The Horses

by Bill Brooks

  Bilk heard the train’s whistle a mile out yet. Next to him in the bed, the thing he’d wanted most since the first time he laid eyes on her—Little Paris. Drunk and snoring a low, steady snore that came and went with each breath. Still, he thought, in the midmorning light she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and definitely the most beautiful he’d ever lain with. She had one dark mole in the low center of her back, just above the swell of her hips like a single drop of India ink. What had surprised him most about her, other than the fact she’d knocked on his door in the middle of the night, after he’d gone to bed and let his hired man, Green, take over the running of the bar, was the size of her breasts. They were a lot larger than he’d thought they would be, and for such a small woman. They drank and he stared and she finally said, “Is that all you intend on doing, staring at my bosoms?”

  Morning flyer, he thought when he heard the train’s whistle. How often he’d thought about that train, where it would take him if he ever decided to climb aboard and say, Take me far as you’re headed, and pay the fare and get off at that very last stop and start all over again.

  The death of Trout had had a greater effect on him than he could have ever imagined. He always imagined Trout’s disappearance from the scene would be a reason to celebrate—that without Trout around, he’d have a greater chance with Little Paris, who seemed to favor Trout over all the other men in the town, even though she didn’t seem to favor any man overly much, Trout was the one who most often paid her visits.

  But Trout’s death left a dark hole of doubt in Bilk’s own heart. For, if a man of Trout’s gristle could be done in by a stranger’s bullet, then everyone was susceptible, and death was always just around the corner.

  “You okay?” he’d asked Little Paris when he’d opened the door to her knock and saw her standing there swaying like a snake about ready to strike.

  “I’m just real sad, Bilk. Sad and angry at life and this grubby little town. Can I come in?” It was plain to see she’d been drinking heavily; she smelled like a whiskey bottle and could barely stand upright.

  “Of course,” he’d said.

  “You got anything to drink?” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “I’ll run up front and get us a bottle.”

  “Of the best stuff…”

  “Yes, of course, nothing but the best for you.”

  He came back and she was lying on the bed in just her chemise and stockings, and he thought, My, my, this sure can’t be happening to me. But indeed it was.

  They drank from the best bottle of champagne he kept stocked, drank it out of fluted glasses he’d kept for special occasions, ones he’d ordered all the way from New York. There had yet to be such a special occasion, but now there was.

  She told him how she was sick to death of life the way it was, had more than once thought about loading her pockets with rocks and jumping into the river.

  He didn’t understand why a woman with her looks would ever want to do a thing like that.

  “You just don’t understand, Bilk,” she said. “A woman’s beauty can be her curse.”

  No, he didn’t understand, but he took her word for it.

  “I need to get out of this place, Bilk. I need to get gone. I can’t live like this no more, dealing with drunks and cowboys and any old fool who comes along with the price of a fuck in his pocket.”

  “But that’s what you do, honey. It’s your stock and trade…”

  Oh, she gave him such a look he felt shriveled inside. Shook her head sadly and said, “You see, nobody understands what it’s like, being a whore, to be stuck inside myself with no other assets than my looks. And how long do you suppose a woman keeps her beauty, Bilk? And what happens after her beauty is faded to nothing and not even the buzzards want her?”

  Well, he offered up his own brand of wisdom, but it was like a schoolboy trying to teach his teacher how to do mathematics or Greek philosophy when he himself didn’t have a clue.

  They drank down the one bottle and Bilk went and got another and they drank most of that, all the while Bilk doing his best to convince her things would be okay, that life had a way of working out, that she’d find her true path, that a rich man would come along and take note of her beauty and offer to marry her.

  “Course it will be a sad goddamn day for me when that day comes, Paris, because I have been in love with you from day one…” There, he said what he’d long felt and was afraid to say to her. The champagne had loosed his tongue, maybe stolen his good sense too. The champagne and the sensual way she was posed there on the bed—without trying to be sensual, he guessed.

  “You truly love me, Bilk?”

  “I do.”

  “Then take me the hell out of this grub hole—take me to San Francisco.”

  “We can get married in the morning,” he said.

  “Married?”

  “Yes, that’s what you want, ain’t it?”

  “Oh, hell, Bilk. Oh, hell…” Then she’d passed out cold and he wasn’t sure whether to take advantage of her in that condition or not. For there it was, the very object of his desire with nothing to stop him but his own sense of propriety; he didn’t think he had any, but he did. He convinced himself that no matter how much he wanted her, he wanted her to be in love with him and to offer herself without any stipulations, such as money attached to the deal. He walked and paced the floor, telling himself he would not screw a passed-out woman, that he would wait for her to awaken—to be a true gentleman about it. To see how she felt toward him when she was alert and sober.

  And thus he fell asleep next to his beloved only to be awakened midmorning by the distant cry of the train’s whistle. Looked at the watch he took from his trousers lying there on the floor. Quarter till eleven. Train was fifteen minutes late. Everything in life seemed to be off kilter since the killings.

  He swung his bony legs out of the bed and sat there on the side, his head held in the cups of his hands. He tried hard convincing himself that this was the way it should be—him waking up every morning with Little Paris there in the bed with him. A life of rising late and going to the café for a late breakfast, then strolling the streets of San Francisco or some other notorious city together, of going to museums and to the ocean, dressed in swell clothes and being this handsome couple who got invited to wealthy parties—the frontier dust shook off their shoes forever. Maybe even have a couple of youngsters. But in fact, he knew such a future was as unlikely as it was for him to be struck by lightning while riding a wild buffalo and holding a rattlesnake in his teeth.

  He put on his trousers and stepped into his shoes and laced them, then stood and looked down at his pretend wife, the small knob of one bare shoulder exposed, and leaned over and kissed it. She hardly stirred.

  Two men stepped off the train, then walked toward the rear where the stock car that held their horses shuddered and waited for one of the railroad men to come and open the door and slide a gangplank into place. They stood there smoking, looking around at the collection of buildings, toward the wide main drag.

  “Quite a little shithole, ain’t it?” Hatch said.

  “Sure the hell is. I hope whatever damn job old Cicero has in mind is worth it. I’d hate to have come all this way for nothing,” Willis said. “What’d them tickets cost us, six dollars?”

  “You remember to keep your mouth shut about what I told you about me and his old lady, you hear? He even gets a whiff of that and somebody’s going to end up dead.”

  “I still can’t believe you horned her. Old woman like that, and your own sister-in-law to boot.”

  “She ain’t no older than me and being kin don’t have a thing to do with it. Fact, it made it even more interesting she was.”

  “Still…”

  They waited till their horses got led down and handed to them, the railroad man gruff in gray overalls, hair thick as a brush, face looked like it was squashed in by something in the long ago.

  They mounted and rode their horses
up through town via the main drag, taking in the business establishments as they went; the big stone bank on the corner looked especially inviting.

  “You think that’s it?” Willis said. “You think that’s what old Cicero got us up here for?” Hatch shrugged. They saw the Cat’s Paw farther on and reined in; though it was not yet even noon, both men craved a drink. To hell with coffee or breakfast first.

  “Get us a drink and ask around about Cicero and the half-wit, Ardell,” Hatch said.

  They dismounted and went in and walked to the bar a minute after Bilk had come and relieved his man, Green—telling him to get to cleaning up the place, then setting a pot of Arbuckle to boil on the stove.

  Two customers already, but he wasn’t truly interested in business this day. He kept thinking about Little Paris back there in his room, how maybe he shouldn’t have been such a gentleman after all, because the buzzing in his blood wouldn’t let up.

  “We’re looking for two old boys,” Hatch said after he ordered them each a short whiskey and Bilk had poured it and taken their money from the wood.

  “Who might that be?”

  “Little fellow and a big half-wit boy. Think maybe they hit town not too long ago.”

  “Why you looking for ’em?”

  “It’s sort of personal business,” Hatch said.

  “Well, you’re going to have to go and talk to Constable Glass about that, mister. He’s got those boys locked up.”

  Well, there was a piece of unexpected news. Hatch and Willis exchanged looks.

  “What they in the jug for?” Willis said.

  Bilk held the bottle aloft and said, “You boys want another short one?”

  “Sure,” Hatch said. “It ain’t that early.”

  Bilk poured, and it was Willis’s turn to pay the freight, and he put two more bits on the wood.

  “Murdering horses,” Bilk said.

  “Murdering horses?”

  “Constable says they murdered his horses, come in the middle of the night and did it.” Bilk shook his head trying to get the erotic buzz out, feeling the need to distract himself from thoughts of naked whores in his bed.

  “Funny,” Bilk continued without being asked to elaborate. “But here that one, the little fellow, shot down the other constable we used to have and another fellow, right out there in the street—in front of the hotel. It was a goddamn sorry thing to do, but all perfectly legal according to the law because it wasn’t the little fellow who started it. Now here they are in the jug for killing a man’s horses. Just goes to show you no bad deed goes unpunished.”

  “You got some screwy damn laws round here,” Hatch said, smiling.

  “It is what it is.”

  “Where’s the jailhouse?”

  “Up the street across from the undertaker’s.”

  “Thankee.”

  Jim came eight that morning and relieved Woody, told him to go find Bob and tell him to come in, then fed the prisoners with food he brought from the Dollar Café—biscuits and fried ham. Marched them to the privy out back, then locked them in again. Both men cursing him, especially the smaller one.

  “You can count on me blowing your brains out,” he’d said on the march back from the privy.

  “I’ll make sure and remember that,” Jim said.

  “You make sure you do.”

  Jim went to the anteroom and sat down at the desk and rolled himself a shuck and smoked it waiting for Bob. But what he didn’t know was Bob was down in bed, kicked in the chest by a horse he was trying to shoe for a neighbor. Broke several ribs, Woody reported when he returned, looking bleary-eyed.

  “You go and get some rest and come back in a few hours,” Jim said. Woody was yawning, tired from the all-night vigil. Sitting, trying to catnap in a chair while two snoring men slept like children, wasn’t exactly how he’d pictured lawman work. Maybe it would get more exciting, he told himself as he headed for his room at the hotel.

  Jim sat there thinking about Luz when the door rattled open and two men walked in. Lowbrow men from the looks of them, not from around this area.

  “Here you got some relatives of mine locked up,” Hatch said.

  Jim stood, his coat off so the men could easily see the revolver in his shoulder holster, show them he was armed.

  “I’ve got two men locked up, yes.”

  “How much to go their bail?”

  “No bail’s been set yet. Have to wait for the circuit judge.”

  “When you think that’s going to be?”

  “End of the week.”

  “You mind we have a word with them?”

  “Put your sidearms on the desk and you can have a regular hymn singing if you want.”

  Hatch looked round to Willis and smiled and said, “Sure,” and they pulled their revolvers and set them on the desk, and Jim walked them back.

  “Talk away,” he said.

  “You mind if we speak private with them?”

  “I do.”

  The half-wit saw Hatch and Willis, and right away the image of Hatch and his maw jumped into his mind like a flame come to life in dry tinder, and that was all he could think about—Hatch and his maw.

  “Boys, I see you done got in a bit of a pickle,” Hatch said.

  Cicero came up to the bars slow, wrapped his hands around them like they were skinny necks he wanted to choke.

  “You need to bail us out of here, we ain’t done nothing.”

  “The constable here says no bail’s been set, I guess there ain’t nothing we can do but wait.”

  The two of them sent messages back and forth with their eyes, Hatch telling Cicero, Don’t worry about it, we got this thing in hand, just be patient. Cicero warning Hatch he had better.

  “Well, hell, I don’t know why you all came if it ain’t to help your poor old nephews out of a pickle. You got any tobacco on you?”

  Hatch looked at Jim.

  “It okay if I pass him my makings?”

  Jim nodded. The makings were passed.

  Guilty as hell, both of them, too dumb to stay out of jail. Killed some damn horses. What the hell would they even do that for? Jesus Christ, thought Hatch.

  “Anything else you’re needing I can get you?” he said.

  “Just out of here,” Cicero said.

  “Rhubarb pie,” said the half-wit.

  Again that silent message with the eyes of men related by blood, kin to kin, and Hatch thinking, The old lady had us both, me and my brother, and look what it’s all come down to.

  “See you around, boys,” Hatch said, and he and Willis marched back out again and asked for the sidearms.

  “When you leave town, I’ll give them to you,” Jim said.

  Anger like a piece of swallowed sharp glass stuck in Hatch and Willis’s craws.

  “You got no right.”

  Jim reached in the top desk drawer and took out the badge Trout had been wearing when he was shot, a speck of dried blood still on one point of star, and set it down on the desk like it was a piece of jewelry they might be interested in purchasing.

  “This gives me the right.”

  “Gives you no goddamn—” Willis started to say, but before he got all the words out, Jim drew his pistol and cocked it.

  “You want to see how I enforce the law?”

  “It’s okay, Willis,” Hatch said, knowing they were as licked as Sunday ice cream this time around.

  “We don’t need guns while we’re visiting. Looks like the constable here has everything well in hand. Let’s go.”

  Outside Willis said, “You just going to let that son of a bitch take our guns?”

  “Look up the street and tell me what you see.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Look again.”

  “See that bank, a dentist’s office, a store…what the hell am I supposed to be looking for?”

  “You think maybe they sell guns at that mercantile?”

  Willis said, “Shit, Hatch, I should have known you’d have a plan.”


  Chapter Twenty-Three

  She dreamed of horses. That the two of them were riding horses across the benchlands, the wind in their faces, the horses running so fast it was almost as if they were flying.

  They came to a small blue-green pool surrounded by trees that spread their shade upon the ground, and there was a table full of food waiting for them. There were bowls of fruit and all sorts of meats, breads, wine.

  And sitting at one end of the table was Hector dressed in a fine black suit, snowy white shirt, his hair combed and his eyes bright with anticipation.

  He looked happily at her and said, “Who is your new friend?”

  She didn’t know how to explain about Jim.

  They sat down to eat with Hector passing plates of food to them as the horses grazed by the pool on rich grasses, their beautiful forms reflected in the water, perfect mirrored images.

  “I have been away,” Hector said at one point. “But now I’m back.”

  And she felt suddenly and very deeply sad. For now she was caught between her love for both men but knew she could not keep them both—that she had to choose one over the other.

  She asked, “Where did you go, Hector?”

  He smiled, and she noticed that he did not touch a single thing on his plate that was piled high with food.

  “Who is this man?” he suddenly demanded, his pleasant manner now charged with anger.

  “He is my friend,” she said in defense.

  Then Jim suddenly stood and pulled his gun and shot Hector through the heart, a bloom of red flowering in the white shirt. In the dream she cried, she wept with sadness.

  She awoke to find her bed empty and realized she’d had a bad dream.

  She dressed and went through the house looking for Jim but he wasn’t there. The dark feeling of the dream lingered in her like a cold shadow she couldn’t escape. She suddenly felt the urge to go see the fortune-teller again. Put on a shawl and left the house and walked up the street to where the old woman lived. There were potted flowers on the windowsill, and from the street, Luz could see a bird in a wicker cage just inside the woman’s open window. It chirped as though crying for its freedom.