Killing Mr. Sunday

by Bill Brooks

13

  Toussaint said, “How you like this business?”

  “Lawman? It isn’t my first choice of things to

  do,” Jake said.

  They’d been riding along the north road, back out

  to the Swede’s place. It was decided a good place to

  begin looking for the Swede.

  “I don’t much care for horses,” Toussaint said.

  “Riding them. It’s the thing Karen was always trying

  to get me to do. Go in the horse-catching business and

  I might have done it, except I don’t care for them

  much—can’t trust them.”

  “That why you ride a mule?”

  “Mules are smarter than horses—they’ll never put

  themselves into danger like a horse will. And if I have

  to ride something, I’d just as soon ride a mule; gentler

  ride.”

  The sky to the north was scudding low with clouds.

  “A storm is on its way,” Toussaint said.

  The weather had turned churlish again, clouds

  scooping in from the north, rolling like gray waves.

  “One place we might look for him—a place where

  a murdering man might try and hole up, is Finn’s

  place,” Toussaint said.

  Jake had heard of the outpost—a whiskey den, re-

  ally, on the west road halfway between Sweet Sorrow

  and the county line. But he’d never been there, had no

  reason to go there, and had no official jurisdiction be-

  yond the town’s limits.

  “What makes you think so?” Jake asked.

  “It’s a rough place, but a place where men don’t

  ask any questions. Finn’s not choosy about who

  comes around long as they have a few bits to spend

  on liquor and that whore he keeps there.”

  “Well, we may swing by there just to check it out.”

  Then they saw something up ahead—a man stag-

  gering afoot along the road, coming toward them.

  “Maybe that’s him,” Jake said.

  Toussaint watched for a moment as they slowed

  their animals.

  “No, that’s Otis Dollar.”

  Jake spurred his horse forward and Toussaint fol-

  lowed.

  By the time they reached him, Otis had fallen. He

  had ribbons of dried blood crusted down his face and

  his hair was matted with it as well. He tried to stand

  at the approach of the two figures, who he couldn’t

  discern through his swollen eyes. He thought perhaps

  it was the Swede coming back to finish him off. The

  Swede and Martha.

  “Martha!” he cried.

  Jake and Toussaint dismounted and took him in

  hand.

  “What happened?” Jake asked.

  Otis looked at him, then at Toussaint through his

  bruised and battered lid; it looked like he had small

  plums in place of eyes. He tried to touch their faces

  with his trembling hands.

  “Oh, god . . .” he said, then fainted.

  They laid him out in the grass and Jake cleaned his

  head wounds with water from his canteen spilled onto

  a kerchief while Toussaint looked on.

  “Somebody’s worked him over pretty good. He

  may have a fractured skull.”

  Fractured skull? Toussaint thought.

  “You talk the same way old Doc Willis talked—

  real medical.”

  Jake ignored the comment. Toussaint couldn’t help

  but wonder who Jake Horn really was.

  “We need to get him to a bed. Where’s the closest

  place around here?”

  “It’s about twenty damn miles back to town, but

  Karen’s is about six that way.” Toussaint pointed off

  to the east.

  “Then that is where we’ll have to take him.”

  Karen was coming back to the house, a pair of rabbits

  she’d shot hanging from her belt. She carried a needle

  gun in her right hand—something Toussaint had

  given her once. She hated goddamn rabbits. She hated

  cleaning them and she hated eating them, but they

  were the only living game she came across when she

  went out that morning and so she’d had no choice but

  to take them. And as she neared her house, she saw

  the two riders, one of them riding a man double. And

  then they all reached the house about the same time

  and she saw who the two riders were and she wasn’t

  pleased.

  “Karen,” Jake said.

  She looked at him, looked at Toussaint and Otis

  Dollar riding double on the back of Otis’s mule. Lord,

  she thought. Toussaint has finally lost his mind and

  tried to kill Otis.

  Jake explained the situation and Karen was re-

  lieved that it hadn’t been Toussaint who had done

  Otis the damage.

  “I might as well open a hospital,” she said. “Or a

  way station.”

  They helped Otis into the house and onto Karen’s

  bed. Toussaint looked on with a certain amount of

  jealousy. He was wondering if this was the first time

  Otis ever lay in Karen’s bed.

  “How long you planning on me entertaining com-

  pany?” Karen said looking down at poor Otis.

  Twenty years had changed him from what he was on

  that one particular day. He had a full head of dark

  hair back then, and quite handsome—not at all the

  way he was now.

  “A day, maybe two at the outside. I’ve sent out a

  burial party to the Swedes. I can have them stop by

  on their way back and pick him up and take him into

  town.”

  “Lovely,” she said sarcastically. “I can’t tell you

  what a pleasure it is to have such wonderful guests in

  my house.” She said this more for Toussaint’s benefit

  than anyone else’s.

  The wind was kicking hard now, bucking against

  the sides of the house, rattling windows.

  Karen started a fire in the stove to set water to boil.

  She saw Toussaint looking at the carcasses of the dead

  water and began to wash Otis’s face, the crusted

  blood, tenderly and with all mercy.

  “Hell,” Jake muttered over the news that the Swede

  was not only a murderer but now a kidnapper, too.

  Karen looked up.

  “If he comes round here, I’ll be forced to shoot

  him,” she said. “I won’t be fooled with or raped and

  murdered.”

  “I’d hope that you would shoot him if it comes to

  that,” Jake said. “I’d consider him very dangerous.”

  She wasn’t sure if she could shoot a man or not,

  even if he was a killer and kidnapper. It was one of

  those times when she wished she didn’t have to go it

  alone. A man in the house to shoot murdering Swedes

  would be a nice thing to have about.

  Toussaint came back in the house.

  “You want, I’ll cook them,” he said.

  “Be my guest,” Karen said.

  “You got flour, some salt?”

  “What I’ve got’s in the cupboard.”

  He opened the cupboard doors, saw the canned

  goods that only reminded him of the visits by Otis that

  fateful winter before Dex was born. But for the time

  being at least, he put such thoughts out of his mind. It

  d
idn’t do any good to haul over the past; nothing he

  could do to change whatever may have happened.

  They ate as the sky outside grew the color of galva-

  nized tin.

  “I’m surprised to see you fooling with rabbits,”

  Toussaint said halfway through the meal.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers and I’d eat a turtle or a

  snake if I had to.”

  “Pretty good ain’t they?”

  Karen looked at him. Toussaint did not try overly

  hard to hide his pleasure at eating a meal at her table

  again.

  Otis ate very little, such was his appetite. His stom-

  ach felt queasy as he swallowed the few bites of rab-

  bit. It felt to him as though he was standing on the

  rolling deck of a ship tossed in bad seas. He thought

  he might pitch out of his chair and he had to con-

  stantly grip the sides of the table.

  Jake asked him about the event that led to his

  beating.

  He wept telling about how the Swede had come

  upon them and threatened to kill them and how he

  tried to save Martha. “Then when I fought him to

  protect her, he clubbed me with his pistola and left

  me for dead. When I come round again, he was gone

  and so was Martha. I fear terrible for her having

  fallen into the hands of that devil. I should have been

  more a man . . . I should have protected her.”

  Toussaint met Karen’s gaze.

  “You weren’t armed and he was,” Jake said. “You

  couldn’t be expected to do more than what you

  did.”

  “I don’t know why he just didn’t shoot you,” Tous-

  saint observed.

  “I couldn’t say, either.”

  Then Otis swooned and nearly fell over and Jake

  with Toussaint’s help carried him back to the bed and

  laid him down in it. He moaned and tossed, then fell

  silent. Jake checked the pulse in his wrist, said, “His

  heart’s strong at least.” Toussaint didn’t fail to notice

  this, either.

  Then, except for Otis’s moaning, there was naught

  but an embarrassed silence around the table until

  Toussaint said, “I’ll go and check on the animals.”

  Karen said, “I need to pump water” and followed

  Toussaint out.

  Jake placed his hands upon the table and looked at

  them. Useless he thought.

  Outside Karen approached Toussaint.

  “You seem to be spending more time out here now

  than you did when we were married, why is that?”

  He shrugged as he took the saddles off the mounts.

  “Just poor luck on my part, I guess.”

  “You mean on mine.”

  “I’d just soon not quarrel with you.”

  “Then quit coming around.”

  He stood for a moment, knowing as he did about

  the small silver ring he’d bought that morning. He’d

  wanted to ride out as soon as he bought it to give it to

  her, but he knew he had to wait until the exact right

  minute when she’d be open to such a proposal. He

  didn’t know when that time would be, but he knew

  now wasn’t it.

  “Karen, in spite of what you think, I’m not here to

  make you miserable. I’m sorry as hell it didn’t work

  out between us and all the rest of it. I can’t even tell

  you how sorry I am, especially about what happened

  to Dex and all. But I was a different man back then

  than I am now and I can see the parts of it I was

  wrong about.”

  She wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, she

  hadn’t expected any sort of apology from Toussaint

  Trueblood, a man whom she never heard apologize to

  anyone.

  “I’ve been thinking of pulling up stakes and leav-

  ing this place,” she said, not sure why she felt com-

  pelled to tell him this except to test his reaction.

  She saw the look of surprise as he finally turned his

  full attention to her instead of that mule he seemed to

  favor.

  “Where would you go?”

  “Back east somewhere, where I could make a living

  without having to struggle so damn hard every single

  day of my life. I still got kin in Iowa—a cousin.”

  He said, “That’s funny, I was thinking about the

  same thing—going somewhere else, I mean. Maybe

  west. I’d sort of like to see the ocean once.”

  “I guess we’ve both had it with this place, and no

  wonder,” she said, and turned back toward the house.

  “Karen.”

  “What?” she said, pausing without turning round

  to face him.

  “I know this is going to sound funny to you, and I

  don’t mean to upset you, but I mean to win you

  back.”

  She started to turn, to light into him for such as-

  sumptions that he could just do whatever the damn

  hell he wanted whether or not she wanted it, too. But

  instead she said above the rising wind, “You won’t

  win me back, Trueblood. Not in a million years,” and

  went on into the house.

  They stayed the night, Jake and Toussaint sleeping

  on the floor with the glow of the stove’s fire between

  them and the wind scraping along the eaves. Karen

  slept in a chair.

  *

  *

  *

  The next morning Jake and Toussaint set out for the

  Swede’s, the dawn a cold gray, the morning sun like a

  blind eye behind the gray, the wind rushing over the

  grasses flattening them near to the ground. Karen did

  not go to the door to see them off, but instead stood

  at the window and watched. She saw Toussaint look

  back at the house just once before he turned his mule

  out toward the road. She remembered the last thing

  he’d said to her: “I mean to win you back . . .”

  Damn crazy Indian, she thought, and never gave it

  anymore consideration the rest of that day until Otis

  said that evening, “That’s a pretty song you’re hum-

  ming. I only wish my spirits were as high.”

  Martha could hardly sleep that night for the cold

  wind in spite of the Swede having wrapped himself

  up against her. She’d made it a point to keep her back

  to him the whole time. What had begun as a pleasant

  picnic had now turned into a cold nightmare of a

  time. She could feel the Swede’s warm but sour breath

  on the back of her neck as they sat awkwardly in the

  cab. His snores seemed like a danger and twice he

  muttered in his sleep before calling out: “Stephen!

  Stephen!” and when he did, his body trembled and

  shook. She knew nightmares were running through

  him like wild horses through the night and it scared

  her that they were. She would have run and taken her

  chances out on the prairies, knowing wolves and pos-

  sibly bears roamed out there in the dark. But the

  Swede had made sure she would not get such foolish

  thoughts in her head by tying her to him with a length

  of rope. She considered the odds: what it would be

  like to freeze to death, against getting et by a wolf or

  a bear.
Either seemed preferable to being molested by

  the crazy Swede. She fretted over the fate of Otis,

  thinking him probably dead from having his brains

  bashed in by the Swede.

  And she tried not to think about the future—of liv-

  ing with a madman on some far-flung frontier, possi-

  bly eating grasshoppers and crickets and drinking

  dirty creek water, all the while aware that at any given

  moment he might take it in his head to kill her. It

  nearly drove her crazy thinking about it and shivering

  from the cold.

  Lord, what had she done so terrible as to deserve

  such a fate?

  At one point she thought she heard footsteps out

  there in the darkness. She was too afraid to look to

  see who would be walking around on such a miser-

  able cold night such as this. She closed her eyes and

  waited to be et.

  She thought of her girlhood, of a time of inno-

  cence, and wondered what it was the Lord had against

  her to deliver her into the hands of this madman.

  Was she now paying for her sins of being dry and

  distant from her husband, of not serving him as a

  wife should, of the sin of jealousy? She wondered, she

  wept, she prayed.

  The nasty old Swede snored and dreamt his mur-

  derous dreams and she felt his fingers play along her

  body, feeling first here, then there, even though he was

  asleep, he felt to her the most dangerous creature on

  earth.

  The footsteps ceased and there was just the wind.

  14

  Fallon Monroe had last served in the United

  States cavalry during the Plains Wars, killing

  Cheyenne and Comanche everywhere he could find

  them. And before that, he had been a very young

  brevet lieutenant in the Civil War, earning his battle-

  field commission at Petersburg.

  Peace came shortly after, but unlike everyone else

  he did not welcome it. For the peace proved worse

  than war and he grew restless and volunteered to fight

  Indians on the Plains. And almost at once he felt more

  at ease with his troopers in the field than his young

  wife at home.

  Whiskey and squaws fed his appetite for the

  killing.

  And when the killing was finished, when the Indi-

  ans had been all but defeated, he once more lost his

  way, became an angry middle-aged man with a wife

  he did not understand and children he felt no kin to.

  He left her for a time in Oklahoma saying he would go

  and find a suitable profession for a man of his skills.

  “What skills are those?” she said.