by Alissa York
Then there were the times when the cageboy was exactly where he ought to be—dead to the world on the stable floor, or on the straw pile in Philomena’s cage—and something else got in their way. Pitch getting a second wind and showing up to check on Bendy’s progress, talking a blue streak of pointers complete with the inevitable lengthy asides. Or Camden, struck with a fresh idea, hammering together little carts to be drawn by parakeets, monkeys swarming about him like children, climbing the curve of his spine.
Still and all, a month of nights had passed since the show first rolled into town, and Bendy had lain with Philomena for half of them. Always in the den at the heart of the straw blind. Always in silence. A sharp suck of air in place of a cry. Her soft, insistent panting in his ear.
He soon came to understand that the fur did not, as he’d first imagined, render any given part of her much like any other. On the contrary, Philomena’s coat was all variation. It was long and slippery over her head, thin at her wrists, woolly in the cleft of her buttocks and between her thighs. Her face fur was soft, though her eyebrows bristled like any woman’s. Finest of all was the hair that flowed south in the valley of her spine. Neck to tailbone, a thumb’s-width ribbon of silk.
She smelled of good meat cooking. A joint in the oven, a chop in the pan. She smelled of salt. A little—he couldn’t help grinning whenever he caught a whiff—of cat.
Fifteen times.
The last of which fell on a night when Stanley woke with a start, possessed of a terrible thirst. He bellowed for her, “MENA!” and when she didn’t appear, he kicked open the cage door and dropped to the ground. He was fast for one so bleary. He came lurching round the corner of the blind as Bendy was scrambling to his feet and Philomena’s head was beginning to emerge.
A body can only bend so far before breaking, even the rubbery corpus of a freak. Stanley came at him bare handed to begin. Then, when Bendy was down and gasping, blind with his own blood, when Philomena had torn away into the night, loping a desperate track to the Gillespie Hotel in search of help, the cageboy staggered off to find a weapon. He was back in moments with a large wooden wedge, yanked from beneath the cage’s wheel.
Swinging the block on its rope handle, he broke Bendy’s collarbone, four of his ribs and the thinner of the two bones in his right forearm—they heard that one go. He was doing his best to ruin both legs when his uncle hauled him off. Camden had a good hold, Stanley’s arms a thick bow at his back, his head drawn back by the hair. When Pitch doused his son with the contents of a water pail, the offspray caught Bendy in the face and helped him see. Clown and cageboy. Ringmaster. Dog girl nowhere to be found. He scuttled backwards on his behind, head singing, chest a bright butterfly of pain.
“Get off me!” Stanley lashed out behind him with his boot heels, but Camden was quick on his feet. “Get off!” He bucked and wrenched, and, giving up on words, let out a bellow devoid of sense.
The ringmaster watched Bendy struggle to his feet. “I’d be going if I were you.”
“Going?” Bendy dropped a tooth with the word.
Pitch nodded. “Gone.”
Bendy never knew how long Camden Pitch kept hold of his nephew—only that it was long enough for him to make a delirious getaway down Kearny Street to the plaza, spot a hollow beneath a watering trough and hide himself away.
Boots came and went, but none of them were Stanley’s. With dawn an hour off, Bendy decided to crawl out of there while he still could. Wicklow would’ve taken him in, helped him back to the old narrow stall, called for a doctor, maybe even sat with him until the doctor came. The idea of it made Bendy’s chest ache to bursting. In the end he chose an older path, dragging himself to Gripp’s.
The rooming house was a miracle of sorts, survivor of a dozen great fires. The mountain man was wholly blind now, skimping on lamp oil, navigating like a grey steamer through the gloom. He let Bendy have his pick of a bunk—the place was three-quarters empty, a condition unknown during the rush—and he sent for the bone-setter, but that was no more than any man would’ve done.
Bendy was still there a week later—flat in his stinking bunk beside the open window, mending but not yet mended—when he caught sight of the show leaving town. The parade passed like memory—Pitch leading the lovely grey, Camden and his five bright balls. Bendy hauled the blanket up like a robber’s kerchief, his heart thundering, as Stanley swung past on the tailgate of the lion’s cage.
Philomena brought up the rear, motionless in her nest of straw. He was too afraid to call out to her. He rose up on his good elbow and, though it pained him, he waved. If she saw him, she gave no sign.
— 29 —
May 23rd, 1867
Dear Daughter
Can you possibly wish to know more? If I had you here before me I might attempt to judge by your aspect though in truth you were a closed book to me more often than not. In any case you are not before me. No one is. And stories have a way of unfolding themselves until they lie entire.
Mr. Burr rode for Cedar early on Thursday the 10th of September 1857 saying only that the militia was called up and he must go. I would not lay eyes on him until two days hence when he rode into the yard at nightfall a different man on a different mount. You remember Dorrie the tall red mare named Shade. He had ridden out on Pepper but now the poor fellow trailed after him on a lead. My husband required help dismounting. I watered the horses but left them to stand in their tack. There were more pressing tasks at hand.
He was filthy. When I felt his forehead my hand came away brown with grease. His clothing was stiff with dust and blood. He stood silent while I undressed and bathed him suds the colour of rust slopping on my kitchen floor. I wound him in a sheet and helped him shuffle to the bed. He lay back when I urged him but refused to close his eyes.
Next I built a fire in the pit out back of the house and burned his clothes. Even his smalls were marked where the blood had soaked through. His boots I soaped in the barn along with the saddle I lifted from the sweating mare. And two items more. His belt and threaded upon it a leather sheath. The knife it housed was still sticky with blood. This I cleaned back in the kitchen. I dried it carefully. After a moment’s indecision I dropped it in the drawer with the others as if it had been used to carve up a Sunday roast.
I hoped to find him resting upon my return but still he stared. He hadn’t moved an inch the drying sheet still swaddled around him tight. Will I bring you some broth husband? It never entered my head to offer him solid food. He was not wounded yet clearly he was not well. I felt a dull horror as I drew near him but overcame it and skirted the bed to lie at his side. I was his wife.
When still he did not stir I drew his head to my breast. It broke him. He wept so the tears penetrated my dress and deeper. Now it was I who stared. Try as I might I could not seem to string two thoughts together. I stroked his head as though it were a cat come to purr on my chest. It seemed an eternity before he could marshal sufficient breath to speak. Even then he spilled his confession to my bosom not once looking up to meet my eyes.
I am no braver Dorrie. In truth I am grateful your face is not before me so that I might set down that same confession in a solitary scrawl.
By the time Mr. Burr’s regiment reached Mountain Meadows on the night of the 10th the emigrant train had been under siege for some three days. Dead horses and stock lay thick. Among them the surprised Gentiles that fell during the first attack and the unlucky Indians that met their returning fire. I say Indians Dorrie but I must tell you there were those who had made themselves so with horse tail wigs and paint. What is more their leader was no chief but a Saint of some rank known to all in these parts. Known to you my girl. Do you remember singling him out in Cedar? I thought Mr. Burr would unsocket your arm.
It was not until early the next morning that this man gathered the Saints there assembled about him to receive their orders. Mr. Burr was certain he had misheard. He had not. They were to kill the entire company save the small children who would be spared. The sc
heme was a treacherous one. The leader would lure the Gentiles from their stronghold with the promise of safe passage back to Cedar. He would claim to have struck a bargain with the Indians. The horde would stand down but only in return for all the wealth those wagons held.
Infants and small children would come first. They would be loaded into wagons with any wounded and most importantly with every Gentile gun. Next the women and older children would walk out in a herd. Following them at some distance would come the able bodied men. Each one of these last would be paired with a Saint in arms. Hard conditions but the leader had a way with words and in any case what choice did the emigrants have?
They could not possibly know that on a bellowed signal each armed Saint would turn on the man in his charge. Halt do your duty. It must have taken some time to fix upon just the right words. Nor could they know savages would leap from the brush to cut the women and children down. Again I say savages but I trust you take my meaning. Dorrie you will remember how my hand came away sullied from Mr. Burr’s brow. Grease paint can be stubborn. A streak of it had clung to his hair line when he and the others knelt to wash their faces in a creek.
Which is worse? To turn and fire at arm’s distance upon a man who has entrusted you with his life or to leap from behind a tree and cut a screaming woman’s throat? And then another’s. And then that of a ten year old boy. My husband did as he was ordered. They all did. In minutes the emigrant train lay dead. Save the small children. Those whose blood the Church has termed innocent and has forbidden any Saint to spill.
Dorrie I find I cannot go on. Can you see where my weeping wets the page? Salt circles in the margins. A pitiful offering indeed.
All a mother’s love
Helen Burr
— 30 —
SHE WON’T LOOK AT HIM. It’s been two days now since it happened, four meals at the same table and still not so much as a flicker of her eyes his way.
Bendy drags through his evening chores. Later, long after the windows of the ranch house have gone black, he leans up against Ink in her stall, pulling his fingertips down the tracks of her scars. Every stroke is a question—should he, should he not. Drawing the last of them to its conclusion, he decides.
He’s out in the night air, kicking across the shadowy yard, before he can change his mind. He can’t help but feel he should be clutching a spray of flowers—the picture of a man making amends. Instead, he brings only an idea.
She takes forever to answer his knock. He’s grinding a slow turn in the dirt when the door emits a cry.
Running things over beforehand in his mind, Bendy saw himself surveying the collection again, asking a question or two, maybe even examining a few tools. Faced with the first touch of her gaze he’s felt since the night before last, he spills his offering the moment he steps through the door.
“I watched this family one time. Not hunting or anything, just messing around outside their den.”
She nods, releasing a flood of relief in his chest. He steps all the way inside, drawing the door shut after him.
“The den overlooked a river. Sandy slopes, you know, good digging. I was letting my horse graze on the far bank. They’d spotted me, all right, but the water was good and deep there, so they weren’t too worried.” He leaves a small pause, which, to his delight, she fills.
“What were they doing?”
He grins. “Not a whole lot. The pups were play-fighting. The mother looked beat. She was off on her own a ways, laying down. The daddy was keeping an eye on the pups, joining in every now and then. For a while they were crawling all over him.”
“How many?”
“Huh?”
“How many pups?”
He thinks for a moment, bringing the tumbling mass clear. “Three.”
“Playing.” She says it to herself more than him.
“Uh-huh. Roughhousing, like.”
Her face and neck flush suddenly, the thin tissue there awash with blood. She fixes him with a look, then turns her eyes, and his with them, to a spot on the floor halfway between her workbench and the first straw tier. Her meaning couldn’t be clearer. He moves into her sightline, into an area the size of a modest stage.
Down on his belly in the near pasture, Lal imagines himself a rattler, all length and scale. He tilts his eyes up in their sockets to find the half moon bulging at its seams. He’d stretch his arms out long, try his hand at a slither, if it weren’t so crucial he keep still.
Dead ahead, no more than a yard from the point of his chin, the grass shivers. His heart pounds, and he worries its rhythm will speak through the ground to the sensitive feet of his prey.
If it has feet.
A stab of fear now, as though a stone, sharp as a tooth, has cut up through the turf beneath him to catch him between two ribs. What if the disturbance in the grass was born of a diamond-back—a real one? It’s possible. He’s made no sound, no movement, to warn one off for what must be at least a quarter of an hour.
The rustle comes again, and even through his fear Lal can tell warm-blooded scurry from reptilian flow. The tooth-stone sinks away. Moments later he becomes aware of a second small presence—this one closer still, somewhere off the crest of his left ear.
His jaw aches with waiting. He holds off until the grass blades before his eyes give a twitch and the rustling seems to emanate from inside his own skull. Then springs. Thrashes and flails, lets out a yelp as not one but both of his hands close around wriggling spurts of fur.
He rolls onto his broad back, clutching two fistfuls of mouse to his chest. Careful, don’t smother them. Hold them hard, though, otherwise they’ll bite.
Who’s the hunter now?
Lal crosses the deep shadow at the horse barn’s back, carrying the mice by their tails, two in one grip. They’ve left off squeaking. He holds them up before his face, sees both are alive and well, scrabbling in the air with their snowflake paws.
There would’ve been no need to go to such trouble if Drown wasn’t so damn clean and tidy. A thorough kick through the corners of every stall hadn’t produced so much as a skittering. The stable was Lal’s place once. The horses still lift their heads when he has cause to pass among them, but there’s a new flavour to their alarm, as though he were some foreign threat come slinking in, rather than the master in their midst.
He lifts his free hand, comforting himself with a bulge of knuckle against his mouth.
Never mind, the thumb murmurs. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.
The cow barn and chicken house stand quiet as he moves through the weeds behind them. A burst of speed across the open, mice swinging, and then he’s into the mulberries, the black form of the silkhouse in his sights.
He creeps close, hunter quiet, hunter calm. The cottage is lightless within, but to be on the safe side he lays an ear to the perfectly fitted door. Nothing but the noise of their feeding. The mice twist and buck, swiping hairline claw marks across the jamb. Lal’s thumb searches out the latch.
As the door eases inward, a rush of sound escapes, jangling his nerves. He’d pictured dropping the mice directly onto a worm bed—saving them the time and trouble of the climb—but now, inhaling the leaf-sweet, fleshy closeness, he finds himself unwilling to enter Ruth’s little house. Coward that he is, he lobs the mice like a pair of tiny torches, yanks shut the door and runs.
Thus far, Dorrie’s managed to cut the centreboard from a sheet of one-inch stock, shape and sand it to the depth of the runt’s trunk, and nail four wooden blocks in the place of shoulders and hips. These work to balance the board now, as she flips and rests it on the curve of its spine. Next she must affix the leg rods.
“Can you do the runt’s legs for me?” she asks.
Bendy’s been waiting patiently, lying on the old barn floor, staring up into the feathered forms that haunt the rafters. Now he folds his hands into paws, cycling his arms and legs as though in the grip of a fleet-footed dream. “How’s this?” He flops his head her way.
She drops her gaze to the
rough beginnings of the runt, sees nothing but lifeless wood. “I need you to keep still. Make the legs and hold them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He curls to take hold of himself by the shins. With a dual, muted pop his legs become hind legs, the crook of high canine ankles translated into unhinged knees. Reclining on the planks, he flips his elbows back on themselves, completing the pose.
“Thank you.” Closing her eyes, she runs his description of the wolf family through her mind again. The runt lies in full submission, her brother standing over her. The third pup, another male, urges them on, teeth bared, hindquarters high. At a little distance, the father wolf sits watching. Beside him, the milk-white female rests.
He’s been slung back in the yipping brother’s pose for some time now—just how long Dorrie can’t be sure. She yawns, laying her hammer aside. “You can stretch if you like.”
She watches him draw back into a squat and bounce gently on his heels—three, four times—before rolling himself up tall. He takes a long stride toward the collection. Before she can speak, he touches his finger to the spot between a red squirrel’s ears and rubs noseward, against the grain.
“Don’t!” Lamp in hand, she slips out from behind the workbench and draws up beside him.
“What’d I do?”
She doesn’t reply, busy restoring the nap of the small red brow. The squirrel perches alone on a sapling stump, an acorn held like a fat apple to its lips.
“Hungry little fella.” His voice is over-cheerful, making up.
She straightens, satisfied.
“I saw one eat a water beetle, you know, the kind with scissors for jaws.”
She treats him to a narrow look. “Squirrels eat acorns. Nuts.”
“Not only. I swear, he started in on the beetle’s hind end to keep it from pinching his nose.”
She shakes her head.
“Don’t believe me?” He turns his attention to a weasel drawn up on its stubby hind legs. “How about this one. Back when I was riding the ponies, one of the station keepers told me how he saw a hawk swoop down on a weasel and snatch it up. Wasn’t long before he could see the bird was in trouble. Sure enough, after a minute or so it quit climbing and dropped clean out of the sky.” He swirls a splayed hand. “The hawk broke its neck, but would you believe that weasel up and scuttled off? Turns out he tore a hole in the hawk’s sweet spot.” He points to his own armpit, the place where a bird’s skin stretches off into wing. “I’m telling you, the keeper swore blind.”