Butch had looked hard at him.

  "You know, a hired gun. Sure."

  "You sack of shit," Butch said. "You couldn't get hired to jerk off."

  The Kid was on his feet with his gun out.

  "Sorry, Kid," Butch mumbled. He took another mouthful of coffee. "Didn't mean anything by it."

  The Kid holstered his gun after a moment and sat down.

  "But you see," Butch said. "It'd have been murder. Gunslinger's got to make the other guy reach first. Make it self-defense. You're too fast, Kid. No one wants to draw on you. You gotta make 'em."

  The Kid was silent. Then he said, "You son of a bitch. You bastard. You..." He paused. "You son of a bitch!"

  "Sorry, Kid," Butch said. He sipped his coffee.

  "Shit." The Kid got to his feet and ran out the door. On the porch, Butch heard him stalk back and forth, muttering, "Son of a bitch." The Kid had taken it out on the ostriches the next day, and Butch had felt oddly guilty for the carnage.

  In the end, he told them about the Andes. He tried to make it sound good, but he could tell he was losing them.

  "How long do you think it'll take to make it up there?" Ella said.

  "A year," Butch said. "Two at the most. It'll be hard, but after that we'll be able to retire for good. We'll live like kings."

  The Kid and Ella looked at each other.

  "What?" Butch said.

  "We can't—" the Kid began, but Butch cut him off.

  "You don't know what you're talking about. I've looked into this."

  "Ella's pregnant," the Kid said.

  Butch didn't know what to say. He felt like going for his gun.

  "Is it time?" the Kid said. Butch looked at his watch and it was. He felt nervous for the first time in years. At least the rain had stopped. The Kid was loading dry shells.

  "It'll be easy," Butch told him. "Don't go shooting anyone unnecessary."

  They swung up into the saddle and walked the horses toward the light. The Kid's began to whinny and he had to talk to her quietly. His best horse was with Ella on the edge of the desert. She'd be there now, Butch thought, waiting for them. He wondered what would happen if only one of them met her and if she had a choice which one she'd prefer.

  She'd kissed them both when they rode off, but she'd been with the Kid the night before. At one point she'd come out to find Butch smoking in the rocker. "Get some sleep," she'd said quietly. "We'll be together tomorrow night."

  He'd sat and smoked and she'd gone outside to the privy. When she walked back she stopped beside him and put a hand on the back of the rocker to still him. He could smell her hair as she stooped over and put her lips to his ear.

  "It could be yours," she said.

  He didn't say a word, didn't even breathe until she straightened up and went back inside and he went back to his rocking. He found his cigarette had gone out.

  There was no whorehouse for twenty miles—the Welsh wouldn't have one in their town—and Butch had taken to drinking with Evans on nights when he wasn't wanted. He told the Welshman that Mr. and Mrs. Jones needed their privacy. Besides, Evans was the only one in town who'd speak English to him.

  He'd asked him once to come to the whorehouse with him, but the Welshman had shaken his head sadly.

  "Not for me," he said. "I tried a sporting girl once. In Liverpool." He shuddered. "No thanks."

  "Well, what do you do?" Butch said. He'd had a few drinks by then.

  "I wait for some homely little settler-girl to get off the boat." He saw the look on Butch's face. "You could too. All you'd need to do is learn a little Welsh. The girls won't mind if you don't say much. I could teach you."

  "How can you wait?"

  "Butch, bach," the Welshman said expansively. "We're part of history here. Our children will be speaking Welsh in a hundred years. Even after they stop speaking it at home. Even after they stop being Welsh in Wales. Look at me. I was a nobody in Liverpool. Now..." He gestured to the bank around them. "You've got to take the long view."

  He poured Butch another drink.

  "D'you know," he said, "the first Welshman to set foot in these parts was a pilot for Darwin."

  Butch would have liked to go and see Evans last night, hut of course it had been impossible.

  They tied the horses with slipknots to the rail outside the bank, and Butch knocked, fie knocked quietly, but he kept it up for a long time, and eventually they heard movement and a voice behind the door.

  "Who is it?"

  "It's Smith."

  Evans opened the door and welcomed them inside. He was in the middle of his supper and he still had a big square napkin tucked into his collar, hanging down over his stomach. He looked a little comic, but Butch liked him for it.

  "Come for a bit of peace and quiet, eh?" he said, and then he saw the Kid.

  "Ella's pregnant," Butch said. "Mrs. Jones," he added when he saw the Welshman's confusion.

  "Oh, aye? That's grand. Congratulations." He held out his hand to the Kid.

  It was all over very quickly once they were inside. The Kid pulled his gun and Evans opened the safe, lie refused at first.

  "You know this is my bank," he said to Butch. "I'm not part of a big company. If you rob me, I'll be ruined. Why should I help you? Kill me. I'm ruined anyway."

  Butch showed him the dynamite.

  "You can still have the safe," he said gently. "You can take it someplace else and start again."

  He'd got on his knees and opened it for them then, but afterwards, when they were stuffing the money—not much, Butch thought—into the saddlebags, Evans said, "I'm too old to go dragging a safe around the country anymore."

  "Go prospecting," Butch said. "The Andes. You can sell the safe and buy grub and a mule and pans and everything you need. Sure." He thought if he could persuade Evans, the idea wouldn't be entirely wasted.

  "No," the Welshman said. "I'm a banker. I've always worked in a bank."

  "Like us," the Kid said. "We've always been robbers."

  He smiled, and Evans smiled back at him as if they were old friends and took a step toward him.

  "No," Butch said. He was talking to Evans, but it was the Kid who turned toward him. Butch could have gone for his gun, but he didn't. He stood and watched. The Kid wasn't a big fella, and once the Welshman was on him he was always going to be stronger. He twisted the Kid's gun out of his hand and turned it on him.

  "Now, boys," he began, but the Kid was going for the gun he kept in his belt. Evans pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He tried again, but by then the Kid had his second gun out. He fanned the hammer once and Evans fell back. The napkin, still fixed at his neck, settled softly over his chest, and a stain began to spread across it.

  The Kid picked up the gun he'd dropped. He shook it in the Welshman's face.

  "No trigger," he said. "I wired it back. It's faster to fan."

  He turned and moved to the door and stopped beside Butch.

  "Where were you?" he said.

  "I'm getting too old for this." Butch stood a moment more. He was still holding the gun he had belatedly drawn, although the Kid had already holstered his and had the saddlebags in his hands.

  "It's all right," the Kid said. "He's dead."

  Butch wondered what it would be like riding out to Ella alone. He could see her in the distance, the way she sat a horse, with her back very straight. She'd be wearing the hat he bought her in New York City, with her hair jammed up under it, exposing her neck. But when he imagined her face seeing him alone, he closed his eyes. He twirled his gun and dropped it into the holster.

  "Hey," the Kid said. "Fancy."

  I Don't Know, What Do You Think?

  THERE ARE WAYS you can tell if someone is serious about killing themselves. You can never be sure and you should always assume they mean what they say, but there are ways. Things like: Has anyone in their family or anyone they've ever known committed suicide?

  What stops most people is the thought of what it would do to those they leave behind. Even at our lowest point we think of other people's feelings. I've talked to people who couldn't bring themselves to do it because they couldn't bear to have someone find them. Even a stranger. One woman told me she felt like she would be imposing. She realized the milkman would find her, and because she opened the door to him at Christmas and gave him some money and he told her about his kids, she couldn't.

  On the other hand, if a person knows someone who has killed themselves, it changes the way they look at it. That's the first sign.

  ***

  My name is Clive and I joined Lifeline in 1988. We get a lot of different calls, but unlike other help lines we're specifically set up for suicides.

  What made me join, and it surprised me, was something the fellow said at the recruitment meeting. I hadn't even gone along to join. All I'd heard was that they were short of money, and I thought I might be able to help with fund-raising. I used to do that at Carol's school when they were collecting for the new gym, and I wanted to show that I could still be useful after the layoff. Anyway, what this fellow said was that Lifeline's policy was not to dissuade people. If someone called him up and told him they'd just swallowed a bottle of pills and wanted someone to talk to while they died, he said he'd do it. He wouldn't try to trick them into saying where they were, even though it would be easy when they got drowsy. He would respect that person's right to die. I found that impressive, that attitude to death. I don't even know if I agreed with it, but I looked at him saying it and I thought, I've got to find out more about this.

  Don't expect to join Lifeline to feel good, I remember them saying in training. Don't do it to feel heroic. The object of the exercise is to make the other person feel good. How you feel is irrelevant. You can't know if you've done any good. You'll never know what happens to them after they hang up. All you can do is listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you.

  That made me think. I used to work for the phone company. I installed the exchange for this town back in the fifties when it was all electromechanical, before they tore everything out and installed the new system. The point is, I thought I knew about telephones. The idea of someone you've never met, someone you'll never meet, calling you up from out of the blue—the possibility of that—made me look at phones differently. Anyone can call you up and say anything and you'll never ever be able to talk to them again once they hang up. That's your whole contact with them. It's like a call from Mars.

  I never expected Lifeline would want me, of course. I was fifty-three then and I thought they would want someone younger. But no, they said they didn't have enough fellows my age, so I signed up for the training. Carol, I'm pretty sure, would have approved—- she was always volunteering for things when she was at college—but my wife, Helen, looked doubtful. No more than me, really. She didn't think that ordinary people did those sorts of things. She thought you needed to be some kind of saint or reformed drug addict and I think she thought I was putting on airs thinking I could give people advice just because we had had our loss. I told her that had nothing to do with it and I was shocked that she thought that. "I could understand your acting funny if Carol killed herself," I said. And she said, "Don't talk stupid."

  Now she tells all her friends that I'm just doing it to meet people.

  The thing that Helen doesn't understand is that you don't give advice. Of course, you could, you want to, but your advice wouldn't necessarily help. You can't hope to understand what the other person's going through and you should never say that you do. They probably don't understand what they're going through. How could you? It's like saying, "Everyone feels like that sometimes." That only makes them feel stupid for calling you, as if their problem is nothing. It's just common sense.

  Helen doesn't even talk to me about it anymore. She thinks she shouldn't because it's all confidential, and she's right, but I think I would tell her if she asked me. I used to tell her all about my training. She could have come along to some of the open sessions. They used to bring in the most remarkable people to break down our prejudices. That's where I met Mary.

  Mary was a transsexual who they invited to come and talk to us. Helen was appalled by that. She didn't think there were any in our town. I suppose she thought they were all in London. The first thing that struck me about Mary was that she was about my age. When she was a man she—he?—used to be an architect. She said she had always wanted to be a woman, which is where I generally part company with these people. I just don't see how you could want something when you never had it. But then one thing she said did really impress me. She said that after the various operations she went back to her company and tried to get her old job back. And this was in this city, mind you. They took her back, too, but they wanted her to be a secretary. That made me laugh, which was embarrassing, but afterwards I went up to her and explained that it reminded me of myself trying to get a new job and that's why I laughed. Everywhere I went they kept telling me I was overqualified and then offering me clerical work. Mary said, "I remember when they used to say you could be out of a job in this town on a Friday night—"

  "—and back in one on Monday morning," I said. I remembered those days.

  Of course, the calls I take now are just as interesting as the training and sometimes I really would like to hear what Helen thinks. I can't see the harm, because she'll never know who the people are any more than I do. The whole thing about confidentiality is a bit misunderstood. Lifeline leaves it like that deliberately. They say the service is confidential, but they encourage us to talk about our calls with each other. To share it if we need to. It makes sense. I think of it like a chain down which some terrible hurt is passed. It starts out with the caller, who passes on a share of it to you, and then you pass it out in smaller and smaller shares to all the other people until it becomes bearable. Talking does that.

  I met Mary again in the queue for the dole a few weeks after I started taking calls. I asked her if she'd like a coffee, but she said she'd love a pint. She said that she felt fine going into a coffee shop alone, but she didn't think it was right for her to go into a pub by herself and she didn't have many friends to go with. After she had a couple, she told me she knew it was unladylike, but she did miss the beer. Helen doesn't drink, herself, and I've lost touch with most of the lads from the office, so we make quite good drinking partners and now we meet once a week after I finish a stint on the phones. It's a little strange, I have to admit. The first time I saw Mary I didn't think, There's a bloke in a dress. I just thought she was a big woman. Somebody said that to her at the meeting.

  "What were you?" they said. "Six foot, six-one, when you were a man?"

  And she said, "I've lost a few inches, love, but not in height."

  Anyway, I don't feel embarrassed being out with Mary. I just find myself staring at her sometimes to see what she might have looked like as a man. I can't imagine it. Sometimes I even look at myself in the mirror and try and imagine my face as a woman's, but then all I see is Carol.

  Another thing Mary misses is the football, and I've offered to go to a game with her whenever she wants, but she says she's still a little nervous. "I lose control at football," she says. "When United got to the Cup final, I fell to my knees on the terraces. I was in tears. Everybody was hugging everyone else." I like football, but I've never felt like that. I asked her how she could take it so seriously and she said, "I suppose I've always been an emotional person. I couldn't care about the big things if I didn't care about the little things too." I asked her if she didn't miss being a man, and she said, "Only the beer and the football."

  Her name used to be Martin and she was originally from Yorkshire, although she doesn't have much of an accent. She has one sister still in the north, but they haven't been in touch for years. She says it's like having the memories of another person. "Martin's dead and buried," she says. "Did himself in. Good riddance." Legally, she can't get her name changed on her birth certificate, which makes her angry, although it seems like sense to me. Once when she'd had a few pints, she said she only kept the pictures of Martin as a little boy and sometimes she felt like his mother. She laughed and laughed, but she's been more careful about how much she drinks now. The hormones have lowered her tolerance, she says, and whenever I try and buy her another one she waves me away: "No thanks. The hormones, you know."

  I used to think that I could really help someone if they were depressed because they'd had a bereavement, but really I can't help them any more than I can help someone who rings up thinking they might have AIDS. My experience doesn't matter. I can't tell them what to do even if they ask me. People do call for advice, all the time, but we're taught not to give it. It's called reflecting the question. It's harder than it sounds. When we were training, the group leader sat us down in a circle and went round firing questions at people. All kinds of questions. "I'm pregnant. What should I do? I think I might be gay. What should 1 do? Who do you think's going to win the league this year?" To which you're supposed to answer, "I don't know. Who do you think's going to win it?" Anyhow, he asked me, "What do you think of Margaret Thatcher?" and I said, "Margaret Thatcher? Don't get me started."

  That took me a long time to get the hang of. It just sounds so insincere, as if you're avoiding the question. Either that or it sounds like a riddle when you say, "I don't know," as if you're waiting for a punchline. The thing is, though, that callers don't want to hear about you, about your opinions or your troubles. They've got troubles of their own. They don't even want to hear your nerves. They're nervous enough. They don't want to have to take you into account as well.

  Helen says she'd never ring a service like Lifeline. I used to agree with her, but now I think I probably would if I ever needed to. People think they should sort themselves out and they feel embarrassed about calling us, but really all we do is help them sort themselves out. I'd consider calling, certainly, but I suppose I've learned so much from the training and helping other people that I don't need to. I just think of the last person I talked to and I know my problems aren't so bad. Then Helen says she might have to ring just to talk to me one time. She's exaggerating. I only work three nights a week, and she gets enough of me under her feet all day as it is. I tell her she shouldn't joke about it. If she ever did call, she says, she'd ask for a female counselor, and I tell her that's her privilege.

 

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