Paradise Sky

“Buy you a drink?” Bill said.

“Sarsaparilla,” I said.

As I mentioned earlier, Wild Bill didn’t much care who said what to whom as long as you didn’t say it to him. He didn’t mind sitting with a colored, and because of his reputation and ability with them pistols, everyone gave him a slide. It was better that way. There was people to cross, but Bill, pleasant as he could be, wasn’t one of them.

“I get a reprieve in about half an hour,” I said, pulling out my pocket watch and reading the face of it.

“That’s when we’ll do it, then,” Bill said. “Well, going to get me a drink, find some cards, and if the night is right, line me up some feminine companionship, preferably before drunke

For a married man with a disease, he was pretty cavalier about things. He wandered off into the crowd, them making way before him like he was Moses parting the sea. I went back to my work, and in about a half hour I turned over the gun gathering to another worker, a white fella with a drinking problem and a ru

Bill was holding down a table with three others, playing cards. Bill, as always, sat with his back against the wall. When I seen he was in a game, I started to walk away, but he called out, “Nat, come on over, friend.”

I came and stood by him as he was tossing in his cards. He said, “I’m done with this round.” He said to them others, “I would appreciate it if you would abandon this table so as to leave me and my friend to it for a private conversation.”

Now, I can swear without exaggeration they was studying him and me, trying to put the whole thing together. It wasn’t like the problem was they was all Southern boys, because they wasn’t. There was plenty who fought for the North wouldn’t give a colored man the time of day or piss on him if he was on fire. As I heard one Yankee say one time, “It was more about territory than niggers.”

But this was Wild Bill, and after a moment of consideration they got up and scraped their chairs and went away. Bill watched them lest one should turn on him, cause the truth was, excluding Charlie Utter and a few others, Bill had few friends that was solid, and many of them that he had was really more like suckasses. Some might even be looking for a moment when his back was turned to pop him. Me he trusted cause I had thrown in my hand that night without knowing who he was or caring.

“You may be off duty, but pull your chair around here by me, the back of it against the wall,” he said.

Like I said, he liked his back to the wall. I did that, and he said, “Nat, there’s some that don’t like you hereabout.”

“I suspect they are legion,” I said, “but it ain’t for anything I done.”

“You are a tribute to your race,” Bill said, not realizing there was an insult in that. “But there are some that would shoot a dog that brought them a rabbit, and just because the dog was black. You following my drift, Nat?”

“No insult to you, but I have been in this position before and have been worse off in times past.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “But I tell you now, that big man, he is one of the breed that killed Jesus, and he has your number.”

It took me a moment, and then I got it. The big man was a Jew.

“Furthermore,” Bill said. “The little fellow, he don’t have nothing but dead in his eyes. He likes to kill.”

“Some might say such of you,” I said.

“Some might,” Bill said, his teeth showing slightly beneath his mustache. “They would be wrong. I don’t like to kill, but I’m willing to if the need arises. I prefer to go to bed at night without having killed a man, for it only furthers the desire of others to pull down on me so as to build a rep. But I can sleep with who I am. I have never killed a man that didn’t need killing, except for an unfortunate accident with a deputy once. But I’ll not discuss that. Weasel, though, he’s one of a bad breed, Nat. He was not only a soldier, he used to be a buffalo hunter, and by all estimates a fair shot. He is said to have shot buffalo calves for fun and was known during the war as a man that liked to shoot the wounded; it didn’t matter North or South. He was Northern, but it was for the blood, not for any kind of cause. That could just be a story, but I tend toward believing it because he has the look about him. I am a good evaluator of character, having used my good judgment to avoid being shot by many a scoundrel.”

“How do you know all this about him?” I asked.

“I was in the war, Nat, and I knew of him through Custer. They were at Bull Run together. The little bastard was deadly, but mostly from behind a tree or from a ditch. He isn’t exactly a coward, but he measures his odds out, I can promise that. No one ever saw him at the forefront of the battle if he could dodge it. He is a backshooter, if he gets a chance.

“The giant, his name is Finklestein, or so he claims. There are those that contest his story of being a Jew and say he is a German or some other foreigner, but it hardly matters, does it? They say he took his wife’s last name. His family, as the story goes, were all killed when he lost his mind and took an ax to them. They say it was a fever and he didn’t know what he was doing and he lives in constant sorrow. That’s why they say he is here in the Territories, to avoid the law.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“That is a good question, Nat. But I have heard the story from several. However, they always got it from another person. And it changes a little here and there. I’m telling you the version I prefer, the one Charlie Utter told me. Anyway, the big man went kind of mad and decided he was a Jew and that he had been turned into something called a golem, if I hear correctly. Fact is, he calls himself Golem, like that’s his name.”

“What’s a golem?”

“It’s a Jew thing. Some kind of monster they say will whip the ass of their enemies. He thinks he’s that monster. That mark he’s put on his forehead, says that stuffs him full of power, whatever that means. Charlie was a little unclear on the matter.”

“Think there’s anything to it?”

Wild Bill gri

“You may be right, Bill,” I said. “He makes my skin crawl, and I don’t think it’s just because of the way he looks. I like to think I’ve got a better heart than that.”

“Let me get right on the matter. I have been told they have been following and asking about you. I have heard it this very night in Ma

I searched through the crowd and spotted the three at a round table not far from us. A fourth man had joined them. He was dirty and small with carrot-colored hair sticking out from under his hat. His nose had been broken and was bent; the tip of it pointed to his left ear. He was cross-eyed, too, but he had eye enough to do what them others was doing. They was all staring right at me.

“They have added another,” I said.

“Jack McCall. He came out of his mama’s wrong hole and she forgot to wipe. So there he is. But he is of no concern. I’ve played him in cards, and he’s a coward. You can tell a lot of things about a man by the way he plays cards. I even felt sorry for him a few days back after I’d taken everything he owned in a friendly game of chance. I gave him a dollar and my best wishes to buy him some food and a rope to hang on to. He took it, but resented it. I stepped on his pride. I thought he didn’t have any.”