by Lin Enger
“Here we are,” Hornaday said, drawing up in front of a three-story hotel. “Same place I stayed when I came out here this spring. Best in town.”
The sign above the double door said DROVER HOUSE, and on its wide front porch a squat woman in canvas trousers stood talking with a pair of men who leaned forward as if putting each word she uttered to memory. “Say,” she said now, “there’s a good-looking boy, ain’t you,” and pointed her finger at Danny. Then she turned to Hornaday, mounting the porch steps. “You didn’t tell me you had sons.”
“Hello, May. In fact, I don’t. These aren’t mine.” He went past her to the front door and opened it for her.
She walked straight for the front desk, where she flipped up a hinged section of counter and took her position in front of the mail slots, her short, fat hands splayed out on the countertop. It came nearly to her chin. “Your room is ready,” she said, nodding at Hornaday and Sully, “but what about these boys here?”
“They can stay with us tonight. They’ve got their own bedrolls.”
“They ain’t part of the expedition, I wouldn’t think.”
“No.” And without embellishing, Hornaday explained how they were searching for their father, who might have passed through town, or even spent time here.
“When?”
“Last six weeks or so, as I understand it.”
“What’s your father’s name?” May asked, turning her round face toward Eli.
“Ulysses.”
“That’s a mouthful,” May said, “but I’ve got no recollection of it, and me a person with a knack for names. How would I know if I seen him?”
Eli described their father. Tall, with straight-up-and-down posture and wide shoulders. No extra weight on his bones. Gray hair.
“That sounds like about a quarter of the boys I see in a given span of time.” May lifted a hand to indicate the townful of men just beyond her front door, but then Danny piped up.
“And this here is gone,” he said, reaching up and taking hold of his own right ear.
“What—he’s got no ear on that side?”
“The war,” Danny explained. “He’s only got a scar there.”
“Well that helps a little. Though now I can tell you I ain’t seen him. Did he come in on the train?”
The boys nodded. They figured he did, yes.
May tipped her head to one side then the other, as if to shift her memories around, make them retrievable. “Tell you what. Either he came through on the rails and kept on going, or else he needed a horse, maybe a rig, and lit out in that manner. In which case you’d want to go and talk to Church at the livery.”
“We think he might be out here collecting bones,” Eli said.
“All the more reason to see Church.”
The big front door squealed open, and a young man wearing a filthy, ankle-length coat glided in, boot heels echoing on the wood floor. He walked right up to Hornaday and put out his hand. “McNaney,” he said, looking Hornaday up and down. “And I’m guessing you’re the fellow that hired me.”
Hornaday introduced McNaney, the hunter who knew his way around the wild country up north, the buffalo expert, but the man wasn’t interested in courtesies, barely managing a curt nod to May and Sully. He said, “Fact is, Sir, Lieutenant Smith needs to see you a couple of days ago. He’s got a six-mule team and an escort of troops all shined and polished, but he’s got to know what else you’re wanting. Mounts, wagons, commissary stuffs. I think we best get you over there to the Fort and get things started. With all due respect.”
“I sent word I’d be late,” Hornaday said.
“Yes, and he got that word. But there’s other things pressing, and Smith needs to get you situated and off.”
“All right, then.” Hornaday turned to May. “You’ll take care of our bags?”
She lifted her hands and chased the men toward the door—“Get going,” she said, “hurry up,” then snapped her fingers at a big stoop-shouldered boy by the window, working at a ledger book. “Stuart, these young men and myself, we’ll be gone for a bit. Be sure you tell Dot to finish off the corner rooms upstairs. Hear me?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the boy drawled.
May led Eli and Danny south past a barbershop that smelled of talc and lye, then past a butcher shop with hams and pullets and ripe-smelling beef rolls, jars of pigs’ feet, baskets of brown, white, and speckled eggs. They turned right on Main and headed west. There was a land shop, a dry goods, and a sturdy bank on whose portico sat a man with blond hair, shoulder length, asleep in a rocking chair, rifle on his lap. And then finally the livery, with a big sign that said CHURCH AND JOHNSON, an unpainted, slat-sided barn that emitted a rank smell Eli found comforting somehow. Just inside the wide door, a man stood leaning on his pitchfork next to a handcart piled with soiled straw.
“Hello, May. You got helpers?”
“Boys, meet Mr. Church. They’re here looking for their old man,” she told him.
He removed his hat, a brimless bowl of grimy leather, and used it to wave the three of them out the door and back into the street. “Let’s talk in the air, shall we?” he said. “Now tell me, who’s your father?” His eyes were cloudy, and he squinted as if he couldn’t quite bring the world into focus.
Eli described his father once more, not forgetting the missing ear this time.
“You’d remember a man like that, wouldn’t you?” May asked.
“I would, and I do. Truth is, I’d remember him if he had a pair of ears like a normal fellow. On account of his eyes, the way they looked at me. Burning, kind of. Like he thought I did something to him. Or might.”
“That’s him,” Eli said, remembering the times he’d felt that way himself, wondering what it was he’d done wrong.
“Well?” May asked.
“A week, week and a half ago. He came in out of the rain one day, mud to his knees, that storm we had. Lightning took the steeple off that little chapel down south that day. Remember? Said he wanted an ox and a cart. Well, it was mules he actually wanted, but I had none to let. He settled for the ox.”
“For what purpose?” May asked.
“He was after bones. Said he was heading down toward the Tongue River Agency, wanted to know about the trail that goes that way. He didn’t seem to know his way around here that much.”
“You sure it wasn’t earlier—say, in August?” Eli asked.
“Like I said, the day of that storm.” Church squeezed the leather cap on his head and pushed long strands of greasy hair behind his ears. “Am I right on that, May? About the storm?”
“Yes, middle of the week, not this last but the one before, like you say. A week and a half back.”
Eli said, “And you haven’t seen him since.”
“I ain’t, no. And now he’s in it for seven dollars and fifty cents for the rig. I’d like to be seeing that money. And my property too, for that matter.”
“What did you get for collateral?” May asked him.
“Egad.” Church lifted a fist and knocked on the side of his own head with it. “Hear that? He gave me something, when you see it, you’ll think less of me as a man of business.” He led them all back inside and into his corner office. There was a battered desk, a straight chair, and a window looking out on the alley. From a drawer he took the tarnished watch Eli had known his entire life, the watch his mother gave Ulysses as a wedding gift, not gold but steel, and which hadn’t kept time since it went over the side of the fishing boat one day on Silver Lake and had to be rescued. The sight of it was like a stab in Eli’s belly. It was almost as if his father’s face had appeared before him in the flesh.
“That’s his all right,” Danny said. “My dad’s.”
“Yeah, and it don’t work neither. Not so much as a tick. And it won’t wind. I didn’t make sure to check it when he gave it over to me, dammit.” The liveryman wrapped his big fingers around the watch and held it up in front of his face and scowled at it before putting it back in the drawer.
“It just needs a new spring,” Danny said, repeating what their father had been saying for years, while carrying it around nonetheless. Until now, Eli had never questioned the strangeness of that.
“How long do the bone fellows generally stay out?” May asked.
“A couple of days, a week. Doesn’t take long to fill a cart the size of the one I let to him. Though it’s hard to say. He might’ve come back and gone out a couple of times since then, dropping the bones off at Slovin’s. Of course the country’s full of renegades and highwaymen, so it makes you wonder.” He stretched, arching his back and rotating his head all around on his shoulders. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“What do you mean, renegades and highwaymen?” Danny said.
Church put a thumb to his mouth and closed an eye, thinking on it. He ignored the warning Eli couldn’t help but notice in May’s face. “Men that’ll put a gun in your nose and take your wallet and your shirt too,” Church said. “Or even just kill you for the sport of it. Men who don’t like working. And don’t like to be told what’s what or where to wipe their dirty feet either.”
“My dad was in the war, and you can be sure he killed people,” Danny said.
“Ah.” The liveryman nodded, then leaned his head toward the battered desk. “I don’t figure you boys like candy, do you? Me, I favor the horehounds.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a paper sack and held it out, smiling in a way that wouldn’t fool anyone.
“I don’t care for ’em, no,” Danny said, and jammed his hands in his pocket.
“How about you?”
Eli couldn’t resist. He took one of the translucent little rocks and slipped it in his mouth.
“You best go and visit with Slovin,” Church said. “Though you won’t find him at his shop right now. I just seen him on his horse, half an hour back. He likes to take the evening meal at his mother’s place, you know, up north.”
“I wish she’d poison him and be done with it,” May said, and ushered the boys out of the barn and into the street.
Behind them, Church laughed. “He ain’t that bad,” he said.
A herd of longhorn steers had passed by, and alkaline dust hung in the air. It sent Danny into a sneezing fit. Looking at him, Eli saw that his face looked drawn and gray, and that there was yellow in the whites of his eyes.
“You all right?” Eli asked him.
“Only tired.”
He threw an arm around his brother’s shoulders and pulled him forward to catch up with May, who was ten paces ahead and moving fast. “We’ll go and talk to that boneman, right?” Eli called to her. “When he gets back from supper?”
May turned around. She shook her head. “I’ll have no truck with the man. But Mr. Hornaday will take you over there tonight, I’ll see to it. Come on now.”
“What have you got against him?” Eli asked.
“Let’s go, boys—I have to get dinner on,” she said, turning and heading off again down the boardwalk. They had to run to keep up with her, Eli half dragging his brother, whose feet didn’t want to keep up with his legs.
May fed them that evening in the kitchen, then set them to work clearing off the tables in the dining room and finally washing dishes at a big porcelain sink with a hand pump. By the time she installed them in Hornaday’s room, it was past nine o’clock and the sun had been down for an hour.
“Now see here,” she said. “The man has a lot to get ready for, but he’ll take you over first thing in the morning, I’ll make certain of it. Meantime, you boys stay put. This here is a nice enough town, but come nightfall a good place to stay inside. I’ll be at the main desk, in case you need me.”
As soon as May had left, Danny coughed. “We ain’t just going to wait up here, are we?” he said.
“Depends on how’re you doing,” Eli said. He’d been watching his brother fighting it off, rolling his shoulders and making little chicken jerks with his elbows, squeezing his big eyes shut and then popping them wide, as if trying to surprise himself into feeling better.
“I’ll be all right.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I’m thinking, what if he’s here tonight. Here in town. What if he’s got a mind to leave in the morning?”
“I was thinking the same,” Eli said.
“Let’s go then.”
“You’ve got to promise me you won’t get sick,” Eli said, hating himself for saying it, but not able to keep the words in his throat.
“I promise.”
And so they went down the back stairs that led to the the kitchen and then crawled on their hands and knees through the hall that passed an open door behind the big counter where May was perched on a high stool, facing away, toward the front. As they left by the alley door, the grandfather clock in the lobby marked the quarter-hour with a single chiming note, and Eli’s stomach clamped up, scared. The night was cool and getting toward cold. A full moon, yellow as rendered fat, hung low and large in the east, glistening with a sheen that made Eli wonder if it was raining off that way. No rain here, though, and no wind either as the boys headed south toward the railroad tracks. They hadn’t gone ten paces before they nearly fell into an old cistern with a low rock lip around its edge.
“Judas Priest!” Eli said, stumbling, but managing to steer his brother clear of the thing. They passed behind the buildings whose fronts they walked by earlier, including the livery where the rear window offered a profile of Church, elbows propped on his desk. He was gazing up in thought like a professor or a parson. Behind the saloon the air shook with the beating of hands on piano keys, and then a door swung open, a man and woman falling out of it, clinging together, the woman squealing in fright or pleasure, Eli couldn’t tell, the man’s arms around her from behind, his face buried in her mass of hair as he carried and pushed her to a stunted tree in the lee of the building where he spun her toward him and pressed her against its trunk with the whole length of himself—all this as the boys slid past, Eli urging his brother, “Come on, come on,” and pulling him along.
Outside the depot an old man, white beard to his waist and reeking of whiskey, sat hunched against a luggage cart, chewing on a leg of turkey. Asked about the boneman’s whereabouts, he lifted the turkey leg and aimed it down along the track, east.
“His name’s Slovin,” the old man said. “You’ll be lookin for a round-roofed building, a barn really, north of the rails. That’d be his bone-house. Might find him there, but I wouldn’t put money on it.”
“Where, then?”
The man leaned back and yawned, his mouth a gaping hole. A sharp, wet laugh barked out of it, the spray striking Eli’s face. “That other house he’s got back there, which he’ll be keepin’ tabs on.” The old man laughed again, but this time Eli backed off to a safe distance and stayed dry.
The line of the building’s roof was like a giant wagon wheel half buried in the ground, a big sliding door taking up most of its high front wall and next to it a smaller door, on which Eli knocked. He knocked again, louder, this time raising what sounded like a voice from inside.
“He’s in there,” Danny said, and lifted both fists and pounded on the plank door like it was the single thing standing between himself and his father. He stepped back and nearly collapsed, his shoulders crumpling, arms crossing in front of his chest. Eli grabbed hold of him to keep him on his feet.
“We’ve got to get you back,” he said.
Danny shook him off.
Then the door opened before them, and the boys found themselves staring at a bald man whose face was smooth and white, nearly featureless, his eyes mere holes, his mouth a straight cut above his soft chin. A man-sized garden slug was what he looked like.
“I hope your visit is propitious,” he said in a voice deeper than Eli would have guessed. “I’m occupied tonight.”
“Slovin?”
“I am.”
“We’re looking for our father, who might be a client of yours.”
“Of what variety?”
>
“Bones,” Eli said.
“Ah.” Slovin turned and cast a look inside.
Eli, looking too, saw a lamplit desk and beyond it the star-salted sky—for the back wall of the barn was gone. The bone pile was eight or ten feet high and extended for at least thirty paces beyond the shelter of the building. There had to be enough to fill two or three boxcars, probably more.
“I have numerous clients,” Slovin said, and he turned and shuffled back inside, signaling for the boys to follow. He dropped himself into the chair behind his desk.
“Who is your father?” he asked.
Eli started describing him, but Slovin slapped the air.
“Give me his name!”
“Ulysses Pope,” Eli said.
“Pope, Pope.” Slovin’s doughy hands formed a knot in front of his face, and it was hard to tell if his small eyes were open or closed. The smell coming from the bone pile reminded Eli of the dump behind Johnny’s house back home, Johnny’s dad the butcher, whose shop was on the riverbank where the carcasses had piled up for years. Slovin straightened himself in his chair and showed something like a smile. He tapped his fingers together. “I’ve seen him, yes. But God knows where he might have gone. Ulysses Pope—my, what a venerable name for a one-eared man.”
“He sold to you?”
“He did. And I paid him handsomely, more than his shit was worth. What are bones, after all?”
“When?” Eli asked him.
The man yawned, coughed into his fist, then took a neatly pressed handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, and wiped his mouth before saying, “Two mornings back, I believe it was. No, yesterday.” He smiled. “I saw your father yesterday.”
Eli wanted to knock the ugly grin from Slovin’s face, throw him off his chair and kick him—for the handkerchief he used and for his pale skin, for the haughtiness in his voice. But Slovin stood abruptly. “I know somebody who might be able to help us,” he said. “Why don’t we go and see him.”