The Hanging of Samuel Ash (22 page)

“How'd you know that?”

“Saw you jump off the train on my way in to the shop. I hear you're looking for someone by the name of Samuel Ash?”

“Right again,” Hook said.

“Bill at the filling station said a one-armed man had been asking about a Samuel Ash. Not hard to figure. There's rare few one-armed men in Carmen riding in on a grain hopper.”

“Can you help me out?”

Patch ran his hand into the shoe to check for nail points.

“There's no Samuel Ash in Carmen,” he said. “Never has been. Now, we had a Samuel Newsome, but he died of tetanus when a rat bit him on the finger while he scooped wheat out of his granary into that old Chevy truck of his. He paid too much for that truck, you know. It had over a hundred thousand when he bought it. That's a hell of a lot of miles for a wheat truck. They sit most the year, so you got to figure how old that damn truck must have been.

“Anyway, Sam had a son named Roy, or so he thought, but everyone figured Roy's real father to be Ben Clemson, the veterinarian over to Cherokee. Ben cut Samuel's bore hogs every season. But squealing pigs gave Samuel migraine headaches, so he always came to town to shoot pool when Ben showed up. Some say Samuel got more services than he paid for, if you know what I mean.

“So when Samuel Newsome died from lockjaw, Roy went off to vet school like his real father had, but then he flunked chemistry three semesters in a row. He's the city plumber now and a damn poor one.

“But there's no Samuel Ash in Carmen and never has been.”

“Maybe I'll check the cemetery,” Hook said.

“You can do that, I suppose. There's two of 'em you know, the city cemetery and the orphanage cemetery outside of town. Putting that orphanage cemetery out there just wasted good wheat land if you ask me. Guess they didn't approve of them kids being buried with the town folks. But either way, you ain't going to find no Samuel Ash.

“Course, you could always talk to Juice Dawson, the undertaker. Juice figures himself to be an important man in these parts. He sits on the orphanage board and the school board and any other board he can find will take him. Picks up a little business that way.”

“He's on my list,” Hook said.

“Know why they call him Juice, don't you? He drinks a quart of apple juice every morning for breakfast. Says it keeps him regular. What he don't tell you is he eats a half-pound of cheddar cheese for lunch every day, sharp cheddar he gets over to the grocery and at a dang high price. Lord knows what would happen if he'd miss a dose of juice someday.”

“Right. Well, thanks for the help.”

“Guess you'll be needing a place to stay. The Frisco don't make that Avard run but once a week, you know. Course, you could always stay with Mamie Stokes. She rents her upstairs out, but she won't take less than a month's rent. I figure you ain't interested in staying in Carmen any longer than necessary.”

“Well, I haven't thought that far ahead,” Hook said.

“I got a room in the back, five a week. Course, there's no bathroom, but the city park's just across the street. They don't lock the bathroom up anymore since Samuel Newsome died. He used to peek through the exhaust fan and watch the girls. And there's a shower, too, though it don't have hot water since the harvest crews left it running and cost the city two hundred and fifteen dollars in electricity and water bills.”

Hook walked to the window. From there he could see the line of hoppers waiting to be unloaded at the elevator.

“I'm going to take you up on that, Patch,” he said, reaching for his billfold. “Here's a week.”

Patch folded the fiver into his pocket. “I'll leave the back door unlocked. I got a boy, Skink, opens up for me, so you might not want to shoot him with that gun you're carrying there. He cleans the shop early. Skink's an apprentice, I guess you'd say, though all he thinks about is girls and eating. Grew up out there in the Spirit of Agape Orphanage. He's turning eighteen, and they're fixing to kick him out. Says he wants to be a cobbler, but mostly there just ain't nothing else around here, and he's too dang skinny for the army.”

*   *   *

Hook started at the west side and worked his way to the wheat field on the east. Just like Patch had said, he could find nothing to suggest that Samuel Ash or any other Ash had ever lived in Carmen. The whole process took longer than he'd anticipated, since the epitaphs turned out to be an unexpected distraction for him. Something about them drew him in.

After picking up a couple of candy bars at the grocery, he walked to the north side of town and then out on the road leading to the orphanage cemetery.
SPIRIT OF AGAPE CEMETERY
had been painted on the metal archway leading into the grounds.

Inside, the road made a full circle. Headstones, adhering to the road's shape, formed a ring. Modest stones cropped from the grass, while yet others bore only brass markers. On the far side, he found no graves at all. One area had been recently dug for dirt, which served as fill for dressing out settled graves.

Unlike most of the headstones in the city's cemetery, the orphanage epitaphs contained no personal messages, no
LOVING DAUGHTERS
, or
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
, or
OUR LITTLE ANGEL
. Instead, they touted the perils of a misguided life:
NOT MY WILL BUT THINE BE DONE
;
LET HIS OWN WORKS PRAISE HIM AT THE GATES
;
LIFE IS NOT FOREVER
.

Afterward, Hook stood at the gate and looked out over the landscape. The evening settled in, and the buzz of locusts rose and fell from the cedars that had been planted along the drive. Patch had been right. Nothing in either cemetery suggested that Samuel Ash had ever lived in Carmen.

*   *   *

He clicked on the light in his room. The space, not much larger than a closet, had been furnished with a bunk, bedside table, and a single straight-backed kitchen chair. Absent of windows, the room had only a single door at the back, which led into the shoe shop.

He undressed, laid his clothes across the chair, and slipped under the covers. The candy bars he'd eaten had long since disappeared, and his stomach now growled in protest.

For some time he lay awake in the darkness considering the possibilities. If Samuel Ash never lived here, why did he list it as his hometown when he joined the army? If he never lived here, where
did
he live? And why would he lie about it in the first place?

Pulling the blanket up around his neck, he listened to the cricket that had tuned up outside his door. He hoped that little Bet had fed Mixer as she'd promised. He hoped that the caboose and casket were still secured. But most of all he hoped he'd not hauled Samuel Ash to a place where he didn't even belong.

 

24

 

H
OOK CRAWLED OUT
of bed and rubbed the sleep from his face. He needed to shower, but without windows in the room, he couldn't be certain of the time. In any case, he wanted to scour the town again, see if anyone knew of Samuel Ash.

After dressing and putting on his prosthesis, he checked the door to the shop, finding it unlocked. He could see a boy at the front of the shop sitting at Patch's desk with his head on his arms.

Hook made his way through the network of machines and said, “Hello.”

The boy jumped straight up out of the chair.

“Holy shit,” he said, wiping the drool from his chin. “Who are you?”

“Hook Runyon. I'm renting the room back there. Didn't mean to startle you.”

“Just resting my eyes,” he said. “Patch didn't tell me he'd rented out the room.”

The boy appeared shorter than he was, slumping at the shoulders and burying his hands under his arms. Though he had ample hair on his head, he'd slicked it back with oil to form a helmet.

In the absence of body hair, his skin shined under the light, and his eyes, little more than black dots, stared out from under hairless brows. A weak chin failed to separate his neck from his face, and his mouth stretched in a thin line beneath a spade-like nose.

“You must be Skink,” Hook said.

“How'd you know?” he said.

“Just a guess.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm Patch's apprentice. Mostly I just listen and clean up.”

“It's steady work, I suppose,” Hook said. “You out of school?”

He nodded his head. “Graduated in May. The orphanage's going to kick me out come my eighteenth birthday. I'd figured on joining the army, but, what with the war over, they're a bit more particular now. So I'm thinking maybe I can open up a cobbler shop somewhere.”

Hook said, “How long you been at the orphanage?”

Skink licked his lips and rubbed at his elbow, which looked like the business end of a navel orange.

“Long as I can remember,” he said. “A drunk found me in a trash can a few hours after I was born. At first, he thought to kill me with a stick, thinking I might be a rat or a blind kitten, but then I started mewling.

“Anyway, the police brought me to the Spirit of Agape Orphanage. They took me in, figuring I'd die soon enough anyway, but Miss Eldridge, the matron, put me in a shoe box, set it on the oven door, and fed me goat's milk. I lived, as you can see, though Miss Eldridge died of the tick fever last summer.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“They have a new matron now, Miss Feola. She don't look like Miss Eldridge. I seen her come out of the shower one day, by mistake, and my heart nearly stalled.”

“I know the feeling,” Hook said, taking out a cigarette. “Care for a smoke?”

“I only smoke Cuban cigars,” he said.

“You like it at the orphanage?” Hook asked.

“That's sure a funny-looking arm,” he said. “Does it work?”

“In a fashion,” Hook said, picking up a pencil off the desk. “It doesn't do so well for holding hands.”

Skink picked up his broom and leaned forward on the handle. “They got a rule out there for everything,” he said. “A body can't breathe without a rule, and, if it's broken, the superintendent don't let it pass.”

“What's his name?”

“Bain Eagleman.”

“What kind of punishment does he hand out?”

“Walking the circle, mostly.”

“The circle?”

“The road in the orphanage cemetery, round and round until Mr. Eagleman says stop. I've wondered how many of those graves out there were kids who just fell over dead from walking the circle.

“And then there's Buck, the farm foreman. He's got a room out in the barn. Mr. Eagleman says it's good for kids to raise their own food, especially kids living off the public dole. Makes 'em respect what's given to 'em free of charge.

“The boys do the milking and mucking out the barn. The girls do the gardening and canning. Bessie Roper canned a green frog one time. When Miss Eldridge opened a jar of jam for breakfast, she wet her pants. I think Bessie's still out there walking the circle.

“There's no pleasing Buck, though, no matter. He yells and cusses and cracks his cow whip all the time. He popped Jim Stoop's earlobe off with that whip. The cook sewed it back on with catgut, so it didn't hurt nothing, I guess.

“Buck said Jim Stoop got between him and a contrary milk cow, and he didn't see that earlobe until the whip had already left the station. I never believed it.”

“What's an orphanage doing with a foreman?” Hook asked.

“He ain't no real foreman, though he sure thinks so. He milks the cows, mows the grass, and hauls out the trash. Sometimes he spies on the kids who are walking the circle and then tells Mr. Eagleman if they don't finish. One night he spied on me, but I saw him. So when he left, I followed him back. He went into Mr. Eagleman's office just like I thought. When he came out, he had Mr. Eagleman's trash can.”

“You said he took care of the trash.”

“Yeah, but then he went through it and stuck something in his pocket. I think he takes stuff doesn't belong to him sometimes.”

Hook searched out a chair. Dusting off the toe of his shoe, he said, “Did you ever know a Samuel Ash, Skink?”

Skink got up and made a couple swipes at the floor with his broom.

“Knew a Samuel Newsome. He used to watch the girls in the park shower.”

“I mean at the orphanage.”

“Kids come and go at the orphanage. Lots of them were just left behind by folks. Sometimes the parents start feeling guilty or sober up and come back to claim their young. Sometimes kids just run away, I seen lots of that. And the orphanage don't go looking that hard, 'cause of the expense, Mr. Eagleman says. Says it takes food right out of the mouths of everyone else. Says runaways deserve whatever happens to them, even if they wind up dead in a bar ditch. Says they didn't care what their running away did to hurt everyone else so to hell with them.”

Skink pushed the trash can to the side and swept under Patch's desk. “I never heard of no Samuel Ash, though,” he said.

*   *   *

The next morning, after yet another lost day, Hook looked up Skink, who had fallen asleep in the channel of light that shot through the front window. He woke him up and inquired about a shower.

Skink found him a towel and a bar of soap. “Park's over there,” he said.

“Thanks,” Hook said.

“You going to shower with your arm on?”

“A man's got to keep clean, doesn't he?” Hook said.

“Don't it rust up?”

“Not if the oil's changed regular.”

“Samuel Newsome showed me how to look at the girls through the exhaust fan one time. I didn't see nothing but Mildred Bonfield's big butt.” Skink shrugged. “It's cold water, you know, and there's roaches big as yard gophers. They say one carried off Ben Hosier's wiener dog. He never did find him.”