Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  “Marshal, why are you protecting that woman?”

  “I’m not protecting anyone, ma’am; I just don’t see any criminal activity taking place in her backyard.”

  “See anything else taking place in Madge’s backyard?” asked another woman. “Heard you were seen snooping around there last week in the dark.”

  “That’s an outright lie, ma’am. Whoever told you that is mistaken.”

  “Well, which is it—a mistake or a lie?”

  “Either or both,” said Clay. “Now I want my office cleared. Good day to you, ladies, and a pleasant evening.”

  He herded them out the door like a gaggle of hissing geese, and closed it behind him. So he’d been seen. He shouldn’t have gone anywhere near the place, even as far from Madge’s back door as he had stationed himself. Maybe it was the man he’d seen who passed the sighting on. If the women talked loud enough, it might blacken his reputation, and Clay didn’t want that. He liked his job and its steady wages, and would no more have risked losing it than shot off his toes. The women were still outside his window, peering in at him. Clay hated them for the self-righteous interfering busybodies they were. He wondered how many of their husbands had visited Madge, and found the thought upset him even more.

  Word of a scientific experiment conducted in the name of God could not be kept quiet for long. By the end of the day a small crowd had gathered around the leaning picket fence enclosing Madge’s backyard. A lamp burned inside the wagon, and the silhouettes of Madge and Wixson could be seen on the dirty canvas. It was noted that they placed themselves at opposite ends of the wagon. Clay went down to Willow Street himself to see how matters were progressing, and passed through the gathering until he came to the wagon’s tailgate.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Please do, Marshal.”

  Clay sat beside Wixson. “How is she?”

  “Failing, I believe. Miss Clifton says her mother’s breathing has never sounded like this.”

  Clay listened; the woman’s breath was barely there, but it came and went with such rapidity her nostrils appeared to quiver. He looked at Madge, who smiled back. Clay looked away. He didn’t know why he wanted her; she was not especially attractive. It must have been hearing her with Maxwell in the cell the night before the hanging, but even that reason made no sense to Clay; in fact it was humiliating to think he had been snared by such unabashedly crude sounds. He wanted someday to marry again with a good woman, and have children by her to replace poor Silan, but Madge could never be that woman, not if Clay intended remaining in Dry Wash.

  His presence appeared to grant the project a sudden legitimacy; soon the watching crowd ignored Madge’s fence and gathered closely around the wagon, expressing awe at the singular appearance of the contraption upon which Mrs. Clifton lay like an unprotesting human sacrifice. Someone asked Wixson to explain his theory, and he stood upon the tailgate to deliver a lecture on the work of a lifetime.

  “Here is the message,” he said, pointing along the sides of his wagon. “‘A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is His delight.’ This is no casual reference to honest shopkeeping, my friends, but an exhortation to seek actual proof of the soul’s existence within us. In the days of old, that was not possible, since mankind lacked the precision instruments of modern science, but now at last we may take up the Lord’s work, and seek to prove beyond even the scorn of such doubting Thomases as there might be among you that the soul is indeed there, a thing of such fragile substance it makes the finest gossamer web among twigs and grass on a spring morning seem a veritable tangle of fisherman’s net, so great is the contrast. The soul, good people, is of such rarefied stuff it cannot bear the touch of air upon it, but must hide inside us all until the moment of its release, at which time its natural lightness takes it up among the fluffy clouds, and beyond, to its rightful home in the heavenly abode. My task—nay, my pledge to my maker—is this: that I shall make evident what the book of books has stated, and carry the proof of it before the court of public opinion in this and any other country so disposed to see and acknowledge the holy truth!”

  There was scattered applause. Wixson accepted a variety of unsophisticated questions concerning his scientific technique for establishing the weight of the soul, then held up his hands to indicate he would accept no more.

  “My friends, I have work to do. I ask that you be as quiet as you can in the presence of your neighbor Mrs. Clifton. We all should pass from this life to the next without unnecessary hubbub and conbobulation, so I ask you please to refrain from conversation while you remain in the area. I thank you.”

  He made a stiff bow and resumed his seat.

  “Pretty good speech,” said Clay.

  “A receptive audience brings out the best in any man with a message worth hearing.”

  Clay wondered what his own message to mankind might be. He thought about it for several minutes, then gave up; nothing of an original nature entered his head, certainly nothing of such importance as Wixson’s quest for the soul. Clay had labeled him a madman at their first meeting, but now was not so sure. Clay had a soul himself, if everyone else did, but he had never felt it stirring inside him. Maybe the soul just lay quiet until the time of death, then uncoiled like a snake from hibernation and began its undulations toward heaven, as Wixson said. Then again, maybe not.

  He stole another look at Madge, who seemed to be dozing. If he took her to another town they might be able to marry without anyone knowing of her past, but that would mean looking for a new job, so it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t marry her in Dry Wash, where everyone knew what she was. It annoyed him that such prejudice should thwart his plans. He saw for the first time that they were indeed plans, not vague longings or misplaced sexual yearning; he wanted to marry Madge Clifton and live with her. But he couldn’t.

  Two days after the backyard vigil began, a reporter arrived from Tucson to cover the story that already had spread beyond Dry Wash. Wixson was more than prepared to speak his mind, never before having been accorded any interest or credence by the newspapers. The reporter took copious notes from interviews with all concerned, including Clay, who stated that although he was not convinced there was merit to Wixson’s theory, he was not opposed to the experiment, given that all parties were agreeable and no money was changing hands. The reporter asked many questions of Madge, as daughter of the woman on the scales, and Clay overheard Madge give her profession as seamstress. Madge knew he had overheard, and when the reporter excused himself to conduct interviews among the crowd that had become a fixture around the Clifton place, she went to him and said, “I darn socks very well, as a matter of fact. Do you have any holes in your socks, Clay?”

  Her use of his name unnerved him. He could not decide if he should resent it or begin calling her Madge.

  “I darn ’em myself,” he responded. “I got in the habit, living the way I did.”

  She gave him a look he could not define, then went to sit beside her mother, who was at last beginning to resemble a body without a soul, even if her lungs still took in their shallow sips of air. Mrs. Clifton had eaten nothing in five days, and it was considered a medical miracle that she persisted in living. A joke in local circulation had it that the old lady would give up the ghost and consent to have it weighed by its absence only when she was sure a good man had come along to make her erring daughter into an equally good woman, which meant she was going to live forever, probably, because no man would be fool enough to marry a whore; no good man anyway.

  When Clay heard the joke from Judge Poudre he found he couldn’t laugh, and the judge resented that, since he was accustomed to people laughing at his jokes. The judge had begun forming reservations about Clay of late, ever since hearing rumors of his hanging around Madge Clifton’s back door. Judge Poudre had visited the Willow Street house himself a number of years back, when his wife had been especially mean to him for several months because he would not countenance the purchase of new furniture for the
ir home, and he had not been impressed by Madge’s skills as a courtesan. The judge had been considered something of a rake as a youth, and so thought himself an expert in matters of love. There was more to Clay Dugan than met the eye, Judge Poudre decided, and wondered when some of it might be revealed.

  Although supervising the bizarre experiment formed no part of Clay’s duties, he began spending more and more time in or around the wagon. He would not go inside Madge’s house, but considered the wagon, where he usually shared a hard bench with Wixson during the vigil, to be neutral territory, therefore no threat to his reputation. He made a point of telling several people of his encounter with Wixson years before, hoping to convince them he and the preacher were old acquaintances, thereby explaining his extended visits.

  Some of his listeners believed him, but Judge Poudre did not. The judge had personal knowledge of a young man in another town who had almost driven himself crazy over some kind of unrequited love for a whore whose services he didn’t even avail himself of. In the end the boy’s nervous system had collapsed, and he was not seen in public again, except for occasional glimpses of him behind the windows of his mother’s house. It was a fact that the whore in question used to walk past the house every Wednesday just before sundown, to taunt the boy, it was supposed, until the mother one evening ran out and shot her with her dead husband’s old Civil War revolver. Judge Poudre himself had tried the case, and the mother had been found not guilty by reason of extenuating circumstances, namely the destruction of her son and the murdered party’s wanton provocation. It had been a tragic case, and the judge saw elements of the same thing beginning to form under his nose in Dry Wash, even if Clay was a grown man. Further developments would bear watching.

  At last it appeared that the dying woman might succumb. Her breathing ceased on several occasions, only to resume again a minute or so later, but the incidents were becoming more common, the gaps between them lessening. Bets on the exact hour and minute of her passing were made among the crowd that swelled to unusual proportions as word spread through the town. Wixson’s theory was finally about to be proven or disproven, and the reporter from Tucson was again on hand to record the result.

  Clay hurried over to Willow Street and was allowed his usual seat of privilege near the soon-to-be-departed. Wixson had lately adjusted his scales, since Mrs. Clifton had lost much of her meat during the extended wailing period, and he had to be sure, for scientific purposes, that his instrument was perfectly balanced before the spirit should depart.

  The town doctor was standing by, his expression disdainful; he was a rationalist, even though he attended church regularly, and he fully expected to witness nothing more dramatic than the overdue expiration of a body unnaturally reluctant to depart the land of the living. He monitored the dying woman’s heartbeat every few minutes, at Wixson’s insistence, and pronounced it a little fainter, a shade more fluttery, each time, until at twelve minutes past seven in the evening he calmly pronounced her dead.

  There was general excitation among the onlookers at this news, until Wixson begged them to be silent and still for the next minute or so. His mood conveyed itself to the crowd, and an absolute hush was observed. The canvas sides of his wagon had been raised two hours earlier to facilitate the public’s view of the long needle mounted in the center of Wixson’s beam balance, aligned precisely with a vertical notch in the brass plate behind it to indicate zero, or perfect balance. Seconds passed, and every eye maintained a watch on the needle. And the needle moved—a tiny fraction of a degree, but it moved—and there came from the crowd a soft rushing of indrawn breath, then a woman screamed that she could see the soul of Mrs. Clifton rising like chimney smoke from the wagon, and no sooner had she declared it than others saw it too. There was general pandemonium as those wishing for a similarly uplifting experience rushed at the scales, clambering inside the wagon to be closer to the source of the phantom, which even now was said to be hovering mere feet above the wagon’s exposed hoops as if to display itself and dispel once and for all the doubts of the witnesses, before drifting to its appointed abode in the starry realm above.

  Wixson was begging the intruders to depart before his experiment’s results were ruined beyond recovery by their stomping and jostling. There were joyous wailings from many women in the crowd, who declared themselves true believers for having seen with their own eyes the ghostly evidence of a soul’s departure heavenward, exactly as had been predicted, and there were howls from others, who had seen nothing, nothing at all, not even the needle’s hesitant trembling, and they wished that the spectacle had been something they had paid for the privilege of witnessing, so they might ask for their money back.

  Clay had to appropriate a bystander’s pistol and fire two shots in the air to calm these hysterical reactions. Madge was still seated beside her mother. Clay couldn’t tell if she had seen the soul or not, but he wanted things to calm down for her sake. He hadn’t seen a damn thing himself, and was somewhat angry as a result, even though the absence of visible phenomena confirmed his own bias toward a material explanation for the world and its workings.

  He laid a hand on Madge’s shoulder, and she looked up at him. “I’m all right,” she said, and Clay withdrew the hand immediately. He turned to the crowd and called for order. “Just settle down there, all of you!” There was a lessening of the general excitement, and Wixson took over from Clay.

  “I invite each of you to come forward and examine the position of the indicator needle—one at a time!—and verify for yourselves that it has moved a fraction from the vertical, and remains there, absolute material proof that the deceased weighs less now than she did in the moments preceding her demise. When sufficient numbers of you have ascertained this to be the fact of the matter, I shall remove the least of my weights from the balancing pan and restore perfect equilibrium to the scales, further proving that what I say is true. You, madam, may be the first to scrutinize the needle.”

  A woman was boosted into the wagon. She squinted at the needle from a distance of less than a foot, and declared herself uncertain that there was in fact a declination. “Put your glasses on, Maude!” her husband called, and the woman flushed, then took from her bodice a pair of spectacles. Once these were perched on her nose she repeated her inspection, and found the needle “a tiny wee bit off-center, seems like.” She was assisted down from the tailgate, and another onlooker invited to witness the needle’s new position. Madge fetched an old chair from the house to aid those who followed in stepping into and out of the wagon, then she stood to one side with Clay until more than a dozen townsfolk verified that the needle had indeed performed as Wixson’s theory anticipated.

  “Now,” said Wixson, “further proof, if proof were needed, that the deceased weighs less than the pan of weights counterbalanced against her. I pluck from the pile you see before you the tiniest weight of all, one one-hundredth of an ounce.” He produced a pair of tweezers and removed from the weights assembled in the pan a tiny bell of metal. “Now I remove another of the same weight, adding up to one fiftieth of an ounce.… You see! The needle returns to dead center! Proof, ladies and gentlemen, of God’s gift which he giveth to all, and taketh back at the end of our allotted span! Come one, come all, and see for yourselves the needle’s new alignment. Step up, Marshal Dugan, and be the first.”

  Clay hesitated, then examined the needle. It appeared to be resting opposite the notch indicating perfect balance, but if he moved his head a fraction to the right or left, the needle no longer seemed to be centered so exactly, and he was no longer sure if his head had been correctly placed to begin with. The distance between the needle and the brass plate, about half an inch, invited variations in reading the degree to which the needle had moved. “Looks to be on the center line all right,” he mumbled, and stepped down to make way for the next examiner.

  “Is it?” asked Madge. She had not taken a close look at the needle since the doctor pronounced her mother dead.

  Clay shrugged. “Pretty cl
ose,” he said.

  A dozen or more people inspected the beam balance, including the doctor, who declared himself unconvinced by the entire experiment. His statement was greeted by muted booing, which upset the doctor. “This is bogus science,” he said, “and bogus religion too!”

  “Retract that statement!” demanded Wixson.

  “I will not, sir! You are a charlatan and a hoaxter! Let us see beneath your set of scales and determine for ourselves if there is not some device hidden away which might tip your needle.”

  “I will do no such thing! My instrument is delicate despite its size and weight, and I will permit no tipping over whatsoever.”

  “Because you fear for what might be found, I say!”

  The crowd began to enjoy the shouting match, yelling support for one man or the other, sometimes both.

  “Very well, then,” said Wixson, “you may examine the underside of the instrument, but you will do so by removing floorboards from beneath the wagon. I repeat, there will be no tipping over or lifting of the instrument.”

  “I accept your offer,” said the doctor. “Let us satisfy ourselves on this matter now. Is there anyone present with the tools necessary for a job such as this?”

  “I can get something that’ll rip planks off right quick,” offered the blacksmith.

  “Please proceed, sir, and thank you.”

  “Ripping? There will be no ripping of my vehicle! If there is to be removal of a certain number of floorboards, then it will be done with care!”

  “Are you reneging on your offer, sir!” challenged the doctor.

  “I am not, sir, nor will I allow damage to my wagon solely to satisfy your needs!”

  Amid the bickering, Mrs. Clifton sat up.

  “Johnny, fetch the cider,” she croaked, and lay down again.

  “Alive …!” screamed a woman, then swooned, and the wagon was mobbed again.

  Clay had returned the pistol he borrowed to restore order the first time, and could see no one else wearing one. His voice alone was not enough to prevent what followed. The body of Mrs. Clifton was lifted from the scales and passed through many hands to the safety of the back porch, then the wagon itself was overturned. The heavy beam balance came crashing down in Madge’s yard. Wixson’s wailings of protest hung above the rampagers like a circling bird as his precious instrument was dismantled to its component parts by wrenching and kicking. The underside of the platform it had stood upon was closely scrutinized for evidence of mechanical fakery. It was smooth and featureless, but this did nothing to alleviate the crowd’s vengeful mood. They had been made fools of by allowing themselves to agree in public with Wixson that the needle had moved, then become centered again when the tiny counterweights were removed. None of that was possible if the dead woman was not dead at all, so there had to have been tricks of some sort to convince people they were seeing what Wixson wanted them to see.