A Congregation of Jackals Page 5

  Godfrey and I were locked in jail while the doctors worked on the manager. They saved him, though he was slower than he was before the injury and walked always veering to the left. We did our time in jail and, in a couple of months, Godfrey and I were run out of town, two outlaws even though we weren’t even men yet. I won’t write any more about my brother, I just wanted you to see how I got the anger in me when I was young.

  Sorry about that smudge, the pen got stuck and I shook it too hard, though mostly it works real fine—it’s the one you gave me for our tenth anniversary.

  I tried being a cowboy for a while. I mentioned this to you once when I first started courting you, but I just didn’t get along too well with those fellows, though I liked the animals. When the cowboys weren’t riding or corraling beeves, they played horseshoes and cards and I was never much for games. Or they talked about whores and that was talk I didn’t at all like hearing and threw more than a couple of fists over stuff that was said. A cowboy who fights gets his pay withheld an extra week, and the one who started it loses half his pay, and because I was unliked, I was always blamed for starting it whether I did or not. The last time I rode beeves across four states I got into so many brawls that I didn’t get any pay at all. It was on this last ride that I met a guy named J.

  J was a huge man nearly six and a half feet tall and with fists like two hams. J’s pa saw the size of him and from an early age raised him to be a pugilist. Boxing was illegal in the state he came from, so he went with his brothers and pa to New Orleans, where people pay to see fights in a ring. J was so big it took some time to find an opponent that wouldn’t make people think of David and Goliath when they were paired up together. The first fellow he fought was a swarmer six inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter. J took the fellow’s blows on his arms and they didn’t hurt him any. When the man got tired, J threw a big one that cracked the man’s nose and eye socket and the poor guy went into shock and died right there. J didn’t want to box again after that, but his pa insisted. A couple more times J stood in the ring and took punches, but he never threw any himself other than to back the other guy off.

  Pretty soon his pa gave up on him and went home. J didn’t go with him. He took to drinking and working in stables for a couple of years and, eventually, doing some work as a vaquero. The first year I knew him I don’t know that I ever saw him sober, but he was a quiet drunk and not at all mean to animals or women the way the cowboys were, so I rode near him and pitched tent with him. Killing that fellow in the ring had made him quiet but he didn’t blubber on like some men did about things that can’t be changed.

  We got jobs with the railroad—cutting trees and swinging sledgehammers and putting down ties for the tracks. We tried to get in with the Oryntals because they never said anything we could understand and I wouldn’t get riled listening to them go on, but they wouldn’t have us in with them, so we worked with white folks and I got into brawls. The last time I mixed it up with a fellow in the rail gang some others jumped in and so J got involved and broke nine of some fellow’s ribs with a sledgehammer. We were fired from the outfit and we never got our pay. I went to the foreman that night with J and we broke his hands, but still we didn’t get it. Negroes and Oryntals were doing better than us. I’m not sure if that’s how you spell Oryntals.

  I was nineteen. We were in Alabama and didn’t know where our next meal was coming from. It was getting cold at night and I said we should rob a bank and J said he thought it was a good idea and better than starving or begging. I had two guns I had taken from a cowboy who had threatened to shoot me when I was sleeping, so we had the gear to do it. We didn’t plan to shoot any people, just throw a scare into them, do some yelling if we had to, grab the money and get out.

  The first bank we robbed, that is exactly what happened. We walked to a small town, figuring the banks there wouldn’t have any armed guards like the ones in Mobile did. We covered our faces with scarves and went into the bank, J got the door, the other fellow with us menaced the customers and I went up to the teller and told him what to do.

  Oswell wondered if it would be obvious to his wife who “the other fellow” was. He supposed it did not matter as long as Godfrey’s name was not written out explicitly in a way that would legally connect him to the crimes.

  He pressed the iridium tip to the top of the fourth page and continued scratching away layers.

  J and the other fellow and I were calm and easy the whole time we were in there. We left that Podunk bank with more money than we had ever looked at in our entire lives, even though it was not really very much. We camped out in the wastelands between towns because they were looking for us. It was cold but we didn’t feel it. A couple of days later we went to another town, bought horses and clothes and more guns and ate three dinners each we were so hungry.

  For the first time in my life, I was proud of something I’d done. I imagine that seems strange to you, but all my life I felt like a fellow was digging his spurs into my sides and for once I felt like I’d thrown him from the saddle.

  We robbed small banks for t

  “That there’s bleedin’ through the paper. It’s gettin’ on the tablecloth,” the colored woman said to Oswell.

  He raised his fountain pen and looked down; he was on the fourth page, which had six more beneath it; the ink was not bleeding through.

  “No. That one there,” the woman said, pointing to the second page he had written, drying to his left. The blot of ink from when the pen had stuck was soaking through onto the lace tablecloth.

  “I’m sorry ma’am.” Oswell lifted the paper and set it upon the ground.

  “Sorry don’t get it clean. Mr. Randolph don’t care none about no ‘pology and it don’t get out no ink stain.”

  “My name is Oswell Danford. Tell Mr. Randolph I did it. If I’ve ruined the tablecloth, I’ll pay for it.”

  The two adolescents at the table, who were playing dice at the time, looked over.

  “Make him pay,” the boy said.

  “It cost fifty cents,” his sister added.

  “No it don’t—it’s two dollars.”

  The woman looked at her kids and eyed them angrily.

  “You get on back to your dice and keep quiet,” she said. “You get a wart for each fib you tell and don’t neither of you know what this thing cost.” She looked back at Oswell and said, “Tomorry I ask Mr. Randolph what to do. Maybe he goin’ to tell us to cut it up for napkins and you won’t have to pay nothin’ for it.”

  “Thank you. What’s your name?”

  “Addy.”

  “Thank you, Addy.”

  “I know it was a accident and you a nice man.”

  Oswell was glad that she could not read the papers she had glanced at.

  The woman walked back to her kids; Oswell yawned. He wanted to finish the letter, but he had a lot more to write. He figured that he had better try to get some sleep while he could. With his cramped fingers, he twisted the cap back onto his fountain pen and replaced the enameled tool in the felt bedding of the wooden case. He yawned once more while he waited for the ink to dry, watching Addy’s kids throw ivory dice and do computations with their little fingers.

  Chapter Eight

  The Lord’s Coydogs

  Beatrice Jeffries walked across the grass toward Jim’s home, a small A-frame at the southwestern limit of Trailspur, Montana Territory. Her titan sat upon a small stool near the north side of the house, combing Joseph’s fur with a wire brush; the coydog noticed her before he did.

  The twenty-nine-year-old woman was not sure whether Jim loved her more than he loved his three pets, but he did love her enough to marry her.

  The first time that the six-foot-five-inch-tall blond man had asked her to dance at a church social, she was so surprised by the request that she had said, “No thank you, Mr. Lingham.” To that, the tall man had said without arrogance, “I got good feet. C’mon,” took her left hand gently in his big palms and pulled her out to the floor.

&nb
sp; To her surprise, the titanic man did have abilities as a dancer . . . and was actually quite graceful. However, because he dwarfed the petite woman so substantially, the experience, though agreeable, was like dancing with a twisting redwood. Over time, Beatrice had adjusted: she grew accustomed to tilting her head back whenever she spoke to him, and soon viewed any man under six feet tall as puny.

  Jim courted her for a long time before he kissed her, and she later found out that he had actually asked permission from her father to do even that. No matter where she was or what she was doing, the thought of that conversation (at which she was thankfully not present) always made her smile.

  He was fairly intelligent for a fellow from Mississippi, and he was as polite as the Englishmen she read about in the periodicals and books her great-aunt sent over from Manchester, England. In fact, Jim was so courteous, he would do practically anything to avoid an argument—even apologize for things that were not his fault (though he would never tolerate anyone maligning her or his coydogs for even a moment).

  Beatrice said to her seated titan, “Joseph is looking very handsome today.”

  “He is now. Got into some mud and had to wash him twice.” Joseph’s purple-black tongue lolled from the animal’s long narrow snout.

  “Where are Jesus and Mary?”

  “They saw a rabbit this morning. Ain’t seen ’em since.” He looked at the basket hooked over her right arm. “What’s in there?”

  “This is a surprise, Mr. Lingham.” He accepted the mystery and pulled his brush through Joseph’s brindled brown and silver coat. She walked up to her fiancé, leaned over and kissed him; he returned the kiss, though his hands did not leave the coydog. Beatrice patted Joseph’s snout, walked up the three steps onto the porch, strode through the slatted door and into the house. The dwelling still smelled like a place where a man lived alone—the odors of socks, boots, dogs, pipes and ashes dominated.

  As the door shut behind her, she heard Jim call out, “Jesus! Get your nose outta that!”

  Beatrice walked up the hall of the house her fiancé had built by himself for two years, and she recalled the first time she had been introduced to the coydogs. She had questioned the sagacity of the names he had chosen for the animals, but he succinctly and unswervingly defended them. She had gotten used to the supernal allusions over time—even if she did have to regularly explain the choice to others—but still she shuddered when she heard him say things like “Jesus! Mary don’t want you back there. Pull that outta her.”

  She walked up the hallway in which hung individual daguerreotypes of Jesus, Joseph and Mary (the coydogs), one of her and one of her and Jim together (a miniature) in formal attire. She was still outnumbered.

  Beatrice’s jealousy was small and a source of amusement and false quibbles more than any real tension between them. The truth was she found his devotion to the coydog trinity a comforting indictor of constancy, his good nature and how he would raise their children.

  Still, when she moved in, she intended to rearrange a few things.

  Beatrice pulled the apron from her dress, hung it upon a hook and called out to her fiancé. Two coydogs barked in reply, though only Jim entered the house.

  “Did you scrape your boots?”

  She heard Jim turn back around, open the slatted door, go outside, drag the soles of his boots on the metal bar and reenter.

  “Yeah.”

  “You should get into the habit of doing that. We are going to have Oriental rugs in here.”

  “I was hopin’ for kids.”

  She swatted his shoulder and said, “With order, we can have both.”

  He looked at the oven and then over at her and hopefully inquired, “Steak and kidney pie?”

  “Did Joseph tell you?”

  “I smelled it out myself. No peas?”

  “I put carrots instead. You are slobbering.”

  Jim wiped his mouth, nodded his head in appreciation, threw his limbs around her and squeezed; the sensation was like being hugged by a house. He released her, sat at the table, buttoned up his shirt, tucked a red napkin into his collar and picked up his fork, holding it with the tines facing down as if it were an ice pick. There was work to be done with him for certain . . . but this was a real man, Beatrice thought with an imagined smile.

  She put an errant blonde curl behind her right ear, slid her hands into kitchen mittens, opened the cast-iron oven and pulled out the savory golden-brown pie. In the corner of her eye, she saw Jim wipe his mouth a second time.

  The petite blonde woman set the food upon the table; the moment her buttocks touched the chair, Jim, his fork still clasped in his left hand, tilted his head down and said, “Thank you Jesus for the food we are about to eat. If there’s any left, you’re welcome to it. We appreciate all that you did for us back then. Now that’s it. Amen.”

  “Amen.” Beatrice had never once elicited angry words from her fiancé, but she had hurt his feelings on several occasions by laughing at his extemporaneous grace. In all instances, she had immediately and genuinely apologized, but the damage had been inflicted. They had eaten the tarnished meal in silence, and afterward he had spent a few hours rambling through the woods with his pets. Once when he had thanked Jesus, Jesus the coydog had barked as if in reply; Jim had not seen the humor in that at all, but instead took it for a sign, which (unfortunately) turned her giggles into far louder cachinnations. After two years, Beatrice had mastered her offensive impropriety; only on rare occasions did she have to bite her tongue to suppress gestating laughter.

  The titan opened his eyes and looked at the steak and kidney pie.

  He said, “Let’s cut off a sizable piece for you before I go in there.”

  After the meal, Jim put the plates and utensils in the washbasin and slapped his stomach, pleased. He leaned over like a tree falling and kissed his bride-to-be. Beatrice slid her tongue into his mouth; his answered hers for two shared heartbeats. She felt a warmth burgeon within her chest and he withdrew from her.

  “Not yet, Bea. Just one more week.”

  Beatrice nodded, lifted a rag from the soap bucket and went back to the oak table her giant carpenter had shaped with his own tools and hands. Her heart beat fast within her.

  “I love you,” he said, as he often did at unexpected times.

  “I can hardly wait to share the nights with you.”

  “I been thinkin’ of that.”

  They both paused for a moment as they considered the intertwining they had abstained from for their two-year courtship. Soon there would be no barriers, she thought.

  One of the coydogs howled. Beatrice looked over at Jim. He had a lever-action rifle in his hand, something she rarely saw except when he was hunting. His eyes were hard and inscrutable.

  The coydog howled again, an awful, plaintive sound.

  “That’s Mary,” she said, recognizing the timbre of the female crossbreed.

  “She sounds hurt. I’ll go see what got her. You bolt the door behind me.”

  “You be careful with that,” she said, flicking an index finger dripping with soap at the rifle.

  He nodded, walked up the hall, went through the slatted door and shut out the night.

  “Bolt it,” he called from outside the house.

  Beatrice walked up the hallway, slid the iron latch and looked through the slats at her fiancé. He crossed through the rectangle of orange light that the lanterns cast through the dining-room window and walked into the darkness; she stared at thick night, her heart hammering. She heard footsteps on the wet grass. Mary whimpered and the males barked. Beatrice’s apprehensions grew.

  The moon picked Jim out, limned him in blue as he strode across the grass. Mary howled pitiably and then whimpered twice. The other coydogs barked.

  “Hush fellas.” The males were silent. Mary whimpered. Beatrice watched the blue-edged silhouette that was her fiancé walk toward the coppice at the northern edge of the property; the male coydogs ran to and orbited their master like houseflies, bark
ing, agitated.

  Jim stopped, looked at the ground and said, “No.” His tone put a heavy lump of dread in Beatrice’s stomach; she knew that something was very, very wrong. Mary whimpered and the males barked. Jim knelt down in the grass and again said, “No.”

  Beatrice grabbed a lit oil lantern, undid the bolt, opened the door and exited the house. She traversed the porch, descended its three steps and walked across the grass; the night dew sparkled like a constellation upon the blades and dampened the hem of her vanilla dress.

  Jim, a half dozen yards away from her, looked up and said, “Get back inside.”

  Beatrice stopped, “Is she going to be okay?”

  “Get back inside and throw the bolt.”

  Beatrice looked down; the light of the lantern in her right hand had illuminated the tableau. At Jim’s knees, before the sniffing snouts of Joseph and Jesus, lay Mary. The prostrated coydog’s hind legs and front right leg were gone. Its lone remaining limb—its front left leg—pawed spastically in the grass, digging trenches while its three stumps waggled uselessly in their sockets. Beatrice thought of a partially-eaten roasted hen and was nauseated.

  Jim wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve; Mary’s lone paw rent the grass and soil. The dog whimpered.

  “Get inside,” the titan said to Beatrice. “Now.”