King of Spades (36 page)

Ransom stared down at Katherine's eyeless face. “Dad shot out one eye and I shot out the other.”

A terrible cry escaped Magnus.

Ransom stared at Katherine's belly. “So I slept with my own mother.”

All fell back a step. Even Judge Todd drew back on his democrat. A space opened up around Magnus and Katherine and Ransom.

Ransom gulped at the air. He quivered like a baby swallow that'd been given a curdle of indigestible alkalai to eat instead of a sweet worm.

Magnus hung onto the edge of the pine coffin. “Oh, son, how I wish now I'd never found you.”

Ransom whispered, “Mother.” Ransom whispered, “Wife.” Ransom whispered, “Even sister at times.”

All the mothers in the lines above held their bellies in their arms and moaned without knowing it.

Magnus clung to the edge of the pine coffin. “Oh, son, remember, pain makes the man. And the more pain the more love.”

Ransom shuddered from head to foot as though from a poisoning. “Thank God she lied to me. Now there'll be no fruit of mine growing on my own mother's tree.”

Ames the newspaperman came forward a step, leaning up from the hips, eyes bright. “Did she know?”

“She's dead now.”

Ames licked his lips. “Did she ever indicate to you at any time that she knew?”

“She's dead now.”

“Thank you.”

“Husband to my own mother. Trying to father myself on my own mother.” Ransom's lips contorted against himself. “Lusting in the lust that once conceived me.”

A tear rolled down across the tips of Magnus' white beard and fell on Katherine's bosom. “It's the old story. When the father isn't respected by the wife, let alone loved, all the demons of hell are let loose.”

Ransom at last fixed his eyes on his father's eyes. “This makes us brothers, doesn't it?”

“Son.”

“A couple of cowbirds to each other.”

Magnus wept. All had gone to smash.

“Dad.”

Then Maule at last couldn't hold back any longer. “Great balls of fire!” Maule was shaking. Maule was full of revulsion at what he'd heard. “Imagine! Imagine the kind of life those two must've had togeth—”

Clemens cried, “Hold the thought! That's enough.”

“Any son who has known his own mother carnally”— Maule's big lower lip curled up in loathing—“why! such a son can never be expected to love another woman ever. He's been held too close to the fire to ever feel true warmth again.”

Clemens cried, “Enough, I say!”

“He who has slept with his mother has had it all.”

Clemens grabbed Maule roughly by the shoulder. “Goddammit, shut up! The boy's life is ruined enough as it is.”

“Learning from his own mother all the wonders and varieties of love.”

“Shut up!”

“Tilling his own father's soil. Horrible delights. Ancient
animal desires satiated.” Maule held his stomach. “It's enough to make one's bowels boil just thinking about it.”

Judge Todd shot a finger down at Maule. “Will you shut up?”

Maule didn't hear a thing. “If we don't punish this crime of all crimes, punish it with the most terrible punishment we can possibly think of, we deserve to be hung ourselves.” In his outrage Maule spat a fat gob at the rocky ground. “Why, you know as well as I do that we can't be allowed to wring our own father's neck so that we can sleep with our mother, can we?”

Ames scribbled notes furiously.

“Murder most foul and most unnatural.” Froth appeared at the corners of Maule's lips. “That poor poor woman, alone with her agony and her blood.” Maule balled his fist at Ransom. “Fiend in human shape! By God, come to think of it, you even have the smell of one who's going to die a most cruel horrible death. Because if I have anything to say about it, this is what we're going to do to you—we're going to boil your balls in your own blood before your very own eyes.”

Judge Todd picked up his gun. “Maule, damn your soul, will you shut up?”

“But couldn't he see? Couldn't he realize? The very Devil himself must have been in him.”

“Maule!”

“He must've known. He must've.”

Magnus cut in. “Not necessarily.”

“What! Not?”

“No. A beard almost always makes a boy look older than he is. And a long dress and face powder almost always make a woman look younger than she is.”

Maule lashed a finger at Magnus. “So you've got it all figured out, have you, that we're going to let him off after all?”

“Well, sir, I do speak as a doctor who has handled many patients. Besides, in ancient times, incest wasn't always
frowned upon. In some instances it was considered a mark of supernatural origin.”

Maule reared up on the tips of his toes. “Why, you presumptuous dirty old bastard you, you're even more guilty than the boy is then, thinking that.”

Clemens said quietly, “Let him who is without sin in this matter cast the first stone.”

At that the bearded miners moved back another step. Some of the miners stood with averted eyes, some with whitened nostrils. One man wrung his ear violently.

Maule still frothed over. “Are you suggesting, John, that we've all slept with our mothers?”

Clemens gave Maule a weary smile. “The first nine months we all had to.”

“Good Lord, John, you know what I mean.”

“Well, you invited that, Clifford. You're such a passionate pigheaded fellow sometimes.”

“Well now, I resent that.”

“Who is closest to us except our mother? Unless it be a sister.”

“Carnally?”

“Spiritually. And this boy knew not what he did.”

“Bosh! I still say that what he did is enough to stir one's blood to madness. Absolutely horrible.”

Magnus stood looking at Ransom's feet. An odd grimace worked his lips. “You know, at that, I am a presumptuous dirty old bastard.”

“You admit it?”

“Because I almost wish Kitty had been with child by my son.”

Everybody cried it out. “What!!” Even Ransom.

Magnus looked up at Ransom. “Because now the line dies with you.”

Ransom stared down at his father. “So what?”

“You're a Worthington and a King both.”

Ransom laughed a short crazy laugh. “No, it does not.”

Magnus' look sharpened on Ransom. “How's that again?”

“Not that it matters.”

“How's that again?”

“You couldn't find her anyway.”

“You mean … you have a child somewhere with another woman?”

“At least I couldn't find her.”

“There is a girl then somewhere who has a baby by you? Your baby?”

“What difference does it make now anyway? Yes.”

“Where?”

Ransom flung his hand up toward the granite spires. “In the Hills. Where else?”

“Tell me about her.”

“It's nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“It's nothing.”

“Tell!”

“Well, when I first came to the Hills here looking for gold, I ran into a wild girl. A white girl Indian-raised.” The remembering made Ransom quiver in his boots. “It was she who showed me where all the gold was. The gold that made Deadwood rich.” Ransom sobbed. “Goddammit to hell anyway.” Ransom sobbed. “And I betrayed her. For what? For money. For gold.”

Judge Todd listened with a hand cocked to his ear. Mouths fell open in the crowd. The women fell silent.

Magnus bored in. “What was her name?”

“What do you want with that? It won't do you any good anyway. You'll never find her.”

“What was her name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“That I may know her when I find her.”

There was a long long pause.

A piece of rock broke off near the top of Mt. Moriah and rattled all the way down to the bottom.

At last Ransom sighed, deep, and said, “Erden Aldridge. A sweet little slip of a girl. The darling. Like a wild swallow. Like her Indian name, Ica Psin-psin-cadan. And I betrayed her.”

“Where did she live?”

In a cave.

“Where in a cave?”

“You'll never find it, so don't bother to look for it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's gone now. Just like she's gone.”

“How do you know the cave is gone?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Well, where do you think she went then?”

“Who knows? Probably to some wild free mountain farther west.”

“The Big Horns?”

“Erdenl” Ransom danced it on his salt barrel. “Erden! Oh my God, oh my little Swallow darling, what've I done to you?”

The wide pool of the deep-blue shadow crept up to Ransom's neck.

“Oh, Erden, the worst was when I took up with this other woman the second time.”

“Now, now, son. One can always use two mirrors to get a proper reflection of one's self.”

“Judge, for God's sake, hang me! Hang me.”

Magnus gave the salt barrel a good shake. “Now, now. Steady, steady. A real stud of a man is bound to have complex tastes when it comes to women.”

“Judge, please, please order Troy Barb here to hang me. I can't stand it any longer.”

Troy Barb lowered his shotgun and backed off, his moon eyes softening like a guilty dog's.

“I've had enough.”

Judge Todd sat all to himself.

Ransom puffed like a cross-country runner coming down the homestretch. “Judge, you've got to get rid of me. I'm a devil supreme.”

Magnus gave the salt barrel another shake. “Son, we all stand in mud. But, remember, we also have our eyes fixed on heaven.”

“I'd cut myself, judge, if I thought it would do any good. End this bad line of girl-fornicators and wife-killers. Let alone mother-lovers. But little Erden's got away with some of my seed. So my stones might as well hang with me.”

Judge Todd grimaced the grimace of a baffled man. “It's almost a clear case of standoff.”

Ransom labored for breath. He danced crazy on his salt barrel. The sound of his boots was like the rattling of two swift snare drums. “Well, if you fellows don't know what to do with me, by the Lord, I do.” Ransom once more grabbed the noose and stuck his head into it and drew it up tight around his neck.

“Wait!” Magnus cried.

Ransom yelled with a powerful voice. “Erden, I'm sorry I betrayed you!” And leaping up, and giving the salt barrel beneath him a kick away, Ransom jumped. His jump was exactly like that of a boy trying for a sack swing hopelessly out of reach.

The dull sound of the drop hurt.

Ransom's head suddenly crooked sharply at the neck. His body pendulumed back and forth a few times. His eyelashes twitched. His shoulders drew up as though for a deep breath.

“Pop goes the weasel.”

A peculiar rigidity set in around Ransom's half-closed eyes. His hands turned purple.

The two blue swallows made another swoop past the gallows.

Ransom's body hung motionless.

Ames folded up his notes. “Well, back to the cases.” Ames started walking toward the print shop up the street.

 

The next day Magnus borrowed a spade, and alone, despite a bad back, dug two graves on the upper slopes of Mt. Moriah.

Magnus first covered the body of his wife Kitty. “Sex plus pain plus love.”

Magnus next covered the body of his son Roddy. “Sex is yes and pain is no and love is triumph. The smiling lips. The wincing eyes. The sweet acid in the skull.”

Magnus whittled two names on a common board and nailed the board on a nearby pine tree. “All too soon no one will remember what these names stood for. Well, that's America for you. Better to carry the blood than the name.”

 

Later Magnus went up the gulch going west. “Erden should make the perfect mother. A white girl Indian-raised.”

 

When a son's blood is finally spilled, which mother weeps most?

The stallions.

January 6, 1966
Blue Mound
Luverne, Minnesota