by Bill Brooks
into a nice little basket.
“I thought maybe we could start things off with a
picnic,” he said, when his wife asked him why it was
he wanted her to accompany him to Cooper’s Creek
that morning.
“Picnic?” she said. “What’s so saucy about a pic-
nic; and, my lord, it’s nearly winter!”
“I was thinking a picnic might be a good way to
get things started. It’s such a pretty day,” he said.
“We’re not likely to get many more before next
spring.”
“What about the store?” she said.
“I’ve asked Gus Boone to watch it.”
“He’ll steal us blind . . .”
“No, he won’t steal us blind. Will you come with
me on a picnic, Martha?”
She could see the look of desperate determination
in his eyes, could hear it in his voice. She knew she’d
been hard on him all these years, her bitterness fueled
by jealousy, even though she was sure that Otis loved
Karen Sunflower, she didn’t suspect he and Karen
were fooling around with each other, that it was just
that one time if at all.
“I suppose,” she said. She saw the smile on his face.
It’s a start, maybe, she thought, and went and got her
wool capote, then decided she might spray just a tiny
bit of perfume behind her ears. What foolishness, she
thought, watching herself pin a hat atop her head.
Picnic!
They rode leisurely out to Cooper’s Creek in a
rented hansom, Otis humming happily, the sun warm
on their faces.
Once arrived, Otis pulled into a grove of young
cottonwoods that bordered the bank of the creek and
said, “This looks like a good place” and immediately
she wondered if he’d ever met Karen Sunflower here
and if that was why he wanted to come here, then just
as quickly pushed the thought away. Best to give him
the benefit of the doubt if we are ever going to get past
this thing.
Otis took a blanket and the basket of food and
wine out of the cab and spread the blanket atop the
still somewhat damp grass from the previous night’s
storm. But the blanket was a thick wool and would
keep them dry. They reclined on the blanket and ate
the sandwiches and sipped the wine.
“Isn’t it pleasant, Martha?”
She had to agree that it was.
“When we were young . . .” he said wistfully. “Do
you remember when we were young and how some-
thing like this thrilled us so?”
Off in the grasses cedar waxwings and yellow war-
blers and black-capped chickadees sang to each other,
fooled no doubt by the changeable weather, but seem-
ingly oblivious. A horned lark swooped down and
pecked at a bit of the sandwich Martha had set aside
on a piece of butcher’s paper.
“It’s like we’re Adam and Eve and this is the Gar-
den of Eden,” Otis said, feeling buoyant now that the
wine had gone to his head. He reached out and
touched Martha’s hand and she did not withdraw it.
“It’s been so long,” he said, and she felt a great
compassion for him, if not the first fires of a new pas-
sion outright.
“Well, you know . . .” she said. “We’re not youth-
ful anymore, Otis.”
“But it don’t mean we can’t . . .”
“Oh, Otis,” she said blushing. “You do have a way
of embarrassing me.”
“But Martha, there is no one here for you to be
embarrassed in front of. It’s just you and me . . .” and
he began to unbutton her dress. At first she tried
pushing his hands away, but then he kissed her as pas-
sionately as he ever had and it caused her to swoon
and fall back upon the blanket and he fell with her.
She stared up at the flawless gas-blue sky as Otis
worked the rest of the buttons on her dress. Perhaps,
she thought. Perhaps . . .
Afterward, they dressed slowly, and Otis said, “I
feel drowsy, Martha. I feel complete and whole again
and drowsy.”
“It’s just the wine,” she said lying next to him.
“No, it’s a lot more than just the wine. It’s pure
happiness, is what it is.”
“Oh, pshaw,” she said, but secretly she felt as
though they had crossed a bridge that had been keep-
ing them apart all these years. She closed her eyes and
felt the sun warm on her face and Otis closed his eyes,
too. And the last words she heard him say before
sleep overtook them was, “You think we might do it
again, Martha?”
How long they slept they didn’t know, but some-
thing woke them quite unexpectedly, a tapping on
their soles. And when they opened their eyes, they
saw the face of madness staring back at them
The Swede said, “Oh, there you are, Inge. I’ve been
looking for you long, long time. I got lost out there,”
and he waved out toward the grasslands, a pistol in
his hand. “I got lost and come looking for you and
there you are. What you doing with this fellow, yah?”
Martha let out a yelp of terror.
Otis sprang into action, intending to disarm the
man and thus save his wife, and possibly himself from
the mad Swede.
But the Swede brought the barrel of the pistol
down hard atop his skull and Otis’s knees buckled.
Then the Swede struck him again and Otis fell back
onto the blanket, something warm spilling into his
eyes. He heard Martha yelping, and her shrieks and
cries seemed to get farther and farther away each time
the Swede struck him a blow with the pistol until he
fell into a stone silence.
The Swede looked at Martha and said, “We go
now, yah?”
11
Jake found the undertaker, Tall John, drinking
a glass of Madeira whilst sitting in front of his
place. The mortician had been enjoying the peace and
solitude of not having any business. And even though
his profession, and thereby his earnings, counted on
folks dying, he was glad for once nobody had re-
cently. After the spate of madness that had pervaded
the community over the summer, during the long hot
drought that resulted in him almost wearing out his
arms and back digging graves and burying folks, he
was more than ready for some rest.
His helper, Boblink Jones, had quit him, stating that
he didn’t care much for working with the dead and he
was returning to Missouri even though the James-
Younger gang had met their demise—Jesse, shot off a
chair that spring, and the Youngers not dead, serving
time in state prison. Boblink still had it in his mind to
become a desperado.
“Now that the James and Youngers is wiped out,”
Boblink said, “I guess there is room for a true outlaw
in that country.” Tall John of course tried to talk the
young man out of such foolishness.
“You’ll only end up like them,
dead or in a prison
cell wasting your young vital life.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. John, but waxing the moustaches
of corpses, and shoveling graves just ain’t for me. I’d
like to believe there is some glory waiting for a young
buck like myself—even if it does lead to a dark and
early end. I’ve come to conclude it ain’t the place a
man’s going, but the way he gets there that counts.”
Tall John gave the boy extra pay to see him on his
way, but was dearly sorry to lose such a good helper.
So the timing seemed right that business tailed off
when it did.
Tall John and his Madeira had found a spot where
the sun lay across the wood sidewalk. He set himself
in a tall-back wicker chair facing the main street of
Sweet Sorrow. Directly across from his place stood
the newly opened millinery, run by Fannie Jones, who
used to waitress over at the Fat Duck Café. Tall John
could see her now through the glass of her storefront
placing hats on little stands. Some had big ostrich
feathers and some satin tied around the crowns and
some were large and some were no larger than a
saucer. He didn’t quite know why women wore such
hats; they looked quite foolish he thought, especially
those with large feathers. But it wasn’t the hats that
interested him as much as the young comely woman,
whom he knew was being courted by Will Bird, a lo-
cal rascal who came and went like the seasons and
never put his hand to regular work.
A young handsome woman, Tall John thought, de-
served herself a man a little less footloose, one who
was steady and had himself a business that wasn’t go-
ing to peter out anytime soon.
Fannie looked up at one point and John raised his
snifter in her direction and he thought she sort of
waved but couldn’t tell exactly because of the way the
sun was glaring off the glass.
I ought to mosey over there and see what sort of
odds are against me, he thought. But just as soon as
he thought it, he lost his nerve. For what excuse could
he offer for looking at women’s hats? None he could
think of. Others might say, if they knew of his interest
in her, that he was too old for her, and maybe he was.
Will Bird was younger, more her age, but Will never
hung his hat on the same nail too long. John had run
over all the arguments he might present to shore up
his case with Fannie, but he wasn’t sure if it came
right down to it, he had the nerve to broach the sub-
ject with her. He drank more of his Madeira.
John was still thinking on Fannie when he saw Jake
coming up the street, was surprised when the lawman
stepped up onto the sidewalk and stopped there by
his chair.
“Marshal.”
“John, I’ve got a situation I need you to handle.”
“Certainly.”
Jake told him about finding the Swedes.
“Lord, I thought we’d gotten past all the craziness.”
“Not quite.”
“How many did you say?”
“Five; wife, daughter, three boys.”
Tall John shook his head in sympathy.
“Terrible news, Marshal.”
“You’ll need someone to help you bury them, I
suspect.”
John wasn’t sure why exactly but the first person
he thought about was Will Bird. Far as he knew Will
wasn’t working and had the time on his hands if he
could get him to agree to do it. It might give him a
chance to pick Will’s brain about Fannie, see what he
could learn about her, her ways and such, what she
liked and what she didn’t. Give him a leg up when he
got around to presenting his case.
“I think I might know someone,” John said.
“The sooner the better,” Jake said.
“You don’t want ’em brought in then?”
“What would be the point?”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“One more thing.”
John looked earnest.
“The old man—the Swede. He’s still out there
somewhere, so you make sure you’re armed in case he
comes back round again.”
John had never known burying folks could be a
dangerous profession, but the sound of the marshal’s
voice in his warning made it seem possible.
“Yes sir, I will.”
Jake went over to Otis Dollar’s mercantile and found
Gus Boone behind the counter.
“Otis took the day off,” Gus volunteered without
being asked. “Him and Martha went on a picnic. A
picnic, can you imagine?”
“Pleasant enough day for it,” Jake said.
“Yeah, but . . .”
“I’ll have a few cans of beans, slab of bacon, cof -
fee, extra cartridges, a box of those shotgun shells,
and one rope.”
“Going on a trip?”
“Going after the Swede.”
“What’s he done?”
“He killed his family, Gus.”
He could see the effect such news had on Gus,
said, “If you could get those supplies together sooner
rather than later, I’d appreciate it.”
Toussaint was waiting for him when he came back
around. Jake tossed him the extra box of shotgun
shells. “Ten gauge, right?”
Toussaint opened the box and dumped the shells in
his pockets.
“Hell, I’m set, you?”
“What do you intend to do with me?” Martha said.
Otis moaned nearby on the blanket, his head stream-
ing red ribbons of blood. The Swede was skeleton
thin, his hair stuck out in whitish spikes from his
head. He had the eyes of a dangerous man, and he
had a pistol, too. She wondered if he was drunk or
simply had gone mad.
“You let me alone,” she demanded. “You let me
and my husband be.”
“We go on now, yah.” It was as though he hadn’t
heard a word she said.
“Go where, you damn fool!”
She couldn’t help but somehow blame Otis for
their predicament. If only he hadn’t suggested such a
foolish thing as a picnic. If only he had asked her to
go upstairs over the store to their bedroom, she would
have gone, perhaps begrudgingly so, but she would
have gone, and he wouldn’t be lying with a bleeding
head and she wouldn’t be in danger of being as-
saulted. She could think of nothing more terrible than
to have a madman assault her.
“We go that way,” the Swede said, pointing with
his pistol off toward the west. She hadn’t a clue as to
what lay in the direction he pointed.
“How far that way?” she said.
“Sweden, maybe.”
“Sweden?”
“Go to the fjords.”
“Fjords?”
“Yah, yah,” he said.
“No!” she said.
“You want I shoot you again, Inge?”
She had not a clue as to who Inge was. The man
was obviously deranged. She’d had an uncle once
who became deranged
and she remembered what a
time her family had with the man, how he cackled
like a chicken and went around picking invisible
things from the air. They’d had to truss him up in
leather straps and take him off to the insane asylum in
Scotts Bluff.
The Swede prodded her with the pistol barrel into
the hansom then climbed on the seat next to her.
“What you wait for, yah?”
“You expect me to drive?”
“Yah, yah.”
She took up the reins. The Swede pointed again to-
ward the west.
“Go on,” the Swede said impatiently.
She snapped the reins and the horse stepped off.
They rode for an hour or so, she calculated, trying the
whole while to come up with an excuse to trick him,
to escape. If I had a hoe, I’d kill you, she thought. I’d
hit you over your damn old skull and split it in two
and leave you out here for the wolves.
He rode next to her, his gaze fixed on the horizon
as though he was expecting to see his damn fjords any
minute. She wasn’t sure exactly what a fjord was. She
noticed spots of blood on his shirt cuffs. It caused her
to shudder. The beautiful day did not seem quite so
beautiful any longer.
“I have to go,” she said.
He turned his head.
“I have to go,” she said again.
“Go?”
“Squat,” she said.
He shrugged.
“You squat, yah.”
“No, you damn fool, I have to go off in the weeds.”
He seemed not to understand.
“Pee?” she said. “You understand what it is to have
to pee?”
“Yah, sure.”
Finally she hauled back on the reins and brought
the horse to a stop, then climbed down without asking
and lifted her skirts to her knees and made the motion
of squatting. He sat and stared at her.
“I got to go off aways for some privacy.” She
pointed.
“Yah,” he said. “Yah.”
“You understand?” He didn’t say anything. She
pointed again. “I’m just going to go off in the grass
there aways . . .”
He watched. She walked slowly backward. He did
not move. “Just over here, is all . . .” she said. He had
a slight smile on his face revealing old long teeth. She
thought he looked like a badger—a very skinny, mean
badger.
12
Clara had gotten the children down to sleep—
the orphan boy whimpered, but once read to along
with her own children, he closed his eyes and his
