? ? ?
AMID THE SETTLED snores and nose-whistlings of the sleeping crew, I lay sleepless for a long, long time, as haunted as I’d been by that damnable plaque in Aunt Kate’s attic. This time by life, not death. For the first time since the Double W cookhouse I whined, only to myself, but the silent kind is as mournful as the other. The miles upon miles of my summer, the immense Greyhound journey right down to the last bus to Wisdom, were simply leaving me torn in two, between Herman and Gram. She and Letty seemed like, what, mirages, distant and beckoning, but Herman had been my indispensable partner, from the depths of the Manitowoc stay to the ups and downs of the open road.
Imagination failed me as I tried to conceive of life without him, or his without me. How can you ever forget someone you will think of every time you eat a piece of toast? Or whenever you touch a map, your fingers bringing memory of red routes once followed to adventure of whatever kind? Or even catching the wink of an eye, sparkling as glass, from someone you are devoted to?
As bereft as I was for myself, I was just as afraid for what waited ahead for him, on the move with the hoboes and on the run at the same time, always with the threat of some yard bull or hick dick matching him up with a MOST WANTED poster, and without me and my tall tales there to rescue him.
As for counting on luck to help us out of our divided fate, phooey and you-know-what. In my misery I felt I might as well throw the black arrowhead into the Big Hole River. The cheerful sentiments in the autograph book seemed sickly against the true messages of life. Loco things happened without rhyme or reason, and that was that. The most hard-hearted set of words in the language, and the only ones that seemed to count in the end. Overwhelmed with these bleak thoughts, I gradually drowsed off, clinging to what I would possess forever, the time of dog bus enchantment when Herman the German pointed a finger west and said, “Thataway.”
30.
IN THE BIG HOLE, there was something to the saying that when it rains, it pours, because sometime later that night, the heavens opened up, one of those sudden summer storms that flash through with crackles of lightning and rolls of thunder half drowned out by the downpour drumming on the roof. And the next morning came the deluge of the other sort, events cascading on the Diamond Buckle ranch as if the clouds had brought in every reckoning waiting to happen.
It began at breakfast, where black coffee was the main course as hangovers were nursed. I was groggy myself from the restless night of rainbursts and so much on my mind. Along the table, Skeeter had the shakes so bad he used both hands to lift his coffee cup, but still was grinning like the wisest monkey in the tree. Highpockets managed to look as capable as ever except for bloodshot eyes. The rest of the crew was in states of morning-after between those extremes. Except, that is, for Herman, who appeared not much the worse for wear, an advantage he had by always looking somewhat hard-used. Meanwhile Mrs. Costello made a nuisance of herself by nagging about the lack of enthusiasm for the runny fried eggs and undercooked side pork, until Jones snapped at her that the crew wasn’t in a mood for hen leavings and pig squeals this morning, and she stomped back to the kitchen.
Despite the aftereffects, the triumphant night in Wisdom cast a good mood felt by everyone but Jones, grumpy over being rained out of haying. “Looks like the bunch of you have the day off,” he conceded with a sniff at the weather, “mostly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Highpockets was on the case at once.
Jones jerked a thumb at the empty chair next to his. “Smiley is no longer employed at the Diamond Buckle.” That sank into me as almost too good to be true, my jubilant reaction mirrored on the faces around the table.
“So,” Jones said, “I need a volunteer to be choreboy until I can drive to Butte and scare up a new one. The rest of you, sure, you can pitch horseshoes or lay around and scratch your nuts or whatever you want to do with the day, but somebody’s got to step up and do the chores.”
Peerless lawyered that immediately. “That would include getting a milk pail under Waltzing Matilda?”
“She’s a cow,” Jones tried to circle past that, “so she needs tending to like the others.”
“I’m not milking any crazy cow,” Peerless stated his principle.
Grinning, Fingy waved a hand lacking enough fingers to squeeze a teat. “I’m out.”
Harv silently shook his head an inch or so.
“I’m allergic to titted critters,” Skeeter announced, drawing a volley of hooty speculations about how far that allergy extended and when it had set in.