Welcome To The Bullpen
The Testament of Friendship
By Stephen Cunningham
The three men sat beside the fire they had going in the dryness of the summer’s riverbed. It hadn’t rained in these parts for months, and usually didn’t this time of year. It was more of a scar carved out from where the water was, than a river, now. When the rains came again, it would be a couple of feet deep in places, but that was a while off yet and these men had no need to worry. They’d even get a good night’s sleep. A coyote might sniff around the edges, smelling beans, but besides the spiders, they’d be fine. Their horses tethered not too far away, and the stars all shining overhead. Three men on their ways back home.
The biggest one, Dick Munk, rose and went to get a battered old pan that was strapped to the side of his saddle. After filling it partway with water from a skin-pouch, he brought it back and set it in the coals. Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a couple of stubby carrots, and from another, a clove of garlic. Beginning to slice them apart and into the pot, he said, ‘Alright, now, give it up’, motioning towards the other two.
The fair-haired, tanned faced man who looked like he could have been a sheriff, name of Baley, stepped up and held out a clove of garlic.
“It’s all I got, Skunk”, he said, still offering it even though he knew that the other man wasn’t going to take it. “I thought we’d be there by now.”
He held the garlic out for another few seconds, then slipped it back into a pocket and stepped back a couple of steps, pinching his nose closed with the fingers of the other hand.
“Not that being downwind of you helps stir my appetite up any”, he says, sounding plugged up and nasally. “Damn, Skunk.”
Dick Munk, known far and wide as Skunk because he never does much of anything when it comes to hygiene, just stares at Baley, then past him to the stars. Then back down to start chopping in some garlic chunks from the clove already in his hand.
“It’s not like there’s been any opportunities to bathe out here”, he says, chuckling.
“You wouldn’t have if you could’ve, Skunk”, Baley tells him, sitting back down on the ground, on the other side of the fire again.
The third man, also having gotten to his feet, doesn’t say anything. His eyes are tightly closed, and his mouth looks like it’s laughing, but no sound comes out. This man is known as Mute. Or, they call him Mute. Not in a mean or hurtful way. He just never speaks. Never makes a sound. No one’s ever heard him do so. He just wasn’t born that way. Standing there, silently laughing, he runs the knuckles of one hand under each eye, wiping away the tears. Then he turns and wanders off into the darkness.
“Ah, Hell, let’s just toss it all in. You still got that garlic on you?”, Skunk asks, to which he receives a reply of the clove being tossed over for him to add in to the pot. He slices into it, after cracking away the paper, and starts to whistle slightly.
“This stuff’ll keep those ants off of you”, he tells Baley, chuckling again.
Baley just grunts.
Skunk pulls a wooden spoon from an inside pocket of his vest, stirs the soup, and has a taste.
“Hmmm… It’s alright. Could be better. Maybe we should use some… Garlic.”
This really gets him laughing, nearly rolling over to the side. His feet get a little too close to the fire, though, so he straightens himself up, still laughing.
“Make a wish, why don’t you?”, Baley asks, across the flames, with a sneer.
Skunk stops laughing. Holds the spoon out towards Baley as if pointing a big long finger at him, indicating his guilt. Skunk makes a ‘Tsk Tsk Tsk’ sound as if he’s disappointed.
“Now… I thought we weren’t going to mention that no more.”
“That’s what you thought, yeah.”
“We’d come to an agreement. We even shook hands on it.”
“Shook hands, shit. Bullshit. You told me to shut up about it, with your hand gripping my shoulder like you had the claws of a vulture. That ain’t no ‘agreement’. That’s ‘Do It Or Else’. And I ain’t running from no bullet, here. Not no more. I’m going home.”
“Well, it got you to quit yapping, now, didn’t it? Sounds like a bargain.”
Baley stared knives right into Skunk’s foul smelling head, but the bigger man didn’t notice. He’d gone back to stirring the pot. Not that there was all that much to stir.
“Besides… I told you not to bring it up no more.”
Mute steps into the circle of firelight, his arms carrying a huge bundle of sticks and dried tumbleweed branches and the like. He piles them up somewhat near the fire, and bends down to one knee, feeding a few loose twigs into the flames. Sitting back, he looks from one man to the other, knowing they had been having words again. Sensing that at some time in the days to come, the two of them would come to blows, or even worse. They’d all been friends since childhood, but Skunk and Baley had always had a rivalry between them. They’d always found some way to disagree, or to argue about something. More times than not, they were friends. When it came around to it, though, they’d butt heads. Butt ‘em hard. Like two old rams up in the mountains, clocking together so loudly that an avalanche would start. Whole pine forests would shiver. And then the two hard heads would slam into each other again. And again. So many times throughout the years it was a wonder one or the other hadn’t killed the other, let alone that they were still such buddies with each other.
“That’s the Testament of Friendship”, was how Baley put it one day, on the trail, when they were discussing it. That’s how they’d referred to it between them ever since. The Testament of Friendship.
“Shit, we should get out there selling it by the bottle…”, Skunk said, mulling it over. Daydreaming in the blazing sun. “We’d make a fortune. Just think about it. One dollar a bottle, sell a little bit of a dream with your snake oil. Isn’t that the way it’s done?”
“It’s the way it’s done, but not by us”, Baley muttered.
Skunk asks, “Baley, you remember that old preacher they had, over to Lindo?”
Baley grunts. “Sure. The one who always waved his arms around?”
Skunk laughs. “Yeah. Like he was clearing a path for the coming of the Lord or something…”
“What you bringing him up for?”
“It’s just, snake oil, and charming people, picking those dollar bills out of their pockets. It makes me think of preachers sometimes. That one in particular. It wasn’t like he was smooth… He was more like crazy. I reckon crazy’d be the word.”
“Everybody thought so.”
“Well… He sure did get them dollars. Didn’t he, though? You ever see them plates go round?”
Baley grunts again.
“Heaped up. Stacked, in piles. Heavy from the coins.”
“Yup… That’s right. They were.”
“Our kinds of folks, we didn’t have the most money in the world. But what they could spare, they shared. And a lot of it seemed to head that preacher’s direction, didn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, it did.”
Skunk paused before speaking again, swatting at a bug.
“What you think that crazy old preacher did with all that money?”
The two men rode in silence for a while. Mute, who was with them, was always quiet.
After a while, they’d ridden up the rough side of a scrabbly hill, weaving their ponies from side to side to try to help them get the best footing. They made it to the top and looked ahead of them. For as far as the eye could see, there was a green valley. Trees and birds and animals, stretching out for dozens of miles, heading off towards the lakes in the distance. The lakes they couldn’t yet see, but they knew they were there. That’s where their home was, beside the largest of the lakes. Where they’d grown up. Where they were headed at the time, again. When they got up to the top of that last big hill, and could finally see the valley, they knew they’d be home within a day. The best part of the ride was coming up, as well. Cool. Shaded. Plenty of game, and wild berries and things to get them through. It was always like a big sigh of collective contentment as they made it through that forest towards home again. Like a giant hand was gently scooping them in.
Sitting beside the fire, in the dried out river bed, coming up on the Owl Hours, as their old man used to call them, they were still a few days away from home. No fresh-cooked pies just yet. No biscuits made by women’s hands. No fresh milk, or onions, or molasses in your coffee. Not just yet. Being down to the last few items of food they had between them, with a couple days yet to ride before the valley, didn’t seem like such an exciting proposition. Not to any of them. There wasn’t even half of one of those three men who was looking forward to hearing any of their stomachs growling. Their horses, neither. There were a dozen or so apples left, in one of the extra packs, but the men all knew those went to feed their horses. Not a one of them was going to cut that one loose. They’d not deny their ponies at least a little bit of nourishment, and liquid, while helping them cross the great terrain. When they all got back, the horses as well as the men would all have as much of their fill of food and relaxation as they could take. For a little while, at least. Then it would be back out there, on another run, another piece of work, and it’d be full circle once again. Until then, it was garlic water. A couple sips of moonshine.
Mute leaned forward and fed another few sticks and branches into the fire. He’d been sitting there, snapping the skinnier extensions from the main branches, so he had a pile to the left of him of those, and on the right side were the larger pieces. He’d take a handful of the smaller stuff, strategically toss them in, then stack a few of the larger ones on top. In this way, he kept the fire going at a fairly steady rate up until the time the three of them were going to lay down to sleep. Another good fire while it lasted.
“Good haul”, Skunk mused, indicating all the wood that Mute had found.
Mute looked his way, and nodded once to acknowledge him.
Skunk stared back, kind of droopy eyed, and then said, “Mute… You’re like a dog’s nose to kindling. You even find it in the dark. I don’t know how you do it, but, since you can, that’s why I’m usually the one sitting on his ass, stirring up the beans or what have we. You just always find the shit out of those sticks. We wouldn’t even have a fire, lots of times, if it wasn’t for what you find.”
Baley chimes in. “That and you’re too lazy, Skunk.”
Skunk shoots him a glance, then has to laugh.
“You got me there, partner. You got me there.”
“If you’d get your ass to finishing up that soup, I wouldn’t mind getting to be eating some… Damn. Come on, Skunk. Let’s eat already.”
“Alright, alright… I’m not the world’s best cook, but…”
Mute stands up, and interrupts them the best way he can, by waving one arm around in front of him. Signaling them to pay attention. Reaching into one of his pockets with the other hand, he pulls out a grip full of greens. He steps over to Skunk, shows him what they are, and Skunk smells mint in there. Wild desert mint. Almost like a clover-looking leaf to it. He wonders, for a second, how Mute could have found that out here anywhere, when there hadn’t been any rain at all, and in the darkness, and…
“Ah, Hell”, he thinks. “He probably smelt ‘em. He’s got the nose for it.”
He indicates towards the bubbling pot, and Mute drops the whole bunch in. Skunk gets his spoon in there, and wrangles all the plants into the liquid and gives the whole thing another stir. After a minute or two go by, and those plants have had some time to steep, he’ll tell the other guys to get their cups out and he’ll dish some of it up to them. Have whatever’s left for himself. He was the biggest one, as far as size, but he’d never been a hog. He cared about these men, they were his friends, and he had always made sure that they had plenty before he had ever had too much. He knew that his larger size could help him make it through the leaner times, more so than theirs would. So he always helped them out that way. It was always one of the things that had held them all together, throughout the years. The sense of camaraderie they shared. The give and take. The watching out for one another. None of them had any brothers they were closer to than the way they were to one another. No matter which one of them was barking at the other, or sulking, or… He’d still be there for the others. As they would still be there, as well.
Sitting around, passing the bottle around carefully between them, waiting for their soup to cool enough to not scorch their mouths, they were taking sips of some moonshine Mute had brought with him. They knew he had a still somewhere, back home, but it was such a closely guarded secret that, even as good of friends as they all were with one another, the two of them had never even seen it. Mute just never took them up there. Or, to wherever it was. Down in some hollow. Behind a stone somewhere. They didn’t know. They didn’t take it all that personally, either. They knew he needed some time away from them, to get off by himself awhile. Each one of them needed that, at times. He’d always shared his special batches with them, and most likely all the batches, come to look at it that way. Seemed he always had a flask or little pocket bottle of the stuff with him. Not that he was a drunkard, or a sot. Not at all. He just liked a little sip of the good stuff at the end of day. While on the trail, or doing work? Never. Sitting around a fire, beneath the moon, with no distractions? He’d have himself a sip. Maybe a couple more. The other guys usually had some with him. He always offered. And they didn’t have shit to do.
Mute started remembering a time, many years ago, on a night like this when the moon was almost full and the sky was completely cloudless. He’d been out hunting, miles and miles from home, when he came upon a scared old woman lost in the woods. She seemed disoriented, and Mute could sense she didn’t have much time left. He approached, but she flinched back, thinking he was a ghost or spirit come to take her. Her eyes were clouded over with cataracts, as if they had coverings of bluish ice in their centers. Reflecting the light of the moon, it seemed. Mute had walked with her awhile, meandering amongst the trees and roots and underbrush. Never touching her, never holding onto her hand… Eventually she became too agitated and scared him off, shooing him away with her fragile running-out-of-energy arms, yelling ‘Ghost, Demon, Go Away!’… Mute had finally let her leave his field of vision, and he’d always kind of felt regret about it. There was nothing he could have done for her. She just wandered off and died. Laid down somewhere and just gave it up. Or felt it leak out from her, or rise. Like steam from something warm out in the cold. Her spirit was released. If that is what does happen.
There was an old blind farmer Mute used to know, who’d died. Just lay down in the grass and let it go. Didn’t even say goodbye. This old blind farmer and Mute, now, what a pair. The one couldn’t talk, and the other couldn’t see. So the one who couldn’t see talked non stop. Glad to have someone to talk to. His wife had passed, a few years back, and whatever kids they’d had had either passed on too or went off to raise some families of their own. He was just a blind old man, alone, out there on that farm by himself. Mute would come by, more days than not, when he was around, and help him with the chores, walk him around so he could check on things, help him gather eggs. The old man was big on eggs. He’d boil them up, as many as there were, and gobble them one right after the other, sitting out on the front porch in the evenings. Feeling the cooler breeze, and tossing the broken bits of the shells off over the railing. Where there was an area of them that looked like a little cloud had come and snowed them down right on the spot. If you were to walk over it, it would sound like some kind of cracking that you never heard before. Just ain’t nothing like it. The old blind man would sit there eating all those eggs, sipping on whatever he might have had, listening to the night grow long. He’d eat them eggs all scrambled, flipped, baked, scorched… With hot sauce, lots of hot sauce… Cook ‘em up in some grease and get a biscuit around I ’em and that’s your meal right there.
That blind old farmer had a harpsichord, as well. And he’d get to playing it sometimes. Although the thing was out of tune. He’d get some music out of it, though, and Mute would just sit there and smile and tap his feet along. Sipping on some of whatever they had going around, as well. Mute didn’t make it a habit of sticking around the place after dark. He didn’t live there, and although the farmer had offered him the place to stay many times, Mute liked living off by himself. So he’d usually go home in the evenings. On the nights when the farmer had that harpsichord rollicking, though, he’d stay. He’d sip that homemade moonshine, and pass the bottle to the blind man, who would have a gulp with one hand while continuing to play with the other. They’d whoop and howl until they finally gave out, and the music dwindled, and silence overtook them both. Their heads would be spinning inside by then, but in a good way. It had to do with some more of that spirit stuff, the life force, the energies of sounds and emotions. That, and they’d be exhausted by then. Getting hungry. The farmer would usually stagger off into the kitchen to make some eggs, and that’s when Mute would usually take his leave. He’d go in the kitchen, touch the blind man’s arm with a friendly squeeze, and then walk his way back to the little place he had off in the hills. Once the farmer passed away, he didn’t make it to the farm much any more. He’d feel the pull, but he wouldn’t go.
One of the things the old blind farmer would talk about from time to time was how his old man had made coffins for a living.
“Coffins!”, he’d say, getting into it. “Make your living off the dead. Ain’t that just about what we all have to do? From the wood ticks to the wolves, to man. Someone’s always eating someone. No matter which way you go about it.”
Mute would just nod, but the blind man couldn’t see him, so he’d just continue.
“There just wasn’t no way I’m gonna be putting them things together all my days… I told him so. My grandfather, too. He’s the one who taught my pa, and brought him along into it. I said, ‘I gotta find my own way’. I said, ‘End up in one of your own boxes’, is what I said. ‘One of my son’s, maybe, or my grandson’s’. My grandpa just about to shit.”
The blind old farmer bowed his head, and cleared his throat.
“I told them I didn’t mean no disrespect. My pa said, ‘You’re gonna end up in one of them, anyway’. ‘I’m not gonna make it for myself, not if I can help it’, I told him. And my grandpa said…”
He always paused for a second there, whenever he recounted this incident.
“ ‘That’s what you think’. I know… I know. I can hear him say it, like he’s standing right here beside me now, saying it right into my ear. Again. Clear as water.”
The farmer stands there, very still, for awhile, thinking his thoughts.
“Well, he was right.”
The old blind farmer cleared his throat again, and began walking off.
“He was dead right.”
The farmer thought it over some more, and added in something else he said a lot.
“There’ll come a day, believe me, sad as it may seem. When old family traditions just don’t get passed along the ways they used to. Folks is gonna forget who they once was, who they used to be. All those simple little things folks do to help survive. Fix things for yourselves. Entertain yourselves. Get food into your belly. Everyone’s going to just get fat and lazy, and the whole world’s gonna go to hell.”
He’d spit, if he was outside, at this. Or growl, or moan, if not.
“Could be it’s already happened. Happening right now.”
Mute sure missed the company of that old man, sometimes. He couldn’t see a single thing with his physical set of eyes, but what he could figure out with his mind, his perceptions… He was aware of a lot more than a lot of folks. When Mute didn’t go back to the farm after the man had passed, it was because it would just be too empty there without him. Without his voice. Without his insight. Without him.
Mute came out of what he was thinking about when Skunk raised his voice to make a point with Baley. To make sure a certain section of a story got across.
“Man, I’m telling you, they were grave robbers. They stole shit out of graves. You understand that? Out of graves. They’d dig around, in the fresh dug dirt or not, and in the houses of the dead… They’d take it all. Whatever they could.”
“They took the bones?”
“They… They didn’t cart off the bodies, Baley. No. The goods. The rings. The necklaces. Earrings. All that shit. Whatever they could sell, they stole. And sold.”
“Earrings?”
“Jewelry… Coins… Whatever’s in the coffin, man. Damn.”
“Damn seems right. Damn them. That’s something men should keep their hands from.”
“That’s what I’m saying. They come up with their wealth and power, but if you traced it back… They got their loot from graves. Thieving it, at that.”
“Well, is there any other way?”
Mute thought about the farmer’s father, and his own father, and who knows how many others, making coffins for a living.
Skunk let out a big yawn, midway through which he also released a rather large fart. Stretched his arms out, yawned again, and began to lay his bedroll out flat on the ground.
“Don’t know about y’all, but I’m about to fall.”
Mute nodded, also reaching for his own bedroll.
Baley licked out the last of his soup from inside his metal cup, ran his shirttail into it once, and set it aside. As he lay his blankets down, and was taking off his hat, he asked Skunk if he remembered something.
All the times he wanted to ask Mute, as well. To hear his opinions, or recollections, or some of the funny stuff he might remember. But there was no way to really ask him anything. He could ask, but he wouldn’t get any response. Not really. Mute was a good hearted person and all, but he wasn’t real forthcoming with any information. At one time, while he had been in prison for a year, for a crime that was never proven he had actually committed. But the judge said he had to do the time, and he did it. He spent the first six months learning how to write. Then he wrote letters to the warden, the judge, the sheriff… Protesting his innocence, giving details that should prove he could never have been the one, at the scene, at the time. It just was not possible. When he had to serve his time down to the final minute, and he’d seen how the letters hadn’t ever helped, he gave up writing and had never done so again. Not even to sign his name on anything. Just gave it up. Chose his silence, that time.
Baley asked Skunk, “Hey Skunk. You remember that grizzly old sumbitch, the one used to tend horses for the Stantons?”
“Yup. Grizzly’s what they all called him. Wasn’t it? Shit, we was just kids…”
“Grizzly. Yeah. You ever heard of what become of him?”
Skunk let out another big yawn, and another, smaller fart. Stretched out fully in his blankets, and answered, ‘Nope.”
Mute was lying back now, looking up at the stars. Already his eyes were closing, and he was drifting off to sleep. He looked forward to his dreams. He always did.
Baley told about how the horse tender had been caught fooling with the cook’s daughter. How that had led to a fight between the two, in which the cook had his left arm severed nearly clean off, the blade stuck in the bone. The hand hanging straight down to the ground, flapping around, pointing to all the blood. Well, without a cook, the other men took umbrage. A few of them grabbed up the horse man, wrapped him in a rug, and took him down to the raging river and tossed him in. I mean, they just said to ‘Roll Him Up’. Some have tried to sweeten the story since then, and say they’d set him on a raft and let him slide freely down stream, but… Either way. He didn’t make it. They’d each taken turns stabbing him while he was in there. One of them dislodged the blade from the cook’s arm, while he lay passed out, and chopped in through the rug with that. After a couple of stabs from each of them, the horse man didn’t even moan any more. And they went and took him down to the river and…”
Skunk cuts in, sounding tired and annoyed.
”Is there a round up to this tale, Baley, or am I gonna have to make one up myself?”
That made Baley think about the whole ‘making a wish’ situation, but he didn’t bring it up. He didn’t want the fight right then. He let his friends just go to sleep.
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