Ron Baird's Blog - Posts Tagged "-blackwind"
August 1953
Late-morning sunlight streamed through the kitchen window as Jessie Faye hummed an old-timey tune and dried the dishes. Her eyes had wandered outside to the play of light on the shimmering aspen leaves when she thought she saw a movement in the shadows at the forest’s edge. It gave her a start because a panther had been about and Oren was worried it might take a calf.
When they’d first moved here, every little noise or passing shadow sent her into a panic, but as the years went by she had learned to relax some. If only the place weren’t so dang far away from everything and everyone.
Not that she was complaining. They had come seeking solitude, and it was a miracle she and Oren had stumbled on this hard-bitten chunk of mountain someone had called a ranch and sold to them. Working from daybreak to nightfall, winter and summer, they got by. Lord knows it wasn’t easy.
Hard, yes, but there was much good about the place. Everything here was of such a grand scale. The sky⎯who would of ever thought there could be so much of it? Those cottonmouth-infested hollers of home were so steep that a body had to climb clear up the ridges to get a thimble full of blue sky. Here, the sun seemed to shine forever. No, she wasn’t complaining, not when she thought about what they had left behind back in Arkansas.
Another movement in the trees jolted Jessie Faye out of her revelry. A frown creased her face, still unlined despite the hard ranch work and harsh winters. And still pretty beneath the curly brown hair piled high on her head.
She wiped her hands on the apron and backed away from the window, moving toward the front room where she would have a better view. She kept to the darkened area of the room as she sought the patch of trees where she had seen…something.
For long moments she watched. But nothing was moving out there now, so she relaxed a bit. She felt a little foolish. Heaven’s sake, she wasn’t some vaporous Mississippi belle. She was a McAllister girl, raised in the hard country of the Little Red River, and a ranch woman these past six years surviving in the high Colorado Rockies. She moved back to the kitchen and the bread dough that was rising on the counter.
Still, almost against her will, her eyes wandered to the yard from time to time and she caught herself pounding the thickening mass, beating down her fear. With long, slender fingers she molded the dough into loaves and set them on the counter to rise. Something was wrong but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Then she had it⎯the magpies hadn’t showed up. They came up every day and raised holy hell, waiting for her to carry out the trash. They screeched and strutted and made an awful nuisance of themselves, but they kept her entertained and helped fight off the loneliness when her husband was gone. She had even given them names, although she would never have admitted that to anyone, lest they accuse her of being addle-brained.
But the magpies, with their blue, black and white feathers flashing in the sunlight, their goosey steps and bobbing heads, were not about, and they were always here this time of day, leastways when she was home by herself. She worried it was because something was out there in the trees and had scared them off. A small tremor of fear shook her body.
For God’s sake woman, she chastised herself, there’s nothing out there you haven’t seen the worse of. Go on and settle this thing in your mind. She felt better for making the decision, so she slipped into the mudroom and changed from her housedress into canvas overalls, a flannel shirt and heavy boots. The overalls still had bloodstains and a burnt-hair smell from castrating and branding the calves last week. The blood she didn’t mind so much, but the smell of burned hair and flesh made her stomach churn.
She knew she had to wash them out, but there was so damn much work to do around here it was near impossible to get caught up.
Still, first things first. She picked up the shotgun, broke it open and saw the brass of the 12-gauge shells gleaming like new pennies. She snapped it shut and reached up to the box on the shelf, grabbed four more, and slipped them into her pocket. The door of the mudroom faced away from the side of the house where she’d seen the movement, so she slipped out that way. Using the squat, brown ranch house for cover, she walked into the trees and hiked a ways up the hillside.
The long-barreled shotgun felt natural in her hands as she eased down through the trees, minding her footfalls the way Pappy had taught her. But the ground was moist, thanks to the afternoon rains they’d been getting, and even the dead branches on the ground were too soft to break if stepped on.
About forty feet above the forest’s edge, she came up with a jerk, her heartbeat echoing in her ears. She could barely make out two figures hunched down watching the house, but she could see their sweat-stained brown slouch hats. Those hats told her all she needed to know: the thing she feared most for the past six years had come to pass.
She crept forward to where she had a clear view, stopped next to a thick white tree trunk, brought the shotgun up to her cheek and thumbed back both hammers, a sound that had only one meaning to anyone who’d ever heard it.
The men below had, and they flung themselves backward and rolled over, raising heavy-barreled pistols in her direction.
“Don’t,” she said, her voice not showing the fear she felt, “or I’ll shoot.” The men squinted over the long, thin beards favored by the folk back home where she and Oren had come up.
“Jessie Faye? Is that really you? Come on now, you wouldn’t up and shoot yer own kin, would ya?” The men rose to their haunches. Their wide, evil grins revealed rows of stubby, tobacco-stained teeth. She recognized one of them⎯cousin Purvis. She reckoned if you put his brain in a bullfrog, it would be too dumb to croak. How in Hades had they found her and Oren and made it all the way up here to the ranch?
“Quicker’n I’d squash a bloody tick, Purvis. What’re y’all doing here?”
“We come for ya, Jessie. It ain’t right desertin’ yer family like that. We come to make things right and take ya back home.”
Make things right. How many times had she heard that growing up? Her stomach lurched like she’d eaten some bad meat, pain stabbed at her bowels. Her legs grew weak. These murderous sons-a-bitches, her kin, had come to kill Oren for marrying her and taking her away. The idea that she’d wanted the same thing and went along willingly couldn’t even be absorbed in their moonshine- and chaw-pickled brains. She left as much to get away from her family as for love. But she did love Oren, and she had her boy and a good life here. She be damned to hell before letting them make things right.
Seeing what they took for hesitation, both men rose. She snapped the gun back to eye level.
“Don’t,” she barked again, the old steel coming back into her spine. “Put them guns down.”
They held them pointed at the ground. “Now Jessie, we cain’t do that. You know that us McAllisters would die ‘fore we’d surrender our guns.”
“If that’s the way you want it, then. I’m gonna count to five. Should I count out loud or just surprise you?”
“Ha!” Purvis said. “That’s a good un, Jessie Faye. ” Despite his tone, she noticed a tick beneath his left eye and sighted on it. Whether or not they believed her, they did start backing down the hill toward the house.
She advanced step for step as they retreated. Just as they moved out of the trees into the yard, the whine of a truck engine coming up the grade reached them, and Oren’s red International stakebed loaded high with hay lurched into view.
“It’s him,” Purvis shouted with glee, as if the fact that she had a double-barrel 12-gauge scattergun pointed at them was less of a bother than a hungry skeeter. They had turned and were raising their pistols at the oncoming truck when Jessie Faye cut loose with both barrels, shredding a tunnel of foliage between them and knocking both men down like hollow reeds in a stiff wind. The double recoil wrenched her halfway around, but she managed to turn back as Oren’s truck roared into the yard. As Jessie Faye stared at the bodies of her cousins through the floating confetti of leaves and twigs, she thought she saw the curtain in the front room move, though there was not a ripple of wind.
Both men were twitching, probably mortally wounded, so she ran to the house, emptying the spent shells and stuffing two new ones into the chambers as she ran.
She toed the screen door open and, holding the shotgun at hip-level, she checked the front room, then the others; no one but the boy was there, in his bedroom, sitting up in sweat-drenched pajamas with both hands pressed to his ears, a look of absolute terror on his face. She stood the shotgun against the wall and waited for the roaring in her head to die down so she could say something to comfort him.
Before she could, two booming gunshots came from the yard outside, which Jessie Faye mercifully recognized as the flat pop of Oren’s Army .45, not the booming echo of the long-barrel .44s the men of the McAllister clan carried. The shots, however, brought her son up and out of the bed at a full gallop. She grabbed him and pulled him to her to hold, but his little fists were flailing. They struck her several times before she could pin his arms in her embrace. He moaned like a wounded animal but stopped thrashing.
She stepped to the bed and lay his now-limp body on the tangle of sweaty sheets, wondering about the swaying curtain. She lay beside him, pulling his small body tight into the protective cove of her bosom, whispering from the core of her heart, “It’ll be all right, baby, it’ll be all right.”
But Jessie Faye wondered if she were trying to convince her son or herself, now that the evil of her blood had touched her family.
Next--the plot
Late-morning sunlight streamed through the kitchen window as Jessie Faye hummed an old-timey tune and dried the dishes. Her eyes had wandered outside to the play of light on the shimmering aspen leaves when she thought she saw a movement in the shadows at the forest’s edge. It gave her a start because a panther had been about and Oren was worried it might take a calf.
When they’d first moved here, every little noise or passing shadow sent her into a panic, but as the years went by she had learned to relax some. If only the place weren’t so dang far away from everything and everyone.
Not that she was complaining. They had come seeking solitude, and it was a miracle she and Oren had stumbled on this hard-bitten chunk of mountain someone had called a ranch and sold to them. Working from daybreak to nightfall, winter and summer, they got by. Lord knows it wasn’t easy.
Hard, yes, but there was much good about the place. Everything here was of such a grand scale. The sky⎯who would of ever thought there could be so much of it? Those cottonmouth-infested hollers of home were so steep that a body had to climb clear up the ridges to get a thimble full of blue sky. Here, the sun seemed to shine forever. No, she wasn’t complaining, not when she thought about what they had left behind back in Arkansas.
Another movement in the trees jolted Jessie Faye out of her revelry. A frown creased her face, still unlined despite the hard ranch work and harsh winters. And still pretty beneath the curly brown hair piled high on her head.
She wiped her hands on the apron and backed away from the window, moving toward the front room where she would have a better view. She kept to the darkened area of the room as she sought the patch of trees where she had seen…something.
For long moments she watched. But nothing was moving out there now, so she relaxed a bit. She felt a little foolish. Heaven’s sake, she wasn’t some vaporous Mississippi belle. She was a McAllister girl, raised in the hard country of the Little Red River, and a ranch woman these past six years surviving in the high Colorado Rockies. She moved back to the kitchen and the bread dough that was rising on the counter.
Still, almost against her will, her eyes wandered to the yard from time to time and she caught herself pounding the thickening mass, beating down her fear. With long, slender fingers she molded the dough into loaves and set them on the counter to rise. Something was wrong but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Then she had it⎯the magpies hadn’t showed up. They came up every day and raised holy hell, waiting for her to carry out the trash. They screeched and strutted and made an awful nuisance of themselves, but they kept her entertained and helped fight off the loneliness when her husband was gone. She had even given them names, although she would never have admitted that to anyone, lest they accuse her of being addle-brained.
But the magpies, with their blue, black and white feathers flashing in the sunlight, their goosey steps and bobbing heads, were not about, and they were always here this time of day, leastways when she was home by herself. She worried it was because something was out there in the trees and had scared them off. A small tremor of fear shook her body.
For God’s sake woman, she chastised herself, there’s nothing out there you haven’t seen the worse of. Go on and settle this thing in your mind. She felt better for making the decision, so she slipped into the mudroom and changed from her housedress into canvas overalls, a flannel shirt and heavy boots. The overalls still had bloodstains and a burnt-hair smell from castrating and branding the calves last week. The blood she didn’t mind so much, but the smell of burned hair and flesh made her stomach churn.
She knew she had to wash them out, but there was so damn much work to do around here it was near impossible to get caught up.
Still, first things first. She picked up the shotgun, broke it open and saw the brass of the 12-gauge shells gleaming like new pennies. She snapped it shut and reached up to the box on the shelf, grabbed four more, and slipped them into her pocket. The door of the mudroom faced away from the side of the house where she’d seen the movement, so she slipped out that way. Using the squat, brown ranch house for cover, she walked into the trees and hiked a ways up the hillside.
The long-barreled shotgun felt natural in her hands as she eased down through the trees, minding her footfalls the way Pappy had taught her. But the ground was moist, thanks to the afternoon rains they’d been getting, and even the dead branches on the ground were too soft to break if stepped on.
About forty feet above the forest’s edge, she came up with a jerk, her heartbeat echoing in her ears. She could barely make out two figures hunched down watching the house, but she could see their sweat-stained brown slouch hats. Those hats told her all she needed to know: the thing she feared most for the past six years had come to pass.
She crept forward to where she had a clear view, stopped next to a thick white tree trunk, brought the shotgun up to her cheek and thumbed back both hammers, a sound that had only one meaning to anyone who’d ever heard it.
The men below had, and they flung themselves backward and rolled over, raising heavy-barreled pistols in her direction.
“Don’t,” she said, her voice not showing the fear she felt, “or I’ll shoot.” The men squinted over the long, thin beards favored by the folk back home where she and Oren had come up.
“Jessie Faye? Is that really you? Come on now, you wouldn’t up and shoot yer own kin, would ya?” The men rose to their haunches. Their wide, evil grins revealed rows of stubby, tobacco-stained teeth. She recognized one of them⎯cousin Purvis. She reckoned if you put his brain in a bullfrog, it would be too dumb to croak. How in Hades had they found her and Oren and made it all the way up here to the ranch?
“Quicker’n I’d squash a bloody tick, Purvis. What’re y’all doing here?”
“We come for ya, Jessie. It ain’t right desertin’ yer family like that. We come to make things right and take ya back home.”
Make things right. How many times had she heard that growing up? Her stomach lurched like she’d eaten some bad meat, pain stabbed at her bowels. Her legs grew weak. These murderous sons-a-bitches, her kin, had come to kill Oren for marrying her and taking her away. The idea that she’d wanted the same thing and went along willingly couldn’t even be absorbed in their moonshine- and chaw-pickled brains. She left as much to get away from her family as for love. But she did love Oren, and she had her boy and a good life here. She be damned to hell before letting them make things right.
Seeing what they took for hesitation, both men rose. She snapped the gun back to eye level.
“Don’t,” she barked again, the old steel coming back into her spine. “Put them guns down.”
They held them pointed at the ground. “Now Jessie, we cain’t do that. You know that us McAllisters would die ‘fore we’d surrender our guns.”
“If that’s the way you want it, then. I’m gonna count to five. Should I count out loud or just surprise you?”
“Ha!” Purvis said. “That’s a good un, Jessie Faye. ” Despite his tone, she noticed a tick beneath his left eye and sighted on it. Whether or not they believed her, they did start backing down the hill toward the house.
She advanced step for step as they retreated. Just as they moved out of the trees into the yard, the whine of a truck engine coming up the grade reached them, and Oren’s red International stakebed loaded high with hay lurched into view.
“It’s him,” Purvis shouted with glee, as if the fact that she had a double-barrel 12-gauge scattergun pointed at them was less of a bother than a hungry skeeter. They had turned and were raising their pistols at the oncoming truck when Jessie Faye cut loose with both barrels, shredding a tunnel of foliage between them and knocking both men down like hollow reeds in a stiff wind. The double recoil wrenched her halfway around, but she managed to turn back as Oren’s truck roared into the yard. As Jessie Faye stared at the bodies of her cousins through the floating confetti of leaves and twigs, she thought she saw the curtain in the front room move, though there was not a ripple of wind.
Both men were twitching, probably mortally wounded, so she ran to the house, emptying the spent shells and stuffing two new ones into the chambers as she ran.
She toed the screen door open and, holding the shotgun at hip-level, she checked the front room, then the others; no one but the boy was there, in his bedroom, sitting up in sweat-drenched pajamas with both hands pressed to his ears, a look of absolute terror on his face. She stood the shotgun against the wall and waited for the roaring in her head to die down so she could say something to comfort him.
Before she could, two booming gunshots came from the yard outside, which Jessie Faye mercifully recognized as the flat pop of Oren’s Army .45, not the booming echo of the long-barrel .44s the men of the McAllister clan carried. The shots, however, brought her son up and out of the bed at a full gallop. She grabbed him and pulled him to her to hold, but his little fists were flailing. They struck her several times before she could pin his arms in her embrace. He moaned like a wounded animal but stopped thrashing.
She stepped to the bed and lay his now-limp body on the tangle of sweaty sheets, wondering about the swaying curtain. She lay beside him, pulling his small body tight into the protective cove of her bosom, whispering from the core of her heart, “It’ll be all right, baby, it’ll be all right.”
But Jessie Faye wondered if she were trying to convince her son or herself, now that the evil of her blood had touched her family.
Next--the plot
