by James Wade
“What’s the Lobos then?” Shelby asked.
The cowboys looked to one another.
“Hard to say,” the talkative one said. “They’re outlaws, sure enough. Murdering thieves. But they’re something else too. They ain’t your regular grifters and lowlifes. A bunch of ’em are ex-military and the like. The Mexicans around here say they’re led by a demon or something of the sort.”
“You believe that?” I asked.
The man shrugged.
“Not particularly. But they are a spooky bunch, I can tell you that much. Had a run in with ’em out near Marathon. Come up on us right at dusk, maybe ten or so, howling like wolves, circling us with their horses. They asked if we was ready for a new world.”
“What’d you say?”
“We said sure we are, that’s why we’re heading to California. Then one old boy came forward from the rest.” The cowboy looked around the room, gathering in the eyes of his audience and perhaps also searching for that which he feared. “He had him a peppered beard and slicked-back hair. Told us California weren’t no different than nowhere else. Said to come with him if we wanted to see what life would be like after the next revolution. Didn’t much of it make sense to me.”
The man took a sip of his coffee and pursed his lips.
“Anyhow, we politely declined whatever the hell it was he was offering, but he decided that wasn’t gonna be enough. Started asking for our horses, our food, even our damn boots.”
“You give ’em to him?”
“Hell yes, we did. They had us over a barrel, and I ain’t getting killed over no goddamn horse, much less a pair of boots. ’Course, old Frank wasn’t having none of it.”
“Who’s Frank?”
“Well, Frank was the fourth member of this here outfit. That is, until he decided he wasn’t giving his horse to no man who wouldn’t pay him for it.”
“They shot him?”
“Nossir, they did not. Instead the old man just nodded, and they all rode off. Next morning, Frank was gone.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Shit, if you’re looking at me for answers you’re on the wrong trail, bud. We got no idea what happened, but like I say, it’s spooky business.”
“That’s a story if I ever heard one,” Shelby told the man, who nodded.
“It is at that,” he replied. “It got to where I couldn’t shake what happened, so I started asking around. Turns out folks been disappearing all throughout the Trans-Pecos. Women mostly, but men too. Rumor has it the entire town of Diskin pretty much shut down overnight.”
“The Rangers huntin’ these fellas?”
“I expect they are,” the man said, “but it’s likely with heavy hearts.”
“How come?”
“Word is, the old boy leading the Lobos is a man called Grimes. And Grimes, if it’s to be believed, used to be a Ranger hisself. Some kind of hero back during the war too.”
“Damn.”
“Damn is right. But the strangest part is, he fought to clean out the Indians and now he rides with a few of ’em—blacks and Mexicans too.”
“God dog,” Shelby said. “Sounds like a bona fide wild man.”
“Like we say, best stay north for a piece.”
Shelby nodded and turned, and the cowboys went back to their banter.
“What do you think of all that, little brother?” Shelby asked me.
“Sounds like we ain’t out of the woods yet. Let’s head back north and then cut east. I don’t want to run into any trouble.”
Shelby added more whiskey to his coffee and swirled the cup with one hand and said nothing.
“Right?” I asked, prodding him.
“Sure, sure.”
The rain passed and the earth drank up the moisture and the mustached man said something in Español and the old woman shook her head. The cowboys rode out, and I fed the horses from the sack of oats while Shelby spent the last of our money on a thermos of coffee.
“You see them gun belts them ol’ boys was wearing?” he asked me. “First pay we come across, I’m getting me one of them suckers.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the old colt and spun it halfway round in his hand, then lost control and cussed and seeing it gave me a chill and I heard thunder again but the storm was long gone.
On the outskirts of town there was a saloon and nothing would do but Shelby had to go inside. I followed him.
The tequila was from Jalisco. It was called Cabrito and had a sketching of a goat on the bottle.
“You drink,” the barkeep said and poured two glasses.
“We do indeed, amigo.”
“Vaqueros?”
“Sí, señor.”
The barkeep nodded, solemn, as if he understood there was a certain nature to such an occupation, some regrettable calling to a faded and dying culture—the last, perhaps, of an entire breed.
“Where to now, brother?” I asked Shelby.
“East.”
“How far?”
“Couldn’t say. How big is Texas?”
“They say it’s pretty big.”
“Well. Let’s see if they’re right.” Shelby tossed back the tequila and slammed the glass down on the bar, motioning for another round.
“Shelby?”
“Yessir?”
“There can’t be no more of this.”
“No more what?”
“Outlawing. Killing.”
“You asking me or telling me?”
“I’m telling you.”
“Telling me,” he repeated and nodded his thanks to the barkeep who’d refilled his glass.
“Yessir.”
“You know what Granddaddy used to say? About killing?”
“I know.”
“Some folks can’t help but be cannon fodder.”
“I said I know.”
“And do you believe that?”
“I don’t.”
“That means you’re one of the casualties.”
10
They passed along a red clay road, with wagon ruts and mule tracks carved out and preserved in the dried mud like tributes to a long-ago rain.
Charlotte rode at the lead, and Randall watched her. She sat tall in the saddle, her shoulders down and back in an effortless posture. Her dark curls fell halfway down her back until the heat of the day forced her to collect them under her hat.
Randall stared at the sweat on the back of her neck.
“What’re you thinking about, Mr. Dawson?” Tad asked, and Randall nearly lost his seat.
“Nothing,” he replied, embarrassed. “Just riding.”
“Oh. Okay. I thought maybe you was thinking about Harry.”
Randall turned to the boy and saw the downcast look he wore.
“Were you thinking about him?” Randall asked.
Tad shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Been thinking about him a lot. It’s just, he was my best friend. My only friend, really. He was always asking me questions about the horses and whatnot. I think he wanted to be a trainer.”
“So you’re the one who taught him?”
“’Course I am. You didn’t think he was gonna learn something like that from you, did you? No offense intended.”
Randall laughed. “I suppose that’s fair.”
“He was a natural, though,” Tad said. “I’ll tell you that much. A real hand.”
“I’m glad he had you to teach him. I’m sure you made a fine instructor.”
“Dang right. None of them lazy curs you got working for you know half as much as me.”
Randall laughed again.
“Alright then,” he said. “Teach me something.”
“Now?” the boy asked.
“Sure. Why not?”
“Well,” Tad looked
around, then looked at Randall’s horse. “I know Mara ain’t hardly been rode outside of a pen before this.”
“How’s that?”
“Look there at her shoes. See how they’re worn down around the outside? That’s from turning in circles in a pen. She may have seen a pasture or two but not long enough to even everything out. You got to give a horse wide-open spaces, else them hooves will crack and peel and wear down.”
“Is she in pain?”
“Naw. It ain’t too bad just yet. And you been riding a while with her now, she’s starting to find her own balance.”
“That’s pretty impressive.”
“Harry would’ve spotted it too. He was as good as me, maybe better, before he . . .” Tad took a deep breath in through his nose, trying not to cry.
“I know, son,” Randall told him. “It’s alright.”
* * *
There came what might have been a distant structure, and it shimmered and wavered on the plain before them as if it were meaning to dance in the sun but found itself instead tethered to the cruel immobility of the desert. They put the horses forward and with each rise and fall of the road the dancing building disappeared and appeared again closer and with added dimension until at last they saw it was a town and that the first building was flanked by others, though not as many as there may have once been.
They started down the main stretch and looked to one another for some acknowledgment of life beyond their own breathing and the breathing of the horses but there was none to be had on the street and they were ready to leave things to the ghosts when a young boy came into their path and there stood staring up at them, his faced shadowed by an oversized hat.
“Hello there,” Randall said and his voice seemed to set the boy in motion, as if the child had been waiting for words—any words—so that he might know the travelers as true and not some apparition blown in from the desert on the rising winds. He gathered the horses without speaking and led them all, riders and mounts, past broken and boarded windows of faded and falling buildings.
“What happened here?” Randall asked, but the boy did not look back, instead pointing upward with his index finger as he walked, and they looked, the three of them, skyward and there they saw a lone buzzard circling and beyond it there were thin clouds fleeting in their makeup and, willing or not, soon to dissolve into the nothingness of the world below and above. They saw the sun as it held court over the land it had birthed and the land it would one day destroy and they saw, each of them, something from their past and all were silent.
The boy walked and though they had not gone far he dropped the reins as if he were too tired to go on bearing the weight of the horses and their passengers, and he turned and stood and again stared up at the strangers and it was any man’s guess as to which party was the more curious.
“Are there no others?” Randall continued with his questioning as though each time the boy did not answer that was in and of itself some passing of knowledge and thus called for further inquiry.
“Momma,” the boy said and pointed once more, this time toward the caved-in roof of what looked to have once been a café or mercantile of some sort.
“Your momma in there?” Charlotte asked, leaning forward on her horse as though proximity would wrest a more complete telling from the child.
“Momma,” the boy repeated and this time pointed to a different building and all three riders leaned back in their saddles uniformly in an unspoken agreement of the boy’s insanity and into the street came a pale man marked with boils and sores of a present nature and the scars of those past.
“My friends,” he called, “come, join us for supper.”
“Ain’t even three o’clock,” Tad said, looking at the sun and its position and finding the gaze of both Randall and Charlotte and shrugging his shoulders.
The robed man, who they each took to be a priest, looked also to the sun and there he stared for a long while and after that while he turned back to the riders.
“Even so,” he said. “We do not get many visitors here and it would be a good thing, I believe, for the child to have the interactions necessary for a supper.”
“He your boy?” Randall asked.
“The boy is of no blood relation to me, though he is a child of God and thus is my brother and my son and also my father.”
“Well, hell,” Tad said, “that don’t make no goddamn sense a’tall.”
“I see you have not taught your own son the ways of our Lord,” the priest said, though not unkindly.
“He’s not my son, but yes, he is not versed in many Christian customs, the least of which is taking the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Ah,” the priest smiled, “so it is that we both find ourselves in the charge of young men not of our seed and yet bestowed upon us in one way or the other by God.”
“I ain’t been bestowed, mister, I rode my horse,” Tad protested, and Randall shot him a look and that was the end of it.
“Please, sup with us and rest here tonight,” the priest requested again.
“We’ll break bread,” Randall replied, “but seeing as it’s early yet, we’ll have to ride on after.”
“I understand,” the priest said, and if he was disappointed or desperate, neither showed. “The boy will show you the way to our stables, such as they are.”
The stables, as suggested by the priest, were not stables but a makeshift overhang of rusted tin resting on reclaimed pine and oak which had at some time been cobbled together with no great care at a length wide enough for their three horses only, and all them near scraping the low points of the tin with their heads. The boy tied the horses and ran around the corner of one of the buildings as though being chased and returned sloshing a washtub of water thick and brown with film and flies. Randall waved him off and the boy had seen this gesture before and reacted in kind by dropping the tub and covering half his own breeches with water. The three of them watched, the horses too, as the boy stood in a motionless silence for a time and after that time he reached into a rusted bucket and from it produced a brush and made for the horses and Tad stepped up to stop him, but Randall held him back and they watched still as the boy ran the brush along the backs and haunches of the horses.
“Fine job,” Randall lied when the boy was finished and he put two dollars in the boy’s hand and Tad’s dismay was audible.
“Fine job,” Randall repeated and the boy closed his fist around the money and once more sprinted beyond the face of the buildings. This time he did not return.
The three of them walked back into the street and there the priest sat in the dirt, his robes folded about his knees and thighs and he arose at their coming.
“It was the railroad,” he said and he lowered his head as if in some grand apology. “It was supposed to come and when it didn’t the town moved on and the Indians and outlaws picked over what was left and fought among themselves and those who died I buried and those who lived I prayed for.”
The priest paused and looked out over the ghost town and the country beyond it.
“Still, there were those who remained,” he said. “Then came the sickness. A plague upon my flock. In the end I became a gravedigger, not a priest.”
“And the boy?”
“The boy has been here since I can remember though I do not recall his coming, nor his mother or father. I cannot say that he is of the town or the plains or that he is not the second coming of Christ himself, and he can also not say these things, as he does not speak, though he hears very well. I have seen him perk up in the night at the sound of things far away, things even I can neither hear nor place. He is not a normal child, and yet I fear I do not know how to make him so. It is good you are staying.”
They walked with the priest to the church he would not abandon and it was set into the world through the molding of mud and clay, the latter making it red in the sun, and above it
stood fastened an iron cross and when Randall asked why it wasn’t wood the priest stared up with one hand shielding his eyes as if he’d never before noticed or as if looking at the cross would bring forth the answer. In the end the priest shrugged his shoulders.
Though the sun was not yet down, the church was dark inside and they ate by candlelight. On the table was a single cut onion, a bowl of browned carrots, and a tough meat of which Randall did not ask the origin. Instead, he complimented the priest on a fine meal and commenced his arduous chewing and the rest of his party did the same.
There was also two-day-old fry bread warmed in a clay bowl and set in the middle of the table. Tad wrapped his meat in the bread and ate it as a sandwich.
“Momma,” the child said to Tad and he copied the older boy’s movements.
“I ain’t your damn momma,” Tad told him.
Randall looked at Tad and motioned to the priest.
“Sorry, Padre,” Tad managed, his mouth full of food.
The priest waved him off.
“A word is only a word,” he said. “Our Lord created the heavens and the earth and the things upon it. He governed life long before words and I do not believe He hears the thoughts on our tongue but rather those in our hearts.”
The priest stared down at his own plate. The food was untouched.
“Yes,” he continued. “There is no hiding what is in a man’s heart.”
“How come you didn’t move on?” Charlotte asked him.
“I am an afflicted soul, ma’am.”
“In what way?”
“I am cursed with a need for drink. A heavy need. And no doubt this is why He has punished me. To be spared when all around you are suffering will harden even the most compassionate of souls.”
Randall watched as the priest pushed his plate toward the child who looked at it and grinned excitedly.
“Momma.”
The priest smiled, weary.
“I am too ashamed to leave this place. I fear no other congregation would take me, and if they would, what kind of terrible things might come to pass? So I stay. I offer empty blessings in exchange for wine or ale. I am no example of God or even a man.”
