The Bridge (17 page)

Bolger just looked at me.

“Not a trick question,” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did you?”

“Shortcut?” Bolger said.

“Yes.”

“What if we did?” he said.

“I’m just wondering,” I said.

“We ain’t stupid.”

“So you did?”

“Like I said, ain’t stupid,” Bolger said. “Saved over an hour on the road. Why?”

“Just curious,” I said.

“’Bout what?”

“You know some men that worked at the camp,” I said. “Brothers, named Cotter?”

Bolger just looked at me with a blank expression on his face.

“Do you?”

Bolger shook his head, but I could tell he knew something of what I was talking about.

“Your brother? He know them?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your brother cut you out of the deal?” I said.

Bolger just looked at me.

“Did he?”

“What deal?”

“You know goddamn good and well what deal I’m talking about,” I said.

“I don’t,” he said.

“You do,” I said.

Bolger looked down and spit on the floor, then looked up to me.

“I don’t,” he said. “You done?”

“Almost.”

“Good.”

“It was just Ballard who hauled the dynamite,” I said. “Wasn’t it?”

“Dynamite?” Bolger said.

“Yep.”

“I don’t know nothing about no goddamn dynamite,” he said.

“You got into a fight and he cut you out of the deal, didn’t he?” I said.

“You’re pissing in the wind,” Bolger said.

“Am I?”

“You are.”

“He don’t give a shit about you, Bolger,” I said. “Does he?”

Bolger didn’t say anything.

“Tell you what,” I said. “You think about it. If you come up with any information, you let me know. I will talk to the judge when he gets here and let him know how you are interested in not going to prison for attempting to kill a law officer.”

Bolger just stared at me.

“Night, Bolger,” I said.

I closed the door on him.

—
42
—

I
walked back to my room. I thought about returning to Virgil’s place and talking with him about Bolger and my summation about Ballard’s involvement about the buckboard and the men at the bridge, but I figured it could wait until morning.

When I got back to my room I found a note lying on the pillow of my bed.
Hot bath? Windsor Hotel. Room 12. Séraphine.

I was tired but only thought about the invitation for the amount of time that it took for me to hear the door of my room above the survey office close behind me.

Next to the Boston House, the Windsor Hotel was supposedly the nicest hotel in Appaloosa. An English couple that had made a successful go of it in the textile business back east operated the hotel. It was a classy establishment next to the depot that catered to stopover train travelers.

When I got to the hotel, a bell dinged above the door. The lobby was dark and empty. There was some light coming from a room behind the counter and a young man stepped out as I neared the front desk.

“Deputy Marshal Hitch, I presume,” he said with a distinct British accent.

“I am.”

He retrieved a key and held it out for me.

“Been expecting you,” he said. “Top of the stairs. To your right, down the hall.”

I walked up the steps, and when I got to the top and turned right, I saw her standing at the far end of the hall.

“I heard you,” she said.

I removed my hat as I walked down the hall to meet her.

She was wearing a nightgown that hung to the floor, covering her feet. The light coming from the open door of her room lit one side of her body like an old-world painting.
Venus,
I thought, as I walked toward her.

Her long, dark hair was pulled up on top of her head with errant strands falling free, as if the whole of it were about to give way.

I moved close to her without saying anything. I could smell her intoxicating perfume. Her eyes were looking up at me. It was like before, like she was seeing into me, into my soul.

For a long moment we just stood looking at each other, then she said softly,
“Bonsoir.”

I leaned in and kissed her. She put her hand on the back of my neck and pulled me tight to her as she kissed me back. I leaned on her slightly and she moved back to the open door of her room. She slid her free hand up under the back of my coat and pulled my body to her. We kissed, hungry, like long-lost lovers. Then I pulled back and looked at her. Her eyes glistened with a haunting, otherworldly fire.

This felt like a dream to me. Everything felt as though I was on the outside looking in. The journey Virgil and I been through, the hour of the evening, the coldness of the weather, the deep snow outside, and her, here in my arms.
Goddamn.

“What’s this about a hot bath?” I said.

“This is a fine establishment,” she said. “Look.”

I looked into the room. There was a fancy claw-foot tub in the corner.

“How about that?” I said. “And water?”

“It’s all here,” she said. “Let me show you.”

She led me into the room and shut the door.

The room was small but elegant. There was an ornate cast-iron-and-brass stove in the corner opposite the tub. Two brass five-gallon buckets sat next to the stove full of water.

“I’ll be damned,” I said.

“No,” she said, “never. This much I know.”

She put one of the buckets on top of the stove, then looked back to me and nodded for me to . . .

“Undress,” she said.

I just looked at her a moment.

She looked at me back; she smiled and nodded again, looking to my clothes.

“You won’t get any argument from me,” I said.

I took off my coat and vest and hung them on a coatrack next to the door, then I sat in a chair in the corner and took off my boots.

“I’d ask you how you knew I was back, but I guess I don’t have to,” I said.

“No,” she said, “you don’t, but I will tell you.”

“Friends, no doubt?”

She shook her head and smiled.

“I saw you and your partner come in, with the wounded man,” she said. “I was walking the boardwalk and I saw you.”

I stood up and undid my trousers and let them drop to the floor.

“Where were you walking to?” I said, as I unbuttoned my shirt. “Or from?”

“No place,” she said.

—
43
—

I
sat in the hot-water tub as Séraphine bathed me. She scrubbed my head with some special soap laced with rose, ginger, and rosemary. Then she lathered a wood-handled scrub brush with some other sweet-smelling soap and commenced to clean me. She scrubbed my arms and chest, then leaned me forward and scrubbed my shoulders and back. She moved to the other end, and starting with my feet, worked her way up my legs. I leaned back in the tub and closed my eyes.

“Best goddamn bath I’ve ever had in my life,” I said.

She smiled and worked her way up my calves past my knees and scrubbed my thighs.

I looked at her.

She set the scrub brush aside, slid her hands under the water, and worked her hands up my thighs.

“I believe I’m pretty clean.”

She smiled.

“I believe you are indeed.”

She moved up and kissed me and I kissed her back.

She stood and got me a towel as I lifted myself from the water. I reached for the towel, but she held it back.

“I clean,” she said, “and I dry.”

She dried me some and I stepped from the tub. I took the towel from her and dropped it. I reached for her and pulled her to me. I kissed her, then turned her around and lifted her nightgown up. She raised her arms and I pulled the gown up and over her head. She turned and faced me.

“I will remember you,” she said.

“Remember me?”

“Oui,”
she said.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“No place.”

“Then why do you say you will remember me,” I said.

She moved, taking my hand and leading me to the bed. She pulled back the covers and slid her slender body between the folds. I moved in beside her.

“You see something else?” I said.

Her blue eyes were moist. She said nothing. She just stared at me.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m the one that’s going?”

“What I know is what I told you.”

“Nothing else?” I said.

She shook her head.

“You’re not a very good liar,” I said.

“I’m not lying, Everett,” she said. “I don’t know how.”

“Everybody knows how to lie,” I said.

She shook her head.

“Not me,” she said.

“Then tell me something,” I said.

“What?”

“If you are going no place,” I said, “and you haven’t seen my inevitable demise, my Earth’s exit, why are you saying you will remember me?”

“I, too, live in uncertainty, Everett.”

“So you are going?”

She just looked at me.

“Are you?”

“I don’t know what will happen,” she said. “It is just something I feel.”

I laid back and put my hand behind my head and looked up to the ceiling.

“Some of what you told me the other night,” I said. “Some of that came to be.”

She didn’t say anything.

“How did you know?” I said. “Can you tell me?”

“I told you,” she said. “Your guides.”

I smiled.

“How did you know the name Cotter?”

She sat up on one elbow, looking at me.

“You don’t believe me, Everett,” she said. “You don’t believe in who I am and what I say.”

“I just said what you told me. Cotter is the name or alias of someone we’re after.”

“Oui,”
she said, “but you think I know that because I know something, something I learned in the doing universe.”

“In the doing universe?”

“Oui.”

“What do you know about the whereabouts of Sheriff Sledge Driskill and his deputies Karl and Chip?”

She shook her head.

“Nothing,” she said.

“What do you know about Walton Wayne Swickey and G. W. Cox?”

“I don’t,” Séraphine said.

“The soldiers?”

“Nothing.”

“What else ain’t you telling me?” I said.

She shook her head and lay back.

“I don’t know anything,” she said dejectedly.

We just rested there. A long silence settled between us.

As unusual and peculiar as this union was between us, I felt more alive and somehow more aware of my surroundings.

I reached for her and I turned her face to me. She was warm. And seemed vulnerable for the first time.

“I believe you,” I said.

“You do?”

“Yes.”

She smiled at me.

“I’m glad,” she said.

“I do. I believe you when you tell me you will remember me, that you will do just that, remember me.”

She smiled warmly and I kissed her. She kissed me back, tenderly at first, then hard and passionately.

Lord . . .

—
44
—

I
t did not surprise me to find Séraphine was gone when I woke up in the morning.
What else?
I thought.

My head was heavy and I felt far less alive and aware than I had felt in the evening. I felt as though I had been drunk, but the fact was I’d had nothing, nothing but Séraphine.

I looked around the room, and with the exception of her smell and the cooled water in the tub, there was no sign she had even been there.

I looked out the window and the landscape was just as it was the day before, a blanket of snow.

I could see the depot and smoke rising up from its chimney. The tracks were completely covered as far as I could see and there was no sign of sun.

I got dressed and made my way downstairs. The lobby was empty, but the young British fella was behind the counter. He smiled at me.

I started for the door and he said, “One moment, Mr. Hitch. I’ve got something here for you.”

He retrieved a small envelope from the key box behind the desk and handed it to me. “Here you go.”

I took the envelope.

“Appreciate it,” I said.

Written across the envelope was one word.
Everett.

I looked at it, and instead of opening it right away I put it in my pocket and left the hotel.

I walked by the depot and made my way back toward Virgil’s place.

I knocked on the door and Allie answered.

“Everett,” she said. “Why, good cold and snow-covered morning. Come on in.”

I stomped the snow off my boots and stepped inside.

“Lands,” Allie said. “That you?”

“Me what?”

She nuzzled her nose into my neck.

“It is,” she said. “You sure do smell pretty.”

“I took a bath,” I said.

“Well, I should say so,” Allie said.

She closed the door.

“You don’t look so good, though. You look like you seen a ghost,” she said.

“No ghost,” I said. “Not this morning, anyway. Virgil in?”

“He’ll be back in a minute,” she said. “I sent him to the grocery to fetch me some baking soda. You feeling all right?”

“I feel fine, Allie,” I said.

“Well, you smell fine.”

“Could use a cup of coffee,” I said.

“You bet,” she said. “Sit yourself down right there and make yourself comfortable, Everett.”

Allie walked to the kitchen and I took a seat at the table.

“Can you believe this weather?” Allie said.

“I can,” I said.

“Think it will ever let up?” Allie said.

“It will.”

Allie brought me a cup of coffee in a proper sipping cup with a saucer underneath.

“Fresh,” she said.

I took a sip. It was thick and had a jolt to it, but I didn’t do nothing but drink it.

Allie took a seat next to me.

“I thought about what you said last night, Everett,” Allie said. “And you are right. I was being insensitive and self-centered.”