The Magic Wagon Page 11

  Shivering more from anger than the cold rain, Billy Bob stood up. He looked first at Albert, then Skinny, then me, and when he did I felt weak. There was pure murder in his eyes.

  He picked up his muddy hat and shook the mud off of it and put it on. He pointed a finger at Albert. When he spoke he sounded almost winded, but it was just plain mad, is what it was. "You make that monkey hand over my pistols now. You hear?"

  "You make him," Albert said.

  Billy Bob took a deep breath, cut Albert to pieces with a look, and went over to the cage. "You give me those," he said to Rot Toe, and he shot a hand out and grabbed at the one Rot Toe was holding.

  Rot Toe grabbed Billy Bob's wrist, jerked him forward until Billy Bob slammed against the bars. Using the pistol in his other hand, Rot Toe reached through the bars and slammed the butt against Billy Bob's noggin. It was such a hard lick it creased Billy Bob's hat to his skull and sent him dropping to his knees. Had Rot Toe not been holding him by the wrist he'd have fallen over. Rot Toe reached through the bars and whacked Billy Bob a couple more times with the pistol, and was just really starting to enjoy himself when Albert said, "Let him go, old man."

  Rot Toe looked at Albert. For a moment, I didn't think he was going to do it, but he let go. He waddled back to the center of the cage and sat down, huffed up like a kid that's had a toy taken from him.

  Albert went over and pulled the tarp down on the cage. He pulled Billy Bob up and pushed him back against it. He slapped Billy Bob on the face lightly a few times. One of Billy Bob's eyes opened, then the other. Albert let go and stepped back. Billy Bob managed not to fall down. He shook his head, took some long breaths, and staggered away from the cage toward the street. "You'll pay. All of you," he said. "You can't do this to the son of Wild Bill Hickok."

  He stepped into the street and squished across the mud and over into the woods. We heard him crashing around out there for a while, then Albert said, "Let's go inside," and we did.

  If my suit wasn't ruined, it was darn close. Except for Skinny, who was still high and dry, we were soaked to the bone. Albert and I took off our clothes and strung them on a line across the wagon, then we wrapped ourselves in blankets and sat on the stoop. I didn't feel so good. I had a slight fever and sniffles.

  When we were as warm as we could get, Albert said, "Little Buster, I think it's time I told you some things so you'll understand. I'd like you to just sit quiet until I'm finished."

  "When I was a boy, Little Buster, I was the son of an ex-slave during the worst time you can imagine, next to slave days themselves. It was called Reconstruction, and I know you've heard of it. We coloreds was supposed to be freemen that could work for our living, just like whites, but wasn't too many folks would hire us, not for any kind of work. Most of them had gotten used to getting it from us for free, and wasn't in the mood to start paying for it. Part of it was the Yankee government. They was telling folks they was supposed to hire us 'cause the Yankee president said so, and people didn't cotton to that much.

  "Lot of whites blamed us coloreds for-their misery, 'cause of the way the Yankees was pushing on them. And to tell it true, Little Buster, them Yankees hurt us all in the long run 'cause they turned their winning into such a mean thing.

  "Well now, I heard tell that the Army was hiring coloreds, and I heard too that they paid and you got to wear a pretty uniform. I heard they treated you near good as whites, and that some coloreds had even made sergeant, which was as far as they'd let a dark man go. Sounded like the life to me. I went out West and joined the Cavalry, was out there for years.

  "I'll tell you, Little Buster, the Army wasn't no paradise, fighting Indians and all. And we coloreds fought more Indians than damn near anybody, but you don't hear tell of that. Or if you do, you just hear it was the Army done it, and they don't mention it was a colored troop what was the ones doing all the shindigging.

  "Still, being a man in the Army was a whole sight better than being a nigger out of it, and sometimes I figure I should have stayed there. But I didn't. I quit and joined up with a fellow named Doc Madonna, and Madonna was a fine man. Didn't see no colors at all. He just saw a man. He made me a partner after a time, and we traveled the country selling medicine, not claiming it could do more than it could do, and we did some juggling and such. Wasn't bad at all.

  "But Doc died and the wagon was left to me. For a while I done what we'd been doing, but it just wasn't the same without him. I got tired of it and went back to East Texas, looked up my family.

  "When I got there I found that my daddy had died some time back, and wasn't long after my mama had taken up with a white man on account of she needed the money he paid her, and this white man gave her a child, and that child was thirteen when I come home. Her name was Jasmine. She was what you call a. high yeller. Pretty thing.

  "Well, I figure Mama done the best she could and all, having all them mouths to feed, so I didn't judge her none. And besides, that white man was long gone and all the kids except Jasmine had grown enough to go off on their own, get a little farm work and such, start their own poor families.

  "I got me some work fixing things here and there, working some in the blacksmith shop. Little farm work from time to time. Anything to turn a dollar.

  "Well now, to make a long story short, Little Buster, Mama died three years later, and Jasmine, she got in with this white boy and she got with child. That white boy got tired of her real quick-like, and he didn't come around no more. She didn't never tell me who he was, and it was a good thing, or maybe I'd have had to turn his head around on his shoulders some, and that wouldn't have done me or nobody no good.

  "This baby was born, and him being the son of a white man and a high yeller, he come out looking white as you. Only thing he had that was like the family was the little red star birthmark low on his back. Jasmine had it. I have it, though you can't see it as good on me 'cause of me being a colored. But on her and on this boy it showed up good.

  "Now there didn't seem a thing for her to do but to put this child on a white's doorstep. For Jasmine to have a white baby would have meant she and that child would have been treated worse than slaves, but she figured she could pass him for white and get him in with a good family and all, and he'd grow up having a chance. She picked this family, the Daniels, 'cause they had money and seemed like pretty good folks. She left the baby on the doorstep, and sure enough they took him in and they raised him white, as they didn't know that he wasn't.

  'This boy they named Billy Bob and he grew up not wanting a thing. He had coloreds at his feet cleaning the floors, dusting the house, and he never knowed he was one of them.

  "Jasmine got her a job working for the Daniels as a maid, and that way she got so she could keep an eye on him. And it didn't make her happy. He treated her and all the coloreds like dirt, 'cause the Daniels may have been good in their way, but they figured a nigger was just some kind of animal that you could teach to clean furniture, and wasn't good for much else, and Billy Bob, he was just like them.

  "There was this buggy accident, and the Daniels, the ones that had become Billy Bob's mama and daddy, was killed in it, and when that happened, the children started scrambling to get the inheritance. Billy Bob being just a took in child, and there not being no will, didn't end up with nothing but his name. They put him out of the house and on his own.

  "Jasmine should have just let it end there, let him go on and live as a white man, but I figure it was eating her inside, being his mama but not getting to tell him. And maybe she thought if he knowed he'd come from black folks well as white, he'd straighten some, not be so hateful toward coloreds, grow up to be a better man.

  "Well, she told him. Proved it with that red star on her back, and he went darn-near crazy, knocked her down and run off. Jasmine come and got me and I went to get him, had about half a mind to beat him to death, but I found him drunk in a ditch and took him home to Jasmine.

  "He wasn't no count even sober, and took to cussing his mama, saying it wasn't so,
that he wasn't no nigger, and I don't have to tell you how bad it distressed her, Little Buster. But he was still her boy and she loved him. I reckon I felt for him too. He was my nephew and he didn't ask to be part white and part colored, but I couldn't help but think that boy just had him a bad streak, and knowing what he knew now was just making it wider, "He didn't go into town no more, he was so ashamed, though there wasn't nobody knowed the truth but him and us. Still, it gnawed at him. He'd eat at the house, cut a little firewood, but most of the time he just stayed wandered off in the woods.

  "Wasn't long before Jasmine took the chest cold bad, and I think some of the reason she was so sick was worry over that boy. Well, she up and died. But before she did, she made me promise I'd take care of that boy, see to it that he got some kind of trade and such. He could already read, write, and cipher, so she thought if I could just get him on the right road, he'd grow up and be a good boy. Mama talk, you know?

  "I buried her the same day I made the promise, 'cause she didn't last long after I'd give her my word, and Billy Bob, he didn't even come watch the burying. He couldn't get out of his head that she was the same woman who'd cleaned his messes in the. Daniels house, and a part of him—the biggest part—seen her as nothing more than a nigger.

  "Like I said, he was my nephew and I made a promise to Jasmine, and I guess I figured there had to be some good in him, being partly of her blood, so I took to caring for him.

  "That old wagon I'd gotten from Doe Madonna was parked out back of my shack, which was a thing I'd throwed up next to Jasmine's place, and it come to me I could teach Billy Bob the medicine show business, as it was the only thing I really knowed about. Sort of let him run the show, you see. Him looking full white could make it a whole sight easier than me doing it by myself and being a colored.

  "That must have been where I messed up. Or maybe it just added to things. But him becoming boss and playing like he was full white just made him more that way in his head. Wasn't long before I'd have to come down on him hard when he got to playing it all too well.

  "Still, it wasn't bad for a time. Then he took to reading them dime novels, thinking about them gunfighters and how they was all so handsome-looking and brave—and white—and he was just looking for some reason not to accept being of colored blood, so he'd go off in these dream worlds, and wasn't long before he was pretty much believing them.

  "He took up the gun too. Started learning to trick shoot.

  And it was like he was born to it. The better he got with that gun, worse things between us got. Then you came along and the secret had to be hidden all the harder. Then we got that body in the box, and that stuff he'd been saying about being the son of Wild Bill Hickok really went to his head. Well, you know that part. And there's that curse, and this town . . . and I'll tell you, Little Buster, I haven't done so good by the promise I made Jasmine. So you can see why I can't just go off and leave him. He's family. He's blood."

  I sat there when Albert was finished, kind of dazed. Like someone had bent 'a fire iron over my turnip.

  "But . . . what can you do, Albert? You've done all there is to do. He ain't worth it. "

  "I still got to try, Little Buster. You see now why I got to. A deathbed promise is a sacred thing."

  We didn't say much else. Just found places to lie down. And though I wasn't in the mood for sleep, I was tuckered, and that fever of mine had gotten worse.

  The fever sent me down in a deep well of sleep, and down there were the waters of a dream. It was the one I'd had before, the one about Mama in the house, flying away to Oz, her red hair flapping like flames. I hadn't had it in some time. The fever I guess. That and the storm blowing, building outside the wagon until it shook and the roof rattled with rain like a dozen men with hammers beating it with all their might, fast as they could go.

  So I was deep into this dream when there came a sound that wasn't part of it. Not thunder or lightning. Just a sharp crack, and it took me a long, deep moment before I realized it was a gunshot.

  I got up. I was dizzy and as hot as if had been bedded in coals. I turned the lantern up, seen that Albert was gone, and Skinny was stirring.

  Pulling on my wet pants, I went outside. Albert, wearing nothing but a blanket, was standing by Rot Toe's cage. The tarp was off the cage and the door was open. It looked to have been pried with a bar. Rot Toe was gone and so were the pistols. When I got over close, I seen there was a puddle of blood on the bottom of the cage, mixing with the wooden floor and the rain.

  "Billy Bob?" I asked.

  "Had to be," Albert said. "I should never have left them pistols in there. Should have known Billy Bob would come for them. Come on, Little Buster, Rot Toe's hurt. We got to find him."

  We got dressed in our wet clothes, and Skinny came with us. We looked high and low for sign, but the rain had washed most of it away. We did find a few cracked limbs across the way, a tuft of Rot Toe's hair on a limb, but when we got in the woods and started looking, we didn't see another sign of him.

  Those woods were giving me the shakes, and I don't mind telling you. It was like this whole little section of the world, the woods, this damned town, had been given over to the devil as some kind of playground.

  Finally we had to give it up, go on back to the wagon. When we got there, we found the back door open and flapping in the wind. And Wild Bill Hickok and his box were gone.

  "We was suckered," Albert said. "Suckered to the bone."

  About that time, our thoughts were taken from what had happened by cussing. This wasn't your plain old cussing, this was the stuff of a real professional. A fella that had had some practice at it and knew it wasn't just a matter of words but a way of life.

  It had just gone light, so we got a good look at what was coming, and it was a sight. Down that muddy street there came a team of six mules. They were pulling a long, flat sled, which looked to have been thrown together in a hurry, and standing at the front of it was a tall, skinny fella with a washed-down hat and a face so thickly overgrown with hair, it looked like a badger's butt. He was cussing now and then to keep rhythm, but the real cussing, the good stuff, was coming from another man.

  There was a horseless carriage on the sled, and sitting on the seat, the rain beating down on him, was an old fella with white hair sticking out from under his hat, and a white mustache that darn near covered his whole mouth. He had his arms crossed, was looking straight ahead, and he was cussing every breath, letting it roll out like a poem. Though, unlike a poem, it wasn't embarrassing and didn't make you want to look the other way.

  The horseless carriage's wheels and underbottom were all caked with mud, and I figured it had gotten stuck bad and he'd had to get this fella with the mules and the sled to haul him out, and he wasn't happy about it.

  Far as I was concerned, he got what was coming to him there. Those fangled noisemakers weren't never going to catch on. They couldn't travel the country the way a horse could, and you couldn't grow feed for them. They were ugly too.

  They cussed on down the street, and we watched after them. When they got past the saloon, I lost interest and turned away. But Albert didn't.

  "Uh oh," he said.

  I turned to look again. A crowd was coming out of the saloon, Billy Bob in the lead. They were walking toward the sled. The sled had stopped and the man sitting in the horseless carriage got down and stepped into the street. He turned toward the crowd, to figure what was going on, and when he did, the sun winked off of his badge and I knew who he was.

  We started running.

  When we got close I heard Billy Bob yell, "You won't take me alive, sheriff"

  And the sheriff said, "What's that?"

  "Draw if you got the guts," Billy Bob said.

  "What's that?" the sheriff said again.

  And Billy Bob pulled both of his revolvers and shot him.

  When he did, the fella who owned the mules, thinking that it might be open season, jumped off the sled on the other side and went facedown in the mud.

&
nbsp; The sheriff took a careful step forward, and sat down, his butt coming to rest on the edge of the sled.

  Billy Bob turned and watched Albert and me come up. He smiled.

  I went over to the sheriff and bent down beside him. His face was as white as a china plate. He looked at me.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "We wanted to stop him."

  "What's that?" he said.

  "I'm sorry."

  "Can't hear so good," the sheriff said. He looked back at Billy Bob, who was still smiling, pushing his pistols into their sash.

  "Who in tarnation was that?" the sheriff said. "And what in hell have I done to him?"

  "It don't take a thing," I said.

  The sheriff's head rolled, his hat fell off, and he sagged against me. I put his hat back on, pulled him onto the sled.

  When I had him laid out, I seen that he'd been hit twice in the chest, about a hand's span apart. It looked as if his shirt were decorated with two big, wet buttons, and they were still growing.

  I turned to Billy Bob. "He didn't hear a word you said. He was darn near deaf."

  "That ain't so," Riley offered, helpfullike, pushing up to the front of the crowd. "Homer, he had a built-in instink for them things. He knew Billy Bob was going to draw, he just wasn't fast enough to match him. "

  "He didn't even know what it was all about," I said.

  "Just saved me having to explain about Jack before I shot him," Billy Bob said, and he got his laugh from the crowd. And some crowd it was. Those folks were right flexible. If Homer had drawn on and beat Billy Bob, they'd have been standing next to him, patting him on the back, telling him what a great sheriff and gunfighter he was. They were nothing more than a kind of vulture, feeding themselves off the pride of whoever was riding high at the time.

  Billy Bob's head floated to his left and his eyes narrowed. When I looked, I seen he was staring at Skinny. I'd forgotten about him. He'd followed along behind Albert and me like a puppy, anxious to see what was going on Way he was smiling, you figured he thought this whole mess had been put together for his amusement.