Dry Rot

by S. L. Stoner

  Sage laughed and stood to escort Eich to the kitchen’s back door. Once there, he stepped out onto the back porch, watching as Eich hefted the shafts of his cart and slowly circled it around toward the street.“Watch out!” Sage called out after him, “Be careful.”

  Eich dipped his head in acknowledgment, reached the street and disappeared around the corner.

  It was courtesy that inspired Sage’s warning to the ragpicker rather than actual concern. After Eich disappeared from view, though, the thought flitted through Sage’s mind that the ragpicker presented a markedly singular appearance to the world. He really looked like no one else on Portland’s streets. A suspicious man, one engaged in nefarious activities, was likely to remember that tall, bearded figure with his knee-high leather boots and creaky wooden-wheeled cart. Sage shut the kitchen door thoughtfully.

  Events, however, immediately pushed aside his half-formed worry over the ragpicker’s safety. When he entered the dining room he found the gusting wind blowing through an open front door and rain soaking the foyer rug. He hurriedly mopped up the water and took away the rug, finishing up just as the day’s first customers arrived at the door.

  Hours later, Fong poked his head out the swinging kitchen door. It was the end of the supper sitting. Seeing him, Sage relinquished his hosting duties to one of the waiters. He headed toward the kitchen, pausing briefly here and there to shake a customer’s hand and check on their satisfaction.

  When he pushed through the doors, he found Fong at the kitchen table, his hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea. “We look everywhere for the two men and never found them,” Fong reported. “So when your message come, we go to that address. We wait outside, watching boarding house for long time. They never come out. Younger cousin finally go to door and ask for the two men, saying he has message. Woman who answer door say that two men move away sudden in early afternoon. Landlady most angry. She say, just this morning, they promise to stay five more days so she turn away other boarders. She lose money.”

  Fong’s information spurred an uneasiness in Sage. The sudden vacating by the kidnappers suggested something spooked them. Surely, moving wasn’t part of their scheme to go after Chester. Sage thought it unlikely they knew where he had hidden Chester. Besides, an attack on Chester wouldn’t require changing their residence. They weren’t going to drag a captive back to the place where they slept. No, they’d use some isolated place to deal with their victim. Someplace like the cooperage.

  As if slowly turning the pages of a picture book, scenes passed through Sage’s mind—Eich looking up into the faces of Sage’s captors just before they whisked Sage away. Eich looking up at the man coming out of the boarding house this morning. Eich seeing the same man somewhere before. Eich, a unique sight, trundling the streets between the shafts of his rattling cart. A most distinctive figure. In a flash of perfect clarity, Sage knew why the two men suddenly departed their boarding house. They had noticed and remembered Eich.

  Sage looked into the dining room. Nearly empty. “Mr. Fong,” he said, “I’m worried about Herman Eich. One of those men saw him today, right outside that boarding house. Maybe they recognized him from when they kidnapped me. We better go check on him.”

  Fong stood up, slapping his wet hat back onto his head. Sage slid his feet into a pair of rubber Wellingtons, stuffed his dress pants into the boot tops, grabbed a hat and jacket and they rushed out the back door. Striding down the alley they reached the street and turned southward toward the Marquam Ravine. Once there, they followed the ravine’s edge westward, toward the hillside, until they came to the small house and Eich’s shed. No light shone through the cracks in the shed’s wall planks although Eich’s cart stood with its tarpaulin thrown back, open to the rain, looking as if Eich had abandoned it while in the midst unloading.

  Sage stepped cautiously toward the shed, taking care to skirt both puddles and sucking mud. Straining to hear, he heard only silence beneath the sound of the pelting rain and the ravine’s rushing water. Fong waited in the darkness beneath a nearby low-hanging fir limb, monitoring Sage’s advance. Reaching the shed’s door, Sage knocked. When no one answered, he carefully edged the door open.

  Inside, it was cave dark. Rain thrummed on the tin roof overhead, sounding like pebbles falling from on high. He heard nothing else. Stepping through the open doorway, he moved immediately to one side, since the outside gloom clearly outlined his form. Nothing happened. Sage took another cautious step and felt something hard give way beneath his feet. Another step yielded that same crunch underfoot. Pulling his match safe from a pocket, Sage struck a light, its yellow flare catching on porcelain slivers littering the floor. Pottery shards lay strewn everywhere, all of it smashed beyond repair. The glinting bits of a shattered oil lamp’s chimney and base covered the middle of the room. Eich’s cot sagged, one of its wooden legs snapped, his bedding spilling onto the floor in a twisted mound. The iron bake oven no longer sat atop the small, pot-bellied stove. Instead, its body rested on its side against a wall, while its lid lay upside down five feet away. A small wooden box sat safely against the wall, just inside the door. It was full of undisturbed teacups. The scene suggested that Eich had entered the shed, put the box down in order to light a lamp only to be ambushed by someone lurking inside.

  Standing in the open door, Sage beckoned Fong forward. He lit a candle and held it aloft as both men grimly surveyed their surroundings.

  “Someone waited for Mr. Herman to come back,” Fong said, his voice quiet.

  SEVENTEEN

  Sage glanced toward his companion. Fong looked strangely older, the lines bracketing his mouth deeper, his dark eyes dull and bleak.

  “Shit,” Sage said.

  “Not good, I think.” Fong nodded, his brow furrowed.

  “We need to find them and quick. They’re killers and Herman witnessed my kidnapping,” Sage said.

  “Hmm. They not want to take him far. Too many people live close around here. If they carry him far, everyone sees. Also, I think too many people know Mr. Eich and might step forward with questions.”

  “That means they hauled him off in a wagon or dragged him into the ravine.”

  “When I wait outside, I study ground. There are no wagon wheel marks other than his cart. That is certain. So I think they took him down into ravine.

  “Jeez, how the hell can we find anyone down there in the dark? Every oil lamp in the place has been smashed and there’s no moon,” Sage said as panic surged through his body and seized his mind. He fought for control. This was the wrong time to lose his ability to reason.

  Evidently Fong remained free of the same distraction because his tone was matter-of-fact as he said, “We need torches and many men. Maybe, I find torches and cousins while you locate helpful Sergeant Hanke and some of his men?” It was not surprising that Fong thought of Hanke. Although Fong might chide the big German policeman for being a noisy clod, Fong was also quick to seek him out whenever they found themselves in a pinch. Like now.

  “Right. I’ll go find Hanke and meet you back here in less than an hour. If I don’t find him, I’ll still be back here anyway.”

  They split up as each traveled north toward the city’s center. Sage angled in the direction of the police station, hoping the big policeman was on duty. Fong headed northeast to secure the assistance of his “cousins.” Not a hard task since, this time of night, they tended to stay within the confines of Chinatown’s narrowly circumscribed locations.

  Sage broke into a trot, spurred on by troubling thoughts. Was Eich being tortured or lying somewhere badly hurt? As he swiftly traveled the dark streets, Sage began muttering a prayer, over and over, in a chant that kept rhythm with his steps.“Please, don’t let anything happen to that old man.” At one point, a more detached part of Sage’s mind wondered at his fervency given his short acquaintance with the ragpicker. The response sounded inside his head, speaking in his mother’s voice, “Sometimes, a body can spot the gold glimmering in another person even when it’s
buried deep.” In Eich case, that gold seemed to lie right atop the surface.

  Sage was lucky. The big German sergeant was pushing out the police station door just as Sage reached the building. The man’s pale eyebrows rose at the sight of Sage, who stood panting at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Ahhhh,” the Sergeant said, his hesitancy signaling his uncertainty as to how to address Sage in the midst of the passersby flowing in and out of the busy police station.

  “Sergeant Hanke, might we confer briefly?” Sage asked, gesturing the man down the stairs and to one side.

  When Hanke learned of the worrisome circumstances surrounding Eich’s disappearance, he lumbered into immediate

  action. Although his pale blue eyes narrowed when he learned it was a ragpicker they were rescuing, he asked no questions.“Wait here,” he commanded instead, before hustling back up the stairs and into the police station. Within minutes he returned with six other policemen, each one grasping the wire handle of an unlit tubular kerosene lantern favored for outside work because it resisted the extinguishing effects of rain and wind. Hanke handed Sage a spare lantern and the group headed south at a rapid pace. They reached Eich’s shed and found Fong and his cousins already there, sheltering beneath a fir tree’s thick boughs. Surprise showed on every policeman’s face except Hanke’s. He grinned widely and his obvious pleasure at seeing Fong quickly communicated itself to his men, effectively unifying the group.

  While they’d been waiting, Fong’s men combed the ground for evidence of where Eich had gone. Boot tracks and two narrow, parallel gouges in the mud laid a clear trail to the ravine’s precipice. Fong said a search at the base of the slope in that spot yielded nothing. They quickly split into two groups to search the ravine bank from top to bottom and along the streambed in both directions. They decided to search only the north bank since the raging stream guaranteed anyone crossing it a dunking or, at the very least, seriously soaked boots and trousers.

  So the searchers fanned out along the bank, walking a horizontal track about ten paces apart. Each man crab-scrambled his way along the slope, keeping one boot on the uphill while his other sought purchase downhill. Their eyes strained to spot a human shape sprawled in the dark mud or rolled tight against the base of a leafless bush. Sage slid directly to the bottom and stumbled along the streambed, fearing that Eich’s attackers had hit the ragpicker on the head and left him face down in the water. It seemed an ideal way to finish him off while suggesting an accidental death.

  Two hours of slithering around on the steep hillside yielded nothing. No evidence of Eich or his fate. Sleet began riding the wind’s edge and the searchers’ teeth chattered. Finally, Sage halted the search until light. The cold men doused their lantern wicks and hurried off toward shelter and warmth. Fong and Sage stayed behind.

  Inside Eich’s shed, Sage started a fire in the potbellied stove and the two of them silently straightened the ragpicker’s belongings. When the door swung inward, they both looked toward it with hope, only to see Daniel’s suspicious face peering in at them from around its edge.

  “What are you doing here? Where’s Herman?” he demanded, stepping into the shed.

  Sage explained and saw the news jolt Daniel out of his customary self-absorption. His face paled, he snatched up Sage’s lantern and headed toward the door.

  “Wait, Daniel!” Sage called. “We’ve searched every inch of the bank for at least half a mile on this side, up and down. Herman wasn’t to be found,”

  The young man paused, turning a bleak, desperate face in their direction. “We’ve gotta to find Herman,” he said, his chest heaving, his eyes frantic. He yanked the door wide open.

  “Wait. We’re coming with you.” Sage buttoned his coat and stepped toward the door. “Where are you going to look?” he asked.

  “In those shacks, on the other side of the ravine. If they wanted to hurt Herman in private, out of the wet, that’s where they’d take him.”

  Daniel led the two of them across the slick timbers of the collapsed bridge. In some ways, the dark made the bridge crossing easier because it prevented Sage from seeing the distance to the bottom. Reaching the other side, Daniel plunged over the edge, his lantern quickly disappearing behind the thick brush anchoring the slope.

  Fong and Sage looked at one another, simultaneously shrugging their shoulders before they too plunged over the side to follow Daniel, their boots sliding uncontrollably down the muddy hillside. Seconds later, Sage glanced up just in time to see the lantern’s light disappear behind a tumbled-down shack that Sage recognized. It was the same one he’d noticed the day he and Chester inspected the bridge. At the sight of it, a vague recollection tugged at his mind only to let go and slither away.

  An agonized cry sounded and Sage’s heart leapt. Either Daniel met with some misfortune or that cry signaled something else. It was difficult to hear over the splatting rain.

  Sage and Fong plunged headlong down the hill, reckless in their effort to reach the structure. The inside was dense with the smell of damp earth. Daniel was kneeling on the dirt floor beside a still form. Lifting their lanterns, they saw it was Eich. He lay with his hands bound behind his back, his feet securely tied, a cloth gagging his mouth. He wore neither coat nor shoes. It looked like they’d hauled him through the creek to soak his clothes. The ragpicker’s eyes remained closed despite their shouts in his ears. Fong and Sage also dropped to their knees, assisting Daniel’s frantic efforts to untie the knots. Sage rubbed Eich’s unprotected hands, finding the ragpicker’s bones hard and cold as icicles. His eyes still refused to open. Daniel whimpered like a terrified puppy even as he tried to rub warmth into the ragpicker’s legs.

  Daniel’s extreme distress made it easier for Sage to control his own fears.

  “His blood still moves,” said Fong from his place near Eich’s head, his fingers tight against the side of the ragpicker’s neck.

  “He needs warmth, something hot in him,” Sage replied, slipping an arm behind the ragpicker’s back to raise him. When he did, the man’s head lolled, and Sage saw a wet mass behind his ear. “Someone has conked him a good one. Treat him gentle. Let’s carry him with his head up as best we can.”

  Daniel ran from the hut and returned immediately with an unpainted, planked door. They carefully laid Eich on the door, Daniel’s coat pillowed under his head, Fong’s and Sage’s covering his body. Once set, the three of them stumbled up the muddy hillside for what seemed like an eternity. Uncontrolled backsliding canceled out nearly every other step. Their burden teetered precariously as they clung to the door edge with one hand and used their other hand to grab at bush branches and pull themselves upward. Once on top, they stood gasping until a wind gust slammed against them, spurring them into a jog toward the twisted wreckage of the bridge.

  “Do you think that bridge is going to hold us if we cross it carrying him? That’s a lot of weight all in one place,” Sage said.

  “No choice. We take him to one of these houses, it cause too many questions.” Fong reasoned quickly.

  Sage angled for a better grip on Eich’s legs and gave the nod that sent them out onto the nearly collapsed bridge. Their feet shuffled across the slick boards like those of blind men feeling their way through untraveled terrain. Each froze mid-step whenever the bridge timbers dipped and swayed. Eventually they reached the other side and staggered the last three hundred or so feet to Eich’s shed.

  The fire was still burning so the shed was warm and became even warmer after Daniel frantically heaved more wood into the stove. Quickly they leveled the broken cot, using chunks of firewood. Fong gently removed Eich’s wet clothes after which he and Daniel rubbed Eich’s cold skin with a towel before wrapping him in blankets. Sage filled a pan with water and set it to heat upon the stove. Once it was hot, he cleaned the wound on Eich’s head. The sight of color returning to the ragpicker’s flesh rewarded their efforts. Still, despite his improved color and although his chest rose and fell rhythmically, Eich’s eyes remained clos
ed.

  Daniel busied himself covering Eich with blankets and boiling water for coffee. That done, the three of them leaned against the drafty walls and watched the unconscious man until Sage’s eyes blurred in sleep. Just as he started to contemplate sliding down the wall to sit on the floor, a groan sounded from the cot and all three watchers snapped wide awake.

  Eich’s eyes opened but remained unfocused. Daniel moved closer to him and at that movement the ragpicker’s gaze landed on Daniel’s face and seemed to sharpen.

  “Daniel?” he asked, his voice thin and rising with the question.

  Daniel grabbed the gnarled hand that lay upon the blanket and answered. “It’s all right, Herman, you’re safe now. We’re here. Mr. Adair and Mr. Fong and me.”

  Eich smiled weakly and whispered, “Sorry that my humble abode is such a mess. My last visitors displayed considerable clumsiness in their effort to subdue me.” He closed his eyes and lapsed into unconsciousness once again.

  The three men conferred and eventually agreed that Eich wasn’t safe remaining in the shed where he’d be vulnerable to a second attack, especially in his severely weakened state. He likely had a concussion. And, he was already sick from exposure which was exactly what they intended when they drug him through the creek to leave him wet and barely clothed in a place where no one would discover him until far too late.