SWOPES AND KALVO

Roscoe Hudson

Swopes fled to Colorado two months earlier before a posse of white men in East Texas got the chance to string him up. He bargained for a room behind Tessie Rose’s, worked off his rent fixing whatever she needed fixing, fended off Tessie’s whores, and choked on the sticky sweet perfume Tessie claimed she bought in Paris. One Thursday night, Tessie sashayed into his tiny room, tits pushed up to Jesus in a velvet coral dress. Kalvo followed her, eyes down, Stetson in hand, boots shiny as gold bits. Swopes liked the look of the man: a sturdy, square-jawed gent from somewhere back East trying to pass for a gunslinger, but his accent would always give him away. Slicked-back raven hair, deep-set cobalt eyes, a mike-white face that had never taken a punch. Kalvo spoke plain, promised Swopes quarters in the lean-to back of his house (he told Swopes he would have to build a fourth wall if he was shy and of a mind to), three squares a day, and twenty dollars a week. Heaps more than white men got for ranch handing. That’s when Swopes knew the man was desperate.

When he got to Kalvo’s homestead the situation was rough. Acres of fallow land. Skinny chickens. A rickety barn sheltered a cow that had stopped giving milk. Worst of it, the well, like the cow, had all but dried up. Two tombstones beneath a spruce tree near the barn—one big, one little—faced the mountains that rose like the chests of sleeping giants in the distance. Wild flowers had been placed on the big tombstone. A mournful ragdoll perched on the little one. Kalvo never spoke their names.

The lean-to back of the main house was just as Kalvo had described—three walls, the front open to nature—but larger than Swopes had imagined, furnished with a cot, table, chair, kerosene lamp, and a zinc washtub big enough for a man of Swopes’s burly size. A Bible commanded the entire space from the center of the smooth spruce table. When Swopes picked up the Bible and opened it, dandelions fluttered out of First Corinthians.

His first morning on the ranch, after Kalvo fed him grits and eggs, Swopes got to work helping Kalvo resurrect the place. Kalvo seemed so green to Swopes he wondered how the rancher had managed to survive out on the prairie for as long as he had. Swopes had to teach Kalvo the ways of both farming and the land that even a suckling homestead baby would have known as well as scripture. Swopes led him around like a tot; he stomped and swaggered about the spread like he was the rancher and Kalvo was the hand. They accomplished more in six weeks than either of them thought possible. They turned over the dried-up soil, tossed on fertilizer, and hoped for rain. Swopes repaired the roof of the barn and reinforced its structure. He fed the cow a special diet; before long it squirt buckets of milk. Eventually Swopes and Kalvo dug a new well. It took Swopes no time to build a privacy wall for the lean-to from pine siding Kalvo had stored on the ranch from way back.

Swopes only entered the main house once to collect his pay. The whole transaction was of a breach of custom. Each Saturday at dusk Swopes knocked on the back door and waited for Kalvo to walk out and press the bills into his calloused palm. On the fourth week, however, Kalvo didn’t answer when Swopes knocked. Tentatively, Swopes opened the squeaky door (he kept promising himself to oil it, though Kalvo never complained) and stepped inside. Unlike the sorry state of the rest of the ranch when he first arrived, the order and cleanliness of the main house impressed Swopes. Scrubbed pots and pans hung on the wall. A piano stood in a corner, covered in a patina of dust; a guitar and a harmonica lay atop it. In the corner opposite a fireplace, a dress form stood naked and neglected. Swopes called out Kalvo’s name again; silence replied. He took off his boots and softly trod the silent floorboards. A long cottonwood harvest table stretched across the main room and the walls of that room were lined with leather-bound books standing in polished bookcases. Swopes ran his fingertips across the tops of the books, recognized many of the titles and names raised in regal gold letters on their spines. There were so many books Swopes felt a pang of longing, both for the books and for Mama and Sarah, for the mornings they taught Negro school children and the nights he sat up in bed and read himself to sleep by candlelight.

The backdoor squeaked. Swopes spun around with a start.

“Take one.”

Kalvo was standing in back of him, shirtless and sweaty, dusty from head to foot.

“My apologies, Mr. Kalvo, sir.” Swopes tingled all over at the sight of him. Sweat streaked his back.

“My apologies to you, Swopes, for being so late. Got myself good and dirty out back a-ways. Thought about planting that west field.”

“I would have helped you, sir.”

Kalvo shook his head. “Got a wild hair, that’s all. I owe you.”

He reached into the pocket of his denims, took out the bills and, as usual, pressed them into Swopes’s hand, palm on palm. The touch of Kalvo’s hand was soft even after all the hard work they had put in on the ranch. Swopes’s cock and nipples began to stiffen. He and Kalvo held hands for a little longer than either of them realized and didn’t let go until Kalvo brought up the subject of books again.

“You want to learn to read I’ll teach you.”

“I can read.”

“Capital. That’s very good, Swopes. My father always said a good man knows the word of God but a righteous man must read it daily.”

He took a thick book off the top shelf and presented it to Swopes’s chest. Swopes felt himself being seduced by both the gilded pages of the book and the pungent odor of the rancher. How long had it been since he had read a book or bedded a man? He accepted the book and humbly excused himself out the way he came, not even stopping to put his boots back on.

Only a few minutes later Swopes was hanging a door on the lean-to when Kalvo emerged from the back door of the main house carrying a washtub and a towel draped over his arm. He set the tub near the well, filled it with well water, stripped, and stepped in. Swopes stopped his work and watched the white man splash around and soap himself. Kalvo stood bare ass to the sun and soapy all over. The scent of the soap Kalvo used wafted down to the lean-to, enticing Swopes. Tessie had gifted him the soap on the night they met. She called it sandalwood. Swopes stood in the doorway of the lean-to watching Kalvo scrub his armpits and asscrack, stroke his pecker. He gripped his own crotch at the sight, let one of his thumbs dance on his nipple. Kalvo bent down and dipped a small bowl into the sudsy water. He lifted it above his head, tilted it, and let the water cascade down his body.

Swopes loosened his denims, pulled out his cock, and stroked it, not caring if his boss saw him or not. A squirt of spit and he was good. Precum seeped from his cock; he looped it around the long sloped head of his dick and kept jerking as he ogled Kalvo’s hairy firm body, its muscular symmetry, the meatiness of his thighs and calves, the flex of his arms. Kalvo, staring directly at Swopes, grasped his own pecker in both fists and tugged furiously. Swopes sucked on his middle finger and plunged it into his asshole; he slid it in and out as he pumped his leaden dick, a quick-slow-quick syncopation that countered Kalvo’s swift pulls. They came together, both shouting so loud the mountains echoed, as if a chorus of ten thousand horny cowboys denied sex for far too long had all drained their balls at exactly the same moment. Pearls of Kalvo’s spunk dribbled into the bathwater as Swopes’s seed ejected from his cock like Roman candles and streaked the dirt. He doubled over and heaved. Kalvo toweled off and hurried back into the main house. The sound of the back door slamming was like a gunshot to Swopes.

A week later Kalvo swaggered into the lean-to. He wasn’t one to knock. He hitched a thumb in his britches, braced his forearm in the doorjamb. “Wash up and shine your boots. Got a thirst. Hate drinking solo.” Swopes watched the ample round humps of Kalvo’s rear as he stepped back to the main house. He’d never known a white man with a plumper ass or thicker thighs. Swopes put aside his borrowed book. He scrubbed up, gave a quick spit shine to his boots, put on a clean shirt and pants. After donning his prospector’s hat he went outside and mounted his horse.

Swopes’s and Kavlo’s horses trotted side-by-side. A crescent moon ornamented the starless sky. They may as well have been the only people on Earth. A chill wind blew through the barren trees and surrounded the cowboys like dead souls.

“Like what?” Swopes asked.

“Never heard that?” Kalvo scratched the stubble on his chin. “When it gets chilly like this it’s like haints rising up out the grave. It’s what my granny always said. It’ll be an early winter sure enough.”

Swopes looked around. He observed the trees and meadows, random critters scurrying and noising the silvery night. He let his eyes rest on Kavlo, the set of his mammoth shoulders, the wide spread of his chest. In the moonlight he looked like a fallen Union soldier resurrected from a valiant death. He wanted to reach over and stroke Kalvo’s face to make sure he was really there.

Spirits were high at Tessie Rose’s place. Every cowboy, ranch hand, gambler, gunslinger, and trader within ten miles packed both floors of the bordello, making an unholy rumpus. The piano player, Sherrod, the only other black man in the room, pounded out a manic ditty while some of Tessie’s girls whirled around the dance floor holding up men so drunk they’d never remember how much money they came into the joint with but were certain to leave broke as beggars. High-stakes poker kept a lot of the customers preoccupied. The whores upstairs, the ones unoccupied, leaned over the railing, swung their titties, and yahooed. Swopes and Kalvo shouldered through the crowds. Once they bellied up at the bar, Kalvo ordered a bottle of whiskey and set it between them.

Tessie sauntered over, red gems dangling from her earlobes. She draped an arm around each of them. “My two favorite men.” Tessie stepped in time to the tune on the piano. “Kalvo, how’s that spread of yours coming along? My friend ain’t put you in dutch, has he?”

Swopes inhaled the sweetness of her powdered bosom, turned up his nose, swallowed another shot of whiskey. His steely blue eyes gleamed. “Ain’t never been better, Tessie.” He swallowed a shot then reached for the bottle. “You’re packing them in tonight, old girl.”

“Chill always sweeps the studs in. A man’s gotta do something to keep warm on these cold prairie nights.” She turned to Swopes and added, “Colder in bed with their wives than it is in here!” She laughed and smacked each man on the back.

The cloying scent of Tessie’s talcum and perfume irritated Swopes’s nose. He sneezed, rubbed his eyes.

“You fellas in the mood for eats? Got an Indian girl in the kitchen made a heap of buffalo stew and fry bread. Mighty tasty.”

“Stew’ll keep us from getting drunk,” said Kalvo.

Swopes glanced across the room at Sherrod. Wiry, with a broad flat nose and a large forehead, he swayed left to right while his long fingers frantically rapped the piano keys, all the while smiling the way children smile when they get away with mischief. A black bowler was cocked on the side of his bald head. He caught Swopes’s gaze, winked at him, kept storming the keys.

“We’ll if you ain’t got no appetite for food,” Tessie said, “maybe you two gents got a hankerin’ of another kind, huh?”

She gestured toward the staircase with her chin. Two comely whores, both topless, leaned over the railing. Each blew Kalvo a kiss.

“We’re stag tonight, Tessie.”

“Kalvo you ain’t been up them stairs in a coon’s age. Religion got you or the clap?”

The air left Swopes’s lungs for a moment. He stared at Kalvo as he leaned in close to Tessie, tilted his head, and arched an eyebrow.

“I’m a clean sinner, Tessie old girl,” Kalvo declared. “A clean sinner.”

The aged madam yelped. “The best kind there is, handsome. Well if you change your mind you climb upstairs. I’ll tell Adeline to set herself by.”

“Adeline?”

Tessie Rose pointed her ringed index finger at one of the girls upstairs who had blown a kiss to Kalvo. A coiffure of saffron-colored hair crowned her head. She had a face like a valentine and skin so white she seemed to glow. Her breasts were enormous; her waist was slender. She winked at Kalvo.

“Fresh off the train from Kansas City and still virgin tight,” Tessie bragged. “Ain’t too many studs rid her yet. I won’t let ’em.”

“Give her the night off, won’t you Tessie?” said Kalvo. He teeter-tottered the bottom of his shot glass on the counter lightly.

“No doing, Kalvo. A whore’s gotta earn her keep. I’ll set her by for you. Ease up on the hooch or your pecker’ll be no good for hanging wash even. Bye now.” She was about to strut off when she turned to Swopes and said, “Don’t think I forgot about you, sad eyes. That little Indian girl gotta earn her keep too. I seen her eat a whole fried rattlesnake once so I know she can handle black snake. Haha!”

Swopes nursed his shot of whiskey and waited for Kalvo to speak, all the while remembering their afternoon the previous week, the pleasure that once again announced itself in his pants. Swarms of lustful schemes crisscrossed his mind.

“Why’d you come out here, Swopes?” asked Kalvo.

“The South is no place for a colored man. The North is no place for a colored man with ambition.”

Swopes couldn’t tell him the real reason. In a flash he recalled Mama and Sarah’s tear-soaked faces as they pleaded for him on their knees outside the schoolhouse, and Sheriff Musgrove carting him away like roped cattle for a white man’s crime. The truth would stay locked within Swopes forever. He swallowed his drink.

“Thank you for the drink, Mr. Kalvo, sir.”

“Kalvo’s good enough for me, Swopes.”

Swopes’s heart fluttered. “Thank you, Kalvo.”

They drank.

“Got around to that book yet? Great Expectations?”

Swopes poured another drink. He could see Sherrod spying on them from across the saloon with a menace in his eyes. “It passes fair. I’m nearly done with it.”

“I receive a shipment of new books every month from Boston. Come to the main house at your liberty and borrow one whenever you want. I can never read them all.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kalvo.”

“Just Kalvo, like I said.”

Swopes admired the nape of Kalvo’s neck as he drank.

“My parents were abolitionists in Boston. They taught many runaways how to read and write.”

Swopes straightened his back, stuck out his chin. “I was born free. I’ve been to school.”

Kalvo nodded. “You remind me of Pip. From the book.”

“Do I?”

“It’s a determination I see in you, Swopes. You’re a hard worker and, I gather, no fool. You’ve certainly helped resurrect my ranch.”

The music in the bordello stopped but the raucous activities continued, the vortex of dancing, carousing, arm wrestling, gambling, and fornicating that to Swopes seemed to belong to another space and time. Sherrod came over, stood beside Swopes, and ordered a beer from the bar. He took a gulp, wiped the suds from his lips with his shirtsleeve, and smacked his lips. “Ain’t seen you in a while, Swopes.”

“Been working hard,” Swopes said. “You know Mr. Kalvo.”

Sherrod tipped his bowler. “Evenin’, Rancher Kalvo, sir.”

“Evening, Sherrod.”

Swopes had roomed next to Sherrod in back of Tessie Rose’s before he went to work at Kalvo’s ranch. During his stay he kept his interactions with Sherrod short and busied himself in a different part of the house from wherever Sherrod happened to be. Something about the man kept Swopes on his guard. He always seemed to mock Swopes in silence, and at the same time the man’s obvious fascination with Swopes was somewhat embarrassing for both men, but if Sherrod felt embarrassed he never showed it. Even Tessie noticed Sherrod’s yen for him and cautioned Swopes to steer clear of the invert.

“You gents out on a toot?” Sherrod inquired.

“Just drinks,” Kalvo said. “And good music.”

“Music? Yes, sir. Ol’ Sherrod is just gettin’ hisself a libation, sir. Goin’ out for a piss. I’mma be back in short time to play piano real soon, Rancher Kalvo.”

He smiled and winked at them before taking his mug of beer and exiting the whorehouse.

“Fella’s a character,” Kalvo said. “Your friend?”

“He wants to be everyone’s friend.”

The cowboys smiled at each other before they downed their booze.

Kalvo said, “You keep that book, Swopes. It’s yours.”

Then Swopes did what he didn’t think he had courage enough to do, what took him more courage than the act of madness and retribution that expelled him into the Centennial State to begin with. Gradually, deliberately, with stealth and the thrill that only risk can surge, he motioned his hand closer to Kalvo’s as it rested on the bar until their pinkies touched. Swopes’s little finger raised like a newborn calf struggling against the frailty and fear that comes with birth. Yes, he lifted the smallest finger of his hand—a hand that had loved and killed, created and destroyed—and stroked Kalvo’s pinky up to the nail and back again, three times, the gentlest of caresses transacted between men accustomed to busting the land and the bodies of other men with impunity; the purest declaration of the flesh announced like a whisper inside of a brothel screeching with lustful degradation. Until the last of his days, Swopes would remember this as the most courageous moment of his life.

Kavlo gazed down at their hands for a moment, took his time lifting his eyes to meet Swopes’s. Swopes prayed for a kiss, braced himself for a slug. He had taken the unspoken contract between them, the wordless code all men like them abided by, and shouted it to the rafters in one small gesture. “I don’t” were the only words Kalvo managed to speak before Adeline pounced on him and kissed him full on the mouth.

“You need to come with me now, cowboy,” the harlot cooed. Her lip rouge smudged his mouth and chin. Kavlo looked like he had been attacked by an animal.

“What are you doing?” Kalvo asked as the woman rubbed his chest and ran her fingers through his hair.

“You’re the best looking man I’ve seen in a spell.” She brushed her bare breasts against him and squeezed him between his legs. “Show me what a real man is.”

Kalvo left the bar without a word to Swopes. Adeline pranced in front of him. She reached behind, took his hands, and placed them on her jiggling breasts. They climbed the stairs and vanished behind a black lacquered door with a shiny brass knob.

Swopes had gotten his answer: I don’t.

He went outside to take a piss behind the whorehouse. Afterwards he decided to saddle up and ride back to the ranch.

“Howdy, sidekick.”

It was Sherrod, walking toward him from the opposite direction.

“Doesn’t your piano need playing?” Swopes was in no mood for talk or games.

“‘Doesn’t’? Damned if you ain’t the whitest soundin’ black boy I ever met.” He spit out a squirt of chaw. “You ain’t foolin’ nobody, sidekick. You one of them Negroes still lovin’ up on master’s dick. Shit, first chance I got I hightailed off the damn plantation, long before the war. Stole a might sum of my master’s loot when he weren’t lookin’ and made out West. That white man of yours surely won’t yield to you, black boy.”

“Leave me be.”

It felt to Swopes like being mauled by a rabid dog instead of being kissed by a man. Swopes didn’t fight. He was too drunk and horny. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt the touch of a man other than himself. He needed release. And perhaps Sherrod was right. Kalvo would never be his. Tonight he was Adeline’s.

Swopes opened his mouth wide when Sherrod squeezed his ass, and Sherrod’s tongue slithered inside. Swopes could taste the beer and chaw in the piano player’s mouth, feel gaps where teeth should have been. It made his dick harder. Sherrod had a narrower waist and a smaller frame, but his body was tight with muscles that knotted at the shoulders, biceps, and chest. Swopes rubbed Sherrod’s pecker and liked the size. Sherrod pushed him down to his knees.

The length of Sherrod’s cock was enough to shame every man Swopes had ever screwed. He pushed the foreskin back with his lips and let his tongue swirl over the bullet-shaped head. He sucked deep, making certain to keep his teeth out of the way, opening wide near Sherrod’s pelvis and closing his mouth on the head of his cock. The funk of Sherrod’s privates proved more intoxicating than the whiskey Swopes had drunk. Spit drooled down his chin. His hole puckered.

“You have someplace we can go?” Swopes asked after a few minutes. “It’s cold out here.”

“Fine right here, sidekick. Ain’t never too cold to fuck.”

Swopes stood, turned his back to Sherrod, and bent over. He dropped his britches to his ankles, careful of his pistol, and placed his hands flat against the door of the shit house. He heard Sherrod hawk once, twice. Felt the gloopy wetness on his rosebud. He braced himself.

“Put your hands on your ass and spread your cheeks.” Sherrod was already panting. “Now push back on it. Yeah, like that. Wiggle your ass some. Ooh . . .”

Swopes sucked in a breath and grit his teeth to prevent the agony inside of him from shattering the stillness of the night.

“That’s fine, boy,” Sherrod murmured. “Sweet hole. Come on and talk to me, honey. Let that split beaver talk to me.”

Sherrod rode his ass for only a couple of minutes but for Swopes it felt like a lifetime. A tear salted the corner of his mouth. He thought for sure he’d die from the pain. Then Swopes felt Sherrod pull out and hawk onto his hole a couple more times before the man’s long cock rutted inside of him again. But this time the pain subsided and Swopes wanted Sherrod’s cock to probe deeper, take longer strokes. He countered Sherrod’s rhythmic thrusting, bucked on his cock like a show pony, and reached for his own stiff prick. He thought of Kalvo with Adeline. He imagined Kalvo where Sherrod was, walloping his asshole, and he imagined himself where Adeline was, lying beneath Kalvo with her legs wrapped around his waist, her cooch gripping his hard dick as his firm, hairy body rose and fell on top of her. Ripples of pleasure vibrated in every region of Swopes’s body.

“Tighter than a church girl’s cooch,” Sherrod moaned. “Goddamn!”

Swopes could feel Sherrod’s cock smash his prostate. He was close to coming.

“Yeah, sidekick. You like this black snake, don’t cha? Come on with it.”

They panted and grunted for the whole town to hear. When Sherrod finally came he bellowed. Swopes could feel the cum ooze out of his ass and run down his balls.

“Turn round, sidekick. Lemme taste it.”

Swopes complied, and Sherrod bent down and took his cock in his mouth. He slurped and smacked on Swopes’s cock, staring up into his eyes and stroking Swopes’s dick with his large leathery hand. When he came, Sherrod guzzled his load with wide-eyed delight.

“Got a dick like a mustang,” Sherrod said. “Hell, you shoulda fucked me.”

Swopes made up his mind the next day. He’d quit the ranch and head out for California day after tomorrow. He had saved up enough money, and he had a fear of staying in one place too long. His horse was strong and if he left now he’d be in California before winter. The longer he stayed the more he wanted Kalvo. There were moments when the desire to touch Kalvo, to hold him and bed him were so powerful Swopes felt himself go dizzy from want. No man had ever captivated him like Kalvo. If Swopes couldn’t have him he wouldn’t stay.

He didn’t wait to be invited into the main house, and he didn’t take off his shoes. He found Kalvo seated at the harvest table sipping coffee and staring into space. He stomped toward him and dropped Great Expectations on the table with a loud thud. Kalvo looked puzzled.

“I can’t stay,” Swopes said, trembling.

Kavlo looked down at the book and up at Swopes. “That book is yours.”

“No, boss. I leave only with what I came with.”

Kalvo stood and approached him. “I thought you were happy here. You have plenty of money and the run of the spread. Have I done something, Swopes?”

“This is no place of mine, boss. No place for me.”

“Boss?” The word from Kalvo’s lips sounded like a rebuke.

Swopes lifted his eyes to the ceiling. He couldn’t bring himself to look into Kalvo’s eyes.

Kalvo’s voice dropped to near silence. “Bosses and ranch hands don’t do what you and I do, talk the way you and I talk.”

Droplets of sweat formed on Swopes’s nose and upper lip as Kalvo took one of his hands and placed it on his crotch. Kalvo’s cock was getting harder and harder.

Kalvo pulled him close. Chest to chest, he whispered in Swopes’s ear,“You’re pretty. You’re my pretty.”

The men embraced and kissed as they clumsily stepped into the bedroom. Their britches dropped before they could take off their boots. Kalvo’s knees hit the floor. Swopes shut his eyes and pumped his prick in and out of Kalvo’s moist mouth. He tugged at his nipples while Kalvo let loose on his dick, licked his balls and his taint. They kicked off their boots, tossed off their pants, and landed on the soft bed; lying mouth to dick they devoured each other.

They had to use spit and a finger scoop of shortening from the cupboard. It helped; Swopes’s rosebud relaxed and accepted Kalvo’s chubby cock with ease. He rode Kalvo’s cock slowly at first, then crashed down hard on his dick, gripping the girth of Kalvo’s cock with the muscles of his hole. All the while Kalvo whispered, “You’re my pretty.” And it went the same for Swopes: Kalvo bent over the side of the bed and shouted when Swopes slid his dick up Kalvo’s willing ass. He wanted it hard and fast, and the harder and faster Swopes rammed him the louder he shouted. Once Kalvo’s ass had been ridden good the pair lay side-by-side, kissing and jerking their dicks. Kalvo shot first, four pumps that slid down his knuckles. Swopes fired five loads above their heads that splashed the headboard. They slept deeper than the dead and held each other through the night.

The next morning word went around town that some no-account named Charlie Guiteau had shot President Garfield dead.

In the winter the pair took a trip into town. Kalvo sprung for new duds for Swopes: quality shirts and denim pants, a corduroy coat, rough leather boots. He even gifted Swopes a Winchester. The owner of the general store, Jessup Griffith, gave them both peculiar looks. Swopes knew why. They paid him no mind. They loaded up the horse-drawn cart with the clothes and guns, other supplies and tools, Kalvo’s monthly parcel of books, and a case of whiskey. The winter was a rough one and after their spree in town they kept close to the homestead. Kalvo cooked flapjacks in the morning and stew at night. Swopes baked biscuits, even a cake once. The eats weren’t fancy but they kept the men well fed and there was plenty. On clear days they trudged through knee-high snow, shot and cleaned elk, held hands, and kissed beneath the night sky with no one to witness but the stars studding the heavens. They read out loud to each other: Dickens, Stowe, Hawthorne, Poe, Douglass, Twain, Wilde. There were card games and dirty jokes, stories from their pasts, and plans for the future. Kalvo said he wanted to hire a couple of Indians to help out come summer. Swopes didn’t know how he felt about it; he didn’t want to share his man with anyone else. Kalvo played harmonica. Swopes played guitar. They took turns singing, got drunk most nights, fucked each other til the stink of it became the air they breathed.

In the spring Swopes gifted Kalvo a clay jug full of dandelions. Kalvo set it on the harvest table so they could look at it when they ate their meals. They hiked the snow-topped mountains and sometimes picnicked on the dry ridges. On a crisp, sparkling morning in mid-March they rode into town after six weeks holed up on the ranch. They bought lumber, more supplies and tools, and more whiskey. Wildflowers pushed through shallow snowdrifts. Women huddled in Griffith’s General Store and haggled over fabric to sew their little ones new clothes and themselves new dresses. Men gathered at the post office or at Tessie Rose’s, cussed Charlie Guiteau, questioned the new president, disagreed about finance and politics. Tessie, dolled up in a baby-blue dress and a feathered bonnet, called out to the pair as they passed her establishment. They ignored her.

In summer Sherrod came riding up to the ranch on horseback. As usual he was grinning ear to ear. “Afternoon, Mr. Kavlo, sir. Right nice day, ain’t it, sir.”

Kalvo eyed him wearily. “I suspect so.”

“Came to have a chat with your ranch hand, sir. He at liberty?”

Swopes walked up behind Kalvo from the barn and stood shoulder to shoulder with Kalvo.

“Three white men come to town lookin’ for you, sidekick. Mad dog lookin’ sons of bitches. Little one, the boss man, he all cut up in the face. Say there’s a bounty on your head. Five thousand dead or alive.”

“You telling us straight?” Kalvo asked.

“Ol’ Sherrod ain’t never told no lie, sir. Miss Tessie gave ’em whiskey and women, no charge. Started flappin’ her jaw. Don’t know why but she got it out for you, Mr. Kalvo.”

The back of Swopes’s neck chilled. Those dead souls Kalvo had spoken of clutched him. He looked behind Sherrod and saw a bundle tied to his horse’s hind quarter.

“Where are you off to?” Swopes asked.

“When white men come ridin’ with a bounty one colored man’s as good to ’em as the next. I’m lightin’ out. If you smart, Swopes, you’ll saddle your nag and kick up dust on the double.”

“Where will you go?”

Sherrod said nothing. He doffed his bowler to them and began to whistle merrily as his horse trotted off. Before long he was a dark spot on the vast landscape. Then he was nothing at all.

They rode onto the property on Independence Day mounted on horses black as midnight and just as foreboding. Three of them, gun-strapped. Kalvo spotted them a mile down the road and told Swopes to take off to the mountains on his horse and not to come back til nightfall. Swopes tried to put up a fight; Kalvo wouldn’t hear it. Swopes scurried up on the roof of the main house and crouched behind the chimney stack. He kept his Winchester trained on them.

The runt of the posse did the talking. “Have a word with you, Rancher Kalvo?”

Kalvo approached slowly from the gravestones. He stayed calm but alert. His Remington was holstered. “State your business.”

“Name’s Taggert,” the piggish little man with the scarred face announced. “Looking for a colored man. Honey skin. Sad eyes. Answers to the name of Swopes. Folks in town say you got such a man employed.”

“No man like that here. Who is this fellow?”

“The culprit I’m looking for busted out of jail and choked the life out of some rich old coot back in Texas. He called it revenge; revenge for what I don’t know. The old man’s family wants this culprit’s hide and I aim to drag it back to Texas.”

“Wish I could help, but like I said—”

Taggert drew a Colt on Kalvo before he could finish. His cohorts followed suit. Taggert told him to drop his pistol, and he did.

“See here, Kalvo,” Taggert said. “I know you got that culprit stashed around here somewhere. Now, I’m a fair man so I’m gonna give you count of five to draw him out or show us where he’s hid. If not you get a taste of what’s waiting for him.”

Taggert got off his horse and walked toward Kalvo. “That old harlot who runs the whorehouse says you and this colored fella’ve gone sissy. To hear her tell it you’ve gone loco for colored cock.” He looked Kalvo up and down and scoffed then loped toward the graves. “Your missus is surely turning over in her grave.” He stood in front of the tombstones, unhitched his britches, and pulled out his pecker. A stream came next. Taggert chuckled.

Swopes opened fire, blowing a hole in Taggert’s chest. Kavlo dashed for his gun when Taggert’s men returned fire; he scrambled behind the large tombstone and fired on them. Bullets whizzed back and forth; horses whinnied and reared out of fear. Swopes hit one of the bounty hunters dead in the eye. He flew off his horse and convulsed on the ground for a few moments before he stilled. The last gunman emptied his gun firing on Kalvo. Before he could reach for another pistol Kalvo got him in the belly. Swopes finished the job, shooting a bullet into his chest.

Sitting over breakfast many months later, after dandelions had bloomed over the place in the west field where they buried Taggert and his men, Swopes asked Kalvo what he was going to say to him the night Adeline led him upstairs. Swopes pushed aside his coffee cup, reached across the harvest table, and tenderly grasped Swopes’s hand. “I don’t want you to leave me.”