The Hi-Lo Country

by Max Evans

  When I did get into town I kept an eye out for Big Boy’s pickup. Finally I spotted it parked outside the two-room weed-wrapped shack of Levi Gomez. Levi was about the best friend Big Boy and I had in Hi Lo. In fact, Big Boy had told him one time, “Levi, you’re the best damn Mexican in Hi Lo. No, come to think of it, you’re the best damn Mexican in the whole state!”

  Levi was a lot of things. He was a quarter French, a quarter Apache and half Spanish. He was a small, shy man with features that looked as if a famous sculptor had carved them as a working model for some future masterpiece. It was fitting because Levi was a good wood carver himself. Cedar, that was his medium. He made all kinds of standing saints the Mexicans called bultos. They had a real elegance about them, a grace and a special kind of dignity. Looking at several of them in a row, a man was tempted to believe in religion. But even more than that, Levi was a poet. People in our country thought that anyone who wrote poetry had to be a little crazy. But I figured a man had as much right to write poetry in Hi Lo as he did in Paris, France. When Levi met a friend, unless drunk, he wouldn’t speak to him in the usual manner such as Hello or Howdy or How are you doing? If he liked someone he didn’t say a word.

  I walked in and took a seat. He bustled around the tiny little room getting me a cup of coffee. He poured himself one and then said, “Did you hear about Big Boy?”

  Something cold twitched at my stomach muscles. I said, “No, what happened?” I just knew Les Birk had shot his heart out. “He’s in jail,” Levi said in his unaccented English.

  “What for?”

  “Well, it’s like this, Pete,” Levi said. “He’s been thinking about Mona a lot lately and he came into town the other afternoon—day before yesterday to be exact. He came over and got me and said: ‘Come on, Levi. We’re going over to Lollypop’s and throw an old-time drunk.’ Then he started telling me about him and Mona and how he didn’t have any place to go with her. He was wanting to run off with her, Pete. Right then. He said he didn’t care what anybody thought. They were right for each other, and no man was going to stop him unless they killed him. Then he changed his mind and said he would just have to wait. He’d make a killing at gambling or something, and then leave with her in style. ‘By the Lord A’mighty, Levi,’ he said, ‘you don’t move a queen into a Navaho hogan.’ He seemed to feel better, and we got to joking and having a good time when Martin Felder came in.”

  I thought of hulking, thickheaded Martin. It had always seemed to me his head was all bone except for a tiny hollow space right in the middle about the size of a midget walnut. He had been raised by his mother and an “uncle.” He was around thirty-five years old and had never left home. He had tried to make it with a few girls, but hardly any of them suited his ma. Nelda Spruce was the only one she had ever approved of, and Nelda had run off to Ragoon with Big Boy for a weekend. That had culled her out as far as Mother Felder was concerned. It hadn’t made Big Boy any too popular with Martin, either.

  I asked Levi, “Was there trouble over Nelda?”

  “Well, no. Not exactly. Martin came in and started chasing one whisky down with another like his guts were on fire. Then he began riding Big Boy and saying things like ‘Some men don’t know what’s theirs and what’s somebody else’s.’ And pretty soon Big Boy told him that some people were so small that when they came up out of their hole in the ground all they could do was blink their eyes and brood about what some other feller had that they didn’t. Well, Martin was feeling pretty sassy by then, and he said: ‘Some men are thieves. Some steal chickens. Some steal gold. And some steal other men’s wives.’ It was pretty obvious what he meant. I knew what was coming, and sure enough, a few seconds later Martin is picking himself off the floor. He got up and, without looking at anybody, rushed out to his car. He jerked out a thirty-thirty and started back. I yelled at Big Boy, who stepped around beside the door, and when Martin came through he grabbed the gun and jerked it out of Martin’s hands. Then he cocked the hammer and marched him back out to his car. He got in the back and made Martin get in the front and drive. He yelled out the window: ‘Don’t nobody try to follow us. We are just going to have us a little private talk.’ Well, he made Martin drive over a cow trail way out in the brush to a clearing and told him to get out. By this time Martin was whining and begging him not to shoot. Big Boy stood him out there and aimed that rifle right between Martin’s eyes. He fell to his knees. Then Big Boy told him he was going to throw the rifle away and they’d have it out fair and square. So he did. Then he jerked Martin up and knocked him down. Jerked him up again and knocked him down again. Up and down, up and down. He kept this up until he was winded. Then he kicked Martin in the belly and broke a few ribs. Then he told him that the next bastard that butted into his affairs was going to get worse than that. I don’t think Martin figured it could be any worse.” Levi shook his head, took a swallow of coffee, and continued:

  “Well, Big Boy came on back to town, and deputy Tom Ezzard asked him what had happened to Martin. He said, ‘The last I saw of him he was kicking a poor old crippled gopher out of his hole and pulling the dirt in after him.’

  “They hunted for Martin all that day and night, while me and Big Boy got drunk and he told me all this. Then early this morning they found Martin down by the highway where he had crawled, pretty well busted up and out of his head. We were asleep when Tom Ezzard came over and got Big Boy.”

  “What are they going to do with him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Levi said.

  “Come on,” I said.

  We drove down by Lollypop’s, and I bought a half-pint of whisky for the J.P., Eldon Howard. He was a fine old Kentucky gentleman with a thatch of white hair that looked like a bleached haystack. I visited with him a lot when I was in town, and always took him a half-pint made back in his own country. We were old friends.

  I went in and handed him the bottle and said, “Howdy, Mister Howard.”

  “Well, hello, son,” he said. “Nice to see you.”

  I didn’t waste any time. I asked, “What are you going to do with Big Boy?”

  He said: “Nothing, son, but let him get sobered up. Everybody knows, although some folks are trying to say different, that Martin threatened his life with a rifle.”

  “What if Martin dies?”

  “He won’t. I just called Ragoon Hospital. The doctor said he’d suffer a while but live.”

  “Good,” I said. “When will you let Big Boy out?”

  “This afternoon, son. Why don’t you see he gets out of town for a while?”

  “I will,” I said.

  Levi and I moseyed around town to see what the sentiment was. It turned out to be mixed but not too violent. We stopped over at Nick’s and had a light beer. We were waiting for sundown to get Big Boy out of town.

  Levi said: “You know, I don’t blame Big Boy one bit. Mona’s a hell of a woman, and her husband is just chicken shit.”

  “If he isn’t chicken shit,” I said, “he sure as hell’s got henhouse ways.”

  “Did you know he was the one that spurred Old Sorrel in the shoulders till he spoiled him, just because you bought him?” Levi asked.

  “No!” I said. “Well, of course, he was foreman of the C-Bars, but I had never suspected it was him. Now I agree with you. Does Big Boy know?”

  “Yes.”

  "Well, I’ll be an egg-sucking giraffe. If Big Boy don’t steal his woman, I'm going to myself.” I nearly choked on the blurted words. I could feel the blood rise up around my ears.

  "Nick,” I said fast, "another beer.”

  Levi looked at me kind of strangely. I was sure glad he was my friend. I thought back to the first time I had seen Levi after I moved into the Hi Lo country.

  He was playing pitch in Nick’s place. I noticed how his hands shook and I could tell that he was a sensitive man. He overplayed and lost heavily. I bought a bottle and took him home. He was section foreman on the railroad then and lived in a section house about four miles east of tow
n. I heard he was the best hand on that line. I found out that night that when he had left for the war his wife had a baby by his blood uncle. Then she divorced Levi while he was still in Italy. They had fixed the court in some way or other, and she not only got custody of the child but everything else he owned. When he came home he took up his old job. But then he asked for a transfer to Hi Lo from Trinidad, Colorado.

  He started gambling after all this, and drinking steady. He quit his job on the railroad before they fired him. After that he started studying art from mail-order courses and carving these saints. Lately he had started writing poetry. He damn near starved to death. And then one day a man from Dallas, Texas, drove up and bought fourteen of those saints for $200 each and told him that whenever he needed some cash just to ship him another one.

  Well, the only thing Levi changed about his way of living after all this good fortune was to build an indoor toilet so he could keep in out of the wind.

  I used to stay with him quite a bit when I was in town. Not that I didn’t like the Collins Hotel, but I just plain enjoyed looking at those saints.

  Levi would hibernate and work a while; then he would slip over to the express station with one of his saints addressed to Dallas. He would figure about how long it would take the package to get there and how long it would be before the check arrived; then he would ease over to the post office to get it. Mitch Peabody would cash it and sell him about a month’s supply of grub, and Levi would head for the saloons to get drunk.

  One time I drove into town and was actually having a coke when I looked across at Nick’s and saw Levi come busting out the door. He damn near ran over a couple of tourists heading in for a drink. They jumped sideways and crawled back into their big-assed jukebox of a car. Levi was yelling and running in a huge circle and waving his arms like a man roping something. He jumped off his imaginary horse and ran down the rope, and you never saw any rodeo hand in your life wrap a calf as fast as he did.

  He headed for our door. Well, he got the door open and then fell headlong into one of the bar stools. It spun around like a runaway wagon wheel. He got up and ricocheted down the line till he came to me.

  "Howdy, Pete,” he said. "I’m Pancho Villa but I’m out of bullets.”

  I don’t know what he meant by that and doubt if he did. He was always saying something unfathomable. Then he ran down the street to Mitch Peabody’s and came back with a whole bundle of brand-new brooms.

  He told Nick: "Give us a drink, Nick. The drought’s on and clouds have gone out of style.”

  He downed a shot and ran out to the curb, dragging the brooms behind him. The blood was running down his cheek where he had cut it on the bar stool. Then he raised those brooms above his head and smashed them down across the curb, all the while yelling "Whoooooo-eeeeee!” and pieces of brooms were flying out in the road and all up and down the sidewalk. Finally he was out of brooms. He looked around, dusted his hands, and came back into Nick’s. Nobody had said a word—just stared.

  He stalked up to the bar. "Another round, Nick. I want you bastards to know that I ain’t sweeping nobody’s floors but mine. Nobody’s!”

  I believed him.

  I tried to get drunk with him, but it was one of those times when a man just doesn’t feel like it. I was too tired or some thing. We hung around until about ten o’clock that night, and finally I said, "Levi, I’m going over to your house and lie down a while before I drive back out to the ranch.”

  It was about two or three o’clock when I heard a moaning noise. I’d fallen asleep. I got up and stumbled over to the door. There sat Levi up against the house baying at the moon. I got him up, hauled him inside, and turned the light on. His face was just solid dried blood. He must have been there quite a while before I heard him. I led him into the little bathroom he was so proud of, wet a towel, and eased it down across his face. I heard this funny noise—ping, ping. At first I couldn’t figure it out. I made another swipe. Ping! Ping! Ping! By God, it was gravel falling out of his face into the washbasin! Somebody had literally stomped his face in the gutter.

  It was the next morning before he could tell me it was Julian Cisneros and a couple of his buddies who had done it. He was swelled up like a snake-bit cow, and I had to get the doctor to come patch him up. I asked him what caused the fight, but he couldn’t rightly remember.

  He went back to work extra hard after this, and the word spread everywhere around Hi Lo about that crazy wood-carving poet. It was just natural for Big Boy and me to like him.

  A couple of months later I walked into his little house, and there was a carving of the Lord’s Supper all completed on a big flat board. I could tell he was really proud of it. There was a preacher holding a revival meeting over at the church, and he heard about this object and came over and visited with Levi. They had a can of beer together and a good talk. Levi was so pleased he just up and donated the carving to the church. That was a prime mistake.

  This preacher told the congregation that he had a precious gift that would be unveiled the last night of the meeting, a surprise from one of their local citizens. The preacher looked a lot like young Abe Lincoln and I presume he was just as good a talker, because before old Levi knew what he was doing he had agreed to come to the final sermon.

  Well, he didn’t have the guts to go by himself, so he talked me into coming along. I didn’t have guts enough for both of us, so I talked Big Boy into coming, too. I guess he had more guts than anybody could expect because he came without asking anybody else.

  Well, we didn’t know what time it started, so we were the first ones there. We didn’t look bad either, if I do say so myself. Levi had on a pin-stripe suit and was pretty slick-looking. I had on clean levis and a new blue shirt. Big Boy had gone all the way with a solid black suit, a white shirt, and a bright red necktie. A Hollywood scout would have been flapping a contract at a hundred paces.

  None of this primping did us any good, however. The people started filing in, one, two, three at a time, but every single one of them sat on the other side of the church from us. I looked at the empty benches in our vicinity to see if they had been freshly painted or something, but they looked all right. I inspected all the windows on our side to see if maybe there was a draft blowing, but every window was shut tight as a bulldog’s jaw. Maybe these were reserved seats, I thought. I looked up to see if maybe the roof was sagging and about to cave in, but it looked as solid as a snubbing post. I felt like raising my hand and asking the preacher if the Lord had some rule against people sitting on the left-hand side of the church. Finally it dawned on me—those people just didn’t care to be associated with us.

  I was worried about how poor old Levi felt. Big Boy told me later it had bothered him, too. The preacher had a funny look on his face, but he nodded to us and smiled. The rest of the congregation did no more than glance at us as they came in. After they were seated they suffered a collective crick in their necks and their noses pointed straight ahead.

  The preacher went through the singing and such-like and then he got up in the pulpit. He said, "Brethren,” being very quiet in his manner, "I am going to unveil before your eyes a magnificent work of art. God has inspired this object of ultimate beauty and he has given this talent to one of your own.”

  I thought, Levi may be one of their own, but they sure aren’t about to claim him.

  "Behold!” the preacher said, sweeping the tablecloth from around the Lord’s Supper. "Behold, and feast your eyes upon the inspiration of God!”

  Well, I have heard a lot of quiet things in my life, such as a kid that’s just pooped at the Sunday table, a dog that has just swallowed a prize laying hen, or Hi Lo, New Mexico, the only time the wind stopped blowing. But they were all an ear-shattering, head-pounding roar compared to the silence that followed.

  The preacher waited. The only reactions were one woman clearing her throat and another dropping her hymnal. I want to make one thing clear: this preacher was a real man, and the Lord sure gave him the power to get m
ad. He whirled on that congregation like a trapped lion, and said, "Mr. G6mez, stand up, please.”

  Levi was about to faint, so Big Boy and I took an arm apiece and raised him up between us. He came about shoulder high to both of us.

  In those same measured tones the preacher said, "I want every living soul in this church to stand up who believes this work of art is a thing of beauty and appreciates Mr. G6mez’s generous gesture with all his heart.”

  Hesitantly, one by one, they rose. All but about a dozen. "Now, all of you standing move to the back of the church and stand against the wall.”

  They went.

  "Now, I want to say,” he went on in that same controlled voice to those still sitting, "that what you have done is bad enough, but it’s not half as bad as these hypocrites”—he shouted the word-- "standing there who have lied to save their faces right here in God’s house.”

  And then he jabbed one finger at them. It looked like a wagon tongue, and some of the people ducked sideways. He spoke in a voice that boomed the wrath of God.

  "Each of you—standing, sitting, no matter—each of you has committed a sin against God and your fellow man this night. It is such a small, measly, weasly little sin that I hate to talk about it. In fact, I won’t because you are all aware of it. But I tell you this, brethren, you should get down on your hands and knees and pray for forgiveness, and though it is not my place to judge or sentence I would delight in your having to crawl through cactus and blazing rocks on your hands and knees to ask this young man’s forgiveness.”

  We never did know if they got down on their knees or not, for Levi broke out from between us, streaked up the aisle, and out the front door. We followed.

  Well, Nick kept setting the beer up and even bought a round himself.

  "Its about time,” I said, "to go down and get Big Boy out of hock.”

  Levi said, "Just a minute, I’ve got a new poem I want you to see.”