Code of the West

by Aaron Latham

  “In Linnville,” said the stranger. “When you was a heathen savage. You done carried off my mama, and you raped her, and you left her for dead. But she didn’t die. Not then.”

  Goodnight hung his head. “What?” he asked again.

  “You all done raped her. The whole tribe. But I’m yours and nobody else’s. No mistake about it. Else I’d be a half-breed. Do I look like some half-breed?”

  Goodnight looked into the stranger’s blue eyes. Familiar eyes in a familiar face.

  “No,” he said in a low voice.

  “And she was your own cousin. Your cousin Sarah. Sarah Goodnight.”

  “No, no. She told you—you mean—she said it was me?”

  “No, she never told me nothin’ ’cause she done died birthin’ me. But I done worked it all out. Who my daddy was and how and how come.”

  Goodnight felt infinitely tired and weak. Did this poor boy owe his deformed hand to inbreeding, cousin on cousin? Was it possible? The old taboo.

  “You’re hired,” said Goodnight. “Put your stuff in the bunkhouse.”

  “Thanky kindly,” said the stranger.

  “You’ve got the advantage of me. You know my name, but I don’t know yours. What do folks call you.”

  “My full name’s Silas Ben Goodnight, but ever’body just calls me Claw. I didn’t like it at first, but I’ve got used to it. Call me Claw.”

  94

  Goodnight sat in his big living room with theTascosa Times in his lap, but he was having a hard time paying attention to the stories. He usually loved to read the weekly newspaper. It was normally a treat, since copies of it rarely made it all of the way out to the Home Ranch. But he owed this particular copy to the stranger who claimed to be his son, and that was the reason he couldn’t concentrate. He appreciated the young man bringing it out to him, but he didn’t know what to do with a “son.”

  Goodnight glanced at Revelie, who was sitting nearby reading a book of poetry. She had told him that it was written by somebody named Tennyson, whoever that was, and it was about some king or other. The husband kept glancing at his wife because he couldn’t decide what to tell her about the new hand that he had hired that morning. Should he confide the whole truth right now? But who knew what the “truth” was? He certainly didn’t. What if his “son” was lying? What if he had made up this story because he had designs on inheriting the Home Ranch? What if? What?

  “What’s in the paper?” asked Revelie.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Goodnight said, startled. “I mean it looks like the same old stuff. Nothin’ interestin’.”

  “Mr. Goodnight, what is the matter? You generally love the ‘same old stuff.’ You know good and well you do. Something must have ‘put you off your feed,’ as your cowboys say. What’s wrong with the old stuff tonight?”

  Goodnight felt trapped. How did she know he was trying to hide something from her? Again? Well, he wasn’t really trying to hide it, he told himself, he just hadn’t quite decided when and where and how to tell her.

  “Well, I guess I’m figurin’ on somethin’,” he said at last.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Revelie. “Can I help?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Mr. Goodnight, you know how I hate it when you refuse to share your problems with me.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “So!”

  Revelie stared at him. He wanted to be anywhere else. Maybe he should just get up and go somewhere else. But where could he go? Because he not only wanted to hide from her, he wanted to hide from himself. What had he done? And why had he done it? He couldn’t imagine himself, as he knew himself now, doing what he had done then. And yet he could not deny his own memories.

  “Mr. Goodnight?” Revelie prompted.

  “Well, I been puzzlin’ out how to tell you,” he said and then fell silent.

  “Tell me what?”

  “About this new cowboy come today.”

  “A new cowboy? I thought you said we had too many already, but you didn’t want to let anybody go. Why do we need another cowboy?”

  “We don’t, not really.”

  “So?”

  Goodnight kept trying out sentences in his head, but he didn’t like any of them. He simply didn’t know how to tell her.

  “So!”

  “So he claims he’s my son.”

  “Your son!”

  “Thass what he claims. He’s prob’ly a damn liar.”

  “Probably?” He could see her doing math in her head. “You mean he might be your son?”

  “I doubt it.” Goodnight was looking down at his boots.

  “You doubt it? You mean it’s a possibility? Were you married before? You just forgot to tell me? Maybe you’re still married? Are you a bigamist, Mr. Goodnight?”

  “No, not hardly.”

  “Then you deflowered some poor girl and then deserted her?”

  “No, not really, not like that.”

  “Not like that? Then how did you desert her?”

  Goodnight felt that his mind was a wolf trapped in a cage. It ran back and forth, back and forth, looking for a way out, but there wasn’t a way out.

  “Answer me.”

  “I didn’t know I was deserting her.”

  “What!”

  “Remember I told you about going on the warpath, you know, back when I was living with the Comanches.”

  “Vividly.”

  “And ’member me telling you about the raid on Linnville? When we went all the way to the ocean?”

  “Of course.”

  He paused. He looked down at his dusty boots and shook his head. No, he just couldn’t . . .

  “Don’t go bashful on me, Mr. Goodnight.”

  “This ain’t easy to tell.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Well, he claims we—they—took his mama captive.”

  Revelie took a moment to think through this latest revelation. Her husband studied her with rising apprehension.

  “You mean you raped his mother?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t his mama. Maybe he made that part up.”

  “But you admit you raped somebody!”

  Now Goodnight’s tongue was truly tied. He just sat there staring at his wife. How could he admit to her that he was a rapist? Her view of him would be changed forever.

  “Everybody did.”

  “Who did?”

  “All the warriors.”

  “All of you! You gang-raped her?”

  Goodnight shrugged and then didn’t say anything.

  “You all raped her and that makes it all right? That’s worse. That poor woman.”

  Goodnight got clumsily to his feet and headed for the door. In the doorway, he paused and turned: “The boy claims she was one a my cousins.” Shaking his head, he went on out.

  You can’t let him sleep in the bunkhouse,” Revelie said in bed a few days later. “You have to invite him to live with us here in our house.”

  “But he’ll upset you,” Goodnight protested. “He’ll be a constant reminder that—”

  “Invite him to live with us. Tell him to live with us. It’s only fair. He’s your responsibility.”

  “No. I don’t even like him.”

  “But he’s the son I haven’t been able to give you. He’s the child we’ve never had. That’s been so hard for me. I thought maybe it was your fault, but now I know it’s mine. He’s your one and only son. You must embrace him.”

  “For my sins?”

  95

  The next morning, Revelie accompanied her husband to the cookshack, where the cowboys were eating breakfast. She had come to meet Goodnight’s “son.” When she entered the small room, all the cowpokes stood up quickly, knocking their benches over backward. They all mumbled greetings. Some called her Mrs. Goodnight, others wished Miss Revelie a good morning.

  “Mr. Goodnight, would you kindly introduce me to our newest cowboy?” Revelie said.

  “Course,” he grumbled. He walked
down the line of cowboys on one side of the long table and stopped at the new hire. “Miz Goodnight, this here’s Silas Ben Goodnight, or so he says.”

  “Call me Claw,” said the cowboy. Then he reached out with his good hand and shook hands with her. “Pleased to know you, ma’am.”

  “The feeling is mutual, Silas,” Revelie said. “I have come to issue you an invitation. Mr. Goodnight and I would be pleased if you would move into the ranch house and live with us. It only seems appropriate. Would you please accept our hospitality?”

  “My pleasure,” beamed Claw.

  So Goodnight’s putative son moved into the big sandstone house and slept in a bedroom across the hall from his supposed father and stepmother. This room had originally been intended as a nursery, then had become a sewing room, and now finally a son inhabited it.

  Goodnight hoped he would get to like the boy better as he got to know him better, but he didn’t. Claw still insinuated something cruel, something in fact like a claw, a claw bent on tearing and shredding. Goodnight told himself that it was unfair to pick on the boy’s handicap, his disability, but he couldn’t help it. He distrusted Claw, distrusted his story, distrusted his motives.

  Now in the evenings, there were three of them in the big living room passing the time until sleep. Goodnight read the newspaper or bent over the ranch’s account books. Revelie kept on reading Tennyson. Claw didn’t read.

  “Listen to this,” she said one night. “‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’ Isn’t that beautiful? Do you hear the beat, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump?”

  “Anything you read,” Goodnight said, “sounds purdy to me.”

  Having satisfied her hunger for poetry for one evening, Revelie put down the thin Tennyson and picked up a fat Trollope. She owned several of his novels as well as volumes by Scott. She had these books— usually pirated editions printed with double-column pages—shipped out to her from Boston.

  Claw passed his time cleaning his six-shooter over and over again.

  “The Robbers’ Roost boys are in the paper again,” Goodnight said. “Looks like they stuck up a stage, robbed ever’body, stole the horses, and burned the stagecoach. Now why’d they wanta do that. Just pure meanness.”

  “Robbers’ Roost?” Claw asked. “What’s that?”

  “Just a buncha outlaws that don’t like us too much. And we don’t like them right back. Their leader’s done promised to nail my cut-off ears to the swingin’ saloon doors in Tascosa.”

  Sensing disapproval, Goodnight glanced at his wife.

  “Would you mind dispensing with such talk?” Revelie said.

  The trio fell silent once again. Goodnight made the most noise rattling the pages of theTascosa Times. Revelie’s pages turned almost noiselessly, while Claw’s cleaning and oiling made even less racket. Coming to the end of a chapter of Trollope’sHe Knew He Was Right, Revelie paused, looked up, and studied the two men in the room. Noticing something, she put her book aside, got up, and approached first Goodnight, then Claw, examining them carefully.

  “Mr. Goodnight, I would like to point something out to you,” Revelie said. “I don’t know why I didn’t notice it earlier.”

  “What?” asked Goodnight.

  “Look at your ears,” said his wife. “No, I’m not that silly. I know you can’t see your own ears. But reach up and feel them.”

  “Why?” asked her husband.

  “Because you’ve both got a little bump on your right ear. Right at the edge. It looks like a pimple, but thankfully it isn’t.”

  Both Goodnight and Claw reached up and felt their right ears. Then they looked at each other, then back at Revelie.

  “See, you’ve both got the same bumps. They make your ears look a little peaked, as if you were descended from elves. But just on that one side. The other ear is normal. You’re half elves. Surely that proves one of you is descended from the other.”

  “Thanks,” said Goodnight.

  96

  In the morning, Revelie got up before Goodnight, which was unusual. She shuffle-stumbled to the “night jar” and vomited. The sound of her retching awakened her husband.

  “Revelie, what’s wrong?” Goodnight asked.

  “I’ve got a queasy stomach,” said Revelie. “Go back to sleep.”

  “I cain’t go to sleep if ’n you’re sick.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It ain’t nothin’. It’s the third mornin’ in a row.”

  “Maybe I ate something.”

  “Ever’body else ate what you ate. And nobody’s sick. We bedder harness up and head for Tascosa.”

  “No—” She threw up again.

  “Yes!” Goodnight rolled out of bed, ready to make all the preparations. He hurried to his wife and held her head.

  “No!”

  “But—!”

  “I know what it is. Well, no, that’s not quite correct. I know what it probably means.”

  “What?” asked the innocent.

  “I think I may be pregnant. Morning sickness is a symptom.”

  “Hoooraaayyy. No, I don’t mean hooray because you’re sick. Don’t misunderstand me. Please. I don’t want you to be sick. But the reason, that’s good news. Wait’ll I tell the cowboys.”

  “No, Mr. Goodnight, don’t tell the cowboys. Please don’t. First of all, I’m not completely sure. It could be something else. But mainly, a woman doesn’t like to have herself talked over when it comes to such matters. It should be a very private condition. I implore you not to tell anyone, not until we know for sure. No, not until I begin to show and we can’t avoid people knowing. Will you promise me, Mr. Goodnight? I implore you.”

  “Course, if you put it that way. I’m just so happy. I’m bustin’ with happiness. But I won’t bust if’n you tell me not to.”

  “Please don’t burst, Mr. Goodnight.”

  97

  One morning about a week later, as Goodnight emerged from his great sandstone house, Claw got up from his seat on the porch and joined him on his walk to the cookhouse. The presence of his “son” still made him nervous in spite of the new evidence that he was indeed this misshapen boy’s father. Goodnight congratulated himself that he would soon have a new child who would of course supplant this unwanted son.

  “Good mornin’,” said Claw. “Is Miss Revelie all right?”

  “Of course,” Goodnight said tartly.

  “Good, ’cause I thought I heard her early this mornin’. She sounded sick. Like she was throwin’ up. Thass an awful sound. An awful feelin’. I was worried about her.”

  “She’s doin’ fine. Just fine.”

  “But this ain’t the first mornin’ I heard that there retching sound. I’m just across the hall and I hear a lot.”

  “I’m not interested in what you hear. Please, less talk about somethin’ else. See them clouds over the north rim? Looks like rain today.”

  “No, what it looks like to me, what it sounds like, is Miss Revelie is gonna have a baby. Now ain’t that so?”

  Goodnight’s face reddened. He stopped walking and turned on his “son.” Claw stopped too and faced his “father.”

  “That ain’t none of your concern,” he snapped angrily.

  “Ain’t none a my concern—?” Claw protested aggressively.

  “Thass what I said and I mean it.”

  “It shore as hell is my concern. Because that there bump in her belly that’s makin’ her so sick might just be my little baby brother or little baby sister. Ain’t that so?”

  “No!”

  “No? You mean it ain’t gonna be kin to me?”

  “I just mean no. Shut up about it. If’n you wasn’t—”

  “Because if he ain’t kin to me, then he ain’t kin to you. If it ain’t my baby brother, it shore as hell ain’t yore baby boy. Or if it’s a girl, it ain’t your baby daughter if it ain’t my baby sister. So it must be my concern. Gotta be.”

  Goodnight wanted to swing at his son. He wanted to break his teeth.

/>   “No, no, just shut up!”

  “Course, maybe you mean it ain’t none a my concern on accounta you ain’t the papa. Then I’ll shut up ’cause it ain’t got nothin’ to do with me. Who you figure the papa is?”

  Goodnight swung, hit his son in the mouth, and knocked him to the red earth. Out of the corner of his one eye, the angry man noticed his wife emerging from the big sandstone house. He also saw Claw spit out some blood and then smile.

  “It’s Loving’s, ain’t it? You know it’s Loving’s, don’tcha? When you’re gone, I hear him and Revelie acrosst the hall. Huffin’ and puffin’. Just like I heard her throwin’ up this mornin’. I hear a lot.”

  Goodnight tried to kick his son in the mouth, but the boy turned away, so the boot glanced off a shoulder. Then the father staggered backward.

  “Tell you what you oughta do,” Claw said. “You oughta tell her you’re gonna go huntin’ overnight. Or you’re goin’ to Tascosa on business. But you don’t go.”

  Goodnight kicked his son in the ribs.

  “You hide out.”

  The father kicked his son in the stomach as he was trying to get up.

  “Then—you—circle back,” Claw managed to sputter, “and you’ll catch ’em.”

  The father kicked his boy in the mouth and broke teeth.

  “Stop it!” screamed Revelie, running toward the father and son. “Mr. Goodnight, please stop.”

  Goodnight had drawn his boot back to deliver another blow when Revelie tackled him. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him back from his victim.

  “Git off my land!” Goodnight hissed.

  “He doesn’t mean it,” said Revelie.

  “Git off my land or I’ll hang you,” he said. “And I sure as hell do mean it!”

  “No, he doesn’t,” she told the cringing Claw while she continued to hold her husband. “This just proves we’re a family. Families fight.”

  98

  I’m going to Tascosa,” Goodnight told his wife one morning several weeks later. “I’ve gotta do some business at the bank.”