A Congregation of Jackals (2 page)

Charles and Jessica were perplexed by the conclusion of the tale. The talker nodded his head and drank another swallow from the dwindling supply in the bottle.

“I am afraid that I do not understand what happened,” Charles said.

“He ate his tongue. Bit it off, chewed it up and swallowed it so he wouldn’t starve before me.”

Arthur opened his mouth widely for another swallow of whiskey; amber liquid splattered upon the waggling nub within, the tiny remnant of his tongue that was no larger than an olive. Charles stared on in disgust; Jessica, nauseated, placed her wineglass down and clasped her shaking hands.

“My God,” Charles muttered. “How did he not bleed to death?”

The talker turned to his brother and with admiration said, “He pulled off his kerchief with his teeth, gulped it in his mouth and pressed it ’gainst the gash to stop the bleedin’.”

“My God,” Charles repeated.

“Arthur was chewing at his bottom lip the next day when we was rescued. I was just startin’ to contemplate my tongue.”

Jessica, pale, attempted a weak smile; she said, “That is so . . . so savage.”

A coldness descended upon the siblings; beneath hedges of dark eyebrows, four glinting black orbs fixed upon the blonde woman.

“He ain’t a savage. He did what he needed to. I know you think you’re better than us, but you’d’ve done the same. We all got the animal within us, even your gentleman husband there.”

Jessica stammered, “I didn’t m-mean t-to—”

Her sentence was cut off by the slam of the whiskey bottle upon the table. “Shut up. Just ’cause you’re pretty don’t mean you can call us savages. You’d’ve done the same if it was you.”

Charles was keenly aware that—excepting the far-off bartender and an inebriate with his head upon a table—the bar was unoccupied other than by the brothers, his wife and himself.

With as calm a countenance as he could manage, he said, “My wife is affected by drink. Please pay her no mind.”

“We ain’t savages. You’d’ve done the same in that gulch.”

“Yes, you are correct.”

The talker removed his hat and set it upon the table. A curved scar like a corded pink rope ran from his forehead to the back of his skull; no hair grew from the raised flesh.

“That’s what savages do,” he said. The talker placed his hat back upon his head. “We ain’t savages.”

“I am very sorry for offending you,” Jessica offered.

“Women says things they don’t mean. I know it.” The talker looked over at his brother. “You accept her apology?”

There was a glimmer of light by Arthur’s hip; the
silent man thrust his right hand beneath the table; his gun holster was empty. Terror like the flames of a brush-fire leaped across Jessica’s features; Charles better hid his fear (though his palms and forehead admitted beads of cool perspiration).

“He don’t accept it.”

Charles pushed back in his seat; a metallic click sounded near Jessica’s knees.

“You ain’t got his permission to go.”

Charles looked at his wife; her eyes coruscated with tears that would soon overflow her bottom eyelids and spill down her cheeks.

“Arthur wants to make a point.”

The Arizonians looked at the mute sibling, as if expecting him to grow a new tongue and speak with it. Arthur did not move or even blink; his arm, thrust beneath the table holding his pistol, did not waver; the silent man just stared forward with reptilian eyes.

“What’s your name?” the talker asked.

“Charles.”

“You got more names than that.”

“Charles Alan Lowell.”

“And hers?’

“Jessica Parcedes Lowell.”

The talker cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Lowell.”

“Yes?”

“Open up your mouth.”

“What do you intend—?”

Jessica yelped; Charles looked over at his wife.

The talker explained, “Arthur poked her with the barrel. You ain’t supposed to ask questions while making him your apology. Open up your mouth.”

The Arizonian swallowed dryly, parted his lips and lowered his jaw.

The talker looked at Jessica. “Put the tip of your little finger in Mr. Lowell’s mouth.”

Charles would have traded his mansion in Arizona and both of his prized stallions for a pistol at that moment. Jessica raised her trembling right hand toward her husband’s mouth and extended her pinky finger.

To the husband, the talker said, “Bite down on the knuckle just below the tip. Don’t hurt her though—just hold it there with your teeth.”

Charles carefully closed his jaw; his upper and lower incisors pressed into the soft skin covering the last joint of his wife’s pinky. Jessica’s hand and arm dangled from her husband’s mouth like an absurd circus-animal tongue.

The talker surveyed the Arizonians and seemed pleased with what he saw. To Arthur, he said, “That to your liking?”

His sibling nodded, his prickly chin moving up and down less than a quarter of an inch.

“Mr. Lowell. I’d advise you, strongly advise you, not to let go of your wife’s little finger.”

Charles nodded minutely. The talker looked over at Jessica. His eyes surveyed her swollen chest, her long pale neck, her full lips, her upturned nose, her cheeks smeared with rouge (now streaked with tears) and ultimately fixed upon her leaking eyes. The appraisal was like a cold wet hand.

“You love your husband, don’t you Mrs. Lowell?”

Without hesitation, Jessica nodded her head.

“But I bet he wasn’t the first one you laid with, now was he?”

Jessica stared at the talker, but did not respond. Charles’s face reddened, his wife’s long fingernail pressed into the wet flesh of his tongue.

“You was with other men before you was with Mr. Lowell, wasn’t you?”

Jessica opened her mouth, hesitated and then looked over at Charles, her hand hanging ridiculously from his mouth.

“Don’t do no fibbin’. Arthur’s hard to fool and don’t at all care for fibs.”

Charles nodded to his wife; she returned her gaze to the talker and said, “I have.”

“How many others you been with, Mrs. Lowell? Lots?”

“One other.” Jessica’s embarrassment made her face shine bright and red.

“What was his name?”

“Burt.”

“Did you love Burt?”

“I was just a girl. I didn’t know anything then.”

“Did you tell him you loved him?”

“I did.”

The talker looked over at Charles and said, “You hear this? Watch out.” He pulled an errant twine of oily hair from his prickly beard, set it behind his right ear and inquired of Jessica, “What was Burt’s prick like?”

Jessica cried out and yanked her pinky from Charles’s mouth. She looked at her husband, frightened.

“You bit me,” she said.

“I did not mean t—”

The empty whiskey bottle struck Charles in the face, smacking loudly as it connected with the man’s right cheek. In the instant that he tumbled from his seat, he saw that the saloon was deserted. He impacted the floor; his unbalanced chair hesitated on two legs and then fell beside him.

“Get up.” Charles righted his chair and reseated himself.

The talker said to Jessica, “You put your finger back in his mouth or my brother’s gonna lose his temper. He’s an angry one.” Arthur stared on, aloof and inscrutable.

Jessica raised her right hand; Charles clamped his teeth to his wife’s pinky; her long fingernail settled against the tip of his tongue. His cheek smarted where the bottle had struck him, and his entire face stung with the heat of his embarrassment. He felt his wife’s heartbeat within the soft flesh of her fingertip—it was as quick as his own.

“What did Burt’s prick look like?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t look at it.”

“Afraid, huh? You one of them that just lies there, eyes shut, feet to the ceiling and takes it like cough syrup?” He looked at Charles and said, “Sorry.” He returned his gaze to Jessica. “So you just lie there with your eyes closed, huh? Maybe a buncha fellows was on top of you, takin’ turns and you didn’t even know it?”

“It was just him.”

“What did Burt’s prick feel like? Bigger than Mr. Lowell here’s? Got a lot of veins or hair?”

Charles felt his wife’s fingernail dig into his tongue and realized an instant later it was because he had unconsciously bitten her again. Jessica winced and shut her eyes.

“Stop biting your wife, Mr. Lowell. She don’t much like savages.”

The talker looked at the Arizonians pointedly.

Charles, embarrassed, nodded minutely and, with ungracious, finger-obfuscated enunciation, said, “We understand your point.”

“Good. But that don’t mean you learned your lesson.” The talker turned to his brother. Arthur shook
his head; the arc of his chin traversed only an eighth of an inch, but the gesture twisted Charles’s stomach into a knot. “He says you ain’t learned.” To Jessica, the talker said, “Was Burt’s prick bigger than the one dangling between Mr. Lowell’s legs? Don’t lie.”

Charles (unsuccessfully) attempted to ignore his wife’s response.

She said, “I’m not sure. It hurt because it was the first time.”

“The next time you done it, it feel good?”

“It didn’t hurt as much, though I didn’t like copulating with him.”

“But would you go back looking for old Burt if your husband got himself killed?”

A silence like winter dawn settled upon the quartet. Charles felt his wife’s pulse race through her captive digit. Arthur yawned, saliva glinting upon his swollen gums and the limp stub within. Tears rolled down the cheeks of the Arizonians.

“I plan to spend the rest of my life with Charles.”

“So you’ll forgive him then?”

“For what?”

The talker punched Charles’s chin; his jaw snapped shut; the tip of his wife’s pinky and a gout of crimson flavored like copper and honey flooded into his mouth. Jessica shrieked and fell from her seat; Charles vomited upon the table.

The sun-bronzed siblings stood up, guns in their right hands. Jessica’s shrieking became hysterical sobbing; Charles wiped bile from his mouth and knelt beside his agonized wife. The shadow of the twins fell upon the Arizonians, but neither looked up at their persecutors. Charles wrapped Jessica’s finger with a handkerchief to stop the bleeding and thought about Jesus Christ for the first time since their wedding.

A deep voice with a thick Irish accent said, “It’s never hard to locate you boys. Let’s go.”

“Yessir,” the talker responded. Without preamble or delay, the siblings strode from the Arizonians toward the door.

Charles and Jessica looked up. Night had fallen on San Fortunado and against that blue-black sky, beyond the reach of the saloon’s oil lanterns, stood a tall, extraordinarily lean man with a curved back wearing a gray suit, a gray hat and a matching scarf tied over his face. Through the tears in Charles’s eyes, the man looked like a cane made of smoke.

The siblings exited the saloon and disappeared into the night, but the slender man in gray remained.

He spoke to the Arizonians, his Irish brogue deceptively cloying. “Don’t take this to the sheriff.”

Charles, emboldened by the absence of his persecutors, heatedly replied, “I certainly will—those men attacked us!”

“You are both alive. Your wife still has her clothes on. Nothing serious happened.”

The tall gray shade turned away; Charles opened his mouth to respond.

With her good hand, Jessica squeezed his shoulder and said, “I don’t want to be a widow.”

Humiliation replaced the anger burning within Charles, but he said nothing. The narrow gray wraith twisted weirdly and was welcomed into obscurity by the night.

The rancher remembered a time not so very long ago when he could remove his boots without sitting down. Even as recently as his early forties, he was able to place the palm of his left hand upon a wall or a tree or a calm horse for support, twist a leg up at the knee and pull off the lifted boot with his right hand. He currently found that—in addition to forty-seven years—the dexterity and flexibility required to become shoeless while standing was behind him.

The strong, hard man sat upon a flat rock beside the creek and removed his left boot and then his right—a low grunt accompanying each endeavor—and set the pair upright beside him, as if awaiting a spectral inhabitant to step into them. He arched his back, eliciting a dozen cracks like wagon wheels on pebble, and inhaled the moist sweet air that only blew in this dell at the edge of his property line. He removed his socks, set them upon the sun-baked stone to dry and then plunged his callused feet into the running water.

Even though he was not a tall man, within this private sanctuary he was a giant, and the animals of his ranch and his house and his wife and his children were but thoughts. The rancher loved all of these things deeply and thoroughly, but he had lived a very different life for many years and still required time to be a solitary giant, time during which the only world that existed was a simple, wordless place.

He leaned back upon the warm rock and observed the surroundings. The shadows of dragonflies slid across the creek; the water broke in foaming complaints as it struck protuberant stones; the leaves turned in the moist wind, caught sunlight and illuminated like emeralds. The aches in his feet dissolved in the cool water; his face warmed in the golden twilight sun; his back melted into the stone. For an instant, all of his mundane concerns, all of the names he knew and treasured, as well as those he would prefer to forget, were borne away by the wind and he simply was.

Then came a sound that touched the melting giant—a person speaking, calling out. He recognized his wife’s voice and a moment later the thing that she was uttering, a thing which solidified and returned him to himself. That thing was his name.

“Oswell,” she repeated.

Oswell Danford, the forty-seven-year-old rancher with a wife and two children, sat up, grunting at the exertion. He turned his head on his broad shoulders, wiped the light brown hair from his hazel eyes and scratched an itch in his mustache. (He never had itches when he was the melting giant.)

“Oswell, are you down there?”

It took him a moment to find his voice, as if he had misplaced it in a shirt pocket or the dog had snatched it up and run off with it. Upon the escarpment he saw his wife, the sky purple and gold behind her fine full figure, her red hair and yellow hem pulled east by the western wind.