The Winter Family

by Clifford Jackman

  “Get your fucking guns, you fat idiots,” Winter said. “The law’s on us.”

  And then to the women: “Didn’t I tell you fucking bitches to clear out?”

  They went, protecting their throats with their hands, forearms over their naked tiny breasts. Mottled dark blue and yellow around their thighs.

  Johnny was pulling up his pants, but Charlie hadn’t moved. He was still staring at Winter.

  “Jesus,” Charlie said. “Look at you. What happened to our dandy? Look at you. You look like a … like a … I don’t know what you look like. Where have you been? What the fuck happened to your ears? What’d they do to you?”

  “Frostbite,” Winter said. Indeed, his ears had been mangled down to stumps. “Get dressed, Charlie.”

  Johnny was pulling his belt tight under his fat stomach. This involved sucking in and then letting it hang over. But Charlie just stood up naked and walked over to Winter, soft wonder spreading over his blunt features, the light from the oil lamps glinting off his bald head.

  “Charlie, the fucking law is on us, there’s a whole posse in the hotel waiting for you to drink yourself to sleep. They know I’m here. We got to get gone.”

  “Dandy,” Charlie said. “Dandy.”

  He was grinning.

  “It’s okay now. It’s okay. You’re here now.”

  He wrapped his pale hairy arms around the unresisting Winter and gave him a tight hug. Johnny, now fully dressed, lumbered over grinning like an idiot and did the same.

  Winter looked up over all that flesh, and if there had been anyone above him, he would have seen the unbearable rage and hate and sorrow etched in the lines around his eyes.

  But when they went downstairs the brothel was deserted. So was the whole town. Whoever the Mexican bounty hunter was, he had been wise enough to see that something big was coming down the pike and to keep his men out of its path.

  88

  Bill Bread waited a long time at the end of the road that led through the trees to Johnson’s farm. Of course there was no one who was more dangerous than Augustus Winter, no one who Bill had known anyway, but that was mostly because of Winter’s luck. If you asked who was a better shot, a better boxer, better with a knife, well, that was Fred Johnson. Bill had often reflected that if Johnson had been a white man he might have accomplished just about anything he set his mind to. But since it had never been clear to Bill what was really in Johnson’s mind, or his heart, he had always thought that it was probably better for everyone that Johnson had been born a Negro.

  “Wait here for me,” Bill told the other riders. Then he rode down the lane, passing a small wooden stable on his way to the house. A woman came out and stood on the porch. She had dark hair and eyes and she did not look happy.

  “I need to talk to Johnson.”

  The woman made her hands into fists and then berated Bill in Italian. Bill waited on his horse as patiently as an equine statue until the woman looked behind Bill, toward the stable. Bill knew that Johnson was there before he heard the click of the rifle.

  “Hello, Bill,” Johnson said.

  Bill looked over his shoulder. “Hello, Freddy.”

  Johnson had his rifle trained on him. But eventually he lowered it and poked the barrel through the snow and leaned on it. He had grown thin with age instead of fat. Ice glinted in his long beard and every time he exhaled a cloud of mist formed around his mouth.

  “You’re sober,” Johnson said.

  “Two years,” Bill said.

  Johnson snorted.

  “It’s true,” Bill said.

  “No it ain’t,” Johnson said. “Winter’s back, ain’t he?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Bill said.

  “And he’s pissed at you, ain’t he?”

  “Well,” Bill said. “You know how the two of us left off. Since then, things have gone downhill.”

  “I reckon that’d sober you up right quick. Even you could keep dry for a few days or so when you really needed to.”

  “I’m telling you, Fred,” Bill said. “Two years. I’ve been saved.”

  “You don’t deserve to be saved,” Johnson said.

  Bill smiled. The pressure of this moment was writ clearly on his face, but when he smiled, he looked younger than he had in years.

  “Well, that’s what I thought,” Bill said. “O’Shea took me into his house and hid me from the federals but it wasn’t clear whether I was going to stay. O’Shea wanted me to. He thought I’d be useful, probably, but he was also grateful. I’d saved his grandson. The rest of the town, well, they weren’t going to lynch me or nothing, I’d saved a lot of lives by turning on Winter. But they were a little suspicious of my conversion. So I was in O’Shea’s house, and I was drinking. As you can imagine, O’Shea was livid. He didn’t understand me. Kept saying I was going to throw away my chance over drink. Drink!”

  Bill affected an Irish accent. Johnson did not smile.

  “Of course I’d heard those kind of talks before.”

  “It’s cold out here, Bread.”

  “Anyway,” Bill continued. “I told him I didn’t deserve to be saved. And then O’Shea’s grandson laughed. He has this crazy laugh. Sounds like a goose getting fucked. Pardon my language. And then he said to me, the boy, he said, He who despises himself still esteems himself as he who despises.”

  “Did he make that up, or did he get it from somewhere?” Johnson said.

  “I don’t know,” Bill said. “The boy went to a lot of different schools. Either way it got me thinking. You know, we killed a lot of people, so you could say that we stood in judgment on them. And we had no right to judge them. But before that, before all the sins I committed, what right did I have to stand in judgment of myself? To say that my life was of no worth? Of no import? That I had the right to throw it away? I always thought of myself as weak willed on account of how I couldn’t quit drinking. But I started thinking how proud I was. How I thought I always knew best. How strong my will really was. It was just that my will was bent on drink.”

  “And so you found Jesus.”

  “O’Shea took me to the Catholic church. They wanted me to go to confession. It didn’t take, so I went to the Methodist church. Tried to sit in the back. I was drunk. It was a woman preacher. Abolitionist. Carpetbagger, came down to Alabama in the Reconstruction, moved out west when things heated up. Anyway, she had no intention of letting me off easy. Called me up front. All of them staring at me. Then she started in about what a sinner I was, but how they were all sinners, every one of them. And all we had to do was ask for forgiveness. She asked me if I believed that. And I started to cry. It was a sad sight, Freddy. Me crying in that church. Stinking of whiskey. Crying, and saying no, I didn’t think I could ever be forgiven. And she said I could. She said I had to believe it. But I didn’t believe it. Of course I didn’t. She said if I didn’t believe it, I couldn’t be saved. So I said, all right, I believe it.”

  “Did you mean it?” Johnson asked.

  Bill waited a long time. A bird called from the trees. The wind swept over the crusted snow.

  “I didn’t not believe it,” Bill said. “That’s what it was like, for me to find Jesus. There wasn’t no blinding light. I broke. I finally just gave up. I let go of my pride. I surrendered. I didn’t ever find God. I just lost myself.”

  “And you ain’t had a drink since then? They should write your story in a pamphlet.”

  “Well, count no man happy till he dies,” Bill said. “My story ain’t over yet. That’s why I’m here.”

  Johnson spat into the snow. “You and me go back a long time, Bread. All the way back to the war. But I go back with Winter just as long. Do you honestly think, if I had to choose between the two of you, that I’d pick you over him?”

  Bill smiled again, but this smile didn’t make him look younger. This was the smile that Johnson remembered: sad and knowing. With an unpleasant jolt, Johnson realized that Bill had never believed that Johnson would join him. Instead Bread had kept him
talking, out in the cold, so that his muscles got stiff.

  Johnson went for his rifle but Bill was faster. He drew his pistol and slapped the hammer and the gun fired. Johnson bellowed and went down, but he pulled the trigger on his rifle and Bill’s horse screamed and Bill was pitched to the ground. The frozen dirt knocked the wind out of him. He struggled to his feet, tried to breathe, and watched his men galloping toward him, past the stable.

  “Boss …”

  “I told you to stay on the road,” Bill gasped. “He’s behind you!”

  And then Johnson came crashing out of the stable at a full gallop and charged up the road, back the way that Bill and the others had come. The horse must have been saddled and bridled, waiting. The hands shouted and turned in pursuit. Bill was left alone, struggling to breathe, bent over double in the snow while Johnson’s woman screamed at him in a foreign tongue.

  89

  When he woke up on the day that he was going to die, Lieutenant Graves could feel some rumor, some tang hanging in the air. Something had been wrong for a while. A few days earlier three strange men arrived in town, tall young hands who looked a little unbolted, drinking every night till they were drunk but never causing any trouble. They were O’Shea’s boys, it turned out.

  Of course Graves had heard about the massacre in Indian Territory, where Augustus Winter was rumored to have been living. He knew this because Quentin Ross had told him several times.

  “Something changed in him all the way back in eighty-one, in Mexico,” Quentin had drawled. “Two years ago he left us for good. Shot up a whole town and turned his back on the civilized world to go live with the Indians. There was always something of the savage in him, even if they did call him a dandy. Perhaps it was the war. You know. The March to the Sea. Tecumseh Sherman was a civilized man. Very much so. Rational mind, like a diamond. But all that burning and looting, books and antiques and beautiful houses. If that’s the kind of value we place on the fruits of our civilization, no wonder Winter joined the red men!”

  Graves did not want to get out of bed, but of course he had to. He shaved himself carefully but quickly using a small silver mirror and a steaming tub of hot water, leaving his sideburns and his long mustache. Then he used the water to wash his face and his armpits, dressed, and walked out to face the day.

  The sun was coming up, but it was weak and faint through the clouds. The temperature was close to freezing and the air felt pregnant, as if it would snow. He took the newly shoveled path to headquarters, where the prisoner was waiting in his cell.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Braun said as Graves stamped the snow off his boots.

  “How’s he been?” Graves asked.

  “Quiet. He saves his smart talk for you.”

  The headquarters was spartan. A desk, a flag, a stove. The cell was in one corner. Two walls of wood and two of iron bars. A cot and a chamber pot. Quentin Ross sat on the cot and watched the lieutenant come in and the sergeant stand up.

  “You shouldn’t take it from him,” Sergeant Braun said. He was older than Graves, hardened and professional, and he knew he had earned the right to speak his mind. “You listen to his shitmouth too much.”

  “He won’t be our problem for much longer.”

  “Small favors. I’m going to the store. You want me to get you anything?”

  “Coffee.”

  Graves had the can in his hand and it was almost empty.

  “You’d run out less if you didn’t give him any,” Braun said.

  “All right, Sergeant,” Graves said. “All right.”

  Braun left. Graves filled the kettle with water from the barrel and put it on the woodstove.

  “Did you sleep well?” Quentin asked, a hint of humor in his voice.

  Graves didn’t reply. He stood with his back to Ross and looked at the kettle. He thought that he didn’t have to answer. Then he thought that maybe it was what Ross wanted, to make him uncomfortable, silent. Eventually he lied and said he’d slept well. The words came out sounding awkward, short and forced.

  “The sleep of the just,” Quentin said. “Quite right. Although I don’t think it’s the nature of the just to sleep easy. They’re always wondering if they should have done more, or less. Hearing again before they sleep the things they’ve said through the day. Constantly torn by regret and worry. Wondering what might have been. Only true scoundrels never have second thoughts.”

  “Like you?” Graves said, turning a bit.

  Quentin smiled.

  Graves sat down at his desk and took up a newspaper he’d already read more than once.

  “How long now?” Quentin asked.

  “You know how long.”

  “I suppose my dreams of rescue are getting more and more unlikely by the hour.”

  “Hope dies last,” Graves said.

  “I don’t suppose your superiors have given any more thought to my offer?”

  The kettle was beginning to sing and Graves stood and began preparing the coffee.

  “You mean to provide information about O’Shea?” Graves said. “About how he supposedly hired you to kill Indians before you and Winter shot up everyone in his town? Mister Ross, do you know the army still has a file on you from the Rebellion? And the first thing it says is how you repeatedly lied to your commanding officers, about even trivial things? If you’ll pardon me for saying so, no one in uniform has given a good goddamn about anything you have to say since the war. And even if they did, nothing you could say about O’Shea would save you from what you’ve got coming.”

  The smile on Quentin’s face did not budge.

  “A shame,” Quentin said. “It reminds me of the story of Alexander and the pirates. Surely you know it. Alexander the Great captures a famous pirate and demands to know how he can justify earning his living in such an immoral fashion. The pirate says, ‘I rob a few ships and they call me a thief. You rob whole nations and they call you a king.’ ”

  “Well,” Graves said. “It’s a nice speech. I imagine they fed the pirate to the sharks anyhow.”

  Quentin accepted a cup of coffee, still smiling that jagged smile.

  “I do not remember,” Quentin said.

  90

  A tall fence of uneven logs surrounded the fort. Sergeant Braun emerged from the gate and crossed the road, balancing carefully on a wooden plank set down on top of the mud. Outside the saloon Al was throwing buckets of water on the puke.

  “Morning,” Al said.

  Braun lifted his cap and went into the general store next to the saloon. The clerk Sam smiled his simple smile from behind the counter.

  “You got any coffee?” Braun asked.

  “Yes sir,” Sam said.

  Braun saw the coffee on a shelf in the middle of the room with the sugar and the flour and went to pick it up.

  “Got a telegram for you too,” Sam said.

  “For me?”

  “For the lieutenant. Came in last night, right before closing. It’s from some man named Bread. Don’t know where he’s from, but it must be pretty far south.”

  “Oh?” Braun asked, while debating whether to purchase some sugar. “How do you know that?”

  “Because if he was from around here, he’d know that winter’s been here for a long time.”

  “Hmm,” Braun said. And then: “Excuse me?”

  “It’s what it says.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Winter is coming.”

  The tin of coffee fell out of Braun’s hands. He walked over to the counter.

  “Give it here.”

  WINTER IS COMING STOP FRED JOHNSON COMING SEPARATELY STOP I AM COMING WITH HELP STOP TAKE ALL PRECAUTIONS STOP BILL BREAD

  The sound of hoofbeats came through the front door. Braun looked up from the telegram. A black man trotted past the door on the back of a foam-splattered horse. The man and horse both looked exhausted.

  Braun realized that he did not have his rifle.

  “Sam, give me your gun.”


  “What?” Sam asked.

  “Give me your fucking gun!”

  Outside, Johnson slid off the horse’s back and went up to his ankles in the freezing mud. He was breathing heavily and blood was encrusted all over his shoulder.

  Sam came up from under the counter with the shotgun and handed it to Braun, who was out the door in an instant.

  “Don’t you fucking move, boy!” Braun said. “I mean it!”

  “Sergeant!” Sam called from inside. “You forgot the ammunition! I don’t keep it loaded!”

  Johnson and Braun looked at each other, frozen in surprise. Then Johnson charged with his head lowered like a bull. Braun was a veteran of the Indian Wars and he struck with the butt of the shotgun, hard enough to crack a skull. Johnson did not avoid the blow; he tucked his head into his shoulders so it glanced off, taking scalp and hair with it. Then he dug his fingers into Braun’s eye sockets. Braun let out a dismayed wail that sharpened into a shriek as they toppled over and Johnson got in deeper.

  After it was over, Johnson stood, his hands darkened with blood, and picked up the shotgun. Sam fumbled along the back wall, tripping over his things, unable to take his eyes off the horror in front of his store.

  “Where the fucking shells at, old man?” Johnson asked.

  “Please …”

  “I said where those fucking shells?”

  “There’s a box of them under the counter. Jesus, mister, don’t hurt me.”

  Johnson swept everything off the counter with one muscular arm and then reached under it for the shells. The telegram briefly caught his eye as it fluttered to the floor. He broke the shotgun and fed two rounds into the breech and then snapped it shut.

  “Get up against the wall,” Johnson said. “Turn around.”

  “Don’t hurt me,” Sam said, sobbing and shaking. He put his hands up on the wall.

  Johnson held the rifle by the barrel and swung the shotgun like a club and smashed the butt end of it into the back of Sam’s head. The old man went face-first into the wall and then slid to the right, leaving a streak of blood behind.

  Outside the sergeant was still screaming.