by Lydia Peelle
He’s a smart one, that old fellow, Billy says admiringly.
Joe? She shakes her head. Joe’s about as smart as that monkey of his.
Well, my girl, a man’s got to have some brains in his head, dreaming up a trick as brilliant as that.
Wasn’t his idea, she says shortly.
No?
She squares her shoulders. Oh no. ’Twas mine.
In a few days, he won’t be able to believe that he doubted her. But other than witnessing her transformation from ugly to beautiful, he doesn’t yet know her powers. He doesn’t even know her name.
Well if that’s so, what’s with the disguise? Why does a pretty little thing like you go and turn into an ugly mouse?
She shrugs. Didn’t take me long to figure out that men would rather see a monkey goose an ugly girl than a pretty one. See, I’ve learned a thing or two about men. I know what they want.
And what’s that?
She doesn’t answer. Just smiles. The gap is a hole you could fall into. Or a door you could climb through. She looks back at her injured hand and shakes it.
Look at that, she says. Took the skin right off.
She takes the rest of the stairs to stand before him, lifts her hand to her mouth, then draws in a sharp breath. Looks up at him from under her lashes.
Blow on it, will you? she says, holding out her hand. It’ll feel better than if I do.
He looks at it. The knuckles are red and chapped, and there are black lines of dirt under her fingernails. He hesitates. His mouth has gone dry. His thoughts are all twisted around. Somewhere in the tangle, he wonders if he is being hustled.
If he is, for the moment, he does not care.
He takes her hand in his and brings it to his mouth. He purses his lips. He blows.
Chicken of the Woods
Bristol
Her parents are dead, her brothers and sisters are all dead, all of them long gone and buried back in County Galway. She came to New York at the age of thirteen with a cousin who did terrible things to her and then died drunk facedown in a basement in Hell’s Kitchen, where rats ate him.
Truly, she says to Billy, when she tells him this story, the first day they spend together. Ate him up, bones and all. She draws an X across her heart. Swear on my mother’s grave.
All alone in the city, she registered with an intelligence office and found a job as a domestic servant. After a month, the old widow she worked for choked on a chicken bone one night at supper and died and Maura only just escaped being tried for murder and that was the end of her career as a domestic. After that she did anything to get by, sold week-old bread on a street corner and did piecework for a glove factory at night. She lived in a room on Mulberry Street with ten other people and two pigs and then cholera struck and they all began to die. She managed to escape, but landed in a filthy shed full of lecherous drunks so crowded she was forced to sleep sitting up when she dared sleep at all. By some miracle she found a flyer about jobs in Virginia. Scraped together money for the train fare. She has been at the Nichols House for a year. She is seventeen years old.
Oh, I ought to be dead ten times over, she laughs. It is a wonder I am still on this earth. Every morning I wake up and thank my lucky stars. The world is full of liars, isn’t it? Liars and sneaks and shams. It’s all a girl can do to keep two steps ahead of them.
It is her afternoon off, and they are walking down Main Street. Billy told her he would take her to lunch. But he is panicking now, realizing that in the finely tailored pocket of his high-class suit, he’s only got a nickel and a couple of pennies.
Where shall we eat? she says, taking his arm. The hotel? Or have you got a private railroad car?
He tells her he’s got to confess something. The suit is nothing but a suit. I ain’t rich, he says.
She laughs so hard tears come to her eyes. Bill Monday, I saw through that suit the moment I saw you across the parlor. I says to myself, Maura, there’s two people in disguise here tonight. Yourself and that handsome boy over there with the grim look on his face like he’s stuck in the schoolhouse on a sunny day.
You’ve known all along? Then why did you agree to lunch?
I liked the show you were putting on, she says, wiping her eyes. Wanted to see how far you’d carry it.
They walk along muddy Main Street with the rest of the Sunday afternoon crowd. She darts in and out of alleys, checking ash barrels, stooping to pick up dropped pennies that he never would have noticed. With her, in fact, treasure reveals itself everywhere. Later she shows him some of her prized scavenged possessions. A Masonic watch charm with a broken clip, a moldy copy of Robinson Crusoe with pink covers. That afternoon, when she triumphantly holds up her fourth found penny for him to see, he can’t believe her luck. In time, he will come to understand that it is more than luck, but a certain combination of qualities that bring her all this good fortune: her animal alertness, the green-eyed charm, that fearlessness. She can flutter her eyelashes at a butcher and talk him into giving her a soup bone as easy as she can catch a wayward chicken and break its neck with a snap of her wrist, do both as if she has absolutely nothing to lose in the world.
That day he gives her a rabbit’s foot he’s been carrying. Tells her the man he got it off of said it was the real deal: the left hind leg of a male jackrabbit killed on a full moon by a cross-eyed man. Which was not a lie, because it was what the man told him. And when she asks if it has brought him luck he says, It brought me to you, didn’t it?
Later it is Maura who finally finds them something to eat, mushrooms that she gathers out in the woods and fries over a little fire he builds on the bank of Beaver Creek. He will learn that many of her meals are scavenged, if not from the rubbish bins of town then from the hills above it, the old fields, the vacant lots. Mushrooms, greens, nuts, windfall fruit, even flowers.
There’s a feast to be had out here, and it’s all free for the taking, she tells him. Anyone who goes hungry in America isn’t paying attention.
Gold and silver in the ditches, he says, certain she heard that one back home too, and nothing to do but gather it. He points to the mushrooms, smiles and winks. Suppose there’s our gold and silver.
She straightens up suddenly. Her nostrils flare.
Oh, I’ll have my share of gold and silver, alright. I’ll be eating off of fine china and wearing ropes of pearls.
The flame-colored mushroom is called chicken of the woods. Later, when they scramble up the hill looking for a hidden place to be together, he sees it everywhere, growing on the sides of trees, fleshy, sulfur-bright, and it makes him ache for her even more urgently.
But that is still ahead of them. He has not yet dared touch her. While they eat, the sun drops slowly in the west. Birds are rustling around on the bank and kingfishers dart over the water, chattering. A cow lows in a field.
Maura, he starts. He has been trying to think of a way to tell her that he is leaving as soon as the roads dry up. He is already sure he never wants to hurt her, or disappoint her, or even cause her to frown.
He fishes another piece of mushroom out of the pan. Warm and soft as flesh, slippery from the butter. The cool evening, the hot food, the smell of her, makes him feel strong and happy. It’s no time to talk of leaving. He’ll tell her tomorrow. Or the next day.
Smiling, she watches him.
Now don’t go gathering mushrooms without me, she says. Some of them out there is poison and they look just exactly like the good ones. Kill you dead faster than a bullet. Girl who taught me about em once got so sick herself they were measuring her for her coffin before she sat up and asked for a glass of water.
He freezes, the bite of mushroom halfway to his mouth.
She laughs. Look at you. Don’t worry. I won’t kill you. You’ve got my word on that.
She brushes the hair back from her face and squats to stir the mushrooms still frying in the pan.
I won’t kill you. But I got to tell you something, Bill Monday. I’ll be leaving you someday. I just w
ant to say so now. I’ll be taking to the road, and I don’t want you to get your poor heart broken.
Busted
Charles had stayed up at the depot until Edmund Hatcher’s train pulled out and the crowd filtered away, still vibrating from the rush of the locomotive in his feet, the rush of seeing her smile at him through the crowd.
Then she had come running back around the corner.
You’re still here, she said, her face so close to his he could feel her breath. Where do you live? How can I find you?
He thought about the shack, the peeling newsprint on the walls, the mice in the kitchen, cobwebs hung with flies.
I’ll find you, he said.
He pulled her behind the freight shed and kissed her, once, quick, before she ran off again. Afterwards he had paced around town, walking big loops, feeling as if he might lift up over the tops of the buildings and into the clouds. Finally he climbed onto the interurban car and headed back out to the shack. When the car passed the Everbright gates, just south of town on the Pike, he laid his head against the back of his seat and laughed.
He got off at the stop whistling. It was a fine day, the air cool and bright, the tobacco being brought in, the trees beginning to change. He laughed again, remembering the taste of her mouth, the sweetness, the faint thrill of cigarettes.
When he turned down the drive towards their place, it took a moment to make sense of the scene. Dillehay’s son’s bicycle lay in the yard, the front wheel sticking straight up. A Ford was parked behind it. Hatcher’s mare, standing in the corner of the pasture, was still saddled, the broken reins hanging from the bit. The Edison machine was out in the pasture with the lid propped open, a gaping mouth. He started to run. He knew whose Ford it was. A doctor’s. And he knew how bad it had to be. Because if Billy was in any shape at all, he would have never let anybody call a doctor for him.
Inside, there were too many bodies. Dillehay and his son, and the doctor leaning over a lump in the bed. The sharp scent of chloroform.
Dillehay’s bird eyes ratcheted around to him. He shifted his tobacco. Told you that horse was no good.
Charles went over to the bed. Billy looked as if he had been worked over by a gang of roughnecks. But it wasn’t the blood or the terrible bruises that made the bottom drop out of his stomach in fear. It was Billy’s silence. His stillness.
The doctor was sewing a flap of his scalp.
Jesus. He ain’t gonna die, is he?
The doctor finished the stitches, tying them off carefully, before he answered. His eyes, behind thick glasses, were the eyes of a man who had delivered a lifetime’s worth of bad news.
I don’t think so.
There was a chair pulled up next to the bed. Charles sat down.
The doctor opened his bag and put the chloroform into it.
For the shape he’s in I don’t know how he even had it in him. Couldn’t even quite understand what he was saying. But when I got here I do believe he was trying to sell me a horse.
A laugh burst out of Charles. Desperate and startled. Yeah?
I told him he isn’t the best advertising for that particular means of conveyance at the current moment.
Dillehay and his son went back out to the fields. Be careful, now, the old man muttered as the door closed behind them, the closest he could come to condolences.
When the doctor was through Charles went outside with him. Walker was his name. He said he had never seen a joint as out of place as Billy’s shoulder. His collarbone was probably broken. He had four busted ribs, as many teeth missing, and the blow to the head—well, he said, they would just have to wait and see. It was a wonder it hadn’t killed him instantly.
Are you sure you ought to go, Doc? Given all that?
I’ve done what I can do. He’s got to rest now.
But don’t you think you ought to stick around? Just in case something happens?
You call me if something happens.
We ain’t got a telephone.
The doctor laid his hand on his shoulder and looked at him with his kind eyes. You go on up to your landlord’s, son, and call me if you need me.
When he cranked the Ford, Charles stood there watching him. It was settling on him that he was going to have to walk back into the shack and take care of everything on his own.
The doctor smiled and patted the hood of the Ford, shook his head, and said, A horse, never again. He went around to the door and stood there with his hand on the handle. Never again will I have to take the time to brush and feed and blanket a horse in a freezing stable after a call that takes me out in the middle of the night.
Charles stood close. He wanted to reach out and take the man’s arm. He did not want him to go. He did not know what he was going to do.
Why is it, Doc, that people always get sick in the middle of the night?
Oh, they get sick at all hours, son. He opened the door and got into the car and sighed. But they don’t get scared until the middle of the night.
Nickerson’s
Two days later Charles went out to the pasture and caught Hatcher’s mare. He put a muzzle on her, and a chain over her nose, and gave her a dose of Billy’s morphine. While he waited for it to set in, he hitched Gin to the wagon. Then he tied the mare to the back and headed up to town. She went quietly all the way, gentle as a lamb. Her black coat gleamed in the cool autumn sun.
When he arrived at Nickerson’s slaughterhouse, the low characters who worked there came out of the woodwork at the sight of her. Somebody catcalled. When he untied her from the wagon she lowered her head and sighed. Her breath smelled of grass and grain. Clumsily, she tried to itch her forehead against Charles’s back. Sleepy and sweet from the morphine.
Hot damn, someone said.
Hell of a horse.
Who do I see to fill out the paperwork? Charles said. His throat filled up when he said it.
You got the wrong place, boy, said a man with a measles-pocked face. This here’s the killing floor.
That ain’t Leland Hatcher’s horse, is it? someone else asked.
Somebody get me the damn paperwork. Charles could feel tears coming on. He blinked them back and swallowed around the lump in his throat. Come on, he growled. Haven’t got all day.
The man with the pitted face sucked his teeth. In his eyes flashed a shady idea so plain he might as well have spoken it.
Let me take her, he said, stepping forward. Hand her over here.
If I see this horse for sale anywhere I’m gonna come up here and twist your balls off, Charles told him. You hear that? If you try anything funny I’ll come up here and I’ll twist em right off with my bare hand.
When he got back to the shack Billy was trying to sit up. He went over and helped him. Stuffed the pillow and a folded horse blanket behind him. He smelled of chloroform. The bruises. The crooked railroad track of stitches. You’d never think a horse could do that to a man.
She gone? Billy’s voice was slurred, heavy, heartbroken.
Charles nodded. Sat down heavily. Jesus. You look like hell.
Billy brightened a little at that. I do, don’t I. Bring me a mirror. I want to see.
Charles went and got the mirror off the wall, and when Billy saw his face he smiled, or tried to smile.
Hoo-whee, Billy said to his reflection. What happened to that poor fellow?
He laid the mirror down. If you happen to find my teeth, the Doc says put em in a glass of milk.
We don’t got no milk, Charles said. We got nothing. Mouse shit in all the cupboards and in the food.
Well that’s alright. I ain’t got the teeth to eat it anyway. Billy tried to smile again. Maybe Dillehay’s got my teeth.
If he does maybe he’ll keep em in trade for the rent.
Billy started to laugh, then grimaced and put his hand on his side. Don’t make me laugh, Charlie boy.
Charles laughed too. It was all so awful and it was all his fault. He ran his hand through his hair.
It ain’t your fault, Billy sai
d.
Yes it is.
No it ain’t.
Then it’s Leland Hatcher’s fault. I believe you now, Billy.
Billy tried to raise his hand, then laid it on his chest.
Any man does that to a horse, Charlie boy, he’s suffered something awful himself. And probably at the hand of another man, who suffered something awful. At the hand of another man before him. And on and on. You want to blame somebody, you got to trace it all the way back to the days of Noah’s ark.
Ah, Billy. I’m gonna make up for it. I’m gonna turn it around. I’m gonna make us some money. Get us back on our feet.
Billy was breathing hard. It had taken a lot out of him, all those words.
I think it’s gonna take more than money to get me back on my feet.
Charles could hear a mouse now, gnawing through something in the kitchen. How could such a small creature make such a big sound?
I’m gonna get me a real job, he said. An alarm clock and a paycheck. Make some real money. Get us out of this dump.
Billy’s swollen eyes moved in his black-and-yellow face. Slowly closed.
Charlie my boy. I think you ought to have whatever the hell you want. You oughta be president of the United States, if that’s what you want to do.
What the hell are you talking about? I don’t want to be president.
Good. Whoever would want that job would have to be bughouse crazy.
Charles laughed, tears in his eyes. If Billy died he did not know what he would do. Where he would go. He did not know.
Billy started to laugh too.
Now, Charles. He drew in a shallow breath. Cut that out. I told you.
Billy tried to shift his weight. His broad shoulders fell back on the folded blanket behind him.
Who said anything about being president, Charles said, wiping his face. I think your brain’s still addled.
Billy closed his eyes. From the kitchen came the snap of one of the mousetraps Charles had set. Then the small silence that was the mouse, dead.