A Cold Place In Hell

by William Blinn

  “And we can still, Billy. Please let’s go on with each other. If a person does a thing, they can keep right on doing it. Please don’t give us up. Please, please.” I couldn’t see her, but I knew the hands were prayerful.

  “It’s different now.”

  “Why? Why is it different?” Right on the edge of the tears taking over.

  I was feeling a building need to pee. Clench it out. Below was the sound of boot heels. A wood creak as Billy sat down by her. On a church organ, Billy’s voice woulda come from the far left-hand side of the keyboard.

  “We got by, Pearline, after the boys in Starett’s bunkhouse agreed silent not to ask Honey for you when they come in. That let me keep looking straight ahead without pictures getting behind my eyes that turned me inside out. It was plain. There was a door in my mind I never opened, and as long as I didn’t open it, we could be together and our plans would be as bright and new as ever they were. Those plans were a door I could open and lean on.”

  “That can still be so, darlin’. Nothin’s changed for us.”

  Billy’s voice stood tall. “Yes, it has, damnit! It’s all changed! It’s me lying in bed at night and knowing you’re lying with Fergus Blackthorne!”

  “Stop it! Stop it!”

  “I can’t stop it! I’d like to! God knows I’d like to! But it’s there! It’s in my head! I keep seeing him with you, keep seeing him reaching out to touch you soft and—”

  There was the sound of a hand slap, like a blacksnake whip crack meeting up with a gunshot.

  The wind still moved the leaves. A bird called. Another one answered the first. Wilbur Moss lay there on the schoolhouse roof like a butterfly in a collector’s case.

  “Billy, please don’t say anymore. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Let’s go back to town.”

  “You don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “No.”

  “Can’t say as I blame you, Pearline.”

  “Billy—”

  “If I was you, I wouldn’t want to talk about it either! If I was you, I’d do anything I could to keep from talking about having Fergus Blackthorne be stroking and touching—”

  “Stop it, you sonofabitch! Stop it this instant!”

  “Why? Why the hell should I?”

  “Because I’m not the one Fergus Blackthorne is touching!” Her speaking voice turned to a wail. It didn’t come from a high place, like a girl’s, but from a deeper place, from a low place.

  A long time went by before Billy said a word. “What’s that mean ... you’re not the one Fergus is touching? What’s that mean?”

  “Just what it says, just what it says.”

  “Pearline, you got to make some sense at least. You’re there. Fergus is there.”

  “Well, that’s not so, is it.” She let out a long sigh, close to a moan.

  I didn’t have to be seeing her to know she was rocking back and forth.

  “Pearline, you’re still not talking sense.”

  “Billy, oh, Billy.”

  “What?”

  “Use your head, teacher! There’s Nicholas! Don’t you see? There’s Nicholas! There’s Nicholas! There’s Nicholas!”

  “Pearline, Nicholas is a boy.”

  Age isn’t about years and knowledge isn’t about what you get out of a book on the shelf, and I had just flat out forgotten how young Billy Piper really was. He knew about men who wanted to be on men on account of that drive when we found out about Morrison and Guettner. Shit on a duck. I remember talking to Billy after we packed those two up and sent them on their way, and how he took it in as well as he could, but still couldn’t wrap all the way around what they were doing. If that was uphill and slippery for him, Lord knows what the news about Nicholas might be doing.

  “Billy, there’s men who like boys.”

  “For that?”

  “For that.”

  “But how?”

  And so Pearline told him, told him what went where and who was getting a penetration and who was doing the penetrating. She told it like you’d explain a color to a blind man or a song to the deaf. After a time, I could hear Billy start to whisper soft little “Nos” and “Aw, Gods” into the silent parts.

  “Does it hurt him?” Billy said.

  “Nicholas, you mean?”

  “Nicholas, yeah.”

  “It does both ways.”

  “Both ways. What’s that mean, both ways?”

  “There’s a body part hurt. And there’s a deeper hurt. Next time you’re around Nicholas, just look into his eyes deep as you can. Just look in his eyes, Billy. You’ll see what I mean.”

  “Pearline, I’ll tell you something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fergus Blackthorne’s a man who needs to be dead.”

  “Billy!”

  “It’s so and you know it’s so. A man who’d do that to a child, who’d cut him and scar him inside like that, doesn’t deserve one more breath than he’s been given already! You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to the damned sheriff or marshal or whatever it is they’re calling him now and I’m going to tell him what’s got to be done to that sonofabitch! And now! Right damned now!”

  Pearline’s voice was ribboned through with love and sadness and a kind of pity almost. “Oh, Billy, sweet Billy. It doesn’t work like that. It won’t ever work like that.”

  “What are you talking about? Why not?”

  “Billy, Fergus Blackthorne is the richest man in Salt Springs, and Nicholas is a little colored boy without a last name who works dumping spittoons in Honey’s, and nobody’s going to take up his side against a man like Fergus!”

  “But that’s not right!”

  “Not right, but so. Not right, but so.”

  Billy’s boot heels on the new fresh floor. Step and a drag. Then I heard Billy start to cry. “Damnit, damnit, damnit,” he said all the while, and then Pearline’s tip-tap footsteps crossed to him, and I knew they were holding each other close and his tears were in her hair. Pearline must have starchy petticoats on; I could hear them crinkle and crack. Then, there was their footsteps moving in the direction of the front of the schoolhouse, slow and in unison. I lifted my head as best I could, and pretty soon they come into my seeing as they moved across the slope that ran down to the trail. They had their arms around each other’s waists. There was no talking. If they’da turned around and ever looked back to the schoolhouse, they woulda seen me pinned up there on the roof. They never turned back, though. They just kept moving away, both of them with their heads down. They still weren’t talking when they went around the bend and were out of sight.

  There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that I couldn’t stay perched up there on the roof like I was, just like there wasn’t any doubt that staying up there was exactly what I wanted to do, because all the trouble in the world was down there on the ground. I laid my head back and just stared up at the clouds, the way a boy might do, seeing faces and puffy-cheeked monsters gliding by up there. I remember doing that way back, when a whisker was just something on a cat. It was a good time, simple as a piece of pie, easy as the clouds I was looking at. But life has its way of tugging at your shoulder and bringing you around to look at the real things, the things that are hardly ever easy or soft, and right now, the way life picked to do that was the pretty basic need I was feeling to get down on the ground and take me a pee. I reached over and grabbed on to the hammer, started to unhook me from the roof. I took my time.

  The bunkhouse was empty by the time I got back to the Starett place. Hef probably had the boys out rounding up the last and the lowest, getting ready for the drive after the Fourth. No sign of Billy or the Dutchman or anybody else. Cookie told me Billy had come by, but said he didn’t stay more than a minute, said Billy had asked about me.

  “He say why?”

  “Bobcat, he said.”

  “Talk sense.”

  “I am. That’s what he said. He’d been out to the schoolhouse, he said. Saw a bobcat out th
ere. That’s why he wanted to see you.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do about a bobcat?”

  “Oh, I don’t think he was looking for you to do anything. He was looking for you because he wanted to borrow your gun.”

  “Lord, God.”

  “I told him a pistol wasn’t the thing, that I’d go on up to Mr. Starett’s and see if he’d give out the loan of one of his rifles, that a rifle was the thing for that kind of game, but Billy just shook his head at that. Needed a revolver, he said. Then he just stomped on off.”

  I leaned back against the cookhouse door. My head was winding around itself in a bad way. I closed my eyes, trying to stop the spinning.

  “You all right, Wilbur?”

  Straightened up, stiffened up, nodded. “Tell Hef I’m taking a horse off the remuda. I got to get into town.”

  “Where’s Geezer?”

  I didn’t answer Cookie, just took off out the door. Geezer wasn’t important anymore. Hardly anything was.

  It was sliding to dark by the time I got into Salt Springs. I looked over in the direction of the corral when I rode past the livery stable. Geezer was standing there at the rail, looking at me on another horse for the first time in our time together. Poor Geezer. That musta been a hard puzzle. People or beasts, it all comes down to a hard puzzle.

  Rooney’s was crowded when I walked in. I stood there for a time, looking around slow for Billy, but there wasn’t any sign of him. That pushed me off step. He couldn’t go to Honey’s, and every shop was buttoned tight.

  “Help you, Wilbur?” It was Rooney, belly out, hair slick and shiny.

  “Looking for Billy Piper.”

  “You found him sort of, but not really.”

  “I’ll just wait here till you sober up.”

  He grinned, gold tooth center stage in his mouth. “He came in about three hours ago and started drinking like he was looking to put me out of business. After he passed out at the bar, I walked him into the back room, let him sleep it off.”

  “He got a gun?”

  “Billy don’t wear a gun, Wilbur. You ought to know that.”

  “That wasn’t what I asked, Rooney. What I asked was whether or not he had a gun.”

  Rooney’s face went under a cloud. He didn’t like being talked to the way I was talking. “He was wearing a duster, Wilbur. I couldn’t say what was under it. I got work to do.” Rooney turned away.

  I moved for the back of the place. Hadn’t taken more than three steps before I felt Rooney’s hand on my shoulder.

  “Where the fuck you think you’re goin’, cowboy?”

  I didn’t turn back, kept looking at that door in the farthest back wall of the place. “I’m going to check up on my pal, that’s all.”

  “Well, he don’t want to be checked up on, Wilbur. He said that over and over. Let him sleep, he said. He had rough thinking to do. He said it over and over. Rough thinking to do. Don’t get all tight-jawed on me, Wilbur. That’s not like you.”

  Now I did come around to talk this to his eyes. “And it ain’t like you to screw down on a customer who’s only looking to check up on a pal.”

  “He wants to think a thing out, Wilbur.”

  “You’re an adamant man, Rooney.”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Wilbur Moss, we are talking about bothering a man who don’t want to be bothered, a man who is going to teach my Deidre about learning out of books, learning things I do not know, things her mother never had a chance to know. And mister, I am telling you that if Billy Piper can do that, then Billy Piper is going to be left alone to do some thinking, for as long as he wants, and I won’t see it done any other way.” His lower lip was all shoved out, like a five-year-old protecting a puppy. His eyes sparkled with growing wet. He stood solid in front of me. There were people starting to watch us. I’d lost.

  “Deputy,” Rooney said. “I’ve got other things to deal with. I think we’re done talking. Is that what you think, too?”

  It was the word “deputy” that did it for me. Like it or not, and it was not, it was still my job to protect innocent citizens from getting hurt, and that realizing inside closed off all the switches that might let me get off the track. “Keep him here for at least ten minutes, Mr. Rooney. Can you at least do that?”

  “Can and will.”

  I nodded, touched off the brim of my hat, and moved outside to the walk in front of Rooney’s. Looked the street one way and then the other. Nothing to be seen except Forrester’s hound out on his rat patrol. My steps on the boardwalk seemed loud, too loud, but there wasn’t a thing to be done about that. I was doing what needed to be done, and loud walking didn’t apply as being important. I swung over across the street and went past the livery stable, past the barn, and then to the corral.

  Geezer was there and moved to the fence where I was standing. I reached out and took his head between my hands and rested my forehead against that soft white blaze of his. He didn’t move and neither did I. He snorfled once or twice, but didn’t back away at all. I don’t think I knew up until right then that I loved Geezer a lot. I patted his neck, stroked him a time or two, then moved off to where I had to go.

  I stopped when I got to the middle of the street, looking off in the direction of Honey’s, more afraid than not that I might see Pearline in her hooded robe come out the door with Nicholas by her side, but all there was in the street was me. I started walking on, and thought for a second I heard Nicholas playing on that sweet potato, but it was my mind twisting the night a little. The sky was clear as good well water, so there was no problem seeing the white carpet of the night sky. Just like looking at the clouds earlier, looking at the stars took me back a way; wheat stalks snapping in a crisp breeze while me and my buddy stared up and wondered things we didn’t know how to put into words. I almost stumbled when I got to the boardwalk on the other side of Main. You got to stand still when you look at the stars.

  I walked as soft as I could, hitched up my belt, checked what needed to be checked. There was a little spill of orange light coming out of his front window. I knocked three times. Heard footsteps coming to the door and stopping just on the other side. “Who the hell is it?”

  “Deputy Wilbur Moss, sir.”

  The door got pulled open hard and he stood there. A sour wave of bourbon sweat came out into the night. “What the hell is this all about, Deputy?”

  So I showed him.

  Wasn’t more than two minutes later before I was standing in front of another door. I hadn’t seen another soul while I was walking, except for Forrester’s hound, that trotted by me with something black and wriggling between its jaws. I knocked on the door, then took a couple of steps back. I put both hands around behind me.

  “Who is it, please?”

  “It’s Deputy Wilbur Moss, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Willard Ganeel unlatched the door and opened it wide. “Wilbur. Come on in.”

  “No, ma’am. I’ll just wait out here. Like a word with Willard, if I could.” He’d heard me from inside, and there was a chair scrape and he came into view. His suspenders were down and there was a napkin tucked in at his shirt collar. He motioned Mrs. Ganeel back into the room and she went right away, a woman used to being motioned away.

  “Wilbur.”

  I brought out my left hand from behind my back, extended it out to him.

  He looked down, took half a step back. “What’s that?”

  “Marshal, that’s the gun I used just now to kill Fergus Blackthorne.” I was holding the gun by the barrel. There was still a little heat to the steel.

  VIII

  There was just too much that Marshal Willard Ganeel just could not puzzle out. The notion that anyone had got himself murdered in Salt Springs was upside down enough, but you add to that the factor that the murdered man was linchpin to everything that was going on, and that the killer was Marshal Ganeel’s deputy, and he was as hamstrung as a man gets to be. He had me manacled to the rail of his porch whil
e he went off to Rooney’s and tracked down Mr. Starett and swore in Omar as his newest second in command. There was fractious debate as to where to put me, being as Salt Springs never had seen need to build an official jail, being used to dumping drunks into the little cage added on to the back of Ganeel’s General Store.

  That’s how I ended up in Blackthorne’s barn, same place where we took Billy after he got hard mashed by Black Iodine. They added some boards to the sides of one of the stalls, and screwed on a flange and a lock to the door. I had a stool and a blanket and a slop bucket and a view of Omar sitting ten feet away from the stall gate with a lever-action balanced across his knees.

  Every once in a while, I looked down at my right hand, the one that lifted the gun and put the barrel right in the center of Blackthorne’s forehead, the one with the finger that tenderly squeezed the trigger till there was that hard flat “pop.” I clearly closed my eyes when the shot happened, and the kick snapped my wrist up, because when I finally opened them, all I saw was a puffy cloud of gray smoke where Fergus Blackthorne’s face had been just a second before. I remember I leaned forward and looked down on his face where he was laying. It surprised me that the hole was so little, with a delicate fringe of pink flesh around the dark part. Fergus’s eyes were opened wide and had a set of disbelief about them. It seemed a shade odd to me that the last fireworks Fergus was destined to see didn’t come on Fourth of July, but from the barrel of the gun I brought to his doorstep on my own version of Independence Day. But sometimes, things work like that.

  I heard a wood creak, and looked over to the door to see Mr. Starett standing there. He started toward the boarded up stall that was my cell.

  “Not too close, Mr. Starett,” said Omar. “Willard was real clear about not letting anyone get too close.”

  Starett didn’t let on he heard a word, never taking his eyes off me, but he did pull up fifteen feet or so away. His jaws were working hard, but there was no chew there. He was just clenching down on what he had to say. “You treacherous piece of horse flop,” he said.