Paradise Sky

by Joe R. Lansdale

  I glanced up then, seen Ruthie had turned her head away from her reading and had set her eyes on me. I said, “What are you reading?”

  “Ivanhoe,” she said.

  “I read that myself,” I said, it being one of the books me and Mr. Loving had read together.

  “The women in it seem fairly dumb and always have to be rescued. There’s times when I wish they would just get their heads chopped off.”

  “But other than that you enjoy it?”

  “I suppose I do,” she said. “Robin Hood is in it. I rather like Robin Hood.”

  “Ruthie is one peculiar girl,” Luther said. “She wants to be a schoolteacher.”

  “That sounds like a good idea for a smart woman,” I said.

  “I agree,” said Luther, “and I second it. She’s just peculiar is all. She talks to ducks.”

  “Birds in general,” Ruthie said. “They are good listeners.”

  “She says they talk to her,” Luther said. “What can you do with a daughter who talks to ducks?”

  I laughed. Then I saw Ruthie’s face. Hell, she and Luther was dead serious. That gal talked to ducks.

  Luther changed horses, so to speak, said, “I’m a preacher, but I don’t take the Good Book just as it is.” He took a fat, floppy Bible from an open box, held it in my direction. “This is no more than a guide. I don’t believe that the words of the Bible are divine or to be taken exactly as is. There are as many bad things in the Bible as there are good, and the bad things are often held up as good because some Bible hero did it, and that doesn’t set right with me. The Old Testament I pass over completely. As for the New Testament, I follow Thomas Jefferson’s lead. I have underlined only the things that are said to have been spoken by Jesus. The rest is of no importance, really. The Beatitudes. How Jesus said we should treat people, do unto others as you would have them do unto you—those are the things I teach.”

  I told him about Mr. Loving, how he believed God just sort of started the clock then stepped off the stage.

  Luther nodded. “Perhaps, but I think he helps in our lives. Maybe not the way we want and when we want. I know it’s hard for some to accept, but I think there is a plan to things. I think he has laid it out, but not in stone. We can vary that plan. We can do better, or we can do worse. There is an afterlife, son, and not all of us will go there, but I don’t believe God sends anyone to hell. I don’t think of him as that mean. I think the bad die and cease to exist; their souls fade. But the good, they live on in paradise.”

  “With harps and such?” I said.

  “I seriously doubt that. I don’t think it’s a corporal place, but one where we are all part of something that is impossible for man to define. Some part of our great universe.”

  “That actually don’t sound much like a preacher,” I said.

  “I’m not with the Methodist anymore.”

  I liked Luther pretty much right off for his manner. And for him not being a Methodist.

  “You teach me how to shoot?” Samson asked.

  “No, he will not,” Luther said before I could answer. “You will learn to read and write and make something of yourself.” After this exchange, Luther turned to me. “No offense meant, sir.”

  “None taken.”

  Next morning Ruthie milked the cow into a bucket and poured the milk into one of the barrels, except for that which was used to drink or for cooking. The way they had it worked out is that as the day went on and the wagon rolled, it sloshed that milk in that barrel until it was the same as having been churned. In the evening the churned milk was salted into butter, then stored in tins. There was usually more butter than could be eaten, but it was also used for easing the pain of cuts and such, and it was even used to take the place of grease for the wagon wheels. Most important, it was poured on flapjacks and mixed with molasses. The flapjacks was made from flour from one of the barrels, which when mixed right with milk and butter can be stretched out for a long time.

  We traveled like this for quite a few days with no trouble in sight. The meals was good, if pretty much the same, and the company was good, too, and it made me glad I had come along with them.

  One night after we stopped and the cow was milked again, the milk being drunk with a dinner of boiled pinto beans and cornbread, the cornmeal coming from yet another barrel, I said to Luther as we sat around the fire, our bellies full, “I seen three of the barrels used. What’s in them other three?”

  Turning to look back at the wagon, Luther said, “Of the three on the other side, one is full of salted meats, which we haven’t broken into yet, and if we can start scaring up some game, we may not have to for a while. As for the other two, well, one has our old dog Scratch salted down in it, and the other contains Geraldine, my wife and the children’s mother.”

  I thought for a moment he was tugging my leg, but when I looked at him, glanced at Ruthie and Samson, I could see he was dead serious.

  “You have your wife and family dog salted down in barrels?”

  “I just said that.”

  “I know, but I felt it needed repeating.”

  “Pickled, to be exact. Brine water, and a bit of this and that to keep them solid and without odor. I had to bend Geraldine’s knees under her chin to make her fit, but she is a small woman, so it’s not that bad.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Bend her at the knees?” Luther asked.

  “No. Pickle her.” I said this and watched my back in case Ruthie or Samson might come up on me, whack me in the head with the intent of pickling me for a later trail lunch.

  “It’s not as grim and mysterious as it seems,” said Luther. “Scratch is a beloved pet, and he come down sick and had to be shot. When my wife died a day later, we decided we had had enough. I had already made the break with the Methodist as a preacher, and the house we lived in belonged to a little church not far from Dodge, and they were forcing us out, so we decided to head to Arkansas. I have kin there, though I’ve never been to Fort Smith. They’re on my wife’s side, actually. I know them from letters. Geraldine was from Arkansas and always wanted to go back, so back she’s going. The idea of leaving Geraldine and Scratch behind for the wind to blow over without any kin nearby was too much. I dug Scratch up, and though he had already been visited by the worms, I pickled him and then Geraldine, set them aside for a few days until we had to leave. When we did, we took them with us. And there they are.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that. I just sat there while Ruthie came over and plopped more food on my plate, poured me more milk.

  “I guess that’s understandable,” I said.

  “Sure it is,” he said. “We couldn’t bear to leave them behind. The thought of it made me sick. I considered it, mind you. It would have been the easy way, but we had a family meeting, which is where I tell them what we’re going to do, and I did it.”

  “How’s that settle with you, Ruthie?” I asked.

  “I want my mother buried in soil where I live,” Ruthie said. “And if she can’t be where I am, I just want her to be some place nicer in the winter.”

  “I hear Arkansas can get pretty brisk in the winter,” I said.

  “It’s got to be better and prettier than Kansas,” she said. “If it’s pretty, I can stand the weather.”

  “Scratch was a good dog,” Samson said. “Mama liked him, too.”

  “Sounds like to me you got it worked out,” I said. Then I ate and drank the milk and then had coffee. That night I slept a little greater distance from the wagon, and I didn’t sleep solid or comfortable.

  More days passed, and I mellowed on the pickling news. I come to think of Luther and his family as odd, but not crazy or dangerous. I guess if you was a generous thinker, you could look at them making big pickles out of their family member and a dog as a gesture of love and kindness. That said, I made sure not to dip from the wrong barrel when I was helping with the flour or dipping out milk or butter. I didn’t want to come up with Geraldine’s eye or one
of Scratch’s ears in a flour scoop. I also wondered about Ruthie and her talking to ducks. I wondered what the ducks had to say. Since none was on hand at the moment, this was a question that had to go unanswered.

  We came to the Indian Nations. There was plenty of Indians there, many of them said to be tame, but I felt it wise not to chance their friendly dispositions if we should come upon some. My plan was to cock my weapons and keep a sharp eye out in case they was overtaken with a sudden loss of hospitality. I knew for a fact Comanches wandering through there would soon skin us as look at us.

  We met a few travelers now and then—whites, mostly. Some of them had been bushwhacked and robbed. We met a colored couple on their way to Kansas. They said they had two children when they started, but they’d come down sick and died. Had it not been for a friendly Cherokee that was wandering about on foot, they would have died, too. He gave them some food and pointed them the right way to go, and then he was gone.

  They ate supper with us one night, and the next morning, loaded down with milk, butter, and such that Luther felt he could spare, they headed north, toward what I figured would soon be weather cold as a witch’s tit. Before they left I asked them if they had come across a burned-face man, partly scalped, and they said they hadn’t. I figured if they had, they’d have remembered it.

  We came to the base of the Ozarks. The land had gradually moved from prairie to a rise in the earth and finally into tree-flecked mountains. When we got up in the mountains a ways, we stopped one night and decided on a two-day wait. The mules was tuckered out from pulling the wagon, and the cow was starting to have trouble keeping up. The milk had started to dry up, maybe from her not being milked as properly as she should have. We thought with rest and a good feeding for a couple of days, the animals would regain their strength. Only Satan seemed fine and even bored from waiting around.

  On our first night there, after Ruthie and Samson had disappeared inside the wagon, me and Luther sat around the campfire. We enjoyed doing that. I had come to look forward to it every night when we camped. First there would be dinner, and for some of the stories Luther told, Ruthie and Samson would be about. Then they would grow tired and turn in. Me and Luther would tell stories about this and that, and if the fire was bright enough, sometimes we’d read books from the wagon, now and again reading aloud to one another. On this night we wasn’t reading nothing, just had blankets wrapped over our shoulders to fight against the cold. There was a night bird calling, kind of pretty, and way out where the mountains was standing tall, a cry like a dying woman came down from them and seemed to roll at our feet like a ball.

  “Cougar,” Luther said. “They ain’t much for bothering someone, but it happens now and then. When I was growing up, we used to lose chickens, hogs, and dogs to them from time to time.”

  “East Texas has bobcats, a few cougars,” I said. “I’ve seen bobcats, but not cougars.”

  “They are elusive critters,” Luther said. “And out like this, it’s best not to come up on one. They mostly won’t bother a person, but they don’t have a code against it if they’re hungry enough or we get in their way.”

  Luther picked up a stick and stirred it around in the fire.

  “What brought you to being a preacher, Luther?”

  “Sin,” he said. “My own as well as that of others.”

  “What could you have done?” I said. “You’re about as affable a fellow as I’ve ever met. You steal some apples?”

  “It was more than that,” he said.

  I waited to see if he was going to volunteer a reason. It was a long wait. I heard the distant cry of that cat again. It brought a chill to my bones that was worse than that brought to me by the wind.

  Luther pulled the stick from the fire and dropped it on the ground. He looked at me, said: “It’s not a simple answer. I was a young man, twenty-five, and I wanted a pistol I saw in a store.”

  “A pistol?” I asked.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” Luther said.

  “Not like I got a meeting to attend to,” I said.

  “I guess you are pretty much trapped here. I lived in Missouri then. A small town, though actually it wasn’t much of town. That store wasn’t much of a store, either, a clapboard building with one room and some shelves with things on them, and there was a big potbellied stove. White men liked to go there and sit around the stove and swap stories, drink some, chew tobacco, and spit at a can. I was fresh from being a slave, but we weren’t treated a lot better afterward. You know about that, I’m sure. I seen that pistol on the shelf when I was running an errand for my former master, as my pa still worked for him, except now he got some wages of a sort; they weren’t much more than what we had when we were owned. I think I was feeling my freedom, Nat. I was feeling bold. I was supposed to be free, so why wasn’t I? I wanted that pistol. I knew there wasn’t any way I could have it, and I was supposed to have the same rights as everyone else.

  “Old Man Turner had a rule, and there was even a sign. It said: I DON’T SELL FIREARMS OR AMMUNITION TO NIGGERS. The resentment built up in me. I had been secretly educated by my pa, who was educated himself, at least to some degree. He had been stolen from the North and brought to the South as a slave when he was young. He had been a free man and could read and write and cipher, but he had to act like he couldn’t do any of those things. That wasn’t tolerated in a slave. After he was stolen, he tried to slip away a few times, but all that got him were terrible beatings. One time Master used pliers to pull out his back teeth as punishment. Pa finally gave up and accepted things. I had been there twenty-five years and accepting it myself. My mother had long died. There were brothers and sisters, but they had been sold off. I was kept because I was strong and Master needed someone sturdy to work the way he worked us. It never occurred to me that I was accepting things same as Pa. It only come to me that he was accepting it. I can’t explain that. Maybe because he was my pa I thought he was supposed to do something, and whatever he did was supposed to include me. I realize now that he was whipped down, body and soul. That pistol became more than a pistol. I wanted to defy that sign and have that gun. It was like a statement, I suppose. I am free and should be treated like I am.

  “Well, one night I snuck out and crept over to the store, pried the back door with a claw hammer, and went inside. There was a safe there. It wasn’t any bigger than a shoe box and was about as secure. I was able to pry it open with the claw hammer and steal thirty-eight dollars that was in there, though I left a copper in it out of spite. I stole that pistol, too. I looked around for some shells but couldn’t figure out which ones went to it. I didn’t know a thing about guns then. I stuffed a bunch of shell boxes in my pocket and lit out. I decided I was going to make my way north through the Ozarks. I thought things might be better up north. The weather was good. I was strong as a bull. And I was spiting not only Old Man Turner, I was spiting my pa, who at that moment in time I saw as a coward.

  “I hid out in the woods and tried to make my way north, but I hadn’t been anywhere much and couldn’t figure out which way to go. I tried to use the sun as my guide, and that way I could find north, but what I hadn’t thought about was that you couldn’t always take a straight route. The mountains, the trees, the creeks, the available paths didn’t always suit a straight direction.

  “What happened is they sent my pa after me, along with a white man, and they had dogs with them. After a few days they run up on me. That white man wanted to let them dogs on me, but Pa kept begging him not to, saying he could talk me in.

  “Well, he wouldn’t have had to talk too hard. I had stolen the wrong ammunition, hadn’t eaten anything but a few wild foods, and was so hungry and weak I wouldn’t have cared what they done to me.

  “This white fellow, I think his name was Ennis or some such, had been hired to bring me in. Old Man Turner had figured out pretty neatly it was me, as I was the only one missing. He was the one sent them out to get me. I bet it cost him more to catch me than it cost to bring ba
ck the money.

  “Pa came into the brush where I was at, the dogs having pretty well surrounded me. He asked me to toss out my pistol, and I did, saying it wasn’t loaded. He picked it up and gave it to Ennis, and I come out. Ennis said, ‘Now, this nigger is going to take a whipping, and you’ll take one too, being his pa.’

  “Pa offered to take a whipping for both of us, and that hurt me to hear it. All of a sudden I didn’t exactly know how I felt about him. I didn’t want him to take a whipping for me, and I didn’t want to take no whipping, either. Ennis said we would both take a whipping and told Pa to strip off my shirt and tie me to an elm so my back was facing away from the tree. I had had many a whippings, but I had come to the point then when I wasn’t going to take no more of them voluntarily. But I didn’t let on that I had turned rebellious again in less than five minutes. Pa started leading me toward the elm. He didn’t like it, but I think he didn’t see any other way out, and he had many times coated my whip lashes with lard and butter and a bit of coal oil. I have the scars to prove that.

  “Ennis came over to stand by Pa so as to watch and see he tied me right. I knew then I wasn’t going to take a whipping come hell or high water. I snatched a pistol from Ennis’s belt, and I shot him. Right in the face. Pa tried to take the gun away from me, maybe thinking Ennis was alive and we might find our way out of this yet. Or maybe he wasn’t thinking. But I tell you what I did. I shot Pa.”

  “Hell,” I said.

  “Didn’t kill him. I shot him in the leg, and he went down. I figured the only thing I could do was take Ennis’s horse and get on out of there. The dogs didn’t know what to do when Ennis was shot, and they sort of drifted off on their own, not having anyone giving them commands. Now they was free, too. All the time I’m getting ready to ride out of there, Pa was begging me not to do it, and then I couldn’t go through with it. Least not without Pa. I got him on the horse, and we rode down a trail and into some valley land. There we come across a colored man running an errand for his former master. Not much had changed for him, either, except in word. I asked him about a doctor. Course, no white doctor was going to help us, and there wasn’t any colored doctors. But he said there was an old woman who was pretty much left to her own devices in a cabin on the edge of a planter’s property. She was once a slave there. She was said to do good things with wounds and sickness.