The Bones of Paradise

by Jonis Agee

  “That Reddy?” He nodded at the poster and nudged Larabee, who was staring at one of the worn-looking women, a skinny brunette wearing a thin, shapeless dress whose red shine had been washed to a faded pink. Droopy gray lace along the bodice revealed the slight cleavage of her small, tired breasts. She waited for the reluctant drinkers to drop a few coins on her round tray, straightened her back, brushed a hank of limp brown hair from her eye, tilted her head, and closed her eyes as if her own touch were the only comfort she knew. A pair of silk stockings with a run laddered up the side revealed narrow, trim ankles.

  Larabee shook his head and nodded at the tired woman. “That’s Nance. Her old man went rodeoing, left her with three youngsters and a cardboard shack at the edge of town when the bulls finished with him.” Larabee took a swallow of beer, sounding more sober by the minute, as if the beer countered the effects of the whiskey. “She’s working dark to dark putting food on the table for the little ones. Shame to see her like this.” He glared at the cowhand who tried to pull her onto his lap and fondle her breasts at the same time as she pushed him away with a tired smile.

  “Damn fool Lister, married her and worked for Drum a time, couldn’t cut it. Never did grow up. Guess he figured it out about the time his brains were stewed with arena dirt.” Larabee turned to lean his elbow on the bar and direct Graver’s attention to the wall of photos and newsprint.

  “That’s Reddy’s daughter Imogene on the poster. Genie, they call her. Followed Lister right down the road, she never came back neither. Guess she met some young fool and stayed gone, the way I heard it. Made a bundle trick riding. Enough for Reddy to sell this place to his other daughter, Lucille, and retire to drinking full time. Lucille lives outside town with a pack of half-wolf dogs and a herd of Indian ponies, while he holes up here in town, street behind this one, over by the firehouse.” He took a sip of beer as his gaze followed the skinny brunette making her way between tables to the bar, where Lucille waited.

  The woman barkeep wore a plain black skirt and a black shirt, ironed crisp but faded, that came to a V at the neck over skin already developing the matted texture of a country woman. Her face wore a neutral, manly aspect with its oval shape and slightly shadowed upper lip and jaw. Her eyes revealed nothing as the thin brunette dropped the round tray on the bar and shoved the change toward her. Lucille swept it into her waiting palm with the edge of her hand and dropped it in a cigar box on the back of the bar. She drew four beers in a row, topped each with a perfect crown of foam, and placed them precisely on the tray. When she was done, she considered the woman propped on an elbow with her eyes closed. Lucille reached out and looped the lock of spent hair under a long finger and lifted it back across the woman’s head. When Nance raised her face, she wore a tired smile, and Lucille gave her arm a quick squeeze and nodded to the men at the table in the corner, who had begun to wave and stomp their feet.

  Lucille wiped the bar, lifting glasses and mugs and working her way to Graver. When she stood directly in front of him, she stopped and measured him with her eyes.

  “You need something?”

  Graver wasn’t sure what impulse made him raise his chin at the sign barring Indians, Mexicans, Negroes, Chinese, and anyone of mixed blood. “What’s that mean?”

  She looked at him carefully. “You can’t read?” She turned and moved to the other end of the bar to serve a couple of cowboys so drunk they held on to the edge of the rail to stay standing.

  Annoyance rolled over him and he was opening his mouth to respond when Larabee elbowed him in the side and tilted his head toward the door that had just closed behind Black Bill, Jorge, and Some Horses.

  “Ah shite,” Irish Jim swore.

  Larabee beckoned the three men over and shoved the pitcher of beer toward them. Without glasses, they had to pass the pitcher from man to man for a quick gulp while Lucille wasn’t looking. Some nights she was inclined to let the nonwhite cowboys drink if they didn’t ask for much.

  Over the back door hung an enormous buffalo head, moth eaten, battered, shaggy to the point that it must have been going through summer molt when it was killed. One ear was twisted nearly off and dangled from the side of the head. The black marble eyes gazed almost drunkenly at the drinkers, and some wag had stuck a hand-rolled cigarette in its mouth.

  Larabee leaned across Some Horses and said, “One of them English lords came out here and shot him a while back. Not much sport. He was the last old bull, not bothering nobody. Pretty tame. But he shot him, had him stuffed and crated to ship home. Then a funny thing happened.” Larabee’s eyes lit up as the whiskey and beer were set in front of him. He lifted the shot glass, toasted Graver and Some Horses, and drank it down in one swallow.

  “So this lord decides to go on one final hunt. And having shot the hell out of every living thing in twenty miles, he heads on up to Pine Ridge Reservation. Right after the Wounded Knee massacre, it was. Heard there’s a big den of mountain lions up there and he wants one. Now nobody bothers telling him that these are cougars, and they don’t live in big family houses, they’re more loners. We figure to take his money and follow him around scraping up the bodies. Easier than cow work.”

  Larabee took a longer draught of the beer. Beyond him the men began to talk loudly and laugh for the first time since supper. Irish Jim and Jorge wore evil smiles as they played stick pig with a knife and their hands on the bar.

  “So first thing happens, this lord runs into a man claims to be chief who says he needs payment for permission to hunt on Indian land. Dumb cocksucker pays. Not even an argument. Well, you can see how that was gonna play out. We ride a little further. Another chief. More money. By about the fifth time we’re stopped, the lord asked the chief how many there were, figuring he should be about done paying. Indian smiles and says, ‘Why, we’re all chiefs in this tribe, sir.’”

  Larabee laughed and slid a glass of whiskey to Some Horses, who smiled and shook his head, his eyes on the steady lift of his hand with the drink.

  “But that’s not all. The lord got so mad, he started shooting dogs. And you and I know, one thing you don’t do is shoot reservation dogs. Hell, you don’t shoot any man’s dogs.” Larabee shook his head. “And this after them troops shot hell out the women and young’uns.

  “So we hightailed out of there, figuring things were gonna go Wild West show soon as those chiefs mounted up. The Englishman saw our dust and followed suit. He wasn’t feeling too comfortable pulling this bull crap by himself, I guess. That lawyer fella, Percival Chance, was with him, tried to follow. Turns out, it was too late.”

  Some Horses nodded, eyes half-closed, and held the glass under his nose as if the bouquet were Cognac instead of the cheapest watered whiskey. Larabee drained his beer and nodded at the bartender for another round. Graver finished his and shrugged.

  “So you’re wondering what happened.” Larabee glanced at Graver while he took a drink from his fresh glass. “See, here’s the strange part.” He drank again, swished it in his mouth as if rinsing his teeth before swallowing. “We don’t know.” He grinned. “Never saw the man again.” He drank. “We rode out of there like Old Nick was on our tails, and didn’t stop till the Nebraska border. Ruint three good horses that day. When we looked back, there was nothing. No dust, not a thing.” He drained the beer and nodded at the bartender.

  “So we rode on into town, had a good night of drinking, in the morning saddled up figuring to go find the dumb bastard. We guessed that lord’d learnt his lesson by then, so back we go. We’re still carrying rifles, you understand, and we’ve got pistols strapped on, just in case. And it’s a miserable morning, rainy and cold as hell. It’s fall and you can feel an early snowstorm tapping its boots over Wyoming way waiting for a good push from the wind to set loose over our heads. But we’d talked a little and worked ourselves up to going back to that last village for him. We knew nobody’d dare harm a hair on his head.”

  Larabee drank a shot and ordered another without touching the beer. His face grew
thoughtful.

  “It was miserable, getting colder by the minute, wind picking up. I remember turning to my brother, Grayton, and saying, ‘We’re in it now,’ and his face had already started to freeze. Last I saw of him. Early blizzard took us down so fast we might have been twigs in the wind. Three days I hunkered in the little cave I dug with my bare hands in a ravine where some puny wild plums hung. Made my horse lie down to block the wind, and prayed. Ate snow, couldn’t get no fire, and only had dried biscuits and a bottle I finished the first night.”

  Larabee drained his whiskey and raised two fingers again.

  “I don’t know how I lost Grayton, he just up and disappeared. Never saw that English lord again neither.” He stepped back from the bar, pulled up his pants, and took a deep breath he let out slowly before he stepped up again.

  “Reddy got the buffalo for next to nothing. Nobody felt good about it. The Englishman’s family sent a message that if we found a body, stick it in the ground. Guess they didn’t care too much for him neither.”

  Larabee raised his whiskey in silent toast to the cracked mirror on the wall facing the drinkers. “Couple months later Lawyer Chance showed up, fit as a fiddle. Spent the winter in the Chadron hotel, living off what he packed out—hides, antlers, handmade Indian junk.”

  Some Horses gazed at the mirror behind the bar and met Graver’s eyes, worry riding hard between them. It was the kind of night frayed the nerves of animals and men alike.

  “Raise a glass to J.B., best boss we ever had!” Irish Jim shouted into the silence the men had fallen into. They automatically saluted the dead man and drained their glasses. Irish Jim glanced anxiously at Graver and ordered another round.

  “You ever run into my brother up there on the reservation, Chief?” Larabee’s face had suddenly gained that unfocused, doughy quality of the nearly drunk: his mouth fighting to hold itself while the skin around it loosened and collapsed. “I mean, after that ruckus at Wounded Knee, guess a man can’t expect much from you people.” Some Horses’s face grew still as he stared into his drink. “Still, if you heard of a white man—”

  Jorge leaned out from the bar and Graver caught his gaze. Black Bill was minding his own business at the end by the door, hat perched back on his head, latigo leather skin taut around the cheekbones and eyes, which he kept on the plank that served as a bar, and where his stack of coins stood in sober attention.

  “Easy to get lost up there,” Some Horses murmured.

  “How come we never found no body?” Larabee slurred his words slightly. “A bad thing never dies, Chief.”

  Graver caught the bartender’s eye and held his hand over the glasses to cut off the liquor. She shrugged and moved down to the other men. Four cowhands playing cards at a round table along the back wall looked up, uneasy.

  Some Horses stared into the mirror, unblinking, as if he peered into a great distance. Graver saw his left hand relax and ease toward the knife sheath on his belt. He dropped his hand and let it settle on Some Horses’s wrist as the wind howled louder and the building seemed to sigh and release dust from the rafters, which drifted down on the hats and shoulders of the men.

  “Something you don’t know,” Some Horses said in a near whisper. Graver leaned in and stared at the side of the man’s face, which held an unusual tension. “Girl found with J.B.? My wife’s sister, Star.”

  Graver thought about what he’d seen. Was Some Horses the one who shot him? He watched the man carefully. Maybe that’s why they’d seemed so eager to work at the ranch. “I’m sorry for what happened to her,” he said.

  Some Horses waited a beat too long, then said, “Rose is real upset. Says she’s looking for the person done it. She’s a hard woman for vengeance.”

  “What about this new girl at Reddy’s you’ve been bragging about?” Irish Jim lifted his hat, brushed it off, and resettled it, smiling at Larabee. The man’s head came up like a horse done drinking water and a slow grin spread across his slack face.

  “You reckon my brother’s taken up light housekeeping with some squaw?” Larabee said in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room.

  Some Horses stared at the bar as if examining the quality of the wood, then backed up a step, hand on his knife. Larabee started to step back, too. Graver grabbed his arm and shook his head.

  “Storm’s getting bad,” Black Bill said and glanced at Jorge, who nodded. “We better tuck the horses in behind here out of the wind.”

  The men hastened out the door into wind that roared like a train coming a couple of streets away, just as a roof sailed over their heads trailed by ladies’ underwear and dresses. Graver and Some Horses glanced at each other, spun, and rushed back inside, shouldering the door shut after the last man.

  Graver could feel the building pushed back and forth like a plaything between some giant’s hands. The thin brunette stopped and looked around, a stricken expression on her face. The barkeep eyed Black Bill and Jorge and reached under the bar for a scattergun.

  “Cyclone’s coming!” Larabee pounded the bar, took off his hat, and whipped his hip like he was riding a bronc, whooping and spinning in a circle until Graver caught his arm.

  “Downstairs everybody, quick!” Graver leaned across the bar to shout over the sudden roar of the wind battering the front of the building.

  “Not him.” Lucille pointed her jaw at Black Bill as the door crashed open. It took both Some Horses and Jorge against it with their shoulders to push it shut again. The two men shook themselves like dogs flinging water on nearby drinkers who protested with dark expressions and muttered threats.

  “Not them neither.” Lucille shook her head as the storm grew louder, then suddenly there was a silence more terrible than the noise of a minute before.

  Jorge shook his head, glanced at the ominous creaking of the ceiling, as if the building were being pried loose of the ground it sat on as the wind returned, and this time the engine of the freight train bore down on them, loosening another shower of dust over their heads. The thin brunette dropped her tray of empty glasses and wrapped her arms around herself, her mouth open in a silent scream.

  “Run!” Larabee’s eyes grew wide and he grabbed the pitcher of beer and the thin woman’s arm and scrambled to the narrow stairs leading down, followed by the other drinkers shoving and pushing each other.

  “You men care if our cowboys come along?” Graver called after the men plunging into the dark shadows of the basement.

  “Long as you buy the next round,” someone called. “I wouldn’t care if you were Drum Bennett himself.”

  Graver nodded toward the stairs and the three cowboys were soon swallowed by the darkness. He glanced at Lucille with her hands flat on the bar, head down, shaking it back and forth like she was trying to stop herself from doing something.

  “Best grab a couple of bottles and get downstairs unless you want to spend the rest of the night in North Platte when the cyclone finally drops you.”

  Her head came up as the wind bellowed again, twice as strong, and rocked the bar. She grabbed an armful of bottles, handed four to Graver, grabbed more, and the two of them made it down the stairs as the door ripped off its hinges and chairs and tables were sucked away.

  In the middle of the basement room was a low wooden platform holding a pallet bed on the floor, a chair, and a large wardrobe with a full-length mirror. The wind gusted down the stairs, pushing sawdust and trash onto the people and flattening a stray cowboy hat against the mirror.

  The three bar women huddled together in the farthest corner, behind an overturned table. The tired brunette wept silently, rocking to the sound of the storm battering the walls apart overhead. J.B.’s men sat on the floor with their backs against the stone wall to the right of the women, and the other men were dispersed to the left, as if they all were willing to fight to keep the females from violence.

  The one exception was a girl of sixteen or seventeen who sat by herself at a table almost directly below the stairs. She was a plain girl wit
h regular features that would coarsen in years to come, but for now, she still had smooth skin that seemed to bloom despite the shadows cast by the few kerosene lamps hanging from the low ceiling. She was wearing red high-heeled shoes, silk stockings held by black garters festooned with tattered red velvet roses, and a short red silk robe that fell open revealing an elaborate bustier and panties in black-and-red brocade that lifted and barely contained her full breasts and seemed too big for her narrow hips and tiny waist. Every man worked hard not to stare too long at the shapely figure on display. She twirled her forefinger in the glass of whiskey on the table, then lifted it and sucked the end like a child, and never bothered to look at anyone. It was mesmerizing, and the men forgot to worry about the sounds of breaking glass and splintering wood overhead. The wind fought down the stairs, swirled her silk robe into the air, and let it settle like a bedsheet around her.

  The girl continued to dabble in the drink. She seemed to enjoy sucking it off the ends of her fingers, ignoring the storm around her, and Graver realized she was probably on some sort of drug, opium or laudanum. She dipped three fingers in the glass and slowly wiped them across the tops of her breasts. If she kept this up, the men would be killing each other despite the fact nobody was drinking anymore.

  Finally a new silence settled, except for the tinkling of falling glass and the creaking of shattered wood. Outside a dog set to howling and a horse whinnied and the people stood, shook themselves, brushed their clothes, and laughed uneasily. Lucille started for the stairs, Graver touched her arm and took the lead.

  Halfway up the stairs he could barely make out the buildings across the street in the darkness, streetlights were gone, and he knew what waited for them. Only the back wall stood, bearing the newspaper articles and photographs of the girl on the white horses. The bottles, beer kegs, glasses, tables, chairs, the bar itself were all gone, along with the three walls. The cedar floor was scoured raw, the orange red of the wood revealed for the first time in decades. The air smelled dense with mildew and sweat, vomit and smoke, as if all the corruption of the bar had been set loose upon the town. Across the street, people gathered to stare at the devastation of the cyclone, which had torn down one side and left the other untouched. Then a breeze began to blow in the fresh sweet scent of wet grass from the hills, and overhead the stars appeared. The cyclone had skipped a few buildings the next block down, then squatted on the church, grabbed it up and shattered it into pieces that were sprinkled all the way to the edge of town. The spire ended up whole, unscathed, cross leaning slightly to the right, on the train tracks in front of the station.