Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  More laughter, lacking the previous level of hilarity, rippled by Grover’s burning ears. “You do what I say, when I say it,” he said, feeling his throat begin to close with fear. He should never have gone in there, should have gone home to be with his wife whom he loved, but Clay was there, so he couldn’t, which was another mistake he’d made already that night, and the result of all his confusion and misery and miscalculation was this—an unwanted confrontation with some stranger who had done nothing more than mock him gently in front of an audience that already mocked him day after day. The whole thing was Clay’s fault.

  “You get over here now,” said Grover, but his voice had to squeeze past the fear clenching his throat, which made him begin to cough, so his words came out raspingly, without the least authority, and the cowboy stayed right where he was. To have responded to so feeble an order would have made him look foolish in front of his friends.

  Grover stifled his coughing. He desperately wanted to be somewhere else, far from Minnie’s, and far from his wife as well; she wasn’t worth it. The faithless hussy probably had done a terrible job of hiding her marital treachery from the neighbors, which would account for the way everyone in town was laughing at him lately. Far from Sophie, that was the place he wanted to be, where he wouldn’t have to listen to any more snickering, or see the kind of smirk the cowboy in front of him wore, the kind that said Grover was a pathetic fool who couldn’t be taken seriously, an opinion so grossly unwarranted it made Grover angry, and so he did the only thing he could have done under the circumstances fate seemed to have arranged for him that night. He drew his gun to arrest the one who smirked, the one who had provoked unjustified laughter, and then, without fully intending it, Grover pulled the trigger.

  His tormentor took a bullet in the abdomen, but managed to draw his own gun and fire before beginning to slide along the bar and onto the floor. The others already had their guns out and pointing at the marshal, but it was not necessary to fire a shot; their friend had put a hole in Grover Stunce’s chest, a surefire dead shot, and the fool with the badge was dying as he fell, the pistol dropping with a clatter beside a rolling spittoon his foe had overturned.

  It took almost an hour to locate the deputy. Someone finally caught sight of Clay on the street and dragged him to Minnie’s. Both parties to the shooting were dead by then, the cowboy having had time to dictate a succinct will that disposed of his few disposables. Several of the Texans were unashamedly tearful, and in no mood for interrogation by someone as biased as the dead marshal’s deputy was bound to be. They were surprised when Clay listened, rather than gave orders. When he had talked with others who witnessed the event, Clay declared that no charges could be pressed against any living person. He further told the cowhands that their dead companion would be buried at the county’s expense.

  The town was not greatly surprised when, two months after the death of Grover Stunce, Clay Dugan married his widow.

  13

  It was the heat, rather than the flies, that exasperated Drew so much. It never went away, even at night. It had taken Yancy and himself a month to reach Galveston, and in that time they passed from the dry heat of the desert to the humidity of the Gulf of Mexico. Yancy had promised cool ocean breezes, but Drew had yet to experience any such thing. The air, when it moved, was like molasses: heavy and thick, tasting of salt tang and fish. Clothing pasted itself against his body within minutes of his dressing, and his socks became damp as bar cloths inside his boots.

  “My hometown,” Yancy said with pride. He had already told Drew he was born in Arkansas, but Drew was becoming used to his lies. Drew reasoned that the information Yancy provided could be divided into two categories—things that mattered, and things that didn’t. It didn’t matter if Yancy wasn’t born where he said he was born, so Drew didn’t bother challenging him over that and similar contradictions. Hard facts were alien to Yancy, but he had offered good advice on how to handle the frisky mare and powerful Winchester Drew had taken in New Mexico Territory.

  Yancy’s “embellishments,” as he unblushingly called them, were reserved for details of his personal life. Drew thought maybe the truth was too sad to tell of, so he forgave Yancy’s lying, because he liked the man. He considered himself a kind of plodding older brother to an immature sibling who just couldn’t help but tell whopping fibs, try as he might to curb the habit. It was a minor flaw, made harmless by Drew’s understanding nature.

  It was clear that Yancy was not a man of any permanent or legal trade, but Drew simply accepted this aspect of him along with the rest of his charming defects. Yancy seemed genuinely to like him, and at no time condescended to Drew in the usual manner of men toward boys.

  “All I ask of you, Drew, is that you never deliver me into the hands of my enemies.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Anyone at all, at any time, and I sure don’t lie. Being independent as I am, I do things to please myself, but the world oftentimes won’t accept a fellow that does what he likes. Ever been around the army at all?”

  “No.”

  “Worst kind of hell. The army life is for dunces who don’t know if they should pull their boots on or take a shit without the sergeant tells them to. Cavalry’s bad enough, but infantry’s worse. To be an infantryman you have to be certifiably stupid. They know right away if you are, because only a certifiably stupid person would ever voluntarily offer his body for purgatory in uniform.”

  “Were you in the army, Yancy?”

  “Do I strike you as being stupid in any way?”

  “No, you’re smart.”

  “And there lies your answer.”

  Which meant that he had been in the army, by the topsy-turvy logic Drew was becoming accustomed to when dealing with Yancy’s past. He couldn’t imagine Yancy taking orders from a sergeant, but he was learning that the world was bristling with things he had never been able to imagine.

  The place they lived in, for example, was tenanted mostly by young women too lazy to dress themselves even in the middle of the day. They were very friendly for the most part, especially Winnie, who was just a few years older than Drew, although she practiced the same mode of undress as all the rest. Drew knew she was friendly because she kept winking at him. He had thought at first it was some kind of nervous twitch of the eyelid, the kind a young man back in Illinois had, that everyone said he never had before he was in the war. That young man’s eye had twitched constantly, but Winnie’s seemed to flicker only when Drew passed her in the hallway on his way to the outhouse. They hadn’t spoken as yet; it was Yancy who told Drew her name, and the names of some of the other lazy women.

  “Why don’t they get dressed? Is it because it’s so hot?”

  “That’s exactly right, Drew boy. These ladies are sensitive to a fault, and can’t abide the conditions of humidity this part of the world inflicts on them.”

  “Why don’t they go somewhere else to live?”

  “Because Vanda won’t let them, not until they’ve paid for room and keep. Vanda’s put a lot of cash into these females, and they owe her plenty. They’re hers, so don’t you be talking with them overmuch and distracting them from their work, or Vanda’ll take it out on my hide.”

  Drew was left puzzling over the nature of the ladies’ work, since none of them ever seemed to go anywhere or do anything. Of course, he was confined for the moment to his and Yancy’s room on the top floor of Vanda’s big house. Vanda was a friend of Yancy’s, so Yancy said, and wouldn’t mind them staying with her for a while, but Drew had to remain cooped up for a little while yet. It had already been two days, and Drew was becoming bored.

  On the third day he waited until Yancy left the room, then went out into the hall. There weren’t any ladies around to tell on him, so he went down to the floor below, where two of them were talking together. They turned to look at him, and one said, “Hello there, sugarpie. He let you out today?”

  “I let myself out,” Drew said. He didn’t like the way their smiles seemed
to be making fun of him.

  “’Scuse me,” said the lady, and resumed the conversation with her friend.

  On the next floor down, Drew bumped into Winnie, who quickly steered him into a room and sat him on a chair by the window. He could see the ships in the harbor from there, and kept glancing outside while she spoke.

  “Does he know you’re out?”

  “I can do what I like.”

  “You’re supposed to stay upstairs, Mrs. Gentles said.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Only the person who owns this whole entire building you’re sitting inside of, that’s who.”

  “It isn’t. That’s someone called Vanda.”

  “Well, that’s her first name, peckerhead.”

  “Oh.”

  “She doesn’t want you here, that’s what they’re saying.”

  “Who is?”

  “The heavenly chorus, who do you think? Does he get in the same bed with you?”

  “Who?”

  Winnie rolled her eyes upward in exasperation. “Handsome Yancy, that’s who. Well, does he?”

  “Why would he do that? There’s two beds.”

  “Are you telling the truth? I’ll hurt you if you’re not.”

  “I am.”

  “Good; that’s fifty cents I won. I said you weren’t his little pooter boy.”

  “What’s a pooter boy?”

  “One that spreads his butthole for gentlemen.”

  Drew didn’t understand that at all, but thought he might look a fool if he asked for further definition.

  “So if you’re not,” said Winnie, “what are you?”

  It was a tough question. He decided to be straightforward. “I’m Drew Kindred … no, Drew Dugan.”

  “And I’m the Empress Josephine. No, I’m Cleopatra. No, Queen Victoria, that’s who I am.”

  She found this funny, for no reason Drew could see. He was beginning not to like her, even if her face was kind of pretty. “Why do you wear half your clothes?” he asked, to steer talk away from himself.

  “Why? Because that’s the way they want you to look.”

  “Who does?”

  “The customers, donkey. They want to see what they’re getting before they pay, give us the eye before they buy, that’s what they do. I made that up myself. Mrs. Gentles laughed when she heard. She’s fancy Yancy’s mama.”

  “His mother?”

  “Everybody’s got one, or had one. Mine’s dead. You still got one?”

  “No.”

  Drew was a little dazed. Yancy had said Vanda was a friend. No one could mistake his mother for a friend, so it was another one of Yancy’s colossal fibs. He should have expected it to be untrue.

  “Are you his sister?” Drew asked.

  “You’re a stupidhead. Why would I be his sister, for heaven’s sake?”

  “I don’t know,” Drew confessed.

  “You’re certainly not very smart, are you?”

  “You shut up.”

  Winnie jumped up and smacked him across the face. Before he was aware of it, Drew had smacked her back, but not very effectively. They glared at each other, breathing hard.

  “Pooter boy!” Winnie accused.

  “Pooter boy yourself!”

  Again, he’d said something hilarious. Winnie fell across the bed, giggling. Drew realized this must be her room, the way she rolled around on the covers. Finally Winnie stopped, and sat contemplating her guest for a minute or so.

  “Come here and kiss me this instant and I’ll forgive you,” she said.

  “I didn’t do anything. You hit me first.”

  “Just you quit arguing and do like I say, or I’ll tell Mrs. Gentles you came down from upstairs.”

  “She can’t be his mother or her name’d be Berdell, so you told a lie.”

  “I didn’t, and it doesn’t matter a damn what their names are, punkinhead, because she was never married to the man that put Yancy inside her, so you don’t know as much as you think you know!”

  Drew absorbed this, and was silenced. Winnie tossed her hair and patted the bed beside her. “You come here,” she ordered, and Drew took himself away from the window and its view of masts and spars to place himself gingerly beside her. He half expected another slap, and was ready for it. The talk of kissing was obviously a trap.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  Drew shrugged, beginning to experience embarrassment. Winnie apparently was sincere in her request; her mouth was puckered and ready. He stared at it, then decided he’d better do what she wanted. This would be his first kiss that wasn’t given to a mother. When it was over with he pulled back fast.

  Winnie shook her head. “You were supposed to kiss me on the lips, stupid, not the goddamn cheek like your granny does. Do it again.”

  He did it again, and was startled when her mouth opened like a pit and seemed to draw him inside. His entire body felt completely different from the way it had felt mere seconds before, especially his toby, which began thrusting against his pants in an insistent manner.

  Winnie broke off the kiss and grabbed at his crotch, then smirked at him in a way Drew didn’t think he liked, but couldn’t actually dislike, not with the blood pounding through him that way, and her hand being where it was, kneading him with a practiced deftness that made him ashamed yet exhilarated at the same time.

  “Well,” said Winnie, “I take it back. I guess you’re not a pooter boy after all.”

  “I told you,” Drew gasped.

  Winnie jumped up and pointed to the door. “You better get, before someone finds out you came down here.”

  He didn’t want to leave, but could think of no good reason for staying that would not have sounded like some kind of begging. Winnie had done something to him that made him want to do whatever she told him to, so she’d like him and maybe later on invite him to kiss her again.

  “All right.”

  He stood up, stooping a little.

  “Bye-bye now,” Winnie told him. “Don’t strangle it, will you.”

  This enigmatic farewell accompanied Drew upstairs.

  In the afternoon Yancy returned. “Come and meet Vanda,” he said. “What’s the matter? You look blue.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, put a smile on. Vanda likes happy souls.”

  They descended four floors, and Drew saw that although the upper stories were divided into many rooms, the ground floor consisted of just three large chambers. The first and biggest was occupied by the women and a few men, mostly sitting around on small sofas, the like of which Drew hadn’t seen before. The second he knew was a barroom, because of all the bottles and glasses.

  The smallest of the three rooms had the fanciest wallpaper of any of them, and the biggest desk Drew had ever laid eyes on. Behind the desk sat a woman much younger than Drew was expecting, and fully clothed. He wondered if Winnie had told him the truth about Vanda being Yancy’s mother. There was no resemblance between them that he could see.

  “Vanda, meet my intrepid pard from out west. Drew boy, say how-do to Vanda, only you’ll call her Mrs. Gentles.”

  “How do you do,” the woman said, smiling just a little.

  “I’m very well, ma’am, Mrs. Gentles.”

  “Sit, please.”

  Drew perched himself on the edge of a plush armchair facing the desk. Mrs. Gentles studied him, then asked, “Will you tell me about yourself, Drew? Yancy says you have had quite an adventure.”

  He told her everything, excluding the siesta noises between Yancy and Maria Huntzucker, and Yancy’s two killings at that desert location.

  When he was finished, he was told, “You are a boy with grit, I think, to have come so far alone.”

  “Yancy helped me.”

  “And rightly so. Where will you go now?”

  “Go, ma’am?”

  “If you could be taken to any place you chose.”

  “I don’t know,” Drew said, and hung his head, knowing it was an inadequate respons
e.

  “Look up. I ask because I wish to know what I should do with you. Have you any suggestions?”

  “No, ma’am. Ma’am?”

  “Yes?”

  “If this is where Yancy lives, I’d like to stay here, ma’am, if you don’t mind.”

  “No, he does not live here.”

  “Oh, I thought he did, you being his ma.”

  “Who told you this?” demanded Mrs. Gentles.

  He had to protect Winnie. “Yancy did, ma’am.”

  “That’s not so,” Yancy protested. “As if I would …”

  Mrs. Gentles lifted a hand to silence him. Drew was impressed by the way it made Yancy shut right up, which wasn’t like Yancy at all.

  “Drew, I have a question for you.”

  “Ma’am.”

  “What is this place, do you know?”

  “This place?”

  “Is it a baker’s shop, or a bank, or a dry goods store?”

  “No, ma’am, it’s a … a whorehouse.”

  He had concluded this after much thought upstairs. Whorehouses had never been discussed in the Kindred home, but a few tantalizing morsels of information had reached him in the schoolyard back in Dinnsville. Winnie’s brash behavior and the state of undress of the other women made it obvious, and he felt a fool for having taken so long to become aware.

  “That is correct. What is your opinion of such places?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. I was never in one before.”

  “You will have noticed that apart from the gentlemen customers, and yourself and Yancy, who are guests, we are all women here. How would you fit in with so many ladies all about?”

  “Ma’am, do you live here?”

  “I? No, I have a small house for my own use, next door.”

  “Well, I could live there.”

  “Could you indeed. And what if I say I have no use for a boy.”

  “If Yancy isn’t your son, then … I could be.”

  Mrs. Gentles looked across Drew to Yancy, and it seemed she smiled a little.

  “Tell me, Drew,” she said, “what is the function, or shall I say the duty, of a son to his mother?”