She took down a tin of biscuits and a slab of jerky from a sagging shelf. After she dropped the food on the table, she sat down, lit up a curved ivory pipe, and watched Hatchet Jack and Zebulon eat.
“Raise many pelts this winter?” Hatchet Jack asked, chewing hard on the jerky.
Annie May shrugged, then let loose another streak of tobacco juice, missing the spittoon by a foot. “I floated my share of sticks, but the haul was damn thin. Not much beaver, a few muskrats and otter, the odd fox. Hardly worth the trouble. Far as I’m concerned, the mountains be finished. Leastways for this old sow.”
They passed around a second bottle of whiskey. When the bottle was empty, Hatchet Jack and Zebulon lay down on a pile of pelts, too tired to pay attention to the rats sniffing across the floor for crumbs.
Annie May closed her eyes and continued to smoke, enjoying the smell and presence of two snoring men. When the memories of a newborn son and a mountain lover who wouldn’t quit threatened to overwhelm her, she stumbled off to her own bunk in an add-to behind the stove.
~ ~ ~
The next morning Zebulon cleaned out a weasel nest underneath a rafter while Annie May sat by the window, watching Hatchet Jack sort out her meager display of pelts, then cinch and slap them over the backs of two emaciated mules.
“Never thought I’d see both of you at the same trough again,” she said. “Not after what Hatchet pulled with your pa. Not to mention your pa with him.”
“He’s askin’ forgiveness, Ma. That ain’t easy.”
“Forgiveness ain’t in my possibles bag. If your pa was here, he’d give him a taste of forgiveness upside the head.”
Zebulon opened the door and threw out the weasel nest, looking at Hatchet Jack, who was kneeling on the ground, carefully shoeing one of the mules.
“Hatchet’s pulled me out of a few scraps and shoot-outs,” he said. “I owe him for that.”
Annie May shrugged. “You always were a sucker for idiot kindness. Truth is, your heart slammed shut when Pa brought Hatchet back and he tried to drown you in the river. I had to pull you out by your hair. Ever since then, you’ll take any bone thrown to you.”
She sighed, not remembering how much Zebulon had been told about Hatchet Jack.
“I’ll tell you some things Hatchet picked up from your pa,” she said. “Dealin’ off the bottom of the deck. Settin’ someone up and draggin’ him to hell and then tellin’ him he done the opposite. For spite and pleasure.”
“He’s slick all right,” Zebulon acknowledged. “I’ll give him that.”
“Never mind,” she went on, as if she was having second thoughts. “He’s still kin. I raised him almost the same as you, a fact that calls for some measurement, if not in the eyes of the Lord, then from you and me. Poor lost-and-found half-breed bastard.”
She took a deep breath before she finally said what was really on her mind: “Tell you one last thing, son. After I sell my pelts, that’s it for me. I ain’t about to wait for my last days stretched out in a low-rent room over some dumb flatlander’s store.”
“Maybe I should pack you down to old Mex,” Zebulon suggested. “Let the sun warm your bones. Fix you up in some little hacienda with a front porch and a cantina down the street. There are worse ways.”
“What the hell would I do in old Mex? Chew my sorry cud with all them bean and chili-eaters? Nossir. When I take my carcass to the misty beyond, the sky will be my blanket and I’ll have a mountain to lean against and a jug to pull on. That’ll be enough.”
He had grown up hearing this statement, or at least variations of it, and depending on her mood he always gave the same reply: “You brought me into the world, Ma. I’ll see you out.”
This time she interrupted him: “I didn’t raise you for false sentiments, son. You do what’s in front of you and I’ll do the same.”
The following morning they all rode off into a soft spring rain. They took their time, as Annie May was in no hurry to be shut of the only place she had known for thirty years, a place she was beginning to realize she would never see again.
That night they camped among the crumbling ruins of an abandoned pueblo, the wind howling around their fire like a chorus of grieving widows. Halfway through a meal of Annie May’s remaining biscuits and dried jerky, Hatchet Jack stood up, his head swiveling back and forth.
An ancient Mexican stood in the shadows, his nearly toothless face marked by an empty eye socket. His skeletal frame was wrapped in torn leggings and a long white cotton shirt.
“You leave a trail like a wounded buffalo,” the Mexican said with a soft Spanish accent.
“Plaxico!” Hatchet Jack exclaimed. “How did you find me?” “I didn’t find you. You found me.”
“But—”
“Your problem is that you think too much. And not enough.”
Without another word, he turned and disappeared.
Spooked by the old Mexican’s ghostly appearance, Annie May paced back and forth, raising her arms against the elements: “Hurrah fer mountain doin’s and all the old warriors in all the times! My boys and I, we come in peace and we’ll leave in peace and we’d be grateful if all you dead and dyin’ red niggers and bean-eaters put the stopper on your salutes. One day soon I’ll pitch my tent inside the big circle. But not now. Not this night.”
Zebulon and Hatchet Jack joined her, shuffling their feet around the fire, faster and faster as they hollered their mountain yells: “Waaaaaaaaagh…! Waaaaaaaaagh…! Waaaaaaaaagh!”
Collapsing on their backs, they finished the last of the whiskey as they sang an old family song:
Old Long Hatcher gone under on the north Platte,
Found him a bar but the bar laid him flat.
Hatchet Jack reached into his pocket and removed a paper bag full of penny candies. Popping half of them into his mouth, he threw the bag to Zebulon, who took a fistful and passed the bag to Annie May, who gobbled up the rest.
“We’re markin’ the bush on sacred ground,” Hatchet Jack said. “Plaxico might make us pay for that.”
Annie May sighed. “You seen one old buzzard around these hide-outs, you seen ’em all. The hell with him. I’ll settle for a healing. What about it, Mister Healer-Dealer? Can you strut your healin’ stuff? Got me a bad knee, shoulder ain’t right, arrowhead been stuck in my leg for ten years, teeth gone or rotten, sluice line to my gut plugged up. Not only that, but I’m spiteful with bad notions.”
“I can handle that,” Hatchet Jack said, showing no confidence at all.
“Check out Zeb while you’re at it,” Annie May suggested. “He’s tough to figure, shot up with no bullet in his pump. Like he don’t know if he’s here or down under.”
Hatchet Jack shook his head, not wanting to go ahead with any of it. “I never done two straight up. I always been the helper.”
“Yoke us up anyway,” Zebulon said. “Never mind the windy complaints.”
Hatchet Jack poked their shoulders and cheeks with his forefinger, blowing tobacco smoke over their heads and shoulders and into their faces. Then he stood up and opened his arms to include the night sky and the black clouds drifting beneath a quarter-moon like a procession of giant bones.
“Old Father,” he cried out, “don’t contrary me now!”
Arching