Hardcastle (21 page)

“Did you kill him?” Regus asked.

“I don’t know,” Music said, and without much preference one way or the other, looked to see. Cawood was breathing like a sleeping dog having a dream, his chest rising and falling irregularly and his nostrils fluttering. “Nawh, he’s alive,” Music said and began to make an effort to get up.

“Hold on,” Regus said softly, “you’re a smaller target settin down.” Gently Regus flipped the barrel of his pistol up and down toward Grady. “What about you?” he said in a much louder voice. “You aimin to get into this?”

Grady did not speak a word; he merely wagged his head from side to side.

“Well,” Regus said, “I don’t mind callin it quits,” and he got to his feet.

Music got up too and found that his right leg could bear his weight; there was merely a band of pain around it as though he’d backed into a hot stove. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Bert Maloney coming back down the railroad siding. But no one else moved. The men down by the tipple, the stragglers Maloney passed along the siding, Tom Harmon, Too Sweet, and Big Cigar Green, who, sometime or other, had appeared in the powerhouse door—all of them seemed to have taken root where they stood with their eyes locked open as though they could not blink. Only Bert Maloney was in motion and shouting: “Now what in tarnation was that all about?”

Music felt unable to answer. He didn’t think he knew what it was all about. It had happened so fast, he felt he’d gotten there a little late and missed it himself. While he was puzzling over what to say, Regus spoke up.

“Aww, Cawood lyin yonder and Music had themselves a little misunderstanding,” he said.

Bert Maloney came up, red-faced and puffing. “Who fired that fuckin shot?” he said.

Regus tipped his head toward Cawood.

Maloney considered Cawood a moment and then Regus, whose pistol was still pointed in Grady’s general direction. “What about it?” Maloney said. “Are ye just about all done or what?”

Regus took one last look at Grady and holstered his pistol. “Sure,” he said, “I never did quite git a leg in it noway.”

“Here I got a contract for a little lump coal, and all kinds of hell comes along to devil me—fuckin slate fall, fuckin track fucked up.” Bert Maloney withdrew a small, blunt pistol from behind his clipboard and dropped it in his pocket like loose change. He glanced at Music and then at Cawood, lying on his back, his arms and legs awkwardly misaligned as though he’d fallen from the sky, and a fierce red ridge beginning to swell from the middle of his forehead down the center of his skull as though he were a young rooster beginning to grow a comb. “Well, is anybody dead or dyin?” he asked.

“Bill Music is shot in the ham, I think,” Regus said, “but he’s standin. Cawood there, I don’t know …” Regus shook his head and ran his finger back and forth under his nose. “If his skull ain’t thin, he’ll make it all right, I guess.” Regus raised his eyebrows and looked at Grady, who had come to stand with them, his long, horse face regarding Cawood soberly. At last Grady’s eyes and Regus’s met. “But any man that pulls his gun,” Regus said, “it seems to me it’s his own lookout what happens to him by way of harm.”

“That’s right,” Grady said in so dry and flat a voice Music realized suddenly that, of the five of them, Grady was the only one who hadn’t had a pistol in his hand.

“Well,” Maloney said, “you boys is some kind of half-assed law, and I reckon I don’t give a hoot whether you want to call in the sheriff, arrest each other, or shoot each other. Whichever. Long as ye settle it and get to the business of keepin some bastard union off my back so’s I can dig a little coal.” He turned his head and spat. “I do think you ort to drag that idiot out of the road though, fore somebody runs his ass over.” He looked at each of them in turn, spat again, and left them to go back toward the tipple and the men he’d left standing there. “You boys got so much money you can stand around and gawk!” he shouted to them.

“Well,” Regus said to Grady, “you want to take an arm and a leg?”

Grady stooped and took hold of an ankle and a wrist, and Regus did the same, and they began to carry Cawood toward the powerhouse. Music collected Cawood’s pearl-handled pistol and his hat and followed, limping more than was necessary in the hopes that people would think the damages on both sides were nearly equal. Regus and Grady stopped beside the bunk, and Regus considered the situation. Cawood’s head was hanging very low. “We’re fixin to break his neck,” Regus said. “Set him down and less us git him by the shoulders and feet.”

When they got him on the bunk, Music limped over and laid the pistol and hat on his chest as if they were some sort of offering, lilies on the bosom of a corpse.

Regus looked at the clock. “Well,” he said, “Bill Music, me and you is workin overtime. See you fellers in the mornin,” he said cheerfully. He nodded to Grady and even to Cawood, who, with his eyes rolled up into his head so only slits of white showed and blood spattered upon his chin and chest, didn’t look good. His lips were a deep shade of blue, but he was still breathing. All at once Music realized that Regus was letting himself out the door, and feeling foolish and vulnerable and almost forgetting to limp, he followed.

It was painful to sit on the truck seat, and Music propped himself on his left buttock, bracing one hand on the seat beside him and the other against the door. “Hellkatoot,” he said after they had ridden across the bridge in silence.

Regus merely grunted and shook his head, staring with a kind of amazed stupefaction through the windshield.

“Where did you come from anyway?” Music said.

“I came down the railroad track,” Regus said. He turned right at the commissary, grunted, and shook his head again. “How come you to crawl that big, ignorant sucker, Bill?”

Music thought about it, but Regus frowned, took a hand off the wheel, and waved the question away. “Hell,” he said and gave a sudden snort of laughter. “Hell, hit don’t matter. Ain’t none of my business noway.” Regus squeezed his eyes shut. “Ooowee, but you sure did swarm him,” he said and laughed weakly. “I expect we ort to run you by the doctor, though. Are ye bad hurt?”

“No,” Music said, “it’s a little sore, but it’s eased off some and don’t seem to be bleedin much. I guess he nearly missed me.”

“Momma’s pretty good at doctorin,” Regus said. “We’ll let her take a look-see. If it’s past her power, we’ll go on to the doctor. I don’t guess you’re a-carryin the slug?”

“Nope,” Music said, “there’s two holes in my britches.”

They said no more until they pulled up before the house, and Music was able to relax after the Model T had jounced along the washed-out wagon road. “You know,” Music said, “I’d just as soon look after this myself, now that I think about it. I ain’t got any underwear, and it’s in a sorta unhandy place for your momma to doctor.”

“Ha,” Regus said. He got out of the truck and slammed the door. “I bleve it’s more unhandy fer you, Bill Music. Hit’s a little behind ye, son.”

Music got out of the truck and tested the leg gingerly. The back of his pants were a bit wet and sticky, but not bad, and the wound, whatever its extent, was sore, but he could walk without a limp if he concentrated. “If I could have that piece of a shaving mirror,” Music said, “I could see to it myself.”

They mounted the steps to the open dogtrot, and Regus cocked his head to make some remark, but the kitchen door opened and Ella appeared. “I don’t know what’s throwed ye so late,” she said, “but come in and eat and do yer chores after, fer hit’ll git cold if ye don’t.”

“We got a little problem here, Momma,” Regus said.

“Well, see to it after breakfast,” Ella said. “I wadn’t studyin on you boys bein late or I’da held off. But wash up and come on now,” she said.

“Hit ain’t bad, but Bill, here, got hisself shot,” Regus said.

Ella Bone stopped short, and for the first time ever, she looked Music in the face, her reddish-brown eyes startlingly warm and handsome. “Lord have mercy,” she said.

Music kept his butt to the wall. “There’s nothin to it,” he said. “The north side of my britches will require patchin if you’ve got the time, but I’ll see to the other myself.”

“You’ll do what I tell you, boy,” she said. “Let me see!”

“No, ma’am,” he said and tried to keep his backside to the wall, but she caught his belt and turned him around.

“Lord, son, you’re bloody as a hog. You git in the kitchen this minute and let me see to that,” she said and steered him roughly through the door. “Now, you turn to the light so I can see, drop yer pants, and hold to that chair!”

There was nothing for it but to do as he was told. “Hellkatoot,” he said under his breath.

“Well, hit ain’t so bad as I feared,” Ella said. “Looks a little like ye sat on a stub, cept yer kinda scorched. Regus!” she said. “Stop that laughin and get me some vinegar water to wash it off and some lard.”

12

HARD DECISION

WITH A SURE, firm touch, Ella cleaned, greased, and bandaged his wound, fussing and muttering to herself the whole time. She wanted to know why Regus hadn’t looked after him better, but the moment Regus began to explain what had happened, she said she didn’t want to hear about it. She noticed Music’s ear, which was red and hot, and the slight swelling over his eye. She held his chin in one of her chapped, mannish hands while she looked at them, and shaking her head angrily, sent him off to change his trousers and bring back the shot-up pair for her to mend. While Regus and Music were eating, she patched the holes, her movements stiff, quick, and ill-tempered.

Music had eaten half his breakfast before he made his awful decision, put down his fork, and braced the palms of his hands against the table.

“Aire ye hurtin, son?” Ella asked at once.

“No’um,” Music said, “I’m goin on home. I’m goin on back to Virginia.”

Ella hesitated only a moment. “Yes,” she said and adjusted the sewing in her lap and then adjusted it again. “Yes, well—this awful place—I don’t blame ye. Not a bit, son. Not a little bit in this world. I reckon it eases my heart.”

Music looked blindly at his plate, but he could feel Regus’s eyes upon him. He could feel the question in them, the surprise, the embarrassment. It took Regus longer to speak. “Well, Bill Music,” he said at last, “I expect yer a-doin the smart thing after all. My notion is you’ve run a mean bluff on half the Burnsides, but a man don’t never know. Ha,” he said, and Music looked up into Regus’s blushing face, “but ole Cawood cain’t say he wadn’t swarmed, no matter that he must have three inches and forty pounds on ya. Ha,” Regus said and sucked his teeth and gave his head a quick jerk to one side.

“Cawood don’t matter,” Music said. “It was just dumbness that made me hit him. I don’t like him, and he caught me at the wrong time.”

Ella Bone looked at her lap. In Regus’s eyes there was a small spark of relief, but puzzlement too, and still something of betrayal, which pained Music to see.

Music began to bob his head before he quite found the words to speak. “There is something going on, I think,” he said. “Your feeling about it was on the mark. Somewhere between twelve and one o’clock this mornin there was a bunch of men sneakin down the mountain into camp.” Music shook his head. “I don’t think they’d been huntin, and that little preacher was with them, so I don’t reckon they were out drinkin or raisin Cain.”

Regus took a deep breath, tilted his chair back, allowed the front legs of the chair to plop down against the floor again, and let his breath out, his lips fluttering like the lips of a horse blowing into a watering trough. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Yeah …” he said, but his voice trailed off. “Shitfire,” he said at last.

Ella looked obliquely, thoughtfully at neither of them and made no remark about Regus’s bad language.

“I can’t make peace with that horse pistol and badge,” Music said. “If those poor, ragged-assed miners was to show up with shotguns and pistols of their own, like you said they might, what the hell would I be supposed to do?” he asked.

Regus shook his head.

“I been livin under your roof and eatin at your table, and now I’m about to run out on you,” Music said. “It makes me ashamed.”

“Hush,” Ella said. “Nobody here blames you, son. I, fer one, see no fault in what ye’ve said.”

“Momma speaks for me,” Regus said. “I’ll not fault ye. You could do me a turn, though, if ye’d pull one more shift and help me collect those unionizers. It would give me a breathin spell.”

Ella shook her head. “Ree, Son, ye’ve no right to ask it of him.”

“I reckon Momma’s right again,” Regus said, “but I’d not ask ye to turn in a solitary Hardcastle man, and I’ll give you my word they’ll get the name of no miner from me. I know Kenton Hardcastle, and it’ll go harder on ever soul in Elkin if a union comes in. Never mind Hardcastle, they ain’t a minin operation in Kentucky that ain’t fightin for its life, nor a one that would stand for a union. It might work some sweet day, but this ain’t the time nor the place.” Regus ran his finger back and forth under his nose. “Wasn’t nuthin on earth that could teach my poppa that, rest his soul, but hit’s a fact. And hit’s far worse now than in his day.”

“Ye’ve no right to ask him to go agin his conscience,” Ella said.

“That’s right,” Regus said soberly. He looked Music in the eyes. “Ye’ll have my hand, and no hard feelins either way, Bill Music.”

“All right,” Music said, “I’ll help you collect the unionizers.”

“I don’t like this one bit,” Ella said. “I can see in your face, chile, that you’re persuaded otherwise, and I’d as lief you’d go on home. Hit ain’t right for folks to go agin their conscience thisaway.”

“Don’t worry,” Music said. He patted her rough, mannish hands. “I haven’t thought of doing anything since the middle of last night that seemed anywhere near right. Longer than that,” he said. “I’m going to go milk.”

“I won’t have it!” Ella said. “You set and eat yore breakfast! Regus’ll do the milkin. He’s not been shot and wallowed about so!”

“Regus can’t hit the bucket,” Music said. “He milks down his shirt cuffs. Let him chop the kindling.”

“Ha,” Regus said, “it’s just cause that cow don’t like me, and I didn’t know nuthin when I bought her and let that feller sell me a cow with little-ole-nuthin tits.”