Killing Mr. Sunday

by Bill Brooks

  keeping her clothed and fed in comparison to how

  much she might be able to earn down the line.

  “I’m not a hard man, mind you,” he said in order

  to lift her spirits just a bit. “But I am a sound busi-

  nessman and I’ll weigh it careful and give you my de-

  cision in a day or two.”

  The corners of her mouth lifted slightly.

  Not long after, they saw the others returning, the

  men tucking in their shirts, adjusting their hats and

  gunbelts.

  “Well, that was right pleasant,” said Zeb when they

  reached the wagon. “You got any more wheels need

  fixing?” He had the grin of a jack-o’-lantern.

  “We’ll be getting on now,” Ellis said, giving the

  girls a hand up in the wagon.

  “Say, I don’t suppose in your travels you come

  across a man named William Sunday?”

  Ellis ran the name through his mind. He’d heard of

  William Sunday. Probably everybody west of the Mis-

  sissippi and east of it, too, had heard of William Sun-

  day. And if memory served, he’d once seen him drink-

  ing in a saloon in Fort Sumner.

  “No, I don’t recall running across anyone with

  that name,” he said. “He a friend of yours?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Well, good luck in finding him,” Ellis said, and

  snapped the reins over his two-horse team. It felt

  good to be back on the move again and not broke

  down in the middle of nowhere and at the mercy of

  strangers. He determined that from now on he’d carry

  a shotgun with him just in case. He could use it for

  future negotiations.

  The Stone brothers felt as weary as children who’d

  played all day and decided that before continuing

  their search for William Sunday, they’d lie down and

  take themselves a little siesta in the grass. Their blood

  felt warm and lazy, their thoughts slow as some old

  river, the sun settled nicely on their closed eyelids.

  Life for the trio seemed as though it could not get

  much better.

  In a way, they were right—life couldn’t get much

  better and was about to get a whole lot worse.

  17

  He lived alone. Old shack so far-flung and off the

  beaten track you had to be lost or unlucky to come

  across it. Nobody knew his name. Hell, he didn’t even

  know his name. The sound of his own voice startled

  him. He disdained the company of strangers, kin,

  anybody. He subsisted on squirrel, prairie dog, ante-

  lope, occasionally deer, and even rattlesnakes. In a big

  heavy Bible set on a plank shelf above a cot, half its

  pages gone—used for firestarter or outhouse paper

  when nothing else was available—there was a name

  written just inside the front cover: genius jackson.

  The shack was rough-hewn logs with a leaky

  shake roof, oilskin in place of where window glass

  once was. A heavy oak door that used to stand as the

  front entrance to a Negro sheriff’s office in Okla-

  homa was fastened by leather hinges and ill fitted; its

  history of how it had found its way all this distance,

  long forgotten. It had the goddamnedest fanciest lead-

  glass doorknob that ever could be found in the whole

  territory.

  Blackened-tin stovepipe poked through an outer

  wall like an arm crooked skyward. Off to the rear of

  the place rose a rusting pyramid of cans. And farther

  out, up a worn path of grass, an outhouse leaned as

  though ready to fall over, as though the rotation of

  the earth had shaped it over time. The original owner

  had been wise enough to place it downwind of the

  shack.

  Genius Jackson wasn’t any more sure of when he’d

  arrived at this place or how than he was his name or

  any of his other personal history. Didn’t matter to

  him. Nothing about the past mattered anymore than

  did the day not yet arrived. It was enough just to get

  along hour by hour, to get past the pain of old bones

  broke how many times he didn’t know, mostly from

  being tossed off horses into fences, down ravines,

  onto rocks. Fist fights and such. Horses were the god-

  damndest cruelest creatures ever was made other than

  humans and he had no truck with either now that the

  old days were behind him.

  Still, he dreamt of such horses, and it frightened

  him: being bucked off in dreams, stomped, bit, kicked.

  His fear of horses was only matched by his fear of

  fire. He’d been in several: old houses, a warehouse,

  once, prairie fires. All of which he did not like to

  think about, but whose memory came unbidden to

  him as unexpected as did his dreams. He hated sleep-

  ing and he hated being awake. He hated being old and

  he hated being forgetful and he reckoned he hated

  about every goddamn thing there was to hate in life.

  He learned to eat crows and turkey buzzards in ad-

  dition to the badgers and prairie dogs and snakes

  whenever such availed themselves to him. His habit

  was to sit all day in the yard with an old single-bore

  .50-caliber rifle—his acquisition of which was as much

  a mystery to him as everything else—and wait for

  something alive to present itself. He was an uncanny

  shot with crack good sight in one eye. He didn’t re-

  member how or where he’d learned such a skill as

  shooting. His memory was as cloudy as was his blind

  eye. How his bad eye got to be blind and when, he

  couldn’t say.

  Sometimes he got lucky and a gray wolf would

  come loping within range. He liked them roasted

  best; they were gamier than regular dog, but much

  more tasty than badger.

  All day he sat like that, even in bad weather, unless

  it rained so hard he couldn’t see even with his good

  eye. For life had come down to eating, shitting, and

  sleeping. Wasn’t no use to worry about anything else,

  but a tooth had recently caused him a ton of misery

  and forced him to consider prying it out of his mouth,

  though he hated the prospect of the pain it would

  cause him.

  So it was while waiting for something alive to come

  along he could shoot and eat that Genius Jackson saw

  the approach of a buggy with two folks in it—more

  folks than he had seen in months, especially at one

  time. It had been four full days since he’d last eaten: a

  three-foot coontail rattler that had crawled out from

  under the pile of tin cans in pursuit of a pack rat.

  His tooth throbbed against his jawbone—one of

  them back teeth hard to get at—until it felt like a

  clock of misery ticking in his mouth. He’d tried the

  previous evening prying it out with the tip of his knife

  but it was about like trying to swallow a hot poker.

  The pain nearly blinded him in his good eye.

  “Look,” the Swede said to Martha. “There’s a nice

  house we can move into.”

  Martha remained silent. She didn’t want to say or

&n
bsp; do anything that would either encourage or discour-

  age him. He had that little pistol she was sure he

  would not hesitate to use on her. So far, the Swede

  had not tried to have relations with her, and for that

  she was grateful. She did not want to be unfaithful to

  Otis, even if he was dead. And she certainly did not

  want to be unfaithful with a man as ugly and crazy as

  the Swede.

  Martha could see a man sitting on a chair in front

  of the distant shack that obviously the Swede could

  not. She’d noticed among other things about the

  Swede that he squinted a great deal. The sight of an-

  other human gave her hope for salvation.

  “Oh,” said the Swede as they drew nearer and saw

  Genius Jackson sitting on a chair out front. “Some-

  body has come to visit . . .”

  “Maybe he’s a friend,” Martha said, summoning

  up her courage to try and entice the Swede to stop in-

  stead of swinging wide of the place.

  “Yah, maybe so.”

  Martha could see that when the man stood he had

  the posture of a nail hit wrong. He had a rifle in his

  hands. No shoes and bareheaded.

  The Swede drew reins. The wind brought with it

  the smell of wet grass.

  “Who you and what you want?” Genius Jackson

  said.

  “I am Bjorn and this is my wife,” the Swede said.

  Martha shook her head ever so slightly hoping the

  old man would catch her meaning. He didn’t seem to.

  “You still ain’t said what you’re doing here, Yorn.”

  “I like this house. We going to move in. You got the

  keys?”

  Genius Jackson’s gaze drifted to Martha and

  stayed on her and she could see he had one clear eye

  and one that was milky.

  Lord god almighty, when was the last time he’d

  lain with a woman? He couldn’t recall. Maybe the

  summer of fifty-two when he was yet a young waddy?

  Or was it in his whiskey-peddling days down in the

  Nations? Seemed like there was a squaw woman had

  butternut color skin and fat thighs and smelt like

  woodsmoke he could recall. It caused his flesh to

  crawl just thinking about having a woman.

  “Move in, you say?”

  “Yah.”

  “ ’At might be all right. Get on down from there

  and let’s have a look at you and the missus.”

  Genius Jackson’s mind was doing a buck dance at

  the sight of Martha.

  It hadn’t escaped her notice the way the old devil

  was watching her. If she had a plugged nickel for every

  man who looked at a woman with that same look in

  their eye she’d be living in a palace in Egypt. But she

  knew, too, that a man with that on his mind could

  work to her advantage. Nothing created a distraction

  like men fighting over a woman, and a distraction was

  exactly what she needed.

  “Water?” the Swede said. “My got, it’s been two,

  maybe three days since we had something to drink,

  yah.” It hadn’t really been that long, but it seemed to

  him as though it had.

  “The well stands yonder, help yourself,” Genius

  Jackson said, hooking a thumb toward the well.

  The Swede took Martha by the wrist and led her

  over to the well, then winched up a bucket of pure

  cold water. He used a hanging tin dipper to slake his

  thirst, then handed it to her. Both men watched the

  movement of her throat as she drank, the rise and fall

  of her chest. Their eyes tumbled all the way down

  past the swell of her hips to the smallness of her feet.

  Genius Jackson licked his lips without realizing

  he was.

  The Swede’s instincts were sharp, too. Trouble

  was, his pistol was empty of bullets and no way to kill

  this claim jumper.

  “Yah, that’s some good water,” he said.

  “Come out of the deep ground,” Jackson said.

  The Swede walked around studying the place, as

  though assessing it for its value.

  “We got us a good house here,” he said to Martha.

  “That fellow is looking at me like I’m a hambone

  and he’s a yellow dog,” she said. “I think he aims to

  steal me away from you.”

  “Yah, yah,” said the Swede out of the side of his

  mouth. “Maybe you make a little eyes at him, eh? Till

  I can grab his gun.”

  Jackson followed the pair around as they studied

  his layout. He didn’t know whether to shoot the man

  or just run him off and keep the woman. He hadn’t

  had to make a hard decision in a long time. Until this

  very hour, all he’d had to think about was how he was

  going to get through the next hour of his life. Now he

  had strangers in his yard and lust risen in his nether

  parts like yeast bread setting in the sun. Then there

  was that damn tooth worrying him all to hell.

  A little time with the woman might just take away

  some of his grief.

  “I got whiskey in the house yonder, and victuals if

  you all is hungry and thirsty.”

  “Yah,” the Swede said. “Sure we are, ain’t we?” he

  said to Martha as the old man led them inside the

  house, his head full of evil plans, matched only by

  those of the Swede.

  The hansom’s tracks became fresher with each pass-

  ing hour.

  “We’re on them now,” Toussaint said once they’d

  crossed a small feeder creek.

  “Look,” Jake said. “I don’t want to have to shoot

  this man if we don’t have to. I’d just as soon he stood

  trial for his crimes—let the legal system have its way

  with him.”

  Toussaint looked at him.

  “Squeamish ain’t a good trait for a man in the law

  business.”

  Jake looked at the badge he wore, said, “It’s only

  temporary, this work. I’d like to keep the bloodletting

  to a minimum.”

  “Fine by me.”

  “Just so you know.”

  “Just so I know.”

  Two hours more and they came within view of the

  cabin, the sun low in the west.

  “What do you think?” Jake said as they halted

  their horses a quarter-mile distance.

  “Seems likely they’d be there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you want to do it?”

  “Straight on is the only way I see, what about

  you?”

  “I don’t see any other way, no trees or nothing we

  could sneak up on them behind.”

  “He’ll have plenty of time to see us coming if he’s

  in there.”

  “Might shoot us out of our saddles.”

  “I mean if we have to take his life, then we will. I

  don’t want you mistaken as to where I stand on this,”

  Jake said.

  “Somehow twenty dollars doesn’t seem like enough

  pay right now.”

  “Well, if he shoots you out of the saddle, it won’t

  matter, and if he doesn’t—it’s still twenty dollars.”

  Toussaint broke open the shotgun and put in fresh

  loads, then snapped it clo
sed again resting the butt

  against his leg.

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll be taking a nap,”

  he said, judging the time to be around noon.

  “We could wait until dark,” Jake said. “But I’m all

  for taking them now.”

  “You’re even starting to talk like a damn lawman.”

  “I’m just tired of chasing this man. Let’s finish it,

  get Otis’s wife back if she’s still alive.”

  Toussaint walked his mule out wide to the south,

  Jake rode his horse out wide to the north.

  18

  She knocked on the door and waited. When no

  one answered, she turned to go. She wasn’t sure

  why she was even bothering. She’d reached the end of

  the hall when his door opened.

  “Clara.”

  She turned to see him standing there half dressed,

  his hair uncombed, looking old and beat down.

  “Come back, Clara.”

  Reluctantly she walked back to his room.

  “I can only stay a few minutes,” she said. “I’ve got

  to open school.”

  He closed the door and motioned toward a chair

  but when she refused it, he went himself instead and

  sat down gingerly. She waited for him to speak.

  “I want to stay with you until my time’s come,” he

  said.

  “Impossible.”

  He drew a deep breath.

  “I won’t be a burden to you. I can take my meals

  out, have my clothes cleaned at the laundry.”

  “You’re asking something of me I can’t give you.”

  “Anything is possible. Hear me out.”

  She listened as he told her about the cancer, how

  far advanced it was.

  “Doc says I won’t make it till spring. But the way

  I’m feeling, I won’t make it till next week.”

  She hadn’t expected this, even though he told her

  the evening before he was dying. It was the sudden-

  ness of it that got to her. He seemed a broken man—

  not at all the way she had always remembered him.

  “Why come here and ask me to do this?” she said.

  “We hardly know each other. We’re just kin in name

  only.”

  “No,” he said. “We’re kin in blood, too.”

  “All these years you didn’t bother to concern your-

  self with me, but now that you’ve got this trouble you

  want me to take care of you. I can’t do this.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I’m asking you to. Because your father is

  asking this one thing of his daughter.”

  “No!”

  “I want to get to know you before it happens. I