Jonis Agee - The Bones of Paradise

As mad as he was, it didn’t take him any time at all to make it to town. The pig rode peaceful until they slowed to a walk and stopped in front of Haven Smith’s store. A couple of people walking by stopped and stared at the green silk bundle slung around his neck. He tipped his hat and they moved on. He didn’t have a good reputation.

Haven Smith scooted out from behind the counter to head him off soon as he came through the door. He waved him away and headed for the canned milk and baby bottles.

“What ya got there, Cullen?” Pearl Stryker swayed down the aisle and stopped so close he could smell the stale beer and sex on her. From the smeared lip color and black rubbed around her eyes, it was easy to see she’d come from work. She leaned in and pulled the silk off the small pink face. “Ooh, looks just like his daddy.”

“You should know,” Cullen said with a grin. She batted his arm hard enough that he felt it and smirked. Contrary to town gossip, he’d never been with Pearl or her sister. No reason not to, but that seemed reason enough.

“Give me a chance,” she said and leaned over slightly and lifted her breasts from beneath so they bulged out of the low neck of the evening gown she wore even though it was noon. They were nice breasts, lightly freckled and soft-looking, made a person imagine the strawberry-red nipples almost visible at the edge of the heavy pink satin brocade.

“Have to work too hard for my money, Pearl.”

She dipped her fingers in the top of her dress and nudged out a nipple. His breath caught. It wasn’t strawberry red until she pinched it hard and giggled softly. “So do I.”

The pig squirmed and nuzzled against him and he noticed her nipple was chapped and leathery, like it’d been sucked too long. I know you do, he thought. She saw the shift in him and tucked it away, turned, marched down the aisle and out the door with Haven Smith running and yelling after her to pay for the bottle of medicine she’d taken.

As Cullen brought his purchases to the counter, Stubs hobbled in, spotted him right off, and hop-stepped toward him, one boot heel landing harder than the other on the wood floor. “Came to town to find ya,” he panted, bracing himself against the counter and leaning over to cough. Least he didn’t stink of liquor and whores. Maybe there was hope somewhere in this mess.

Then he caught sight of the pig poking its snout out of the sling.

“I knew it! Damn sow littered soon as I left yesterday, I bet. Any others make it?”

“Thirteen by my count. I moved them back to their pen, tied it up best I could, but it’ll need rebuilding. What the hell’s been going on out there?”

Stubs shook his head and toed the black crack between two unfinished pine floorboards. He removed his hat and rubbed the back of his head, working his way to the front, dry skin flaking as he went. “It was Carter and that Russian fella, Sergei, claimed his cousin was a famous writer beheaded by the tsar or some such story? They sorta stopped working in dribs and drabs and the others seen so they did, too, until I couldn’t get a one of them off their pockets to do a damn thing. I tried to tell them Drum would be home any day and they laughed, said he was too crippled to cause any trouble and you was out of the way, too.” Stubs resettled his hat and spit on the floor, rubbed it in with the toe of his boot. “Yesterday they locked me in the feed room and ran through the house and took off with some horses. Tracked them here, spending Drum’s money and making fools of themselves. Figured you’d show up sooner or later and we’d settle it with them.”

Stubs’s face was anchored with dark hollows under his eyes and deep creases in his cheeks. A slit from his upper lip to his chin had healed odd and puckered his mouth like he was drinking vinegar. He watched the boy with an expectant look in his eyes, as if he hadn’t had enough fighting and killing in the War Between the States.

Cullen didn’t want to ask, but he did. “What is it you think we should do?”

Haven Smith’s quick steps interrupted them as he slid behind the counter, glanced at the pig, opened his mouth to protest, then closed it and toted up the prices of the milk, baby bottles, and the new shirt Cullen added to the pile.

Stubs raised his brows and nodded in the direction of the guns and ammunition. When Cullen shook his head, Smith waited to see if he produced some real money, then sighed and hauled out the red leather accounts book and opened it to their page. He tapped a finger on the bottom amount, started to say something, shook his head, and wrote the new amounts.

“Soon as he’s on his feet,” Cullen said.

“I didn’t bring extra bullets,” Stubs said in a low voice as the boy turned to leave.

“What is it you think we’re doing?” Cullen asked once they were out of hearing. Smith had a big mouth and the boy didn’t want that new peace officer leaving some poor soul in the dental chair to come and arrest them.

Stubs stopped outside the doorway and stared at him in disbelief. “What Drum would do, boy, what any right-thinking man would do.”

“You want me to shoot those men dead?” The pig wriggled and tried to lunge out of the sling. Cullen set it down on the boardwalk where it promptly squatted and let loose, the stink enough to turn their faces. The pig shook itself, wobbled a few steps, squatted again and scooted its butt, then tried a few more wobbly steps. Stubs and Cullen followed it down the walk, away from the mess they’d left for Haven.

“I get your point,” Stubs finally said. “But we could take back the horses, ones wearing our brand, and get the dentist to arrest them for stealing.” The excitement was in his eyes again.

“You have a list of what they took?” Cullen bent and picked up the pig, which seemed ready for another feed and nap, so he settled on the bench in front of Stillhart’s Bank and broke out the supplies.

Stubs chewed his skewed lower lip with his stained brown front snaggletooth. “Got me there. What about the horses then?”

He nodded. “And the milk cow? What the hell did they do with her?” He held the bottle to the pig’s lips. It grabbed the rubber nipple and sucked.

Stubs sat down beside them, ignoring, as the boy did, the stares of folks walking by. “You know, I can’t rightly say. One morning I go out to milk her and she’s gone. Guess that’s enough to shoot a man over, ain’t it? Cattle rustling.”

Stubs was disturbing the peace and quiet Cullen had come to earlier. Why couldn’t a person be left alone with his thoughts? Now he could feel needles starting in his head, striking his skull like tiny bursts of heat lightning, making the world go away a little, like he heard through a dense fog or wall of water, and he knew he was going to do something bad.

So there it was. He went back inside and added shells to the accounts book, for the Peacemaker he’d stuck in his saddlebag, and for the new shotgun Stubs insisted on, though it made the hair on his neck prickle with foregone conclusion. Oh, you would, a voice in his head mocked. He felt the suckling pig in the green silk cradled against his chest, warmer than the day’s heat, the soft snoring contentment warring against the lightness that ballooned in his chest now that he was shoving shells in the revolver and breaking open the shotgun, careful not to nudge the baby awake.

You often see how things will go, he thought, and you are helpless to their untwining from your own desire. The flies buzzed on the pig shit tracked down the boards of the walk, tainting a town woman’s long yellow skirt hem with a brown stain she wouldn’t discover for minutes now, perhaps an hour, and would it be before or after the day went fatal? Already they walked on the plane of someone else’s tragedy, and the details of the moment suffocated him: The brown dog with the long hair and limp, one ear cropped and cockeyed, lifting a leg against the wheel of a runabout from which stepped Percival Chance. The quarrelsomeness of the sparrows in the cornices of the hotel across the street as the judge and Drum and Rivers entered with the oil and gas woman, Markie Eastman. The politeness that flourished between them didn’t bode well for Cullen. They would conduct business over a white tablecloth with wine in glasses and heavy silverware, tolling the boy’s future against the china plates as they shared a meal too heavy for the heat of the day.