The Hour of Lead (21 page)

She woke and returned to the front room. There in her night shirt, a blanket around her for decency, Linda rested, awake. Wendy curled on the divan. Midnight, Linda tapped her arm.

“You were crying out,” Linda said.

“I'm sorry.”

“It's all right. I wasn't sleeping,” she said.

Linda stirred the fire. Wendy watched the flames until Linda touched her shoulder.

“Where is he?” Wendy asked.

“Out there,” Linda said.

“He's not tired?”

“No,” Linda told her. “He doesn't need sleep. Not now.”

Wendy realized the boy already succeeded in one respect. He was guarding them and she was allowing it. It had gone too far his way. She saw him thinking of her. It was something she found too pleasant, and she willed herself to study the window. Outside, she recognized a splash of moonlight on a face across the corral. The boy, she thought, but she saw another follow. A few minutes later a pair of long shadows darkened the yard near the house's south side. A tool levered at the sill of Mrs. Lawson's room, but she had locked her window clasp against the weather. They tried Wendy's room, next to hers, but that window was painted shut years before. They circled the house tugging fixtures, prying for loose sideboards, with no luck. Linda found a skillet and broom handle. Wendy pulled the poker from the fireplace hearth, and deadbolted the door.

A few minutes later she heard knocking. They didn't answer. The men pressed the door with their shoulders. The frame shuddered and nailed wood squawked with their weight. One grunted, then the other, then the door gave. A sound like a grain sack hitting the ground followed. The boy's head appeared in the window glass, then was gone. On the porch outside, lay the taller of the drifters tied at the wrists and ankles.

A half hour and the boy returned carrying a saddlebag. He set it on the ground and drooped the tied man over his horse and snubbed his wrists to his ankles. He slapped the horse's croup and it trotted off.

The boy looked to Wendy. “They wanted to hurt you,” he said.

Wendy nodded

“There's another and he has a gun,” Linda told him. “He'll come back.”

“No,” Lucky said. He lifted the saddlebag and opened it. Inside was the short man's head. Lucky threw it in the open stove. Blood hissed on the coals, and the boy added an extra quarter of pine to
stoke the fire. It kindled, and flames rose. The man's skin blistered, then blackened. His hair crinkled. Wendy could smell it cooking.

“Good boy,” Linda said.

Mrs. Lawson stood in the doorway of her bedroom.

“They were not my cousins,” Mrs. Lawson whispered.

“No,” Linda said.

“They were not family. They were liars.”

“Yes,” Linda said. “They were liars.”

The room was quiet, aside from the sizzling of skin.

“Did you predict this?” Wendy asked Lucky.

The boy looked at her.

She undid her blanket, then tore her shirt in half and stood naked under.

“This,” she shouted. “This.”

She spun like a dervish, faster and faster, her hair twirling. The severed head came and went under her arm. Its eyes had shut or perhaps its landing in the fire had left them that way. Linda found the blanket and draped it across Wendy's shoulders. Wendy sat in a chair with the blanket. The boy set some coffee on to boil. When it was finished, he poured a cup, then offered one to the rest of them. Wendy took hers, though her hands shook.

The boy was calm as a stone. He'd done the men like good math, plotting a line and measuring to where it bisects the next. He was making angles, dividing people and events and Wendy herself into something he could gauge. Wendy coughed, then vomited bitter bile. It was the smell, she said, but it wasn't that at all. Mrs. Lawson gave her water. She drank and spat and drank again.

“I want to know about my father,” the boy said.

Linda sipped her coffee. The boy waited.

“I suppose you do,” Linda told him.

The boy looked stumped. He had thought the one question would be enough.

“What did he look like?

“It's difficult to reduce a person to looks,” Linda said.

The boy stood and reached into the fire. He pulled out the head. “Did he look like this, goddammit?”

“No,” Linda said.

The boy returned the head to the fire, then wiped its grease on his pants.

“I didn't care for him,” Linda said. “It was you I wanted.”

Wendy finished her coffee and the boy poured her another cup. When he stood over her, she could feel him looking into the blanket, and she knew she'd passed the place she could do anything about it.

“You were fathered a long time ago, if you want the truth,” Linda said. “Longer than you know. The other was just coincidence. Your father was just a boy. He could have been any boy.”

“Why'd he leave?”

“Someone shot him,” Linda said.

“That isn't so,” Wendy said.

However in Linda's mind literal truth was too narrow for such matters. Lucky nodded at the mirror in his hands, unaware what he was agreeing to. Soon, Mrs. Lawson returned to her bedroom and Linda to the extra room she and the boy occupied.
What else was there for them to do?
Wendy thought.

When the door squeaked, she knew it was Lucky coming for her. She heard his footsteps pad the floor, his breath in his chest rushing. His naked body was led by an enormous erection, tipping him forward like he was running downhill. The hair behind it was oddly like the mountain's fog, and the root seemed disconnected from the man. She considered looking up and trying to meet his eyes to see if she could find some reason there, but finally, she stared at the business end of him. It was his reason.

He bent on one knee like a noble waiting to be knighted by the queen. His flesh lay against her belly and drummed. She rolled and
it was on her hip. It was just skin and blood, she knew. They were all just skin and blood and bone. She stared into its small mouth, waiting for an answer, or a story, or just for a signal to go on and finish it.

“I can save you,” he said. “I did it the once already.”

“I don't feel saved,” she said.

She turned away. The boy waited. He was right of course. He'd done the work to earn her, and she felt odd about not allowing him his prize. A part of her hoped to, larger than she'd ever imagined she would invest in that sort of thing. She longed for a body's warmth to hide her. She knew he'd do whatever she asked, but she couldn't get the question from her chest to her lips. It shuddered between, not swallowed, not spoken, stuck where she could neither digest it nor spit it out of her. Finally, she closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep. If he took her that way, she would abide it, but she could not bring herself to invite him.

When she awoke, she was unstained. The boy had returned to the room he and his mother shared. Wendy opened the door and watched them sleep. His shoulder was large and awkward under his mother's arm, and his tipped head lay across her covered breast.

22

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, M
ATT LAY
late in his pallet and watched the sun rise, something he had not done in ten years. His hands had chapped and they itched. He stroked his singed eyebrows and ragged hair. Smoke clung to his hair. His bandaged feet leaked yellow fluid. He pulled socks over them and donned his work clothes. Walking was a new kind of anguish. The pup glanced at him and turned its head and whined at her own pain.

Outside, the old man, tipped by the cast on his leg, eyed him from the porch.

“You look chewed up and spit out.”

Matt rested on the trough's lip and closed his eyes and squinted into the sun lifting from the eastern horizon.

“I don't think I'll be much use for a while,” Matt said.

The old man was above him, then, shifting from his good leg to the cast. He knocked his hands together. Matt's own heartbeat picked up, and he felt giddy. He opened his eyes and gazed at the
boots, studying the laces. He pulled his T-shirt over his head and undid his pants. He could bear them no longer.

Jarms stood in the doorway.

“Get in the trough, Matt,” he said. “I'll bring the ointment and the dressing. We got to see to your feet. There's some fresh linens, too. You can make a wrap.”

Jarms returned with sheets and the medicine and spread some on the soles of Matt's feet. Matt winced with each pass and finally commandeered the tube himself and doctored his chest. Jarms greased his ankles and shins, then rifled old bed sheets until he found one long enough and tore holes in it for Matt's arms and head. Matt closed his eyes and Jarms lifted the sheet over him. It was cool and a little windy underneath where it didn't cling to the ointment. Jarms checked Matt's feet again, then crafted gauze stockings around them and anchored them with tape. The birds were scolding, and the sun was trying to warm the morning.

Jarms herded him to one of the bedrooms inside. He delivered his traps on the next pass and Queenie the last. Matt didn't argue.

“We'll tend things,” Jarms said. He left, and later Matt heard him lead the cattle to the barn. Roland remained in the doorway, leaning on his cane.

“You think he would've went in?” he asked. “Without you, I mean.”

“I reckon he would have,” Matt said, though he did not like to lie.

•

A
MONTH LATER ONE EVENING
when Matt was repairing a fence gate that allowed grain trucks to pass through the pasture, Garrett slowed his truck and let it idle, then opened the door. He poured two
cups of coffee from a thermos and offered Matt one. They stood on the peak of a steep hill, the only real promontory for miles. Before them, farmhouses and outbuildings scattered the country, gravel roads like arteries; automobile lights like blood flowing awkwardly between.

“You've got this enterprise tapping like a sewing machine,” Garrett said. Garrett pointed his arm south and west. Most of it was darkness. “I bought most of that country up in the last three years. The old man got out of the market like Joe Kennedy and ended up with a fortune and land is cheap. Everybody's going under and glad to have bottom dollar,” he said. “Land is cheaper than, well, dirt.”

Garrett pointed toward the Jarms ranch. “See that group of lights there. I haven't quite cornered that place yet.”

Matt nodded. “I doubt they're selling.”

“I know the old man's doctor.”

Four miles away, a truck slowed for the grade and shifted down; Matt could hear the whine of the transaxle.

“How come you shot the dog.”

“I apologize for that,” Garrett said. “A fit of frustration. It was stupid. The dog did no harm.”

Matt didn't reply.

“I'm a good aim. I shot her where she could be fixed.”

“It was meant to wound me.”

“It was meant to wound Horace. Did, too. I've rarely seen him so irritated.”

“You just twisting his tail?”

“Trying to square him away,” Garrett said. “He's not inclined to break or lead, though.”

“What's that to you?”

“I got a soft spot for him. I hate to see him go to waste.”

“He seems bound and determined.”

“With Roland looking after things he could go on forever, or at least till he pickles his liver and kidneys. That isn't the case any longer. Roland is going to pass on soon. He leaves the place to Horace. Well, it will bankroll some good stories then go belly up. He's a child. He needs looked after.” Garrett drew his tobacco pouch from his shirt pocket along with papers. He picked free three brown leaves and rubbed them between his palms and the flakes rained into the papers. Not one missed its mark. He turned the papers until the tobacco settled, then, on the short side, licked the opposite with a darting tongue that reminded Matt of a lizard. He twirled the paper perfectly and handed the cigarette to Matt along with a wood match struck on his pants zipper. Matt smoked. Garrett lit another for himself.

“You ever hear of a trust?” Garrett asked. “A person deposits money or land or gold or the like into it. Like a bank. Except that money, it has a trustee. The trustee decides when to open the purse and when not to.”

“You see Roland taking to a bank after all they've undone?”

“It's not a bank that handles it, it's a lawyer.”

“I doubt he'd see much difference,” Matt said.

“The lawyer, he just signs the papers.”

“This trustee, that going to be you?”

Garrett shook his head. “You.”

“Until Roland passes?”

“Until Horace passes. When that day comes you'll sell it to me. Fair market.”

“How come you don't just take it?”