Lonesome Animals (27 page)

“Yesterday, I saw a man. Someone cooked him. Slow. While he was still living.”

The Birds quieted.

“He was a criminal, I guess. There's paper on him in two counties, though neither describes his crime. They just tell of some things he did. Stealing and fighting. Those aren't crimes unless someone else decides they are. The damned bigwigs steal every day. It's why we're in the fix we are, isn't it? And fighting? Taking every breath is a fight, isn't it boys? Can you recall one moment that wasn't a fight? Guns and fists are what the law doesn't like, but for some, all they have is guns and fists, and some, they're fighting things guns and fists can't even crease.”

He paused and looked at the silent group. Some cradled their beer glasses and others sat with their hands in their laps, gazing down.

“That man, he took it. His arms were hacked from his shoulders, then he was strung up like a beef and cooked and he kept alive. He could've picked dying. I've seen plenty do it when they recognize their clock leaking time. But he didn't do that; he kept alive.
Knowing nothing was left but cooking and dying anyway.” Strawl fired into the ceiling and a bolt of light shot through. He squeezed the trigger and let off another round and another luminous cord bisected the room. Strawl stood and the two rays crossed his torso.

The oldest Bird rose. He had greyed at the temples, though he was as smooth-skinned as a child and the only wrinkles he possessed, cornering each eye, made him appear wise and alert. They were a beautiful people, Strawl thought. His name was Raymond, and no one ever addressed him as Ray.

“We have done nothing,” he said.

“I'm not here to accuse.”

“You're not hunting a killer?”

“Are you killing?” Strawl put the gun barrel next to the man's temple.

Raymond drank from the whiskey bottle and handed it to a cousin or nephew, someone not young enough to be his son.

“Heard it was you,” he said to Strawl.

“I heard that, too,” Strawl said.

“That would mean you're chasing your tail.”

“And that isn't like me,” Strawl said.

“No,” Raymond said. “It's not.”

“Well, decorating bodies doesn't sound like you, either,” he said. He raised the pistol and swung it around the room. “You others. I don't know so well.”

The Indian now holding the whiskey bottle took a pull.

“Leave us,” he said.

Strawl shot the bottle from his hand. The bullet creased a cousin behind him who hit the wooden floor and howled, then grabbed his bleeding arm. Strawl watched the blood soak his shirtsleeve, then tick on the floor as it had from Jacob, like time itself leaking away. Strawl bent and looked over the prone man. “Fuck pain,” he said. “Fuck fear.” He laughed. “Fuck your sister.”

It was quiet. The wound was clean. “In and out,” Strawl said finally. “You'll lift a glass again with no trouble.”

“Killing us will do no good,” the one still holding the bottleneck said.

Strawl turned the gun on him.

“It might,” Strawl said. “Can't know for sure without going on and doing it.”

“The law will take you.”

“Law paid me for twenty years and all I did was kill and harass Indians. They'd be happy to have a few on the house.”

He set his beer glass on the table and watched it wobble, then steady. Condensation ringed the wood under it. He inhaled a breath and studied his hands until their tremors slowed. Bullet holes pocked the back wall, and through them seeped a fainter light, like stars in early dusk. Casings clacked on the floor under his chair legs. The Indians stared at him, many wide-eyed, looking for openings to exit or furniture to duck under.

“Goddamnit,” he said. This was nothing near what he'd intended.

He leveled his gaze at Raymond.

“We've been honest with one another, haven't we?” Strawl asked. “About the big things, I mean. You might have lied to keep from getting caught and I might have lied to catch you, but we never lied about what we were, any of us.” Strawl tipped a beer bottle at the family. “I put Henry there in the guardhouse six months once. I'm just guessing, you likely pulled a couple over on me, as well.” He paused.

“You have committed crimes, but most are justified by your ways. It's why I have not visited you.”

Raymond and the others waited for him to go on.

“I have summoned devils within me all my days, and they have heeded my call. So much so, that they arrive now without prompt
or cue and I have to beckon other devils to do them battle. I have spilled blood for no cause. I would like to be sorry for it, but for the most part I am not. It's a failing, I know.” He paused. “It has made me strong and feared and it has ground me to a nub.” He rested his eyes a moment. “But the things I have seen recently.” He stopped and drank. “I hunt a man who is a man but something else, too. As brave as the Taker of Sisters died, this man I seek has more to him. He had the power to make such a man die, yes, but also the will to watch and appreciate such an end. There is something beautiful in blood, a thing past the beauty of the flesh, or a flying bird, or a painting or a song, even past a god's grace,” Strawl said. “This man knows this thing. I will know what he knows. Then he can go ahead and take what he wants from me.”

“What if it is your own face you see?” Raymond asked.

“It will be,” Strawl said. “But it will be another's as well.”

“Maybe your monster is lonely.” The group laughed.

“Monsters are always alone,” Strawl said. “But never lonely.” He set his gun on the table and reloaded the cylinders, then held it up and spun the housing so the group of men could see it filled with rounds. He turned his back to it and the Indian men. “Here is my pistol. If you have done these things, you will kill me now, and I will die and many will be happy for me to be dead, but I will meet who it is that does these things and know him and be satisfied. Kill me, but only if you have killed the others.” Strawl sighed. “And if you have done these things and do not kill me now, then you are not a man nor even a dog, but a snake slinking into his hole.”

No one moved aside from Hurd, who ducked behind the bar for his scattergun.

They would kill him now, Strawl knew—he had neither the law nor the fear of the guilty to discourage them—but he would have his answer, nonetheless. And then perhaps death would be a relief, just a late Sunday morning with no chores and no church and no light
flooding the room, no conscience to pester you into rising when you rolled onto your side and make out daylight in the window glass and determine the time, and then, just as you prepare to swing your feet onto the cold floor, you remember it is Sunday and your muscles unloosen and your head returns to your feather pillow and your eyes close and your head darkens once more, and you feel lucky, blessed even, for ten minutes of sack. And it was better alone, with no one to share it with, no one to wake you and ask if you wanted her to begin the coffee, or to start the coffee without your asking and then begin breakfast for which you would be grateful thirty seconds after rising, but those minutes before, resent as much as if a day offence building stood before you.

The Bird clan whispered and smoked and mulled his offer. Minutes passed until the beer was gone and the cigars burned to stubs. The room emptied, two or three at a time nodding to the new barmaid on their path to the door, and with their departure, Strawl's fatigue returned. It was no relief being left alive and outside of it. Finally, only Raymond remained. He opened the cylinder and emptied Strawl's pistol of bullets and speared the burning end of his cigar in a tin ashtray.

“We have nothing to do with these killings,” he said.

“I'm out of fight, Raymond,” Strawl told him. “You should have seen them. The first had wings made of rib bone. And the last. Well, I told you about him. Both in their youth, still.”

“None of us are young,” Raymond replied. “Not even those just born.”

Strawl handed Raymond a fresh cigar and sat in silence as the man left the tavern. He drank a little more from the bottle of beer in front of him, but it was lukewarm and bitter and didn't slake his thirst. Raymond and his band had not killed anyone. Strawl did not hold with the notion that eyes revealed the soul. Faces were another matter. He trusted them not for what they revealed, but
for what they could not hide. Living animated each in a manner neither beard nor rouge could mask, and each differed in how it told of such living. Though Raymond had managed to maintain a lively wit, every muscle that wrapped his skull was tired. His skin draped over his face as loose as a serape. The narrative in him had ceased, and what remained was history severed from memory, no more alive than if read in a book. Killing was not in them any longer. They were simply witnesses that rumor and hearsay occasionally multiplied into more.

He'd failed.

He had no more suspects and a herd of red-assed police in a race to see which could take the most of his flesh the soonest. He realized he was tired and in want of sleep. He hoped Elijah had not dallied collecting the horses. It was a short ride to Conant Springs and the soft meadow that encircled it.

Strawl rose to square his bill. Hurd had left and the hired woman stood with her back to him, rinsing glasses. Her dark hair had been parted in the middle and tied with a beaded band. She stood in a familiar manner. The woman's face rose in the mirror then she turned to accept his money and he recognized it was Ida, his late wife and Elijah's mother. She counted his change, then let it sit on the blonde wooden slab.

“Alive,” Strawl said.

She nodded.

“Did the current save you?”

“No,” she said. “I was never in the river.”

Strawl put his hands to his face and rubbed his brow. “Did Elijah give you the money?”

“He has money?”

“He sold half the ranch. I wanted to know what he squandered the proceeds on.”

“He owns no ranch.”

“I gave him half of mine,” Strawl said. “After you died.”

“I have not seen him since I left you.”

“But he knows you are well.”

“He knows,” Ida said.

“Was living with me so awful?” Strawl asked.

“Yes,” she said. “For me.”

“Then why did you stay?”

“I didn't.”

“You couldn't have left without deceiving me, making me think you were dead?”

“No,” she said.

Strawl was quiet until she spoke again.

“I did not want to cause a mess in your house.”

“Generous of you,” Strawl said. He tapped the bar with his finger, rattling the coins and paper. “Though the funeral put me to some expense.”

Ida set down a dried glass, then lifted another and toweled the inside, her dark hand flattened against the glass.

“I never chased skirts. I never struck you. I never left you hungry.”

She ran some water and rinsed another glass under it.

“Well good luck to you,” Strawl said.

He collected his money and stepped from the bar into the bright light of day. It blinded him, and he squinted. Elijah sat on the bench in front of the tavern.

“Same number went in came out. Still no killer.”

“Nope,” Strawl said. “Ran into your mother, though.”

Elijah nodded.

“The money. Was it for her?”

Elijah shook his head.

“You knew she hadn't drowned.”

“I knew.”

“It would be a good reason. The money and her,” Strawl said.

“I know,” Elijah said. “But it wouldn't be my reason.”

“Maybe I could stand being deceived a little.”

“You've been deceived plenty.”

“That so?”

“It was Dot that smuggled Ida off the place. That was her part of the bargain.”

“Bargain?” Strawl asked.

“My end was to keep you from killing more Indians.”

“Seems to me you got the lighter duty.”

“Dot didn't know that.”

“But you did.”

“Yes.”

“For certain.”

“Yes.”

Strawl noticed the grin on the boy's face, a strange smile, one he recognized though its expression was now not familiar.

“Jacob was about four days dead. That would put his death the night before you came back to the ranch, wouldn't it?”

“It would,” Elijah said.

Strawl heard the meaty whack before he felt it. His knee bent in a manner it wasn't built for and he tipped clumsily onto his side. The pain was by now familiar: there was no beauty or wonder in it, only hurt, and he was not worthy of a glorious death or even a simple one after which people mourned, and rather than provoke him, the blow and the knowledge left him resigned. Another blow from the rifle butt to his injured ribs took the wind from him, and he imagined he was drowning, as he'd imagined Ida drowned. Then came another blow that cracked against his ankle and though it did the least damage it caused him the most pain, and he yelped like a wounded animal, enraged, finally, and once more.

E
lijah drove his feet into Baal's flanks and felt the air leave the animal. Outside of town he nudged the horse to a trot but Baal had never held that middling gait well, and, eventually, Elijah pressed his knees to the horse's withers and he smoothed into a lope. Ten miles later, he hobbled Baal near birch at the south bay of Owhi Lake. He hiked the basalt cliff above, halting at a serviceberry bush to load a handful into his shirt pockets. In his mouth the heavy skin bent and finally broke, and he tasted the sour juice and meat. He held one on his tongue a moment before swallowing and adding another. At the bluff's top, he studied the Nespelem's vague shape in the haze of dust and heat. The weather baked the country like summer still, but the aspen leaves had yellowed ; instead of flashing like coins in the wind and sun, they tore
from their branches and gathered in leeward depressions at the foot of the boulders strewn throughout the basin below him. He hunted the sky but saw nothing aside from two circling hawks. He watched them adjust their fanned tails in the quiet sky. A rising breeze elevated them, then broke, and they fell until boosted by another. Their wings barely beat the hot air, just tipped with and against it.