Crows & Cards

by Joseph Helgerson

  "Zeb," Chilly said, appearing tired of shouting at Goose, "come out to the kitchen. There's something I want you to try on for size."

  So we trooped out to the kitchen with Goose bringing up the rear 'cause he needed a couple of sit-down breathers on the way. Ho-John sat over by the stove, whittling a toy out of a block of wood and paying us no mind as we all squeezed into a pantry.

  "Climb onto that middle shelf there." Chilly pointed. "Take a look through that hole in back."

  I did it without no trouble, though I wasn't thrilled by its height, and if I'd bulged an inch or two bigger in any direction, it would have been a pinching tight fit. There was a crowd of crockery on the shelf above me, all full of pickles and relishes and such, while a troop of bottles and jars were spread across the shelf below me. The middle shelf had been cleared of everything but some grains of spilt salt, which was about as worrisome a sign as could be. Knowing how stern the Brotherhood felt about charms and portents and what have you, I waited till Chilly wasn't watching before sneaking a pinch of salt to throw over my left shoulder. I didn't skimp on crossing myself either. There wasn't any telling how long those grains had been laying there churning up bad luck, and I didn't plan on taking any chances.

  "What do you see?" Chilly asked.

  Rolling on my side, I squinted through a hole in the back wall.

  "The main parlor," I said.

  "All of it?"

  "Well"—I pressed an eye against the hole and searched around some—"pretty close to all of it. But mostly I got a view of the big table in front of me."

  "Perfect. And are you comfortable?"

  "Tolerably." I skipped over mentioning the salt or the height or how cramped it was.

  "If a pillow and blanket will square things, we'll get 'em for you. And anything else that'll make that shelf feel homey. You just name 'er and it's yours."

  "Oka-ay," I drawled, puzzled-like. "But why would you want me to feel at home on a pantry shelf?"

  "Oh that's not a pantry shelf," Chilly corrected.

  "It's not?" I squirmed around to see if I might have missed something. But no matter how hard I scouted her over, it still stacked up as a plain old wooden shelf.

  "No sir," Chilly boasted. "That there's our new telegraph office."

  CHAPTER TEN

  LINED UP AGAINST THE OTHER WONDERS of St. Louis, that new telegraph office was a considerable letdown. I put a brave face on my misgivings, not wanting Chilly to think me some ungrateful little carp, but my disappointment must have showed through, 'cause Chilly laid down the law.

  "Now see here, Zeb, can't everyone go expecting to start at the top. That ain't the way things work in this here world."

  "Expect not," I mumbled.

  "Come along now," Chilly ordered.

  And he jerked me off that shelf and marched me out of the kitchen, and back around to the parlor, where he stood me right before the wall shared with the pantry. As walls go, it weren't anything more special than some rough-cut old lumber that was pegged together. A long time back somebody had splashed Spanish brown wash over it. There were two pictures hanging on it, one of George Washington, all noble, the other of King Louis something or other, doing a bang-up job looking important too, though I wasn't in any mood for admiring them, not as sore as my arm felt after Chilly's roughhousing. If I'd been back home, my brother James would have been making crimpy baby faces at me, the way he did whenever I was about to cry. Just thinking of that made me want to blubber all the more, so I bit my lip and did my best not to snivel.

  "Now where do you reckon you were looking through this wall?" With a sweep of his hand, Chilly invited me to check things over.

  Well, the whereabouts of that peephole was a champion mystery. I couldn't find it anywhere, not in George Washington's or King Louis' eyes, nor any of the knotholes to be found here and there, which were all plugged solid.

  "Check that lower corner there." Chilly pointed me toward the frame around President Washington.

  Painted all gold and green and blue-purple, that frame was crawling with curlicues and carved vines and clustered grapes that looked more artful than the picture itself. After a minute or two of snooping, I found the hole I'd been peering through. The bottommost grape in a ripe-colored cluster had been punched clean out, not that you'd have ever noticed without putting your nose right up to it. The pantry on the other side was shadowy as Pa's smokehouse, so there wasn't any light leaking out.

  "You see?" Chilly said. "Won't anyone know you're there at all."

  If that's what Chilly thought was souring me, he was way past wrong. What had me so puckered up was that I'd just caught a whiff of something, maybe a rat.

  "I'm kind of wondering," I said, picking my words with care, "what I'll be doing back there?"

  "Why, helping rich men share their bounty," Chilly explained. "Here, let me show you something."

  He set Goose Nedeau down in the chair nearest the portrait of President Washington. Pulling out a deck of playing cards, he fanned five of 'em out in Goose's hand. "Sit still," he ordered Goose before parading me back to the pantry and waving me onto the shelf again. When I put my eye to the hole, I found myself looking over Goose Nedeau's right shoulder. He was holding two nines, a king, a ten, and a six.

  "That's the news you'll be spreading over the telegraph," Chilly said.

  "Ain't there supposed to be a wire or something for me to work with?"

  "Zeb says we need a wire," Chilly yelled out to Goose. I could tell by his uppity tone that he was poking fun at me. He knew full well that a telegraph needed wire.

  "He's a sharp one, all right," Goose heckled.

  "Even if I had a wire," I went on, "wouldn't somebody have to teach me how to talk over it with clicks and clacks? That's the way it's done, ain't it?"

  "He says we got to learn him clicks and clacks too," Chilly shouted to Goose.

  "Sounds like a job for the Professor," Goose yelled back.

  "Best leave me out of it," the Professor warned from behind the bar.

  Chilly jabbed my shoulder hard and asked in a mean voice, "Anything else bothering you?"

  "No," I sulked, though I did have one mighty big question circling around in my head.

  Try as I might, I couldn't quite figure why anyone on the other end of a long telegraph line would give a hoot about what cards Goose Nedeau was holding in his hand. Wouldn't they want to be hearing about something more important? Wouldn't floods or elections or steamboat races be on their minds? Wasn't that the kind of news fit for telegraphs? I couldn't get a hook on any answers to that question at all, though it turned out I didn't have to worry over it. Right about then, Chilly called out, "Ho-John, come in here. Got a job for you."

  Clinking chains all the way, Ho-John shuffled into the pantry, took one look at me, and announced, "I don't think he'll cook up none too good."

  "This ain't a cooking job," Chilly explained. "It's a carpentering job."

  Ho-John straightened up some upon hearing that and said, "You tell old Ho-John what you're needing. Leave the rest to him."

  "I want you to run a good stout wire up to this shelf that Zeb's on. I want you to run it down through the floor, under the house, and attach it to the bottom side of a floorboard in the main parlor."

  It didn't amount to much of a telegraph line. The total length would have run maybe ten to fifteen foot worth, give or take.

  "That mean you done found some new way to cheat the poor gents what come in here?" Ho-John wanted to know.

  I recoiled some at the sound of that. Back in Stavely's Landing, hauling out a word like cheat often as not ended in fisticuffs.

  "Well I like that!" Chilly cried, his cheeks taking on color fast. "Where do you think these gents get their money if not by cheating somebody else? Answer me that."

  "I wouldn't be knowing 'bout that," Ho-John said. "Imagine each of 'em gots their ways."

  "And if you add all those different ways up," Chilly came right back, "what do you think we'd h
ave us?"

  "I've done heard your preachering before, Mr. Chilly," Ho-John said. "There anything else you want fixed?"

  Ho-John could have done a better job on sounding respectful, but he could have done worse too. Mostly, he sounded kind of lukewarm. But answering Chilly's questions with a question, that wasn't anywhere near a good idea. It got Chilly's back up even more.

  "Only your manners," Chilly bristled.

  "Are we going to be cheating then?" I asked kind of peaked-and worried-like in the silence that followed.

  "Cheating's a mighty harsh word," Chilly commented, still glaring at Ho-John. "It ain't one the Brotherhood much favors."

  "What word does the Brotherhood go for?" I asked.

  "Shortening's the way we put it." Turning toward me, he simmered down enough to say, "Let me ask you this, Zeb. If one man's got a thousand dollars to make a thousand bets with, and another man's only got one dollar to make one bet with, who do you think's going to win?"

  "Why, the man with the thousand."

  "And does that seem fair?" Chilly asked.

  "If you're going to put 'er that way..." I backed off.

  "That's the only way to put it. 'Cause the fellows that come in here with their pockets bulging, in the long run they're going to win every time. Unless we do something to shorten 'em up some."

  "Still sound like cheating to me," Ho-John said, "and the Sunday preachers say there ain't nothing going to make that right."

  "Far as I can tell," Chilly reasoned, biting back some bile, "there ain't enough right to go around in this world, and a man in your shoes, Mr. Ho-John, ought to be the first to know it." To me, he added, "What you got to ask yourself, Zeb, is whether you want to lend a hand in spreading that right around. 'Cause what do you think the Brotherhood has me do with the money we earn from all this?"

  "Help out orphans?" I guessed.

  "That's exactly right," Chilly agreed, "along with other poor and needy. Old widows and one-legged Indian scouts and what have you. You remember why we share our winnings?"

  "'Cause sharing is what makes a man great," I quoted, double relieved to have remembered that lesson.

  "That's right, Zeb. It does. Now isn't that something you think worth doing? And before you answer that question," Chilly piled on, "you better answer this one: how do you think those rich folks got rich in the first place?"

  He had me there.

  When I said hard work, he pounced, asking if I'd ever seen any calluses on a rich man's hands.

  Well, I'd never seen a rich man's hands, not close up, but I didn't imagine they had any slivers sticking out. So I asked if they couldn't have maybe inherited their riches. Chilly allowed I might have a point but said if inheriting was all there was to it, we'd still be ruled over by some king or other back in England. That seemed an even sprucier point.

  When I guessed maybe they had found their riches, say in a gold mine or something, Chilly came right back with the news that whoever found a fortune still had to keep it, and how did I reckon they'd manage that, what with every chicken rustler and snake charmer between here and kingdom come after it.

  By then I was pretty much played out for answers and finally just came out and told him so. Chilly filled me in on the right answer pronto.

  "Zeb, my boy, nine times out of ten a rich gent got his fortune by cheating somebody else out of theirs. If they run a plantation, they got wealthy off the sweat of someone like Ho-John over there. If they own a store, they got it by charging everyone a nickel too much for whatever they're buying. So if you're bound and determined to think in terms of cheating, you better first give some thought as to who you'll be cheating. Hereabouts, you'll only be cheating the cheaters and taking their money and putting it in the hands of the less fortunate."

  I hadn't ever thought of all that before, and I must say it was an approach that took some getting used to. I'd got caught cheating once back home, when I'd bribed my sister Becky into copying some definitions from Ma's dictionary for me. Such lessons was how Ma taught us penmanship, and she spotted the difference in our handwriting without a blink. Even now I don't care to dwell on what happened next, 'cause I spent an awful sorrowful string of afternoons writing out triple the number of definitions I'd started with. Ma had been a schoolmarm before hooking up with Pa, and not one you ever wanted to cross.

  "What about that one rich man out of ten who earned his fortune without cheating?" I come back with, kind of weak.

  "You don't have to worry any about him," Chilly promised. "He ain't never going to be showing up around here trying to double his fortune. He's going to be plenty satisfied with what he's got and won't begrudge us what we're getting."

  Answers such as Chilly's deserved to put my mind to rest, and maybe they would have, if Ho-John hadn't been clucking his tongue real soft—the same exact way my pa was known to—and shaking his head as though Chilly's calculations beat all. When Chilly slapped a dime in my hand and told me to run down to First Street to get some telegraph wire, I jumped at the chance, more than happy to get shut of all the bothersome, naggy questions swarming around me.

  "Just don't let any crows follow you back," Chilly warned out of the blue, right before pushing me outside.

  "Do they do that?" I stalled in the doorway.

  "They've been known to, on occasion, and I won't tolerate 'em around. Hear? No scavengers. The Brotherhood won't allow it. Either you pull your own weight or you're out. That's the rule."

  Prickly as he sounded about it, I promised that I'd heard him just fine, though I was wishing hard that I hadn't. On top of everything else, now I had to worry about being followed by crows, who didn't fool around when it came to having beaks and claws.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I SLUNK DOWN TO FIRST STREET to hunt up a general store that carried wire, but what should have been high adventure ended up with considerable droops. For one thing, I couldn't let loose of the way that Chilly's explanation had made Ho-John wag his head no till he looked weary as Moses telling everyone one more time where he'd found those commandments. On top of that, I was supposed to be keeping an eye out for crows? And before long it occurred to me that I might even bump into my Great-Uncle Seth, though neither of us had the foggiest what the other looked like. Still and all, I steered clear of anyone with the slightest hint of a tanner about him, say a buckskin vest or coonskin cap or moccasins 'stead of boots.

  The first store I stepped into wanted a nickel for twenty foot of wire. The second store asked for a dime. Same for the third, so I headed back to number one. The starchy clerk behind the high counter there might have bumped up to a dime too, if he'd known how much Chilly'd given me, but at least I knew better than to go flashing money around before it was time to pay. Back home I would have heard plenty about shelling out such a sum for wire, and I headed toward Goose Nedeau's in spirits low as a swamp full of sorrowing frogs. But pretty soon I heard something that nailed my boots square to the road.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," a voice palavered, squawky as a jay, "friends and neighbors, countrymen and visiting nobility, cardsharps and low-down polecats, I'm here to tell you how to save you and your loved ones, if you tolerate any, from pains too demoralizing to mention. There's vapors and symptoms loose on the land. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's clear sailing just 'cause you and yours breezed through this past winter with nothing but the sniffles. You're not in the sunshine yet. There's ill winds blowing from far gone away. Mountain fever, rheumatic pains, the poxes—they're all but small potatoes if lined up with the troubles headed our way."

  Yes sir, it was Dr. Buffalo Hilly, all right, breathing hope and fear into a crowd of gawkers and especially into me. Why, I'd never before got around to considering half the hazards he was hanging out to dry. All of a sudden slivers and pecking hens paled. Buffalo Hilly's admonitions pushed 'em right out of my head.

  Still in his calvary suit, he'd climbed up top his wagon and was giving his accordion a solid pump every now and then to liven up his spiel. A
bout the only one unimpressed by what he was spewing was the camel hitched up front. Everyone else was looking at one another out of the corners of their eyes, wondering if anyone had heard of some new calamity brewing nearby. I know I was. Here and there wise heads were nodding yes, that they'd been expecting just such troubles any day now, which left me feeling in powerfully good company. And all the while everyone was creeping forward so they wouldn't miss a lick of what Buffalo Hilly had to say. Naturally, I was inching ahead right along with 'em, keeping an eye out for the Indian chief and princess as I went.

  "I've found the one treatment that casts out everything from consumption to tapeworms, female distresses to catarrh," Dr. Buffalo Hilly proclaimed. "It's a brain tonic of the first degree! Disordered stomachs, beware! We're talking herbs of joy! You can call me a yarb and root doctor if you've a mind to. All I can say is that this elixir works wonders and I'm the living proof."

  To get his point across, he threw back his head and clear out of the blue crowed like a rooster. "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

  I couldn't help but laugh with everyone else.

  Right on cue a cross-eyed man in a mud-splattered, ragged shirt lunged forward, shoving money at Buffalo Hilly, though where he'd come up with the price of the elixir was an open question and drew some snickers from the crowd. Still, the doctor treated him as if he was the genuine article—a sick man in need of healing. Flinging back his cape, Buffalo Hilly climbed down off his wagon to oblige his tipsy customer as if they were old friends, which somebody in the crowd accused them of being.

  "Friends in good health," Buffalo Hilly shot right back, taking such ragging right in stride, which primed the pump good. People surged forward.

  You might have thought he was the captain of a sinking ship stepping into the last lifeboat, the dignified, high-minded way he came down off that wagon. Along with a couple of real friendly assistants, he started passing out tonic bottles and reeling in dollars fast as his hands could jig. And all the while he done it, people couldn't resist reaching out to touch him, to reassure themselves he wasn't river mist, I guess. He let 'em do it too. He patted and hugged 'em for free, just 'cause they needed it, and told 'em, "There, there, everything's going to be all right now."