by Rod Miller
“They know I’m here?”
“Yes, Sir. I said as much. Although I did tell them you were quite busy and, without an appointment, you may be unable to see them.”
Ben pushed away from the desk, swiveled his chair and looked out the window, seeing nothing of what it framed.
“Go ahead and show them in, I suppose.”
CHAPTER TEN
Five gold eagles sat stacked on Ben’s desk. He had to admit they made a pretty picture. But $50 meant little to a man such as himself. Not that he would turn it down in most circumstances. But this time—well, this time he would forego a further entry in his account books in the interest of keeping his no-account brother from getting what he wanted.
“Where the hell did you-all come up with fifty dollars cash money?”
Richard cleared his throat. “That ain’t your business, Uncle Ben. All’s you need to know is, you give us them books Pa wants and it’s yours.”
“That Bible and that journal diary ain’t worth anywhere near fifty dollars.”
“They are to Pa,” Abel said.
“Well now, ain’t that just like your Pa. My brother, bless his soul, never did have an idea of the value of things. Offering that kind of money for them books just goes to show how rash the man is.”
“Ain’t no need for you to be bad-talkin’ our Pa,” Abel said, stepping toward the desk with fists clenched.
Richard grabbed him by the elbow. “Don’t bother, baby brother. It ain’t like he’s wrong.”
Abel jerked his arm free and turned his anger toward his brother.
Ben laughed. “Sounds like you’ve growed up enough to see your daddy for what he is.”
“What’s between me and my Pa ain’t any of your business. Whilst I can think of a hundred better ways to spend that money, it’s Pa’s money and he said to use it to get them books he wants. So do we got a deal or not?”
Ben rocked back in his chair and swiveled around until his back was to the boys. “See that safe there in the corner?”
“We ain’t blind.”
“Well, here’s the thing. That box—all the sides and the door—is made of inch-thick iron. You couldn’t open the thing with a pickaxe. There ain’t but one key to it—well, there’s another one, but it’s locked up in the vault at the bank—and the onliest people on all the earth that knows where that key is, is me and Peter. You-all met Peter, didn’t you? He’s the one answered the door,” Ben said as he swiveled back to face the boys.
He talked on. “That book and Bible your daddy gave me for safekeeping is locked in that safe.”
Richard, irritated by all the talk, said, “That’s fine, Uncle Ben. It’s good of you to keep them in your damn safe. Now, why don’t you unlock it and give us them books and we’ll take our leave.”
“Let me finish. As I said, them books is in that safe.” Ben looked at each of the boys in turn, locking eyes until each, save Abel, looked away. “And that’s just where they’re going to stay.”
Both Richard and Abel protested, but Ben hushed them with a wave of his hand. “Now, boys, I suggest you-all get the hell out of here and go back to your daddy—wherever he is—and tell him he ain’t got no claim to any part of the Pate family. Including the name, as far as I’m concerned.”
Richard huffed and reached for the stack of coins.
“No,” Ben said softly, his hand beating Richard’s to the pile and covering it. “The money stays.”
“The hell!” Richard said. Abel stepped up beside his brother, voicing his own protest. Melvin stayed where he stood, propping up the far wall.
Again, Ben hushed them with a raised hand. “Hold it, boys. As I said, the money stays.”
“But that ain’t nothin’ but thievery!” Abel said.
“It ain’t right!” Richard said.
“We’ll go to the law!” Abel said.
Again, the humorless laugh rolled out of their uncle. “Boys,” he said. “You-all stop a minute and think about it. I’m a respected citizen hereabouts as you know—from this town all the way to the courthouse in Memphis. You-all ain’t nothing but drifting vagrants. I could have you in jail by dinnertime.”
Abel reminded him who was breaking the law, but it had no effect on Ben. He repeated his claim of standing in the community. And said that the reputation of their father reflected on them, and not to their credit. He pointed out again that he could have the boys arrested for vagrancy. Or, come to it, accuse them of trying to rob him in his own house, with Peter as a witness.
“Now, boys, just who do you think the law is going to believe?”
His nephews offered no answer, but their eyes betrayed their thoughts. Richard looked angry, but defeated. Melvin, cowed, as usual. Abel’s eyes burned with hatred.
That boy might bear watching.
The boys left Ben’s house and did not speak until reaching the river, where their mules were corralled in an abandoned pen that backed onto an empty shack. It was Melvin who broke the silence.
“Rich?”
An irritated look was his older brother’s only response.
“I’m wonderin’ why it was only five of them gold eagles Uncle Ben took from us. There was eight of them under that fireplace, wasn’t there?”
“Oh for God’s sake, Mel! I kept out three of them so’s we won’t go hungry on the way back to Ma and Pa. Or when we get there. We been hungry long enough on account of Pa’s foolishness, and this money will stave it off, at least for a time.”
“But Pa said—”
“Shut up! I know what he said. But Uncle Ben wasn’t no more likely to give up them damn books for eighty dollars than he was for fifty. So why don’t you just forget about it? We’ll get on the ferry this evenin’ and that’ll be the end of it.”
“No.”
Richard whipped around and stared wide-eyed at Abel. “What?”
“I said no. This ain’t over. You-all can do what you want, but I ain’t goin’ back without them books. Pa sent us here to get them and I aim to do just that.”
“Pa! Pa this, and Pa that! I’m sick to death of hearin’ you carry on about Pa. Had you the sense God gave a bottle cork you’d see he ain’t give us nothing but trouble, with more to come.”
“Say what you want—he’s still our Pa and we ought to do what he says. I’m going back and get them books for him.”
Before Abel could draw another breath, he found himself prone on the riverbank, the wind knocked out of him—whether from his brother’s two-handed shove to his chest or from the landing that resulted. He sucked air in but could not release it and the feeling of strangling panicked him.
A kick in the ribs from Richard’s boot solved that problem as it rolled the boy from his back to his belly. Richard wound up for another kick, but Abel had come to himself enough to roll out of the way, and when Richard followed up with a stomp, he grabbed his foot and upended him, then scrambled to his feet, fists cocked.
With a leer on his face, Richard rose and rushed in, only to have his direction and momentum reversed by a blow to his nose from Abel’s fist. Blood streamed, and Richard’s face reddened to match.
“Grab him, Mel! Hold him!”
Melvin hesitated. “But Rich—”
“Grab him, I said!”
But Mel lacked enthusiasm for the job and was too slow. Abel interrupted his attempted bear hug from behind with an elbow to his tender ribs and Melvin went down. But Abel’s attention to Melvin gave Richard a chance to land a blow, and he made the most of it. Abel went down and when he did, Mel, now in the fight with fervor, rolled on top of his younger brother and pinned his wrists to the ground. A blow to the boy’s head from Richard’s boot rattled his brain. Another kick landed on his shoulder.
“You little sonofabitch!” Richard said between gasps. “I’ve had a belly full of you trying to lord it over me!”
As Richard wound up for another blow with his boot, Abel jerked and bucked, loosening Melvin’s hold on his wrists. With an open hand, he smac
ked Melvin above the ear, opening the wound he had bathed only yesterday. His brother screamed and rolled off and away and Abel was soon on his feet.
“Leave off!” he told Richard.
“Like hell,” came the reply, accompanied by a flying fist.
Abel ducked away, landing a blow to Richard’s gut. His brother bent double and Abel’s wild uppercut landed on his chin, standing Richard upright if only briefly, as he collapsed in a heap. Abel turned to Melvin, sitting spraddle-legged with blood leaking between the fingers of the hand held over the gash on his head.
“You had enough, Mel?”
Mel nodded.
Abel rummaged around the one-room cabin and came out with a rusty bucket and a rag that looked to have served as an apron. He dipped the bucket full from the river and half the water leaked through the bottom before he got back to Melvin.
As he had done before, he mopped away the blood and cleaned the wound as best he could. He rinsed the rag, folded it, and told Melvin to press it against the cut. Refilling the leaky bucket, he hurried to where Richard lay and dumped it in his face. His brother wagged his head back and forth, spitting and snorting as he came awake. When finally his eyelids cooperated and lifted, he saw Abel standing over him. Anger darkened his eyes but it faded with echoes of the blows his youngest brother had delivered.
“Now, you two listen to me,” Abel said. “I meant it when I said I’m going back to get them books.”
“How do you aim to do that?” Richard said.
“I don’t know. I’ll figure out something, somehow.”
“I suppose you want our help.”
“No. I want you-all to stay here and wait for me. If I ain’t back by morning, go on ahead back to Pa. Tell him I tried my best.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Once a grassy clearing among the trees, the campsite was trampled down to dust. When it rained, that meant mud. Gathering firewood forced Lee always deeper into the forest. Likewise, Sarah’s foraging for roots and greens and berries and seeds sent her ever farther afield. Any rabbits or squirrels in the immediate vicinity who hadn’t found their way into the cooking pot by now had quit the area long since.
Amber sunlight filtered through the trees, softening the harshness of their temporary home. But it did nothing to dampen Sarah’s increasing ire at the state of her affairs.
“We’ll move on once the boys is back,” Lee said for the hundredth time.
Sarah stirred the watery stew with more enthusiasm than the chore required, the spoon ringing the sides of the cast-iron kettle like the clapper in a bell. She swiped a stray strand of hair away but to no avail; it again draped over her face until she tucked it persuasively behind an ear. “Like as not them boys has been set upon by thieves or killed by Indians or succumbed to some other untoward end.”
“Now, Sarah—”
“Don’t ‘Now Sarah’ me! Had you not sent them off on such a senseless errand they’d be here right now, where they belong.” She clanged the spoon clean against the rim of the pot. “No, I tell a lie. They’d be here, all right, but it damn sure ain’t where they belong. Ain’t none of us ought to be here.” Sarah wiped her hands on the hem of her apron and again slid the unruly hank of hair behind her ear. “You and your damn-fool notions. . . .”
“Coarse language is becoming a habit with you, woman. And such talk don’t tote up to your advantage.”
“Shut up,” she said, dabbing her eyes with the apron. “Just shut up.”
Clouds of dust followed her out of the clearing. She sat on a rock on the bank of the stream. Not the most comfortable seat, but over repeated visits her backside had somewhat conformed to its hills and valleys and angles and slopes. The whisper of rushing creek water did not wash away her fears or anxiety, but it did soothe them to some extent. And, unlike Lee, the stream heard her complaints without comment or correction or contradiction.
“What’s happened to the home place?” she said under her breath, so only the creek could hear. She thought again of the spindle-back rocker in the front room and the contented hours spent there with needle and thread, darning egg, or knitting needles. Or, at times, a favorite book.
“I wonder if whoever’s cooking at my stove has learned to regulate the heat, what with that finicky damper.” She thought of the pantry, the crocks on its shelves brimming with the fruits of their labors. Dried apricots and cherries, prunes and raisins. Pickled cucumbers afloat in brine, sacks of onions, bags and boxes of herbs and spices. Dry beans. Rice. Flour and sugar. The cellar, with its trove of root vegetables and stored apples. She swallowed saliva at the thought of salty ham and bacon from the smokehouse. “Oh, Lord,” she whispered, “what I would not give to see the yolk of an egg running across a plate.”
Sarah stood, brushed off her backside and smoothed her apron and walked back to the cook fire to dish up a supper of weak broth for herself and her husband.
“Mighty tasty, Sarah,” Lee said, licking his fingers.
She only looked at him.
“Once the boys get back,” he said, his tongue catching a drip on the heel of his hand, “we’ll go on to Fort Smith. Can’t be more’n a week’s travel.”
“Then what?”
Lee handed her his plate and spoon and wiped the palms of his hands against his thighs. “I reckon me and the boys will rustle up some work for the winter. With four of us makin’ wages we ought to could earn a pretty good pile. Outfit us real good, come spring, then roll on west.”
“Where to?”
“Don’t rightly know, as yet. It’ll come to me ’fore the time comes.”
“ ’Nother one of your fool notions, that what you’re saying?”
He looked at his wife through sad eyes. “Call ’em notions if you will, woman. Man’s got to follow his heart.”
“It’s your heart you’re following, is it? Well, one thing’s for certain sure, Lee Pate—it ain’t your brain.”
Sarah lowered herself to the ground, legs folding beneath her. She studied the empty plate in her hand and set it aside. Tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear, she wiped away a tear runneling down her cheek.
Lee’s eyes widened in wonder. “Why, Sarah! What is it?”
“It’s everything, Lee. Everything.” Wiping more tears with the hem of her faded apron, Sarah repeated much of her conversation with the creek to her dumbfounded husband. She confessed her shame at the meager fare that left her family unfilled and unsatisfied. She repeated her fears for the wellbeing of her boys. And she punctuated it all with a frenzy of racking sobs.
Sliding off the log on which he sat onto his knees, Lee crept the few steps to Sarah and enfolded her in his arms. “I am a thick-headed man, Sarah. I knew you was upset, but I did not know it went beyond your annoyance with me.”
It took some time, but Lee’s embrace relieved Sarah’s quaking. Whispered apologies felt useless as they fell from his tongue, but he knew no other course.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Something about his meeting with Lee’s boys bothered Ben Pate. He didn’t feel guilty about what he’d done; not exactly. But he didn’t feel good about it, either. He’d fussed and stewed over it, picked at dinner, then fretted about it some more. Finally, he told Peter to tell the cook he wouldn’t be needing supper—he was stepping out for a drink and would find something to eat in town. Peter watched him hunch into his long-tailed duster, tug on his wide-brimmed planter’s hat and leave the house like a troubled man with much on his mind.
But Ben never did eat supper. He did have a drink. He did not stop after the first one, or the third, or many others to come. Long past midnight and well into the wee hours, the bartender decided to lock up. He shooed a few men with no particular place to go and in no hurry to get there out the door. Then he tried to rouse his last holdout out of somnolence. After lifting Ben’s limp head off the table three or four times and watching it sag back into a stupor when the bleary, bloodshot eyes failed to make sense of his surroundings, he realized Ben—or Mister Pate
as he called him when the man was conscious—would not be walking out the door on his own.
“Antonio!”
The old man who worked as a swamper in the saloon looked up from the sink where he was up to his elbows in glassware.
“C’mon over here and help me get Mister Pate out the door.”
Antonio dropped the dirty rag he’d dried his forearms with on the table where Ben sat and, arms akimbo, studied the man. “He no look so good.”
“Ain’t no wonder,” the bartender said. “He’s swallowed enough of what passes for whiskey in this place to float a steamboat.”
“You think he make it home on his own?”
“Oh, he’ll be all right. Let’s take him outside. Fresh air will do him good.”
The bartender propped Ben’s hat on his head and each man hitched an arm under one of Ben’s and half-carried the stumbling, mumbling man out the door. They leaned him against a sign advertising nickel beer hanging beside the door of the saloon and held him there.
“Mister Pate!” the bartender said, shaking the unsteady man by the lapels. “Mister Pate! Wake up!”
Ben stirred and lifted heavy eyelids enough to manage a few slow, quizzical blinks until the world came into a soft but penetrable focus. He looked at the men holding him up, and seemed disturbed at their presence. “Go ’way,” he slurred. “Le’ me ’lone.”
“You going to be all right, Mister Pate?”
“Damn right,” Ben said, weakly swatting at the men.
“You sure?”
“Get the hell out of here!”
“Looks like he’s comin’ around, Antonio. Let’s leave him be. I’m plumb tuckered and beggin’ for a bed.”
The men went back inside and the bartender closed and latched the saloon door. Ben stayed where he was, not trusting his rickety shanks to support him without assistance. Deep, deliberate breaths of the damp night air slowly brought him back to semi-consciousness and he set off for home, staggering along the board sidewalk. He dragged one hand along the walls of the buildings he passed to steady him along his path.