The Thicket Page 6

  “You’re going to sell a borrowed horse?” I asked.

  “Well,” Shorty said. “I believe we will. Yes.”

  “My shotgun here?” Eustace asked.

  “Did you leave it here?” Shorty asked.

  “You know I did.”

  “Then it is still here, Eustace. Did you think perhaps it had taken legs of its own and gone a-gallivanting?”

  “I reckon not, but I thought you could have swapped or sold it.”

  “You know why I keep it here,” Shorty said. “I would not sell or swap it, and you know that.”

  Eustace nodded. “Times got hard, I would.”

  “It is in the back room, if you have a mind to take it. It is back there along with your bag of shot and some of the makings for more, if you believe you will need it.”

  “I’m hoping that’s enough,” Eustace said. “If I can get them fellas to covey together, I can bring down a whole mess of them firing but one barrel.”

  We had coffee and some cold cornbread that was in the bread box, and then Eustace went to the back and to bed, making a pallet on the floor with some of Shorty’s blankets. That left the bed for Shorty. Shorty gave me a blanket, and that left the floor in the smaller front room for me and Hog.

  I was still not certain about Shorty as a manhunter. I began to suspect I might be in for a switch-around, these two killing me for my land papers, though I doubted they would be able to pass my signature. However, it wouldn’t take much in the way of torture to get me to sign it repeatedly and sing a little song as I did. I had no false ideas about how tough I was. I only wanted to find my sister and get even with those villains who had killed my grandpa. For me, them paying their dues in prison was enough of a debt.

  I folded up the land papers, put them back in my pocket, and slept on the floor of the main room, under the dwarf’s low table, on a blanket that smelled like dried sweat. During the night Hog crawled up with me, and I had his foul breath to deal with, which was a little like wrestling the ghost of a billy goat, prone as they were to stick their heads between their legs and piss on their beards. I tried to say my prayers, but they felt hollow, unlike when I was at home and my family was in the house with me and everything was in order. Prayers seemed fine then, but right now I felt empty. I asked the Lord to forgive my lapse of conviction, and figured that under the circumstances he would. I tried to get some rest, but I didn’t sleep much, just a nod here and there that made me feel worse than trying to stay awake.

  Finally I got up and lit a lamp, wandered around the room, and looked at the books Shorty had. There were all manner, but a large batch of them were travel books, including some by Mark Twain, one of which, The Innocents Abroad, I had read myself. I looked through some more books, found that many of them had marked maps and marked passages, sentences underlined with a fountain pen. They were mostly about exotic places, many of which I had never heard of. I read a little of this and that, but under the circumstances none of it could hold my interest. I put out the lamp, left Hog snoring, crept outside, and got some air, which was rich and sticky, like a sweaty horse shank, full of the sounds of cicadas and crickets and more than a few bleating frogs.

  While I was standing there in the night, I glanced up at the hill and saw Shorty was back up there looking through the telescope. I thought he was in the back room asleep, and even though I had been mostly awake I hadn’t heard him walk by and leave the house. The air was full of fireflies, and they flittered about him like fairies, kind of made a halo above him with their little yellow lights.

  I strolled up on his lookout, but went wide and tried to come up behind him. I’m not sure why I did that, but I did. When I finally got up the hill, being stealthy as I went, and was right on him, he said, “You walk like a goddamn buffalo. If I had time, we would work on that.”

  “I thought I was pretty quiet,” I said, coming on ahead until I stood beside him. He hadn’t removed his eye from the telescope.

  “For a buffalo you are most delicate,” he said.

  “Do you really plan to help me?” I said. “I am dead serious, you know.”

  “I do, but I think you are asking another question. Do you doubt me because I am small? That was your earliest indication, something you said when we first met.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Right now, I don’t know how I feel about a lot of things. I’m sort of worked over, to tell the truth, and I got a sunburn on the back of my neck on top of it all. And yeah, perhaps I am worried that you being a midget could make it a difficult task. There you have it. You asked, and there you have it.”

  “It is better when people are straightforward about what they think of me. It is the lying and the dodging and the shifty-eyed looks that annoy me. I came to a comfortable conclusion with myself some time ago. Well, should say I have come to a more comfortable conclusion. I will not say it is complete and something I can nestle down into like a feather pillow, but I have made my bed a lot better to lie in than it once was by learning to accept what I cannot change. Mostly I think my size is other people’s problem, not mine, though an easier way for me to get on a horse could be devised. So you have your doubts about me. Any other questions?”

  “Can Eustace actually track them?”

  “He can. And he is better than I let on, but you cannot let Eustace think too much of himself, because he becomes too confident, and, oddly, that leads to the bottle, and he cannot handle the bottle. Boredom is not good for him, either. He gets crazy when he has drink. That’s why I keep his shotgun here. It is why he is best without too much money on hand, and why he often leaves part of his money with me. None of which I have now. A coin for him is like a snake in the pocket. He cannot wait to rid himself of it, where I, on the other hand, am tight with a nickel.”

  “You keep his gun so he won’t sell it for liquor?”

  “So he will not shoot anyone and everything in sight. His skin color affords a large number of angry opportunities, and Eustace does not cotton well to someone treating him poorly because of it. He has his color, and I have my size, and that is our connection. We both wear albatrosses. But if you are wondering if we can do the job, I assure you we can, though in the end I do not promise it will not become messy. Messy is the nature of the business, child.”

  “I am sixteen,” I said.

  “Good for you,” he said. “May you make seventeen.”

  He said all this without so much as removing his eye from the telescope. Then he did, and said, “Like to take a look? Just put your eye to it, and leave your hands away from it so as not to destroy my setting. I have it lined up just right.”

  I went over and took a look. What I saw was a lot of moon. There were shadows on the moon. I said, “What are the shadows?”

  “Craters. Mountains, perhaps. I read a story in a magazine of recent, or recent to me. A man in Hinge Gate, at the general store, used to save magazines for me that did not sell. He gave them to me. In that one story I read, a man goes to Mars by just holding out his arms and wishing he were there. He went, and he saw a strange world with strange beings and monsters. I really enjoyed that story, and standing here one night, with Mars, not the moon, in my scope, I considered doing the same. Then it occurred to me, what if it worked and I went? It would be worse than here, all those monsters he wrote about, and me out there on Mars, and it being dry and no trees. I liked reading it, but decided I would not like living it after all, having enough problems without compounding them with Martians. Besides, I have long ago given up on wishes. Perhaps there is something out there on those worlds. Something like us, or something better. I dream sometimes of a world not where I am the height of others but where everyone is my height. But that is a dream, not a wish. I know better. Wishes do not come true, and there is no such thing as true love and a happy hunting ground when we cash in our chips.”

  “I don’t know. I believe that,” I said, standing back from the telescope. “About true love, anyway. I think it exists, and there’s someone for ev
eryone, and you just got to wait till they come along.”

  “That so?”

  “My folks were much in love.”

  “Were?”

  “They died.”

  “How did they die?”

  “There was an illness, and it got them both,” I said, being careful not to describe their death too clearly, for fear Shorty might think I was carrying smallpox around with me, ready to cough it on him. “That’s why Lula and I were with our grandpa, heading toward Kansas.”

  “And he left you all that farmland to sell?”

  “He did. He didn’t plan on coming back home.”

  “He was correct in that assumption.”

  “I guess he was,” I said.

  “Your folks got along, but that does not determine in my mind true love, or love at first sight, or someone waiting in the wings for you. Here I am, high in my forty years, and I have yet to find a woman with long legs who is ready to let a dwarf nestle between them on a regular basis unless she is paid for the service. So true love? I do not think so. There can be a getting used to, I believe, and some might call that love, but I do not believe in love at first sight, or the ordained love that I have read of in books. You might make something called love between the two of you, like creating a stew, but I do not accept that love is lying in wait for you, except in your mind. Lust at first sight, or availability that might become love, but nothing ordained.”

  “Seems like a sad way to be,” I said. “Just figuring everything is by accident, or of your own making, and there is no divine plan.”

  “That is what you call it? A divine plan?” Shorty shook his head. “As for it being sad, well, that is the nature of man, I believe. As for sad about there not being true love and not thinking it is all preordained, quite the contrary. It avoids a lot of disappointment and false expectations.”

  “I believe God has plans for all of us,” I said.

  “Set plans?”

  “Yes.”

  “Predestination?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the tornado coming along and sinking the ferry, your grandfather shot and killed, your sister nabbed and taken away, and you nearly drowned are all part of his plan?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Then why worry about your sister? If it is part of his plan, then it does not matter how much you worry or concern yourself, because it is all going to come out a certain way anyway.”

  “Grandpa was not a worrier,” I said. “I am. He trusted in God. He trusted in his plan.”

  “And God pulled a good one on him, did he not?”

  “There is a reason.”

  “Unknown to us, of course.”

  “Someday, perhaps, in heaven.”

  “If you are in town, and there are horses running down the streets, coming from both directions, fast, do you look both ways before you cross the street?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you do not have the faith you claim,” he said. “If it is all preordained, then you will be hit or not hit by those horses no matter which direction you glance, because it is all laid out.”

  “It is common sense,” I said.

  “Not if you believe as you do.”

  This was making my head hurt, and it reminded me of the sort of confusing questions Lula asked. I decided to abandon the talk by going silent.

  Shorty put his eye back to the telescope. “Do you know how I became interested in the stars and the moon and the planets?”

  I didn’t really care, but since I was looking for his help, I decided to at least feign a bit of interest. “No,” I said. “How?”

  He turned from the scope and looked at me.

  “A book by a man named Lowell. He wrote about Mars, about the canals he thinks are there, and if you look through the telescope—though the one I have is not truly sufficient to the task—you can certainly understand why he might think such a thing. Then the story I read that I mentioned, admittedly fiction, expounded on that, and excited my imagination. I had to save quite a bit from my dealings here and there to afford to send off for this telescope.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  “I believe so. Yes.”

  While we were having this talk, all I could really think about was my sis out there in the wilds with those horrible men, one of them the murderer of our grandfather, and all of them bank robbers and killers and no telling what all. I kept wanting to bring that up, but I knew it was no use. We were not leaving tonight. I knew, too, from a reason standpoint, Shorty and Eustace most likely knew what they were talking about as far as catching sight of any sign.

  “You are wishing none of what has happened to you had happened,” said Shorty. “And you are wishing that your sister will escape, and that she and you will meet up and things will be as they were. Well, she might escape. It could happen, but through no wish of your own—through luck and circumstance, perhaps good planning on her part, initiative taken. Is she a good planner, a good thinker?”

  “Not really, no,” I said.

  “There you have it. What you have to harden yourself to is us finding her and getting her back, and knowing things will not be as they were but as you make them. And we may not get her back. Though I can guarantee within reason we will find her if she is alive, and possibly if she is dead, and we will find them as well and take care of your business and seal our agreement. But once again, things may not be so happy when it is all over.”

  “I understand that,” I said.

  “Maybe you do, but youth can confuse you. Let me tell you a little something about why I do not believe in wishes. I was born to a man who named me Reginald Jones. I thought for a long time I would grow to be a normal height and be a son he could treasure. But I did not grow to a normal height. He called me his goddamn midget. My mother loved me and called me Reggie. She died when I was nine. My father put me to work at that age, and I do mean work. He was a harsh man. When I was ten he rented me out like a mule to a cotton farmer. On the way to work one morning, riding a paint pony called Old Charlie, I fell off and burst my eardrum. It was a terrific fall. I could hardly stand upright, and all the world seemed to tilt. I rode home, my ears bleeding. My father took a quirt and whipped me with it until I bled so bad the blood came through the back of my shirt. I climbed back on the horse, went to the cotton field, and put in a full day’s work. That is how it was for me. Hard work, and there were few considerations. A year later my father told me we were going to the circus. I cannot explain the sort of excitement I felt, as it was not only the fact that I was a child and we were talking about the circus, which at that time was mysterious to me, but also that my father had made the plans and had included me to be with him. We did in fact go, but he left without me. I stayed. He sold me to the circus, and for not much money. Can you imagine? I was not the Reginald he had expected, and with my loving mother gone, he couldn’t abide me and sold me like a household trinket. I was kept there like a wild beast, at the mercy of the owner. Let me tell you, in short order I decided the circus was nowhere as fun as I had anticipated. Not by a long shot.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Shorty sat down on the ground, and I did the same.

  “No use to be sorry,” he said. “It is what it is, and if you look at it at a proper angle there is a humor in it. It gave me my philosophy in life: trust no one completely. I have made some exceptions. I trust Eustace mostly, though when he drinks, he cannot be trusted by man or beast. Even Hog hides then, and Hog is fearless. I trust the sun to rise and the sun to set, though I know one day it will do these things without me, and I find that peculiar to think about. Do you?”

  “Haven’t never given it consideration,” I said.

  “Not a man of deep thoughts, huh?”

  “I don’t actually know,” I said.

  “You have not given your consideration much consideration,” Shorty said, and gave out with a laugh that sounded a little like a bark. “When I was in the circus, a man named Walter the Midget
taught me to think about such things. I do not know if I should be glad of it or if it would have been better to have been bathed in the shadow of ignorance. He once said those who refuse to consider what they do are cloaked in the shadow of stupidity, but they enjoy the shade. It is cool and comfortable there. He and the circus were my teachers. I do not say this expecting to be considered wise, but to suggest that most of us merely travel through life without much thought—or perhaps we consider some silly promised land where we will go when we die, knowing in our heart it is only one of those wishes I spoke of but trying to convince ourselves of its authenticity because we are afraid of the void.”

  “As I said, I believe God watches over us.”

  “If he is up there, he has certainly looked the other way during the course of my life. To begin with, he started me out with a handicap, or at least what others would think of as being one.”

  “He gave you a challenge.”

  “I did not want a challenge,” he said. “I wanted to be tall. But what I got was Walter the Midget, the other midgets, and the circus. But Walter, he was educated, and he educated me with Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, books of poetry and philosophy, and his practical experience. He taught me how to be a clown as well, to make people laugh at my smallness. I have since then had very little to laugh about, and have been uninterested in making others laugh.

  “Walter the Midget gave me the only true education I ever received. But the circus, I hated it there. I hated the people we worked for, if you can call what we did honest work. One time, a lion being whipped and poked with a chair, killed and ate part of the ringmaster right in front of a large audience, who did not leave during the event but acted offended at the same time they watched the lion have his dinner. It was for us, the midget clowns, a red-letter day, and we drank to it. We were sadder when they killed the lion. He had only done what most of us wanted to do, and that was kill one of the tall people. It was a good moment in a not-so-good life.