The Bully of Order (20 page)

She rested her hand on my crotch, and I felt the absolute stirring of myself, living blood. Had she thought the same of me, that I was after her money?

“Maybe they're in love,” I said.

“Don't be silly. It's Oliver. Even if someone was deranged enough to fall in love with him, he's incapable of love himself.” Teresa liked talking about love and people's capacity for it. At first I thought she was naive, but as time went on I began to think she had a sensibility that maybe I lacked. I began to listen to her and to trust in her ideas of romance. Fully aware that I had fallen for her completely, splash, like an osprey going for a fish.

As she took off her boots, the last bit of liquid yellow sunlight spilled in the window and across her bare legs. I found the blankets I'd left on the shelf and carefully made a bed on the floor and Teresa slipped out of her underthings and beneath the blankets. The bed was cold. It wasn't what I wanted yet, and Teresa seemed disenchanted too, so I curled around her back and pressed my knees against her smooth cold thighs and kissed her neck.

“Tell me we're in love,” she said.

There was only one answer, and I was relieved it wouldn't be a lie.

“Yes.”

“Yes. Say it.”

“We're in love.”

She reached her hand back and pulled me against her. “Closer,” she said. “I want you to crush me.”

The sound of rain on the metal roof, wind against the windows, not a storm, just weather; it would pass. Slowly the light went out of the room, and in the gloaming the whole world was the shed and the sounds and flickers of light from outside were nothing to me. The truth was, we were together. The truth was, we were in love, and we held each other as tightly as we could so we wouldn't lose what we felt. It seeped into my blood and filled me like a sickness. Somewhere out there was the world and my father, and this love was against them, like one army standing against another.

T
hey were to meet
the man from the Northern Pacific in his rooms at the Arctic Hotel. He'd rented the entire third floor for his delegation, mostly hired security, but simple handshakers too. It was only Bellhouse and Tartan that were going upstairs, but six other men were on the street out front.

Bellhouse stopped on the landing to double-check his revolver. “I got married here once.” Behind him was a massive painting of a naked woman in a flaked gold frame. The woman in the painting was standing in a stream, with her hair over her breasts. Tartan had studied it before when he lived in the hotel. The woman had a familiar face; she looked like Nell Ellstrom.

“Hear me?”

“You got married here once.”

“Divorced too, before I came down in the morning.”

“I thought we were comin here to cut a deal for pennies on the ton. What's with the hogleg?”

“I'm not paying anyone for something I can take with a fight.”

Tartan followed his boss up the final set of stairs and then stood back when he pounded on the frame of the door with his fist.

“Open up, Gendle. It's Hank Bellhouse.”

The door behind them opened, and two men in gray suits came out.

“Is he here?” Bellhouse asked.

“He'll be ready in a moment,” one of the men said, the taller of the two.

“What, is he fucking sleeping? It's fucking noon.”

“I suggest you join us in our room until he has his coffee.”

“We already had our coffee. And our naps.”

Bellhouse tapped Tartan on the leg, and they were on them. It wasn't a quiet affair. The first man was sent sprawling down the stairs with a dent in his face from the butt of Bellhouse's pistol. The second screamed when Tartan stabbed him in the armpit and then brayed when the blade went in his neck. Two more doors opened down the hallway, and more men came out. Bellhouse kicked in the railroad man's door, and he was on the other side of it about to open it or making sure it was locked—in any case, the impact of the door sat him down with a split in his forehead. Tartan slid a dresser in front of the door for a battered woman's blockade.

“Morning.” Bellhouse lifted Gendle to his feet and threw him on the bed. He hadn't finished dressing, and his pants were hanging off him. Shirtsleeves swam about his scrawny white arms.

“This is unacceptable,” Gendle said.

“A bigger lie has never been uttered,” Bellhouse said.

The door opened a few inches, even with Tartan bracing himself against the dresser. Bellhouse raised his revolver and whacked Gendle across the face with it.

“Move aside,” he said to Tartan. He fired three shots through the door and smiled at the grunts and moans that followed.

“You're coming with us.” He reloaded from the loose shells in his pants pocket.

“Why?” Gendle said.

“Need you to send a telegram.”

“It's too late for that. We had an agreement. Nothing you can do now will change what you've done.”

“We'll see. Move that fucking furniture and watch him.”

Tartan did as he was told, and Bellhouse ripped open the door so hard that it hit the wall and bounced back and slammed shut behind him. The shooting started, and it didn't sound like it would stop.

“How many are up here?” Tartan asked.

“Seven. I don't know, eight. Some might be out, but they'll be back.”

“Of course they will.”

It went quiet for a second and Gendle rolled off the bed to get away, but Tartan dropped to a knee and stabbed him through the webbing of his left hand, pinned him to the floor. Down the hall he heard someone kick in another door, and then there were more shots. Gendle squirmed and whimpered.

“Please.”

“Hush hush, pinhead.” Tartan eased the blade out of the wound and wiped it on Gendle's shirt. He put the knife away and pulled his pistol and pointed it at the door. He could tell by the footsteps that it was Bellhouse, and he lowered it.

Hank came through the doorway with blood on his face and a hole in his arm. “Kindle me a fire. I'd like to warm my bones.” Blood dripped from his hand onto Gendle's legs.

Tartan smashed the lantern in front of the door and struck a match. They threw Gendle off the balcony onto the roof below and then scaled down after him.

“Catch this son of a bitch,” Bellhouse said to his men on the street. Smoke was already pouring out the windows above. Tartan tossed the railroad man down and the men below held out their arms, but not with any conviction, and Gendle slapped through them and slammed into the deck and was knocked dumb. Bellhouse jumped down and landed like he'd hopped off a mule cart instead of a second-story roof. Tartan wasn't about to jump, thinking, With my luck I'd break my leg, so he opened a window to an upstairs hallway and took the stairs. He lifted the painting off the wall on his way out. The crowd in the street knew enough to not stare too long.

“Someone ring the bell,” Hank said. “We got a fire burning down the Arctic Hotel.” He threw Gendle over his shoulder and strode off toward the telegraph office. No one moved.

“Get Chacartegui then, you fuckin idiots,” Tartan said. “We can't have the whole town burnin up.”

The bell started ringing and filled the streets with panic. And why wouldn't it work out? Tartan thought. At least for a little while. Why wouldn't this pay? The smoke looked brilliant as it blackened the sun. He strode off happily with the painting tilted hugely onto his back.

I
woke alone in the
shed, with a milky yellow sun pouring in. I'd walked Teresa home some time after midnight and then came back to the shed to sleep, not wanting to walk all the way home or be there when Matius returned. The bells were ringing. There was a fire. I heard footsteps on the gravel path outside and sat up just as Macklin came through the door.

“Duncan?”

“Reverend.”

He studied me for a moment and then gestured for me to stand up, to hurry. “And your boots. Get on your boots. You're coming with me.” He passed me a shovel and emptied the tools from the wheelbarrow in the corner, and I held the door for him as he wheeled it outside.

At first I thought they'd been burning slash and that maybe it had spread and taken a house or an outbuilding because the smell was wrong for pure timber, but when we rounded the corner of the church I saw the Arctic Hotel engulfed in flames. One building among hundreds, one match burning inside of a box of matches. Macklin went bowlegged and elbow-wide down the road, the empty wheelbarrow banging and clanking, and I followed him with the shovel on my shoulder, knowing that there was nothing to be done about a fire that size until we were looking at rubble. People were out of their shops and houses, and they filled the streets. I abandoned the shovel to help Macklin load people's belongings from the nearest of the rooming houses into the wheelbarrow and haul them into the relative safety of the road.

By ember the fire jumped from the Arctic to Walker's saloon and then crossed the alley to the Olympus. The flames flapped raggedly in the wind and Macklin and I watched while the jail caught fire and the deputies let the prisoners out and put them in the bucket line. Chacartegui arrived in time to see the firehouse catch flame. He was interim fire chief, since Grosso had died in a well collapse. He couldn't find the key to unlock the pump, and his little gang of firemen in their blue coats and red hats were antsy to get to work. The law star on Chacartegui's chest shone uselessly. Ben and Joseph spotted me with the wheelbarrow—Macklin had disappeared, and they had me help them load Bernice Travois into the barrow, still in her rocking chair, and Joseph wheeled her into the street. The old woman had lost the ability to talk. Ribbons of drool slung off her chin. I still remembered her giving me the bread the day my mother died. When we set her down, I leaned in close and whispered into her ear, “I'm sorry that I was ever rude to you, Miss Travois.” She smiled up at me and patted my hand. Ben pinched her ear and stuck out his tongue, and the old woman smiled at him too. Mean as a snake.

Joseph was yelling to come on. Chacartegui and the firemen wheeled the hand pumper to the end of Hume and sank it in the river. The sheriff caught us gawking and waved us over.

This was no longer about the Arctic Hotel and the Mack Building or even the whole of Hume Street; it could spread up the hill; it could burn the whole town.

“Look,” Chacartegui said. The water tower was burning, going up like a rolled newspaper. He had tears in his eyes. Ben and I stepped forward and took our turn at the pump.

“You better not have had anything to do with this,” Chacartegui said to me.

“With what?” Ben said.

“This fire. I've heard Bellhouse's name and Tartan's, which means you two were nearby.”

“I was sleeping,” I said.

“I'm deathly afraid of fire,” Ben said.

“So pump, or I'll feed you little goujeers to the flames like pitch wood.” The shield bearer strode off to who knows where. He was a good man, so they said, but a bit of a merganser.

The pump was gushing water all over our boots and pant legs.

“You think it'll stop? That it can be put out?”

“I think she's set to burn us all to cinders,” Ben said. A look of mischief crossed his face. “We're combing the hair of a dead man.”

Just then there was an explosion and the flames jumped Heron Street and the State Bank was burning. Two firemen came forward to spell us. We scanned the masses for Joseph but couldn't find him. Ben called his name a few times and whistled, but the roar of the crowd and the wind building inside the flames drowned him out, just a wild place to be, and the heat was enough, even where we were standing, two hundred feet away, to warm the buttons on my shirt to the point they felt like they'd burn me. We went to watch the bank burn.

“You think the money's still in there?” Ben said.

“Where else would it be?”

“If it's locked in the vault, it'd be like an oven, wouldn't it? They won't pull any hard currency outa there, just dust.”

“Coins'd melt.”

“Can you believe this, Duncan? Look at it.”

The fire kept going north up G Street and the north side of the river, sending up neat curtains of smoke hemmed with flame. They'd raised the bridge, and ships were lined up like ducklings to leave. Ben and I made our way through the crowd and the mess of furniture and precious items vomited from the now-burning buildings and watched a few of Chacartegui's men dynamite John Young's place so the fire wouldn't make it to the hospital. I don't think anyone was thinking it would work, but it did. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. Ash rained down, and if you stopped to notice and peer through the waves of rolling smoke and tumult, it was sunny out there behind the chaos. A perfect sunny day. If only it would rain.

Joseph found us, and him and Ben started grabbing what they could carry from the piles of belongings in the street. I took a pistol in a holster from a table, but Macklin saw me and pointed, so I put it back. Joseph was wearing four coats and two hats. If we were older or even a bit slower, I believe we would've been shot.

The opera house was on fire, and Ed Hulbert's. Men were drinking bottles of beer and some of the whores had a tit hanging out and looked swagged on something harder than lager. We stopped and watched Central School burn for a while. We'd all gone there at one time or another. Doc Haslett used to walk me to the door and wait for me after so I wouldn't skip, but I'd go out the window first chance I got. The fat doctor couldn't stand cleverness, so that's all I gave him. Double helpings.

We trudged up the hill. The big houses looked unburnable, but the pitchy gems caught the light, dripping from the siding and fascia, a thousand wicks.

Charlie Boyerton and Oliver were in their yard with a dozen others, filling buckets from the yard pump and hauling them up a ladder to wet the roof. Mrs. Boyerton and Teresa were nowhere to be seen.