A Bullet for Billy (11 page)

T
he Mexican general studied him till it got on his nerves. Just stood there and stared in on him.

“What you want?” Sam said, almost shyly, but with a hint of defiance too.

“You think he's coming, don't you, your famous grandfather, the Texas Ranger?”

“Yes, he's going to come and bust me out of this spit bucket.”

The General sucked his teeth contemplatively.

“I think if he comes at all, he will have the head of your brother in a basket for me.”

Sam felt the bite of the comment as if it had teeth.

“Tell me, was it your idea or your brother's to set upon my daughter?”

“I keep telling you we didn't do nothing but try and save her life, mister!”

“If you keep insisting you are innocent, then you leave me no choice to show you any mercy. How can I have mercy on someone so cold-blooded?”

“Did you all find a knife anywheres? Because me and Billy sure weren't carrying no knives on us. And I don't know how you could say we stabbed your girl if we didn't have no knives.”

Thus far no knife had been found, and this troubled the General greatly. He was an observant man; his military training had caused him to be so. He was strategic as well.

“Tell me what you did with the knife,” he said. “It might go easier on you.”

Sam shook his head disconsolately.

“I don't know why you can't believe nothing,” he uttered.

“You know how this is going to work?”

Sam shook his head.

“I have told your grandfather that if he will find and kill your brother, that I'll let you live.”

Sam bowed his head, looked at the floor.

I didn't do nothing. And Billy
didn't
do nothing either!”

“He confessed.”

“Just to save me.”

“Then he was a fool, it won't save you, his supposed lies. Nothing is going to save you, my young friend.”

“Then why not just kill me if that's what you all are intent on doing? Why not just get it over with?”

“You must understand fully the gravity of what you've done and repent.”

“Fuck, I don't even know what that means—repent.”

“You are a crude young gringo.”

“I reckon maybe I am, but I don't know how else to be,” Sam said. “It ain't like I got much to lose at this point in the game by trying to show you my good side, now does it?”

“You think that is what this is, a game?”

“No sir.”

The General thought the boy disarming in his manner: one moment talking tough like a man much older, the next shy as a schoolgirl. But he felt no compassion for him because of their crimes. Even a young snake can kill you with its poison.

“How does it feel?” the General said.

“How does what feel?”

“To suffer, to never know the hour of your death?”

Sam touched the lacerated places of his face and body where he'd been whipped.

“I guess I know a little of what old Jesus went through before they killed him,” Sam said.

“You believe in Jesus?”

“I do, yes sir.”

“You think he will be waiting for you in heaven?”

“Yes sir.”

“You think he knows what you did to my daughter and that he will forgive you for it?”

Sam looked up, his eyes full of grief.

“He didn't see me do nothing like it. I may have done some bad things but I never did what you said.”

The General slapped him across the face with an open hand so hard, the sound was like a pistol shot. It knocked Sam senseless for a moment.

“You will own to it before it is over,” the General said.

“That what you want? Me to own to something I didn't do?”

The General slapped him again, just as hard, and Sam tasted the salt of his own blood as it leaked from his lips and his nose.

The General smelled of cloves, his eyes black as the beads on a woman's necklace. He just needed hooves and horns and he'd be the damn devil.

The General walked out of the cell and the Ruales guard with him locked the door.

Left alone finally, Sam felt himself shrinking
inside. He tried hard not to think about what it would be like in those final minutes when they came and dragged him from the jail—for he would not go willingly—and stood him in front of a wall (wasn't that the way they did it?) and tied his hands behind his back. He tried not to think what it would be like looking down the barrels of their aimed guns and waiting for that instant when they pulled their triggers and how the bullets would feel punching into him, and if when you died did you float off this earth into heaven or was it more like just a forever blackness where you didn't think or feel anything.

Forever blackness
. It broke his heart to think there might be a forever blackness.

He thought of Rebecca, their neighbor girl back home who lived in the house next to Jardine's place where his mama had moved him and Billy to be with Jardine. Rebecca had strawberry-colored hair and budding bosoms and a sweet way about her. She was a year older, and seemed several years wiser. And when she kissed him that one evening underneath the tree with the sound of cicadas buzzing all around, he thought he had never felt anything as good or would again, until she reached for his hand and put it inside the top of her dress and he felt the small, firm, rounded bosoms and the rapid beating of her heart.

Something happened to him that evening.
Something in him broke like a wall pushed by too much water behind it, and he felt a warmness issuing from him and wondered if he'd wet his pants. But it was worse than that. Much worse. And it scared and embarrassed him even as the pleasurable sensation washed over him.

“Oh my,” she said when she noticed as he twisted away. Then giggled into her hand saying, “No, Sam. I'm not laughing at you.”

He ran off leaving her there under the tree, too embarrassed to speak, and for a week or more hid out, Billy and his ma saying, “You sick or something?”

The last time he saw her, she wanted to talk to him about it, but he begged her not to and they kissed and sat sweetly holding hands, Sam pining away for her, to touch her again like he did when he had his accident, but afraid he'd have another.

Then Jardine suddenly got himself killed and it was a mournful time till Billy said they ought to leave off out of there and strike out on their own.

Now as he sat caged and bleeding, his whole face hurting like the blazes, he pined for her, for home, for his ma, even for Jardine. And it all got worse when he thought that maybe Billy was even dead, his body lying out there somewhere, the buzzards and wolves eating it.

I come into this world with nothing
, he finally told himself.
And I guess I'll go out of it with nothing
.

He could not see them because there were no windows in the jail to see them with. But he thought the stars might be falling.

I
t went on like that for a while, me waiting outside the dugout for Billy to make his play—to go out in a blaze of glory as he said it, or to throw down his weapon and come out peaceful. The air buzzed with flies.

“You liking it in there with those dead people,” I called at one point. “You're going to join them, you don't get your ass out here.”

“I need your assurance you won't shoot me if I come out,” he said.

“I already told you, kid, I'm not here to kill you. I just come to get you to your granddaddy.”

Another thirty minutes ticked off, then he said, “I'm coming out!”

“Toss your piece out first,” I said.

His pistol came out through the busted window and landed in the dirt. Then he appeared in the open door frame holding his shoulder, his fingers painted with blood.

“You busted my damn shoulder with one of your shots,” he said, grimacing.

I told him to sit on the ground while I went inside to check on the scene. And it was as one of the patrons who'd run out earlier said it was—two dead, one a woman. I mean both god-awful dead with the flies eating their blood. There wasn't any time to bury them. I figured somebody would surely find them quick enough and do the job for me, or burn the place down around them. There just wasn't any time to waste.

I helped the kid struggle into the saddle of his horse that had run off a little ways but then stood cropping the local vegetation of grass there by the river's edge where I caught it up easy enough.

We rode north again with the rising sun off to our right painting the desert red, then golden. You could feel the heat already rising from the desert floor. A Harris hawk sat perched atop a saguaro and watched us with an alert eye as we passed down the road.

Then it suddenly took flight, went into a low glide, and snatched a packrat with its talons and
lifted high into the air again, working its wings mightily, breakfast caught.

“I feel like that packrat,” Billy said. “Just like it.” He rode slumped to his offside where his shoulder was broke from my bullet.

“Don't die on me, kid,” I said.

“Hell, why not?”

I didn't have an answer for him. And to tell the truth, maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he had died. It would save the Cap'n the trouble of doing the deed. But still, something in me didn't want the kid to die.

We had to ride slow because of the kid's busted shoulder. But before we ever reached Finger Bone, I saw the Cap'n's hack sitting off to one side of the road, the horse still in its traces its head down, the Cap'n slumped over in the seat.

I figured the Cap'n was dead. That he'd got up his grit to follow us and just died, and the harnessed horse finally just stopped pulling without anyone to guide it.

I reined the stud in thinking the whole journey had been a failure, remembering what I'd promised the Cap'n if he died—that I'd go down and try and save the other boy and kill the General if I had to. I sure did not want to.

The Cap'n lay on his side across the seat with his eyes closed, his hat fallen off his head.

“That him?” Billy said.

“It is.”

I dismounted and told the kid to get down and he nearly fell getting off the horse because of his bad shoulder.

“Sit on that rock yonder,” I said, and he went over and sat on it because he looked like he was close to fainting.

I went over and shook the Cap'n, and at first he didn't move. I shook him again and he roused, but slowly, never even reaching for his pistol, which told me he was in bad shape. I've never seen him come awake without reaching for his pistol.

“Huh…what is it?” he muttered.

“You okay?” I said.

He looked around till he saw Billy sitting there on the rock. His eyes narrowed. I saw the lines around his mouth tighten. The boy looked up.

“You my granddad?” he said.

Cap'n nodded.

“Come here, boy,” he said.

“I can't.”

Cap'n looked at me.

“What's wrong with him,” he said. Then he saw the blood on the side of my shirt, dried now to a reddish brown.

“We had a problem,” I said. “He didn't want to come along. His shoulder's broke from a bullet.”

The Cap'n looked aggrieved.

“You been taking your medicine?” I said.

“Too much of it, it seems. I thought I had it in me to catch up with you. Didn't want to lay this whole thing on your back, Jim. Last I knew I was just driving along, and gawd almighty, I wake up and you're standing here. My head feels like it's stuffed full of cotton.”

“You don't look too well.”

“I don't feel too well, to be truthful with you. Had some real bad dreams.”

“What do you want to do here?” I said.

“You know what I've got to do,” he said.

The kid sat listening. You could tell he suspected something bad was about to happen, like a dog you're about to put down, or a horse when you approach it with your gun behind your back—they just know. The kid just knew.

“Listen,” I said. “I'm going to walk off up that road just a little and leave you to your business. Then I'll come back. That okay with you?”

He nodded.

I glanced at the kid one last time, then led my horse up the road where there was a bend in it that would take me out of sight of the Cap'n and his grandson. I didn't want to see it. I knew it would be a scene that would live with me all the rest of my days if I saw it.

I walked with an ache behind my eyes and wished I had a whole bottle of whiskey to drink myself into a stupor. Maybe it would help, maybe
it wouldn't. I got around the bend and stood there in the road waiting for the pistol shot that would kill the kid. I wish I didn't have ears to hear with, either.

Time seemed to stand still like the whole world was frozen in a moment. Then: BANG! A single shot. The sound quickly got swallowed by the vast desert as though it never happened. I turned around and walked back, expecting to see the last thing I wanted to see.

Only what I saw wasn't at all what I expected.

The Cap'n lay dead on the ground, his gun still in his hand, one side of his head blown out, his boots pointed skyward, the dust soaking up his blood. Billy sat there on the rock staring at him.

“What the hell happened?” I said.

Billy shook his head.

“He shot himself,” he said.

“Goddamn, I can see that, boy!”

“I thought he was going to shoot me,” Billy said, his whole body trembling now. “He said he was bound to kill me in order to save Sam. He said, ‘I hate to do this worse than anything, son…' Then he cocked his gun and I said, ‘Yes sir, I understand. You got to do what you got to do. Go on and do it.' He told me to look away, that he didn't want me to look at him. I told him I wasn't going to look away. Told him that I wasn't afraid of dying as much as I was to keep living.
Told him that I'd messed up my life pretty good, but if he by God was going to kill me, I wanted him to look me in the eyes when he done it.

“He said, ‘Yes sir, you surely have ruined your life. I just don't know why it was you went so bad so young. I guess if I'd been there for you, you would have turned out different than you have.' I told him it wouldn't have made no difference—that I'd probably have gone bad either way, that I thought I just had bad blood in me. He said, ‘Is that why you killed that woman and my friend Ira Hayes?' I told him I killed that lawman because he was going to kill me for trying to escape—that it wasn't something I wanted to do, that it was an accident.

“He said, ‘What about that woman, that just an accident too?' I said, ‘No sir. I never did kill no woman,' and explained it all to him. You know what he said when I told him that?”

I shook my head.

“He said, ‘I believe you, boy. I been around liars and cheaters and badmen all my born life and I know one when I see one. You might be a lot of things, but I don't think you're a liar.' I said, ‘Well, that's it then, go ahead and pull your trigger and get this over with.'”

I waited as the kid hesitated, blinking back whatever was in his eyes.

“Then he just said, ‘I'm all in, boy. I'm finished
as finished can be, and I'll be damned if I'm going out with such sin on my head. So long, boy,' and turned the gun on himself before I could try and stop him…”

Tears began to stain the kid's dirty cheeks, his resolve to be hard-bitten was broken at last, broken in a way no bullet or threat of death could break him.

“Thing is,” I said, kneeling by the Cap'n and taking the gun out of his hand, then gently closing his half-open eyelids. “He wouldn't have lasted another week. He was eat up with cancer. I guess he just couldn't do what he'd always done in the past.”

The kid rubbed the tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“What's that?” he said.

“His job,” I said.

“Where does it stand now,” he said, “between you and me?”

“If your granddaddy didn't kill you and bring your head in a basket to him, the General was going to shoot Sam, that was the deal,” I said.

“Then you best go on and do it. Sam's a good boy and never done nothing truly wrong other than what I talked him into doing. He don't know much better—he's just a kid. Hell, what difference does it make to me if I'm alive or if I'm dead.” He looked at his bum shoulder. “I'll never
be able to use this no more and I'd as soon be dead as be a cripple anyways.”

I stood away from the Cap'n's body. My old friend. I looked at the kid. I told myself I should just ride away from this, that maybe the younger boy was already dead, and even if I killed this boy and did what the General wanted, I'd just be wasting my time doing a dirty business I wouldn't ever be able to wash from my hands.

There was already too much good blood spilled as it was.