Ghost Medicine (8 page)

Rose followed me out into the bright, hot day. Tommy had one foot in his stirrup, about to launch himself up onto Arrow.

“You. Boy. You, black-haired boy with the boots on.”

He was up on Arrow now, and looked down at her.

“You chewing tobacco?”

Tom spit to answer. “It's been a real long time since I had any tobacco. Could you spare me some?”

Tom looked at me and kind of rolled his eyes. I was smiling, though. He pulled the can out of his back pocket and put a fresh wad into his mouth.

“Here.” He handed her the can.

Rose opened the can, smelled the tobacco, and messily put some into the side of her cheek. “I knew you boys was nice boys when I saw you come up. That's why I didn't shoot you.”

“Thanks for that,” Tom said as I got up onto Reno.

“And you. Tennis Shoes. You come back some time and catch one of my horses and I'll let you keep ‘em.”

“You mean that?”

“The both of you can,” Rose said, and spit, every bit as nicely and professionally as I had ever seen Tommy spit. She held the can up for Tommy, but he waved it away and Rose smiled and kept the tobacco.

We had the last of the strays back to the fence line. One more post had to be strung and Carl would be finished, too.

“Tommy, if she was about a hundred years younger, I think you'd be in love with that tobacco-chewing woman.”

“Yeah, Stotts. And I'd have to fight you to get her ‘cause of her horses.”

“You boys finished yet?” Carl called out.

“This is the last of ‘em,” his son said.

The next day when Gabe, Tom, and I went shooting started out innocently enough, I guess.

We met at the Foreman's house at 6, while the air of the morning held that dry summer coolness that promised scorching heat by noon. Carl was backing the old Ford F-150 into the hitch of a horse trailer when Gabe and I rode up.

“You want to give me a hand here, Troy?” he said. “Tom's just getting his butt out of bed. He'll be out in a minute.”

I lowered the hitch onto the receiver after Carl Buller stopped the pickup. Then he got out and came around to help with the rest of the hook-ups. He smelled like cigarettes and coffee and alcohol. And although there was never a time I can recall not seeing him drunk or on his way to it, Carl was one of those drinkers who still managed to get out of bed early every day and get his work done. I suppose he had his reasons. Tom's mother ran away from them when he was just a baby. I talked once or twice about mothers with Tom Buller, and it was probably the only thing we ever talked about that made him uncomfortable and quiet. I understood now what kept my friend from mouthing certain words, and I never for a moment believed I knew anyone in my life who was stronger or more admirable.

“Moving some horses today, Carl?”

“Benavidez bought a real pretty Walker for his wife. I'm going to go pick her up out past Leona this morning.”

I finished closing the bolt on the chain on my side of the hitch and wiped the rust from my hands onto the leg of my blue jeans.

“CB, I'm gonna use the reloader when we come back today.” Tom came out of the house, pushing his stringy black hair back with his right hand and then placing his hat down on his head to hold it there. “Gabe, can you come in here and help me grab some stuff?”

“If you're hungry, Gabriel, you boys can take whatever I got in the kitchen.”

“Thanks, Carl,” Gabriel said, and vanished behind the dark, slamming screen door.

Carl lit a cigarette and leaned against the gate of the Ford, looking at me. Then he looked over at Reno.

“Where you boys going to be shooting today?”

“Tom says we're going to ride down to that big south field ‘cause that little hill with the cross on it's a good enough backstop and there's no cows down there now.”

“Just make sure you don't let that Gabey blow his own head off. Benavidez wouldn't look kindly on me if that were to happen.”

“I don't exactly think he'd want to immediately adopt me, either,” I said, and Carl looked at me, smiling and wincing in the bitterness of his filterless smoke.

“Is Tom's horse around back?”

“You could get him. Take care.” And then he yelled to the shut screen door, “ ‘Bye, son!”

I could hear Tom and Gabe both shouting their good-byes from within the house as I walked around back to the wood-fenced stall where Arrow stayed during the warm-weather months. From the front of the house came the rattling clatter of the truck and trailer driving off toward the west.

Tom and Gabe came out the back door as I was cinching Arrow's saddle.

“Hey thanks, Stotts.” I don't think he ever called me Troy unless he was talking about me to someone else. “You got your gun?”

“Yeah. It's on Reno.”

Tom slung his saddlebag over Arrow and hooked it onto the saddle. He reached into his right back pocket, permanently branded with a faded moon-shaped stress mark where he carried a constant supply of smokeless tobacco and pulled out a black-and-green can of Kodiak. He took the can, label side up with the head of a bear on it, between the thumb and middle finger of his right hand and whipped it down four times, each shake making a cap-gun pop as his index finger snapped against the lid.

He pried the cap from the can and extracted a small wad of the wet black-brown dip and jammed it down into the lower right corner of his lip. He wiped his fingers off on the butt of his jeans.

“That's nasty stuff,” Gabriel said.

Tom held the can out in his left palm, the lid still off. “Want some, Gabe? Stotts?”

I don't know why, but I wanted to try that stuff so bad; all those times being with Tommy and watching him doing it. So I don't know why, but I just said, “Okay.”

And Gabe said, “No way!”

And Tommy laughed and said, “No way, Stottsy!”

But I took the can from Tom and, feeling like an expert from having watched him do it so many times, cornered a wad between my thumb and finger and only spilled a little bit before I got it down between my lips and teeth.

“The trick is”—and Tommy spit a big wet string down at his feet—”don't swallow it, or they say it'll make you sick, but that's never happened to me. And know when to shut up and just smile. That's one of the hidden benefits. It makes people shut up.” And he spit again before saying, “So let's go!”

Well, first of all it smelled pretty good, I thought. And it didn't taste bad, either, although it was powerfully minty and it kind of burned in my mouth. But then in about twenty seconds, as we were walking Arrow around toward the other horses, I all-of-a-sudden had to grab on to one of his stirrups just to make sure I wouldn't fall down. Everything suddenly seemed far away, including Tommy's laughter and his voice echoing dimly, “Pretty good buzz, huh, Stottsy?”

“Oh yeah.” And I spit, but not with the same seasoned and classy experience as a Tom Buller. I got it on my shoe.

Gabriel watched me, in shock and disgust, his mouth open and curled down.

And to think I'd actually seen Tommy Buller drive a car with this stuff in his mouth and not veer off into the lake. At least I knew I could count on Reno to navigate me safely.

We rode slowly south toward the field the Benavidez cattle pastured in during late spring, now picked fairly clean; the grass dried straw-blond. I disposed of my chew and washed out my mouth and spit. Then I took a long drink of water from my canteen. I was still undecided as to whether or not I liked it enough to try it again. Tommy kept his in for a long time, and could carry on conversations naturally so that you'd hardly notice he was chewing. Sometimes, because of the way he'd punctuate his speech with spitting, you'd swear he had it in his mouth even when he didn't.

“Give me your money,” Tom said, holding out his hand. We each gave him five dollars. It was our way of gambling on our shooting skills, although I believed at the outset that they'd both be better off just handing their money over to me and saving their bullets.

Tommy had brought along an assortment of targets: empty beer cans and plastic milk jugs. We never used bottles or glass for targets on Benavidez land. And none of our horses was gunshy, but as Tommy set up the targets atop rocks or downed trees on the hillside, I tied the three of them up in the shade of a big mushroom-shaped oak about a hundred yards away.

I walked back to our makeshift range, carrying a brick of five hundred rounds and my old Winchester bolt-action .22. My dad gave me the rifle when I was ten, and it was already about forty years old at that time. But it was real easy to take care of, and it shot with extreme accuracy.

Tom brought out his .40-caliber handgun, the magazine ejected and the slide latched back so we could all see it was unloaded. He reloaded his own ammo because bullets for that thing were expensive, while .22 rounds were practically free.

Gabriel didn't have his own gun. I doubted his parents knew he was with us. I had taken him shooting before, though, and he was a fair shot with my .22, even though he seemed afraid of guns. But I think Gabriel was more afraid of admitting he was scared to me and Tom than he was of shooting. Of course, living where we did meant that people pretty much had to have guns. I guess, for boys, having a gun was about the same as having a bicycle if we had lived in the suburbs. And Benavidez did try to push the issue on him, but I knew Gabriel had such an aversion to guns and the thought of hurting things, even though he'd tag along with me and Tom no matter what we wanted to do.

“Okay,” Tommy said, “ten shots at ten targets. After you shoot, you go up and set ‘em up again. First one to twenty-five wins the cash. Who wants to go first?”

“Not me,” Gabe said, to no one's surprise.

“You set ‘em up. Go ahead, Tom.”

Tom pushed ten of the stubby rounds into the magazine and slid it, with a click, up into the handle of his gun. He pressed down on the catch and released the slide forward. He raised the gun with both hands and cocked his head back slightly. “Okay, I'm going across left to right.”

I was watching Tommy and the target arrangement, but when he pulled off the first round, I could see Gabriel jerk, startled, out of the corner of my eye. Maybe I did, too. Even out here in the open field, that gun of Tom's was painfully loud.

He missed the first shot.

“Why don't you just give me the cash now?”

“You'll get a chance with that peashooter, Stotts.”

He cleanly hit the next seven in a row, but missed the last two targets.

“I'm up. Let's see how you did.” And we all walked up the hill to replace the targets and count up the score.

It really was kind of unfair, my using a rifle against Tommy's handgun, but he didn't complain, so after I hit all ten targets in my first round I offered, “Let's trade guns for round two, okay?”

“Fair enough,” Tom said.

“Can I try your gun?” Gabe asked Tommy, who widened his eyes and said, “Sure, if you really want to.”

We walked back down to our shooting place and Tommy handed Gabe an empty magazine and a box of reloads.

“Just push in ten of ‘em like you seen me do,” Tom instructed. Tom pulled the slide back on the .40 and latched it, then handed it to Gabe, who inserted the magazine.

“Okay, now. When you release the slide, there'll be one in the chamber, so be careful ‘cause it won't stop shooting till it's empty. Aim it just like a rifle, only your arm's the stock.” And Tom spit down at his boots.

We both stood back, behind Gabriel, watching him take aim at the first target. He pulled the trigger, and a good five seconds before we realized it, all of these things happened at once: The first target, a beer can, spun up in the air, whirling like a propeller blade and disappearing into the brush behind it. As the gun kicked back in Gabriel's hand he said, “Ow!” and pulled his hand in toward his chest. Gabriel let go of the gun and it flipped over the back of his hand. When the gun hit the ground, it discharged a second time, this time sending a bullet cutting through the air just between Tommy and me. We were standing just about eighteen inches apart.

I looked at Tommy, slack jawed, examining him up and down to see if there was any blood. I'm sure Tommy was looking for the same thing on me. Neither of us said anything, we just stared at each other, each thinking, I'm certain, about how unlucky we almost were.

“I hit it!” Gabe was joyous. Then he realized what had happened with the gun, no longer in his startled hand.

“You know, Gabey,” Tom began, “we always promised to be lifelong friends, but I wasn't planning on me being barely seventeen when that came to an end.”

“I can't exactly say sixteen is an old man, either,” I said, “so why don't you just stick to the .22, bud?”

Tommy carefully picked the gun out from the weeds at Gabe's feet. “You didn't by any chance bring a couple baseballs with you, Gabey?” Tommy asked. “You'd take us for sure.”

Gabriel could throw a baseball faster and straighter than anyone I'd ever seen.

We all laughed. I know Gabe felt horrible, and things didn't get any better for him when Tommy added, “And by the way, you only have eight shots left, Gabey.”

“No fair!” Gabe said, but, after almost killing us, there was no way we'd let his protest amount to anything.

Gabe ended up scoring five on the first round. I'm sure his nerves got the better of him, because I'd seen him do better with my rifle plenty of times. Tommy's handgun was a little heavy and difficult for me to aim, and as I hefted it, I kind of got a sense that it was hungry to get a person.

Despite using the pistol, I took nine targets in my second round, so it looked to all of us that I'd be the winner again today.

“It's not over yet, Stotts,” Tommy said. “Let's count ‘em up.”

And we all went up to reset the targets. That first beer can was getting the worst of it; its top was nearly shorn off. Once again it had been knocked behind the log on which it had rested, into the cover of dried grass.

“There it is,” Tommy said, and stepped over the log while Gabe and I looked along our range at the other fallen targets.

That's when Tom Buller kneeled down right on top of one of the biggest rattlesnakes I'd ever seen.

The thing I hate most about rattlers is how whenever you're looking for one, walking with that feeling that it's around and trying to be careful to see it before it sees you, you never see one. And then one day you're walking along, minding your own business, thinking about something that bothers you, admiring the beautiful day, thinking about a girl, and next thing you know you're calling yourself every variation of stupid for nearly stepping right on one.

Tom let out a stifled scream and jumped back, but it was too late. The big snake whipped back around and bit Tommy through his pants, just below his right knee.

“Dammit!” And Tommy grabbed at his leg tightly with both hands and rolled onto his side.

The snake, fat and black, slid off through the grass, down the length of our target range. I chased after it. Our guns were left behind, resting at the spot where we'd been firing from, but I found a branch from an oak tree and began clubbing the snake. I hit it squarely in the center of its back and it suddenly bent, stiffly, at a right angle, and turned back toward me. His back was broken, he would die for sure, but not soon enough. I drove his head down into the ground with the end of the branch and his body wriggled and twisted in protest. I stepped down on his head with my left foot and pulled the Dawson from my back pocket, opening it with the thumb of my right hand. The snake twisted violently as I cut the head clean from the body, and then, as blood vomited in thick purple clots from the wound, the decapitated rattler crawled off a few more feet into the weeds.