Vacant Graves

by Christopher Beats

She gave no more protest and I realized she was just as anxious to leave as I was. Maybe it was the goons who’d caught her or perhaps the cruel destruction of her property. Women can be funny about their hats.

  An enormous black steamcoach idled in the alley beside the hotel. Wisps of lazy coal smoke and steam crept out of its stacks. A driver sat near the control-levers on the back left side. He was wearing the customary uniform of his profession—topper, goggles and a checkered scarf. Though he drove a horseless carriage, the strange fellow had a riding crop. There were not, in fact, horses anywhere to be seen.

  “When you leaving, friend?” the first traveler asked him.

  We were too far away to hear his response. Apparently it was vulgar. The three travelers gasped. The coachman pushed back the rim of his hat with the riding crop so they could see his toothy grin.

  “See here,” one of the travelers protested. “How dare you speak to me like that? I’ll have words with your employer about this.”

  The driver pointed his crop at the passenger-door, as if to say “Go ahead.”

  The businessman straightened his coat and rapped smartly on the door. The other two nodded angrily.

  I froze. Something about the driver’s attitude bothered me. Phoebe continued forward until I caught her arm. “It’s a private coach,” I observed. “Not the Pittsburgh flyer.”

  “So? Maybe they’ll give us a ride.”

  I shook my head.

  The door slid open just a little. The inside of the cabin was dark, so dark that the passengers were obscured.

  The businessman with the nice mustache gesticulated indignantly, pointing at the coachman up top.

  After a moment of listening, a gloved hand emerged from the coach and beckoned the traveler closer. The traveler leaned into the compartment and then, just as quickly, fell out again. He staggered about drunkenly and collapsed.

  The coachman yawned as if he were bored.

  The other two travelers gaped. It took them a moment to register what they saw. They spun on their heels and fled, leaving their valises behind in the mud. The door of the carriage closed as if nothing happened.

  The affronted businessman lay unmoving in the mud.

  I turned and fled with the others, nearly tearing Phoebe’s arm from its socket in the process. I ran until we were deep in the rail yard and nearly out of breath. The businessmen were nowhere to be seen. I assume they went into the hotel or saloon, somewhere out of the night. Somewhere warm and safe.

  “What happened?” the girl asked, digging her heels into the ground.

  There was no time to stop. I kept dragging her until we settled on a rapid walk, faster than she wanted but slower than I liked. We circled behind some boxcars and started up the tracks.

  “What happened?” she repeated.

  “The man who fell...”

  “Yeah—what happened to him?”

  “His throat was slashed.” It happened so quickly that Phoebe hadn’t seen, but I had. Even from ten yards back in a dark alley, I’d seen the neat red line across his jugular.

  “Are you sure? Who would murder a man just for knocking on his coach window?”

  “Stanny Slash. Stanny Slash would kill a man for that.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “What do we do, Mr. Schist? What do we do?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  If the three scrags from the hotel had joined their boss, that made five men at least, counting the driver. There was also the possibility that if Stanislaus himself were here, he’d brought equipment more deadly than a knife.

  Three men I could easily take by surprise, especially if they were drunk. Five men in the presence of their murderous employer would be much more difficult. If his reputation were any indicator, Stanny was the kind of tyrant that forbade drinking until the job was done.

  Phoebe cast her eye over her shoulder every other step, as if Stanislaus were going to swoop out of the trees like an owl.

  “Maybe the union can protect us. Mr. MacCallard seemed like a gentleman.”

  “He did, but he might not be in charge anymore. For all we know, he’s dead.” It wasn’t an appetizing thought. If men like Roy got in power, the town would become a crazy no-man’s land, one I’d have to negotiate with a girl on my elbow and Stanny Slash dogging my steps. “We’ve got to leave town.”

  “Somebody’s coming.” She indicated the direction with a nod.

  A man was walking at us from the two Liutt-towns, not from Juniper Junction. After a few minutes, I could see that he was a tall fellow, over six feet.

  I thought of MacCallard immediately. Phoebe must have, too, because she called his name.

  An unfamiliar voice answered. “Yeah?”

  A few steps later, we saw that it wasn’t the union leader at all but a tall negro in mining clothes.

  “Sorry, sir,” I said. “We mistook you for MacCallard.”

  The miner flashed a white smile through the gloom. “No worries. Thought you were calling me. Everyone calls me Mack.”

  It was damned weird, him skulking in the rail yard like this. “Going up for a nip at the saloon, Mack?” I asked cautiously.

  “Nope. They don’t let negroes in there. Actually, I was looking for you. I saw you duck back here and I followed you.”

  Phoebe tensed beside me. I had my gun but I didn’t draw it. He was a big guy, but there was no visible weapon and he didn’t seem hostile.

  “We’re avoiding someone.”

  “Oh?”

  “A dangerous fellow. Anyway, I think we’re leaving now.”

  “On foot?” he asked. “It’s a long way to the next town and plenty dark. Why not come back to the two Liutts? I can show you a way that avoids the road.”

  Phoebe nodded. “That steamcoach could run us down on the highway easily.”

  I hesitated. We didn’t even have a map—just a vague idea where the next town was. “All right.”

  We started back through the shadows between rusted flatbed cars.

  “I heard about Paddy O’Neal’s wife,” Mack told us. “Shame. Patty was a great guy.”

  “You were friends?”

  “Does that seem strange to you, Mr. Schist?” He grinned again.

  “You know my name.”

  He nodded. “Heard a lot about you two. Ruffled some feathers here.”

  I gave Phoebe a sideways glance but she didn’t notice. Now that Mack had proven less than dangerous, she was busy watching our backs again.

  I cleared my throat. “Sorry to sound presumptuous, but darkies and micks don’t always mingle.” I thought of the tenements. There was a de facto segregation enforced by the Irish gangs.

  “Down in the mines, we’re all black.”

  I didn’t have a response to that, so we walked along the swale of the tracks in silence. We were following an old railway spur. Weeds came up through the slats, brown and brittle in the winter’s air. We could see the lights of the factory north of us. Apparently, this detour had only added another five or ten minutes to the journey. We’d be warm and snug in a piss-soaked hotel room in no time.

  “Heard you were working for the union, looking for scabs or something,” he said casually.

  “I couldn’t say if I was.”

  He looked at me. “There aren’t any scabs in Liuttsville.”

  We passed out of the forest and into the open fields south of Liuttsburg. The witch-fire made Mack’s hair look red. After staring for a m
oment, I saw his hair was red.

  “So you came looking for me to tell me I’m wrong? That there aren’t any scabs in Liuttsville?”

  He shook his head. “I came here to hire you.” He laughed at my shocked expression. “That’s right, to hire you. I want you to find Paddy O’Neal’s body, Mr. Schist. I want you to see what they did to it. I want to know if they’re really embalming him.”

  “Why not just crack the box open?”

  “We’d have to dig up six feet of earth in an open field between the towns. I think the detectives might notice that.”

  “Oh. Still...doesn’t seem like my kind of case.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “Greenbacks?” I asked mechanically.

  “I can get greenbacks.”

  “How the hell can you afford this? I don’t work for nickels.”

  He reached into his pocket and drew a wad of company script. It was easily a month’s wages for a miner.

  “That’s a decent bundle,” I admitted. “Only it’s company script.” I narrowed my eyes. “How’d you get so much?”

  His features hardened. “It’s not stolen, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Phoebe glanced at me.

  I gave an embarrassed cough. “It’s just odd for a miner to have that big a wad. Are you fronting for somebody?”

  “Yeah—the Associations.”

  My blood ran cold. “Another union.”

  “Hell no! The Negro Miner’s Benevolent Association plus the Irish Miner’s Benevolent Association. The two organizations have asked me to represent them tonight. Normally, we operate separately, but we feel this issue affects us both, so we’re pooling our resources.”

  I snorted.

  “It’s all aboveboard. Mr. Liutt approves of our organization. We mostly collect dues to help out widows and whatnot. Mines may be harsh, but miners are kindly.”

  I ruminated on that for a moment. It made sense. Liutt could hardly deny men the right to help widows and orphans.

  “Your organization is branching out, then. Would Liutt approve of you hiring a detective to snoop around?”

  “Who said anything about snooping around? We just want you to check that our dead miners are being treated with respect. You’re quality control, that’s all.”

  I rubbed my temples. “This is a helluva time for me to take on another job.”

  “We should help them,” Phoebe said. “They’re nicer than Roy.”

  Mack gave her a smile. “It’s good of you to say so, miss. But I intended for you to do both jobs at once.”

  I rolled my eyes. “First of all, he hired me, not her.” I might give Phoebe an ounce of credit every now and again, but I wasn’t about to publicly admit to partnering with a teenager. “Also, not to rain on the parade, but MacCallard might be dead for all we know. I can give my full attention to your job...if I decide to take it.”

  Mack’s eyes widened in alarm. “Did something happen to Aidan?”

  “You mean, besides that massacre outside the factory gate?”

  “Were you there? I heard he came out okay...”

  “I didn’t see him in the crowd.”

  A look of relief came over him.

  I watched him with interest. “That’s an awful lot of concern for a factory worker.”

  “Any man’s death diminishes me.”

  He was quoting John Donne. Backcountry Pennsylvania was full of surprises. “An educated miner.” It felt like finding a lily in the Sahara.

  “Are you surprised?” His voice had an edge to it.

  “The Associations didn’t just ‘send you.’ You’re the leader of at least one of them and probably the de facto leader of the other.”

  “My official role is irrelevant. Today I’m acting as a representative in the matter of hiring you.”

  “You are their leader and, from the sounds of it, a politician to boot. Only a politician would hedge on a question like that.” I shook my head in disgust. “That’s why you cared so much about MacCallard. You’ve worked with him, maybe even got to be friends. Hell, you even remind me of each other.”

  “I know Aidan,” he told us blandly.

  I laughed harshly. “And you just help widows, eh?”

  “We help everyone. We’re a benevolent association, like our name says.”

  “A union,” I repeated. “In league with Big MacCallard.”

  “Roy didn’t seem to like miners much,” Phoebe interjected. “How could they be working together?”

  “Roy is an illiterate bumpkin. MacCallard is the brains. He’s the one who matters.” I turned back to the miner. “Are you following Big MacCallard’s orders?”

  Mack shook his head. “No. We’re independent. We have an understanding is all.”

  “Not to scab at the factory.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Sounds like a shit deal for you. If I had a chance, I’d rather sweat in the factory than choke in the mines...”

  “Are you going to take the job or not? MacCallard won’t mind if you do both jobs at once, I’m sure of it.”

  “I like to know the variables,” I said.

  “The only variable you need to know is greenbacks,” he said.

  I looked at the ground. The bastard knew me. So did Phoebe. She leaned close to me and Mack politely looked away, pretending not to listen.

  “Do you have enough to pay our way home?”

  It was patently unfair. The railway should pay our way home. Pennsy should’ve paid for all our meals, our clothes ruined by smoke, and the hotel room with piss in it.

  But they wouldn’t. And Ma Mosey’s advance was gone. I had the union’s advance, but no matter what the union claimed, company script would be worthless once we left the company town. Every dime would be coming out of my pocket. Every nickel would be one less loaf of bread for Moira and the coming baby.

  “Christ alive.” I gritted my teeth. “We’ll do it.”

  Mack offered me his hand and I grudgingly took it. “We appreciate it, Mr. Schist. You know it’s the right thing—you’re helping your fellow Irish.”

  “How’d you know he’s Irish?” Phoebe asked foolishly.

  “Because Paddy’s boy told me he could talk Gaelic.”

  Who else would learn Irish except an Irishman, or in this case, a half-Irishman?

  He bowed to Phoebe and loped into the forest. Two shadows detached from the night and fell in beside him. They had been there the whole time, watching us, protecting him. It reinforced my belief that the Association was a lot more than a charity. Charity administrators do not need bodyguards.

  “He seemed like a nice fellow,” Phoebe said when he was gone.

  I glowered at the factory. It loomed at the edge of the horizon, smokestacks pointed up like knife-hilts in a murdered man’s back.

  “You weren’t really surprised by his reading, were you, Mr. Schist? I mean, my Da used to read Frederick Douglass.” She gave me a wry smile. “Even plain folks in Darke County know that some negroes can read.”

  Frederick Douglass was a man I didn’t want to think about. Not because a scholarly black man bothered me—quite the opposite. I’d read his story back when I was a starry-eyed soldier-boy going off to war. He taught me about how slavery ruined poor Sophie Auld, and recalcitrant slaves got casually shot by impatient overseers when they weren’t being whipped or starved. I read that and I told myself I was fighting for negro freedom and for John Brown’s ghost.

&
nbsp; That made losing worse. The Confederates won, and though the Halifax Treaty officially ended slavery, very little had improved for negroes. The Dixie high-ups had plenty of ways to keep their blacks yoked up, even if on paper they were free. Up north, meanwhile, things weren’t much better, as Liutt’s mines plainly demonstrated.

  Last I heard, Douglass was in hiding. Even though he was a citizen of the Magnocracy or maybe Canada, the CSA had put a considerable bounty on his head, along with every other negro who dared write books suggesting folks were equal. Publishers in the Magnocracy didn’t want to nettle the planters, so the days of moral pamphleteering were over. The great rumbling presses which ran The Liberator and Uncle Tom’s Cabin were as cold and dead as the United States government.

  When we got back to the hotel, I slapped the last of the union advance on the counter and fattened it with a little of Mack’s. “I need a fresh room.” I glanced at Phoebe. “And some food.”

  The weaselly clerk was on duty. He arched an eyebrow and gave us our original room—the one with holes in it—and had the audacity to charge us full price. I was past complaining, though. Phoebe looked dead on her feet and I badly needed to wash the grime off my face. The foul ooze of Tartarus was everywhere. I could smell it in my nostrils and taste it on the back of my tongue like sour milk.

  The kitchen at the hotel was open all night, on account of the late shifts, but most of the good stuff was gone. Days of a union blockade and all the stranded travelers meant their food stores were more than a little depleted.

  While the room was prepared we had sandwiches in the lobby. The bread was hard and the filling was some kind of potted meat with a bit of mustard.

  Phoebe’s face fell when she saw them. “What’s this?”

  I tore the sandwich apart with relish. “Food,” I said between bites.

  “Are you sure? What kind of meat is this?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know. The kind that comes in a can.”

  “This came out of a can? We preserve fruits and such at home, but not meat. Are you sure it’s safe?”