The Brave Cowboy Page 4

  Burns stopped. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. I heard it too.” They stared at each other. “I think it came from the south,” she said. “Towards the city.” She shaded her eyes with her hand, gazing toward the smoke and dust of the invisible city. She saw something black, a smoking fragment, float slowly down across the blue dome of the sky, down, down, disappearing below the horizon. “Did you see it?” she cried.

  “I saw somethin,” he said slowly. “Was it an air plane?”

  “I don’t know. Yes—-I suppose it was. Part of one, maybe.” They continued to stare at the southern sky, where nothing moved now, nothing burned or shone; the arc of black smoke lingered on in the windless air like something forgotten. “It must have been a jet plane,” Jerry said. “They explode now and then—I don’t know why.”

  The cowboy stared at the smoke trail, rubbing his jaw. “Yeah…” he said. “Well…” He looked at Jerry.

  “There’s a bucket out there you can water the horse with,” she said. “Hanging on a nail by the feed barrel.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” He went on toward the corral, leading the mare and staring south at the hovering thread of smoke.

  Jerry took what was left of a ham from the icebox on the porch, re-entered the kitchen and began preparing a meal. When Burns returned about ten minutes later, carrying saddlebags, rifle and guitar, she had the kitchen table set with dark home-baked bread, a pitcher of goat’s milk, butter, a salad of lettuce and tomatoes and cucumbers in a wooden bowl, and a plate heaped with four thick slices of fried ham. Burns dropped his equipment on the floor and looked joyfully at the food. “Hey!—look at all that, will you!”

  “Sit down,” Jerry said. “The eggs will be ready in a minute.”

  “Doggone—how’d you get all this on the table so fast?” He pulled up a chair and sat down. “You some kind of witch doctor?” Then he stood up again. “I gotta comb my hair and wash my face for a feed like this.”

  “Would you like your eggs turned over?”

  “What?” He filled the basin and splashed water over his face and hair, and groped around for the soap. “No—sunnyside up, please.”

  “The salad and bread were left over from lunch,” Jerry said. “I hope you don’t mind.” He made some kind of garbled reply from under the water. “I hope you like goat milk; we’ve got plenty of it.” The eggs were sizzling; she lifted them out of the skillet and onto the plate with the ham. “It’s all ready.”

  “Be right there.” Burns was fumbling around by the sink, searching for something with soap-blind eyes. “Jerry…?” She put the towel into his hands. “Thanks…”

  “What did you think of Abigail and Psyche?”

  “Don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.” He dug the mud out of his ears with a corner of the towel.

  “The goats. The bearded one with the big bulging udder is Abigail and Psyche is her daughter.” She tossed the salad a little with a wooden fork and spoon. “Come on, it’s getting cold.”

  Burns smoothed back his long black hair with his fingers and sat down, “Say—where’s Seth? I knew somebody was missing around here.” He began cutting up a chunk of ham. “Haven’t seen him around.”

  Jerry filled his glass with milk from the clay pitcher. “He’s in school.”

  “What’s that stuff?”

  “Milk.”

  “That’s a good Mormon drink.” Burns paused between mouthfuls of ham and egg to drink some of the milk. “It’s all right—smells just like the one that tried to butt me.” He wiped the white foam from his upper lip and turned back to his plate. “So the little fella’s in school already; that’s a damn shame.”

  “He’s six years old now.” She sat down at the opposite end of the table. “Have some of the salad, Jack.” Vague emotions, formless ideas, were crowding her mind: she could not entirely suppress the foolish notion that this strange wandering friend, riding in like a knight-errant, might have the power through magic or valor or wit to bring back to her, somehow, the man to whom she had dedicated her love. She tried to attend to what he was saying:

  “… Thought you two was gonna teach him yourselves, bring him up right and proper so’s the authorities wouldn’t get their old superstitions planted in the bairn’s head.” Burns wiped up his plate with a slab of the dark bread, ate the bread, and took another hearty drink of goat’s milk, leaving a white tideline on his beard. He looked at her. “Well, naturally you can’t do that now—what with Paul in trouble and you havin to work, I suppose.” She made no answer. He pushed his plate aside and leaned on the table, gazing at her. “Mighty good fixins, Jerry. I’m right proud of you.” She said nothing. “Gotta toothpick?” She shook her head slowly, looking down at the table, after a moment he pulled a match from his shirt pocket and the jack-knife from a pocket of his jeans and began to whittle himself a toothpick.

  She was having trouble with her thoughts; this man Burns, whose mere physical presence was so reassuring, and whose love and loyalty she could never have doubted, yet made her feel for some reason a shade uncomfortable: in his sombre eyes, in his slow smile and the lines of his face, in the firm rank masculinity of his body, she thought she perceived a challenge. A challenge in his every word, every motion.

  “He’ll be home pretty soon, I suppose?” Burns said.

  She looked up. “Who?”

  “Seth.” He stared at her, puzzled, and then frowned and looked away.

  “You’ve got milk all over your mouth,” she said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yes, in about an hour.”

  This is ridiculous, she told herself. I am an adult woman, mother of a six-year old boy, wife to Paul Bondi. I’ll not be lured into fantasy by anyone, not even by this smoky-eyed centaur on the other side of the table. And even as she said it another truth flared across her mind with the certainty of lightning.

  “Would you like some more milk?” she said.

  “No thanks.”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, don’t bother. Let’s have some later.”

  “It’s no trouble at all.”

  “No thanks, Jerry.” He rested his chin on his fists, looking at her with his grave, almost melancholy eyes.

  She felt suddenly annoyed with him. Was he making some sort of game out of her uneasiness?

  “Mrs. Bondi,” he said. She glanced at him, startled. “Mrs. Bondi, I came here to see you and Paul and Seth and maybe be of some use. I got some money and a rifle. If there’s anything I can do I’ll do it. That’s what I came for. When I’m finished I’ll be movin on, like before.”

  She was grateful for his slow careful speech. She wanted to thank him but she said, half lying: “You didn’t have to say that, Jack. I knew.” They faced each other in silence for a few moments, both faintly embarrassed. She said: “And for heaven’s sake don’t call me Mrs. Bondi. You make me feel like a thoroughly respectable housewife.”

  He smiled. “Well ain’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Yes I am. But I don’t want to feel like one.” She stood up and started to clear the table of dirty dishes. “You didn’t eat any of the salad,” she said reproachfully. He was about to speak but she interrupted: “I don’t blame you. It is kind of wilted.”

  “Let me help you with them dishes.”

  “Absolutely not. I won’t have you washing dishes your first day here.” She stacked them in the sink and rinsed them with hot water from the kettle on the stove, “I’ll not wash them now anyway.”

  “That’s the best idea yet.” Burns drew his materials from his shirt pocket and began to roll a cigarette. While his fingers were busy he strolled into the next room and looked at the paintings on the walls—Jerry’s work—huge canvases splashed recklessly with color, thick rich oil paint piled on with a palette knife, representing not ideas or things but nervous sensations. Burns lit his cigarette as he contemplated the work: he was mystified but pleasantly stirred, and felt his fingers itching to reach put, touch, dig int
o and squeeze the refulgent paint.

  He turned away from the pictures and toward the books that were lined up, shelf on shelf, against the east wall. There were far more books there than any one man should own, let alone read; and weighted heavily on the side of professional philosophy: from the Fragments of Heraclitus to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Burns felt himself in the presence of the absent husband; he could hear, along the networks of memory, the tone and peculiar timbre of that anxious voice, with its precise affectionate articulation of syllables and phrasing. He went back to the kitchen. “There’s one more thing I need,” he said to Jerry, who was putting more wood into the stove.

  “What’s that?”

  “I need a bath. I smell like an old ram that ain’t been dipped or even rained-on for about five years.”

  Jerry smiled at him. “I was hoping you would think of that. But it’s a big project to take a bath here. You’ll have to carry about ten buckets of water to fill the tub, and you’ll have to chop some more wood to keep the fire going. Do you feel up to all that?”

  “Will you scrub my back for me?”

  “No.” She shut the door on the firebox and straightened up. “There’s the tub; here’s the bucket. The axe is outside.”

  “All right,” he said. He reached for the bucket “Guess I’ll fill the tub first. Mind if I track up your kitchen floor?” She was standing in the doorway of the next room now, watching him. He grinned at her. “What’re you thinkin about, Jerry?”

  “Never you mind. You fill that tub.” She brushed back her coppery hair with one hand. “I’ll see if I can find you some of Paul’s clean underwear to put on. I don’t suppose you brought any?”

  “Nope, not me. I’d sure be much obliged to you.” He opened the kitchen door and stepped outside.

  “You might have to prime that pump,” she called after him. “The well’s getting low.”

  Burns was drying himself with a big green towel when somebody began to fumble with the knob of the kitchen door. “Who’s there?” There was no answer; he wrapped the towel around his middle and opened the door. “Come on in, Seth.”

  A small boy with red hair and a sticky face walked into the kitchen; he set his tin lunch bucket carefully on the kitchen table and then turned to stare at Burns.

  “Howdy, Seth.” Burns unwrapped the towel and continued rubbing his legs and arms. “Where you been all day?”

  The boy was shy. He stared at Burns with soft blue eyes, intelligent but diffident. At last he said: “I was at school.”

  Burns began to get into Paul’s underwear. The shorts were a little slack around the waist. “Did you see my mare, Seth?”

  Jerry called from the next room: “Is that you, Seth?”

  “Yes,” the boy said to Burns. “Can I ride her, Jack?”

  “Well, I don’t know; she’s kinda mean and hard to handle. You any good with broncs?” He put on a clean white shirt belonging to Paul Bondi. The boy did not answer his question. “I’ll take you for a ride on her tomorrow evenin. She’s had a long trick today.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Jerry said from the next room. “Can I come in yet?”

  “Just a minute.” Burns pulled on his dusty, faded jeans; his legs were about ten inches too long for any of Paul’s trousers. “Come on in,” he said.

  The boy said: “I’m not afraid.”

  Jerry opened the livingroom door and came into the kitchen. She rubbed the boy’s hair, bent down and kissed him on the mouth. “How was it today, Seth? Did you have fun?”

  “That’s a helluva question to ask a fella that’s just got out of school,” Burns said. He put on a pair of Bondi’s clean socks.

  “No,” the boy said.

  Burns smiled as he removed the spurs from his boots.

  “What’d I tell you?” He hung the spurs to a nail in the wall and sat down to put on the boots. The boy kept his eyes on the spurs. “They’re too big for you, Seth. You grow a few more inches, then you can wear em.” He tugged at the boots, muttering. “Always hard to get on over clean socks.”

  “You’ve got awfully big feet, Jack,” Jerry said.

  “I know. If I could grow roots like a cottonwood I wouldn’t need such big feet.”

  “Where are you going?” the boy said.

  “Me?” Burns looked at Jerry. “Where’s that old beat-up Dodge of yours?”

  “Down the road about half a mile, out of gas.”

  “You sure it’s outa gas?”

  “I don’t know. Anyway, it won’t run.”

  “Well me and Seth’ll have to see what we can do about that. You wanta come along, Seth?”

  The boy nodded.

  “You be sure to get him and yourself back here by suppertime,” Jerry said. “I don’t want you two in trouble.”

  “We’ll be back in plenty of time.” Burns stood up and looked around; he found his hat, brushed it with his hand and put it on. “Why don’t you come too? I’m just gonna get some feed for the mare, maybe a little groceries.”

  Jerry shook her head. “You two run along; I’ve got too much to do.”

  “I’ll do it for you.”

  “I have to write a letter.”

  “Oh…” Burns paused. “Anything I can get you?”

  Jerry signed faintly, passing her hand over her eyes. “No, I guess not.” She watched Burns reach for his sack of tobacco and put it into the pocket of the white shirt; the boy stared at him too. “Yes,” she said; “get me a pint of ice cream. Two pints. Three pints.”

  “What kind?”

  “Oh… strawberry, chocolate—anything. I don’t care. We’ll have a party when you get back. And get a bottle of wine. A good dry vino rojo. Okay? Or would you rather have gin?”

  “I’ll get both… then we can decide later.” Burns stepped to the kitchen door and opened it. “Let’s go, Seth. By the way—” He looked at Jerry. “You said the car was half a mile down the road. Which way down the road?”

  “Toward town. South.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He smiled at her. “We’ll be back in half an hour. Come on, Seth.” He and the boy went out and the door was closed. Jerry gazed ruefully at the washtub full of dirty gray water that Burns had left behind.

  The kitchen door opened again and Burns came in, looking sheepish. “Goddamn, Jerry, I’m sure gettin absent-minded. I clean forgot to empty that there tub.”

  “You might find a use for the car keys, too,” she said.

  They found the car where Jerry had left it, a dull and rather haggard automobile parked half off the road Burns got in and switched on the ignition, watching the fuel gage. The needle remained pointing at the E. He stepped on the starter but nothing happened; there was no response at all.

  “It’s dead,” the boy said, sitting beside him.

  “Sure is.” Burns got out and lifted the hood. He checked the battery first and found that the ground cable had shaken loose; the bolt and nut that should have fastened it to the frame were missing. He hunted around inside the car, in the dashboard compartment and under the front seat, until he found what was needed. Afterwards, when he switched on the ignition, the fuel gage registered a quarter full tank.

  They drove to a feed and hardware store first. Burns bought two bales of alfalfa, a half bushel of bran and barley for the mare, some Omalene and calf manna for the goats. After he had loaded the feed into the car he went back into the store and bought a quarter pound of horseshoe nails and two heavy-gage files; outside, sitting in the car, he put a file in each boot and then pulled his jeans down over the tops of the boots.

  “Why are you doing that?” the boy said.

  Burns looked at him, “If you were in jail how would you get out?”

  The boy looked down at the boots. He smiled, and said: “But it’s not that hard to get in a jail, is it?”

  Burns laughed and started-the engine. “I don’t have to tell you anything, I reckon. Mind now, this is a secret.” He looked at the boy. “You understand? You daren�
�t tell anyone, not even Jerry. Okay?”

  The boy nodded, his eyes alert with interest “I won’t tell, Jack.”

  “Let’s shake hands on that.” They shook. “Fine; now let’s go find us some ice cream and vino.”

  It was a quiet party. The boy Seth, Burns, Jerry Bondi, sat around the kitchen table eating their manufactured ice cream with the solemn devoutness of communicants. A few bars of sunlight slanted into the room from the west window. Outside, in the tamarisk by the pump, a dying locust keened away the long afternoon.

  “Some more vino?” Jerry held the bottle poised over the cowboy’s empty glass.

  “I want some more,” Seth said. His red hair had fallen over his eyes, his mouth and nose were dappled with ice cream. With his mouth open they could see the purplish stain on his teeth.

  “You’ve had enough,” she said. She started to pour into Burns’ glass.

  “Bastante,” he said. “No more.” He pushed the bottle away, lifted the glass and drank down what was in it. “I gotta get goin,” he added, and belched gently.”

  “I tell you, you can’t see him today.”

  “What?”

  “They won’t let you.”

  “Won’t let me?”

  The boy watched them with his serious eyes; he was still sucking ice cream from the end of a big spoon.

  “You can’t see him until next Wednesday,” she said. “Wednesday is visitors’ day. If he’s still there.”

  “He won’t be there next Wednesday.”

  “Well, probably not; his stay in the county jail is supposed to be temporary. They—whoever they are—will transfer him to some Federal prison as soon as they can.” Jerry stared at the tabletop and squeezed the glass in her hand so hard that her arm began to tremble. “—Or wherever they put political prisoners.”

  “Lots of folks in the jailhouse these days,” Burns said cautiously.

  “There always are.”

  “More than usual, maybe.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so.” She sipped at her wine and relaxed a little. “Anyway they won’t let you see him today.”

  “Well I sure aim to see him today.”

  She looked up at him. You crazy fool, she thought, you think I wouldn’t be there myself this very minute if it were possible? Who are you, anyway?—he’s my man. She bit her lower lip, afraid that she might begin to cry. Goddamnit, she thought. She watched him slide back his chair and stand up. Spare my ceiling, you long-connected—Christ, I’m drunk, she thought, and almost giggled.