All Things Left Wild

by James Wade

  Grimes rose and brushed off his breeches and stared up at the circling birds and they called out and the man nodded and for the briefest moment I gave life to the thought they were conversing, the man and the buzzards. I lifted myself off the ground and squinted my eyes under the pain in my skull.

  “Well, now, that’s not quite what I had in mind,” he said.

  I stood in silence and waited. We stared at one another but somehow it felt as though I was the only one present, watching from some other dimension as Grimes stared at the real me.

  “I could always use good boys. Are you a good boy, Caleb?”

  “I’m a boy who wants to collect his companions and get on down the trail, with all due respect.”

  Grimes wore no gun belt but I took note of the leather sheath that hooked around his neck and shoulder and fell at his side and inside held a bowie knife of considerable size. I tensed, and Grimes stayed with his studious approach, always watching and considering and contemplating and then he threw his hands up in mock defeat.

  “Fair enough. You go get your brother and y’all ride on out.”

  “And the girl.”

  Grimes smiled.

  “You know what your brother was doing to her, don’t you, son?”

  I nodded, “I’ll handle him.”

  “Will you? What do you reckon would have happened between you two if we hadn’t ridden up when we did? Were you gonna kill him?”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Is that a no?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “A woman’s place is with her family,” Grimes said. “Do you agree?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “Then I think it best if my daughter stays with me.”

  I hesitated, then said, “She don’t seem to feel that way.”

  His face flattened out and the way he looked at me set a lump in my throat and I felt the familiar panic sliding up my spine. The thunder in my mind was as loud as it had ever been and I could feel the darkness around us despite the bright sun and even the horse seemed spooked, but Grimes never moved.

  “Get your brother,” he said. “Sophia stays with me.”

  Sophia.

  * * *

  They had Shelby tied back-first against a tree and his head was slumped and bloody but he smiled when I said his name.

  “Looks like you was right, little brother,” he said, almost proud. “The murderous Bentley brothers was famous enough to get caught by a band of bounty hunters.”

  I studied his lazy grin and the mash of pus and dark red crust on the side of this head where it seemed no ear could ever have been.

  “How come they turnt you loose?” he asked, suddenly confused, and I looked around to see how many eyes were on us before I answered.

  “They ain’t bounty hunters,” I half hissed at him. “It’s the Lobos. The ones them cowboys were talking about.”

  Shelby scrunched his face and considered the information.

  “They gonna kill us?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Grimes said they ain’t.”

  “You talked to Grimes?”

  I nodded, “Says the girl’s his daughter.”

  “He’s gonna kill me for sure,” Shelby said, panicked.

  “I don’t think he is, but I ain’t for certain one way or the other. Now lean up and let me get them ropes off. I don’t wanna hang around and find out I’m wrong.”

  I helped Shelby to his feet and we found Bullet with the other horses in a grove of stunted oaks near the creek. His bedroll and saddlebag were attached, and he went through the two satchels slung over the old Mexican saddle and cussed and said the sumbitches had stolen his pistol.

  “Forget it,” I told him. “We still got the rifle.”

  “To hell with that. They can’t get away with that.”

  “They sure as shit can, unless you’re looking to die for that gun. And even then I reckon they’d oblige you and get away with it just fine.”

  Shelby looked around at the hardened warriors milling among the tents and small, scattered fires.

  “That pistol didn’t shoot straight anyways,” he said and he spit and we walked Bullet back up the ridge where my horse sat near Grimes’s tent.

  Grimes had lathered his face with a shave soap and was half bent over a wooden bucket of water gliding a straight razor down his cheek when we walked up.

  “Boys,” he said like an old friend who’d been awaiting our arrival for some time. “Y’all sure I can’t get you to stay for a while?”

  Shelby looked at me, confused, but I said we were just here to collect the horse and rifle.

  “And my pistol,” Shelby blurted out, and my heart sank as Grimes lowered the blade and looked at him blankly.

  “What pistol’s that?”

  “The one your men down there took off me when y’all jumped us by the creek.”

  “That sounds like something you’ll need to take up with them,” Grimes said and turned back to his bucket.

  “Well, ain’t you the boss?” Shelby asked.

  Grimes stilled the razor once more.

  “The boss?” he said. “Are you under the illusion this is a business enterprise of some sort? There is no boss here, son. No workers. That’s not how we do things.”

  “Like Arthur and his knights,” I said.

  I don’t know why I said it. I can’t even be sure where I’d heard it, but Grimes beamed through his lathered soap and pointed the blade in my direction.

  “That’s right, Caleb. Just like Arthur.”

  “Who the hell’s Arthur?” Shelby asked, but we both ignored him and again found ourselves in an unannounced staring contest. Grimes broke first.

  “I knew you were a smart boy,” he said.

  “We’re gonna be on our way, Mr. Grimes. We appreciate the hospitality, and the fact you’re letting us leave outta here in one piece.”

  Grimes held his razor and his stare and no one moved and I felt Shelby shifting anxious beside me. From our right, Marcus approached with three men, one of them an Indian in full native dress who I assumed to be Tom. They were each of them armed. They stopped a dozen or so feet away, and we all stood in silence, every eye on Grimes, waiting.

  “Almost,” he said at last, and his face was straight and still no one moved.

  “Sir?” I asked.

  “Almost in one piece,” and he pointed to the Indian with his razor and grinned and his men laughed and I saw then that Tom had also adorned himself with a necklace from which hung a severed ear.

  I looked back to my brother. Shelby laughed, nervous, and touched his hand to his wound and grimaced and then laughed again.

  “Alright then,” I said and mounted up and bid Shelby do the same and as we rode over the ridge to the east I could feel Grimes watching us and I thought about the girl and her fear and I knew we’d all see each other again.

  16

  They rode, the four of them, up through a mountain pass and down the other side and across sand so white it looked like milk had spilled in the desert. Randall rode ahead, pushing the pace while distant plateaus became reality, and the rabbits and lizards and desert foxes fled from the pounding hooves.

  In the desert valley west of the Guadalupe peaks, he reached a town with no name in which a wedding was taking place and a crowd of well-wishers blocked the road. There was only one street and on it four buildings, one being the church, and Randall looked at the people and wondered where they’d come from but did not ask. He sat his horse, the others yet to reach the town, and watched as the people threw rice into the air and it fell onto the groom’s black jacket like a light snow and blended with the bride’s white dress and veil and Randall remembered his own wedding and how Joanna was upset to be leaving so soon for the territories and he’d told her their whole lives were waiting
for them in the West.

  The groom was short, but well built, with soft tan hair that seemed to match his skin. He beamed to each ear and whispered to his new wife and she laughed and shook her head. He pulled away from her and she reluctantly let his hand slip away, leaning toward his absence as he went. The man bounded up the church stairs and waved his hand to the crowd. He motioned for the bride to follow and she blushed and the crowd clapped until she joined him atop the steps, atop the world. The man began to speak and Randall was not close enough to hear or if he was it didn’t matter.

  Randall thought of the last time he and Joanna had been truly happy and it was long ago and it pained him to admit, but even then he considered it was not her happiness but her desire for a different life that bound her to him. He had said all the things she hoped to hear and they, the both of them, had painted a future in the setting sun. Years of disappointment had stained their dreams, but Harry was the saving grace. He brought them back together, gave them purpose and the colors to draw a happier ending than the one for which they were destined.

  “If only you could go back,” a man said and Randall jumped in his saddle and considered for a moment the possibility of God but found only an old man with a well-kept gray mustache astride an Indian paint horse and the old man motioned with his head toward the newlyweds, who were making a second pass through the line of rice throwers.

  “They got no goddamn clue what life’s all about,” the old man said. “Too bad they can’t keep it that way. Ain’t that right, partner?”

  “I suppose so,” Randall answered and moved to turn his horse.

  “That’s my granddaughter up there. Happy. In love. No goddamn sense in her brain. I’m the richest man in a hundred miles,” the old man said and then laughed at himself. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, there ain’t nothing much around for a hundred miles. Anyhow, I told her, I said, ‘Darling, I’ll give you the money, you just go on and take a coach to El Paso, then catch you a train somewhere.’ North, east—hell, I didn’t care—just away from here, from all this dust and nothingness. Instead, she goes and does the dumbest goddamn thing a person can do. She falls in love. And to a sodbuster of all people. Dumb sumbitch has land not far from here. I know ’cause he bought it from me. Just like I know not a thing’s ever gonna grow on that land—or anywhere else out here. Only thing can grow in this desert is the weight on a man’s soul.”

  “You made money, though,” Randall said, and the man laughed again.

  “Aw, hell, I just got lucky. I come out when this place was full of luck, and we used it all up long ago. I made my money off the ones who come too late. And the ones still coming.”

  The man looked at Randall and Mara and cocked his head.

  “I don’t know you, stranger,” the man said, and it was a statement not a question.

  “I’m Randall Dawson, out of Longpine in the Arizona territory.” Randall stuck out his hand, and the man met it with his own and held onto it as he thought.

  “Dawson. That ain’t kin to Travis Dawson?”

  “Yessir, it is. The lieutenant was my grandfather.”

  “Sumbuck,” the man said and slapped his thigh, causing his horse to stir. “I’ll be goddamned straight to hell, you’re Travis Dawson’s grandson? Well, where the hell were you when my Priscilla up there was set on finding her a husband? You know, your grandpappy was a real mean sumbitch, but boy, he was good stock. We cleaned out the Comanche, the Apache, even some of the damn Yankees before they sent the army out this way.”

  The man laughed and coughed and hacked from his throat.

  “I’m drunk and ornery and sending my only grandbaby out into the world with some sorry kid who don’t hardly have a row to hoe, and here sits the kin of Travis Dawson. Why don’t you come on and enjoy some of the festivities I paid for?”

  Both men turned at the sound of horses, and Tadpole and Charlotte pulled their mounts up alongside Randall, the child still clinging to Tad’s back. Charlotte’s hair fell loose and curled from beneath her hat, and Randall studied the shape of her face as she took stock of the scene ahead.

  “Can I help y’all?” the old man asked and Randall noted a change in his tone.

  “These are my companions, Miss Charlotte Washington and young Tad . . . Tad . . .”

  “Roberson,” Tadpole said and he sat tall in his saddle with his chest out.

  “The child is in our charge as well, but we don’t know his name or his story,” Randall said, worrying how that might sound.

  But the old man barely heard him. He sat stunned, staring at Charlotte, his mouth agape to the point Randall worried he may have been taken by a stroke.

  “A nigger,” the man mumbled, and Charlotte stiffened.

  “Sir?” Randall asked, and the man blinked and spoke again.

  “You telling me the blood of Travis Dawson is out here riding the country with a goddamn nigger?”

  “We best be moving on,” Charlotte said, but Randall waved her off.

  “Oh, I don’t see the hurry,” Randall said, not taking his eyes off the old man. “This gentleman here just invited us to his granddaughter’s wedding celebration.”

  The old man’s face grew two shades of red.

  “I sure as hell didn’t invite no nigger,” he said, and Randall mocked a look of disappointment.

  “Well, that’s a shame,” he said, then leaned closer to the man. “Because if you think my grandfather was mean, you oughta see what I’ll do to you if you say one more word about that woman.”

  Randall folded his arms across his waist and let his right hand rest on the butt of his Colt.

  The man considered this, and in the seconds he took to think, Randall felt as if his hard-beating heart would betray his false display of confidence. His hand began to shake and he slowly lowered it to his side. He tried to control his breathing, but the world began to shrink around him.

  “Well, fine—this is already a goddamn disaster of a day,” the old man muttered as he nudged his horse toward the crowd.

  Randall’s pulse showed in his neck, and though he wasn’t quite strong enough to form words, he looked at Charlotte and nodded.

  “What are we waiting on?” Tad said eagerly. “Let’s get us some of this wedding grub. I ain’t had no cake since I asked Daddy where my momma was.”

  “Pumpkin,” the child agreed.

  They tied their horses and filled their plates with grilled corn and paper baskets of fruit from a buffet line stretching through a courtyard in back of the church. Long wooden tables had been moved outside and they sat and ate in silence and ignored the puzzled or angry glances that came their way. Tadpole left his seat on a quest for cake and Randall looked at Charlotte and smiled and she said nothing.

  “Not even a ‘thank you?’ ” he asked.

  “Thank you?” she repeated, her jaw tight. “I don’t know these people. I don’t need this food. All I see is we’re wasting time with a bunch of folks who don’t want us here. And what was you planning on doing if that old man decided he was gonna get some boys to ride us outta town? You gonna draw them pretty pistols and start spilling blood?”

  “No, I just . . . I thought maybe you would think I . . . That was hard for me, to stand up that way. I’m not used to it. I think I was trying, maybe, to impress you.”

  “Why on God’s green would you be trying to impress me? I done told you, Mr. Dawson, I’m here for that boy and nothing else. You’re a married man. And if you weren’t, going around picking fights ain’t the way to court me.”

  “What is the way?”

  “What?”

  “To court you,” he said, and she noted his eyes, desperate and searching, like a lost child.

  “Don’t be foolish,” she said, dismissing him.

  “Well, I wasn’t gonna let him call you that,” Randall said, then stood.

  “Where y
ou goin’?” Charlotte asked.

  “To see if anyone has a bottle.”

  “Well, don’t get drunk and go to shooting ghosts again,” she snapped. “We ain’t got time to bury ’em all.”

  She watched him go. He was slight, but sharp. Handsome even, she thought as she tried not to smile. She had not been with a man in more than a year. She had no desire to, as most men were foul and obnoxious. Still, something ached inside her and she could not convince herself Randall Dawson had nothing to do with it.

  Randall returned empty-handed, while Tad showed up with cake crumbs still on his lip. The child stuffed his pockets full of corn and they rode, the four of them, away from the town, leaving the wedding and the people and the sun behind them.

  * * *

  The road, like the country it ran through, pitched and tilted and flattened out only to pitch again and Randall studied the map and Charlotte studied the sun and both knew they were making good time.

  They stopped only once the rest of the day, near a wooden marker with an arrow painted on it in a color once red. The child flung himself from Tad’s saddle and stood up, apparently unharmed, and stared at the post. When they circled back around for him he wouldn’t get back on the horse. He shook his head like a dog throwing off water and then commenced with slapping his own skull with open palms.

  Charlotte slid off of Storm and tried to calm the boy but it was slow going. Randall tried talking to him and that too brought no results.

  “Looks like he wants to stay,” Tad said. “Might as well let him.”

  They stared at him until the guilt came, and he sighed and got off his horse.

  “Goddamnit all,” he said, and reached out and took the boy by the hand and the boy quieted on the spot and Tad helped him up onto the horse.

  Charlotte and Randall stared at each other and at Tad and he looked at them with contempt and lost patience.

  “Don’t say a word,” Tad told them. “I’m just ready to get on with it.”

  He put the horse back into the road and Charlotte and Randall followed suit and the boy whispered, “Pumpkin,” and Tad shook his head.