Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  “Let me go …,” Clay said.

  Chaffey shook his head. “I can’t. He’d kill me too. He’s mean.”

  “Before he comes back … we can both go! You didn’t do anything bad yet!”

  Chaffey wagged his head violently from side to side, pressed his lips together to keep himself strong.

  Clay used the word he’d been saving till last. “Please …,” he said.

  The gun was lifted. “Bill says … he says I got to, so we’re both in this together. I swear, he’ll kill me if I don’t. I’m sorry, truly.…”

  He thumbed back the hammer and took aim. To Clay the muzzle opening seemed impossibly large, big enough to swallow him whole. He heard the shameful sound of his own voice begging, begging as the seat of his pants filled with a fetid brown froth, and all shame was subsumed by the need to talk his way out of dying.

  Chaffey’s eyes told Clay when the moment had come. They closed against the anticipated blast. Clay turned to throw himself away from the yawning muzzle’s line of fire, but he moved too late. The shot’s deafening sound was merely the aftermath to what felt like a skewer rammed through his face from one side clear through to the other. The bullet had passed through both cheeks, missing the teeth and gums only because Clay’s mouth was wide open in a scream he couldn’t hear. He fell, more from shock than any conscious plan to play dead, then lay still, his mouth filling with blood.

  Clay heard Chaffey’s boots moving across the floor, and had the presence of mind to stop breathing. His face was buried against the surprisingly firm flesh of his mother’s side. He could feel blood gushing from his ruptured cheeks onto the cloth of her dress. Chaffey’s breath rasped a few feet above him for a long moment, then the boots moved away, and he heard Bill’s voice coming from over by the house.

  “You get him?”

  “I got him!”

  The combined sound of their voices moved in the direction of the barn. Clay drew breath and lurched upright. He hurried from the cabin and crossed the yard, glancing at the barn door—no sign of the Chaffeys—then upstairs to the bedroom of his parents, a room he had never been inside. Delaney had told him once that the pistol was kept near to hand in case robbers should enter the house at night. Had Chaffey searched the upper floor during his brief time inside?

  Clay yanked open the drawer of the bedside table. There lay the gun, smelling of oil. He picked it up. The Colt seemed to possess a weight beyond its own metal and wood.

  Delaney’s two best horses had been taken from their stalls to the yard. The only saddle was placed on the first, then Bill went to fetch the saddle from his own inferior mount to put on the second. Unbuckling the girth, he hesitated, then turned. The last thing he saw was the boy standing in the house doorway, aiming a pistol at him. Bill heard the first chamber misfire, but the second killed him with a bullet to the chest. In the few seconds it took him to die, he cursed his brother for a fool.

  Chaffey came hesitantly from the barn. Had that been Bill’s gun he heard? It sounded louder than Bill’s. The boy he thought he’d killed was already halfway across the yard, a pistol held before him in both hands. Chaffey felt his knees give way, and he sank to the ground. The gun grew larger as Clay approached to within a few feet of the kneeling man.

  “He made me …,” Chaffey said.

  The hammer went back. He watched the trigger squeezed. The dull click of a misfire was too cruel. The following chamber also granted him a few extra seconds, but the next did not. Chaffey felt his skull fly apart, then felt himself leap out of his own demolished cranium.

  Clay watched the body crumple sideways into the dust of the yard. Both men were dead by his hand. The fact stunned him, elated him. How had any of this happened? How could Chaffey, who had worked alongside him this past month, aim a gun and try to kill him? The fact that he had done so made Clay’s reciprocal aiming and more successful killing acceptable. Clay didn’t doubt it, even if his body was beginning to twitch, even as the instrument of retribution fell from his hands. It had been right, right and good, to do the thing he had done.

  He washed his mouth free of blood, then changed his fouled pants before mounting the horse that would take him to town. His face was on fire by then, the pain so bad he couldn’t keep himself from crying.

  6

  Hassenplug paid for a doctor. It was worth two dollars to be sure his son was born right. His wife could have organized the assistance of area midwives, but Mrs. Hassenplug was in no mood to cooperate, wouldn’t go anywhere near the girl or fix her food, hadn’t even spoken to Zoe after her belly started to balloon.

  It was jealousy, pure and simple, Hassenplug could see that, but he didn’t interfere; best to leave his wife out of things till the baby was born, then he’d put her in her place. Zoe might even change her mind and begin showing respect for the father, might even consent to be his real woman, a second wife, like the kings in the Bible had. Yes, he’d keep Mrs. Hassenplug away from the baby, before and after its birth, just in case she was jealous enough to do the boy harm. She’d been acting very strange of late, and couldn’t be trusted.

  The doctor earned every cent of his fee. It was a night birth, protracted, noisy, troublesome. He very nearly lost patience with the girl under his care; she didn’t seem to be trying hard enough to push her baby out, reluctant to experience the ultimate pain of passage. He encouraged her, instructed her, shouted at her, and finally the thing was done, another soul received into the world of men. The doctor went downstairs to inform the Hassenplugs their erring daughter (or servant girl; the doctor had not quite fathomed the relationship) had delivered herself of a healthy female.

  Hassenplug paid the fee, but his two dollars felt like lead weights. A girl! What use had he for a girl! It was a colossal betrayal of trust. He’d wanted a boy, told Zoe many times to concentrate on making it so, exhorted her to prayer, if that was what it took. And she’d let him down with a girl as useless as herself. When the doctor’s buggy departed into the night, Hassenplug uncorked a jug and proceeded to get drunk.

  No one visited Zoe to inquire after her needs. When her chamber pot was filled, she tipped it out the window. When she felt hungry, she ignored the feeling, too proud to call downstairs for food—an act of begging, in that house—and in time the need for food seemed to pass. She drank from a bucket of water kept standing by for the doctor’s use in the delivery; the doctor had used little, and Zoe calculated it would last her at least another day.

  Her baby ignored Zoe’s various deprivations, insisted on and was granted as much suckling as she desired. Zoe had been convinced she would give birth to a boy, despite entreaties to otherworldly forces, and her delight in a girl was sufficient to quench much of the hatred and misery that had been growing inside her along with the child. A girl was not what her rapist wanted; this alone was a major triumph for Zoe. By a process she could not have defined, Zoe eliminated Hassenplug’s role in the pregnancy. Her girl had come to her by accident, as it were, and was in no way connected to anyone or anything on the farm. She was Zoe’s alone, a projection or extension of herself, and so doubly precious.

  On the second day after the birth of her daughter, Zoe came downstairs. The Hassenplugs drew away from her as she placed herself and her baby on a kitchen chair. “I need to eat,” she stated. She had rehearsed the words many times, perfecting the tone to her own satisfaction; it sounded less like begging, more like a demand. The Hassenplugs looked at each other, then Mrs. Hassenplug complied, setting down a chunk of dry corn bread.

  Zoe broke off a morsel and nibbled daintily, not wanting to gratify the Hassenplugs with a display of voracious hunger. When the edge was taken from her appetite, she unfolded the blanket from her baby’s face and said, “Her name is Naomi. She’s mine.”

  Mrs. Hassenplug’s confidence in reclaiming her husband had been strengthened by the doctor’s report of a girl, and she was disposed, now that the issue of a male line for the Hassenplugs had been scuttled, to be more amenable to Zoe’s nee
ds. This did not mean she would have been the first to venture upstairs, had Zoe not come down, but now that the baby was before her, she could not help herself; she had to lean forward and inspect the thing that had threatened her marriage.

  “Why, there’s a mark on it.…”

  Hassenplug himself came forward, made curious. The baby was indeed marked; from the outer corner of her left eye there streamed a cloud of inky blue that swept around the side of her head to wrap itself about the ear, itself completely blue, almost purple.

  Whatever universal empathy Mrs. Hassenplug might have allowed herself to feel vanished utterly at the sight of the birthmark. She knew such things were, if not the devil’s work, at the very least indicators of inferior blood. The child would very likely turn out to be an idiot, even if her face was sweetness itself. It was a sign, a definite sign that all was not right with the circumstances of the birth, and should anyone be surprised that it had turned out so? This was no product of love or sanctified marriage. Her husband had forced himself on the girl, and the act was transferred to the face of the child she bore. There it was, for all the world to see, a massive blue tear leaking sideways from that innocent eye.

  Mrs. Hassenplug stepped away, and her husband joined her in that backward step of condemnation. Not only was the child not a boy, it was marked by permanent ugliness. It was no child of his. Zoe must have tricked him into thinking it was from that day when he’d taken her partway to town. The little whore had clearly been lifting her dress for some half-witted farmhand in the area, then led Hassenplug to believe the swelling was due to himself. Such gall! Any child of Hassenplug’s, even a girl, would never have been so disfigured. The entire episode was a trick, but he had no intention of playing the dupe for long.

  Zoe got her trip to town. Mrs. Hassenplug and baby Naomi (already called Omie by her mother) also went along. Hassenplug bought Zoe a new dress and shoes, then she was taken to the station where the Hassenplugs had chosen her almost five years before. A ticket was purchased and placed in her hand. “This’ll take you far as Springfield, Illinois,” she was told, and a five-dollar bill was tucked into the baby’s shawl. “That’s for the things you’ll be needing,” Mrs. Hassenplug advised.

  To Zoe, none of this was surprising. The Hassenplugs had been hinting she might be better off elsewhere, in a big town. In a way, it gave her satisfaction; this was the very plan she’d concocted for the day Hassenplug had raped her. Now it was happening. The difference lay in the ticket, the five dollars, and Omie.

  She said nothing, had said virtually not a word since being informed she would be going to town that day. She was being sent away, mailed by locomotive to a distant place where she could not bother her erstwhile parents.

  They stood on the platform, together yet separate, waiting for the train. Zoe looked at her baby, at other travelers standing about, at the rolling stock in a siding, anywhere but at the people who had taken her in, her betrayers. It was best to be gone from them, and yet she felt a certain inexplicable sadness. The paradox depressed her even further, and Zoe spent her final minutes on the platform staring into the air, seeing nothing she could name.

  When the 2:20 westbound rolled in and came to a clanking halt, she stepped up into the nearest car without a word and took a seat on the far side, away from sight of the Hassenplugs who, for their part, departed the platform before the drive wheels began to spin and grab at the rails. Wister’s Landing receded, and Zoe did not look back.

  Within minutes the woman she had seated herself beside began making conversation with Zoe.

  “Now, that wouldn’t be your baby, would it?”

  “Why not?”

  The unintended brusqueness of Zoe’s reply made the woman hesitate to continue. “Well, it’s just you’re so young.”

  “She’s my baby sister,” Zoe said. “We’re going to Springfield to see our ma. She sent the money. We were at Aunt Lucy’s, but now we’re going home.”

  “That’s a long ways for a young girl to go alone, and with so little a baby. How old is she, two months?”

  “Three.”

  “How is it that your ma’s all the way to Springfield, and this little one’s just been born? Why isn’t she with your ma?”

  “She’s sick, our ma is. She sent us away so we wouldn’t catch it too.”

  “She sent a slip of a thing like you all the way to your aunt’s on your own?”

  “No, ma’am. My brother Clay, he came too. He went back yesterday.”

  The woman believed not a word of this. She peered more closely at the baby, looking for a resemblance to the plain-faced girl at her side, and noticed the birthmark.

  “Now, there’s a shame, but you know, blemishes and suchlike respond to lemon juice applied two times weekly till it goes away. I had a second cousin, Rosalie, with a strawberry mark on her chin, and it went away by the time she was nine years old. Well, almost. You could still see it in direct sunlight, but not so’s you’d notice unless you looked. She didn’t care a bit. Lemon juice, fresh squeezed, just dab it on. Of course, Rosalie’s mark was smaller, and not so dark, more of a deep pink than blue.”

  “It’s her blue tear,” Zoe declared, “for all the sadness in the world.”

  “Oh, my, but that’s so poetical! I can tell you’re a girl who’s been to school.”

  Zoe didn’t contradict her.

  “I’m Mrs. Ringle. Don’t you have any baggage at all? You must have a bottle at least, for the baby.”

  “No, ma’am, I’ve got nothing.”

  “Well, didn’t your ma provide you with such things before you left? Or your aunt, for the trip home?”

  Zoe shook her head and looked out the window to avoid Mrs. Ringle’s eyes. Mrs. Ringle knew she had encountered a small tragedy in the making, or more likely the second or third act of that tragedy. “Little girl,” she said, leaning closer so the nearest passenger, a gentleman apparently asleep against the window frame, couldn’t hear. “I want you to know I’m your friend in need, if that’s all right with you. Everyone needs a friend, someone to trust. If you feel the need, you can tell me anything at all, and I’ll listen and tell you what you’re maybe needing to know.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  Less than an hour later, Zoe rose from her seat with crying Omie and took herself away to the car platform for some time. Mrs. Ringle knew she was out there with the flying cinders and scenery, giving suck with her little girl’s titties to her own little girl, and it made Mrs. Ringle sad to think of such things happening in a Christian country.

  Stepping down in Springfield the following day, Zoe waved to Mrs. Ringle, who had taken herself out to the platform to say good-bye. Mrs. Ringle was continuing on to Saint Louis, where her brother owned a draper’s; she had been asked to join him when her husband died back in Chillicothe, Ohio.

  She passed Zoe a scrap of paper bearing her brother’s address, and told her to go there “if things don’t work out the way you expect, with your ma being sick and all.” Zoe thanked her, and the wave she delivered as the train began moving was sincere. She would not, however, place her trust in grownups again, no matter how concerned they might seem.

  Zoe had made up her mind, on the moonlit ride across the state line from Indiana to Illinois, to be her own mistress from that night forward. Her sole concern would be to care for Omie and move westward in hope of finding Clay and Drew. She knew this last aspiration was near to impossible in so vast a land, but what else was she to do with her life, if not attempt reunification among the carriers of Dugan blood?

  Zoe hadn’t attended sufficient Sundays in church to believe with any certainty in the accepted God, but she placed great trust in a concept more ancient than Jehovah; she trusted in fate, the inexorable grinding of wheels within wheels. Her need, her passion, was for her brothers. Since so strong an emotion as hers could not simply fly away into an empty sky, the thing she desired must eventually come about. She knew it with the certainty of all believers. It was the rock
of her soul, excluding all others.

  The wide streets of Springfield intimidated her with their neatness and order. A general air of prosperity gave the people on those streets a quality Zoe could never hope to imitate. Where could she and Omie possibly fit in? The answer was clear; they simply wouldn’t try to fit into this bustling town. Springfield would be the place where they transferred from railroad to something else in their journey west. Clay would never have settled hereabouts, only one third of the way across America.

  A nearby restaurant wafted the tantalizing odor of food to Zoe’s nostrils. She approached it, examined the menu hung in the window, and was shocked at the prices listed beside each dish. Made aware of her hunger and her limited resources, she passed along several more streets, to an area less salubrious in appearance, and entered a chophouse.

  The place was nearly empty, the lunchtime trade having departed, the dinner regulars yet to arrive. Zoe chose a corner table and set her baby down. She had never entered such a place before, but was aware someone would eventually come and ask her what she required. The person was a young man, and Zoe selected plain chops with a side dish of potatoes; she declined a pitcher of beer. Her waiter went off with the order, then returned for conversation. His oiled hair was parted in the center and arranged in two remarkable wings over his temples. His mustache was similarly spectacular, reaching almost to his ears.

  “Your kid?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Zoe knew Mrs. Ringle hadn’t believed her denial, and so had decided to speak the truth.

  “How old are you?”

  “I don’t see why you need to know.”

  The waiter smiled. He knew people, could judge them by their face, their hands and clothing, above all by their voice. He calculated the girl before him was fifteen, appealing in a half-starved, elfin kind of way. The waiter had recently left his wife for just such a toothsome waif, only to have her taken from him by a peddler passing through to Kansas City. His wife wouldn’t have him back, but the girl might be replaced, if he kept up a smooth flow of words. The fact that his customer had a child would make the waiter’s seduction of her that much easier; no girl so young and in need would think to question a helping hand. The waiter had been abandoned only a week ago, but restitution was on its way, if only he trod lightly enough.