Paradise Sky

“Wife gets the coffin, dog stays in the barrel. Her relatives have a graveyard, and since there ain’t no one to protest against it, she’ll end up there, I reckon.”

“What about the dog?” I asked.

“I think he should be buried there, too. It’s out a stretch. I rode a mule out there after I was told where it was and was told all her people were dead. Frankly, it’s kind of a relief. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to do with them. Relatives can be a pain in the neck.”

“That’s a rough thing for a preacher to say,” I said.

“Isn’t it?” he said.

“Would you like a top-off on that coffee?” Ruthie asked me.

“I suppose I would, Ruthie, thank you.” I of course didn’t even remember drinking it I was in such a state.

She got the rag, took hold of the pot, and poured me a cup. That cup wasn’t no more than full when I started telling them about the letter I had gotten from Cullen, leaving out what I didn’t want them to know. I had the dime novel with me. I had dropped it on the log beside me. Samson picked it up and was thumbing through the pages. I didn’t mention that it was supposed to be about me. I think Samson might have been reading all the while I was talking. That’s one good thing about being young. You don’t always feel obligated to pay attention to sad stories.

I spilled it all out—about how I needed to start back to Deadwood and how I was pla

“Ruthie!” Luther said.

“Well, he is,” she said. “He went off and left her to kill a man—”

“How do you know that?” I said. “Luther?”

“I didn’t tell her,” he said.

“We both know it,” Samson said. “We listened when you was telling Pa.”

All right, Samson was paying some attention after all.

“You got big ears,” Luther said, “the both of you. Too big.”

“Not as big as Nat’s,” Samson said.

“That’s true,” I said.

“Well,” Ruthie said, “we heard it, and that’s all there is to it. Nat left her to kill a man.” She looked at me. “Now you want to go back, and you shouldn’t have left in the first place.”

“It’s not your business to say,” Luther said.

“No,” I said. “She’s right. I shouldn’t have left.”

“And you shouldn’t go back now,” Ruthie said. “The winter is bad up there, that’s what the letter said, and if you go, you have as good a chance of dying as she has. You won’t have accomplished a damn thing.”

“Watch your language, young lady,” Luther said.

“I’m not a lady,” Ruthie said.

“I’m noticing that,” Luther said. “But you act like one just the same. Nat, I apologize for Ruthie. She’s been taught better ma

“She was taught to be honest and thoughtful, is my guess,” I said. “I think that’s what she’s doing. I didn’t have any right to go off and leave her, not with her being that way.”

I stood up to leave.

“Won’t you have supper with us?” Luther said. “We needn’t talk any more about this if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that. I need to start out tomorrow, after I get some supplies. I’ve got enough money put back for that. Enough to get me to Dodge. I got a friend there who can help me out. I need to go and think things out.”

“Nat,” Ruthie said. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to get you all guilty and stirred.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “You just wiped the looking glass for me. Now I can see through it.”

Luther put his hand on my shoulder. “Come tomorrow morning for the funeral. I would be pleased if you could be there.”

I nodded.

I walked back to my place. I had forgotten the dime novel. Guess I’d been in that shack about a half hour, looking at the wall, when there was a knock. Opening the door I found Ruthie staring at me. She was holding the dime novel. She held it out to me. I took it, and when I did, she said, “Nat, I didn’t mean what I said. Hell, maybe I did.”

“Come in, Ruthie,” I said. “Leave the door open. A young woman ought not to be in a man’s quarters.”

“Dog-diddle propriety,” she said.

“Maybe you ought to watch your language more,” I said. “Luther might be right about that, way you’re talking and all.”

“Listen here. I’m going to talk straight. You said I was being honest before, but I wasn’t.”

“How’s that?”

“I don’t want you to go back. I don’t want you to worry about her anymore. I know you got to, that’s what you should do to be a man worth a plug nickel, but the simple fact is I’m in love with you, Nat. There you have it.”

“That can’t be.”

“It can be, and it is.”

“I mean, that won’t work.”

“Doesn’t change the facts. When I saw you the first time, I thought, now, there is a man of substance.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

“That’s how I felt. I told myself I would be proven wrong when I got to know you, but I wasn’t.”

“You’re a child,” I said.

“I’m eighteen years old. My mother was married when she was sixteen. Thing is, I’m jealous, Nat. Jealous you can love your woman like that, and here I am wanting the same sort of thing. Be honest with me. You look at me pretty often, don’t you, Nat?”

“You’re very attractive,” I said. “Beautiful, I think. But that’s just me looking, not me thinking.”

“Mama once told me if a man is looking, he’s thinking,” Ruthie said.

I didn’t say anything, as there is a certain truth to that. It’s the birds and the bees, I reckon.

“Okay, I guess I thought some things I shouldn’t have, way a man will.”

“It’s more than that, Nat.”

“How do you know what lives inside my head?”

“Because you don’t look at me the way a wolf looks at a staked goat. That’s how some men look at me. You look at me the way Pa used to look at Ma, way he used to smile at her, even if she was fussing at him. That smile would make her madder, but he was always taken with her. Think he would have salted her down and put her in a barrel to bring all the way here if he didn’t feel something special?”

“Hell, Ruthie, he salted down the dog, too.”

“Well, he loved the dog, but I’m not saying it was the same. He didn’t look at the dog the same way. I don’t think you can make a case it was on the same level. Come on now, Nat. Tell me you don’t see something in me you like.”

“I see plenty in you I like. You’re not only pretty, you have a strong heart and a good mind, and you seem to me to be a pla

“I do indeed,” she said.

“I like the way you walk.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

I sat in a chair and tossed the dime novel on the floor. Ruthie closed the door. She said, “Tell me when you look at me all you see is someone who is a good pla

“I said about your head and heart.”

“Tell me you don’t feel just the slightest something for me. Tell me you don’t think I would make a good wife.”

“Of course you would,” I said. “Just not my wife.”

“I want you,” she said. “In my bed, such as it is—a pallet under a tree—and in my life forever.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that. Your pa will shoot us both. Listen, Ruthie, it’s not that easy.”

“Tell me you don’t love me.”

I looked at her and opened my mouth, but it didn’t come out. I put my head down and shook it. “I have obligations.”

“You loved Win—that’s her name, right?”

“Right. And it’s ‘I love Win,’ not ‘loved.’”

“You loved the Win you knew. She had a breakdown. She wasn’t strong enough.”

“Don’t say that,” I said. “Don’t ever say that.”

“But she wasn’t.”

“Who would be?” I said.

“I didn’t mean to make you mad,” she said.

“But you have. Don’t ever say that about her. You can’t say things like that if you haven’t been through it, and heaven forbid you should. It’s not always about strength. It’s more complicated than that.”

Ruthie sat down on my bed, put her hands on her knees, said, “I shouldn’t have said that.”