Sanctuary (5 page)

But the man wilted under the heat of Jasper's glare, and he stepped back.

“Now, dog,” Jasper said, menace poking from his voice like spines from a yucca. “Let's see if you can learn this new trick.

“Let's see if you can catch this liver in your teeth. Had a dog once that could do that. Throw him a piece of meat, and he'd snap it out of the air like a rattler after a mouse.”

“You ready, dog? I'm going to throw it now.”

“No, you're not.”

The little knot of men jerked around.

“Where in hell did you come from?” one asked. Then he noticed Mordecai's collar and whispered, “Sorry, preacher, for the language.”

“The language is the same if I'm here or not.”

The men started to break up, but they were pulled back by the harshness of Jasper's voice. “You being a preacher don't mean a damn thing to me,” he said.

Jasper had dropped the liver back into the tub and picked up his knife, shining dull and bloodstained. He held the knife low, edge up and pointed at Mordecai's heart. “Suppose you get the hell out of here, and let us get on with our business.”

“You've got half your business taken care of,” the preacher replied, an edge creeping into his voice. “You took the boy's quarter, and I figure that's worth two livers and a beef heart. Isn't that the going rate?”

Mordecai glanced at the rest of the men. They nodded, too intent on the drama unfolding before them to speak.

“Seems to me that the ‘entertainment' you had at the boy's expense ought to be worth something, too—say a front quarter.”

Jasper turned livid. “You're about to get more entertainment than you bargained for,” he said, snarling. “Preacher, I'm going to gut you just like this steer here, and hang you up for the whole town to see, collar and all.”

Jasper lunged, his knife coming in low and fast and ugly.

The preacher sidestepped, and Judd slipped on the pile of entrails, going down to one knee. When he rose, the preacher was standing behind him, unbuckling his belt.

Jasper grinned malevolently. “Well, look at this, boys. The preacher's afraid he's going to pee his pants.”

The preacher waited. Jasper came at him like a bear stalking a wounded deer, and the preacher's arm moved in a blur.

Crack!

Jasper's eyes widened. Two cuts crossed his cheek like wagon tracks. Blood seeped down his face.

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

The preacher was twirling the belt about his head now, and at each revolution it cut into Jasper's face, neck, arms. Jasper stumbled backward, fleeing the belt as a child flees a nest of aroused yellowjackets.

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

The knife clattered to the ground, and Jasper followed it, rolling into a ball, arms doubled over his face. His shirt was shredded, blood oozed from him, and he was sobbing. “Please, no more. No more. Please. Please.”

The preacher turned to the other men, and they stepped back.

“Turn the other cheek on a man with a knife,” the preacher said. “Likely as not, you won't have it.”

One of the men twittered, and nervous laughter pattered through the butchers.

“I'm going to be in the Silver Dollar Saloon around nine o'clock Sunday morning,” the preacher said. “I'd like to buy all of you a drink.”

“I'll be there,” said the man who had tried to stop Jasper from abusing Judd, and some of the other men nodded, too.

“Now,” the preacher said, “I'd like two livers and a beef heart and a front quarter. You can take the quarter out of Jasper's wages.

“Right, Jasper?”

The heap on the ground moaned.

Judd and the preacher walked toward the camp, the preacher listing a bit under the weight of the beef, and Judd carrying the livers and the heart in an old flour sack they found hanging in the slaughterhouse.

“Why did you come?” Judd asked.

“Just walking,” the preacher replied. “And once I was there, I couldn't let him do that to you.”

“I didn't see you come,” Judd continued, his voice stretched a bit with the effort of carrying the meat. “You weren't there, and then you were.”

“There was a lot going on. You just missed me in all the hullabaloo.”

Judd's eyes narrowed, and they walked in silence for a few moments.

“Thank you,” Judd whispered.

“That's not something I like to do,” the preacher said. “But you can't talk to a man like Jasper, at least not when he's on the prod. He shouldn't bother you for a while.”

A fire was burning in the dump, and Judd's nose wrinkled. He had lived in that smell most of his life and still he hated it.

“You can leave the meat,” Judd said. “I can get help to carry it from here.”

“Came this far. Might as well go the rest of the way.”

The shacks hung in the haze on the far side of the dump. The Old Hawk children were rummaging through the garbage, looking for toys and anything else they might sell or use. Some of the older people picked through the dump, too, looking for scrap metal and clothing, cast-off goods for cast-off lives.

There were eight shacks, mostly logs accented here and there with mismatched boards of varying colors. Old tubs, buckets, flowerpots, and shovels worn flat and dull from Montana gumbo lay scattered around the buildings. Years of feet had worn the grass away, leaving dirt corrupted by broken glass, tin cans, and toys worn out long before the Indian children had gotten them.

Three men squatted in front of one shack, smoking.

“Don't look at them,” Judd muttered quietly, “or they will take this meat and your money.” He hesitated a moment. “They might hurt you, too.”

Here and there a child's face, nose flattened against a windowpane, peered out at them with eyes too deep and dark to fathom.

Judd and the preacher marched through the tiny village, carrying raw meat and the villagers' attention with them. Judd stopped at the step of one of the shacks, totally unremarkable from the others, and called, in Cree, low and insistent.

“Grandmother, we have meat—and a visitor.”

There was stirring inside the shack. Judd and the preacher could hear it in the creak of floorboards and the clatter of something inadvertently kicked, skittering along the floor. Judd waited a long moment, then opened the door.

Grandmother was sitting in the rocking chair where she spent most of her time. Later, as the sun warmed the Montana prairie, she would move it outside, sitting in the sun as her hands moved by memory over one project or another.

The old woman was as wrinkled as her clothing, and it seemed in the dim light that they were one, that someone had dropped a bundle of rags on the chair and set them to rocking.

Her eyes, black as a river slough on a summer night, followed the meat to the table, her nose wrinkling. Judd knew that she smelled the meat, and the scent set her belly on edge.

“Grandmother, we are not invisible to him,” Judd whispered. “He can see you.”

She thought about that a moment, still as a rabbit listening for the quiet pad of a coyote.

“Where did you get the meat?” she asked in Cree, her eyes still on the table.

“At the slaughterhouse,” Judd replied in Cree. “The preacher helped me.”

“Why did you bring him to our home?”

“He carried the meat.”

“That is bad. You should never bring a white man here. There will be trouble now. They will make us go away, and we will be cold next winter. Tell this preacher to go away. Tell him we don't want him here.”

The preacher had been standing by the door, listening as the old woman spoke.

“Grandmother,” Mordecai said in Cree. “There was a time when the people welcomed visitors. What have I done to offend you?”

The old woman started. Until that moment, it had seemed that her eyes were too cloudy to notice the visitor. Now they probed his face, her mind trying to see past the cataracts that blurred her vision, trying to see past the color of the preacher's skin.

“How is it that you speak Cree?” she asked.

“It is not my first trip to the prairie,” he answered. “Nor the first time I have visited one of your people.”

“Are you one of the people,” she asked, “or a Métis?”

“I am of many people. We are all of many people.”

The old woman pondered that for a moment and then nodded. “Yes. That is true. My mother, the boy's great grandmother, was Chippewa. We are all of many people. I apologize to you. You are welcome in our house, and I thank you for the meat you have brought us.”

“The meat is Judd's,” the preacher replied. “I only helped him carry it.”

“Call the Old Hawks and the others,” she said, turning to Judd. “We have meat to share.”

Clinton Old Hawk came tentatively into the shack, hat in hand. When he saw the meat on the table, he bit his lip. But he stood unmoving, eyes on the meat, mind on the white man standing in the corner of the room, almost at his elbow.

Grandmother Medicine Elk cut a generous portion from the beef quarter and gave Old Hawk nearly half of one liver.

“I have bread,” he said in Cree. “Old bread from the back of the bakery. Baker Jamison left it for farmers to feed their pigs, but this time I beat the pigs to it.

“I would share that with you.” He grinned, brown, crooked teeth showing from a mouth hidden moments before in the thin line of his lip.

Grandmother's eyes jerked to the preacher.

“He speaks the people's tongue,” she said.

Old Hawk's eyes grew round.

“The baker had thrown the bread away,” he said, his words coming in a rush. “I was stealing only from the pigs.”

The preacher shook his head. “I will say nothing of this.”

Old Hawk's breath escaped in one long sigh.

“I was told that if they caught me stealing again, I would go to prison. Prison is not bad. There is food every day, but I would fear for my family.”

The preacher nodded.

“Did you intend to share the meat with the others in the village, Grandmother?” the preacher asked.

She nodded.

“Perhaps you would tell the others of Grandmother's generosity,” the preacher said to Old Hawk “And perhaps you could tell them that I would like to talk with them after everyone has shared in the meat.”

Old Hawk nodded and fled the cabin, his entire being shouting relief.

The squatters were scattered like driftwood in front of the Medicine Elk home. Only the children moved, squealing as they played tag with one another. One boy of about two years held his mother's skirts as though they were the only anchor in a world askew, his eyes boring unashamedly into the preacher's from a face stained with dirt.

The faces were vacant, but Judd knew what they were thinking. They had meat, and now the price was to be paid in the coin of their attention or labor.

The preacher stood before them, his face as unfathomable as theirs, and when he spoke it was in the people's tongue.

“You will eat now of the meat that Judd and his Grandmother gave you and of the bread Clinton Old Hawk and his family shared. But the day after tomorrow, the pain will crawl into your bellies again, and your children will cry themselves to sleep.”

“Only you can chase the hunger away, but I can show you how. Together, we can fill your children's bellies. What do you say?”

“I say you're full of bullshit.” One of the three toughs, whiskey bottle in hand, stood on the edge of the group, swaying a little. “I say you come not for the people's need, but for your own.”

Judd's breath hissed through his teeth. Jack Ten Horses terrorized the village. He survived by stealing from the people and by rolling drunks as they staggered away from Sanctuary saloons. It was said he had killed Billy White Man in a drunken brawl by the river, but never said to his face.

Ten Horses, thick bodied and bandy legged, malevolence and alcohol painted across his face, stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at the preacher.

“Speaking the tongue is a trick, like all the tricks the white man plays on the people. You are here now for yourself, not for these,” he said, dismissing the squatters with a wave of his hand.

He went on, “You are here to serve your own conscience, not the bellies of the people. And once you have done that, you will walk away, your feet crushing into the dirt the hope you have planted here, and we will be left here to watch it wither away.”

Ten Horses spat on the ground, his face grimacing from a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Go now, preacher. Go now, or I will kill you and feed your body to these people you care so much about.”

A murmur ran through the crowd.

Judd stepped forward. The cold spring sun sparkled against the sweat glistening on his forehead. He knew Ten Horses as only few in the village did.

As a boy, Ten Horses had trudged up the hill to the slaughterhouse, chosen to sacrifice his pride so that those waiting below—too frightened and proud to go—might eat. He had barked and begged and rolled over for Jasper, and he had learned to hate as few did.

Then one day Ten Horses left the village without looking back; he lived only in rumors. He had been seen in the Bear Paws. He had killed White Man in a drunken brawl.

Cold and hunger lay on the village that first winter like death. The people waited until Judd's grandmother, tears in her eyes, sent Judd trudging through the snow to the slaughterhouse and Jasper.

When Ten Horses returned, face hard and scarred as chipped flint, he bullied the village as Jasper had bullied him. But he didn't bother Judd or his grandmother, honoring a bond Jasper had forged between them, as much bond as either would allow.

But now Judd felt compelled to speak on behalf of the preacher, and that would make Ten Horses his enemy and life even more difficult.

“Wait,” he said, his voice cracking. “You must know. The preacher just whipped Jasper.”