The Burden of Souls (Hawker's Drift Book 1)

by Andy Monk

  “Who’s it from?” Sniffy asked, peering over the top of the note.

  “The Mayor,” Cece stuffed the note back into the envelope, “apparently I have a night off, which is news to me. And Mr Jack too I expect.”

  “Oh…” Sniffy shuffled backwards.

  “He would like me to sing for him.”

  “Oh…”

  “I suppose I should be flattered.”

  “S’pose…” Sniffy shuffled a bit more, before leaning in and adding in a lower voice, “You gonna go?”

  “It would be rude not to… wouldn’t it?”

  “S’pose…”

  Cece eyed him carefully, before asking in an equally low tone, “Is there anything I should know about the Mayor?”

  Sniffy pondered the question, before replying in a measured and flat voice, “He’s a wonderful man who has done great things for the town. Everybody says so; Preacher Stone, Mr Jack, Sheriff Shenan, Dr Rudi. Everybody… well everybody save Mr Wizzle, but nobody pays any heed to him on account of him being soft-headed and all. That and being a clown…”

  “The Mayor’s a real diamond. I get that.”

  Sniffy nodded his head and added in a loud voice, “Yep, the Mayor sure is a great guy,” before looking around, when nobody paid any attention he leaned in close. Cece held her ground despite the greasy forelocks that brushed her face.

  “You seem real nice, Miss, just be a bit careful… around the Mayor.”

  “Careful?”

  The hair that filled her vision convulsed; there may have been a frown down there somewhere, “You being pretty an all.”

  The man in charge has an eye for the ladies. What a surprise.

  “I can look after myself when it comes to men.”

  Sniffy looked like he was going to say more, but Monty shouted at him before he could speak again. “Sniffy! Get back to the yard or I’ll have to pay Norris for your time. I’ll have a couple of beers on the house for you tonight!”

  Sniffy’s eyes lit up and he cracked a smile wide enough for a few yellowing teeth to be visible through the undergrowth, “Free beer!” He chuckled and wandered off towards the door, whatever he’d been trying to tell her quite forgotten.

  Men really were the same where ever they were…

  The Barber

  Just like every other Wednesday Ash Godbold closed his barber shop at 4pm on the dot. Everybody in town knew he closed at 4pm on Wednesdays, as that was the day he took his wife and daughters to have dinner in Rosa’s, which was, by a long and winding country road, the best place to eat in Hawker’s Drift.

  Or rather everybody in town knew that except Audley Cobham, who invariably came in for his weekly shave precisely at 3:55pm. Every Wednesday.

  “I’m closing in five minutes,” Ash looked up from the broom he was sweeping the off cuts of Barney Deeb’s and Chester Budoch’s hair up with.

  “Yep,” Audley nodded and settled himself into the chair, jutting his chin forward to inspect himself in the large mirror that had belonged to Ash’s grandfather.

  Ash sighed and put the broom to one side, “You know you could come in at 3 o’ clock for a change…”

  “Nope… still feeding me chickens then. They’re darned particular. Don’t lay right less they get fed at the same time every day. You can ask any chicken man that.”

  “Creatures of habit eh?” Ash wrapped a towel around Audley’s shoulders and resisted the urge to strangle him with it. There was no point arguing with the ol’ coot. He’d considered closing ten minutes early more than once just to teach him a lesson, but it wasn’t worth it. He really would never have heard the last of it.

  “Yep. Pesky critters.”

  Ash looked at the clock hanging above the mirror, he hated being late, even if he knew he wouldn’t be keeping anyone waiting. Kate was well aware that old man Cobham ensured he never got to close exactly at 4pm, so she and the girls wouldn’t be on time for their pre-dinner soda either.

  He whipped some lather up in his soap jug before working it into Audley’s scratchy grey whiskers, only half listening to him yap about the town’s goings on. As well as a keen chicken man, Audley Cobham was an incessant and insatiable gossip.

  As soon as the clock clicked onto 4pm Ash put down the soap jug and shaving brush, crossed to the door and turned over the “Closed” sign.

  “Taking the family to Rosa’s?” Audley asked, his eyes following him back to the chair in the mirror.

  “That’s why I close early… every Wednesday…”

  “Family…” Audley nodded sagely.

  Ash held a dish under the old man’s chin.

  “Spit it out.”

  “I ain’t finished yet!”

  “You want to chew that nasty stuff, that’s your business, but I’m not taking a razor to your throat with that jaw of yours worrying away at it. I hate mopping up blood, it’s bad for business.”

  Audley worked his jaw a bit more before reluctantly spitting out a black gob of chewing tobacco.

  “Why can’t you just smoke the stuff, like a civilised man?” Ash wrinkled his nose and slid the dish away from him along the dark wooden counter that run along the wall beneath his grandfather’s mirrors.

  “I prefer a good spit…” Audley chuckled, his thin bony shoulders twitching beneath the towel.

  Ash flicked open his razor, gave it a couple of swipes along the leather strap that hung from the counter and gently pushed Audley’s head to one side.

  “Did you see that McCrea woman the other day?” Audley cackled, twisting around to look up at Ash just as he was about to put the razor against his skin.

  “Jeeez Audley! They call these things cut-throat razors for a reason you know!”

  “Sorry… always forget,” Audley sniggered softly and settled back. Ash suspected he jigged about in the chair so much because he actually wanted to be cut, just so he could run around town showing off his scar and telling everybody what a cack-handed oaf Ash Godbold was.

  “Well did ya?” Audley repeated, less animatedly as soon as Ash had scraped the first swathe of stubble off.

  “Nope… heard about it though,” Ash paused, razor in mid-air, to look at Audley in the mirror before continuing in a lower voice, “…bad mouthing the Mayor?”

  “Yep… never heard the like. I was standing plumb in the middle of the square me self and I heard her as clear as day, screaming like some demented banshee outside the Mayor’s front door. Which you knows is a goodly way away.”

  Wouldn’t be the first woman to come out of that house screaming…

  Ash kept the thought to himself.

  “Strange woman…” he said instead, and managed to get his razor out of harm’s way when Audley started nodding vigorously in agreement.

  “Her and that foul tempered husband of hers – God rest his soul – made a fine pair of uppity no-goods.”

  Ash grunted his agreement, he’d never had much to do with the couple and Tom McCrea had always been passable enough when he’d come in for a haircut, but he wasn’t going to argue the point with Audley Cobham, especially given the collected wisdom of the majority of Hawker’s Drift’s council of miserable, sanctimonious old gossips was that the McCreas were trouble.

  He sometimes wondered what the good folk of the town said about him behind his back…

  *

  “Mr Cobham?” Kate asked once he’d kissed her cheek. He rolled his eyes by way of a reply.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he grinned at the girls.

  “We’re kind of used to it,” Emily replied, pursing her lips in mock annoyance.

  Lord, she’s growing up so fast…

  “I know, I’m a terrible father,” he ruffled Ruth’s hair and winked. Ruth stuck out her tongue.

  “The worst!” Emily insisted.

  “Yep, that’s why I’m going to make you pay for dinner this time young lady.”

  “Not possible, I have no money. I am quite the pauper.”

  “I’m sure Rosa has plen
ty of dishes that require washing.”

  “Rosa isn’t that cruel to children,” Emily replied, “whatever you say!”

  Ash smiled and looked at his eldest daughter, standing on the corner of the square in the warm afternoon sun, her dimpled infectious smile and eyes as big and blue as the endless sky above. She was wearing her second best dress and Ash couldn’t help but notice that it was straining to contain her breasts; he was pretty sure that dress had fitted her just fine only a few weeks ago. He had a vague feeling of wrongness that his little girl even had breasts.

  Young Euan Rudi, the doctor’s boy, ambled past clutching a package. He grinned and touched his cap in greeting, though his eyes were fixed solely on Emily, who smiled in return, blushed faintly and tried to look away and stare at Euan all at the same time.

  Ash suspected he wasn’t the only person who’d noticed his daughter’s breasts…

  Ash ushered his family inside Rosa’s before anybody else could get an eyeful of his daughter. He would have a word with Kate about getting Emily a new second best dress.

  Rosa Fawn greeted them in the same way she did every week, which was to say in the manner of a woman who had just been reunited with a close relative whom she’d heard had died years ago.

  She was a big blustery woman with red cheeks and grey hair who insisted on hugging almost everybody who came into her restaurant and after the girls had been made a fuss of she hugged both Kate and Ash, who found himself semi-crushed in a particularly fierce bear hug.

  “How are you all!” She beamed finally, “it’s been too long, far too long. I’ve missed you all so much!”

  It had been precisely a week since they had last been in and, unforeseen calamities aside, it would be precisely a week before they came in again, but Rosa never seemed to have grasped the concept of time. Absolutely everything was too long ago, be it a year or five minutes.

  They settled themselves into their usual stools at the counter; they would eat at one of the check-clothed tables along the window so they could look out and see who was about in Pioneer Square, but the girls had always liked to sit on the high wooden stools along the dark rosewood counter first, where they could eye the cakes laid out under glass dishes and catch occasional glimpses of Rosa’s husband through the swing doors, toiling in the steam and noise of the kitchen as they drank their sodas.

  Even when Rosa’s was empty, the kitchen was still full of steam and noise. Ash had told the girls, when they were still young and breasts had not been a concern, that there were enormous iron cauldrons in the kitchen which were continually kept on the boil and stirred by Harry Fawn’s kitchen trolls, who had once been naughty little boys and girls who’d been sent to work in the kitchens by their exasperated parents when nothing else could be done with them, but the heat and noise had disfigured them until they were hunchbacked, scarred and pitiful little creatures.

  Kate had never approved of that story, she didn’t like the idea of the girls saying something that might offend Rosa, but it had kept the girls quiet and their eyes fixed on the swing doors to the kitchen in the hope of catching a glimpse of one of Harry’s trolls.

  They knew he was only joking, of course, though given Harry Fawn’s sour disposition, cold eyes and mirthless expression he did look like the kind of guy who just might have a kitchen full of trolls.

  Quite what Rosa had ever seen in him, Ash couldn’t imagine as they seemed about as mismatched a pair as you would ever come across.

  He glanced at Kate, who was inspecting the cakes with Ruth, and smiled. He guessed not everybody could be as lucky as he’d been.

  Lucky? More like blessed. A beautiful wife, not one, but two beautiful daughters, a good business, a comfortable home. If all he ever had to complain about was Audley Cobham, then he guessed he truly was a fortunate man.

  He’d never believed his life would turn out like this, that he’d ever make anything of himself. Perhaps some people would say being a barber in a town so remote the rest of the world seemed to have forgotten about it didn’t amount to a great deal, but so what? He was happy, his family were happy, life was good.

  Big, bumbling Ash Godbold, with his mismatched face and slow tongue. Not good looking, not bright, no money, nothing much going for him. He’d washed up in Hawker’s Drift near on twenty years ago, nothing in his wagon save a couple of chairs and his grandfather’s mirrors, a young man going nowhere. Now he had everything he could ever want. Now he was happy.

  He sat at the end of the counter and watched his wife and daughters giggling as they sucked their sodas through brightly coloured straws. The sun was streaming through the large plate glass windows, fringing their blonde hair with halos of gold. Emily and Ruth had taken their looks from Kate rather than him, something he was sure they were all extremely grateful for.

  He glanced along the counter to see if their usual table was free, the one in the corner by the window, where they could sit and look out over the square and see everyone in the restaurant too.

  It was still early and Rosa’s wouldn’t get busy for another hour or so, as it was there were only two other customers. Eudora Dewsnap, who was scratching away in her journal, in between occasional disinterested stabs at a slice of one of Rosa’s fine fruit pies and Deputy Blane, who sat in the back corner mechanically sipping coffee.

  Blane sat in the only part of the restaurant where the rays of the afternoon sun did not reach and he still wore his hat ensuring his eyes were lost in shadow, but Ash got the impression he was staring intently at them.

  He tried to shake the feeling off, he didn’t really know the Deputy, he seemed a quiet and solitary man with a singularly inexpressive manner about him. Ash had never been much of a talker himself and wasn’t usually inclined to hold that against a man, but with Blane it seemed to run deeper as if he were actually disdainful of other people.

  Ash shrugged and turned his attention back to his family; Ruth had finished her soda with a final prolonged slurp and was looking terribly pleased with herself.

  “Such a piglet,” Emily sighed and shook her head at her little sister.

  The Clown

  Mr Wizzle peeled open his eyes and looked up into a cloudless cornflower sky. He had fallen asleep. Now he had woken up. He sighed and tapped his fingers against his generous belly. He had only meant to close his eyes for a moment, he’d been watching the first stars emerge from the dusk, and now it was morning.

  He must have plum tired himself out with yesterday’s long walk. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, it still took an effort to get away from folks. He yawned and shut his eyes again. Never mind.

  He’d slept well and he’d obviously needed the rest, he wasn’t a young man anymore after all. God had wanted him to sleep rather than see angels, so who was he to complain?

  His mouth was dry, but he felt so at peace stretched on the ground that he couldn’t face sitting up and finding his canteen of water.

  No, just a little longer. He would lay and feel the morning sun warm his skin and listen to the silence that was broken only by the grass sighing upon an occasional kiss of wind. Even the insects were quiet; the morning was too cool for them to be about their business yet.

  Everything was perfect. He was alone and at peace with the world, away from the filth and noise of Hawker’s Drift and all of its Godless shenanigans. Just the sun and sky and grass and Mr Wizzle. A slight smile played across his face and he felt content, which he only ever truly did when came out onto the grass and looked for the angels.

  Perhaps they’d come while he slept, dancing about him, ephemeral and translucent, lighting the sky with their angelic glory. Or perhaps he would have seen nothing but the occasional falling star. It didn’t matter. He would spend the next day and night here; he had food, water, his bible and a pack of playing cards to practice his tricks with. So what was the hurry? Everything was perfect.

  He tipped his hat over his face; maybe he’d nap a little more and enjoy the silence.

  “Mr Wizzle! Mr Wizz
le!”

  His eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright, his battered derby tumbling into his lap.

  He blinked and looked about him, but could see nothing but the vivid green grass, which would have been above his knees if he’d been standing, stretching from horizon to horizon.

  “Oh my God, it really is you, isn’t it?”

  The voice, which was female, was coming from behind him and he twisted around to find an elderly woman standing in the grass, she was wearing a loose robe and clutching a peculiar looking bottle to her chest.

  Her skin was deep, rich sepia, crumpled and fissured by age; her hair was short and grey, thin enough for the morning sun to show the black of her scalp beneath.

  Once he’d turned to face her she clapped her hands delightedly and revealed her teeth, which looked near perfect despite her obvious age, with a dazzling smile. Mr Wizzle couldn’t help but return it, even if he didn’t have the faintest idea who the old woman was.

  “I’m sorry ma’am, do I know you?” he asked, eventually struggling to his feet despite the stiffness in his legs.

  “Why, surely you do! I’m Amelia. Amelia Prouloux! Well, Amelia Cooper I suppose, but I never really liked that name. Dead common and I’m sure Frank’s kin never had much doing with making barrels anyway, so I kinda gone back to my old name since Frank passed on.”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “Pleased to meet you Amelia Prouloux,” he reached up to doff his hat, but found only tufts of his spiky red hair as he’d forgotten his derby had fallen off when he’d sat up, “I’m Mr Wizzle.”

  Amelia leaned in a little closer to him, “I know who you are silly. I’ve never forgotten you.”

  When she continued to stand there staring at him, he fished a bag out of his pocket and offered it to her.

  “Pickled egg, Amelia Prouloux?”

  She added some more wrinkles to her broad nose, “No thanks, hun.”

  Mr Wizzle shrugged and fished one out for himself. It was breakfast time after all.

  He looked around to see if the strange old woman was with anyone, but the grass was as deserted as it usually was. He wondered where she’d come from, given that she looked like she’d just gotten out of bed.