The Thicket (5 page)

“How much land?”

“It’s two places,” I said. “One is a hundred acres, my grandpa’s old place, and one is twenty-five, my folks’ place, but it’s on good farmland. Grandpa’s isn’t as good.”

“Farmland is what you make of it,” said the colored man. “You got to know the right way to break down animal manure, and I do. I had some land of my own I could grow corn so high you’d have to be a bird to see over it. I was doing that for Old Man Rutledge, but he died and his wife didn’t like me. Her family, the Cox family, used to own my people, and when the change come the old man could stand it, but she couldn’t. She didn’t like having to pay me in crop and some wages for what they used to get for free from my folks. I was looking for some new work when I come into town and these fellows and his friends robbed the bank. I thought I could get a job burying them. I’ve done that off and on for years, since I wasn’t making all that much on the farm. Oh, I left now and then to track and do sundry work, like digging graves. Usually pays a quarter apiece for burying; least it does for me. I’ve done it quite a few times. White man digs a grave, it’s fifty cents a corpse. Like the way he digs it is different and better than the one I dig for a quarter.”

I decided not to mention that my parents had died of the pox and that they were buried in coffins full of lime, as I figured that might possibly bring down the property value. I said, “Then you’ll do it?”

“That depends on if we can get Shorty to sign up. He’ll do it, I’ll do it. But I got to have someone like him at my back. And my guess is all those men, especially Cut Throat Bill, have prices on their heads. Me and Shorty could make quite a collection if this comes out right. If it don’t, well, we could get ourselves killed, and you, too. And you look green enough they might even kill you twice.”

“You get my sister back and help me catch those men that killed Grandpa, see they get justice, I’ll sign both properties over to you. Then, like you said, there’s the possibility of rewards for those skunks.”

He rubbed his chin. “We’ll need some supplies, but I reckon to have any we’ll have to steal it.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I don’t want to get in the wrong life myself, end up hanging beside Bobby there. I won’t steal. That’s not how us Parkers do things.”

“So far the way you Parkers do things is you get yourself killed and kidnapped and knocked out in the street. You are not off to a good beginning, young man.”

“I won’t steal,” I said. “I can’t. My grandpa was a preacher, and he would roll over in his grave if he had one. Only he’s somewhere in the Sabine River or washed up along its banks. I get sick thinking he’s stuck to some root down under and catfish are at him.”

“Tell you what,” said the colored man. “Let’s go see Shorty, see what he thinks, and we can see about supplies from there. He might not go. We’ll see him first. You say your name is Parker?”

“Jack Parker.”

“Mine’s Eustace Cox, and I think we might be cousins of a sorts.”

“How’s that?” I said.

“You sound a little offended that you might be part darky. Well, rest assured, white boy, it’s me that’s part of you. Cox family married in the Parker family, and one of them Cox boys, some forty-five years back, made me with my mother—against her will, I might add—and she was colored and Comanche, and so here I am. So we could be relatives.”

“I don’t care one way or the other,” I said. “I just want to rescue my sister, and time’s wasting.”

“Not me been lying out here in the dirt, cuz,” he said. “But it’s near night now, so ain’t much you can do. We can get over to see Shorty maybe, talk to him. I’ll have an answer for you then. If we can’t help you, then you’re on your own, cause I got no other suggestions. Like I said, I got to have the right man riding with me, and no offense, you’re just barely grown.”

“Nineteen,” I said.

“You’re lying,” he said.

“Well, I might be closer to seventeen,” I said, still stretching the blanket.

“In my day that was grown and then some, but not now,” he said. “You are green behind the ears, and pretty much green all over. Actually, you’re more pink in spots. You got the sunburn on the back of your neck from lying out here in the street. That’s gonna smart some come morning, if not sooner. Let’s go see if we can find Shorty. But first, I got to bury this one. I already tucked the other one away at the cemetery.”

“The one on the board?”

“That would be him. Now I got to get this one. I’m going to have to cut him down and drag him, because I don’t have a horse.”

I won’t lie to you. I was horrified at the thought, and even more horrified when he gave me the shovel to hold, put his pipe away, pulled out a big knife, and reached up on his tiptoes to cut the rope high. When he did, he let the man fall, got hold of the nub of rope, and started dragging him down the street with that big old hog trotting after him. After a moment he and the hog paused, and both looked back at me. Eustace said, “You coming?”

Carrying the shovel, I went after them.

Eustace dragged the body through an alley and out back of the town buildings, over some rough ground toward a line of trees that was on a hill above Sylvester. This was quite a trip we took, and the body of Bobby O’Dell kept turning over and over, and by the time we got to the trees, what was left of his face didn’t look so good. I won’t talk about what happened to his eyes during this event.

Finally we come to the trees, and Eustace dragged the body some more through the tree line, then there was another hill, and up on that hill were some crosses. No tombstones—all crosses, simple things made from cheap lumber. By this time the sun had gone down and I was seeing all this by moonlight, but it was a half-moon and bright enough. It gave those crosses a kind of glow.

There was a freshly covered grave there—the one he had referred to, of course—and he let go of the rope and started digging next to it. The hog sat down on the ground and watched, as if taking note of the proper way to get the job done. In no time at all Eustace had broke the red dirt down to about three feet deep and six foot wide. He gave me the shovel then. I took to digging. Eustace sat on the ground with his back against a cross and gave me instructions. I dug for a long time. Eustace didn’t offer to spell me, and of course the hog was out of the mix, being more of a spectator.

Eustace said, “This here is where they bury colored, paupers, and outlaws. I done got my money for this, which is a good thing. Sometimes the grave’s dug, town council don’t want to pay. They done me that way once—for the good, white people’s graveyard—and I dug up that old woman and her child and took them over and laid them on the mayor’s doorstep. Since they had died in a fire, they didn’t look so good. They had to pay me what they owed me, and they done it quick, and they had to pay me more for burying them again. They could have got somebody else, but they knew I’d be mad about it. You don’t want me mad. You especially don’t want me drunk and mad, which is why I don’t drink. There’s a demon in the bottle when I do, and the town knows it, and the nigger haters have tried to settle me down, but they got settled, so they live with me. That whiskey, it’ll make me do wrong. One sip I’m happy, two I’m mad, and three I’m crazy. Maybe it’s the Indian blood I got, or maybe it’s just me.”

I had almost quit listening at this point. I was still thinking about what he had told me about the woman and child. I said, “You dug up a woman and her child?”

“Took them right out of the coffins. They were dead, so it didn’t matter none to them. I needed that fifty cents, and when it was all said and done I made a dollar. By the way, I ain’t sharing the grave money with you just because you’re digging. Consider this like a down payment on me hunting down those fellows that’s got your sister. Tell you what. You stay here and pat that grave down some more, and I’ll go borrow a horse, pick you up when I got it.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but I had a feeling that there was only so much I could worry about at this point, though I might could make a mention of Jesus to him at some point and see if he’d come around to a better way of thinking. Eustace and the hog went off about their mission, leaving me to finish the work.

I trembled when I thought again of Lula. We had always got along fine, and I had even stooped to playing dolls and tea parties with her, though I had never even known anyone of my acquaintance to have an actual tea party. She was a good girl, and we were good friends for a brother and a sister. Though when I was younger, I do remember chasing her more than once with a frog to scare her, or with a sticker-burr switch. She was a good runner. What I remembered most about her was how strange she could be, studying on things and considering on matters of no interest to anyone else. Like how could a hummingbird fly backwards and a chicken that had wings couldn’t do any real flying at all. It didn’t seem a deliberation of prominence to me. She was always coming out with that kind of thing, and I was always telling her if God wanted us to know the answers to such, he’d have written it down. One time she looked at me when I said that, and said, “You’re telling me God wrote the Bible with his own hand, and in English? And knowing all things, he has no word on the hummingbird and the chicken?”

I had never thought on such a thing for a moment, and before I could say as such, she had already moved on to some other contemplation that most likely had no explanation, either.

I patted the grave down some more, then got bored and leaned on the shovel. Then I got tired and sat down. The sunburn on the back of my neck had started to sting, but there wasn’t a thing I could do for it but bear it. About the time I began to think I’d been hornswoggled into digging a grave for nothing, I saw Eustace riding up the shadow-covered hill on a horse, the hog trotting behind him. There was a bridle and reins on the horse, but no saddle.

When he got up by me, I saw he had an automatic pistol stuck in his belt. It was the same sort Fatty had. He said, “We better get on our way.”

He held out his hand and I took it. He swung me up on the back of the horse. We went away at a trot, the hog running along beside us, hardly blowing any air at all.

It wasn’t an easy ride, bareback like that, and I nearly bounced off several times. I had to put my arms around Eustace to stay hung on. This was a bit troublesome for me, as at the time I felt I was a grown enough man that I ought not have to cling to him like a child waiting for a nipple. But that was the size of it, and I put it on to wear, so to speak. Hog, as the porker was called, made his way easily and quickly, and I was surprised at how fast he could go.

The moon was high by the time we came to where we were going, which was on the other side of the river. We crossed at a narrow spot, but the water was high from the rain the day before and was still rolling fast, if not exactly raging.

The water washed over the belly of the horse, then its sides, and up over our knees as we rode across. Once, we hit a sinkhole and the water came up to the critter’s neck and we got a good drenching. I was nearly washed off the horse. Finally we made it to the other side and rode up a high, slanting portion of the bank. I really had to hold on for dear life, but eventually we made the lip and Hog paused there to shake like a dog.

Eustace turned the horse down what was more of a rabbit path. After we had gone that way awhile and the night air had begun to dry us some, everything opened up. There was a grassy hill, and on the hill I spied something I couldn’t quite make out. As we rode up, the moonlight fell down on it like a splash of buttermilk. I saw it was a telescope mounted on the hill, pointing up at the stars, and there was a child looking through it. And as we topped the hill, I could see beyond him a house and corral and a small barn, all of it nicely laid out.

Closer yet, I realized that the child was not a child at all but a man, a dwarf.

M
y first view of Shorty was on that hill under the moonlight. He noticed us long before we came up, but when he saw us good he turned back to the telescope and continued peering through it.

Eustace reined in the horse. Hog sat on his haunches, lifted a back leg, and snapped at his ear with his hoof like a dog with a paw.

I slid off the horse, my butt numb as my legs. Eustace dropped down and held the horse by the reins. He said by way of greeting to the dwarf, “You up for hunting down some folks and maybe killing them? Rescuing this boy’s sister?”

The dwarf pulled his eye from the telescope and studied Eustace. “Does it involve money, as I am about to a spot where I need some more?”

“It’s got some twists in the road, but it could be about some money,” Eustace said.

“A maybe job,” the dwarf said. “I do not know. That is somehow not as enticing as a solid offer.”

“It sounds all right,” Eustace said. “Ain’t nothing without a chance in it, is there?”

“Some things have fewer chances,” the dwarf said.

“Why don’t we go on to your place, have some coffee, and talk on it?” Eustace said.

“Time’s wasting,” I said. “Every minute things could be worse for Lula.”

“Lula?” the dwarf said.

“My sister,” I said.

“I see. Well, sir, she is not my sister, and until I know the ends and outs of this enterprise, you cannot consider me bound for action.”

“Come on, then,” said Eustace. “Let’s go palaver.”

“I see you have both crossed the river,” said the dwarf.

“Yes,” Eustace said. “But we’re drying out good.”

By this time I was much agitated, as my grandfather used to say, but it also occurred to me that his agitation might well have led to his death as much as a bullet did, so I pulled my feelings up tight and followed the dwarf toward his house, Eustace leading the stolen horse and Hog trotting along with us.

It was odd to watch the dwarf walk, for his movements were somewhere between that of a grown man and that of a child. His head seemed large and heavy on his shoulders, which were broad for a man his size. He was hatless, and in the night his hair looked dark, black, even. I had noticed a bit of a shadow on his face from unshaven whiskers, yet there was about Shorty a kind of delicateness of habit, like a man who belonged in better surroundings. I don’t know how else to describe it other than that, but that was my first impression. Like he was visiting royalty shrunk down to size and quite angry about it.

When we got to his shack, he went inside and after caring for the horses, we went with him, Hog included. It was clean, if simple and small. It was two rooms. I could see from where we stood through an open doorway to another room, where there was a small bed in a simple wooden frame. On the other side of the room where we stood there were stacked books and papers and magazines. Shorty lit some kerosene lanterns and pretty soon it was yellow inside and I got my first real good look at him. He was indeed dark-headed and had an evening shadow of black whiskers. His eyes were blue or green—the light was not bright enough for me to be certain, though later I would determine they were gray. He was dark-skinned from working outside, and behind what at first seemed a delicate face were hard-edged bones that poked at his cheeks and punched out his chin. He was a handsome dwarf, and had he been six foot tall he would have undoubtedly been what they call a ladies’ man.

He had a wooden step in front of the cast-iron stove, and he poked some wood in the burner and lit a fire. He poured water from a bucket into a pot, got coffee into it, and set it on the fire hole to boil. He seated himself in a chair at the table in the middle of the room. It was the only chair. It was a low table, and me and Eustace, without discussing it, sat cross-legged on the floor, which put us at about the same height as Shorty. We looked across the table at him. Hog laid up in the open doorway, his head and shoulders in the shack, the rest of him hanging out in the yard.

Shorty said, “I have to be out and about and maybe hunt down and kill someone, I need to know the entire enterprise.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it?” I said. “I was expecting someone else.”

“A taller man, perhaps?” said Shorty.

“I won’t lie. Yeah, someone with some height and weight.”

“Gunpowder and shot come in all manner of containments, but all of them are powder and shot, and some of the small ones are tightly packed and have a considerable punch. Consider me a tightly packed package.”

I had my doubts, but I was desperate. I laid out all that had happened, about my dead and river-claimed grandpa, my kidnapped sister, and the papers I had that showed ownership of property. To make that more certain, I pulled those papers out—now dry, as they had not gotten seriously dampened by the river—and folded them open carefully on the table for them to gander on. While they were doing that, I reminded Shorty of the bank robbery and how it was the same bunch of scoundrels. I told him of the rewards that would be on the heads of Cut Throat Bill, Nigger Pete, and Fatty and tried to be eloquent and persuasive in my telling.

“I got a thought,” said Eustace, “and it’s this. There might be a whole passel of them bad men lumped up together. More than was in town. Would be my guess they all have a price on their heads.”

“You are saying it might well be a bonanza,” said the dwarf.

“I reckon I am,” Eustace said.

The dwarf leaned back and considered. “It has its merits.” The dwarf got up and found a cigar in a box he pulled from a cabinet. He took out one of the cigars. It was a big cigar. He put it in his mouth, moved the coffeepot, bent over the stove, and poked his face toward the fire. Red shadows flared across his skin, and then he pulled back, puffing the cigar. He replaced the coffeepot and went back to his little chair, blowing clouds of reeking blue cigar smoke into the air.

“What we need to do is get going,” I said. “She’s been gone now near a day, and they could be miles away.”

“Oh, they are,” Shorty said. “They are many miles away, but my guess is they have stopped with the night.”

“You don’t know that,” I said.

“You are correct,” he said. “I do not. They could well be traveling by night, but I think it is best we do not. We cannot easily find their track by night, but tomorrow when there is light we can, and we can proceed at a rapid pace.”

“I could just go on ahead, and you two can do without the reward,” I said.

“You could do that,” said the dwarf. “And you are welcome to proceed. But if we should decide to follow tomorrow, we would catch up with you posthaste, and perhaps find you with a broken leg, having stepped into a rabbit hole or drowned in the river if you got off course. All this being a slow go, by the way, if you are without a horse, which you would be, as I have no intention of loaning you one.”

“Eustace stole the one he got,” I said. “I could take it.”

“Now, didn’t you tell me you didn’t want no part of thievery?” said Eustace. “Now you’re talking like a common horse thief.”

“I’ve reached a point of extreme anxiousness,” I said.

“Say you have?” Eustace said, and laughed at me.

“You cannot have the horse,” Shorty said. “If you want us to go after these men and rescue your sister, we will be about it at first light and on horseback.”

“Eustace said he was a good tracker, and could track a fart under a rock in a river, or something like that.”

“No,” Eustace said. “I said my mother’s people could, least the Indian side of her. I said I wasn’t near that good.”

“But you’re good?” I said. “Right?”

“Yep,” Eustace said.

“Listen here, son,” Shorty said. “Eustace is not as good as he thinks. He is nowhere as good as he brags. He cannot track at night, or in a rainstorm, or after too many days when it has grown cold. His mother and his mother’s people could. It is not something that runs in the blood. It is taught, and he learned something of it.”

“I do all right,” Eustace said.

“Yes, you do all right,” Shorty said. “I remember once when you and I tracked a renegade Indian for four days, only to discover we were following an old white man riding on a donkey. With all due respect, Eustace, you can track, but you need daylight and some luck, and you are often wrong.”

Eustace made a grunting noise, and I felt my heart sink a little.

“Am I right?” Shorty said to him.

“I do all right,” Eustace said again.

“Of course you do,” said Shorty. “You do all right, but that is not in the mother-lode vein of amazing. We can start here just before daylight, get to the spot where it all happened, see what sign is left. Let me tell you something, though, boy. Your sister, if she is with those hard men, she may already have given up her flower, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” I said, having trouble saying it. “And I’ve thought about that.”

And I had, and the thought of it made me sick.

“Our job is to rescue her, kill the hell out of the men who stole her, and collect a reward,” Shorty said. “Am I right?”

I said, “I would guess that the rewards from the law are dead or alive, so it might not be necessary to kill anyone. My reward for you is the land, if you get my sister back.”

Shorty and Eustace looked at me as if I had just dropped my pants and taken a big dump right there in the room.

“Might not be necessary to kill no one?” Eustace said. “You had a drink or two I don’t know about?”

“I’m just saying killing may not be necessary,” I said.

“Meaning you do not have the stomach for it?” Shorty said.

“Meaning it might not be necessary if we can bring them to trial,” I said.

“Town will give them the same trial they gave that one you seen hanging on the light pole,” Eustace said.

“We perhaps can try some other town,” I said.

“Each town has its own jurisdiction,” said Shorty. “They will end up back at Sylvester, where the bank was robbed. It does not make sense to not kill them when we will take them to Sylvester in the long run, and they will dispatch them there, trial or no trial. We do the job up front, we save everyone some time and worry. The kidnappers know this, and when we find them they will use the time they are being carried back to the law as a possibility of escape. I do not want to fret with that. If they are dead, they cannot escape. This, sir, is a fact.”

“I don’t want to kill people if we don’t have to,” I said.

Shorty leaned back, clasped his hands together, and laid them on his chest. He looked up at the ceiling. “Well, there might be an option,” Shorty said. “And we can consider that.”

He looked at Eustace. Eustace said, “All right, we’ll put that thinking in our thinking pipe and smoke it.”

I didn’t think he or Shorty sounded particularly sincere, and the whole thing made me feel weak. I wanted my sister back. I wanted justice. But I didn’t want anyone to be killed. I decided to say no more on the matter and cross that bridge when we got to it.

“We need a grubstake,” Eustace said.

“Where did you borrow this horse you have?” Shorty asked Eustace.

“Sylvester. Where the bank robbery was.”

“All right, then,” Shorty said. “I have horses we can ride, and we can sell the borrowed one along the way, provided a buyer presents himself. And I believe I can put together enough supplies for us until that time and perhaps beyond.”

“You’re going to sell a borrowed horse?” I asked.

“Well,” Shorty said. “I believe we will. Yes.”

“My shotgun here?” Eustace asked.

“Did you leave it here?” Shorty asked.

“You know I did.”

“Then it is still here, Eustace. Did you think perhaps it had taken legs of its own and gone a-gallivanting?”

“I reckon not, but I thought you could have swapped or sold it.”

“You know why I keep it here,” Shorty said. “I would not sell or swap it, and you know that.”

Eustace nodded. “Times got hard, I would.”

“It is in the back room, if you have a mind to take it. It is back there along with your bag of shot and some of the makings for more, if you believe you will need it.”

“I’m hoping that’s enough,” Eustace said. “If I can get them fellas to covey together, I can bring down a whole mess of them firing but one barrel.”

We had coffee and some cold cornbread that was in the bread box, and then Eustace went to the back and to bed, making a pallet on the floor with some of Shorty’s blankets. That left the bed for Shorty. Shorty gave me a blanket, and that left the floor in the smaller front room for me and Hog.

I was still not certain about Shorty as a manhunter. I began to suspect I might be in for a switch-around, these two killing me for my land papers, though I doubted they would be able to pass my signature. However, it wouldn’t take much in the way of torture to get me to sign it repeatedly and sing a little song as I did. I had no false ideas about how tough I was. I only wanted to find my sister and get even with those villains who had killed my grandpa. For me, them paying their dues in prison was enough of a debt.

I folded up the land papers, put them back in my pocket, and slept on the floor of the main room, under the dwarf’s low table, on a blanket that smelled like dried sweat. During the night Hog crawled up with me, and I had his foul breath to deal with, which was a little like wrestling the ghost of a billy goat, prone as they were to stick their heads between their legs and piss on their beards. I tried to say my prayers, but they felt hollow, unlike when I was at home and my family was in the house with me and everything was in order. Prayers seemed fine then, but right now I felt empty. I asked the Lord to forgive my lapse of conviction, and figured that under the circumstances he would. I tried to get some rest, but I didn’t sleep much, just a nod here and there that made me feel worse than trying to stay awake.

Finally I got up and lit a lamp, wandered around the room, and looked at the books Shorty had. There were all manner, but a large batch of them were travel books, including some by Mark Twain, one of which,
The Innocents Abroad,
I had read myself. I looked through some more books, found that many of them had marked maps and marked passages, sentences underlined with a fountain pen. They were mostly about exotic places, many of which I had never heard of. I read a little of this and that, but under the circumstances none of it could hold my interest. I put out the lamp, left Hog snoring, crept outside, and got some air, which was rich and sticky, like a sweaty horse shank, full of the sounds of cicadas and crickets and more than a few bleating frogs.