The Horses

by Bill Brooks

  The fortune-teller said, “I was expecting you.”

  They went into the drawing room where a small round table, a deck of cards, and two chairs stood. There was nothing else in the room but an oval mirror. She sat across from the woman and waited, then remembered the price and took it out of her reticule—one dollar—and placed it on the table, and the fortune-teller stared at it for a long moment before picking it up and putting it inside her blouse.

  She was as ancient and wrinkled as a biblical fig, her hair white as a virgin’s soul. She had small, curious eyes that seemed to float in their sockets, a tiny little thing hardly larger than a twelve-year-old child.

  “Give me your hands, dear.”

  Luz held forth her hands, and the woman took them in her own. The woman’s hands felt like wax, the fingers with their long, yellowed nails curled round her wrists as though she were about to pull Luz from deep water.

  The woman studied Luz’s hands, reading the lines the way a cartographer reads a map he’s just made. She began to hum lowly between pursed lips.

  At last she released her grip and settled back as though having completed a long and exhausting journey through dry land. Sighed and closed her eyes.

  Then: “That which you love will soon be lost to you.”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  The woman shook her head, opened her eyes. They were eyes that lacked any true and single color, the eyes of a ghost, Luz thought.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “What is it you love?”

  “My children and my…” She started to say, My man, but caught herself. Is that what Jim was, her man? She wasn’t so sure, because even though he’d asked her to marry him and she had said yes, she was afraid there were things about him she didn’t understand, things that made her fearful to give him all her trust without question. He was still a stranger to her in many ways, she realized after having watched him on the street with those two men, how he was ready to kill them both.

  “Yes?” the woman said.

  “There is this man…”

  “It could be him…it could be one of your children.”

  “You can’t tell me?”

  “I can’t. There is only so much I am able to see. Only so much light I can carry into the darker world.”

  “When will this happen?”

  “Pretty soon. The aura around you is very strong, the lines in your hands broken.”

  Luz looked at the palms of her hands. But weren’t all lines in people’s hands broken?

  She looked at the woman’s hands. Her lines were not broken except for one place.

  “I will pray for you, child,” the woman said. “It is all I can do.”

  She smelled of dead flowers, and Luz left quickly in order to stand in fresh air again. She vowed she would spend no more time or money on the fortune-teller—that she was just some crazy old woman who kept herself alive on other people’s fears and desires. Perhaps fear and desire were the same things—that what we most desired was what we most feared. She wanted love the most, to love and be loved again as she had been with Hector. But now that it had been offered to her in the form of another man, she was afraid to love so completely. She feared if she gave Jim all her love as she had done with Hector and something happened to him too, it would destroy her.

  She went quickly to the jail hoping to find him, looking in the windows of the café as she went to see if he was in there eating.

  She found him instead writing something there at the jail, sitting behind a desk. He looked up and put down the pen when she entered.

  “You left this morning without saying anything,” she said.

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Why not? You always have in the past.”

  “I knew you were upset with me.”

  “I had a bad dream.”

  “About what?”

  “You and me and Hector.”

  “But it was just a dream.”

  “I went to see the fortune-teller.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “That I would soon lose that which I love.”

  “You believe her?”

  “No.”

  But Jim could see the doubt in Luz’s eyes, could feel it as palpable as the heartbeat in the wrist.

  “Let’s get married and leave this place,” she said. It sounded to him like a question more than a request, something to test his love for her.

  “Where would we go?”

  “Anywhere…Texas. I have a brother in Texas who owns a big ranch. You could work there and we could live there. My children would love it.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” he said.

  “But?”

  “I need to be my own man, Luz. I can’t work for nobody but me.”

  “You’re working for somebody now.”

  “Just for a real short time, just to get a little something put back into the bank. Then I’m back to horses. Horses is what I know, what I love doing.” He paused, then added: “Horses and you and having a family. I never thought I’d want a family until I met you, Luz.”

  “You can get horses in Texas,” she said.

  “I like it here. I have my own place for the first time in my life. I’m not going to let somebody run me off. You’re worrying for no good reason.”

  Suddenly the prisoners began to yell.

  “When the fuck we gone get something to eat!”

  “Go on home, honey,” he said. “I’ll come round later. I don’t want you subjected to this riffraff.”

  She threw her arms around his neck.

  “Please,” she said.

  He held her a moment, then undid her arms and led her to the door.

  “Go on home, honey.”

  And when she left, he went to the rear cell and stared at the two of them through the bars.

  “You keep your mouth shut or I’m going to beat it shut.”

  “You plan on starving us to death?”

  “Don’t give me any new ideas,” he said, and walked out.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jim finished what it was he had been writing and folded it carefully and put it in his shirt pocket while he waited for Woody to come relieve him. He wanted to have a long conversation with Luz, explain better to her things about himself, things until now he’d assumed she would understand about him without his having to explain it. If she wanted to know everything, he decided, then he would tell her everything—the good and the bad of what his life had been till the day he met her. Wipe the slate clean and start fresh. It made sense.

  Then Bucky Weaver’s kid, Arturo, he believed the boy’s name was, shuddered the door open and said, “I need help!”

  “What is it?”

  “My old man’s killing my old lady…”

  Jim knew the family slightly.

  Bucky was a teamster with a good-size mouth on him, especially when he got his drunk on. Liked to fight with his fists, cuss anything and anybody who looked at him cross-eyed. Jim figured a man like that, it didn’t matter if the one crossing their eyes was a woman or not, was his own wife or not. Had a brood of kids ran wild like prairie chickens, this one included, who’d steal a damn rusted bottom bucket or strips of barbed wire from fencing if nobody was looking, they were so damn poor. The bottom of the boy’s bare legs were scratched and he was barefoot; his clothes hung from him like dirty washrags.

  “You sure they’re not just arguing?” Jim said.

  “He knocked her down and two teeth out of her mouth.” The boy opened a dirty hand, and Jim saw something that tied a knot in his stomach: two pieces of bloody bone that surely were human teeth.

  He grabbed his hat on the way out the door, wishing Woody had come in, but he hadn’t yet and there was no time to go look for him if what the kid said was true, and he didn’t see how it couldn’t be—a man knocking his own wife’s teeth out.

  “He been drinking, your paw?”

  “Yes sir, about all day.”

&nb
sp; “He knock your maw around a lot when he’s like that?”

  “Some but nothing this bad.”

  The kid hopped aboard a twisted-ear mule and punched his heels into its ribs hard as if he was trying to kick in a door locked from the inside. The mule brayed and showed its teeth against the bit but trotted off, and Jim mounted the stud and followed.

  Far as he knew, Bucky Weaver kept a shack southeast a mile or two you could see from the road once you got close because of the big windmill Bucky had built and painted red for some goddamn odd reason.

  Jim rode alongside the boy and said, “Your old man got many guns?”

  “A few.”

  “Where’s he keep them?”

  “One by the front door and one in the bedroom.”

  The sun threw their shadows out in front of them.

  “What started this thing between your maw and paw?”

  “Nothing.”

  Jim hated a woman hitter as much as he hated anything. And it seemed like it was always the meanest and biggest sons of bitches that married the smallest women and did the hitting.

  They rode on in silence, the kid kicking and urging his mule to go faster. They topped one rise then another, then saw the red-painted windmill clacking gentle in a soft but steady breeze.

  Jim drew rein, said, “You best wait here, boy.”

  “But—”

  Jim cut him off with a hard look.

  “It could be bad down there, real bad.”

  Jim rode steady toward the house. It seemed quiet, peaceful, no shouts or bloody screams coming from it. Bad sign, Jim thought. He pulled his revolver and dismounted, keeping the stud between him and the front door. He glanced back to see the boy still sitting the mule, jug-eared and staring.

  “Hello the house!”

  No answer.

  “Hello the house!”

  There was a dreadful long silence, then: “What you want, mister?”

  “Constable Glass from Domingo,” Jim called. “Your boy summoned me, said you were having a bit of trouble out here.”

  “No goddamn trouble here. You might as well get on back to wherever the hell it is you come from.”

  “Like to talk to you a minute if I could.”

  “Got no time for jawing.”

  “Like to talk to your missus then.”

  “What for?”

  “See if she’s doing okay?”

  “What the hell business is it of yours if she’s okay or not?”

  Jim noticed there weren’t any of those wild kids running around. Chickens scratched in the yard, but not even a dog to bark and raise hell. He figured the other kids had run off too.

  “Come on out here a minute,” he called.

  “Go to hell and get off my property while you’re doing it.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why the hell can’t you?”

  “I’m the law is why.”

  “Shit, not around here you ain’t.”

  “Afraid so. Law’s the law, no matter.”

  “I’m gone come out there and bust your ass you don’t get.”

  “Better come on then.”

  Jim waited until the door creaked open, and Bucky appeared in it holding a single-barrel big bore in both hands like an ax handle he was getting ready to split wood with.

  “Best drop that piece,” Jim said.

  He could see Bucky trying to figure out how to make his move with Jim keeping the stud between them.

  “Boy,” the man called to the kid farther on. “I’m gone whip your ass for bringing the law to my door. You best climb down off that mule and get in here.”

  “He’s not going to come in there, Bucky.”

  A guttural sound croaked from the man’s throat.

  “You know me?”

  “I know you by reputation. Am told you’re a mean drunk. Understand as how you like to knock women around. Now call your wife out here to me so I can have a look at her. She’s okay, I’ll get on my horse and ride out.”

  “I’m gone shoot your damn head off.”

  Jim didn’t see a way around it. He rested the pistol steady on the seat of his saddle, aimed just where the man’s legs forked, knowing the bullet would drop several inches, squeezed the trigger until the pistol banged like a door slammed shut. Bucky yipped and dropped his big bore and fell straight down. Jim crossed the yard before he could get off his ass again.

  “You shot me in the goddamn leg!”

  “You didn’t give me much choice. I was aiming for your nuts.”

  Jim called the kid and told him to go and find a belt or a piece of rope and tie off the bleeding leg, reached and took the big bore and broke it open, saw there was a twelve-gauge shell in the breech, picked it out with his finger and thumbnail like a piece of walnut meat and dropped it in his pocket, then flung the gun out into the yard.

  He went inside, and it looked like the whole house had been cyclone hit, furniture overturned, dishes broke, shelves busted loose from the walls, a window broke out. He found the woman huddled in a back room separated off from the other two rooms by a blanket hung from nails pounded into the jamb.

  She was holding her face, and blood had dribbled out between her fingers and dried on the backs of her bony hands.

  He knelt down beside her.

  “You okay?”

  She shook her head.

  “Of course not,” he said. “You want me to take a look?”

  She shook her head again.

  “How about I take you into town and have the doctor look at you?”

  Again she shook her head.

  “I’m going to arrest your old man for beating you.”

  “No!” she sputtered. He saw then where the two teeth had been, the split lips, puffy now, the right eye bulging dark as a plum.

  “We need him here—to put food on the table…”

  “Yes ma’am, I understand all about that, but you can’t let him be beating on you this way.”

  “He won’t do it again,” the words coming out cluttered like she was chewing a piece of beef and trying to speak around it. Jim helped her stand and walked her into the main room where there was a pan of water atop a dry sink at one end, and he took a piece of frayed cloth hanging from a nail and dipped it in the water and wrung it out and touched it to the woman’s battered mouth. She lifted her harried gaze, and he understood all there was about the hard times she’d gone through and hoped to God he’d never be in such a situation, and knowing more certainly he’d never put Luz or any other woman in a similar situation. He did his best to keep his anger tamped down for her benefit.

  He went back outside, and Bucky was sitting there moaning his pain, gripping his thigh where the bullet had gone in, a leather belt cinched now above his knee. Jim took out his Barlow and slit open the torn and bloody trouser leg and felt around back of the wound where there was another larger one and said, “My bullet went right on through, I doubt it broke so much as a bone, but it took a good-size chunk of meat out of you.”

  “Well, goddamn, ain’t I the lucky one it didn’t break no bone!”

  Jim saw the boy standing there staring, told him to go and round up his siblings and get them back here to help his maw. Then when the boy ran off, Jim turned his attention back to Bucky.

  “I reckon you are one lucky son of a bitch because I’m not going to beat you like you beat her. At least not right now even though I’d like nothing better. I’d haul your stupid ass to the jail and lock you up in it but for her pleading with me not to. But I will tell you this one thing: I ever come back out here because you hit her, and I’ll bury you out back of beyond.”

  Bucky was on the verge of tears from the booze wearing off, the pain like fire in his leg crawling up into his groin, the realization he was faced down by a man in front of his own family—the worst possible indignity a man like him could suffer.

  The boy came back, his siblings in tow, who all went into the house except the brave boy. Jim stood and walked him off a little ways f
rom the house.

  “I don’t care what it takes, he ever hits your mother again, you come find me. You understand?”

  Arturo nodded his head.

  “Or if he ever hits you over this, you come and find me.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Then Jim walked away, took a deep breath and exhaled, wanted to swear, but didn’t. Mounted the stud, started to ride away, then pulled up and said to Bucky:

  “Heed my words.”

  The eyes of the two men met across the span of space, and both knew which had been licked and which hadn’t, and who would be licked even worse the next time they met under similar circumstances.

  Jim nodded, turned the horse out to the road and back to town, never realizing what he was about to ride into.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When Woody got to the jail the chair behind the desk was empty, but both prisoners were still in their cell much to his relief. I sure don’t hope I get fired over being late, he thought, and sat down at the desk.

  He had looked at the two of them locked up and they looked at him, and something shivered under his flesh and he thought: The eyes of evil is what I am looking into. Well, he knew he’d never make a career out of being a lawman, and perhaps it was time he more fully concentrated on what he knew he could be good at. He planned on sending off a batch of poems to a publisher in New York, soon as he got relieved of his duties this day. They were poems about his adventures thus far in the West, of Westerners, those plainspoken, often drunk and loud men, their profanity and tendency to engage in fights, their often lurking silences before they exploded into violence. And speaking of exploding into violence, could any of God’s creatures be more prone to such than a horse? He thought not. He smiled at the thought and set the small elk-skin satchel with his poems and his journal there on the desk.

  He took out his pen and his journal made of heavy cardboard covers and pages of plain heavy stock paper, his bottle of ink, extra nibs, and spread them before him.

  The events of the double killing had been nagging his thoughts ever since he’d witnessed it, and he thought he would write a poem about them as a means to clear the emotional wreckage the shootings had rent. Though he didn’t want to be overly dark, he thought it his duty as an observer of his times to pen what he’d witnessed in the terrible murders of Trout Threadneedle and Tug Bailey.