by John Larison
I knew then despite the mask and the costume and all sense of reason that this musician before me was my Noah.
“What is it?” Greenie asked.
“I can’t do this!” Constance was shouting. “Stop, don’t touch me! I won’t do this! I can’t . . .”
There was a commotion then at the door and eyes turned from the dancers to look. One of the soldiers was attempting to stop someone from entering and I heard Miss Mildred’s voice ring out, “Let me through!”
At this all other eyes turned toward the door and even Constance herself turned and the Governor barked at the guard to leave Miss Mildred alone. Miss Mildred crossed the dance floor with purpose. She was tiny and yet a path cleared before her as it would for a lion. She put a hand to the neck of the musician’s guitar. The song went still. At the sight of the player’s eyes, any last doubts vanished. Here was my brother!
But here?
“This is not holy or right,” Miss Mildred announced. She raised a finger and leveled it on her son.
He sidestepped from it as if that finger was a barrel.
Miss Mildred called, “There is no love here, don’t you see? The premise is in error. The whole house is built upon a lie!”
The Governor moved to put an arm around his mother and laughed and showed his laugh to the crowd of masked guests and they took this to be evidence of a bizarre joke and laughed with him.
Miss Mildred pulled from her son and took her granddaughter by the arm. “Do you want to go?”
Constance nodded.
“Stop!” the Governor bellowed. At once he seemed to remember the audience about him. Maybe he thought of the headlines the next day, for in the corner stood reporters from five newspapers. A smile passed over the king’s face, wide and gleaming white. He addressed all of us. “My poor mother is ill of mind. Please join me in forgiving this intrusion. Age will leave us all in a state of confusion, I fear.”
Constance walked with her grandmother toward the door.
The king was nodding at me. Drummond and Greenie was already moving to block the exit.
When I looked back I saw the guitar player frozen, his instrument hanging at his side, his dark eyes upon me. One of his band said something in his ear but still he stared. My brother knew me.
The banjo player left the stage and followed a few steps behind Greenie and Drummond. The two of them now stood at the threshold, and Constance was yelling at them to let her out. The player simply drew Constance out of the way and shut the door on the men and turned the latch on the lock.
Then the man swung his banjo against the wall and the neck shattered. He drew from the instrument a pistol and shot the senator through his head.
Hot jam splattered about the room and screams erupted and a great wind blew people across the floor and shots barked from every corner and great plumes of powder smoke belched through the air and a musician held Constance from behind and her feet kicked high in the air and another placed a feed bag over her head and these men ran with her through the havoc and the agony of the wounded and the Governor crumpled with a wound, and still Noah stood on the stage, still Noah stood looking on me. A photographer’s flash burst.
Noah come straight for me and stepped over the man in buckskin with the flintlock who was on his knees and covering his head to the reality, and Noah placed his hand to my shoulder. My brother touched me. He lifted the mask from his face and opened his mouth to speak and said only, “Jess.”
The rest lives on in me as if from dream.
I remember Agent Thorvald on the balcony reloading both barrels of his scattergun, flipping it closed, and taking aim on us. I drew and shot him through the throat. He bucked and staggered.
Plaster rained from the ceiling and we flinched against it. The air was fogged now with too much gun smoke. My ears rang so loud I only saw the bark of fire from barrels but didn’t hear their bursts.
I know Noah swung his guitar against the floor and pulled from its guts a six-shooter and shot a militiaman as he leveled his rifle. The bullet entered the eye and the life dropped out the man at once.
“This way!” I hollered.
We went down the stairs toward the kitchen and as we passed by a platter upon the table Noah took up a drumstick and ate it as we walked. We passed through the kitchen and out the side door and into a night lit by gunfire.
We emerged and saw the others firing on militiamen who now had no choice but to cling to the fronts of their defenses. They had built their structures to ward off an attack from outside, not from within. Through the mayhem rode a lone man with a string of the Governor’s own buckskins. My brother said calm as dawn, “You ride with me.” He leapt onto his saddle and reached a hand back toward me. A bullet ripped between us.
Constance was still bagged but now she was sitting atop a saddle and being tied with cattle rope to the horn. Another man was tying her feet to the stirrups. She screamed and thrashed but there wasn’t no easy way to come loose from such a web.
“I ain’t leaving Ingrid.”
“Ingrid? You mean . . . ?”
“She’s in the stable.”
Noah looked up at the house. Bullets come at us from two directions and his people returned fire and militiamen ducked for cover. He flicked the chicken bone into the night and licked his fingers. “Well, better hurry.”
I didn’t bother with the saddle or reins but only swung on in the stable and gave Ingrid the heels and ducked the door and we burst into the night at a full run.
We joined them in the darkness and bolted as bullets sliced the air over our heads and sparked from rocks at our feet, and we continued toward the mountain by moonlight, our human eyes unable to see but trusting the horse in its bounding gait. I counted eight, plus Constance and me.
We was pounding the sage when the man beside me cursed and touched his hand to his shoulder and cursed again. He lost his rhythm with his mount and fell sidelong to the earth. No one else saw but me.
Ingrid wheeled back and I leapt to the ground and helped the man stand. He was shot through the shoulder. We was outside the accuracy of their rifles now but still the bullets whined overhead and clattered through the sage. “My mare ain’t big enough for two,” I panted.
He drew his pistol and took aim back at the men saddling to come for us. “Go,” he barked. “I’ll hold them long as I can!”
But then from the dark come the sound of hooves and Noah appeared, trailing the man’s gelding by the reins. “You fit to ride?”
“I think I can.”
“Then this ain’t the moment for your death.”
The wounded man tucked his pistol in his waist with his good arm and then used the same to grip the horn and swing up. We rode on.
At the bend in the mountain we didn’t turn up as I expected. We cut across the gully and along the slope of sage and then headed back down the mountain the same direction we had come, only some hundred yards into the timber. We rode within sight of the estate and I could see smoke bellowing from the palace. Someone had set its guts afire.
We cut from the wilds and come into the heart of town by a rare-used road. We continued into the heart of the city, where our tracks mixed with the thousands of others on the dusty streets and we slowed to a walk. Men turned their horses down alleys. Soon it was Noah and me. Constance was not with us. I asked a question but he put his finger to his lips and continued walking his horse as if he was in no hurry at all.
By full moon we rode east out of Pearlsville. We kept our pace for some miles. But Ingrid could not keep up with the big buckskin. My brother called for me to leap to his saddle and I done so and caught myself by his shoulders. Ingrid kept with us now that she was lighter my weight.
So I clung to my brother and buried my cheek into his back and listened to the thundering of his heart and the hooves below us and I believed all over again in the Lord’s vision.
He had been there all this time! All my suffering, all my hardships, He knew! All my sins, He forgave them!
IV
In the wee hours of the morning, we come to stop at a barn and turned loose the horses into a pine corral. Ingrid was lathered and worn and so didn’t protest the treatment.
Just as soon as the gate was tied I jumped on Noah’s back and kissed his hair and he flipped me over his shoulder and the two of us went into the dust laughing. He put me in a headlock and knuckled my hair until I begged mercy. Soon as he let go, I kneed him in the guts and climbed on top and started slapping at his face until he rolled me. Then we lay there on our backs laughing it off and watching the stars shoot.
“How’d you manage that anyhow?” Noah asked. “The guardsmen?”
“Shot my way in, brother. I might best you with this here Peacemaker.”
He howled. He sat up. “No, for real.”
“How else would I get on his guard?”
He turned and looked at me in the moonlight. “Who taught you to draw?”
I thought of Pa and sat up and found my hat and brushed it clean. “There’s a lot to tell, brother.”
I think he sensed the news and didn’t want it. He stood and offered me a hand and powered me from the ground. He brushed some pine needles from my jacket. “Hell of a costume you wearing. I was up on that stage, and ain’t nothing I notice in this world when I’m playing music but for the Lord’s own grace, and there I seen you. Except it ain’t you. It’s a goshdarn guardsman, but for once I don’t want to see this one bleed.” The years had deepened and coarsened his voice. I couldn’t get enough of it.
“What’d you think when you saw me?”
“Think? Well, standing up there, before I knew you was my sister—ah, it sounds too queer to say it.”
“Say it, brother. You got to now.”
He shrugged. “Even before I knew it was you, I knew I loved you.”
He put his arm around me and drew me near and for a long time we leaned on the other and didn’t say nothing at all.
* * *
—
The men gathered about the corral as they rode in. They hollered and pushed and pulled bottles from jackets. “Did you see her? She’s prettier even than they said!”
Constance had still not arrived. I could see my brother watching the darkness for any sign.
The men each acknowledged my brother with a downward nod of the head. Just the same as Greenie and me would do if we walked into a room and saw Drummond standing there. One of my brother’s crew said, “Did you see the gals go to butter when you played that tune?”
Another threw his hat in the air before he was even off his horse and howled and then marched over to shake my brother’s hand. “You said it would work and I didn’t know but goddamn if that wasn’t slick as sauce!”
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, Mason,” my brother said. “But watch that tongue. The Lord has blessed us by keeping us all alive once again and we won’t reward Him with disrespect, now will we?”
“No, sir!” Mason said. “Tonight, I’ll do just as He asks. No premarital congress or taking His name in vain or any of that other goddamn shit.” He turned to the sky. He was a big man, and powerful. “You hear me, Lord? I love you! And I love this man here!” The bandit took my brother in his arms and slapped his back. “I’d follow this man anywhere! This man has your attention!”
A third man didn’t say nothing but just swaggered near and hung his arms over the corral and spat. My brother straightened up and hung his arms too and muttered so low I nearly missed it, “Nice play with the door, partner.”
This new man was thin and small shouldered and dark. He was the one who had locked out Greenie and Drummond in one move. His face was familiar to me now. This was the Moonshine Kid from the wanted posters I’d seen tacked up beside my brother’s. He tossed a thumb my way but didn’t look. “Who’s this?”
My brother turned to me and smiled. “Annette. Meet my sister, Jessilyn.”
The man took off his hat and I saw he wasn’t no man at all. She was lean and her jaw was sharp as Noah’s. She wore a pistol on her hip and a rifle slung across her back like a brave. Her hair was shorter than mine. “You had a man on the inside all this time?” That voice was powder igniting.
My brother shrugged. “Guess so. Didn’t know until the heat but never hurts to have a friend where you don’t expect one.”
“Jessilyn?” Mason blurted. He looked on me hard. He looked to Annette. Then he looked eye to eye with my brother. “What’s happening to womenfolk these days?”
* * *
—
When Constance arrived I saw she wasn’t no more in her feed bag. Her feet wasn’t tied to the stirrups, her hands was loose. She wore a man’s riding jacket over her fancy dress, and a man’s hat as well. Her hair was tucked up inside.
The boys all went quiet and turned toward her. She was steering her own horse.
Noah put his hand to her mount’s nose and patted the animal’s neck. “Smooth enough. I only wish we had got there in time for Will,” he said.
At the name she stiffened.
My brother offered her a hand but she swung her legs and leapt to the ground with considerable skill. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt Father.”
Noah turned to the boys all watching. “Did we hurt her old man?”
There was a hard silence. The boys toed the dirt. A voice said, “I mighta seen him take a stray round to the wing.”
Noah drew a breath and shook his head. “What was the one rule? Huh?”
Annette had been leaning on a pine but now she stood tall. “Was a considerable fight, but you boys knew the rules.” She looked over the men and spat. “You better hope I don’t learn one of you took intentional aim on that man.”
Noah touched Constance’s elbow and said, “Come on this way. We got a meal ready for you, dear. Your first meal in freedom. I will learn of your father’s health, okay?”
As we neared the barn I could see light inside.
“Baby! You there, baby?” At the door stood a full woman in a dress with her hair down. I could see it was curly and tamed, and her voice was sweet as molasses.
“I’m here, sugarbread!” shouted Noah. “You won’t believe what I rustled up.”
The woman come running from the doorway and leapt in the air and Noah took her in his arms and spun her and kissed her proper. When she landed her hands could not keep off his person. One was around his back and the other she planted on his heart. Her eyes was like diamonds in the moonlight. “Is this here our guest of honor?”
“This is Constance Pearl.”
“Oh!” the woman exclaimed. She was tall with an ample chest and her dress did nice things to her shapes. “It’s such a high pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Constance. I feel like I know you from your letters. Where’s your man? Mr. Will?”
Noah explained the sad news and the woman took Constance in her arms and I saw a genuine tear roll from her eye.
Noah said, “But Constance ain’t the surprise.” My brother pointed at me. “Jane, this little man before you, this little man be my sister.”
“Jessilyn?” the woman said.
“This here is Jane Saint-Steel,” Noah said. “She’s my woman.”
Jane put her fingers to my hand. “Oh, come into the light and let me set eyes on you! Your brother hasn’t told me enough. I’ve been so dying to meet you!” Then she took Constance’s hand too, and the three of us crossed to the barn. “Two new friends, just like that! You just never can tell what the day will bring.”
* * *
—
The barn was worn and weather beaten but there was room there for us all. The bandits was laughing over their steaming bowls of venison stew. A cat twisted about their ankles. One bent to pet it. These boys was hard faced bu
t young, most my age thereabouts. They was all colors and persuasions. The only thing they had in common was the guns they was wearing. And the way they looked at my brother. This was Noah’s Wild Bunch.
One of the Chinamen among them had ten years easy on Noah. His head was shaved bald and wrinkles formed about his eyes when he laughed. He flicked a man’s ear in jest. He lifted a bowl to his lips and drank it down.
We had two wounded. The one I had helped, who I would come to know as Pale Jay, sat with his shirt off and hot blood soaked through the white cloth wrapped tight around his shoulder. The bullet gone clean through. He held the arm to his body and ate with his good hand. The other wounded man had took a blast from the agent’s scattergun. He had six or eight trails of blood coming down his back and a stick in his teeth. One of the boys took a knife to the wounds and dug out the lead, piece by piece. He handed each one to the man to ponder. They both was laughing.
The one they called Annette sat by the fireplace with her bowl balanced on her knees. Her eyes was black and glistening and mean. I could see she too passed as a man when she wanted to. It come natural to her given her height and jaw. She wore a cowboy’s jeans with sheepskin chaps. Her shirt was plaid and unbuttoned at the top. She wore a bear-hide vest for warmth.
“Be careful of Annette.” Noah was holding two bowls of stew and give one to Constance and the other to me. “She bites.” Then he took up Jane in his arms and the two of them shared some private language. Jane squealed in delight. It was halfway to morning and this party was just starting.
Constance set her stew aside untouched. “So you were involved in my escape the whole time? I never fancied it.”
“I’m more surprised than you,” I admitted. “So the feed bag on your head, all the screaming and kicking, that was for a show? Damn persuasive.”
“Yes, well. I wanted to walk away and for father to know it was me who chose to leave.” She looked at Noah where he stood. “The feed bag, I suspect, was for the newspapermen.”