The Bones of Paradise

by Jonis Agee

  Was it the locket that lured him to her, as he was now drawn to Rose? Before she died, Star told her she had set a trap for their mother’s killer, and was selling him handmade goods. Rose told her to wait for Some Horses and their cousins before she went to meet him. Star said she would, then didn’t. The boys were too young to be part of the massacre, though, so Star must have arranged to meet an older man. This story was like a snake eating its own tail. Every time she thought she’d found the end, it led her back to the beginning. Tears filled her eyes.

  Dulcinea placed her hand over Rose’s. “I’m so sorry.”

  Rose shook her head and wiped her eyes with her arm.

  “It comes down to three possibilities as far as I can see.” Dulcinea stood and brought the coffeepot to the table and poured a splash in each cup. “Drum, Graver, or Chance.” Rose picked a cold biscuit from the platter, broke it open, and covered it with Vera’s mulberry jam. “Not my husband.” She stole a glance at Rose. “And not my boys.” She set the pot down on the table.

  Rose shook her head. She knew Dulcinea would never consider her sons capable of murder, but on her own list she placed them pretty high. After last night, Hayward was at the top and maybe Cullen, too, despite their age. Drum Bennett she didn’t know about.

  “Maybe there’s more than one killer,” Rose said.

  Dulcinea chewed thoughtfully and sipped her coffee. Her hands shook, and she steadied them on the table.

  Higgs burst through the door, looked wildly around the kitchen and parlor. “Where is she? She’s here, isn’t she? You hiding her?” He spun and Graver, who followed, grabbed his arm to stop him. “She’s not here!” His words almost an accusation. The two women looked at each other. Vera was gone.

  “I’ll go and look for her,” Graver said. “Should I take anyone?”

  “The Indian,” Higgs said. Then his shoulders slumped and he remembered his hat, pulled it off his head, and held it in his hands as if he stood beside a gravesite. Dulcinea was about to offer him coffee and breakfast, half out of her chair when Rose put a hand on her arm to stop her.

  “She’s gone. Black Bill, too. They run off together,” Rose said. Higgs ran a trembling hand up his forehead and the bald dome of his head.

  “She hasn’t been herself, I could see that, I knew she was unhappy.” He glanced at the women at the table as if suddenly aware they listened. Without another word, he set his hat on his head, turned, and left.

  “Do you think this has anything to do with . . .” Dulcinea asked.

  Rose thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Vera loved your husband like a brother.”

  “Why did she leave, then?”

  Rose looked out the window and didn’t answer.

  Chance came down the stairs carrying his bag. He tipped his hat at Dulcinea and ignored Rose. His handsome face appeared hollow this morning with dark circles around his eyes as if he had not slept. A pallor like dusty fog clung to his skin. He had shaved, badly, nicking his chin and missing the dark stubble patches on his throat.

  “Did you know about this business with the Eastmans?” Dulcinea asked, her voice harsh.

  He gazed at her, rolled his lower lip under his teeth, looked at Rose, and then shook his head. “Last night’s the first I heard of it.”

  “How can that be? You told me you were looking at my land, you must have someone who’s paying you.”

  Rose wanted to add that he was too busy living off the fat of the land and pretending to prospect to do much work for anybody, but stopped herself.

  “I haven’t been in my office much of late. Miss Eastman arrived while I was out of town.” He raised his brow. “Maybe Cullen can provide the information you seek.” Rose could tell he was a person unused to questioning, especially from a female.

  Dulcinea squared her shoulders. “Do we have a conflict of interest?” She poured herself more coffee without offering him any.

  He looked startled, shook his head quickly, and tried to hide the anger in his eyes. “No, I’m working to gain clear title to the ranch for you. I told you I was looking for oil and gas. This new business with the Eastmans—are you wanting me to represent you in that, too?”

  She paused, sipped her coffee without taking her eyes off him. “How can it be clear title if the rights are subverted? What led Cullen to imagine he could sell those, I wonder?”

  He held up a hand, set down his bag, and stepped toward the table. “Mind if I sit and have a cup of coffee with you?”

  She hesitated before giving a quick nod. Rose stood, took a dirty cup from the pile in the sink, placed it before him, and let him pour his own. He lifted a hand to reach for the sugar, glanced at Dulcinea, then picked up the bowl. He looked around for a spoon, gave up, poured it in, and stirred with his finger. His eyes searched the table for the cream pitcher, but Rose had already put it away and made no move to retrieve it.

  He drank from the cup, grimaced, and set it down. “In the matter of—”

  Dulcinea jumped up. “Oh, stop it! I’ll go to town today and contact my people in Chicago to discover the meaning of all this. I don’t know who you think you’re dealing with, Mr. Chance, but I am not the fool you have been taking me for!”

  She gathered her skirts and marched to the stairs, where she stopped and turned again, saying, “Good day, sir.” And then flew up the stairs to change into her riding costume.

  Rose wondered how she could escape the lawyer, who always found an excuse to linger at the ranch. In some ways he reminded her of Crockett from the telegraph office. Lily skipped in and tugged on her skirt. Behind her three kittens followed, tails stiff as tiny lodge poles as they crossed the porch into the house to tumble at the child’s feet. When Rose knelt to pet them, Lily whispered, “Mama, Mr. Higgs says his wife is gone, and Black Bill’s with her. Mr. Higgs is so upset he wants to hurt someone, he says. Mr. Graver says don’t act too quick, he’ll find them.” Lily gazed into her eyes, and her chin quivered. Rose gathered her in her arms and rocked her, crooning. She might be small, but she had to live among people who were not her own, and must learn vigilance, and how to guard herself by finding the secrets they carried. She felt the lawyer’s eyes follow her every move.

  “I’m leaving then.” Chance stepped onto the porch. Rose kept her eyes on his tall black boots, their heels and soles worn to the thickness of a cottonwood leaf. He pulled a small leather pouch from his pocket and shook it. The sound of jingling coins caught Lily’s attention. He loosened the drawstring and let a coin slip into his palm, then held it up to catch the light. Lily started to reach for it, but Rose drew her hand down with a shake of her head. The lawyer shrugged and slid the coin back in the pouch. With a tip of his hat, he left. Rose watched him all the way to his horse, already tied at the gate by one of the hands, who must have felt as she did about the man who never went home.

  She held Lily on her lap as she nuzzled the gray kitten against her cheek, and was reminded of her sister. They were separated when Star was four years old by the priests who took Rose away to train as a servant at the mission school, but she had always kept Star close in her thoughts, especially after their mother was killed. She rarely thought about their father, who drank until he died on the road to Rosebud one winter night and wasn’t found until spring melted the snow, revealing him on his back, one arm flung out in sleep, the other clutching the whiskey bottle he favored. His face gnawed some, the rest of him untouched, too old and sinewy, too pickled, people laughed, maybe he was onto something there. Ever know a drunk to get a mosquito bite?

  As was the nature of her people, it was a good joke that grew until it was said that he’d died a happy death, smiling. Since his nose and cheeks were gnawed off, Rose didn’t know how they could say that. She was still at school, almost trained, the whites said, enough for a dumb one, though what good it would do to write and read English and do sums when she would be scrubbing floors, washing dishes, and calling white people mister and missus, she couldn’t say. They wouldn’t
let her go home for the funeral. Then her mother insisted she take the first job offered with the telegraph man because of the upheaval on the reservation.

  After their mother was killed, Star was taken in by their aunt to live with her white husband and sprawling family on their rundown ranch. The white man was an indifferent rancher and left all the work to her cousins and other distant relatives, who knew enough to keep horses and cattle from starving and freezing, even if they couldn’t hang on to their allotment of land. At least people wanted Star. After Rose left Crockett and the telegraph office, she fled to Pine Ridge with Dulcinea and stayed with those same relatives until she met Jerome Some Horses, who was already a man with a vision and a horse and a shack, where he lived with his grandmother.

  Last spring, as they made their way north, through Babylon for a few supplies, and out to the Buffalo Grounds to set up summer camp, they met her mother’s cousin, Byron. He shared a beer with Some Horses, and Rose gave him a bowl of rabbit stew, a poor meal, but it was a hard winter and the animals wore only thick coats over their bones. A few days before, Byron was drinking in town with the white man, Conway, married to her aunt, when Conway complained that Star was worse than useless, as he put it, and to top it all off, she’d run away. He suspected she’d gone to Rapid City or even as far as Omaha to lift her skirts and earn her keep. Byron hit the man and was promptly beaten, then thrown in jail, but the sheriff released him two days later when a white boy charged with murdering his grandmother refused to share a cell with an Indian. Byron’s long, pox-scarred face was still bruised and lumpy from the beating as he gummed the thin stew and swallowed.

  Conway bothered Star, he said, and she had found two white boys to take her away. She trusted too much. Rose had tried to warn her, but it was already too late. She wondered which white boy it was, of the two of them, Cullen or Hayward. Which the lover and which the jealous one?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Soon as Cullen stopped the rank dun horse in front of Drum’s house, it was clear nobody had worked in the week since that stupid dinner. Cullen had spent the five days following in town with the Eastman woman trying to convince her not to return to Denver. This was the thanks for all his hard work. Geese and chickens wandered the porch, crapping everywhere. The old sow had rooted her way out of the pen and sprawled in his vegetable garden, wallowing in the mudhole she’d dug by butting the loose pipe he’d rigged for watering. She’d used her huge snout to plunder the lettuce and carrots, and the seedling tomato plants were tipped on their sides. When he rode closer, he saw wriggling around her and realized she’d given birth and was squashing half the babies. He climbed down, tied the horse to the rail, and ran into the garden to scare her up. She gazed at him with a lazy half-open eye, snorted, and flopped her head down on one of the babies. There were almost too many to count, and they mewled like newborn kittens. The sow snored.

  He kicked her, but she couldn’t feel it, so he got his rope, noosed it around her thick neck, and pulled. She had to weigh three hundred pounds. He tied it around her front legs, too, and wrapped the end around the saddle horn and made the dun back up, which it did like it’d been a cow pony its whole worthless life. It must hate that pig as much as I do, Cullen thought. He had a time stopping the horse, and they about pulled off the sow’s hide. Once he untied the rope, she clambered to her feet, baby pigs crying and wobbling around her. The ones he’d thought she killed were up and at ’em, too. Still, he didn’t want her killing the rest of his garden, so he looped the rope around her middle and drove her back to her dry pen, which would have plenty of mud once he refilled the water trough with its rusty bottom flaking in the heat.

  “Those sons of bitches.” Cullen cursed steady and low as he turned on the windmill and hand pumped the water. Soon as it was going good, he took up the boards and tied and nailed the pen back into some kind of shape, knowing it was hopeless if she decided to push her three hundred pounds of lard against it. She was down again, this time letting the babies nurse, packed in two layers lined up at her teats. Wouldn’t you know it, he thought, there was an extra one, number thirteen, smallest, already runty-looking, and when it whimpered, sounded so damn pathetic, Cullen reached down and picked it up, snotty nose and all, and slipped it inside his shirt while he went to find some grain for the sow. The barn was a wreck inside. Drum would have a fit when he saw how the men had slung saddles, halters, blankets, pitchforks, and shovels every which way. Manure in the stalls looked a month old, and the grain was down to a sack the mice had started working on. When he grabbed a canful, corn slipped out the hole in the bottom. Then he realized the milk cow was missing. Lazy bastards must’ve turned her loose and let her dry up or stole her. How was he gonna feed the runt that squirmed and mewled against his stomach?

  He poured the corn on the ground in front of the sow’s snout so she could eat and feed the youngsters at the same time. There were no horses waiting for the noon change in the corral either. It was like the hands left the sow, geese, and chickens in charge. The cattle would be grazing the river pasture this time of year. Only trouble they’d be having was deerfly, mosquitoes, blackleg, pink eye, and other assorted diseases, with the rare snakebite and broken leg thrown in. He would have to ride out and check on the herd.

  “I told you,” he muttered. “I told you this would happen.” He led the dun back to the house and tied him to the rail again. The horse heaved a sigh. Cullen loosened the girth and the animal only halfheartedly snapped his teeth.

  “You never listen. Think you’re God on earth, and now look at this mess we’re in. Men gone. Place can’t run itself. Animals every which way. I don’t even want to know what the cattle are doing out there.”

  The door was ajar and he wasn’t surprised by the wreckage within. They’d gone through, looking for what they could steal since they didn’t dare ask for quitting wages. Drum was known to make a man fight him or Cullen for those. He couldn’t go light either, or Drum would be next in line with his fists. Cullen didn’t blame the men as he picked up the cans stripped of labels, a childish meanness, and righted the chairs around the table. They’d smashed Drum’s big wooden chair with the arms that made it look like a crude throne. He grabbed the kindling it’d become. “This took some doing,” he said, but the men had enough history here that they would spend the time. A nice breeze blew in the broken window, which accounted for the thick dust that coated all in sight. The stovepipe was askew. He reattached it, stuffed in the chair pieces, and lit the fire. The small saucepan was on the floor under the stove and rocked now with a big dent in its bottom. He picked up the cans and shook them to figure out which might hold evaporated milk. It took him several tries with his knife blade pounded into the top to find it. The others were canned peaches and pears and beans and corn. He figured he’d eat some and give the rest to the sow.

  When the milk was heated, he fished one of Drum’s leather work gloves from the pile in the wooden window seat the men hadn’t discovered. There was also an extra rifle, an old Colt Peacemaker, several boxes of shells, a hatchet, and a bowie knife, the blade rimed with rust. He’d take those when he went after the hands, who wouldn’t have made it much farther than town. Spending what they stole on liquor and those worn-out girls at Reddy’s.

  Meanwhile, he poured the warm milk into Drum’s glove, cut a hole in a finger, and held it to the runt’s mouth. At first it squirmed and fretted until he squeezed out a bit of milk, smeared its lips, and stuck his finger in its mouth to get it to suck, then replaced his hand with the glove and it nursed so hard it had to stop, gulp and gasp for air, then went back, slower and more steady until its eyes drifted shut and its belly was a hard pink ball, and the milk dribbled down its chest onto Cullen’s shirt. They sat for a bit, the sun warming the room, the pig pressed into his chest, its breath a steady little whistle against his shirt, and it seemed that maybe this was the best of times: without Drum, without the other men, without his mother and brother, just him and the animals and the Sand Hills breeze b
earing the scent of tall fresh bluestem and wildflowers, sweet and green against the dust and greasy odor of bad food and old grudges. He pictured his mother’s big gray stallion out in the corral, his sleek body dancing lightly around the pen, waiting for Cullen. He dozed for a few minutes, an unheard-of thing to do, until the dun snorted and stamped its feet, and gave a high questioning whinny, like he worried he was the last horse on earth.

  Cullen carefully cradled the pig, laid it in Drum’s overstuffed chair by the hay-twist stove, and looked through the rest of the house, which didn’t take but a minute. Drum’s room was in pieces, literally, every bit of paper or cloth shredded with a special hatred. The room he used to sleep in was tossed around some but there was never anything worth having in it. He found an old shirt his mother sent him a few years ago wadded under the mattress where he had left it an hour after it arrived. Green silk. Hard to even guess what was in her mind that day. Buttoned up with sleeves tied together, it made a fine pouch to carry the pig.