Nick

by Michael Farris Smith

  The barmaids and saloon girls disappeared through a swinging door in the back of the saloon. Down the stairs came a grizzled and gray man who wore a thin robe that was tied at the waist with a strand of rope. He surveyed the scene and when the dogtired and dogdrunk group of gamblers saw him they rose and stood at attention as if he were a scolding father. The man leaned over the banister and spit into a spittoon and then he began to point and give direction. The men staggered in beaten and drunken steps to do what he commanded. They picked up the overturned chairs and table. Gathered the scattered cards and chips and money and made neat piles of each in the table center. Picked up the spilled glasses and bottles and one of the men took a handful of rags from behind the bar and they wiped the wasted liquor from the floor. Then they used the same towels to wipe the blood and snot and saliva from their faces.

  Nick tossed his cigarette and followed the trail of sparks with his eyes and that’s when he noticed others across the street. Standing close against a butcher shop window. He could only make out murky figures through the fog but knew there were at least three of them as that’s how many red cigarette tips he counted moving in the dark.

  He turned his attention back to the saloon. The man in the robe shook his finger and made several remarks with a serious brow and then he called out and one of the women returned and joined him on the stairs. The men nodded in apology and agreement. Gathered their coats and hats. Shuffled in a broken line toward the saloon door and meandered off quietly.

  Kade was the last to leave.

  Nick crossed the street. Following and losing him in the fog but finding him again as he stopped once to bend over and vomit and another time to piss. He walked in the middle of the street and swayed from one side to the next and after he had followed him for several blocks he realized Kade had nowhere to go or was too drunk to find it. He talked to himself in slurred speech and then he finally sat down on a curb. Leaned against a lamppost and almost instantly his head knocked against it.

  Nick stepped out of the street and onto the sidewalk to approach him from behind. And then he thought he heard footsteps and he spun around. Held his breath and peered through the fog but there was nothing but the dripping of water from a gutter or street faucet. He pulled out the pistol but was seized by the night and the eyes he felt upon him. Real or imagined. Kade grunted and belched and adjusted himself against the lamppost. Tried to get back to his feet and now he was kneeling. On both knees. Head bowed. And it was then that Nick heard him chanting or maybe praying. He raised the pistol and stepped behind the drunkard and his hand would not stop shaking so he switched the pistol to his left.

  A final act of war, he thought. And he was taken by vengeance and anger and thirst for violence not induced by the colors of flags but by the simple distaste for another human being and the pistol only inches from Kade’s head and this was not the way that he had killed before. This was something else and he knew if he pulled the trigger then he would become part of all he had seen and hated and survived and lost. His right hand shook and his left hand pointed the pistol and his body not in the dirt littered with the dead but on the sidewalk of a street where people lived and children walked with mothers and at least some men tried as hard as they could. He dropped the pistol and the clatter caused Kade to break from his stupor and he turned and swung and knocked Nick to the ground with a backhand fist.

  And it was then that they rushed from the shadows and tackled Kade to the pavement. Three men. Two of them pinned Kade and despite his hollering and flailing they managed to get his hands roped behind his back and a gag crammed into his mouth. The other man pulled the drawstring sack that had been filled with Judah’s belongings from his back pocket. He forced the empty sack over Kade’s head and then pulled it tight around his neck and beard. The man then looked away and whistled. And then Colette appeared from the fog like some villainous ghost. She stopped at Kade. Grabbed his nose through the sack and twisted until he gave a muffled wail. And then she bent down to Nick and said don’t just sit there. Get up and go. You don’t see any of this.

  54

  Two of the men held Kade’s arms as they walked and punched the side of his head when he made a sound. The other man had found the pistol and held it next to Kade’s ear and promised he would fill it up if he so much as spoke the word of God. Colette walked in front and led them through the clouded streets and she never spoke. Only pointed when it was time to make a turn. She held a Derringer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  They arrived at the alley that John LaFell had dragged her into. It reeked of the dead and was littered with wooden crates and bags of garbage. A single light hung from the back corner of the alley and its glow filtered softly into the fog. Kade grunted and was again punched in the ear and then he began to whimper like a dog and he was punched again. Colette stepped over and around the debris and moved to a door deep in the alley. She opened it and motioned for the others to follow.

  They moved across the dark threshold of the abandoned building. At the end of the hallway Colette opened the door to the room where she had been a prisoner. She lit a candle and motioned to the men holding Kade to bring him inside.

  She pointed to the floor beside the bed and they sat him down in the same spot where she had been bound and gagged and threatened. Wondering if she would die and how bad it might be. The same spot where she had listened to John LaFell crying. The same spot where she had soiled herself because he didn’t give her any options. And as the men sat Kade down and then pulled more rope from their pockets and tied his feet together she smelled John LaFell. His foul and liquorstained breath and his must of the street and these would be the smells that she could not help but associate with heartbreak. She had thought her abductor was the worst of our kind but then learned that he had only been a desolate father with no way to understand the suffering that the world had cast upon him. She closed her eyes and breathed in the odor of despair and asked him for forgiveness for what they had done to his child though she knew there was no such thing.

  She opened her eyes. The men settled Kade and left the room, closing the door behind them. Colette dropped her cigarette on the floor and stepped on it. She knelt beside Kade and listened and he was fighting to conceal his sobbing and this was what she wanted. To hear him on the other side. To understand that he was not what he believed himself to be.

  She placed the Derringer on the floor. Untied the string and lifted the knapsack over his head. His eyes were swollen and his cheeks red and Colette lifted the candle from the floor and waved it back and forth across his face. His eyes followed the light and then she held the candle still and they stared at one another. Colette picked up the Derringer and pushed it into the obnoxious beard of the obnoxious man until she felt it pressed against bone. And then she leaned close and put her lips to his ear and whispered. You don’t fuck with me and you damn sure don’t fuck with Judah. And you will sit here in this dark silence for as long as it takes me to decide when you will die.

  55

  Nick found Judah still out on the floor next to the open and emptied safe. Winded and slobbering in a halfsleep. He looked down into the safe and then at the opium pipe and the seeds scattered on the floor. He touched Judah’s shoulder and gently shook and tried to wake him but Judah only trembled.

  He slid one arm under Judah’s knees and the other behind his neck and lifted him. He carried him into the saloon and then up the stairs to the apartment and Nick knew that if he stayed this routine would play out over and over again until Judah found someone to help him end it. Nick opened Judah’s door and carried him into the bedroom and laid him down on the bed. He took a chair from the sitting room and set it next to the bedroom window and sat down. The fog hung over the street and he wondered how long until daybreak.

  Nick saw himself in a chair by a window on the third floor of a repossessed château. One leg crossed over the other. His arms crossed at the wrists and resting on his knee. He leaned forward. The château stood in the midd
le of a mostly remaining village and it had become a stop for soldiers going back and forth to the front. It had been rocked by shellfire in earlier days but stood proud though missing chunks of pillars and stone. Massive rooms with marble floors. Fireplaces tall enough for a man to stand in. A small theater with carvings on the ceilings. Across the château grounds a spring fed into a concrete pool with steps that led down into the clean and cold water and a small chapel stood with a hole blown in its roof along the backside of the grounds.

  Across the lawns where elite families once spread blankets and enjoyed sunset dinners and where young girls once picked flowers and where babies had crawled there now stood a makeshift prison camp. A wire fence had been strung in a haggard rectangle and connected by ten-foot-high fenceposts. Barbed wire ran two laps around the top of the fence. Within the captives milled about without head cover or shelter and one corner of the camp had become the place for piss and shit and the foul odor hung in the air and moved on the breeze as if the putrid smell existed solely as a reminder. Some of the captives were without shirts and others without boots but they all shared the drawn and yellow faces that come with disease and hunger.

  The first floor of the château was where the Americans cooked and ate. Officers kept to one end and the enlisted men kept to the other. The second floor housed the infirmary. The nurses and doctors stayed busy with those who had a chance to recover and three brothers from the village stayed busy with those who did not and they carried out bodies all hours of the day until a lieutenant asked them to only come at night.

  The third floor was where the men slept and most stayed outside during the day. Smoking and dozing in the sun and sitting with their feet in the spring. But on this day bulking gray clouds hung low and a wind enhanced the odor so Nick sat inside and watched. The window looked out toward the prisoners.

  The grass that had once been there was worn to mud and the prisoners moved about feebly. Few gathered in groups. Most of them keeping to themselves. Nick noticed two soldiers moving close to the fence. Pointing and then talking and then pointing again. The prisoners noticed the soldiers and they began to drift toward them.

  Then one of the soldiers stepped to the fence. Put his back to it and took two steps. He held a stick and he drew a line across the ground. The other soldier then opened his coat and pulled out four baguettes. He handed two to his partner and they tore them in half and then set them on the ground along the line. A hand’s width apart.

  They pointed again. One of the soldiers held a piece of paper and a pencil and he jotted down a few notes. And then the soldiers stepped closer to the fence and began talking to the prisoners and directing them toward the bread on the ground. While one explained the other teased the prisoners with a nub of bread, holding it just out of reach and then pretending to throw it over their heads. They turned and searched and some chased like fooled dogs and the soldiers bent over laughing. Again they pointed at the bread on the ground and then they stood back and watched.

  The prisoners leered at the two soldiers. Their stomachs fighting between pride and hunger. And hunger finally won as a shirtless prisoner dropped to his knees and slid his rail thin arm through a square in the fence and he reached out for the bread, his bony fingers desperate and his face pressed against the fence. No chance to reach it. The others then gave in and did the same and the soldiers kept track of their bets. They had bet on the tall ones and bet on the ones who looked the hungriest though the tallest were easier to pick out. The prisoners fought and scrambled over one another. Getting low on the ground and trying to cut down the space between the fence and the bread. Shoving and slapping and biting and pulling at each other in an effort to reach the farthest. Wanting to survive. One piece of bread was reached and as the prisoner pulled it back he was molested and it was taken from him. Another piece of bread was reached and the winner was dragged backward by his feet before he could get the bread through the fence wire and half a dozen others scrambled for the baguette dropped at the edge of the fence.

  The ruckus drew the attention of the other soldiers. Some wandered over and watched and then meandered away. Others cheered. Others pulled out whatever money they had and got into the game. Behind the fence, a great brawl of starvation.

  Nick looked down at Judah. He didn’t understand why this was what he thought of now and he realized that the rest of his life would be filled with such images. He hated the men who had set the bread on the ground and he hated the others who had joined in and he hated that he had sat in the chair and watched instead of going out and telling them all that they were the worst of men. That they deserved to be shot the moment they returned to the front. He had sat there and watched and he didn’t know if that made him worse or better. He began to talk to the sleeping Judah and he told him of the chateau and of the prisoners who were so hungry and thin that their spines showed and how they clawed at one another over one bite of bread and that there would always be an enemy and it only took an instant for the enemy to become someone you didn’t expect. He told him then about Paris and how warm it was sleeping next to her on top of the costumes and he told him of his father’s store and how a minute there seemed to be longer than a minute anywhere else. He told him how he had searched the city for her and he told him about the wide pathways and carousels in Parc Monceau and about the children chasing pigeons and about having something and then losing it but he admitted that Judah knew plenty about that. He told him about the way his mother sang in the kitchen when she made dinner and he told him about the tree outside his window that he had climbed onto its broad limb on many nights but he never had the nerve to climb down and explore further. He talked to Judah the rest of the night as Judah grunted and bled and moaned and he did not hold back any thought and it was as if a great wind was blowing through him and pushing him in another direction.

  56

  Colette poured the three men and herself whiskey shots and she told them what they already understood. Your mouths stay shut. This never happened. She then poured them another shot. Took some cash from her coat pocket and paid them. Said she would need them again and they all drank and nodded. And then she asked them to leave.

  She removed her coat and laid it across the bar. Reached inside and pulled out the drawstring sack. The fog remained heavy but the night had begun to fade, the earliest light only moments away and in that hazy world of changing color she reminded herself of the conclusion she had come to the instant that Kade had made his threat. It was as if his loudmouth proclamations were keys to her own dungeon cell. Keys that she had been grasping for between rusted irons and her fingertips only able to skim the perfectly cut metal that would allow her to live and breathe and return to this world. His threats had slid into the keyhole and released her from her captivity and she had stepped out with only one thought in mind.

  This life will be no more.

  She lit and smoked a cigarette. Walked over to the cases of whiskey. Turned and gazed around the room and it felt strange to her. As if she was a visitor taking a tour of another life. She walked over to the bar and took the empty sack and walked upstairs.

  As soon as she reached her room she fell face first into the pillow and lay across the money and medals and letters and photographs and cried with a severity with which she had never cried. A fierce sobbing decorated with indecipherable outbursts, cries of hurt and anger and emptiness that formed no concrete words but instead reached out to all that was trapped inside her with vague and gripping embraces. She awakened the sleeping house and one of the women knocked on the door and asked if she was all right and Colette screamed for her to go away. For all of them to go away and never come back. The woman moved away from the door but when Colette did not hear the rest of them she opened her door and screamed into the hallway for them all to get the hell out of here right now and never set foot in this place again. Her voice rang with such ferocity that the women darted out of their rooms and down the stairs and into the cold dawn still wearing their sleeping clothes with the
ir arms filled with whatever they could carry, driven by the fear of being attacked by a lunatic.

  When the house was empty she went from room to room. Ripping sheets from beds and tearing at them and kicking over nightstands and busting mirrors. She slammed lamps against the wall and threw books and brushes and shoes and whatever else she could lift and throw. She broke a chair leg free and then walked into the hallway and beat at both walls as she stomped along yelling and swinging and when she came to the staircase she kicked the railing over and over until it cracked and then she kicked it some more until it snapped and fell. She stood at the staircase panting and sweating and searching for something else to destroy. She stood with a tight grip on the chair leg and her heart pounding and her cheek bleeding where a flying shard of wood had sliced her face and then the thought entered her mind with a thunderous jolt.

  Burn it.

  She rushed from room to room and gathered sheets and furniture and pillows and piled it all in the hallway. She then ran down the stairs and took the matches and knapsack from the bar. She hustled back upstairs as if being chased and then she shredded the pages of a book and spread them across the pile in the hallway. She struck three matches together and dropped them.