Paradise Sky

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “I won’t try to convince you. We’ve had that talk. But I will say this. If you can’t get right with God, then you better get right with yourself.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say,” I said.

  “Does it help?”

  “As much as anything could.”

  “People are an odd bunch,” Luther said.

  “Sometimes I feel odder than the rest.”

  “Should I pray for that man’s soul for you, Nat?”

  “I guess it couldn’t hurt, even if I think your words are bouncing off the wall.”

  “You’re saying it’s the thought that counts.”

  “I don’t think anything counts much, to tell the truth.”

  “I’ll say a prayer for him anyway. What’s his name?

  “Chooky Bullwater. I wonder if he stole the pig cause he was hungry. They said it was an old feud, but maybe he just wanted something to eat. I been that low before.”

  “So have I, as I’ve told you. I had a Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment. Maybe this is yours.”

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  “You didn’t shoot Chooky or the pig, Nat.”

  “True enough.”

  “Ruthie told me you were in town. She told me about Win. I didn’t know her, but I remember how you talked about her. I’m sorry.”

  “I should have come to see you sooner. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  Luther put his hand on my shoulder. “Ruthie has feelings for you, you know that?”

  “I do.”

  “I know there’s been some bad things in your life, and Win was important to you, but if you have feelings for Ruthie, I think you ought to let her know. And if you don’t, then you ought to let her be.”

  “I guess I’m sorting out how I feel about things.”

  “Don’t sort too long,” he said. “There’s other fellows that have an interest in her. I fear the Baptist fellow the most.”

  “What about a nonbeliever?”

  “You got room to come around. He don’t. He’s solid Baptist.”

  “Judge Parker says God is a Methodist.”

  “Better that than a Baptist or those fools that play with snakes.”

  “Somewhere along the line I figure you got bit by a Baptist instead of a snake,” I said.

  “I do hold a certain prejudice, but that is neither here nor there. It’s good to see you again, Nat. You know, Samson greatly admires you…Let me ask. Does this event today mean you’ve given up on the man hurt Win?”

  “I’m still a deputy marshal, and he is in my sights as an officer of the law.”

  “And that’s all there is to it? A man doing his duty?”

  I didn’t answer that. I dodged around it. “You know what? Say a few words for that innocent pig. He wasn’t killed to be dinner. He was murdered.”

  I got up, patted Luther on the shoulder as I passed, and left out of there.

  31

  A few days later, one sunny morning, I was at the courthouse. I had testified in court about a fellow I had arrested for stealing a couple goats. It had been an easy arrest. I found him asleep on the trail and the goats he stole wandering about. He wasn’t much of a rustler. Another hour of him asleep and the goats would have walked home.

  I finished up my testimony and was coming down the courthouse steps with a warrant in my pocket for a fellow who had robbed another fellow of a horse, when who should I see riding along on his big sorrel but Bass Reeves. Riding along with him was Choctaw Tom.

  There was a white marshal with them, Heck Thomas, and he was driving the prison wagon that was rattling along behind them. In the back of it six men was peeking out of the bars at me. Three of them was colored, two was maybe Indian or Mexican, and the other was white. I recognized him. Kid Red, the boy me and Bronco Bob had taught to shoot. He was as skinny and ragged as I had first seen him when he was carrying Bronco Bob’s shooting gear. He was hatless, and his red hair had grown long and stringy. He was chained to the others by wrist and ankles and the main chain was locked down to a ring in the middle of the wagon.

  “Hold up, Bass,” I said.

  Bass raised his hand, and Heck pulled the wagon to a stop.

  “I know one of your prisoners,” I said.

  “You knowing him won’t help him none. These are the worst among a bad lot,” he said.

  “They steal full-grown hogs instead of pigs?”

  “That’s funny shit, Nat. You are something of a softie, I fear, and it will get you killed. My prediction is every one of these dog turds will hang, including the one you know.”

  “I’d like to speak to one of the turds for a moment, the one I know.”

  “All right,” Bass said. “Heck, Choctaw, let’s get a cup of coffee. These fellows ain’t going nowhere.”

  Heck climbed off the wagon, and Bass and Choctaw dropped down from their horses.

  “Bass, let me have the redhead off the trot line,” I said.

  “That ain’t a good idea, Nat.”

  “Leave his leg manacles on. Just take him off the main chain, let him out so me and him can talk.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am.”

  “Which one is he?”

  I pointed out Red.

  Bass pushed up his hat and gave me that dark, burning look he used on men who didn’t agree with him. I have to admit, that was some look. I tried not to let my knees buckle.

  “I get a feeling that someday you and me are going to tussle, Nat.”

  “Not unless I steal a pig.”

  Bass grunted. He went around and unlocked the back of the wagon and unchained Red from the main chain and brought him out. He pushed him to me. Red’s leg chains tangled him up, and he fell. I got him under the arm and pulled him up.

  Bass locked the back of the wagon.

  “You got as long as it takes us to have a cup of coffee in the courthouse.”

  “Have two cups,” I said.

  Bass did that grunting thing again, went up the steps of the courthouse and inside with the other two. I led Red over to the courthouse porch, and we sat on the edge of it.

  “How you been, Nat?”

  “Just happy as a duck in water. What the hell, Red? What are you doing? I got a letter from Bronco Bob. He said you’d gone wrong and thrown in with Ruggert. You know what he did to me?”

  Red hung his head. “I feel deeply sorrowful about it, Nat. I do. It’s the whiskey. I got on it, and then I got to liking the guns and the thrill, and next thing I know I’m with Ruggert, and…I wish I could explain it better.”

  “Me, too. What have they got you for?”

  “The big man had a writ, and he served it, and it had a lot of things written on it.”

  “Did you do them all?”

  “Yeah. And some more wasn’t on it.”

  “How bad was what was on it?”

  “Murder, six times, train robbery, stagecoach robbery. Burglary. Public lewdness. I showed my pecker to some ladies. I was drunk on that one, Nat. I mean real drunk. On all them charges I was drunk, Nat. I ain’t like that now. I’m a changed man.”

  “Save it. You’ve crossed the river, and there’s no boat back. You might be lucky with time in prison, but I figure it’s the rope. That’s a lot of mischief, Red.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s bad enough you done all that, but Ruggert? You teamed with him? What did I ever do to you, boy?”

  “Nothing, Nat. You always treated me straight and upright. I ain’t got no excuse for it. You won’t believe this, but when I first got crossed with him I had been rustling some cattle, and he was the man we sold ’em to. Me and these others, and I thought, I know him from Deadwood, and that’s the man done them bad things to Nat, wrapped him in a cow skin and raped his woman and killed the other one. I knew all that from you and Bronco Bob telling me. Shit, Nat. Really, I meant to kill him. And then he had us all stay the night. He was staying in a shack, and it turned out he’d killed them that o
wned it, and they was propped up out back. It was cold weather, so it wasn’t as nasty as you’d think. He put them stolen cows in their corral. Ruggert, he had a buyer, and he paid us for them. He also had some men with him, four of them, so I was waiting on my chance—”

  “This sounds like bigger bullshit than Bronco Bob writes.”

  “Hey, I read some of those books, and they’re good. I’m in a couple of them, though he’s not real nice to me.”

  “Goddamn it, Red. Give me your shitty explanation. Give me something to believe.”

  “I know how it sounds, Nat. But it’s all true. I was going to kill him, but he had whiskey.”

  “You sold me out for whiskey?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Jesus, Red.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen how it did. It was sort of like a little creek—that would be me—flowing into a larger river, and that larger river would be Ruggert. Next thing I know I’m drinking, and he’s talking. I never mentioned you, but he did. He has it bad for you. Told me how you violated his wife and so on and so on, and how he had killed you by wrapping you in a cowhide. Word hadn’t gotten to him yet. I told him I knew you some and that you was alive. I didn’t make out we was friends.”

  “Thanks for that,” I said.

  “He was beside himself. Got so mad I thought he was going to mess his pants. He jumped up and hobbled around—that’s how he walks, with a hobble.”

  “I know. Go on.”

  “He said you was the reason every bad thing had happened to him, including his being burned and scalped and his balls carved on. It was a long, sad story, Nat. And I was moved. Not that I thought you was responsible, but he’d had some deprivations. I learned that word from one of Bronco Bob’s dime novels.”

  “Congratulations on your vocabulary.”

  “Next thing I knew me and him was planning a robbery. I didn’t have nothing against you, and I didn’t think you was responsible for nothing, but he was really sad.”

  “Well, boo-hoo.”

  “So before I know it I’m in with him, and we’re robbing trains and getting into scrapes and he’s praising my gun handling and all that, and I’m liking it. I did mention to you in the past how I hadn’t gotten a lot of attention.”

  “You did,” I said.

  “Now I was getting some. It went to my head.”

  “That’s it? That’s why you were with him?”

  “I suppose that’s all there is to it. And then we did this last job, which was robbing a stage up near Kansas, and things went bad. I got in a shoot-out, killed the driver and the shotgun rider, and damn if a stray bullet didn’t pick off a kid. We had brought everyone out to stand in front of the stagecoach, and there was this boy dressed in a suit and a bowler hat, holding a little dog, and that’s when the shotgun man, who we had disarmed and told to stay up on the seat, pulled a derringer and shot at me. He missed, but I didn’t. Then I shot the driver for good measure, and Ruggert yelled, “Watch them prisoners,” and I don’t know how it happened, but I just turned and shot. Bullet went right through the dog and hit that kid. He just sort of sat down out from under his bowler hat. That dog and him didn’t so much as whimper. I knew then I was through. We split up. Ruggert took the money. Days later I got lost somewhere in the Indian Nations. My horse broke a leg. I shot it and then got lost worse than I was before, if you can imagine that, come out finally on a clay road and knew where I was. Didn’t help me none. Here come that big colored man and with him that other fellow driving the wagon and the mixed blood, and there was five men in there. Deputy marshal, one you call Bass, has a memory like a steel trap. He figured me for someone on the run, which I guess isn’t that hard, but he remembered a description of me and Ruggert. I wasn’t anywhere near where we robbed that stagecoach, but he had already gotten word. Goddamn telegraph.”

  “I don’t like him,” I said, “but he is a hell of a marshal.”

  “He said, ‘You fit a description, boy.’ I tried to hold out on him, but after that kid and that dog, I’d had enough. I shot my mouth off. I told him everything I had ever done, and that included stealing a comb when I was a kid in Deadwood.”

  “You’re still a kid.”

  “I don’t feel like one.”

  “I’m sorry for you, Red, but there’s nothing I can do for you.”

  “You want Ruggert, don’t you?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “I can give you a lead on him, but I’d like something in return.”

  “I can’t let you go.”

  “Hell, I know that. But maybe you can talk to this judge, Parker.”

  “He’s a hard one,” I said.

  “You could talk to him about how I helped you marshals out. Ruggert, he’s the brains behind all this, and he wants to kill you. He knew you were here he’d come for you. I bet he would. But I bet it would be better and easier you just went to him.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “I know his running path. He don’t know I’ve been nabbed. He’s expecting me to show up again. You can use that. Besides, I ain’t going back if I could. I think he might be planning to kill me. There was a fellow in our gang disappeared and no one knew where he went. I figured it was Ruggert got rid of him. Got him alone and killed him on account of it was more money for Ruggert. He always seemed to have more than the rest of us. He was the leader, but he was supposed to split whatever we hauled in even-steven. I don’t know he ever did. Maybe that fellow called him on it.”

  “I don’t care about any of that. Who else is with him?”

  “Pinocchio Joe Bullwater is one. And then there’s this other fellow, Indian Charlie Doolittle.”

  I had never heard Pinocchio Joe’s last name. It was not listed on the warrant, but it certainly rang a bell now.

  “Pinocchio Joe have a brother named Chooky?” I asked.

  “He did. He didn’t ride with us, but he put us up in his cabin some. I was planning on going there when I got caught out on the road.”

  “That’s interesting,” I said.

  “You got to watch Pinocchio Joe. He’ll cut down on you in a minute. Doolittle not so much. He’s kind of like a chicken. He’s just as happy pecking corn out of cow shit as he would be eating fresh corn. But he’s a sneaky bastard. Look here, Nat. Will you talk to Parker?”

  “I will, but I won’t guarantee a thing.”

  “But you will talk to him? Put in a good word for me?”

  “You tell me where Ruggert stays, and if you lead me on a wild-goose chase I will put in a different kind of word with Parker. Hear me?”

  “I do,” he said. “I do. You put in a good word, that’s more than I deserve. Goddamn it, Nat. I am so hungry. I haven’t eaten in days. Bass gave me some water, but when I asked for a bite, he gave me his best wishes.”

  “I’ll get you fed. You can count on that. This information you got, you can’t tell nobody but me. Say anything to anyone else, our deal is off.”

  “That’s how it’ll be. Thanks, Nat. You were always good to me. I want to make things square with you and me. No matter how it turns out, me in prison or bouncing on the end of a rope, I want to make things square.”

  He told me where he thought they were hiding. I placed him back in the cage and secured the lock through the chains that fastened him to the wagon.

  I went over and seen Judge Parker right away. I told him what I knew from Kid Red, and I put in a good word for him on account of him giving me some information that might lead to me coming up on Ruggert and killing him. I also told him there might be something to me checking out Chooky’s cabin.

  “Kid Red has quite a list of serious crimes, Nat,” the judge said.

  The judge was sitting at his desk, but now he stood up, walked around, and looked about his room like he was searching for cobwebs in the corner.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m only asking to put it into consideration. He isn’t really any more than a boy, and he’s had it tough.”
/>   Judge Parker stopped walking, put his hands behind his back, and looked at me.

  “Nat, would you say you’ve had it tough?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Surely things have not all been slick sledding for you as a Negro.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Have you committed any crimes?”

  “Not that I’d own up to.”

  “All right, then, let’s take another tack. Lot of men brought in here have had hard lives and can tell you stories so sad it would make you and your horse weep. But they still had a decision to make, and they chose to go wrong. I know some of the men who work for me haven’t always been on the up-and-up. Maybe that’s your case, son. But what I will tell you is this. I find out they aren’t square, find out they aren’t doing their duty, then they have to answer to the same laws as those they arrest. Understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t want to know your past. Way I look at it, I don’t have a warrant, I don’t have a thing to say to you for anything. But this boy, he murdered a boy and a dog. The dog doesn’t rest as heavy as the child, but it has some weight with me. I like dogs. You look at the list of his crimes—hold up.”

  He went to his desk and ratted around in some papers, came up with one.

  “This is the latest information I have on the Ruggert gang. And it’s quite a list. Your boy, as you call him, has murdered and robbed—”

  “I said as much.”

  “Hold your water. Listen. They have raped in the Nations. Indian women. Negroes and white folk as well. Your boy is said to have raped a young girl. That’s what it says here.”

  “That doesn’t sound like him,” I said.

  “It’s not what he’d tell you. Look at it this way, Nat. A boy like that with bad raising has made choices you wouldn’t make. You may have some knots in your life’s rope, but I bet you haven’t raped any young girls. Now he whines. He could have gone either way, and he chose one way and you chose another. He’s a criminal, and you are a US deputy marshal. You kept your word to him, and now you’re done with it. I will tell you true as the direction we call north I’m going to hang that boy. That’s how it is. Now, if you have something that will let you get this Ruggert and whoever is involved with him in his criminal enterprises, go forth and do it. Good day, Nat.”