Ten Thousand Charms

by Allison Pittman

  “Get away from me.”

  “Yep. You came highly recommended. Sent you a few of my buddies, too.”

  “I said—”

  “That was what … two, three years ago?”

  “Don’t touch me.” Not demanding, really, but not pleading.

  He let go of her hand only to slide another chair over, sitting in it, trapping her.

  “Saw you walk in with that baby. Thought I recognized you. Then it hits me—Gloria.” He scooted his chair a little closer, leaned in, as if he were telling a secret. “That my kid?”

  The rancid laughter returned. Gloria’s mind and stomach reeled at the possibility. She frantically searched her memory, desperate to connect the face to a house, to a time, a year, a month.

  His laughter took on a self-conscious air before dissolving completely in Gloria’s icy silence. He fidgeted a little, mustering all the dignity available to a pile of rags and whiskey. Gloria felt something close to amusement, to victory.

  “So you was really rakin’ it in back then,” he said, trying to assume an air of casual conversation. “Now you don’t have six bits for supper.”

  “I—”

  “And I figure, what kind of man would I be to let an old friend go hungry?”

  “I’m not a friend and I’m not hungry.”

  “Then, if it ain’t too much trouble,” he was touching her arm now, squeezing and unsqueezing a little path from her wrist to her elbow, then sliding back down. “I got me a little setup on the back wall. Got a little money,” he leaned close, his beard touching her face. “Got all the money you want.”

  Gloria went perfectly still. Now this was familiar. This was her life. The friendships forged at Jewell’s house, the birth of her son, the months with John William and Kate—all of it disappeared in one breath. This stranger was every man she’d ever known. This embrace was every touch she’d ever felt. She recognized the din of this crowd; she’d grown up with the stench of this room. This proprietary grip on her arm was far more familiar and fitting than a small, warm head nuzzled in her neck or a strong hand helping her to stand.

  He’d scooted a little closer. His breath engulfed her. His beard skittered on her skin. There was a time when this man would have given her a sense of power. She would dangle her charms, elusive, enticing, just outside the grasp of such desperate starvation. She would have laughed at his need for her, squeezed him for every drop of his money and pride. In her view, she emerged from every encounter victorious. Now, though, she merely sat, motionless, indefensible to his invasion. His voice droned on, a putrid flow of promises and threats, recalling and predicting details that made her body fester with shame. She felt herself disappear a little with each vile caress, dissolving under the stream of his words. The joy of her son, the comfort of John William, the delight of Kate—all faded behind the sour speech of this stranger.

  Then, as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone.

  “I said, get away from her.” The familiar voice of a growling bear.

  Gloria glanced over, saw the chair next to her now empty. She turned around and saw the man against the wall behind her, eye level with John William. When she looked down and saw his feet dangling six inches above the floor, she wanted to smile.

  A crowd immediately migrated to this end of the room, men eager to witness a fight. Witness any spectacle, really. And it seemed that they would be rewarded. John William’s face glowed with rage. He held it, nose to nose with the filthy little man, breathing heavily through clenched teeth. Gloria had never seen him like this. When the pathetic little man attempted to wiggle free, John William slammed his forearm against the man’s chest, bringing forth a wheezing gasp.

  Gloria stood and laid a tentative hand on John William’s sleeve.

  “MacGregan,” she said.

  The little man tore his terrified eyes away from those of the giant who pinned him and looked at her. “What’d you call him?” he asked, his voice devoid of air.

  “John William, put him down, now. He didn’t do no harm.”

  The only sound in the tavern was that of John William’s rhythmic breath. Somewhere behind the crowd a mother ushered her children outside, admonished her husband who wanted to “stay and see this.”

  “My money’s on MacGregan,” shouted a voice in the back. There was a spatter of nervous laughter, a few isolated words of agreement, and a change in John William. At once, he loosened his grip, allowed his prey to drop to the ground, and stepped away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender to his victim. “I’m sorry.”

  The man held up his own hand even as he fought for breath. “You kiddin’? How many men can say they made it through a fight with John William MacGregan?”

  “I know a few who can’t,” said another voice in the crowd, which responded with raucous laughter.

  John William stood in the middle of them, staring at the floor. His breath was deep and even; his shoulders quivered with each exhalation. Gloria took a step closer and looked into his eyes.

  He was disappearing, too.

  The rotten little man reveled in the attention. He danced little circles around them, throwing air punches. He reached up to give a slight push on John William’s shoulder, saying, “C’mon, now. Not so ready to fight now, eh?”

  Laughter and taunts from the crowd became a call to violence. In the midst of the rancor, Gloria marveled that so many of the men were able to call John William by name.

  Gloria reached up, took John William’s face in her hands, and forced him to look at her.

  “MacGregan,” she said, “where’s Kate and Danny?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “The children—Kate and Danny. Where are they?” She spoke louder to overcome the cries of the crowd.

  “They’re all right. They’re fine. There’s an Indian woman looking after them.”

  “Let’s go,” she said, softly. “Let’s go to the children.”

  Gloria grasped both of John William’s hands in her own and turned toward the door, leading him like a yoked beast.

  The crowd jeered their loss in a common voice, but one comment rang out above the din.

  “Go on and take ’er, MacGregan,” crowed the unmistakable voice of the seedy little man. “Just try and save some for the rest of—”

  His last words were lost in a shatter of jaw and teeth. He hit the wall he had previously been pinned to and sank to the floor.

  Gloria looked at the man, then at John William, then back at the man again. She brought a hand to her mouth, but soon found it lost in John William’s giant, bloodied grip as he tugged her through the newly silenced crowd toward the door.

  She kept her gaze fixed firmly on John William’s wide back, seeing it slapped by hands from the crowd and the occasional shout of “Nice going there, MacGregan,” and “Never thought I’d live to see the day …”

  She feared some would follow them, but no one did. Just a few steps into the crisp night air and the scene inside became a murmur.

  “I did some tradin’,” John William said.

  “I though he said we couldn’t until morning.”

  “Indians.”

  “Oh. Good,” Gloria said.

  “Got some supplies. Should last us for a couple of weeks.”

  “Fine.”

  He was still holding her hand, the little man’s blood sticky on her fingers. They rounded a corner. Against a crumbling adobe wall, an Indian woman sat—a heap of softness and skirts—holding Danny. Baby Kate lay in the folds of her lap.

  “I asked her to watch them,” John William said. “I had to find you.”

  “Your son,” the woman said. Her soft, leathered voice slipped from a brown folded face sporting a four-toothed smile. She held Danny out to Gloria.

  “And, your daughter,” she said as she handed Kate to John William. “Beautiful children.”

  That’s when Gloria realized that, rather than the bright brown eyes of every Indian she�
�d ever met, this woman stared through watery gray clouds.

  “Thank you,” Gloria said, “for watching them.”

  “Beautiful children. Not born together, these ones. But made to be brother. To be sister.”

  “Yes,” Gloria said.

  “Away,” the woman said, gesturing vaguely toward the fort’s gate.

  “We are,” John William said. “At first light.”

  13

  Once the children were fed and sleeping, John William and Gloria sat next to the dying embers of their fire. The moon was full and casting shadows. Though it was late, neither made a motion to bed down for the night. The silence was a comfortable one, though charged with questions. John William poked at the fire, causing a sputter of spark and new flame. Gloria tucked her skirts closer and spoke into the night.

  “What happened in there?” Gloria asked.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” John William said, tossing his branch into the fire.

  “But you didn’t. Tell me.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Those men, they knew you. They recognized your name. How?”

  John William looked at his hands, clenching and unclenching his fists until finally bringing them together, one fist cupped in the long fingers of the other hand. When he finally spoke, he spoke to his hands.

  “I used to be a boxer. A few years ago. Used to go to different towns. Different camps. I had a manager who set it all up. Brought the men in, charged a fee, took bets.”

  The blue light of the moon mixed with the sporadic light of the fire, and Gloria took the opportunity to study his features. The tiny little imperfections took on new meaning. When John William glanced up, catching her eye, she felt as if she’d been caught sifting through his life. She waited for him to look away, to look ashamed, but instead he smiled.

  “Not very pretty, eh?” he said.

  He brought his hand up to rake back his hair and turned a profile to Gloria. She had never seen his ears, had always wondered why he wore his hair so long. Both ears—but the left one especially—looked like lumps of flattened biscuit dough.

  “That’s why, sometimes,” he said, letting his hair fall back to cover his disfigurement, “I don’t hear so good.”

  “So, did you win?”

  “You saw me,” John William said, turning inside himself again. “I won. I always won.”

  “So why did you stop?”

  “Sometimes, you can hit a man too hard.”

  “How hard?”

  “I was in Boston. Guy there had a whole setup. We were fightin’ in a ring. The take at the door was nearly five hundred dollars—hundred of that went to the winner. I think I cared more about that money than anythin’. It’s like everythin’ else just …”

  “Disappeared?”

  John William looked at her, and understanding fueled the fire between them.

  “Exactly. I didn’t hear anythin’. Didn’t really feel anythin’. I know my opponent was landin’ punches, but I didn’t feel them. It’s like I was …”

  “Numb,” they said in unison.

  “He was a little guy. Not like this one tonight, but shorter than me. We were an even match in strength, but his face was just the right level. I didn’t have to reach up, you know, to land a punch.”

  Gloria looked at him, more than six feet of man bent to sit beside a fire, and wondered how any man could match his strength and size.

  “So I just kept hittin’. Kept landin’ punches. I heard people cheerin’, screamin’. His face was all broken, all bloody. It was like poundin’ meat. Bits and pieces of it got stuck between my fingers. Then there was one last hit. I felt that one, but I don’t think he did. He just sort of stared at me and fell down. I think he was dead before he hit the ground.”

  There was silence then, nothing but the crackling of the fire, spitting sparks. Gloria’s eyes never left John William, but he didn’t face her. His head drooped and he bounced it, lightly, on his gripped hands. She noticed his knuckles, swollen and bruised. Never in her life had Gloria felt any desire to touch a man. Now it was all she could do not to reach out to John William, to comfort him. She remained silent, waiting for him to invite her voice.

  “I thought for sure that would be the end of my boxin’,” he continued, “but it wasn’t. If anythin’, it brought in bigger crowds. Bigger fights. I got a manager who started takin’ me all over the country, callin’ me ‘The Killer.’ ” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Sometimes I was takin’ in more than five hundred dollars a night—”

  “Now there’s something we have in common.”

  Gloria was rewarded with a slight smile before John William resumed.

  “And I was beginnin’ to feel like the most powerful man in the world. Then, one night I was in a saloon, just like this one tonight. Was drinkin’ every round, and some guy comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, Killer, wanna take a shot at me?’ I tried to back off, but he just kept pushin’ and pushin’. He took a swing at me, and I let it pass. Then he took another, and I let it pass.”

  Scenes from earlier this evening played in Gloria’s mind as John William supplied the details of that night. The jeering crowd, the shouted taunts.

  “Then I hit him.” He looked up. “And I killed him.”

  “Oh, John,” she whispered.

  “And I went to jail.”

  “But it was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and once that sank in he added, “neither did the sheriff. He locked me up long enough to wait for the circuit judge to come for a hearin’.”

  Gloria knew the stigma and the stench of prison. She’d spent months at a time in crowded, dank cells. She couldn’t understand why now, at this point in the story, John William’s face beamed.

  “It’s where I met Katherine,” he said.

  “Oh?” Gloria said, smirking. “What was she in for?”

  John William chuckled. “Well, she wasn’t exactly in prison. It was just over in South Pass—”

  “I passed through there.”

  “And the jail there, the courthouse in front, they use it as a school when there’s no court in session. Katherine was a teacher.”

  “So she was a genius, too?” Gloria said.

  “I don’t know about genius, but she was a fine teacher. Mornings, just after the children got settled down, she would read a chapter of the Bible to them. I heard some of it growin’ up—Irish Catholic, you know—but it never meant anythin’ to me until I was sittin’, trapped in prison.”

  “Was it the same that you read to me?” Gloria asked.

  “Some of it. But I remember one day, she’d been readin’ about Jesus and His trial, His death. What they did to Him … they beat Him,” he explained. “Whipped him. Katherine told the children about the scourge—strips of leather with bits of stone and glass to cut the skin. She told them about nailin’ a man to a cross. The wounds and the blood and the pain.”

  Gloria shuddered.

  “And I thought about myself there in prison. Comfortable, warm. Fed. And this was after killin’ a man with my bare hands.” Gloria listened hard, but the life and death of Jesus was little more than the subject of ranting street preachers and weeping women. Still, she shied away from appearing even more ignorant to John William. But he must have sensed her confusion because he paused, took both of her hands in his, and spoke slowly, clearly, directly.

  “Don’t you see? Jesus went through all of that for me. To save my life.”

  “Your life?”

  “Yeah, my life.” John William still held her hands. He moved his grip to encircle her wrists and turned her hands so that the palms faced up. “We think our lives are in our hands,” he said, “that we’re in control of everythin’. But we’re not. God is. And someday we’ll have to answer to Him for every sin. Every wrong.” His grip tightened. “You need to know that.”

  Gloria just looked down at his fingers overlapping as they grasped her wrists. His last words we
re punctuated with little tugs, but something tugged inside her, too, telling her to listen, to understand.

  “I spent months sittin’ there, regrettin’ every punch I ever threw. Wishin’ I could take back every fight, every drop of blood, and it hit me. It didn’t matter if the world called me a killer. It mattered if God called me a killer. And while I could never take back all the wrong that I did, I knew that God would forgive me for all of it. If I just asked Him to.”

  “But that wouldn’t change anything.”

  “Oh, but it does,” John William said. “It changes everythin’. I killed two men, sent them to their maker, and I started to wonder about what would happen if I was sent to my maker. I thought, what if I hang and die and have to tell God what I did? I wondered how I would tell Him that I was sorry and wished I could take it all back.”

  Slowly, John William had been drawing Gloria closer to him. Their eyes were locked as tightly as their fingers when John William broke his gaze away and bowed his head, resting it on their joined hands. She sensed that his lips were moving, but she heard nothing, not even a whisper. Something in her wanted to prompt him, to urge him on, but something else told her to be still and silent and wait for his next words. Before they came, he raised his head, released her hands, and drew away.

  “I was scared to death of dyin’,” he said. “Every day, Katherine had the children say a Bible verse. That day it was John 3:16.”

  Gloria looked at him, blankly.

  “ ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ ”

  Gloria tried to wrap her mind around the words, but their meaning remained distant, blurred. She sensed John William’s reverence for it, though, and gave a tiny nod of understanding.

  “Jesus died so that I could live. Forever, in heaven,” John William said. “And if I didn’t believe that, then His death was for nothing. I was already responsible for two meaningless deaths.”

  “So, you believed.”

  “I believed. And I prayed. I asked God to forgive me, and He did. That minute I knew my life was saved. That I had changed.”