John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

In the pickup they talked about horses and farm machinery and who used to be a bad hat when they were young and who was still capable of some orneriness on a full tank and about drunks they'd had and horses they'd owned and about poor old Roger DuPree whose woman had the roving eye. They passed liquor front seat to truck-bed, taking careful, fair pulls of the remaining Johnnie Walker and the halfbottle of Mogen David J.C. had stashed under the barn floor. Brian closed one eye the way he did when he drank so they wouldn't cross and Bad Heart carefully wiped the neck when it was his turn. They banged over the yellow-brown land in the long plains twilight, holding the bottles below sight-line as they stopped at each trailer to say they wouldn't be out too late. Raymond started to protest when it was time for him to be left off, but Jim Crow said a few growling words and his mournful face darkened even sadder — it would just kill him if he had to smack the boy. Raymond didn't want a scene in front of the guys and scooted off flapping the rump of an imaginary mount with his silver hat. The liquor ran out and Sam's belly began to rumble so they turned out of their way to hunt some food.

They reached a little kitchen emporium just before it closed up and J.C. sprang for a loaf of Wonder Bread and some deviled-ham spread. The old woman in the store wore a crucifix nearly half her size and wouldn't sell alcoholic beverages. FOR PEACE OF MIND, said a faded sign over the door, INVESTIGATE THE CATHOLIC FAITH.

"Sonsabitches damnwell ought to be investigated," said Jim Crow. "Gotten so I can't but give a little peep of colorful language around the house and she's off in the bedroom on her knees mumbling an hour's worth of nonsense to save my soul. What makes her think I'd trust that bunch with my soul escapes me"

"Now they mean well enough, Jim, it's just they don't understand Indian ways. Think they dealin with a bunch of savages up here that haven't ever heard of religion. Think that somebody's got to get theirselves nailed to a tree before you got a religion."

"Fuck religion!" shouted Bad Heart from the back, and that ended the conversation.

A sudden rain hit them with a loud furious slap, drenching the men in the back instantly and smearing the windshield so thick that J.C. lost sight and the pickup sloughed sideways into the shoulder ditch. It only added to their spirits, rain soothing them where the sweat had caked itchy, not cold enough to soak through their layer of alcohol. It gave them a chance to show they didn't give a fart in a windstorm how the weather blew, to pile out and hunker down in the mud and slog and heave and be splattered by the tires when the pickup finally scrambled up onto the road. The flash downpour cut dead almost the moment the truck was free, just to make its point clear. J.C. spread a blanket over the hood and the men stood together at the side of the road waiting for Jackson Blackroot to slap them down a sandwich with his brand-new Bowie knife. The ham spread was a bit watery but nobody kicked, they hurried to stuff a little wadding down to soak up more liquor. They pulled wet jeans away from their skin and stomped their boots free of mud on the road pavement. J.C. came over to Brian.

"Don't you worry about the delay, son. We'll show you a real cowboy drunk soon enough."

"No rush."

"Damn right there's no rush. Got time to bum out here. Time grows on trees. Well, bushes anyway, we're a little short on trees. There isn't a picture show or a place with live music in some hundred miles, the Roman Church is about the only organization has regular meetings and you can have that. Isn't much cause for people to get together. Workin horses like we done is something though. A little excitement, even if it is work. Hell, it's better that it is work, you feel good about it even after it's over, not like a drunk where it takes a couple years of selective memory to make it into something you like to talk about."

"Doesn't seem so bad."

"Oh, there's worse, I'm sure. But I see you're passing through, not staying. Nobody lives here unless they were born here and can't hack it anywhere else. It's why most of the land around here was made into reservation, nobody else wanted it. Oh, the Badlands, up by Interior, they're striking to look at so the Park Service took them for the tourists, but the rest — hell, even the migrating birds don't come back anymore."

"Where you traveling to, Brian?" It was old Sam that asked.

"California."

He frowned. "You best be careful. That California is wild. Had a brother was killed there."

"I'll watch myself."

"I'd steer clear of it if it was me. They say it's wild."

J.C. laughed. "When was this brother killed, Sam?"

"Just around the start of the war. Got himself caught in something called the Zoot Suit Riots and that was all she wrote. Just plain wild."

"You know where I found Brian?" said J.C. "He was walkin up Six-Hat Road there by Petrie's, sayin he's gonna walk to the Innerstate. Seems he got his directions from old Cody Sprague there."

The men laughed. "Be better off gettin em from the buffalo," said Jackson Blackroot, "at least he's a native."

"Sprague isn't from around here?"

"He come out from some city back east, what was it, Philadelphia — ?"

"Pittsburgh."

"Right. He come out from Pittsburgh on his vacation one summer and he sees all these roadside attractions up there on go, the prairie-dog village, reptile farms, Wall Drug Store, all that, and he thinks he's found his calling. He worked in some factory all his life and always had something about bein' his own boss, owning his own business. So he takes his savings, which couldn't of been much, and buys himself two acres down on Six-Hat, the most worthless two acres in the whole state probly, and somewhere he gets ahold of that animal. Gonna build a dude ranch with the money he makes selling rides. Well it's been six, seven years now and I don't know how the hell he survives but he still hasn't got but them two acres and that animal."

"He's a nice old guy though," said J.C. "Talk your ear off, a little crazy, but a nice old guy."

"He's a character all right," said Jackson.

"He's an asshole." Bad Heart climbed into the rear of the pickup.

They had eaten all the bread and were talking about Sam's brother getting killed in Los Angeles when Jackson remembered something.

"Hey," he said, "what we gonna do about that wake they're having over there for Honda Joe? Suppose we ought to go?"

"Just slipped my mind," said J.C. "Live just five mile away from us, no way I can't make an appearance, and it slipped my mind. Listen, as long as there's all of us together and we got the truck — "

"I suppose we ought to go."

"Damn shame it is, young kid like that. Goes through all that Vietnam business with hardly a scratch, gets himself a Silver Star, then comes back to smash hisself up on a goddam motorsickle. Young kids like that seem bent on it. I remember I couldn't talk my brother out of his plan for all the world, nosir, he had to have his California."

"It wasn't this it would have been some other," said Jackson.

"If it wasn't the bike maybe he would of drunk himself to death like some others around here."

"No, I don't think so. Honda Joe was always in a hurry to get there."

"Well he got there all right. In a couple pieces maybe, but he got there."

"We ought to go look in on him, for his mother's sake. What say, fellas?"

"I never liked Honda Joe," said Bad Heart.

"Well then, dammit, you can stay in the truck."

"If there's one thing I can't stand," said Jim Crow very quietly when they were on their way to Honda Joe's wake, "it's a sulky Indian."

It was still twilight when they passed by the access road to J.C.'s place again. He didn't offer to drop Bad Heart home before they went on. They crossed Six-Hat Road, Brian was just able to make out one of Cody Sprague's signs to the right, and then a half-mile farther along they were stopped by a horse standing in the middle of the road, facing them.