Smith said, “I seen a two-headed baby in a bottle one time. It made me cry, it did, seeing something like that.”
“You big baby,” said Winnie, not without affection.
“I was only seven,” Smith defended himself.
“Are we united in this enterprise or not?” Nevis demanded.
“I guess it’s worth a shot,” Smith conceded. “We lost a day’s work over it, so maybe we should try and get it back.”
“Just as long as you take it away from here,” Winnie said, “and don’t expect me to be touching it at all.”
“Your tiny hands will not be soiled,” Nevis assured her, then stood and put on his hat. “No time to lose now,” he said. “I’m off to alert the newspaper fellows. Our discovery will doubtless be front-page news in tomorrow’s edition.”
The office of the Glory Hole Sentinel, owned by Leo Brannan himself, as were most other enterprises in town, was a brisk walk away, on Brannan Boulevard. Nevis found the place lighted and filled with activity despite the hour’s lateness. He asked to see the editor, and was informed the editor was at home, dining.
“But he should be here to receive important news,” protested Nevis.
“What news is that?” asked the printing crew’s boss.
Nevis told him about the Indian in the ice.
“A dead Injun? That all? I grant you it’s good news when another one dies, but that don’t make it something to put in the paper.”
The printing boss wanted Nevis to leave; the man stank of shit. “You the feller that runs the honey wagon with Smith?”
“I am, but we found the object while engaged in our other line of work, namely ice collecting.”
“That’s right, I heard you did that too. Well, there’s an item you and Smith’ll be real interested in reading come tomorrow, let me tell you.”
“Item, sir?”
“Come on along back here and I’ll show you.”
Nevis followed the printing boss to the clanking presses. A freshly printed sheet was taken from a pile and thrust at him. “There, read that there, halfway down.”
Nevis saw the bold headline: NEW IMPROVEMENTS FOR GLORY HOLE. The article sent a chill crawling across his skin. Leo Brannan intended bringing the town up-to-date by building an electrical generating plant, which, as well as providing brighter lights for the community, would also power a small ice-making factory. Brannan was not content to stop there, but had committed himself to installing modern plumbing in every home and building, all at his own expense. The projects were to begin just as soon as the plans were finalized.
“Why …?” asked Nevis.
“Why? So folks can read the news without getting bad eyes from it, and have a real cold beer, and not have to smell your wagon rolling around town. It’s progress, see.”
“But it will put Smith and myself out of work.…”
“Well, what kind of work is it anyway, huh? You can get yourselves better jobs, can’t you, huh? Can’t stop progress. Brannan, he knows that. Had a bug up his ass about progress ever since his old lady left town again, permanent this time, they say. He’s got to have progress here, and no mistake. It’s a rich man’s distraction, that’s how I see it, to keep his mind off of how she went away like she did. Mind you, what man wants a wife with just one arm, when he’s got a piece like he’s got stashed on Bowman Street. I had a piece like that, I’d tell my wife to go someplace else too.”
“May I … may I keep this?”
“Sure you can; no charge. Listen, just you go bury that dead Injun before the law finds out. Dead men have to be buried, that’s the rules in this town, mister.”
Nevis hurried back to Smith and Winnie with the news sheet, and their faces blanched as he read to them the obituary of their twin professions. “A double blow,” he said, laying the paper down. “If it was only an ice factory he intended building, or just the modern plumbing … but both! This is the end for us, Smith.”
“The shitty bastard!” Winnie raged. “Why’s he have to do that to us! Why doesn’t he give his money to poor folk if he wants to get rid of it! Shitty rich man …!”
“We never done nothing to him. Hell, he don’t even have poop pots in his house, got that plummery instead, up on the hill and at that fancy lady’s place that he keeps. Fancy plummery, and now he wants everyone to have it, so’s we can’t do the work anymore. Why would he do that to us?”
“Brannan isn’t doing it to us. He very likely doesn’t even know we exist. He simply wants to give his town the latest and best. It’s an unfortunate coincidence that the very improvements he wishes to make will force us to seek other employment.”
“Not me,” Smith said. “This is what I do, and it’s a good living. What’s he want to spend money making ice for, when we can get it for free just up the valley?”
“For us, it’s free, but we charge anyone who takes it from us. That is the free enterprise system upon which our nation is built. We’re obliged to change our ways to accommodate a changing world. I abandoned art for the same reason, my friend. No one wanted it, so I ceased to create it. The lessons of change are harsh, but we all must learn them in the end.”
“Quitter,” Winnie sneered.
“Realist,” countered Nevis.
“Weakling,” she said.
Nevis was hurt. He could see that Winnie had been drinking for the better part of the day while he and Smith labored to release their Indian from the ice, but drunkenness alone could not excuse such insults.
“I’m a pragmatist, Winnie. Life has fashioned me that way. You may hate Brannan for the thing he intends doing; but he’ll do it anyway, without ever knowing you hated him for it. That is the gulf that yawns between rich and poor.”
“We ain’t poor,” Smith said. “We make a good living, doing what we do. You ever starve for a meal or a drink since we teamed up? It’s a good living, and the son of a bitch wants to wipe it out for us.”
“Progress, Smith …”
“Shit on it! And shit on Brannan too! Maybe he owns the town, but he don’t own me!”
“Me neither!” declared Winnie.
Nevis was fast becoming upset at the way in which his friends seemed to have assumed he was taking Leo Brannan’s side, when he was not. He knew Winnie and Smith were unsophisticated individuals, but couldn’t they see how inevitable it was that their lowly work would someday be made redundant by progress, which seemed to have become the nation’s watchword of late?
“Nor I,” said Nevis, but the mildness of his voice seemed only to infuriate the other two. He saw now that both had been drinking heavily during his absence, and resented their selfishness. Nevis had walked all the way to the newspaper office to make some money for them, and yet here they were, siding against him as if he had somehow been responsible for the disastrous news he returned with. It was not fair that someone of his intelligence and integrity be accused thus, and he took a drink from the bottle on the table and told them so.
“Who are you to talk?” Winnie said. “You didn’t work for a living till you came here.”
“I told you, I was an artist.…”
“That ain’t work,” said Smith, “not real work anyway.”
“It certainly is! Do you imagine Rembrandt painted his portraits without monetary compensation? Are you truly so ignorant? Art is the most honorable work known to man, with the possible exception of doctoring the poor and needy!”
“Then go back to it, why don’t you!”
“Winnie, please … This bad news has upset us all.…”
“She’s right,” Smith declared. “I don’t often say so, but she’s right. If you had’ve belonged here, you never would’ve been this way about Brannan, not caring what he’s gonna do to us. For you, it ain’t really real, is what I’m saying, even after I brung you in and set you down and give you a drink and a job and a woman besides.”
“You never gave me to him,” Winnie protested. “I made up my own mind about that.” Turning to Nevis, she said. �
��And I regret it now, if that’s the way you feel.”
“Stop it! Stop it, both of you! What have I done …?”
“It’s that Injun,” stated Smith. “I never wanted to mess with it, but you had to go and dig it out and bring it down here, and now look what happened because of it. It’s a bad-luck dead-man Injun, is what it is, and if you had’ve done like I wanted and left it where it was, we never would’ve been in the trouble we’re in, and that’s a fact.”
“No, no … Smith, the news would have reached us sooner or later anyway. You’re not being logical, not sensible about this. The Indian has nothing to do with Brannan’s plans, in fact it may be the very thing that allows us to weather the approaching storm. The thing is worth money, as I explained before. If we act quickly to preserve it, the Indian will serve us well. Finding him was not bad luck, but the very best of, good luck, don’t you see?”
He had their grudging attention, and continued with a passion. “People are interested in the unusual, the bizarre, the ugly and the horrific, and will pay to experience these things at second hand. Look at this, for example.” He snatched up the news sheet again and pointed to the leading article: SLADE STRIKES AGAIN! FIEND STILL AT LARGE! “The whole southwestern region is petrified by the presence of this cannibal, but the rest of the country spends money reading about their terror. Man is a creature fascinated by the awful, the ghastly, the lurking horrors of the world. We have such a horror, and it cost us the sweat of one working day. Must I make my point all over again? Must I?”
Smith and Winnie exchanged sullen looks. Smith’s expression relented first, and he held out his hand for the bottle Nevis held. “You sure about this Injun?”
“As sure as any man in this vale of tears can be of anything.”
“Well, all right, then.” Smith drank deeply by way of acceptance.
Nevis looked at Winnie. “Will you believe I’ve done no wrong, and want only to help us all?”
Winnie said, “I suppose,” and reached for the bottle.
“Thing is,” said Smith, surrendering it, “we don’t have us a glass case that’s airtight. I never even heard of such a thing. That Injun, he’s already ripe, I say.”
“Then we’ll pickle him until the case is made.”
“Pickle?”
“Exactly. Preservation is not in itself a difficult task. The problem is to preserve the object one is desirous of preserving without hiding it away from view inside a pickling barrel, and that is where the airtight case comes into its own. Until we have it, though, we must resort to dunking our frigid friend in vinegar brine, like so much herring. It should only be a temporary measure, until the case is built. Do we have the financial wherewithal to order such a specialized piece of work, Smith?”
“I reckon.”
Nevis smote his forehead. “And we shall enlist the aid of Mr. Leo Brannan in making our find known to the scientific community and the world at large!”
“I don’t want him having nothing to do with it,” said Smith, and Winnie agreed.
“But the man is perfectly suited to our ends,” Nevis enthused. “What was Slade before Leo Brannan placed a reward upon his head? An unspeakable wretch who ate of his fellow man’s flesh in a collapsed mine, a disgusting specimen of humanity to be sure, but of little note in the sweep of history. However, once our illustrious magnate made known to the public his personal desire that Slade be found and punished, the talk has been of nothing else. The man-eater has become a walking plague, a shadow over the land, the subject on every lip, and Leo Brannan could do the same with our Indian, I don’t doubt.”
“But why would he want to?” asked Winnie.
“Because …” Nevis faltered. He could think of no compelling reason. The fact that the Indian had been discovered above Glory Hole might pique Brannan’s interest, and any man committed to modern plumbing and ice production would surely be willing to invest in a scientific curiosity such as theirs, even if this meant nothing more than informing the world of its existence. Nevis doubted that remorse over throwing two men out of work would play any role in Brannan’s thinking.
“Who knows why a man such as he might or might not help us, but my friends, he won’t accept or reject our proposal until we ask.”
“That’ll be your job, then,” said Smith. “You got the words that’ll make him sit up and listen, I guess.”
“Thank you, Smith. I am in complete agreement. I will, however, require a new suit of clothing, plus extensive bathhouse time. You, as custodian of the purse strings, will have to supply the cash for these necessary items.”
“Me?”
“I can’t appear before the wealthiest man in the west as I am. I must appear urbane, confident and sweet-smelling before I enter the sanctum of the great man.”
“Why don’t you pay for that stuff? I pay you wages, don’t I? Use ’em for the stuff, why can’t you?”
“Smith, you don’t pay me anywhere near as much as you pay yourself. If this plan is to stand any chance for success, you must part with fifty dollars for my own requirements, and considerably more, I should think, for the glass case. Nothing spent, nothing won, I fear.”
Smith took back the bottle and drained it.
Seeking out the personal interest of Leo Brannan, and receiving it, were two different matters. Freshly scrubbed, shaved, coiffed and attired, Nevis presented himself first at the offices of Brannan Mining, but was shown the door when he explained his business. He then walked all the way up the valley to Elk House in an attempt to confront the owner there, but could get no further than the front doors, having been issued no personal invitation to visit.
Undeterred, Nevis strode back to town in the gathering gloom of evening, his new shoes pinching quite painfully by that time, and concocted on the downward journey yet another gambit, his most audacious. If Leo Brannan would not see him, prevented as he was from knowing Nevis’s need because of the intervening employees at his doorways and portals, then Nevis would have to approach the man by way of someone even closer than his servants. He would take the risky step of consulting with the man’s mistress. He knew her house on Bowman Street as did most of the town, and had heard the rumors that placed her in a less salubrious location at an earlier moment in her life at Glory Hole—a common boardinghouse close to the railroad tracks. It was the humble origins of the mistress that inspired Nevis with faith in his plan; such a female would not be arrogant or dismissive of his entreaties. He was filled with self-assurance as he lifted the lion-headed knocker on Imogen Starr’s door.
It had been a dreadful day. Her breakfast had been unacceptably burned, and her green parrot, a recent gift from Leo, had somehow slipped free of its perch chain and flown through the nearest open window. Leo would be furious when he found out. Lovey Doll had not liked the bird, not trusting its beady little eyes and wickedly curved beak, and it had revealed previous tuition in its filthy vocabulary, something she was sure Leo had been unaware of when he purchased it for her. Anyway, it was gone, and after its abrupt leavetaking, Lovey Doll had shouted at the maid who left the window open, and at the maid whose responsibility it was to take care of the parrot’s needs; the lazy girl had not even noticed the parrot’s leg ring was not secure, and so was responsible for its loss. Lovey Doll doubted that a Brazilian parrot would last long in the rarer atmosphere of Colorado. Perhaps she should order another from whichever exotic store in Denver had provided the first, and hope that Leo did not notice the difference.
Leo had of late been quite testy in his dealings with her. The one-armed wife had packed her bags and left, dragging her odious daughter with her, but this had not improved Leo’s temper at all; he was brusque, demanding, not at all his usual self. The parrot had been a gift by way of apologizing for certain intemperate remarks he had passed recently, remarks concerning the flatness of Lovey Doll’s belly. She had taken to gorging on food since that day, in hopes of plumping herself out to an agreeable width and depth, but still Leo grumbled about his need for a son
“or else.” Surprisingly, he had not forced her to visit a doctor for official confirmation of the lie, an oversight for which Lovey Doll was grateful. She could not hope to fool him forever, though, and since conception seemed beyond her body’s abilities, she was fearful for the future, when Leo found out he had been deceived. Any man who sent away his wife because she was barren and his mistress was not would surely be very angry to learn his mistress was a liar. It was the daily postponement of his learning the truth that gave Lovey Doll headaches of terrible proportion, and prevented her from gaining the flesh she required to further the deception for a month or two more. She was in such a state of nerves she could not keep food inside herself, but vomited it up within a half hour of eating, or else lost precious weight through the embarrassing affliction of running bowels.
She was in no mood, therefore, to answer her own doorbell when it became obvious the maids she had shouted at earlier had gone into hiding somewhere inside the house, and could not hear the visitor announcing himself on her step. Lovey Doll’s face, as she opened the oak door, was not conducive to unwarranted conversation.
The fellow there had a vaguely familiar air about him that confused her momentarily. It was intolerable that she should be expected to answer her own door, without knowing who her visitor was in advance. “Yes?” she snapped. The man was staring with an impudence she considered worth reporting to Leo, so he could have the fellow run out of town for his lack of manners. “What is it?” she asked in exasperation.
“Lovey Doll?”
The words transfixed her with fear. How did he know? Who was he, this red-nosed stranger?
“No,” she said. “You’re mistaken.”
“Lovey Doll … It’s you, it’s really you.”
“Please depart this instant.”
“It’s me, Nevis!”
“Nevis?”
“Nevis Dunnigan! I painted your picture, Lovey Doll. You don’t mean to say you’ve forgotten posing for Venus Revealed. Lovey Doll, I never thought … oh my goodness … to see you again.”
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