another nip off the jug. Reuben glanced back toward Uncle Cullen, who was sitting at a table on the far side of the dance floor, sipping his hooch and talking to some rancher friends, all of them grinning at the high sheriff, who’d passed out with his head on the table. Reuben saw me and made a shooting gesture at me with his finger and thumb and then followed Chente into the crowd and out of sight.
I asked Rosa if she cared for a sip of whiskey but she said she’d better not. It wouldn’t do for her employers to see her sneaking off to the parking lot or catching the smell of liquor on her breath. I wanted a drink myself but wasn’t about to leave her unattended.
A little later, just as the string band finished up with a snappy two-step number that left us in a sweat, Reuben and Chente came shouldering through the mob of dancers to join us, Reuben with his arm around a strawberry blonde and Chente holding hands with a blonde of brighter shade. They introduced the girls as the Miller sisters, Laura Lee and Susan.
Their family owned a ranch up toward Fort Davis, the Susan one said, and they and their two brothers were visiting with family friends near Marfa. Did we know the Rogersons? She leaned back against Chente, who was standing sort of half turned to her so nobody but me and Rosa could see him stroking her bottom. All four of them had been hitting the hooch pretty hard—you could see it in their eyes and hear it in the silly way they laughed.
“We know them,” I said. “We’ve never much socialized.”
Reuben snickered and said, “Back in school one time Jimmy kicked Larry Rogerson’s ass like a damn football.”
“Next time you do it let me know so I can watch,” the Susan one said.
“Susan don’t much care for Larry all the time putting his hands on her,” the Laura Lee one said.
Reuben hugged her tighter against him and she ran her tongue in his ear. Some of the dancers around us saw that and were amused and some were tight-faced with disapproval.
I’d never seen Reuben so close to drunk. I said excuse me to the Laura girl and pulled him aside and said he’d best lay off the stuff and sober up some before his daddy found him out. He said, “Right you are, Jimbo”—then took hold of me like a dance partner and tried to whirl me around. I cussed him softly and tugged his hat down over his eyes but couldn’t help laughing along with Chente and the girls.
I lost sight of them during the next few dances as I spun Rosa around the floor, grazing against other dancers and them bumping into us and everybody saying “Sorry” and laughing about it.
And then, just as the Mexican band took over and began playing a loud rendition of “Tu, Solo Tu” and Rosa and I hugged close and started swaying to the music, I caught a glimpse of Chente in the center of the floor and saw the ready way he was standing and saw the two cowboys in front of him, one of them pointing a finger in his face and running his mouth in obvious anger. He was holding hard to the arm of the Susan girl and she was trying to break free of his grip. The other guy was holding a bottle of beer by the neck like a small club and glaring at Chente too. Even at this distance I could see the similarity between the cowboys and I knew they had to be the Miller brothers. And then Larry Rogerson stepped up beside them, giving Chente a hard look and saying something too. Then the crowd of dancers between us closed up and I lost sight of them all.
I stopped dancing and tried to spot them again through the swirl of couples. Rosa Elena clung to my neck and said, “What?”
I saw Chente giving the cowboys the horns sign with his index and little finger, then turning away and walking off through the crowd. The cowboy with the beer bottle started after him, followed by his brother and Rogerson. I yanked Rosa’s arms off me and roughly shoved my way through the dancers, women protesting my rudeness, guys cussing me.
I came out at one corner of the dance floor and saw Chente emerging at the other—and saw the Miller guy behind him swing the beer bottle like he was throwing a baseball and hit Chente on the head. Chente’s hat fell off and he staggered forward and fell to his hands and knees and the Miller guy kicked him in the ass and sent him sprawling in the dust.
A woman shrilled and people leaped up from the picnic tables and rammed into each other as some tried to back away from the fight and some tried to get closer. I was shouldering through the crowd and catching glimpses of the Millers and Rogerson kicking at Chente and even through all the yelling I heard one of the brothers shouting something about the greaser sonofabitch putting his hands on their sister. Then Chente had him by the leg and got him down and started punching him as the other brother and Rogerson kept on kicking and there was a haze of dust and women were shrieking and men cussing and bellowing to break them up, break them up. The lines of the overhead lights had been jostled somehow and the shadows were wavering and giving the whole scene an eerie look.
I shoved my way out of the crush of people and saw both Millers locked up with Chente on the ground and the three of them punching and rolling around while a half-dozen men were jumping all around them looking for an opening to grab one or another and pull them apart. Uncle Cullen was struggling to pry Reuben away from Larry Rogerson whose head was locked under Reuben’s arm. Rogerson was worming around in Reuben’s grip, and as I ran toward them I saw that he had a knife in his hand. And saw him stab Reuben in the stomach and in the chest.
Reuben’s arms fell away from Rogerson and he sagged back against Uncle Cullen who was hugging him from behind. Uncle Cullen staggered under the sudden weight and fell to his knees with Reuben still in his arms. I ran up to them and Uncle Cullen was pressing a hand to the wound over Reuben’s heart and croaking, “Son, son…” Reuben’s eyes were open but they weren’t seeing anything anymore.
Most of the people around us still had their attention on the fight between the Miller boys and Chente and some were cheering the fighters and some were still yelling to break it up and some were laughing at the attempts being made to stop them. Only the folk closest to us had seen what had happened to Reuben. Women were crying and somebody kept saying, “Oh my God oh my God…”
Rogerson was gawking down at us, still holding the knife. He looked at me and his eyes showed a lot of white and he flung the knife away and stepped back with his open hands up in front of him. All the blabber and shouting around me suddenly sounded very far away. I took the pearlhandled switchblade out of my pocket and snicked out the blade.
I had a vague sense of people drawing away from me as I walked up to Rogerson and he started to say something but I never heard a word of it. I grabbed him by the collar and jerked him toward me and stuck the blade in his belly all the way to the hilt. He made a sound like a small yawn and grabbed my shoulders as if he’d suddenly thought of something real important to tell me. I gave the knife a twist and jerked it sideways and blood gushed hot all over my lower arm. I pulled out the blade and stepped back and he put his hands to the wound and a bulge of blue gut showed between his fingers. His pants were dark with blood. I stabbed him again—in the chest, just like he’d stabbed Reuben—and he dropped to his knees and a bunch of women screamed at the same time as he fell on his face and lay still.
I stared around at the horrified faces, and the shouting and crying and confusion rose back to normal volume. Maybe the other fight had finally been stopped, I didn’t know, but there were more people around us now, a lot of them yelling to know what happened and a bunch of others all telling them at once.
I retracted the blade into the haft and put the knife back in my pocket and turned to see about Uncle Cullen. He had let go of Reuben and was clutching at his own chest, his face twisted in pain. I helped him to his feet and asked if he thought he could make it out to the truck and he nodded but his face clenched even tighter. I pointed to his hat and somebody picked it up and handed it to me and I put it on my uncle’s head and my fingers left smudges of Rogerson’s blood on it. I heard somebody shouting that the sheriff was too drunk to stand up and others yelling to know where a goddam deputy was.
“Would some of you bring Reuben?” I said. There was a general hesitation and then three or four guys picked Reuben up and brought him along behind me as I half-dragged Uncle Cullen out to the parking lot, his grunting breath hot against my neck.
It might have been different if the sheriff had been sober or there had been any other lawmen around, but nobody said anything to me, nobody tried to stop me. They laid Reuben in the bed of the truck and I settled Uncle Cullen into the passenger side of the cab and then got behind the wheel. I pulled the truck into the flow of vehicles leaving the lot and a minute later we were rolling back toward the ranch.
