by Diane Munier
“Get your hands behind your head,” I screamed at him. “Do it!” I yelled when he hesitated cause the son of a bitch in me was out now.
He put his hands back of his head.
“You stay that way soldier. I mean you don’t move. Clear?”
He stared at me.
“Any of these your sons?”
“What?” said he.
“Your sons!”
They all stayed quiet. They’d lowered their weapons, but they still had them.
“You will answer me, or I will shoot you in the leg.” I pointed my weapon at Sonny’s leg.
“Why you asking?” he said het up now.
“I reckon that one there is one,” I pointed at one ugly enough to be his—same unfortunate eyes.
“That is not my son,” he said.
“Then if I kill him, you won’t mind,” I yelled.
“If you kill him, you’ll never ride out of here,” he yelled.
“Take him,” I said to Michael.
“If you fight, he’ll kill you,” I said to the son, my eyes still on Sonny, “and I will kill your pa.”
Michael took his revolver and pulled ‘the son’ from the mule. He fought some, but only to stay on his feet and show some dignity. Michael made him lie down and put his hands out straight, palms down.
“Who else?” I asked.
“Pa?” One said. Sonny rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth.
I told that one to get off and lie and when Michael went to him he surrendered. It would be hard to shoot such a nice fellow, but not impossible.
“I ain’t gonna watch this, I ain’t gonna,” one said, and I shot him as he had raised his gun, in what could a been construed to be a threatening way. He was not dead, but he wished he was, I think. He had dropped his gun though, and fallen off his mule, and he rolled around in agony but suddenly went quiet, while the big animal ran to glory.
Poor Iris. She’d have more business soon. We stood now, guns leveled, and we waited.
One kicked his mule and turned him round and lit out, and Michael shot him in the back. His mule kept going, but he was slumped forward, and he soon fell out of the saddle laying still as a stone in the yonder field, his butt in the air in a peculiar way, but that was the way he fell. And I wondered if I had not found Jimmy’s new pants.
So we had one more left. I looked at him, and he was beginning to recognize someone crazier than himself. He threw his gun down and raised his hands.
“Get off,” I said. He did. Michael took his gun.
“Tie them up,” I said to William, and he went to his gear on the porch and returned with rope for tying folks. We tied them to one another. One big wagon train of bastards.
The one had died in the yard, the other yonder dead also, not that we checked, but he hadn’t moved, and butt up like that, he surely would have.
I moved them around back of the house and had them set in the yard there. Michael would stand guard.
“You gonna kill us?” Sonny said.
I didn’t answer for like I said, no plan but to get the hell out of there.
William went back to walk the circle. We all had to look sharp then. I went in to check on Iris and Jimmy. His fever was lining out better, but she had him so full of witch’s brew he didn’t come round except to mumble like he was in the war again. That was better than him crying over Allie like he’d been sometimes during the night.
“I need to move him,” I said.
“He’ll die,” she said.
“We’ll all die here. Can you come along? For pay?”
She stared at me. “I ain’t been off this place for ten year.”
“Things have changed,” I said.
“My cow.”
“We’ll run her to pasture and tell that fella probably turned us in to these outside. Same with their mules.”
I told her quickly about the two bodies.
“You can’t go leaving dead folks all over this country,” she said. “Might be I know some of these.”
“If you come, you might be in danger,” I said. “It’s just to the train. Say fifty miles, I reckon. After that…mayhap you’ll want to keep going.” I grinned.
“You got a darkness,” she said.
“Yes’m,” I said.
“Your ma…she has prayed it into submission,” she said. “Stay close to your ma. And…I cannot leave my garden. But him…,” she looked at Jimmy, “he is a strong man. God may allow him more on this earth. I can’t see it clear…though he is loved.” Then she looked at me, “As are you. It holds you in the light.” She looked back at him, “And it holds him there. It comes from the same strong place…from home.”
One thought in my mind—Addie. She was my home.
“Oh,” she says. “Yes it is a woman who steps out of your ma with her own bright light.”
“She is not my ma,” I said so there be no confusion.
“Oh no…but she is someone’s mother.”
“Yes’m.”
“She will set a fence around you, but it will not be small. She will give you room to run and yank you back just in time for you are tethered to her. Stay close to her.”
“Miss Iris…Addie will not have me.”
“She has already had you.”
I knew I blushed like Johnny might.
“You and her are tied. Yes tied and cross-tied. Tangled is what you two are. Yes, trussed and chained. You are…you are one.” She had been looking off at some weeds hanging from her rafters and I looked there too, but I couldn’t see anything beyond a cricket helping himself.
“She might marry Cousin. What about that?”
She looked at me now, her brows thick and white, her eyes blue and sharp. “She might.”
“That’s it?” I didn’t like it.
“Yes. But if she marries him, she’ll pine for you. And you…if this woman won’t have you…just stay by your ma.” She took a big breath, then shuddered. “Her tether is a noose…but it will keep you from a real noose. Yes…stay by her.”
I admit I stared at her some. “Well hellfire. I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
I was thrown, but there was no time to think on this. I surely couldn’t be clawing now just to make it home and spend my days with Ma.
“Can you give me enough medicine to help me get Jimmy to the train? If I can get him to that train, he’ll live,” I said. Maybe we all would. “I reckon I’d like him as close to ‘gone to glory’ as we dare get him. I don’t want him to be aware of all his pain and misery cause we will have to move like the big number nine is breathing up our asses…excuse me.”
“I want those two you killed off my land. You have brought too much death here.”
“Yes’m.”
“And what, pray will you do with these you have tied in my yard?”
“I am marching these four along with us. If we get shot, even if they miss, I shoot one of them, right out front for all the world.”
“That is the darkness I spoke of. But it might get you home,” she said, tapping her furry lip.
Tom Tanner
Chapter Twenty-Three
I walked them two out front, Sonny and the other. Gaylin watched the two after, the sons. His job was harder for they looked at him sometimes, but not so much as they grew so tired and their feet dragged heavy as stones.
I had put the father as lead, for a father should set a path for his children. But I didn’t say that, thought it only. And I wanted to go to Johnny, then, but I would not bring him there.
They had let us pass, but I was not a fool. When we got to that train all hell was what I feared. But I did not fear so much, for I grew stronger with every step toward home, and we had made it to terrain I was familiar with, the plains, even as it was that deceptive quiet I knew so well.
I had pushed these vessels of wrath, and they were dog tired. We had ridden slow, a funeral procession as we led their stinking hero to the train. If we stopped, Gaylin stood over them with the command to fire should the litt
lest thing show itself while William and Michael took note of our surroundings. William sometimes rode off to see if we were followed, and I prayed, yes prayed before he returned.
I wanted these bandits exhausted, and after two days marching, with scant break, they were dragging chins, asses and feet.
So it was I took them into the town of Rigsby. When we arrived, we caused a stir, for two big boys sat on the porch of the general store, and they knew this Sonny, or knew of him, I couldn’t get it straight because they were unable to express a thought it seemed, but they were more suspicious of me than they were of the outlaws. But there was a man there who fought with the Eighty-First, and he was sheriff. He did not have a jail, but there were posts with chains and cuffs in a lean-to where deserters had once been held. I reckoned that could not be a more fit provision.
The sheriff was a man of some courage, and anxious for adventure, glad to be a part of something big. He would hold these in chains until he got word transmitted from Springfield about warrants. I told him we would split the reward if there be one, for I was turning the prisoners over to him. Well, he needed to make reports on all that had happened. I told him I would have that done, but when was the goldurn train coming through that went to Greenup? And was there a doctor for our Cap, who’s state had bled into delirium, and become the most pressing thing about this mess?
I reckoned Jimmy had been administered too many herbs, and potions, and medicines. Iris had given me many instructions, but travel had kept me from tending him properly with the many other pressing matters.
But in Rigsby there was a doc, and he was sent for. The train was not as obliging. It would not come until tomorrow, and that was lucky. I did not feel lucky, but it served Jimmy. I told this Sheriff that he needed to set a strong guard on Sonny and his band for we had others dragging along we feared, ones who meant mischief. He mustered deputies pretty quick, and we felt the weight of the cross lift.
The undertaker, who also barbered, and would let a man rent his washtub for a bath out yonder of his shop, soap and towel included, was building a casket for Monroe big enough to hold his bloat, and also the loot, though I did not mention the loot. I just ordered a box that was deep and insisted came time to move that body he let me and the boys do it cause we were that particular. End of diatribe.
Well they were pretty admiring of us and the pluck it took to bring down Monroe. I was never so glad to have the stinking beef jerky remains of that one to silence any doubt that we were not as crazy as we looked.
We carried Jimmy into the Doc’s table. Doc lived with his widowed sister, and she seemed to care not about the shiny table the way Ma might if she had such. It was not the first time, she said, that a patient had been on that table for sundry reasons. Her name was funny…Rayetta.
Sounded foreign to me, and she looked like a Jenny besides. But it turned out she was one of those that would not go for Garrett so much as me.
Yes, she was pretty, but I could not consider such. I thought of Addie, because any pretty girl of her age took me to thoughts of her. I felt this tremendous loyalty to my Addie, even though she was possibly marrying Cousin. If Iris was right, she would be miserable, and there was some satisfaction in that, for I did have that dark side and I had never denied it. So yes, I wanted her miserable if she chose him. Yes I did.
But after we got Jimmy settled and the doc was looking him over, and asked me to move out of the light, I knew something was afoot. She was giving me smiles, and I was stinking and greasy trail dust, and that was all. Jimmy was heinous with the dead man’s smell. We deserved live burial.
The others went straight to the bathhouse-barber-undertaker’s. But I stayed back for I was the captain of this ship that must not sink.
So I was anxious as he examined the wound and started the same steps I saw Iris go through. He cut off clothes, and Rayetta went out, but I stayed put, and we covered Jimmy’s privates with a little cloth. Doc washed my pard who was once again soiled. And his clothes were burned, along with the bandages. Doc said whoever tended him had saved him thus far for the wounds were draining, but still hot to the touch, still poisoned. He was mad that Jimmy had been moved, and he was stern with me, but I worked it out by clenching my hands and my jaw and my butt-cheeks. I said it don’t matter long as he did Jimmy some good. I couldn’t kill everybody could I?
Jimmy was drunk, best way to explain it. He was saying ridiculous things, then he got quiet, then he thrashed. I showed Doc the ointments and such, but he had no respect for them. He did understand the laudanum, and when this Rayetta brought me some clean duds that was some man’s who didn’t need them anymore, I did not ask why. They were washed and smelled so much better than anything I’d worn since the days of Ma’s noose, that I felt like things might finally be going my way.
So after my bath, and my hair was cut, even though it was sunset now, and some kind woman let us eat at her table for twenty-five cents, beans and bacon, bread and coffee, I went back to the Doc’s in them clothes that were a bit tight but fit pretty good. Well Michael had whistled at me, and had a laugh, but leastways I didn’t have to pick from the undertaker’s clothes like some I knew.
Rayetta had a good eye. But she was so proud of them clothes she kept looking me up and down. And it made my privates itch. I was wagon sore is all. I was sore every which way and the soap had been the kind took off skin. I felt like a spring snake. But that bath and those clothes made me human again. Not to mention those three plates of beans.
So the others, that be Gaylin and Michael, not William as he’d be off somewhere you’d never think to look, were bunking out back of the sheriff’s in a bunkhouse kept there from the war. But I couldn’t stay so far from Jimmy. Not with that fever and him so poorly. So that brought me back to the doctor’s, and Rayetta’s dewey looks.
I asked if I could hold vigil in the one chair they had in there looked substantial enough to keep a fella from pitching onto the floor if he closed his eyes. I’d as soon lie on the floor and planned to once they were out of there. They said oh sure it was fine, and she kept fussing over me like I was her husband came back to life.
I did not want pie. Well I did, but no, I would not keep taking favors. And I had never worn a dressing gown in my life. Not since I was a baby anyway. Privates in the wind like that with this lonely woman about…not hardly.
“You’re a hero,” she said. “They’ll have a parade for you boys time word gets to Greenup. Sheriff sent a rider ahead. They’ll send a telegraph to Springfield soon as they get to Raymond. That handsome face of yours will be on the front page of every paper. The girls will be swooning.”
She kept rubbing her hand over the tops of her breasts. I tried not to see it, and I kept my eyes glued on the many items in the room. Most fascinating was the skeleton hanging near the wall. “Is that real?” I said.
She laughed. “No darlin’.”
“Well knock me down with a feather,” I said. I kept looking at Jimmy. If he could hear, he was loving this.
Guess a fella like me could make a living filling dead man’s shoes. I reckoned in time these women would find them fresh troops, but until they did the call of duty might pop up anywhere. I hadn’t even been washed when she set a bead on me. Now that I was…washed…she was slurping her spit.
“You can go on to bed, Missus. I can get the doc if he gets worse. Where is the doc anyway?”
“Oh, he has a baby coming few doors down.”
I gulped, and she heard it. Well I’d been there, the birthing. But Janey came quicker than most. “Well…I am purely worn out. Guess I’ll turn in.”
“I can’t bear to think of you on that chair, Tom dear. You got a sweetheart back home?” She was swaying side to side while she did that rubbing.
“Yes,” I said, feeling some kind of rudeness getting far as my throat. I didn’t know what was likely to burst out of me if she didn’t back off.
She was doing that rubbing again, lower this time, near the tips. The breast tips.
I put my eyes back on Jimmy. I kept staring and willing her away. I jumped and rattled the bed when she touched my shoulder.
“You sure have been fighting a long time, haven’t you soldier?”
“Ma’am,” I said standing. I was trying to turn her way, but there wasn’t enough space what with the bed, the chair and the small table with the medicines and wash pan and her corralling me.
“Don’t fight so hard, soldier. We ain’t all enemies, you know.” Her hands were on me, sliding up my fresh shave, the place where Iris slapped me.
“Get…get off me,” I said.
“Tom?” Jimmy said.
I turned to him then, and I think I knocked her against the wall, but I didn’t give a hoot.
“Hey pard,” I said, grabbing his hand, never so glad to see him.
“Man the guns,” he said. Then louder and crazier, “Line ‘em up!”
“Shhhh,” I said. “I did. The guns are lined.”
“Man the guns, man the guns,” he yelled.
“We’re manning,” I said trying to find him in those glassy eyes.
“There’s hell to pay, hell to pay!” he screamed. Sounded like Chattanooga, but I couldn’t bet the farm. It could a been Alabama like as not.
“We done paid it, Cap,” I said, looking over my shoulder to see if she was still around.
About the time I grew hopeful, she came in carrying a silver tray with some kind of alcohol in a fancy glass bottle, and two little glasses. She was in her nightdress. I could see some skin round the collar bones and deeper, all in that little glance cause those buttons wasn’t fixed.
Lord, God, I didn’t trust her with Jimmy. A picture flashed in my mind of her manning the gun so to speak, and it made me shudder. I took to mopping his head with the water setting nearby for such and pondered how I’d just as soon deliver that baby myself and get the doc back here.
“You never did tell me about that sweetheart,” she said pouring that fruity smelling stuff.
“Ma’am,” I said, and she cut over me.
“Rayetta,” she said.
“That is some handle,” said I, “but I am about to shame myself in the hopes of keeping you from doing the same. There be one woman for me. That’s all.”