Whiskey When We're Dry

by John Larison

  “Whose girl?”

  “Don’t lie to me. Ain’t no secret the way your eyes follow that one. Natural enough, I know, but you rein back them eyes, son. Don’t be foolhardy. That honey ain’t worth waking the bear.”

  I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t know what to say.

  “There’s talk about the house,” he began. “I ain’t telling you this for gossip sake. When it’s his daughter there won’t be no jury by your peers, if you follow the horse I’m riding.”

  Drummond spat and pointed his chin at my arm. “Try dropping that elbow.”

  “My elbow?”

  “When you shoot.”

  I took aim on an iron plate at a hundred yards and fired. The bullet hit the plate square. I worked the action and hit it square again.

  I opened the action and ejected the last empty shell. “I’ll take any more advice you got.”

  Drummond took the Winchester from my hands and showed me his preferred grip on the front stock. “You’re applying pressure on them follow-up shots. You’re thinking about reloading. You ain’t staying true to your trigger. Follow that lead through its target.”

  Drummond handed me back the Winchester. He looked at me with a peculiar heaviness. “It is different when the bullets come at us. Matter of time, you’ll see. When the bullets fly, it ain’t him I think about. It’s us.”

  I watched him limp back toward the house. I watched until he was near the doors and then I racked in another shell and took aim downrange. When my bullet missed the bull’s-eye it was Drummond’s voice I heard telling me why.

  * * *

  —

  The following day a string of carriages arrived carrying businessmen and their guards. After meeting inside they spilled out to the range with tumblers in hand. Wagers was placed and cash monies counted out on the table and then I was put up against their best. He was an Indian with short hair and dressed in the fine suit of his patrons. His hat was much like the Governor’s.

  When the Indian offered his hand in the customary shake I was thinking of magpies on the girl I left out.

  The Indian drew back his hand and rested it on his pistol butt. He spat on my boot.

  My blood went to a boil without no warning at all. I just swung on the man. My fist done broke his nose.

  The Governor himself pulled me off. I saw the men he was wagering against and how they was laughing and all at once I felt damn foolish. The Governor helped me to my feet and slipped the toe of his boot under my hat and kicked it up and caught it and placed it back on my head. “Straight here lost his parents to the reds.”

  “Yes,” a rich man said. “Too many did.”

  The Indian was straightening his nose. He spat blood and cursed me.

  The Governor commanded me inside to right myself, but he himself walked me across the yard. His arm was about my neck and he said in my ear, “Hell of a blow! Good show. But learn to swing with your left. We can’t have you breaking that trigger finger.”

  Inside I was twisted with doubt. I couldn’t explain even to myself why I had hit that man. These years on, I see I was only trying to hit myself.

  * * *

  —

  Boss had to schedule a rematch with the Indian and his keepers. When it come I kept my eyes on the target. I was ashamed for my heat, for breaking his nose, for being laughed at. But I knew by then how to twist shame into its own hunger. I outshot the Indian each round and on the last I beat him two to one.

  Afterward the same two media boys done an interview on me. I was stunned until I put it together that this little interview piece was how they was making up to the Governor for that earlier caption. The Governor wasn’t just the subject of the paper, he was its owner as well. So the piece they wrote on me was about as truthful to what I told them as what I told them was to the honest facts of the matter. I remember opening that paper and reading that given twin pistols I could fire twelve rounds in three seconds and keep them all in a man’s heart at fifty paces. This come as news to me.

  My picture turned out fancy. It’s the one that ran months later in all the papers beside Noah’s. Him with a Winchester and peep sight, and me holding Peacemakers across my chest. This time the caption read, “Fastest man living, Jesse Straight, of the Governor’s guard.”

  * * *

  —

  In the holehouse I counted out my monies. I had over two hundred dollars. It was a mountain. Hard to manage even. Had Pa ever held so much money?

  I took twenty-five dollars and folded the bills and put them in my breast pocket. The rest I rolled into their satchel and tied back in their place. For a moment I considered taking it all in my pocket just to be near it, but Pa wouldn’t never do something so dumb.

  The thought occurred to me then that I could simply stay on with the Governor a year and return with enough money to buy a herd and hire the hands I needed to run the place. A year here and I could take on Mr. Saggat himself.

  Maybe that’s when I first felt the difference.

  When I thought of the life Pa had built for us, there was a boredom within me now. The prospect of those lonely days and the drab work and the worry of market prices and rustlers and lions and disease. I didn’t miss it. Who was I if I didn’t miss the life I was here trying to recover? I missed the land but I didn’t miss the hunger, the solitude. I hadn’t known when I was living it, but that life was lackluster.

  Pa give his breath trying to make our spread work. And here I was not even putting value in what he’d built up.

  I punished myself by remembering Pa’s remains in every detail just as I found them upon the earth. I dwelled for a long time on the particular manner of his hair scattering in the wind.

  * * *

  —

  I found Drummond sitting over a bowl of grub. I placed the twenty-five dollars beside him.

  “What’s this?”

  “Even things out,” I said. “For the coaching.”

  He held the money and looked at me. He tucked it in his pocket. “Twelve bullets in three seconds, a mule’s ass.”

  “Boss was the one answering their questions mostly. Can I ask you something?”

  Drummond shrugged. “You probably going to even if I say no.”

  “You ever afraid of catching a bullet?”

  “Nah. You can’t see bullets coming at you. Arrows, now that’s another matter. An arrow bends and falls and you gotta make a dodge. Can’t think of nothing else but dodging. Hurts less than you figure if’n you get hit, unless the point hits bone, then its god-awful, blinding, make-your-teeth-ache pain.”

  “What’s a bullet feel like?”

  “Like a horse done kicked you, then set you on fire. But you can’t see bullets.” His gaze narrowed. “You ain’t losing your confidence, is you? I give you shit over the newspaper and such but . . .”

  He pushed his bowl aside. “Listen, LP. Some men, most, I reckon, figure they the kind to miss. So they miss. What I seen right off in you, what the Governor done seen too—missing ain’t in your bones. Now tell me, you hungry or full?”

  “Hungry.”

  “Good. That’s right. Hungry will put your bullets where you look.”

  He put in a plug and offered me his pouch. He said, “Honest? The only hit I fear is the gut shot. Gut shot ain’t no way to die. But there ain’t no other way around it, a bullet comes through your belly, you got a day or two of the worst living reckonable. I seen it. If’n we talking honest, that’s what wakes me up nights. Wouldn’t wish it even on Harney. There ain’t no turning the tables on the gut shot.”

  “Yessir.”

  He stood from the table. He pulled the bills I gave him from his pocket. “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  He put them back. “Promise me something. If it’s just you and me and I’m hit through them guts, you put one here.” He touched his finger
to the space between his eyes. “I ain’t joshing. Don’t make no friend go on living when he’s done for. End it quick for him.” He touched his finger again to the point between his eyes. “We do that for each other and we can put the fear to rest some. You understand?”

  “Yessir, I do.”

  * * *

  —

  When Greenie returned that night I was in bed thumbing through the Bible I found upstairs. Greenie held a bottle in his hand and offered me a nightcap. His straw bed crackled under his weight.

  We laid there watching the candle throw shadows on the ceiling.

  I whispered, “Do you intend to be a hired gun your whole life?”

  “I couldn’t make half this much money doing nothing else. I’d be hermit-lonesome without the crew. But someday maybe I’ll take my earnings and ride home and buy the spread next to my folks and find me a gal to be the mother to some children.”

  “Really?”

  “Nah. I know that’s what I’m supposed to want. But what woman could ever understand? You understand. I don’t got to explain nothing to the crew. Do you think it’s wrong for a man not to want the wife and such?”

  I pushed the book aside. “I think a man gets to want whatever he wants.”

  “I think I used to want those things,” he said. “I think I can remember being a boy and wanting a girl and a family and a spread. Seems awful far off now.”

  “What do you want from this life if not family and land of your own?”

  “Honest?”

  “Honest.”

  “Most the time I’m riding around hoping some fool will make a try. I watch it in my head most the day. I see the fool first and I draw down and drop him in the dust before he gets a shot off.”

  “That’s what you want?”

  “No. I don’t know. I want that as much as anything. But I know it ain’t right to want a killing. I ain’t a savage. I’m just a kid from Tennessee who gets bored easy.”

  I passed him the bottle.

  He finished it. “This helps.”

  “Yeah, it do. Does Miss Aberdeen help?”

  He sat up and looked on me. “I wish she did. What about your gal?”

  “I ain’t of the mind to go back,” I said in all honesty.

  The candle flickered. It was low and would be soon smoking. Greenie licked his fingers and squeezed the wick, and I heard him lie back in bed.

  “I’m glad you’re here, LP,” he said in the darkness. “Now I see I was lonesome before you come.”

  “I was lonesome too, friend.”

  * * *

  —

  The next day I saw Will unloading a cart of split wood before the shack where the Governor’s mother lived. He was stacking the wood upon her porch. I walked out toward him. I shed my duster and rolled up my sleeves.

  “Is she here?” I took up an armload of quarters and palmed one extra in my free hand.

  Will passed his forearm over his brow. “Who knows where she is. That woman runs a mad trapline.” He pointed his chin to the heap of worthless rabbit and badger pelts upon the porch. Two fresh ones was staked out on a board.

  “She selling them hides?”

  He shrugged. “Eating their wearers, I think.”

  “Badgers? Don’t she got all the lamb and beefsteak she could ever fancy inside?”

  Will laughed. “She doesn’t come inside.”

  I took up a new armload and was grateful for a labor of the body for once.

  Will set his quarters in place. Sweat ran down his neck and soaked his shirt. “This isn’t a job of yours, so what is it you want from me?”

  It is true I wanted to know what had brought Will into the Governor’s office that day. Ever since, I had been seeking a cause to find myself alone with him. But now we was together, I couldn’t think of no way to bring up the subject without him turning the inquiry on me. “What do you think of Harney?” I asked.

  Will squinted. “Who?”

  I started to explain, but then saw by his eyes he was playing me.

  “It’s so sad,” he said. “To see a good man like the Governor getting picked on by his constituency.” Will scratched his cheek.

  I couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  Will almost smiled. “He sent you to ask questions, or something?”

  “Nah. Nobody sent me. Stacking wood feels like home is all,” I said.

  “Is that right? Well, then, let’s load you up.” He stacked the wood so deep I had to feel my way to the porch with a toe.

  He palmed two quarters and tossed them into place and wiped the sweat from his brow and studied me for a long minute. It was the kind of look he would not dare in the company of white men.

  “I get the feeling we ought to talk,” I said. “Somewheres else.”

  He turned back to the wood. He loaded his left arm. He said, “Guardsmen don’t talk to niggers.”

  We finished the work in silence and then took a moment in the shade to catch our breath. Before us was the vast sage and the wavering heat. There wasn’t nobody else outside. I drew my flask and offered it to him. He declined. I took a pull for my own self and wiped the sweat from my eyes.

  Even the horses was sticking to the shade of the stable.

  “Thanks for the hand,” he said, and walked back toward the house.

  * * *

  —

  My first action come that week. I was in town with the Winchester in hand and a half-empty bottle hidden in my pocket. Before me was a crowd of disgruntled laborers. I was only thinking about when I might sneak a pull of whiskey.

  Greenie and me was on either side of a door that contained the Governor when a bottle broke on the wall. The shouts of the laborers climbed in volume and the whole mass of them surged toward us.

  Greenie fired a shot over their heads and the mass stumbled backward as he intended. He marched toward them with no fear at all, and men fell upon one another to move out his path.

  That’s when a small man rushed out from the shade of the building. In his fist was a silver blade.

  I know I hollered as the Winchester leveled, but he didn’t stop and I fired. It happened that fast and with that much thought. If I hadn’t, Greenie may have taken a knife to his back.

  There was another shot then too, this one from Greenie. I heard a man in the crowd cry out in pain.

  Greenie leveled his rifle on the mass of men, as did I. They was a force many times our number, they could’ve tore us limb from limb, but instead they dispersed before us like rats in lantern light. To see big men turn tails and run from our guns was its own pull of whiskey.

  The Governor himself opened the door. “What in ruination?”

  The man I shot was writhing on the ground. Greenie’s was gagging in the sun, blood bubbling from his mouth. A pistol lay beside him.

  The Governor paid the wounded no mind. He said to Greenie, “Must we go?”

  “I believe we have it tamed, sir.”

  “Good. Five minutes more and this will be a profitable agreement.” The door shut.

  I went to my man’s side. I took his knife from the ground and put it in my belt. He was hit in the wrist and the abdomen, and for a moment I believed I must have shot twice. But logic revealed it was the same bullet that inflicted both damages.

  He could barely speak he was so scared. He was a man in his middle twenties with a fighting scar on his forehead and a bent nose. His hands was as long as a grizzly paw, though one was going ghost white. He sang, “I’m dying, ain’t I? I’m dying, ain’t I?”

  It occurred to me then in full force that I had put this man upon his back.

  Drummond arrived and stepped a boot to the shot arm. The man roared in pain. “Who put you up to this? Who’s paying you?”

  “Paying me?”

  “You ain’t no Chinaman
, so don’t talk dumb like one.”

  The man looked up toward the blue sky. “I am now heading off to meet my Maker, ain’t I?”

  “This one is fit for the stage,” Drummond said to me. “Look, kid. You took a bullet to the hand and a graze along the belly. See?” Drummond touched the toe of his boot to the belly wound. “The bullet didn’t even hardly cut you. If it had, your guts would be bulging like snakes through a bag. Now, tell me who put you up to this or I will gladly help you encounter your Maker.”

  The man’s head settled back to the earth and he looked up and upon the blue yonder. I could see his mind moving off with the pain.

  Drummond drew his pistol. He cocked the hammer and drove the barrel into the man’s eye.

  The wounded voice cracked. “We heard the Governor was coming. He works us to breaking and then kicks us loose. All the while he charges for food and sleeping and even our goddamn water. Who put us up to this? Your master done put us up to this!”

  Drummond considered the words. He slipped the pistol back in its place.

  Greenie was standing over the man he shot. The man was now dead. I could see his dead eyes staring off at the buildings. The ground about him was red and glistening. Greenie was looking down at him. Greenie was miles off, looking down.

  Drummond said to me, “Harney is behind this. He is watching us. I can feel it.”

  I looked out from under my black hat and upon this cruel world and the faces watching back. I could’ve gone two ways then, down into a pit of sorrow at what I done to this man—or up on a horse so tall I might just ride free of it.

  Drummond tapped the back of his hand to my chest. “Good work, LP. Too bad you missed but . . .” He winked.

  “Ain’t nothing.” I was testing the words and trying to believe them.

  He tipped his head toward Greenie. “What you just done for him, that there is the highest thing, LP. There ain’t nothing more righteous in this world than defending a brother.”