A Cold Place In Hell

by William Blinn

  We drunk ourselves to snoring, and first light was a painful process for us both. We loaded up the high-sider, which didn’t take long, being as a lot of what we carted up had gotten used away and a good deal of the rest could stay in the shack through summer. Billy was stubborn about the books needing to go on back to Salt Springs, except the knitting and baking ones. We put out feed for the thirty or so head Billy had rounded up for Starett. Wasn’t a lot, wasn’t a little, and the beeves wasn’t the real reason Starett sent Billy on up to Jupiter View anyway. We tied Geezer and Whiskey to the ass end of the high-sider, and we was headed down the road by eleven, no need to turn a look back to see who got left behind. Billy and me’d done so much talking getting rid of the bourbon, there didn’t seem to be much for us to say going back down. The air was warming, the woodpeckers were hammering hard, and it felt like quiet was a good thing for both of us to hear. Of course, right then I couldn’t know that would be the last time I’d ever get a chance to feel like that about a new springtime, but that part I better save for later.

  Billy reached over and pulled back on the reins when we came over the slope that gave us our first look at Salt Springs down in the belly of the gouged-out valley. The horses pulled in and Billy shook his head back and forth while he looked down there. “It’s bigger,” he said. “Least, I don’t recall it spreading out so wide when we come up here last.”

  “Told you that, pal. It’s all spread out more since the oil talk got real. More changes than brand-new twins. Starett’s even talked to Heflin about being the law in town. Says we’ll get big enough to need a lawman full time.”

  “Sheriff Heflin, for God’s sake?”

  “Don’t think they’re clear on what to call him. Marshal or Sheriff or Constable or who knows. But that’s just one of the things they’re talking. They say the railroad’s likely to extend out even. That means depots and railway people and that means families, which means a school and then a teacher full-time, like Heflin, the law officer. They’re talking new stores, and that means builders and that’ll mean—”

  Billy put a hand on my arm. “Tell me the last part again.”

  Damn, he was different. Had a bite that really clamped down. “They said there’ll be stores needing to get built and they’ll need carpenters and people like that. Builders.”

  Billy shook his head. “Not that part, Wilbur. Tell me the part about they’re going to have a school and that means they’re likely to be needing a teacher.”

  V

  Heflin didn’t want any part of being anything like a lawman or a constable or anything that they eventually decided to call the job. He told me that when him and me was unloading the book crate out of the high-sider. We’d sent Billy on to put Whiskey and Geezer into the corral. It was just too hard for Billy to deal with the book crate, what with the gimpy left leg of his. Heflin didn’t like that Billy wanted the book crate in the bunkhouse instead of back into the Starett’s. Seems Billy wanted to read some of the books over again, which seems like saying the first time was pretty much wasted time, but that was just him now; wasn’t him before.

  “I don’t give a gopher’s hump who breaks the law, unless the law they break busts into my pocket or bloodies my beak. Person starts pinning a badge on, he’s just pinning on a target for a lot of those Hickoks out there and I don’t want it, not a bit.”

  “You know how to handle a gun pretty good,” I told Hef.

  “‘Pretty good’ is plenty good for making coffee or pumpin’ on a dove, but ‘pretty good’ when it comes to thumbing back a hammer and drawing down on another man is just an undertaker invite. No thank you.”

  “You tell Blackthorne?”

  “Told Mr. Starret. He said he’d pass on the word.”

  “He say who they might look to get once Blackthorne finds out you decided to live out a long life?”

  Heflin grinned, gap tooth and all. He nearly lost his hold on the book crate. We was almost to the place by Billy’s bunk. “He said they might ask Willard Ganeel.”

  “Shit on a duck.”

  “Wilbur, I’m serious. That’s what they’re thinking about. Starett said Willard’s always had the scattergun behind the counter. He hardly trusts anybody except his mother and she’s been ten years dead.”

  We put the book crate down and straightened up slow, hands to our lower backs, both groaning like a pain choir. “Suppose Willard Ganeel turns them down, too. Who they going to ask then?”

  “Willard won’t turn ’em down. Shiny star. Sheriff Ganeel. Marshal Ganeel. He’ll swell up and float off over the ridge when he gets that job. You watch. Month after he gets that job, he’ll be wearin’ a tie-down holster.”

  “Folks’ll laugh.”

  “They’ll laugh once maybe. Willard won’t give them cause to laugh twice.”

  “Damn,” I said. “This town’s getting to be like a drunk running downhill, goin’ more pell-mell with each step, till he falls splat on his face.”

  Hef offered up a soggy brown clump of chewing tobacco. Man with a gap tooth chewing tobacco isn’t likely to rival a sunset. I’d rather chew on a dead cow’s udder. Shook my head. He crammed a fistful into his craw, gummed a little bit. Said something. No way a human ear could make out what he said, so I just nodded. Hef chortled juice from the back of his throat and nodded, too, so it looked like the nod was presently in style. Heard the door open behind me and turned around to see Billy Piper standing there.

  “I got me back wages coming for the winter, and once I see Mr. Starett, I’ll stand for beers at Rooney’s if anybody’s interested.”

  Anybody was interested.

  Hef and me waited in the little outside room when Billy went in to get his wages from Mr. Starett and tell him all about what he got done up on top of Jupiter View. We could have gone in and waited in the little sitting room off to one side, but the chairs and such Mrs. Starett had put in that room were all delicate with little curlicue legs, and neither one of us felt like our rumps were right for those fancy cushions. There was free beer at the end of the trail, so we could stand, we could wait. And we could also hear what Billy and Mr. Starett was saying to one another.

  “Damnation, Billy,” Starett was saying. “Thirty-two head. That’s twice as many as I would have thought.” You could hear from his tone he was smiling from ear to ear.

  “I think you ought to count thirty-one, Mr. Starett. There was that one I told you about, sickly as can be.”

  “Billy, if it was sucking in air and blowing it out when you and Wilbur come down, I’m counting it in the mix. You earned your wages, son. Got it coming to you.”

  “Well, that’s good, sir, on account of I figure it’s going to cost a little more to live in Salt Springs upcoming.” I could hear in Billy’s voice that he was putting on his grown-up rig. He didn’t do it very well, but I give him sand for trying, especially with Mr. Starett.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Wilbur was telling me all the plans about new people coming in, new places going up, new homes and new stores and all. Seems to reason that with all the new people, that prices for just about everything might pop higher.”

  A negative growl from Starett. “You’re wrong there, boy. All the new people and stores and the railroad and the oil derrick gangs, that’ll mean more competition, and that’s what drives prices way down. Makes it better for everybody. Greases the wheels.”

  “That work for everything, the competition part?”

  “Does. You bet it does.”

  “How’s it going to work for the school part?”

  “The what?”

  “Heard they might be needing a school for all the railroader kids and clerk kids and all the kids, and I’m not sure how a new school slides into the competition box you’re building.”

  There was a long time without talking, and I could easy see how Mr. Starett might be tilting his head to one side, looking at Billy like you’d look at a butterfly with horns. “How come you’re so interested, Billy? You
’re a little old to be goin’ to school, to my way of thinking at least.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “Well, then—”

  “I was thinking to put in for being the teacher, sir.”

  Heflin coughed loud. I think he let some of his chew slide down. He looked at me, gap-toothed and chew-stained and hammered hard by what Billy just put out there.

  Billy was telling Starett he didn’t expect to just be handed the job, but that he’s found out up on Jupiter View just what learning was all about, how it flamed up parts of his brain and how excited it come over him. He lost the grown-up stuffed-up sound and he was just Billy, telling Starett all about the books, all about being outside at dawn to catch the first gleaming so he could get back to reading what he’d put down when the night’s cabin fire died. Then he told Starett about the Indian.

  “Don’t know how old he was, no way of telling, but he was old for a fact and I only knew he was coming past because the snow was new and each step he took had the scrunching whistling noise. He had rawhide britches and a blanket and there was icicles hanging down from his hair and eyebrows even. As soon as I saw him, I waved him to come on in, because he was walking, but he was walking frozen as it gets. His eyes and face were dead in the way he looked, and he just moved his head back and forth when I called out and pointed to the inside of the cabin. He just moved his head back and forth and turned his back, moving into the shadows, black as prairies pits. Don’t know if he got himself turned out or if he wandered off on his own. What was sure was that he couldn’t do what he used to do and wasn’t willing to settle for a place in the circle he didn’t earn. There was a bright moon that night he went by, but the clouds were everywhere so that was the way the moonlight was, too, soft over all there was, but more like cool noontime, with no shadows, and the farther off he moved, the more it was that the moonlight seemed to be shining right on through him, and I swore he got to be nothing but lines and dark parts the farther off he got, and that’s when it settled in on me. Most time, I don’t think we learn a thing quick, like you’d go and strike a match. Most times, it soaks into us with our hardly knowing a thing is happening, until it’s happened and we get the point that we know something we didn’t know before, that our thinking goes in a new place than it went before. That wasn’t what happened with me while I was looking out into the night to the old Indian.

  “Hit me like a bolt, it did, that him and me were exactly the same, that neither one of us could do what we’d always done before, and that I couldn’t rightly claim to earning my place around the fire anymore, just like the Indian. And I knew I’d get put somewhere, maybe swamping out behind the bar at Rooney’s, or even worse’n that over at Honey’s, and those kinds of things are just heart-cutters, Mr. Starett. Bleed a man from the inside out. It’s being dead with lots of ladies’ rouge on your cheeks. Not a way to be. Not a way.

  “That’s how I come to think about putting in for the teacher job, Mr. Starett. I know it sounds crazy to you, crazy to everybody you’ll tell it to, and I don’t bristle about that. But I do know how much I know, Mr. Starett, and I know how to learn more, more than I never knew was out there to know. And I’m easy with you talking to other teachers and having tests and finding out their experience and where they’ve done teaching, and each and every one will have done more teaching than me, because like we both know, I haven’t teached anybody anything. But, there’s the kicker, Mr. Starett, here’s what I can throw in the pot that I bet the others can’t, because they’ve been riding that rail for a longer time than me. You ride long enough, you’ll get a callus on your backside. You teach long enough, you’ll start to fall asleep in the saddle. Got to be. But not with me, Mr. Starett. Not with me. Those other teachers might be able to hand out bushels of facts I can’t get to yet, but there’s one thing I can teach that I bet they forgot all about.

  “Mr. Starett, I can teach learnin’. Because I’m more tadpole than frog, I can teach how bright that light is and how it can make you warm before you ever knew you were cold. I can teach that, Mr. Starett. I can teach learning.”

  I saw a wild-animal circus once where they had a dog knew how to walk a stringy rope they had stretched between two poles. The look I had on my face then was the same look I was giving Heflin in the little room where we stood outside, listening. Neither one of us ever heard Billy talk that long a time at one go. Told you he was different.

  There was an empty time before Mr. Starett spoke up. “Billy, I think you’re trying to walk up a road that’s frozen solid, but I’ll pass on the word to Blackthorne and the others and I’ll try to see that you get treated fair.” There was a sound of crinkling paper. “Here’s your wages. You did good.”

  Billy came out of Starett’s room a second later, cramming the bills into his pocket. He looked back and forth between me and Heflin. He knew we’d been listening.

  Billy smiled a little. His shoulders hitched.

  “The man didn’t say no,” said Billy Piper. “Let’s get over to Rooney’s.”

  We went to Rooney’s, though I couldn’t swear up to it in court. I remember Hef and the Dutchman loading me across Geezer’s butt and tying me onto the horn for the ride back to Starett’s. I do remember walking in to Rooney’s with Billy and Hef, but it gets pretty smeared up after that, which isn’t my usual way, at least not on the past ten, twelve years. There was a time I enjoyed getting squiffed more than just about anything, squeaky springs singing with a purpose, but when the years started adding on, I couldn’t get back to form as quick as I did younger. So I reined that part of me in, until last night, and why I went stupid last night, I didn’t really know, though there’s a part telling me it’s tied up with Billy Piper, though that doesn’t hold sense much when you turn it this way and that and look at it in the light. It’s not like Billy Piper was my son or brother or anything like that, where his changing his talk and thinking would cause me any bother. We’re just pardners a little. We just both work at Mr. Starett’s. He’s not my brother, he’s not my son.

  I guess Hef and the Dutchman carted me in and put me on the bunk, but they didn’t peel off my britches or shirt, for which I don’t blame them, being as my skin nowadays looks like pie crust in the rain and I’m told that when I’m drinking stupid I give off a stench that you could nail to the wall. I woke up when my belly started bubbling, and I barely made it out the door before I started anointing the grass in just about every way you can imagine, though it’s not an imagining I’d encourage you to do.

  After a time, I teetered over to the trough and dunked my head under, swishing my mouth, spitting, dunking again. Any horse to drink out of this in the morning’s sure to go at least blind, if he doesn’t get mercy and just die. I come up, pulling in air as deep as I could, still not done with my shitting. And all this because of something I did to myself on purpose. I’ll be eating turds next.

  “Hey, Wilbur.”

  It was Billy’s voice, soft as the night itself. Don’t know why I didn’t hear him close in. “Hey, Billy. You just gettin’ back?”

  His head moved up and down, once each way. “Me and Pearline had a lot of catching up to do.”

  “You get it all done?”

  “Most, not all. Try again tomorrow night.” He nodded off in the direction of the corral. “Geezer still was saddled when I rode in. I took it off. It’s on the rail there with the blanket. Never saw you forget to do something like that before.”

  “I didn’t forget. Heflin and the Dutchman must have. They rode me in and poured me to bed. They might have been a little squiffed, too. Lord knows I was.”

  He smiled a little. “Yeah. Looked like you were heading there when I left for Honey’s. You were even starting to sing.”

  “Shit on a duck.”

  “You were, Wilbur. You were. Something about an Irish shepherd boy.”

  “Shit on a duck.” And it come to me then, me standing on a chair, singing like a man yelling fire, Hef trying to bring me back down to the floor level. Some
thing else needed to be talked on. This was getting too tight around my collar. “You tell Pearline about this notion you got about teaching school?” His head cocked off to one way, looking to me sideways. “Don’t you look to me like that. You know damn well me and Hef could hear.”

  “I did.”

  “So, Pearline said ...”

  “Nothing.”

  “You told her you were looking to teach school and she didn’t have anything to say to that?” I gave a snort in response.

  “Not in words, she didn’t,” Billy said.

  “What the hell’s that mean?”

  His mouth pursed up while he dug for words. What he found was this. “It means there’s times and places where what gets said doesn’t get said with a voice using words, and me and Pearline were in one of those times and one of those places.”

  “Oh.”

  “Bet your ass ‘oh.’” He looked at me, shaking his head. “Wilbur, I got to say it. There’s a smell coming off you a skunk wouldn’t claim as his own. Jesus.”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Don’t smell up the night and I won’t.” We both grunt-laughed at that and fell into step, moving back in the direction of the bunkhouse. Just the sound of our boots crunching and a few way-off hoot owls. “Ask you something, Wilbur?”