A Congregation of Jackals (5 page)

He pried the nails from the soil-dampened lid (they came loose silently) and swung it open upon its hinges. Within was a bundle two feet in diameter and almost four feet long, wrapped in a gray blanket. He set it upon the porch and carefully unrolled it, revealing the sealskin sack that lay within. The familiar smell of fish oil and leather made the home the rancher knelt in front of seem incredibly distant and the past no longer a remote, diaphanous thing.

Oswell’s fingers undid the twine and pulled open the mouth of the sack. Upon the gray blanket he slid out its contents: four repeating lever-action rifles (two with bayonets), two big-caliber single-action five-round revolvers, two small-caliber single-action ten-round revolvers, three cartons of rounds (which he would replace with fresh ammunition), a canister of gun oil, a chamois, a bundle of barrel swabs (long and short), two long curved knives and four throwing knives.

The rancher checked over the guns, cleaned and oiled them for two hours: they had aged far less than he. He replaced them in the sack with the other weapons and miscellany, rolled that up in the blanket, placed the bundle in the crate and quietly nailed it shut. He replaced the porch planks and quietly tapped the nails in the extant grooves. (He would hammer a few new bits in tomorrow morning when he was not worried about waking Elinore and the kids.)

Oswell did not want to bring the burden inside his house, but he did. He put the crate in a black trunk and left it near the door; he set his boots on top of it, toes pointing west.

Iris O’Connor grew up two miles from the restaurant at which she had worked for a quarter of her twenty-four years. The Railroad Luncheonette was not the finest place one could eat in Philadelphia, but its pork-heavy scrapple enticed two scores of locals to return daily, and its proximity to the station always supplied the place with hungry travelers. Iris (daily) hoped to find a husband in the establishment—ideally, a man from a faraway place to which she had never been—but her only suitors had been fellows with whom she had gone to school who were mean to her while she was changing from an awkward girl into a fetching woman, and she would never forgive them.
The O’Connors were all grudge holders, and she carried on that proud tradition.

The establishment was quiet: the customers had finished their lunches and departed. Iris was stacking plates one atop another in the curve of her right arm when she looked through the window at the red brick train station across the street. Passengers in suits stepped into the afternoon sun; hands went up, soliciting carriages and stagecoaches; men sat upon benches and unfolded newspapers upon the right knees that they had crossed over their left knees like women. The New York train had arrived.

From the somber assemblage strode a man in a brown suit who carried a big valise in each hand. Even from a distance, Iris could tell that he was an extraordinarily handsome fellow.

The waitress hurried to the rear of the restaurant with her burden, pressed through the double-hinged door, raced past the sizzling flattop to the porcelain counter upon which were piled ninety-eight dirty dishes and set down seven more with such speed that a pork-chop bone was catapulted into the cleaning water.

The Negro dishwasher fished out the detritus, his dark hands covered with white suds and said, “This tired nigger got ‘nough work. I ain’t washin’ no pork chop.” He tossed the bone into the garbage, indignant.

“Sorry Sulky.” Iris turned from the dishwasher, sped back into the dining area, snatched a menu from the wall and approached the man in the brown suit.

“Good afternoon and welcome to the Railroad Luncheonette. Will anyone else be joining you?”

“Yes. I have two associates coming in on the two-thirty.”

“Let me take you to a nice private table in the rear.”

The man smirked for no discernable reason, took off his maroon hat, nodded politely and followed her as she led him to a quiet corner of the restaurant. He set his two black suitcases down—they seemed very heavy—and sat upon a wicker chair facing the window that admitted a view of the station.

“My name is Iris.”

“I am Dicky.”

Iris giggled and said, “That’s a boy’s name.”

“I’m eleven. I haven’t aged well.”

Iris smiled and presented the menu to Dicky. He perused it thoughtfully—the exact same way that her friend’s husband (who was a doctor) scrutinized things as if they contained ciphers nobody else could understand.

“People like the scrapple,” she suggested.

“I’m not Dutch.”

“All sorts of people like our scrapple. And it comes with eggs.”

“I will have the scrapple, eggs and a coffee.” He returned the menu to her. “I would like the eggs with two colors, if your cook is capable.”

“He can do it.”

Iris nodded and lingered for a moment, admiring Dicky’s clean-shaven face, square chin, girlish lips, drawn cheeks, upturned nose, grinning blue eyes, long lashes and wavy black hair.

“Perhaps you should write down my order.”

Iris blushed and said, “It’s only three things. I can remember seventeen menu items without writing anything down.”

“You should join a circus.”

When Iris placed the scrapple, eggs and coffee before Dicky, the man’s smile was gone and no more japes
leaped from his agile tongue. He stared through the window that faced the train station, at the flood of people who had just arrived on the two-thirty.

“Let me know if you need anything else.”

The man’s blue eyes did not leave the window when he succinctly replied, “I shall.”

Disappointed by the man’s change in humor, Iris walked over to an empty table, sat herself down and began folding napkins into little tricornered hats.

The door opened; she looked over at the new arrivals. Two men holding a big black trunk between them entered. One was a rugged, strong man with dirty-blond hair and a mustache; the other was a plump fellow with a red beard upon his cheeks and chin. They wore brown clothing and weathered boots. The trunk they carried looked very heavy.

Dicky rose from his chair; the new arrivals strode toward him. They nodded at each other, but none of them smiled.

The New Yorker said to the heavy one, “You got fat.”

“You go to hell.”

The brothers set the trunk down; the wooden foundations of the building creaked. Dicky shook the right hand of the strong sibling and then the proffered palm of the heavy one. The three sat around the table and looked at each other for a moment of inscrutable assessment.

Dicky sipped his coffee and broke the silence. “Don’t take this personally, but I had hoped never to sit opposite the Danford brothers again in my lifetime.”

The plump one said, “I’m not waxing nostalgic looking at you either.”

Dicky nodded and said, “Did either of you fellows get married?”

The plump one said, “We both did. Mine left me; Oswell still has his and some fine kids too.”

Dicky looked at Oswell and said, “She’s a good one?”

“She is.”

To the plump one, Dicky said, “Did yours depart because you got fat, or was the weight gain caused by her running off?”

“Don’t talk to my brother that way,” the strong one warned.

“I was just curious about his transformation.”

The strong one looked at Dicky with a gaze that might have been the prelude to a gunfight and said, “I’ll knock you down, Dicky. I’ve done it before.”

“But sometimes it went the other way.”

The men stared at each other, the strong one with a baleful glare, Dicky with a humorless grin. Iris snatched two menus from the wall and hurried toward the strange reunion, hoping to curtail the fisticuffs that might be one stupid remark away from beginning.

The strong one looked at her and, before she even arrived, said, “We’d appreciate two plates of scrambled eggs, some toast and some bacon.”

“Crispy,” the plump one requested.

“And two coffees please.”

The men ate their meals in silence, paid and left.

Through the window, Iris watched them walk to the train station carrying their heavy luggage like pallbearers. The plump one said something; the men stopped and set their luggage down. The plump one placed his hands upon his thighs, bent over and vomited. Dicky offered him a maroon handkerchief, and the plump man thanked him and wiped his lips and beard clean. He offered the cloth back to Dicky, but the
handsome man declined and pointed to the nascent puddle.

The plump man laid the handkerchief upon the slick of vomit, picked up his end of the trunk and—with the strong one and Dicky—departed, leaving the partially-covered mess behind them upon the cobblestone street.

Dicky frowned at his poor hand—a motley trio and a pair of fives—and looked up from his cards.

He said, “Do you think Lingham might be working an angle on us?”

The low sun pouring in through the train window threw half of Oswell’s leathery face into shadow and brightly divined the white hairs that sprouted intermittently amongst the light brown ones.

The rancher did not look up from his hand when he said, “We’re playing cards.”

“I can do both simultaneously—talk and play cards. Many folks can.”

“We’re playing cards so we don’t have to talk.”

“Do you think this is a setup?”

“We’ll assess the situation when we get there. There’s no use guessing at things out here.” The train rattled.

Godfrey laughed, shook his head and said to Dicky, “What’s the point of cheating when we’re not even playing for stakes?”

“You saw that?”

“I saw it.” Godfrey was always the more observant Danford, Dicky thought.

“I am practicing.” Dicky pushed aside his napkin to reveal the slit he had earlier cut into the fabric of the tablecloth with the razor he kept in the waist hem of his trousers. He extricated three cards—an ace, a jack and a king—and flipped them into the toss pile.

Godfrey asked, “Are you still a card sharp?”

“When a wealthy fool presents himself to me, I am.”

Oswell snorted, slapped his cards down, stood up and grabbed the coat slung over the back of his chair.

“No need to get ornery,” Dicky said. “Sit down—I’ll play straight.”

Without a word, Oswell left the table and walked toward the rear of the cabin. He pulled the door wide and escaped into the rattling roar between cars.

“His kids must adore him,” Dicky said to Godfrey.

“He’s not like this back home. Quiet, sure, but not so grumpy. It’s just . . . well . . . he’s got a lot to lose. More than both of us put together.”

“You want to play for money?”

“Not unless you front me the stakes and I don’t have to repay you.”

Dicky gathered the cards, divided the deck in half and shuffled them loudly; he dealt out two hands and asked, “What happened with you and your wife?”

Godfrey looked at his cards far longer than he needed to.

Dicky said, “You don’t have to talk about it. I was just trying to pass the time—cards are boring if money and women aren’t involved.”

The plump man set down a pair of cards and said,
“Give me two.” Dicky flicked over Godfrey’s replacements; the man scooped them up and slid them into his collection.

The elder Danford said, “I talk in my sleep sometimes. Night murmurs. That’s why she left.”

“Plenty of people talk in their sleep. That is no reason to leave a man. Did you snore as well? Society women find snoring very distasteful.”

“I didn’t snore. I just talked.”

“She does not sound like a very tolerant woman.”

“It wasn’t so much that I talked, it was what I said.”

Dicky’s nape prickled and his eyes became hard; his cards dipped, accidentally revealing his hand, yet his focus was elsewhere.

With cold directness, the New Yorker asked, “What did you say?”

“I don’t know exactly. But one morning, when I went into the kitchen, she looked at me . . . differently. She was repulsed and . . . and she was afraid.” The memory was clearly a painful one for Godfrey to recount.

He continued, his voice quiet with shame, “We never slept in the same bed together after that. A month later, she left.”

“How long ago was that? When did she leave?”

“Ten years next month.”

The handsome man relaxed. If Godfrey had explicitly incriminated Dicky and the rest—and had the woman intended to do anything about it—the hammer would have fallen long ago.

The New Yorker surveyed his five cards, tossed three, snatched their replacements, placed them in his hand and said, “What was her name?”

“I’m not telling you that.”

Dicky laughed at the suspicious reply and said, “I’m not going after her, I was just curious.”

“Just the same, I’d prefer to play it safe. You’d pull the cross off a church steeple if you needed firewood.”

“Some have claimed that I am not a devout adherent to the faith of self-sacrifice.”

Oswell had not said more than a dozen words to Godfrey and Dicky during the last two days aboard the train. As his ranch and wife and children sank behind him in the east and the thorns of his past rose up before him in the west, he found it harder and harder to make conversation and even more difficult to succumb to sleep. For the first time in seventeen years he put a gun—the single-action ten-shooter—beneath his pillow, but it did not put his mind at ease.

The rancher lay awake in a lower bunk at the rear of the sleeping car while his brother and Dicky and twenty-seven others slept around him. To Oswell, the car felt like a mausoleum peopled by breathing corpses.

After two hours of standing at the precipice of sleep without falling over into its waters, Oswell pulled his coat and trousers from his cubby, clambered quietly out, grabbed his boots from the floor, dressed himself and walked through several darkened passenger cars until he arrived in the partially lit dining car in which three Negroes sat hunched defensively over their dripping food.

“We closed,” a colored woman holding a butter-soaked cob of corn said. “We ‘ready cleaned up for tomorry breakfast.”