Butcher's Crossing (3 page)

He entered the hotel and paused just beyond the open door to let his eyes become accustomed to the dimness. The vague shape of a counter rose in front of him to his right; behind it, unmoving, stood a man in a white shirt. A half dozen straight leather-seated chairs were scattered about the room. Light was given from square windows set regularly in the three walls he could see; the squares were covered with a translucent cloth that billowed slightly inward as if the dimness and comparative coolness were a vacuum. He went across the bare wood floor to the waiting clerk.

“I would like a room.” His voice echoed hollowly in the silence.

The clerk pushed forward an opened ledger and handed him a steel-tipped quill. He signed slowly, William Andrews; the ink was thin, a pale blue against the gray page.

“Two dollars,” the clerk said, pulling the ledger closer to him and peering at the name. “Two bits extra if you want hot water brought up.” He looked up suddenly at Andrews. “Be here long?”

“I’m not sure,” Andrews said. “Do you know a J. D. McDonald?”

“McDonald?” The clerk nodded slowly. “The hide man? Sure. Everybody knows McDonald. Friend of yours?”

“Not exactly,” Andrews said. “Do you know where I can find him?”

The clerk nodded. “He has an office down by the brining pits. About a ten-minute walk from here.”

“I’ll see him tomorrow,” Andrews said. “I just got in from Ellsworth a few minutes ago and I’m tired.”

The clerk closed the ledger, selected a key from a large ring that was attached to his belt, and gave the key to Andrews. “You’ll have to carry your own bag up,” he said. “I’ll bring up the water whenever you want it.”

“About an hour,” Andrews said.

“Room fifteen,” the clerk said. “It’s just off the stairs.”

Andrews nodded. The stairs were unsided treads without headers that pitched sharply up from the far wall and cut into a small rectangular opening in the center level of the building. Andrews stood at the head of a narrow hall that bisected the long row of rooms. He found his own room and entered through the unlocked door. In the room there was space only for a narrow rope bed with a thin mattress, a roughly hewn table with a lamp and a tin wash basin, a mirror, and a straight chair similar to those he had seen below in the lobby. The room had one window that faced the street; set into it was a light detachable wood frame covered with a gauzelike cloth. He realized that he had seen no glass windows since he had got into town. He set his carpetbag on the bare mattress.

After he had unpacked his belongings, he shoved his bag under the low bed and stretched himself out on the uneven mattress; it rustled and sank beneath his weight; he could feel the taut ropes which supported the mattress against his body. His lower back, his buttocks, and his upper legs throbbed dully; he had not realized before how tiring the journey had been.

But now the journey was done; and as his muscles loosened, his mind went back over the way he had come. For nearly two weeks, by coach and rail, he had let himself be carried across the country. From Boston to Albany, from Albany to New York, from New York—The names of the cities jumbled in his memory, disconnected from the route he had taken. Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis. He remembered the grinding discomfort of the hard coach chairs, and the inert waiting in grimy depots on slatted wooden benches. All the discomforts of his journey now seeped outward from his bones, brought to consciousness by his knowledge of the journey’s end.

He knew he would be sore tomorrow. He smiled, and closed his eyes against the brightness of the covered window that he faced. He dozed.

Some time later the clerk brought up a wooden tub and a bucket of steaming water. Andrews roused himself and scooped up some of the hot water in the tin basin. He soaped his face and shaved; the clerk returned with two more buckets of cold water and poured them in the tub. When he had left the room, Andrews undressed slowly, shaking the dust from his garments as he drew them off; he laid them carefully on the straight chair. He stepped into the tub and sat down, his knees drawn up to his chin. He soaped himself slowly, made drowsy by the warm water and the late afternoon quiet. He sat in the tub until his head began to nod forward; when at last it touched his knees, he straightened himself and got out of the tub. He stood on the bare floor, dripping water, and looked about the room. Finding no towel, he took his shirt off the chair and dried himself.

A dimness had crept into the room; the window was a pale glow in the gathering murk, and a cool breeze made the cloth waver and billow; it appeared to throb like something alive, growing larger and smaller. From the street came the slowly rising mutter of voices and the sounds of boots clumping on the board walks. A woman’s voice was raised in laughter, then abruptly cut off.

The bath had relaxed him and eased the increasing throb of his strained back muscles. Still naked, he pushed the folded linsey-woolsey blanket into a shape like a pillow and lay down on the raw mattress. It was rough to his skin. But he was asleep before it was fully dark in his room.

During the night he was awakened several times by sounds not quite identified on the edge of his sleeping mind. During these periods of wakefulness he looked about him and in the total darkness could not perceive the walls, the limits of his room; and he had the sensation that he was blind, suspended in nowhere, unmoving. He felt that the sounds of laughter, the voices, the subdued thumps and gratings, the jinglings of bridle bells and harness chains, all proceeded from his own head, and whirled around there like wind in a hollow sphere. Once he thought he heard the voice, then the laughter, of a woman very near, down the hall, in one of the rooms. He lay awake for several moments, listening intently; but he did not hear her again.

Andrews breakfasted at the hotel. In a narrow room at the rear of the first floor was a single long table, around which was scattered a number of the straight chairs that appeared to be the hotel’s principal furniture. Three men were at one end of the table, hunched together in conversation; Andrews sat alone at the other end. The clerk who had brought his water up the day before came into the dining room and asked Andrews if he wanted breakfast; when Andrews nodded, he turned and went toward the small kitchen behind the three men at the far end of the table. He walked with a small limp that was visible only from the rear. He returned with a tray that held a large plate of beans and hominy grits, and a mug of steaming coffee. He put the food before Andrews, and reached to the center of the table for an open dish of salt.

“Where could I find McDonald this time of the morning?” Andrews asked him.

“In his office,” the clerk said. “He’s there most of the time, day and night. Go straight down the road, toward the creek, and turn off to your left just before you get to the patch of cottonwoods. It’s the little shack just this side of the brining pits.”

“The brining pits?”

“For the hides,” the clerk said. “You can’t miss it.”

Andrews nodded. The clerk turned again and left the room. Andrews ate slowly; the beans were lukewarm and tasteless even with salt, and the hominy grits were mushy and barely warmed through. But the coffee was hot and bitter; it numbed his tongue and made him pull his lips tight along his even white teeth. He drank it all, as swiftly as the heat would allow him.

By the time he finished breakfast and went into the street, the sun had risen high above the few buildings of the town and was bearing down upon the street with an intensity that seemed almost material. There were more people about than there had been the afternoon before, when he first had come into the town; a few men in dark suits with bowler hats mingled with a larger number more carelessly dressed in faded blue levis, soiled canvas, or broadcloth. They walked with some purpose, yet without particular hurry, upon the sidewalk and in the street; amid the drab shades of the men’s clothing there was occasionally visible the colorful glimpse—red, lavender, pure white—of a woman’s skirt or blouse. Andrews pulled the brim of his slouch hat down to shade his eyes, and walked along the street toward the clump of trees beyond the town.

He passed the leather goods shop, the livery stable, and a small open-sided blacksmith shop. The town ended at that point, and he stepped off the sidewalk onto the road. About two hundred yards from the town was the turnoff that the clerk had described; it was little more than twin ribbons of earth worn bare by passing wheels. At the end of this path, a hundred yards or so from the road, was a small flat-roofed shack, and beyond that a series of pole fences, arranged in a pattern he could not make out at this distance. Near the fences, at odd angles, were several empty wagons, their tongues on the earth in directions away from the fences. A vague stench that Andrews could not identify grew stronger as he came nearer the office and the fences.

The shack door was open. Andrews paused, his clenched hand raised to knock; inside the single room was a great clutter of books, papers, and ledgers scattered upon the bare wood floor and piled unevenly in the corners and spilling out of crates set against the walls. In the center of this, apparently crowded there, a man in his shirt sleeves sat hunched over a rough table, thumbing with intense haste the heavy pages of a ledger; he was cursing softly, monotonously.

“Mr. McDonald?” Andrews said.

The man looked up, his small mouth open and his brows raised over protuberant blue eyes whose whites were of the same shaded whiteness as his shirt. “Come in, come in,” he said, thrusting his hand violently up through the thin hair that dangled over his forehead. He pushed his chair back from the table, started to get up, and then sat back wearily, his shoulders slumping.

“Come on in, don’t just stand around out there.”

Andrews entered and stood just inside the doorway. McDonald waved in the direction of a corner behind Andrews, and said:

“Get a chair, boy, sit down.”

Andrews drew a chair from behind a stack of papers and placed it in front of McDonald’s desk.

“What do you want—what can I do for you?” McDonald asked.

“I’m Will Andrews. I reckon you don’t remember me.”

“Andrews?” McDonald frowned, regarding the younger man with some hostility. “Andrews....” His lips tightened; the corners of his mouth went down into the lines that came up from his chin. “Don’t waste my time, goddammit; if I’d remembered you I’d have said something when you first came in. Now—”

“I have a letter,” Andrews said, reaching into his breast pocket, “from my father. Benjamin Andrews. You knew him in Boston.”

McDonald took the letter that Andrews held in front of him. “Andrews? Boston?” His voice was querulous, distracted. His eyes were on Andrews as he opened the letter. “Why, sure. Why didn’t you say you were—Sure, that preacher fellow.” He read the letter intently, moving it about before his eyes as if that might hasten his perusal. When he had finished, he refolded the letter and let it drop onto a stack of papers on the table. He drummed his fingers on the table. “My God! Boston. It must have been twelve, fourteen years ago. Before the war. I used to drink tea in your front parlor.” He shook his head wonderingly. “I must have seen you at one time or another. I don’t even remember.”

“My father has spoken of you often,” Andrews said.

“Me?” McDonald’s mouth hung open again; he shook his head slowly; his round eyes seemed to swivel in their sockets. “Why? I only saw him maybe half a dozen times.” His gaze went beyond Andrews, and he said without expression: “I wasn’t anybody for him to speak of. I was a clerk for some dry goods company. I can’t even remember its name.”

“I think my father admired you, Mr. McDonald,” Andrews said.

“Me?” He laughed shortly, then glowered suspiciously at Andrews. “Listen, boy. I went to your father’s church because I thought I might meet somebody that would give me a better job, and I started going to those little meetings your father had for the same reason. I never even knew what they were talking about, half the time.” He said bitterly, “I would just nod at anything anybody said. Not that it did a damn bit of good.”

“I think he admired you because you were the only man he ever knew who came out here—who came west, and made a life for himself.”

McDonald shook his head. “Boston,” he half whispered. “My God!”

For another moment he stared beyond Andrews. Then he lifted his shoulders and took a breath. “How did old Mr. Andrews know where I was?”

“A man from Bates and Durfee was passing through Boston. He mentioned you worked for the Company in Kansas City. In Kansas City, they told me you had quit them and come here.”

McDonald grinned tightly. “I have my own company now. I left Bates and Durfee four, five years ago.” He scowled, and one hand went to the ledger he had closed when Andrews entered the shack. “Do it all myself, now....Well.” He straightened again. “The letter says I should help you any way I can. What made you come out here, anyway?”

Andrews got up from the chair and walked aimlessly about the room, looking at the piles of papers.

McDonald grinned; his voice lowered. “Trouble? Did you get in some kind of trouble back home?”

“No,” Andrews said quickly. “Nothing like that.”

“Lots of boys do,” McDonald said. “That’s why they come out here. Even a preacher’s son.”

“My father is a lay minister in the Unitarian Church,” Andrews said.

“It’s the same thing.” McDonald waved his hand impatiently. “Well, you want a job? Hell, you can have a job with me. God knows I can’t keep up. Look at all this stuff.” He pointed to the stacked papers; his finger was trembling. “I’m two months behind now and getting further behind all the time. Can’t find anybody around here to sit still long enough to—”

“Mr. McDonald,” Andrews said. “I know nothing about your business.”

“What? You don’t what? Why, it’s hides, boy. Buffalo hides. I buy and sell. I send out parties, they bring in the hides. I sell them in St. Louis. Do my own curing and tanning right here. Handled almost a hundred thousand hides last year. This year—twice, three times that much. Great opportunity, boy. Think you could handle some of this paper work?”