Page 22 - WTP Vol. VI #4

Jedediah (continued from preceding page)
Jedediah put his hat back on soon after Connie left and, oblivious to the burgeoning heat, sat alone that afternoon, sat there quietly for many hours inside the sunbaked trailer, wearing the boots, the jeans and the denim jacket.
there on the table in front of him. The old man had retrieved a used envelope from his crab-cage file cabinet and he discarded its contents now, laid the big envelope flat, then wrote his daugh- ter’s name in upper case letters.
He crossed and uncrossed his legs, drummed his fingers on his thigh, tipped the hat down oc- casionally. Twilight came. The trailer was cool- ing. The old man got up, lunged for the gun rack, grabbed hold of a double-barreled shotgun and cracked it open, bent the firing pin beyond all hope of repair, shook both cartridges out, blew inside the chambers, held the gun to the fading light and made absolutely sure those chambers were empty. He then snapped the gun shut and slammed it onto what passed in that place for a dining table. Connie had stacked the attorney’s files on that table before she’d gone back home.
The horse whinnied again. Jedediah blew-out the lamp, gazed through the window, saw the gray mare flick her tail. She was tied for the night out- side Luisa Santiaga Barbosa’s mobile home and he watched that saintly old woman as she put half a bale of hay into the feed bin. She then patted the mare and talked to her.
“Put all these papers in the trash, Papa, then for- get about that man.” Jedediah could still hear his daughter, could see her nudge her nose into her baby boy’s chest. “We have everything we need,” she’d added. And into the trash he’d dutifully tossed those files, everything except the very
first page, the page with a photograph of Lochlan Byrne; he’d kept that fat bastard’s picture. He’d waited for Connie to leave then took a serrated gutting knife down from the rack beside the mounted harpoon, took that ugly knife and nailed the page hard into the dining table. It had made a very satisfying sound, but then he wrenched the knife out and returned it to the rack. He tipped back his hat, scratched his forehead and, sneering, took up an old red pen and scrawled WANTED! beneath Lochlan’s bloated face. This made Jede- diah chuckle, granted, but six hours of focused contemplation had been needed before he could persuade himself to cripple that shotgun prior to setting it down.
Early dawn found Jedediah dressed once more in fresh wool socks, a pair of laundered thick blue jeans and a clean denim shirt from the rail beside the shower stall. He dabbed on some cologne, then sat in the wicker chair. He’d see the stars fade and the sky begin to brighten. The old man knew ten minutes would be sufficient for the traditional pain in his chest to subside and for his breathing to settle down.
With the sun gone, he put on some pajamas and sat barefoot at the dining table. Not without fra- gility, he’d eschewed his nightly three fingers of Scotch. He drank hot tea instead, from an old tin mug, and by the light of a paraffin lamp. The shot- gun remained beside Byrne’s photograph, right
He stood, pulled on his jacket. He then ap- proached a mirror and put on his Stetson. He leaned in, used the edge of a thumb to tamp his pencil-line moustache. “Good enough,” the old man said, recalling with a smile the booming declaration his father, the judge, had often made when Jedediah was just a little boy: “let’s go.”
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(continued on page 61)
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The envelope with Connie’s name was now in the pocket of his denim jacket, while Lochlan Byrne’s picture was tucked inside the rear pocket of a black leather saddle. Jedediah’s sturdy saddle was more than fifty years old. He’d placed it on the floor, next to his boots, and the stock of the neu- tered shotgun poked out of a scabbard he’d buck- led in back of that saddle. Lochlan might have left no monetary trail but Jedediah had a pretty good idea where the man himself would be.
“For how long?” asked Luisa Santiaga Barbosa.
~