A Congregation of Jackals

by S. Craig Zahler

  As the New Yorker slapped his palms against the Montana Territory stone, the faces of various women flitted through his mind. He knew that none of them would think of him when their final hours came.

  Dicky’s draining blood saturated his shirt and the jagged rock beneath his spine. A diaphanous pink bubble inflated on his cold lips; its sibling burgeoned in one of the holes that pierced his chest. His hands and feet filled with ice.

  Oswell Danford stood over him; the rancher’s head was as high as the tallest mountain peak; he said, “You want me to put another in you?”

  Dicky coughed up blood. He wheezed; frigid air blew through the holes in his lungs. The spirit that played the drum in his chest dissipated. His left leg began to twitch.

  A coldness crept up from his extremities, toward his eyes. His vision began to narrow. He thought of Viola, the whore with whom he had invested all of himself last evening. He tried to imagine what his child would look like, yet saw only a blank face.

  He exhaled; the drum in his chest boomed one more time and was then silent.

  Chapter Forty

  Dusk Trepanation

  A bandaged wedding guest named Doc Earl pulled the penultimate nail from Beatrice’s skull, leaving behind a hole an eighth of an inch deep; a drop of warm blood slid down the side of her head, onto her shoulder. The medical man lifted pincers from a blue fire and pressed them against the wound. Blood sizzled for one long second as the puncture was cauterized. He removed the pincers and pressed a swab to the wound.

  A halo of dull pain throbbed around her head, but the morphine the doctor had given her made the experience bearable if not entirely remote. She looked at the eleven nails beside her feet; the points of the steel rods were stained with crimson.

  The doctor plucked the final nail from the back of her skull and tossed it to its siblings, where it landed with a clink. He cauterized the puncture with the heated pincers; blood sizzled; the smell was nauseatingly similar to that of a panfried steak. He pressed a swab to the sterilized wound and then wrapped gauze around the pulsating dozen.

  Because she found the thought of donning her wedding gown utterly abhorrent, Beatrice wore Smiler’s coat with her corset underneath. She would probably feel cold if not for the warming narcotic coursing through her veins.

  Upon his arrival, Doc Earl had informed her and her father that a few people left within the church had actually survived, albeit with serious injuries, and that the trunks had been pulled from the wreckage by the townsfolk too. Everyone had reclaimed their valuables, and all of the missing persons were accounted for. Twenty-nine wedding guests had died.

  Beatrice’s father kept his arm around her shoulders the entire time, excepting when she had dressed and when he and Smiler had to restrain Goodstead while the doctor fished the Indian’s bullet out of his stomach. The deputy was averse to surgery and had repeatedly said, “It’ll come out on its own” and “I trust in my abilities to excrete,” throughout the process.

  Her father offered her the neck of a canteen lit gold by the scalp of the sinking sun. She took it and drank; the cool liquid wet her parched mouth and throat.

  “You should try to escape,” Goodstead, pale and holding a towel to his stomach, said to Oswell. He pointed to the west. “Now’s your chance. Run for it.”

  The rancher, seated upon a stone, said nothing in response; he just stared at the gilded horizon.

  “Go on Oswell, skedaddle,” the Texan advised. “I promise to any god but the one I believe in that I won’t shoot you right away.”

  “Deputy Everett Goodstead,” Beatrice’s father said admonishingly; his strong voice resonated through the arm with which he held her. “My daughter’s seen too much violence. Mr. Danford gets hanged like I told him.”

  Her father raised a damp cloth and wiped her face; with metal thread, Doc Earl secured the gauze that encircled her head.

  “I still cannot believe that James was an outlaw,” Beatrice said. “He was the gentlest man I ever knew.” Her words were small, soft and fuzzy from the morphine. This was what she had sounded like when she was nine years old.

  “He never willingly hurt another person,” Oswell said.

  “Don’t go turnin’ him into a goddamn martyr,” Goodstead said to the rancher. “Don’t you dare. We got twenty-nine dead people and their families, and none of them care how sweet James was back when he was robbin’ banks and shootin’ folks.”

  “None of us are martyrs. We all did bad things and deserve to hang. I just wanted Miss Jeffries to know that there was never any malice in James Lingham.”

  “And you?” her father asked.

  “I wanted to be sheriff when I was little, but things went bad for me and I turned mean.”

  “That’s how it happens,” her father said.

  At that moment Beatrice noticed that the timbre of Oswell’s voice and her father’s was exactly the same.

  Her veins and tissues warmed by the opiate, Beatrice stared up into the sky. The moon sat on a bed of cotton; large black birds soundlessly circled the orb like dried leaves on the surface of a pond.

  Smiler pointed to Quinlan, his crew and Dicky, prostrated on the stone, and said, “Them buzzards is gonna eat well.”

  “If they’re immune to poison,” Goodstead remarked.

  “It’s time to head back home,” her father said, and kissed her on the cheek.

  Chapter Forty-one

  An Addendum

  P.S. The sheriff of Trailspur fetched the letter so I could add this information before it goes out tomorrow with the mail. I am in jail right now.

  We took down Quinlan and his crew. I am sure that there will be something about it in the papers since a lot of innocent folks got hurt and killed. I can tell you now (if you didn’t figure it out already) that Godfrey was the one I referred to as the other fellow, so you won’t see him again either. He was hanged, and so was J. I wound up putting D down myself because I thought he might draw on the sheriff, though now I think D just didn’t want to get hanged, which some fellows find much worse than getting shot. Either way, I am the last one of the Tall Boxer Gang and I am going to get hanged on the first of September.

  If you want to tell me anything before they string me up, send a wire to Theodore William Jeffries at 10 Oak Avenue in Trailspur, Montana Territory, and he will pass the message along. If you want me to be buried in Virginia, let him know that too because he said he would send my body there. It is up to you and what you think best for the kids. Maybe telling them that I’m on a trip is better than telling them what really happened, which might affect them badly or make them ashamed. Good-bye.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Branches (Broken and Bent)

  T.W., wearing a brown suit and leather shoes, sat on the couch in his den; the weathered throw quilt his deceased wife had made pressed familiarly into his back. With a heavy lump in his stomach, he stared at the window; he had dreaded this particular sunrise.

  “Do you want sausages or bacon?” Meredith inquired.

  He looked over at the woman: her black and silver hair was pulled back into a bun; the cuts and bruises upon her face from the wedding were now almost invisible.

  T.W. said, “I’m not too hungry. I’ll just have some eggs and biscuits.” He remembered neither shoving her into the aisle during Quinlan’s getaway nor shielding her when gunshots rang out, but according to her he had done both of these things.

  Meredith had been cooking for him and helping him up and down the stairs the last nineteen days, encouraging him to walk, and also discouraging him from overdoing it. Oftentimes, she and Beatrice discussed Italian paintings, German music and English writers; T.W. did not at all follow these conversations, but he relished the sound of them.

  The widow asked, “How is your hip doing today?”

  “Better. I should be able to tackle the stairs without any help pretty soon.”

  “I do not at all mind escorting you to your bedroom.”

  Despite the fact that T
.W. was a fifty-seven-year-old man who had faced peril and savagery and violence and tragedy throughout his life, a rose hue illuminated his cheeks, wrought by her intimation. Meredith and he had abstained from fornicating while his hip mended, but they had tasted each other often during the late hours.

  “I appreciate the help,” he said, looking to the window to conceal his blush.

  Footsteps upon the stairs garnered his attention; he turned around and saw his daughter descending in her lavender nightgown and slippers. The bandages had come off of her head six days ago; her fast-growing blonde hair already covered over most of the wounds, excepting the four on her forehead.

  “Good morning, Daddy,” Beatrice said. She had gone back to calling him that ever since her wedding.

  “Good morning, Bea,” he said.

  “Good morning, Meredith.”

  “Good morning, Beatrice. Would you like sausages or bacon with your eggs?”

  “I would enjoy bacon, thank you.”

  Beatrice sat beside her father and kissed him on the cheek.

  “How did you sleep last night?” he inquired.

  She hesitated for a moment and said, “I slept well.”

  “How much did you get?”

  “A couple of hours at night. Then I read until dawn and fell asleep again until now.”

  “Four hours. That’s not enough.”

  Her face had new lines in it around the edges of her mouth and at the corners of her eyes; her cheeks and chin were sharper than they had been.

  “It is more than most nights,” she said. “It is easier for me to sleep after the sun has come up.”

  “What did you read?” Meredith inquired as she laid six strips of bacon into a heated frying pan.

  “A story by an English author named Wilfred Ronald Meyerson.”

  “Which one?” The bacon sizzled.

  Beatrice hesitated before she said, “ ‘Embraced by the Hands of the Beast.’ ”

  T.W. did not at all like the sound of that story, but he waited for Meredith’s response. It seemed that almost any comment he made on art was incorrect.

  “That is an extraordinarily evocative chiller,” Meredith said as she poked the hissing bacon with a long fork. “Did you find it frightening?”

  “I did find it frightening, especially when Lynette was lost in the catacombs. I could hardly breathe when she reached into the darkness and felt that wall of fur, and those hearts beating on the other side of it.”

  T.W. said, “That doesn’t sound like it’s going to help you get to sleep.”

  “It occupies my mind.”

  T.W. looked at Meredith to see if he should say anything more on the matter; the woman shook her head. He felt that it was valuable for his daughter to put her thoughts elsewhere while she distanced herself from the tragedy, but he found her morbid inclinations, sleeplessness and night fears troubling. He had not once seen her look at a Bible since her wedding, and when the new minister came to Trailspur (it turned out that Minister Bachs had been tortured to death by Minister Orton), she had very little interest in his spiritual guidance.

  Meredith slid two-color eggs, lard biscuits and bacon onto three plates and carried them from the kitchen. T.W. snatched his cane (with his daughter’s help), stood, walked to the dining-room table and sat down on the seat the widow withdrew for him. Despite his request for no bacon, she had given him two crispy strips.

  “Thank you,” he said to Meredith. He asked his daughter, “Do you want to say grace?”

  “You may say it.”

  T.W. bowed his head forward and said, “Come dine with us, Lord Jesus, be a guest in our home. Let these gifts to us be blessed. Amen.”

  Meredith said, “Amen.”

  Beatrice silently raised her head.

  T.W. tore off a piece of his lard biscuit and dipped it into an egg yolk; the porous pastry inhaled the yellow syrup. He put it into his mouth and chewed mechanically.

  “I think I should visit my great-aunt,” Beatrice remarked in a small voice.

  T.W. swallowed and said, “You want to go to England?”

  Beatrice turned her eyes away from her father and nodded, guiltily.

  He wiped his mustache with his napkin and asked, “For a holiday?”

  “I do not know for certain, but I feel that I must leave Trailspur for a little while.”

  Several times since the tragedy she had mentioned the idea of going away on a trip, but never before had she named such a far-off destination.

  “Think on it for a couple of days,” he said. “If you still want to go, I will send your aunt Grace a letter.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded his head. The thought of her leaving was a very painful one, but he understood why she felt the need to put space between herself and the Montana Territory. He would not attempt to dissuade her if she became fixed on the notion.

  They ate their meals, T.W. eating far less than he usually did. He chewed each bite far past the point of flavor, awaiting the inevitable knock on the door that he had dreaded since dawn.

  Boots clacked on the step to his front door. He swallowed the eggs almost forgotten in his mouth. A fist knocked thrice upon the wood.

  “Mayor Jeffries,” Goodstead said.

  “Come in, Sheriff,” T.W. replied.

  The door opened; Meredith and the Jeffries looked toward the sunlit portal. Sheriff Goodstead, wearing a dark blue shirt, matching trousers and a silver vest, upon which he had pinned his badge, entered the house; he removed his gray hat. Deputy Kenneth John, wearing black, followed shortly after; he had thinned out and trimmed his beard since the tragedy.

  “Good morning, folks,” Goodstead said.

  “Good morning, Sheriff. Good morning, Deputy,” Beatrice replied.

  “Good morning,” Meredith said.

  Kenneth John said, “Hello.”

  T.W. grimaced and nodded.

  The Texan looked at Beatrice and Meredith and said, “The mayor’s hoarding all the pretty ones in here.” He looked at T.W. and said, “You selfish.”

  “How is your mother doing?” T.W. asked Kenneth John.

  “She ate something,” he said without elaboration.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” T.W. replied. The woman had never recovered from her elder son’s death three years ago and was now a widow as well. If she fell ill again, the mayor doubted that she would fight to stay alive, though Kenneth John was doing his best to make her proud.

  “Do you like my new vest?” Goodstead asked Beatrice. “Look at the tassels on the back.” He turned around to display the ten small pendants of silver thread that hung there. He shook himself; the tassels swung pendulously and glinted.

  “It definitely suits you,” Beatrice said.

  “Thanks,” he replied, and turned back around.

  Meredith said to the Texan, “You have a cheerful attitude, considering what you are about to do.”

  “You ever have a cold where you get better—it’s almost all gone—but there’s just this little bit you have left, botherin’ you? Like a cough or some phlegm?”

  “I have.”

  “That’s what Oswell Danford is.”

  T.W. slapped his palms to the table and stood up; the legs of his chair scraped across the wooden floor. Meredith handed him his cane. He kissed her and then pressed his lips to his daughter’s forehead.

  The mayor looked at Goodstead and said, “Let’s get it over with.”

  They walked to the door; the three men put on their hats the moment they crossed the threshold and were struck by the sun.

  Mayor Jeffries and Sheriff Goodstead sat upon mares outside of the town jail, a squat stone edifice with four barred windows. The building was currently being expanded to accommodate the influx of strangers that the tragedy had attracted.

  Seventy people were gathered on the sides of the avenue, including Big Abe and his wife, Judge Higgins, Rita, Wilfreda (whose arm was in a sling), Roland and Vanessa Taylor (who had lost both of their child
ren and looked wrathful), Snappy Fa (who had been caught in the collapse, survived, but lost a leg), the Sallys, a dozen other wedding guests with painful souvenirs, and more than a score of strangers. Ed the barber and a customer with a half-lathered face walked out of his shop to join the assemblage.

  The door to the jail opened; Deputy Kenneth John escorted Oswell Danford outside. The rancher wore brown trousers and a beige shirt that had been cleaned yesterday for today’s event; his wrists were manacled. He squinted in the bright sunlight, his face covered with a prickly beard as red as Godfrey’s had been. The throng silently watched the deputy escort the man toward a saddled white horse.

  An egg struck Oswell’s face and cracked; clear and yellow mucoidal strands dangled from his right cheek. Kenneth John continued to walk the prisoner forward. A rock cracked against Oswell’s forehead, leaving behind a red mark T.W. saw from ten yards off.

  The mayor fired a pistol into the air; the report eddied through the crowd and to the plains.

  T.W. yelled, “That isn’t what happens in Trailspur!”

  “Look what he did! Look what he did,” Tara’s mother Vanessa yelled, her voice raw with rage.

  T.W. cantered his horse directly toward the woman and said, “He’s going to pay for what he did, Mrs. Taylor, I promise you. But the Montana Territory is going be a state soon—we must be civilized. This man should and will be hanged as is proper by the laws of this country.”

  An onion smacked Oswell’s swollen ear; the rancher winced but said nothing.

  “That’s enough folks,” Sheriff Goodstead said. “From this moment forward, I will lock up anyone who throws somethin’ solider than a dirty look.”

  From his wheelchair, Grandpa Sally yelled, “He should be strung up in public! We should get to see him choke!”

  “That isn’t the kind of town I’m the mayor of,” T.W. said.

  “Then we shoulda voted somebody else!”

  “Maybe. But you have me for now.”

  Deputy Kenneth John led Oswell to the white steed; the prisoner jammed his left foot into the stirrup, grabbed the pommel with his manacled hands and hoisted himself up. A gunshot cracked the silence; everyone but T.W. and Oswell flinched. The mayor surveyed the crowd and the storefronts; he saw no shooter or smoke.