Dark Trail

by Ed Gorman

  “I wasn’t exactly a perfect husband.”

  “I wish I hadn’t done it that way, Leo. I hope you know that.”

  “I know that now. I guess I didn’t then. And hell,” Guild said, “maybe there’s no easy way to do that anyway, to leave somebody. Maybe the way you did it was the only way it could be done.”

  She said, “You know why I sent that letter over to your sleeping room?”

  “You want me to go see him.”

  “If you would.”

  Guild stared at her. “You really want him back?”

  “I’m pretty pathetic, I know.”

  “You know better than that, Sarah.”

  Then Guild lit a cigarette, and they talked some about him going upstairs and seeing her husband Frank.

  And Guild said, finally, “Aw, hell, Sarah, you really want me to go up there?”

  Chapter Three

  The corridors were carpeted in red. The mahogany doors of each room were shined fine and the brass doorknobs polished bright. As he passed down the hallway, Guild heard small snippets of lives behind each door: a married couple snapping at each other here, an old man coughing up phlegm there, and the last a woman with a pretty voice singing “Beautiful Dreamer” to an infant she was apparently rocking in her arms. The infant made happy sounds as the woman sang on.

  The room he wanted was at the end of the hall. There was a fire exit door on the back wall and a window that looked down on an alley. Two black men were loading a buckboard with crates from the back of a store, and they were laughing about something secret as they worked.

  Guild put his ear to the door. What he heard made him walk back down the hall aways. He felt almost ashamed listening to the noises they made. This sort of thing was their business. He was just glad that Sarah hadn’t come along. It would be rough, hearing them go at it that way.

  He gave them ten minutes before trying again. He walked back to the door and put his ear to it.

  Just then an impressive-looking man with white muttonchop sideburns and an expensive Edwardian suit came out of a room down the hall. He saw Guild there, pressing his ear to the door. Guild blushed. He started to explain and then decided the hell with it. The man had already made up his mind about what sort of person Guild was anyway.

  They were done making noise. Guild knocked.

  “Who is it?” Frank Evans said.

  “Guild.”

  “Leo?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be a son of a bitch.”

  “Who is it, sweetheart?”

  “Leo Guild.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Old friend of mine.”

  Which wasn’t exactly true, Guild thought, but now wasn’t the time to worry about that.

  He could hear them scrambling into their clothes now, buttons snapping shut, boots being jerked on.

  Frank Evans opened the door.

  The first thing Guild noticed was his hair, how it had gone heavily salt-and-pepper. And the second thing he noticed was that Frank held a Colt right in Guild’s face.

  “Sorry, Leo. Just had to be sure.” Frank dropped the gun.

  “Same goddamn Frank as always.”

  Frank paid no attention. “Come on in, Leo, and meet my sweetheart.”

  She sat at a dressing table, combing long lustrous red hair into a fancy pile on top of a well-shaped head rising from a long white neck. She was not at all what Guild had expected. She was elegant and beautiful. She wore a green organdy dress. In the mirror he saw that she had green, intelligent eyes and a soft, friendly smile.

  Guild felt sorry for Sarah. This wasn’t the chippie she’d described.

  This was a decent woman, at least judging by appearances.

  “Good morning, Mr. Guild.”

  “Good morning.”

  She patted white powder on her face with a puff. Just the right faint amount. “Would you care to join us for breakfast?”

  “No, thanks, miss.”

  “We’d be happy to have a guest.”

  “All the same, miss,” Guild said. He’d taken off his hat and was picking at its brim with his fingers.

  She stood up. She was tall and most intimidating. The organdy rustled as she went over and gave Frank a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll go for a walk for awhile then meet you downstairs. I know you two want to talk.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart.” As he said this, Frank winked at Guild, as if he were bragging about what a find she was.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Guild,” the woman said at the door.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Guild said.

  She nodded and was gone.

  A long moment after she had closed the door and could be heard walking down the hall, Frank said, “Sarah sent you, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Goddamn her, Leo. Goddamn her anyway.”

  Frank wore black pants and a starched white shirt that still needed a collar. He paced. He moved quick like a kid, but now there were lines in the almost pretty face and around his eyes.

  “I hear she’s Rittenauer’s woman.”

  He stopped pacing and looked at Guild. “You know something I don’t understand, Leo?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why you care so much about Sarah? After what she did to you, I mean.”

  “She’s a good woman.”

  “She slept with me while she was still married to you.”

  “I wasn’t the easiest man to live with.”

  “Didn’t it hurt, what we did to you?”

  Guild tried not to think about it. He couldn’t ever remember crying in quite the way he had in those days, crying so hard in the solitary night that he felt as if he’d vomit. He’d traveled wide and far in those days—up into the mountains and then along down the river, into cities bright on the plains at night, and villages lazy and happy in the sunlight, but the pain had been always with him, always. How he’d hated them in those days, lying Sarah and quick-smiling Frank. He’d even in the longest and blackest nights planned somehow to murder them, but he never had, of course, and in the passing of years the rage had gone, and he was even able to find happy memories amidst the grief. Then when he’d seen her five years ago, when she had dragooned him into getting Frank out of that farmhouse, he’d forgiven them all, Sarah and Frank for betraying him, and himself for not being the husband Sarah had deserved.

  To Frank now he said, “She loved you, Frank.”

  Frank sighed. ‘This isn’t easy for me, Leo.”

  “I can see that. Nice hotel room. Beautiful woman. It’s probably real hard work.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “It’s just—” and he started pacing again. “You know how some people get old and other people don’t?” Before Guild could say anything, “She thinks because my dad was a farmer, that’s what I should be. There’s some family land in Missouri. She wants me to take it over and raise corn and cattle.”

  Guild pointed to Frank’s face. “You taken a look in the mirror lately?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You still think you’re this cute little kid, Frank. And you’re not. You’re getting to be as old as the rest of us.”

  Frank nodded at Guild’s white head. “At least I’m not as old as you, Leo.”

  Guild sighed. “She loves you, Frank. And she’s a damned good woman.”

  “I know she’s a good woman, Leo. You don’t have to tell me that.”

  “You could have dinner with her tonight.”

  “I’ve got dinner tonight, Leo. With Beth.”

  Guild shook his head, went over to the window. In the sunlight the railroad tracks almost glowed. “I’m told Rittenauer’s coming in tonight,” he said without turning around.

  “I’m not afraid of Ben Rittenauer, Leo. Just in case you’re trying to scare me.”

  Guild turned around and faced Frank. He wanted to slap him around, but he knew it
would do no good. “You should be afraid of him, Frank.”

  “He’s a punk.”

  “He’ll kill you, Frank.”

  “All he’s ever fought are old men.”

  “You’re an old man now, Frank. At least for a gunny.”

  Frank took an Ingram pocket watch from his trousers. “I’ve got to go meet Beth now, Leo.”

  “You remember what I said.”

  “You remember what I said. Ben Rittenauer doesn’t scare me.”

  Guild walked over to the door, put a hand on the fancy brass knob. “It won’t last long, you know. You and Beth.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “And there’s no guarantee that Sarah will be there waiting for you.”

  “That’s my problem, Leo. Not yours.”

  “A nice spot in Missouri could work out real nice.”

  Frank grinned. “It sure could, Leo. When I get to be an old man. But not now. Not right now.”

  Guild turned the knob and opened the door. He’d said all there was to say.

  Behind him, Frank said, ‘Tell her I appreciate everything, Leo.”

  Guild said, “I don’t think that’s what she wants to hear, Frank.”

  He left.

  Chapter Four

  Ben Rittenauer enjoyed train rides. He liked the way the pictures inside the frame of the window kept changing, green bluff to flinty mountain, rushing river to piney foothill, day into night. In his lap he had a big red apple and a pocket knife for paring off a white chunk of the fruit every once in awhile.

  Sometimes he got up and went to the back of the car and stood on the clattering deck. He liked the noise and the sense of speed and the wind in his face. He liked the smell of grease from underneath and the stream of coal smoke from the locomotive ahead.

  He got up and went to stand on the deck now, holding on tight to the railing because this particular section of road bed was rough; a man could get pitched off before he knew it. The area surrounding him now was mostly bluff, firs stretching steep all the way up to the horizon and deer roaming the long dusty buffalo grass that had turned brown in the slanting autumn sunlight.

  The big thing was not to think about Beth. She’d done this in Waco, in Ponca City, in St. Louis, and now she’d done it again. He hated the word “whore”—it being what his father had always called his mother during the worst of their arguments—but he could think of no other word that applied here. Whore.

  He listened to the rattling rails and sucked in the scent of pines lying just beneath the coal smoke. He felt the first chill of autumn, apple cider weather being the way he usually thought of it. He thought again, miserably, of Beth.

  He stayed out on the deck a few more minutes, and then went back inside to his seat and tried to get some sleep.

  It was dusk when Rittenauer pulled into the city. A fat conductor carrying a lantern walked up and down the depot platform, hurrying new passengers aboard. A black man offered to carry Rittenauer’s leather bag, but Rittenauer shook his head. He’d always felt foolish being waited on this way.

  Downtown he saw streetlights to rival those in Chicago, saw sparkling black buggies and surreys, and women in picture hats and wide evening smiles. Shop windows were filled with all the latest items. When he saw the jeweler’s he thought of Beth. How she loved to look at jewelry.

  On the corner of a dark street he found a hotel named the Breds-ford Arms. It was new and had three floors; quick white boys carried your bags and made irritating small talk as they preceded you up to your room.

  His boy, who was maybe eighteen, kept looking at him all the way up the stairs to the second floor. Finally, he said, “Excuse me, mister, but you sure do look familiar.”

  “I do, huh?”

  “Yessir.” The boy, obviously observant, took note of Rittenauer’s gaze. “I hope I’m not making you mad, sir.”

  “No, son, you’re not. But if you don’t turn around and watch where you’re going, you’re going to trip on one of those stairs and break your goddamned neck.”

  The boy grinned. “Yessir.”

  They reached the second floor. The narrow hallway smelled of shaving soap and cigar smoke and, more faintly, of sweet perfume.

  The bed was soft but not too soft and the window overlooking the street below was small but not too small. How Rittenauer loved to look out windows.

  The boy set Rittenauer’s leather bag down on the bed and said, “Ben Rittenauer.”

  Rittenauer sighed. “Do you win some sort of prize now?”

  “Sir?”

  “For guessing my name right.”

  The boy’s face got red. “I didn’t mean to make you mad, sir.”

  Rittenauer sighed again shaking his head, and went over to the window. He stared down at the street. “Do whatever you do, kid, and then get the hell out of here.”

  “Yessir.”

  Rittenauer had shot three men in fair fights before he was thirty-two years old. This had made him, in a small part of the country, a “personage,” as journalists liked to say. But Rittenauer was tired of being a personage and tired of all the goddamn kids like this one who were stupid enough to believe that Rittenauer was somebody special.

  All he wanted was Beth back, and to take care of Frank Evans.

  “I didn’t mean anything by that, sir.”

  “I know, son. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.” He turned around and flipped the kid a shiny quarter. “Where can you get a good meal in this town?”

  “The Ames House. Real good chops and steaks.”

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  “You be needing anything else, sir?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  The kid paused. “You ever give autographs, Mr. Rittenauer?”

  “No, son, I don’t.”

  “Oh.” The kid looked even younger and dumber, in his band-leader jacket and his vastly disappointed small-town frown. “I see.”

  Rittenauer turned back to the window.

  The kid left.

  * * *

  Sometimes he imagined he could hear the ghosts of the room. All the traveling salesmen, all the happy and unhappy married couples, all the lonely young men and lonely young women. He could hear prayers and curses and laughter and tears, all in the pretty papered walls of this room.

  He lay on the bed now, resting from the train journey, wondering just how many such rooms he’d been in since Beth had left him a year ago?

  Ben Rittenauer had looked for her everywhere. He took every tip, every suggestion, every “logical deduction,” and followed it down.

  And always it led him to a room like this, where he would lay on the bed and hear vague voices rumbling in the rooms on either side of him, and where he could hear the ghosts of roomers past on the dusty air.

  Finally, he slept. Not long or well but enough to make him feel a little better when he woke up.

  He stripped down to his pants and then took the wash bowl on the bureau and carried it down to the bathroom to get fresh water. He brought it back, shaved and washed under his arms, and put on some of the stuff Beth had bought him. He slapped it on; it stung and felt good at the same time. And certainly it smelled good.

  He went over to the bed and put on his shirt and his gun and his jacket. And then he went out into the waiting night.

  Chapter Five

  It took Guild twenty minutes to talk Sarah out of her room and over to a combination restaurant and tavern called The Crowing Rooster. When she was upset, Sarah went for days without leaving her room and ate only rarely. She also bit her fingernails with such ferocity that it was painful to watch. When you looked at her hands, her fingers were bloody stumps.

  She looked pretty in the glow of the Rochester lamp, sitting across from Guild. She would not order for herself—“Just coffee’s fine, Leo, honest”—so he’d ordered for her, a porterhouse steak that he said he’d split with her because they were expensive, and sweet potatoes and corn on the cob. When she wouldn’t eat, Guild said, “I�
�m not going to eat till you do.”

  “You need your food, Leo,” she said.

  “You heard what I said,” he said. She frowned and dug into her food. While she didn’t eat all of it she did eat most of it, and that made Guild feel a lot better.

  He was just finishing his last bite of the butter-melted steak when a stout man in a good dark suit came over and stood next to the table.

  “I understand you’re Leo Guild,” he said.

  Guild looked up at the man, swallowed down the steak, and nodded. The man was jowly and had a mustache, and a nose too small for his moon face. He set a small white business card on the table and said, “I understand that you know Frank Evans.”

  Guild glanced over at Sarah. “Yes, I know Frank. This happens to be his wife, matter of fact.”

  The man took his hat off and nodded. “You’d be Sarah then; Sarah Evans.”

  Sarah nodded. She looked nervous. What the hell was all this about?

  “Most pleased to meet you, ma’am,” the man said. Then he turned his attention back to Guild. “Could you possibly meet me at the Swenson Tap Room at ten tonight?”

  “I suppose. Mind telling me what it’s about?”

  The man’s eyes strayed to Sarah, then back to Guild. “I’d rather wait till then, if you don’t mind. No offense, ma’am.”

  Guild picked up his card. “Hollister.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ten?”

  “Ten o’clock, Mr. Guild.”

  Guild put the card in his shirt pocket. ‘Ten o’clock it is, Mr. Hollister.”

  “He’ll come back, Leo. He always does.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the question.”

  She sighed. “You mean, maybe I shouldn’t want him back?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I love him.”

  “You think you do anyway.”

  “Oh, no, Leo, I know I do. Honest.”

  As they walked through the downtown and then the park and then along the moon-silvered river, they could see their breath as they talked. Everything was silver-touched with hoarfrost and moonlight, and the lone roaming dogs of this night looked cold. The horses in the livery made contented sounds in their snug blankets and hay, and the distant roaring train sounded fierce and purposeful hurtling across the empty prairie.