Killing Mr. Sunday

by Bill Brooks

  were necessary.

  The weather itself mournful, it seemed.

  Then Jake stiffened.

  “What is it?” Toussaint said.

  “I counted three.”

  “Three what?”

  “Boys. There were four.”

  They fanned out, walking cautious, because the

  mist had closed in upon them to the point they could

  barely see the outbuildings.

  Toussaint heard it first.

  “Coming from back toward the house,” he said.

  It sounded like the mewing of a cat.

  They stopped at the back wall, saw the loose board

  along its base.

  Jake went back inside, got the lantern, lowered it

  to the base as Toussaint drew back the board.

  A pair of eyes shone in the dark recess when the

  light reached them.

  It took some time, but Jake coaxed the boy out. He

  was muddy and shivering, his face streaked where

  he’d been crying. He stood about as high as Tous-

  saint’s hip, disheveled dirty blond hair.

  “You think he saw it, don’t you?” Toussaint said.

  “He knew to hide,” Jake said. “He saw something

  that scared him.”

  “Man like that who’d . . .”

  Jake warned his partner to silence with a look.

  Toussaint went inside and tore down the door blan-

  ket and brought it out and wrapped the kid up in it.

  The weather had turned even more bitter, the rain

  to snow, the wind driving it into their faces. The sky

  lay so low out across the grasslands a man afoot

  would walk right through it.

  “This is going to get worse before it gets better,”

  Toussaint warned.

  “Karen’s,” Jake said, setting the boy on the front

  of his horse and swinging up behind him. “We’ll ride

  to Karen’s and wait it out.”

  “Hell, she’ll be doing cartwheels she sees me.”

  “You mean the boy, don’t you?”

  “Him, too.”

  And the boy rode silent in the cradle of the law-

  man’s arms.

  7

  They reached the outskirts of Bismarck and

  William Sunday told Mr. Glass rather than skirt

  the town as they often did, that this time they were

  to go on in.

  “You’re calling the shots,” Glass said, privately

  glad not to have to spend another night sleeping on

  the prairie. Hadn’t been a night gone by since he’d

  left Denver that he didn’t miss his wife and home-

  cooked meals and all the rest of what having a wife

  offered a man. All her demands for him to do better

  had been pushed aside by the loneliness he felt. He

  thought that when they reached their final destination

  he’d sell the carriage and catch whatever stages and

  trains he could to return home again as quickly as

  possible. Women were a premium and highly prized

  in the West and he’d not want to take a chance that

  his might find herself a new man, one who was more

  enterprising and could afford to give her all the things

  she wanted, like the hats she saw the French women

  were wearing in Paris as advertised in the fashion sec-

  tion of the newspapers.

  Such worries were something he wouldn’t have

  minded discussing with his employer: women in gen-

  eral. But his employer was a quiet man who did not

  engage in idle conversation. Glass had tried various

  subjects to interest him, thinking it would make the

  journey a little less onerous, the time pass a little more

  quickly.

  “What do you think about President Garfield get-

  ting shot?” he tried at one point.

  “He was a damn fool to just let a man walk up and

  shoot him.”

  Well, what was there to say to that?

  Then he asked whether or not he thought Mr. Bell’s

  telephone would ever reach as far west as Denver.

  “I heard it is quite something,” Glass said, to

  which William Sunday did not reply. “Don’t even

  need to be in the same building, much less the same

  room to talk to a fellow.”

  But William Sunday was not a man to look beyond

  the next few months knowing as he did that he’d never

  use a telephone or know a world where such inven-

  tions would come into existence, and so he did not care

  to think about such things, nor comment on them.

  With the sun near set by the time they arrived in

  Bismarck, the sky to the west was a haze of purple

  and William Sunday did not fail to take notice of it,

  for each sunset was precious to him now, each

  minute, hour, day. Every tree and flower and bird, it

  seemed, had a certain importance now.

  “Pull up to that drugstore,” he said.

  Glass waited while his employer went inside and

  came back out again.

  “Find us a hotel, Mr. Glass.”

  They registered at the Bison Inn, two rooms ad-

  joining and a bath down the hall. It seemed like lux-

  ury and it was.

  “Early start as usual tomorrow?” Glass asked.

  William Sunday leaned heavily against the door to

  his room as he inserted the key.

  “Maybe not so early, Mr. Glass,” and opened his

  door and went in.

  He barely made it to take his clothes off, his back

  ached so bad he could not bend, and the fire in his

  groin caused him to bite the inside of his cheek. He’d

  run out of laudanum two days before and they hadn’t

  come across a settlement or a village large enough to

  have a pharmacy until now. He uncapped the bottle

  and took two large swallows and waited.

  He could hear Glass moving around in his room.

  He closed his eyes and silently counted backward.

  The drug usually began taking effect around the

  count of fifty. This time he counted all the way down

  to a hundred and started again before its soothing

  warmth coursed his veins and eased his pain.

  Goddamn, goddamn, what a way to go out—slow

  like this.

  He tried to sleep but kept waking up. Every time

  he shifted in the bed it was a knife going through him.

  He reached for the bottle and nursed it until the pain

  and the night went away and did not awake again un-

  til he heard knocking at his door. He pulled out his

  pocket watch and checked the time. Both hands were

  resting on twelve.

  “Mr. Sunday!”

  “Yes,” he muttered.

  “You okay in there?”

  He cleared his throat, said, “I’m just getting

  around, be ready to leave in half an hour.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Then he heard Glass’s footsteps going down the

  hall. His body felt heavy as a sandbag. He moved

  slowly, dressed, then rested after he had. It was

  while struggling to get into his coat that the thought

  occurred to him again. The weight of the pistols

  resting inside their custom-sewn pockets caused him

  to consider a thing he never thought he would until

  that day in the doctor’s office.

  He took one out. A seven-shot Smith & Wesson
>
  with yellowed ivory grips and a three-inch barrel. He

  favored it for close work. Well, what could be closer

  than putting it to his own head and pulling the trig-

  ger? He’d done it to other men. It had never been a

  problem. It would sure enough end his misery. He

  wouldn’t have to end up like some old wounded buf-

  falo the wolves tracked. Man always had a choice

  about how he lived and how he died, whereas lesser

  animals did not.

  He thumbed back the hammer cocking the trigger.

  It would just take an instant. Sweat beaded his fore-

  head and a drop of it fell onto the pistol’s barrel. The

  sweat drop turned into a daughter’s tear. But would

  she really cry for him once she heard of his demise, or

  would she think good riddance? It was something he

  needed to find out. A last act, so to speak. The pistol

  would always be available to him.

  Ride it out, he told himself ten times over until he

  lowered the hammer and slipped the pistol back into

  his pocket.

  Glass was waiting for him out front. Sunlight daz-

  zled in wet puddles in the street. It had rained the

  night before; he hadn’t remembered hearing it.

  “You look ailing, Mr. Sunday.”

  He climbed aboard the carriage with difficulty and

  eased himself down to a position he thought he could

  tolerate, patted his jacket pocket for reassurance of

  the bottle of laudanum that had become more impor-

  tant to him than his pistols.

  “I need you to drive with all due haste, Mr. Glass,

  but take it gentle as you can, if you understand my

  meaning.”

  The road out of Bismarck looked hard and smooth,

  a road they could make good time on. Glass thought

  he understood what the man was asking him.

  “I’ll do my best, Mr. Sunday.”

  And snapped the reins over the rumps of the two-

  horse team.

  8

  On a late afternoon that was more like evening

  because of the dark brooding weather, their hands

  nearly frozen, they made Karen Sunflower’s place;

  she, the ex-wife of Toussaint Trueblood.

  They dismounted and Toussaint said, “I’ll take

  care of the horses. Maybe I’ll just sleep in the stables

  till morning.”

  Jake lifted the boy down from the horse.

  “Don’t be foolish,” he said. “We have to eat and

  get something warm in us. I doubt Karen’s going to

  turn you away.”

  “You don’t know Karen.”

  “Sometime you’ll have to tell me why, but right

  now I’ve got to get this child inside.”

  Karen opened the door when Jake knocked, looked

  at the boy in his arms, her gaze narrowing.

  “It’s one of the Swedes,” he said. He knew her feel-

  ings toward that family, but it didn’t matter. She

  stepped aside and let him enter.

  “I hate to impose upon you,” Jake said, setting the

  boy at the kitchen table close to the stove. “But we

  need to get something warm in us and I need to take a

  look at this boy once he’s warmed up to make sure he

  isn’t hurt.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “I’ll explain it soon as we eat and I have a look at

  him.”

  Karen set two plates—her supper already eaten an

  hour earlier. She’d been preparing for bed even

  though it was early. Ever since her son, Dex, had been

  killed, she preferred lying in bed it seemed more than

  not. At least asleep, she told herself, she didn’t have to

  think about how much she missed him. Now here was

  the marshal bringing one of the Swede boys to her

  home—one of the very boys who’d tossed clumps of

  dirt at her horse one day and almost unseated her.

  One of the boys who was blood kin to the girl Dex

  had been with the day he was shot, no doubt over her,

  by another boy. It felt like an intrusion upon her sen-

  sibilities until she looked closer at his small face and

  saw that whatever his older sister had been, he surely

  was innocent of her sins.

  “Better make it another plate,” Jake said, remov-

  ing his mackinaw and hanging it over the back of a

  chair. Karen looked at him questioningly.

  “Toussaint’s with me.”

  He saw the way that hit her.

  “Please,” he said. “It’s just for the night. We’ll be

  moving on first light if the snow has quit.”

  Toussaint knocked and waited. Karen opened the

  door and stood there looking at him directly in the

  eyes.

  “I know,” he said. “I ain’t wanted, and I can sleep

  in the stable, like I told the marshal,” and started to

  turn away, for he had told himself he would not quar-

  rel with her no matter what the situation. They’d quar-

  reled enough for a lifetime. In fact quarreling with her

  was the exact opposite of what he’d had in mind for

  months now.

  She stepped aside and said, “You might as well

  come in since you’re already here. I wouldn’t turn

  even a dog away on a night like this.”

  “Thank you very much,” he said, trying hard to

  keep most the sarcasm out of his voice.

  They ate in silence, Karen sipping coffee watching

  them.

  Three men at my table, she thought, certain memo-

  ries trying to flood their way back into her mind. But

  she would not let them. She watched most especially

  her ex-husband sitting there, his black hair damp

  against his head, his square face with its sharp fea-

  tures of his mixed blood eating like she’d remem-

  bered him before things went bad between them.

  The boy fell asleep eating. Karen made him a pallet

  on the floor by the stove and Jake carried him to it.

  He did a quick check to see if there were any wounds,

  saw none, and started to draw the blanket over him.

  “Take off his shoes, at least,” Karen said, kneeling

  and untying the boy’s shoes and pulling them off. She

  shook her head when she saw the state of his socks,

  damp and with holes in them. She took them off as

  well and rubbed his feet with a dry towel then cov-

  ered him with the blanket. This, too, caused certain

  memories to try and come back to her, but she shut

  them off quickly.

  Then they sat back down at the table where Tous-

  saint sat finishing the last of his food, swiping up the

  stew gravy with another of Karen’s biscuits. He didn’t

  realize how much he missed her damn biscuits until

  now. Woman makes the best damn biscuits a man

  could put in his mouth, he thought. Just one more rea-

  son I ought to try and make amends with her, get her

  back.

  “You want to tell me the story now?” Karen said to

  Jake, trying her best to ignore Toussaint altogether.

  So Jake explained it and when he finished she sat

  back with a dour look on her face, shaking her head.

  “That family . . .” she said.

  “It was the hus
band,” Toussaint said. “I don’t

  suppose we can blame them all for how they were

  with a man like that running herd over them.” This

  surprised Karen, for she thought Toussaint be-

  grudged them as much as she, had hoped that he did,

  for Dex was his son, too.

  “When in the world did you find compassion in

  you?” she said.

  He shrugged, said, “Don’t know that I have. I was

  just saying.”

  “He’s right,” Jake said. “The sins of the father and

  all that.”

  “Philosophers,” Karen said. “You want more cof-

  fee?” Toussaint held out his cup and Karen looked

  at him.

  Karen provided them more blankets with which to

  make pallets, then without saying so much as good-

  night retired to her room there at the back of the

  house. The cherry glow from the wood stove felt com-

  forting in ways more than just the heat it provided.

  “What you going to do with that boy?” Toussaint

  asked, the two of them lying in the near darkness.

  “I don’t know. I heard there is an orphanage down

  in Bismarck. Take him there, I guess.”

  “And that crazy bastard Swede?”

  “Get the boy settled in town, first, then go after

  him.”

  “That was a bad thing he did to them.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “I know it was.”

  Toussaint lay there thinking about Karen, about

  how many times he’d slept on this same floor during

  their short but tumultuous marriage—whenever they’d

  argue and if the weather was bad, otherwise he’d sleep

  outdoors under the wagon, or just on the ground. The

  nice thing was when they made up. He wished they

  could make up now, wished he could go and join her

  in her bed and curl up next to her.

  The wind moaned along the eaves.

  The next morning, the sun was out in full force,

  sparkling off the snow that lay in patches.

  A gray tyrant flycatcher flew against the window,

  its wings fluttering furiously, tried several times in

  confused effort to enter the house, and when it could

  not, flew off again.

  Jake had been sitting at the table having a cup of

  Karen’s coffee. Toussaint was already out with the

  horses. A pan of powdered biscuits was turning

  brown in the oven and their smell filled the cabin. The

  Swede boy tossed and turned restlessly upon the bed.

  “We should wake him,” Karen said. “He’s having

  dreams, probably bad ones.”

  Jake went over and shook the little fellow awake.