Henri Ville

by M. Chris Benner

  Raymond, the previous Stable Master, packed his stuff and left without a word several weeks earlier. At 14 (give or take a year, since he didn't know his birthday), Cant was now presumed to be the oldest of the group. And Marielle was right; it was a job he had already been doing, even before the position needed filling. Part of the reason Raymond went off was because the stable boys never looked up to him, never revered him (at least not as much as he wanted) - it was always Cant they admired, always Cant they asked for help, always Cant.

  Cant accepted the position of Stable Master the same way he accepted the respect of the others - "Um, sure? I mean, yeah. I guess." - with a healthy level of confusion and modesty.

  Expecting a response but not getting one, Cant found Marielle's attention to the desert. He didn't check the object of her scrutiny, instead using the distraction and proximity to memorize every detail of her face. Fair skin. Freckles on her nose. Her dark, wiry brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. For the first time, Cant noticed that her ears were a size too small for her head. She acted demure but it was a ruse, a sham; she was no more coy than she was a singing barn animal.

  He smiled, but the happiness was short-lived.

  There was movement in the desert.

  Something-someone was approaching.

  "Stay here," Marielle ordered, storming off.

  Cant's eyesight had never been good. There was a black, wavering blob in the distance, one that could have been anything from a lawman to a cave monster. Squinting, bits were becoming distinguishable - there were three of them. One had long hair. One was much taller than the other two. And there was some sort of animal behind them?

  III

  The man held both of his empty hands in the air. A young boy and teenage girl followed close behind, ready to use him as a shield if necessary.

  "You better be someone important!" Marielle demanded once she was within earshot.

  She met them halfway, some fifty feet from the house.

  There was a brief exchange of words:

  "I would like to rent your?brothel? Right, is that the right word?" the man spoke in a voice both calm and half-drunk. (After giving him a taste, Pellsley Grant successfully talked the man into purchasing a full case of the whiskey; then they began an hours-long conversation about distilling, filling the somber Pellsley Grant with more enthusiasm while the two bored young'uns continued to shoplift through his store.)

  "What? I'm only going to say this once - you need to? turn back?" she spoke cautiously as the man bent and disappeared into a bag at his side, leery.

  The man withdrew two thick stacks of crisp $10 bills.

  "Here," he said, shoving over the money as if it were a nuisance.

  Marielle cringed at the stranger's sudden movement but the man didn't notice. When she didn't grab the money from his hand, he pushed it into the crook of her folded arms. Her first instinct was to defend herself. The money fell to the ground in flittering, snowflake-like swinging bills. Again, the man didn't notice; he was fishing deeper into his bag. The teenage girl was next to him, observing each reaction with an inquisitive yet vague expression. The young boy was still hidden behind the man.

  "Here it is," the man sighed, relieved.

  From the bag, the stranger pulled out a clanking leather pouch and tossed it to Marielle.

  She caught it, surprised at how heavy it was.

  "I want to rent your? this broth? this place. And everyone in it. Until further notice."

  Marielle loosened the string tying the pouch shut and gently tipped a small amount of its contents into her hand.

  "Name's Anson," the man introduced himself as an afterthought.

  The bag was full of gold.

  IV

  The gothic edifice of The Catlight Infinite rose from the desert more like a mirage than a brothel.

  It had once been called Butcher's Den but Butcher was long since dead of a blade to the thick of his belly - there was a dispute over payment, a few words led to a few heated words until ole' Butcher was lying in the dirt as he bled to death. And though he had been a mean son of a bitch, he left enough evidence to suggest that his women would inherit the land if he were to pass on. That was some years back, when the place was hollow and dying. The outside had been in a state of collapse, the gutters held up with boards. The inside had been musty and stale. Back then there were only a few girls - mainly just Marielle, her thirteen year old daughter, and a few of those French girls they brought in on the prison carriages - but, after Butcher's passing, they tended the house with every hour of day and several by moonlight. Their first investment was the barn, for horses and extra hands; it was also the largest, and the only one they couldn't pay off over time. Onlookers and the people of the nearby town called it foolish to build a horse barn when renovating a brothel, but the onlookers and the people of the nearby town didn't have the grand ideas that Marielle did. While the horse barn was constructed by the local men, the women worked together to clean and re-wood the front of the house. All of the jobs had to be done as one, considering the supplies were often too heavy for any of them to carry alone. They built the awning twice, over the period of a year: their first attempt was nearing completion when it got torn down by a storm; the second, sturdier attempt took several months longer (and the importing of a lot of stone) but finished with an elegant, practiced appearance. And they kept and polished the plaque over the door in memoriam of Butcher, one reading Butcher's Den.

  Jagged towers pointed off the third floor of The Catlight Infinite, giving it a castle-like appearance, with each spire an individual space only big enough for a straw-filled mattress and two adults. These overlooks (as the small rooms were nicknamed) were so small that they would have to be crawled into from a third-floor ladder. Each spire had a tiny window and each tiny window had a tiny orange candle beside the glass. The stable boys would often pass the time laying against bales of lightly banded hay, watching the orange flickers vanish one-by-one from the tiny windows and discussing the woman that could possibly be in that overlook, and what that woman could possibly be doing.

  Only one overlook had a permanent occupant - Marielle.

  Her overlook lifted highest in the air, had the brightest orange glow in its window (the last to go out every night), and a solid, miles-long view down the only path. All directions led deeper into the desert except for the one that led back to Brighton, the nearest town at ten miles. Though she made no mention of her life before The Catlight Infinite, her past would bob the surface as she spoke of the claustrophobic half-room spires. "I can only sleep if I feel safe and I only feel safe wrapped up tight and a weather-eye to the horizon. Anything can come knocking, anytime. Warmth of a man ne'er filt me with that safety. Hell, I'd sleep in one of them shandy wood coffins if it had a view. Funny how you get used to somethin' as a chil' and it never goes away?"

  To the men, however, she'd brush it off:

  "I just like a tight fit."

  (This was something the boys had heard her say many times, always suggestively, and it was something the boys had heard many of the visiting suitors adamantly agree with - though the older and the smarter boys understood there must be some other meaning, one that eluded them.)

  Torches surrounded the entrance.

  Riders could maneuver past the two stone columns supporting the awning and pull up against the cathedral front doors. Without drawing attention, the stable boys would escort the horses to a barn on the northeast edge of the land. A negro gentlemen in a black suit and white gloves would wait at the lip of the entrance, enthusiastically welcoming newcomers and repeat clients as he opened the doors. (His name was H.S. but no one ever asked.)

  This was extravagance.

  However, there was a two week period where opening the doors would have found no clients but one, and a cacophony of booze and laughter and women and loud music. The men were scarce besides the young stable-hands, a mere two musicians and the ring-leader of the trouble - a man named Anson Sharpe. From the day he st
ormed in and on for a full fourteen days exact, Anson was their only client. The women were plenty - a handful of French girls, Marielle, Rebecca, Francis, and three others - and they would fill the front lounge, lazed up on the satin covered benches and drinking, giggling, whispering secrets, all of them having the best time any of them had had in a long time, if ever.

  Walking through the door in those two weeks - just before the renovations that were to follow - would have found music at full volume. There were two musicians hired to play around the clock and they were an odd pair. Their music consisted of a twangy guitar and lead vocals courtesy of Dan while Patrick banged on a makeshift drum made of tight bull-leather pulled taut across a metal pan. Their honeyed voices were at once soothing and at times raspy. The odes of which they would sing could lift the feet in dance as much as it could bed the heart.

  Passing through the front cathedral doors would have found music and a lavish, brightly lit lounge area covered in gently-toned blankets and soft pillows, the kind that make you sleepy just by a touch of the fabric. Anson Sharpe - his light brown skin and dark features poked from between the shoulders of two women, one on either side - would smile widely while the woman to his right dropped crushed ice into his mouth and the other poured whiskey. Marielle always occupied the end corner of the bar at the opposite side, observing the ruckus quietly? and always with a slight smile.

  The bartender, a cook named Cheff, had his duties cut in half during this period. He was relinquished to the back for barbequing meat and preparing inordinate amounts of food for everyone while his bartending duties were handed over to a young man by the name of Jonathon William Beckett the third. Why the nine-year-old boy chose to bartend was anyone's guess but, soon after they arrived, Jonathon asked and no one objected. Cheff was glad to be off his feet and Marielle, in her web at the curve of the end of the bar, was glad to watch him closer.

  The past, of which Marielle never spoke, she found embodied in the young Jonathon William Beckett the third. Though in their lives together - two weeks in a brothel, only peripherally involved - the boy and the mother hen shared a mere word, maybe two, though she felt privately a deeper link to the boy. His quivers, first of shyness and then, in comfort, at fleeting whisks of fear, were common to those who had fled the horror of terrible lives. She would watch young Jonathon attempt to spin a pint glass along the curl of his palm only to lose it to gravity. The glass would shatter and Jonathon's eyes would lift, his body quivering in anticipation of a scolding or beating, only to find the accepting gaze of Marielle's eyes. With a nod, she'd let him know it was fine, and he stopped looking for approval after the sixth glass fell. It took him a full week to become good enough to move on to flipping the corked whiskey bottles. (He only broke one of those before everyone told him to stick to bar glasses.) Their eyes met on a few occasions, Marielle and Jonathon, and his shyness would return in their brief words, while she spoke with lips in constant grin.

  It's odd, she thought, to have the shreds of a soulmate in someone thirty years younger.

  Anson would laugh boisterously and smoke the cigars that had been a gifted to the brothel by visiting Mexicans some time earlier. He'd stare up into the mirrors covering the ceiling, each 3x3 with a square outline of painted gold. He'd playfully flirt and soak in the attention, of which there was plenty. He distributed most of the money he had acquired thus far on his journey. (There was more but it was hidden elsewhere and substantially smaller than what he had brought with him.) His belly was full of delicious food and his hand occupied by a delectable whiskey. Women all around him. This was the way he wanted to leave this world.

  After those two weeks, he'd be ready for the fate he knew awaited him?

  V

  On the second morning of his occupancy of The Catlight Infinite, Anson approached the stable boys:

  "You're gonna dig me something like a ditch. All long here?" He pointed past the house. "It's gonna run all up along here, to the left of the barn and down past the house. And it's gotta be deep-you ain't got no more chores now 'cept digging this. Make it 'bout four feet deep and 6 foot wide."

  Then, to himself, "Enough to fill up."

  "Fill up with what, sir?" asked Cant.

  "Water," Anson mumbled, staring into the east a moment. He surveyed the land further, southeast to northeast.

  "Water, sir?"

  "Rain," Anson said quietly, almost to himself as if Cant didn't exist, but then snapped out of it, turning. "Yeah, water. Rain. It's gon-don't worry. Just dig me this ditch. And I'm also gonna need that region behind the barn, it's gonna be off limits for some time?"

  ***

  On the fourth day, there arrived many large packages for Anson Sharpe:

  Calcium Oxide.

  Sodium Nitrate.

  Sulfur.

  Bitumen.

  A caldron.

  And several others, in many square wooden crates and thick brown sacks.

  From then on, every day for six days, Anson worked the time between his morning hangover and his nighttime drinking. The kids would watch him with a monocle from the top of the barn. Shirtless, hunched over his sweat-covered gut, he would churn and mix. The shirt he'd wrap around his nose and mouth while close to the black-smoke plums emitted from the bubbling caldron would leave in the morning white and return dark as coal. The smell that wafted over the quarter mile, from Anson's cauldron in a patch of nowhere to the top of the barn, had the stench of a battlefield and lingered long after Anson finished, several days later.

  The final product was placed in an empty oil drum once used for kerosene.

  ***

  The next delivery to arrive was a large, coffin-like box.

  The delivery men - the very same that had delivered the previous packages - set the rectangular wooden crate outside the front of the house, under the awning. The three delivery men made no announcement, spoke no words, and vanished soon after. They were an odd trio, dressed in black with their heads down. They had long-brimmed hats pulled over their foreheads, only foreign strands of longish, unkempt dark hair curling from underneath.

  After an announcement from Anson, the whole of The Catlight Infinite (except Cheff and H.S.) walked outside to find the crate open. Inside were two dozen firearms. There were a few rifles and two Colts but the rest were miniscule pistols with the capacity to hold only two bullets at most.

  With the populace of The Catlight Infinite, Anson set the many empty whiskey bottles along a sandy ridge and held target practice daily for the seven days after the package's arrival. He made sure - women and children alike - knew about gun safety, about the right and wrong ways to point it, to hold it, to use it. He enforced a level of professionalism, making clear that weapons weren't toys and the sooner it was realized, the better, as you could wound someone dear. The point wasn't fun, it was protection. You could enjoy pulling the trigger: it was impossible not to love that feeling of a cartridge exploding, ejecting fire from the barrel in a ball of furious lead, the burst of impact. It was freeing. To prove his point, he threw a bottle into the air, fired three shots, and missed.

  "Had I been a good shot, that would have felt great," he added.

  Surprisingly, most of the girls were relatively trained with a gun, especially Marielle, who admitted to having her own rifle in her bedroom Overlook.

  Anson told them all that it would be well worth learning how to defend themselves with a firearm, should the day ever come.

  The only people unable to fire a straight bullet were the French girls.

  ***

  The women and children were armed, and practiced.

  The Greek fire was ready, and stored in a kerosene drum.

  For the remaining three days, Anson spent his time relaxed. Lounging. Drinking. Womanizing. Never had he smiled so much, for so long, in his life.

  As the final day arrived, he took care of the simple few details remaining.

  To Cant:

  "Late tonight, Pellsley Grant is going to walk up to that fro
nt door and, when he does, I want you to tip the oil bin I got at the top end of the trench. It's full of that stuff I made and it's gonna be rainin' like a sunofabitch but I need it to pour straight down that ditch you dug for me. And I want you to do it, Cant. Not the other kids. At the first sign of Pellsley, the kids are to run. I don't want none of them here but you. You. I want you to tip that barrel. I want you to wait a moment, and you're going to hear a gunshot. When you hear that shot, you run, too. You join them other boys. You encounter any folk out there you don't know, you shoot 'em. Hear me? You shoot 'em and you shoot 'em so they don't get up, and you keep on runnin'. Do you hear me?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "None of you - none of you boys come back until past noon tomorrow, okay? So you pack up some food, you wrap it in something waterproof, and you take it with you. And all of you are gonna need rain gear."

  To Jonathon:

  "If things get rough, I want you to get to the cellar, okay? The second you hear a gunshot, you run to that cellar and you stay down."

  To Drewbell:

  "Stop acting so goddamn depressed."

  To Marielle:

  "Sorry."

  "Why?"

  "?just, for everything I done and everything I'm about to do, I guess."

  "You're forgiven."

  VI

  That final night, there came signs of rain.

  The day had been barren and dry but clouds were migrating west, dark, full nimbus that seemed to pulsate with water. Drewbell had been staring out the window of an overlook, watching the clouds crawl across the blue canvas. (Like Marielle, she felt safe in the overlooks.) There had been an overwhelming need for change inside her. Leaving her family some miles back to ride with a younger boy and an eccentric, often drunk older man had been a fair amount of change; now, she needed more. The clouds closed in and brought an early illusion of nightfall. There were distant flashes of lightning. Drewbell decided that she would soon leave The Catlight Infinite. Not that night, maybe not even that week, but soon. Lethargy had swallowed her once they stopped at the brothel, having traveled quite a long distance to a place at the center of the middle of nowhere. Now, the calm was ending and the strength was gathering and the time was approaching to leave this life once more.