Incident at Twenty-Mile Page 14

  He smiled a slack, inane smile and returned to his sweeping. After she brushed past him and padded back upstairs with her bottle, his embarrassment turned to bitterness. For crying out loud, he'd only said what he said for her own good! To shake off his feelings of unjust rejection, he applied himself energetically to his push broom, raising clouds of churning dust that first discovered, then defined, a shaft of morning sunlight that had climbed high enough to come in over the bat-winged bar door.

  Lodgepole Creek Gully

  EVENING WAS CLOSING IN when the prospector tied his riding mule and his two coffee-colored pack mules to scrub pine and started his cooking fire with pine cones and sticks of windfall. He had snared two nice fat jack-rabbits, and he meant to have one for his supper.

  A susurrous scurry of sliding scree drew his attention to three men climbing up the slope toward him. Well now! It had been a donkey's age since he'd had a good chin wag. By the time he'd added more windfall to the fire and blown on the ash-scabbed pine cones to get his coffee pot boiling, the men were closer. He answered their call with a cheerful wave of his hand. By God, he'd roast both jackrabbits! Have a little celebration. These flatlanders probably never ate jackrabbit in their lives. It'd be a treat for them. He could tell they were flatlanders from the elegant clothes of the one in front: that leather doohicky for a tie, and that fancy green-and-gold waistcoat.

  LIKE EVERY SATURDAY, THE noonday meal with the Kanes was bigger than usual because Mr. Kane and Ruth Lillian would only have time for a quick sandwich that evening. Matthew was expected to follow his Saturday custom of taking supper at Bjorkvist's boarding-house. Since he had the whole afternoon on his hands, he knew that he really ought to go up to the Livery to see if B. J. Stone and Coots had any chores for him, but he was still uncomfortable about them, and he was afraid that something in his manner might reveal that he knew their secret. The idea of men "doing" one another seemed to him-well, not exactly evil or repulsive, but odd. And sort of embarrassing, too: an embarrassment he felt on their behalf, something like the embarrassment he had felt on his parents' behalf when he first learned how babies are made, and pictured his folks doing it. He hadn't known whether to laugh, or shudder in disgust.

  But he had been avoiding B. J. and Coots for a week now, and he made a firm resolve to see them soon. Tomorrow for sure!

  … Or maybe the day after.

  When evening brought the miners hooting and shooting their way down the street, he joined the queue, paid Mrs. Bjorkvist her silver dollar, and took his usual place at his usual table. When Kersti leaned over and pressed herself against him while serving the biscuits, Doc nudged him and pumped his eyebrows. "I do believe you've made yourself a conquest there, Ringo! And I'll bet she never quits! As for her looks…? Well, hell's-bells, all cats are gray in the dark, like the fella says." He nudged him again.

  Matthew glanced up to see Oskar Bjorkvist staring at him from the kitchen doorway, his bland face puckered into a frown of intense hate. He felt a flash of anger at the idea of that slack-mouthed idiot thinking of Ruth Lillian while he "did" himself out in the back shed.

  That night he sat up in bed, reading The Ringo Kid Takes His Time by the light of his kerosene lamp, while from out in the street came the occasional yelp or hoot of a miner raising hell. His attention kept sliding off the page, not only because he had read the book more than a dozen times already and it was not one of his favorites because there was too much "pink-and-silver sunsets" and "yellow-streaked dawns" and "purple-tinged deserts" and such fancy truck between the interesting action bits, but also because his ears kept straining toward the back door, harkening for Kersti's arrival. Just before leaving the other night, she had said something about coming again Saturday, after she had cleaned up at the boardinghouse. He had gone over in his mind half a dozen times how he'd tell her that they couldn't do it anymore-not because he didn't like her, he would hasten to say-but because it wasn't fair on Ruth Lillian, who was his… well, he didn't know exactly what she was, but anyway they couldn't do it anymore, and that was that! But he'd tell Kersti that it wasn't because he didn't like her! 'Cause that wasn't true! He did like her. In fact, he thought she was… you know… just fine. And he hoped someday she'd manage to get out of Twenty-Mile and get a job in some city and find friends-and a fella, too, of course!

  What really troubled Matthew-and made him angry with himself-was that even while he was remembering Kersti's beefy face, thick body, and tangy smell, and thinking about how terrible it would be if Ruth Lillian found out that he and Kersti had done one another, he felt himself getting hard, in spite of himself. He couldn't explain it. How could low feelings of lust get hold of a man when all his loftier aspirations were tugging him in another direction? Maybe Mr. Kane was right when he said that men were lots closer to the animals than women were. One thing was for sure, you could bet the Ringo Kid never found himself getting hard while he was talking in his polite, soft-voiced way to one of the pretty young women he met in his wanderings from town to town, looking for chances to do good.

  It suddenly occurred to him that he shouldn't be lying in bed in his long Johns when Kersti arrived, because that would give her the wrong idea. He was tugging his trousers on when he heard her scratch at his back door, and he was still stuffing in his shirt as he opened it and told her to come in and sit down, because there was something they had to talk about. She sat on the edge of his bed and made a little pouting face when he sat in the chair over by his reading table and began by saying, "Now look, Kersti. There's something we got to talk about. You and me, we can't-"

  "Ain't you afraid somebody might look in the window and see me here, and you with your shirttail sticking out?" Kersti asked, cupping her hand over the kerosene lamp and blowing it out. "That's better. Now come sit over here by me, so's we don't have to talk so loud and risk being heard by folks."

  With an impatient moan, Matthew crossed and sat on the edge of the bed as far from Kersti as possible, which wasn't all that far, as she was sitting in the middle. "You see, Kersti, the fact is… listen, we got to talk about-"

  But she avoided the "lecture" she could feel was coming by the straightforward expedient of reaching out and grasping his penis, right through his trousers.

  "I knew it! You're hard, and that means you want to do it. So what are we waiting for?"

  He stood up. "No, now look, Kersti, we really-" But she pulled him down onto the bed and started fumbling with his belt.

  And he didn't stop her. Lordy, he didn't stop her.

  But as soon as they'd finished, he told her that they mustn't do this again. Never, ever. (It was somehow easier to tell her now that he was spent and soft.) She lay beside him, silent and heavy, and he could feel anger and hurt radiating from her. Then she began to cry. Great sobbing snorts… oddly like her snorts when she climaxed. Her voice was all wet and slippery when she blubbered that she knew it was because of that stuck-up Ruth Lillian Kane… with her piled-up hair and her orange-blossom water! But what about her? She didn't have nobody but old Murphy, with his falling-off hair!

  In that overly patient tone of weary reasonableness that men use on women they've wronged, he reminded her that she intended to get out of town pretty soon anyway. And he went on to assure her that she'd find someone who'd love her, and take care of her, and always be- Well, maybe she didn't need to be loved and taken care of! Maybe she didn't need him nor anyone else! Yes, and another thing! She'd just as soon he didn't come to the boardinghouse to eat on Saturday nights anymore! And if he did? Well then, she'd be damned if she'd serve him!

  He asked if she was mad at him.

  What did he think?

  "Sh-h-h! Somebody'll hear you!" Her mention of the orange-blossom water that Ruth Lillian sprinkled on her handkerchiefs had reminded him that he should have said something nice about the vanilla extract Kersti had dabbed behind her ears and under her arms, largely eclipsing the smell of stale sweat. "You're not thinking of telling anyone about you and me, are you?" he aske
d.

  After a petulant silence that she maintained for a punitively long time, she finally said… no. No, she wouldn't tell, because if her ma found out she'd beat her into next Tuesday. So he needn't worry! She wouldn't tell his precious Ruth Lillian!

  She turned away from him and lay there, brooding over her hurt. Then, to hurt him in return, she said that her pa had told Jeff Calder that he'd better hire Oskar to do the breakfast chores at the hotel and kick out this Chumms or Ringo or Dubchek, or whatever-the-hell-he's-calling-himself-this-month, because he was mighty friendly with those Sodomites up to the Livery, and everyone knows what that means.

  "But I ain't been up there for a long time."

  "What does that prove?"

  "Well, I can tell you that neither B. J. nor Coots has ever done anything wrong when I was around."

  "That's what you say." She was struggling into her dress.

  "But it's the truth!"

  "It don't matter what's true and what ain't. It's what people think that matters! Now look what you done! You made me rip my dress!"

  "I didn't mean… I'm sorry."

  "Sorry don't get the barn painted!" She stormed out, slamming the back door behind her.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, shaking his head. "… the barn?"

  "AFTERNOON!" MATTHEW GREETED. HIS jovial tone was calculated to make up for his failure to drop by for more than a week… or at least to deny B. J. a chance to comment on it.

  "Mm-m… " B. J. didn't look up from the two-month-old copy of the Nebraska Plainsman he had found at the bottom of the pile when he was desperate for something to read.

  Matthew chafed his hands together vigorously. "Hoo-birds! There's a nip in the air! Winter's on its way, and no mistake."

  "You reckon?" B. J. turned the page and read for a third time an article written in succulently ghoulish journalese that fleshed out the headlines: TRAGIC INCIDENT AT BUSHNELL GORY SCENE GREETS CURIOUS NEIGHBOR "Yes, sir," Matthew pursued with dogged verve. "Early this morning, I could see my breath in the air, and I was indoors!"

  "See your breath, could you? Well now, how about that?"

  Matthew couldn't help glancing thirstily at the tin mug of steaming coffee beside B. J.

  "Where's Coots got to?"

  B. J. carefully folded the paper, set it aside, and leaned back against the wall, his mind still on the article he had been reading. He regarded Matthew with a long, defocused gaze as he hefted various possibilities. Then he blinked and said, "I'm sorry, Matthew. What were you saying?"

  "I was just wondering where Coots was."

  "He took the donkeys up to the Lode by the back trail."

  "Hey, maybe he'll run into Reverend Hibbard up there! Maybe he'll get a free sermon! A nice long juicy one, with plenty of hellfire and goddamnation!"

  "That would be a real treat for him. Well, Matthew! I don't believe we've seen you around here for a spell."

  "Yes, well… I've been… you know… real busy."

  "I see. " B. J. drew a breath as though to ask about something… then he decided to take a different tack. "Matthew?"

  "Sir?"

  "May I give you a bit of advice?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "There are two are things in this life that are easily squandered, and too late regretted: time and friends. The wise man either spends his time well or wastes it gracefully. But he never, never lets a friendship shrivel and die for lack of attention. Friendships are just too precious. Too rare. Too fragile."

  Matthew knew he should try to explain why he hadn't been around, but instead he said, "I don't have to worry. I've got plenty of friends." And he instantly regretted the cocky sound of that.

  "Have you?"

  "Sure."

  "Like Reverend Hibbard? Or Professor Murphy? Or the Bjorkvists?"

  "I was thinking of the Kanes. And the folks at the hotel."

  "The Kanes? Yes, probably. The hotel? Well, I suppose you might count on the girls as friends… in their way, and to their limits. One often finds a residue of sentiment in girls like that. The lees of love at the bottom of the bottle. But sentiment is to love what ethics are to morality, or what legality is to justice, or justice to compassion-all degraded forms of a loftier ideal. But yes, the girls might come to your aid, should you fall upon evil days. But as for Delanny and Calder…?" B. J. made a dry three-note laugh. "Delanny doesn't care about people. Dying is a selfish business, Matthew. Ask anyone who's cared for an aging parent. And Jeff Calder is no one's friend. He's a man of prejudices, rather than values; of appetites, rather than tastes; of opinions, rather than ideas. He doesn't care who's right, only who wins. There are millions of Calders out there. They elect our presidents, they fill our church pews, they decide our- What in hell are you smiling at?"

  "The way you talk, sir. There's no doubting that you used to be a schoolteacher. Hoo-birds!"

  B. J. Stone chuckled. "I guess I was waxing a little pedantic. Cup of coffee?"

  "I'd like nothing better. No, don't get up. I'll fetch it."

  From the kitchen, he raised his voice to ask, "Ah… did you know Coots back when you were the schoolteacher here?"

  There was no answer. When Matthew returned, rolling his mug between his palms to warm them, he repeated, "Is that when you two met? Back when you were teaching school?"

  "Why this interest in Coots and me?"

  "Just curious."

  B. J. looked at him through narrowed eyes. Then he lifted his shoulders as though to say, "Well, why not?"

  "No, I didn't meet Coots until what I thought would be my last day in Twenty-Mile. The town was dying and there weren't enough children left to support a teacher. The lawyer had already gone, and the blacksmith, and the town marshal-this last taking with him the wife of our principal merchant. The time had come for B. J. Stone, Esquire, to drift on to the next town and try to teach a love of books to a new batch of kids who'd give the world to be anywhere but in that schoolroom." He leaned toward Matthew and informed him in a mock-confidential tone, "Teaching, you understand, is not just a profession. It's a calling."

  "So how'd you meet Coots?" Matthew perched up on the work bench with his cup of coffee.

  "Coots had the misfortune to blow into Twenty-Mile just as the dried-up town was beginning to blow away. For a couple of weeks he worked here at the livery stable. Then one morning, the owner told him he was fed up, and Coots could have the goddamned Livery, lock, stock, and unpaid debts. The lock didn't have a key, and there wasn't much stock, but there were plenty of debts. Luckily, the creditors had all left town, too. " B. J. scratched his chin stubble with his thumbnail and lowered his eyes. "I'd planned to leave a box of books at the Livery to be forwarded when I found a town that needed a burned-out teacher. We fell to talking, Coots and I. I don't remember about what. Just… talking. And that was it. Just like that. It's silly, really: two old farts in their fifties. Ridiculous. But… " B. J. shook his head at the capricious vagaries of human emotion. "Coots had known about himself for a long time. I, on the other hand, had not known. Oh, I'd surmised, but I had never let the truth get close enough to read its name." He drew a breath, and his attention focused back to Matthew. "You understand what I'm talking about, don't you, Matthew?"

  "Yes. Well… sort of."

  "And does it trouble you? Or upset you?… Matthew?"

  But Matthew was looking past B. J.'s shoulder, out across the donkey meadow.

  "About Coots and me? It's neither good nor bad. It's just… the way we are. You understand?"

  "Somebody's coming."

  "What?"

  "Three men. Look."

  B. J. turned and stood up. One of the men was on foot; the other two were mounted on coffee-colored mules that were so spent and stumble-footed that the men had to rib-kick them ceaselessly to keep them moving. They were crossing the donkey meadow, having worked their way up from the tangled labyrinth of cuts and blind ravines below.

  "Prospectors?" Matthew asked.

  "No," B. J. said. They w
eren't dressed like prospectors, at least not the one wearing that fancy waistcoat. And mountain men know how to treat mules. All three men had pistols stuck into their belts. No holsters. B. J. recognized this to be a bad sign.

  The men threaded their way toward the Livery, but it wasn't until they were almost at the shoeing yard that B. J. stepped out from the shadow of the lean-to into the sunlight.

  "Nice-looking herd you've got there!" the one in the waistcoat said, flicking his thumb toward the scraggly beef standing forlorn in the empty meadow. "Need many ranch hands to look after it?"

  "Looks like you've lost a mule," B. J. said in a tone bereft of either friendliness or curiosity.

  The man in the waistcoat slipped down from his mule and stepped forward, grinning. "That we did, friend! Couple of hours back. The poor beast just balked and wouldn't go another step. I tried reasoning with it, but we were on a narrow cut with sheer rock on one side and a whole lot of nothing on the other-a real awkward place for a mule to get ornery. Well, I gave that mule a tug or two, sort of inviting it to have second thoughts about its uncooperative behavior. But, no. No, the poor old beast had made up its mind that it was going no further. So I did what any reasonable man would do when friendly persuasion fails. I sent a slug into his stubborn head and pushed him off into the ravine. He made a fair splat when he hit the bottom, I got to give him credit for that. As a comfortable ride and a willing companion, that mule was no great shakes, but when it came to splatting…! Well, that just goes to show that all God's creatures have their own special gifts. Some are strong; some are wise; some possess the ability to comfort and console. And that mule? He was a natural-born splatter. " Lieder grinned, and B. J. could tell that he took pleasure in his ability to turn a colorful phrase.

  The man who had come on foot chortled, a gnarled gnome of a man with a barrel chest and facial features that were flattened and askew, as though someone had pushed the heel of his hand into the face of a soft clay statue and given it a twist. Lieder turned and raked him with a theatrical glare. "Don't you dare laugh at that poor beast, Tiny! That poor mule was one of God's creatures, and its journey to the great pasture up yonder is not to be laughed at!" Then he turned his eyes to B. J. and winked. "… But it did make a fine splat."