Leaving Cheyenne Read online

  “That’s all right. Who made the fortune, and who worked for wages all his life?”

  “You might have made the fortune,” I said. “But I’d just like to know what good it did you. Working like a Turk. Which one of us was satisfied?”

  “Hell, that’s easy,” he said. “Neither one. We neither one married her, did we?”

  Talking to myself. Gid was off in the Great Perhaps. I looked around at the house and down toward the barn. One man’s whoop is another man’s holler, anyhow. At least Gid was stubborn about it. I remembered one election day, when I gave him hell. Me and Molly had the first shift. The bloom was really on the peach, as far as she was concerned. She wore a blue dress with white dots on it and never wore nothing on her hair. About two weeks before that I had got to spend my first whole night with her. We was there an hour by ourselves, and kissed and walked around and had the best time: I pumped my hat full of water so she could get a drink. Then Gid come and talked her into staying with him after I was supposed to leave. Only he had old Ikey for a partner and had to scheme around someway to get rid of him, I don’t remember how he finally done it. It tickled me. He thought he’d have Molly to himself for two hours or so. I left about the time Ikey did and circled around and intercepted him; he was riding that old crippled mule. “Ikey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” I said. “Living in a free country where they let you vote. And the first time the government gives you a little job you let somebody send you off on some damn errand. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll turn that mule around and get back up there where you belong.” I broke me off a good-sized mesquite limb and handed it to him. “See if you can get that mule in locomotion,” I said. I guess he thought I intended to use it on him. “Yes suh, Mistuh Johnny,” he said. “I sure get back. I didn’t inten’ to leave in de fust place.” So poor Gid got about twenty minutes. I guess it was kinda mean, really—nobody gets enough chances at the wild and sweet. But he would have done the same thing. There’s just two things about it that I really regret. One was not being there to see the look on Gid’s face when he heard that crippled mule clomping up, and the other is forgetting to bring a Kodak that morning, so I could have got a picture of Molly while she was sitting in her blue and white dress on the schoolhouse steps.

  THREE GRAVESTONES

  GIDEON FRY – 1896–1962

  MOLLY TAYLOR WHITE – 1900–1976

  JOHNNY MC CLOUD – 1898–1985