'Your legs broke?' Coots wondered, continuing his work.
B. J. sighed deeply, pushed himself up from his chair with a grunt, and went off to the kitchen.
Coots tested the edge of the knife with his thumb and, satisfied that it was sharp, stopped the wheel and turned off its water drip. 'Yes, you'd play hell getting any work from that tight-fisted Bjorkvist woman. She squeezes every nickel so hard the buffalo shits itself.'
'Mr. Coots?'
'Hm?'
'How'd you come to be a gunfighter?'
'How does any fool start doing stupid things? After the war I was like lots of men: nowhere to go, nothing to do, didn't know anything but fighting. I was young, and I had a lot of anger in me.'
'You fought in the Civil War?'
'That's right. I signed up with an Arkansas regiment.'
'You fought for the South?'
'Most of the Five Tribes were with the Confederacy. After all, most of us owned slaves, too. The South promised us tribal rights and better land after the war was over. And you know how Indians are about white promises. They just keep swallowing the bait and swallowing the bait and swallowing the bait.'
'I didn't know Indians had slaves.'
'Could be there's lots of things you don't know.'
'And were you one of them? A slave, I mean?'
'No. I was never a slave. Indians don't make good slaves. Either they rise up and kill their master, or they just pine away and die.'
'But you're…'
'Black? Yes. There were two kinds of Negroes with the Cherokee. There were field slaves that the Indians bought and used just like white people did. Then there were blacks who'd run away to live with the Indians… mostly because they'd done something to a white man, and they knew what'd happen if they got caught. Now, my father- Hey, why the hell am I talking about all this when there's work wants being done!'
'Oh, go on, Mr. Coots. Your father was a runaway, was he?'
'That's right. Most Indians will accept you if you're willing to live their way. They don't think about race the same way as whites do. Or blacks either, for that matter. My mother was a breed. So I'm three-quarters Black… and at the same time all Cherokee.'
'What is war really like, Mr. Coots? Must of been a real adventure.'
'War? Mostly war's boring. You're always cold and wet. And you're tired. And itchy with bugs. Then all of a sudden everyone's shooting and shouting and running around, and you're so goddamned scared you can't swallow. Then it's all over, and some of you are dead or wounded, and the rest are back to scratching and being bored. That's war.'
'And after all that, your side lost.'
'N-not exactly. By the end I was fighting for the North. After the way Choctaw and Chickasaw troops got blooded at Pea Ridge and Wilson's Creek, Chief John Ross decided we were goddamned fools to fight for the Carolinians and Georgians who had driven us off our land, so he led the Upper Creeks and a bunch of us Cherokee mixed-bloods to join the North, and next thing I knew, I was wearing the blue of the 2nd Cherokee Rifles.'
'You fought on both sides? And to think I didn't know that Indians had fought in the war at all!'
'The Five Tribes suffered greater losses in the war than any American state, North or South.'
'Gee, they never told us about that in school.'
'There's lots of stuff they don't tell you in school about Indians, boy. And about whites, too.'
'I guess so.' Matthew digested all this. Then: 'Can I ask you something else?'
'No, you can't!'
'All right.'
'My mouth's worn out with talking!'
'I understand… but if I could ask something else, Mr. Coots, I'd ask how come you and Mr. Stone haven't given me any work. I mean, I understand why Mrs. Bjorkvist hasn't. She's bone stingy, but you two… But I guess it's not up to you to decide. You'd have to ask Mr. Stone before giving out work, and he'd probably-'
'I wouldn't ask B. J. nothing. I'd just tell him.'
'Tell me what?' B. J. asked, returning with the coffee pot and Matthew's cup from earlier that morning. He flipped it empty.
'We're going to give the boy some jobs of work to do.'
'We are?'
'Yes. A few hours here and there. And we're going to pay him fifteen cents an hour. He's not afraid of hard work. Unlike some people I could mention.'
B. J. Stone passed Matthew his cup. 'Well, I guess you're part of my staff. Though God knows why a healthy, bright young man would want to stay in this godforsaken excuse for a town.'
'Thank you, sir.' Matthew accepted the scalding coffee and drew in a long, air-filled sip. It was even stronger than before, but he didn't make a face. 'I don't know why you bad-mouth Twenty-Mile so much, Mr. Stone. It seems to me a nice town full of helpful people.'
'You're mistaken, boy! Twenty-Mile is moribund! And its citizens are the lees and dregs of this world: the lost, the lonely, the losers, the lazy, the luckless, the low-minded. And that's only the L's for Christ's sake!'
Matthew's mouth had slowly opened in awe at this flow of words. He looked over at Coots, who shrugged and said, 'He used to be a schoolteacher. Some trades leave their marks on a man, like those little burn-scars on the arms of a blacksmith, or the black spit of a coal miner. School-teaching leaves a man with incurable mouth- flap.'
'I'd give anything to be able to talk as smooth and slick as that, Mr. Stone. You use words almost as good as Mr. Anthony Bradford Chumms.'
'Who? Oh, that British hack you're so fond of. The one who-how did it go? '… lends a cultured richness of expression to exciting tales of the American West'?'
Stung by this mocking of the man who created the Ringo Kid, Matthew said, 'No matter what you say, Mr. Stone, I don't agree that everybody in Twenty-Mile is losers and lonely and low-minded, and all that. Take Mr. Kane, for instance. Him and his daughter seem to be good people.'
'It isn't a question of good or bad. It's a question of being whole or crippled. Once Twenty-Mile started dying, only the lame and the confused stayed behind. Everyone got out who still had a modicum of health, or hope, or heart-'
'And that's just the H's,' Coots said with annoyance. He was used to B. J.'s misanthropic outpourings, but he didn't think he should parade his unattractive bile before a stranger.
'But you're right about the Kanes, Matthew,' B. J. Stone continued, the bit well between his teeth. 'Kane's not a bad man, just weak. He's let bitterness and self-pity gnaw at him until it's eaten half way through his heart. And his daughter…? Well, I feel sorry for her, growing up in Twenty-Mile. But she's got spunk and she'll find a way to get out one of these days, I'm sure of it. As for the rest of us…' He flipped his hand, as though to clear the air of such rubbish. 'You've met the Bjorkvists. Now there's a fine upstanding family for you! A grasping woman who wrings money out of the miners. And her hulking bully of a husband! Oh and don't forget that simple-minded son with a slop-bucket for a mind. And Kersti, a poor pack animal cruelly short-changed by both Nature, who made her ugly, and Fate, who dumped her in this lost chunk of Nowhere. One might feel sorry for Kersti, if it weren't that she's sure to produce a litter of her own, a litter bearing her parents' lethal blend of cupidity and stupidity.'
'And that's just the 'iditiy's,' ' Coots muttered, looking out to the northwest, where the low angle of the setting sun was picking out textures on the hillsides.
'The Bjorkvists left Sweden with a sect that found the Loo-tern church too forgiving and sinner-coddling for their taste, so they set up a religious colony back in some Iowa or another. But they threw the Bjorkvists out. Imagine being rejected from a fundamentalist sect! How low on the intellectual ladder can you get?'
'What did they get thrown out for?'
'Who knows? The mind boggles! The imagination staggers! The stomach turns! The skin crawls! And as for Professor Murphy, our tonsorial entrepreneur! He arrived in town trailing rumors behind him like the stench of his potent bay rum.'
