Cherokee (23 page)

He said, “Write or wire me about the trouble. I'm anxious for you.”

We turned the horses and rode around the town and started up the road for Anadarko. It was not quite one o'clock and we had plenty of time, but I found myself pushing the horses up into a slow gallop. Hays said, “What was ya'll talkin' 'bout so seriously there on the porch?”

“Kinfolks,” I said. “Let's get a move on.”

We made it to Chickasha with time to spare. In fact, on account of Charlie wiring ahead about the stock car, we ended up with about an hour to spare after we got the horses loaded. I spent a little of that time wiring Ben that I'd got his telegram and that we were on our way. I couldn't give him an exact time because the schedule was very difficult to figure out. Me and the Cherokee ticket agent went over what timetables he had, but all I knew for sure was that we'd get into Fort Worth the next morning about nine o'clock. After that it looked like we'd have to go to Austin, and then change trains to get to San Antonio, and then change again to make it to Blessing. The best I could figure, we'd be a good fifty or sixty hours on the rails and waiting. But I felt sure we could do better than that. I'd never taken it, but I felt sure there had to be a direct train out of Fort Worth to San Antonio.

We killed a little time by going down to the Cigar Store and buying a couple of bottles of whiskey for the trip. Before we went in I told Hays to watch himself as he'd be the only white man in the place. He said, “What about you?”

I didn't answer him, and we went on in. There were a bunch of men sitting around at tables drinking and a few eating. There was no bar, but a kind of counter like you'd see at a mercantile store. A pleasant-looking young man with long, black hair and a Roman nose waited on us. He put two bottles of a good brand of whiskey in a flour sack and asked if there was anything else. The whiskey was a little higher-priced than I was used to paying, but I figured it was bootleg. I told him that was all we needed, and he said, “Don't let that firewater get you in trouble, brother.”

I said, “White man's medicine. Bad for Injun.”

He laughed.

Going out, Hays said, “How come everybody goes 'round calling one another ‘brother'? They think they're all kin? Hell, that damned Injin even called you brother.”

I said, “Didn't I warn you about that Injin' business?”

“All right, all right. But how come they call you brother? You ain't no more Cherokee than I am. Even if you do look like one.”

“Hays, just start worrying when they call
you
brother.”

We went on back to the depot and sat down to wait. After what seemed an eternity I faintly heard the far-off wail of a train whistle. The ticket agent said, through the bars of his window, “That'd be your train. Once he gets in and gets hooked on to what rolling stock is going, he'll be out of here. I'd be in my car with my horses was I you.”

We finally got rolling about dusk. After we were a ways down the road and used to the motion of the car, Hays and I made a good supper out of watered whiskey and fried chicken and that good bread Margaret made. Hays said, “That woman can cook. Damn shame she's a Nigra. Got a mighty appealin' figure.”

“She might feel it's a damn shame for you you're white.”

He looked up at me. “Now that is some remark. You don't reckon she'd rather be white?”

“Why?” I said.

He just shook his head. “Boy howdy, Boss, you get some strange ideas in yore head from time to time. We gonna save them ham samwitches fer breakfast?”

“If we want any we better. Likely come dawn we'll be rolling along in the big middle of nowhere.”

I had two days to think about all I'd learned from Charlie and to roll it around in my head. I thought of myself and Lucy and Alice and Ben and Norris. I thought of Howard. I thought about all of us. I kept running the events through my mind the best way I could, trying to figure if Howard had had a whole lot of selection or if he could have done a better job with a bad situation. I didn't begrudge him his appetites, either for the beauty of Lucy (I'd had that from Charlie) or for the genteelness of Alice. I could understand him wanting both. I just kept trying to figure out if he couldn't have made a better job of it.

I gave a lot of thought to Norris. He was the only one of us three, me and him and Ben, who'd had a proper momma and daddy right there that he could see and know. Ben and I had just thought we did, and that wasn't the same thing. Norris had always acted like he was the anointed one and maybe it was that knowledge, even if he didn't realize it, that knowledge that he felt somewhere down deep, that give him such a smug, superior attitude. His mother was playing queen of the castle while mine and Ben's was shucked away in a shack somewhere waiting until Howard got the urge to visit her. And try and try as I could, I couldn't squeeze a single memory out of my past of anyone who could faintly resemble her, even though Charlie had said I'd been with her nearly all the time for the first two years, and then a lot of the time up until I was three or four. I could remember being left with a woman who wasn't like Alice, but I couldn't put a face on her.

So I thought and thought for two days. On the morning of the third day, when we finally stepped out of that stock car in Blessing, I was no closer to knowing what I thought than I had been when I started. Nothing had been resolved in my mind, and that included what I was going to say to Howard or what I was going to tell Ben or Norris.

First, there was some trouble that had to be tended to, and I didn't even know what kind of trouble it was.

Ben was there to meet us. I'd finally gotten our schedule straightened out as we got closer to home, and I'd wired him from San Antonio what time we'd be arriving.

We got down from the stock car, stiff and sore from getting jolted around for all that time, and walked up the platform while the railroad hired hands unloaded our horses, and there was Ben standing by the depot. I'd been gone nearly a week, and it was good to get out of the cold wind and the heavy jacket and get home. Except it wasn't good to come home to trouble.

Ben stepped out from the depot. It was going on for ten o'clock of a fine, mild fall day. I said, “What the hell has happened, Ben?”

He was smoking a cigarillo, and he threw it away and said, “It's Norris. He's been shot.”

“Bad?”

“I never heard of anybody getting shot was good. No, it's his arm. His right arm. Shay Jordan come up in his office and shot him.” He jerked his thumb toward town. “He's over at Doc Adams's. It's bad enough the doctor wants to keep him handy.”

“When did it happen?”

“About three hours before I sent you that telegram. They sent word out to the ranch. Lew Vara did. And I come as fast as I could, and wired you soon as I seen what happened and found out who done it.”

I eyed his face. “What have you done in the meantime?”

He nodded. “I was expecting that one. I done exactly what you told me to do, nothing. I figured this was going to take some serious thinking, so I wired you and sat back to see. Waited for you. I have not seen Shay Jordan since it happened and I ain't gone looking for him.”

We were walking as we talked. We came to the town end of the depot and stepped down off the platform right by Ben's horse. I said to Hays, “Ray, go get the horses. Ben and I are going to walk down to Doctor Adams's office. Come on down there.”

Hays said, “Howdy, Ben.”

Ben said, “Howdy, Ray. Horse herd is fine.”

With Ben leading his horse we started for the doctor's office, which was right in the middle of the town, almost next to our hotel. Ben said, “The doctor's watching him. His arm's broken, but if there ain't no infection Norris ought to be all right.”

It made me think of Charlie Stevens. It was ironic in that way and ironic in another. Doctor Adams was way above the average small-town Texas doctor. He'd been trained in one of those big Eastern medical colleges, the kind that turned out the very latest in an up-to-date doctor. Normally a town like Blessing could never have attracted such a doctor, who'd normally have been practicing in one of the big Northern or Eastern cities where he could make the money his training deserved. But Norris had argued that it was worth our while to get such a doctor and let our company pay him the difference between what he might have made in Chicago, say, and Blessing. Norris's original thinking had been for Howard's welfare, but he'd also pointed out that it wouldn't hurt the rest of us none to have such a doctor around when bullets started flying. And he'd said that it was just another way of keeping our less fortunate neighbors from being overly jealous of us, providing them with the kind of doctoring they could never afford. In the end he'd convinced me and, though Doctor Adams cost us five to six thousand dollars a year, I considered it money well spent. It was maybe paying off now for Norris.

And if Charlie Stevens had had such a doctor he might not have lost his arm.

We crossed the dusty street and stepped up on the boardwalk. I said, “Without giving me a whole bunch of details, what's Lew Vara doing about it?”

Ben said, “I reckon you better hear that from Lew himself. It's kind of complicated.”

I nodded. I wasn't feeling much at that moment, wasn't even trying to think much of anything. I wanted to know all of what had happened and how Norris was before I turned anything loose inside.

Ben said, “I been holding in just like you told me.” He glanced at me. “But if Norris goes to getting worse I ain't promising a damn thing. If ever a sonofabitch needed shooting it's Shay Jordan. And I'm gonna do it. No sonofabitch like Shay Jordan shoots my brother and walks around talking about it for very long.”

I just give him a look. I wondered if he'd be just half as mad if he knew the truth about Norris.

We got to Doctor Adams's office, and Ben opened the door and we went in. His office had once been a store, and still had the plate-glass windows in the front. Now it had been partitioned off so that he had a kind of small waiting room up front, with all the important stuff in the back. There were a few chairs and a little desk where the lady that sorted out the doctor's patients usually sat, but now there was nobody home. Ben stepped to the door that led to the back and called out in a hoarse whisper, “Doctor Adams? Doctor Adams?”

Over his shoulder I could see Gregory Adams come out of one of the little rooms he had back there and step into the hall. He saw Ben and came toward us. Doctor Adams was a short, sandy-haired man not much older than I was, with one of those Yankee accents where the words sounded like they had edges on them. He came walking down the hall putting his finger to his lips for us to keep still. He was wearing a long white linen coat that came nearly to his knees. I'd always figured doctors wore those to keep the blood off their good clothes.

He come up to us. He said, “I've got Norris heavily dosed on laudanum. He's sleeping right now, getting some relief from the pain.”

I said, feeling a little stir of anger, “Can I see him?”

Doctor Adams said, “You can take a quick look, but nothing more.”

We followed Doctor Adams down the hall to a door that was about half open. He pushed it further open so we could see into the room. Norris was laying on his back with his right arm suspended from the ceiling with some kind of arrangement of cords and pulleys. His arm appeared to be resting on a little board, but I couldn't tell on account of it was covered with bandaging. His light hair was outlined against the pillow and he looked mighty weak and wan. I just stared at him for a moment, and in that moment he wasn't my half-brother, he was the same brother he'd always been. He was smug and he was hardheaded and he was selfish and superior-acting, but he was my brother.

Ben started to say something, but Doctor Adams put his finger to his lips and led us up to the waiting room. When we got there he said to me, “He's lucky. The bullet didn't catch the bone square or it would have shattered it. It's broken, and I had to dig out some bone splinters, but the bullet went on through, thank heavens, and I think it's going to heal all right.”

I said, “What about infection?”

“What about it?”

“Is he going to get any?”

Doctor Adams just shook his head. “How in hell should I know? Medical science is doing everything it can to learn about infection. Right now we don't know any more than you do. Also, he's lost a lot of blood. Rest is what he needs right now. Rest and food.”

Ben said, “Will it weaken his arm, them chips out of his bone?”

Doctor Adams said, “Yes. Why? Is he planning on leaving the business world and taking up a new profession of herding cattle?”

Ben said, “Well, no, but . . .”

Doctor Adams said, “He'll be more than strong enough to use a pencil. Now you two get out of here. I've got a child with a fever back there. You can come back this afternoon if he's awake.”

We started to leave, but he called after us at the door. “Look, I don't mean to sound so brusque. The next twenty-four hours ought to tell the tale on the infection. You worrying about it is not going to help a thing.”

Ben said, “If it does get infected, will you have to do what I think—”

I cut him off by shoving him out the door. I said, “Goddammit, Ben, don't even think about such things. Just keep your mouth shut.”

But I couldn't get the thought out of my mind, and I reckoned it was because of seeing Charlie Stevens and thinking about justice being visited on Howard, with Norris losing his arm. I knew it was nothing but coincidence and that the one didn't have anything to do with the other; still, it was a thought I had trouble keeping out of my mind.

We walked down the boardwalk toward Lew Vara's office. I said to Ben, “Look, you hunt up Hays and the two of you go on back to the ranch. Go by and tell Nora that I'm home, but that I'm going to spend the night in town.”

Ben said, “Hell, Justa, he's my brother too. I want to wait around and see. Hays can tell Nora and Howard you're back.”

I hesitated. He had every right. But then I had to say, “No, Ben. I don't know what's going on and I don't know the Jordans, don't know what they might get up to. Somebody from the family needs to be out watching the ranch—just in case. And I've got to see Lew Vara and get myself oriented about this whole matter. Before we start doing anything I want to get the straight of it.”

“I can tell you that,” Ben said. “That motherfuckin' Shay Jordan walked into Norris's office and shot him.”

“I understand that, but what were the circumstances? You don't just walk in and shoot a man with no provocation.”

“Some people do,” Ben said. “Trash like the Jordans. I know Shay Jordan shot Norris. That's good enough for me.”

“But you know Norris. He's always got to play gunfighter. Ben, if he provoked that kid into it, that's another thing entirely. Now I want you to go on back to the ranch. If there's any news I'll send word to you as fast as I can. If there's any change in Norris's condition I'll get word to you. I'll be home tomorrow and you can come back in then.”

We had come to stand in front of Lew Vara's office. Hays was just coming up the street, riding his horse and leading the two others. I told him to hitch my horse and then go on to the ranch with Ben. He said, “What's the trouble?”

I said, “Ben will tell you all about it on the ride home. Now ya'll get going.”

I watched Ben mount up on his own horse, and then they went trotting off down the main street, Hays leading the packhorse that hadn't gotten to do a whole lot of packing. I opened the door to Lew's office. He was sitting at his desk in the middle of the room, and I caught him with his head back in the beginning of a yawn. I said, “Things a little slow?”

He said, “Sit down, boy. Tell me about your travels. Been up to Injun country, huh? Get scalped?”

I sat down in a chair across from Lew and got out a cigarillo and lit it. Lew pulled open a drawer in his desk and took out a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers. He poured us out drinks while I got my smoke lit and drawing. We picked up the drinks, said “Luck” as befits the toast, and then knocked them back. I said, “I appreciate you back-trailing me when we left.”

“You have any trouble?”

I shrugged. “Not so's you'd notice. Didn't go cross-country like I was supposed to. We took the train in Bastrop.”

“Yeah,” Lew said. He was watching me, waiting.

I jerked my chin toward the door that led to the cells in the back. “Shay Jordan back there?”

Lew shook his head. “No.”

“Then he's got to be dead or on the run, and Ben didn't say anything about either one of them possibilities.”

Lew put his hands on the desk, his fingers intertwined. “Justa, there ain't a damn thing I can do. They called me from the bank right after it happened. Sent a boy over. I got there before the doctor did. Norris was on the floor and there was a gun right beside him. His desk drawer was open on the right side. On what I could see I didn't have any reason to arrest Shay. I went out and talked to him, and he claimed that Norris had pulled a gun on him and he'd shot in self-defense.”

“What did Norris have to say?”

Lew shook his head. “I ain't really had a good chance to talk to Norris. The doctor said he was in shock. I know he was in pain. But from what little I could get from him, the drawer had fallen out when he fell from the gunshot. I guess the gun could have fallen on the floor then. But I don't know how the drawer got put back in the desk.”

“Shay done it,” I said. “Or whoever was up in that office, clearing space around Norris. Not realizing the drawer was important.”

Lew shrugged. “All I know is they ain't a damn thing I can do until Norris can talk. He's been feverish and a little out of his head the last couple of days. Doc says he ain't gonna make a hell of a lot of sense until his fever breaks.”

“Lew, you don't no more believe that Norris pulled a gun on Shay than I do.”

“I know that,” he said. “But what's the good of arresting him? It would still come down to a swearing match between the two as to what happened. A jury might be more inclined to believe Norris, but they might not believe him enough. And Justa, you know that Norris is always on the prod, scared folks won't think he can handle himself like his two brothers. It's going to get him killed someday. But no, I don't think this was the time. I think he might have provoked Jordan with his mouth, but not with a gun. But everybody doesn't know him like you and I do.” He paused and glanced at the wall before he went on. “I hate to say this, especially with him laying over there in Doc's infirmary hurtin', but they's some folks think Norris has got some mighty high ideas about himself. Some folks wouldn't mind seeing him split his britches. You take this to court and a jury, and I ain't sayin' for sure, might be more persuaded to look at it from Shay Jordan's viewpoint. Remember, he'll come swaggerin' into that courtroom like a small rancher fightin' for his life against the giant Half-Moon ranch.”

“Lew, that ain't the way of it and you know it. The Half-Moon ranch has gone out of its way to be fair with—”