Jonah samples a spoonful of Nelly’s concoction. She has a sample herself. Both spit it back into the plate. Nelly says, “I’d rather eat a cow’s ear.”
“We got any beans?” Jonah asks.
“I’ve already got some cooked.” Nelly reheats beans at the stove.
Jonah drinks whiskey and ponders things. “They ain’t no good fer pelts and they ain’t no good fer eatin’. They must be good fer somethin’.”
Stirring the beans, Nelly says, “What if you ground the damned things up, bones, innards and all, add a lot of salt and cook it good. I think if you put it up in jars you could sell it to the big city people. They can feed it to their dogs and cats.”
“This ain’t a time fer no hairbrained idees like that, Nelly girl.”
“All right, what if we raise them, lots of them, and tame them. People might want them for pets. There’s a railroad, you know. Up in New York, up in Boston, all those places. We’ll put them on ships and ship them to Nippon, to China, to Europe.” She rolls up her sleeves, scrapes the leftover prairie dog slop into a bowl on the floor. The dog eagerly runs to the bowl, sniffs, but backs away.
Jonah pushes his plate aside. “I’m goin’ to bed. Maybe I’ll dream up a decent idee.”
Hours later, as James whimpers softly and lies sleepless with hunger, Jonah and Nelly sleep soundly, full of beans and farting, until a crash of thunder and a flash of lightning that fills the house with bright blue light wakes them. Nelly looks out the window in time to see a swirling wind collapse the barn into a pile with the screech of nails and the splitting of old lumber.
“Git away from that winder, girl, so I can have a gander.”
Jonah is thankful to see his horse and the ox standing unharmed where the barn had been. “Lordy, lordy. Thank the lord them animals ain’t hurt.”
On the open prairie, the storm has passed. Dewey, slumped on his government-issue horse, makes his way toward the homestead, where lamplight glows in a window. He is wrapped in feed sacks to ward off the wind. He is sick, dying, or both. Vomit specks cling to his prodigious beard. Comanche steps into a prairie dog hole. Dewey slides off into the ankle-deep mud, where his boots become stuck. He steps out of them in his sock feet and plods on with his dangling foot behind the equally lame horse.
The moon looms large and shines brightly. As he nears the house, the dog barks.
Nelly shakes Jonah’s shoulder. “Listen.”
“The little mongrel’s after a prairie dog, Nelly. Blow out them candles and go to sleep. I got a barn to start raisin’ tomorrow.”
Nelly gets out of bed and opens the front door. “There’s a man on a horse, half dead. Who is it, Jonah? Who is that?”
Jonah rolls out of bed. “Maybe it’s old man Floyd from over at Hays City.” He looks out the door. “Nah, Floyd’s taller in the saddle. And he rides a better lookin’ horse.”
Near the house, both Comanche and Dewey collapse into the mud.
Nelly runs out to help, lifts his legs and tries to drag him inside. She gives up. “Jonah! Come and help me for gosh sakes.”
Still sleepy and annoyed at the disturbance, Jonah reluctantly helps to get him inside and put him on the dining table. Nelly lights a lamp, holds it over Dewey’s shivering, convulsing body. She slowly unwinds the feed sack wrappings, revealing his naked body a little at a time. Jonah looks at the face with a glimmer of recognition. But with Dewey’s closed eyes, full beard and long hair, he isn’t recognizable. Beneath the knotted, dirty beard, the flesh of his face is beet red, swollen, drenched with perspiration.
Nelly places her hand on his forehead. “I never felt anybody this hot. He’s on fire.”
“He ain’t got any clothes on,” James says. “And look, he shat on his self.”
Nelly raises her open hand. “Close your mouth! Get out of my sight!”
James retreats to his pallet, weeping.
Jonah says, “What’re we gonna do now? Closest doctor’s a day’s ride.”
“I better warsh him down.” She fetches a bucket of water. “He smells awful.”
“You, my wife, are fixing to wash the shit off another man’s wally?”
“You want him stinkin’ in the house all night? When somebody’s sick, you just have to help them.” Nelly wipes Dewey’s face with a damp cloth. Jonah reluctantly lends a hand after putting on his work gloves. He covers Dewey’s privates with a plate as soon as they are exposed.
Nelly snaps. “Get that plate off there and go stoke the stove. We’re gonna warm up some rags and put ‘em all over him. It’ll stop the shiverin’ and get him warm.”
Jonah stokes the stove and throws in a few dried ox patties.
Under rags, Dewey is either asleep or unconscious the next morning. Outside, his horse, barely alive, tongue protruding, lies where it fell. Jonah removes the saddle and loads a shell into his Sharps. The ox, harnessed, waits nearby. “Well, brother horse, you ain’t much good to the world no more. So I’m gonna go ahead and put all your sufferin’ to an end as I’m sure your owner would do if’n he wasn’t so bed-bound.” He fires a shot into the horse’s head, ties its rear legs to the ox’s harness and tows the carcass away from the house, leaving a trail of blood from the gaping bullet hole. Jonah unties the horse from the ox, looks skyward. Already buzzards circle. “Brother buzzard, brother coyote, brother worm and brother beetle. And any other gosh darn critter that wants to feast on this dead horse here — come ‘n’ git it!”
Near the well, Nelly rinses the last bit of Dewey’s clothing in a wooden tub. She squeezes it almost dry, hangs it on the line, empties the soapy water onto the ground.
Hauling up a bucket of fresh water, she carries a pail of it inside. Using a funnel she pours water slowly into Dewey’s mouth. He lies under the rags, still unconscious. She removes the funnel, wipes spilled water from his beard. He is delirious, but no longer shivering. She trims his beard and hair, smiling, and singing softly:
“Green grow the lilacs, all sparklin’ with dew…. I’m lonely, my darlin’, since part’n with you…. But by our next meetin’ I’ll hope to prove true…. And change the green lilacs to the Red, White and Blue.”
Later that day, Dewey lies on the dining table, dressed in a diaper fashioned from bed sheets. A candle in a tin saucer, balanced on his belly, burns brightly. Jonah, Nelly and James sit around him eating beans. There’s barely enough room for their plates. Nelly eats right next to Dewey’s head, Jonah at his feet, James at his midsection.
Dewey is greatly improved in appearance, redness gone, fever gone. Yet he remains unconscious. Nelly lifts his head and places a small pillow under it, then spoon feeds him some beans. Whatever spills into his beard, she wipes with a wet cloth. His eyes open as he eats, but they just roll around unfocused.
Jonah looks uneasily at the sleeping man on their table. “We ain’t even got no idea who he is or where he belongs.”
James pokes Dewey lightly with his fork and giggles, only to have Nelly slap him hard across the face. He runs outside screaming. This is a bit much even for Jonah. “You’re mighty mean to that boy sometimes.”
“I got my reasons.”
“He’s my boy, too.”
“Well…I guess I can say the truth, now that we’re married up…. It ain’t a pretty truth, but…James is my father’s boy.” A tear slips out of one eye.
Jonah holds her hand. “That’s what a boy needs is a granddaddy. Why in Hell don’t you write your father a letter and say he should come on out here and see his grandboy.”