Killing Mr. Sunday

by Bill Brooks

  ing skills. He didn’t know what white women said to

  their men for providing them with food, whether or

  not they praised them and as part of their praise of-

  fered themselves in gratitude. He had it in mind that if

  she offered herself to him, he would overlook the fact

  she was white. A man couldn’t be too choosy when it

  came to either food or women in such skinny country

  as the grasslands.

  “You might make a good wife,” he said. “I could

  use a good wife. I’ve got three horses now and who

  knows what else the Creator might give me. I never

  planned on having another wife, but then I never

  planned on being run out of Texas, neither. I had two

  or three wives down there but the Rangers killed

  them. They would have killed me too, but I was too

  smart for them. Some day I might go back there and

  rub out all the Rangers.”

  Martha listened to the mumbo-jumbo talk. She

  was cold and wet and the rain fell hard enough to put

  out the fire, and once it was snuffed they sat there in

  the darkness getting colder and wetter, the fat Indian

  talking about something she didn’t understand, but

  knowing how most men thought when it was dark

  and there was a woman around who could keep them

  warm and comfortable. She grew more nervous and

  finally said, “ ’S’cuse me, but I got to go use the

  bushes,” and stood up.

  “Where you going?” Big Belly said when he no-

  ticed the woman standing against the skyline, the rain

  falling in his hair and in his eyes. “You and me better

  get inside them horse blankets, eh?”

  But then suddenly she wasn’t standing there any-

  more and Big Belly said, “Hey! Hey!” calling to her.

  “You better not go off, some bear might get you,

  wolves maybe.”

  But it did no good, his warnings. He waited a long

  time, then curled up in the horse blankets with the

  rain falling on his face and thought it was too dark

  and wet to go chasing after a woman. I’d just as soon

  stay dry. Besides, I still got my horses. He didn’t think

  she’d go very far in the rain, that even though she was

  white, she’d figure out how wet and cold it was and

  come back to camp and get in the blankets with him.

  He closed his eyes and waited.

  She stumbled along in the dark, fear forcing her to

  keep going and not turn back. She didn’t know what

  was worse, catching her death from pneumonia, or

  maybe getting eaten by a bear or wolves, or being at

  the mercy of the fat Indian’s carnal desires. She may

  not have understood his lingo, but she understood the

  look in his eyes before the fire got doused. Lonesome

  men always had that same lonesome look. And if she

  hadn’t been a married woman, she might have used

  her womanly charms and such lonesomeness to her

  advantage. But she’d taken a vow to be faithful to

  Otis, in spite of his sometimes pitiful behavior, and

  faithful she’d be as long as she had a single breath left

  in her. She’d rather get et by wolves than break her

  wedding vows.

  And on she stumbled into the long wet night, fear

  and cold howling in her every fiber.

  The storm swept over them and brought with it rain

  and an early darkness.

  Toussaint had been thinking about Karen; what he

  would feel like if it was her instead of Martha they

  were trying to rescue. He figured the first opportunity

  he had, he’d go and ask Karen to marry him. He’d

  give her the silver ring he had in his pocket. She’d

  raise hell of course, refuse and tell him to get off her

  land, threaten to shoot him maybe if he didn’t. Hell,

  he didn’t care if she did shoot him just as long as she

  agreed to marry him afterward. He missed her like he

  never thought he would. He couldn’t even say why he

  missed her exactly—maybe it was because he missed

  the bad parts of being married to her as much as he

  missed the good parts; she always made him feel alive,

  even if at times miserable. She always kept his pot

  stirred up real good. Making up with her was always

  better than the fighting. Then, too, the rain made him

  remember those good parts real well and he knew for

  sure he missed those times when it rained—him and

  her lying abed watching it before and after making

  love. He reckoned he was somewhere around forty

  years old. She was, too. They might just as well get

  married again and grow old together rather than

  grow old alone he reasoned. He knew Karen’s ways,

  and she knew his, and he couldn’t see learning all that

  stuff over again with a new woman.

  Jake said, “We better find a place and make camp.”

  “I know where there’s an old soddy nobody lives

  in not too far from here,” Toussaint said. “Used to be

  lived in by these two Irish brothers who thought

  they’d come west to make their fortune. From Brook-

  lyn, New York, I believe they said they were from.

  Last time I came across them one had died of some-

  thing and the other was nearly starved to death him-

  self. I hunted him some dreaming rabbits and it saved

  him, eating those dreaming rabbits. Anyway, the last

  time I come out this way he was gone, the place about

  ruined, the roof half caved in, but funny thing was all

  the furniture was still there.”

  “What are we waiting for, point the way,” Jake said.

  They found the place still standing, what there was

  of it. One wall had collapsed and most of the roof as

  well, but there was a bit of shelter nonetheless.

  “I guess we should have come better prepared,”

  Jake said.

  “You thought we’d find them quick,” Toussaint said.

  “I’m new at this.”

  “I know it. Manhunting is something you learn as

  you go.”

  They sat in a pair of the chairs the brothers had left

  behind, in under what was left of the roof. The hiss of

  rain had to it a hypnotic effect.

  “Can I ask you something?” Toussaint said.

  The question came out of the shadows and was one

  Jake hadn’t expected.

  “Sure.”

  “You ever bad in love with a woman?”

  “I was.”

  “I guess it didn’t work out or you wouldn’t be in

  this country alone.”

  “You’d guess right.”

  “You mind me asking why it went wrong between

  you and her?”

  “There a reason you want to know about my love

  life?”

  “Yeah, figure you might know more’n me about

  what’s in a white woman’s heart.”

  “Karen, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a long sad story I’d have to tell you about the

  woman I was in love with,” Jake said. “One I’d just as

  soon not remember.”

  “Sure, I understand,” Toussaint said. “None of

  that stuff is easy for a man. Thing is, I�
��m thinking of

  taking up with her again.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Some rain, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You think we’ll find Martha alive out there

  somewhere?”

  “It’s hard country,” Jake said. “You’d know that

  better than me.”

  “This is hard country on a woman, for sure.”

  “Hard country all the way around, the way I see it.”

  “You think women have it in them to forget past

  injustices?”

  “Probably more so than most men.”

  “I hope we find her alive.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  The sound of rain sang them to sleep.

  22

  Fallon Monroe saw the shadow of a shape that

  looked like a shack and spurred his stolen horse to-

  ward it. The rain had beaten his hat down and filled

  his boots. It was a cold evil rain, he thought, like

  something God would send to drown an evil man, or

  at the very least punish him for his sins. Fallon wasn’t

  a big believer in God or sins, but he was some because

  his old man had been in the God business and some of

  it had rubbed off.

  He drew in at the ramshackle place, didn’t see a

  light on inside, figured rightly it was vacant. He tied

  off and went in slapping rain from his hat. He found

  an old bull’s-eye lantern and lit it, looked around. It

  was a bigger than usual shack with several cots in two

  rooms, rusted cookstove with nickel-plated legs. And,

  except for the loose floorboards and the strange smell

  of the place, he thought to himself, it’s just like a fine

  hotel. He found some canned goods and some mealy

  flour and a chunk of salt-cured pork and within the

  hour he’d eaten his fill. He pulled his tobacco from an

  inside pocket along with his papers and fashioned

  himself a shuck and smoked it sitting out of the way

  of the leaky roof, then remembered how wet his feet

  were and pulled off his boots and poured the water

  from them out an open window. He carried the

  lantern over to the large bed—it had an iron frame—

  and was about to bunk down when he saw the stains

  large as a pair of dinner plates. He held the light

  closer. Bloodstains. He pulled back the blankets and

  saw the stains had soaked into the tick mattress. It

  made him feel a tad uncomfortable to think about ly-

  ing down on a bloodstained bed and so he went out

  again into the main room and chose one of the small

  cots and lay down on it.

  He’d checked out the first three stops the ticket-

  master back in Bismarck had written down for him—

  Bent Fork, Tulip, and Grand Rock. Just shitholes of

  places and no Clara. The next place on his list was a

  burg called Sweet Sorrow. The good news was, so far

  there hadn’t been any law on his trail for the stolen

  horse.

  The night rain seduced his mind to thinking back

  when he was a boy. It seemed like another lifetime.

  Like it wasn’t him but someone else, a story he’d read

  about a boy.

  One thought led to another and eventually it all led

  to his daddy. The old man had been a preacher back

  there in Kentucky, would ride the circuit on a mule

  back up in the hollows preaching to folks where there

  wasn’t any church except the sky and the trees. When

  he wasn’t preaching he was a sawyer and Fallon never

  did conclude how the two went together. The old

  man would be gone from Saturday night till Monday

  morning and come home with chickens, eggs, butter,

  and jams, all in a poke sack to go along with the little

  bit of money he earned from his preaching; enough

  food and money to keep the Monroe family—Fallon,

  his ma, and his siblings—from starving. The old man

  was hard and stern, seemed to be smoldering inside

  all the time, hardly ever smiled.

  One time he caught Fallon looking at a deck of

  playing cards with sultry renderings of women on

  them he’d gotten from a boy in town for a nickel. The

  boy said he stole them off a gambler. The old man

  belt-whipped him over it, saying how he was going to

  “beat the devil out of him” and pretty much did.

  But then one day a woman from the hollows

  showed up with her young daughter—a girl not much

  older than Fallon, fourteen or fifteen—both women

  barefoot and looking like scarecrows except for the

  daughter’s round belly. The older woman came right

  up to the house and yelled for him to come out—

  “Preacher Monroe! Y’all better get on out here now!”

  This, on a Good Friday when they’d all just sat

  down to a nice chicken dinner with the old man giv-

  ing his usual long prayer before eating.

  And when the old man came out of the house to

  confront the crone, so, too, did the rest of the Mon-

  roes and stood there on the porch behind the old man

  as the hollow woman announced about how the old

  man had put his seed in the girl and it was plain as

  hell looking at her that somebody sure had.

  “What you gone do about it, Preacher?”

  “I had no hand in it,” the old man said with a

  wobbling voice, for Fallon’s ma and his siblings were

  all staring at him; the wattle on his neck quivered.

  “It ain’t a goddamn hand that caused this—it was

  your straying and unholy pecker!” the woman decried.

  Fallon remembered looking up at the sky thinking

  it was going to split in half. The old man run the hol-

  low woman and her child off by invoking the wrath of

  God on her for such false accusations, telling her she

  would burn in a lake of fire and so on and so forth,

  raining brimstone from the heavens on her, and if that

  didn’t by god work he’d get his gun, until she shrank

  and fell back, then turned running up the road, the

  girl in tow screaming, “The Devil! The Devil”

  It made for a long hard rest of the day, the old man

  about half wild and Fallon’s ma equally so, for the

  truth could not be denied no matter how much the

  old man tried denying it. It was the most terrible event

  that could have befallen them all—the hollow woman

  and her pregnant child.

  Late that evening the old man said, “I’m going to

  prove to you, Hettie, I didn’t have a thing to do with

  that girl getting knocked up,” and went out and came

  back with a big timber rattlesnake long as his arm and

  stood in the yard with the red sky behind him invok-

  ing the name of Jesus and Jehovah, shouting “Lord, if

  I have sinned then let this serpent strike me dead.”

  And that’s exactly what happened. The snake struck

  him twice in the face. The old man lingered through

  the night but was dead by dawn, his face swollen and

  red like a rotted melon. It didn’t even look like him

  when they buried him.

  Fallon heard his ma telling the girls: “The wages of

  sin is death. Your pa thought he could kiss
and fool

  with that girl and get away with it the same as he

  thought he could kiss and fool with that old snake

  and get away with it, but he couldn’t.”

  It was a week later that Fallon found the same deck

  of playing cards the old man had whipped him over

  hidden in the top rafter of the outhouse and realized

  why the old man made so many night trips out there

  late at night, a lantern in his hand.

  He thought now about women in general and those

  on the back of playing cards and thought how it was

  women who brought as much pain to men as they did

  pleasure and how it been that way since the beginning

  of time when Eve tempted old Adam with that apple

  and got them both kicked out of Eden, just like that

  hollow woman and her girl got his old man bit by that

  big snake, and, now, just as his wife Clara had by

  leaving him and taking their children—leaving him as

  though he didn’t mean a thing to her.

  He was half asleep when he heard the door open.

  Quick as a flash he had his gun cocked and aimed,

  thought he saw the shadow of someone there in the

  room. Rain hissing like a thousand angry snakes.

  Thought at first he was dreaming, that it was the old

  man come back from the grave, come back to belt-

  whip him for fooling with those card women.

  “Easy, now,” he said. “I’ve got my gun on you and

  I’ll sure as damn shoot a hole in you.”

  The voice of a woman startled him.

  “Don’t shoot, mister,” the woman’s voice said.

  Fallon’s fingers found the matches, struck one and

  touched it to the lantern’s wick and the room filled

  with a nice warm light. The woman was wet and

  bedraggled, her dress torn and muddy. She wasn’t a

  young woman by any means. She wouldn’t remind a

  man of the women on the back of a deck of playing

  cards, not by a damn sight.

  “I’m about froze to death,” Martha said. “I was

  near killed by a savage and had to run for my life . . .”

  “Then you better shuck them duds and crawl up in

  these blankets with me,” Fallon said. She wasn’t

  young, but she was a woman and it had been a long

  time since he’d been with one. “It’s the only safe place

  I know of on a terrible night such as this.”

  “I’m a married woman, mister . . .” Martha said

  through chattering teeth. “I hope you’ll be gentleman

  enough to respect that.”

  He looked her over good, decided it wasn’t worth