Lonesome Animals

by Bruce Holbert

  “Cards to draw?” Elijah asked. Not a player took one.

  “Shit, oh dear,” the railroader said.

  The last raise had been Elijah’s and he started the betting again with two bills, both twenties. He tossed them toward the middle of the table. The players all watched them flutter, then go still. “One for me,” he said. “And one for Jesus Christ, who gave his life so that sinners may live.”

  The shovelface was short and at a loss.

  “I’ll put up the Model A,” he said finally.

  Elijah shook his head. “Money,” he told him.

  “I ain’t got it.”

  Elijah nodded at the silverspoon. “Ask your near-wife to help you out.”

  The silverspoon smiled. “Time was, you’d take blankets and beads.” He dug into his pocket and sorted for three more fives.

  “There was a time as well when Samson slew Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Then Delilah took his hair. But he learned and prayed to God and was permitted to pull the great house down upon all of them.”

  “He was just as dead,” the silverspoon said.

  “But so was everyone else.”

  The Irishman stared at Strawl. His face had warmed at the turning of each card, but now it had gathered back its gloom.

  “You ain’t bet all night, why you going all out now?”

  “I like my hand,” Strawl told him.

  “We all like our hands.”

  Strawl didn’t dispute him. Neither did the rest, and the Irish folded.

  The railroader followed without checking his wallet. Elijah offered them the bottle and the two sat swapping it.

  Strawl raised ten more.

  “Petey?” Elijah asked.

  “I told you. I ain’t got it.”

  “What about you, dog lover?”

  “My last is bet.”

  Elijah was grinning now. “It’s only me and you, it seems,” he said to Strawl.

  “Whoa now,” Pete said. “You can’t just shut us out.”

  “Yes,” Elijah said. “I can.”

  “You know my note’s good,” Hollingsworth told him.

  “I know you say it is,” Elijah told him. “But this man may not want to treat with you.”

  “It’s not square to keep Pete out of the game,” Hollingsworth said.

  “You exiled me like Moses himself.”

  “You earned it,” Pete said. “You wouldn’t argue that, would you?”

  “I would not. But that’s not the point.”

  “Well we ain’t ever had a stake go this high before.”

  “We may never again if we let you gamble with no folding money.”

  “I’m not asking to welch,” Pete said.

  “What are you requesting, then? The only person here who trusts you is Hollingsworth, and nobody trusts him.”

  “You name it,” Pete said. “You and him.”

  Elijah turned to Strawl. “Would it satisfy you to see this man eat some fresh horseshit?”

  Strawl said, “His partner has to settle up, too.”

  “Agreed?” Elijah asked.

  “That’s worth double,” Hollingsworth said.

  Strawl put in another ten, so did Elijah.

  Pete showed four kings. Powell sighed.

  Elijah shook his head. “All that money before me and bad fortune, too.” He threw his cards in the deck without even showing them.

  “Well?” Pete asked.

  Strawl turned his hand on the wood table.

  “Just a flush?” Pete whooped.

  The railroader said, “Pete. You better look closer.”

  The cards were out of order, and the moment it took for Pete to realize he’d been bested felt a little like what hitting him might have. Pete’s shovelface turned red. His mouth opened once but only sputtered.

  Elijah announced, “My horse is tied to the front rail. There’s oats in Woo’s stable.”

  Strawl gathered in the bills, sorting them by denomination, taking his time, but it was Elijah who put them in his pocket.

  They took the bottle outside of the tavern. Elijah returned with the feed, and they listened to the horse take it.

  “It shouldn’t be long,” Elijah said. “He is as regular as rent.” He lit a lantern from the tavern so he could see their faces. The flame flickered in the wind and their images shuddered. The Irish had kept the whiskey for himself. He was past drunk.

  “Should’ve hung him when we had the chance.” He shoved Strawl, though it was the Irish who ended up falling.

  “You only lost money,” Elijah told him.

  The Irish stared at Strawl from the ground. “I ain’t no fighter,” he said.

  “Then don’t behave like one,” Elijah told him.

  “I’d wager Petey could hold his own,” the railroader ventured. He lifted the Irish under the arms until he was standing upright. Neither was a threat except to themselves. The railroader was smart enough to see it, even if the Irish wasn’t.

  “I’ll take that bet,” Elijah said.

  The silverspoon smiled. “You put a lot of stock in an old man.”

  Elijah shook his head. “I just have no faith in Pete.”

  Strawl could see Pete pondering a reply, then, knowing the only response worthy was a blow, choosing to hold off until his odds improved. It was a kind of calculation Strawl despised. It implied he’d weaken.

  The silverspoon grinned though his partner was being provoked. It was an alliance shy of square, Strawl could see.

  They smoked for twenty minutes until the horse’s tail lifted and its bowels flopped shit to the ground. Steam rose with its stink. Elijah had brought a fork from the tavern, and he stabbed a round nugget and put it and the lantern to Pete’s face. To Strawl’s surprise, Pete immediately grabbed the fork and began chewing. The first bite he vomited, but the second went all the way down. The railroader handed him the whiskey.

  “Sweet Jesus, Petey.”

  Elijah patted his back. “He took to it like a badger to his hole.”

  Strawl nodded. Pete had taken his medicine without wailing.

  Elijah passed the lantern to Hollingsworth’s face. He held up the empty fork. “You want to pick for yourself or do you prefer being served?” Elijah asked.

  “Neither,” Hollingsworth said. “You were cheating, I say.”

  Elijah laughed. “Why am I not richer, then?”

  “You and him are in cahoots. I expect you’ll split the money later.”

  “Show us how I did this thing.”

  “You’re all the proof I need. We ran you out for bilking us before. What’s to convince us you’re changing your ways now?”

  Pete was staring at the fork. “I guess you’ll eat if I did,” he said. Partner or not, he didn’t want to have it said he ate shit alone. But Hollingsworth was a silverspoon and not accustomed to doing what didn’t please him. “You can swallow what you please, but I’m passing.”

  With that, he thumbed the lantern out and unbooted his knife. Elijah stepped back. He struck a match to the wick. The knife blade in Hollingsworth’s hand flickered like water in moonlight.

  Elijah’s voice was low; he held his hand palm up, like he was settling a colt. “Put the blade away,” he said.

  The silverspoon laughed. “You think I’m scared?”

  “I think you should be,” Elijah told him.

  The silverspoon passed the weapon from one hand to the other in front of him like it was too hot to hold. He was no knife handler, Strawl could see, and with the next toss, Strawl drove his shoulder and hip between Hollingsworth’s wrists and broke three ribs. He heard the blade hit the dirt, then delivered the silverspoon another blow and a kick that broke his shoulder. Hollingsworth crawled for the knife, still on the ground. Strawl ground his wrist like he was killing a snake until Hollingsworth was still except for his labored breaths.

  “He ain’t gonna be able to eat no horseshit now,” Petey groaned.

  “No,” Elijah told him. “But he would tr
ade a bellyful of shit for his bellyful of blood. You better find Doc Everett.”

  Pete nodded and Strawl didn’t doubt he would obey. He was inclined to follow orders, and Hollingsworth was too busted up to give them.

  “They’re going to arrest him,” Powell said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The law. Hollingsworth owns half the mountain. They won’t ignore him being broken up like old furniture.”

  Elijah laughed. “This old man is the law.”

  He and Strawl mounted and loped their horses over the road out. They passed the tree Elijah had hung from and proceeded into the dark of the night. The horses made good time once they hit the valley. After a mile Strawl drew rein and Elijah slowed Baal, his favorite horse, and turned her. Elijah emptied his pocket and handed the bills to Strawl.

  “He was right,” Elijah patted his mare. “Hollingsworth. I cheated him.”

  “How did the good hand come to me?” Strawl asked.

  “It was the only way I knew to do the trick,” Elijah said. “Besides, they would have put me back in the tree if I had dealt myself a straight flush.”

  Stick nickered. He enjoyed a good run and was impatient to have his head. Elijah gazed into the sky, which had grown clear and cold for late August.

  “You got a bunk?” Strawl asked.

  Elijah shook his head.

  “Well if it don’t rain, I got an idea where to sleep comfortably.”

  Strawl angled his horse west, back toward the divide. In the dark, the planted hills looked like what he recalled of the ocean. He saw Elijah pass and disappear into them. It was a strange sensation, like the country was too tame for a man mounted on a beast. Yet here he was, astride his own.

  eight

  The next morning, Elijah was gone, though his bedroll remained. Strawl filled his coffeepot from a canteen and waited for it to perk under the breakfast fire.

  Nine years ago, Strawl had witnessed a line of children in the trading post dressed in starched slacks and white shirts, a deacon minding the brood. An Indian woman buying beans recognized her son and called out a word. A boy, not more than three, turned and bolted, a great crucifix bouncing on his chest, afraid for the strapping the old words brought. It reminded Strawl of Pharaoh rounding up the two-year-olds.

  He encountered Elijah a month later, bent in half in front of the church, the priest beating him with a willow switch. The priest reared to strike the boy again, but Strawl bent from his horse and caught the man’s wrist with one hand and the boy with the other. He lifted the boy aboard the horse before either could protest. The boy said nothing, just stroked the sorrel’s neck in rhythm with its steps. His shirt hung out. The back of it stuck to the places he was bleeding. Strawl dragged from his cigarette, then tapped the ash into his hat brim. The boy snapped it from his fingers when Strawl replaced them on the reins. He lifted his other hand to defend his prize.

  “Yours,” Strawl said in the Nez Perce tongue.

  “You know these words.” The boy drew from the cigarette and exhaled through his nose expertly.

  “Just the mountain dialect,” Strawl replied.

  “How come?”

  “Because I never did business with the Clearwater side.”

  “How come you know this language?”

  “I used to hunt them.”

  In Nespelem, Strawl bought some hard candy and bag balm to soothe the boy’s wounds. The boy sucked the candy while Strawl doctored him. At Leeland McClune’s, Strawl examined the bull he’d come to see and its progeny in the barn. Satisfied, he arranged for a hired man to escort the animal across the river the week following. He paid McClune in cash and returned to the corral where he’d left the boy and the horse tied. Both were nowhere to be seen.

  Strawl borrowed McClune’s quarter horse and gave chase. The boy had left the road after a hundred yards for turned ground, making him easy to track, until he switched again for a meadow and the brush-choked draw after it. A bald ridge boxed the far end and Strawl made for it. He was waiting behind a tall rock, and when the boy passed on the game path coming out, Strawl grabbed the reins and halted the sorrel.

  “It’s clear to see how you come to the rod,” he told the boy.

  Strawl returned McClune’s horse and bore north and east for the Nez Perce plots with the boy. Smoke rose from a few clapboard shacks. Feared by the whites and resented by the Nespelems and San Poils, the Nez Perce staked tipis or constructed tin hovels on a few hundred-acre plots the Dawes Act provided them. Their cattle were often left untended and simply wandered off. The Nez Perce were not inclined to stitch their god’s flesh with fences or corrals.

  Strawl asked the boy for directions and Elijah guided him to a tipi protected by a tamarack stand. A woman of middling age emerged at the opening. Elijah grinned at her and slid from the horse.

  “You’ve raised a fine horse thief,” Strawl told her.

  She was in a gunnysack dress, but her hands were clean and her hair pulled back.

  “She like living here?”

  The boy shrugged. Strawl looked to the woman. “I have work,” he said. “Your boy here won’t have to face the priests and there’s plenty to eat.”

  He needed a hand with Dot and the cooking, and she and the boy seemed hard put.

  “What do you say?’ he asked.

  She nodded, finally. He sent a buckboard wagon for them the next morning.

  The boy couldn’t even keep to a name. At birth, he was named Elaskolatat, which meant Animal Running into the Ground in Sahaptin, a cousin to the consonant-rich Salish dialects that seem as many as the trees to those without the tongue to speak them.

  Animal Running into the Ground’s mother had been his father’s youngest wife, and when he had expired in the 1918 influenza outbreak, Animal Running into the Ground had been too young by years for the night of steam and smoke and fasting when the appropriate spirits would have visited his sleep and he would have dreamt his adult name, and that slumber turned impossible for him as he witnessed the incense and Latin incantations and clacking rosaries of his father’s Catholic funeral.

  At four years, Animal Running into the Ground joined the buckboard wagon loaded with stoic children headed for the church and school. Early on, he did not resist the lessons, especially in language. He understood the power its speakers possessed and was impressed that words could have such might. He was, in fact, deluded in regards to their value, a fiction under which he would labor all his days.

  He read voraciously the only text available at his home or the church, the Catholic Bible. He knew it chapter and verse by age eight and grew to believe in the Hebrew God. Animal Running into the Ground was no seer yet, but, in the images that filled his thoughts, he recognized his own face rising. Like taming his reflection in a pond, the harder he looked into the words, the stiller he became, until he felt steadied and right. Then some thought he could not name roughed the picture like a wind or duck landing on the watery mirror of his thoughts, stirring and distorting his likeness.

  He devoured his Bible like a fly does his meal, consuming a passage, then vomiting its ideas, then feasting upon his own regurgitation. He stole a Catholic Apocrypha and a copy of the Gnostic Thomas from the priest’s library and consumed them likewise. For five months he studied, and when he rose from the books like Rip Van Winkle from twenty years of sleep, the things around him were no longer what they had been, and he insisted upon a new name to fit such a passage. From that moment on, he answered only to Elijah.

  His first prophecy was simple enough: a storm. The following day, the church thermometer read a hundred degrees and the air refused even the highest of clouds. Elijah seriously reconsidered both his name and his calling until two days later when thunderheads stacked against the northern horizon and, an hour before dusk, lightning cracked and thunder spooked the herds and a fifty-mile-per-hour wind blew the roofs from several barns and houses and then the clouds collapsed and soaked the whole of the reservation in a gulley washer. It was patienc
e he lacked, and he determined to put no calendar to his divinations. He would announce each season’s approach to his mother, and within a few weeks autumn’s first freeze would cover the country, and two months after an inch of snow, and, four months following that, buttercups on the bloom. He was chastised by the priest, who told him even the ignorant could foresee the seasons, given three weeks’ leeway. However, Elijah knew even then that augury’s truths lie less in the specifics than in the audacity necessary for utterance. The point wasn’t that the messiah appeared on a Wednesday or Thursday, Elijah replied to the priest, it was that he arrived, and those who foretold of him were proved wise and those who doubted were proved ignorant and faithless. The priest slapped him for insolence, and the boys behind him snickered, for Elijah had predicted just such a response to them only ten minutes before.

  Ida sewed moccasin beads and laundered the neighbors’ clothes for scraps of meat and flour. She fed the boy and herself pan bread and berries and salmon dried on the racks next to the river’s cataracts. Fall, Animal Running into the Ground trapped quail and sage hens with willow snares, and Ida turned them on a spit each evening, frying canned greens in a skillet she set on a flat rock in the fire ring’s center. Each winter a neighbor would kill an elk or deer or yearling bear and leave it outside their door and Ida and Animal Running into the Ground would butcher it and set the flesh upon a crosshatch of green branches, then cover the greasy meat in rock salt and let it smoke.

  Her emotions Strawl had only been able to guess at; though he married her six months later, she remained but a mirror for his own desires, anticipating what he required and delivering it before he recognized a lack. Even giving her body had nothing to do with herself. He had glanced into her face when they were locked together and recognized in her flat features and dark irises only the husk of a woman waiting for each event in her life to occur and pass so she could be shed of it.

  But she had returned life to the house. Though Dot resented the intrusion at first, Ida learned her favorite foods and teased her with such outlandish tales of Magpie and Fox that Dot soon felt compelled to argue. Though Dot was more partial to science than religion, Elijah would study nothing else, so she debated chapter and verse with him until they both spoke the king’s English better than a pair of minister’s children.