============= 1 =============
Having nothing else to do, the old sun baked hot upon the nothing new from up high in the coffee-colored Cliffside clouds. Brenny bit his lip. Walking without a big toe was something'd take a little getting used to.
Annie was scratching his back as he sat on a bar stool in La Brisa Saras. “Little lower, sweetheat,” he mumbled. He took his pain and chewed on it. Annie scratched down his long spine as she hummed along with the piano player, who sat cross-legged on the bench and whistled a gospel tune.
The dry early morning stole the moisture from their mouths in Cliffside. A man, Carlo Saras, stood in a yellow shirt behind the bar sweating, eyes closed. He spoke up to the ceiling: “...'s dry.”
“Heb'out some damn water, Saras?” Annie barely spoke as she stared out the open door.
“Yeah,” Carlo Saras blinked twice. “Yep.” He flipped open a heavy bucket lid, and scooped out a few glasses. Absently, he set them on the bar.
Brenny breathed, “Thanks,” and felt a trail of wetness down to his chin. He touched his lips: blood. 'What'sat from?' he thought, one eye closed.
Skinny Tom wiggled up between the stools, himself. “For all the mudstains, there sure ain't no mud puddles around,” he coughed. Under that old hat of his, you could barely tell Skinny Tom was just a kid with a deep, gravelly voice.
“Mud just dryin' up, reckon.” Carlo was used to humoring him, but it was rare somebody paid attention to Skinny Tom unless he was singing on the piano.
“We're all breathing it,” Skinny Tom said, and kissed into one of the water jars. “Mud's weighing us down from the inside.” He motioned up and down his chest with open fingers, then stepped back over to the piano with his glass high out in front of him.
Brenny pivoted his boot heel on a loose wood slat in the floor, wondering 'Is that blood pooling up in my boots, or sweat?' He took the second glass of water and huddled over it. Annie stepped away from him and walked to the staircase, humming the tune Tom'd been whistling earlier.
Listening to Annie's heels punctuate the morning air, Brenny wiped his mouth on his wrist, and there was no more blood on his lips.
Skinny Tom took off his hat, and leaned toward Annie as she walked. He sang quiet, “When the love has ended, what is there to say?”
Annie, despite herself, giggled while rolling her eyes over to Carlo and Brenny at the bar.
Tom sang low, “There's no time for sorrow, yesterday is passed...”
Annie pinched his hat off the piano and tossed it to him. “You don't know nothin' bout Love or Sorrow, skinny old Tom.” She squinted at him, then stepped up the staircase.
“But you could teach me!” Tom yelled up to her, smiling wide. “I'm so willin' to learn!”
Brenny and Carlo said “Shut up” and “Quiet” at the same time. It was early, and two of the whores, Lozena and Conchita, were still sleeping upstairs.
Behind the bar, Carlo knitted open the top button of his yellow shirt, and fanned his naked neck with a dry dishtowel. “He dead?”
Brenny nodded, his eyes pinched. “Oh, he's dead.” On the bar in front of him, he pulsed his hands into fists, then relaxed them. “I spec old Thales will come by some time this morning, drop off the money.”
Carlo asked, “What you think people will say? They been saying weird things lately.”
“Just a nickname, Saras.”Brenny picked up his water. “Weren't really God hisself up on that old hill.”
“Si.” Carlo kept fanning his neck. “Who you s'pose gave him that name, amigo? Missionaries?”
“Well,” Brenny was about to take a sip of water when he noticed something at the bottom of the glass. “I don't reckon I know who gave him that name.” Brenny narrowed his eyes on the half-floating black object in his water: It was a bee. Also, around the rim of the glass, there was a bloodied lip print from his own mouth. “But if anybody can say for sure, it's me. And that was just a man up there, livin' in one of them caves.” He drank.
“Si.”
Brenny bent up his leg and set his foot against the barstool next to him, trying to wiggle his boot off. “Got n'ything a man could eat, back there?” He was wincing, and somehow his pain had dug his old accent out of the basement, putting Scotland back into his voice.
“Si,” Carlo sighed, nodding. “No much. Some old beef.” Slipping his hands into the apron around his waist, he walked into the back room.
“Sounds...” Pebbles and dust poured thickly from the gape of Brenny's open boot. “Sounds nice.” Blood, black and coating pebbles, dripped onto the dry slats. Brenny dropped his boot to the floor, and fixed his hands about its partner.
“How could you eat anything in this room, right now?” Skinny Tom stood up and waved one hand in front of his nose. “Ain't just mud we're breathing in here, heh. How long you been wearin' them boots, ol' Brenn--” Tom stopped.
As Brenny slid off his left boot, a wet suck was proceeded by a red blood spill. Mere wet flaps hung where toes used to. Brenny sniffed briskly as the dry air cooled the skin of his foot and the pain developed further.
He knew that light-headed feeling from last night wouldn't be back, but Brenny was still in pain. Seeing Skinny Tom in pallor made him smile, though.
Carlo walked out of the back room carrying a flat metal plate, waving away mosquitoes. “Here's your beef, Escocés.”
Brenny handed the heavy boot to Skinny Tom, and pulled the plate under his chin. “Gracias, señor.” On the plate rolled rubbery bullets of old ground beef and browning greens. Glancing down to where his big toe used to be, Brenny scooped half-a-handful of the stale beef into his mouth.
“Oh! Mancha de sangre!” Carlo was leaning over the bar, glaring panicked at the bloody mess on the floor. “Tom you clean it now!”
“Well, I just, eh..” Tom put his hat on and jabbed a thumb toward the piano. “You know, uhh...”
Carlo Saras tossed the dry dishcloth at him and said, “Clean it up,” before walking away.
“Well, shoot.” Tom held out the boot to Brenny. “Here's your boot back.”
Brenny took another bite and smiled wide. “Have fun, kid.”
“You've got something in your teeth.” Tom took the last water glass and got on his knees with the towel. “Man, I can't wait to get off work.”
Tom scrubbed the floor. After a minute or two, he stopped whistling, and sat on the floor.
Brenny didn't eat, and stared at the jellied shomp of his foot. The absurd visual pushed his pain into full blossom. “Get me a whiskey, there Tom.”
Tom stood up and walked behind the counter. As he poured, carefully, Tom asked, “Did he have wings?”
Brenny bit his lip, not smiling.
============= 2 =============
Having nothing else to do, the old sun baked red upon the nothing new from down low in the Cliffside clouds. Brenny still bit his lip. Just sitting without three toes was something'd take a little more getting used to.
Cliffside folk stuffed into the narrow barroom of La Brisa Saras. Skinny Tom was playing a new gospel tune while Annie and Conchita both hummed along, smiling and fanning their necks. Carlo had his yellow shirt buttoned all the way up, and sweatstains darkened his back and armpits while he pinched away coins and chits from thirsting, dirty hands.
Six of the men were miners, and three were just passersby without hats. Brenny still sat on a stool, chin out, chewing that top lip and rubbing his knee with the back of his thumb.
A girl named Lisadelia balanced her skinny hips drunkenly atop the stool next to him. Between sips of wheatgrass beer, she worked out the creases of her dress like they were a letters on a page she couldn't read. “You know, old Brenny, sir,” She was a shade of bashful which was rather void of shyness. “T'aint no sin to tell me where's it happened. Or how't got done.”
Brenny closed his eyes to appraise the topside of his eyelids, and bit off a layer of skin from his top lip. “Ain't nothing to say bout the ordeal, Miss Thales.” Brenny spared Conchita and Lozena each a glance before looking Lisadelia right in her young eyes. “You already know amuch as anybody else. Only man got business with that story is your father.” Brenny twisted his empty bottle in a circle atop the bar. “After we're done talking, maybe you can shake it out of him.”
“Oh, Mr. Brenny,” Lisadelia pushed in another fake blush. “My daddy don't never tell me nothing bout work.” She held her beer in her hands, now looking down into it. “That's a-why I'm just so curious alls a time.”
“Run on home, now, girl.” Thales, a tall man, took the bottle from her, and held it up in front of his eyes before putting it on the bar. “You got chores'n the morn.”
“Oh, daddy...” Lisadelia's redness now was genuine. “You oughttin' just tend to your own knittin'.” She unsteadilly dismounted the barstool and trodded, head down, out the front door.
“Howdy there, ol' Bren.” Thales straddled the bench, and dropped a riding bosal and a stock whip to the floor next to him as he unbuttoned his coat. “You been sortin' wildcats? You look like you been dragged through the briar patch.” He looked over to Carlo and held up one finger, nodding.
The miners each held up a dirty waving palm as they saw Thales come in. He said, “Howdy.”
“Thales, I got to say, it's good to see you.” Brenny smiled up, squinting. “I really been looking forward to this here meeting of ours.”
Thales set down his hat on the stool next to him. “You're saying I'm late. You're sayin' you been a-waitin' here a while.”
Brenny's shoulders hunched in. “I ain't been here all day for the company, you could say that.”
“It's a fair ride into town from the ranch house, I guess you know that.” Thales was now checking his pockets. “Had to get the dogs out and fetch me a couple snakes been bothering the herd.”
“Snakes up there?”
“Oh, yeah. You bet.” Thales produced a thin cotton bag tied with twine and dropped it on the bar.
Brenny took it, and sighed. As he gave it a second look, he noticed a small bloody thumbprint, from his own hand. He wiped his lip with his index finger, and sure enough, it was bleeding again.
“Hell, what'd she slap you?” Thales laughed.
“Ah, hell! No, she didn't slap me.” Brenny wiped his hand on his britches. “Just the dry heat – cracking my lips some, I reckon.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Thales scratched his forehead. “Dry out't the ranch there, too.” He breathed. “Well, a drought ends with a flood, I reckon.”
As Skinny Tom sang the first line of The Old Chisholm Trail, even the passersby hollered and Annie and Lozena locked arms to dance in a circle.
The bartender approached, blinking. “Here you are, señor alguacil.” Carlo placed a brown ceramic mug on the bar in front of Thales, flat beer sliding over the sides, before walking off.
After pinching out the chaw in his cheek and tossing it, Thales took a gulp of beer, and spoke: “So that old crazy old timer's gone.”
Brenny's foot burned with pain as he moved it. “Yep.” Brenny tried not to prop up images of the man's matted grey hair, his scabby neck, or scary fingernails reaching. “Dead as we'll all be, ole cuss.” Just thinking of him made Brenny's calves cramp up. The old man wore no clothes.
“Anything up there with him? Anything'd give any idea where about he came from? Who he was?”
“Well, nah,” Brenny grunted. “Nothing to eat, no fire. No damn clothes even.”
“Psh. That it?” Thales drank his beer with his eyebrows hitched up high.
“Box of bullets and that damn Kentucky rifle. Couple books, I guess. A blanket laid down.” The cliff rocks were brown and red. The sun hot upon him. “Didn't have but nothing else. I brought them books back with him, on that cart in back.” Brenny's ankles were shaking. The old man's face was simply ancient, his eyes milky and wild as he held the rifle. “Feller...” Brenny laughed, a little nervous. “Old feller sure was a tall drink of water. Nineteen, twenty hand maybe. Skinny, though.”
Thales laughed. “Well, that don't help your case with them superstitious folk, none.” He smiled seriously. “What you been telling them?”
“Nothing.” Brenny bit his lip again. “Not one damn thing.”
Thales laughed again. “Well.”
Brenny's foot and leg were paralyzed with pain. “You got a better approach, there, Sherrif?”
“Well, Bren, you damn well know that ole whore Lozena's gonna raise one Hell a ruckus.” Thales scratched his cheek and waved off a mosquito. “I stopped by at Padre Gutierrez's spread on the way up here for that very reason. He just say he don't want no trouble, and he's been opposed to this nonsense since it caught fire a month back.” The sherriff squinted into bottom of his mug, and looked confused by absurdity. “Says God is a spirit, and could never die or resort to killing a man with bullets.”
“That all?”
“Well, sure.” Thales wasn't smiling. “He said you could stay or go, but he's running out of room in that old churchyard.”
Brenny got cold. “That a fact?” He shifted on the barstool. “Is that a fact.”
“Shit, Bren. You know I feel the same. If it were up to me, this thing'd be over this minute. Why you think I agreed to pay you so damn much?”
“Well, you can keep it.” Brenny's accent was back, again. The more pain that crawled up his legs, the more Scottish he felt. “Old feller shot his self.” He put the money back on the bar, leaving another brown-red thumbprint.
“Shot his self?” The sherriff had emptied his mug. “Well, how 'bout that.”
“I'm just glad to have him gone.” Brenny Shiancoe looked earnest. “Maybe these folk'll calm down.”
“I'll drink to that.” The sherriff slapped the bar, and held up two fingers to Carlo. “Can't hardly have no peace with all this hysteria.”
The miners and the strangers all clapped through the last chorus and the women bowed down, showing the pale shelves of their collarbones. Lozena's cross necklace dangled lightly in the air, white against her black hair.
“Say, Shiancoe.” The Sherriff sniffed. “That Lozena ain't heard yet, 'as she?”
Brenny shook his head, sighing. “Only folk't know are sittin right here. Also Skinny Tom and whoever's lyin' cold on the flatcart out back.”
“What books'd he have up there?”
Again, Brenny shook his head, and pinched his top lip between his teeth.
============= 3 =============
Having nothing else to do, the old sun baked hot upon the nothing new from up high in the clear, blue Cliffside sky. Brenny trembled, angry. On the cliff, his knees shook as he reloaded his Schofield behind a gathering of boulders. The old man's thin, long hair twisted in the hot wind as he spoke at Brenny in a voice unheard, a language unspoken.
Despite the fact that obviously, the man spoke no English, Brenny felt it important to say his piece before more shots were fired. “Now the Sherriff done sent me up here, old man. Ain't but one of us coming down from this hill sucking air.” His voice was shaking wildly as the words, irrelevant, shot from his shivering lips. “You cain't just go shootin folks 'th that ole rifle. Round here we call that murder.” With his pistol reloaded and full in his hand, Brenny readied to move. “Even if they weren't no good and prolly deserved it anyhow.”
With a bellyfull of liquid coals roiling in hot somersaults, Brenny bit his lip and sprang out from behind the rock. Immediately, he trained his pistol on the old man's pale, skeletal frame but Brenny hesitated to fire. The old man was very slowly skrimping bullets from the chamber of his rifle and dropping them at his naked, dirty feet.
Soused in sweat, Brenny held his Schofield with both hands and watched through a tight squint. With a clumsy, senile tremble, the man dropped the butt of the rifle to the ground, and scooted the barrel up under his chin while getting on his knees. His eyes flared wide open and his jaw dropped slack, baring sharp, spare teeth like ruins.
The old man's face was simply ancient, his eyes milky and wild as he held the rifle. Again, that terrifying voice in those terrifying, strange words. His thin hand slid down near the trigger guard.
“No, no no... Don't!” Brenny lowered his gun, and put up his hand.
The gun blasted. The man fell back. Brenny's eyelids went slack.
All around him, the cliff rocks were brown and red. The sun was hot upon him, alone on the cliff. Silent winds blew warm air in circles.
Brenny later hauled a long-wheeled cart up the rock path. It was dark, and finding his way was difficult.
When he reached the cave, the old dead stranger's scant frame was still sprawled out awkwardly with the rifle leaning against his leg. Brenny gathered him up with some books he found in the cave, and threw a cotton sheet over the cart for the walk home.
Halfway down the cliffside, one wheel bumped off the axle, and the cart tipped. The old man tumbled, his limbs flailing erratically. Instinctively, Brenny drew out his gun, ready to fire. He panted, scared out of his mind. 'Old man looked alive, tumbling down this hill.'
Brenny stepped toward the wheel, afraid to turn his back to the body where it lay. As he stuffed his Schofield uneasily into his belt holster, the barrel slipped in his hand and the gun went off. The bullet shattered the skeletal architecture of his foot and sprayed blood, skin, and boot leather in all directions.
Brenny cursed and hopped in place, firmly clutching his knee and squeezing his eyes tightly shut.
Coyotes howled in the canyon, and the woodpeckers went silent. It took him all night to get home.