Redeye by Clyde Edgerton Page B

wanted it to be mine.
    I woke up two or three times in the night with my thumb hurting and kept dreaming my hand had a rock in it.
    â€”——
    The next day we was in some low mountains and saw Leesville down below us. I was looking forward to some good grub, something different anyway. We followed a switchback road down the mountain and could see the town below every once in a while. It was smaller than Mumford Rock by about half. I was thinking hard about some good food, and thinking maybe we’d find a saloon and that maybe things would work out for me and a woman maybe. Towns sometimes had new girls in from places like Chicago. I figured maybe it was about time for me.
    When we got to the bottom of the mountain there was this marsh that we somehow got on the wrong side of. All the water was alkali and it smelled . . . bad. We had to backtrack, and when we finally got into town it was pretty late. Zack had been there before and so he knew where to deliver the blankets. We got Jake and the other mule and the extra horses and the cattle all corralled and went in the Twisted Stem Saloon for a drink.
    It was a big place inside, bigger than I’d expected, and with a kind of yellow glow, and smelled damp, like something stale. There was one table of three cowboys playing cards, and two cowboys at the bar, big mirror with whiskey bottles in front of it, and some Kodak pictures of dead bears hanging from tree limbs under this giant picture of a naked woman laying down. There was elk heads on the walls, and antler racks.
    â€œI’ve walked that rail more than once,” Zack said, pointing up to this little balcony.
    â€œWhat you mean?”
    â€œI mean I’ve walked that rail. Like a tight wire.”
    The bartender was . . . a kind of old woman with big eyes and hair piled up on her head. “Is it Mr. Zack?” she said. “What’ll you take—the old thing?”
    â€œI reckon so. What you been up to, Vida Lou?”
    She poured him a drink and slid it to him. “Running this place the last two days. Fuller’s got stomach pains. He’s in bad shape. What’ll you have, young man?” she asked me.
    â€œWhatever he’s having.”
    â€œHe’s having the old thing—cheap whiskey.” She laughed, then coughed, put her fist to her mouth, looking at Zack. I figured she
had
to be a whore. She had all this black stuff around her eyes and a lot of red paint and you could smell her perfume across the bar. She looked like she was probably more fun than anything in the world.
    She poured me a little glass over half full of whiskey and slid it to me. By this time Mr. Pittman was in there. He’d been outside talking to Redeye and tying his leash to a post. He said he tied him to a table one time and Redeye started out after something pulling the table and broke it all to pieces.
    â€œI’ll take a whiskey,” he said.
    She slid him one.
    Mine burned all the way down and my stomach got warm and my head got light. Then she slid us another one and her and Zack went into talking about some people I’d never heard of, and so I walked down a little ways to see what was going on in the next room. I’d heard some laughing in there.
    It was a restaurant, but what got me, from head to toe, was thisgirl sitting facing me. There was one cowboy beside her and two across the table with their backs to me. She had on a white high lace collar and her eyes were very dark and her hair was piled up on top of her head, too.
    I went and stood in the doorway with my drink in my hand just the way I figured a cowboy would. She looked at me and her eyes stayed on me longer than you’d expect. She had a lower lip that drooped a little bit like somebody I knew, but couldn’t place. She looked at the cowboy that was talking to her, then she looked back at me again. And my mind flashed to what if she fell in love with me and married me and I took her back home and