Incident at Twenty-Mile Page 9

  "You got that right."

  The Reverend scowled. Was that a dig at him?

  "But Bible reading sure didn't do my ma much good. She used to say the meek would inherit the earth. But after a lifetime of being meek, the only earth she inherited was a six-foot hole."

  "Don't you dare talk against the Book, boy! It's blasphemy! And blasphemers are damned to twist and scream in rivers of fire!"

  "That so?" Matthew looked into the Reverend's hooch-whipped eyes with a chill calm that caused them to flicker uncertainly. "What about drunkards, Reverend? Are they going to twist and scream too? And what about Bible-pounders who sneak into whorehouses at night? They do much twisting, do they? I know they do their share of screaming, 'cause I heard one of them the other night, stumbling down the street, bawling and blubbering."

  The Reverend's lips compressed. "You're brewing all kinds of trouble for yourself, boy! Who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind!"

  Matthew looked at him long and levelly, then he allowed the Ringo Kid to say on his behalf, "If there's a storm brewin', mister, you can bet I won't be the only one to get wet." With which, the Ringo Kid turned on his heel and walked away, his gait loose and confident, although an uneasy Matthew could feel the Reverend's eyes boring into his back.

  As he approached the Traveller's Welcome to start making breakfast, he felt himself emerging from the Other Place. Weight returned to his legs, and objects around him began to lose their smeared halos of light. He drew in long breaths of cool morning air to dilute the angry acid that was etching into his stomach, like it used to every time he was obliged to face up to bullies at a new school.

  He knew he had made an enemy of the Reverend, and he knew that wasn't smart, because experience had taught him that the best way to manage people was to keep them buttered up and off balance with his special blend of joshing and sudden sincerity.

  … But that smell of whiskey on his breath!

  Tie Siding, Wyoming

  THERE WAS A TRICKLE of drool at the corner of the old man's mouth because a recent stroke had left him with a slack lower lip and one drooping eyelid.

  The biggest of the intruders, the one with the bullet-shaped head that sprang neckless from his shoulders, and the lips that were permanently drawn into a tight little pucker, sat at the at the old man's table, ripping chunks off the loaf of sourdough bread and dipping them into the honey pot, then wedging them into his mouth. As he chewed, he hummed with infantile pleasure, and this seemed to annoy the second intruder, a diminutive barrel-chested man who kept watch on the street from behind the lace curtains.

  The old man searched the pale gray eyes of the third intruder, who sat patiently before him, his fingers toying absently with the slide of his braided leather lanyard. Why had these men pushed their way into his snug little house? Who were they?

  "Oh, come on now, Mr. Ballard," the gray-eyed one said. "Think back! I cannot believe you don't remember me, 'cause I remember you. Oh, I remember you very well indeed. I even remember those fancy waistcoats you always wore." He reached over and felt the silky lapel of the old man's green-and-gold brocade waistcoat between the pads of his fingertips. "I am sorely pained to see you so crippled up, Mr. Ballard. May I have that, please?" He took the old man's cane from between his knees. "For weeks now me and my followers have been hiding in ditches and barns, while men with guns searched everywhere for us. And all that time I dreamed of catching up with you in your schoolhouse, after everyone had gone home. Just you and me, all alone. Like when you used to keep me after school."

  "You were one of my pupils?" Mr. Ballard asked, his numb lip making the p's puffy.

  "There you go! Now let's see if you can come up with my name. Think back. Think back."

  But over the years, Mr. Ballard had taught so many children in his one-room school in Tie Siding, a town that had sprung from the red dirt of the Wyoming/Colorado border to provide the Union Pacific railroad with the pitch-soaked ties it needed in its land-grabbing race against the Central Pacific. It wasn't long before ancient high plateau pine forests were plundered to extinction, and the town rapidly declined from its zenith when it had boasted two general stores, three hotels, a post office, the biggest saloon south of Laramie, and a stone jail, the only stone building in this town of wood. Of all this, there remained only one store whose keeper doubled as postmistress. By the time Mr. Ballard had his stroke, only a dozen students were left at the school, so few that his place could be taken by a recent widow who had once been his pet student, and who now combined her teaching duties with the task of bringing him meals and keeping his clothes clean and tidy. Mr. Ballard frowned and pressed his fingers to his lips in an effort to envision which of the half-forgotten parade of little boys that had passed through his school could have grown into this man with the dead, ice-gray eyes. His fingertips felt the drool that his lips were unable to feel, and he wiped it away with a little shudder of disgust. He had always been meticulous about his dress and his diction, and the effects of his stroke on both these carefully cultivated social attainments caused him intense embarrassment. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't remember you."

  "Oh, now, please try real hard to think, Mr. Ballard," the pale-eyed intruder implored. Then he suddenly smashed the tabletop with the cane. "Think back, goddamn it!"

  This eruption of violence brought a sudden epiphany of recognition, and Mr. Ballard's left eye widened in terror.

  Lieder grinned. "Ah, now you remember! I can see it in your eyes. Well… in the one eye, anyway. Yes, it's that no-account Lieder kid, back like a biblical scourge! You thought you'd seen the last of me when you had me dragged off to that home for wayward boys, didn't you? Didn't you, Mr. Ballard? But you didn't reckon on this force I read about in a book. Karma. And what Karma means is this: As you dish it out, so will you get it crammed down your own throat, sooner or later! And you sure could dish it out, Mr. Ballard. Oh, Lord how you could dish it out! For some reason, you set yourself against me from the first day I came to your school."

  "I doubt that I set-"

  "You set yourself against me! I was a smart kid, and I had questions to ask. But you set yourself against me. Do you remember that first day?"

  "I've had so many pupils. I can't remember any one particular-"

  "Oh, you're going to remember. Don't you worry about that, Mr. Ballard. I've risked my neck just to jolt your memory. I've come back to this one-dog town, when I knew they might be waiting to drag me back to prison."

  "… I really don't-"

  "The first day I came to school, I tried to let you know that I was smart and worthy of your attention and praise. I raised my hand time after time, but you only called on your pets. Then when you were telling the class about Indians, I leant over and whispered to a boy about how I'd once seen a Indian with a patent medicine huckster, and I described how he'd done the Rain Dance right there in front of the Price Hotel. You slammed that switch of yours down on your desk and snarled at me to shut up. I tried to explain that I was just telling this boy about Indian dancing-but you said if I knew all that much about dancing, then I'd better come up to the front and dance for everybody. Are you telling me you don't remember that?"

  "I don't remember! I swear to God I don't." There was a whimper in his voice, and the drool flowed freely.

  "You don't remember, huh? Well, let me paint the picture for you. I was eight years old. Skinny little barefoot kid in short pants. You told me to dance for the class, but I told you I didn't want to. I was dying of shame, but you got me by the hair and you started hitting the backs of my legs with your willow switch, and I started dancing. Dancing and whooping. And the harder you hit, the higher I danced and the louder I whooped!" Hard tears filled Lieder's eyes, and his jaw muscles rippled. "And you said: 'Well, well, it seems our little Indian can sing as well as dance.' And everyone laughed. And that willow switch of yours came down across my bare legs again and again and again! And I danced for you, Mr. Ballard! And I sang for you!"

  Both
the followers stood, their mouths open with rapt attention. They were entranced by the way their leader could flow words out like that!

  "I assure you, young man, that I never meant to-"

  "And your pet, that Polish girl with the yellow curls? The one that was always dressed up in pink and white? She laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks! And there we were, that girl and me, both of us with tears running down our cheeks!"

  "I don't remember any of that. But if I did what you say, it was wrong. I admit that. But please don't — "

  Lieder brought the cane down across the side of the teacher's head with such force that it tore the top of his ear. The old man's eyes rolled up as he slipped toward unconsciousness from shock, but Lieder grasped his hair and snatched his head up.

  The big bullet-headed man stopped eating and looked on, grinning, as the honey dripped from his bread and made a little puddle on the table. The small barrel-chested man at the window stepped over to where he could see better.

  "And from that day on, Mr. Ballard!" Lieder thrust his rage-contorted face to within inches of the old man's half-paralyzed one. "From that day on it was war between you and me. You'd beat me every chance you got, and I used to raise hell in the back of the class, and hurt kids during recess. I even snuck over to your house one night and shit in your well. You been drinking my shit ever since! But our war wasn't a fair contest, Mr. Ballard, because you were a man and I was only a kid. And you had the stick. You always had the stick! Then one day you dragged me up to the front of the class and whipped me so hard that you broke your stick on my ass. Broke the goddamn stick! You wanted me to beg for mercy, but I wouldn't! I wouldn't, 'cause I was all through singing and dancing for you, Mr. Ballard! I clamped my jaw so tight to keep from crying that I broke this tooth. Look! You see? You see? All the kids laughed. They never did like me 'cause I was smarter'n they were and I used to make them play games my way. That little pink-and-white polack pet of yours, she laughed hardest of them all! And do you wonder if I was humiliated, Mr. Ballard? I was humiliated! Well, guess whose turn it is to be humiliated now, Mr. Ballard. Bobby-My-Boy? Grab this old turd and bend him over the table."

  The bullet-headed giant stuffed his bread into his mouth and dragged the old man to the table and bent him over the edge until his cheek lay in the puddle of honey.

  "Snatch his pants down!" Lieder ordered. "I'm going to whup his ass! Who knows? Maybe he'll sing and dance for us."

  Grinning, Bobby-My-Boy undid Mr. Ballard's belt and pulled down first his trousers then his flap-seated drawers, and Lieder began methodically to rain blows on the shrunken old buttocks. With each of the first half-dozen clouts, the old man's body convulsed as he whimpered into the honey, then suddenly his muscles sagged, and he lay still and silent, but Lieder's rage fed off his exertion, and the blows came ever swifter and harder until the buttocks were the color and texture of currant jelly. "Don't die on me! Don't you dare die on me, you son of a bitch!" he cried through bared teeth. "Don't you cheat me! I got revenge coming! I got years of revenge coming!"

  The small barrel-chested man hissed from the window, "Somebody's coming!"

  Panting, sweat running from his hair, Lieder blinked his way back toward reality. "Wh-? What are you saying?"

  "Somebody's coming!"

  Lieder went to the window and looked out through the lace curtain. There was a woman approaching from the far end of the long dirt lane, carrying a metal lunch pot.

  "Looks like she's bringing the old man his dinner," the short man said. "We better slip out the back and push on into Colorado."

  "We ain't going to Colorado. We're heading north, up into the Medicine Bow country. There's gold and silver up there. Precious metals to finance my crusade."

  "But… but if we were going north, why'd we come south in the first place? Don't make no sense!"

  "Don't you tell me what makes sense and what don't! I came here because I had business to attend to. Now that account is closed and my mind can rest easy. We're heading north. So you two better start looking around this place. Fast! Take anything you can carry: guns, clothes, money, food… anything."

  But the small one couldn't believe what he was hearing. "We're heading back toward Laramie and the prison?"

  "You heard me. The last place they'd look for us. We'll slip around Laramie and head for the high country. I got two rules. Always do what they don't expect. And always do it real sudden. They'll find out what happened here, and they'll think we slipped down into Colorado. So either they'll chase after us or they'll-Hey, I know her!"

  "What?"

  "That woman! I remember her blond curls and her pink-and-white dresses! Now look at her, will you? All grown up, plump and proper."

  "We better get going. She's almost here!"

  "N-no. No, I think we'll just sit tight and let her come. Pass me that cane, Bobby-My-Boy."

  "You're going to whup her?" The neckless giant asked, his nostrils flaring in anticipation.

  "I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do to her." Lieder's eyes became soft and distant. "But one thing's sure. She won't laugh at me this time… not even a little snicker." Bobby-My-Boy smiled and sighed, contented.

  FRIDAY MORNING, AFTER ATTENDING to his chores and exchanging with the hotel girls the half-joshing, half-flirting banter that had become ritual, Matthew had a couple of hours on his hands before dinner with the Kanes, so he drifted up to the only grassy spot in Twenty-Mile, the triangular, up-tilted little meadow crossed by a rivulet running off from the cold spring that provided the town's water. This meadow belonged to the livery stable, and half a dozen of its donkeys lazily nosed the grass while, at the far end, a scrawny cow stood in the shade of the only tree in Twenty-Mile, a stunted skeleton whose leafless, wind-raked branches stretched imploringly to leeward, like bony fingers clawing the clouds. The meadow couldn't be seen from any part of the town except the Livery, so Matthew felt comfortably secluded as he sauntered along, intending to investigate the burial ground that abutted the donkey meadow, but B. J. Stone called to him from the Livery, so he turned back and began the chore they had found for him to do: oiling tools.

  While Matthew applied himself to a task he knew was invented to give him some wages, B. J. and Coots continued their ill-tempered game of whist, slapping down the limp, greasy cards with cries of victory for each trick taken or sullen growls at each trick lost.

  "I saw you exchanging social niceties with our local sin-merchant yesterday morning, Matthew," B. J. Stone said as he tentatively tugged a card from the tight fan of his hand… then tapped it back into place with his forefinger… then gnawed on his lower lip and hummed an uncertain note… then- "Are you going to play or not!" Coots snapped.

  "Hold your bladder," B. J. advised. "Problem is, I can't quite remember. Whether or not you've played the queen of clubs?"

  "That's for me to know and you to find out."

  "Hm-m-m." He looked over at Matthew. "What was going on between you and Twenty-Mile's version of Billy Sunday-except that unlike the inexhaustible William Ashley Sunday, our Hibbard never played professional baseball, and God knows he isn't a fulminating proponent of prohibition- or maybe he is. No depths of hypocrisy would surprise me."

  "What's a preacher doing in a little place like Twenty-Mile?" Matthew asked.

  "What are any of us doing here?" B. J. Stone replied.

  "Not playing cards, that's for damn sure," Coots grumbled.

  "I'm thinking! Now, let's see… I led with the seven, and you took it. But did you take it with the queen? That's my question."

  "I ain't telling. That's my answer."

  "Hm-m-m. " B. J. turned to Matthew. "The Surprise Lode is owned by Boston merchants, descendants of folk who came over on the Mayflower, not in search of religious freedom like the history books tell us, but in search of a place where they could impose their own brand of religious intolerance. You'd think that once the oppressed got the upper hand, they'd banish oppression from society. But no. No, human nature being
what it is, as soon as the oppressed manage to snatch a little power, they use it to oppress their erstwhile oppressors… or anybody else handy."

  "Who gives a big rat's ass?" Coots wanted to know. "Are you going to play cards or not?"

  "These pious Bostonians dismiss the maiming and death of workers in inadequately reinforced mine shafts as an unfortunate by-product of the need to maximize profit, but their moral sensibilities insist that their wage slaves be exposed to the word of the Lord God Almighty at least once a week. So the manager of the mine had to find somebody willing to go up there and threaten the poor bastards with eternal damnation every Sunday. And what kind of preacher would live in a place like Twenty-Mile and tend to that reluctant flock up at the Lode? The Reverend Hibbard, that's what kind."

  "Are you going ever to play?"

  "Patience, patience. Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem, as old Horace says."

  "I don't care what the old whore's ass says! What I say is you should either shit or get off the pot!"

  "So you see, Matthew, Reverend Hibbard does what everyone else in Twenty-Mile does. He serves the mine. Even poor old Coots and I work for the mine. They use donkeys in the shafts, and we bring the lame and sick ones down to tend to them and feed them up, and we keep a few backups out in the meadow yonder. You must have seen them, along with the beef."

  "The beef?" Matthew asked.

  "Every week the train brings a live beef up from Destiny to supply the boardinghouse. Usually a stringy old cow that's gone dry. We let the Bjorkvists keep it in our meadow in return for a few 'steaks.' Sometimes the poor old cow arrives with a broken leg, because no one's taken the trouble to tie it up properly in the train. But, thank God, it only has to suffer for a few days, until Bjorkvist and his dim-witted son butcher it. Not proper butchering, just cutting it up into slabs that mostly get eaten by the miners, but the Bjorkvists sell some to their fellow townsmen. A couple hours of butchering each week is the only contribution the male Bjorkvists make to our economy, but without their 'steaks' we wouldn't attract the miners for the Kanes to sell things to, and for Professor Murphy to bathe and shave and perfume, and for Delanny to provide with whiskey and poontang-which, come to think of it, could be considered another aspect of the meat-selling business. So you see, son. Serving the silver mine is what everyone in Twenty-Mile does!"