The Kept

by James Scott

  The room had fallen into darkness before she raised herself to light the lamps. One lonely match shook in its box. She said a small prayer, asking for the match to last long enough for them both. It struck on the first try, and once it fizzled down to a manageable flame, she lit one lamp, then the other. She held the match in her fingers, the flame burning slowly, dancing in tremors and waves. She didn’t dare breathe and put it out. When the heat crept close to her fingers, she shook once. As she watched a small ribbon of smoke make its way up toward the ceiling, she imagined the cool surface of the vase, the weight of the clay.

  “LET THE BOY breathe,” Paul said.

  Kelly relented, and Caleb made a show of readjusting his clothing from her latest embrace, but really, he’d enjoyed this one as much as the first. Martin served stew, thick with potatoes and earthen carrots, strung with beef. Paul tore him a chunk of bread.

  “So, Caleb,” Martin said. Paul shot him a warning glance that Caleb followed, but Martin plowed ahead. “How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Twelve,” Martin said with great purpose. “That’s getting close to manhood.”

  Kelly and Paul exchanged a look. “What brought you here to Watersbridge, Caleb?” Kelly asked.

  “My mo— My father,” Caleb said. Then, changing his mind about lying to all the expectant faces, “My mother.”

  “Did your mother or your father ever talk to you about where you came from?” Paul asked. He propped his elbows on the table and dropped his bread into his stew.

  “She told me that I was born here.”

  Martin shook his fists with joy, Kelly brought a hand to her chest, and Paul pushed the bread around his bowl with his finger.

  “So then,” Caleb said, his fist tightening on the bag of gifts he’d placed by his seat, “you’re my real mother?”

  Kelly brought her bowl to the stewpot, even though she had yet to touch her spoon. Paul tapped Martin with the mouthpiece of his pipe, which he loaded with tobacco and tamped down with his pinkie. Martin touched his brow like he’d been struck with a sudden headache. To try to please them, Caleb took a bite of his stew and smiled. He wanted to return to the happy dinner, but his other hand clenched the bag harder, rolling the top under his fingers. Kelly’s chair screeched across the floor as she set it near him. “Caleb,” she said, and pushed his hair away from his forehead again, “your mother was my sister, Kaitlyn. And your father was her husband, Samuel. You were—” She sobbed, a big, gasping sound. “I’m sorry. You were named for him. Samuel.”

  Caleb dropped the bag of treasures to the floor. In spite of himself he asked, “Where is she?”

  “Someone stole you,” Martin said. “Kidnapped you, right out from under us.” Paul shushed him and lit his pipe. His bread had soaked up the color of the broth and turned soft and dull. Their utensils all remained clean and unused.

  “Where is she?”

  “Your mother—my sister—” Kelly said. “She passed on.”

  “Passed on?” Caleb said, sure he knew what she meant but not wanting to.

  The stew gurgled. The tobacco in Paul’s pipe made a small crackling noise and the scent reached Caleb, sweet as the forest in summer.

  “She died,” Martin said. Paul and Kelly each said his name at the same time, but he continued. “She died when she gave birth to you.”

  The words struck Caleb with a quickness. “To me?”

  “It’s not your fault, sweetheart,” Kelly said. “It wasn’t anything you did.”

  Caleb couldn’t begin to process that another life had been lost because of him. Instead, he focused on Elspeth. Maybe, Caleb thought, his mind shouting, speaking too quickly for him to hear, Elspeth had taken him away because she didn’t wish for him to live without a mother. Or to live without a father. Why, then, would she leave so often, and when she came back, keep herself from him—from all of them—even when she sat in the same room? The pipe smoke that had begun so sweetly now tasted like dizziness, like his mouth when he woke up sick. The world slid away from him and he looked up at it as though from the bottom of a well.

  “This is a lot—an awful lot, Caleb,” Kelly said, and he put his head on the table, the soft napkin on his cheek, the heat from his bowl close to his forehead. Before he knew it Kelly helped him from his chair and up a set of dark, narrow stairs. He worried, for a moment, that he’d been poisoned, but Kelly’s arm around him told him different. She carried the bag that contained the gifts he’d purchased for her, the shards of the broken vase scraping against one another. In his hand he still held his spoon.

  She pulled back clean-smelling sheets, and Caleb slid in, fully clothed.

  “You need rest,” she said. She pried the spoon from his hand. She kissed his cheek, then his nose, then his other cheek. “Poor child.”

  A FAINT NOISE roused Elspeth. A mouse scurried across the panes of moonlight cast on the floor, and it disappeared behind Caleb’s empty bed. She turned down a corner of his blankets and ran a hand along his pillow to feel the small indent where his head had rested. She felt ridiculous in her perfumes and fancy clothes. She undid her hair. She slid off her shoes and shed her dress, which she hung from the only available hanger, run through an eyehook in the ceiling that awaited some long-missing decoration. The dress swayed back and forth.

  Her dreams came quickly: icy, sharp nightmares in which she walked a set of creaking planks in front of a crowd of people: the children she’d taken—Emma, Jesse, Mary, Amos, and Caleb; their mothers and fathers, who screamed for her blood; the small skeleton next to the train tracks, with its delicate finger bones, its incomplete skull; and Jorah. A firm hand pushed her from behind and she plummeted for minutes, hours, before a set of pincers hanging from a crane closed in on her, piercing her below her rib cage, jerking her to a stop. The blood flowed down her legs and dripped from her feet. The crane moved, out over the gray enormity of Lake Erie, until it reached deep water that had not yet frozen, and the pincers released her into the raging waves from such a great height that she sank so deep she could not hope to swim to the surface. As she approached the flat light of day, she crashed into a solid layer of ice. She pounded. But the ice would not break.

  She kicked herself awake, out of breath. One man’s gaze stood out from the crowd that had already begun to fade from her memory. He’d placed a hat over his heart, and he didn’t yell like the others. Once the pincers tore into her flesh, he’d slipped his hat back on and turned to go without a word. The name Shane—ignored for so long—rang through her, and she wondered about all the nights Caleb had spent away from her. The dress moved in some unseen wind, the hanger scratching back and forth, producing an awful squealing that sounded nearly like laughter.

  “YOU’RE AWAKE,” THE voice said.

  “Yes,” Caleb said, and he felt the same cold stone in his bowels he’d felt in the barn, his face against the wood, the stench of his own urine flooding his nostrils.

  “It’s Paul,” he said. “Don’t be alarmed. I know it’s been too much for you to take in all at once.”

  Caleb sat up. Paul’s shoulders hunched, and his hands cupped around something Caleb couldn’t make out in the dark. Kelly hadn’t drawn the curtains, and Caleb could see the fat moon, heavy in the sky.

  “I know that whoever raised you did well,” he said. “Maybe they weren’t the ones who took you. I can’t be sure. But I’m here to warn you.” A creak came from the hallway. Paul and Caleb froze. They waited. Something—an owl, maybe—passed by the window, and Caleb jumped. Paul put his finger to his lips.

  “Martin Shane is an unforgiving man,” Paul said once enough time had elapsed that their suspicions quieted. “One who’s unlikely to wait to see whether someone is guilty or not. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” Caleb nodded. “When you disappeared, Martin and your father—they looked for you, far and wide, all over the state. Weeks, months at a time, they were gone.” Caleb envisioned a man who looked like him galloping across the wide-open p
laces he and Elspeth had crossed. “They found a woman who thought she may have seen you at the train station,” Paul said, and though Caleb thought he’d remember such a thing—riding on a train—he didn’t interrupt. “She said she saw the doctor and a woman holding a newborn infant. They questioned that doctor, and he never wavered, not even a little.” Paul pulled at a loose string: a tear beginning in the knee of his pants. “Martin and your father went up and down the tracks, stopped at every station, town, and in-between. They exhausted themselves. I don’t know that they slept. Horses gave out by the handful. When they returned, they stayed up all night in the living room, pouring over maps and newspaper reports, each and every word of the woman who thought she might have seen you. And they’d leave again, midnight, noon, it didn’t matter. Whenever a new thought struck them, they’d be off again.

  “It was less than a year before it all got to your father. Every time he came back he’d be more and more like a skeleton. Less and less of him. And it was like he couldn’t see anything in this world anymore. He didn’t say much to me, or to Martin, either. And then, one night, they were riding into Watersbridge and your father meant to cross the ice as a shortcut home. Martin said it was too warm, the ice too thin. Your father didn’t listen. Martin had turned his horse around and had only gone a few paces when he heard the ice cracking.”

  “My father’s dead,” Caleb said, needing to say it out loud.

  “They looked for him that night, dragged some lamps down to the water, tied a rope around the waist of a man named Edwin, who’d been a friend of your father’s, and let him shuffle out onto the ice. I was there. On the way back, Edwin shook his head before the light even touched him, like he’d been shaking his head the whole time. If it hadn’t been your father, and if people didn’t know of his heartbreak already, they wouldn’t have even bothered.”

  Caleb tried once more to picture a bigger him riding across the plains, following train tracks that melted into the distance, but all he saw was a gaping hole in the ice that turned clear and still and then froze over completely.

  “All this riding and all this hunting turned Martin into a different man. Hell, he was a boy then. Not much older than you.” Caleb saw Martin’s wild eyes as Ethan pinned him down in the Elm. “Every penny he earned he used to hire trackers, hunters: whoever he could find. Trouble was, around here, people had already helped as much as they could, and they’d seen what had happened to your father, and they’d seen what had happened to Martin, and the whole thing scared them to pieces. And it had been two years by that time. You were gone, vanished. But Martin, he kept looking. Every cent he had, he’d find someone who wouldn’t feel guilty taking his money. Sometimes Martin would go along with them, and he’d pull out the maps, the plans, and the words of that woman, and it’d start all over again.”

  Paul toyed with whatever he held in his hands. “I could tell soon as I saw you on the trail that you’d been through things. You have some of the same look about you that your father had, that Martin has.” Caleb wanted to tell him about Emma, Jesse, Mary, Jorah, and Amos, and how he’d burned their bodies and he’d burned their home. He wanted someone to stand up and scream for him, to acknowledge all that he’d lost. “Your mother, your father, your family, whoever it is,” Paul said, “are not safe from Martin. Some of the men he hired would come round here, and they were killers. Empty-souled killers.”

  Caleb imagined the glint of Jorah’s hair, the small explosion of powder that preceded the man falling in the fields. He walked around the mounds on the other side of the hill. He smelled the earth the following morning. A killer looked at the barn. A red scarf fluttered, and then another and another. He saw the long hair, the stooped walk, and he knew what had happened. “Where did they come from?”

  “Who?” Paul said, only half present.

  “The men Martin hired. Where did they come from?”

  Paul gave the object in his hand to Caleb. Wrapped in dark fabric was a roll of money. “Kelly and I have been saving that,” he said, “all our lives. Whatever we could keep from Martin we did. Sometimes he’d find it and he’d go off and buy another drunk tracker, another man itching to let loose his bullets.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “We want you to know that you can stay here, and we’ll put this money to making you a life. Kelly and I, we’d take care of you,” Paul said. “But if whoever brought you here is important to you, you take that money and you run. You get far enough gone that you’re not on those maps Martin spreads out.”

  Caleb didn’t care about the money. To him, it was nothing but paper. “Where are the killers?”

  A sudden demonic glow flared out the window like a sunrise, followed by a holler. “He’s burning it all—the maps, the papers, the accounts, the newspapers—now that you’re here.” Paul’s eyes squeezed into a frightened squint. “This release”—he tipped his chin toward the window—“will be followed by the thirst for another.” He closed Caleb’s hand around the wad of money. “Go.”

  Caleb gathered up his few belongings. The broken gifts he ignored. He looked around for the Colt before remembering he’d traded it in for a bag of junk. He longed for his Ithaca and felt too light without it.

  In the kitchen, Kelly stood at the window, watching as Martin threw sheaves of paper into the blaze and then poured a bottle onto them that made the flames leap. From the way she stiffened, he knew she sensed him there, the same way the animals would only partially acknowledge his presence. He lingered, not sure what he hoped for, before walking down the front hallway and into a night filled with Martin’s rhapsodic screams.

  ELSPETH PICKED HER way down the stairs in new shoes that necessitated that she gather up her skirts to see where she stepped. The hotel had begun to wake, some rumpled men stumbling in from the night out and others straightening well-pressed outfits and drinking coffee. A few women were scattered among them, dressed in elaborate fashion. The room smelled of cleanliness: soaps and subtle perfumes. Out of habit, Elspeth expected Charles, carrying their mugs of coffee.

  Frank recognized her, but it took a while, even with her standing right in front of him.

  “Elspeth,” she said.

  “Elspeth,” he repeated.

  “My son,” she said. He brought his cup to his mouth but failed to drink from it. “Have you seen him?” Frank shook his head. “Do you know where he might be? It seems as though,” she said and struggled to keep her composure, “he has taken some of his belongings with him.”

  “Did he take his shotgun?” Frank asked. The gun, cleaner than the day she’d bought it, occupied the shelf above Caleb’s bed. “That boy isn’t going anywhere without his gun,” he said. “Why don’t you come talk in the back?”

  He grabbed her elbow roughly and pulled her through the kitchen and into a back pantry filled with jars of jams and jellies of all colors, shelves of cookbooks, and sacks of flour and grocery bags labeled with crooked letters. Frank shut the door and left them in the dark. Another explosion of dynamite in the graveyard shook the tiny room.

  “Look, ma’am, sir, whatever the hell you are today,” he said, “this is none of my business, but since I’ve spent some time with Caleb: Have you given any thought to what you’re doing to that boy?”

  “Not enough,” Elspeth said. “But more lately. Thank you.”

  His hand touched her stomach, then slid quickly down and into her groin. His fingers pressed against her. “Why?”

  “To avoid being recognized,” she said. “To stay out of trouble. To keep myself from the same sins.”

  “That boy doesn’t have a chance,” he said. “Not a damn chance.”

  She was glad for the darkness. “I know.”

  His hand raised to her. She could sense it looming and waited for the blow, tilted her head back to receive it. Finally, the punishment she’d deserved for so long. “My wife is pregnant,” he said. “I’m sad for the world that will meet our child.” The hand lowered and he tossed the door open. T
he new air hit Elspeth’s face and her tears turned cold. Another explosion sounded, this time unsettling jars and a bag of flour. The cooks busy making breakfast halted, ready to catch falling objects, then resumed their work, the whisking of eggs sounding to Elspeth like the claws of an animal hunting. She wished it would hurry up and find her.

  CHAPTER 16

  Again Caleb heard the beat of a horse’s hooves chasing him back to the center of Watersbridge. The graveyard was quiet. The bodies lay beneath lamps strung up for the occasion, and in their golden domes the empty graves yawned at their prey. When he reached them, he braved a glance back and saw nothing there. No horse followed him. Martin Shane did not appear out of the gloom, smoke hanging about him, emanating from the folds of his coat.

  Dawn approached and things were beginning to brighten, objects emerging from the black to reveal themselves as everyday bushes and trees, not men with scarves sighting him down the barrels of their rifles. He slowed. By the time he reached the Brick & Feather, his hysteria had subsided, and his mind had focused on one objective: leaving.

  The wad of money sat heavy in his pocket. In the quiet of the hotel, the carpets softened his steps. From the counter, Frank gave him a sad smile. Caleb opened the door to their room to reveal Elspeth awake and already bundled, her bags under her arms, and dressed, once again, like a woman. His frazzled mind could barely process this transformation.