by B. E. Scully
“I don’t give a shit about a man’s word! I need out of this thing!”
But the Bone Man was shaking his head sadly. “Not going to be an easy way out of this thing, J.J. Not for either of us. In fact, there’s probably only one way out, and it isn’t easy. But it is permanent.”
Now it was Ivy’s turn to shake his head. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, then no way. No way. I’ve done a lot of shitty things in life, but I’m no cold-blooded killer.”
“I notice you qualified that,” Bone Man said.
“Don’t fuck with me here, Falten! I’m especially not eager to be a freakin’ cop killer. No way. If I go down, you go down with me, I swear to god!”
Bone Man reached out and patted Ivy’s shoulder like a parent reassuring a child. “No one’s going down except for Mickey Klein.” He sighed as if already delivering the man’s eulogy. “He was a good cop for a lot of years. Did a lot of good in this city. But the city got the better of him in the end. At least he died the way he always wanted to—in the streets that he knew so well, doing what he did best. Hopefully his killer will get justice someday, but of course, those kinds of killings are the hardest to solve. No witnesses. No weapons found. Just another cop shot in a lonely alleyway in the wrong part of town. Maybe even this alleyway,” the Bone Man said, looking around. “Some people might even whisper that Mickey Klein had it coming—might have been wrapped up in some nasty business that he shouldn’t have been. But that’s not what we’ll remember him for. He’ll die a hero, and what more could a man ask for? Better than dying a dirty-handed drunk who should have hung it up years ago.”
Then the Bone Man reached into his coat pocket and handed something to Ivy—something that flashed hard and cold in the dim streetlight. A pistol, the Hound realized, and that took care of the last of his self-control. He cried out and made a dash for the street, but he wasn’t fast enough. Ivy caught the back of his coat and pinned him to the ground. The rough gravel and concrete scraped painfully against the Hound’s cheek.
“Look what we got here, an alley rat sniffing around where he shouldn’t be,” Ivy said.
“I didn’t hear anything!” the Hound pleaded. “I didn’t see anything! Voices aren’t as loud when they come on the snow! Hushed-like, harder to hear!”
The Bone Man gently pushed Ivy away from the Hound and extended his long, thin bone fingers. “Need a hand?”
The Hound didn’t want to touch that skeleton hand. He knew if he did, the Bone Man would have him. But he reached out anyway.
“There you go!” Bone Man said, hoisting the Hound to his feet and brushing his hands together as if he were washing them with soap and water.
“Want me to kill him?” Ivy said, and the Hound’s legs gave way, sending him to the ground again. If he curled up tight and small enough, they might go away. If he closed his eyes tight enough, they might go away.
The Bone Man laughed, thin and high, like wind through bare trees. Skeletal trees. “I thought you said you weren’t a cold-blooded killer. Obviously this poor man is suffering from some unfortunate mental disturbance.”
“He saw our faces,” Ivy said. “Doesn’t matter if he’s nuts or not. You were the one just telling me how easy it is to kill someone in an alleyway just like this one with no one the wiser. Especially with this gun you just gave me, which I’m pretty sure would trace back to some other poor bastard already rotting away in prison somewhere, if it’s traceable at all.”
The Hound cautiously opened one eye. And right there, within arm’s reach, was a stick, nice and sharp on the end, like the kind his mom used to stake up tomatoes in the summer. Manlike Woman must have put it there, and he offered her up a silent prayer of thanks. Then, fast as a snake on a dry river bed, he shot his hand out, grabbed the stick, sat bolt upright, and plunged the sharp end into his right eye.
The pain was instant, it was everything.
* * *
“Look, look!” the Hound shouted, blind with agony even more than the ruined eye. “I didn’t see anything! I can’t see anything!”
“Jesus Christ!” Ivy shouted, hopping away from the Hound and jittering like an electric eel. “Jesus H. Christ!”
But the Bone Man stayed perfectly still, more curious than alarmed.
“Look, look!” the Hound shouted again. “I’ll get rid of the other one, too!” He pulled the stick out of his eye and felt something thick run down his cheek. He gripped the stick, summing the will for the second one now that he knew how bad it would hurt. But a hard, strong hand stopped him—stronger than the Hound would have thought, for a skeleton.
“No need for that,” Bone Man said. “Any man willing to put out his own eye to prove a point is a man you can trust. Here,” he said, pulling an immaculate white handkerchief out of his suit pocket. “Press this against your eye. You’re going to need to get to the hospital right away. If that gets infected, our friend J.J. here will get his wish without even having to earn it.”
“Jesus Christ, now you’re telling him my name!” Ivy yelled.
“He’s already heard our names. Including my last one. So fair is fair,” Bone Man said to the Hound. “What’s your name, son?”
“Hound…my name is Hound.”
The thin wind rattled through the trees as the Bone Man laughed. “No, son, your given name. The one your mother calls you.”
“Sean…my name is Sean Packard.”
The Bone Man told him his name—the one his mother calls him—but the Hound let it skitter into one ear and right out the other. The Hound didn’t trust names unless they were written down in books or genuine newspaper articles. Sometimes not even then. He preferred giving people their own secret names, the ones their mothers never even knew about. But even though the Hound never called the Bone Man anything, the Bone Man always called him Mr. Packard.
But he’d done something even more important than that. He’d done something no one had done in a long time—so long the Hound couldn’t remember the last time. The Bone Man had reached out and shaken the Hound’s hand—a sincere, hearty handshake, despite the hard skeleton fingers.
“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Packard,” Bone Man said, pulling out his wallet. “I’m going to give you this fifty dollar bill, no interest due, no need to repay. You’re going to use it to get yourself to the hospital. There’s only one condition.”
The pain was overwhelming, and the Hound desperately wanted to pass out. But he also desperately wanted to keep talking to this skeleton who seemed to know exactly what to do and say.
Don’t trust the white man’s gifts, a voice whispered. Was it Manlike Woman? He couldn’t tell in the snow. And anyway, Manlike Woman wasn’t here. Bone Man was.
“What condition?” the Hound rasped.
Bone Man reached into his suit pocket again and pulled out a slip of paper and a pen. He wrote something down and handed the paper to the Hound. “After you get out of the hospital and whatever mental health ward you’re sure to end up, go to this address. It’s a halfway house, but it’s a good one. They’ll put you up there for at least a couple weeks, no questions asked. Will you do that for me, Mr. Packard?”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Ivy said again, but the Bone Man gave him a look that shut him up.
“Yes,” the Hound nodded. “I’ll do that.”
That was too much for Manlike Woman. She appeared behind the green dumpster, looking worried. But the Hound’s pain was too great, too disorienting to pay her much mind. He groaned and shook his head, and when he looked again, she was gone.
“Yes, I’ll do that for you,” the Hound told the Bone Man.
And he had. He’d gone to the hospital and the mental health ward and then the halfway house. And that’s where the Bone Man eventually caught up with him.
Don’t trust the white man’s gifts.
But by then it was too late.
A car backfired somewhere in the distance, and the Hound sat up, wide awake. The sound came back to him, back through the
past and into his present.
The sound of a gunshot. Fired from the pistol in his hands, the same kind the Bone Man had given to Ivy. And then to the Hound.
The Hound had been surprised when the Bone Man had turned up outside the halfway house one day. He’d come in on a cloud, the same way he’d appeared outside the clinic all these years later. But back then the Bone Man hadn’t wanted him to leave town and never return. Then the Bone Man had wanted to be his friend.
It turned out the Bone Man liked history, too, and knew almost as much about it as the Hound. And like the Hound, his specialty was the American West. In fact, the Bone Man knew most of the same historical figures the Hound knew, and seemed genuinely impressed that they sometimes turned up and talked to him. He didn’t know about Manlike Woman, though, and the Hound never mentioned her. He knew how she felt about his new friend, and it wasn’t good.
“Why doesn’t he ever talk with you in public?” she asked. “Why always while strolling around some remote part of town or out in the woods somewhere? Doesn’t want anyone to see you with him, that’s why. Up to no good, that one.”
But the Hound hadn’t listened. He had been so excited to have someone to talk to, someone who didn’t come and go with the rain. Someone real. The people at the halfway house helped him stay on his medication schedule, and he felt the fog starting to lift just a little. He thought about contacting his sister, of maybe getting a place of his own, a real place with lights and a shower and maybe a living room couch and T.V. And then came something the Hound hadn’t dreamed of in even his wildest dreams, something even better than a hot shower and a television set of his own. The Bone Man offered him a job—a real job with pay and a title.
They’d been talking about the bad old days of law enforcement, when city marshals called all the shots and cops’ salaries were paid by the businesses and residents on their beat.
“It was a mess, all right,” Bone Man said. “But one thing I’d like to see more of today and that’s the return of posse comitatus. Ever hear of that?” The Hound had, but Bone Man answered before he got the chance. “That’s a fancy Latin way of saying ‘power of the community.’ Now, most people associate it with lynch mobs and vigilante justice, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Civilized society has no place for things like that. But one good thing about posse comitatus is that a county sheriff—hell, any law officer, really—could deputize any able-bodied man to assist him in keeping the peace or to pursue a known felon.”
The Bone Man shook his head sadly and sighed. “I sure wish there were more able-bodied, willing men around these days to help out. Us lawmen sure could use it in these troubled times of ours.”
“You mean you can still do it? Still deputize people?” the Hound asked.
“‘Course you can! That’s a part of what makes the U.S. of A. such a great country! Every man with the will and the courage can do his part. Not many left like that, though.”
The Hound shook his head sadly, too. He would have liked more than anything in the world to be such a man, but it never crossed his mind that he could be. Until the Bone Man said otherwise.
“Say!” Bone Man exclaimed, as if he’d just thought of it. “I just remembered something I normally wouldn’t bring up to you, Mr. Packard, and that’s the time you put your eye out in that alleyway. It was a reckless thing to do, don’t get me wrong on that. But it showed real courage. Real conviction. That impressed the hell out of me, I’ll tell you straight.” He shook his head again. “Too bad a man like you isn’t interested in police work.”
“I’m interested! I’m very interested, depending…” the Hound said, trying not to sound too eager. He’d read in a newspaper article once that people didn’t like it if you seemed too eager.
“Well, see, I could deputize you right here today if you wanted. Job even comes with a monthly stipend—small, but better than nothing. But I’ll tell you straight again, Hound, that idea worries me a little. You know that man that was with me in the alleyway that day? The man you called Ivy?”
The Hound nodded.
“I’ve been trying to put that man behind bars for a long time now. But he’s a slippery one. I can’t make anything stick on him. He’s a murderer and a scoundrel, Hound, and you know what makes it worse?”
“What?”
Bone Man leaned forward with a confidential whisper. “He’s one of the last living relatives of Edouard Chambreau.”
“No!” the Hound gasped. He imagined his old nemesis, the old pioneer gambler and thief who thought the only way to be somebody was to kill a man, alive and well right here in 21st century Oregon in the form of a man covered in ivy!
“You bet,” Bone Man said. “No one knows about it, because Ivy has made good and sure to cover it up. But I dug long and hard to find out the truth. And the long-lost flesh and blood of Edouard Chambreau still walks among us today, as wicked and rotten as ever. And you know what else?”
“What?”
“I think he’s set to kill a man. And not just any man—an officer of the law, just like me.”
“Arrest him!” the Hound shouted in alarm. “Arrest him right now!”
But the Bone Man was doing that sad head shake again. “I’d love to, Mr. Packard. But sometimes the law won’t let you do what you know is right. It’s set up that way to protect people, but sometimes it protects the wrong people.”
“Can I… can I help in some way?”
Bone Man looked up, surprised. “You mean you’d be willing to take a risk like that just to help out a poor old cop like me?”
“Yes. Yes, I would.”
“By god, I knew you were an honorable man!” Bone Man said, slapping his thigh in amazement. “I guess they’re so scarce these days you don’t believe it when you’ve found one!”
Bone Man reached into the pocket of his coat—how did he fit so much into those pockets, anyway?—and pulled out a pistol exactly like the one he’d given Ivy. “A deputy needs one of these. It’s the law.”
But the Hound hid his hands in his own coat pockets and hung his head. “Don’t know how to use that. Can’t be a deputy.” He felt tears coming into his good eye and turned away. He didn’t want a man like the Bone Man to see him cry.
“Nothing to it. It’s loaded and ready to go. See this little lever here? That’s the safety. You want that in the off position, like this,” he said, showing the Hound. “But only when you’re ready to shoot. Just aim straight at the chest—not the head, like in the movies—and keep pulling that trigger, slow and steady, until the bad guys stop moving. But only if you feel threatened. Only if they shoot first. But if they do shoot first, then you come out blazing. Make sense?”
“Makes sense. If they shoot first, come out blazing.”
Bone Man smiled. “You got it.”
He handed the Hound the pistol. It felt more solid and substantial than a newspaper article or even D.B. Cooper’s bundle of twenty dollar bills. It felt powerful.
“You be sure to keep that in a safe place until the time comes to use it. Don’t ever tell anybody where you got it. In fact, don’t ever tell anybody you even have it. Now let’s seal the deal and shake on it. A man’s word and a handshake is a bond that can never be broken.”
The Bone Man extended his hand, only this time it wasn’t hard bones but soft cloth. He must have noticed how uncomfortable the Hound was with his skeleton grip, because ever since the alleyway he always wore gloves when he was with the Hound. Even though the snow had finally left town, he still wore them out of courtesy for the Hound. Bone Man was a gentleman like that.
So you think, Manlike Woman told him. But there are other reasons a man wears gloves even when he doesn’t need to. Beware of wolves in gentleman’s clothing.
But the Hound hadn’t wanted to listen to Manlike Woman. He’d wanted to be an honorable man, a man who risked his life for men like the Bone Man. He’d shaken the gloved skeleton hand and promised to take care of the gun—the same one he now sat cradling in
the rain, beneath his plywood and plastic tarp.
The rain was finally letting up, but the Hound kept the tarp wrapped around him just the same. He needed to fall back asleep, to return to the dream. To remember. Sometimes, the Hound understood things better in his dreams than he did in real life. Sometimes the dreams made more sense.
He curled into a ball and huddled on his patch of dry ground. Before he knew it, Dream-Hound was back in the alleyway. Only this time, he had a gun just like Ivy.
Bone Man had told him where to be—a dead-end alleyway just like before, only in an even more desolate, mean part of town. And just like before, the Hound was positioned behind a dumpster, only this one was blue, not green. Blue like the sky, blue like the sea. Blue like the Bone Man’s eyes. Blue like his own.
“There’ll be two men there, Mr. Packard,” Bone Man had told him. “First, that ivy-covered bastard descendent of Edouard Chambreau. Ivy is a crook and a liar, and I’ve been after him for a long time. Now, the second man is the officer of the law I already told you about. You might be tempted to think of that man as honorable. And he used to be, Mr. Packard. He really did. But you know how it is with lawmen—time turned him, made him go bad. I suspect he might be mixed up in some very bad business with our friend Ivy. That’s why I need you to be my ears and eyes—or eye, rather,” the Bone Man amended with a hideous laugh that split his face open like an earthquake. “But I’m going to be honest with you here—it might get dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” The Hound wanted to be Bone Man’s ears and eye more than anything, but he didn’t like dangerous. Dangerous always turned out bad.
The Bone Man nodded solemnly. “That’s right. In fact, I’d never usually send you on a mission like this, but I’ll be on a stake-out that can’t be avoided. Top secret, but trust me, it’s too important to miss. That’s why I need you. Just the kind of thing we need deputies for, in fact. I’ve worked with a lot of deputies for a lot of years, Mr. Packard, and I’ve never felt there was a better man for a job like this one than you.”