Off Kilter

by Laura Strickland

  James’ heart wobbled between hope and despair. If he can help you. A big question.

  The dog crawled into his lap and licked his chin. Why couldn’t the rest of the world see him the way these animals did?

  “You know I’ll pay you back, Tate,” he said, still not looking at his friend.

  “Damn right you will.” A laugh filled Tate’s voice. “Now back to work with you, and look sharp.”

  ****

  It didn’t take long for James to ferret out the doctor’s location—not one of the big houses on Elmwood or Delaware, as he might have expected, but a modest building down on Franklin Street. He even walked by it later that week, but he didn’t go in. Honesty forced him to admit he feared to, not because of any potential pain or even embarrassment but because if Roesch said he couldn’t help him, James’ last hope would die. And right now he needed to hold on to that hope.

  Catherine remained on his mind and in his heart all the time. She danced through his inner vision and he saw again the way she’d looked at him, the smile in her eyes. He felt the way her little fingers clutched his across Roselyn’s kitchen table, fiercely tight.

  He saw once more how she’d appeared the first time he beheld her disembarking from Boyd’s airship, her hair a blaze of red-gold in the afternoon light. Unquestionably the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.

  And that made good reason why he couldn’t give her his heart—poor battered and blackened member that it was. Even if his wildest dreams came true and Roesch agreed to operate on him, if he underwent a surgery or a set of them, he could not imagine he’d look perfect or anything close to it.

  Catherine, beautiful Catherine, deserved perfection.

  Put these feelings away from you, idiot, he lectured himself. You knew you’d never have a woman in your life other than those who take money to bed you. You knew all the while love was for other men.

  Still, his anguish affected his mind. He was so surly during his court appearance, he nearly won himself jail time instead of just a fine. Tate complained about him being cranky around the place, and he got into an argument that very nearly came to blows with that wretch, Drappot.

  “Shut that dog of yours up nights,” Drappot warned him, “or I’ll do it for you.”

  “Touch one hair on her body and you’ll not move again,” James returned, aching—just aching—for an excuse to pummel the smaller man.

  Then, three days after James’ discussion with Tate, the boss came to him, looking grim.

  “Jamie, lad, I’ve just had word that fecker Boyd’s out of the hospital and back in the grand house on The Avenue. Brendan Fagan, it was, sent me the news. Apparently Boyd’s had the authorities in, asking what can be done to track down his ‘assailant’.”

  “Catherine, you mean.”

  “Aye. He was told the police would make what inquiries they could. Brendan, now, Brendan may have his suspicions that we’re involved. I’ve been asking him to keep me informed, after all. But he’ll not rat on me. There’s a brotherhood even beyond that of the Buffalo police force.”

  “Of Irishmen.”

  Gravely, Tate nodded. “Brendan says that Boyd, not satisfied with the official response, has vowed to increase his efforts to find wee Catherine. Here’s where it gets dangerous.”

  “Yes.” Boyd would employ all his resources, which were undoubtedly considerable. “Why can’t he just let her go?”

  “Men like him don’t. ’Tis a matter of pride with him, isn’t it? He’s not about to relinquish what he considers a possession. Anyway, you’d best get over to Roselyn’s and warn them. I know they’ve been keeping the lass close, but they’ll need to be twice as careful now.”

  James just nodded, but his heart leaped. An excuse to see her again, his friend. A mixture of eagerness and frustration gripped him, not half of the flesh.

  “And stay away from Drappot,” Tate said. “I don’t need any more complications.”

  The afternoon brooded around James as he went: close, gray, and threatening rain, the kind of weather than often placed him on edge—as if he wasn’t already on edge enough. The streets seemed even more crowded than usual, choked with steamcabs, cart grocers and pedestrians, forcing him to shorten his stride, detour around immobile groups, and grow still more aggravated.

  On the corner of Prospect and Carolina Street, very nearly in front of Roselyn’s boarding house, traffic had come to a complete stop. At first glance, James thought there had been an accident. He could see two steamcabs halted at the intersection, both exhaling trails of vapor like impatience, and foot traffic seemed to be diverting around them. Not until he reached the corner itself did he see the problem.

  A delivery wagon had halted in the intersection, half blocking it, leaving room for pedestrians but not cabs to get by. One of the horse-drawn wagons it was, well-loaded with coal, and its driver had disembarked to deal with his recalcitrant horse.

  James’ stomach soured; he detested steamcabs on general principle and because of their noise and dirt. But he knew very well a delivery or carriage horse’s existence could be grim and terrible. They worked long hours, often without adequate food or care, and his heart bled for their plight.

  He eyed the horse in question, now: a well-aged beast, it stood as if carved of rock, all four hooves set, looking like it might never move again. Its driver, obviously furious, shouted at it and gestured, to no avail.

  Keep out of it, James told himself. There’s nothing you can do for the poor beast. It happens all over the city and, as Tate always says, you can’t save everyone.

  But the ugly frustration that had gathered inside him for days stirred, and when he saw the driver go back to the wagon and take up a crop, it threatened to burst like water from a dam.

  “Move, you misbegotten pile of bones! Move or I’ll teach you better!” The driver began to rain blows upon the unfortunate animal. Pedestrians looked away, the steamcab drivers turned their heads. Only a couple of steam servants out on errands—slaves just like the horse—stood and stared, they and James. But he didn’t stand; he hurried forward as fast as his feet would carry him.

  Before he reached the wagon he saw the horse’s legs begin to tremble. It went down slowly, front legs first and then the back, with the red-faced driver still whaling on it.

  “What in hell do you think you’re doing?” James didn’t recognize his own voice. Surprise arrested the driver’s arm, and he gazed into James’ face, startled. His eyes widened with alarm.

  Had James been thinking clearly at this point, he might have divined the man’s thoughts: monster. James knew his face, never pretty, became truly frightening when rage overcame him. And rage now had the upper hand.

  The driver raised his crop again. The next blow never descended because James gripped the arm with a force just short of that needed to break the bone.

  “Leave go of me!”

  “Stop beating your animal.”

  “Not mine, the ugly, scrawny nag. Belongs to my boss, and I’m sick of him giving me the oldest horse in his stable. Let go, I tell you! This is none of your business. And I have to get the friggin’ thing to move, don’t I?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t leave it here blocking the road.” The man drew his arm from James’ grip and struck the horse once more—one last time. Light that also, somehow, contained a great deal of darkness exploded behind James’ eyes.

  He snatched the crop from the fellow’s grasp, snapped it between his hands, and tossed it away, telling himself he needed nothing but his two fists. With rampant satisfaction, he smiled into the bully’s eyes and waded in.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cat had nearly finished peeling her way through a mountain of potatoes when Dottie burst into the kitchen, dust cloth still in hand, and cried, “Come quick, Miss Murphy! There’s a man gone mad in the street, beating someone to death.”

  Roselyn, kneading bread dough at the other end of the big table, swore under her breath—words Cat imagined no respect
able woman should know—and drew her fists from the dough.

  Breathless, Dottie continued, “Ben says he thinks it’s your friend, Mr. Kilter.”

  “What?” Cat leaped up and her paring knife clattered onto the table. As she moved to the door Roselyn cried, “Albert—don’t you be going out without your cap on your head!”

  But Cat paid no heed. She trod on Dottie’s heels, and they burst out the front door together, joining a crowd that already contained many onlookers. Cat blinked in disbelief, and then blinked again.

  A large cart horse, still in its traces, had gone down in the street. Cat couldn’t tell if it lived or had expired on the spot. Two figures beside it had become the center of all attention. One of them she recognized as James Kilter, though had he not been so constantly on her mind these past days she might not have known him. His damaged face, now further disfigured by a terrible grimace, looked barely human, and his eyes blazed.

  The other man—the cart driver?—lay beneath him, back on the bricks of the street and doubtless unconscious. That didn’t keep James from striking him again and again with fists like hammers, without so much as a hint of the mercy she usually saw in him.

  “Christ!” she breathed. And then, racing forward without a thought she cried, “Jamie! Jamie!”

  By the time she worked her way through the intervening onlookers and reached the confrontation, two Buffalo police officers had arrived. One of them threw out an arm and barred Cat’s way when she would have rushed in.

  “Here, lad, keep back.”

  “But I know him. I know him!”

  “Which of them?” asked the officer. Surely close to the age of retirement, he sweated in his too-tight uniform, looking unhappy with the situation. But his partner was a big, strapping fellow who looked all too capable of taking James on.

  “Him!” She supposed she made no sense; she didn’t care. “Jamie, Jamie!”

  Kilter did not respond. Blood spattered his fists and seeped from half a dozen places on his opponent’s face.

  “Get him up out of there, Kelly,” the first officer told the second. The big fellow went in, seized James, and pinned his arms behind him, hauling him up.

  But so great was Kilter’s rage he threw the fellow off and turned on him, blue eyes blazing. His gaze slid over Cat without recognition. Some sort of wild madness did indeed possess him, and the strength of a thousand.

  The crowd gasped and murmured. Would James be so reckless as to engage in fisticuffs with a police officer? The two big men squared off, and Cat’s heart sank violently.

  The big officer closed and grappled with James, who again threw him off with apparent ease. Roselyn chose that moment to hurry up, puffing.

  “Do something!” Cat entreated her. “What’s come over him?”

  “Gone off kilter, he has,” Roselyn declared. “It’s happened before. Sweet saints and the holy mother, this can’t end well.”

  Indeed, it couldn’t. The senior officer loudly began to inform James he was under arrest, while the young one circled with obvious intent to seize him yet again.

  James threw one more punch that crashed into the big officer’s jaw, rocked him back on his heels, but didn’t fell him. Then James turned and went to his knees beside the stricken cart horse.

  The crowd exclaimed as he put his arms about the beast and tried to lift it up, and Cat’s heart constricted in her chest. He’d moved from mindless violence to total compassion.

  Yet no man, however strong, could hope to lift a ton of cart horse. The animal stayed down, its head nodding, with James Kilter entreating it beneath the gray sky.

  An emotion Cat couldn’t name took her forward. She dodged the big police officer, who stood looking on, and went to her knees at James’ side.

  “Jamie, let me help.”

  He disregarded her as if she weren’t there. His big hands, smeared with blood, caressed the horse’s neck and withers, and he crooned like a gentle song, “Come on, my beauty. Get up for me. It’s safe now—I’ve served the brute as he deserves. Come on, I’ll call the anti-cruelty league and get you clean away from him, so I will.”

  The horse’s ear twitched, and it blew out a breath. James’ arms closed about it again, and he lifted. Cat added her puny strength to his, but still the poor beast failed to rise.

  Cat bleated over her shoulder, at the crowd, “Help us!”

  A few souls came forward—a man carrying packages which he set aside, a maid from one of the nearby houses, even a steam servant, its metal surface gleaming in the dim afternoon. With gentle care, they urged the animal up. It struggled to rise, and Cat felt someone take the place at her side. From the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of blue and, to her shock, realized she stood shoulder to shoulder with the big police officer.

  The cart horse heaved and came to its feet.

  Some members of the crowd cheered. Even Cat knew that a horse down in distress rarely got up again. She looked into James’ face, hoping for some sign of satisfaction, but saw bewilderment and hard anger yet.

  “Very heroic, my lad.” The elder of the two officers stepped up to James. “But you’re still under arrest for assault and battery.”

  James looked not at him but at Kelly, the officer who’d helped lift the horse. “Will you make sure the anti-cruelty league is called? I’ll not have this animal go back to that bastard.”

  Kelly nodded. Cat, who stood between the two men, looked into his face. Incredibly, only then did she realize Kelly wasn’t entirely human. Shock raced through her: he must be one of the automatons covered with human skin; she’d heard about them.

  “What about your victim?” asked the first officer, the human one.

  Roselyn fought her way to their side. “Officer, I know this man. He works for my brother, Michael Murphy. You can see he was provoked. The cart driver clearly abused this helpless animal.”

  “That, ma’am, doesn’t justify beating the man half to death.”

  “It does,” Cat murmured, and shot another concerned look at James, who stood like a man coming slowly out of a nightmare. His gaze swept over Cat, still without recognition, and moved to the face of the hybrid automaton.

  “Sir,” it—he—said, “you must come with me.”

  “All right.”

  “Jamie. Jamie!” Cat seized both his forearms; her touch seemed to steady and rouse him. The confused, blue eyes focused on her for the first time.

  “Sir.” Roselyn stepped in and spoke to the elder officer, not the hybrid. “Surely there’s no need to take him to the station. It’s plain what happened here. That lout was abusing his animal.”

  “I sympathize, ma’am, really I do. I hate bullies, myself. But he laid that fellow out.” The officer nodded to the steam ambulance, now just arriving. “The man will have to go to the hospital.”

  Roselyn gnawed her lip and eyed James. “I’ll send word to Tate,” she told him. “Don’t worry; he’ll be down to the station directly.”

  James’ gaze never wavered from Cat’s, and his forearms, beneath her fingers, had gone rigid.

  The elder police officer lowered his voice and whispered to Roselyn, “What’s the matter with him? Is he mad?”

  “A crusader, is our James Kilter,” Roselyn replied. “Carried away by his fervor sometimes.”

  “Fervor, is it?”

  James bent his head toward Cat’s. His mottled face, which had been flushed with rage, was now pale beneath its scarring. “I was supposed to warn you,” he said.

  “Warn me?”

  “Boyd. Looking for you. You must stay close.” His eyes caressed her. “Safe.”

  “Come along then, son. You’re going to the station.”

  The first police officer gestured to the automaton, who drew James’ hands from Cat’s grasp.

  “No,” she said, “let me go with him.”

  “Now, sonny, the jail’s no place for you, not if you’re smart. You wait here while we take care of this.”

  “Please,” Ca
t beseeched, and tears came to her eyes. And, as he was hauled away, inexorably, she cried, “Jamie!”

  James’ broad back twitched, but he never looked back at her, not once.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Jamie!”

  Catherine’s cry still echoed in James’ ears as the police marched him to where the paddy wagon waited nearby. His senses—and his sense—returned to him slowly, the darkness clearing away like rainclouds after a storm. But there was a great black span of time during which he could not remember what he’d done.

  There had been a horse and a man abusing it. He looked down at his hands and saw them spattered with blood, likely none of his. He heaved a great sigh.

  Not again. What had he done? And Catherine—Catherine had been there, had witnessed all.

  That was it, then. Any hope he’d ever had of winning her—of having her—had just died on the bricks of the street. Not that he’d had any real hope anyway. Oh, she said she was his friend, and that was generous of her, but for all his wanting it could go no further. Only look at him. Look at her. Even with Roesch’s help he would be a freak, at best, and he’d no assurance of Roesch’s help.

  He jerked a look at the police officer beside him—a damned automaton, a hybrid at that. If rumors proved true, Dr. Roesch would have studied him. He would know the man.

  James might ask…but no. The hybrids made his skin crawl, and anyway, he was under arrest. Besides, there was no point; he’d just destroyed any chance he ever had with Catherine.

  Fool that he was! He’d been supposed to protect her. Fine lot of good he could do her now. Yet the man had been beating the horse, an animal clearly too exhausted to pull its load. He couldn’t just stand by, could he? No matter what it cost him.

  The human police officer opened the back of the paddy wagon and pushed James in. The interior smelled of other men’s sweat, puke, and despair. James sat on the bench and put his head in his hands.

  Catherine. As the dark mist cleared, he saw the look in her eyes when she clutched at him. Oh, what had he done?

  When they reached the station the big automaton, whom the other officer called Kelly, hustled James out with brusque efficiency and stood by while he was booked, motionless as a steamie on shut down. What did they expect him to do? Go off kilter again? Wreck the place? No, for all the fight had gone out of him, leaving him sick and cold.