Friends

by Charles Hackenberry

  "No trouble," I said. "Just so long as you're looking out for her now."

  He throwed back his head and laughed, which surprised me some. "Yes, indeed, Mr. Goodwin, I will take good care of her from now on. But she is her own woman, nonetheless, you understand."

  Well, I had never heard no one say nonetheless like that, right out loud. The truth was I didn't understand-whatever it was he thought I understood, that is. I didn't want to seem stupid by saying so, so I just left it float.

  "It was Justin who found me when I was lost," Mandy explained. "I was cold and wet and he got us a place to stay. Then we came here. And after I heard the women singing in the saloons, I wanted to sing in them too. Justin, he got that for me as well, and now we go to a better place, eh Justin?" She seemed cheerful and not at all scared, like she was when I rode off to help Clete.

  "Yes, indeed we do, Chere," he said, mixing a chuckle in with his words. He was a smooth one, all right, in both the easy way he spoke and the way he looked. I could see how Mandy might like him.

  "Soon we will go to Louisiana, Willie," she said, squeezing my arm and sounding as happy as a schoolgirl with a new dress. "Isn't that wonderful? Justin lived there and he says I will be the toast of New Orleans with my singing. Isn't that so, Justin?"

  "Yes. it is," he said, nodding his head.

  We had gone up the street a good piece and before long we come to the Grand Central. "This is where I'm staying," I told them. "And I'm ready to tum in for the night."

  "Oh, no, Willie!" Mandy pleaded. "I have only just found you."

  "Won't you have a drink with us?" Justin ask.

  "Thank you, no," I told them. "' was in the saddle all last night and when I get sleepy-"

  "Yes, I remember," Mandy said, cocking her head and smiling at me. "Get your sleep then, Willie, and we will see you another time, no?"

  "Sure you will," I told them both. I said goodbye to Thebideaux and he shook my hand, thanking me again for helping Mandy–as if I had did it for him. Mandy give me a peck on the cheek and afterwards took her new fellow's arm again. I watched them walk on up the street and then I climbed the stairs to my room, unlocked it, lit the lantern and took off my boots. The hotel man had piled all our stuff on the floor in a big heap, but I decided straightening it out would have to wait 'til morning. The bed was comfortable, but I didn't feel so sleepy as I did before, though I was plenty weary.

  I laid on top of the covers with my clothes on and thought about Mandy. It would not be right if I said I didn't envy that Justin fellow she was with a little-maybe even a bucketful. I seen it in myself the minute he looked at her, back at that place she was singing in, and it didn't help none at all that he was friendly and polite to me, treating me like his uncle or something.

  But at the same time I seen that she was better off with him. He was more her age and more her background, too. More important, he'd saved her when I went and left her to go help Clete out of a jam … just left her out there on her own with night coming down in them Badlands. Truth was, I'd lost her and he'd found her. And then kept her-safer than I ever could. To top it off, he knowed how to find places for her to do her singing in. Lot more than I could do.

  Still, as right as it was she should be with him instead of me, I could no more get her face out of my mind than I could sprout wings and fly back to Texas.

  Jezrael DuShane sat on a bench across the street from the Gem and waited for his man to come out. The two drunks argued over whose tum it was to buy their next bottle.

  "Make tracks!" he snarled.

  They turned to him, ready to fight, then glanced at each other and quickly moved off down the street. The bigger one slowed and looked back over his shoulder like a dog in flight to see who it was who had chased him away, but when he saw the tall man in the high peaked hat slide his hand down his pants leg toward his gun, he scurried after his companion.

  As the drunks turned a corner, Jezrael DuShane let out a high, squeaky laugh and crossed his long legs. After a minute he planted a sharp elbow on his thigh, cupped his pointy chin in his hand, and made his plans. He decided that if Shannon was alone when he came out, he'd shoot him then and there and be shut of this. But Clete Shannon was right behind Bullock when they stepped out of Swearingtons place. DuShane waited til they had gone up the street nearly half a block before he rose like a dark ghost and followed them up the street.

  I guess I did fall asleep after a while, maybe half asleep and half awake is a better way to put it. For I dreamed of my father a spell, and I hadn't done that in years. A real strange dream it was, for I could see him so clear … him sittin' in his chair beside the big green parlor lamp we had back home. And reading a book, probly one of Mr. Cooper's, his favorite, like he liked to do after his chores was done. He was enjoying what he was reading, too, my father, for he chuckled and tapped the page with his finger on the real good ones. I probly wouldn't be trying to tell this today-to explain about Clete and me and Mandy and me-if it hadn't of been for my father reading all his spare minutes away and getting me to do some of the same when I was a boy.

  The sound of my father tapping his book changed in that dream and pretty soon it woke me up, for someone was rapping on my door, soft and gentle. It confused me a minute, but then I got up to answer it.

  I grabbed my .36 out of its holster before I unlocked the door and opened it a crack. There stood Mandy, pretty as a canary bird.

  "Do you mean to shoot me, Willie?" she asked, standing there in the dim hallway. She was giggling while she said it, so I seen it was just a joke.

  "What is it?" I ask her. "Did you see DuShane?"

  "No, I just wanted to see you again. Can I come inside?"

  "Course you can," I told her, opening the door wide and then laying my .36 on the little table. I fussed with the lamp to make it brighter. "Where's your man, Justin what's-his-name." I knowed his name, all right, remembered it good, but for some reason I wanted to pretend I didn't.

  "He talks to the man at the saloon where I will sing tomorrow night," she said, coming into the room and looking things over. "Getting me more money than I made before. But he is not my man–not my lover."

  I looked her in the eyes after she said that, but I could think of nothing to say.

  She sat and bounced on my bed a time or two. "Oh, he is my lover, I guess most people would say. But not the way you mean. We are just friends, really." Her dark eyes watched my face to see the effect of her words.

  "Pretty tight friends, it looks like."

  She nodded, keeping her eyes on me. "Yes, we are good friends, Justin and me. Good friends like you and I were when we rode your horse together, do you remember?"

  "Not likely I'll ever forget that," I said.

  She laughed deep in her throat and then stood up, untied her hat and tossed it on the bed. Then she kicked off her shoes, come over to me and put her arms around my neck. "I could have two friends at the same time. You do care for me, don't you, Willie?"

  "Yes I do. Of course I do." Seemed strange to be saying that to her after she so much as told me she was sleeping with someone else now, let alone her being young enough to be my niece. "But I got no right to feel that way towards you. Never did." I put my arms around her middle, but we stayed a little distance apart.

  "Right? What do you mean, right?" she ask. I thought for a minute it was another of her jokes, but the way she set a little line on her forehead, between her eyes too, I seen she really didn't know. "What right do you need to love me, Willie?"

  I thought on it for a minute, but I could see no better way to tell her exactly what I meant, but I tried anyway. "Maybe another way to say it is that it wouldn't be right for me to love you."

  "I cannot understand that," she said, laying her head on my shoulder.

  The perfume in her hair made me think of lilacs and I held her close. "I'm surprised the man downstairs told you my room number, let you come up here. This don't seem like that kind of a place."

  "Oh, he knows me," Man
dy said. "He comes to hear me sing. He knows I am not a whore." She moved her body a little against me, so as not to let me forget she was there.

  As if I could.

  I didn't know what to say then, so I just held her close. It was quiet in that hotel.

  She yawned against my neck and then giggled for doing so, even though it didn't seem to me like a real yawn. "I believe I am sleepy too, Willie. Are you going to take me to bed?"

  It stunned me she would say that, especially after I'd just explained things to her. I studied on how to make it plain why we couldn't do this while I unbuttoned her fancy yeller dress and she was taking off my shirt.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Jezrael DuShane stood in the shadows across the street from Bullocks office and waited. After a while he stole to the rear of the building, trying to see inside. Bullock was a careful man, DuShane reasoned after he had circled the place twice: all the windows were draped.

  When he reached the front of the building a second time, Jezrael crossed the street again and leaned beside the doorway to a saloon, more in line with Bullock's entrance than he had been before. Once, at an upstairs window, someone moved the drapery. Though the light had flickered for only a second on the heavy red velvet, DuShane stood rigidly erect, his steely gray eyes fastened to that window.

  He was still watching it nearly an hour later when the saloon closed and the men piled out, laughing and talking loudly as they passed him. When the man he guessed was the owner or the bartender came out and started to lock the door behind him, DuShane grudgingly moved off a dozen yards. As the street grew quiet again, he sidled back and stood in the shadows once more, his left hand nervously fingering his holstered pistol.

  He was beginning to think that Shannon was going to spend the night in there when the front door opened with a creak and his man came out, lantern light silhouetting him in the door frame. DuShane quickly drew his pistol and aimed, but Shannon stepped out of the light and the Sheriff of Deadwood walked right into the notch of his sights. DuShane's anger flared bright and he almost shot Bullock for meddling in his business.

  The two lawmen walked down the other side of the darkened street, a little unsteadily, it seemed to the watchful man in the high peaked hat, and he followed them on his side at a safe distance.

  Mandy lay close against me, warm and sweet-smelling. I thought for a minute she'd gone to sleep, so slow and regular her breathing was.

  "What it is, Willie?" she ask.

  "Just thinking on you, girl. How you ain't like nobody else I ever knew."

  She kissed me on the neck and then squeezed me tighter with her legs. We was just getting back to what we had started when I heard footsteps in the hall. Of course I knowed right away it was Clete, and just as soon it struck me that he'd be coming in here to sleep. Don't know why I didn't think of that before then, but I didn't.

  I heard his key scratching for the lock and I almost had my pants pulled up when he opened the door and stuck his head in and looked around. The lantern was lit and he had a pretty good view of what was going on, but it seemed he didn't understand what he saw for a pretty long minute, looking at me and then seeing Mandy. He still had his hand on the knob when he backed out, though he didn't pull the door closed the whole way.

  "Willie?" he said in the hallway.

  "Yeah, this is the right room." I glanced at Mandy and she was sitting up with the covers pulled high … What'll I do?" I asked her.

  She seemed pretty amused. "Tell him to come in. It's not the first time he … found us like this."

  "You're right, it's not. Only he's going to start thinking we got poor imaginations and can't think of nothing else to do with ourselves, is all," I told her.

  She laughed loud at that … Come in, Mr. Shannon!" she called to Clete.

  Well, the door swung open, but he didn't step inside right away. The look on his face said he wasn't sure it was her, and then he was sure, and then he wasn't. Finally, he was. He was also drunker than he was earlier, not that he showed it that much.

  "Evening, Miss Mandy," Clete said, tipping his hat as he come in the room, wobbling some on his boot heels. "Nice to see you again, though I'm damn surprised to. What-?" Then he turned to me, his face a blank. "I thought you'd be asleep, Willie. I didn't mean to sneak up on you." He let out a big yawn after he said that.

  "Oh, we heard you coming." I looked at Mandy and she smiled at me and then at Clete. It was a awkward, quiet minute. "Guess Mandy and me will get another room so you can get your sleep," I told Clete. "Looks like you need it."

  "Yes, I surely do," he said, and then yawned again. "But I'll get the other room. You two just go back to-" He stopped and shook his head. "I mean … aw, hell, you know what I mean."

  Clete looked kind of stupid, Mandy giggled, which didn't help at all, and I just sort of stood there with my nose hanging on my face.

  "I'll see you tomorrow, you old fart," Clete said, taking his saddle bags off the heap on the floor and then heading toward the door. "Bullock and I are going out in the Hills in the morning. He thinks-" Clete waved off the rest of whatever he was going to say. "Never mind. I'll tell you about it after I get up. G'night, you two."

  He was part way down the hall by the time Mandy called goodnight after him. I heard him stumble down the stairs and then ring the bell down at the desk to wake up the night man. Mandy flung back the covers by way of inviting me to join her there and I could see no good reason why not to. I got back into bed and after a few minutes I heard Clete come back up, go into the room beside us and flop down loud on the bed.

  Mandy and me picked up close to where we left off and it didn't take long to get far beyond that. Somewhere about then I heard Clete laughing over in his room, and of a sudden I knowed what he found so funny. It was me he'd told to pick a hotel where he wouldn't be kept awake by a bunch of yahoos thumping around in their beds, and now here it was me keeping him from his sleep by being the one doing the thumping.

  Of course Mandy wanted to know what Clete was laughing at, and after I said what it was, she started laughing too. And I guess Clete must of heard her and figured out that I'd told her, and then he started laughing all the harder. Naturally, with the two of them going on like that, I couldn't keep but from joining in too.

  About that time some deep-voiced fellow down the hall hollered out to Shut the hell up! and that made it all the worse. Trying to keep that laughter inside made it want to come out all the more, and pretty soon the whole floor was awake and either yelling or laughing, though we three was the only ones who saw anything funny about it.

  Took a while for that ruckus to end, I'll tell you, but after a time I heard Clete doing that deep loud snore of his. Mandy didn't seem sleepy at all, and I knowed I wasn't, late as it was and as long as it'd been since I'd slept. At one point I was aware of the lamp flame fluttering, running out of oil. But I wasn't at all interested in getting up and blowing it out, even though it was smelling up the room pretty bad. Neither was Mandy, and finally it sputtered out.

  Once, while we was taking a little breather, I heard someone in the hall, moving slow and walking soft. At first I figured it was Clete, maybe having to go piss or throw up from all the whiskey he'd drunk or something. I didn't know why I had thought it was him, after I thought it over, for it sure didn't seem like his walk. Maybe I was paying more attention to other things. Anyhow, I sat up in bed and, dim as it was, I saw the knob turn, first one way and then the other. Well, I had locked that door after Clete'd left, so I knowed no one was going to walk in on us again. And I also knowed for certain right then that whoever was turning that knob surely wasn't Clete.

  I slid out of bed and grabbed my .36, but by the time I got the door open, he'd skedaddled. Oddest part is I didn't even hear him go. Since I didn't have my pants on, or nothing else neither, I give up the idea of chasing whoever'd tried to get in.

  "Who was it?" Mandy ask.

  "Probly just some drunk got the wrong room," I told her, but I didn't believe
that, not entirely I didn't. I felt pretty bashful standing there in the open doorway in the altogether, so I closed and locked the door again.

  It was not so dark in the room as it was before, I noticed then. Our windows faced the east, and I was surprised to see a pretty healthy red glow climbing above the ridge out that way. Mandy got up and come over to the table, after I put my gun down, bare naked as me, only she seemed nakeder, strange as that seems. She took my hand and laid it gentle on her breast. Mandy looked right into the center of me, her clear brown eyes awful bright and dead-level with mine.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  Her face, in that soft and rosy morning light, was about the prettiest thing I'd ever saw. "This is the way I want to remember you, Willie, remember us together. Standing here like this and your hand on me here."

  "That sounds a lot like a goodbye," I told her.

  "Yes, it is. I don't want to be here when people wake up."

  I touched that black curly hair of hers with my other hand and expected it to be crackly with sparks, like when you pet a cat in the winter, so glossy and wiry it looked. Instead, it was soft as a beaver pelt. "Sounded like a more permanent goodbye than that."

  She shook her head the least little bit and dropped her eyes. "I don't know, Willie. I hope it is not. But we had no goodbye at all the last time, and I thought … " She didn't finish her words, but instead put her head on my shoulder and then, after taking herself a deep breath and letting it out in a long sigh, turned and started gathering up her underthings. Funny, but she seemed a little angry about something. Not much, but she frowned and fussed, though when she saw me looking at her she smiled.

  I got back into bed and watched her dress herself the rest of the way. Mandy looked to me that early morning like a statue that'd come alive and decided to clothe herself, so smooth her skin was, like a fine brown marble, and so graceful she moved, the way a well-bred young filly does after she really learns how to run good. Considering all that love we had done, you'd a thought I'd of had enough of the smell and sight of her, but I didn't. Must be how some men feel about whiskey, I remember thinking, like they just can't get enough no matter how much they get.