Matthew came running across the street, slipping in the mud. But before he got to B. J., Lieder grabbed him by the collar and snatched his face up close to his own. 'Did you know about this, boy?! Did you know they meant to shoot me in the back?!'
Confused, frightened, Matthew cried, 'What? What do you mean?'
'I knew it!' Lieder cried into the rain. 'I knew it! I have always been a good judge of horse-flesh and man- flesh, and I just knew that one damaged boy couldn't never turn on another. They didn't tell you they planned to shoot me down in cold blood. No! They used you, boy. You let them use you just as bad as if you'd been a new boy in prison. Now maybe you know who your real friend is!' He looked down at B. J., who had slumped to his knees still hugging Coots's legs to him. 'Oh for Christ's sake, old man! He's dead! All your sobbing and whimpering won't change that. He's dead, and it was your sneaking and plotting that killed him! Killed him just as sure as if you'd kicked that chair out from under him yourself. So stop slobbering on like an old woman!'
B. J. muttered something wetly into Coots's legs.
'What?'
'I want… take him down.'
'Take him, then! Take him! I don't need no back-shooting nigger hanging around my front door! Go on! Take him!'
B. J. looked up at the beam and the rope, confused, tears streaming from his eyes and nose and mixing with the rain on his face. 'Matthew…?'
Matthew fished his Barlow knife out of his pocket and held it out. B. J. climbed up on the chair and sawed at the rope, while Matthew did his best to lighten the strain by lifting Coots, but the legs were too limp, and when the rope parted with a dull twang, Coots slumped across Matthew's shoulders, the lifeless weight buckling his knees and making him stagger, but none of the deacons came forward to help him; they remained close to the wall, scared and drunk. B. J. peeled Coots's weight from Matthew's back and sat across the bottom step in the rain, holding Coots in his arms, the dead face buried in his neck.
'Now ain't that a picture?' Lieder asked, stepping out into the rain and standing before B. J. and Coots to occupy the center of attention. 'Now, this here's what I call a picture of true friendship,' he told his men and 'deacons' with grave sincerity, the rain running from the brim of his hat onto Coots's chest. 'You may not believe it, schoolteacher, but I appreciate how you must be suffering, knowing that you caused the death of your friend with your treachery and schemes. Friendship and loyalty are two qualities I admire… ' He looked back up to his audience on the porch. '… just as I detest sneaks and tattletales. And one among you is just that, a sneak and a tattletale. One among you is a Judas. Schoolteacher?' Lieder placed his palm on B. J.'s head. 'Shall I tell you how I found out about your nigger friend?'
B. J. didn't respond.
'No, maybe I shouldn't tell. After all, I gave my word. But then, I do loathe a tattletale. Always have, ever since school. I gave my word, so I cannot divulge who told me in hopes of getting in good with me. But I can say this much: he was a man of the cloth.'
B. J. lifted his head, and his eyes found those of Reverend Hibbard among the silent onlookers.
Hibbard's eyes flickered, and he pressed back against the wall of the hotel, shaking his head in denial and lifting his palms in helplessness. 'Yes but… but…' he babbled into the rain. 'I only did what I had to do. I saw your Coots up at the Lode! I knew he'd be coming back down today. It wasn't hard to figure out he'd be trying something!'
B. J.'s eyes remained heavily on Hibbard: there was neither hatred nor anger in them, only infinite sadness, infinite pain.
'Don't blame me!' Hibbard cried. 'What if your Coots had failed? Eh? Mr. Lieder would have thought we were all in on it! You didn't care what would happen to us, did you?'
B. J. closed his eyes and lowered his head to Coots's, but Matthew continued to glare at the preacher with cold loathing.
'Don't you look at me like that, boy! I did what I had to do! I acted for the greater good!'
'Oh now, don't piss yourself, Reverend,' Lieder said. 'Nobody's going to hurt you. After all… ' He smiled. '… you enjoy my personal protection.'
'Matthew?' B. J. said quietly. 'I've got to get him home.'
Matthew looked around for something to carry Coots on, then he decided to fetch the handbarrow he used to bring supplies up from the train. He hurried back across to the Mercantile, and he was dragging the barrow out of the shed when Ruth Lillian opened the back door. 'Matthew…?' But he shook his head and plodded back through the rain.
They lifted Coots into the barrow as gently as they could, but his legs and arms dangled over awkwardly. B. J. grasped the handles and pushed Coots home, rain washing the tears from his upturned face, his arms stretched straight from his shoulders to the handles, his boots slipping on the mud through which Coots's bare heels dragged.
DAWN. AND THE RAIN had thinned to a chill mist that condensed in opalescent beads on the rusted wire fence between the donkey meadow and the burying ground. The gritty scrape of B. J. 's spade cutting into the yeasty earth was uncannily sharp and clear, as sounds are in mist. Unused to such heavy work, B. J.'s breathing soon became a rasp that galled his lungs, so he didn't object when Matthew took the spade from him and continued digging at the same rhythm.
B. J. sat on the ground beside Coots and placed a comforting hand on his blanket-wrapped chest, too deep in grief and pain to notice Matthew's peculiar expression as he dug: faraway eyes and a vague half-smile.
The handle of Matthew's spade stung his hands when the blade rang on the shelf-rock that lay about four feet beneath the sodden surface. He turned and began to bring the other end of the grave down to the same level. It wasn't until he stood up to take off his hat and wipe the sweat from his forehead that he noticed Frenchy standing behind B. J. and Coots. Without a word she hitched up her skirts and tucked the hem into her waistband until her cotton-stockinged legs were free up to her knee-length pantaloons. She stepped to the edge of the grave and held out her hand with an authority of gesture that dismissed argument. Matthew gave her the spade and watched her dig with the economic hip-swing of a woman who had done her share of field work as a girl, before she escaped to the glittering world. He was on her 'scar side,' and the immobile, dispassionate ugliness fascinated him.
He became aware of a soft humming behind him… an old Negro spiritual. He turned his head, and Lieder was standing there, his hat in his hand, his head bowed.
Without looking at Lieder, B. J. rose and took another turn, then he gave the spade to Matthew, who had struck shelf-rock from end to end before Frenchy's turn came again. And all the time, Lieder continued to hum in a soft, plaintive voice, his hands folded on the butt of the cocked pistol in his belt. The grave was only a few inches longer than Coots, so it wasn't possible to lower him in gracefully. Matthew stood in the hole with Coots's feet between his boots, while B. J. 's straddled his head. The face had become uncovered in the handling, so B. J. covered it up again, folding the fabric over tenderly. They climbed out and stood on the edge of the grave until B. J. said, 'I guess I should…' But then he shook his head miserably. 'No words.' He pushed the spade into the newly dug earth and stood with it, but he was unable to dump it onto Coots.
Frenchy took the spade from him and led him back to the Livery, leaving Matthew to fill in the grave.
Lieder stopped humming and followed the departing B. J. with his eyes. 'Just look at him. That schoolteacher is a broken man. Broken by suffering and loss. You saw how he couldn't even try to take his revenge on me? That poor old man's so full of grief and self-pity that there's no room left for hate. And a man needs hate. Sometime hate's all that keeps us going. Oh, it's all the old fool's own fault, of course, but still…' Lieder shook his head and sucked at his front teeth. 'I hate to see a man's innards all scooped out like that. He won't be any good to anybody until the suffering burns itself out, and that'll take a long, long time. And you know what that means, Matthew? It means you're all alone now. You can thank your lucky stars that you and me, we're cut from the same cloth.' He chuckled. 'Rough old burlap! That's the kind of cloth we were cut from, right? Eh? What do you say?'
Matthew stood stiff and unresponsive, his eyes defocused, not even feeling the hand that Lieder had laid on his shoulder.
'It wasn't my fault that jig tried to back-shoot me, Matthew. I had to punish him. I didn't have any choice. But you can believe me when I tell you that I wish to God it hadn't happened. I didn't want to harm anybody in this sorry excuse for a town. But people just won't leave me alone!'
