Haints Stay (17 page)

“You have little faith in people.”

“I guess,” said Bird.

“I hate to see anyone put to death,” said Mary.

“That's foolish,” said Bird.

“Why ?”

“Because the only way to deal with an evil thing is to put an end to
it.”

“I don't like it as an idea,” said Mary. “I won't agree to it, but I will
not be called foolish.”

“Then let's concern ourselves with bread,” said Bird.

The building had three stories : two bedrooms in the upstairs and a
hallway with a ledger and a cash register. Beneath the floor level, where the
restaurant was and the tables and chairs, there was the storeroom. In the rooms
upstairs, they discovered warm clothes, blankets, and a basket full of buttons of
various sizes. There was also thread in a drawer and several cans of oil for the
lamps.

There was a long jacket hung from a peg by the door that
led to the kitchen. There was nothing in its pockets. They could work the stove
well enough. They could keep the fire going with wood from an enormous stack behind
the building.

Every now and then, Bird would check the windows. He saw no one and
nothing moving but the few remaining horses.

“What if he comes back ?” said Mary.

“That's why we have the pistol,” said Bird.

They took the pistol out behind the building. A hundred or so feet away,
there was a wagon. They flipped it over and set a milk bottle on it. They walked
away until they were a distance they could be proud of.

“I would like never to shoot a man,” said Mary, “but I can shoot bottles
for sport.”

“How many bullets do we have ?”

“She said we could find more, if we looked.”

“All we found was buttons and a coat.”

“I think she meant… around.” Mary pointed to the backs of the adjacent
buildings. She swept her hand from left to right.

“She said to stay hidden.”

“I think we're meant to sneak,” said Mary.

Bird pulled the hammer back on the pistol. The pistol was heavy enough to
make him feel off balance, as if he were listing in its direction and would topple
over without serious concentration when he fired. He held up the gun and exhaled. He
squeezed the trigger and the gun flew from his hand. The floor of the alley coughed
dirt several feet to the left of the wagon.

“You are our protection ?” said Mary.

“It's not easy,” said Bird.

Mary took the pistol and fired without much hesitation. She splintered
the wagon a few inches from the base of the jar.

“We cannot shoot,” said Mary. “But I'm better.”

“We have to practice,” said Bird.

“You can practice,” said Mary, “once you've found more bullets.”

Mary made bread and Bird caught and killed a chicken. They kept quiet and
did not explore much outside of the building with the kitchen and the bedrooms and
the storeroom — and no one else, if they were around, made themselves known. There
was butter in the storeroom, for the bread, and lard to cook the chicken in. They
salted everything heavily. They found wine under the counter and tried it and did
not like it. There was a fireplace near the base of the stairs and they made a small
fire, more for entertainment than out of necessity. They did not sleep well. They
made pallets on the floor near the fire with the blankets from upstairs and the
clothes from the trunks. It went unsaid but understood that upstairs would not have
been a comfortable place for either of them to spend the night.

Bird kept the gun near his pillow. He watched the fire in its metal. He
had not wanted to become a gunfighter but it seemed like he was going to have to
become a gunfighter. Mary did not have the follow-through for it, even if she was a
better shot.

“Please stop staring at the gun,” said Mary.

“I'm thinking,” said Bird.

“About the gun ?” said Mary.

“About having to use the gun some day.”

“It is thinking like that that will make it so,” said Mary.

“That's foolish,” said Bird.

“You are an orphan who doesn't have the capacity for reason or high
thinking. In his whole life my father never once drew his gun.”

“And he was murdered,” said Bird.

“You're frightening me and making me feel alone,” said
Mary. “You are supposed to be my little brother.”

“I am not little.”

“You are a cripple.”

“I'm not a cripple.”

“I do not want our friendship to go on like this. You need to think of
something else to talk about and think about other than guns and killing and dying.
I won't have any more of it.”

“You sound like Martha used to sound,” said Bird.

They were silent for some time. Mary might have slept. Finally, Bird
said, “I am glad you're here.”

Mary did not respond, but she shifted, eyes closed, to face either him or
the fire.

In the morning, they were friendly again. They all but finished the
bread, then gathered small rocks from behind the building. They sat, leaned against
the building, and took turns trying to throw the rocks into a bowl they had set a
few feet away from them.

At first, neither could do any more than hit the side of the bowl and
scoot it an inch or so in either direction. After some time, they started landing
the rocks in its center. Bird landed four in a row then turned to Mary and said, “I
would like to go into the other houses and find bullets for the gun.”

“It makes no difference to me,” she said, “but it is not a path I would
pursue.”

“I don't know what we're to do here,” said Bird.

“We can do anything we like,” said Mary. “We are on our own now.”

“I don't know what that means,” said Bird.

“It does not mean anything,” said Mary. She tossed her last rock at the
bowl and it ricocheted off the side.

“I have a scared feeling,” said Bird, “and I cannot get
rid of it.”

Martha watched the killer make a modest camp. From a low hill, she
could make out his shadow and then, with the light of his fire, his face and the
baby in his arms. He held the baby's face beneath his jacket, and he rocked it for
several minutes. Then he set it to sleep on a pile. She watched him pick at the fire
and set his heels by its outer coals. She worried that he would look up toward the
night sky and see her outline on the horizon, or that he would be able to hear her
breath working its way down the hill and into the branches of the trees above him.
She seemed to be breathing abnormally. Snorting like a beast. Heaving like her
father in the throes of a coughing fit.

The killer did not sleep, but picked at the fire whenever his head began
to drop, or wandered the small circle of his camp. He did not smoke. He did not sing
or talk to himself. He was still up until the moments bordering sleep, and then he
moved just enough to keep it from overtaking him. Or so it seemed from her vantage.
She studied him and tried to know him well enough to make a plan. He was like a fox
in its den, or a snake in its pit. She wished she was truly a sharpshooter, able to
pick him off safely from a distance. She did not think she could surprise him. She
was not a faster draw. If it came to a fight, she would not be victorious. There was
a chance she could outride him, seeing as she was only one, and he and the child
were two. She slid herself back down the hill and out of view. Her horse was tied
up, shadowed by a cluster of thin trees, but still visible if one were to happen
upon them. She made herself flat against the dark hill.

During the night, birds settled on either side of her and picked
at the hill for insects or seed. She was still and they moved over
her and around her indifferently. They were focused on their task. They squeaked,
but seemed to communicate nothing. She felt pity for them that they had no higher
calling. But there was something simple and direct about the way they lived, and
that was admirable. She turned over and crawled a few feet on her belly, scattering
the birds. She pointed her right elbow into the dirt and positioned the rifle
against her upturned palm and its corresponding collar pocket. She fired and hit the
dirt between the fire and the man. He was up then and headed for cover, but she
managed two more shots that sent him sliding into the dirt. She was astonished and
proud. Each shot had felt less natural than the previous and she had become
convinced she was incorrect in her decision to open fire from a distance, rather
than to overtake him on the path. But it had worked. There it was. He was slain.

She hurried down the hill, leaving the gelding tied on its opposite side,
along with her things. She came upon the body and fired several more shots into its
hulk, splitting his leathers and spitting blood onto her leggings and thin-soled
shoes. She winced. The baby was screaming unlike any child she had heard before. She
lifted it and tried to settle it by whispering sweet things and bouncing it, but
nothing worked. She dug through the killer's belongings and could not find much of
use. The food was far from edible and his weapons or tools were crude and few. She
took a blanket for the baby and investigated the corpse's pockets. Again,
nothing.

She carried the screaming baby back over the hill to her horse. Snow
began to fall. It had hardly felt cold enough for snow before, but there it was,
drifting along like ash at the edge of the world.

She held the baby close to her chest as she pulled
herself onto the horse. She had no milk to offer the child, nothing to warm it other
than the blanket, so she undid her blouse and positioned the baby directly against
the warmth of her body. She did up what she could of her shirt over the baby and
wrapped herself in the blanket. Again and again, the baby took hold of her nipple
and tried to wrench life from it. Nothing came. It was painful, but she let the baby
work at her, as much as she could stand it. It was the least she could do. She rode
slowly, trying to trace the route they had taken from the town where the boy and
Mary were waiting.

Soon, though, the path was indistinguishable. A thin blanket of snow
covered every inch of ground, and weighted the branches of the fir trees that seemed
to go on endlessly in every direction. She fired her rifle into the air and the baby
screamed, but otherwise would not let up.

Then there was a whole slew of men Brooke had killed for what most
would call honorable reasons. He wandered a bit after Sugar left, without a home or
a town to call his own. He had no friends and no sense of needing any. He needed
food and reasons to stay upon his horse, which were running out as he came upon more
and more miles of nothing. Finally, he crossed paths with a group of men celebrating
a recent victory over a team of bandits riding north, looting small towns along the
way. They had slain the bandits, returned a percentage of their loot, and were now
celebrating in the woods. They liked to drink and sing and Brooke soon learned that
he too liked those things. He spent the night with them — they were merry enough to
accept him as one of their own, knowing nothing
about him, where
he'd come from or where he was going. Soon, though, he learned that this militia was
made entirely of men looking to blur their pasts. They rode nameless and unadorned.
They relied on no one outside of the group, and were slow to trust on less
celebratory occasions. They had their fair share of inner turmoil, but it was
repeatedly squelched by an unspoken understanding that the whole thing only worked
if they worked together. As soon as they turned against one another they would be
back on their own again. For these particular men, the fear of that was enough to
keep them riding quiet, day to day.

During that time, Brooke must have killed fifty men. Maybe a hundred. He
did not remember the majority. They often tracked and killed one man at a time.
Rapists and murderers. Plenty of bandits. It was more than likely they killed a
large portion of innocent men. If any man felt guilt about that, he did not make it
known. Brooke found himself pleasantly at ease with following the instruction of a
posted sign, or a desperate sheriff, or even consistent word of mouth.

In between hunts, they would drink. Some of the men had wives and
children, or mothers, sisters, brothers, fathers, cousins, grandparents who depended
on them. Some of them would send home money. A few even wrote letters. No one talked
much about their personal lives. None seemed too satisfied with the hand life had
dealt them.

They played cards sometimes, late into the night. They were not emotional
drinkers. There were not many physical altercations amongst the men, and few wept or
carried on, as Brooke would later witness over and over at card games in nearly
every town he occupied for more than a few nights. When they played, these men were
a casual kind of serious. They took each hand
as it came and played
and bristled slightly at a loss, but it rarely went any farther than that.

One man, an older one who called himself Grot because he “liked its
sound,” used to sing the loudest at night and throughout their daily rides as well.
His hair was long and gray and he wore a beard. The backs of his hands were
crisscrossed with scars he'd likely dug himself. He shot animals from his horse
throughout the day, for sport. Deer, squirrel, pheasant, lizard. But he did not
collect them. Sometimes, another rider would, and he would laugh at them or ignore
it. It was bothersome, but not unforgivable. One night, he lost his temper over a
few pieces of gold and sprung on the boy who'd won them. Simple things seemed to
bring out the worst in people. He plunged his thumbs into the boy's eye sockets and
scoured the sight from them. As the boy lay there screaming and clutching at his
face, Grot lifted the boy's beer in a bloodied hand and drank what was left of it.
He struck the boy then with the empty bottle, shattering it and silencing him. He
seemed to relax then. The other men around the fire rose and wrestled him up and
over to a nearby tree. He managed a few blows across the necks and faces of these
men but nothing that slowed them. They hung him and watched him kick and when he was
done, they shot and buried the blinded boy.