1
Septemus Ryan woke up
at dawn. He didn’t know where he was. He rolled over on the bed and
looked in the gray morning light at his nephew asleep and snoring
in the bed across from him. Close by roosters crowed and dogs
barked. A milk wagon or a water wagon or a freight wagon jangled by
in the street below. He was hot from the heat, which was already in
the eighties, and also hot from his hangover. He even felt a little
feverish. He’d had several hard years drinking, ever since the
death of Clarice, and the drinking was taking its toll. Bloody
stools, sometimes frighteningly bloody ones, from hemorrhoids that
liquor only inflamed. Dry heaves in the morning sometimes, sticking
his finger down his throat till the vomit came up in a hot orange
gush that had a recoil like a hunting rifle. And disorientation.
His employees had long ago started making jokes about his drinking,
winking and smiling to each other and even shaking their heads in
pity. Poor sonofabitch. Daughter’s dead and he can’t get over it.
These days he wanted whores. He wanted them even though much of the
time he was too drunk to do anything with them. He just got kind of
crazy sometimes. He was always paying bills submitted to him by
angry madames. Come back here and try that shit again and you god
damn see what happens. He never hurt the girls. He just destroyed
the rooms he was in and then usually broke down bawling. He had no
idea what this was all about. He didn’t care, either.
He got out of bed.
James started to wake up.
“You go back to sleep
now,” Ryan said. “You hear me?”
But James didn’t need
convincing. Between the early hour and his hangover, James had
barely been conscious when he’d glanced up. He fell back asleep,
snoring wetly.
Ryan went down the
hall to the bathroom. He filled the basin with clean tepid water
that he poured from the pitcher. He washed his face and then shaved
with a straight razor, getting all lathered up, and then he washed
his neck and his armpits and dropped his trousers and washed his
balls and his butt. He took water and a comb and got his hair to
lie a certain parted way and then he was satisfied. He was a
handsome man and he knew it and that was his vanity, so even on a
morning such as this he wanted to look his best.
Back in the room, he
put on a clean white shirt and a nice light jacket. He looked over
at James only once. He smiled to himself. James would always
remember last night. His first girl and most likely his first
drunk. He didn’t want James to be a woman and a woman was exactly
what his sister was turning her son into.
The last thing he did
was pick up the Winchester. Then he was ready. He left the
room.
The hotel he sought
was down by the tracks. The back door was flanked by garbage cans.
The garbage stank, gagging sweetly like a corpse left in a hot room
too long.
People weren’t up and
around yet. It was scarcely five a.m. Another half hour and then
they’d be about their tasks.
He went up three
flights of stairs to the top floor and then he went in through the
fire door and halfway down the hall to room 307.
He glanced left,
glanced right. Seeing nobody, he rapped on the door with one
knuckle.
“God damn fucking
sonofabitch,” a male voice said from the other side of the door.
“Who the hell is it?”
A muzzy female voice
muttered something Ryan didn’t understand.
Ryan rapped again.
One knuckle.
“You’re gonna be one
sorry pecker when I get there, let me tell you,” Carlyle
said.
Ryan could hear
covers being thrown back. Even in weather like this, some people
liked covering up. He could hear Carlyle pulling his pants on.
Carlyle continued to swear. The woman said nothing. Hopefully she’d
gone back to sleep.
Carlyle opened the
door and Ryan put the muzzle of his Winchester right in Carlyle’s
face.
Ryan saw that behind
Carlyle the woman was still sleeping.
He got Carlyle out
into the hall. The man wore pants. No socks. No shirt. He had a lot
of gray chest hair and little fleshy titties like a young
girl.
Ryan said, “Walk
downstairs now, Carlyle. There’s a buggy and you’re going to get
into it.”
“You got the wrong
man, mister,” Carlyle said. It was easy to see how scared he was.
It was almost disgusting to see. You’d think a man who had played a
part in the death of an innocent young girl wouldn’t be scared of
anything.
Ryan said,
“Move.”
“Hey, listen,”
Carlyle said. “You got the wrong man. Honest.”
Ryan slammed the
barrel across the back of Carlye’s head.
Carlyle, who appeared
to be just as hungover as Ryan, started crying.
Ryan said, “Move. You
understand?”
Carlyle, looking
confused and baffled and imploring, snuffled some snot up into his
sinuses and starting walking down the rubber runner leading to the
fire door, and down the stairs outside.
Ryan made Carlyle
take the reins of the top buggy. He held the Winchester on Carlyle
where passersby couldn’t see.
***
As they left town
they passed the morning’s first citizens, a black man washing down
horses, a Mexican throwing out fry grease, and a chubby priest in a
dusty black cassock sweeping off the steps of his church.
As they reached the
sheriff’s office, Carlyle started looking around for any sight of
Dodds or his deputies. But the squat adobe building with barred
windows on three sides appeared to have no one awake inside.
Carlyle looked as sad
as any man Ryan had ever seen.
They rode on out of
town.
“You ever have
children?”
“Huh-uh.”
“How come?”
“Whaddya mean how
come?”
“Most men have
kids.”
“Just never did is
all.”
“Ever married?”
“Nope.”
“How come?”
“What the hell you
askin’ me all these questions for?”
“We got a ways to go.
Just trying to make the time a little more tolerable.”
“You plannin’ to kill
me?”
“I don’t know
yet.”
“You should look at
your god damn eyes sometime, mister.”
“That’s enough for
now,” Ryan said. “Just keep your eyes on the road.”
The horse was a big
bay. Every ten yards or so he dropped big splashing green shit on
the road. It splattered all over his fetlocks. The smell made
things worse for Ryan. He shouldn’t have had so much to drink last
night. This morning was important.
When they got to the
timber land, Ryan had Carlyle pull the wagon over.
Ryan said, waving the
Winchester, “Get down.”
“Get down?”
“That’s what I said
isn’t it?”
“Why am I gettin’
down?”
“Because you’re going
for a walk.”
“You’re gonna kill
me, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know
yet.”
“You liar. You
liar.”
This time Ryan
smashed the butt of the Winchester into the back of Carlyle’s head.
A bloody hairy hole showed on the back of Carlyle’s head now.
“You sonofabitch,” he
said, but he got down. He held his head, trying to stop the blood,
but red kept pouring between his fingers.
Ryan dug in his
pocket and took out his handkerchief. “Here,” he said.
Carlyle took the
handkerchief and applied it to the back of his head. The white
cloth turned red almost instantly. Ryan must have hit him harder
than he’d thought.
“Move,” Ryan said
then.
“Where?”
“Into the woods. To
the river.”
“You
sonofabitch.”
But he started
walking.
“You remember the
dress she had on that day?” Ryan asked. The trees were spruce and
elm and maple. The shrubs were red bud and lilac and mock orange.
In the underbrush were fox and rabbit and gray squirrel. You could
smell the heat already. You could smell the dry dirt on the narrow
winding trail through the woods. Ryan could smell the sweat and the
piss on Carlyle. Ryan could smell the sleep still on himself.
***
After a time, them
moving faster now, Ryan said, “Calico.”
“Huh?”
“The dress she wore
that day. Calico.”
“Oh.”
“She’d only worn it
twice. It was her birthday dress.”
“Mister, look,
I-”
“You should’ve seen
how the bullets tore up the dress. You should have seen the
blood.”
“God damn, mister,
you got the wrong-”
“Stop. Right
here.”
“Mister, look-”
“I said stop.”
He jammed the
Winchester in Carlyle’s back.
They were in a
clearing. A doe stood on the edge of the long grass. Ryan could
smell thistle and thyme. The deer looked so sweet he wanted to go
up and hug her. Clarice at the zoo had always hugged the
deer.
Ryan said, “Turn
around.”
“Mister-”
“Turn around.”
Carlyle turned
around.
“You know I’m going
to kill you, don’t you?”
“Mister-”
“I’m going to
gut-shoot you. It’s going to take a long, long time to die.”
Carlyle started
crying. You could smell how he’d shit his pants just then. Just
standing there, just then, shit his pants.
“Mister,
please-”
“There’s no pleasure
in this for me. I want you to know that. I’m only doing what needs
to be done.”
“Jesus, mister, if
you’d just listen-”
Ryan put a big
sopping red hole in Carlyle’s stomach. There was the sound of the
gunfire and the scent of gunsmoke. Carlyle’s cry was a pitiful
thing. He fell to the ground. He was twitching pretty bad. It was
ugly to watch.
Ryan walked over and
stood next to him. Ryan looked down and said, “You should’ve seen
that calico dress, Carlyle. You should’ve seen it.”
Carlyle was sobbing.
Ryan could see every piece of beard stubble on Carlyle’s chin and
every whiskey and tobacco stain on his teeth. “Holy Mary, Mother of
God,” Carlyle was saying, praying out loud without any kind of
shame at all.
Ryan watched him for
a time. Stood there. Just watching. After a time the convulsions
started.
“Shit, mister, just
shoot me. Please. Jesus, please. Please.” The blood soaked into his
trousers now. You could see life fading in the blue eyes.
Fading.
“Please,” he said. “I
can’t take it no more. Please.”
Ryan lifted the
Winchester and pointed it directly at Carlyle’s face. He didn’t
have the taste for torture after all. He put the weapon right on
Carlyle’s nose. “You sure you want it this way?”
Carlyle was in so
much pain he couldn’t even talk. All he could do was nod. His lips
were already dry and white and chapped. “You should’ve seen what
that calico looked like,” Ryan said. Ryan shot him in the face. He
blew his nose off. All that remained was a ragged hole with blood
chugging out. Ryan stared until he couldn’t stand to stare any
longer.
A jay came and sat on
Carlyle’s forehead and pointed a delicate beak at the hole in the
dead man’s face and started tasting the blood. Already you could
see plump black ants coming up.
Ryan took one more
look at Carlyle then hefted his Winchester and left.