Brimstone, стр. 14

“Or sew or iron or wash clothes,” I said. “Or cook.”

“Hell,” Virgil said. “She can’t sing and play the piano, either, but she been doing it for years.”

“I thought you liked her piano playing,” I said.

“God, no,” Virgil said. “You?”

“No,” I said. “Singing, neither.”

It was still raining, and the water ran down the windows in the front of the office, changing the shape of everything moving in the street. Virgil sipped his coffee and looked at the rain.

“She used to be fun,” Virgil said. “Now she working so hard to make it up to me, she ain’t fun anymore.”

“She is pretty drab,” I said.

“Drab,” Virgil said.

“Sorta no color,” I said. “Boring.”

He nodded.

“Drab,” he said. “That’s her. Drab.”

“Maybe if you was to say something to her.”

Virgil shook his head.

“Know the only thing she’s good at?” Virgil said.

“Not firsthand,” I said.

Virgil nodded.

“She’s good at it,” Virgil said.

I nodded.

“Built for it,” he said.

“I notice she’s filled back out, since we come here,” I said.

“She has,” Virgil said.

“But…” I said.

“Ain’t ready yet,” Virgil said.

“Why not?” I said.

“Got to think it through,” Virgil said.

“You love her?”

“That’s what I’m thinking through,” Virgil said.

“We come all the way down here looking for her,” I said. “And killed four men to get her out of Placido, and you don’t know if you love her.”

“Thought I did when we come down here,” Virgil said.

“But?”

“But I can’t seem to get past what she done yet,” Virgil said.

“The men or the running off, or both.”

“Understand the running off,” Virgil said. “She felt shamed. But the other men.”

“It didn’t work out for her,” I said. “You seen where we found her.”

“No,” Virgil said. “And I don’t have no problem with the whoring when she didn’t have no choice. Feel bad for her. But I don’t have no problem.”

“Bragg?” I said.

“Him, the other men, when she had a choice.”

“Maybe she thinks she didn’t,” I said.

“Then what she transforming for?” Virgil said.

“Please you?”

“It don’t please me.”

“And you ain’t talked about it,” I said.

“Can’t,” Virgil said.

I nodded.

“Neither one of us,” Virgil said.

I nodded again.

“Yet,” Virgil said.

WHEN ALLIE BROUGHT OUR LUNCH, Virgil and I were sitting outside the sheriff’s office watching the last of the whiskey get packed onto a wagon, in front of the Bluebell Saloon.

“Isn’t that good?” Allie said.

“The Bluebell?” Virgil said.

“Yes, it’s closing. They’re going away.”

“Some saloons left,” Virgil said.

“Not so many,” Allie said. “Brother Percival says we’ve driven four of them out already.”

“Pike’s Palace still doing well, though,” Virgil said.

I knew why he said it. He was still thinking about Choctaw Brown being with Pike the night Pike killed three men. Virgil never forgot anything, and he never let anything go.

“Brother Percival says Mr. Pike is running a much more Christian enterprise than the others.”

Virgil said, “Uh-huh.”

“I think they’re actually kind of friends,” Allie said. “I see them together sometimes.”

Virgil nodded.

“What’s Pike do that the others don’t?” Virgil said.

“I don’t really know,” Allie said. “But I know Brother Percival sends some of the deacons over there regularly.”

“How ’bout Deacon Brown?” Virgil said.

“Yes, he goes over.”

“And they go there to make sure,” I said, “that he’s running a Christian saloon.”

Allie’s face sort of squeezed in on itself.

She said, “Being Christian doesn’t mean being foolish, Everett. We know men have their needs.”

She looked at the floor.

“Women, too, I guess,” she said. “And we don’t expect everyone to be perfect. So we are working to get rid of the worst kind of vice dens, and try to maintain a better option.”

“Why not let them decide for themselves,” I said.

Allie didn’t look at either of us. She stared down the street and watched the wagon pull away from the Bluebell.

“People can’t always decide for themselves. When they do, many times they decide the wrong thing.”

Neither Virgil nor I said anything.

“And they can’t ever make it up,” Allie said. “They try and try, but the thing they did was too wrong… and they can’t fix it.”

“Nothing can’t be fixed,” Virgil said.

Allie turned her head toward him. She didn’t speak for a time. Virgil didn’t say anything else.

“You really believe that, Virgil?”

“I do,” he said.

They looked silently at each other. Allie opened her mouth to speak and closed it without speaking. They looked some more.

Then Allie said, “Here’s your lunch. I got to go practice on the organ now.”

She handed the lunch basket to Virgil, who took it.

He said, “Thank you, Allie.”

She nodded and smiled sort of uncertainly, and then turned and headed south on Arrow Street toward the church. Virgil watched her go.

“Something up between Percival and Pike,” Virgil said.

“That what we was talking about?” I said.

“Partly,” Virgil said.

THE HOUSE WAS LITTLE MORE than a cabin, with a stock shed next to it. In front of it, in the trampled dirt yard, was a dead man facedown with part of his head blown off. An arrow protruded from his back below the ribs. In the stock shed, a milk cow was making some noise.

Virgil and I dismounted and went into the house. There were three rooms. All of them empty.

“There’s women’s clothes in both bedrooms,” I said to Virgil. “But no women.”

“And there’s a wagon and a plow in the yard but no horses,” Virgil said.

“Somebody took ’em both?”

“Maybe our Indian friend,” Virgil said.

We went back into the yard and squatted on our heels beside the body. I shooed the flies away and pulled out the arrow.

“Same kind of arrow,” I said. “No point.”

The cow was still complaining in the shed.

“Needs to be milked,” Virgil said.

“Sounds that way,” I said.

“You know how to do that?” Virgil said.

“Nope.”

“I do,” Virgil said, and went to the shed.

The cow was in one stall; the other two stalls were empty. Virgil found a milking stool and began to milk the cow, letting the milk soak into the hard earth of the shed.

“Shame to waste it,” I said.

“Cow don’t think so,” Virgil said.

While he milked the cow I studied what little sign there was on the hard-packed earth. When Virgil was through, he pitched some hay from the loft into the feed trough, and left the shed gate open.

“We’ll take her back to town when we go,” Virgil said. “Maybe Allie can do something with her.”

“Can’t read much here,” I said. “Ground’s too hard. But over there, leading toward the river, there’s the tracks of maybe three horses. Two of them probably shod, one of them not. I think.”

We stood together over the dead body.

“Killed the man,” Virgil said. “Took the horses and the women.”

“A while ago,” I said.

“He is getting kind of ripe,” Virgil said.

“We don’t smell good when we’re dead,” I said.

“Especially after a while,” Virgil said.

“Probably don’t care, though.”

“Probably don’t,” Virgil said.

He was looking off in the direction where the hoof prints led.

“Got a start on us,” Virgil said.

“Yep, but if he’s traveling with two women,” I said, “he might be going slower than we will.”

Virgil glanced suddenly over his shoulder back toward town. I could see dust rising along the road from town, and in another minute I heard the sound of horses and a wagon.

“Be the undertaker,” Virgil said. “He can take the body. We’ll take the cow.”