“Schoolhouse is going to be finished by the end of the week,” she said.
“You got to be wrong about that, Pearline. Billy couldn’t do all that by himself in that little time.”
“Well, he’s not doing it by himself, not anymore.” Her look sneaked quick at me, then danced off. She wanted to see how I was taking it. “Mr. Starett took most of Blackthorne’s men and put them out there working on getting it all done. And it’s not just the schoolhouse anymore.”
“If it’s not just the schoolhouse, what the dickens is it?”
“Well, it’s going to be used for other things when school’s not in session.”
“Things like what?”
“Things like you being tried for killing Fergus Blackthorne.”
I was going to go on trial for my very life in the very building me and Billy Piper put up with our own two hands. Shit on a duck.
She saw my eyes and hurried on, trying to put butter on the burn. “It’s all part of how Mr. Starett wants Salt Springs to look big and settled down for the new people coming in. We need to have a place where it’s like church, a place where important things happen. That’s why he moved so quick to make sure the building was up and solid and pretty as a picture. It’s all to impress the new people.”
“I wouldn’t want to go on trial in a place that wasn’t pretty as a picture, Pearline. It’d be an awful thing to contemplate.” I heard the back door of the barn open, and knew Omar was standing in the door in total glower. I raised my arms high overhead to show I wasn’t about to smuggle a Gatling gun back into the barn, then turned slow to face him.
“Time, Wilbur,” he called out.
“Coming in, Boss.” I looked back at Pearline and nodded my best, then resumed walking back to Omar. The barrel of the rifle was pointed to the ground, but it was cocked full.
“Billy’s going to come by tonight,” she said. “Lawyer things. Legal things.”
“I expect I’ll be here.” I moved in past Omar. His nose wrinkled up when I passed him, smelling the beer.
“Next time that woman shows up here bringing you a beer, you tell her to turn right on around and get out of here.”
“Suppose I told her I’d just drink half the tin and bring the other half on in here for you.”
His mouth worked like he had a bad tooth way in back. “Yeah, that’d be a way of doing it, too, come to think of it.”
Billy thought I was sleeping when he showed up that night, but that wasn’t so. I had started spending time behind closed eyes, but hearing everything and knowing what was going on, sort of floating through time, avoiding everything I could, knowing that there were parts of me that were getting more brittle and frail every day and that crawling into a kind of hole and pulling the dark in after me was a way of being able to handle the harsh brightness when it came time that I couldn’t avoid it any longer. So, I heard him when he came in through the door, exchanged heys with Omar, and moved on to the stall cell. I sat up.
“I like seeing Pearline better,” I said. “She brings beer.”
“Smells better, too, probably.”
“I wasn’t going to bring it up, but it’s something you might want to work on.”
Billy smiled. He turned a bucket over and sat down on the other side of the door. He had himself a bunch of papers in his hand. “I need to let you know what’s going to happen when we get in to that courtroom.”
“Pearline tells me it’s a building we both know pretty well.”
“That’s so.” He looked down at the top sheet of paper. “I’ll take this slow. You need to listen hard. You got a question, you pop up and let me know.”
“Go.”
He took a breath, turned his head back and forth, though he wasn’t wearing a buttoned up collar. “It’ll be formal in there. They’ll put the judge up on the front platform.”
“Where you were going to put the teacher’s desk.”
“Just where.”
“All right. He’s up high in front. What next?”
“He’ll ask you your name.”
“He doesn’t know my damned name?”
Billy waved a hand, letting me know I needed to step back and work on the listening part. My look let him know I understood. “He’ll know your name, but he’ll have to ask for the record. I told you it was formal. He just needs to get down on paper that they got the right man in front of him.”
“All right.”
“Then he’ll ask you how you want to plead.”
“And I say guilty.”
“No. You say not guilty.”
“Billy, you know and I know—”
He slapped his hand down hard on the stack of papers. “Wilbur, get out of my way and do what I’m telling you to do! I’m trying to save your life here! I don’t know if I can keep you out of prison, but I might have a long shot chance at keeping you using up some air and not just helping the grass stay healthy! If you plead guilty, they’ll send the jury home and it’s up to the judge to say what’s going to happen. If you say not guilty, that means I’ll get to call a witness or two and maybe get them to thinking they need another look at what you did and why you did it, and that might mean they won’t be building a platform with a trapdoor in it just meant for you!”
“You’ll call a witness, you say.”
“Maybe more than one.”
“Who? And what would it be that they’d be a witness to?”
Billy turned and looked back at Omar by the door. “It’s time for that privacy again, Omar.”
“Sonofabitching pain,” Omar said. He got up and moved to the front barn door. “I’ll be right outside here,” he said.
“We know. We’ll try not to take long.” Billy watched the door, and waited till Omar was out of the barn and the outside latch got slammed shut before he moved around to look at me once more. “The witness would be Nicholas.”
“And you’d ask him questions.” Billy nodded. “You’d ask him questions about what?”
“About what Fergus Blackthorne made him do.”
“Billy, Lord God. Talk about that stuff out loud in front of all the people likely to be there? That’s harsh on Nicholas, Billy. That’s clawin’ off a scab.”
“Wilbur, we’re talking about your life here.”
“You said there might be more than one witness.”
“I might call Pearline. She didn’t see what happened, that was all behind closed doors, but she could still talk about other stuff.” He saw the dark come over my face. “What? What’s the matter?”
“Billy, I’m not sure if you got an idea about how much I don’t like sounding like a lawyer, any lawyer, and that lawyer Pacquette in a special way, but I don’t see any way out of it. What he said before, cobbed as it was, still had some rock at the bottom. You think you can talk against a murdered rich man with the word of a pleasure woman and a little nigger boy like Nicholas?” I didn’t like talking about Pearline and Nicholas like that, and I could see Billy didn’t like it much either.
“Well, why don’t you give me the list of people you think I ought to talk to, Wilbur? I’ll just wait right here while you’re coming up with that list of yours.” If Billy coulda taken the look he had now to the poker table after a draw, there woulda been folded hands going down all around.
“All right, I ain’t got no list,” I said. “And maybe I don’t have any chance either.”
“It’s not a big one, pardner. It’s a slice of potato you could read through.”
The door opened quiet and Omar was standing there with two men. Their clothes were wrinkled and dusty and their clothes said they came in to Salt Springs in a rig, not on horseback. City clothes. Pale soft city faces. Omar cleared his throat. Billy spun around to see who came in. He got up at once and started off to them, never looking back to me once, which told me whoever these two were, they were there to spit in the soup.
Billy moved to Omar and the new two at the door, and they started talking, but low, too low for me to hear a wo
rd. There were handshakes all around and Omar backed off like a mutt in the parlor with the queen’s cats. Billy said a thing, and the two new ones looked over at me. They were looking at me, but I wasn’t there; I was just that thing they were looking at. A few more words and a few more nods and Billy started walking them over in my direction. They both took off their hats. The old one had frizzy gray hair; the younger one, shorter with little quick chicken peck steps, had his hair shiny and combed perfect. Billy’s hand gestured to them both when they reached my stall. “Judge Andrew Dewey, Mr. Hugh Walsh, like you to meet Wilbur Moss.”
“Mr. Moss,” the old one said. Young one just bobbed a nod.
“Hello,” was the best I could do.
Billy had himself all pulled up, church-usher proper. “Judge Dewey’s going to be presiding at the trial, Wilbur.”
“If you say so.”
“And I’m the state’s attorney, Mr. Moss. I’m the lawyer for the other side.” You’d have to boil his eyeballs before that look of his would ever nudge up to cool. “Do you have any idea why Judge Dewey and I stopped by to see you, Mr. Moss?”
I looked at Billy, shook my head.
“They’re here to see whether or not there ought to be a trial, Wilbur.”
The two both saw the look in my eyes, baffled, lost. The old one took a try. His voice sounded like he wanted to help. “The law doesn’t like killing, Mr. Moss. The law doesn’t even like it when it’s the state itself that might be doing the killing, especially if the person to be killed isn’t up to realizing the facts surrounding the decision that’s putting his life at risk in the courtroom.”
It was in view now; I could see it. I held up a hand, palm out. “I’m not too dumb to know what’s going on and I’ve never been crazy a day in my life, especially not on the night I knocked on Fergus Blackthorne’s door. I did what I did and that’s why there’s a trial and I got no excuse, no excuses.”
Billy came in quick. “Wilbur, you do have a story to tell. That’s why we’re going to call in some witnesses, remember?”
The young short one threw his fang in. “And, Mr. Moss, you do realize that Mr. Piper here isn’t really an attorney, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Do you realize that I’m regarded as a very good attorney at law, and that I’ll do every legal thing in my power to convict you?”
“That’s your job. I expect you’re good at your job. Your coat looks expensive as perfumed gold.” I smiled. He didn’t smile back.
Judge Dewey cleared his throat, though it didn’t need it. “Sounds to me like we’re done here, Hugh. Nice to have met you, Mr. Moss. We’ll be seeing you in a couple of days.” He could have been talking about a horse auction. Him and the young one started backing away. The judge talked on the move. “I don’t run a merciless court, Mr. Moss, so if there’s some request that crosses your mind, something you might need or something that might assist Mr. Piper in mounting your defense, let us know. I’m not going to promise we’ll grant everything you might come up with, but I will give it a fair hearing. I’m not a man who rules brutally from the bench.” He did what he did to pass for a smile; then the two of them was at the door. Omar pulled it open for them,
“Hey!” I yelled out.
They looked at each other, then to me. “Yes, Mr. Moss?”
“I do think I got me one request.”
It was something I’d wanted to have done ever since my voice changed and I started knowing what being a man was about, though I never got to a hundred percent about most of it, when I look back. But it was a thing I seen in every pissant town and village and city and populated pimple I was ever in since my squeaky days. I’ve stood at the window and watched in just about every one of those towns, but it involved paying out money and money was meant for food and drinks and sweatin’ the sheets to good purpose, and I could never see my way clear to rolling the silver out for something that frivolous. But when the judge spoke out like he did and I realized I might get it for free, I thought it was worth the effort to at least holler out. To my surprise, and Billy’s, too, the judge laughed out loud and said as he didn’t see the harm.
So I was going to get me my first barbershop shave.
Quentin Tillman didn’t call his place a barbershop, because he had been to San Francisco and knew about the word “tonsorial.” It was a little place behind the bathhouse and the sign was in small letters: TILLMAN’S TONSORIAL. The letters were pint-sized, I suppose, because Tillman’s main business, The Floral Funeral Parlor, was just down the street and Quentin didn’t want to confuse the public. There was understandable speculation as to whether Quentin got his practice on the dead so he could make the living look better, or if, in fact, it was totally the other way around. Didn’t matter spit to me. If my shave and a haircut helped some rotting hulk look more presentable to those who loved him, then so be it. If it was the other way around and some corpse was helping me look and smell my best, then I voted with Judge Dewey; what’s the harm. I toyed with the notion that it might also be that Quentin could trim me up today and then have me to work on later on in the week, when I might have crossed over, but that’s the kind of thinking that gets you down and dizzy, so I shoved it aside.
It was Sheriff/Marshal Willard Ganeel in the saddle today, so I was outfitted with hand manacles and leg irons again. I had to hop down off the boardwalk down to the street, and getting to the other side was slow goin’, me moving like a gut-shot pheasant. I don’t know what it was about those leg irons, but they brought my head down; they beat me. Even going to Tillman’s Tonsorial, which is exactly where I wanted to be, those leg irons made me more of a prisoner than I ever wanted to be.
Today was the day Billy was going to talk with Nicholas, after Pearline smoothed the way talking to the boy last night, and maybe after I had tasted heaven with my haircut and shave, Billy would walk in with some news that sparkled in the dark.
Give Quentin Tillman his due; the man treated me like I was a visiting fat belly from Moneytown when I was hopped in by Willard and Omar. He talked about seeing me stop in front of his windows sometime and how much he wanted to cut that head of hair because, according to Quentin Tillman, the head of hair I had was just about the best head of hair ever got Wyoming wind blown through it. He was saying all this in that bird-chirpy way of his, and while I knew it all had more bullshit than the Goodnight-Loving Trail ever dreamed about, it still made me feel better about things. Quentin kept up his chirping even while Willard was making sure Omar was getting both my hands cuffed to the arms of the chair.
“Willard, you really got to do me like this?”
“Do.”
“Why?”
“Quentin’s going to be using a straight razor at some point.”
“So what?”
“You might try to grab it, kill yourself.”
“Willard, if I was looking to kill myself, I’d just bust out running when we were crossing the street. ’Cause you’d use that shitter to blow me in two. You know you would.”
“I would. Never said I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t take no joy from doing it. Just because it was my duty, that’s all. Wouldn’t take no joy at all.”
Quentin had me swing around, facing the mirror. He was ducking side to side, left to right, fluffing up my hair like a woman does to a pillow. Felt good. “Well, Willard, in that way, you and me are alike,” I said.
“What way?”
“If I was to cut my throat, I wouldn’t take no joy in it at all either.”
Quentin put his hands on each side of my head and tilted it to one side, then pressed hard on it like he was setting a cornerstone. I took what he meant and tried to stay stock still. A sheet got wrapped around me and the snipping started. It was a pleasant sort of sound, steady and pleasing. The little feathers of hair tickled when they touched me on the back of my neck, and I couldn’t think back on a time when I was tickled past the age of six or so. It didn’t take Quentin long, as he was good at his job and I wasn’t a grizzly
sort on top. He combed my hair with a soft brush and stood back, letting me look in the mirror.
“Mr. Tillman,” I said, “that looks just—”
He put the tip of his finger to my mouth. “We are not done yet,” he said.
Then the chair got tilted back and I was looking up at the ceiling for just a second, before I was looking at nothing at all after he wrapped a steaming-hot towel all around my face. It was hotter than Hell and I tried to pull it away, but when you’re cuffed to the arms of the barber chair, there’s problems about doing that. Tillman put a hand in the middle of my chest, and the heat got bearable and he could feel me relax and go back onto the cushion. The towel had some kind of scent on it that made taking in slow deep breaths a good pastime. Quentin started stropping the razor in a slow even way, strop one way, then strop back the way he came. Slow and slow, like one of those tippy metal fingers piano teachers use to keep the counting regular when they’ve got a kid there on the bench. Way off somewhere, I heard laughing, young laughing, so I didn’t have to peel away the towel to know there were kids with noses flat against the window glass looking at the scary man chained down to the barber’s chair. I didn’t have to look and I didn’t have to care because it was just like when I was drifting away when I was up on top of the schoolhouse just a few days ago. More and more, I was finding ways to go back on into myself and curl up tight in a little cave back in my brain and let it all go by at its own speed, not of any concern to me at all, not while I was curled up tight in that dark cave protecting me.
Quentin stopped the sound of the razor going back and forth on the strop and proceeded to peel away the towel off my face. I kept my eyes shut, smiling because I’d seen enough barber shaves, standing at the window just like those kids on the boardwalk, to know what was coming next, and it was better than I hoped when that warm lather got brushed out gently on my face, something so soft and clean it just seemed that this must be what they make clouds out of.
While he was finishing the brushing, Quentin said: “You don’t seem at all nervous.”
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