The Western Lonesome Society

by Robert Garner McBrearty

  “I know he was,” Jim’s mother says.

  “Why would he call here?” But then movement distracts Jim’s father. “Look! Two birds are drinking from the birdbath.” There is a sad yet happy lilt to his voice. “Is this the first time they’ve come?”

  Jim looks up from his cereal, milk smeared across his lips. “No. Len shot one yesterday. He shot it and it fell in the water and we threw it in the alley for the spray cats to eat.”

  His father’s mouth hangs open as he stares at the birdbath. “Well, there you go.”

  “He killed it?” his mother asks. “He killed the poor bird?”

  “For the spray cats to eat.”

  “The stray cats, love.”

  Len comes into the kitchen. “I was just practicing. I didn’t think I’d hit it.”

  “Let the birds drink in peace, will you?” their father says. “How’d you like it if someone shot at you every time you tried to get a drink?”

  Len’s tongue works against the side of his mouth. “I guess I wouldn’t like it.”

  “Last night,” Sis says. She is seven and they all look at her because she is always saying things that shake them up, as if she’s in touch with strange, menacing forces. “I saw a light.”

  Their mother’s eyes narrow in on her. “What light, Sis?”

  “It shined in my window. Then it was gone.”

  “What kind of a light?”

  “It came in the window. Then it was gone. I don’t know.” She stares at her milk and her lips tighten. That’s all they’re getting out of her. Jim can picture her in movies, being questioned by the enemy, bright lights shined in her face. She gives her captors nothing.

  By the time they are driving to school, the name Paul Rittendorf has turned in his mind to Paul Roughhound, and Paul Roughhound has merged in his mind with the light shining in Sis’s window. The light heralds a new trouble in their lives. But there is not much time to think of this now because his mother has pulled into the long circular driveway of the convent school and a nun with hairs sprouting from a vast mole throws open the back door and grins with broken teeth. “Hello, child,” she says. He screams and grabs hold of the inner door handle and Sis’s arm as the nun tries to drag him out. As he holds on to both Sis and the handle, the rest of the blackrobes move in. They stretch him out like a rope, two pulling at his feet, two prying at his fingers, one pinching the nerve between his shoulder and neck. Len and Sis, who must be driven along to their own school, eye him darkly, contemptuously, as his fingers slip away. His mother’s eyes well up with tears. “Jim, I explained all this,” she soothes. Certainly she explained it. But he never agreed!

  He reaches a supplicating hand out to Sis, his elder by two years and an eternity of wisdom, his sister, the veritable soul of understanding and consolation, his Sis, as pure and kind as the Blessed Mother herself. Ah, blessed Sis. She shirks back from him as if to avoid a beseeching leper. She raises her foot and grinds the white sole of her St. Theresa of the Little Flower school shoe against his nose and kicks him out the door. As he wails, the nuns cart him off like a battering ram.

  *

  Evening in the backyard.

  “You see this, kids,” their father says. He picks up a white dirt clod from the earth. He’s still wearing his work shirt. Tie loose a notch. Jaunty looking. Rough, handsome face. Large nose off center.

  “This is colichee,” he says, kneading the clod in his hand.

  “Colichee,” Jim says, working the sound around on his tongue.

  “That’s right. Col-eech-ee. This is the stuff we got to get rid of if our grass is going to grow. Every time you see it, pick it up and throw it into the alley.”

  “I want my own bathroom,” Sis says. “They whiz all over the toilet.”

  “Why don’t you boys aim a little better?” He kisses the top of her head, gathers them all in, hugs them. “I wish I had more nights when I got home early like this.”

  He goes in to change clothes after work, and Momma comes out to throw the softball. Jim stands waggling the bat while she calls in her drawl, “Swing, honey, swing!” The ball looms before his eyes, wide and white and dropping through the twilight. But he does not swing. He’s waiting for the perfect pitch, the pitch that he can hammer over Momma’s head, over Len’s leaping glove, over the fence, high above the neighbors’ roofs, into orbit, up to the moon’s drooping eyes watching over them all here in the gathering dusk of summer in this Alamo city of siege and cannon fire, where city meets country, where the O’Briens, settlers, stalwarts, do battle with the rattlesnakes and the bandits and Comanches that ride out of the hills every full moon to raid and sack the ranch.

  Then later, after they’re fed, after the baby’s been put to bed and the backyard has fallen into darkness, his mother and father smoke on the patio, their cigarettes glowing red in the night. As Len and Sis swoop around in the yard, Len chasing, Sis shrieking in delight, Jim comes in like a spy, a spook, an infiltrator, lies flat on the soil and the sprigs of grass trying to spurt their way through the colichee, lies there and listens as his father says, “I’m not going to get mad. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on here and if we’ve got something to worry about. Just tell me what happened.”

  “It was such a long time ago. I hadn’t talked to him since then until he called a few days ago.” Ice tinkles in their drinks and the cigarettes glow brighter, like fireflies. “He got a wound in his arm,” she says. “So he came back early from the war.”

  “I see.”

  “What do you mean you see? It’s not like what you’re thinking.”

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking. I’m all shook up. Go on.”

  “He came into the drugstore a couple of times. He wanted someone to talk to.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing much. High school. The old football games. He talked about the way you played quarterback.”

  “He couldn’t catch worth a lick. So what happened?”

  “His Momma died. She’d been sick a long time. His Daddy had died when he was little and he didn’t have much family, so I thought I ought to go to the funeral. Betty came along. At the cemetery, he asked if I’d come to his house for the wake. He looked so lonely, I said okay.”

  “You went to his house?”

  “I went with Betty. People were drinking. Before I knew it, Betty went off and left me, and when I said I was going, he said he’d give me a ride home.”

  “This is too much.”

  Her voice breaks. “I’m trying to get it all out so you’ll know. I’ve saved this up inside for a lot of years.”

  The ice tinkles in his glass. “Go on.”

  “We started to drive. I thought he was driving me home, but then he started making turns and he said he wanted to show me something. Right then I knew something was wrong with him.”

  “My God.”

  “He was driving too fast for me to jump out. He drove us out to the country. Out to some land that his family owned, out in the sticks. Somewhere around New Braunfels. There was nothing out there but an old cabin.

  “He walked me around the land. There wasn’t much. Mesquite trees, cactus, rocks. It was starting to get dark. We sat on the edge of the porch, on the planks. There weren’t even any chairs. He had a flask and he kept trying to get me to take a drink, but I wouldn’t. He was drunk. But it wasn’t the way people usually get when they’re drunk. He wasn’t sloppy or slurring. It was more like he wasn’t really there.

  “I asked him to take me home, and he just shook his head and said he didn’t know. It was scary, the way he said it, like he didn’t know himself if he was going to take me home. He kept getting madder and madder, but it wasn’t like how people usually get mad. He never even raised his voice, and that made me even more scared. I had a rock hidden in my hand and I was about to hit him when he asked i
f I was crying. I guess I was. I guess I was crying. I told him my parents would be worried about me.

  “He said he didn’t have any parents now. He said all his people were dead and his mother was a crazy old bitch. I told him I always thought that she was nice. And he started crying and saying, ‘I’m sorry, Momma, I’m sorry I called you a crazy old bitch.’ He kind of crumpled over and cried on me.

  “Then he got up and said let’s go. Get in the car. I didn’t say anything. I knew it would go bad somehow if I said anything. I leaned as far against the car door as I could all the way home, ready to jump if he got crazy again. Then outside my house, he said he wanted to see me again. He tried to kiss me and I jumped out and ran . . .

  “His car would come by sometimes without stopping. Sometimes the phone would ring and there’d be nobody there. But he never came into the drugstore anymore. I heard he’d moved away. Then I heard he was in prison for armed robbery. Then I got the call last week . . . He said he wanted to check on me. He said he wanted to make sure I was being treated all right. He . . . he asked about the kids.”

  Jim’s father’s cigarette glows in the darkness. “If he comes around here . . . ”

  “Don’t do something crazy,” Jim’s mother says. “This will pass. He’ll drift on.”

  She begins to cry. “I thought it was all over. I just want him to go away.”

  *

  One evening coming back from the playground, Len riding behind on his bike, Jim and Sis walking a little ahead, a white poodle dashes out of a house and across the street with two kids in chase, yelling, “Come back, Scruffy!” On his bike, Len goes after the escaping pooch. Swooping down like a cowboy snatching a senorita off the street, he snags the dog in one hand as Jim and Sis and the two other little kids cheer.

  A battered old car screeches to a stop beside them. A pirate jumps out. Silver tooth in front, stubbly-cheeked, ropy-veined Popeye forearms, dirty white T-shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots. The pirate snatches Jim with one steely hand and Sis with the other, and as they shriek, he tosses them into the back seat and swings the door shut. As Roughhound tries to go in the driver’s door, Len drops Scruffy at the feet of the two neighborhood children, then charges in on his high-handle-bar bicycle and dives onto Roughhound’s neck. Roughhound grabs him by the hair and throws him into the front seat.

  Roughhound speeds away. Looking back through the rear window Jim sees the two neighborhood children holding the white poodle, waving as the car turns the corner. Len’s on his back, kicking his feet at Roughhound’s side and Roughhound snarls, “You keep that up and I’ll break your foot for you.” Sis leans over the seat and says, “Don’t fight him now, Len. I’ll kill him later with a pin.”

  Roughhound glances wide-eyed over the seat at her, his brow sweaty.

  She is talking now to Jim, in the back seat, “I take the pin. Behind his ear. One little move. One little touch and he’s dead. Dead,” she grunts, her eyes hollowing out, her voice spooky, from the depths, and Jim sees them in a dark bead-curtained room, Sis dancing like an Egyptian, her belly bare, her wrists bejeweled, Roughhound reclining on a big pillow as Sis dances nearer and inserts the pin behind his ear. “Dead,” she moans, transported zombie dancer from an old movie or something, “Dead. Dead . . . ”

  “Shut that little girl up!” Roughhound shouts.

  They turn corners and go faster and faster, the kids in the back swaying from side to side, bouncing off doors, Len lying in the front, quiet for a moment, but then he springs back into action, releases another barrage of kicks at Roughhound. This time Roughhound one-hands the steering wheel, reaches out and grabs Len by the waist of his jeans, pulls Len in closer, sliding him down the seat toward him as Len wiggles and kicks at him. Roughhound works him closer until he can grab Len by the throat. He chokes until Len lets out a squelchy sucking sound and then he releases and Len lies there coughing and holding his throat.

  “You kids settle down,” Roughhound says. “I ain’t going to hurt you.”

  They’re barreling now into ranch lands and hills. He presses the accelerator down, down, and Jim holds Sis’s hand as they sink against each other in the seats that smell of something old and foul and rancid.

  Down rough dirt roads. Roughhound freewheels and jimmies the battered car up to an old plank and hack board cabin and parks beside a broken, lopsided porch.

  He hops out, opens the back door, flashing his silver tooth. “Mi casa, su casa.”

  Len gets out from the front seat and moves fast around the car so that he can guard Jim and Sis when they struggle from the car, blinking in the evening glare as Roughhound beams at all three. “Don’t be shy now, kids. We’re going to have us a right good time.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Len demands.

  Roughhand scratches his stubbly cheek. “Why? You ask your Momma why. I told her to meet me once, just once. Now she’ll have to meet me, won’t she?”

  His eyes soften and cloud over. “We’re all going to be a family,” he says tearfully.

  “He’s crazy!” Len screams. “Run!”

  But Roughhound grabs hold of Jim’s arm. “You coming inside, boy?”

  He gives Jim’s arm a tug and Jim cries out in pain, and Len says, “Okay, mister, okay.” They go into the cabin and Roughhound kicks the door shut. The cabin is dim in the evening light. Keeping himself between them and the door, Roughhound lights a propane lantern. There’s one main room with a brick fireplace, a roughed out kitchen in one corner, a small bedroom off the main room. A couple of straight-backed chairs and a heavy wooden rectangular table. Roughhound stands guarding the door. “All right,” he says. “I’m going to tell you the truth now.” He pauses, gulps air, voice coming out strangled. “I’m your real father.”

  Sis sinks to her knees on the plankboards. She bends over and dry heaves.

  “You’re a liar,” Len says.

  Roughhound stares sadly at him. “You were always the tough one.”

  “You’re not our father. You’re making that up because you’re crazy.”

  Roughhound stares at him, his tongue working at a sore tooth. “That’s the second time you’ve called me that. My word, you’re an unpleasant bunch of children.”

  Roughhound’s face turns dark. He looks about to rush at them, but then the air sags out of him. He leans back against the door. His back slowly slides down it until he’s sitting on the floor. He shuts his eyes. With his knees up, he lowers his head to his hands. “You kids all sit for a minute,” he says groggily.

  Len leads them over by the fireplace and pulls over the two chairs. He has them sit, while he stands, watching Roughhound.

  After a couple of minutes, Roughhound, eyes still closed, calls out, “Hey, tough kid. Listen to me. Go in the kitchen. On the table there, there’s some mugs and a jug of water. You pour a cup for your brother and sister. And yourself. You pour yourself a cup, too.”

  Len doesn’t say anything, but he goes to the table. Jim sees him slide something into the waistband of his jeans and cover it with his shirt. He pours the water and they drink thirstily. Without looking up, Roughhound says, “On that table, there’s two bottles of pills. Now you get me some of those pills and you get me my water now, too. Okay? Will you do that for me, tough kid?” he says, but he says it in a quiet, almost nice voice.

  “Okay,” Len says. He goes to the table. “How many pills you want?”

  “It don’t matter exactly. A good handful. I got a real bad headache.”

  Len pours pills from both bottles into the palm of his hand and brings Roughhound the pills and a cup of water.

  Without looking up at him, Roughhound opens his palm and Len pours the pills into the center of his hand. Roughhound raises his hand and drops all the pills into his mouth at once and washes them down with big swallows of water. Still with his eyes shut, he jiggles the cup. “A little more water.”

&nb
sp; Len brings him the water and backs away without turning his eyes, all the time watching Roughhound.

  Roughhound’s eyes lift up and pop open and it’s almost enough to make Jim fall out of his chair. Roughhound stands up, flashing his silver-toothed grin. “That’s what’s missing. I needed to think of something fun to do.” He opens the door and Jim sees there’s still a little sunlight left. “Come on out on the porch.”

  As Len passes by, Roughhound says, “Don’t run, tough kid. I can catch at least one of them.”

  He gestures toward the edge of the porch. “You kids sit here. I got a real nice surprise for you.” He walks out to a burned-out brick fire pit. He finds an old smashed up tin can, and he sets it in place on the fire pit wall. He flashes the silver tooth.

  “Crazier than shit,” Len whispers.

  Roughhound freezes with his hand on the can. “Did you say something?”

  Len shakes his head. “Nope.”

  Jim slips his hand into Len’s. It’s been a while since he’s slipped his hand into Len’s, but Len squeezes it, holds it tight.

  “What are you doing?” Len asks Roughhound, but he takes the edge from his voice.

  Roughhound’s mouth plays around like it’s trying to find the right position, to give or to take or to scold, but his lips soften and loosen and twist back into a grin as he walks back past them into the cabin, and he comes out a moment later carrying a small flat box and dragging one of the old wooden chairs with him. He pauses for a second, setting the box on the seat of the chair. “What’s that girl doing?”

  They look over at Sis. She’s kneeling a few feet away from them on the porch and making the sign of the cross, touching her head, the center of her flat chest, her left shoulder, her right.

  “She’s praying,” Len says. “She’s pretty religious.”