Whiskey When We're Dry

by John Larison

But the men cheered.

  Annette blurred into four. They all said in unison, “Now that we’s warmed up.”

  I shook the dizzy from my vision and put out my fists. She was right there within reach. When she come with a wide right I delivered a jab to the nose and blood come over her lips. Maybe she let me hit her, I don’t know. She licked the blood. She laughed. She made like she would strike again but then swept my leg out and I was down. She was upon me and wrapping me up tight and I couldn’t free my back from the earth.

  The boys counted it out, and then it was over. I had lost. There come a great chorus from their ranks.

  Annette helped me up and put her arm around me and blew the blood from her nose. She was panting and laughing and she said, “You don’t fight like no girl.”

  I spat blood. “What a girl fight like?”

  “Loud. Afraid to punch so they claw. Pull your damn hair out if you let them. Ain’t a good time. That was a good time.”

  The boys slapped us on the backs and one ruffed my hair. Another replaced my hat. Blister handed me my pistols. Blister who had regarded me with cold eyes since my arrival now said, “Good show, Jess.”

  Money was paid out all around and Annette took up her winnings and stuffed them in her pocket and put on her hat. I didn’t hear my brother but I saw the boys go straight and turn toward the trail. Their laughter was gone. “Howdy, Patrón.”

  Noah’s thumb was hooked on his holster.

  Blister said, “We was just passing some time is all, Patrón.”

  Noah walked past them and looked on me. He put a pinkie to the blood on my chin. He turned on the boys. “Which one of you was hitting on my sister?”

  A raven sailed by and cawed. It was the only sound for a thousand miles.

  “Huh?” Noah barked. I will admit it warmed me some to see him take such offense. He looked in the eyes of each man one at a time.

  “I just tripped and fell is all,” I said.

  The boys laughed, then caught themselves. Noah took Blister by his collar. Blister had fresh blood on his brow.

  “It was me,” Annette said. “I done beat up your sister. And I liked it too.”

  Noah come to stand before Annette, and the boys backed off. Noah chewed the plug in his mouth and their faces wasn’t twelve inches apart. Annette didn’t flinch. Finally he spat to the side and offered his hand.

  “Well, I guess I owe you my thanks then. That girl’s been needing a whupping. Ain’t that right, sister?” His eyes was all sunshine. He draped his arm around Annette. “With a face like that, a blow will only improve its symmetry.”

  A bottle was passed to me then and I took a pull. The boys was laughing and pushing. Annette’s eyes was on me.

  * * *

  —

  After that day I was welcome among the boys, and I took to playing cards with them during the dull hours. I wasn’t never no good at poker and so I come to pay out most of the gold nuggets I stole from the Governor. At other junctions I won back some of the nuggets with my shooting, both the quickdraw and the distance. The boys pushed me in ways they didn’t Annette and cracked jokes at my expense. But if a bottle was procured, it come my way. When there was liquor enough they was eager to share stories too, most of them about my brother, about funny things he done, or great shots he made, or in hushed voices how he had changed since Jane come around. They was careful not to talk ill of Jane, least not around me.

  I believe they was, to a boy, afraid to be without the protections of my big brother. In that, we was the same.

  * * *

  —

  The days turned colder and the nights began to freeze and I knew it was this time of year when Pa had passed, and I suspected the very date of his demise was upon us now or would be soon. I thought often of him. Not often of his body no more, but of the man he was in that brief window without syrup. That was the man I carried now. Yet what name was I to call that man?

  One afternoon I tacked up Ingrid and went looking for my brother. It was warm that day and the sky was without a cloud. The wind was gentle from the west. We’d been holed up long enough that I was starting to itch. I was also wondering about the wisdom of wintering so high in the mountains. The Rock would be beset by snows soon and our animals would not have access to graze.

  Noah’s mount had a peculiar rear shoe which made picking his sign easy enough. I cut it on foot, and then swung up and walked Ingrid along the trail, leaning over the horn to watch the tracks.

  They led across the valley and to a canyon cut in the bright rock surrounding us. There we hit aspen and the smell of morning dew. The grass along the canyon floor was still deep green and I could see sign from deer as well as antelope. Overhead, a golden eagle watched from its perch on the wall. All the little critters was hidden and on guard.

  I found Noah at the head of the canyon, where the water trickled down a narrow coulee that only a goat could climb. At first I saw Blackie. The animal had a mouthful of grass and was broadside watching us, not chewing. Ingrid liked the looks of that and began to trot, and Blackie put her head back to graze.

  Noah called from above. There was a ledge about twenty feet off the meadow. “Nice, ain’t it?” His voice echoed like a shot. “Nothing like this back home.”

  “If you looking for lonesome, brother, say the word.”

  “Nah. Join me. I’ve known plenty of lonesome.”

  I removed Ingrid’s bridle so she might eat unencumbered, and then picked my way up the crag toward my brother. It was a hard climb and he met me at the edge with a hand.

  “I was just giving thanks to our Maker in my own way. Strong medicine in the artful contours of this world He built us.”

  Out of habit I reached for my tobacco.

  “Annette got you smoking rollies, I see.”

  “Gives my hands something to do. I prefer working to all this sitting still.” I offered him the pouch and he took it.

  “Too many idle hours in banditry.”

  We twisted our smokes in silence.

  “I used to be always planning the next heist. I was accumulating bills like I was accumulating pride, and pride is a deadly sin. In truth, what does a dollar buy you anyhow? Nah, in this world a dollar is a fool’s bait.”

  “I think you can only say that when you got plenty of them dollars stashed about.”

  “Dollars is shallow. I just knew there had to be something deeper than dollars in this world.” He flicked a match and sparked his cigarette and then mine. “Second to the Lord’s good graces is the freedom to ride unseen.”

  I thought that one over. It was Pa who come to mind, Pa and his true name, our true name. He had ridden free under a new name. I still hadn’t decided if or when to tell my brother the burdensome news that his name was not Harney.

  “What’s the long view, brother? What happens after winter?”

  He drew a breath and nodded. “Well, I ain’t sure yet, but I know we must move on from these mountains. Maybe we can return in five or ten years, but until then we got to find something new. But I don’t want the newspapers talking like we fled. I need to trust in the Lord on the matter, frankly.”

  “Brother?”

  “What is it? Say it.”

  “If He’s Lord over us, why does it matter if we trust or not? He’s still the Lord either way.”

  He looked on me as if for the first time. “Sister, trust is what opens the gates to our eternal reward in Heaven.”

  “Heaven,” I said. “Someplace outside this place.” I drew on my cigarette and watched the smoke move down on the morning chill. “But look about this canyon, brother. Tell me this ain’t Heaven enough for one life.”

  “Praise the Lord,” my brother said. “You ever think of them together in Heaven? Ma and Pa?”

  “I try.”

  His voice went low. “I don’t remember her face no
more, Jess. Children born now will have photographs, they won’t even need memory to know their people. That’ll change this world.”

  “You always so sure, brother. I wish I was sure like you. My sure comes and goes. Mostly it goes.”

  He smiled. “I too wavered, for a lot of years in fact. Now I see that even the doubting was part of His vision for me.”

  I drew a pocket bottle Annette had slipped me.

  “Ain’t it early for liquor?”

  I took a little draw and passed it through my teeth and looked to the eagle on his rock. Just as my eye found him, he lifted into flight. His shadow tracked the canyon wall and then was gone. Not a moment later, a squirrel appeared atop a rock. Birds began chirping from every crack. A rabbit hopped out from its bush. This world waits on the eagle to look away.

  “I don’t like the notion of us wintering here, brother. Snows could be ten feet deep, you don’t know.”

  “The Lord knows.”

  “You sure? There’s a lot of lives down there counting on you.”

  “Counting on the Lord,” he said. “I am but a humble servant.”

  I took a pull of the bottle and drew my Peacemaker and dumped the shells and set about reloading them. Something to do with my hands. “I ain’t sure about Heaven, brother, but I know for certain we make our own hell.”

  * * *

  —

  On Sundays the folks gathered to make a big breakfast of eggs and bacon and biscuits. It was the one meal when the boys and the folks ate together. A young couple without children, called the Cherrys, was always the first outside on Sundays. Mr. Cherry took it upon himself to start a fire in the hearth and Mrs. Cherry would start the children singing. Soon folks would sing hymns and preaching songs and in time the boys would join the tunes with their instruments and little children would get their first lessons on the guitar or fiddle. Dogs put their wet noses to hands and was rewarded with crumbs. Hens too watched us from the edge, and when the dogs and the children was otherwise engaged, them birds rushed by twos toward a bowl left unattended.

  It was Noah’s arrival beside the fire that commenced Sabbath services. He donned a dark woolen suit and a flat-brimmed hat and a pair of shiny boots. When folks saw him coming they quieted their children and took seats before the fire. The boys put aside their instruments and sat cross-legged upon the ground and snuffed their smokes. There come only the chatter of children and the whinnying of horses at play. Doves cooed from the Rock and swallows careened. The autumn sunlight was welcome on our skin.

  Noah began his sermons by taking up a flame from the fire and touching it to a wax candle. Then he produced a small jar of Old World spices from his pocket and this he sent along from person to person. Men and women alike smelled the contents with their eyes shut to this world. As they done so Noah strummed his guitar.

  I will admit it was easy to believe when I looked upon my brother before us. His was a powerful tonic. He was quick witted and beautiful and it was easy to think him smarter than the lot of us. If a man of his caliber could be so sure, then we was fools to hold any doubt at all.

  Noah turned his face toward the heavens. All us did. He spoke with his eyes wide open. “Hear us, Lord, hear our humble tribute. We desire only your guidance and your forgiveness.”

  “Yes!” Mr. Travis proclaimed. “Say it new!”

  Annette chipped a scab from her knuckle. When she saw me watching she raised an eyebrow and yawned.

  Noah preached, “Remember that blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Matthew tells us to rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in Heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

  “Amen!”

  I noticed Constance had not yet joined us on this particular Sabbath. She had been among the first outside on the other Sundays. Her cottage door was shut.

  Blister was admiring his pistol. He cocked the hammer and let the hammer down until he felt a presence and looked up to see me watching. He put the pistol back in his holster and looked again upon my brother, hands folded in his lap.

  “There is a valley in our realm, I walk about it in my dreams, where the grass grows overhead and cattle have not yet trod. This valley is wide enough to hold us all and our children and our children’s children and so forth until the Lord again sends His son to us.” Noah held out his fist as if it contained this valley. “But we cannot enter our valley until we destroy Mammon’s army and seize control of his gate, for the Lord has saved His greatest earthly reward for His bravest and most faithful and most humble servants.” He opened his fist and dust fluttered to the ground. “The Lord shall reveal our moment.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I asked, “Where is this valley, brother?”

  His eyes found me. He stepped closer. He took hold of my arm and lifted me from where I sat.

  Annette picked food from her teeth. She was watching this.

  He said, “It is inside you right now! It is inside all of us!”

  All this time Noah had held the Bible and now he lifted it and thumbed to the page marked with a slip of paper. I had witnessed Jane reading him this passage the night before and the morning before that. He knew some words but his powers of mind lay in memorization. His true gift was in the delivery. Now he held the book before him as if reading the words direct. Even his eyes moved as if he was reading.

  * * *

  —

  After services I visited Constance. She was in bed reading a book. There was no mistaking the fact she was pale in the face with sunken eyes, and when she saw me she tossed the book aside without concern for losing her page.

  “Good story?”

  “Why does every book end in a wedding or funeral?”

  “Which do you prefer?”

  “Neither,” she said. “Both are beginnings.”

  “What do you want to read?” I had seen a stack of books in the storehouse. I could get her one. It was something I could offer her.

  “I want a love story that doesn’t involve a king,” she said. Neither of us spoke a time. I took a seat on the bed next to her.

  “There is something . . . ,” she began in a new voice. “Something I want to tell you. Jane already knows. Jane was the one who understood the signs. But I want to tell someone. I want to tell you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Jess, I am with child.”

  “With child?”

  “Yes. Will’s child.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at such bright news—a new baby coming to this world, Constance a mother.

  She told me all about these headaches she was having, about how the old happy smell of horses was now offensive to her nose. She had upchucked one noon, and Jane had known right off what was afoot. “If Will . . . Our plan had been to be married just as soon as we reached New York, married under a new name. They allow such marriages in New York. That was the plan even before. Those nights with him, I believed—it sounds queer, I know, but I believed us to already be married, married in the Lord’s eyes. Married in the manner that counts most, by the heart.”

  I took a breath and pondered. This rock was so very far from any midwife or doctor. The child would be born in May or June. Would the snows this high be melted by then?

  “Will lives on. So I should be purely happy. . . . I should be, shouldn’t I? But I keep thinking, I can’t stop. What am I to do now? With this child but without him?”

  I thought of them in any town, a dark child with a white woman. Would it be any easier, a dark man and a white woman?

  Constance said, “Will would know what to do. If only we had slipped away one night, or on a casual errand. So many times we might have vanished together! Will would know his child. Will would be a father. Will would know what to do. Us, together.” She wiped the tears
from her eyes. “You know what that house was like. I mean . . . Should I have anticipated what Father was capable of? I think about it instead of sleeping. Every moment that we might have escaped together. Why didn’t we escape?”

  She looked up into my eyes. “Your brother thought to do it at the ball. He said all the guests would add a level of confusion to the getaway.”

  For a long minute neither of us spoke.

  I said, “You don’t think that’s the real reason he wanted to try at the ball, do you? I mean, Pearlsville at midday got plenty of crowds to confuse things too.”

  She looked to her lap. “I don’t know. Harney is the one who understands such matters.”

  “But you doubt,” I said. “I can see it in your face.”

  Constance drew a big breath and let it out. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Okay,” I said. I stood from the bed. I put my hat back on.

  “Jess?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think he wanted an audience. I think he wanted the newspapermen present. I think he wanted the story told.”

  * * *

  —

  Jane spent most of her weekly hours with the children in the big house. A pair of mothers assisted but nobody had Jane’s knowledge of reading and arithmetic and Bible studies so it was natural for her to be the teacher and the headmaster. There was tablets stacked near the window and chalk enough for a lifetime.

  That week the older students used their skills to write a story on a scroll. Jane brought it home and read it to herself in the firelight. She was making notes. Her script was tight and quick and never dipped or climbed from its straight path. When I had asked her about Constance’s child, Jane glowed. “Isn’t it amazing news! But keep it close, Jess, for her sake. Constance is early yet, and these things don’t always keep. The fewer who know, the easier the recovery, should the Lord decide to take that tiny soul home.”

  Now I said, “Jane, you write like you got schooling.”

  She answered without looking up. “Any skill can be learned.”