by Треваньян
For almost a year, he gave up drinking and held down two jobs, working day and night, in rain and sun, through sickness and health, saving every penny. By spring he had enough for a down payment on a badly eroded farm with a half-ruined house. What did it matter if the land wasn't no good? He wasn't no stupid dirt farmer! He was going to raise red foxes, which only required a few knocked-together hutches out behind the house. Then the bad luck started coming. He had difficulty finding foxes to raise. None of his neighbors had even heard of raising foxes. They thought fox pelts came from trapping. Well… well… well, all right, he'd get some wild foxes and raise them in hutches, and they'd breed and pretty soon the place would be teeming with foxes! He managed to buy three foxes from a trapper, one with a chewed-up leg from the trap. They all died in the hutches, the one with the bad leg lasting the longest… which just proves how everything depends on luck. After a long, cold winter and a long, sodden spring, they had to let the farm go back to the bank… more bad luck to feed Dubchek's bitterness. He started drinking again. Well, why not? What was the use of trying when everyone was against him, and everything was keeping him from making something of himself!?
The wind rose to an insane screech, clutching at the windows of the Mercantile, and slashing at the wide sheets of water that poured from brimful guttering, ripping them into ribbons of froth.
THE DARKNESS WITHIN THE hotel kitchen was intensified by an eye-baffling contrast with a trapezoid of bright light pouring in from the barroom beyond. His flat-topped Colt in his hand, Coots inched toward the blinding swath of light, rolling his weight from heel to toe of his bare feet so as not to make a sound. Queeny-good luck-was singing to the player piano. She's only a bird in a gilded cage, a byooo-ti-ful sight to see-e-e. He inched forward, feeling his way with his bare feet rather than with his eyes…. for her love was so-o-old, for an o-o-o-old man's go-o-old! She's a bird in a gilded ca-a-a-age.
B. J. STONE SAT DEEP in his chair, his face out of the lamplight that glowed in Ruth Lillian's cupric hair. He had listened sympathetically to Matthew's explanation of why nothing was his father's fault, because he never had any luck. But his mind had slipped from time to time to Coots… out there in the rain… in danger.
Matthew's head was bowed, his eyes lost in the shadow of his brow. B. J. had hoped that Ruth Lillian's honest and obvious concern would tempt Matthew to talk about what had happened in that farmhouse in Nebraska. But he had parried her questions by talking about his father rather than himself, and after the last crash of thunder and lightning, he hadn't continued his story. So B. J. cleared his throat and began in a gentle, measured voice, "I… ah… read this article in a Nebraska paper. There was this man and woman who lived on a farm. With their son. A passing neighbor heard their cow bellowing to be milked, so he banged on the door and looked in through the window. Then he ran off for help. They found the woman dead. A broken neck. The man had been shot. Almost blown in half. " He paused, but Matthew didn't respond, didn't even raise his head; his eyes remained lost in the shadows. "The neighbor described Mrs. Dubchek as a decent, God-fearing woman, and the husband as a violent ne'er-do-well who was 'no stranger to the bottle. ' The son was nowhere to be found. The paper suggested that he might have been kidnapped by the murderers. Or maybe killed and buried somewhere. When he was asked about the boy, the neighbor couldn't give any useful description. 'Just a boy,' he said. 'Nothing special. ' " B. J. leaned forward into the light. "That neighbor was wrong, Matthew. The boy was very special indeed. And my heart goes out to him when I think of how he must have felt when he found his parents… like that. Or, even worse, maybe he actually witnessed the murders. What a burden of pain and horror he must be carrying inside him."
Matthew lifted his head and looked into the space between B. J. and Ruth Lillian. He reached up and touched his temple with his fingertips, then his lips, then his hand fell into his lap. He swallowed dryly. When he spoke, he started in midstream, as though he had been talking for some time, but the words hadn't come out. "… so Ma, she'd spent the day with a neighbor lady because Pa'd beat her up real bad, and she wanted to get looking better before she came home because it used to make Pa mad to see her face beat up. Well, I… you know… I didn't want to be there alone with Pa, all drunk and smelling of whiskey and up-chuck so I… you know… I walked into town, just to get away for a while. But I didn't have any money, and it was getting dark and starting to rain, so I came back. And Ma was lying there on the floor with her head sort of sideways and… wrong. And he was standing over her, sobbing and clawing at his cheeks. What was going to happen to him? What would they do to him? He hadn't meant to hurt her! He'd just given her a little shake! He got ahold of my collar and pushed his face up close to mine and asked me what was he going to do? But I wouldn't look at him, so he let go of me and fell on his knees beside Ma, and he started moaning and rocking himself. He wasn't crying because Ma was dead! Only because of what they might do to him! And the smell of whiskey and up-chuck! I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see or breathe. He knelt there beside her, rocking and moaning. He didn't hold my poor broken mother and rock her. No, he just rocked himself! So I just… you know… I took his shotgun down and I said, 'Pa?' But he didn't look up, so I said, 'Pa?' again. And he still didn't look up, so I just… " Matthew swallowed so hard that Ruth Lillian could hear it. His voice was full of tears, but his eyes remained dry… distant… empty. This was not what B. J. had expected to hear.
PRESSING BACK INTO THE deep shadow of the kitchen, Coots cocked his pistol and eased his head out toward the trapezoid of harsh light from the barroom. Two reflector storm lamps stood on the bar, their light directed toward the open kitchen door. They were so bright that it was hard to see past them, but he could make out Jeff Calder standing behind the bar, half-asleep on his feet. By stretching his neck a little more, Coots could see the backs of Bobby-My-Boy and Tiny sitting at a table on either side of Chinky, each with a hand in her lap. The "deacons" were on their loafers' bench near the player piano, where Professor Murphy sat with his body twisted to avoid contact with Queeny, who leaned over his shoulder searching through the piano rolls, looking for a song that- Wait a minute. The storm lamps! Why were they set up on the bar, pointed toward-?
"They tell me you're called Coots," Lieder whispered, his pistol pressed into the soft spot beneath Coots's ear. "I like to know a man's name."
"YOU ACTED ON THE spur of the moment, Matthew," B. J. explained. "The shock of seeing your mother lying there on the floor, and knowing that your own father had… Anybody might have done what you did. You've got to understand that, and you must try to forgive yourself. Oh, it's going to take a long time to get over what happened. Maybe you never will. But believe me, son, in time you'll find a way to live with it… or live around it. And any time you feel that talking things out might help, well, we're here and we-"
"After I… did it, I dropped the gun on the floor," Matthew continued. Nothing B. J. had said had penetrated his mind. "I couldn't pick it up. I tried, but I couldn't make myself touch it."
"But you did pick it up," Ruth Lillian said, hoping to guide him back to reality. "You brought it here with you."
He blinked and looked at her with a confused frown, as though realizing that fact for the first time. "You're right. I… I brought it with me."
"Why?" B. J. asked. "Why'd you do that, Matthew?"
"I don't know. Maybe because it was Pa's. And because he never had any luck."
Ruth Lillian repeated his words in a wondering whisper. "Because your pa never had any luck… that's why you carried that gun more'n a hundred miles?"
He settled his eyes on her without answering. The storm was fleeing southeast as quickly as it had roared in from the northwest. The wind had suddenly fallen, and the last of the departing lightning billowed dimly within horizon clouds, followed at a long interval by the distant mutter of weary thunder.
"Matthew?" she repeated gently. "Is that why you brought it?"
"I hate that gun, Ruth L
illian. I really and truly hate it. I don't ever want to see it nor touch it again!"
"And you don't have to," B. J. assured him. "You'll never have to touch that gun again. If you want, I'll go over to your place with you and we'll-What was that!"
A gunshot from across the street. Followed by five more shots, the rounds squeezed off at regular, unhurried intervals.
B. J. rushed to the window.
Having emptied his gun into the air to attract attention, Lieder was standing on the porch of the hotel, lit from behind by a tombstone-shaped slab of light formed by the open bat-winged doors.
The wind had died away, but that heavy, soaking rain that follows the trailing edge of mountain storms continued to drill down vertically, making such liquid din on glistening roofs and in mud- lathered puddles that Lieder had to cup his hands around his mouth and shout, "I know you're out there, schoolteacher! Come out, come out, wherever you are! All-ye, all-ye ox-in-free!"
B. J. could make out two figures standing behind Lieder… his lackeys. And between them there was a tall- "Oh, God," B. J. whispered. "Oh, God!"
"What is it?" Ruth Lillian asked.
They had Coots. His arms were bound to his sides, and he was standing on a chair beneath the central beam of the hotel porch. B. J. couldn't see clearly, but he knew from the way Coots was standing-up on his toes to relieve the pressure-that there was a rope around his neck, running tight over the beam. And there were other men crowded along the wall of the porch, Lieder's "deacons". Witnesses.
Lieder shouted again, but some of his words got lost in the noise of the rain. "… Coots here… guilty… assassination! You… last words with…?"
With an agonized cry, B. J. rushed from the window and pounded down the stairs to the darkened shop, stumbling at the bottom and ending up on his knees. He scrambled up and staggered on through the dark, catching his hip on the counter and upsetting a stack of cans. He reached the front door, which he shook until the spring bell above complained, but it was locked! "Wait!" he cried. "Wait!"
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
B. J. barged blindly through the store to the back door, clawed it open, and lurched out into a puddle being excavated by a thick rope of water falling from guttering overburdened with rain. "Wait!"
Lieder had expected to see B. J. coming from the direction of the Livery, so he was surprised to see him emerge from between the Mercantile and the ruins of the Pair o' Dice Social Club, slithering in the mud.
"Well, now! What were you doing over at the Jew's? Come on, schoolteacher! Run! You can make it! Hurry up, there!"
"Wait!" B. J. rasped, his lungs screaming for air.
"Run!" Lieder set his foot against the chair on which Coots stood on his toes. "Come on! Go it, schoolteacher! Attaboy! You can make it!" He kicked the chair out from under Coots. "O-o-oh. Too late." The crack of his neck was audible through the rain; his body jerked twice with such convulsive force that he broke the cotton clothesline that bound his arms; then he hung still, turning slowly, his hands cupped, knuckles forward, his toes turned inward. There was an eternity of human suffering in those bare, gnarled old feet… turning.
B. J. stumbled up the steps of the hotel and grasped Coots around the knees. He tried to lift the body to take the weight from the rope, but he couldn't: the knees and waist were limp. "Help me!" he begged Tiny and Bobby-My-Boy, who looked on, interested. "Somebody help me!" There was a nervous stir among the deacons, but no one stepped forward. B. J. hugged the knees to his chest and moaned.
Matthew came running across the street, slipping in the mud. But before he got to B. J., Lieder grabbed him by the collar and snatched his face up close to his own. "Did you know about this, boy?! Did you know they meant to shoot me in the back?!"
Confused, frightened, Matthew cried, "What? What do you mean?"
"I knew it!" Lieder cried into the rain. "I knew it! I have always been a good judge of horse-flesh and man-flesh, and I just knew that one damaged boy couldn't never turn on another. They didn't tell you they planned to shoot me down in cold blood. No! They used you, boy. You let them use you just as bad as if you'd been a new boy in prison. Now maybe you know who your real friend is!" He looked down at B. J., who had slumped to his knees still hugging Coots's legs to him. "Oh for Christ's sake, old man! He's dead! All your sobbing and whimpering won't change that. He's dead, and it was your sneaking and plotting that killed him! Killed him just as sure as if you'd kicked that chair out from under him yourself. So stop slobbering on like an old woman!"
B. J. muttered something wetly into Coots's legs.
"What?"
"I want… take him down."
"Take him, then! Take him! I don't need no back-shooting nigger hanging around my front door! Go on! Take him!"
B. J. looked up at the beam and the rope, confused, tears streaming from his eyes and nose and mixing with the rain on his face. "Matthew…?"
Matthew fished his Barlow knife out of his pocket and held it out. B. J. climbed up on the chair and sawed at the rope, while Matthew did his best to lighten the strain by lifting Coots, but the legs were too limp, and when the rope parted with a dull twang, Coots slumped across Matthew's shoulders, the lifeless weight buckling his knees and making him stagger, but none of the deacons came forward to help him; they remained close to the wall, scared and drunk. B. J. peeled Coots's weight from Matthew's back and sat across the bottom step in the rain, holding Coots in his arms, the dead face buried in his neck.
"Now ain't that a picture?" Lieder asked, stepping out into the rain and standing before B. J. and Coots to occupy the center of attention. "Now, this here's what I call a picture of true friendship," he told his men and "deacons" with grave sincerity, the rain running from the brim of his hat onto Coots's chest. "You may not believe it, schoolteacher, but I appreciate how you must be suffering, knowing that you caused the death of your friend with your treachery and schemes. Friendship and loyalty are two qualities I admire… " He looked back up to his audience on the porch. "… just as I detest sneaks and tattletales. And one among you is just that, a sneak and a tattletale. One among you is a Judas. Schoolteacher?" Lieder placed his palm on B. J.'s head. "Shall I tell you how I found out about your nigger friend?"
B. J. didn't respond.
"No, maybe I shouldn't tell. After all, I gave my word. But then, I do loathe a tattletale. Always have, ever since school. I gave my word, so I cannot divulge who told me in hopes of getting in good with me. But I can say this much: he was a man of the cloth."
B. J. lifted his head, and his eyes found those of Reverend Hibbard among the silent onlookers.
Hibbard's eyes flickered, and he pressed back against the wall of the hotel, shaking his head in denial and lifting his palms in helplessness. "Yes but… but…" he babbled into the rain. "I only did what I had to do. I saw your Coots up at the Lode! I knew he'd be coming back down today. It wasn't hard to figure out he'd be trying something!"
B. J.'s eyes remained heavily on Hibbard: there was neither hatred nor anger in them, only infinite sadness, infinite pain.
"Don't blame me!" Hibbard cried. "What if your Coots had failed? Eh? Mr. Lieder would have thought we were all in on it! You didn't care what would happen to us, did you?"
B. J. closed his eyes and lowered his head to Coots's, but Matthew continued to glare at the preacher with cold loathing.
"Don't you look at me like that, boy! I did what I had to do! I acted for the greater good!"
"Oh now, don't piss yourself, Reverend," Lieder said. "Nobody's going to hurt you. After all… " He smiled. "… you enjoy my personal protection."
"Matthew?" B. J. said quietly. "I've got to get him home."
Matthew looked around for something to carry Coots on, then he decided to fetch the handbarrow he used to bring supplies up from the train. He hurried back across to the Mercantile, and he was dragging the barrow out of the shed when Ruth Lillian opened the back door. "Matthew…?" But he shook his head and plodded back thr
ough the rain.
They lifted Coots into the barrow as gently as they could, but his legs and arms dangled over awkwardly. B. J. grasped the handles and pushed Coots home, rain washing the tears from his upturned face, his arms stretched straight from his shoulders to the handles, his boots slipping on the mud through which Coots's bare heels dragged.
DAWN. AND THE RAIN had thinned to a chill mist that condensed in opalescent beads on the rusted wire fence between the donkey meadow and the burying ground. The gritty scrape of B. J. 's spade cutting into the yeasty earth was uncannily sharp and clear, as sounds are in mist. Unused to such heavy work, B. J.'s breathing soon became a rasp that galled his lungs, so he didn't object when Matthew took the spade from him and continued digging at the same rhythm.
B. J. sat on the ground beside Coots and placed a comforting hand on his blanket-wrapped chest, too deep in grief and pain to notice Matthew's peculiar expression as he dug: faraway eyes and a vague half-smile.
The handle of Matthew's spade stung his hands when the blade rang on the shelf-rock that lay about four feet beneath the sodden surface. He turned and began to bring the other end of the grave down to the same level. It wasn't until he stood up to take off his hat and wipe the sweat from his forehead that he noticed Frenchy standing behind B. J. and Coots. Without a word she hitched up her skirts and tucked the hem into her waistband until her cotton-stockinged legs were free up to her knee-length pantaloons. She stepped to the edge of the grave and held out her hand with an authority of gesture that dismissed argument. Matthew gave her the spade and watched her dig with the economic hip-swing of a woman who had done her share of field work as a girl, before she escaped to the glittering world. He was on her "scar side," and the immobile, dispassionate ugliness fascinated him.