Moses ran a hand through his flaming red hair. “I’ve made it rain in every town I’ve entered. It’s the town, not me.” He stood theatrically. “I mean, who names a town Nowhere?”
Orion finally raised his head and then his voice. “I called this meeting to discuss what to do with Jeremiah Goodbye. And the boy he brought with him.”
The room sat silent for a few clock ticks.
Orion stood with a grunt. “As we all know, he’s taken root in the Worst house with that weird boy. And another man has ended up dead from the flip of his coin.”
“Jeremiah didn’t kill him,” said Ellen. “The man didn’t take cover in the duster, and he suffocated.”
Josiah shook his head from his chair.
Ellen shot him the look.
Loreda Draper, still blind from that duster, spoke up. “He saved my boy’s life. Without Jeremiah Goodbye coming along when he did I’d have nothing to live for. Nothing.” Nicholas stood by her side now. He squeezed her hand and rubbed her back.
Ellen noticed a hint of normalcy still residing in Nicholas Draper, as if Jeremiah had shielded him not only from that duster, but also from the ugliness the duster brought with it.
“He’s still wanted by the authorities for the murder of four men,” said Orion. “Possibly five now. And truth be told, Wilmington, that boy’s always made me nervous. Started drinking before he even lost all his baby teeth. I mean, who does that?”
“He’s scrappy and tough is what he is,” said Leland Cantain, owner of the once-popular opera house. “The way he stood up to the government when they killed our cattle.”
“That was me,” said Josiah with a grunt.
Cantain stammered. “Well, he stood up to the bank during those foreclosure auctions. And hijacked that train full of wheat to keep it off the market and drive up prices.”
Several heads nodded, including Wilmington, who stared across the table at Josiah. It got quiet, so everyone heard what Wilmington said next. “You know, Josiah, I always liked him more than you. Loved you both, but he was always my favorite. Especially after you went and ratted him out.”
Josiah clenched his jaw and jerked a nod like the words hadn’t bothered him, but he wasn’t so dead that Ellen couldn’t see the hurt. She thought of walking over to him in comfort, but that thought passed liked the wind.
It would have taken too much energy to get up.
Wilmington wasn’t finished. He faced Orion. “Jeremiah might have a temper that’s unpredictable, but if you’d known what he’d suffered through you’d understand.” He pointed at his old friend. “And at least he wasn’t an actor, a man pretending to be on top of the world when in truth he was becoming buried by it daily. You’ve been a bachelor all your life, Orion, acting like a lothario on the outside when on the inside you don’t know the first words to say to a woman.” He looked as if he was finished, but then he went back in for more. “Always finding a certain flaw to avoid getting close, when all along the flaw was in you, my friend. I seen how you looked at my Amanda, too, when she was alive, like she’d have been a luckier woman to have you instead of me—you with your tuxedo and fancy gloves and whatnot. But you know what, Orion?”
Orion’s head was still lowered like he was whimpering. He shook his head.
Pour it on him, thought Ellen. Let him know, Daddy Wilmington, even if it stings.
Wilmington did just that. “She laughed about it, Orion. ‘Poor Orion,’ she’d say. ‘Poor, poor, Orion. Maybe one day he’ll find his match.’ And don’t forget Ellen over there. Her mother? Hmm? You thought she was in love with you, but she wasn’t. It was me she ended up staying in Nowhere for, not you.”
Orion had gone white as a sheet, and just as quickly he flipped to red, embarrassment and shame shining in that blotchy skin.
Ellen shot her father-in-law a look that could have made that bullet move by sheer mind power had he the gumption to face her. The truth wasn’t so funny now. Her lower lip quivered, and she squeezed James tightly enough for him to start coughing. Then she patted his back harder than she meant to, which made him cry.
Finally Wilmington sat down, holding his head like the bullet in there had begun to hurt.
Maybe that bullet deserved to move after the things he’d just said.
Orion looked like a man who’d just had his soul ripped free, his bones left to flutter like wind chimes. A man the entire town had always thought bigger than life was now slumped over with his back arched like a turtle shell.
On a normal day, Ellen would have been over there in a heartbeat to rub that poor man’s shoulder. Instead she did something so mean and ugly it brought tears to her own eyes. “Poor Orion. Poor, poor Orion,” she said, but with so much sarcasm Wilmington looked up from the floor and Josiah turned in his chair. “My mother was too good for you, Orion.”
Rita Belmont shifted the room’s attention from Orion. She stood from her chair in a rumpled blue dress. “Just before we came over here on account of hearing Orion’s stupid bell, I asked Ray if I looked fat in this dress, and he said yes.”
Ray, her husband, who Ellen had always thought was ugly as a moose, nodded like he was the bee’s knees. “Well, it’s the truth, ain’t it?”
Half the room nodded.
“The truth, Ray,” said Ellen, “is that you must have gotten dropped on your head when you were a kid—as misshaped as that skull of yours is.”
Toothache said, “Doeslooklikeananvilfromtheback.”
“Enough.”
They all looked to the far corner of the room, where shadows dominated the opening of the hallway leading to the first-floor rooms. Out stepped Jeremiah, and beside him was the boy, Peter. “Enough.”
“How’d you get in?” asked Deacon.
“Through a door, like most people do.” Jeremiah surveyed the room. “Now, if you don’t have something nice to say I’d recommend not saying anything at all. And if you’re going to take a vote on whether I stay or go, it’s best we do it in front of my face.”
Josiah stood so fast his chair toppled. He made sure Jeremiah found his eyes, and then he spat to Orion’s hardwood floor. “There’s my vote, brother.”
And then Josiah walked out of the Bentley’s swinging doors, the silence so palpable they could hear his boots crunching in the dust as he crossed the street.
“I assume that’s one vote for me going,” said Jeremiah. “Anybody else ready to show their cards?”
Sister Moffitt stood. “I want you to stay, Jeremiah Goodbye. In a world that’s suddenly turned mean, I can’t for the life of me think of something ugly to say about you. Not like I can about some others in the room. Like Father Steven over there, who—” Jeremiah held up his hand, and she stopped herself. She coughed into her fist three times and spat dust. “Anyway, like I was saying, I want you to stay. I don’t think you murdered those men. And I think I bought you some time with the authorities.”
“How so?”
“This morning, before that dust got too deep into my brain, an idea struck.”
“Wish it was lightning that struck her,” said Father Steven. “Then maybe we could have had some improvement on the otherwise unimprovable.”
“No more of that,” Jeremiah told the priest, who settled back into his chair, fingering rosary beads.
Sister Moffitt explained. “I took Father’s car and rode into all the neighboring towns.”
“She owes me some gas,” Father mumbled.
Sister continued. “I got the word spread everywhere that I’d just come from Texas and I’d seen Jeremiah Goodbye heading south with a Bible and a gun.”
“I don’t have a Bible.”
“I just supposed it would sound more authentic,” said Sister Moffitt. “But I told all the men in those towns to spread the word that the Coin-Flip Killer was heading to Mexico.”
Father Steven leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “I’ve got a Bible you can swear on, Sister, now that you’re partaking in the sin of being a liar.”
Wilmington said, “My son stays.”
Father Steven said, “He stays, but I want answers.”
“And answers you’ll get,” said Jeremiah, with Peter standing by his side like a loyal soldier. “As soon as I make sense of things myself.”
One by one, everyone in the room raised their hand and voted that Jeremiah stay, either by a few short words or by a nodding of the head. Even Sheriff McKinney, who had been so adamant before, voted he stay, although with a bit of reluctance in his half-raised arm. Truth was, he was probably afraid to vote his heart. He’d always been leery of Jeremiah.
Ellen said, “He stays, and by what I’m reading in all your eyes, I think what you fear more than him staying is him leaving us again.” She turned her head toward the hotel’s owner. “Orion?”
Orion looked around the room, then gave a slow nod of his head, which looked heavy as a bowling ball. He was staring at the spot where Josiah had spat on his dusty floor.
Then the click-clacking sound of a woman’s hard-soled shoes entered the hotel, and Orion’s head slowly raised.
Eyes turned toward the doorway.
A pretty woman with hair the color of chestnuts and eyes as brown as mahogany stepped into the room. She was just shapely enough for Ellen to dislike her from the start.
“Are there any rooms available?”
Walking in all put together in a fancy purple dress somehow free of dust.
The woman looked across the room toward Jeremiah, and Jeremiah returned her gaze as if he knew her or at least had seen her before.
Orion straightened from his slouched posture, suddenly looking wide-eyed and lovestruck. He cleared his throat and did his best to regain the boisterous man-of-the-stage persona he was known for, even though the dust had still clearly worn him down. “It’s your lucky day. We’ve got plenty of rooms available.”
“Good,” she said. “I’ve luggage in the car.”
“You one of them reporters from out east?” Ellen asked.
“I am.”
“Then we don’t want you here,” said Ellen. “Keep to your own. All you’ll see here is dust. We don’t need any films or stories showing how we failed the plains and the plains failed us.”
The woman smiled despite the bluntness. “I’m not here to do a story on the dust bowl.”
“The what?”
“The dust bowl.” She smiled. Her teeth were pretty and white. “It’s what writers are starting to call it out here in the plains. And what blew in two days ago, that massive duster—they’re calling it Black Sunday.”
Ellen scoffed, folded her arms. “Black Sunday, huh? Fancy name given by those who didn’t see it firsthand. If you’re not here to report on the dusters, what are you here for?”
The woman nodded across the room. “I’m writing a story on Jeremiah Goodbye. The Coin-Flip Killer.”
Jeremiah stepped forward, tipped his Stetson. “Although your work I’m sure is appreciated, the attention accrued from your story will not be.”
“It’s not that kind of story, Mr. Goodbye.” The woman looked around the room. All eyes were on her. “I don’t want you to be caught.”
Sheriff McKinney said, “I keep waiting for a yet. She don’t want you to be caught … yet. As in, the more stories she writes on you, the more famous she becomes.”
The woman smiled. “Are folks always so blunt here in Nowhere?”
Ellen felt a stab of jealousy at the sight of that pretty face untouched by the climate, the dress somehow clean and fresh, the auburn hair that shimmered. “Why don’t you want him to be caught then? What do you want with Jeremiah?”
“By the sound of what I heard coming in, I want the same thing as you.”
Jeremiah said, “And what might that be?”
“Your freedom.”
“I’m already free.”
“Then your name untarnished.”
“What’s in it for you?” asked Ellen.
“The truth.”
“And fame,” said Ellen.
“I seek only the truth.” She locked eyes with Ellen. “If fame comes with the revelation of it then so be it. It’s a tough climb for a woman in this business, and I don’t plan on being deterred. I do believe the man standing before us is innocent of the crimes leveled upon him.”
“Sounds like a lawyer to me,” said Deacon.
“If only he’d had one during the trial.”
“He did.”
The woman smirked. “One who could add two and two?”
Ellen couldn’t disagree. Jeremiah’s lawyer had been an unprepared slob who’d showed up three sheets to the wind on the final day of trial.
Jeremiah asked, “What makes you so sure of my innocence?”
“Three years of investigating.”
“Why?” asked Ellen.
“Every reporter is looking for that breakthrough story. That hint of injustice that could blow a case wide open. I think this here is mine.”
“I’ve seen you,” said Jeremiah.
“I attended every day of your trial,” she said. “I’ve been digging into things while you sat in prison. I was there the day they put you in the chair and the tornado came through and tumbled that wall, saving your life at the same time it stole several others. In other words, I’ve been following you, Jeremiah Goodbye. A lot better than the authorities have, I might add.”
Had their brains not been full of so much Black Sunday dust they would have been amused by her words. Instead, most in the room just sat there and stared.
“What’s your name?” asked Ellen.
“Miss Buchanan. Miss Rose Buchanan.”
For the first time since the woman had entered the Bentley Hotel, Ellen looked over toward her father-in-law. Wilmington had yet to utter a word, and looked like he’d seen a ghost. He slowly stood from his chair and shuffled toward the pretty woman, eyeing her like he wasn’t sure she was real.
Ellen said, “Wilmington? What is it?”
He didn’t even look Ellen’s way. He continued on toward Rose Buchanan and then stopped two feet away from her.
She was a confident enough woman to not step back from him. She seemed as curious about Wilmington’s actions as Ellen was, and with his stooped posture, he gave no inkling of being a threat.
“Hello,” said Rose, offering a hand with long, slender fingers.
Wilmington gave her hand a glance but didn’t shake it. Instead, he stepped closer and gave her a hug.
THIRTEEN
1924
Jeremiah helped Josiah from the ground and told him to run on home.
Josiah wiped his bloody lip and ran a hand through the tuft of hair that had fallen from a thatch he’d slicked back in the morning. He’d been spending more and more time on that hair since Ellen Maverick moved into town, and William Worst had made one too many comments on it.
“I don’t need you fighting my fights, Jeremiah.” Josiah got back down into a fighting stance, prepared to resume what Jeremiah had seen over the wheat field moments ago—Josiah and William in a violent tussle, and his brother on the losing end of it.
Three days in a row now those two had pasted blows on each other behind Daddy’s barn, and Jeremiah just knew it was over the new girl in town, the one Jeremiah had already locked lips with on three separate occasions. Had Josiah been aware of that juicy nugget, perhaps it would have been Jeremiah he wanted to fight instead of William Worst, who was mean as a rattlesnake but dumb as one of Mulraney’s cows.
William had three inches on both of them and at least thirty pounds of farm muscle disguised as fat. Two months before, Jeremiah had seen him lift the front end of a John Deere all by himself after it got a wheel caught down in a creek he wasn’t supposed to be riding over. Josiah wasn’t small, by any means, but he was no match for William Worst, who stood with his big legs planted, fists ready.
He had a red blotch the size of a quarter on his forehead, and at first Jeremiah thought Josiah must have landed a blow. But it was only an an
gry-looking pimple, with a matching one on the left side of William’s neck. Those things looked like they hurt, and William seemed to have one brewing at all times. No wonder he was so mean.
But Jeremiah stepped back anyway. If Josiah was determined to have one more go at William, then he’d let him. He just wasn’t going to hear him whine and moan about it while they tried to fall asleep tonight. Josiah would find no sympathy from him.
The remainder of that fight took no more than thirty seconds. Josiah got in one good lick to William’s five, and soon Jeremiah’s twin brother was on the ground again, wiping a glob of spit from his right eye while William knelt over him, his legs jutting right up next to Josiah’s ears. After one last slap to Josiah’s face, William stood, wiped his bloody hands on his overalls, and walked away with his eyes glued on Jeremiah, practically daring him to retaliate.
But all Jeremiah did was watch, secretly fingering the quarter he kept in the right pocket of his trousers. He’d known William Worst since they were barely taller than the wheat at harvesttime, and they’d yet to scuffle like William and Josiah seemed to do daily. William knew better than to pick on Jeremiah. He never did anything more than give that stare and walk away.
Jeremiah figured that might need to change soon. But for now he helped Josiah back home, sneaked him in the back door so Wilmington wouldn’t see them, and got Josiah all cleaned up, just like he’d said he wouldn’t do.
That night, as Jeremiah sipped on bootleg corn liquor he got under the table from Mr. Powell down at the pharmacy, he swore he could feel Josiah’s bruises. One nasty deep purple one on Josiah’s left bicep was perfectly shaped like a clenched fist. Jeremiah touched his left arm in the same place, and although there was no purple mark on his arm, he felt the pain all the same, tender as a bruised peach.
Jeremiah took a heavy gulp of the clear whiskey. He didn’t wince like he used to, and he could already feel himself growing numb from the intake of it. He hoped it would help numb the nightmare he knew he’d have that night. He looked over across the room at Josiah, who’d just buried himself under the sheets. “Sure you don’t want a drink?”
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