Whiskey When We're Dry

by John Larison

  “Come in here and roll up them sleeves. Knock off your boots on the porch, I ain’t keen on sweeping these days. My bones protest any form of cleaning.”

  I did as I was told. I removed my hat as I come through the door. It was the first room fitted by a mother I had seen since visiting Mrs. Saggat’s house a lifetime before. Everything was dusty and disordered. On every surface was pebbles of dawn color and branches braided by the years and wind. She collected these queer things. A wasp nest hung from twine in the corner. She caught me eyeing it. “That old thing. I just like its shape. Bugs made it, ain’t that something? Bugs make something every bit as fancy as my boy’s palace.”

  What held my attention was a tree as thick as my thigh she’d cut at the base and at overhead and wedged into the corner of the cabin so it fit perfect up and down. It was an aspen and its trunk had been scraped in wild order until there wasn’t much bark left on the tree. Under those freshest rubs was the grown-over sign of more.

  “The stags done that, with their horns. Ain’t it lovely?” She fingered a tendril of velvet left pinched in a splinter of wood. “This here is the cloth that shields their horns as they grow. The stags take to rubbing it off on the same trees they done last year and the same trees their daddies done ripped about. I always been collecting things that put me in awe.”

  There wasn’t a tint of color left to her skin and if a wind had come up it might’ve blown off like dust from a cracked lake bed. Her hair was thin as cobwebs.

  But her motions, like her voice, was steady as rock. She held the lantern up to my face. There wasn’t a shake to her. She couldn’t have been much more than four feet tall but she was formidable. She handed me the knife. “Well, get to it. Them critters ain’t putting themselves in the stew.”

  She took a seat in the rocking chair and put a match to her pipe. She rocked and puffed, rocked and puffed.

  I rolled up my sleeves and went to butchering what was left of the rabbit.

  “Why you dressed like a man anyhow?”

  The knife paused its work, but then I kept it going. “I know I got a baby face.”

  “You wear a man’s clothes and you hack that rabbit like a man but you as much man as me. Less even. Woman is water and the rivers in me is dried up.”

  I didn’t say a word. I kept on cutting the rabbit.

  Her chair creaked. Her lips worked the pipe.

  “So I take it you got my son and his paid admirers fooled. That’s no feat. Don’t crack that bone. I don’t want no slivers in my stew. Who taught you kitchen skills? You’re a damn idiot around a knife.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t get pouty on me. Answer my question.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Why you dressed such? Come now. Just the two of us. Those fools don’t dare venture out this way. And my son only comes on his birthday. I’ve lived here a thousand years without no help from them.”

  I was hungry to tell it straight. Not even Greenie knew the truth, and I was worn with holding it all back. On that particular night I feared that even the raw facts of my life was only an hour more with the Governor from vanishing.

  It come out in its pure form. I told it with hunger. “So when Pa died I set out to find my brother by my lonesome and bring him back home. I killed a man outside of Scarletville and just recent I killed another, and it was another man who put these marks on my face, but he didn’t die. When I was girl I didn’t have no ma so . . .” I went on this way, back and forth through time with no logic but its own. Such relief to hear this in the air outside rather than echoing endlessly within. At last I told her of Johnson.

  She said, “But you ain’t told me why you dressed as a man.”

  I thought on it. “A man can be invisible when he wants to be.”

  She dug a pinkie into her ear. “I look about this world and see nothing familiar but for the things the critters make. Now I see you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Call me my name. Mildred. Do you believe in Heaven?”

  “To be honest I sometimes wonder why the Lord would suddenly care enough to offer us a heaven. I don’t mean to blaspheme.”

  This made her laugh. “Why you worrying about blasphemy anyhow? Blasphemy is for paid admirers.

  “Nah, around here we got ourselves a knife, a stewpot, a critter, and a world that makes critters. That’s what the Lord give us if He give us anything at all. And if not for them things we’d sink into the dirt and every little storm and critter would go on as if you and me never took a breath. Don’t know about you, but that comes to me as some manner of relief.”

  “Relief ain’t something I got much experience with.”

  She laughed at this notion. “Talk to me when your bones ache and your head pounds and you can’t hold your piss for ten minutes. You have any idea how much of the day I spend avoiding discomfort? I do three things here. I get my food, I build me a fire for heat, and then I spend every remaining minute trying to settle into some posture or another that don’t hurt.”

  I laughed. It felt like the first time.

  She come near and I didn’t dare breathe. She passed her fingers through the hair over my ear. “Coarse as straw. Mine used to be like that, but now it is corn silk too long in the sun.”

  She drew new from her pipe. “Men like my boy see this rich land and turn inward. It makes them foolhardy and narrow of thought. They don’t see the place but for their own reflection in it. Give my boy a hundred years and he will have rewritten the map of the cosmos to place himself at its center. You watch, girl, you beware. His is a crowded hermitage. His kind march through a blizzard and convince themselves it is a desert. Tell me, what is it you desire from this life?”

  The answer was ready on my tongue. “Home. And my brother there with me.”

  I put the stewpot on the woodstove. There was camas bulbs and carrots and some variety of wild onion already in there. It was so very late by then.

  “Take my bed. I don’t sleep no more at night. I sleep when the sun is at its blinding. So you sleep in my bed. You pull that quilt up and about you and let me keep an eye out on your behalf. I can see how worn you are with keeping guard. Let me do that for the both of us.”

  My eyes watered. “I couldn’t impose, Miss Mildred.”

  “You ain’t got no choice but to stay, child. Now fill up that woodbox so my old bones don’t have to. It’s a trade then, see?”

  Mildred packed her pipe while I worked. When I was done, I hung my gun belt from the hook and shed my boots and laid upon her bed.

  “I got a lot to tell you. The story begins in a logging camp by a lake. Shut your eyes now, dear. Let this old ma tell you how all this started.”

  For the first time in my life I drew a thick quilt about my neck and fell asleep to a mother’s telling.

  * * *

  —

  The guests started arriving in the morning, and wagons was delivering the remaining provisions, and builders hurried to finish their projects. The wedding was tomorrow and the last of the guests was to arrive by the evening train and so dinner would come an hour later than normal but would be served as a feast during a royal ball.

  I saw the performers roll to the door in two laid-open wagons, their instruments kept safe in wooden crates, and two of them sitting upon them with a hand to the wagon edge for balance. They was met like all deliveries on this day, by a pair of militiamen who checked their paperwork and then searched through their belongings and patted their persons for weaponry.

  I was still watching when the Governor found me.

  “Samuel, my good man!” He was in terrific spirits. He told me I was to shoot a duel in Denver come two weeks’ time. From there we would continue east. “Already word is spreading of Samuel Spartan! What did I tell you?”

  He put a hand to my back and said, “You were seen near my mother�
�s cabin this morning. Do you have a missive for me?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you sure? She is a woman of firm opinions. When she’s lucid. What did she say? What drew you so near a madwoman in the morning hours? You’re not keeping things from me, are you? Since our fresh start? Samuel, I thought we were past the keeping of secrets. Aren’t we friends?”

  “She said all kind things, sir.”

  He laughed. “That woman hasn’t spoken a kind word since the forties.”

  He took a fresh cigar from his pocket, and I struck a match and cupped it against the breeze. While he puffed I considered setting his moustache on fire. “As you can see, my mother has a substantial presence in my mind. I would prefer if you would help limit the damage by not visiting her. Then I won’t have to hear about it and imagine all her subversions. Also, why must you do the queer? Visit my mother of all people? Shoot my guns, drink my liquor, wrestle my niggers, but don’t visit my mother.”

  He drew in the smoke. The smoke escaped on his words. “I brought her here out of kindness. A son’s duty and all. But I swear that woman is a burr. She can’t be any other way. And watch, I promise, she lives another two hundred and fifty years. You know I tried to hire her a nurse? She wouldn’t hear of it. I tried to build her a proper house. I have all the beef she could eat but she won’t touch it. And the trouble she causes. Had to finally stop inviting her for supper on account of her rabble-rousing. Isn’t a mother’s duty to get out of her son’s way? If I succeed in this life I will build giant castles in which sons can place their mothers and rest assured they are well tended. The good Lord has tested me with that maternal figure of mine. And now this daughter who won’t leave her room.”

  * * *

  —

  As the shadows grew long and the sun less hot, the guests wandered among the garden to a guided tour. The women clung to the elbows of their men and laughed the cackles of civilization.

  I was on post inside, fresh washed and in new attire, when darkness settled and the music began. In the last hour of the event I would ride out as a guest. I needed a new hat and jacket for the escape to work.

  But once free of here, where would I go that was any closer to my brother? There was no home to return to.

  The major was among the guests in his sword and stripes but he knew not a soul and so leaned against a wall and rolled a smoke. Two of his men stood attention along each of the entrances and exits, their rifles rested on their toes. The rest of the militia remained at the ready at their posts among trenches and dikes.

  The guests held masks to their faces and wore elaborate costumes in colors fresh as spring. Even the musicians wore masks though theirs had to be tied to their faces as they needed their hands for making merriment.

  I did not see Constance among the crowd. I did see the senator tipping his head in laughter.

  When I saw Greenie, I joined him near the musicians.

  We hadn’t spoken in days. In the months before we hadn’t hardly gone two hours without talking.

  There wasn’t no missing his swollen eye. He’d taken a punch since I last seen him.

  For a long minute we stood there pretending to consider the party before us. He was the one who offered a plug. I took it and thanked him. He said, “I don’t think I can call you Spartan.” He looked at me in his sidelong glance, and I understood he too thought the notion absurd, and that was all it took to put me at ease. Greenie and me was in this together.

  “It’s Mr. Spartan to you.”

  “Nah, you’ll always be an LP in my book.”

  We spat.

  “Who gave you that blow?”

  “Boss always assigns us the dark business.” He looked at the ground. There wasn’t no one else he could tell and I could see he was in hard need of telling it.

  They had told Will that a valuable delivery was due at the rail station and so he climbed into the cargo wagon without protest. He rode with his feet dangling off the back like he done any day when deliveries arrived. Except this time it was Greenie and Drummond who went with him, and he should’ve suspected something, but he trusted. When they arrived they rolled into the station warehouse itself and Agent Thorvald was there to close the door behind them. Will realized the score at once. He made a break but it wasn’t no use. His strong arms cast Drummond aside and he swung and connected with Greenie. But then Thorvald broke his knee with a club, and Will staggered about begging for his life. They beat him with clubs hollowed at one end and filled with lead.

  “You think they was lovers?” Greenie asked. “For real? A black and a white?”

  Greenie sighed. “I don’t really care either way. Ain’t my job to care. I just do, and I leave the thinking to the guy with money enough to pay. If it wasn’t me, it’d be someone else, right?”

  A minute passed. “Right, LP?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Greenie said, “Folks say you lied to Boss. Folks say you is lucky to be breathing.”

  The Governor was approaching us with a short man at his side. The Governor’s costume was a kingly red cape and a bejeweled crown. He wore no mask and yet I could not see any truth upon his face. I had once lusted for his approval.

  The man beside him wore a buckskin outfit like those worn by the buffalo hunters a generation before, and positioned below his navel was a huge flintlock pistol in his belt. The man lowered his mask to shake my hand. I was surprised to see the round spectacles of an attorney or doctor.

  “This is the shooter I was telling you about,” the Governor said. “Teddy, meet Mr. Samuel A. Spartan.”

  The man took care in replacing his glove after shaking my hand. He said in a shrill voice, “I hear you shot down Cliffpatrick’s Negro? When I heard that I had to meet you. I saw that bull of a man shoot in Denver last autumn and was surprised to see such quickness in one so large. Gladiator to gladiator, a specimen like that one would be unbeatable, I imagine. How the Lord has blessed us with the great equalizers of lead and powder, no?”

  “Teddy here owns two of the finest ranches you’ll ever ride and isn’t half bad with a long rifle himself.”

  “I am a sportsman, nothing more.”

  “Your accent is eastern,” I said.

  “It is,” he admitted with considerable regret. “But I am man of the West. The East is rusty and self-confident beyond good charm. Have you been?” He left me no time to respond. “Though if not for the East’s money neither of us could afford to be western men, am I right, governor?”

  “Every family needs its wealthy uncle.”

  The crowd was stopping its dancing and turning toward the balcony where Constance now stood, her gaze upon us all. She wore the dress of a far-off princess and a smaller variation of the king’s crown, but she had added the black mask of a bandit.

  The Governor said, “Oh, for chrissake.”

  The crowd clapped at her arrival.

  The senator climbed the stairs and took up the arm of his bride-to-be, and the musicians did not miss the moment. With horns they announced the arrival of royalty. The senator led and Constance had little choice but to follow.

  Despite the mask about her eyes I could see the red sorrow within. There was no missing her grief.

  Senator Scott raised his arms to quiet the crowd. He pulled free his mask. All fell silent, including the musicians. The man was dressed in a white suit with a stripe down the side and military honors on its breast. They was contrived, no doubt, as the senator had escaped military service by consequence of his wealth. “Thank you all for coming,” he shouted. “We thank each of you for making the long journey on our behalf. My bride-to-be insists I not monopolize the floor with a speech, but then again I am a member of the senate—what else might I offer?”

  Lofty laughs around the room.

  “I wish to take just one moment now to thank our generous and influential host. Mr.
Governor, tomorrow when I marry your only daughter I will be the most grateful man in this sprawling state of grateful men. All of us are beholden to you, sir. Constance is a refined young woman of sunrise beauty and with charms that exceed the principles of fair division we imagine for our democracy. To be considered a worthy suitor by you, sir, is the single greatest honor of my life. I thank you.”

  Heads turning to glimpse the Governor. I could only see the back of his crown, but I imagined he was wearing that pursed smile that revealed so little.

  Teddy clapped his buckskin gloves and others joined in and the senator raised a glass of champagne toward the host. “To you, sir. The prime giver. We cherish your contributions to our union, and to ourselves.”

  “Hear, hear!”

  In all of this Constance had remained still, her eyes upon the chandelier. Now she walked down the stairs, leaving the senator to hurry along behind.

  From the musicians a lone guitar sounded, and the dance floor cleared of guests except for Constance and the senator. He offered his hand and she looked upon him. She did not take the hand.

  Moments passed and not an eye could look away, not a breath could be drawn. We all waited, Greenie and me included, for her to accept what she was supposed to have already accepted. His hand could wait no more and so took hers from her side and the dance commenced at once.

  Greenie leaned over and said, “A gold coin says she don’t go through with it.”

  It occurred to me then that I knew the song played by the guitar. It rose up within me like a wind and carried with it memories of long ago. My eyes looked upon the Governor’s crown but my mind saw only Pa on Ma’s birthday, his eyes closed to the fiddle, and Noah in the firelight working the action on the pistol.

  Pa’s song. It was Pa’s own!

  I stepped for a better look. The musicians hovered with their instruments, their masked faces upon their masked leader who now bowed to the power of the chords. Each note come through him and out of him and delivered with it a lifetime of sorrow and revelation and delight. It wasn’t just Pa’s song but everything Pa had hoped to convey, only cleaner than Pa ever could.