Jonis Agee - The Bones of Paradise

Some Horses stared into the mirror, unblinking, as if he peered into a great distance. Graver saw his left hand relax and ease toward the knife sheath on his belt. He dropped his hand and let it settle on Some Horses’s wrist as the wind howled louder and the building seemed to sigh and release dust from the rafters, which drifted down on the hats and shoulders of the men.

“Something you don’t know,” Some Horses said in a near whisper. Graver leaned in and stared at the side of the man’s face, which held an unusual tension. “Girl found with J.B.? My wife’s sister, Star.”

Graver thought about what he’d seen. Was Some Horses the one who shot him? He watched the man carefully. Maybe that’s why they’d seemed so eager to work at the ranch. “I’m sorry for what happened to her,” he said.

Some Horses waited a beat too long, then said, “Rose is real upset. Says she’s looking for the person done it. She’s a hard woman for vengeance.”

“What about this new girl at Reddy’s you’ve been bragging about?” Irish Jim lifted his hat, brushed it off, and resettled it, smiling at Larabee. The man’s head came up like a horse done drinking water and a slow grin spread across his slack face.

“You reckon my brother’s taken up light housekeeping with some squaw?” Larabee said in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room.

Some Horses stared at the bar as if examining the quality of the wood, then backed up a step, hand on his knife. Larabee started to step back, too. Graver grabbed his arm and shook his head.

“Storm’s getting bad,” Black Bill said and glanced at Jorge, who nodded. “We better tuck the horses in behind here out of the wind.”

The men hastened out the door into wind that roared like a train coming a couple of streets away, just as a roof sailed over their heads trailed by ladies’ underwear and dresses. Graver and Some Horses glanced at each other, spun, and rushed back inside, shouldering the door shut after the last man.

Graver could feel the building pushed back and forth like a plaything between some giant’s hands. The thin brunette stopped and looked around, a stricken expression on her face. The barkeep eyed Black Bill and Jorge and reached under the bar for a scattergun.

“Cyclone’s coming!” Larabee pounded the bar, took off his hat, and whipped his hip like he was riding a bronc, whooping and spinning in a circle until Graver caught his arm.

“Downstairs everybody, quick!” Graver leaned across the bar to shout over the sudden roar of the wind battering the front of the building.

“Not him.” Lucille pointed her jaw at Black Bill as the door crashed open. It took both Some Horses and Jorge against it with their shoulders to push it shut again. The two men shook themselves like dogs flinging water on nearby drinkers who protested with dark expressions and muttered threats.

“Not them neither.” Lucille shook her head as the storm grew louder, then suddenly there was a silence more terrible than the noise of a minute before.

Jorge shook his head, glanced at the ominous creaking of the ceiling, as if the building were being pried loose of the ground it sat on as the wind returned, and this time the engine of the freight train bore down on them, loosening another shower of dust over their heads. The thin brunette dropped her tray of empty glasses and wrapped her arms around herself, her mouth open in a silent scream.

“Run!” Larabee’s eyes grew wide and he grabbed the pitcher of beer and the thin woman’s arm and scrambled to the narrow stairs leading down, followed by the other drinkers shoving and pushing each other.

“You men care if our cowboys come along?” Graver called after the men plunging into the dark shadows of the basement.

“Long as you buy the next round,” someone called. “I wouldn’t care if you were Drum Bennett himself.”

Graver nodded toward the stairs and the three cowboys were soon swallowed by the darkness. He glanced at Lucille with her hands flat on the bar, head down, shaking it back and forth like she was trying to stop herself from doing something.

“Best grab a couple of bottles and get downstairs unless you want to spend the rest of the night in North Platte when the cyclone finally drops you.”

Her head came up as the wind bellowed again, twice as strong, and rocked the bar. She grabbed an armful of bottles, handed four to Graver, grabbed more, and the two of them made it down the stairs as the door ripped off its hinges and chairs and tables were sucked away.

In the middle of the basement room was a low wooden platform holding a pallet bed on the floor, a chair, and a large wardrobe with a full-length mirror. The wind gusted down the stairs, pushing sawdust and trash onto the people and flattening a stray cowboy hat against the mirror.

The three bar women huddled together in the farthest corner, behind an overturned table. The tired brunette wept silently, rocking to the sound of the storm battering the walls apart overhead. J.B.’s men sat on the floor with their backs against the stone wall to the right of the women, and the other men were dispersed to the left, as if they all were willing to fight to keep the females from violence.

The one exception was a girl of sixteen or seventeen who sat by herself at a table almost directly below the stairs. She was a plain girl with regular features that would coarsen in years to come, but for now, she still had smooth skin that seemed to bloom despite the shadows cast by the few kerosene lamps hanging from the low ceiling. She was wearing red high-heeled shoes, silk stockings held by black garters festooned with tattered red velvet roses, and a short red silk robe that fell open revealing an elaborate bustier and panties in black-and-red brocade that lifted and barely contained her full breasts and seemed too big for her narrow hips and tiny waist. Every man worked hard not to stare too long at the shapely figure on display. She twirled her forefinger in the glass of whiskey on the table, then lifted it and sucked the end like a child, and never bothered to look at anyone. It was mesmerizing, and the men forgot to worry about the sounds of breaking glass and splintering wood overhead. The wind fought down the stairs, swirled her silk robe into the air, and let it settle like a bedsheet around her.

The girl continued to dabble in the drink. She seemed to enjoy sucking it off the ends of her fingers, ignoring the storm around her, and Graver realized she was probably on some sort of drug, opium or laudanum. She dipped three fingers in the glass and slowly wiped them across the tops of her breasts. If she kept this up, the men would be killing each other despite the fact nobody was drinking anymore.

Finally a new silence settled, except for the tinkling of falling glass and the creaking of shattered wood. Outside a dog set to howling and a horse whinnied and the people stood, shook themselves, brushed their clothes, and laughed uneasily. Lucille started for the stairs, Graver touched her arm and took the lead.

Halfway up the stairs he could barely make out the buildings across the street in the darkness, streetlights were gone, and he knew what waited for them. Only the back wall stood, bearing the newspaper articles and photographs of the girl on the white horses. The bottles, beer kegs, glasses, tables, chairs, the bar itself were all gone, along with the three walls. The cedar floor was scoured raw, the orange red of the wood revealed for the first time in decades. The air smelled dense with mildew and sweat, vomit and smoke, as if all the corruption of the bar had been set loose upon the town. Across the street, people gathered to stare at the devastation of the cyclone, which had torn down one side and left the other untouched. Then a breeze began to blow in the fresh sweet scent of wet grass from the hills, and overhead the stars appeared. The cyclone had skipped a few buildings the next block down, then squatted on the church, grabbed it up and shattered it into pieces that were sprinkled all the way to the edge of town. The spire ended up whole, unscathed, cross leaning slightly to the right, on the train tracks in front of the station.