A Cold Place In Hell

by William Blinn

  “I wanted to, Wilbur. I was even taking steps in that direction. But I had a knife in my hand, and that move could have set things off in the wrong way and nobody would want that. Even you wouldn’t want that.”

  “Why ‘even’ me?”

  “On account of you being a deputy.” Long puff on the stogie fouled things a bit more. “What do they call it? A higher standard.”

  “Hef, you’re a no-good sonofabitch.”

  “Actually, I’m a very good sonofabitch. Had a whole lifetime practicing up to get good at it.” He nipped off the glowing end of his cigar, scraped away at the warm gray, tossed it on the ground. Geezer’s head swept low, and he roamed back and forth over it for a tick, then started to chew away on the black sour root. I wouldn’t want to be walking behind Geezer tomorrow.

  “Where’d the Dutchman go?” I said.

  “Into town, I expect.”

  I reached my hand around to my butt pocket, pulled out my bandanna. I unknotted it, spread it flat on the dirt. Everything was still there, every cent, every dollar. I looked up at Hef. “He didn’t take my money.”

  “I stopped him. You’re welcome.”

  “So the Dutchman went into town without my money?”

  “Seems the case.”

  “You think he’ll go looking for Billy?”

  “Wilbur, how can I know what a crazy old carbuncle like the Dutchman might do? He might go do any old thing at all.”

  There’s people in this world, men mostly from what I’ve seen, who cannot abide something that’s straightforward and honest and good. They don’t even abide the word “good” itself. If a thing is tough and smelly and a little bit scarred up, they’ll buy it a drink and a ticket to the baths. But if a thing or a person had some care and innocence about the edges, they had to find a way to get it scuffed up the very best they could. I think if there’s enough people in line at the table, there’ll always be somebody needs to spit in the soup. Heflin was one of those people. I stood up slow, joints popping like a Mexican dancer’s little clickers. My lip was swole up and there was a draining slit at the edge of my mouth. I owed the Dutchman for all a that. I started moving for Geezer.

  “Where you off to, Wilbur?”

  “You know where I’m off to. I’m off to town.”

  “Gonna teach that goddamned Dutchman a lesson, huh?”

  I had to grab under my knee to lift my leg high enough to foot the stirrup. I grabbed on to the horn and took in a deep gulp. Closed my eyes and pulled myself onto the saddle. My head hurt, wobbled a bit inside. When it all settled, I looked down, and Heflin was standing there next to Geezer, a needling smile in place.

  “You sure you’re up to riding into town, Wilbur? You look a little wrung out.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I was going to hang some banner flags out. You could stay here, help me out.”

  He wasn’t making a lick of sense. “Banner flags? What are you talking about banner flags for?”

  “Hell, Wilbur. Look at the calendar. In a week, it’s going to be the Fourth of July. You know how Fergus Blackthorne is about the Fourth of July. And Starett goes right along with him on it.”

  “Fergus is going to go through all that whoop ’n’ holler even though his wife’s gone? She was the reason for all that, I thought.”

  “Well, Wilbur, maybe Fergus Blackthorne has gone and got himself a brand new reason.” He grinned wide. He was a happy cowboy.

  I touched up Geezer, and we moved out of the dooryard and onto the road to Salt Springs. About halfway into town, I tried to think of something I should have said to Heflin. It would be something really smart and tough and sharp.

  I was tying off in front of Rooney’s when it came to me. I just stopped moving, staring out into the very last flare of the sunset. I didn’t want to move because it seemed to me like the idea was so near perfect, so new baby with all toes and fingers, that I could barely make myself think it through I was that fearful of finding a crack. But there wasn’t any. I had the idea that was going to get me out from under. I was going to go in to Rooney’s wearing my deputy badge and start me a fight. I was going to find some bloomer butt and pick on him and swing hard, and they’d have to rip that deputy badge off my chest with both hands. And if I wasn’t deputy, there’d be no reason why I couldn’t be out on the trail drive, and I’d be shed of Salt Springs by the time Billy found out about Fergus Blackthorne and Pearline’s nighttime visitations. I wouldn’t be there to help him, that was true, but I didn’t see what help I had to give anyway and I didn’t want to be there to see it all, because what is also true is that when a man gets a lot of rings around the trunk, he wants to dodge away from pain, his most of all, and what Billy was facing would pain me hard. I opened up the saddlebag and pulled out the deputy badge. Pinned it on as straight as the schoolhouse roofline and moved to the Rooney batwings.

  I held up just inside, looking around for anyone soft around the gut who showed signs of being in Rooney’s for most of the night. Nobody lean, mean, and eager for Wilbur Moss. Then I saw him sitting at the chuck-a-luck table. Fringy hair and wearing a tight suit coat with a fake flower in the buttonhole. Didn’t know who he was, but the pasty face pretty much was a guarantee that he was one of the mining engineers, and they most struggle with knuckles to the nose, it’s been said. And besides, I wasn’t on the lookout for a donnybrook, just enough of a nosebleed to get me fired off the force. Shouldn’t take much.

  “Wilbur, what the dickens happened to you?” The voice belonged to Willard Ganeel, and he was standing right next to me, looking worried.

  “Nothing happened to me, Willard. Why?”

  “Don’t lie to me, Wilbur. Your face looks like somebody tried to take out a tooth while your mouth was shut tight.” He moved closer and his voice got secret soft. “Is somebody trying to intimidate you, Deputy?”

  “Oh, Willard ...”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and turned me off to the side, away from the chuck-a-luck table and the little pasty-faced target I had picked out. I smelled flowers, and looked around before I realized Marshal Willard Ganeel had discovered Sweet Lilac Cologne. “Because I’ve heard about the lawmen being intimidated by bulldog bullyboys who think the law doesn’t apply to them. And I won’t have that in Salt Springs, not with all the new things in our future.”

  “Willard, so help me, no one’s tryin’ to—”

  “Then tell me how your face got all puffed up. Tell me how come you got that new cut on your mouth? Tell me that.”

  Hard to know how a man could smell like flowers and still manage to talk like shit, but Willard seemed to have the knack. I did as much thinking as I could. “Willard, this is between you and me, okay? This doesn’t go a step beyond you and me.”

  He liked that; it sounded like someone might have to swear on something or take an oath. “I’m the marshal, Wilbur. Who can you trust if you can’t trust the appointed law?”

  It was a good question, but I decided to stay on the topic. “Willard, you know Honey’s?”

  He looked to see if there was anyone close. “Yeah. I guess I know Honey’s.”

  “You know about the Russian girl at Honey’s?”

  Willard got bulgy-eyed. “Well, I’ve heard some.”

  I pointed my finger toward my face. “She’ll sell you a special ticket for this,” I said.

  There was a gap opened between Willard’s lips about four nickels’ worth. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Not many do.” The gap between Willard’s lips was staying there, so I took a peek back over my shoulder to where Mr. Pastyface had been sitting at the chuck-a-luck. There was no luck; he was gone. I went back to Willard. “You seen Billy Piper tonight, Marshal?”

  It took him a while to erase the blackboard and move on. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

  “Where was he?”

  “He was at the bar having a beer with the Dutchman.”

  “The Dutchman? A beer with the Dutchman?”

  “I th
ink the Dutchman was buying.”

  I felt somebody put a mountain on my shoulders, and I sunk back against the wall. Eventually, I guess every ship sinks. “You see which way he went when he left?”

  “Did not. And, Wilbur, about the Russian girl. You’re not supposed to be going into Honey’s at all.”

  I locked eyes with him and stood up straight. I put my hands on his shoulders. I couldn’t say how far apart our noses were, but I could smell the lilacs. “Willard,” I said, “I just told you about the Russian girl and me. And to talk back the talk you talked to me, who can I trust if I can’t trust the appointed law?”

  Willard took that in solemn, and then he nodded once. He stepped back. I let my hands fall to my sides and almost tilted a formal bow to him, took a step straight back, and then turned around and walked out through the door and let a lot drain out of me when I got to the porch outside Rooney’s. The mountain on my shoulders was gone. Then it was back.

  There was that velvet hooded cape moving down the boardwalk like a ship slipping through the shallows. Nicholas was the ferry towed along behind, fist tight in the velvet, his head down. I watched them till they swung around the corner and moved down the street that led to the back door of the place where Fergus Blackthorne was. A little flutter of movement took my eye farther down the street, and I saw I wasn’t the only one watching that passage. There was a tall figure next to the livery stable, but the moon was low and I couldn’t make out who I was looking at. All I could see was that the tall figure didn’t move, just stood watching Pearline and Nicholas for a long time, watching and not moving for a long time. Then I heard the door at the back of Fergus Blackthorne’s place open and, a tick or two later, close up tight, with the bolt thrown hard. Then the tall figure by the livery stable moved out into the street and started away.

  The tall figure had himself a sizable limp.

  I didn’t go back to the Starett ranch that night. A part of me was easy about that on account of what I saw, but that wasn’t the reason I stayed in Salt Springs. The reason there was the bubbling gurgle that was coming from Geezer’s gut. I figured the reason was the cigar of Heflin’s that got gobbled down a few hours earlier. I couldn’t say certain what the effect on old Geezer might be, but I knew I didn’t want to be close to Geezer when it was time to find out, whether front end or back. So I stored Geezer in the livery stable corral and I pooched up a buncha straw in the barn, tried to go to sleep there. Didn’t have much accomplishment when it came to the sleeping part, though. Hardly any at all.

  It was soft mother-of-pearl all across the sky when I came out of the barn. When I moved around to Geezer in the corral, the mother-of-pearl was overtook by the stench of horse crap and Lord knows what else had been spewed out during the night. I got me a bucket and filled it up from the trough, cleaned up what I could, but I still didn’t have much faith that Geezer was certified safe for the ride out to the schoolhouse, so I headed out on my own, leaving Shit Flanks looking after me with a curious look.

  Rooney’s was just cracking the doors wide when I walked in. Not like me to go there this early looking for a drink, but I already resolved to spend this whole day getting lost in any way I could. It was a day I was going to start out by having more to drink than a sane man ought to have before noon, but being sane wasn’t very close to the top of the list of things I wanted to happen today. My belly was tomb empty, so there was a sizable effect taking place after the third dose of Dr. Whiskey. I was breathing open-mouthed and sweating more’n the temperature called for. Cicero tried to turn deaf when I asked for a bottle to take with, but I wore him down and walked out with it under my arm half an hour later.

  I didn’t like walking out to the schoolhouse because it meant being afoot, and there’s something unmanly about that to my way of thinking. There’s a power comes from the saddle, from being up high and feeling all that muscle under you willing to do what you tell it to do. And while I still think that to the core, I have to say that thinking comes more easy to a walking man than one with leather under his backside. Maybe it’s the smell or the dirt, the stone crunch you can feel under the boot heel, or maybe it’s just that a man’s smaller when he walks and being small makes him afraid and fear leads to thinking. I’m not sure about any of that. I’m just sure that a walking man thinks more.

  My thinking was that the boil was red for a time, and now it was turning mealworm white and had to pop itself pretty soon now. I didn’t want to be around to see it, but there didn’t appear to be any train coming through that had a ticket with Wilbur Moss’s name on it. It was going to end bad, there was no question about. It was going to end bad and Wilbur Moss was a hobbled gelding, useless and sad and empty.

  When I come to the clearing, my shirt was soaked black and sticky, but when I saw the schoolhouse framed like it was, none of that was important. You could see what the place was going to look like, see that more than likely we’d be looking to paint in a week or ten days. Billy had done some more work on the back wall, and the tall pole where we’d put the bell was wrapped with red, white, and blue bunting. I’m not any kind of flag waver or parader, but for a little tick, something boomed up inside me, until I recollected that Fergus Blackthorne had put a sizable brand on the day and most folks thought it was more his than theirs.

  I uncorked my glass compadre and took a pull before I put the ladder up and had a foot on the first rung. Not much of a secret that roof work and barley breakfast have some shortcomings, but fact is, I didn’t give sand about that. I’d started out to get lost and whiskey can do that, just like hard work can. I’m a man, and men have skills when it comes to finding ways to hide. I started to climb on up.

  The sun was quartered high now, and the heat didn’t come from just the bottle anymore. I lined the boards proper, for a man with some shining inside, and took my time to make sure the nailing was flush and constant. I wasn’t one to carry a watch, couldn’t afford to, and wouldn’t if I could. Watching time is having time run you, insteada you running time the way you want. So, I don’t know how long I was up there, nose to the boards, taking my sips, doing a good job on the roof and listening to everything that was in that pus boil that was ready to roar. But it was getting hotter and I was beginning to lose some spine. I emptied out what I had, spilled it down my throat, then rolled over on my back on the slant there and started to close my eyes. Then, somebody in my skull started to wave a red flag about that, so I did something out of step for me, which was that I actually went and did something smart. I grabbed on to the hammer and snatched up some nails, rolled over, and bunched up some of the material of my sopping shirt sleeve, and hammered the nail through the cloth on one side, then scrunched as much as I could and nailed down another part of the shirt material farther down. Me in the shirt, shirt nailed solid to the roof boards. I took the arm that wasn’t nailed to the roof and tilted my hat down over my face, and then I just let it all settle inside, melted away every hard part I still was carrying around, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so syrup soft in my life, at least not since they lifted me out of the crib. I could hear my breathing slow, and even my heart sounded more gentled down. It was dark under the hat, and I needed the dark more than anything, and I remember thinking to pin a medal on my soul because I’d set out to lose Wilbur Moss from Wilbur Mos and I think I got there a lot sooner than even I thought.

  After a time, Alma was there. She was riding Geezer through a rolling meadow, the grass tall and whipping back and forth, little ribbons cutting across the stalks. Alma didn’t have a stitch on top, just a froth of a light blue skirt, and her breasts swayed soft with Geezer’s pace. She sat Geezer like a man would, legs spread wide, thighs outlined under the skirt’s veil, hands taloned in Geezer’s mane. Alma was smiling.

  “Goddamnit, Pearline! Goddamnit-goddamnit-goddamnit!”

  I squeezed my eyes tight shut. Alma didn’t want to hear a harsh thing like that, not at a sweet time like her and me were having. We had a carve-out place for just the two of
us, and there was no call for anything like what got yelled far off in the back of my head. No call.

  “But Billy, for years you’ve been able to—”

  “It wasn’t Fergus Blackthorne, goddamnit! It wasn’t Fergus Blackthorne.”

  The sun poked in under the edges of my hat. Alma wasn’t there anymore, and I had myself nailed down on top of the roof of the new schoolhouse. I could hear walking steps below me, along with a woman crying, mostly the way a scared little kid might cry. I tried to sit up. Couldn’t.

  “And do you think that was easy? Do you think that was an easy thing for me to do?” Billy’s voice was high, close to shredding away.

  “No, no, no. I know it wasn’t easy. But we were doing it, Billy. We were staying close, weren’t we?”

  “Goddamnit!”

  “Billy, don’t. I get scared when you get like this. I know it’s hard for you. It’s hard for both of us. But we’ve stayed close. We still talk about our plans, our places we’re going to go, places where no one knows what went before. And because we still talk about the plans, I know we both still want the plans to be so. Don’t you still want the plans to be so, Billy?”

  Footsteps, boot steps, Billy walking to the other side of the frame floor. Only birdsongs after that, and the wind stroking the leaves against themselves.

  “Billy, please say something. Please, please, please, say something.” Pearline blew her nose.

  I started to move, but I was afraid of a board creak. I lay still. I guess I breathed, because I didn’t die. I lay still.

  “Pearline,” he said after a time, “ever since we talked and been together, I loved you more than my next breath. You were so much in my thinking, I couldn’t get coffee with cream without I rhymed in my head with your name. And that’s crazy, and maybe I was, and maybe that’s what love is, or what it does. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe nobody knows. But we’re in a situation, you and me, we’re in a situation hardly anybody’s ever been in before, at least not in Salt Springs. And we handled it. Wasn’t easy, but we handled it, didn’t we?”