The Bones of Paradise

by Jonis Agee

  Higgs called Larabee and Willie Munday to move Drum upstairs. Cullen followed.

  “I don’t see why he can’t stay on the sofa,” Mrs. Bennett muttered to their retreating backs.

  “Hard to keep that arm right,” Graver said, intending to elaborate from his own experience until she caught him in a gaze that would freeze a man on a hot stove. She was definitely Drum Bennett’s equal, and certainly more than Graver could handle.

  “And who are you?” She stopped behind the rocker, her hands gripping the black lacquer. He noticed they were the kind of hands that had seen work, the nails short and irregular despite the small thin fingers. On her left hand, she still wore her wedding band. Well, Graver thought, that was something.

  “Sir?” She tapped her fingers against the back of the chair. She was like an overbred mare, likely to bolt at any moment, not reliable enough to work except maybe as a fancy horse some lazy owner could step out for show. She opened her mouth to address him again, but he interrupted with a wave of his hat.

  “Ryland Graver, ma’am, Ry.” She closed her eyes and nodded.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. Shall I fetch you a glass of water?” He moved toward her with the intention to catch her if she fainted, but she waved him away.

  “Please. Get yourself some water.” She opened her eyes and tried to smile. It came out a tired grimace. “I just need to know who my employees are and what jobs they perform.” She inspected him, dressed in J.B.’s clothes, from the tall boots to the black shirt to the new black hat that Graver worked hard to keep the dust from settling into. “Judging from your attire, I’d say you have some elevation above the other men. So I repeat my request, what do you do here, on J.B.’s, our, ranch?”

  He picked a piece of cottonwood lint from the brim of the hat, wondered what to tell her. He didn’t want to shock or offend her with the fact that he was wearing her dead husband’s clothes, but he didn’t have any others to wear. He was in a quagmire. From upstairs groans and then a shouted string of curses commenced when Drum apparently awoke as they set his arm.

  Frank Higgs hollered from the top of the stairs, “Graver, bring that bottle of brandy from the office.”

  Graver lifted his hat. “This is what I do here, Mrs. Bennett, whatever they tell me.” As he edged past her to the office tucked off the parlor, he smelled the musk of a woman’s body unwashed from travel beneath the sweeter scent of her perfume and felt, for the first time in more months than he cared to think, a surge in his own body that made him pause for the briefest moment behind her, her back inches from his chest. His breath caught in his throat, and he swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a tremor pass through her.

  “I’ll keep your accommodating nature in mind, Mr. Graver.” Her voice had a rich deepness that ran itself up and down his spine before settling in his legs, made it just a bit more difficult to walk with the assurance of a man who carried his own water in the world. Hell, it made a person want to carry his and hers and anybody else’s she had a mind to invite along. He smiled and shook his head as he moved inside the office and spied the brandy on the desk.

  “That’s our wedding brandy,” she said when she saw the bottle in his hand. “That man never even bothered to come over when we got married.” She reached for the bottle, but Graver lifted it away.

  “They need this upstairs, ma’am.”

  She stamped her foot, but her arms collapsed to her sides. “This really is the last straw. I am going to march up there and make them take him home. He’s never going to leave at this rate!” When she started to push past, he stood in her way and reached to take her arm. A surprisingly strong and muscled arm it was, he had time to consider before she shook herself free.

  She pulled herself to her full height, all five and a half feet, and seemed able to look down her nose at him despite his advantage in size. A schoolteacher look, definitely, he thought. “Give me that bottle.”

  He was about to give it to her when Higgs thundered down the stairs, startled when he saw the two of them, grabbed the bottle, and rushed back up. Graver suppressed a smile, focused on his own battered hands while she took a few deep, restorative breaths. When he peeked up, her cheeks were aflame and she rubbed tears from her eyes with her knuckles like a child, a look his own daughters had worn on occasion. The thought stung his nose and throat like vinegar.

  He wouldn’t offer her the pieties she would hear from others. He knew how grief poured out your life like so much night soil and left you empty as a piss pot, the stink and rancor bubbling your skin to open sores that only you saw and felt. No one who truly grieved wanted to be touched, held, rubbed on . . . it was like being boiled alive. He didn’t know how anyone survived. Getting shot was hardly a scratch compared to what happened after his wife and children passed. Maybe a part of him deserved it. Maybe she felt like that now.

  He glanced at her tilted head, listening to the cursing and voices upstairs, the creaking of the bed as they struggled with Drum. There was a faint dew of sweat under her eyes now, across the pink sunburn and freckles on her cheeks, on the bridge of a nose that had a bump in the middle, which some might consider a mar on its beauty, but he did not, and the lips, though she’d seemed angry or pensive since he’d met her, had corners that curved upward despite her mood. He could see how a young J.B. would want to court and win her, as Graver had his own wife. Always there was that one feature, that one small detail that seemed to bring a person to another person, something private and endearing. With his wife, it had been the peculiar points of her ears, which made her seem fawn-like, like some benign creature he should protect, but despite his fierceness, he had failed, as J.B. had failed. There was nothing a man could do, apparently. He sighed. She shook herself and glanced at him, then back toward the stairs. It had grown quiet.

  “I’m sorry. I, it’s just—” She opened her palms and looked at him as if he could do something to fill her empty hands. “Have you met my other son, Hayward?” She held him briefly with those light brown eyes rimmed with violet, then shook her head and peered out the window.

  Graver nodded cautiously.

  “What’s your judgment of him?” She looked at him again, her face solemn, the suggestion of a smile on her lips, hoping for a good report. It broke his heart.

  He hesitated, glanced up the stairs, then back out the door at the men drifting down to the bunkhouse until supper call. Vera’s stew was ready, cornbread sitting under flour sacking, butter softening on the plate. “The boys, well, they pretty much have the run of things here.” He took a deep breath. “They sit a horse pretty good, rope decent, sometimes they even put in a day’s work you stay on them, but they’re youngsters yet.”

  She waved her hands at the description. “Never mind all that. Soon as they go away to school, they’ll learn other skills.” She hesitated, and then in a rush, “I need your help with something.”

  “Ma’am?”

  Her voice trailed at the sound of a horse arriving, accompanied by yelling and loud laughter from the barnyard. Her face brightened and she strode out the door with Graver behind. “Hayward,” she whispered.

  The boy rocked unsteadily in his saddle, unmindful of the lathered horse’s sides heaving for breath beneath him. Finally Hayward slumped sideways and slid off his horse, landed with a soft thump in the dirt. Struggling upright, he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed, ignoring the wet splashing. Finished, he worked at buttoning his pants until finally giving up with a shrug and turning back to tug on the exhausted horse’s reins.

  Cullen pushed past them in the doorway and sprinted down the walk to where his brother tried to stand without weaving. “You were supposed to wait for me!” Cullen pushed Hayward’s chest and he fell back, landing in his own piss-soaked dirt. They fought for a few minutes until, being the bigger of the two, Hayward pinned his older brother and held him while they argued. In the end, they lay side by side, gazing at the sky, giggling, no doubt about some mischief they planned. Graver kept that to hims
elf.

  “High spirited,” Graver said. His hands clenched his hat to keep from walking out there and throwing the two of them in the stock tank until they sobered up. They could take care of the horse afterward, too. Probably ruined it, spent its heart and mind on foolishness. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to help the widow with these two.

  “They need some refinements, I can see that, but they come from good stock.” She wasn’t going to give up on her boys. Her lips formed a smile that wanted to become broad, and though she held it back, her eyes were alight with joy and her shoulders fairly trembled with the urge to reach out to them. She was their mother, despite having abandoned them, peculiar as that seemed to Graver. “Hayward? Cullen.” Mrs. Bennett started down the stairs toward the gate, calling their names, her deep voice higher than before, the question in her tone letting the boys know they could ignore her.

  Cullen half pulled, half shoved his brother upright, then stood and brushed at the pissy mud on their clothing, which only resulted in smearing it. He picked a glob off his cheek, threw it at Hayward, and followed with a shove that nearly sent the boy sprawling again. The wrestling match threatened to restart until Hayward glanced at his mother, ran a muddy hand through his long hair to push it off his face, and dipped his head at her. Cullen glanced at her, too, and let his body slacken, not bothering to push his brown hair back or wipe his face on his sleeve. His face wore a pout, the mouth a replica of hers except the corners turned downward in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction. His white-blue eyes were small and quick, like a wild animal’s. The Bennett nose, strong, slightly hooked and crooked from being broken, sat squarely on his face, making him not so much handsome as possessing the possibility of character. Without taking his eyes from his mother and Graver, Cullen snapped his fist out and punched his brother in the arm. Hayward’s yowl brought a smile to Cullen’s mouth, leveling its corners.

  “Boys.” The widow ran out of words as she searched their faces. Neither boy moved. She started to open her arms to them, then thought better of it and let them settle at her sides. “I’m sorry about your father.”

  Hayward dropped his gaze to the ground and shoved the toe of his boot through the sandy dirt. Cullen stared at her with his small flat eyes, tilting his head and lifting his chin the way his mother did. Suddenly Cullen lurched forward and wrapped his arms around her, rubbed his muddy cheek against hers and nuzzled her hair, then stepped back and held his arms out and performed a deep bow. His mother’s expression was startled, then grateful, but quickly turned to anger when she saw that filth stained her dress from his mocking embrace.

  “Mother—” he began. “May I call you that? It’s so kind of you to come calling.” His mouth curled in a sneer and he gave Hayward a quick cuff on the back of his head. “Say hello to your mother, stupid! You remember her, don’t you?”

  Hayward stretched out a hand, realized how dirty it was, rubbed it on his pants, and then held it out again. She ignored his hand, stepped closer, and embraced him, casting Cullen a defiant glance, while Hayward kept his arms at his sides as if suffering from her touch.

  The older boy nodded once, looked away, and the meanness fell from his expression, replaced by something that made his lips tremble. When his mother dropped her arms and stepped back, there were tears in her eyes, and neither boy would look at her.

  “Need to take care of that horse,” Graver said.

  Hayward sighed and started to turn. Cullen caught his arm.

  “Who the hell you think you’re talking to?” Cullen took a step toward Graver, who shifted his left leg back a few inches, preparing to fight.

  Hayward grabbed Cullen’s arm and muttered something that made the older boy glare at Graver and then turn away. Graver almost followed him when he yanked the reins and pulled the horse off balance so it about went down before managing to steady its spent legs.

  “That wasn’t necessary.” Mrs. Bennett turned toward him, her chin high, face pale. When she swept past him in her dirt-streaked dress and muddy hair and face, there was an overbright glitter of tears in her eyes and it struck him to the quick. He wanted to whip those boys within an inch of their lives, make them apologize to their mother, make them comfort and care for that poor broken horse, make them sober and clean and respectable. He wanted her world to be just what she needed it to be. He would do that for her.

  But she paused at the gate and called back, “Graver, help them with the horse.”

  It was enough to make him feel like he’d taken a mouthful of flour, dry, tasteless, impossible to swallow. He should walk away, and he would, he thought, except he didn’t own so much as a horse, let alone the clothes on his back. And there was still the question of who shot him and killed J. B. Bennett and the girl. He meant to find out before he left.

  PART TWO

  AND STARS CONFOUNDED

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Fall of 1889 Rose got a job in Rushville, Nebraska, which sat below the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The school gave her a letter saying she was able to perform the duties of a servant. In other words, she swept and cleaned, washed clothes, and sometimes cooked for Crockett, the white man who ran the telegraph office. He slept in the back rooms of the little house in a nest of his own sweat and alcohol and sometimes waste. No matter. Day and night, the chattering key like a trapped ground squirrel could only be escaped through drink, in his case, or by sleeping in a tipi behind the livery stable, in Rose’s. The two did not speak. He believed her mute, and he signaled her work with broad hand gestures or shouted single words. For some reason he thought she might be deaf as well.

  It was the telegraph that drew her to the job. She studied his stained fingers as he tap-tapped, and then the book beside the key, the one that formed the words. It was a secret he did not want her to have, but she watched and memorized. Practiced at night while he was passed out drunk, the moon spilling a slender column of light on either side of the window cover and knifing across the counter where she sat, learning to tap the code.

  Rose had always been drawn to secrets. She was a member of the Turtle Clan and knew their stories, which she would later tell only to the next in line, her daughter. She didn’t tell her the “Morse code,” though. After the taps brought the troops against her people, she wouldn’t spread its poison. She only wanted to know its power. The next year, 1890, was the summer of the “Ghost Dance,” as the whites called it. Indians on their way to Pine Ridge Reservation passed along the edges of town, and she often met with them, shared food or goods they needed after their long journeys. Word spread across the West, and the Cheyenne and Paiutes, along with her own Lakota, hurried to Pine Ridge. She longed to join them, but her mother sent word by her nephew that Rose was to stay away until she sent for her. Even then, her mother was uncertain about the white men who peered restlessly at the dancers through their glass eyes, some intent on dragging the older girls behind the tipis. Her mother feared for Rose’s safety.

  The keys never stopped chattering in those months, and as Rose learned the code, she discovered what foolishness the army believed, fed to them by frightened white ranchers and townspeople who feared Indians whenever they saw more than two at a time. In their eyes a family with children became a raid, a potential massacre.

  Rose could not enter most of the stores in Rushville if she wished it. She gave drunk Crockett a monthly list of goods and he purchased them for her, giving her the few coins left over as her remaining pay. She knew he cheated her.

  By late summer, the number of dancers had doubled, and Big Foot, Short Bull, Kicking Bear, and Sitting Bull’s names appeared often in the telegraphs. A man named McLaughlin, Standing Rock agent, called the Ghost Dance “demoralizing, indecent and disgusting” before he’d even witnessed it. The white men wanted her people to become Christians. They called Wovoka the devil, because he predicted the whites and their soldiers would drop dead if the people danced.

  Sometimes her nighttime studies left her sluggish for work. Soon Crocket
t started to empty her pockets and remove her shoes at the end of each day, sometimes force her to lift her skirt and let him pat her blouse in case she was stealing—only his codes, only secrets too small for her pockets, too large for the heavy, stiff shoes with laces he made her wear instead of moccasins, so he could hear her clumping heels on the bare wood floors.

  At night, she wore the moccasins her mother had made, beaded with wild roses, and she wove sly as a snake. She opened the wood file drawers and found copies of telegrams starting that summer, from the agent to Fort Niobrara and Fort Robinson to General Miles and from there to the president, congressmen, anyone who would listen, so great was the fear of a half-starved people, broken, in ruin, who only wanted to dance in hope again. The son of God is come, they said, and they danced to hold off the belly hunger, the desire of the spirit so much greater. By fall of 1890, the tone had grown harsher still, demanding the immediate deployment of troops to finish the business on Pine Ridge. She shivered in the night coolness as she read the messages.

  She thought of her days in the Indian boarding school, staring out the tall windows at the corner of the cemetery where the small white crosses and short beds of humped soil sat row after row, too close together, and told the story of other Lakota children. She vowed not to be one of those who withered and died there. She pretended to be patient, obedient, and dumb so they would trust her and leave her alone.

  Soon more and more troops arrived, their camp crowding her tipi until she had to sign to Crockett for permission to sleep on the office floor. He dared to pinch his nose and point at her bundle to suggest it smelled, and she smiled her not-smart smile and nodded. He shook his head, shrugged, and returned to his room to drink and sleep, despite the chattering key he couldn’t keep up with.