Rueful Regret

by Steve Vernon

  “Sounds like Pig Latin to me,” Grimes pointed out.

  “The pig was attacking me,” Bass argued. “That makes any killing self defence.”

  “You left that pig’s body lying on the saloon floor,” Joe Partridge offered in rebuttal. “That makes it littering. The sentence is final and I fine you one decent dirt-hole burial.”

  “That fine is fine by me,” Grimes said. “It’s a good day for digging.”

  Bass just scowled.

  “What about it, Bass?” the sheriff prodded.

  “I’d rather see the judge,” Bass said. “As far as I’m concerned funerals and jailhouses aren’t nothing more than a total waste of good drinking weather.”

  “The judge might agree with you on the drinking part of that equation,” the sheriff admitted. “But that’s not what I mean and you know it. So what about it? Are you fine with the sentence?”

  “Do you really have to ask?”

  “I’m asking because I want to ask,” the sheriff said. “And I also enjoy hearing the sound of my own voice speaking. As far as I’m concerned you two are wearing the only got-to around here.”

  “You’re going to have to run that one by me again just a little bit slower,” Bass said. “So that I can catch it.”

  The sheriff smiled patiently.

  “I’ve got the badge,” he thumbed himself in the chest. “And so long as I have got it you two have got to do just exactly what I tell you to – or else you got to stay in one of my many fine jail cells – of which there are two. Got it?”

  “I counted two,” Bass admitted.

  “I guarantee you I’ll put you in the drafty one,” the sheriff said.

  They both looked pretty damn drafty to Bass. The bars couldn’t break the wind any harder than a sorry wet beer fart.

  “I can’t pay for no damn burial,” Bass protested weakly.

  The sheriff scratched his teapot belly through a hole in his shirt and pointedly yawned.

  “It seems to me that you pay for your drinking just fine,” the sheriff pointed out after finishing with his yawn. “You must have some money kicking around. Didn’t I see you up by Sally’s window tent just last week?”

  “Sally who?” Bass innocently asked.

  Partridge just grinned.

  “I didn’t get to be sheriff by being stupid.”

  “I thought it was on account of your good looks,” Bass said.

  “Bring a bouquet of posies along with that compliment and I might even kiss you,” the sheriff said with a grin.

  “I can’t afford any posies,” Bass replied. “Unless I steal them from the graveyard.”

  “I bet you’ve got lots of money left over from all of that bounty-killing you used to do,” the sheriff said.

  “Not lately,” Bass let on. “Lately I’m on a budget.”

  “Come again?”

  “I’m damn near broke,” Bass said. “As a matter of fact I was sitting there in that barroom just minding my own business, considering the possibility of making a change in my career. The position of town drunk just isn’t paying off the way that it used to.”

  The sheriff chewed that over thoughtfully.

  “Have you given any thought as to what sort of a career you might take up?” Grimes asked.

  Bass shrugged.

  “Right now I am thinking about running for town sheriff,” Bass said. “The way things keep going I suspect there might be an opening in that particular situation.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” the sheriff answered coolly. “These aren’t exactly the kind of bars that you’ve grown used to hanging around.”

  “You’ve got a point there,” Bass agreed. “It’s too drafty and dry for sure.”

  “And besides,” Partridge went on. “You’ve still got to pay for what you did.”

  “I’m not digging or paying,” Bass argued, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Would you rather I just lock you up?” Partridge asked.

  Bass considered the notion.

  “I’ll thank you not to be pertinent when I’m talking to you,” Bass said. “And I fully look forward to this grave new experience.”

  “I figured you would,” Partridge said.

  “So what happens to the pig?” Grimes asked.

  “Well, Willy Jake has already said a pig-like prayer over its carcass and has begun the cremation process even as we speak.”

  Grimes grinned and licked his lips.

  “I thought I smelled barbecue,” he said. “Do you mind if we eat before we dig?”

  “What do you mean we?” Bass asked.

  “Eat later,” the sheriff said. “The barbecue is for the funeral and that body is getting riper by the minute. Do you two need directions to get to Toes-Up Rising?”

  “Not hardly,” Silver Grimes said. “I’ve been living out there for the last three days.”

  “In a graveyard?”

  Grimes shrugged.

  “Why not? I like the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s quiet and the view is breath-taking and there’s nobody shooting shotguns at you or riding in on pig-back.”

  “Not so far, anyway,” Bass pointed out. “You never can tell what the day will bring a fellow.”

  Chapter 5 – Cold Beans is Better than No Beans at All

  Toes-Up Rising was the town graveyard.

  Well, actually the word graveyard would have DEFINITELY be putting on airs. The fact was Toes-Up Rising was nothing more than a little pock-fuck of an ambitious hillock poked up hummock-like from the dirt and the gravel scattered just outside of the Rueful Regret town limits.

  “I don’t like graveyards one bit,” Bass said.

  “Why?” Grimes asked. “There’s nothing out here but a pack of dead people and they don’t seem to be making all that much of a fuss.”

  “That ain’t the point,” Bass said. “Graveyards have always given me the feeling that some of these here dead people aren’t quite finished whatever they were up to in the first place. I get the feeling that one of these days these here dead people are going to clamber on up out of their graves and come hunting for whatever is still moving.”

  Grimes shook his head.

  “Who in the hell would dream up a story like that?” he asked. “You must sure have something wrong with your think muscles to be mulling over the notion of dead bodies rising up out of the dirt.”

  “There could be ghosts out here,” Bass said.

  “There could be,” Grimes agreed. “I recollect there used to be talk about a ghost or two and an old lost gold mine buried somewhere in between the Toes-Up Rising graveyard and the East end of never-you-mind but the honest fact is that there ain’t any more treasure to be found out here than maybe possibly a couple of moldering old pocket watches and whatever pennies the dead men were buried with. Odds are even those pennies were picked up and spent a whole long time ago.”

  Bass stomped on the dirt.

  “The dirt is hard,” he said.

  “Did you expect soft dirt?”

  “Soft would have been nice.”

  Grimes snorted in derision.

  “It ain’t rained out here since Christ last peed through the holes in his feet. There is damn little that grows around these here parts except a helping full of ache and depression. The ground out here is as hard as the sheriff’s heart.”

  It was true.

  Forty years ago a mule had died on this hillside and the owner had thrown dirt over its carcass before the flies took hold of it, on account of it had stunk too badly to eat. Following that somebody else had buried a dog up here and later on people had started filling in the holes around the dog and the mule and they decided to call the whole notion a graveyard, of sorts.

  Stranger things had grown from simpler seeds.

  The wind blew some of the grave dirt and the spring rains washed it away and gradually every single wooden cross and leaning stone was further marked by a pair of upturned boots poked out from where the dirt had blown or washed awa
y. They called it Toes-Up Rising and the name stayed stuck.

  “It is a hell of place for a graveyard,” Bass observed, working the tooth of his shovel blade into the dirt.

  “It is a nice enough view,” Grimes said, picking up the pick and letting it swing and chunk into the dirt. “All of these dead people, quiet and such. I like it just fine up here.”

  Swing, chunk.

  “So you keep telling me,” Bass said. “I will admit that you swing a pick pretty good for a one-armed man.”

  “I have my moments,” Grimes answered.

  “So do you really live all the way up here?” Bass asked.

  “I have,” Grimes admitted. “For the last three days, anyway. I have got a wagon parked over by the chapel.”

  “I don’t see any chapel.”

  “The chapel burned down sometime back but the ground still reeks of ash and holy water. Don’t you know any of your town history?”

  “This isn’t my town,” Bass said. “It is just the place where I come to pass out in, ever chance that I get.”

  Swing, chunk.

  “It seems a hell of a place to wind up in.” Grimes said.

  “Are you talking about the graveyard or the town?”

  “Maybe both. Why would you stick around here for so long?”

  “There was nothing else worth doing,” Bass admitted. “I have got that chair in the saloon worked in real smooth about the divot in my left butt cheek. It seems a damn shame to go and disturb it now that I have got it all worn into a smooth workable system.”

  Swing, chunk.

  “I guess that makes sense if you squint at it,” Grimes said. “You are either in a groove or a rut.”

  “It might be both,” Bass admitted. “But I prefer to think that I am just settling into comfortable, is all.”

  “That’s one word,” Grimes said.

  “You sure ask an awful lot of questions,” Bass said. “Are you writing yourself a chapter book or something?”

  “Just passing time, is all.”

  “Pass this, then,” Bass said, breaking wind loudly.

  “Now that’s real profound,” Grimes said.

  “I thought so.”

  “You’ve got to admit it seems awfully foolish when you stop to think about it.”

  “Think about what?” Bass asked.

  “Thinking about how you killed yourself a woman you said meant nothing to you and then you crawled into a bottle to pickle for at least two whole years.”

  Bass shrugged.

  The shrug gave him an excuse to stop shoveling.

  “Two years is a kind of a long bath, don’t you think?”

  “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” Grimes admitted. “but it seems more of a wallow than a bath, if you ask me.”

  “Well who asked you?” Bass asked. “It makes as much sense to me as you coming here to look for me. What sense does it make to wait two years to come looking for someone who accidentally shot a woman? That’s a long while to wait on vengeance, isn’t it?”

  “Cold beans is better than not beans at all,” Grimes stated.

  Grimes grinned at that.

  Bass had to admit that the man had a pretty good grin, as far as picket fences went.

  “Let’s get back to the digging,” Bass said.

  Which is what they done.

  Swing, chunk.

  Only Bass wasn’t about to let it go at that.

  “So what about you?” he asked Grimes. “How did you wind up here?”

  Grimes shrugged.

  He had a kind of an off-balance sort of shrug, what with his one arm being shot off like it was – but it worked for him just fine.

  “I just drifted in, I guess.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Grimes looked around, acting mildly surprised.

  “Bullshit? Where? Did I step in it?”

  Bass snorted.

  “You know what I mean. You didn’t just drift in by accident, did you? You’re here for some sort of a reason – and I expect that reason somehow sort of involves me.”

  That brought on one more off-balance shrug.

  “What can I tell you?” Grimes asked. “The fact is I did not want to stick around for too long after you had disarmed and de-armed me with that shotgun blast.”

  “That buck and ball surely caught you hard, didn’t it?”

  “It surely did,” Grimes agreed.

  “So what did you do after getting shot?”

  “At first, not much,” Grimes said. I just took a look at Helen, lying there on the bed.”

  “That’s twice in two minutes that you’ve used that name,” Bass said. “Just who in hell is Helen anyway?”

  Grimes just stared at him like he was ten kinds of stupid – which maybe he was. All of that whiskey he had washed down over the past two years had fuzzed out his thinking habits considerably.

  “Why don’t you try thinking about it?” Grimes prompted.

  “I don’t know if I really WANT to think about it.”

  “Well keep on digging. It will come to you in time,” Grimes said. “Only time is something that I don’t have much of – so I’ll tell you that Helen was that pretty little thing that was riding on my giddy-up stick like it was a saddle horn right before you let fire. I tried to push your aside to fire back at you but your shotgun blast finished her off before she could properly dismount.”

  “Did she at least get to go off before she died?”

  Grimes stared at Bass coldly.

  He would not say another word.

  “Damn shame,” Bass carelessly went on. “She seemed like such a pretty little thing.”

  “She was until you got through with her,” Grimes finally spoke – his voice hardening out. “I don’t know what the hell you had loaded that shotgun with but whatever it was it surely did the trick. You filled her so full of holes a man would be hard-pressed to swat a good-sized fly with what little was left of her.”

  “At least it was fast.”

  Grimes kept on looking at him.

  That feeling of stupidity grew larger and larger inside of Bass’s heart.

  “Is that all you’ve got to say?” Grimes asked.

  Bass just shrugged.

  “What the hell else is there to tell you?” Bass asked. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  The two of them kept on digging.

  It was easier than thinking.

  Finally Bass spoke.

  “Pig fat,” he said.

  Grimes looked in disbelief.

  “Come again?” he asked.

  “Pig fat,” Grimes repeated. “I load my shotgun shells with buckshot and a musket ball tamped into the wad with a good-sized goop of rendered pig fat. The pig fat hardens and keeps the buckshot together longer when I fire it. Gives it a nice tight pattern that will blow the hell out of whatever I hit, a whole lot further than a shotgun blast usually flies.”

  Bass laughed, just a little.

  He was pleased to be sharing his innovation – even if he had stolen the idea from off of a Mexican army scout that he had holed up with about twelve years back.

  “I tell you,” Bass went on. “That pig fat sure gives the fellow you are shooting at something to chew on.”

  Grimes just stood and stared at Bass as if the man were speaking in some sort of a foreign language.

  Bass stared back.

  “Something I said?” he asked.

  “Her skin was soft to begin with,” Grimes finally answered, talking low as if to himself. “All warm and spice-smelling and eager.”

  He spit thoughtfully into the dirt.

  “That pig fat buckshot of yours pulped her down into something along the lines of a bowl full of cheese curds and bone meal,” Grimes said. “Now brag on that, why don’t you?”

  Grimes shook his head like he was trying to clear it of a bad memory.

  Bass still didn’t get it.

  “So what?” Bass asked. “Dead is dead, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t
mean to sound so hard.

  The fact was he had been bothered enough by the way that things had happened to give up bounty killing all together – but he had also let the whole feeling scab over some time ago and he wasn’t about to sit down and pick at it out here in this festering boneyard. He figured that it was better to leave the dead lay right where they fell. It just made no sense to him at all to go poking at something that was likely to poke back.

  Grimes swung around and chunked Bass squarely on the side of his skull with the pick handle.

  Bass fell into the mouth of the grave and before he could get back on up Grimes was on top of him, pinning him down with his weight and a pick handle placed strategically across Bass’s throat.

  Then Grimes scooped up a handful of grave dirt and pushed it down into Bass’s open gaping mouth.

  Bass coughed hard.

  The dirt tasted of nettle and cactus, windstorm and pure regret.

  “You chew on that for a while,” Grimes said.

  Then he stood up and got back to his digging as if nothing had ever happened.

  Bass sat up and spat the dirt out, hacking hard and chewing on the stony bits. He could have shot Grimes just as easy as that – only he wasn’t all that sure about what he actually wanted to do right now. Besides – Grimes could move awfully fast for a one-armed man.

  It might be he was expecting Bass to make just such a play.

  “What did you do that for?” Bass asked.

  “You looked a little hungry,” Grimes said, swinging the pickaxe. “I thought I’d give you a little dirt to chew on. Now shut up dig, would you?”

  The tooth of Grimes pickaxe uprooted a small cluster of snowbell flowers that had been growing in the dirt.

  “Damn it,” Grimes swore.

  “Now what?” Bass asked, as he retrieved his fallen shovel, still spitting out bits of dirt.

  “There just isn’t enough flowers growing in this here dirt to go uprooting them like I just did,” Grimes mourned.

  He kept staring at what was left of the tiny white flower.