Page 70 - WTP Vol. VI #4

Jedediah (continued from page 13)
She’d been seated on her porch-swing and had seen her neighbor draw near. A book was in her hands. Jedediah had stopped and waited just beyond the edge of Luisa’s property. The woman was tall, slender; she wore a thick black shawl and an old black dress. Gray hair reached all the way down to her waist. She stepped toward him, held onto the book, staring at him from above a pair of reading-glasses perched on the end of her nose.
Neptune’s Den was one disgusting clapboard hovel. Call it a poker house, whorehouse, road house, grill or bar room, call it what you will,
but Jedediah had always figured it was devised long ago by the devil himself, then built by mor- tals during the time of whalers. Surely, it’d been frequented nightly ever since, by the local flot- sam and the womanizers, the gamblers and the drunkards, losers all, and each of them regarded with two parts professional interest and one part concern by the county sheriff and by women of notoriety.
The old man had draped his saddle across one shoulder. Luisa saw the shotgun. “Lochlan?” she asked, but Jedediah seemed disinclined to an- swer that particular question. He just hoisted the saddle up some more then tapped his hat, took her hand and kissed it. “Doña Barbosa, good morning. A couple o’ hours today? I’ll have your sweet filly back here, safe and sound, you know I will. Before breakfast if I can.”
But in the gray morning light, this godless place looked exactly as it was: a storm-battered wood building situated about a mile along the shore from Mr. Engstrom’s coffee shack. Jedediah tied Luisa’s horse to a post outside a back door he’d used once or twice across the years. He stroked her mane, muttered to her and secured her, loop- ing the reins three times to make a good strong knot. The animal was quite content to nibble at the grass beside her hooves.
Jedediah felt the response more than he heard it. She’d squeezed his hand when he took it, held onto that hand. She threw her book in the sand, then led him toward the gray mare.
A bouncer the size of a pickup truck, young and dumb, a kid really, sat slouched half-drunk and half-asleep in a chair at the top of the steps lead- ing to the building’s main entrance. With the chair tipped back, the young man opened his eyes that morning to Jedediah holding two barrels of a shot- gun a couple of inches from his nose. He was about to remark on this state of affairs when the old man raised a finger to his lips. “Hush,” whispered Jede- diah, and kicked the chair from under him.
Another woman waited with the horse. He shiv- ered. For sure, Luisa had said something in his ear as they’d walked; he’d felt her lovely hair brush against his cheek, but he could not hear the words, nor could he hear the sound of the waves breaking nearby. Her face had brightened in the soft light of a matte reflector and he’d turned, saw the grip’s assistant hold the screen, saw dolly tracks appear in the sand, then vanish, and when his mother and Luisa took the saddle from him and fastened it on the mare, the two women exchanged some words; they laughed
The kid crashed on the deck. The back of his head hit the wood while a cowboy boot pressed hard upon his chest. The man bent down and poked both barrels in his ear.
in silence with heads thrown back as Jedediah mounted the little horse.
And all the while, Luisa had been watching the man from her lonely porch, the book still in her hand. The morning’s fog was coming in. “Two hours, Jedediah,” she called as he rode toward the mist. He was headed for the wet sand. “I promise,” he yelled, and that was the last he ever said to her. ~
“I said hush,” Jedediah rasped. He reached inside his jacket pocket, pulled out the photo of Lochlan Byrne. “Have you seen this gentleman?”
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“Mister, I ain’t seen that dude, I promise, but I
The kid stared at the picture, eyes bulging, then pointed a finger at his own mouth to request per- mission to speak. Jedediah laughed. “Go ahead.”