The Hour of Lead (17 page)

“I imagine so.” Matt shifted to allow the dog more purchase.

“Old man was ranting about all the work you got to today without freezing solid,” Jarms said. “I wish I liked work better, because he favors it so much,” Jarms said. “It'd be dishonest to pretend, though.”

“Work's dishonest?” Matt asked.

Jarms shook his head. “Pretending.”

“You pretending to like that girl the other night?” Only on the last few, coldest nights had Jarms left off the scraggly waif. Otherwise, they locked plumbing steady as stink follows scat.

“You seen that, eh?” Jarms laughed. “That's honest work.”

Matt laughed.

“You think I'm fibbing?”

“That girl, she working, too?”

“Making rent for her whole family. They're squatting in the old house, the other side of the ranch. I sent a steer home with her, too.”

Matt let that sit. Hard times might mean a girl giving herself up for a roof and meals.

“Sounds like her work.”

“That work doesn't get done by one.”

“If it's work it does.”

“I ain't talking about fucking,” Jarms said. “That's a damned sin.”

“What was I watching, then?”

“You was watching the bible. Fucking's only supposed to be allowed for one thing, making a baby,” Jarms said.

“You're lying,” Matt said.

“Which part?”

“That last for sure. Some of the other, too, but I can't pick it clean.”

Jarms shook his head. Jarms being born had busted Roland from his mother, Jarms told him, then his growing up left him without a
child to boot. It was all he could think to do to square himself with his father. The girl would get a thousand dollars and Roland would get the child.

“As for the rest, I can't tell lie from truth. I can only say I ain't making it up.”

Matt finished the juice and rolled the bottle across the dirt toward Jarms, who ignored it. “How come he didn't have more than you if he likes babies so much.”

“Did,” Jarms told him. “I was all that lived. He was a good father, too. I got watered and fed and cared for like I was in a garden. I just grew funny, I guess. He don't have much use for me.”

“He likes you fine,” Matt said.

“Nope. He loves me. That's not the same thing.”

“He enjoys your company. I can see that.”

Jarms sat for a moment. He permitted the idea to settle upon him. It was strange to Matt that Jarms spent so much time talking, when silence was what suited him best.

“I'll tell you something,” Jarms said. “I envy them other babies. They never hurt him except when they died and that's easy to forgive.” Jarms was right. The living sooner than later disappointed you. He waited for Jarms to speak, but Jarms was in no hurry. Matt had come across more than a few who took to conversation as keenly as Jarms did, and some that stuck to quiet as much as himself. They were all one kind or another, though. The quiet ones found means to mute talk or simply avoided words altogether and the people who made them. Talkers had the same tactics though opposing ends. They either hammered silence with jabber, or left it for noise. There were some in between, of course, but Jarms was not one of them. A man betwixt both was neither, and couldn't carry words or quiet with any comfort. Jarms was able to manage both.

“When my father and brother died,” Matt said, “it was cold.”

“Colder than this?”

“Colder than I'd ever been.”

“I didn't know you lost them.”

“I was only fourteen or so.”

“Maybe reason to try inside a house.”

“Or reason not to,” Matt said.

“You miss them?” Jarms asked.

“I don't recall their looks,” he said. It seemed to Matt a poor answer.

•

T
HE FIRST DAY OF
F
EBRUARY
, the weather turned. The temperature remained at freezing but was no longer a danger, just inconvenient. Jarms returned to his project with the girl. Roland, cooped up for a month, demanded a respite from the house and some work with the cattle. Matt accompanied him for the task, but Roland's horse missed a step in a dry creek and rolled up on him. Roland's femur cracked louder than a gunshot. The horse screamed and danced, its forelock, too, broken and dangling. Roland ordered Matt to do for it before tending him. Matt ended the horse with his pistol. The animal wheezed twice, shuddered and expired. Roland had clamped his lip between his teeth and it bled, purpling his mouth. Matt sliced open his trousers. Roland's knee was catawampus, cap facing the sky, even though Roland lay tipped on his side.

“Am I bleeding?”

Swelling had doubled the knee's size faster than bone or gristle breaking. “Inside,” Matt said.

Matt lugged Roland to his horse, shocked how little he weighed. Roland nodded north toward a horse doctor a creek away. Matt's horse tried to maintain a level lope, but each step sucked breath from Roland, and after a mile, moans. They both agreed a gallop
would abridge the misery, but, reaching the horse doctor, he had gone quiet. Matt worried he'd died.

The doctor loaded laudanum into Roland until he slipped off. The man twisted the leg and aligned the bones then fashioned a splint and cast the apparatus with tape and plaster. He fingered Roland's pulse and pulled open an eye and pressed the stethoscope to his chest, looked at his watch, and did it again.

“You like work?” he asked Matt.

“I can pull my share.”

“Good,” the doctor said. “Because he's done with it.”

“I seen men mend after worse.”

The doctor gazed at Roland, who dozed still with the narcotic. “When the older ones get bunged up, I check them thoroughly. It's the only time I see most unless I'm pronouncing for the county.” He tapped Roland's chest. “His heart's congested.”

“He never mentioned nothing.”

The doctor said, “He isn't the mentioning type, is he?”

The doctor fished through his cabinet for some pills. “This isn't a cure,” he said. “All it'll do is keep off his dying if he takes one in time.”

“You don't have nothing else better.”

“This is it. Period,” the doctor said. “He's got a son and a hired man. That ought to be plenty. Tell the boy to start eating honestly.”

•

O
N THE PORCH AT THE
house, Matt boosted a bed frame with shortened two-by-fours. He strapped plyboard under the head and mounted a pulleyed come-along on the porch ceiling to raise the whole thing so Roland could watch the ranch's business.

When he woke, Matt handed him the nitroglycerine.

“The doctor said if your chest aches take one of these.”

“A long way from my leg,” Roland said.

“The other thing's wronger than your leg,” Matt told him.

Roland nodded.

“Don't forget.”

“Something a man's not likely to, is it?”

Matt warmed a ham portion in a pan. Roland's hands shook with the painkiller. He couldn't direct the silverware from the plate to his mouth. Finally, Matt loaded a fork to feed him. Roland glared at him and knocked the fork to the floor; he resorted to his hands, chewing a ham end and collecting gravy with bread slices.

Jarms returned in the middle of their meal.

“What in hell happened?”

“We were tending the cattle,” Matt said. “His horse fell on him.”

“I thought the cattle was your job,” Jarms said.

Roland set his dinner plate down. “We were working,” he said. “You got no say in work.”

Matt loaded Jarms a plate and one for himself. They ate in silence, then played some hands of cribbage until the old man began to doze. The night was mild, but Jarms collected a pair of heavy blankets and put them over Roland.

“He's dying,” Matt told him.

“It don't take a mean lie to get me to apologize,” Jarms said.

“I'm not lying.”

“He'll limp is all.”

“His heart's filling. The doctor found it when he checked the other.”

Jarms squinted like his head ached. He tapped his father's arm with two fingers. The old man's eyes fluttered.

“If he doesn't require those blankets, you can roll them off when I leave.” He stood for a minute. “If he gets cold, though, leave them.”

Matt nodded.

“I don't want him chilling.”

“Me neither,” Matt said.

“Well, we're agreed, then,” Jarms said.

Evenings, as winter backed off, Matt and Roland took their meal on the porch. They discussed the past day's work and prepared for the one to follow. Matt listened to the man's chest rattle and considered it against his own breathing. He wondered at the motor that living was, fueled more by will than food or drink.

Thirty-two days Roland remained on his back, then reclined, then hobbled. Gimpy and afoot, he pined for horseback until Matt allowed it. Saddled and aboard his mount, Maynard, he rode directly to the thin creek they called Rebel Flat. Matt trailed to mind him. Halting at the tree, Roland hobbled the horse and cripped to the bank. Water barely dampened the pebbles. It would be a short crop without spring rain.

Roland whacked the creek bed with his cane. He sweated through his shirt collar, though it was still morning. Matt watched him stroke the names and dates carved into the tree and unscab-bard his buck knife and freshen them. The effort exhausted him. The doctor knew more than horses. Roland was not long for this world.

19

T
WO WEEKS LATER
, M
ATT MENDED
fence on the property adjacent to the Garrett place. Midday, Queenie approached, her hip catawompus, dragging a hind leg. A bullet had shattered her back quarters. Blood matted the short hair where it entered. He lay her across his saddlehorn and hurried for the ranch. At the barn, he put her under with horse dope, then sharpened a long knife on a whetstone and parted her hide. The sinew and muscle required sawing. Matt worried he'd cripple her further.

“What happened to the queen?” Jarms asked.

“Someone shot her,” Matt said.

“You sure?” Jarms asked.

“Look for yourself.”

Jarms did.

“Where'd this occur?”

“That knob with the high tree. I was stapling some bad fence.”

“Back by Chesik Road.”

Matt nodded.

“Goddamnit,” Jarms said. “I'm sorry.”

“You didn't shoot her,” Matt told him.

Jarms approached the dog and patted her head. “I can still be sorry,” he said. He tugged one eye open. The milky underside of the lid clouded half the iris. “You patch her up?”

Matt shook his head. “I'm no surgeon. The bullet's still there. I hate to cut her up.”

They both stood, studying the animal's breathing.

“Old man's got an encyclopedia. Might have dog anatomy pictures.”

“You think we could sort muscle from tendon and gristle and nerves and veins and arteries following those pictures?” Matt asked.

“No,” Jarms said. “I do not.”

“Me neither,” Matt told him.

Jarms considered the matter. “We can't just see how she heals?”

“Leg or rib, maybe. Not with a hip. She'd be bait for anything hungry.”

“Well, we're not going to shoot her.”

“Might not have a choice,” Matt said. “I'd hate to.”

Jarms shook his head. “No, we'll take her to the horse doc. He put Roland back together. Well, mostly.”

“He know dogs?”

“Got to be better than you and me and a goddamn book.”

Matt lifted the dog, which breathed faintly, still lost to the anesthetic, and seated himself in the car's backseat. He laid the dog on the seat next to him. Her head rose a bit and she sniffed herself and tried to comprehend her predicament. He put her head into his lap and she lay still.

The vet owned several hunting dogs, as it turned out, and possessed a soft spot for the animals. He separated meat from bone and found the bullet splattered against Queen's hip coupling. He set the bone best as he could with wire and staples then doused the
wound with alcohol. After, he found his sewing kit and a needle and sewed the wound shut with catgut.

In the car Jarms headed them south beyond the ranch.

“You missed a turn.”

“You and that dog have earned a damned holiday.”

In the backseat, Matt saw fishing gear, a rifle, a bait can, and a skillet along with bedrolls for both of them. The car turned and turned again, before it intersected the Walla Walla road. Outside, the parabolic hills surrendered to grades too steep to farm. The canyon narrowed until the sky stayed only a dim track above each edge. Cattle clung to the steep sides standing or sleeping in the warm evening. The pastures stank. The car passed the lights of a single ranch house and a long barn shadow. At the bottom, the ground turned rocky and the Snake River sliced through, flickering back the sun's glow.