The Bones of Paradise

by Jonis Agee

  “It’s for your own good,” he murmured. “It always was, every last lick of it, son.” He tested the sound of the word, son, found it foreign and hollow, his tongue too thick to shape it. As the wagon began its bone-cracking descent to the ranch house, Drum and Cullen were shoved against the broken seat back, and a splintered board gouged Drum’s shoulder but he didn’t move. Hair fell over the boy’s eyes. Drum brushed it back and it flopped back down, and he remembered how mad he would get when the boy slunk around with his hair covering his face. There was nothing for it, he discovered, the hair had a will of its own, and he was thankful again Dance hadn’t pulled that trigger. As the horses slowed to a plodding walk up the road to the ranch house, the cattle and horses raised their heads to stare at the spectacle. Drum knew he should hate Dance, want his heart carved out in old vengeance, but the truth was Cullen started it, he was always headed here, and nothing Drum could argue made things any different.

  Dulcinea stood at the gate, clutching the posts as if to launch at him, while Hayward waited in the barnyard, legs slightly apart, hands resting on the butts of his pistols. Apparently someone from town had ridden out to break the news, and Drum was oddly relieved. Higgs took charge of the horses, and Graver came around to the wagon bed and lifted the boy out as if he were a child merely gone to sleep, leaving Drum to half drag himself to the tailgate and ease his legs to the ground. When they wouldn’t hold him, he had to hang on to the wagon. Dulcinea lifted a hand to touch her son; Graver shook his head and carried him to the house, mounted the steps easily and entered without having to adjust his burden. Hayward stood his ground, continued to stare at his grandfather as if he intended to cause a ruckus. Drum dropped his eyes, found the steadiness in his legs and began the long trudge to the house. Higgs clucked to the horses and led them to the barn. The old driver didn’t move, as if he were permanently fastened to the bench and bound to bring only the ill winds of poor fortune.

  Inside the house the silence was so heavy it seemed to have always been there, resting in dusty vigilance against the windowsills and chairs, sparing nothing. Graver took Dulcinea by the shoulders and turned her away from the body laid on the table while Rose pulled the blood-stiffened shirt from the trousers. The buttons were sealed to their holes with blood and Graver sliced off the shirt with a knife, the sound of the material tearing like a saw across Drum’s teeth as Dulcinea flinched. It should not be strangers who did these things, but he couldn’t move as the bare chest with pale down between his breasts was revealed. When Graver peeled away the shirt, it stuck to the skin and the dark holes of the wounds seemed too small. He might still be alive—Drum stopped the thought and nearly reached out to Dulcinea, who started and took half a step forward before collapsing, arms wrapped around her body, silent but for her ragged breath.

  They removed his pants and his worn undergarments and his patched boots and holey socks, revealing the toes bent and rubbed with calluses, and the shame rose inside like bitter bile to choke him. He could not catch his breath or swallow, it seared his lungs and burned his throat. Every scar, every untended wound, every bruise belonged to him. Dulcinea caught her breath and stared at him, her eyes full of dead reckoning, words over the contended boy unnecessary now.

  Rose handed Dulcinea a pail of hot soapy water and she began to swab Cullen’s body with long, tender strokes of a rag. She washed his hair, rinsed and toweled it carefully so it spread like a shiny brown shawl around his head. She patted his face clean, the blue shadows under his eyes, the slack muscles of his jaw, the cracked lips that had finally released their reckless sneer. Drum noticed how the sun had bleached the eyebrows and lashes to a gold-white against the deep tan of his face, and how there was a white line across his forehead from the hat that rested just so. He noticed the nose slightly off center from breaking. The white welt of a scar at the corner of his eye. Dulcinea’s hands paused at the ear, stroked the lobe as if trying to remove some stubborn stain, until Graver touched her arm. She shook him off this time, took a deep breath, looked toward the door at her other son, and said, “Hayward, go and find clothing for your brother.”

  The sound of her voice startled the silence awake and Drum could hear Stubs shouting at someone outside and Higgs arguing and hoofbeats as someone else galloped into the barnyard. He was tempted not to move, but knew he would at the same moment he had the thought. Outside, Stubs and Higgs argued, the two men nearly at blows, though they should know better. Lawyer Chance walked to the house, his lathered horse tied at the gate, and a buggy came down the hill toward the ranch. The neighbors and the curious from town would pile on them now, professing all kinds of sympathy and useless words as if they ever cared one lick for that boy in there, as if they hadn’t every one of them wished him the worst there was. Since they missed J.B.’s funeral, they felt they’d earned this one.

  The rage stirred in Drum’s belly like an old friend, and he opened himself to it. He grabbed Chance’s arm, spun him away from the porch, and pushed him back.

  “Dulcinea—” the lawyer said.

  “Leave her alone,” Drum said. “She has family in there.”

  Chance opened his mouth, gazed at the porch, thought better of it, shrugged, and turned back.

  “Stubs, you take care of the lawyer’s horse. Higgs, you make coffee. People are coming. We’ll put them to your place for now.” Drum tried to make his voice ring with the old authority, but his heart had gone out of it. Recognizing the truth, the men avoided his eye as they trudged off to their work. As if the news were carried by express rider across the hills, the cowboys returned early from their work. Hats in hand, Irish Jim and Willie Munday came to the gate, asked Drum what they should do. He sent them to help Higgs set up chairs and planks on sawhorses for the food and drink that would soon arrive.

  The buggy pulled up and Judge Foote stepped down and offered a hand to Markie Eastman. Drum felt his belly stir again and it was all he could do not to horsewhip them both off the place, woman be damned. Somehow he felt it was their fault, this business distracted him when he should’ve been running cattle, his ranch, and that boy. Cullen had no business taking after those men like that, and Drum could only blame himself, and the others around him. He nodded curtly at the judge but wouldn’t look at the Eastman woman or acknowledge her words of condolence. He pointed toward Higgs’s small home, and with a brief glance at the house behind him, they turned away. They would want to see him, see the wounds, see his face in that final repose. It was a bitter thought. By heaven, he was the only one who cared for that boy all these years, he should be the last one to see his face, not these strangers, not even his mother—but there his thoughts hit a rough place, because he knew he was wrong.

  In that moment Drum Bennett had his first real doubt, a luxury he had not afforded himself in years. His grandson had died a man’s death, doing a man’s job, though he was but half-grown, a job he was made to do because there was no other way. Drum had beaten it into him, and truth be known, if the boy weren’t in there lying on the kitchen table, his grandfather would still be beating it into him, one way or the other, and for that, he was, by God, accountable. Drum felt his knees buckle, as if a two-hundred-pound bag of feed dropped on his shoulders, but he wouldn’t allow that luxury either. He held the closed gate, blinked away the water in his eyes, and stood his ground, because he could go neither back toward the house, nor forward into the yard where people would want to talk.

  The rest of the afternoon and into dark the yard continued to fill with wagons and buggies and horses. After a while, Graver came out of the house and for some reason, Drum yielded and allowed himself to be led inside to sit and wait in the parlor, stiff-backed, eyes cast to the figured carpet at his feet. Dulcinea would not leave Cullen’s side, so they brought her a straight-backed chair and placed a glass of water in her hands, which she held like a chalice in her lap as she stared at her son’s sleeping face. Drum took in the spectacle and wouldn’t look at anyone after that. Hayward stood behind his mother for a
while, became restless and began pacing the length of the house, finally expanding to the porch and then the walk, circling like a dog on alert. No one allowed in or out. Where was Graver? Drum looked up quickly and spied him in the barnyard pointing new arrivals to Higgs’s place, telling them where to tie their horses, acting like he ran the place. He should go out there himself, but he couldn’t move—he’d send Cullen instead, and in that breath, a tide of emptiness rushed in.

  He looked over at the boy, willed him to rise, but the only movement was his mother reaching out to brush a fly from his cheek. Although she would not want it, Drum rose and walked into the other room, dragged a straight wooden chair from the wall to the opposite side of the table, and sat down, placing his hand on the boy’s arm for the cold comfort of it. Later he would not remember his thoughts that long night, only his refusal of food and drink, and the annoyance at the least disruption of the short time he had left.

  At dark someone lit candles around them, which guttered in the heat and filled the air with a greasy stink Drum could barely abide. Around midnight three white moths began battering themselves against the wavering shadows on the wall and hovering so close to the candle flames that they singed and dropped fluttering to the floor, leaving behind a silence all the more profound for being emptied of motion. A fly bumped lazily against the boy’s face and staggered away drunkenly whenever Drum lifted his hand, but it was the buzzing that tolled loudly in his ear. He would remember it for the remaining days of his life.

  In the morning they buried Cullen in a series of broken, awkward movements with no majesty or grace or meaning, as everything was undertaken with too much haste. The coffin lid didn’t quite fit, so they bound it with rope, and the coffin itself was much too long, so the body slid back and forth with unseemly thumps that made it difficult to carry. When they set it in the ground, the hole was too shallow, so they dug deeper while the mourners waited. The body swelled in the heat and released a groan followed by a gagging stench. The gravediggers, Irish Jim and Willie Munday, opened a snake hole and had to scramble out while Jorge shot the rattlesnakes. Hayward was back to pacing with his hands on his guns like he’d been hired to tame some outlaw boom town in the Black Hills.

  Drum never moved a muscle and Graver stood beside Dulcinea, and seemed ready to catch her if she fainted. Drum was so angry he wanted to shoot them all. His hands kept reaching for something, an axe handle, a rifle, a pitchfork. Keep away from my boy! rang in his head as the terrible funeral stretched in an endless series of mistakes. The preacher got Cullen’s name wrong, called him Cuthbert, and Drum started forward to beat him to the ground with his fists. Graver touched his arm and he stopped. Dulcinea’s face twisted into hysterical laughter she forced down. When they finally lowered the coffin into the hole, it tilted and everyone could hear the body thump one last time against the end of the box and that about broke Drum’s mind. A tide of red came over his eyes and he stopped seeing anyone, only the image of his grandson on that table.

  The sun was setting in a slash of red-orange and purple when Larabee and Frank Higgs stepped back from filling the hole, wiped the sweat off their faces, and looked toward Higgs’s house where the mourners had begun to laugh and talk loudly among heaps of food and drink.

  “Think we’re done here for now,” Higgs said and stepped away without looking at Drum.

  “We can bring in more dirt tomorrow,” Larabee said. “Put some scrap iron in there to hold it.”

  “You would, would you!” Drum stood and grabbed the shovel from Larabee. “Get the hell outta here!” He began to drag dirt off J.B.’s grave and throw it on Cullen’s until Higgs sprang to his side and pulled the shovel from his grasp.

  “That’s enough. We’ll see to it in the morning.” He was Drum’s size and when he looked the older man directly in the eye, it was Drum who dropped his gaze, then collapsed on the ground beside the grave. What he couldn’t tell Higgs or anyone was that he had nowhere to go now. There wasn’t one damn thing he could do. So he sat there, legs sprawled out before him, hands on his aching knees, and waited.

  PART FIVE

  PREPARE the HEAVENS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  It was all going to hell on a painted pony, Higgs thought. That son of a bitch Black Bill, he’d trusted him, trusted Vera for that matter. Now the two of them run off together. It was midmorning and nothing worth a wad of spit was happening. Drum still sat under the stunted mulberry in the cemetery where he’d been since they put the boy in the ground a month ago. Rose or Hayward hauled his meals out to him like he was bedridden again. Last week, Larabee and Willie strung up a tarp to cover him from the sun and wet if it ever rained again, then the other night the wind tore it down and Drum didn’t lift a finger. Let the old bastard bake, then.

  He raised his cup and gulped the rest of the whiskey coffee in one long continuous swallow, slammed it on the table next to his chair, and pushed up, staggering slightly until he caught his balance on the porch rail. When he looked to see if anyone had noticed, Graver was walking up to his house.

  “Boss?”

  Higgs waved off the concern in the man’s eyes. He wanted to tell him to get the hell back to work, but couldn’t remember if he’d given him any work lately.

  “That stallion’s going to pieces.”

  Higgs stumbled inside where the reek of rotting food on crusted dishes piled on the table and in the sink nearly made his eyes water. Goddamn it. Goddamn it. That son of a bitch Bill. Vera’s note said only that she was going now and he shouldn’t follow. She wasn’t coming back. He believed her. He knew her to keep her word.

  He opened the dresser drawer and pulled out the shirts she’d carefully folded, underwear, trousers, and carried them to the carpetbag he’d readied last week. He took the best horse he could find from the corral, figured he was owed, ignored Graver’s questioning expression, tied the bag to the saddle, mounted, and rode away without uttering another word to another person. To hell with the Bennetts, he was going to Kansas.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Graver was the only person who seemed to notice that the foreman just quit. The men idled around the bunkhouse drinking, playing cards, and fighting or riding off to town to raise a ruckus. Hayward was primed for it. Graver knew he should follow Higgs down the road, but the stallion had kicked the corral to pieces, his hooves cracking the poles repeatedly as nobody paid him any mind. Graver looked to the house to see if Dulcinea was aware of her horse’s actions, but there was nothing.

  He sighed and pulled his hat lower on his forehead. He used a rope because he didn’t trust the stud, and waited for the horse’s natural curiosity to bring him around, hoping he’d read him right and that he wasn’t about to tear a chunk out of his shoulder. It wasn’t long before the horse was interested enough to follow him into the barn, where Graver brushed and saddled him with the same confident rhythm to hold the animal’s attention. He was about to lead him out and mount him when he was interrupted.

  “What are you doing?” Hayward stood in the doorway, his hands hung over the twin set of pistols. Although Graver couldn’t see his face, he guessed it wore the rage that hid his grief.

  “He needs to be ridden.”

  “That’s my mother’s horse and no one else rides him.” Hayward stepped closer, his hands twitching nervously over the guns. If it weren’t so ridiculous, Graver would be tempted to give the boy a good thrashing. Instead he shrugged and slapped the stallion’s neck.

  “Why don’t you saddle your father’s chestnut and we’ll take them both for a run. Not good for blooded animals to be penned up like this, and your ma’s still feeling poorly.” Graver pushed a hunk of mane over to the right side and rubbed the stud’s forehead while he straightened the forelock, watching the kid out of the corner of his eye as he circled him. Hayward’s face was a torment of emotions. Eyes red rimmed from crying, mouth jittery like it couldn’t decide whether to yell or pinch together in a sob. His skin was damp and greasy, like he’d drunk too
much and it wasn’t sitting well. His hands trembled as they sought the gun belt with its extra holes punched to hold its heavy bulk on his narrow hips.

  “Here, you hold him and I’ll ready the chestnut. Won’t take more than a minute or two. Just talk to him and pet on him like your mother does.” Graver held out the reins. The boy was like an orphan calf coaxed to the bucket for the first time. The stud sniffed him as he approached and stepped back with a nervous swish of his tail.

  “You can ride him on the way back if he settles.” Graver placed the reins in the boy’s hand.

  As he saddled the chestnut, Graver shook his head. “Damn waste.” He could feel the bitterness that had taken up permanent residence in his head since he lost his own family and witnessed the way these people tore each other to pieces. It made him mad. He stood for a moment, letting the horse settle as he watched Drum, who sat beside the grave as if it were a campfire. Half a dozen times he’d been tempted to march out to that cemetery and drag the old man to the house, force him to stand on his hind legs, and stop this nonsense. Now Frank Higgs was gone, things were getting worse. Wasn’t nobody doing a thing out here but sitting around. Even Rose kept to herself now that Dulcinea wouldn’t talk to her. One killing too many. Took the heart out of folks.

  They rode out the back way, past the cemetery, hoping to get a rise out of the old man, and up into the hills beyond using the cattle trail. Graver glanced over his shoulder at the boy, who posted the chestnut’s high trot with little effort, his long legs relaxed at its sides. Slowing the stallion to a walk, Graver waited for Hayward to ride up beside him, the stallion ready to shy and bolt. He rubbed its withers and crooned until the horse let out a long series of snorts and dropped his head, still chewing the bit like he could break the metal in two.