Lonesome Animals (20 page)

He nodded to a log split lengthwise. Strawl looped Stick to a tree and sat. Elijah was not long following. Inside the house, Jacob filled a pair of pails with oats and rice. He set them beneath the horses and fed each a handful of sugar cubes. The men listened to the horses' noses bang the buckets, and, when they were finished, Jacob led both to the barrel trough to drink.

“Hello Elijah,” Jacob said. “Sorry to hear about Ida.”

“Appreciate that,” Elijah said.

“You, too, I suppose.”

Strawl nodded.

Jacob fetched two tin plates and, from a cauldron in the fire, deposited a scoop of sugared beans and ham on each and culled from a bucket limp radishes and carrots picked from a garden somewhere behind the house.

“You don't look so frightening,” Jacob said to Strawl.

“Age and sentimentality turned him infirm. He's only a shade of what he once was,” Elijah said.

“That's lucky for me,” Jacob said.

“I'm not anyone's horseshoe, yet,” Strawl told him.

The crickets sawed at the night. A kitten stirred the grass followed by another. They circled Strawl and Elijah, then reappeared at Jacob's shins. His hand dangled over one knee and when one of their tails batted it, he gently tugged until the kitten mewed, then released it, and the cat reversed itself for more of the same pleasant torture. Elijah bent and lifted the other and stroked its head, but it struggled and he released it. The kitten hurried beneath Jacob's chair, then stared back at him.

“Funny as people, aren't they?” Jacob said. “Killers, too. Used to be lizards and gophers and mice and chipmunks plenty. Their mama went on a murder spree likes of Bonnie without Clyde. Only thing lives within a hundred yards is a badger and when these two come of age they'll likely harass him to distraction.”

He turned his finger and the two of them batted it.

“They bring me their kills,” Jacob said. “Drop them half eaten on the step. Rabbits and snakes, even. They're not hungry. I feed them meat and gravy and biscuits and they take to it like trout do a stream.” The cat, tired of play, curled into a ball under him. “Practicing for when I'm gone and they have to fend for themselves,” Jacob said. “You know, they torture mice. They'll keep them alive an hour just for entertainment.”

“I guess they can't get into the picture shows.”

“Probably attack the light on the screen. This one would.” He rubbed the cat's back once.

“That the one you killed the owl over?”

“Saw that, did you?”

Strawl nodded. “Owl was just killing, too. Same as cats. Doesn't seem he deserved to die.”

“Killing is nature,” Jacob said. “I'm as animal as these two. As that owl, too. And I never planned a killing, not even hunting.
I just sit someplace until I get hungry and something that needs killing always come by.”

“Men, too,” Strawl said.

“I don't eat men.”

“But you killed some.”

“I get crossways of others occasionally.”

“You seem to come out living each time.”

“So do you,” Jacob said. “Maybe we just got more practice than most.”

“Killing's not something to be done half-assed, I suppose.”

“Not if you want to stay off the killed side,” Jacob said. He leaned back, stretched against the chair, and crossed his palms behind his head. His thick arms swelled. “Stealing's wrong and I won't do it no more,” he said. “But killing? You can't live a day without being part of murder or manslaughter or armies lining up on one another. Babies killing their mommas being born or us eating biscuits and jerked beef while a thousand Chinamen die for lack of a bowl of rice.” He turned a log in the fire and let the coals spit while he stared at it. “But you decide,” Jacob said. “How do you think people dead?”

“No conscience, I guess.”

Jacob nodded in agreement. “Books and laws are just words and sounds and not a shade, not the scrawniest shadow, compared to killing.” He dropped the stick into the flames and shook his wooly head. “Dying should be like bad weather; if you're not where there's a roof, then you're going to get wet, and sooner or later we all get rained on.” Jacob shook his head. “I spent too much time alone. Makes me talk in wide circles.”

Strawl nodded. “Better than being a duck in a pen.”

“Not if you're the pen builder,” Jacob said.

Strawl laughed and Jacob did, too. Their laughter tore at the night, while Elijah watched their contorted faces in the firelight.
A pair of swallows swerved into a gnat cloud just out of the light, then wheeled and dove again.

Elijah lay against his saddle, pistol still within reach, studying Strawl's strange interrogation of Jacob. Neither was afraid of the other, nor was either sure he had the upper hand. Elijah realized Strawl had wanted the circumstances such.

Jacob rose and went into the house.

“We had the high ground,” Elijah said to Strawl.

“He knew we were coming,” Strawl said.

Jacob returned with a coffeepot and two tin mugs. He handed Strawl one and set the other on a grate to warm.

“Heard you in the wolfweed over the hill. Then a lark quit singing.”

“But you kept here,” Elijah said. “Your sister send word?”

“She'd be the last one to.”

“It did strike me six feet of dirt covering you wouldn't ruin her day,” Strawl said.

“She don't want me dead. She wants me to not've been.”

“That's a cold trail, I'd say.”

Jacob said, “I'd likely follow it, though, right back to where me and her are unbuttoning each other the first time. Doubt I'd go further. I'm a sinner, but an honest one.”

Strawl smoked. “I got to say, I don't understand it completely. Them that diddle their mothers; they're just trying to backtrack to the womb.” He tapped his ash on a flat stone, then set the cigarette down. “But a sister. Sort of like diddling yourself, isn't it.”

“You're a crude-talking bastard,” Jacob said.

“Interesting, seeing as what you did to her.”

Elijah eyed his gun and Strawl shifted his weight to his haunches, but Jacob hunched his back and stared into the fire.

“No one did her worse than I did, it's true.” Jacob looked up.

“Well, she is a looker,” Elijah said.

“She is perfect,” Jacob said.

Strawl shook his head. “She's not without sin. Not unless you forced yourself on her.”

“I never forced her.”

“There's lots of ways to coerce a person,” Strawl said.

“True enough,” said Jacob.

“Lots of ways to surrender, too. You went at her more than once, that right?”

Jacob stirred the fire.

“See, once I'd understand. Well, at least I'd see excusing it. No accounting for the random. But twice, you can't claim ignorance or a bad drunk. So how'd you go about it? You could have held a gun to her, but that would probably make balance a problem. Maybe you went at her from behind like a bull. Wouldn't have to see her face that way. She'd likely be crying and hurt. But you'd want to watch that most of all. You'd need to trap her hands and feel her resisting. You'd want your face over hers so you'd be so close on her, that's all she can see. You'd want to see her give up. You'd need that.”

Jacob looked at him closely. “I never forced her. We thought we were taking care of each other.”

Strawl went on. “Were you reshuffling the deck? Figure a little you gets into her and a little her into you and you can play a fresh hand? And now you're attached to the memory like a pining schoolgirl. Good thing you didn't have a brother's all I can say.” Elijah's gun was in his hand.

“You're as black as they say.”

Strawl nodded. “I am. But I had two sisters and never even seen them naked and never wanted to. Where's that put you?”

“You're a murderer,” Jacob told him.

“So are you,” Strawl said. “A twisted, insane sore on the ass of the world. And I'm here to lance the boil.”

Jacob stood, muscle and bone and meat blocking the sky. “Kill me, you man-killing son of a bitch. I'm right here and I don't move for man nor beast nor bullet.” He clouted Strawl's shoulder with a roundhouse blow that knocked him from his seat to the ground, then stood and straddled his waist. “Kill me.”

Strawl rolled toward a quartered round and busted it across Jacob's kneecap. Jacob howled and, from all fours, Strawl drove his shoulder into the big man's testicles. Jacob grunted, then landed a blow on Strawl's ear that clanged his skull and blurred his eyes and dropped him back to his knees. Jacob vomited silver bile into the fire. It hissed, and the alarmed cats watched from the light's edge. Jacob spat. “I ain't running and I ain't scared.” He limped to Strawl's saddlebag and unscabbarded his rifle, then breached a shell into the chamber. He skidded it across the grass between them, but the rifle bounced and the trigger caught a stone, sending a round into the house and cats scurrying every direction. Even the goat and the horse sought cover in the hay shed.

“Your gun hunts on its own,” Jacob said.

“Habit,” Strawl told him.

“It's well trained,” Jacob said.

Strawl touched the lump behind his ear gingerly. “Can do everything but aim. But that would be a lot to ask.”

Elijah propped himself on one elbow. A cat curled with him and yawned. “Who's getting the best of it?”

“The rifle,” Jacob said.

“Well, if you're past killing one another, go fight yourselves bloody, just as long as you don't wake me and don't plan on me digging your graves.” He turned his back to them and settled his head against his blanket.

“You still want killed?” Strawl asked.

“I could take it or leave it,” Jacob replied.

“Well, I can't promise nothing for the long term. But I've expended all the energy I care to this evening.”

Jacob nodded. The coffee perked and he poured a cup for himself and Strawl.

“Dice's been out here,” Strawl said.

“He told me you were on a killing spree,” Jacob said. “Said I should expect you.”

“And here we are.”

“You don't strike me as an artist,” Jacob said.

Strawl chuckled.

“Imagine he told you it was me doing the murders,” Jacob said.

“Not in so many words,” Strawl replied.

The fire burned and they watched it.

“Dice doesn't care who it is,” Strawl said. “He figures one of us will kill the other and he'll argue whoever is dead is his man.”

Jacob pondered this awhile. “If it's me, I'd have to be drunk,” he said. “I'd kill sober, but not make a riddle out of it. That's not practical. But drunk I am anything but practical. I go dark pretty quick and then the horse has the reins.” He sipped his coffee. “We'll need some evidence, I suppose.”

“You carrying some around with you?”

“Just a bad reputation.” He nodded at the door. “You're free to search, though.”

Strawl passed the coffee cup from one hand to the other. “You drink often?”

“Once or twice a month, depending on when I come into money and how much. If it's a fistful, I hide it from myself.”

Strawl set his cup on the ground and pulled his cigarette workings from his shirt pocket. “You smoke?”

“Just the pipe.”

“Suit yourself.” Strawl folded the papers, then opened the tobacco pouch with his free hand and sprinkled the paper gutter with tobacco. Jacob rose and disappeared into the house. Strawl licked the papers, then turned them until they were tight. He struck a match and put the cigarette in his mouth in time to see Jacob reemerge from the doorway with ajar of corn whiskey. He tipped the jar at Strawl.

“If I get drunk, then who will interrogate you?”

Jacob thought a minute, then poured a little shine in the remains of Strawl's coffee. “That's all you get. Then you'll remember and I won't have to say I drank alone.”

Jacob filled his own cup and drank. His sigh was deep and certain as a dog's going down for the night. Strawl envied it. He sipped at his cup. His scalp tingled. He closed his eyes and his lids peppered with reddish light, like his blood was the firmament and the alcohol beat the constellations beyond it.

Jacob drank deeply while Strawl continued to dawdle over his cup, disappointed and relieved he was limited to the contents within the coffee. Jacob refueled, adding the last of the coffee to cut the sting. He squinted and blinked, then pursed his lips and made a humming sound. He found two kittens rubbing his chair legs and lifted one in each hand as if he were balancing them on a scale. They squirmed lazily. One bit his thumb and he tossed it toward the fire. It lit on a hot stone, mewed, and bounced into the darkness.

“I'm sorry, cat. No hard feelings.” He put another stick on the fire. “Forgiveness is hard-won,” he said.

“What do you need to be forgiven for?” Strawl asked him.

“Every moment I breathe air,” Jacob said. He took a long drink, then spat into the fire.

“Living is no sin.”

“It's the worst sin,” Jacob said. “ It's the only thing that makes no sense. World is easy arithmetic if you subtract life.”

“But there'd be no one to calculate the numbers.”

“All the better,” Jacob said. “You know they are making national parks? No one can hunt or fish them. You can catch a trout on this side of the boundary line, but you can't on the other, but the line is invisible except in an office. Does a trout know what a line is, even?”