Deep in the Heart of Me (18 page)

Thing of it is Dewberry is five miles from home. And far as my parents know I'm on my way to Springfield with Pat and Shaun.

So I'm out all night if I want to be, and I've not a thing to occupy myself presently but a limp and another three miles to town—to Sobe's.

My plans to visit Sobe are upside down, but then again that's right where I'm headed. There's a chance her dad gets called out I could wait and see and go a-courtin' before she got over to the widow Olmstead. I could kiss her again, I'll bet. She doesn't put up a fight on that. Well, I think I might be uncommonly handsome then. That's why the girls look at me. They say I'm good to look at. They say that.

I quickly feel my face for new wounds or scratches but I've come out well I think. Except for the knee. And my hand.

And Dad seems proud of me mostly. He introduces me to everyone with pride even if he kicks me right in the ass sometimes and works me like a mule.

I have to laugh to think of it all, I do.

Here I am walking this road, and it's nothing to me. I held my own with some of the worst this county has. They come on our land again, and I'll do worse. I'll be the worst if that's what it takes.

They should have told me about the dynamite. But I might have said use two sticks. I might have said use three.

I wish I could get a couple more sips of that fine liquor in me. I pretty much never felt like this before. Not on Dad's wine at all.

Dad makes a barrel of lightening, every year, but we're not to take it unless Mom fixes it with honey when we are sick. I've been a good boyo for so long. I make myself sick with how good I've been.

I wonder what else they withhold from me that I need to know about, to discover. I'm pretty tired of being told what to do.

By them and the preacher on Sunday and now Miss Pat Rivers, who looks like a man by the way.

I was right to walk out of school. Maybe I never should of went back. But I was good in that debate. I shook that boring place to kingdom come with that one.

Sobe now…well she's a river, that girl.

I hiccup, and I laugh. I bend over laughing. Hell if that wasn't the best thrill of my life riding that mule across Otto's yard and them pouring out from the game and shooting at me. Then that outhouse blew. And now it's so funny, finally, it's just so funny I am bent over it's that good. I'll bet they had no idea…no idea at all what had befell them. Or befallen them either.

So here I am bent over, and I'm laughing and in-between, I think I hear it, someone coming on horseback. I straighten. I won't run. I don't think.

But in the distance, I can just see it, and I walk that way.

A beast without a rider.

A beast I know all right.

It is that…beast.

That Jack…Bastard.

And I am sober just that quick.

And I am amazed.

We walk toward one another like wary old friends who fought on different sides of a battle.

"What the…?" I say.

I can see that gash above his knee, just like me, same leg if I don't count his two in back, same leg in front is what I mean.

"Well, what happened?" I say, but he don't answer thank God.

So I run my hand from his head along his neck, and I get on in my usual fashion except I land on my belly on his back and ridge of bone, and he is patient while I swing a leg over and groan a little.

I walk him slow and make sure he is sound enough for this growing boyo, and he walks solid, and I do not hurry, but I take him back the way he came and dread is upon me. So much dread.

It is Halloween all right, well two days past. I do not hope to come on trouble, I do not, but how else could it be that beast is walking free and not on his way north to be sold?

I shut that down, that shouting voice of woe. My eyes are open like two big headlights, cutting through the blue-washed moonlight taking in the shadows that didn't bother me at all a moment before when I was…drunk and carefree.

How can I get about two inches tall so quickly? I am looking right and left, and right and left and in front and behind, waiting for that one fellow who rides holding his own head to come screaming down on me.

Well, Sobe…I said I was a better man than those others. I think I could be. If I make it through this dreadful night.

I hurry that mule along a little. I know he is hurt, but he is tough inside, the best kind of fellow. How is it he got Otto Smith for a handler? This life is no kind of fair. I know that for sure.

I sound like Shaun.

Shaun, where are you? What have you and Pat done now?

So I am about holding my breath as I gather my courage and move this mule along and I am watching, and I see it in no time at all, the place where something left the road. No time at all I come up on it and see the scrub laid over and another twenty feet in see the back of Uncle John's truck and the wood fence that raised the height of the gate is broken through where that mule must have jumped. I dismount and go in, and I have no more claim on that mule, he can stay or go. He's alive at least, but the others, I don't know. The colt is gone. From what I can see, he's not in the bed. It's empty. I round the truck, and it's not easy with the small trees bent over. The truck has come to rest against an oak. It still runs. I see Pat in the cab, and his head is against the window, face turned to the side. I get the passenger's door open, and he comes to a little, moaning at least, blood coming down his face from a gash in his forehead. He coughs and throws up, right there, all down his front.

"Pat," I yell. "Where's Shaun?"

"Wha…?" he says. "Tonyo?"

"Where's Shaun?"

He looks around, lurches the truck's door open and falls out of the truck. "Oh…," and I can't make it out after that. Can't figure what he's saying I go around front, and it's dented in, but not like he'd smashed it there, more like he rolled there.

He's calling to Shaun. His voice gets stronger and more worried.

"Shaun," he's saying.

About the time, he finds Shaun and calls for me. Shaun is lying in some scrub near the side of the truck. I can't see what's wrong with him.

"Oh God," Pat is saying. "He's shot. He said that. He said he's shot."

"Who shot him?"

"He's shot…," Pat keeps saying in this breathy voice. He sounds mad.

Pat struggles to get Shaun in a hold. "Grab his feet!" he screams at me, and I scramble to do that.

We trip and fall and slip and slide and get him in the truck's bed. And he doesn't come too, but we get there, and I see it now, blood soaked through on the back of his shirt. Pat is red from it, from carrying Shaun.

"Who shot him?" I say.

"I don't fookin' know," Pat screams. "Who do you think? Smith!"

He hurries to get back in the truck and grinds it into the gear for back up, and we move some, rock a little, move some more and with a terrible surge, we get out of there. Pat gets on the road and stops.

"Get out," he yells at me from inside the cab.

I don't understand.

"Get out," he screams.

I have been holding Shaun's head on my knee. I think he's breathing. Maybe it's wishful thinking. But I can't leave him like this.

Pat is screaming at me. Then he gets out of the truck and comes in the bed like a crazy fool and grabs me and starts to drag me out and I fight him, but he's too strong. Next I know I'm on the ground.

"Get home. Don't tell anyone about this. You weren't with us. You didn't see us. You left after we loaded the colt. That's all."

I get on my feet. "Where…what…."

"To the Doc's—what do you think?"

"What if he's…what if…?"

Then he gets in the truck and takes off, and I'm standing there looking after.

But I'm not alone. Standing side of the road twenty feet away is that mule.

Shaun might be dead. He looked dead. Oh God, God. What if Shaun is dead?

My heart hammers so hard, and I can't breathe.

He must have gotten shot in the yard. Could he go that long and not know? Why didn't he tell us?

I sink down right there, middle of the road I just sink down.

I don't know what to do. Pat said to go home. I guess I better do that. But what if Shaun dies?

That mule steps into the road. He's chewing away and looking at me. I don't want him to leave. I surely need him. I slowly get on my feet. I'm a little wobbly, a little drunk still.

I just walk right up to that mule, and he makes it clear he's not done with his meal, but I get on him, and it's deplorable what a show that must be, but he stands for me, and I get up there, and he lets me know we are only moving now on his time as I am the beggar, and the tables have turned.

But it's not long we are taking that road at a deliberate pace. I am not upset or feeling anything but a numbness of sorts.

Every now and then I forget where I'm going, then I remember, and I don't know if I am going right, then I remember again.

Somewhere in there, I cry some. I wish I didn't, but tears come, and I don't make noise with them which is all I can do to not be a girl.

But I come to the place where I cut back through Neibour's. And I slowly get to the bottoms, and it's all I can think to do, and I am not thinking I'm just going. So I get through the bottoms, and I enter Smith land. I know that first step. See the mule is going home and I'm allowing it.

There is the paddock fence I entered when I took Jack Bastard, the bravest, brightest mule that ever lived. So I get off Jack, and the man in me is there again, maybe first time, or at long last.

So I get Jack in the paddock there, and I'm off him now. I check his leg and the wound does not go deep in the muscle.

He will carry a scar, but he'll mend well.

Will Shaun? I don't know. He might already be strumming a harp. Oh God, I can't think of it.

I walk then, to the paddock fence, and that cabin shows a lamp inside, and I pass that outhouse roof laying belly up that a way, and I think I smile, which is the first thing I've done hasn't been sober and stiff. But it doesn't alter my intention at all to stay my course. There is a guard there, a fat fellow comes out of the shadows.

"Right there," he tells me and his gun on me, and that's not my first time. Many a boyo has had his gun on me in the woods when we shoot for fun.

"I put a mule in the paddock I think belongs to Mr. Smith," I say.

"I saw," big belly says, spitting his chaw and holding his gun so he can shoot me right through the heart if the notion takes him.

"I'm Tonio Clannan. My dad is…."

"I know who," he says.

"Well, you can get that gun off me," I suggest.

The door to the cabin opens then. It is a bleary-eyed Otto Smith in his long johns.

"Who's this thief?" he says. He looks like an old Tillo.

"I found your mule," I say.

He stares at me while he motions Belly should lower his gun. "Found?" he says.

"He's that one you're so proud of," I say thumbing behind me toward the paddock.

He stares some more. If he hopes, I'll break he's wrong. I believe everything I'm saying. See, that's the trick.

"How you know that?" Otto says pulling up his suspenders.

"Everyone knows that," I say.

"You're…."

"Tonio Clannan. I go to school with Tillo and Utz."

"'Found' him, eh?" he folds his arms. "You tell me how you found him."

I move my hands to my hips and throw my weight on one leg. "Found him near Neibour's farm. Just walking down the road. He came right to me. Well, I had an apple. I'd been working for Uncle John earlier. Before we set out to prank Neibour's. Then I got pranked and left on the road. Guess it was providence."

"Providence?" He spits very near my boots.

"Seems so. I best get going. My dad don't take to me being late."

"You hold on," Otto says.

I had taken a step like I needed to run, but I stop now. "Yes, Sir?" I say to this gangster who'd been on our land and clocked Shaun, this thief.

He goes in the house then and comes out. "You see anybody else on the road? Anyone around my mule?"

"No, Sir."

"You boys been blowing things up tonight?"

"Um…we put an outhouse on a teacher's roof."

He stares. I stare.

"That mule has a cut on its leg," I say.

"Let's see," he says, and he goes back in the house, and I stare at Belly, and he stares at me. It's just one long night of staring.

Otto comes out with a coal oil lamp, and he walks a little ahead of me to the paddock with Belly behind us. We trudge quiet, and Belly has the gun.

So we get to the paddock, and Otto opens the gate. We go in, us three and Belly closes the gate, and Otto stands there with the lamp and makes a clicking sound and Jack Bastard makes that half whinny half hee-haw sound is the nearest I can describe it, and I know the way of it, half-Maman and Granma's Italian and half of Dad's Irish, ignoring half of Dad's French of course. But it all comes together, and the family makes a language it can understand. It's that way with this mule and Otto Smith.

And the mule comes slow, and he stands before Otto, and that one makes a sound and digs a nub of carrot from his pocket and the mule eats that and does not bite Otto's hand, but I notice how flat he makes it.

Then J. B. leaves him and comes to me, sniffing me over like Tibby might. I pretend I don't know about its big ornery teeth, and keep my bitten hand in my pocket.

"There now, he likes you," Otto says.

He sets the lantern on the ground and looks at J. B.'s leg. Belly steps forward too.

"Don't think it goes to the muscle. His step is sure," I say. "I'd mix some sugar and Iodine. You got a clean towel?"

They ignore me.

Finally, Otto raises and looks at me. "You say you come on him on the road? All the way to Miller Road?"

I shrug. Further than that, but I don't say.

"When I was a boy I saw a man hung for stealing a horse," he says.

I do not speak. I know old people have seen a lot of things. So we stand there a bit.

"Were you in the Great War like my Dad?" I say, knowing he didn't go. Boys know that about each other's fathers. In our town, it matters more to the sons if their father went than it matters to our Dads.

He doesn't answer about the war.

"Well, my dad saw people hung for nothing. And they'd leave them there," I say. "My dad…it's made him tough…that war."

We are staring again.

"If he finds who came on our land…well, he's looking. Asking questions. Sheriff too."

"Belly will take you home," he says.

"I'm not going home. I'm going to the sheriffs. Should I tell him about your trouble?"

"You should not," he says.

More looking.

"It's no trouble," I say. "He'd come right out and investigate. Does he know about this place?"

He gets out his little money purse then. He looks at Belly, then me, then he unbuttons it and licks his thumb and I can see that purse is fat with money.

He counts out three bills, and I stand there.

He folds those bills, puts the purse back into his pocket, looking at me the whole time, then hands me that money and I say, "Oh no, Sir."

"Take it," he says none too kindly.

So I do. With my bitten hand I take it. I count it there in front of him. Fifty dollars.

"Don't show around here again," he says.

"Oh. No, Sir," I say.

"Belly will take you home," he says.

"No, Sir," I say.

"He will take you away from here," he says more firmly.

I look at that one, who still holds the gun which he uses to motion I should move toward the truck.

I comply.

If Belly doesn't kill me and Shaun lives, I have his money. I have it.

But if Belly shoots me it ends like this. Maman will never get over it. She had high hopes for me. And if Shaun dies, I can pay for a very grand funeral at least.

But the saddest thing would be to lose the chance to love Sobe.

I hope Belly doesn't mess with me.

For his own sake.