Whiskey When We're Dry

by John Larison

  “Charles did discover our illicit play and reported our insolence to Father. We leaned our ears to his office door. We could hear everything. Charles volunteered to resign his position. But Father wouldn’t allow it. He ordered Charles to keep better control of his ‘offspring.’ I believe Father saw this as a tremendous act of charity. Really, Father counted on Charles too much to let him go.

  “By then our course was set. Our games had grown too important to simply be forgotten. We knew each other too well to see what everyone else did in our colors. I was a lonely girl, Jesse. Jesse, is that even your name?”

  “My ma named me Jessilyn. Jane is calling me Jess.”

  “Which do you prefer?”

  I shrugged. “Jess, I reckon. Why belabor it.”

  “I never knew you were a sister. Never suspected it. I knew I saw something different in you, however.”

  She took a long moment considering me. “Could you have done anything? Could you have warned him?”

  “I’ve been turning that over ever since.”

  “He was the only person who knew me. And he believed I was the only person who knew him. But did I? Oh Lord, I hope I did. I pray I offered him half of what he offered me. There is no one left who knows me.” She wiped her tears and even as more rolled she looked royal and above suffering. “I have spent these days attempting to reconcile this world. How is it that the sun still rises and sets and the seasons still turn and men laugh as they pass? How do these things still occur when Will no longer draws breath?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve been slipping into self-pity.”

  “You got the right,” I said.

  Constance dried her eyes. “I will never again utter Father’s name. I pray it is erased from this earth forever.”

  * * *

  —

  I joined Jane in making supper that night. It was just us in their place. Jane had made potatoes and a roast and the air smelled homey and fine. There was day-old bread, a gift from another house. I gave the stove some juniper and then stirred the meat juice into flour gravy while Jane set the plates.

  Jane was telling me of the eligible bachelors among us. “You don’t want any of the Wild Bunch, trust me. Sure, a couple of them might catch your fancy, but those boys are feral creatures. Forgive my bluntness, but Lord knows what sins they have perpetrated in the name of lust. Now there’s Mr. Thompkins. Have you met him yet? He is a widower and the father to a pair of boys in hard need of a mother. You’ve seen them about the meadow surely.”

  Jane was a tough one to sort. She spoke with a highfalutin air, and her back was always straight like Constance’s, yet her hands was rough from a life of labor. Sometimes she used the low word instead of the high, as if by mistake. Noah told me she was a schoolteacher before they met, but I wasn’t so sure I believed him. Most of all it was her eyes. I saw in them something I recognized, a thirst to be believed.

  From an open chest she lifted a pink dress with little white flowers upon it. It was a girl’s dress, not in size but in pattern, built for luring in a man. You’d never see no married woman in a dress like that.

  “It is mine from before, a lifetime ago, when I was narrower.” She held it out between us. “I want you to have it.”

  I didn’t squeal with delight. I ain’t sure what look I had on my face but whatever it was sent Jane scrambling.

  “I know it suffers from wrinkles, but, Jess, we can smooth those. It does have some wear but wear can be mended.” She lifted the hem. “Nothing a few stitches can’t solve. I should’ve done that before I offered it to you. How rude of me. I see now that it looks worn and maybe belongs to an older generation.”

  “Nah, thank you, Jane. I just taken a liking to trousers is all.”

  Noah walked in and hung his hat on the hook and pulled out his chair at the head of the table and sat heavy.

  “But you’re so beautiful!” Jane said. “I know you have those marks and they must give you terrible grief, but those aren’t any reason to hide yourself. Jess, the right man won’t care about marks.”

  She placed her hand upon my shoulder. “The right man loves not the shell you show the world but the fiber you keep safe beneath. Right, dear?”

  “Right,” Noah said. “Supper ready? Smells ready.”

  “We’re discussing womanly matters,” Jane said. “Matters of love.”

  Noah looked at me. “I ain’t heard Jess ask for no help on matters of love, sugar.”

  “Well, that’s rather my point,” Jane said.

  Noah winked at me.

  I took a seat near my brother and let Jane bring the food to the table. Noah said, “What is it you want, sister?”

  “Supper. And whiskey, if I tell it honest.”

  “No, I mean the long view.”

  “I don’t rightly know, if we ain’t going home.”

  “Sure you do. I see the resolve in your eyes. You got some notion stirring up your soul.”

  I hit the spittoon even though I chewed no plug. “I want to join your crew. I want to be part of your Wild Bunch.”

  He smiled. “You don’t have to. I got plenty of boys. Jane could teach you a few things you missed by the lake. It ain’t easy being on the crew.”

  “I ain’t after easy. I want to ride with you.”

  At this he looked me over. “So this ain’t a costume then? You really don’t want to dress nice and talk sweet and find yourself a man to call your own?”

  “Brother, I want to be at your side anytime you walk into trouble.”

  He paused to think on it. He looked to Jane.

  Jane pursed her lips.

  He hit my shoulder as he used to when we was kids. “All right then. Well, I guess that makes Annette your new boss. You best pay her a visit after supper.”

  * * *

  —

  Annette and a few of the boys was tending to the storehouse. Inside was crates of jarred goods and drums of salt pork and boxes heavy with nails and tools. There was slabs of curing ham and wood crates filled with straw and eggs. On one wall was bag after bag of feed for the horses. There was a great roll of hemp rope long enough to reach the moon. The storehouse didn’t have no windows and it was as cool in there as the night itself.

  Annette set a box of straw-laid onions on top of another of dirt-crusted potatoes. “Won’t look like this come the end of winter,” she said when she saw me at the door.

  I offered to help but Annette said they was through. She ordered the boys out and locked the door behind us. She put the key in her pocket.

  In the evening light, the boys got to pushing one another and laughing and Annette took a seat on the gate of a wagon. I didn’t have the nerve to take the seat beside her, she’d have to scoot over to make room for me.

  I leaned against the wagon. “This will be a hard place to winter.”

  Annette put a match to her rollie. “The only place to winter is upstairs of a saloon, you ask me.”

  The one they called Mason pointed at Annette’s smoke. “Can I roll one, Boss?”

  Annette stood from the rear of the wagon, cigarette in her lips. “Come on,” she said to me. “I got me a fresh bottle, and these boys is dumb as hell.”

  * * *

  —

  I followed her to the entrance of the Rock and beyond. I might’ve told myself I was following that bottle but it was the shifting of Annette’s body that held my attention. I couldn’t hardly hear my thoughts for the pounding in my chest.

  Annette wore that bear-hide vest in the cool mornings and come the hot afternoons she rolled up the sleeves of her flannel and unbuttoned it partway. When she rode through dust she drew up a green bandanna till only her eyes showed under her black hat. She kept a pinch of wolf fur in the band.

  She walked with the unease of a man who had spent his days upon a fast horse, and I couldn’t help but make a
study of her motions. Everything she done had her brand on it. Even how she wiped the sweat from her brow. She lifted her hat and used the underside of a wrist. I’d never seen nobody do that before. When I was away from eyes, I tried it for my own self. To feel what she must feel.

  In the time I knew her Annette didn’t hide her womanness or find cause to flaunt it. She didn’t tell no man he was right just to end the fight. She thought what she thought and did what she wanted to do, and she had my brother’s full respect because of it.

  Before us that evening the sage was lit in red light. Annette leaned on the outside of the Rock and I done the same and we smoked and shared a bottle as the light left this world. She was telling me about some of the dumb things the boys done. I thought my laugh sounded too girlie.

  Bats come out the rocks and fluttered overhead like leaves in a storm. For a time she quit talking and we just watched. All that silence and I worried over my words. Nothing I thought to say sounded good enough.

  But soon the whiskey had me bolstered. “What about Jane? She always so smiley?”

  Annette made a farting sound with her lips, and passed me the bottle. “That woman. She done softened him for the worse. She’s the reason we’s here, sitting still, rotting like some puffed-up beaver.

  “Before her your brother rode fast and slept out and played music till dawn and come winter holed up in proper towns with plenty of drink. We was a crew of pure bandits. Done as we pleased. Now we dwell with straight folk who look on us like we’s savages. Don’t get me started on that woman.”

  “She’s sweet on him though,” I said.

  “They been together plenty long, you ask me. I’m waiting on your brother to come back to us. She’s just a stopping-over point for him. He got a soft spot for the motherly types. He used to take up with one like that each winter.”

  “He married this one.”

  “Yes, he did. But Jane ain’t cut out for this life. She just trying it on. She likes the way the story sounds, wife to an outlaw.”

  We passed the bottle.

  She asked me, “You just trying it on?”

  “I was born his sister,” I said.

  “That ain’t what I’m asking.”

  I looked at her, the first time our eyes met and lingered. Her face was dark and full of whole worlds. “I ain’t the storytelling type.”

  Her eyes went to the distant north. She was always looking north.

  “You ever consider leaving him?” I asked.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Back home or whatever?”

  She took back her bottle. “Where I come from sticking a side is your home. Your brother? He’s my side. He might get tamed by that woman but he’s still my partner.”

  She pulled up her shirt to reveal the bare skin. The light was just enough I could make out a ragged tear long as a forearm, years ago healed over but all crooked and warped and thick as leather. “My horse was shot out from under me on the run. Spined. I went headlong into the timbers. Got myself skewered out. I was three weeks on my back in a doc’s house. Lucky to come through it at all. Your brother stayed on with me. He paid the doc and he didn’t leave, even when I cursed him.”

  “My brother stayed with you?” I admit to thinking of him that night long ago when he’d left me with Pa bleeding on the floor. I swallowed more whiskey.

  “Ain’t many like that in this world. Your brother, he sticks his side. He’s the most home I ever knowed.”

  Annette had rode south from Canada. Her Blackfoot ma was half French and had passed early. Her pa was a buffalo hunter but he wasn’t nobody she ever met. She took to fending for herself at age eleven. By thirteen she took up a pistol and crossed the border. At fifteen she put the barrel to a stranger’s back and demanded his cash money. That particular stranger was my brother.

  “What was he like as a boy?” she asked. “I ain’t never had no big brother, but I bet he was a bully. Was he? Did he beat on you?”

  “He made sure I had half the quilt during the night. That was the kind of brother he was.”

  By now the whiskey had us soaked. We sat on the ground with our backs to the Rock. Annette was cross-legged and took off her hat and set it on a knee.

  I was wet enough to ask, “You don’t believe in what my brother believes, the Lord and all that, do you?”

  She put a new rollie to her lips and sparked it. The match went tumbling through the darkness and we could see its ember on the dry ground.

  “Oh, them’s just words.” She twirled her finger at the stars. “Men is all the time hiding behind words.”

  * * *

  —

  Next day at noon I had my first guard duty and took my brother’s Winchester up the trail to the rim. I was nearing the top and huffing with the climb when I heard some commotion ahead. The boys was there and they was laughing. Annette was with them. She was laughing too.

  The one they called Blister shouted, “Youn thinks he can outwrestle me. What do you think?”

  “I pin you in ground like girl,” Youn said.

  Blister laughed. He was a thick man with a neck that was all muscle and wider than his jaw. When he laughed, a vein rose across his forehead. “See? Wagers. Give ’em to Jeremiah.”

  Money was being counted out all around and Blister looked to me and said, “You in?”

  It was the first time I’d been included among them. Natural enough I dug out the last bills I had in my pocket. “Why they call you Blister?”

  Annette answered. “On account he shows up when the work’s done. I got a dollar says I can whup the winner.”

  I pinched my bills. “These here is on Annette.”

  A chant started and Youn and Blister took off their guns. Youn bent until his palms lay flat on the rock. Blister called him all sorts of names, mostly having to do with his people being short and slow of mind. The words was cruel but the game was in good fun. Youn stood and rolled his neck. “Your tongue run many miles. Wear you down.”

  Their fight was short. Blister started with a good leg sweep that caught us all by surprise and Youn hit the rock hard. Blister was upon him and shouting as he wrestled, “See? See? A Chinaman ain’t nothing special!”

  What Youn did next happened so fast some boys missed it. By a miracle of bending Youn hooked his heel around Blister’s neck. The bigger man smashed backward into the rock. Youn rose and embraced Blister in such a manner that the man’s knees was about his face. Blister fought but it was already too late. The pain was written upon him. He had no move and the fight was over that quick.

  The boys fell down with laughter. I was among them. To see bigmouthed Blister deflated so quick was high pleasure.

  Annette handed me her gun belt. She shed her coat and I took that too. She spat out her tobacco.

  Youn was collecting his money. “Chinaman win! See! Chinaman best.”

  Blister was rubbing out his shoulder.

  The one they called Carlos called, “These dollars is on Annette!”

  “Youn,” Annette called. “Put that money on this here fight.”

  Youn turned and studied her. He put his money in his pocket and said, “No fight girl.”

  “Bullshit,” Annette said. “You fighting me.”

  He shook his head. “Chinese no hit girl.”

  “You in America now.” Annette punched him in the nose.

  All of us gasped at the sight. The men started pushing at one another with the speed of it. A circle formed at once. Blister said, “Get her, Youn. Hit her back.”

  Youn wiped the blood from his nose. He spat more blood to the ground. “I no fight Boss.” He held his finger at me and said, “You fight her.”

  The boys erupted in cheers. Boys who had claimed to only hold a nickel in their pockets now pulled wads of cash from their boots and hats. Someone pushed me from behind. I s
tumbled into the center of the circle.

  Annette smiled. She cracked her knuckles. She rolled her neck. She had a few inches on me and every belief she would win.

  “How about we shoot?” I said. “I wager you can’t hit that . . .” I looked out over the sage for a target.

  “No lead,” Annette said. “I aim to beat you with my fists.”

  The boys started a chant.

  One of them barked, “Take off your clothes!”

  Annette kneed that man in the stones and everyone laughed at his expense. The chanting grew louder. “Fight, fight, fight.”

  She come to me and put her hand on my shoulder and her lips to my ear and she whispered, “To hell with these nimwits. I’ll hit you and you go down and we’ll split the winnings.”

  Something about her assumption that I would throw a fight so she might come out its victor convinced me. I shed my pistols. I shed my coat. I tossed my hat to Youn. I was ready to earn my place among them.

  Annette come at me and I ducked and hit her square in the belly. She buckled with the surprise of it and I could’ve hit her again but I was amazed at what I just done. I hadn’t thought of it, I had only witnessed it occurring. Maybe it was the drilling led by Drummond rising now like instinct.

  Annette was on a knee. She looked up at me and smiled. There wasn’t no anger between us, it was something else. I backed from her. I readied myself. I feared what she might deliver.

  She seized me in a grapple and dropped me to the rock. She climbed up my length and I knew then that Annette had won many a rumble with men bigger than me. She drove her forearm into my throat and kneed me and pummeled my abdomen. She was laughing as she done it.

  I got a hand free and drove it up under her ribs and she let me roll loose and stand up. But she was ready and her blow hit me square in the jaw and my head rung as if I had fired a pistol in a holehouse. She could’ve ended it right then. I was staggering and blurred and unsure of the season. Anyone could’ve called the fight.