made two bowls of mashed potatoes, and black-eyed peas, and greens with salt pork, and tomatoes, and hot biscuits and wild grape jelly, and for dessert, two dewberry pies oozing the thickest, sweetest juice you ever tasted.

  Only problem was, all that food made me think of the Rausses and their pine table that “sagged in za middle,” and even with so many ones in my family around me, Vela started blowing back up into my head. I shoved her out. She wouldn’t go. I shoved her again. She wouldn’t go. Finally, I just passed my plate and throwed every ounce of energy I had into eating.

  Vela was all past now. Like Ma and Pa was past.

  “Things ain’t never been so good for me, Willis,” Ma was saying, and her round Irish face was flushed pink. Her face looked more rested than I ever seen it. “Jess gits six, eight dollars a horse. Ranchers bring ’em here and come get ’em. And he’s been teaching Joe. He’s got the touch, Jess does. Folks say he’s the best buster these parts.”

  “Yeah.” Jess raised his coffee cup in a salute. “Ain’t none better’n me.”

  I got a whiff of something. “What you got in that cup, Jess?”

  Ma was the one that shook her head. “Oh, Jess don’t drink no more.”

  “You ain’t sipping when you’re busting, are ya?” I asked.

  Jess just smiled and took a long swallow. “I’m the best.” He had a moon face like Ma’s, and he most always had a twinkle in his eye. It was hard to believe it, Jess making money, money enough to feed a family. When we was kids, he was a big old larruping lazy boy. The old man’d whip him for not hoeing the cotton right, for cutting out the tiny little cotton plants and leaving the weeds, and then Jess’d go back and hoe it just the same way—cut out the cotton and leave the weeds.

  Three bronc-busting brothers L. to R., Jess; Tull, holding the child; Joe

  Bronc-busting just come natural to him, I guess.

  “Say, Willis,” he said, “tomorrow, I’m gonna peel the bark offa five outlaws. How ’bout it? Help me out, boy. That brush is hell on horses. They use ’em up faster’n I can bust ’em.”

  “I ain’t crazy,” I said back.

  “What d’ya mean by that?”

  “Don’t like horses,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “That means you are crazy.” He laughed and twisted his fork in his potatoes. Joe looked up, smiled, and then went back to eating. And godamight, was that boy eating! There was a mountain of bones piling up on his plate, and a mountain of ever’thing else disappearing offa it.

  It was Ma that looked worried. “Well, Willis, then what’cha gonna do?”

  I shrugged. “I’m thinking.”

  “They’re planting east of here. Maybe you could get a stake.”

  “I ain’t gonna waste my life behind no stinking mule’s ass, Ma.”

  “How ’bout driving a freight wagon?”

  “And what’s that? That’s jus’ following a bunch of horses’ asses.”

  Ma frowned. “You don’t need to get smart with me. That ain’t a bad job, driving a freight wagon. It’s what Pa’s doing now, ’tween Fort Worth and Amarillo.”

  “Won’t be for long,” I said. “Railroads ’r takin’ over that job.”

  “Well, you gotta do something. Ever’body who lives has gotta do something.”

  After supper, Jess and Joe went out back to meet with a rancher hauling in two new broncs. The little kids went out front to play marbles. Me and Ma stayed at the table, and we both had another cup of coffee. She saucered it, like she always done when we was kids, but when she went to blowing on it, she was blowing so hard that little waves was skittering over the top.

  I could see something was eating at her.

  “You got a good mind, Willis.” She give a sigh and poured her coffee from saucer to cup. “I’ll never forget it, how Miss Dora come up to me in town that day, come rushing right across the street. ‘You can’t let Willis quit, Missus Newton. You give that boy a education, there’s no telling what he’ll do. And you don’t give that boy a education, there’s no telling what he’ll do either.’”

  She took a sip of coffee, and give another sigh.

  “I hated it that you quit.”

  I didn’t say nothing to that.

  For farm kids, school was just three months—January, February, March—between harvesting and planting times. I’d only went that one time, when Pa’d gone off to New Mexico, hunting for God’s Country. I blowed through four grades in nine weeks, the teacher said I was the smartest one she’d ever had. Got ever’ damn word right in that fourth speller but one. “Bulk.” I spelled it how it sounded. “Bolk.” Then the seat of my pants ravelled plumb out and I was ashamed to wear ’em. It didn’t matter to me that I had no shoes, but when you ain’t got no seat in your pants, that’s a diff’rent story.

  I quit.

  ’Course, it wouldna made no diff’rence. Pa woulda yanked me out, soon as he figured out God’s Country wasn’t in New Mexico, and he come back home.

  “You know what Pa said about school, Ma. ‘School don’t give a boy sense.’”

  “Pshaw. Pa’s one to talk about sense. Crazy old fool!” She shook her head. “He’d let up some by the time Ila and Joe and them come along. You know Joe went into high school? He did, thank Jesus. Maybe if you’da stayed working for that old man that wanted to send you …” She stopped and shook her head again. “You’re the one I worry over most, Willis. You ain’t like the others. You’re restless. Just like Pa.”

  I could feel the blood rushing to my head. “I ain’t nothing like the old man.”

  “That one way, you are.”

  “I ain’t like him no way.”

  I laid low around Ma’s for a couple of weeks or so. I watched Jess teach Joe the tricks, how to ride them crazy-eyed broncs down to sweat, and I seen that my little brother, even if he didn’t say much, was a fast learner. As for me, I monkeyed around with this and that, fixed a broke-down fence, and give Joe some money to buy a hog. Then I butchered that hog the way I figured a hog oughta be butchered, and dulled four knives doing it. And after Ma got a neighbor farmer to smoke all the meat, there was a whole winter’s store outa it. I even saved out the bladder and blowed it up with a turkey quill for the grandkids to bust when Christmas come.

  Still, I didn’t feel like I fit there.

  There was a place for Jess in that ranch country, and there was a place for Joe. There reall
y wasn’t no place for me.

  Then something come down that didn’t give me no choice but to blow.

  It was late afternoon, and Ma and the rest of ’em was off shopping in town. I was splitting mesquite logs into firewood. Swinging that ax up high as it would go. Crashing it down, WHAM! hard as it would go. Ever’ muscle in my whole body was working and straining and pumping blood. Sometimes what a man needs most in this world is to just shut off his head and split a log.

  WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

  I wasn’t thinking, just standing there a-WHAMing, when, all of a sudden, here comes a Ford Model T, a-skidding to a stop, kicking up a big cloud of dust. The door flied open and a little body flied out. It was a man with a red face and he was a-hollering: “Where’s Jess! Where’s that drunk son-of-a-bitch! Gonna kill ’im!”

  The man raced over and near knocked me down before he skidded to a stop. Then it was the whiskey on his breath that near knocked me down. I knowed who he was. His name was Dudley, and him and Jess had been messing around with the same woman, a dark-haired gal that worked at one of them Crystal City saloons.

  “Where’s that Jess? Gonna kill ’im!”

  I put down my ax and wiped the sweat offa my forehead. “You ain’t killing nobody, Dudley. You ain’t nothing but a whiskey pickle.”

  “Well, this pickle’s packing a pistol!” And damned if he didn’t hunch down and start to pull a pistol outa his left boot.

  I was faster. I had a .38 tucked into my waistband, I’d been keeping it there “just in case.” I pulled it out and jabbed Dudley in the belly with it. “Jess ain’t here, Dudley old boy. You’re dealing with me here. And I ain’t easy like my brother.”

  His face went white.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Let’s fight it out!”

  Without missing a beat, he bent his head down and charged at me. It was the craziest thing you ever seen! Charged at me, and then stretched his neck out and bit me. Bit me! Square on the forearm. It drawed blood. Well, I don’t know what come over me then. I reached down and grabbed Dudley’s hand and popped one of his fat fingers in my jaw teeth and cut down on it. Then I ground it, and I ground it, and I ground it.