Paradise Sky

by Joe R. Lansdale

  The deal went easy because I had that bill of sale on me. Another town over and I was tired of dragging that pack horse along. I sold it and most of the goods I had that it was carrying. Again, I had signed the new bill of sale with my name, and it was at this point I knew I needed another moniker, as Mr. Loving had suggested in his letter. I decided I would take part of his name or something similar. Tate became Nate, and Nate become Nat, and Loving became Love, and I became Nat Love. That’s the name I am still mostly known by and have kept ever since.

  I crossed out of the trees and into the plains, and there wasn’t much in the way of water or shade. I rode where I saw the brush grow, finding a creek or two that way, though the water in them was little more than a trickle. It was enough to water myself and my horse and fill my canteen. This became harder as I went, because the brush got more sparse and so did the water. I took up riding at night again and sleeping during the day, because it had grown very hot. Though the nights was pretty cool, with my coat on they was bearable, and there was no longer trees and tree shadows to make the going rough.

  There was one night when I was riding and I looked up at the sky, trying to recognize some of them star heroes Mr. Loving told me about. All of a sudden that sky looked so large and wide I felt as unimportant as a speck of dust in a dry creek bed, then in the next moment a different feeling rushed over me. I saw it as freedom. I wasn’t tied to nothing no more. My future right then felt as large and wide as that sky.

  One early morning, as the dark was dying and the light was rising, I come to a town that was so damn small the coming and going sign was pretty much on the same post. It said RANSACK on it. As it looked and smelled like a heavy rain was coming, I stopped there and spent a night in a barn for a dollar, which seemed like robbery without having to put a gun in my face. What made it less worth a dollar was that it was infested with rats, and though there was a cat in there, it hid out from them. Those rats was near big enough to straddle a turkey flat-footed, so I could see the cat’s point of view. They scampered about me all night, loud as if they was wearing boots.

  Lightning flashed and could be seen clearly through the splits in the slats of the wall. That and the hammering of thunder, and the rain blowing in through those gaps, made for a bad night of sleep. When I awoke right before daybreak, somewhat damp and not much rested, I found I had rolled over on one of those rats and crushed its head like a walnut.

  Morning light come, the rain had passed, and for two bits I was able to go to the back of the hotel and buy some oatmeal with sugar and butter and a dollop of not-too-spoiled milk in it, along with one short cup of coffee so weak you could see the bottom of the cup when it was filled to the brim. It tasted like coffee grounds had just been waved over the cup.

  After I’d choked down the lumps of oats and swallowed that coffee, I rode out of there and passed by a freight wagon that had lost a wheel and turned sideways, dumping a load of buffalo bones someone had been collecting on the prairie. Around those parts buffalo bones was gathered and sold to be ground into fertilizer. I was studying on their whiteness, considering fixing the wagon and trying to haul them myself for a few dollars, but decided it wasn’t a job for one horse. And sure as hell, someone might come back for them, and there I’d be, a thief.

  I happened to look behind me and seen there was three men on horses on a rise looking down at me, but still a good distance away. I rode around on the other side of the buffalo-bone wagon and got off my horse.

  I thought maybe one of the men was Ruggert, but I didn’t know for sure due to the distance. I thought it looked like him, and the other white man looked like Hubert. The third man was colored, which didn’t seem right, but I wasn’t taking no chances. I pulled the Winchester off my horse and settled behind the wagon, peeking through gaps in the stack of bones.

  They stayed where they was for a long time. I think they took it in their heads, whoever they were, that I had a good position, better than theirs, and if that was what they was thinking, I had to agree. I stayed where I was for a stretch, watching to see if they was trying to come around on me. The rise tapered at the ends, and to ride or walk around on either side of it, they’d have to reveal themselves against the skyline. From the cover of that wrecked wagon I could have shot them off their horses like they was bottles on a post.

  I kept my vigil for what was near an hour by the sun, and then took my chances and rode on so as not to give them time to go wide and come up on my flanks or behind me. I rode glancing over my shoulder the rest of the day but didn’t see them again. I began to think they wasn’t who I thought and wasn’t after me at all, and we had just happened to cross trails.

  I was about a half day out of Ransack when I seen this colored fellow taking a dump near some mesquite bushes, wiping his ass on a handful of rough leaves. Had I been a desperado, I could have shot him out from over his pile and taken his horse, cause he was deeply involved in his undertaking—so much, in fact, that though I was still some distance away I could see his eyes was crossed with the strain.

  Being glad I was downwind, and hating to interrupt a man at his business, I sat on my horse until he finished leaf-wiping, and then I called out. “Hello, the shitter.”

  He looked at me and grinned. “You ain’t planning on shooting me, are you?”

  “No. I thought about stealing your horse, though, but it’s swayback and ugly in the face.”

  “You sound like you’re picking a wife, not a horse,” he said. “When I left the plantation I took that horse with me. Wasn’t much then, less now.”

  He was still standing near the bushes and his pile. He’d fastened his pants, and I watched carefully as he picked up a Winchester that lay on the ground near him. He walked toward my horse. The Winchester was in his left hand, and his right hand was extended for a shake. He walked prim and tall, like maybe there was a rod up his ass. I politely refused to lean down from my horse and embrace his invitation for the reason his fingers looked brown to me, and to let my right hand be taken by a man with a rifle didn’t seem wise.

  He nodded at my refusal, taking it in stride. I surveyed him, saw he was a tall man and skinny, wearing a hat with a big feather in it. His face was smooth, and his nose looked to have white man in it. He had green eyes, too, and that didn’t come from any African. Somewhere in his bloodline there had been a peckerwood in the woodpile.

  He put his rifle away in its boot, mounted himself on his horse. He said, “I’m riding out to Fort McKavett to join up, if you care to ride along.”

  “I’m of the same mind,” I said, and that’s how we rode off together. By nightfall we had struck it up pretty good. We found a creek where he could wash his hands with lye soap from his saddlebag and make a handshake more inviting; and shake hands we did. He had some coffee and biscuit makings with only a minimum of weevils. He got out his cookware, made a fire of mesquite brush, and pretty soon we was resting against our saddles, the horses hobbled nearby, eating flat biscuits and drinking bad coffee. My new companion was one of the worst cooks I have ever known.

  I thanked him for the meal, and since all I had to offer was some conversation, that’s what we did. His name was Cullen, but he kept referring to himself as the Former House Nigger, as if it were a rank akin to general. He told me a long story about how he got the feather for his hat, but it mostly come down to he snuck up on a hawk sitting on a low limb and jerked it out of its tail.

  He come out of that story and said, “When my young master went to war against the Yankees, I went with him. I fought with him and wore a butternut coat and pants. I shot at least a half dozen Yankees.”

  “You leaking brains out of your gourd?” I said. “Them rebels was holding us down.”

  “I was a house nigger,” he said, as if he hadn’t already told me that about a half dozen times. “I grew up with Master Gerald, the young master, and didn’t mind going to war with him. Me and him were friends. There were lots of us like that.”

  “Y’all must have got drop
ped on your heads when you was young’uns,” I said.

  “That war wasn’t just about us slaves, you know. It was about states’ rights.”

  “And what was the main states’ right?” I asked, and then answered for myself. “The right to own us like cattle. States’ rights be damned. Set fire to states’ rights.”

  “The young master and the old master were all right,” he said.

  “For masters,” I said. “They owned you.”

  “Maybe I was born to be owned,” he said.

  “Born to be owned?”

  “They were always quoting about it out of the Bible.”

  “That damn Ham fellow again,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s it; someone called Ham.”

  “It’s a story has to do with Noah’s balls,” I said. “Noah’s the fellow that had all those animals in his boat, and his balls and us being slaves is just as silly as it sounds.”

  “Oh, I know the story,” he said, but he didn’t make any more comment on it. Instead he looked into the fire awhile, as if he might see someone he knew there. “I loved Young Master like a brother. I was his special servant in the home. We did everything together. He got shot in the war, in the throat. It killed him deader than a tree stump. I sopped up his blood in a piece of his shirt I cut off, mailed it back home with a note on what happened. As a house nigger, I can read and write pretty well. After the battle, I had to bury Young Master not far from where he fell. Wasn’t any other choice. I went home then, as there wasn’t any call for me there, and I was needed by Old Master.”

  “You chose to go home?”

  “I did. When the war was over and slaves were freed, I stayed where I was comfortable, which was on the plantation with Old Master and his wife. By then, though, it was all coming apart. Damn Yankees coming in and telling how things were to be done. All the other slaves didn’t have any loyalty. Not a drop. They ran off. Including that high yellow bitch that was Old Master’s mistress. He had treated her good, and his wife had to put up with it, so I’m not sure of her complaint. She had nice clothes and perfume and so on.

  “Old Master and his wife died, him first, her right behind him. I buried them under an elm near the house. It was a good spot. Uphill and a good distance from the privy or any pooling water. That just left me and Old Master’s dog.

  “That dog was as old as death and then some. Couldn’t eat good, fell down a lot, so I shot it. That hurt me almost as bad as the death of the family. That dog was eighteen years old if he was a day. Not long after that I took some goods from the house, took to the road, not having any more mind where I was going than a blind chicken. I came upon the news about the government signing up coloreds for the army. I’m not any good on my own. I need someone to tell me what to do, so I decided the army was for me.”

  Well, now, I decided the Former House Nigger had a shingle loose, but I didn’t say nothing about it, least not right then. We was riding companions, and it was wise to stay peaceable.

  About three days later we rode up on Fort McKavett, between the Colorado and the Pecos Rivers, near the head of the San Saba River. Grand as a kingdom, that fort, or so it seemed to me back then. It was situated on a wide mount of land and had a good view of everything below and around it.

  Out front was colored fellows in army blue drilling on horseback, looking sharp in the sunlight, which there was plenty of, it being so bright you had to squint to stand it. It was hot where I come from, sticky, even, but you could find a tree to get under. Out here, all you could get under was your hat, or maybe some dark cloud sailing across the face of the sun, and that might last only as long as it takes a bird to fly over.

  But there I was. Full of dreams and crotch itch from long riding. Me and my new friend, the Former House Nigger, sat on our horses checking that fort over, watching them horse soldiers drill. It was a prideful thing to see, for they did look sharp, but that was their looks, not their abilities. Them uniforms kind of lied to you. They couldn’t ride a horse if they was tied to it. They fell off so regular you almost got to thinking that was their plan. Ride out, fall off, remount, do it all over again. Still, it was colored troops, and I was glad to see them doing something besides following a plow or plodding along after white folks, ready to chop their wood or wipe their children’s asses.

  We rode on down to join them.

  In the commanding officer’s quarters, me and the Former House Nigger stood before a big desk with a white man sitting behind it, name of Colonel Hatch. He had a caterpillar mustache and big sweat circles like wet pie pans under his arms. His eyes was aimed on a fly sitting on a stack of papers on his desk. That bug would lift its wings now and then as if to fly, but it was just a posture. He stayed where he was. Every time those wings lifted, Colonel Hatch would hold his breath, as if fearing it would take to the air and buzz away. Way he was watching that damn fly you’d have thought he was beading down on a charging Apache. Nearby a colored soldier, probably fifty years of age if he was a day, stood at ease, not showing any expression. He might have been dozing with his eyes open, he was so still.

  Colonel Hatch said, “So you boys want to sign up for the colored army? I figured that on account of you both being colored.”

  He was a sharp knife, this colonel.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ve come to sign up to be a horse rider in the Ninth Calvary.”

  The colonel reluctantly took his eye off the fly. “We got plenty of riding niggers. What we need is walking niggers for the goddamn infantry.”

  I figured anything that had the tag “goddamn” in front of it wasn’t for me.

  “I reckon ain’t a man here can ride better than me,” I said, “and that would be even you, Colonel, and I’m sure you are one riding son of a bitch, and I mean that in as fine and as respectful a way as I can muster it.”

  Hatch raised an eyebrow. “That so?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “No brag, just fact. I can ride on a horse’s back, under his belly, make him lay down, and make him jump, and at the end of the day, I take to liking him, I can diddle that horse in the ass enough to make that critter smile and brew my coffee and bring my slippers, provided I had any slippers or coffee. That last part about the diddling is just talking, but the first part is serious.”

  “The diddling part ain’t fact,” he said.

  “No, sir, it ain’t.”

  “But will the horse bring you your slippers and make your coffee, even without the diddling?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Maybe you are a riding son of a bitch,” Colonel Hatch said. “What about you?”

  He was addressing the Former House Nigger, who said, “I haven’t any intention of diddling horses, but I can cook and lay out silverware. Mostly as a house nigger I drove a buggy.”

  “A buggy, huh?” Colonel Hatch said, and at that moment he come down on that fly with his hand and got him, too. “Bastard,” he said.

  He peeled the fly off his palm and flicked him on the floor. The colored soldier, who I had thought might be standing asleep, showed me he was not. He come alert, bent down, picked up the fly with a pinch of gloved thumb and forefinger, took the smashed varmint to the open door, and flicked him into the great outdoors.

  Hatch wiped his palm on his pants, eyeing me the same way he had that fly, said, “Let’s go outside and see how much of you is fact and how much of you is fart mouth and horseshit.”

  They had a corral nearby, and the horses in it was rough-looking, like they was in line for the soap factory and anxious to get it over with. But there was a separate, smaller corral, and in it was a horse that nearly filled it up. He was a big black stallion, and he looked like he ate men and shitted out saddlebags made of their skin and bones. He put his eye right on me when I come out to the corral. When I walked around on the other side, he spun around to keep a gander on me. Oh, he knew what I was about, all right.

  Hatch took hold of one corner of his mustache and played with it, then turned and looked at me.
“You ride that horse well as you say you can, I’ll take you both into the cavalry, and the Former House Nigger can be our cook.”

  “I said I could cook,” the Former House Nigger said. “I didn’t say I was any good at it. I can make a peach pie, though, and it ain’t bad if you can imagine it with a crust. I mostly just make the pie slop. Crust defeats me.”

  “What we got now,” Hatch said, “ain’t even cooking of the lowest order. There’s just a couple of fellas that boil water and put stuff in it, mostly turnips. It’s just one step up from eating horse turds. So if you can do better than that, out here you’re a goddamn chef.”

  By this time four colored soldiers had caught up the horse for me, one of them being the sleepy-eyed fellow that was the colonel’s assistant. During the process, the would-be wranglers came close to losing an eye in the gathering, and all of them at one point or another got banged from side to side and rolled along the hot, dusty ground like doodlebugs. They finally looped the horse’s nose with a rope, got him bridled and saddled, and led him into an empty corral. When they come off the field of battle, so to speak, two of them was limping. The sleepy fellow was holding his head and looking amazed that he was still alive. They had tied the horse to the railing of the corral, and he was kicking at the wind like maybe he could knock it down.

  “Go ahead and get on,” Colonel Hatch said. “Show us your Bellerophon to his Pegasus.”

  I figured Hatch didn’t think I knowed who they was, but I had Mr. Loving to thank for the fact I did.

  “I will show you my Bellerophon and my Perseus,” I said, just to let him know I wasn’t as ignorant as he figured I was, but he didn’t give any show that he thought a thing of it. My remark was as wasted as a nod to a blind man.