A Cold Place In Hell

by William Blinn

  “Go do it, Billy! Go find Blackthorne or Starett or both of ’em and give ’em each a snot-knocker for me! And tomorrow you’ll be a gamed-up cowhand who can’t ride and a schoolteacher who almost had himself a school and kids who needed teaching! Hell, you’ll feel real good then!”

  Billy’d just started the half jump he had to do to mount up since his left leg was too stiff to lift his foot the proper way into the stirrup. He was half belly over the saddle, looking back over his shoulder at me, feet dangling. Looked fairly humorous actually, but it wasn’t the right time to point that out to him. He slid down off the saddle, stood there with his head resting against Whiskey’s flank. He turned around, looking at me in a way I didn’t like at all. He walked back toward me, bobbing up and down a little with that wobbly walk of his. When he stopped, he was just a little closer than him and me usually stand with each other.

  “Maybe I ought to start the snot-knockin’ with you right here and now, Wilbur.”

  “Why would you want to do a thing like that?”

  “Because we tell each other the truth, you and me, and you knew what they was saying about me and how I’d slip along.”

  “Billy, what they’re looking for you to do is the same thing they’re looking for me to do. I’m an old windbreak who they figure will do what they tell him not to do. You’re a so-called teacher without a teaching paper in your back pocket. Way they see it, we’re both stove in and not worth worrying about. We got nothin’ to fight with, Billy, because we got no place to go.”

  He looked off from me. The fire got dampened. He took in a long breath. “Goddammit to hell and gone, Wilbur. Nicholas ought to be able to go to school. Everybody ought to be able to go to school!” He looked me direct again.

  “Billy, don’t start in on one of your learnin’ sermons again. I—”

  “Hell, Wilbur. You ought to go to school!”

  “I can read menus and road signs. I don’t need anymore.”

  “You don’t know what you need, Wilbur. That proves why you need to go to school.” His smile a sad one, older than usual for Billy. He turned away and walked back to Whiskey, head down, the left leg coming along like a lost calf. He pulled himself up across the saddle, swung his right leg over.

  “You want some help with the other foot?”

  “No. I can do it.” He got the toe of his left boot into the stirrup, tried to push it in farther.

  I started over to help.

  “Touch that foot and it’ll be the last goddamned thing you touch.” He worked the foot, standing up partway, then sliding it on into the stirrup in a way that worked. He whistled when it got done. Looked down at me. “So, we’re doing what we’re doing because they don’t think we can do anything that’s worth salt. We’re doing what we’re doing because we’ll never put a stone in their boot no matter what.”

  “The way I see it, yeah.”

  “The way you see it makes some sense, Wilbur. Wish I didn’t agree about that, but we’re pretty much capons in all this deal, ain’t we? We could just saw off our balls and put ’em in a safe somewhere.” His heels touched on Whiskey’s flank and the horse started forward.

  “Where you goin’?”

  He didn’t look back when he talked. “When I got things to think about, I used to take a walk. That’s not so easy anymore, so now I let Whiskey do the walking while I do the thinking part.” The pony went on a bit; then Billy reined in and turned around in the saddle, looking back, “Tell you one thing, though.”

  “Waiting.”

  “One of the reasons to put our balls in a safe is to make sure we know where they are when the right time comes to pull ’em out and put ’em to proper use. So, don’t you forget the combination to that, old man, ’cause they’re coming out at the right time, I’ll guarantee you that. They’re coming out at the right time.”

  I stood there watching him and Whiskey move off into the woods, his game leg sticking out stiff. Made him look like an upside-down Y. When he was out of sight, I thought about heading back into town, but I was too dark to do that, so I looked around for something that needed doing on the schoolhouse, something that would let me feel it wasn’t all so empty a day I was goin’ through. We had trouble getting the steps level just right, so I went over and hung out a new plumb line, trying to get it right. Then I started to hear Billy yelling. I was over by Geezer, just starting to pull myself up into the saddle, when I realized the yells weren’t about any kind of trouble or Billy needing help.

  The yells were just him out there in the woods somewhere, bellowing and howling. No words, no anything but anger and head-butting bile and piss vinegar. Pounding the dirt probably, kicking at pine cones and rocks. There comes times when you just got to let the Lord know that you’re not sure how much more you can take and He needs to start taking those fancies into account. It was hard to tell how far off Billy was. Things echo hard in the trees and stay in the air a long time. Wouldn’t be a surprise to me to know that some of Billy Piper’s yelling and bellowing was still bouncing off the trees on some mountainside to this very day.

  He was doing his kind of work out there in the woods. It was time for me to get back to my job on the steps.

  The next morning was like the morning before it, with Billy gone by the time I lifted my head off the pillow. Couple of seconds before it come to me that the mornings weren’t really twinned up, because Billy had told me where he went once it got light.

  And when I got there, there he was, one rung up on the stable’s corral fence, with Black Iodine circling round, edging in a little closer each time. Though there wasn’t no line, Black Iodine was definitely hooked. I stayed still, watching while it closed in on Billy’s hand, stretched out to him, shining red apple held steady. Billy was making little soft clicking noises, like you might do for a squirrel or a pigeon. Lord knows why we think they must like clicking sounds. But maybe it’s so, because in a while, Black Iodine’s head was right opposite Billy, only a foot or so above that shiny red apple. Billy’s hand was steady as a boulder at the bottom of a pond. He left off the clicking sounds. “Hey,” he’d whisper. “Hey ... hey ... breakfast time’s here ... come and get it ...”

  Damned horse did just that. Bobbed its head down, grabbed the apple, and backed away, never taking its eyes off Billy. Barely a chomp or two, and then a throat wiggle and gurgle spit noise, and Billy was reaching into the belly of his shirt, coming out with a second apple.

  First one musta been good. Black Iodine took a step toward him, stopped, then took a second one. Billy’s hand was out like before and he was smiling easy and strong. The big horse took one more step, and Billy’s left hand went around to his back pocket. He pulled out a little piece of cloth. Kept it all wadded up. Iodine’s head had moved back into the feed chute again, and it was looking down at that apple. When it bobbed down to get its treat, Billy did two things in a blur. When the apple was out of his right hand, he gave the horse a strong pat on its neck while his left hand reached around and folded out that rectangle of cloth on the big stallion’s back, right at the base of the neck. Iodine never quivered. There was an apple to get down the gullet. No time for a fainty feather on its back. Iodine moved away, jaws working, gurgling coming to the surface. Billy looked over and saw me, smiled, waved me on over. I came up to his side and we looked into the corral. Iodine might have been a spawn of death itself, but there was no denying the damned horse was the hugest piece of ebony that ever got turned into snorting sweaty horseflesh. The low morning sun danced off each little valley and muscle. If you’d thrown a buncha snakes into a black satin bag, them turning all around each other under that satin woulda looked exactly like the beast’s muscles wrestling under his skin. Beautiful and dangerous, though maybe that’s pretty much the same thing, when you get to the dark part of things.

  “What the hell’s that on his back?” It was Fergus Blackthorne who called out, coming out of the stable. He had a steaming crockery cup of coffee in his hand. “What the devil is that anywa
y?”

  Billy nodded, pointed to himself. “That’s mine, Mr. Blackthorne. That’s my handkerchief.”

  “What’s it doing on his back?”

  “I’m just trying to get him used to the feel of a little something there. Just trying to show it won’t hurt him.”

  “Jesus, Billy. Jesus ... George on that one.” He blew on the coffee, took a noisy slurp. “Never knew a cowboy who carried a hanky before.”

  Billy cleared his throat. It was a soft noise, the kind you do in church. “I’m not a cowboy anymore, Mr. Blackthorne. I’m a schoolteacher, remember?”

  Blackthorne looked sideways at Billy. “Oh, that’s right. You’re a schoolteacher now. I forgot about that. I’ll try to remember next time.”

  He bounced his look in my direction. “Wilbur, I don’t see you wearin’ a badge. Shouldn’t a town’s deputy be wearing a badge?”

  “I got it back in my kit.”

  He took in a deep breath, hummed a little, letting it out. “We’ll probably get into that tomorrow night, Wilbur, but I think you need to have that badge on all the time.”

  Billy looked a question over at me, and I looked back I-don’t-know-either to him. “What’s tomorrow night, Mr. Blackthorne?”

  “We’re going to have a meeting of all the town employees. You two are town employees now, you know. You and Willard Ganeel and Sarah Allgood. We’re going to make her town secretary. Her handwriting’s the best. Looks like it came right out of a printer’s shop.” He went to take a sip of coffee, but there wasn’t any left. He looked at the bottom of the cup like there’d been a plot against him. “Anyway, Starett and me decided we’d have a town employee meeting to set policies and so forth. Things like wearing badges, things like that.”

  I’m not much for meetings, and I guess that showed on my face. I admire anyone who’s got strong ideas and ways to tell you about those ideas, but it’s always seemed to me the more people you get in a room talking about a problem, the more smooth and polite and watered down it all turns out to be. A hundred people can sing a song, but only one can sit down and write it.

  “Eight o’clock in the General Store,” Blackthorne said. “See you both there.” He nodded an adios and moved off in the direction of his place.

  All I could think of was him standing under the overhang in the darkness there, looking up at Billy and Pearline and Nicholas. I wished I hadn’ta seen it, because it wouldn’t go away and it was in my head in a festering kind of way.

  “Look,” Billy said. He was pointing off to Black Iodine in the corral. “The handkerchief’s still there.”

  “So?”

  “If the handkerchief stays, then maybe a saddle blanket will stay. If the blanket can stay, then maybe there’s a bit of hope for a saddle. Any saddle needs a rider. Might be a chance.”

  “Billy, your brains gettin’ more crooked than your bad leg. You ought to want to kill that damned horse, not break it.”

  He stared out at Iodine for a long time. “Wilbur, you’re part right. I do want to kill that horse. And that want is the very thing I’m trying to tame.”

  That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, and I was getting too hungry for breakfast to arm wrestle with it. “Cookie was throwing slop together when I left. You want to go eat?”

  He came down off the rail, shaking his head. “I’m going on over to Forrester’s Smithy. Want to see if he’s got a bell we can put up at the schoolhouse.”

  “Never saw a bell at Forrester’s. Saw a come-to-dinner-triangle clanger there. That sets off a racket that’s hard to ignore.”

  The head shake got shorter and more set. “No. A schoolhouse needs a bell. Church gets a bell for the same reason. It’s an important place with an important reason.”

  “They got bells at funerals, too, sometimes.”

  Billy laughed, his smile like a crescent moon. “You making plans to go to a funeral, Wilbur?”

  I said no, but of course I couldn’t see what was coming.

  Mrs. Ganeel put out a spread for us at the town employee meeting, and Willard had cleared off a place on the counter for all the plates and platters. What was there was side meat and johnnycake and hominy, steaming away, filling the room with more warm closeness than might be hoped for. Willard kept saying that his wife could cook anything, and after the first bite of side meat and johnnycake, I thought that would-cook was a better fit than could-cook. The only thing that would eat that pig would be another pig. Sara Allgood finished a first plate and most of a second. Sara was a husky woman.

  Mr. Starett and Mr. Blackthorne came in a few minutes late, that being because they stopped to have dinner at Rooney’s. I have noted in my time that rich men don’t stand in line to be first for side meat and johnnycake. Coffee got poured and dishes stacked and everybody found a place to light. Starett and Blackthorne were at the front. Starett was the official talker.

  “Folks, we’re at a door here, and on the other side of the door is a room this town’s never been in. It’s a bigger room than we’ve ever been in before, and there’s people in there we don’t know, powerful people who can chew up the town of Salt Springs and spit it out again. That’s why we’ve got to get us organized, get us thinking the same way and behaving the same way. We’ve got to make sure these other people take Salt Springs seriously and listen to what we have to say.”

  Sara Allgood made a little pigeon-coo noise. “Do you really think things are going to be all that different? Really?”

  “Sara, it’s going to be more different than you can imagine.” Starett pulled off his half-glasses and used them to point to us all. Might as well have had a sign around his neck: something important coming up. “Let me give you an example, something Fergus and I just heard about a few minutes ago. You know about the supply barn the railroad’s got at Twilly’s Pass. All sorts of equipment there, stored up for the construction going on. Two puffer-belly switch engines there. I believe we’re all here in accord with the notion that we have a good crop of young people. Oh, there’s mischief, there’s back talk, there’s the occasional outhouse gets picked up and moved. But they’re generally a good lot, well mannered, respectful, clean, mannered through and through. Anybody here doesn’t think that’s accurate?”

  Nobody but Blackthorne knew what he was talking about, so we nodded.

  “Well, let me tell you how this incoming boom has already affected our young people. Last night, somebody busted the lock on that supply shed and climbed up on top of one of those puffer-bellies and took off with the locomotive bell itself!” His fist smacked down on the counter. “Unscrewed it from the fitting and took off like a thief in the night!”

  “Actually,” said Blackthorne, “it was a thief in the night.”

  I peeked over at Billy. He was looking straight on at Starett. A pound of lime with white paint poured over would have showed more clue.

  “But do we really know it was some of our young people?” said Sara.

  “Miz Allgood, who on earth else could it be?” It was Billy doing the talking. “I did my share of mischief when I was green and growing. Some do; some don’t. But it’s the way of some youngsters. That’s why I look forward to getting our school up and running. I understand what devilment can exist in a youngster. I understand it firsthand.”

  “And you think you could have an effect on this kind of thing?”

  “Ma’am, I think I could turn it back like Moses did with the Red Sea.”

  Starett cut in. “Point is, our young people are being twisted around. The world’s getting powerful more complicated and hard to understand. That’s why we’re all here.”

  “I’m here because I was told to be here.” I was saying an honest thing. Honest and smart aren’t always the same thing, seemed like.

  Blackthorne looked at me hard. His eyes had the kinda glow you can see in a cougar’s eyes in a dark cave. “And I see you’re still not wearing your badge either.”

  “It’s in my kit, Mr. Blackthorne. Keep forgetting the damned th
ing. Pardon the language, Sara.”

  “Well, Wilbur,” Starett said, “you got to start wearing the badge full time. That’s part of your job, showing people that we are putting together a town where the law stands firm and tall, a place where people can feel restful about raising a family. You don’t wear the badge, you don’t get paid. Let’s put it that way.”

  “It’s a strong way to put it, Mr. Starett. I can see a benefit to me wearing the badge more. I’ll look to it.”

  “And Billy, we’re clear about you and the colored boy, yes?”

  Billy Piper nodded instantly. “He won’t be going to the weekday school, Mr. Starett. Rest easy on that.”

  Blackthorne’s head lopped over to one side looking to Billy. “Whoa in on that a bit. What’s this ‘weekday school’ you’re talking about?”

  “Saturday. Saturday school. Nicholas and three or four of the girls from Honey’s. And there’s the Creole waitress at Rooney’s is thinking about it as well.” He didn’t have any expression at all on his face. Looked like a frog who just ate a fly.

  Blackthorne wasn’t going to be that fly. “We’re not paying you to teach on Saturdays, Billy.”

  “Oh, I know that. But the girls all agreed to do a little cleanup after we were done with class. And I can always find some little thing for Nicholas to do. It’s all sort of a barter deal.”

  “And what exactly would you be teaching these people, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Reading, almost all the way. Nicholas don’t have that at all, and all the girls are real ragged about what they can understand. Once they get reading down, everything else will pretty much fall into place.”

  Starett reached out and put a hand on Blackthorne’s arm. It stopped Blackthorne from saying what he was going to say, which, judging from the size of the breath he took in, was going to be loud.