Whiskey When We're Dry

by John Larison

  * * *

  —

  And so it come to pass that Charles, Constance, Jane, Noah, and me rode north to wait out the winter. Come spring we planned to cross the border and into the safety of mountains deeper than these. I rode with them but I dwelled with Annette.

  I would deliver her home to the land where the wolves would forever howl, someplace untrampled and raw.

  We bought a wagonload of provisions and took up an abandoned shanty in hills blanketed with larch. It was a summer place open to fierce winter winds and so it was the perfect hide for wanted men. There the five of us passed the cold months burning windfall for heat and frying flapjacks upon the stove.

  We had come so many miles yet Noah and me did not know how to move about each other. He stiffened when I entered the room. If I saw him coming, I found labors to take me elsewhere. Ours was a truce built from the quietude of shame.

  When we couldn’t escape the other’s presence, we spoke about matters of utility. Where to fetch our next dry wood, a better method for keeping mice from our food stores, the proper way to repair a broken hinge. We talked too of the weather and the duration of the weather and the new ferocity of the weather. It is the weather after all that proves there’s no might to human borders.

  It was Jane’s growing belly that restored my brother. As she swelled with the only true miracle, he devoted himself to learning the Word. He aimed to build a proper congregation in the north, he said, a peaceful one dedicated to the principles of harmony and fair treatment. He didn’t speak of it to me, but I overheard as he preached to them.

  Jane was the one who guided his teachings. The daylight hours offered plenty of time for study. Jane retained her patience as my brother’s tongue stumbled over those sounds. She had to teach him the same lesson a half dozen times before he could demonstrate the principle himself. But his grit did not slip. Nor hers.

  Constance and Charles also found direction in his learning. Constance sparked discussions about my brother’s preferred passages from the Bible, and Charles enjoyed deepening their debates with contrary arguments. To these conversations I listened, but never joined. My body was among them, but that was all.

  At night I rolled out my bedding in a lean-to beside the cabin and set Annette beside me. I moved through each day on ritual, and this was the last. I pulled up the rifle and checked its chamber, and then turned my eyes to our snowbound backtrail. I never counted on sleep and so was never disappointed when it failed to come.

  * * *

  —

  Constance and Charles took to walking in the afternoons, and so I took to following them with the rifle. They walked through the endless larch and Charles shook the snow from limbs and held back boughs so that she might pass without trouble of ducking or dodging. Her belly swelled now with child. I couldn’t understand their chatter from the distance but I trailed its harmonies.

  In the snow-blind months after the killings, I found direction in imagined threats. Bandits rushing from the hills with weapons. Soldiers leaping timbers and hurtling dynamite. Raiders come to kidnap the mothers I now guarded. Without these fictions the world was only white. And so in every waving branch I saw a hidden enemy, in every foreign sound I heard a battle cry.

  But one afternoon I ventured too close and Charles saw me and waved me up. Of course he didn’t guess that I had followed them each day. He only assumed I was out hunting and our paths had entwined.

  “We were just speaking of Will,” he said. “About the jokes he’d be making at our unlikely situation. Holed up and on the run with the infamous Harney as he soon becomes a father.”

  Constance wore a wool blanket about her shoulders and her hair was hidden under a scarf. The snow landed on her but melted at once. It wasn’t falling from the skies now, only from trees.

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  Charles brushed the snow from my shoulder.

  I looked off at the winter, the black trunks of pine against the white quilts of snow. I tried to recall the dews of spring, and the rushing of mountain water. I sought to conjure the bright sides of trout catapulting over skittering bugs. In all of it, I saw a map with no landmarks, no scale. I looked toward the north.

  “You are welcome with us,” Constance said. “Wherever we end up, you will have a home with us.”

  Home. The word tumbled on in echo.

  * * *

  —

  As children one spring in that far-off land, Pa had saddled our horses and the three of us rode across the brown grass sopping with melt and then into the snows and still higher to the basin where he knew our bulls had been trapped by winter storm. We found their shapes in the receding white, their meat strewn about the hill, dragged in all directions by the retreat of scavengers. Pa swung down and took up a handful of red ice and said, “They was crossing the hillside when the snow sloughed loose. They didn’t stand a chance.”

  I recall the heaviness of his voice, the water in his eyes. He was looking at their bones there in snow, and knowing that had he done better, had he come up here in time, the bulls would now be swatting at spring’s first flies.

  He sat in the snow with no regard for the cold. He put his head into this hands and sobbed. Our pa who had survived a war and buried his true love. These dead bulls set him to weeping.

  * * *

  —

  I believed nothing ever changed, but then the first full moon after the equinox brought on Jane’s labor.

  She moved about the cabin, about the forest, about herself. For two days Constance stayed with her and held her aloft during the pains. In the evening the air around them tingled as it does before a lightning storm.

  Charles and Noah spent the daylight hours fashioning a cradle from wood split by ax. I took to laying in a stash of cordwood, the rifle always within reach.

  It was during the last day of waiting that Noah and me finally broke from our truce. I was bucking a fallen log when he said, “Let me have a go.”

  He took up the saw in his left hand and began working it. Chips and dust scattered over the snow. “Not as practiced as I should be,” he said, panting. “As I aim to be.”

  When the length of wood dropped to the snow, he stood a time breathing and studying the ice as it wafted from the limbs overhead. The sun cut through and turned what fell to gemstone.

  Inside we heard Jane working through another pain, and I worried how far that sound might carry in the still air.

  “Why the Lord has made bearing a child so hard on a woman I can’t figure,” he said.

  This labor was a fate I couldn’t protect her against. Her blood would run but would it stop in time? Jane was sure. She wanted us far off, away from midwives or doctors who might know wanted posters.

  My brother said, “Men don’t ever know that brand of resolve.”

  He set the saw aside. His gaze lingered on my knees. Those eyes gray and unblinking. “Oh, Jess. I should’ve been there. I left you with suffering that wasn’t yours to bear.”

  The snow sloughed from the limbs and the air filled with ice. “We come through it,” I said, trying to sound okay. “That’s what matters.”

  He looked at my marks, his mouth half open with words he could feel but not yet find.

  I heaved the maul to my shoulder. I wiped the sweat from my brow as Annette would’ve, with the inside of my wrist. Sometimes I pretended I was her. It was one of the ways I kept her with me.

  He said, “You loved her, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, brother. I did.”

  “I should’ve been the one to catch that bullet.”

  “‘Should’ ain’t a word the world knows.”

  We turned toward the sound of Jane’s pain. Her roar rose from someplace hidden and ancient. My brother sighed at all he could not help.

  “What will you name the child?” I asked.

  He was still l
ooking on the cabin. “Jane won’t consider a name until the baby is born healthy and whole. She believes in luck, good and bad.”

  I took a mouthful of snow to wet my parched tongue. “You ever heard the name Rowhine?”

  My brother surprised me when he said, “Did Pa tell you the truth?”

  “You know?”

  “One day beside the lake, laying over the Sharps. He told me the whole deal. I remember the trout sending rings. I remember wondering what a name means.”

  “He never told me.”

  “That don’t matter. Sister, Pa kept us from town for good reason. You know what folks called our stream? Coward Creek. Everybody knew he was a deserter. You don’t escape that war in no sixty-three with all your parts.”

  “Did Ma know the truth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I was watching the ice in the air. “I never called our father by his real name.”

  “Sis, his realest name was Pa. You know that. The rest don’t count for nothing.”

  I drove the maul through the wood and into the block beneath. The maul was stuck and I had to jimmy it out. Finally it come free, but I just dropped it into the snow. I was too wore through to keep fighting that wood.

  My brother stepped near and put his hand to my marked cheek. “Oh, sister. What might’ve been.”

  * * *

  —

  The pains come in earnest that night and Noah and Charles left the house to us women.

  I started to leave too, but Jane stopped me. “Stay. Please.”

  So I stayed.

  In the gaps of her labor she spoke. “He leaves us to interpret everything but this.”

  Constance pushed upon the small of her back through the pain. “There now. Your body knows all about this business with no help from words.”

  When it got close Constance held Jane in balance and blew air upon her wet brow. Jane was soaked through and now she could not stand but with help. She bore down with a strength not possessed by five of me.

  I was ready with rags and a quilt. The fire raged in the stove and the air among us was wet as storm. Jane had told us how it would go. Constance was to catch the child, I was to run errands.

  But now Constance was held tight by Jane’s grip. Jane was on her knees and I was the one before her. I saw the skin of her gates stretching tight. The head drove at that flesh just as I had seen each spring during calving, and I knew to put my hands against it, to slow the descent and give the flesh time to soften and open. And so my hands was the first to touch you in this world.

  The cord was about your neck and I slipped it free and your eyes opened and revealed the celestial forever and me reflected against it and I knew then my honest name just as I knew yours. I said, “Rosa.”

  I gave you to your wide-eyed mother.

  Those hours we lingered about you. When your tongue got busy Jane put you to her breast and taught you to take in this life. I cut from a roast of venison and fed the bites to your mother’s lips from the point of the knife.

  Remember is the name of all children. In that name is the seed and the thaw.

  Noah come to me before the fire. Together we held our breaths not as people stooped before some man’s idol but as souls bent before the altar of awe.

  He held the guitar by the neck. “I want my daughter to know music on her first day.”

  “I don’t know much guitar.”

  “Slide over.”

  Noah put the belly of the instrument against my own, against Annette where she always was. “Like this,” he whispered. “There now, you’re getting it.”

  So the first song you heard was the song of your people. Noah held the notes and I strummed the strings. We gave you the song as one, together.

  * * *

  —

  That night as you slept bare against your mother’s flesh, I slipped from the room and took my bedding as usual to the lean-to and spread it upon the bark chips and set the rifle within reach. I had been up all night with the labor and had not slept during the day and still I could not lose myself to slumber. My vision was consumed with you. I saw us a thousand different ways, among prairies and wildflowers, upon horseback and mountain trail, raising our eyes to the underside of cranes on the wing and bending our noses to the purple petals of camas. I saw it so clear I could feel your hand in mine and hear your voice call for Auntie.

  Noah emerged from the cabin with a lantern.

  “Put that out,” I hushed. “An easy target.”

  “No one is hunting us here,” he said. “Not today.”

  He sat beside me.

  “What is it, brother?”

  “Someday,” he whispered. “You must tell her. I do not want there to be lies between us and I do not trust myself to tell this true.”

  “Then I will tell her, brother. I will tell her the bad with the good.”

  “She will not be proud of her old man.”

  “You still have time to make her proud.”

  I turned out the lantern, and the moonlight cast the world in gunmetal.

  His voice from the darkness, “Do you believe sin is handed down, one generation to the next?”

  “I reckon it piles like snow.”

  He began to shake. “She deserves better than me.”

  “Come near, brother.”

  He leaned until his head settled upon my lap, and there his tears penetrated the wool and wet my skin. I placed my hand on his cheek. I hummed to him, as he used to me, in a far-off place where the desert met a lake.

  * * *

  —

  April passed and still we did not leave. We knew of deep snows in the passes and so we waited until early May. April might’ve made a difference.

  We left the cabin with little and traveled fast. You and Jane rode in the wagon under a thick quilt. Noah held the reins. Charles and Constance followed in back. I rode some distance ahead, on the same chestnut. I had taken to calling her Solstice. She was jumpy and unsure, and I trusted her ears to hear what I might not.

  I wore a dress because the posters had me as a man. I had my preferred pistol concealed in the hem of my jacket. The Winchester was in its scabbard where I might wield it if the need arose.

  We spent every dark holed up in the lee of the wagon, a small fire for warmth. That’s where I took my time with you, just us sitting on the edge of light. Anytime I put my nose to your mouth to take in your breath you latched on. You had this manner of driving your knuckles into your mouth, and I recall saying you was learning your edges.

  But one Montana morning delivered ice from the skies and that turned to hard rain and so come dusk we broke from the trail to test our welcome at a lonely ranch house where smoke rose from the chimney. Its owner met us on the porch. He had a black beard and smoked a long pipe, and he thought too long at Noah’s offer of gold coins. It was the woman who swept by her man to welcome us. She took a keen interest in you and dished us deep bowls from a pot of mutton broth and told of her family’s recent hardships. Two boys played near the stove as we ate. The man kept staring on me. He looked off anytime I turned toward him. My marks couldn’t be hid.

  * * *

  —

  On the last morning we rode to a stop on the ridge above the border town. Fourteen buildings, nearly all built with a front to make them appear two stories when in fact they was one. The only true-built two-story was the whiskey house.

  The town looked like so many other little cities built upon that wilderness, some fool’s vision crammed into a fold of desert or strapped to a precipice. This was no place to call home but for the divide men had drawn on the 49th parallel. Noah flicked his chin toward the other side. “Today we get born new.”

  Smoke rose from the chimneys below and I saw horses hitched and swatting at spring flies. We might’ve cut through the woods but for the wagon. Maybe I
knew, maybe I didn’t.

  You cried from the quilt and Jane opened her breast to you. Still you cried. I always wondered if you knew.

  Noah removed his glove and put his fingers to your cheek. I saw he was saying his good-bye. Jane began pleading with him but it was no use. He announced, “Let me check the path. If they’re on to us, this is where they’ll wait. I won’t risk you all, not this time. If you hear gunfire, ditch the wagon and cut through the timber and don’t stop. Don’t wait for me, you hear? I’ll hold them until you’re safe, and then follow by the cover of darkness.”

  “No.” I said it firm as Pa. Noah’s eyes met mine. “You stay with your daughter. I am a woman and they expect a man. I will signal that it is safe.”

  “This ain’t your doing, Jess. I put us in this bind.”

  But Jane touched his arm. Their eyes met over your suckling and she made him to understand what she and I already knew. His life was no longer his own.

  Watching them together, there was no missing the magic between those two. They knew the other as the farmer knows his earth. Your folks was the real thing. You can always breathe deep and know you grew from the true, honest thing.

  I looked out over that new country I still hoped to wander. Those mountains went on till winter and beyond.

  I drew Annette from my pocket and gave her to my brother. “In case, take her home for me.”

  “Take her yourself.”

  I pushed her into his hand. “Promise you’ll leave her over green grass where wolves still roam. Someplace far off and holy.”

  Jane answered, “We promise, Jess.”

  They looked on me with no words, and that made it feel like the last time.

  I smiled. “No need for all this heaviness. I’ll see you again in but a quarter hour.” I tipped my hat and wheeled Solstice and we rode down that ridge.

  I did not look back. I did not say a proper good-bye. What I’d give to have held you once more, to see your eyes and the forever they contained. To see, one last time, a daughter returned to her mother’s arms.