Paradise Sky

There was one night when I was riding and I looked up at the sky, trying to recognize some of them star heroes Mr. Loving told me about. All of a sudden that sky looked so large and wide I felt as unimportant as a speck of dust in a dry creek bed, then in the next moment a different feeling rushed over me. I saw it as freedom. I wasn’t tied to nothing no more. My future right then felt as large and wide as that sky.

One early morning, as the dark was dying and the light was rising, I come to a town that was so damn small the coming and going sign was pretty much on the same post. It said RANSACK on it. As it looked and smelled like a heavy rain was coming, I stopped there and spent a night in a barn for a dollar, which seemed like robbery without having to put a gun in my face. What made it less worth a dollar was that it was infested with rats, and though there was a cat in there, it hid out from them. Those rats was near big enough to straddle a turkey flat-footed, so I could see the cat’s point of view. They scampered about me all night, loud as if they was wearing boots.

Lightning flashed and could be seen clearly through the splits in the slats of the wall. That and the hammering of thunder, and the rain blowing in through those gaps, made for a bad night of sleep. When I awoke right before daybreak, somewhat damp and not much rested, I found I had rolled over on one of those rats and crushed its head like a walnut.

Morning light come, the rain had passed, and for two bits I was able to go to the back of the hotel and buy some oatmeal with sugar and butter and a dollop of not-too-spoiled milk in it, along with one short cup of coffee so weak you could see the bottom of the cup when it was filled to the brim. It tasted like coffee grounds had just been waved over the cup.

After I’d choked down the lumps of oats and swallowed that coffee, I rode out of there and passed by a freight wagon that had lost a wheel and turned sideways, dumping a load of buffalo bones someone had been collecting on the prairie. Around those parts buffalo bones was gathered and sold to be ground into fertilizer. I was studying on their whiteness, considering fixing the wagon and trying to haul them myself for a few dollars, but decided it wasn’t a job for one horse. And sure as hell, someone might come back for them, and there I’d be, a thief.

I happened to look behind me and seen there was three men on horses on a rise looking down at me, but still a good distance away. I rode around on the other side of the buffalo-bone wagon and got off my horse.

I thought maybe one of the men was Ruggert, but I didn’t know for sure due to the distance. I thought it looked like him, and the other white man looked like Hubert. The third man was colored, which didn’t seem right, but I wasn’t taking no chances. I pulled the Winchester off my horse and settled behind the wagon, peeking through gaps in the stack of bones.

They stayed where they was for a long time. I think they took it in their heads, whoever they were, that I had a good position, better than theirs, and if that was what they was thinking, I had to agree. I stayed where I was for a stretch, watching to see if they was trying to come around on me. The rise tapered at the ends, and to ride or walk around on either side of it, they’d have to reveal themselves against the skyline. From the cover of that wrecked wagon I could have shot them off their horses like they was bottles on a post.

I kept my vigil for what was near an hour by the sun, and then took my chances and rode on so as not to give them time to go wide and come up on my flanks or behind me. I rode glancing over my shoulder the rest of the day but didn’t see them again. I began to think they wasn’t who I thought and wasn’t after me at all, and we had just happened to cross trails.

I was about a half day out of Ransack when I seen this colored fellow taking a dump near some mesquite bushes, wiping his ass on a handful of rough leaves. Had I been a desperado, I could have shot him out from over his pile and taken his horse, cause he was deeply involved in his undertaking—so much, in fact, that though I was still some distance away I could see his eyes was crossed with the strain.

Being glad I was downwind, and hating to interrupt a man at his business, I sat on my horse until he finished leaf-wiping, and then I called out. “Hello, the shitter.”

He looked at me and gri

“No. I thought about stealing your horse, though, but it’s swayback and ugly in the face.”

“You sound like you’re picking a wife, not a horse,” he said. “When I left the plantation I took that horse with me. Wasn’t much then, less now.”

He was still standing near the bushes and his pile. He’d fastened his pants, and I watched carefully as he picked up a Winchester that lay on the ground near him. He walked toward my horse. The Winchester was in his left hand, and his right hand was extended for a shake. He walked prim and tall, like maybe there was a rod up his ass. I politely refused to lean down from my horse and embrace his invitation for the reason his fingers looked brown to me, and to let my right hand be taken by a man with a rifle didn’t seem wise.

He nodded at my refusal, taking it in stride. I surveyed him, saw he was a tall man and ski

He put his rifle away in its boot, mounted himself on his horse. He said, “I’m riding out to Fort McKavett to join up, if you care to ride along.”

“I’m of the same mind,” I said, and that’s how we rode off together. By nightfall we had struck it up pretty good. We found a creek where he could wash his hands with lye soap from his saddlebag and make a handshake more inviting; and shake hands we did. He had some coffee and biscuit makings with only a minimum of weevils. He got out his cookware, made a fire of mesquite brush, and pretty soon we was resting against our saddles, the horses hobbled nearby, eating flat biscuits and drinking bad coffee. My new companion was one of the worst cooks I have ever known.

I thanked him for the meal, and since all I had to offer was some conversation, that’s what we did. His name was Cullen, but he kept referring to himself as the Former House Nigger, as if it were a rank akin to general. He told me a long story about how he got the feather for his hat, but it mostly come down to he snuck up on a hawk sitting on a low limb and jerked it out of its tail.

He come out of that story and said, “When my young master went to war against the Yankees, I went with him. I fought with him and wore a butternut coat and pants. I shot at least a half dozen Yankees.”

“You leaking brains out of your gourd?” I said. “Them rebels was holding us down.”

“I was a house nigger,” he said, as if he hadn’t already told me that about a half dozen times. “I grew up with Master Gerald, the young master, and didn’t mind going to war with him. Me and him were friends. There were lots of us like that.”

“Y’all must have got dropped on your heads when you was young’uns,” I said.

“That war wasn’t just about us slaves, you know. It was about states’ rights.”

“And what was the main states’ right?” I asked, and then answered for myself. “The right to own us like cattle. States’ rights be damned. Set fire to states’ rights.”

“The young master and the old master were all right,” he said.

“For masters,” I said. “They owned you.”

“Maybe I was born to be owned,” he said.

“Born to be owned?”

“They were always quoting about it out of the Bible.”

“That damn Ham fellow again,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s it; someone called Ham.”