Big Picture: Stories (15 page)

“Nah, man, I don’t want to hit you. I just want you to go away.”

“Come on,” Joseph said. He knew what it felt like to be a jerk. He pushed his chin out. “Punch for punch, midface. You go first.”

“You’re crazy,” the kid said.

Joseph moved closer. He was just inches from the boy’s face, and could see him sweating. “Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

“Why don’t you just go someplace?” another boy said.

Joseph silenced the smaller boy with a look and returned his attention to the first kid. Joseph pushed the boy in the chest with both hands. “I said for you to hit me.”

The boy fell back a step and swallowed hard, his eyes wide open. “Hey, man.”

Joseph shoved him again.

The other teenagers stepped in and stood between them. They were all unsteady, heaving in deep breaths, shifting their weight left to right.

“Go home,” the kid said from behind his friends.

“All right, I’ll go home, but first I want you to punch me. Hey, I’ve been an asshole out here. A real asshole. I won’t hit you back, I promise. You can’t let somebody be such a jerk and get away with it.”

“Go on and hit him, John,” one of the boys said.

“Yeah,” said another.

“I don’t want to,” John said.

“Your pals are here, so I can’t very well hit you back, right?” Joseph felt a smile on his face, an unfamiliar smile, a hollow smile, a mean smile.

The kid squeezed through his friends and Joseph thrust out his chin again and pointed to it. The boy threw out a weak open-handed tap that Joseph barely felt on his cheek.

“Harder,” Joseph said, pointing again to his chin. “Right there.”

Another blow, a little sharper. The boy was trembling, his lips parted and quivering.

“Hit me like a man!”

“Let him have it, John.”

“Yeah.”

When Joseph came around, he was alone. The sun was almost gone and a light drizzle was falling. His face hurt. The wind blew trash across the blacktop. His brain throbbed. A violent shudder ran through his body as he thought about what he had done. He wanted to find the boy he had terrorized and apologize. Then he hoped that the punch had been good enough, satisfying for him, hoped that the boy’s fear would be short-lived, hoped he would never see him again. Maybe all the boys would get a good laugh out of it. They would be nervous and falsely cocky at first, Joseph imagined, but later genuine laughter. “John, remember that crazy …” he could hear them saying.

He felt better when he could see the hills scissor-cut against the western sky. It was dark when he rolled home. The night smelled good. When he entered the house he found there was little need to tell Cora anything. She looked at his swollen face and started to cry. She begged him not to die.

“Okay,” he said. He held her for a while there by the door and took deep breaths, thought about things like insurance and debts.

She pulled from him and walked stiffly away.

Joseph went into the bathroom and looked at his face in the mirror, rubbed his jaw.

Wes came in.

“Hey there, cowboy,” Joseph said. He could hear Cora crying in the bedroom.

“You okay?”

“Nah, I guess I’m not doing so hot.”

“What happened to your jaw?” the boy asked.

“Tried to knock some sense into myself.” He looked at Wes’s face in the mirror. “Why don’t you see about your mother?”

Squeeze

“You sure you ain’t got no Indian blood in you?” the heavily mustached Lucius Carter asked again.

Jack Winston castrated the bull and tossed the severed parts behind him where they landed in the dirt at the base of the shed wall.

Carter rubbed the neck of his bay, which chomped its bit and stamped the parched ground. He looked down at the man kneeling behind the young bull confined in the squeeze gate. “Just a touch?”

“Carter, if you weren’t studyin’ your ropes all the damn time, you’d see I’m black and nothing else.” He smiled at the man working the squeeze. Several men within earshot laughed while they worked, since Winston had insulted Carter’s ability as a cowboy.

Carter pushed his tongue into his cheek and stared hard at Winston for a second before spitting and walking away. He pushed the shoulder of another hand who said something to him as he passed.

“You got him a good one that time,” Kirby Dodds said and let the bull go.

Winston didn’t want to get him “a good one.” Winston didn’t want to say anything. He gave injections to and castrated three more bulls, watched them bolt away from the gate, then stood up, slapped at his dusty knees, and headed for the bunkhouse. He shed his smelly shirt, sat down on the foot of his bed, closed his eyes, and took a deep, dusty breath. He raised an arm and worked a kink out of his shoulder, then pulled off his boots and socks and wiggled his toes.

Jubal Dixon, the cook, a short, one-legged man, appeared at the doorway, looked past Winston out the window, then asked, “You eating here?”

“No, Jubal, I thought I’d drive into Deer Point, get a room and wash my filthy, stinking clothes. Maybe catch a ball game on television.”

Jubal nodded and turned away.

“Hey, Jubal,” Winston called after him. “Want to ride in with me?”

Jubal considered the offer as he leaned against the jamb and tapped the floor with his metal crutch.

“What do you say?”

“Split a room?”

“You bet.”

Winston showered and gathered together his dirty clothes in a couple of pillowcases. He put on his good boots and good hat and stood by his truck waiting for Jubal. Jubal came out with a small knapsack, wearing a brand new pair of jeans; the empty leg was neatly folded up and pinned behind him. He tugged at the lapels of his corduroy sports coat.

“Jubal, you’ve got to give the gals a fightin’ chance.”

“Ready?”

Winston watched as Jubal climbed in on the passenger side, then got in himself and started the engine. He pulled the Jeep pickup around past the corral, onto the wagon-rutted lane, and followed that to the gravel road.

“How do you like this thing?” Jubal asked.

“Can’t complain. I’ve gotten six years out of her.”

“I been thinking about getting me one of them Rangers. You like those?”

“Good trucks,” Winston said. “I wouldn’t turn one down.”

“Wouldn’t kick it out of bed, huh?” Jubal said and laughed. “Wouldn’t kick it out of bed,” he repeated more softly, shaking his head and grinning.

Winston smiled at the joke.

It was dusk and Jubal was just coming to from a nap with a jerking of his leg and coughing in a closed mouth. Winston had enjoyed the talkless time by just looking out at the countryside. Jubal cleared his throat and rustled around until Winston glanced over at him. The younger man wasn’t sure what he was seeing at first. He did a double take, leaning over to see more clearly. Jubal had a rag in his hand and was rubbing it against something in his lap. It was his teeth. He had his dentures out of his face and in his lap and was polishing them with his hankerchief. Winston didn’t say anything, just kept his eyes forward on the road.

There wasn’t much to the town of Deer Point, but folks claimed it was a town. There was a hotel, a couple of bars, a Dairy Queen, a Sears catalog store, a traffic light that was turned off on the weekends, and a Chinese restaurant name Lung Luck’s. They registered at the New Deer Point Hotel, which had been built in 1892 and was called “New” even though no “Old” Deer Point Hotel had ever existed. Winston began up the wide stairway slowly, anticipating Jubal’s pace, but Jubal vaulted up the carpeted steps to the second-floor landing with his crutch swinging close to his leg.

“Easier to do it fast,” Jubal said, turning to face Winston at the top.

They dropped off their gear, left the hotel, and went down the street to Lung Luck’s. They sat at a table in the middle of the restaurant, placed their orders, and soon their food was brought to them. The kitchen radio was playing country music that became louder every time the waiter passed through the swinging door.

“Know what I heard a feller call this stuff once?” Jubal said, pointing at his food with his fork. “Chink Stink.”

Winston glanced at the waiter to see if he had heard. It seemed he hadn’t since he continued to wipe down a booth table without pause.

“Always liked it myself,” Jubal said. “Didn’t much care for that feller.”

Winston nodded and bit into an egg roll.

“That same guy would let his dog lick his dishes clean. I mean, that’s how he washed ’em.”

They ate on for a couple of minutes in silence. Jubal’s crutch, which was leaning against an empty chair, began to slide to the floor. The man caught it.

“I ever tell you how I lost my leg?”

Winston shook his head. “No occasion to hear that story, I’m afraid.”

“I was out lookin’ for cows on BLM land. I saw a steer and took off after it. I didn’t see the ravine and neither did the damn horse and we both flipped in the air and the son of a bitch landed on me.” He drank some iced tea. “Feller that was ridin’ with me went for help and forgot where in blazes I was. Can you believe some shit like that? Then, by the time they found me …” He paused. “Infection.”

“Hm,” Winston said.

“And you know who that feller was?” Jubal didn’t wait for a reply. “It was the idiot with the dish-licking pooch. Dog spit probably got into his brain and made him loco.”

They paid up and went down the street to a tavern called the Stirrup that held a big lighted sign with a tilted martini glass—the olive was rolling back and forth. Winston and Jubal drank beers and ate nuts and played pool. Jubal shot pool with his crutch and he was doing pretty good until the beers started to take hold; his balance became uncertain, his shooting got sloppy, and the rubber tip of his crutch threatened to scratch the cloth. They walked over to a booth and sat down. Jubal drummed his fingers on the Formica—his nails were in need of trimming—and drank beer from a bottle.

“I think that ought to be your last one,” Winston said.

Jubal didn’t seem to hear him and looked away at the door. “Jesus Christ,” he moaned, “Lookie what the cat drug in.”

Winston looked up to see Lucius Carter, in a new white hat, with another man and a broad-shouldered, heavily made-up woman. Her eye shadow was evident even from across the room and it extended well beyond her brows.

Lucius saw Winston and the one-legged man and made straight for their booth. “How you boys?” he asked.

Winston and Jubal nodded. Winston knew Jubal didn’t much like Carter.

“Couldn’t find no ladies, so you had to settle for each other, eh?” Carter said.

Jubal looked at the blond woman who had come in with the other man. “See you couldn’t find no ladies either.”

Carter smiled an evil smile. “What was that?”

“You heard me,” Jubal said, looking him in the eye.

Winston sighed.

“How do you think you’d get around with no legs, Hoppy?” Carter said.

Winston grabbed Jubal’s arm as he started to rise. “Steady, cowboy.”

“Yeah,” Carter said, “better keep your girlfriend under control.”

Jubal snatched free of Winston’s grasp, stood, and swung his crutch, which caused Lucius Carter to duck and step back. “Son of a bitch,” he shouted. Winston found himself standing, too. Jubal swayed there for a moment while the alcohol found his brain and then he passed out.

The blond and the second man came and stood with Carter over the unconscious man. Winston gathered him up, loaded him over his shoulder, grabbed his crutch, and walked out. He carried the man down the street and through the lobby of the New Deer Point Hotel, past a clump of tourists who probably thought this was a neat piece of local color, or maybe they thought the dusty black cowboy was taking the one-legged, unconscious, old man upstairs to have his way with him. He climbed the stairs and wedged Jubal between his shoulder and the wall while he got the door open. He dropped him onto one of the beds.

He sat at the window and looked out at the quiet street. It was a lonely life, he thought. Then he heard gurgling, coughing, and he saw that Jubal was having some kind of problem. He leaned over him. Jubal was choking because his dentures had gotten turned sideways in his mouth.

Winston sighed long. A cowboy touched a lot of things, he thought, blood, dung, placenta, but here he was, stone-chilled by the prospect of reaching in and pulling out the man’s dentures. But he did it. With a deep, held breath, he did it. He dropped the teeth on the nightstand between the beds and ran into the bathroom and washed his hands for a considerable time, nearly disappearing one of those little wafers of hotel soap.

He thought about turning on the television, but instead just undressed, opened the window wider, got into bed, and closed his eyes.

Next morning, Winston woke up and showered while Jubal was still unconscious, his snoring letting on that he was alive. Winston didn’t disturb him, just grabbed his sack of laundry and left the room.

While his clothes were in the machine he read back issues of
Sports Illustrated
and
Newsweek
and
McCall’s
and smiled at a little Indian girl who kept running down the aisle away from her mother, rolling a plastic bottle of fabric softener.

“How are you?” Winston asked the girl as he folded a pair of jeans.

The four-year-old just stared at him. She had big dark eyes and straight black hair that fell down her back in two braids. She was wearing a sweatshirt with a bear on it.

“My name is Jack. What’s yours?” He smiled at the woman who didn’t seem to mind him talking to the child.

“Mary Dreamer.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

The girl ran back to her mother, pausing to pick up a fabric-softener sheet off the floor. Her mother snatched it from her and threw it into the trash.

A man in a dirty coat with greasy, matted hair came in and pushed through the magazines on the counter before asking the woman for change. The woman pulled her daughter behind her and told him to go away. He walked over to Winston, smiled big, and showed a mouth with two lonely teeth. Winston could smell the whisky and, before the man could ask, gave him two quarters.