David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

Jonah rolls out of bed. “Maybe it’s old man Floyd from over at Hays City.” He looks out the door. “Nah, Floyd’s taller in the saddle. And he rides a better lookin’ horse.”

Near the house, both Comanche and Dewey collapse into the mud.

Nelly runs out to help, lifts his legs and tries to drag him inside. She gives up. “Jonah! Come and help me for gosh sakes.”

Still sleepy and annoyed at the disturbance, Jonah reluctantly helps to get him inside and put him on the dining table. Nelly lights a lamp, holds it over Dewey’s shivering, convulsing body. She slowly unwinds the feed sack wrappings, revealing his naked body a little at a time. Jonah looks at the face with a glimmer of recognition. But with Dewey’s closed eyes, full beard and long hair, he isn’t recognizable. Beneath the knotted, dirty beard, the flesh of his face is beet red, swollen, drenched with perspiration.

Nelly places her hand on his forehead. “I never felt anybody this hot. He’s on fire.”

“He ain’t got any clothes on,” James says. “And look, he shat on his self.”

Nelly raises her open hand. “Close your mouth! Get out of my sight!”

James retreats to his pallet, weeping.

Jonah says, “What’re we gonna do now? Closest doctor’s a day’s ride.”

“I better warsh him down.” She fetches a bucket of water. “He smells awful.”

“You, my wife, are fixing to wash the shit off another man’s wally?”

“You want him stinkin’ in the house all night? When somebody’s sick, you just have to help them.” Nelly wipes Dewey’s face with a damp cloth. Jonah reluctantly lends a hand after putting on his work gloves. He covers Dewey’s privates with a plate as soon as they are exposed.

Nelly snaps. “Get that plate off there and go stoke the stove. We’re gonna warm up some rags and put ‘em all over him. It’ll stop the shiverin’ and get him warm.”

Jonah stokes the stove and throws in a few dried ox patties.

Under rags, Dewey is either asleep or unconscious the next morning. Outside, his horse, barely alive, tongue protruding, lies where it fell. Jonah removes the saddle and loads a shell into his Sharps. The ox, harnessed, waits nearby. “Well, brother horse, you ain’t much good to the world no more. So I’m gonna go ahead and put all your sufferin’ to an end as I’m sure your owner would do if’n he wasn’t so bed-bound.” He fires a shot into the horse’s head, ties its rear legs to the ox’s harness and tows the carcass away from the house, leaving a trail of blood from the gaping bullet hole. Jonah unties the horse from the ox, looks skyward. Already buzzards circle. “Brother buzzard, brother coyote, brother worm and brother beetle. And any other gosh darn critter that wants to feast on this dead horse here — come ‘n’ git it!”

Near the well, Nelly rinses the last bit of Dewey’s clothing in a wooden tub. She squeezes it almost dry, hangs it on the line, empties the soapy water onto the ground.

Hauling up a bucket of fresh water, she carries a pail of it inside. Using a funnel she pours water slowly into Dewey’s mouth. He lies under the rags, still unconscious. She removes the funnel, wipes spilled water from his beard. He is delirious, but no longer shivering. She trims his beard and hair, smiling, and singing softly:

“Green grow the lilacs, all sparklin’ with dew…. I’m lonely, my darlin’, since part’n with you…. But by our next meetin’ I’ll hope to prove true…. And change the green lilacs to the Red, White and Blue.”

Later that day, Dewey lies on the dining table, dressed in a diaper fashioned from bed sheets. A candle in a tin saucer, balanced on his belly, burns brightly. Jonah, Nelly and James sit around him eating beans. There’s barely enough room for their plates. Nelly eats right next to Dewey’s head, Jonah at his feet, James at his midsection.

Dewey is greatly improved in appearance, redness gone, fever gone. Yet he remains unconscious. Nelly lifts his head and places a small pillow under it, then spoon feeds him some beans. Whatever spills into his beard, she wipes with a wet cloth. His eyes open as he eats, but they just roll around unfocused.

Jonah looks uneasily at the sleeping man on their table. “We ain’t even got no idea who he is or where he belongs.”

James pokes Dewey lightly with his fork and giggles, only to have Nelly slap him hard across the face. He runs outside screaming. This is a bit much even for Jonah. “You’re mighty mean to that boy sometimes.”

“I got my reasons.”

“He’s my boy, too.”

“Well…I guess I can say the truth, now that we’re married up…. It ain’t a pretty truth, but…James is my father’s boy.” A tear slips out of one eye.

Jonah holds her hand. “That’s what a boy needs is a granddaddy. Why in Hell don’t you write your father a letter and say he should come on out here and see his grandboy.”

Nelly looks at Jonah, dumbfounded by his ignorance.

Back at the Binder Place: a CLOSED sign across the door. The windows are boarded up. The signs that once hung from the porch roof rafters now dangle on broken wires, the paint faded, unreadable. A couple of wagons and a few horses are tied up in front of the house, a black wreath is affixed to the door.

In the parlor, Mrs. Binder’s body, coffined in a poorly made wooden box, rests on the dining table. A few black-clad mourners in attendance lower their heads in silence. Katie, standing at the head of the coffin, kisses the corpse on the forehead. “If you see Papa, tell him I love him and miss him dearly. And if Jonah’s there, tell him to please send me a sign that he’s passed on, so I won’t always be wonderin’ if my brother’s ever comin’ home. Good night, Mamma. I love you.” Several men in attendance nail the lid home and carry the coffin outside.

In the orchard a headstone with grasshoppers crawling on it reads:

GUSTAV BINDER

Born Hamburg, Ger., 1814

Died U.S.A. Kan. 1875

Beside it are a blank stone and an open grave. Men with ropes lower Mrs. Binder’s coffin into the excavation without ceremony. Dirt is shoveled in on top.

Katie walks back to the house in tears, accompanied by several women in black. On the porch men dawdle, smoke pipes, chew tobacco, carve wood, and spit. The women say their final goodbyes to Katie and coax their men to the wagons. She waves at them until the wagons are too far and dark to see. Alone now, she has a dose of tincture of opium, flops down in a chair and closes her eyes.

Her dreams have scarcely gotten underway when an unfamiliar sound ends them. With the empty tincture vial in her lap, she awakens to the sound of strong wind and flapping sailcloth. She feels her body drifting to the door. She feels her eyes looking out. On the horizon she sees a set of two square sails full in the wind.

The wind wagon sails over the hard prairie sod, fast, out of control. Two men are on board: Sheriff Peppard, now retired and wearing eyeglasses with half-inch thick lenses, and his former deputy, Ratoncito, retired in a sense, but also working for Peppard in a sidekick capacity. Ratoncito speaks with gestures, never words. As Peppard strains at the helm, his eyeglasses fall off. Everything is a blur. In searching for his glasses, he loses his grip on the helm. The wagon rolls on, out of control.

“Ratoncito! Drop the sails and heave the anchor!” Ratoncito lowers the sails, then applies all his strength toward lifting the “anchor,” fabricated from several plow blades and a cannon ball. He manages to get it over the stern. It bites into the sod, turning up a furrow, and slows the big wagon. “Step on the brake!” Ratoncito rides the smoking wooden brake, slowing the wagon further.