“So was she too old or ugly or what?”
“Like I said, it wasn’t like that,” repeated Cane, regretting now that he’d even mentioned it in the first place.
“What the fuck?” Chimney said. “A bunch of books and some puss walkin’ in on ye? That’s as crazy as Cob and his heavenly table horseshit. I don’t know about you sometimes, brother.” He moved over to the empty window frame and peered out at the dark tree line across from the house. “Better go ahead and get ye some sleep. Sounds like you need it. I’ll keep the first watch.”
Cob came to the next morning, a bit surprised that he wasn’t still on his horse. He tried to raise up, but he’d never felt this tired in his life. He saw Cane sitting on a warped and splintered wood floor covered with dust and grit and purplish balls of coon scat, his back leaned against the wall, reading one of the newspapers Chimney had taken from the store. A small pile of feathers from where a bird had been eaten by some animal lay over by the entrance to the other room. “Where are we?” he asked.
Cane looked up. “Some old house we found.” He set the paper aside and picked up a canteen.
“So them men quit chasin’ us?”
“Maybe,” Cane said. “We ain’t sure yet.” He held the canteen to Cob’s lips with one hand and lifted his head with the other.
“Where’s Chimney?” Cob asked after he had drunk his fill.
“I’m right here,” Chimney said. Swiveling his head to the left, Cob saw his other brother squatted down, looking out the front window. Beside him was the rifle they had stolen from the storekeeper. Other guns had been placed on either side of the door, and a wad of bloody rags was tossed in the corner.
“How long we been here?” Cob said.
“Since last night.”
“Boy, when I first woke up, I thought for sure we was back at the shack on the Major’s place.”
“Yeah,” Cane said, glancing around. “I guess it does have the same ambiance.”
“Ambiance? I’ve heard that word before, ain’t I?”
“Sure you have,” Cane said. “Remember that line in the book about Bloody Bill? Talkin’ about the sportin’ house? ‘The elegant, subdued ambiance of the gilded room was—’?”
Then Chimney, still staring out the window, cut in and finished the sentence: “?‘…suddenly shattered by the forced entry of a lustful, liquor-soaked Bloody Bill, his side-arms rattling in their tooled-leather holsters and his gold tooth gleaming in the light from the candelabras like the rarest of Satan’s jewels.’?”
“What the heck does ‘gilded’ mean?” Cob asked.
“Well, I think it’s like ‘shiny,’?” Cane said. Then he remembered the story he’d come across in the paper. “Hey, listen to this.” He commenced to reading aloud about a night watchman in Savannah who claimed that he fired six rounds point-blank into one of the Jewett Gang, the chubby one with the moon head, and watched as the criminal laughed them off as if the bullets weren’t any more lethal than mosquito bites or the good-night kisses of some sweet, innocent child.
“Damn, I wish it were so,” Cob said, craning his neck to look down at his throbbing leg.
“Jesus Christ, we never been within a hundred miles of there our whole lives,” Chimney complained. He walked from his post at the window over to the coffee pot sitting at the edge of the fireplace. Although Cane was usually against risking the smoke of a fire when they had men trailing them, Chimney had let him sleep all night, and he didn’t have the heart to tell him no when he said he’d like a cup of coffee. “And where do they get the rest of that bullshit? Skeeter bites. Fuck, look at him. He’s lucky that ol’ boy back there couldn’t shoot worth a damn or we’d probably be a-plantin’ him right about now.”
After that, they lapsed into silence, listened to the snake slither around inside the walls. Cob dozed off again and Chimney went out to check on the horses. Cane opened the newspaper, and on the third page he found an article about German soldiers roasting young children over a spit for their dinner in some place called Belgium. He shook his head when he finished reading it. At least he and his brothers weren’t the only ones being lied about.
28
JASPER CAME INTO the Blind Owl right after Pollard opened up and stood by the door with his hand on the handle. “What the fuck do you want?” the bartender asked. He was wiping out some glasses with a rag he’d blown his nose in a few minutes ago, setting them on a shelf under the bar. Unlike the cook who strives to maintain a semblance of cleanliness in his kitchen for the most part, but occasionally can’t resist sticking a dead fly or two in some whiny customer’s meal, Pollard didn’t discriminate; in one way or another, he passed on a taste of his grossness to each and every one of his patrons.