It was crowded. It was smoky. It was Rooney’s.
I wedged closer to the bar, recognizing a lot of faces, but not that many names. The faces were the oil faces and the railroad faces and I’d seen all of them on the street and at the General Store and livery. We’d nod, not knowing each other, but knowing that was probably on the way. You could stand on the stairs and look down into the crowd and tell who was who. The oil men weren’t businessmen, but they made do with their heads and what they knew how to do and find out. There was no holsters, no thick leather gun belts, no boots, no spurs. There was city coats in dark tweed and vests with chains from one pocket over to the other. Not a broad brimmed hat in the bunch, just those domey little Irish derbies. You could see a good many of them had noses the color of raspberry jam, with a little curving half moon across their faces where the narrow derby brim didn’t do them any good at all out in the sun. But that’s what they wore, that’s what they stayed with, because it was a city hat and these were city men.
The railroaders were more used to spit and sweat, but there was still a line carved between them and the cow drivers. They were tough on both sides, but the railroaders had scales and gauges and those measuring telescopes out in their supply yard, and that little difference was enough. The three kinds all moved through Rooney’s from the bar to the eating room to the card tables and wheel, like salmon and trout and carp all trying to share one pond that was squeezing them all tight at all sides.
I caught Johnny Kenosha’s eye and nodded me an order for a beer, which he commenced to pull right then. I needed that beer more than normal, which is why I wasn’t pleased to have a hand grip down on my wrist just when I lifted the schooner to my mouth. I looked over to see that the owner of the hand was brand-new Marshal-Sheriff Willard Ganeel.
Shit on a duck.
“Evening, Willard,” I said.
“Marshal.”
“Beg pardon?”
“‘Marshal’. That’s how you call me when we meet up. I’m the marshal. You the deputy. That’s how we call each other. Mr. Blackthorne found me a book on lawmen. That’s what we need a few words about.”
He still had hold of my wrist. It was starting to smart some. “Willard—”
“‘Marshal,’” he said, strong and low. He manufactured a smile, so it would look better between us. “And you need to put the beer down and order yourself a cup of coffee.”
“I don’t see that, Willard.”
He tightened on my arm and it came down with the schooner of beer onto the mahogany. “You can’t drink on duty,” the marshal said.
“According to you, I’m pretty much always on duty.”
He nodded slow. “That’s the way.”
“So, if I understand it all, Willard, this job pays pissant wages and I might get killed doing it and I can’t go to Honey’s and I can’t have a beer, so I can’t get fucked and I can’t get drunk, all so I have the honor of being your helper.”
“Look at it this way, Wilbur. Yeah, you can only have coffee or water when you’re in Rooney’s, bur Starett and Blackthorne have set it up with Rooney so that you get to drink for free.”
“I get free coffee and free water.”
“All you want.”
Somebody won at the wheel at the back of the room and a big holler went up. People all over were looking around, standing up on chairs, to see what was going on. I just kept staring at Willard Ganeel. His badge was gold. My badge was silver. Somebody won at the wheel. Somebody lost at the bar. I headed outside.
I was almost to the batwings when I felt a hand on my shoulder. If I came around to find myself looking at Willard, I was going to flatten him, but instead I found myself nose to nose with the doughy face that belonged to Omar. His breath was all hops. To me, that smelled pretty good. “I heard,” Omar said. “I know how to help.”
“Talk, Omar.”
“When you come in here, order yourself a cup of coffee. I’ll see you at the bar and come over, order myself a beer. You drink down the coffee as quick as you can. I’ll pour you a cupful of beer into it.”
“Cup’ll be hot, Omar. Beer’s going to get warm.”
Omar wasn’t a big man, but he worked to draw himself up as much as he was able. “Wilbur, when the beer you’re gettin’ comes free, it don’t behoove you much to whine about the temperature not being to your liking.”
Well, he was right as right gets to be, and that’s what I told him right away. He accepted that, but didn’t move off. Acted like there was more needed to be said.
“Omar, is there a problem I don’t know about?”
His lower lip bounced a bit. “They’re bringing in a doctor. People are going to go to that doctor about ailments and aches and I’ll just be a carpenter again. When you know ailments and aches, people treat you with respect. When all you know is hammers and nails and saws, you’re pretty much a gray horse, and no more’n that.”
“You’re the best carpenter we got and everybody knows that. Everybody.”
Omar’s head bobbled. Eyes welled up. “They’re changing it, Wilbur. They’re changing the dirt under our feet while we’re standing on it.”
“They call it progress, Omar.”
“Then you won’t mind if I shit in your boot and call it butter, will ya?” He knuckle-wiped his nose and teetered off to the bar, hands crammed in his back pockets, head down.
I took in as big a gulp of air as I could manage once I got to the boardwalk out in front of Rooney’s. The moon was doing its job and it was quiet as velvet in all directions. I decided to walk around a little, let the chill blow through me. Hell, I was a deputy. If anyone asked, I’d say I was on patrol. Had a sound to it.
There was a little flutter of something moving on the other side of the street, but the moon was coming from the backside there, so it was shadows and softness when I looked over at first. Then I saw what the flutter was and I had to lean in, squint, to put a point on it. It was just a shape at first, a dark form on the sidewalk, till I saw that Nicholas was right there moving along with the shape, one hand reached out and hanging on. It wasn’t till that shape went by one of the shop windows that I saw the reflection clear and knew it was Pearline.
It was a long cape she was wearing, with a loose peaked hood she had pulled forward. She hardly made a sound moving down the boardwalk, but her being such a tiny thing, that wasn’t a second-thought thing. I moved along the opposite side of the street, staying close to the shadows as I could, making as little scrape and scuffle as I could, though that probably wasn’t a crucial thing to do because it was clear wherever Pearline was going, she wanted to get there in the time it takes a bear trap to snap shut, and that hoof was pulled hard forward, like a woman might do when she didn’t want anyone seeing her.
She made a turn at the back cross street and kept to her pace. I crossed right after her, still holding on the dark shape of her in the cape with its hood, little Nicholas still knotting his fist into the material of the cape. She stopped at the back door of one of the larger houses and tapped three times on the door. No more than two counts went by before a yellow slash of lantern light spilled out over her and Fergus Blackthorne stepped aside to let the two of them in.
Even though I didn’t want to see what I seen and didn’t want to be there at all, I turned into a hitching post for the next few ticks. The only place I had to go was the Starett bunkhouse, and Billy might be there and asking questions, and those were questions I didn’t want to hear or lie to him about. So there I stood.
Until Nicholas started playing that sweet potato and the soft whistling tune came like a ribbon tossed out there into the darkness of the street and I realized it was time for Wilbur Moss to go home. Slow.
VII
Billy was sound asleep when I got back, and later on, after first light, when my bladder ballooned and I needed to go out back, I looked over at his bunk and it was empty. I guessed he was off doing his courtship with Black Iodine and that was good with me, because I didn’t want
to look him in the eye. I was afraid he’d see something there that would let him know there was something in the shadows he didn’t know about. Sorry I knew about it myself.
There aren’t many things I like better than a good sleep, but the time just when night goes and dawn arrives is one of those things. So there I was in the yard, tallywhacker in hand, looking out over the dew shining on the grass, hearing some of the morning doves start their song, feeling the cool move off and the warm blow in. Even better once the sluice gate in my belly opened up and I started to kill some of the poison ivy drop by drop. One corner of the sky was getting smeared with a dusty pink, and one of the good things about an old man peeing slow is that he gets a chance to let these times roll over him like good syrup. There’s something to be said for slow peein’ and bein’.
I was just tucking my tack hammer back into my britches when I realized I’d been hearing something for a good twenty seconds or so and not really been knowing it, that the sound had a way of stitching itself into the sunrise sounds and didn’t seem out of place one little bit. Which held water because the sound I was hearing was the sound of a ringing school bell.
I reined in Geezer when we got to the top of the knob that looked down on the little draw where we’d put up the schoolhouse. There were five people in the framed wall-less construction: Billy and four of the doves from Honey’s. They were all seated on one of the benches there, hands in their laps. A couple with their hands tucked into those little furry hand-cuddler deals, all looking at Billy Piper, who was up in front of them. The wind was easy, but it was at my back, so I couldn’t make out the words he was saying, though I could hear the melody, hear the bright excitement he was riding on. I’d never seen him so boiling over, like he couldn’t get a rein on something inside. Pacing back and forth, arms flying around, a book in one hand, flipping through the pages, pointing at some parts of a rectangular page, then handing the book to one of the doves, letting her take a crack at it, then clapping one hand against the other when she got done. And just at the same time it lit into me that I’d never seen Billy Piper like this before, I came to know I’d never seen Billy Piper teach before either. Never seen the like.
I touched up Geezer and we started on down to the school and Billy and his little Saturday class. There was Pearline, and sitting next to her was the mulatto girl Honey kept saying was from Arabia, and the thick Russian girl next, the one with a name I couldn’t pronounce right, the one who’d take cowhands up to her room and close the door and then there’d commence to be the sound of substantial robust ass-slapping coming out from behind that door a while after. I didn’t know whose ass was getting slapped, and I wasn’t formulating any plans to get behind that particular door and find out. On the other side of the thick Russian girl was Honey herself, hair red as blood, lips just the same, face skin the color of oyster shell turned inside out. Once I saw a drunk slap Honey, and her head just plain disappeared in a cloud of puffy pink. Didn’t know if Honey was there to learn something or other or just to keep tabs on her girls. Didn’t matter. Surprised to see her there for whatever reason. No sign of Nicholas.
Billy heard Geezer’s hoof scratches on the loose shale, and waved us on in with a wide spaniel smile. The doves turned in unison, following his look. Honey and the Russian nodded. Pearline smiled, though the smile was all frayed around the edges. The girl who was supposed to be from Arabia never looked up from her book.
Billy threw his arms wide. “No roof and no walls, but it’s a schoolhouse now, Wilbur, and we’re just winding up the first class!”
“I heard the bell. Sounded fine.”
“How long you think it’ll take to get the roof on?”
“End of the week.”
He looked back at the doves. “See, ladies? Next week we’ll be in the shade of a new roof, so there won’t be any excuses about the sunshine making it too hard to do any reading.” He gave Honey a little book, putting her in charge of returning it next week and making sure the girls each took time to read up on what was in there, which Honey solemnly promised to do. All the while he was handing out the what-to-do’s, I had my eye on Pearline. I couldn’t lose that picture of her from last night, gliding along the boardwalk in that long hooded cape, Nicholas gripping on to the material, towed along like a dory behind a two-masted sloop. Then, the lantern light from inside Fergus Blackthorne’s place falling across her when he opened the door to let her in. And now, her in the bright sunshine of a new day, sitting there and taking in every word of Billy’s, like a baby bird with its mouth open waiting for Momma to get back to the nest. I never got very smart about women, so I didn’t know if one was a lie and the other was real, or if they were both branches off the same tree with only one of them getting the light. All I knew solid was that I had something inside me that’d rip Billy Piper apart if I let him know it.
Billy walked the doves off to where Honey had tied off the rig. There were waves and see-ya’s, and Honey took hold of the reins like a beer wagon teamster and they rolled off down the road, Billy standing there looking after till they were out of sight, then walking back to me, grinning like never before, which is saying a lot.
“Did you see, Wilbur?”
“I don’t know. I was watching for a while from up top there. What was I supposed to see?”
“Me. Me teaching.” He looked down at the bench where the doves had been sitting. “They were all listening to me and I was reading to them and they were grabbing on to every word, every blessed one.”
“What were you teaching?”
“Reading mostly. Honey and Pearline already got feet under them about that. The Arabian girl can write her name in printing, but not much more than that.”
“Billy, she’s no more Arabian than—”
“And the Russian girl can’t read a lick. She can read in Russian, she says, but it’s all different, because they’ve got letters in their alphabet we don’t even have! Did you ever know that? I never did.”
“No. Didn’t know it.”
“I’ll have to look it up somewhere. There’s a teachers college in Cody. Maybe I could write out there and they could tell me about that.”
“Billy, slow down. You’re wearing my ears out.”
He laughed, spun around in a circle, almost falling down. “Don’t you see, though, Wilbur? Don’t you see?”
“Told you. I was up on top there for a while watching.”
“No, no. Not that. I actually taught them, Wilbur. They know something now they didn’t know when Honey drove the rig on out here! I taught ... Me, Billy Piper ... I’m a teacher. I can do it. I can take some little piece of knowing something and hand it over to somebody else and they’re not the same somebody else they were when they walked in! Damnit, Wilbur, that’s magic. It’s just damned powerful magic, is what it is.”
“So now you’re a schoolteacher.”
His head bobbed. He spun in the direction of the framed skeleton we put up. “I thought I could make up a little place in the back there. A two-room something where Pearline and I could start off when the time was right. Schoolteacher can’t live in a ranch bunkhouse anyway.”
“You figure you and Pearline gonna tie it up?”
“Sure.” He saw the look on my face. “Why not?”
“Billy, everyone’s gonna know what Pearline used to do, what she used to be. It’s one thing behind doors at Honey’s. It’s another when we’re talking about the wife of the schoolteacher. Shit on a duck, you must know that.”
“When me and Pearline tie up, she won’t be doin’ that anymore.”
I hated poking holes in him, but couldn’t seem to stop. “Billy, folks will know. They won’t forget.”
“Wilbur, these people comin’ in are churchgoers. Churchgoers are supposed to forgive.”
“Churchgoers are supposed to do a lot of things churchgoers never get around to doing, and we both know that.”
The look he gave me was level and strong. He walked across the new flooring, the limp of his
making a tempo you couldn’t sing to. He stopped next to Geezer, reached up, and wrapped his hand light around the horn on my saddle. “Wilbur,” he said, “it doesn’t matter about the floor you’re scrubbing. What matters is the dream you’re dreaming when you’re scrubbing that floor.”
“And you and Pearline got dreams.”
“We do.”
I felt like a pack mule getting more loaded on than he could take. I jerked my head off in the direction of the road. “I haven’t had breakfast yet. Going to go see what Cookie’s scraped off the floor.” I pulled Geezer’s head around and moved off for the road.
“Wilbur!” Billy Piper called. “Didn’t you ever have yourself a dream?”
I pulled Geezer’s head up, turned back in Billy’s direction.
“I know it was probably a buncha years ago,” he said. “But there had to be a time when you had some kinda dream kicking you in the butt.”
I had an answer, but it wasn’t an answer I could easy give out with, because it had to do with family, and the only family I had right now was all under the roof of Starett’s bunkhouse, and Billy was central to that and he was tilting to move out the door. I could straighten that tilt up if I told him where Honey was sending Pearline at nights now, but that’d break something inside him, and I’d spent too much time in Blackthorne’s barn getting him back together to ever rip him apart like that. So, I said: “Yeah, I had me a dream once. It had to do with me having a horse cock and a harem!”
He busted out at that, the laugh high-pitched and open. He was laughing more now than at any time since I’d knowed him.
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