Paradise Sky

I told him about Mr. Loving, how he believed God just sort of started the clock then stepped off the stage.

Luther nodded. “Perhaps, but I think he helps in our lives. Maybe not the way we want and when we want. I know it’s hard for some to accept, but I think there is a plan to things. I think he has laid it out, but not in stone. We can vary that plan. We can do better, or we can do worse. There is an afterlife, son, and not all of us will go there, but I don’t believe God sends anyone to hell. I don’t think of him as that mean. I think the bad die and cease to exist; their souls fade. But the good, they live on in paradise.”

“With harps and such?” I said.

“I seriously doubt that. I don’t think it’s a corporal place, but one where we are all part of something that is impossible for man to define. Some part of our great universe.”

“That actually don’t sound much like a preacher,” I said.

“I’m not with the Methodist anymore.”

I liked Luther pretty much right off for his ma

“You teach me how to shoot?” Samson asked.

“No, he will not,” Luther said before I could answer. “You will learn to read and write and make something of yourself.” After this exchange, Luther turned to me. “No offense meant, sir.”

“None taken.”

Next morning Ruthie milked the cow into a bucket and poured the milk into one of the barrels, except for that which was used to drink or for cooking. The way they had it worked out is that as the day went on and the wagon rolled, it sloshed that milk in that barrel until it was the same as having been churned. In the evening the churned milk was salted into butter, then stored in tins. There was usually more butter than could be eaten, but it was also used for easing the pain of cuts and such, and it was even used to take the place of grease for the wagon wheels. Most important, it was poured on flapjacks and mixed with molasses. The flapjacks was made from flour from one of the barrels, which when mixed right with milk and butter can be stretched out for a long time.

We traveled like this for quite a few days with no trouble in sight. The meals was good, if pretty much the same, and the company was good, too, and it made me glad I had come along with them.

One night after we stopped and the cow was milked again, the milk being drunk with a di

Turning to look back at the wagon, Luther said, “Of the three on the other side, one is full of salted meats, which we haven’t broken into yet, and if we can start scaring up some game, we may not have to for a while. As for the other two, well, one has our old dog Scratch salted down in it, and the other contains Geraldine, my wife and the children’s mother.”

I thought for a moment he was tugging my leg, but when I looked at him, glanced at Ruthie and Samson, I could see he was dead serious.

“You have your wife and family dog salted down in barrels?”

“I just said that.”

“I know, but I felt it needed repeating.”

“Pickled, to be exact. Brine water, and a bit of this and that to keep them solid and without odor. I had to bend Geraldine’s knees under her chin to make her fit, but she is a small woman, so it’s not that bad.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Bend her at the knees?” Luther asked.

“No. Pickle her.” I said this and watched my back in case Ruthie or Samson might come up on me, whack me in the head with the intent of pickling me for a later trail lunch.

“It’s not as grim and mysterious as it seems,” said Luther. “Scratch is a beloved pet, and he come down sick and had to be shot. When my wife died a day later, we decided we had had enough. I had already made the break with the Methodist as a preacher, and the house we lived in belonged to a little church not far from Dodge, and they were forcing us out, so we decided to head to Arkansas. I have kin there, though I’ve never been to Fort Smith. They’re on my wife’s side, actually. I know them from letters. Geraldine was from Arkansas and always wanted to go back, so back she’s going. The idea of leaving Geraldine and Scratch behind for the wind to blow over without any kin nearby was too much. I dug Scratch up, and though he had already been visited by the worms, I pickled him and then Geraldine, set them aside for a few days until we had to leave. When we did, we took them with us. And there they are.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. I just sat there while Ruthie came over and plopped more food on my plate, poured me more milk.

“I guess that’s understandable,” I said.

“Sure it is,” he said. “We couldn’t bear to leave them behind. The thought of it made me sick. I considered it, mind you. It would have been the easy way, but we had a family meeting, which is where I tell them what we’re going to do, and I did it.”

“How’s that settle with you, Ruthie?” I asked.

“I want my mother buried in soil where I live,” Ruthie said. “And if she can’t be where I am, I just want her to be some place nicer in the winter.”

“I hear Arkansas can get pretty brisk in the winter,” I said.

“It’s got to be better and prettier than Kansas,” she said. “If it’s pretty, I can stand the weather.”

“Scratch was a good dog,” Samson said. “Mama liked him, too.”

“Sounds like to me you got it worked out,” I said. Then I ate and drank the milk and then had coffee. That night I slept a little greater distance from the wagon, and I didn’t sleep solid or comfortable.

More days passed, and I mellowed on the pickling news. I come to think of Luther and his family as odd, but not crazy or dangerous. I guess if you was a generous thinker, you could look at them making big pickles out of their family member and a dog as a gesture of love and kindness. That said, I made sure not to dip from the wrong barrel when I was helping with the flour or dipping out milk or butter. I didn’t want to come up with Geraldine’s eye or one of Scratch’s ears in a flour scoop. I also wondered about Ruthie and her talking to ducks. I wondered what the ducks had to say. Since none was on hand at the moment, this was a question that had to go unanswered.

We came to the Indian Nations. There was plenty of Indians there, many of them said to be tame, but I felt it wise not to chance their friendly dispositions if we should come upon some. My plan was to cock my weapons and keep a sharp eye out in case they was overtaken with a sudden loss of hospitality. I knew for a fact Comanches wandering through there would soon skin us as look at us.

We met a few travelers now and then—whites, mostly. Some of them had been bushwhacked and robbed. We met a colored couple on their way to Kansas. They said they had two children when they started, but they’d come down sick and died. Had it not been for a friendly Cherokee that was wandering about on foot, they would have died, too. He gave them some food and pointed them the right way to go, and then he was gone.

They ate supper with us one night, and the next morning, loaded down with milk, butter, and such that Luther felt he could spare, they headed north, toward what I figured would soon be weather cold as a witch’s tit. Before they left I asked them if they had come across a burned-face man, partly scalped, and they said they hadn’t. I figured if they had, they’d have remembered it.

We came to the base of the Ozarks. The land had gradually moved from prairie to a rise in the earth and finally into tree-flecked mountains. When we got up in the mountains a ways, we stopped one night and decided on a two-day wait. The mules was tuckered out from pulling the wagon, and the cow was starting to have trouble keeping up. The milk had started to dry up, maybe from her not being milked as properly as she should have. We thought with rest and a good feeding for a couple of days, the animals would regain their strength. Only Satan seemed fine and even bored from waiting around.