The Jump-Off Creek (13 page)

“You know I never have been so stove up I couldn't ride. You taking the nickel bet?”

“Hell yes. I'll be back with him shortly.”

He walked off through the trees, east. The bay had left plain marks on the ground. He followed them. When Blue was out of sight behind him he broke into a jog. If he ran part of the way, and if his knee held up, he thought he might cover the ten or fifteen miles by nightfall. The horse was on a beeline for home, he knew that. He'd catch him along the fence line above the house, and get the little steady dun of Blue's, and then he'd have to find the way back in the dark, in the rain. And pay up the nickel.

He ran and walked, ran and walked. It started to rain softly. He walked up the ridges and ran down them, skidding long marks in the duff digging in the heels of his boots. When he smelled smoke he veered off toward it, a quarter of a mile before he came
over the hill and saw the boy there at the tail end of a supper stop, wiping out his tins, stowing his gear to move again. It was Turnbow's friend, Osgood, the redheaded kid with the big hat. There was a stiff hide showing flakes of dried blood, rolled behind the saddle of his horse. It didn't look like wolf—maybe it was badger, though badger wouldn't be worth much.

Tim waited, leaning over, letting the rain cool the back of his neck. He felt his heartbeat fast and hot in his bad hand. He waited and thought about it until some of his breathlessness had tapered off. Then he went down limping through the trees toward the kid, hallooing when he was still a ways off and then coming in more slowly. The boy watched him a minute, standing stiffly beside his horse with his hands hanging pale and long-boned below the too-short cuffs of his shirt sleeves. Then he booted mud on the fire and pushed a toe in the stirrup and mounted up. He sat on the thin pinto horse waiting for Tim to come.

Tim said, “You saved me a couple of miles.”

The kid was wearing his closed-up look. He waited without saying anything, seeming to study the backs of his hands.

“Lost my horse,” Tim said. Then, not what he meant to say, “I'm in need of one.”

The kid pulled his Adam's apple up and down his long neck. In a low, breaking voice, he said, “Where's the red nigger?” and Tim's belly rolled.

He put his hot right hand against his pants leg. He had been running quite a while, his knee was swollen, on fire, if he'd had a gun he'd have stuck it up under the kid's nose. What he said wasn't what he'd thought about saying when he had stood on the hill making up his mind to come down. “We were tracking a bear lamed in one of your own damn traps. I expect you all just walked away when you saw the sign, and left it for us to finish.”

The kid's face got blotchy around the pimples. He gave Tim a quick, careless look. “Well then finish it,” he said, low and hot.

He touched his horse to move. Tim reached for the bridle and the kid's boot shot out and took him on the cheek, ramming teeth against the inside of his mouth in a starwheel of brightness. He had his fingers on the headstall, he held on to it. The horse jerked backward, startled, lifting him on his toes, and the boot swung in again, hit him hard in the chest, under his heart. He didn't think he'd let go of the horse, but his back hit cold and wet against the ground. When he got a little sharp breath back in his chest, he heard dimly through the buzz of pain the horse carrying Osgood off through the trees, not hurrying, leaving Tim alone there with the rain dribbling against his face, running with the little trickle of his blood.

The mule made a sound that woke her: a single homely bray. She did not lie waiting for its repeat but pushed her feet down in her boots and took the shotgun across the black room to the window, to the barred storm shutter and the peephole giving on to the south edge of the brush fence. The rain had ended for the moment. The two goats moved darkly, silently, on the part of the slope she could see. She watched them. A dim bouncy light came up slowly onto the hillside so the goats began gradually to cast long shadows.

“Ma'am.”

It was Tim Whiteaker's voice. He said it not very loud, or from a distance away, around at the front of the house.

She went to stand behind the door in the little light that came between the unchinked logs. She held the shotgun down in one
hand and with the other hand held together the front of her bed dress. “Yes, Mr. Whiteaker.”

He said, “Can you come,” or something like it, the words furry, run together. He might have been drunk, there was something of that sound in it, but she could not stand behind the closed door in case he was not. She did up the buttons on her wrapper. He said, “Ma'am,” again but that was all, waiting for her.

She pulled back the bar and came out under the eave of the house into his lantern light. She was still clasping the shotgun in one hand. He sat on a horse in the yard, hunched up under his hat as if it were still raining hard. The light of the lantern he was holding up cast him in strange black shadow.

“Can you come,” he said again, and when she did not answer he ducked his head. “Blue needs stitching up.”

“All right.” She nodded. “Wait.”

She went in again and dressed, tied up her boot laces, pushed her undone hair under her hat. She put needle kit and carbolic in a handbag and toted the saddle out from where she kept it inside. The man had gone around behind the house. He was trying to get hold of the black mule, walking it into a corner of the brush fence, arms spread wide. He had set the lantern down on the ground and in its high light he looked jerky, clumsy. The mule kept away from him.

“Here,” she said. She went past the man gently and up to the mule, leading it by the rope hackamore. Mr. Whiteaker stood lamely with his hands hanging down, watching while she lifted the saddle on. She saw there was mud or blood on the front of his coat, a big mouse beneath his right eye, a little streak of dried blood there where the skin had split.

When he saw her looking he shifted his weight anxiously. He bent down for the lantern and, carrying it, raised himself with stiff care onto his horse again.

On the mule she followed him back along the Jump-Off Creek. The lantern cast a high jumping light, long jumping shadows.
Ahead of her the man sat his horse tenderly. He looked slight, thin as a shadow himself. Someone—Blue?—had lately given him a neat straight haircut, had shaved the back of his neck below the hairline so it looked smooth and white and unprotected.

The dogs ran out to them when they passed through the fence, trotting out stiff-legged and then smelling the man or seeing him and shifting to simple seriousness. Mr. Whiteaker rode past them without a word, rode up to the door of his house and hung the wire handle of the lantern on a nail at the eave of the roof. He tipped himself rigidly out of the saddle. He looked at Lydia, a sliding sideways look, and took hold of the mule's bridle.

“Go on in, ma'am. I'll put up the animals.” He went off into the dark, pulling the horse and Rollin behind him, while she took the lantern down off the nail and carried it inside the house. The Indian, Mr. Odell, was laid out on his belly on one of the two narrow beds. He squinted his eyes against the glare of the light. His eyebrows seemed thick black marks drawn across the pallor of his skin.

“Oh, Mr. Odell.”

He made a little smile, not moving his mouth much. “It's okay, ma'am,” he said in a low voice, hoarse. “I been worse.”

She scraped the bench up next to his bed and sat on it, with the lantern held up in one hand to get a look at his back. She had sewn up cows and goats—once her own thumb. But raw wounds made her qualmish on the first seeing. The fine hair lifted along her arms, a light hum rose and sang in her head.

“Barb wire,” she said in a doubtful way.

“No, ma'am, I guess not. We jumped a bear.”

She nodded. “Oh, I feared that,” she said, with the intention of not sounding fearful at all.

She stood and took off her coat and hat. It was hot in the small room, doubtless it had been Mr. Whiteaker who had earlier made the fire in the stove. She saw he had set water to heat there as well. She brought the kettle over to the bench and with a wrung
out towel began to daub away the drying blood, the threads of shirt in the long wounds. She felt the man holding still, grinding his teeth—Lydia not being his wife, mother, sister, he would not yell, could not complain. She was tender, but pitiless, having never gained pity and so never learning it. She painted his back with yellow carbolic and began to stitch closed the several shallow furrows. He kept his eyes closed and his breath came sometimes harshly from his mouth.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Odell,” she said once, without stopping what she was at.

He opened his eyes and closed them slowly. “It's okay,” he said, in a breathless sort of way.

When she was finished she drew the edge of his blanket up to the back of his neck. The wool smelled of sweat and staleness. “All right,” she said.

He made a rough sigh, that was all, without opening his eyes. She sat on, watching him sleep. Mr. Whiteaker never came inside. Finally she took the lantern and went out and found him leaning against the wall of the house in the darkness.

“Mr. Whiteaker.”

He stood somewhat straighter without standing away from the house. “You got it done?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. He seemed to think something over, then he said, “I appreciate you coming out at night like that.” He mumbled it, perhaps around the soreness of his face.

“Of course.”

He looked at her. “I'd have done it myself,” he said, mumbling still. “I've sewed him up other times. But a horse stepped on my hand. I couldn't hold on to the needle.” He lifted his right hand slightly so that she saw it was swollen, discolored.

“Have you broken it?”

“No. I guess not. I just couldn't hold on to the needle.”

She nodded, accepting this information the second time without comment.

He looked at her again, and away. “We started a bear,” he said.

“Yes. Mr. Odell said so. Have you killed it?”

“It's dead.”

In a moment she said, “I have had one after my goats.”

He nodded again, not surprised, said, “He had a lame foot,” as if it might be an apology.

It had been hot inside the small house, the air outside felt sharp, strengthening. But it was too cold without a wrap. She began to shiver. “Come in, Mr. Whiteaker. I believe I ought to take a stitch or two there below your eye.”

He looked down at his boots. “It'll close,” he said.

She waited for him without replying. Finally he stood away from the house. “All right, ma'am,” he said, and followed her into the house.

He sat on a chair staring past her while she cleaned the little cut and tacked it closed. The eye above the wound was swollen narrow, blood-veined, it watered slightly when she pushed the needle through the skin. The watering eye or the sour man's smell of him made her think suddenly of her dad. The skin of Mr. Whiteaker's face was coarse, stubbly, like her dad's too. But when she stood back from him she saw Mr. Whiteaker again, that childish expression he had, like a boy holding a stiff smile against his will.

“Shall I look at your hand?”

He looked down at it and then held it out. There was a bruise and a swelling on the back of his hand, the fingers looked stiff and swollen too. She touched the lump lightly.

“I don't believe it looks broken.”

“No.” He dropped his hand, let it rest on his thigh. She saw him look sideways cautiously at Blue. The Indian slept heavily, sweating, with his mouth open slightly to let out his harsh breath.

“I'll sit up with Mr. Odell,” she said.

Tim Whiteaker ducked his chin. “I don't mind seeing you back to the Jump-Off if you're wanting to go home.”

“I'll sit up with Mr. Odell a while.”

He nodded. “Well,” he said.

“You look quite spent, Mr. Whiteaker. Please lie down and sleep and I'll wake you when I'm ready to leave.”

He nodded again, not arguing. He went to the other bed, a low log frame holding a mattress on crosspieces of rope. He sat on it and took off his hat, pushed his left hand back through his cropped hair. Then he lay down on his back with his sore hand cupped on his chest. He didn't try to get his boots off. He looked at the ceiling a minute and then closed his eyes. After a while he made a little sound, it might have been a word.

“What,” Lydia said. But he was quiet after that, asleep.

In the turned-down light of the lantern she sat in the rocking chair without rocking. Her eyes burned in the close dry heat. She heard the dogs settling restlessly under the house and once after that a cow lowing in a mournful way, but chiefly what she heard was the unaccustomed sound made by the breathing of the two men, hoarse and regular.

She woke suddenly, jerking up in the chair. She had dreamt a little, a short jumbled dreaming of her dad, and it had been Lars, in the dream, who woke her.
Get up
, he had said, pushing his thumb against her side. She hardly remembered his face now, after three months, but in the dream it had been distinct, a wide face, pale eyes, and the thick lips like a woman's, with strong sculpted curves.

When there was enough light she stood and went quietly out and home on Rollin without waking Mr. Whiteaker, there being no reason to do so and several for letting him sleep. She was glad enough to get away from the oppressive, crowded little room, the smell of blood and illness. Her dad's room had always smelled like that. Her mother smelled that way too, carrying it on her clothes, the pores of her skin, into other rooms.

It wasn't as if it was a bad time of year for one of them to be laid up. They had turned out the cows and were at the point of making new fence, cutting brush. It wasn't anything that couldn't wait.

“I can get up on a horse,” Blue said, sullen, arguing with nobody. He got out of bed to piss and afterward went back to bed. He flopped around restlessly and sweated and swore and looked at Tim sidelong in embarrassment.