In a Shallow Grave

“It ain’t love.”

“All right, what’s my secret if you know so damn much?”

“I ain’t the only one who knows now, mind you,” Quintus began. “Say, your feet ain’t so cold today, you must be improving your circulation.”

“I never knew you to tease before, Quints.” I was touching his hair still more partly through astonishment at how much bear grease he must have put on it that day, but he jerked away from me as though my hands disgusted him.

“Do you want me to read to you now?” He had put back on my shoes and socks.

“I want to hear you tell me you know what I keep secret, you know that.”

“All right! All right for you! Daventry and me followed you one night.”

I closed my eyes and pushed myself away from him. Then I buckled up like I had appendicitis, only I believe it hurt me more.

“We followed you,” he went on, “slow oh so slow up the cliffs and down past little creeks and junglelike places and unused cowpaths and all, well you know the way after all, and then we seen you go into . . .”

“. . . The dance hall . . .”

“. . . Which I never knowed existed anymore and I born and bred here . . . Yeah . . .’ Quintus grabbed my left foot and pulled it over to him and began rubbing the calf, and held it even though I tried to get out of his grasp . . .

“We watched you through the windows . . .”

I groaned and cursed like he was tearing out my guts.

“We seen you dance with yourself under that revolving . . .

“. . . Moon.”

“Well, that ain’t what it’s called, but if you say so, all right, moon. You looked good though under those little polka-dot lights revolving all over you . . . You looked like a fine young white man.”

“Sure, shit.”

“We was both impressed, Daventry and me. Only Daventry began to bawl. That was when I found out about him.”

“That he was wanted . . .”

“Cripes no, Garnet, desperado, wanted, nothing . . . Daventry turned to me and said, ‘I love Garnet. I’ve loved him from the minute I seen him. I never want to leave him.’ ”

“Quintus,” I started, and I grabbed him by both his ears and held his eyes right up almost to mine, don’t you bullshit me now, after all I’ve gone through . . .”

Quintus breaknecked away from me, and standing up said, “Why don’t you listen to anything I ever say to you . . . ? That’s why I have to read to you because you won’t never listen . . .”

“All right.” I began trying to think it over. “He seen me dancing under that moon that gives off polka-dot lights, all right . . .’

“Well, I’ve told you everything then . . . We know your secret . . .”

“And you still want to be friends with me, is that it?”

Quintus stared at me, if not dumbfounded, considerably nonplussed.

“But your other . . . statement, Quints, must be some barefaced lie to make me feel bad down deep . . .”

“What statement you mean?” He would not help me.

“You said Daventry loved me.” It took everything out of me to say this.

“That’s what he said, yes. He said you was his other self, and he would never part with you.”

And speaking of the devil, there he come in the front door, Daventry. He looked a lot younger. Well, he had a new suit of clothes on, and this new pink shirt.

“What’s this I hear about you bein’ dispossessed and evicted by the sheriff?” He went straight to the point and came over to where I was half-falling out of my chair.

“Why, they can’t do that to you, Garnet . . . I won’t allow them . . .”

“Yeah,” I said, but avoiding his face as much as I used to think he had avoided mine.

“No, siree,” Daventry said. “I won’t allow them to throw you out. And you a war hero and all, just let them try . . .”

“Where are those dispossess papers, by the way?” Daventry wondered, and seeing them on my little spinet desk he gathered them up, and also seeing Quintus’ dime-store reading specs he took them up also and put them on his nose but didn’t like them and laid them down.

He studied the papers a long long time, while I studied him.

“Were you a sheep-farmer yourself?” I said out of the blue.

He looked up quick from the papers. “My dad was,” he replied.

“Well, then you must have been too, wasn’t you? I mean you must know all about sheep, even if you ain’t what would be called today a shepherd.”

I was smoking some of his grass now, and he noticed this.

“Well, nobody called my dad a shepherd,” he spoke emphatically, and he began marking little sections of the dispossess papers with a stub of a Mohawk pencil.

“But you lived around sheep,” I had to go on. “Did you have sheep dogs?”

Both Quintus and Daventry looked at me somewhat cautious, puzzled, and a little concerned.

“Why all at once do you want me to tell you about my life in Utah, Garnet?”

“I hear you been spying on me in your spare time.” I brought this up now, for my secret having been discovered upset me almost more than anything since the day I found out I would never look like I belonged among the living again, that my inside was my outside, etc.

Daventry looked at Quintus as if he could have killed him, so I said quickly, “Quintus’ mother has passed away, and we have been to the funeral.”

“Oh, Quints.” Daventry got up right away and went over to him. “I’m grieved to hear that.” He tried to take Quintus’ hand, but I guess I am the only white man Quintus ever let touch him, come to think of it, so Daventry had to just pat his shoulder four or five times.

“So I hope you’re satisfied, Daventry.” I went back to my secret, and I believe the grass was doing something to me now.

“Satisfied as to what?” His voice sounded like a big orchestra of trumpets so that I thought I was going deaf. He stood of course right by me.

“What are you so interested all of a sudden in me being a shepherd for?” he thundered. “Hey?”

“Your dad is the shepherd, ain’t it?” I got out. I felt I was going to bawl, so I handed him the joint.

“There ain’t no shepherds, only ranchers,” Daventry ap­pealed to Quintus in his growing dismay.

“Well, you slept with my girl and you found out I have this secret place I go to. The ruined dance hall of course is what I mean, with the polka-dot lights. You’ve got every­thing I have. I also understand you are in love with me, though I don’t quite know what you mean by that.”

Daventry looked so confounded, I’ve never seen a white man look so at sea before, he looked as if he was going to shake his arms and legs off of him the way he flailed around. He would look at Quintus and then at me, and then he would look down at the dispossession papers which he held still in his right hand.

Finally he sat very deliberately down on the floor, and put his head between his knees.

“Is there anything more I have or maybe don’t have that you want, Daventry?” I inquired. I don’t know why I was being so mean to him.

“I don’t really love the Widow Rance, as you call the bitch,” he said.

“But you went to bed with her, didn’t you?” I said, and the thought of it made me so dizzy I had to hold my own head between my knees at once to keep from keeling over (one of my doc’s many remedies to keep me among the living or at least the conscious, and as a matter of fact I spent most of my time in the hospital with my head be­ tween my legs, it did seem).

“Now you see here, God damn it,” Daventry began, looking up, and had his face changed. Both Quintus and me was hushed to see it. “You look here, will you,” he began, and the spit began to form on his lips like foam. “You set me up with her! You wanted this to happen, and you know it. You made me the bearer of those messages. I never wanted to go near her. Never even heard tell of her. You set me up.”