Paradise Sky

by Joe R. Lansdale

  He yelled out to the others he had me cornered, and that’s when the water got deep and I was suddenly up to my neck, still clinging to my bag of pistol but knowing I had most likely wetted it up to the point of not firing.

  It was then that I took a step and found the water got really deep. I was under it before I could say, “Oh, shit.”

  I don’t know how far I went down, but it seemed some distance. All I know for sure was it was wet and I come up out of it snorting. At that same time a shot was fired, and I felt the side of my head, high up over my ear, burn like a lightning strike, and then everything was black.

  I couldn’t have been out long, cause when I come to Ruggert and his horse was right over me. Still in his saddle, Ruggert swung out and down, trying to grab me by the collar, pull me up, trap me against the side of his horse, and ride me out of the water, where he could lay solid hands on me.

  I was pretty light and thin compared to him. He was strong and was trying to back his horse out of the water, dragging me with it. It was then that I swung out with the bag of pistol, which I had clung to even during my time of unconsciousness. I swung it high, and damned if I didn’t catch Ruggert a good lick—nailed him about the same place he grazed me with his shot.

  He let out a sound like a cow that was dropping her calf, and next thing he was in the water, facedown and cold out. I ain’t sure why I done it, but I rolled him over so he wouldn’t drown. I looked down into his face, which seemed to be older than I knew he was, and took a quick study of it. There was creases on his forehead, along with a red knot swelling up where I had whacked him. His whiskers was wet and clearly shot through with gray. It was then, too, that I realized that though he was stout, he wasn’t no big man, really, but was short and muscled with a big belly. I don’t know why I noticed all this, but I did, and then I let him go a’floating and got to hustling out of there, thinking any minute the rest of them fellas would come up on me. An alligator couldn’t have hastened through that marsh any faster than I did, though I was concerned I might come upon a real one in my progress, it being bottomland and close to where the Sabine run its course.

  I didn’t have no idea how far I went or how long it was before they found Ruggert, who at that point in time I thought was dead. I just kept going.

  The swamp got thicker with trees, and the land got firmer, and after a long time I was on solid ground, moving along nicely through a stand of hardwoods and scattered pines. The day began to creep away, and I stopped a few times to rest, listening for horses, but didn’t hear nothing. Being in such thick woods, I couldn’t really see the sun and tell which way it was sinking, so I was firmly confused on directions.

  When the trees broke there was a clearing. I looked out and seen I had made a loop all the way back to our property, only now where our house used to be standing, there was a pile of blackened ash and charred wood.

  My first impulse was to charge out of there over to the house and see if I could find Pa, but I didn’t. It was a tough decision, but I had been dragging and staggering through the swamp and the woods all day, and the sun was setting like a busted apple off to my right, finally showing me which way was west. I sat down among the trees and put the bag of Colt in my lap and waited until it was solid dark.

  There was just a piece of moon that night, but it was good enough I could make my way across the field and over to our burned house. I looked around as best I could in the moonlight, fearing I’d find Pa’s body, and that’s exactly what I did. He was blacker than his natural black and was smoking like a heap of burning tobacco, his ribs and skull revealed, the fire having charred the flesh off of them.

  They had throwed our hog up in there with him, probably shot it or beaned it in the head. It had burned up too, except I could see its legs poking up, its hog hooves puffing off strips of smoke like rips of cotton. The air smelled like frying pork, or at least I liked to think it was pork, cause it made my stomach hungry and sick at the same time.

  I felt so weak I almost couldn’t walk. It was too hot to go right in there and drag Pa out, and by that point it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to cure up and be well between now and things cooling off. He was dead as dead could be, and they had either killed him there or done it and put him and the hog in the cabin and set fire to it just because they could. I wasn’t sure what their problem with the hog was. Probably just wanted to kill something else, and without me being around the porker had taken my place.

  I decided I couldn’t leave Pa there until he’d cooled down, so I went out to the barn, which they hadn’t burned, got a rope, and lassoed Pa’s body and dragged it out of the ruins of our shack. I hauled him to a place beneath an old oak, got a shovel out of the barn, and buried him, his body still smoking. I didn’t make a cross or heap up stones, cause I didn’t want to let on where he was buried, in case the vengeful bastards might take it out on his remains. I scraped the ground good and dragged some leaves over it with the shovel, so unless someone was looking for the grave it wouldn’t be easy to find.

  Finishing up, I was considering if I could get away with sleeping in the barn when I seen outlined in the moonlight four men on horseback coming out of the pines along the draw at the back of the property. They was heading in the direction of the cabin.

  Carrying the shovel and my bag with the pistol in it, the rope coiled and looped over my shoulder, I eased into the woods, hunkered down, and watched. I seen right off from the way he sat in the saddle that one of them was Ruggert. He wasn’t dead. It was then that I wished the pistol hadn’t gotten wet, because I didn’t want to chance shooting it and it misfiring. I pulled it out of the bag anyway, poured water out of the barrel, checked the chambers, and discovered three loads. I couldn’t have put up much of a fight with that if it was working, especially if I was saving one of the shells for myself. Still, I clung to it in case I had to give it a try.

  So there I sat, back in the shadow of the woods, squatted down on my haunches, watching that string of horses ride toward the shack, starting to be able to hear them talking. The night air carried every sound as clean and sharp as if they was standing right beside me. I listened to them until they rode up to the burned-down house. They looked around for a while but never bothered to get off horseback.

  “Looks like he’s all burned up, Sam,” said one of the men mounted next to Ruggert. “I don’t even see no bones.” He was a man I had seen around town but didn’t know well, other than he was kind of a drunk and his name was Hubert something or another. The others I didn’t know at all.

  “It’s that damn uppity shine I want,” Ruggert said. “Want to cut him and rope him and burn him and whatever I can think of.”

  That uppity shine would be me, of course.

  “We ought to burn down the goddamn barn while we’re here,” Ruggert said. “I think they got chickens we can kill.”

  “Ah, the hell with it,” said the man mounted next to him. “Let’s head on back in. I’ve had enough. We got us one tonight, and I’m satisfied enough.”

  “Wasn’t your wife’s butt he was looking at,” Ruggert said.

  “Hell, I think your wife’s butt is about all she’s got going for her,” said another of the men. “I’ve taken a look now and then.”

  “But it was a darky took the look,” Ruggert said. “I can understand a white man, but a darky? That’s wrong, and you know it.”

  “We’ve done what we can, and I’m through with it,” Hubert said. “I ain’t gonna spend the rest of my night chasing some nigger through the swamp.”

  “I wasn’t planning on starting out until tomorrow again,” said Ruggert.

  “You’ll start without me,” said a man.

  “I got to get home to dinner,” said another.

  “I ain’t never gonna give up till I get him,” Ruggert said. “I have to get me a tracker to run him down, that’s what I’ll do.”

  That’s when I heard a sound behind me, like something creeping up. I turned with the big pistol, hoping it would
fire, and seen our old plow horse, who we called Jesse. He was wandering out of the woods, walking right at me. I stood up behind the tree, and the horse come over and looked down at me, probably wanting the grain it hadn’t had. It made a nickering sound.

  I heard Ruggert say, “There’s that old nigger’s horse.” A shot was fired, and Jesse reared up slightly and turned and bolted away in pain.

  Another shot was fired off into the pines where Jesse had departed, then there was silence. I laid down on the ground behind the tree and wormed my head around the side of it and took a gander. They was riding off then, having burned down our house, killed my pa and a hog, threatened the chickens, and shot at Jesse. Not to mention they had tried to kill me. They had had a busy day.

  It was my thoughts to follow them into town and kill the four man jack of them. But even in the state I was in, I knew that wasn’t a good plan. There I was, a kid compared to them, and them with guns that was fully loaded, and there I was with an old pistol that might work and might not, and if it did, I had three shots and there was four of them.

  Much as it galled me to do it, I lay there and let them ride out of sight. When I was sure they was good and gone, I put the pistol in the bag and went into the woods searching for Jesse. I found him easy enough. He wasn’t much of a runner, old as he was. I petted him up, saw that the bullet had grazed him under the belly. Ruggert seemed to have a knack for coming close but not quite getting there.

  I walked out of the pines, and, as I expected, Jesse followed me to the barn. Opening the double doors, I let him in and fed him grain, went out to the well pump and got a bucket of water, and sloshed it into his trough. I looked around for something for me to eat, but there wasn’t nothing. We had a few chickens in coops behind the barn, so I went out there and let the chickens out, since there wouldn’t be no one to feed them anymore. I gathered about a half dozen eggs that hadn’t been collected that day, put them in a feed bucket, and went back inside the barn. I took all the eggs out of the bucket and laid them out on a pile of hay.

  There was some matches in the barn, and I used hay for a fire starter, brought in some sticks from outside, and made me a little blaze. I sat the bucket on some logs I dragged in. I cracked all those eggs and fried them in the bottom of the bucket. They stuck a little, but I scooped them out with my hands when the bucket and the eggs was cool enough for me to stand it. I licked the eggs off my fingers.

  When I finished eating, I decided to lay down for a couple hours’ sleep. When I woke up I was crying. I was crying for Mama being dead, Pa murdered. I was mad I had been chased and near killed for looking at a white woman’s butt. On top of that I was angry about them taking a shot at poor old Jesse, who was about as dangerous to them as a windblown leaf.

  Getting off the horse blanket I had laid out, I got the saddle and the bridle and such that was needed and dressed Jesse up. I led him outside. It was a still night, and the air was sharp. The moon was laying gold light over everything, smooth as butter being spread with a knife. It was odd the world could look so pretty and the air taste so clean and my pa was lying buried under a tree.

  I walked Jesse out to the oak, where I said my good-byes to Pa. Mama was buried in a colored cemetery. I thought about visiting her grave but come to the thought that she and Pa was dead and that didn’t matter none. Mama told me once she wanted a better life for me and thought being free would give me a shot. She said, “You get the chance, you got to take it.”

  I also remembered her lying sick, dying, touching her hand to my cheek, saying, “Willie, you’re our hope. You got to go on and make something of yourself. You got greatness in you.”

  Well, I didn’t know if that was true, but I know Mama believed it, and I wanted to. It was better to follow the dream she wished for me than to try and visit her grave. One had a future, the other just might not.

  I started thinking on those stories I had heard about the colored army and made up my mind their outposts would be my destination, which was no short hop and a jump but way out in West Texas. I led Jesse to the draw, then guided him down into it. Once we was there I mounted, and Jesse splashed through the water, on to where that marshland was. We eventually come out on the draw and took the road alongside the marsh for a stretch. We passed where me and Ruggert had our tangle. Even with Jesse plodding like he was dragging a plow, we made a good many miles. The marsh was covered with a mist thick enough it looked like a cloud had fallen out of the sky. We rode through that cloud, the dampness of the mist clamping to us like a wet cloth.

  Eventually the sun burned off the mist, and we left the road and wandered between the trees. The ground was mighty clean under them trees until we got close to the river, and then the brambles started to grow.

  I had bagged some grain for Jesse, and when it was good and light I stopped and let him eat some of it right out of the bag. Not so much that when he took a drink of water he’d founder. What drinking water we had was what I had put in an old whiskey jug in the barn and tied over the saddle with a cord. And there was the Sabine River, which we was about to cross. That was all-right water for a horse, but I drank from it once when I was out fishing and got the runs so bad I thought I’d be in the outhouse the rest of my life.

  The Sabine wasn’t wide, but it was deep there, and Jesse had to swim it. The water was sluggish, but a couple of turtles was showing out and making good time. I watched their snaky heads as they drifted down the river and under the shadows of the overhanging trees along the bank. A fat perch swam by, and he was colorful enough and the light was bright enough so I could see him good, and just the sight of him made me hungry again.

  There was a few times when I thought Jesse might tucker out, but he stayed with it, and we got to the other side. I slid down off Jesse, grabbed a handful of the rich, stinking mud from the riverbank, and slapped it on my head wound, which had opened up and was bleeding heavily. I packed some of the muck on Jesse’s bullet graze, and then I walked him until I thought he had blown well enough for me to ride. We continued then, steady as the ticking of a clock, heading out west.

  2

  My journey out west didn’t get much farther than the middle of East Texas on that day, and by that time I was so hungry I could almost see buttered cornbread crawling on the ground. I fed Jesse again and chewed some of his dried corn myself. It wasn’t even close to satisfying. I couldn’t figure what Jesse saw in it. It wasn’t a thought with a lot of sense behind it, but by that time I didn’t have a lot of sense. I was still sticking to the places where I was less likely to be seen, but I was so tuckered out from the events of the day before, and from sleeping only a short time, I knew only that I was following the sun. Right then, had Ruggert come up on me I would have been done for. I was covered in ticks and chiggers and itched all over, including my privates, and I knew if I stopped I might not get going again.

  That’s when the woods began to thin, and I come to a place that had been cleared, though there were still stumps scattered throughout the clearing. I could see some vegetables growing beyond that on some well-plowed land, maybe twenty acres or so. On the other side of the field was a comfy-looking house and a barn and some wood fencing, a feedlot and such. It all looked well cared for, which was a thing I could appreciate. I figured I could also appreciate eating something from the garden.

  It had turned off hot by this time. I tied Jesse to a tree, took the gun out of the bag, laid the bag on the ground with the gun on top of it, and crawled out to the garden. I plucked about half a dozen maters off the vines—big, fat ones—then edged my way to the corn and took down about a dozen stalks, some of them bearing several ears of corn. I felt bad for doing it, plundering a person’s crops, but I was at the point where I had to eat or pass out.

  Creeping back to where Jesse was tied, I gave him the cornstalks I had pulled and ate the fresh corn. I would have adored to plunge them big, juicy ears into some boiling water with some salt. I ate the maters, or at least four of them. By that time I was full. I gav
e all that was left to Jesse.

  We waited there during the hot of the day. I slept on the pine needles, hoping Jesse wouldn’t step on me. I slept with my hand on the old pistol.

  It was cool dark when I woke up. Jesse was standing with his head held low. I got my bag and put my gun in it, led Jesse along the edge of the crops until we got to the end, and began to mosey toward the barn and corral.

  The moon was thinner this night, but still good enough to walk by. I could even see an old bull snake slithering over the ground pretty as you please. I felt low enough right then to crawl with him.

  I got to the corral. There was some horses there. The barn was open to it, and the horses could go in and out as they pleased.

  I took off Jesse’s saddle and bridle and let him loose in the corral. I took Pa’s watch out of the bag and laid it on a fence post. Right then that watch felt heavy as an anvil to me. That watch and Jesse was all I had left of him. Still, he wouldn’t have wanted me to take a horse without payment, even if Jesse and that watch wasn’t worth any one of those fine cayuses in the corral.

  I petted Jesse, being sick about leaving him, but figuring whoever owned this nice place would take better care of him than I could. I wanted to leave a note about his plowing virtues and how his nature was and all, but I didn’t have a pencil or paper.

  I picked up Jesse’s bridle and reins, dodged through the fence, and started easing up on the horses. I had the pistol in the bag and had tied it on my belt. The horse I chose was a big black one. I tried to calm it, but it kept moving away from me, and it was starting to snort.

  I was cooing to it like a dove and was within a foot of laying hands on it when it raised up quick and kicked out with its front legs, knocked me winding. I wasn’t hurt, but it was a close call. I was trying to get up when a big man wearing a droopy hat come out of the shadows, leaned over me, showed me a big hole in the end of a pistol. Even in the moonlight, I could tell he was wearing patched Confederate pants tucked into his tall boots.