Killing Mr. Sunday

by Bill Brooks

  with their unlearned looks. They didn’t understand

  what was happening to their sister Gerthe or why

  there was so much blood or what was in the towel

  their ma had handed their pa or why she was so stern

  with him.

  He stood up from the table and said, “Olaf, come”

  and the boy followed him out into the cold mixture of

  snow and rain and they went to the shed and the man

  said, “Olaf, get the shovel, yah.” And the boy got the

  shovel and laid it across his shoulder and followed his

  father out a short distance from the house until the

  man stopped and turned back to look at how far

  they’d come.

  “You dig a hole here, yah.”

  And the boy began to dig while the father stood

  watching him and the house through the veil of rain

  and snow. The digging went easy and several times

  the boy stopped and looked at his pa and said, “This

  deep enough, Papa?” and the man looked at the hole

  and said, “A little deeper, Olaf. Dig a little deeper,

  yah?”

  And when the hole was about knee deep the man

  said, “That’s enough,” and laid the towel in it with

  the icy rain already building a puddle in the bottom,

  and said to the boy, “Go on and fill it up, shovel the

  dirt back in quick,” and watched as the boy did as he

  was told. Then the man took hold of the shovel and

  smacked down the wet lump of earth two or three

  hard times and handled the shovel back to the boy

  and they walked back toward the shed, the night sky

  a muted dark reddish color.

  It was on the way back that the man decided what

  he’d do. It seemed like the only thing he could do to

  alleviate his fret. Things had already gone too far for

  any good to come of it. He kept thinking about

  Gerthe, how he knew she was going to die and that

  would be the end of everything. The last little pre-

  cious thing he had in this world to ease the aching

  loneliness and isolation he felt. Sometimes when he

  was with her he thought of dark blue mountain slopes

  rising from the silver fjords of another place that had

  been his home when he was a boy, younger than her

  even; when everything seemed so full of hope and

  lacking in troubles.

  He didn’t know why he was the way he was, what

  caused him to do the things he did with her, his own

  daughter. Twice she’d run away, once with that In-

  dian’s boy. The last time the boy had been shot dead

  by a stranger who must have wanted her more than

  the Indian boy. That was the sort of thing she aroused

  in men, even young men.

  “I know what you do with them boys, yah,” he said,

  getting her alone. “You just remember something.

  You just remember who puts food in your belly and a

  place to put your head down. It’s not those wild boys.

  You should be grateful to me for these things, yah.”

  Then not long after the men brought her back

  from running away that last time she began to get sick

  every day, eating her mush and throwing it up and he

  knew why, because he’d seen the old woman do the

  same thing each time she got with child. It was the

  way women got. And he got her alone again and he

  said, “You see. This is what happens when you don’t

  obey your papa, when you go around laying with

  every boy you can find. They get you like this, yah.”

  The wet snowy rain fell into his eyes and dripped

  from his hair and off his ears and soaked through his

  shirt, the boy walking ahead of him, the shovel over

  his shoulder, and when they got to the shed he said,

  “You go on to the house, Olaf,” and the boy went. In-

  side the shed he could hear the rain dripping off the

  roof and it was a lonely sound and caused him to feel

  like he had nothing else in his life—that the only

  thing worth having was in the house dying.

  He reached onto a shelf and took from it a piece of

  burlap that smelled of machine oil and unwrapped it

  and lifted free the pistol.

  “There,” he said.

  She had made him keep it out in the shed, saying

  that one of the boys might fool with it and shoot him-

  self or worse.

  “They’re too young,” she said. “When they get

  older, maybe.”

  The rain going drip, drip, drip.

  The boys were gathered there at the table when he

  shot them. All except for Stephen, the youngest boy.

  He wondered where Stephen was, but his mind was

  too mad with the explosions to go and look for him.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  “Lord, Jesus!” the woman screamed coming out of

  the girl’s room.

  He aimed at her but she ducked back inside the

  room.

  “What is it, Mama?” the girl whispered as her

  mother climbed into the bed with her and wrapped

  her in her arms.

  “Oh, Gerthe,” she said. “Oh, Gerthe,”

  Then he was in the room with them and for a soli-

  tary moment she thought he might not shoot her and

  the girl.

  “Lars . . .” she said. “Lars . . . what you do?”

  He did not say anything, but raised the pistol once

  more and shot her and she fell over still grasping the

  girl whose fevered mind was already confused; she

  thought she was having a bad dream, that she would

  awaken from it.

  “Mama!” she cried. “Mama!”

  And he shot her, too.

  Then in his madness he placed the end of the barrel

  against his temple. It was like a hot kiss against his

  skin. He smelt the cordite and machine oil even as his

  hand trembled. He closed his eyes and saw the fjords,

  the icy steel-blue waters that were depthless under a

  muted sun, and pulled the trigger, biting the inside of

  his cheek with anticipation of the shattering explo-

  sion that did not happen. The hammer fell with a

  snap. He could not believe it. His hand shook so terri-

  bly he nearly dropped the gun. What’s wrong, he

  wondered. Then he saw looking into the cylinders

  that there were only five of them—five shots was all

  he had to destroy them all and it wasn’t enough.

  He retched and dropped the gun and went out into

  the other room where his sons lay slumped over the

  table as though asleep. What he saw chased him back

  inside the room where the women were and he

  snatched up the empty gun without rhyme or reason,

  but hoping somehow the fear in him would subside if

  he had the gun.

  “Stephen,” he said softly. “Stephen.” Calling the

  boy to come. The murder out of his heart now. The

  madness gone completely. “Stephen . . .”

  But the boy did not come, and soon the fear set

  into the man and he knew he must run and hide or

  they would find him and hang him and the fear of

  hanging scared him worse than anything he could

  think of.

  He swallowed hard as though the rope was already


  tightening around his neck, packed a valise with a

  few clothes, then paced the room where he and his

  wife had slept every night together. They would not

  sleep together anymore. It felt to him a relief in a

  strange way.

  Methodically his mind began to function again and

  he went out into the main room carrying his valise

  and his empty gun and set them on the table, then

  gently lifted each of his sons and placed them side by

  side on the floor face down, next to one another and

  could not look into their dead eyes as he did, but in-

  stead looked at the walls through teary eyes.

  And when he finished, he stepped back into the

  girl’s room and looked at them lying there, mother

  and daughter, clutching each other in death, their

  heads thrown back, their mouths agape, their eyes

  open and staring off into the void. He gently took the

  coverlet and spread it over them up to their necks,

  then went out into the cold rain that was partially

  snow, too, and hitched the horse to the wagon and

  rode away without looking back.

  The boy Stephen had been in the privy when he heard

  the shots. At first he thought it was the thunder, but it

  didn’t sound like thunder exactly. He buttoned up his

  pants and crept from the privy and began to go to the

  house when he heard the two more shots and saw

  flashes of light through one of the windows—Gerthe’s

  little window. Instinct told him to hide and hide he

  did under the house in a little space he and his broth-

  ers had made for just the purpose of hiding from one

  another when playing.

  He squeezed in there and waited. Above him he

  heard heavy footsteps. Papa had always warned them

  about the dangers of strangers coming to the house,

  especially in the night, like it was now.

  “You must be careful of strangers, Willy and Tom

  and the rest of you,” his papa would say. “There are

  bad men out there” and his papa would fling his arm

  toward the outer world. “And sometimes they think

  you got something they want, yah, and they come and

  bash in your brains and shoot you in the heart and

  take whatever it is . . .”

  So that is what he thought had happened: that a bad

  man had come and was up there now taking what he

  wanted from them and that he had shot his papa

  maybe and maybe Willy and Tom and the others—his

  mama, too.

  He didn’t want to breathe for fear the bad man

  might hear him. Lying there in the damp cold dark-

  ness, the drip of rain, the footsteps of someone walk-

  ing around right above his head. It was all he could do

  to keep himself from crying out.

  Then he heard the door open and close. Mama was

  always complaining about the squeaky door. And

  pretty soon he heard the tread of a horse’s hoofs

  against the wet ground. Someone riding away, and the

  rattle of the wagon, too.

  The boy squeezed his eyes tight and did not move.

  He was afraid.

  6

  The door to Jake’s hotel room rattled hard under

  the knocking. His pocket watch lay face open on

  the stand next to his bed. The light in the room was

  spare, gray as an old cat’s fur. The watch read 5:30.

  He sat up still shaking loose from the dream that had

  gripped him: Celine sitting on the side of a bed in a

  room full of hot white light rolling up her stockings,

  her husband lying dead on the floor between them.

  She was smiling up at him, giving him that notorious

  look she had a way of perpetuating. He felt frozen,

  unable to move or speak. A silver pistol lay on the

  carpet next to the dead husband. Then just as sud-

  denly she was pointing the pistol at him, saying,

  “Now your turn, Tristan, to join the dead . . .”

  He felt a shock of relief that it had only been a

  dream.

  The door rattled again, He answered it.

  Toussaint Trueblood stood there, his eyes dark and

  brooding.

  “You going to go out to the Swede’s and check on

  the girl?”

  “Yes, I’d thought that I would, though there is little

  more I can do for her.”

  “I want to go with you.”

  “I’m not sure she will tell you what you want to

  know.”

  “I can ask.”

  Jake nodded.

  “I guess you have that right. Give me a few min-

  utes, okay?”

  “I’ll be outside waiting.”

  In ten minutes they were moving along the north road

  under a steady drizzle, a mixture of snow and rain

  that lent the air a foggy quality. They could see their

  breath, like steam, and they could see the breath of

  their animals as well. All those weeks of summer

  drought now forgotten; the rains started in early au-

  tumn, continuous, and the fear became that they

  weren’t ever going to stop. Men in the saloons and the

  barbershop joked about building arks. Several streams

  had flooded, including Cooper’s Creek, which swelled

  over its banks twice, and residents discovered which

  had leaky roofs and which didn’t.

  Now the rain was mixed with snow and soon

  enough it would be all snow, the very thing that Roy

  Bean and others like him had forecast.

  They skirted wide of Karen Sunflower’s place at

  the suggestion of Toussaint.

  “I thought maybe I’d tell her myself once I talked

  to the girl,” he said. “But not now.”

  They rode on in silence except for the creak of sad-

  dle leather, the sloshing of rain, their heads down

  against it, their hands numbing.

  *

  *

  *

  At last they saw the ramshackle homestead of the

  Swedes. It stood almost ghostly in the gray mist.

  Toussaint said, “It don’t feel right.”

  They saw no smoke curling from the stovepipe, no

  light on in the windows. Then they saw a thing that

  was most disturbing: the Swede’s underfed hound lay

  dead, its skull crushed, its fur wet and half frozen

  with the sleet in it.

  Jesus, Jake thought. He sat a moment listening.

  Taking the medical bag in one hand, he shifted the

  Schofield from his pocket to his waistband. The small

  hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he got down.

  Toussaint didn’t say anything, but followed his lead.

  Jake called to the house and was answered by

  nothing but silence.

  Toussaint untied the shotgun that hung from his

  saddle horn by a leather strap; it was cut off short in

  both stock and barrels. They approached cautiously,

  Jake calling out one more time as he stepped in under

  the overhang. Toussaint stood off a ways watching

  the house from a more distant angle.

  “Hello in there, it’s Marshal Horn. Anyone home?”

  Nothing.

  He removed the pistol from his waistband, thumbed

  back the hammer, pushed open the door that was

&n
bsp; slightly ajar already and resting on leather hinges. The

  sound it made when it swung open was like a moan.

  No light on inside the house as there should be on

  such a dreary day. It felt cold and damp. Not even a

  fire in the stove that he could see from the angle at

  which he stood. He called once more, and again no

  answer. He looked back at Toussaint.

  Then, he stepped inside even though his instinct

  told him not to.

  They were there stretched out on the floor. Three

  boys lying facedown, side by side as though they’d

  simply lain down and gone to sleep. Jake found a

  lantern and lit it and the warm light chased off some

  of the darkness.

  Toussaint came to the door, looked in without go-

  ing in. He saw the dead children, too.

  “Son of a bitch.” It was more a soft utterance of

  pain than a declaration.

  Jake knelt by the bodies, held the light close. Each

  had been shot in the head with what must have been a

  small bore pistol judging by the lack of damage, even

  though there was a copious amount of blood. Jake

  closed his eyes as though to shut out the macabre

  scene. Then he stood.

  “Where’s the girl?” Toussaint said.

  Jake looked toward the hanging blanket.

  “You got my back on this?”

  Toussaint nodded and Jake drew aside the blanket

  with the barrel of his pistol and looked in. The girl

  and her mother lay together on the bed. Jake stepped

  close and touched their faces and felt how cold they

  were, then withdrew his hand.

  “Goddamn it.”

  Toussaint followed him back outside, and they

  stood outside the cabin in the damp chill with the rain

  dripping down from the overhang. Jake took in two

  or three deep breaths. He’d seen all sorts of death in

  his time as a physician, even the deaths of women and

  children. But never so much slaughter of innocents in

  one place. Death by murder was a different sort of

  death than any other.

  Toussaint cradled the shotgun in the crook of his

  arm.

  “I didn’t see the man,” he said.

  “He did this.”

  “Looks like.”

  “Question is why?”

  “Men go crazy sometimes. Lots of reasons. None

  of them good.”

  “But not like this.”

  “No, not like this, till now.”

  No words seemed to fit anything they were feeling.

  No words were going to fix anything, or bring any of

  those children or that woman or girl back. No words