She left money on the table and she walked toward her place. I’ll need a new name, she thought. A good one. Something to remember. Something that makes you want to be there or if you don’t want to be there you at least want to walk by and look in the windows. The kind of name that makes you want to find out. And I’ll need to think about the girls. Two of them will have to go because they don’t look like I need them to look but I won’t worry with that until later. Her thoughts were clear and direct and she felt the twilight closing around her and she promised herself she would not give in. The things that chased her always on the hunt during the shifting hour and she walked with high knees and hard steps as if preparing to lower her head and crash through an emotional wall.
Her heel stuck between the cobblestones and she stumbled but caught herself. Someone inside a saloon cackled and whistled and she turned to look and a cowardly head ducked down. Colette straightened herself and reached behind her head. She pulled out hairpins and bent over and shook her head and when she raised it her hair fell in thick waves. She ran her gloved hands through it and smiled and the gloam seemed to smile back in its own undefined way.
She arrived at her place. She had told the women to go and do something tonight and the room echoed with her footsteps as she walked across the hardwood and to the bar. Underneath the bar was a whiskey bottle and half a dozen glasses. She took the bottle by the neck and took a glass and then she went upstairs. At the top of the stairs she stopped and listened and heard nothing and she knew she was alone.
In her room she poured the whiskey and set the glass and bottle on her bedside table. Turned on the lamp. She took off her coat and gloves. Untied her tallheeled boots and kicked them off and she rubbed at her stocking feet. She lifted the top mattress and removed the sack and tossed it on the bed, anxious to count the booty. Sat down on the bed and crossed her legs and she loosened the drawstring and turned the sack upside down and shook.
The sack was filled with exactly what she had expected. She separated the stacks of cash. Not a goldmine but plenty for what she needed. There was the deed to the saloon and the building. Business documents and bank documents. These she would stick into an envelope and return and she set them all aside. She grinned as she fanned the money. Tiny flitters of revenge. She stacked the money neatly at the foot of the bed and then she found things she hadn’t expected.
Judah’s two medals and their ribbons lay intertwined. Colette separated them, stretched out the ribbons, and pressed them with her palm. She trailed her fingers along the rainbow ribbon of the Victory Medal, touched the bronze circle and then felt the raised winged victory holding her shield and sword at the ready. She turned the medal over and read the words curved across the top—The Great War for Civilization. Then she moved her fingers to the purple ribbon of the Purple Heart. A deep purple with the thin white outline as if necessary to keep the rich color from leaking away. She picked up the heartshaped medal. Felt the smooth gold border. In its center the profile of a stoic George Washington.
She lay the Purple Heart next to the Victory Medal and stood from the bed. In the corner of her room was a short bookshelf and from the lower shelf she removed a coffee can. She opened the can and took out a fold of letters, separated one from the others, and then returned to the bed. She held the letter that had been delivered to her when they believed he was dead, its edges worn and random words blotted out. She read it twice and then dropped it next to the medals.
There was one more envelope from the sack and she opened it. Several photographs fell out and lying face up was her own black-and-white image. A photograph of her in her wedding dress, standing in front of a blooming magnolia tree at the side of the Episcopal church. A white magnolia blossom hung at the tip of a branch right next to her smiling face. She held a bouquet of wildflowers that Judah had picked earlier in the day from random Frenchtown gardens, a flowerpicking thief creeping through the earliest morning light collecting something true and natural and symbolic for her to hold. Though the photograph was in shades of black and gray in her mind the colors shined with a spectrum’s brilliance.
She set the photograph down and picked up two others. Both pictures of Judah’s mother and father. One of them standing outside the saloon and an eight-year-old boy standing with them. The other photo of them sitting at the bar with a towel thrown over his father’s shoulder and a tea cup held daintily in his mother’s fingertips. Colette picked up her wedding picture and tried to recognize the woman who looked so happy. So unaware of what love could turn into when it was challenged and failed and decided to become something else that burned and sought deliverance. She turned the photograph in her hands and looked at herself from different angles. Tried to find a change in her expression with the shift of light. Something that suggested she had never existed with such bliss. And that’s when she noticed it. In the church window to her left she saw his reflection. He was standing to the side and watching her as she posed. But he wasn’t watching. He was admiring. Happily devastated. In Judah’s reflection she realized there was no way that she could hold the picture to give any other interpretation than happiness.
She raised her eyes from the photograph and looked at the money. Looked at the documents. Looked at the images of his mother and father who she had loved. Her arrogance flaked away and she tossed the photograph of herself into the air and it twisted and fell facedown and she noticed the handwriting on the back. Again she picked it up and held it close and she noticed Judah’s script. Written in pencil in a shaky hand.
I dont want to be in this world anymore.
Below the words was a brown smear and she knew that it was his wiped blood. She stuck the tip of her finger into her mouth and licked it and then she tried to wipe it away. But it had been there too long.
The room had grown dark. The transforming hour had come and gone. She stood from the bed and walked to the window and she lacked the courage to admit to the night sky that it still had much to teach her. She looked up hoping for a moon or a star to give a sense of wonder but from where she stood there was nothing to see. Only the vast and infinite dark. Hours earlier she had been strong and severe. But she couldn’t survive the twilight.
She circled the room while shaking her head and then she picked up the bottle and drank. She thought of taking it all back. Thought of going to him. Thought of letting go. She looked over her shoulder at the money. The photograph was stuck in her hand and she read his words again. I dont want to be in this world anymore. She crossed her thumb over them and stared at the brown streak and imagined the bright red drop of blood as it fell. She set the photograph facedown on her pillow, unwilling to exchange looks with the eyes of the past.
She drank again and put the bottle on the nightstand. Then she reached to turn off the lamp but as her fingers touched the knob the stillness of the night was shattered by a boisterous bawl from downstairs. A booming cry that called her name and demanded her to show herself.
50
Nick walked through streets in the falling night. He had gone into the saloon in the late afternoon to find him and Judah something to eat and he had noticed the hallway door open. In the backroom he discovered the desk pushed to the side and the safe open and empty and he knew it could only have been Kade. He went to the apartment to tell Judah but Judah was smoking and nodding and close to sleep so he kept it to himself. Waited until Judah was steady and resting and then he crossed the hall and took the pistol from the dresser drawer and set out to find Kade.
One last act of war. The only thought in his mind.
The cathedral chimes sounded, playing a hymn he recognized from years of sitting with his mother and father at the end of the pew where he had grown from a toddler into a young man and as the chimes played the song he couldn’t name but could recognize he saw his mother and father sitting there right now. In the same spot on the same side of the aisle. And they had been there every Sunday for the last ten years as he went off to New Haven and then off to France and experienced a ne
w kind of baptism.
He pulled his hat down low and his jittery eyes danced beneath the brim as he crisscrossed Frenchtown looking for Kade and he had remembered what he recognized him from. The day of the fire. Coming down the stairs of the brothel and standing at the bar and saying it’s a shame before he walked past Nick and slapped his shoulder and walked out into the street.
The night stretched out and he finally sat down on a curb. In the house behind him Nick heard the voices of children playing. Shrieking and laughing and shouting to one another. Across the street an old woman with a blanket wrapped around her leaned in the doorway smoking a pipe. So still that but for the puff of smoke she might have passed as a withered mannequin. The only light came from a corner café and a saxophone played a bouncy tune and standing at the open door of the café was a thick man with a long and bushy beard. He slapped his leg with a newspaper in rhythm with the saxophone and he drank beer from a stein and when the music stopped he hollered for the son of a bitch to crank it up again.
Nick stood from the curb. Kade barked again at the saxophone player and then turned up the stein and chugged. A voice from inside the café told him to go to hell and he lowered the stein and belched. Nick tugged the hat down once more and walked past him unrecognized, wanting to make sure it was him.
Kade finished the beer and set the stein on the café steps. Then he called out, wanted to know if they had any cigars in there. Not shitty cigars but real cigars. The same voice called out again for him to go to hell but then a hand extended from the café door, holding a cigar. Kade reached into his pocket and stuck a coin in the hand and took the cigar from it. Then he told them saxophones were for sissies anyhow and besides I got more important shit to do than wait around for you to play something else. He tucked the newspaper under his arm and pulled a box of matches from his coat pocket and lit the cigar. He walked and smoked and Nick followed, creeping closer to him with each passing block. But then Nick fell back into the shadows again as he recognized the street and the building and Kade had led them to Colette.
51
Judah lay on the floor with his head resting next to the open safe. Vacant eyes stared at the muted lamplit ceiling as the opium haze covered the room. Blood was smeared across his mouth and splattered into the safe as he couldn’t keep it from coming out of him now. It was there when he smoked and when he didn’t smoke and when he woke from sleep and it was there when he ate and it was there when he went to the bathroom or tried to walk into the saloon or down the block. All he could do was smoke and keep himself deadened to the pain in his lungs and legs and back and he had seen the open and empty safe and that was that.
He had made it into the backroom and then collapsed to his knees next to the open square in the floor. The drug worked on him and he fell asleep and an hour later when he woke the pain was there again. Inside and out. He got to his knees and crawled to the desk and heated a few seeds and he inhaled deeply and in resignation. He wiped his nose and face and then lay back down and turned on his side, his knees and arms tucked in fear of being alone.
52
Kade smoked the cigar and dropped the newspaper onto the scarred bartop. He called out again when his first cry wasn’t answered and said I know damn well somebody is in here. Nobody leaves the front door of a whorehouse unlocked. He then heard movement upstairs.
“Colette. Somebody. Come on down here,” he said. “I’m keeping my pants on. Got something better to talk about. Now come on.”
He strode behind the bar and took a bottle of gin and a glass and he poured and drank. Colette appeared at the bottom of the staircase and he said you ain’t as easy to find as you used to be.
“Who are you?” she said though she recognized him. He had the kind of trailworn face and the brusque sound of intrusion that made him difficult to forget.
“You should know. Been in and out of your old place a few times.”
“So has everybody else.”
He drank again and smacked his lips.
“I always heard you was some kind of badass,” he said. “But you don’t scare me at all.”
She crossed her arms. Moved over to the bar and poured a short glass of whiskey and said you got until I’m to the bottom of this glass to tell me what you want.
He looked her up and down. Sucked on the cigar.
“Last time I was at your place there was a little fire. And that sweet little number that I went upstairs with did all the work. I told her I’d give her another twenty to pour the gasoline out of the flasks. Another twenty on top of that to drop the match. And she played right along. And I’m guessing you know who sent me.”
“You’re not capable of surprising me.”
“Good. Cause I ain’t here to surprise.”
“Then what are you here for?”
“I’m here cause I can put it to Judah.”
“Then put it to Judah. God knows if you walk in and give up Judah you’re giving up yourself.”
“Not exactly.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s that whore’s word on mine. I can say she did it. She can say I did it. But good luck finding her and getting her to talk.”
Colette turned up the whiskey and finished it. She then set the glass on the bar and she walked over to the front door and opened it. The cold night air drifted in and pushed the cigar smoke around the room.
“You think you’re smart but you’re really only boring,” she said.
“Naw. I ain’t boring. And maybe I ain’t smart. But I’ll goddamn well walk in the police station and spill it. And they’ll lock away Judah. I’ll do all that unless somebody gives me a reason not to.”
“I don’t give a damn about Judah or what happens to him.”
“You hate him. I ain’t questioning that. But I’m guessing you don’t want him to die locked up. And that’s what he’d do. So I ain’t even asking for much. I figure a few hundred and some freebies now and then.”
Colette stood next to the open door. A young man without a coat or a hat paused. Rubbed his arms and looked inside and she told him to go on. The chimes of the cathedral resonated and one man screamed at another at the end of the street. She looked at Kade and he was smoking the cigar again and waiting for her to say what he wanted her to say.
Colette closed the door. She took the long way around the room. Walking casually with her eyes on him. She twisted her hands and fingers as she made her way toward him and she stopped when she reached the end of the bar.
“Don’t you get no ideas,” he said.
She reached underneath the bartop and pulled out a baseball bat. He raised the cigar to his mouth just as she swung and he leaned back in time to save his jaw but she caught his hand and sent the cigar flying, red sparks scattering across the floor. He hustled to the door and scatted out as Colette followed him onto the sidewalk and halfway down the block. She then let him walk off into the night and before she went back inside he called out. You better think about it. You got one more chance. I’m gonna wait about two more days for you to decide where you want to bury him and then he’s done.
53
Nick had stood across the street and watched Kade and Colette talking in Colette’s place.
He held his hand on the pistol in his coat pocket and he saw her pull the bat from beneath the bartop. Swinging and missing but sending the cigar like a meteor across the room. When the door opened and they came out Nick snuck around the corner and hid in the shadows and listened to Kade threaten her once more as he disappeared into the night. He hurried along the street to catch him. To stay close. And in his haste he didn’t notice when the lights from Colette’s place went out and Colette came out of the door.
Kade drank and cussed and sat at the round table with the other men who drank and cussed. Nick sat on the front stoop of a bakery. Watching from across the street and smoking a cigarette he had borrowed from a passing street girl who had only moments before nabbed the cigarettes and pocket watch from the pants of a drunk babyfaced t
ourist.
The December moon sat high in the Southern sky. Horses clopped and midnight barges called their song across the thick waters of the great slow river. The great release of steam engines sounded across the darkness with the vast exhausts of trade as Kade drank and grabbed at whatever pair of legs walked past the table. The moon then disappeared and a dense fog rolled into Frenchtown and the street lamps gave a sultry light.
The card table erupted and the players surrounding it were at each other in a whirlwind of fists and elbows and throats were grabbed and heads were butted and the barmaid and saloon girls stood back and watched and some laughed while the men crashed across the table and across the chairs. The table tumbled and money and chips scattered and the saloon girls scooped up both and shoved them into their brassieres and garters with nimble movement. Kade gave a great roar as hands buried into his beard and pulled and the pack rolled across the floor like a violent dust cloud. Fists and forearms found noses and jaws and there was no way to make out who was winning and who was losing and eventually the drunken mob exhausted itself and the men fell apart as if giant invisible arms had been holding them packed together and then let them go.
Nick Page 21