Territory (48 page)

“Would he?”

“Darwin saw evidence of the principles of natural selection. He didn’t turn away from it.”

“This is a little more alarming.”

“Darwin insisted the world wasn’t created full-grown in seven days. So far you haven’t been so alarming as to deny the validity of Scripture.”

That surprised a smile out of him, but it was fleeting. “ ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ ”

“There, wasn’t it a Christian heresy, once, to say they didn’t exist? Besides, I think the Hebrew word is feminine, so you needn’t worry.” She pressed her hands to her face; her gloves were at least cooler than her flushed cheeks. “Heavens, I sound like a madwoman.”

“Talking makes you feel better.”

“I can’t think and natter at the same time. And thinking about this makes my insides feel uncertain.”

“No credit,” Frederick Austerberg declared, up at the front counter. “Cash only. We do not give credit.”

Mildred looked around a shelf to the front of the store. Mr. Austerberg was bristling at a tall, slender man with dark reddish brown hair in an oilcloth slicker and riding boots. The man’s back was to Mildred.

“Funny,” the man said. “I’d’ve sworn my friend Mr. Gray had an account with you.”

Jesse lifted his head, as if listening.

“What he has is no matter. You will have to pay cash.” Mr. Austerberg lifted his chin. “We do not need custom from such as you.”

The man tilted his head, perhaps at the things on the counter. “All right, then,” he replied, sounding amused. “I’ll just put these back.”

Mildred looked away before the man could see her staring. But Jesse nodded at him, so Mildred felt justified in looking again. The man nodded and smiled at Jesse. He had piercing, light eyes, a longish, squared-off face, and an armload of merchandise. He looked familiar, but she thought he was someone she’d seen, not someone she’d been introduced to.

He began to set things back in their places on the other side of the store. Jesse frowned, his eyes focused on empty air, as if contemplating some inner trouble.

Curiosity got the better of her. She drifted a few steps down the counter to a display of hand mirrors and picked one up. Now she could see over her shoulder and around the end of the shelf. The man returned two pairs of socks, and laid a cotton blanket on a stack of others.

Then he held his hand out, palm upward, cupped and empty above the blankets. He stared into it. Mildred felt a prickling on the skin of her arms, like static electricity.

A light wavered on the man’s face. A flame leaped and grew in the palm of his hand.

She was afraid he’d notice her if she moved, afraid he’d spot her trick with the mirror if she didn’t. She watched as he raised his cupped hand and poured fire, like liquid from a ladle, over the blankets and the canvas tarps and the bulging paper sacks on the floor below them.

Then he walked out of the store.

“Fire,” she choked, then sucked in air and shouted, “fire!”

Jesse was already there. “Bring water!” he yelled to Mr. Austerberg. The fire was spreading with unnatural speed. It behaved more like water or oil, soaking in, seeping, trickling in rivulets. A stack of wool shirts caught as if they’d been doused with kerosene. That wasn’t right; wool ought to smolder.

She swallowed hysterical laughter. No, it wasn’t right.

Jesse grabbed things off the shelves, threw them on the floor, and stamped on them. A thicket of brooms hung from a rafter; Mildred yanked one down and beat at the fire. The flames spattered across the wooden floor like hot grease. Mr. Austerberg ran up and threw a bucket of water into the heart of the blaze. It hissed and died—and sprang back up again. He ran for more water.

Jesse looked at her across the crawling flames. “Get out of here.” She saw fear in his face.

He stretched his hands out over the flames. Her view of him rippled in the heat, but she could tell he was rigid with effort. Her skin was prickling again.

Nothing changed—no. The flames stopped spreading. Slowly they crept toward Jesse, leaving scorched trails behind.

Mildred gripped the broom handle until her fingers ached. She began to sweep in quick, short strokes, toward the center, as if the flames were muddy water. Together they could contain the fire; she hoped Jesse knew how to put it out.

The blaze became a thin, shoulder-high column of fire. The sound of the flames rose in pitch to a screech. They lapped at Jesse’s hands. His eyes were closed tight, his teeth clenched, like a man under the lash.

And the fire was gone. A rack of ruined merchandise and six feet of black, smoking floor were all that remained. Mr. Austerberg materialized with another bucket of water, and Mildred wondered,
How long did that take?

Jesse swayed and folded slowly, until he was on his knees. Mildred crouched beside him as Mr. Austerberg soaked the blackened shelves.

“Are you all right?” Stupid question; of course he wasn’t. He was rocking over his hands, which lay in his lap like dead things. They were scorched red and black.

“It had to go somewhere,” he whispered. “I think I dodged some of it.”

There wasn’t time to try to understand that. “You have to go to the hospital. Are you burnt anywhere else?”

“Arms.”

“Mr. Austerberg! Do you have a wagon?”

“No,” Jesse said in a stronger voice. “I think … not the hospital.”

Mildred was about to tell him he was in no fit state to judge. But he might be right.
Trust your instincts.
“Fine. What, then?”

“Brown’s.”

“We’ll still need the wagon.”

He shook his head. “I can walk. Less fuss.”

“The hell you can.” Mildred saw Mr. Austerberg flinch at her language.

“I can.”

Less fuss? Yes, and it would suggest to anyone who saw or heard about it afterward that he was not as hurt as he was. But the truth would come out eventually, wouldn’t it?

She decided. “Mr. Austerberg, do you have a delivery boy?”

Mr. Austerberg nodded.

Mildred fumbled in her purse, found her little notebook and a pencil.

“Have him take this note to Crabtree’s Livery Stable and deliver it to a Chinese boy named Chu. He’s Mr. Fox’s servant.”

She began to scrawl, then thought of her reader. She flipped to a new page and printed, “Mr. Fox is hurt. Meet us at his room. Millie.” She started to tear out the page, then stopped. “Mr. Fox, can Chu read? English?”

Jesse nodded. Mildred ripped out the page and handed it to Mr. Austerberg.

She helped Jesse to his feet. She expected him to lean on her. Instead he stood very erect, and his face was distant, as if he were thinking hard about something.

It was a strange, dreamlike trip to Brown’s. Even the rain seemed unreal, a performance staged in the street to be viewed from the covered sidewalk. Mildred walked slowly beside Jesse, ready to grab him if he stumbled or swayed. When they came to an intersection, she put up her new umbrella and tilted it to shelter him as well. But she was afraid to speak. Whatever he was doing inside his head, she knew she mustn’t interrupt.

Chu met them, not at Jesse’s room, but on the landing of the stairs. She seemed to grasp matters in one swift look; when they reached her, she wrapped her arm around Jesse’s waist on one side, while Mildred got her shoulder under Jesse’s on the other. She felt him surrender some of his weight.

Together they helped him into the room and sat him on the bed. He was breathing hard. Chu dashed to an old nail keg that sat by the door, incongruous in the elegance of the room.

“Thank you, Mrs. Benjamin,” Jesse murmured. “You’d best go now.”

Chu was pulling a curious set of objects out of the nail keg. Four tiny brass thimble-shaped things, a handful of incense sticks, half-a-dozen paper packets, a squat milk glass jar. She jammed the incense into the brass thimbles and set one on the floor at each corner of the room. Then she produced a tin box of matches from a pocket and lit the incense. She spoke Chinese as she did it, the words tumbling over each other. The room began to smell like a Hoptown shrine.

Mildred, out of an impulse she didn’t understand, yanked the drapes across the windows. Then she fetched a towel from the washstand and stuffed it under the door. “You’ll have the management down on you in a flash, otherwise,” she told Chu.

Chu said nothing. But her face, turned up to Mildred, was frightened and hopeful at once. Mildred nodded to her and went back to Jesse.

He sat perfectly still on the edge of the bed.

“I have to get your coat off and see what the damage is.”

“No. Go home.”

He didn’t seem able to reinforce the words with that tone that caused one to obey him without thinking. “Shut up, please,” she told him. She unbuttoned his coat and slid it cautiously off his shoulders and down his arms. He didn’t wince or make a noise. Mildred was afraid he might have gone beyond feeling anything.

His coat sleeves weren’t burned. Neither was the white cotton of his shirt, even the cuffs. But she could see the burned skin disappearing beneath the cuff edges. What had that fire been, that it burned things that ought not to have caught, and what had Jesse done with it, that it harmed nothing but him?

She slid his suspenders carefully off his shoulders and down over his arms. The alternative was to unbutton them, and she simply wasn’t going to fumble with the waistband of his trousers. She unbuttoned his shirt. There were no signs of burns on his chest. “I’m sorry, but I’m about to destroy your shirt,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. She got her scissors from her purse and snipped the sleeves of his shirt off at the shoulder seams, then cut them away from his arms.

The damage reached to above the elbow on both arms. His skin was charred black in places like an overdone roast, and smelled like one as well. Mildred swallowed her lunch when it threatened to come back up and was grateful for Chu’s incense.

“Not to bone,” Chu said, her voice shaking. “Not burnt away. Only skin.” She twisted off the lid of the white glass jar and began to spread the contents over Jesse’s hands and arms. It was an ointment that smelled sharply of an herb Mildred couldn’t identify. The blackened places on Jesse’s skin formed lengthwise streaks on his arms that met and branched, following the lines of his veins.

Jesse didn’t react to Chu’s touch on his arms. Had he fainted sitting up? Then Mildred realized he was shivering, though the room was warm. Shock, of course. Shock held back pain. She found a blanket in the bottom drawer of a chest across the room and wrapped it around as much of him as she could and still leave his arms free.

He was conscious, at least as she understood the word. But he seemed not to be aware of them, the room, anything. Mildred turned to Chu. “What’s happening?”

“He heal himself from inside. Chow Lung do, one time.” Again Chu lifted frightened eyes to Mildred. “Maybe.”

In other words, Jesse might be doing magic, or he might simply be too deep in shock to respond. “How can I help?”

“Need hot water for tea.”

“Put the towel back under the door after I leave.”

Mildred went down the back stairs to the kitchen and convinced the staff to give her a very large pot of hot water, and no, she was quite capable of carrying it up to her room, thank you, it was the most foolish thing, but she had a horror of room service, a sort of superstition, she supposed, and thank you so much, she would certainly let them know if she needed anything else. As she lugged the kettle up the back stairs she reflected that eccentricity, once embarked upon, lay always like a pit at one’s feet.

Chu pinched bits of powder out of the paper packets, dropped them in a cup, and poured hot water over them. Another herb smell rose up, this one decidedly unpleasant.

“I don’t know if we can get him to drink,” Mildred warned.

“He maybe come back.”

Come back—that was it exactly. It was as if he’d left his body to fend for itself, and gone somewhere else. Mildred found the idea irritating. “Give me the cup.”

She sat down on the bed beside him and held the cup under his nose. “Jesse. I know you’re in there. Come out and drink this, or I’ll pour it on you.”

He blinked and drew his head back from the steam. “Eeugh.”

“Chu says you have to drink it.” Chu hadn’t, exactly, but Mildred felt it was a safe assumption.

Jesse looked past the cup to Chu and frowned. “Mustn’t sleep.”

Chu shook her head. “Not poppy. Only much
yang.”

A flutter of breath came out Jesse’s mouth that might have been a laugh. “If you say so.”

Mildred held the cup to his lips and he sipped. “Eeugh,” he repeated.

“Drink.”

“Too hot.”

“Then drink slowly. It might help the shivering.”

It did seem to help, and when the cup was empty, Jesse seemed stronger and more aware.

“Let me fetch a doctor,” Mildred said.

Jesse shook his head. “He’d give me morphine.”

“If you don’t want it now, you will soon.”

His smile was tight. “Now. But I think …” He shook his head again. “Don’t dare lose the thread. Not yet.”

“Do you mind the incense?”

“No. It … gives me something to come back to.”

Oh, that explains everything,
Mildred thought. How could he use so many plain English words and make no sense? “I need to get you propped up before you fall off the bed.”

“Don’t let me sleep.”

Mildred suspected that pain would take care of that. But she pulled off his boots and dragged him, with much help from Chu and a little from him, to lean against the headboard. Chu lifted his arms while she piled pillows across his lap and spread a towel over them. Chu lowered his arms gently onto the towel. Jesse was breathing hard again when they’d finished.

“What else should we do?” Mildred asked Chu.

“I no goddamn doctor,” she said apologetically. “Chow Lung teach, I watch, only not so long.”

“We’ll do the best we can. Could you fetch some soup? Something he can drink?”

Chu nodded briskly. Mildred searched her purse and gave her a dollar. Chu jabbed a finger toward the smoke rising in one corner. “Joss burn all time, hear? Keep safe inside, nobody see.” She whisked out the door.