by Bill Brooks
John and Teddy set the bench in front of the depot, waiting for the train to come in. John whittled on a stick of cottonwood and kept an eye peeled on the street for trouble. Teddy fought the urge to go back to the boardinghouse. A lonesome wind blew up the street and a Mexican pushed a handcart loaded with ocotillo and cages of chickens.
“I guess that train ain’t ever going to get here,” John said.
“It’ll get here.”
“I wish it would sooner than later, don’t you? I keep waiting for the local law to come up the street…I sure don’t want to shoot nobody else this year.”
“Me neither, John.”
But the law never came and an hour later the train arrived and they got on it and John said he wouldn’t breathe easier till it pulled out again. And when it did pull out, when they felt it make that first lurch, then start to move steadily, Teddy felt his heart abandon him as the little town slowly receded into the distance and with it, his first hard love.
John rolled himself a cigarette and passed the makings in Teddy’s direction. Teddy looked at them and said, “I guess it’s time I learned, ain’t it?”
“Now you’re starting to talk like a true outlaw, old son.”
They rode in silence for a time, smoking and looking out the window at the countryside with its hills like brown sombreros.
Then Teddy said, “Can I ask you something?”
John shrugged. “Sure.”
“That woman you shot, Maria, did you love her or were you simply jealous?”
John didn’t say anything for a moment, but Teddy could see he was studying on the question.
“I don’t know,” John said at last. “I always figured love and jealousy went together, if you felt one you had to feel the other. But maybe they don’t have nothing to do with each other. I guess if I had to put money on it, I’d say it was love I felt more’n the other…”
“It all hurts, don’t it?”
“Like something’s broke inside you.”
The conductor came through taking their tickets and after he walked on down the aisle John said, “The worst part was, my love couldn’t save her. Nothing could…”
It was about as close as Teddy figured he’d ever see a man like John come to crying; the way his voice broke when he said that, the way his jaw tightened into a knot and how he swallowed hard.
Teddy understood the feeling even as John’s words rattled around in his head: The worst part was, my love couldn’t save her.
Chapter 9
It was later reported in the Times-Picayune that the old man’s name was Adolphus Fly. The article said that he’d been hauling a load of logs down to a nearby sawmill, and that it was less the case of the train striking the old man, his horse, and wagon that caused the wreck, than it was of the hauled logs becoming jammed under the train wheels.
The newspaper said:
Mr. Fly, local sawyer, and an industrious citizen of our fair community as well as a deacon in St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, was struck and killed just outside of town by the morning zephyr. Mr. Fly, recently widowed by the suicide of his wife, seemed a man of great misfortune. He shall be greatly missed by one and all.
The article was accompanied by an artist’s rendition of the carnage.
Bob Parsnip had been reading a copy of the Police Gazette when the wreck occurred. He had suddenly been flung from his seat into a heap of writhing, screaming flesh. A heavyset woman landed across his lower back and he heard a pop, this followed by instant searing pain that caused his nuts to shrink and his legs to go numb.
A bloody-nosed porter crawled over seats and bodies, trying to untangle the lot of them. Then the police arrived. A skinny reporter for the Times-Picayune also arrived and began questioning anyone who would talk to him. One of the policemen looked down at Bob quizzically and said, “Get up, son.”
“I can’t.”
Then the policeman tried to pull him up and the pain almost caused him to faint. The policeman called for some men to come and put him on a stretcher. The policeman said, “I think he’s a Indian, boys,” to one of the Negroes who placed him on the stretcher.
He was placed inside a horse-drawn ambulance along with another fellow who looked quite dead—an older man with part of his jaw missing. Somebody had tied a tag to the man’s toe. Bob could read the name on the tag: A. Fly.
At the hospital Bob was taken into a room that reeked of medicine. After an hour or so a man in a white apron stained with blood came in and looked at him and said, “I’m Dr. Glass,” then started tapping Bob on the knees, then tried to get him to stand. But the pain was too much and this time Bob did faint.
When he woke again, he was in a bed of starched sheets and his back felt stiff as a board and his legs and feet tingled like they were stuck full of needles.
A nurse came over and said, “How are you feeling, young man?”
She was tall with hair the color of the sun.
“I feel fine,” he said, because he’d learned a long time ago—before his mother stole him and ran off with the preacher—that an Indian never tells a white person what he is thinking. His father had taught him that: Yellow Hand, who was now in the spirit world and immune to such things as train wrecks and sore backs.
“You don’t look so good,” the nurse said.
She had green eyes and looked a lot like the sort of sin the boys at the school brought down on themselves by the white God when they talked about diddling girls. She was pretty for a white woman. She put her hand to his forehead and her hand felt cool and comforting.
“You’re running a fever,” she said and took her hand away and some of the heat in him seemed to go with it.
She poured water into a basin and dipped a cloth in it and wrung it out and put it over his eyes.
“This will help,” she said.
He didn’t say anything.
“You don’t talk much, do you? Is that because you’re an Indian?”
“Careful, I might scalp you,” he said.
She blinked, then laughed a little tittering laugh that had the pleasant sound to it of birds chirping in the morning. He figured she was about the age his mother was.
He felt tired and started to drift off, but then had a dream he was falling and started and the pain crawled all over him. His back felt like somebody had hit it with a sledge.
She poured a teaspoon of something from a dark blue bottle and put it to his lips and said, “Drink this, it will help with the pain,” and he did and pretty soon he felt like he was floating.
She came to see him the next day and each day after. On the third day she sniffed and said, “You need to bathe.” He looked at her stupidly. “Oh, don’t fret,” she said. “I’ve done this before, lots of times. I was a nurse in the war.”
She left and returned shortly with a large pan of warm water and a cloth and began to wash his arms and face and neck. Then she helped slide off his nightshirt and he said, “Why?” She said, “So I can wash the rest of you.” He replied, “I can do that myself.” She handed him the cloth and said, “Go ahead.” When he couldn’t bend to wash his lower parts, she took the cloth from his hand and washed them for him.
He closed his eyes while she washed him down below and it felt quite pleasurable. Then her hand stopped and he opened his eyes and saw she was staring at him down there.
He said, “You see something you like?”
“As a matter of fact…” she said.
She came to visit him again that night and, halfway through the “bath” she was giving him, she paused and said, “You never did anything like this before, have you?”
“No,” said Bob. “I haven’t.”
She smiled and he could see the white of her teeth in the moonlight that shone through the small window above his bed. Her yellow hair looked white with the moon in it. He wondered how old she was. He reasoned she could be nearly as old as his mother.
“Well, you’re sure enough a natural lover,” she said afterward.
“I am?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t hurt so much when you…”
She smiled again.
“I wonder why,” she said.
“You think maybe you could wash me some more?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, looking down at him. “You look like you could stand a second washing.”
She returned every night and Bob seemed to lose all track of time or his central purpose—the one that had got him this far in the first place. He began to realize how easy it would be for him to never leave this place.
She told him her name was Pearl. He told her his was Bob, “But that isn’t my real name.”
“What is your real name?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“How is it a person doesn’t know his real name?”
“I don’t know.”
He thought it too much to try and explain to her; and besides she was a white person and you didn’t want to tell white people too much. Not even pretty ones whose hands and body felt like a flock of angels beating their wings against you.
By the following Tuesday Bob was able to sit up by himself and walk around some, but it wore him out to move around too much.
“How long do I have to stay here?” he asked the physician.
The doctor shrugged, said, “Maybe another week. Soon’s you’re able to get around on your own well enough, I’ll discharge you.”
Bob took some solace in the doctor’s words.
That night after he and Pearl finished their bathing, he said, “I’m leaving out of here the first chance I get. I’ve got to be somewhere. There’s something I’ve got to do.”
“What?” she said.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She sighed deeply and Bob felt a little bad for being so abrupt with her.
“I could go with you,” she said.
“You could?”
“Sure. I’ve nothing to hold me here.”
“I might have to do something bad when I get to this place I’m going.”
“Something bad, huh? You mean, something worse than what we’ve been doing for the better the part of a week now?”
“Something a lot worse.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re an outlaw…a wanted man?”
Bob thought about how he had strangled the schoolmaster. He probably was a wanted man.
“I’m not wanted yet,” he lied. “But I will be after I do this thing.”
“Oh, dear, perhaps you shouldn’t do it.”
“You better get off of me now.”
Pearl did not come to visit the next couple of nights and Bob missed her company a lot more than he figured he might. But he was concentrating once more on his true purpose—to find Buffalo Bill and end his life. Just as Buffalo Bill had done for his father. It was the way he could get back to being a true Indian instead of a pretend white man.
Pearl finally came to visit him.
“I’ve thought about it,” she said.
“Thought about what?”
“About you and me.”
“I’ve thought about it too,” Bob said. “I’m going to become an Indian again.”
“I think that’s a fine idea.”
“Going to let my hair grow long and go live on the land my father’s people lived on.”
“You mean, on a reservation?”
“No. I aim to take back what was stole from us.”
“Is that the thing you have to do—the bad thing?”
“That’s part of it, but that’s not the main part.”
“What’s the main part?”
“I can’t say.”
“Because you don’t trust me, isn’t that it, Bob?”
He didn’t answer her but looked instead through the window above his bed—looked out into the utter darkness of a world of which he knew so little about.
“I think I love you,” Pearl said. “I want to go with you.”
“Better that you don’t.”
“A woman should be with the man she loves.”
“If they catch me, they will hang me unless they don’t want to wait long enough for somebody to fetch a rope and shoot me instead.”
“Why would they do that, Bob? Who’s they?”
“The white people I’m going to make angry when I do this thing.”
“Oh, Bob. You’re impossible to figure out.”
“Did you want to give me a bath?”
She touched his face with a hand as smooth as porcelain.
“I do.”
“Me too.”
And later he said, “You’re a lot older than me, does that bother you?”
“No, Bob,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me, does it you?”
“No,” he said.
Such was the power of love and desire on dark stricken nights in a world made lonely without those things.
Chapter 10
Teddy and John arrived in North Platte on a day so full of sunshine they had to squint when they got off the train. Wind made the telegraph wires hum and John looked at them and said, “Now I remember why I was only here once and why I left and why I didn’t come back till now. That damn wind will make you go crazy.”
“Let’s go find us a beer, then find Cody,” Teddy said.
“I’m all over that.”
They walked down the street where they could buy a beer. It felt good to stretch their legs and shake loose some of the train ride from their blood.
They entered a saloon and stepped up to the bar. John ordered two beers and watched as they were poured and had the heads knocked off. Then John said, “I guess I forgot I don’t have any money,” and Teddy placed four bits on the bar and said, “Whatever that will buy,” and they drank and slaked the thirst they’d built up.
“It almost seems like that business back in Las Vegas never happened,” John said, swiping clean his moustaches. “Don’t it to you?”
“Yeah,” Teddy said. “In a way it does.”
The bartender poured them two more and they drank them down and Teddy said, “You know where I can find Colonel Cody?” The bartender told them how to get out to Billy’s house: “It’s about a mile out.”
Teddy said to John, “I reckon we’ll have to rent horses unless you want to walk the mile out there.”
John shook his head.
“I’m guessing the Pinkertons give you some sort of expense account?”
They found out where there was someplace they could rent horses, then went down and rented a pair of saddle horses and rode out to Billy’s house.
Three, four hounds came out baying and the horses got skittish. John’s almost bucked him off because John had a knack for riding the most skittish horses, but he stuck and cussed the hounds. Billy came out onto the porch and called to the dogs and they ran back as John and Teddy rode up to near the steps.
“Colonel,” Teddy said.
“Mr. Blue. Won’t you get off that fine-looking nag and come on in, you and your companion?”
John had heard a lot about Cody, his Indian-fighting skills and all the rest, though he didn’t put much stock in a lot of it because he knew from experience that a lot of those fellers with big reputations didn’t always earn them. But because of Teddy, John was willing to allow Billy the benefit of the doubt.
It was a large spacious house with mounted heads of buffalo, cougar, antelope, and mule deer hanging from the walls of the room Billy led them into. Teddy and John could hear children off in another room and a woman’s voice scolding them. There were cowhide rugs on the floor and a chair made out of steer horns.
“You boys have a good trip out?” Billy asked. “And can I get you a glass of refreshments?”
“I’d not object to some whiskey,” John said.
“Whiskey it is, same for you, Mr. Blue?”
Teddy nodded and him and John settled their hats on their knees as they seated themselves in camp chairs.
Billy poured three glass
es half full of Kentucky bourbon he had sent to him every few months and they clinked glasses when Billy said, “To old friends not here to drink with us…”
Then John said, “That’s some heap good firewater, Colonel.”
Billy told him how he came by it. John didn’t know whether or not to be impressed.
Louisa came to the entryway of the room and said, “I’d like a word with you, Bill.” Billy excused himself and went out with her.
Teddy and John looked at each other.
“What is it exactly you’re supposed to do for him?” John asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well, he serves some damn fine liquor and I guess if nothing else the trip was worth tasting some of it. I don’t guess I’ve ever had any better, you?”
“Believe it or not, yes, but nothing this good west of the Mississippi.”
They could hear Louisa talking to Billy, her voice loud but indistinct beyond the walls of the room. They couldn’t hear Billy saying much in return.
A few minutes later he came into the room again, his face a little flushed.
“I apologize for the distraction, boys. Family business always needs taking care of, it seems. Either of you lads married?”
They both shook their heads and Billy said, “Marriage is a fine institution, if you know what I mean. We’ll have some lunch in a short while.”
“George Bangs didn’t say in his telegram why you wanted to employ my services,” Teddy said.
Billy looked at him.
“We never got to know each other very well that time up in Cheyenne when I was up there trying to talk Wild Bill into joining me and Texas Jack for another go ’round back East, did we?”
“No, sir.”
“My misfortune. I heard some good things about you from Colorado Charley…after the sad event of Bill’s dying. He told me how Wild Bill turned you out, once he learned you were a Pinkerton. Such was his misfortune.”
Teddy waited for Billy to get to it. Some men took the long way around things.
“I did what I could for him, Colonel.”
“I know you did, and I know too that had he allowed you to go along up into the gulch you might have kept him from getting himself shot. We all make mistakes, some just more fatal than others.”