The Winter Family (27 page)

Burns rubbed the lower half of his face, raised his eyebrows, and shrugged.

They walked outside to the cheers of the crowd. A few men came forward urgently as if they had something to say.

“We already heard it,” Honest Jim said. “We already heard it all. They’re treating us no better than the secessionists. That’s what happens when you stand up to Republicans. But don’t fret, boys! Mickey and I are here for you. We ain’t scared! We don’t care a whit for those murderers! You watch us and see if we don’t vote three times today!”

The crowd cheered again. They were drunk and shoddily dressed. A few police officers in their blue uniforms lurked toward the back.

“You boys all voted at this poll?” Burns said, waving at the voting poll in the alley between his office and the saloon.

“Yes sir,” one drunk said. “They won’t let us vote no more here.”

“All right,” Burns said. “You come on up with us to vote again. Don’t you have no fear. Me and Honest Jim’ll take care of you. Anyone interfering with you patriots’ll have the police to answer to.”

“Hip hip, hooray!” the crowd shouted.

They set off, a drunken procession with Honest Jim and Mickey Burns at its head and a layer of police officers guarding its flank, marching like an army off to war, or a herd of pigs trudging up the Bridge of Sighs.

The first stop was a voting station in a cheap hotel, and everything went well. The men cast ballots under the names of famous presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Abraham Lincoln. Everyone was drinking. While Honest Jim pumped the hand of the hotel keeper and made jokes and grinned, Mickey Burns had a low and urgent conversation with a group of ward heelers. These precinct captains had each been provided one thousand dollars in walking-around money by King Conor and had at least ten lieutenants each. All of them were telling the same story.

“I been robbed,” a dark, intense-looking Italian said. “Mickey, you know I never steal from you! Never! I use the money like-a you told me! I had all-a my boys! But they all had guns! You said the police would protect me!”

“What the hell, Mickey,” another said. “You hired all these new cops but they’re just getting gunned down. What do you expect us to do?”

“I expect you to tough it out, boys, if you want us to remember you after Election Day,” Burns said. “If it was easy work it wouldn’t pay so well, now would it?”

“Mickey!” the Italian cried reproachfully.

Burns made a gesture with his head toward Honest Jim, who shouted, “All right, boys? Anyone want to vote again? No? Then on to the next one!”

The men streamed out of the hotel. Burns and Honest Jim stayed behind.

“Who were those grim buggers?” Honest Jim asked. “More ward heelers?”

“Yes,” Burns said. “Ross’s boys are robbing them. They’re going to make a pretty penny out of this.”

“They’ll need it,” Honest Jim said. “Whole city’s going to turn against them. Word’s spreading fast. Right now people are scared, but we’ve got ’em outnumbered ten to one. Just can’t let ’em intimidate us, Mickey.”

Burns didn’t reply.

Outside the repeaters were milling around a flatbed wagon with a number of young toughs sitting on it.

“What’s going on here?” Honest Jim cried.

“Those dirty bastards are holed up in the Riel Tavern,” one of the toughs shouted. “They’ve taken over the polling station. They shot Jeffrey!”

“Did they now?” Honest Jim said. “Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?”

“Jimmy,” Burns said. “Hold on to that temper of yours. Let’s think about the best way—”

Honest Jim’s hand clamped down hard on Burns’s shoulder, making Burns wince, and he grinned a terrible grin that had nothing to do with humor or happiness. It was more like a monkey showing its teeth to a rival in a dispute over a coconut.

“Maybe Conor was right about you,” Honest Jim said. “But that’s a question for another day. For now, if you show weakness before these men, just know I’ll tear your fucking arms off.”

Honest Jim wheeled to the crowd.

“Whose city is it?” he howled. “Eh? It’s ours! We’re taking it! We’re taking Chicago!”

The men roared. There must have been close to sixty, including the police officers.

“Follow me!” Honest Jim cried.

Lukas saw the mob coming up the road toward the saloon. He hesitated, the image of Winter coated in blood still swimming in his mind, but eventually he turned and banged on the door.

“Charlie!” he cried. “Charlie, get out here! Charlie, there’s a whole pack—”

The door flew open and Charlie emerged, angry, and then he looked in the direction Lukas was pointing and his face went slack. He said, “Johnny! Auggie! You better get out here.”

Johnny came out first, Winter a few seconds after, with his jacket back on and his bow tie hanging around his neck. The crowd of men stopped just short of the wooden sidewalk in front of the saloon, up to their ankles in the mud of the street.

“Yer fucking dead!” someone in the back of the mob shouted.

Winter rested his hand on the pistol strapped to his thigh.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Winter said. “How can I help you?”

Honest Jim stepped forward.

“Who are you?” Honest Jim said.

“Augustus Winter,” Winter replied.

“I’m surprised to see you admit it, sir,” Honest Jim replied. “You’re wanted for murder.”

“In Mississippi, I am,” Winter said. “This is Illinois.”

“It certainly is,” Honest Jim agreed. He looked Winter up and down and then said, “I never heard it said that you were a dandy.”

“It’s what you might call a relatively recent development,” Winter replied.

“City living agrees with you, does it?” Honest Jim asked. The drunkards behind him were tittering.

“It ain’t that,” Winter said. “It’s like the poet said. The time came, as it always does, when it was harder to stay in the bud than it was to blossom.”

The repeat voters laughed scornfully. Honest Jim’s worn and scarred face rearranged itself into a contemptuous expression. Lukas and the Empire brothers looked perplexed; Lukas even craned his head around to stare at Winter in bewilderment. Winter just tilted his head back. Although his face was serious there was the slightest gleam of amusement in his eyes.

Burns could feel his stomach sinking, as if he were in an elevator falling down the shaft.

“I have you at a disadvantage,” Honest Jim said.

“I wouldn’t say that, sir,” Winter said.

“I mean you don’t know my name.”

“All due respect, I’m not sure what your name’s got to do with anything.”

“I’m Jim Plunkett,” Honest Jim said. “Honest Jim they call me. Now I don’t have no official position but I’m what you might call a leading citizen. These men with me have come to vote. Step aside.”

“Well,” Winter said. “Everyone’s got the right to vote, don’t they? And this is a polling station, ain’t it? So that’s all right, I suppose.”

But he didn’t move and his eyes roamed the crowd.

“Oh,” Winter said. “Mister Plunkett. I do believe there’s been a mistake. That man there, the tall thin one, with the gray hat. He voted already. Didn’t he, Lukas?”

“Yep,” Lukas said, his eyes shifting from side to side.

“You’re mistaken,” Honest Jim said.

“No,” Winter said. “I ain’t.”

“Officers,” Honest Jim said.

A sheriff’s deputy stepped forward.

“Out of the way, Winter,” the deputy said. “You’re interfering with the election.”

“Well,” Winter said, “you all interfered with it first.”

Many men in the mob were armed. At least a dozen pistols and rifles were pointed at Winter. Lukas and the Empire brothers were shifting on their feet and trying to look everywhere at once. But Winter never moved, never blinked, never acted for an instant like he was not in control of the situation.

“This is your last chance, you goddamn mercenary,” the deputy said. “That’s the law talking.”

“The law,” Winter said. “If I live to a hundred years old I’ll never understand your type. In case you hadn’t noticed, we ain’t doing things by law today. That’s how you wanted it and now you’ve got it.”

“Get out of the way,” Honest Jim said, “or you’re dead.”

“I’d rather die,” Winter said.

He drew his pistol quickly. Someone in the crowd pulled the trigger of a rifle but missed. And then Winter, Charlie, Johnny, Lukas, all of them, began to fire.

The gunfight, such as it was, lasted less than thirty seconds. The two groups stood ten feet apart and blasted away. The mercenaries
were outnumbered, but they were hardened killers who’d been under fire before. The repeaters had always stopped short of murder, unless their passions blinded them, and the men they’d battled had fought by the same code. Johnny was shot in the shoulder while Winter took one in the side of the neck. Blood spouted like a little fountain from the wound. But then the repeaters broke and scattered and fell back, shouting and screaming and leaving behind the wounded and the dead.

Winter clapped a hand to his neck and grimaced. He ducked down against the side of the building and struggled out of his jacket.

“Wee-oo!” Charlie shouted. He inhaled deeply and shook his head. “Smell that, boys!” he shouted. “Smells like victory!”

A pall of gun smoke hung in the air.

“Fuck all of you!” Lukas shrieked.

The scattered mob took shelter wherever they could: behind carriages, lampposts, inside buildings, around corners. A few returned fire.

Honest Jim was crouched in an alley.

“Murderers!” he exclaimed. “They can’t get away with this!”

Mickey Burns was next to him.

“Mother Mary,” Burns said. “How many are dead?”

Honest Jim grabbed a young man next to him.

“Rouse up the neighborhood!” he snarled. “Spread the word! I’ll have all their hides! Get everyone into the streets! It’s war! It’s war!”

Jan was kneeling next to a public pump in an alleyway between two rows of shanty houses, working the handle, desperately trying to get a drink. He knew that in this sewer of a neighborhood he stood a fair chance of getting cholera from the water, but he was so desperate he was willing to chance it. His clothes were stuck to him with sweat and his hair was standing up where he’d run his hands through it. No matter how hard he worked the handle nothing came out. It only made a weird choking noise, like a sick infant in its sleep.

“Do you hear that?” Bill asked.

“Yes,” Jan said. “I think some water will come out soon.”

“No,” Bill said. “Stop for a minute.”

“It’s almost here,” Jan said.

He was desperate for the water to wash over his scalp. He felt so dirty.

Bill took Jan’s hand away from the handle.

“Listen,” he said.

“I don’t hear anything,” Jan said peevishly.

“Me neither,” Bill said.

Jan wondered whether Bill was making a joke. Then he realized how quiet it was. They were in a densely packed neighborhood, a hive of humanity, and yet there were no women in the backyards hanging laundry, no sounds of children, nothing. Except for some sort of hum, growing louder and louder all the time.

“What is it?” Jan said.

Dusty, Bill, and Jan stood around the pump with their heads cocked, like hounds straining to hear a distant bugle.

A single man appeared at the mouth of the alley and pointed toward them. He shouted something, but he was too far for them to hear.

Dusty raised his rifle to his shoulder. “Get back, you little prick,” he bellowed.

And then the mob flooded into the alleyway, like a tidal wave rushing into a shallow canal.

“Run!” Jan shouted.

They ran, staring behind them at the stunning horde that had come from nowhere, without warning, but when they turned their eyes forward they saw another mob at the other end of the alley.

“Shit!” Dusty screamed.

He raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired, and a man staggered, and fell, but the mob was surging forward, men and boys, children even, old women, waving clubs in the air, knives, planks of wood. Fingers hooked into claws. Shouting.

“Through here!” Jan shouted.

He leapt over a rickety wooden fence into a muddy yard and ran toward the back door of a shanty. The door splintered underneath his boot. Inside an ancient woman tried to stab him with a knitting needle. A blow from the back of his hand sent her sprawling. He bolted
through the little one-room shack, the rags on the floor sticking to his boots, and blundered out into the afternoon sunshine.

“They’re everywhere!” Dusty screamed.

And indeed they were. There was nowhere Jan could look where he did not see the mob.

“Go, go!” Jan cried.

They ran across the road and burst through another cheap home and crashed out the back door and sprinted through the tangled, trash-filled garden and hopped another fence and came onto a broader street, only to discover that this road was even more crammed with men than the alleys behind them.

“It’s Winter!” Bill said.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dusty said.

“Look!” Bill said, and pointed, and sure enough, a couple of blocks down the street, Winter and Lukas and the Empire brothers were leaning out of the window of a faded bungalow, firing their guns on the hordes of men besieging them.

“Go, go!” Jan cried.

They ran down the middle of the street. Men were coming at them from every direction: streaming out of buildings, jogging along the sidewalks and springing out of the alleyways. The threat of getting shot kept the pursuers at bay for a time. Finally Bill pulled the trigger on one of his pistols; the only sound was a little click. The mob pounced.

Jan looked behind him and saw that they were on Dusty, and he drew his knife and cut him loose. He looked forward and saw that they had wrestled Bill halfway to the ground, and he stabbed a man in the neck, a boy really, and Bill wriggled free but then someone hit Jan and he fell and dozens of men pressed down on him.

“Help!” Jan screamed. Someone kicked him in the face. He still had hold of the knife and managed to swing it a few times to generate a little space, but as he was rising up to his knees a powerful man knocked him to his back and wrapped his hands around his throat.