by Aaron Latham
“All right,” said Revelie, “shall we make two bravery? How shall we put it? ‘I promise always to strive to be brave.’ How’s that?”
“Real purdy. Now it’s my turn. I reckon three oughta be ‘self-reliant.’ Is that okay?”
“That’s fine. Now four.” She wrote the numeral. “Maybe four could be ‘fair,’ always striving to be fair. Fair and impartial.”
“Yeah, fair, and like you said because ever’body’s worth the same amount.”
“Equal?”
“That’s it.”
Her pen scratched across the paper.
“Read it to me,” Goodnight said. “Read me what you wrote.”
“All right,” Revelie said. “‘In all my dealings, I promise to be fair and impartial and to treat all people as equals.’”
“You ever think a writin’ poetry?”
“As a matter of fact, I did—when I was a girl. Thank you for the implied compliment.”
“Now whose turn is it?”
“Yours, I believe.”
“What number?”
“Five.”
“Okay, five, well mebbe five oughta be loyalty? Loyalty’s a good one.”
“How shall we put it: ‘I promise to be loyal, loyal to my wife or my husband, loyal to my leader . . .’ That’s you. Who else?”
“Loyal to your family. Your mama and papa. Your brother and sister.” He could hear the change in his voice, which seemed to thicken. His tongue felt swollen and worked awkwardly. “Yeah, right. An’ loyal to your friends. An’ loyal to the other hands on the ranch. An’ loyal to the ranch, to the canyon, to this here country. Loyal to the animals, the buffalo, the wolves, the cows, the dogs. Loyal to the damn bees. Loyal to the plants. To horehounds that are some use. To mesquites that ain’t. Loyal to this here red land.”
“Wait,” Revelie said. “Is this a code for the ranch or a code for the whole territory?”
Goodnight was stumped. He didn’t know. He wanted to do so much but had the power to do so little. Or so it seemed to him.
“We will start with here,” Revelie said, “and then we will expand.”
“Good,” said Goodnight. “So first off we’ll ask our cowboys to sign this here code. Thass a start, huh? Then whatsomever.”
She raised her hand and he watched her write. He loved the idea of her turning his thinking into words. Fancy words. Impressive words. Real writing. He realized he had a big, dumb smile on his face. He considered changing his expression but decided against it. He just left the big, dumb smile right where it was.
“Okay, I’m caught up,” Revelie said.
“Well, uh, I’ve about run dry on ol’ number five. Now it’s your turn.”
“Perhaps we should put in a few ‘Thou shalt nots.’”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should put in something about not drinking.”
“Thass kinda strict.”
“All right, maybe something about not drinking too much. Not getting drunk and treeing towns.”
“You mean like what happened to you that time? Good. Thass good. An’ say sumpun about not disrespectin’ women. Good. Good. Anything else?”
“It’s your turn, darling.”
“Well, the main ‘don’t’ as far as I’m concerned is ‘Don’t kill nobody.’” His voice felt thick again. “An’ if’n you do, you gotta promise to let the other boys be the jury. And I’ll be the judge. And if’n you do it, you gotta pay. Thass about it. You got anything else you wanta add?”
“No. I can’t think of anything.”
“Good. We’ll have all the boys sign this here contract just like I signed that paper with your dad. An’ we’ll sign it, too. We’ll all sign it or make our marks.”
“Right.”
“Can I see it. I wanta look at it.”
She handed it to him.
“That’s real purdy,” Goodnight said. “Real purdy. It’s the purdiest piece a writin’ I ever seen in my life.”
Now he could finally read the words that his wife had written at the top of the page: “Code of the West.”
50
Goodnight was dreaming a familiar dream in which Loving returned to the Home Ranch. In his sleep, he often corrected what had gone wrong, fixed what was broken, even raised the dead. Now he dreamed a dream of Loving, who had grown tired of wandering, and who came riding back into the red valley kicking up red dust. Dreaming was one of the ways in which he mourned—or perhaps avoided mourning.
Goodnight woke up wanting to sneeze and realized that his nose was being tickled by something other than a cloud of red dust. He sniffed the air and identified the smell.
“Revelie,” Goodnight said in a low but urgent voice, “wake up.” He shook her shoulder. “Revelie, you gotta wake up.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked in a sleep-thick voice.
“I think I smell smoke,” he said.
He could hear her sniffing the air.
“You’re right,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “We better check on the boys.”
Grabbing clothes but not wasting time dressing, Goodnight and Revelie both ran naked and coughing into the fresh air of the dog run. Rubbing their eyes, they could see that the south room—the cowboys’ room—was on fire. Through the windows, they beheld dancing flames. Goodnight was suddenly desperate. His fear turning him back into a little boy, he was terrified that he was once again going to lose somebody very close to him.
Then the door of the burning room burst open and cowboys came pouring and choking out. Goodnight strained to focus his good eye to penetrate the dark and the smoke. He managed to recognize Coffee, yes, good, and then Simon, crawling on his hands and knees, then Tin Soldier without his tin hat. But that was all. Where was Too Short? Where was Suckerod?
In spite of his fear, or rather because of it, Goodnight dropped the clothes in his hands and lunged at the open door. He sensed Revelie’s moment of indecision, as she was torn between modesty and wanting to help, but thankfully she lingered. Why should she risk her life? Inside, Goodnight stared into a fiery chamber of horrors and wondered for a moment if anything could be done. Then he felt his wife’s cool touch on his bare shoulder, and he knew he had to try.
“Get back!” he shouted at her.
Plunging into the furnace, Goodnight was blinded by the smoke. Unseeing, he rushed headlong at the flames as if they were some bully. Then he tripped and sprawled headfirst. His hands reached out to try to break his fall and the hot floor burned his fingers. Still smoke-blind, he angrily kicked out with his bare feet at whatever had tripped him. And then he realized that he was kicking a man. He had found one of his boys, still wrapped in his bedroll. While the married couple slept on a feather mattress, the cowboys still slept on the floor. But was this cowboy asleep, unconscious, or dead?
Rising to his knees on the griddle-hot floor, Goodnight grabbed the bedroll with both hands and started pulling in the direction of the open door, which let in the wind that fanned the flames. He could feel the body begin to slide toward him. Good. Backing up, still on his knees, he pulled again. His burden, which was heavier than he had expected, caught on something and wouldn’t move. He jerked, but it didn’t help.
Then Goodnight felt Revelie beside him. Her bare shoulder touched his, the way it did so often in the night, and her hands grasped the reluctant bedding and pulled. They pulled together. The burden released its grip on whatever it clung to and slid once more across the burning floor.
Coughing and gasping, Goodnight and Revelie pulled the unconscious cowboy through the doorway. Since he was baby-helpless, it was as if they were assisting at his birth—or rebirth. The husband and wife had delivered their first manchild, but would it be a stillbirth? Revelie started slapping his smoke-darkened face in a desperate effort to make him wake up and take a breath.
Recognizing Too Short, Goodnight realized that Suckerod must still be trapped inside. He hated the idea of charging back into the flame
s where he knew his skin would feel as if it were on fire and might be at that. Where every breath would scald his lungs. But he had no choice, so he lowered his head and attacked.
“No!” yelled Revelie. “Stop!”
Wanting to stop, Goodnight kept going. He had to save Suckerod. But just as he reached the burning threshold, he somehow lost his balance and fell sideways. He thought the house must have given way and fallen on him. Then he opened his good eye and saw that the house was Coffee. Goodnight tried to get up, but Coffee wrestled with him to keep him down, to keep him from plunging back into the fire, to keep him from throwing away his life. Soon Coffee had help when Simon joined his side of the fight. Goodnight finally gave up and slumped back in Coffee’s arms.
“Everybody, close your eyes,” Revelie said, “except you, Mr. Goodnight.”
Then her husband remembered that his wife was naked. He looked in her direction and saw her still bending over Too Short, whose chest was now heaving. Goodnight figured that Too Short had probably opened his eyes, seen this vision of naked beauty, and been startled back into breathing. He was lucky he didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. Revelie turned to her husband with an ivory smile that made her sooty face beautiful. She was actually sooty all over.
Then she got up and gathered up the clothes she had dropped on the ground. Her husband wondered if any of the cowboys had closed their eyes very tight. He doubted it. He figured she doubted it, too, but she didn’t seem to mind. He wondered if all the Boston girls were like her. Soon she disappeared into the hackberry thicket.
“You may open your eyes now,” Revelie called, and then laughed raucously.
Getting gingerly to his blistered feet, Goodnight started looking around for his own dropped clothes. While he got dressed, he tried to piece together in his mind what must have happened. He wondered if Suckerod had been smoking in bed, something he had been warned repeatedly not to do. Well, maybe, but Goodnight told himself not to blame the dead.
Sensing an uneasiness in his men, Goodnight turned and saw Revelie emerging from the hackberry thicket only half-dressed. She had on her shoes and skirt, but she had evidently failed to pick up her blouse in her haste. Revelie stood before them with her whalebone corset fully exposed to their view, which brought back painful memories . . .
Telling himself to concentrate on the here and now, Goodnight fell to wondering whether the Robbers’ Roost gang might have started that fire. He had burned their house, so maybe they had decided to pay him back by burning his. Then he saw the “RR” scratched in the red earth.
BOOK THREE
QUEST FOR LOVING
51
Late 1870s
Goodnight felt bad.
He still lived in the enchanted canyon but was no longer quite so enchanted by it. His life seemed to him to be as flat and changeless as the Staked Plain that surrounded his canyon. His soul was dying of thirst. Looking within himself, Goodnight found all his buffalo dead, all his mustangs broken, all his wolves trapped and skinned. All the wild Humanity in him had been rounded up and confined to a reservation. His spirit was fenced in with barbed wire.
In his unhappiness, Goodnight dreamed of Loving. It was that old dream again, the one about Loving returning from his wanderings, but this time he dreamed the dream wide awake. He hadn’t seen the cowboy with changeable eyes for ten years, but he seemed to miss him more than ever. Whenever something went wrong in the red canyon, Goodnight always found himself wondering what Loving would have done. If he had been around, he might have prevented that long-ago fire. And even if the fire had happened, surely Loving would have been able to save the poor burned cowboy. Right? When Goodnight shared these thoughts with Revelie, she always reminded him that Loving might well have died along with Suckerod since they both slept in the same room. But Goodnight felt sure Loving would have smelled the smoke and put out the fire before it got out of hand.
And what was more, Loving could have talked Tin Soldier out of leaving the Home Ranch. Goodnight missed Tin Soldier every day. As he missed, even more acutely, Loving. Why had they gone? Goodnight really couldn’t understand how anybody could voluntarily leave the prettiest spot in the whole wide world—even though he himself was not very happy there at the moment. Nor could Goodnight imagine any man willingly forsaking the circle of Revelie’s charm. He felt that if he could just bring Loving back, then the circle would be whole again, and he could shake off his discontent.
The rancher thought these thoughts as he lay on a spotted-cowhide couch in the smallest room in a very large house. After the fire, he and his wife had decided to rebuild using materials that wouldn’t burn. They told each other that they couldn’t stand another night like the one that had killed one of their cowboys. The answer was stone. Now a red-sandstone house sprawled in the red-sandstone canyon. The home at the Home Ranch appeared to have risen on its own right out of the red earth. The couple now livedin the canyon in a different way, in a more complete sense, surrounded by canyon walls and also by walls made from stones cut from those walls. In a way, the big red house reminded Goodnight of his early days in the dugout: the mansion seemed a descendant of that old shack that had been dug directly into the canyon floor. Over the years, they had added to the big house, making it bigger and bigger.
The stone house was good, but Goodnight missed the days when they had all been happy living together in the cedar house: the new wife and the new husband, all the cowboys, all under one roof. Now the Home Ranch had a sandstone bunkhouse that stood apart from the big red ranch house. Now the rancher and his wife seemed to live on a different plane from the cowboys. Hierarchy had come to the ranch.
Lying on his couch, chewing his “cud,” Goodnight had to admit that Revelie had a point when she named this cell his “brooding room.” (He, of course, called it his office.) He kept the curtains pulled all the time, so the room was always dimly lit. Dim places were the best places for thinking. Revelie said the closed curtains just made his dark moods darker.
“Hello.”
Revelie’s voice startled Goodnight. “What?”
“I didn’t intend to frighten you,” she said. “I’m just doing some cleaning. As you know, we’ve got company coming. Very neat company. White-gloved.”
“Don’t remind me,” he said, sitting up on the couch. “But she won’t be coming in here, will she? This ismy room. Don’t clean up.”
It was surely a mess, he had to confess, but he liked it that way. He loved the yellowing pieces of paper, random articles of clothing, spurs, hats . . .
“Sorry,” she said. “I can’t stand this mess, and my mother will like it even less, believe me.”
“Then the both of you are invited to kindly keep outa here.”
It was a fight they had often had before, but this time there was a new urgency, because Mrs. Sanborn was on her way. Velvet Pants wouldn’t be accompanying her because he had died suddenly of a heart attack several months ago at age fifty-five. He left his estate divided equally between his wife and daughter, which meant the Home Ranch was now owned by three people: the rancher, his wife Revelie, and Mrs. Sanborn. They were equal partners—one-third, one-third, one-third. So Goodnight was now in business with his mother-in-law, and she was on her way to inspect her new property.
“How can you stand it in here with the curtains closed and the window shut?” Revelie asked. “It isn’t healthy.”
She pulled the curtains back and opened the window. He wanted to get up, go over, close the window, and pull the curtains, but he managed to restrain himself. He knew from experience that this was a bad idea. He didn’t want to start a wildfire that he might not be able to control.
“Can I throw this out?” Revelie asked, holding up an Austin newspaper that was almost a year old.
“No!” said Goodnight.
“Why not?” she asked.
“I wanna read it again,” he lied. He just hated throwing things away. Even more, he hatedher throwinghis things away. “Please, just let everythi
ng alone.”
“Okay, read it now.” Revelie tossed the paper at him. “You’ve got plenty of light for a change.”
He caught the newspaper but didn’t read it.
“What about this?” Revelie asked, holding up a briar pipe. “Surely I may throw it out. As far as I know, you don’t smoke.”
“No, it’s a gift.”
She tossed it at him. He dropped the newspaper and caught the pipe.
“These are worn out.” She held up ratty slippers. “They’ve got to go.”
“They’re just gittin’ comfortable.”
Revelie threw the slippers at Goodnight. They hit him in the chest and throat.
“Ouch,” he coughed.
“Serves you right. You’re a packrat. And packrats are just as bad as any other member of the rat family. Now come on, we’ve got to throw out some of this junk.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, we do.” Revelie picked up a tattered page with numbers scrawled haphazardly on it. “You couldn’t possibly have any use for this.”
“Git your hands off that!” Goodnight commanded.
“Why?”
“Just don’t touch it! I mean it! Put it down!”
“What’s so special about this piece of paper?”
“Just leave it alone.”
“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to tear it up.”
“No, you ain’t. You may think you are, but you ain’t.”
Goodnight struggled up off the low couch, staggered momentarily, and then lunged at his wife. But he was too slow, or she was too fast. Before he could reach her, she tore the piece of paper in half. Goodnight screamed in agony. He tackled Revelie. The blow caused her to drop the two halves of the page, which fluttered down. She went down much faster and harder. The floor knocked the breath out of her, and then her husband landed heavily on top of her. She tried to scream, but there was no air inside of her. Panicking, Revelie started scratching Goodnight’s face. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed her by her heels, and dragged her out of his sanctuary.