A Bullet for Billy

by Bill Brooks

  “You best pull your piece too.”

  Sam followed suit and they rode up to the house slow, thinking any minute some hound would come out barking and snarling. And such would have been the case, but Longly’s hound had been bitten a week earlier by a rattlesnake several times and died an anguished death. The man Longly had not yet replaced him, much to Billy and Sam’s good fortune and not to Longly’s.

  They tied off their mounts out front, and Billy stepped up to the door with Sam across from him, both of them holding their pistols at the ready. Billy rapped hard at the door and kept rapping till a light came on inside.

  “Who is it?” they could hear a man calling from within. “Who the hell is there and what do you want?”

  Billy shouted, “It’s the law, open this goddamn door!”

  It opened slowly and Billy stuck the muzzle of his revolver in Longly’s face and walked him back into the room with Sam following.

  “You’re the brats of that whore Frost was living with,” he said, and Billy struck him across the ear with the barrel of Jardine’s pistol, and Longly yelped like someone had scalded him.

  Sam was feeling nervous.

  “Give me all your money, you son of a bitch,” Billy commanded. “What you owe my family for taking the life of a decent man.”

  Longly held his bleeding ear, the blood dripping through his fingers and down his hand to his wrist.

  “I’ll give you shit and call it money, is what I’ll do, you mealymouth little peckerwood.”

  Billy struck him again, across the collarbone, and dropped the man to his knees. Billy thumbed back the hammer and put the muzzle to the man’s head and said, “You think I won’t, just go ahead and call me another name and find out.”

  Longly relented, and Billy let him get a tin box from under his bed and take out the money he had in it, then Billy ordered Sam to take a rope and tie Longly to the bed, and Sam did what Billy told him. And once he had Longly tied to the bed, Bill went into the small kitchen and broke off a table leg and come back in and set to whaling on the bound man till Longly stopped screaming, passed out from the blows.

  “I reckon playing all that baseball come in handy, huh?” Billy said, standing there breathless.

  “You killed him,” Sam muttered.

  “Nah, I didn’t. I just busted him up good. Look, he’s still breathing fine. Let’s get.”

  So they left with Longly’s money and the man from Uvalde’s horses and Jardine’s pistols and Longly’s canned peaches and a slab of fatback bacon and coffee in a burlap poke tied to Sam’s saddle horn, and Billy wanted to burn the place to the ground with Longly still in it, but Sam talked him out of it.

  And they rode hard for a time but then Billy said, “We ain’t safe nowhere this side of the border, we best go to Old Mexico, cross the river and get on down to where they don’t care who we are or what we’ve done.”

  And along the way they sustained themselves by holding up small stores to get supplies, and once a saloon for whiskey and a box of cigars. They even robbed a bank in Brazos but hardly got more than pocket change because all the money was kept in a large steel vault the banker said couldn’t be opened till the next morning.

  They camped out in canyons so nobody looking could see their firelight. They drank the whiskey till they passed out from it and smoked the cigars till they got used to smoking them.

  One night while thus camped, Sam said, “I miss Ma.”

  “I miss her too,” Billy said. “And as soon as we get a little extra money, we’ll send her some of it to help her along and let her know we’re all right.”

  Sam sometimes wept in his sleep.

  And once they got down near the border, Billy said, “Time you and me became full-fledged desperadoes.”

  “How do you mean?” Sam said. “I thought we already were with all the crimes we been committing.”

  “We stole things, yeah—whiskey, horses, and even a box of cigars, and robbed that bank in Brazos.” They both laughed at the fiasco of it. Billy continued, “And we come close to killing a man—which is the truest mark of a true desperado,” Billy said. “But we ain’t blooded yet.”

  “How do we get blooded?”

  They were sitting their horses atop a rocky ridge looking down on a small village below. And perhaps a mile or two beyond, if their judgment was worth a spit, lay the river that once you crossed you were in Old Mexico. The river shone like a wire in the fading light.

  “Come on, I’ll show you,” Billy said and spurred his mount down the slope, and Sam followed him on down.

  They rode into the village with their pistols plainly showing, and folks outside their haciendas stopped to look at them. It was just one dusty street leading up to small adobes on either side, ramadas with roofs made of ocotillo that threw down patches of striped shade. They came to a cantina halfway up the street, and Billy said, “Let’s rein in here.”

  They tied off their horses and went in without trying to hide the fact they were wearing pistols, and strode to the plank bar. A small, thin man with a horseshoe of gray hair stood behind the bar.

  “We’d like some whiskey and a woman.”

  The man looked from Billy to Sam.

  “You boys got a red cent to pay for the booze and pussy?”

  The man had a deep Southern drawl.

  “I guess we wouldn’t be standing here asking for it if we couldn’t pay for it,” Billy said, and slapped five silver dollars on the table. “What’ll that get us?”

  The man smiled enough to show he had buck teeth.

  “Zee!” he called to a woman seated at a table by herself on the other side of the room. Near where she sat, a man sat with his head lying down on his table, snoring.

  She was a lot bigger than anyone else in the room, and she lifted that bulk from her chair and came over. She was wearing a loose, thin cotton shift that showed the outline of her breasts and the patch of dark hair between her legs when she waddled over.

  “These boys say they want a piece of beaver,” and he pointed at the money on the bar. “What do you think, Zee?”

  She looked at each of them.

  “You little peckers think you’re up to handling Mama Zee?” she said.

  “I reckon we’re about up for anything,” Billy said.

  “Shit then, follow me.”

  “I’ll wait here,” Sam said.

  “Hell you will,” Billy said and tugged him by his collar to follow the woman out back to a small shack that was barely large enough for a bed and a basin, which was all there was in it.

  “How you peckers want it, one at a time or both together?” she said.

  “One at a time,” Billy said.

  “Strip off your duds then, or if you’d rather, leave ’em on, but let’s get started because it’s tight in here and I don’t mean this,” she said, lifting the shift above her fat thighs. “I’m not laying in this stifling room any longer than necessary.”

  Sam cut his gaze away as Billy dropped his pants and climbed on top of the woman. Sam wished he could shut his ears as well—the ache of bedsprings and the woman grunting like a shoat hog. Then Billy climbed off and said, “Your turn.”

  It was something awful and at the same time fixating, Sam thought as he tried not to think at all. And when it was finished he and Billy went back into the bar while the woman cleaned herself up standing over the washbasin and had themselves a shot of tequila each, then left and headed for the river.

  And when they’d crossed the river and made camp for the night, Billy said, “How was that back there?”

  “Plain ugly,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, but you liked it too, didn’t you?”

  “I guess it’s second best to using your hand.”

  Billy laughed and said, “Well, we’re both blooded now.”

  “I feel like I ought to jump in that river and warsh.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Think I will.”

  “Hell, I’ll join you.”

&
nbsp; And for a time, as the sun sank beyond the brown hills, they frolicked in the cool waters of the river like fishes until they were exhausted and climbed out and lay on the grass naked and wet, semi happy knowing they’d probably never cross north of the river again—that what had been home was home no more.

  Billy lay on the grass thinking, I guess what we have done can never be undone. I should have left Sam out of this, but too late, too late.

  The stars looked like God’s own eyes staring down at him.

  Sam said, “I hope we didn’t catch the pox from that fat whore.”

  “What do you know about the pox?” Billy said.

  “Nothing, except it’s supposed to be something bad and something you get from whores. I heard it makes men go crazy and some blind. I heard old Wild Bill Hickok had it and he went near blind, and that’s how come that fellow shot him in Deadwood City because Bill couldn’t even see the fellow pull his pistol.”

  “I don’t think we caught the pox, do you?” Billy said.

  “I don’t know.”

  They closed their eyes and fell silent, each wrapped in his own thoughts. A coyote yipped from somewhere off in the dark hills. Another yipped back.

  Chapter Nine

  Jim & the Cap’n

  I eased my Merwin Hulbert from my holster and brought it out and ready waiting for the next footstep to crunch into the caliche. The Cap’n lay asleep, his snores light, rhythmic. I leaned and touched his shoulder, and he awoke instantly, sitting up, his hand full of pistol. I touched the back of his wrist to keep him from firing at me.

  “Someone’s outside,” I whispered.

  We didn’t hear anything.

  “Maybe nothing,” I said.

  Then we heard it again, something, someone moving around outside. I rolled away from the Cap’n so that I was pressed up against the wall of the shed nearest the sound. There was a slight crack between the weathered boards and I put my eye to it. The moon was bright enough to show a shadow of a man carrying an ax standing there several inches from the shed as though listening for us. I shifted back to the Cap’n and whispered, “Start snoring again,” then rolled back to the wall as soon as he did.

  As I watched through the crack, the figure outside simply stood there holding the ax down alongside his leg, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. But it rose even more when a second figure appeared and stood next to the first. He was also carrying something in his hands—a shotgun it looked like, judging by the short length of it. I heard them whispering.

  “You know what to do,” the one said to the other. It was the voice of the old man who a couple of hours earlier shared his grub and whiskey with us. I guess he was about to put an end to all that hospitality. They took a single step forward toward the shed and I shot the old man, the flash of light blinding my night vision for a moment.

  I heard a yelp and the Cap’n crawled over quickly and said, “What’s going on?”

  But instead of answering him I kicked down the loose boards of the wall and fanned the hammer of my pistol into the body of the man with the ax who’d paused and bent to his fallen comrade. I was pretty sure I hit him four out of four because every shot coming in rapid fire as it did caused his body to jump and jerk. He dropped the ax with the second round, spun completely around with the third, and went down with the fourth. The old man was on the ground moaning. The Cap’n was right there, his gun held straight out in front of him, cocked and ready.

  “Get a lantern if you would, Cap’n,” I said. He crossed the yard to the house and took a bull’s-eye that had been hanging next to the door on a nail and struck a match to the wick, then lowered the glass and brought it near the two shot men.

  One, the one holding the ax, was a younger version of the old man. He was shot through the belly and writhing on the ground, groaning through clenched teeth.

  “Bring your light over here to this other one,” I said, and the Cap’n walked it over and lowered it to the old man’s face. His eyes were crossed in death as though he’d been trying to look down his nose at where my bullet struck him—top button of his shirt. Cap’n flashed the light around the ground till it fell on the double barrel. He bent and picked it up and looked at it close. Then he looked at the one moaning and groaning and said, “You chickenshit son of a bitch. How many others you done this way?”

  He gasped and said, “I need a doctor, oh…oh…”

  “You’re gut shot, among your other wounds,” I said. “A doctor won’t do you any good.”

  It was a mean goddamn thing to say to someone dying, but I owed him no sympathy for trying to waylay me and the Cap’n.

  “Oh…help me…”

  “You bought the ticket, now do the dance,” I said and stood away.

  Cap’n, still carrying the shotgun in his hand, his pistol now tucked down in his holster, said, “The old man must have thought we had money we were going to use to buy horses,” he said. “I wonder who this other’n is.”

  “Looks enough like the old man I’d say he was kin, son or something.”

  “I don’t guess it really matters, does it?”

  “No sir, I don’t suppose at this point it really does.”

  “What do you want to do about him?” Cap’n said, pointing the barrels of the shotgun at the dying man, whose boot heels kept digging for purchase into the ground.

  “Leave him,” I said. “He’ll not make it till daylight.”

  “Can’t just leave him like that, Jim. Wouldn’t hardly be Christian.”

  I looked at the Cap’n as he handed me the shotgun.

  “No, I’m not going to kill him,” I said.

  “I know,” the Cap’n said. “I know you ain’t, Jim.” Then the Cap’n stood over the wounded man and drew his pistol quickly and shot him through the skull, and reholstered his revolver.

  “I didn’t see no other way, did you?” the Cap’n said.

  “None at all.”

  “What time you figure it is?”

  “Two, three in the morning,” I reckon.

  “Still can catch a few hours of rest and head out first light,” he said.

  “All right, if you think you can after all this.”

  “Might just as well make use of that bed inside,” he said. “Beats hell out of sleeping in the shed like a couple of dogs.”

  “Be my guest. I’ll wait out here ’case there’s any more of his boys comes home.”

  “There won’t be,” Cap’n said. “I think we done all the killing tonight we’re meant to.”

  The Cap’n went inside and I took out my makings and rolled myself a shuck to ease off the things I was feeling. Then I took the dead men by their boots and dragged them both into the shed and laid them there, and went out again and sat down on one of the supper chairs that was still out front.

  I never have found out all the reasons that possess men to set upon one another, money, hatred, just pure meanness. Whatever it is gets in a fellow’s mind makes no sense if in the end the man you set upon puts a bullet through your brain.

  I smoked my shuck down, and then I guess I dozed fitfully in the chair until first dawn. The sky was as gray as a ghost with just a seam of silver light between it and the horizon. I went inside to wake the Cap’n, but he was already awake, but just lying there. He sat up and said, “Was it a dream I had about last night, me shooting a fellow in the brains?”

  “No sir, it was real enough,” I said.

  He rubbed his eyes, then pulled on his boots, and we went outside again. We went out to the pump and washed our hands and faces and strung water through our hair, and then went back inside, where I fixed us some breakfast of fatback and beans from a can. We ate there at the table without speaking anymore about last night till we finished and stood away from the table and went outside again, leaving the dishes just setting there.

  I saddled my horse and then put the Cap’n’s in the traces of the hack, and he climbed aboard and looked off toward the road and said, “What’d you do with the bodies, Ji
m?”

  “I put them in the shed.”

  He nodded.

  “The wolves and coyotes smell death, they’ll be round soon enough.”

  “I’m not that far gone as a human being yet to let them have at dead men,” I said. I went over to the shed and searched around till I found a can of coal oil, then shook out the contents all over the boards before striking a match and setting the whole place afire, the bodies still inside. The fire caught slowly at first, then built quickly enough, like a maw of flame swallowing everything.

  We rode off toward Finger Bone, the hungry flames behind us just as if we were riding out of Sodom and Gomorrah.

  “I wonder how many others them two has waylaid over the years?” the Cap’n said as we rode along.

  I said I didn’t know but I guessed we weren’t the first, that they just didn’t suddenly start with us, because of the way the old man had set it up.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t try and drug us with that whiskey first,” Cap’n said.

  “You and me both know, criminals was smart, wouldn’t none of them get jailed or shot,” I said.

  “Well, their souls are with Jesus now,” he said.

  “I doubt Jesus will have any truck with them,” I said.

  “I doubt it too, Jim. I doubt it too.”

  We were leaving death to go and create more of it, and that was an unsettling thought if ever there was one.

  It was like death was dogging us just so it could learn how to do it proper. Last night, when I shot that man, I realized then and there, I didn’t flinch at the thought, my heart never quickened, my hand never wavered, and it made me realize that in whatever ways I thought I’d changed, I hadn’t changed all that much.

  The road lay long and straight ahead of us, the sun just now rising above the rimrock to our rear, and the world seemed no wiser or bereft because of what we’d left in our wake.

  Chapter Ten

  Billy & Sam

  They wandered from place to place, striking up friendships with the locals because they were in a strange country and Billy had heard some tales from Jardine back when Jardine was still alive and talking about the things that went on in Old Mexico. Said he’d been there a time or two, back in his wild youth, Jardine called it. “It’s easy country if you know how to get along with the natives,” he’d said. “Hard country if you don’t.