“Like hell,” answered the driver. “I know where I am. I used to work around here, but the wife doesn’t know it. Let me tell you, I practically built that dam alone. Yes, sir, I remember still, the ‘cheapest earth filled dam in the western hemisphere’ it was supposed to be. And the Slide — I suppose you know about it — was like a whole corner of the world fell in.”
“I recollect it,” said Luke.
“I was surprised not to find any lights, not even a lunch wagon on the road.” The driver leaned closer to watch. “I must’ve missed the turning into town. ‘There isn’t any town way out here,’ says my wife, but I know better. I thought we’d just fly through for a quick look around. And of course to stop some place. I was surprised to see the place so run down, not a sign or anything. Why, you wouldn’t even know the dam was here.”
“It’s here all right,” said Luke.
He twisted up the leg, tied the rubber hose so that the lower calf went white and the upper darkened, making the child appear ready for transfusion. Keeping the blade out of the child’s sight, he peered at the fang marks in the coloring flesh. A crack of static burst from the car. “Try another station, Lou,” called Camper and they heard the whirr as the window was rolled shut.
His tin kit lay open in the dust at his heels, the extra blade catching the light, the label worn off the green corked bottle of iodine. Luke squeezed the leg, satisfied himself with the set of punctures, tightened the rubber tubing, shifted a bit, took up a packet of matches and, striking three or four, heated the blade.
Luke had seen them stricken before: Ma was not immune to rattlers on the water trail and even the Mandan was struck one blow from a startled head. The snakes were driven further and further from the bluff and new highway, and gathered wherever a few rocks or sticks could hide them deeper in the fields. He had killed them with rake handles. Once he ground an old flathead down with his long heel. But still their bodies might dart from a forkful of hay or dash from under pail or wheel to strike.
The blade turned blue. Luke once more picked up the leg and sank the point quickly in and out until two crosses had been cut and, the knife still hanging from his fingers, Camper holding the child’s shoulders, he relaxed his face and posture and sucked the wounds, his eyes growing heavy in the headlights, staring, as if the venom had a hard and needy taste to a man who, in all his youth on the infested range, had never himself been bitten. He took it as one of his four drays copped the bar of salt, hung over it, and kept it from the rest.
Specks of red appeared on Camper’s yellow shirt and with one hand he swatted, all the while watching the cowboy draw, turn, spit and stoop again. The mosquitoes filtered across the headlight, hummed and settled, biting into the driver’s white arms and neck. “Hurry up,” called the woman, her voice muffled behind the glass.
“This country’s hell on a man,” said Camper. He lit a cigarette and sat down more comfortably on the curving bumper. He watched the cowboy repack the tin and wipe his hands. “By the way,” he rubbed his arms, “how deep is she these days?”
“Eighteen feet, six inches round noon,” answered Luke, “but she’s down a little now.”
“That’s a lot of water.” He reached for his pocket. “I hate to be shoving off. Kind of like to wait until dawn and take a look around. I know there’s fishing. But the wife’ll be howling how she wants a hotel with screens on the windows and a girl to bring in the towels and washing water. Wait a minute,” he looked at Luke’s boots with steer heads carved above the ankles. “Can I give you something?”
“Naw. You just come back sometime when the sun’s up and it’s been raining a few days before. Come back and see her when she’s brimming!”
“I will,” called Camper, “I sure will.”
Luke Lampson finally walked into the dark acres adjoining the few lamps and measured streets of Mistletoe. Approached from almost any side, it was open country, sand, clay and nests of weed; the horseshoe street was swept abruptly from a rutted field. Children’s dolls and slides always lay toward the flagpole center, never behind the houses on the plain. Luke entered town by picking his way between two single story cabins and crossing the street before him to the drugstore: Estrellita’s. He straightened his hat, brushed the burrs from his pants and pushed through the patched screen door.
“Howdy, Lampson, howdy, Lampson,” murmured and softly echoed the men around oilclothed tables.
“Evening, gentlemen.”
He crossed to the counter and settled himself on a chromium stool.
“A bottle of pop, Mary Jane,” he said to the little girl in apron and white soda fountain cap.
Luke hooked his heels on a rung, spread his sharp knees and leaned over the straw. His back was to the men, his head hidden under the curled black brim. He looked into the rear kitchenette where an old man fried hamburgers and the girl did her lessons; he looked through the connecting door to the billiard room and back to his drink. There was only one light in the billiard hall, a pair of feet on the edge of a table and the row of cues. On the few nights of the week when a customer might enter, beer was served him and the light turned up. But those men who used to pride themselves on studied shots and drop ashes on the green cloth, now took to Estrellita’s. They watched the cowboy, his stooped shoulders, the split in his shirt, the white calf of his leg between the top of the boot and the rolled denim.
“Any of you boys seen Bohn?”
They waited a moment and then: “Naw, Luke, not tonight.”
“Ain’t seen him since an hour.”
“Reckon he’s in to Clare.”
The little girl laughed, pulled the primer over her face and the chef slammed a handful of meat on the griddle. With the point of his knife he pierced the bun, slit it, laid it flat and smeared on margarine. They heard the meatcake sizzling.
Across from Estrellita’s was the Metal and Lumber Gymnasium where the welders played the linesmen, where raffles were held and any entertainment, resulting in proceeds for the town, occurred. The grilled windows were open, lights were strung over the slippery hardwood, the instrumentalists followed the scores of their sheet music bought in Clare. Luke paid his dime at the door.
he’s here,” said Wade of the man with the red wagon.
“Saw him, did you?”
“Yes, sir, I got a look at him.”
There was a desk and a chair on rollers for the Sheriff of Clare and a cane chair for his visitor. But both men stood. In the jail office they did not face each other, rather they waited side by side, the Sheriff’s hand on the other’s arm, talking slowly, not quite in whispers. They did not move but rested on their feet, alert by standing, old now, steady, for nights which kept them from slumbering, together watchful, dimly awake..
“I knew he was coming, Wade. I heard of it.” The Sheriff gently laid down the fat, wingfolded body of his Stetson.
No move was made to sit or turn and take the few steps to the open door from which they could have seen a street, a ridge of roof, the sloping, dry and distant night. Their backs remained without effort toward those sights, dim or broad, which might have made them think men slept in safety. Facing walls, the rear of the jail, they breathed together with a faint heave as if pollen and dust tracked them — all day they inhaled the clouds raised by a passing few youths — and the air were still laden long after the setting of the sun. They waited, come to a stop in the middle of the narrow stone room where dried cigarettes lay strewn on the faded blotter of the half open desk, where a winter coat hung from a peg, and the arm of each was made easy by touching the other’s. A thin light hung above their heads from a long cord more rope than wire. Separately they stared at the floor, pausing a moment in those outer, less confining parts of a jail. They smiled.