Greenleaf Strayhorn frowned as he rode beyond the dense liveoak motte and got his first clear look at Prosperity. The dry west wind, which had been blowing almost unbroken for a week, picked up dust from the silent streets and lifted it over the frame buildings to lose it against a cloudless blue sky. He turned toward the brown pack horse that trailed the young sorrel he was riding. His feeling of distaste deepened the wrinkles which had resulted from long years of labor in the sun.
“Wasn’t much of a town when we left here, Letty, and I can’t see that it’s got any better. But you wanted to come back.”
Prosperity had a courthouse square but no courthouse. Even after voting some of its horses and dogs, it had lost the county-seat election to rival Paradise Forks, a larger town which could rustle up more horses and dogs. Greenleaf hoped the dramshop was still operating. He had paused in Paradise Forks only long enough to buy a meal cooked by someone other than himself, and that had been yesterday. He was pleased to see the front door open. If the sign out front had been repainted during his twelve-year absence, he could not tell it.
“‘Finest in liquors, wines and bitters,’” he read aloud. “‘Cold beer and billiards.’ Our kind of a place. Mine, anyway. You never was one for self-indulgence.”
The sorrel’s ears poked forward distrustfully as a yellow dog sauntered out to inspect the procession. Greenleaf tightened his knee grip, for the young horse was still prone to regard with great suspicion such things as dogs, chickens and flying scraps of paper. It had pitched him off once already on this trip. Greenleaf was getting to an age when rodeoing was meant to be a spectator sport, not for personal participation. The dog quickly lost interest in rider and horses and angled off toward the liveoak motte to try and worry a rabbit or two.
Greenleaf tied up the horses in front of the saloon, loosening the girth so his saddlehorse could breathe easier. He checked the pack on the brown horse and found it still snug. Seeing no others tied nearby, he knew the saloon was enjoying another in a long succession of slow days.
He stepped up onto the board sidewalk, taking an extra-long stride to skip over a spot where two planks had been removed. Somebody had evidently fallen through in the relatively distant past. The rest of the boards were badly weathered, splintered and worn. It was only a matter of time until they, too, caused someone embarrassment, and probably skinned shins.
The whole place looked like the tag end of a hot, dry summer. Whoever had named this town Prosperity was a terrible prophet or had a wicked sense of humor, he thought.
A black cat lay curled in the shade near the front door. It opened one eye in response to Greenleaf’s approach, then closed the eye with minimum compromise to its rest.
The bartender sat on a stool, his head upon his arms atop the bar. He stirred to the jingling of spurs and looked up sleepy-eyed.
“Beer,” Greenleaf said. “A cold one if you’ve got it.”
The man delivered it to him in a mug and gave him a squinting appraisal. “Ain’t your name Greenleaf Shoehorn?”
“Strayhorn.”
“A name like Greenleaf ain’t easily forgot. The rest of it…” He shrugged. “Didn’t you used to work on Old Man Hopkins’ place?”
“And married his daughter Letty.”
Memory made the bartender smile. “Anybody who ever met Letty would remember her. A mighty strong-willed woman. Where’s she at?”
“Outside, on a horse.”
The bartender frowned. “You’d leave her in the hot sun while you come in here for a cool drink?”
He walked to the door. “All I see is two horses.”
“She’s under the tarp on the packhorse, in a lard can. Her ashes, I mean.”
The bartender’s face fell. “She’s dead?”
“Took by a fever two weeks ago. Last thing she asked me was to bring her back here and bury her on the homeplace alongside her mama and papa. It was so far, the only way I could do it was to bring her ashes.”
Soberly the bartender refilled the mug Greenleaf had drained.
“Sorry about Letty. Everybody liked her. Everybody except Luther Quinton. He hated all the Hopkinses, and everybody that neighbored them.”
“It always makes it easier when you hate the people you set out to rob. Less troublin’ on the conscience.”
“He still owns the old Hopkins place. He may not take it kindly, you buryin’ Letty there. Asked him yet?”
“Wasn’t figurin’ on askin’ him. Just figured on doin’ it.”
The bartender’s attention was drawn to the front window. “If you was thinkin’ about askin’ him, this’d be the time. That’s him comin’ yonder.”
Greenleaf carried his beer to the door, where he watched as the black cat raised up from its nap, stretched itself luxuriously, and meandered out into the windy street, crossing Quinton’s path. Quinton stopped abruptly, turning back and taking a path that led him far around the cat. It stopped in the middle of the deserted street to lick itself.
The bartender remarked, “Superstitious, Luther is. Won’t buy anything by the dozen because he’s afraid they may throw in an extra one on him. They say he won’t even keep a mirror in his house because he’s afraid he might break it.”
“He probably just doesn’t like to look at himself. I never liked lookin’ at him either.” Quinton had long legs and a short neck. He had always reminded Greenleaf of a frog.
Quinton came to the door, looking back to be sure the cat had not moved. He demanded of the bartender, “How many more lives has that tomcat got? I’ve been hopin’ a wagon might run over him in the street.”
“She ain’t a tomcat, and there ain’t enough traffic. She’s liable to live for twenty years.”
“I’d haul her off and dump her, but I know she’d come back.”
Quinton’s attention shifted to Greenleaf, and his eyes narrowed with recognition. “Speakin’ of comin’ back…” He pointed a thick, hairy finger. “Ain’t you the hired hand that married the Hopkins girl?”
“Letty. Yep, I’m the one.”
“There’s no accountin’ for some people’s judgment. Wonder she ain’t killed and scalped you before now. Has Indian blood in her, don’t she?”
“Her mama was half Choctaw.”
“Probably some kind of a medicine woman. That Letty laid a curse on me the day I took over the Hopkins place. Cow market went to hell. Calf crop dropped to half. Rain quit and the springs dried up. I had nothin’ but bad luck for over a year.”
“Only a year? She must not’ve put her whole heart into it.”
Dread was in Quinton’s eyes. “She back to cause me more misery?”
“She died.”
Relief washed over Quinton’s round, furrowed face like sunshine breaking through a dark cloud. He was not one to smile easily, but he ventured dangerously near. “I’m mighty sorry to hear it.” He gulped down a glass of whiskey in one long swallow. “Mighty sorry.”
Greenleaf grunted. “I can see that.” He turned to the bartender. “Old Brother Ratliff still doin’ the preachin’?”
The bartender nodded. “You’ll find him at the parsonage over by the church. My sympathies about Letty.”
Greenleaf thanked him and walked out. He had not expected this to be a pleasant homecoming, and running into Luther Quinton had helped it live down to his expectations. Untying the two horses, he looked a moment at the pack on the second animal, and a catch came in his throat. He had worked his way through the darkest of his grief, but a lingering sadness still shadowed him. He wanted to fulfill his promise to Letty, then put this place behind him for once and all. His and Letty’s leavetaking from here had created a residue of memories bitter to the taste.
Not all the fault had been Quinton’s. Letty’s father should have known he was dealing himself a busted flush when he tried farming on land where the average rainfall was only about fifteen inches a year, and half of that tended to come in one night if it came at all.
Letty’s stubborn nature was a natural heritage from both sides of her family. She had tried to keep on farming even though her father had accomplished four crop failures in a row. He had died of a seizure in the middle of a diatribe against the bank for letting him borrow himself so deeply into the hole and refusing to let him dig the hole any deeper.
All Quinton had done, really, was to buy the notes from the frustrated banker and foreclose on Letty. Quinton had acquired several other properties the same way. He was not a hawk that kills its prey but rather a buzzard which feeds on whatever has died a natural death.
Greenleaf had not considered Brother Ratliff an old man when he had lived here, but like the town, the minister had aged a lot in a dozen years. Greenleaf had to knock on the door a third time before it swung inward and a tall, slightly stooped gentleman peered down at him, cocking his head a little to one side to present his best ear. From Ratliff’s gaunt appearance, Greenleaf judged that the Sunday offering plate had been coming back but little heavier than it went out.
“May I be of service to you, friend?”
“I’m Greenleaf Strayhorn. You may not remember, but you tied the knot for me and Letty Hopkins a long time ago.”
The minister smiled broadly and made a gesture that invited him into the spare little house. “I do remember. Quite a beautiful bride, she was. Have you brought her with you?”
“In a manner of speakin’, yes sir. I was wonderin’ if you’d be kind enough to say some fittin’ words over her so I can put her ashes in the ground?”
The minister’s smile died. “The Lord calls all of us home eventually, but it would seem He has called her much too early. I hope she had a good life to compensate for its shortness.”
“We did tolerable well. Got us a nice little ranch up north, though we wasn’t blessed with kids. She just never could shake loose from her old family homeplace. The memory of it was always there, itchin’ like a wool shirt. She wanted me to bring her back.”
“It’s a sad thing to preach a funeral, but part of my calling is to comfort the bereaved and commend the soul to a better land. When would you want me to perform the service?”
“Right now, if that’s not too soon.”
The minister put on his black coat and walked with Greenleaf to the church next door. “Would you mind pulling the bell rope for me, son? The devil has afflicted my shoulder with rheumatism.”
Afterward, Greenleaf unwrapped the pack and fetched the lard can containing all that was left in the world of Letty Strayhorn. He placed it in front of the altar. A dozen or so citizens came, curious about the reason for the bell to ring in the middle of the week. Among them was the bartender, who knew. He had removed his apron and put on a coat, though the church was oppressively warm. Its doors and windows had been kept shut because the wind would have brought in too much dust.
The sermon was brief, for Brother Ratliff did not know all that much to say about Letty’s past, just that she had been a hard-working, God-fearing woman who held strong opinions about right and wrong and did not easily abide compromise.
At the end of the closing prayer he said, “Now, if any of you would like to accompany the deceased to her final resting place, you are welcome to go with us to the old Hopkins farm.”
A loud voice boomed from the rear of the church. “No you ain’t! The place is mine, and that woman ain’t fixin’ to be buried in any ground that belongs to me!”
The minister was first surprised, then dismayed. “Brother Quinton, surely you would not deny that good soul the right to be buried amongst her own.”
“Good soul? A witch, I’d call her. A medicine woman, somethin’ from the Indian blood in her.”
“She has passed on to another life. She can do you no harm now.”
“I’m takin’ no chances. You want her buried, bury her here in town. You ain’t bringin’ her out to my place.”
Apologetically the minister looked back to Greenleaf. “I am sorry, Brother Strayhorn. I may argue with Brother Quinton’s logic, but I cannot argue with his legal rights.”
Greenleaf stood up and studied Quinton’s physical stature. He decided he could probably whip the man, if it came to a contest. But he would no doubt end up in jail, and he still would not be able to carry out Letty’s final wish.
“She’s goin’ to be disappointed,” he said.
The town cemetery was a depressing place, the site picked for convenience rather than for beauty. His sleeves rolled up, Greenleaf worked with a pair of posthole diggers that belonged to the minister. Brother Ratliff, looking too frail to help in this kind of labor, sat on a marble gravestone and watched as the hole approached three feet in depth. The length of the handles would limit Greenleaf’s digging. The bartender had come to the cemetery but had left after a few minutes to reopen the saloon lest he miss out on any thirsty customers. Or perhaps he had feared he might be called upon to lend a hand with the diggers.
Ratliff said, “It matters not where the body lies.”
“So the old song says,” Greenleaf responded, turning into the wind. Though its breath was warm, it felt cool against his sweaty face and passing through his partially soaked shirt. “But I feel like I’m breakin’ a promise. I never got to do everything I wanted to for Letty while she was livin’, but at least I never broke a promise to her.”
“You made your promise in good faith. Now for reasons beyond your control you cannot fulfill it. She would understand that. Anyway, you brought her back to her hometown. That’s close.”
“I remember a couple of times my stomach was growlin’ awful at me, and I bore down on a whitetail deer for meat but missed. Close wasn’t good enough. I was still hungry.”
“You’ve done the best you could.”
“No, I ain’t.” Greenleaf brought the diggers up out of the hole and leaned on their handles while he pondered. “Mind lendin’ me these diggers a little longer, Preacher?”
Ratliff studied him quizzically. “You’d be welcome to keep them. Should I ask you what for?”
“A man in your profession ain’t supposed to lie. If I don’t tell you, you won’t have to lie to anybody that might ask you.”
Greenleaf used the diggers to rake dirt back into the hole and tamp it down. The lard can still sat where he had placed it beside a nearby gravestone. “We had a full moon last night. It ought to be just as bright tonight.”
The minister looked up at the cloudless sky. “Unless it rains. I would say our chance for rain is about as remote as the chance of Luther Quinton donating money for a new church. Would you like for me to go with you?”
“You’ve got to live here afterward, Preacher. I don’t.” Greenleaf finished filling the hole. “If I was to leave you the money, would you see to it that a proper headstone is put up for her?”
“I would consider it a privilege.”
“Thanks.” Greenleaf extended his hand. “You don’t just know the words, Preacher. You know the Lord.”
Even if the moon had not been bright, Greenleaf could have found the old Hopkins place without difficulty. He had ridden the road a hundred times in daylight and in darkness. Nothing had changed in the dozen years since he had last traveled this way. He rode by the deserted house where the Hopkins family had lived while they struggled futilely to extract a good living from a soil that seemed always thirsty. He stopped a moment to study the frame structure. The porch roof was sagging, one of its posts buckled out of place. He suspected the rest of the house looked as desolate. The wind, which had abated but little with moonrise, moaned through broken windows.
“Probably just as well we’ve come at night, Letty. I doubt you’d like the looks of the place in the daytime.”
Memories flooded his mind, memories of coming to work here as hired help, of first meeting Letty, of gradually falling in love with her. A tune ran through his brain, a tune she had taught him when they had first known one another and that they had often sung together. He dwelled at length upon the night he had brought her back here after their wedding in town. Life had seemed golden then … for a while. But reality had soon intruded. It always did, after so long. It intruded now.
“I’d best be gettin’ about the business, Letty, just in case Luther Quinton is smarter than I think he is.”
The small family cemetery lay halfway up a gentle hillside some three hundred yards above the house. Rocks which the plow had turned up in the field had been hauled to the site to build a small protective fence. Greenleaf dismounted beside the gate and tied the saddlehorse to the latchpost. He let the packhorse’s rein drop. The brown would not stray away from the sorrel. He untied the rope that bound the diggers to the pack, then unwrapped the pack.
Carefully he lifted down the lard can. He had been amazed at how little it weighed. Letty had never been a large woman, but it had seemed to him that her ashes should represent more weight than this. Carrying the can under one arm and the diggers under the other, he started through the gate.
He had never been of a superstitious nature, but his heart almost stopped when he saw three dark figures rise up from behind the gravestones that marked the resting places of Letty’s mother and father. He gasped for breath.
The voice was not that of a ghost. It belonged to Luther Quinton. “Ain’t it strange how you can tell some people no and they don’t put up an argument? Tell others and it seems like they can’t even hear you.”
The shock lingered, and Greenleaf had trouble getting his voice back. “I guess it’s because no doesn’t always make much sense.”
“It don’t have to. All that counts is that this place belongs to me, and I don’t want you on it, you or that woman of yours either. Lucky for me I set a man to watchin’ you in town. He seen you fill that hole back up without puttin’ anything in it but dirt.”
“Look, Luther, you hurt her enough when she was livin’. At least you could let her rest in peace now. Like the preacher said, she’s in no shape to do you any harm. She just wanted to be buried next to her folks. That don’t seem like much to ask.”
“But it is. You heard her when she laid that curse on me after I took this place. She named a dozen awful things that was fixin’ to happen to me, and most of them did. Anybody that strong ain’t goin’ to quit just because they’re dead.” Quinton shook his head violently. “I’m tellin’ you, she’s some kind of an Indian medicine woman. If I was to let you bury her here, I’d never be shed of her. She’d be risin’ up out of that grave and hauntin’ my every move.”
“That’s a crazy notion. She never was a medicine woman or anything like that. She wasn’t but a quarter Indian in the first place. The rest was white.”
“All I know is what she done to me before. I don’t aim to let her put a hex on me again.”
“You can’t watch this place all the time. I can wait. Once she’s in the ground, you wouldn’t have the guts to dig her up.”
“I could find twenty men who’d do it for whiskey money. I’d have them carry her over into the next county and throw her in the river, can and all.”
Frustration began to gnaw at Greenleaf. Quinton had him blocked.
Quinton’s voice brightened with a sense of victory. “So take her back to town, where you ought to’ve buried her in the first place. Since you seem to enjoy funerals, you can have another one for her.”
“I hope they let me know when your funeral takes place, Luther. I’d ride bareback two hundred miles to be here.”
Quinton spoke to the two men beside him. “I want you to ride to town with him and be sure he doesn’t do anything with that can of ashes. I want him to carry it where you can watch it all the way.”
One of the men tied up Greenleaf’s pack and lashed the diggers down tightly against it. The other held the can while Greenleaf mounted the sorrel horse, then handed it up to him.
Quinton said, “If I ever see you on my place again, I’m liable to mistake you for a coyote and shoot you. Now git!”
To underscore his order, he drew his pistol and fired a shot under the young sorrel’s feet. That was a bad mistake. The horse bawled in fright and jumped straight up, then alternated between a wild runaway and fits of frenzied pitching in a semicircle around the little cemetery. Greenleaf lost the reins at the second jump and grabbed at the saddlehorn with his left hand. He was handicapped by the lard can, which he tried to hold tightly under his right arm. He did not want to lose Letty.
It was a forlorn hope. The lid popped from the can, and the ashes began streaming out as the horse ran a few strides, then whipped about, pitched a few jumps and ran again. The west wind caught them and carried them away. At last Greenleaf felt himself losing his seat and his hold on the horn. He bumped the rim of the cantle and kicked his feet clear of the stirrups to keep from hanging up. He had the sensation of being suspended in midair for a second or two, then came down. His feet landed hard on the bare ground but did not stay beneath him. His rump hit next, and he went rolling, the can bending under his weight.
It took him a minute to regain his breath. In the moonlight he saw one of Quinton’s men chasing after the sorrel horse. The pack horse stood where it had been all along, watching the show with only mild interest.
Quinton’s second man came, finally, and helped Greenleaf to his feet. “You hurt?”
“Nothin’ seems to be broke except my feelin’s.” Greenleaf bent down and picked up the can. Most of the ashes had spilled from it. He waited until Quinton approached, then poured out what remained. The wind carried part of them into Quinton’s face.
The man sputtered and raged and tried desperately to brush away the ashes.
“Well, Luther,” Greenleaf said, “you really done it now. If I’d buried her here, you’d’ve always known where she was. The way it is, you’ll never know where she’s at. The wind has scattered her all over the place.”
Quinton seemed about to cry, still brushing wildly at his clothing. Greenleaf thrust the bent can into his hands. Quinton made some vague shrieking sound and hurled it away as if it were full of snakes.
The first Quinton man brought Greenleaf his horse. Greenleaf’s hip hurt where he had fallen, and he knew it would be giving him unshirted hell tomorrow. But tonight it was almost a good pain. He felt strangely elated as he swung up into the saddle. He reached down for the packhorse’s rein.
“This isn’t what Letty asked for, but I have a feelin’ she wouldn’t mind. She’d’ve liked knowin’ that no matter where you go on this place, she’ll be there ahead of you. And she won’t let you forget it, not for a minute.”
Riding away, he remembered the old tune Letty had taught him a long time ago. Oddly, he felt like whistling it, so he did.