The Bully of Order

by Brian Hart

  Days passed, and we were still crawling through the weeds, found trails, lost them. Made a few miles on the beach and then back up the rocks. Twice we hid from people, father and son, side by side.

  We made a good camp with watertight shelter under a cliff overhang, and Duncan slept for nearly two days. When he woke, he’d lost his fury and the madness in his eyes. He wanted to go home, for it to stop. Astoria could be a week away. I saw us getting nabbed there, or Oysterville. Big rivers to cross regardless.

  “Let’s move farther inland,” I said.

  “I can’t see it being easier than what we’ve been doing.”

  “It’d be safer, is all.”

  “Crossing the rivers will be the end of us, won’t it?”

  “You’ve never been this far away from home.”

  “No. I can say I saw Portland now. Which might have to be enough.”

  “What of the girl?”

  “I can’t have her. It won’t be allowed.”

  “It isn’t likely. I wish it were.”

  “You could turn me in. For the money.”

  “I’d rather not.” I wanted to urge him on, to give him the strength he needed. We’d come this far, but how much farther? Not for the first time, I thought of Tarakanov from Kozmin’s story. “It’s best to keep going.”

  “Not if I end up getting caught anyway. Shackled is bad enough, shackled and dead tired is, let’s say, unfortunate.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Will they hang me?”

  “Not if there’s a trial.”

  “With the money on my head, nobody’ll want the hassle.”

  “We should keep going.”

  “Lead the way.”

  The problem ceased to be the cliffs. Rivers, brush, and distance replaced them. I took a bearing whenever the sun came out from the clouds, which was rare. Seemed at least once a day we caught a break. Rain stopped, clouds parted, the angels sang or burped or screamed, and there was the sun, like a dream. Skirting the logging camps put us on a winding path, but it was easy to lift more food. Low-hanging fruit. Bull cooks generally sleep more than they work. When we used to roll back into camp at dusk, the bastards would be all aflutter, and haven’t I been working all day, and isn’t cooking just as much of a slog as chopping trees? And you couldn’t tell them to suck it, or you’d starve. Power collects in the joints of the world and makes it arthritic.

  They’d spiked shortline rail all over the woods, and we of course made the mistake of following it and had to double back to keep our course. We saw four black bears walking together through the trees, and not one of them was a cub. They swung their heads around when they scented us, and then they were gone. Duncan went after them for a way until I caught him. In the distance we could hear the chunking of the double bits like a galloping herd.

  Pack trails came and went, some with fresh tracks, most without. Avoidance was our plan, and that kept us to the woods. High ridges were the best—not that we could see anything, but we didn’t have to cross a creek every ten minutes.

  Duncan told me how he and Teresa Boyerton had been close since they were small. I wondered who else knew this. I wondered if it mattered at this point who knew what about Duncan. He was quarry.

  A sign was nailed to a cedar post, “Wolfskill” with an arrow pointing north. The trail we were on hadn’t been traveled in a while, and we’d been crawling over blowdown and scrambling over mud and rock slides for miles.

  “Sounds bad,” Duncan said. “Wolfskill. Kinda name is that?”

  “Normal somewhere, I’d guess. He was one of them that cut the Spanish Trail.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I remember the name from when I was in California.”

  “He was successful in his exploring?”

  “He died rich and fat in Los Angeles.”

  “We should follow his route, then. It can’t be worse than any other.”

  “No, probably not.”

  Duncan touched the sign and tested the post, and we walked on. I thought maybe Wolfskill came this way hunting otter. Maybe there were other Wolfskills, as there are other Boyertons and Ellstroms. This track of thinking led me to my brother, and I could see scattering his bones on the black sand for the gulls to peck at and shit on. Understanding family must be one of the most complicated acts a human can go through. And it’s because you know them that it is so hard. Because you think a thing good. My thoughts were buoyed to a singular idea of faith, like a skiff at the pier, and with the waves they bumped into religion and God and my son walking in front of me. You think a thing good. You think a thing real. I wanted to go back and stack stones around the base of Wolfskill’s sign so I’d know that it would be there, that we hadn’t imagined it.

  The salt was in the air. The day fell away finely without a fuss. I made camp while Duncan hunted for firewood. We were on a grassy point that looked down on a mired creek bottom. The deer sign indicated their numbers to be in the thousands, or maybe only twenty that had been long in residence. Lurkers in the hole. We could shoot one at dawn, I was sure of it.

  In the dark I stalked down to what I thought would be pistol range and waited. The rain started as the sun lightened the tree line. A doe and her fawn emerged from the brush. I stood uneasily on the pins and needles in my feet and leaned against a black alder for a brace and shot the fawn. The doe ran off and didn’t look back. The bark of the alder was torn, and it had reddened my coat sleeve. I dug my thumb in it and spread the color over the back of my hand that held the pistol. The young deer wasn’t moving. After a minute or so I climbed down to the creek bottom and made short work of gutting it. Warm and limber, draped across my shoulders, nothing as loose and unmanageable as the freshly dead. Maybe once I would’ve felt bad about shooting the fawn instead of the doe, but I didn’t now. We could eat the fawn before it spoiled. Both would’ve died if I’d shot the doe. Duncan helped me skin it, and we boned out the meat and spread it on the skin out of the rain. I stoked the fire, and Duncan speared the two loins on cut alder sticks and seared them in the yellow of the flame. We ate off the stick and with our hands, stuffed ourselves like a couple of ogres.

  The day following we dropped from the ridges and wasted hours crossing creeks and rivers. Exhausted, we made camp early in the trees.

  “I don’t feel hunted anymore,” he said.

  “That’s laziness.”

  “They can’t always be after me. They have to stop sometime.”

  “Have some of this coffee. I can’t drink it all.” It was the last of our supply. We sipped coffee and watched the fire burn down.

  “Why’d you let Matius be that way?” Duncan asked. “Didn’t you get tired of it?”

  “He was much older than me. I never thought to stop him. He could do anything, almost anything, and I’d forgive him.”

  “Do you forgive him now?” Duncan asked.

  “No, I don’t. I’ll never forgive him.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Were you afraid of him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been afraid my whole life.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder, and he reached up and patted it. I’d not felt so much love for anyone since the day he was born. I wanted to tell him, maybe a father always does, how he was once a waxy little being squirming in my hands, with only his mother and me to protect him. Things change, but not many, not often, not for long.

  Three days later I paid a lone sturgeon fisherman to ferry us across the mighty Columbia. We both showed our weariness, but we had no choice but to keep walking.

  Jonas

  The excitement surrounding the manhunt kept Jonas from going into town. Bellhouse hadn’t been back; nobody else had either. The Parkers had taken their goats and gone, Jonas didn’t know where. They didn’t say good-bye, and he didn’t expect they gave him much thought, not after all that had happened with Duncan.

  No matter how big a fire he built, the house still felt cold. Without knowing what else to do,
he began straightening out years of his father’s—and, he had to admit, his own—neglect. After they’d cleared the land around the house, Jonas took the job at the mill. He lived at the bunkhouse, ate at the chow hall, shopped for intimates at the store.

  Sometimes he was angry with Duncan, sometimes murderous. Not often, but sometimes he was grateful. Grateful that it had all been sorted out. He’d known his father had lied that night, but not about what. He thought maybe he’d told Jacob to hit her, or maybe he’d hit her after Jacob had. The problem with being right was that he’d rather be wrong.

  Kozmin showed up with the mail and the last few weeks’ worth of newspapers. He’d been locked up, and they’d let him keep the papers when he left.

  “What a show yer missin. They got U.S. marshals and regular law from all over, as far away as Montana. They say they might call in the army if they don’t find him soon.”

  All three letters had already been torn open. One was from his mother; the other two had something to do with a sawmill his father had invested in. Reading the first and second letters, he discovered that his father’s name had been at the top of the list of investors on a mill in Portland, and now that the owner had died, the equipment was to be liquidated and the profits, after fees, would come to him, or he could arrange to have the equipment hauled away. So long ago, he’d told his father what a fool he’d been for investing in that fraudulent mill. But it hadn’t been fraudulent. Maybe he was the only one that hadn’t gone back to get his money. Maybe the cheat with the phony mill just needed that first bit of cash to make it come together. Regardless, his father had left him something useful.

  “You hear me?” Kozmin said.

  “The army. Yeah, I heard you.” Jonas took the bottle when the old man offered it. Kozmin had a broken blood vessel in his left eye and a cut on his lip. “They beat you up in there?”

  “No, I did it to myself last night. Bellhouse came and got me out and gave me some money, he said, for my trouble. I went rabid, musta fell down.”

  “He send you here? Bellhouse?”

  “No. Well, I guess. He gave me yer mail to give you.”

  “The hell is he doin with my mail?”

  “I don’t know. Said he tapped the postman for it.”

  “You read this, didn’t you?” Jonas held up the letter.

  “I looked at it.” Winter wind through the trees like flat chalk over the board. “Bellhouse says if we can get Duncan a message, he’d appreciate it.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Teresa Boyerton’s with him.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Think just what he says. It means she’s with him, if Duncan wants to find her.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “Doesn’t matter if we can’t tell Duncan.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “What will you do about that letter?”

  “I’m gonna go down there and load the whole show into a boat and bring it back here. I’ve been handed a bit of a blessing with this mill. I plan to take advantage.”

  “I could help.”

  “You can come if you want to. I won’t stop you.”

  “I know how to set up a mill. I done it before.”

  “It’s just a little fucker.”

  “Even when they’re small, it’s a lot.”

  “Small enough to move, though. They’ve hauled bigger.”

  “People see you leavin town, they’re gonna say yer goin to help him.”

  “Fuckin Bellhouse already read my mail. Let him figure it out. He can tell everybody what I’m up to.”

  “When’re we leavin?”

  “I don’t have a thing keepin me here. I say we go now.”

  “I don’t have any money for my passage.”

  “I’ll cover you. Take it out of yer wages once we get to work.”

  “I didn’t say anything about wages.”

  Jonas stood and went into the bedroom and packed a bag. It’d be good to be moving, to get out of the Harbor.

  Tartan

  He hung on to his crutch and squatted over the bedpan and stared at the open door, pants around his ankles. Bruises leaked from under his stained bandages. The hole in his face and the shattered teeth were hard to understand. His tongue didn’t believe it and wouldn’t rest. Dr. Haslett had brought him a milky concoction of cocaine and vinegar, but it had made him restless and tasted horrible so he’d gone with whiskey. A fire had been lit in the stove downstairs and the door left open to let in the warmth.

  He didn’t bother to read the newsprint before he wiped with it. A sketch of the boy was enough for him to know what it was about. Finished, he one-handed his braces and, with the crutch in his armpit, two-handed his buttons. He gave the pan a boot, and it slid across the floor into the hallway.

  Hank would be by soon. I’m on the dark side of it now. Moss growing, mushrooms sprouting. My usefulness was my guts and my fists. My usefulness is done. Nitz’s mom came for the bedpan but didn’t bother looking in on him. It was early still, and the stink and fuck noise had finally shut off.

  Boots on the stairs, and then Hank was in the doorway.

  “Dressed for your funeral?” Bellhouse said.

  “Had to get out of bed, didn’t I?”

  “I ask you: What’s the point?”

  “Clothes make me feel less spinsterish.”

  “Oh, you’re still plenty young to take a husband.”

  “What’s the news?”

  “Manhunt continues,” Bellhouse boomed.

  “Yer fight?”

  “We settled it.”

  “How much?”

  “Not any of your concern, my little henny huhn. But I brought you a gift.” He passed over the Jurgensen pocketwatch.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Services rendered. A retirement present.”

  Tartan opened the watch and squinted at the inscription. “Who the fuck is CSB?”

  “Coast Sailors Boys. You’ll always be one of us.”

  “I’m healin.”

  “Fucking broken. Take the watch. I’m done with you.”

  “Bounty’s up on the boy.”

  “I got marshals and straight badges by the dozen crawling all over my docks, all over the goddamn coast. This is your fault.”

  “I made the choice.”

  “She admits the error of her ways but can do nothing to heal the damage.”

  “What peace is there? Leave me to rest, Hank. I’m lackin the necessary bluster for an argument.”

  The gold teeth flashed, and Tartan caught the scent of what was coming. “The elder McCandliss said something to me made me think you might be trying to set a springboard against my position. Any truth to that?”

  “There’s no ax comin for you, not from me there’s not.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  On his way out, Bellhouse bent at the waist and inspected the trail of urine and shit that had leaked from the kicked bedpan. “Filthy cow,” he said, and then he was out the door and down the stairs, two at a time. Tartan looked down at his hands, and they were shaking.

  Jonas and Kozmin

  Jonas at the rail. Kozmin sleeping on the engine hatch. They could’ve never known that Duncan and Jacob were standing on the other side of the breakers, watching as the ship lights glided by. Jonas felt something, though. He lifted his eyes from the frothers and curling black and studied the blotted coast. A cut hole in the bluish evening. White stumps like cut rope. There’d be someone out there. There’d be ax-swinging maniacs hacking at the world, working in the shadow of a bear. Work was on his mind. Like climbing stairs, and someone had given him the first tread, but he had to build the rest as he went. Mill. Lease. Labor. The foundations of the Boyerton show were crumbling. He made it in time, he could get a lease or two when they went on the block. Didn’t matter how much he had to borrow or steal. Get skin in the fight.

  He had to hire a lawyer to get the deed to the mill. The machinery had been g
one through, but Kozmin said it’d still work. They hired mule teams to get it to the water and then walked it on board in two dozen pieces. The old cruster knew his business and worked like a young man. Jonas suspected that he might not be as old as he said. Sometimes thoughts of Duncan rose up in his mind, his father, too. The hours and time generally, without the regimentation of the mill, went by recklessly. He’d forgotten how quickly a day could pass. Time was no drudge. If a person were to stand back and wait, they might learn something. They might starve or be trampled. The throat of the mill was big enough to cut six-footers. Small miracles.

  Back up the coast like a couple of thieves. Resilience is the ability to get on the boat and be gone. Jonas imagined no welcome home, no notice at all, and that’s what they got. Tied up at the wharf, watching the gulls shit and the water blacken and deeper than blacken the pilings. Now fuckin what? More money out of the wallet. More hauling, more freighting. But it’s terminal now. Cut all spring, summer, and fall, let em soak. Winter mill. Kozmin called the amount of work biblical in scope.

  “How much you have saved?” the hermit asked.

  “Like I’d tell you.”

  “Better hire some fools.”

  “Lots of fools to be hired.”

  “This’d be classed under gyppo, I believe. Junk show.”

  “Nah, pure fancy. Pure through to the heart.”

  Jacob

  We traveled at night. During the day we watched the road. Men walked by with rifles and dogs but didn’t venture into the forest. A contingent of soldiers clattered by in a wagon with a broken spoke. They couldn’t all be hunting Duncan, but they were. Sitting still was the hardest part. I led us through the forest to a trail that I’d only seen once and was surprised to find it again. It was dawn when we reached the Soke. I told Duncan to stay hidden and knocked on Salem’s door.

  “Doc, the hell you want?”

  “Invite me in. I could use a rest.”