Under the Skin

by James Carlos Blake

  There was a skinny jackrabbit on the spit over the fire but it was charred beyond all possibility of being edible. Chente tried it anyway and chewed a mouthful for a while before spitting it out. I fetched the lunch sack Reuben had brought with him but Reuben didn’t want any of that either, so Chente and I split the three beef sandwiches and the six flour tortillas folded up over refried beans. There were some apples too, and we gave them to our horses.

  While Chente and I ate, Reuben kept glancing over at the dead men. I knew what was on his mind.

  “It’s gonna be slower going back, driving that bunch of jugheads,” I said. “We spare the time to dig four graves and we’ll never get back to the river before sundown. Your daddy’s gonna have a shit fit as it is, but it’ll be fifty times worse if we aint back by dark. And we’ll play hell getting these animals across the river at night.”

  “It don’t seem right, leaving them lay to rot.”

  Chente chuckled and said they wouldn’t have much of a chance to rot. He jutted his chin upward, directing our attention to a pair of vultures circling way up high—and still others were coming at a distance out of the sierras to the west. I’d always marveled at the mysterious way they got the news so fast.

  “Los zopilotes tienen que comer tambien,” Chente said.

  “Shit,” Reuben said. “How’d you like them to feed on you?”

  Chente said they might very well do that someday, whether he liked it or not. Then he put his head back and yelled at the vultures overhead that today wasn’t the day.

  And we all busted out laughing for no reason except the grandly certain feeling that today wasn’t the day for any of us.

  L ate in the day we got the herd across the river and onto YB land. By the time we arrived at the corrals the sun was almost set behind the sierras and the portion of it still visible was the color of melting gold. The western sky looked smeared with blood. The vaqueros had been at their supper but they all came out of the mess shack to watch us get the herd into the corral. Then we turned our mounts over to the stable boys for good rubs and a big feed.

  When we came out of the stable, Uncle Cullen was at the corral, still in his traveling suit and tie, studying the recovered horses. Over at the house, Aunt Ava was watching us from the door with her arms crossed.

  “Luego,” Chente whispered to me, cutting his eyes at Uncle Cullen and sidling off to the cookhouse, his cutdown shotgun tucked under his arm.

  We stood waiting for Uncle Cullen to say something. When he finally turned around to us, there was still enough light to see his face under his hat brim. He was sixty-three but had never looked his age until about eight months before, when he’d had a heart attack while he was working with some new horses. Since then he’d slowed down a hell of a lot and had acquired a slight stoop and had come to look every day of his years and then some. But his eyes still held some of their old fire.

  “You disobeyed me,” he said. “Both you.”

  “Yessir,” I said. “It’s all my fault.”

  “Oh? You force him to go with you?” he said, nodding at Reuben.

  “No sir, but—”

  “I can talk for myself,” Reuben said. “I went on my own, Daddy. I disobeyed you too. We done it to get the horses back.”

  “I know why you done it.” Then he said to me, “You know the brand on them others?”

  “No sir. But I know they didn’t belong to them thieves.”

  “So you figured we’d make them ours?”

  “No sir. I figured you’d know what to do about them.”

  “So happens I know the brand. Arthur Falcone’s, way up by the Vieja oxbows. I’ll give him a call tonight. He’ll probably want to come with some trailers.”

  He regarded the sheathed Sharps under my arm and the revolver under my belt and I wondered if he was remembering that I’d gotten both weapons from Frank Hartung.

  “How many was it?”

  “Four.”

  “Any of them like to steal again?”

  “No sir.”

  He stared off at the purple eastern sky. Then looked at Reuben and I had a hunch what was on his mind, what he wanted to ask but was afraid of the answer to. So I told him.

  “It was just me dealt with them.”

  “Just you all four?” He cut a look at Reuben.

  “Yessir.”

  He nodded at the Sharps. “With that.”

  “Yessir.”

  Until that moment I hadn’t really thought about how he might react to the news that I’d killed four men. I had probably assumed he would approve—after all, I’d only done what I had to do to get our horses back. Who could object to that? Not until I saw the way he looked at the Sharps did it occur to me how very differently he might see the whole thing—how differently most people would.

  “You got any idea what could’ve happened to you-all down there? Not just from them thieves but from the police, from the goddamn rurales? From some bunch of bandits you might’ve come on?”

  “I guess we could’ve had a little trouble, yessir.”

  “A little trouble. Yeah, you could call it that.”

  He’d never told me or Reuben very much about his younger days, but Frank Hartung had, and so I knew Uncle Cullen had never been a shrinking violet. Many a time when Uncle Cullen wasn’t around, Frank had entertained us with stories of the bar fights they’d been in, tales of broken noses and lost teeth, blowed-up ears and black eyes and the different times they’d been tossed in the El Paso or the Las Cruces lockup till they sobered up and bailed out. But he’d never mentioned a knife or a gun in any of the fight stories. The only story Frank ever told us that involved a weapon was about Uncle Cullen’s older brother, Teddy, who was found dead in an alley in Alpine one frosty morning. He was nineteen years old and had been stabbed a bunch of times. They knew it happened in a fight because his face was bruised and his knuckles all skinned. There were rumors of a girl and of a jealous boyfriend but nobody the local police questioned admitted to knowing anything about it, and whoever killed him was never found out. Teddy had been something of a loner, Frank told us. “A man friendless as Teddy,” he said, “has got the least chance of all in this world.”

  If either Frank or Uncle Cullen ever killed a man, they did a good job of keeping it secret from us. But I really didn’t think there was any such secret for either of them to keep.

  In the last of the light before the closing gloom hid his face, Uncle Cullen looked at me in a way he never had before, like he was staring at somebody he wasn’t real sure he recognized.

  “I always did believe,” he said, “that a fellow gets to be eighteen, he’s old enough to make his own decisions, be he fool or be he wise. But Jimmy, I want you to promise me that as long as you continue living on the YB you won’t never go across that river again without my permission.”

  I promised.

  He turned to Reuben. “And you best promise me the same, least-ways till you’re a grown man too and decide for yourself what to do and where to do it.”

  Reuben promised.

  “All right, then,” Uncle Cullen said.

  He jutted his chin toward the porch, where Aunt Ava’s shadowy figure still stood. “You boys go on and get you some supper,” he said. “Miss Ava told Carlotta keep yall a warm plate in case you got back tonight.”

  As we headed for the house, I still felt the look he’d given me. A look you give a stranger.

  Aunt Ava stepped out of the shadows to meet us at the top of the porch steps. She gave Reuben a hug and told him to wash up before he sat at the table. He said yes mam and went inside. Then she took my free hand in both of hers and went up on her toes to kiss me quick on the mouth. I stood there in astonishment and watched her go into the house, and after a moment I went in too. It was the only kiss she ever gave me.

  She never mentioned the rustlers even once, and Uncle Cullen never referred to them again. As far as I knew Reuben never spoke of them to anybody. When Falcone came with the trailers for his h
orses the next day, Uncle Cullen told him they had came splashing from across the river onto YB land and when he saw their mark he thought it damn strange that Falcone’s stock was so far south and on the Mexican side. Falcone said he was sure the horses had been rustled. He figured the herd got loose of the thieves somehow. Uncle Cullen said that must be it and he told Falcone he should consider himself lucky. Falcone said if he was lucky the horses wouldn’t have been stolen in the first place.

  M ost of another year passed. Every day pretty much the same except as marked by the turning of the seasons. Yellowing days and chilly evenings turned into nights of frost and days of sharp blue air and coatings of snow on the mountains, and then slowly turned to days of wind and new warmth and foalings, then days of rising heat and dusty greenery along the river and the creeks.

  We worked the roundups, Reuben and I, worked the brandings, worked at trimming manes and tails and bundling the hair for shipping. We tracked down strays and mended fences. If anyone had asked me what I expected to be doing in the years ahead I would’ve thought it was a fool question. What else would I be doing but living and working at the YB? Uncle Cullen had done it all his life and there was no reason to think Reuben and I wouldn’t do the same.

  But things can change pretty damn sudden, of course. And one night that summer they did.

  Every year, the Veterans’ Club held a Fourth of July Firecracker Dance at the old fairground just off the Marfa road, about halfway between the YB ranch and town, and that year Reuben and Chente and Uncle Cullen and I drove up there in our old truck. My uncle had been a devil of a dancer back before he had the heart attack and was forced to start taking it easy, but he still liked to go to dances and tap his foot to the music and watch everybody and criticize their dancing styles, and he liked to have a drink or two with neighbor ranchers and catch up on things. He tried to cajole Aunt Ava into going along with us, but she never was one to socialize and she said for us to all go ahead and have a good time.

  It was the biggest turnout ever, at least two hundred people, lots of them families, both Mexican and Anglo, and there were plenty of high school girls from Marfa as well as girls from the local ranches. A pair of bands took turns providing the music—a string band from Alpine and a ranchera group from Marfa. The dance floor was a large patch of hardpacked dirt with rows of colored lightbulbs strung overhead. It was a moonless night and the sky was crammed with stars. There were bleachers and tables and benches, openfire pits smoking with slabs of ribs, a scattering of concession stands selling cold drinks and cotton candy and hot dogs. The air was rich with the aromas of it all—and with a taint of booze. Prohibition was on its last legs by then but was still in force and the bootleggers were still doing good business, especially since the sheriff didn’t give a damn, being a drinking man himself. Almost every table had a jug or three on it and the only ones making a secret of their drinking were men who didn’t want their wives to know and boys who’d been told by their daddies they were too young yet.

  We’d brought a jug of hooch too—me and Reuben and Chente—and every once in a while we’d take a break from dancing and go out to the truck in the parking lot and have a snort. I’d slipped the jug behind the truck seat before Uncle Cullen came out of the house and got in. Not that he’d say anything to me about drinking—hell, I was only a month shy of nineteen—but he’d for sure climb all over me for letting Reuben drink, and he might yet have tried taking a belt to Reuben’s ass if he caught him at it. Uncle Cullen of course had his own jug on hand—“to ward off the chill,” he said, of the July night.

  After about an hour of whirling around the floor with different girls, I settled on the one I wanted, a Mexican honey named Rosa Elena. She was in the country illegally and spoke just enough English to understand her duties as a housemaid for a prosperous Marfa family. They treated her well and had invited her to come with them to the dance. She was round-hipped and bright-eyed and a dozen guys were after her and had been cutting in on each other all through the early evening. We were just starting our second dance together when one of them came up to cut in on me, but she held to me and whispered that she wished we could stay partners. So I turned the guy down—and all the others who tried cutting in after him, and I refused to surrender her between numbers. One of the cowboys I shook my head at didn’t take it too well, and for a moment I thought the fool might try to start something. But he didn’t do anything more than give me a tough look and mutter under his breath before backing off. The word must’ve got around that we were paired for the evening, because we were left pretty much unbothered from then on.

  At one point while I was dancing with Rosa, I saw Chente and Reuben sneaking off to the parking lot for another nip off the jug. Reuben glanced back toward Uncle Cullen, who was sitting at a table on the far side of the dance floor, sipping his hooch and talking to some rancher friends, all of them grinning at the high sheriff, who’d passed out with his head on the table. Reuben saw me and made a shooting gesture at me with his finger and thumb and then followed Chente into the crowd and out of sight.

  I asked Rosa if she cared for a sip of whiskey but she said she’d better not. It wouldn’t do for her employers to see her sneaking off to the parking lot or catching the smell of liquor on her breath. I wanted a drink myself but wasn’t about to leave her unattended.

  A little later, just as the string band finished up with a snappy two-step number that left us in a sweat, Reuben and Chente came shouldering through the mob of dancers to join us, Reuben with his arm around a strawberry blonde and Chente holding hands with a blonde of brighter shade. They introduced the girls as the Miller sisters, Laura Lee and Susan.

  Their family owned a ranch up toward Fort Davis, the Susan one said, and they and their two brothers were visiting with family friends near Marfa. Did we know the Rogersons? She leaned back against Chente, who was standing sort of half turned to her so nobody but me and Rosa could see him stroking her bottom. All four of them had been hitting the hooch pretty hard—you could see it in their eyes and hear it in the silly way they laughed.

  “We know them,” I said. “We’ve never much socialized.”

  Reuben snickered and said, “Back in school one time Jimmy kicked Larry Rogerson’s ass like a damn football.”

  “Next time you do it let me know so I can watch,” the Susan one said.

  “Susan don’t much care for Larry all the time putting his hands on her,” the Laura Lee one said.

  Reuben hugged her tighter against him and she ran her tongue in his ear. Some of the dancers around us saw that and were amused and some were tight-faced with disapproval.

  I’d never seen Reuben so close to drunk. I said excuse me to the Laura girl and pulled him aside and said he’d best lay off the stuff and sober up some before his daddy found him out. He said, “Right you are, Jimbo”—then took hold of me like a dance partner and tried to whirl me around. I cussed him softly and tugged his hat down over his eyes but couldn’t help laughing along with Chente and the girls.

  I lost sight of them during the next few dances as I spun Rosa around the floor, grazing against other dancers and them bumping into us and everybody saying “Sorry” and laughing about it.

  And then, just as the Mexican band took over and began playing a loud rendition of “Tu, Solo Tu” and Rosa and I hugged close and started swaying to the music, I caught a glimpse of Chente in the center of the floor and saw the ready way he was standing and saw the two cowboys in front of him, one of them pointing a finger in his face and running his mouth in obvious anger. He was holding hard to the arm of the Susan girl and she was trying to break free of his grip. The other guy was holding a bottle of beer by the neck like a small club and glaring at Chente too. Even at this distance I could see the similarity between the cowboys and I knew they had to be the Miller brothers. And then Larry Rogerson stepped up beside them, giving Chente a hard look and saying something too. Then the crowd of dancers between us closed up and I lost sight of them all.

>   I stopped dancing and tried to spot them again through the swirl of couples. Rosa Elena clung to my neck and said, “What?”

  I saw Chente giving the cowboys the horns sign with his index and little finger, then turning away and walking off through the crowd. The cowboy with the beer bottle started after him, followed by his brother and Rogerson. I yanked Rosa’s arms off me and roughly shoved my way through the dancers, women protesting my rudeness, guys cussing me.

  I came out at one corner of the dance floor and saw Chente emerging at the other—and saw the Miller guy behind him swing the beer bottle like he was throwing a baseball and hit Chente on the head. Chente’s hat fell off and he staggered forward and fell to his hands and knees and the Miller guy kicked him in the ass and sent him sprawling in the dust.

  A woman shrilled and people leaped up from the picnic tables and rammed into each other as some tried to back away from the fight and some tried to get closer. I was shouldering through the crowd and catching glimpses of the Millers and Rogerson kicking at Chente and even through all the yelling I heard one of the brothers shouting something about the greaser sonofabitch putting his hands on their sister. Then Chente had him by the leg and got him down and started punching him as the other brother and Rogerson kept on kicking and there was a haze of dust and women were shrieking and men cussing and bellowing to break them up, break them up. The lines of the overhead lights had been jostled somehow and the shadows were wavering and giving the whole scene an eerie look.

  I shoved my way out of the crush of people and saw both Millers locked up with Chente on the ground and the three of them punching and rolling around while a half-dozen men were jumping all around them looking for an opening to grab one or another and pull them apart. Uncle Cullen was struggling to pry Reuben away from Larry Rogerson whose head was locked under Reuben’s arm. Rogerson was worming around in Reuben’s grip, and as I ran toward them I saw that he had a knife in his hand. And saw him stab Reuben in the stomach and in the chest.