by Jonis Agee
As mad as he was, it didn’t take him any time at all to make it to town. The pig rode peaceful until they slowed to a walk and stopped in front of Haven Smith’s store. A couple of people walking by stopped and stared at the green silk bundle slung around his neck. He tipped his hat and they moved on. He didn’t have a good reputation.
Haven Smith scooted out from behind the counter to head him off soon as he came through the door. He waved him away and headed for the canned milk and baby bottles.
“What ya got there, Cullen?” Pearl Stryker swayed down the aisle and stopped so close he could smell the stale beer and sex on her. From the smeared lip color and black rubbed around her eyes, it was easy to see she’d come from work. She leaned in and pulled the silk off the small pink face. “Ooh, looks just like his daddy.”
“You should know,” Cullen said with a grin. She batted his arm hard enough that he felt it and smirked. Contrary to town gossip, he’d never been with Pearl or her sister. No reason not to, but that seemed reason enough.
“Give me a chance,” she said and leaned over slightly and lifted her breasts from beneath so they bulged out of the low neck of the evening gown she wore even though it was noon. They were nice breasts, lightly freckled and soft-looking, made a person imagine the strawberry-red nipples almost visible at the edge of the heavy pink satin brocade.
“Have to work too hard for my money, Pearl.”
She dipped her fingers in the top of her dress and nudged out a nipple. His breath caught. It wasn’t strawberry red until she pinched it hard and giggled softly. “So do I.”
The pig squirmed and nuzzled against him and he noticed her nipple was chapped and leathery, like it’d been sucked too long. I know you do, he thought. She saw the shift in him and tucked it away, turned, marched down the aisle and out the door with Haven Smith running and yelling after her to pay for the bottle of medicine she’d taken.
As Cullen brought his purchases to the counter, Stubs hobbled in, spotted him right off, and hop-stepped toward him, one boot heel landing harder than the other on the wood floor. “Came to town to find ya,” he panted, bracing himself against the counter and leaning over to cough. Least he didn’t stink of liquor and whores. Maybe there was hope somewhere in this mess.
Then he caught sight of the pig poking its snout out of the sling.
“I knew it! Damn sow littered soon as I left yesterday, I bet. Any others make it?”
“Thirteen by my count. I moved them back to their pen, tied it up best I could, but it’ll need rebuilding. What the hell’s been going on out there?”
Stubs shook his head and toed the black crack between two unfinished pine floorboards. He removed his hat and rubbed the back of his head, working his way to the front, dry skin flaking as he went. “It was Carter and that Russian fella, Sergei, claimed his cousin was a famous writer beheaded by the tsar or some such story? They sorta stopped working in dribs and drabs and the others seen so they did, too, until I couldn’t get a one of them off their pockets to do a damn thing. I tried to tell them Drum would be home any day and they laughed, said he was too crippled to cause any trouble and you was out of the way, too.” Stubs resettled his hat and spit on the floor, rubbed it in with the toe of his boot. “Yesterday they locked me in the feed room and ran through the house and took off with some horses. Tracked them here, spending Drum’s money and making fools of themselves. Figured you’d show up sooner or later and we’d settle it with them.”
Stubs’s face was anchored with dark hollows under his eyes and deep creases in his cheeks. A slit from his upper lip to his chin had healed odd and puckered his mouth like he was drinking vinegar. He watched the boy with an expectant look in his eyes, as if he hadn’t had enough fighting and killing in the War Between the States.
Cullen didn’t want to ask, but he did. “What is it you think we should do?”
Haven Smith’s quick steps interrupted them as he slid behind the counter, glanced at the pig, opened his mouth to protest, then closed it and toted up the prices of the milk, baby bottles, and the new shirt Cullen added to the pile.
Stubs raised his brows and nodded in the direction of the guns and ammunition. When Cullen shook his head, Smith waited to see if he produced some real money, then sighed and hauled out the red leather accounts book and opened it to their page. He tapped a finger on the bottom amount, started to say something, shook his head, and wrote the new amounts.
“Soon as he’s on his feet,” Cullen said.
“I didn’t bring extra bullets,” Stubs said in a low voice as the boy turned to leave.
“What is it you think we’re doing?” Cullen asked once they were out of hearing. Smith had a big mouth and the boy didn’t want that new peace officer leaving some poor soul in the dental chair to come and arrest them.
Stubs stopped outside the doorway and stared at him in disbelief. “What Drum would do, boy, what any right-thinking man would do.”
“You want me to shoot those men dead?” The pig wriggled and tried to lunge out of the sling. Cullen set it down on the boardwalk where it promptly squatted and let loose, the stink enough to turn their faces. The pig shook itself, wobbled a few steps, squatted again and scooted its butt, then tried a few more wobbly steps. Stubs and Cullen followed it down the walk, away from the mess they’d left for Haven.
“I get your point,” Stubs finally said. “But we could take back the horses, ones wearing our brand, and get the dentist to arrest them for stealing.” The excitement was in his eyes again.
“You have a list of what they took?” Cullen bent and picked up the pig, which seemed ready for another feed and nap, so he settled on the bench in front of Stillhart’s Bank and broke out the supplies.
Stubs chewed his skewed lower lip with his stained brown front snaggletooth. “Got me there. What about the horses then?”
He nodded. “And the milk cow? What the hell did they do with her?” He held the bottle to the pig’s lips. It grabbed the rubber nipple and sucked.
Stubs sat down beside them, ignoring, as the boy did, the stares of folks walking by. “You know, I can’t rightly say. One morning I go out to milk her and she’s gone. Guess that’s enough to shoot a man over, ain’t it? Cattle rustling.”
Stubs was disturbing the peace and quiet Cullen had come to earlier. Why couldn’t a person be left alone with his thoughts? Now he could feel needles starting in his head, striking his skull like tiny bursts of heat lightning, making the world go away a little, like he heard through a dense fog or wall of water, and he knew he was going to do something bad.
So there it was. He went back inside and added shells to the accounts book, for the Peacemaker he’d stuck in his saddlebag, and for the new shotgun Stubs insisted on, though it made the hair on his neck prickle with foregone conclusion. Oh, you would, a voice in his head mocked. He felt the suckling pig in the green silk cradled against his chest, warmer than the day’s heat, the soft snoring contentment warring against the lightness that ballooned in his chest now that he was shoving shells in the revolver and breaking open the shotgun, careful not to nudge the baby awake.
You often see how things will go, he thought, and you are helpless to their untwining from your own desire. The flies buzzed on the pig shit tracked down the boards of the walk, tainting a town woman’s long yellow skirt hem with a brown stain she wouldn’t discover for minutes now, perhaps an hour, and would it be before or after the day went fatal? Already they walked on the plane of someone else’s tragedy, and the details of the moment suffocated him: The brown dog with the long hair and limp, one ear cropped and cockeyed, lifting a leg against the wheel of a runabout from which stepped Percival Chance. The quarrelsomeness of the sparrows in the cornices of the hotel across the street as the judge and Drum and Rivers entered with the oil and gas woman, Markie Eastman. The politeness that flourished between them didn’t bode well for Cullen. They would conduct business over a white tablecloth with wine in glasses and heavy silverware, tolling the boy’s futu
re against the china plates as they shared a meal too heavy for the heat of the day.
Somewhere above them in his room sat Mr. Eastman, who let his daughter’s charms do the business he was too old or ill or negligent to conduct, and his coughing, which the boy could hear as he stood so completely in this moment, the guns heavy in his hands, pulling him to the earth, and others to follow in this small space of time, losing time breath by breath by breath.
It was as if he could peer into the small houses and shacks behind Main Street and see the lives lived into the future. There was Black Bill at Vera’s side, packing for the journey to her family, finally right again in her preacher father’s eyes. Frank would not know this until he received her letter, and he would never be the same, a man broken into pieces by the weight of a single piece of paper.
The boy was put to mind of all the lives around him, and how they toiled, until there was such an accumulation, they were knocked apart for simply being present.
The Peacemaker was heavier than he was used to, for he had never killed a man, not even shot at one. He lifted the silk cradle from his neck and looped it over the saddle horn, ignoring the dun’s flat-eyed expression. The horse sank his shoulder away from the imaginary weight and warmth of the pig’s body—and it struck the boy that none of us wanted to shoulder the life of another. Then the horse snorted and straightened, and relaxed hipshot where he was tied and commenced dozing, eyelids sinking, as close to benign as he’d ever been, hide rumpled with dried sweat, tail burr clumped, mud and ticks twisting his mane in a wild apotheosis; he was finally at peace. The boy almost reached out and patted him, but stopped so the horse’s world would remain inviolate, circumscribed by its nature. There could be no breach. That was their fate, Cullen thought. Theirs and mine. So you’re suddenly a man of words, the voice in his head mocked. No, that’s the last of them, he answered, taking one final look around. He tipped his hat at the old men sitting in chairs along the hotel porch, glanced at Stubs, who bared his long yellow teeth, and waited like a shadow to walk into their time.
It took three places to find them, Sergei the Russian, Carter, Faro Jack, and Dance Smith, all laid out drunk and naked at Reddy’s Shack, put up after the storm, where the girls now worked. Cullen stopped at the other bars, half hoping they’d gone, that he’d have time to consider whether to chase them or not, or hell, that they went back to the ranch to sleep it off. When he pushed open the door, there was a scurrying like mice when you go into a dark barn of a sudden. The first girl in her “room,” divided off from the others by blankets, grabbed fistfuls of filthy sheet to hide, and gave them a dirty look and opened her mouth to protest until she noticed the gun swinging upward. He couldn’t say he wanted to shoot them, but now that the blood rose in his head, the black howl, he couldn’t say he wouldn’t. It was Stubs pushed down the barrel of the shotgun and growled, “Wait a minute.”
The man opened his eyes, took a moment to recognize them, and scrambled for clothes or guns or whatever, it made no never mind. The shotgun rose and there was a noise as it went off, splattering Sergei the Russian’s head against the ample breasts of the whore, who howled as the buckshot punched holes in her arms. A tinny sound said, “Stop, damn it, stop!” as the boy let loose the second barrel. The left side of the Russian’s face disappeared and the whore went quiet. A man crawled behind Cullen, who turned, took aim at the naked back, and this time used the Peacemaker. The body collapsed with a shiver on the bloody floor. He nudged it with the toe of his boot, and the sight of Carter’s familiar weak chin and beak nose bent to one side evoked nothing. When the man opened his eyes, Cullen shot him in the face.
“That’s enough.” Stubs put his hand on his arm, not the one holding the pistol, and Cullen wondered where his shotgun had gone. He slipped on the bloody floor and Stubs held him up. “Them others is hiding back there. Let them go.”
He looked at Stubs, who now seemed lost, tears in his eyes as if he hadn’t urged this war, brought him to fight it. Cullen shook his head, let himself ride the clear even tide as he tore down the blanket and prepared to squeeze the trigger on a bed holding two young whores, naked bodies pressed together as if made whole, whimpering, then shook his head again and lowered the gun.
This was not what he meant—and then he heard a terrific roar and the room was suddenly red and black and he was on his back, watching the flies bump the low pine ceiling as the flood rose quickly up his legs, spread into his chest, filling him so he could not catch his breath to ask the man leaning over him, rifle barrel pressed to his throat, who would ride his mother’s horse now?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Markie Eastman stood and smiled at the table of men she had just convinced to sell their mineral and subsurface rights when a ragged boy ran into the dining room and yelled, “Shootin’ at Reddy’s place!”
Judge Foote, Harney Rivers, and Percival Chance stood as Drum Bennett leaned back and drained the remaining inch in his brandy glass. He knew the Eastman woman was prepared to pay more, but the other men were greedy and couldn’t wait. He hated doing business when others gummed it up.
“Aren’t you coming?” the judge asked.
“None of my dogs in that fight.” Drum reached for one of the cigars the lawyer had passed around so freely before they were interrupted. Rivers hesitated, glanced between the judge and Miss Eastman while Chance strode away.
“Go on,” Drum urged. “Might meet a man needful of your services.” He laughed and twirled the cigar in his fingers. He shook his head. First he thought Dulcinea was going behind his back, now he had to figure out how to convince her to sign over those rights so he could make his deal and drive her out of the hills again. He and Rivers had lied about the deal, and he was thankful that damn grandson of his hadn’t shown up to cause more trouble. Far as he knew Cullen was out in the hills running horses to pieces and tending cows like he was supposed to be doing. He’d make a decent hand he ever grew past those notions of his.
As he smoked he noticed the dining room had cleared, and he heard shouting in the street and voices like a crowd gathered. Maybe somebody got themselves killed, he thought, maybe it was their lucky day. He grimaced as his leg and arm picked up the staccato of the street voices with a steady jabbing ache in the healing bones, despite the whiskey he’d used to numb the pain. Must be weather moving in. Now he was going to be one of those old farts who sat around complaining and prognosticating, like that damn Stubs with his war wounds.
He gazed at the empty room, the tables covered in stained white cloths that’d seen too many days of service, the fireplace along the far wall with the pale green marble columns and mantel, over which hung a big oil painting of Indians chasing down buffalo. He never understood why people made such a thing of the past, as if white men hadn’t come in and killed the buffalo and as many Indians as they could so they could take the land. It was warfare, and a person didn’t sit around feeling sorry about all those Southern boys got themselves killed protecting a bunch of rich sons of bitches wanted their Negroes waiting on them, did they? Better to hang a painting of men working cattle. He’d mention that to Riley, the hotel owner, soon as he got the chance. He stretched his legs and stared at the dingy ceiling with its sooty plaster roses clustered in the center.
“Drum Bennett here?” someone yelled into the lobby, followed by the irregular thumping of Stubs, hobbling toward the table.
Drum looked up, ready to bless him out, but stopped once he saw the man’s face, blood-smeared hands, and shirt. Suddenly he couldn’t catch his breath, and his heart bumped hard enough to hurt.
Stubs shook his head and licked his cracked lips. “It’s Cullen.”
It was to Dance Smith’s credit he didn’t pull the trigger that would have ruined Cullen’s face. The thought circled Drum’s mind during the long journey in the shambling livery stable wagon. A ruined ragbag of a man drove the spavined, broken-wind, rack-of-bones horses at a maddening walk or a shambling trot that almost bounced them out of the bed. Drum h
eld his grandson’s body in his arms and braced his own against the splintered side that creaked ominously at every hole the wheels found. And that was the other thought that circled Drum’s mind, as relentless and stark as the rolling hills of grass, without relief of tree or rock or body. He wondered that he had ever loved this land. First his son, now his second son, his grandson who was to carry the Bennett name into the future, his legacy, but that wasn’t a thought he allowed himself to entertain as the flies found the dried blood on Cullen’s shirt, and overhead, the turkey vultures circled in a relentless arc, lowering themselves as they followed the wagon’s poor progress.
Behind the wagon Stubs followed, leading the dun with the sobbing pig still tied to the saddle in its green silk sling, and Drum’s horse. He wouldn’t allow Stubs to ride in the wagon bed with Cullen. The old warrior had done enough. Since Cullen was dead, the dentist-sheriff had arrested Dance and Faro Jack, but Drum didn’t care. It was too late. The men would be set loose tonight and told to leave town. It was good Dance hadn’t pulled the trigger and blown his grandson’s face to pieces, Drum thought. At least he could give his mother that comfort.
When they neared the ranch, Stubs rode ahead while the team increased their impossible gait to one that jerked the wagon so hard Drum grabbed the side and trapped Cullen’s body with his own legs to keep him. It was strange how light the boy had become. In Drum’s experience bodies grew heavier, heavy as stone, but Cullen was light, almost as if he were made of straw or feathers, while Drum’s legs and arms must have weighed a hundred pounds apiece.
