I been around enough gasping gurglers to know that dying is a hard thing to do, and I was coming to find that trying to die is pretty near to impossible. I don’t mean swallowing a Colt barrel and letting fly; I mean where you talk in your head and decide that if everything stopped while you were sleeping and you woke up dead, you might not think it was the worst day of your life. That’s what was going through me when my head hit the rope mattress that night. I was trying to move forward, which is what life is when you get down to it, but every step I started to think about was into steam or ice and there wasn’t any going forward at all. So I closed my eyes and told myself I’d just stop sometime during the night and see what darkness is and whether or not there’s peace there.
Which got me a really good night’s sleep and let me wake up as rested as I think I’ve ever been, except for those times I’ve humped myself to a stupefied state. When I rolled up to a sit and looked around, I saw the bunkhouse was empty except for Heflin standing at the window, using the reflection there to help him with the morning shave. He heard me grunt coming off the bunk, and nodded. “Morning.”
“If you say so.” I stretched out, scratched my bottom. It was well past first light. Apparently that trying-to-die-stuff really works. “Where is everybody?”
“Out to the ridge pasture. I was out there myself. Had to come back for the water wagon.”
“And to scrape off some whiskers.”
“They grow when I’m on wages. They can get scraped off the same time.” He started working on the little valley right under his nose.
“What’re they doing out at the ridge pasture?”
He didn’t answer for a time. It was delicate work where he was scraping. “Culling out the ones who won’t get through the drive.”
“The drive? They big enough so soon?”
“You been busy, Wilbur. You been working on the schoolhouse with Billy and all that. We decided we’d keep on feeding the beeves even if you was there to supervise and tell us all what we were doing wrong. I guess we got lucky; they kept gettin’ heft on ’em even without you looking on.”
There it was, the way out of all the pincers squeezing me from every side. The notion of the drive, the time out on the move, the night sky and the stink and the sweat and the moaning beasts all around, that would get me out from under. Bless Heflin. He showed me the light. “When do we leave?”
“There ain’t no ‘we’ about this, Wilbur. You ain’t goin’.”
“What the hell are you talking about? If there’s a drive, I’m going on the drive. I always go on the drive.”
Hef sopped a rag in the water, started to wipe off his face. “Starett and Fergus Blackthorne say different.”
“How come? Who talked to them?”
“I did. Asked if you was still on the ranch as a hand and they both said no. Said you were a city employee now. You are Willard’s deputy, they both said.” He checked on his reflection a little more, then dropped the wet towel on the sill. He turned away from the window for the first time, looked at me straight on. “I guess you must be doin’ a good job.”
“I ain’t doin’ any job at all, dammit. Haven’t stopped a fight. Haven’t arrested a soul.”
“Looks like you got all the bad boys intimidated, Wilbur.”
I was still in my raggedy long johns and no shoes. Not very intimidating or impressive-looking. I musta looked like a beggar on the street corner. I held out both hands palm up in Hef’s direction. “Hef, Hef ... Don’t do this to me. I’m a hand. You know I’m a hand. I need to get out on the trail, Hef. I need that more’n I ever needed anything, Hef. I never been bumpin’ you for favors. I never asked for a soft ride. Tell Fergus, tell Starett. Tell ’em you need me out there.”
“Wilbur, they were pretty tied down about this. They were both bone hard about it. Besides, if I was you, I’d be looking forward to sticking around here. It looks like it’s going to be about as interesting a time as this town’s ever seen.”
“Jesus, Hef, stop. I heard all the sermons about the future with the railroad and the oil and all that’s going to come to be.”
“I was thinking more about Pearline and Fergus.”
I know my heart kept pumping, and I know I kept taking air in, blowing it out, but it seemed like everything just froze up. Like sometimes, even a waterfall will freeze up, a solid ice wall with ripples and waves solid as stone. That’s how I felt after Hef said what he said. Frozen waterfall, spring nowhere in sight.
Hef saw me, knew me well enough to know. “Wilbur ... There a snag somewhere?”
“The thing about Pearline and Fergus. Where’d you hear it?”
“Rooney’s.”
“Who from?”
“Honey. She was drinking. Thought it was funny. Fergus laying out a bogus on Honey with the city employees, then calling her about some sheet warmer over at his place on nights when the wick got warm.”
Shit on a duck. If it got said at Rooney’s, it got said all over Salt Springs before there was another sunset. “Any of the other boys there?”
“Whole bunch.”
If you was walking on a trail and came across a burning fuse, you might decide to turn tail and get the hell outta there as quick as you can. You might not need to see a dynamite stick at all; some things you just assume. Some things go together in your head quick as spit. That’s what it was with Honey talking her talk in Rooney’s; it was going to get back to Billy and sooner than later. Some things you just assume. You don’t always have to see the damned dynamite stick.
“Wilbur, the boys know better than to say anything to Billy.”
Which I knew was so. None of the boys under Starett’s roof ever put in a call for Pearline when they went to Honey’s. I don’t recollect anybody ever talking about it; it was just something we all knew was a right way to go. We might beat the pulp out of each other after a game of penny-ante, might kick a nut off if one poke crossed another. That was all the way. But the notion of leaving our spend in a woman another poke valued true was not in anybody’s kit.
But Billy would find out, and he’d ask if I knew, and it wouldn’t ever be the same between me and my pal again, not ever.
I got out to the schoolhouse about an hour later and Billy was there, working on the back wall. All the lumber for the roof was there by now, and he had dragged out the ladder from Starett’s barn to get ready for putting a hat on his castle. I got the ladder up against the side and started carrying the boards on up, one at a time. Billy offered to help me, talking about setting up a pulley to move things quicker, but I waved him off, lying that I had my own way of doing things when it came to a roof, which was bald-faced balderdash, but it kept him and me working in different places and that was good, because I couldn’t grab on to it any other way. After a while, I was sweating like a sausage on the griddle and my shirt couldn’t get any blacker, so I came on down to get some water. I took a long pull and let the coolness slip down and heard the grass next to me crinkle when Billy sat himself down next to me. I held out the canteen and he took it. No talking for a little while. We just puffed there in the summer sun.
“Coupla the girls told Pearline they liked the class,” he said.
“When’d you see Pearline?”
“We walked out this morning, down by One Legged Indian Crick.”
“And they liked it, huh?”
“That’s what they told Pearline. Especially the Arabian.”
“Billy, she’s no more Arabian than I’m a Choctaw.”
“Going to take her at her word, Wilbur. Not my place to call someone out as a liar just because there’s questions floating around. She wants to be Arabian, then I’ll call her Arabian. Don’t hurt me and might help something for her.”
I sometimes forgot how young Billy Piper was. Stupid and young aren’t the same thing, but God knows they’re next-door first cousins. “Nicholas wasn’t at your class,” I said.
“He’s young. Honey wanted him to sleep in. Said he was up late the night b
efore. Some kinda goings-on at Honey’s.”
Billy and me once had a long campfire talk about how hard it’s got to be to be a doctor when you have to lay out something awful for one of your patients. What words do you use, what pillow can you find to wrap around those words? I remember feeling sorry for the made-up doctor we was talking about, but no more. That damned doctor knew what he was getting in to when he decided he’d be a doctor, so he couldn’t claim to be surprised when the casket in the next room needed to be explained. But all that was in the pot when he sat down to play. He wasn’t handed that duty on account of being happenstance on the boardwalk out in front of Rooney’s seeing a thing that would tear his pardner up like a straight razor back and forth slap. “Well,” I said, “I bet Nicholas will like class. He’s a bright one.”
“He went out playing with me and Pearline Sunday. He was off his feed. Hardly played that sweet potato at all.”
“Well, like you said, things getting busy all over at Honey’s, sounds like.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Billy said.
“Me neither, Billy. Me neither. I was just saying that because that’s what you told me. You and me are in the same boat as far as going to Honey’s goes.”
“Don’t think that’s exactly true, Wilbur.” He was looking straight out, treetop level. It was an older face than usual for Billy.
“Oh, I know that. I know you got Pearline and I’m just a stump jumper. I just meant as far as going to Honey’s is all I meant. I didn’t mean to say it was just the same with you and me. We’re not twinned up or anything like that.”
“You ever loved a woman deep, Wilbur? Hurtin’ deep?”
And shit on a duck, there was an explosion in my skull like someone was hammering a nail into me. A flood of pictures came whipping through me, mostly forgettable sweatables I been with over the times, but one kept pushing through, and her hair was red and her name was Alma and her and me wrapped around each other after a dance at Fort Phil Kearney. Her pap was the sergeant major there, and I was working breaking horses for the new troop coming in, and afterwards she stroked the back of my neck where we lying out under the willows, and she told me about her thinking on life and what she thought it would hold for her. Her voice was a whisper, and I remember thinking I never knew a time in my life when I was more easy and at home with everything. I never saw skin as pale white as her breasts, and her thighs was what clouds must be made of, if clouds could be made of something like silk. Alma was her name, and I hadn’t a thought of Alma in ten turtle lifetimes, until Billy had asked me about loving a woman deep. I guess I did once, but I forgot to tell her.
Billy said: “You’re going to give me an answer or not?”
“Not,” I said and got up, climbed the ladder, and started to work on the roof. I could feel his eyes watching me. Hell, I could feel me watching me. Alma’s last name was Poindexter.
“Starett loves his wife deep,” Billy called up.
“He does.”
“You think Fergus Blackthorne ever loved his wife that way?”
He was picking at a wound he couldn’t see, but I could feel it right to the core. “We come here to build a schoolhouse, or to prattle like a buncha old ladies at a play party?”
He got most of the side wall up and I got a bunch done on the roof.
I had half a mind to ride on into Rooney’s and half a mind is what that notion came from, being as I was making Rooney’s more of a habit than it ought to be. Billy grabbed himself a couple apples off of Cookie’s shelf, so I figured he was heading over to feed Black Iodine and smooth him out a touch. I wondered if Fergus ever saw Billy out at the corral. If he ever walked out to talk with Billy, see what he was up to, wondered what Billy would do if he ever heard from Fergus about Pearline’s stopping by. I don’t know total what cowboys are good for or good at, but I do know that wondering wasn’t one of them. I swung over to the bunkhouse.
There was a game of mumblety-peg going on over in the corner, with Heflin’s pigsticker being used by five or six of the boys, Heflin looking on with pride, like he was the parent, not the owner. The Dutchman had his scripture book out, which probably meant he was headed for Rooney’s, then Honey’s, knowing all he had to do was pray how wrong he’d been after he got back and forgiveness was in the mail. He looked up when I walked past him and he smiled, and I knew that meant trouble. He was up on his feet moving behind me before I even got to my bunk. When my butt hit the blanket, there he was looking down.
“Rode out past the schoolhouse yesterday. Lookin’ fine, I think.”
“We’re making progress.”
“You and Billy working on it together, is that how it goes?”
“That’s how it goes.”
“And how is old Billy?” Him using “old” was like Miz Starett saying “shit.” Didn’t fit.
“I guess he’s doing fine.”
“He’s a nice kid. I worry about him.”
“You worry about Billy?”
“I do.”
“When did that start? I don’t recollect you worrying much about anybody, Dutchman.”
The Dutchman made a noise that was supposed to be a chuckle, but a frog gets closer to whistling than he did to laughing. “Oh, I don’t say out my feelings much, but I care about people, worry about people. Just like I know a lot of people worry about me, even if they don’t speak it out.”
“You know that people worry about you.”
“I do.”
“What people would that be?”
“You, Wilbur.”
“Me? I worry about you?”
“Wouldn’t come as a surprise.”
“And why should I worry about you, Dutchman?” I started to realize I wasn’t hearing Heflin’s pigsticker go thumping into the floorboards like before. The mumblety-peggers were all looking over to where the Dutchman and I were talking.
Dutch sat on the bunk next to mine. He held out both hands, a beggar’s message. “Because I was thinking on going in to town and stopping at Rooney’s and then taking myself over to Honey’s, but I looked in my poke and I miscalculated my funds, Wilbur. I don’t have enough to afford to make that plan real.”
“Sad story, Dutchman. Not sure it’s the first time it ever happened in this world.”
He went on like I hadn’t said a whisper. “And I was thinking to myself: ‘If Wilbur knew I had this situation, he might reach into his pocket and do a rightness to help me out some.’”
“That’s what you thought.” Somebody in the mumblety-peg bunch laughed low.
The Dutchman’s head moved up and down real slow. “And then I thought: ‘And if Wilbur won’t help me out, maybe I’ll go look up Billy Piper and tell what I got in mind,’ though that’s not what I’d prefer to do, because there’s always a chance I might slip up and mention something about Pearline paying nighttime good-time visits to Fergus Blackthorne’s. I wouldn’t want to do that, understand, but you know how it is with us who don’t speak English from our birthdays. Sometimes, the words come out in ways we hardly understand ourselves.”
There’s a cross-eyed kinda power that comes to me at times like this one was, because what takes power away from us is not knowing what’s around the corner, what noon’s going to be like while we’re standing there at dawn. Because I knew what was coming next; I could see a little way into the future, and that’s better than most times are, even if the future you’re knowing about involves an old windbreak like Wilbur Moss getting the puddin’ kicked out of his nut sack. The Dutchman and me looked at each other for a little while. Didn’t see that there was much to be gained by drawing it out. I shifted my weight a little, then rolled backwards as hard as I could, throwing my right leg out stiff. I hoped the toe of my boot would catch him under the chin, but I guess he flinched back a hair, because it was the boot heel that made contact, though it was flush on it. The kick got his tongue to get caught between his teeth, and by the time I rolled up on the other side of my bunk, there was a generous spurt coming out fr
om between his lips and the lower half of his face was looking like he had a scarlet neckerchief wrapped around him. His voice was more buffalo than man and his eyes were uncordial.
The Dutchman launched himself across the bunk and the top of his head hammered hard into my gut, and I heard myself pig-grunt and tasted something at the back of my throat I had called breakfast just a while back. Then God come down out of the sky and decided to give the Dutchman four more pairs of hands, and he started using each and every one of them to turn this wincing old man into something you’d throw over the back of a couch. I knew the other boys would jump in and pull the Dutchman off me because I’m old and rheumy and he’s bear mean as it gets, and as soon as I knew they’d pull him off, I knew I was wronger than ever. And it started getting dark then, with the every once in a while sparkle of lightning going off way behind my eyes. No thunder.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t squiffed when I had my head deep in the water at the horse trough. I lifted my head out, spitted some, sputtered some more, and when the throbbing took over the cabin I called my head, I poked myself back down into the coolness. I stayed there as long as I could, opened my eyes, and damned near died of the apoplexy when I found myself looking into two dark holes and two pool-ball-sized eyes right opposite mine. I screamed like a stuck pig and yanked back.
I butt-crawled back from the trough, then opened up my eyes and saw Geezer standing on the other side of the trough. There was a curtain of slobber water coming down off his mouth. He wasn’t pretty dry; wet, he could curdle a prune.
“How’s your breath?”
Heflin was sitting on the rail. The stink from the turd-length thing he was smoking fit well with how I was feeling. He took in a puff, blew out a straight gray plume. “How’s your breath, I said.”
I put my hands on my ribs, took in a quick gasp. Hurt some, didn’t scorch my insides. “Tolerable.”
“He worked on your gut for quite a time. Wanted to make sure you weren’t busted.”
“You coulda made sure of that by stepping in.”
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