by Brom Kearne
12
Thorn had a few leads he wanted to follow in town, but for the moment he didn’t want to leave the avenue that had unexpectedly opened up for him on this side of the river. He now had a name to go with the gang: the Amber Bones, and he had eyes on someone who had been in contact with them, at least insofar as they had given him a bandana. If Eli could lead Thorn to the gang then he could wrap this whole thing up tonight.
He found a decent vantage point from where he could watch Eli’s bedroom and remained there for most of the night. Josh and his wife Marie argued constantly. She despised living on the farm and blamed her husband for their loss of status in Bradenfield. She accused him of having been intentionally fired, and of having nowhere else left to turn besides his brother’s farm. In his turn, he accused her of never supporting him, of constantly sabotaging him and undermining everything he did so he was guaranteed to fail.
Thorn grew so frustrated with their constant arguing that he removed himself from his vantage point and took up another further away, so their voices only carried to him in muffled shouts. He thought that it was no wonder Eli had been so aggressive. Thorn felt a little guilty for taunting him the way he did. If Scott Tanning’s home life had been this bad Thorn understood the allure of joining a gang where he could feel important. He didn’t know what to make of Eli’s talk of a revolution, but it was probably just kids being kids, wanting to feel like they were a part of something bigger than themselves, wanting to get back at their parents for a frustrated and ruined childhood.
After several hours Thorn again dug into his traveling rations. Nothing happened all night. Eli never left his room and he was never visited by other members of the gang. It was well before dawn when Thorn made his way back to the Pith farm tired and bored. He went into the loft and got a few hours of sleep in.
His internal clock wouldn’t allow him to sleep much beyond sunrise, despite how tired he was. Besides, he could see smoke coming out of the Pith’s chimney, which meant that breakfast was not going to be long in coming. He was starved and the thought of a good breakfast almost made up for the supper he’d missed the night before.
He was not disappointed. Despite the meagerness of the current crop, Mrs. Pith laid an outstanding breakfast table. Thorn helped himself to eggs, bacon, hotcakes and syrup, hominy, fried potatoes, and plenty of coffee.
“We missed you at dinner last night,” Mr. Pith said.
“You’re wearing the same thing you were yesterday. Did you even get any sleep?” Mrs. Pith asked.
“A little. I apologize for missing supper. If it was anything like this outstanding breakfast, then I really missed out.”
Mrs. Pith smiled at the compliment.
“Well there’s no supper tonight. We’re having a meeting with the other farming families at the Varick’s. Airing some of our grievances. You’re welcome to attend if it suits you.”
The last thing Thorn wanted to do was sit around listening to a bunch of farmers airing their grievances, especially after listening to the Varicks fight all night. “I’d love to but, um, I’ll probably be busy running down more leads.”
“Suit yourself. I thought it might give you an opportunity to speak with some of the other farmers about that gang you’re chasing. It’s one of the topics of debate, what with them attacking our farms and the pale greens doing nothing to stop them.”
Thorn stopped chewing for a moment because Mr. Pith was right. It would be a great opportunity to speak with some of the other farmers. If Eli Varick had been approached by the gang, it stood to reason that other teenagers had as well. Either they or their parents might know something that could point him in the right direction, and having them all in one place would save him the trouble of running all over town to speak with them.
“I guess I might find some time,” Thorn said.
“Whether you do or you don’t, it’ll be at the Varick’s this evening at six o’clock. Everyone’s bringing a dish, so there’ll be food at the least.”
“In that case I wouldn’t want to miss it. I’ve got a few things I want to check on in town first.”
“If you’re going into town you’d best walk because that buggy of yours will be cited a dozen times over the moment you cross the Foamingwake Bridge. Our government is useless if not for collecting fines and taxes.”
Thorn didn’t mind stretching his legs, and he certainly didn’t mind leaving behind the clunking old hunk to walk over the Foamingwake Bridge to the eastern side of Webster Grove. He could see the stone buildings rising on the other side of the river as he came near the top of the bridge. It was a stark contrast to the rustic plains behind him.
The zenith of the Foamingwake Bridge offered a breathtaking view of the Old Foss and the floodplain in which Webster Grove had been built with the great river snaking its way off to the north and the south. The narrow bend around which the town had arisen was conspicuous from up here. Despite the man-made drought, the land on which the farmers lived, at least from up here, looked like a green half-moon. On the other side there was no greenery anywhere. The pine grove for which the town was named had been sacrificed early on to build the piers and warehouses that lined the river, as well as the boats and ferries that sailed upon it. Immediately on the other side of the bridge was the docks district, the most important feature of the town. Countless piers jutted into the river to accommodate the robust shipping industry that provided Webster Grove with the majority of its economic windfall. Beyond the docks district the wooden buildings gave way to tall buildings made from stone.
Originally a ferry boat was sufficient to carry people back and forth across the river, but as trade exploded and people pushed westward the necessity of a bridge became paramount. Tad Webster himself had designed the bridge to span the Old Foss, and though the original had collapsed and taken with it an entire caravan of settlers, Tad Webster learned from his mistakes and designed a stronger, sturdier bridge which continues to serve the people of Webster Grove to this day. He also designed the lock system to accommodate the large barges that needed to sail under it. Most of the river boats were short and flat, and were perfectly capable of navigating under the bridge. Tad Webster, however, was a visionary, and foresaw his town becoming one of the wealthiest in the Free Lands, and the jewel of the west, and believed that someday the Old Foss would be sailed by bigger and bigger boats. He financed the entire project out of his own not inconsiderable wealth, and maintained it by tolls paid by those who made use of the lock.
After Webster died childless the bridge passed into the city’s hands, and they wasted no time in first increasing the toll for the lock, and then instituting a toll for any boat that passed under the bridge. The shipping companies had been designing their barges to be wider and flatter, so they would not have need of using the lock and this practice was seized upon by the Webster Grove government as they pushed for the bridge toll, citing that these shipping companies were using sleazy tactics and going to extreme measures to avoid paying what was, to them, a tiny toll. They did not have difficulty in bending public will against the shipping companies.
Like most governments that get a taste of money and power, only to devolve into a feeding frenzy over it, it was not long before Webster Grove began charging a toll on anyone who used the bridge at all. They saw the flux of people moving west and wanted a piece of it, above and beyond what their passage through the town meant for the local economies. This made it prohibitive for farmers to do business in the town proper at all, as they had to pay the toll going both ways, and it was this act which first cemented the personality of the town’s two disparate halves.
Most of the people who worked on the barges and piers were up from Level Shore, which was a pirate town and had the reputation for existing in a state of civilized anarchy. Level Shore lacked a strong central government, and so the various factions vying for control staged a coup every so many years. And the people backed which ever faction promised the best opportunities for themselves at the moment. It was nothing for
the pier workers of Webster Grove to speak of and foster a revolution in response to the excessive taxation, and the town went through a very difficult period of civil unrest as each successive cadre of leaders was thrown out on their rears.
This period of unrest lasted until Fred Mallory was elected mayor, running on the platform of eliminating the bridge tax for everyone. Unlike most politicians running for office, he actually fulfilled his promise. Just like most politicians running for office, however, he did not tell the whole story of his plan. He made up for the lost revenue by instituting a property tax on all privately-held land. His reasoning was that the shipping companies had been using nefarious means to circumvent the bridge tax, including land shipping and smuggling, and that by taxing all privately-held properties he was forcing them to pay their fair share. Of course, this share fell hardest on the farmers and the citizens who now had to pay an exorbitant amount of money just to keep the land they already owned.
And Fred Mallory was not forthright on another point. He was heavily backed by the L & D Shipping Company, which had been for some time quietly selling off their privately-held assets and moving into publicly-held warehouses, the use for which they paid a small fee to the city and bypassed the property taxes altogether. Len Dietrich the Second had formulated this plan and had paid what was necessary to get Fred Mallory elected. The result was that their competition simply could not compete, and within a few years L & D had established a monopoly over not only the town of Webster Grove, but the entire shipping lane that was the Old Foss.
For his part, Fred Mallory embezzled large sums of money from the city. He wanted to build himself a palace made entirely of marble, but settled, for the time being, on building giant mermaid statues at each end of the Foamingwake Bridge. The project ran massively over budget and in his desperation to leave his permanent mark on the town Mallory began seeking other sources of money, including stealing from the very company that had gotten him elected in the first place.
The mermaids were never completed. They continue to stand as giant misshapen hunks of marble at either end of the bridge and are referred to derisively as Mallory’s Mermaids. As for Fred Mallory, he disappeared one day and was never heard from again. His disappearance gave rise to no shortage of folktales and stories to explain it, as well as the occasional person who comes forward claiming to have knowledge of his whereabouts, or with claims of having seen him alive and living in a distant part of the province. A few people have claimed to have seen his ghost sobbing under the moonlight shadow of his mermaid statues late at night, giving rise to the notion that he was done in by Len Dietrich the Second for his betrayal, and dumped in the river.
The river was active today as Thorn crossed the Foamingwake Bridge with barges, most of them colored with the red and gold emblem of the L & D Shipping Company, sailing up and down the river. The sound of water being suctioned into or out of the lock provided a strong undercurrent of sound to the wharf and buoy bells, conversations and music wafting from the many riverside pubs, and the creaking of ropes as wooden cranes loaded the boats with cargo.
Thorn walked under the morning shadow of Mallory’s Mermaids as he came onto the wharf. Every building was either a pub or an L & D Shipping warehouse. Some of these pubs were already quite rowdy even in the early morning. They were packed twenty-four hours a day as the stream of sailors arrived with their cargo and their pay burning holes in their pockets at all hours.
Thorn began to think that maybe Marshal Wolcott had been right. L & D Shipping was the only company getting attacked by the Amber Bones because they were the only shipping company in town. Or in the whole province, by the looks of it. He thought that his time would probably be better spent watching Eli Varick, as he was the only person Thorn had encountered so far who had been in direct contact with the gang, but the truth was that Thorn was bored. He hated long stake outs and when the job required them he usually found a different job. Thorn didn’t have the attention span or the patience for it. He wanted to be in the middle of things, and a rowdy saloon was the perfect place to work out some of his boredom. With any luck there’d be a fight and he’d get to bust some heads.
Thorn found a saloon that seemed particularly busy and ordered a drink while he mingled with the wharf workers. He pretended to be a drifter looking for work on the river and was liberal with buying drinks for everyone to get them talking about L & D Shipping.
After an hour or two Thorn had acquired a lot of knowledge but very little of it was of much use to him. He could recite the town’s political history and the rise of L & D Shipping, two subjects that were inextricably entwined. The workers both loved and reviled the shipping company, as it was the hand that fed them, but also the hand that worked them to the bone.
“The pay is good, that’s for sure, but they treat us like ants,” one of the sailors remarked to Thorn. “Like worker ants, right? Like you’re not a person and your labor belongs to them. And then when they’re done with you you’re tossed aside for the next willing body.”
While the sailors and dock workers had a mixed helping of loving and loathing for the company they worked for, they were unanimous in their hatred for the local government. As most of them were from Level Shore they spoke openly about revolution, about toppling the government and instituting someone that would help reign in the excesses of the L & D Shipping Company. They seemed to be operating under the belief that if they simply keep replacing the town’s leadership, eventually they’d get someone that would do things “the right way.” Thorn found that no two people, however, were in agreement on what “the right way” was, and conversations about the subject usually devolved into arguments, and from there into fist fights. The saloons seemed to have taken a hands-off approach to the inevitable fist fights that broke out. It took Thorn a little while to put his finger on what was so odd about these saloons, but after watching his first fight he figured it out. They did not have any furniture, and those tables they did have were bolted to the floor. This was not only to prevent grave injury on the part of the fighters, but to prevent the saloon owners from having to replace chairs every time a new barge came in. Drinks were served in tin cups that, while being heavily dented in some cases, were not prone to shattering as a glass or ceramic mug would be.
The endless discussions of political struggles bored Thorn. He didn’t feel that any of it applied to him since he lived as far west as he could in a place that was mostly untouched by the Bradenfield or, for that matter, the Webster Grove, political structure. The quarrels of the workers seemed petty and small, although he enjoyed them a great deal more when they devolved into fist fights, because those were something he enjoyed very much.
After a while Thorn realized that he was just wasting time. No one in there knew anything about Brad Hadlik or the Amber Bones. He had made his way through many of the bars along the wharf, had bought countless drinks, and was feeling quite tipsy himself when he stepped outside for some air and to refocus on his mission. He discovered to his chagrin that he had blown through the money he’d allotted for the job and he was now completely broke. Thorn had never been very good with managing money. It slipped through his fingers faster than water.
As Thorn was looking out over the wharf and the river, his eyes followed a train of cargo that, having been unloaded from the barges, was sent up the wharf to be loaded onto a horse-drawn wagon. These wagons were each lined up under a sign that labeled its destination. Once a wagon was full it departed and another took its place.
Of course that’s where he needed to be. Thorn shook his head in amazement at his own ineptitude as he went up the wharf to where the overland shipping wagons were being loaded. At least, he thought to himself, the rum on his breath would help sell his disguise as a vagrant looking for work.
Thorn found a group of workers that were taking a break and sidled up next to them as he waited for a way into their conversation. They were friendly. In fact, and despite the frequent fist fights in the saloons, Thorn had found mo
st of the dock workers to be quite open and friendly. The fights were just a matter of course, and a matter of settling difficult political arguments. There hadn’t been any true malice behind any of them.
“What does a fellow need to do to find some work around here?’ Thorn asked.
“If you ain’t found work it’s because you ain’t looking,” replied one of the workers.
“Head on up the wharf and you’ll find the hiring station. They’re always willing to pay you a few dollars for a shift of unloading cargo or mopping the decks. You don’t even need a reference.”
“I’ve gotten myself into a bit of trouble with gambling,” Thorn said, “and I was hoping to make a bit more than a few bucks. What about driving one of those wagons? That pay good?”
“You ain’t gonna get into a driving job,” one of the workers replied.
“I’ve heard they might have a place for people who were willing to bend the rules a little bit. You know, make a little extra on the side for carrying a little extra on the side.”
The workers exchanged uneasy glances. “You’re talking about smuggling?”
Thorn nodded.
“We don’t know nothing about that.”
“Of course,” Thorn said quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply. I’m just a little desperate is all. But it’s kind of dangerous work, isn’t it? Didn’t I just hear of someone getting attacked a few days ago?”
“That’s why they hand-pick their drivers. On account of the danger. You never know when some bandits are gonna attack.”
“You’re not talking about Brad Hadlik are you?” asked a different worker.
The other workers exchanged uneasy glances again.
“What do you know about that?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Thorn said quickly. It was always such a delicate dance, trying to ask his questions without seeming like that’s all he wanted, and while he liked to think that he was good at it, the truth is that he wasn’t. And that’s why he usually bought lots of drinks for everyone. “It’s just they were talking about it in the saloon when I asked if I could get a driving job. They said the ghost of Court Raleigh got him. That kind of stuff gives me the shivers, but I’d be willing to risk it if the pay is good.”
“Court Raleigh is just an old folk tale,” the worker said, although the color had drained out of his face. “You’d best be concerned about real threats like pirates.”
“Well, something got him,” said another worker, “and it wasn’t no pirate. And whatever it was has got the drivers spooked. I’ve seen full-grown men flatly refuse to drive west at night.”
“It wasn’t no ghost,” said the first worker. “That land out there is lonely, hard territory to cross and Brad Hadlik had a mental breakdown. That’s all there is to it. That’s why they got him under observation at the hospital.”
“No, they put him under guard so he couldn’t get out and tell the rest of us the truth. They’re sweeping the whole thing under the rug.”
“What did the pale greens say?” Thorn asked.
At least on this point the workers were in agreement as they harrumphed audibly.
“Pale greens are useless. Besides, Len Dietrich owns this town. He’s got his own private police force and nothing happens here that he doesn’t know about. If he wants this matter hushed up, then it’s hushed up and you’d be better off if you stopped asking so many questions.”
An eruption of noise from one of the saloons arrested their attention and prevented Thorn from answering. A man wearing nothing but long johns had burst out of the upper window and had crashed to the wharf below. If he had sustained any injuries he didn’t show it as he popped to his feet and began running up the wharf. A couple of men leaned out the window, pointing to him before disappearing quickly back inside.
“Bar fights,” one of the workers said derisively, although by the look of him he had seen a few himself.
“Sailors from Level Shore have no respect for anything,” said another, and they all nodded.
As the man ran up the wharf towards them, Thorn was surprised to see that he knew him.
“Jol?” Thorn said. “Jol Levey?”
Jol stopped, blinking a few times as though he were too drunk to focus. The two men from the window burst out the front of the saloon and continued their pursuit, drawing a furtive and frightened glance from Jol as he tried to focus on Thorn.
“Thorn? Thorn, you’ve got to help me.” He began clawing at Thorn’s shirt. He reeked of rum, his hair was an unkempt mess, and his long johns had stains all over them.
“Last time I saw you, I was hired by a debt collector to bring you in. What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”
“They’re going to hurt me, please!”
Jol gave a startled cry as the two men closed the distance. Jol cowered behind Thorn’s broad shoulders as they drew nigh.
The two men looked from Jol to Thorn and back again. “Are we going to have a problem here?”
Although he didn’t know them, Thorn recognized them as bounty hunters. The workers with whom Thorn had been speaking were standing uneasily nearby in case things got rough. They weren’t entirely sure whose side they were on, but they were ready to bust some heads nonetheless, if things went in that direction.
“What do you want this man for?” Thorn asked.
“That’s none of your concern,” said one of the bounty hunters.
“How much are you getting for him?”
The bounty hunters exchanged glances. One of them had been stepping lightly to the side so as to have Thorn flanked should there be any trouble. Thorn stepped back, bumping into Jol and pushing him back as well.
“Five bucks,” said the bounty hunter.
“He hardly seems worth the effort,” Thorn said, “for just five bucks.”
“Please, Thorn, you’ve got to help me,” Jol whimpered. “You don’t know what they’re going to do to me. You have to help me!”
“I have to do exactly nothing,” Thorn said over his shoulder. “I’ve hunted you down before for your gambling problem, no different than these fellows. My guess is you’ve gotten yourself in debt again and that’s none of my business. If I thought you were worth it I’d beat these two into submission and bring you in myself.”
Jol made a frightened cry and began backing up.
Thorn actually was considering taking out these two bounty hunters and delivering Jol himself. He could use the money after blowing it all in the saloons on a pointless investigation. Ultimately he decided against it. He already had a job to worry about, and he knew from experience that working for debt collectors was more trouble than it was worth. He wasn’t going to hinder these bounty hunters, but he wasn’t going to stand aside either.
They kept a wary eye on Thorn as they advanced around him. When Thorn didn’t make a move they broke into a sprint, and caught one of Jol’s feet just as he was jumping off the wharf for the river below. He began screeching and kicking, shouting, “This is on your head, Thorn! This is on your head!”
It took both of them to wrestle him down to the point that they could bind his arms and shove a gag in his mouth. He was still kicking as they hauled him away.
The workers with whom Thorn had been talking were eyeing him harshly after everything quieted back down.
“You’re not really looking for work, are you?” one of them asked.
Thorn shook his head. “No, I’ve got a job and you’ve been very helpful. Just tell me where the L & D headquarters are.”
“You ain’t getting in to see Mr. Dietrich, if that’s what you’re after.”
“That’s my problem.”
“Len Dietrich Way,” answered another of the workers.
Thorn didn’t understand him, and thought that he had said that Len Dietrich was away. “Excuse me?”
“Len Dietrich Way,” he repeated. “It’s the name of the road. Most everything here is named for him in some way or other.”
“I see,” Thorn said.
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br /> If Thorn wasn’t broke he would have thrown them a dollar. As it was he merely departed and made his way into town.