Contention and Other Frontier Stories

by Hazel Rumney

  When the feel of the road changed beneath my shoes, I thought it might be the driveway into the church, so I cautiously turned right. The wind blew even harder, and I went down on my knees, choking and spitting, and crawled until I bumped into a corner of the building. Another couple of feet to one side, and I would have missed it.

  I felt my way along the weathered clapboard, past a window to the entrance, then hunched against the door and felt for the rusty knob. I turned the knob and pushed, but the door didn’t move. I put my shoulder into it, but still the door remained firm and clearly locked. I hollered, hoping somebody would hear me, but even if there had been somebody inside, my voice wasn’t strong enough to overcome the roar of the wind. I kicked and pounded, trying to force or maybe break the door, but it was oak and weathered and rugged as the proverbial cross. I leaned my head against the door for a moment, wishing I had the breath to curse properly, and knowing I had to get inside or be choked by the storm.

  So I slid down the wall to the window. The sill was about chest high; I turned my back and aligned my right elbow with the middle pane, then drove my elbow sharply backward. The glass shattered, scattering pieces inside. Then I reached in through the jagged edge, undid the hook from the eye, and slid the window up. I brushed the glass away from the sill, tossed the water bag inside, and pulled myself up and over. Once on the other side I slammed the window shut—but dust spewed in from the broken place like it was being shot from a firehose. It was dim inside the church, but I could see the back of a pew within arm’s reach, and a little rack that held hymnals and testaments. I snatched up one of the Bibles, broke its spine so it would stay sprung open, and jammed it into the space where the pane had been.

  Then I picked up the water bag, walked around the end of the closest pew, and sat down. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see the dust swirling like stars in the vaulted ceiling above.

  Then I saw the coffin.

  It was still bright enough in the east to throw a shaft of sunlight through a window, illuminating the coffin at the business end of the church, where the preaching took place. The light made brilliant the coffin’s occupant, a girl of perhaps seven or eight; her face shone with unnatural warmth and her neatly combed blond hair seemed a tender fire. The effect could have come right from a Caravaggio painting, perhaps “St. John the Baptist.” I’d seen a print of it once in a book at the Kansas City Public Library.

  I stood up and moved closer.

  The coffin wasn’t store bought, but a bit roughshod, woven by hand from willow strips, like a basket. The child’s dress, which was clean and pressed, was made out of flour sacks printed with an animal cracker design—monkeys and ducks and rabbits. In her clasped hands was a spray of wildflowers.

  “Good day for a funeral,” said a rough voice.

  I hadn’t seen the man slumped in the shadows, sitting in a pew on the west side of the coffin.

  “Pardon?” I asked.

  “It’s Sunday,” he said. “Some days seem better for buryin’ than others. I know, because it’s the day I put my Astrid in the ground last November. Married fifty-one years, would have been fifty-two this summer.”

  He had not turned to look at me as he talked. The back of his bare head was a tangle of white hair above a frayed denim collar.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “The child there. Is she related?”

  “No,” he said. “Don’t know who belongs to her.”

  Then what are you doing sitting here in the dark with her? I thought but didn’t ask. The old boy clearly didn’t want much conversation, and I was getting a queer feeling because he hadn’t even yet turned to look at me. Then he coughed, a wet hacking cough, his shoulders shaking with pain.

  “I have water. Would you care for some?”

  He held up his left arm until the coughing stopped, the hand shaking in the air as if he were busting a bronc.

  “Yes,” he said. “Feels like I’m dying of thirst.”

  I carried the water bag up the aisle. Outside, the wind rattled the door and beat against the north and west walls of the church, and I could hear sand slithering down from the place in the broken windowpane that wasn’t covered by the testament.

  “That’s far enough,” he said.

  I stopped a couple of paces behind him, and he held out a gnarled hand. I placed the bag in it, and he flipped off the cap and took a long drink. Then he poured some into his kerchief and wiped his face.

  “You always carry water with you?”

  “Only a fool travels without it,” I said.

  The old man laughed.

  “That’s for damned sure,” he said. “And I’m proof of it.”

  Outside, the wind keened a death song.

  “You can sit,” he said, motioning to the near end of the pew across the aisle.

  “All right,” I said, taking the seat.

  I could see his face now, and it looked as if he had just about worn it through. His yellow skin was blotched and tight over the cheekbones, his nose was crooked from a bad break many years ago, and his cloudy blue eyes swam in watery sockets.

  “The door was locked from the inside,” I said.

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t want company,” he said. “But, you managed to bust in.”

  “One of my charms,” I said.

  He glanced my way, then shook his head.

  “You dress like a man.”

  “Not really,” I said. “A lot of women wear pants these days. Practical, with my job.”

  “A girl with a job,” he said. “Still can’t get used to it, other than bookkeepers and schoolteachers and . . . well, some ladies that do their business at night. What kind of work do you do?”

  “I talk to people and type and use the telephone.”

  He snorted.

  “My Astrid loved to talk,” he said. “It didn’t matter about who or what. She woke up talking and went to sleep talking. Used to drive me half mad, but now I can’t think of any sound that would be half so nice.”

  Then there came the sound of scrabbling at the front of the church; there were some low voices, and the door rattled against the lock. The old man did not move.

  “They’ll die out there,” I said.

  He didn’t answer, just cocked his head a bit as if he were listening to somebody besides me. Then he reached beneath his coat, and I caught the glint of something deadly in his right hand.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m ready. See who it is.”

  I went to the door, slipped the bolt, and opened it to a blast of dust that blew in a gaggle of refugees. A mother and her children came first, all three dark-headed and looking stray and hungry. They were followed by a young couple in clean but modest city clothes, the girl carrying a picnic basket, and, judging from the way they hung onto one another, sweethearts or newly married. The boy had short hair and thick glasses, and his girl had long blond hair. Last came a black man who seemed neither young nor old, wearing a black suit jacket over coveralls, and who did not seem to hurry even though hell itself howled outside.

  “Why was the door locked?” the black man asked. “I’ve been deacon here for twenty years and never knew the latch to be set.”

  “The wind,” I said, putting my shoulder against the door until I heard the latch. “Where you all come from?”

  “Met up on the road,” the black man said. “All running from the storm, so I brought ’em here. Who are you?”

  “Call me Frankie,” I said.

  “This is a black church?” the young man asked.

  “This is the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Jericho Springs,” the ageless black man said. “Been here for more than fifty years, founded by my Exoduster grandfolks. But you all are welcome just the same.”

  “Hell,” the young man said, and the girl gave him a look.

  “Excuse us,” she said. “We’re grateful for the shelter, deacon. We’d have choked to death for sure out there on the prairie.
It was such a lovely day, and we thought we’d have a little picnic lunch, then the storm blew up so sudden. We got caught walking halfway home and would have been smothered for sure if you hadn’t found us.”

  “Call me Bascom,” the deacon said, and his voice sounded like a sermon laced with whiskey. “Omar Bascom. And you’re welcome, miss.”

  Then Bascom’s eyes went to the broken window, and back to me, and then to the old man sitting in the pew up front.

  “That his Ford out there?”

  “Mine.”

  “What kind of business you have to break a window to get in?”

  “Survival,” I said. “He was already inside, with the door latched. I’ll pay for the window.”

  “And the good book,” the deacon said.

  “Oh my,” the mother said, pulling her children closer. “Is that a coffin?”

  “You all better come up here and sit down,” the old man said. He had found a folding chair and turned it around to face the pews. He held the ancient blue six-shooter in his right hand, resting easy on his right thigh. Blood seeped from the tail of his blue shirt, down his left pant leg, and was spreading on the floor. Tucked beneath the chair was an old brown satchel.

  “Come on up,” the old man said, motioning with the gun. “Sit where I can see you. We’re going to ride the storm out together.”

  “You don’t look like you’re in shape to ride anything out,” Bascom said, easing into a front pew. “Put down the gun and let us tend to you. When the storm passes, we’ll send somebody for a doctor.”

  “Past tending,” the old man said.

  The mother sat with one child on her lap and the other beside her. They were perhaps two and five, the girl older and sitting on the pew, and the boy reaching for the front of the woman’s thin smock, and each time the mother gently moved the hand away. I noticed that the mother’s own hands were small, scarcely larger than her little girl’s.

  “Whose child?” the mother asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bascom said. “We found her after services this morning, on the wooden steps out front. Somebody had just left her. Probably a family bound for California. Died of dust pneumonia, I reckon. My wife cleaned her up and we put her in the basket, but with the storm coming, there was no time today to dig a grave in the cemetery out back. We’ll use a couple of fruit boxes to put her in the ground tomorrow and save the basket for next time.”

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “We found no clue,” Bascom said. “But her name is known to God.”

  “Amen,” the mother said.

  “And where did you come from?” the old man asked.

  “Joplin,” the mother said. “That’s over the state line way east in Missouri. I’m Florence, and this is Finis Junior and Pearl. Our truck is down the road three or four miles, with a rod through the side of the block. Damn that man who sold it to my man, Fin.”

  “I know those lots on West Seventh in Joplin,” I said. “You’re lucky you got this far.”

  “Lucky?” Florence asked, then laughed. “We’ve never been lucky in our entire lives. Just once, instead of being the ones got took, I’d like to do the taking. I’d just like to know how it feels.”

  “Where’s your man?” the old cowboy asked.

  “Finis Senior is with the truck,” Florence said. “He sent us along toward Boise City, knowing that somebody would more likely give us a ride if we was alone. Nobody wants to give a man a ride these days.” She pronounced Boise like the locals do, not like the city in Idaho, but Boyce. “If you don’t mind me asking, mister, why do you have that gun on us?”

  “You don’t seem scared,” the old cowboy said.

  “What’s there to be scared of now?” Florence asked. “This is the end of the world. It’s been coming for some time, we all knew it. The sky has turned to ashes and we’re all going to be buried in dust.”

  “Now, we’ve had dust storms before,” Bascom said. “It doesn’t mean the end times, not yet.”

  “Just look outside,” Florence said. “It’s still hours until sunset, and yet it’s dark as midnight.”

  “I’ll get the lamp,” Bascom said. “And some newspapers to stuff the cracks in the door and the window sills. And that broken pane.”

  “Do you have a telephone?” I asked.

  “Sister, we don’t even have electric,” Bascom said. “What do you think?”

  “Don’t go where I can’t see you,” the old cowboy said.

  “Where would that be? There ain’t but one room here.”

  “You didn’t answer the question,” the young man said. Now that I was closer to the couple, who were sitting just across the aisle, I could see rings on their left hands, so they must be bride and groom. “Why do you have that gun on us? We haven’t done nothin’ to you.”

  The old man didn’t answer.

  “He robbed the bank at Dalhart,” I said. “That’s my best guess, anyway. Got shot making his getaway, and from the look of him, it was a gutshot. He’s lost a lot of blood and thought he’d hole up here until maybe he could travel again. If I’m wrong, mister, tell me now.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”

  “No, I’ve got a few questions left.”

  “Save them,” the cowboy said. Then he turned to the girl with the picnic basket. “Any food left in that?”

  “A little,” the bride said. “But it’s got dirt in it.”

  “Don’t matter.”

  She gave him the basket, which he picked through while the deacon and the groom went about sealing up windows with yellowed newspapers. The deacon placed a low stool between the pews and the chair where the cowboy sat and adjusted the wick beneath the fluttering flame of the kerosene lamp to give more light. The old man’s eyes swam in the yellow glow.

  He took a bite of a bread and cheese sandwich, but he couldn’t seem to swallow, so he ended up spitting most of it on the floor. “I don’t think I should have drank all that water,” he said.

  “It’s your insides,” Bascom said. “They’re all busted up.”

  “I reckon.”

  He passed the basket over to Florence, who began to brush the dust away so her children could eat the scraps.

  “Give me the gun and let me help you,” Bascom said.

  “We’ll just wait,” the cowboy said.

  So we sat in the circle of light, with the dead child beyond us at the altar, listening to the wind and feeling the dust settle on our skin and hair. Bascom motioned for the water, and the old cowboy handed it over, but before he could flip open the top, the groom snatched the bag from his hands.

  “What?” Bascom asked.

  “You should let us drink first.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why,” the bride said. “That’s just the way it’s done.”

  Bascom looked to some point beyond the groom’s shoulder.

  “This house belongs to the Lord,” he said. “Here, we are all equal.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said, and snatched the water bag from the boy’s hands, so roughly that the edge of the bag knocked the glasses from his face. “It’s my bag. If this man is good enough to bury our unclaimed dead, he’s good enough to drink my water. You’ll drink, too, when you get thirsty enough.”

  I handed the water back to Bascom, who said nothing, but drank.

  The bag went around, and each drank their share in a rough kind of panhandle communion. The groom had recovered his specs, now with one shattered lens, and even though his face was as red as my bandana, he drank like the rest.

  In time, Florence’s youngest child squirmed uncomfortably beside her.

  “Junior needs to make water,” she said to us in a whisper.

  “There’s a bucket in the cabinet toward the back, with the brooms and other things,” Bascom said. “Draw the cloth aside and you’ll see it.”

  The mother herded both of her children to the far corner.

  With nothing to do but sit and
watch, I began thinking about the rabbit drive earlier that day. There had been hundreds of families—men and women and all their children big enough to walk—who drove them across several sections by shouting and banging pans, herding them to a place where two long chicken wire fences met to form a sharp corner. The rabbits streaked across the land, faster than I could have imagined, darting in straight lines to one point or another, seeking shelter. But, inexorably, they were funneled to the killing corner. Soon there were a thousand or more rabbits trapped there, hopping over one another and crying, and the townsfolk approached with ax handles and other clubs. The rabbits just gave up, allowing themselves to be snatched up by their hind legs while the clubs came down on their skulls. The rabbits not killed by that first blow screamed, and the sound was like that of a small child screaming in pain. When one rabbit screamed it would get the others going, even the ones that hadn’t been snatched up yet, but were shaking and cowering against the fence, and the sound was like a chorus from hell.

  You couldn’t eat the rabbits after because of the rabbit fever, and it was impractical to skin a thousand dead rabbits, so even the fur went to waste. I understood why the rabbits were killed, because the crops were more important, but the people went about it with a purpose that was beyond it just being a chore. Some of them clearly enjoyed it, and others—the ones who ended up killing the most—beat them to death with a manic zeal that made it clear that they were not just killing rabbits but were trying to beat their way out of their troubles. Perhaps they were imagining the banker down the street, or their neighbor who was just a little better off, or the wife who had left. Some, I’m guessing, were imagining God.

  In my head, I had been working on the lead to the story for hours, knowing I would have to phone something in to Art, but I couldn’t get past the sound of the rabbits dying. Every time I thought I had something I could use, something about the plains people defending their land from a pestilence that might have come straight from the Bible, there was that sound in the back of my head, mocking me.

  “I grew up here,” the old cowboy said, bringing me back to the church.