John Hawkes - The Beetle Leg

“That ain’t my hand.”

“You won it,” Lou spilled the coins, shot them with the flat of her palm, “take it.”

They sat as if still standing and their uneasy country gait knocked together legs ill-fitting under the table. Their thumbs were permanently scratched in ten years’ testing for the sharpness of a blade and they had lost no blood. These four met on the seat of a wagon, survived Ma’s wedding trip, thereafter packed away bonnets and allowed the barn to fall, fast friends.

Lou licked her diamonds. She moistened the ring finger first with the tip of a handkerchief touched to her lips, gently turned the band. Then she raised knuckles, bone, the thin stick to her mouth, gnawed as upon a hive, and one stone, another, ceased to roll and glittered in the center of the table.

With barely a whisper Thegna shut the door.

She had tacked no rawhide sheets across the windows, no smoke heavy on eyeshades filled the room. There were no watch chains on embroidered waistcoats, no weapons concealed in the finery, the feathered fronts of silken shirts. Black cigars, gold teeth, long wallets next to hot and scented breasts, these were buried under the young willow limbs of wing dams on the river.

“I ain’t sat with a reckless player. Before now.”

“Somebody give them to her.”

“There’s people wear such things.”

And Thegna: “Don’t touch them. Loan her, for awhile.”

The cards were blank, warped as if they had been shuffled under water. The women held them at arm’s length and to one side — to catch the light from a barn lantern shadowed by the faces of those with whom they boarded, shade lifted crankily to the lighting of a pipe.

“Don’t you know Pa’s game?” asked one.

“They play it even out to Clare.”

“Let the lady study it,” said the cook. “She don’t know brag as well as you.”

“I told him,” pressing the cards face down against the table, “this place hasn’t even a road to reach it. And, my God,” leaning over them, “it’s not Nevada!”

But the sternwheeler rocked upstream. Camper’s wife heard the signal of the bells. The crystal glass palace, wide of beam, candles bursting in the darkness, plowed over snag and bar in the shadow of the dam. Smoke, and the music of an instrument strummed on the lower deck, filled the salon. From carboned chandeliers light fell on dirty cards and amidst the singing and dancing forward, the gentlemen, ordered not to wear boots to bed, with lace undone around their throats and black eyes flashing to the count of chips, created, among amateur and blackleg, a cold solemnity and harsh silence that would last the night. Wheels paddled sternward, only a few inches of night water separated the golden purse from the changing, uneven spine of the river bed.

“Sit down,” said the cook, “he played!”

Again Lou Camper heard the ringing on the river, smelled tobacco and glass tumblers of brandy. They moved slowly at the speed of the lagging current, showering sparks on the black water, peopling with shadow and linen revelers an enormous liquid dead land far from shore. Feet splashed, shoulders scraped warm peeling wood and suddenly, from the deck below, against the constant lull of gamblers, a voice called up clearly between cupped hands, laughing through low fog and unaware of danger.

“Oh, Lou, Lou, where’s he at now?”

ma was old already when she married the dead Lampson in the dam. And the Mandan was but a child.

She prepared herself in the morning, lasted and traveled the entire day to the wedding at dusk far south in Clare. In those days Ma had friends. They helped her, though they did not arrive until after sunrise. But, carrying her bundle out to the darkness, Ma filled her heart with the family rolled asleep behind, and knowing that wagonloads would find her, except for death or accident, thought not of friends but only of her tentative husband’s mother.

“There’s just one thing I got to ask. That is for Hattie Lampson to come. For her to watch it.”

Ma put her clothes by the basin, filled it, and between the house wall and the roost, plunged thin tough arms and face into the water and after rinsing raised her eyes to twenty miles of dripping clouded sand across which lay the town where weddings were announced nearly once a month. She had heard of them. The pulse beat in the hollow of her elbow.

“It’s too late for her,” Luke’s mother said the night before, “I won’t go.”

But Ma dashed herself with water and in the hour before dawn— she had lain awake to see a matronly night die down — she put a bounty on her own voice and expected, as if the very day could change her, to be persuasive in the ways of women. She shook out her hair. She soaked it. And the only thing she wanted she was sure of. The night before a wedding, perhaps then they spat and hard things were said against her; but on the very day of compliments, then the fires were set and the lock was on the door.

“She’ll come around,” thought Ma.

There were no holes from which wagons might appear, no hump to cross, no turning to bring them into sight. For miles of white land lay open and fallow on all sides of the ranch. But if they had to ride three days and nights and drive hard teams themselves, Ma would be surrounded by women married longer at her age than she could ever be. She patted her cheeks to draw up the color of the blood.

“I guess I can have my way. This once.” Quickly Ma picked up the basin, flung it wide, and a shower of water splashed easily through the darkness.

In the open air, squatting in the sand for half an hour before the day of marriage, the woman sorted her clothes. She bit off a piece of thread. The gray hair dripped and slightly wet her shoulders. She tried not to listen for the stirring of the brothers and their old mother and now and then, wiping her mouth carefully, she raised her head and peered over the slight curve of the earth to the south where it would happen.

“If the sun don’t come up soon,” she thought, “I’ll damp the pillow on our first night.” And then: “I’ll make Hattie Lampson dry it.”

On all the days of the week, Ma never saw the sunrise though she awoke as early; for her the clearness of the day was noticed late and the first heat, which killed the very cry of the chickens, only wore her down by noon. But this morning she saw it gather, roll up and melt the east. The fire of the small, perfectly round sun was suddenly stretched, banded, across the entire horizon. She saw the thin red arms actually wrenched across the back of the earth.

“That’s a bad light. But I don’t care.”

Luke found her hunched in a sun ray, head forward, hair laid flat on her knees.

“You ain’t very energetic for a woman who’s almost married.” He picked up the basin. “You used the water.”

“I’m entitled.” Ma spread the strands. “But you ain’t supposed to talk to me like this. You can’t look at me, like he was out here watching what I do himself — before it’s time.”

“There’ll be fuss enough,” said Luke. “Just let me wash.”

The head of hair grumbled. The cowboy took off his shirt.

“It’s hard enough for me to keep my spirits collected without you around.” Ma turned her back and drew the flowered satchel near.

“You aiming to carry something from the house?”

“I’m traveling, ain’t I?”

“Right back to here. That’s all.” Luke blew into the water. “What’s in it?”

“You don’t watch me now! This finery ain’t for men to see— except in the dark.” She pulled wide the mouth of the bag and under spreading hair, arms deep, looked into the dust and flowers. For a moment, as the sun drew her scalp tight and turned the silver metal of her hair into powder, she slept and hands hung gently. Then, eyes closed, she straightened the layers and before tying shut the bag, stroked and settled whatever filled the bottom.