Paradise Sky

“What’s this church called?” I said.

“It hasn’t any name. It’s just me, and I preach what I think Jesus meant, with the understanding I could be wrong, though not so wrong as the others.”

I smiled at that.

“So you see, Nat, I was once a very bad si

“He deserved it,” I said.

“Just the same. I shot him and I disrespected my pa for no good reason but pride. I stole. I lied. I actually did service a goat once. I was on the road and I came across it at a farm where I stole some chickens, and one thing led to another. Anyway, that’s not for the children to know.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Do you and the goat write?”

“No. But we parted friends. Later on, when I had religion and my head screwed on tight, I met Geraldine, who was from Fort Smith. We married and were very happy. I continue to be happy because I am thankful I had her and our time together. God took her, for whatever reason, but I feel blessed each day that she was mine. That I have these wonderful children, Ruthie speaking to ducks notwithstanding.”

That night I slept under the wagon, and three or four times the cry of that cougar brought me awake. Last time it did the sound was close, so I didn’t really sleep anymore, just lay there under the wagon, cradling my rifle, eyes open, alert to shapes, thinking about Luther and his religion and his need to be a better man. Me, I was out to shoot a bastard.

28

When we finally came into Fort Smith I saw it was a fairly lively town. There was a lot of bustling about, people on the streets and boardwalks, wandering out of stores and such. We come to the livery, but the man there told Luther there was a colored livery on the edge of town and that he ought to take his animals there.

“I’d take your stock,” he said, “but there’s lots of white folks in town for a hanging, and they come first.”

We didn’t really have no other choice but to rattle onward. At the edge of town there was a big tree where there was some horses tied, and next to it was a ramshackle shed that had three sides closed in. The open end showed us a row of horse and mule asses. There was a bit of open room at the far end. Enough to house five or six animals if they all agreed to be friends. The owner of the shed was a big redbone with one good eye. The other eye had the lid pulled down and sewed shut due to some ancient injury. He said we could go cheap if we wanted to just put them under the tree.

Luther paid up for the shed for his mules, my horse, and the cow. He was allowed to pull the wagon under another tree down from the tied horses and turn it into a camp spot. Me and Luther both saw this as short-term housing and animal boarding. It wasn’t a whole lot better than just having the animals stand out in the rain. Anyway, we pulled the wagon there, then took the animals back to be housed in that shed.

I was supposed to be done with Luther and his family and get my twenty dollars, but I told Luther to forget it. He gave me five dollars anyhow, told me I had a place there in or under the wagon. I thanked him, said I would see him again, but for now I was on my own. Truth was, I didn’t want to stay around Ruthie. She was starting to stir my blood, and I felt guilty about it.

“You ain’t got to go,” Samson said.

“You don’t have to go,” Ruthie corrected Samson. She wasn’t speaking to me. She didn’t seem to care one way or another.

“Guess I do,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come back and have Ruthie teach me how to talk to chickens.”

“Ducks,” she said.

“Ducks, then,” I said.

“I doubt they’ll speak to you,” she said. “I don’t know they’d like your attitude.”

“How do you feel about my attitude?”

“I could probably learn to tolerate it. How do you feel about me talking to ducks?”

“I could probably learn to tolerate it.”

“Actually, I do speak to chickens and other birds, and they speak to me, but I’ve always found ducks to be the most informative.”

“That’s information I can hold to my heart,” I said.

“You do that, Nat Love.”

I must admit she made me feel pretty good and at the same time pretty bad for feeling that way, what with poor Win back there in Deadwood, her head like a cleaned-out room, and me out here flirting with a pretty girl that talked to ducks.

Me and Samson shook hands, and he did it like a grown man. Then I shook Ruthie’s soft little hand, took what money Luther gave me, and walked into town. I needed to figure on what to do next. I hadn’t so much as heard a word about Ruggert, and I feared I had seen the last of him. Golem was out of the way, but the worst of them seemed to be lost on the wind. I figured the best thing I could do was find myself a place to stay and a steady job, at least until I could figure on things. I had left Win alone to kill them, to avenge her, yet being away from her made me feel confused. I thought back on her, and all I could remember was how she looked at me as if I was a stranger.

I come upon some colored boys playing in the street and asked them about a place where I could stay. They gave me directions to a colored boardinghouse, and to get there I had to go back part of the way I had already come. I got a room, and it cost me three dollars for a week. I figured a week would maybe give me time to find a job. I reckoned, too, that I could deal with Luther for a bit of supplies to get me through until I cornered a job.

My little room didn’t have a real bed in it, just a cot, and when I laid down on it I had to bend my feet a little so they didn’t hang off. The room was slanted because the undersupports wasn’t even, and there was cracks in the walls and the wind whistled through like a butcher knife. It was worse than the room I had in Deadwood. I bought some newspapers and looked for job ads, but there wasn’t any, so I used the papers to clog the worst of the cracks in the wall. A couple of blankets came with the room, and there was a small stove with a smoky stovepipe that went up and turned and poked out of the wall.

I was told not to burn the heater too long, else the pipe would catch on fire and burn the place down. They hadn’t even done a good job of putting it in the wall, didn’t surround it with mud or some such that could take the heat and not flame up. I figured I might manage to fix that myself.

It took me three days, but finally I got a job sweeping out the general store. I worked three days a week, about four hours a day, and got paid a dollar a day. The white fellow who did it on the other days made two dollars a day. My employer was a Mr. Jason, a porky fellow with muttonchop sideburns and a patch of hair that was thick on the sides and at the back. It looked as if there had been a brush fire on top. When he first offered me the job, he stood before me holding a broom. He explained to me how it worked, in case I might think it was a horse.

He told me when I went to work that I had to understand he paid white men more, but he felt the War between the States was over and I deserved a chance to work—at half price, as he didn’t believe colored were animals the way some did, but that didn’t mean he felt they were on par with a white man, one of God’s true creations. I guess I was an untrue creation, along with the worm or the traveling salesman. He then told me something about how to hire me he had to cut something at home that he was used to having and really cared for, cause it would mean money was spent on me that couldn’t be spent on items of his desire or some such. I don’t remember exactly. It made about as much sense as believing the moon was made of green cheese.

I did this job for a week, then I got a kind of promotion and was put on six days a week, not just sweeping but unloading supplies and such. I didn’t get any more a day, just more days. Mr. Jason made it clear that he was quite the positive sort of fellow giving me such a position, and I heard his lecture again on how he felt he was the fairest man in Arkansas when it come to niggers. I secretly harbored the view that one night I’d have liked to burn his store down, but since he didn’t live in it, I didn’t see the reasoning.