Jake Stimmel: RED-HEADED MIKE FINNEGAN • Cleaver Magazine

Fiction by Jake Stimmel
RED-HEADED MIKE FINNEGAN

“I did not take your boat, Mr. Roosevelt, because I wanted to steal something, no indeed; when I took that vessel I was laboring under the impression, ‘Die dog or eat the Hachette.’” —Letter from Convict Michael J. Finnegan to Theodore Roosevelt, 1887, Bismarck, North Dakota

It’s all rolling green hills and prairie flowers until you arrive at the bad land’s edge. Then the place where somebody sliced away the tranquility and the land is scabbed.

The only way to know the place before you hit that wound is if it rains, you can smell the wet red dust ahead as it thickens to mud. And beneath the sound of the fat droplets falling through tall grass, you possibly hear many tiny streams rushing ahead, rushing down. The best place to hear such a flat and empty sound.

On the night they caught up it was raining like that. If I hadn’t been running I would have dreaded the sound, but things as they were, I had safety and freedom when I smelled that rain. And when I came to the final hillcrest the green broke away and the land became a knotted vastness of black and rich red and brown. Fresh wounds over old scars. Beyond were strange spires stretching toward parched yellow ridges, pressing up and dropping away over and again to the horizon. The rutted hillside diving down below my feet was wide and channeled and I didn’t want to go that way.

Chasing me was my best friend, Michael J., whom we called Irish, and the man we had stolen from, Theodore, along with the rest of Theodore’s posse. Underpaid ranch-hands and anywise a couple cowboys. I knew Michael was with Mister Theodore and the rest, and I knew that they wanted to hang me together. But I didn’t know why. All I knew was I didn’t want to die in the Dakotas, so I slid my way down the muddy side.

The first channel threw wet dirt into my nose and sent my feet flailing. Fear comes in a way you don’t expect and I was sliding fast. My boot-heel hit on a loose rock that slipped right through the hole in the bottom of my boot and jabbed pain up my leg. I tried to stand, not that speed, fell and rolled before I managed to get my feet out front again. The old boots were already so wet I couldn’t tell how hard I was bleeding from the rock. I made my way down most of the rest on my front, slipping and sliding down through blinding sludge and rain. When I reached the bottom the first thing I thought of was whiskey in an unmarked bottle from Hollihan’s outside Medora. That was where I met Michael J.

He had been trying to hunch over the bar and sip a bottle of beer. Somebody like him, though, they can’t hunch like that. He glanced me with one big, broad shoulder when I walked in, his eyes flashing gun-steel and gray beauty.

I was at the bottom of the hill, and I wanted to be back in that bar. Or maybe I just wanted to be drunk. I walked forward to forget, stepping on strange rolling country that rose up out of everywhere and from nothing. The rain kept slapping against the mud.

From the time I’d met Michael, I’d always had the feeling that he was somebody worth following. I had thought about this a bit, in recent days spent running: if leading is a skill, then so is following. I’ve been trying to learn how to follow. This, though, just running away. Nothing there.

My boots were packed with red mud, the stuff dripped out of them from the sides and my shins were slick and oily beneath their thin leather.

I stood up and brushed at the mud on my jeans and wondered why I tried that hill. Because it gets dark here, blind dark night and darker than above. I thought of the bartender where I met Michael. Her dark skin glowing behind the oil lamps on the bar top. She liked us both, maybe together she liked us even. I brushed at the mud on my jeans again and then, over the heavy sounds of rushing water, I heard a rock tumble and splash into mud. The sound was coming from the hillside. I ducked behind an undergrown yucca plant for a breath, then I ran on.

The nearest real cover was a tiny channel cutting between two mud spires and I flopped in it. Freezing water roared past my face, soaked me completely. I heard no other sounds. The water tasted like shit. I raised my head and spat a mouthful.

On the hillside above, I spot them working their way down much more carefully than me. I count four: Theodore, Michael, two others, a couple of Theodore’s ranch-hands. I knew all them bastards. One had a name like Dennis or Dave or some such bullshit, and the other one I distinctly remember was called Yarrow. The water around my face began to slow up, pick another path.

Yarrow yells something I can’t understand over the sound of the rain and running water, something hoarse and angry. They all stop and turn towards him.

I can tell that the one lowest on the hill is Michael J. because of his dumb-looking leather hat, slouching by his ears in the downpour. Yarrow shouted and wheeled his arms around a couple of times, the last time so violently that he unbalanced and slid five yards down in the muck. I laughed along.

I had not regretted my bad shot at Yarrow until now. Didn’t even wing the fucker. Be one less. Glad I missed. Wouldn’t be here to see him fall without.

But I didn’t regret my stray bullets so much that I was about to hand myself over to them. Maybe just to Michael, alone. But Mr. Theodore and this other Dingle, or whatever the name was, they would save me from getting my balls blown off by Yarrow in order to hang me from the tallest tree they could find. Or maybe just the first tree, but with an express knot. Michael wasn’t like that. I’d heard a story once about a man who was hog-tied before they hung him because they couldn’t find anything tall enough to dangle him from. I spat out another mouthful of wet badlands and that’s when I hear the snake rattle.

Fear spiked into my hurt leg. I’d been bitten before and I suppose my body had some memory of it, and my memories twitched embers across my back. The rattlesnake was huge, bigger than any I’d ever seen, coiled over itself. Long fangs glinting through the water in the air, dripping with something, eyes like twitching scales. It must have been caught out by the rain, same as me. I stared, motionless. The rain eased and the snake stopped rattling.

This close, ought to bite right away. My throat was pounding, all the blood rushing up and I didn’t feel cold anymore. The snake lowered its arrowhead face to the ground and stared at me; I looked into the eyes and saw something like a person. Then a flicker of satin black tongue lapped around its jaws and looked at me wary, a stranger’s look, I recognized that look. We kept looking at each other until I began to feel cold again, and then I heard Yarrow shouting again. They had reached the bottom of the hill and coming my way. I glanced up over top of my hiding place.

When I looked back, I caught the rattle of the snake disappearing around the corner of our little draw. Almost beckoning—I dragged myself to my feet and followed it through the quickly rising water.

“I see him!” Michael shouted. I dove around the corner. The snake was gone and for some reason I was looking for it. I knew they were close when I poked my head around the corner and a bullet zipped right past my fucking face.

A few more pot shots landed around the corner and Yarrow started shouting again, but I didn’t care. There was a slim crevice above the water line. Inside, I guessed there was a dark cave and I felt certain this is where the snake had gone. I followed inside, slid down the sheltering rock.

Our narrow cave was strangely quiet, sheltered from the torrent outside. Gentle rattles confirmed that the snake was somewhere in the darkness, very close. The cave didn’t echo and it wasn’t quite tall enough to stand up in, but I figured that if I went far enough they wouldn’t spot me. Maybe the snake would scare them off. It rattled again, vicious now, as my soaking boots squelched forward. Three quick steps and I was in the full cover of the smothering darkness. The moment I put the foot down there was a sound like water on hot oil and the snake jammed its fangs through the right leg of my jeans and gone again.

I stumbled back against the cool, damp wall and looked up toward the faint light at the opening. My chest was heaving from the fear. Stinging pain began to radiate out from the spot where I was bit, crawling slowly toward my thigh. Both legs ruined now. Above, the dim light of the opening stayed empty. Rain’s roar had turned to a patter down here. From the sound I thought maybe it was slowing down, but then shining rivulets of brown water began to shimmer on the slick side of the cave.

Now whispers filled the cave: maybe the voices of the men outside the mouth, maybe rainwater slipping down the walls. Or it was the sound of the snake. Suddenly, I hated the rattlesnake like I’ve never despised anything. Right then, should have been that I hated Michael J. worse than syphilis, but all I wanted was to kill the snake. The sharp pains and burning in my leg were getting worse, and I felt sick. My mouth tasted like river mud and rotten meat. I suppose the snake felt the same way, because I heard it start rattling again, very, very close.

The second time it bit me, I think it hurt less. I knew it bit me from the hissing sound, from the stark silence after it struck. One bite can be survived, even alone in this strange desert. The second bite I feared would kill me, or at least incapacitate. And then I would drown in this cave. The snake began rattling again, still very close, nowhere for either of us to run.

My shoulders crunched down and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. When I heard the snake flick its tail again, I flung myself across the cave and grabbed at the darkness. My fingers closed around cold scales and writhing.

The snake flicked out its tongue at me and twisted in a two-handed grip, nearly wriggling free. Even though I had caught it, I still hated it unimaginably. I wanted to do what it had done to me, and I felt like puking. So I bit the snake, just above where my hands grasped it, I bit into the fucker so hard that I tasted blood. Then I clamped down.

The viper did not struggle as I did this; it stopped moving altogether. That did not make me any less angry. I pressed my jaw down, harder, until finally the snake’s neck give away. The snake’s head fell, splashing into what was now a couple inches of muddy water.

One snake taken care of, I had to get out for to take care of the other. Once you get enough in you, rattlesnake venom knocks you down and works quickly, painfully. The rotten taste in my mouth had intensified to something sweet, tangy. Putrid mayonnaise. I’d tasted it once.

If Theodore and Michael weren’t out there I could make it to the nearest civilization, some fucking fort near Medora. Better than drowning in this dark hole, while the snake poison burned me up. I’d gone from near freedom to nothing left to lose, and all it took was some fucking rain. I started dragging myself up the wet wall toward the storm outside.

The surface was dark and the ditch below the cave entrance had grown into a creek of intimidating depth, moving with all the speed and murkiness of the Little Mississippi with rain.

“They said the water was gettin’ too high.” Michael emerged from behind a bush on the other side. “Too damn high, and they fuckin’ left. Unbelievable.”

“Why would you stay?” I yelled, dragging myself onto the opposite bank.

“Is that blood on your chin?”

“Answer me!” I was pissed, the taste in my mouth growing worse and my leg throbbing and I was pretty sure that I was about to die right there. I leapt into the water before Michael had any chance to move. The creek was waist-deep, ice cold and the current was strong. I made it across with a couple of flopping strokes, pulling with my best arm and my bit leg throbbing sharply, and dragged myself onto the mud. Michael’s boot came down hard on fingers, pain snapping out and up my arm. I slid my hand out and struggled to my feet, my good hand resting on my knee. My broken hand splayed out on the rock like a half-melted fork, and it hurt worse than the leg. Contrary to popular belief, new pain does not block out old.

Sure in the knowledge that I was dying and that it was his fault, and that I followed him once so it was my fault too, I threw my whole aching carcass at the bastard. If he was afraid, he didn’t show it. Instead he rotated his broad shoulders and brought his fist crashing down against my jaw. My feet slipped and I fell backwards into the water, splashing and then catching myself on my arms. Michael backed away a few steps and watched me flailing in the water. There was almost a full second where I was able to think. The only way to get Michael J., I decided, was to hit him where it hurts.

“It’s snake blood!” I shouted over the roar of rain. He turned toward me—I think I lost the element of surprise there. “SNAKE BLOOD!” I shouted again. To my extreme embarrassment, his shoulders began to shake with laughter. But I had to hit him, like I’d decided, so I started to limp forward slowly, one wounded animal approaching another.

“You remember that night, Michael, where I put makeup on you?” I asked. He stopped laughing instantly.

“Very funny,” he replied, but his eyes changed shape.

“Lipstick.” I touched the snake blood on my own lips. “How could you forget?” Even I couldn’t forget it, and I had been even drunker. The whore who lent us the makeup could not forget either, I was sure, it was among the most beautiful things what happened that night. Michael seemed to be remembering something, thinking somehow about it, because when I charged him again he didn’t react until he was on his way down.

I propped my good forearm across his throat and while he wasn’t struggling much, my whole body was screaming in pain. We looked each other in the eyes and I watched his beautiful blue-grays roll back to soft gypsum as he suffocated. Then I kissed him once with the snake blood. I looked at his cheekbones, his forehead, his lips bright red with rattlesnake blood. I stood up.

There wasn’t much left for either of us to do but walk away. Michael was gasping like a fish betrayed, windpipe crushed. I wasn’t sure he could walk away. But I had to go, for the snake bite. I made for the nearest high ground, a patch of green grass and a tree standing beneath the limits of the bad lands.

Jake Stimmel is a teacher and writer in Minneapolis. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. Some of his other work can be read in Tough Magazine, Club Plum Literary Journal, and Stoneboat Literary Journal. He is online at jakestimmel.com or, in real life, feeding the cat.