Killing Mr. Sunday

Home > Western > Killing Mr. Sunday > Page 16
Killing Mr. Sunday Page 16

by Bill Brooks

late to take any of the words back.

  “I figured he done something bad,” Otis said. “I

  saw blood on his shirt cuffs just before he knocked

  me on the head.” Then they fell to silence again, the

  food and the very world itself seeming glum.

  All the rest of that morning, Karen had sat in front of

  the cabin watching for strangers while Otis lay in bed

  mumbling in his sleep before she went in and woke

  him for dinner. It was right after they finished eating

  that she saw a strange-looking carriage approaching

  from off in the far distance, two people riding atop.

  “Get ready, we got company,” she said.

  Karen took the needlegun Toussaint had once

  given her and went outside with it and Otis followed

  her. He squinted through swollen eyes to see who it

  was, said, “If you give me a gun I’ll help you kill

  him.”

  “Go back inside, Otis. I only got this one gun and

  I can shoot pretty damn good with it and if there is

  any killing to be done on my property, I’ll be the one

  doing it. Your head funny the way it is, I wouldn’t

  trust you to protect me from a chicken thief.”

  But when the contraption drew within better view,

  Karen could see the two people riding atop it: Tall

  John, the undertaker, and Will Bird, the lanky and

  handsome young itinerant with dark curly hair

  spilling from under his hat. It was a glass-sided hearse

  they rode atop.

  “Miss Sunflower,” John said as soon as he drew

  reins and set the brake. “Marshal asked me to come

  collect Otis from you.” He looked at the shopkeeper,

  the bandaged head, the swollen black-and-blue eyes

  that gave him the look of a wounded raccoon.

  “We thought maybe you were that madman,” she

  said.

  “I don’t suppose you’d have any coffee with some

  whiskey in it,” said Will Bird, his thirst for a drink

  hard upon him now that he’d helped bury a bunch of

  murdered people. The youngest woman’s face espe-

  cially haunted him; she had probably been pretty

  enough in life, but in death she was haunting.

  “Coffee, no whiskey to go in it,” Karen said.

  Both he and Tall John were sweaty and dirt

  smeared.

  Both men got down and John wiped his brow with

  a large blue bandanna he pulled from his back

  pocket.

  “An onerous task burying those poor folks. Oner-

  ous, indeed.”

  “Damn mean work, too,” Will Bird said, not know-

  ing what onerous meant, hopping down to stretch his

  legs. “How you been Karen? It’s been a time since I

  seen you last.”

  “I’ve been okay,” she said. There had been a time a

  few years back when she’d flirted with the idea of tak-

  ing Will Bird into her bed. It was the summer before

  Will went off to Texas and when he was roaming

  around the county picking up whatever work he could

  find locally. She’d hired him to repair her leaky roof for

  her. It had been a week’s worth of work—what with

  waiting for the rain to come again after he patched it to

  see if it leaked still. And over that time they’d gotten to

  know each other about as well as a woman without a

  man and a man without a woman can in spite of the

  difference in their ages and philosophies.

  Will had even gone out one evening and picked

  wildflowers and brought them to her. They’d eaten

  their meals out of doors most evenings where they

  could hear the meadowlarks singing in the dusk and

  Will said, “It’s like they’re singing just for our bene-

  fit,” and Karen did not disagree with such a notion.

  Will Bird could be a terribly charming fellow and he

  had a smile like beauty itself with his nice white teeth

  set in his weather-darkened face. Then, too, he had a

  pleasant singing voice, something she found out about

  the night he brought her the wildflowers.

  After it rained and they saw there were no leaks,

  he’d said to her, “I’ve come to be awful fond of you,

  Karen,” and she knew immediately what he meant

  and was tempted to repeat those same words back to

  him, but she didn’t because she knew where such

  things could and would most likely lead and she just

  wasn’t up to paying the price of another broken heart

  so soon since her heart hadn’t yet mended all the way

  from being broken over Toussaint. And so she’d paid

  Will Bird his meager wages and watched him ride off

  one purple evening and he looked like something that

  artist that came through the area once might paint:

  Will’s dark shape and that of his horse against a sor-

  rowful but lovely sky.

  Now they stood eyeing each other and remember-

  ing those times until Karen said, “I’ll get you all some

  coffee,” and went in and got it.

  “Maybe you ought to ride into town with us,

  Karen,” Tall John said as they got prepared to go

  with Otis reclining in the back of the hearse.

  “I’m not letting some mad Swede run me off my

  land.”

  “You want Will to stay with you for a while, until

  the marshal and Toussaint catch that murdering old

  man?”

  She looked at Will who was looking at her and she

  knew that the only thing more dangerous than having

  a madman come around would be if she allowed Will

  Bird to stay with her there alone.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve got my gun and I can shoot as

  good, and maybe better than Will can. You all go on.”

  She saw the disappointment on Will’s face but he

  didn’t say anything. Instead he just looked off toward

  the distance as though distracted by the emptiness. He

  still had Fannie waiting for him, he reasoned.

  She watched them go with some little regret. It

  seemed ages since she’d known the comfort of a man

  in her bed and it was all that damn Toussaint True-

  blood’s fault and if he ever showed his face around

  her again, she’d by damn sure let him know how she

  felt.

  21

  “Well, what the guddamn hell are we to do

  now?” Zeb said to his brothers.

  “Storm’s coming,” Zack said.

  “Where?” Zane said.

  “Yonder.” Zack pointed off to the northwest where

  a wall of brooding clouds seemed to be advancing like

  the Devil’s army.

  “It hits, we’ll be wet as dogs without no horses to

  outrun it.”

  “Who the hell was supposed to watch them cayuses,

  anyway?” the elder brother said. Zeb could be more

  ill tempered than the other two combined. He was al-

  ways the one quickest to fight and once even knocked

  a tooth loose from a prostitute’s mouth in a Goldfield

  bordello because she giggled when he took his off his

  pants. He got thrown in jail for it, too. The local law-

  man had not taken kindly to having his wife’s tooth

  knocked out, said: “You just lowered her going rate�
��

  who’s going to want to pay her five dollars without a

  front tooth?” The lawman did more than jail him. He

  took him out back of the jail with the assistance of a

  couple of deputies and pummeled him good, breaking

  several ribs and knocking out one of Zeb’s own teeth.

  “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, ain’t

  that what the Bible says?” the lawman said, rubbing

  his bruised and scraped knuckles. Zeb doubted the

  lawman had any Bible in him.

  Zeb spat blood and said, “ ’At fat bitch ought not to

  laugh at a man’s fireworks,” and the lawman hit him

  again so hard he thought he’d been shot dead. He woke

  up tied to the back of his own horse, it running wild

  with bean cans tied to its tail so it would be spooked

  and run till exhausted. Riding slung over its back like

  that, every step was pure hell from the broken ribs Zeb

  suffered from being stomped by the deputies after the

  lawman knocked him cold. He coughed up blood for

  nearly a month after and swore vengeance on the law-

  man, but his brothers talked him out of it.

  “We go back they’ll kill us all,” the youngest, Zane

  said.

  “Hell, I’d rather be dead than humiliated by that

  big-nosed bastard and his ugly wife.”

  “Ain’t worth it,” said Zack.

  Truth be told, Zeb was a little afraid of the man af-

  ter what he’d done to him. Confronting him again

  wasn’t really something he wanted to do but said he

  did out of false bravado and so had let his brothers talk

  him out of seeking revenge, knowing they were proba-

  bly right: the lawman would kill him and them, too.

  Now the trio stood in the waist-high grass with a

  chill wind snaking through it and the bruised sky

  closing in on them.

  “Well, unless we grow wings, we ain’t going to get

  nowhere but we walk there,” Zeb said.

  “Which way?” Zane asked.

  “Hell, does it look like it makes a difference? Any-

  where but in the direction of that storm seems to be

  about right,” Zeb said.

  “Let’s head the way we were going when we met

  that wagon full of whores,” Zane said at last, leading

  out, his brothers falling in a sober line behind him.

  Zane was the youngest and the most impatient.

  By dusk the first few raindrops struck them in the

  face.

  “Guddamn, but that’s a cold rain,” Zane said.

  “Guddamn, but it sure is,” said Zack.

  “Stop your whining,” Zeb said. “You sound like

  wimmen.”

  By the time they saw the light of the house, they

  were soaked through to the skin. The rain so miser-

  able cold and bad it felt like it had reached down into

  their bones, like their very blood had turned to rain,

  and every step was one of misery. Rain sluiced off

  their hat brims and down their faces and down the

  back of their necks and Zeb cussed his brothers for

  not being vigilant and letting a fat Indian steal their

  horses.

  “One guddamn Indian!” he kept repeating. “One

  fat guddamn Indian snookered us!”

  Then Zack said, “Hey, they’s a light.”

  They all three looked and surely there in the dis-

  tance, through the curtain of rain they could see a

  light.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Zack said.

  Karen was just about to turn in. It had been a long tir-

  ing day she’d spent keeping an eye out for the mad-

  man. She was glad he hadn’t shown himself. She did

  not want to kill anyone—even a mad Swede, even if

  he had murdered his whole family. She did not want

  to have to deal with murder or death anymore. The

  rain, when it came, made things seem more lonesome

  than usual. And every time it rained, day or night, she

  couldn’t help but think of her past romantic liaisons

  with Toussaint, how he used the rain as an excuse not

  to do any work, and instead would talk her into bed

  where they played like children—very wicked but

  happy children.

  But now, alone as she was, with naught to keep her

  company but the grave of her one and only child, all

  she could feel was the deep lonesomeness of it all.

  Somehow the rain made the prairies seem even more

  empty than they were, made a body seem more iso-

  lated from any other form of life, made the rest of the

  world seem more distant—as distant as the moon and

  stars.

  She undressed and slipped on her nightgown,

  stood in front of the mirror, and brushed through her

  short thick hair and thought, I’ve become almost like

  a man over these years. Plain as the land, no beauty to

  me whatsoever. No wonder I lost my husband. What

  man would want a woman who looked so plain? She

  turned in profile, this way and that. What man could I

  hope to get looking as I do: square of shoulder, small

  of breasts, thick of waist? There ain’t a lovely bone in

  me. The only man who’d want me would be wanting

  a woman for the sum total of ten minutes; a man like

  a dog who’d hump anything female. She fought down

  the emotions of sadness, of beauty once possessed but

  now lost.

  She told herself she was too old to concern herself

  with such vanity, that even if she had wanted, she

  could not have held onto the way she once looked be-

  fore the hardships of living on the plains stole from her

  her youth and beauty. No woman could. Then tears

  spilled down her cheeks in spite of her resolve not to

  cry, but she stiffened and wiped them away with the

  back of her wrist and turned out the lamp. Darkness

  fell into the room immediately and she did not have to

  look at the unbeautiful reflection of herself.

  She lay abed trying not to think, but the more she

  tried not to, the more she did.

  There were a few dollars left in the sugar bowl.

  Money she meant for buying necessities. She was low

  on flour and canned goods and sugar and coffee. And

  though she didn’t want to ask him for it, she had had

  it in mind to ask Otis for an extension on her line of

  credit, knowing full well he’d give it to her and gladly

  so. For she knew that Otis Dollar was still in love with

  her even after all these years and even in spite of the

  fact she was no longer an attractive woman. The only

  reason she could think of was that he’d fallen in love

  with her when she still had some beauty to her twenty

  years earlier, and that was what he was still in love

  with, that image of her back then. Nothing she could

  do about it. And maybe she didn’t really want to do

  anything about it, in spite of the fact Otis was obvi-

  ously back in love with Martha. But was it so bad to

  have someone love you and know that they loved you

  even if you didn’t them?

  By god, I’ll buy myself a dress, she thought sud-

  denly. I’ll ask Otis to extend my line of credit and buy

 
; a dress and I’ll go to the dance Saturday night at the

  grange hall and I’ll dance with any man who asks me

  and drink my share of punch and whatever might

  happen will just have to happen. And come Sunday,

  I’ll start looking for horses again and catch me

  enough to pay back Otis and keep me through the

  winter, and if things go well and I catch me enough

  horses, I’ll sell this place and go somewhere exciting,

  Europe maybe, England, see Queen Victoria. Maybe

  I’ll even take an Englishman for a beau.

  Her heart beat rapidly at the excited notions that

  filled her head. Too long she’d been as fallow as an

  unattended field . . . too many days and weeks and

  months had gone by, filled with only hard work and

  trying to raise a child by herself, and all it had gotten

  her was grief and sorrow. Now she was alone, com-

  pletely and utterly and she’d grown tired of it. She

  imagined herself in the dress she was going to buy

  from Otis. She imagined men asking her to dance and

  how she wouldn’t turn any of them down. She imag-

  ined . . . oh, my, Will Bird escorting her home after-

  ward, coming to the door with her . . . and, perhaps

  even inviting him to come in. The two of them stand-

  ing in the darkened little house late at night, flush

  with the evening’s revelry . . . his mouth on hers . . .

  knowing it wouldn’t last more than a single night . . .

  knowing she’d not want it to. A single night of pas-

  sion would be enough. Just one single night.

  Then she heard a noise. Something that wasn’t sup-

  posed to be there. And her romantic notions exploded

  from her head like a covey of quail flushed from the

  brush.

  *

  *

  *

  The prairie dog tasted like charred wood. It was

  bony, too. Little bones Martha had to gnaw on to get

  the least little bit of meat off of. Still, she was so hun-

  gry it could have been a Delmonico steak she was eat-

  ing instead of a measly little prairie dog.

  “What you think, sister?” Fat Belly said to her in

  Comanche.

  Martha wasn’t sure what he was saying, so she just

  sort of smiled around her piece of the prairie dog. She

  didn’t know how an Indian could get fat eating such

  small creatures; this fellow must have eaten a terrible

  lot of the little things.

  “I wish this was a steak,” she said, feeling some-

  what compelled to say something to him.

  He wondered if she was praising him for his cook-

 

‹ Prev