Some days, Pearline and Nicholas came out, bringing a take-along from Rooney’s, which was lunch and welcome. We’d sit around on the lumber piles and open up the take-along, with Pearline making everything out like we were a family on a picnic. She was primrose pretty and Nicholas was energy with a bright smile, and for me, who never had a family, they were some of the best times we had. I’d find myself watching Pearline and smiling, just enjoying the sound of her voice, the way it piped and danced, hearing her laugh and watching her clap her hands when Billy would make some little joke. Sometimes, I’d be thinking back on stories I told when we were on a drive, stories about wide-open ivory women thighs and how me and all the boys would laugh, and I regretted telling those tales when I was watching Pearline put out some of those odd family lunches we shared. She was sweet, Pearline was, and I was glad she and my pard knew how well they fit up.
After we were done with the food, Billy and Nicholas would take Rooney’s take-along tins down to One Legged Indian Crick to give them a rinse, and that was the time when I’d get to talk to Pearline. Not that it was so much Pearline I was talking to, but just that it was a female and not matterin’ to me what Pearline did at Honey’s; it was just that it was a little bit of a time when I could drink in some of the softer side. It was striking me that I didn’t have an oversupply of knowing how much I missed that all my life. Cowboy’n don’t dwell much on that side. Sometimes, not many, but sometimes, she’d talk about Honey and the life, and I remember me asking her if her and the other girls weren’t a lot afraid.
“What of?”
“Pearline, somebody snuck in and killed that one girl, Rosalie. If I was Honey, I’d be nailing windows shut and hiring night fighters.”
“Whoever did it went off, Wilbur. It’s done.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
She looked over at me like there’d been a loud noise. “How come you’d say a thing like that?”
“There’s law in town now, Pearline.”
“Willard Ganeel isn’t any kind of proper law. Everybody knows that.”
“Everybody except Willard. He thinks that badge come down from Heaven on high.”
“But you’re the deputy. Isn’t that so, Willard?”
“It is.”
“You’re the one who tells him what to do?”
“Other way around. He tells me.”
Pearline looked down in the direction of One Legged Indian Crick. We could hear Billy and Nicholas talking and laughing. The voices were getting closer. Pearline stayed looking at the woods below, but when she talked, she was talking to me. “If Rosalie’s hand hadn’t been shaking so much, we wouldn’t be having this little talk, Wilbur. Just remember that and do whatever you can to put Marshal Willard Ganeel on the sidetrack.” She straightened her shoulders back and waved off to Billy and Nicholas. She moved off to them, never looking back at me, but I knew full well she knew I was looking at her. Pearline and me never talked about Rosalie ever again. No need.
After a time, what we were doing actually started to look like what we hoped. There was a frame up and a shape, and it was enough to make any ten-year-old boy groan and spit, because what was there was no doubt going to end up being a schoolhouse.
I’d stand there and look at it at the end of every day and that’s when it settled in on me, why the whole project was bringing me so much righteousness within. Cowboyin’ doesn’t build a thing; you move the beeves from here to there and it’s hard, harder than other folks can ever know, but when you get them to where they’re going, all of a sudden it’s done and over with and you mount up and ride on back to the place you started out from so long ago. You’re just a little sore and hungover and that’s the change; that’s the change. But at the end of those days working with Billy Piper, I was able to stand there and see something strong and real and know I’d had a part of putting it there and that it would be there for a long time after I wasn’t. I wished I had a woman to tell that to, wished I had a kid to brag to.
It was an item could be reached out to, touched, sniffed. You could rub your whiskers on it, lean strong with your backside and know it wasn’t ever going to give way. I recall walking by city buildings and seeing where some worker had carved his initials in the wood or stone, and it wasn’t up until this very time that I understood why: Here I was; here’s what I did. I’d ask Billy. He would understand, but I’d ask. It was his schoolhouse more’n it was mine.
Way in the distance I heard Nicholas start to play on his sweet potato for him and Pearline on their walk back to Honey’s. Schoolhouse to whorehouse. I guess we must like being in a house.
While Billy and me were getting seriously puffed up about what we were getting done with his schoolhouse, it looked pretty heifered next to the bull work getting done in the town itself. The tent city for the railroad people had a lot more frame walls you could see, and there was serious talk about adding a wing to Rooney’s and having that be a gentleman’s hotel for the oil people. Everyone called all these things improvements for the town, but there was one bird hadn’t landed on a branch yet, and that was the talk of moving Honey’s way out from Salt Springs itself. The thinking here was that if there was going to be wives and families and kids straying through our place, that Honey’s and what went on there wouldn’t be all proper. Which was so, in its way, as Honey’s didn’t have proper anywhere on its here-ya-go. It wasn’t like we didn’t already have kids in town. We did, more than just Rooney’s kid, and from what I saw and heard, they just looked on Honey’s as the place where the men went to see the ladies, and when they got a little older, they knew why the men was going there, and any town where there was bulls in one pasture and cows in another wasn’t shattering many secrets about getting sweaty and happy at the same time. Nobody asked me. I never had kids. Maybe that’s the reason. Too much work lying to them all the time.
One night a couple of weeks into the schoolhouse building, me and Heflin and the Dutchman rode on into town, heading for Rooney’s and maybe Honey’s after that. It was almost like I was coming into a town I never seen before. They’d been dragging the street with a sled loaded down with stones so they could smooth out some of the oldest ruts. The front of Rooney’s had been whitewashed, and there was a new sign dangling out front with a curly R at the front of the word Rooney’s and letting everyone know that the owner’s first name was “Sean,” which I found out later is said out loud like there’s an H after the first S, Irish apparently not being as simple a language as American is. The boardwalk that ran along the front of every business on Main Street had been hammered new and flattened out some. And then there was the outlining on the front of Honey’s, where the new sign was going to go up, which was going to be new named “Miss Honey’s Bath House for Gentlemen.” Maybe that would keep Mrs. Starett and her hovering Ladies Aid sorts at arm’s length.
The inside of Rooney’s was the same, if you don’t count that it was a lot cleaner now. It was still too smoky and noisy and had itself a smell, but if any of that had gotten made different, it wouldn’t a been Rooney’s anymore. I don’t much care for the place when you list it all like that, but there’s still some ease to be taken when you walk in the door and see it just like you left it; Rooney’s was what you know filled with who you know. That’s a pillow that’ll fit your head and soften the edges.
The Dutchman hammered an elbow into my ribs and nodded toward the back of the room, and once I looked in that direction, I let off my pissedness at being elbowed by the Dutchman, because there was Omar standing at the very end of the bar, smiling at nothing, but definitely very pleased with being Omar, which isn’t an easy thing to justify. He saw us looking at him and started down toward us, holding his beer up high, like a tightrope walker with a balance pole. Heflin waved Omar on over and made a hole for him in the line along the bar. The Dutchman nodded and grunted in Omar’s direction, so we wouldn’t be hearing much more from him for the rest of the night.
“What the hell brings you in here, Omar?” Hefl
in said. “This boot don’t fit you.”
Omar’s smile broadened out. “Saw him walk on in here. Had to come see how he was doing. Looked good. Had to find out for sure if he was good.”
“Who’re we talking about?”
Omar’s head bobbed off to one side. Looking over there, I saw back into the little dining room Rooney kept for his specials. Shit on a duck, there was Billy sitting at one of the white tablecloths with Pearline, and a waiter was pouring pink wine for them both. Had to be the first wine for Billy. Pearline mighta gotten treated over to Honey’s by some such lout. She was wearing a shiny satin, soft-blue-like, and there wasn’t a soul in the place except them, at least as far as they were concerned.
“How the hell’s Billy afford being back there?” Heflin said.
Omar replied: “Doesn’t have to afford it; he’s there on Rooney’s treat.”
“Rooney’s treating him? When the hell’d Rooney start treating crippled cowboys and their whores?”
The answer was mine and it made me happy and sad all at the same time. I knew why I was happy, but the sad kept itself in the shadows. “You got it wrong, Hef. Rooney ain’t treating a crippled-up cowboy and a whore. He’s treating the man who’s going to be teacher of his son. He’s treating the new schoolteacher and the schoolteacher’s lady and don’t you ever forget it.” Heflin humphed and took a gulp of barley death, and I just kept watching Billy and Pearline. There wasn’t a man in the front saloon who didn’t know how Pearline padded her purse, and there was likely more than one man in the room who had laid some change on top of her dresser. She knew that and Billy knew that and still they kept firm in their traces, heading up their particular hill, pulling that load as best they could.
“Doin’ fine, too, as well as I can tell.” It was Omar talking all about Billy’s leg. He said the bone wasn’t set perfect, if you meant that “perfect” had to have “straight” in there, too. But it had set strong, said Omar, and while it might ache up on him sometimes, it ought to hold up for what he’s got to do, and that’s all anyone could expect, seemed to him.
Struck me that Black Iodine mighta freed Billy up in ways none of us could appreciate clear, but that thought went out of my head when Billy and Pearline got up from their table and moved off toward the front door. There was a back door to Rooney’s, and they coulda headed there, but that didn’t seem to be in their thinking. I caught their look and tipped the hat, waggled a few fingers. Billy nodded and Pearline smiled, fingers waggling back to me. It meant something to them that I waved. Meant something to me that they waved back.
Changed my plans for the evening, though. Couldn’t have a friendly wave like that and then head on over to Honey’s later and eat from the other side of the bowl. You don’t do that. I don’t know why, but I know you just don’t.
I walked Omar outside after I stood him for a drink more and he started to show a serious list to port. He was pleased and he was proud and he was as squiffled as a man ought to be who holds the medical ability of the town in his hands. I knew Blackthorne and Starett were talking about the railroad and oil meaning that a diploma doctor would be pulling in most any day now, and I didn’t know what that might do to Omar. No need to tell him now, nothing to be gained, so I pointed him off toward his place and he walked off, pigeon-toed and knock-kneed, but making more progress than not.
I peered off to the other side of the street when I heard twin boot strikes on the boardwalk there. Willard Ganeel was out making what I figured he’d call his night rounds. Fergus Blackthorne was by his side, hand on Willard’s shoulder. Willard had his left hand wrapped around the butt of his pistol. Even when Fergus would say something, Willard would just nod, never looking over, head swinging back and forth like a boat pilot on the Platte. They stopped when they got to the corner and talked a bit, Fergus mostly, and while I couldn’t make out any words, the tones were easy and friendly, and Fergus’s hand stayed on Willard’s shoulder the whole while. There was a handshake, and Willard moved off down the right-angle street, leaving Fergus on Main Street. He was just starting to turn away when he heard the sound of Nicholas playing the ocarina. The moonlight was almost straight down, but there were still black shadows under the overhang and that’s where Fergus scurried back to, standing there in the dark looking over at the second floor of Honey’s.
Billy and Pearline were out on the deck, her sitting in the rocker. He was standing behind her, rubbing her shoulders. Pearline was wearing a veily robe and her hair was down. Nicholas was sitting on the railing that circled the deck. The song he was playing was the song you hear from a nightbird on the river. I looked back over at Fergus.
He wasn’t moving, just looking up to the deck. Then he unbuttoned his frock coat and his right hand was at his front. It took a few ticks, but pretty soon I realized he was rubbing his hand up and down his front in that way every man knows, whether they want to own up to it or not.
Billy wasn’t there when I got back to the bunkhouse, and he wasn’t there when I woke up in the morning either. He mighta stayed the night with Pearline, but that didn’t hold, bein’ as while Rooney might stand you a meal if he was of a mind, Honey didn’t run her enterprise in a way that I heard Mr. Starett call more suited to a lazy fair. So Billy came back after me and got up and left before me. Wasn’t the first time. Been almost every morning lately.
He wasn’t at the schoolhouse when I got there either, which was lately somewhere in between never happen and regular doing. He never said where he was spending the early part of the day and I never asked, but being as he made sure to stay later than me on those days when I got there and was working before him, I didn’t have any call to push on him about it. This particular morning, though, it wasn’t like that.
He showed up with a cloud on his face, and it stayed there most of the day. Wasn’t any singing or stupid talk. There was just that cloud all around him and everything he did. I was thinking it might be that him or Pearline got wind of Fergus Blackthorne standing there in the overhang. I got pretty much certain of that when Billy and me were eating lunch.
“Talked with Blackthorne this morning,” he said.
“Where’d you see him?”
Billy chewed on a stick. Spit out a chunk of bark. “I went over to his stables.”
He said it like a coin flip, like I ought to know why he was there. He was wrong. “What was you doin’ over there?”
“Givin’ apples to Black Iodine.” He saw my look. Smiled. Shoulders hitched up. “I been over doin’ that the past couple weeks every morning.”
“How come?”
“Make a friend.”
“That friend crippled you up some, Billy.”
“More’n some, I’d say.”
“So, how come?”
Billy shook his head like there was a gnat buzzing around. It wasn’t the question he didn’t like. It was that the answer he had didn’t have any hard corners to it. “I can’t get a rope on it, Wilbur. It’s just something I want to do. Or try to do.”
“And Blackthorne saw you doing it and he’d rather grind the horse up for pig slop.”
“No. We didn’t talk about Black Iodine. We didn’t talk about anything like that.”
“What’d you talk about?”
“Nicholas not being allowed in the school.”
And that was where the cloud got born and why it was so stubborn in getting blown away. Billy had given his list of students to Mr. Starett, and Mr. Starett had passed it on to Blackthorne, sharing information was all, and Blackthorne got creased every way you could get about it. Told Starett the town was on a precipice, ready to leap across and step up to a whole new place, bring in new people, build out new businesses and shops and stores. Oil and railroads and mercantile, was how he said it, and according to Billy, Blackthorne said it to him, too, over and over, oil and railroads and mercantile. Like a Catholic stroking Latin the way they do, diving down into the sound and letting it cover their ears. Oil and railroads and mercantile. Nigra boy in a sch
ool full of white tadpoles would splash the pond and spoil the surface, he said. No, no, and no. I spoke the way you walk across a new frozen river. “Billy, what Blackthorne’s saying might be the easiest way.”
“The easiest way?”
“Might be, yeah.”
“And that’s good, keeping Nicholas out of school.”
“Didn’t say ‘good.’ Said ‘easy.’ And that’s pretty close to what Starett and Blackthorne are looking for you to do.”
His head swung around to me slow. Held on me for a long time. I felt me a need to get up, so I did.
“Better get a move on,” I said. “We’re burning off too much time. We can still get a start on those front steps, don’t you think?”
“Sit your ass down, Wilbur.”
“Billy, we got work to do.”
He shook his head, held me like a pin holds a dead butterfly. “You got talking to do, Wilbur. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. But you’ve got some talking to do, and there’s nothing out here that’s more important than any of that.”
So I sat me down and started, telling Billy what Mr. Starett said, told him about not being high on the test list, but Blackthorne putting a pointer on him because he was a Salt Springs boy and he’d do what was right for the town, do what was right as far as Starett and Blackthorne decided right to be. Told him and told him and hurt him and hurt him with each word, each breath, hurt him in deep ways I don’t think I ever hurt a man before. He stood up in the middle of it, fists balled up tight, jaw working, lips all stone. He stalked off as best he could, moving off in the direction of where he ground-tethered Whiskey.
A Cold Place In Hell Page 7