Rueful Regret

by Steve Vernon

  “It’s just a damn weed,” Bass said. “There’s no sense crying over it.”

  “And she was just a damn girl,” Grimes said right back. “Do you want to eat some more dirt?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I didn’t figure you did,” Grimes said. “Now get back to your digging like I told you to. The parade is coming and we want the hole ready to be filled.”

  Grimes pointed down toward the town where two heavily loaded wagons and a small file of ambitious pedestrians were trudging determinedly uphill towards them.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me,” Grimes went on. “I need to go and slip into something just a little more funereal.”

  So saying, Grimes dropped the pick in the dirt and walked away from the grave, leaving Bass leaning there on his shovel. It would have been easy to swing that shovel across the back of Grimes head – only some small voice buried in the back of Bass’s brain whispered that it might not be as easy as it looked.

  The last thing that Bass needed was for Grimes to whirl around and shoot another hole in him.

  “Best get to digging,” Grimes called back over his shoulder – as if he could read Bass’s mind.

  Bass dug down determinedly, deepening the hole that he stood in as the funeral procession drew steadily closer.

  Chapter 6 – Open Your Hymn Books, Please

  Two rattling buckboard wagons rolled up through the broken wooden gates of Toes-Up Rising.

  One of the wagons carried Newt Gallagher’s pine box while the other carried the carcass of the freshly barbecued pig and a keg of lukewarm beer. Quite a few of the town folk walked behind respectfully but more than a few rode in on Newt’s wagon. The pine box he was parked in was just the right size and shape to squat a set or two of tired haunches upon and more than a few folks took advantage of that happy circumstance of dimensions.

  It was Willy Jake himself who drove the beer and barbecue wagon.

  “I’m not about to trust anyone else to ride along,” Willy Jake told anyone who would listen. “They want a swallow of beer or chew of pig they’ve got to pay me first.”

  It might have had something to do with that beer and that pig – but there was a surprising turnout for Newt’s funeral, given that nobody really liked him all that very much. Bass figured that folks were just looking for some sort of a change to their day-to-day routine. It was a big old day for the town – a pig barbecue AND a burying all in the same occasion. Still, there were a lot of nice things said about Newt in between the digging, the burying, the beer-drinking and the pig-out.

  “He always paid his beer bill, nearly on time,” Willy Jake said.

  “He never peed on the jailhouse floor,” Sheriff Partridge added.

  “He didn’t snore that loudly.”

  Bass looked around to see just who had said that last comment.

  It was Sally Jezebel, standing there by the graveside directly behind Bass, looking as if she had only spoken up by accident.

  “Ma’m,” Bass said. “I am pleased to meet you. My name is Bass Clayton.”

  He hadn’t actually meant to speak up either. The words of introduction had just sort of fallen out of his mouth unbidden.

  “I know you,” Sally said. “You’re the drunk.”

  Bass just smiled.

  He never minded the truth. Besides, Sally did know him. He visited her nearly every night after she turned her last customer out. He wasn’t sure what he was doing with her. He just liked her company was all. Every morning, before most folks awoke, he would sneak out of her tent.

  In public – just like now - they always let on like the two of them were total strangers.

  “And I know you,” Bass replied. “You’re the local whore.”

  “I guess that’s what some people might call me,” Sally admitted.

  “Well that’s what you are, isn’t it?”

  “What you are isn’t always exactly just what you are, mostly,” Sally said. “Sometimes things on the surface are nothing more than itch on a scratch.”

  That didn’t make much sense at all to Bass but he did not see much sense in spoiling her mood by contradicting her. Instead he turned and made out like he was listening to the preacher talking from his book of dead names. The words written down in the book sounded pretty enough considering that they had been wrote down by a bunch of fellows who had wound up nailed on crosses, hung, burned and worse.

  “Yes sir,” Bass said, half to himself and the other half to Sally. “The surest way to get folks talking nice about you is to go and get yourself killed somehow.”

  “Unless they want something from you,” Sally added. “Folks will talk awfully nice if they think they are going to actually get something out of it.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Bass admitted.

  He wondered to himself – for about the thirty-eighth time that minute - just what exactly Grimes was looking for.

  Bass saw Grimes standing just a little way off from the funeral, just behind a tombstone that marked the burial place of a judge who had rendered one too many sour verdicts. Grimes was looking rather dapper in a brushed velvet frock coat with one sleeve neatly pinned back and a thin black string tie that was knotted so neatly the precision would have shamed a draftsman.

  Bass guessed that Grimes had changed into the suit back up in his wagon.

  He wondered briefly just how Grimes had managed to tie so very neat a knot with only one arm.

  Personally, Bass thought that the suit was just a little too ostentatious for these circumstances. Of course he hadn’t bought himself a new shirt – much less a new suit – since he had first ridden into Rueful Regret.

  Drunks just don’t do dapper very well.

  “Who’s the fancy dresser?” Sally asked.

  “Just a fellow whose arm I shot off,” Bass replied.

  “So you two are close, I guess.”

  “Blood brothers,” Bass said.

  Sally just nodded.

  “Have you come to pay your respects?” Bass politely asked Sally. “Or did you just come for the pig?”

  “Both seemed like the right thing to do.”

  Bass eyeballed her discretely. She was a pretty little thing, standing here in the graveyard sunshine. Maybe worn just a little gaunt from the whoring and all – but pretty enough just the same.

  “Grimes and I dug the grave,” he allowed. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “So you’re the one who shot him?”

  “Not me,” Bass said. “That was Grimes. I’m just the fellow who shot the pig he rode in on.”

  She looked at him with those wise alley cat eyes of hers.

  He wasn’t fooling her one little bit but she would let him go on thinking that maybe he had – just long enough to keep him in a comfortable state of doubt and mistrust. He knew it and she knew it and life went on calmly.

  “I see that Grimes showed up,” Bass said, again glancing up to where Grimes stood alone on the hill. “I’m a little surprised that he even bothered. I wondered why he doesn’t come a little bit closer?”

  Sally shrugged.

  “I suppose he might be taking advantage of what ever cover he can find up there. It might be that he’s actually worried about any disgruntled relatives that old Newt might have possessed.”

  It seemed a sensible enough answer but privately Bass kind of suspected that Grimes might just be taking advantage of the sturdy old tombstone to have himself a good and comfortable surreptitious lean.

  “Did Newt actually have any disgruntled relatives?” Bass wondered aloud. “I would hate to think about any of them riding up on me while I was looking in the other direction.”

  “I can’t say that I’ve heard of any Gallagher kinfolk hereabouts – gruntled or otherwise,” Sally said.

  The two of them stood politely as the local choir brutalized a hymn. The hymn in question sounded just a little like “That Old Rugged Cross” but some of the choir folks sounded as if they might have actually been
singing in tongues. Bass hummed along with them – not sure of the words himself.

  “You’re leaning just a little off-key there,” Sally pointed out, referring to his singing.

  “Off key nothing,” Bass allowed, thinking that she was meaning something else other than the hymn. “I can’t even hit the lock these days – much less key it. No ma’m – drink and despair have rusted my key-turning abilities down to nothing more than a determined droop.”

  Sally smiled, catching his sideways drift.

  “You haven’t even tried that much lately,” Sally said. “I still keep my tent door open, you know?”

  He looked at her, standing there.

  He slept beside her most nights but in all that time he had never tried anything. Even when it was her idea in the first place – which it usually was.

  “I guess I don’t know you hardly at all,” he said. “Which is strange, given that I sleep with you most every night. Might be my vision has been growing poorly. How long have you been eyeing me like this?”

  They were both talking around the subject matter just as evasively as they could manage. Neither of them cared to use that four letter word L-O-V-E.

  “Long enough to be certain,” Sally allowed.

  “How come you never told me?”

  “It might be I did,” Sally said. “It might be you were just too drunk to notice me telling you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, figuring that it was a fine time to change the subject. “So what are you REALLY doing up here anyways, Sally?”

  There was nothing like putting someone on the spot to derail a conversation.

  Sally just shrugged in reply.

  “The truth of it is I kind of feel responsible for Newt’s death,” she said.

  “Did you put him on that pig?”

  Sally couldn’t say that she had.

  “Did you put that pistol in his hand?”

  No to that too.

  “Then you ain’t responsible,” Bass decided. “The best advice my daddy ever gave me was to learn to travel light. Do not hang onto any unnecessary guilt or misdoubt. If you have any trouble following that particular bit of advice – well, I recommend drinking. It beats the hell out of guiltying any fine day you care to mention.”

  Sally smiled softly.

  “So,” she asked. “Do you follow that advice much?”

  “I lead with it every chance that I get,” Bass replied.

  “It’s good advice,” Sally said. “Why don’t you drop by my tent tonight and show me just how to follow it? I’ll even buy the bottle.”

  “Free whiskey sounds like a fine idea,” Bass said.

  “I thought that you would think so,” Sally said.

  “You’re not just planning on getting me drunk and taking advantage of me, are you?”

  “Might be,” Sally allowed.

  “Buy two bottles, then,” he said. “I do my most serious sort of drinking late at night.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said. “You know where my tent is at, don’t you?”

  “I do,” he said. “You sure I won’t be getting in the way of business?”

  “I’m taking the night off,” she said. “I’ll hang the bloomers at half-mast in honor of Newt’s untimely passing.”

  Bass actually did not think that Newt’s passing was all that untimely, given that the man had been busy pointing a pistol in Bass’s direction at the time of his dying.

  Still and all he smiled politely at what she’d said.

  Diplomacy will get you far in this life.

  “I’ll warrant there is going to be a lot of awfully funny walking fellows in the saloon tonight if you half-mast those bloomers and close up shop.”

  “Are you arguing?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, they’ll live, I suspect,” she went on. “Funny walk or not.”

  “If you call that living,” Bass added.

  By now the preacher was done his talking and the choir had finished pummeling their last hymn into submission and the pallbearers slid Newt’s coffin down into the grave hole.

  There wasn’t much more ceremony than that.

  “Enough praying,” Sheriff Joe Partridge gave his own practical benediction. “Let’s get to that pig.”

  Bass wanted some of that pig too – but he couldn’t take his eyes off of Sally as she walked back to her buggy.

  “Would you mind very much if I walked you back home?” Bass called out to her, suffering from an unexpected burst of courtesy.

  “I would, actually,” Sally said. “A whore gets little enough time to herself. I prefer to keep my days in privacy, thank you. But I will be waiting for you tonight with two full whiskey bottles.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” he said.

  “Besides,” she pointed out. “Don’t you have to stay and cover that hole back up?”

  “That’s a fact,” he said. “I will see you later, then.”

  Bass watched her walk away.

  She had a pretty good walk that bore watching – whiskey or not.

  “Sally?” he called out, one last time.

  She turned and looked at him.

  “Newt’s last words were of you,” Bass allowed, although he hoped that she didn’t think to ask him just what exactly those words happened to be. Goddamn you Jezebel just did not seem to qualify anywhere close to be tearful or fond.

  “That is kind of you to say,” she called back. “I thank you for it.”

  And then she looked at him.

  “I guess I don’t know you very well, either,” she said.

  She might have said something else as well – but her words were caught and stolen by the thieving wind.

  And then she was gone.

  “Are you fixing on murdering her too?” Grimes asked. He had snuck up on Bass for the second time in a row, damn it.

  Bass guessed that Grimes was pretty good at sneaking. He had barely managed to hang onto his dignity and stop himself from dirtying his britches out of pure unexpected startlement.

  “I killed that other girl,” Bass corrected. “I did not murder her. There is a difference.”

  “Why don’t you explain that to me while you are walking me home?” Grimes asked. “I overheard you offering to walk Sally home.”

  “You’re not half as pretty as Sally,” Bass allowed.

  “I’m not half bad, though,” Grimes said. “Come on. We two REALLY need to talk.”

  “I thought that is what we were doing,” Bass said. “What the hell were you up to way up there behind that gravestone?”

  “I was pissing,” Grimes explained. “The act of pissing is an awkward and time-consuming procedure for a fellow with only one hand to aim and squeeze. I figured I would stay up there out of sight while I paid my respects and eased my bladder.”

  “Good thing,” Bass said. “The sight of your pizzler would most likely start the women to laughing and the men to sympathizing – neither of which is particularly decent at a burial.”

  “But pissing is?”

  “It keeps the grave grass growing nice and green, don’t it?” Bass said.

  Grimes smiled for a bare half of a second.

  “So are you coming along?” he asked.

  “That depends,” Bass said. “Where exactly do you live?”

  “Not far,” Grimes said, pointing up towards the ruin of the burned down chapel. “Just up yonder beyond the ashes, close to the dirt.”

  “Do you ever say anything straight out?” Bass asked.

  “Not so as I can help it.”

  “I figured,” Bass said. “We ought to bury up this grave first. Settle with the sheriff like he asked us to. The last thing we need is to have that old buzzard breathing down our back holes.”

  “Might get some of that pig, too,” Grimes said.

  Which is just what they did.

  Chapter 7 – The Sacred Art of Farting Around

  There had indeed once been a chapel built upon Toes-Up Risin
g, but that was a long time before the town of Rueful Regret was ever dreamed up – back in the days when white men were rarer than dancing pigs and the wind blew just a little bit cleaner.

  In fact there had once been a medicine lodge built at that very spot – a place where the holy men of the Karankawa Indians would sit and gather and talk about holy things.

  Mostly they would just sit and fart around because nobody had ever bothered to explain to them the difference between sacred meditation and the fine art of farting around. The truth was the warriors of the tribe were far too busy farting around themselves to bother mingling their own fecal fragrance with the far too pungent aroma of the holy men.

  After a time the holy men died off.

  The fact was they had farted far more often than they had fucked.

  Soon only one old holy name by the name of Medicine Ass remained to sit in the sacred shaking tent – which mostly shook in the fear of another sacred fart. He was called Medicine Ass because he had to use a sacred soothing ointment upon his not-so-sacred bottom hole.

  Medicine Ass took up with a wandering Jesuit monk by the name of Father Lamar who had been defrocked for wiping his bottom upon a page of the Holy Bible – which he had used only because the almanac had run dry – and the two kindred spirits had built themselves a mission together.

  Well, actually it was more of an adobe shanty that had originally started out as nothing more than a wannabe-privy with delusions of ambition – but the Jesuit had carved a cross upon the adobe and he had called it a mission – which was a good enough name for it as far as Medicine Ass was concerned. The two of them sat together in their mission shanty and had farted around for three more years – just mostly shooting the sacred shit before an argument over the frying of eggs had broken out between the two of them and Medicine Ass had opened the Jesuit’s throat with his knife.

  Which ended that.

  Medicine Ass was more than a little surprised when blood the very same color of his own had spilled from out of the Jesuit’s freshly-opened throat. Medicine Ass had been certain that the wound would have bled out a horde of pale white smoky butterflies – the man had been so full of hot air and the flutter of angel wings.