The Internet Source
for Western

    Love has a violent edge to it, and it isn't the same everywhere. Especially when a father and a son love the same woman. Least, that's how I heard it.
    It was a rainy gray-cast metal day with a chilled wind and lightning like welding sparks cutting through the sleet that merged gray sky to brown Wyoming prairie. It was a day for death, for sunshine that wouldn't come and an ominous wet void to live in.
    Not for me though. I'd come into the corner pub that evening in Fort Laramie after sorting calves all day. I was ready for the fire in the old potbelly stove and a shot of Turkey with a beer chaser. I hitched up to the bar, my canvas coat dripping in the corner coat tree and got those drinks all right.
    I looked around the bar and took a taste off my shot, enjoying the burn. The regulars were there but there wasn't a lot of merriment going on. Heavy rain draws a man inward, worrying about his calves getting infections or his crops winding up in the canal. A radio behind the barwell buzzed something about more rain that night before it was suddenly clicked off, the amber dial disappearing like sunshine under clouds. The room was silent for a moment at least until Jack Oland slammed his can down, making all of us jump.
    "Boys, I was just thinkin'.."
    "'Bout what, Jack?" came out with various murmurs.
    "About that preacher fella' that done up and killed his family back in Grandsburg."
    "What the hell made you think about that?" Miles Hayden asked as he poured his beer into a glass, capping it with a neat one inch white derby.
    "I don't rightly know 'cept it was a day like this, just turnin' into nightfall as they shot him out on the prairie. That, and Miriam's been on my back to join the Baptist church.
    "Why, you ain't stepped foot in a church since she collared you, Jack," Frank Welzo said, his farm cap tilted backwards and sideways on his head, giving him an off-kilter look.
    "Well hell, I know that Frank. I just said she'd been on me to because she's been goin'. I ain't given in and she ain't quit tryin'. Anyway, that's why I was thinkin' of that preacher man."
    "Them Baptists can't wait to die. That's 'cause they figure they'll be the only ones in heaven," Tell Gifford gibed and a low chuckle ran the crowd. "That old preacher man was Baptist, wasn't he?" Tell asked.
    "Them Baptists get a little carried away," Frank offered.
    "He wasn't, neither," Jack said. "He ran the Episcopalian church down on Main.
    "Well there you go," Miles said, as if bein' an Episcopalian was a good enough motive. "They are out there buying up all the good land and making country clubs out of it. There isn't much those Holy Rollers won't do."
    I didn't say anything. I kissed my first girl under a bridge at an Episcopalian church camp when I was 12. We were deep in a kiss when a bat flew in her hair. She panicked and mashed into me and I had my first awakening. Had good luck with girls ever since, too. I figured them Episcopalians gave me something.
    "Found his knife hilt-deep in a cactus, didn't they Jack?" The sound of a woman's voice rough with cigarettes and whisky fumes cut into my fantasy as she slid a cold beer down my way.
    "Yep, Mona, it was covered with blood and stuck outta that cactus, darn near splittin' it in half."
    "Who took him down?" Frank asked.
    "Sheriff Ragland from over Cole County got the shot. That ole' preacher come running toward him with that knife in the air shouting somethin' about God and such and Ragland put a bullet through his cheek. Come out through his lower jaw on the other side but it laid 'im down.
    "How the hell did he get him through the cheek to the other jaw when the preacher was runnin' toward him?" I asked.
    "Well hell, I don't know!" he bellowed, drawing off his farm cap and running his forearm across his face like he was sweating real hard. "Probably turned his head or somethin' distracted him. Anyway that's how they found him, face down in the mud with his face half blown off and that knife buried in a cactus.
    "How many he kill before they got him?" Tell asked.
    "It was just his kin in the house. Took out his mother-in-law and wife, then followed up with the kids."
    "No shit," Tell whispered. He thought about doing his mother-in-law in now and again, but a man would have to be nuts to kill his kids. "Got'em all?"
    "Every last one of 'em," Jack said. "The neighbors heard some screamin' and what not and one of them was standing in their yard when the ol' preacher came boiling out of the house screaming about the godforsaken country and freeing his family. Heard it said the preacher never even seen his neighbor. Neighbors up and down the street was calling the police. By the time they rallied, the ol' preacher was already out of town and on the flats. Only reason they got him is because it was a still night and the first policeman to roll down his window could hear the screamin'.
    "They followed him then?"
    "Well of course they followed him. He'd killed his family, for cryin' out loud. Found him dang near a mile outside of town before Ragland, who had gotten the call from his brother-in-law, jumped the county line and nailed that preacher."
    "Wonder what set him off?" Tell said, putting another cap on his beer.
    "It's the wind," Jack said. "Does it to easterners every time. It gets in their head and bats their brains around. Ain't met one yet who could take it."
    Jack stared down at his beer a moment and we all knew he was right. There were more divorces in this room and just as many in every bar between here and the Montana line than in most places. The wind picks up in October and it doesn't stop until March. It eats away at your days and soon you begin hearing it like a song off key. Often as not it's the woman who gives in first. If a woman don't leave, she'll find a way to take herself out. There are some tough ones here and they add the only color we men got. But they are few and far between and they make it because they have learned how to listen to the song and not give a damn. Once you try to make sense of it, you're owned. It'll make you cry and fight and if you listen hard enough it will make you kill. Yeah, we all knew what Jack was saying. Drinkin' could take the edge off but it was still there, and we all had to fight it off so we didn't wind up like that preacher.
    We were all thinkin' about the preacher when the door opened up. A stiff breeze blew in followed by the shadow of a man. We all turned at the same time to see who it was.
    It was the hair that caught me. It was white, shoulder- length, pointing straight onto a pea coat big enough to hide a shotgun. His wide-brimmed hat was level across his forehead and he gave all of us a look as the door closed behind him. Walking across the floor he pulled his leather gloves off and they vanished into a side pocket as he slid up the barstool at the top of the horsehoe bar. He ordered a shot of Maddog 20/20 and his voice was clear, almost polished, like he'd been taught that there was only one proper way to speak English and he'd stay by it.
    His eyes circuited the room and the boys all gave him a nod, though none of us recognized him. Except me. I knew him.
    Tell picked up his glass and was looking through it. He always did that when he was thinking hard about something. Finally he put down his glass. "Remember Mrs. Bagby? She done snapped too. Course her old man did drink a whole lot," Tell concluded as he spun the glass in his hand.
    Jack looked up, glad to be back on a subject he started. One stranger more or less didn't matter when Jack was telling stories.
    "I darn near forgot about her. That was a messy one, that one was. Thing about it was that no one knew Elmer got poleaxed."
    "Wasn't until almost two weeks later they even knew he was dead," Frank said, spinning a matchbook on the bartop. "Here he was dead and all the bar owners that knew him figured he was at another bar. No one missed him."
    "Sounds a lot like your family an' you," Tell said. We all got a chuckle out of that and Frank just had this boyish look on his face.
    "You try livin' in a house with a wife and three daughters and see if you don't want be missing for a week or two just for some peace and quiet."
    Frank was speaking the truth. Those Wetzel girls stayed just on the edge of trouble and mamma Wetzel could be a terror whenever anyone accused her baby girls of anything. From shoplifting to catting around, them girls had been accused of all of it - and guilty of most of it. Frank knew it but he was outnumbered so he'd tell us about their adventures - if the newspaper didn't do it first.
    "Anyway," Jack said, "they'd never found him except Myrtle's freezer unit when down. Neighbors in the trailer park began complaining about a strange smell in the court. Myrtle didn't let it rattle her though. She kept him there another week."
    "She'd gotten away with it that long, I don't see why she just didn't light that trailer on fire," Tell said. "Happens all the time and with her being old and all it wouldn't be no big surprise. And even if she did get caught for arson or something what are they gonna do -- put her in a home? She wouldn't serve time."
    "Makes a lot of sense," said the white haired man. "I rather doubt they would have looked her place over for bones and such, her being old and all. It would have been the perfect crime. So how did she get caught?"
    Conversation stopped then and we all looked at him. It's a bad habit all us boys had and it don't make a stranger feel real welcome. So I decided to pick up the thread.
    "She decided she'd best clean out the freezer," I said. "So late one night she threw these trashbags in the back of her truck and drove over to the canal bridge. The canal was running pretty full and them bags would've sunk and been down to Nebraska by morning. As she was standing over the bridge with the first bag, a rookie cop on DUI patrol stopped on the bridge and told her to stop.
    "I heard he give her a lecture 'bout littering," Jack said, picking up on my thread so as he could get the finish. Jack took another pull off of his beer. "While he was writing her up she reached for another bag and tried to throw it over. Heard said he was rattled by then and handcuffed her and put her in the back of the cruiser. Her second try made that cop curious about what she was trying to throw away. He opened the first bag.
    He found Elmer.
    Well, he found part of Elmer. Bags two and three held the rest.
    Jack had a way with pauses. He took a long pull on his beer, looking sideways for a reaction from the white haired man. He didn't get one.
    "And what did they do with ah--I think you called her Myrtle?"
    "Well, Myrtle was sittin' in the back of that car. The rookie hadn't closed the door, figuring the cuffs would be enough. She got out of the car and walked toward the railing and stood there quietly until the rookie was done calling it in and gagging on his own report. According to his story he turned around and seen her leaning back on the railing.

"He was a bastard," Myrtle said, her gray hair slapping around her wattled neck. "I give him what he deserved and by God something is going over this bridge!"

    With that, she shoved herself backward over the railing. The rookie radioed in but he was hysterical and by the time anyone else got there, Myrtle was out by the Kountry Kids go-kart and miniature golf park, a good fifteen feet under water."
    "Chopped up old Elmer herself," Tell said. Tell was in tight with the coroner so he'd get the inside track on the condition of a body. "Told to me that she used a plain old kitchen knife and it took her some four days to do the job. Said she did the whole thing with that knife. Heard said it would take a man some two days to do that, working near 'round the clock. Might've been stretchin' the truth a little, " Tell said. "Anyway, cuttin' up a full grown man into small enough pieces that he could fit in garbage bags in the freezer took some pretty creative cuttin'."
    "Leastways Myrtle had herself a reason," Mona said, as she slid a new round of drinks down the bar. "Elmer was a mean old cuss and when he took to drinkin' wasn't no tellin' what he might do. Probably did slap her around some. Yep, Myrtle had her reasons I bet. Nothing like that Esquala kid that took to target practicing. Didn't seem like he had no reason."
    "Probably on dope," Jack said.
    To Jack's way of thinking people did crazy stuff for two reasons. They were easterners or they smoked them left-handed cigarettes. Wasn't any other possible reason to him.
    "Esquala didn't even know who he was shootin' at. Sammy was just out gettin' his newspaper when the kid took him out. Damn kids, don't know what they'll do next," Jack said, shaking his head.
    All their faces turned to me because I was the closest to being a kid in that room. Already had two ex-wives but I hadn't broke 35 and these boys all had seen at least a third as many years. It was common knowledge that I used to run with Esquala every now and again. Hate to admit it, but we'd had ourselves a time or two.
    "Don't be looking at me, boys, I hadn't seen him for a while before that Sunday morning," I said. Turning to the white haired man, I framed my story.
    "It was one of those summer mornings, real pretty like. People was gettin' ready to go to church or mowing lawns, just day to day living. Esquala got around that Sunday morning most likely with a wicked hangover and something just flat give out. He took a rifle, hopped into his car and drove out to Grandsburg's residential West Side. He took out three fellas that morning, killing two and wounding one. None of them was the fella' he was lookin' for. Sammy was out on his front yard when he took a shell in the chest. Billy Wortham was workin' over his truck when the second shell cut through his spine. Heard told that there was an impression of a radiator cap on his chest from laying on it for near an hour after he died. And before the police rounded him up, Joey Cochran took a shell in the shoulder but came out OK. Joey hung out with Clay Martinez and Martinez was who Esquala was looking for in the first place."
    "Yep, had to be dope that set Esquala off. Any time those kids got to warring wasn't no tellin' who was gonna get hit. He got off good though. Only time I ever saw a kid like him beat the system. Sent him to the institution with all them other people who lost a grip." Jack said, nodding his head at his own wisdom.
    "It's them psychiatrist fellas' that done it," Tell announced. "Went and let a perfectly sane man out just because he could make himself sound stupid. "Shoot," he said as he took a long draw and slammed his can to the bar. "I coulda' told em' he was playin'. He knew which end was up."
    Psychiatrists rated right up there with easterners and strangers in this part of the country. Seemed like a man who couldn't work with his own head didn't have the right to get in the way of those who had all the answers.
    By that time the last of the gray color outside the picture window above the tattered pool table had vanished, and a carbine darkness slid through the bar. The wood stove heaved and groaned in the silence and flickers of flame could be seen in the pinholes of the welds that held it together. The rows of whisky took on a dark hue, glowing in the soft light. The wood bar felt solid and the initials carved on its edge blurred as I thought and drank.
    I looked over to the long-haired man. His hair took on a barbwire steel sheen in the light and his face was comfortable to look at. You could just see, whenever he'd look into the barroom mirror with the blue LITE inscription and it would throw back his reflection, that he was a man who had seen things, a man who would stand his ground but yet never be in the thick of things. There was a hint of Indian about him, a hint of wildness and education. As a two-finger Wild Turkey shot slid into my waiting hand, I knew that we would have something in common. As I raised the glass I looked across the rim and saw him looking at me. The idea that he was thinking the same thing burned all the way down. Like I said, I think we knew each other.
    "I don't know how you can put a label on sane or not," the white haired man said, his voice mixing with the silence rather than shattering it. "Sometimes killing is the best for everyone involved. It has its place, I suppose."
    He didn't say anything more. His hand moved slight against his glass and Mona dropped scotch three-fingers deep in it.
    "You tellin' me that killin' is the best way to solve a problem?" Jack asked the white haired man. Jack turned away and looked at all of us. "For a coyote maybe, but not folks just gettin' by."
    "Couldn't agree with you more, Jack. No reason for it," the white haired man said.
    Jack looked at him, deciding whether he liked the stranger or not. Jack liked to be agreed with but this stranger may be trying to pull a fast one.
    "But you said it has its place in a man's way," Jack countered.
    "Not for all men, Jack, but for Barry Fenton it was the best way."
    From the looks on our faces not a soul knew Barry Fenton.
    "He live around here?" I asked.
    "No," the white haired man said as Mona filled my shot glass.
    "He came through this way some. He was a traveling man, sort of like myself, and it wasn't just a couple counties over that he folded up in a roadhouse out in the middle of nowhere.
    "What was his deal?" I asked.
    The white haired man paused a moment, draining half his shot and setting the glass down on the sheen of the bar top without a sound. It looked like light striking light when he set it down. His eyes had the same look when he focused on me.
    "Barry Fenton was obsessed with women," the white haired man said simply, as if that was enough reason to get yourself killed.
    "It wasn't just that he liked them. He was enthralled by them. They were always something alien to him, something untouchable yet warm."
    "Sounds like your wife, don't it, Frank," Tell said. Smiles came out across the board and I could see just a turn on the white haired man's face. Tell and Jack was laughing and carrying on. The white haired man paused, waiting for the merriment to die down.
    "Barry had a way of saying the right thing at the right time," the white haired man said, undercutting the laughter. "He understood them better than most of us do the women we live with." He drew his last shot out of his glass and set it down again. "Except with his wife. With her he felt weak. It was a power struggle between them from the day they met and it didn't ever end. She loved him but she had a way of smothering him. Mostly because she did everything right. She understood the world and he didn't, and I don't think he could ever come to agreement with that."
    "That ain't what killed him though?" Frank asked.
    "No, But it led him to dying. He had a mistress."
    "Well hell," Jack yelled. "That's what killed him. He got caught and she nailed him!" Jack slammed his can onto the bar and twisted his cap again.
    "Not yet, Jack," the white haired man said. It was friendly enough but I could sense the warning in it. From the look on his face, Jack could too.
    "So what happened?" Frank asked. Jack still wasn't talking but I could tell he wanted to know how it turned out.
    "Barry had a son from one of his earlier dalliances before he ever got married. He was a bright and handsome boy and as he grew up you could see he had none of his father's dilemma. He was a hunter, so to speak, full of direction and promise. His only downfall was a temper which was quick to fly and needed very little to set it off." He paused a moment as if picking up a thread of memory.
    "You knew the boy?" I asked.
    "I remember noticing the boy's desire to hunt," he said, his eyes hard on me. "He would catch butterflies and pin them to cardboard. He'd take the dog out into the field and I watched him as they flushed a rabbit out of a pipe. None of these in themselves were any different then any other 10-year-old kid. What struck me that day, when I was walking with the boy and the dog, was that when the dog ripped out the throat of the rabbit and blood sprayed from its ruptured jugular, the boy lit up. He was ecstatic, overjoyed at the slaughter. There was no remorse, no lack of purpose, just a sheer joy that lit his eyes and as he held the rabbit up by its hind feet and as the blood ran down its fur and onto his arm I saw the man he would become. It sounds strange I know, boys, but at that moment I saw Barry's son leave boyhood and go into manhood and I knew that blood would not trouble him."
    There was a heady silence in the room as we pictured what the white haired man had told us. Death was common here, in animals and people and seasons and crops, but it was never something any of us would rejoice over. It was something that was there, as much as the life that countered it.
    "Barry didn't see his son much, growing up. He didn't want the boy and the boy's mother raised him. I went to visit the boy the day he killed the rabbit."
    "You knew his mother?" Frank asked suspiciously.
    "I've known a lot of people for a very long time," the white haired man said, his eyes glittering.
    "So what about this Fenton character?" Jack asked.
    "He traveled as part of his job. He finally did find love. He adored her. Her name was Lisa. Now Lisa was not what she appeared to be and I could have told Barry that but he wouldn't have listened to me. She feigned being a broken-wing bird but she had a strength to her, a danger, a feminine hawk that would leave her mark. I saw it but Barry loved her for her weakness. As the years went by they spent time together, furtively, seeking ways of being together but still Barry couldn't decide. Oh, his wife knew about it of course but she was still waiting for him to have the guts to come out with it."
    "So she took him out one night, did she?" Jack asked. "He ought to have known better. A woman won't share. It's just not in her nature. Nothing new to that."
    I looked at Jack and he saw I wasn't happy with his answer. I had a feeling, a nagging need to hear this story and by God I was going to hear it.
    "You boys want me to go on or shut up?" the white haired man asked.
    "Yeah, we want to hear it," Tell said, looking at me, wondering why I was glaring at everyone like they were my worst enemies.
    "Me too," Frank said, ordering another beer. The wind outside had picked up and limbs brushed the windows as the Margie's Diner sign across the street creaked back and forth.
    "OK then," the white haired man said. "Well, like I was saying, Barry was catching Lisa when he could and dreaming about leaving his wife. The years passed on and Barry and Lisa still hung on to each other. She was a lot younger than him and no one could figure it out. But Lisa never married and Barry never divorced."
    "Sounds like a good deal to me," Frank said, pulling the tab off another beer and swiveling his chair so his other half could get warmed by the fire. Me, I didn't need any fire. The whisky was doing what it should and I vaguely wondered when I paid for the last one. The white-haired man just smiled at me real slight like.
    "What happened to the boy," I mumbled.
    "The boy. Well, he grew into a strong young man. He left home and found Barry and fired questions at him, why Barry hadn't stayed or ever tried to see him.
    "How did the boy take it?"
    "To the boy, Barry was as weak as the rabbit of years ago and the boy saw that weakness and hated it. The boy hunted for answers and got none and so he left."
    "Just left? What, college or something?" Jack asked, his words starting to slur.
    "No, he just vanished. No word, nothing. Gone for near a decade as I remember. There were times when Lisa vanished too. She'd drift in and out of the county on vague errands and show up with weak excuses, and Barry simply picked up where they left off without question.
    "Barry wasn't the only one with an outside lover," Tell concluded, peering over the top of his glass with bloodshot eyes.
    "That's about the way of it, Tell," the white-haired man said. He stopped and looked around the room, his eyes coming to a full circle as he scanned everything before settling on me.
    "So how was he folded up?" Mona asked.
    "It was in a roadhouse a couple of counties away from here like I told you. It was a cold night and there wasn't anybody out. A night of strange happenings. Barry saw a young man drinking sullenly down the bar. It was his son. The bartender had gone to the storeroom and it was just Lisa in the room with Barry and his son. Barry felt a note of pride at the man his son had become and words were forming in his head as to how he would heal a lifetime of injury to his boy. He hadn't realized the boy had hunted him."
    "Hunted him?" Mona whispered. "And then what?"
    "Barry stood up, walked down to where the boy was sitting. Lisa was behind him. He put out his hand to greet his son just as his son leveled a pistol and shot him through the head."
    The old man's voice hadn't changed, only slowed as he ended. The silence in the room was as a screen as we played the picture of Barry in our minds. The old man reached for his glass that Mona had just filled and her shaking hand betrayed the effect he had on all of us.
    "As the bullet entered his brain he saw a blue flash and the hawk in his Lisa as she pulled his son close and kissed him deeply and for that moment Barry Fenton saw how the world truly was."
    The white-haired man drained his shot and turned the shotglass upside down indicating he was done for the night.
    "Sweet Jesus," Mona exhaled.
    The room was deadly silent except for the crackling of the wood stove.
    "Did the boy go to jail?" Frank asked.
    "No," the old man said, putting down his glass as he slid off the barstool. "The boy and Lisa vanished that night. There were no witnesses. Never will be, I suspect."
    "What about the bartender? He'd of identified the girl at least."
    "Not lying face down with a bullet in the back of his head behind a pallet of beer in the cooler."
    "Damn!" Jack said, his fingers causing the aluminum in his hand to buckle.
    The old man threw some coins on the bar and got up from his chair. As he put his coat on and slid his wide-brimmed hat over his white hair, he stared straight at me, blue flashes in his eyes, and a cruel curl to his lips.
    "Ever been in love, boy?" He asked, the question filling the room as I heard it 10 times as loud as it was.
    "Yeah, I've been there and gone."
    "No doubt you have, boy," he murmured. "No doubt you have. Here, I've got something for you. Something to remember me by." Even as he reached his hand into his pocket and slid the object down the bar I knew what it would be.
    As it hissed its way down the bar under my hand I saw it; small and gold with the letters ZIPPO stenciled down the side. I picked it up and flicked it: a blue spark jumping and dying.
    "A burnt-out lighter," Jack scoffed.
    The white haired man strode out of the bar, a cold breeze marking the room behind him as he shut the door as quietly as he had when he came in.
    "Crazy old coot," Jack said, as he opened another beer. "If that'd happened I woulda' known about it. He's one strand short of a full fence, that's what I think."

***

    Maybe not, maybe so. Maybe it was just a story. Better that they all figured so. Angel or devil or old man, he was there for me. I had seen him before; in Arizona, 11 years ago in a small bar just off the railroad spur. Later in Missouri where the Mississippi barge I worked on parked after a one month stint and me and the boys found the local pub, and now, here. He's not about to let me forget. He was there. The blue flash was his and this lighter. He told my father's life and now he is telling mine.
    Lisa had stayed with me for a few years after that night. I loved her because she was a hawk. A silent one. Somehow the law figured a lead and we found out she was wanted for questioning. That fear brought my hawk down and she helped herself to a razor blade in a porcelain tub eight months later, tired of running. When they got news that she committed suicide they dropped the case.
    I moved around a lot after that and set up a no-name life for myself. I had made good money on the river and I remembered how I loved to hunt so I bought a farm out here, just another dirt farmer with a few bucks and no family history.
    Maybe I was a little hard on my old man. I've learned to keep my temper down but it's still a fierce one. The boys are all drunk now but if they get to piecing the story together they may figure something out. I'll have to move on again. I won't see the white-haired man for awhile, not until I begin to forgot again. Then he'll remind me about hawks and rabbits - and murder.
    It's like I said. Love's got a hard edge to it.

*~*~*~*~*

Copyright © 2001 Thomas Eaton. All rights reserved.