The Killings of Stanley Ketchel

by James Carlos Blake

  After putting Walt to work at finishing the paint job on the barn, Bailey packed his and his wife’s clothing and smaller belongings and put the bags in the carriage. The Hilda girl’s goods all fit into a single small suitcase. The bed and wardrobe in the dining room, both of which Bailey had crafted himself and which his wife meant to have in Kentucky, he would dismantle and take by wagon to Conway for shipment Saturday morning.

  Mrs. Bailey kept Goldie occupied in the kitchen all morning, showing her where everything was stored, instructing her in the mealtime routines and the colonel’s favorite recipes, each of which was written on a small card and kept in a file box in the pantry. She lectured Goldie on the vagaries of the ice box and of the man who delivered the ice for it. She wrote down her usual shopping schedule in Conway and what supplies could be procured there, which things she could get only in Springfield.

  The noon meal was a hectic affair, the colonel giving Ketchel last-minute instructions about things that had to be done in his absence, Bailey chiming in with any particulars that Dickerson left out and reminding him that a carpenter named Noland was coming from Conway on Saturday morning to finish a few interior details on the new barn. Also, another sharecropper family would be arriving in a few days, a little earlier than previously expected, and the house they would be living in was still in need of a cleanup and some minor repairs. If Ketchel lent him a hand, Bailey said, they could have the place ready by tomorrow afternoon. Ketchel said sure thing. As for Walt, he would be working with Brazeale for the next week or two. Brazeale had agreed to plow an extra field in exchange for a better share of the next crop, but he needed help, and Dickerson had promised him Walt Hurtz. The colonel told Ketchel to just make sure Walt tended to the horses in the barn first thing every morning before going to Brazeale’s.

  While the men ate and talked in the dining room, Ketchel caught glimpses of Goldie moving about in the kitchen as she worked with Mrs. Bailey. Only once did she look out the kitchen door just as he looked toward it. She smiled brightly and waggled her fingers. Then Mrs. Bailey was beside her and scowled from one of them to the other before drawing the girl out of his view.

  AFTER DINNER, KETCHEL went out to the shooting range beside the barn for his daily session, pushing a wheelbarrow full of empty bottles. The Colt was tucked in his waistband and the Remington .22 rifle the colonel had given him in Michigan was slung across his back. A week earlier he’d accidentally knocked the little rifle to the floor after giving it a cleaning and he had been intending to test the sights to be sure they had not been jarred out of alignment.

  Walt was high on a ladder, brushing paint along the top of the barn wall, his paint bucket hung on a ladder hook. He paused in his work to watch as Ketchel wheeled the barrow up to the mound only a few yards from the foot of the ladder and transferred the bottles to the dirt slope, spacing them at various heights. His boots crunched on the broken glass of previous practice sessions.

  “If you’re fixing to do some shooting,” Walt said, “hold on till I get out of the way.”

  Ketchel looked up at him. “You wouldn’t be in the way unless you sat right in front of what I was shooting at.” He took up the barrow handles and started away from the mound.

  Walt watched him a moment and then carefully set his brush across the mouth of the paint can and started down the rungs. About forty feet away Ketchel unslung the rifle and set it against the barrow, then faced the mound and drew the Colt.

  “Wait a minute!” Walt called out. He was not halfway down the ladder.

  Ketchel raised the Colt. Walt pressed himself tightly against the ladder and tried to make himself small as Ketchel fired six shots in steady succession, each one shattering glass.

  In the kitchen Goldie’s heart heaved. “What’s that!”

  “Mr. Ketchel killing bottles,” Mrs. Bailey said. “Kills him a bunch every day. Murders a whole lot of tin cans too. Now pay attention here, girl, to this pecan pie recipe. It’s nothing in the world the colonel likes better for dessert than pecan pie, but there’s a tricky part to this and you best get it right.”

  Ketchel slipped the empty revolver back into his pants. Walt exhaled a long breath and swore softly, his heart shoving against his ribs.

  Now Ketchel had the Remington to his shoulder. Walt again hugged the ladder hard and the first riflecrack sent a tin can flipping through the air. Ketchel continued shooting, whanging away one can after another. With one bullet left in the magazine, he worked the bolt and aimed up toward the barn roof.

  Walt cringed and felt a great urge to urinate. “Oh, Jesus!”

  Ketchel squeezed off the shot and the bullet rang on the weathercock atop the barn roof and set its arms spinning.

  The Remington’s sights were fine.

  While Ketchel reloaded the Colt, Walt scooted down the ladder and hastened to a spot well behind the firing line. Ketchel did not even look his way. After shooting up several more loads of .45 cartridges, he called it a day.

  “You’re a pretty fair hand with that thing,” Walt said.

  Ketchel’s glance seemed surprised, as if he’d forgotten Walt was there. He put the Colt in his waistband and slung the rifle over his shoulder and started rolling the wheelbarrow back to the shed behind the house.

  Walt hurried up alongside him. “Say, Mr. Ketchel, could I borrow that rifle, you reckon?”

  “Say what?”

  Walt told him about the rat. “I figure with that rifle I might could pop him good if he shows again tonight.”

  “Nothing nastier than a damn rat,” Ketchel said. “You know how to clean a rifle?”

  “Sure I do.”

  Ketchel handed him the Remington and Walt followed him back to the house, where he was left waiting at the kitchen door while Ketchel retrieved a handful of bullets and a cleaning kit.

  AS THE COLONEL settled himself in the driver’s seat and took up the reins, all set to leave for Conway with Mrs. Bailey and Hilda, Ketchel told him not to worry, he could take care of things.

  “Hell, son, if there’s anybody can take care of things, it’s you. I’m not worried.”

  He hupped the team into motion and Mrs. Bailey once more waved so long. Bailey called out that he’d see her the day after tomorrow and he’d better not find her drunk and dancing on a saloon table, by God, and everybody laughed.

  Goldie worked in the kitchen the remainder of the day, preparing supper for Ketchel and Bailey while they loaded the dismantled bed and wardrobe on a mule-drawn dray and took it down the road to Brazeale’s house, where Bailey would spend his last two nights on the ranch.

  Just before sundown, Walt finished the final brushstrokes on the barn. The plan had been for him and Goldie to move their things into the ranch house late that afternoon, including the cabin bed to replace the Baileys’ bed, but everything had fallen behind schedule and Ketchel said the move could wait until the next day. Walt said that would be a problem, since he would be in the field with Brazeale until almost dark. Ketchel said that was all right, he would help Mrs. Hurtz move their things to the house as soon as he was done helping Bailey clean up the tenant house.

  Bad Saturday

  They were finished with the tenant house by midafternoon and headed back to Brazeale’s house, Ketchel at the reins of the wagon. They didn’t talk much. Bailey kept looking around as if trying to memorize every shrub and tree. He said he was going to miss this place. Ketchel said he believed him.

  When they came to Brazeale’s house, Bailey hopped off the moving dray and said good night and that he’d be sure to say so long before he left in the morning.

  When Ketchel got to the main house, she was ready to go get the things at the cabin. She had prepared his supper, a rabbit stew whose wonderful aroma wafted from the kitchen, and had put it in the warmer to be ready when they returned. As they drove to the cabin, Ketchel asked how she liked the ranch, and she said she liked it fine, but of course she’d spent most of her life in this neck of the woods and so it wasn’t anything a
ll that different for her. She guessed he’d seen an awful lot of different places, though, hadn’t he? Had he ever been to New York?

  He talked about New York all the way to the cabin and she continued asking questions about it even as she gathered Walt’s and her belongings and he dismantled the bed. She helped him load the frame sections on the cart. He said she seemed pretty strong. She flexed her arms like a circus strongman and said, “Ozark girl, mister. Tough as that mule there.”

  She was already back on the dray and he was about to shut the cabin door behind him when he spotted the Remington .22 propped in a corner and went back in and got it. He asked if Walt had shot the rat. She said they’d left a plate with some leftover greasy potatoes on the table, then lain awake for a long time, just listening. She struck a match every so often while he held the rifle ready to shoot, but after almost two hours the rat hadn’t shown so much as a whisker. So they went to sleep.

  “This morning the plate was so clean it was like the rat washed it after he was done eating.”

  Ketchel laughed along with her.

  They got back to the house and unloaded the cart. They set the baggage and the rifle by the fireplace in the dining room, then lugged in the bed frame sections and she helped him to reassemble them and then they pushed the bed up against the back wall, a few feet from the kitchen door. They were both sheened with sweat. She poured two cups of water from a pitcher and handed him one. They stood close and drank and studied each other’s eyes.

  He’s got it for you, girl, she thought. He might could be the one, the ride out. Her heart sped.

  “You ever been in San Francisco?” he said.

  “Me? I’ve never been farther west than Coffeyville, Kansas.”

  “Coffeyville? That’s where it went bad for the Daltons.”

  “Well, I don’t know anybody named Dalton, but it wasn’t a real happy place for me, either.”

  And just like that, in the altered timbre of her voice and the change in her eyes as she remembered her time in Coffeyville, he knew who she was. Her mien of that moment made utterly familiar to him in countless whorehouses across the country.

  All in that instant he felt profoundly foolish, sad in ways he couldn’t have explained even to himself, outraged that she should have the face and smile of the girl on the trolley.

  Whoever that girl had been, this one could never be her.

  And for the first time allowed himself the thought that whoever that girl had been, she could never have been Kate.

  He felt heat in his eyes, an ache deep in his throat.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” she said.

  He checked the impulse to say something rude, was about to bid her good night and walk away, when she smiled that smile. And slightly shifted her stance so that her breasts stood higher.

  He knew it for a whore trick. Well hell, he thought. And pulled her to him.

  In less than a minute they were naked and in bed. She was nicely put together and awfully good at the deed, he had to give her that, and maybe all her show of enjoyment was fake and maybe not, it of course did not matter at all. All that mattered was the carnal balm of the moment. He thrust into her as if he would impale her to the bed, suckled at her breasts so hard she cried out even as she clutched him tighter, buried his face in her neck.

  When they were done, she cuddled to him. Stroked his hair. They were sweating and her skin was sticky on his. He got up and began dressing.

  “Oh God, you’re right,” she said, gazing toward the window. “He’ll be here pretty quick now, it’s so close to dark.” She smiled the smile. “I guess we’re just a pair of reckless fools for love, huh? Taking such a chance.”

  Then stopped smiling when she saw his face as he buckled his belt. He stood over the bed and stared down at her. Then pulled a thick roll of currency from his pocket and peeled off a twenty-dollar bill and dropped it on her bare stomach.

  “It’s the smallest I got. I figure you owe me eighteen dollars change.”

  She could not speak.

  “I don’t know if that fool’s your pimp or your stooge or what the hell he is, and I don’t give a damn. Tell him whatever you want. If either of you care to stay on, you can, the place can use you both. But if you want to go, go.”

  He went to his bedroom and put on his woods jacket and slipped the Colt into his waistband in front of his hip. Then went out and got in the wagon and drove to Conway to have a drink or two.

  Feeling the way one does on learning of the distant death of someone dear.

  WHEN WALT ENTERED the house it was already full dark outside. The only light was in the dining room and the kitchen, where he found her stirring the pot of rabbit stew. He at once saw in her face that something was wrong and asked what it was. She said it was just a bad feeling she’d had all day. She couldn’t explain it, but she thought they’d made a mistake coming here. She wanted to go. They could get work somewhere else.

  “Go? But you…I thought you liked the place. You said you did.”

  “I thought I did too, but I was wrong. I hate it, I want to go.”

  He sensed there was more to it and kept asking what it was. She kept saying there wasn’t anything else, she just wanted to leave.

  “Well, all right, honey, if that’s what you want,” he said. “It’s just, I thought…”

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s just go, let’s go tomorrow, okay? Can we?”

  “Sure, honey, sure.”

  “We can ride with Bailey when he goes to Conway. Go ask him if we can. Please. Go over to Brazeale’s and ask him right now.”

  He did. And Bailey said of course they could go with him, just be ready to leave around nine o’clock. He asked what was wrong, if something had happened. Irritated by his own perplexity, Walt gestured impatiently and said, “We’re just quitting, that’s all. We had enough of this place. We’ll be ready when you come by.”

  When he got back to the house, he ate supper and wanted to discuss the matter further, but she would have none of it. As soon as he was done eating, she latched the parlor door and they went to bed. He held her close, first in comfort, then gradually with other intentions. It was the last thing she was in the mood for, but she indulged him, if only to pacify him and get him to sleep all the sooner.

  Walt was snoring deeply but she still lay awake when she heard the wagon’s low rumble and its creaking halt. She heard the front door open and close. Heard Ketchel’s boots on the parlor floor. Heard his bedroom door open and shut.

  THE ROOM WAS gray with dawn light when he shook her awake with a start.

  “What? What is it?”

  “You tell me, goddamnit,” he said through his teeth. “What is it?” He had her hand mirror ready and held it in front of her face. She saw her own large and fearful eyes, and then, even in the weak gray light, saw the livid little splotches on her neck.

  Oh, you son of a bitch, she thought. And you dope, she told herself. Why the hell didn’t you check?

  “While the cat’s away, huh?” Walt said.

  “No baby, no! Listen, listen. He…he…” She stifled her sobs with the sheet.

  “He what?…Oh, Jesus Christ…Did that bastard?…Goddamnit, I’ll kill him!”

  He started to get up but she caught his arm and held tight and whispered: “No, baby, no, he didn’t, he didn’t. I mean, he wanted to…I mean, he wanted to kiss me, see, but I said no, and he held me against the wall and he’s so strong and wanted to kiss me, that’s all he wanted to do was kiss me he said and he…he was kinda drunk, see, and I kept turning my head away and saying no, and so he…he was kissing my neck and such and…. He doesn’t even know he did this, I bet, I know he doesn’t even know. He was drunk, baby, he was drunk is all, but he didn’t do anything, not really, he didn’t do anything, he probably won’t even remember anything about it…. Please, Walt, don’t say anything to him, don’t…. He’s got that gun, baby, he’s got…. Let’s just leave, okay? Can we just leave? Say we’ll just leave…pl
ease.”

  He drew a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling, exhaling slowly.

  “You pack us up and I’ll make breakfast,” she said. “Let’s do everything just like normal, all right? Just like normal. You won’t say anything to him and—”

  “I ain’t afraid of him.”

  “I know, baby, I know you’re not, but let’s not start any trouble, please. Everybody around here’s for him and nobody’s for us, so let’s just do everything like usual and then we’ll go away with Bailey. All right? Okay, baby?”

  Walt shrugged and sighed. “Yeah, okay. If that’s what you want, honey, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  HE WOKE HAPPY from the Johnson dream. The one where his punch landed on Johnson’s chin and felt just perfect. And Johnson started down….

  Next time, oh man, next time.

  Then remembered the night before. He was sure she would want to leave and would talk hubby into it, give him some horseshit reason.

  Then remembered the love nips he’d put on her neck and how the mug was bound to see them. Brother, was she in for it.

  What if he braces you about it?

  Him? The mug nearly pisses his pants whenever I look at him. He may be dumb but he ain’t totally stupid.

  Yeah well. You shouldn’t have done it. Not the nips.

  What the hell, the whore had it coming. Thinking she could play me.

  She can’t help it she’s a whore. And she couldn’t have played you in a hundred years.

  She thought she could.

  Who cares what she thought? It was mean and you did it for the lowest reason there is.

  And what’s that?

  You felt sorry for yourself.