All Hat

by Brad Smith

  Pete came back from the gents’, unabashedly zippering his fly as he crossed the room, and sat back down. He took a drink of ale, and then Ray tapped his forearm with the back of his hand and gestured down the bar.

  “We got a horse thief in our midst.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Pete said when he looked.

  “The bartender gave him a beer, and then he made a phone call.”

  “You don’t say.” Pete took another drink of ale and then looked at Ray, who was sitting with his hands flat on the bar, his eyes dark and contemplative on the bartender.

  In less than fifteen minutes the back door opened, and the bald man who’d taunted them at the auction sale entered. He looked at the bartender, and the bartender nodded toward Paulie. The man came at Paulie from behind, put him in a hammerlock before Paulie could move, and hustled him out the back door.

  Pete looked at Ray and saw the angry resignation on his face. They drank off their beer, and as they got to their feet, the bartender approached.

  “You guys had enough?”

  “Enough of you, you fat fucking rat,” Ray said.

  Sonny was out there, of course, in the back corner of the parking lot, against a rough wooden fence that separated the bar’s property from the residential area beyond. The bald man had both of Paulie’s arms twisted up behind his back, and Sonny had his cane in both hands and was working Paulie over pretty good with it, screaming that he wanted to know the whereabouts of his horse. Paulie’s hat was lying on the ground by his feet. He had his head turned away from the blows, and blood was running down his face, but he wasn’t saying a word.

  Ray approached the bald man from the side and hit him on the temple as hard as he could with an overhand right. The big man let go of Paulie, and Paulie fell to the ground. The big man stayed on his feet, and he turned on Ray in a rage, his small pig eyes marked by surprise born of arrogance and then pure malice. Out of the corner of his eye Ray could see Sonny scrambling for his car.

  “Where’d you get the balls?” the man asked, and he came on.

  His first punch clipped Ray’s forehead, and Ray lost his temper then and stepped inside the big man’s advance and clubbed him with a half-dozen right hands, turning his shoulder into each punch, driving the big man back against the fence, breaking his nose, and knocking him down in the dirt. He would’ve hit him some more if Sonny hadn’t stopped him by screaming his name.

  When he turned, Sonny was standing maybe fifteen feet away and had an automatic pistol pointed at Ray. Sonny’s chemical grin scared Ray a hell of a lot more than the gun. Ray put his arms out slowly to the sides.

  “I knew it’d come to this,” Sonny said, his voice thin and reedy with nerves, the pistol actually shaking in his grip.

  Ray saw Sonny’s fingers twitch on the gun, and he knew he had to move. His eyes went to the fence, gauging the height. He was ready to leap when he heard Pete Culpepper’s voice: “Take the kid and get in the car, Ray.”

  When Ray turned back, he saw Pete standing at Sonny’s side. Pete had a handful of Sonny’s ponytail in his left fist, and he had the muzzle of his double-action Colt .44 pressed against Sonny’s temple.

  Sonny had a pained, frightened look on his face, and he was squinting in deference to the gun barrel against his head.

  “Put the gun on the ground,” Pete told him. Sonny went to drop it. “Place it on the ground,” Pete snapped. “You want it to go off, you fool?”

  Ray put Sonny’s gun in his pocket and Paulie in his car. As he drove off, Ray could see Sonny and the bald man standing in the parking lot. Sonny was fuming, and the bald man was bleeding, and neither would look at the other. Ray smiled—he guessed that each was holding the other responsible for their predicament.

  A couple of Ollies with no Stan to blame.

  * * *

  Ray drove Paulie to the hospital, and Pete followed in the pickup. The first person they saw when they walked into the emergency ward was Etta.

  “Oh, my God,” she said when she saw Paulie’s face. “What happened?”

  “Sonny beat him with a cane,” Ray told her.

  There was no doctor on duty, and they had to wait until one was summoned. Etta took Paulie into an examining room, where she and a nurse cleaned him up and took stock of his injuries. Pete and Ray sat in the waiting room and looked without interest at the magazines and waited for the doctor.

  “Texas is looking better all the time,” Ray said.

  When the doctor arrived Pete decided that there was no point in the two of them sticking around. After he left, Etta came out and sat with Ray while the doctor and the nurse tended to Paulie.

  “How’s he look?” Ray asked.

  “He’s gonna need twenty-five, thirty stitches. How do you know this kid?”

  “I don’t.”

  Etta reached over and took Ray’s right hand and looked at the skinned knuckles.

  “He’s crying in there,” she said. “He kept saying it’s all his fault; he stole Sonny’s horse.”

  “I don’t know whose fault it is, but it’s not his.”

  “He said Sonny pulled a gun on you.”

  He looked at her and shook his head. She watched his eyes for a moment, but he looked away, and then she let go of his hand and left the room. She came back with alcohol and gauze and some Band-Aids, and she cleaned the cuts on his knuckles and dressed them.

  “You don’t need to be getting involved with Sonny again.”

  “I know,” he told her.

  “Just stay clear of him.”

  “I couldn’t figure out a way to do that tonight, Etta.”

  She glanced toward the examining room, where Paulie’s face was being stitched back together.

  “Okay,” she said. “But from now on, just let him go. Sonny Stanton’s gonna have to answer for himself one day. And when he does, it’ll be to a higher authority than you, Ray.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been reading your new Bible. But I’m not so sure about that.”

  “I know you’re not.”

  Ray held up his right hand and examined the repair job. He flexed his fingers and felt the joints stiffening already.

  “What about you?” he said. “You gonna take your own advice? You gonna let him have his way?”

  “To hell with the farm.” She realized she was making the decision as she spoke. “In the end he’ll win out anyway. It’s all about money. If he wants it bad enough, he’ll get it. I’m tired of the whole damn thing.”

  “Being tired of it is not a good enough reason to let him win.”

  “I don’t want anything else to happen that’s gonna encourage trouble between you and Sonny. His money will win that one too, and you’ll end up back in jail. Or dead, if he’s playing with guns now.”

  Ray got to his feet and walked across the room. He took his cigarettes from his pocket and put one in his mouth, but when he turned back to her she shook her head and he put it away. He stood there watching her for a moment, in her green scrubs, her blue eyes steady on his.

  “Pete’s headin’ back to Texas,” he told her. “I been thinking about tagging along.”

  “I think you should.”

  He nodded, and he didn’t ask her why she thought that. He thought that he knew, and if he was wrong he’d rather not know he was wrong. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out Sonny’s little automatic and handed it to her.

  “Can you get rid of this for me?” he asked. “Sonny maybe went to the cops, like last time. I’m on parole—I get pulled over with this on me, I’m right back in stir.”

  She took it without hesitation. He watched her eyes for a moment. He was hoping for a smile or something, he wasn’t sure what. Something to tell him that things were the way they were because there was no other way for them to be.

  “So Sonny wins—you can live with that?” he asked.

  She looked away, and he could see that she wasn’t any happier with the notion than he was. But when she turned back, her eyes were
clear and her voice was even. “This isn’t about what I can live with, Ray. It’s about what you can live without.”

  * * *

  Ray took Paulie home with him to Pete Culpepper’s spread. Stitched up, Paulie’s face didn’t look nearly as bad as Ray would have thought. There was a sizable gash across his left cheekbone and another above his left eye; other than that he had a few bruises and minor cuts. He’d be sore as hell in the morning, but it could have been a lot worse. No doubt it would have been a lot worse.

  “You feeling all right?” Ray asked as they left the hospital lot.

  “Yeah, not too bad,” Paulie told him.

  Ray drove the back roads out of town, not knowing if the cops would be out for him, or if Sonny had rounded up a posse. It was a moonlit night, and as he drove he could see the cattle grazing in the fields and the stark, leafless limbs of the trees along the road silhouetted against the sky. He smoked a cigarette and offered one to Paulie, who declined.

  “I’m really sorry,” Paulie said.

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “I’m glad Sonny didn’t shoot you.”

  “Hey, me too.”

  When they got to the farm Pete was already in bed and asleep. Ray opened a bottle of rum, and he and Paulie sat in the kitchen and had a drink. The hound got up when they came in, and he walked directly to Paulie and lay down at his feet.

  “What were you doing in town?” Ray asked.

  “I left Dean and them,” Paulie said, looking into his glass, his eyes heavy. “I just didn’t like it.”

  “They still got the horse, I assume.”

  “Yup.”

  “How’s Dean making out collecting semen?”

  Paulie looked at Ray and smiled. “Not too good.”

  “I bet.” Ray smiled back at Paulie.

  “Who was the guy with you?” Paulie asked after a time. “The guy with the gun?”

  “That was Pete Culpepper. You met him at Fort Erie.”

  “He looked like a cowboy.”

  “That’s what he is.”

  After the first drink Ray made another, but pretty soon Paulie’s eyes started to flutter shut. Ray made him up a bed on the couch, and Paulie lay down and was asleep in a heartbeat. The hound lay down on the floor beside the couch and went to sleep too.

  Ray took his drink out onto the porch and sat in one of the old ladderbacks, his boots up on the porch railing. The night was warmer than recent nights, and he saw now that it had clouded over since they’d driven home. There was a smudge of light in the clouds where the moon had gone to hide, and the air was heavy with the promise of more rain.

  Well, the weatherman could do whatever he damn well pleased. This time next week, he and Pete Culpepper would be sitting on another porch in West Texas, drinking bourbon and branch water. Maybe eating some of that rattlesnake chili Pete liked to brag on.

  Tonight had cinched it. Let Sonny have his way; let him use his money and his deceit and his nasty disposition to get what he wanted. In the end it wouldn’t make him happy because Sonny didn’t have it in him to be happy.

  And if Etta was resigned to Sonny taking her farm, then let him have that too. Sonny was always going to get what Sonny wanted. He had his money, and he had his lawyers. So he could smack his women around and get away with it, and he could beat on kids like Paulie and get away with that, too. Well, let him. Ray didn’t give a hoot in hell anymore.

  “Goddamn it,” he said out loud.

  He came down off the porch and walked through the darkness to the barn. Inside, the bay was sleeping on her feet, but the other mare was restless, circling in her stall. The gelding was awake, and he came to Ray when he walked over to the stall.

  Ray looked at the horse, and he thought of all the times he’d spent here, and of the conversations he’d had here with Pete Culpepper, and of how all that would be ending in a few more days. And he thought of how this gelding and the two mares would be sold off and he wouldn’t see them anymore, but that it didn’t matter because they were just horses anyway. And things like horses and this farm and Etta’s farm didn’t matter because they were just things, and you could get on fine without them.

  The gelding took a half step forward and pushed his velvet nose against Ray’s cheek, and Ray breathed in the sweet horse smell of him.

  “Hey buddy,” he said, and then he heard the pregnant mare in the next stall grunt heavily and begin to stomp. When Ray looked, she began to circle once more; then she made to lie down but at the last second got back to her feet.

  “Shit,” Ray said, wondering why he hadn’t picked up on the signs earlier.

  He went into the stall, and by the time he got the mare on her side he knew she was in trouble. Her breath was coming in sharp gasps, and she was struggling mightily with the contractions. Ray found a roll of friction tape on a shelf and gave the mare’s tail a few quick wraps to keep it out of the way. Then he knelt in the straw and had a look. The baby’s nose was visible so he knew it wasn’t a breach, but the foal wasn’t moving at all and appeared to be stalled in the birth canal. Ray thought for a moment to run for Pete, but he knew there was no time. After all, it had been Pete who had taught him that a foal locked in the uterus could be lost in a matter of minutes.

  Ray rolled up his sleeves and reached into the uterus, clearing the placenta as best he could from the foal’s nose. He couldn’t determine if it was breathing or not.

  The mare’s left hind leg was in the air, and she was in a constant state of push, but nothing was happening. Ray reached in farther and found one front leg and straightened it out along the foal’s nose. The other seemed to be twisted sideways and pushed out at an angle from the foal’s body. It wouldn’t move, and after a moment he felt the cord wrapped around it. The mare was crying out in pain now, and her leg was kicking dangerously near Ray’s head. The foal’s nostrils were still and its eyes closed, and Ray feared it was already dead. He pulled his jackknife from his pocket and unclasped the smaller of the blades, then went up into the birth canal again. Working blindly, he fumbled with the cord, unable to pull it loose enough to cut it.

  There was no movement from the foal, and the mare’s kicking grew less fervent. Ray was suddenly afraid he would lose them both. He turned the blade of the knife sideways and slid it along the foal’s leg, felt it cut the skin there, but pushed it farther until he felt it under the cord; then he twisted the blade upward and felt the cord separate as the leg came free. Grabbing both legs now, he dug his heels in on either side of the mare and began to pull. Sweat was running down his forehead and into his eyes, and the mare kicked wildly. Ray continued to pull, his shoulders strained, his boots digging for traction in the straw. His eyes were on the foal’s shoulders, where they were stalled in the uterus, and he pulled and he cursed and he hoped and he yelled and then he prayed.

  And finally, the foal came, moving just a fraction at first and then sliding along steadily until it was completely out. Ray lay the newborn in the straw and knelt over it and cleared its mouth and nose, and as he did the foal suddenly snorted to life, shaking its small head and sucking at the air, kicking out wildly with its small, soft hooves. Ray felt the tension go out of the mare, and he sat back in the straw and ran his sleeve across his forehead. The foal was a filly, he saw now, dark brown and nearly black. The cut on her foreleg was bleeding but minor.

  A moment later the mare, in spite of her exhaustion, began craning her neck. Ray slid his arms beneath the new filly and moved her up onto the straw where the mare could nuzzle her.

  Ray’s breath was coming in gasps, and he had placenta and blood on his clothes. He sat back in the straw, trying to catch his breath, and watched the two. As he watched, the filly decided she would stand. She got halfway up on wobbly knees, and then she fell, but she tried again immediately.

  “Whoa now,” Ray said. “You’re in an awful hurry.”

  But she kept at it. Finally, Ray got on his knees and took her in his arms and stood her up, held her there until she
got her feet underneath her and could manage on her own. When he moved back she stayed on her feet, knees knocking, legs trembling, looking at him with eyes that were seeing everything for the first time.

  And Ray sat in the straw, and he looked back at her in the faint light.

  After a while he got up and walked out of the barn and hooked Pete’s truck up to the trailer, and then he went into the house and shook the kid Paulie awake.

  “Wake up,” he said. “We’re going for a drive.”

  18

  “And that’s your story,” Jackson said, and it wasn’t a question.

  They were in Jackson’s kitchen, the three of them. Jackson at the table, elbows on the arms of his chair, fingers bridged in front of his face. Sonny sitting across from him, indignant and defiant. The Rock standing just inside the door, his face all lumpy and his nose pushed to one side like somebody who had just had the shit kicked out of him.

  “That’s it,” Sonny said, maintaining his pose.

  There were apples in a bowl on the table. Jackson picked one up and cut a wedge out of it with a paring knife. He chewed carefully on the fruit, all the while watching the two men across the room. Then he cut another wedge.

  “Paulie shows up, and instead of calling me or calling the cops, you decide to handle it yourself,” he said to Sonny.

  “Why not? It was Paulie. I was just asking him a few questions, and I would’ve got some answers too if that fucking Dokes hadn’t shown up.”

  “Why would Ray concern himself with it?” Jackson asked. “He wouldn’t even know Paulie.” Jackson cut another wedge. “Unless you guys were doing more than asking questions.”

  “Well, you weren’t there, Jackson. Were you?”

  “If I was, then we might know where the horse is by now. But I can probably guess what happened. I know what Ray’s like. And you know it better than anybody, Sonny.” He glanced over at the bald man. “By the looks of your face, you’re in on the secret too now.”

  “I got sucker punched,” the Rock said.

  “You tough guys are always getting sucker punched,” Jackson said. He put the last piece of apple in his mouth. “Well, Sonny—now what?”