The Horses

by Bill Brooks

  It wasn’t any of his affair, he told himself—what happened. Stay clear of it, Jim. You’ve got a peck of your own problems.

  He touched the ring box several times on his way back to the house.

  Chapter Fifteen

  El Paso, Texas

  He had her bent over a barrel, her skirts hiked high, in a rain-washed alley while Willis waited his turn with her.

  “Come on, now,” he was saying, as though he were coaxing a mule to step over a log crawling with snakes. “Come on now, old gal…”

  She was the lowest sort of whore—a crib girl without a crib to work out of since it had been torched a few days earlier by an irate and crazed self-appointed preacher. So she took men in the alleys or whatever handy shadow there might be, or behind some building, any place that wouldn’t get her locked up by the local police; for they could be fearsome on whores with Albert Hightail as the new chief. He was a religious zealot, and perhaps the man behind the preacher’s burning of her place. The pious chief would just as soon see every whore run across the border and had already jailed her twice on charges of loitering and disorderly conduct. Her name was Alma Washburn and she’d left a husband and three kids back on an Iowa farm for what she thought would be a grand adventure after meeting a westbound rake who proved out to be an ex-convict who’d tossed her a line with his charm hooked on the end of it. She’d stolen the sugar bowl money as surely as he had stolen her heart, and together they took the noon flyer out of Sioux City. But he shook her off the hook there in El Paso and disappeared.

  She had choices of course, as every single woman of her era did. She could scrub clothes for a Chinaman or sell what God gave her—something to that point, she reminded herself, she’d given away for free. She chose the latter because the money was at first quicker and a lot easier. She could do what she did and keep her eyes closed and her mind back on her children in Iowa, which is mostly the way she did it. But then came the pox and addiction to opium to help her get through life, and ten years later she found herself bent over a barrel of Hatch’s choosing—not wanting to waste his hard-earned stolen cash on a room—there in the back of the Express Saloon and Billiards Parlor.

  And while he was doing to her what it was men did, she thought of her children: they’d be grown now; Mattie eighteen and Roy nineteen. Sometimes she thought of Duck, her husband, wondered if he’d remarried, wondered if he ever thought about her. Most likely not, she told herself. And who could blame him?

  “Come on now, gal. Come along there…”

  She looked at the other one, waiting. Squirrel teeth when he grinned, yellow as acorns, a brush of whiskers on his chin reminded her of the mad preacher, fiery torch in his hand coming at her through the darkness. Both had real long faces and jug ears, and no doubt possessed.

  “That’s it, honey,” she said in the same monotone repetition she used on every man to get him to hurry along, get it done and over with. “Give Angel the goods now, honey…” She called herself Angel because she felt like one that had fallen down into the mud, its wings tore loose.

  Willis looked on eagerly as Hatch thumped into the woman, then gave a long, deep groan as though somebody was pulling his carrot out by the root. Hatch finally staggered back away from the woman, fumbling with his trousers that had fallen around his ankles into the mud.

  The whole alley stank of the garbage of rotted food and urine that stained the walls of the buildings where the men went to relieve themselves of the ice beer.

  “Your turn,” Hatch said, and before he could even get fastened all the way up, Willis was humping her too. Hatch had lost his fever now and turned and walked to the head of the alley and rolled himself a smoke, thinking about the telegram in his shirt pocket—the one that had arrived earlier from guess who? He couldn’t believe it. It was Cicero Pie, old Louisa’s boy, the sister-in-law he’d humped that time he was back there. She’d told him the other one, the half-wit, Ardell, had seen the two of them. Shit, as if he cared.

  But he must not have said anything to the hothead, Cicero, like she’d warned him not to, for Cicero had turned into a real mean son of a bitch from everything he’d heard about him since. They’d taken to calling him the Mortician because of all the bodies he’d left in his wake. Now he wanted him and Willis to come to Domingo and help them do a job there. The telegram didn’t say what, because it was coded, he reckoned so the telegrapher wouldn’t catch Cicero’s meaning: Come quick if you get this. Big job ready to go. Need two extra top hands. C. Pie. You remember me, don’t you? Reply soon as possible. Was postdated Domingo, New Mexico Territory.

  He’d shown it to Willis.

  “What do you think?”

  “It ain’t like we’re making a fortune round here.”

  “I’m surprised to hear from that old boy.”

  “The way you did his maw, I guess so.”

  “She was ugly—never knew why John married her to begin with till that afternoon when she showed me her talents.”

  They both stood grinning there in the middle of the rainy day, first rain either of them had seen for weeks.

  “I guess we should go on up and see what the deal is.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just thinking about it has got me all stirred up.”

  “Pulling a job, you mean?”

  “No, how it was that day with John’s wife.”

  “I’d like to have been there.”

  “I bet you would.”

  “How much we got between the two of us?”

  “I got nine dollars and fifty cents, you?”

  “Three dollars and this liberty dime.”

  “I say we get a little something to take the edge off.”

  They found Alma hanging out front of the saloon looking lusty-eyed, ready to conduct a little business. They’d bought a bottle they had with them and already half-drunk down.

  “You boys hankering for a gal?”

  “Yes we sure as hell are.”

  “Five each.”

  “How about fifty cents apiece.”

  She shook her head sadly, as though she pitied them or herself or the whole damn world for the sorry condition it was in. She used to get upward to twenty dollars a pitch. But she was running low on fuel these days, and a gal still had to eat.

  “I get paid up front.”

  “Hell, here you go…”

  So there she was now getting humped in the alley by the other one—the one with the yellow squirrel’s teeth. Him just grunting and not even saying, “Come on old gal, come on.” Working away like a man trying to chop down a tree.

  Lucky for her he had a real hair trigger and finished in less than two minutes.

  But in that flash of time, she was transported to a bed in an upper room of a new farmhouse painted white so that it stood out among the rolling green fields. The windows all open to let in the spring breezes that blew at sheer curtains and caressed her youthful naked skin better than any lover ever could, and knew that before the next morning she would take her life because she just couldn’t go on doing life this way—bent over a barrel for fifty cents and letting bucktooth dirty strangers rut away inside her.

  Willis came out to the head of the alley where Hatch stood smoking a cigarette, the rain that passed through earlier now fleeing east in a dark gray curtain with charcoal streaks, leaving behind great puddles in the street that reflected like hand mirrors.

  “Something’s wrong with her,” he said.

  Hatch didn’t turn round to look.

  “What?” he said.

  “I don’t know, she’s just back there crying.”

  “You hurt her with that?”

  Willis looked down.

  “No, I don’t reckon so. I mean I don’t see how.”

  “You didn’t bite her with them squirrel teeth did you, like she was a nut needed cracking open?”

  Hatch was always making fun of his teeth.

  “No, I didn’t bite her.”

  They could hear her back there so
bbing but didn’t turn around or trouble themselves to go and check on her. She was, after all, just a whore.

  “I say we go get some vittles and then buy a pair of tickets up to New Mexico.”

  “I guess we worked up an appetite, huh?”

  “I’m about tired of this goddamn El Paso, ain’t you?”

  “Been tired of it since the second day we got here.”

  “Nothing here but Mexicans and gun artists. Too many damn policemen to suit my tastes.”

  They walked up the street to where their horses were tied in front of the hardware store but stopped and bought some tacos off a street vendor to eat along the way to the train station.

  She had enough to buy a bottle of mercury. Enough to swallow and put an end to the memories of children and sweet rolling fields of grass and clover and corn growing tall as a man by the Fourth of July; of picnics and lemonade and harsh winters and lakes frozen over thick with milk-colored ice; of a man coming in smelling of cows he’d milked before daylight and again before nightfall; of a good-looking rake who stole then broke her heart easily as a hammer would a glass bowl; of weddings and baptisms and funerals.

  Yes, just one little bottle of mercury would put an end to all those fine sweet memories just as quick as it would put an end to the rough rutting of smelly men and cold shivering nights under frayed blankets in doorways; of dazed and forgettable days without pleasure and the general molestation of her soul.

  O, sing to me of they sweet sin and I will send Jesus to save ye… The mad preacher’s words ringing in her ears as he set blaze to her only refuge.

  “We best go wash off our carrots before whatever that whore may have give us gets down into our blood,” Hatch said, finishing the last of his tacos as they sat there in front of the train station. “Woman like that gives a man diseases will turn his brains to worms.”

  “We could go down and warsh them in that creek yonder,” Willis said.

  “That ain’t no crick, that’s the mighty Rio Grande.”

  Drunk like they were with whiskey and the sense of power a man gets from taking a woman, they laughed like fools.

  “I hope that job Cicero has in mind has lots of money attached to it.”

  “I never humped a woman for two bits before.”

  “I have. Once in Mexico. She didn’t have no teeth.”

  “Maybe the women in Domingo is nicer.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  “Life’s about an interesting son of a bitch, ain’t it?”

  “Sure is.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The breed was there on the porch, hadn’t moved, and Jim felt a sense of mild relief as he rode up and tied off the horses.

  The breed studied them.

  “Which one is mine?”

  “Neither one, but you can ride the dun.”

  Jim stepped up on the porch and took the ten silver dollars from his pocket and held them forth. Hairy Legs’s eyes glowed a little.

  “My traveling money,” he said. “Get me back East to see what that Free Love Society is all about.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that. Let me go inside and tell my woman I’m back,” Jim said. “Then we’ll get going.”

  “She’s up there,” the breed said, pointing to the ridge.

  Jim saw Luz up there by the headstones. He walked up.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Just looking.”

  “Got something for you.”

  She turned her gaze away from the headstones.

  He took the ring box out and held it forth in the palm of his hand. She hesitated in taking it.

  “You shouldn’t have,” she said.

  “Go on and take it if you would. I think I might have done all right in picking it out.” He was going to make a joke of it, tell her he had to nail on a roof for it, but decided the moment required a more serious approach.

  She pushed herself against him, and he held her tight.

  “You okay? That breed didn’t try anything, did he?”

  “No. I’m okay. I just want you to hold me for a moment.”

  They stayed like that for several seconds, then she leaned back and opened the hand that held the ring box.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “As sure as I’ve ever been about anything.”

  She opened it slowly and he watched her face, her eyes as they settled on the ring. Then her gaze lifted to meet his own, and he could tell he’d done well.

  “Put it on, see how it fits. Hettie Watson at the jeweler’s said if it wasn’t the right fit you could bring it by and Bart would fix it.”

  “You put it on for me.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  It was a little large for her slender fingers, but it didn’t matter.

  “I feel like your wife already.”

  “I feel like you are, too.”

  He kissed her then, her mouth warm and soft as ripe fruit.

  “I could stay just like this forever,” she said.

  “You know I have to go with the breed.”

  “Yes.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Yes.”

  “I brought you something else,” and he pointed down toward the house at the little gray filly. “I want you to ride home before it gets dark. Take the shotgun, just in case.”

  She looked worried. He told her not to be. They walked down the slope of the ridge together, arm in arm. The breed watched them from the far side of the dun, his arms resting across the animal’s back. Dark woman, white man, didn’t seem to quite fit. Made him envious that it did.

  He waited while the man and woman went in the house and came back out again, and then waited some more while Jim saddled the horse for her and helped her into the saddle, then handed her up a shotgun.

  “I’ll come for you when we finish this business,” he said.

  She nodded, looked at the breed, then turned the horse’s head toward the road to town.

  “You ready?” Jim said.

  “You?”

  “Yeah, I’m ready. Lead out.”

  The breed rode the dun up the ridge, then down the other side to the bosque where he’d found the horse apples. He crossed the river where it riffled shallow over river stones, then walked the horse up and down stream till he was satisfied and punched his heels into the dun’s flanks.

  Jim followed, thought the breed kept a good seat for an Apache. But then he wasn’t all Apache, was he? And he still wondered about that cavalry jacket, how he’d come by it.

  They rode till the sun was nearly set beyond the Capitans, the rays split by the mountain’s jaws. The breed pulled rein and got down. There was a pile of cold ashes under a scrim of dirty snow that lay in the lee of a big juniper.

  “Made camp here,” he said after closer examination of the ground, then looking off toward the southeast. “Two horses, two men, now.”

  “Looks like they’re headed toward Domingo then.”

  “Looks like.”

  “Guess that’s where we ought to head.”

  “Dark in half hour.”

  “I know the way.”

  “Fine, unless they turn off and go another direction before they get there.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Make camp here, start first light.”

  It made sense.

  They built a small fire in the ashes of the old one using pieces of dry ocotillo they scouted until darkness fell over them like a purple blanket.

  “Guess I should have thought to bring some supplies from the house,” Jim said almost apologetically. Between what had happened earlier and his concern for Luz and buying her the ring and giving it to her, he’d plumb forgotten to think ahead; that finding the horse killer might take more than a day.

  “We could shoot a crow if we saw one,” Hairy Legs said.

  “If we saw one.”

  Hairy Legs squatted in front of the fire, the light dancing in his leathery old face.

  �
��I used to could conjure up crows and other creatures,” he said.

  “Why don’t you conjure up a nice big fat rabbit or something then. I’d rather eat a rabbit than a crow any day.”

  “I would too. I can’t conjure up no more.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Just can’t. Got to be too much like a Mexican, I guess it is.”

  “That’s what you are, part Mexican?”

  “Little Irish in there, too, somewhere.”

  “Irish?”

  Hairy Legs shrugged. “I think so, way back on my mother’s side.”

  “Interesting.”

  They sat and listened to the night sounds—the yip of a coyote, the coo and chuck of quail dusting themselves in the dark shadows, and at some point, the snort of javelinas rooting around in the scrub.

  “Had some light to see by, we could shoot one of them pigs,” Hairy Legs said.

  “Be a waste of bullets with no light.”

  “Maybe one will walk into the light and let us have a look at him.”

  “Fat chance.”

  They lay down on the ground and did the best they could with sleeping. Hairy Legs had an easier time of it than Jim, who lay there staring up at the speckle of stars thinking about Luz. Where was she just now? In her bedroom brushing her hair, thinking of him?

  He had never felt so tangled up over a woman before. Not like this. He told himself he wanted children. A son. A little girl. He wanted someone to carry on after he and Luz were gone. It’s the way it should be, he told himself. We don’t come here just to disappear and leave no trace we ever been.

  “You asleep?” he said.

  “Almost was, you hear something?”

  “No, just wondering.”

  “Wondering what?”

  “You believe in a life after this one?”

  “Don’t hardly believe in this one.”