The Empire of Shadows (9 page)

“We can sleep late,” he said. Mary grunted, doubting every syllable. “You think our little darling will let us?”

Tom shook his head, but said, “Miracles could happen. Maybe the mountain air will put her out.” The
Utowana
bumped into the dock and the thrumming of the steam engine suddenly ceased. The silence of the wilderness filled the void, as if its weight alone had stopped the engine. Tom and Mary filed off with the rest of the guests ambling up the slope toward the glowing hotel, now silent after the band had packed up.

“What're the odds those two are back in their room?” Tom asked with an appraising twist of his mouth and one raised eyebrow as he looked at his pocket watch.

“Sixty-forty against,” Mary said. “'Becca can run circles around Mike if she gets going. I wouldn't bet against her.”

They had just entered the main hall when Tom said, “Care for a port before bed?”

“Ooh. That sounds nice. I hope it's not too late,” she said, looking about at the few guests still in the place. “Lead on, Captain.”

The dining hall was empty, except for a group of three men at a far table and a young couple seated near a window. The couple leaned close across their table, drinking each other in as they spoke in intimate whispers. Tom noticed how Mary looked at them. “I remember when you used to look at me like that,” Mary said after they'd ordered. Tom couldn't quite tell if she was serious, or if it was just one of her teasing provocations.

“I look at you like that all the time, Missus Braddock,” he said with mock seriousness. “You just don't notice,” which was quite true. There wasn't a day that went by that Tom didn't appreciate Mary's looks. But Mary, for all her dark beauty, didn't see herself as beautiful, and never truly had. She knew that men seemed to think her so, but she didn't believe it, not really.

“I notice more than you imagine, Tommy,” Mary said more seriously than Tom was expecting. “I notice how you come home so tired you fall asleep in that old chair of yours. Not that I'm any better,” Mary said, holding her hand up when she saw Tom about to protest. “We're an old married couple,” she said with a tone that was a mix of warmth and remembrance, but of longing, too, and perhaps just a little fear.

“I suppose we are,” Tom said. “And what of it? What else are we supposed to be? We are old; well, not old really,” he said, because he didn't see himself and Mary as old. “And we are married,” he went on. “Funny. I used to dream about what this would be like, being married to the same woman for years and years.”

“It hasn't been that long,” Mary said. “You make it sound like forever.” Though she frowned as she said this, Tom could see the play in her eyes.

“No. Not forever at all. Not nearly long enough.” Tom nodded toward the other couple. “Those two, they'll find out if they're lucky.”

“But it's not luck,” Mary said. “It's work in a way, I mean staying together when there are a million things that could pull people apart if they let them. We've managed to make it. I mean, your job could have separated us a dozen times if we'd let it. My…” Mary lowered her voice “…houses, what with the payoffs, and politics, and problems with the girls; any of that might have separated someone else. And Mike…”

Tom sighed. “Yeah, Mike. He's put enough strain on us for any three kids.” Tom made an effort to brighten the mood, though, and smiled, saying, “Then there's 'Becca.”

Mary smiled too and reached across the table for Tom's hand. “An angel,” she said, but it wasn't just an endearing phrase. “She's everything I ever imagined. Even Mike loves her.”

Tom smiled. “Yeah, I suppose he does. No. I know he does. He's a good kid. He just needs to get over this rough spot.” Tom knew how trivial he was making Mike's troubles sound. He'd seen the night watchman, seen the burned warehouse. But he still had faith.

Mary nodded. “He'll come out stronger,” she said. “This trip…”

“Yeah, A couple of weeks away is just what he needed, us, too, for that matter.”

“We'll have to work on him,” Mary added. “Well, not work exactly. Just pay attention really, time and attention.”

“The boy needs to know he's loved,” Tom said. “You get right down to it, and that was what hanging with that gang was all about. They'd been like family long before we ever came along. Things like that you don't give up easy.”

“No,” Mary said. “You don't. I suppose that's what old married couples do,” Mary said. “Not give up.”

Tom smiled. “And we haven't, have we?” He squeezed her hand. “You know…” Tom searched for the right words, and looked over at the spooning couple before he found them. “We may be an old married couple like you say, but I would never change that. I am precisely where I want to be. Precisely,” he said with an urgency that drew them even closer.

The corners of Mary's wide mouth turned up and her dark eyes flashed. “From time to time Tommy, you
do
say the right thing.” Her eyes flickered from him for an instant as her foot stroked his leg under the table. “They're watching us,” she murmured with an imperceptible nod toward the other couple. “I hope they're jealous.”

They sat nursing their drinks for some time, talking softly of things they had done and things they had yet to do.

“I want to spend some time with Mike,” Tom said. “Just the two of us. Thinking maybe we'd go fishing.”

Mary nodded. “It'd be good for both of you,” she agreed.

“I'll see about getting us set up with a guide, maybe that Busher fellow.”

Mary smiled in a playful sort of way. “What is it about men and catching fish?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.

“Ah, my dear,” Tom said with the voice of an old sage. “This is a question women have pondered for thousands of years. It is one of the mysteries of manhood, a closely guarded secret known only to the male of the species and passed down from father to son.”

Mary laughed. “In other words, you don't know.”

“It is unknowable,” he answered.

They were laughing when Tom felt someone looking at them. Turning to his right he noticed that the three gentlemen from the far table had gotten up and were strolling toward the door. One of them seemed familiar to him. He was about to say something, when the man asked, “Do I know you, sir? You seem familiar to me in some way, but I can't place you. Have we conducted some business or other, or was it perhaps from the service I recall your face?”

Tom looked at him hard but nothing came. “I was with the eightieth New York,” he said. “Served all over. Could have—wait!” Tom said, pointing a finger at the man. “Hold on. You're General Duryea.”

“At your service, sir. And you are?”

“Thomas Braddock.
Sergeant
Braddock,” Tom said with unusual emphasis. “Currently Captain of the Third precinct, New York City Police. And this is my wife, Mary,” he said as he rose to shake Duryea's hand. There was a look of shock on the general's face, as if Tom had just produced a rabbit from his hat.

“I never thought to see you in the living world again, Sergeant,” Duryea said, his eyes in a squint as if they might be deceiving him. He shook Tom's hand hard, pumping it with vigor as his wonder turned to delight. “My friends,” he said, turning to William and Frederick. “I'd like you to meet a dead man.”

Tupper dozed as the train rumbled northward. The trip up the Hudson had gone well. Nobody except the waiter had taken notice of him. He'd got a bit of dinner on the boat, as much as he could afford. His pockets were stuffed with buttered rolls when he left the table, not knowing how long it might be till he could afford to fill his stomach again. Tupper nodded off thinking of breakfasts he'd had the winter before when he was logging near Long Lake. Stacks of wheat cakes, bushels of eggs, corn bread, fried hams, blackened steaks, and rivers of coffee had his stomach growling.

Tupper slipped into a dream. He was in the longhouse of his old village. He saw the council fire but it was just ashes. All was in silence. He kicked at the ash and watched as a gray cloud rose. The ashes spread as he watched. Snaky gray tendrils groped in the longhouse. They seemed to almost have life and will, fanning out, blotting the contours of the lodge.

He stood speechless. He looked down and saw he was a boy, as he had been when he last saw the council fire burning. The cloud towered above him. It billowed in the darkened rafters and writhed in the corners devouring the place. He feared to move. The cloud would know. It would know, and come for him. But to stand still was to give up.

He turned to run but found himself falling. He fell and fell, landing on his back, staring up at the ashen cloud as it reached for him. He held out his hands to ward it off, but it did no good. It touched him on his legs and arms and chest. A deathly chill spread like ice on a pond.

Tupper woke with a gasp. He looked about him. People were staring. He put his head down again and tilted his hat over his face. He knew he should have slipped into a freight car. Tupper looked at his boots, stretched out before him. It wouldn't be the first time he'd walked the Adirondacks. By his reckoning, it would be thirty-five or forty miles to where he was headed. If he stuck to the woods by day and the road after dark he could cover that in a day and a half. He took a deep breath. The prospect of a long walk sent a warm rush through him, though the horror of his dream still lingered.

“The dream world is for men to use and learn from, Jim,” his grandfather had told him once when he'd been troubled by a nightmare. “Nothing in it can hurt you. The real monsters walk on two legs in the sun.” Tupper grinned to himself at the memory. He wondered what his grandfather might think of him now.

Tupper put that thought aside. He considered the things he'd need. A couple of buttered rolls were not going to see him through to where he was going. A good rubberized canvas tarp, a pack basket, some salt pork, a frying pan, and fishing line were added to his mental checklist. The trick was getting them without being remembered. Tupper closed his eyes once more, certain that something would come to him. Something always did.

Hours passed. North Creek had arrived and now was far behind. Tupper had walked off the train and out of town without looking back. The man from the North River docks got off the car behind, blending with the small crowd of tourists. He was different now. His clothes had changed and he looked like a local. Though he watched Jim go out of the corner of an eye, he made no move to follow. He waited for the stage with the others.

Tupper had been walking all through the afternoon and the dying of the day. The fancy clothes were gone. A sturdy pair of canvas pants and a plaid flannel shirt had replaced them. He was still disturbed at finding his bayonet missing.

He'd discovered it when he'd changed on the boat early that morning. He was still angry and couldn't imagine how he'd lost it. The only thing he could think was that it had fallen out of his boot somewhere between Fat Bess's and the docks. He'd liked the weapon and especially the bone handle. It had been made by a man who knew his knives, though it wasn't made for cutting.

Jim promised himself he'd fashion one just like it when he had the opportunity, and thought about how he'd make it as he walked north. All he carried was his small satchel. He'd stuck to the woods until he was beyond North River, though the going was rough and his progress slow.

Once dusk had settled on the forest he came back to the road. It had been empty as far as he could see. He made good time, though he had to watch his footing on the rocky, rutted ground. Glancing at the moon he guessed it was somewhere after eleven. Tupper loved the moon, always had.

Soíka gaákwa,
was the moon in the tongue of the Iroquois. Unlike the sun, it demanded nothing. He could gaze upon it and not lose his sight. It would not burn the skin nor wring the water out of him as its sister the sun would in the summer. The moon was there for him to touch, to enjoy at his ease as he would a lover. Though it wasn't his totem, it was always a source of power for him, a heavenly guide and secret strength. The night was Tupper's friend.

He walked stumbling little, though the blackness was almost complete. His stomach was empty. One last roll, flaking and hard, bounced in his pocket. He saved it for the time when his energy flagged. But for now his legs were strong and his lungs bottomless. He would walk like this for hours before food was necessary. He'd learned long ago how to put hunger aside, to dig deep into the reserves his grandfather had taught him were his.

“An
ongwéonwe
can walk the sun into the earth,” he used to say. The old man had proven it many times, taking him on hunts for days at a time with hardly anything to sustain them but boiled corn bread. “A man hunts better on an empty stomach,” the old man said.

Tupper did not walk alone. There was the moon to guide and the spirit of his grandfather for council, but other things were with him too. The voice of the wind in the forest reminded him of his dream on the train. More than once he stopped, hand on the butt of his pistol, listening. In those times the forest seemed to mock him, whispering that his senses were dulled by his time in the city of the white men. He somehow felt it was so, and walked in caution.

Only once did he see anyone on the road. It was a man in a carriage with a lantern swinging from a pole to light the way. He'd seen the light from far off and hid himself in the forest as the shay passed. Tupper couldn't make out the man's features, but a chill went through him when the driver turned his face toward him, as if sensing his presence. Jim stood a long time watching the bobbing lantern fade before following.

The sky in the west was showing the barest shade of charcoal gray when Indian Lake drew near. Tupper didn't need to see the town. He could smell it. Even before the dawn the rich spice of wood smoke flowed over the land. He was instantly hungry. Jim had left North Creek with none of the things he needed, deciding to find what he could on the way, rather than risk being remembered in the little town.

“If you don't want to be tracked, then don't walk in the mud,” the familiar voice counseled. The smell of wood smoke grew stronger, so strong in fact that Tupper wondered at it. He came to a dirt track leading off to his right. It was not much more than a converging shadow. The smoke seemed to be coming from that direction, so he veered off the main road and followed the track into the woods as the first gray ghosts of the day appeared between the trees. As he walked the smell of smoke grew stronger.

“Odiágweot,”
he grunted, speaking the old word for “smoke.” Tupper liked to think in the old language, even though few spoke it now. It came more naturally here after lying dormant in the city.

A mist of smoke lurked in the hollows as if it oozed up from the earth. He stayed well clear of those places but still kept on for a little way, hoping to find a cabin perhaps and an opportunity to take some of the things he needed. He walked like a bobcat on a scent, pausing now and again to sniff the wind and test the dark with narrowed eyes. He found the pistol in his hand but put it back in his pocket and reached into his boot for a more silent weapon before remembering it was gone.

Tupper turned a bend in the road. In the darkness it looked like a dead end but it wasn't. The road opened before him, the trees receding on either hand, scattered like a defeated army in full retreat. Before him a vast clearing spread into the distance.

In the wooly, gray halflight an army of stumps stood in a barren wasteland. Branches lay about in tangled confusion, reaching like gnarled and withered fingers. The mist of smoke was thicker here, flowing about the decaying stumps. Tupper shivered as he stood rooted before the field. Far off on the other side, maybe half a mile or more, there were spots of red glowing within high black piles that he knew to be the bodies of trees. From those piles the smoke oozed spreading across the land. “Charcoal burners!”

For a long time Tupper stood brooding. The fallen forest, the stumps, the sickly gray cloud of the slowly roasting logs held him in a morbid spell. This was what
honióo
did, spoiling and burning till nothing was safe, not fin nor fur, bark nor rock itself. The forest would be made to yield, skinned like a beaver, the carcass left to rot.

This had been Six Nation land, the hunting ground of the Mohawk, the keepers of the eastern door to the Iroquois longhouse. This land had been theirs for as long as the elders had memory.
Hodianok'doo Hediohe
had given it into their care long before the time of Hiawatha, and the trust had been passed from one generation to the next, unbroken.

Now, in the span of just a few generations, their land was plundered. The beaver were first, trapped almost to extinction for the fancy hats of the English and French. Their land had been whittled away by trade or treaty or theft. Once the
honióo
had it, the trees were next, then the iron from the ground and the game from the forests. Gone were the wolf, the moose, and the mountain lion,
never
to return. Streams and rivers ran brown with mud from logging and river drives. Even the fish were fewer now.

To those who knew it not, the Adirondacks were pristine. To those few of his race who still walked these woods, it was a bitter husk of what had been. That there was still hope for what remained seemed little consolation. Tupper felt these things more than thought them. They smoldered in his wilderness-wired brain with the sickly scent of singed hair and hide. It was as if some part of him had been burned away, he felt, as he squinted through dampened eyes over the wasteland before him. The low fog of the smoldering logs lapped at his feet as though he smoldered too.

An hour later Tupper was leaving Indian Lake. The hamlet had yielded what he needed with no more than the flutter of a sleeping eyelash. A clothesline, an open tool shed, a quiet barn, and an unlocked smokehouse were plundered. He had enough to keep him going if he had to take to the woods. He could disappear, drop below the surface of the green sea around him, and not come up for weeks.

That wasn't what he wanted, though. His notion about earning enough to buy himself a place had grown. It had driven him to the city to earn more than he ever could in the Adirondacks. But he had been cast back, a fish too foreign and too far from its native pond. Maybe he was meant to stay, and in the staying find his own path. If the long arm of the police did not reach him, he would find that way. That his might be the way of pain did not concern him.