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Brady Hammer Stole a Pie
by D.L. Chance
Brady Hammer stole a peach pie from Old Lady White’s kitchen window sill.
He wasn’t harboring any larcenous intentions against the maiden woman when he woke up early for his four-to-midnight shift at the mine that afternoon, hungry as a spring-skinny bear and still a little groggy from wasting so much of what was left of the previous night at a saloon with a few of the boys. In fact, outside of raiding the occasional watermelon patch with the other coal camp kids as a child himself back home in Kentucky, he’d never been what anyone would consider any kind of thief.
But walking down the alley behind the former schoolteacher’s house and catching a whiff of the fresh-baked delight that warm summer afternoon, and knowing like everyone else how the spinster White made a daily habit of taking little nap — passing out — after downing a tot of whisky at lunch (something, it was said, she firmly believed absolutely no one but herself and the Tacoma spirits distillery that discreetly shipped her two bottles of its best every week knew about), Brady just couldn’t stop himself.
Fresh pie!
And besides, he reasoned, she should have figured setting a hot pie out to cool in a window opening directly on a public alley was a bad idea. Especially in a mean-natured place like Butte, Montana! That’s right, he thought, glancing quickly around before taking the tin pie pan in both hands and hastily retracing his steps back to his rented room over a hardware store in the next block down the alley, she should have known better!
Alone, with the door locked tight behind him, Brady leaned in close and inhaled deeply, drawing the endlessly pleasant mingled odors of peaches, sweet spices and lard pastry crust over whatever operating olfactory sensors he still retained after so many years of breathing acrid dynamite smoke and pulverized hardrock dust.
Damn, but he loved pie! Always had.
Apple, cherry, berries of all colors and tastes, shoo-fly, cream, custard, buttermilk, even vinegar when nothing else was available, Brady couldn’t remember a time in his life when he had enough pie at one time to satisfy his taste for what was to him the most sacred of baked desserts. Cake, he could take or leave. But a well-baked slice of p-p-pie was as close to culinary perfection on Earth as he ever expected to get.
Brady gently set the pie on his bed. He gazed at it adoringly for a few seconds before kneeling and reaching down to grope around underneath the bed. He came up with a chipped china dinner plate. The floral-patterned plate came with a breakfast he’d ordered delivered two weeks prior, and he’d been meaning to wash it and return it to the beanery across the street ever since. Now, absently wiping the delicate but food-soiled dinnerware on the dusty linen curtain of the room’s only window, he was glad he’d hung onto it.
Hands trembling slightly, Brady carefully turned the pie pan over onto the plate and smiled happily when he removed it to find that the crust remained intact. Constantly swallowing back anticipation-generated saliva, he noted how nice and evenly browned the underside of the baked dough had turned out, and he hungrily eyed the thick rolled edge where the top was married to the bottom.
“A true wonderment,” he mumbled, reaching for his jackknife and fumbling the big blade open. He cut a slender wedge into the pie, and marveled at the consistency of the juice that oozed out. Not too thick, not too thin.
Still on his knees beside the bed, Brady separated a tiny taste from the point of the wedge and balanced it on his knife blade. Then, teasing himself mercilessly for a moment by holding it out from his body, he slowly moved the morsel first to his nostrils before gingerly placing it beyond his lips.
Even though it was still too warm for anything but adventure eating, Brady’s first bite of Old Lady White’s peach pie had to be a hint of what after-supper sweets must taste like in Gloryland, he reckoned. And the second bite. And the third. Eyes closed tight in flavor-borne ecstasy, Brady savored every last little delicately seasoned chunk of blessed summer’s most blessed of fruits. He chewed slowly and methodically until each luscious mouthful was reduced to a near-liquid consistency before regretfully swallowing.
On the fourth bite though, he chomped down on something in the pie filling hard enough to have broken a tooth if he hadn’t been chewing so fastidiously. Isolating the offending object with his tongue and spitting it out into his palm, he saw that it was a small chunk of peach pit. Probably got left in there accidentally when the peaches were canned, he guessed. Taking care not to chew so hard, he finished the slice within another minute or two.
Then, in an orgy of self-gratification, he cut away a slice wider across than his open palm, and took it gently in his faintly trembling hands. Only when every last morsel of crust was gone, every last bit of peach flavor licked from his fingers did he feel sated enough, temporarily, to let his thoughts turn to other of life’s necessities.
But damn, he thought, wishing for something to drink, that was good. He gazed lovingly at what was left of the pie, and slowly came to his feet.
“Save ‘er for later on,” he decided out loud. “Make ‘er last.”
The only place to store the pie until later on, other than the bed or the floor, was to put it on the only other piece of furniture in the room; a straight-backed chair next to the bed. He used it strictly as a handy place to throw his clothes when turning in, but it would do nicely for the pie. He shoved a pile of dirty clothing off the chair and onto the floor, then brushed bits of loose rock and dirt from where his grimy work clothes would ordinarily have lain until the kid from the Chinese laundry down the block came by to pick them up every Wednesday.
He carefully placed the pie in its new place of honor on the woven reed chair seat, and turned to notice the now empty pie pan. Have to get that back where it came from, he reckoned. But best wait until after work. Slip it back onto Mrs. White’s sill in the wee hours, and maybe leave a dollar or two in it to show his appreciation.
And don’t let anyone see him do it. Not anyone!
Having a plan in place Brady drew a deep, contented breath, and suddenly fetched a heroic belch up from somewhere deep in his deepest innards. The taste immediately coated his tongue — a rancid combination of last night’s supper, leftover whisky and canned peaches, with the harsh metallic taste of the can nearly as strong as that of the peach slices — and almost caused him to bring up the various sources of that taste. But, swallowing furiously, he gradually eased the contents of his stomach down his throat and back into their normal homeplace behind his belt buckle.
“Damn,” he muttered, working his mouth furiously to squeeze a trickle more saliva from the already overworked spigots under his tongue, “I need a drink.”
Still a little queasy, Brady locked the door behind him a few minutes later. He shuffled carefully down the rickety steps and started up the alley toward his favorite hootch house around the corner — a place christened merely with the name “Bar.” Though he never pondered on the coincidence of how the small booze shop was not only his favorite but also happened to be the closest one to where he lived, he did wonder why three Chinamen digging a toilet pit in a yard across the alley stopped working to watch him pass.
He casually glanced back toward his second-floor room, and its single window. Had these Chinee seen him take the pie up there and eat it, he wondered?
Naw, he decided. They couldn't know. Brady walked on, chuckling at himself for worrying about this sudden skittishness over taking the pie and enjoying it so much.
The saloon was more of a long, slender, roofed-over and indifferently-floored space between two buildings than an actual business establishment. With the canvas tarpaulins that served as front and back walls rolled all the way up on such a warm day, customers stood packed at the bar instead of sitting at tables there was no room for anyway. Entering from the alley, Brady walked through the place and elbowed enough room for himself near the open street end, and caught the eye of the bartender — a tough-looking, muscular-built man he’d never seen working the bar at this time of day.
Just as the rough-faced barkeep arrived to take his order, Brady uncorked another deep-gut belch that moved the men crowded in on either side of him away by better than a foot.
“There’s a privy out back, friend,” the bartender growled, glaring at Brady and wrinkling his nose in disgust. “Cobs are a nickel a handful.”
Feeling the hostile eyes of the nearby customers on him, Brady cleared his throat and swallowed frantically for a long moment.
“Uh, no,” he finally said. “No thanks. Just pour me a beer and I’ll drink it over by the sidewalk.”
“Suit yourself, but don’t do that in here again.”
“I won’t.”
Halfway through the beer, something in Brady’s belly moved like it suddenly grew its own mind and wanted out, now. He knew he was in some serious personal trouble. Brady eased cautiously to the bar and set the glass down. Pulling out another nickel, he motioned discreetly at the bartender.
“I believe I’ll have that handful of cobs after all,” he said softly, knowing his face must be as red as the new bricks making up the walls of the skinny bar.
“Cobs it is,” the big barman said loudly, grinning and reaching into a wooden box near the beer barrel. “And for you, friend, they’re on the house this time.”
Ignoring the bartender’s smirk, and the outright laughter of the afternoon saloon loafers, Brady reached for the denuded corncobs and walked stiff-legged back toward the alley. He dropped one cob on the way, to the roaring approval of every man there, but he didn’t dare bend over to pick it up.
In the toilet, located about twenty unsteady steps from what would have been the back wall of the bar if it had a wall instead of just a rolled-up canvas drape, Brady got his suspenders loose and his britches and balbriggans down just in time.
He tried to keep his business private, but he soon realized that there was no way his nether regions were going to stay quiet during the painful, uncontrollable and thoroughly humiliating internal spasms that racked his body over and over, and curled him into a fetal position on the double-service bench. Even during the most violent eruptions, Brady could hear laughter in the distance. Guessing someone was stationed nearby and passing reports to those inside the slender saloon, he found he no longer cared. His only concern was whether or not he had enough corncobs.
Finally, he drew a deep breath and was able to sit up. He wiped sweat from his brow and reached for a cob. But before he could put it to its intended secondary career another stab of pain shot through his middle, and the infernal body racket started up again.
Almost a quarter-hour later, exhausted and beyond the ability to be embarrassed any further at the moment, he hitched up his clothing and slunk from the privy.
“It’s not as pleasant coming out as it was going in,” the bartender shouted from inside the saloon, “was it, friend?”
Brady ignored the barman’s dig, and its accompanying laughter, and reassured himself that the big bastard couldn’t possibly know about the peach pie. The damn peach pie. Instead of returning to the saloon, he turned toward the mine where he worked as a driller. He was going to be late now.
For some reason, someone sat eating pie in the front window of every eatery he passed, and the odor of baking pies seemed to have chased away the normal Butte smell of burning coal from the smelters and bodily wastes from the hundreds of horses usually stinking up the town. Turning one corner, he saw a man wearing a tall chefs’ hat and pushing a flatbed wheelbarrow toward him. The man stopped as Brady approached.
“Pie?”
“Uh, what?”
“I’m selling pies,” the man said. “It’s a new business for me. Like to buy one? It’d make a dandy after-supper snack. They’re fresh-baked and still warm.”
Trying desperately to sound as casual as possible so as not to arouse suspicion among the constant stream of strollers passing by — and vaguely wondering why anyone should be suspicious of him for anything since he was fairly positive he hadn’t been seen stealing Old Lady White’s supper dessert — Brady shrugged.
“What kind have you got?” he croaked.
“Oh, all kinds.” The man smiled, sensing a sale. “Apple and cherry, mostly,” he said. “A few blueberry. But I do have an apricot and a couple of peach — where are you going?”
Brady couldn’t help it. At the mention of peaches, his legs began pumping completely without his conscious permission, and he found himself shoving past other pedestrians along the walkway.
“Make you a hell of a deal,” the pie salesman shouted.
Near panic, Brady practically ran headlong into a uniformed beat copper. The policeman grabbed Brady’s shoulders and held on firmly.
“Did you steal that pie?” he barked, the age-old flavor of Ireland hanging heavy in his thick accent. “Speak up, now!”
Brady almost went limp in the lawman’s grasp.
“Um…”
“Well, did you?”
“Wh-What?”
“I said did you see that guy,” the copper snapped, jerking his forehead at the pie vendor. “He was trying to talk to you about something when you just took off running like he asked you for a loan. Clean out your ears, Bucko!”
Brady realized what was likely going on. The pie vendor probably supplied free pies to the beat cops hereabouts for the privilege of operating on the street. But before he could answer, Brady belched again. The policeman held on for a moment longer, and then he cussed and released Brady to move backwards a few unsteady steps. Brady fell all the way to the plank sidewalk.
“Jaysus!” the cop roared. “What a stink! Just what in the name of all that is dear to the holy mother have you been eating, boyo?”
“I’m late for work is all,” Brady said, levering himself slowly to his feet. “And I don’t feel all that good this afternoon, no.”
“Don’t feel all that good, he says!” The policeman shook his head. “Hell, feller-me-lad, your guts must be rotting right out your backside! Surely you noticed.”
The policeman moved away another few feet. Brady knew it was in case he belched again, but he still felt faintly insulted. And, speaking of his backside, another ominous twinge there told him he needed to get to the mine toilet as soon as possible.
“Officer,” he said, rubbing meaningfully at his lower abdomen, “with all due respect, I really should get on to work.”
“Well off with ‘ye then,” the cop barked. “And get yourself a good dose of salts. Whatever ails your insides is a pure sin!”
Thinking that the policeman was closer to the truth than he realized, Brady promised to down a strong percogoric as soon as possible; having no intentions of keeping that promise because salts were absolute last thing he needed.
Stopping twice along the way to clamp his buttocks tight against incessant waves of pressure, Brady finally staggered to the mine and entered the office. The foreman looked up and frowned.
“You’re late, Hammer,” he said tightly. Then he looked closer at Brady’s ashen, sweaty face. “Say, do you feel all right?”
“No.”
The other man jerked a wrinkled handkerchief from his back pocket and used it to cover his mouth and nose. “It’s nothing catching, is it?” he asked suspiciously.
“Probably not.” Brady hoped the foreman didn’t notice how stiff-legged he must have looked standing there. “But I don’t think I can hold out for a whole shift this evening.”
The foreman blinked and, narrowing his eyes, studied Brady more intently.
“The trots?” he finally asked.
Humiliated all over again, Brady only nodded.
“Hell, Brady,” the foreman said, putting his handkerchief away and leaning back in his chair, “I can’t let men take off an entire shift every time they catch a case of the skivers.”
“But—”
“That’s your problem,” the foreman said, smiling at his own little joke. “And if that’s your only ailment, there’s plenty of abandoned drifts down yonder where you can take care of it.”
Brady’s shoulders slumped in defeat. He regretted it instantly when the action accidentally allowed a tiny sample of the steadily expanding gas blowing his intestines up like a balloon to escape into the small room.
“Now I don’t mean to be unkind about it,” the foreman went on, “but you have to understand my position here. I can’t just let — what the HELL is that stench?”
“Sorry,” Brady murmured.
“Damn!” The foreman yanked the handkerchief out and clapped it over his nose again. “You don’t need to take a shift off, Brady, you need a week in a hospital somewhere.” He moved the cloth and sniffed experimentally, then slapped it over his nose again. “Hell, maybe a sanitarium! What did you eat, boy? Whatever it was is taking a powerful revenge on you.”
Before Brady could respond, another violent belly spasm ripped through his already twisted insides, and the panicked look on his face said more than mere words could. He turned and grabbed for the doorknob, his eye on the toilet beside the nearby hoist shack.
“Take off as long as you need, Brady,” the foreman yelled through the door. “Just don’t bring that stink with you when you come back!”
Sitting miserable inside the privy, Brady thought about how the foreman was right. And so was the policeman. What ailed his insides was a sin, and it was wreaking revenge on him. A terrible revenge.
During the half-hour he sat there, unable even to straighten himself upright on the roomy three-hole bench for most of the time, he heard at least two people approach the outhouse. Faint chuckling noises from beyond the door made Brady suspect that several more had crept up after the first two, as if they were checking up on whether or not the others had told the truth about the odors and noises coming from the privy. But he didn’t care. All he wanted was to eliminate the odiferous demon torturing his guts.
Later, walking slowly toward the downtown area, Brady had to stop in his tracks and stand perfectly still several times. He no longer even pretended to study the awesome mountain views off in the distance while giving his innards time to settle down.
Shuffling aimlessly around the streets, and always keeping a toilet in sight, he noticed a revival tent set up in a vacant lot a half block back from Main. The sun was still up, but people were already beginning to gather at the site because it would get too cold for preaching after sundown.
Thinking over what the policeman said about sin, and what the foreman had said about revenge, Brady shrugged and headed that way. He found a seat on a rough plank bench near the back of the lamp-lit tent, and hoped no one would sit near him. But as the tent continued to fill with the faithful and soon-to-be righteous, he found himself trapped in place; desperately hoping his last outhouse visit at the mine would be the last he’d need before the revival meeting broke up.
A sad-faced accordion player accompanied the crowd on a couple of ancient hymns to open the service before an enthusiastic preacher jumped spryly onto a small stage made from nailed-together soapboxes. He removed his topcoat and, spreading his arms wide, laid his head reverently over at a slight angle and closed his eyes.
“Beloved,” he intoned, “confess your transgressions and be redeemed!”
There was a moment of complete silence in the tent, and then a large, heavily bearded miner stood up near the middle of the crowd and faced the preacher.
“I have lain with women of the street,” he yelled loud enough so that everyone could hear, “and one of them gave me the clap! I want to be free of this demon!”
The preacher’s eyes popped open and he pointed toward the crude plank altar at his feet.
“Then come down, brother,” he said firmly. “Come down and ask to be delivered of that vile clap!”
“Amen!” the miner shouted, shoving people out of his way and practically running toward the front. “Amen!”
“Anyone else?” the preacher bellowed. “Any other wretched reprobates here in need of redemption?”
“I’ve coveted my neighbor’s sewing machine,” a woman shrieked, coming to her feet and turning toward the congregation. “It’s a Singer.”
“Well come on down here, sister, and be free of that…covetessness.”
While the lady made her way to the altar, others began standing and shouting out wrongdoings. All kinds of heinous moral offenses. One well-dressed man claimed to have helped rob a blind bootblack over in Anaconda. Two women said they regularly engaged in intimate relations with each other’s husbands. A matronly old lady tearfully alleged she regularly engaged in intimate relations with herself. A bartender said he often secretly sipped at the glasses of customers before passing them over, and spit in the glasses of the customers he didn’t like. The preacher’s response was always the same: No matter the degree of moral failing, redemption could be had merely for the confessing.
Unable to stop himself when his misery-wracked colon suddenly jumped halfway to his breastbone and threatened to eat its way out his navel, Brady shot to his feet during a slight lull in the proceedings.
“Yes, brother,” the preacher cried, pointing at Brady. “You have a personal burden to confess?”
Every eye in the tent, wet and dry, turned in Brady’s direction, and a hushed stillness fell over the assemblage.
What difference does it make if they know now, he wondered?
“I stole a pie,” Brady wailed, “and it’s about to kill me!”
“Then come on down,” the preacher entreated, “and shed your soul of that wicked offense!”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because…because I dare not move!”
“But you must!” The preacher clasped his hands together in pleading supplication and held them out toward Brady “All are welcomed here, brother! Welcome to cleanse their troubles from their disgraceful bodies!”
“I admit as how I sure could use some of that cleansing,” Brady said, suppressing a shudder. “But just not now.”
The preacher hopped off the podium and made his way toward where Brady stood. “In that case, I’ll come to you,” he shouted, shaking his hands wildly with every step. “As we all come together, so shall we come to you!”
“No,” Brady shouted, clutching at his middle, his face a tense mask of agony. “Don’t do it!”
“But Brother, I must come to you as you come to me!”
“No,” Brady yelled again, standing up straighter and throwing his head back in the faint hope that he could stop what he suddenly knew he couldn’t. “Stay back you bastard!”
The preacher stopped, stunned. As one, everybody in the tent gasped at Brady’s foulmouthed outburst.
A hushed paralysis seemed to freeze everyone silently in place for a long, thunderstruck moment.
Then, with a prodigious and unmistakable growling noise that built from his bowels much like the bass rumbling of a shallow underground dynamite blast, and was clearly heard all over the suddenly silent tent, it happened.
Brady filled his pants.
“Damn,” he muttered.
All around him, the faithful broke free of their temporary immobility and immediately backed away, pushing and falling over each other. Brady’s foul-natured aroma expanded relentlessly inside the tent and many of the pilgrims crowding toward the door flap as a manic mob threw decidedly uncharitable glares his way. Some were even abandoning belongings, and the lady with the accordion dropped it where she stood and scuttled under the bottom of the tent wall.
Still standing near Brady, the preacher frowned and blinked. The sides of the preacher’s nose went up involuntarily, and he squinted intently at Brady through the pungent reek.
“I’m afraid there’s no redemption for you here, friend,” he gasped. The smell almost overwhelming him, the young preacher shook his head and rushed for his coat, and shoved his way in among the others jamming the exit. “Have you tried a sanitarium?” he called out, just before escaping to the fresher air outside.
With the revival meeting irreparably broken up, Brady stood alone in the empty tent for a long time until it was completely quiet outside. His despair and humiliation were complete now and, noticing there was no one hanging around outside the dense canvas walls, he walked slowly back home.
He sat at the foot of the stairs leading up to his room until full darkness had fallen, then peeled out of his soiled clothes and left them to lie on the ground. Vowing to never, ever steal anything again, no matter how small and insignificant it might seem at the time, Brady cleaned himself as best he could with his shirt. Naked and past caring who saw it, he left his clothing for whoever wanted to steal such rags and climbed the steps to his door; drained physically, emotionally and, he hoped, intestinally.
The stairs, along with so much abuse on his body for so many hours, left him light-headed and wobbly on his feet. But, even though he found it hard to concentrate, he knew he didn’t want to sit on his bed in his current unsanitary state. Instead, he reached for the chair and dropped heavily onto it.
Only then did he recall where he left what had remained of the peach pie.
Two days later, he found the street vendor and bought two fresh apple pies. He intended to take one to his boss later, but the other was meant for Old Lady White in atonement for stealing the peach demon.
At her house, he knocked on the back door and stood patiently with the pie in one hand and his cap in the other, a familiar tension beginning to grow in his middle.
When she answered the door, he lost his nerve.
“Uh, I h-heard you…um, I understand a pie went missing day before yesterday,” he stammered. “I had this extra one, and I thought you might like it.”
She stared hard at him, then at the offering. Then she smiled, and it seemed as if at least a decade melted off her face.
“Why thank you,” she said. “But that really isn’t necessary. I meant to throw that pie out anyway. I guess I did, and must’ve just forgotten about it.”
Brady hoped his stunned curiosity didn’t show on his face.
“You threw it out?”
“Yes.” She reached for the apple pie offering. “At least, I was going to. I set it on the sill to cool enough that I could get my pan, and the next thing I knew it was gone. Can’t imagine how I threw away the pan, though.”
Brady made a mental note to return her pie pan as soon as possible.
“Why were you going to throw it out?”
“Because it wasn’t good,” she said, shrugging philosophically. “You see, I had some extra peaches and pastry after I made the pie, so I made popovers, too. But there was something wrong with the peaches. I ate one of the popovers, and it made me so deathly ill that I spent most of that day in the water closet, if you’ll excuse my saying so out loud. How did you hear about the pie?”
“I…Miss White, I have to be honest with you,” he said, unable to meet her eye. “I took that pie. I stole it, and it don’t matter none that you was going to throw it out anyway. It was theft. I’m right regretsome about that, and I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive an old fool.”
The woman studied his face for a long, silent moment. Suddenly, he didn’t understand why he thought she was as old as everyone seemed to believe. Why, she wasn’t more than a few years older than him; probably not even as many as five. Maybe less.
“I see,” she finally said. “Well, Mister…?”
“Hammer, ma-am” he said. “Brady Hammer.”
“Well, Mr. Hammer, from your peaked complexion and hollow eyes, it looks like the pie itself has already chastised you more than anything I can say or do will. You don’t need my forgiveness.”
“I don’t?” An infant grin played at the corners of Brady’s mouth, and the knot that had been growing in his insides since he knocked at her door untied itself and allowed his gut to settle quietly back into place. “I ‘preciate that.”
“My pleasure,” she said, nodding at the pie in her hand. “Now, would you like to join me in a little snack? You look like you could use something solid in your belly, and Lord knows I could use the company.”
Brady glanced at the pie, and he felt his face go white.
“I’ll be happy to set and talk awhile, ma-am,” he said, rubbing absently at his still-tender abdomen. “But…well, I never cared much for pies, myself.”
The End
Cayo Bradley
by Nina Romano
A whistle sleek as moonlit grass captured the attention of Darby McPhee. She listened to the remains of its sibilance with longing, wanting to run away. How long could she stay in that cottage slaving away her youth for her five brothers and father? Darby was days shy of her fifteenth birthday when the three o'clock whistle blew. She'd made up her mind. Tomorrow she'd be on that iron panther heading for the east, her Aunt Bea's, an education and a new life.
There were several obstacles she'd have to overcome not the least of them the fact she might never return. She would take her courage in her two hands, like her Pa told her so many times to do when she faced a fearful thing and she'd tell Cayo Bradley just how she felt about him. And it would be today. Wondering what it would be like to kiss him, she rolled up her sleeves.
Darby reached for the butter churn and poured in the cream she had skimmed off the milk. Her thoughts followed the white stream. Then veered with, After all, I may never see him again, and a man ought to know if he's been loved, even if it's a starry-far-away love that can never be fulfilled. Her anger and fear were felt in every forceful slam of the stick with its round flat disk end. She'd make butter all right and she'd cream away every worry and dang thought about the long train ride east, leaving Pa and telling Cayo. What if he didn't feel the same? Wouldn't matter, she'd be leaving anyway. And a man should know.
Darby rushed to finish her chores. She set the table, pulled the muffins from the oven, turned the bacon, and whisked a dozen eggs with farm cheese she'd made earlier that morning. Standing in the doorway, she clanged an iron triangle, calling the men to breakfast. When will I tell Pa? She patted the pocket of her apron, which held Aunt Bea's letter stating all the arrangements she'd made for her niece. Darby slapped the butter onto a daisy form cut-out made of an oval piece of sorrel wood, closed the three inch high wooden mold with scalloped edges around it and hooked a curved nail over the head of another nail to secure it. She ran to the barn giving a hoot to her eldest brother Garret and buried the butter shape under the ice protected by hay. It always amazed her how the hay kept the blocks of ice from melting, but this would be the last time she'd have to concern herself about farm things like this. Aunt Bea had an ice box. City folk lived so much better.
The omelets were made and served. Garret reached for the strawberry preserves that Darby put up last summer.
"Pa, pass the biscuits," Garrett said. "Hey, girl, where's the butter?"
"I've a given name, Garret, just like you," she said. "I'll get it. I put it to cool in the barn."
"Probably just cuddling that dumb old sheep dog is all," Darby's father said.
"Not," Darby muttered and walked out the kitchen door.
Garret and Pa. She'd miss them. The only ones who recognized the fact that she was the opposite sex. Darby's younger brothers, Bixby, Randy, Chad and Pat, were inconsiderate. Darby thought of them as irresponsible assholes. Pa and Garret were always at them to fix something they'd messed up. Or to get going on a task or chore that should have been finished days before. Lazy bunch of oafs, serve them right to have to clean up after themselves.
When Darby came back from the barn the sun was full up.
"Can't you read?" she asked the men.
"Sure," said Pa. He pushed away from the table and was about to light a cigarette he'd just rolled.
"Pa, out of respect for your dead wife and my Momma, please don't smoke in the house," Darby said. She took hold of a sign she'd made. It was pinned to the gingham curtain on the window nearest the big oak dining table where her family sat.
She read, "Close the shades when the sun is full up."
Darby let the curtain fall and closed the shade. Then she picked up a sign that was leaning on a milk bottle used as a vase for wild flowers.
"More stink weeds in this house than milk," said her younger brother Pat.
"Hush up," she said. And she read from her second note. "It says here, pick up your dish and bring it to the kitchen, or you can eat off the unwashed, doggone thing, oink oink, next meal."
She tossed the note on the table and began clearing away the breakfast remains.
"Skinny as a broomstick, child. You eat?" Pa asked.
"Sure, Pa, at three o'clock when I got up to start my chores." Now's my chance. "I've got a letter from Aunt Bea. Been meaning to let you read. I'll set it by the wash bucket."
"I'll have a look see when I come in at sundown," said Pa.
Thank Heavens. "I have to rush now. Mrs. Miller expects me at the store early today, it being Saturday. There'll be lots of farmer wives and hands coming in for supplies," Darby said to her father who'd caught her around the waist and gave her a squeeze. She felt a twinge of guilt. Looking at her father, she thought of a dozen kindnesses he'd gone out of his way to do for her. She'd miss him, but she couldn't sacrifice her life any longer. Momma's been gone five years. It goes by all too quickly, and I'm not his wife.
At times Darby felt like a mother hen to his sons. That was a thing her father would have to reckon with when she left. Darby had mulled this over in her mind many times. But the day before her departure it was a tune that was wearing itself out. Momma's dead, not coming back and I'm leaving, Pa. This time I'm really going.
Chad had gone out and come back in. He was holding a piece of paper in his hand. "Hear ye, hear ye. I found this note nailed to the outhouse door in Darby's scratchy hand. Says: Throw in lye after each deposit."
Everyone laughed. And Darby went to the kitchen to do the dishes. A note meant for the boys, said, Always, prime the pump. They'll get on just fine.
* * *
That dusty summer of 1873 found Cayo Bradley working as a hired hand and sometime cowpoke on the Lindstrom ranch in Parcel Bluffs. Cayo never had a day off, but Saturday afternoons he'd hitch up the wagon for Libby and Mrs. Lindstrom and take them to town. Libby was nothing like her friend Darby. The Lindstrom girl was spoiled and arrogant and Cayo overheard Darby once tell Libby that her Daddy ought to give his darling daughter a once-and-for-all-time good licking to straighten her skinny ass out. Mr. Lindstrom had tossed Cayo a full pouch of chewing tobacco for the ride to town. Cayo guessed it was the old man's way of thanking him for putting up with his daughter. But all his boss had said was, "Watch the ruts and gofer holes, Cayo, and have a high time, ladies."
The Lindstrom women would go visiting at the parlor in Hotel Ryder, drink tea, and, with tongues as sharp as scissors, cut to pieces every other woman in town. Sometimes they would go to the dressmaker Fanny Oates, or tend to some other womanly tasks. Lastly, before they headed home they would stop into Fern and Harris Miller's General Store where Darby McPhee worked as a salesgirl.
The Millers were childless. Fern was able to handle the regular trade during weekdays, but on Saturdays and Sundays things were hectic because the farm folk turned up in town to replenish their stores. Darby was hired to take up the slack and deal with the weekend rush. Fern was a motherly figure for Darby and tried to draw the girl out. She was partially responsible for Darby's decision to leave Parcel Bluffs for educational greener pastures in the east with Aunt Bea.
Cayo Bradley was a lean man with sharply cut cheekbones and bronze skin. Some said he was part Apache. Others claimed he was left for dead by bandoleros, and because of his mean disposition, not even the coyotes would go near him. Maybe that's where he got his name. Nobody in town knew him by any other. Whatever his component parts were, it was for certain he was a man quick with a Bowie knife, swifter with a whip. He wore chaps every day but Saturday when he drove the buckboard. Cayo carried a Colt pistol in his holster and never rode his horse without a Winchester rifle strapped to his saddle. He was a man that people respected, a man who kept his mouth shut and eyes peeled, even the eyes they said he had in the back of his head.
On Main Street, Cayo would stop and talk a spell with Sheriff Link Jones. He rode posse for Link when the train had been held up the year before. Link didn't care if Cayo was a man with a past or not. All Link knew for certain was that Cayo could draw fast, shoot sure, ride and rope better than any damn cowhand he'd seen since his own father died. And because Cayo joined last year's posse, Link was able to apprehend Bick McAlister and his brother Greer. But Cayo wanted no part of the lynching, and, afterward, when he was offered Bick's new tooled boots, he refused.
Cayo would stroll to the bath house and have a shave and bath, paying his two bits, with a thumb snap underneath, flipping the coin in the air for the owner Sara Birch. Trim and tidy, he'd meander over to Miller's General Store flanked by a telegraph-assay office on one side and a bank on the other.
When Cayo opened the door to the general store and stepped inside he was surprised at the cool dank air that hit him. Like a cellar. The next thing he sensed was the autumn rich smell of dried apples. When his eyes became accustomed to the dark, then he noticed, almost tripped on, a keg of dried fruit. He began to make out clear images. Not in the least was the tall, straight young body of Darby McPhee. She was standing behind a counter. The shelves and wood planks behind her were beautiful intricate patterns of flowers, deer, and mountain goats. The carvings were disarmingly graceful patterns straight out of the mountains of Bavaria designed by the capable chipping and scaling of the carpenter Heinz Schroeder. The shelves were lined with Mason Jars of peaches preserved in thick syrup, and glasses of homemade raspberry, blueberry, blackberry and strawberry jams, covered with wax. There were tins of black strap molasses, hurricane lanterns with extra long wicks, boxes of four inch wooden sulphur matches and bottles of tomatoes.
On the counter were burlap sacks of strange spices marked with names like oregano, basil, peppercorns, marjoram, sage, rosemary, thyme and dill. On the floor in front of the counter were larger gunnysacks of white beans, rice, lentils, cane sugar, flour and cornmeal.
Darby said, "Say, Cayo."
Cayo tipped his hat. "How do?"
"Tickety-boo." She smiled her father's smile.
Cayo looked about and seeing the owner absent asked after her. "And Miss Fern?"
"Over to the tinsmith. You needing something beside your shirt? Need tobacco? Special blend costs five cents a pouch, but this here one's just as sweet and it's a penny."
It was like there were no other customers in the place the way she looked at him. Not yet fifteen, but a woman made.
"Make it a penny worth. He walked up to the counter and extended his doe-skin pouch.
She deals with all these cackling hens, boisterous drunks. Cooks and cleans for her Pa and five nasty suckers she calls brothers. She loves me. I feel it. Know it. She takes extra care of me spending too much. And here again. He watched Darby as she folded his ironed shirt and started wrapping it in brown paper.
"Hold on," Darby said, "Let me tend this first so's it don't smell like tobacco."
Cayo put a five cent piece and a penny on the counter.
"Too much," she said. "Only one cent for work shirts. Five's for dress ones, if they's got ruffles."
Was she saving me money here, too? She could charge what she liked. Fern Miller let Darby take in ironing and she made her own prices. Cayo's face flushed and he was glad of the darkness, and the cooler inside air. He switched a penny, taking up the Shield nickel from the counter. Opening his pouch, he waited. Not just for chewing tobacco. For what? I'm fifteen years her senior, yet when I see her I'm a dunce of twelve. He looked at his hands, the palms began to sweat. He wiped his hands on his pants.
When I'm at the spread I think of things I'm going to tell her—how a calf is all warm when he's born, and after—how he's all wet with his momma's juices. The thanks in the mother's eyes when you've helped pull her baby free. What it feels like to rope a steer, and how the air smells when you burn his flesh with a branding iron. I can tell her of the high full moon over the prairie and stars you can touch with all the shooting arches of light that make you think there's another universe somewhere out yonder. And here I'm wanting to give her cornflowers and buttercups and Libby's bell-shaped tiny lilies of the valley. Tell her I'd like to have her for my own. To smell the skin of her, to wake up to her tousled hair on my pillow and arm. There's that knot again in my stomach. If I don't eat Johnnycake for a year I wouldn't go and miss it. But it ain't corn bread, it's when can I tell her? And how do I?
Darby's fingertips barely touched Cayo's. They looked at each other. Long and hard. She drew her hand away as if she had all day to do that one thing.
Then she turned her back and started putting things on the shelves and said, "I'm home bound at four o'clock today. I take the back path by the old curved road. It's earlier than I usually leave."
Why's she telling me this?
Darby faced him, dusted the counter of the spilled tobacco with her apron and said, "I'll be doing some packing and such besides preparing supper for the boys and Pa. Tell Libby for me I'll ride by later around eight. They'll be finished eating then, won't they?"
Cayo stood there like a storefront Indian. A wooden statue had more life. He felt no blood course through his veins. Time stood still. She's leaving. Leaving Parcel Bluffs. Leaving me. Without ever having told her how I feel about her.
"Can I walk you home, Darby?"
"It's a ways, Mr. Cayo Bradley, but I'd be pleased of the company. And ... " she pulled her hair behind her ears, and gulped some air, "and there's something I've been meaning to say to you."
A customer came in with two small children. Cayo held the door for the woman.
"Yeah, me too," Cayo said, tipped his hat, and walked out.
* * *
Libby Lindstrom knew how Darby felt about Cayo. Libby had hoped that Cayo felt the same way about her, not Darby. But somehow she knew he cared only for Darby. He was in love or desire or whatever with Darby McPhee, her best friend since forever.
Libby noticed how at times when she talked to him how he'd get that far look in his eye, and be someplace else. Mind traveling she called it. But at the mention of Darby's name, his pointy ears'd prick up and his nostrils wriggled—a coyote who'd caught a scent.
There were other things. Little things. Libby couldn't define surely, but the signs were there for anyone interested enough to read them. And she was interested. Now her dear friend and foe would be leaving on the train east tomorrow. The night before Libby hadn't slept well with the excitement of Darby's parting and the possibility of taking hold of Cayo's lonesome heart. Darby's secret was the one thing she kept to herself. She'd been a chatterbox all the way to town.
"Woodpeckers make less fuss with their morning tapping. The buckboard noise seems quiet compared to you, Libby. Hush now you're bringing on one of my migraines," Mrs. Lindstrom said, fiddling with an empty bottle of laudanum through the cloth of her purse.
Libby wasn't sure, but could swear Cayo smirked. It seemed to her that he was keeping the corners of his mouth controlled as they worked to turn upwards. Thunderation and damnation. What do I see in him anyway he's so ornery and mean-tempered? He could look under my skirt and still never crack loose with a smile. I hate him forever. Well, till tomorrow anyway.
At Mrs. Ryder's social tea, Libby didn't join in with the usual catty talk of the women. Instead she sulked, got up and looked out the window, her mind calculating the whereabouts of Cayo Bradley. He always went to the Miller's for stores, but who knew just when.
Libby didn't want to give the lovers a chance to declare their rightful feelings for each other. She wanted to ruin the bittersweet departure—a probable promise of letters and a future meeting.
Probably die and go straight to hell, I will, trying to break up something right as raindrops on windflowers.
"I declare," Mrs. Ryder said to Mrs. Lindstrom, pouring tea into a porcelain cup, "your gal's a might quiet today."
"Thank the Almighty," said Mrs. Lindstrom. "Libby was a mockingbird on our way into town." She lifted the honey pot and heaped a generous spoonful into the steaming brew.
"Mrs. Ryder, Ma, I'll take leave now and get a breath of air; maybe set a spell with Darby over to Miller's. It's always cooler there."
"You do look a bit peaked. You all right?" Suddenly there was a note of concern in Mrs. Lindstrom's voice.
"Um-hum," said Libby. "Really. Fine."
She walked out the door listening to her mother call her a flibbertigibbet, and worst tempered-soul the Savior ever put in Parcel Bluffs. "Why the only person who can hold rein on that girl is Cayo Bradley."
"That so?" Mrs. Ryder asked as Libby closed the door.
She sauntered her most genteel walk over to Miller's, every now and again using her parasol as a walking stick. On the walk to Miller's, she dwelt on how the conversation would go with Darby, and what she could buy as a pretext for walking in without her mother. Rock candy.
Libby hadn't timed her visit right. Instead of Cayo, Darby was waiting on a different cowboy. When Darby finished, she turned and excused herself to Fern Miller. Libby heard Darby say, "I need to have a moment's privy, to tend something personal, if it'd be all right?"
Fern said, "Sure thing."
Darby and Libby stepped into the back storeroom behind a curtain and perched themselves on a bale of cotton. As if by ritual both girls fanned themselves with their smocks.
"Did you get my message?" asked Darby.
"What message?"
"I told Cayo to tell you I'd be over after your supper tonight to say my farewells."
"Cayo was here already? Where'd he go to?"
"Mighty interested in a hired hand, Libby. Thought you'd be caring to hear the particulars of my departure east."
"Sure I am. It's just that I'm surprised."
They put down their aprons and smoothed the folds.
"Surprised at what?"
"He came in so early."
"Snooping, huh? He always comes for his ironing. Today he came ahead of time cause he's plum out of chewing tobacco."
"That's untrue, Darby McPhee."
"You calling me a liar? What's got into you? The man bought chewing—"
"He couldn't chomp a pouchful in two hours." Libby fidgetted with her hands.
"The pouch was empty." Darby stressed the last word.
"I saw Daddy fling a small bulging purse to him this very morning."
"We're arguing over something real dumb, you know that? Hold on just one tinker's damn."
"No need to curse."
"Why you're jealous, and flushing red. Got a hankering for your Daddy's ranch hand, now don't you, little Miss Libby Lindstrom?"
"Not—"
"That's a sin of covetousness. You know how I feel about him. Known forever. Out the sky drops a hawk, no a vulture. Some friend." Darby jumped off the bale. "You could have leastwise had the decency to wait till I was snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug tucked in at Aunt Bea's."
"Did you tell him your feelings yet?"
Darby put her hands on her hips and swayed slightly. "Now that's for me to know and you to find out. None of your concern. And forget the message. I won't be riding out to see you tonight or ever."
* * *
At four o'clock sharp, Darby said goodbye to Harris and Fern Miller. She thanked Harris and kissed Fern, then put her pay in her pocket. Cayo Bradley slouched against the back wall of the General Store, his hat pulled low over his eyes. He tipped it back and stood up straight before Darby's hand touched the door.
Darby walked outside and immediately shielded her eyes. As soon as they adjusted to the brightness, she dropped her hand. She wanted Cayo to take hold of it, but knew he wouldn't even if he was dying to. How to begin?
For the first fifteen minutes she began but faltered, trying to make small talk. He took up where she left off, his efforts were more clumsy and more endearing.
Sagebrush rolled across the path. Mountains surrounded them. Scrub pines, yucca and thistles covered the dry patchwork of red earth. Cattails and wild iris interspersed goldenrod.
Cayo linked his thumbs in the belt loops of his pants and Darby walked with her arms in back of her, right hand grasping her left thumb.
She stopped to pick a piece of prairie grass and kept on walking as she chewed the flat blade till it gave up the last of its juices. Then she tossed it, watching the slight breeze glide it to the ground. Kite to the right, she thought. She stopped again in the middle of the path.
"I've been meaning to tell you about my Aunt Bea back east."
"Don't think I want to hear if it's to do with them bags you'll be packing."
"I lack book learning. Need to get away from my brothers. I'll miss Pa, but he'll get on, and before you know it I'll be back in Parcel Bluffs—"
"They ain't no such thing as coming home. Once a critter leaves the nest, he gets a taste for flying high. Things look mighty different from up there."
"How'd you know? You a bird?"
"I been a bird sometimes in Indian country. I've tasted ground herbs make you fly like a feathered arrow, make you know life from inside an eagle."
Darby and Cayo continued walking, shoulders almost touching.
"What's it like?"
"Like to bust out your skin, or hold on tight to a girl. Never let go, if'n that girl be you."
Darby looked sidewards but was afraid to stop walking, kicking up little squalls of dust for fear she'd never recapture this moment. But she had to look at him, see the moonless night of his eyes.
Darby stood dead still in her tracks. Cayo put his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. She hesitated a minute then said, "I think of you sometimes ... when I'm pitching hay, or milking, or rag-washing the kettles, or dusting Momma's Bible." Darby brushed back the hair off her face. "Even with my eyes open, looking at something else, I see you."
Cayo spat the rest of his chewing tobacco through his teeth. "I've seen you in the cottonwoods when I was flying over," he said pointing to the sky. "Even before I knowed it were you. I saw the black panther riding east. But you was churning butter. In Indian country." Cayo pulled out his tobacco pouch, looked at it, put it back in his pocket.
Darby's eyes followed his movements, remembered the feel of the doeskin and beadwork she'd touched just a few hours ago. Who had made it for him? "Libby came to Miller's after you left. She told me her Daddy gave you a pouch this morning."
"That be true. I gave it to Link Jones. Don't cotton to gifts with tie strings, makes a man indebted." He heaved a sigh. "Miss Libby. Well, now, she's got some real learning to do. She ain't no Darby McPhee."
Darby felt her cheeks get hot. The McPhee ranch was in sight. Cayo took Darby's hand in his and squeezed the fingertips gently. They walked to the shade of a pinon tree on top of a bluff. The whole valley lay before them like a penny postcard. Darby leaned against the tree. They stood inches apart. Cayo rested his hand on the trunk just above her shoulder.
"I ain't much with words, Darby, but I got lots of feelings. If you want, I'll talk to your Pa. Tonight if you say, and you can pack your duds, but, not to travel east, to set up house with me."
Darby looked a little frightened and puzzled, until Cayo added, "It'd be a proper wedding with a preacher. You tell me if and when you're a wanting to get hitched.
He put his other hand up above her shoulder.
Bird in a cage.
"I'll be heading back up there." He nudged his chin in the direction of the Sangre de Cristos Mountains. "Soon as the summer corn's in. Got a cabin needs a woman's hands to give it warmth.
"I was banking on learning to be a teacher." She heard herself hedge.
He took hold of both her hands.
"I can help nature teach you things ain't in no books. You can school your own kids. Ours. Time I was settling in, Darby."
Darby listened, her heartbeat pulsing faster with every word he stammered on. Her mind raced. No fair asking a man to wait. And me afraid he wouldn't want me. But he does. Darby grew so still, she thought he'd hear the pounding in her chest.
Finally she said, "I never been east, nor seen the ocean." But the deep of his eyes'll be forever.
She reached up to grasp his hands.
"You'll glimpse it all when our baby calls you in fright cause he climbed a perch too tall, and you catch him in your arms."
"Lots of folks never go east or travel to the sea." She took a deep breath and blurted out, "I can't chance leaving you to make high-cheeked babies with the likes of Libby Lindstrom."
Cayo smiled a small smile.
Darby returned the smile. "Got some yellow gingham I was fixing to sew into curtains."
"Yellow'd be mighty pretty on them cabin windows. What do you say, Darby?"
"If that's a proposal, Cayo Bradley, my answer's yes, but I best get home afore Pa sees Aunt Bea's letter."
"I'll come round to talk to your Pa at 8."
"Make it 7:30? Got to telegraph Aunt Bea to come west."
Time sped to no time. Before she could even dream it, Cayo took hold of Darby's sun-warmed arms and clasped them around his neck. She closed her eyes and tilted up her chin. But the second Cayo covered her lips with his, she opened her eyes. A kiss for all times.
A kiss to remember.
The End
The author was inspired by and is grateful to Elizabeth Bishop's anthologized poem "Behind Stowe," for this line from that poem: "A whistle sleek as moonlit grass,"
which begins the first line of this story.
Forgiving Wind
by Matthew Dexter
“Welcome to the wild,” he says, jumping off his favorite horse.
He shuffles over like an ostrich, kicking the mud from dusty stirrups, holding out a crusty weather-beaten glove. I shake it, out of politeness, if nothing else. My mother doesn't condone cowboys trampling her tomatoes; that would be reprehensible. But Mama’s out searching for gold.
Whole family has been hypnotized with the dream of El Dorado. Rumors that Cortez buried gold in the Baja so he wouldn't have to sail it all back to Spain for King Charles. Mama insists the famous explorer passed away before he had the opportunity to dig up his treasure.
“Ready for an adventure?”
The cowboy is a hired hand, but a hand of confidence.
“I'm ready when you are,” I say, saddling the mule.
“The audacity of your mother to believe she can find gold in the dirt,” he says.
“Never know—”
“Hey Grandpa,” he shouts, waving his sombrero to the man who never moves; just sits on the porch, a forgotten statue as his family goes crazy. The old man waves and smiles. He’s already said his goodbyes.
There’s been a wicked deal of turmoil in the family since she told us we would be living off the land, digging for a hidden treasure only god knows exists. She left me and Grandpa behind to meet the cretins trying to evict us, give us an extra month, and that’s all we have. But she is our mother, so we obey. It’s ironic that she took such an interest in digging for gold when she’s spent her entire life ridiculing material possessions, especially jewelry and automobiles. This is why we ride horses. We’re the weird family with the vociferous old lady always yelling at us, talking her mouth off round-the-clock, till she falls asleep beneath the stars.
“We're not quite ready man,” he says, “come down and help me tie these ropes around our future.”
There was mayhem in the house when she told Grandpa she was taking us out of school. They argued about it for hours, but the lure of instant riches eventually enchanted him, as it did us all. Mama was given this strange map after digging in the garden—read it and immediately became entranced with the idea of fortune. The northern portion of the Baja California peninsula. Two weeks later we picked up our backpacks and said goodbye to San Ysidro, crossed the border; sombreros on our heads, dreams in our pockets.
Children were throwing rocks across the border fence into the United States. The conditions in Tijuana can best be described as squalid—bottomless poverty and romantics—yet we marched south, into the wild west of her madness. Eating tacos and speaking Spanglish we wasted pesos in dilapidated cantinas for a few days before Mama had an epiphany about her luck never happening over a bottle of whiskey and a deck of cards.
The crazy cowboy yokes his wagon to the back of a couple stubborn mules and smiles with wild abandon: “This is how we used to travel when I was your age.”
“Yoke your wagon to the stars,” I tell him, paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The connection eludes him. But I mount my mule again and we ride off together into a clueless world where education consists of counting how many screws loose we have in our minds. I follow the madman into the desert, the horizon our destination.
A giant mosquito bites me on the eyelid and the cowboy spears a rattlesnake with his hunting knife just as it’s about to strike my mule.
“We're a family with no country, only rainbows and dreams of El Dorado.”
I try to explain that El Dorado has little to do with Baja, and that the map was probably written by ignorant children, but Mama says it was “given to us by the heavens, so let it bring us what it may.”
It’s the middle of June and the sun beats down upon our shoulders like the acrylic nails of Satan. I told her we were better off chasing butterflies, but she packed her stuff, stole some shovels, and headed south. She’s been digging for days. In the mirages of my delirium, Grandpa waves as we fade away into the heat waves of the uninhabited southwest.
The breeze our only respite, sweat dripping into our eyes, the bombastic cowboy talking incessant gibberish and dancing in his saddle, but I stopped listening hours ago, as the perspiration began dripping into my mouth. The blind fanaticism of our family is tearing us apart. Chasing gold, buried treasures, if we don’t find any we’ll lose out property, out home, everything.
“But the money will make us better,” Mama intimated.
So we ride on into the crimson sunset, camping as twilight breaches the indigo blue of the horizon. We cook beans over a fire and tell ghost stories about our ancestors. The cowboy terrifies me with his tales, but it’s an intimate campfire and I’ve never felt closer to anyone. Here on the range the strange sounds of the Baja come alive and I fall into a dreamless sleep so deep and bright that not even the lure of gold can stir me.
That is until the strange sounds just before dawn begin to haunt the campsite. A coyote comes down from above and lands on the cowboy’s shoulders. He wrestles the beast, cuts it with a hunting knife, and tosses the monster into the fire where it howls beneath the moon for a few minutes before burning into the heavens.
Wake up shivering. The cowboy is dancing around the orange embers of the fire.
“It’s cold as hell,” he says.
“That’s an oxymoron,” I inform him, but he isn't listening, doesn’t care if his words are contradictory. Who’s culpable if we die in the desert? I wonder; hunkering over the embers as the cowboy gets lost in a manic tribal dance. He looks like a lunatic, but I don't want to disparage him—insulting or berating him would be stupid. He’s filled with dogmatic beliefs: rigid to the core about his insistence on knowing everything; an obstinate Don Quixote chasing windmills. He’s sure that rain means the world needs to be cleansed, that the stars are attached to his wagon on a clear night. Once I tried to rationally discuss his exuberance by gently pointing out the innocent confusion of his beliefs, but antagonism seldom works with a cowboy.
“You have some crazy ideas,” I say, as we saddle up the animals, enjoying a quick breakfast with the cherry sunrise. It’s true he’s a madman, but a mild-mannered one at that. His heart is golden; no need to excoriate his character for the things he cannot control. His enthusiasm is contagious, and even the mules get inspired when he gives his morning speech. Though he’s prone to hyperbole, there’s no other place I would rather be at this moment.
Here we are on a mission for riches, when an auspicious sign comes into view just as we're about to ride into a golden dawn: a double rainbow all the way across the sky.
“Full-on double rainbow all the way across the sky…”
He begins crying when he sees the ethereal vision, all the colors. He begins singing and weeping, falling victim into the inertia of his emotions. I exhort him to stop crying immediately. “Please stop,” I say. Prying him out from his majestic psychoses often takes some coaxing, but he wipes his eyes on the reins of his animal and we ride off after the king’s gold.
“We're almost at the end of the rainbow,” he says. I'm not so sure we are, but it’s hard to tell with all the morning mist, so I indulge his imagination.
By midday the rainbow is merely a figment of a cowboy’s forgotten morning. Like a fish, he only has a six-second memory. You can try to extricate the details from the labyrinth of his mind, but it’s like scraping gold dust from the core of the earth—an impossible task.
Mama and the rest of the gang are waiting in the shade of a large palm tree. The palm fronds shake in front of her face as she sleeps on a pillow of gold dust. They’re shameless, courageous, with a look of unmitigated impudence across their faces as they snooze beneath the noonday sun. They've all lost weight digging for promises, Mama is curled into a coil like a snake, so flexible and lithe she could float on air and strike you like a cobra, and perhaps she will.
The cowboy shakes his head. “Still think people who believe in treasure are imbeciles?” he asks.
“People who search for gold are morons,” my sister mocks.
I watch the glitter on her eyelashes, promises flickering from all their eyelids. Mama awakes like a grizzly, shakes the fronds with her laugh.
“Don't be so hypocritical, little one,” she says to the little girl, “you've been digging yourself for days, praising the dirt at our feet. Come here, dear boy, kiss your Mama.”
I kiss my Mama and tell her about the double rainbow, the angels, the proliferation of all my doubts, as they float into a forgiving wind, toward the stars.
The End
It Happened in Oso
by John Duncklee
The first slug slammed into his right shoulder lodging into bone, spinning him around all the way so that he still faced his attacker. The sound of the .37 caliber Potrio followed before he knew what had happened. Then a second spiraling lead bullet struck him in the stomach, spilling his blood onto the dust of Durand Street, the main thoroughfare that split the town of Oso, the county seat of Oso County, New Mexico, into two parts, one gringo, the other Mexican. The man stood precariously weaving back and forth as his blood drained from the gaping hole. He wondered what was bleeding. What had the bullet severed to cause so much blood to gush from his gut. Pain dulled his brain. It was all he could do to keep standing.
The first shot to his shoulder made it impossible for him to draw his own weapon, a .42 caliber Pacemaker, from its low-slung holster tied down to his right thigh just above his knee. Then he saw his attacker approaching slowly with revolver in hand pointing the weapon straight at his heart. His blurred vision managed one clear glimpse. Sam Craver. How in hell did Sam Craver find me?
“Well, Sam, I reckon you are hankerin’ to finish me off,” he groaned.
“Halpern, I suppose I should. I’ve shot horses better off than you seem to be right now,” Craver said without pausing. “I just want you to know that when you messed around with my wife, Kate, you made the biggest mistake of your entire sad life, you scum of the earth. You varmint. You creeping worm.”
Oscar Halpern stood with his blood draining his life to the dust. Sam Craver lowered his Potrio and aimed it at Halpern’s groin.
“You can die knowing your manhood wasn’t attached, you reptile.”
“Leave him be, Sam,” a female voice shouted from the opposite side of the street from Marcy’s Eatery. “I invited him myself.”
A loud rifle shot intruded on the conversation. Craver twisted, bent over, and fell onto the dusty street. His felt hat fell off as he slumped to the ground and the sweated up headpiece landed crown up along side its owner.
A woman on horseback loped up to where Halpern stood ready to fold up his body and fall to the dust with his opponent. She grabbed Halpern under his shoulders and swung him up behind her. “Hold on, Oscar, I’ll get you to the sawbones before you croak.”
Onlookers gathered around Sam Craver. Marcy Ingram, who ran the only eating-place in Oso, leaned over to discover if Sam was breathing. “He’s still alive,” she said to the crowd. “Someone get a blanket and we’ll carry him into my place. Somebody go get Doc Reed.”
Dan Gravy stood there. He enjoyed looking half way down Marcy’s melon-shaped breasts. He had tried on numerous occasions to take her on buggy rides into the country.
“The doc’s probably busy with that other jasper,” Gravy said.
“Tell Doctor Reed that he needs to save this man’s life,” Marcy replied with desperation in her voice. “Get going, Dan. Do something useful for a change.”
The rutted main street of town was constantly splattered with horse manure and sometimes after cattle had been driven across town to the railroad corrals circles of green dotted the road and often helped fill in the ruts made from buggies, freight wagons and infrequent automobiles. Across the street from Marcy Ingram’s eatery the door to the sheriff’s office opened and a rotund man sporting a shiny silver badge attached over the breast pocket of his shirt stepped out of the doorway, looked up and down the main street of Oso, and took out a red plaid handkerchief from his pant pocket and blew his nose with a honk that Marcy heard just as she started back inside her restaurant. The Sheriff took a fresh cigar from his shirt pocket, reached into his pant pocket again and took out a small jackknife that he opened. He then proceeded to cut the tip from the cigar. After accomplishing that operation he took the cut off tip, and popped it into his mouth before grabbing the cigar with his teeth and lips and lighting it with a match that he had struck on the edge of the office door. He sucked on the cigar and blew out a cloud of smoke toward the street without taking the cylinder out of his mouth. Again he glanced up and down the street before stepping forth to walk to Marcy’s for a cup of coffee. Marcy stood by her door and watched. When Sheriff Bell reached halfway he seemed like it was the first time he had noticed Marcy waiting for him. He stopped, removed the cigar from his mouth and flick off the ash with his little finger.
“I heard some shots out here, Marcy, what in hell was going on?”
“Sheriff, where in the world have you been? There has been two men shot. Neither probably won’t be alive for long and you finally show up after all the shooting is over.”
“Now, Dammit, Marcy, you know I take my nap every afternoon. It was lucky I even heard the shooting.”
Before the sheriff could enter Marcy’s place of business two women arrived trotting with two folded blankets. Marcy went back to Sam Craver’s limp body on the street, grabbed the blankets from the women and wrapped Sam as best she could, trying to lift him gently onto the blankets. She stood up and wiped the sweat from her brow, and looked at the sheriff. “All right, Sheriff Bell, why don’t you earn your salary for a change and carry Sam Craver to Doc Reed’s.”
“You’ll have to give me a hand, Marcy, you know I ain’t supposed to lift anything heavy after that horse rolled on me,” the sheriff said.
“If you hadn’t been so engrossed lighting your cigar that old horse would have fallen on you and just died peacefully in front of the Lucky Dollar Saloon. You grab the legs and I’ll try to hold on to his arms,” Marcy said.
Slowly, the two carried the unconscious Sam Craver to Doctor Reed’s office, and left him in the waiting room after telling the doctor he had another patient to look being back to life. They returned to Marcy’s Eatery where she poured two cups of coffee and sat down at a table opposite the sheriff. With her tin cup full of coffee in her right hand and her left palm under her chin she stared at Sheriff Alfonso Bell. Dan Gravy sat at the counter without paying any obvious attention to the couple. He was the only customer.
“How come you were to run for sheriff to begin with?” Marcy asked Bell.
Well my father is gringo and my mother is Mexicana and Oso County is 50/50 so I figure I couldn’t lose.”
“Was the election close?”
“No I won by a landslide.”
“How did you manage that, Alfonso?”
“Easy, there wasn’t anyone who wanted the job so I had nobody running against me.”
“How long ago was this?” Marcy asked.
“Fifteen years ago, before you came to town.”
“Heavens, that’s before I even knew there was a town or county in New Mexico called Oso.”
”Verdad, true, and I have never had any opposition running for my job since then.”
“Why is that?”
“The only reason I can figure is that I have done a good job of keeping law and order in Oso County.”
“For heaven’s sake, Sheriff, nothing ever happens here, at least until today, and you slept through it all,” Marcy said.
“I’ve been taking my naps every afternoon for fifteen years,” Bell said, scratching his chin with his right index finger.
Marcy glanced toward the door as Kate Craver entered and walked straight to the table where Bell and Marcy were sipping their coffee. Kate stood with arms akimbo glaring down at the Sheriff. “What do we pay you for, Sheriff Bell?” she shouted. “There are two men shot and killed, and you are nowhere to be found.”
Bell looked up at Kate, saw her scowl, and looked back to his tin cup swirling it around nervously. “I was just telling Marcy that I was taking my nap and barely heard the shots.”
“Do we pay you to take naps or keep law and order in this durned county?” Kate asked.
“You said that the two men were shot and killed,” Marcy said. “Are both your husband and Oscar Halpern dead?”
“Deader than mackerel,” Kate said.
“Who shot Sam Craver?” Marcy asked
“I shot that unfaithful slug. He called me unfaithful for spending a little time with Oscar Halpern, and I knew very well Sam was seeing you on occasion, Marcy.”
"How in the world can you accuse me of being with your husband?” Marcy asked, with forced indignation in her voice.
“Come now Marcy Ingram, you have quite a reputation in this burg. Your so-called eatery is nothing more than a house of ill repute and you are both the madam and the girl.”
“I must ask you to leave, Kate,” Marcy said, raising her voice. “What you are saying is uncalled for.”
“I’ll leave,” Kate said, and turned toward the door. Halfway there, she stopped and swirled around. “I’ll leave so you and the sheriff can cuddle up in your bed in the back room.”
Marcy rose from her chair, tin cup in hand and rushed toward Kate. She stopped within four feet of Sam Craver’s widow, and tossed what was left in her coffee into Kate’s face. Sheriff Alfonso Bell kept his seat, and watched the two women in astonishment.
Kate wiped the coffee from her face with her sleeve. “Bitch,” she yelled. “I ought to give you a load of lead from my Portchester.”
Bell rose from his chair and started toward the women. He grabbed Marcy’s her right arm, and tried to restrain her. Kate left the restaurant just as Marcy squirmed away from Bell and grabbed a chair from a nearby table and swung it at the sheriff’s head. One of the chair legs splintered when it hit the sheriff’s skull. His Stetson flew off, and sailed across the room. Bell staggered under the blow and sunk gracefully to the floor unconscious.
Still holding the chair in both hands, Marcy looked down at her target and laughed.
“You have one helluva swing, Marcy,” Dan Gravy said. He had turned around when the yelling started and witnessed the entire situation.
“Nobody grabs me by the arm when I am mad,” she said.
“Do you need help moving Sheriff Bell out of the way?”
“Since you are the only customer and I know very well you really don’t care what is on the floor, I’ll just leave him be, and he can go back to his office when he wakes up.”
“Sure has been a lot of ruckus in Oso today,” Gravy said.
“By the looks of Kate Craver I doubt if the ruckus is over yet,” Marcy said.
Marcy went back to the kitchen area and began washing the dishes in the deep sink. Gravy was still sitting at the counter when she finished and was hoping the entire time that she would bend over and he could steal a glimpse of her bosom.
Gravy’s quest was unsuccessful because Marcy had been well aware of Dan’s ocular intentions ever since she came to town and opened Marcy’s Eatery on Durand Street. Anytime Dan Gravy was in her restaurant Marcy made sure her blouse or dress was pinned securely to disallow Dan a view of her breasts.
About the same time as she went into the kitchen area Sheriff Bell came to and looked around from his position on the floor wondering where he was and what had happened to put him in such a position. Leaning up he felt a sharp pain from the top of his head. He rubbed his eyes and pushed himself up so that he could grab the legs of a table and pull himself up to his feet. He glanced at Dan Gravy and Marcy momentarily before retrieving his Stetson and heading out the door. He was in no mood to make conversation with anyone. He decided that a good stiff drink of mescal would cure his headache so he ambled down Durand Street toward the Lucky Dollar Saloon. Inside the saloon he hesitated to let his eyes become accustomed to the dark interior except for the light hanging from the ceiling over the pool table so that the players could see what they were doing. Two Mexican cowboys were playing a game. One stood holding his pool cue as the other concentrated on a bank shot into the side pocket. The sheriff ambled up to the bar.
Frank Villa, the bartender stepped over and looked into Bell’s eyes. “What will it be today?” he asked.
“I think a double of your best mescal will do it for me,” Bell replied.
Villa took a bottle of mescal from under the bar after putting a double shot glass in front of the sheriff. He poured the glass full of mescal to the point where it came close to spilling over the edge. “I heard some gunfire a while back, Sheriff. What was that all about?”
Bell lifted the full shot glass to his lips and tipped it high so that the entire contents went into his mouth. He grimaced and put the glass back on top of the bar. “A couple a fools fighting over a woman like bulls over a cow in heat,” Bell said. “Might as well pour me another.”
Villa grabbed the bottle from underneath the bar, and brought it up to pour the sheriff another double shot. “Anybody killed?”
“Oscar Halpern and Sam Craver are both dead,” Bell said, and then threw down the second double shot of mescal.
“They must have shot at the same time,” Villa said.
“Damned if I know. I was taking my nap when it all happened.”
“Eso es la vida,” Villas said.
“That’s life, all right,” Bell said, and pushed his way from the bar and left the building. He smiled when he was ten yards away headed toward his office. He thought about the many free drinks he had enjoyed at the Lucky Dollar Saloon since Frank Villa had opened it five years before. Villa had a definite Mexican accent and, for that matter, Bell talked very much the same way. Bell blamed it on his mother teaching him Spanish first and then English. There were times when he wondered about Frank Villa’s background and where he had come from. Villa never revealed any of those facts to anyone. Sheriff Bell didn’t care where he was from as long as the free drinks got put on the bar at the Lucky Dollar.
He was a few yards from the door to the bar when he saw Dan Gravy coming toward him. “Howdy, Sheriff,” Dan said. “How’s your head?”
“My heads just fine, Gravy. After watching all that stuff going on you must have enough gossip for the next six months.”
“Now, Sheriff, I don’t gossip. You should know that. I just tell what I see, and everyone seems to believe me.”
“That depends on how drunk you are when you’re talking.”
Gravy turned, waving a short good-bye to the sheriff and walked into the Lucky Dollar Saloon. Bell continued to his office where he sat at his desk to think about the trouble that had come to “his” town. He took off his Stetson with his left hand and scratched the top of his head with his right fingernails. After putting his hat crown down on the desk he took his chin in both hands and stared through the window in the door, watching Durand Street to see if anything else might be happening. “Nothing ever happens in this stinking burg when I’m awake,” he murmured.
The following afternoon the sheriff sat at his desk after his nap. Again he stared out the window in the front door wondering whom he had heard ride up to the hitch rack at the side of the building. Not bothering to knock, Kate Craver opened the door and strode in like she belonged there. “I just wanted to inform you, Sheriff, that I am filing a recall petition calling for your ouster as sheriff, and holding an election to fill your office with someone who will earn the salary,” she said, enunciating her words with precision. “Here is a copy for your information.”
She slapped several pages onto the desk. “By the way Sheriff Bell, should you decide to reclaim your office, I am running against you.”
Kate swiveled on her high-heeled boots and walked out the door. Sheriff Bell heard her horse’s hoof beats as she reined him toward the Lucky Dollar Saloon.
The sheriff took the petition papers in his hands and slowly read the legal language. “Now, I’ll have to go to the county offices and see what all this crap means,” he said out loud. He rose from his chair, put on his hat and left for the nearby Oso County Court House.
Kate Craver smiled as she rode up to the Lucky Dollar. She had met Frank Villa several times and was confident she could persuade him to aid her in the election in getting the Mexican vote in Oso County. She didn’t worry about the gringos because most were dissatisfied with Alfonso Bell, but could never find anyone willing to run against him. Dan Gravy stood against the bar with a shot of mescal in front of him. He tipped his hat as she approached. “Howdy Missus Craver. Sorry about your husband,” he said.
“Thank you, Mister Gravy. Did you happen to witness the skirmish?”
“No M’am, I was in the restaurant drinking coffee when all the shots happened.”
Kate walked to the end of the bar, out of earshot from Gravy. Villa looked up and met her eyes. “Missus Craver, I am sorry to hear about your husband. Is there anything I can get you?”
“If you don’t mind, I would like a glass of wine and I also need to discuss something with you.”
“Sorry, but I don’t have any wine. All I have is tequila and mescal,” Villa said. “With this prohibition on I don’t want to keep a lot on hand in case those revenue men pay Oso a visit and decide to put me out of business.”
“Well, if all works out with my plan you will have another income besides the bar.”
“I don’t understand what you are saying Señora.”
“Frank, I am passing a petition to recall Alfonso Bell and will run against him and whoever else decides to run. I am offering you a deputy sheriff’s job if you will pass this petition around among the Mexican people and have them sign it so we can get rid of that worthless Bell and bring law and order to Oso.”
“I guess I can do that,” Villa said.
“Tell me about yourself, Frank,” Kate said. “I don’t even know where you came from, just that you rolled in one day, bought the Lucky Dollar and have been here ever since.”
“If I tell you what you want to know you must keep it all a secret. Otherwise I will have to leave.”
“What in the world have you done to worry about being forced to leave Oso?”
“It’s like this, Señora,” Villa said. My real name is Doroteo Arango. I was born down south in Durango. I had to leave after I defended my sister against a hacienda owner and killed him. I changed my name to Francisco Villa. You probably know me as Pancho Villa, the general who invaded Columbus, New Mexico. I think I pissed off General Pershing because he chased me all over the Sierra Madres but I always got away. Anyway, I surrendered my troops to General Huerta in 1920 and went to live on a hacienda called Canutillo that the government gave me. I knew there were some hombres that wanted me dead so I took off in 1922 and drove across the border on July fourth. All the customs people were celebrating their independence holiday and were nowhere in sight. I drove up here to Oso, bought the Lucky Dollar and have been here ever since. Those people in Parral that wanted me dead shot the wrong person and buried him thinking it was General Francisco Villa.”
“That is quite a story Frank. It is amazing that nobody around here recognized you.”
“I shaved off my mustache and I look like just another Mexican.”
“Did you change the name of the Lucky Dollar when you bought it?”
“I just took ‘Saloon’ off the sign and replaced it with ‘Pool’. I keep wondering how long your government is going to try to stop people from drinking.”
“Heaven knows and it’s not telling,” she said. “How do you manage to stay in business?”
“I have no problem with that,” Villa said. I keep the tequila and mescal hidden and don’t keep much out here at the bar in case the policia comes to town. I have good amigos that bring the bottles to me from Chihuahua. They know a hole in the barbed wire that they drive through.”
“It sounds like you have everything figured out,” Kate said, still amazed at the story of General Francsico Villa.
“Do you still want me to be your deputy sheriff?” Villa asked.
“I think you will be perfect for the job. If the revenuers come to town, between the two of us, we can point them in the wrong direction.”
She handed Villa a stack of petitions, gave him instructions and started for the door. Gravy tipped his hat again as she walked by him. Villa examined the petitions, and walked over to Gravy. Handing one to the town ne’er do well Villa raised his left eyebrow. “Señor Gravy, would you like to be the first to sign this petition to recall the sheriff?”
Gravy looked at the paper, turned his head toward Villa and handed the petition back to the owner of the Lucky Dollar. “I don’t think I want to get mixed up in all that political stuff, Frank. Try someone else.”
Gravy finished his mescal and left the bar. He headed straight for the sheriff’s office and found Bell sitting at his desk with his head in his hands.
“Hey, Alfonso, did you hear about that Craver woman passing out recall petitions to get you out of office?”
“She was already here. I wonder why she is so mean. I’ve seen old wild mares that weren’t near as mean as she is.”
“What do you figure to do about it?” Gravy asked.
“What in hell is there to do?”
“You could go around and talk to people.”
“I don’t think I have to worry about all this stuff. I have never been defeated in an election yet.”
“But this time you not only have an opponent, but your opponent is a wild mean woman.”
“She is probably mad because Sam killed her lover boy before she could kill him.”
“Why don’t you arrest Kate Craver for murder and that will solve the recall stuff?”
“I was taking a nap when it all happened and that won’t set well with the voters.”
Gravy shrugged his shoulders and left the sheriff’s office to have a talk with Marcy at her Eatery and see what she was thinking about the latest news to hit Oso.
Within a week, Kate had more than enough signatures on her petitions to file them with the county clerk. Tapping her fingers on the counter, Kate showed her annoyance that the clerk, never having been involved with a recall petition, had to consult with the county attorney to determine what course of action she needed to take. Further delay arose because the county attorney had to research the proper legal procedure for a recall petition and subsequent election. When the obese clerk finally returned waddling up to the counter she suggested that Kate return the following day to find out what needed to be done to hold an election. Kate turned abruptly and strode out of the office and out of the courthouse. The following morning she returned to find that all was in order and that the election would be held in thirty days. The clerk had informed her that the thirty-day period allowed for candidates for the sheriff’s office would have time to run a campaign.
Frank visited as many Mexican families as he had time for and Kate made the rounds of the gringos. They collected twice the number of signatures necessary to call for an election and both huddled across the bar at the Lucky Dollar planning their campaign.
Alfonso Bell did nothing out of the ordinary, making sure he had his nap every day. He didn’t feel comfortable at the Lucky Dollar, so he bought his bottles of mescal and drank at home. He couldn’t understand why his friend Frank Villa had chosen to side with Kate Craver attempting to what he termed “steal” his office of sheriff.
On election day Kate rode around town a few times and worried that not enough voters were showing up to put her in the sheriff’s office, but when the polls closed and the county clerk counted the votes she was delighted that she had won by a significant enough margin. She also learned that Alfonso Bell had one week to vacate the building and turn in the equipment for inventory.
After the transition had been accomplished, Kate pinned her badge on her curvaceous chest and Frank bought a new shirt on which to pin his deputy’s badge. They walked around Oso to show that the law was in good hands and then went back to the office where Kate did most of the talking laying out plans to keep peace in the town and county. At the end Frank complained that he needed more time to keep the Lucky Dollar open, so Kate modified the schedule to suit Frank’s needs at the saloon.
When Frank returned to the Lucky Dollar he found Alfonso Bell and Dan Gravy waiting for him to open. The only conversation was Alfonso requesting to buy two bottles of mescal. Gravy asked for one. Frank went into the back room and carried out three bottle for his customers, took their money and watched them leave. Frank realized that Alfonso had changed his attitude toward him especially since he could no longer expect free drinks at the bar. Bell and Gravy went to Alfonso’s house to drink their mescal and talk over a plan that Alfonso had been thinking about. They sat at the kitchen table with their drinks in front of them. Before taking the first taste Alfonso admonished Gravy to keep what he was about to say a secret.
“Hell’s fire, Sheriff, you know I don’t hardly talk to anyone in Oso,” Gravy said.
“Good,” Bell said, hoping he could trust Gravy. “I am not happy that Frank is a deputy and that Craver woman beat me out of the job I held for fifteen years. I don’t know how to get back at her but I have an idea how to put Frank out of his bootleg bar business.”
“What you figure on doin’, Sheriff?”
“I think that the revenuers would enjoy knowing about the Lucky Dollar selling bootlegged mescal and tequila that has been smuggled out of Chihuahua.”
“I think you’re right, Sheriff. Frank might start thinking about siding with that Craver woman, and come the next election, you could get your job back.”
“You are reading my mind, Dan. I think I will contact those revenuers in El Paso, and see what happens to the Lucky Dollar.”
Two days after Bell reported the Lucky Dollar to the revenuers, Frank Villa received a call from his old friend Jim Clay, who had sent weapons and ammunition into Mexico for Pancho Villa’s army. Because of his job with the United States Government, Jim was privy to most decisions made by the revenuers. Jim was also instrumental in arranging shipments of mescal and tequila to Oso from Chihuahua. Jim and Pancho had been close friends for many years. Jim warned Villa that the Sheriff of Oso County had tipped off the revenuers. They were planning a raid on the Lucky Dollar in three days if all went well with the trip from El Paso.
Frank hurried over to the sheriff’s office and told Kate that he would be busy and why. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
“If you want to forget about law and order for a while, you can come to the Lucky Dollar and help me carry mescal and tequila bottles down into the cellar.”
“Are you sure Alfonso Bell tipped them off?”
“That’s what my friend Jim told me. Bell even told them he was the sheriff of Oso County.”
“I ought to go over and arrest him for impersonating a law officer,” Kate said.
“I think it is better not to do anything that might let Bell know that we know what is coming from El Paso. In fact, I will carry the bottles to the basement myself.”
“This might be exciting!” Kate said.
Frank returned to the Lucky Dollar and began by lifting up the heavy trap door in the floor that led to the cellar composed of three rooms, each with shelving from floor to ceiling on each wall. It took Villa two days to transfer all the bottles from his storeroom on the ground floor, down the stairs into the cellar. After finishing the chore, he spread an old rug over the closed trap door. He went to his room in the rear of the Lucky Dollar and went to sleep. He hadn’t worked as hard a since he was riding through the Sierra Madres eluding ”Black Jack” Pershing and his “flat lander” soldiers.
The following morning he fixed an early breakfast of beefsteak and frijoles before walking to the Sheriff’s office to tell Kate he was ready for the revenuers any time they arrived to raid the Lucky Dollar.
“I left the sign up so they could find the place easily,” he said.
“Why make it easy for them?” Kate asked.
“Because what I have in store for them is something I look forward to.”
“When will they arrive in Oso?” Kate asked.
“Maybe late today. I will be ready for them whenever they get here.” Villa then voiced a string of Spanish epithets and waved his hands as he spoke.
“What does all that mean?”
“It is probably good that you didn’t understand. It was my personal message to the revenuers and the government that would not help me in the war.”
Villa returned to the Lucky Dollar, made sure the entrance door was locked and then took a position in a grove of trees across the road from the bar. He had brought a kitchen chair out there previously so he would have a place to sit while he waited for his prey.
A black sedan drove up, paused for a few moments and then parked in front of the Lucky Dollar. Frank remained seated obscurely in the grove of trees. Three men in dark suits and fedora hats got out of the car and walked casually toward the entrance door.
“This has to be the place,” the first officer to arrive at the door said.
“The sign says ‘Lucky Dollar Pool’, and that’s what the Oso Sheriff told the Chief,” the shorter of the three said.
The first man tried the locked door. “The door is locked. Maybe the owner got wind of the raid.”
“He’s probably inside and locked up when he saw us drive up,” the first man said. “Get the ram and we’ll see what kind of booze they drink in Oso.”
The shorter man walked back to the sedan and opened the trunk from which he took an iron pipe with an angle welded to one end and handles on the other. He returned to the door. “Who gets to open the door?” he asked.
“Since I am in charge of this raid I think I should be the one to open the door,” the first man said. The shorter man handed the battering ram to the leader and stood back out of the way. First the leader of the raid knocked hard on the door several times with his fist.
“This jasper ain’t about to open his door to us,” he said and lifted the ram into position. It took three thrusts of the ram to splinter the door and the doorframe so that the three could gain entry to the building under suspicion.
Villa waited until all three had entered his building until he stood up from the chair and walked to the Lucky Dollar to stand in the open doorway. “Can I help you?” he asked.
The three revenuers had reached the far end of the bar and were about to go to the storeroom. They stopped dead in their tracks and turned toward Frank Villa standing in the doorway complete with his badge pinned on his new shirt.
“Are you Sheriff Bell?” The leader asked.
“No, I am the owner of the Lucky Dollar. Alfonso Bell is no longer Sheriff of Oso County.
The three revenuers started walking toward Villa. Villa pulled out his Potrio and pointed it at the men. “I don’t know who you people are or who you think you are, but you have broken down my door and damaged it beyond repair. I liked that old rustic door very much.”
The leader pushed his head toward Villa, and looked at him with glaring eyes. “We are from the government and are raiding this establishment because it was reported to be selling bootlegged liquor.”
“I think you have made a mistake, gentlemen. And, I must insist that you pay me the damages to my door. I think a hundred dollars should cover the repairs.”
“That is preposterous,” the leader said. “Lower your weapon. We are officers of the government.”
“I will lower my weapon as soon as I see one hundred dollars on the bar.”
“We need to look around inside here some more,” the leader said.
“Help yourselves, but put your weapons on the bar first,” Villa said.
“We are government officials.”
“I really don’t care who you say you are. You broke my door and I want a hundred dollars for the repairs.”
“You are being very difficult, Sir.”
“Thank you. ‘Sir’ sounds quite appropriate. I think I need to take you under arrest to the Sheriff.”
“This is getting completely out of hand.”
“All right, let’s go. All three of you get in line and we are going to visit the Sheriff of Oso County.”
Frank took his position in back of the revenuers and marched them up to Durand Street and into the Sheriff’s office where Kate sat at her desk. “What do you have here, Deputy Villa?”
“These people claim to be government officials, but they broke down the door to the Lucky Dollar and refuse to pay me a hundred dollars for repairs.”
“Hmm,” Kate murmured
“Gentlemen, this is Sheriff Craver.”
The three revenuers looked wide-eyed at Kate, tipped their fedoras and stood waiting for their fate.
“Put them in the cell, Deputy, until they decide to pay those damages. We can’t have people going around town breaking doors down for no reason.”
“Now wait a minute, Sheriff. Let’s see if my fellow officers and I can come up with the hundred dollars.”
The three officers rummaged in their pockets and put what money they carried on the Sheriff’s desk and counted it. The amount came to ninety-six dollars and forty cents. “That’s all we have, Sheriff Craver,” the leader said.
“It’s up to Deputy Villa to say if he will accept that amount.”
They looked over at Frank. He put his right hand on his chin, scratched the stubble a couple of times and brought his arm down to his side. “I suppose that might cover it if I do the work myself,” he said, and went over to the desk and collected the money.
“Now gentlemen, what was it that brought you to Oso?” Kate asked.
“A man who called himself Sheriff Bell contacted us, and said that the Lucky Dollar is selling bootlegged liquor,” the leader said.
“I think you might be more careful when a man claiming to be Sheriff tells you something that isn’t true,” Kate said.
“Are we still under arrest?” the leader asked.
“I will release you if you go straight back to your automobile and go back to wherever you started from. And, please don't waste our time again. We are far too busy keeping law and order in Oso County than to deal with bumbling government officials.”
When Prohibition ended in 1933 Frank and Kate held a big party for the town of Oso. She had never lost an election and Frank was still her only deputy. Even Alfonso Bell attended the party.
A month later Kate was sitting at her desk when Frank Villa drove up in his Cadillac convertible. She stood up from her desk and walked out the door to see her deputy grinning from ear to ear.
“What’s with the grin, Frank?”
“I sold the Lucky Dollar to an hombre from California,” he said.
“Why on earth did you sell the Lucky Dollar now that Prohibition has ended?”
“Kate, it just isn’t fun any longer.”
“Golly gee,” she said. “I was thinking the other day that we ought to get married.”
“I appreciate your thought dear Kate, but I already have two wives—one waiting for me in Durango, the other in Parral.”
“Francisco Villa, Doroteo Arango, whoever you are, you are an old devil. But, I love you.”
“I love you, too, Kate. Adios!”
The End
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