Cottonwood (29 page)

“You ought to hire a typesetter after all these years,” I said.

“Had one until a couple weeks ago, but the disloyal son of a bitch quit and moved to Oswego. I got a pair of apprentices who can’t be trusted to do it right, so I end up doing it myself.”

Most of the light came from the window, and the shadows the reflected snow cast on the composing room were long and deep. “How come you don’t turn the lamps up?”

He looked up, as if he were only just then noticing that the room wasn’t particularly well lighted. “Oh. Well, lamp fuel costs money and I’m used to doing it like this.” He was growing annoyed, and I thought it best to keep my mouth shut until he finished the task at hand. I stood by the window reading the day’s account of the Bender trial, and when he was ready he wiped his hands and sat at the desk opposite.

“You seem pretty sure those women aren’t the Benders. Or is that just newspaper politics?”

“Have you had a look at those two? If that’s what Katie Bender’s sweet hindquarters have come to then it’s a goddamned shame.”

“I haven’t seen them up close.” I hadn’t come to talk about the Benders, though, and I tried to remember that I had reasons to be mad at him. “What’d you write about me, Ed?”

“You didn’t give me much to write. Just that you were back.”

“I don’t mean the other day, I mean when Maggie came back to town.”

“Hell, you want to know what I wrote about Maggie?” He led me into the back of the printshop, into a room containing a multitude of newspapers hanging down from cylindrical racks. A bookcase held a large number of enormous volumes bound in light calfskin. “Help me with the date, here.”

“Well, she left Greeley in September of seventy-five.”

“Seventy-five . . . as I recall it was around the middle of October of that year that she came back . . . I was still a weekly, so that simplifies matters somewhat. Go on, sit down.”

I sat at a large table, and shortly he produced a copy of the paper dated October 17th, 1875. The lead story was Maggie’s:

VILLAINY UNPUNISHED

RETURN OF MRS. LEVAL TO THE SCENE OF HER CRIMES—MR. NETTLE SAYS SHE WILL NOT BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE—OUTRAGE OF THE CITIZENRY

The law-abiding citizens of Labette County are asking themselves why we now tolerate and even welcome the kinds of criminals we once set out after with torches ablaze. Mrs. Marguerite Leval has returned to Cottonwood to ask forgiveness of her husband, Marc Leval, who is in the frailest of health after being shot down by Mrs. Leval’s own illicit paramour, the notorious Bill Ogden, who had treacherously played at being Mr. Leval’s friend. That the two set off together immediately after the commission of the crimes does not move Mr. Nettle, the County Prosecutor, to file charges of attempted murder or accessory thereto.

“You’ve got some crust, you son-of-a-bitch,” I said. “I ought to thrash you for that.”

“Don’t get too cross about it. Maggie didn’t sue. Hell, Bill, I didn’t think you were coming back, is the thing.”

The next number in the volume, for October 24th, was even worse:

LOVE CONQUERS ALL

MR. MARC LEVAL’S MEMORY RETURNS TO HIM—IT WAS THE BENDERS WHO SHOT HIM AS THEY FLED—HIS WIFE NOT TO BLAME, NOR HER FUGITIVE PARAMOUR

Mrs. Marguerite Leval, recently returned from an unknown location whence she and her notorious cohort, Bill Ogden, had fled after the failed assassination of Mrs. Leval’s husband Marc, has effected a most remarkable recovery upon her husband, whose memory had been, it seems, damaged by the bullets that crippled him two and a half years ago. Previously, he had remained silent as to his assailant’s identity, and most here assumed that the guilty party was his rival for his wife’s affections, Bill Ogden. Now Mr. Leval has sworn, we are told, to the county attorney and others that it was the notorious Benders themselves that made him an invalid on the night they escaped into the ether. A lovelier testament to the healing powers of love would be difficult to imagine.

“Mr. Smight came over and punched me in the face over that one, and then Herbert told me to put a stop to it quick or he’d have me shut down.”

“I don’t guess you did.”

“Story was losing steam by then anyway. What’s more, people were starting to feel a lot of sympathy for her. Look at this here,” he said, and he moved over to a separate set of volumes bound in the same light-colored calfskin. Selecting one he brought it over to the table. “I keep a separate morgue for the
Free Press
, but Cy’s too cheap to keep the
Optic
on hand.”

He flipped around until he found the issue of October 16, 1875. “Here’s what Cy had to say about it.” His index finger traced down the page to the pertinent article. Here, too, Maggie was the subject of the lead article, but she wasn’t its villain.

MRS. LEVAL HAS RETURNED

IT IS HOPED THAT HER TESTIMONY WILL AID IN THE CAPTURE OF HER HUSBAND’S ATTACKER—SALOONKEEPER OGDEN SAID TO HAVE COMPELLED HER TO ACCOMPANY HIM ON HIS FLIGHT FROM JUSTICE.

To the great joy of all Cottonwoodians, Mrs. Marguerite Leval, the wife of our friend Marc Leval, has returned to Cottonwood after an absence of more than two years, during which, Mrs. Leval’s intimates have informed the
Free Press
, she was held in the vilest of captivity by the outlaw Bill Ogden, who once operated a saloon here. Ogden’s motive in shooting his friend and protector, Mr. Leval, seems to have been an un-reciprocated love for Mrs. Leval.

Ed’s arms were folded across his chest, and he looked down at me with great satisfaction. “So you see who your friends are and aren’t in the press. Cy dropped all that about you when Leval came out and said it was the Benders who shot him.”

Distracted as I was, I had nonetheless to admit that the
Optic
’s stories hit closer to the mark than the
Free Press
’s did. “Seems like old Cy thought even less of me than you.”

“Nothing personal, on his part or mine. ’Course, like half the men in town, Cy was a little bit sweet on old Maggie. And he was doing what he did at least partly at Leval’s behest.”

“Leval was looking pretty poorly when I saw him yesterday.”

“He has his good days, too. He was at the trial last week, looked pretty dapper there in his wheelchair. Speaking of which, you want to go see the ladies?”

“The Benders?” I said.

“I was thinking I might try and talk my way past that Mrs. Naylor, see if I couldn’t get a few words with the ladies this afternoon after court lets out. Why don’t you come along and see what you think. Court’ll likely adjourn at three-thirty or four.”

It was two-thirty now; in the interim I elected to stay and leaf through old volumes of the
Optic
and the
Free Press
, seated in a chair by the front window, catching up on any number of useless facts about Cottonwood’s economy and society, and various aspects of local and state politics that had escaped me during my long exile. And then—in one paper, ten years old, in an article on a Christmas party at the Methodist Church, I was struck by the names of two of the students: Maria Canterwell, Ninna’s girl, and Marc Leval, Jr. With strained voice I asked Ed about the latter child.

He peered at me over his spectacles, as though trying to decide if I was pulling his leg. “That’d be Maggie’s boy. Born shortly after her arrival here.”

I nodded. “Those articles from ’75 didn’t mention she was with child,” I said.

“Hell, no,” Ed said. “No need, for one thing. Still a small town then, everybody knew.” He laughed under his breath. “Everybody except you, I guess.”

When we left the offices of the
Optic
the snowy streets were hard to navigate, but they’d be worse in a day or two when the melting snow turned the frozen earth to mud and then to solid ice. We took Ed’s buggy toward a neighborhood east of downtown, then turned onto a street of cozy little cottages and pulled quickly in front of one of them. If memory served, this was very close to where the whores’ row of tent cribs had briefly stood during the boom. The Naylor residence looked quaint and comfortable beneath its white blanket, and gray smoke rose from its chimney. Before we had a chance to knock, a lady came to the door. She wore a plain brown dress covered by a heavily floured apron and looked none too happy to see Ed; I, on the other hand, might not have been there at all.

“Mrs. Naylor, allow me to present Mr. Ogden. Mr. Ogden, this is Mrs. Naylor, the wife of Deputy Naylor of the Labette County Sheriff’s department. She’s the de facto matron of women at the moment.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Naylor,” I said with a suave, continental bow that normally won me great favor with married ladies of a certain age. Mrs. Naylor was unimpressed.

“Here to see the ladies? I just got done feeding them.”

“They ought to be pretty docile, then,” Ed said.

“Docile? They’re horrid, just horrid. The language they use! And in front of the baby. It’s just a shame.” She led us through their small, warm parlor toward a back bedroom. “Don’t misunderstand, I’m awfully grateful for the money, but I wonder if those two wouldn’t be better off in the county jail.”

“I thought it was decided there was no proper way to segregate them from the male prisoners?” Ed said.

“Hah!” It was an unladylike ejaculation that nonetheless underscored in her a certain attractiveness I’d missed theretofore. “Segregation from men is the last thing those two want,” she said, and then she stopped and covered her mouth with her hands, grinning naughtily beneath them and flushing bright red. “Now the strict rule is a matron, that’s to say me, shall at all times be present during any interviews with men. That’s always the rule when we’ve got female prisoners, and apart from propriety’s sake, it’s to protect the women, of course. In this case, though, it’s more to protect the honor of the men.”

“I heard what you said, you mackerel twat,” came the old woman’s muffled voice through the door.

Mrs. Naylor took the compliment with greater equanimity than most of her peers would have, I think, turning to face Ed and me with a resigned look. “You hear what I have to put up with? This trial better not last much longer, is all I’ve got to say on the matter.”

She unlocked the door and opened it, careful to remain outside the room, and Ed and I stepped in. Sitting in a rocking chair of hickory was a very careworn and haggard old woman, crabbed and bent over even seated as she was, and in a chair next to the window was a well-fed, idiotic-looking woman in her forties. A girl child two years old or thereabouts played at the latter’s feet with the end of a shawl.

“Who the hell’s this,” the old woman snarled, with not a trace of Mrs. Bender’s Alsatian sound in her voice; I would have guessed New York, upstate somewhere.

“You remember me, ladies. I’m with the
Optic
. Just came to ask a few more questions.” Ed indicated me with his hand. “And this is Mr. Ogden. Mr. Ogden, this is Mrs. Eliza Davis”—indicating the younger woman—“and this is her mother, Mrs. Almira Griffith.”

Mrs. Davis’s leering smile made me cringe in much the same way Katie Bender’s flirtations once had, and she laughed and held her baby’s hand up in a wave. “You see there, Nattie? That there’s Mr. Ogden.” On her temple was a vivid scar partially covered by her coiffure. “Maybe he’ll be your new daddy.” She gave me a look of theatrically exaggerated sadness. “Her old daddy took off God knows where, and if he comes back to our house he’ll find us gone and no way to find us.”

The old woman glowered at the bunch of us; I’d scarcely known old Mrs. Bender and would be hard-pressed to say whether this woman was she or not. I was puzzled by her daughter, also. While it wasn’t impossible to imagine that the lithe and vivacious Katie Bender had metamorphosed physically into this worn-out, obese creature, one thing that couldn’t be said about Katie was that she was stupid, and the younger of the women in the room seemed eager to prove from the outset that she was a numbskull.

“Anything you want to ask the women, Mr. Ogden?”

I thought about it for a second.
“Habt ihr die Nacht vergessen,
in der ich zu eurem Haus rausgeritten bin? Als eure Mannsleute
mich umbringen wollten?”

I discerned no trace of comprehension in their faces, nor of dissimulation. The younger woman cackled. “Damn if everybody down here in Kansas don’t speak Dutch.”

“You’re not the first to try that, Mr. Ogden,” Ed said.

They both looked pleased, as if they’d passed some sort of test.

I tried again in English. “Remember the night I rode out to your place and your menfolk wanted to kill me?”

“Our place in Michigan?” Mrs. Davis said.

“He means the Bender place, out this way,” Ed said.

“We ain’t the goddamn Benders,” the old lady yelled, rising out of the chair and making a fist at Ed.

“I ain’t a Bender, but she is,” young Mrs. Davis said with the mischievous laugh of a naughty child, pointing at her mother. The old lady took several steps forward, claw extended at her daughter’s face.

“That’s a goddamn lie and you know it.”

“No it ain’t,” the daughter yelled. “You’re the Bender, Ma.”

There was only one bed in the room for the three of them, covered with a patchwork quilt that didn’t look any too warm. “Mind if I sit on the bed, Mrs. Naylor?” Ed asked.