Paradise Sky

“I’ll get you fed. You can count on that. This information you got, you can’t tell nobody but me. Say anything to anyone else, our deal is off.”

“That’s how it’ll be. Thanks, Nat. You were always good to me. I want to make things square with you and me. No matter how it turns out, me in prison or bouncing on the end of a rope, I want to make things square.”

He told me where he thought they were hiding. I placed him back in the cage and secured the lock through the chains that fastened him to the wagon.

I went over and seen Judge Parker right away. I told him what I knew from Kid Red, and I put in a good word for him on account of him giving me some information that might lead to me coming up on Ruggert and killing him. I also told him there might be something to me checking out Chooky’s cabin.

“Kid Red has quite a list of serious crimes, Nat,” the judge said.

The judge was sitting at his desk, but now he stood up, walked around, and looked about his room like he was searching for cobwebs in the corner.

“I know,” I said. “I’m only asking to put it into consideration. He isn’t really any more than a boy, and he’s had it tough.”

Judge Parker stopped walking, put his hands behind his back, and looked at me.

“Nat, would you say you’ve had it tough?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Surely things have not all been slick sledding for you as a Negro.”

“I suppose not.”

“Have you committed any crimes?”

“Not that I’d own up to.”

“All right, then, let’s take another tack. Lot of men brought in here have had hard lives and can tell you stories so sad it would make you and your horse weep. But they still had a decision to make, and they chose to go wrong. I know some of the men who work for me haven’t always been on the up-and-up. Maybe that’s your case, son. But what I will tell you is this. I find out they aren’t square, find out they aren’t doing their duty, then they have to answer to the same laws as those they arrest. Understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t want to know your past. Way I look at it, I don’t have a warrant, I don’t have a thing to say to you for anything. But this boy, he murdered a boy and a dog. The dog doesn’t rest as heavy as the child, but it has some weight with me. I like dogs. You look at the list of his crimes—hold up.”

He went to his desk and ratted around in some papers, came up with one.

“This is the latest information I have on the Ruggert gang. And it’s quite a list. Your boy, as you call him, has murdered and robbed—”

“I said as much.”

“Hold your water. Listen. They have raped in the Nations. Indian women. Negroes and white folk as well. Your boy is said to have raped a young girl. That’s what it says here.”

“That doesn’t sound like him,” I said.

“It’s not what he’d tell you. Look at it this way, Nat. A boy like that with bad raising has made choices you wouldn’t make. You may have some knots in your life’s rope, but I bet you haven’t raped any young girls. Now he whines. He could have gone either way, and he chose one way and you chose another. He’s a criminal, and you are a US deputy marshal. You kept your word to him, and now you’re done with it. I will tell you true as the direction we call north I’m going to hang that boy. That’s how it is. Now, if you have something that will let you get this Ruggert and whoever is involved with him in his criminal enterprises, go forth and do it. Good day, Nat.”

“Good day, sir.”

I left the courthouse stu

I was close to Red. I said, “There’s a new warrant, says you raped a girl. You didn’t mention that.”

“Why should I, Nat? I was just getting me some. It was an Indian.”

“And if it was a colored girl how would you feel?”

“I don’t know. I think of you as different.”

“I’m colored.”

“Yeah, but you’re different.”

“And if she was white?”

“Of course not.”

“So you did rape her?”

“I took some advantage of her, but I wasn’t the only one, and I wasn’t the first of us.”

“So the number and position somehow make it different?”

“It was just some girl you don’t know, Nat.”

“Listen to me. Listen good. I told Judge Parker you helped me out. Right now I don’t know you did. You may have lied to me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Good. Because I’ll get Ruggert, and you know what?”

“What?”

“You’re going to hang like drapes.”

“You said—”

“I said I’d talk to the judge. I did. That was before I knew you raped a girl. You did it, and you don’t seem bothered by it in the least.”

“It gets to me a little. I was drunk when I did it. Wasn’t entirely myself.”

“Shit, Red. You’ve become one of them. Only reason you are talking to me, befriending me, is you thought I could help you out. You put everything on being drunk. It’s you that’s drinking, Red. It’s not being forced down your throat.”

“You’ve killed before.”

“Not for money. Not for sport. And I never did the things you did. That boy and his dog. That wasn’t no accident, was it?”

“Nat.”

“It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

“I never had a dog. I never had a fancy suit like that punk had, or a bowler hat. He looked right proud of himself in that garb, holding that damn dog. I never had nothing.”

“So they should have nothing?”

“You’re turning on me, Nat.”

“You turned on yourself, Red. All I can hope for you is the drop through the trap is clean, snaps your neck, and you don’t strangle.”

“You’re like all of them. You’re just like Ruggert said.”

“Like all of who?”

“Like all the goddamn people like you.”

“How do you mean?”

“He said no matter how good a nigger is, in time the nigger will come out in him. You just let it come out in you. You sold me to the rope.”

“You sold yourself, boy. And I ain’t getting you a damn thing to eat. Suck your thumb.”

I turned then and started walking away. I felt like a fool. Tears was ru

“Nigger,” he kept calling out, over and over until I was gone.

32

I bought myself lunch, something I could eat out under a tree, and later when I seen that the wagon had been emptied of its prisoners, I walked to where Ruthie stayed with her family. I found her out in the yard with a hoe. She was trimming around some tomato vines that she had staked. They wasn’t real healthy-looking tomatoes. I stood at the gate of the fence they had built around the garden, which I guess was about half an acre, and watched her hoe for a while. It wasn’t that I enjoyed seeing a woman work, though I damn sure like one that is willing to, but I found myself trying to figure if she was the sort that would have gathered rats in a bag and beat them to death or drowned them. I couldn’t see that. And I couldn’t see Win talking to ducks. There was a lot of confusion in my head, but some of it sorted out that very day. I opened the gate and went through the path between the crops. Ruthie lifted her head when she saw me coming, leaned on the hoe. I could see Luther out back cranking a bucket of water up from the well. He looked like a tree wearing a hat. It was a nice well and a nice house. Samson was out in the distance tossing corn to some free-ranging chickens.

They both looked up and saw me. I lifted a hand in a wave. I went right up to Ruthie.

“I’m going on a hunt for a dangerous man. I think you know who I mean, as you’ve heard me talk about him. I’m done with him, and you ain’t been claimed by any of them other suitors, I would love to be your main man, as long as you don’t think it’s a ricochet and you know I’m serious about marriage.”

“That’s a lot of words,” Ruthie said.