The Kept

by James Scott

  He walked purposefully to the display of pistols and ammunition. He studied the guns. The man noticed Caleb, cleared his throat, put the catalogue under the counter, and walked slowly toward him.

  “In the market for a pistol, son?”

  The word caused Caleb a slight pang. He looked from the man to his son and knew beyond a doubt that whatever Jorah Howell had been, he had never been his father. “I need a gun.”

  “How about the Colt?” the man said. “A fine pistol. Very fine.” He removed one of the revolvers from the case and flipped open the cylinder. He handed Caleb the gun grip first. “I have to warn you, even a used Colt pocket thirty-two, which is what you have in your hands, is going to cost you almost ten dollars. Right now we’re running short on the Army model—it’s our most popular pistol—but that’s twelve dollars, new. No one ever sells us back a used Army model. Do they, Seth?”

  Caleb couldn’t look at them, father and son, to see how the boy answered. The pistol was heavy, substantial, and as clean as if it had never been touched by human hands. Caleb saw how filthy his fingers were and blushed. He clicked the cylinder into place and aimed down the barrel of the gun at a bag of oats at the other end of the store. He placed the Colt back onto the glass case and rattled the money in his pocket. He had just over two dollars.

  “May I ask how old you are? Maybe you’d like to come back with your father.”

  Caleb caressed the gun, but didn’t pick it up again. “I hoped to buy it as a Christmas present. For my father.” It surprised him how easily the lie came; it had jumped up from his throat like a hiccup. Before Caleb had slept in the barn, before he’d become the caretaker of the animals, during the bleary, sleepless nightmare days, Amos had taken one of the feathers Caleb kept in his pocket and scampered from the loft and toward the house, saying he was going to tell their father that Caleb was playing with girl’s things. Caleb had slid down the ladder after him, but by the time he reached the barn door, Amos had almost made it inside the house, so Caleb, without thinking, picked up a rock and threw it. It sailed willfully toward the kitchen window, made a neat hole in one of the panes and landed, apparently, next to Emma, who’d been seated on the floor, painting a face on a corn-husk doll. Caleb had sprinted back into the barn, and disappeared into the darkness of a cow stall, where he hid between two of the giant beasts that regarded him with sidelong glances and absentminded chewing.

  He heard his father’s footsteps, moving with the same inevitable will as the rock, coming closer and closer. The cows—who didn’t yet know Caleb as they soon would—betrayed him and moved to the edge of the stall, thinking they were about to be fed, leaving him standing alone. He fumbled with the latch.

  “Caleb,” Jorah said. Only a few weeks prior, Caleb had hiked to that square plot of land cloaked by gnarled moosewood, the newly turned earth smelling of spring, the murder fresh in his mind, and he didn’t know which version of his father would appear to him: The one that regarded him with sadness or the one that set upon him with anger. Caleb shuffled to his punishment.

  “Caleb, why did you throw a rock at your brother?”

  Caleb tried to lie. He searched his mind for a good reason, a better reason than the one he had. Instead, he told his father most of the truth. He only omitted that without sleep, he’d been making strange decisions for days, forgetting to give water to the cows, dumping the slop bucket in with the horses. He expected fire and brimstone but his father only quoted, “He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.” Jorah waited. “Do you know what that means, Caleb?”

  This time he’d lied. He couldn’t face his father any longer and he’d said that he understood and he was sorry. Jorah’s mouth had flapped open and shut a few times, but then he’d breathed out of his nose and simply strode away.

  In front of the gun counter, Caleb fumed at how all of his lies seemed to originate from Jorah, a web spinning ever outward. “My father has always wanted a Colt,” he said. “My mother died”—here the shopkeeper covered his mouth with his hand—“and I thought I could do something special for Christmas.” Caleb sweated with wickedness, but he didn’t think he could be good again without these wicked ways and the purpose they were to serve. Moreover, it seemed to him that no one told the truth, and the more time he spent in this large world, the less he felt beholden to do so himself.

  “That’s surely understandable,” the man said, and glanced at his son. “We do have a credit policy here. It’s usually only reserved for our long-standing customers.” Beneath his moustache, he smiled. “But you have a trustworthy face.”

  A small piece of Caleb, a sliver, wanted to warn the man, wanted his plans to be discovered, to receive his punishment, even as the shopkeeper leaned on the counter and went through the merits of each and every Colt pistol. He told Caleb what kind of game could be taken down with each one. Caleb saw the men again. The gangly one he would shoot like a deer, the bearded one a moose, the smooth, long-haired one a mountain lion. He listened to the descriptions of the guns, and he imagined each in his fist, making up for the failure of a man he’d mistakenly called father.

  AT THE END of the service, Elspeth and Charles stepped out into the bright light of day. They squinted. New snow made the world ache. “Where’s your wife?” Elspeth said. “Your family?”

  Charles scuffed his feet in the snow. Other churchgoers milled about them, tying their scarves around their necks and buttoning their coats. Men draped shawls over women’s shoulders. Charles itched at his beard. “If there was ever a time and place to tell the truth,” he said, then trailed off. “They’ve gone away.”

  “Away? When will I get to meet them?”

  “They’re visiting her parents. It’s nice, I think, for children to understand their family, where they come from.”

  Elspeth agreed. The minister shook hands along his way out of the church, and Charles removed his hat once more. Elspeth reached out to comfort Charles and squeezed his forearm. She had forgotten herself and squeezed harder, in what she hoped was a manly way.

  “How about I buy you those gloves now? I’d be happy to. The store’s open.”

  Elspeth held up hands covered in new gloves. The leather smelled fresh. She said she’d bring him his old gloves and he told her not to bother. They ran out of conversation. Wind channeled through the graveyard. The snow was stripped from the tops of the graves, leaving them bald and dark against the white backdrop.

  “Do you think God can really forgive us our sins?” Charles asked.

  “I hope so,” Elspeth said. They faced the rows and rows of headstones, each lost in their own thoughts, Elspeth desperate to be overwhelmed by faith as elusive as the light through the trees.

  IN THE LOBBY of the hotel, Caleb idly flipped through the pages of a newspaper, unable to read much of it. The Colt pistol he had tucked into his pants at the small of his back. Six bullets occupied the cylinder. He kept another dozen in his pocket. The shopkeeper had been kind enough to sell him a new Colt Army pistol for the price of a used one, and then had insisted on wrapping the gift. As Caleb had ripped the paper and hidden the empty box and the rest of the ammunition underneath his bed, his hands had felt like those of someone else, and the only thing that had returned them to his body was reloading the pistol again and again.

  Elspeth surprised him by pulling a chair up next to his. They each sat in their own preoccupations. Elspeth felt like she was cooking a huge meal and every pot and pan, every kettle and dish, boiled over and she couldn’t get to any of them in time. She didn’t have enough arms, and couldn’t make anything quiet down long enough to gather her thoughts. She saw the paper in front of him and pulled it toward her. She found an article about the gold rush in Klondike Creek and read it aloud. Neither listened much to the descriptions of the hordes of men driven by the promise of an easier life to the dangerous wilds of Canada, but the steady flow of words made them each retreat farther into the cushions.r />
  Caleb examined his mother. Their hair was similar—hers a bit darker, but it fell in the same waves, contained similar cowlicks. His nose could be hers, but they were common, sloping and unobtrusive features. His eyes were brown and farther apart; hers were gray as the winter sky. She had his high, pronounced cheekbones, though her face was less angular. Still, he thought, he belonged to her.

  CHAPTER 6

  That night Elspeth dreamt of Charles. She sat in her rocking chair, watching out the window of the farmhouse. The day had just started and she could see the brightness expand on the landscape in front of her. Charles materialized at the trailhead, his back bent by a heavy, black bag. As he approached, his steps burdened, he passed a depression that burst with red ribbons unfurling across the snow, rolling endlessly, and the whole hill became covered in crimson silk. She met him at the door. They kissed.

  When she woke, she still felt his lips on hers. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and washed her face, but it could not rid her of the echo.

  Caleb slouched against the wall, checking the street, his pillow propped up behind him. In the darkness, his eyes were gaunt and sunken, as if the effort of watching had hollowed them out. “Where did you get those clothes?” she asked, noting the new shirt and pants, neither of which had been patched and repatched.

  “The man at the Elm Inn gave them to me for work.”

  “Work?” she said. Despite the outfit, he looked poor and frayed at the edges.

  “I’m only sweeping and cleaning up,” he said. He couldn’t believe how much his mother resembled a man, with her hair cut short, Jorah’s old clothes, and the rinsed shoe polish shadowing her jaw. Something about her, however, a leftover twinge of pain or some unfound piece of shotgun pellet, worried him. He longed to tell her he’d been the one to shoot her, but in their rushed bursts of time together he couldn’t work up the courage. “It’s the best place to find them.”

  Her head fuzzy from sleep, she didn’t know at first what he meant.

  “The killers,” he said.

  Elspeth straightened the sheets and then the faded pink quilt on her thin mattress. The clock downstairs rang the hour. “I’m late,” she said, and bound her breasts and dressed in a hurry, her back to the boy.

  OUTSIDE, CHARLES WAITED with a cup of coffee. They stood for a minute, both facing the empty street, covered over once again with a thick coating of snow. The images of the dream roiled in her head.

  “I can’t wait for my family to return,” Charles said before the door had even shut behind her. “My boys. I miss my boys. Graham’s laugh—have I told you about Graham’s laugh?” He had, but Elspeth had come to like hearing his stories, the way his whole body became involved, swaying, hands gesturing, feet stomping. “When they were small, his brother Stephen pulled his arm from the socket—it hung there loose as an empty sleeve—and I had a hard time popping it back in, because every time I did, he would scream and I would try to lessen the pain and end up not going quite far enough. My wife got the idea of distracting him, and she tickled under his chin, and soon we were all laughing—Graham’s like a bird tweeting, high and fast—and I popped the arm back in.” His smile vanished. “Graham got upset. ‘You tricked me,’ he said. And we had. But he only blamed me. It was always my fault.” He coughed, expelling a thick cloud. “I’d forgotten that.”

  “You’re a good father,” Elspeth said. “Blame is difficult to maneuver.”

  He walked the rest of the way sullen and detached.

  Jorah had never blamed Elspeth. Not fully. Perhaps he thought it their cross to bear together, but Elspeth knew they could not have children because of her. Dr. Forbes had told her so. He hadn’t seen her in nearly a year, though his manner betrayed no surprise at her sudden visit. “I expected you might ask,” he said. “I remember our conversations well.” All of her hinting around had not gone unnoticed, apparently, and yet that was not the worst of his news: He had no remedies, no prescriptions, and no cures.

  The men swung poles at the ice, undoing the night’s slow, steady stitching over the wound they’d carved in the lake. The cracks echoed up the hill. The lamps hissed, hanging in a line from the icehouse down to the shore. The men on the lake worked in darkness, and with each passing day, Elspeth thanked God that she and Charles worked on the crane, near a bright light. They waited, drinking their coffee, hoping to time their last hot sip with the call to work. Until the men had cleared the canal and began sawing the blocks of ice out from the expanding hole in the lake, they had little to do. When the first block had been cut, they’d go to the water’s edge, where the temperature plunged, to free the crane’s joints and hinges from the coat of ice that had sealed them fast. They would strap on their cleats and jump up and down to get their blood circulating. In the same way, a man named Daniel patted the horses, shifted the blankets on their flanks, rolled and rubbed their leg muscles between his palms, trying to keep them warm until the first sled had been filled. The Friday before, one of the horses had pulled up lame on the first haul, and Daniel had screamed at Charles and Elspeth for overloading the sled. Daniel whispered close to one of the horse’s ears, and Elspeth thought of how Caleb would excel at such a job. Much more fitting, certainly, than the Elm Inn.

  “Jorah van Tessel,” a voice said behind them. It was Edward Wallace. “I didn’t realize you were paid to stand and do nothing. Charles Heather, on the other hand”—he rapped Charles’s knuckles with his cane—“has earned a great deal of money for doing nothing.”

  “They’re not finished clearing the canal,” Charles said.

  Wallace glared toward the shore. “Go help out in the icehouse until the flow starts. Be useful, Heather.” He walked to his office, covering the ground in a few strides, cane knocking on the ice, bowing to squeeze through the door.

  The icehouse was lined with stone and coal. Small gaps in the wood allowed air to circulate, keeping the room from retaining any heat. From the doorway, a sloping path descended into the body of the building. Blocks of ice rose into the air as tall as the tallest buildings Elspeth had seen, taller even than the roof of the church, though the steeple brought it closer to God. Pulleys and ropes hung everywhere from the great beams of the ceiling to hook and raise ice to the gaps at the top of the giant rectangular stacks. Men atop these stacks guided the blocks into place.

  Charles hopped up onto a barrel.

  “Aren’t we supposed to work?” Elspeth asked him. No sooner had the words come from her mouth than she saw Owen Trachte standing in a small circle of men, talking and gesticulating. She flinched.

  “Owen Trachte,” Charles said. Owen was stuffed into the fabric of his three-piece suit, his massive neck and arms threatening to burst the seams, like an overstuffed sausage.

  “He looks familiar,” Elspeth said. The sight of Owen didn’t concern her as much in the icehouse—she was well-concealed in her hat and scarf—but his presence rattled her.

  “He’s around sometimes. I think he sells parts for a machine company. Or hardware. Or ropes, maybe.” When she didn’t react, he continued. “His father was a doctor who drank himself to death.”

  “Maybe I knew his father,” she said. She’d known of Phillip’s habit, surely, and saw him sometimes at night in his office drinking and rereading letters from his wife, and she would find him in the morning, rumpled and reeking. He would leave the letters on his desk, and sometimes as he readied himself for work, she would pretend to search for something so she could read a few lines in his absence. “Do they look alike, Owen and his father?”

  “A bit,” Charles said. He drummed his hands on the barrel. “I don’t know, actually. I didn’t know his father well.” Her discomfort twisted and turned within her. “I’m sure Wallace is safely in his office now,” he said mercifully, “and we can sit down by the shore.”

  Elspeth’s head spun with images of Owen after thrashing his friend—cheeks flushed, hole in his smile dark as pitch—and she wondered what he would do if he were to recogni
ze her.

  EVERY COUPLE OF days, London White asked Caleb to wash the sheets and towels, washcloths and underclothes. He wore an apron borrowed from one of the bartenders to protect his new shirt. When Caleb placed the dirty items into the old bathtub they used, he avoided colors and stains that he didn’t want explained. White squeezed every penny out of the Elm Inn, and a cot had been set up in the corner of the laundry for days when it was not in use. After the first hour, the windows clouded with condensation, and the drying lines Caleb hooked from a sconce at one end of the room to the other would be heavy with sheets. Water puddled on the floor.

  Caleb stirred the linens in the bathtub with the broken end of a broom. He liked to pretend he was steering down a river, as he’d seen in a book his mother had brought home. The book had only lasted a day. When Jorah had read a page and deemed it unacceptable, he’d burned it in the woodstove. The etching of a boy standing, the legs of his overalls rolled high on his calves, steering a raft down seething rapids had stayed with Caleb. He became quite involved in this daydream, waving and talking to people along the river, before the current took hold of the ship and he needed to bravely pilot his craft.

  A girl, his age perhaps, with curled brown hair walked into the room. “What are you doing?” she asked. Caleb had never seen her before. She wore a small dress, the kind a girl half her age and half her size would wear, and it struggled to cover where her legs met her hips. If Mary had worn one of Emma’s dresses, this was how she would appear. The look in her eyes, however, one of pain and weariness, made Caleb speak to her as if she were much older than he. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I was stirring the wash.”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  Caleb shrugged and looked around the room, to insinuate he clearly hadn’t been talking at all.