“I loved her.”
“Your wife?”
“Lorraine.” My mouth felt tight like tetanus. “I know it looks bad what I did, but I really loved her.”
“I know, Cowboy. I believe you.”
“It’s like it was another person who married her then. I didn’t mean to lie about it.”
“You’re lying again.”
“It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t who she was.”
“Shit,” Jesse said. “You grow up Negro in America, Cowboy, it matters more than anything in the world.”
I shut my eyes.
“I never saw her body,” I said. “Or maybe I did and I just don’t know. Hell, maybe I just convinced myself she’d have been better off alone.”
“Or you’d be better off running away.”
I stomped my boots and blew into my hands. I lit another cigarette.
“Cowboy?”
“You hear those stories of girls finding their husbands in hospitals years later and you think it’s possible and it nags at you but I think she would have found me if she was still alive. She’d at least sent a letter telling me to go to hell.”
“That’s a lot of faith there, Cowboy. A lot of faith.”
We sat until the windshield was covered with snow and we couldn’t see the prairie anymore.
“I used to come out here often, when you were a boy. Escape to this spot, just for a moment. Cleared my head.”
My father was getting at it, working his way toward the answer I’d imagined for a long time. I had to make sure he got there. “What happened? What made you go?”
“It’s a fair question.” Jesse said, pulling a drink from a bottle and then offering me some. “A real fair question.”
“You’ve had to have thought about it, thought about what you’d say if you saw me again, or didn’t you think you’d ever see me again?”
He took another drink. “I wasn’t sure. Not ever. Figured I might, but then I thought someone might kill me before I got to. Then I heard you were in the trenches and I figured you’d be the one to get killed and I, well, I had a hard time with that because I blamed myself for you going there.”
“Why’d you go?”
“Glory and adventure, like Robinson Crusoe.”
“You’re lying.” I said.
Jesse closed his eyes and mumbled.
“Go on.”
Jesse
I’ve always despised the prairie dog, Cowboy. Hated them. It is, beyond a shadow of doubt, the most filthy, vile, incestual, disease-ridden, polygamist creature that has ever traversed this green Earth, having within it morals little better than your common Mormon, not that I oppose the idea of free love because Emma G. in her less batty years argued persuasively on its behalf. But prairie dogs, Cowboy, prairie dogs. They’ve tortured me since boyhood. As soon I could crawl, I’d be chasing them around my Daddy’s farm with a sawed off broom handle. I’d be chasing after them screaming for them to get off our land—ruined our crops, you see. Those rodents were much more vexing than those poor wolves the government exterminated in such a horrible fashion. How they could kill a beast of such magnificence by feeding it broken glass, I cannot explain.
Even in manhood, they kept after me. That day I left so long ago, that terrible autumn morning when I fled, that day I know you pain to hear me speak of, that day I rode east into Kansas, my old Palomino snapped her ankle on a prairie dog hole and I had to put her down right there. Mattie was waiting for me in Kansas City. You should know that, Cowboy. I had dreams of riding toward the rising sun, and instead I ended up walking into Kansas City with wet boots. Humiliating, Cowboy. To fancy myself a great man, yet to reunite with my lifelong love like some downtrodden hobo. I can’t tell you how bad I felt. Utterly dejected.
I know you don’t care, Cowboy. But listen.
Even with my long history with that certain rodent and despite my complete disdain of its habits, when I gaze upon a colony of them, I can’t help but have the metaphor shoot through my guts like an arrow shot from Apollo’s bow. In this industrialized world, where shysters and robber barons endanger every decent freedom, parcel and imprison in barbed wire every sweet slice of soil, the prairie dog, nevertheless, survives. And do you know why, Cowboy? Well, it’s simple.
The prairie dog is the anarchist of the animal kingdom.
It’s true, Cowboy. It’s a truth as apparent as the Earth’s roundness. It’s a truth as obvious as the imperial corruption of the capitalist system. Truth exists. And the truth is that the prairie dog is a lower form of anarchist like the ape is a lower form of man. That is not a judgment. Just evolution. Someday the prairie dog may dynamite his own oppressor’s castles, but for now he exists in the animal kingdom and the animal kingdom does not have the requisite thumbs to detonate nitroglycerin. Let me explain. The prairie dog cares none for the trappings of civilized life—our fences, our churches, and our factories. He knows them for what they are: artificial constructions of a moneyed class that seeks to subsume nature to further the basest of sins and that sin is avarice. He refuses to partake, unwilling to be shackled into domestication. He is a mustang that won’t be broken. Like those New England pilgrims who braved the rough Atlantic three hundred years ago, the prairie dog is a separatist, forming its own egalitarian society, ignoring the artificial rights of property owners, living as one body, yet preserving the rights of each individual prairie dog to choose his own path.
Pure damn anarchy.
And like the anarchist, the prairie dog has been under siege for the last century. With every industrial advancement, the prairie dog is attacked. With every natural or man-made disaster, the prairie dog’s sought out for extermination. He is blamed for drought and flood, for fire and tornado. The propagandists laid the blame upon his dirt doorstep for the discontent of the populists and the violence of Bleeding Kansas. Hell, if they could have blamed him for corrupting old John Wilkes Booth, they’d have done so. Yet like the anarchist, the prairie dog survives. When the men with guns seek him out with malicious intent, the prairie dog barks his alert and saves his kin. He burrows deep underground, and before long reemerges smarter and stronger with a keen sense of his enemies and a desire to seek retribution through sheer survival. Just like the anarchist.
I know, I know. The point. I’m getting there, Cowboy. Just be patient.
Now, this happens for a number of reasons. The prairie dog adapts to his surroundings. He builds where he can, when he can. But he is no coward. He does not seek shelter in the remotest field, hidden from modern life. No, the prairie dog is courageous and bombastic. He’ll thumb his nose at the usurpers whenever possible. He builds his colony in the middle of the town if he can find a way. He does not rely on the past for a crutch, but instead learns the lessons of the history to build for the future. He is not a romantic. He is a pragmatist. Which of nature’s creature defines anarchy better? A prairie dog, Cowboy. That’s who.
I came to this conclusion a few days back as I lounged on my stomach staring out at the New Sligo Jailhouse. An adjacent cornfield provided me cover. I relaxed beside a colony, where a half dozen prairie dogs gazed down upon my speculating. But did they sound their alarm? Of course not. No, they recognized me as a fellow of their sorts. If the animal kingdom had jails and if the prairie dog thumbs, he’d be the best at busting his kin out of captivity. No, Cowboy, they observed me, seeking to learn the proper technique to perform one of life’s great joys: the jailbreak. You see, most practitioners of the jailbreak over-intellectualize it. They give too much credit to their captors. Hence, they seek out convolution when simplicity is the sword in the stone. Too many folks have taken Dumas as a textbook, when really there is little need to sneak into a body bag meant for someone else. And few occasions ever call for tunneling. No, Cowboy, sheer will suffices. Maybe some dynamite, occasionally a well-placed bribe, but those are ancillary. You see, prison guard
s expect tunneling. They expect high stakes breaks. What they don’t expect is simplicity.
But during that cool night just a few days ago, after I had scouted the jailhouse for a full two weeks, learning the movements of the guards, memorizing their routines like I was a pupil and they were my multiplication table—you remember when I taught you to multiply?—I knew I was ready to strike, so after the day guard departed, I loaded my Colt, and then waited for the last of the sun to disappear behind the Rockies. The night smelled of cold iron and dust, while mosquitoes nibbled at my arms and a praying mantis observed me from the middle of a cornhusk. The mantis might also be considered an anarchist, if it weren’t for their unequal sex relations. I ate a jar of nuts for strength and waited for the night guard to extinguish the jail cell lights.
I strode across the lot beneath that evil tree, right up to the jailhouse door, and then turned the knob. Locked. But that was fine. I’d planned on a locked door. Expected it. So I knocked, a dainty, ladylike knock using a single knuckle and bouncing it off that old wood door to a sweet Scott Joplin beat. I knocked twice like that, then stepped back to await my prey. Hardly a moment passed, when a voice whispered through the wood.
—Who there?
—Seamus Rahill, I said in my most corrupt falsetto.
—All right then.
The door opened. Standing on the other side was a young Cyclops. Based upon his sunken jowls, poor hygiene, and lack of depth perception, I recognized his lineage. He was an O’Leary and I figured him for young Clyde. His father had been a man of low moral character and substandard intelligence, yet he’d also been a man of great courage and my own part in his early exit from this world haunts me to this day and I’ll explain why momentarily.
As I looked upon young O’Leary, I observed two things I hadn’t planned on. First, he was without his gun. Fine. A little easy, sure. Takes a bit of the fun out of it. Not nearly as romantic. No one writes home about busting into a jail with an unarmed guard, but needless to say, it’s not a terrible obstacle to overcome. Second and more troubling, he wore neither shirt, nor trouser. This was embarrassing. An unarmed guard was one thing; an unclothed guard was simply humiliating. My sense of importance, my own grandly romantic image of myself, was greatly diminished. So staring at the young O’Leary, unarmed, unclothed, I decided that killing him, letting the world know he was offed without his britches to shield him from the vermin, was in poor taste. So I asked myself a simple question: what would a prairie dog do?
I introduced my revolver to his forehead.
He took to the floor.
I walked inside with a cheap victory.
The room was lit by a teetering lamp. On my right was a wall of wanted posters—I recognized my likeness in one—and before me stood an empty desk. To my left lay a Mexican girl, her hands bound to the bars of a jail cell. She lay there still as cement, naked and crying and cut up and bleeding. It turned my guts to see a girl so young in such a state and I thought of Tillie, my own sweet daughter, and I felt shamed because I had been a poor father. Inside another cell were a couple of Mexican fellows. I hadn’t any connection to those boys. The jailbreak was just a ruse, a way to disguise my real intentions, because, as you know, what got me really hopped up were them files, but first I had to take care of the prisoners to make said ruse work.
I pulled out a pocketknife, and then cut the ropes binding the naked girl. She lay still, hesitant of me. I tried to calm her, speaking in a quiet tone.
—Soy el Jesse Stephens magnífico. El hombre mas guapo en el mundo.
—Como?
—Soy el Jesse Stephens magnífico.
I wanted to check her over. Once she felt the gentleness of my touch, she relaxed. I saw that the wounds were neither light, nor deep, but somewhere in the middle where only infection could take your life, but pain was the obvious intent. Once freed, she cried something awful, then grabbed hold of one of the men in the adjacent cell. Her brother, I later discovered. It was just awful, Cowboy. And I was filled with the sort of righteousness I’m rarely prone to. But I didn’t have much time so I turned to the Mexican and asked her where the keys were.
—Su cinturón.
I walked over Clyde, still unconscious, and searched to his britches, unfastening the keys from his belt. As I looked at the young O’Leary, my righteousness got the better of me. He lay face down on the floor. I raised my Colt to the back of his skull. He’d raped that girl before her brother, tortured her for play, but after I pulled back the hammer, after I massaged the gun against his cranium, I found that I didn’t have it in me to take him like that. Perhaps I’ve mellowed in my old age, but more likely I couldn’t do unto the son as I had done unto the father.
I turned toward the man, the brother.
—What are you in for? I said, but in Spanish.
—Stole a horse, he said.
—Horse thief, hmm. Whose horse?
—Senor Rahill’s.
—Good work.
I unlocked him and his compatriots. His sister fell into him and she was plainly ill. I told him I’d get her to a doctor, a good one. I turned to O’Leary and looked down at that poor seed of a failed man. The boy, for I could only see him as a boy, lay naked on his belly, his backside taking in the air. I searched the jailhouse for some rope. When I found some, I dragged O’Leary to the desk and tied up his arms and legs. I wrote a quick limerick—the preferred poetic form of the anarchist—signing it “¿En qué pararán estes misas, Garatuza? El Guapo.” Mighty odd the police never found it. My hunch is the real killer didn’t know what to make of my fine verse and decided to dispose of it.
You don’t speak a lick of Spanish do you, Cowboy? Well, it means “When Will These Masses End, Garatuza?” It’s from an old Mexican trickster who conned the country into believing he was a priest. One of the world’s first anarchists. Figured it apt in these days of holy frauds.
Then I told the kids to hang on for a minute as I searched through the desk for them files. After a quick tossing of the jailhouse, I realized that despite the O’Leary boy’s carelessness in regards to his visitation policy, he had been careful enough to place those files, his livelihood, in a place not so easily discovered. So I went to him and woke him with a couple of quick slaps and he looked up at me with that awful eye and wouldn’t speak, so I gave him a hard tug of his pecker and asked if he knew the story of Alcibiades and when he said he didn’t I gave him an abridged history lesson on the ancient origins of love and he quickly pointed to a hollow wall panel where I found the files. Forest had been covering up for Big Hank, and, well, me for a long time and it was always going to be the ruin of him and for that I’m sorry. That’s the lesson in sanctifying your leaders, Cowboy. We all got demons. Every last one of us.
Well, I shoved all the files in my briefcase and I figured there might be something useful for later on, yet I couldn’t help it when my eyes fell upon an envelope with your mother’s name. It wasn’t like the others, not in the way it was blackmailing her. It was pictures of her body after she’d died and it broke my heart to see her in such a state, how she’d become so sickly in the years since my departure and the pictures showed that she had been on dope when she passed. There was also a letter and it said, “Forgive me lord, for I have sinned.” She’d taken her own life and if it’s because of me, I’m sorry. I wanted her to live on, but she couldn’t. She’d killed herself and that little bastard had a file that said so. What he planned on doing with it, I couldn’t say.
I followed the Mexican girl and her compatriots out into the lot, leaving the door open, hoping, somewhere deep down, that O’Leary might die of exposure. As I left he called out asking who I was. I went back to the door and lowered my hat.
—I am the magnificent Jesse Stephens, the handsomest man in the world.
But I want you to know Cowboy that I left him alive. Someone else shot him. I assure you, it was not I.
&nbs
p; My hideout was in an abandoned building in the heart of Germantown. It had these old water worn ceilings and broken windows that froze the joint on those cool autumn days, but it was good enough because there wasn’t anyone living nearby for almost half a mile. So when I kidnapped your sister in the middle of the night, she was surprised by where I was driving her.
—Why here? she asked.
—Who would look for me here?
—The police, tomorrow, when I tell them.
—I should have blindfolded you.
I threw my cigar out the window and it gave her chance to climb up on to her soapbox, an opportunity she’d been wanting on for a long while.
—You know you might burn down the whole town doing that.
—You nag me like your mother, I said. How do you know I won’t kill you? I am, after all, what did the papers call me, the greatest criminal mastermind of the 20th century.
She laughed, Cowboy. She really chuckled.
—You wouldn’t, she told me. My death would have no ideological ends. And you are, after all, an ideological animal.
She’d gotten smart in the years since I last saw her, even if some of her smartness is of the loony kind.
—You’re a property owner and Seamus Rahill’s niece, I said. Why shouldn’t I kill you?
—Because you love me.
—Perhaps, I told her.
And I did. I really did. Cowboy, you and your sister have turned out so beautiful, so amazing. I well up just looking at the both of you and it makes me sad to think of all that time apart. I went to your sister because I was desperate, but I also felt somewhere inside me that she wouldn’t fink on me. That she’d find some benevolence to help out that poor girl because she’d been healing the sick in Rahillville and that is an act of charity that esteems her in my old eyes.
The Trench Angel Page 19
