Whiskey When We're Dry

by John Larison

  Ribbons was strung overhead from the fireplace to the rock walls and they made the sound of bird wings in the breeze.

  A great commotion was let loose upon our arrival and from the houses come men and women of all persuasions. They whooped and hollered and music echoed around that rock. Children chased hoops and dogs chased them and chickens saw the mess coming and figured it was for their flesh and went clucking through the wheels of wagons.

  There was thirty-something souls, plus the Wild Bunch—too many I thought. These others was folks who had been broke by mining or driven from their homesteads by cattle barons or arrived west with too little knowledge of land and water. They had begged for my brother’s charity and he was inclined toward generosity.

  We rolled to a stop before the houses, and Noah leapt down and reached a hand back for Jane and already they was surrounded by people and merriment. Jane at once began introducing Constance to the women.

  Annette and Youn pulled free the tarp and then the man they called Blister jumped up and began heaving the sacks of beans and grits and cornmeal and wheat flour down to waiting arms. Men hefted the sacks to their shoulders and carried them through a door into a building as big as five houses and come back out to grab armloads of feed and give it to the horses.

  The bag the Pinkerton had cut was being sewn back up by a woman in an olive dress. Her fingers moved like lightning and when she was done, two men was ready to heave the heavy sack into storage.

  Noah was telling the story to a flock of children at his feet, boys and girls alike. I took notice. “Then what? Then what?” they shouted until he raised a hand to quiet them.

  His hand formed the shape of a pistol. “The Lord spread His protections upon us and their bullets strayed wide!”

  The children commenced firing on one another with their own finger pistols and Noah looked to me and pulled off his beard and said, “Just like us when we was little, ain’t they? Kids always like the shooting parts best.”

  “Nothing changes,” I said. “You still the storyteller.”

  He smiled. “Everywhere I go, sis, the truth follows.”

  There was Indian children, boys and girls ten to sixteen or thereabouts, all smaller than their years, most dressed in threadbare gray uniforms with their hair cut ragged. I looked about but didn’t see no Indian mas.

  Jane said, “Your brother shot up their school this spring and knocked down the gates once and for all. These poor children had no place to go. Couldn’t remember which way was home.”

  “Why’d he shoot up an injun school?”

  Jane said, “The Lord directed him thus. Those poor children. Soldiers came and took them from their mothers, you know. Claimed it was for their own good.”

  Annette pushed me toward the wagon. “Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Work.”

  I took up a sack of cornmeal and drug it from the wagon and heaved it to my shoulder.

  “Just one?” Annette lifted another, boosted it with a knee, and set it upon my other shoulder.

  I barely held my balance under the weight.

  “Maybe one more?” she said. Before I could respond, she was heaving another sack.

  Noah took that sack himself. He said to me in private tones, “That’s the game she likes to play. Push you till you break. She’ll grow on you, or break you, one of the two.”

  * * *

  —

  The plan had been to deliver Constance and Will to an eastbound train. They would ride to Chicago, then onward to New York City, where they would start over under new names. My brother put his hands in his pockets when he spoke to her. “I got fresh mounts ready to go if you still want to catch that train.”

  Constance leaned on the wagon wheel, her dress dusty and littered with hay. She brushed at that hay but it was no good. All about us men and women went about their labors, all with an eye angled on Constance. She blew the tendrils of hair from her face. She saw nothing but the dirt before her. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I am so lost without him.”

  Jane put her arm about Constance. “Come this way. I’ll lead you to your cottage. It’s the last one, and it isn’t as fancy as you deserve, but it is solid and blessed from on high. Let’s find you some clean clothes, and maybe a cup of tea. Do you drink tea? Tea has a manner of setting the world right. Let’s you and me have a cup and talk it through. What do you say?”

  Constance wiped a tear from her cheek. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Oh, never call me ‘ma’am’! Do I look that old? Consider me your sister.”

  Annette watched Constance and Jane cross the meadow. Her thumbs hung from her gun belt. When she saw me staring, she spat a stream of tobacco. “What you looking on?”

  “Not much,” I said and turned back to the labor at hand.

  * * *

  —

  Jane and Noah lived in a house like all the other houses but theirs had a line of men waiting out front. I entered to find Noah sitting at the table over a bowl of boiled eggs listening to the concerns of an old man who was deaf and shouting so loud my ears set about ringing again.

  Noah shouted as he chipped shell from white, “Let me stop you right there, Mr. James. Is there a point to this ramble? Something you want me to do?”

  The old man thought this over. He shouted, “The Yanks come at us by fives but there wasn’t no lead left so we hacked them to bits with our hatchets.”

  “That’s a fine story, Mr. James.”

  “It ain’t no story a-tall.” He held up his left hand to reveal three missing fingers. “Ask my digits if they think it a story.”

  “I agree with you,” my brother shouted. “With everything. Now, maybe I could come by tomorrow after some proper slumber and hear the rest of this fascinating true event?” Noah rose and helped the old man to his feet and put a hand to his back and guided him toward the door. “And thank you for coming by,” he hollered.

  Then he turned to me wide eyed. “Mr. James’s wife passed last month. She was twice as deaf as he. Maybe you heard their banter in Pearlsville.”

  Mason stood by the door. He put in a cheekful. “’Nother one, Patrón?”

  “It’s like this when I’ve been absent.” Noah took the whole egg at once.

  The next man put his hat in his arms and waited to move from the doorway until Mason directed him to sit. He was older than Noah. Still he said “sir.”

  He took some minutes to get rolling but then come around to his point. “I just believe that maybe there’s enough of us now that we need some manner of government. Like last week when the sugar arrived, folks was having a hard time getting their share. It’s the injuns’ fault. There’s too many of them. Old Miss Wilson asked me to get hers because she was afraid of them little heathens. My wife has a fear of their kind too. Some events of her childhood, you understand. It troubles folks to mix with the reds. Maybe we could send them on, someplace else, someplace they can be their way without offending our womenfolk?”

  Noah washed down his egg with a cup of water.

  “I ain’t faulting you in any way, you understand,” the man said. “I know the Lord called you to set them free. I’m just wondering if He also insisted on them reds coming to live off our winter supplies and such.”

  Noah finished his water. His tin cup met the table with the softest clink. “So you desire a government to help ensure you get your full amount of sugar?”

  “Well, yeah, sort of. That and other matters.”

  “They’s children, Mr. Travis. Them injuns is but children.”

  “But you know their kind.” Mr. Travis nodded gravely. “They could turn on us at any moment.”

  Noah tapped his next egg on the table. “Listen, Mr. Travis, I like you. You’re a hell of a magician and not half bad on the Jew’s harp neither, but three of my boys out there is part injun. What would they think of us
booting some kids just on account they happen to be red? Why not me and Jess here for being part wet? Or you for being a Negro?”

  “But their kind don’t heed our Lord. They don’t belong in . . . All I’m requesting is some—”

  “But have you considered what the Lord is requesting?”

  Mr. Travis looked to the table.

  Noah held the egg in the light and turned it. “The Lord has endowed each of us with the capacities for self-reliance, Mr. Travis. There ain’t no higher calling. He who can tend to his own needs is free to give his faith fully.” He offered the egg across the table to Mr. Travis.

  Mr. Travis looked on the egg. He held up a hand and said he was full.

  “You’ve been with us since April and I would like to see you remain, Mr. Travis.”

  “Me too, sir. Very much. I hope you hear my gratitude.” Mr. Travis turned to me to explain. “We was but days from death and Mr. Harney and his people found us and took us in and filled us with hot soup and charity. We might not have survived without this man. My wife says your name still in her nightly prayer. I didn’t come here to talk ill of you, sir. I hope you know my sincerity.”

  “Why do you stay on with us?” Noah asked. “Your fortune improved weeks ago and you could’ve ridden out.”

  Mr. Travis looked about the room. He sat a little straighter. “Because the Lord acts through you, sir. Because the Lord brought us together. Because maybe the Lord believes I can play some crucial role. If the Lord trusts you, who am I to doubt? You walk through bullets and don’t get hit.”

  Noah smiled. “Mr. Travis, why else do you stay with us?”

  Mr. Travis shrugged. “Everybody knows me as the roofer. That’s a damn important job. It ain’t number one, like you, Mr. Harney, but a roofer is something. Here, the Lord knows me. He sees my good work. Here, I’m an important man.”

  “You do make a damn tight roof.” Noah looked to me. “Mr. Travis got this manner of laying slats. Ain’t a drop of water thin enough to sneak through, not even in the thickest gale. I know slats and this man is gifted. It is true, Mr. Travis. No need to shy at the compliment, as any praise of a man is only praise for his Maker.”

  “I am grateful for you, sir. Someday when the smokes clears, as you preach on Sundays, we’ll ride from this holy rock and into our own green valley with grass head high, and there we’ll begin the good work as the Lord intends.”

  “Amen,” Noah said. “That is beautiful, Mr. Travis. And that is why we don’t need no government. We’re as the Lord intends, humble peasants in His fertile garden. We look out for one another. We care for our fellow man. I will make an announcement about patience in the food line. Will that suit you?”

  Mr. Travis was not one for disagreement. “Yessir. Thank you, sir. I knew you would know best.”

  “And in exchange, will you promise to do a kindness for them poor red children? I suspect the boys among them could do well by learning your trade.”

  “You want me to teach them to lay slats?” He looked about the room. “What use has an injun got for a roof?”

  “We don’t know what future the Lord has in store for them children. But here we is with time and it would only do them good to learn a skill. And maybe the good Lord will guide you to see the same sparks in them that you see within your own children. Now if there ain’t nothing else, Mr. Travis. As you can see, I got plenty of talking ahead this afternoon.”

  Mr. Travis hadn’t got what he come for but there wasn’t no disappointment in his face. He rose and thanked Noah and then turned and thanked me and then put on his hat and thanked Mason for opening the door and then walked out into the summer light and called his thanks a last time. “Maybe I’ll show them red children some card magic too.”

  “Praise the Lord,” my brother answered.

  The next man stepped forward.

  Noah laid his head on the table and said, “Send the rest away, will you, Mason? Please?”

  Mason pushed the man back out and said to the rest, “Go on, get! Patrón has had enough. Come back later.”

  “Do you have to sound so mean? I ain’t mean, I’m just worn down is all.”

  Mason shouted, “Patrón is just worn down. He ain’t mean.” The door slammed shut. Mason looked around the room. “Me too?” He put on his hat and hit the spittoon and then stepped outside.

  “Want something?” Noah asked. We was alone and I was reveling in that fact.

  “I’ll take a whiskey, if’n you got one. We’s due for a little celebrating.” My mouth watered at the notion.

  “We don’t keep no whiskey in this house,” Noah said.

  “Why on the plains not?”

  He smiled a big brother’s smile. “The Lord don’t want me tied to my saddle, sis. There was a time though.”

  “So you don’t drink even a drop of whiskey? Like it’s your birthday and you just come into a satchel of gold, and you’s telling me you don’t say yes to a bitty glass?”

  He pulled his tobacco pouch and studied me. “You was such a sweet girl when I last seen you. Now you got all this . . .” His finger gestured toward my jacket and his brow furrowed. “You’re as rough as a cowpoke the morning the coffee brews clear.”

  We sat in quiet for a time as I pieced that one through. Then I asked, “What about you, brother? How’d you go from yarn spinner to this?”

  My brother rolled a fresh smoke and offered it. He rolled another in short order and then my match lit them both. He reclined and we both exhaled and I waited. So many miles and finally here we was, my brother and me together, just us.

  He told me how after leaving our home that night long ago he rode hard on the notion of going all the way to California. But just over the county line he ran out of food. He set about raising money at a poker table but found himself out back getting stomped on. Broke and robbed he offered himself to the next company he come across, some old-time cowpunchers. It was them who changed his mind about California.

  “Big Red was our boss and he took me on, special. He and me stayed up nights trading yarn. He wasn’t a God-fearing man, but he was wise in his own way. In time he let me in on how he made his real money. See, a cattle baron off in Pearlsville or St. Louis, he expects to lose a few head each week to bears and lions and wolves. He plans for it. But Big Red knew by then the meat eaters was near killed off in them mountains. So that meant some extra head. Got me? We was doing all the work, Red said, so why shouldn’t we take those extra cattle for ourselves? I worried what the Lord would think. I wasn’t sure, but I was young and went with the old. He and me pieced together a good herd up a side valley. Come fall, we sold it and our wages went up tenfold. But in truth, it didn’t sit right with me. The Lord couldn’t approve of rustling.”

  I thought about what Pa would say of thieving another man’s cattle.

  “Big Red rode for Montana the next spring and the new boss wasn’t worth a bit. He put me on fencing, and he would’ve left me digging posts until the new century. So I skipped out. Tried to catch up with Big Red but never could. All the ranches already had their hands and I couldn’t find even day labor. I went through my money by solstice. That was a low time for me, sis, the summer of eighty-one. I admit to harboring dark thoughts. I considered coming home then, tail between my knees, but . . .”

  Our eyes met. He looked back to the table.

  “I had took to drinking. That winter and spring, I had money for drinking. But once the money was gone, that’s when my thirst grew. I missed rye like an old friend. I done things then for a drop that I ain’t proud of. Whiskey was the boss of me.

  “Sis, I was in Telluride looking on the bank there when the Lord come shown Himself. It was nighttime and I was alone and cold even though the calendar said August. The moon was red behind that bank and then as I watched it turned gold. It sounds crazy, I know, but it ain’t no crazier than what happened to Moses on the
mountaintop. See, then beside me—this is the part I’ve been wanting to tell you since it happened and you got to believe it—beside me appeared a man taller than Pa, taller than Big Red even, clean shaven and dressed in a suit too clean for this world. He wasn’t no man of flesh, but of divine will. I listened, sis. I memorized every word. Do you know our Lord? Have you heard His voice?”

  I shrugged.

  “May He speak in your ear too. Them words set me right inside, and I have stayed right since. He knows each of us. He has a plan for each of us. Take comfort in that, sis. That’s all the comfort we need in this life.”

  “What did the Lord tell you?”

  “Well, that’s for us. But He did mention the First Bank of Telluride!” Noah laughed. “After that night, I saw it all clear as dawn. See, in this country law don’t yet come from God, it comes from money. Money is the hammer swinging about and beating down the righteous. That’s what’s happening to working folk on both sides of the big river. It’s money that drives down cattle prices and runs family men into debt. It’s money that grows kings while little children starve not two miles away.”

  He looked about the room and then leaned closer. “I’ll tell you some of what He said but keep it here. The Lord told me, ‘Noah Harney, you got to solve this problem. You got to be the one save these children. You got to be one to bring my laws to this land. If not you, then who?’ And then He said, ‘I hereby enshield you from lead and blades. For as long as you do my work, I will protect you.’” Noah let this settle while he relit his cigarette. He raised his eyebrows and exhaled.

  I knew all about the First Bank of Telluride. It was big-time on account Noah waited until summer’s end, when all the payrolls come in from back east to cover labors owed. This was the twenty-five thousand in cash money our neighbor boy Isaac had mentioned, but in truth Noah got it all without firing a single shot. No dead marshals. The genius wasn’t in the heist, it was in the escape. Before the robbery he stashed three fresh mounts on a straight line toward the high country, each about five miles from the last. The lawmen didn’t stand a chance of keeping up on their worn-down horses.