The Bully of Order (21 page)

Oliver spotted me and waved, so I passed through the gate and shook his hand and asked if I could help. Joseph and Ben hadn't followed me and were already gone. Oliver's eye patch had a long brown hair stuck to it. We hadn't spoken for some time, and I'd grown half a foot taller than him. Mr. Boyerton was watching me. He knew who I was from Oliver, and I suspected he might know who I was from Teresa as well. We were different species, and the way he looked at me I felt I was still dwelling in the mud, burping at the moon, while he was strolling the esplanade. Such is the oppression of the young Occidental.

With shame flickering in my heart I joined the bucket brigade to soak the roof shingles and found my place halfway up the ladder. Through the tall windows on the second floor I could see the portraits on the stairway wall. Grandfathers and great-uncles, uncles and cousins, no necked hatchet-asses in black suits with canes and hats and watch chains, posing, all of them dead in the War and otherwise. Teresa told me that Oliver was the end of the line and judging by the paintings that seemed about right.

The wind changed and the smoke rolled over us, and I had to tie my kerchief over my face to keep from choking. The rivers wouldn't save us, and neither would the sea.

Dr. Haslett told me once about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He wasn't there, but he'd read all the reports. Black bricks and burned dogs, ash, all that was left. No place to sleep or even rest. He said in the end the city benefited from it, like every now and again a body benefits from a fever or a good sweat.

Teresa passed in front of the window. She was dressed to go outside and carrying a small purple suitcase. Miss Dalgleish, the housekeeper, was with her, carrying two more. I yelled to her, and to my surprise she turned and saw me and after a worried moment she finally smiled and pressed her palm to the window. Miss Dalgleish hauled her away down the stairs toward the back of the house. When I looked down to catch the next bucket, Mr. Boyerton was looking up at me, short, squat, and from my angle all of two feet tall. It was a low, dirty feeling that passed over me, because I wanted the man to like me. I needed him to, or my life would turn away from where I planned it. Away from Teresa. Oliver was watching his father. The buckets kept coming, and the water sloshed all over and soaked my clothes. The uniformed brigade, led by Chacartegui arrived, and we all climbed down from the roof and ladders and helped them drag their big pump to the cistern in the back of the house and unroll the two hundred feet of moldering hose they'd brought with them. The sheriff put two men on the pump and they got to work and sprayed down the porch and the bushes on both sides of the street. They looked ready to face whatever came up the hill after them.

I stood with Oliver in the yard and watched what was left of the town below be swallowed by smoke. We couldn't do anything but wait. Boyerton had left to check on his mill. I wished I had talked to him before he'd left, but Oliver would have to do.

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“Father put her and Mother on a boat.”

“Why aren't you with them?”

“I need to stay and make sure the house is safe.”

“I heard you got a girlfriend.”

Oliver blushed and looked away.

“Who is it?”

“I'm not at liberty to tell.”

“She pretty?”

“You could say that.”

“Does your father know?”

“It's not his concern.”

“Does he know about me and Teresa?”

“No.”

“But you do.”

“I've known for a long time.”

“You wouldn't say anything, would you?”

“It's not my business.”

“I'll do right by her. I swear it.”

“I plan to do the same by my Mabel.” He was squirming with his unique version of glee, and he would tell me who it was if I asked, Mabel who? But I didn't. I didn't care, not that much. I'd find out anyway eventually.

It was that the town was burning, the Harbor was burning, and that I could've chosen a better time to square with Oliver. His father would hear about me and Teresa soon enough, if he hadn't already. It didn't matter. The smoke was rolling out over the water now, like a storm, yellow and gray and black. This was a catastrophe. Hundreds would be homeless tomorrow. We'll never be the same after this, said somebody nearby. I'd thought of Teresa as a fire once, a burning house. It seemed a long time ago when I was scared of her. I couldn't imagine feeling that way now. Ships were all adrift and moving out, an armada in retreat. The Harbor was burning, and when I looked at Oliver, he was smiling, trying to hold it in, but his one eye was clearly shining with what had to be joy.

I
'd cobbled together a
shanty. Water dripped from the waterlogged shingles like honey from thin-sliced black bread. The land was unclaimed. Wind blew through one wall and slapped loose paper to the other. I didn't poach or rage or trespass and was therefore left alone. The door was open, and the rain dribbled down on the roof and the two sailcloth tarps covering my woodpile. There was an oilcan under the eave, near the wall, and every minute or so a big wet drop would go
plekink
against its side. I counted it as my clock, and time went faster in relation to the storm, which was acceptable, although contrary to my experience. For the drop to form, a capillary draw was required. This of course was aided by the leaks in the roof, which relied on gravity alone, but there under the eaves, the rising and the falling drips met and formed a drop. I thought of this as being symbiotic, as it should be, not as failure, as it was.

Someone was coming out of the forest. I closed the book I had open on my lap and nodded a greeting to the shadowy figure, said: “Evening, Cossack.”

“Greetings, Dr. Ellstrom.”

Kozmin, covered in clay mud, had three dog salmon strung on a piece of rawhide and looped around his belt. He untied them one-handed and stretched an arm and threw them onto the woodpile, and then removed his hat and showed his wild gray hair, ducked his head and came inside. My furniture was a couple of row seats that I'd hauled off from the burned theater on Heron Street and a table I'd made from a stump and a slab. Kozmin picked up the closed book, sat down, stretched his legs before him, and farted.

“A man who never farts loudly will never live well,” he said.

“Then you live well, Kozmin, often.”

“I do. You look as awful as ever, Doctor.”

“I don't keep a mirror.”

“I have a question.”

“Ask it.”

“Why don't you cut off that filthy sack of shit hangin from your chin?”

“My beard?”

“Filthy sack of dirty shit hangin from your chin. I can smell it from here. Jesus.”

“Who created all the heavens and earth.”

“So they say. So they say.” Kozmin produced a kerchief and rattled and shook the pluggage from his nose. “The city burned.”

“I was there.”

“I didn't see you. Were you haulin water or lootin?” His eyes darted over the features of my face.

“Neither.”

“How's a city to burn if you go and do somethin to stop it?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“Fuckin tragedy. Nice of you to stand by.”

“We do what we can.”

“Little succor that.”

“You can little succor this.” I grabbed at myself, and the old hermit smiled toothlessly.

“Bellhouse did it, you know. Set off the Arctic to hide his murdering. He's apparently the proud owner of three miles of Northern Pacific track.” Kozmin tapped the side of his nose with his index finger.

“That won't last long.”

“I wouldn't guess it would take long to squeeze a lifetime's worth of wages out of those rails.”

“No, a solid month would do.”

The oilcan dinged, and we both looked at it. Kozmin studied the source of the drip, waited for another, then spoke.

“What of the War?”

“Which is that?”

“It's been two years since I seen you last. Your friend Perlovsky told me you up and joined the Oregon Volunteers.”

“You saw Perlovsky, when?” The two of us had been sawyers together in the redwoods, but he'd disappeared one day. I pulled on the saw and he didn't pull back, ten feet of tree between us. When he didn't answer to his name I hopped off my springboard and circled, but he was gone. Never returned to the camp.

“In the spring. He was in Willapa Bay with the oystermen.”

“I thought he was dead.”

“He thought the same might've become of you.”

“I unjoined my regiment not long after joining it.”

“They let you do that?”

“They do if you volunteer.”

“Did you make the trip across the ocean?”

“No, I quit while we were garrisoned in San Francisco. They hadn't even given us rifles yet, or pay.”

“They say it wasn't much of a fight. The paper said that.”

“Tell that to the Spaniards swimming in the wreckage.”

“Someone had to lose,” Kozmin said.

“Funny you saying that to me.”

“Not that funny.”

“I know. I know it's not.”

He opened the book and thumbed a few pages. “I saw your boy the other day.”

My heart like a fat toad leaped into my throat. “How's he keeping?”

“Honestly, I think he's destined for trouble.”

“Is he living with the Parkers?”

He gave me a hard look. “Ain't been stayin there for years. They kicked him out. He's with yer brother as far as I know, gettin pummeled if'n he gets caught.”

“If he's breathing, I'd say he's doing fine. He'd like to kill me, you know.”

“Maybe it's time you tested his mettle.”

“I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring him up again.”

“You'd appreciate it? Well, that's nice, isn't it?”

“A courtesy for being in my house.”

The hermit laughed like only a mad hermit would. “I know who I am, Jacob. I'm a man that gets drunk and pisses himself a few times a week. I'm not welcome most places. The whores won't even have me. Not interested. Keep your money, they say. You need it more than me.”

“Your point is?”

“You're givin us hermit types a bad name. With that goddamned beard and the rest. You've turned into a rotten swamp goat, is what it is. What I see at least. You've gone garbanzo, friend.”

“They still want to hang me for what I did.”

“Nobody cares no more.”

“I do. Duncan does.”

“You know what he said to me when I told him to stay clear of Bellhouse and those McCandlisses? Said that old men and wisdom are like two parallel lines. He held up his fingers at me, like so, to show me that they would never meet, never touch.”

“He's not stupid.”

“No, he's smart enough.”

“What's your plan for that mess on my woodpile?”

“You don't like fish?”

“When did I say that?”

He tapped the cover of my book with a mossy knuckle. “Homer would've liked you.”

“I'm just killing time.”

“Quality work you're doin of it, too, journeyman.”

We sat like spectators and stared out the hole in the wall that served as a door, two chicks in a partially hatched egg; a ritual of nothing, an absence of ritual that was built to dispel the previous absence. Ass to the wind.

Eventually Kozmin cut one of his salmon into steaks and pan-fried them over the firepit.

After we'd eaten, the hermit picked at his teeth with a fishbone like a miniature scimitar. “Myth intervenes in all the stories we tell, especially those we tell of ourselves. Speaking on a grand scale.”

“Like you'd know another way. Christ.”

“Who created all the heavens and earth.”

“Amen, Cossack.”

“Scavengers are found out in time and pinched for their lowness. Hunters turn to farming for stability.”

“Aren't you a prescient mummer.”

“God speaks through me.” He smiled and leveled the fishbone at me in a not unthreatening manner.

“Your ass.”

“What isn't a concern to my bowels? Alvine is my middle name.”

“I see you as more spry than wise.”

“Eh?”

“I said spry.”

“Sure, demon spry, cat spry. I leap anthills just like they were”—he paused for effect—“anthills.”

“Your athleticism matches your ample gift for bullshit.”

“It does. Of course it does. That said: Do you have time for a tale this evening?”

“If it's worth a damn.”

“Oh, it's worthy. It's even true.”

“Where'd you hear it?”

“On the mountain.”

“Alley betwixt four whorehouses.”

“Who gives a damn where I heard it? It's a good story, and long.”

“Better be. I'm not a bit tired. Get to it.”

“In the long, long ago—”

“If you start it like that, it already sounds like bullshit.”

“No bullshit. That's how it starts. It's the beginning.”

“Then begin.”

“The hero's name is Tarakanov. He was on the
Konstantin
when the Russians made their fort at Katlianski Bay, and while his comrades were busy taking wives and counting their profits, he'd been watchful. The Kiksàdi were angry and on the move. It was the middle of summer, when the sun was restless and there were voices in the gloom of the forest like seals barking and ravens. An attack was coming, any fool could see it, but his comrades drank too much to notice and relied on the sheer numbers of the hired Aleut hunters to protect them, but none of them held any true allegiance to Baranov. Wages in the end are only wages. The battle would be fast and bloody.”

I waited for him to go on, but apparently that was all he had to say. He chipped at the now dried mud on his pants and sleeves and then gathered up his pack to go.