Against the Day (91 page)

 
Deuce sometimes felt like he had put his head into a very
small room, one no bigger, in fact, than human head size, unechoing, close and
still. “Well
. . .
maybe,” he could
hardly hear his own voice, “I could go out and kill a
whole

lot
of other folks? and then I wouldn’t feel nearly as
bad about just the one
. . . .
”

As must happen
to all badmen early and late, Deuce
one day found himself putting on the deputy’s star. Back in the mountains,
right up till the day the Owners turned and came after him, he had felt not so
much working on one side of the Law or the other as protected from the choice
itself. Now, on the run, secure only in forward movement, he found the decision
so easy that for a minute and a half one sleepless middle of the night he was
sure he’d gone crazy.

One day, out in some hazehorizoned
piece of grassland, Deuce and Lake noticed unexpectedly up ahead in the green
circumference this narrow smokecolored patch, and feeling peculiarly drawn,
decided to have a look. As they rode closer, architectural details emerged from
the bunchgrass and the dazzle of sky, and soon they were entering Wall o’
Death, Missouri, built around the remains of a carnival, one of many inspired
by the old Chicago Fair. The carnival after a while had moved on, leaving ruins
to be converted to local uses, structural members from the Ferris wheel having
for miles around been long incorporated into fence, bracing, and wagon hitches,
chickens sleeping in the old bunkhouse, stars wheeling unread above the
roofless fortuneteller’s booth. The only structure not fallen all to pieces yet
was the Wall of Death itself, a cylindrical wood shell, looking fragile but
destined to be last to go, weathered to gray, with ticket booth, stairs winding
around, chicken wire that once separated the breathless tip from the spectacle
inside.

Visited by motorcycling pilgrims, as
if it was a sacred ruin, scene of legendary daredevilry, when viewed from
overhead reminding widelytraveled aeronauts of ancient Roman amphitheatres
strewn across the old empire, empty ellipses at the hearts of ancient fortress
towns, the onset of some suburban fatality in the dwellings presently appearing
at human random around it, treeless perimeters becoming shaded boulevards
astream with wheelfolk

and picnickers, while around the dark
corners, under the new viaducts, in the passages greased with night, the gray
wall, the Wall of Death, persisted in the silence and forced enigma of
structures in their vanishing
. . . .

“Maybe there’s an employee entrance
around back somewhere,” Lake offered. They eased their horses to a fenceriding
gait.

And, well it was peculiar, but the
folks inside did turn out to be expecting them, it seemed—they appeared
bearing casseroles, pies, chickens plucked and otherwise, selected members of
the Methodist choir lined up and sang “For It Is Thou, Lord,” the Sheriff,
Eugene Boilster, who’d been standing at the front sill of his office all
morning scanning the grassscape, likely the sky as well, stomped forward with
both hands out in welcome.

“Glad you didn’t get lost. The last
two, or do I mean three, got lost.”

Deuce and Lake understood inside of
the next breath that they were being taken for some deputy peace officer and
his missus supposed to be showing up today, who as it turned out never would,
and maybe they exchanged a quick look. “Snug little community,” Deuce said.
“Forget to adjust for windage, you could miss her clean, never know it.”

   
“Artillery
fancier, eh?”

   
“Last
resort if reason and persuasion don’t work, of course, sir.”

   
“You’ll
see.”

Вuт
it was not
the minutiae
of the day’s offenses, the penises caught experimentally in laundry wringers,
repeated thefts of the only automobile in town, willing victims of the
formulations of Happy Jack La Foam, the local pharmacist, who’d have to be rescued
from up telegraph poles and belfries, from temperance meetings or the
unsympathetic weaponry of spouses in pursuit, not the fabric of the municipal
day Deuce was really there to attend, he discovered, so much as to be on call
around the clock for the more abstract emergency, the prophecy which loomed out
beyond the sensible horizon of daybook fact, the unspokenof thing they had
hired him to deal with, which he came to fear could only be regarded—like
you’d need a telescope to look at another planet—by way of the police
ticker or printing telegraph in the back of the Sheriff’s station. A
specialist’s apparatus, the next step on into the twentieth century from wanted
men’s faces on penny postals.

Out from under whose glass dome one
day came ratcheting unwelcome news, from Mexico by way of Eagle Pass. Reporting
officer C. Marín, responding to a report of firearms being discharged within
town limits, found in the cantina Flor de Coahuila a northamerican male about
twentyfive years of age, identified as (converging letter by letter as Deuce
watched to

the inescapable name) Sloat Eddie Fresno, dead of gunshot
wounds inflicted according to witnesses by another northamerican male, no good
description available, who then left the premises and had not been seen since.

 
Deuce’s eyes were filling unexpectedly with salt water, some
outrush of emotion trapped prickling just behind his nose, as he imagined
himself on out to some picturesquely windswept grave, head bowed, hat off, “Big
slow lummox, couldn’t get out of your own way, they were bound to find you,
shouldn’t even been you, you were just along for the job, coverin your
pardner’s back, maybe deserving of hard labor but not to be shot down in some
cantina surrounded by language you never learned much more of than
señorita
chinga chinga
and
más cerveza
maybe, you old fool—damn, Sloat,
what’d you think you were doing?” While creeping into him came the rectal
message that somebody might be more than willing to do him up too, along with
the quickening heartbeat of hatred, a coconscious witness of all their past
together violated and death’s sovereign bobwire run straight through. Device
needed to be the fuck out of this office, out the door saddled up and raising
dust, finding and gutshooting the sumbitch killed his runninmate, again and
again, till there’s more shit on the walls than blood
. . . .
Lake arrived in the middle of these reflections with a
couple armloads of laundry full of sunlight and smelling like the first day of
the world, the frail suggestion that none of this needed to come to pass
. . . .
“What is it now, my own guardian of
the Law?”

“Old Sloat.” He was shaking. “
’Member him? my partner? Yours too ’s I recall? Shot dead down the border.
Maybe even by one of your gotdamn brothers.”

“Oh, Deuce, I’m sorry.” Thought to
put a hand on his shoulder, thought better. She knew she shouldn’t but guessed
she felt more happy than otherwise to hear the news. Against the unwavering
serpent glare, she tried to be reasonable. “He had a way of trouble finding
him, you know, it could be nothing at all to do with—”

“You just keep bein faithful to that
Anarchist shithouse you grew up in,”and that was it, he was out the door, no
courtly kiss, touch of the hat, backsoonmydarlin, only the surprisingly careful
latchclick behind him.

The days would then proceed to drag
their sorry carcasses down the trail of Time without word one from Deuce. Long
as she didn’t brood too much about what it was he thought he was out there
doing, it was almost a relief to have him gone.

Later, alone, gliding into sleep, she
was shocked awake by a familiar, keen, anal memory and swore for a minute,
sitting bolt upright with her nightdress up around her hips, that Sloat had
returned from the dead for the sole pur

pose of fucking her in his alltime favorite style. It was not
the fondest way she might have remembered the passing of a loved—well,
now and then desired—one, but again, it was Sloat who had come to her
from out of the howling leagues of emptiness, that penis, as she had suspected
for some time, harder when it wanted to be than the most obstructive barrier
death could come up with.

Tace Boilster dropped over, mostly to
sit and smoke cigarettes without having to go through a whole Bible lesson
about it at home.

“I can guess where he’s heading for,”
said Lake, “is Texas. Might not be where he is, of course.”

   
“Somebody
looking for him, Lake?”

   
“Wouldn’t
surprise me, but this time he thinks it’s him out looking.”

   
“Oh,
my. Then I take it this time ain’t the first?”

“He’ll be back. Either way, he finds
another offender to kill or doesn’t, it’s not fixing to be no church supper
around this place.”

“He better behave himself if I’m
here,” Tace said. But she had taken off her Sheriff’swife face like a deputy
might unpin a star. “Maybe you’d like to tell me a little what’s goin on?”

   
“See
one those readymades?”

   
“Sure
thing. Have one with you.”

   
“There’s
one already in your mouth, Tace.”

   
“Uhhuh.”

Lake lit up and told Tace the whole
sad story. Not so comfortable with it that her voice didn’t drop sometimes to a
whisper and even a choked failure of voice altogether. Seeing at some point
Tace’s expression grow alerted and careful through the veils of smoke, “Guess
somethin’s really wrong with me, isn’t it.”

“What? you married somebody shot your
Pa.” She shrugged and opened her eyes wide, as if in puzzled inquiry.

   
“You
see a lot of that around here?”

Tace allowed herself a short sigh
through her nose. “One way or another I get to see it all. Young beaus, irate
fathers, nothin new. You two maybe pushed a little further, ’s all.”

“That man kicked me out of the house.
Just left me—I could have ended up in some crib in Mexico or dead, for
all he cared. Should’ve been me that killed him.”

“And it turned out to be Deuce. And
then later on you two met up. Well? Ain’t exactly like you planned it out
together, is it?”

“Still bad enough. Pa’s dead and gone
and I haven’t stopped hating him. What kind of unnatural daughter’s that make
me? A girl is supposed to love

her father.”

   
“Sure,”
said Tace, “in those Elsie Dinsmore stories or someplace. We all

grew up on that stuff, and it poisoned our souls.” She put
her cigarette in her

mouth and reached a hand gravely to rest on Lake’s. “Tell me
somethin. Did he ever try to . . .”

   
“What?
Oh—”

   
“Have
his way?”

   
“Webb?
Webb could be mean as they come, but he wasn’t stupid.”

   
“Mine
did.”

   
“Your
Pa? He—”

“Him, my brother Roy Mickey into the
bargain.” With a peculiar smile, squinting through the smoke, as if daring Lake
to say something.

   
“Tace.
Oh, my dear.”

“Years ago, not the end of the world.
And I was worried more for Ma, tell the truth. Didn’t last long anyway, they
all got to bickerin amongst themselves, before I knew it Eugene come along and
I was clear of that house, praise the Lord, no worse for wear.”

   
“Never
would’ve happened in our family.”

   
“Well
don’t sound so forlorn, you didn’t miss much.”

She dreamed about
Mayva
.

Squirrel on a fence post. “What are
you looking at, bright eyes?” The squirrel, standing up straight, angled its
head, didn’t move. “Sure, easy for you,

but wait ’ll the weather turns.” All the while getting the
wash spread out on the fence, being careful not to dislodge the squirrel.
“Crazy in the head, every one of you.” That was always Mayva, who would get
into these exchanges with animals, nearly conversations. A squirrel or a bird
would sit for what seemed hours, while she talked to them, pausing now and then
in case they had something to say in reply, which sometimes it appeared they
did. Lake swore she’d heard creatures replying in their own languages and her
mother nodding attentively, as if she understood.

   
“What’d
that hawk have to say, Ma?”

“Range fire over by Salida. Some of
her relations got scattered. She’s just naturally concerned, ’s all.”

“And then later on,” the girl’s eyes
as wide open as blue columbines in July, “somebody came in, said there really
was a fire over there.”

“Sure, Lake,” the boys holding out
their fingers Mexican style as if to say
atole con el dedo,
“but Ma
could’ve heard that anywhere. She knows you believe everythin she says.”