The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones

by Charles Neider

  We went north and headed all the way up toward the Restless Sea and there you could see the change in the land—no more great rocks except offshore and plenty of sandhills and scrub pine and browning grass and yellow trails and grazing cattle and you could taste the saltmist on your tongue. It was up in those sandhills that the Kid later killed and buried Bob Emory. Nowadays they use that sand to make cement, I am told, and have a big factory there.

  We rode down onto the beach again and saw the seawolves poking their heads like bald old Negroes out of the water. The rotting kelp on the beach stank of iodine and terns flew up in clouds and cried in their high voices and we rode through the millions of flies and tasted the bitterness in our mouths and watched the ocean boiling around the rocks and the sunlight prickling off it. Well if you were going to get yourself killed it was as good a spot as any in that country. Come to think of it, that was the last time I ever went out to that point near Spanish Bay. I wouldn’t want to go back, though. I understand they’ve got it all changed, the way they always have.

  *

  The Kid found Nika up around Hijinio’s and got off his horse when he saw her. There were two other women with her, working the outside of the adobe, but the others left when they saw him coming, and Nika just stood there, her hands full of mud, and watched him come, the anger showing in her face. He came up close, leading his horse, and stopped and stared at her.

  He sensed that she had changed. She looked different—tired, a little grim, and almost as if she had been drunk for a long time. She looked older too. He knew that he would have his troubles with her. In a way she was no longer the Nika he had known and yet her face and figure had hardly changed at all. Watching her, he was glad he had come to get her. She was as peppery as ever. She stood with her hands on her hips, her head held arrogantly and her jet hair showing a little on her forehead from under the small rebozo which fell and covered her shoulders. Her face was gaunt. He liked that too. The cheeks were high, Indian-like, the eyes deepset beneath bony brows, the nose strong and the nostrils flaring, the mouth large, with a downward sweep of arrogance, and her cheeks were sunken, the whole face a little skull-like.

  There was something about her all right. She was not as pretty as some of the other girls but she had fire. He did not like the soft round ones with the slightly flabby faces or the faces just beginning to turn flabby, with the flattish Indian faces and the Mongolian eyes, or the soft young ones with faces like plums. He knew them and he knew that past a certain point there was no fun in them, although they had their own kind of pepper too. He was getting too old for the soft ones. He liked this woman standing there as though she were ready to turn her back on him or to spit in his face or to cut him up with a knife. She had beautiful hands, long and almost wristless, the lean forearms flowing darkly onto them and the fingers clean and long and straight. They were the hands of a murderer and he liked them.

  Why had he gone after other women? Why had he hurt her? He felt a little dizzy. Was it because he was tired or was it because of her effect on him? A woman like this could last a man a long time. And yet he had hurt her, had brought the girl Juanita here and had let her live with him for more than a week, the soft Juanita from the hills, with the moon face, the almost light skin, the black hair and black eyes, the soft nubby nose and the dimpled cheeks, the soft shoulders and the childlike glances, the soft mouth with the curling corners and the crying spells when she thought he was displeased with her.

  “You had no right to do it while I was still alive,” he said.

  “What are you doing back?” she asked.

  “You got married on Wednesday but I was not supposed to be dead until Saturday. You thought I was gone for sure. You wrote me off for dead both of you.”

  “Oh cut it out!” she cried. “If that’s what you’ve come to tell me save your breath!”

  “On Wednesday I was still alive. If I had made a break and got myself killed for my trouble it would have been all right for you to get yourself married. But on Wednesday I was still alive.”

  “Yes? And what about that Juanita?”

  “You were still my woman, regardless. And you should have come and told me. You should have come anyway, even if you didn’t tell me, knowing I was waiting for my death.”

  “Now wait a minute. I was going to come.”

  “But you thought I was as good as dead and not worth bothering about. It’s wrong to write a man off before his time—you know that? That must have been some wedding night, him sick in his lungs and you sick in your heart.”

  “You keep him out of it!”

  “Why? Because he stole my woman?”

  “You keep him out of it!”

  “I wouldn’t want to remember that wedding night if I was you. The padre that married you ought to be ashamed of himself and if I’m ashamed of some of the things I’ve done, like bringing that girl here and shaming you, I’m not as ashamed as that padre ought to be and you too. But let’s forget all that and start from scratch in old Mex. This country is not good for us any more. What do you say? Will you come back with me?”

  “You go to hell,” she said.

  “I want you down there with me. The country is good. Miguel won’t try to hold you. He knows you belong to me. He married you behind my back but I don’t hold it against him. When a man wants a woman anything goes. He’s a nice fellow but he’s dying. You know that?”

  “Stop talking like that!” she cried, furious with him. Then she said softly, “Why didn’t you die? Why did you come back to haunt us? I have no use for you. Understand?”

  “Sure you have,” he said. “I know you.”

  “Do you? I got a brother and a husband and a house. A house my father built. I was born here. I like this country. Where were you born Kid?”

  He smiled.

  “You don’t know?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Who was your mother?”

  He shrugged.

  “You don’t know that either? I remember my mother and my father and this is where they lived and where I’ve lived and I’m sick of strangers.”

  “You calling me a stranger?”

  “That’s right! You go from place to place, killing, always afraid of being killed. What do you think it would be like living with you? Sure. You kill Patron, Dedrick. But they’re bound to get you. And what about the others? The other killers? Always waiting to catch you drunk or with a hangover or a little sick in the stomach or with your eyes bloodshot or with your shooting arm stiff? You think they’re dead? There’s always a new one coming up and getting ready to put that one bullet into you. Where would I be in all that?”

  “You’ve done all right,” he said.

  “Have I? I’m tired of all that. Miguel’s sick. I’ve got all I can do to keep him alive. He needs me and I need him and the truth is you never need anybody.”

  “All right,” he said dryly, smiling.

  She was not the only one who had changed. He had changed too and she saw it. His face was raw from the sun and wind, his eyes bloodshot, and he was tired down into his bones and it showed in the way he walked—there was a kind of brittleness in his gestures—and in the slow tired way his bright lashes settled down over his eyes and in the way the corner of his mouth turned down slightly as if in irritation. He had always been a clean fellow, he had always bathed whenever he could and had liked to use lots of soap, but now the grime had settled into the hairline creases of his neck and in some apparently new lines of his face, which suddenly showed the years on him, and she noticed these things and was surprised. She saw that he was not so much of a boy any longer and she knew he would not live to reach his next birthday. As long as he had been a boy no one could kill him but now he was done for, she thought.

  “You’d better get out of this country if you want to stay alive,” she said. “And if you do anything to Miguel God help you.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ve had it coming. Miguel give you that ring?”

 
“You sure didn’t,” she said bitterly. “You just took off.”

  “How about forgiving a fellow?” he asked.

  “What are you smiling about?” she said.

  “Well?” he asked softly.

  She refused to answer.

  “Looks like I’m not exactly popular around here,” he said.

  “And why should you be?” she demanded. “Just who do you think you are?”

  He shrugged.

  “Me? Nobody,” he said and turned and walked away toward his horse, going in that new brittle way which told her that he was very tired and beginning to feel his age and hadn’t long to live.

  *

  I never did like that Nika much. I didn’t like the way she wore her hair and the way she talked up in her nose. She wore her hair long and parted exactly in the middle, with the ends braided and coiled tight at the back of her head, and she wore it with her head up and with that tight skin of her face which showed the bones underneath and with her strong nose which always looked as if she were flaring her nostrils and with her large teeth bulging against her closed lips (making you think she was using snuff), and when she walked around like that I hated her. After all she was no better than a slut and had no right to put on airs.

  As I said, when she talked it was always up in her nose. Everybody else talked in their mouth or back in their throat but this wasn’t good enough for Nika, she had to get that whine into it. And when she said something to you in that high whiny voice you would have thought, if you had been the damn fool she took you for, you heard an angel talking, the way she turned those large black eyes on you and the way she dropped her lids or twisted her lips into a smile or puckered the papery skin on the front of her cheeks or showed you her long white teeth and the tip of her hot tongue or placed her bony hand on the crown of her head.

  The Kid had taught her to shoot pretty well and she even liked to fool around with snap shooting and drawing from the hip, but that was because they were in “love.” She was the kind of woman who took up whatever her man was good at or that she thought he was good at or that somebody had convinced her he was good at. As for their being in love, it was a funny kind of love that could make people act like that toward each other, especially that could make a woman ruin a good man. Her walk was good and her body was good too—she was thin and wiry and small-breasted and could punch you with bony fists and make you feel it—and she had some kind of style but she also had something murderous, you never knew which way she was going in love or in hate, and I’m positive she didn’t know either and maybe that’s why the Kid took to her the way he did.

  She was a fourflusher from way back and I’ll give you ten to one that if she’s still alive she’s fourflushing right now. She was the kind of woman who could get hold of a peaceful man and in no time flat make a murderer out of him. She would have done that to Miguel if she had had the time. I have known men who might as well go at their wives with a knife and get it over with but who just pare a little off at a time or who stick the point in here and there to see if the wives can still feel it, which they always can. These men make wrecks of their wives and then blame them for being the wrecks that they made them. Even Miguel would have gotten to be like that, Miguel with the soft skin and the dark gentle eyes and the soft easygoing voice.

  He was a nice fellow and in a way he was lucky he died shortly afterward. When he was well he would go over to his piece of land on Headland Meadow and work it and make corn grow there and potatoes and cabbages and beets. He had a cow too and several pigs and a couple of horses that were no better than plugs. I remember him bending over his earth, the sea behind him, his hips heavy, his face a little round, with the black mustache above the heavy lips, and I remember his soft brown hands with the heavy, horny, dirty nails, the earth still on them after he was through working for the day.

  One day, after a raid on the Rancho San José y Sur Chiquito, I brought him two good horses and told him he could have them. He did not want to take them.

  “Go on take them,” I said. “We’ve changed the brands.”

  After thinking a long while he said, “All right,” and I was glad.

  *

  We met the Kid as he was coming off the Punta. I asked him if he wanted to go abalone fishing with us and he said sure, so we went down to a cove we knew on the Punta, where there were lots of abalones hanging on to the rocks, letting the tide drift over them and getting their food from what it brought. The best way to get them was to use a heavy knife, get the point in quick and pry. If you used wood they crushed it. With a knife you could force them loose and lay them with the wet meat and muscle looking skyward. The big ones weighed several pounds. It was good eating after it was pounded, delicate and not very fishy.

  We had some fun diving for them and then we rested. The bay was very blue and I could feel the sweat running down my back. On the other side of the bay was the mission church, with its short yellow walls and long red roof. Even at that distance you could see it was a ruin.

  “They say the Jesuits built that place,” Harvey said.

  “You mean the Franciscans,” said the Kid.

  “No the Jesuits.”

  “Franciscans.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Harvey said.

  “You and me both,” the Kid said, slapping him on the back, and they laughed.

  The fog rolled in and then the bay was dead-gray and glassy, the subdued sea spreading out from the cove, the kelp, brown and knobby, heaving offshore, the olive hills showing through the wisps. There were no seasmells then, no smells of anything, and the air was dead except for a faint gull cry and the echoes the seawolves set up, coughing, barking, grunting.

  “Be good to get back to Mexico,” Harvey said.

  “Be good to get back to a drink,” the Kid said. “Let’s go over to Hijinio’s.”

  We took the outer trail with the sheer drops and found Hijinio and had some aguardiente and the fog lifted and we sat under the cypresses, talking and watching the seawolves on the rocks.

  “Good country,” said the Kid.

  “You been here a long time?” I asked Hijinio.

  “Since I was born,” he said.

  “Where you ever been to in your life?” I asked.

  “I been to Paso Robles.”

  “You ought to go to Mehico. Great country,” I said.

  It was a pretty spot all right, with those crazy trees gnarled and ashy and none much bigger than an orange tree. They had soft gray trunks and their arms looked wild and frozen. The water slopped below us and every once in a while we would get the stink of fish and droppings.

  I have sometimes wondered what you would find if you dug down in his grave. A few yellow bones, I reckon. I remember the way they carried him to the ghost tree, all dressed out after the wake, with Francesca Zamora crying and Hijinio walking behind her, and I remember the sound of the spade as Jesús Garcia dug the grave. He was sweating. When he stopped for a rest somebody said, “Deeper Jesús deeper. It isn’t right to leave a man so shallow.”

  “Don’t you think I know how to bury a man?” said Jesús Garcia angrily.

  And I remember that Nika was not there—she was lying shocked on the Kid’s bed—and Miguel was dying and Harvey was dead and Bob was dead and now the Kid was dead and there was only me left, and I had the feeling that I had better take off and start life from scratch somewhere else, and it was a hot night in the middle of July, with no trace of fog and with a full moon that lighted our way, and the seawolves were barking and I remember how we left the place, after Jesús Garcia had filled the grave, each one going quietly, alone.

  It must be the same place still. I doubt if you’ll find more than half a dozen changes that the years have brought.

  8

  We rode back to Old Man Richardson’s, had some chow and took our siesta. After siesta we went hunting in the hills and Harvey shot a buck, which we brought down to the ranch. Modesto Machado, Nika’s brother, was there, waiting to s
ee the Kid.

  “Muchacho!” said the Kid, delighted, walking up to Modesto and clapping him on the back.

  “Kid! Great to see you!” said Modesto.

  They went off to one side, talking, and later the Kid told me Modesto had brought word Dad had heard a rumor he the Kid was back in the Monterey country. It didn’t bother the Kid at all. I saw them go out to one of the corrals and target shoot. Modesto showed the Kid how fast he could draw. They talked about some fine points of gunplay, Modesto’s eyes glowing as he watched the Kid.

  He was sixteen, a nice-looking boy in a Mexican sort of way. He had a small head and clean-looking ears and a lean jaw and a strong chin and a very full mouth and high cheekbones and was very dark and had a wild-growing mustache and his hair was black and soft and grew down over his ears and down his neck and he could look sadder, when the mood hit him, than any other kid I can remember, bending his head so the bottom of his chin was lost in the folds of his serape and looking at you with those soft black eyes under the heavy eyebrows, his mouth slightly open and the upper part of his chin kind of puckered. If there was anybody the Kid really cared about I guess it was this Modesto Machado. Modesto lived in the valley with a Mexican farmer for whom he worked and was a popular boy over there. Sometimes the Kid and I would go to see him and we would stay at the rancheria screened by cottonwoods in the foothills. The Kid had given Modesto his first gun, a nickel-plated Colt’s forty-five, and had taught him to shoot, to draw and to take care of the weapon.

  They came back from the corral and joined me and Harvey. Modesto said the Dedrick boys had sworn to get the Kid and had shot their mouths off about what they would do to him when they caught up with him.

  “Fourflushers,” the Kid said. “Fellows that talk before they make their play. Hey Doc you see this kid draw?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Practice,” said the Kid. “Like this.” And he showed him, over and over again. “Now you do it,” he said. We watched Modesto.