Whiskey When We're Dry

by John Larison

  “How do you know it’s a her?”

  “I have dreams, and in them I have a girl.” Her eyes filled. “I do wish to be wrong. A mulatto and a girl? The world is cold enough.”

  Annette was gone and I would never see her again and yet how lucky we had been for those few moments when we fit. I wiped my eyes dry. “What is it like to feel life inside you?”

  Constance put her hand to my shoulder. “Jess. I know what it means to lose the one you’ve counted with your future. I know how it feels to have the future stripped from you.”

  I looked to the paints on the walls of the Rock. I looked at the handprints of ancient men.

  “One time,” she began with lightness in her voice, “Will and I snuck out into the sage by nightfall. We were kids and we climbed onto the hill just high enough that we were above the roof of Father’s house. There we sat and ate the slices of cake Will had fingered from the kitchen. I kissed him that night. After the cake. The icing was on my tongue and it was still upon his lips and I leaned across the divide between us and licked the sugar from his face. We were twelve or thirteen, so we didn’t know what kissing leads to and it went no further. But I remember how the moon bounced from his eyes after, how it bounced from him onto me and how easy it was to believe. The Lord had united us. The Lord intended us together. How could it be any other way? I still feel as much now. Cling to your certainty. Cherish it. No one can take her from you now.”

  Constance looked to Noah’s house. “We are with child together, Jane and I. What else can the Lord mean but that we should stay together? How are we to live in this world if not by our faith in the omens He sends to us?

  “There was a time, those first days here in fact, when I believed my faith to be lost. How could the Lord allow Will’s death? How could he intend for me to bring up our child without him? I know, Jess, how easy it is to doubt. But He must be watching. He must. We share a cold world, Jess, and yet as long as heat exists, how can we not trust its source?”

  * * *

  —

  By day the boys grew rowdy. Mason got his hands on a cube of dynamite and he rode it out a quarter mile and tied it in the top of some bitterbrush. From the rim we could see only the faintest red speck. The boys laid down their monies and took turns firing on it. I watched and admired how a target could so direct their spirits.

  It was sometime before a bullet found its mark. Pure chance. But there was disagreement about the particulars and soon Jeremiah and I was pulling two of the boys apart. Lips was bloody and a shoulder come out of joint. Charles was sent for to mend the shoulder.

  Jeremiah offered me a plug. We stood eyeing the crew as they watched Charles rotate the arm. Jeremiah muttered, “These boys need something to do.”

  “These boys need their boss.”

  We shared a glance. He spat.

  * * *

  —

  Some days after her death the boys had a card game going. We lingered in the sun near the pole barn. The winter wasn’t that far off now and the boys was arguing. The topic turned to my brother.

  “Harney without a woman would still have his arm.”

  “He was distracted.”

  “Can’t have a woman in this business.”

  “Now that I can agree with.”

  “I bet you something.” Mason nodded toward Noah’s house. “That queen of his is making the decisions.”

  “Wouldn’t touch that bet,” Carlos said to his cards. “She is the only reason we ain’t left yet.”

  “Shut up, all of you,” I said.

  There had been talk among the boys for some days about the fact that I was there with Noah and Annette in the hailstorm of lead and yet I had not been touched. When I started across the meadow the boys ditched their cards to follow me.

  Jane saw the mess of us coming and met us at the door. She pulled the wood shut behind her so we couldn’t see inside. “Pleasant day, isn’t it?” She wore that big smile of hers. Her belly bulged. It was the first I noticed the outward show of child. “How can I be of assistance?”

  I said, “Let me see him.”

  “He’s sleeping,” Jane said.

  The door pulled open. Noah stood there without a hat on. He was hard withered, sunken eyes and dry-flaked skin. His arm wore a fresh bandage. Even so blood stained the wrapping. “Morning, boys,” he said with gravel in his voice.

  “Come tell us what you want,” I said.

  Noah found his hat on its peg and put it on. He stepped into the daylight and Jane put her hand to his shoulder. He said to her, “Give us a moment, would you, dear?”

  “Of course.” She stepped inside but left the door open.

  With his left hand Noah took a pouch from his pocket and handed it to me. “Roll me one. I ain’t yet mastered the left-handed spin.”

  “Patrón, how long you reckon we gonna be here?” Mason asked. “We really sticking it out for the whole winter?”

  “What’s to stop Dizzy from leading the militia here?” I asked.

  Noah took the cigarette I offered and pulled a long drag. I was waiting on him to lead his boys. But he only looked on his stub. “Ugly, ain’t it?”

  “Si, Patrón,” said Carlos. “It’s ugly.”

  “Dizzy,” I said. “We got to hunt him up. He knows where we hide. That reward is his for the knowledge.”

  Noah looked up from his arm. He drew on his cigarette. All the boys watched him.

  “Either that or we should move on,” I said. “You got this figured, so tell us.”

  When my brother could’ve led us with any word at all, he only smoked. He had called that arm an implement of divine will, and now the Lord had taken it back.

  “Harney?” Mason belted.

  Noah spat a flake of tobacco.

  I turned to face the Wild Bunch. “All right, boys. We break into two teams. One finds Dizzy before he turns us over and the other stays here in defense. I ride with whichever team is on the hunt. Sound right, Patrón?”

  I ain’t sure my brother was listening. But now he gave a little shrug and nodded.

  The boys pushed at one another and at once was jockeying for who would ride out first. It was Jeremiah who didn’t move. His eyes remained on Noah. “What do you think?”

  My brother said, “It’s a good idea.”

  “Go draw cards for the teams,” I said. “Patrón and me will talk the particulars.”

  The boys done as I say. Jeremiah was the last to go. We was sharing a look.

  Now I took hold of my brother’s shoulder to gain his mind. His eyes passed over my face and then to the rim.

  “You got to return to us, brother. These boys is counting on you. I’m counting on you.”

  “All the lead that has come at me, and I ain’t never been hit. And then the bullet that does connect takes my right arm. What do you make of that?”

  “It don’t change the fact all these lives is counting on you. We’s here because of you.”

  He smoked the last drag of his cigarette and dropped it and toed it out. “The boys listen to you.”

  “I think we should leave. I want to say that. I believe it is foolish to remain here. They may already be marching toward us.”

  Noah nodded toward the Rock’s walls. He looked into the Indian paint upon them. “The snows ain’t far off now.”

  “What you saying?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You got to know.”

  “Jess, what do you want from me? I lost her too.”

  I coughed at what rose in my throat. “What about getting Jane and Constance closer to a midwife? What about getting all these children out of harm’s way?”

  “I just don’t know, Jess. Okay? I don’t. I mean, how could He let this happen?”

  * * *

  —

  We passed the
last warm days of autumn on the hunt. We traveled by forest to likely crossroads and set up ambushes. I carried Annette with me and set her on the Rock beside the shells I lined up in case they was needed. I wanted to rain lead down upon Dizzy from the silence of the forest. I wanted to punch lead through his guts and watch him flail. I wanted to bring him on a pole back to the Rock and teach him what he’d done to her. My mind was consumed with sour visions.

  In time we come to feel ourselves alone in that wilderness. The silence got the boys’ spirits down. We could feel the long winter bearing in on us, and the stillness it would bring. We all knew the hardships awaiting us in that Rock. The boys would’ve been wet all day had I allowed bottles on the hunt.

  On the last day warm enough to draw sweat, they was arguing among themselves anytime we dismounted. Petty matters. I ordered them apart. I ordered them to take up firing positions and not to speak.

  I had just put in a fresh plug when I heard Carlos clicking for my attention. I turned and saw that something was coming down the road. Whatever it was, was big, brown, and moving without a sound. It hadn’t broke a stick or rolled a rock. The boys readied their rifles.

  The great bear took his time. He stopped beside an old broken pine and commenced tearing at the wood. Chunks busted free and the bear dug at the rotten wood inside. He licked the grubs from the chips. He sat on his haunches and ripped out more. He was through too many limbs for a clean shot and we was downwind and so not a finger among them rushed. Annette had taught them well.

  I might’ve stood and scared the bear off. I might’ve saved his old life. But I only watched. Annette was beside me and a grueling winter was before me and my brother wasn’t the man I believed and nothing at all was mine.

  He finally rose and continued down the trail and when he crossed our agreed-upon marker, we opened up on him. The great bear spun and roared and charged across the stream and up the far slope. The boys fired on him as he ran and continued firing for some moments after he disappeared. Some leapt to their horses and charged after the animal. A bear is much faster up a hill than a horse but our bear was hard hit. Jeremiah fired the finishing shot from his saddle. The bear roared one final time and then come crashing back down the slope. He rolled to rest in the water.

  * * *

  —

  We drug the bear behind us all the miles back to the Rock and there hung it from the pole barn by its neck. From the long drag the hair had been scraped on one half of the bear’s body and the other side was caked in dust and grit. Mason cut the hide at the neck and then the boys took hold and pulled while he worked his blade. They joshed like old times, as if Annette and Blister was still among us, as if the crew was whole.

  When the pelt come free there hung the strongest-looking man any of us ever seen. The boys quit talking. They stared. His legs was bear-short and his arms bear-long, but his muscles was thicker than even Mason’s and in all the same places. The bear twisted in the breeze, naked.

  * * *

  —

  The fat was cut clean from the muscle and put to render and the meat was cut in great chunks and then diced and diced again. This was packed into meal-sized balls that would freeze down overnight. The bullets had soured sections of the meat and these had to be cut free. The bullets was dropped in a tin pail beside the table and each one landed with a plink.

  I bent to that pail and lifted one of them pellets. The lead was bent and flattened and contained in its crevices fat and blood and even a single barb of fur. What remained weighed hardly nothing. It had been driven through hide and flesh and muscle and bone and brought a bear to its knees, and now I held it in my hand, this piece of lead no bigger than my pinkie nail.

  So minor a metal had reduced her to an ashen corpse.

  * * *

  —

  Folks always think they know what happened next. I ain’t seen the history books for my own self but people tell me what they read. I don’t like to hear it, and not on account those books missed some facts. I avoid it because they missed the why. It’s all yarn without the why.

  * * *

  —

  We didn’t go looking for Dizzy no more, he come to us. Behind him was the Governor’s militia and a detachment of the U.S. Cavalry, being guided now to the very place that had eluded them so long.

  They was years from any battle worth fighting and drier than dust and sure of only one thing. We was outside the boundaries of soul, outside the protections of God, and no scales would detect crime in our slaughter. They rode with a freedom so potent it could sour a nation.

  * * *

  —

  The watchman’s alarm sounded before dawn, before the force had cleared the pines. I was already up and dressed as had become my sober pattern and so I was among the first to the rim. It was Carlos who sounded the alarm. He said he had seen a flash on the edge of the plateau, a match to a cigarette, he thought.

  The horizon was a crisp line separating realms. The morning star was fading. For a time we stood and watched and wondered if Carlos had it wrong. But then come the rumble of a storm and we knew at once it was not thunder. They come out of the gray dawn to deliver our death.

  The boys took to the mortared walls and firing ports. Carlos was blowing his whistle in the code of imminent attack, and from below we heard the shouting of men and women alike. There come the crying of an infant. The pounding of hooves ever louder.

  When the horses was inside a mile I got the match sparked and the fuse traced across the red rock toward the canyon mouth. I hollered a warning to the others and then knelt and covered my ears. The dynamite blew and the Rock shook and there come the cataclysm of boulders cascading to earth. The canyon mouth was now blocked by columns of red rock, pebbles and dust still sloughing free.

  There come the sounds of doves ripping by overhead but it was in fact bullets. Lead struck stones and wheezed off into nothing. Lead-painted boulders. Hot shards struck my cheek and drew blood. Lead passed so close I could smell its molten vapors, and I saw Pa again but for a flash as he poured balls before the evening fire. So many hours breathing the fumes of lead. Lead fizzed about us. Lead whispering its death song. Lead, and at its launch, a gray ribbon of smoke. My whole life has been governed by this goddamn metal.

  * * *

  —

  Their charge would’ve cut right through us if not for the Rock. But with it, they was like a storm to oak panel. We fired on them as they neared. We fired on them as they banked from their planned entrance. We fired on them as they continued their charge in a full circle around our Rock and then back out the way they come.

  The mess of them, horse and men, collected together again outside rifle range, minus the wounded and dying who now lay upon the sage. The boys continued to lob bullets.

  “Save your lead!” I barked. “They seek to empty our reserves.”

  “They watch us,” Noah hollered. He had been slow to reach the rim but now he knelt among us. He poked his head over the rock then ducked back. Lead hit nearby and I felt foolish for not seeking cover. All the boys who had been standing now knelt behind cover.

  “Do as Jess says, boys,” Noah shouted. “They’s counting our guns.”

  The fighters churned there in the sage, confused no doubt by the lack of access, and then they dismounted. They was a mile out and too far for even the Sharps and they knew it.

  Noah took the brass scope from his pocket. He flicked it open and brought it to his eye. The wind was in our face. He clung to the edge of the rock to shield as much of his person as possible.

  “I count six dying horses and two dead men,” someone said.

  “One of them men is mine,” said Mason. “First blood.”

  “Count it.” Carlos nodded. “I saw the hit.”

  Noah was having trouble steadying the scope with one hand. He cursed. “This thing is hopeless.”

  I took the scope from hi
m and stood from this ridiculous edge of rock and held it to my own eye with two hands. I counted the living as best I could with all the moving in their ranks. “I got one twenty-two,” I said. “That’s horses, not men.”

  I will admit I took a moment longer looking for Greenie’s red hair. I didn’t see it. But I did spy a small man with a sword and figured him to be the major.

  Noah took back the scope. He handed me his tobacco pouch. “Roll me one.” Now he sat cross-legged with an empty sleeve in his lap.

  I rolled him one. Then I rolled another for myself. I sparked a match and covered it to mine first and then his. We looked off into the distance as the sun rose behind us and threw our black shadow out over the enemy and the sage beyond.

  That’s when I noticed the calm settling about me, in my breathing, in my hands. It was peace, no other word for it. To have the enemy there, in one known place—there was a queer comfort in it.

  “Is they coming or not?” Carlos hollered.

  “Try us again!” Mason shouted as loud as he could. “Grow some stones and charge! I wanna get me a few dozen more.”

  “What do you want us to do?” I asked my brother.

  He didn’t answer. I don’t believe he heard the question. The rollie in his fingers trembled.

  * * *

  —

  The fighting juice faded from the boys with the hours and they got to complaining of being hungry, of being bored, of fighting an enemy too yellow to charge.

  Still Noah sat behind the lip of rock. “Somebody go down and get us some grub. This here is a siege. Might as well get ourselves fed.”

  Nobody moved. Nobody wanted to miss the moment the action started. So I picked out two boys and sent them down.