Blood Rust Chains

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Blood Rust Chains Page 3

by Marco Etheridge


  “Wow, that’s wild. So I can see where that line travels down to our immediate family. That makes this the Boyd line, right? But wait, why does this Charlie guy have no arrows after him. Did he die or something? I mean, after that crazy shooting?”

  “You catch on fast big brother. You’re looking at a main part of our family tree, the paternal line. That would be the Boyds. Basically a pretty straight line back to Ireland. But we can’t see all of that on one screen because the tree gets too big pretty fast. You have to view it in sections. But right here, this data square next to Charlie, that’s Michael Boyd. He would be your great-great-great grandfather. And that makes Charles your great-great-great uncle.”

  “Got it. But what about Charles Boyd? Everyone else has, what, progeny following them. But not him. Did he die young, or just disappear?”

  “Progeny, wow, you’re a natural. Let’s go back to Charlie’s bio page and I’ll show you.” Susan worked the mouse and a new page appeared on the screen. “This is where it gets good.”

  Quinn looked down the laptop screen. There were text entries, links to documents, census reports, a birth record. Then he saw a link to a newspaper article.

  “Anna, Illinois, 1912. Where the hell is Anna, Illinois? What’s this newspaper story?”

  “Anna is a small town in southwest Illinois. A farming community back then. And that newspaper story is the dirt I was telling you about. What I sent you was an interview that was used for this story. Quinn Boyd, meet Charlie Boyd, the shotgun murderer in our family.” Susan leaned towards Quinn with a conspiratorial grin on her face.

  “Jesus, Sis, this kid really did kill somebody? How did you find all this?”

  “Ah, well, the finding part was easy. I traced the line to Michael Boyd and there were all sorts of entries about Charlie. Murders in small towns tend to be pretty well-documented. The rest of it just fell into place. The story is pretty basic and pretty nasty. Charlie was the second son in the family. The Boyds had a quarter section, about 160 acres of land. Because Charlie was the second son, he had no chance of inheriting the farm. He could stay with his brother and work the farm, of course. Lots of families did that, but not Charlie. He doesn’t seem to have been much of a farmer. Instead of staying on the farm, he worked at the big hotel in town. Charlie stoked the stoves in the kitchen, did maintenance, that sort of thing, just a worker. He was nineteen years old. This is where it gets ugly. Charlie’s boss at the hotel was a man by the name of William Hanks. One Saturday evening, Mr. Hanks shouts at Charlie about his shoddy work or something.”

  “Mr. Hanks is our murder victim from the interview you sent me, right?”

  Exasperation written across her face, Susan gave Quinn a poke in the shoulder. “Hey, you may be writing this story, but I’m telling it, okay? Let me have my moment.” She raised her eyebrows in her best attempt at a threatening look.

  “Sorry, sorry,” said Quinn, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Please, on with the gruesome story.”

  “That’s better. So, Hanks berates Charlie over some misdeed. Unfortunately for Mr. Hanks, he does so in front of a kitchen girl that Charlie is sweet on. After his shift is over, Charlie goes over to a friend’s place. Charlie and his pal proceed to get good and drunk while Charlie fumes about the insult. Eventually, Charlie convinces his friend to loan him an A.H. Fox double-barrel 12 gauge shotgun. It was a very common model, sort of a workingman’s shotgun.”

  “Criminy, now you’re an expert on historical weapons?” He eyed his sister with a bit more respect. He was surprised to think that there might be a dark side lurking under that perky exterior.

  “There’s a lot of stuff to learn here besides birthdays and who begat whom,” Susan said smugly.

  “Okay, okay, we’ve got the kid, we’ve got the motive, and now we have the weapon.”

  “And if we have no more interruptions, we can have a story. Charlie wakes up early on Sunday morning. He’s hungover and angry. Without waking his friend, he takes the shotgun and heads down to the hotel. Now you have to picture this in your mind. It’s a bright sunny Sunday morning on the main street in a small farming town. People are in their Sunday best heading off to church. Charlie walks up to the front steps of the hotel and just as he does, who should walk out the front door but our Mr. Hanks. Without saying a word, Charlie Boyd points that shotgun up the stairs and fires both barrels, killing William Hanks where he stands.”

  “Hey-Zeus Christo! He just blasts the guy? Not a word? I read that in the piece you sent me, but I didn’t really believe it.”

  “That’s how the story goes. But there’s more of course. Charlie might not have had much to say before he shot the man, but then he starts ranting and raving and threatening the crowd on the sidewalk. Before he can reload, some folks grab him and he drops the shotgun. Charlie gets marched to the jail, beat up a little bit, and that’s the end of it.”

  “But wait, what happens to the kid? Why does his line just end?”

  “Well, Charlie is tried and convicted of second degree murder. He only missed a first degree murder charge because of his age and the drinking before hand. That and they probably didn’t want to end up hanging some poor nineteen year-old kid. Who knows? Charles Boyd disappears into the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet. Horrible place. Still is. Back then there was no running water in the cells, rats everywhere, dark and cold in the winter, hot as hell in the summer.”

  “So he spends the rest of his life in prison, is that it?”

  “That’s the weird part. Charlie just disappears. Once in the prison, it’s like he never existed. As far as I can tell, there are absolutely no records of him after he goes into Joliet. No prison records, no release papers, no death certificate, nothing. Poof, he vanishes.” Susan closed the lid on the laptop and leaned back in her chair.

  Quinn rubbed a hand over his face, trying to digest the details of the story. “But there has to be some record of him, right. People just don’t disappear in prison. Maybe you just haven’t found the right sources yet.”

  “Actually, people do just disappear. It’s the bane of genealogical researchers. There is always that one elusive relative, the person that connects one branch of a family tree to another, the missing link. You search and you search, but there is just no paper trail. It happens. Records are destroyed, courthouses burn down, all sorts of things happen. Before computer databases existed, before microfilm and microfiche, if a piece of paper was lost or destroyed, it was gone. Charles Boyd’s case is weird though, I’ll admit that. From the twentieth century on, records are usually pretty reliable and easy to find. But not on this guy. I’ve contacted the Illinois penal system records department and they couldn’t help me. I’ve searched the death records for Illinois and the other states that border Illinois. I’ve talked to other folks that are working on the Boyd line. So far there is not one scrap of paper that can tell us the fate of poor Charlie.”

  Quinn let out a long slow whistle. “And here I thought this was just going to be another human interest piece. Damn, Sis, I might have to earn my money on this one.”

  Chapter 4

  Quinn

  It was well after noon when Quinn pried himself away from Susan’s long goodbye. He had enough information for an entirely new take on the article and a good case of caffeine jitters from swilling too much filter coffee. The tires of the Honda squelched down the wet driveway. Susan waved from the shelter of the front entry.

  Driving back down US 26 through the Vista Ridge Tunnel was out of the question. Quinn hated that tunnel more than any other stretch of road in Portland. Traveling through that death trap twice on a rainy day was just not going to happen. Quinn pondered what force this horrible stretch of road exerted on politically correct hipster Portlandians, turning them into raving maniacal stock-car racer wannabes. Was it some sort of vortex that hovered over the hills of Forest Park?

  What I need is real food, time to think, and a way back over the hill to town. I guess that means we’re headed fo
r tacos down in St. Johns. Quinn’s face broke into a broad grin. Yessir, a big plate of messy tacos is just what I need.

  Quinn pointed the Civic north, threading his way out of the posh suburban tangle of Northwest Heights. Everything on the west side of Forest Park was a strange land to him. The geological barrier of the Tualatin Mountains ran from Goose Hollow in the south all the way up to Sauvie Island in the north. The green slopes of Forest Park, even if they weren’t really mountains, effectively sealed off northwest Portland from the suburban wasteland of the other side. Sort of like Mordor, thought Quinn. Suburban Orcs on the outside of the city, good elves, hobbits, and men on the city side.

  Cursing the twisting labyrinth of cute lanes, and the lack of a functional grid of avenues and streets, Quinn finally got himself up onto the Skyline. Hugging the western edge of the green hump of the ridge, Skyline Boulevard wiggled its way northwards. Quinn scowled out through the pattering rain. Damn McMansions get further and further into the hills each year. Sure, there were still a smattering of the old pasturelands with a real farmhouse here and there. But even this high up the hill, the huge cookie-cutter mansions with three car garages were sprouting from the newly-contoured ground like morels on a warm rainy day.

  Well, Bub, I don’t think you could come up with a slower way to get home unless you drove clear to the coast. Quinn chuckled, but he was enjoying the wet drive as only a native northwestern can. He turned off of the Skyline onto Springville Road, burrowing into the narrow tunnel of trees that twisted up and over the humping ridge. Easy there Son, this is not a good place for sliding off the road. Quinn slowed his pace along the tight, wet roadway.

  The road climbed under the wet green gloom of fir and hemlock, the big leaf maple starting to turn their autumn colors. Quinn pondered the story of Charlie Boyd. The kid went into a rage over a verbal slight, not even a physical blow. The boss had simply insulted the kid, no more. But this Charlie, he doesn’t have any checks on his anger. What would that be like, giving full rein to an emotion? Well, in this case the answer is obvious, the rage led to a murder. Not such a good outcome. Certainly not for the boss-man, and not for the kid either. Vanished into the sands of time, poof!

  Is it action versus thought? Is that what’s got a hook in you? Are you looking for trouble, or just hoping trouble will find you? No, I’m hoping that tacos will find me, and I have a real good idea where to look for them.

  Quinn navigated the twists of the road as it dropped down to the west side of the Willamette River and turned onto the US 30 spur. The flats across the valley were covered with the slanting gray of a determined Northwest rain. Industrial buildings and tall silos loomed up along the river. The little clapboard houses of St Johns disappeared into the mists. The Willamette river stretched underneath the gothic spires of the St Johns bridge. To the north, past the wetlands and sloughs, lay the mighty Colombia. To the south, the river bisected the city of Portland.

  Over the Willamette the roadway dropped from the historic bridge onto the flats of St. Johns. Quinn loved it here, this remnant of what old Portland must have been like. This land had been the home of workers, the people who toiled in shipyards, ironworks and woolen mills. Still was to a degree. St Johns was its own city until it was incorporated into Portland in 1915. You should have built a wall while you had the chance, Boyos, kept the rabble out. Just past the end of the bridge he passed Cathedral Park. Quinn turned onto a side street and parked next to a dilapidated building.

  The rain soaked into his hoodie as he walked towards the brightly painted storefront. The warm sweet smell of the panaderia floated over the aisles of the cramped tienda. The pungent sharp spice of the taqueria cut through the sweet bread aroma, pushing out from the back of the store and bakery. He eased his way past the Hispanic women in the narrow aisles, working his way toward the sharp cloud of cumin and chilies.

  Quinn ordered his tacos in formal Spanish. The dark woman behind the high counter chuckled in a motherly fashion. When the Señora slid the basket of carne asada and chile verde tacos onto his wobbly table, Quinn already had tiny tubs of avocado sauce and salsa ready in a neat line. Next to the condiments was a brimming plastic glass of horchata. The tacos were too hot to hold, but he dug in anyway. Juggling the hot tortillas between his fingers, he anointed the first taco with sauces from the tubs. The drippings from the taco fell back onto the plate, staining his hands in the process.

  The tacos devastated, Quinn ruined three napkins trying to mop the taco drippings from his hands and fingers. Leaning against the back wall of the taqueria, he let his eyes wander up the long narrow aisles. Keep your back to the wall, that was the rule. But there was no good reason for it anymore? You don’t have any reason to worry about anything, Bucko. Those bad old days are long gone. No one is looking for you. Even back then not many people wanted to find you. No one except your running buddies you owed money. The rest of it was just cliché crap you picked up from bad movies. Yeah, we weren’t really tough guys, that’s true. We could see the tough guys from where we were standing, but we weren’t them. All of that is more than a decade gone. No bad guys are going to come busting into the bodega looking for your sorry ass.

  Yeah, but what about this other story? What about this Charlie Boyd, your great-great-great-grand-uncle? Was he the genuine article, a real bad-ass? Maybe, for the short time, while he stirred his anger with whiskey and resentment, maybe he became more than a scared kid. He damn sure had some grit to march up main street on a Sunday morning, blow that guy to hell. But what if that was just the whiskey talking, turning him from scared kid into a death-dealing maniac. Right up until they laid hands on him that is. What did the witness say? Young Charlie slumped like a sack of corn. All the life gone out of him. But not before that one blazing moment.

  Quinn swirled the last two inches of his horchata, forcing the dots of cinnamon to blend into the sweet milky drink. He swirled and drank, swirled and drank. Setting the empty glass down, he pondered the story. But Charlie had his moment, didn’t he? So is that what is digging into you? Are you feeling the lack of a dramatic moment, the big act three showdown? Do you not remember what real trouble is like? There’s not just a singular dramatic moment, curtain sweeping closed then opening again, cast coming out to take the ovation. No, real trouble grinds away, slow and steady, eating you up bit by bit, wearing you down. You know that grindstone, don’t you Quinn? Maybe that’s what Charlie was feeling, the nip of the grindstone. He could have caught a long look down into the future, could have seen years of being abused by the boss-men of the world. Maybe he saw that long tunnel of claustrophobic small-town life. So he snapped, knowing what would happen and snapped anyway, trying to go out in a rage. Instead he ends up being dragged away like a sack of grain. Then nothing, a ghost in the system.

  No, I don’t need that kind of trouble in my life, thanks. I remember the desperation and that slow squeeze. There was never a moment of failed blazing glory, only a plodding slowness. All the rest of it, that stuff about being a tough street guy, that’s all crap. You were just an addict, no tougher than the rest, hustling and scamming, ripping and running, just like everyone else you hung with. Your crew, where are they? Some dead, some in the joint. Exactly. All that was more than a decade ago, Quinn, more than ten years. That crap is behind you. Let’s try to keep it there, yes?

  He slid from the bench against the wall and made his way toward the gray light at the front of the store. Quinn walked across the street through the slow patient rain, dodging the growing puddles with the unconscious deftness of a native. To the south, the spires of the St Johns bridge were scratching into the bellies of the low clouds. Well, at least it’s not blowing in sideways, thought Quinn. Another winter about to begin in the gray-nor-wet. No Sir, this ain’t no place for the faint o’ heart, the fragile, or the suicidal. Quinn laughed out loud as he fired up the engine on the old trusty-rusty.

  The road rose to the height of the St Johns span. The suspension bridge seemed to hover between two plan
es of water, the rain clouds pressing from above and the river reaching up from below. Quinn crossed to the far side and headed south on US 30, winding past the piers and railroad lines scattered along the industrial side of the Willamette. As he passed fuel farms and hulking steelyards, Quinn veered off of Highway 30 onto St. Helens, heading for Alphabet City, Portland’s Northwest district.

  He drove through the industrial district, yet another section of the city under siege by the developers. Soon enough, he figured, those buzzards will learn to make ugly warehouses and assembly plants into condos. Hell, it was already happening. Banging against the vision of Looney Tune vultures perched on power lines, another nagging image was kicking around in his head. Charlie Boyd shouting, then sagging like a dead thing. Raging bright and flaring out, all in a moment. Okay, the story hooked me, I got it. But let’s try to keep it in the context of the piece, right?

  He breathed a sigh of relief as he dodged safely back into the clogged grid of Northwest Portland street traffic. The magazine piece was morphing in his head as the story of Charlie Boyd pushed aside the human interest angle. Quinn was not looking forward to his next conversation with the editor of the magazine. “Grist for the mill old buddy, grist for the mill.” Talking to himself was a long established habit. What sane writer didn’t talk to himself? As the traffic crept along the narrow streets, he entertained himself with vignettes of famous writers berating themselves. The idea of Hemingway shouting “Less words! Less words, dammit!” had him laughing out loud. Would Faulkner have said just the opposite? He was still chuckling to himself as he squeezed the Honda into the tiny parking lot of his apartment building.

 

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