Paradise Sky

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “We hid out in the woods, and that night I got Pa over to her place. The old woman said the bullet was too deep to come out, but that he’d heal over, and if he didn’t die of infection, which she called the rot, he’d live to pull a cotton sack another day. It was my plan to leave him there, thinking that bullet would work for him, not against him, and that he could say I shot him and Ennis when they tried to take me back.

  “That old woman gave him something to drink, and Pa passed out. She said it was for the pain and he’d get over it in a few hours. That was naive of me. I rode out of there into the trees, and at that point it was like I couldn’t go no more. I just fell off that horse, down between some sycamores, and lay there. The horse ran off. I was so weak I couldn’t move anymore. I had been going without rest, and now I was drained by fear and confusion. I was up pretty high in the hills, but I had a good view of that old woman’s shack. I seen that old woman come out of her shack and head toward the little settlement down below. I tried to get up and move on, but my legs had quit on me. I decided if someone, or dogs came, they could have me. I didn’t have no more fight left. I just laid down there in the cold and slept.

  “I don’t know how long I was out, but when I woke up my will had been somewhat restored, and so had my strength. Down below here come that woman, and she was walking fast for someone old as she was, and right behind her on horseback, and some on foot, was a bunch of men with lanterns. They come to her house, and I knew then she had gone and told on us. Pa was knocked out from her so-called medicine. They went in and brought him out, and the only thing I’m thankful for, Nat, is he was still mighty drugged and couldn’t walk. He was literally dragged. They put a rope around his neck and found a tree limb and pulled him up. His neck wasn’t broken, like in a clean hanging, but he was strangled. Again, I hope that medicine kept him away from too much pain. He kicked a little, but it wasn’t any time at all before he was still. That old woman wasn’t anything but a Judas.

  “I eased back on my hands and knees, got to my feet, and started running. I still had that pistol I had taken from Ennis, and I told myself if they come up on me, and I saw there was no chance for me, I would use it on myself before I would be strung up. But the odd thing was, no one ever came after me. Maybe they thought I was long gone and not stupid enough to be sleeping on a hill just up from that old woman’s house. As for her, I entertained going back to kill her, but it came to me that she didn’t know any better. She had been a slave all her life, and to let Pa live, and possibly have it found out, could cause her harm. For an old slave woman she had it pretty comfortable by then, too old to work and around long enough she was beloved in the same way you like an old dog that has been about for years. For what she done to Pa she probably got a ham and an extra scoop of flour from her former master.

  “I lit out. I just kept going. I started heading north. I stole chickens, killed and ate them to survive.”

  “Better dead chickens to eat than alive,” I said.

  “That’s the truth. I stole eggs, stole food from houses when no one was about. I even robbed a couple of white men on the road with my six-gun and whipped one of them about the ears just because I could. I was on the road one night, going into Illinois. I had stolen an old swayback horse and was getting bolder as I went. I come upon a colored fellow lying beside the road. He was dead. It appeared his neck was broken. I guess he had fallen off his horse or been thrown by it. The horse was nowhere to be found. That’s what I was thinking then, about the horse. Not thinking there’s a poor man lying dead at my feet, but that he had a horse, most likely. I searched through his pockets, found a flask of whiskey in his coat and two bits in change. I never did find his horse. I wanted to. I figured it had to be better than that old swayback. I left there with that flask, drinking, not thinking one whit about that poor man.

  “I went on, and the night turned cloudy. I swear, a bolt of lightning, blue-white and sizzling with fire, came down out of the heavens and hit that swayback smack in the head and gave me the burning trembles. When I woke up that horse was lying on top of me, and I could smell its hide sizzling from the lightning strike. It was then that the clouds parted and I saw the stars. Nat, it was then I saw the face of God. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t seeking vengeance. He was there to let me know I had a chance to turn things around. What do you think about that?”

  “That God liked you all right but didn’t have the same feeling for horses.”

  I couldn’t help saying that, and feared soon as I said it Luther would take offense. But he laughed. “That’s a good point, Nat. I’ve thought on it. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t have an answer. But what I had from that point on was faith that I was placed here by God for something better than robbing the dead. I worked for a long time to get out from under that horse. That lightning bolt had knocked us to the side of the road, and the ground was soft there. I wasn’t crushed on account of that, as the ground gave with me and made enough of an indentation I was able to slip out from under that dead swayback. I was numb for a while, being stunned from the legs down. I grew a lot of hair after that. My legs and balls got hairy, and so did my chest. It was overnight. That lightning stoked me up inside with the spirit of the Lord.”

  “Along with hairy balls,” I said.

  “That, too. I walked out, Nat, walked into Illinois, and first colored church I come to I went in during services and dropped to my knees and prayed. I prayed not for ownership of things but for my eternal soul. I prayed to be a better man. A little later I got a job there at the church, cleaning the place, and pretty soon I was doing a bit of preaching, time to time, you know, when the preacher would let me. He didn’t let me for long, because I started getting a following, a big following. He came and told me I was too good at it. I was taking his job altogether. I didn’t want to do that to him, and he didn’t want it done to him. I moved on through the country, stopping at colored churches and preaching when they’d let me be a guest at their pulpit.

  “It was heady stuff for me. I went from being a Church of Christ for a while to being a Seventh-day Adventist. All I remember about the Church of Christ is they argued over musical instruments. Some were for it, some weren’t. Adventist I don’t remember anything at all. I met some Catholics and prayed with them some. I was a Baptist for a while, but frankly, I found them too stupid. I know that’s a harsh thing for a preacher to say, but they believed the Bible word for word, and common sense didn’t stir them in the least. If the preacher told them a handful of shit was honey, they’d eat it. They lacked the desire to question. The Methodist I was with a little longer, but they thought they were special because they could go to dances and didn’t see the devil in their soup, meaning they were down on the Baptist, who could service a goat and shoot a man while doing it, and think if you had been baptized, you were forgiven. Catholics had too many beads and such makings. There were some other branches, but they hurt my feelings about the same. That’s why I started my own church and took to my own way of preaching.”

  “What’s this church called?” I said.

  “It hasn’t any name. It’s just me, and I preach what I think Jesus meant, with the understanding I could be wrong, though not so wrong as the others.”

  I smiled at that.

  “So you see, Nat, I was once a very bad sinner. I shot a man—”

  “He deserved it,” I said.

  “Just the same. I shot him and I disrespected my pa for no good reason but pride. I stole. I lied. I actually did service a goat once. I was on the road and I came across it at a farm where I stole some chickens, and one thing led to another. Anyway, that’s not for the children to know.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Do you and the goat write?”

  “No. But we parted friends. Later on, when I had religion and my head screwed on tight, I met Geraldine, who was from Fort Smith. We married and were very happy. I continue to be happy because I am thankful I had her
and our time together. God took her, for whatever reason, but I feel blessed each day that she was mine. That I have these wonderful children, Ruthie speaking to ducks notwithstanding.”

  That night I slept under the wagon, and three or four times the cry of that cougar brought me awake. Last time it did the sound was close, so I didn’t really sleep anymore, just lay there under the wagon, cradling my rifle, eyes open, alert to shapes, thinking about Luther and his religion and his need to be a better man. Me, I was out to shoot a bastard.

  28

  When we finally came into Fort Smith I saw it was a fairly lively town. There was a lot of bustling about, people on the streets and boardwalks, wandering out of stores and such. We come to the livery, but the man there told Luther there was a colored livery on the edge of town and that he ought to take his animals there.

  “I’d take your stock,” he said, “but there’s lots of white folks in town for a hanging, and they come first.”

  We didn’t really have no other choice but to rattle onward. At the edge of town there was a big tree where there was some horses tied, and next to it was a ramshackle shed that had three sides closed in. The open end showed us a row of horse and mule asses. There was a bit of open room at the far end. Enough to house five or six animals if they all agreed to be friends. The owner of the shed was a big redbone with one good eye. The other eye had the lid pulled down and sewed shut due to some ancient injury. He said we could go cheap if we wanted to just put them under the tree.

  Luther paid up for the shed for his mules, my horse, and the cow. He was allowed to pull the wagon under another tree down from the tied horses and turn it into a camp spot. Me and Luther both saw this as short-term housing and animal boarding. It wasn’t a whole lot better than just having the animals stand out in the rain. Anyway, we pulled the wagon there, then took the animals back to be housed in that shed.

  I was supposed to be done with Luther and his family and get my twenty dollars, but I told Luther to forget it. He gave me five dollars anyhow, told me I had a place there in or under the wagon. I thanked him, said I would see him again, but for now I was on my own. Truth was, I didn’t want to stay around Ruthie. She was starting to stir my blood, and I felt guilty about it.

  “You ain’t got to go,” Samson said.

  “You don’t have to go,” Ruthie corrected Samson. She wasn’t speaking to me. She didn’t seem to care one way or another.

  “Guess I do,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come back and have Ruthie teach me how to talk to chickens.”

  “Ducks,” she said.

  “Ducks, then,” I said.

  “I doubt they’ll speak to you,” she said. “I don’t know they’d like your attitude.”

  “How do you feel about my attitude?”

  “I could probably learn to tolerate it. How do you feel about me talking to ducks?”

  “I could probably learn to tolerate it.”

  “Actually, I do speak to chickens and other birds, and they speak to me, but I’ve always found ducks to be the most informative.”

  “That’s information I can hold to my heart,” I said.

  “You do that, Nat Love.”

  I must admit she made me feel pretty good and at the same time pretty bad for feeling that way, what with poor Win back there in Deadwood, her head like a cleaned-out room, and me out here flirting with a pretty girl that talked to ducks.

  Me and Samson shook hands, and he did it like a grown man. Then I shook Ruthie’s soft little hand, took what money Luther gave me, and walked into town. I needed to figure on what to do next. I hadn’t so much as heard a word about Ruggert, and I feared I had seen the last of him. Golem was out of the way, but the worst of them seemed to be lost on the wind. I figured the best thing I could do was find myself a place to stay and a steady job, at least until I could figure on things. I had left Win alone to kill them, to avenge her, yet being away from her made me feel confused. I thought back on her, and all I could remember was how she looked at me as if I was a stranger.

  I come upon some colored boys playing in the street and asked them about a place where I could stay. They gave me directions to a colored boardinghouse, and to get there I had to go back part of the way I had already come. I got a room, and it cost me three dollars for a week. I figured a week would maybe give me time to find a job. I reckoned, too, that I could deal with Luther for a bit of supplies to get me through until I cornered a job.

  My little room didn’t have a real bed in it, just a cot, and when I laid down on it I had to bend my feet a little so they didn’t hang off. The room was slanted because the undersupports wasn’t even, and there was cracks in the walls and the wind whistled through like a butcher knife. It was worse than the room I had in Deadwood. I bought some newspapers and looked for job ads, but there wasn’t any, so I used the papers to clog the worst of the cracks in the wall. A couple of blankets came with the room, and there was a small stove with a smoky stovepipe that went up and turned and poked out of the wall.

  I was told not to burn the heater too long, else the pipe would catch on fire and burn the place down. They hadn’t even done a good job of putting it in the wall, didn’t surround it with mud or some such that could take the heat and not flame up. I figured I might manage to fix that myself.

  It took me three days, but finally I got a job sweeping out the general store. I worked three days a week, about four hours a day, and got paid a dollar a day. The white fellow who did it on the other days made two dollars a day. My employer was a Mr. Jason, a porky fellow with muttonchop sideburns and a patch of hair that was thick on the sides and at the back. It looked as if there had been a brush fire on top. When he first offered me the job, he stood before me holding a broom. He explained to me how it worked, in case I might think it was a horse.

  He told me when I went to work that I had to understand he paid white men more, but he felt the War between the States was over and I deserved a chance to work—at half price, as he didn’t believe colored were animals the way some did, but that didn’t mean he felt they were on par with a white man, one of God’s true creations. I guess I was an untrue creation, along with the worm or the traveling salesman. He then told me something about how to hire me he had to cut something at home that he was used to having and really cared for, cause it would mean money was spent on me that couldn’t be spent on items of his desire or some such. I don’t remember exactly. It made about as much sense as believing the moon was made of green cheese.

  I did this job for a week, then I got a kind of promotion and was put on six days a week, not just sweeping but unloading supplies and such. I didn’t get any more a day, just more days. Mr. Jason made it clear that he was quite the positive sort of fellow giving me such a position, and I heard his lecture again on how he felt he was the fairest man in Arkansas when it come to niggers. I secretly harbored the view that one night I’d have liked to burn his store down, but since he didn’t live in it, I didn’t see the reasoning.

  I managed during this time to write some letters. I wrote one to Cullen, even sent one to Dodge City in hopes Bronco Bob was still there. I wrote that lawyer in East Texas, even though I didn’t have my papers Mr. Loving had given me. I wrote him and told him I had them, and I sent it to his name in care of general delivery.

  In the letter to Cullen, I gave very detailed accounts of my travels, though I left Ruthie out of it except for mentioning her name as Luther’s daughter. I put in things for Win, tried to touch on a number of events she might find amusing, even though I didn’t know for a fact any of it would mean a thing to her. I asked about her playing the flute and mentioned our fine place on the hill, in a very modest way; told her I was tight on the trail of Ruggert and had only stopped in Fort Smith for supplies, which was a mild lie. I was neither on Ruggert’s trail nor merely stopping for supplies. I was at a standstill. But that’s how I told it, and then closed out with all my love to all of them. I thought I ought to write Win her own letter but decided against it
. If she was still confused, it was better I kept things general, let her hear it from Cullen. Maybe that way some of it would sink in.

  In Bronco Bob’s letter I was even more entertaining, and I threw in a couple or three lies to liven up the whole thing where I thought it might be sagging. I mailed the letters with hopes of them all finding their intended, then waited for a reply.

  One day as I was sweeping out the store, I came out on the front porch and seen a big colored man riding on a sorrel horse. He sat straight in the saddle, had a bushy mustache, and wore a ten-gallon hat and a shiny badge. He looked firm as an oak tree. He had a rope leading from his saddle horn to another horse behind him, and on the horse was a white man big as the man leading him. He was hatless, riding with his head down, his hands tied together in front of him to the saddle horn. He looked as if he had been chewed on by a cougar.

  There was another colored fella working there with me by the name of Washington, and he walked up beside me to see the man ride by. He was somewhat younger than me, a boy, really.

  I said, “He’s got on a marshal badge.”

  “Marshals wear them,” Washington said.

  “They got colored marshals?”

  “Judge Parker does. That there’s the toughest and best marshal there is, black or white, red or brown. That’s Bass Reeves. You don’t want him after your ass, cause he’ll sure as hell find you. Want to fight, he’ll fight, and he’ll bring you back lying across that horse if need be. That fella there, looks like he wanted to fight. Lucky he’s alive.”

  “A colored marshal. I’ll be damned,” I said.