A Congregation of Jackals (22 page)

“Jim,” she said as the delicious agony grew in her bosom and the blonde curls at the bottom of her corset dampened with her own moisture. (She knew they should stop, but the ache in her breasts and the warm pins in her loins made it hard to speak.)

“Jim,” she said again. He raised his mouth from her breast, the pale skin and red nipple of the lobe gleaming, and kissed her again with a fire he had never once before allowed himself to exhibit.

Another crack sounded—this time from outside of
the house. Jim twisted from her and drew the gun he had slid down the back of his belt. He watched the front door for a moment.

Her voice quiet and dry, Beatrice said, “That was just the front door to the Meyers’ house.”

“Okay.”

He replaced the gun beneath his belt. She raised the cups of her corset and then refastened the hooks on the side. Beatrice did not look at Jim as she pulled up and then tied the straps of her dress. She was embarrassed, yet her heart still hammered with excitement.

“I shouldn’t have done that—gone an’ gotten us all crazy riled up,” he said. “We should wait for God’s blessin’. We waited this long.”

“Tomorrow night,” she said. She felt certain that had Jim not been distracted by the noise, the two of them would have prematurely joined together as husband and wife.

They drank tea and talked about the shindy. She did not ask why a man who had patiently abstained for over two years had lost his self-control the night before the wedding, because she was almost certain he would not tell her the truth when he answered her.

When her father arrived, smiling and with a smear of lipstick just beneath his chin, Jim shook his hand, kissed her good-bye and departed into the night.

Beatrice, filled with myriad concerns, asked her father if he would read her to sleep as he had up until she was eleven years old. His voice carried her from the anxieties of reality into the realm of children’s stories and ultimately into the velvet domain of slumber.

The small room was lit blue by the dawn sky. In the middle of the narrow bed, Oswell set down a sealed envelope upon which he had written,

Should Oswell Danford go missing or perish please deliver this parcel to
—

Elinore Bass Danford
13 Cutter Way
Harrisfield, Virginia

Thank you
.

He left five dollars legal tender on top of the missive to cover expenses and to encourage an honest delivery.

Oswell had not slept very well, and when he walked into the hallway and looked at his brother’s weary visage, he did not need to ask if Godfrey had fared any better. The rancher knocked on the door to Dicky’s apartment, but received no response.

“Maybe he’s in the lobby,” Godfrey said.

Oswell, who wore a dark brown suit and cowboy hat like his brother’s, a fresh white shirt and a new union suit beneath it, said, “Let’s see if he’s down there.”

The Danfords descended the stairs into the quiet lobby of Hotel Halcyon. An old man wearing a white
suit stared at a window on the other side of which the coming sun announced itself in swaths.

Oswell sat in a cushioned chair; he set the guest ledger upon his lap and his enameled pen case atop that. Godfrey sat next to him; he placed the valise with the revolvers on the floor beside his feet.

“You get any sleep at all?” Godfrey asked.

“A couple of hours—in slices and slivers.”

“You have any dreams?”

“I had one about Elinore and the kids.” His children and wife had not recognized him in the dream.

“I had one about Mr. Ferguson. You remember him?”

“The bank manager,” Oswell said. “The one who took Ma’s house from us.”

“Yeah. I had a dream that it didn’t happen like that. We didn’t beat on him at all, and instead of taking the house, Mr. Ferguson hired on some special doctor who brought Ma back from the dead and fixed her eyes and everything. And afterward, he went and married her.”

Oswell imagined the scene and asked, “And then what happened?”

“I had a restaurant. You became a sheriff like you always said you were going to. Things were real different.”

“Sounds like we were good men.”

The brothers sat in silence for a minute.

Godfrey said, “Too bad it didn’t happen that way.”

“Yeah.” A silhouetted figure passed in front of the window. “There’s Dicky,” Oswell said, pointing to the front door.

The handsome man walked into the lobby, looked at the old man in white and then at the Danfords.

“Give me a moment to refresh myself,” the New Yorker said to Oswell.

“It’s early. You’ve got some time.”

Dicky, his suit wrinkled and shirt stained with sweat, climbed the stairs toward the second landing.

“I guess Trailspur women aren’t any cleverer than the girls elsewhere,” Oswell said with a grimace.

“I liked the one that I was dancing with,” Godfrey remarked.

“What’s her name?”

“Annie.”

“I saw you holding hands and close-dancing. She looked pretty.”

“She’s very pretty. Her grandfather was from Spain.”

“You always liked girls like that—like that one you asked to marry you in Arizona. What was her name?”

“Consuela.”

“You had some good times with her.”

“I should’ve just told her I was Catholic. Jesus is still Jesus, no matter what the minister calls himself.”

“Is Annie going to be at the wedding?”

Godfrey nodded, but did not look happy in so doing. Oswell knew that his sibling’s attachment to the woman was yet another source of concern on a day ripe with peril.

A few minutes later, Dicky descended the stairs, wearing a black suit and round, broad-brimmed hat. To Oswell, the man looked refreshed and alert.

“Do we have time for breakfast?” Dicky asked.

Oswell looked at the window; the sun had not yet risen from the earth.

“Let’s have some chow,” he said.

“Blackie,” Dicky said to the old man in the white suit.

The elder turned to face Dicky; Oswell saw that he was blind.

The old man said, “You’re the one that weighs one hundred an’ seventy, right?”

“You are correct.”

“What do you want?”

“We are hungry. Is there a place in town you would recommend for us to breakfast at?”

“Go to Harry’s Good Eats. Her coffee’ll turn you into a nigger. Food’s good too. Get the pork chops.”

“Thank you,” Dicky said. “And I hope that Isabel comes to have tea with you this morning.”

“I’ve got a good feelin’ about today. A very good feel-in’,” he said, and looked back at the window with blank, blind eyes.

The three men walked into Harry’s Good Eats, sat upon three stools at the burnished counter and then looked at the menu that was painted in red calligraphy upon a green placard nailed to the wall. A bearish woman, wearing her blonde hair coiled like a cobra atop her head and a grease-spattered apron, walked past the diminutive Negro standing at the smoking griddle in the rear of the kitchen alley, and over to the three new arrivals.

“Do you need for me to read you the menu?” she asked with an accent that indicated to Oswell that she was German or perhaps Swedish.

“No ma’am,” Oswell replied. “We can all read.”

She put her hands on her hips, prompting them to order.

Oswell said, “I’d like the pork chops and scrambled eggs. And some potatoes and dark toast. And coffee too.” The woman did not write the order down, but instead nodded that she had memorized it.

“That’s what I want too,” Godfrey said. The woman nodded.

Dicky said, “I would like a stack of pancakes, some syrup, pork chops, and eggs over easy, if your cook is capable.”

“Buzzy is deft,” she said.

“I would also like a steak, medium rare—New York strip if you have it—and some sausages. Coffee would also be appreciated.”

The woman looked at him incredulously and then nodded. Godfrey, despite the day that loomed before him, laughed; Oswell warmed at the familiar sound of his brother’s cachinnations.

“I suppose we don’t have to ask what you were doing last night,” Godfrey said. “It’s good you can walk, at least.”

“I am Harry,” the woman announced and then departed. She walked over to Buzzy to relay the order; he nodded when she had told him everything. The five-foot-tall colored man stood on a crate with a long metal spatula in each hand, expertly wielding the pair as if they were metallic extensions of his own limbs. He grabbed the flour bag and flipped meat and cracked and scrambled eggs without ever once putting the tools down. Oswell could tell that he enjoyed his work.

Buzzy cooked. The smears of light, flashes of fire, clicks, cracks, clinks and sizzles mesmerized Oswell and drew him out of his weathered body and away from his worries into an incorporeal and thoughtless limbo. He wondered if this was what death was like and then abruptly returned to himself.

Harry placed the food before the three of them; Dicky’s order was so large it overhung the edges of the counter and crowded into Godfrey’s space. They ate their meals. Even though he knew that he consumed very flavorful victuals, Oswell was unable to taste anything; he chewed and swallowed with no more relish than if he were chopping wood for tinder.

Dicky treated them and left a tip equal to the cost of the entire meal (a gesture that Harry seemed to find
evidence of stupidity rather than generosity, judging by the irritated look upon her face when she counted the bills). The Danfords thanked the New Yorker and stood from their seats.

The three men walked out and were struck by sunlight. They lowered the brims of their hats and walked east, toward the church.

Oswell, Godfrey and Dicky, three yards’ distance between each man, traversed the main avenue into a rural section of town. They walked past nineteen houses, four farms, three cattle ranches and a vast fenced property adorned with six signs reading
TAYLOR’S HORSE CORRAL: RUSTLERS WILL BE SHOT
DEAD.

In threescore strides, the lush grass of the plain was replaced by wild weeds. A silhouetted cross, wavering in the brilliance of the rising sun, sat in the swell of land ahead of the trio. The men continued forward; two more crosses and the body of the church rose from the ground. The gazebo, four hundred yards east of God’s house and fifty to the south, was the only other anomaly on the wide horizon, the last remaining tooth in an old man’s jaw.

“Your special rifle can cover that gap?” Oswell asked.

“It is a shallow-groove, lead-bullet rifle made for long-range shooting. I have won competitions with it at twice that distance.”

“Okay.”

They walked past the church (at which no one was present) and over to the gazebo, in which Dicky had hidden his weapons. The trio climbed the five wooden steps into the octagonal shelter.

The New Yorker took his ten-shooter from his waist, set it beneath the bench, lifted up a loose plank, looked at the oblong bundle in the dirt below, withdrew a pair
of binoculars, replaced the plank, sat down, took off his black hat, fanned himself with it and yawned.

Oswell asked, “You goin’ to set up the special gun now?”

“It is assembled and loaded, as is the lever-action rifle you gave me.”

“I suppose you shouldn’t have it out while people are getting to the church,” Godfrey said.

“If someone comes directly at me, I will use my revolver—it is far quieter than either rifle. Once those church doors are shut, I will get to this.” He thumped the heel of his boot upon the loose plank. “Presently, I will survey these fine Montana landscapes for rogues and jackals,” he said, raising his binoculars from his lap. He spoke jauntily, but Oswell could hear tension in his voice.

“You remember the old signals?”

Dicky withdrew a lady’s hand mirror from his jacket pocket and redirected the sun into Oswell’s eyes for a brief, blinding moment that pulsed painfully in the center of his skull.

“One flash for all clear; two flashes for a warning; three for an engagement,” Oswell said.

“I remember.”

Oswell looked for a moment at Dicky. He had no idea what else to say to him. He tipped the brim of his hat to the New Yorker, turned around and descended the gazebo steps, the sun and his brother at his back as he walked west and north toward the church over four hundred yards off.

“I intend to see the Danford brothers at the banquet tonight,” Dicky said.

“I hope so,” Godfrey said.

“Yeah,” Oswell contributed.

The gazebo shrank behind the Danfords and the
church swelled in front of them. Their strides synchronized—the tattoo was that of a lone man walking across the dirt. They reached the facade of God’s house.

“Give me a five-shooter,” Oswell said.

Godfrey withdrew and handed his brother one of the large-caliber revolvers. Oswell raised his right pant leg, slid the gun into his boot and dropped the cuff down over it.

“That can’t be comfortable,” Godfrey remarked.

“It isn’t—but if that sheriff sees guns on us, I’m not sure what he’ll do. He’s got suspicions already, and we need to be here no matter what.”

“You may be able to stand at the door with that, but I can’t walk the patrol with a gun in my boot,” Godfrey said. “I’ll stash the other two in places where I can get at them—in case I can’t get to the rifles we buried in time.”

“Do that.”

Godfrey took the valise and headed to the side of the church.

Oswell looked at his own shadow, stretched like black taffy across the dirt, weeds and stones to his right. He wondered what Elinore’s face would look like when she read the letter he had written; he shook his head to clear the visage he saw.

The forty-seven-year-old rancher leaned his back against the white church he had traveled across the country to stand in front of on this day. He looked to the east: the plains were open for many, many miles before they surged and narrowed into mountaintops, from behind which the sun shone like a brilliant accusation upon his face. Oswell scanned the flat plains; he wondered what would rise up from the dirt and try to pull him and his posse down.