The Thicket (24 page)

A
fter riding a fair piece we found a narrow path cut in the woods and decided we ought to go down it and find a place to camp where we were out of main view. We couldn’t make the path out very well at first, but our eyes adjusted to it better after we had been among the thicker trees for a while, and then the woods broke wide where more trees had been chopped down and sawed, most likely by the colored men from the sawmill some miles back.

We rode on through the clearing until we came to where the woods were wild again, and we nestled up within the pines and hardwoods for cover. We figured ourselves safe enough there, and it wasn’t any time at all until we had the horses fed and watered and hobbled. We were too tired to eat and pretty much just fell out. I lay out in the open on my bedroll with Jimmie Sue, and Hog came and lay down by us.

I was nearly asleep when Jimmie Sue put her arm across my chest and brought her mouth close to my ear. “I wanted to grow up to be a princess, but instead I’m a whore. How did that come to be?”

“I guess you took a wrong turn.”

“No doubt about that.”

“I wanted to be a farmer and I’ve come to be a killer.”

“We both missed our turn, didn’t we?”

I put my arm under her neck and pulled her to me. “You’re a princess to me, Jimmie Sue, no matter what turn you took. You asked what I wanted back there on the road, or words to that effect. And I got the answer. I want you.”

“Tonight or forever?”

“I don’t want you tonight, actually,” I said. “I’m so tired I can’t even take my pants off.”

“That does mean something.”

“How’s that?”

“That you say you want me even with your pants on.”

“Yeah. I guess so,” I said. If Jimmie Sue said anything after that I didn’t hear her, because I fell fast asleep.

I awoke in the middle of the night with a burning thirst and saw Spot was awake, sitting on the ground just outside the thick of the pines, between a jagged stump and a burnt spot where a stump might have once been. There were also some places where the stumps had been dynamited out.

I looked around and seen then that everyone else but Eustace was still rolled up in their bedrolls and the horses were quiet, and no one had swooped in on us to cut throats. I could hear Hog snoring next to Jimmie Sue. He may have been good in a fight and dangerous, but he wasn’t much of a watchdog.

Now, as I said, I had been tuckered out in a serious way, but when I woke up I felt refreshed and a little eager. I felt good about Jimmie Sue. I watched her sleep for a few minutes. Her face was smooth when she slept and she looked even younger and less worn down and more pretty than usual. In sleep she was the princess she wanted to be.

My good feelings only lasted a moment, and then I started thinking about Lula. I thought of her dressed in an old rough shirt, men’s overalls, and clodhopper boots, lying on her stomach looking at dewdrops on a blade of grass. When I came to get her, to call her for chores or to come in to breakfast, without taking her eyes off that blade of dew-dotted grass she would say, “Jack, all those little drops of water on the grass. If you were small enough, a little, little fish, that drop would be the same to you as an ocean.” Being neither small enough nor a fish, I couldn’t understand what it was Lula was getting at. Right then all I could think about was her, where she was now and what was being done to her, or had been done to her, and I felt a boiling sickness inside of me and it was all I could do not to scream.

I slipped out from under the stuffy blanket without waking Jimmie Sue, picked up my pistol, stuck it in my belt, trudged over to where Spot was, and sat down by him. He had built a small fire and was cooking up some coffee. He had the weapon that had been given him lying nearby.

“You know how to use that?” I asked him. I was talking softly, cause I didn’t want to stir the others.

“I’m gonna reckon you don’t mean the coffeepot but the gun,” he said.

“Either one,” I said. “I’ve had enough bad coffee this trip.”

“The gun I’m no real good at and don’t plan to use it. As for coffee, Shorty likes it too black, Eustace likes it too watery, Jimmie Sue don’t drink enough to matter, and the sheriff don’t care one way or another. So I got to make it how I like it.”

“What about me?” I asked.

“I ain’t considered on you much,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I mean I can’t get no handle on you. I can’t figure your ways.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean I know your sister has been toted off, but I’m wondering what you think you’ll be getting back.”

“My sister,” I said.

“Someone who looks like your sister,” he said.

“You can’t know that. I’m tired of hearing that from everyone. You can’t know a thing like that.”

“I guess not,” he said. “But my Grandpa Weeden, he told me in slave days he got sold from his mother and father. Actually they sold his father off early on, when he was a runt, and then he got sold a few years after. He reckoned he was ten, but he wasn’t entirely sure. Wasn’t much paid for him, and the man bought him didn’t really need him, but bought him because he wanted to separate the piglet from the sow, so to speak. Grandpa Weeden said he figured that’s how it was and why it was, cause on the farm he saw how much this fella liked to pull a piglet away from a sow hog, how much he liked to hear that pig screech and that mama hog carry on. He liked that so much, he would get him a board and whip on that old mama hog. Then he’d throw that pig up in the air, over the slats in the pen, and let it fall down in the mud. He thought that was funny. My Grandpa Weeden said that was how he figured the man saw him, as a piglet he could buy cheap and take away from the sow and he’d just wean it and never think about where it come from.”

“If you’re talking about my sister being weaned, I’m sure she’ll remember where she come from and how things were.”

“That’s the problem I’m talking about. She’ll remember, all right, same as Grandpa Weeden, but there’s just some places you can’t go back to, and the remembering of them makes it worse.”

The coffee water was boiling. I went to my saddlebag, got my tin cup out of it, and brought it back. Spot had his own cup, and he poured us some of his makings. It was good and dark, but not too bitter or too weak. It had a taste that was akin to the way it smelled, which ain’t always the case with coffee.

I looked around, noticed Eustace hadn’t come back. I said, “Where’s Eustace?”

“I don’t know exactly, but I seen him wander down there into the woods. I think he had a bottle with him, and I figured him pretty drunk on account of he had that drunk way of walking, like one foot was on high ground and the other one hurt.”

“He’s not supposed to drink,” I said.

“You go tell him that,” Spot said.

I shook my head. “Not me.”

“Listen here,” Spot said. “I’m gonna put a bite of beans to heat in a pan. You watch them while I go relieve myself in the woods. Only thing you got to do is stir them now and again, and don’t let them scald.”

“All right,” I said.

He got the beans ready, gave me a big spoon, and went away into the woods. It was less dark now because it was near morning. Light was seeping in near the bottoms of the trees. There was one spot where it was golden and the light appeared to jump a little. I was watching that when Shorty came up.

“You have more beans?” he said.

“No,” I said. “You got to ask Spot if he does. He’ll be back in a moment. He’s taking care of his toilet.”

“Where is Eustace?” Shorty said.

“Spot says he thinks he has a bottle. Saw him wander off this morning, into the woods there.”

“Damn. Got it in town is my guess. I thought I smelled liquor on his breath last night. He probably had a nip, woke in the night and had another, went off in the woods to finish it. That, my friend, is not a good thing. But I will deal with him…Jack, I will say this just once. What I said about true love. Maybe I am wrong. I watch how you look at Jimmie Sue and how she looks at you, and I have to say it seems more than lust.”

“I think we are going to marry,” I said.

“That might be carrying it too far, but I wish you luck and prosperity. Even if, when this is over, Eustace and I will own all your land.”

Shorty grinned, stuck out his hand, and we shook. “Good luck to you, Jack,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “Considering your feelings on love and marriage, I got to take that as sincere.”

“Right now it is sincere,” he said, still holding on to my hand. “Ask me how I feel tomorrow.”

He let go of my hand. I said, “I hate to spoil a good moment, but I have to go make water. Watch the beans, will you?”

“In love, but practical,” Shorty said.

I gave him the spoon.

Like a moth, I started to where the sun glowed most. I walked on out until I was well in the woods, because I had more in mind than a watering. I got my pants down without dropping my pistol in the dirt, leaned against a tree, and took a mess right there. I wiped on some leaves, being careful not to gather up any poison ivy leaves in the process.

I finished my toilet, pulled up my pants, turned to look toward the brightening of the sun. That glow I had seen was still there. It seemed to be hanging between the trees even as the light grew bright. I walked toward it, sniffing the air, because now I could smell smoke. I could hear, too, a kind of crying. I pulled my pistol and went along quietly, using a deer trail so as to make less noise. The light I had been watching grew brighter, and it jumped a little. The smell of smoke was thicker, and there were thin snakes of it floating in the air. I knew then that it wasn’t the light of rising morning I had seen but a big fire. The crying was still going on. My gun hand trembled. I could hear voices, laughing, and a kind of snorting sound.

I ducked low and crept along until I come to where I could hear the voices better and I could see the fire, if not its source. It was rising up high over a hill that was covered in brush and dropped off out of sight. I eased up to the brush, hunkered down behind it, and peeked through.

B
elow me there was a great fire built in a clear spot, and the logs had collapsed and flames were licking the last of them; most were already burnt into embers and ashes. Sunlight was breaking clean and heavy, and I was able to see better what was down there, though it all had a rosy haze about it from the fire and the rising sun. It made the dew on the bushes sparkle like tiny jewels.

The woods were cut open wide, and there was a small cabin. It was cruder than the trading post. It was flat-roofed and didn’t have a chimney, but there was a metal stovepipe poking up out of it, and the smoke coming from it was black and greasy-looking. I guessed that was the cook fire, and the fire out front of the place had been where people had gathered and had light to see by. Considering the weather, it would have been a hot evening.

More peculiar was a black bear with a thick logging rope tied around its hind leg, the other end bound to a tree. I reckon the bear had about twenty feet of rope to go out on. The bear wasn’t anywhere near the fire or the cabin. It just sat still and snorted from time to time.

There was a crude log corral out back with horses in it. I counted them. There were twelve. That didn’t mean there were twelve people, of course, as there could have been spare mounts, but it didn’t mean there were only twelve, either, if you considered every horse had a rider and that some might have been riding double and there was a wagon without mules or horses pulled up in the yard. Starting out to the side and running alongside the cabin there was a narrow dirt road that ran into the clearing. It was a logging road, and fresh. I bet just a month before it had been nothing more than a critter trail, but now it was wide as a wagon and winding onto land that looked to have been cut down with Satan’s own scythe.

But none of this held my attention as much as something else. Cut Throat and Nigger Pete had Spot down close to the fire, just out of reach of the bear. They had stripped Spot’s clothes off and had been at his chest with a stick of burning wood. In fact, Cut Throat still held the stick in his hand. He was chewing tobacco and saying something to Spot I couldn’t understand, and now and then he’d spit tobacco on him. Spot couldn’t do anything back, because Cut Throat was sitting on his legs and Nigger Pete had hold of Spot’s arms and had the back of Spot’s head against his knee.

There were some other people down there, too, and they wandered up for a look at Spot, then wandered away. It was as if they had seen something curious, like a fly stuck in a jar of honey, and then grown tired of it. They meandered about the place, spitting and drinking from jugs and peeing off to the side of the house. One skinny, shirtless man, wearing overalls with one strap loose off a shoulder, was near the bear. He looked as if his nose had been borrowed from someone bigger, and he was the only one I seen wasn’t wearing a gun. He was making dirt clods and throwing them at the helpless bear. When the first clod hit, the bear stood up and waved its paws and growled. The man laughed and threw more clods.

In that moment Spot looked up, his mouth open, crying heavily, and I can’t honestly tell you I know he seen me for sure, but he was looking my way, and for an instant I think his eyes widened because I think he saw my face between a split in the brush, and for a moment his face softened, as if he thought I might be there to help him. He could have called out for me, but he didn’t, and I don’t know if that’s because he didn’t actually see me and I just thought he did, or was being brave and not wanting me to get caught, too, or if he just didn’t have the juice left in him to make any noise. But I do know this. If he did think I was there to help him, I wasn’t. Oh, I wanted to. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

I was just a boy with a gun I didn’t really know how to use, and down below was all of them, those monsters, and maybe I’m putting too fine an explanation on it, and not mentioning well enough just how scared I was, but the bottom of the creek is that I didn’t do anything about it because I was afraid to. That ain’t really an excuse, but it’s all the one I got.

Spot turned his face away from me and looked slightly to the side in a manner that seemed to say I quit on this entire thing we call life. I just quit. That’s when Cut Throat, having had all the fun he wanted, put down the burning stick and pulled a razor from inside that dead man’s suit of clothes he was wearing, opened it, and very slowly, with the skill and precision of a barber shaving a pesky eyebrow hair, leaned forward and cut a deep wound in Spot’s forehead. The blood didn’t spray. There was just a line of a mark from the razor, and then in the now-bright sunlight that had risen above the tree line, the cut turned red and Cut Throat moved. Nigger Pete, as if he’d had the practice, tilted Spot’s head back and the blood sprayed and Nigger Pete cackled like a hen that had just laid an egg.

Cut Throat stood, and Nigger Pete lifted Spot up so that his feet didn’t touch the ground. Spot tilted his head to one side and closed his eyes and let his arms hang loose at his sides. Nigger Pete lifted him even higher and moved him toward the bear. The bear didn’t seem interested. The man with the clods was still there, and now he knew how it was, and that caused him to giggle and get busy with leaning over and grabbing dirt, making and throwing clods at the bear that was now riled and had taken to standing on its hind legs. Cut Throat came in front of Spot, and the razor moved again, and then Cut Throat stepped aside. This time the cut struck Spot’s throat, and there was the same queer delay, the red line, and then a spray of blood that went wide and far and splattered on the bear’s face and beaded in its fur, the sun making the beads look like wet rubies.

The bear seemed reluctant at first, but the blood was hot and the bear was hungry. The bear came forward, and Pete pushed Spot toward it, causing him to fall face-first in front of the bear. I like to think Spot was already dead when the bear went at him. Except for being grabbed by the back of the head by the bear and shook like a rag and flung aside, there was never another move out of Spot that made me think he suffered.

A couple of men that had been wandering around in the yard, peeing and just strolling about, came over to watch the bear work. One of them nudged Spot with his foot, spoke up. “Now there’s a little nigger done gone to heaven.”

I felt in that moment as if I had come unstuck from life and that I was somewhere outside the real world, in some insane place where common decency and the laws of men were just silly things, like lace pants on a donkey. My eyes turned wet. My bowels went loose. I didn’t know if I should move or stay still, and was uncertain I could do either. Then a hand came down on my shoulder.

“Stay quiet,” said Shorty’s voice.

I turned, saw Shorty behind me on his knees with his Sharps, starting to move backwards. I eased back with him until we were maybe twenty feet from where we had been, hunkered down under a wide elm. When we spoke our faces were as close as lovers and our voices were as light as the beating of a gnat’s wings.

“Cut Throat,” I said. “He…”

“I saw.”

“I didn’t do a thing.”

“There was not nothing you could do. Nothing I could do. Spot saw us both, Jack. I was looking just over your shoulder.”

“I didn’t know you were there,” I said. “I didn’t do a thing.”

“Was not anything you could do. Spot said not a word. He died game.”

“I haven’t any consolation in that,” I said.

“I think he did.”

Shorty got me by the sleeve and pulled me away, deeper down the trail and out of sight of the cabin. My legs wouldn’t hold me after that, and I just sat down in the middle of the trail. The world was blurry.

Shorty hunkered down by me.

“He might have give us up,” I said, “and we just don’t know it yet. You don’t know he didn’t.” I said that because I wanted him to have given us up. I wanted not to think he just looked at me and I looked back and didn’t say a word and he stood brave and I sat coward.

“I believe not. They do not act like men that are worried or even mildly concerned about anyone else being about. I think he gave them a lie about himself and they took it.”

“He just wandered off to shit, went too far, and they got him and hurt him and fed him to a bear,” I said. “One moment he’s cooking beans to eat, the next thing is he’s being eaten.”

“That is about the size of it,” Shorty said.

I felt boneless, as if I might come apart and trickle away into a hole in the ground.

“What do we do?” I said.

“Gather our posse and surprise them. To be more precise, we shoot the hell out of them before they know we are coming. Eustace, however, may be a problem. I went looking for him and did not find him, and that is the way he gets when he drinks. He wanders and hides until it takes him over. When it does he is a wild animal. We should sober him up. We need his shotgun. How many did you make out down there?”

“Six wandering about, counting Cut Throat and Pete, but the horses and the smoke coming up from the cabin make me think there are more inside.”

“Did you see your sister?”

I shook my head.

“She may be inside the cabin,” Shorty said.

I nodded. “I can’t believe what they done to Spot.”

“Believe it, son. Come on, let us find the others.”

We had gone back but a short piece down the path when we come across Eustace, drunk as a beaver at the bottom of a whiskey barrel and making enough tromping noise to arouse Cut Throat’s men. He had the shotgun in one hand and the liquor bottle in the other.

“Hey,” Eustace said when he saw us. “I been drinking.”

“I can see that,” Shorty said. “Eustace, I am going to need you to get quieter and become sober quickly, because we have come upon them.”

“Who?”

“The killers and kidnappers,” Shorty said.

“Oh, oh yeah, those fellas,” Eustace said. He burped, lifted the bottle, which was a big one, and took a chug from it. It was nearly empty. When he lowered it, he looked around, said, “Have you noticed how many pine cones there are? I saw some under an oak tree. Why is that?”

“They roll with the wind,” Shorty said. “It is a simple mystery. Now, listen to me, Eustace. Please. We will need to prepare a strategy.”

“A what?”

“Prepare a plan to take care of the kidnappers.”

“Hell, I got a goddamn plan,” Eustace said. “Go down there and shoot their dicks off. Which way are they?”

“They have killed Spot,” Shorty said.

“Spot?”

“He came out here to do what nature demands, must have heard them, or one of them walked up on him. Whatever, they got him and they killed him in a bad way.”

Eustace looked at me as if this needed to be agreed on. I nodded.

“Little Spot? That can’t be. He wasn’t doing nothing to nobody. He wasn’t bigger than a bump on a log. He was just riding with us. He ain’t in on this.”

“Nonetheless,” Shorty said. “He is dead by their hands.”

Eustace started to cry. Shorty grabbed him by the hand with the bottle in it.

“Come on, Eustace. We need to go back to our camp and get Winton.”

Eustace ignored him, started walking in the direction of Cut Throat’s camp.

“Dog fuckers,” Eustace said.

“No,” Shorty said, taking a firm grip on Eustace’s arm. “No.”

Eustace started trying to sling his arm free, but Shorty clung to it.

“What are you?” Eustace said. “A tick?”

“We need Winton and Hog, maybe Jimmie Sue,” Shorty said. “We need all our guns.”

Eustace was starting to get loud, and though we were some space from Cut Throat and his men, it wasn’t so much it didn’t worry me.

Eustace started swinging his arm, and Shorty swung with it, like he was tied to it. Then Eustace snapped his arm a little, and Shorty came free of it and rolled up under a pine tree, losing his hat and his rifle.

I ran and grabbed Eustace’s legs and tried to take him down, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Shorty was up now. He ran behind him, jumped up, and grabbed the back of Eustace’s shirt and pulled him backwards. Between the two of us we took him down on his back. He dropped the shotgun but clung tight to the bottle of whiskey.

It was a short-lived victory. Eustace took a deep breath, sat up, and flung us both away from him, knocking me down the trail a ways, sending Shorty to roll back under that same pine tree.

“Damn it,” said Shorty, picking up his hat and sticking it on his head again.

Shorty grabbed up a large stick, ran up behind Eustace while he was trying to stand, and hit him in the back of the head as hard as he could. Eustace was on one knee when he took the hit. He didn’t budge, just turned and looked at Shorty.

“Shit,” Shorty said.

Eustace rose up and loomed over Shorty like a mountain. The look on his face made me think he was about to take hold of Shorty and mash him like an accordion. Then, without the least bit of warning, Eustace toppled over on his back, somehow managing to keep that whiskey bottle in his fist. He lay there and didn’t move.

Me and Shorty eased over to him. Eustace had both eyes closed. He opened them suddenly, making me jump. He said, “They got Spot?”

“Yes,” Shorty said. “They finished him off.”

Eustace sat up. He lifted the bottle to his lips and started swigging what little was left. A moment later he tossed the empty bottle aside and got up. He went over and picked up his shotgun, though it took him a couple of tries.

“You have to take it easy,” Shorty said. “You are drunk as a skunk.”

Eustace said, “I’m going to kill someone. I got lots of shells in my pocket. Some of them I’m going to kill twice.”

I started to say something. Shorty said, “It is no use. He has got some of his sense about him, but not much of it is common sense. You go on back and get Winton and Jimmie Sue. Me and him will go down there and see what we can roust.”

“No,” I said. “I’m going with you.”

“I am past arguing,” Shorty said. “I cannot leave him, and we need the others.”

It was decided for us. Eustace was already staggering down the trail toward the cabin. Shorty grabbed his Sharps and went after him, and I went after the both of them. There was part of me that figured I was walking right into the mouth of death, but I remembered those men back at the trading post, especially the one that had walked off and then come back and joined the others. They were trying to fix something about themselves, too. It didn’t turn out too well for them, but now I understood.