The Vanquished (6 page)

“You look big enough to me.”

“Sure,” he said, and frowned when he looked away. He was not a stranger. He remembered the brown flesh of Maria, the contempt in her look. He had been down the trail and seen the cribs of Stockton and Sacramento. The body of a woman was a wonder and a mystery but not unfamiliar to him. He had only half a dollar in his pocket, and he knew Gail knew it. That was what puzzled him about the misty near-smile in her eyes, brightening the interest already there. “I ain't that big,” he said, and saw her shake her head. The whores had laughed at him sometimes; they had seldom shown him any smile other than a calculated upturning at the lip corners and a brittle, weary look.
Maria
, he thought, and cursed inwardly. “What for?”

Whatever the answer was, it was only in her eyes, and he did not recognize it. He shook himself. “Aren't you supposed to be tending bar?”

“I let one of the dealers take over. I wanted some air.”

“You've got it,” he said.

Her laughter was soft and throaty. “Don't fool, Charley.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Don't pretend to be so hard. You're not that way.”

“No?”

She laughed again. “No,” she said, in mocking echo of him. She directed one long-lashed look at him and said, “Where will you sleep tonight?”

“I don't know. I sold my shack two days ago. Maybe in the stable loft.”

“That's cold at night,” she said. “Use my house. Here's the key.”

The iron key dropped into his palm. When he looked up she was going away, back up the walk to the Triple Ace.

Lights sparkled out of windows. A small bunch of men came up the street, laughing and talking with hearty familiarity. They went past and left in their wake the residue of their laughter, soft and insolent and sour like a taste on his tongue. He stood alone in the shadows and beyond the roof of a low, flat building across the street he could see the branches of a tall tree swaying in the wind. The cool air bit through his clothing. It was a lonely hour. He puzzled, frowning, and presently settled his flat-slab shoulders, turning along the street. When he passed the stable's big open doorway, an earthy scent, damp and dark, issued from it. He tarried there. A dark tomcat shot out of the adjacent corral and spurted across the street. Wind made a thin hollow sound along the street; he was a solitary warmth in the night until a lantern came bobbing forward through the stable and the Negro hostler stood holding it shoulder-high. Its wavering flare glistened off the dark surface of his skin and eyes; his teeth flashed. “Howdy, Charley.”

“Howdy.”

“Fixin' to spend the night up here? I don't mind.”

“I guess not,” Charley said. “Obliged anyway.” He went away, with the upraised lantern casting his shadow before him so that he trampled it into the dust when he walked. He turned into the narrow alley and walked slowly through it to Gail's little white house, and went in, using the key she had given him. Inside, he lighted a lamp and set it on the central table and turned its wick down low, and settled on a stuffed chair, from which he regarded the motionless, closed door through half-lidded eyes. Uncertainties troubled him, and too restless to lie still, he went to the door and flung it open and stood with the night wind brushing his cheeks. The image of a face wavered before him, temples shot with gray—the hard-eyed face of Norval Douglas. He thought of Douglas and thought of the man's toughness and self-assurance, and wondered whether he should follow Douglas. Cool air freshened his skin and now he thought back to his brother Ed, and the thinking was not new. Ed was in his grave now, but that was of no matter. Charley remembered in detail the day Ed had left home. Ed had come out of the barn with the horse he had bought from Pizner's neighboring farm, and Charley had come out of the house in time to see Ed's belongings loaded on the saddle and Ed leading the horse up to the shack, a tall youth with long ash-colored hair like Charley's own; Ed had called out to the house, and then Charley's father had come out, his Creole stepfather, and behind him Charley's mother had appeared timidly in the doorway, saying nothing, only putting her bleak hollow eyes like dead eyes on Ed and holding Charley's shoulders with her veined knobby-fingered hands. Charley had smelled the odor of whisky strong on his stepfather and he had listened wincingly to his stepfather's tyrannical voice, strange and always unfamiliar with its French-Indian accents: “Put up that horse and unpack those things. There is much work to be done and the Lord did not make you to idle away time adventuring.”

Ed's answer had been gentle but firm. “I'm leaving, old man.”

“The Lord will punish your soul. Have you a soul, Edwin? No matter—you'll be punished.” His stepfather had drawn up his thin shoulders and laid his glance like a whip with flat righteousness on Ed. “Unsaddle that horse now, boy!”

“No, old man.”

His stepfather had clamped his jaws then and wheeled inside; and only then had his mother moved, lifting her hands reluctantly from Charley's shoulders and going down to stand beside Ed, touching his arm hesitantly and saying, “Go quickly—he's gone after the switch.”

“Let him.” There had been a grimness in Ed's eyes and Charley had stood back against the wall beside the door, watching with mute amazement. His mother had stepped away from Ed with fear on her face, and his stepfather had come out with the birchrod. Charley knew the sting of it. Now his stepfather had come down with the switch and Ed had stood his ground. His stepfather's demeanor was that of a man half raging and half drunk and when he had lifted the rod, Ed had jumped forward and pinned his arm, and Ed, with his face pressed close to his stepfather's, had spoken hissing: “You listen to me, old man. I've seen your pious preaching and your drunk crying and the way you like to push us all. I've seen it and taken it. I'm moving on—I don't expect you'll ever see me again, only if I ever hear you've hurt Ma or Charley, then I'll be back and I'll bust a hoe over your whisky-logged head. Now drop that Goddamned rod and step away from me, you old bastard.”

It was the only time Charley had ever seen fear in the old man's eyes. The hand had opened, dropping the birchrod, and Ed had pushed the old man back, coming forward then and kneeling by Charley. He had put his hands on Charley's shoulders and said, “One day you'll be big enough to do the same thing, kid. I'll see you somewhere, when that time comes. But meantime you watch out for Ma and be a good kid, eh?” Ed had solemnly shaken his hand and wheeled abruptly to his horse, brushing the old man with his shoulder, and gathered the reins in quick synchronization with his rise to the saddle. The horse had turned and Ed had ridden away, followed by Charley's wistful eyes and his mother's rising tears and his stepfather's hoarse recriminations: “The Lord will avenge me! Let no man's son turn against the father—damnation upon the son—you shall lie in Hell!” And the old man's accent had made Charley want to laugh and want to hit him, to smash that red-lined face and crush it soft. The old man's arms had ridden up and down in exasperation and rage.

When Ed was out of sight down the fence-bordered road, the old man had turned and Charley had seen the angry round redness of his eyes. “Let no one speak his name in this house again. He is no son of mine.”

“Neither am I,” Charley had whispered, and the old man not hearing him had gone inside after his jug of corn.

The cold night wind slapped his eyes, making him blink. He stepped back into Gail's parlor and pushed the door shut and went back to the stuffed chair. In a moment he was up again, turning the lamp wick higher and carrying the lamp around with him while he searched the place and presently found, in a high kitchen cupboard, a clay bottle of forty-rod whisky. He took it down and poured a mugful and took the mug and the lamp back into the parlor, and sat up with his drink nursing it while he tried to push dismal memories away so that he could think about the good hours—riding the old bay plow horse up the riverbank toward town under a warm summer sky with dragon-flies and bees making strange writings in the air and underfoot the passing of a broad field of brown-eyed yellow daisies. A hunting trip when he was ten, his brother showing him how to pour the powder down the muzzle and grease the patch and patch the ball and ram the ball home, halfcock the big knurled hammer and cap the nipple, set the front sight in the seat of the rear notch and draw his bead, and squeeze off the shot, afterward stepping aside to peer past the gently puffed cloud of black powdersmoke. Skinning an antelope out. Lying on his back under a silent temple of green treetops interlaced across the cloud-tufted sky, an ant crawling over the back of his motionless hand. Tramping through a fall of new clean snow to feed the stock in the barn. Skipping stones across the white-rippled surface of the river, deep water clear as sun-green glass. The smell of grass and wildflowers and pine needles, strong and heady the scent of the land.

The front door opened and Charley lifted his head sleepily in time to see the woman Gail slip inside and close the door softly. The pink-lavender curtains stirred. She turned to face him, throwing off her wrap, and said, “I thought you'd be sleeping.”

“No.”

She saw the mug in his hand and smiled. “You don't miss much, do you?”

He raised the mug to his lips and felt the amber liquid scald its way into his belly. When he put the mug down he grinned, showing his teeth. “I didn't figure you'd mind.”

“Why should I? Help yourself.” She sounded jaded. Through the crack-open window he heard the wind making a tune in the streets. She dropped her gray knit wrap on a table, put her level glance on him and let her hand hang idly touching the bundled wrap. Her lips parted, seeming to cling moistly to each other.

He gripped the whisky mug again, tightly in his fist, and suddenly he had the strange feeling that he was experiencing the exact moment when the fluidity of his youth was beginning to crystallize into its final form. The wind, no more than a gentle and almost imperceptible breeze, seemed quite distinct in his ears. His hand relinquished the mug and slid back toward him along the surface of the table. He noticed the yellow unsteady flickering of the lamp in the corner of his vision. He felt the pressure of the chair's stuffing against his thighs and buttocks and back and shoulders. His head turned and he found his eyes fixing themselves on the strange incongruity of the empty, clean mustache cup at the end of the table. In the confused turmoil of his sensations, he was mainly aware of the girl's quiet advance and of his own hard breathing. He stood up, made irritable by a consciousness of his own awkwardness, and he said, “What's going on?”

She swayed when she moved; it was an unconscious gracefulness that was part of her at all times. She was so close to him that he could feel the flutter of her breath. She tossed her head back. “You're a good-looking fellow, Charley. I hope your eyes stay clean like that.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“You're fine,” she breathed. He felt the soft touch of her fingers, toying with his sleeve, and then when she walked past him he followed her with his eyes. He felt afraid. She went to the kitchen and came back in a minute with a glass half full of red-brown richness. She sipped from it and looked at him with her long eyes over the rim of the glass. Her lips pushed forward thoughtfully and Charley said, “What's on your mind?”

“You.”

“What about me?”

“Don't be so damned innocent, Charley. You keep trying to hide behind your age.”

“I do?”

“Sometimes you're a little slow, Charley,” she suggested.

“Well, maybe I am,” he said. Her smile was, he thought, a little sad. He did not understand, but he did not need to. His experience taught him nothing about this moment, and while he tried to think his own feelings betrayed him: he lifted his hands palms-up and displayed great, inarticulate energy, but it was of no avail; he found himself wordlessly encircling the woman's body with his arms. He thrust his face forward and sought her lips. He felt the warm hunger of her mouth, the insistent thrust of her body, and yet, through all of it, there was a nagging corner of his mind that lived through this and was not touched by it except for a dim, faraway regret.

CHAPTER 5

Charley walked slowly down the street to Jim Woods's saloon. The hour was early; the place was almost deserted. Out of his last fifty cents he spent twenty-five on breakfast and the rest, in the course of the morning, on mugs of beer. Norval Douglas did not appear that morning, nor did Jim Woods himself. The wood-frame clock ticked loudly and rang the hours. The bartender told Charley that Woods had taken the mail coach to Stockton to see a man about selling the saloon. No one seemed to know Norval Douglas's whereabouts. Senator Crabb had returned to San Francisco the night before. And, the bartender confided, Chuck Parker was in town.

Mention of Parker's name made Charley's hands become still. It awakened unhappy memories of pain and embarrassment. “Did Parker break out?” he said.

“Released,” the barkeep said, stroking his mustache. “Served his time, I guess.”

“Hasn't been that long, has it? A year?”

“I don't exactly recall,” the barkeep said, and went.

Charley borrowed a pack of cards and played solitaire through the afternoon until at sundown hunger made him impatient with the game and he swept the cards together and turned them in to the bartender. Remembering that there was no money in his pocket, he made friendly talk with the bartender and managed to talk the man into slipping him a few sandwiches. He took one or two more from the tray on the bar when no one was looking, and that was the sum of his supper, consumed quickly in the alley behind the saloon. Afterward he drifted the streets, now and then stopping by Woods's place to find out if Norval Douglas had returned. Someone said he had gone out into the valley to solicit enlistments in Crabb's party. He was expected back any time—but midnight came and went and he did not appear.