Boone

Sound, in the true desert, is a force that catches you unawares always. 

In the bleakness of sand and scrub a shack adjoins a small house with two horses tied to a hitching post leaning their heads down standing aside the wall trying to stay in the shade and out of the hot mid afternoon sun. Inside, through a still, blanketed doorway and thick adobe walls is a dark room, cool by desert standards. There is a bar of thick oak planks atop a row of barrels. In front of the bar are two white cowboys in leather chaps and worn suit coats. A Mexican high peaked sombrero and a derby are sitting atop the bar next to clear mugs half full of flat beer. Behind the bar is a dark skin black man in a loose clean white shirt. The shirt is buttoned to the top. He wears an expression of boredom looking down at the bar top. There are several bare tables with an assortment of heavily built chairs neatly placed under the tables.

The cowboy named Sammy looks at the other cowboy, “How’s your leg, Bradley?”

Bradley, nodding, responds, “Kicks up ever now and then, but all ‘n all, I think the worst is over. Don’t feel no different when in the saddle, so that’s a good sign I would say.”

Sammy looks up at the bartender and answers, “Unhunh…”

Bradley rubs his nose, “Yeah, there are some folk take a fall like that and never comes back from it. Remember Red? Member when Red had his horse fall on him? That’s the worst, not being able to ride no more… he cain’t even walk out the door no more. It gained and gained on him and he’s just a cripple now. Not me, I can ride and walk, hell I can even drink.” Bradley lifts his beer mug and pulls back some of his beer and starts chuckling. The other man is looking down at his own beer, in his own thoughts.

The bartender lets out a big yawn and shakes his head at his own weariness.

Bradley looks at the bartender, and frowns. Hoof beats on hard sand. “Sounds like someone coming this way for some reason, Thompkins.”

They hear “Whoa up, Belle, whoa, whoa up, yes, yes, yes.” The horse snorts.The thud of a something landing on the ground inclines Thompkins’ head to the side.

The curtain blows inward a bit with lazy moving dust under its edge.

The curtain is pushed to one side as a man in buckskin trousers and jacket rushes in in a cloud of dust as he pulls off a large brimmed sombrero with a peaked crown and beats it against his arms and legs heading straight for the bar and bartender.

“I needs the wettest whiskey you got, pard, and if ya sees my throat under all this dirt ya sees the longest throat West of New York and East of San Francisco all curled up inside with cactus needles and flies. So, fill up any tall glass ya gots with the wettest whiskey, be it tequila or gin or scotch stuff, pard.”

Thompkins looks at the man, his frown deepening, then looks down at the bar, then around at the bottles on a board shelf behind him, and says, “Thas what there is: tequila, mescal, aguardiente and some more tequila.”

“Tequila it is, pard. Just leave the bottle, don’t need no cup. Jus think that that bottle is gone. Do I smell some cookin?”

“We gots lamb, chicken and beef. How long you going ta be here?”

“I just got here. Don’t…” The stranger stopped in mid-speech, staring at Thompkins, who looks down at the bar top.“I know you.” the stranger states nodding his head up and down. His long hair falls over his shoulders in blond curly tangles. He nods slowly with an assured smile. ‘I know you like I know myself.”

Thompkins regards the man. “Sorry, never seen you before.”

The stranger says each word slowly, “Oh… yes… you… have.” Then, smiling at Thompkins, he speaks normally, “My name’s Wes.”

He looks at Wes. “You gonna eat somethin?”

Wes smiles wider and some dust falls from his moustache. “Yes, please. A bloody steak would do me just fine. The way you used ta cook’em.”

Thompkins shakes his head. “Carmen,” he calls softly to a doorway on the side of the bar top. “A steak, bloody.” Then Thompkins turns to Wes. “Look, boy, I don’t know who you thinks I am but I am not.” 

Wes studies Thompkins’ face and shakes his head. “Maybe some years have slumped you a little but you is you.” He laughs, slapping his hand to his thigh. 

Thompkins ignores him and pours more beer from the tap in a ceramic barrel into the cowboys’ cups.

He looks over at Wes, who takes a pull from his bottle.

A nicely rounding lady with jet black hair piled high in pigtail swirls, dressed in a long white dress comes through the door behind the bar and puts her eyebrows up to Thompkins, who nods. She smiles at Thompkins in a bashful way and nods toward Wes. Thompkins nods back and she leaves.

Wes pulls himself from leaning on the bar, stands up and faces the group. “You are my brother.” He smiles at the cowboys, then at Thompkins. 

Carmen comes back out with a plate of food and sets it on the bar top near Wes. She looks at his hand on the bottle, turns and goes back through the doorway.

Wes turns and looks at Thompkins. “Your squaw?”

Thompkins moves his already irritated expression to one of anger. “She ain’t no squaw and I don’t like you in here now.”

“I am sorry, and did not mean no disrespect. My wife was a Piute but she died and left me feeling like a lost soul. It wadn’t disrespect, friend.” Wes forks the pieces of steak into a doubled tortilla adds some rice and beans rolls it up and dips the end into a small bowl of red sauce. “Oh, that’s heaven.” he exclaims before finishing it and making another. Wes turns to the cowboys. “Let me tell you two a story whilst you having your beers.

“Back about eighteen years ago, right after the great war, I was a ringtail kid with no money and just moving across the country like so many was. I was thinking to go to San Francisco but never knew it was so far from my starting place in Lou’siana. I just could not figure out the West. Freezing nights, hot and dusty days. Could not hunt nothing because I could not see nothing ta hunt and I was afoot.”

He drinks from his bottle. “Made me a mite thirsty just thinking about walking all the way I had walked in those days. I walked day and night to get across this damn thing of a big, long desert. Never knew what a desert was, you see. Don’t have ‘em in the bayou, it’s wet. I thought the desert had to end sometime or I had died and gone to hell without knowing it.

“One night I smelled some food cookin’ and veered off my route to find where this scent was comin’ from. I didn’t care if’n it were Apaches, I was gonna get me my fill before I died was the thought in my head.

“So, over a little scrub dune I come on this nice little neat fire with nobody there and a skinned rabbit with long ears stuck on a stick and droppin’ juices into the fire. I walked right on over to that rabbit and then I heard this deep deep deep voice calling me out. I turned to see a big black devil in the moonlight with hair like horns from the bible and I honest to god fainted dead away.

“When I come to, I was tucked into a bedroll and the fire was low. Across the fire was another blanket that mounded over the body of that devil. Couldn’t see it’s face. but a cup of water was at my side and I drunk it down with barely a swish. The devil in the blanket laughed like a dog bark and I got afraid again. I yelled over to him, ‘What, who you?’”

“He yelled back, ‘Who you?’

“My name Westin Purdy, sir. You ain’t a devil, is ya?”

“His grin was lit by the firelight. ‘Some calls me niggah, spade, shit and a black devil, so I guess I is a devil. Never thought about it none.’

“So you just a niggah like me?”

“He hee-hawed like a donkey, ‘Like you? Gimme that again, boy.’

“What do you mean?’

“Then he asked me,’Who calls you a niggah? You got white skin under that filth and yella hair under that dust. What do you mean?’

“Those folk. Well, where I am from, those folk, the rich folk that is. Sometimes we calls each other niggah.’

“‘Wait,’ he says to me, ‘now you tellin’ me that white folk is called niggah?’

“Unhunh. Yessir.” I says.

“‘Well then, I guess I cain’t let a brotha niggah starve to death. Take some of that long ear and eat your fill, boy. You has delighted me to no ends tonight.’

“An that’s how it began, ya see. Our brotherhood, if you will. His name”, turning to Thompkins, “was Brewster Boone and nobody ever called him Brewster. He stole a horse for me. So we partnered up and raided some ranches, cut out some fat beefs and butchered them, selling them in the towns around. Soon, we had a mule to carry our stuff and we was doin’ all right.

“We come into a town in SouthTexas and Boone gets in a fight with a big guy who he kills with a butcherin’ knife, so we has to run for it and lost that mule. It was about a year later down in the bad lands of Chihuahua, Mexico, we found ourselves surrounded by about thirty Yaquis. They knew they had us and we knew it too. I will always remember Boone lookin’ at me”, he turned to Thompkins, “with the same eyes you gots, and saying he always wanted me to get laid before I died, brother. He always called me brother. He pulled out his buffalo rifle and put in one of them big cartridges and slammed the bolt shut. I did the same with my carbine. Then he said, ‘We will just wait and see who dies first.’

“Not long past a buck cut from the rest with a whoop and a yellin’. He was covered in yellow paint and his horse was also covered in yellow paint. He had a war hoop that was extended out like a spear. We found out later they just touched the other warrior with it but we didn’t know that so Boone took aim and shot that buck back about twenty feet or so off his horse. The horse stopped in front of us surprised like. He said, ‘If we lives through this we got us another animal.’

“Up on the ridge line we heard all them Yaquis talking and even yelling like they was fighting amongst themselves. Then two of them, with their hands up, rode out slowly toward us. Boone put another cartridge in that big rifle and laid it across his saddle. They came up to us like they was afraid of him. They talked to us but we did not understand what they were saying.

“One of them handed Boone his blanket and with a lot of hand signalling they had us believe that we should come with them for food and drink. thick oak planks atopBoone said, ‘We be dead here or there, we got nothing to loose.’

“They sort of pushed my horse in behind Boone and we marched off at a nice slow trot toward the West. We got to this little bunch of round huts near a stream surrounded by them small wild oak trees. All the people, about forty or fifty, were waiting in the shade. The others were just standing and sitting around staring at Boone on his big brown horse. A couple of youngsters said something and laughed. An old man came up on them and beat them with a twig and they sat solemn from then on.

“They gave us food and drink. Actually, they gave Boone all that. To them I was like his pet or something, so they sort of gave me his leftovers. Boone would not have any of it after he saw what they was doin’ and he said he would not eat unless I ate, would not drink unless I drunk, would not smoke unless I smoke. They begrudgingly gave me the same as he. The thing was they wanted him to mate up with the women.

“You see because of his colour and size, they thought Boone was from the original family of the Yaqui, the Bear Clan. Later, we found out that a lot of different peoples had this Bear Clan thing, and boyio, we used it. But, in the year or so that we lived with these Yaquis we were taught a lots of things about medicine and herbs you would never think of that were right there in front of you in the desert. We showed them how to use the rifles and we learned the bow and the sling. There was lots of different games they had to while the time away. I had a good time. That was my first woman and really, my first drinking. They was good people. I met up with them a couple of years later and had a good time with my ol’ friends.

“When we finally left, because we heard there was a silver strike up in the Colorado territory, they gave us more than they could afford but we had to take the stuff. Boone gave Wolf, the chief, his buffalo rifle, embarrassing everybody in the tribe. We had to leave quick before they started giving us more stuff. We already had eight ponies and a couple of donkeys packed with rabbit furs and cow skins. We had enough food for ten men. We left three babies that I found out later when I ran into the boys. They really wanted Boone to spread his sacred seed into their women. It was an honour. They never could quite get too happy about me doing the same.

“Like I said, I ran into some of the boys a couple of years later and it was them that told me that Boone had been killed in a little mining town that didn’t even have a name. It might have been Jones’ Town or something like that but I burned it down before it got a name.

“Ya see, Boone had me go on down to Rocky Falls to see some Shoshone down there. He was courtin’ this Messican girl he took a likin’ to. When I got back there was a horrible body crumpled in this pine box layin’ against the carpenter’s wall. It had a long black coat like Boone had but it had been shot up bad. It was bare foot. Maybe a hundred bullet holes in the corpse. The face was mush and a slouch hat was all shot up and stuck to its head. I couldn’t believe it, you see. So, I goes into the bar and says, what happened?

“Now they didn’t put me and Boone together so they starts talkin’ about this uppity niggah who tried to get on one of the Swiss Women. They all laughed. I went outside and took my rifles out, loaded them up and came back in shootin’. I shot most of them and I scalped them and burned the bar down. That caught the other buildings and tents and the whole place went up. There is a legend up there today that that area is haunted by a chief of the Bear Clan. Injuns don’t go there.”

Wes turned to Thompkins, “You never died. Why didn’t you find me?”

Thompkins frowned. “I am sorry for you. I didn’t understand before. I ain’t him. He musta died back there in that town. That man wouldn’ta let his little brother go on like that, sir.”

Wes had tears rolling down his cheeks. “I got crazy. I’d knife anybody ever talk bad about injuns nor niggahs. I hoped to die. Then I found my Little Squirrel. She brought me back to lovin’ and carin’ for things. We had two boys. They died with her of the pox epidemic. Suffered.”

“Damn.” Thompkins said, wiping a tear from his cheek with his shirt sleeve. “I surely am sorry about times for you. I ain’t this Boone though.”

Wes blinked and wiped away the tears. “Sorry, I don’t cry. Don’t remember crying since the kids and my Little Squirrel died, and before that when Boone went. If you ain’t Boone, you sure walk, talk and looks cross like him.” 

Leaning forward, Wes whispers, “You probably gots your reasons. I’ll go out for a minute if that’s okay?” He stands up straight, picks up his bottle and goes outside with it.

Carmen comes through the kitchen door picks up the plate and catches that the mood has changed into a sad one. A younger Carmen comes through the doorway and Sammy strains his neck to look around Bradley to smile at the young girl. Sammy raised and lowered his hand in salutation when she looked over toward the bar. But she ignores him, seeing Thompkins’ sad face. The mother says something to her daughter and they go back through the doorway.

Sammy whispers to Bradley,”You think she ever gonna like me?”

Bradley lifts his mug, tilts it back and drinks.