The Bully of Order (33 page)

I stopped, and the bear turned its head to look back, torn skin hanging from its jaw. “You're just a dead bear, and I'm being slint enough to talk to you.”

“I'm not as dead as you might think.”

“With your knife-hacked meat and lack of hide.”

“How sure are you that you got out of that river?”

The memory was fresh and terrifying, icy hands pulling me down to a place somehow warmer, deeper and warmer, like forgiveness.

We trudged on in silence, and I watched the bear, stepped in its tracks. Like forgiveness, like cold water; it went easier after a while. Then there was someone on the road ahead of us. I stopped, and the bear stopped. We were near the Parkers', but I couldn't make out any house lights through the trees.

“Zeb?” I said.

Whoever it was kept coming and didn't speak.

“Zeb, I'm sorry for what I did. I swear. Please, Zeb. Talk to me.”

I still couldn't make out if it was him, but whoever it was, they weren't stopping. I lifted the pistol, and they jumped off the road and silently disappeared into the trees. When I got to where they'd been, there weren't any tracks that I could find. The bear was sitting on its haunches. A thin layer of ice had formed on its body.

“You want my coat?” I said, embracing whatever I could, whatever face of the world was before me. Without a roof you find a tree, without a blanket you pile up the leaves.

“I'm a dead bear. Why would I need a coat?”

“Cuz Kozmin stole yours.” I shrugged off my father's long coat and draped it over the bear's back. It wasn't going to stay on. I tried to force the bear's paw into the sleeve but couldn't manage. The thing smelled awful, and the ice was bloody in the palm of my hand. I needed to use both hands. “Hold this.” I passed over the pistol, and it dropped into the snow and was swallowed up. I reached for it and knocked my head against a tree trunk and fell back into the snow. The road was somewhere behind me. A strange coat, maybe Jonas's, was draped lengthwise over a low limb. I got up and snatched back the coat and put it on, then dug the gun out of the snow and wiped it down with my bare hands.

Back on the road the snow was gummy with mud and felt like clay beneath my boots. Wagon ruts deep enough to show the axle dragging sectioned out the path.

The lights of town were glowing above the last hill. The widowmaker's tangle, the Janko tepee. I'd lost my gloves, or maybe I never had any. I couldn't be sure. The gun was an icicle in my hand.

Men were busy in the mill yard, walking the bunks and loading carts to go to the docks. The lights lit the steam and made the largeness of the place seem even greater. There was yelling and the hollow sound of chains snapping to against big timber. The screams of the giant saw blades in the mill were dampened only slightly by the walls and the log bunks that surrounded them. Lantern-lit flat-bottomed boats steered by pole men were on the water, straightening out the booming grounds and bringing in strays.

Down harbor the big ships were anchored in the channel, waiting for the flood-tide dawn and the bridge to open so Cudahey could guide them in. I passed a few houses, all dark. Someone had forgot to put their chickens up, feathers in the mud, three or four birds' worth in neat clusters, like they'd spurted up from the ground. Farther on, a dog tied to a porch rail barked at me, and I barked back. Shaggy, one-eared guardian, his chickens would be alive still. If he had any. I climbed from the snow and mud and onto the shoveled and swept planks.

The Sailor's Union was locked up and dark. I went around back, but that was locked too. I'd been hoping for a warm reception. Young hero, come home.

The lights at Dr. Haslett's were on. I went up the stairs and banged on the door. I heard footsteps and then there he was, looking right at me, bloated as a dead cow.

“Is my mother dead?

His eyes narrowed, and he stepped back and motioned me inside.

“I don't want to come in.”

“I never wanted to lie to you. I tried to talk her out of it.”

“Where'd she go?” I took the pistol from my belt.

“Put that away and come inside.”

I didn't put up the gun, but I followed him down the hall into the living room. The fireplace was roaring, and the doctor had to pick up an open book from his chair so he could sit down. I hunkered next to the fire and held the gun to the flames. “You knew what it meant, doin that to me, helpin her leave.”

“I had to do what she asked. I didn't have a choice. I loved her. I couldn't say no.”

Haslett's new wife was up now, standing in the hallway behind him. She'd heard what he said, and I could tell he'd be getting a ration when I left. He turned and motioned for her to go back to bed. “Wait here,” he said to me, and followed her down the hall.

When he came back, he handed me a bundle of letters tied with string. I knew what they were. I slipped the gun back in my belt. “She wrote you and not me.”

“I'm sorry, Duncan. I'm truly sorry. I made her a promise, and I didn't keep it. You aren't my son, and it hurt me to see you because you remind me of her.”

“What was the promise?”

“You were supposed to live with the Parkers.”

I looked down at my hands, shaking in my lap.

“I was supposed to keep you safe,” Haslett said.

“This is safe, is it?”

“Men have to be accountable for their lives.”

I couldn't speak. I shoved the letters inside my coat and took a box of matches from the table and a cigar, and I left.

I stood outside the tent city and watched the shadows and then went and checked the alleys for the McCandlisses. No one was about. No Bellhouse. No Tartan. All was quiet. A safe night, and no one knew it.

I wandered up the hill and left the burn, and the noise began to fade. I climbed a low fence into a vacant lot and waded out among the debris of what used to be the Slade Hotel. The back wall was still standing, and behind it a section of stairway led up to a kind of observation deck built between two massive fir trees, both dead and twisted and charred.

From the veranda I could see all the way to Boyerton's mill and survey the comings and goings of the men on the Line. They reeled in and out of the streetlights like they were attached to cables, tiny donkey engines dragging them along. Women and men and men and men went arm-in-arm down the muddy and planked streets, pressing shoulders together to keep from falling.

The water in the harbor held the lights of the town like a slow river holds stones. I was filled with a deep untethered feeling, wild in all my muscles and veins. Maybe I didn't want to do anything, but I had to. I had no choice.

I climbed into one of the trees to have a better look around. The snow fell away, and wet ash blackened my hands. Below me the town was a jumble of watery lights and crooked shadows. Tegumental snow, the body's protector. Smoke poured from chimneys and hung low in the air. The mud in the side streets was shiny and dimpled-looking. The wind came off the harbor, and I climbed higher and perched on a limb like an owl.

A procession of wagons and men on horseback and on foot was coming down the hill. They passed directly below, and I could see Charlie Boyerton riding at the front on his fine black horse. Out on some nocturnal business at the mill. The ships in the harbor told the story. There were only three independent mills left, and soon Boyerton would own all of them. I watched as the procession went on and toured right through the heart of town to the mill. The gates were opened, and the lights burning overhead illuminated each man as they passed.

I dropped from my perch and got out of the wind beside the tree and struck a match and puffed the cigar to life and let the acrid smoke trickle from my nose and mouth. I opened the first letter, dated December 15; it began: “Dear Milo, I've made it safely to New York.” The match burned my finger, and I dropped it. I lit another and read on.

I crumpled the letter and threw it as far as I could, and the wind caught it and it landed in the street. I struck another match.

Wadded up and thrown into the street, another match.

Torn and wadded and thrown. She needed to know. My thumb was blistered, and I only had two more matches. I couldn't read any more. There was something so evil and cold about her leaving me, but all I wanted was to see her. I ground the cigar out beneath my boot heel. The wind blew out the next match, and the one after. I sat in the moonless dark and waited for daylight and imagined my mother bathing invalid soldiers in a place called Bath, and why wouldn't it be.

Not much later, the mill gates opened, and Boyerton came out alone and rode up the hill. I waited, not even breathing, terrified. I hoped he'd stop somewhere or turn off and not pass by but he always appeared again, rounding corners, drawn to me. Then he was there, and under a streetlamp I could see his face, weary and pale. He kept riding, and when he saw the letters in the mud he pulled up his horse and dismounted. He flattened one against the flank of his horse and then struck a light and read it. I thought his night business at the mill could've been about me. He could've been getting men together to bring me in. I had the pistol out, and I stood up and walked toward him.

“That's mine,” I said.

He turned stiffly and dropped the lit match in the street. “Who's up there?”

“That's my letter.”

“It's you. Get down here and let me see your face.”

I went slowly down the stairs. I cocked the pistol and slipped it into my coat pocket. A dog barked in the distance, and a breeze picked up. I took off my hat.

“You're coming with me,” Boyerton said.

“No, I'm not.”

He held up the letter. “From your mother?”

I nodded, replaced my hat.

“You come with me, and I'll see you're not harmed.”

“Where are we goin?”

“To see the judge. You need to be punished for what you've done to my daughter.”

“I've already been punished. Been punished my whole life.”

“I don't like excuses, never have.” He handed me the muddy letter. “Follow me.” He turned his horse around and mounted up. “Don't run away. Be a man about this, and it won't be half as bad. Come on.”

“I'm not running.”

I waited until his back was facing me; it was an easy shot, less than ten yards. Not meaning to but doing it anyway, I took aim and unbelievably squeezed the trigger and the richest man in the Harbor pitched forward in his saddle. The horse ran forward and then bolted away from the gaslight, and Boyerton fell into the mud. I checked the street and the windows for movement and then went and gave Boyerton a nudge with my boot. His throat gaped where the bullet had exited, and there was blood and bone and sinew. He was dead. I squatted there, looking into his face. The gaslight gleamed watery in his dead eyes. There was no mistaking what life was, and where it hid. Wonderful death filled his gaze, utterly nothing. I set the gun down on his chest so it wouldn't get muddy and touched my fingers to the warm blood of the death wound. I was amazed at myself and what I'd made. His horse stood broadside up the block, looking back at me. I had to leave. I had to run.

D
id you see him?”

“Course I did. The son of a bitch. Let's follow him.”

Up the hill the two bedragglers tail the lone horseman.

“Crap, my lungs.”

“I'm blown. That horse can step.”

“Fuck, c'mon. We'll catch up unless we quit.”

“I thought we were quit already.”

“We'll rest.”

“Why're we followin him anyway?”

“Cuz I've put in seven years, and he didn't even tip his hat.”

“He paid you for yer years.”

“Course he paid me.”

“Is he to be yer friend?”

“I'd like to kick him in the ass, is what I'd like. C'mon, let's catch up and swack him with rock-filled snowballs.”

Running now. Running up the hill for all of fifty yards, then stopped again.

“My legs are broke.”

“Let's sit for a moment.”

“Time you think it is?”

“No idea.”

“If we sleep now, we'll never wake in time to beat the whistle.”

“Who's sleepin?”

“Yer not tired? Look at you, yer done.”

“C'mon.” Snow scooped from the walk, and rocks added from the gutter. “I'm ready.”

They're under way when they hear the shot. And stop. And look around.

“Hear that?”

The snowball drops
, tunk,
on the walk.

“Course I heard it.”

“Let's go back.”

“Fuck you. C'mon.”

Far up the road the black horse passes under the streetlight. It's being led up the hill, and they walk after, still thinking they'll catch him and give him a good swack, until they see the man in the road, nearly trip over him.