Paradise Sky

Golem came over and squatted down in front of me, kind of studied on my face. There wasn’t any expression to him. He pushed his hat up, and I seen there was a deep and ragged scar across his shaved head. I hadn’t seen it before because he always had his hat on tight, but now I could and could tell it was a horseshoe shape; he had been kicked by a horse. That explained some things, not that it gave me any comfort. Besides that wound in the middle of his forehead was that odd mark made with what I now decided was ashes.

“He thinks God has made him of mud,” Ruggert said. Then Ruggert reached out and patted Golem’s shoulder. “And surely he has. Good old thick, river-bottom mud.”

Ruggert let his hand drop from Golem’s shoulder, said, “Proper way for a nigger to die is by the rope and fire, but there’s nothing but rocks and a trail here. That’s not nigger-hanging landscape. I like a good high tree with a good firm limb. It’s best if you don’t tie a hangman’s knot, just a slipknot. Last longer that way. You see, Willie, we got the rope but no limb.”

“Why don’t you boys wait here,” I said, “and me and the ladies will go find you one. I’ll send someone back to tell you where it is, and we can meet there.”

Ruggert punched me in the face. It was a good shot and knocked me back against my saddle and blood from my busted nose ran into my mouth. I rolled my head to the side and spat it out.

“Take care of the ladies,” Ruggert said to Golem.

“As if they are given to me by God,” Golem said, each word no more level or unlevel than the other. If you could figure on how a dead man might speak—if he could—that would be how Golem sounded.

“God can’t be here right now,” Ruggert said to Golem, “so they are given to you by me, the next best thing. But I am vengeful, Golem. Vengeful, and I wish for you to be the same, my strong right hand. You got a pocketful of nice coins I gave you. That shows how I take care of you, don’t it?”

Golem barely nodded, pulled his hat back down, and moved toward the women. My heart missed a beat.

“Then there’s fire,” Ruggert said, as if he had only taken a breath in the conversation, “and I have considered on it profoundly, but then decided any nigger that dies is bound for hell, so you will have that. I think something else might be more appropriate, and I’m deciding what that is. I am giving you,” he paused, “much thought. You have come to think of yourself as highfalutin, but you are to me nothing more than that nigger who some time ago so insulted me by looking at my wife’s behind with lustful intent.”

I started to say that her face cured that but decided my best approach at this stage was not to anger him further, though, truth to tell, I figured it didn’t matter one whit. He was all het up to do me in, make me suffer, and had been after me for so long he would have to have satisfaction, and he wanted to draw it out.

“It was an accident,” I said. “I was walking by, and I just happened to look. There was nothing lustful about it.”

“A white man,” Ruggert said, “even a poor one, must maintain his position, and if those I knew in town thought I let a nigger slide by on such a thing, then what would they think of me?”

By now I knew there was no smoothing it over, so I went for it. “They don’t even remember you or me, and what makes you think they ever had a high opinion of you?”

“She left me, Willie. I believe it was because I couldn’t honor her womanhood by making you pay. For that I blame you. She still has to be taught her lesson, she and the man she run off with, but Willie, I had to see you first. I had to take care of you before the other. Did you know your mother and father were once owned by my grandfather? They were. Did you know my grandfather liked dark meat, and that your mother was his special pick? You wasn’t even born when he owned her, but he did, and he owned your pa, too, and he knew what Grandfather was doing with her out in the milk shed.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said, and I didn’t. I figured he was just yanking my chain.

“Don’t make it less so, Willie. But when you seen my wife’s butt, it was in the same position my old grandfather seen your mama’s, except he hiked up her dress. And you know what? She didn’t have no say in the matter. That’s when white men were as they should be, and the idea of a free nigger—well, that just wasn’t something that could be imagined, or should be. I was just a boy when Grandfather told me to come out to the milk shed with him and your mama and to come stand on a bucket and have me some.”

“You lying son of a bitch.”

He shook his head. “No. It’s true. I didn’t do it, Willie. I was young and scared, and I didn’t do it. Now I wish I had. But if I didn’t have your mama, now I got you. In a different way, of course, but you are owned as she was owned as your papa was owned. You are owned right this moment by me. You are the root of my problems. You have undone my life with the insult you showed my wife. I won’t be outdone by a nigger, Willie.”

I looked him in the eyes, and the words finally came back. I said, “You got to have someone to blame, because your life is just as low-account as any slave’s ever was. You think you deserve better. You don’t. Spending your life chasing after some fellow caught a glimpse of your wife’s ass is no way for anyone to live. You are outdone by your own dumb self.”

That’s when he hit me again, this time with a backhand, a really solid blow that knocked me back and made me dizzy. I didn’t try to sit up after that last hit. Just lay back with my head on the saddle, blood ru

Weasel came over, said, “You figuring what you can do with him, ain’t you?”

“Of course I am, you idiot,” Ruggert said.

Weasel reacted to being called an idiot as if it was nothing more than his middle name.

“I know I’m just paid help,” Weasel said. “But why don’t you do what the Indians do—some of them, anyway?”

“What would that be, Mergatroit?”

Mergatroit! That was a disappointment. To me he would always be Weasel.

“Kill one of them cows and skin it, wrap him in it, tie him up tight as a papoose. Wet it down, and when the sun comes up that blood inside the skin and that wet on the outside will start that skin drying, just like how you soak rawhide to get it tight. It’ll tighten and tighten and blow his guts out. My daddy did it to a fellow once wouldn’t pay him money he owed. I helped him wrap the skin.”

“It killed him?” Ruggert said.

“And real slow. He got so he couldn’t scream anymore it was so tight.”

Ruggert turned his head to one side, as if measuring that suggestion like a woman thinking of cutting cloth for a dress. “Slow, huh?”

“Oh, hell, yes,” Weasel said. “When we cut him open, his insides busted out of him and all over us.”

Ruggert nodded. “Kill a cow.”

They didn’t waste a bullet. Golem grabbed the poor cow by the horns, twisted its head, and Weasel stepped in and cut the critter’s throat. Golem brought it down to the ground with blood splattering on him and coloring the grass. They was on that beast before it was dead, started the ski

Win and Madame was still on their knees, and Win had started to scream at them, knowing full well that they was about to do something to me. Madame, who had paused in her cussing, went back to it, least until she was hit in the head with a rifle stock and knocked back on the grass. Ruggert started tearing my clothes off, yanking my shirt to pieces and tossing it aside, unfastening the belt and buttons on my pants while Weasel yanked off my boots, which he measured against his feet, then flung in the grass. Then Ruggert tugged off my pants. For no reason at all they left my socks on.