“Okay, what happened?” she asked.
He turned his face away.
“I’m disappointed in you, Bill.”
He spoke through split lips: “I kinda figured.”
“How much do you owe them?”
He told her. Sara dropped into a chair by the bed. “How could you be so goddamned stupid?”
“It wasn’t like I planned this.”
“You know they’ll kill you. Probably I should just let them.”
He surprised her by starting to cry.
“Cripes, don’t do that,” she said.
“I can’t help it.” Snot was running from his thickened nose. “I love Kate, I love the girls. I’m really, really sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t help. How much time have they given you to come up with the money?”
“I can earn it all back. Just stake me for one night. I won’t need much, just enough to get started.”
“Does Kate fall for stuff like this?”
“She doesn’t have to know.”
“It was a rhetorical question, Bill. How much time?”
“The usual. Three days.”
“What’s usual about it? On second thought, don’t tell me.” She got to her feet.
“You can’t tell Hollis. He’ll kill me.”
“He might.”
“I’m sorry, Sara. I screwed up, I know that.”
Jenny appeared, a little breathless. “Okay, looks like she bought it.”
Sara glanced at her watch. “That gives you about an hour, Bill, before your wife shows up. I suggest you come clean and beg for mercy.”
The man looked terrified. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing you deserve.”
27
Caleb was building a chicken coop when he saw a figure walking up the dusty road. It was late in the afternoon; Pim and Theo were resting in the house.
“Saw your smoke.” The man who stood before him had a pleasant, weathered face and a thick, wooly beard. He was wearing a wide straw hat and suspenders. “Since we’re going to be neighbors, thought I’d come by to say hello. Phil Tatum’s the name.”
“Caleb Jaxon.” They shook.
“We’re just on the other side of that ridge. Been there a bit, before most folks. There’s me and my wife, Dorien. We got a grown boy just started his own place up toward Bandera. Did you say Jaxon?”
“That’s right. He’s my father.”
“I’ll be damned. What are you doing way out here?”
“Same as everyone, I guess. Making do.” Caleb removed his gloves. “Come in and meet my family.”
Pim was sitting in a chair by the cold hearth with Theo on her lap, showing him a picture book.
“Pim,” Caleb said, signing along, “this is our neighbor, Mr. Tatum.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Jaxon?” He was holding his hat against his chest. “Please, don’t get up on my account.”
I’m very pleased to meet you.
Caleb realized his error. “I should have explained. My wife is deaf. She says she’s pleased to meet you.”
The man nodded evenly. “Got a cousin like that, passed a while back. She learned to read lips a little, but the poor thing just lived in her own world.” He raised his voice, the way a lot of people did. “That’s a fine-looking boy you have, Mrs. Jaxon.”
What’s he saying?
You’re beautiful and he wants to go to bed with you.
He turned to their guest, who was still fingering the brim of his hat. “She says thank you, Mr. Tatum.”
Don’t be rude. Ask him if he wants something to drink.
Caleb repeated the question.
“Have to be home before supper, but I reckon I could sit for a bit, thank you.”
Pim filled a pitcher with water, added slices of lemon, and placed it on the table, where the two men sat. They talked about little things: the weather, other homesteads in the area, where Caleb should get his livestock and at what price. Pim had gone off with Theo; she liked to take him down to the river, where the two of them would just sit quietly. It became clear to Caleb that the man and his wife were a little lonely. Their son had gone off with a woman he’d met at a dance in Hunt, barely saying goodbye.
“Couldn’t help notice your wife is expecting,” Tatum said. They had finished the water; now they were just talking.
“Yes, she’s due in September.”
“There’s a doc in Mystic when the time comes.” He gave Caleb the information.
“That’s very kind. Thank you.” Caleb sensed the presence of a sad history in the man’s offer. The Tatums had had another child, perhaps more than one, who had failed to survive. This was all far in the past, but not really.
“Much obliged to you both,” Tatum said at the door. “It’s nice to have some young people around.”
That night, Caleb replayed the conversation for Pim. She was bathing Theo in the sink. He had fussed at the start but now seemed to be enjoying himself, batting the water around with his fists.
I should call on his wife,
Pim signed.
Do you want me to go with you?
He meant to translate for her.
She looked at him like he had lost his mind.
Don’t be ridiculous.
This conversation stayed with him for several days. Somehow, in all his planning, Caleb had failed to consider that they would need other people in their lives. Some of this was the fact that with Pim he shared a private richness that made other relationships seem trivial. Also, he was not innately social; he preferred his own thoughts to most human interaction.
It was true, as well, that Pim’s world was more limited than most people’s. Beyond her family, it was confined to a small group of those who, if they could not sign, were able to intuit her meanings. She was often alone, which did not seem to trouble her, and she filled much of this time by writing. Caleb had peeked at her journals a few times over the years, unable to resist this small crime; like her letters, her entries were wonderfully written. While they sometimes expressed doubts or concern over various matters, generally they communicated an optimistic view of life. They also contained a number of sketches, though he had never seen her draw. Most depicted familiar scenes. There were a great many drawings of birds and animals, as well as the faces of people she knew, although none of him. He wondered why she had never let him see them, why she had drawn them in secret. The best ones were the seascapes—remarkable, because Pim had never seen the ocean.
Still, she would want friends. Two days after Phil had stopped by, Pim asked Caleb if he would mind looking after Theo for a few hours; she wanted to visit the Tatums and planned to bring a johnnycake. Caleb spent the afternoon working in the garden while Theo napped in a basket. He began to worry as the day drew to a close, but just before dark Pim returned in high spirits. When Caleb asked her how they had been able to carry on a conversation for close to five hours, Pim smiled.
It doesn’t matter with women,
she signed
. We always understand each other just fine.
The next morning, Caleb took the buckboard into town for supplies and to reshoe one of the horses, the big black gelding they called Handsome. Pim had also written a letter to Kate and asked him to post it. Besides these errands, he wanted to establish contact with more people from the area. He could ask the men he met about their wives, with the hope of expanding Pim’s circle, so that she would not feel lonely.
The town was not encouraging. Just a few weeks had passed since he and Pim had passed through on their way to the farmstead; at the time there had been people about, but now the place seemed lifeless. The town office was closed, as was the farrier. But he had better luck at the mercantile. The owner was a widower named George Pettibrew. Like many men on the frontier, he had a taciturn manner, slow to warm up, and Caleb had never managed to learn much about him. George followed him as he moved through the cluttered space, placing his order—a sack of flour, beet sugar, a length of heavy chain, sewing thread, thirty yards of chicken wire, a sack of nails, lard, cornmeal, salt, oil for the lanterns, and fifty pounds of feed.
“I’d also like to buy some ammo,” Caleb said, as George was tallying the bill at the counter. “Thirty-aught-six.”
The man made a certain expression:
You and everybody else.
He continued jotting figures with a stub of pencil. “I can give you six.”
“How many in a box?”
“Not boxes. Rounds.”
It seemed like a joke. “That’s all? Since when?”
George poked his thumb over his shoulder. Tacked to the wall behind the counter was a sign.
$100 BOUNTY
Mountain Lion
Present carcass at Hunt Township Office to collect.
“Folks cleaned me out, not that I had much to begin with. Ammo’s scarce these days. I’ll give ’em to you for a buck apiece.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
George shrugged. Business was business; it was all the same to him. Caleb wanted to tell him to stick it, but on the other hand, a mountain lion was nothing to mess with. He rolled off the bills.
“Think of it as an investment,” George said, depositing the money in his lockbox. “You bag that cat, this won’t seem so much, will it?”
Everything went into the wagon. Caleb surveyed the empty street. It really
was
awfully damn quiet for the middle of the day. He found it a little unnerving, though mostly he felt disappointed that he would return with so little to show for his visit.
He was about to drive out of town when he remembered the doctor Tatum had told him about. It would be good to introduce himself. The doctor’s name was Elacqua. According to Tatum, he had once worked at the hospital in Kerrville and retired to the townships. There weren’t many houses, and the doctor’s was easy to find: a small frame structure, painted a cheerful yellow, with a sign that read,
BRIAN
ELACQUA,
M.D
. hanging off the porch. A pickup tuck with rusted fenders was parked in the yard. Caleb tied up the horses and knocked. A single eye peeked through the curtain on the door’s window.
“What do you want?” The voice was loud, almost hostile.
“Are you Dr. Elacqua?”
“Who’s asking?”
Caleb regretted coming; there was obviously something wrong with the man. He thought he might be drunk. “My name is Caleb Jaxon. Phil Tatum is my neighbor, he said you were the doctor in town.”
“Are you sick?”
“I just wanted to say hello. We’re new out here. My wife is expecting. It’s all right—I can come back later.”
But as Caleb stepped off the porch, the door opened. “Jaxon?”
“That’s right.”
The doctor had the look of a derelict, thick at the waist, with a wild mane of snow-white hair and a beard to match. “You might as well come in.”
His wife, a nervous woman in a shapeless housedress, served them some kind of bad-tasting tea in the parlor. No explanation was offered for Elacqua’s curt behavior at the door. Maybe that was just how things were done out here, Caleb thought.
“How far along is your wife?” Elacqua asked, after they’d gotten past the formalities. He had, Caleb noted, put a little something in his tea from a pocket flask.
“About four months.” Caleb saw an opening. “My mother-in-law is Sara Wilson. Maybe you know her.”
“Know her? I trained her. I thought her daughter worked at the hospital, though.”
“That’s Kate. My wife is Pim.”
He thought for a moment. “I don’t remember a Pim. Oh, the mute.” He shook his head sadly. “The poor thing. Nice of you, to marry her.”
Caleb had heard statements like this before. “I’m sure she thinks it’s the other way around.”
“On the other hand, who wouldn’t want a wife who couldn’t talk? I can barely put two thoughts together around here.”
Caleb just looked at him.
“Well,” Elacqua said, and cleared his throat, “I can pay a call if she’d like, just to see how things are going.”
At the door, Caleb remembered Pim’s letter. He asked Elacqua if he would mind posting it for him when the office opened.
“I can try. Those people are never there.”
“I was wondering about that,” Caleb said. “The town seems kind of empty.”
“I didn’t notice.” He frowned doubtfully. “Could be the mountain lion, I guess. That happens out here.”
“Has anyone been attacked?”
“Not that I’ve heard, just livestock. With the bounty, a lot of folks are out looking. Stupid, if you ask me. Those things are nasty.”
Caleb rode out of town. At least he’d tried to post the letter. As for Elacqua, he seriously doubted Pim would want anything to do with the man. The mountain lion didn’t concern him unduly. It was simply the price one paid for life on the frontier. Still, he would tell Pim not to take Theo to the river for a while. The two of them should stay near the house until the matter was resolved.
They ate their supper and went to bed. Rain was falling, making a peaceful pattering on the roof. In the middle of the night, Caleb awoke to a sharp cry. For a terrifying second he thought something had happened to Theo, but then the sound came again, from outside. It was fear he was hearing—fear and mortal pain. An animal was dying.
In the morning he searched the brush behind the house. He came to an area of broken branches; tufts of short, stiff hair, tacky with blood, were spread over the ground. He thought it might have been a raccoon. He scanned the area for tracks, but the rain had washed them away.
The next day he walked over the ridge to the Tatums’. Their operation was much larger than his own, with a good-sized barn and a house with a standing-seam metal roof. Boxes of bluebonnets hung beneath the front windows. Dorien Tatum greeted him at the door, a plump-cheeked woman with gray hair in a bun; she directed him to the far edge of the property, where her husband was clearing brush.
“A mountain lion, you say?” Phil removed his hat to mop his brow in the heat.
“That’s the word in town.”
“We’ve had ’em before. Long gone by now, I’d guess. They’re restless sons of bitches.”
“I thought so, too. Probably it’s nothing.”
“I’ll keep a lookout, though. Thank your wife for the johnnycake, won’t you? Dory really enjoyed her visit. Those two were writing messages to each other for hours.”