The Road to Reckoning (13 page)

He nodded at Henry Stands, who nodded back after surmising him also. We entered the store, which was cheap for windows, for it was dark as a barn with lamps that flickered with poor oil. There were four round tables set about, each with a single man drinking from jugs alone as if they were foreign knights who did not have the tongue to sit and talk together. They eyed us once and looked down to their cuffs or mugs.

Once in I became aware of Henry Stands’s smell, which was profuse. I had bathed and had clean clothes. He stank of damp, fire, and road and not a little of rum. This is not how a salesman should present himself but I had small hope of doing business anyways. A cup of water was all I was expecting.

But Henry Stands had been holding out on me. I had forgotten who I rode with.

‘
Irish!
’ he called to the man behind the counter, which was not more than two dining tables boarded at the front with wood. I thought this opening an insult, but as it was the man grinned.

He wore a felted cap two sizes too big for him and a collarless shirt. A fat mustache made him seem friendly and furious in an instant but it was the friendly look that settled me.

‘Henry Stands!’ He stood up tall. ‘Long time.’

‘Not long enough, Irish.’ We strode up to them nailed dining tables. I guessed that ‘Irish’ was not the man’s real name, but the Irish were the first to come out here for the mines and the iron. He began to pour before Henry Stands had put his palms to the bar.

‘Can I get some water for the boy? Clean as you can without paying for it.’

Irish gave me some gin in the water and I grimaced but he smiled and hacked with a tremendous blade at half a sugarloaf he had on the bar. He dropped a sliver in the glass and gave me a pine stick to stir it.

I thanked him but was unable to remove my down-turned mouth.

‘What you doing around, Henry?’

Henry took his drink in one and pushed for more. I did not think this a good start for a salesman.

‘I am to Cherry Hill for escapees. You don’t know any escapees ’fore I get, do you, Irish?’

The man pretended to think for a moment. ‘I do not.’ He filled the shot glass again. ‘What is with the boy?’

‘I am returning him to my sister in Phillipsburg. He has been educated in Danville for a while.’

I did not reveal my astonishment at these lies. I felt safer for them. These were good lies. Henry was adept at them.

‘But I am also on to Paterson, New Jersey, to fulfill orders on a new trade I have lucked into.’

‘What trade is that, Henry?’

Not a bad hook fashioned. I supped my gin-water.

‘Well, I suppose my chief will not mind me showing you, Irish.’ He took out the wooden gun and displayed it wrist first. In the gloom it was impossible to distinguish wood from iron and Irish’s face stiffened and Henry Stands snorted.

‘It is just wood, Irish. A model for sales. Take a look at it.’

He took the model, gentle like a young girl’s hand. ‘So it is.’

Henry wiped his nose with his finger and then his brow with the same. ‘It is a new gun. It is five shots in the fist. But reliable and machine made. A revolving gun but cranked by itself like clockwork. I have fired it many times myself and resolved to undertaking them for my own guns.’

I piped up over my glass. ‘It is the future! Manufactured by Mister Samuel Colt in Paterson, New Jersey, sir!’

Irish looked at me, the gun in his hand. I smiled and he smiled back and winked as Irishmen do before they give you a small coin, but I did not get a coin.

‘You use these, Henry?’

Henry plucked it back. ‘Let me show you how.’ He turned on the room.

‘Gentlemen,’ he addressed the lone drinkers. ‘I have a wooden model gun here in my right hand. It does not shoot, it will not shoot. Take no offense, but I will use you in demonstration. You do not have to stand, but if you have pistol, rifle, or knife about you, draw it now. For show
only
. This is just a piece for Irish here.’

The four men looked from Henry Stands to each other. Henry showed the gun in an open palm. ‘It is wood only! I wish you to throw down on me, without firing, if you will, and I will show you how this magnificent piece is … that is to say … how it is … magnificent. As I say.’

I watched the men still not stir and then I looked at Henry Stands and empathized with them. It was the holsters on his belt. I coughed and pointed to his waist.

Henry looked down and muttered through his beard as he emptied his belt and slapped his pistols to the counter and turned back on his audience.

‘Now. Throw down on me.’

Slowly the men’s hands went beneath the tables, their eyes moving from the real pistols on the counter to one another to a wooden toy in a fat fist.

A hand and a dark blade came up on the left.

And that was all Henry Stands needed.

He flashed the wooden gun at the hand and before I had time to blink he fanned his left palm over the hammer four times before anyone had cleared the table’s surface.

The faint noise was only four flat cracks of wood against wood that almost sounded as one. The only cloud was the show of dust from Henry Stands’s boots as he shifted to fire. The gentleman at the last table was so startled by the imaginary shot and fire that he dropped his pistol to the floor and apologized to Henry Stands for doing so.

I clenched my fist and punched the counter secretly to myself. The shots were quieter than his wind-rifle but no less impressive.

Henry Stands had demonstrated the Paterson as a shootist would, as the gun should only be shown, and some pity for that. It was a killing tool after all and a right fast and deadly one in the right, or wrong, hands. For street-work. I doubted that even mister Colt knew that his revolving cylinder could be utilized so.

Henry Stands thanked them sullenly and spun back to the counter and dropped the gun to its whiskey-sticky surface.

‘There now, Irish. What you make of that? Four desperate men shot and saved from their wives in a heartbeat!’

‘That is very impressive, Henry.’

‘You can bet your mother it is. I have a letter from President Jackson affirming it.’

I jumped in. ‘And barrels of them and revolving carbines have been sold to the Texas army! Our army and navy will take them up within the year!’

Henry nodded. ‘And I am authorized to sell them for ten dollars apiece. Just two dollars’ deposit—or trade—to confirm and you could sell them for three times that worth. You could have as many as you want in a month for they are factory made for quality and swift delivery. I have a book here full of orders. Take it or leave it. Take it or lose out to a man in Stoddartsville, where I will travel next.’

Henry Stands relished his new role. He had not looked at me to show any amusement but I had never heard him so verbose. He was as vocal as any of his birds. More so, as they only looked at each other silently across a page.

‘How many would you like to take, Irish? I could do with some rum and potatoes and bacon for them.’

‘I could do that, Henry. And I surely would.’ Irish picked up the wooden piece and handed it back. ‘I only regret that you were not here two days ago.’

Henry Stands’s face became like stone; not a muscle moved as he spoke.

‘Why is that?’

Irish grinned, or kept grinning, as I am not sure if he ever stopped from the time we entered. He reached below his bar-top and I saw Henry’s fingers twitch to his pistols but they abated to see the reveal.

We could not have divined.

Irish raised and slammed to the wood beside the model its steel brother. Not a mark between them other than the nature of them, but there was no doubt that the steel one had a story ahead of ours to tell.

Henry Stands still stood solidified, but I stared at an explosion before me and drew away from the sight of the real gun that should not have been there.

Should not have been there!

I looked to the door. The dark of the saloon made it already the night. It was just afternoon. We could make hours before dark; we could run. Not yet in the night. Run. The daylight calling me.

Henry Stands’s voice brought me back to stand as he spoke to Irish.

‘Where did you get that?’ he drawled but low and loaded enough that Irish would have to answer if he was to continue on.

‘Two days gone. A young trader sold me two pistols of the same. He offered me Easton dollars in exchange for specie and if I gave three coins more for the guns.’

Henry Stands lolled his head at me and I read his mind.

Understand you that almost every county had its own paper notes. My father had taken notes issued from the Easton and Wilkes-Barre turnpike. You exchanged these for coin along the road and the canals. Easier to carry, the notes that is, but specie, actual coin, means more and always will. It is the metal of its worth. Do not let your government convince you otherwise or you are as lost as in a tornado with the paper whirling all around you. They will take it from you if you let them and charge you for its disappearance, hiding the coin behind their backs.

I stared at Henry Stands. These were my father’s dollars, which only Thomas Heywood would have changed for coin or for food to feed his demon mouth. One of the guns lay silent on the counter. My father had been alive when I had known them last and the memory of that terror had the door pulling at my back and my legs moving. Only Henry’s voice stayed me from running.

‘Two days, you say?’ He touched the barrel of the unique revolver. I noticed the men at the tables still paid attention, their eyes on Henry Stands’s broad back, I guess not sure if their part had ended or not.

‘Two days,’ Irish said.

‘You get the name of this man who sold them?’ Henry asked quietly. His finger pushed the gun away for an inch.

‘No,’ Irish said. ‘It was a good business. I did well enough to not ask names.’

I could not hold myself any longer.

‘It was Thomas Heywood!’ I yelled, and Henry glowered at me but I was riled with fear. ‘Those are my father’s guns! The man killed my father and took them and you have bought them from a murderer!’

‘
Thomas!
’ Henry bellowed with a raised hand set to side-winder me, but he was a length away. I was more thrown by his use of my name, his first yet. Still I backed away a step.

‘Those are my father’s guns!’ My eyes blurred, and damn if my lip wasn’t trembling, and I cursed myself and covered my jaw with my hand. ‘You will give them back!’

Irish shook his head and studied me like I was in a cage. ‘What is he about, Henry?’

‘Never mind,’ Henry growled, and stuffed the wooden Paterson in his belt and his pistols to their home. ‘The boy is touched.’

He rushed on and grabbed my coat at my back and lifted me and I hung like a cat by its scruff as he strode to the door with laughter behind us.

I kicked the air and he shook me and I was out on the porch with the cold stinging my wet eyes and his rough face staring down at me. This was the closest I had been to that face. His beard was grayer up close and had bits like wool sprouting from his cheeks. The whites of his eyes were the same as the skin around them, like old, yellowed bruises.

‘Who else sells those guns, boy?’ He fixed me with a rheumy eye that bolted me to the wood under me. I could not lie. I had seen one other man in mister Colt’s factory but that did not matter. I knew those guns. They were mine. I pulled my leather book with the linen pages from my coat and held it to his face.

‘They are numbered, Mister Stands! In single figures! You see if the number of that gun does not match the first page of this book! You see if it don’t!’

He straightened and plucked the book from me. ‘Mind your tongue, boy.’ He leafed through to the first pages and then looked over the edge of it down at my red eyes. ‘I don’t need to reckon on these numbers, do I?’

‘No, sir.’ I shook my head.

‘Then we will suppose that your Thomas Heywood is on the road.’ He looked about to the hills. ‘Two days … Did your father have more Easton dollars?’

I did not know and I said so. I looked about also, every tree hiding a man in a saw-toothed coat or a hat with an Indian hatband. Henry must have seen my chest beating.

‘Boy.’ His tone was grim and he passed back the wooden gun from his belt. ‘Don’t be getting afraid on me now. I would not consider that kindly.’

I gathered myself and stuffed the model into my own belt. ‘No, sir. But can we go?’

Henry Stands walked to the horses and I alongside. He was ruminating on our supplies. ‘We have a murth of your sofkee. I will shoot a rabbit. We will do well enough with or without rum.’ He paused and looked back to the store. ‘Irish may take some powder for gin. I will try him.’

I thought of reminding him of the value of the spectacles for trade but I was sure Henry Stands would not
countenance such a sacrifice.

‘You have anything else to trade, boy?’

I took out the brass compass.

‘A bull’s-eye watch?’

‘A compass.’

Henry Stands kept walking. ‘You are a curse.’

He straightened up the horses and checked his rifle’s holster. ‘Wait here. I’ll take some powder and shot for Irish. I need only a handful for my pistols.’

‘Where are we to go, Mister Stands?’

He made off to the store without an answer. He returned with two
quart bottles, which he deposited in his coat, and as he mounted talked to me as if to himself.

‘If your man has Easton dollars he will trade them along the road. He will go back to Wilkes Barre or on to Stoddartsville. I do not think he is out for you. Just coin and whiskey.’

‘What about us?’ I found a rock I could get up from and impressed myself with my single try to get on Jude Brown even with one hand on my wooden gun to stop it jumping.

Henry Stands wheeled his horse and looked up and down the road as if he could see for miles. ‘Well, I think we will go higher. Go over the Lehigh river and through the shades.’

‘The
shades
? The Shades of Death you spoke of?’

‘I said I would. I said your man would not take the high ground.’

‘None of that sounds promising.’