Quite a place. The owner was a great admirer of the Kid and did a lot of business with him in counterfeit money. I sure liked to go there and have my enchiladas brought to me by a native girl. Good life we had then. You can see I haven’t been lying. Good town as towns went—but now the Kid was due to be hung in it and he was due to be hung on Saturday morning and here it was already Monday night.
4
Tuesday morning slipped by and before the Kid knew it it was siesta time and then siesta was over and in the middle of the afternoon Dad came in to say that there was a newspaper fellow downstairs who wanted to interview him and that if the Kid agreed it was all right with him. The Kid smiled and said, “What’s he want to do that for? Hell I don’t want to see him.”
Dad sighed. He studied the Kid’s face for a minute, then said slowly, “Kid as sheriff of this county I got some questions to ask.”
“Well now ain’t that something,” said the Kid.
Dad’s face grew serious. The Kid said, “Now Dad there’s no cause to get downright gloomy on me.”
Dad stared at him and asked, “You got a will made?”
The Kid roared with laughter.
Dad said, “If you haven’t got one do you want to make one?”
The Kid pointed at him and threw his head back and laughed until his face was purple.
“All right,” said Dad, grinning. “Any letters you want to write?”
The Kid just smiled.
“Any last instructions? Last wishes?”
“No.”
“Anything you got to say to me?”
“You don’t really want me to say it now do you Dad?”
“Well you better say it before Saturday.”
“I’m not hung yet.”
“You will be.”
“There’s always that one chance in a million.”
“Not this time. It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late,” smiled the Kid. “You ought to know that.”
*
The afternoon was slipping away, the way the morning had. He lay down and fell asleep but was awakened by the slamming of the door in the room next to his. He had been wondering for some time what that room was used for and had noticed that Lon always went into it before going to Charley’s. He would go in there and then there would be a heavy clump and he would leave, sometimes fussing with something or cursing. The Kid had taken to watching him as he walked over to Charley’s and he noticed that Lon never carried his shotgun there. It was the shotgun, he thought, that he parked in the room next door. Could that room be the gunroom?
He heard Lon cursing now but could not make out what he was saying. And then it occurred to him that there was something wrong with the lock. He heard footsteps mounting the stairs. Lon whispered, “Why don’t we get this damn lock fixed? One good shove and that door’ll fly open.”
“What’s eating you?” Dad said. “Who’s going to shove it? What you afraid of?”
“Me I’m not afraid of nothing.”
“I said we’d have it fixed didn’t I?”
“Forget it,” Lon said.
They walked down the corridor and down the stairs. A little later the Kid and Pablo played poker. The Kid deliberately lost a few hands.
“That’s a nice gun you got,” he said.
Pablo stopped playing to gaze at him. “Now don’t you get any ideas.”
“Me? Anyway I don’t want to see you get hurt. I promised your wife I’d take care of you.”
Pablo laughed. “A lot you care about me Kid.”
“I like you Pablo,” said the Kid, smiling.
“Yeh. And you’d kill me if you thought it would do you any good.”
“You know where I’ll be on Monday?”
“Where?”
“You know Arroyo Grande? Below San Luis?”
“Oh yeah? And where will I be?”
“Right here. Wondering what happened.”
The Kid laughed and Pablo joined him.
After a silence Pablo said, “Well... you had yourself a time. I don’t reckon you got any kick coming. But it’s too bad. And for killing that Johnson. They ought to give you a medal for that. You should have died an old man hombre. That way they could never say they hung you.”
“That what they’ll say?”
“What else?” Pablo shrugged.
“How they feel about my hanging?”
Pablo laughed.
“They’re not all sorry Kid. Some say you’re bad for this country. That it’s time it grew up. And that with hombres like you around it’s... not so good. The anglos talk like that. My people... they say you were good to them. They say stay away from the hanging Saturday morning. No good for a greaser to be seen at that party. Stay away and let the anglos know how we feel about it. About everything, now and all the way back. I’m sorry you’re taking off this way.”
“Why don’t you help me get out of here?”
“No. We have to live with them. What we have in our heart—that’s one thing. We like this country. We want to stay. It’s my job. I got Maria Jesús and the boys to think about.”
“And yourself.”
“Sure.”
“What would you do if I made a break for it?”
“I don’t like it when you ask questions like that.”
“You’re a good boy Pablo. Remember: if the time comes—don’t be a fool and get yourself killed.”
“Don’t worry. I got a lot of living to do.”
“Me too.”
“No not you. That’s what I’m sorry about. Some are afraid you’ll escape. Anglos mainly. Afraid what you’ll do. They shouldn’t have a damn greaser guarding you. That’s what they say. You can never trust greasers. This greaser Pablo is going to help the Kid escape. They say, What are we waiting for? What good will it do to keep him on ice like that? They say Dad was your pard, he’s going to help you escape and I’m going to help you and the only good one is Lon and they ought to kill you now.”
“Good.”
“What?”
“They’re scared.”
“You like that? I bet you do. But it’s not so good for me and my people.”
“Stop worrying. I’m going to be hung on the fourth. Everything will be all right for you and your people.”
*
After dinner the afternoon went quickly. When the evening came he lit the oil lamp and later played poker with Pablo and Dad, Lon watching in the doorway. Pablo had brought in another chair. During the evening Pablo said,
“Before I was just a greaser with a badge. Now when I go out people look. This is the fellow that’s guarding the Kid. Be nice to this greaser boy.”
“You like them to look at you?” asked Dad.
“Sure. What about you Kid?”
The Kid shrugged and studied his cards.
“No I like it,” said Pablo. “Now when I go out people stop me who never used to see me and say, What’s the news of the Kid? They ask my wife and even my brother-in-law.”
Lon snickered.
“What’s so funny?” asked Dad, turning to look at him.
Lon shrugged and grinned.
“What you believe in Pablo?” asked Dad.
“Me? I believe in God. The Church. That I’m only a little man.”
“You’re not so little.”
“Sure. Even in the other things I am.”
“What you want to believe that for? You’re not down in old Mex.”
“No you believe what you believe even when they don’t force you. What do you believe in Kid?”
“Nothing.”
“You got to believe in something.”
“I must have lost it then,” the Kid said.
Pablo shook his head wonderingly. “What you believe in Dad?”
“Hell what everybody else believes in I reckon.”
“You don’t believe what Pablo believes,” said the Kid.
“I mean us americanos.”
“Sure and what do we believe
in?” asked the Kid.
“God I reckon and that we’re all free.”
“Well now I’m not.”
“I reckon not,” grinned Dad.
“About God. I hear He’s fast but I’d like to see for myself,” said the Kid.
“You will.”
The Kid laughed. “It’s like burning a candle.”
“Have it your way.”
“What do you believe in Lon?” asked Pablo.
“Bullshit.”
“Just like Lon,” said Dad. “Always got to have a minority opinion on everything.”
“He asked me.”
“Yeh. That was his mistake.”
Soon afterward the Kid said he was sleepy and the game broke up. As they were standing around the room the Kid said, “Dad. How about letting me wash up? My feet.”
Dad eyed him skeptically. “All right.”
They removed his irons and let him wash, their hands on their gunbutts. Then they locked them on him again.
“Thanks,” the Kid said, smiling with pleasure. As they left the room he said, “You fellows are doing a good job. You could hang God Himself the way you’re handling this.”
*
He turned out the lamp and lay down on the bunk fully dressed. Another day gone. The moonlight was strong in the room. He fell asleep, lying on his back as he was, and did not stir much during the night.
He awoke at about six, rubbed his eyes absently, stood up, looked around the room, then remembered it was Wednesday and that on Saturday morning he was going to be hung. He went to the plaza window. The plaza was still. Smoke coming up from some of the adobes. Some riders the other side of Calle de Estrada. The jail still too: not even the sound of snoring. For the farmers the day had already begun and down at the bay it had probably begun two hours ago. He wished he could see the bay and sandhills but they were on the left and he could not get a view of them from his cell.
He went to the little chest and washed and shaved, then lay down on the bunk. Holding the leg irons taut, he slowly raised and lowered his legs about twenty times, after which he rocked back and forth. Then, holding his legs still, he swung his arms in arcs from his groin to a point over his head. He began to sweat. He went to the window again. Out there, in the middle of the plaza, was where they planned to hang him Saturday at nine o’clock. Well he did not have much time to find that one in a million.
Pablo came out of the front door and headed for Charley’s, without looking up, going in that swinging tight-hipped walk of his, his gun hanging low.
One thing sure: his best chance for a break was when Lon was over in Charley’s with the other prisoners. Maybe there would come a time when both Lon and Dad would be away from the jail. Lon lived in an adobe in town with his two brothers but now he was spending his nights in the jail and was almost as much a prisoner as he himself. In the room across the corridor from the gunroom were some sleeping quarters and that was where Lon and Dad slept. As for Pablo, he went home every night.
He saw Pablo returning across the plaza, carrying a board with his breakfast on it. Looking up, Pablo saw him at the window and waved. Balancing the board with one hand, he said, “Hi Kid how goes it this morning?”
“It’s a good morning.”
“For me it is but not for you,” said Pablo, laughing, and the Kid pretended surprise.
“What do you mean by that hombre?” he asked and they both laughed.
He heard Pablo climbing the stairs and there were other footsteps also, probably Lon’s, and then there was a rap on his door, the thrust of the key, a sudden pushing open of the door inward, the sight of Pablo with his drawn forty-five, the sight of Lon behind him, the English shotgun in the crook of his arm, the brief disappearance of Pablo while Lon stood in the corridor, eyeing him in hate, the clatter of dishes and Pablo bringing the breakfast in on an old coffee-stained board.
The Kid sat down on the bunk and tried the coffee. “This coffee is great Pablo, piping hot,” he said sarcastically. Pablo shrugged.
It was always Pablo who went down to One-eyed Charley’s for the Kid’s meals. Lon had said he wouldn’t wait on him if they paid him a thousand dollars to do it. Pablo sat down on the chair while Lon stood in the open doorway. After a while Pablo said, “You’re not talking much today.”
“That’s right,” the Kid said and Pablo went out and they locked him in. He lay down on the bunk and fell asleep.
When he awoke he went to the door and rapped. “Hombre!” He heard the scraping of a chair and then the shuffling of steps, then the click of the lock, and the door opened and Pablo stood in the doorway, covering it with his forty-five.
“It’s too quiet,” the Kid said. “How about some poker?”
“Good,” said Pablo. He locked the door behind him and thrust the key into his pocket. Then they sat down and played with Pablo’s deck, the Kid sitting on the bunk and Pablo taking the room’s only chair. Again the Kid let Pablo win. This time Pablo was beginning to get excited.
*
At eleven they brought him his lunch. From twelve-thirty to two-thirty he slept again, it being siesta time. When he awoke and got up to stretch he felt as always that there was something wrong with his right thigh and he knew that the feeling was due to his gun not being strapped on it. The gun was heavy and the thigh muscles did not know how to behave yet without it. When he moved about his right leg thrust itself forward more than necessary, as if the gun was still there, and it made him uneasy because the thigh seemed uneasy, and because he was not used to being without a gun for so long.
He went to the window and saw some kids and grown-ups on the plaza, looking up. He wondered where Nika was and why she hadn’t come to see him. Looking out at the people there, he wondered how it would be when the hemp was fixed around his neck. This was not how he had expected to call the turn. There was no problem dying with a gun in your hand, shooting it out, maybe killing someone, having the ball tear into you, dropping you, making you gasp with the suddenness and power of it but giving you enough time to take off like a man, maybe saying to somebody you liked, “Well I’ll see you boy. So long.”
When they put the hemp around his neck and jerked how long would it take for him to choke to death? What would his legs be doing? How would his face look? Would it turn purple and look like a dried prune, making the kids laugh? Would he piss in his pants and be buried with the piss stinking on him?
He rolled a cigarette and saw that his hands were shaking. He had to steady them to light it. He had been drinking heavily the past year or so, not the region wines but raw whiskey, colored by coffee and flavored with red pepper to give it bite on the way down, and he was not the boy he had once been. His nerves had changed quite a bit.
What if his chance never came? They would say, When it came to a showdown the Kid had no sight on his gun. They would say, Hell a little adobe like that would never have kept a good man in. It sure looked as though he had been dealt a bad hand and that he was going to drop out of the game. Where was that one chance in a million? Would it come?
And then, as he took a deep drag on the cigarette, it was as though he were not standing at the window with the people watching him, as though he were not in the room at all but out in the back yard, coming out of the outhouse and running into the house and up the stairs and ramming his shoulder against the gunroom door, and he knew in a flash what his chance was and knew exactly what he must do and knew he would do it tomorrow around noon while Lon was at Charley’s and he was glad he would make his play. He began to laugh, his face turning very red, and the people on the plaza watched him and glanced at each other, wondering if he had gone loco.
After dinner he and Pablo played monte. When Pablo said, “Well Kid how are you feeling now? Your time’s running out,” the Kid smiled that strange smile of his, the muscles bunching up around his mouth and his upper lip looking blistered underneath, and said, “I tell you Pablo it’s like this. I’m feeling very good. Maybe it’s your time that’s running out.”
And he laughed as if he had heard a great joke. Pablo laughed too.
“What you think Kid? You got a chance?” asked Pablo.
The Kid made a mouth and said nothing.
As they played he thought: ‘Through the back door, through the office, up the stairs to the gunroom door.’ The back door swung inward. That was good. As he ran inside he would swing it shut behind him. The other door would be on his left as he came to it. It would be up against the corner, with maybe a chair in front of it. He must be sure, on the way to the outhouse, to note what had to be done there. Perhaps it was not worth fooling with that door. He would have to back out of the room with the knob in his hands and he did not have that kind of time and yet it would be well to have it shut when Pablo reached it, otherwise Pablo, who was fast, might get in a shot in the corridor just as he, the Kid, was reaching the stairhead. He would run up to the knob, grab it with both hands, then yank the door as he backed out. He must remember not to catch the shackles on the knob. And he must look out for a bulging of planks, some old knot in the wood of the floor, or some small thing, anything that might catch his heel and trip him. That second door was a problem and he must go over the action many times in his mind to prepare for it. The important thing was to do everything slowly to be sure there were no mistakes. It was up to Pablo and Lon to make the mistakes. After all he had nothing to lose but they did and it was they who would rush into things. The front door would be open as usual but there would be no point in running onto the plaza, unless he wanted to get riddled by Lon.
The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones Page 5
