Hell's Half-Acre

by Nicholas Nicastro

  “It would sure be a ser­vice if you told us what you know. About those Benders.”

  Brockman faced him, eyes hidden but lips pressed thin. It looked to Leroy like regret but was something else. The trustee, after all, had no experience in common with the unrequited. For even as they were hoisting Rudolph Brockman by his neck, even as his windpipe closed and the gallery of his tormentors receded to a dull smudge of light at the center of his vision, it was her words he heard, making him promises as empty as the air he clutched.

  “She never called on me,” he said, voice dry. Then he pulled away from Leroy’s grasp and headed into the night.

  Eight whole bodies had been recovered that day, along with partial remains of three more. By the end of the day, with no more graves appearing, the casual onlookers began to drain away, leaving only a few figures to cast divided shadows by the light of scattered torches.

  It was late, nearly midnight, when Colonel York arrived with a small entourage and a wagon. Whistler jumped down, and after examining the first body recovered that morning, gave York a grim nod. The latter didn’t dismount, but only turned his face into the night. The coffin was off-­loaded, opened, and filled with the doctor’s remains. When it was lashed in the bed of the wagon, York approached Leroy.

  “Know where they went?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “How many others, besides our Bill?”

  “Eight. Ten. Hard to say.”

  York chewed this over. “I suppose you’ll all be moving on, then.”

  “Moving on? Why?”

  “A town can’t survive something like this. They murdered it, along with these poor souls.”

  Leroy considered this. Clearly, this was the grimmest day in the short history of the township, even counting the war and the troubles that preceded it. But the thought that the homes they had built, the schoolhouse they had raised with their own hands, were to be condemned by the acts of a few itinerant maniacs, struck him as unjust beyond measure. By some chance, he thought of the little blackboard in the classroom, where every Sunday he would write chapter and verse in his most careful hand. He knew that little blackboard, with its maplewood frame and the chip in the upper right corner the size of a half-­dollar, as thoroughly as any stretch of real estate in the vicinity. Losing it suddenly seemed the most tragic thing in the world to him.

  “I don’t think that’s right,” he said.

  “Better move on,” replied York as he turned his horse around. “This place will go back to desert, mark my words.”

  The colonel and his party left immediately, not stopping for the night in any of the surrounding towns. For his part, Leroy haunted the site until his watch chimed once. Then he finally climbed on his runabout, hoping to snatch a few hours’ rest before returning in the morning. His prospects for sleep, alas, were dim.

  As he left, one of the other lingering figures darted toward him. “Twelve men have already promised,” said a breathless George Majors. “More guns may come on later, when the posse meets. At sunup.”

  Though he was justice of the peace, magisterial distance was not Majors’s style; he was in among the grave diggers from the first hours of the search. “Can we count on you?” he pressed.

  “I can’t make no promises. There are duties for me here.”

  “You can come when you can. But hurry up. We’ll have them sons of bitches before long.”

  As Leroy pulled out he sighted something new on the edge of the Bender property. Closer, he found a sign, newly painted and erected in a pile of dirt. It read:

  THIS CLAIM TAKEN, APRIL 1873, BY R. ELDER

  Chapter Twenty-­Three

  The Benders Divide

  APRIL 16

  A WEEK EARLIER the four Benders woke in the dark. Silently, they went about their morning ablutions, dressed, and made their last survey of the cabin’s contents. When they mounted the wagon, the crickets had hushed, the sky entwined in the purple fingers of dawn.

  The outlines of the cabin were just becoming discernible as Kate regarded it for the last time. She had lived in it for nearly two and a half years, longer than in any single place in her life. At that moment it was empty, but also crowded, for they’d left faces permanently etched in its nail heads and knotholes. They gaped at her as she sat with Almira and Flickinger. The latter glanced at the fine gold watch he had taken from Clarrity, and cursed Junior’s soul. When the younger man joined them on the wagon, he had a look of accomplishment on this face. “Almost forgot to wind the clock,” he explained.

  “Why?” asked Almira, in that way that promised no answer would suffice.

  They took the trail for as long as they dared, fearing with every turn of the wheels they would meet someone they knew. Two miles out they could no more afford to go east; the old man, making liberal use of the switch, turned the horse due north, directly over the prairie. The ride off the trail was smoother, with no grounding and bouncing through ruts. The only sound—­other than the creaking of the ancient springs—­was the hiss of tall grass as it caressed the underside of the wagon. Looking back, Kate could see four lines of flattened grass unspooling behind them.

  “We’re leaving a track,” she said.

  “It won’t last the day,” replied Junior.

  “That might be too long.”

  By mid-­afternoon they approached Thayer. The LL&G line, bound for Parsons, lanced straight southeast before dead-­ending a few miles beyond the town. Following the new tracks, they reached the railroad station but stopped well away from any other soul. Junior stood in the wagon bed, tossing their baggage down to the old man, as Kate and Almira attended to their tickets.

  Kate suffered a stab of anxiety when she found the window unattended. Pressing her face against the bars, she could just see the agent seated to her right, napkin tucked into his collar as he slurped from a bowl. She knocked on the window frame, and failing to get his attention, rapped harder. He looked up, frowned.

  “You’re acting like you’re on the run,” Almira whispered in her ear.

  Kate waved her off as if bothered by a fly.

  “Help you, miss?” asked the agent through potato-­crusted teeth.

  “Four to go as far as Humboldt.”

  “Round-­trip?”

  “One way.”

  “She means round-­trip,” Almira interjected. And to forestall any argument, she discreetly jabbed a fingernail into the flesh of Kate’s arm.

  The agent looked at them. “Which is it, ladies? One-­way or round-­trip?”

  “Round-­trip, sorry,” replied Kate.

  Tickets in hand, they returned to find their baggage piled on the rude plank road that served as a platform. Having abandoned the cabin sooner than they expected, they’d had no time to purchase proper luggage. Their belongings were stuffed instead in the kind of random containers seen among destitute souls fleeing a few steps ahead of their creditors: an apple crate roped in a bedspread, a canvas feed bag lashed with wire, a trunk clad in spotted dog hide, so old and worn it gleamed in the sun.

  Junior stood nearby, smoking. When he turned, he gave Kate a look of simple, unabashed delight, as if he expected never to see her again. The look worried her, as it seemed to suggest that he saw some future in their collaboration.

  “Where is himself?” Almira asked him.

  “Tending to the wagon.”

  “And the bank?”

  He smiled, dragged on his cigar, rolled it from his lips. “You know he won’t let it out of his sight.”

  “You let him go alone?”

  He shrugged. “Where’s he gonna go?” Then he opened his jacket, exposing the pistol he kept holstered there.

  There had been few times in the last two years when their hatbox full of cash was out of Almira’s direct control. If she had been a locomotive, she would have had to bleed off steam to keep from ex
ploding. “Well, he’d better hurry up,” she grumbled. “Train’s almost in.”

  On the theory that a wagon abandoned at the station would attract attention more quickly, Flickinger drove it out of town. A half mile west he found a stream shaded by a copse of cottonwoods. He left the wagon there, the horse tied to the wheel to keep it from attracting attention. He didn’t bother to check if everything was removed from the bed. The only thing he retrieved was the precious hatbox, tucked under his arm.

  Shading her eyes with a gloved hand, Kate recognized him a long way off by his stooped, simian shuffle.

  THE TRAIN—­A GILT-­EDGED American with the broad-­mouthed funnel of a wood-­burner—­pulled in before Flickinger was quite there. With only a few passengers getting off and only the Benders waiting to board, the stop was destined to be brief. Junior tossed their bundles up to the porter in the baggage car as the women watched the old man. He was doing his impression of a man running, arms and legs moving but not seeming to propel him any faster than his gouty usual.

  Fortunately there was a delay as the engineer came down from his cab. Ignoring the privy house that was right beside the station, the engineer stepped beside the driving wheels and—­after checking there were no ladies about—­urinated on a squeaky leaf spring. He gave it a good soaking, spraying it until the hot metal ceased steaming and the stock was marked with his particular odor. Fastening his flap, he looked up and discovered a ten year-­old girl with her head out a carriage window, watching. He tipped his cap to her.

  As Flickinger ran, the hatbox rang and crunched under his arm, sounding to Kate exactly like it was—­a load of ill-­gotten loot. Mounting the track, he stumbled, hitting the roadbed with a metallic clang that caused Kate and Almira to gasp in unison. The “bank,” fortunately, did not spill its contents. He collected himself and rose just as the engine gave its last whistle.

  There weren’t many passengers originating in Thayer, a small town at the end of the line. The last car was empty except for a sleeping drunk who had come from the direction of Humboldt and was now slumbering his way back. The Benders took the middle, opposing seats in the center of the car. They sat in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes as the train picked up speed, and Kate began to feel—­not just hope—­that she was leaving Kansas behind for good. Glancing out the window, she imagined a lone, heroic figure on horseback, pacing the train, his face at once featureless and turned lovingly in her direction.

  The conductor, working his way from the back of the train to the front, came by to check their tickets. Almira handed them over without exposing her face to him. The old man made no acknowledgment at all, but Junior offered a wide, over earnest grin that seemed more than the occasion demanded. Fortunately, the conductor was nearly as indifferent to them as the empty seats around them. Glancing up as he punched their tickets, Kate searched his blue eyes and saw nothing reflected there.

  The stop at Chanute had come and gone when it finally seemed safe to speak aloud.

  “Much as I’m enjoying this journey, am I alone in thinking we should discuss our split?”

  Almira turned to her, then the drunk down the carriage, then back to Kate. “Split? What split? We stay together.”

  “I say that’s the stupidest thing we could do, considering they’re looking for a party of four, two women and two men.”

  “If you think you’re going to put something over on us by taking more than your fair share . . .”

  “She’s right,” declared Junior. “Four together is conspicuous, but two ­couples might get away, no trouble.”

  “Nobody asked you,” Almira snapped, and glared at Kate. It was a face Kate had seen before, whenever the possibility of parting from her long-­term had been raised. A more naive soul might have mistaken this for affection, but Kate took it only as fear of losing her meal ticket.

  Then, with a prefatory rumble, the old man spoke: “We split. Soon as we can.”

  There was a brief silence as they all absorbed this eruption.

  “If we must, then it’s by sex,” Almira said. “You and the boy go south, me and the girl north.”

  “What’s to draw a body south?” asked Junior.

  “If you paid half a goddamn mind when we talked about this before, you wouldn’t ask fool questions.”

  “You take it to the end of the line and keep going south and west,” Kate explained. “Down near the border there are places with no law. The whites stay north, and the Mexicans keep south, and they try to forget what’s in the middle.”

  “Sounds like no place for a woman,” he replied. “Almira, you go.”

  “Like I said—­the men go south, the women have no trouble hiding out back East. In some city or other.”

  Kate made her play: “Husbands and wives would be just as good. Better maybe, because nobody hardly wonders about a ­couple traveling together.”

  Almira dealt her a look hotter than the embers flying by their carriage window. Junior, by contrast, fairly gleamed with pleasure.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re about,” Almira grumbled. “You still think you’re the smart one, don’t you?”

  “I think the proposition should at least be put up for a vote.”

  “Seconded. And I vote to divide by ­couples,” Junior declared.

  “And I say by sex!”

  “Then it’s two to one so far,” said Kate, and turning to Flickinger, “Declare yourself.”

  The old man seemed not to hear. She was about to repeat the demand when he suddenly threw his head back, exposing the thatches of thick gray hairs ringing his nostrils.

  “Kein Zweifel, the witch is right,” he said. “It’s no place for a girl.”

  The other three looked at each other, confused.

  “So how do you vote?”

  “Ich will nicht.”

  “An abstention, then!” chirped Junior. “Two to one, the motion carries.”

  Almira jabbed him in the side with her elbow. “I say, like hell it does! This isn’t the damned Territorial Congress!”

  “It’s decided,” Kate growled. “I won’t go another step with you, and that’s it.”

  Almira stared at her with rage barely contained. But when Kate did not relent, and the matter seemed to drop, her rheumy eyes softened into something like tender wounds. When she spoke again, there was a quaver in her voice.

  “So it is over, then? For all my trouble over you, it ends just like that?”

  Kate, unmoved: “If you expect anything more, you’re as stupid as you are low.”

  Almira turned to the window, lashing them all with her silence. Or so she thought.

  For her part, Kate could hardly contain the happy pounding of her heart. If she was truly free of Almira, she was one step closer to reunion with her father, and out from the shadow of Clarrity at last.

  The Negro porter removed their motley belongings from the train at Humboldt and hung around with open palm. The old man, still clutching the hatbox full of money, merely stared at him until the porter gave up. Kate, taking pity on him, opened her little embroidered purse and gave him two bits.

  The four of them stared at each other as the train pulled out and everyone else on the platform receded out of earshot. As much as they were tired of each other, they were the only close company each had known for many months. Kate’s imminent independence excited her, but also filed her with a sick-­making apprehension. The chin ribbon securing her hat suddenly felt too tight. Loosening it, she found her gloves bothered her too, so she tore those off.

  “So who goes south?” asked Junior.

  Almira, who observed Kate’s discomfort with a certain satisfaction, wagged her head. “You Kinder would never make those outlaw camps.”

  “I won’t argue with that.”

  The women got tickets: two one-­way trips to Lawrence for Kate and Junior, and two fo
r Vinita, in Oklahoma Indian Territory, for Flickinger and Almira. The men, meanwhile, retired to a privy to divide the bank. The process took a while. There was a line at the door by the time they came out, with some—­but not all—­puzzled to see two men come out of a piss-­house together.

  As Junior came back she interrogated him with her eyes. He nodded: the old man had offered no trouble on the division.

  “How much?” she asked.

  “Forty-­nine thousand six hundred and fifty two.”

  So there was something more than twelve thousand dollars coming to her. She turned the sum over in her mind, relishing the prospect of impressing her father with such a bankroll. She envisioned his approval as he saw what an earner his little girl had become. There were many games she could stake him with that kind of fortune—­which wouldn’t be strictly necessary, of course, because such a successful gambler would not need her help.

  More immediately, it would be enough to establish “Professor Katie Bender” in a style appropriate to her skills. She could purchase property in any of the better neighborhoods in Chicago, Buffalo, New York. Instead of cheap handbills, she could afford to advertise in the weekly magazines. When she’d worked at the Cherryvale Hotel, she had taken copies of Harper’s Bazaar that had been left in the dining room. Often, she’d lost track of time leafing through its pages, imagining her skills extolled there in fancy type, until Jeremiah Moore or Alice Acres reminded her to get back to work.

  Thinking this way, she hadn’t noticed Almira sidling up to her.

  “I was a girl once, when me and my mother worked the Alte Brücke in Frankfurt. Did you know I had a pet?” she asked. “It was a little white hound, white all over with a black tail and black—­how are they called—­socken. That’s what I called her, after those paws. I loved that dog, from his pink nose to his pointy tail, so much that I would steal food to feed it. You see these scars on my hands? I earned them back then, when I was caught with a bit of wurst from a cart. The butcher did me with a horsewhip, and though they bled and I made tears from the pain, I took my punishment, willens, for this hound, because he went to sleep satisfied that night, with his little belly full.”