The Cunning Man

by D. J. Butler

  “What do you think they charge at these brothels?” Michael asked.

  “You and I are not going to find out.”

  “That’s not the right answer.”

  Hiram shook his head. “Yes, it is.”

  “No, you should be saying ooh-la-la. Did they teach you nothing in Paris?”

  They exited the alley onto the main street of Helper. Main Street was full of neon lights: Hiram saw two, no three, movie theaters, and a bowling alley, and restaurants of various kinds. There were bars, and sidewalks full of people laughing and drifting from one entertainment to the next, but it wasn’t the full-blown bacchanalia he had feared.

  “That one.” Hiram pointed at a signboard that read Hotel Utah. The words were spelled out in a cross, centering on the shared letter T, and that struck him as a good omen. It made the sign of the cross, and also it reminded him of the Sator Arepo charm, the Abracadabra pyramid, and other written charms, in which words intersected in meaningful combinations.

  “I’m following you, Pap.”

  Hiram stepped toward the hotel. First Naaman Rettig, then Mary McGill.

  Chapter Eight

  The streets grew more crowded. A chattering herd of men spilling from one of the town’s movie theaters jostled Hiram and Michael at the door of the hotel. The letters on the movie marquee spelled out The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

  Hiram and Michael struggled past the filmgoers and into a warm, dark foyer.

  But…could this be the Hotel Utah? It was a crowded space, the wallpaper fraying, the carpet underfoot unevenly worn into tangled ruts. The front desk was slapped next to the bar and somewhere in the building, frying fat emitted greasy smoke.

  A man with a handlebar mustache walked, elbows locked with a cool-eyed, gigantic woman, her arms as big as Hiram’s thighs. Her caramel-colored dress tented off her in a wash of thick perfume. The man wore a turquoise and silver bolo tie, a bright orange waistcoat, and tightly-cut trousers the color of a ripe lime over cowboy boots polished to a dull red shine. His snapping, roosterlike strut suggested that he was dressed to impress.

  The couple moved toward a back hallway.

  A man with two older women on his arms started up the steps to Hiram’s right. The women wore black lace gowns with plunging necklines and their lips were bright red.

  “Pap,” Michael said. “Pap?”

  * * *

  Hiram’s mind was elsewhere.

  He remembered a town called Rouen, a couple hours’ drive from the sea and on the Seine. He was thinking of a red lamp he’d seen, casting a rosy glow on dozens of women in silky lingerie.

  Brits, Aussies, and Yankees were lined up fifty feet deep to get in, every man filthy from the trenches and most looking forward to a bath and a shave as a prelude to the other services on offer. Hiram and his friend Yas Yazzie stood in the back of the crowd, unable to look each other in the eye.

  Yas was a big Navajo, broad-shouldered, with dark eyes and jet-black hair. His skin was a smooth brown and when he smiled, his face glowed. But Yas wasn’t smiling then, in Rouen, when some British lieutenant went careening by on a bicycle in a cloud of gin. He wasn’t smiling a few minutes later, when one of the women admitting the soldiers at the front of the line let her lacy robe slip open.

  Hiram wasn’t smiling, either. He felt ill and embarrassed. He wanted a bath, but he figured he’d get the bath and then bow out from any other kind of encounter. He had a wife at home, as did Yas, but then, many of the boys in their unit were married. Charlie Casey insisted that being at war, five thousand miles from home, gave them all a free pass with the ladies. And besides, the women were French. It wasn’t like they were sleeping with American girls.

  And back home, who would ever know?

  Those arguments seemed hollow from the start, but especially when Hiram found himself looking at a half-naked French girl, walking along the line of Doughboys to encourage them. Hiram had made a promise to Elmina Shepherd to be true when they’d wed, a promise for all time and all eternity. Yas had done something similar.

  “Yas,” Hiram said, “we’re not over here for this.”

  The two men weren’t exactly in the business of soldiering either, at least not in the normal sense of the word. Both of their wives had wondered why they’d signed up at all. Neither man had been drafted…again, at least not in the normal sense of the word. They were as much as ten years older than the other fellows in the platoon. Older than most of the guys in the regiment.

  Older, and wiser.

  Yas nodded. “I’m only sad you said it before I did. Maybe we can find a bath somewhere less crowded.”

  It took them six hours. They found a bathtub on the second story of a wrecked hotel, half the walls gone and the roof open to the sky. They built a fire of shattered hotel furniture under a soup pot from the hotel’s kitchen and shuttled pans from hand to hand until they could fill the tub with water that very nearly passed for hot. They took turns getting clean while looking up at a clear night sky.

  * * *

  Seventeen years later, Hiram stood in the crowded lobby with Yas’s son, Michael, now his son. Hiram wasn’t sure he’d grow to be as tall or wide as Yas, but he had the hands and feet for it. And he was sprouting like a weed, a bit taller than Hiram and not done growing yet.

  What could Hiram tell the boy? That it wasn’t what Michael imagined? That he regretted bringing his son along to Helper? Not to look?

  “Remember that every woman deserves respect,” he found himself saying.

  He expected a sarcastic response, but Michael only nodded.

  Hiram led his son to the front desk. The clerk was a stick-bug of a man, thin and slow-moving, with an Adam’s apple that looked as if it had come from a foundry. A mustache overflowed his upper lip.

  “Can you ring a suite for me?” Hiram asked. “I’m here to see Naaman Rettig.”

  The insect man grinned and a gold tooth winked from his smile. “Wrong hotel, Captain. But if you and your Indian pal want some fun, this is the best place in town.”

  Michael raised his hands. “Aw, Pap, am I your Indian pal? Though I’m thinking this doesn’t seem like that much fun, after all.” He walked away, through clouds of perfume, and Hiram followed him to the sidewalk.

  The Hotel Utah was one door down. The crowd emerging from the theater had made Hiram miss his door. That same crowd was now packed into the hotel’s bar to drink, voices raised to the pitch and volume of a stampede.

  In front of the hotel stood parked a row of cars. Most of them could have belonged to miners or railroad engineers or local farmers, but one stood out: it was a bright red Chrysler Phaeton, the carriage of a rich man, with its whitewall tires and its leather ragtop. The Phaeton was polished to a shine that hurt to look at, and it was deliberately parked straddling two spaces, as if to keep lesser cars away.

  This lobby had brown and gold wallpaper down to a wainscoting of polished wood. Cigar smoke residue oozed from the wood, and a berrylike hint of old wine made Hiram feel that merely to inhale was to risk intoxication. Underfoot was thick red carpet that swarmed with golden bees and hives; out of respect, Hiram avoided stepping on the gold thread. When he asked about Naaman Rettig, the clerk, an older man in a gray suit, rang the railroad man’s room.

  “Go right on up,” the clerk said.

  Hiram wondered why Rettig wanted to see him. And where had he got Hiram’s name? Had Hiram’s heliotropius finally betrayed him to fame?

  He and Michael started up the stairs, climbing through the tobacco smoke from the bar and the watery electric lights.

  Michael was chuckling. “That was hilarious. My first brothel and I go there with my straight-as-a-shovel Mormon father. Quite the rip-snorting place, but none of those gals were ginchy enough for me.”

  Hiram didn’t want to ask what “ginchy” was.

  “It’s fine, Pap,” Michael said. “I’m not going to become a sex maniac or a boozer.”

  Hiram sighed.

  They walked up f
our flights of stairs and down a red-carpeted, golden wallpapered hallway to a door. The bees and their hives were banished from this floor, with nothing to replace them and break up the oxblood of the carpet.

  A man without a neck stood at the door, arms crossed over his chest. Instead of tall, nature had made him wide, so wide that Hiram doubted he could walk through the door without turning sideways first. The sides of his heads were shaved, while the rest of his thick black hair was greased forward. He wore slacks, wingtip shoes polished to a mirrorlike shine, and a black sweater. And he didn’t look happy.

  “I’m Hiram Woolley. I’m here to talk with—”

  The big man pushed open the double-doors.

  The first room of the hotel suite had been transformed into an office. A corkboard covered one wall, next to the door to the bathroom, and push pins, papers, and all manner of receipts were transfixed there. On the other wall, beside the bedroom door, was a map of the region, more pushpins, and some string.

  A desk dominated the space in front of the wide windows letting in the multicolored light of Main Street. Stacks of paper clipped or stapled together littered the top of the desk, along with more maps and several coffee mugs, their bottoms stained dark.

  A slightly short middle-aged man rose from the desk. His thick shock of hair was so blond it was almost white. Pale hair also burst out of the collar of his shirt above his cravat.

  Hiram removed his hat and held it in his hands.

  Rettig’s desk job had widened him a bit, but his shoulders and arms had the muscles of a fit man. He wore a frock coat and waistcoat. He pulled on soft gray kid leather gloves.

  Before those gloves went on, however, Hiram saw the twisted pink skin left by burns, severely disfiguring scars, marking the man’s hands and wrists.

  Rettig squinted at them with light green eyes far too small for his face. He slapped a hand down on his desk. “Welcome, welcome, Mr. Woolley. I just have to find my cheaters.”

  Michael moved forward to the desk and lifted handled glasses, a lorgnette, so Rettig could reach them. He put them to his face, which made his eyes look even tinier. “Much better,” the railroad man said. “But Lord, where are my manners?”

  He walked to the front of the desk, forcing Michael backward. Hiram stepped forward to shake Rettig’s hand. “Naaman Julius Rettig, that is my full Christian name, and remember, it’s Naaman, but I won’t take ‘nay’ for an answer. I’m glad Chief Fox found you so quickly.”

  “I’m Hiram Woolley, but you know that.” And how did the railroad man know it? “And this is my son, Michael.”

  Holding his glasses on his nose, Rettig shook Michael’s hand. “Yes, yes, the Navajo son.” Rettig dropped Michael’s hand abruptly. “Now, Mr. Woolley, I appreciate your accepting my invitation. For we have business to discuss, not only the business of my railroad, but the business of humanity. I believe I’m quoting Dickens.”

  They all sat, Rettig behind the desk, Hiram and Michael in chairs, a bit too close to the ground. The chairs were so short, their legs must have been sawed. Rettig sat tall, and they had to look up at him; his desk sat on a low platform.

  “Your office is impressive,” Hiram said. Then he guessed: “Is that your Chrysler parked out front?”

  “It’s even swankier on the inside.” Rettig smiled. “Do you like it?”

  Hiram shrugged. “My truck suits me.”

  Naaman dropped his glasses to his desk to squint furiously at them. “I got a telegram from your Bishop Smith, who is very concerned about the Kimball mine situation.”

  That was how Rettig knew. “He asked you to help me?”

  Naaman Rettig laughed. “Oh, in a manner of speaking. He said you were bringing food to Kimball Mine. The Kimballs are known to him. It’s a prominent name among your people, and he worried about them. As he should. He said you were bringing food, and asked if my trains would carry more food down to the Kimballs, from Utah Valley.”

  Hiram wanted to feel relieved, but something warned him he shouldn’t. “That’s good to hear.”

  “What is a ‘presiding bishop’?” Rettig asked. “Is Bishop Smith the head of your church?”

  “There are three men in the presiding bishopric,” Hiram said. “They don’t run the church. They run the physical side, the secular things. Such as the buildings. And now they’re trying to figure out how to deal with the Crash. I help them. Bishop Smith is…he’s the second man of the three.”

  “Very good. As for the use of my trains, of course, I had to tell him no.” Naaman Rettig nodded and smiled. “I’m the trustee of the railroad’s investment here, and I can’t go squandering that investment on some mine. Not unless, of course, the railroad owned the mine. I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Woolley.”

  “You don’t have to call him Mr. Woolley, sir,” Michael put in. “Hiram is fine. And thank you for being such a good steward of your shareholders’ money.”

  “Easy, son,” Hiram said.

  Rettig licked his lips and blinked, obviously caught off guard. “Yes, I am a good steward. Now, let’s talk about the Kimball Mine, the Kimball Corporation, how much do you know about the Kimballs?”

  Michael answered as if rattling off a list of facts out of a book. “It was a ranch, back before the railroad. Teancum did well with the mine, until all the wives and most of the kids left, or died, and he was left all alone with Ammon. Teancum disappeared a couple years back, maybe with his new fourth wife. With old Teancum gone, Samuel and Eliza came home. The kids fight over how to run the mine, and it’s shut down. And we brought them beets. We’re beet farmers when we’re not serving the good people of the State of Utah.”

  Rettig plucked up the lorgnette and looked through it at Hiram. “Beets?”

  “We brought more than beets,” Hiram said. “These being hard times, it wouldn’t be right for us not help out.”

  “I can respect that.” Rettig put his glasses back on the desk. “Here’s more of the story for you to consider. Teancum Kimball was a rancher in 1881, when the D and RGW first made Mr. Kimball an offer on his land. Kimball proved there was coal in the hills, and our railroad needs coal. Kimball refused. Actually, the story goes, he had an old blunderbuss that he waved around, saying he’d rather be damned than sell his ranch. I wasn’t there myself, you understand, but the incident made such an impression on the director at the time that he recorded it in the company’s minute books. And Teancum never did sell. Instead, he started mining the land himself. Eighteen ninety-one, that’s when Teancum Kimball opened his mine.”

  Michael sat straight up and cocked his head to one side. “Sir, thank you so much for the history lesson. I had no idea 1891 was so fascinating. What happened in 1892?”

  Rettig let a scowl cross his face, but only for a moment. “Nineteen oh-three was the year of the great mine riots. Men were killed. Again, the D and RGW offered to help Teancum with his troubles. Again, he refused to sell. And that was the same year his wives ran off, all except for one, Samuel’s mother. Samuel came the next year, but alas, Teancum’s remaining wife died. If anything, that hardened him.”

  “You know an awful lot about the wives of Teancum Kimball,” Hiram observed.

  “Kimball is a prominent name here in Helper, too.” Rettig paused. “Some say Ammon himself had been in love with the young woman, Samuel’s mother, that sweet young sister wife. And when Samuel sprang into the world, Ammon swore to hate him forever. A family drama, Biblical.”

  “Biblical?” Michael asked. “Do you mean there was a plague of frogs next? Or did the Price River turn to blood?”

  Rettig frowned at Michael. “Others believe it was Teancum who turned Ammon’s heart against his little brother because he was weak, a fancy boy, who didn’t want to dirty his hands with anything but paint. Regardless, no one around here was surprised when Samuel left.”

  “Let’s cut to current events, Mr. Rettig,” Michael said. “Two years ago, Teancum and his new wife disappeared—”

  “God rest their s
ouls,” Rettig cut him off and directed his tiny-eyed gaze at Hiram. “Though a man that age taking a girl scarcely into her twenties to wife is perhaps not looking for rest. Again, the D and RGW made an offer. Ammon refused. No firearms were involved, thankfully, and that brings us here, today. You want to help the men of the Kimball Mine, do you not, Mr. Woolley?”

  “Hiram is fine. And I do want to help. That’s why Michael and I are here.”

  Rettig squinted through his lorgnette and found a manila envelope. “This is our thirteenth offer to purchase the Kimball Mine. My predecessor’s failure to convince Ammon Kimball to sell might be one reason he lost the confidence of the board, and then his job.”

  Hiram’s heart felt heavy. “How can I help, Mr. Rettig?”

  “I’m hoping you might take them the offer.”

  Michael laughed out loud.

  “Why me?” Hiram didn’t relish the thought of getting between the feuding brothers.

  “You and the Kimballs share a faith. I hope that you’ll be able to talk with Ammon and Samuel, get them to bury their differences.”

  Hiram ran his fingers through his hair.

  “As the Lord is my witness,” Naaman Rettig said, “my motives are pure. I’m only in town three more days, because, believe it or not, I have much larger issues to deal with on the Denver end. A faulty survey means one of our lines is in danger of falling into the river. The chaos in Helper can be easily ended. Instead of a family torn asunder by feud, the mine should be owned by a solid business with a clear-eyed Board of Directors, with the united purpose of giving the men of Kimball steady jobs with good pay.”

  “I think that calls for a God bless America, sir.” Michael sat tall, with his shoulders back.

  Rettig scowled. “Don’t mistake me; the railroad wants to profit. But the railroad’s profit requires it to have coal, and obtaining coal requires the work of miners, so the D and RGW’s desire for profit will lead it inexorably and directly to re-opening the mine. And in the meantime, yes, I would bring food down from Utah Valley for the men and their families. So yes, my boy, God bless America. Now, I’m a busy man, Hiram. Will you take my offer to the Kimballs?”