Then she was in his arms, and she was crying, almost as hard as Chess had, after Rook’s fall. But it was all right, it’d have to be. Everything was all right, now.
In this whole sad, hex-broken world, they — at least — had each other.
A month since Hex City’s downfall, and in that whole time, Chess hadn’t used his powers once — just rode through the Painted Desert like anybody else, quiet and careful, ’til he finally reached some dirt-scratch town on the Texican border. Dry Well, he thought the sign at the trading post had read, which fit. There he unwrapped the ear-bob he’d retrieved from that seam where the Crack closed over, still crusted with blood, and threw it down on the countertop. “How much?” he asked, voice tight and small, as though his mouth were full of sand.
The shop-keep barely glanced up from assessing it; didn’t seem to register his torn lobe or the spattering of bullet holes ’cross his jacket, now so badly neglect-faded it looked halfway back to Confederate grey. Didn’t seem to recognize him at all, or only as yet another penniless drifter, of whom these streets did seem well-choked. “We don’t lack for turquoise ’round here, but gold’s scarce,” he said. “Give ya five.”
“It’s worth twice that.”
“Then go back where you got it, sell it there. Five.”
“Eight, and I’m bein’ over-nice.”
“Five or four-fifty, makes no never-mind to me. Keep arguin’ and it’s four-fifty, plus I call the Marshals. Your choice.”
Chess raised a brow, feeling: You cheat everybody comes in here, motherfuck, or am I just special? prick at his tongue, like that broken knife blade one of his Ma’s roistering biddies used to carry hid in her mouth, back when Oona’d still had enough to splash out she could account herself flush with “friends.” But for once, he took a perverse sort of pride in not indulging himself.
“Five, then,” he said. “Any place to stay close by, with food on the premises?”
“You want good, or cheap?”
Chess spread his hands out. “I’m like you see, and I still need to buy new gear.”
“That’d be cheap — try Widow Maysie’s, end of the street.” As he counted out the cash, his nude eye flicked toward the hitching post, greedy. “Could prob’ly do better, you was willin’ to sell that horse of yours.”
“I don’t aim to stay too long.”
“Suit yourself, then.”
And again, his former self’s voice slid forward to snap, in his scarred ear: Goddamn if I won’t ’cause I always do, you stupid old shit-kicker. Familiar yet irrelevant as the carping of a ghost, too foolish to know he should fall over and get himself buried.
The Widow had three rooms empty and a gaggle of kids running her ragged, but turned suddenly nice as pie when Chess proved he was willing to pay extra for solitude — laid out fresh sheets, made him up a plate of beans with salt pork, even lent him her dead man’s shave-kit, after he asked where to find a barber. “That man’s no good, sir,” she told him. “A dago from parts East; calls himself a leech, but I seen him leave gut-shot men lead-poisoned, and still take cash money for it. Do better to do it yourself, and save the expense.”
Save it for you, you mean, Chess heard Chess-that-was whisper, his bile already dimming, a mosquito’s hum. And returned to himself abruptly, falling straightway into a silence-pocket that argued she might’ve been talking a while yet, without his participation — just staring down and panting slightly, blood all a-hammer while considering on nothing much, the way some badly shocked troops’d done in battle’s wake, during the War. “Soldier’s heart,” the medicos had called it, or “nostalgia.” Yet another of those old Greek terms the Rev’d known so well how to explain, in between his Bible-blather, his Shakespearian discourses.
A surfeit of memory, Chess — not good memory, either, even as it engages us to all else’s exclusion. For “nostalgia” means “our pain,” you see.
“Sir, are you well? Are you all — ”
Fine enough, you idjit, given. Better by far, after a while, without your yammering laid in on top of the rest of it.
But: “Ma’am,” he managed, finally, doing what he thought might be a passable Ed Morrow imitation, “that’s . . . kind advice, I’m sure. Thank you for it.”
“Why, you’re most welcome. Room’s at the hall’s end — you take as long as you need, make yourself presentable. I’ll boil water for washing.”
“Ma’am,” he repeated, dipping his head like a play-actor. And stumbled past, nose suddenly salt-stuffed and eyes a-sting, too dim to negotiate except by touch alone.
It took him far longer than he’d thought it would to do for the beard he’d worn almost since he bid San Francisco farewell, hacking and scraping for what seemed like hours ’til the skin showed through, though at least he didn’t cut himself too badly. After, he examined his face in the dull tin mirror and was surprised to realize the scar ’neath his jawline barely showed at all, except from odd angles.
Otherwise, he looked thinner, older, burnt ’cross the nose and tanned darker than he’d ever seen himself before. A slight lightening at either temple, uneven on each side, dimmed his hair’s red from flame to afterglow. An outright thread of grey wove through one gilt brow, making it fork, then hike quizzically.
Maybe no one would take me for Chess Pargeter after all, he thought, for one breathless moment — frozen while a paralyzing wave of something swept up through him, strong but nameless, almost impossible to decode. Hope? Horror? Regret?
Regret, hell.
No, he was himself still, no matter what: small-made and slim, face like a scowling fox, harder by far than he seemed at a distance. Though the embers might burn low and crusted, they remained hot; something would blow on ’em soon enough, making ’em flare and pop. And then?
Well. Then, he supposed, they’d just have to see. Him too, along with everybody else.
Chess plunged his hands back into the washbasin, made one more grooming circuit, wiping away what was left of his whiskers. Then slung his ruined jacket back on, and went out in search of drink.
Nearest thing in Dry Well to a saloon was a combination eatery and melodeon in which a three-piece band sawed away at their fiddles, and two indifferent-looking skirted creatures moped wherever they thought they could show ’emselves off to best advantage. One bit got you a shot and dinner, a plate heaped with sowbelly, and the three Bs — biscuits, bacon, beef — with wild onions as a side dish, against the scurvy. There was a card game in one corner, a hot topical discussion in the other: Pinkerton’s legacy, that new outfit Geyer and that other ex-agent had cobbled together out of old Allan’s leavings. Doc Asbury they had working hard, making reparation, parsing his Manifolds from weapons back to tools — something Songbird would be glad to hear of, Chess supposed, for all the harm the old man had done her, in his misguided attempts to defang hexation at its individual roots rather than its ultimately unknowable source.
How he might convey that information to her, on the other hand, he had no idea. Nor why he might want to try.
You may speak to us at your convenience, red boy, that man-squaw Yiska’s voice murmured at his inner ear, the very same instant this thought framed itself — for she too seemed more powerful, perhaps augmented by dead Grandma’s legacy, now she’d passed beyond the veil Chess didn’t plan to penetrate again anytime soonish. We welcome your intelligence. There is a place amongst us held open for you, always.
And why would I want that? he ached to cry out, even aloud, for all around him to wonder at. I ain’t none of yours, like you ain’t none of mine. Only person left on this damn earth I belong to is —
— Ed, maybe, when all was said and done. Maybe even Yancey Colder Kloves, who might one day consent to set her weeds aside and be Missus Morrow. But aside from them . . .
Two women he’d hated in this rambling, violent life of his, a whore and a goddess, and he couldn’t even say he hated the first anymore, or not quite so much as he had. While f
or all his affections bent Ed’s way, frolic-wise and other-, there remained one man alone he’d ever loved, thus far. Loved and hated both, in almost equal measure.
The hurt of it crept up and down like sickness, but never went away; a self-refreshing void, set right where that hollow his heart filled once more used to gape. As though his own pulse, so long absent, were nothing but a hammer pounding one new nail for every beat into his own flesh, forever wrenching the same wound open.
All things pass, still, red boy. All things move on. Even him. Even you.
He didn’t want the advice, necessarily, for all he knew it was probably good. Yet he couldn’t deny there were parts of him — larger parts than ever before — which wished to Mictlan-Xibalba’s lowest deeps it might, eventually, prove true.
Over by the trio, an altercation was rising, argument sliding fast to incipient brawl. A long-legged young man sat scowling with a guitar slung over his chair-back, mariachi-style, while three other cowboy bravos poked at him. “Sing for us, Alarid!” one demanded, jeeringly.
“Don’t think I will.”
“Aw, c’mon, we’re all waitin’. I know just the song, too: Oh, Charlie’s neat and Charlie’s sweet, and Charlie, he’s a dandy . . . and every time we chance t’meet, he gives me sugar candy . . .”
The lanky sumbitch in question — his first name being Charles, Chess could only assume — narrowed his eyes, which were bright blue fringed with lashes so dark and thick they looked like he’d smeared on what the San Fran ladies called fireplace kohl. His hair, too, was black as a coalhouse cat, unruly, with one long lock falling like a kiss-curl; some Mex in his complexion, the arrogant furl of his grandee’s lip. This was the sort of young buck annoyed those ’round him simply by existing, and didn’t seem to’ve figured yet that that should make him pull his head in, rather than jut it out all the prouder.
“‘Sweet’,” he repeated. “Problem is, though — I’m savin’ my candy for better men than you, Sam Holger. Not that I’d ever thought you wanted it before, as such . . .”
Holger turned first red, then white, choking hard on an in-drawn breath, like it was fire-water. “You . . . faggot motherfucker, you,” he began, spluttering, “always puttin’ on your Goddamn airs and graces — ”
“Better airs and graces than cowflop-stink, and ten pounds of stupid in a five-pound sack.”
“That’s pretty big talk, for a pole-smokin’ queerboy,” Holger’s right-hand pal put in.
“Well, I am big, or so I’ve been told.” As if to prove it, not-so-sweet Charlie unfolded himself, attaining a height from which he could stare down on almost every man there. “’Sides which, you don’t have to be tall to raise all sorts of hell, even on the invert side of things. Y’all never heard of Chess Pargeter?”
Right-hand guffawed while left-hand snorted, and Sam Holger just shook his head. “Oh, so,” he said, sneering. “Got yourself somewhat’ve a crush, I ’spect, from them songs and penny novels. But you ain’t no Chess Pargeter, Charlie Alarid.”
Chess could see where this was headed. Holger he took for a bully, but blooded. Charlie, too proud to back down, read all over as being as yet unversed in how best to make others do the same. It felt familiar enough to time, a song Chess could hum in his sleep. Why should he get involved?
’Cause the boy seems to idolize you, fool — and he’s not bad to look on, either. Though on t’other hand, it was thinking with your dick got you into . . . everything, in the first place.
Aw hell, he thought, once again.
Downing the rest of his shot, therefore, Chess kicked his own chair back deliberately, making it ring ’gainst the floor — and when the rest of ’em jumped, heads turning, he rose too: not so high as Charlie, yet with a tad more martial emphasis. Commenting, as he did: “No, he sure ain’t. I am, though.”
Right-hand and left- scoffed again, like they was wound-up clockwork with only the one trick. “The hell you say!” right-hand blurted. “Am what?” Holger demanded, at almost the same time.
“Chess Pargeter, ass-wipe. Did I stutter?”
All three gave him a hard stare, followed by a snort.
Left-hand: “What, ’cause you’re red-headed and runtish?”
Holger nodded. “You ain’t neither! Just some sad-sack don’t even have a gun on his belt, stickin’ his nose in where it don’t belong — ’sides which, even if you was him, word is that whoremaster Rook’s been cast down, and all his old gods along with him. There ain’t no hexes left, now they took their city and gone . . . so if you got left behind, what sort’a hex could you even be?”
“There ain’t even such a thing as hexation no more, is what I heard,” put in right-hand, crossing his arms.
Chess felt himself boggle. “What idjit told you that?”
“Hell,” the fool replied, “I don’t recall — read it in the papers, I s’pose. It’s known.”
Now it was Chess’s turn to snort, then snap his fingers. Without fanfare, he was suddenly him once more: imperially regaled from tip to toe, boots shone, spurs gleaming — his red hair silver-touched but sleek, pomaded. All finery replaced but the ear-bob, his Colts . . . and the beard.
“That a fact?” He asked, mildly enough.
Holger swallowed, visibly. His pals turned pale. And Charlie Alarid, previously the sole fierce Spartan in this whole five-horse crap-hole — he clapped his hands together, happy as a kid on Christmas, and laughed right out loud.
“Told ya,” was all he said.
The place seemed dimmer than before. Or was it just how Chess shone brighter, casting everyone ’round him into shadow? Not that he could help it, any more’n they could.
“I . . . ain’t afraid of you,” Holger lied, queasily, licking his lips. To which Chess simply shook his head.
“Boy,” he said, though the man in question probably had five years on him, “you need to listen, and listen good — there’s no way this goes well, for anybody but me. Walk away and you live, with a story to drink on. Make me kill you, what’s that? Stampin’ on an anthill just for fun, conduct unbecoming. You ’n’ yours ain’t worth the juice it’d cost me to set you afire, let alone the piss it’d take to put you out.”
Sounded fair enough as he said it, but how was he to know, without Morrow there to translate? Still, even as he turned his back, he suspected it wasn’t going to work. And indeed, a second later, Holger’s first bullet came pocking over his shoulder, shattering a lamp behind the bar — but the second bounced straight off in a heat-haze ripple, ricocheting back through the webbing between Holger’s gun-hand thumb and forefinger. Holger squalled, cradling his maimed hand. As his weapon hit the floor, meanwhile, Mister right-hand reputation-debunker and their left-hand pal alike were left stunned, unsure whether to help, flee or just stand steady, hoping Chess wouldn’t notice they were still there.
“Now,” Chess said, turning back, “just think a little, and you’ll see exactly how foolish a move that was. ’Cause me, I’ve been a damn god most’ve this last year, like Rainbow Bitch Ixchel-that-was and the rest — got hexation comin’ out my eyeballs, so much I don’t hardly know what-all to do with it, which is why I oft-times don’t choose to. But even was I ‘only’ plain Chess Pargeter once more, you’d still be the stupidest motherfucker alive to talk at me that-a-way . . . and you wouldn’t be that for long.”
He nodded at Holger. “Once upon a time, I’d’ve told you to come back when you’d trained left-handed, try it again. Here’s the difference a war makes, though — right this instant, I’m more inclined t’be merciful than not, since I’ve been travelling with good people a while. So . . .”
Here he stepped forward as Holger stumbled back, caught hold of him by the wrist and laid his opposite hand to his sweaty forehead, willing reparative sleep all through him. Holger folded up, wounds already knitting, to clunk skull-first back onto the floor at Chess’s feet; Chess stepped away while the fool’s friends lunged to catch him, wiping both palms of hi
m like Pilate.
“. . . take that, clear out, and leave me be,” he concluded. “I’m drinkin’, and I don’t care to be disturbed.”
Everyone mostly took care not to do so, after — looked anywheres else, all but whistling. Chess sat and was served, though the barkeep kept on forgetting to charge him. He took it first as his due, then eventually sighed, shook what coin he had left ’til it had multiplied itself threefold, and left it by his up-turned glass.
Halfway down the street, he noticed young master Alarid still drifting vaguely after him, hands in his pockets and guitar dangling, and stopped to fix him with a cold eye. “Already saved your ass once tonight,” Chess pointed out, “so you can stop starin’ at me like I’m ’bout to grant you wishes.”
Charlie shrugged, not even pretending to be shamed. “Made my dreams come true when you showed Sam Holger and them how queer can go hand in hand with tough sumbitch, so . . . maybe I just want to thank you, is all.”
“Okay, then — you’re welcome. Now move on.”
“I’d heard you was prickly.”
“Oh, I am that. But I s’pose now you’ll tell me how you like ’em that way, right?”
Charlie smiled, as if to say: Pricks’re good. And suddenly, it was all Chess could do not to snicker.
Been so long since he’d flirted with anyone out of more than spite — a restless urge to mess with men’s minds, along with everything else — that he could barely remember what it felt like, let alone whether the result’d be worth the effort.
What’m I gonna do with you? he thought, letting his eyes roam up and down, and Charlie — obviously well-able to tell what Chess was considering — shot him a hot look under lowered lashes in return, as though he believed he could suggest some options.
“Don’t think just ’cause we share the same tastes that makes me your patron saint,” Chess told the kid, at last. “I ain’t lived through . . .
all I did just to tour the West in search of fellow mis-mades, or save fools of any persuasion from their own mouths.”
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