Bachelor's Puzzle

by Judith Pella

  Knowing that Tommy was a bit slow in grasping things, Zack began as directly as he could. “Tommy,I was just pretending to be a minister. My reason for doing so is a long story, but mainly I just needed to hide out for a while.”

  “Was it a joke or something?”

  “No, not at all. There were some men pursuing me, and I didn’t think they would ever find me if I was a minister, using a different name and all.”

  Tommy rubbed his chin, nodding as if he really understood.

  Maybe he did.I t wasn’t such a complex story when boiled down like that.

  “But you preached sermons, and you buried folks. I . . . well,I was looking on, hidden in the woods, when you buried my pa.” A hint of anguish flickered across the boy’s brow; then he brightened. “It was a fine service, too. You done a good job.

  You sure you ain’t no real minister?”

  “Everyone thought you were long gone,” Zack commented. He was just as curious about Tommy’s story as the boy was about his.

  “I weren’t never exactly sure my pa was dead till I saw the funeral.I couldn’t leave before I was sure.”

  “Why, Tommy?”

  “If he weren’t dead and I left, who’d be there to protect my ma?” Tommy said matter-of-factly.

  Zack’s stomach tightened. Was it true, then? Tommy killed his father on purpose? Afraid to ask that direct question, Zack tried to skirt the issue. “Did your father hurt your mother, too?”

  “Not while he had me around.”

  “Is that why you never left before now?”

  “I figured my pa had to beat on someone—someone weaker than him.If not me, then surely it’d be my ma.”

  Zack had always wondered why Tommy had stuck it out under such deplorable conditions for so long. Now he had to question his own actions when he had left home so young. Had his departure merely opened his mother up to take his stepfather’s abuse. He had never considered that until now.

  “That’s most admirable, Tommy,” Zack said with all sincerity.

  Tommy shrugged, then said, “Reverend, if you wasn’t a real minister, does that mean my pa wasn’t buried proper, and his soul is floating out there somewhere like a ghost or something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, he don’t deserve no better anyway.” For a seventeen-year-old, Tommy’s tone held a man’s share of bitterness.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened in the woods?” Zack asked. Maybe it was true that confession was good for the soul. Perhaps it would help ease Tommy’s bitterness if he could talk about that day. Zack hardly realized how naturally he fit back into the role of counselor. Maybe being a minister had indeed rubbed off on him.

  “I know folks think I kilt my pa of a purpose.”

  “Most are ready to believe it was an accident.”

  Tommy shifted uncomfortably. Finally he said, “But it weren’t a accident.I shot him, Reverend—”

  “Zack.” Zack didn’t want Tommy to confuse any of this with some spiritual confession.If Tommy wanted to talk as if to a friend, fine, but nothing else.

  “Okay, Zack. I shot my pa. That low-down, dirty—” He stopped abruptly, then went on, “Hey, if you ain’t no minister, I can cuss in front of you, can’t I?”

  “Yeah, you can, but I get the gist of what you mean,” Zack replied. “Your father pushed you to do what you did, right?”

  “He was drunk,” Tommy said. “He was aiming his shotgun at me and then he fired a couple of times—into the air, but still it scared the stuffing outta me ’cause his aim ain’t none too steady when he been drinking. He told me he was gonna make a man of me, not some churchified sissy. He was real mad I had started going to church, you see. I started to run and he run after me, but he tripped over a rock and went down, letting go of the gun.I grabbed the shotgun and aimed it at him. I wanted to scare him like he scared me, but he just laughed at me. Said I didn’t have the guts to shoot him, and he came toward me again. I knew if he got hold of the gun again, he’d kill me for sure. So I fired. I fired two or three times, even after he went down. I just couldn’t stop. When I realized what I had done,I ran.”

  “It sounds like self-defense to me, Tommy.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It wasn’t murder. A fellow can kill to defend himself. That’s the law.”

  “Don’t matter much, does it? My ma probably hates me for what happened.”

  “She knows what kind of man your father was,” Zack said. “I don’t think she’d hate you for defending yourself. I do know she is worried sick about you.”

  “I don’t want her to feel bad.”

  “She’s your mother. She loves you.” Zack had never before regretted what he’d done in leaving his mother. Now he understood as never before how selfish he’d been. His mother had loved him, too, even if she had been too weak to protect him. He had caused her suffering and pain she did not deserve.

  “I miss home terribly,” Tommy said woefully. “That’s why I only got this far. I thought maybe I could go back home someday.”

  “You and I are a lot alike, Tommy.”

  Tommy laughed with a snort. “Me and you? I wish I was like you, Zack. Why, you’re smart, and all the girls like you. You was brave enough to beat up my pa. The folks in Maintown thought real high of you. They just snicker at me.”

  “They don’t think highly of me anymore.”

  “ ’Cause you faked being a preacher?”

  “Because I lied to them and used them. They probably believe I was mocking them and their God.”

  “Was you?”

  “No,” Zack replied unequivocally. On the contrary he had never respected people more. And as for their God . . . he had never intended mockery. But now he saw that every time he had prayed a prayer and preached a word without meaning it, he had been showing contempt for those very things.I t didn’t matter that in the last few days since leaving town he’d brought back to mind many of the things he had memorized and realized the truth of the words, the words of Reverend Robert E. Markus and of his God. Could he ever make up for what he had done?

  “Are you ever going back?” Tommy asked.

  “I don’t know. What about you?”

  “Be easier going back with a friend.”

  Zack nodded.

  Over the next several days, Zack and Tommy talked a lot about these things.If one’s first impression of Tommy was that he was slow-witted, Zack quickly saw that the boy possessed a great deal of wisdom.

  “I don’t think the folks in town would hold a grudge against you,” Tommy said one day. “I think they’d forgive you.”

  “How can you say that when many of them were never very nice to you?”

  “Well, the folks that matter. L ike the Newcombs.” Tommy arched a brow knowingly. “The Newcombs matter most, don’t they? ’Specially since you’re sweet on Ellie.”

  Zack’s jaw went slack. “What makes you say that?” He had never believed his feelings were that obvious.

  “I seen the way you looked at her, like a sick mule or something. I looked at Maggie like that sometimes, but she never looked back at me in the same way. But Ellie, she looked at you with them same pining eyes.”

  “I’ll be honest with you, Tommy. I want to go back, swallow my medicine, and try to make it there.I liked Maintown, the people . . . and Ellie Newcomb.”

  “Then you should.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “But you stood up to my pa.”

  “It’s a lot easier to beat up someone with fists than to face them with humility.”

  “I guess I can understand that,” Tommy said. “I’m afraid to go back, too. But you know what?I t ain’t no fun to live in fear. I done that for too long with my pa.”

  Zack smiled. “You are so right!”

  They finished out the week at the camp. Zack’s pay was one dollar and fifteen cents a day, so six dollars and ninety cents in one’s pocket was nothing to sneer at when a man was considering starting a
new life. And it wouldn’t hurt having some money if he failed in Maintown and had to hit the road again. But something inside him gave him confidence that he might find a way back into the hearts of the citizens of Maintown. When that confidence faltered, Tommy helped to bolster it. And he did the same for Tommy.

  Together they rode back to Maintown, Zack on William Locklin’s nice horse and Tommy on his father’s mule. They were two misfits hoping to find a place to call home.

  They were riding along the banks of Milton Creek, its water low in the midst of summer, just a few miles from Maintown proper when Zack saw the three riders approach and knew immediately that they were not local folk. They were not dressed as farmers, their horses were too good, and they had pistols strapped to their waists, along with carbines in their saddles.

  Zack had no weapon. Tommy still had his pa’s shotgun hanging from his saddle.

  As they came closer to the strangers, Zack suddenly desperately wished he could reach that shotgun. He recognized Beau Cutter.

  “So we finally meet!” Cutter shouted over the hundred or so feet that separated them.

  “Tommy,” Zack said quietly, “don’t make a sudden move, but get ready to make a run for it.”

  “You know them men?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Run where?”

  “You just run the minute I give the word.” Zack hoped if he remained behind and had it out with Cutter, Tommy could get away.

  “We ain’t far from the Carlsons’ deserted shack,” said Tommy. “We could hole up there—”

  “You run home, Tommy, fast as you can.” Then Zack saw Cutter go for his rifle. “Now!” Zack barked to Tommy.

  Tommy had his shotgun in hand. “I can pick ’em off—”

  “Now!” Zack ordered again.

  “But—”

  Zack realized Tommy wasn’t about to desert him without good reason, so he added, “You gotta get help.”

  This seemed to make sense to Tommy, who probably didn’t realize no one in Maintown was about to help out the fake minister.

  As Tommy tossed the shotgun to Zack, he said, “The shack’s just south, less’n a quarter mile.” Then he dug in his heels and took off. At that same moment Cutter fired, missing Zack by a few inches.

  One of Cutter’s men had his rifle aimed in Tommy ’s direction.

  “Leave the kid be,” Zack shouted. “He’s nothing to you.”

  Cutter called off his man and said, “It’s only you I want, Hartley.”

  “He might go for help,” one of the men said.

  “No one in that town is gonna help him,” Cutter said. “That so, Hartley?”

  “I’ve no friends back there. That’s true,” Zack replied.

  Zack knew he couldn’t lift and aim the shotgun before Cutter or his men fired their own weapons. So his options were few. He could let Cutter pick him off like a sitting duck, or he could give him a moving target. The moving target had little chance of getting far, but a small chance was better than no chance at all. Zack dug in his heels so hard that his horse reared. A rifle fired and missed, then Zack took off. A couple more shots flew over his head.If he didn’t get shot first, his horse would probably end up breaking a leg going at such a pace on this rough trail. Nevertheless he headed south. The trail quickly led down into a small valley that opened out into a meadow. The tall grass likely hid all manner of hazards, potholes, rocks, buried roots. But Zack was heartened by the sight of the shack dead ahead. He raced toward it in a zigzag route, hoping to avoid the rifle fire behind him. One shot took his hat clean off his head.

  Fortunately, he and WilliamL ocklin’s fine horse made it to the cabin in one piece. Zack leapt to the ground before the animal came to a full stop. With the shotgun in hand, he ran to the cabin. I nside he found a musty, ramshackle heap. There was a hole in the roof, letting in enough light to show this place had not been fit for occupation for many years. He heard a couple of varmints scurry away underfoot to some dark corner. But the first thing Zack did was barricade the door by sliding the bar through the rusted metal carriers, still in good shape. Then he cracked open the shotgun and found it fully loaded. Tommy probably had intended on using it to hunt game while he was on the run.

  Zack snapped the gun back together and squatted on the dirt floor by a window that had no glass but half of a shutter intact. He could hear Cutter and his men taking positions around the cabin.

  “You’re surrounded, Hartley!” shouted Cutter. “You may as well give up.”

  “What’ll you do if I surrender?” Zack asked reasonably enough.

  “I’m gonna kill you!”

  “But, Beau, that doesn’t give me a whole lot of motivation, now, does it?”

  “What did you expect?”

  “You know I didn’t mean to kill Sinclair. You can’t kill a man for an accident.”

  “We wouldn’t have been in that alley in the first place if you hadn’t welshed on the money you owed me.”

  Zack didn’t like the direction this was taking. He peeked through the opening in the window. Cutter was behind some trees, maybe within range of the shotgun. But Zack was no sharpshooter, not even close. That was one reason he was not fond of carrying a gun. Another reason was that he wasn’t crazy about shooting people.

  Still, he didn’t want to die.

  He decided this might be a good time to practice something for real that for the last months he had been pretending to do—pray.

  “Well, God,I’m’m in a fix and I don’t know how to get out of it. Could you find it in your heart to help a miserable reprobate? I would promise you I ’ll follow the straight and narrow if you do, but I remember reading—or was it in one of my sermons?—that it isn’t a good idea to try to make deals with you. But I was already intending to be a better person. Now I ’d just like the chance to see if that’s possible. But not at the expense of Cutter. I mean, if I can turn good, so can he. Would it be asking too much to get out of this fix without anyone dying?”

  Pausing, Zack decided it was a pretty convoluted prayer.

  He needed practice, that was for sure.

  Finally he finished, “See what you can do anyway, God. Ah . . . amen and thanks.”

  It was nothing like the fancy prayers he’d prayed as a minister. Many of those he had lifted directly from Markus’s book, and others he had fashioned in the same style. He was smart enough to pray a religious-sounding prayer, but even he knew that for God to hear, it had to come from the heart. So this time he avoided all the book jargon he’d adopted before.

  He heard some movement outside. Could be Cutter’s men would try to get closer to the cabin. There was only the one door and one window, so entry would be difficult. They might try to burn down the shack. Zack thought it would be too ironic to have two shelters burned down around him in the space of a month.

  Cautiously he looked out the window. He saw the flicker of a shadow about twenty feet from the shack to the left. Then, bam! A shot blew the remaining shutter off the window. Zack ducked safely away. Keeping down, he stuck the shotgun through the window and fired—just to remind them he wasn’t exactly helpless.

  After a half hour Zack realized this had all the makings of a regular standoff. All Cutter had to do was wait for Zack to die of thirst. Why hadn’t he taken a moment to grab the canteen from his saddle before racing to the shack? Suddenly Zack was feeling very dry.

  He knew Cutter was not about to wait three or four days. He would make a move long before then. Probably soon.

  When Zack heard the sound of horses, he thought for a minute that Cutter was attempting to rush the place. Risking a look through the window, he saw that was not it at all. Maybe it was the answer to his prayers.

  “I’ve got men with weapons trained on you,” shouted the familiar voice of Calvin Newcomb.

  “This ain’t none of your business!” Cutter shouted in response.

  “You are wrong there,” Calvin said. “We are not gonna have gunfighting in our town, you hear? I t is
our business to keep our town peaceful.”

  “You the sheriff or something?”

  “You might say that. Now put away your weapons and leave.”

  Cutter chuckled. “I can’t do that. And I doubt a bunch of farmers can make me.”

  “Like I said, I’ve’ve got a half dozen men with weapons. One is aimed right at your head.”

  Zack could see Calvin, Nathan Parker, and Stan Wallard. Who else was in the woods with Cutter and his men in their gunsights?

  “Listen here,” said Cutter. “I am only seeking justice. The fellow in the shack murdered my friend. And he owes me two hundred dollars.”

  “As I understand it, the killing of your friend was an accident,” Calvin replied.

  “My friend is still dead, and I’m gonna have justice—”

  “You mean vengeance.”

  “Why are you defending him?” Cutter asked. “I heard what he did to you folks.”

  “That’s our business. There’s just not going to be any more killing.I t’s your word against Zack’s. There are no witnesses to prove it wasn’t an accident or the law would be after him.I looked into the matter, and the police in Portland have closed the case. But if you kill Zack Hartley today, there will be witnesses, and you will be hauled in for murder. You best accept the fact that your friend’s death was an accident, or you will likely end up hanging.”

  There was a long pause. Good old practical, wise Calvin!

  He had spoken pure horse sense. Cutter had to be thinking it over.If he killed Zack now or even sometime later, everyone would know who had done the deed. Also, another killing might open up the case of the alley shootings. Both of those deaths were accidental or at the least self-defense, but an investigation would hurt Cutter in any case.

  Finally Cutter said, “Well, he still owes me two hundred dollars. That is fact.I got his signed marker to prove it.”

  Zack only owed Cutter one hundred dollars, but of course Cutter would have added steep interest.

  “He will pay back every penny,” assured Calvin.

  Zack could pay back six dollars and ninety cents and saw no possibility to repay the rest, not honestly—and he really was determined to walk the straight and narrow. Maybe Cutter would be willing to wait a few years for his money.