by James Scott
Long ago on the unfinished road, his mother had told him she had no brothers or sisters. Jorah was not his father, but even if he was, he and Martin shared no visible similarities. He couldn’t be his uncle, but somehow he felt familiar, as if they’d spoken before in a dream.
“Because if it is true, well, then, we have a whole set of problems.” The winding of the watch became ferocious. White sighed in irritation at what his hands had been up to while he had been distracted, and he threw the watch next to Caleb’s pistol.
“Then it’s not true,” Caleb said.
“That’s no kind of an answer,” White said. “What trouble are you in?”
“I’m not,” Caleb said.
“We don’t have many twelve-year-olds wander in here, Caleb. Much less twelve-year-olds with pistols tucked into their waistbands.” Caleb wondered whether White had a gift for spotting sin. He witnessed enough of it; perhaps it revealed itself to him. Caleb fidgeted in the bed, even more aware of his nakedness beneath the sheets. “If you’re in trouble and you’re honest with me about it, I will take care of it.”
Caleb pondered this opportunity for long enough that White took it as an answer, and patted Caleb’s cheek with reassurance. He checked himself in the mirror, washed his hands, and slapped his face with water. As he watched his own reflection he said to himself or to Caleb, “Of course not. Martin has been prone to outbursts like this. If you were indeed the Shane boy, you would be much . . .” White inspected Caleb in the glass, his head tilting this way and that, squinting. In answer, White pulled the sheets up tight around Caleb’s neck. “No,” he said finally, after much study. “No.”
“Mr. White,” Caleb said, “what’s happening?”
White pressed his hair into place, removed his jacket, slapped it with an open palm—the dust glittering silver in the light from between the curtains—and then slid it back across his shoulders, where it fit like a second skin. “The proper question is,” he said, “how do we keep this from happening again?” He fetched his watch from the bedside table, held it up to his ear, secured the chain, and situated it in his vest pocket. He buttoned his jacket. His hand moved over Caleb’s Colt. “Turns out you might need this.” White rotated the gun on the table so that the grip faced Caleb. The unsteady sensation Martin had set upon him flooded back stronger, because there were so many things he didn’t know. He wondered if he was the Shane boy. The image of Shane’s neck bulging beneath Ethan’s arm came back to him and he said, “Mr. White, please don’t kill him. Don’t kill Mr. Shane.”
White laughed. “Son,” he said, “what good would that do me?”
A MAN STOOD over a cart full of the dead with the Bible in a tremulous hand. His legs swayed on the cart bench, and he periodically bent down to steady himself. He wore denim overalls and a hole-filled shirt: not the uniform of a holy man. He commenced a passage, then stammered and wiped something from the pages with his forearm, flipped through them, the wind rustling the fine paper, the sound like wings flapping. He struggled to keep his place. “Damn it,” he said as he lost his balance, regained it momentarily, then slipped from the cart, the Bible falling from his hands. He scurried after the book, and when he picked it up again he thumped it against his thigh to rid it of snow. Perhaps realizing what he’d done, he cradled the Bible in his outstretched palms, as if to ask His forgiveness for the rough treatment.
Elspeth watched this from the edge of the trough where she’d sat—covered in gore—for almost two hours. On occasion, a doctor—or someone acting as one—would lean down and ask if she’d been hurt and she would shake her head without speaking. One of them had handed her a cigarette before he ran off, in the direction of what she didn’t know. She rolled the cigarette between her fingertips, crushing it, only dimly observing the tobacco drift to the ground, and the paper being taken by the wind when it had emptied.
The children came in an endless loop: stealing them, watching them grow older, listening as their sounds crystallized into words, Dr. Watt taking the baby from her outstretched arms and the elation ebbing from her body, the child she’d dropped on the train tracks crying out to her. Once, after a long absence, she’d sat down to a dinner that Mary had cooked, something that had apparently become customary with her gone, and the children all looked to Elspeth, expectant. How their shrill voices had angered her, how she’d wished they would stare at something else. They seemed hardly to blink. The angrier she became, the less they watched, and this stoked her fury. Caleb had been one of the last to look away, eating the center of his bread, pressing it against his mouth, licking off the butter.
The would-be preacher read aloud, “But the rest fled to Aphek, into the city; and there a wall fell upon twenty and seven thousand of the men that were left.” He frowned and glanced around the bustling scene, but when no one took any notice of him—he did not spy Elspeth watching him—he pressed on. “And Benhadad fled, and came into the city, into an inner chamber.”
Elspeth missed Jorah. It came to her like waking from a nightmare. Jorah would be able to find the perfect passage for this man, to give him the strength he needed to deal with the crushed bodies gathered in a heap at his feet. On her voyages into the city, she rarely thought of her husband—even when a man took a shine to her she declined out of her own disinterest, not out of loyalty to the husband who’d stayed on as her protector through all of her sins. Another man, after all, served her no purpose. But in the dimming sun, with all the horrors of the day receding, she wanted to see her husband, to touch the bony bumps on his shoulders, chalked with dry sweat, and have him kiss the top of her head where her hair parted.
The preacher’s brow furrowed and the corners of his mouth tipped again, and he rifled through the pages. Apparently dissatisfied, he returned to where his finger had marked the page he’d begun and he continued, “And his servants said unto him, Behold now, we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings: let us, I pray thee, put sackcloth on our loins, and ropes upon our heads, and go out to the king of Israel: peradventure he will save thy life.” Even the casual listener could tell that the man hadn’t picked a suitable passage, but Elspeth forgave him—as he apparently did himself—for he left the cart and walked away in the middle of another verse.
“That did not go well,” a voice from behind Elspeth said. Edward Wallace blotted out the sky. He leaned on his cane and smoked from a pipe. In general, he appeared unbothered by the events that surrounded him.
“I suppose not,” Elspeth said. Two men dragged a dead horse up from the lake.
“I hear you acquitted yourself well today, Jorah van Tessel,” Wallace said. Bile rose in her throat. “Perhaps in pairing you with Charles we’ve underestimated you.”
The mention of Charles made her blush. All of the jokes the men in the office told and the strange, oblique allusions coalesced in her head. “I don’t believe so, sir.”
“So are we in agreement?”
“No—I meant, sir, that I don’t think that’s the case. I enjoy the work.”
Wallace grunted, and with a crackling of bones and joints, sat down next to her. He coughed a few times and they waited until his wheezing subsided. “In truth, Jorah, most of these men are meant for nothing more than this.” He gestured with his cane to the panorama around them. The sun had escaped the tree line and drifted out over the lake and turned gold in its descent, Erie with it. In this new glow, the men moving the dead from the icehouse and the rest making repairs and consoling one another turned to shining statues.
“Come with me,” Wallace said, and rose with the help of his cane.
ELLABELLE HAD WARNED Caleb not to spend time in the stables. “Not one good thing happens there,” she said. Between the stalls, however, the heat from the animals chased the chill from his bones and a long-lost security welcomed him. A man named Gerry logged the comings and goings of horses, carts, and carriages. Caleb didn’t like his leer when the night wore on and he’d snuck too many drinks from the bar, or how he lingered in the Elm
as often as he could, loitering by the women’s rooms, wearing an evil grin and pinching their rear ends, which always made them squeal and slap his shoulder. If Gerry had even slightly resembled one of the killers with his wiry strands of hair and yellowed teeth, Caleb would’ve shot him on the spot. Or so he told himself.
Night had fallen. The noise from the Elm reached into the stables, and so Caleb walked farther into its darkness, to the end of the stalls. The quiet eased the tension between his eyes. One stall held no horses; the latch had been broken from the wood. Caleb hooked his leg up and over the rails with a practiced agility and soon he’d fallen asleep in the hay.
He hadn’t been there long when he heard loud voices. Caleb knew Gerry’s slur, but the other voice didn’t conjure a face as easily. “Aw, hell. White don’t know what he’s doing from one day to the next,” Gerry said. “From one minute to the next, even.”
The light from a lantern drifted down the aisle, and Caleb retreated to the rear of the stall. From his new vantage point, he could see the back of the man who’d started the fight Martin had waded into, swinging chairs. Martin’s friend took off his hat and rubbed at his scalp. “He’s taken a shine to the boy?”
“Don’t you worry, Dax,” Gerry said. “Marty proves that’s the boy and White’ll have to let him have him.”
Caleb wondered if he’d underestimated Gerry; it sounded like he was trying to calm Dax down.
“Proof?” Dax said. “Where in hell’s he going to find proof? The kid’s been gone for fifteen goddamn years.”
Gerry scoffed. “That boy ain’t no more than thirteen. Probably hasn’t got a hair on his prick yet.”
“You know what I mean.” He lowered his voice. “Martin said he’d pay me to take him. We could split it.”
“Dax, don’t be an idiot. I don’t like White any more than you, but if you make off with that boy, there’s only one place for him to come looking, and he’s going to come looking with Ethan and a whole armory of guns.”
A latch lifted, and Caleb heard the rattling of reins. “He likes the boy that much?”
“Does it matter how much?” A horse whinnied, and Gerry nickered at it. “London White,” Gerry said, “don’t like being thieved.”
The hooves moved off, and so did the men.
Caleb exhaled. A noise rustled close, and he didn’t have time to react before an arm reached through from the next stall and grabbed his neck. He smelled liquor and tobacco. The arm clenched tight enough that he couldn’t scream.
“Looks like I caught myself a barn rat,” Gerry said, his breath hot on Caleb’s ear. “You been into the feed, rat?”
Caleb’s feet kicked at the hay. The horses whinnied nervously. He reached into his waistband and wrapped his fingers around the Colt. Gerry yanked Caleb back hard, smacking his head into the wooden rail. The force of it must have surprised Gerry, and Caleb shrugged his arm off, scurried deeper into the pen, lifted the gun and cocked the hammer. Shadows cast by the lantern, which Gerry had hung down the aisle, prevented Caleb from seeing into the next stall. “Don’t touch me,” he said, his throat raw.
Gerry spit onto the dirt. “You heard us, didn’t you, boy? You heard me tell that idiot Dax Hanson not to kidnap you? You heard me warn him about Mr. White?”
“Step out into the light,” Caleb said.
“So you can line me up? I don’t think so, son. Why don’t you put that weapon down and we’ll finish this chat?” Caleb caught a glint of thin hair and he pointed the pistol right below it. “Okay, now,” Gerry said.
“Stay still.” Caleb listened for the man’s feet shifting in the hay. For the first time, he’d done what he’d hoped he would have the strength and courage to do and he had the advantage on someone. This didn’t give him the elation he’d expected, instead he clutched his stomach to hold everything inside. “Who is the Shane boy?” he asked. Wind shifted something in the beams and the whole barn squealed at them.
“Martin Shane’s nephew disappeared a while back—he’d have been about your age now, and so he gets it in him that every boy that comes around is his old lost nephew.” His feet moved.
“Stay still,” Caleb commanded. From this distance, he figured he could get maybe two shots off before Gerry could hop into the pen.
“I have to admit, though, Caleb Howell, you’re the first one that’s ever given me pause. Or,” he said, “Mr. White.”
“Mr. White thinks it’s me?”
“Hell if I know what goes on inside that head of his. But this is the first time he’s let Shane walk out without a scratch after pulling something like that.”
Caleb squeezed his legs together. His stomach was warm. “Where does Martin live?”
Gerry laughed. “Martin Shane’s been a friend of mine since you were nothing more than a star in the sky, son.” He stepped out into the light and turned his back to Caleb to lift the lantern from the nail where he’d left it. He’d lost the fear that Caleb was going to shoot him, and Caleb didn’t have any need or desire to kill the stable attendant, although he’d told himself he would if it had come down to it. He let his arm drop. Gerry whirled and punched Caleb in the jaw. Then the temple. Caleb crumpled, the gun in his hand, a full complement of bullets in the cylinder.
“You’re lucky you got angels watching over you,” Gerry said and kicked some hay on Caleb. “You ever put a gun on me again, boy, better make sure you shoot me dead.” On his way out of the stables, he slammed a fist on one of the enclosures. The horses whinnied and reared at the outburst. The swelling didn’t wait. If angels watched over him, Caleb thought, they didn’t mind seeing him suffer.
ELSPETH HAD TO work to keep up with Edward Wallace’s strides. Even with the cane and on unsteady footing, his long legs swallowed up a yard at a pace. He stopped to shake the hand of the would-be preacher, who beamed as if he’d been touched by God Himself. Inside, Wallace’s office had been decorated like a well-appointed sitting room, with a rack full of periodicals between two overstuffed chairs. A fire popped and sang, the room dry and pleasant. Thick rugs deadened her footfalls, and Wallace shut the door to the cold and hung his cane on the coatrack. In the corner lay a crib, a yellow blanket folded over its rail. Elspeth clenched her fists. “Terrible tragedy,” she said, her throat frail from the choking, her voice somewhere on a train with the baby.
“Yes, of course,” Wallace answered. He wedged himself into one of the chairs and motioned for Elspeth to take the other. Though aware of the crib behind her, crouched in wait, she tried to ignore its call. She removed her hat and pushed her hair behind her ears, reminding herself to cut it even shorter when she was within the safety of the hotel. Through the windows, she could see the icehouse and the land falling off toward the water where workers had already begun to rebuild the line of lights in the ruts made by the horses and the sled. The small, round fires still burned.
“Charles tells me you can work numbers,” Wallace said. He set his pipe onto a dish and took a ledger from under his chair with a groan and flipped it open to a page marked with a ribbon.
Elspeth had initially learned mathematics from helping her mother with the cooking, and the books the van Tessel girls had left behind, and had further improved her skills as a midwife—mixing tinctures, tracking changes in weights of mothers and children—though she didn’t recall telling Charles. The attention, however, had already grown too much for her. She reminded herself of the cost of discovery. “No, sir.”
“The bookmen need help,” Wallace said, ignoring her. “Especially now, with new men coming on and families needing their final pay.” He took two fountain pens from his breast pocket, uncapped them, and laid them side by side. “Jorah, let me be frank.” He consulted his ledger. “You’re not cut out for the line. The crew you and Charlie work on has been the slowest, day in and day out, since you arrived.”
She thought of Charles’s absences and of their many breaks, where she bent over and waited to catch her breath. Beads of sweat began to form at her hairline and
at the small of her back. She’d been too confident about her ability to fool them. Wallace began making lines on the ledger, loud, final lines that must have signaled the deaths of the icehouse workers. Charles’s feral expression came to her and the veins in her neck pulsed.
“But Charlie spoke highly of your intellect, and so . . . The position comes with a raise.” Another mark struck out another life.
“I’m not that concerned with the money, sir.”
“You have a son, don’t you, Jorah?” His pen hovered over the paper. She wondered if anyone knew about the errand boy yet—whether his parents had been informed or not. “Wouldn’t your son enjoy one day moving out of the Brick & Feather and into a home? Wouldn’t he like to have a room of his own, perhaps? A growing boy needs a room of his own.”
Elspeth ignored the surprising knowledge Wallace had of her and instead indulged in the daydream of her and Caleb living in a small house on the edge of Watersbridge. It was summer. Elspeth crossed the yard after work, and when Caleb threw his arms around her, she didn’t care that her hands had been stained with ink and ran them through his hair anyway. Then, from the gaping maw of the open door, a baby cried. Wailed. And Elspeth longed to run to the child but Caleb clung to her tightly, as she had Amos, as Jorah had when he’d asked her about the children. She gasped.
“Horace, one of our accountants, has been forced to pay rent here while he takes care of his grandchild.”
Elspeth needed to touch the blanket, to clasp it to her face and smell it, breathe in the scent of the child. The familiar itch came to her, a scratching at her core. “So the infant sleeps here at night?”
“Often, yes,” Wallace said. He tapped his pen on the edge of his ledger. “It’s no way to raise a child—in someone else’s home.” He slashed out another life.
Tears began to form and she heard the baby crying again. She wondered where they could go, how much money it would take to set her and the child up in a new town. She blinked the tears away. “I’m sorry—It must be the smoke from the fire.”