The Bones of Paradise

by Jonis Agee

  “Your chestnut cut us off! That boy’s dangerous!” Chance shouted as soon as Graver and Larabee came in earshot. “This is a valuable horse! She’s won every race she ever entered.” The horse tossed her head, tried to lurch back and away.

  “She’s so dear, I’m surprised you put her in a two-mile race over rough country.” Larabee lifted and resettled his hat so it shaded his eyes. “Hot out, ain’t it.”

  Graver approached the horse, laid his hand on her right shoulder, and spoke to her quietly as he ran his other down the injured leg. She calmed, snorted, and dropped her head when Graver stood, stroking her long neck where the pain made the muscles stand rigid until they, too, began to release in quick ripples.

  “Broken?” The lawyer looked at Graver, the horse, and back at Graver, who pinched the mare’s skin between his fingers and released, noting how long it took to relax.

  “Needs water pretty bad.”

  Chance threw up his arms, dropping the reins. “What’s the point?”

  Graver stepped into the punch, and hit the lawyer so hard his head snapped back and he staggered to his hands and knees. Behind him, Larabee picked up the reins to stop the horse from panicking and running away.

  The lawyer struggled to his feet, and felt to see if his jaw was broken.

  Larabee unfastened the cinch and set the saddle and blanket in the dust.

  “You think so much of her, take her,” Chance said, his voice muffled by the bulb starting to swell on the right side of his jaw.

  “Don’t forget your saddle!” Larabee spat a long brown stream at it as Dulcinea arrived, followed by Willie Munday, who struggled with two full buckets of water.

  “How’s—Oh no!” Dulcinea glanced between the two men and the horse. “I’m so sorry—” She touched the lawyer’s arm. He shrugged her off and stepped around her to pick up his saddle.

  “My own damn fault,” he muttered, then shouldered the saddle and limped away. Graver stared after him a moment, thinking the man might have some grit after all.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  It began at dark when the prize money was passed out in the tent beside the grandstand. The group of Indians waited patiently at the end of the line for their race winnings, as if they knew that was where they were expected to be. It wasn’t the whole group, only six young men, plus three of the older men, and Rose and Some Horses. The race organizers had passed out cheap bottles of whiskey freely after the win, and the older people wondered about the tactic. A couple of the young men had so much to drink they had to be supported by their Sioux brothers, those who saw the ruse for what it was. Now the little group wavered unsteadily as if an ill wind built its ire against them. Irish Jim stood with the Bennett Ranch cowboys while Jorge counted his money. Men from other ranches stood in similar knots inside and outside the tent. As darkness fell an electrical tension had spread among the crowd. Now left with little to do but drink, they focused their attention on the Indians, who had finally made it to the pay table.

  “What can I do you for?” the bland-faced, white-haired man asked as his fingers flashed through a stack of bills, fanned them like cards, then shuffled and squared them. When he looked up he had an oval, fleshy, boneless face that reminded one of a mask as much as anything. The impulse was to dig a finger where the cheekbones should be to see if anything firm lay behind it or if his face could be peeled off like a rubber mask. A cigarette resting in the corner of his mouth bounced as he spoke, barely parting his thick lips. “Chief?”

  Rose strode through the little group and placed her blue ribbon and cheap tin loving cup on the table, not slamming it down but making such a definitive move there was no question about her feelings.

  “Won you a trophy and a ribbon, I see, well good for you,” said the bland-faced man with the bloodless smile.

  “I want the prize money goes with it,” Rose said. Jerome and the other Indians murmured behind her. The cowboys enjoying the scene either nodded or shook their heads. Then one enterprising man removed his hat and offered odds on the Indians getting their money, and the men with fresh dollars in their jean pockets stepped up to bet on whether the man would successfully fleece the Indians.

  “I gave your braves all the whiskey they could swallow right after the race. Now let me get back to my figuring.” He made the dollars between his fingers disappear and began to stack the coins, then they vanished, too, like he was some kind of illusionist.

  Rose stepped closer and rested her hands on the table. He merely eyed her fists and continued counting. When he’d made another stack of coins and bills disappear, he reached under the table, lifted a Colt revolver, and placed it next to his last stack of money.

  The Indians behind Rose were silent as knives slipped into the hands of the younger men. They pressed forward. Irish Jim slid outside while Jorge stayed and reached for the knife he hid in his boot. Some cowboys left while others inched forward to back the man at the table.

  “I won the race,” Rose said in a low firm voice. “I want my hundred dollars.”

  The bland-faced man made the last of the money disappear, placed his hands palm down on the table and rose, the pistol sliding smoothly into his hand as if it had a will of its own. “And that was a hundred dollars’ worth of whiskey. You people don’t even know what money is.” When he smiled it was a boyish grin that likely disarmed most. Jorge slipped around to the other side, halfway between Rose and the man behind the table. He held the knife low, the blade up in gutting position.

  Rose stared at the man so long she seemed mesmerized, until her face slowly relaxed, shifted, and she leapt at him so quickly he didn’t have time to shoot or move before she’d yanked the gun from his hand and pressed her skinning knife to his throat. The struggle was nearly over before the other men joined the action, swarming the fighters, and then taking on the Sioux and each other. Jorge swiped his knife at the barrel-chested steer wrestler, sliced his red shirt in half, and the man spun away, wiping the bloody scratch with one hand and holding the other up in surrender. Jorge stepped back and looked for another way to defend Rose as a crowd rushed the tent; so many piled in, the ropes squeaked and pulled the stakes from the ground, collapsing one side and pushing the fighting men outside to spread like wildfire through bunchgrass. In a matter of minutes, half the town was embroiled in the melee. What began as standing for the Bennett brand was now well beyond that as men burst noses and broke fingers and arms and teeth with abandon.

  The Indians quickly dispersed, and with them the strongbox that held their prize money in addition to the rodeo proceeds. No one saw them except Irish Jim, who laughed and punched the man standing beside him in the ear. Jorge straddled the bland-faced man’s back, whipping and spurring him like a bull as the man tried to buck him off. Hayward traded punches with a town boy who always seemed to mock him, mimicking his every move when he brought the ranch list to the store or went to church. They’d eyed each other since they were eight and now was the time. The other boy outsized him by forty pounds and three inches, but his body wasn’t as lean and quick. Hayward hit him repeatedly in the kidneys with short jabs that built deep bruises and took his breath until the boy finally dropped to one knee and held his head. Hayward looked around to see if anyone had witnessed his victory, and since no one had, he shrugged and wandered toward the hotel where his mother was staying. He had been hit enough that the world was fuzzy and tilted. He put his eye on the open doors of the livery stable and staggered inside.

  As if he were the ringleader, the fighting mob followed, men staggering in and out of contact, trading blows and sometimes just hugging each other, refusing to give up the battle as they collapsed from the beating and were later found in each other’s arms like drowned lovers. Hayward was dimly aware of the commotion at his back as he entered the stable and walked down the long line of cheap straight stalls toward the back, where four box stalls held his mother’s stallion and the chestnut, the lawyer’s mare and the stable owner’s personal animal, an ancient gelding he�
�d had since a young man.

  At first Hayward thought he was still groggy from the fight, wiped his face with his hand, shook his head to clear it, and then accepted it as true—his mother and Graver were in each other’s arms, kissing.

  “What the hell,” he murmured, took a step toward them and stopped. Graver stepped back first and glanced at the lawyer’s mare dozing in the corner of the stall. His mother pressed her fingers against her lips. Hayward almost rushed to her then, thinking Graver’s kiss unwanted, but stopped when he saw her tiny smile. She spoke in a low voice he couldn’t quite hear and Graver lifted his gaze to her. She spoke again and the man shook his head, paused, half turned to leave, then turned back and swept her into his arms. It was like a scene from one of the dime novels the hands traded in the bunkhouse.

  He couldn’t interrupt them now, Hayward realized. A funny ache gripped his gut and spread its fingers up his spine until his shoulders and neck stiffened and hurt from holding his head upright. His father hadn’t made her stay, and the blame had grown into hate until he was almost relieved when his father died and his mother returned. He wasn’t sure how he felt now, things had changed. He heard the brawl move slowly down Main Street, away from the sound of broken glass, and the shouts of fighters and onlookers. That would be the store, where Haven Smith ruled their lives like petty cash, and would now discover the mob looting each freed bag of flour or pair of socks with the kind of malicious glee reserved for tyrants and bankers. One by one, Hayward heard the windows shatter along the street, followed by triumphant cries from the rioters. His brother would have joined them, no doubt, but he didn’t feel the same enthusiasm for destruction. Truth be told, as he watched his mother and Graver embrace, he felt only one thing, the familiar sense of longing for comforting arms he’d had his entire life.

  A gunshot rang out, followed by the explosion of a shotgun, more breaking glass, screaming and yelling and people running. A saddled horse galloped by the open door of the stable, eyes flashing, broken reins flapping in the air while the stirrups banged its sides, urging it to go faster, faster, faster. The joyfulness of the crowd changed into panic, and then to outrage as they spun and hurried back toward the source of the shots. Hayward half turned to watch through the open doors as the last building at the far end of the street burst into flames. The fire quickly dissolved into thick gray-white smoke more like heavy fog than burning as it billowed along the street, briefly blanketing the crowd, then passed beyond, leaving the figures shrouded in what seemed a mist as they coughed and straggled away. He knew the horses would panic if the cloud of smoke entered the stables, but if he moved, his mother and Graver would know that he watched. The horses in the straight stalls shifted and sniffed the air. Ironclad hooves banged against the wood sides and a horse sent a high questioning call into the darkness, to be answered by several low, reassuring nickers.

  The stallion sensed Hayward’s presence, and recognized his scent. He had been watching the melee, too. He recognized the smoke as from a smothered fire, and stood calmly as wisps entered the stable and disappeared into the blanketing darkness.

  It was calmer now, business owners were tidying up, and the sound of tinkling glass could be heard in concert with the swishing of broom bristles against sidewalk boards. Here and there, men staggered together down the street toward one of the bars, arms across shoulders or hands locked like children struggling to reach home in a storm.

  The dentist-sheriff, mysteriously absent during the riot, appeared with his hat slightly askew and his shirttail, untucked, hung over a large gun belt slung much lower than usual, as if he’d dressed in a hurry. His gait as he patrolled the sidewalk had a slight hitch and weave to the side that he struggled to straighten. It would be two hours before he was discovered in his office, near death with a knife wound in his back, the victim of an angry husband or dental patient, it was never determined which.

  It would not have surprised Hayward that Dulcinea’s skirt brushed his leg as she walked past on Graver’s arm, oblivious of her sleeping son or the fray that had swept through town, or of the figure who watched them from the dark alley as they crossed the street and made their way to the hotel.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  They hurried up the stairs, without noticing the sleeping desk clerk, down the second-floor hall to the large room at the end that was always saved for a Bennett, a courtesy passed from one year to the next, one generation to another. If Dulcinea felt any hesitation as she turned the filigreed brass knob, if she noted the floral design under her palm, it was impossible to tell, there was such confidence, such certainty in her movements. Standing to one side, Graver removed her dead husband’s hat and scuffed the toe of her dead husband’s boot across the cabbage rose carpet, as if smudging away a recent stain or clot of mud.

  Inside the room, he shut the door as she assessed the chaos of clothing she’d abandoned in her haste. The mauve satin bedcover she ordered all those years ago was faded and bore dark holes from cigarette ash and stains from careless eating and drinking in bed. She remembered only the exhilaration of the first night she’d slept here with her husband, newlyweds even after three months. Then she felt Graver’s hands on her hips as he lifted and placed her on his lap. She buried her face in the matted hair of his chest, her fingers finding the new ridge of scar over the bullet hole in his shoulder. She thought she smelled the green sunlight of the hills as she held her breath, then felt the brush of his lips at her ear. “J.B.,” she whispered.

  She didn’t realize she’d closed her eyes until she felt the empty cooling space and heard the door click shut behind him. When she reopened her eyes, she saw the shabbiness of the room, the glow of J.B. had dissolved, and Graver was gone. Maybe it wasn’t possible to recover the past, she thought, or to find a true present. She could only live in this shadow version of both, without love and purpose.

  With her cheek against the cover, Dulcinea imagined her breath was like a breeze caressing silk drapes at an open window, creating a strange music like someone running their fingers across satin. When she held it, she swore she could still hear it, and began to breathe in tandem with the sound, unsure whether she created it or it created itself. Whether she imagined J.B. or Graver with her that night, she could not say, for it seemed they were one. She felt the terrific weight of her husband alive outside this small vial of present time, and she also felt Graver breaking into her world, shattering every window and flinging the door off its hinges each time he was near, until the more drawn she was to him, the more alive J.B. became.

  Everything was silent and black when she rose sometime during the night and knelt at the window. She looked down at the two figures in the shadows, struggling, cursing, and saw the taller one stab the shorter, thicker man. He wrenched the knife upward and lost his grip when the victim staggered and fell. The attacker looked down the alley each way, drew his pistol, nudged the body on the ground, seemed to decide against the noise it would make, and put it away. He searched the victim’s pockets, withdrew a packet of papers and money before sliding into darkness. When she awoke in the morning, she was convinced it was a nightmare.

  When Drum Bennett was found, barely alive, the next morning, the sun was well up, and the day promised to be the hottest of fall, the air filled with the pounding of nails into boards to replace broken windows and voices calling up and down Main Street reporting damage. Drum lay in a narrow alley between the hotel and the boot maker. He was discovered by a gang of boys searching the debris of the night’s revelries for anything they could find, which thus far had produced only a pocket knife with a broken blade, a couple of whiskey bottles with a drop or two in the bottom, and a silver dollar they fought over.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  It was Dun Riggins, owner of the livery stable, who woke Hayward with the news of his grandfather’s injuries and the demise of Percival Chance from a collision with a runaway wagon. Hayward sat, blinking in the dusty light, unclear where he was. Then the fight flooded back, followed by oth
er confusing images, and he stood, confirmed the Bennett horses were still in their stalls, and lurched toward the almost unbearable light beyond the big double stable doors.

  He was horribly thirsty and unsteady on his feet, and some part of him knew his presence was required at Drum’s bedside. When thoughts of his mother came, he found it easy to push them behind the pain that sat like a skullcap behind his eyes, crushing his head as it moved to the back of his neck. He was halfway to Doc’s when he thought he heard someone call his name. He didn’t slow. Then he heard it again, along with a thumping, irregular boot step. He stopped and turned to face Stubs, Drum’s ranch hand.

  The man tilted his head for them to continue without speaking, and they were almost there before Stubs paused and turned toward the street, watching as the riders from the Box LR, led by Larson Dye looking worse for the wear, walked past. Across the street, Stillhart the banker spoke with Harney Rivers, both staring and nodding toward Doc’s place.

  “Gonna be a lot of that,” Stubs said. “Smart man sticks to his relations, keeps his mouth shut till he know the lay of the land.”

  Hayward felt an old anger rise in chest. “Like Cullen did?”

  Stubs shook his head and rubbed the knee that always ached. “Not saying do what he did. Sometimes he knew enough to sit quiet and wait to see how the game played out.” He glanced at Hayward, took in the bruises, cuts, and blood, and nodded with satisfaction. “You’re carrying the name now. It’s up to you.”

  Hayward opened his mouth, about to ask the old cowboy what he was talking about, when the sudden weight of the words caught in his throat so dry he couldn’t even cough. He shook his head and walked on until he reached the door to the clinic built onto the side of a tidy brown house. The small rooms housed the doctor, his old-maid daughter, and a strange young girl from Ireland whose passage was to be paid as an indentured servant. She puzzled Hayward even now as she pulled open the door before he had a chance to knock. Standing slightly behind him, Stubs whispered, “Them crows are circling, boy, better make tracks.”