by Amy Faye
He was exhausted, anyone could see that, but there was something else, too, something that sleep couldn't replace. If she didn't know better, she'd call it a sense that, somehow, he could keep going. And there was no replacing that, no matter how hard she tried.
The door behind her opened, the sound of footsteps on the floor drawing her attention. How long had she been sitting there, lost in her own head? She didn't know. The children were talking amongst themselves, the older ones who already pretty much knew the lesson making sure that the younger ones were making their letters correctly. Exactly the way that she would have liked.
Marie turned. There he was, right by the door. The look on his face wasn't pleased, but he didn't look despondent, either.
"Is something wrong?"
He walked over slow. "Is now a bad time?"
"Not particularly," she answered. She kept her voice low, to avoid letting the children hear. There was nothing wrong with them hearing, per se, but it was a private conversation between adults, and some part of her wanted to keep it that way. Because it was him.
"I have to call it a day and get ready for work. If you want, you could move back into the schoolhouse tomorrow. There's work yet to be done, but you can't see the sky no more."
"That's great news. I'll tell the kids right away."
"Yeah, I'd thought you might feel that way. I'm glad to have been help."
"Is there anything you wanted as payment? I don't have much money, but—"
His jaw flexed and tightened. "No, thank you," he growled. But the way that his eyes darted down for a moment…
Her cheeks flushed. "Well, thank you again. I'll see you tomorrow, maybe? Or this evening, perhaps we'll come in for supper again? You needn't pay for us, of course."
"If you'd like," he said, his voice coming out strained and tight. "That would be just fine."
Marie smiled. She shouldn't have, not with the way he was obviously thinking about her. It might come off as a sort of invitation. But she smiled nonetheless. She couldn't stop smiling, not even when he turned and headed out the door.
Eighteen
Chris took in a deep breath and looked out at the work he'd been doing. Only a little while left before work, and he was already tired from a day's labor. Unpaid labor, too, which he couldn't begin to explain.
Upon a time, he'd never have done it. He was paid for his work, and if he wasn't being paid then there was no reason to be doing the job. That was a dangerous road to go down. Once you start thinking like that, then there's really no reason to spend any time on anything that you don't like doing, or work.
The work you will do, well, it ain't framin' timbers. Because that takes a lot of time, and pays only moderate-well. No, if the only thing that matters is the money, then you do jobs that pay big and take no effort, and it doesn't take long before you start figuring that the only thing standing between you and a big pay-day is the law.
That wasn't who he was any more. Certainly wasn't who he wanted to be. But he felt the disconnect in every part of his body, down to his bones. What had happened to him? Who even was he any more? The door behind him opened and he moved to step out of the way of whoever stepped through.
There wasn't anyone there. Not immediately, anyways. Not obviously. Until he looked down. A little boy stepped through without saying anything.
"Jamie. Hey, kid. Y'alright?"
He shrugged.
"What's the problem? Your friends not any fun?"
"I'm fine," was his response. But Chris didn't particularly buy it. He knelt down and leaned in.
"Come on. You wanna see what I've been workin' on? Maybe that'll cheer you up."
His eyes light up halfway, like he's interested but none of it much matters to him any more. It's a feeling that Chris doesn't need to have explained to him.
He took Jamie's hand gently and started walking. The boy followed without any hesitation. He seemed as interested as anything, but like doing the actual walking was just too much work. It made Chris's head hurt. There was too much going on that reminded him of things he'd hoped not to be reminded of.
"You know," he said after a long time. "I know it's tough."
"I'm fine," Jamie answered, like he was following a script.
"Good. I'm glad you're fine, man, because when I lost my parents—I don't know, man. I about lost it."
"What do you mean?"
"I was about your age, I guess. A little older, you're, what, ten now?"
"Nine and a half."
"Close, then. I was thirteen, and they went in the night. Got sick, and then it turned bad and fast."
The boy was quiet as they walked through the middle of town.
"Man, I was broke up about it for so long. I used to wake up and think, maybe today they'll, I dunno… wake up. Think better of it. I got sent off to live with…" Trying to explain any of it to a nine-and-a-half year old suddenly seemed impossible. "I got sent off to live with other kids whose parents had moved on, like. So you figure we all kinda had a thing in common, right?"
Jamie nodded as they walked, not really answering. The way his body slumped as it walked, he didn't have the gumption, and Chris couldn't blame him.
"No, that ain't how it went. Ten boys, three of 'em my very own brothers, and not a lick of sympathy in the bunch. Everyone wanted to pick a fight with everyone, like the winner got their parents back. My brother was older. Tried to keep me safe. I tell you, I can't stand being treated like that. Like he thought I couldn't take it." Chris stopped a minute and knelt down by Jamie.
"So I won't do that to you, you got it? I know you're tough, and I know you can deal with whatever you got to deal with. You don't need my help, and I know it. But, if you ever want anything from me, I won't say no, and I won't laugh. There ain't nothing funny about it, aight?"
Jamie nodded, but this time it wasn't going to be enough.
"I need to know you understand, Jamie. Just tell me you'll call after me if you run into any trouble, and we'll be on the way."
"I know it's fine. Miss Bainbridge told me she'd help if I had any trouble, too."
Chris couldn't keep the smile off his face so he stood back up. Just across the street was the schoolhouse.
"Sure, she did. She's good people. You might find, though, that there's gon' come a time when you have a problem you don't want to talk to a girl about. And when that time comes, you can come to me." Chris gestured up the ladder. "You go ahead, and I'll be right behind you. Take your time, yeah?"
Jamie nodded tiredly, and then he mustered up his energy and set one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, and eased his way up. He was only nine and a half, sure. But he'd lived on a ranch his whole life, so it wasn't hard to imagine that he'd spent plenty of time on ladders. The comfortable way he went up like it was second nature was enough to tell Chris that he had.
Once he'd followed the kid up, he walked over across the gently sloping roof to where the hole had been.
"You ever seen a building going up, Jamie?"
He shook his head.
"They're a bit like you, in a way. You got bones, right? Hold you up, make you move around. And when they break, it hurts like hell, let me tell you."
The boy nodded. "Yeah, I know, I think."
"Well, buildings are the same way. They got bones—the rafters, you seen 'em, I know—and frames, and then everything around them, what you see, is like skin over that. But if the skeleton goes, the skin goes, and the skeleton right there"—He pointed at the patched-over spot—"had gone bad."
"What happened to make it bad?"
"Probably just age, or a little spot that didn't get tarred over, and that made for a leak. Then the timber gets water in it, and it starts to rot out."
"Yeah," the boy said, like he knew what Chris was talking about.
He took a step to look closer and all of a sudden a sick feeling ran through Chris's stomach. If he took one more step—
His hand shot out and grabbed Jamie's wrist. The boy froze, and
then real slow, turned. "What's wrong?"
"Stop there," Chris said. He tried to keep his voice even and calm, even as his heart was thumping at a thousand miles an hour. "No further."
"I know," he answered, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Or you'd fall through, right?"
Chris let out a breath. "Yeah. Just be careful, alright?"
What was it about this kid that had him so on-edge? He should have seen that the boy wasn't moving any further. But that hadn't stopped him panicking. And there was nothing that he could do to explain why he'd done it.
Nineteen
Marie rubbed her eyes and poured herself another cup of coffee. She was a tea drinker, usually. Coffee left her feeling on-edge, and she usually didn't like it.
That said, if she was going to be up another late night, then certain sacrifices had to be made, and her preference for tea over coffee was the first to go. She looked out the window and fought the desire to lay her head down.
If she went through the night, then it would be easier than if she let herself think that she might be able to get a good night's sleep, and then couldn't. It was going to be hard, but she needed to be there when Jamie's nightmares started.
Besides that, she'd brought with her a veritable treasure trove of books when she came out from New Orleans, and she had barely touched them since she got into town. So much had been going on, and she'd nearly forgotten about them.
She opened the book to the ribbon bookmark. None of it seemed the least bit familiar. Naturally; she hadn't read the book in almost four months. With a gentle feeling of resignation, she turned back to the front of the book and started again. If she was lucky, she might be able to make a few chapters' headway before Jamie's nightmares overtook him.
The sound of the clock in the front hall finally pulled Marie out of the trance of reading. It tolled out twelve times, in total, and then went silent. She looked down at the page. She'd passed where the marker had started some time ago, though she couldn't say if it had been minutes or an hour. Time had slipped completely from her mind.
She turned around and stood up. Fatigue hit her suddenly and swiftly, as if she'd been avoiding it successfully up to that point by keeping busy. She dared to risk opening the door, and peering inside.
The light from her lamp, no doubt running low on oil after the hours of reading she'd done, spilled into the room, just enough to see inside. Jamie lay there, as still as a stone. Her heart started to pound hard in her chest. Was something wrong? Was he still breathing?
She stilled herself as much as possible, watching and waiting for some sign that would tell her. The more she remained still, the better she could see, the better she could make out the minute movements of a person in sleep.
Curled softly around a pillow, she could see his back rise gently, just enough to allow the tiniest amount of air in, it seemed. Then, slowly and rhythmically, he let it out again. No sound penetrated the room, but he was fine.
Her heart, though—it thumped in the teacher's ears, so deafeningly loud that if she hadn't known better, she would have thought it might wake the boy up from his slumber, like the story by Poe. The idea itself was nonsense. If anything, the thing to wake him would be the light from the candle.
Marie took her time in closing the door. It would be a waste to wake him, now that he rested so soundly, at the last moment.
She let out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding until just then. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears even still, pulsing in her fingertips. He was alright, and he would continue to be alright. That, at least, was some comfort.
Convinced, finally, that she might be able to sleep the rest of the way through the night, and with her eyes feeling increasingly bleary, Marie stripped off her jacket and skirt. Maybe it was improper to be running around in her underwear with a boy Jamie's age around, but then, she wasn't going to be sleeping in her clothes, either.
She laid down on the couch. She was a small woman, she reasoned, which usually came only with problems. She couldn't reach anything above the lowest shelf in the cabinet without having to lift herself up onto the counter top, which was sufficiently un-ladylike that she simply didn't do it at all.
And then there was the fact that her body was anything but over-strong.
Yet, in laying on beds, she had found something else that it served well, as her feet propped comfortably onto the opposite arm, without hanging too far off or having to rearrange her body to fit properly. That was the first thing she had found she liked her size. The first thing that she would admit to, at least.
The other time had been in this room, too, and it was not remotely a thought she was prepared to entertain. The size difference between a man and a woman was a simple matter of fact. There was no reason to take pleasure in it, and particularly no reason to think about it after the fact when the man in question was Chris Broadmoor.
She used her arm as a sort-of pillow and dug into corner where the seat met the back of the sofa. It was soft, there. Warm and comforting, like the couch was wrapping its arms around her. She caught herself when she felt her mind wandering in a direction it shouldn't have.
What, she wondered idly as her mind wandered—so long as it avoided the gutter, she found it always wandered before she let herself sleep—what had made the difference tonight?
Was Jamie too tired for dreaming? It couldn't have been enough time that he'd simply begun to get over it. She wasn't even willing to entertain the notion, because it was laughably wrong from the beginning.
The children, maybe. Being around the children, who'd been in high spirits after so many days of being away from school. Now they got to have time away from their families, away from chores, away from their everyday lives, and maybe that played some part in it.
Then again, she thought, maybe there was something else. When she'd gone outside, wondering where Jamie had run off to, she couldn't help noticing where he'd finally found himself. Sitting on the edge of the roof with Mr. Broadmoor.
She wondered what they talked about. But most of all, she wondered what Jamie thought about it, and wondered why she was so concerned about a bartender she barely knew.
Twenty
True—he had no reason to be doing any of this. There was a strong sense in his chest that he owed the Pearsons, for everything that had happened. And it was true that Jamie was tied up with Marie, now. It was a better plan to have the boy stay with Marie than it was to have the kid staying with him, surrounded by Sarah and her girls.
The sun beat down on him as he checked the tar again, to make certain it was thoroughly coated. It was drying quickly. That was good for the pace of the job, since it meant that he could move on to nailing down the roofing and getting all of it finished sooner.
It was bad, though, because it meant that he didn't have a long time to think about what he was doing, and he was well past the point where he was comfortable tarring roofs. He hadn't done the job in fifteen years and though the entire process was familiar enough that he didn't worry about forgetting the entire thing, he couldn't say the same for his level of comfort with it.
The little things kept jumping up and hitting him in the face, little mistakes that he'd never have made when he was apprenticed. What was he even doing? He wasn't cut out for this work. But something kept him coming back, day after day.
Chris let out a breath and put the thoughts out of his mind, leaned over and painted on a thick swatch of tar where he thought it looked a bit thin. Then he wiped away the sweat that was beginning to bead on his forehead and dropped the brush out of the way.
Reaching into his belt, he pulled a small handful of nails free and stuck them into his mouth, grabbed a short stack of roofing tiles, and got to hammering. The work went quickly and easily. Place it, check the placement, and rap the slat into place with a few easy strikes of the hammer.
The quickness of the work belied its complexity. That, at least, hadn't changed since he was young. The amount of tar that ended up
on his face was something he'd forgotten until it started to happen, and then all of a sudden, in a scalding flash of memory, he realized that he'd had the exact same experience as a young man.
He didn't like to think about that time, any more than he liked to think about anything that had happened before he came here. But it was a skill that had proven useful. The thought had occurred to him more than once, sitting up on that roof, that he might be able to pick it all up again, if he so desired. All it would take would be a little bit of effort and some practice.
The notion of a real trade, rather than sitting in a smoky room pouring drinks all day, held an odd but undeniable appeal. It was the antithesis of everything he'd believed for such a long time, and yet now here he was seriously entertaining the notion.
Wouldn't it be nice, he seemed to think, to be able to come home with his hands covered in blisters for a wage that might only be ten cents more a day, rather than sitting around and talking with women who most men paid for their time.
The entire idea was laughable, and yet, it kept coming up, over and over. The sound of steps on the boardwalk below gave him a convenient excuse to stop work for a moment. The hammer was set aside, the sharp nails pushed out of his mouth and into the palm of a waiting hand.
There was a man below, rail-thin with a hat. Beside him was a woman who looked as if she could have fit two of him inside her. Her clothes were modest, but even still, the way that she moved drew attention to breasts that would have been extravagant on any other woman, but seemed proportional on her heavy-set and poorly stayed frame.
Where the man's expression was tired, hers was aggravated. And when Chris moved on the roof, she immediately looked up, like she'd been expecting him. One meaty hand rose to shield her eyes.
"Can I help you folks?"
She didn't respond with anything but a sneer. It wasn't unheard of, not with Chris, but it was unusual that someone would act that way so openly. Her other arm moved to poke the man beside her with one fleshy elbow.