Calhoun’s second bullet whizzed by Wayne’s head. Wayne’s shot hit Calhoun in the stomach.
Calhoun went to his knees and had trouble drawing a breath. He tried to lift his revolver but couldn’t; it was as if it had turned into an anvil.
Wayne shot him again. Hitting him in the middle of the chest this time and knocking him back so that his legs were curled beneath him.
Wayne walked over to Calhoun, dropped to one knee and took the revolver from him.
“Shit,” Calhoun said. “I wouldn’t have thought that for nothing. You hit?” “Scratched.” “Shit.”
Wayne put the revolver to Calhoun’s forehead and Calhoun closed his eyes and Wayne pulled the trigger.
The wound wasn’t a scratch. Wayne knew he should leave Sister Worth where she was and load Calhoun on the bus and haul him in for bounty. But he didn’t care about the bounty anymore.
He used the ragged piece of bumper to dig them a shallow side-by-side grave. When he finished, he stuck the fender fragment up between them and used the sight of one of the revolvers to scratch into it: HERE LIES SISTER WORTH AND CALHOUN WHO KEPT HIS WORD.
You couldn’t really read it good and he knew the first real wind would keel it over, but it made him feel better about something, even if he couldn’t put his finger on it.
His wound had opened up and the sun was very hot now, and since he had lost his hat he could feel his brain cooking in his skull like meat boiling in a pot.
He got on the bus, started it and drove through the day and the night and it was near morning when he came to the Cadillacs and turned down between them and drove until he came to the ‘57.
When he stopped and tried to get off the bus, he found he could hardly move. The revolvers in his belt were stuck to his shirt and stomach because of the blood from his wound.
He pulled himself up with the steering wheel, got one of the shotguns and used it for a crutch. He got the food and water and went out to inspect the ‘57.
It was for shit. It had not only lost its windshield, the front end was mashed way back and one of the big sand tires was twisted at such an angle he knew the axle was shot.
He leaned against the Chevy and tried to think. The bus was okay and there was still some gas in it, and he could get the hose out of the trunk of the ‘57 and siphon gas out of its tanks and put it in the bus. That would give him a few miles.
Miles.
He didn’t feel as if he could walk twenty feet, let alone concentrate on driving.
He let go of the shotgun, the food and water. He scooted onto the hood of the Chevy and managed himself to the roof. He lay there on his back and looked at the sky.
It was a clear night and the stars were sharp with no fuzz around them. He felt cold. In a couple of hours the stars would fade and the sun would come up and the cool would give way to heat.
He turned his head and looked at one of the Cadillacs and a skeleton face pressed to its windshield, forever looking down at the sand.
That was no way to end, looking down.
He crossed his legs and stretched out his arms and studied the sky. It didn’t feel so cold now, and the pain had almost stopped. He was more numb than anything else.
He pulled one of the revolvers and cocked it and put it to his temple and continued to look at the stars. Then he closed his eyes and found that he could still see them. He was once again hanging in the void between the stars wearing only his hat and cowboy boots, and floating about him were the junk cars and the ‘57, undamaged.
The cars were moving toward him this time, not away. The ‘57 was in the lead, and as it grew closer he saw Pop behind the wheel and beside him was a Mexican puta, and in the back, two more. They were all smiling and Pop honked the horn and waved.
The ‘57 came alongside him and the back door opened.
Sitting between the whores was Sister Worth. She had not been there a moment ago, but now she was. And he had never noticed how big the back seat of the ‘57 was.
Sister Worth smiled at him and the bird on her cheek lifted higher. Her hair was combed out long and straight and she looked pink-skinned and happy. On the floorboard at her feet was a chest of iced-beer. Lone Star, by God.
Pop was leaning over the front seat, holding out his hand and Sister Worth and the whores were beckoning him inside.
Wayne worked his hands and feet, found this time that he could move. He swam through the open door, touched Pop’s hand, and Pop said, “It’s good to see you, son,” and at the moment Wayne pulled the trigger, Pop pulled him inside.
Not From Detroit
Outside it was cold and wet and windy. The storm rattled the shack, slid like razor blades through the window, door and wall cracks, but it wasn’t enough to make any difference to the couple. Sitting before the crumbling fireplace in their creaking rocking chairs, shawls across their knees, fingers entwined, they were warm.
A bucket behind them near the kitchen sink collected water dripping from a hole in the roof.
The drops had long since passed the noisy stage of sounding like steel bolts falling on tin, and were now gentle plops.
The old couple were husband and wife; had been for over fifty years. They were comfortable with one another and seldom spoke. Mostly they rocked and looked at the fire as it flickered shadows across the room.
Finally Margie spoke. “Alex,” she said, “I hope I die before you.”
Alex stopped rocking. “Did you say what I thought you did?”
“I said, I hope I die before you.” She wouldn’t look at him, just the fire. “It’s selfish, I know, but I hope I do. I don’t want to live on with you gone. It would be like cutting out my heart and making me walk around. Like one of them zombies.”
“There are the children,” he said. “If I died, they’d take you in.”
“I’d just be in the way. I love them, but I don’t want to do that. They got their own lives. I’d just as soon die before you. That would make things simple.”
“Not simple for me,” Alex said. “I don’t want you to die before me. So how about that? We’re both selfish, aren’t we?”
She smiled. “Well, it ain’t a thing to talk about before bedtime, but it’s been on my mind, and I had to get it out.”
“Been thinking on it too, honey. Only natural we would. We ain’t spring chickens anymore.”
“You’re healthy as a horse, Alex Brooks. Mechanic work you did all your life kept you strong. Me, I got the bursitis and the miseries and I’m tired all the time. Got the old age bad.”
Alex started rocking again. They stared into the fire. “We’re going to go together, hon,” he said. “I feel it. That’s the way it ought to be for folks like us.”
“I wonder if I’ll see him coming. Death, I mean.”
“What?”
“My grandma used to tell me she seen him the night her daddy died.”
“You’ve never told me this.”
“Ain’t a subject I like. But Grandma said this man in a black buggy slowed down out front of their house, cracked his whip three times, and her daddy was gone in instants. And she said she’d heard her grandfather tell how he had seen Death when he was a boy. Told her it was early morning and he was up, about to start his chores, and when he went outside he seen this man dressed in black walk by the house and stop out front. He was carrying a stick over his shoulder with a checkered bundle tied to it, and he looked at the house and snapped his fingers three times. A moment later they found my grandfather’s brother, who had been sick with the smallpox, dead in
