swallow down again.
“Dex would have liked that headstone,” she said.
Toussaint knew he didn’t know his son well
enough to know what he might have liked.
“It’s a hunk of stone for sure,” he said.
“I don’t want anyone to ever pass by here without
knowing he once existed,” she said.
He saw her close her eyes, the wind going through
her short coarse hair like curious fingers. He stepped
a bit closer to her and put his arm around her waist.
“I guess that stone will be here until the world it-
self comes to an end,” he said. “You did right by his
memory.”
She heard something in his voice that troubled her.
“Don’t go getting sentimental on me,” she said.
“It’s not your way.”
“I’m just saying if it were me, I’d want a nice stone
like that so folks could see it and know I was here
once.”
“If it were you,” she said, “you’d have somebody
burn you up and put your ashes in a clay pot, like you
did with your daddy.”
“No,” he said. “Them’s the French do that. Don’t
ever let nobody do that to me.”
“What would I have to say about it one way or the
other?”
He’d fished out the ring from his pocket and had
been holding it in his hand until he thought it would
burn a circle there in his flesh.
“Maybe nothing,” he said. “Unless you’ll take this.”
She looked at it.
A murder of crows came cawing through the lost
sky. They sounded like women arguing, he thought.
“Well?” he said when she did not reply.
“You’d want me still, after all we gone through, af-
ter what those men did to me?”
“I want you like those crows want to fly,” he said.
He saw her eyes water, felt a sting in his own.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s something I need to
give some thought to.”
“Fine by me,” he said. “Just hold on to it for me
will you, until you make up your mind? I’m afraid I’m
going to lose it somewhere.”
Her fingers touched the ring and in the doing,
touched lightly the palm that held it.
“You decide you don’t want it later,” he said.
“That’s okay. I mean, I’ll understand.”
She took the ring and looked at it for a long mo-
ment then slipped it into her pocket. Well, at least she
hadn’t taken it and flung it, he thought, or flat out
said no to the idea and that was progress when it
came to dealing with Karen Sunflower.
He watched as she knelt and touched her hands to
the cold stone, traced her fingertips over Dex’s name,
the year of his birth and death, the carved cherub,
then touched those fingers to her lips. She went to
stand again and was unbalanced and he took hold of
her and helped her up. Their faces inches from each
other, he did what was natural in him to do and
lightly kissed her mouth, sore and tender as it was,
and she did not pull away but let him do it. Then he
simply held her to him, the wind buffeting them, and
the crows had flown completely out of view and their
caws had faded till the world was silent again.
30
Big Belly slept the night on the grasslands with
wanting in his heart: wanting a hot meal, some
whiskey, maybe a woman. He dreamt of his wife and
fires and heads of Texas Rangers on sticks. He dreamt
of wild horses and buffalo like there were when he
was a child. He woke shivering under the saddle blan-
kets and his belly growling.
He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes and
looked off over the top of the grass toward the town.
Where the hell did all the white men come from, he
wondered. When he was a boy about the only white
men that came into Comanche country were the
whiskey peddlers and a few old traders. Now the
country was filling up with whites. Everywhere a man
could go there was a white settlement.
He was hungry enough to eat the ears off a wolf. If
he didn’t get something to eat soon, he might have to
eat one of his three horses. He looked them over. Of
the three, a smallish brown horse looked like if he had
to eat one would be the one he’d eat. Only he didn’t
feature eating any of them if he didn’t have to.
The good thing was after he’d stolen the horses,
he’d found a few extra pistols in the saddlebags, some
shirts, socks, white man’s shit. He figured if he could
find a trading man, like one of those old Co-
mancheros or a nasty old whiskey peddler, he could
trade some of the goods he’d found for food, whiskey,
maybe even a woman. Well, there was only one way
to find out.
He tucked his long hair up under his greasy hat and
slipped out of his greasy buckskin shirt and slipped
on one of the found shirts so he’d look less like a true
Indian than maybe some half-breed or Mexican, and
