On their left, meadows fell away in varying slopes between the road and the Missouri. The meadows lay sweet with the year’s last clover balls. Bees moved like loops of syrup, slowly, from ball to ball. A tangle of wild roses, belled with hips the color of ripe apples, ringed a buffalo wallow.
Magnus and Roddy dipped through an ancient riverbed, and then suddenly were in among the giant cottonwoods.
The cottonwoods loomed immense, their tops like high-thrown flukes of sporting whales. Sunlight moved under them in varying puffs.
Sweet grass underfoot, cropped short by the buffalo, gleamed a deep green. The last flies of the year rose out of the grass for a wondering bite. Across the river purplish-green waves moved across a slough of ripgut grass.
Magnus selected a fallen cottonwood limb as the target. Its bark was mostly peeled off, leaving a bone-dry bole. It had numerous little knots which made for excellent bull’s-eyes.
Roddy shot well. He aimed instinctively and on the rise. He more squeezed than pulled the trigger. He took the kick of the double-barreled shotgun through the back leg where it rested lightly on the ground.
“Son you have only one fault that I can see.”
“What’s that, Dad?” The two barrels of Roddy’s gun gleamed iridescent blues and greens.
“It’s the way you handle your gun between shots.”
Roddy’s lower lip showed pink for a moment.
“Son, there’s one thing you must always remember. Always. And you must never forget it. Just a touch on the trigger, on purpose or accidentally, and off she goes.”
“I wasn’t pointing it at anybody.”
“You twice had it pointed at me. With your finger still in the trigger guard. Once you even had it pointed at your own foot.”
Roddy’s green eyes darkened.
“It’s all right. But watch it.”
“Nnn.”
Magnus thought he’d better counter what he’d said with something pleasant. “Maybe this fall you can enter the town turkey shoot.”
At that Roddy brightened. “Boy, Dad, if they’ll let me enter, I’ll win us a great big fat turkey gobbler for Thanksgiving.”
“Atta way to talk. Might as well be a man as not. While you’re at it.”
Magnus took his turn with the pistol. Standing a good twenty paces off, he hit dead center five times out of six. A silver dollar could have covered the bullet holes in and around the tiny knot in the log.
Roddy took pride in his father.
Magnus found a penny in his pocket. He flipped it into the air above them and with a single shot hit it on the way down.
Roddy spotted where the penny glanced off. He went over and got it. “It’s bent double, Dad.”
“Didn’t I drill it plumb center?”
“You hit it dead center all right. But it didn’t go through. Just bent it double.”
“That’s blunt-nosed bullets for you.”
“When can I try the six-shooter, Dad?”
“In a couple of years maybe.”
“Why wait that long?”
“A revolver is trickier than a shotgun. Because it’s too handy. It can turn on you so much quicker than a shotgun.”
“That’s why when a man wants to commit suicide he always takes the revolver then.”
Magnus winced. “Where’d you hear that fool notion?”
“Heard the kids at school talking about it.”
“Good Lord.” Magnus punched his heel into the green turf.
“Say, Dad, suppose you was to meet a real road agent in a saloon? And he was out to kill you? How’d you take care of him?”
“I suppose you heard about that in school too?”
“Yeh.”
“Hum.” Magnus touched a hand to his eye as if refixing a monocle in place. “Well, in the case of a vicious road agent, I’d aim with the eyes, never the gun. Gut-shoot him.”
“Say, Dad, when are you going to give me a monocle like you got at home?”
“Never.”
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t fit in America.”
“We’re going back to England someday, ain’t we?”
“No, boy, no, I guess we never will.”
Roddy kicked loose a round skipping stone from the grass. He picked it up and fitted it expertly in his eye as though it were a monocle.
“Don’t, son. I have nothing but bad memories about those things.”
Roddy skimmed the stone away, off across the grass. “Sorry, Dad.”
Magnus shook himself. “Well now, boy. You got any advice to give me? Turn and turn about, you know.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Nothing? Nothing about how I hold the gun or something?”
“No.”
“Not even the way I stand maybe?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Then I can qualify for a pistol shoot.”
“Boy, I can’t wait for the day when I can shoot a pistol.”
Magnus sat down on the bony cottonwood log, and got out his pipe and lighted up. In a moment the tranquil smell of tobacco smoke wafted around them.
Roddy checked to see if his double-barreled shotgun was empty, then placed it carefully on the other side of the log with the barrels aimed up and away from them. He settled on the cottonwood log beside his father.
Magnus sat musing on the scene, eyes lidded half-over, free hand hanging.
A halo of mist wavered over the spot where the Big Sioux pushed its green water into the tan waters of the Missouri.
A mosquito wisped across Magnus’ line of vision, so close that for a second he thought it a whistling swan going by legs adangle.
“Say though, Dad.”
“Yes.”
“Can I give you a piece of advice about something else?”
“Fire away.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t though.”
“Fire away.”
Roddy gave Magnus a look of young force. “Don’t always be so picky with Mom. There ain’t nobody bothering her. Hanging around her. Really. Exceptin’ just me, Dad. That’s all.”
“Son, I don’t want to believe bad about your mother either.”
“Hain’t you got some kind of a pill you can take that’ll help you get over them crazy ideas?”
“Son, the next time I’m in the office, I’ll go take me a great big cow pill.”
“Now you’re joking.”
“A little. But not really very much.”
Roddy got out his jackknife. He opened both blades, the long one straight out and the short one halfway, and began throwing the knife expertly at the ground, making it land with one or the other of the two blades coming point down in the grass. The long blade counted ten points and the short one five.
Magnus watched Roddy’s game of mumblety-peg with a smile. He mused aloud, more to himself than to the boy: “Life. Yes. First there’s the time when you talk about your jackknife and how wonderful sharp it is. Then there’s the time when you brag about your horse and how many women you’ve made. And then there’s the time when you hobble down to the poolhall and brag about what a good crap you had that morning.”
Roddy glanced up at him briefly, went on with his game of mumblety-peg.
A coneflower stood erect at the end of their log. Its rays had fallen, and what was left of the flower, the cone, resembled the dark heart of a chicken.
A giant stag beetle tried again and again to climb the bluff edge of a buffalo chip.
A rough whizzing was suddenly around the heads of the man and the boy, and then a green bottle fly lighted on the glossy toe of Magnus’ boot. It sat a second, blinking its wings and making a quarter turn; then whisked off.
Magnus picked a wild clover. He smelled its purple head. He twirled it between his fingers. A little drop of its juice appeared at its severed end. Magnus caught the little drop with a fingertip and licked it. Wild. Like the taste of fresh hay to a horse.
There appeared to be no atmosphere at all. To breathe
was to savor what seemed to be subtly commingled fumes of alcohol and wild clover. In fantasy fingertips went about touching the tan points of waiting maiden breasts.
Roddy announced the result of the game he had been playing. “I win. One hundred to eighty-five.”
“When our ship comes in,” Magnus murmured. “One day.”
4
Magnus searched through the bottom drawer of his desk; at last found it. A bottle of rye.
”Such terrible dreams I’ve been having lately.” Magnus shuddered. “And then that last little tyke coming in here, a little girl pregnant at twelve…. Lord, it’s no wonder doctoring drives a man to kissing Black Betty.” With a push of his thumb, he uncorked the bottle; then, with a glance at his framed diploma hanging on the wall above his rolltop desk, tossed off a snort. “I don’t know how much more of this I can stand. Whew!”
There was a strong smell of carbolic acid in the place. A clock ticked on a bookstand. A cobweb as big as a hairnet hung across one of the green windowpanes.
“Horrible.” He took another shot. He was glad that for once there were no patients out front waiting for him. “Yes, if it weren’t for that venomous carbuncle the human brain, maybe a man could enjoy the simple sins of life a little.”
A dray rattled by on the frozen streets outside. The horse clopped along with a lazy tumble of hoofs.
“Magnus, old boy, you’re just like one of those swine in the gospel into whose mind the devil has entered. It’s time for you to jump off the brink too.”
His big gold repeater watch in his vest pocket ticked like a tardy heart. “Yet I just know there’s got to be someone. Just got to be. He started coming around right after Roddy’d learned to walk.”
He recalled the mad dream he’d had the night before. In that dream he’d got up to check the lock on the front door. He was sure he’d snapped it shut when they went to bed but he still heard the door banging. He found the door open. Shaking his head, he closed it carefully again. Firmly. He went back four times to make sure it really was locked. Each time he found it open again. The last time it finally stayed locked. He staggered back to bed. Just as he entered the bedroom he heard a noise on Kitty’s side of the bed. He quick looked. Great snakes alive! It was the fellow. A young man of twenty or so. Slim. Green-eyed. Dark hair. Bearded. A mocking disobedient smile lay curling over his Indian lips. There was even something gleeful in the young man’s manner, as if he’d just then successfully got away with something. Pulled something off. Then, like a smoke ring almost, the youth began to drift out through the open window. At the same time Kitty awoke with a look of deep satisfaction in her eyes. She too acted as if she’d pulled something off. She drew the bedcovers up over her bare bosom against Magnus. At that Magnus let go with a roar of rage. What a dream that’d been.
His eyes fastened on a brown gleam. It was where the late-afternoon sun shot reflected through the top of the bottle. Soft alcohol fumes wimmered from the open bottle and slowly commingled with the brisk smell of carbolic acid.
“Set a man on the edge of a precipice and in a few minutes he’ll feel the draw of it. Down there is death, he thinks. An awful smashing of guts and bones. The next thing, he’ll start to lean.”
Sunlight struck a pair of dark hairs on his forefinger. It touched them just right, changed them to golden brown.
He tossed off another snort.
“I’ll have nobody treading my hen.”
Outside on the street a bullwhacker let go with a wonderful avalanche of profanity. The bullwhacker’s whip popped with the great sound of a ten-gauge shotgun. In a moment oxen groaned, yokes creaked, wheels cracked.
“By the Lord, I just know there’s got to be somebody.” Magnus touched hand to eye. “There just has to be.” Magnus picked up the bottle; downed what rye was left with a long suck; slammed the bottle down on his desk. “And I’m going to get it out of her even if I have to beat it out of her with a club. I just know she keeps comparing me in her mind with that other fellow. I can tell. Knowing he’s better hung than me.”
He shoved back in his armchair and got to his feet. He clapped on his black hat, locked up, and headed for home.
The sun had just rolled off the rim of the earth when he turned down his dusty path. A high scarf of nimbus cloud before his very eyes became an enormous flame. Pink-yellow dusk swept over the whole world.
Magnus stumbled as he stepped across the threshold of his house.
“Damn that kid anyway, always leaving his racket laying around. Right in the path.”
Roddy looked up from where he was sitting reading Robinson Crusoe. He gave Magnus a surprised green look.
Kitty gave Magnus but one glance from where she was sitting crocheting, then retreated into the kitchen.
Magnus skimmed his hat onto the hall tree. “Lord!”
Roddy put his book aside and got to his feet. “Say, Dad, what’s the idea?”
“What do you mean?”
“Blaming me for making you stumble.”
“Didn’t you?”
“There’s nothing on the doorstep. Because right there’s my racket. Standing in the corner where it belongs.”
“So it is.”
“You said yourself once, Dad, that the first thing you’re gonna do, when our ship comes in, is to have a porch light put in.”
It pleased Magnus to see the boy face up to him like a man. He couldn’t help but give him a grudging smile. “Well, boy, right you are. Dead right.”
“I was gonna say.” Roddy went over and closed the door. “After what we agreed by the giant cottonwoods.”
“Right.”
But Magnus resented the way Kitty had retreated into the kitchen. He left the boy and went in pursuit of her. He found her busy at the stove. “I suppose the other fellow never drinks.”
Kitty reset the coffeepot to the front of the range with a bang.
“But instead gets his jollies sleeping with other men’s wives.”
“Roddy.”
“What about him?”
“At least think of him.” Kitty threw some wood into the range. “If you can’t think of yourself.”
Magnus stood very erect beside her. “Roddy’s young. And’ll outlive it. But maybe I won’t.”
“Why don’t you go sit down?” She threw him a mixed look, partly sneering, partly wincing. “And we’ll get some food into you.”
“Maybe I’m not hungry.”
“How about some coffee?”
He grabbed her arm, bent it back around under her shoulder.
“Don’t.” Her voice came pinched.
He bent her arm farther. “Woman, if you don’t admit it here and now, before God and my son, that you’re a bad woman, bad! goddam you, I’ll take a club to you.”
“Magnus.”
“Because I know all about you.”
“Please.”
“Because my nightmares tell me so. And nightmares never lie.”
“Please, daddy husband.”
“And goddammit, please quit calling me daddy husband.”
“Magnus then.”
Out of the corner of his eye Magnus caught sight of Roddy standing in the doorway. He turned for a better look.
The boy had gotten out his blue blanket and was sucking its silk border.
Magnus staggered, he was so shocked. Only moments before the boy had shown him a pair of tough horns. “Son, put away that goddam blanket! Shame on you. Tit time for you is long ago past.”
Kitty gave her arm a hard quick jerk, and managed to break free of Magnus. She ran for the bedroom.
Magnus turned in a rage on his son. “Why don’t you keep better watch on our house?”
Roddy dropped his blanket to the floor. “What for?”
“To catch the man that’s been molesting your mother lately, of course.”
“Dad, there ain’t nobody botherin’ her. Like I told you. Exceptin’ just me.”
“And when you catch this fellow, and I’m not home, I wan
t you to run over and call Herman Bell the cop.”
Silence.
“And don’t you forget it either.”
Silence.
“Some men are devils and they’ve just got to be locked up for their own good. Let alone the women.”
Kitty burst out of the bedroom with strides long and lunging for so short a woman. She came carrying a chamber pot and a looking glass. Her face was as white as the skin of a bled chicken. Her dissimilar eyes glowed with dissimilar fires. She stuck the chamber pot, and then the looking glass, into Magnus’ face.
Magnus stared into the chamber pot, then into the looking glass.
“Magnus, in the name of our common humanity, who are you to point the finger?”
Magnus abruptly collapsed within. He reached for her. And missed. He kissed air instead of lips. He wept. “Help.”
Roddy saw it all. And slowly Roddy’s eyes took on a distant glint. It was the same look he’d had in his eyes when, some years before, on a Sunday afternoon, he had seen his father lying on his mother and struggling with her in the act of love.
An October frost came, and soon ripgut grass was rolling in alternate floods of tan and blood, and oak leaves made a brown buckskin noise, and gardens lay sunken.
5
Men were hurrying home to wife and supper. Twilight dusted down in floating flakes of rust. High shadows humped off the bluffs north of town.
Down the boardwalk came slim courtly Magnus: black hat, black bow tie, dark suit, black patent-leather shoes, immaculate white shirt.
Magnus kept looking from side to side. His black eyes were smoked over and his large liberal lips worked and curled and worked. A blue revolver lay gleaming in his hand.
He had three more houses to go before his house. The three houses were log-cabin affairs, one-story, roughly hewn, chinked with clay. In one cabin fatty beef could be heard frying over a fire. From another came the smell of singed onions. In the back yard of the third house a single white chicken, roosting in the lower branch of a bare maple, sat with eyes filmy, wings fluffed.
Magnus’ heels hit the boardwalk with determined drumming sounds. The palm of his hand was dry. Where his finger touched the trigger of his revolver the skin prickled.
“Hey, Doc, what in the world are you up to?”
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