David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

“Look, I’m bleeding,” Nelly says.

“Let’s go on in and put some linney-mint on it.”

Jonah carries Nelly over the threshold and sets her down. The place is Spartan in its furnishings — little more than a stove, a bed with a straw mattress, a table and a chair. Worry and disappointment cloud Nelly’s face as Jonah applies lineament to her bite, spilling some on the bed. The dog continues to growl at her.

Jonah confesses he isn’t much of a housekeeper. “Nell, that’ll be your concern from now on. Warshin’, cookin’, cleanin’ and such.”

“It’s awful small, Jonah. It won’t be too long before we need a room for my baby.” She rubs her stomach. “I mean our baby, when we have one…which will be really, really soon…I hope and pray.” She raises her skirts and pulls Jonah down on top of her.

Dewey’s beard and hair are long and tangled. The strain of imprisonment shows in his weary eyes. Through his cell door he sees a condemned man being marched along in shackles by two guards. A preacher follows. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.”

Dewey shouts, “Preach! I beg your pardon. Can you spare a minute?”

“What is it son? This is a solemn time.”

“Here’s my question to you. If the Lord is my shepherd, and he makes me lie down in green pastures, that’s good. I’ll eat some grass. But what’s all that about leadin’ me beside still waters. What’s wrong with a nice, cool, fast movin’ crick?”

The preacher shrugs. The guards shrug. The prisoner says, “A sheep won’t drink from movin’ water.”

“Well, now, that makes a lotta sense. Thank you, Mister, and goodbye.”

Thirty minutes later, Dewey lies in his cot twirling his thumbs and staring into space as he listens first to the snap of the trap door, then the snap of the man’s neck, then a wet, gurgling death rattle.

Nelly lies abed, in labor. Jonah sits beside her, rubbing her stomach.

Rags boil on the stove. While stirring them, Jonah looks at a calendar on the wall. The month is March. Curious, he stops stirring and goes back through the pages of the calendar, stopping at October. He returns to the bed.

“You know what, Honey Flower. This little’un’s commin’ perty early. It ain’t gonna be very big. Hell’s bells, Darlin’. You only been here a day or two more than five months.” Nelly is not paying attention. She’s very focused on giving birth. “I reckon I had it wrong. I thought it took longer.” He thinks for a moment. “We could have two babies a year now. They could help out with the chores.”

“I’m gonna bust, Jonah! I’m gonna bust wide open!”

“Don’t go to frettin’, Darlin’.”

“It ain’t right! The baby ain’t right! I’m gonna die. It’s gonna kill me! Help me, Jonah!” Jonah is frozen with fear. Nelly gives one big push and screams as the baby squirts out, fat, full-term, bloody, with the umbilical coiled around his neck. The baby has a purple birthmark in the center of its forehead that looks like a vestigial third eye. Nelly faints. Jonah recoils in horror. The dog jumps on the bed and eats the placenta.

The homestead, four years later. Jonah pushes a wheelbarrow-load of sand to his prairie dog trapping grounds. On top of the sand is a cage. Tied to Jonah’s belt is an empty feed sack; in his back pocket a pair of heavy-duty leather gloves. He opens the hinged, latched top of an overturned barrel, reaches in and comes out with a fussing prairie dog, which he dumps into the feed sack. He repeats the process with the other kegs, finding at least one, sometimes two or three, each time. Soon the sack is full of chittering, barking, scrabbling prairie dogs.

Dewey looks over his cigar-boxed pill bug collection, about twenty or so. They feed on a piece of moldy bread. He uses his long thumbnail to separate two pill bugs from the rest. When he touches them they curl into pea-sized balls. He picks one up and pushes it into his right ear, then the other one into his left. He covers both ears with his hands and lies on the cot, giggling and squirming as the bugs open up inside his ears and try to dig their way out.

As Nelly washes dishes, James, her four-year-old birth-marked boy, frolics with the terrier and in the process knocks a jar of honey from the table. It breaks. Honey oozes out. The dog licks it. Nelly pulls the boy over her knee, pulls down his trousers and swats his bare bottom with a switch. “Bad little devil child! Bad little demon boy!”

The terrified boy screams in pain as Jonah enters with a skinned, dressed and bleeding prairie dog carcass. “Try fryin’ it this time. Soak it in some vinegar first. What’s that boy done now?”

“Broke the honey jar. He’s cursed. Can’t do anything right.”

“Go get on your pallet, son, and shut that mouth o’ yourn.”

Nelly sets the boy on his feet. His crying subsides and finally stops when he settles onto the pallet. “One more sound,” Nelly says, “and I’ll cut your tongue out with my scissors.”

The boy chokes back any further tears and uses both hands to pinch his lips closed.

Dewey’s beard is longer and bushier than ever on the day of his release. He’s wearing his fringed jacket and hole-riddled mule skin hat, sitting on his cot reading the Bible. “Revelation. Eighteen. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.”

A jailer approaches with heavy footsteps and unlocks the door. “You paid yer price, Dewey, you scum-sucking pig. You’re a free man.”

Dewey stands, looks back at the soot-covered walls and the patch of sky through the window one more time, then walks out with the dog-eared, dirty and much-read Bible. The jailer stops him. “Leave it for the next man. That Good Book is the property of the state of Kansas.”

In the background, the sandstone administration building of the State Penitentiary of Kansas. An old horse with a new saddle is tied to a post. “All right, now, Dewey,” the jailer says, “here’s yer horse, yer saddle, and yer ten dollars, compliments of the United States of America. Now ride the hell out of here and don’t ever let me see that ugly face you got ever agin.”

“Pretty doggoned old horse, there. Looks pret’ sick, too.”

“Name’s Comanche. She’s got some miles in ‘er yet.”

Dewey folds the bill into his pocket, mounts Comanche and rides off.

Nelly places burned prairie dog parts onto tin plates. She, Jonah and James bite into the meat. It’s extremely tough and they struggle to chew it. “It tastes like dirt,” James says and spits it back into his plate. Nelly slaps him hard. Jonah says, “If you don’t like it, go to bed hungry.” James cries all the way to his pallet on the floor.

Jonah says, “That boy’s a half-wit. He ain’t no good fer nothin’.”

“Maybe God’ll bless us with another one. A better one.”

“A boy with a strong back. And one that ain’t marked on the head like that ‘un.”

“And good pure blood.”

“Amen, girl. Amen.”

A dusty, windy Dodge City street. Dewey rides into town, swatting grasshoppers from his face and flicking them out of Comanche’s eyes. He ties up in front of the Hotel Dodge & Saloon.

The bartender, alone in the saloon, sits on a stool with his shoulders and folded arms resting on the bar, sound asleep. Dewey enters quietly, sits at the bar, plunks down a coin. No reaction from the bartender other than snores. Dewey plunks the coin louder. This time the bartender wakes up.

“Gi’me a shot o’ yer best sheep dip, there, Sleepy.” The bartender moves languidly toward the backbar, yawning. “Now lookit, Mister Take-Your-Time, I ain’t had a drop o’ liquor in ten long, dry years. And it’s painin’ me watchin’ you move around like a goddamned tortis.”