Paradise Sky

I sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand from under the blanket. It was light as a false promise and paper-thin. Her skin that had been so lovely dark was now ashen as a week-old campfire. Her eyes were huge in her skull, and they held nothing; they were dark and bottomless. They didn’t even search to find me or move at all; they lay flat in her skull like stones.

“Win,” I said.

I began talking to her. I told her everything I could remember about how we met, the kiss that had meant so much, her flute playing, the times we had on the hill beneath the great tree, the crawling shadows of oncoming dark, the stars at night, the color of moonlight, but nothing moved her. I told her how she had changed me inside. How all the bad things I had in me, all the anger, had washed right out, and that I couldn’t lose her. That she had to get better, cause if she didn’t they might wash right back in. I told her every dream and hope I ever had. I told her about my pa and about my mama, even told her my mama thought I was cut out for something great, and Mama had meant Win, cause I couldn’t think of nothing greater.

I said, “I love you, Win.”

I like to think I felt her hand squeeze mine a little, but to be honest I can’t be certain. I was there for three days, and then on the fourth day, Win was no longer with us. It was as if that bed was a pool of deep water and she was sinking deeper into it every day, and then one day she reached bottom. But I was there when she left completely, and I was happy for that.

She was buried on that hill we loved. Me and Cullen, Wow, and the China girls did it. Buried her up there in a fine coffin that Cullen helped me pay for, one lined with shiny white silk. I laid her flute in there with her, the way Charlie had laid Wild Bill’s good rifle with him. We buried her deep and covered her grave with rocks to keep the wolves and bears out. Cullen bought a headstone, and me and him set it in place at the head of her grave. Her name was on it; her birthday was a guess. From my remembrances, conversations with her, I knew she had been born in the summer. I called it June. I guessed the day. I guessed her age, and we put the date she died behind that.

Underneath was carved something I had asked for: WIN, WHOSE KISS MOVED ME FROM EARTH TO SKY.

Cullen and Wow and the China girls all hugged me and went away. I stayed up there with Satan. I stayed up there all day. I talked to the grave. I cursed the world. I yelled at the mountains. I screamed at the sky. I grew so weak my shadow seemed heavy. For a while there I wanted to die.

In time it got dark and the stars came out, and there was a shiny sliver of moon. I sat there and looked at it, sitting with my back against the tree, my head turned slightly toward the grave.

I swear to you a snow-white owl came down from the dark sky and rested on the headstone, its moon shadow falling across the grave like a blanket. It turned its head the way owls do, which doesn’t seem to involve the turning of a neck, and looked at me and made a hooting noise and flew away.

Reckon if I was an Indian I would say it came for her spirit, carried it off into the sky. And like those Greeks and such Mr. Loving told me about that was always getting put among the stars, I fancied that’s where she was. It seemed right to me she would be among them heroes and beauties, shining down forever like the star she was.

The wind through the trees sounded like notes from her flute.

30

I left out of Deadwood without saying good-bye to anyone on a cold spring morning with the sky chock-full of dark clouds covering the sun. The shadows from those clouds rolled over the ground and covered me. At some point those clouds went away, but for me the darkness didn’t. I rode on across Nebraska and into Kansas, the days going by with the speed of a bullet.

On the day I was close to Dodge the prairie flowers was starting to bloom and the grass was high and bright, green and yellow, rolling like the waves of the sea. If there had been buffalo out there the world would have seemed as of old, except for the heaviness of my heart.

When I rode into Dodge I stopped off at the livery, and Cecil said I could stay overnight, which is all I did. I didn’t look up Bronco Bob, but I wrote him a letter. I told him I was passing through, that Win had died, and that I was on my way to Fort Smith. I said he could write me there. I had some plans, but I didn’t mention them to Bronco Bob, as I was uncertain how those plans would go. I mailed the letter and traveled on.

On the edge of the Indian Nations I saw some Comanche, and they saw me. There was four of them, and they came riding toward me with their hands held high, palms open, working their horses with their knees. They was a ski

I stayed cautious. They wanted tobacco and whiskey, and I didn’t have either. I finally gave them some cornmeal, and they dropped off their horses and opened the bag and went to eating it as it was, just by the handful. They was starving, and it made me ill to see these once mighty warriors on their hands and knees scooping out cornmeal. White man’s whiskey had something to do with it; it had been the hot oil they were boiled in, the hot irons that pressed them out.

This lay on my heart like a rock, so I gave them about half my jerky, which meant I’d be on half rations until I reached Fort Smith. They gave me a blessing, I think, but for all I know they may have been saying, “Thanks. Kill you later, black asshole.”

I went on my way but kept an eye in the back of my head for a couple of days in case they was following, thinking maybe they might want what was left of my possibles. They wasn’t following, though. Up into the mountains I went. The trees was emerald green, plants was blooming and busting with color, flowers was pi

In Fort Smith I went to see if I could rent my old room, but it was already occupied by a family of four, and since I had felt tight there by my lonesome, I pitied them. I went to the livery there, tried to make a deal like I had in Dodge, but the liveryman was nothing doing. I didn’t consider trying to get my old job back, as charming as Mr. Jason had been.

I sauntered to the post office and looked on a pinup board there to see if there was places to stay a

After several turndowns, I found an old colored lady with a hitch in her get-along who had a back porch I could stay on. It was closed in, but at night it was cold as a well digger’s ass. There was no stove, just a small table by the bed. But the days was warming, and besides, I had me a plan. I spent my first day relaxing on that back porch, and for a bit more money the old lady would give me something to eat about noon. That first day she brought me out some dried cornbread that was hard enough to throw and kill a squirrel. I dipped it in some milk that was on the edge of turning and got through the day, which considering the old lady liked to sing gospel songs to herself while she rocked and knitted, and had a voice she could have used to teach a frog how to croak, wasn’t nearly all that uplifting an experience. By nightfall I was starting to look for a place I could hang myself. Thank goodness she finally quit singing, having grown hoarse, and my neck and a rafter was spared.