Paradise Sky

  “How long ago was that?” I asked.

  “I don’t rightly reckon,” he said. “But I think I’m about sixteen, and that’s been seven, eight years ago I left. I ain’t got that boot-shine kit no more.” He added that as if we was about to ask him for a boot polish.

  “My God, you were practically a baby,” Bronco Bob said.

  “I ain’t never been a baby,” said Jim.

  “All right, then. We still don’t know which you prefer,” I said. “Jim or Tim.”

  “I come to most anything,” he said.

  “Naw, that ain’t going to work,” I said. “Decide on your name.”

  The boy looked at Bronco Bob, said, “I like Red, actually.”

  “Then Red it is,” I said. “And remember, you got to tote your own weight if you’re going to be with us.”

  “I been doing that and can keep on doing it.”

  And that’s how Red, formerly Tim and formerly Jim, became our companion.

  That first night we stopped to camp, we did so down in a ravine. We had a cold supper of beans, as we was worried about Indians. It was a clear and dry night, so the ravine was fine. It was lined with rocks, and there wasn’t no water in it right then. It was dry and a good windbreak. Bronco Bob dug around in his bedroll, where he had wound up his possibles, and pulled that white fringed jacket he had worn at the shooting match out of it, tossed it to Red.

  “Put that on, and take care of it,” Bronco Bob said. “It’s yours, but you got to take care of it. This one will fit you better than me. I’m gaining in girth, and I prefer my big cotton one. It’ll warm you well enough.”

  Red held the jacket like he had just been given baby Jesus’s fresh swaddling wrap. “Thank you, Mr. Bronco.” It was obvious he wanted to say something else, but his tongue had grown too thick and was blocking his throat.

  “I catch you leaving it laying about,” Bronco Bob said, “I will take it away from you and give you a kick. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Red said.

  “You got a few manners,” I said. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “An old woman took me in for a year, and then she died. I didn’t tell no one right away, cause I figured I’d have to leave her house, and the weather was bad. I stayed there awhile longer, then she took to stinking too bad. I was going to bury her in the night, but she died in her big cloth chair and I waited too long and she melted into it. Her and that chair was one and the same. I was too little then to drag it. I just left. Someone finally found her, cause of the stink, and dogs had broken in and eaten part of her. I heard all about it on the street. She was buried sitting in that chair, or what was left of her, as most of her by then was in the cushions. She loved that chair, though. She was the one taught me manners good. I liked her a lot. I hated she died. She could sure cook good cornbread. I didn’t know until I come to live with her that you was supposed to wipe your asshole, even if it was with a rag or paper or leaves. I didn’t know it mattered, as hadn’t nobody told me until she did.”

  “We get the idea,” Bronco Bob said. “Here is another thing. From here on out, you’ll take a pinch of salt, and when we have it, soda, and you will fray a small stick and dip it in the salt and clean your teeth with it. You almost got enough growth on your teeth there to cut and winnow. A young man like you may want some ass in the future, and I am not speaking of the lady mule you’re riding. If you prefer fairer ones to those less fair, nice teeth are important. From what I can see, those chompers are fair enough, just grimy, but they’ll go bad if you don’t get to work on them.”

  Bronco Bob opened his bag, took out a small willow stick that was bunched up with others in a tied bundle, and handed it to him. It was a trick we all used to keep our teeth clean—that and a finger dipped in salt rubbed on the gums as well. Bronco Bob followed this up with a pinch of salt he put in the boy’s palm.

  “Now, son, you spit in your hand, on the salt, fray that stick with your teeth, then use the frayed end and the salt to clean yourself. You start on it tonight so we don’t have to look at that grass growing on them in the morning. When we get somewhere where we can buy it, we’ll get some baking soda or tooth powder. You do that maintenance every day, and they’ll clean up. I got a mirror you can see into during the day, and you can do a more serious job of it. That will be your job until we arrive where we are going.”

  It was a long ride, and we did see some Indians, but they looked more ragged than Red. They was few in numbers and kept their distance. We passed buffalo hunters and skinners who was hunting the herds, and they stunk so bad we could smell them coming for half a mile at least. A few lessons from that old lady who had taught Red to wipe his ass might have been of some benefit to them.

  We didn’t spend any friendly time with them, as me and Bronco Bob was not taken by their lot, and neither was we proud of their profession. We came across carcasses of them buffalo they had shot and skinned, the meat left rotting on the prairie. For a fellow like me that had grown up looking for something to eat pretty much day up and day down, it was a terrible and senseless waste.

  Anyway, we passed them and others, folks in wagons heading out to Deadwood for the mining, though the finds there was already playing out. We did camp with them a time or two, though there was those, mostly Southerners, who didn’t like the idea of being so near a colored on the prairie, thinking I might in the night murder them all and rape the women. Mostly folks was friendly, though. We asked if they had seen a burned-up man or a big fellow with a mark of some such on his forehead.

  No one said they had at first, but when we was near across Nebraska, a man and woman with two young children told us they had in fact seen the burned-up man, and he had bummed a meal from them. They felt sorry for him and fed him supper, and come morning he decamped early, taking with him their frying pan, a bag of sugar, and some bacon. We hastened to add he wasn’t no friend of ours, and we was after him for other reasons, but didn’t dig into the details.

  “It just goes to show, a fellow burned up like that might not need no more pity than a fellow that ain’t burned up,” the woman said. “He was just as bad as if he was everyday-looking.”

  When we was back on the ride, Bronco Bob repeated the woman’s lines to me, the ones about a burned-up fellow not being necessarily any better than one that wasn’t. “There is a philosophy in there somewhere,” he said.

  We rode on across Nebraska and come to the state of Kansas. We was certain of when we come to it, as Bronco Bob had traveled all that area when he was living off shooting matches. There wasn’t much out there in Kansas (not that there had been much in Nebraska), and I have to say I didn’t take to it at all. It was just too wide with nothing on it but tall grass. Bronco Bob said it was so tall cause there wasn’t enough buffalo coming through anymore, least not in the numbers they once was. Considering all those rotting carcasses we’d seen, this was understandable.

  Along the way we started teaching Red how to better handle himself in polite society. We made sure he understood that farting at a meal was not a sign of respect for the vitals but was foul. We explained women especially disliked this, and when it was built up in you too tight, you had to find a place by yourself and let it go. I had learned this from Colonel Hatch back at the fort during my soldiering days.

  We taught him that clean hands was best for eating, when you could wash them, and if you had a chance to eat with a knife or spoon you ought to. We discouraged eating with a knife, unless that’s all you had or there was no women around, which was our case right then.

  Bronco Bob showed the boy a few boxing moves, and it was fun to see Bob dancing around, quick on his feet, his fist held up, throwing punches. He taught the boy how to do it, and they had a few matches, thumping each other in the chest, avoiding the head. I even took to doing it, too. I learned more about fisticuffs than I knew there was to learn. I thought before it was just about who was the strongest and how fast you swung your arms, but Bronco Bob taught me different. I couldn?
??t lay a hand on him, even though I was bigger and taller. Had he not been hitting me in the chest and ribs and pulling his punches, I would surely have taken a beating, especially if he decided to include punches to the head.

  Red took to boxing and really seemed to enjoy it, though he always moved as if his ankles was tied together. He had good hands but not good feet. He couldn’t dance about and move like Bronco Bob, who said people use the weight of the arms too much, don’t apply the twisting of the hips, which he felt was the secret of success as a pugilist, as he referred to himself.

  We also taught Red about gun shooting, and we was the right ones to do it. Still, Red had a knack right from the start, more so even than with boxing. He could hit targets right away, and he seemed to be one of those like me—if I do say so myself, and I do—who instinctively has an ability to point the gun and shoot and figure on its rise and sighting mostly by touch alone.

  Red wasn’t no gun hand, but he was well on the way to being one if he wanted to put in the work. I even gave him my old Navy Colt and some shells. I figured with the Colt, LeMat, and Winchester Mr. Loving gave me, I was armed enough for most anything and could spare the pistol. Bronco Bob gave him a derringer, which is a good weapon if you can hold your man down and put it to his forehead, shoot him with it, and then go to beating on him with the butt of it to make sure he feels something.

  By the time we got to Dodge City, Kansas, Red could shoot and box well enough, and his teeth was cleaned up and he had learned how to comb his hair and put a part down the middle. That red hair looked mighty odd to me, and the part in the middle made it look like someone had dragged a rake through some blooded grass. But over the weeks he had actually put on a few pounds, as had the mule, and had started to look manly.

  Dodge City stank like cow shit and unbathed men on the day we showed up, and it was my figure it stank that way on the days we didn’t show up. There was cloud cover cloaking the town. It was as if we was having a sack pulled over our heads the air was so thick. It was cold, too, a dry kind of cold that was given a knife’s edge by a prairie wind blowing at our backs.

  There was tents on the outskirts and large signs posted up that said we had to turn in our weapons. That was different from Deadwood, as turning in guns was only that way at the Gem, an idea I put into action, and as soon as that idea come about the murders in the place dropped considerable if didn’t disappear. There was always someone who sneaked a pistol in or was willing to gnaw someone’s throat out or beat them to death with a chair leg, but on the whole it was a little less rowdy. Thing was, after I quit being the bouncer, I can’t say if the rule was enforced anymore.

  We rode by a big cannon in front of an army fort, and I tell you I got a little nervous passing by the fort for fear I might be identified as a deserter. But as this was a white bunch of soldiers, that was near impossible, unless one of the ranking white soldiers from my old regiment had been transferred and might recognize me. I knew it was unlikely, but it made me jittery just the same. I still carried more than a little guilt for having left my job with them.

  We passed by the cattle yard, and there was cowboys hustling longhorn cows down the street and into catch pens. A goodly number of the cowboys was colored, and I seen a lot of Mexicans in their crowd as well, though some was so covered in dust I couldn’t quite figure what color they was, only that they were cowboys and knew how to move cattle.

  There was a general store, the Long Branch Saloon, a dry-goods store, and all manner of business buildings along both sides of the street. It was a much more organized and better arranged line of buildings than Deadwood, none of it built in such a way as to be treacherous. The street was wide and hard enough there wasn’t any mud puddles, only a few holes here and there, most likely made by herds of cattle being driven through. There was lots of cow pies in the street and flies to go with them.

  Bronco Bob said, “When I first come through Dodge it wasn’t nothing more than a line of tents and a handful of cows. Look at it now.”

  “It still smells like shit,” I said.

  We arrived at the livery, unsaddled our horses, turned them into a corral, took off our guns, and gave them to the liveryman, a short little guy wearing a wool cap—which had been home to some moths at one time—and loose red gallusses that could be seen when he moved and his blue-jean coat swung wide. He appeared to have some Mexican or Indian blood in him, way his skin was colored and how his eyes was dark, but I figured his bald head was all Irish. He gave us what he called claim checks; it was a piece of paper with our names written on it and a brief description of our weapons. It matched the papers that was tied to our guns.

  Bronco Bob said he and Red was going to the saloon where he intended to buy Red his first beer and maybe a whiskey. Then they might go whoring. Knowing Red’s upbringing was in good hands, I chose to find a place to sleep.

  Thing that was different in towns out there on the plains was that a colored could occupy any hotel if the owner was willing to room him. There wasn’t no law against it, as there was in the South. I can’t tell you it was all even out there for people my skin color. I can only say it was more so.

  I got a room in a hotel run by a fat white man. I was given a key. I felt strange about it and very good. In that moment I had been accepted as an equal, if for no other reason than I had the price of a room. I thought that was fair enough.

  It was midday, and I was as tired as if it was midnight. I paid out for a tub and some hot water and retired to my room until the bathwater was brought to fill the tub, which was already there under one of the windows. I pushed up the windows to let some air in, being used to the outside those long weeks, and the smell of cow mess sailed in on the breeze like birds. I finally pushed the window closed except for a crack and sat down in one of the two chairs that was there. It was thick with cushion and comfortable.

  The bathwater come in trips delivered in steaming buckets, carried a bucket at a time by a very nice-looking colored girl who gave me a friendly eye.

  Had I wanted, I surely could have had a sweet night with her, but I didn’t act on it. I wouldn’t do that to Win. I pretended her beautiful face and dark brown skin was of no allure to me, and when the water filled the tub and she left, I stripped down and soaked, washing my long, wild hair. Drying off, I fell into bed without a stitch on, and even with the light shining in through parted curtains I fell into a deep sleep in the nicest and softest bed I had ever spent a night in.

  I didn’t wake until the rest of the day had passed, the night had journeyed, and late morning arrived and crept on well past first bird’s song.

  I dressed, went downstairs, and had breakfast, which was two pickled eggs, toast, and coffee. I asked the fat man at the desk where a colored man like myself could get his hair cut.

  It was a tent at the back of Main Street, and when I stepped inside I saw at least four colored men ahead of me. The barber was a big, dumpy, coffee-colored man with a bald head. Bald barbers make me nervous.

  Some chairs was provided, so I sat and read a dime novel that was laid there for the purpose. It was the biggest batch of balderdash I have ever read, as it had to do with Wild Bill Hickok, and the personality of the character in that story wasn’t anything like Bill, but it was pretty entertaining once I made up my mind it wasn’t no true-life story.

  When my turn came, I had to lay the book aside right when Bill was about to have a shoot-out with a dozen men. I never did learn how that come out, but I had a pretty good idea. I sat in the chair and had my long hair cut short and shaved at the neck and powdered. It might have been nice had the barber run the razor over the strop a little more before he went about his work. There were times when it dragged over the back of my neck like a plow over solid rock.

  I threw in another coin to have myself shaved. It was done quick and rough, and I was only cut twice. The barber gave me a mirror to look in. Without all that long, thick hair, my ears really stood out. I had almost forgotten about them.

  I paid
up, strolled over to the dry-goods store, and bought me a fresh shirt.

  I went back to the hotel and put on my new shirt, which was bright red, and waited around for what I didn’t know. What I needed to do was start asking around about Ruggert and Golem, but I was a little uncertain where to start until the obvious hit me. I walked over to the livery and asked the liveryman, who was currycombing Satan as I got there.

  He turned and seen me, said, “If I remember correct, this here is your horse.”

  “It is,” I said.

  “He is one fine animal—a little too lean, I figure, but well taken care of.”

  “He is a little lean,” I said. “We been traveling.”

  “Few days’ grain, and he’ll fatten up,” he said.

  “Sir,” I said. “Might I ask your name?”

  “Cecil Jenkins,” he said, like it was a title akin to captain or governor.

  “There are two men I’m trying to find, and I was wondering if you might have seen them.” I then went on to describe them.

  “Should I tell if I have? You sound like you don’t like them much.”

  “Do I?”

  “You do.”

  “You haven’t seen them, no problem. If you have, it’s up to you if you want to tell me about them or not.”

  He hesitated for only a moment. “I have seen them. They quarreled right here in this livery.”

  “Quarreled?”

  “They did. Big one decided he didn’t want to go with the scarred fellow, and I think it had to do with money.”

  “So he don’t think he’s a mud monster so much he can’t worry about money,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Cecil said.

  I waved it off, saying it wasn’t important.

  “I don’t suppose you have any idea where either one of them is now, where they went?”

  “The big man’s horse is still here,” the liveryman said, “and he is paid up through the week, so my guess is he’s in town. As for the other, he said he was going out with some cattle drovers, got a job as a cook.”