The Bones of Paradise

by Jonis Agee

  A red-tailed hawk glided up and over the hill, the white winter belly almost obscured by summer brown, and then dipped toward the valley they traveled, swift as an arrow. It hit a rabbit running a ragged pattern through the switchgrass along the road ahead. The rabbit uttered a single choked scream, then went limp and hopeless, back broken, eyes fixed as the bird swept upward. A single drop of blood splashed Rose’s faded-gray-cloth-covered arm, the edges feathering out and sinking, already permanent. Rose followed the hawk’s flight until it was out of sight. “Star,” she whispered. “Star is making sure we’re safe.”

  Dulcinea knew they should go down the hill to the ranch. It would be dark soon, and late for supper. She used to be the one cooking, along with whatever cowboy’s wife they could hire. She knew what it meant to have extra mouths at the table. Rose didn’t eat much, though, and she hadn’t been hungry since they’d left the reservation, but she’d have to eat to keep track of things. She was going to find the person who killed J.B. They were already sentenced to death in her heart. She glanced at Rose. What kind of vengeance did she plan? In the years she’d known her, Rose had been a fair person, but anything to do with family was outside fairness. Dulcinea felt the same.

  “Your husband left you a lot of land,” Rose said, her eyes squinting into the distance.

  “I wish he hadn’t.” Dulcinea was surprised by her bitter tone, as if she blamed the land itself. She had thought of nothing except getting home and making certain that Rose was right. Stranger things happened. Maybe J.B. was still alive and it was—she couldn’t think what.

  She half expected her husband to see her from atop another hill, to gallop toward her, waving hat and arm, as he had every other time she arrived.

  “What are we going to do?” Dulcinea turned to the other woman. Rose stared at the ranch below, and then shifted her eyes back to Dulcinea.

  “We’re going to find out who did this. Look and listen. Someone knows something. My sister will help us.” Rose looked down at her mount’s wind-tangled mane, combed it thoughtfully with her fingers as the horse gazed longingly at the others going home for the night.

  Dulcinea pulled up in front of the house and Rose stopped beside her. Her gaze followed the picket fence around their first home, where the foreman now lived, and then on to the second, larger house J.B. built for her when she was pregnant with their second son. It needed paint, but the windows were intact. The lilacs in the side yard had grown tall and straggly, the blooms spare, purple and white glimpses amid the dark green leaves. She hadn’t been this close in years. She was too afraid of Drum catching her or her husband forcing her to explain why she couldn’t stay. She dismounted and started for the house, then shifted her gaze to the fenced-in pasture beyond the barns. He wasn’t in the house. He’d be out there. They couldn’t wait. She lifted the skirt she still wore from school and started toward the cemetery where her husband rested.

  The sound of the house door closing made her glance over her shoulder as Vera Higgs strode to the gate, lifted the latch, and stopped with her hand shading her eyes, taking in the new arrivals. She was a tall, slender African, dressed for work in men’s canvas pants and a faded blue shirt cinched with a wide leather belt. She stared at Dulcinea without expression, as if the wind in the hills had picked up a feather and blown it to her doorstep. A few years ago, J.B. introduced them in town, and it was a painful, awkward moment with him tongue-tied between them. Dulcinea nodded without speaking to the woman, whose gaze shifted to Rose, who still sat atop her horse.

  “I take it you’re with Mrs. Bennett,” Vera said. “If you ride over there, one of the men will take your horses. You’re welcome to have supper with us.” Her low contralto voice held a music Dulcinea envied, and she was jealous that another woman invited her friend into her own house. She immediately shook the notion from her head.

  She started toward the cemetery again, took only three steps before she heard, “Vera! Who is that? Vera?” Only one man had a voice like that: loud and harsh enough to wake the dead. Her eyes flitted from the cemetery to the house to Vera at the yard gate, and her mind filled with a roar.

  “Do not tell me that Drum Bennett is in my house!” She glared at Vera standing in her way as she half ran to the gate and then yanked it out of the other woman’s hand, marched up the walk, climbed the rotting steps, crossed the porch, pulled open the door, and strode inside.

  “Get out!” she shouted at the figure on the parlor sofa, leg propped on a pillow while he yelled himself red in the face, white spittle collecting in the corners of his mouth like a rabid dog.

  He blinked, mouth gaping. “You!” he growled. He had a full head of greasy white hair, and a mustache hung with a curd of egg over lips so thin they looked to be drawn on his fleshy, boneless face. The brows were thick white, too, as if he had fallen in a boiling laundry tub of lye soap. His skin was shiny hard, brown as a beetle’s, and his eyes were the same ugly white-blue. To ask for any kindness would be as fruitful as inquiring of a bolt of fabric how the day was progressing. It pleased her to see the sweat bead his forehead and dampen his chin. If she could pry open those razor lips and jam her traveling pistol down his throat, she would do it.

  She pulled off her hat and tossed it on the rocker across from him. “You need to leave.” It was then she noticed someone sat in the corner of the room, legs clad in dirty, torn denim stretched out in front of him as he slouched in the chair, hat pulled halfway down his face as if napping. Slowly the legs pulled under his body and the figure thumbed his hat back and sat up, still managing to slouch. Cullen. The same wolf white-blue eyes as his grandfather, the same insolent sneer on his lips. She couldn’t catch her breath, felt like she’d run a footrace and was on all fours panting.

  “Hello, son,” she said, keeping her voice soft as she would for a young child. He stared at her as if she were a stranger.

  “We had a bargain, woman.” Drum pulled himself more erect and wiped his mustache, the egg curd dropped to his sleeve.

  “That bargain’s lying out there in the ground. Call your men. Get on your horse or wagon for all I care, but get out of my house.”

  “You’re the one needs to stay gone, missy. Soon as I’m up again, you—”

  “You’ll what? J.B. is gone.” She folded her arms and rocked back on her heels.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Drum said in a low voice.

  “However it happened, you killed him,” she said. Cullen’s laughter from the corner made both adults glance over. Drum’s face paled and his mouth hung for a moment, then his expression darkened.

  “You’re out of your mind—” He licked his lips.

  “You didn’t protect him, did you? Look at you, you’re a used-up old man. You can’t even take care of yourself now.” She gestured toward the broken ankle, and he stretched his hand down his leg as if to protect it from her.

  “Cullen, get the hell out of here,” Drum said. The boy laughed again, shook his head this time, as if realizing he was out of everyone’s reach.

  Drum glared at her. “Think it’s safe here now?” His whispery voice made her shiver.

  “Oh no.” She braced herself on the back of the rocker. “I talked to the sheriff in Babylon this morning. He’s coming out here to investigate. I said it was more than likely your doing.”

  His eyes settled on the glass of water on the table beside him, then glanced quickly at her. He let his hands drop in his lap and stared at the wall. “You have to sleep sometime,” he said.

  “I’m not worried about an old cripple.” She pulled her traveling pistol from her skirt and held it loosely in her hand. He saw it and shook his head. There was a sharp intake of breath from Cullen’s corner as he straightened with hands on the chair arms and feet under him, ready to spring.

  They waited in silence. It reminded her of the special musk of the reptile house at the zoo in Chicago when she was in grammar school, a dry, fetid stillness fueled by the unwashed and unrepentant man and the long stewing rage of t
he woman beside him. She wondered what Cullen thought. She cursed the fact he was here to see this. She’d meant their reunion to be much different.

  “Too late to take the boy, lady.” Drum’s smile was more smirk. “Maybe he’s the one you have to watch out for now.”

  She had to pretend he lied because his words came too close to her fears. She saw the mirth leave Cullen’s face, replaced by the alert expression a hunted animal might wear. Had he—

  She turned abruptly and went to the kitchen for coffee. The coffeepot was in its usual place on the warming shelf on the back of the woodstove, which turned the contents to bitter black soup by end of day. J.B.’s favorite, a bitterness that made a person’s tongue swell and teeth brittle as if they’d been grinding sand.

  “Cup would be fine by me,” Drum called.

  “Same for me,” Cullen’s singsong mocked the two adults.

  She took a sip, savored the harsh bite with the tip of her tongue, and glanced around the well-kept kitchen, noting the orderly arrangements and feminine blandishments of flowers and her old lace curtains.

  “Cup a coffee, sister,” Drum said. Cullen slouched again, hands folded on his lap, his expression amused. Where was her boy, her sweet boy of old? She shivered, and then stopped herself. Couldn’t afford to show weakness in front of the old man.

  She went to the chair across from Drum and moved it closer to the low table on which rested his sundry goods: a battered metal comb one would use on a horse’s mane and tail, a pair of tiny wire spectacles, a smooth pebble veined with gold and silver, and a book whose spine and cover were so worn, the printing was a series of gold hieroglyphs, unreadable to her eye. Drum Bennett with a book. Truly he must be at wit’s end. No sympathy rose in her heart. She recalled the weeks and months after giving birth when that old man arrived to browbeat her out of bed, weak and ill, into cooking for him, despite the boys crying hungrily. “We’ll make a ranch woman out of you yet,” he’d declared.

  She sat, lifted her skirt, and placed her left foot on the table, kicking the pebble and comb onto the floor. When he saw her right foot about to join the other, he rescued his glasses from being crushed, although the book slid off and landed with a spine-breaking thump, loose pages flittering. She settled her skirts and leaned back, allowed the muscles sore from riding to find the contours of the chair. Her knees protested when straightened and her calves took a minute to relax their contraction.

  “He took up with an Indian girl, you know, that’s what got him killed. Found her out there right beside him.”

  She responded with silence, and he nodded. Cullen shifted restlessly in his chair, then rose and went quietly through the doorway to J.B.’s office. They listened as the cork hissed from a bottle and liquid sloshed into a glass. He reappeared with a half-full glass of brown liquor in his hand and began prowling the room with catlike grace, silently weaving among the chairs and tables while taking small sips. He stopped at the whatnot shelves and picked up the belt buckle Hayward had won riding goats as a boy and let it drop with a thud on the walnut shelf. He took a longer drink.

  “You didn’t know he was seeing that girl?”

  She gulped the burning-hot coffee to scald the lump caught in her throat. Cullen stopped behind her chair, rested his hand on the back of it. She was unsettled, she wanted to lean forward but remained still, even when he began to play with the chignon at the back of her neck. When his ragged fingernail scraped her skin, she couldn’t stop her shiver and he placed his hand on her shoulder. She waited a moment before reaching up to touch his fingers, afraid he’d jerk them away. He sucked in his breath but held still, and she stroked his fingers three times before he lifted his other hand to drink again. She could smell the heavy spice of their wedding brandy. That’s what they’d always called it.

  “She was fourteen. Tiny slip of a thing . . .” Drum grinned, as ugly as he knew how, like he’d just made her stick her hand in a gunnysack full of rattlesnakes. “What do you think of that, sister?” He rubbed the thigh of his good leg and chuckled. She closed her eyes and turned her face from his. That kind of meanness needed a witness to really be enjoyed. Cullen squeezed the back of her neck with his hand and remained silent.

  A part of her knew J.B. deserved more happiness than their miserable meetings offered, but a child? J.B.? Rose said her sister was a good girl. Why would Drum lie, unless he was responsible.

  Drum glanced at Cullen. “He’s not coming to live with you, you know that, don’t you?” Drum’s mood and tone changed abruptly and Cullen began to prowl the room again. “Don’t bother pretending, sister. I know why you’re here. That boy is mine, that’s all I have to say on the subject. You’d have him ruint in a month. Turn him weak and mewly like J.B. was until you left. Took him a while, but he grew a pair and managed to keep this place going. More than I predicted.” He paused and looked out the window at the ranch yard, where the hands were gathering for supper.

  “What have you done to find his killer? Anything? Or have you been sitting here planning on how you’re going to take over everything J.B. and I built?”

  Drum almost flinched, his face reddened. Cullen stopped at the end of the sofa and watched her, the drink halfway to his mouth.

  “I sent men out to look.” Drum stared at his hands, his mouth a grim line.

  She stood and paced between the kitchen and living room, hands clutched in front of her as if she were going to be sick. Her mind flooded with protest and argument, but it did no good. Not now. Not then when Drum arrived that morning for his “legacy,” as he called it. Family curse was how she’d always referred to it, as if the vampire of Bram Stoker’s novel had come to life in the Sand Hills of Nebraska, a place so remote the rest of the state rode out of its way to avoid it. There was no justice here. They were all merely blooded creatures waiting for the fatal bite. Even J.B., the man who loved her more than she loved herself, could not change his father’s mind. And so she was forced to leave without him ever knowing she paid for his safekeeping, and the price became her burden, the forfeiture of their future together.

  She stopped behind the chair she had sat in and clutched the back. Cullen had returned to his father’s office for another brandy and stood in the doorway drinking and watching them.

  “I will find out who murdered my husband. You don’t need to concern yourself. He would want it that way. He never trusted you, Drum. Not for a minute. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the one pulled the trigger. If you did, I’ll hang you out there myself.” She pointed to the cottonwoods behind the barn.

  “Just because you’re the cow standing in the pigsty don’t mean you’re not dirty, missy.” Drum used both hands to lift the splinted leg, pivot, and ease it to the floor, grimacing at the effort that brought sweat to his pale cheeks and the backs of his hands.

  “Here, Cullen. Put that glass down and help me. I got to visit the outhouse,” he yelled, then glanced toward the homemade crutches at the end of the sofa. He wouldn’t ask. He studied the table blocking his access. His only choice was to hobble around it. Somehow he pushed himself upright, swaying with the bad leg propped out in front of him, balancing with his arms outstretched, on one foot, like a man on a wire in the circus. The first hop on the good foot brought his toe under the braided rug and he crashed to the floor, crying out as he tried to twist away from the broken ankle, resulting in a loud snap as his arm broke beneath the weight. Cullen drained his glass, set it down, and hurried over to help.

  Dulcinea was on her feet before she could stop herself. Shifting him to lie on his back, she accidentally grabbed the hand of the injured arm, and moved the bone with a grating sound. He moaned through gritted teeth.

  “Lie still!”

  “Help me, boy,” Drum groaned.

  Cullen rocked back on his heels and looked at his mother, the amusement again in his eyes as he raised his brows. She nodded and together they tried to raise the old man to a seated position. When that failed, she rose and went to the door to call for men
to help. Rose was still at the gate, holding the horses. Both looked played out from the long, fast ride, their heads down, coats rough with dried sweat. She watched as the hands started for the house and then paused at the door to peek at the scene inside, uncertain what was expected of them.

  “What happened?” Vera asked as soon as she pushed her way through the crowded doorway, followed by her husband, who stepped forward and knelt beside the old man.

  “Frank Higgs, ma’am. We met in town couple years ago?” The foreman tipped his hat to Dulcinea.

  “Still have to go out back,” the old man muttered as Higgs directed the men to lift him. “That damn woman did this to me! Keep her away from me!”

  “I told you to use the night jar,” Vera scolded.

  “He needs to go home,” Dulcinea said. “I don’t want him in my house.”

  Her words were greeted with expressions ranging from surprise on Frank and Vera’s faces, to bemusement on Cullen’s, and finally to fleeting triumph on Drum’s, before he fainted in their arms.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  She blew in like a hard west wind, the kind that dropped a man’s bones to zero, froze his hair to his skull, and clogged his eyes with ice. Graver shook his head at the scene. The old man on the floor, pee darkening his trousers and the braided rug beneath him, Vera and Frank Higgs standing helpless while the widow paced, her small black kid button boots thudding firmly on the parlor rug, her arms folded, as if Drum Bennett’s every ragged breath caused her affront. In a plain gray bodice and full skirt, Dulcinea Bennett was a handsome woman with only a few small lines at the edges of her light brown eyes. There was a rich glow to the strands of auburn hair falling out of her chignon. She possessed a slender build that spoke of inner force, more than equal to her father-in-law, Graver suspected. She appeared cool despite the heat that put a moist sheen on everyone’s face. He wondered what made her leave her family.