The Devil You Know

by Jo Goodman

  Israel’s eyes slid sideways. “What makes you ask?”

  “Experience. I know the look of a man who’s kicking himself. How long have you been at it?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Hmm.” Beacon was able to give his slow nod the weighty consequence of a sage. “Then you probably want to stay out at least another hour.”

  “I don’t think another hour, a day, or even a year will be enough time to make this right.”

  Beacon sipped his drink. “Well, there’s your faulty premise. Time doesn’t make it right. You have to do that. Time just gives you a chance to think . . . to pray.”

  Israel turned the tumbler in his hands. “I’m not much for praying.”

  “Maybe not while you’re nursing that drink, but when you’ve had enough of that, you might consider walking over to the church. Door’s open. It’s quiet. No one’s there but God.” Beacon rose, picked up his drink in one hand, and set the other lightly on Israel’s shoulder. “Just something to think about.”

  * * *

  It was dark when Willa woke. The room was quiet, still, and yet she sensed Israel’s presence. She did not lift her head, but her eyes surveyed the area in her line of sight. She found him sitting in the rocker but outside of the stove’s meager firelight. Both he and the rocker were merely deeper silhouettes than the shadows around them.

  “You’re awake,” he said.

  His voice barely broke the silence. It drifted toward her as if from a distance much greater than the ten feet separating them, like the sough of the wind high in the treetops. She wondered how he had known she was awake but thought perhaps it was no different for him than it was for her. Each of them, they just knew.

  “Have you been here long?” she asked. Her voice was thick and husky, almost unrecognizable as her own. He knew how she sounded coming out of a deep sleep. This was different. Even without seeing her face, he would know she had been crying.

  “I had a Shaker tune running through my mind. ‘Simple Gifts.’ Do you know it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not quite a minute long.” He hummed a few measures for her, tapping his fingers on the arm of the rocker as if accompanying himself on the piano. “I was on maybe the ninth go around when I realized you were awake.”

  “You have a rather unique way of marking time.”

  He shrugged. “It was just what was in my head. I’ve always found it hypnotic.”

  Willa sat up slowly and leaned back against the headboard. She felt as if she’d been drugged. She pressed three fingers to the faint hollow of one temple and began to massage it gingerly.

  “Do you want me to light one of the lamps?” asked Israel.

  “Lord, no.”

  “I didn’t think so, but I thought I should ask.”

  The pressure of her fingers began to ease the dull ache in her head. “Where did you go?”

  “I walked some. Nowhere in particular. Just walked. I ended up in January’s.”

  “The saloon.”

  “Yes. Mostly to get out of the cold, but a little because of the liquor.”

  Willa felt her lips twitch. It was unexpected, even unwelcome, but there it was. Israel could do that to her, not because he tried, but because it was his gift.

  “That’s where Pastor Beacon found me. I was nursing my second drink, contemplating a third, and he suddenly appeared at my elbow.”

  “Not an angel on your shoulder, then.”

  “Not quite, more like my conscience. He invited me to use his church, and then he left. ‘Just something to think about,’ he said. So I did, and then I left.”

  Willa did not try to keep the surprise out of her voice. “You went to Saint Luke’s?”

  “Hmm. I did. It was the first time I’ve stepped inside a church in at least six years. A church like that, I mean, one not of my own making. It actually crossed my mind that the Holy Ghost might stop me at the door, but that didn’t happen. The opposite, in fact, I was welcomed.”

  “Someone was there?”

  “Not exactly, but yes.”

  She thought about that. “Oh.”

  “Mm-hmm. It set me back on my heels. Maybe it’s the reason Pastor Beacon always looks so astonished.”

  Willa realized her headache was gone; she stopped rubbing her temple and laid her hand over her knee. “So the Lord lives in that house. What did you talk about?”

  “No talking,” he said. “Not by me. I just listened.”

  “And here you are.”

  “Yes. I was never going anywhere. Did you understand that when I walked out?”

  “Not immediately,” she said. “But eventually, yes.”

  “I wasn’t entirely certain you would want to see me again, but there was never any thought in my mind about staying away. I love you, Willa. I want to be your husband, and I understand if what I’ve told you means that you do not want to be my wife. It was selfish of me not to share all of it before we were married. I knew that, and I chose to do what was in my best interest, not what was in yours.”

  Willa pulled her hair to one side and began to plait it as she considered the full meaning of what he was saying now. “You said something like that before, about needing to be my husband. Why? Why is it in your best interest?”

  “Don’t you know, Willa? You settle me. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever known, this sense that I am where I belong, and where I belong isn’t a particular place. It’s wherever you are. You make me want to be a steadfast man, a better man . . .” He paused and then added with wry humor, “Maybe even a reasonably smart man.”

  Willa’s quiet chuckle tickled the back of her throat. He’d remembered that she had once called him a reasonably smart man, and it had not quite been a compliment.

  “I don’t know, Israel,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “I’m not sure if I should be flattered or troubled. I don’t want the responsibility for you staying . . . how did you say it earlier? On the right side of wrong? I think that responsibility should be yours, whether you’re with me or whether you’re all the way over there.”

  She heard the rocker creak and saw his silhouette shift in the chair. “That wasn’t an invitation,” she said. “I don’t know when I will be ready for that. I’m still hurting, Israel. My head. My heart. I am not blameless here. I know that a lot of what I feel I brought on myself. You did not give me particulars, but it’s not as if you didn’t warn me. I cannot recall any one moment where I lowered my guard, and yet it happened. You asked me once if cynicism came naturally to me or if it was born of experience. I can tell you now that it was the latter, so accepting that I put it all aside for you, well, that’s difficult right now. I thought I was smarter, you see. And I’m not.” Her voice broke and she fought for control. On a thread of sound, she said again, “I’m just not.”

  Israel did get to his feet then. His destination was the window, not the bed, and he stood much as she had earlier, looking out over the street and clearing his mind. “This afternoon you said I owned your heart. Did you mean that?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s against your will now, is that it? You’re telling me you wish it were different, that feeling the way you do makes you less in your own eyes, not more. Not clever, not sensible, maybe even foolish and weak and—”

  “And human,” she said quietly.

  “Hmm.”

  “Are you smiling?”

  “A little.”

  “Then I suppose you better light the lamp. I don’t like missing that.” Willa imagined that his smile deepened, but she did not wait to find out. Before he finished searching for a match, she was out of bed and on her way to the washstand.

  By the time lamplight made it possible to see clearly, she was able to present a face unmarked by tears. It was not possible to hide all the evidence that she had been crying. There w
as nothing she could do about puffy eyelids or the red tip of her nose, but running a damp washcloth over her face gave her back a measure of composure.

  Israel lowered the lamp and returned it to the bedside table.

  Willa stood still for his assessment, her chin lifting ever so slightly when he finished and his eyes held steady on her face.

  “As fetching as you look in that towel,” he said, “I think you should dress so we can go downstairs and get a meal. We’re not going home now that it’s dark, and Mrs. Putty told me earlier that she would be serving dinner in the restaurant until eight if she didn’t run out of pork chops and fried apples before then.”

  Willa’s mouth watered and her stomach rumbled and still one of her hands lifted to touch her face in a self-conscious gesture. She pursed her lips when Israel raised an eyebrow at her. “What?”

  “How you look,” he said, unable to keep the humor out of his voice. “Seems as if it’s a little bit important to you.”

  Her hand fell away. “Not amusing.”

  “A little bit amusing.”

  Willa whipped off her towel and threw it at him. He was still chuckling as she finished dressing and even now and again as he escorted her to the dining room.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Come away from the window, Annalea,” Happy said. “They won’t be home tonight. Not this late. You can stop looking for them. Don’t know what you think you’ll see out there anyway.”

  Annalea came out from behind the curtains, clearly reluctant to leave the space she had occupied for the better part of the last hour. “They’ve been gone all day.” She walked over to the piano bench, dragging her feet in dramatic fashion every step of the way. She sat down heavily but did not face the piano, choosing to stare gloomily at her father instead. “I barely had any time to talk to them before they left.”

  Happy rattled the two-week-old newspaper he was reading and gave Annalea a narrow-eyed look over the top of the broadsheet. “Hard to believe you didn’t get at least a couple hundred words in edgewise.”

  “Maybe I did, but that’s not the important part. The important part is that they promised they would be back tonight.” Annalea’s fingers curled on the bench on either side of her. “I’m telling you, Pa, this marriage is not what I thought it would be.”

  Happy returned to reading and said absently, “I collect you had expectations.”

  “Sure, I did. For one thing, I didn’t think I’d be sleeping by myself every night. It’s not that John Henry isn’t good company, but I miss Willa. Feels funny to turn over and not see her in the other bed. She’s been there my whole life.”

  At the mention of his name, John Henry raised his head, regarded Annalea soulfully, and when she paid him no mind, he settled comfortably back on the rocker.

  “Her place is with Israel. A married woman sleeps beside her husband.” He raised the broadsheet so it covered his face and he cleared his throat. “She talked to you about that, didn’t she?”

  “Yep, but she never said it would be every night. I’m telling you, Pa, I never thought it would be every night.”

  Happy did not ask for clarification of “it.” Annalea might have been speaking of Willa’s sleeping habits or something else entirely. He carefully folded the paper and laid it on the sofa beside him. “You said ‘for one thing.’ That leads me to suspect there might be at least one other thing, a second thing, you understand.”

  “Oh, there is. Willa still wants to send me to school in Jupiter in the spring. I thought Israel was on my side, but since he married her, he takes up with her on everything.” She thrust out her lower lip. “I liked him better when he had a mind that wasn’t hers.”

  “I see. Anything else? If not, maybe you could play something for me. Any one of the pieces Israel was teaching you would be fine. You have your mother’s touch on the keys now that Israel’s mostly got the thing tuned.”

  Annalea opened her mouth to speak and shut it abruptly. She cocked her head, cupped her ear, and listened. “Do you hear that? They’re coming! It’s them. I know it.” The piano bench shook when she jumped to her feet. Ignoring Happy’s admonition to wait for him, she ran to the front door and flung it open. She teetered when she reached the lip of the porch, brought up short by the single horse and rider approaching the house.

  Recognizing neither of them, she set her hands on her hips, her stance more belligerent than welcoming. It was a rare occurrence that a stranger wandered into the valley and right up to the front door, so she figured he had a purpose and that it was her business to discover what it was.

  “Who are you?” asked Annalea. The stranger tipped his hat to her, but then his gaze lifted to a point over her head and she realized her father was standing behind her. She looked over her shoulder and saw he had his shotgun. John Henry was there also, head up and watchful. She had felt quite brave facing the stranger, and now she felt quite safe. She swung her head; her pigtails flew sideways before they fell down her back. “And what do you want?”

  “Name’s Samuel Easterbrook. And I do apologize for coming upon you after dark this way. Truth of the matter is, I stayed overlong at a neighboring spread. Big Bar, it was called.”

  Happy said, “We’re familiar.”

  “Fellow there, a Mr. Malcolm Barber, invited me to rest a spell as I’d been riding all day.”

  “Now that don’t sound like Mal,” said Happy. “Annalea, you best step aside. If I hear more of this, I might just have to shoot something.”

  Annalea moved far to the left but stayed on the edge of the porch. “Pa. I see Zach and Cutter coming.”

  Samuel Easterbrook raised his hands. His horse stirred restlessly. “There’s no need to run me off. I’m not lookin’ for trouble. Fact is, I’m here on account—”

  “What’s going on?” asked Zach, holding up the lantern he was carrying. He was slightly out of breath from the dash across the yard to the front of the house, and the lantern wobbled in his hand. He stopped eight feet from the porch while Cutter leaped up on it from the side and stood protectively at Annalea’s shoulder.

  Happy said, “We’re just determining that. Girl, you go on inside now and take John Henry with you.”

  “All right,” she said. “But we’ll be watching from the window.”

  “Wouldn’t expect otherwise.” Once Annalea was safely in the house, if not out of earshot, Happy addressed Samuel Easterbrook. “Go on. You were saying that you’re not looking for trouble.”

  “That’s a fact. I’ve been riding a few days now, coming from Stonechurch. You know it?”

  “I reckon we all know it,” said Happy. “It’s a mining town. You don’t look like any miner I’ve ever seen. For one thing, never knew one to wear a Stetson.”

  “I’m not from there. It’s where I come from. I’m lookin’ for a fellow that went through there a while back. Tracked him there. Now I’m tracking him here.”

  “Here?” asked Zach. “To Pancake Valley?”

  Samuel Easterbrook slowly lowered his hands as he shook his head. “To Jupiter, and then to the ranches around these parts. I got myself turned sideways after I left Big Bar, and if you don’t think that pains me to admit, you should think again. I understood there was a more direct route I could have taken, but Mr. Barber’s son . . . Eli, is it?”

  Zach, Happy, and Cutter all nodded in unison.

  With the confirmation, Samuel went on. “Eli. He told me the shortcut would most likely get me shot. Said you folks were a mite touchy about riders coming over the ridge from Big Bar.” He eyed Happy’s shotgun. “Hard to see how he was wrong when I made a point to arrive from the road and still confronted this reception.”

  Happy did not apologize. “No one’s shot you yet. It makes no sense that you’d come here after dark.”

  Samuel shrugged. “The Barbers were hospitable but not generous. No one offered me a place to
bunk so I had to move on. Do you mind if I get down from my horse?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” said Happy. “Now, Mr. Samuel Easterbrook, I’m real clear on your name, but this tracking business is muddy to me. You some sort of lawman? And if you answer yes, you better be prepared to show me a badge.”

  “Not a lawman. And no bounty hunter either. Did some scouting for the Army a ways back, and I got a letter from a friend asking me if I’d look into this fellow’s disappearance. So that’s what I’m doing. A favor for a friend. And from what I’ve been through, it’ll be years before I’m satisfied that he’s paid me back in full.”

  Happy did not respond to any of this immediately. Instead, he told Zach to pass the lantern to Cutter and then directed Cutter to sidle on over. “I want a better look at who I’m talking to,” said Happy.

  Cutter stood directly above the steps and held up the lantern. Samuel Easterbrook’s face was bathed in light. Happy saw nothing remarkable about the man’s features. He was clean-shaven with no scars or birthmarks. There was no cleft in his chin, no prominent Adam’s apple. His eyes were neither placed too closely together nor too widely apart. His mouth was set in a straight line; his nose was a gentle slope. Happy supposed that he had a face that women generally found appealing but not distinguished or even interesting after some time had passed. Happy judged Easterbrook’s height to be about the same as Cutter’s, making him taller than Zach or him. He sat too heavily on his horse’s back, not putting enough weight on the stirrups. Happy wondered if he was tuckered out or just lazy.

  “All right, Cutter,” said Happy. “You can lower that now. I’ve got my measure of Mr. Samuel Easterbrook.”

  “Sam,” he said. “Just Sam.”

  Happy ignored the friendly overture. “So about this fellow who disappeared, the one you’re looking for. Who is he and what makes you think he might have come this way?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know that he came this way in particular. I tracked him to Jupiter from Stonechurch. He got himself in a poker game up that way, and the men he played with recollected that he talked about going to a little town they’d never heard of before. Turns out that was Jupiter.”