All Honest Men

by Claude Stanush

  “Momma send zis.”

  “Come on up.” I put out my hand.

  “Oh no, I haff to go.”

  “Aw, c’mon. Jus’ a few minutes.” I grabbed Vela’s hand and tugged a little on it. Up she come without saying nothing more. She was washed and scrubbed from after all day in the field, and I could smell a whiff of lye soap.

  “Why don’t you set down?” I said.

  I pointed over at my pallet, it was really just a old quilt stuffed with corn shucks. Vela looked down at it, but she didn’t move. She just stood there. I didn’t set down either, just stood there too, holding that strudel plate. We both didn’t seem to know what to say next, so we didn’t say nothing. I could hear a mouse snubbing around in some loose hay, but that was the only sound there was.

  Finally, Vela said something. “Poppa, he says you’re za best worker he ever has.”

  “Ain’t gonna be long before the cotton’s all picked.”

  “Yah, but forty more acres Poppa iss going to buy. Und all za time, even in za vinter time, there is vork.”

  “Forty acres?” I said. “How’s he gonna buy forty more acres?”

  “Mister Hunter next farm, he vants to sell. Last year, za fever gott on his vife und his baby, und zey die. Und Mister Hunter, he vants to die too. He move avay, zo he can forget. Poppa und Momma, zey don’t haff much cash money, but zey haff some.”

  “Your old man’s a good farmer.”

  “Yah, yah.” She put her shoulders back a little.

  “Maybe he’d let me work them forty acres on shares?”

  “Yah, yah.” Her face got even pinker.

  I knowed it was now or never. My knees felt like they was gonna rock out from under me. I put down the plate with the strudel on it, and I walked over to Vela and put my hands on her shoulders and I kissed her on the mouth. I did it so fast she didn’t have no time to duck or go nowhere.

  She still didn’t move. It was like she was froze up, except for how she was breathing. Kinda like a horse after it’s run hard. And her face had gone from that flushy pink to beet red.

  I looked her straight in the eye. “I like you, Vela.”

  She didn’t say nothing back. Only, “I haff to go.”

  At first, it was like she’d forgot where the ladder was, even though she’d just come up it. When she finally seen it, she walked over and turned around and started down it backways. I went over to her and grabbed her hand so she could hold onto something while her legs was feeling for the rungs. Her hand was slick wet.

  “Henry,” she said, “I haff to tell you. Emil vants to marry me.”

  “Emil?”

  “Yah.”

  “Emil’s a mule.”

  “He iss not a mule.”

  “Then what’d you come up here for?” All of a sudden, I was so mad I coulda spit.

  “Strudel.”

  If Vela was gonna marry Emil, I didn’t wanta keep staying on that farm. Only I didn’t wanta take off, either.

  I’d never felt that way about a girl before. Some pretty gals’ll give you a itch, and if you can’t have that gal, that itch’ll make you feel like you’re gonna die for about six hours. Then it goes plumb away. Like it was never there. Vela give me a diff’rent feeling. I can’t say what it was. It was deep down. There was something so clean and pretty and sweet about her, like how the sky’s so clean and pretty and washed after it’s come a good hard rain. A gal and a sky are diff’rent things, of course, and a young man don’t ache after a blue sky like he aches after a gal. But there’s something about one of them washed skies that makes a man one-hundred percent happy to be alive on this Earth, and that’s how I felt about Vela.

  There was another reason I didn’t wanta leave.

  I didn’t wanta miss the first hog killing.

  Most of them German farmers around Weimar was so good at what they did, even with how hard it was to make a living offa cotton, that they could afford to keep hogs. Like I said before, the Rausses had four of ’em. Anyhow, they didn’t kill any of them hogs ’til it was cold enough that the meat wouldn’t spoil. But soon as it come the first norther, a bunch of Germans would get together and throw down on the first hog of the season. It was like a big party. Poppa Rauss had told me all about it. They’d stab the hog in the heart, or shoot it in the head, and hang it in a tree, and drain all the blood out into a pan. The women would take turns stirring the blood so it wouldn’t clot up while the guts was took out and cleaned. The big guts was stuffed to make liver sausage, the other guts was stuffed with ground meat and salt and pepper to make other kinds of sausage. The blood was used to make “blood sausage.” The main parts of the hog’d be cut into hams and bacon and ribs and chops, and they’d be cured over a wood fire. Even the hog’s head would be cut up—snout, ears, tongue, ever’thing—and made into “head cheese.” And the feet was pickled, what Poppa called “pig knuckles.” The things that was too nasty for eating, like the balls and the bladder, they used ’em anyway. The balls was greasy and they was hung up in the barn and used to oil saw blades. The bladder’d get blowed up like a balloon with a turkey quill and dried and saved for Christmas eve. That’s when the little kids’d jump on it and, BANG!, pop it like a firecracker.

  I sure hated to leave the Rauss’ farm before I seen one of them hog killings with my own eyes.

  Yeah, it was both them things together—Vela and the hog-killing—that had me dragging my heels about taking off. But the next few days after I kissed that gal in the loft, it seemed like she didn’t wanta have nothing more to do with me. She’d keep her face hid deep in that stove-top bonnet when we was out picking, and if I was north to her, she’d turn that bonnet west. If I was west, she’d turn south. If south, east. If east, north. But ever’ so often, her neck’d twist towards me for a flash. And by the end of the day at the end of the week, her whole body turned plumb around and she come over to where I was at and aimed her nose right at me.

  “You come Sunday?”

  “I don’t think so, Vela.”

  “Come.”

  “I don’t dance.”

  “You don? Ur can not?”

  “Same thing.”

  “I teach you. You come.”

  I went. She sounded like she wanted me there, and that give me some hope. But for most of the first hour I stood on the side and grinded my teeth, watching Vela and Emil hop and skip and whirl together. I hated that Emil. I hated him because of Vela. And I hated him because he was so much of their kind—big and strong and blond haired and German. Then I seen Vela say something in his ear, and he looked over at me, and his shoulders squared. Vela come over. She pointed outside.

  “Za porch?”

  Soon as we was out there, she put her arms on my waist and there we went—a-sliding, a-hopping, spinning around. Left … right … right … left … hop … hop … skip … slide. And before I knowed it, one of my legs got in the way of t’other one, and down we went—arms and legs a-tangled. And before I knowed it, I was kissing Vela and damn if she wasn’t kissing me right back.

  “How c’n you do it?” I said in her ear when the kiss was done. “Marry that mule?”

  “I say zat I marry him? Nein. I say zat he ask to marry me. Emil iss a lazy one.” And then she give me the prettiest look I ever seen in my life. “Henry, you are za one I get to loff.”

  I wanted to spend ever’ second I could with that gal.

  ’Course, we was still picking cotton together, from dawn to dark, from can-see to can’t. But I went to helping her with chores, too. When you’re in love with a gal, and she loves you back, the henhouse you’re sweeping out has got the sweetest chicken dung you ever smelled. And the hogs you’re slopping has got the prettiest snouts you ever seen on a hog. Even the weeds in the garden ain’t no problem. Them weeds got as much right to be there as you do, you think, and you give ’em their due for being strong and tough and stubborn, and you’re happy to see ’em and you’re happy to yank ’em.

  Momma and Poppa seen what was
going on, and I guess they was for it, because after the supper dishes was done, Poppa started telling me to stay for their “reading time.” Sometimes, Vela’d get out the Weimar Democrat-Gazette and teach me spelling words. She always give me the long ones, but being I had that camera memory, all I needed was to see a word two or three times, and I could say ever’ letter in it. Other times, I’d tell Vela and her folks some of Ma’s outlaw stories. About bad-men like Butcher-Knife Bill and Dirty-Face Charley and Snakehead Thompson. Their eyes’d get rounder and rounder, and they’d make out like they didn’t wanta hear no more, but I knowed they did.

  The best part come when it was time for sleeping. Momma and Poppa was letting Vela walk me over to the barn, so long as she didn’t go in it, and we’d took to inching behind that big red door and she’d let me kiss her so long as I never did wrinkle up her collar. And them kisses got me so dizzy and worked up that if that barn’d caught on fire and burned to a pile of ashes all around us, I wouldn’t a-knowed it.

  All that was the good luck.

  Bad luck come the day after we picked the last boll of the Rauss’ cotton and two weeks or so before it’d be time for the first hog-killing.

  It was a Saturday, I’ll never forget it. Most times, that was a work day like the others, but being that we was done with the picking, Poppa Rauss had said it was a day of rest. We was all gonna drive in the buggy to Weimar where the ladies’d buy theirselves some new hats and stockings, and Poppa, a half-keg of beer. Even though he made his own beer, he wanted plenty extra that night—a dozen neighbors had already been sent word to come drink it.

  Even the mules knowed the hardest work of the year was over. They trotted all the way into Weimar and Poppa never had to pop the whip at ’em once. I had on a gray church suit (I’d got rid of that egg-yoke yellow one soon as I could), and there was eight silver dollars in my pocket to get something for Vela. It was a necklace she had her eye on at Schott’s Watch & Jewelry Store.

  When we got to Weimar, we drove down Main Street to Maxwell’s General Merchandise Store. That’s where we was going first. I hopped outa the buggy to tie up the mules. The others got outa the buggy, too, and for a minute or so we was all gathered there on the boardwalk.… when all of a sudden, somebody slapped me on the shoulder from behind.

  “Skinny Newton, for God’s sake! When’d you get outa prison, boy?”

  “Prison?”

  All the Rausses repeated it, like they was frogs croaking together on a log.

  I didn’t want to turn around, but I knowed I had to do it. And there stood a big fella with a crooked nose and a coupla teeth missing in front. He was wearing bib overalls and a straw hat.

  “I don’t think I know you, mister.” I started to walk off, but the big fella clamped a big hand on my shoulder.

  “You sure knowed me good enough to flash your ass in my face when you was blowing past me down them rows.”

  Goddamn!

  Yeah, I knowed the guy. It was Lonesome Gates, one of Dirty Butter’s tight aces back at Imperial. He was a lazy old louse.

  “So, Skinny,” he went on, “you never answered me here, boy. When’d you get outa prison?”

  Momma Rauss, she was standing the closest to me, grabbed me by the arm. “Vus you in prison?”

  “It ain’t how it sounds.”

  “Vus you in prison?” Momma Rauss asked it again.

  I looked over at Vela. Her face was white.

  “I ain’t gonna lie to you. I ain’t a liar. Yeah, I done some time. A little time. But I was innocent as a baby. You can go ask the Gov’nor. He’ll tell you. He give me a pardon. That’s how innocent I was.”

  “Vhy?” Vela asked. “Vhy dm you tell us?”

  “And you’d-a believed me?” My throat felt like somebody’d rammed a pound of cotton down it.

  “Vel.… you … you could haff.…” Vela didn’t say nothing more.

  Now Poppa Rauss’ face was getting redder and redder, and it looked like his whole German head was gonna blow up. “Adam und Eve, yah, they vas innocent too … Und Cain und Abel … Yah, everybody iss alvays innocent …!”

  “Hell, they was the ones that stole from me!” I said. “More’n four years of my life! And it was a frame-up! I didn’t steal no cotton! It was somebody else. He confessed to it.”

  “Cotton? Zat’s vhat you vas in prison for? No, you didn’t steal zat cotton, no!” Poppa was hollering now. “Vel, you’re not going to steal my cotton! Und you’re not going to steal my girl.…”

  “You gotta let me tell you what it was …”

  But Poppa Rauss had a awful look on his face. Tears was running down Vela’s cheeks.

  I wasn’t one to cry. Most times, when I had bad feelings I just went and sweated ’em out. But I could feel something pushing up, hard, from the back of my throat, from the same place that felt like it was stuffed full of cotton.

  I choked it back.

  I choked ever’thing back, turned on my heel and walked off. Walked off from Poppa and Momma, from all the Rauss grandbabies, Helga and Olga and Mina—and from Vela.

  I never saw any of ’em again.

  EIGHT

  The train through Weimar only went two ways: east and west.

  I picked west.

  There was a Southern Pacific, freight, No. 277, that come in sometime after midnight. It headed toward San Antone and El Paso and, way on down the line, to California. I knowed I didn’t wanta go all the way to California, but, other’n that, I didn’t know where I wanted to go.

  I felt like I’d been hit by one of them freight locomotives.

  When No. 277 come in, I swung on up into a empty boxcar and I set down in the doorway, dangled my legs over the side and let the country slide by. It was a dark, dark cloudy night. There wasn’t no moon, no stars. Inside me, I felt black as that night. Vela’d blow over me and I’d push her outa my head and, a minute later, she’d blow over me again.

  I likely woulda married that girl if it hadn’t been for.…

  For what?

  Goddamn that Lonesome Gates! Goddamn that hard-assed Poppa Rauss!

  That whole ride, my mind went here and there, here and there.

  When I wasn’t pushing Vela outa my head, I was thinking about a letter I’d got from Ma just a week before I’d got sprung from the penitentiary. It was a letter that I couldn’t hardly believe: Ma wrote that her and the old man had busted up.

  Pa’d finally give Ma “the last straw I could take,” she wrote. Seems that he’d decided this time that God’s Country was down near the Mex’kin border, in Zavala County, where we’d gone one time before, when I was a kid. The first time, Pa said he wanted to farm new country, but all we found in Zavala County was horns and thorns—prickly pear cactus and scrubby mesquites and wild, rangy cattle.

  This time, Pa’d heard they was digging dozens of water wells into a underground lake, and turning all that dry country into a Farmer’s Paradise. But, like always, he’d got ever’thing mixed-up. Them water wells cost lots of money to dig, money that Pa didn’t have. And the main crop folks was growing down there was onions. Pa didn’t know the first thing about growing onions. For a while there, Ma and Pa and the kids that was left was all living in a tent. That’s when Ma said, “You jus’ go on back north, Jim. You find God’s Country, I’ll read about it in a letter.”

  Goddamn my old man!

  The train stopped in San Antone, to drop off some cars and pick up some others. I quick pulled up my legs and hid over in one corner of the boxcar, ready to jump out in case a railroad dick come poking around. None did. I knowed the next stop was Uvalde, about seventy-five miles west.

  Uvalde’s where I decided I was gonna get off.

  Ma’d told me in her letter that she and some of the kids was living about forty miles from Uvalde, in Crystal City, next to the South Texas brush. And what do you know, that lazy brother of mine, Jess, was making cash money there by breaking brush country broncs for ranchers, and he was supporting Ma and what was left of ou
r family.

  Of all the people I knowed, Ma was the one I cared most about seeing.

  To get to Crystal City, I had to catch a spur at Uvalde. Only I hadn’t ate since early the day before, and by the time the train got to Uvalde my stomach was growling like a bulldog. I walked over to Main Street and had me a big breakfast: scrambled eggs with Mex’kin pepper sauce, sausage with Mex’kin pepper sauce, grits with Mex’kin pepper sauce, and three cups of hot black coffee. The whole thing cost me 15 cents, but it was worth ever’ penny.

  When a man’s got a full stomach, at least he ain’t altogether empty inside.

  Uvalde was a pretty town, with tall leafy pecan and oak trees lining the streets and some of ’em even in the middle of the streets. If things’d been diff’rent in my life, I mighta even liked being there. There was buggies and Model Ts and people all over, going about their business. At one corner, I seen a bunch of little girls dressed in white, standing in a circle. In the middle was a skinny young fella in a black suit. “Gather ’round for the voices of angels,” he was saying. “These ’r poor Baptist orphans!”

  Christmas was a ways off, but the song was about how Jesus was born in a stable, and how God lives in ever’body.

  I walked over and dug into my pocket, I still had them eight silver dollars in there. I felt bad for them orphans, even if they was Baptist. Their voices was soft and sweet, except for one tall girl in the back who was sticking her neck out and bleating like a calf. I felt sorry for her most of all.

  Their basket was coming around and I’d just throwed a dollar in when, all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I seen something I hadn’t seen in a long, long time. A bright red head of hair, just as red as a peckerwood. So red you couldn’t miss it if you was in a crowd of a thousand people.

  Before I knowed it, that red head was right up on me.

  “Red Farley! I’ll be damned!”

  “Well, by golly!” Red slapped me on the back. “What the hell you doing here, Little Snakes?”