The Peacemaker’s Vengeance

by Gary D. Svee

  The box elder bugs were out, doing whatever box elder bugs do. Mac was taken with the thought of standing at the south side of the school building until he discovered their secret. The boy had never seen a box elder bug eat or drink, and yet they must. Or perhaps they fed on the sun, absorbing its rays through the red and black patterns on their backs.

  Mac leaned against the stone wall. Warm it was from the sun and without hard edges that might have poked into the boy’s musings. He thought then that he might lean against the wall and fall asleep, the sun nuzzling his face as a cow nuzzles her calf.

  Mac might have fallen asleep but for the click of Miss Pinkham’s heels on the walk as she stepped away from school. She stopped beside Mac as she reached the south wall.

  “What are you doing, Mac?”

  “Thinking about box elder bugs.”

  Miss Pinkham smiled. “It is a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “Beautiful—even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.”

  “A Montana day in June?” Miss Pinkham asked.

  “A Montana day in June and box elder bugs.”

  Miss Pinkham smiled, and Mac did, too.

  “You work at the sheriff’s office, don’t you, Mac?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My room is near the courthouse. If you don’t mind, I’ll walk part of the way with you.”

  Mac smiled. The two walked slowly, enjoying their time in the sun, and then Miss Pinkham broke the silence.

  “Do you enjoy working at the sheriff’s office?”

  Mac nodded.

  “What do you do?”

  Mac cocked his head and stared at his teacher for a moment. “Mostly I take care of letters and reports, that kind of thing.”

  Miss Pinkham was silent for several minutes. “What’s the sheriff like? Is he nice to work for?”

  Mac beamed. “He’s really nice. He’s taken me hunting and fishing, and we talk all the time, and—”

  “Is that what he does when he isn’t working?”

  “I don’t know. I know he likes to fish. He took me fishing once with Big Jim Thompson. Big Jim is the Yellowstone County sheriff. He’s as big as a wall, and he can eat Tilly’s sandwiches until—”

  “Tilly?”

  “Huh?”

  “Who is Tilly?”

  “You don’t know Tilly?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she cooks at the Stockman. Could be that she owns it, I don’t know. Anyway, she makes roast beef sandwiches that…” Mac shook his head. “I don’t know how to say…”

  Miss Pinkham laughed. “The writer’s bane,” she said. “How do you explain how something tastes, or why one thing tastes better than another?”

  Mac grinned at his teacher.

  “Does the sheriff spend a lot of time with Tilly?”

  “Just for breakfast and dinner. He either fixes himself a sandwich for lunch or has Tilly fix him one.”

  “Just a sandwich for lunch?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Not much for a tall man like him.”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, this is my corner,” she said, stepping toward her apartment. She stopped and turned, “Mac, you got an A on your final. I suppose you expected that?”

  Mac shook his head.

  “Well, you should. Straight A’s this year. You’re going to make something of yourself, Mac McPherson.”

  She waved then, and walked off. Mac grinned all the way to the door of the sheriff’s office.

  The sheriff’s door was shut, and Mac hesitated. Anyone could be on the other side. The sheriff might have arrested a murderer, or he might be talking to one of the commissioners about something. Maybe they were talking about Mac, about the five dollars a week that he was being paid. Maybe Sam Goodman was in there arguing that his nephew Sonny Ingram should have Mac’s job.

  Mac’s apprehension battled with his need to know—and lost. The boy rapped at the door.

  “Come in.”

  The sheriff’s voice was flat. Bad news lay on the other side of the door. The sheriff was sitting behind his desk, holding a letter from Catherine. The sheriff looked up as Mac entered, smiling wanly.

  “How was school today?”

  “Fine. Finals week. Most of the farm kids are already home, putting up hay. It’s pretty quiet.”

  Again the wan smile.

  “Shut the door, would you, please?”

  Mac leaned back and pulled the door shut, taking his seat in the chair before the sheriff’s desk.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  The normal stack of official letters was scattered across the sheriff’s desk. Ordinarily, the two would go through those letters, and then share the letter from Catherine. But this day those letters held no interest for the sheriff, only the one in his hands.

  The sheriff chewed his lip and then handed Catherine’s letter to Mac. The boy held the letter to his nose, expecting to catch the faintest scent of one flower or another. Catherine seemed to collect beauty, the sheriff had said, flowers sharing their scents with his beloved.

  A question mark crossed Mac’s face, and the boy shook his head.

  “I don’t—”

  “No, I didn’t, either. Something’s wrong. I don’t know if I should read it or throw it away.”

  “But you can’t do that.”

  “No, I can’t do that. Open the letter, Mac.”

  Mac reached for the hand-carved cedar letter opener on the sheriff’s desk. The point of the blade slipped between flap and envelope, and the letter hissed open.

  “‘Beloved,’” Mac said. “She starts her letter with ‘Beloved.’”

  “That’s good,” Drinkwalter said.

  Mac bent the folds in the letter so its full face would lie flat on the desk, and began:

  “Beloved:”

  “I am torn so in the writing of this letter. Death came to Mother Saturday last, and I have been grieving. I remember when death came for my father. My mother’s knees buckled, and for a moment I thought that she might fall. But she recovered and set about doing all the duties that are occasioned by a death in the family. Now I must do as she did, and I’m finding how difficult it is to make all the arrangements for her funeral and burial.”

  “I was with her when the doctor told her that he had no treatment that would ease her condition. She died a long death, and there was nothing I could do for her, but try to ease the pain.”

  “I don’t know if she awakened before dying or if she fell asleep and simply didn’t wake up. I know that she didn’t stir in the evening. I have trained myself to listen to her every sound in the night. I know only that when I came in the morning, she was … gone. I wish the doctor could have given me something for the pain then.”

  “I have tried to reconcile myself to her death. I know that she is in a better place, and I am sure that Father met her with open arms. I’ve never read anything about heaven reconciling the ages of its residents, but it would be a blessing if she could go to him as she was when he left her.”

  “I imagine them sitting beside a creek on a picnic blanket, she telling him about us, and he telling her about all that they might see in heaven. She will be giddy as a young girl, and he proud as a king.”

  Mac stopped reading then, his face stricken. He handed the letter across the desk so the sheriff could see the blurred letters where Catherine’s tears had fallen.

  “Yes, I see,” Sheriff Drinkwalter said, handing the letter back to Mac. “Please read the rest of the letter.”

  Mac nodded and began again, fighting to get the words past the knot in his throat.

  “I’ve made arrangements for Smith Furniture and Funeral Parlor to handle the arrangements. They came yesterday … and took her away.”

  “The house seems so empty now. In the past few years, Mother has not been much company. The pain was eased only by large doses of a painkiller, and that drained her of consciousness as
well as pain. I would read to her some evenings from a book that I particularly liked, and sometimes in the reading, she would smile, so I knew that she was there with me.”

  “No one is here with me now, and I feel so terribly alone.”

  “I have longed all these years to be with you in Montana, and now I am filled with doubt. Will you have me still? We have changed over the years, you and I; only my love remains as it did that day when you left Cincinnati.”

  “I can no longer bear the grief and the doubt. I am writing to tell you, Frank Drinkwalter, that if you will have me, I will settle the estate here, and be on my way to be with you. If you say no, I will love you no less. I will live out the rest of my life here, knowing that I was given someone special in my life.”

  “Think carefully before you reply, but please don’t linger. I have been too long in the waiting to tolerate any more suspense.”

  “Mac, if Mr. Drinkwalter decides to have me, I expect you to be at the station to greet me. I see you in my mind’s eye as a younger Frank, tall and slim. I will know you when I see you, and please bring your mother. I feel as though she, too, is a part of my family.”

  “I love you, Frank, surely as no woman has ever loved a man before. Please write.”

  Mac looked up. “She signed it ‘Catherine,’ just ‘Catherine.’”

  The sheriff leaned back in his chair, his eyes going to the ceiling. “I’m not going to write her this time, Mac.”

  Mac’s head jerked up. “You can’t do that. You have to write to her.”

  “No, Mac. This time I’m going to send a telegram.”

  Mac edged into the low clapboard building that served at the Eagles Nest depot. The waiting room was empty. Mac shuffled toward the stationmaster’s counter, a caged cubicle, poking into the waiting room from the baggage compartment on the east side of the building.

  Sparks Pierson was standing at the counter, shuffling waybills. He didn’t look up until Mac said, “I’ve got a telegram.”

  Pierson peeked over the top of his reading glasses. “No, son. You’ve got a piece of paper, but you came to the right place if you want that piece of paper made into a telegram.”

  He took the sheriff’s note and rubbed it between his hands as though he were performing magic, stopping only when he brought a smile to Mac’s face.

  “You’re Mary McPherson’s boy … Mac.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you have a piece of paper saying that you will accept the fortune that the president of these United States wants to give you for your past advice, but only if he will stop pestering you about how this country should be run?”

  Mac grinned again. “It’s from Sheriff Drinkwalter.”

  “Sheriff Drinkwalter, now there’s a fine man. You know, Mac, in their finest tradition, police are the peacemakers. Isn’t anyone in town he hasn’t helped one time or another, and some of them regular as clockwork. Weren’t for the sheriff, Tippins would have been long dead by now, curled up in some snowdrift or another.”

  Pierson peeked over the top of his glasses. “A person in my position has his finger on the public’s pulse, and I’ll tell you that the sheriff is the heart that keeps this community going.”

  Pierson paused, one eye squeezing shut as he considered what he had just said. “That’s not too bad. Better write it down, so I won’t forget it.”

  “Pierson pulled a tablet from the drawer in front of him. Let’s see … yes, he’s the heart that keeps this community’s pulse beating.”

  Pierson winked conspiratorially at Mac. “I’ve been collecting expressions for years. People like to read things like that while they’re on the train. People will likely flock to me to see what I have to say about this or that. Could be I’ll make a fortune, wind up on some South Seas island, thinking about Montana blizzards.”

  Pierson winked at Mac, again. “Anyhow, where was I …? Oh, yes, I was telling you about all the things the sheriff does for Eagles Nest. Not long ago a drummer comes busting in here hell-bent on getting a ticket on the 12:20 A.M. Muttering, he was, about his treatment at the Absaloka. ‘No two-bit hick sheriff is going to run me out of town,’ he said. He was stomping around yelling about what he would do to Frank for libeling him the way he did when a card fell out of his sleeve. An eight of diamonds, it was. Don’t know why a man would slip an eight up his sleeve, maybe an ace or two. Anyhow, when he saw me looking at the card, he quieted right down.”

  “Pete Pfeister told me later that jocko had just about cleaned out Jimmy Tillot before the sheriff came, and Jimmy with a wife just about to have a baby.”

  “Well, a man can learn a lot if he just listens, and I keep my mouth shut and my ears open, and you’d be surprised—”

  “I certainly would.”

  It was Pierson’s turn to grin.

  “Well, let’s see what the sheriff has to say:”

  “Catherine Lang at blah, blah blah. Beloved … Ah…”

  Pierson turned to stare out the window. “I wondered about that. Drinkwalter is a fine-looking man and a hard worker, and I couldn’t figure out why he …”

  The stationmaster turned back to the telegram. “Beloved, I grieve for your mother. Stop. Know that you have always had a place in my heart. Stop. Come now and take a place in my life. Stop. Please hurry. Stop. Frank. Stop.”

  “I want you to come, too. Stop. Mac. Stop.”

  “You know her?”

  Mac shrugged his shoulders and nodded.

  “Is she nice?”

  Mac nodded again.

  “Of course she would be. Sheriff Drinkwalter wouldn’t settle for anything less, and now he needs a home for his bride.”

  Pierson absentmindedly counted the words. “That will be eighty cents. I know it’s expensive, but I don’t set the prices. You can tell the sheriff that. You can tell him, too, that I’ll send it right away. She will have the message no later than tomorrow morning.”

  Pierson turned to stare out the window.

  “And Mac, could you come back sometime this afternoon? I’ve got an idea, and I might need your help.”

  16

  CLOSED, the sign on Nelly Frobisher’s establishment said. The women who worked there were taking shifts caring for Nelly. When she awakened sweating and screaming from a nightmare, one of the women was there to soothe her, a monotone chant of human kindness that Nelly heard in all her waking moments.

  She was beginning to edge away from the terror that sent her hiding in the shadows of her past. She talked with the other women now, not much, but a little, and her appetite was returning.

  The women were living in self-imposed exile. The interim in their business and the caring for each other was breaking down the shells they had built around themselves. They spent their time cleaning the house and baking great loaves of bread that they would eat fresh from the oven, slathered with slabs of butter from the town’s creamery. They were opening up to each other, beginning to see through the facade of caked makeup to the women beneath.

  And because each of the women shared similar experiences with Nelly, they began to share those experiences with each other.

  Nelly Frobisher’s emporium was beginning to heal itself in the early days of June 1912, each woman pulling herself free of the pervasive dread they felt after they found Nelly hiding in a clump of blankets.

  A peace settled over Nelly’s until that one night when the booming on the front door night brought back the fear, and they wondered if hell itself waited in the darkness outside.

  Beulah was upstairs with Nelly, sharing the saga of her life with her companion. Nelly seemed to find the tone, if not the words, soothing, and Beulah talked on. But Beulah didn’t tell Nelly about her marriage as a mail-order bride to a homesteader. She didn’t tell her about the abuse and the shotgun and the way that the pigs grunted with excitement at the offering of fresh meat. She never told anyone why she refused to eat pork.

  Jezzie and Bridget were sitting in the kitchen, sharing reminiscences in hus
hed voices.

  “How did you ever take on a name like Jezzie?” Bridget asked.

  “Short for Jezebel,” Jezzie said. “My husband was a Bible thumper. He caught me out in the barn with a hired hand we had. He was a pretty little thing and enthusiastic. Really enthusiastic.”

  Bridget smiled. “Those are the best kind.”

  “In this business, it seems like the only kind.”

  The two were chuckling when the pounding began. The door shook from the force of the blows and sent reverberations through the house as the skin on a drum reverberates until it touches the soul. Bridget’s eyes widened. She jumped to her feet and drew the shades in the kitchen, but even as she was returning to the table, Jezzie was standing to answer the door.

  “Don’t go, Jezzie. We don’t know who it is.”

  “What if it’s one of our regulars?” Jezzie said. “It might be Mike Mulligan. He generally comes in Tuesday night. It might be Mike.”

  “And it might be that dead-eyed son of a bitch who put Nelly in such a state. She’s just starting to get better. If he comes through that door, Nelly could sneak back into her mind to hide, like she did that first night.”

  “It won’t hurt to go see. I’ll bet it’s Mike Mulligan, and he treats me pretty good.”

  “He treats you like a whore, Jezzie.”

  “That’s what I am Bridget, a whore.”

  Jezzie stepped past Bridget’s protestations toward the front door.

  It was dark outside, the lantern not alight as it usually was on business nights. So Jezzie could see nothing but blackness. Mike Mulligan, it would be, Jezzie thought. Shy he was with her, and sometimes he brought a flower as though she were a lady and he a gentleman. Jezzie had a special spot in her heart and in her bed for Mike Mulligan. She would do something special for him tonight, just as he did special things for her.

  She opened the door a crack, and darkness leaked into the room. “Is that you, Mike?” she asked, her voice beginning to quaver.

  BAM! The blow to the door tore it from Jezzie’s hands and sent it crashing against her cheek. She spun unconscious to the floor, leaking lifeblood from a cut on her cheek.