There Is No Otherwise Page 3

  ‘What are they looking at?’

  ‘Damned if I know.’

  JP said, ‘there's a dream I have like this. I'm in a field and all the cows turn and stare at me. And you two are in it staring at me too.’

  ‘That aint a dream, boy, that's today.’

  They crossed the state line and JP crossed himself. They drove along the east edge of the Castner firing range. According to the old man it had originally been the property of the Las Norias Cattle Company. When they passed Fort Bliss Modine slowed to the speed limit.

  Before they left the highway he pulled over. They had rounded a long bend and he pulled over to the side and turned off the lights. Arliss opened the window to listen. The Winchester was still on his lap.

  ‘Kill the engine, Modine.’

  They waited about ten minutes and nothing passed.

  ‘I'd say that's all clear,’ Modine said.

  ‘JP?’ Arliss said.

  ‘All clear.’

  ‘Let's go then.’

  *

  IT WAS ABOUT MIDNIGHT when they got to the ranch. The moon was full in the sky and it was haloed by a ring of blue like the iris round a pupil. The old man was sitting on the porch smoking his pipe, waiting for them. He rocked back and forth gently in his chair.

  JP had his hand over the wound. Modine helped him out of the truck and over to the house. Arliss walked next to them with the rifle.

  The old man looked them over and shook his head. ‘Found some trouble, did you?’

  Modine said, ‘trouble found us.’

  ‘I'd say it did.’

  There was a long pause when nobody said anything. The air was still. For once the night was silent. JP looked at the old man. He didn't have a bottle. He was sober — clear and cool as the night sky. It was almost as if he was his old self.

  JP broke the silence carefully. ‘Ethel's dead aint she.’

  The old man nodded. ‘She is and there aint no otherwise.’

  The boys stood there at the foot of the porch. Arliss took his hat off and Modine did the same. JP didn't have a hat. The old man motioned to the blood on JP's shirt.

  ‘It aint nothing.’

  The old man came down the steps and helped JP up onto the porch.

  ‘Let's get this seen to,’ he said.

  ‘It aint nothing.’

  Arliss and Modine stayed out on the porch and JP followed the old man into the house. He had a well‐used first aid box in the kitchen and he took it from its shelf and pulled out some gauze.

  ‘Wipe it with this.’

  JP took his hand off the wound to see what he was dealing with. The blood had matted to the shirt and the bleeding had stopped. When he pulled the shirt from it though it started back up.

  ‘Take that off.’

  He unbuttoned the shirt.

  ‘It aint deep.’

  ‘Bone stopped it.’

  The old man dabbed the gauze with alcohol and cleaned the wound. Then he put fresh gauze over it and wrapped it tight with a bandage round the body.

  ‘How'd you get this?’

  ‘A man come at me with a knife.’

  ‘I shouldn't have let you go.’

  ‘I wish you hadn't.’

  ‘How's the other guy?’

  ‘I got the better of him.’

  ‘Did you?’

  JP said nothing. Then he said, ‘I don't know.’

  The old man stood up. He said, ‘I'm going to the police station in El Paso to report Ethel's death in the morning.’

  JP wanted to say something respectful but he wasn't sure what was customary. The old man was too big and the words that could be said were too small. He had been married longer than JP's own father had lived. He looked at the old man and the old man looked back at him and there was reassurance and promise in their eyes that they could not have articulated otherwise and they both knew it.

  The old man patted JP on the arm.

  ‘I'll come with you in the morning,’ JP said. ‘I've got some business of my own.’

  * * * * *