by The Outsider
They could survive the loss of one stack. If they ran short, Noah and her brothers and others in the church would share their own. It was hard to think of winter, though, when the wind still blew hot and the sun came up bright and searing onto another summer's morning. But the wind would blow cold again soon enough, and the sun would lose its heat, and this winter would have been a bad one for her and her sheep without all her hay.
If the outsider hadn't been here to shoot his gun.
He stopped in front of her. His naked chest was streaked with soot and sweat, and marked with red blisters from flying sparks and embers.
He searched her face just as Noah had done. "This time I'm killing them for you," he said.
She closed her eyes; she was so tired. And she felt that terrible burning emptiness in her belly, the need to make them pay for what they had done. She thought of how all she had to do was keep quiet and let Johnny Cain, man-killer, do what he wanted.
She exhaled a deep, painful breath. "You gave me your promise you wouldn't. It was understood between us when you said you would stay."
"And I've told you before: you ask too much."
She couldn't meet his eyes. She pressed her hands flat against her belly, but the burning emptiness didn't go away. "What you are thinking, what you're wanting, would destroy my soul. And you say I ask too much."
CHAPTER 18
Johnny Cain stood easy, feet spread and hands hanging loose at his sides. The slouching brim of his Plain hat shaded his eyes from the glare of the midday sun. A soft smile played at his mouth.
As Benjo watched, the gun suddenly seemed to leap into Cain's hand, spitting fire. The six bottles lined up along the top rail of the Yoders' south pasture fence exploded in quick bursts, and shards of glass fell, glittering, into the grass.
"You didn't miss a one!" Benjo exclaimed, so excited at this display of crack shooting that he forgot to stutter.
The outsider swung around, his eyes glowing and wild, like the coyote's. Skeins of gunsmoke drifted through the air.
He slipped his Colt back into its open-topped holster. "It's easy not to miss when the bottles don't shoot back at you," he said.
Benjo hesitated a moment, but then he approached Johnny Cain, slowly. He carried a string of black-speckled trout in one hand and a hickory pole in the other. A wicker creel, slung over one shoulder, bounced against his hip. His brogans made the sun-seared hay stubble crackle. The loud popping blasts of gunfire had seemed for a moment to silence the earth, but now the insects that lived in the grass resumed their dry song.
It was so hot that the thick air shimmered in waves before Benjo's eyes, one of which was swollen nearly shut. Sweat dripped off the shaggy bangs of his hair, stinging the cut that split open his eyebrow. His lips felt thick and pulpy.
The outsider was snatching his six-shooter from its holster and releasing the hammer onto an empty chamber with a loud click, over and over, snatch and click, snatch and click, so fast Benjo couldn't see the individual components of the motion, only the end result of the gun barrel pointing level at the fence where the bottles used to be. And, every time, that fateful click of the hammer striking steel.
His mother had forbidden Benjo to be anywhere near the man while he practiced his gunplay. She'd tried to forbid Cain to do it in the first place and he'd answered her with a no, a no that offered no excuses or explanations or apologies. So now Benjo figured the outsider's stem face and grown-up lecture about bottles not shooting back was only his way of making up to Mem for that flat-out no he'd given to her.
"On the other hand," the outsider went on as if there'd been no pause in the conversation, "it looks like them trout must've put up one heck of a fight."
"Huh?" Benjo jerked the string of black-speckled trout up into the air as if he'd suddenly forgotten he had them. He flushed, and words piled up like a dam of stones in his throat. The outsider said nothing more, only looked at him. Ashamed, Benjo's gaze dropped to the domed toes of his brogans.
"Come here." Cain's hand fell on his head, propelling him toward the creek.
Benjo sat on a flat-topped rock. He slid the creel off his shoulder and wedged his hickory pole into the elbow of a chokecherry branch. The outsider squatted on his haunches on the gravelly bank. He took off the flashy blue bandanna he'd taken to wearing lately tied around the neck of his Plain shirt. He soaked the bandanna in the lazily running water, wrung it out, folded it into a pad, and handed it to Benjo.
"Hold this to your mouth. You're bleeding onto your shirt."
Benjo glanced down and saw that his shirt looked like he'd dribbled chokecherry jam all over it. He took the wet bandanna and pressed it gingerly to his tender lips.
Cain looped the string of trout around an outcropping of rock so that it would dangle into the creek and stay cool. Benjo waited for the man to ask how his face came to look like a side of butchered beef, but he said nothing more. Cain was leaving it up to him to tell what had happened, or not.
It was cooler here by the creek, shaded by a thick stand of lofty cottonwoods and yellow pines, but Benjo thought the sun must have been baking the rock he sat on not so long ago, because it burned right through the seat of his broadfalls. He squirmed, wincing at the bruises a pair of pointed-toed boots had planted on his rump.
He cast a covert look at the outsider, who had sat down himself on a beaver-chewed log, hooking his elbows around his bent, widespread knees. He had picked a stalk of monkeyflowers and was twirling it between his fingers.
"Muh... muh... muh—..." Benjo took a deep breath. "My hat!" he spat out.
"I noticed it has gone missing" was all Cain said.
The muscles in Benjo's throat clenched and spasmed. Tears of frustration burned his eyes, but he kept them tamped down. It took him a long time to get it out, what with the way shame and fear acted like a snakebite to his tongue, swelling it up so thick it tangled over every word.
The Mclver twins had come upon him fishing down by Blackie's Pond. They'd snatched his hat and gone running off with it. Only this time they didn't make him say pretty please to get it back. They'd filled it full of stones and sent it to the bottom of the pond, and then they'd beat him up proper and for no reason that he could tell, except maybe pure meanness.
"And now," Benjo finished up on a rush of spent breath, "whuh—when Mem f-finds out I lost another hat, she's g-gonna be mull—mad enough to chew nails."
"You could always tell her the truth of how you 'lost' it."
"Wuh... would you t-tell her if you were me?"
The outsider plucked the red petals off one of the flowers while he considered this. He raised his head, his eyes squinting against the glare of the sun on water. "Probably not."
Benjo sighed. It wasn't a man's way to go around making excuses or explanations or apologies—his da had taught him that. He thought of his da, and of that time his da had beaten that Hunter cowboy bloody for tripping up Mem. And of how his da had later said there were some indignities a man just shouldn't have to suffer.
It took Benjo an especially long time to get these next words out because they were so important to him. "Wuh... would you tuh—tuh—tuh—t-teach!... T-teach m-me how to f-fight?"
The outsider's fist closed over the last monkeyflower, crushing it. He opened his hand, letting the bruised petals fall into the creek. "I didn't think fighting was allowed on the straight and narrow path."
Benjo swallowed hard. It was right what Cain said, about the Plain and narrow way, and not succumbing to the sins of violence and anger and hating your enemy. But he just kept thinking that if he stood up to the Mclver twins once, if he struck back with even a single blow, then maybe they would leave him alone once and for all.
The outsider nodded slowly, as if he'd managed to hear Benjo's thoughts. "I reckon fighting back does help sometimes. Other times it only gets you a worse beating." His gaze shifted to the sling that hung out the waistband of Benjo's broadfalls. "I would think a fella who's as handy as you are with that sling
wouldn't have to take a lot of gaff from the other boys."
"Mem m-made me pruh—promise n-never to use it in anger. I'm only suh—supposed to use it to hunt f-food wuh... wuh... wuh..." We eat. He flushed hot to think of the lie he was telling, of the lie he'd been living. All those rabbits and squirrels and rodents he'd killed for the coyote and her pups, they sure didn't count as food for the Yoder table. But the coyote was gone now. She was gone.
"But she didn't make you promise not to fight with your fists?"
It took a moment for Benjo to catch up to the outsider's thoughts. "She didn't thuh... think of it," he finally blurted.
He stood up and held out his hand the way the outsider had done with him once, and this time he barely stuttered at all. "You said we were p-partners, that we watched each other's backs. Partners t-teach each other things too, like how to f-fight."
A tight look came over Cain's mouth and eyes, as if he were suffering a hurt somewhere. But he took Benjo's hand and gave it a good shake.
"She sure is not gonna be happy with me for doing this, though," he said.
Grinning, Benjo shrugged off that worry. "She w-won't see us. When you pruh—practice with your gun, she always stuh—stays in the house."
Rachel couldn't imagine what they were about. At first she thought they were dancing, and the silliness of it made her smile.
Until Benjo slammed his fist into the outsider's stomach.
She covered the last few feet at a run, stumbling over the rough hay stubble. The outsider must have seen her coming, but he didn't so much as flicker an eye in her direction.
"You're starting to pull back on your punch the instant it lands, boy," he said. "You got to follow through with it.
Think of my belly here as a Mclver face and smack his freckles right on through the back of his head."
Benjo cocked his arm for another blow, Rachel grabbed his wrist and whipped him around—and saw his face.
"What devil has done this to you?" she cried. For a moment she thought it was the outsider, but then she made better sense of what she'd just seen and heard.
Her hand hovered over her son's bruised eye, afraid to touch him. "Oh, my poor bobbli. Who did this?"
"Nuh—nobody, I f-fell."
"Benjo Yoder, don't you lie to me. Please don't you lie to me."
His gaze darted once to the outsider, then his chin set at a stubborn tilt. He backed up a step, and she realized he was about to bolt. She made a grab for him but he was too quick, running off along the creek in the opposite direction from home.
"Let him go for now," Cain said. "He's trying hard to grow up and learn how to fight his own battles, and you shame him when you make a fuss like that."
"I'm not making a fuss. My son is beaten bloody, and you say I'm..." She pressed her fist to her mouth. She closed her eyes and saw an image of her son, her Plain son, punching his fist into the outsider's stomach. She spun around to him, anger burning so hot and raw in her that she could only choke over the words she wanted to fling at his head.
He hooked his thumbs in his gunbelt and cocked one hip. His mouth pulled into a wry grimace. "So, you want me to go cut you a willow switch now," he said, "or wait till you're done scolding me?"
"Don't make a joke of it. Not this."
"You got to allow—"
"No, I will not allow it, Mr. Cain. I will not allow you to teach my son how to push his fist through another's face."
"One thing I was trying to do was save wear and tear on his own nose."
"While putting his soul in jeopardy."
"Look, right now your boy's having himself a little tussle with life. He already knows and understands your way. So he's asked me to show him my way—"
"The ways of violence!"
"Ways he's seen, Rachel. And been on the hurting end of, to judge by the look of him. Ways he can't help seeing, no matter how much you and your people try to shelter him. Maybe you ought to let him make his own choices as to what sort of man he wants to grow into?"
She looked at his revolver, hanging heavy at his hip and snug along his thigh, looking as if it belonged there the way his hand belonged at the end of his wrist. "Like you've made your choices."
His eyes held hers for a moment. Then he slid the gleaming Colt from its holster, snapped open the gate, and began feeding cartridges into the chambers, one by one.
She averted her gaze from the sight of that hand loading a gun, and for the first time she noticed the shattered green bottle glass littering the ground beneath the fence. He'd been teaching her son how to fight with his fists. He could have been showing Benjo how to shoot, as well. To shoot and kill.
He snapped the gate closed. "What did you come down here for anyway?" he said. "Benjo. He was—"
He shook his head slowly. "Uh, uh, Rachel. You didn't know about your son getting beat up on by those other boys until you got down here. You've been listening to me practice my shooting for weeks now, and you've been wanting to come and not wanting to come." His finger moved gently, lovingly over the trigger guard, but his eyes were locked with hers. "Because it excites you, doesn't it?"
Her breath left her in a gasp. "No!"
Casually he stretched out his arm, pointing the gun barrel slightly downward.
She didn't see the battered tin plate lying in the grass until he struck it with the first shot. It leaped into the air, ringing like a dinner triangle, only to be struck by the next bullet, and the next and the next and the next, ringing, ringing, ringing. He made that plate dance, and she couldn't imagine how he did it, how his eyes could follow that flash of tin so fast, to stroke it again and again, five times in all, before it at last clattered to the ground.
He stood there with his arm outstretched, the gun wedded to his hand and his eyes on fire with an unholy delight. She stared at him repelled—and enthralled. Caught up in his wild and ringing power.
She breathed, ran her tongue over her dry lips. "You're righthanded," she finally said, surprised her words sounded so everyday, as if she were discussing the sheep or what she was going to fix for supper. "You managed so fine with your left hand while you were injured, I thought—"
"I've taught myself to manage fine with either hand."
"To kill with either hand."
"That most especially."
His smile was cold, but something terrible flared in the depths of his eyes, as though the shutters there had cracked open an instant to reveal the passion that lived inside him— a passion stark and black, and infused with the most frightening pain.
She leaned forward, her voice softening. "It's possible to change, Johnny. With prayer and effort and the help of God's holy grace. Oh, I'm not saying it won't be hard—"
He grabbed her arm, his fingers biting deep, hauling her roughly up against him. With his other hand, he brought his revolver up to her face and pressed the barrel against her cheek.
"Rachel, darlin'," he said. "Who are you fooling?" He pressed the barrel harder into the soft flesh of her cheek, forcing her mouth to pucker. He wet her lips with his tongue. "You want to change me, Rachel, to reform me and make me God-fearing... but only so's your conscience won't put up a howl when you finally take me into your bed."
He took her mouth, then, in a kiss that was both sweet and brutal, and she let him. When he was done he released her. He dropped the hand with the gun to his waist and fired the sixth bullet, making the tin plate dance one last time.
Rachel laid her forehead against the cow's warm broad belly. Her throat felt so raw and hot her sigh hurt coming out. But it hurt even more to hold it in.
She hiked up her skirts, pulled the tin milking pail between her legs, and leaned forward, balancing easily on the one-legged milking stool. The cow's hairy udder bag, heavy with milk, swayed as she washed it. The milking actually was Benjo's chore, but he hadn't come home since he'd run off. When he did, she would bathe his cuts with witch hazel and rub a raw potato on his bruises, but she knew she would get precious few confidences in return. He
'd confided his trouble to the outsider, though, and it hurt to think of that.
She pulled and squeezed on the cow's pink teats, and the milk hit the bucket with a sweet ringing. Cain had said her boy was trying hard to grow and learn how to fight his own battles and she had shamed him with her fussing. She wondered if Ben, confronted with the sight of their son's bruised and bloody face, would have done the same as the outsider and taught Benjo how to fight back. How to fight his own battles.
It wasn't the Plain way, though.
And it wasn't the Plain way to kiss as she and the outsider had kissed. Two people not married, kissing with their open mouths and tongues.
She'd always known he was tainted—what he'd seen, done, how he'd lived and sinned. But she could only think of that with her head, not with her heart. Not down deep where it really mattered. She couldn't think of him in terms of right and wrong anymore, or of good and evil. At some time during the long hot spring, her soul had come unstrung. "Rachel."
She looked up, twisting half around on the milking stool. He stood within the door frame of the stall, his feet spread slightly, his hands hanging loose at his sides, the way he did just before he fired his six-shooter. Rafter shadows fell in bars across his face.
"I'm sorry what I did to you out there," he said.
"Don't you dare tell me you're leaving."
"I'm hurting you, goddammit."
"Don't blaspheme; it's wicked. And you're not hurting me. Leastways, no more than I deserve to be hurt."
His throat clenched around a harsh laugh. "All right, maybe I'm not being too kind to myself either. But no woman deserves me, especially not a woman like you."
The cow chose that moment to slap her in the side of the head with a manure-caked tail, and Rachel went back to her milking. Hunh. A woman like her, with stinky green cow poop likely smeared now on her prayer cap and cheek. It made her want to laugh, probably because she was so close to crying.
