"Yes, sir," answered the black doorman, solemn.
All Anson could make out in the darkness was the white gloves.
"You near scared the piss out of me. I mean, literally. I near pissed all over myself."
"Sorry, sir," answered the voice.
"No-no," Anson laughed, regaining his composure, returning to a position that looked as if he were straddling an imaginary horse. "I try not to use outhouses if I can help it, not since once there was a rat'ler curled up waiting to jump in my ass."
"Oh my, sir."
The stream billowed as Anson relieved himself.
"H.S., with this storm comin'," he said as he peed, "maybe it's best you be off. You got somewhere to go? Can you head up on to the town?"
"No, sirs. They ain't like negroes in Brighton."
"Oh."
As Anson finished peeing, a shudder shot through his body.
He zipped.
And the first drops of rain began to fall.
"Well then," said Anson, returning inside. "I suggest you arm yourself. More comin' with this storm than the rain."
FROM AN ACCOUNT OF HENRI VILLE
Henri Ville and her compatriot robbed several more banks over the subsequent weeks after their first gun opera in Philadelphia. It was a particularly chilly winter season and the several cities to which the pair traveled were suffering record snow falls, though this halted their travels and robbery transgressions not-at-all. When everything was said and done, the infamous Henri Ville and the gentleman Anson had thieved six banks in as many weeks, just prior Christmas Eve. Unlike their initial attempt, the ensuing robberies were without deception, quick with of legendary gun that was rumored to spit fire at 1,000 bullets per second, and the duo were vanished before the police even had time to respond, without even the necessity to discharge said weapon. And though each location was distinct in municipality and establishment, one detail remained consistent in every single situation:
Only one specific account from each branch was stolen?
Every dollar taken belonged to The Brant Estate of New York.
Why the pair has targeted the wealthy New York aristocrat Daniel Brant and his Industrial Empire has yet to be answered?
The beauty Henri Ville, along with the gentleman Anson Sharpe, disappeared after that final bank, The First Trust and Savings in Chicago, and the details of each incident were kept moderately mum, though the blazing torrent gun had raised quite the notoriety. It wasn't until the first murder that Henri Ville was identified, at which time she became renowned, became recognized, became both Pariah and Princess of the Underground Gun Sleights. The culprit of the Brant Estate robberies had been a mystery, published in the papers as the Heiress Fireline, the Soul Sister of Jesse James Himself, the Beauty of Bounty, and, until that point, her name, her purpose, and her location after Philadelphia and each subsequent robbery were unfounded, speculative?that is, until an evening one cold February in Kansas when Henri Ville met the Sheriff Anthony-Jim Brash.
Accounts ranged - some say he approached, hassled, intimidated; others say she approached, intimated, insinuated - but the end result was certain: Sheriff Anthony-Jim Brash lie gut-shot and dead in a pool of his own blood, as did several of his deputies, who had tried to intervene. The striking Henri Ville had, as always, been accompanied by the gentleman Anson Sharpe but, as further eye-witness accounts confirm, it appears - whether due to this circumstance is uncertain - that the pair did part ways shortly after this gruesome evening. Composite sketches of the maiden Ville were given to the Marshall's Office and found to be One and the Same as the Brant Estate perpetrator.
Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that this was also the hostess and birthday matron to the largest, grandest party in Philadelphia history some months earlier, thusly revealing the name and identity to the newly infamous murderer and bank robber. And so here grounded the legend, tepid in comparison to the events that were to transpire, but so began the myth of Henri Ville?
XI
Dan and Patrick sat in front of the lush parlor, with Anson at a small table in the corner. The musicians were playing a somber tune, Dan with his fingers picking an old wooden guitar and his partner gently beating a small makeshift drum made from a bedpan with thin buffalo skin stretched over top. Anson was watching the band in-between moments of laughter, his eyes drunkenly shifting from the two women on his right, the band to his left, and the door across the room.
And they sing:
Oh, can it be
The voices calling me
They get lost and out of time
I should've seen it glow
But everybody knows
That a broken heart is blind
That a broken heart is blind
The rain had started as a pitter-patter, a sprinkle, sparks of lightening, cracks of thunder, and then the water fell more violently, the wind drawing the rain in whip-like slashes through the air. It was an angry storm, one livid and ready to strike as if punishing the godforsaken earth.
There were enough candles in the parlor area to edge out the shadows in every corner. Anson kept a hand under the table, presumably touching one leg or another, while his other hand clasped a miniscule bar glass with a touch of whiskey at the bottom. His eyes would follow an invisible line from the music, to the women, to the door?where they would linger a moment before he'd exhale a sigh and his half-open gaze would follow the same line once more.
Jonathon William Beckett the third was behind the bar cleaning up a few shards of broken glass with a spread out newspaper and the tip of someone's long-lost shoe. He had been laughing hard while a woman threatened to tickle him, and it had been a night when he had attempted his first (few) sips of whiskey. The woman, one of the polite French girls, had reached over to jab his armpits. His flinch knocked over a near-empty bottle of whiskey. He filled the newspaper with the remaining broken shards and left to walk into the back. The French tickler followed behind him, heading toward the cellar to pick up another bottle of whiskey to replace the one she inadvertently knocked over. It was the only task Jonathon was unable to accomplish, as the cellar was dark and scary, a creaky ladder leading down to a dirt floor and dusty, dilapidated wooden shelves; it was a creepy little den, weary and forlorn and misty like a mausoleum.
***
"I think I just seen something?" called out the man beside Sheriff Wimbledon Brash. Even close, it was hard to make out the words through the clash of the storm, and Brash wasn't even quite sure who it was that spoke to him through the black darkness and thickening rain.
"What was it?" he hollered back.
"It was?black. I think I saw?it was quick. I think. I seen it go 'round back maybe. Come from the west."
The man calling could be identified as Marshall T. Pickford Service, a reliable source with an apparent eagle-eye. The storm was heavy. The men were lined against the ground some 200 yards out from the house and barn, all against the ground and watching through binoculars, but the details were fuzzy at best and mostly incomprehensible.
***
"Ain't'n we gon' leave the cave? They gon' get'er before us."
Curtis Anglin didn't want to get his clothes wet. They were much too expensive for that. Also, he had just had a hair treatment, in anticipation of a congratulatory photo after catching the she-devil Henri Ville and collecting her bounty.
He looked over Jasper.
"?Gimme some of yer gear."
"My gear?-"
Jasper didn't understand, as he was much shorter and wider.
"God! Damnit! Jasper. Just gimme some'a them denims."
"An' then what?"
"An' then we go in through the front God! Damned! Door! Now gimme them denims?an' help me with my hair."
***
"I seen Henri Ville," Drewbell spoke her words careful, precise.
The rain was coming down in walls outside.
Nathan Jr. 1 and 2 had been quiet for some time, their line of sight outside the barn poor due to the stor
m.
There was stillness by Drewbell's words, which stood in stark contrast to the turbulence outside and the maelstrom beyond the open barn doors.
"What?" Cant finally got out.
Every eye in the barn was on Drewbell.
"I saw them walk her to the gallows. She got caught up near my old town, in Warminster, and they was fixin' to hang her-"
A light lit in the eyes of the boys similar to Cant's retelling of the man that had seen Jesse James' cold dead body on ice.
The adventure in their young eyes was short-lived.
"We got trouble," called down Nathan Jr. 2.
***
Into the cellar the young French woman stepped. She was heading down to retrieve another bottle of whiskey, after she had accidentally caused the destruction of the bottle previous. A lantern in her hand, one whose glass had been singed black along the top of the curved cylinder, she kept the light at a dim shine and lifted high-
Her toe hit the edge of a rock dug into the earth flooring, one too big to pull up and one over which everyone stumbled. She regained composure, lifted the lantern just over her head once more, and examined the shelves. There were bottles, mostly unlabeled, and they were beginning to dwindle again. Pellsley Grant had helped restock their supply shortly after Anson's arrival, which were all bought and paid for by Anson's generous donations to The Catlight Infinite.
Shelves lined on both sides of the narrow underground compartment on their way toward a short step-ladder leading to the shuttered doors in the back yard - through which they brought in the alcohol, usually. (Sometimes it just went straight to the bar, if the money wasn't available and the stock was short.) She looked over the first shelf, turned to check the shelf opposite, and swung back to check the final shelf on the opposite side-
There was a flash of black and metal glare caught in the lamp light just before the lantern fell from her hand, hit the ground, rolled, and went out. She was screaming as she, too, fell to the ground, but found only a gurgling wheeze escape her lips?.
***
And Pellsley Grant hollered from the darkness of the rumbling thunderstorm:
"You better open them doors, nigger!"
He stumbled a bit, closing one eye to mend his wild ambling.
H.S. watched him approach with mild caution. This wasn't the first time a belligerent Pellsley Grant had staggered the path to The Catlight Infinite; this time, though, H.S. noted something different in his voice. Through the wind, over the torrent of rain, H.S. could hear an anger that was usually tucked beneath the veneer of disingenuous platitudes; one always hidden in fear of catching scorn from the women should his true repellent nature show through.
And as Pellsley Grant approached, he kept his hands crisscrossed beneath his vest. He had already passed the moat stretched near the front of the house, reaching long across the front and as far back as the barn - it was almost invisible in the darkness of the squall and he initially hadn't noticed it, as it had filled over with water. (He had fallen in, thinking it was ground, nearly drowned, and then crawled back out and did his best to circumvent the deep ditch.) The moat was acting like an irrigation ditch with the overflow gushing south into the nothing lands of the desert.
Pellsley, drenched and more unpleasant than ever, moved under the awning.
H.S. held up his hand.
"No, sir. You know them ladies don't want no trouble."
Pellsley Grant removed the gun he had been holding so close to his side, protected from the rain by his vest.
***
"Um, Pellsley Grant is in front," Nathan Jr. 1 called down from the rafters.
There was a moment of silence.
"How did he know, Cant?" asked one of the boys.
"I have no?" Cant started, then remembered his tasks-"Grab the gear, get the pack. Nathan Juniors, get down here. Everyone get their gear. Let's go let's go let's go." He ushered all the stable boys to the edge of the storm, just inside the barn. They faced the fierce tempest, fear in each and every one of them. They pulled on thick black shrouds to starve off the water's freeze, and in the night they would appear as no more than tiny shadows.
Drewbell stood watching in the back, confused.
"You go and you meet me where I done showed you, near that cave," called Cant over the hushing winds, specks of water hitting their faces as if from the mouth of an overeager speaker.
Cant looked over the boys one last time, counted to be sure they were all there, and then sent them off with a wave of his hand. Bravely, the young boys hesitantly took two, three, four terrified steps into the rainstorm before breaking into all-out sprints. The water washed over them, bouncing off their black, waterproof shrouds as they ran side-by-side, seven young men becoming shadows in the storm.
Cant turned back toward Drewbell and yelled to be heard:
"There's gonna be a gunshot and I'm to tip that barrel-" he pointed to the drum at the close-end of the ditch.
"And then what?" she yelled back.
There was a gunshot, muffled by the storm but nonetheless distinct, from the direction of the house.
"We run like hell."
***
H.S. couldn't say much to the barrel of Pellsley Grant's revolver before the trigger was pulled, the hammer released, and the gun?clicked limply.
"I can see from here, sir. You done got yer weapon wet. Rounds is wet."
Pellsley was more furious at H.S. for telling him what was going on than what was actually going on. He lowered the weapon, opened the chamber, squinted. Stumbled back a step. Flicked out the old rounds. Added a new round from his belt, flicked the chamber closed-BANG. The gun fired down into Pellsley Grant's leg, a burst of flame flicking up from his trousers and then dampening out from the rain. The bullet passed shallowly through the outer edge of meat in his thigh and came out the other side, hitting the rain-soaked ground with a hollow thud.
"God damn!" was all he could yell, over and over, as he fell backward onto the ground beside the moat. He lay there a moment while H.S. slowly turned, his face showing no sign of either worry or amusement, and he went into the house to find Marielle.
Pellsley Grant lay bleeding on the dirt ground. His consciousness began to slip - whether from the drink or the wound he was unsure - and the last image he caught before drifting into a heavy, drunken slumber was that of a hooded man rounding the corner of the house.
***
Cant pushed over the barrel and watched the thick black liquid pour out, mixing with the water, floating on top like oil, flowing in ebbs as it snaked down toward the house.
He returned for Drewbell.
"Come with me," Cant spoke his words in tones both low and caring. Drewbell could hear him fine. His hand was out. She hadn't moved but two or three feet from the hay pile. She moved closer to the doorway and the sheet of rain falling not a foot passed Cant.
She didn't take his hand.
His eyes were intense, focusing.
"No," called Drewbell, shaking her head uncertainly.
"You don't have much choice."
In the distance grew a tiny flame from water. It was climbing, spreading.
Gunfire, round after round after round, erupted from the house. Cant turned his head, his attention off her and toward the dark and the storm and the fire fight. Inside the house came echoing flashes like lightning and thunder; then, Cant turned, his attention returned to her, his eyes refocusing.
"Please," he spoke the words both beseeching and commanding.
There was hesitation.
A moment.
And then she took his hand.
XII
The door opened.
Anson's attention had been on the front from the moment of the first gunshot, when Pellsley Grant and H.S. walked in, politely shut the door behind him, nodded to the gathered attention, and made a line straight for Marielle at her corner of the bar. The band stopped. The women also turned their attention to the door, as the creaking of outside footsteps could be
heard. Someone was cautiously approaching the front door, the sound distinguishable even through the storm.
And when the door opened, it was near kicked off its hinges.
In jumped Curtis Anglin, guns drawn, his hair curled into a bun and placed under a darkly-colored bonnet. He was in denims too sizes too small, the pant legs riding up to his calves, sleeves stuck up his forearm. Drenched through, soaked to the bone, he made two steps inside, his teeth chattering from the cold but determined nonetheless.
"Where's that whore goes by the name Henri-" called Anglin, authoritative and loud and ferocious-the women withdrew their firearms, nearly thirty in all, each pulled from a brassiere or garter, each with their sights aimed squarely at Curtis Anglin-"Oh, sh-this isn't the grocer!" he quickly added in pretend confusion, dropping his guns instantly to lift both hands in immediate surrender.
Anson Sharpe hadn't moved.
The women looked to Anson, who held his hand up to signal a wait. He stood, reached over for a nearby lantern, and approached Curtis Anglin with a lazy stroll. He got close, held the lantern up to check Anglin's face. Anson's eyes narrowed, questioning the choice in attire. He reached up, lifted off the bonnet. Stared yet more quizzically at the hair beneath. Sized up the ill-fitting denims. Anglin was too terrified to move, his hands and arms tense and ready to fix his hair the very first chance possible.
Anson moved outside (-Anglin swiped a quick, primping hand through his hair-) and walked to the edge of the front awning, just away from the storm. He could see the men approaching, a dozen or so, in the wavering night blackness. With a mighty heave, he swung the lantern still clutched in his hand hard and smashed it to the ground in front of the moat-A mighty flicker and flare and bright burn grew from out of the water, as if a river were catching fire. The flame rose near five feet off the ground, a fence of fire zig-zagging as it dashed up the hill, back to the barn, as well as out to the water's end, down the moat, out towards the desert. Anson watched the trail slither and extend a fair way past the end of the trench, drifting with the runoff, headed for nowhere. The flame climbed back to the barn and reached the overturn oil drum where the rest of the Greek Fire had been stored-
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