by Brian Hart
I woke to Tartan opening the window and connecting a stovepipe and sending it out so he could start the fire and cook eggs. It took him ten minutes to complete the chore and I watched him the whole time. Wind blew in the open window and I curled into my blanket. Bellhouse appeared from a door I hadn’t noticed in the back. Delilah followed him, dressed in a red silk robe. Her bare feet were fascinating. I didn’t hear Tartan sneaking up on me. He kicked me in the ass and stole my blanket, then clamped a hand on my neck and dragged me to the table and sat me down.
“Flea bite,” Bellhouse said to me when I sat down.
“Poor thing,” Delilah said. “How’s yer head?” She touched my hand. Before I could answer her, Tartan served me coffee and a plate of steaming eggs with buttered bread.
“He didn’t keep any liquor down. Why would he feel bad if he ain’t been drinkin?” Tartan said.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you for breakfast.”
“Fuck off,” Tartan said.
Delilah’s nipples were raised against the thin fabric of her robe. We ate and the wind howled in the window.
“What’ll you do today?” she asked me, without looking up from her plate.
“I don’t know. Hadn’t thought about it.”
“He’s coming with us,” Bellhouse said.
“Is he?” Tartan said.
“I think he should go home,” Delilah said. “You boys play too rough for him.”
“This slint plays rough. Ask his uncle.”
“Ask Teresa Boyerton.”
I took a swig of the coffee and burned my tongue raw.
“Yer mother,” Tartan said. “She must not a thought you were worth keeping.”
“Tartan, let go that rude uncivil touch,” Delilah said.
“Don’t quote at me, woman.”
Delilah smirked at him and then filled her coffee cup and got up and walked toward the door in the back of the hall. We all watched her go.
Bellhouse was watching me. “Finish your coffee.”
I did as he told me. I wouldn’t look at Tartan.
“Your shotgun is behind the door. Go get it.”
“Send the pup on his way, Hank. I’m tired of him.”
“Not as tired as he is of you.”
I got up to retrieve the shotgun, thinking I might kill them both, because it felt like the answer was coming from that direction, from a future of death. The hall didn’t seem so big when you weren’t crossing it. The shotgun was where he said it was, and I checked it to see if it was loaded, but it wasn’t.
“Bring it here,” Bellhouse yelled.
I walked back, not knowing where to look. It felt like I’d forgotten how to walk. Bellhouse produced a flask from his coat pocket and uncapped the coffeepot and poured. Then he took the gun from my hand and motioned me back to my chair. The safety I’d felt when Delilah was with us was noticeably gone. These were true wolves. I drank the spiked coffee and gagged on the spirit burn.
“He doesn’t know what he says,” Bellhouse said of Tartan. “He insults people’s mothers because he’s weak-minded.”
“I mean everything I say,” Tartan said.
Bellhouse swung the butt of the shotgun so fast I didn’t have time to jump. Neither did Tartan. The wood cracked into his temple and sent the big man sprawling on the floor. It didn’t look like he’d get up, but then he did. He wasn’t bleeding, but there was a knot on his head rising like a poison bite. He took his seat and sipped his coffee, squinted his left eye, looked at me, smiled.
“I’m going to ask you to apologize.” The shells were in Bellhouse’s hand, and he cracked the shotgun and loaded both barrels.
“This fuckin slint gets me clobbered after I cook us all—cook the slint himself—fuckin breakfast, and you want me to apologize.”
Bellhouse pointed the gun at Tartan’s chest. “I can like you and kill you just the same, but it’ll be harder. See? I don’t want to shoot my friend. Because we are friends. I want you to try to make it as difficult as you can for me.”
“Don’t shoot him,” I said.
“Stay out of it, slint.”
“Give me the gun.”
“You wanna shoot him?” Bellhouse seemed pleased.
“I’ll do it.”
“No, he’ll apologize.”
“Hank.” Tartan rested his giant fists on the table.
“Do it,” Bellhouse said.
“I’m sorry, slint.”
“That’s not nice. Try again.”
“I’m sorry I said what I said. Sorry.”
“Give me my gun.”
“It was an apology.” Bellhouse broke the shotgun and put the shells back in his pocket. “The scales are once again balanced.”
“Not for him,” Tartan said.
“I still don’t believe you.”
“Ask fuckin Haslett then.” He spit on the floor and left me and Bellhouse sitting there alone.
Bellhouse tinged his fingernail against his flask. “Family, what makes cowards brave and brave men crumble.” He drank but didn’t offer any, and I was grateful for that.
“Why doesn’t he kill you?” I asked.
“Because he can’t.”
“He wants to.”
“Sure, but I’m the drover of that son of a bitch. Sheep can’t kill the drover.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but then again, I did.
“It might be that you have to tell yourself a few thousand times how you want it to be before it works,” Bellhouse said.
“What if I killed Charlie Boyerton?”
“No, he’s a drover bigger than me. You’re too low to even measure into his flock. Romantic of you to think it.”
I poured myself more coffee. “He’s the one, though, isn’t he? If I could do it, he’d be the one.”
“Experience has taught me that there is never in fact only one. The fuckers come paired and clustered, apples on a bent branch. You cut one loose, two more will drop on your head.”
“Him gone, though. It’d be me that was making the decisions.”
“About what? His mill?”
“No, his daughter.”
“Maybe. How would you do it?”
“Shoot him like I shot my uncle.”
“Well, all I can say is, kill cleanly if you’re gonna kill at all.” He was up with his coffee and out onto the deck. Me and the tables and chairs, the piano. Faintly I could hear Delilah singing.
A woman and her two small children came in and swept. The woman wiped down the bar top while the children straightened the chairs. They as a group ignored me and everything they saw. When they were finished, the woman went to the door in the back and Delilah opened it and handed her some money and they left. Delilah was dressed now, and she followed them to the stairs and switched off the overhead lights and came and sat with me. The rainy morning corpse color filled the east side of the hall with a dirty gray light and left the other side, our side, nearly dark.
“Where’s Hank?”
I nodded toward the door. She had perfume on, and her nails were freshly painted.
“He jumps down from the rail to the street instead of taking the stairs. One day he’ll break his leg and we’ll all be sorry. The toughest ones whine the loudest.” She touched the coffeepot, but it had gone cold. She puckered her lips and blew air to see how cold it was, saw her breath. “Somebody should start that fire again.”
“Why bother?”
“That’s one way. The other would be to go and do it without me having to ask.”
“I’ll be leaving shortly.”
“Hank told me you hurt that rich girl’s arm.”
“It was an accident.”
“I’ve had those accidents before, and it always felt purposeful to me.”
“She wouldn’t listen.”
“Impatient puppies, they nip and snarl.”
“We were goin to get married. I thought it was settled.”
“Well, covet that heap of disappointment. You could be miserable for year
s before you had to enjoy a single day. If you play it right, you could waste your whole life for free. What a deal.”
“Yer shacked up with Bellhouse and tellin me what to do?”
“We don’t count for much out here in the rip. Neither of us. You’d do well not to forget that.”
“Delilah?”
“You should call me Mabel.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’re just that special, aren’t you?”
“Mabel, can I kiss you?”
“No, you may not.” She smiled, and I took it for a maybe. I reached for her hand, but she was fast and I was slightly drunk, too slow, tipped the coffeepot. My chair fell over when I stood up.
She held up her hand so I wouldn’t come closer. “Get out.”
“Yer beautiful.”
“And you’re nothin but a boy and you smell worse than a dead mule.”
“I swear to Christ I know what to do with a woman.”
“Like he’d know.” She pushed herself back from the table and stood up. There were footsteps on the stairs. I picked up my chair and slid it into its place. Tartan entered the room and crossed it in seconds.
“The squid remains,” he said.
“He’s on his way out,” Delilah said.
“I’ll show him the door.”
“He can go on his own.”
Tartan righted the coffeepot and touched a finger to the spill. He smiled at Delilah and then punched me in the throat and folded me over his shoulder. I kicked and fought him, but he cracked my head against the doorjamb on the way out and I went dark. Delilah was waving good-bye, last thing I saw.
Tartan
He lugged Duncan across Front Street, through the morning bustle, and flopped him down in the mud. Rain had melted the snow overnight. The farrier’s boy, Libby, hitched a horse and wagon for him and Tartan tossed Duncan aboard and rode out of town. Busy shit of a day, two camps on leave and seventeen ships at last count. Drawbridge stuck open for the ships coming from the new Wishkah docks, loaded from breech to bore. Never used to be a problem till we got a bridge that moved. “Fuckin lower it, Paoletta,” Tartan bellowed.
The scrawny pipe-hat tender waved to Tartan from his perch, tin roof and a double-hung window. One, two ships passed, and he finally lowered the bridge.
Paoletta, hanging out his window with his hat in his hand. “Sorry for the wait.”
“I don’t like that you can control where I get to.”
“I don’t control anything, Mr. Tartan. I just make the bridge go up and down.”
He wasn’t getting into semantics with Paoletta. Bridges should be goddamn fixed. End of story. Used to haul the lumber through the streets and everyone was happier. Maybe not everyone.
I could sell the little grunion. Market was up for impressment but it goes against our union goals. Boyerton was an option as well. Nope, time for class, lesson one: Don’t aggravate my stomach because it aches.
An hour later, with a sore ass and a horse that wanted to quit, he was at the bridge where they’d found Duncan the night before. Tartan pinched the boy’s balls to wake him, and when he opened his eyes, he lifted him over the rail with one hand and threw him in. He thought the boy’d say something smart and make it worth it, but he was just scared and confused, and as soon as he was falling into the fast cold water Tartan felt remorse and wanted to take it back. He wasn’t a bad kid. Got me clobbered. Aw, Christ, fetch him back.
“Swim, boy. Swim for shore.” But he was underwater and gone. Drowned a child. Fuck me. Then he broke the surface and was swimming like a terrified animal, all whites and rolling in the eye sockets. Arms like chicken necks, water for blood. “Giver snoose, fuckin swim,” Tartan yelled. But it was too late; he was already around the bend.
Tartan had trouble getting the cart turned, and by the time he did, the boy was long gone and setting to get caught in one of the minor logjams or random cataracts or, below that, get swallowed by the slough.
He finally tied up the horse and walked the river, but Duncan wasn’t there.
It was afternoon by the time he got back to town. He had Libby spread word that Duncan Ellstrom had fallen in the river and was most likely drowned. Neither him nor the slow-witted farrier were dim enough to mention the fact that Duncan had last been seen draped over Tartan’s shoulder, nor would they unless they wanted to join him.
Tartan walked into the middle of the Sailor’s Union meeting and whispered in Hank’s ear what had happened. Hank shrugged. “Shame. Delilah’ll be heartbroken.”
“Sure.”
“We should send out a search.”
“I already looked. He’s gone.”
“For appearances we should.” He turned to the crowd. “I need your help, men. A boy has fallen in the river, and he might be drowned. We need to find him, save him if we can, bury him if we can’t.”
Men scratched their heads and looked at their drinks. Hats were pushed around tabletops. It was cold, wet, and soon to be dark outside.
“Little late, ain’t it, Hank?” a man with a pinched face in a pea coat said. “We still need to talk about those Willamette sons a bitches crowdin us on the grain shipments.”
“That can wait. Down your drinks and grab your hats. We’re forming a picket line at the river mouth and going to the bridge. If we don’t find anything, drinks on me tonight. If we do, drinks still on me. Let’s get.”
Damp men put on damp coats and hats and gave up on being dry or getting drunk at a decent hour.
“Be hell to find him.”
“Hope it ain’t me.”
“Who the fuck is it, anyway?”
“Duncan Ellstrom,” Tartan said.
“That little devil?”
“Shoulda drowned him and the McCandlisses at birth.”
“Ain’t Boyerton lookin for him?”
“Enemy of my enemy,” Hank said.
“Slinkin slint.”
“Quit fuckin moanin,” Tartan said.
“Someone fetch a ferry pilot, we’ll boat up to the Wynooche and then hoof it,” Hank said, cherishing the looks of disgust that a night of slough tromping brought to everyone’s faces.
As a mob they went out the door, and when they hit the street, the townspeople thought riot and closed the shutters and locked their doors. Hank climbed onto the back of a trash wagon and addressed the street.
“A boy has fallen in the river, and the proud members of the Sailor’s Union are going to search for him. Damn the rain and the imminent darkness. Come join us if you’ve any decency or community pride.”
The doors and windows remained closed. The hermit Kozmin stumbled from the alley, hauling his pack onto his back. “Wait for me.”
“Guess we’re all alone then,” Tartan said.
“I said I’m joinin,” Kozmin said.
“All by ourselves.”
“You wait.”
“Fuckin dead liver crone.”
The hermit hustled by Tartan, said: “I got something we can use.”
Tartan followed him to the waterfront and helped him haul his coracle up the ladder. The big man put it on his back like a turtle and they walked together to the ferry.
Thirty-five men debarked at the Wynooche pier.
“Can’t walk out there.” Bellhouse motioned to the slough that was the Wynooche and the Chehalis all at once. “We’ll take the road to the bridge and then work back. No luck, we’ll call it a night.”
The mass of the searchers followed Bellhouse upstream. Some stayed with the ferry, feigning sleep. Kozmin and Tartan slipped into Kozmin’s tiny bathtub of a boat and entered the slough. A freezing rain came through the trees in fans of white and spattered the murky slough water three feet into the air. Dismal conditions for any kind of outing. Tartan had the paddle while Kozmin held a lantern and leaned precariously over the side and called the boy’s name again and again. They bounced through the channels and mires and scooted over the shallows. Surely they were lost as well. Even if they could find
the main channel in the dark, the little boat would capsize at the first hint of the Chehalis’s powerful currents.
“Think he made it out of the water?” Kozmin said. “Or are we corpsin? Have to be near dead now from the cold.”
“We’ll find him,” Tartan said. Maybe just so I can kill him twice, he thought. Kozmin called Duncan’s name and whistled, and then they heard a sound and Tartan hit the water with the blade like he hated it. There was an island among a dozen other islands, and on it knelt the boy, his hand up, waving them in.
Jonas Ellstrom
The second whistle sounded, and he pulled the lever that stopped the belt and sat down on the bunk of lumber beside him. Light came through the windows, cut into ropes and blobs by the cracked glass, wormy shapes shifting on the rise and fall. Disembodied heads floated by above the machinery, arms shot out to turn valves. Men lived in this beast like mice in an abandoned house.
Dawn was a marker, the only natural one that the mill allowed, and that only dimly. Night was heralded by the illumination of the electric lights overhead, the progressive spark of modernity, from firelight to bulb. Jonas rarely if ever caught the actual moment when the darkness arrived; it came slowly and then completely, and somewhere in the middle, the lights came up.
There were birds roosting in the rafters; small and gray and soundless, they flew in tight nonmetrical patterns. Their chalky shit streaked the beams. Sometimes he saw dead birds on the floor and was surprised how large they were. They weren’t much different from dust motes when they were alive, except they shit everywhere and were capable of dying. If the windows weren’t broken, they couldn’t get in. If the doors weren’t open.
The next shift began to file in and take up the spots of the departing, but Jonas would be staying. Double shifts were what he’d asked for and what he’d been given.
He rolled a cigarette with shaking hands. Every one of the boards he sat on had been handled by him, moved and carried by his hands. Sometimes he looked out at the forest and the stumps and imagined he’d slid his fingers over the inside of half the trees in Washington. As if he were a preacher laying on hands. Blessed be. He felt the blood settle in his muscles, a cooling kettle. Water that’s been boiled tastes flat compared to fresh water, and my blood’s been boiled. He was all right today, but last week he’d collapsed and had to be carried outside for fresh air and a drink of water. Dawson, the foreman, had given him a shot of whiskey from the flask he kept secreted in his vest pocket. Dawson wasn’t nearly so bad as they said. He’d let Jonas rest for ten minutes or so, and together they’d watched as three men in an oceangoing canoe fought and boated a ten-foot sturgeon. They were yelling but not panicked. The man that had hooked the fish pulled it close and it splashed and swept its tail, and then one of the fishermen stood and quick as a shot got a gaff into the fish’s jaw and the canoe rolled and almost went over before another man raised his arm, holding a club, held high before it fell and rose again, like it was on a camshaft, pummeling. The fish finally stopped thrashing, and they set two more gaffs and fell back and the fish slid over the gunwale and landed in their laps. The canoe settled noticeably deeper into the water and the men cheered and smacked each other on the back and shoulders.