I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang

by Leonce Gaiter

Starr told Rufus first. The boy said nothing before he turned on his heel and walked away. After a moment, Starr chose to follow him, fearing the worst. Rufus tromped straight to Vann’s cell and found the bloodied drunk inside. From his pocket, Rufus pulled his truncheon and swung it against the side of Vann’s face. Blood sprayed across the cot. Rufus raised the weapon again but Starr grabbed him and dragged him from the cell.

  “We gotta tell Bill,” Starr said, shaking Rufus from his rage.

  Rufus broke free. He stood stock still in the hallway of Murderer’s Row. A helpless look came over him. Then he wept. A shocked Starr looked on. Immediately he realized that the boy wasn’t crying for himself. Never in his life had he seen one man’s tears for another. He had seen men shot over pennies, but he had never seen this. He almost smiled.

  “You be cryin’ if it was me?” he asked, knowing the answer and not expecting one. He tentatively brushed the boy’s shoulder in the way of a comforting gesture, but that was all he could do. Sobbing sounds transformed into animal grunts as Rufus gritted his teeth and brought himself to heel. He stood erect again and swiped his eyes and nose with his sleeve.

  “We gotta tell Bill,” Buck repeated.

  They walked funereally through the corridor’s aimlessness and drunkenness. They found Bill waiting on his cot.

  “What happened?” He asked as if he already knew that it had all gone wrong.

  “The gun got stole,” Starr said.

  Another tear rolled down Rufus’ cheek. Seeing it, Bill smiled and shook his head. This was the damnedest boy. ‘Too bad he won’t be at my funeral,’ Bill thought, ‘someone cryin’ for me would make pretty a picture.’

  “My fault,” Starr said. “I shoulda took it right away. Shouldn’t o’ left it with him.”

  “Everybody dies,” said Bill. “I had my run.” He laid back on his cot and put his arms behind his head. His open eyes stared up at the ceiling as if it were a star-filled sky.

  The rest of Sunday came and went. Rufus saw neither Bill nor Starr. He went about his Trustee chores and worked to think of nothing but the broom’s dust or the bucket’s filth. He felt like he’d been hollowed out and left behind.

  On Monday he looked into the courtyard and saw men preparing the gallows. He thought of going to see Bill, but something in him didn’t want to. He was scared, afraid of what might happen. He had cried. He might do it again. Bill might be scared. Bill’s life had been immortalized in books and his death would be equal to his life if Rufus had anything to do with it. If he had known without the slightest doubt that Bill would play his part and await the Final Judgment with the implacability of a martyred saint, he would not have hesitated to visit him. But he had doubts. He doubted himself, and deep down something inside him even doubted Bill. After all, he wasn’t just a legend any more. Rufus had touched his flesh, watched him piss and seen him turn his head away in trepidation. He had become something less than the legend. He was a man. And so to prepare for Bill’s death, Rufus had to make him a myth again. He wanted to forget that he had touched Bill’s flesh. Again it would be like a tale in a storybook. It wouldn’t hurt so bad that way. It was proper, he decided, that his next sight of Bill would be on the gallows.

  With the prisoners still locked in their cells on the morning of Tuesday, June 25th, head jailer J.D. Berry with two guards on either side walked to Bill’s cell. They stood before it, and with barely a glance at the man inside, Berry read from a letter.

  “The review of the conviction of Crawford Goldsby for the murder of Ernest Melton remains in the hands of the Supreme Court of the United States. Judge Isaac Charles Parker therefore grants a stay of execution pending completion of that review. ”

  The jailer and his Deputies then marched just as quickly from the jailhouse corridor. Berry’s voice had woken Bill. He had been half asleep when the jailer started talking, but he had understood. He would not die today.

  “Bill done got Supereemed ,” hollered one prisoner. Whoops and hollers echoed on Murderer’s Row.

  “Hooray for the Supereem Court,” another shouted as laughter exploded up and down the prison.

  On that day, there was no milling about in the halls of the Ft. Smith jail. The guards left the prisoners in their cells. They always did on hanging day.

  ~

  On hearing that he would not die, Bill breathed. He felt the air inflate his lungs, his chest swell full of it.

  “Now how we gonna get the hell outta here,” he winked at Starr on seeing him. Henry had to stop himself from hugging Bill. He thanked God he’d hitched his star to this relentless force and damned lucky sonofabitch.

  A legend about whom he had only read, a flesh and blood man whose hand he had taken, a legend again on the certainty of his death. And now, once more, Bill lived. He had died by all rights. Rufus had seen Bill to the gallows; he’d envisioned his corpse hung from a rope and now Bill stood before him more alive than ever. Rufus examined the resurrected man from his smiling face to his bootless feet. He had never been more awed before anyone.

  The day after Bill’s reprieve, Rufus learned that he himself would be released on July 4th. Starr noted the irony.

  “You get free on the same say as they celebrate America free. Look what they done with it. I’m jus’ remindin’ you to show equal mercy.”

  With Bill’s reprieve, there was time to execute Starr’s new escape plan. Rufus didn’t have many days left, and he wanted to be a part of it. Bill, though, had prepared himself to die and had to cope with living to face dying again. He had reasoned and struggled with imminent death, and, finally, he had learned to sleep soundly with it. Now, as if he hadn’t already faced down fear and forced himself to live through dying with a downright celestial calm, the reprieve and prospect of conquering that dread yet again, it choked him. Having come close to the fire, having felt its heat, he couldn’t will it away twice. You have to know something to truly dread it. Now he knew proximity to death. Fear had crept up on him the last time, stealthily, and had remained pleasantly vague; and then he replaced it with rage at thwarted plans and cursing the world for showing him a fool who couldn’t even hold onto a gun. He hadn’t had time to fear a slow march to a hanging until he was so mad at himself and the world that it didn’t seem to matter anymore. But now the reprieve had come. His rage was spent. A new, more rational plan had been set in motion and he waited again, to die or not—again. And this time, he brooded on his own fear. He had seen the men marched before the crowds in the jail’s courtyard, the noose dangling all alone beneath the strangely grand leanto, like a fancy bauble in a high-toned shop. The crowds chatted and milled with anticipation. Ft. Smith had good hangmen. Men usually died quickly from broken necks instead of writhing and jerking for endless minutes at the end of the rope. Bill wondered if they’d cheer when his hangman pulled the lever.

  To exorcise his fear, to familiarize himself with its object and thus reduce it to the level of a bullet or a gun or a horse or all the other things that could kill him and about which he didn’t give a shit, Bill closed his eyes and held his breath. He laid still and filtered out the noise and stink of the men all around him. He tried to anticipate the nothing there could be when he died. That’s what scared him—nothing. He knew pain; he had felt it. But no matter how hard he tried he could not imagine nothing. He could not grasp not being here. He had always been here. There was no opposite. It was unthinkable. It was beyond belief. But still he closed his eyes and held his breath and filtered out the sounds and smells to bring himself closer to it, like a blind man groping at a face. He would know nothingness before nothingness would mean he could not. He had seen men play a game called chess. He had seen them concentrate for hours the way he would for moments as he aimed his gun. They said it was a puzzle. He decided that this too, was a puzzle. He had only to concentrate hard enough and he would solve it. He would come to understand what nothing was. At night he chiseled silently at the brickwork supporting the cell’s metal doors. He hacked at the mortar to remo
ve bricks and enlarge the empty space behind where he would hide the long-awaited gun. All night he concentrated on soundlessly sweeping up and moistening the mortar dust to spread along the bricks so that no one would notice. During the day he puzzled and rarely slept.

  From Bill, Starr tried to hide his own uncertainty, disguise his chafing at the wait and his guilt about his former failure. He redoubled his outward insouciance, behaving with the confident panache of a cheating gambler in a game full of rubes. Regardless, Bill grew less responsive and spent more of his daylight hours with arms folded tightly across his chest. He rarely left his cell. He paced doggedly or lay on his cot as still as a dead man.

  On July 2, five days before Rufus was to leave the jail, a guard approached Starr.

  “You got a visitor,” he said.

  “She’s here,” Starr whispered as he flew past Bill’s cell behind the guard. Bill’s eyes popped open and he sat upright. Rufus, watching, almost chased Starr down the corridor until he caught himself. Starr deliberately slowed his pace and pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket. He stopped for a moment to light it, with the impatient guard looking on.

  “Move it along, Henry,” said the guard as Starr finally passed him. The woman in question sat in Henry’s cell with a handkerchief to her nose and unquiet eyes. Clean clothes and Sunday best marked her as a proper lady and she was shown due deference. She tried to avert her eyes from the dirty men who gathered outside the cell openly gawking at her. Some displayed stiff manhoods expanding their trousers while others leeringly stroked their conspicuous bulges. The guard roughly pushed them aside as he led Henry in. She stood as he entered. He paused on seeing her. The stranger took one awkward step forward, urging him with her eyes. He then stepped toward her and hesitantly placed his hands on her arms with reluctant familiarity. She turned her cheek toward him and he leaned daintily forward to kiss it. The guard parked himself nearby as the lady resumed her seat. They made awkward small talk about non-existent people for a few minutes. Finally, the lady professed to be overtaken by the jailhouse redolence and minced quickly from the cell. Rufus watched her go, and knew that the guns were waiting. He had half a day before he was scheduled to empty more shitters. That’s when he’d collect the gun and shells. In the meantime, he returned to Bill’s cell. Starr joined them. In silence the brethren admired each other, a satisfied nod and a flick of a grin the only clue to their conspiracy.

  For the remaining days before Rufus left, they never mentioned the plan. They spent their time in pregnant silence. On Rufus’ departure date, they shook hands in Bill’s cell and subtly acknowledged that they would see each other soon. Henry felt almost sorry for the boy as he left Ft. Smith jail, anticipating his reunion with the great Cherokee Bill. Starr knew that, despite the promises and assurances, neither he nor Bill would probably ever see Rufus Buck again. Starr planned to escape the Territory on the fastest wings he could find. He neither knew, nor cared what Bill would do, but felt confident it did not include Rufus Buck and his gang.

  If he had been asked to think about it though, he would have decided that he wished Buck well.

  ~ ~ ~

  John Buck waited outside in the familiar old wagon with familiar old mare as Rufus stepped from the Ft. Smith jail. Surprised, Rufus stopped on seeing him, acknowledging how far he had traveled from his days as a child of parents. The mare and the wagon and the man inside were like spectral visitations, not unwelcome, but eerie and reeking of things past. As Rufus approached his father, the latter nodded to him with a hint of a smile.

  “Your Ma showed me your letter, so I came,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Rufus replied as he climbed on board.

  His father snapped the reins and the horse moved on. Both men stared at the road ahead. Neither spoke.

  Rufus scanned the land all around. He wanted to see if he sensed any difference as he crossed the river boundary from Arkansas into the Indian Territory. Would the air be sweeter? The soil a deeper, richer brown? Cooler air touched him as they approached the water, and its whispers made for the sweetest listening he’d had for ninety days. As they crossed the cool river, the demarcation, they entered a thicket of brush and oak. Shade and the buzz of insects and the bird’s chirping and squawking added to the soft cacophony that tickled Rufus’ ears. As the road progressed, the land opened up before him. And he was home. Starr had told him about it. He saw it with new eyes and it was among the most perfect and beautiful things he had ever seen.

  “I learned some stuff in prison, Pa.”

  He looked at his father and got no response.

  “I learned about the Territory an’ how it’s supposed to be.”

  His father gazed at the road ahead. Rufus followed the gaze as he spoke, eyeing the beauty and birthright that he would reclaim.

  “I met Cherokee Bill.” At this, his father cast him a glance. “He’s a good man. Nobody tells him how to live or where. He lives like white folks.” Rufus looked at his father’s impassive profile. “I wanna be like him.”

  His father’s face relaxed into an acquiescence laced with sadness. Rufus hoped that the look was not indicative of yet another blow from the brutal inevitabilities under which his father had suffered all of his life. Rufus tried to see contentment in that old face, a flicker of acceptance—and maybe even hope—for which he could take credit as the dutiful son; and he may have seen it. But he could not be sure.

  ~

  Bill’s ill temper did not go unnoticed. A powerful presence, his mood bled beyond his cell. It infected the inmates like fear infects a herd. The guards grew tense. Simultaneously, one of the men who had smuggled guns to Starr found it impossible to contain his brush with fame. In terms general enough to salve his conscience and reduce fear of retaliation from Starr or his associates, he desperately boasted his part in the play.

  “I can jus’ tell you,” he said to any available Ft. Smith listener, “you keep your eye on the Ft. Smith jail. There some mighty wicked fellas might come flyin’ outta there.” He’d laugh and clap his hands. “And I bet you ain’t never gonna look at a cesspit quite the same,” which left his audience half-amused because they sensed a dirty joke and half-befuddled because they couldn’t find it.

  The rumors of imminent jailbreak spread quickly throughout Ft. Smith. They reached the local press, and finally the head jailer’s ears. Coupled with Bill’s agitation and its contagious effect on the jail population, the jailer sensed trouble and feared the worse. Determined that there would be no break on his watch, on July 10th he ordered all prisoners locked in their cells and the entire prison searched.

  The dramatic lockdown and search agitated the inmates on every floor. The deputies stormed from cell to cell amidst the prisoners’ queries, resentments and taunts. They searched clothes, boots, felt every inch of mattresses and even stirred shit buckets for telltale clanks and obstructions. They found knives, manufactured and homemade. They found whiskey aplenty, most of it originally jailer-supplied, and now jailer-confiscated to enormous complaint and occasional violent resistance.

  Bill waited his turn. He checked the brick wall and it looked undisturbed enough to fool any guard. He pawed over the thin mattress and he could feel the little lumps, but he knew what he was looking for. He hoped that ignorance would make them undetectable. He laid on his cot, surprised at his own demeanor. For the first time in some time he felt calm.

  Two guards unlocked his cell and ordered him out. One stood by him in the corridor while the other conducted the search. Bill looked up and down the empty hallway. He rarely saw it empty. This is how it would look when he made his escape. From within the cell he heard the rufflings and tearings. A moment later, the guard emerged with a triumphant smile holding a handful of six-gun cartridges.

  “Bill was plannin’ a party,” the guard mocked. Bill spat tobacco on the wall.

  The other guard shoved Bill back in his cell where his few belongings sat in disarray and his mattress stuffing protruded from a huge gash down its middl
e. He turned to face the bars as the guards closed them. The brick wall was untouched, its contents undisturbed.

  5

  Rufus’ old house surprised him as he approached it. It looked smaller than he remembered. He would have sworn the wood had been less weathered, its dimensions more imposing. The big shade tree looked bare of leaves despite high summer and the chickens pecking the ground less plump and more desperate for what morsels the earth offered up. His father pulled the horse to a stop and his mother filled the open doorway. She waved courteously at him and he waved back. There was no smile on her face. Rufus realized that he wasn’t wearing one either. Looking at her, this did not feel like a homecoming. It felt like goodbye.

  He jumped from the wagon and walked toward the dour woman. He walked as if he would go right through her. If he could, he would have—to feel every inch and muscle of her, to know her finally. She put her arms around him and held him tight. Her fist pounded hard on his back as she held him. Then, having mastered whatever that fist smashed down, she let him go.

  “Them boys were here,” she said. “They’s gonna meet you in Okmulgee.” She started back into the house, but turned again. “They was wearin’ guns,” she added.

  Rufus’ father led the horse and carriage toward the barn. Rufus watched him go, and surveyed the house, the fields, and the distant trees. He made a picture of it to hold onto as if it were a special place he had run across and wouldn’t see again. He felt lonely because he knew he didn’t belong here anymore, and had no other home. It was hard to imagine his parents without him. He couldn’t see their lives continue—their sun and moon continue to rise—without him as their fulcrum. What would they do with their days? Without him, they might be mere shadows. Neither seemed whole, not like Cherokee Bill or Henry Starr who grabbed what they wanted and captured the world’s imagination doing it. They were all about possibility. His mother and father, on the other hand, took nothing, and had nothing—except him. And now he would leave them and they would continue, less substantial, ineffectually scratching and clawing at the earth like the scrawny chickens pecking at the place. He went into the house and put a few things into an old saddlebag. He took a final look at his father’s heirlooms of loss hanging on the wall. He wondered if he belonged up there with the piece of bagpipe; or maybe his parents did—heirlooms. Maybe, he thought, his father had been mourning himself all this time. His mother passed through on her way to the stove. She paused to note the saddlebag on the floor but did not glance at her son as she continued on her way. This was her goodbye.