Paradise Sky

“You’re right about that,” I said.

“I know that. I’m jealous of Win, and I don’t even know her. I just wanted to say something mean. God says judge not lest you be judged, and now I wouldn’t be surprised if he brought a mess of troubles on me for saying it.”

“Forgive yourself. I have.”

“Nat, you never said how you feel about me.” She turned her head and laid those beautiful eyes on me. Outside the wind was starting to whistle and the sun was starting to set, and I was thinking what Luther was thinking about now. He had to have guessed she would come here.

“I don’t love you, Ruthie,” I said. “I love another.”

“You love who she was,” she said. “You don’t want to be a coward. Want to stand by her, but you lost her. You been away too long, and she’s not herself. You know that’s true.”

There were tears in her eyes.

I had a hard time doing it, but I knew it was the right thing to say. “Ruthie. I like you. But I don’t love you. I love Win.”

“All right,” she said, and she could hardly get the words out. She got up, went to the door, and opened it. “All right,” she said again, and stood there in the doorway, the last of the sunlight resting on her as she turned to look back at me. “You got to do the right thing, Nat. But you know how I feel.”

“You’re young,” I said. “It’ll pass.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, and went away.

I sat there in my chair looking out the open door, watching the night fall down. I sat there and thought. I remembered what Mama had said, about how I had to go out and have a future, and that I was destined for greatness. Right then I didn’t feel so great, and my future wasn’t that shiny. I had let her and Pa down, and I had let my own self down. If you could buy bad choices, it was like I had asked for a bag of them.

I sat there and felt ill. I cried a little. I feared I might have lied to Ruthie. Win was becoming a ghost, and I was starting to feel like a rotten son of a bitch.

29

Early next morning I bought some supplies and gave Mr. Jason my best wishes and said so long. He took this more kindly than I meant it. I paid Satan out of the livery, led him over to Luther’s wagon.

Luther, Samson, and Ruthie was dressed in their finest, and they had laid out the coffin with the wife and the barrel with the dog on a sled. They had the mules hitched up to it with some equipment I figured they had borrowed or rented from someone, perhaps the owner of the sled.

Ruthie nodded at me. Samson made a few of his usual attempts at jokes. He was not a fu

Out at the graveyard, Luther had already dug the grave, maybe with help from Ruthie and Samson. There was a couple of shovels sticking up in a mound of dirt. He had two long pieces of rope with him. Me and him took one end of a piece of rope, while Samson and Ruthie took the ends of the other. We hooked the ropes under the coffin and lowered it into the grave.

When that was done, Luther said, “I found she wasn’t as pliable as expected, but I got her mostly straightened out. She and me both smelled like pickles before it was over.”

Luther went into a rambling sermon that should have been boring, as it wasn’t all that interesting if you took it word by word, but he had a way of talking, a tone of voice, that could make reading a grocery list sound fascinating. I almost got religion myself.

When he was done, I helped cover her up, then we dug a fresh hole for the dog. Down it went, and we shoveled dirt in the hole. That done, he said a few words for the dog, wrapped up with “Amen,” then said, “I plan on getting my wife a headstone next. Blacksmith said he needed some help. I told him I was a good hand and showed him how I could heat up and hammer a horseshoe. He seemed impressed. Said he could only use me three days a week, and sometimes when there is a lot of activity in town. He does shoeing for the marshal service.”

“Judge Parker,” I said.

“One they call the hanging judge.”

“That would be him.”

We talked a little more, then I told them good-bye, shook hands with Luther and Samson. I shook hands with Ruthie, too, but she didn’t look right at me, and her hand was like holding a dead fish.

I got on Satan and started riding. It didn’t take me long to leave Fort Smith and wind my way into the mountains.

By the time I reached Dodge, the weather was really bad. Cecil took in Satan for nothing, feeling like he owed me one. I let him think it. Maybe I felt it was true. I got a job shoveling horse shit at the livery.

Next thing I did was I looked up Bronco Bob.

Bronco Bob was happy to have me stay with him. He had acquired a mean-spirited, redheaded, heartbreaking strumpet who lived with him, but not the one he wrote me about. That great love had passed. During the nights he wrote while she whored and brought in money. What he wrote he sold to the dime novel company. I was the inspiration for many of his books, though he had taken to writing about a fellow called Broke Hand Bob, who was a one-handed fellow who could throw a knife real well with his good hand. He was made of thin air, Bronco Bob not having any real adventures to steal from for that character. Course, way Bronco Bob wrote it, my adventures and his wasn’t all that different.

Well, I began to get the feeling I was wearing my welcome out, though Bronco Bob was nice as he could be. But the strumpet gave me looks, and there was the fact that her and her customers humping all night, and her and Bronco Bob humping all day, not only kept me from sleep but kept my hand in my pants. I had been caught going at it twice already. Once by the strumpet and once by Bronco Bob. It was embarrassing, but I owned up to it. Bronco Bob said his strumpet had friends, and one night I broke down and took pleasure from one. I felt horrible the next day, having violated Win’s trust. I was no better than Hickok, who I had judged not so long ago. And then again, it was possible Win had no idea who I was anymore.

A week or so later I talked Cecil into letting me sleep in the livery. I moved out with Bronco Bob telling me it wasn’t necessary, but I could see on his face a look of grateful good-bye. We played it out, though. Him asking me to stay and me saying how I appreciated it but needed more room. I even threw in I wasn’t fond of having someone walk in while I was priming my pump. I was easily embarrassed when I was younger.

I moved to the livery.

It wasn’t a bad life, really, if you didn’t mind waking up and going to bed to the smell of horse manure. I did my job, Cecil paid me some, and at night I stayed in the loft in the hay with a couple of thick and very used horse blankets. I always had the faint smell about me of a mount that had been rode hard and put up wet. I didn’t go out much, as there wasn’t much to do. And as Dodge became more civilized, they became more aware of the color line. I didn’t drink beer or whiskey, so there was no real pleasure for me at the saloons, and at the cafés where they still let colored in I was too short on money for the grub. I ate cheap, and I ate in the loft.

When spring cracked the country with brighter light and warmer air, the grass turned green and the flowers jumped up. I packed my little bit of belongings and said good-bye to Cecil. By this time he was almost weepy to see me go. He knew he’d have to take over the shovel.

“You’re as good a hand as I ever had,” he said, taking one of my hands in both of his.

“Glad for it,” I said.

“My best goes with you.” When he let go of my hand, it was almost with reluctance.

“Thanks, Cecil. You been all right by me.”

“Here’s fifty dollars to go with you, too,” he said, pulling the bills from his coat pocket, shoving them into my palm. “I think it’ll do you better than my best wishes. Your helping out the gals at the brothel, that’s got me free tail for life, so I kind of owe you.”