by Bill Brooks
want to get to know my grandchildren. I want you to
know me and I want them to know me. That’s all I
want. And in exchange, I’m leaving you and them
everything I have.”
He reached for a satchel sitting on the floor at the
foot of the bed; even that much was a struggle for
him. He set it on the bed and said, “Open it.”
She didn’t want to, but she did.
“That’s for you and the girls,” he said.
“I don’t want your money.”
“Who else would you want me to give it to? You’re
all the family I have left.”
“I don’t care who you give it to. Give it to the
whores or whoever you spent all your good years
with.”
“Clara,” he said, but she didn’t want to hear any-
thing more from him, turned, and rushed out.
He winced when the door slammed closed behind
her; it had the sound of a gunshot, and the feel of
one, too.
He knew, without knowing how he knew, that they
would be coming for him: men who wanted to make
a reputation by killing him, maybe even some relative
of that boy he and Fancher had shot off the fence, but
surely they would come for him. It wouldn’t matter to
them if they killed him sick like this, or if he would
even have the strength to pull a trigger in self-defense.
The strong killed the weak. That’s the way it was, and
that’s the way it always would be.
Well, let them come. Let them get it over with in a
hurry. He’d had enough already.
He looked at the valise of money—close to forty
thousand dollars for nearly fifteen years of work. He
felt like laughing at the situation. He’d planned on us-
ing the money to go to Mexico someday and buy
himself a small ranch and live out his days in the sun,
possibly even re-marry and have more children. He
laughed because he knew if there was a god, he would
be laughing as well.
He reached for the laudanum. Thank Jesus for the
laudanum, for nothing else seemed to work.
*
*
*
Try as she might, Clara could not get her thoughts off
William Sunday since her visit the day before. She had
the children do their arithmetic followed by a spelling
bee and then let them out to play for recess. She se-
cretly wished she had a cigarette to smoke—a habit
she’d given up when she left Fallon.
She thought about her father, the fact he was dying.
Why should she care, she asked herself. Yet, it wasn’t
that simple. He was right about one thing, they were
blood kin and even though they’d not truly known
each other very well, blood kin still meant something
to her. She watched her two girls playing with the or-
phan child—oh, to be a child herself again. She won-
dered if William Sunday ever felt about her the way
she felt about her girls. Did he ever have such love in
his heart for her, or was he too busy looking out for
his own interest to notice her, much less care?
Damn him all to hell.
She told herself she would not care. That if he had
dragged his sick self all the way here to see her, to im-
pose upon her, he had just wasted his time.
The children ran about and shouted and chased
one another. They laughed and squealed, and the
smallest of them showed their innocence by mimick-
ing the others. Those a little older displayed traits of
socialization with one another, and the eldest of
them—the boys and the girls—even flirted a bit, the
girls being coy, the boys, well, being boys.
Then she saw him. Lingering near the schoolhouse.
Tall, but stooped a bit, dressed in black, watching
her, the wind tugging at the flaps of his coat. His face
seemed bloodless and it dawned on her fully then that
if what he’d told her was true—and she had no reason
to believe that it was not—he would be dead in a mat-
ter of weeks and whatever questions she might have
of him, whatever secrets he might hold, would pass
with him from this life into death and be forever lost.
Their eyes met and held and when she did not turn
her back to him, he walked over, slowly, painfully,
and something in her felt weak to see him like that,
limping like some old hound, for she’d always known
him as a man whom it seemed not even lightning
could strike down.
“Looks like you got a yard full,” he said as he came
to stand next to her. “You like teaching?”
“I like it well enough,” she said.
“It’s something to be proud of,” he said.
The spirits of the children rose and fell like a cho-
rus of joy.
“Which are yours?” he said.
“Those two,” she said, pointing out April and May.
“They look just like you.”
“I think they look more like their father.”
“No,” he said. “They look just like you. They got
the Sunday tallness in them.”
It was true, the Sundays were tall people and she
was tall and so were her girls for their age.
“Where’s he at, Clara? Their father?”
“I guess he’s in Bismarck where I left him,” she
said.
“He hit on you?”
“No.”
“It’s none of my business, I know. But no man has
a right to beat on a woman.”
“I’d as soon not get into my personal life with
you,” she said.
“Of course. Well, I won’t trouble you further.”
She watched him limp off, then called to him.
“If you want to stop by for supper this evening,
that would be okay, I suppose. Meet the girls.”
He halted, turned. “I’d like that,” he said. Then
walked on toward town, the pain so bad he thought
he might bite off the end of his tongue.
She wasn’t sure why she’d made him the offer to
come to supper. What could she possibly hope to
achieve by doing so?
Damn it, I wish I had a cigarette.
William Sunday did not know if it was accidental or
by design that his daughter had him seated at the
head of the table. Whatever it was, he felt honored.
The children could barely take their eyes from him.
He tried his best to warm to them in a way that
wouldn’t scare them. He thought about telling them a
story, but the only stories he knew to tell weren’t ones
a child was likely to understand, and certainly not
ones his daughter would tolerate him telling—stories
about shootings and whorehouses and whiskey drink-
ing. Finally, the eldest child spoke.
“I’m April,” said April.
“And I’m May,” said May.
The boy did not say what his name was, but sim-
ply sat there big-eyed and waiting for Clara to fill his
plate. The fare consisted of salted pork, turnips,
baked beans, biscuits, and buttermilk. It was spartan
by William Sunday’s standards. He was
mostly a
steak-and-potatoes sort of man; oysters and such. A
man accustomed to washing everything down with
good bourbon and later having a fine cigar with his
sherry. But again he felt honored to be eating at this
table with his daughter and granddaughters, and the
food did not matter to him.
Family, he thought, and nearly choked on the
emotion of it, then felt foolish for feeling suddenly so
sentimental.
They ate with little conversation until April said,
“Are you our grandpa?”
“Yes,” he said. “Your grandpa, William.”
May giggled and Clara told her not to laugh with
food in her mouth.
“And who is this?” William Sunday asked of the
boy.
The boy didn’t answer.
“His name is Stephen,” Clara said. “He’s staying
with us for a time.”
William Sunday could see by the expression on
Clara’s face that the subject was not open for discus-
sion.
“You look like a fine lad,” he said and the boy
looked away toward Clara who said, “Finish your
supper.”
Later, when the girls had cleared the table and
everyone was tucked in bed, Clara told William about
the boy’s circumstances.
“That’s a piece of tough news,” he said.
“I don’t think his father realized the suffering he
caused, and how his only surviving son will have to
live with the horror and shame of it the rest of his
life,” she said. William Sunday did not fail to get her
not so subtle point about a life lived wrongly, about
sins of the father passed on to the children.
“I was a terrible son of a bitch most of my life,” he
said. “I did lots of things I am not proud of, and now
I can see I did them for the wrong reasons. But I can’t
change any of that, and you can’t, either. I’d like for
both of us not to try. I’d like for both of us to start at
this moment and try and be good to each other—it’s
all I have to offer you and all I want to offer you.”
“I’m not sure I can forget,” she said.
“I’m not asking you to forget, Clara. I’m asking
you to forgive.”
“I’m not sure I can do that, either.”
He started to say something else, but then the pain
shot through him like a bullet and he took a deep
breath and held onto the back of a chair to keep from
collapsing. He’d run out of laudanum and by the time
he realized it the pharmacy had closed.
“I don’t suppose you’d have a drop or two of
whiskey around?”
She shook her head.
“I won’t have it in the house.”
“Because of him?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry your marriage turned out bad,” he said.
“I guess my luck just runs bad when it comes to
the men in my life.”
He found his hat on the peg by the door he’d hung
it on and said, “It was a good supper, Clara. My
granddaughters are lovely and I want to get to know
them more if you’ll allow it. I wonder if maybe to-
morrow, if the weather isn’t so bad, we could all go
on a picnic?”
“I’ll have to give it some thought.”
He nodded.
“I’ll call on you tomorrow, then,” he said and went
out the door. Rain was hitting the window glass like
someone tossing sand against it. Darkness had fallen
while they’d eaten. She wondered if she were doing
the right thing, having him to supper, having him
meet her children. She wasn’t sure anymore what was
the right or wrong thing.
She set about doing the dishes, then checked on all
three of the children making sure they were asleep
and the rain hadn’t awakened them. Then she was
alone there in the house, without a husband or much
of a future and with a father whom she had never ex-
pected to see again. Even if she wanted to start over
again with him, to renew an old history and even if
she wanted to love him, what chance did she have
now that he was dying, near death? It all seemed so
futile. She felt tired.
Finding her cloak she stepped outside for a last trip
to the privy before her own bedtime.
That was when she found him: lying there, in the
mud, the cold rain soaking his clothes, unable to lift
himself, moaning against the pain.
19
They moved in cautiously, in an ever-tightening
circle around the cabin, ready to shoot into it if
they saw the barrel of a gun poking through one of
the windows or out of the door.
They drew to within a few yards.
“What do you think?” Toussaint said.
“I think there’s something wrong.”
Toussaint dismounted, Jake did, too.
“You want to go in first, or you want me to?”
Jake said, “I’m the one they hired, you cover me.”
He went to the door and standing to the side
knocked on it. They waited for someone to answer.
And when nobody did, Jake turned the fancy glass
doorknob and swung the door open.
“Hey!” he called.
No answer and he stepped inside, pistol cocked
and ready. He stepped back out again and said to
Toussaint, “No need for that shotgun—there’s two of
them, both dead.”
“Otis’s wife?”
Jake shook his head.
“No, both men, one’s the Swede.”
Toussaint followed Jake back inside and saw them:
two bodies: both men. One the Swede, the other
somebody they didn’t know. Old man, curled up on
his side, butcher knife sticking from his neck, gallon
of blood, it seemed, leaked out under him. The Swede
was on his back near the door, a dark hole center of
his forehead like a third eye socket with no eye in it.
Toussaint walked over to the one wall where light
fell in through an open window—one without the oil-
skin to shade it. He saw old pages torn from a cata-
logue tacked up—mostly drawings of women wearing
corsets and stockings with a description and price of
the items next to the drawings. The paper was yel-
lowed, curled, some of it ripped and tearing, some of
it rain soaked.
Toussaint saw that this is what happened to old
men who ended up living alone far out on the prairies
without the benefit of female companionship: they pa-
pered their walls with the pages from catalogues and
dreamt no doubt of beautiful ladies there with them
in the loneliest of hours and sometimes ended up dy-
ing violent and unexpected deaths.
Jake saw it, too.
“What do you think?” Toussaint said.
“Looks like they had one hell of a fight and killed
each other,” Jake said.
The cabin was just one room. A bed in one corner,
a small wood stove in the center of the room, table
and a chair in the opposite corner, and the catalogue
; women.
“No sign of Otis’s wife,” Toussaint said.
“She must have gotten away while these two were
busy killing each other,” Jake observed.
“Well, you want to take time to bury them?” Tous-
saint said squatting on his heels outside the cabin af-
ter they had a look around.
“No,” Jake said after several moments of thinking
about it. “I’d rather get on the trail of the woman.”
“Just leave them then?”
“Wouldn’t be quite right to do that, either. Wolves
would come, badgers, coyotes, birds would come eat
their eyes out.”
“Well, hell. What then?”
Jake went back in the cabin and came back out a
few moments later. Toussaint could see smoke start-
ing to curl through the open windows. He knew then
Jake had set the place afire. It wouldn’t be any sort of
great loss.
“It’s the best,” Jake said as the first flames licked at
the walls then ate through the dry shake shingles of
the roof.
“Seems somehow fitting,” Toussaint said.
They watched until the roof collapsed and sent a
shower of sparks rising orange against the smudged
sky.
“Mount up,” Jake said.
“Where you think she is?” Toussaint said, stepping
into the stirrups.
“That’s what we need to find out.”
They started searching for sign by riding a loop
outward from the cabin. There wasn’t much sign to
be cut, but then Toussaint saw where the grass was
knocked down just a little like someone had ran
through it and they followed that for a time until they
found a piece of torn cloth not much more than the
length of a finger—gingham.
“She’s heading this way,” he said.
“Back toward town,” Jake said, “hell, she might
even be there by now.
“Town’s still a long way.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Let’s pick her up.”
Big Belly saw the horses. Three nice-looking saddle
horses. Looked like they were just out there eating the
grass waiting for someone to come along and take
them. Sometimes the Great Spirit provided unex-
pected gifts to his favorite people. Big Belly squatted
there in the grass just about eye level watching those
horses. He didn’t want to be seen in case those horses
had owners around somewhere. Most horses did have
owners, though some got away from their owners still
wearing saddles like the three he could see. Might be
