Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  He fetched Zoe’s chop and set it down with a flourish. “You’ll be wanting pie after that,” he said.

  “No pie. I’d like some water, though.”

  He supplied a brimming glass, and a generous wedge of pie. “It’s on the house.”

  Zoe looked up, her mouth full. “On the house?”

  “No charge. A gift, see?”

  Zoe didn’t see. “Why?” she asked.

  “Because, excuse me for saying so, you look real hungry, more than just pork chop and spud hungry. Your little baby there, he won’t eat right if you don’t.”

  “She.”

  “She. Babies, you have to be careful. Have to give babies what they need or they get sick, so the pie, that’s for her, see, even if it’s you that eats it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I know about babies. I had one, and a wife. They both were lost last year, taken away by sickness, so don’t you be getting sick, you hear?”

  Zoe’s chop had already disappeared. Without pause, she tackled the pie. The waiter watched her eat his gift. He wouldn’t charge for the chop either; it would all come out of his pocket, but he considered it a worthwhile investment.

  “Tully’s my name; what’s yours?”

  “Zoe Dugan.”

  “And the baby?”

  “Naomi. I call her Omie.”

  “I expect you’d tell me to mind my business if I asked where you’re headed this fine day.”

  “West.”

  “West? Now, that brings to mind a mighty big picture. How far west?”

  “I don’t know. I need to find my brother Clay, and Drew, he’s my brother too. They’re out west somewhere.”

  “I hope you find them,” Tully said, his voice somber. He could tell Zoe was admiring his mustache. It was the mustache that first attracted the other girl, the one who’d run off to Kansas City with a man who hadn’t half so fine a set of handlebars. Tully bet she’d be regretting her choice by now. He bet if he showed up in Kansas City and found her, she’d fall into his arms and stroke his mustache and say what a fool of a girl she’d been. She was so pretty, much prettier than Zoe. Her name was Lovey Doll Pines, and Tully had to admit he was still in love with her. There could be no real substitute for Lovey Doll.

  Tully had heard there were jobs aplenty in Kansas City, so much bigger a place than Springfield. He knew also that bold moves were not a part of his nature. He wouldn’t mind striking out for Kansas City if there weren’t the possibility of disappointment when he got there; he needed to be sure ahead of time his attempt to win back the runaway would be met with success, and Tully was intelligent enough to know such things are never guaranteed.

  Of course, if he went there with another girl in tow, and never did meet up with Lovey Doll, or found her and was rejected all over again, he’d have the second girl right there to comfort him. His mind was working quickly now. In Tully’s boardinghouse there was a man named Aspinall, a stonemason by trade, bound and determined to go west. “There’s folks dying out there by the score,” he maintained, “and nothing but wooden markers to show where they lie.” Aspinall didn’t doubt there was a place for him beyond the Mississippi, and Tully didn’t doubt the man could accommodate in his wagon passengers such as himself and the little mother wolfing down cherry pie.

  Several families invited him to live with them, including that of the doctor who sutured his cheeks. Clay used the lattice of horsehair stitches on either side of his face to resist answering them all. He would tap his mouth and shake his head, like a dumb person. Some people in town thought Clay’s tongue had been shot off, but the doctor assured anyone who asked him that no, the boy’s tongue was intact; it was only the flesh of his cheeks that was disfigured.

  Clay took a room at the hotel while recuperating, and it was there a lawyer came to inform him that the Delaney farm and all stock, equipment, dwellings and furniture thereon belonged to him; Edwin had made a new will just ten weeks before his death, stipulating that his son—he referred to Clayton throughout the document as his son—be the beneficiary in the event of Edwin’s wife predeceasing the boy.

  “It’s all yours, Mr. Delaney,” the lawyer said, genuinely pleased for him; the entire county was talking of nothing but Clay’s grit in tackling and killing the murderous Chaffeys. At the Delaney funeral, many complete strangers had shaken his hand and wished him well. Clay wondered how they would have felt had they known he shat in his britches. His small but potentially embarrassing secret made Clay cynical.

  So the farm was his. What earthly use did he have for it? He was no farmer. At best, farmwork was a distraction from himself, from his guilt over having made no move to go back for Drew and Zoe. It occurred to him that he could do that now, go fetch them from the towns where they’d been taken in; Wister’s Landing, Indiana, for Zoe, an even smaller place in Illinois called Dinnsville for Drew. Clay’s course of action was obvious, largely because of a lack of alternatives.

  The lawyer was watching his face. Clay’s lips parted. The lawyer leaned forward in anticipation.

  “Sell it,” Clay told him.

  “The farm?”

  “Sell it fast.”

  “Is that the right thing to do, Mr. Delaney? That’s a real nice farm you’ve got there, practically a showplace.”

  “I don’t want it. My name’s Dugan.”

  The lawyer was offended by the last remark, but didn’t allow himself to show it. “Would you like some time to reconsider?”

  “No.”

  “My fee for real estate transactions is five percent of the sale.”

  “Ten percent if you get rid of it before the end of the month.”

  “I’ll return tomorrow with a contract.”

  “Return this afternoon.”

  “I … very well, this afternoon.”

  The lawyer had changed his mind about Clay. The boy was cold clear through. The lawyer didn’t think Clay felt any real sorrow over the death of the Delaneys. He was just a tall bag of bones with a face like a skull and hands that looked as though they could crack rocks the way ordinary boys cracked pecans. The patchwork of black stitching under both cheekbones gave his face a desperate, haunted aspect, but the eyes were calm, unflinching. He seemed a great many years older than a youth almost eighteen.

  The lawyer earned his ten percent, and Clay boarded an east-bound train with a thickly wadded money belt around his waist. On the first leg of the trip, to Dinnsville, he felt himself becoming excited at the thought of seeing Drew again. He’d be twelve years old now, and probably still walked with his feet pointed in: Mr. Pigeontoes, Nettie had called him (Clay, whose feet were planted at a forty-five-degree angle to each other, was Mr. Duckfeet); and he’d probably have that same big smile, the kind Clay had never had, the kind that made people want to be Drew’s friend. These simple recollections made Clay weep as he watched the countryside roll by, and the crinkling of his face with the small grief of remembrance caused his cheeks, recently released from their stitches, to hurt.

  In Dinnsville he asked around the town for two days before learning that the Kindreds, who had taken Drew in, had moved west about four months before, to an unspecified location. Reeling, Clay boarded the next train east, bound for Wister’s Landing. Zoe had just better be there, or he didn’t know what he’d do.

  Hassenplug was pitching hay into the barn loft when someone rode into the yard. He recognized the horse as belonging to the livery stable in town. Even at a distance the rider’s face looked strange, hollowed out somehow. Hassenplug climbed down from the hay wagon and approached him.

  “Something I can do for you?”

  “Mr. Hassenplug?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m looking for my sister, Zoe.”

  Clay watched the man’s face cloud over.

  “Say who?”

  “Zoe. Dark hair, thin build. You took her off the orphan train about five years ago.”

  “Well, she’s gone, sorry to say.”

 
; Clay dismounted. “Gone where?”

  Hassenplug raised his hands in a helpless gesture.

  “Why’d she go?” Clay asked.

  “Never told us. Never said a word, just upped and left, must be four, five weeks ago now.”

  He stared at the stranger’s face. There were two holes in it, filled with new, pink flesh, as if someone had driven a stake clean through his cheeks. It was an ugly sight, but he looked at the scars rather than into the eyes of Zoe’s brother, because those eyes were also holes of a kind, unblinking as a snake’s. Hassenplug realized he was a little scared, and wished he hadn’t left his pitchfork on the wagon.

  “Anything else to tell me?” Clay asked.

  “No, reckon that’s about all.”

  Clay took several steps closer. “Now you listen. I spoke with some people in town, a lot of people, including a doctor who said Zoe had a baby. You don’t remember the baby?”

  “Oh … the baby. Well, there’s things that’s not polite to mention.”

  “Who gave her the baby?”

  “Never told us. Never said a word. Could’ve been anyone around here; no way to tell, if the girl won’t say, I reckon.”

  “I heard stories,” Clay said. “There’s talk it was yours.”

  “No … nossir, not mine. I got a fine wife right here with me as can bear witness. I never touched her; paid for the doctor to come, even—he tell you that? Cost me money to let her have the baby safe and sound.”

  “She got on a train. They say you were at the station with her, you and your wife.”

  “That’s right, that’s correct, we seen her off. She wanted to go, wouldn’t listen to us when we said she can stay here. The missus, she begged her to stay on. We were hurt bad when she left that way, real bad, it’s the truth.”

  “The truth.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Clay stared at him for a long moment. A woman came out of the house, carrying a rifle. The window was open; she’d probably heard every word.

  “You believe in judgment, Hassenplug?”

  “Like the Bible says? I reckon so.”

  “That’s good to hear. I believe in it too.”

  Clay mounted and rode away. Mrs. Hassenplug joined her husband and let him take the rifle from her. “Ought to’ve killed him,” he said. “See the face that feller had? Like a dead man.”

  “Well, he’s gone now.”

  Shaken, Hassenplug took to his jug for the rest of the afternoon and evening. He was in no condition to act when his barn caught fire after midnight. Animals were milling in the yard, the entire loft was ablaze, and all he could do was stare at the conflagration and feel the tears on his face evaporating in the heat.

  The conductor on the express run saw a curious thing just west of Wister’s Landing that night. He saw a horse and rider racing alongside the train, keeping pace in the moonlight till the rider grabbed the rear platform of car three and swung aboard. The horse immediately slowed and veered away from the train.

  The rider entered the car and sat in a vacant seat. Every other passenger was asleep under the dimmed oil lamps. The conductor approached him with a mixture of curiosity and professional outrage. He slowed when he saw the rider’s face with its riven cheeks.

  “Ticket?” he inquired.

  The new passenger produced several large bills and handed them to the conductor. “End of the line,” he said.

  “You mean Indianapolis?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “You’ve given me too much, sir.”

  “No I haven’t. I got on back in Columbus, yesterday.”

  “Columbus?”

  “Yesterday. If anyone asks, understand?”

  “Yessir. Columbus through to Indianapolis. Correct change, sir. Can I get you a blanket?”

  “And a drink, unless it’s extra.”

  “Nossir; a stiff belt comes included in this amount.”

  The conductor left Clay alone, then returned with a glass and a blanket.

  “There you are, sir. Should be getting into Indianapolis just about sunrise.”

  “Thank you.”

  The conductor hovered a moment longer, but was ignored. He left to count his small windfall in private. Clay sipped at his very first whiskey, pulled the blanket up around his chin and wondered what in the world he would do now.

  All three, himself and Zoe and Drew, had been uprooted within the space of a few months, as if there existed a fantastic plot to ensure that they never came together again. Only God could have arranged such a thing, and since Clay didn’t believe in God, he was left with a numbness that bore no name.

  7

  Morgan Kindred had religion. It was not a matter of regular Sunday churchgoing, or even the commonplace practice of Bible readings taking place within the home; Morgan had an entirely different appreciation of God. He knew for a fact he was to play a personal role in some act God had hinted would soon take place.

  The revelations had begun even before Drew’s adoption by the Kindreds. Morgan and Sylvie had produced five stillborns in a row before accepting that they were not to be blessed. The first revelation was an instruction to Morgan that he be present at the Dinnsville station two days thence to receive into his heart a special child. Sylvie was unconvinced until she laid eyes on Drew Dugan standing disconsolately beside his older brother; then and there she accepted the instructions from God, and thanked the Lord for having sent them such a handsome little fellow, even if his face was swollen by crying.

  No further commands were received from the heavenly realm. For Sylvie it was enough, but Morgan was disappointed. He moped over the brevity of his communications with the highmost. In time, he accepted that Drew had been the sole reason for God’s intervention. The voice had spoken to end their childlessness.

  Drew’s proud new parents ran a store in town, supplying the county with necessary dry goods. The business gave them a fair living, but Morgan had always imagined himself aspiring to a more exalted plane. The store was inherited from his father, a man devoted to money. When his mother died, Morgan took her place behind the counter, and stayed there, bringing in Sylvie to assist him when old Kindred died and the store became Morgan’s. He was tempted to sell out and move on, pursuing some kind of life more attuned to his inner need for spiritual truth; but Sylvie, a practical woman, persuaded him against making so rash a decision, and under her more intense style of management the business prospered to a degree that eventually offended Morgan; earthly riches were a dreadful trap, and he dreamed often of the needle’s eye.

  A short while after Drew turned twelve, the second revelation came. The same disembodied voice woke Morgan from restless sleep with an instruction of awesome simplicity. Morgan sprang from the bed, sweat streaming from him, the words ringing still in his ears: Go Thou to a desert place.

  He wakened Sylvie and conveyed the message to her. A deep sleeper, slow to comprehend when woken abruptly, she nodded and lay down again, no wiser than before. Morgan understood he would have to try again after breakfast.

  Once Sylvie realized what had transpired, she let Morgan know the strength of her resistance. She told him a move to some uninhabited region would be madness. She would not do it—never! Morgan pleaded, but Sylvie stood firm.

  Drew was in favor of the move once he learned the likeliest place was somewhere in New Mexico Territory, an area swarming with redskins, he was told at school. Drew’s latent urge for adventure in the west, a thing he’d assimilated from Clay without fully remembering the source, was awakened. Drew thought of nothing but deserts.

  Sylvie believed she had turned her husband away from his ludicrous scheme, but Morgan was not to be diverted from God’s business by any woman; he announced he had found a buyer for the store. When he told Sylvie the price agreed upon with a rival merchant down the street, she went immediately to the man and declared the sale would not go through unless he increased his offer substantially. Since no formal contract had been signed, the wou
ld-be buyer had little choice but to agree on an equitable sum. His revenge was to spread around town the idea that Morgan was a fool, dominated by his shrew of a wife.

  The Kindreds left Illinois, telling no one in Dinnsville of their destination, since they had none in mind; God would direct Morgan at the appropriate time. A hint was dropped to the new owner of Kindred’s store that the family was headed “southwest.” The townspeople assumed Morgan, or possibly his wife, was suffering from consumption and required the drier air of the territories that offered such remedial stuff.

  By rail and stagecoach they made their way to Santa Fe. Their arrival was early enough in the day for Morgan to bypass the hotels and search instead for a small open wagon and team. He located these by midafternoon, paid cash and drove back to the depot, where Sylvie and Drew were dozing in the fierce heat. He loaded their baggage aboard the wagon, drawing attention to the fine condition of both vehicle and mules. Sylvie refused to speak with or even look sideways at her husband. Drew, despite an unquenchable thirst, was excited by the strange adobe dwellings around him.

  Morgan bought food supplies and a small tent, then followed the road out of town, heading west. The desolation ahead lifted his spirits, made him euphoric. Sylvie was despondent. Her faith in the voice of God was dwindling, and it had never been great. She hoped a few days of extreme discomfort would bring Morgan to his senses.

  It wasn’t until Santa Fe was well behind them and darkness falling that she realized they were without a gun.

  “Supposing there are Indians?” she said.

  “They won’t be hostile. In any case, we have divine protection.”

  “Supposing we don’t?”