The blisters on Hewey’s hands had no chance to heal. He had promised to build a surface tank to catch the water pumped by the new mill. This was a brutal, grubbing type of work he would never hire out to do for pay unless he had one foot in the grave from a terminal case of starvation, but he would do it free of charge to fulfill a promise or as a gesture to someone who had provided him bed and board.
There was no dishonor unless a man took money for it.
It was a work that demanded much from the body but little from the brain. His mind was free to soar, to drift away to other times and other places, to people he had known and people he might someday meet, to things he had done and things he intended someday to do. He trudged along behind two half-broken Lawdermilk mules and guided the hungry jaws of a big steel fresno, scooping out ancient layers of deep rich soil and moving them forty or fifty feet to dump them and form the rim of an earthen vessel that would water a growing Calloway cattle herd. The sweat flowed freely and his body sometimes ached, but it was a happy time, for in his mind he relived a thousand cheerful days he had known, unconsciously filtering out and rejecting the unpleasant. He had never allowed himself to dwell on the darker times, for to live them once had been more than enough. While the mules struggled and the sharp blade cut down to the caliche undersurface, Hewey Calloway rode broncs and danced with pretty women and caroused with traveling companions like Snort Yarnell and Grady Welch. He raced horses with Homer Ganss and the Indians. He helped Alvin Lawdermilk find a forgotten hiding place and retrieve a whisky bottle he had all but given up for lost. The reunion had been a joyous thing to see. He followed the schoolteacher’s red dog and watched Fat Gervin drown in the wake of a hundred black mongrels with outsized bladders, all the bank examiners in the state of Texas unable to save him.
After the third day he lost count, because time meant little to him. Days, he was by himself because Walter was busy in the fields and the boys were in school. Nights, they would sit outside after supper and talk awhile, but everybody went to bed at dark because to do otherwise meant to burn the kerosene lamps, and kerosene cost money.
“God gave us all the light we need,” Eve would say. “When it’s gone He means for us to rest.”
The stricture was not firmly enforced, because an allowance was made sometimes for Cotton’s studying.
Nobody had told Eve about Fat Gervin and the dogs, so she was pleasant to Hewey. Once she even went into her meager reserve of dried fruit and made an apricot cobbler that she knew was a special favorite of his. Watching him come dragging into the house of an evening, sweat-crusted and weary, she would tell him there was still hope of turning him into a Christian.
Tommy kept hanging on to Hewey’s words as if they were gospel, prodding him to tell stories. His gullibility was no longer unlimited, however. Sometimes Cotton listened and sometimes he didn’t. When he did listen, it was with a mood more of tolerance than of enjoyment. Usually he had schoolbooks to read, or books about mechanics and electricity and things of that sort, subjects in which Hewey saw no future. Nobody ever learned to ride broncs from reading a book, and knowing what made an engine run was no help in judging cattle.
Hewey decided it would do no good for him to counsel his nephew. The boy would have to find out for himself the error of his ways.
Late one evening as Hewey was taking the harness from the mules, preparing to feed them a bait of oats, he saw a horseman approaching on the wagon road. Sheriff Wes Wheeler came quickly to mind, but Hewey soon saw that this was not the sheriff. This was a smaller man, bent-shouldered, riding a worn-out old black horse that could not have carried the sheriff’s weight. The rider came by the chinaberry grove, found no freighters and angled on up toward the house.
Hewey was standing at the front step by the time the old man got there. Walter, washing the day’s dust off of his face in the outdoor washpan, dried himself on a towel and stepped out a little way to greet the visitor. The old horse eyed the towel suspiciously. Despite his age he acted as if he could pitch or run if the towel made any untoward move. There were some horses that never quite gentled down, just as there were such men.
“Howdy, Mr. Rasmussen,” Walter said. “You’d just as well get down. Supper’ll be ready directly.”
The old man sat hunched. He appeared bone-tired, reluctant to expend even the little energy it would take to get down from the saddle. “Much obliged, Walter. You don’t suppose your woman will mind.”
She probably would, Hewey thought, but she wouldn’t say anything the old man could hear. She would grit her teeth and be painfully civil.
He remembered the old man now, though it had been some years since he had last seen him, and Boy Rasmussen had gone downhill a long way. The face was pinched and furrowed, the skin dark and dry as old leather. The blue of his eyes seemed almost faded out, so that the red which rimmed them was dominant. His chin almost touched his nose, for he carried his teeth in a leather pouch hung around his neck, the leather string covered by a once-blue silk bandanna that was faded and dirty and frayed. His hands were shriveled, splotched with liver spots.
He had a smell that made the barking black dog keep its distance.
Hewey could only wonder how many years it had been since this old drifter had been given the name “Boy.”
Rasmussen painfully brought his right leg over the high cantle, dragging his foot across the black’s thin rump. Hewey heard a popping sound but couldn’t tell if it was from the dried leather of the ancient saddle or from the thin and rheumy knees. In a high-pitched, breaky voice the old man said, “Walter, I don’t suppose there’d be any whisky about?”
Walter shook his head. “We don’t keep any on the place.” Hewey saw pity in his brother’s eyes.
Rasmussen’s disappointment was plain. “It ain’t that I’m a slave to it, you understand. It’s just that I got the miseries tolerable bad today. There ain’t a joint in my body…” But there was no use belaboring the point. “I don’t suppose you’d have some ‘baccy? Chewin’ or smokin’, I wouldn’t be particular.”
Hewey had a half-empty sack of the makin’s in his shirt pocket. “Keep it, Mr. Rasmussen.” It was Mister out of deference to age; it made no difference how far down the ladder the old man had descended. On no account would Hewey have addressed him as Boy. The old man eagerly took the sack in shaking hands and laboriously rolled a cigarette, spilling tobacco around the edges of the curled brown paper. Not until he lighted it and took a lung-filling drag of the smoke did he pause to thank Hewey. He stared intently through eyes that did not see well anymore except into the past. “You’d be brother Hewey, wouldn’t you? Been off roamin’ the country, they tell me. It’s a big old country. I seen most of it myself, once. I reckon I’d go again, but this old pony here, I don’t believe he could make it anymore. Them poor old feet have carried him too many miles.”
Walter spotted Tommy staring curiously at the aging cowboy. “Tommy, I wisht you’d take Mr. Rasmussen’s horse down to the barn. Unsaddle him, put him in a pen where the other horses won’t bedevil him. And feed him some oats, will you?”
Tommy took the patched leather reins from the old man’s arthritis-cramped hands, his gaze roaming over the ragged black saddle that must date back to the trail-driving times after the big war. Hewey could read the thought behind Tommy’s eyes: how many wild and glorious scenes had that old saddle been a witness to or even a participant in?
Eve stood in the door, looking in dismay at this wizened old veteran. She would feed him supper; of that there was no question. But if she could help it she would not have him in the house. She said, “It’s too hot to eat in the kitchen. Wouldn’t you men like to eat outside where it’s cool?”
She didn’t give them time to argue the point. “Walter, you can fix Mr. Rasmussen a plate and take it to him.”
Rasmussen stared at Eve with a shyness that bordered on fear. It was a trait of these old bachelor drifters that they never quite understood women and were always nervous in their presence. The natural urges had been so long suppressed or diverted through the commercialized and mechanical attentions of the sporting women in town that they found it difficult to communicate on any level with the “good” women they encountered along the way. They put these women on a pedestal somewhere beyond the bounds of reality and made it a point to ride a long way around whenever they could.
The old man probably knew perfectly well that Eve didn’t want him in the house. But he was happy he didn’t have to go in there because it would have been as much an ordeal for him as for her. He took his teeth out of the pouch and put them into his mouth, dust and all. The way he tore into the supper, and ate a second helping when Walter refilled his plate for him, told Hewey it was probably the only thing he had eaten all day. He was a chuckline rider, too old anymore to find any steady work, existing off of the kindness of others, and off of grudging charity when he found no kindness. Almost nobody in this country would turn an old man away hungry, but there were some who would make him pay a price in shame and humility.
Hewey had heard old stories about Boy Rasmussen. He had been a great cowboy in his prime, pushing herds up the trail from South Texas to the railroads in Kansas, and beyond to the Indian reservations in Wyoming and Montana. There had been a time, before the years and the bottle had robbed him of dependability, that he had bossed herds and been a man of substance and repute. But the years had not been benevolent. Whatever might once have been was gone now. All that remained was a shell, a lonely and pathetic remnant, a burned-out relic of another time so far behind him that even he must find it unreal when the ghosts went roaming through his mind, stirring the dead ashes of old campfires, speaking in voices long silent.
After supper he began talking, his narrative wandering aimlessly through some long-ago time, touching on names no one else remembered. Hewey noticed that Tommy listened intently, and even Cotton was drawn to the old man. He spoke of the agonies of that old war, and he spoke of roundups so far behind him that most of the other participants, man and beast, had long since gone back to dust. Somehow he seemed to slip away from reality then, and he was back in an earlier time. He got up from his chair, saying he had best be getting some sleep because he had to be up early in the morning to point the herd for Doan’s Crossing on the Red; they had to make it to Dodge ahead of the other outfits, before the buyers could fill their early needs and lower the price.
Hewey watched him shuffle toward the barn. He looked worriedly at Walter. “They let that old man ride around by himself? It ain’t safe for him.”
Walter shook his head. “He’ll remember where he’s at when he has to. He drifts through here a couple of times a year. He’s got a brother down on the border that he stays with some. He’s got a sister up on the plains. He’ll get there, whichever way he’s goin’.”
Eve came outside, holding the screen door open even after she was on the front step, so she could retreat into the house if Boy Rasmussen was still around. “Did he finally go?”
Walter told her he had gone to the barn to sleep.
“Good,” she said. She turned her attention to her boys. “You’d have done better to’ve been studyin’ your lessons instead of bein’ out here listenin’ to the crazy carryin’-on of a senile old man.”
Tommy did not agree. “Folks say he was a wheel horse once.”
“Maybe so, but he’s just a busted wheel now. You boys can learn one thing from him. You can learn what happens to people who drift through life with no purpose and no direction … men wastin’ their good years seekin’ after the sinful pleasures of whisky and the flesh, playin’ cards and consortin’ with fallen women.”
She looked directly at Hewey.
Hewey said defensively, “Eve, you’ve never seen me with no fallen women.”
“Thank God I have been spared that sight. But I have seen you dally with whisky and cards. The rest is best left to imagination.”
Tommy asked, “Mama, what is consort?”
She purposely didn’t hear him. She kept her eyes on Hewey. “If you don’t change your ways you’ll wind up an old saddle bum like Boy Rasmussen.”
Hewey folded his arms, a gesture of defense. “I’ve never been a saddle bum. A bum begs somethin’ for nothin’. Sure, I’ve been on the chuckline now and again, but I’ve always worked my way. Somebody feeds me or gives me a place to sleep, I always chop some wood or top off a bronc or somethin’. I never leave anybody poorer because he taken me in.”
Eve fixed him with a triumphant stare. “At your age I don’t suppose Boy Rasmussen did, either.” She stood as if daring him to reply. Her point made, she retreated into the house, stopping only to call out, “You boys get ready for bed.”
Tommy’s question was still unanswered. “Uncle Hewey, what does consort mean?”
Hewey studied on that, looking in vain to his brother to step in with a better answer than his own. “I’ll tell you someday, when I’m old enough to know.”
Walter got up and left, laughing to himself. Sitting alone, Hewey saw nothing left to do except go to bed too. He walked down to the shed where he had been rolling out his blankets at night. He decided to take them out into the open to get away from the smelly old man, but to his relief he heard the old man’s snoring and found that he had spread his thin roll outside the shed, on the ground. That spared Hewey from having to do it.
He awakened in the morning to the first color in the east. Throwing off his blanket, he put on his hat, then his shirt and pants and lastly his boots. He walked to the open door of the shed and called out, “Old-timer, breakfast’ll be ready directly.”
But the old man was gone. Hewey stepped to the corral and looked for the poor black horse. It too was gone. Boy Rasmussen had arisen earlier than anybody and was on his way to Dodge, or to the Cheyenne reservation, or perhaps to pick up a herd in Mexico … whichever fancy might have crossed his fragile mind.
Hewey stared out into the empty land as the sun’s first good light spread across it. Whichever way he had ridden, Boy Rasmussen was a long time gone. Hewey stood a while staring, and an odd chill touched him.
At breakfast Eve remarked that Hewey was unusually quiet. He told her he was thinking about the tank-building job; it was almost finished. But the job had not crossed his mind except at the moment he needed an excuse.
Eve said uneasily, “I wish the old man hadn’t left so early.”
Hewey blinked. “I didn’t think you liked him.”
“I don’t like to think of anybody, even an old saddle bum, ridin’ across this big country hungry. You sure you didn’t hear him get up and leave?”
“I never heard a thing.”
Walter said, “He’s of that old-timey breed, about as much Indian as white. They never did believe in makin’ noise about anything they did. He comes quiet and he goes quiet.”
Tommy put in, “Like a ghost, sort of.”
Cotton ventured, “He is a ghost, of a kind. The world has gone off and left him.”
Hewey frowned. “He’s seen his hard times, but he’s seen good ones too. I don’t know but what I like his times better than the ones you’re so hell-bent on takin’ us into.”
* * *
Walter Calloway sat bareback on the gray plow mule atop the fresh new tank dam and smiled as he studied the large basin Hewey had dug and smoothed just below the windmill. He had taken time away from his planting to ride over and look at the job.
Hewey said, “If it don’t meet with your approval you’re welcome to cut my wages half in two.”
“It’s a good job of work, big brother. I figured it would take you twice as long.”
Hewey shrugged nonchalantly. “I can do anything I put my mind to.”
“And your back.” Walter nodded. “You’ve never been lazy, Hewey. You could do anything, be anything you wanted.”
“I am what I want to be.”
“I’m sayin’ you could have a place of your own. Things come easy to you when you want them. You could have a place like mine. Maybe better. All you’d have to do would be to make up your mind that’s what you wanted. All you need is the wantin’.” He paused hopefully. “I wish you would, while you still can.”
Hewey stretched out a long strip of dirty cloth that had been a sleeve. “All I need right now is a shirt. This one is past salvation.”
“You can have one of my shirts.”
Hewey doubted that Walter had one to spare. “I been wantin’ to go to town anyway. I promised Pierson and the Dutchman…”
Walter grumped, “You’re awful good at changin’ the subject. I was tryin’ to talk serious to you about gettin’ a place of your own.”
“I know it, and I’m tryin’ to head you off.” Hewey looked up at the windmill that bore his name. “I still say it needs a coat of paint.”
He hadn’t been keeping track of time, but after supper that night he found on inspection of Eve’s patent medicine calendar in the kitchen that the next day was Saturday. “I couldn’t of timed it better. It’ll be interestin’ to see how much the town has grown.”
Tommy laughed. “One blacksmith shop and three outhouses.”
Eve turned quickly, her eyes scolding, “You don’t talk thataway.”
Hewey said, “Be careful, button, or pretty soon you’ll be talkin’ like me.”
Tommy replied, “That’d be all right. Will you take me to town with you, Uncle Hewey?”
Hewey would have, but Walter said, “I need you boys at home. There’s still a right smart of field work needs doin’. I’ll sure be glad when school is out.”
Tommy didn’t argue. His parents had trained him not to. But Hewey could see the boy’s disappointment. He said, “Later on, when things get caught up around here, I’ll take both of you boys with me on a trip someplace.”
Cotton glanced at him over his book. He said nothing except with his eyes. He went back to his reading.
Tommy’s eyes brightened. “You mean that, Uncle Hewey? When? Where we goin’ to go?”
“I don’t know, exactly. We’ll figure somethin’. Maybe we’ll go out to the Davis Mountains and down into the Big Bend. Or maybe we’ll get us a boat and paddle it down the Pecos River plumb to the Rio Grande.”
“I never have learned how to swim.”
“Neither have I. But I wasn’t figurin’ on fallin’ out of the boat.”
Walter said, “I’d sure like to go on a trip like that myself.” He was not joking. Eve cut a sharp, half-fearful glance at her husband.
Hewey said, “Why don’t you, then? It’d be like old times.”
A warmth came into Walter’s face, lighting his eyes, deepening the laugh wrinkles at the corners of his mouth. “It would; it would for a fact. If I could ever see my way clear to get away for a little while…” He took a last sip from his coffee cup and found it cold. He got up and pushed his chair back under the pine table. “Long day tomorrow. We better all be gettin’ some sleep.” He walked out the door, bound for the little house out back.
The boys got up and shuffled around a little, drinking water from the dipper, Tommy wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Good night, Uncle Hewey. We’ll talk some more about that trip.”
“You bet we will,” Hewey answered, looking at Cotton and finding no belief in that nephew’s eyes.
When the boys were gone, Hewey saw that Eve was studying him with worried eyes. Uneasily he said, “I expect I’ll go to bed too.”
“No you won’t. Not till I say somethin’.” She looked away from him, frowning. “Hewey, I made up my mind I was goin’ to stay in a good humor with you if it kills both of us. And I’m tryin’ to, God knows. But I wish you wouldn’t talk to Walter about goin’ somewhere with you. It’s bad enough talkin’ foolishness to the boys that way, but him … I think it wouldn’t take much to get him to go.”
“It might be good for him if he did.”
Her voice was brittle. “No, it wouldn’t. It would just wake up a lot of old notions that it took years to put behind him. He’s your brother, Hewey. He’s got more of you in him than he has of me.” She blinked away a hint of a tear. “He gave up a lot for me and these boys. Nobody but him and me know just how much. So I wish you would leave him alone. Please … leave him alone.”
* * *
Most people who called it Upton City did so out of jest. They said it would have a foot and a half of snow on the Fourth of July before it ever became a city. Hewey couldn’t see much change in it since he had left here. He couldn’t even see the three new outhouses Tommy had spoken of. The town—what there was of it—was mostly single-story frame structures strung out in a casual line along a street that appeared to owe its original routing to a meandering buffalo trail. The story had been told that a trader had been on his way to set up a small post at Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos, but his heavily laden wagon had broken an axle here. There being no nearby timber big enough to hew a new axle, he had started selling goods out of the tarp-covered wagon. The story was probably a lie, but it made good telling. Hewey had never been one to let dull facts stand in the way of a good yarn.
Almost every house had a windmill of its own. Some people said that was wasteful, but Hewey disagreed; there was wind enough for everybody.
Dominating the town was a square stone courthouse, two stories plus a tall, domed cupola. It was built in the style of a storybook castle but scaled down to fit the limited assessed valuations of a land-poor ranching county. Beside the courthouse stood the stone jail, built to a similar pattern but smaller, squattier and lacking the cupola. Nobody saw any need in having the jailhouse be as fancy as the courthouse; the society there was nothing to brag about.
The best building in town, apart from the courthouse, was the Tarpley bank. It was built of the same stone as the courthouse, quarried nearby to save as much freighting expense as possible. It was limited to a single story, not one foot wider or longer than it had to be. C. C. Tarpley stressed economy in all things, including space. The fanciest thing about it was the carving of the name and date it had been built: 1898.
Fat Gervin stood in the door, leaning lazily against the jamb. Hewey saw him first and gave him a fleeting wave, smiling as he remembered the black dog. Fat turned without reply and disappeared into the mysterious realm of ledgers and debentures and compound interest.
Hewey looked again at the name over the door’s stone arch: TARPLEY BANK AND TRUST.
Damn little trust there on either side of the counter, he reflected.
A man called Hewey’s name and came running out from the front gate of the wagonyard, causing Biscuit to shy and step sideways. “Hey, Hewey Calloway! We’d given you up for dead!”
The shout drew the attention of a barber and his customer in a small shop across the street. The barber stepped onto the porch to holler at Hewey. His customer came out with the white barber’s cloth still tied around his neck, lifting and falling with the breeze. Biscuit did not like that cloth at all.
Hewey didn’t know who to go howdy and shake with first, so he stayed where he was, in the middle of the street. They all came out to him. In a minute others came from other stores and shops, and they clustered there on the street until big Blue Hannigan’s freight wagons, two hooked in tandem, came along needing the room.
“Hewey Calloway,” Hannigan called, “you’re blockin’ the wheels of commerce.”
But the wheels of commerce stopped right there as Blue got down to join the others in a drink at the Dutchman’s to celebrate Hewey Calloway and Fat Gervin and the boys’ black dog. The story had gotten around.
Hewey looked back toward the bank. “You reckon Fat Gervin’s heard it?”
Blue Hannigan spat a brown stream of tobacco juice at a curious pup ten feet away and made a near miss. “Bound to have by now. There’s always some slack-jaw runnin’ to tell everything he hears.”
It seemed to Hewey for a while that the only commerce in town was probably the Dutchman’s, for almost everybody he knew in Upton City seemed to drop into the little saloon to shake hands with Hewey, recall a yarn or two out of old times and demand a new one or two to take along. Many a lie was told there in the space of an hour or so, and one or two stories that Hewey felt were mostly the truth. He made a show of drinking with everybody, but in reality he drank only a little. It was a quirk of the Dutchman’s character that although he sold the stuff, he had the greatest respect for his poorest customers. Gradually the well-wishers drifted back to their own business, leaving Schneider and Hewey alone in the long, narrow room. The Dutchman had said little. He said nothing now. Friendship didn’t have to be proven in conversation. Hewey leaned his elbows on the dark-stained bar, staring at a row of engravings nailed to the wall beside and above the mirror. In lots of bars the pictures would be of women, sometimes barefoot all the way. In the Dutchman’s bar they were of racehorses. Schneider knew what was important in this world. It was said that he had been married once.
The room seemed to darken. A big man had come up to the open door and stood in it. Hewey blinked against the sunlight that haloed the man. He recognized Sheriff Wes Wheeler.
The sheriff said, “Mornin’, Hewey.”
Hewey sensed that Wheeler was not there to take a drink or to visit with the Dutchman. A little of the glow went out of him. “Mornin’, Wes.”
The sheriff came up beside Hewey at the bar. “Hewey Calloway, if wealth could be measured in friends, you’d be a richer man than C. C. Tarpley.”
Hewey could see that the sheriff’s thin smile had no depth. The eyes were coldly serious. He replied, “It is, and I am.”
Wheeler turned to Schneider. “Dutch, you reckon you could go outside for a smoke or somethin’? I got a little business to talk to Hewey about.”
Schneider gave Hewey a worried glance. Hewey knew the Dutchman was guessing there was trouble over Fat Gervin and the dog. “Hewey,” Schneider said, “if you need help I am your witness. I saw it all, and there was nothing.”
“There’s no trouble,” Wheeler assured the Dutchman. “It’s a private matter.”
Schneider laid down his bar rag and walked outside. The sheriff watched until he was sure he would not be heard. “Hewey, when you make friends you do a real good job of it. But when you make an enemy you do a good job of that too.” From his pocket he pulled a sheet of paper, folded many times. “You’ll want to take a look at that, then burn it.”
Hewey had a good idea what it was before he unfolded it. It was a fugitive notice, printed on a real press and everything. It was the first time he could remember ever seeing his name in print. Well, almost his name. Big block letters read HUGH HOLLOWAY.
A cold feeling settled in his stomach, but he tried to cover it with a surface grin. He doubted he was fooling Wheeler. “Marshal up yonder still hasn’t gotten my name right.”
“He will, sooner or later.” Wheeler’s face was deeply furrowed. “I thought you was goin’ to visit a day or two and then leave.”
“I been buildin’ a stock tank out at that new windmill.”
“You through with it yet?”
“Finished yesterday.”
Wheeler stared at Hewey’s glass, the only one left on the bar. It was full, and had been for half an hour. Impulsively he picked it up. “Hewey, do you mind?” The sheriff downed the drink and set the empty glass solidly back down on the bar. He seemed disappointed that the drink didn’t make his task any easier.
“I ain’t fixin’ to tell you what to do, Hewey. You’re a grown man, and then some. But if it was me, I’d get my good-byes said and travel on.”
“I’d hate to go now. You know, even Eve has been in a good humor most of the time.”
“Them folks up at New Prosperity ain’t. At least not that marshal. I have a feelin’ that if he was to come across you he’d shoot first and then ask you to surrender.”
“If he wanted to, he could find me no matter where I went.”
“Maybe. But he’ll find you for sure if you stay around here. I don’t know that there’s anything I can do for you if he comes. I’d even have to help him if he had the right papers and asked me to. That would distress me, Hewey.”
Hewey stared at the racehorses. He wished Wheeler hadn’t drunk up all the whiskey. “I never like to cause distress to my friends. But dammit, Wes, this thing has been blowed up out of all reason. There wasn’t nothin’ to it, hardly, just a few words and one little punch. Didn’t even skin my knuckles to speak of. All I hurt was his pride.”
“That’s all some people have, is pride. Generally the ones who take on over it most are the ones that have got the least to be proud of. Better you’d broken his head open than to’ve left him lookin’ foolish in his own town.”
“I just don’t like people tryin’ to run my life for me, tellin’ me what to do. I don’t do that to other people, and I don’t want them doin’ it to me. When I go someplace it’s because I want to, and when I leave it’s because I want to.”
“I’m not crowdin’ you, Hewey. At least I’m tryin’ not to.”
“It ain’t you, it’s them.” He felt somehow trapped. He doubled his fist and beat it against the bar.
Hopefully the sheriff asked, “That mean you’re fixin’ to leave?”
Hewey had hit the bar too hard. He rubbed the aching hand. “It means I’ll think about it.”
“All right, Hewey. I just don’t want you on my conscience.”
“No reason I should be. Whatever I decide, it’ll be my own doin,’ not yours.”
The sheriff nodded. “I’ve had my say.” He reached over and touched Hewey’s tattered sleeve. A faint smile compromised his solemnity. “Go or stay, if I was you I think I’d get me a new shirt.”
Pierson Phelps’ general mercantile was the largest store in town. It was a simple frame structure decorated by a liberal application of gingerbread trim along the top of the porch. Canned and boxed goods were stacked high on a shelf inside the window, but Phelps never moved anything out onto the porch for display. It was too much work to move it back in at night. The sign out front was a small one, the letters hardly six inches high: Phelps General Mercantile and Sundries. He saw no need in ostentatious advertising; everybody in town knew who he was and what he sold. He also had the post office, and that fact was noted on a separate sign even smaller than the other. Anybody who couldn’t find the post office probably couldn’t read a letter anyway.
The old merchant stood a little way inside the door, apron around his broad waist, dark sleeve protectors pulled way up on his thick arms. He wore a small black bow tie, which always seemed to bob up and down as he talked. “I heard you were in town an hour ago, Hewey. Thought you had forgotten me.”
“Not hardly. Just taken me a little longer than I figured on to get around. I don’t suppose you’d have a shirt that’d fit me? Not one of them fancy two-dollar Sunday-meetin’ shirts. Somethin’ even a broke cowpuncher can afford.”
Pierson narrowed one eye and shut the other, studying Hewey’s build. He walked behind a counter on the drygoods side, where the bolt cloth was stacked, and pulled out a drawer. He poked around in it a minute and brought out a simple white shirt with gray stripes. “Normally I get a dollar apiece for these, but seein’ it’s you I’ll let you have it for six bits. I’ll even throw in a bow tie.”
“Any cheaper without the tie?”
“I’ve already given you my preacher rate, and you’re no preacher. But I’ll keep the tie and give you a sack of barber-pole candy to take home to the boys.”
Hewey took the shirt, felt of the plain cotton material and decided it was too high at the price. Many a time he had worked a full, hard day for a lot less than six bits. But money was getting to where it wasn’t worth anything anymore.
“Merchant takes all the best of it,” he lamented. “But I reckon I’ll settle for what I can get.”
“It’s the cost of labor that makes everything so high,” Pierson sympathized. “You wouldn’t believe what some people earn, workin’ in factories back east. They’re ridin’ this country down to ruin.”
That was how things had always been as far back as Hewey could remember. Price of cattle was always too low, and price of everything else was always too high. “I’m goin’ to find me a corner back yonder and put this new shirt on,” he said.
Pierson pointed vaguely with his sharp chin, somewhere toward the rear of the room.
The post office section was along the south wall, a little more than halfway back in the store. Hewey couldn’t remember that he had ever received a letter out of it, but it was comforting to know he could if anybody ever wrote to him. He went around the back side of that section, where he wouldn’t be seen from the front of the store, and he took off what was left of the ragged shirt that had known hard duty almost continuously all winter and spring. His long-handled underwear wasn’t a lot better, but it had one virtue: nobody could see it. He wasn’t going to buy himself a new set. Pierson would probably want an extra four bits, at least.
Money didn’t mean much to Hewey, but he saw no sense in throwing it away.
He didn’t realize how long it could take him to put on a shirt. He hadn’t figured on the thing having so many pins. Every time he thought he had found them all, another one stuck him. He was so intent on the pins that he didn’t hear the wooden floor squeak under someone’s feet.
He heard a woman say, “Woops!”
By reflex he turned, the shirt in his hand. The schoolteacher stood there, eyes wide in surprise. Again by reflex, Hewey brought up the new shirt to try to hide his chest, which the long underwear was doing anyway. “Pardon me, ma’am,” he managed, feeling his face burn red.
“Pardon me, Mr. Calloway.” She turned her back on him.
He hurriedly pulled the shirt on. A pin he had missed was scratching his neck, but he wouldn’t have taken the shirt off again for a box of them, the two-dollar kind. He quickly shoved the shirttail in and buttoned his britches. “I’m decent now,” he said uneasily, feeling around the collar but unable to locate the irritating pin. He decided he had rather put up with it than make a show of the thing.
She had moved around to the other side of the post office section and was still turned away from him. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, Mr. Calloway. I had no idea you were there. Mr. Phelps must have stepped outside somewhere.”
Hewey had wondered why Phelps hadn’t headed her off. “My fault,” he replied. “I ought to’ve gone out back to the…” He caught himself. One did not speak to a lady about such things as outhouses. Their existence was only privately recognized, never publicly acknowledged. They were, between the sexes, in the nature of an open secret.
She said, “I was just trying to see if I might have a letter. Mr. Phelps always puts them in that box back there.”
Hewey could see so many open boxes, letters sticking out of at least half, that he had no idea which one she meant. “Show me where it’s at and I’ll get it for you.”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t want to cause you any trouble.”
“No trouble atall. I can reach in there easy and get it.”
“That’s not the kind of trouble I mean. It’s against the law for you or me to touch it so long as it’s behind the postmaster’s counter.”
“It’s your letter, ain’t it?”
“Not until Mr. Phelps hands it to me himself.”
With his eye Hewey roughly measured the width of the counter and the reach to the boxes behind it. For the letter it would be a very short trip. “It’ll be the same letter then that it is right now. Seems to me like I’d save Pierson Phelps a little work and you a little time.”
“I know the rule looks silly, but it is the rule.”
“Looks to me like if they want people to pay attention to the rules, the rules ought to make sense.”
She smiled. “You have the logic, Mr. Calloway, but Washington has the law. I am afraid I have been put in the position of the devil’s advocate.”
He didn’t know what she meant by that, but it sounded vaguely wicked. And her a schoolteacher …
She asked, “Have you always been such a rebel, Mr. Calloway?”
“That war was over a good while before I was born. But my old daddy was in the Confederate Army.”
Her eyes seemed to be laughing a little, but he had the feeling that she was not really laughing at him. At least, the laughter did not embarrass or anger him. She said, “I wonder how you ever got along in the Army, with all the regulations you had to obey?”
“There was times when I thought sure I was goin’ to wind up in that army jailhouse, but seemed like they always found someplace they needed me worse.” He stared at her thoughtfully. “How’d you know I was in the Army?”
“Tommy told me. He has told me a great deal about you, as a matter of fact. He said you were in Cuba, right there beside Teddy Roosevelt.”
Hewey squirmed. “Well, I was in Cuba, all right. I wouldn’t say I was all that close to the President.”
“Tommy told me you were in the charge up San Juan Hill, showing Roosevelt the way.”
He felt his face going red again. Where in the world had the boy ever gotten a yarn like that? “You got to watch that button, ma’am. He’s inclined now and again to exaggerate.”
She smiled. “He’s a good boy. They’re both good boys. You can be proud to have them for kin.” The smile faded, and the laughter gradually went out of her eyes. She seemed to be looking past him a moment, leaving this time and this place for somewhere out of memory or out of imagination, possibly some place lost. She caught herself and looked back at him, but the glow did not return to her eyes. Whatever ghost had crossed her mind, he had taken the glow with him. She said, “I’ve been interested in Cuba for a long time. I’d like someday to have you tell me about your experiences there.”
“They didn’t really amount to much.”
“They would be interesting to me.” She looked away from him again, toward the front windows and the sunlight on the street. She said, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Alvin Lawdermilk?”
“Not since Sunday, out at the place.”
“He has talked about you a great deal. Everybody talks about you a great deal.”
He grimaced. “I hope you don’t listen to everything they say.”
“They all speak well of you.” She reconsidered. “Mostly well, anyway. One gentleman down at the bank might be an exception.”
“I hoped you’d forgot about that.”
The smile came again. “I’ll never forget it. I’ll be eternally grateful to you.”
He frowned. “I get the feelin’ Fat Gervin done somethin’ to you.”
“He didn’t, but he would have. His intention was clear enough.”
Resentment flared in him. She was a handsome woman, he decided. He could understand how a man of Fat’s character could get to thinking things that should never cross the mind of a married man. Momentarily those thoughts came to Hewey too. But he quickly put them aside, for this was a lady, and a gentleman did not compromise a lady, even in his mind. He had no regret for what he had done to Fat. He was sorry only that Miss Renfro had seen it.
“It was a fool stunt I done.”
“Not at all. It fitted him so well.” She seemed ready to turn away, but she said, “Alvin Lawdermilk has been talking about how much he would like to have you come over to his place and help him break some horses and mules.”
“He told me, but I been needin’ to get on down the road.”
“He’s short-handed. All he has is Julio Valdez, and it’s too much for just the two of them. He could really use your help.”
Hewey shoved his hands into his pockets. In one he felt the folded fugitive notice the sheriff had given him. “I wisht I could oblige, but I got a job waitin’ for me out west…”
“And a job here, if you want it.”
Pierson Phelps came in the front door, looking around. He spied Spring Renfro, and his round face lighted up like a barn-dance lantern on a Saturday night. “Miss Renfro! I just saw your paint horse tied outside. I hope you haven’t waited long.”
“Not at all, I’ve had a pleasant visit with Mr. Calloway. I came to see if I might have any mail. I’ve been expecting a letter from my sister.”
“Yes, a letter came for you yesterday.” Phelps stepped inside the little cubicle that was the post office and reached up into one of the boxes. Hewey grimaced. He could have reached it, and Miss Renfro could have read it by now.
Phelps handed her the letter. She glanced at the handwriting. “It’s from her, all right.”
Phelps came out from behind the counter and leaned his heavy body against it. “School’s about out. I suppose you’ll be leavin’ us soon for the summer?”
She shook her head. “No. My sister is all the family I have anymore. She has her own home, and her own family. I’d be company for the first few days. After that I’d be a burden. Cora Lawdermilk has asked me to stay and help her see after her old mother.”
Phelps smiled. “That’s fine. We’ve gotten used to havin’ you around here. We’d miss you if you left.”
“And I’d miss this place.” She moved to the front door. Phelps and Hewey followed her. She paused and looked out into the street. “Odd, the hold this West Texas country takes on a person. First time I saw what I had come to, I hated it. I was used to trees and tall green grass and running streams. All I saw here was open country and desert. Or so I thought. But it’s grown on me. I don’t know if I could ever go back to the piney woods again.”
“You shouldn’t ever have to. If some eligible bachelor here doesn’t come along and grab you up, I’ll be awful disappointed in the whole bunch of them.” He glanced at Hewey.
Hewey felt his face redden once more.
She walked out to her horse, tethered at a rail. She untied him and stood a moment, looking at the sidesaddle, then glancing back at the store.
Pierson Phelps gave Hewey a push. “What’re you standin’ there for, cowboy? She needs a lift up.”
Hewey had been thinking about it, but he had wanted to make up his own mind. Stiffly he stepped down from the porch and gave her a boost, careful not to touch her anywhere except the foot. Even being close to her flustered him a little.
Once she had her right leg in place over the horn, and her ankles properly covered by her long riding skirt, she thanked Hewey. “I hope you’ll keep in mind what I said about Alvin Lawdermilk. He does need your help. And it would be nice to see a new face.” She smiled and rode up the street on her paint horse.
Hewey stared after her. He had decided she wasn’t really so old as he had judged the first time he saw her. He doubted she was past thirty. Not much past thirty, anyway.
Phelps said, “You could do a lot worse.”
“Worse than what?”
“She’s a real nice lady.”
Hewey could see no argument with that. “Seems like it.”
“I’ll admit she’s not the greatest beauty in the world.”
Hewey turned and challenged him. “Show me one in Upton City who looks better.”
The way the storekeeper smiled, Hewey suspected he had stepped into a trap. Phelps said, “She’s got no gentleman callers, far as I’ve heard.”
“She still ain’t got one.”
Phelps regarded him with amusement. Hewey was sure now about that trap. The old man said, “I believe you’d better have two shirts. Tell you what I’ll do—I’ll give you the second for just four bits. And I believe you’ll be needin’ that bow tie after all.”