Read Online Redeye by Clyde Edgerton - Free Book Online Page A

Zack.
    â€œWhat’s your religion, young man?” the Bishop asked me.
    â€œBaptist.”
    â€œWell, you ride up to my ferry someday, the one you come across on. Give me a chance to discuss Scripture and tell you about our prophets, Saints, and the Kingdom. We believe much that the Baptists believe.”
    â€œWell,” said Zack, looking around, “right now we got to find some cows.”
    So we went our way and they went theirs, and we found thecattle grazing together in a little pine grove about a half-mile on along ahead of us. We herded them back to the others, and the day was long and hot and, all in all, pretty boring.
    That night I was tired. My ass was sore and I was happy to get a chance to walk down to the river, gather some driftwood, and get the stiffness out while Zack hobbled the horses. The sun was down when I got back to camp and the sky was red. We had biscuits, coffee, and bacon, and then Zack and Mr. Cobb Pittman rolled them a cigarette apiece. Zack asked me if I wanted one. He can roll a cigarette with one hand really fast. He said he learned from a one-armed Mexican. I told him yeah and I tried but spilled out a lot of tobacco.
    Mr. Pittman was picking fleas off Redeye again. He wears smoked spectacles in the daytime and then at night he puts on reading spectacles for flea picking. His eyes are red and run water all the time.
    Zack looked at the cigarette I’d tried to make. “You just got to get where you can hold the sides up like this. Here, look. Like this. Just practice holding the side up, like this. That son of a bitch Mexican would roll one for everybody, say six or eight in a row, before anybody else could roll one, and him with just that one arm.”
    â€œHow’d he lose his arm?”
    â€œSomebody told me he hung from a cliff with a rope tied around his wrist until his arm rotted and when they cut him down they thought he was dead but he weren’t and they had to cut off his arm because of gangrene. This was back around ’75 or ’80.
    â€œWhy was he hanging by his arm?”
    â€œNobody said. They had to saw it just above his elbow.”
    â€œI met a man that knew him in Texas,” said Mr. Pittman. “If he’s the same one. Been kidnapped by Apaches, and left hanging. Apaches won’t torture you unless you been a coward,” he said to me. I think that was about the first thing he’d said directly to me.
    Redeye kind of waddled over to me and I rubbed his head. His nose was short and he was bow-legged. Hard as a rock. His blind eye looked like a ball of blood with a film over it.
    â€œHe don’t seem all that mean,” I said.
    â€œWho said he was mean?” said Mr. Pittman. “He’s a good dog. He just lost his training for a while. He’ll be all right. Some of his kind get stuck on something’s nose and you have to kill them or kill whatever it is they’re hooked into. The Indian I got him off of was a Papitaw—a breed that uses dogs to hunt boars. The dogs catch the boars by the ears—else the dog gets gored. Did you know that?”
    â€œYessir, I’d heard that.”
    â€œHe told me he’d choked Redeye’s brother to death. Damn thing hooked into a milk cow’s nose and he tried everything he could and finally had to choke him and the damn dog died hooked in.” He snapped his fingers. “Come here, Redeye. Here, get in the bag. And the cow broke its neck trying to get him off.” He rolled him another cigarette. “They was a family of clear purpose dogs.” Redeye got in his bag, worked up until his head was sticking out his head hole, and Mr. Pittman tied the other opening shut. “I tried to teach him to smoke but it didn’t take.”Redeye looked up at Mr. Pittman like he loved him. “Say your prayers, boy.”
    It seemed to be a little more chilly than the night before, so I went back to the river and got some more wood,