by Hannah Tinti
The undertakers tried to straighten the body, but it was too stiff, so they simply rolled it to the floor, the bartender still holding his spoon. One of the men grabbed under the knees and the other hooked beneath the arms and across the chest. Everyone shuffled their chairs aside, and the undertakers made clumsily for the door, taking small steps. The bartender’s arm swung out over heads as he passed. The patrons hid their faces, eyes keen on cards or the dissolving foam in their glasses of beer.
As the undertakers maneuvered around a table, one of them stumbled, and the bartender’s soup spoon, still firmly gripped in his fingers, knocked off a hat. The brim was wide like a minister’s, with a blood-red band. It spun as if caught in a wind, and landed near the bar rail in the sawdust, quite knocked out of shape.
The owner of the hat stood up from his chair like a shadow stretching across a wall. His eyes were too far apart. Ren saw this first before anything else. There was so much space between them that his face looked pushed in—an open plain of blankness. His skin was pale, his hair long and plastered to the sides of his chin. His coat was made of leather and he wore red gloves—same red that was in the band of the hat.
The undertakers stopped in their tracks. As the man in the red gloves approached, they dropped the bartender to the floor. “It wasn’t intentional,” one of them said. The other backed away. Patrons at the tables nearby picked up and moved to the other side of the room. The man in the red gloves didn’t say a word. But as they all watched, he removed a large knife from his belt, put it against the bartender’s wrist, and sawed off the dead man’s hand.
The green girl took hold of Ren’s sleeve and hid her face against it. He could feel her breath, hot and blowing through the cloth against his skin. The bartender’s arm shook as the man made his way through the bone. When he finished, the man in the red gloves reached over and picked up his hat from the floor. He dusted it off, shaped it with his fingers, and placed it on his head. Then he took the hand of the bartender, still holding the spoon, and brought it back to his table. He pointed at the green girl. “Bring me some stew.”
The girl rushed into the kitchen while the drinkers kicked sawdust over the blood and settled back in their seats. The undertakers seemed relieved. They scurried around the body, heaved it between them, and rushed out the door. The latch closed and the daylight crawled away into the corners and the hurricane lamps sent out their glow, and all of the men—all of them—suddenly began talking, as if they had been holding their breath until the body was gone.
The green girl came back holding a bowl of stew. Ren watched her maneuver her way through the crowd. He closed his eyes, but it didn’t change anything. He could still see the back-and-forth motion of the knife, the fleshy end of the bartender’s arm. It was as if the blade was cutting into his own body. He pressed tightly against his scar. He dug his nails in.
The room narrowed and pulled away, until Ren felt as if he were leaning over the well at Saint Anthony’s and hearing the echo of the water. Somewhere in that echo was a terror Ren had felt before; he was remembering now, almost touching it, the voices of the men in the bar mumbling in his ear, until the green girl grabbed his elbow and said, “You’re going to spill it.”
The glass of ale in his hand was tipping. Ren didn’t remember picking it up from the bar. He caught it now and set it straight. He thanked the girl, who gave him a halfhearted smile before going back to work. Ren made his way unsteadily back to the table. Benjamin and Tom were watching the man in the red gloves, who was now eating stew with the bartender’s hand.
“We need to leave this place,” Tom said.
“You’re drunk,” said Benjamin.
“Yes,” said Tom. “But I mean it.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Benjamin. “Not yet.”
Tom poured himself another glass. “I’ve been in this bar for two days, and I’ve heard more than I care to.” He looked over at the surrounding tables, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. “The mousetrap man, McGinty, he’s running a market for smuggled things here. Opium, French novels, postcards, gold teeth, whiskey, whale oil, pistols, ivory bracelets, and lip rouge. Anything and everything that anyone could want. He controls it all from his factory, taking a cut of every bit of action. And when he doesn’t get his cut, his men do some cutting of their own.”
Tom nodded at the man in red gloves, then made a gesture of apology toward Ren. “I’m attached to my hands. I don’t intend to lose them.”
Benjamin didn’t respond. He was too busy studying the man in the red gloves eating, as if this act was teaching him something important, something he’d been trying to learn for years. Benjamin’s face changed each time the man lifted the bartender’s hand, until he looked angrier than Ren had ever seen before. He shoved away from the table. He started buttoning up his coat.
“Where are you going?” Tom asked.
“We’ll do one more run,” Benjamin said. “One more, and then we’ll go.” He seemed suddenly in a rush. He handed Ren the key to their room. “Go beg your way back with Mrs. Sands.”
“What about Dolly?”
Benjamin stopped for a moment. He tapped Ren on the chin. “Just make sure he doesn’t kill anyone yet.” With that he turned the collar up on his coat, and in two steps he had slipped into the crowd.
Ren fingered the key in his hand. Tom poured a sandy liquid into two glasses, and pushed one over. “Here,” he said. “I’m tired of drinking alone.”
“I have to take care of Dolly.”
“One drink.”
Ren lifted the glass. He took a tentative sip and swallowed. The alcohol felt like flames in his mouth.
“What were your fellows’ names again?” Tom asked.
“Brom and Ichy,” said Ren.
“Mine was Christian.”
“I remember.”
Tom blew out a stream of air. “It’s a shame to lose your fellows.”
Ren stuck his tongue into the whiskey again. He waited to see how long he could hold it in his mouth before swallowing. A warm, pleasant glow started up the back of his throat. “Isn’t Benjamin your fellow?”
Tom poured another drink. His words started to slur, one sliding into the next. Ren had to lean forward and concentrate to understand him.
“When I met Benji, he was on the run for deserting. And wasn’t I struck by him? And didn’t I take him in and show him every kindness, a roof over his head and something to eat and how to find his way in and out of trouble? I taught him how to play cards, and how to be sure a woman wasn’t making a fool out of him. And now our paths are so twisted together that they’ll hang us from the same rope.”
“He was in the army?”
“He was sold into it,” said Tom. “His uncle turned him in to cover a gambling debt. The army sent him out west, and he saw men shot to pieces, trying to put their stomachs back inside themselves.” Tom lowered his head onto the table and groaned. “He was only a boy when it happened. Just a few years older than you.”
Ren set his glass down. Then he lifted it back up. The bottom left a damp ring on the wooden table. A thin, unbroken line. He thought of Sebastian, whispering through the gate. I should have used it. I should have wished on it as soon as it came to me.
The story Tom had told was breaking up, and the boy knew that if he waited long enough the words would leave the room, threading through the tables and out the door and it would be as if he had never said them. Tom seemed to be asleep now, his head in his arms. Ren slid out of his chair, but before he could leave, the schoolteacher lifted his face.
“Brom and Ichy.”
“That’s right,” said Ren.
“They’re nice names.” Tom lowered his head once more. “Hold on to them.”
NINETEEN
Dolly was asleep underneath a maple tree, and Ren thought he looked almost peaceful. His head was resting against the rough bark, his hood pulled over his face. It was a warm night. The trees on the common were set in a line like pawns a
cross a board.
Ren shouted in his ear. He held his nose and slapped his cheek, but Dolly did not respond. Ren sat on the grass and watched the sun go down. Every once in a while he would lift Dolly’s collar to make sure that his chest was still rising and falling. Ren counted seventeen links on the tattooed chain. He tried to imagine what it might be like to have that many ghosts behind him.
It was nearly an hour before Dolly finally opened his eyes.
“How long have I been sleeping?”
“About a hundred years,” said Ren.
Dolly felt his face for whiskers. He gave his broken grin. “Then how come I’m not old?”
“You are,” said Ren. “It just doesn’t show.”
The streets were dark as they made their way home. Dolly followed in a daze, stumbling over bricks in the sidewalk. Ren steered him down an alley and past another group of soldiers, smoking on the corner. Their uniforms were dirty, their guns hung casually from their shoulders. When Ren turned to look, one of the men nodded, showing the gaps in his brown teeth, and Dolly made the sign of the cross in return.
By the time they approached the boardinghouse it was early evening. The windows were shuttered as they came along the sidewalk. Ren tried the door and found it unlocked. The fire in the kitchen was cold. The knife and pie-makings were still on the counter, the rolling pin covered with flour, but Mrs. Sands was nowhere to be found. Dolly stood by while Ren opened cupboards and closets, turned over the potato basket, pushed the cloaks hanging by the door aside, then thundered up the stairs.
“Mrs. Sands?”
Ren checked their beds, then went to the landing above. He pushed his way into the mousetrap girls’ room. The space was large enough to hold four single cots. Shards of mirror hung on the walls. In the closet were their Sunday clothes—their heavy boots and navy dresses missing. He knocked over a box of rouge. He stumbled up another flight of stairs to the attic.
When no one answered his banging, he went inside. The room was narrow, with a pitched ceiling and two skylights. Underneath these openings was an old rope bed, and flung across it, still in her kitchen clothes, was Mrs. Sands.
Her face was flushed, the top of her collar torn loose. Her hands were pasted with flour. Ren touched her shoulder. “Mrs. Sands,” he whispered. She began to shake, lightly at first in response and then harder, so much that she nearly fell to the floor. Ren reached for the blanket, pulled it across her body, and held her down, leaning all his weight onto the mattress.
“YOU’RE MURDERING ME.”
“I’m trying to help.”
Mrs. Sands focused for a moment on Ren’s face. She reached out and grabbed hold of him. “IT’S THE DROWNED BOY.” The landlady shook her head. She tore at the sheets. “I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYONE SO HUNGRY.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Ren asked.
“I WON’T TAKE THE BOWL AWAY, I PROMISE.” She clutched his arm and tried to stand up. “I HAVE TO MAKE SUPPER.” She got out of the bed and began to cough, her body folding in half. She bent over the ground, pressed her hands to her ribs, and began to sob. A small trickle of blood fell from her mouth onto the rug.
“Dolly!” Ren screamed. He bolted to the stairs. “Dolly!”
The staircase pounded, as if each flight were collapsing beneath the man as he ascended. Dolly burst into the room, his hands groping out before him like a blind man’s.
“There’s blood in her mouth.”
Dolly crouched on the floor in his monk’s robe. He looked the landlady up and down, then touched her stomach. Mrs. Sands groaned.
“Don’t do that!” Ren said.
“She’s sick.”
“I know,” Ren said. “Help me.”
Together they got Mrs. Sands back on the bed and rolled her into a blanket. Ren had seen other children at Saint Anthony’s come down with this kind of fever before. When they coughed blood, Brother Joseph would move them into a separate room. If the brothers waited too long to send for a doctor, another plot would soon be made in the field next to the chapel.
Dolly carried Mrs. Sands downstairs while Ren unscrewed the knob from Benjamin’s bedpost. They would need money, he thought, and gathered it all. The horse and wagon were in the stable; it took time before they could get the animal properly rigged and settle Mrs. Sands in the back. Ren listened to her coughs, clasped the reins in his one good hand, and hoped that he would be able to remember the way in the dark.
It was nearly an hour before they reached the bridge. Ren had taken three wrong turns. Dolly could not remember what direction they had started from, and Mrs. Sands had fallen into a troubled and sweaty sleep. The boy could see shapes in the alleyways as they passed, moving figures around a fire, a vagrant propped against a wall, an old woman holding her skirt up to her waist, then dropping it when she saw them pass. He looked straight ahead, as if he noticed none of this, and when he caught a glimpse of the bridge he let out a sigh of relief. There was only one road to the hospital now.
The wagon shifted as it went over the river. Ren looked into the rushing water. He thought of the drowned boy and wondered if his spirit would be able to feel his old clothes passing overhead. Ren held on to the reins tightly, and began to bargain with God. If they crossed safely over the bridge, he would say ten rosaries. If they made it to the hospital, he would say twenty.
Under a streetlight ahead were two men, smoking pipes. One wore a porkpie hat pulled to the side; the other had spats buttoned up to his knees. It was the same two men that Dolly had recognized outside O’Sullivan’s bar. Ren hesitated, but drove the wagon on. As they got closer, the man in the spats took a round, flat disk from underneath his arm and slapped it against his wrist. With a pop, the disk turned into a top hat. The man placed it on his head, then jumped in front of the horse and took hold of the bridle.
“Bit late for catechism, isn’t it, Father?”
The man in the top hat could not have been more than twenty. His face was smooth, his confidence untried. Behind him, the man in the porkpie hat pulled a chain from his pocket and ran it through his fingers.
“I’m a monk,” said Dolly.
“That’s not what I remember,” said the Top Hat. “I remember a purple suit.”
Ren tugged at the reins. The mare shook her head back and forth. Dolly pushed the hood of his robe from his face, then stepped down from the wagon.
“Let go of the horse.”
“All we want is a blessing,” said the Top Hat. “Then maybe we’ll forget we saw you. You’ve got a blessing for us, don’t you, monk?”
Dolly raised his two fingers to start the cross. Behind him, the man in the porkpie hat lifted the chain. It came down hard on the back of Dolly’s neck. Ren cried out, but Dolly didn’t react. He simply turned and took hold of the man’s throat and crushed it. The chain fell. Dolly pushed the man up against the streetlamp and then bashed his skull against it, over and over, until the man’s hat fell onto the sidewalk.
Ren was yanked from his seat. The man in the top hat was shouting in his ear and it was only then that the boy realized there was a knife pressed to the side of his face. Then they were both falling over, and Dolly was on top of them. Everywhere there were elbows and knees scrambling. Ren felt a sting on his cheek. A foot in his stomach. He covered his face with his arms and rolled off the sidewalk and into the gutter. Above him someone shrieked and groaned and then the shuffling stopped and it was quiet. The boy’s fingers touched something soggy. It smelled like rotten fish, and it was. Ren looked around him. He was surrounded by heads and tails, all the leftovers from a day of fishing the river.
Dolly took the boy by the elbow and set him on his feet. The shepherd’s robe was sprinkled with blood. The man in the top hat slumped against the sidewalk; one of his eyes had been put out, and a slick trail of red ran from his lashes to his ear.
The boy was shaking. His legs were wet. He could hear voices, a shout in the alley, coming closer. Dolly was calmly looking out into the night, and the boy knew he
could kill a dozen more like this. Ren struggled not to panic. He tried to think of what Benjamin would do.
“Get them in the wagon,” Ren said. “Now.”
Together they loaded the men into the back of the cart, one on either side of Mrs. Sands. All the commotion had stirred her from her fever. She was awake, her face spotted with red, her brow damp with perspiration.
“THEY’RE ALWAYS STEALING MY BACON!” she shouted.
“We know,” said Ren. He pulled the blankets over the bodies.
Mrs. Sands seemed happier with the dead men covered up. She closed her eyes again. “SERVES THEM RIGHT.”
Ren tucked the comforter up to her chin. He took Dolly’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Dolly’s fingers were slimy; Ren could feel a bit of something left—hair, or skin—in his palm. He didn’t mean it, he thought as they climbed back into the wagon, but in his heart Ren knew that Dolly had meant it, and he would have done it again, and again. After this Ren couldn’t think anymore. Instead he felt the air on his damp skin, the smell of fish in his clothes. The lamppost disappeared behind them, and the boy realized that he was sharing a seat with a murderer. There would be no more bargaining with God. He was into hell now for sure.
Ren hurried the horse along, trying to put as much distance between the wagon and the town as possible. The law would be after them soon, if they weren’t after Dolly already. Ren’s palm began to sweat as he thought of getting caught. Every few minutes he checked to make sure they weren’t being followed. Before long they were beyond the limits, and then in the open countryside. Dolly leaned back in his seat, as if all of this was happening to someone else. The moon came out from behind a cloud, but the man’s face remained dark.
“You killed them, Dolly.”
“It’s their own fault.”
“That doesn’t make it right.” There was a rustling in the woods at the side of the road. Ren turned his head. He felt the trees watching them. The oaks and the elms and the maples towered over the wagon, their branches swaying. Ren felt the words of contrition at the back of his throat, and then they were spilling out: O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee. He glanced over at Dolly, who was looking up at the stars. “You’re going to have to confess too.”