Chapter One
The day I walked out of court, I didn’t have anything more in mind than getting the hell away from Bastrop County, and quick. One minute the jury was acquitting me of Willie Griffin’s murder, the next I was hot-footing out of there.
Well, there was a little more to it than that. For one thing, I was still limping from the thigh wound Tom Bishop gave me with his pearl-handled Colt’s. I had other, healed-up bullet holes in me, from Mr. Milton’s over-and-under, that pained me in wet weather. But the wrench in my gait kept me mad. I was too damned young to be walking like an old man already—twenty on the last day of May just past. One other problem—I was about to leave my little brother in that shit-hole of a jail.
Our lawyer didn’t hold out much hope for getting Shot off his charges of robbery and assault. But at least it wasn’t murder he was facing like I had been. He’d got caught, though, and landed in jail coming to bust me out, and that was what hurt me about having to leave him there. I knew, though, that he could take care of hisself. He was plucky, buck-strong, and he didn’t have any murder charges pending against him. That was the main thing.
Now the story might have come different if Shot had been out there on the streets of McDade with us the day Mr. Milton and Tom Bishop killed our older brothers, Az and Jack. Shot might have been facing murder for killing Willie Griffin just like I had been, like Bob and Charlie, our pals, had been. They couldn’t prove against us was all. There had been too much shooting to say rightly whose bullet was the one to take Griffin out of the fight. Willie was our friend, though, and if I shot him, I sure didn’t mean to.
Course, if my little brother had been out there on the street that day, it’s for pure certain the outcome would’ve been different because he’s a crack shot. Always has been. I remember him shooting a hawk out of the sky with one round from Pa’s old cap and ball when we weren’t but six and seven, if that. Pa whaled both our butts bloody for taking his pistol without asking but Shot got his go-by name after that. His real one’s Marion Simon, after our ma’s side of the family, but Shot just seemed a more natural, rightful thing to call him. And I believe if he’d been there at McDade last Christmas Day, Tom Bishop and Mr. Milton would not have come away alive.
So that’s what all troubled me as I left the courthouse. I felt bad for deserting Shot since he’d been coming to my rescue when he got hisself arrested. But I was also still just a mite ticked off at him not going into town with us last Christmas Day. Anyhow, I sure wasn’t planning to stick around long enough to attend his trial. There was plenty of folks who still thought me guilty as a skunk with hydrophoby to maybe get up a lynching party if their mood struck ugly. It was the feeling bad part festering in me, though, that made me duck back in that jailhouse long enough to say goodbye to my brother. He was, after all, the only brother I had left.
But Shot, he didn’t have it in his mind to let me make it a quick adios. I was standing there beside the bars, bare-headed, in the same ragged clothes I’d worn since they’d caught me last December—just washed up enough so’s I could stand trial in them. And I raised up my hand at him, told him about the acquittal, and said I’d read about him in the newspapers.
I had already turned around to walk back into the outside sunshine, when he said, “So? Tell me where you’re going. I’ll meet up with you when I get out.”
I answered, “West,” and kept inching towards the doors. I didn’t really have nothing planned good yet. Just getting out of town.
He said—and now this was with the jailer and the other prisoners and everybody else standing there listening—he said, “Take Lily with you. Take care of her for me, Woody.” And well, dammit, I almost reached back and knocked him to the ground for asking that of me like that. For one thing, Woody was Jack’s name for me, and it sort of shook me hearing it come all the sudden out of Shot. And for another, he should of known I didn’t have time to put up with toting around no little girl, especially not a pregnant little, girl.
“I’ll fetch her if Wash Jones don’t bring you clear,” I said to him, pretending he had a chance in hell in court.
He shook his head at me. “She ain’t got no place to go till then. And anyway, Wash says it don’t look too promising for me.” He gave me one of those sad-dog looks he could put on so good. “She ain’t got nobody, Woody. Take her with you. You owe me that much.”
“Goddammit,” I said, stepping right up close to the bars, and his face. “What the hell’re you asking me for?”
“Who else is there? I already wrote to Aunt Violet, and she says they’re too crowded. Her brother’s sick and she’s got his whole family there. I can’t think of no place else.” His features turned ornery. “Anyway. You owe me. You wouldn’t be carrying that leg if I hadn’t picked that lead outta you. And you’d more likely be dead.” He stuck his arm out through the bars and pointed his finger at me. “You know it’s the truth. You owe me, Woody. You take her with you.”
He was right, of course. I owed him my life and I knew it. So, I said I’d take her, and we gripped our hands together, but I never gave him my word on it. Still, when I stepped out of that jailhouse into the sunshine again, I turned towards the boardinghouse down Elm Street where I knew Lily was working, and I trod that way, cussing her, cussing Shot, and cussing myself the worst.
She’d forsook her family and upbringing for Shot. She’d even made a half-hearted attempt, back last January, to sneak us a pistol so he could pull it on the guards and break us out of that stink-hole. Sharp as Shot was about most things, he was plumb ignorant when it came to that little, big-eyed girl, though. He wouldn’t take her gun, said it would just get us deeper in trouble, and he wanted to live to someday watch their baby-child grow up. Appeared to me like he’d lost a few screws and I told him so, seeing as how at the time it looked like I’d be the one to swing for Willie Griffin’s murder. Bob Stevens and Charlie Goodman had already skinned out on acquittals by then, and that pocket pistol of Lily’s looked like my only hope.
“You’d understand,” Shot told me, after he’d sent her away that day, “if you ever once fell in love.”
And so that was all the stuff I was reflecting on and puzzling over as I walked out of that cold place. And all I had wanted to do was get the hell out of Bastrop. But I reckoned if I owed Shot my life, why, I owed his girl just as much.
See, she had been there on the street in McDade that day, and it was her that plucked me bleeding from that ditch and rode me out to Jack’s house, where Shot was waiting with his penknife and a bowl of cobweb poultice to doctor me with. Not only that, but Wash Jones had called her as a witness for my defense, and it was her testimony that cast the first doubt that I’d been the one to shoot Willie down. So, I limped on over the six blocks to Elm Street, turned left, and found the boardinghouse setting neat off the road underneath a spread of broad pine trees.
Lily was in the kitchen cooking supper for the people staying at the place, using her apron to lift a hot oven of beef bits and taters off the stove. When I came in the back door, she saw me, jumped, and I thought was about to dump that stewpot all over the floor. Her belly pooched out underneath her apron, and it was my niece or nephew, after all, curled up inside there, so I slid over a bench real quick for her to set the pot on. It seemed like the least thing I could do.
She said, “You scared me half to death. You’re out?”
I nodded and looked down into that pot of hash. The smell was steaming up at me, making spit come in my mouth.
“You hungry?” she said, noticing what direction my eyes were aimed. “I could skim you off some if you want.”
I stuck my hands in the pockets of my britches and shifted from foot to foot. My leg was giving me misery after walking the mile to get there. And too, I’d been in jail about half a year by then and wasn’t yet used to my freedom. I said to her, “Shot says for you to come along with me.”
She was getting down a plate from a crate cupboard, a saucer really, and she piled a spoonful of the hash onto it. “Where you going?” She handed me the plate and a spoon.
1 shrugged. “I dunno. Some place.”
I gobbled up the food, and I don’t expect I was much mannerly about it. Shot had told me she was a fine cook, and he hadn’t lied about that. I started thinking she might not be so bad to have along, at least till I’d purged myself of the poor jail chow I’d been forced to eat for the last six months.
“San Antone maybe,” I said, around a mouthful of food.
“San Antone? That’s pretty far away. I can’t go that far away. Marion’s trial’s coming up pretty soon.”
She wrung her hands in her apron and looked unsettled for a second. Then, like her mind kicked back in gear, she flung open the firebox on the stove and reached in with her apron for a pan of toasty biscuits. I helped her with that too, and she gave me one to sop my gravy.
“You don’t have to go,” I said, stuffing the biscuit whole into my mouth. “It don’t make no difference to me.”
She gave me a look like she didn’t quite catch that last part, which she probably didn’t with me blowing biscuit crumbs through my teeth. Then the door from the kitchen to the house opened, and a tall lady with a bunch of keys pinned to her waist peered in at us.
“That food almost ready?” the woman said, and then she spied me eating. Her shoulders straightened stiff. I tried to hide the saucer behind my back, to stop my mouth from chewing. I stood there sucking at the wad of biscuit.
“Yes ma’am, I’m nearly done,” Lily said, acting nervous about the woman.
“Lily? Who is this vagrant?” the woman said, harsh-like, staring mean at me.
“Don’t mind him, Miz Dillard.” Lily waved a floury hand towards me. “He’s just my brother-in-law.”
The woman frowned harder at me, and to Lily said, “We charge for board. He’ll have to pay. And if I catch you feeding people for free, kin or not, I’ll have to let you go. You understand?”
“Yes’um,” Lily said, and she seemed to have shrunk up about six inches, which she could ill afford. She wasn’t really even full-grown yet—only a month or two past her sixteenth birthday—and so stubby she’d have made a good armrest.
The landlady went back into the house, and I recommenced with my all-out chewing. Lily was picking up biscuits and putting them in a big, cloth-wrapped bowl.
“Good food,” I said, feeling I owed her something since I’d got her in trouble. I was still hearing what she had just called me—her brother-in-law. It made me feel funny thinking about it like that. It was true, of course. Shot had sure enough married her over in Austin just after Christmas. So that made her kin, all right. Made me her brother-in-law. And thinking that, I realized she was just about the only kinfolk I had that wasn’t locked up or pushing up daisies. At least any place close around.
“You have money?” she said, concentrating on the biscuits.
“Nope.” I licked my fingers and set the saucer in the dishpan. “The pay ain’t too good where I’ve been.”
“How’re you gonna get to San Antone?” She raised her eyes at me.
“I was hoping you had some I could borrow,” I said. I sluiced off my hands in the dishwater, then had to wipe them dry on my shirt, since there wasn’t any dishtowels around, save the one underneath all the biscuits.
Lily just kept watching me. Seemed to me her face was all eyeball, like she was part possum or hoot owl. Made me feel itchy having them glued on me so straight.
“You gonna get a job when you get there?” she said.
“I reckon.”
“You ain’t made plans?”
“Nothing past getting there.”
I dabbed the back of my hand against my mouth. During all those months in jail, I’d grown a sort of mustache, and I found a few crumbs clinging to it. I brushed them onto the floor, then thought maybe I shouldn’t have done that. I tried to grind them in with my foot, but Lily didn’t seem to notice. She flopped the cloth ends up over the pile of biscuits in the bowl.
She said, “What about your papa’s farm?”
“It’s foreclosed.”
“No, it ain’t. I went and paid the taxes.”
“Did Shot tell you to do that?”
“I didn’t ask him. I figured he had worries enough.”
I shook my head. “I ain’t going nowhere near McDade. You go on ahead.”
“I ain’t going back there, either.” She stopped fiddling with the bowl of biscuits and leaned on the table like she was either tired or thinking hard. “Marion mentioned once about leasing it out.”
“To who?” I almost laughed. “Ain’t nobody around there gonna deal with me in business.”
“You’ve got a lawyer, don’t you? It’s a way to get some money. Maybe he’d lease it out to somebody, give you whatever he gets. Marion thought there was a way to do it. Then after his trial, we could meet you over at San Antone.”
“We?” I stared at her and the smile slid out of my mouth. “Ain’t gonna be no we. They got him cold on this. Got folks to testify they seen Shot shoot them men in Austin. Got witnesses say they seen him come outta Billingsley’s store with that strongbox from the safe. They got him guilty. The only question is how long they’re gonna give him for it.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so blunt about it. Thinking back, I see now it was a mistake. But for one thing, I wasn’t much used to speaking to a female, and for another, it just didn’t seem healthy for her to keep fooling herself. She’d been hanging around Bastrop since February, and it was June already. She’d been going over to see Shot every day they’d let her, telling him this and that about how things were going to be once he got passed the trial, like they were about to be back together full-time again. And Shot just let her go on thinking like that, because I guess he felt too soft about her to just say flat-out, “I’m gonna be at Huntsville for a while, hon, and then we can do all this stuff you got planned.”
Anyhow, I just blurted it out for him, right there in the kitchen and she like to have collapsed before I caught her. Tears were brimming out of her like rain, and I was sorry I’d opened my mouth. I wasn’t much for comforting a person, and I didn’t do too good then, either. Oh, I held her all right—by both shoulders and at arm’s length, just kind of amazed and puzzled by how she was churning up all that water.
Mrs. Dillard came in again and she saw Lily bawling and me holding her out like the Thursday newspaper. The woman shook her head and got real mean-looking. She said, “Goodness sakes. Are you still here?” to me and I didn’t know what else to do. I said, “Your supper’s all cooked. And now me and Lily’s got to go. Could you give her her wages now so’s we can get along?”
Lily’s head started shaking and she clutched at my sleeves. She babbled something, some kind of protest that I couldn’t understand for all her sputtering. But I wasn’t giving her any choices now. I steered her towards the back door, and she went on outside. Then I turned and looked at Mrs. Dillard’s narrowing eyes. I pushed my hands down in my pockets and waited for her to come across with Lily’s pay.
“I know now,” she said to me, pointing. “You’re Haywood Beatty, aren’t you?”
“Yes ma’am. That sure as hell is my name.”
“I heard they were about to let you out but I didn’t believe it.”
“Acquitted me. I was acquitted fair and square. You got Lily’s pay now?”
She gave me one more mean look and I gave her one right back. And then she went to the crate cupboard, reached up in there for a fancy tin can, and prized the lid off.
There was a lot of cash money inside there, and I had to keep my mind turned away from the sight. Not too many months ago, I might have been tempted to snatch that money can right out of her stingy hands and light out on the run. Or else I might have made a note of the exact spot on the cupboard where she put it and come back some dark-moon night. But six months’ worth of smelling the stench of sun-starved bodies, and of sweating the gallows rope, had sort of tamed me down.
She said, “If I’d had any idea there was a murdering scoundrel in my house, why I would’ve called for the sheriff to come put you back where you belong.”
I pasted on a smile that hurt my cheeks, chomped down on my tongue to keep from spouting off, and held my palm out for the six dollars that ugly woman counted into my hand. It would’ve served her right if I had bashed her down and stole her tin can.
“Thank you kindly,” I said and reached to tip my hat before I remembered I didn’t own one no more. It had got left somewhere on the street in McDade, along with the blood and souls of my brothers Jack and Azberry.
Lily was outside, sitting on a pine stump in the yard, eyes dried up and waiting for me. She had a little gripsack laying at her feet. “How much did she give you?” she said, rising as I came up.
I looked and saw the door standing open to a little lean-to room off the carriage shed where I reckoned she must have been sleeping all these past months.
I opened up my hand. “Six bucks.”
“She owed me eight.”
I started to turn around and go back for the extra two dollars. We’d be needing all we could rake up. But Lily grabbed ahold of my elbow, and it stuck me I hadn’t had so many girl touches in all my life. It felt kind of funny having a sister.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Just let it be. Miz Dillard’s been a trial to me. And anyway, I’ve got one-sixty in here.” She patted her clothes bundle and I nodded.
We started walking around towards the back road, and I got to say, I was glad she picked that route. I wasn’t too anxious to be showing my face. Even if this wasn’t McDade, trials were big news in those parts, and all five days of testimony, the courthouse had been jam-packed. I figured if the biddy Dillard had recognized me, she wouldn’t be the only one to. I felt more comfortable sort of easing into it, going around down through the outhouse alleys and by the horse lots.
“Still,” I said, having to slow down my pace for Lily. Even with me crippled she wasn’t keeping up. “Two dollars is two dollars. With your one-sixty, we’re still coming out forty cents in the hole on this deal.”
She glanced sidewise at me, kind of dipping her head. Then she laughed, and it was plumb mirthful sounding. I had never in my life seen anybody go from one mood to the other so fast. She had to stop walking, she got such a kick out of whatever had set her off.
I wiped at my lip, thinking maybe I still had some hash gravy stuck in my mustache. She kept on laughing. “What?” I said, getting kind of touchy about it.
“I said one-sixty, and you thought—” She busted up again, and it took a second for her to get ahold of herself enough to speak. “I meant one hundred and sixty, Haywood. Not one dollar sixty.”
“Oh,” I said, still not liking that I was the butt of some joke.
Then it dawned on me what she was saying. I looked at her, and a smile started on my face. It got even bigger when I noticed where she was leading me and what we found when we got there. Mollie, Shot’s pretty paint mare, standing in a box stall just inside the boardinghouse stables.
