Whiskey When We're Dry

by John Larison

  “Yessir.”

  Across the street doors was cracked and children’s faces watched us. There was a stillness over everything now. Not a breeze. Not a murmur. A mother’s hand pulled a child in by his ear and a door slammed shut. A tall man with a Dragoon in his belt looked at his boots when he seen I was watching.

  A potent whiskey come over me then, all at once. It poured from their eyes when those eyes flinched from me. In that whiskey was proof I too was made of grit and gravel and could not be blown from this earth by simple winds.

  I racked the Winchester, and for once found what I was after all those times I tipped a bottle.

  Greenie pushed me. I stumbled and righted myself. He was looking on me in a wild manner, and so I punched him in the gut and he slapped me across the neck and then we was laughing and he took me in a headlock and Drummond took the rifle so I could grapple with both hands.

  “Right?” Greenie yelled when he cut me loose.

  “Right!” I said and meant it. I was high now, so high I could let myself believe we was on the side of right.

  * * *

  —

  I woke early the next day on account my guts was churning and walked into the chill of desert dawn.

  Among the sage I found Lady Mildred’s tracks. She was up before me. I followed those tracks until I found new blood where she had whacked a snared rabbit.

  She walked with tiny steps and favored her right leg. Her shoes was the flat-sole variety of a farm wife fifty years before.

  As the sun touched the mountaintop I stood and looked the way she’d gone.

  I was still standing there when the sun found me.

  * * *

  —

  I played sick on payday to avoid the girls. After supper I drove my finger into my mouth and vomited in the hall where no one could miss it. Greenie helped me to bed and I stayed under my quilt until the crew left. Once I was sure the place was quiet, I rose and snuck into the kitchen for some more supper to replace what I’d given up.

  By then it was dark and the cleanup was long past. The Governor was done entertaining upstairs and the blacks was back in their quarters. So I was surprised when I found someone in the kitchen in the glow of a single candle. It was Will and he hadn’t heard me coming. I paused in the entryway.

  He was holding a note to the candlelight. He was reading.

  Will was no longer dressed in his serving wear. He wore his long johns and a pair of leather moccasins. He was bent over the counter, one foot balancing on its toe. His attention was whole given to that note.

  It was too far to see its words or even its penmanship, but I could see it wasn’t the thin parchment that occupied so many desks within the house. This note was written across a coarse paper with a single fold upon its middle—fancy. I had seen that paper before, but where?

  Will must’ve sensed my gaze for he turned all at once and stood tall and said, “I’m just tidying up.” Then he touched the paper to the flame and let it burn in his fingers before tossing what remained to the stone floor. He walked out of the kitchen, and as he passed me he said, “You don’t look ill.”

  “I’m feeling better.”

  He continued down the hallway and I waited until I heard the sound of a door clicking shut.

  I toed the ashes on the floor. There wasn’t a scrap left.

  * * *

  —

  I woke up when Greenie come back. I sat and shook off the dream I’d been having.

  “Feeling better?” he asked. “Sorry to wake you. I was stalking, but you got an ear.”

  “I’m better, mostly. Wasn’t sleeping hard.”

  Greenie sparked a match and touched it to the candle. “Got a letter from home today. Was hoping you might read it aloud. I ain’t yet opened it.”

  “Course,” I said. “How was Miss Aberdeen?”

  He drew the letter from his shirt and I took it and unfolded it to the light. “What does it say? Everybody okay?”

  “Dear Joseph, Your letter comes like the spring breeze and fills our hearts with certainty that Jesus holds a place for our family by His great hearth. Please send another soon. Please tell us more about your prosperity. Do you have a wife? When might you return?

  Your father fell ill last year. It is his heart. He spends his days in bed rest now. Though it pains me to say as much, I can only pray he will survive long enough to witness your return. Your presence would be most valued and appreciated should you return, even for a short stay.

  Maybe you don’t yet have a wife. The Nelson girls are soon to come of age. Maybe you remember them from our July celebrations? Mr. Nelson would give you your pick of them if you arrive with resources. I will attest that men find the middle one pleasing to spectate.

  Please, my dear son, stay in good health and spirits, and send word of your plans just as soon as you have them. May the Lord continue to shower you in prosperity and peace. Your loving and devoted mother.”

  “That ain’t Ma’s voice. Somebody done wrote them words for her.” Greenie spat. He laid back on his bed but found no calm there and sat up. “Prosperity? What does that even mean?”

  “You considered leaving for home?” I asked.

  He shook his head no.

  “I’ll get a pad and pencil.”

  “Nah, not now.”

  “What do you aim to do?”

  He shrugged. “Wire them money, reckon.”

  “You could ride it there your own self.”

  “I ain’t leaving this for that.”

  I handed Greenie back the note. He held it in his hand and looked on the words. He folded it and tucked it under the mattress, where he kept his monies. “Can I ask you something? Why’d you play sick tonight? Payday don’t roll around but once a month and Boss done treated us to them girls and most men would’ve gone even with the pox.”

  “I wasn’t playing.”

  “So I got to wondering.” He leaned and whispered, “Do you love girls?”

  I laughed. “All men love girls.”

  He studied me in the candlelight. I looked to my hands. Greenie knew me too well.

  “What I wouldn’t kill for a bottle,” he muttered.

  I found the remains of mine in the bed and heard the last pours slosh at my shake. I offered it across the divide.

  Greenie took the rest down. “One time you asked me what I wish for. Well, what I wish for . . . I can’t never touch what I want. Do you know that trouble, LP?”

  “I know that trouble.”

  For a long time neither of us said nothing.

  Greenie cut short the silence. “There was this one time. We was in winter quarters and we’d lost eight good men from the company just that autumn in an ambush. Our friends not being there, it wore on us. To see your buddies, they was laid out with their hair skinned . . . quills stuck in their eyes. . . . The injuns cut the muscles from their legs while they still lived. They took care not to cut the arteries. What they done . . . it laid waste to all I’d ever dreamed. After that there wasn’t nothing but killing them savages and taking every breath I had left for my own self. It was hard lonesome, you know?

  “There was this one kid in the camp, youngest one. His name was Frederick but we all called him Bern. Bern was small but he could ride better than most and he and me took to bunking together on account we was both from Tennessee, him from west and me east-middle. So I heard him get up that night in the dead of winter. I heard him leave the tent. I don’t know who else was out there with him, but I watched them go into the storehouse and there wasn’t no mistaking the business they was transacting. Now there wasn’t a gal within forty miles. You follow me? When the boys found out . . . What they done when they found out . . . The boys cut him to pieces. Our own people. They cut his man parts. That was just the start. My friend Bern died in the snow, all laid out, all alone. Our ow
n brothers done that.”

  “Did they get strung up?”

  Greenie didn’t answer for a long while. “Captain was in on it. Report said injuns done it.”

  His hand was shaking.

  I asked, “What did they do to the other man, the one he was with?”

  His voice was so low I nearly missed it. “Never figured who the other was.”

  I asked, “How’d they learn what Bern was up to?”

  The empty whiskey bottle clanked on the floor. Greenie said, “My point is in this world a man must be careful how he lives.”

  I lay back on the bed. For no good reason my breath was coming up short. “Greenie? What you trying to tell me?”

  Greenie lay back too. “Nothing. Just go to sleep. I shouldn’t have said nothing.”

  * * *

  —

  The wedding was nearing and Constance was busy with preparations and most days there was cause for her to venture into town for one matter or another. She was in the papers regular now and the thought of all them men reading about her wedding give the Governor pause. Natural enough he put the four guards he trusted most on her person anytime she ventured out. Drummond rode inside the carriage while Greenie and I rode buckskins. Tuss held the scattergun beside the driver. It was as we drilled in the slow times.

  On this particular day we rode her down to the tailor’s where her dress was being took in, and stood our familiar positions about the building while she lingered inside. The longer we stayed the more folks gathered about to watch. She was a princess to them, and it wasn’t every day they might catch a glimpse.

  There was a beggar calling to me but then again there was always beggars and I didn’t think much of this one. But when Constance and Drum come out, this particular beggar got between us and the carriage and started making a show and wouldn’t move out the way. He wasn’t an old man like most beggars and he seemed too well fed for a man who made his living on scraps. Drum was the one who called it. This beggar got him thinking ambush. He shouted, “Angel! Angel!”

  It was our code. So all at once we went on hot. We made quick work of it.

  Drum put the butt of his rifle to the beggar’s head and knocked him flat to the earth. Greenie and Tuss leveled their weapons on those about us and barked at them to lay flat or die. I was closest to Constance and so I was the one to put my hand to her back and drive her forward while shielding her body with my own. I put both of us through the open carriage door.

  At once the carriage was off at great speed. The boys was coming up behind on the buckskins, and I was pointing my rifle out the window, and all of us was waiting on their shots. I was hoping on them a little, maybe.

  But not a bullet was loosed.

  I was now inside the carriage and alone with the holy daughter. We was rolling at such a clip that the smallest bump could lift us from our seats.

  Constance was crying as I had pushed her with some force and her day dress was now tore and her elbow bleeding the brightest, cleanest red across her white skin. “And what was the point of that? Huh? That man was only begging his supper!”

  “It’s our charge to protect you, ma’am.”

  “They only long for a look. They only long to be near. I am a promise to them, don’t you see? Don’t you remember? This life can hold brighter days.” She put a white cloth to her bloody elbow. “It is all so sad. All of this, all that we have . . . I’m not able to pretend that I am glad. Not anymore. What we have comes on their backs. This whole wedding, my entire life, it comes on their backs. And you people beat them to the ground with your rifle butts!” The box that contained her wedding dress was between us. She had clung to it with force when I pushed her into the carriage. “I should be married in some dusty calico, like any other woman in this state.”

  “Would you rather live in a hovel and worry over every meal?”

  “You’ve been turned by my father. Don’t deny it. I remember when you arrived. I saw in you that you didn’t believe in this. You were different. I saw it that first night we dined. You were in awe, but you were not in approval. You might be the only person to ever eat at that table who didn’t want all the silver and charm for himself.”

  She set the box and the dress it contained on the seat beside her. “I would have you know that not all men are as weak willed as you. There are men who fight right now to remedy injustice. They risk everything they have, love and life included, to overturn this madness, to create a system built on balance and equity.” She dabbed a linen to her eyes, then to the blood on her elbow. “What, really, brought you here anyway? If you didn’t want all of Father’s silver for yourself, what is it you wanted? I know you wanted something.”

  “To be favored by a man of his caliber, that answers a call from deep inside.”

  Now her eyes narrowed. “To be favored? Is that why you broke into Father’s office just the moment he and Charles were off sending a telegram?”

  I glanced sidelong at her. Her heat had caused her to say more than she should, but she was too prideful to backstep.

  A deep silence rose between us.

  There was only one person who knew I had broken into the Govenor’s office. But why had Will told Constance, of all people?

  She had held this secret from her father, I knew as much or else I would not in that moment be trusted with her safekeeping. But why keep the secret?

  I was turning over the possibilities when I remembered where I had seen that heavy paper before, the paper Will had burned when I found him reading it. Constance had used the very same kind as a bookmark that day I rode with her and the Governor toward a lunch with her fiancé.

  * * *

  —

  I was still sorting these events the next day, even as I stood in the Governor’s office, just him and me. He was watching out the window for the approach of his militia.

  “We’ve made progress,” he said almost to himself. “The fifty thousand stolen from the train. Every serial number on the bills was known and recorded. The Pinkertons monitor where these bills turn up. A brilliant stratagem—I only wish the idea had been mine. The noose narrows, Straight, and soon it will tighten.”

  “Where is Harney?” I asked. “Where do these bills lead?”

  “Here they march!” The Governor seized me by the shoulder and led me from his office. “Little brings me as much joy in this world as looking over my fighting men!”

  “Your militia? Why bring them here?”

  “You don’t think I would leave the security of this wedding entirely in the hands of my few guardsmen?”

  The militiamen wore green wool coats and gray trousers. The uniforms was caked in dust and sweat. They was an old force, older than I expected anyhow. The men was in their thirties mostly and the officers on past forty. Nearly all wore thick beards and sun-beaten eyes and they looked upon me with dour intention.

  Their leader’s sword clanked as he dismounted and handed Will the reins to his powerful bay. He offered the Governor a Union salute. He was looking up at his commander on account of the difference in their statures. The Governor said, “At ease. Welcome back, major. I understand you have much to report.”

  “Sir, I recorded extensive notes on our encounters with the enemy.”

  “I look forward to your briefing, major.” The Governor pointed with four fingers at the great many men on the road. “Order your boys to retire to that pasture and join me for a brandy. After we discuss the bandit we need to begin designing plans for the defense of the estate.”

  “Yessir. I am eager for your counsel, sir.”

  I looked out over the mess of soldiers and saw their eyes back upon us. Behind the soldiers come a great train of wagons and supplies. I heard the bellows of worn-down mules and the grinding of metal rims over gravel.

  The sheer size of this militia sent a shiver through me. A force of 150 men existed to extin
guish my brother from this earth, and here I was almost part of it.

  I looked to the mountain. I wanted to believe he was there, above all this. I wanted to believe that even from so high he would recognize me.

  * * *

  —

  That night Drummond and Tuss and the major went outside with bottles. They was old friends and laughed like it. Greenie was in our room cleaning his Winchester. “Come on,” I said. “I’m going out there.”

  “You can keep that major for yourself. I was hoping Harney might clean the smile off his face once and for all.”

  I looked at Greenie anew. “You afraid of him?”

  “Afraid? Shit.”

  “Get up, then, let’s go.” I had questions to ask the major once his guard was down.

  We took our bottles outside. The major was leaning against the house and patting the pockets of his uniform. I handed him my tobacco pouch.

  Drum and Tuss was looking us over. Tuss said, “Ain’t you kids got some letters to write?”

  The major was a little man but strong as a bulldog. “Indebted,” he said with no meaning to the word and no warmness for me or my tobacco. He chewed the plug three times and placed it in the corner of his cheek and spat. He tossed the pouch and I caught it with my left.

  We all spat.

  The major sent down a pull of whiskey. He was smirking at me. “You got the look of a fish. I got an eye for such matters. He looks fishy, don’t he?”

  Tuss and Drummond held perfect still. I could tell I was expected to do something. I sipped my bottle.

  “He is cold, give him that.” The major swigged. They all swigged. “If you took Drum’s spot you must be a decent squeeze with a six-gun. Never met a fish who could shoot worth a shit. Never met a kid who could shoot who wouldn’t go to fists over being called a fish.”

  I tipped my bottle toward the major. “You seen Harney recent?”

  “Only his dust. Shit, that one is some part injun, I’ll tell you.” The major puffed out his chest. “He’s got himself squaws. Whole herd of them. They keep him hidden. They got these tunnels they use. Hide ’em with sage and you never see nothing but tracks going into a mountainside.”