benchlands and onto the grasslands; it had the feel of
Canada in it. Tall John rode next to Will Bird atop the
glass-sided hearse. Inside were five caskets of basic
pine, ropes, and shovels. It would be at best a pauper’s
funeral. The prairies were awash in the purple light of
evening. Way off in the distance from the height at
which they rode they could see the lone cabin.
“That’s it,” Tall John said.
Will Bird had recently arrived back in Sweet Sor-
row after nearly six months gone to Texas where he’d
worked as a helper building windmills in and around
Victoria. The days were nothing but hard hot work
under the stifling Texas sun and he would have quit
except the men he worked for said they wouldn’t pay
him until his contract was fulfilled. His bosses were a
pair of itinerate Germans named Meiss and Fiek—
hard, taciturn men who lacked humor and who could
outwork a mule. They ate liverwurst and onion sand-
wiches that caused their breath to stink worse than a
dung heap. They had big teeth and never laughed.
Will Bird’s last job had been building one of the
old Dutch-style windmills outside Goliad, as rough-
and-tumble a place as there ever was—where the
liquor was cheap and plentiful, the whores fat and
wicked, and the gamblers mostly cheats and back
shooters.
Tragedy struck the day he fell off one of the damn
platforms and landed on a rattlesnake that had curled
itself up under a mesquite bush. The snake bit him on
the hand and he grabbed it by the tail and cracked it
like a whip snapping off its head. But his hand
swelled to three times its normal size, turning black
in the process and causing the skin to split. He lapsed
in and out of a fever that had him talking to long-
dead kin.
Somehow he recovered and did not die himself.
And with the assistance of one of the Germans’ nieces
who’d been hired to feed the crew and wash their
clothes, he began to flourish. Her name was Hilde-
gard, whom he affectionately called Hildy. She
spoon-fed him soup and washed his bit hand in the
shade of a tent near where the Germans continued
their construction of the windmill, the ringing of
hammers and the groaning of timber a sort of sweet
symphony as Hildy ministered to him.
His hand went from black to bright red, and in a
week he could almost close it, but not enough to hold
a hammer or carry a bucket or even grip a ladder well
enough to be of much use to the windmillers. But a
snake-bit hand proved no impediment to his growing
desire for Hildy, a big strapping girl with yellow pig-
tails, rosy cheeks, and large bosoms. Will talked her
into following him down to a nearby creek with the
ruse they were going to collect drinking water.
But Meiss, the elder of the two, and uncle of the
girl, had his suspicions about the handsome but some-
what lazy and inept young westerner and had been
keeping a close eye on the doings between the two.
He, in fact, had long held something of a plan to
marry his niece once their work contracts were fin-
ished in Texas. Had set aside a certain amount of
money each job to pay for a wedding. He grew suspi-
cious when he saw her and Will Bird heading off into
the brush with a bucket.
climbing down from the platform with growing anger
and jealousy.
What he found beyond the canebrakes unleashed
his fury.
He smacked Will off the girl with his large felt
hat—
Will didn’t take the assault easy and laid into the
older German with lefts and rights, his arms flying in
windmill fashion, landing blows that drove the old
man to the ground. It wasn’t until the German was ly-
ing on his back, eyes rolled up in his head, that Will
felt the snake-bit hand burning as if it was on fire.
Will looked at the old man, looked at Hildy, saw
her chubby bare legs still exposed, said, “What the
hell!” and finished up what they’d started prior to
the arrival of the German uncle, then rode away on
the same piebald mare he’d come to Texas with in the
first place. He didn’t see no true future in being a
windmiller and he sure wasn’t looking to become no
bridegroom, neither.
Of course, he never planned on returning to Sweet
Sorrow to become some grave digger’s helper, neither.
Yet here he was, working for Tall John the under-
taker. At least temporarily, he told himself, until
something more befitting of his talents came along.
There was one other thing that kept Will Bird from
leaving: Fannie Jones.
He met her at the cafe and he liked what he saw,
and he guessed she did, too, and he’d been sparking
her regular ever since. He wasn’t a hundred percent
sure she was the gal for him in the long haul, but in
the short haul she’d do just fine.
Will looked toward where Tall John pointed. The
cabin looked lifeless and lonely, as if it, too, had died.
“I got to tell you, I don’t much crave this sort of
