All Things Left Wild

by James Wade

  7

  For nearly two weeks since leaving Longpine we’d trekked desert country and mountain passes where roads wouldn’t go, covering our tracks and keeping away from eyes not our own. Now we brought the horses down onto a trafficked path for the first time since Tucson, and I felt myself tense at the sight of passersby.

  There were farmers headed to market, men and women working fields off the roadside, and children with makeshift fishing poles.

  “Where in the shit you think they’re going?” Shelby asked, craning his neck to watch the young anglers pass on.

  “Fishing, I’d guess.”

  “Fishing, hell. I ain’t seen no water for twenty miles.”

  “Maybe they got ’em a secret spot,” I said.

  Shelby spit and shook his head.

  “You remember when we built that secret hideout off Christopher Creek?” I asked him.

  There was no answer.

  “Called it Fort Bentley,” I continued. “Spent three days and nights out there.”

  “Then we ran out of beans,” Shelby said.

  “I told you we should’ve took more, but you were convinced we’d kill a bear and have meat for months.”

  “We might’ve done just that, if you weren’t so loud with your whining. You missed Momma too damn much.”

  “I still do,” I said, and neither of us spoke again for a long while.

  We stopped in a town called Boracho, and Shelby traded his belt for a bottle of mash whiskey. His mood was sour as it often got, and whatever was eating at him he would try to drown it or, at the very least, put it through the trials of drunkenness.

  “We need food,” I told him.

  “Shoot something then,” he replied, turning the bottle up.

  “The horses need food.”

  “To hell with the horses. And to hell with you.”

  “That’s how it’s gonna be?”

  “You didn’t love her no more than me,” he said, wiping his mouth. “She was my momma too.”

  “Where the hell would you get that idea?”

  “I know what you think.”

  “Well, bud, I sure do wish you’d let me know what it is.”

  “She loved you better.”

  “Now that ain’t—”

  “She did,” he cut me off. “She loved you better and Daddy did, too, and y’all just thought I was dumb ol’ Shelby. Don’t say it ain’t true.”

  “It ain’t true.”

  “Well, I’m not dumb. I been watching folks my whole life. I know how they think.”

  “Alright then.”

  “I’ll show you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll show you right goddamn now.”

  And with that he put a heel into his horse, and I watched the two of them grow small as they headed south from the town.

  I followed, putting the horse at an easy trot and searching the desert for any sign of where Shelby may have quit the road. I was worried he’d found a bush to pass out behind and I would pass him by, leaving him to get snakebit. When I finally caught up with him, just two miles outside of Boracho, I wished for the damn snakes.

  An old Mexican with a wide-brimmed straw hat and what I took to be his two daughters were just off to the side of the road. They were on foot and leading a pack mule and Shelby sat forward in his saddle with his arms crossed one over the other, grinning.

  “Say hey, little brother,” he said, his words a bit slurred.

  The old-timer looked to his mule and up at Shelby and said nothing. The women stood still.

  “Sir,” I tipped my hat. “Ma’am, ma’am.”

  “Lord have mercy, look at that thing,” Shelby said. “They sure do got it loaded down, don’t they? I don’t know that I ever seen me a mule that loaded down.”

  “Looks like it’s handling the weight fine,” I said, turning the horse in a circle in the road and looking back at where we’d been, watching it somehow get closer.

  “Naw, I don’t reckon it is,” Shelby said, spitting and shaking his head. “I think it’s only right that we help this poor animal by taking a little bit of that there load.”

  The man spoke and he offered that Shelby could buy whatever he wanted and then began to display his merchandise.

  “Blanket my daughters make,” he said, holding up a corner of blue and white.

  “Don’t want no blankets,” Shelby said, and I called for him to come on and let’s get moving. “Don’t be rude, Caleb. This here businessman and me are doing business. Ain’t that right, señor?”

  “Sí, business,” the man said and nervously pointed out a sack of cookware, some grain that he had traded for but would gladly sell, and a bushel of beans that he assured us had not been purchased at the poor market.

  “What about that satchel there?” Shelby asked and the man patted at a leather bag.

  “Ah, is pine nuts,” he said, smiling. “Is for my wife. She make the pies.”

  “Pies?”

  “Sí, es bueno. Very good,” the man nodded.

  “Well, I’m gonna need that satchel,” Shelby said.

  “No, no, is not for sell,” the man said, still smiling. “Is for my wife.”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn who it’s for, you’re gonna hand up that satchel.”

  The man looked to his daughters and then back to Shelby and his smile was gone. Shelby fished his pistol out of his pocket and the women screamed and he pointed it at the man.

  “Pies, my ass. Now give me that bag ’fore I put your insides on the outside.”

  I stilled the horse who could feel the tension and watched as the women held each other and the man nodded his head somber and reached for the straps. He loosened the bag and walked slowly to Shelby’s horse and stared up.

  “Is not right, this thing you are doing,” he said and lifted the bag.

  “Not right?” Shelby said, his voice a mock surprise. “You hear that, bud? He says I ain’t right.”

  Shelby crossed his arms again and the pistol rested in his left hand pointing casually into the desert.

  “Alright, señor,” Shelby said, snatching the satchel. “I’ll make you a little deal then. If this here bag is full up with pine nuts, I’ll toss it right back down to you, and everybody can be on their way. But if it ain’t, I’m gonna put two holes a piece into you and your mijas. Sound like a fair trade?”

  We were all of us silent and unmoving and the only thing we heard was the coins shifting as Shelby moved his hand through the bag of money. He tilted his head back and laughed.

  “What’d I tell you, brother? I know about people. I’m a natural goddamn Peckerton.”

  “It’s Pinkerton. And you’re a natural horse’s ass. Leave these people alone and let’s go.”

  The old man dropped to his knees and brought his hands together in front of his face.

  “Please, señor,” he asked quietly, and Shelby laughed again from his belly and put away his gun.

  “I ain’t gonna shoot you, old-timer. My brother and me are just gonna ride off with your money, and you ain’t gonna say nothing to nobody about it. Comprende?”

  The man nodded and his daughters wept and finally Shelby moved his horse up the road behind me. I started out at a near gallop and had put some thirty yards in between us when Shelby turned back.

  “You know, I always heard businessmen were lyin’ sumbitches,” Shelby said, approaching the man who stood watching him. “Just lie right to your face. You know who used to say that? Ol’ Ben Hawkins. Folks called him Hawk back when he was cleaning out the Indians. Fought them redskins for damn near ten years, but you know who he hated even more than Apaches? Businessmen.”

  “Come on, brother,” I called, but he ignored me.

  “And any time old Hawk would catch a businessman lyin’, well, he’
d make sure it was the last lie that fella ever told. Now, what do you reckon Hawk would say to me right now, if’n I was to just let you walk on down this road here?”

  “I don’t know,” the man mumbled, his head was down.

  “Speak up, señor,” Shelby said, hovering over him from atop his horse.

  The man looked up and squared his shoulders to my brother.

  “I do not know,” he said, a resigned defiance in his voice. “I do not know of this Hawk. I do not know of you. But I will tell you now that you are not a good man. You are a wicked man, and God will judge you for your wickedness.”

  Shelby hung his head and sat his horse, and again the world was motionless and mute. When he looked up again his lips were stretched into a thin smile. I cried out, but my words could not stop the bullets, and the man’s body jerked and spun and crumpled.

  The shots spooked the animals. The mule turned and took off the way he’d come, while Shelby’s horse reared and tossed him to the ground. I gave the horse under me some slack and let him run a piece, then slung my catch-rope over the mule before reining and turning back toward the chaos.

  One daughter was crying over her father’s body, and the other was screaming at Shelby, who dusted himself off, laughing. She ran toward him, her arms flailing, and he caught her and slung her to the ground.

  “We got to go, Shelby,” I pleaded. “Somebody would’ve heard them shots. Get back on your horse and let’s head out.”

  “What about them?” he asked and the cries and screams stopped as the women awaited their fate.

  “They bury their father,” I said. “Now let’s get off the damn road.”

  “They’ll tell the law which way we went.”

  “Then we’ll start out one direction and pick another once we’re out of sight. But I promise you we won’t have to worry about it if we stick around here one more minute.”

  He kicked one girl in the stomach.

  “Shelby!” I called, pleading.

  He mounted up and we headed off the road toward a grove of privet trees, and I thought the worst was over until Shelby pulled up short and spun his horse.

  “I dropped the watch,” he called as he raced away. “I dropped Daddy’s pocket watch when I fell. I can’t leave it.”

  “You can’t go back.”

  “Got to, son,” he said.

  * * *

  I pushed on and made the trees and dismounted and we stood, the horse and me, looking back up toward the road. I put my hands on my hips and spit and knew the old man was right about my brother being wicked. If there was a God, He’d judge Shelby, and I imagined He’d go ahead and judge me too while He was at it.

  When I was a boy my father told me all men are the same. They’re all scared, he said, and the meanest are more scared than the rest. I thought about this and concluded that I was destined to be mean and decided I would work a ranch somewhere and stay away from people so as to not spill my preordained meanness out onto them. Momma laughed when I told her.

  They took Daddy’s badge when I was fourteen, though it rightfully should’ve been much sooner. He would go on long drinking spells up in the hill country or down in Mexico, leaving the kid-deputy to manage things in his absence. The folks in town were sympathetic for a while, then concerned, and ultimately just angry and no one could blame them. No one except Shelby, who swore it was all Randall Dawson’s doing. Dawson had paid money, of which he had plenty, to bring in some fancy lawman from back east. He also organized the vote to remove my father from his duties. After that, the drinking got worse—to the small degree it had left to go—and when Daddy up and left, Shelby swore his revenge on Dawson and said it was for the family. Shelby always went on about that—the family—especially when I didn’t want to do something. He’d call me “little brother” and he’d say his piece and in the end I’d do the thing I didn’t want, and I’d think about my mother and how we were both her sons.

  * * *

  And so I thought it now—family is family—as I paced the distance between trees, trying to think of any reason to not ride away and never look back. Family is family. My heart caught in my chest and I wasn’t sure if it had stopped beating. My throat tightened up and I shook my head and said aloud, “Keep moving,” and so I walked back to the horse and opened the saddlebag. My hands were trembling as I fished for the dandy brush at bottom of the sack. I tried to steady my breathing but each was quicker than the last and I braced myself against the horse and closed my eyes and saw the Dawson boy standing there in front of the stable, gun raised. His body spasmed and shuddered like the old man in the road and they were both dead and I felt like I was dying too.

  I began to cry and couldn’t stop and I stood brushing the horse and sobbing, and it must have been a terribly strange scene had anyone been there to watch. But there was no one. Only me. And when at last I wiped my eyes and put the brush back into the bag, my fingers hit something cold and hard. I closed my fist around the pocket watch and pulled it out into the world and stared at it without moving. My eyes widened and I turned again toward the road and waited for the gunshots to come. I didn’t wait long.

  The echo of murder was still in the air and I mounted my horse and rode hard into the hills, racing across traprock and shale, urging the horse forward through the unkind terrain. My mind was at once overloaded and blank, and when I suddenly pulled up on the reins and brought the horse to a skidding stop, I knew he probably took me for insane.

  I sat the horse for what felt like hours. The two of us alone in the world. I wasn’t sure if I couldn’t move or if I didn’t want to or both. I screamed out, and the horse perked his ears and twitched them and took a step. I sat, breathless.

  * * *

  At the top of a plateau about eight miles from the road, I looked down and could see his horse climbing. He sat an awkward saddle, and when he reached the top and saw me, he laughed.

  “I knew you weren’t about to up and quit on me,” he said.

  “I should.”

  He laughed again.

  “I told you I wasn’t dumb,” he said, shaking the bag of coins at me. “I told you.”

  “And what about laying low? What about new lives? We ain’t been in Texas two days and we’re murderers all over again.”

  Shelby rolled his head back and groaned.

  “You worry too damn much,” he said. “Who exactly do you think is gonna tell anybody what happened? Nobody. I saw to that. Besides, the law’s got more to handle than a few dead Mexicans.”

  He slid clumsy from the horse and took a few steps toward the fire and fell and lay there drunk for most of the night. I dug through the rest of what he’d stolen and found cold tortillas and dipped them in a can of beans and ate.

  That night the moon was gone and the stars shone in earnest. Shelby snored, and I thought of the man back in Longpine who counted stars and named them. I thought of how he sold spyglasses out of his wagon and how I wished I had bought one. I thought of my mother and tried to remember her face. I thought of the family on the road and the boy in the stable and there I came into an unnatural sleep, and soon I was dreaming. In my dreams I heard the distant rumble of thunder as a storm gathered and the faces all returned, only now there was a girl. I couldn’t see her, but I felt her there, and she felt like home. I tried to get to her, feeling my way through the darkness, but she stayed hidden. I called out to her but there was no answer, only the menacing faces melting into the sky and the growing darkness of the coming storm.

  “Caleb,” the girl whispered.

  “Caleb.”

  I opened my eyes.

  “Caleb,” Shelby said. “Do you think He will?”

  He’d awoken at some uncertain hour before the dawn. I watched him cry, and through his wailings he asked God to spare his soul. He rolled in the dirt and called out to God over and over but if anyone was listening They gave n
o indication.

  “Do you think He will, Caleb?” he asked again, turning to me. He was covered in dust and snot and tears and his words were begging.

  “No.”

  8

  Randall awoke to the drumming of an infantry unit as it marched across his skull and lay siege to his brain with muskets and small artillery. He poured water over his head and saddled his horse. When he saw the empty bottle, its former contents churned in his stomach and were then expelled from his mouth in unceremonious fashion.

  Heading east from Mesilla, the Organ Mountains rose up in the distance and masked the sun’s ascent for the better part of the morning. The night’s chill lingered a bit longer and Randall pushed Mara and the horse did not resist. Together they moved quickly up through the mesquite brush and cactus and followed a wash down into a canyon and at last came to the mountains, where they began a slow climb with the sun overhead.

  In the afternoon both horse and rider took shelter from the heat in the shadow of a ridge topped with red rock formations and sparse flowers. In the evening they would make for higher elevation, where conifers and mosquito grass grew in the cooler climate. Randall found no creek nearby, so he watered Mara from one of his canteens and spilled much of it onto the horse’s face and neck and the hardened sand below.

  Finding his jerky dull he bit into a red pepper and was soon afire from mouth to midsection and he began to howl and spit and kick, and the water seemed to only make it worse. He cursed the comerciante and unbuttoned his shirt. Mara watched intently as he near emptied another canteen and then threw his hat into the dirt only to pick it up and brush it off. He slumped down against a rock and took short shallow breaths. He closed his eyes and they were wet with tears, and when he wiped them they stung and reddened and again he hollered and began to feel about the dirt for the canteen but was frozen by the report of a rifle.

  “Don’t shoot!” he cried, and from his knees he threw his hands into the air and tried to open his burning eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Dawson, she ain’t shooting at you,” the boy said, and for a moment Randall believed it was his son and he must still be dreaming.