The Brave Cowboy

by Edward Abbey

  The lights were not turned off.

  The two Navajos did not wait. One of them was already engaged in trying to twist his body through the opening in the bars. He had his head and one shoulder through but was having difficulty with the other shoulder. His companion squatted beside him, whispering advice and encouragement. The man in the hole squirmed and writhed patiently, delicately, anxious but not in haste.

  The other men in the cell, except the old man Konowalski, were now awake. They sat up on their bunks and stared in silent stupefaction at the Navajo wriggling among the bars like an impaled worm. The Mexican giggled nervously, biting his fingernails; the Pueblo Indians smiled and nudged each other with their elbows.

  The Navajo seemed unable to get through. After several minutes of wordless struggle, sweating and breathing heavily, he withdrew his shoulder and head, returned his entire body to the cell. He sat on the flow for several minutes, panting and staring gloomily at his fists. The other Navajo, a thinner man, whispered suggestions into his ear and made signs with his hands.

  Bondi returned to his bunk after a while, sat down slowly and cautiously, and tried to avoid imagining what was probably happening to the cowboy. His helplessness fed his anger; he fumed and cursed internally, sick with rage, with surprise, with apprehension. He shut his eyes, lay back and made some pretence at sleep, hoping in that way to induce true sleep, but this was foolish and worthless: his fear made sleep impossible, despite his aching body, his overwhelming weariness.

  It’s my fault, he decided; if I had stood up to Gutierrez at supper there, like a man should, Burns wouldn’t be where he is now. No—I’d be there instead.

  The idea made him pause in his thought; he stared up at the bottom of the bunk above his head.

  Of course, he went on, that doesn’t diminish my moral responsibilities. But then—wife and kid… And maybe they’ll come and get me anyway, when they’re finished with… (This possibility, suddenly realized, sent a little hot flash of terror through the core of his body.) That Gutierrez is a clever villain, waiting until God only knows what hour in the morning—one o’clock? two o’clock?—-to seize his revenge. We should have expected it; the shrewd brute, waiting till now, till the jailer’s gone home or out or is drunk or asleep…

  And maybe they’re coming for me too, he thought again. For me—what do they do? Slaps, kicks, I could take—I’d shut my eyes and relax, try to faint; but suppose they do something more sophisticated—use a rubber hose; ducking in water, steam heating? A man like Gutierrez—capable of anything, I’m sure, any mode of horror…

  Bondi felt a queasy loosening in his entrails, a sudden need to go to the toilet. But after a few bad moments he managed to get a better grasp on his thoughts and nerves, to make his speculations revolve around the reasonable, the human, the ordinary: What they’ve done, he argued, undoubtedly what they’ve done, they’ve taken him down there for further questioning, investigation. Perhaps some unsolved robbery or adultery is involved; or maybe it’s merely the FBI come to inquire about his draft status. He’s in some kind of difficulty there, didn’t he say? Yes, it’s late at night but the FBI has its methods, so I’ve heard, it’s good and sufficient reasons, answerable to nobody… Earnest, intelligent, well-trained men, they know what they’re doing—best that common citizens not attempt to interfere: would only muddle things unnecessarily…

  Telephone? But why telephone?

  The Navajo removed his shirt; he wore no undershirt. He put his head through the aperture to liberty, then one smooth brown shoulder—his skin and muscles sleek as a skinned cat—and then the second shoulder This was the difficult part; the flesh became jammed and compressed between bone and iron: neither would yield. But the man continued to tug and gasp, sweat glistening on his animal hide; the other Navajo endeavored to assist him, pushing from inside at the imprisoned limb, gently dislocating the shoulder bone to get it through, shoving with both hands at the slippery meat. The breathing of the struggling Indian filled the cell with its noise, seemed loud enough to be heard throughout the cellblock. A slight tearing sound, like the ripping of tissue, and the man was through—but wounded, a bad laceration welling with blood on his side. He ignored the pain, dragged his hips and legs through and rested for a minute or more on the floor between the bars and the window. The second Navajo passed him his shirt and he put it on.

  Could I ever get through there? Bondi wondered— if I had to?

  Both men went to work, the one inside twisting and knotting together several blankets, the other—standing in the narrow passageway which surrounded the cell-block—trying to remove the fine-mesh screen from the window. He pushed and shook the screen from a kneeling position, careful not to interpose his body between the window and the pallid light from the cell The screen would not come off.

  “Gimme one of the files,” the Navajo said to his companion. “And see if you can put that light out.”

  Bondi sat still and watched; he wanted to help, to take part, but some dull fear kept him quiet and inert.

  The Indian inside the cell slipped one file through the bars to his friend; with the other in his hand he climbed to an upper bunk and jabbed at the light globe sunk in the ceiling, poking the tang of the file through a wire grid. The globe cracked and broke; tiny slips of frosted glass tinkled on the floor. The incandescent bulk inside the globe still shone, undamaged; the man jabbed farther through the grid and the bulb popped out, an inhaling vacuum, and more glass fell and the cell was dark.

  Back to the womb, thought Bondi, back to the womb of night, of darkness and— Christ! What are they doing to Jack? How long has he been gone now? Ten minutes? twenty? half an hour?

  The taller Navajo was crawling through the hole in the bars; the first one had the screen wedged off the window and was busy tying one end of the blanket-rope to a bar of the cell.

  Above, on their steel shelves, the two Pueblo Indians carried on a hasty debate, murmuring in their river language into one another’s ears, making circular motions with their hands.

  The Mexican watched the proceedings without uttering a sound, picking forlornly at his nose. The ancient vagrant Konowalski remained indifferent to all activity, lay with his face to the wall wrapped in his rags and peculiar smells, and sighed and spluttered in his sleep like a dog with worms. Like an old dog with old worms.

  Moving swiftly and efficiently, the Navajos completed their preparations. One of them looked out the opened window, waited for a few seconds, then swung over the sill and down outside, climbing down the rope. The second Navajo spoke to Bondi:

  “You haul those blankets up when we’re gone. Okay?” Bondi nodded. The Navajo came close to the bars and looked at Bondi with his slanted Mongolian eyes; he grinned a little, the skin of his face wrinkling up like aged cowhide. He smelled strongly of sweat and horses and beer. “Hey,” he said—“you say good-by to your friend for us. Tell him—” He heard a soft call from below and hesitated, then turned back to Bondi. “—Tell him, if he ever come to Moenkopi country, you tell him to come see us. All right for you too, maybe. Okay?”

  “Thanks,” Bondi said. “I’ll tell him.”

  The Indian smiled. “I gotta go now.” He turned away and after a quick survey of the darkness outside, backed over the window sill and disappeared. Bondi pulled gently at the taut twisted blankets; when he felt them go slack he hauled them up, in through the window, through the bars and let them lay in a pile on the floor.

  He stretched out full length on his unblanketed greasy verminous pad, pillowed his head on his forearms and closed his eyes. No visions came in that darkness; but he thought that he could hear, within the sphere of his consciousness, fragments of a music like spears of light—brief flashes of sound between intervals of silence—and then an immense babble of human voices, a sea of gulping mouths, red fleshy lips, the pulp of tongues, submerging the fitful music under a smothering wave of noise…

  The confusion died; he struggled with his doubt and guilt: He remembered Jerry hi
s wife and her face appeared to him in the private gloom: the serious brown eyes, her freckled skin, her crown of coppery hair. Love and regret swelled in his mind: Jerry, he mumbled, forgive me, my darling, forgive me, oh forgive me.

  And there was his son.

  He had one glimpse of the gulf that surrounded them, the vast deep ether of time that made a solitude of their three interwoven lives. Remorse, anger, fear, shame, loneliness—in his sorrow he knew or thought that he knew them all. I’m too weak, he thought, too weak for the thing I’ve done.

  The cellblock door opened—Bondi heard a grunt, shuffle, and the fall of a body—and slammed shut again. He listened and heard a man coming down the corridor, slowly, dragging his feet. He stood up. The cellgate slid sideways and the cowboy appeared, shambling through the opening; the crank was turned outside, the gate closed and locked.

  Burns sank down on the lower bunk, his hands over his face. Bondi sat beside him, put an arm around his shoulders and managed to speak. “What happened?” he said. Burns did not answer. “For godsake what’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m all right,” Bums mumbled. He passed his hands tenderly over his eyes, nose, mouth. “Don’t feel too good but I guess I’m all right.”

  “They beat you,” Bondi said.

  The cowboy grinned shakily and sadly; his lower lip was torn and bleeding, a front tooth broken off. “Gutierrez did,” he said. “Mostly the others just watched. He didn’t beat me bad; I tried hard to make things easy for him, not give him any trouble. I tried not to get mad. Kept my head down, kinda took it easy. Wasn’t too bad—I’ve seen worse.” He lowered his hands and looked at Bondi; dried clots of blood hung from his nostrils, one eye was purple and swollen, the skin on one cheek was raw, black. In the semi-darkness of the cell these abrasions gave his face a mask-like, almost comical, fixity. The cowboy grinned stiffly through this mask. “I’m might surprised to see you still here,” he said. “What’re you waitin for?” He looked around in the cell: the two Pueblo Indians, the Mexican, watched him in silent fascination. “Them Navajo fellas left, I see. Good boys.”

  “But why?” Bondi said, sickened, still unbelieving. “They can’t do things like that to people. Even a prisoner…”

  “Don’t get upset,” Burns said. “Take it easy. You might be next. And talk kinda quiet—my ears are ringin like banjos.”

  “Sorry,” Bondi said, He paused, trying to comprehend what was happening. “But surely he can’t get away with it?”

  “Who? Get away with what?”

  “This ape-man—Gutierrez.”

  “I don’t know,” Burns said. “He prob’ly will. The other guards ain’t gonna tell on him. And the jailer ain’t even here—who’s gonna know about it? Who’d care anyway? This kinda thing happens all the time: it’s what people deserve for goin to jail. I think so myself.” He looked around again, saw the open window beyond the bars, the blankets laying on the floor. “We better get movin,” he said. “Be daylight pretty soon.”

  “Well, go ahead,” Bondi said, staring at the floor.

  “What’s eatin you now? You still got the crazy notion of stayin here?”

  Bondi placed a hand on his aching forehead. “Please,” he said, “Let’s not argue about it anymore. You know I can’t go.”

  Burns was silent for a few moments, then he said: “Paul—you ever have an impulse?”

  Bondi made no answer.

  “You know what an impulse is?” said Burns.

  “Yes,” Bondi said.

  “You ever have one?”

  Again Bondi was silent. The cowboy said: “See that bar, filed clean through and bent outa the way? See that open window? See them blankets tied together on the floor?” Bondi did not answer. Burns said: “Look at that open window again; think about what’s out there. It’s dark, it’s night. The city is asleep. Out on the edge of the city is your adobe house, Jerry and the kid.” Burns waited for some response from his friend but there was none. “Beyond the house, ten miles across the mesa, there’s the mountains. The mountains go north to Alaska, south to Guatemala.”

  “Get to toe point,” said Bondi.

  “I want you to come with me,” Burns said.

  “Do we have to go through all that again? You’re wasting valuable time.” Bondi felt irritable, frightened, and confused. “If you’re going at all you’d better go now.”

  “You’re a peculiar fella,” Burns said. “If you wasn’t dearer to pie than my own brothers I’d sure say you was a damned fool.”

  “What of it? It’s by my own choice.” Bondi gazed at the floor, aware of the other men watching him—Burns, the Indians, the Mexican. “I can get out of here whenever I want to,” he said. “Quite simple: all that I have to do is change my mind. Or I should say, make up my mind.” He smiled wryly at Burns. “The Judge added an additional torment to my two-year sentence: he said that if I should care to submit to the law after all, he would suspend the remainder of my sentence.”

  “Suspend it?”

  “Yes; set me free.”

  The cowboy thought that over. “You are a damned fool,” he said. “Why don’t you take him up on his offer?”

  “I don’t know; I can’t; I don’t know why. Would you do it?”

  “Me?” said Burns. ‘Well, I wouldn’t get myself in such a fix in the first place. I keep clean away from tanglements like that.”

  “Would you do it if you were me?” “If I was you I’d do whatever you would do.” “You ought to go,” Bondi said; “you don’t make me happy.”

  “I didn’t come here to make you happy,” Burns said. “I come here to get you outa here.”

  “Well, I refuse to be rescued, thanks just the same.”

  From the other side of the steel wall came a plaintive whine, half-human, half-canine: “Will you guys please… I gotta sleep…”

  “What good do you think you’re doin yourself or anybody else by stayin here?” Burns asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Bondi said. “I only know that if I don’t do this, if I give in, I’ll be haunted by my surrender for the rest of my life.”

  Burns stood up, touching his bruised and beaten face. “I ain’t gonna argue with you no more. Maybe you know what you’re doin.” He faced Bondi again. “I can’t help rememberin what you said this afternoon, though.”

  “What?” Bondi said. “What do you mean?”

  “Somethin you said—maybe it was only talk.”

  “Tell me what you’re talking about, damnit.”

  Burns looked sadly at his friend, his own face tired and worn in the obscurity, his eyes dark. He took his hat off, pushed the hair back from his brow, replaced the hat. Bondi was waiting for him to speak. Burns said: “You said somethin about you hoped you’d never—what was it?—sacrifice a friend to an ideal…”

  “Well? Go on.”

  “How about a wife?” Burns said. “How about her?”

  “I know, I know,” Bondi answered desperately. “Can you think for a moment that hasn’t been on my mind? For months?”

  “I know,” said Burns. He hesitated. “I’m mighty sorry I said that, Paul, It was downright stupid.”

  “Somebody had to say it,” Bondi replied. He looked at Burns, then at the open window. “God, I wish I were free to go with you.”

  “Do you mean that?” Burns said. “Really mean it? If you do—”

  “No!” Bondi said. “I don’t mean it. It’s nonsense. Get out of here before somebody spots that missing screen. You haven’t got much time.”

  The cowboy put his hands on Bondi’s shoulders. “It sure pains me to leave you behind, hermano. Makes me feel like a traitor. But I’ll see you again pretty soon, won’t I?”

  “Of course,” Bondi said.

  “We’ll go on that huntin trip like you said, soon as you’re back from wherever they send you.”

  “Yes,” said Bondi.

  “Well…” The cowboy picked up the blankets, pushed them through the bars; he removed his battered hat an
d shoved it through also. “I guess I’ll mosey along,” he said. He knelt down on the floor by the hole in the bars. “Say, I almost forgot.” He fumbled inside his shirt, inside his undershirt, searching for something. “Got a letter somewhere here. Hope I do; it’s from Jerry.” He found the letter, wrinkled, sweat-soaked, dirty, and gave it to Bondi.

  “Thanks,” Bondi said. He held it in his hand without looking at it. He knew already what was inside.

  The cowboy put his head through the opening, then his arms, and squirmed his way out of the cell. In the passageway outside he stood up, straightened his shirt, put his hat back on.

  Bondi stood up and went close to the bars. “Be careful, Jack,” he said. He put his hand through the bars. “Good luck to you.”

  “Much obliged,” Burns said, shaking the hand.

  “Good hunting.”

  “I thank you,” Burns said. He turned away and looked out the window. “Kinda dark down there. Is that a hedge or somethin by the wall?”

  “It should be,” Bondi said.

  Burns looked long and cautiously in every direction; then he picked up the knotted blankets and lowered the free end of them outside. He came back to the bars. “If you change your mind,” he said to Bondi, “Jerry will tell you where to find me. I’ll tell her where I’m goin; too many ears around here.”

  “Have a good time,” Bondi said. “And remember me.”

  Burns smiled again and climbed over the sill of the window. A final wave of the hand and he was gone.

  Bondi leaned against the bars, staring out the window at the shadowy, complex pattern of cracks and stains on the wall of the building across the alley. He listened for what he could hear: the footsteps of a man walking away down the street, the sound of an automobile passing, the high thin scream of a jet plane miles away and above, a brief stirring of wind and the dry rustle of leaves, the indistinct words of a conversation somewhere within the cellblock. He waited and listened, gazing dully through the open window.