Code of the West

by Aaron Latham

  With his pocket knife, Goodnight dug into the bull’s-eye. He winced because the target reminded him of his own gouged-out eye. He was also afraid of what he might find.

  He dug out a .45 slug.

  Then he dug out another.

  And another.

  Three bullets in one hole. He was already trying to figure out how he was going to tell Revelie.

  “If you tell Revelie,” Loving said, “I’m leavin’.”

  Goodnight hadn’t even heard him come up.

  73

  You seem different,” Revelie said.

  The party was over. Husband and wife were lying in bed hugging each other after particularly strenuous lovemaking. Now that their bodies had been reunited so happily, he wanted their minds to be similarly joined. He told himself that this was what he had been waiting for, the “perfect” moment for the telling of secrets.

  “I know,” Goodnight said. “I feel different. Better.”

  “It’s because Loving has come back,” Revelie said.

  “That’s part of it,” he said. “He’s back, and my sister’s come back, too. Becky’s back.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “You were right. I shoulda told you this here stuff a long time ago, but I buried it. Got this graveyard in my dang heart. That was wrong. Now I want you to know everything ’bout me. Gonna open up all them graves.”

  He paused and looked at Revelie, but she didn’t say anything.

  “It started to happen back when I was ten . . . ”

  He tried to tell it all just as it had happened, except for the rapes. He didn’t think rape stories were fit for a white woman’s ears. So he didn’t exactly tell her everything because he wanted to protect her from the worst. But he couldn’t shield himself. He remembered everything, he relived everything.

  Jimmy clashed swords with Becky, knight against knight. Sir Jimmy’s broadsword had been hewed out of a cottonwood branch. The hewing consisted of stripping off the bark. Sir Becky’s weapon was made of sterner stuff, an oak branch, with the rough bark still on. Their armor was made of homespun cotton, which was the color of butternut. One knight wore baggy pants, the other a shapeless dress. The crash of swords rang out loud in the cool spring morning air,whack, thwack. It was the Golden Age: they were ten years old.

  “This is the best sword fight ever,” shouted Jimmy, who loved swordplay and superlatives.

  “Ouch!” yelled Becky. “You hit me!”

  “Sorry,” Jimmy hissed happily, “but you hit me first.”

  These medieval knights lived in a hand-hewn family fortress in the middle of the Texas woods. The walls were made of wooden logs, sharpened on top like schoolroom pencils, standing upright side by side. The fort had been built to keep out Indians, but the red man had kept the peace for years. That morning, the only violence that concerned the fort was the battle between two of its own children, a brother and a sister, twins.

  “Stoppit!” yelled carrot-topped Becky. “Stoppit! Stoppit!”

  Yellow-haired Jimmy stopped his rain of sword strokes, but not because his redheaded sister asked him to. Rather it was because of something he saw. The fort’s main gate, which stood wide open, framed a band of Indians. Jimmy glanced from the warriors back to his twin sister, wary of both.

  “You’re not supposed to hit on the head,” Becky complained. “Thass against the rules.”

  “Hush,” Jimmy ordered. “Lookeethere!”

  He pointed with his sword at the warriors beyond the gate. His left hand came up and touched the birthmark on his cheek. He almost always reached for it when he was worried about something. It seemed to be the physical manifestation of all his fears, that string of blue dots that looked so much like the Big Dipper.

  When Becky finally saw the warriors, she quickly ran behind her brother.

  “Act like you ain’t ascared,” Jimmy warned. “Injuns can smell if you’re ascared, like hosses.”

  When he looked around to see if anyone else had seen the Indians, Jimmy saw women and children running. But he noticed very few men, since most of them were working in the fields at this time of day. Jimmy felt better when he finally saw his father, Silas Goodnight, who had been working indoors, hurrying toward the open gate. Everything would be all right now.

  “Daddy!” Jimmy called. “Wait!”

  “Daddy!” cried Becky at the same time. “What’s wrong?”

  Paying no attention, the twins’ father rushed past them, followed by their uncle, Ben Goodnight, and their grandfather, Elder John Goodnight. The brother and sister could hear the hurried fear in the men’s voices. Then the adults paused, catching their breaths at the threshold of the open gate.

  “Guess I better go see what they want,” said Uncle Ben.

  “I’ll watch the gate,” said their father, Silas. “Anything goes wrong, you come a runnin’. Unnersand? I’ll slam it shut behind you.”

  “Wait now,” said their grandfather, Elder John. “Don’t go takin’ no chances!”

  “Got to, Pa,” said Uncle Ben.

  Jimmy crossed ten-year-old fingers on both hands. He saw his uncle—looking like a giant from his point of view—walk out through the open gate. And he watched his father take up his position next to the gate that never should have been left open in the first place. He saw his granddaddy fretting.

  “What’s gonna happen?” asked Becky.

  “Shut up!” Jimmy said. “You ask too many questions. Drive a person batty.”

  Since he was afraid to get mad at the Indians, he got mad at his sister instead.

  “I’m sorry,” Becky said.

  Jimmy watched Uncle Ben trying to communicate with signs and gestures. A hundred mounted warriors were milling about and screaming. Uncle Ben seemed to be addressing a red man who carried a soiled white flag.

  Sir Jimmy, the fearless knight, realized he was trembling. The shivering seemed to begin in his pioneer bone marrow and ripple outward to his skin. His whole pioneer heritage told him that he now faced the greatest danger under heaven. He had been brought up to fear wolves . . . but Indians were fiercer. He had been taught to be afraid of snakes . . . but Indians were deadlier. He had been reared to tremble before the devil . . . but to fall into the hands of Indians was worse than going to hell. Indians would cut off your hair, scalp and all. Or they would cut off your balls for the fun of it. Or, the boy reminded himself, there was a good chance they would do both.

  Jimmy relaxed a little when he saw Uncle Ben start back toward the fort. The boy stopped shaking and even uncrossed his fingers, which were beginning to hurt. When Uncle Ben finally reached the open gate, he huddled with the twins’ father, their heads close. Sir Jimmy dropped his sword and ran toward his daddy. Sir Becky followed right behind.

  “Hey, you kids, git back!” yelled their grandfather. “Go hide!”

  “No, I want my daddy,” whined Jimmy.

  “You mind me. Go on!”

  “No!”

  In exasperation, Elder John Goodnight gave up for the moment and turned to greet his sons, Ben and Silas. The three grown men and two small children now huddled together.

  “They’re Comanches,” said Uncle Ben. “Say they’re hungry. Least I think that’s what they’re sayin’. Believe they want a coupla our cows.”

  “Ben, we ain’t got no cows to spare,” complained Elder John. “You know that.”

  “That’s what I told ’em. Anyhow I tried to tell ’em.”

  “How’d they take it?”

  “Not too good, don’t look like. I don’t trust that damn white flag. Guess I better go back and try talkin’ ’em outa makin’ trouble.”

  “No,” Elder John said as sternly as he could, “less just lock the damn gate and . . .”

  “I got to or there’s gonna be trouble for shore.”

  “Now do what I say.”

  “Cain’t.”

  “Nobody minds me.”

  As Ben and Silas turned back toward the open gate, Jimmy and B
ecky tried to follow, but their grandfather grabbed them and held them. Elder John wished his sons were small enough to be restrained in the same fashion. The twins’ father turned momentarily to reassure his children.

  “I’ll be right back,” he promised.

  Once again, Jimmy watched his father wait by the gate while his Uncle Ben walked out to meet the Comanches. He saw red men milling and whooping and trick-riding and working themselves up into a frenzy as the white man approached. He felt a tingling in his balls. He wanted to scratch but was embarrassed, so he just touched the Big Dipper on his face and then ran his fingers through his hair.

  Jimmy could hardly believe the scene unfolding before him. Viewed through the gate, it all seemed to take place on a kind of stage, like the Bible plays the family put on at Christmastime. The savage “players” wore such extravagant costumes and makeup that they couldn’t be real. And what they were doing couldn’t be real either. They couldn’t really be plunging their lances into Uncle Ben. He couldn’t really be falling. Arrows couldn’t really be thumping into his writhing body. It was too far away and too colorful and too unutterably horrible to be real. Surely Uncle Ben would get up again when the game was over, just the way Jimmy and Becky came back to life after their sword fights.

  Even when the Comanches started riding toward the open gate, Jimmy kept on watching as if he were witnessing playacting or game playing. The paralyzed boy just kept staring at the Comanches as they raced screaming toward him. His twin sister, suffering from paralysis too, just stood and stared beside him.

  “Jimmy! Becky! Run! Run!”

  Turning toward the shrill voice, the boy saw his mother, Lucy Goodnight, running toward them, coming to the rescue, charging directly toward the warriors. Her apron flapped like a frightened flag.

  “Jimmy! Hurry!”

  Overcoming his paralysis, Jimmy started running toward his mother. His twin sister ran with him. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw his father struggling to close the gate before the warriors could crash through. Jimmy lowered his head and tried to run faster, but then he did what that salt wife did in the Bible. Looking back, he saw a Comanche arrow strike his father in the stomach. The boy wished he could turn into salt, too, because then he wouldn’t feel anything when he saw his dad fall and writhe in pain in the still-open gate. It was as though Jimmy had been shot, too. His feet seemed dead. Maybe he had turned to salt after all. He just stood there and stared at the warriors who came riding in over his father’s body, dirtying it, trampling it, adding insult to death. It seemed so terrible to be killed in springtime and to bleed on the new grass.

  “Jimmy!” his mother screamed. “Take my hand!”

  Soon she was pulling him toward the back of the fort as more savages poured through the front gate. Jimmy saw several men rushing by to try to bar the warriors’ way and thought he should join them. Now was his chance to be a knight for real and rescue damsels, but these damsels were really just his relatives. Knights didn’t usually rescue their aunts and cousins and such like. Besides, he was being dragged along by his mom and couldn’t get loose. Not that he tried all that hard. Looking back again, Jimmy saw two more uncles dying and his granddaddy trying to run away on legs hobbled by old age.

  “Run for the spring gate,” his mother shouted.

  In the farthest corner, the small spring gate served as a back door to the fort. It had been cut there to make it easier to fetch water from a nearby spring. Jimmy’s hand came uncoupled from his mother’s, but he kept on running. He was faster than his mother and soon passed her and was even gaining on his sister. But then he decided he shouldn’t run off and leave his mom, so he slowed down and waited for her to catch up.

  Hearing his grandfather cry out—even in the screaming battle he recognized that voice—Jimmy looked back to see the old man on the ground. Two Comanches were on top of him. Averting his eyes from his grandfather’s ordeal, Jimmy found himself staring at warriors attacking his grandmother, Granny Goodnight. The Comanche braves were tearing off the old woman’s clothes. The boy had always imagined his grandmother’s apron as a part of her anatomy, but now it was gone.

  Jimmy forced himself to look straight ahead while his fears whipped him to run faster and faster. He saw the cabins passing. He saw the corral off to one side. He saw the tiny door, looking like a child’s playhouse door, waiting up ahead. And he felt his balls beating like bell clappers between his legs.

  Tripping, falling, rolling on the ground, Jimmy saw the battle inside the fort as tumbling chaos . . . blood . . . pain . . . death . . . warriors throwing his nude grandmother to the earth . . . other red men pulling the trousers from his grandfather’s kicking legs . . . all seen through the misty cloud of goose feathers thrown up by the wild warriors who attacked the fort’s feather beds as if these embodiments of soft civilization were their mortal enemies.

  Jimmy felt his mother hauling him to his feet. They clasped hands again, but this time the boy, running in front, pulled his mother, making her go faster. He managed to cross his fingers again on the run. They reached the shadow of the picket wall, which had been so much trouble to erect and which hadn’t done anyone any good at all. One after another, they began clambering through the tiny gate, its smallness making their escape feel a little like a terrible game to the boy.

  Unable to resist, Jimmy looked back one last time and saw through the goose-feather fog a warrior pinning his grandmother to the ground with a lance . . . another Comanche cutting something from between his grandfather’s legs and holding it up as if it were a dead ground squirrel . . .

  “Don’t look!” cried his mother. “Come on! Hurry! Come on!”

  Jimmy was still looking back as his mother dragged him away from the little make-believe door and toward the river. As they ran, Jimmy could still hear the fighting and hurting and the rhythmic screams of his grandmother.

  “What’re they doin’ to her?” cried Jimmy.

  “Run!” yelled his mother.

  “What’re they doin’ to Grandma?”

  “Don’t ask questions. Run! Run!”

  Out of breath, Jimmy did keep running, pursued by Granny Goodnight’s terrified, angry, hurting voice. Up ahead near the river were trees and bushes and high grass that seemed to promise a hiding place and possible safety. Jimmy was nearing this river haven when, looking back, he saw several warriors come riding around the side of the fort, chasing two young women.

  Jimmy was frightened for his Aunt Elizabeth and his Aunt Rachel, both in their early twenties, both losing the races they were running. Rachel Plummer was slowed by the weight of her eighteen-month-old son, Billy, whom she carried in her arms. Elizabeth Kellogg ran faster, but not fast enough. With excited whoops, the Comanches rode these white women down as if they were wild game. Soon the red hunters had their prey surrounded. When Aunt Rachel tried to break out of the ring, a warrior on foot grabbed a hoe—a hoe of all things—from the ground and hit her in the face. She fell unconscious, dropping her baby. Jimmy closed his eyes as if he had been the one hit and knocked out.

  Looking again, Jimmy saw warriors attacking his Aunt Elizabeth, who was still standing. When they began to strip her, he was embarrassed for her—and at the same time curious and guiltily excited. So far away, Aunt Elizabeth looked like a doll being undressed. But unlike other dolls, this one fought back. This doll tried to protect its bodice with pathetic doll hands. This doll attempted to clutch its full skirt even as it was torn away. This doll didn’t like being a toy, but couldn’t help it. Soon all its clothes were torn off. The unwilling doll stood white and pink, humiliated and afraid. Dolls weren’t supposed to feel anything, and Jimmy wasn’t supposed to feel this way about dolls either.

  Looking away from one doll, Jimmy saw another, Aunt Rachel, who was putting up no resistance at all because she was unconscious. But the savages were nonetheless having a hard time with her. Sound asleep, this doll was putting up a better fight than the other doll: For Aunt Rachel wore a whalebone corset that
completely baffled the Stone Age warriors. They had no idea how to solve the puzzle of its tiny fastenings. It was as impossible for them to enter the corset as to enter white civilization itself. The Comanches pulled and grunted and got angry, but they didn’t penetrate the whalebone armor that protected her.

  When Aunt Rachel regained consciousness and began to struggle, her attackers gave up on her corset, planning to solve this puzzle later at their leisure. A brave simply dragged Aunt Rachel, who was naked except for her corset, to a nearby horse and threw her on it. Then he mounted behind her and rode off with his curiously arrayed prize. Another Comanche scooped up her baby and carried it away. A third red man dragged Aunt Elizabeth, completely nude, up onto his horse. She made a handsome trophy.

  Now the Comanches, no longer diverted by the two young women, were ready to seek more victims. Seeing Lucy Goodnight and her children fleeing toward the river, they started after them. Now small white legs had to try to outrun horses. Jimmy heard the hooves and whoops drawing closer and louder. He was too frightened to look back now. The warriors overtook the mother and her children with no trouble at the edge of the small river. A circle of stone lance points fenced them in. The trapped family cringed in a clump.

  The Comanche who seemed to be the leader was completely nude except for yellow paint that covered him from head to foot. All the others had their faces painted black, the color of the night, but he was the sun. All the others had long hair, but his was cut short, almost like a white man’s.

  This short-haired Sun Chief pointed a finger at Jimmy. The boy instinctively held up his hands as if to ward off a blow—then touched his Big Dipper birthmark. In pantomime, the naked warrior instructed the mother to place her son on his horse, acting it out. But Lucy Goodnight shook her head. No, she wouldn’t give her son to this nude Comanche painted to look like the sun.

  Another warrior advanced, black-faced and grim, who also wanted the boy, but again the mother refused. So the brave raised his lance as if to drive it through Jimmy. The boy was already trying to guess how much it would hurt. He saw the lance leap forward, like a rattlesnake striking, and he instinctively ducked. The spear sailed over him and plunged its fang into his twin sister. It went in her chest and came out her back. She collapsed on the grass—the way she had done so many times when they played their games—but this time she didn’t get up again, no matter how loud he screamed.