Gaffney, Patricia (25 page)

"Isn't that what I said? Isn't that exactly what I said?
Women don't know what the hell they want."

"That is the God's honest truth."

They toasted each other with so much feeling, they almost
shattered their whiskey bottles. Jesse slugged down a big shot without choking,
but the fire in his stomach afterward burned like a son of a bitch. Too bad he
wasn't much of a drinking man. Still, compared to his new best friend, he was a
regular Doc Holliday.

He wished he'd realized sooner what a swell fellow Tommy was.
Seemed like they could talk about anything. Already they'd been through horses,
state politics, dirty jokes, the meaning of life. Now they were starting on
women. "Good thing there's no crime tonight," Jesse noted. Otherwise they'd
have to give up their beds and drink sitting up.

Tom grunted, took a drink, belched. "Know the real reason she
won't have me, Mr. Gault?"

"Jesse."

"She thinks..." He leaned back against the cool brick
wall and shut his eyes. His pale skin and scrawny chin-beard reminded Jesse of
pictures of

Jesus, right after the Crucifixion. "She thinks..." He
bared his teeth, fighting back tears.

"Hey now," Jesse started, sitting up.

"She thinks I'm a coward." He whispered it, scrunching
his face up, but by some miracle he didn't cry. He took another sip of whiskey
to clear his head. "I feel better for getting that out. Funny how I can
admit it to you, of all people. You ever been scared of anything, Mr. Gault?
Jesse?"

"I'm scared of dying." Like Tom, he felt better for
getting it out.

"You?"

"Well, hell. What do you think? I go around trying to commit
suicide?"

"No. No, I guess not. But why do you do it, then? Why'd you
pick your line of work?"

"Why did you?" he countered, cagey.

"Because I believe in law 'n' order."

"Hah."

"And I thought I'd be good at it. I didn't know... I wasn't
prepared for the danger." He faced Jesse but didn't look at him. "I
know what people call me behind my back. You think Glen's right? You think I'm
yellow, Mr. Gault?"

"Hell, no. Hell, no. What's brave about getting yourself
killed? Listen here," he said, leaning forward, getting intense. His elbow
slipped off his knee; he caught himself just before hitting his teeth on the
bottle. Hm, drunker than he thought. Good; finally. "If you face off with
Merle or Turley, they'll kill you where you stand. Where's the sense in that?
People'll say nice things at your funeral, but inside they'll be thinking, What
an idiot that Tommy Leaver was. And a month later, they won't remember your
name."

"You're right. Abs'lutely right." He hauled himself up
and started for the door.

"Where you going?"

"Gotta piss."

"I'll go with you."

A fog had rolled in sometime; everything looked white and ghostly,
not real. In the alley behind Main Street, they relieved themselves against the
brick wall of the jailhouse. "Still," said Tom, "I got to do
something. This thing with the snakes, thass the last straw. That boy coulda
died. And if it hadn't been him it woulda been Cady. That's murder, thass what
that is."

"Can't you—"

"I been sending wires and letters to the U.S. Marshal's for a
month. They say they'll send somebody, but they don't."

They finished their business and wandered back around to the
front. "Quiet tonight," Jesse observed. He could hear soft piano
music coming from the Rogue, though, and that big, aching hole opened up in his
chest again. God, lonesomeness hurt like hell. If he felt this bad, he wasn't
that drunk after all.

Tom was, though. It hit him all of a sudden— must've been the
fresh air. He wheeled around to go back in his office and almost fell off the
boardwalk. Jesse had to catch him. Their arms got tangled up, and they went
crashing against the side of the building. "Shh," the sheriff hissed,
missing his lips with his index finger and almost poking his eye out.
"Shh—shh! Don't let 'em see me."

"Who?"

"Folks. I'm the sher'ff." He collapsed in hoarse,
wheezing gales of laughter.

Jesse got him into his old cell and settled him down on the cot.
"You okay? Maybe you had enough."

Tom took a swallow from his bottle, shuddered, and spat it out on
the floor. "Aw, no," he mourned, eyeing the mess he'd made. "Now
I gotta clean that up."

"I'll do it."

"You will?"

"Sure."

"You're the best, Mr. Gault."

"J-"

"Jesse. Been meaning to tell you," he slurred,
stretching out on his back. "That day I asked you to help me? Outa line.
Desp'rate. Wit's end. You... you're a stranger, could be gone tomorrow. Not
your fight," he mumbled, eyes closed. "Gonna do something. Dunno what
yet. Something..." He passed out with his mouth open.

Jesse found a blanket and covered him up, pulled his boots off for
him. Lying there snoring, he looked like an overgrown boy with his wispy beard
and pale, freckled cheeks. What could a man who looked like that do against
Merle Wylie? Jesse had a powerful urge to save him. The only trouble with that
was, Sheriff Lily Leaver was probably a better shot and a faster draw than he
was.

"Shit," he mumbled, weaving his way out of Tom's cell
and back into his to get the whiskey. "What the hell am I gonna do?"
he asked the bottle. No answer. "Gak." Booze tasted like kerosene to
him now, but he slugged some more down anyway.

He wandered outside. The thick, swirling fog reminded him of the
inside of his own head. Pretty soon he was weaving down Main Street, pulled by
the high, sad notes of Chico's piano. Not many folks out tonight, and the few
that were got out of his way fast, he noticed vaguely. Rogue's Tavern came up
on him all at once, looming out of the mist like a ship in a gray harbor.
Yellow light from the windows looked warm and friendly and inviting. He
quickened his stride—which was why he tripped on the step to the sidewalk and
smacked his knee on the edge. It didn't hurt, because he was pretty numb by
now, but afterward he walked with a limp.

He stopped at the swinging doors and hung on them, peering inside.
Hardly anybody here. Chico finished a song, and the sound of Cady's voice, low
and sweet, saying, "You're busted, Curly," was another kind of music
in the smoky hush. Right about then, it hit Jesse that he loved her. He really
loved her.

Welp, no time like the present to tell her. In his eagerness, he
shoved the doors open a little too hard. They smashed back against the walls,
crash.
Everybody in the bar jumped, and Levi dropped the glass he was drying.
"Miss Cady McGill," Jesse said purposefully, weaving toward the
blackjack table. Curly Boggs and a couple of the Witter ranch boys shot out of
their chairs like Cady had dealt them all rattle- snakes. The closer he came,
the farther they backed up. What the hell? By the time he got to her, stood
swaying in front of her, they were all gone. Vanished, disappeared. Maybe he'd
imagined them?

"McGill," he repeated hoarsely—too many cigarettes, too
much kerosene. But he could still see straight, and she looked good. A sight
for sore eyes. For a little thing, she sure had a lot of hair. Piled up all
neat and shiny on top of her pretty head. She had a gold dress on tonight,
mmmmm, sexy as hell, with long sleeves but no shoulders. How did it do that? He
couldn't tell; he was distracted by the hint of a wing, or maybe a beak, in her
cleavage.

He scowled. He'd tried to like that bird, God knew he had, but he
couldn't. It irritated him. He hoped her sailor boy was feeding the fish at the
bottom of some ocean.

"Well, that's just great. Thank you very, very much."

"Don't mention it." He smiled at her, then noticed she
wasn't smiling back. "What'd I do?"

"Damn you, Jesse Gault." She came out from behind the
blackjack table with her hands on her hips. The term "wet hen" drifted
through the haze of his mind. "First you won't lift one selfish little
finger to help me, and now you drive away what few customers I've got left. Are
you sure you don't work for Wylie? You might as well!" She was steaming,
mad as a bull; he'd have let her alone and waited till she cooled off, except
for one thing. She kept blinking because she had tears in her eyes. That just
did him in.

"Aw, Cady girl. C'mere, honey—"

"Don't call me Cady girl, and don't you touch me." When
she pushed him in the chest, he fell over the chair behind him and landed
butt-first on a table. Cady's brown eyes went wide. "You're
drunk."

"No, I'm not." To prove it, he got up and came toward
her again. "Got something to tell you."

"What? You're going to go down to Wylie's right now and tell
him to stop?"

"No, this is something—"

"Then I don't want to hear it. I want you out of my place.
Why won't you go?" The tears started again.

"Aw, Cady, will you just let me talk?"

"No. Out, Jesse.
Out.
Levi, make him go," she
pleaded, swishing out of his reach in a whirl of gold skirts and rhinestone
jewelry. He started to go after her, but he stumbled over another damn chair.
He sat down in it hard and watched her stalk off, high heels clacking, bustle
sashaying.

"Shit," he sighed mournfully. Levi appeared out of
nowhere, holding out a glass of vanilla soda. Jesse shuddered away from it, his
insides quivering. "Say something good, Levi. Gimme some o' that Buddhist
wisdom."

The bartender sucked in his cheeks, thinking. "Want nothing.
Be nothing. Go nowhere."

Jesse peered at him, bleary-eyed. "That's it?"

Levi shrugged. "What you expect on short notice?"

Cady couldn't sleep. Nothing new there: ever since she'd kicked
Jesse out of her bed, she'd slept badly. Tonight, though, she couldn't even
keep her eyes closed.

Everything was a mess, her whole life, and everything she didn't
want to happen had happened. She tossed the covers off, pulled them back up,
threw them off again, thinking about her sorry history with men. Was it her
fault? Something she was doing? She'd been so proud of herself lately. She
hadn't been in love, meaning in trouble, for years. Men: trouble. She gave Glen
that brilliant piece of advice all the time, and now look at her. Ha ha.
Another one of life's hilarious jokes on her.

Had she suffered like this when Jamie left her? It was getting
hard to remember, but she didn't think so. She definitely hadn't when the
Monterey schoolteacher's wife turned up. Really, only Mr. Shlegel's death had
hurt this bad, and that had been a clean, clear ache, just ordinary grief over
losing somebody she'd dearly loved. But this thing with Jesse Gault was worse,
and that made no sense at all. How had it happened? He was a hired killer!
She'd known him for less than a month!

Oh, she'd gone over it a hundred times, there was no point in
telling herself again how completely impossible he was. Anyway, she'd managed
to get over the hired killer part pretty easily, hadn't she? That had stopped
bothering her, sort of, a long time ago. But this new wrinkle—the fact that he
wouldn't do anything about Wylie even after what happened to Ham—would not go
away. She couldn't set it aside, let Jesse be her lover again and pretend
nothing was wrong. It eliminated him. She'd been stupid in the past about who she
gave herself to, but this was a flaw in a man even she couldn't overlook.

Too bad it had to show up in the one man she wanted for her own,
for life. She'd really done it this time.

The next morning, red-eyed and exhausted, she paid a visit to Ham.
He still looked a little gray around the gills, as Levi put it, but his spirits
were high and he was itching to get back to his busy, little-boy life. "I
get to get out o' bed today," he chattered, "Doc say so. Hey, Cady,
lookit what Mr. Gault give me." He pulled a bullet from a little cloth
pouch in his pajama pocket. A bullet!
Let this be a lesson to you,
Cady
chided herself.
You're in love with a man who gives out bullets to sick
children.

Lia Chang came in. Cady kissed Ham and gave up her place by the
bed so Lia could give him his lunch, a bowl of ginseng and lotus seed soup—to
improve circulation and reduce internal heat, Lia claimed. Ham ate it, which
Cady decided must mean he really liked his father's new girlfriend.

And how did she feel about
that?
Jealous? Resentful?
Abandoned? Standing beside Lia, watching Ham dutifully open his mouth and
swallow the soup she spooned into it, Cady had to admit she felt all three.
She'd gotten used to thinking of him as the next best thing to her very own
child. She loved him so much; when he'd almost died, she had honestly and truly
wanted to trade places—save him with her own life. Now, though, just as much,
she wanted him to have his own happy, loving family. A real mother, who could
look after him and take care of him all day, every day, not just in her spare
time. She sighed, sending him a gentle smile over Lia's shoulder. She guessed
she had the best kind of love for Ham. She loved him enough to give him up.

"Lookin' peaked," Levi pronounced as she was leaving.
"You feel all right?"

"Fine. I'm not sick, if that's what you mean."

He scrutinized her, squinting his eyes to see her better—Levi
needed glasses. With anybody else she'd have taken offense or been embarrassed
or tried to cover up. But Levi, her best friend, never judged or criticized, so
there was never any point in getting defensive. "Saw Mr. Gault this
mornin'," he mentioned. "He look even worse than you."

"I'm not surprised," she said with a sniff, as if she
didn't care. "I expect he's lying in some alley right now, holding his
head."

"Nope. Saw him walkin' outa town."

"Well, he can keep going for all I care."

Levi smiled sweetly. "You still mad at him."

His placidity needled her. "Why aren't
you
mad at him?
That's what I can't figure out. It was your son who almost died," she
pointed out, but she felt hopeless and silly even as she said it. "I
thought—everybody thought Jesse was becoming a friend, somebody we could trust.
And now this." Levi just kept smiling. "Don't you think it puts him
in a new light? Don't you think it shows what he really is?"

"Could be. But what if he trying to go straight?"

"What?"

"What if he through with killin'. What if he trying to get
shut o' that life."

She blinked at him. "Oh, Levi," she breathed. "Do
you think that's it?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Might be. He never seem like a
killer to me much. Some, but not much." He rubbed the side of his nose
with his index finger, squinting again. "Maybe he tryin' to change for
you."

"For me." She sighed it, thunderstruck.

She left Levi's in a daze. It was Friday; by rote, she walked over
to Nestor's and rented her usual buggy and mare. All the way out to River Farm,
she thought about Levi's theory. Could it be true? Was Jesse trying to give up
gunfighting for her? It scared her, how much she wanted to believe it.

But if it was true, why hadn't he just said so? Because he was too
proud? Oh, the things she'd said to him, the names she'd called him! She wanted
to shrivel up in a ball when she thought of how mean she'd been to him. And
last night he'd gotten drunk on account of her—she saw it clearly now. She had wounded
him to the quick. He wasn't even that much of a drinking man, and because of
her he'd drunk himself silly. Fool! She could've been helping him, encouraging
him to stay on the straight and narrow, and what had she done? Chided him for
being selfish. Taunted him. Urged him to take bloodthirsty revenge on an enemy
of
hers,
not even
his.

"Oh, Jess, I'm sorry," she said out loud, "I'm so
sorry! If I could see you now, I'd tell you." She thought of turning the
buggy around and looking for him in town, but Levi said he'd gone for a walk.
To try to get over the hateful things she'd said to him, she didn't doubt. Her
skin crawled. She was so ashamed.

She heard a noise, a gunshot, just as she was guiding the gray
mare through the worn stone gateposts to River Farm. "Whoa, horse,"
she said softly, pulling on the reins. They stopped. She listened. More shots.

Somebody hunting? This far from town? It sounded like a pistol,
though, not a rifle. That probably meant one thing: somebody was having a high
old time shooting out the last few panes of window glass in Le Coeur au Coquin.

"Oh, no, you're not," Cady vowed, smacking the mare's
rump with the reins and making her jump. "Not if I have anything to say
about it."

She slowed down before the house came into view, though. Guns made
her nervous. Jumping down, she tied the reins to a tree branch and crept around
the bend in the carriageway on foot.

The house appeared, as ramshackle as ever, and as beautiful to
her. The shots were coming from the back, toward the orchard, in intermittent
bursts: six shots, silence; six shots, silence. Not a window breaker, then. A
target shooter.

She still didn't like it. Wasn't this private property? Anyway, in
her heart, River Farm was hers, and she didn't like the idea of people with
guns traipsing over it. Picking up her skirts, she started down the stony path
around the house..

****

Jesse had been a tad optimistic. He'd brought a sack full of beer
bottles, seven of them, but one would've been enough. No, more than enough.
What he should've brought was the broad side of a barn.

"Shit," he cursed for the sixty-sixth time, once after
each bullet that flew above, below, to the right, or to the left of the goddamn
bottle on the fence post. He'd never been any good at this, but you'd think
one
bullet would've hit the goddamn target by now, if only accidentally. His
hands were steady, so was it something with his eyesight? Damned if he knew.
Some brain path wasn't working right, that's all he could figure.

The damn gun was heating up again, burning his fingers. He slid
his last six rounds into the chambers and slapped the cylinder closed. This was
it. He braced his legs and took aim, closing one eye and sighting down the barrel
with the other.
Bam.
Nothing.
Bam.
Nothing. He changed his
stance, changed eyes.
Bam.
Nothing.
Bam.
Nothing. He held the gun
with both hands and didn't close either eye.
Bam.
Nothing.
"Shit." He closed both eyes.
Bam.

Whap.

"Ow!"

He whipped around, holding the back of his neck. He got a fast
look at Cady's wide-eyed, furious face just before she slugged him again with
her string bag,
whap,
right in the mouth. "Ow, damn it—Cady, I can
explain—"

Whap.
"Okay, start."

He danced away, shielding his face with his arms, and she hit him
in the chest as hard as she could.
"Ow.
What's in there,
rocks?"

"You're not a gunfighter at all!"

"Okay, I'm not."

"Who the hell are you, then? What's your name? It's not even
Gault, is it?"

"No, it's Vaughn."

Whap
on the chin. "Liar! You damn lying son of a—"

"I didn't lie about the Jesse part," he pointed out,
backing up.
Whap. "Ow!
Damn it, Cady, would you cut that out?"

She took one last swing, a real roundhouse that, luckily, missed
completely. Her momentum took her around in a full circle, and her purse went
sailing off into the weeds. She collapsed on the stone wall, mumbling vicious
curses, and dropped her head in her hands.

Jesse's heart rate finally slowed down. He holstered the empty
six-gun and, out of habit, checked the beer bottle. Gone—shattered. Wonderful.
He was a crack shot with his eyes closed.

Time passed. Cady never moved, except to clench and unclench her
fingers in her hair every once in a while. He kept thinking she'd start the
conversational ball rolling soon, but she just sat there. Disgusted or defeated,
it was hard to tell which. Probably both. He went toward her a step. She'd
dropped her weapon, but he still felt wary. "Cady, honey?"

"Don't talk to me."

"That's silly. We have to talk."

More time passed. Finally she lifted her head and clamped her
hands on her knees. He thanked God she wasn't crying. "All right, then.
Explain yourself," she commanded, dry-eyed and grim.

Uh-oh. Maybe not talking wasn't such a bad idea after all.
"What do you want to know?" he hedged.

"Who's Gault?"

"Uh..."

"No, I know who he is—
a real
gunfighter.
Where's
Gault?"

"Aha." He clasped his hands under his chin and rocked
back on his heels, thinking, thinking. "Where's Gault," he echoed
philosophically, rhetorically. "An excellent question. Where could Gault
be? Since I'm not Gault, and yet there is a Gault, or there was one at one
time, where could the real Gault have gone? That's the question. And an
interesting question it is, and very much to the point." Cady's bleak stare
held a mix of disbelief and distaste, and never wavered. "The problem with
that particular question," he plowed on, "is that I'm not at liberty
to answer it."

"You're not at liberty to answer it." She said that
slowly, distinctly, so the full idiocy of it wouldn't be lost on anyone.
"And why is that?"

"Why is that! Another good question." Levi would be good
at this; he'd give some circular Buddhist answer that sounded really good, and
Cady wouldn't realize it didn't make a lick of sense until days later. "I
gave my word," Jesse said without thinking. It slipped out: the truth. How
unusual.

She blew air out of her mouth, a popping sound of utter disgust.
"Well, isn't that convenient."

She didn't believe him! Now, that rankled. The first time he'd
ever told her the truth, and she didn't believe it. "I did," he
insisted, "I swore a solemn oath."

"To Gault?"

Touchy territory. Lamely, he reverted to "I'm not at liberty
to say."

More disgusted air-blowing. She stood up. "The newspaper said
Gault got wounded in the hand in Oakland. His gun hand. Is that when you
decided to use him—be him? Well, is it?"

"Yes, but—"

"And you've been extorting money out of innocent people ever
since?"

"Innocent!" No, that was wrong. Too late, he corrected
it. "Extorting!"

"What a piece of work you are, Mr.
Vaughn."
Her
lips curled with contempt, and Jesse felt cold all over, like she'd ducked him
in a tub of ice. "What I can't figure out is why you're still here. You've
got everybody's money by now, so what's keeping you in Paradise?"

"You." Oh, and also the fact that he didn't have any
money.