Whippoorwill

by Sharon Sala

  And then strike me blind.

  But when his prayers were not immediately answered, he knew himself well enough to recognize the symptoms. Unless a miracle occurred, he was about to sin.

  The streets were deserted save for a dog and a couple of kids running toward home before dark. The wagon master climbed down from his rig and began to unload Randall’s bags, but Randall hardly noticed. Framed by swinging doors and the lamplight from the hanging chandeliers in the room behind her, the woman was a sight to behold.

  The lines in her face were softened by the shadows of dusk, and so Howe did not readily see them. Her body looked soft and welcome to a man who’d ridden a wagon seat until it felt as if his hip bones had come through his rump. And then she smiled and he started convincing himself that this one wouldn’t matter. She sold herself on a daily basis and nothing he did to her could be misconstrued as a lie. It wasn’t as if she would expect anything from him other than her pay. It wasn’t as if she counted. She was only a whore. He never even noticed when the wagon master drove away.

  Letty had seen the clerical collar. It was the preacher everyone had been waiting on. She was beside herself with glee. Will the Bartender would never believe it, but she, Leticia Murphy, was going to be the one he would first greet. She pulled her feather boa across her cleavage in an attempt to cover her breasts and took a step forward.

  “Welcome to Lizard Flats. I’m Letty,” she said.

  It was all Randall could do to nod.

  Letty got nervous. Embarrassed by the flush that spread up his neck and cheeks, she looked away. It shamed her to think he must be shocked by her appearance. But curiosity won out and she started the conversation over again.

  “You are him, ain’t ya? I mean… you are the preacher everyone’s been waitin’ for?”

  Randall doffed his bowler, bowing just low enough to get a better than average view of her barely concealed bosom.

  “Yes, madam, I am. Reverend Randall Ward Howe at your service. Maybe you would be so kind as to show me to an hotel?”

  His voice made Letty shiver. It reminded her of the culture in James Dupree’s speech. Then, angry that he’d made her think of Jim, she blurted out.

  “The hotel has been full for days, but there are a couple of rooms over the saloon that Will the Bartender sometimes rents out. He went to get himself a haircut for the funeral, so I can’t let you have no key until he gets back.”

  Howe frowned. “What funeral?”

  She eyed the preacher up and down, taking absent note of the fine cut of his clothes and thinking of how this man was going to put his blessing on Sophie and Alfonso’s wedding.

  “I guess the one you’ll be performing tomorrow after the wedding, and as I hear it, none too soon. The old codger they brought in to bury is stinkin’ up the place somethin’ fierce.”

  Howe dabbed at the sweat coming from the roll of fat beneath his chin. “Good Lord! Don’t you people have an undertaker?”

  This time Letty laughed aloud and pointed behind her to a man who was passed out in the floor and slumped against the bar.

  “All’s we got is Eulis, there. When he’s sober, which is hardly ever, he digs the holes and plants the bodies. When he’s drunk, he sometimes forgets to cover ’em up.”

  Howe tried not to show the horror he felt. Maybe he’d been wrong last night. Maybe God had truly forsaken him by abandoning him to this wasteland. And if that was so then it shouldn’t matter if he sinned just one more time—for old times’ sake—before he continued down the missionary trail that fate had set him on.

  Howe gave her one of his show-me-some-pity smiles. “I’m travel-weary to my bones. And since your boss isn’t here, would you be so kind as to consider letting me, ah… rest in your rooms until his return?”

  Letty had heard too many invitations in her lifetime to ignore the one she’d just been handed. She started to snort, and then inhaled instead. Maybe she was mistaken. It would be a disaster if she offended the man the whole territory had been waiting for. Then his gaze slid downward and she saw that he was peering through the feathers to the valley between her breasts.

  Letty knew leers when she saw them. So preacher man. You got itchy man parts just like every other male who comes through these doors.

  “Would you care to follow me?” she asked.

  Howe picked up his bags, watching her hips swaying beneath her dress as she led the way upstairs. His loins were beginning to surge as he watched the ripple and roll of her body beneath the tawdry silk.

  I’m not going to mind this ride at all.

  When the door closed behind them, Letty turned, and the glitter in her eyes was as hard as Randall’s dick. “It’ll cost you a dollar.”

  Howe’s hands shook as he dug in his pocket. He would have given her a five-dollar gold piece and considered himself getting the best of the bargain.

  Letty took the money and tucked it away when he wasn’t looking. It didn’t pay to trust any man. Even a man of the cloth.

  ***

  Reverend Randall Ward Howe would never have imagined—not in his wildest dreams—that it would cost him a dollar to die. But that is exactly what he did—right in the middle of a hump—right on top of Leticia Murphy.

  Letty felt the air and the life go out of him all at once. In her line of work, men often shot their wad before they even got it in. And no matter how loud they bragged to their buddies about their prowess, she’d watched their lust go limp on a regular basis. But she’d never, not once, had one die on her before.

  With a panicked grunt, she pushed him up, then off of her. His purpling face and deflating belly were more than she could handle. She grabbed her pillow, clamped it over her face, and commenced to screaming until goose feathers came out between the threads in the ticking and into her mouth.

  But time passed and Randall Howe continued to hog his share of Letty’s bed. When she could think without coming undone, she knew she had to make a plan. And since she was naked, the first thing to do was get dressed. Every few seconds she would give his body another push, just to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake. To her continuing dismay, she hadn’t.

  “They will hang me for sure! People have been coming for days to hear the preacher from back east, and I’ve gone and killed him in a bed of sin.”

  With that, she began to shake.

  But as with everything bad, there comes a time when weariness can overtake grief and fear. It happened to Letty just about the time she began to get mad. She leaned over the bed, peering into the preacher’s sightless eyes.

  “It’s your fault, you stupid lout,” she muttered, then reminded herself. “I can’t just let him lay. I’ve got to do something!”

  No one argued with her decision.

  She yanked his hands across his belly, then folded his arms across his chest and covered him with a spread. Now he looked like the corpse he was, lying cold and still beneath the makeshift shroud. And with that thought, came another, followed on the heels of the wildest scheme she’d ever concocted. But if it worked, no one would be the wiser and she just might escape the hangman’s noose. She bolted for the door.

  The silence of the bar was odd, almost eerie. She couldn’t remember a day when there hadn’t been at least a half-dozen men milling about, unwilling to go home.

  Will the Bartender was still gone. She thought of Truly Fine, who’d left here over a year ago, and while she wished now that she’d been on that stage with Truly, the solitude in which she found herself was all the better to play out her hand.

  To her relief, Eulis was right where she’d seen him last, passed out on the floor beneath the bar. Letty nudged him several times with the toe of her shoe. He didn’t budge.

  “Eulis!”

  He didn’t move. He didn’t blink.

  Letty bent down and grabbed his long, bushy beard, yanking it back and forth until his head lolled on his neck like a yo-yo.

  “Dang it, Eulis, wake up!”

  He groaned and rolled,
squinting through swollen lids as the overhead lights all but blinded his vision.

  “Letty? Izzatchu?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” she hissed. “Get up.”

  “Wha’ the hell are you doin’?” he muttered, and swiped at Letty’s hands. “Dammit, ’at hurts.”

  She glanced nervously toward the door. If anyone came in now, her plan would be ruined before she had a chance to set it in motion. Thankfully, there was no one in sight.

  “Get up!” she whispered. “I need your help.”

  “Can’t. I’m in my cups,” Eulis said, and rolled over on his side.

  Letty grabbed him by the ear, yanking hard enough to bring tears to Eulis’s eyes. “I will skin you alive and stake you on an ant hill if you don’t get up.”

  As drunk as he was, it was the word ant that got his attention. Every now and then he still found a dead one in his tangle of beard.

  He groaned and staggered to his feet. “What the hell do ya’ want?”

  “Come with me,” Letty said, and all but dragged him up the stairs.

  “Now see here,” Eulis mumbled, trying to regain his freedom before the whore pulled him into her room. “I ain’t able to help you out like this none. I’ve been drunk too long to get it up, and that’s a fact.”

  “I don’t need that kind of help, you ass. I need you to help me hide something.”

  She pushed him through the door and slammed it shut behind them.

  Even for a drunk, the body on the bed was impossible to miss. Eulis staggered backward. He’d seen plenty of dead men in his days, but none laid out on a whore’s bed, covered with a thin cotton spread, and not a stitch of clothes to his name. It was a sobering sight that sent the last fumes of alcohol flying from his whiskey-soaked brain.

  “What the hell did you do to him?”

  She thought about crying but changed her mind, although her voice was shaking. “I didn’t do nothin’ to him that I don’t do to any other man. How was I to know he was goin’ to croak on me?”

  Eulis felt bad. He hadn’t meant to upset her none.

  “There, there.” He patted her shoulder. “I’m sure it couldn’t a’been helped. I always say, ‘when it’s a man’s time to go, it’s his time to go.’” He grinned through a drunken fog. “Besides, I can’t think of a better way to die than gettin’ a little of the good stuff on the way out.”

  Letty hit him up aside the head. “Don’t make jokes. This is serious.”

  Eulis grimaced and rubbed at the side of his face where she’d smacked him. “Not for him it’s not. He’s past worryin’ about anything.”

  Letty bit her lip as she confessed her sin, although saying the words made her belly quake. “That there’s the preacher everyone’s been waiting for.”

  Eulis gawked. He looked from the mound of flesh beneath the spread, to Letty, and back again.

  “You killed the preacher?”

  At this point, she began to shake and moan, wondering if it hurt much to hang.

  “Oh hell, now, let’s don’t start that all over again,” Eulis muttered. “We’ll figure somethin’ out.” The sounds coming out of her mouth were giving him a serious headache.

  Letty blew her nose on the skirt of her dress. “We’ve got to hide the body.”

  Eulis stared at the mound of man beneath the spread. “That might take some doin’. He’s right portly.”

  She rolled her eyes and then punched Eulis on the arm. “You aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know. I lay odds you have never been humped by something the size of a buffalo.”

  Eulis considered the fact and had to agree. And then he thought. “We could bury him.”

  Letty’s face brightened. It was the first sensible thing Eulis had ever said in her presence.

  “Where?”

  “I done dug a hole for that trapper they’re waitin’ to plant. Maybe I could dig it a little deeper and put the preacher-man in first. If I cover him with a few inches of dirt, no one will be the wiser when they drop the trapper in on top. Hell, the old trapper smells so bad now that I doubt anyone will even come to watch the buryin’, save maybe his partner who brought him into town.”

  Letty’s eyes widened as she considered the notion. With one last sniff, she clasped her hands beneath her bosom in a prayerful gesture.

  “Oh Eulis! If you help me do that, you can poke me free forever.”

  Even though his pecker was useless, he brightened at the thought.

  “All right then,” he said. “Help me wrap him up good. We’ll drag him out the back door and into Will’s wagon. I’ll have him at the cemetery before you can say amen.”

  Reverend Howe would have been highly incensed at the casual way in which his earthly body was handled. He was rolled, thumped, and bumped down a single flight of stairs, then dragged up a plank and into the wagon with little ceremony.

  The only snort of disapproval came from the horse pulling the wagon. And it was not at the manner in which the body was being handled. It was because he was still hitched to a wagon, rather than a feed bag.

  But Letty was borderline hysterical, and Eulis was on a mission. The horse’s meal would have to wait. Together, they made it out of town and up the hill to the cemetery then did what they had to do. Later, still hidden by the shelter of darkness, they re-entered town a weary, but calmer, pair than when they’d left.

  “I need a drink,” Eulis muttered, as he unhitched the horse and bedded it down in a stall.

  Letty’s eyes narrowed. She had other plans for Eulis—plans she’d been concocting while he’d been digging a deeper hole.

  “What you need is a bath.”

  Eulis shrugged and brushed at the dirt on his hands and clothes. It mattered little to him. There was so much of it that one more layer of grime hardly mattered at all. Besides, if he could stand himself, why should anyone else care?

  “Naw, I’m fine.” Eulis combed his dirty fingers through his long hair and beard to prove that it was so.

  “Not if you’re going to preach tomorrow,” Letty said, and started pulling him toward the door.

  “Not if I’m gonna what?”

  Letty was too busy guiding him toward the back stairs that led up to her room to answer. Her bath tub was full and waiting for her to crawl in, but tonight it was going to see better use.

  More than once, Eulis tried to run, but Letty had him by the beard, and it hurt too much when she pulled.

  “Dagnabit you witch! Turn me loose or else,” he warned.

  “Or else what, Eulis Potter? Who are you gonna tell? And what will you say? That you helped a whore hide a dead body? That makes you an accomplice. They can hang you as high as they hang me. You’d best remember that.”

  Eulis groaned. He had just remembered why he’d become a drunk. It had been a woman who’d driven him to the bottle, and she’d been too much like the one who now had him by the balls—and the beard—to argue with.

  The door slammed, and they were suddenly alone. The tub beckoned although the steam had long since quit rising from the water.

  “Take off your clothes,” Letty ordered.

  Eulis groaned. He was some sober, but not enough, he feared, to do her any good.

  “Not for that, you ass,” Letty muttered, and started ripping at his jacket and shirt. The rotting garments fell away in her hands. “Get in the tub. By the time I get through with you, you won’t recognize yourself.”

  Eulis was feeling too sick to argue. He needed a drink, but from the look on Letty’s face, he wouldn’t get the time of day unless he did as he was told. He crawled into the water with the reluctance of a drowning man. The tepid water shriveled his privates to an embarrassingly small state.

  “I’ll get some more warm water,” Letty said, and bolted out of the room. She was back within minutes, having snitched the big pot of water off the stove that Will kept ready for the making of coffee. When she tilted it into the tub and poured, Eulis started to shriek.

  “Christ all mighty!”<
br />
  “Preachers don’t curse,” Letty muttered.

  “I’m going to be sick.”

  “You do, and you’ll be bathing in it,” she warned.

  He swallowed the bile and took the soap that she offered.

  Two hours later, he stood before her mirror, a shorn and saddened man. His own mother would not have recognized him. He was, as near as Letty had been able to create, a passable recreation of Reverend Randall Ward Howe, right down to the part in the middle of his hair, and the clean-shaven face and double chin.

  Letty handed him the preacher’s clothes. “Try them on,” she said.

  “He was fatter than me,” Eulis argued.

  “Your beer belly will hold them up. You can belt in what sags.”

  Letty was still holding the scissors she’d used to cut off his hair and beard, so Eulis figured an argument of any sort would be a lost cause. Reluctantly, he began to dress, and when he finished, stood back to view himself.

  All told, he didn’t look as bad as he’d feared. He even pranced and preened a bit at Letty’s instructions, trying to mimic the walk of the man whose final act on earth had been a sin. By the time dawn arrived, Eulis had been coerced into a plan of collusion that could fall apart at any given moment. Neither of the culprits had any notion of whether Banker Worthy or Widow Hollis had known the reverend on sight. If they did, it was all over. But, Letty and Eulis were counting on the fact that they had only known him by name. So, if Eulis didn’t go and get himself drunk before the ceremony, they’d be home free.

  Letty pushed a sweaty lock of hair away from her face. “It’s nearly daybreak. I’m gonna clean myself up, then we’re both going down and pretend nothing is wrong.”

  Eulis grinned. His mouth was dry. And he would have killed two snakes for nothing stronger than a smell of cheap whiskey, but he was starting to enjoy himself. He looked real good in these fine clothes. And Letty didn’t know it, but he’d been raised on the Good Book. He knew plenty of passages to get him by the worst of it.

  What he didn’t know was if he could keep a straight face. In the years that he’d spent in Lizard Flats, he’d been kicked aside, ignored, or spit at on a daily basis. This was too good to fathom. He kept thinking of Sophie hitting him with her umbrella and the trouncing Alfonso Worthy had given him while he’d been sitting in Pete Samuel’s trough. Now Eulis was going to perform their marriage ceremony and it wouldn’t be worth a hill of beans. It was the best sort of vengeance a man could ask for. Bloodless, but binding, nevertheless.