The Winter Family (19 page)

“Very well,” Quentin said. “Tomorrow night?”

“That’s too soon,” Archibald protested.

“Tomorrow,” Quentin said again. “We shall make it worth your while. And we will be on our very best behavior.”

“I don’t know, Mister Ross,” Archibald said.

“Double.”

“Double?” Archie said.

“Indeed,” Quentin replied.

“All right,” Archie said. “Tomorrow.”

“You see what happens?” Charlie snapped at Johnny, slapping him across the face.

The three of them staggered back into the hotel. Quentin called for Bill to get their drinks ready, but when they arrived at the bar they saw someone who surprised them.

“Herr Müller!” Quentin cried.

Jan smiled at them from the shadows, where he was sitting with Bill.

“Sergeant,” Charlie said. “How’d it go after you threw me out of that kraut saloon? Did they buy it?”

“Better than we hoped,” Jan said. “I’ve gotten very deep very quickly.”

“How’s the little scratch?” Charlie said, his eyes narrowed to slits with malevolent humor.

Jan made a face.

“I suppose I got carried away,” Charlie said. “Made it look authentic, though.”

“I suppose,” Jan said.

“Time to celebrate!” Quentin said. “Have a drink with us.”

“No,” Jan said. “I will need all of my wits about me tomorrow. But I need to speak with you.”

“Oh, all right,” Quentin said. “Charlie, Johnny, give us a minute, will you?”

The Empire brothers made their way to the bar, while Quentin sat down with Jan. “What’s troubling you, my friend?” Quentin asked.

“It’s not easy for me to say,” Jan said.

“Is it about what happened in Mississippi?” Quentin said. “We didn’t have much chance to speak about it.”

Jan looked so upset that he might cry.

“It wasn’t our fault,” Quentin said. “We all knew Winter was a bit wild, but I don’t think any of us believed he was capable of that. Did you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, a certain amount of responsibility rests with me,” Quentin said. “I should have kept a tighter rein on him. Still, Jan, how could I have known? You don’t believe I had anything to do with it?”

“No,” Jan said. “But why do these things keep happening? All the way back to the war. These things keep happening again and again. And every time we are getting in so much trouble. So that now if I’m caught here in this city, this city I fought for, I’ll be hung.”

“Well, Jan,” Quentin said. “What were we to do? Execute Johnson? Would that be justice?”

“It wasn’t just about Johnson,” Jan muttered. He glanced into Quentin’s eyes, which were wide, honest, and earnest. But something was in them, or something missing from them, that made them hard to look at for too long.

“My brother is far more trustworthy than Sherman,” Quentin said. “If he says he will stand behind us, then he means it. He won’t say one thing to us in private and then leave us hanging out to dry.”

Jan forced himself to look Quentin in the eye. “Quentin,” Jan said, “I spoke with Phil Sheridan before I came here.”

“Yes?”

“He swore to me that Sherman told you that it was important to respect his field orders. He said you’d been warned again and again.”

“Of course he’d say that,” Quentin said. “They wanted us raising hell, but also to be able to deny that they had anything to do with it. They’d reap the rewards of our hard methods without having to pay the price. You can’t trust anything they’d say.”

Jan looked away. Surely Quentin could not be lying. He had no reason to lie. What was the alternative? If Quentin had engaged in butchery merely for the sake of butchery, and transformed himself and his men into outlaws by so doing, and was able to lie about it
with such a perfectly calm and reasonable expression on his face, as if he believed his own words, then he was mad and Jan had never really known him at all.

“Well,” Jan said. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Good,” Quentin said. “We’ll put this behind us.”

“All right,” Jan said.

He did not have the heart to ask Quentin where he had been with the Empire brothers. The sound of laughter and breaking glass followed him as he walked up the stairs to his bedroom.

In the little town of Morris, sixty miles southwest of Chicago on the Illinois River, Louis Parker was in the barn behind his home, milking a cow, his face pressed up against its side and his hands reaching under, gently and rhythmically squeezing.

The barn door opened and his wife, Dorothy, came in.

“Louis,” she said. “I thought I heard gunshots.”

Louis leaned back on the stool, away from the cow, and wiped his forehead.

“Pardon me?”

The cow made a low noise.

“I thought I heard gunshots coming from the reverend’s old place,” Dorothy said.

Dorothy’s gray hair was tied back in a tight bun. She had broad arms and an enormous bust. Louis was slight and entirely bald and wore spectacles.

“Well, maybe someone’s hunting,” Louis said.

“Oh, Louis,” Dorothy said. “Couldn’t you go have a look? I’m awfully worried. If someone came up to the house when you were down here I don’t know what I’d do.”

Louis sighed. He looked around the barn at the three other cows waiting in their stalls and then he took the lantern from where it was hanging and walked up the well-worn path to the house.

Dorothy followed behind him speaking nervously. “I can’t think who would be down there.”

Louis sighed again. He went in through the back door, set the
lantern down on the floor, took the shotgun off the rack, cracked it open to make sure it was loaded, picked up the lantern again, and went back outside.

It was a cold morning, without much wind, and the stench coming off the Illinois River was strong. The sun was rising in the east and it cast fingers of light over the murky water, almost black with coal dust and dirt and the blood of hogs. Bits of white cloth, chunks of wood, and animal corpses all bobbed along with the sluggish current.

The Reverend Winter’s house was next to the water’s edge. No one had moved in since he had died and the windows were shattered and the dock was washed up on the shore like a shipwreck. The gardens were all dead and even the grass struggled to grow.

Louis came up to the house with the lantern, shining its light around. There were two sets of tracks in the soft earth and he heard the sound of someone’s boots scraping on the floor inside.

Instead of calling out, Louis tucked his shotgun under his arm and used his free hand to shutter the lantern. Then he set it down on the ground and walked the rest of the distance to the house in the darkness. He came up to the window quietly and peeked inside.

What he saw caused him to jerk his head and tiptoe away as quickly as he could. As he was picking up the lantern, a little figure stepped into his path and shrieked, in the piercing voice of an enraged adolescent.

“Get your hands up you dirty little ratfucker, or I’ll blow your head off!”

The boy looked to be about fifteen. He was skinny and dirty, wearing a ragged set of overalls with no shirt underneath, and he had an enormous pistol hanging at each hip, over which his hands were twitching eagerly.

“Hsst,” Louis said, scrambling with the shotgun, but the boy drew his pistols with such overwhelming, unnatural speed that Louis was startled and his weapon tumbled through his numb fingers and landed on the depleted earth.

“I said get them hands up, you ugly whoremaster!” the boy screeched.

Louis heard a heavy tread on the ground behind him, and his heart fell. He turned around and saw the man coming out of the house, saw his long hair and his thin scratchy beard, both the color of winter wheat. Saw his yellow eyes, as slick and as hard as chrysoberyl.

“Augustus,” Louis whispered. “It’s me. Do you remember me?”

Winter gave no sign that he did. He walked up to Louis and stopped a few feet in front of him and stared into his face.

“Auggie,” Louis said, “it’s me. Louis Parker. I live up the hill. You remember me? My wife, Dorothy? You used to come over to our house when your daddy … you used to visit our house sometimes? Remember? She’d give you biscuits and gravy?”

“Shut up!” the boy cried, and Louis felt both pistols dig into his lower back. “Should I shoot him, Auggie?”

Winter never broke eye contact with Louis, who stared right back, hoping to touch something, move something, kindle some spark of the boy he’d once known.

“Louis!” Dorothy cried as she hurried down the hill. “Louis, what’s happening?”

Louis wanted to tell her to stay back, but he was not as quick as the boy, who trained one gun on Dorothy while keeping the other on Louis and shouted, “Get back!”

Dorothy took one look at the boy and either failed utterly to understand the danger he represented or else knew instinctively how to handle children, for she simply narrowed her eyes and said, “You point that away right now, young man,” and kept hurrying toward her husband.

And either the boy was afraid to fire without instructions from Winter or else there was something in the tone of her voice that stopped him, for he fell quiet.

“Louis?” Dorothy said as she came closer and peered toward them in the dark. And then: “Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Auggie? Is that you, Auggie?”

And now Winter’s gaze fell upon her, like a weight of merciless stone, but once again Dorothy seemed oblivious.

“Oh my goodness, it is you!” she cried, and she went to him and gave him a hug.

Winter was so surprised that the hardness of his expression cracked. He did not look affectionate or sorrowful, or anything at all, other than momentarily unsure of himself, and unguarded.

Dorothy stepped back and her face was wet with tears but she was smiling. She looked from Winter to Louis to the boy and said, “Well, come on up to the house! I think we still have some pie from last night.”

“Pie!” the boy cried, holstering his guns. “Oh boy! I’m fucking starving.”

“Young man,” Dorothy said, “what’s your name?”

“Lukas Shakespeare,” the boy said.

“Well, Lukas, if you don’t watch your language, you won’t get any pie.”

“Yes ma’am,” Lukas said.

When they walked through the front door, Dorothy said, “Make sure to take your boots off.”

Lukas sat down and lifted his feet and pulled his boots off like a monkey. Then he threw them aside and sprinted after Dorothy.

Winter followed Louis, holding the shotgun. He left his boots on and they made little imprints of dirt on the carpet.

“Won’t you sit down, Augustus?” Louis said, sweating. “Come sit down in the living room, here.”

Winter settled in a large armchair. He laid the shotgun across his knees and kept his eyes on Louis.

Dorothy was in the kitchen with the boy, forcing him to wash his face and his hands. Then she brought cups of coffee for the men. She glanced once at Winter’s boots but didn’t say anything.

“It’s so wonderful to see you again, Augustus,” Dorothy chattered. “We haven’t heard a word about you since you left for the war. I know how hard that must have been for you. Your father was in a rage about it but we could all see how proud he was of you. The reverend was a good man underneath his temper and he loved you very much. I’m only sorry he didn’t live long enough to tell you himself. We have all his things if you want them. Oh! Listen to me prattle on when I’m sure you have plenty of things to tell us.”

Dorothy stopped and looked expectantly at Winter. He flicked his eyes to her for a moment and then looked back at Louis.

“Well,” Dorothy said, “the little fellow is in there eating all the pie, so perhaps I’ll get some breakfast on. I’ll let you two catch up.”

She bustled out of the room and said something sharp to Lukas, whose reply was lost as the door closed behind her.

Winter gazed off through the window toward the little town of Morris. It had never seemed so far away to Louis as it did now.

“My daddy’s dead?” Winter asked.

“Yes,” Louis replied.

“It was the river that got him, was it?”

“Yes.”

“Why’s the river flowing the other way now?”

“They reversed the flow of the Chicago River back into the Illinois,” Louis said. “To keep the lake clean for Chicago’s drinking water.”

Winter’s lips twitched a bit.

“So Chicago killed my daddy in the end, did it?”

“I suppose so,” Louis said. “It killed a lot of people. But the governor won’t do nothing about it.”

Winter didn’t say anything more.

Louis cleared his throat. He tried to meet Winter’s gaze, then looked down again.

“Augustus,” Louis said, “I won’t tell anyone you came here. I promise.”

Winter’s face was without expression.

“I promise you. Please. I wouldn’t ever tell. Augustus, I swear. We were always good to you. My wife loves you. She don’t know about what happened in Mississippi. I kept her away from the papers.”

“That why she thought my father was a good man? That he loved me? Did you keep the papers away from her about him too?”

Louis shrank into the sofa.

“Your wife is a goddamn idiot,” Winter said.

Louis stared desperately at Winter’s face, as if he was trying to catch on to something human, to draw sympathy out with his eyes. To make Winter feel something. But Winter only looked at him as he would the sluggish, polluted Illinois River flowing by. And then Louis did what many men did when they had to spend much time with Augustus Winter. He started to cry.

“Augustus, please.”

“The world’s a hard fucking place,” Winter said. His hand moved just a little on the stock of the shotgun. “A little hard to get by with just please.”

“Augustus,” Louis said. He wiped his eyes and then spoke almost without thinking. “My lord, Augustus, when you say things like that, you sound just like him.”

That got a reaction. Winter stood up so quickly he knocked over the chair. He pointed the shotgun at Louis, and his eyes looked as if some infernal gate had come loose inside them, as if they had become windows to Hell.

Louis was too shocked to be afraid. He had never seen a face so distorted with surprise and hatred and he simply assumed that he was about to die.