So Brave, Young, and Handsome: A Novel

by Leif Enger

  “Why? I wouldn’t, in your place,” he said. “Also, Becket, I want your company. It comes to light we are both of us writers. Two authors traveling together—the discussions we’ll have! Here, what do you think of this proposition? Men are built of words. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?” At this he leaned forward and slapped my knee heartily, as if we were a pair of thrown-togethers at the beginning of a long train ride, discovering our common love of bookish pursuit. “Men are defined by the words they use, and I have always said so!”

  During this conversation I had continued to perspire until my face and hands and even the steering wheel were rimed with salt and dirt; my dislodged finger was a proud little melon. Bitterly I said, “Men are defined by their actions, Mr. Siringo. Yours define a bully and liar. I’ll have no more discussions with you than I would with any thug you care to name.”

  It was a righteous short sermon, delivered, I still say, in as tidy a style as a man with one hand broken and the other bitten is likely to possess; yet envision my surprise when Siringo blinked and drew back from me, as though I’d gone out of my way to injure his feelings.

  “Why, there ain’t any demand for talk of that sort,” he said, his voice turning back toward frailty and confusion. “No demand at all. A little thoughtful discourse is all I had in mind.”

  And the strange thing, as I watched his face struggle with my little flash of resentment, was that I was sorry I’d said it. All he had to do was turn from me to watch the passing ranch land, show me the back of his crabbed webby neck shrinking farther into that huge collar. For several long moments I truly believed I’d been too hard on the old vulture. Why deny him his thoughtful discourse just because my finger ached? I came that close to making a sort of apology. Go ahead and laugh. A time was coming when I would relate all this to Glendon Hale, confessing my weak-mindedness; but Glendon only nodded and said Charlie had more traps than anybody, so many in fact that Charlie himself didn’t know them all; but his finest snare lay in believing every word that he said, until you believed them too and stepped readily into his palm.

  2

  We spent the night round a popping fire, having made some seventy miles. In that part of Oklahoma few trees grew bigger than cornstalks so we camped in the lee of a roofless farmhouse from which I pried enough planks to keep a flame. Watching me scrounge boards sore-handed appeared to help Siringo rebound from my earlier terse remarks and he was in tall spirits again, pointing out telling features of the old farmstead; the skeletal mill tower riven by lightning, a wide propitious chimney now rubbled, the lichened tilting posts of a vanished corral.

  “It was a big corral once,” he said, as dusk faded. “These folks must’ve thought they’d made it.”

  “I guess they did make it, for a while,” I replied.

  “Nope, that’s vanity,” Siringo said. “It came to nothing, you will notice. Grasping after wind,” he added happily. He had a way of pronouncing doom in buoyant tones as if reading aloud from the comics. It made me feel bitter toward him—and toward myself, for lacking the wit to have simply driven away that morning while he sulked in the weeds. It was worse than annoying to realize he’d guessed right about me—that I would not leave him there in the sun to bake.

  My hand, by the way, was improved. After perhaps ten minutes of knifing distress Siringo had abruptly reached over, taken my hand in his own and reset the finger while I yelped and jerked the Packard to and fro. One swift pull was all it amounted to—it shames me to tell you how strong were my feelings of gratitude. I am weak about pain. Immediately my outlook improved and the old strap seemed pleased with my advancing manners. When I thanked him he only cackled lightly, then tucked into a corner of the seat and fell asleep with apparent confidence that I would try nothing untoward. Sure enough I didn’t. Pulling rotten planks off the farmhouse and stacking them by the fire, I was bitter about that too.

  “Say—look what I got here,” Siringo said, as if remembering a treat held in reserve for this very hour.

  Easing down on a precarious kitchen chair scavenged from the house he waved a copy of Martin Bligh. He said, “Hey hey,” as if I ought to be tickled, but the last thing you want is for a fellow like Charles Siringo to know you any better.

  “Guess where I obtained this,” he said, his cheeks burnished with firelight.

  “I don’t know.”

  He propped an eyebrow and opened the book and angled it to better read the title page.

  To my good friend Emma Davies, remember always the books that were your first loves—

  “Stop!” I cried. It was unseemly that he should read my heart-felt inscription so breezily. “You stole it from that girl!”

  “No, sir. She gave it to me,” he replied.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  That sat Siringo up a little straighter, across the fire. He regarded me, his mouth open in apprehension.

  “I see. Yes, I do. You were a favorite of hers, weren’t you?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said, shutting my eyes.

  “No, no—I see how it was. You like the notion that she kept your book on her little shelf of beloveds. That she read your words by golden lantern light. It makes a very pretty picture. It’s nice to be admired by someone like that, yes?”

  He had me nailed, of course. To this day I remember Emma, her eyes regular moons while I read to her Martin’s close shave with the Apaches. Back to mind zipped her naïve compliment, that I was after Alcott but ahead of Frank Spearman.

  Siringo said, “Anyway, little Emma must’ve turned a corner after you left. Disappointment in your practical ethics, I would imagine. She more or less flung this book at me. Why would she have done such a thing?”

  Well, that was simple enough. I’d stepped away from what might’ve become friendship with her grandfather, the dutiful Royal, and also away from law and innocence.

  “I read it,” Siringo stated.

  It took me a moment to realize he meant the book.

  He said, “It was real good for what it was. I enjoyed that Martin fellow.”

  A great weariness pulled at me. I stacked a few more planks on the fire and lay down on my blanket. It was only a cotton blanket and no pillow. I could feel all my neck bones. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I had perhaps glamorized Martin’s blissfulness at sleeping on the open prairie.

  Siringo said, “A man of action, Bligh. Once he made up his mind, he wasn’t much available to persuasion.”

  I hoped to go to sleep on that affirming note, but Siringo wasn’t finished.

  “Man of that sort wouldn’t be much use in this world, but I liked him all the same.”

  The ground was full of hard knots. I sat up. “Not much use, you say.”

  “Well, no. Not much. He was honorable, as you mention forty or fifty times, but when a man has a chance to walk away from torture and doesn’t, the word you’re looking for is stupid.”

  “We will disagree on this subject.”

  “Nonsense,” said Siringo. He was deeply amused and not at all sleepy—I resented him for getting a long nap that afternoon while I drove the automobile through seventy miles of dust in the opposite direction from home. Now my eyes were all sandy and sore, while his were fresh and full of sashay. He said, “For the sake of argument, let’s postulate that you are my captive. If I abuse you from time to time on this our sojourn to the west, how long will it be before you bolt?”

  “Bolt?”

  “Try to bolt,” he amended.

  “There wouldn’t be the least dishonor in my taking leave of you—you aren’t even a Pinkerton anymore, but only pretending. Your authority is counterfeit,” I told him.

  If I hoped that would sting, I was disappointed.

  “You are right about the Pinkertons but wrong about authority, as evidenced by our relative positions. We must raise the stakes. Suppose that by staying with me, you could convince me your position is the right one—that honor is worth whatever it might cost. Remember though
that I am a rogue of brutish habits with a room saved for me in Hell. What would you suffer to make your argument?”

  “I’d rather not answer.”

  “Don’t fret, we are only talking.”

  “I refuse to answer. This is an ambush.”

  He gave a thick chuckle. “You have nine more fingers, Becket.”

  I said, “I would stay until my fear won out, and then I’d run away.”

  Siringo reached for one of the boards I had stripped from the house. He poked the coals, then dropped the board amid them to smolder and pop. He said, “Are you admitting to cowardice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t look so sad. The same end overtakes coward and champion. How about this proposition? Honor is vanity.”

  “That’s contemptible.”

  He shrugged. “As you will. Did you read my book?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  I didn’t answer. My eyes were still open and I could see sleep moving toward me like rain across the prairie.

  “How come, hey?”

  Honestly, I hadn’t looked at his book because I hadn’t the heart. It discouraged me to think of this reckless Siringo sitting down and dashing off his hundreds of pages while also being a cowboy detective and productive bounty hunter and living legend, while I might struggle a week to put down six sentences that mattered. I hadn’t read his book because I was afraid it would be good.

  “You got it with you?” Siringo demanded.

  “No.” Though I did—it was still in my pack.

  “That’s all right. Here, I’ll tell you a bit,” and he proceeded to narrate for me the first chapter of his memoir, wherein he leaves home as a stripling to get work driving horses. It was a swift involving tale, packed with ruffians and violent broncs and sweet-faced girls from the opening gun, and Siringo had it word for word and pause for pause like a man of the theater, even though he had written it all down some twenty years ago.

  “Why, that’s exceptional narrative,” I admitted, when he’d finished.

  “Well, it’s what happened, more or less. It’s what should’ve happened, anyway. That’s all I do, just lay down events without floral arrangement.” He leaned back, pleased with his recital. “What about you, Becket? How do you work your stories?”

  “I’m not writing anymore,” I said.

  “What’s that mean? Is your eyesight failing?”

  “It means I can’t do it anymore.”

  “Can’t do it?”

  “I’m no good anymore—that’s all. It’s not the end of anything except one short career. Now I am tired. Good night, Siringo.”

  He said, “How can you be good once, and then not?” He seemed more awake than ever and also sincere in his puzzlement. Glancing at him, I saw a man watching me with something resembling concern. No onlooker would have guessed he had kidnapped me and put me in torment through much of the day. I shut my eyes and tried to drift. Siringo was stirring the coals. Abruptly he said, “Say, Becket—is your mind all right?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Do you know your alphabet?”

  “Yes, I know the alphabet.”

  “Sing it for me.”

  “Sing it?”

  “You know: A, B, C, D—”

  “I know it.”

  Siringo threw something, a small rock, and hit me on the chest. I sang the little tune.

  “Well, you got the letters.” He narrowed his eyes. “You own a dictionary?”

  “Both Oxford’s and Webster’s.”

  “You got every tool in the box, and you still can’t make a story.”

  “Not a good one, it seems.”

  Blessed silence while he thought this through; then he chirruped hoarsely and issued a diagnosis.

  “Why, poor Becket—you got no medicine, that’s what it is. You used it all up in only the one book. You got no medicine left at all!”

  It put him in such a good mood that he let me go to sleep at last—down I went like a spoiled prince, hard earth and neck bones and all. Whether Siringo slept I don’t know. When I awoke he was crouched over the fire. It was just dawn and his face was pale as smoke. It gave me hope; clearly he was weak. In those cold first moments the thought even came to me that Siringo was dying, that this would be his last day. It was followed however by the much worse thought that he had died already, during the night, and was up anyway, making coffee in the normal fashion, and that I would be compelled for some time to be the companion of a dead fellow who refused to acknowledge his condition.

  3

  We got bread and jam in a town called Ingersoll, plus cream and a pint of raspberries from a boy at roadside whose father had promised to take him to the Pacific Ocean if he sold every berry in their sizable patch by August. That’s what the boy said. To this Siringo remarked that the Pacific Ocean was a long ways off.

  “He’s gonna get a boat and we’ll fish for the big silver ones that live down deep,” the boy said.

  “You’ll never see the ocean in your life,” Siringo replied roughly. “Drive, Becket.”

  “We will!” the boy insisted—he was still insisting as we pulled away.

  “That was unkind of you,” I said. “You showed no grace to that youngster.”

  He said, “If I had the energy I would follow him home and show no grace to that papa of his. The ocean!”

  “You don’t know his papa won’t take him.”

  “Did you notice the state of his short pants?”

  “No.”

  “How about the dirt on his neck—did you see that?”

  I confessed I had not.

  Siringo looked at me in disbelief. “Well, heavens, Becket! No wonder your medicine’s dried up.” In disgust he settled back and shut his eyes. “Wake me at the next town, we need fuel.”

  The next town turned out to be Alva, which I remember by its colors—beds of petunias and black-eyed Susans and variegated daisies fluttered streetside, many homes wore new paint, the whole place seemed picked up. Horses and wagons and autos stood in a park beside a river which turned out to be the same old Salt Fork; an outdoor market had been set up with people selling pies and cakes and garden truck. Families spread blankets on the lawn and picnicked in the shade of cottonwoods; some boys had made a heavy kite out of butcher paper and the ever-present westerly had it humming over the lawn. All of it taken together seemed like a sign to action, and I began to look about and wonder what chance might show itself. A fuel station lay off the road near the park. I looked over at Siringo, who was waking up on his own.

  “Where are we?”

  “Alva.”

  Maybe my voice betrayed too much interest.

  “Charming town,” said he.

  “Indeed.”

  “First we’ll get something to eat. Then gasoline and water. Don’t you give in to temptation now,” he said. “You’ve got no friends in Alva.”

  I nodded, but felt lifted by the sight of people enjoying themselves. How could Siringo know who my friends were?

  We pulled into a dirt lot where a team of Percherons stood in harness before a wagon bright with melons and cabbage and heads of broccoli. Stepping out of the Packard Siringo leaned back in for a small canvas bag. He licked his forefinger and swabbed up a mixture of salt and baking soda with which to clean his teeth. This he did at leisure, scrubbing his gums while inspecting the forbearing Percherons; then it was back to his grip where he located a mottled tin badge and pinned it to his vest. “Pinkerton issue,” he said, with what seemed an alloy of respect and irony. At last he pulled from his bag a clanking set of manacles and asked me without apology to hold out my hands.

  “Are these really necessary?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” he said, with clear disappointment.

  We ate chili in a café where my hopes of escape receded. The place was nearly full and we took a table in the center where Siringo made much of removing the cuff from my left wrist and clipping it with a brisk snap to the leg of the
chair. Fixed thus I couldn’t sit upright but had to eat slumped, like a chimp recaptured after brief liberty. The patrons peered at me over their newspapers while Siringo nodded smiling to all. He looked absolutely the sharp old lawman in charge of his situation. Craning round I caught the pitiless eyes of harried cooks so no doubt my felonies and punishment were being thrashed out fully in that kitchen. The chili was strong as poison and the reddest stuff in my experience; Siringo ate like a scavenging bird, in big swallows without evident pleasure. Afterward he called a waitress who brought out two wedges of coconut cream pie. I will say that even in my chimp slouch this pie seemed the work of angels.

  “You pay, Becket,” he told me at the counter. “Someone at the Hundred and One went and lightened my pocket while I lay sleeping.” I know he intended to humiliate me—manacled I couldn’t reach my wallet and had to have him get it for me, and ruffle through it, and pay for our lunch—nevertheless I had to smile, and nearly to laugh. For I remembered asking Glendon what I might do for Darlys DeFoe, as he was leaving, and Glendon replying he’d done it already.

  I hoped Siringo had arrived at the ranch with a fat roll.

  Heading back to the auto, he stopped and bent slightly at the waist. He was perspiring.

  “Are you all right?”

  He gave a nod.

  “Is it your wound?”

  “No.” His stomach made an agonized liquid sound. He said, “Don’t bother to live as long as me, Becket, it is only occasionally worth it.” Back he went to the café at a stiff trot after dispensing stern instructions to wait for him in the Packard.

  The moment he disappeared I stepped round the corner in my manacles and through the first doorway I saw, a dim newspaper office with a counter and register and a man in repose behind a desk.

  I said, “Sir, if you please, I need assistance. My name is Monte Becket. Is there a police officer in town?”

  “Yes, there is. Are you in trouble, Mr. Becket?”

  Though I was in full view I don’t think this fellow ever saw the cuffs.

  “I’ve been kidnapped,” I told this journalist.