Whiskey When We're Dry

by John Larison

  “You asleep?” I asked.

  “I ain’t drunk enough yet.”

  Splitting a room with a man was less trouble than I’d expected. The room had a bed on either side. I slept in my long johns and I took measures to change when he wasn’t near. If the morning was chilly I concealed my chest, as my nubs hardened like no man’s and might show through my button-up. I did have to suffer some manly business. Greenie did little to tame his formidable flatulence and in the mornings he was more likely to fill the night pot than make his way to the holehouse. But all in all he give me space and I give him plenty of the same.

  This night he lit a match and touched it to the candle and threw back the covers and said, “I’m finding us a bottle even if I got to go to the Governor’s bedside.”

  He returned minutes later empty-handed. “Nothing worse than sobering up from half drunk. Tell me about your girl, Straight. You ain’t never told me about your girl other than you got one.”

  “She ain’t really my girl no more.”

  “She leave you?”

  “You ain’t told me nothing about your home,” I asked. “You got folks?”

  “Yeah.” The thought only deepened Greenie’s mood.

  “Tell me about them.”

  “I’m their only son. Seven years in September since I been home.” He thought on it a time. “I worry Pa has passed on and I don’t know it. Maybe I’m still living like he’s here on this earth and he ain’t. I ain’t sure I feel him no more. You think I’d feel him if he was still breathing?”

  “Have you sent a letter?”

  “I ain’t much for writing.”

  “My skills ain’t practiced,” I admitted, “but I can scribble. If you find paper and a pencil I’ll write your letter.”

  “Why help me write to my folks?”

  I shrugged.

  He rose and took the candle into the hallway. I heard him out in the kitchen and then going up the stairs. He was gone long enough my mind began to slip in the mushy snow that comes before sleep. His feet stirred me back. “Found them in a desk drawer.”

  I took the writing things from him.

  “Guess what else I found?” A big smile spread across his face. He pulled a pint bottle from his pocket. “Brandy. It was stashed in the same drawer as the writing utensils.” He took a long pull and passed it to me.

  “We gonna get in trouble?”

  “Maybe. Worth it.”

  I took the bottle and felt its comfort spill through me.

  “How is these things started?” he asked. “I mean do I ask after them first or do I tell them about me? I ain’t much experienced with correspondence. Getting or sending.”

  I hadn’t read a letter home in my life and so didn’t know how a man was to start one. I imagined Pa opening a letter from Noah. I could see what he would want to know first and second, and what he wouldn’t want to know at all.

  “Tell them that you are well. Then wish them good health. From there we’ll read it over and see where we stand.”

  Greenie was a good-looking man but words slowed him down some. I did my best to follow his dictation but I had to fill in some gaps on my own choosing.

  “Okay, read it back to me.”

  “Dear Folks, This is Joseph, your youngest boy. I am in good health and in better spirits. I have grown some since you saw me last but I still wear the boy-face you give me. Because of it my friends call me Greenie. Are you in good health and spirits? I hope so. I think of you often.”

  “Now what should I say?”

  “Tell them what you have been doing for money and what dreams you got for your future. Tell them you will return home soon.”

  He took a sip from the bottle we was sharing. “Will I?”

  “Sure you will. A man owes it to his folks to return from time to time. Anyhow they’d like to hear it, I reckon.”

  “Add to it something pretty sounding at the end,” he said. “Like what a good church boy would say. Say something about the savior. My folks is Baptists.”

  I give this some thought. “May the good Lord bless and support you until I might arrive home to take up the efforts my own self.”

  “Yes, that’s it. That’s right. Damnation. You good, Straight.”

  I handed him the letter. “Now sign your name there.”

  He was slow to touch the paper. “I ain’t got nothing but my initials.”

  “Then that’s what they’ll want.”

  When he was done he looked the letter over in the light.

  My writing wasn’t nothing fancy but I believed it to be legible. I learned it copying the Good Book. It pleased him plenty. He give me the remainder of the bottle. “What’s your girl’s name anyhow?”

  I said the first name that come to me. “Elizabeth Annalee.”

  “What’s she like?” He was sitting on the edge of his bed looking at me in the candlelight.

  I told him of her orphan background and how she dreamed of a wholesome marriage. I told him I wasn’t the type for marriage so I left her. It all come out sounding very manlike, the way I laid it.

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean, what is she like?”

  Men save a precise tone for conversations about love acts, and I had come to know that no matter the meaning of the words spoken in that tone, the content was lust. I summoned the manly elements within me. Men always spoke first of shapes. “She’s about yea tall and her hips come out like this and her chest is, well, just about proportional.”

  “Proportional. So big then?”

  “Big? Good size. Healthy. Plenty of milk.”

  “I like good-size tits.”

  “Yes, me too. Good-size tits is nice.” I tried to fathom what it was men did with good-size tits. “They make a kind pillow.”

  “You should get her to bouncing on you. You ever done that?”

  “Course. All manner of bouncing.”

  He looked at me sidelong. “You been schooled proper?”

  “Course I been schooled. Proper.”

  “Bullshit! I can see it in your face! You ain’t never rode your pony into that girl’s stable. Lookee here, we got ourselves a frosty!”

  “A what?”

  “Straight is a frosty! Don’t be ashamed. I was a frosty till I wasn’t no more. Round about the time I turned twelve!”

  Greenie laughed and blew out the candle and lay back on his bed and laughed some more. “We’s gonna get you a proper hayride come payday.”

  * * *

  —

  Late morning the next day we got word of the Wild Bunch from a man on a near-dead horse, he’d ridden all out since dawn.

  The Governor looked to Drummond. “Well, move! Don’t just stand there!”

  We rolled fast and in the afternoon we come through a wide valley with no trees and saw the bloating bodies of two dead horses. In the ash was the metal rims of wagon wheels. There was pools of brown blood baked into the earth. The bodies of four men was then being piled into a wagon by the deputies.

  The sheriff took off his hat to speak to the Governor through the carriage window. “The ones that fought back was killed. The ones who surrendered was stricken of their footwear and firearms and left to walk. The story they’re telling will have folks buying them drinks for some years on.”

  The Governor spoke through clenched teeth. “The gold?”

  The sheriff pursed his lips. “Every ounce of it, sir.”

  I imagined my brother in this very spot of earth. Him wheeling around on his horse, gun smoke leaping from barrels, bullets straying around him. A gunfighter.

  “Straight!” It was the Governor. “Get down here!”

  I climbed down from the top and the door was opened for me to enter the shade of the carriage. The sheriff cocked his head at the sight of me, but he could not remember where we’d met
before. I tipped my hat to him. “Sheriff.”

  I put a foot to the step, and entered the carriage with the Governor and he pulled shut the door behind me. I was expecting a conversation about Harney.

  “We’re making a detour,” the Governor said. “Put your feet up and rest those eyes. I have a business associate over in Buckstooth who will gamble large against you. He has a thing against little men with big mouths. So run that mouth of yours.”

  I nodded. I pointed at the tracks. “Shouldn’t we get after the Wild Bunch?”

  The Governor passed a cigar below his nose. “And what would you do, young Straight, that the posse already in pursuit would not?”

  I thought for an answer. “Well . . .”

  The Governor called to the driver, “Move quick. We must catch Mr. Cliffpatrick before he boards his train.” The Governor lit a cigar and looked me over. “You will find that I am the type who prefers healthy distraction when the moment doesn’t allow for decisive action.”

  The driver’s voice responded through the carriage wall. “We will arrive back after dark, sir.”

  The Governor roared, “By God, I know the distance in terms more nuanced. . . . How many of this territory’s features bare my . . . Just for this once do as I say and drive, and leave the thinking to men born for it.”

  We arrived in Buckstooth to learn that Mr. Cliffpatrick had left the preceding day, earlier than planned due to concerns for his safety. This set the Governor in a worse mood, and I was glad to return to the top of the carriage for the long ride back in the dark.

  * * *

  —

  In the days ahead I lost my first two wagers when my bullets passed behind their saucers. The problem was all mine. My mind was on my brother, even when I took aim.

  After the second loss the Governor was down nine hundred on me, and didn’t so much as look my way for three full days. I was sure my time in his employ was coming to a fast end.

  I asked Greenie about it the night of my second loss, as we laid out in our bunks. “Think he’ll cut me loose?”

  “Oh, he ain’t gonna do that over a couple losses. He just gets in his moods is all. You’s safe until he finds a shooter he likes better.”

  * * *

  —

  I was on the range practicing when Charles brought word the Governor needed me down at the capitol building. Ingrid wasn’t saddled but one of the big buckskins was, and I had to lead the animal alongside a rock so that I might reach my boot to the stirrup.

  We thundered down the road and I understood all I was missing riding a small horse. I didn’t even know the buckskin’s name but he was the trustful type and he knew just where to take us and what speed. As we crossed town all eyes followed me and my tall horse and the Winchester I perched on my thigh. I was riding with the Governor’s brand and wearing the duster and cruel black hat of his guard. No man dared look me in the eye.

  That was some potent medicine.

  * * *

  —

  I found the Governor standing beside a teardrop of a man. Mr. Hershel was his name and he was the owner of the rail line, in town for a meeting about Harney. He wore a brown suit with a cut so particular it couldn’t fit another man on this earth. There wasn’t no jaw to Mr. Hershel at all, just flesh drooping from his eyes all the way to his collar. He wore spectacles and leaned on a cane.

  When he saw me Mr. Hershel tapped his cane to my right arm. “Your employer was quick to offer a wager this day. I wasn’t two minutes off the car when he proposed a shooting. Now I wonder if I’m here to discuss Harney at all or if this isn’t all a ruse to arrange long-sought retribution. I’ve known the good Governor three decades now and can say he’s rarely shown such enthusiasm for one of his guns. Which has me worried about my money. Yet if you’re as good as he seems to believe, a thousand may be a fitting ticket price. How much have I taken from you over the years in these wagers, good friend? Your Governor keeps an exacting total.”

  “Two thousand one hundred and fifteen dollars,” the Governor said. “But it is Mr. Cliffpatrick who holds me deepest.”

  Hershel’s shooter was Shamus Wilbur Pickett, better known as Famous Shamus. He was a beanpole of a man, whose long arms unfolded like a vulture’s wings. The contest was the standard for wagering men at travel. What made it less standard was the newspaper boys who showed up.

  One stood about with paper and pencil while the other asked us to pose for pictures. They witnessed the moment I bested Famous Shamus on the quickdraw.

  Afterward the Governor slapped me on the back. “I knew the pressure of the newspapermen would help your aim! You are the rarest kind, Jesse. Like Drummond. The question is, will you turn to stone when the bullets come at you.”

  “At me, sir?”

  He laughed, his big hand wrapped tight about the back of my neck. “Don’t worry, Straight. You’re too valuable to risk.”

  The next day the paper was sitting in the foyer. There was my image beside the joyful Governor, my hand still holding the Peacemaker. Behind us was a droopy-looking Hershel and Pickett. All our eyes was downrange on the target I just hit. The caption read, “Faster than Famous Shamus, but is he faster than Harney?”

  The Governor went red at the sight.

  That afternoon the editor of the paper come to the house with the man who wrote the caption. The stone walls could not contain the Governor’s wrath. We heard a brass spittoon go bouncing down the hall. The editor and his man left with their hats in hand, but the Governor wasn’t done. He chased them out. “How is Harney news when he wasn’t even there? Huh? Tell me that, Straight? How can a low-down bandit hold so much attention when great men are each day building a nation from dust? Am I the only man on guard for such inequities?”

  I admit I was in awe of the sway my brother held over the untouchable Governor. But I played my part. “Let me near him, Boss. Put me up against Harney and we’ll see who’s still standing.”

  At this, the Governor pulled the cigar from his lips. “If only he could be lured here by a wager so big . . .”

  “Charles!” The Governor was calling down the hallway now. “Charles!”

  A door opened and out stepped the butler. “Yes, sir, how may I serve?”

  “Charles, we must draft a letter.”

  “A letter to whom, sir?”

  “To that blasted felon.”

  “Of course, sir. May I ask, where will we send it?”

  The Governor turned his cigar. “We could place the letter in the paper!”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “That could be done. However, sir, might it send the impression that you two are on equal footing? Might your constituency—”

  “Good point, Charles. I rushed ahead of myself. Never mind. I was, but for a moment, a victim of emotion.”

  * * *

  —

  I spent my first ever payday standing guard outside buildings in the hot summer sun. But no heat could turn my thoughts from that pile of money I would gain come nightfall. I was learning money can be its own whiskey.

  I was wet when we returned to the estate. Even my new hat was soaked through. Greenie and the others went to the bath. I stayed behind. “Come on, Straight,” Drummond called into my room. “You smell like a burned pig.”

  I made like I was busy until he left. Then I shut tight the door and wasted not a moment in stripping down. I put a cloth to a bowl of water and set about scrubbing the sweat and dust from my skin.

  I had softened up some since arriving here. My legs was like sticks below the knee but above they was getting fleshy with all the grub I was eating.

  I wiped clean my thigh and saw blood mixed with the dirt. I reached a finger to confirm that I was in fact experiencing my womanly bleeding. It never appeared regular for me in this life, but when it arrived it always started light and grew heavy a day on.

  In the kitc
hen I dug around until I found a pair of thick rags. I returned to my room and shut tight the door once again and commenced tearing the cloth into small pieces I could fold and position proper. I tucked the extras into my shirt pocket.

  * * *

  —

  We took our pay to town that night, the boys and me. I was flush with drink by the time supper was through and so I didn’t have my best interests in mind when I agreed to go. Probably wasn’t no getting out of the trip nohow. We saddled up, the four of us, and put the animals to a canter and watched the last glow of the day fade into purple.

  “You can have any one of them you want,” Greenie said, “except for Miss Aberdeen.”

  “Greenie has been in love with that Aberdeen since we rode him down there on his first payday,” Drummond said.

  “She understands me is why. She comes from Tennessee too.”

  “Son, she don’t understand nothing but what’s writ on a bill. She’s probably from Iowa if the man of the moment is from Iowa.”

  “You don’t know her,” Greenie said. “I won’t stand you talking down on that sweet gal. She’s the most honest whore I ever met.”

  Drummond laughed. The money had put us all in good humor. “You just get greener and greener. What’s your type of ride, Straight? No, let me guess.”

  Tuss leapt on. “I reckon the bigger the better.”

  “No,” Drummond said. “A wide gal would scare this kid.”

  Greenie laughed. “Should we tell them? You saggy old bucks won’t believe this. Jesse here is a frosty.”

  Tuss slapped his leg. “Boy, howdy! A genuine frosty? Can’t be. How old is you anyhow?”

  Drummond exhaled smoke. “I didn’t know they was making frosties no more.”

  Tuss took Greenie’s tobacco from Drummond. “I thought Yanks was born bred by their uncles.”

  “Hey, pass that over here,” Greenie said.

  “Not before I twist me one for now and two for later,” Tuss said. “Huh, Jesse? Is it true?”

  I was bolstered by the bottle in my pocket. “I like me a lot of woman for the riding.”