When the farmer died a year later, Dubchek discovered that his wife's inheritance consisted of a web of mortgages and re-mortgages. Once again, he felt cheated, this time by a woman who had dangled a useless, debt-riddled farm in front of him to lure him into marriage. The child was born; the farm was repossessed; and the three of them pushed on west, drifting from job to job, each ending with Matthew's pa being accused of loafing or stealing or drinking or sassing back. Between jobs, there were wild schemes for getting rich quick. One time, Dubchek had a chance to get in on the ground floor with a red fox farm. Red fox furs that were all the rage among rich woman back East, who would pay a hundred dollars to hang one pelt around their necks, its tail in its mouth. A hundred dollars! You multiply that by a thousand, and you've got a hundred thousand dollars. And that's just for starters!
For almost a year, he gave up drinking and held down two jobs, working day and night, in rain and sun, through sickness and health, saving every penny. By spring he had enough for a down payment on a badly eroded farm with a half-ruined house. What did it matter if the land wasn't no good? He wasn't no stupid dirt farmer! He was going to raise red foxes, which only required a few knocked-together hutches out behind the house. Then the bad luck started coming. He had difficulty finding foxes to raise. None of his neighbors had even heard of raising foxes. They thought fox pelts came from trapping. Well… well… well, all right, he'd get some wild foxes and raise them in hutches, and they'd breed and pretty soon the place would be teeming with foxes! He managed to buy three foxes from a trapper, one with a chewed-up leg from the trap. They all died in the hutches, the one with the bad leg lasting the longest… which just proves how everything depends on luck. After a long, cold winter and a long, sodden spring, they had to let the farm go back to the bank… more bad luck to feed Dubchek's bitterness. He started drinking again. Well, why not? What was the use of trying when everyone was against him, and everything was keeping him from making something of himself!?
The wind rose to an insane screech, clutching at the windows of the Mercantile, and slashing at the wide sheets of water that poured from brimful guttering, ripping them into ribbons of froth.
THE DARKNESS WITHIN THE hotel kitchen was intensified by an eye-baffling contrast with a trapezoid of bright light pouring in from the barroom beyond. His flat-topped Colt in his hand, Coots inched toward the blinding swath of light, rolling his weight from heel to toe of his bare feet so as not to make a sound. Queeny-good luck-was singing to the player piano. She's only a bird in a gilded cage, a byooo-ti-ful sight to see-e-e. He inched forward, feeling his way with his bare feet rather than with his eyes…. for her love was so-o-old, for an o-o-o-old man's go-o-old! She's a bird in a gilded ca-a-a-age.
B. J. STONE SAT DEEP in his chair, his face out of the lamplight that glowed in Ruth Lillian's cupric hair. He had listened sympathetically to Matthew's explanation of why nothing was his father's fault, because he never had any luck. But his mind had slipped from time to time to Coots… out there in the rain… in danger.
Matthew's head was bowed, his eyes lost in the shadow of his brow. B. J. had hoped that Ruth Lillian's honest and obvious concern would tempt Matthew to talk about what had happened in that farmhouse in Nebraska. But he had parried her questions by talking about his father rather than himself, and after the last crash of thunder and lightning, he hadn't continued his story. So B. J. cleared his throat and began in a gentle, measured voice, "I… ah… read this article in a Nebraska paper. There was this man and woman who lived on a farm. With their son. A passing neighbor heard their cow bellowing to be milked, so he banged on the door and looked in through the window. Then he ran off for help. They found the woman dead. A broken neck. The man had been shot. Almost blown in half. " He paused, but Matthew didn't respond, didn't even raise his head; his eyes remained lost in the shadows. "The neighbor described Mrs. Dubchek as a decent, God-fearing woman, and the husband as a violent ne'er-do-well who was 'no stranger to the bottle. ' The son was nowhere to be found. The paper suggested that he might have been kidnapped by the murderers. Or maybe killed and buried somewhere. When he was asked about the boy, the neighbor couldn't give any useful description. 'Just a boy,' he said. 'Nothing special. ' " B. J. leaned forward into the light. "That neighbor was wrong, Matthew. The boy was very special indeed. And my heart goes out to him when I think of how he must have felt when he found his parents… like that. Or, even worse, maybe he actually witnessed the murders. What a burden of pain and horror he must be carrying inside him."
Matthew lifted his head and looked into the space between B. J. and Ruth Lillian. He reached up and touched his temple with his fingertips, then his lips, then his hand fell into his lap. He swallowed dryly. When he spoke, he started in midstream, as though he had been talking for some time, but the words hadn't come out. "… so Ma, she'd spent the day with a neighbor lady because Pa'd beat her up real bad, and she wanted to get looking better before she came home because it used to make Pa mad to see her face beat up. Well, I… you know… I didn't want to be there alone with Pa, all drunk and smelling of whiskey and up-chuck so I… you know… I walked into town, just to get away for a while. But I didn't have any money, and it was getting dark and starting to rain, so I came back. And Ma was lying there on the floor with her head sort of sideways and… wrong. And he was standing over her, sobbing and clawing at his cheeks. What was going to happen to him? What would they do to him? He hadn't meant to hurt her! He'd just given her a little shake! He got ahold of my collar and pushed his face up close to mine and asked me what was he going to do? But I wouldn't look at him, so he let go of me and fell on his knees beside Ma, and he started moaning and rocking himself. He wasn't crying because Ma was dead! Only because of what they might do to him! And the smell of whiskey and up-chuck! I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see or breathe. He knelt there beside her, rocking and moaning. He didn't hold my poor broken mother and rock her. No, he just rocked himself! So I just… you know… I took his shotgun down and I said, 'Pa?' But he didn't look up, so I said, 'Pa?' again. And he still didn't look up, so I just… " Matthew swallowed so hard that Ruth Lillian could hear it. His voice was full of tears, but his eyes remained dry… distant… empty. This was not what B. J. had expected to hear.
PRESSING BACK INTO THE deep shadow of the kitchen, Coots cocked his pistol and eased his head out toward the trapezoid of harsh light from the barroom. Two reflector storm lamps stood on the bar, their light directed toward the open kitchen door. They were so bright that it was hard to see past them, but he could make out Jeff Calder standing behind the bar, half-asleep on his feet. By stretching his neck a little more, Coots could see the backs of Bobby-My-Boy and Tiny sitting at a table on either side of Chinky, each with a hand in her lap. The "deacons" were on their loafers' bench near the player piano, where Professor Murphy sat with his body twisted to avoid contact with Queeny, who leaned over his shoulder searching through the piano rolls, looking for a song that- Wait a minute. The storm lamps! Why were they set up on the bar, pointed toward-?
"They tell me you're called Coots," Lieder whispered, his pistol pressed into the soft spot beneath Coots's ear. "I like to know a man's name."