Paradise Sky

I assumed he was dead like the horse, or right near it, cause buzzards were circling overhead. One of them had lit down near the horse and was staring in its direction as if waiting for a signal. A little black cloud of flies was buzzing about.

Riding over there, we discovered the colored fellow wasn’t dead at all. Even with his leg trapped, he lifted up slightly on an elbow and pointed the business end of an old Sharps .50 at us.

“Hold up,” I said. “I ain’t got nothing against you.”

“You’re money on the hoof is all,” he said, then sighed and gently laid the Sharps on the ground. “It ain’t like I’m going to spend it, though.”

We dropped off Satan, and I gave Cullen the reins to lead him. I pushed the Sharps aside with my foot. The man didn’t try and stop me. I don’t think he had the strength to lift that heavy old rifle again. He didn’t have a handgun strapped to him.

I squatted by him. He had a face that looked as if it had been chopped out of dried wood. His eyes was so black they looked like blackberries. I said, “Just resting?”

He took a deep breath. “Me and my horse thought we’d stop in the middle of the prairie, under the sun, and take a nap. It seemed like a nice enough day for it. Feeling pleasant, I asked him if he would lay down on my leg.”

“You had on that hat, you might could block out some of the sun.”

“I can’t get my leg out from under this dead bastard,” he said, kicking the horse with his free leg. “Not even enough to reach my hat. I like that hat. I had to kill a Mexican for it.”

Cullen picked up the hat and brought it to him, leading Satan as he came. The man was too weak to lift his hand and take it. I lifted his head, Cullen pushed the hat on him, and I settled his noggin back down on the ground. The back of the hat bent under him, the brim in front tilted so that it covered his face in shadow. I could see now that the horse had a couple of bullet holes in it. Sombrero Man had a hole himself, in his left side, between chest and belt. He was leaking out pretty fast.

“This ain’t how I was expecting things to work out,” he said.

“I reckon not,” I said. “Having a horse fall on you and getting shot up don’t seem like a good plan for nobody.”

“Can’t say as I can recommend it.”

“You’re the one hunting me, aren’t you?”

“I recognize your ears. I was told you had a set.”

“Why would you help those men? They despise colored folks.”

“They hired me because I’m a tracker, part Seminole, out of Florida originally, late of Nacogdoches, Texas. That Ruggert fellow heard about me and my tracking, come and hired me. Money was good.”

“Money’s no kind of reason,” I said.

“Thought I might grow up to do the ballet, but my legs looked bad in tights. So I do what I do. Only profession I got, tracking and killing people. Pays good, and I have a lot of time off.”

“Time to relax and get hold of yourself is always good,” Cullen said. “I didn’t have much of that and always wanted more. I liked my work, and was good at it, but more time off would have been good.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s a holdup on being a slave. Not enough time off.”

“That’s a good point you got there,” Cullen said. “Very true.”

“What I’d like to request is two things,” Sombrero Man said. “Could you get this horse off my leg, for one?”

“I’ll consider it,” I said. “Tell me—has Ruggert given up by now?”

“He took it right bad you raped his wife.”

“I didn’t,” I said.

“Other one told me you just looked at her ass. I can understand that. I’ve had a piece of ever’ color ass I could find that would give out, and the thing is, an ass is an ass when you add it all up. But Ruggert, he didn’t see it that way. He is an odd piece of work, and he ain’t a forgetter.”

“So I’ve figured,” I said.

“We just stayed at it, and he kept paying me with money he got somewhere or another, so I stayed on. We come upon you first out by that abandoned buffalo wagon.”

“I remember.”

“Not much else to tell. We come to the conclusion you was in the army. Thought you’d leave the fort at some point, and we could cut you from the herd.”

“That has been one long wait.”

“I’ll say. But he paid, and I stuck. We camped nearby on the sly. Used a spyglass to see where you were. Followed your troop out when you took to the woodlot, lagged behind on purpose. I don’t know what he pla

“Hubert is dead,” I said. “Apache got him.”

“Can’t say I miss him.”

“You never said the second thing,” Cullen said.

I had forgotten there was a second thing.

“No, I didn’t,” Sombrero Man said. “Number two’s this. Stay with me till I pass on. Take me some place where there’s a real graveyard. I don’t want to lay out here on the prairie. I want to be in God’s soil, have some words said over me.”

“I don’t owe you a thing,” I said.

“I ain’t got no hard feelings. Why should you?”

“Because you were going to kill me,” I said.

“I understand your point of view,” he said. “It’s a clear one.”

I studied on the problem a moment. “I should leave you for the buzzards, but I’ll do it. Ain’t getting you no headstone, though.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “No one would know who I was anyhow. For the record, my name is Cramp, or that’s what I’m called. Man got my Seminole mama’s belly full of me called me that. He run off early. I got a second name, but nobody used it much when I was little, and finally they didn’t use it at all, and now I don’t remember what it was. There ain’t a single person I know of alive that’s kin to me. But I was thinking God might forgive me some things if I was buried proper in his own ground.”

“It’s dirt,” I said. “And that’s all it is.”

“I think I’ve spoken enough for this life,” he said and started to breathe like a dog panting.

We dug around his leg with our hands. It was hard ground. Finally I got my knife out and broke the ground up good enough to slide his leg out from under the horse. The leg was a mess, bones sticking right through his pants, and he had bled out something awful. We dragged him around so he could rest his back against his horse. He closed his eyes, and after a bit he breathed less heavy, and finally he wasn’t breathing at all.

11

We figured as payment for taking him to a graveyard, anything in his saddlebags was ours, which was good, because the meager bits of grub we had was ate up. There was dried jerky in his bags and some pickled eggs in a leather pouch. The eggs was out of the shell, and they had broken up. They not only tasted pickled, they tasted like sweaty leather. We ate them anyway.

There was some oats in a bag on the horse, and we gave that to Satan, and from the dead man’s canteen we poured water in the sombrero and let Satan drink from that. When he finished drinking the water he ate part of the sombrero.

We also found a change of clothes in his possibles, and since the shirt fit me better than Cullen, I threw away my stinking army shirt and put it on, keeping my army coat and pants with the stripe. The extra pants didn’t fit neither of us, so we tossed them.