The Bully of Order (18 page)

At the crest the quiet was snatched away. The lights were up in town and the timber haulers were moored at the docks, awaiting cargo. The new drawbridge was raised, and wasn't it a triumph, made me think of a book with a broken spine, ripped in half with half the meaning on either side. I'd seen the Harbor grow, old docks failed, new docks came, wharfs and warehouses, mills, junkshow jetties, highbar leavings, pilings like cobbler's nails. Bridges were stitching us together. We got our trains and they're noisy all the time, but it's a good sound, shows we're all a-bustle and not lazy.

The birds were gabbing and hawking to each other, squeaking corks. In my mind I tied strings to them and then tied the strings to the men at the wharf yelling at each other and at slings full of lumber that hovered in the air not so high or safely above and to a man came a gull and a raven, a pelican. Unclaimed I imagined they turned restless and tormenting: either the lone raven was dead-eyeing you from a broken branch or the velvety bitches were waiting till you were hungry and alone and wouldn't mind any company at all, and then they hid. So it went, you wanted both you got none, you wanted none you got both. We're the puppets of the winged slashers, three-toed do-dahs. Maybe some lucky slint would get a bear paired to him, and he'd get bear dreams every night. Others, sailors most likely, they'd get the boneheaded seals with their black eyes that go all the way through their heads. Salmon fishermen must have dreams of bluebacks cobbled like stones across the rivers, and the sturgeon men dream of the bottomless dark and boats that can't be turned over. Drunks dream of ponds of liquor where they drink like deer, proudly and aware, never slipping. Fools dream of being wise and respected and drive hard bargains that will break them before they wake up. I know these things because my mother told me, or I thought she had. My dead mother has been as good a teacher as my living one was. And I couldn't always remember what she'd said and what I'd made up, so I blended the two and called it my attributable faith, my intestate philosophy. Like the Harbor, all rivers run to me.

Foreground, the biggest show, four blocks long, was Teresa's father's mill, the Boyerton Pacific; leaking steam from the towers and pipes, cracks in the walls, like it was being crushed. Teresa was my girl, further even, my secret fiancée, and when I looked at the mill I'd be lying if I said I didn't see a bright future for myself. Watch what you wish for, you might end up a bootlicker. Cousin Jonas was inside there somewhere, one known man among hundreds of anonymous immigrants. Shoulder to rib with what Uncle Matius laughingly called “proud humanity.” Said: “The better man deserves more and the best man most.” By his logic the worst man deserves nothing, but that's not what he'll get. The worst man sometimes takes it all. Matius holds up his meager prize, smiles for the photographer. The ripsaws screamed, their pitches rising, octaves crossing and then falling when they met the wood; it was a song, an anthem, a dirge. The endless corrugations of the log booms made it look like they'd planked over all but the shipping lanes. Loggers dream of sharp axes and barren fields, wake screaming with their iron fists clutching at amputated limbs.

Behold the Harbor: trouble and toothaches, a face of mirrors. Here she comes, and I'm going in with my fists up.

I found the McCandlisses in front of the post office. Ben had his foot on the base of the lamppost like he was stretching for a climb up the drainpipe. The oil lamp above stunk and flickered. But would you look at the gleam of Ben's buttons, the sharp fella. I stood beside them, as tall as Joseph but only seventeen to his twenty-one, and waited for them to say hello before I did.

“Another piece of joy,” Ben said, snapped his kerchief off his shiny boot.

“Say hello then,” Joseph said.

“Fuckin hello then, you filthy slints. Hello.”

“Hello yourself, beanpole,” Ben said.

I had aversions to these public displays, but Ben and Joseph had given up any hope of normality while mine remained, perhaps stupidly so, intact. Machiavellian is how it made me feel. “Let's hit the water,” I said, “embrace the lull before the bustle.”

“I'm workin,” Ben said.

“At what?” his brother said.

“Preenin,” I said.

Ben touched his nose with his index finger and gave me a wink.

“Should we hit the water?” Joseph said, like he'd thought of it.

“Sure. Greener pastures,” I said.

“Shit green,” Ben said.

“Slint preen,” I countered.

“You both listen up.” Ben did a quick jig and tugged at his collar. “From hell to the bulgy cock-lap of God himself—I'm revered as fuckin brilliant. Gleamin sweet. I make diamonds cloud and gold tarnish.”

Joseph spit and hooked his brother with a finger in his armpit and hauled him along behind us, laughing as they went.

At the wharf we rested our backs against the railing with our legs out before us like we were ten feet tall and watched the shadows of men move down the boardwalk, dancing twigs, from the darkness into the light. The fleas came off the boards and coated our legs like flax seeds. Itching commenced. Cigarette smoking convened. Smoke bloomed to heaven, and heaven turned on the rain blaster. We kindly huddled.

“Have you kept up your studies?” Joseph asked.

“On occasion,” I said. “But time gets in the way.”

“Too fuckin much of it,” Ben said.

I went to class more to see Teresa than for any learning or to please anyone else. Dr. Haslett kept on me about it, so I dawdled to bunch him.

“And your uncle?” Joseph asked.

“A barrier to all things.”

“Ten dollars is a barrier that I'll cross tonight.” Ben stuck his pinkie into the corner of his eye to dislodge a white glob of sleep and then blinked a few times to clear his vision. He had a permanent condition that left him weepy-eyed, baby deer blinking cute. Small predator, new and sharp teeth.

I searched out and caressed the locket that Teresa had given me, felt it through my shirt. She was with me in the form of smooth metal. Her tinker soul. Love like a hot bath. Who am I to resist? Will you marry me. Yes, I will. Yes. Had it really gone that way? I'm sure it had. Surely.

“What's his angle now?” Joseph asked, tugging at the stitching on his worn cuff.

“Who?”

“Uncle Matius.” The elder McCandliss enjoyed hearing about the various schemes of my uncle. He received much of the attention that our split fathers avoided, the loathing as well as the ardor.

“Commandeering Boone's splashdam on account of recklessness.”

“Reckless how?” Ben said.

“Public safety and all that. Apparently he killed Done-head Dunne's dog.”

“That animal was deaf and crippled.”

“I don't think he's arguing the state of the deceased,” I said. “He's trying to build a committee to put himself in charge and send Boone to the back of the line.”

“One drowning, and a man's called reckless,” Ben said. “But if you crush, maim, and slaughter a couple every week in the woods, it's a tragic predicament. No answers, no explanation. Dangerous work, they say. Shame you can't avoid the losses.”

“Payday is a soothing balm,” Joseph said.

They'd picked up this rhetoric from Hank Bellhouse and liked to throw it back and forth to each other like a stick for a dog.

“I've heard trees are heavy because they're completely composed of wood,” I said. “I'm talking pure through, made of lumber. Every inch of em.” The weak and mocking laughter died out, and we were soon silent. Waves slipped over the mud and slapped into pilings. Salt and fish guts and lowish tide, brined slop, the boundary of terra firma and the beginning of the end of the world.

“Waiting,” said Joseph.

Ben spit and admired his boots. “I pissed for five minutes straight this morning. Felt like I was back in time, like I'd turned into a little boy again, holding my prick like it was something I could pass back to someone when I was done with it. Like I could be swallowed into myself and come out my own whizzer and splatter on the ground.”

“More likely that you'd dry up and be nothin save molderin socks and a pair of beautiful fuckin boots,” his brother said.

I agreed. “Truly wondrous boots,” I said.

“Sure, but just boots on any other le-whicky-whicky but me,” Ben said, tongue at the side of his mouth, eyes full of trouble. “Teresa waved to us earlier. She was with Margaret and that other girl with the missing finger.”

“Sarah Mulch.”

“She waved and smiled,” Joseph said.

“She's friendly.”

“Not so much. Not to us. Not usually.” Ben made the cunny tongue at me, and I worried we might end up slugging it out. “Duncan, it's this,” he said flatly. “A woman's got yer balls. Her name is Teresa Boyerton, and she has every bit of you. Admit it.”

I wanted to tell them that if the alternative was slinking the alleys with them, yes, it's true, but I didn't. I kept quiet and steadied myself for the next barrage.

“Are you not planning a wedding? We've heard rumors,” Joseph said.

I searched their faces but found no clues. “Who told you that?”

“Gettin married, then what?” Ben said. “Babies? Christ, it'll rain frogs. Duncan spawn.”

“News to me,” I said.

“News to all of us,” Joseph said, and patted me on the shoulder, like congrats.

“Well, fuck off about it.”

“For now,” Ben said.

I watched the crowd and worked on the problem, which was, as I saw it, that Teresa had been snitching on me. On us. But no, but it had to be her. On one hand it was good, because now I'd be onto what I was supposed to be onto, which was getting her father to sign off. He wouldn't, though. I knew it as completely as I'd ever known anything. She knew as well. Might explain the blabbery. Boyerton's daughter would not be pledged to the likes of me. Unless something changed. Unless I changed. Or he did. But what was she doing, confiding a damn thing in these dirty bastards who were, if anything, my best friends in the whole world, but at the same slint fuck of a moment also ones who'd laid hands on her before? Ben could be making it up, slipping up with fake news to make me slip myself so as to tell them the truth, a truth that wasn't theirs to have. The truth was mine alone. I could've howled, my soul was so bent and confused. The hairs in my nose hurt. Love at its most essential is pain.

A skiff came bobbing in and ran aground beneath the wharf. We all stood and leaned over to see who was playing captain, but it was too dark to tell much except that he was alone.

“Who's there?” Joseph asked.

“The bringer,” came the voice from below.

“And what do you bring?” I said.

“Worthless fuckin slint,” Ben said. “Telfer,” he woo-hooed the name like a little girl crying. “Telfer, the slint.”

“Not worthless, Benjamin. I bring nothing worthless.” The small man jerked the boat a little ways onto the bank and uncoiled the bowline to tie up, but it wasn't long enough to reach the piling, so he pitched it back into the boat and heaved the boat higher onto shore. “I've got instruments.”

“Instruments?” I said. “You're talking sextants, fuckin slide rules and abacus.”

“I robbed the band,” Telfer replied.

“Evil slint,” Ben said. “Evil sneaky fuckin slint.”

“No piano?” Joseph said.

“Should I go back for it? I'll need help lifting.”

“Get up here,” Ben said.

“I should bring the haul up with me, right? So's we all don't get muddy, I can pass it to you from here.”

“Leave it, you fuckin unbelievable ass. Can't sell the band's instruments,” Ben said. “Can't. Fool. Idiot.”

“Why not?” said the ferretous little man, huffing when he reached us.

“If they could play, don't you think they'd be in the band already?” Ben said.

“I didn't take them all.”

“You might as well take them back,” I said.

Telfer smacked himself in the forehead for the big idea he just had. “I could sell them back to them.”

Ben grabbed the man by the collar and shook him. “I should send you over the rail.”

Telfer pried himself free and stepped away. Below us, the oily water lapped hollowly at the square stern of the boat. “I did like you said.”

“You did nothin like we said.” Ben ground his fists into his own eyes, and they came away wet.

“Did you take Pelican's guitar?” I asked.

“I did.”

“Take it back to him,” Joseph said. “He'll fuckin die without it. He cradles it when he sleeps. He buys strings instead of food.”

“God,” Ben said.

“What were you thinkin?” I asked, having fun with him.

“I was thinkin I'd sell the stuff to someone else.”

“But you didn't think who that would be?” Ben said.

“Leave the boat and all the rest. It'll be found and returned, I'm sure,” Joseph said.

“They know it was me, though.”

“Slint, fuckin dim slint,” Ben said. “I hope they stomp you flat.”

“What were you tellin me to do if it wasn't what I done?”

“Nothin. We didn't tell you nothin. Leave it,” Joseph said.

“Oughta stomp him ourselves.”

“Ben.”

“I'll take em back.”

“Leave em.” Joseph walked away and we, the three of us, followed him. Shortly we entered the street, and the crowd filled in around us. Firelight in the eyes, brass buttons. Watch the knives on the belts and the rare bulge of a pistol. You could be killed, swimming in these dark waters. The opera house was letting out as we approached, so we eased and aimed and went breathlessly through the exiters like oil on ice. I touched a billfold but lost it in the spin. Snagged a cufflink and then a hatpin. Ben snatched two watches and gave one to me and the other to Joseph. Telfer got nothing. In the alley his little fingers popped loose a pipe from his hatband and filled it from an oily sack in his breast pocket, but as soon as he had it lit, Ben snatched it away and smoked it for him.