by Chloe Garner
“Kayla’s dress shop is gonna go, then,” Sarah said.
“If by go, you mean I’ve got most of my house staff down there now doing the renovation work? Yeah.”
Sarah shook her head.
“Dreams really do come true,” she said, and he gave her a sly little smile.
“Kayla’s a good girl. Deserves some good things.”
“You figure all Lawsons deserve good things,” Sarah answered. He shrugged.
“Deserve, maybe, maybe not. But it’s my job to make sure they happen anyway.”
“If you say so,” Sarah said. “From where I sit, there’s a few of ‘em could stand to have some disappointment in their lives.”
“Have you looked around Lawrence recently?” Jimmy asked rhetorically, then went back to his map. “The chemist and pharmacist will go here, at the corner. Doc should go across the street, I think. We’ll put the quality-of-life shops at the end, here...”
He pointed. Sarah nodded.
She could see it.
Damn him, but she could. The number of men wandering around the town was big enough that they’d more than fill out two streets, giving them a sense of life and use that the main street hadn’t had in years.
And the town was just going to grow. Every train, there was another load of them.
“Where we gonna put all the laborers?” she asked, interrupting Jimmy as he went through the shops. He looked up at her, a little annoyed, a little amused. She didn’t change her expression at all. He might have her cowed, but he didn’t have her afraid. She wasn’t going to cower for him.
“You are concerned about them,” he said.
“I am,” she said. “You look after the Lawsons, I’m gonna keep looking after everyone else.”
“We’ll put apartments above the shops, but I figure it will be the shop owners mostly living up there, like it is now. We’ll have to put some kind of lodging outside of town, here, maybe,” he said, waving his hand over empty table off the map, “or maybe more where they are now. We can’t worry about them, now, though.”
“How you figurin’ on gettin’ all your investors past the establishment they’ve got goin’ now?” Sarah asked.
“We’ll come around this way, end up going down Second Street to get to their lodgings,” he said. “Just go all the way around.”
She shook her head.
“Lotta handwavin’ goin’ on in this plan.”
He relaxed, sitting back in his seat and crossing an ankle across a knee as she stood up to tend her tea.
“There’s always a lot of handwaving going on in any good plan,” he said. “You’re always building the bridge just as the people are going over it, but they’ve got to believe it’s already done, if they’re going to set out in the first place.”
“Is that how you see it?” Sarah asked, pouring them both a cup of tea and setting the kettle back on the stove.
“It’s how it is,” Jimmy answered.
“You’re ignorin’ the homesteaders,” Sarah said.
“How?” he asked. “Other than the fact that I’m not actively building barns for them?”
She pointed at the map.
“They ain’t gonna care about any o’ these things,” she said. “The laborers, things go right, ‘ll be up in the mountains movin’ stones around. Won’t be too many of them here. The shopkeepers, they’ll be here and make the place look right, but they ain’t gonna keep each other in business. At least for the time bein’, the homesteaders are the ones who are here, all year round.”
“Okay,” Jimmy said. “And what does that mean for this?”
“Means you need things here that they need. Sure, a lady comes in from the Jaspar ranch for somethin’ else, she might stop in for a fittin’ of a dress, or to have her hair done up, but she ain’t comin’ in for those things on their own.”
“And what brings them to town?” Jimmy asked.
“Right now? Granger’s and the tavern,” Sarah said. “You need a post office, you need a tack and feed store, you need a barber, a proper barber, probably next to the tailor. You need things that those folk need.”
“I thought that was what Granger’s was for,” Jimmy said. Sarah nodded.
“It is, but he ain’t got the space. You need space for him to store a bigger selection, and he needs more shop front, here, here, and here, to keep people comin’ into town and spendin’ their money.”
“Money they got from where?” Jimmy asked. It was a good question. She didn’t know, and he knew it. She shrugged.
“If they’re gonna stay, they’re gonna have to figure it out.”
“That’s my girl,” he said. “Otherwise, they’ll sell their land to us bit by bit, and we’ll do something productive with it.”
“Like put up tiny little vacation homes for rich folk,” Sarah said sarcastically. He shrugged.
“It’s going to make a difference. You’ll see. I’ve been thinking we might need a public stable and stockyard. Maybe here?” he asked, pointing at an edge, where Second Street had previously ended. She frowned.
“What for?”
“Trade,” he said. “It would be where we would have the claims auctions, for one, but eventually, it would be where people would come to buy and sell livestock. Maybe even sell their harvest grains.”
She nodded.
“That would work. You get enough traffic through there, a lot of the boys out at the homesteads’d come in just to see what’s there.”
He nodded. She sipped her tea, then motioned at him with it.
“You know what we’re both not talkin’ about,” she said.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Women,” she said.
“And here the conversation was going so well,” he said with slight humor. She glowered at him.
“No. Not your cast of imported problems,” she said. “The ones for the rest of the town. We was one-sided before you and your lot showed up.”
“The Lawsons have not upset the gender balance in Lawrence,” he said, “but I do see your point. I think it’s a problem that solves itself.”
“How?” she asked. “You’ve got a thousand men here and maybe fifty women, not includin’ the whores.”
“Sometimes ladies like that marry,” Jimmy said. “They aren’t something other than women, just because they understand the economics of actually being one.”
“I ain’t gonna argue with you over what you call Jezzie, but she ain’t a lady,” Sarah said. “That’s all.”
He shrugged.
“Where there is money and single men, you’ll eventually get women,” he said. “It may take some time, but I think it will straighten out on its own.”
She shook her head, thinking about what Lawrence looked like, when you got off the train, but clearly there wasn’t anything to do about it tonight.
She looked at the map.
“So we’re agreed?” she asked.
“I’ll leave it in your care,” he said. “I’ve got other things to do most of tomorrow, but I’ll try to come see your progress before the sun goes down.”
“I ain’t your foreman,” Sarah said.
“Right now you are,” he answered. “Because there’s no one better to do it. Consider that I’ve got Wade sitting watch tonight before you get angry at me.”
“He deserves that,” she said.
“Only because you and he have never gotten along.”
“He’s never gotten along with anyone in his whole life,” Sarah said. “Thinks he breathes his own special Lawson air and gets sore at anyone what gets too close and might steal some.”
Jimmy laughed.
She wasn’t sure she’d never heard him laugh before, certainly not in his adult life.
“You know, I’m going to tell him you said that. He likes you because he thinks you keep me in line.”
“Ain’t no one keepin’ you in line, save that pretty little girl you’ve imported to stand next to you, and that only if she can.”
“Only ‘cause she ain’t got a clue who I am,” Sarah said. He shrugged.
“I certainly wasn’t going to tell her, but she and Thomas are close, and he’s apparently sure that the right way to handle you is to tell her everything about you. I think you’d be surprised how clear a view she has of the situation.”
Sarah wondered what a clear view of the situation looked like, then shrugged.
“I’m busy,” she said. “Will be for quite some time, I reckon.”
“Don’t stay away too long,” he said, standing and finishing his tea. “It’s rude.”
She glowered again, standing and walking him to the door.
“Oh, one more thing,” she said. He turned and faced her on the porch. “The young man who’s doin’ all the real work of buildin’ your town.”
Jimmy raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“Name’s Clarence,” she said. Jimmy snorted.
“That seems about right.”
She shook her head.
“When this is all done, I want you to find a nice cozy hole for him to go live in,” she said. “Someplace nice, where he gets to do work what suits him. No shovels and pickaxes and explosives. Real work with his head.”
Jimmy shrugged.
“I expect a lot of the investors will want to have auditors here who are good with figures. You can introduce him...”
Sarah shook her head.
“No, I don’t want to see him again,” she said. “Not after we’re done.”
“He reminds you of Pete,” Jimmy said. Sarah nodded.
“Good spirit in both of ‘em. I want him gone.”
“It’s done,” Jimmy said. “You can trust me with him.”
She gave him a quick little nod, and he hopped off the front porch, untying his horse and throwing a leg up and over the animal before giving Sarah a salute and heading off in the dry, quiet dark. Sarah closed the door and went back to the kitchen, pouring herself another cup of tea and settling in to annotate the map with everything she was going to need to think about to get it all done in time.
––—
The walls were up; Clarence had a brilliant plan for the roofs that he explained to her quickly over the breakfast she had brought for him. She didn’t understand most of the words he used, but she nodded anyway, then sent him back to do what he’d been doing.
Hobflowers were everywhere, beginning to bloom in serious numbers. She enjoyed walking on them, but they were damningly resilient plants. Born and bred in the desert, and it showed. She went and walked the length of Second Street, envisioning the buildings that were to come, there, then went to find Doc.
“Sarah,” he said. “I expected you yesterday.”
“Lot goin’ on, Doc,” she said. “Talk to me about the kid.”
“The one who never woke up,” Doc said. She nodded. He shrugged. “I can tell you that it weren’t natural causes what killed him.”
“Okay,” she said. “What was it?”
“Broken neck’s probably a big part of it.”
She nodded slowly.
“That sounds pretty conclusive.”
“Someone killed that boy, Sarah,” Doc said. “And if it weren’t for his friend being suspicious, no one would have even asked about it. Just would have pitched him in another grave.”
She scratched her head and put her hat back on.
“Was hoping you’d tell me it was his imagination.”
Doc shook his head.
“You bring in that many men at once, some of ‘em are bound to be bad.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess you’re right.”
She shook his hand and made her way out to the shantytown, searching for quite a while before she found the young man who had showed up at her door the day before. He looked at her with nervous, anxious eyes.
“Someone killed your friend,” she said. “I need you to take me to see the man he’d been fighting with.”
The man ducked his head and nodded at the dirt. At least here the hobflowers had been trampled into submission, Sarah noticed. The men were good for something.
“Patty is the one in the green shirt,” the man said, pointing. Sarah had to squint to make out the differences in color of cloth, but she had a pretty good guess which one the young man was talking about, and it didn’t really matter that much, anyway.
“Patty?” she said, taking big strides forward and scattering many of the men around her. The one from her porch had already melted away. It wasn’t the one she had expected, but one just behind him who looked up at his name. She could see the decision as it happened, whether to stay or run, when he saw her. Running was usually a bad sign for someone accused of murder, but Sarah inspired a lot of flight when she was in a bad mood and she’d come to expect that a certain portion of folk would split when she turned up and said their name, no matter how innocent they might be.
His feet stayed planted, which might have been the flight instinct coming back round again - she wasn’t sure - and she stopped in front of him.
“You’ve been fightin’,” she said.
“That against the law here?” he asked. Smug snot, by instinct. Just the kind she loathed most.
“Ain’t no laws in Lawrence,” she said. “Just me.”
He swallowed.
“Is that against you?” he asked.
“Fightin’s somethin’ men do when they ain’t got enough else to do,” she said. “You ain’t got enough to do?”
“Not a lot to do around here, no,” he said. She could see the quick shot of desperation as he heard his own tone. It was habit, bleeding through under stress, and she almost felt sorry for him.
“I see,” she said. “You been fightin’ a man named Rut?”
He swallowed again.
“What’d he say I did?”
She scratched her face.
“Who were you hangin’ round with two nights ago?” she asked.
“I was with some of my boys,” he said. “Trying to keep warm, the same as every night.”
“You mind pointin’ ‘em out?” she asked.
“What did Rut say I did?” he asked again.
“I need to know who does and who doesn’t know what happened, two nights ago,” she said. “That means havin’ your friends here to talk to me about it.”
“Jeen was there,” he said, pointing wildly. “And Bart.”
She turned and a watched as the crowd melted away faster from a pair of men than they could melt into it. She summoned them forward.
“You cold, night before last?” she asked.
“Cold every night,” one of the two said.
“What were you doin’ about it?” Sarah asked.
“Fire,” the second one said, looking at her with defiant eyes that quickly cast down when she turned square to look at him.
“You get to show me where,” she said. “Both of you,” she indicated Patty and the first man, “you follow along behind. Don’t annoy me and try to disappear. Ain’t nowhere to go.”
She looked at the defiant one, who looked at her with angry eyes through thick eyebrows, then turned and shuffled away, the crowd splitting to either side as he walked, like a predator trotting through a herd of sheep.
She followed at an easy gait, watching the men as she passed them. Life was hard, here, and it showed on them, in their posture and the texture of their skin, the wear of their clothing and their faces. It wouldn’t be forever, but she didn’t like it. It wasn’t right, for one, but more importantly, men who felt like that were much more likely to do something stupid to try to get out of the situation.
Something like the fire, only bigger and involving more people who she actually cared about.
They got to a small box, three wood walls and a blanket, and the leader shoved the blanket up and over the boxes so she could see in. There was a small scorch of a fire in the m
iddle of the space, and just the barest signs that someone intended to return here specifically - a little bit of food, a pair of socks hung on a loose nail, a blanket rolled up in the corner.
“How many of you in here?” she asked.
“Eight,” the new addition from behind her answered. “We take turns sitting by the door.”
Door.
That was sad.
“And how many of you knew Rut?” she asked.
Patty stepped forward.
“Knew? What are you saying I did?”
“Rut failed to get up this morning,” she said. “We don’t take kindly to murder in Lawrence, so I’m lookin’ into it.”
“Lots of guys don’t wake up in the morning,” Patty said. “You gonna go around and ask about all of them, too?”
“If I need to,” she said. “What was Rut like?”
“He was a jerk,” Patty said. “Stole stuff when no one was looking, acting like it was his in the first place when someone called him on it.”
“Ain’t a reason to kill someone,” she said.
“And I didn’t,” Patty said. “Yeah, we had a fight a few nights back, but that’s all it was. I punched him in the nose ‘cause he deserved it, and he pulled out a knife and threatened me with it. Ask anyone.”
“And you said you were going to get him,” Sarah said. He opened and closed his mouth.
“Might have. I don’t remember. But the knife. It wasn’t his. He stole it, same as everything else.”
“It was mine,” one of the other two said. “I bought it on the way here.”
“Where is it now?” Sarah asked.
“What happens to the pockets of the dead?” Patty asked with a shrug. “Someone stab him with it?”
“No,” she said. “He died of a broken neck.”
There was something about the starkness of a statement like that that tended to silence a room. This crowd was no different. They recognized that what happened to Rut, unfortunate and potentially as kleptomaniac as he was, could happen to any of them. There was a moment, the first time that you directly confronted a violent death, where empathy won out over any sense of justice or satisfaction. Sarah looked around quickly, scanning for faces that had already finished coping, a false sense of mortality or introspection, or a lack entirely. She looked at the one with the thick eyebrows.