Paradise Sky

There was also a book of poetry in one of the saddlebags. It was handwritten, and I figured between tracking and killing, Cramp had liked to rhyme a little. I ain’t no great judge of poems, though Mr. Loving had me read a considerable number of them, but I can tell you these were so bad they hurt my feelings. I threw the book away and had an urge to bury it lest a coyote come across it, read a few lines, and get sick.

“There’s a town I come through on the way here to joining up with the soldiers. Ransack,” I said.

“I come to it myself,” Cullen said.

“We might go there. They’re bound to have a graveyard.”

“We could just leave him here and wouldn’t nobody ever know,” Cullen said.

“I’d know.”

“I think I could know and get over it,” he said.

“Maybe I could in time,” I said, “but a promise is a promise.”

“How we going to do it? We just got the one horse.”

Cramp had a lariat and a bedroll. I stretched the bedroll on the ground, then me and Cullen laid Cramp on it and wrapped him in it along with what was left of his sombrero, which we laid on his chest. I wound the lariat around his body and tied it so we could drag him behind us. We got his Sharps then, climbed on Satan, and started out.

That bedroll idea wasn’t perfect, but it’s what we had. Fact was, once we got loaded up and headed out, the bedroll began to come apart on the boot end, and after a few miles one of Cramp’s boots slipped free of the blanket and thumped along the ground.

In time we come across enough small trees to cut a couple of limbs with my knife and make a travois—and this took some work, I assure you. The travois lifted the body off the ground more and kept what was left of the blanket from wearing. Parts of Cramp, including his face, was starting to peek out of it. He was also growing a mite ripe, and his face, which first swelled up, was now withering like an old potato.

We come to Ransack near nightfall.

Seeing it from a distance, Ransack looked like a series of large fireflies in the midst of shadow shapes, but it was kerosene lamps and fires, and the shapes was buildings.

As we rode in it was as silent as death, us having a very recent companion who belonged to that club, and then suddenly there was sound. At first it was like the hum of a fly, then we could hear clattering and a bit of music coming from one of the bars—a tuba, a piano, a banjo, and some kind of horn that might have been a trumpet or some idiot blowing through a pipe.

We went wide of that, as I was thinking if there was any colored folks around they’d be at the back of the town and wouldn’t be welcome around white folks’ saloons, stores, or women. When we come to the backstreets, it wasn’t my people I seen but China folk. I had seen pictures of them in books Mr. Loving had, but here they was now, in the flesh.

There was four or five Chinamen and a China girl next to a big fire with a metal rack over it and a large, black pot of boiling laundry on it, the likes of which the China girl was stirring with a long, thin board. The firelight was so bright you could see the colors of the shirts in the churning laundry. The men was all about the same size and wore loose clothes. The girl was dressed the same and was almost as thin as the board she was holding. Her hair was long and black and bound behind her head, and the men had a single pigtail hanging off their partly shaved heads. Along with the pigtails they wore curious expressions, like maybe we was the first colored they’d seen, though it may have been on account of we was dragging a body you could smell from about three acres away and Cramp’s boot was hanging out of the blanket along with an arm that had come loose and was dragging in the dirt.

A Chinaman we hadn’t seen before, kind of fat with a greasy pigtail, come out from behind a big barrel that was blazing with enough fire to light up the ground around us. He waved his hands at us. I reined to a stop. He said. “Want girl?”

“Say what, now?” I said.

“Sell girl for cheap, you want.”

The girls came out of the shadows and into the firelight. One was perched on a wooden peg leg and had a crutch to help her, and she was by far the comeliest of the three, though she could have used about ten gallons of water and a bar of lye soap to set her straight. There was two other China girls, and they wasn’t of the appearance to hurt anyone’s feelings, either, though they walked as if they had been horse-hobbled. They wore enough powder and rouge and such to paint the whole Sioux Nation. A fourth showed up, and she was so ugly she could have chased a bobcat up a tree, but then again maybe I wasn’t one to talk. She didn’t have the same kind of stunted walk but moved same as anyone else. I was later to learn this was because them other gals had their feet bound since they was children to make them small and to make their movements littler and their opportunities for ru

“Half woman, she cheaper,” said the Chinaman. “Five pe

I realized he meant the woman with the wooden leg.

“Actually, she’s more than half a woman,” I said. “Way more.”

“Then cost more,” he said, leaning toward Cramp, holding his nose as he did. “Friend on blanket, he have to clean first. Stink up girl.”

“We got other plans for him,” Cullen said.

“Yeah, he’s past interest in such things,” I said. “And we’re going to pass on your offer. Though we could use some food.”

“Got chop suey,” he said. “Good. Ten cents.”

“That’s more than the woman,” I said.

“Chop suey not have wooden leg.”

“Thought we were burying Cramp,” Cullen said.

“I haven’t the strength,” I said, and I meant it.

The Chinaman paused to study Cramp. “Man dead.”

“Nothing slides by you, does it?” I said.

“Not going to get better,” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “He won’t.”

The Chinaman studied me for a moment. “Still want food?”

“Sure. But ten pe

The Chinaman studied on my offer. “Okay. Put dead man away. Come eat.”

I looked back at Cullen. He shrugged.

It may seem harsh, but we parked Cramp and his travois over by a sort of lean-to, because the only thing I could think on clearly was getting my stomach wrapped around some chow.

We tended to Satan. He was tired and hungry himself. I was able to buy some oats from the Chinaman at a dear price and will admit to taking some of the money from a bag worn around Cramp’s waist. I had become his gravedigger and his banker.

When Satan was unsaddled, fed, and watered, I combed him down with equipment borrowed from the Chinaman, and then me and Cullen sat down on the ground to eat. We had to pay first, and we did, and the chop suey was only a little better than the horse meat we had eaten after the Apache fight. I came across a chicken foot in the bowl and what I thought might be a mashed calf’s eyeball. I fished these out and ate the rest of it without too much study on it and even paid for seconds for both me and Cullen.

After we chowed down, we saddled Satan and hooked Cramp and the travois up. I turned to the gal that was perched on the wooden leg, said, “Where’s the nearest graveyard?”

She stared at me.

“We need to bury him,” I said, pointing at Cramp.

I waited to see if she spoke American, and she did, or at least understood it enough, because she pointed right down the street. All we had to do was go on forward until we got to it, it seemed. The Chinaman came over and cuffed the cripple alongside the head, knocking her down in the dirt. He said something fast to her in China talk. Then in English to us: “I do talking,” he said.

“There’s no call for that,” Cullen said.

“My woman,” he said. “I give talk. Not her. She for sale. She do as I say.”

“Well, you lighten up there,” I said. “That ain’t called for. I was the one spoke to her.”