by James Wade
“Get the crackers down from that shelf,” she said without turning around, and Randall hesitated, which was not to the woman’s liking and she told him so. “Never mind. I’ll do it my goddamn self. You want anything done around here, I swear to Christ, you just have to do it your goddamn self.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I wasn’t sure which shelf,” Randall stammered, and Charlotte smiled and seemed to be enjoying the interaction, while Tad appeared as nervous as Randall and Pumpkin studied the ceiling with his hands in his lap.
“Sorry, ma’am,” the woman mocked him. “I give you shelter and make you tea and you can’t even get the goddamn crackers. Well, I don’t know what I expected from a man. My husband—may he rest in whatever hell was waiting for him—he was as useless as tits on a bull.” She looked at Charlotte. “All men are, you know. Every man to ever walk this earth has been kept alive only by the patience and practicality of a woman.”
“I can believe that,” Charlotte said.
“Well, it’s a matter of fact not belief. Belief’s got nothing to do with it.”
The woman put a cup in front of each of them and she stopped and stared at Pumpkin and he never took his eyes from the ceiling.
“When we first came out in eighteen and forty-three my husband, bless his ignorant heart, was going to strike it rich in the gold mines of California. ’Course, as you can goddamn well see, we didn’t make it to California or nowheres close before he got hisself snakebit. Might’ve lived if it was only the one bite, but he was in such a hurry to get back to our camp to get the poison out, he stirred up another snake and this one got him a couple more times. Dumb sumbitch, my husband.”
“And you didn’t go back after that?” Randall asked and the woman looked at him with disgust.
“Go back, hell,” she said. “All that was back east was more dumb men. No, I was wilder in my younger days and I figured I’d live on my own in the wild until a worthy man came along and swept me up. You all see how goddamn well that worked out.”
“You didn’t have no problems with Indians?” Tad asked.
The woman laughed.
“Indians,” she said. “I almost married an Indian, after my husband died. A beautiful Mescalero boy. He was dark and hard with the most lovely black hair that hung down his back. Let me tell you, the bedroom activities were never dull with that one.”
Tad choked on his tea.
“But unfortunately, he was also a man and worse than that, he was an Indian man and if you think men are simple in our world you should try the world of an Indian man. They hunt and smoke and hunt and smoke and tell stories and play grab-ass with one another. The women do all the work. I mean everything. They dress the animals, they cook and clean and set up and tear down anytime the village moves. They raise the children, they tan the hides, they farm the gardens, they make the tools and the pottery, and the whole thing was just too goddamn much. I mean, there’s nobody ever accused me of shying away from no work. It ain’t about that. It’s about working for somebody else and not getting paid a wage—you understand what I’m saying? Anyhow. I sure do miss the pecker on that boy though. Black boys got big peckers too, I’ve heard. Is that right?”
Tad’s mouth hung open, and Randall’s eyes went wide.
“I couldn’t say,” Charlotte answered, hesitant.
“Couldn’t say? What, are you with this one?” the woman asked and motioned to Randall. “Hell, I thought he was your boss or something. I didn’t know you was with him. You need to train him up, honey. He couldn’t even find the goddamn crackers.”
* * *
That night Randall sat on the porch wrapped in an Indian blanket the woman had tossed at him and smoked his pipe. The storm had passed and the night was quiet and still and the chair under him creaked and the floor under it creaked as well and far across the plain a panther came down from the rocky hills and pawed at the fresh snow.
The moon shone bright and reflecting off the white fields it was brighter still. Randall watched his own smoke rise into the air and there it lingered for a moment and then moved on and joined up with the thick column from the chimney and together they drifted toward the moon, as if being called home.
The woman opened the door and stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind her and sat in the empty chair next to him without saying anything. Above them dark shapes passed through the moonlight, and Randall leaned forward to better see.
“Geese,” the woman said. “I been wondering when they was gonna come. Head down to Mexico—and further, I reckon—about this time every year. ’Course they probably weren’t counting on this goddamn storm.”
“Probably not,” he answered.
“Can’t blame ’em. There ain’t much in the world you can count on. Your black girl in there tells me you all are on some mission for vengeance. Says a couple of lowlifes killed your boy.”
“She’s not mine. She’s a free woman.”
“Well, whatever you want to call it. She’ll never be free, though. None of ’em will. They may go back to the chains in time, or they may not, but they won’t be free. Not here.”
The old woman produced from her gown pocket a small sack and in it was the trimmings of an aromatic leaf and Randall watched as she pinched a dose and placed it unceremoniously into her mouth and began to chew.
“That’s not tobacco,” he said and the woman rolled her eyes.
“I guess you must be the smart one of the bunch,” she said. “You want any hashish? I got an old Mexican fella who passes through from time to time and brings it for me. His wife up and died a few years back, and I think he wants to marry me. Or at least wants me to go down to Mexico and take care of his ass.”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”
“You sure are one polite sumbitch to be riding all this way looking for some folks to kill. The boy says you already had it out with some of them road-running sacks of shit.”
Randall nodded.
“Well, I guess if that didn’t turn you around, there ain’t much that will.”
“I guess.”
“What’s wrong with the little one?”
“Couldn’t say. Found him in a town with no name and no people other than an old priest who looked about ready to die.”
“So you just thought, I already got one child gonna be in danger, I might as well put another one there with him.”
Randall shrugged. “I didn’t want anyone coming with me to begin with. Now they’ve been here long enough it seems natural.”
“Well, it ain’t. If you and that woman wanna go get yourselves killed, then go right ahead, but you ought to leave them boys with me.”
Randall leaned away from the woman and eyed her with great curiosity.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’m a mean old cuss, but I ain’t heartless.”
“If you aren’t, you put on a good show of it.”
“I imagine that’s fair,” she said. “I had me a boy once too. Me and my husband, back in Virginia. It’s how come we were headed west in the first place. He died in the war and we couldn’t set there in the house where we raised him, or even the state for that matter. We loaded up and went running from our sorrows, and it shouldn’t taken no genius to see they was gonna follow along for the duration. And they did. The West ain’t no different than the East, and as much as there ain’t neither side gonna say it, the North ain’t no damn different than the South. It’s all just people in a pot and we’re boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter and in between we hope to make some money and make some love and maybe raise a few babes to carry on after us. Funny how we do that. So scared of dying we think we can work our way around it all by living on through our children. But children die too. Some quicker than others.”
She tucked her sack away delicately in its pocket and leaned back in her chair.
“I’m gonna go ahead
and assume you ain’t never killed a man, and save us the time of me asking or you lying,” the woman told him. “Now these boys killed your son and that’s a damnable offense, no doubt. But let me tell you a little secret, Mr. Dawson. There ain’t nobody holding your son captive ’til you get your revenge. They ain’t gonna let him go soon as some more bodies hit the ground. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, ma’am, I believe I do.”
“But you still think this is something you got to do? Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Makes you feel more like a man, does it?”
“Maybe so.”
“Mm-hmm. Of all the species on God’s brown earth, men are the dumbest and the race ain’t even close.”
“Maybe so.”
“You leave them boys here. You know it’s the right thing.”
“I’ll talk to them.”
“You’ll get ’em killed is what you’ll do.”
“I’ll see about it.”
“You goddamn well better. And let me tell you one more thing, before this green leaf puts me to sleep. Revenge isn’t real. You can’t buy coffee with it. It won’t warm your bed at night. And killing only leads to more killing. You want my advice, you take that pretty one in there and y’all go on and get married and you have yourself another boy to make you forget about the first one. That might seem harsh, but I’ve lived too long and seen too much to tell it any other way but the way it is.”
The woman stood and put her hand on his shoulder and he stared up at her face and it was as soft a look as he’d seen.
“You seem a good and decent man, sir. I’ve known very few, but the ones I knew all had the decency pulled out of ’em by the woes of the world. It didn’t happen overnight, neither. It was a slow burn of a growing flame and eventually it ate up the humanity that made ’em decent in the first place.”
Randall placed his hand atop hers and nodded and thanked her and said again he’d talk to the boys. When she opened the door a rush of warm air blew past him from inside the cabin and it was gone before she closed the door again.
29
We rode south into what looked like desert never ending and then there were mountains where before there was nothing, as if they’d been set down momentarily en route to a more deserving home. The weather came and it came fast and the mountains were gone again, blocked by a snow that blew sideways, moving east without regard for those who would not follow.
Marcus and Tom made the line, passing out coats taken from the dead in Perry Springs, and I took mine and looked past the bullet-sized holes in the fabric and knew that in the face of the storm there was warm or cold and nothing else.
When Shelby came for a coat there was not one given and he was told they were only for those who killed and he complained and said the girl had a coat and Tom asked if he was a woman. I tried to give him mine and he refused and there was a hate in his eyes and I understood why. I watched the fog of his breath fill the air around his face like a mask and then he was gone, pushing Bullet toward the front of the column.
The storm broke near the base of the Chisos, the desert behind us and the climb ahead and the sun setting soon.
The next morning we started into the mountains, where Grimes said dozens more men were waiting. A dry arroyo started wide at the base but turned narrow and the men dismounted one after the other and walked their horses over the slick rocks and thawing snow. Marcus took my reins in hand with his and led us, the two horses and me, and he no doubt harbored a guilt for drawing down on me.
We saddled up again on the shaded side of the mountain, where the path disappeared into a pine forest and the air was colder still and it spilled out onto a set of steep switchbacks leading up. I worked my jaw around with my mouth open to relieve the pressure in my head and slumped forward onto the horse holding tight the horn of the saddle lest I slide backward on the steep grade of the trail.
I watched the mules and wagons navigate the sloped trail, the wooden wheels somehow failing to crack and splinter against the rock, and I felt the eyes of mule deer ventured down to below the snow line to forage and now come upon this winding snake of men and beasts. The grackles screamed at us from their branches and named us intruders, their wings and chests becoming wide and puffed in their defiance. When we made no move to turn back, they for a moment relented but then flew yet to other trees to repeat the notion.
The gray clouds and the peaks above us hid the sun like a glowing treasure behind their backs, and we could see they would not let it go until morning. The trees swayed and shook and shed in the blistering of the wind, the cold lassoed to it like a stubborn cowboy. I pulled tighter my coat around me and sought to tuck my jaw downward and erase the length of my neck so that I might bury my face into the fabric like a turtle into its shell. Other men did the same and soon it was as though a band of coats and hats rode up the mountain pass with only dark, inset eyes to guide them.
Even with our small party the going was slow and laborious and it occurred to me the suffering and logistical difficulties if the army were to send men up this mountain. It was also not lost on me the proximity to the Rio Grande and how easily the Lobos could slip into Mexico if they were to receive any unwanted company.
We reached the main camp at day’s end, and it looked more a proper village than the tent city I’d imagined. There were a handful of log cabins, a livery, and several bonfires burning throughout the clearing.
“What do you think?” Marcus asked, riding past me. “Home sweet home.”
The Perry Springs women were taken to one of the cabins, and I was shown to a tent near the livery by one of the men from the mountain.
“I’m G.W.,” he said and held out his hand. He looked a part of the mountain, covered in hides and hair and with a grizzled beard.
“Caleb,” I said, and we shook.
“Grimes says you’ll bunk with me. Says you like horses.”
I nodded.
“I like women,” he replied, disappearing into the tent. “But to each his own.”
I looked out at all that was before me. The sun was sliding from the sky and threatening to go west forever. The clouds moved in the opposite direction, as if they’d had a falling out or just come to some different conclusion about things. I watched them go. I watched as the shadows of dusk arose from their graves and were given life by the fading light. Soon the world would be covered in darkness and the shadows would return to the feet of those things from which they were birthed, but here in this magic hour they were free to move and grow and exist on some balanced plane between light and dark.
* * *
The sun shone our first full day in the camp, and men set about tasks of all nature. Some worked on building shelters, others chopped wood, a small group gathered to argue over the best way to smoke meat. G.W. and me followed the savory smells to the middle of the camp.
A tanned and leathered old woman of not much physical stature sat on an overturned bucket with her legs spread. The front of her dress, a discolored red, hung between her thighs, where her hands were fast at work plucking the feathers from a brown hen.
A man held position over a large cookfire where sat an iron grate full up with various cuts of beef.
“You got them steaks ’bout ready, Big John?” asked a slender man.
“They gettin’ there. Good steak takes time, son.”
“The hell it does. You overcook that meat, and Juanita ain’t gonna stop at them birds.”
The old woman spoke in Spanish, and the big man near the grill grunted.
“You just worry about your pollo, Abuela,” he said. “Leave the real meat to me.”
She glared at him.
“That’s Abuela,” G.W. said, leaning toward me. “She’s been here longer than me. Folks say Grimes killed her son, and now she just follows him around. Like he’s all she’
s got left of her boy or something.”
“Seems strange,” I said.
G.W. shrugged. “Them old Mexicans are a strange bunch.”
“How long you imagine we’ll stay up here?” I asked him.
“Hard to say. Once it starts snowing, it ain’t likely to stop until spring. But that’ll give us plenty of time to breed that fresh crop y’all brought in yesterday.”
“The women?”
“Hell, yeah, the women. What? You still thinking about horses?”
“Have you done it before?”
“Not me. Last winter was the first, but there weren’t as many girls, so it was mainly Grimes and a few of the boys who’d been here longest.”
“And they had children?”
“Yessir. Got a whole nursery set up in one of the cabins,” he said. “Can’t wait to add mine to the bunch.”
I nodded.
“One more question,” I said. “Is there a cowboy up here goes by the name of Frank?”
The man shrugged his shoulders.
“Don’t know any Frank,” he said.
That night I went to the tobacco cart and took a small sack and filled it and wrote my estimate on the ledger and signed my name. I didn’t know the day so I drew the shape of the moon with the pen and left it full and unshaded so that it might mirror the image staring down at me from the starry world of blackness and blaze.
In front of the tent I fed a small fire and watched it lay and rise with the wind, and the flames would swirl up and then die with each great gust and from the dead they rose time and again as a savior from the cold.
“Come on,” G.W. said. “Time to howl.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but I followed, and dozens of men fell in with us, all moving toward a giant bonfire just outside of the camp.
Grimes stood pale and naked before the fire and the others looking up as if he were some monument to a bygone world. He raised his arms high to match the growing flames, and there he was, erect in the light of the moon and the stars and all these things burning. He took in such a breath and stood, mouth closed and eyes wide, and looked to each man in his own eyes and then turned upward toward the floor of the universe and let loose a guttural moan, and those before him stamping their feet into the rock and silt and sand.