The Bully of Order (47 page)

We dug like animals and rolled rocks away and under us and pushed them to the edge and heard them crash all the way down. The lantern flickered again, but this time it died and we were digging in the dark. Water drained in and made a muddy pool. Duncan climbed up and pushed against the boulders and they rolled outward. The air was fresh, but it was still dark. It was more cave, wet and muddy. We felt for the edges with our open hands. I speared my hand against a spiny stalk of devil's club and finally realized we were outside, and it was night.

“We made it,” Salem said.

My son's shape rose from the lesser darkness. The night was moonless, and the clouds covered the stars. I wanted it to rain so we would know for sure we were back in the world.

With two matches to spare, we had a fire going. I thought we were south of where we started, but Salem wasn't so sure. We'd been turned around down there. It seemed we were near the coast, but that would mean not only that we passed under two rivers and who knows how many creeks but that we'd slipped beneath a mile or so of open harbor. We put our backs to the trees and watched the fire. Dawn came a few hours later, and with the light came our bearings.

“I know where we are,” Duncan said.

Salem touched my shoulder and walked away.

“Where's he goin?”

“Salem, come back here.”

He held up a hand. “I'm goin to spend yer money, Doc. Whores with teeth and beautiful smiles and turpentine-free whiskey.” He'd already gained the road, and in another hour he'd be over the bridge and into town.

“He's gonna turn me in.”

“No, he won't.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, he might turn you in, but nobody'll believe him. Nobody'll even listen.”

O
ut the second-story window
, into the rain, garbled howler. “I'm not waiting, Haslett. You'll hurry the fuck up, or I'll kill you. Hear me?” Dr. Haslett, squinting against the drops. “Fine. I'll be back in an hour.”

“Half an hour.” Tartan slammed the window frame down, and the impact, the very sound, hurt his teeth and his guts.
Haven't shit in six days. Last time I pissed, I thought I'd goddamn die. Just hurry with the painkiller, Doc, cuz the whiskey does nothing.

“Woman,” he yelled. “You old cow, get up here and fetch my crutch.” He had his pistol out, and his knife was stuck in the window sash. Footsteps on the stairs, and then there was a girl, sixteen or near it; he didn't know her, hadn't seen her before. He pointed to the crutch and mouth-breathed at her. She wasn't afraid. She picked it up and tried to hand it over, but he had to stow his pistol before he could take it.

“One or the other.” She had a sweet voice, and lips like she only fed on beets.

He shoved the pistol in his belt. The grip went against his shot gut, and he didn't know it till he bent to steady himself on the crutch. The pain pulled the rug.

“Blacked out,” the girl said.

He was looking at the ceiling, and then he was looking at the tit that had slipped out of her dress. “You'll need help to stand me.”

Then she was squirming under his neck, under his back, burrowing. She had her legs under her now, and she was squatting. “Hook my arm.”

He did as she said. She was brutally strong. He thought she might be the strongest woman that ever lived. A marvel.

Doc in the doorway.

“About time, fatass.”

He put the bottle and package of powder on the bedside table. “Sit.”

“Just got up.”

“Help him to the bed, dear.”

The girl was under his good arm, a hand under his ass cheek, hauling him on. Set him down like a sack of eggs. Doc opened the package and mixed the white powder with a little of the liquid from the bottle in a small ceramic bowl from his bag and made a paste. “Dip your finger in it and slime it around your mouth.”

The taste was awful, but the relief was instant. The girl licked her pinkie and dipped it in and sucked it clean. “Yell if you fall again.”

“Yes.” All he could say through the joy of the pain disappearing. Doc folded the paper and slid the rest of the powder into the bottle, and then shook it up and passed it over. “Drink it sparingly. And don't think you can move around, even though you don't feel pain.”

He drained half the bottle and then sucked the bitter from his teeth. Haslett shook his head and went to leave.

“Know what I told him?” Tartan said.

“Who?”

“Ellstrom, the outlaw Ellstrom. Said his mother left and wasn't dead. That was cruel of me.”

“He came to see me,” Dr. Haslett said. “I know what you told him. It doesn't matter why. I pity that boy. We've all failed him. Probably me most of all.” Haslett took a pull from one of the bottles of whiskey on the table. “They haven't caught him yet. Two hundred men on the roads. I heard another hundred are out on the water. They got every bridge, every crossroad, and every rail station. It's a national obsession, as far as that goes.”

“If he lives, he'll be comin here,” Tartan said.

“No, he wouldn't.”

“He'll want to kill me. And he'll want the girl.”

“Why would he want to kill you?”

Tartan took the bottle and swirled the liquor. “Because I deserve it.”

“We all do. Don't drink all this, and don't think you got the strength to get your prick up for that girl that was in here.”

“I'll know when I know.”

“Your heart might stop, and then you wouldn't know anything.”

“I have a heart?”

“Made of rotten leaves and fish guts.”

He listened as the fat man descended the stairs. Without hope, he licked the powder remaining on the paper and decided the best would be to camp out at the Boyerton house and wait for Duncan to return. He could get Mason to haul him up there in a covered wagon, park him up the street. Get some more a this powder and wait. That's a plan, a timber to cling to. Happy with himself, he called out for the girl. He waited on the bed with his prick out and blood seeping from the bandage on his stomach into the dark hairs.

She entered the room and dead-eyed him, with a thumbnail scraping the crusted lipstick from the corner of her mouth.

“Might be harder to do this than liftin me from the ground.”

“I doubt that.” Her dress came off like a shadow.

H
e'd called the marshals
to the union hall, and they all sat drinking coffee, waiting for Bellhouse or whoever else to say something. The McCandlisses had been told to hitch a team to Tartan's wagon and bring him here. It was time to get these lawmen out of town, Bellhouse didn't care how. They were ruining business. Teresa Boyerton was there with Oliver, and she looked scared. He'd had a talk with her last week and made her cry. She understood now. Delilah took care of the one-eyed brother.

When Tartan came through the door, leaning on his crutch, Bellhouse got up from his desk and helped him into a chair.

“The hell is this?” Tartan said.

“Check his pockets,” Bellhouse said. “He carries the dead man's timepiece with him at all times.” A marshal approached, searched Tartan's coat, and came up with Boyerton's watch.

“What's your father's full name?” the marshal asked Oliver.

“Charles Samuel Boyerton. That's his watch. I can tell from here.”

“Hank, you gave that to me not five days ago,” Tartan said.

“Now, don't start lying. You told me you stole it from Boyerton the night you killed him.” Bellhouse shook his head, held up his hands in surrender. “Time to confess, my old friend.”

“We need your real name,” the marshal said. “And we need to know what happened out there when the sheriff was killed.”

“What the hell we doin here?” Tartan said to Bellhouse. “You spinnin the wheel on me? I didn't do nothin, and you know it. You gave me the fuckin watch. Coast Sailors Boys. That's what he told me. Coast Sailors Boys. Christ.” Tartan laughed and kept laughing until he saw Cherquel Sha come up the stairs.

“You come here to lie too?” Tartan asked.

“I don't lie.”

“Who shot Chacartegui and the deputy?” the marshal asked.

“This Dickerson here.”

“Who shot me, then?” Tartan asked.

“Who cares,” said the marshal. “Who fuckin cares.”

“I'll take the bounty now,” Bellhouse said.

“You'll be paid, sir, soon as he's convicted of the murders.”

Bellhouse and Teresa glanced at each other. Delilah brought Oliver a glass of beer. The room was far from jubilant. Oliver slid his hand up her leg, whispered, “Mabel.”

She smiled at him and went back to the bar.

The marshals worked quickly, and in moments Tartan was gone, hauled down the stairs and out the back door of the hall. His crutch had been left behind.

“I'm buyin,” Bellhouse said, looking at Oliver and Teresa.

“We have to go,” Teresa said.

“I don't,” Oliver said. “I'm stayin with Mabel and and Mr. Bellhouse.”

“Whatever suits him,” Bellhouse said.

“I'll see you at home.” Teresa grabbed an umbrella going out the door, and it wasn't until she was in the street that she realized it wasn't hers. She considered taking it back, but what did it matter. There was a mudslide on the hill, and everyone was looking at it. Someone had her hand, and it was him, and it couldn't be. It couldn't be him. It was. He was smiling when she heard the shot and closed her eyes.

K
ozmin came in the
house for dinner. We'd sold our first batch of slabs the day before, and the crew had finally been paid. Jonas had gone to town with them to make sure they were treated as well as they could be. They'd stuck with us when they didn't have to, and that's worth something more than a payday.

The old man and I sat at the table and ate in silence. Nell's diary was there between us, but he never asked what it was or even glanced at it. The person I was in her words was a shameful man. But she'd abandoned Duncan. I was one thing, her son another. She shouldn't have done that. If we spoke again, I'd tell her. Maybe that's all I'd tell her.

After dinner Kozmin and I sat by the fire with a bottle.

“Should I finish the story about Tarakanov?”

“I'd like that. I'd nearly forgot. He was on the move last time you stopped, wasn't he? Going to save Anna Petrovna.”

“That's right. He snuck into one of the Indians' lodges in the middle of the night and took two Indian women captive. He believed he could trade them to get Anna Petrovna back and that he was one smart promyshlennik, and everyone was happy for the first time in a long time. Bulygin promised him everything but the crown.

“Understandably they were more than surprised when they went to make the trade and Anna Petrovna didn't want to go with them. She wanted to stay with the Hoh people because they treated her well. She didn't want to starve alongside her husband, trying to get rescued by a ship that'd already sailed. Bulygin didn't know what to say, but Tarakanov did.”

“What'd he say?”

“He said: I surrender.” Kozmin was smiling. “His comrades couldn't believe it, but they knew that Tarakanov was the smartest of them all, and if he thought it a good idea, then it most likely was.”

“They all just surrender to the savages?”

“If they were savages, would Anna Petrovna want to stay with them?”

“I'd suppose not.”

“Half the group surrenders, the others drown trying to cross the bar in their canoe.”

“Bulygin?”

“Surrendered, and by the grace of his captors he was even permitted to live with his wife.”

“Grace? They were slaves.”

“Better to be slaves than dead and drowned.”

“I've heard arguments to the contrary. In fact, most arguments are to the contrary.”

“From those who haven't spent a winter coast-bound with no food or decent shelter or hope of rescue. Thirty days of servitude is shorter than thirty days of starvation.”

“So they treated them well.”

“Those that earned good treatment. Bulygin died, and so did Anna Petrovna eventually, but Tarakanov lived, and years later he was ransomed and returned to New Arkhangel.”

“All that, and he just went back?”

Kozmin filled his cup and my own, and then set the empty bottle on the floor. “Above all else, survival.”

I drank and felt my regrets swell in my guts. “When I was young,” I said, “I was afraid I would be hurt or that I would be a failure. Now I'm afraid I'll be alone. Makes me think the only true coward is him that fears love.”

“Well, that's a cold dead one, isn't it?”

I nodded that it was and closed my eyes, felt the heat of the fire on my face and hands. “Yer a good friend, Kozmin.”

“Yep, couldn't do much better than me.”

 

I
was on the balcony
of the Eagle, waiting for Salem to come back with our drinks. I'd had two already and was ripe for more. The crowd below was facing toward the scar on the hill left from the mudslide; it looked a little like a man's face in profile with the fallen trees and ripped stumps cluttered around his throat.

Then I saw her, the girl, and I knew who it was. She came from the Sailor's Union, alone. In the street she stopped and looked at her umbrella, confused.

Duncan stepped from the alley. I'd left him at Macklin's church. He promised me he'd stay until I came back. He had to run to catch her, and in the crowd it seemed he was safe. When she turned, Teresa Boyerton realized who it was and smiled and lifted his hat from his head and kissed him.

The crowd parted when the rifle came up. It was Zeb Parker, our old neighbor. He'd grown tall, his clothes hardly fit him, he had a scar on his face, and his eyes were wide and scared and locked on Duncan. He fired and the shot hit home and Duncan fell on his side on the muddied planks. Then the soldiers on the walk saw him and there was another volley, but they shot high and Zeb stumbled backward from the splintering boards and fell. Teresa was the last one standing. It was a miracle she hadn't been wounded. She held her arms out, screaming, and went toward the soldiers with her hands raised, begging them to stop. Behind her, Duncan was suddenly on his feet and running away, ran right by Zeb, gave him a look that said: I knew that it would be you, but I'm not angry. My boy had blood on his hand, and his shoulder was wet with it. Zeb rolled to his feet and gathered himself and ran after him, but slipped and fell headlong, and the barrel of his rifle augered in between two planks and stuck there. A soldier shoved Teresa to the ground and took aim at Duncan's back; he had a clear line, but Ben McCandliss came through the Sailor's Union doors with a knife in his hand, and the blade flashed across the back of the soldier's neck and his shot went into the boards. The other soldiers turned on Ben, but his brother was there, swinging, and finally the marshals got in the middle and broke it up. Teresa stood in the street, looking after Duncan, but he was gone. Zeb left his rifle where it was and walked away with his head down and his hands out, like he wanted to shake some foulness from himself. I knew that gait, that full measure of sorrow.