The Outcasts (12 page)

Deerling said, “You did good back there.”

Nate felt his face redden, but he was pleased.

“That was quick thinking with the telegraph man. Saved me from having to bang him over the head to get what we needed.” He drew a pouch from his pocket and pinched some tobacco into his lower lip. He offered some to Nate, but Nate declined.

Deerling said, “Guile. That’s the way of the world now. Pinkertons and federal agents asking questions, stealthy-like. As if you could talk a John Wesley or a Mescalero Apache out of his gun.”

Nate watched Deerling’s profile, certain his sudden talkativeness had more to do with the excitement of being near to capturing McGill and less to do with his being impressed over Nate’s initiative. Dr. Tom had told him that bold action would go a long way towards salving the disappointment Deerling had felt over the horse-thief incident, but Nate figured that his sneaking over a telegraph counter was hardly enough to earn his way back into Deerling’s good graces.

As though he’d been reading Nate’s thoughts, Deerling asked, “I imagine you were too young to be caught up in the war?”

“Well, I didn’t fight, if that’s what you mean, but I did get caught up. I was sixteen when I volunteered with the Nineteenth Mounted Cavalry. I’d no sooner got to Arkansas when they sent us back to Texas. Me and a few other boys, and three hundred cavalry horses from the dismounted troops.”

“You herded them back to Texas?”

“Yes.”

“How many’d you lose?”

“Two.”

“Two?” Deerling reined up the bay and looked at Nate. “You lost only two horses out of three hundred? You drive them straight into Texas?”

“No, sir. I drove them into Oklahoma first, south of Fort Smith, and then down to Lancaster.”

“How many miles is that?”

“I don’t know. A couple hundred.”

Deerling stared at him for a moment, then spurred his horse into motion. He spit off to the side and was silent for a while.

Nate added, “The man I’d joined with was fatherly to me. Some of the best stock was his. There were rogue troops in Arkansas, Union and Confederate, and I didn’t want the horses taken.”

Deerling chewed on that for a while, along with his plug of tobacco. He asked, “You ever shoot a man, son?”

Nate looked at him and said, “Yes.”

“Did it have to do with losing those two horses?”

“Yes.”

“Then it comes as a surprise to me that you were so upset by my killin’ a horse thief. One, I might add, that would’ve made soup from your guts if he’d had a chance.”

“Would you have shot him like that from the ridge if he weren’t Indian?”

“Probably not.” Deerling spit again, then backhanded his mustache. “That what bothers you?”

“It does.” Nate felt his jaw beginning to set.

Deerling grunted and shifted in his saddle impatiently. “And I guess you’d tell me why, if I was to ask?”

“Yes, sir, I would.”

“Yes, I bet you would. I see you’re just burstin’ to tell me why it’s wrong to kill an Indian, you bein’ from Oklahoma and all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

“I think it means you’re diggin’ awful close to the bone with that stick you call your tongue. Go on, ask me about my mission-raised mother, and while you’re at it, why don’t you go insulting my wife too!”

“Hold on, Oklahoma—”

“No, you hold on. I went along with the mishandling of a prisoner, and I’ll keep my mouth shut about your shooting a horse thief, but you keep riding me about my people and, captain or no, I’ll knock you off that big bay. So you go ahead and ask me about my Oklahoma-reservation kin.”

A look of dawning understanding passed over Deerling’s face. “Whether or not you were raised on a reservation is no matter to me.”

“Well…all right, then.” Nate reined his horse abruptly to the far side of the road.

“All right, then.”

A good quarter hour passed with no words exchanged, but Nate kept watch on Deerling out of the corner of his eye. He was angry, still itching to confront the ranger, to bring it to balled fists on a flat piece of earth if need be, but he also felt brought down, deflated, and he thought it would probably always be this way with the ranger: three steps forward and two steps back. He struggled to calm his breathing, focusing his mind on the road ahead.

“I had a daughter,” Deerling finally said, surprising Nate with the suddenness of a statement that sounded more like a confession than a revelation. The ranger had slowly eased his horse to the middle of the road, and to Nate, Deerling’s words felt like the closest to a peace offering he’d get that night. Deerling’s face was composed, no longer heated, but Nate caught the whiff of remorseful sadness, the downturned mouth and hunched shoulders.

“It happened a while ago. But you never get past it. I regret now not being softer with her. I’m told I’m sometimes…” Deerling looked at Nate briefly, exhaling a breath through his nose. “Unyielding.”

Nate nodded sharply once in agreement, but said nothing. Talking to the widow must have stirred memories for the old man, but it came to Nate that neither Deerling nor Dr. Tom had ever made mention before of having wives or children, other than Dr. Tom’s saying that the hunt for McGill was for family reasons. It had seemed only natural to him that a life spent so long in rangering would mean forgoing such attachments.

He was going to ask Deerling how he came to lose his daughter when a pistol blast caused Nate’s horse to rear up, and he saw Deerling knocked back over the bay onto the road. As he struggled to keep his own horse under control, Nate heard a second blast, and then the gelding collapsed to his knees, pitching Nate to the ground. The fall sent a pain like a white phosphorus flare striking across his bad hip and the back of his head, and he lay on the ground stunned and half conscious.

The gelding’s hooves were flailing nearby, blood coursing from a wound in his side, and Nate rolled over, pulling himself away from the injured animal, trying to keep the horse’s body between himself and where he thought the shooter was. The only cover for an ambush was in a stand of trees nearby, and he pressed close to the ground, hoping their attacker would think them both dead and reveal himself. Nate pulled the pistol from his belt and cocked the trigger.

Two more shots were fired. The first bullet struck the gelding in the haunches; the second shot tore up the dirt close to Nate. He pressed his free hand over a gash at the back of his head to stanch the bleeding, and soon after, he heard the rider pounding past him on the road. Nate stood, taking aim at the assailant, recognizing the bulky rider as Prudone, the marshal from Harrisburg. But it had grown too dark, and his vision too watery and dim, for him to aim and shoot with accuracy, and he was afraid if he missed, the marshal would circle back and renew his attack.

He fell to his hands and knees, dizzy and sick, and then crawled to where Deerling lay. Hit squarely in the chest, his wound pumping blood, Deerling had torn open his shirt with both hands and was pedaling his legs as though trying to walk away.

Nate could see awareness in Deerling’s eyes, and he pressed both palms over the wound. His fingers were soon too slippery for traction, and he tore off his coat and used it as a bandage.

Deerling opened and closed his mouth a few times, blood from his lungs mixing with spittle. “Did you see…?”

“Yes,” Nate said, his breath ragged and hot in his throat. “I saw him.”

Deerling pressed his hands over Nate’s, as though their combined strength could stop the urgent bleeding, but soon Deerling’s fingers lost their hold, and his hands slipped from his chest and lay twitching on the ground.

When Nate looked into Deerling’s face again, he saw the man’s eyes were open and fixed, but he kept his weight on the coat in a momentary belief that some remaining reservoir of blood or wellspring of his own desperate vitality could reanimate the man. After a time, he realized that he had been pumping the dead man’s chest, straight-armed and mindlessly rhythmic, as though prodding a sleeping man to wake, and he stopped and sat back on his haunches.

The night had been quiet, no wind or foraging night creatures, and Nate, buffered by shock in the first moments of violence, had been unaware of any sounds around him other than his partner’s last utterances. But he heard the screaming of an animal in pain and he realized that his horse was still struggling to stand. Nate staggered up, almost falling, pointed his pistol and fired. He missed the first shot, the blood coating his hands slicking the grip, and he took a second, killing shot.

He pulled Deerling off the road and sat with him for a while, unable to move, gutted by fear, bewildered beyond a ready acceptance that the ranger who had survived hostile attacks for two decades had been killed in his presence by a single assassin who was himself a lawman. But even lifeless, the ranger’s face appeared unrelaxed, was still compressed into lines of wary reserve. Nate reached down and closed Deerling’s eyes.

Shivering from the cold and his own injuries, he managed after an hour to catch hold of the bay. He calmed the horse and then lifted his partner, facedown, over the saddle. He gathered the reins and began walking towards Houston, Deerling’s blood drying on his coat.

A
white vapor filled Lucinda’s head. She was conscious enough to know that her eyes were closed, but somehow she was unable to open them. A loud twanging made her stir, and in her disoriented state she thought the sound resembled the strings of a guitar being plucked unnecessarily hard. The noise seemed to come from over her head, and soon another metallic slapping noise jolted her, and her eyelids finally opened.

She was in a bed that she didn’t recognize; it certainly wasn’t in the Waller home. The room was in want of paint and new plaster, and, when she turned her head slightly towards the window, she saw the wisping threads of a cobweb in one corner. She turned her head away from the window and saw Jane standing at the bedroom door. The girl seemed to glow in the hazy light, and when Lucinda tried to speak to her, she found she couldn’t form the words.

Jane came to the bed and sat on the edge. She said, “You’re awake. You’ve been sleeping since yesterday.”

After a bit Lucinda managed to ask, “How…?”

“Tobias brought you here. He’s the Negro man who found you at the Wallers’ old storage house. He’s been here twice to ask after you.”

Jane seemed to glow brighter, like some pearl-white lantern with the gas key turned up high. The slapping sound came again and Lucinda’s gaze went to the ceiling.

Jane patted her arm. “That’s the prickly wire Father has strung across the roof to keep the buzzards off. But they continue to roost. When they fly away, they hold the wires in their talons until the very last moment. May calls them the celestial choir.”

It seemed to Lucinda that the words being spoken had started to slow down like an overwound clock, and the brilliance from Jane’s skin was scalding her eyes. She felt a tremor beginning in her legs, her back arching involuntarily. Before she lost consciousness, she heard the slapping of the wires playing a tune she thought she recognized.

When Lucinda opened her eyes again, Jane was standing by the bed, holding a bowl and a spoon.

“How long have I been here?” Lucinda’s mouth felt dry and cottony, but the light had resumed its normal intensity.

Jane set the bowl on a bedside table and helped Lucinda prop herself up on the pillows. She picked up the bowl and began to spoon soup into Lucinda’s mouth. Lucinda thought her stomach would rebel against any food, but the warmth and saltiness sharpened her hunger and she sucked at the broth greedily.

Jane said, “Today is Tuesday. You’ve been ill since Sunday.”

Lucinda looked at her, startled. She had lost two days. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been so sick.

She maneuvered herself up onto her elbows and asked, “Why did Tobias bring me here?”

Jane’s face reddened and she looked down at the bowl. Lucinda’s mouth twitched and she said, “Ah, I see. Well, the Wallers aren’t the first to believe that what I have is catching.”

Jane fed her another spoonful. “It’s ignorance, plain and simple.”

“You’re not afraid?”

“You have fits, not the plague.” She fed Lucinda more of the soup. “The Caesars of Rome had the falling sickness.”

“The falling sickness. That’s a pretty phrase.” Bedford had said that there were twenty ways to die from one Sunday to the next in Middle Bayou—from alligators, poisonous snakes, the perfidy of men. And yet her greatest threat came from within her own body.

Lucinda shifted again, looking around. “Where’s May?”

Jane arched a brow. “She’s teaching in your stead.”

Lucinda said, “Oh, dear.”

A movement at the door made Lucinda look up. Bedford was hovering at the entrance, looking worried. She was pleased to see his distractedness and the days’-old stubble on his face. Lucinda had not seen herself in a mirror yet, but she put on what she hoped was a grateful smile. “Bedford.”

“Miss Carter. Lucinda. Are you feeling better?”

“A little, thanks to your care.”

“I’m…we’re happy to have you here for as long as you need to be. Until you are well.”

There was a pause, and Lucinda felt Jane’s eyes studying the both of them, the spoon poised over the soup bowl. Her attentiveness had changed the moment her father called Lucinda by her first name. If anything good had ever come from her sickness, it was her being placed inside the Grant home as a patient to be cared for and fawned over. Lucinda knew that in her attempt to gain Bedford’s trust, his older daughter—who acted in all ways save one as wife to her father—could be her greatest ally or her greatest obstacle. She’d known many women like Jane, women who gave up their own lives to be caretakers and who could find surprisingly inventive ways to fend off those who tried to usurp their hard-earned places.

Lucinda looked up at Jane and, reaching for her free hand, said, “I have the best possible nurse.”

For days, both Jane and May brought meals to her room and small parcels of food, preserved fruit or baked things, from the settlers wishing her well. May would leave in the mornings for the schoolhouse but stay with her in the afternoons, telling her of each student’s progress or slide towards unruliness. The girl would sit, or lie, at the end of Lucinda’s narrow bed, and after she gave her reports, she would press Lucinda for details of towns and cities far away or of the latest modes of ladies’ dress and hairstyles.

Several times a day, Bedford would appear at the bedroom door, awkward and concerned, staying only a moment to ask after her health.

On the third day of her recovery, she walked with May out into the shorn fields surrounding the house, their rustling progress flushing mourning doves from their hiding places. When Lucinda felt tired, they lay together side by side, the air cool, the earth radiating the sun’s heat like an oven-warmed plate. They could hear Jane calling them back inside, and they shushed each other and laughed like rude children hiding from a playmate. Lucinda turned onto her back and looked up at the clouds, and May rested her head on Lucinda’s shoulder, like a sweetheart. They lay so still that soon they could hear the renewed burring of doves nearby.

Lucinda then whispered into May’s ear the story of her own father taking her out into their hay field when she was a child and placing into her hands one tiny dove’s egg plucked from a nest that only his hunter’s eyes had seen.

“The egg burned in my hand with a surprising weight for so tiny an object,” Lucinda said. “A pulsing globe with the hidden warmth of the chick about to hatch.” She reached over and stroked May’s cheek. “He told me that I was like the dove, trapped in the shell of my infirmities, but that someday, if I was good, if I cleaved to God and all His admonitions, I would escape, perfect and whole.”

“But you did not escape,” May said.

“No, I did not escape.” The shell remained, Lucinda thought. Not the brittle casing of a dove’s egg, but an elastic, permeable membrane, one that accepted light and air, sounds and awakenings, but that kept her body imprisoned. “He committed me to a madhouse,” she said.

“Oh,” May cooed, and she wrapped one arm more tightly around Lucinda’s neck.

Lucinda’s eyes closed with the pleasure of the embrace and the ambient warmth of the ground, and impulsively, she kissed the girl’s forehead. She then stood and gave her hand to May to preclude any more conversation, and they walked back to the house together.

Later, Lucinda sat alone for a while on the porch, wrapped in a blanket, savoring the fragile warmth of the November sun. Lucinda could see, in the distance, Lavada and Sephronia pushing Elam’s wheeled chair on their daily walk, the twin bell-like motions of their skirts sweeping up the dust of the path. May stepped out onto the porch holding a hairbrush and watched the women.

She said, “You would think they never had buzzards on
their
roof. But they do, and I’ve seen them.”

May unpinned Lucinda’s hair and began to brush it. It had become an afternoon practice, and Lucinda, who most times did not relish being touched, had come to look forward to the ritual. The brush was made of old embossed ivory, the boar bristles gentle on her scalp.

May said, “I’ve spoken to Father and told him I think you should stay with us. So we can care for you.”

Lucinda had tipped her head back and closed her eyes, drowsy and relaxed. “And what did your father say to such a scandalous suggestion?”

“Well, he didn’t say no.” She continued brushing Lucinda’s hair for a moment, and then said, “I found the letter you were writing to your brother.”

Lucinda opened her eyes, her drowsiness gone. “Which letter?”

“The letter you had been writing in the little storage house. Before you had your fit.”

Lucinda searched her mind for her last few moments before losing consciousness. She remembered being inside the shed, but she had forgotten about the letter until May reminded her of it. And there was no clear memory of what she had written before hearing the noises that led her to find Tobias.

May set the brush down and moved to sit on the railing across from Lucinda.

Keeping her face expressionless, Lucinda asked, “Where is the letter now?”

“In a book by your bed.” May tilted her head and smiled in a way that made Lucinda clench her teeth. “I put it there to keep it safe.”

Lucinda’s tapestry bag had been delivered to the Grant home by Euphrastus during the first few days of her illness. As soon as she was able, Lucinda had searched to make certain that the money she had taken and the gun were still at the bottom of the bag. She had not thought to assure herself that her letters had not been discovered.

May had been swinging her legs, idly kicking the railing struts, but she stopped abruptly. “I think I’ve tired you out. I’ll help you back to your room.”

May led Lucinda up the stairs and into bed. After smoothing the bedcovers, she leaned down and kissed Lucinda on the cheek. She stood, brushing the hair from her neck, and asked, “What’s your brother’s name?”

Lucinda paused for a moment before answering. “Bill,” she said.

“Will your brother come and visit, do you think?”

Lucinda reached out and cupped May’s face in one hand. “He may need to.”

As soon as May had left the room, Lucinda picked up the book and saw it was one from Bedford’s library. She found the letter, pulled it out, and read what she had written:
I progress as the Trusted Teacher. You will be pleased to know that I am now friend to the one who is of interest to you…

Her impulse was to laugh out loud with relief. She couldn’t have written a more innocuous beginning to a letter if she had tried.

Bedford appeared at the bedroom door, and seeing Lucinda reading the letter, he started to leave. But she called him back and he stayed for a while, talking of inconsequential things. The fading light cast doleful shadows under his eyes, and she thought perhaps he’d been losing sleep on her account.

He told her, “Your stay in this house has, for me, been a gift.” He looked shyly down at his hands and she waited patiently through the long pause for him to continue.

Finally he asked, “May I continue to call on you once you have returned to the Wallers?”

She lowered her chin modestly and said, “Yes.”

The next day, May insisted on a picnic by the bayou, and she packed a basket with the best of the neighbors’ gifted food for Lucinda, herself, and Jane. They moved quietly while passing the Waller house, May whispering to Lucinda, “Lavada will want to come too if she sees us, and it will be tedious beyond endurance.”

They walked close to a mile along a narrow path to a clearing surrounded and shaded by tall trees, and Lucinda was astonished to see Elam sitting in his wheeled chair unattended. He was situated facing the water, rigid and motionless as usual, a quilt tucked around his lap.

Jane shook her head. “They leave him like that, sometimes for hours. Mr. Waller says there are too many women in the house, and that solitude builds fortitude for Elam. It’s cruel.”

Turning her back to the chair, May said, “It gives me the willies.”

They began to eat the roasted meats and pickled vegetables, salty and still tasting of summer, but Lucinda watched Elam’s unmoving form, believing he was not as insensible as the women in his family believed him to be. Once, when he had been parked outside the schoolhouse, Lucinda noticed that he was in full sun and went to move him into the shade. She waved her hand across his face to chase away a wasp, and his nostrils flared at the smell of the scent on her wrist. She brought her face level with his and thought she saw the slightest gleam of recognition in his eyes. She told him, “I know what it’s like to be made a prisoner in your own body.”

Watching him sitting alone and helpless at that moment caused a sudden anger to fill her chest.

“My own father couldn’t tolerate the sight of me,” Lucinda said. Jane averted her eyes at the outburst, but May looked at her, intensely curious. “When I was eleven, he sent me to an asylum for the insane, the simpleminded, and the crippled. In the mornings, we shook scorpions out of our shoes, and at night we chased the rats up and down the hallways. We were beaten when we didn’t improve. My father saw my weakness as his personal failure.”

She stood up abruptly and walked to Elam’s chair. She wheeled him about, pushed him close to where they were eating, and sat down again.

She was about to offer to feed him or at least try to give him some water when Jane, looking over her shoulder, said, “There’s a man walking in the trees, watching us.”

Lucinda turned and saw that the man was staring at her as though he knew her. He was moving rapidly, almost sprinting, and was only a few yards away when Lucinda realized it was Mrs. Landry’s German.

He grabbed her, pulling hard at her clothes, scattering food off the blanket with his heavy boots. May screamed, her hands defensively over her head.

“You bitch. You goddamn bitch.”

He yanked Lucinda partway off the ground, held her two-fisted by her collar, and shook her. She felt the back seam of her dress giving way.

“Where is it?” His face was over hers, spittle flecking his mouth, lips cracked and raw. Fresh, knotted scabs threaded their way over his forehead and cheeks, as though he had fallen into a mesquite thicket.