The Bailiff puffed his pipe and nodded his head.
“I’m not making any of this up,” she said.
“I don’t think that you are,” he replied. “What did you see when you looked at the sky?”
“You don’t think that I’m lying to you?”
“Of course not. But tell me now, what did you see?”
What she’d seen were two birds, or flying machines, or dragons, or prehistoric reptiles, or angels—it was difficult to be sure, and perhaps she’d seen all these things. Perhaps, she said, they’d been one thing and then another, changing constantly, and the Bailiff had thought this entirely plausible. The two things, whatever they might have been, were locked in an even fiercer battle than that being waged by the sea upon the sandy shore. One was wreathed all in flame and the other in a whirling veil of shadow. Bits of them were torn away and fell to the ground, sizzling, smoking, melting sand to glass on contact. She was very afraid, seeing them, not knowing what it meant, and Soldier told the Bailiff that she’d tried to reach the shore.
“Why? Did you think you’d be safe there?”
“There was a yellow boat waiting,” she told him. “I thought that it might take me to the dark woman again. I thought she might have left it there for me.”
“You wanted to be with her?” he asked, and Soldier nodded yes. “Do you wish you were with her now?”
“It was only a dream,” Soldier said. “She wasn’t a real person. You can’t wish to be with a dream.” But she knew that was a lie, and she’d missed the dark woman since the moment she’d awakened.
“Are you certain of that, it being only a dream?”
Instead of answering him, Soldier told the Bailiff how she’d lost her footing, had fallen and rolled a long way down the dune, getting sand in her mouth and eyes and nose; when she finally reached the bottom, she was sore and bleeding, dizzy, and her eyes were watering. Overhead, the two things, whatever they might have been, clawed and screamed and tore at each other. She understood that they might do this for all eternity, that they might have been at each other since the world began.
When she finally reached the beach, the boat was gone.
“Had it sailed without you?” the Bailiff asked, relighting his pipe, which had gone out.
“No, it just wasn’t there anymore. I’m not sure it was ever really there.”
And so, defeated, she’d sat down on the wet sand. There were stranded starfish and oysters and snails and ammonites all around, bits of coral and driftwood. She found a hermit crab huddled inside a snail’s shell. The waves cooled her feet, which were bruised and raw from so many days or weeks or months walking in the desert, but the salt water also burned the blisters and the open, weeping sores. She’d become a child again, when she wasn’t paying attention, a little girl sitting alone on a faraway beach while titans fought in the blue-white sky overhead. Digging her fingers into the sand, she found a single pearl and hid it in her robes.
“And then I woke up,” she said.
“Yes,” the Bailiff said. “I see,” and then he said nothing else for a while. Soldier sat staring at the floor, at patterns she imagined she could see in the wood’s grain, and the Bailiff sat smoking his pipe. She could hear a clock ticking loudly somewhere in the room, though she hadn’t noticed a clock before.
Finally, the Bailiff emptied the bowl of his pipe into an ashtray and told her to stand up. “It’s getting late,” he said. “The sun will be up soon. Off to bed with you, little Soldier.”
“Did I tell it right?” she asked.
“If you told the truth, and I think you did. But remember, say nothing of this to the hounds, even if they should ask.”
“Lie to them?”
“Just do as I say. I need to think about this. Adelaide will show you back to the basement.”
And Soldier almost asked him something else, almost asked what other secrets he was keeping from the ghouls, feeling a sort of thrill that the two of them were sharing a confidence, a conspiracy, that she’d been given instructions to disobey her masters and mistresses.
“Thank you for the cookies,” she said, “and for the soda. Next time, orange might be nice.”
“Ah, well then, next time, orange soda it will be.”
“And arrowroot cookies,” she added.
“If you wish,” and the Bailiff had already turned away from her. The library door was opening, and Soldier could smell the faint acrid odor that all the silver-eyed people carried with them. Adelaide was coming for her.
“Thank you,” Soldier said again, and this time the Bailiff only nodded his bald head and made a harrumphing noise that meant he was busy and she should leave. He was reading a large book lying open on his desk, squinting at the pages by the unsteady light of the oil lantern, peering at the print through the lens of a magnifying glass. There were other books on his desk, and an hourglass, and a bottle of red ink, and a calendar for July 2007, with all the days marked off through the nineteenth. Part of her wanted to ask him if she could stay, if she could sleep upstairs, but then Adelaide was leading her away, back down the long hallway to the parlor, and she was glad that she hadn’t asked. He would call her back, if she did as he’d said and kept their secret. He would call her back, and there would be sweets and the smell of his pipe.
“You can find your way from here,” Adelaide said.
“Yes,” Soldier agreed. “I can. I know my way,” and she went back down, through the basement doors, and descended the rickety stairs into darkness.
Soldier took Highway 117 west out of Warwick, shrugging it off like a long, dirty nightmare—the Rolling Stones blaring from the radio, just her and Saben White in the black Dodge sedan, because she left Odd Willie at Rocky Point to get rid of the dead priest and the Impala. She drove on past Apponaug, then took the interstate north, turning back towards Providence. Saben sat up front with her, with her and yet completely apart from her, pressed against the passenger-side door, keeping as much distance between them as possible. And that was fine with Soldier. It meant she’d made her point, so it was just as fine as fine could be, so long as Saben didn’t start crying again. It was easily one of the most loathsome sounds that Soldier could imagine, women crying. It never failed to make her angry and always jabbed at the violence that was never very far beneath the uneasy surface of her; sometimes it was almost enough to make her physically ill. She’d once killed a woman for crying, a woman that she might otherwise have let live.
When they’re finally clear of Warwick, when Cranston’s sprawling bleak and ugly on their left and it won’t be much longer before Providence comes in sight, Soldier takes out her cell phone and calls the Bailiff. He doesn’t answer, of course. He never answers the phone himself. So first she has to talk to one of his lackeys, some shit-for-brains bootlick calling itself Cacophony who tells her how concerned they’ve all been, how they’ve been simply sick to death with worry. Soldier tells the boy to put the Bailiff on the line and then go fuck himself with the sharp end of a broken bottle.
“I was just this very minute talking about you,” the Bailiff says. Nothing will ever seem as unnatural to Soldier as the Bailiff’s voice coming through a cell phone.
“Guess that’s why my ears were burning,” Soldier replies and turns down the volume on the radio.
“I got a couple distraught calls from our friends up in Woonsocket,” he tells her. “They aren’t pleased at having been so neglected this afternoon. I trust it couldn’t have been avoided, your dereliction. I trust it was at least a matter of life and limb.”
“It was a matter of Saben,” Soldier says. “Me and Willie, we were right there, ready to go. Then Saben showed up forty-five minutes late.”
“Is that so? Then why am I only finally hearing from you more than two hours late?” he asks. “How, little Soldier, would you care to account for such a marked discrepancy in time?”
“It’s a big fucking mess,” she says, wishing there were any way at all around the words that have to com
e next, knowing that there’s not, so she gets it over with fast. “She killed a priest somewhere down in Connecticut and brought him back to Warwick in the trunk of her car. We’ve been trying to deal with it.”
“Well, now. That is a mess, isn’t it. A priest, you say?” And the Bailiff laughs as though Soldier has just told him that this whole situation was the result of a blown tire or a stripped transmission or Odd Willie running over a fire hydrant. “Well, Miss White’s certainly getting a bit more enterprising. Indeed. We’ll have to see that she’s rewarded for all this ambition.”
“I’ll reward her right now,” Soldier says and glances at Saben. “All you got to do is say the word, and I’ll reward her good and proper.”
“And what about you?” he asks. “Those two are your responsibility. When they fuck up, you fuck up. I’ve been quite explicit about that, Soldier. So, then, how shall I reward you?”
“Good damn question,” she says before she can think better of it.
“What about the earthly remains?” the Bailiff asks, and it takes her a second to realize he means the priest.
“Odd Willie’s having some sort of barbecue. I don’t think there’ll be anything left to worry about when he’s done. Listen, what am I supposed to do now? I can be in Woonsocket in half an hour, tops. Hell, I could be there in twenty-five—”
“No,” the Bailiff says, and Soldier hears someone laughing in the background. “I’m afraid that won’t be necessary. Our friends don’t like to wait around. They’re busy men. They’ve rescheduled for Monday at noon, that is, if you think you can make the time. If not—”
“No, no, Monday at noon,” Soldier says, grateful that she’ll have some time to recover from Rocky Point and the scene at the Dunkin’ Donuts before she has to face Woonsocket. “Monday’s totally fucking fine. I’m sorry as hell about this mess, Bailiff. But, please, I want her off my crew, okay? Right now, today.”
“I’ve told you, she’s your responsibility,” the Bailiff replies. “Should I explain once more precisely what that means?”
Soldier looks over at Saben White again, Saben who’s still staring out the window at the other cars or the bare trees along the side of the interstate, Saben with her swollen lip and blackening eye, the dried blood at the nape of her neck. And Soldier wonders if it would really turn out that much worse if she simply took out her gun and blew the bitch’s brains out. After all, how much hotter can boiling water get?
How hot is summertime in hell? How hot do you think, little Soldier?
“Yeah, fine. My goddamn responsibility. So, what do you want me to do now?” Soldier asks the cell phone.
Saben White smiles, then, as though she’s scored some secret victory. Soldier catches the smile out of the corner of her right eye, and it almost doesn’t matter what would happen to her, because whatever it is, she has it coming, and it will surely find her sooner or later, anyway. On the radio, the Rolling Stones give way to Procol Harum, “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” and Soldier turns the volume up again.
“I want you home as soon as possible,” the Bailiff says. “I want you somewhere safe, somewhere visible, so I don’t have to worry about you anymore.”
“And what about Saben? What do I do with her?”
“Your responsibility,” the Bailiff says for the third time. “Now, stop worrying so much about our wayward, trigger-happy Miss White. Perhaps she had good cause in this transgression. Perhaps there is a greater purpose here that we’ve yet to comprehend, little Soldier.” And again, in the background, that high, girlish laughter.
And, likewise, if behind is in front
Then dirt in truth is clean
Soldier swallows, her mouth so dry there’s hardly any spit left at all, and the bottle of whiskey is calling her so loudly now that it’s a miracle she can hear either the Bailiff or the radio.
“Willie’s a good man, so long as he has the right tools,” the Bailiff reminds her. “You did well to leave the good father in his capable hands.”
“Do I call you when he’s—”
“You just go home,” the Bailiff says, that steel tone in his voice that says the matter’s settled. “See that Miss White walks the straight and narrow. One priest here or there is hardly a sign of the Apocalypse, but I shouldn’t want it to become a habit. Was he Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, or perhaps Episcopalian?”
“Catholic, I think.” And Saben White nods her head yes. “Yeah, Saben says he was Catholic.”
“Well, that makes it all a little easier,” the Bailiff says. “Some wheels are much easier to grease than others, if you get my drift.”
She doesn’t, but isn’t about to say so.
“And, Soldier, that bottle you bought this morning,” the Bailiff continues, “you best leave that where it is for now. You may give it to me when next we meet. I’ll consider it a gift, recompense for this inconvenience.” And then there’s silence, and she folds the phone shut and tosses it onto the dash. Saben flinches at the noise, and Soldier bites down hard on her lower lip because a little taste of her own blood is better than having to explain to the Bailiff how Saben’s door just happened to come flying open, spilling her out onto I-95 at sixty-five miles an hour.
“Don’t you worry, sweetie,” Soldier says, putting a little more pressure on the accelerator. “It looks like someone’s got your ass covered.”
And then she notices the clouds building on the horizon, sweeping down towards Providence from the northwest; billowing hills of purple-gray, heavy with snow or freezing rain, and she wonders if Willie’s found everything he needs to start his fire. And then the clouds make her think of an ocean, and an immense desert at her back, and monsters warring in the sky.
THREE
New York
A fter the cab ride from the train station, after dinner and half an hour’s worth of old Tom and Jerry cartoons on Sadie’s little television, Emmie sits on the sofa and watches while her stepmother checks all the locks on the front door of her apartment again.
“Just in case,” Sadie would say, or, “It never hurts to be careful,” if Emmie were to ask her, but she doesn’t ask because she knows better. She knows that Sadie paid extra to have all those locks installed on the door, because Deacon said so. He also told Emmie that it wasn’t polite to ask questions about Sadie and her weird thing with the locks, but she’d already suspected as much.
“Something very bad happened,” Deacon told her, “a long time ago. That’s how her arm got hurt. I’ve told you that, Emmie. Now she needs to feel safe, that’s all.”
“Does she have OCD?” Emmie asked him.
“What?” her father asked back, furrowing his brow and scowling at her. “Where the hell did you learn about OCD?”
“From an abnormal-psychology textbook in the library at school. I know about schizophrenia, too, and paranoia—”
“Jesus.” Deacon sighed and shook his head. “No, Emmie. She doesn’t have OCD. She’s just…she’s just high-strung, that’s all. She needs—”
“To feel safe,” Emmie said, even though it annoys him when she finishes his sentences for him. Even when he’s drunk and forgets what he was going to say.
“Are we gonna play some Scrabble now?” Emmie asks her stepmother.
“If that’s what you want to do, then that’s what we’re going to do,” Sadie replies, apparently satisfied with the assortment of dead bolts and chains on the door, because now she crosses the small living room to check the locks on both the windows again. From the sofa, Emmie can see the rusty iron zigzag of the fire escape, and there’s golden light from the street lamps down on St. Mark’s.
“I’ve been reading the dictionary a lot lately,” Emmie says, “learning new words.”
“New words?” Sadie asks, sounding distracted, staring at something down on the street, her good hand resting on the windowsill. “What kind of new words?”
“Well, Q-words, mostly. Especially Q-words without Us in them,” Emmie tells her. She wants to ask Sadi
e what she sees down on the sidewalk, out in the street, but she doesn’t, because Deacon would probably tell her that was rude, as well.
“What’s wrong with Q-words with Us in them?” her stepmother asks, not turning away from the window.
“Nothing’s wrong with them, except that there aren’t enough Us in Scrabble, and I never have one when I have a Q and actually need one.”
“Oh,” Sadie says.
And then curiosity gets the best of Emmie, which happens a lot more than she’d like to admit. “Sadie, what are you looking at down there?” she asks.
“Nothing,” Sadie replies, but she still sounds distracted, like she’s thinking about everything in the world but playing Scrabble and what a pain in the ass Q-words can be when you don’t have a U. “I was looking at a dog, that’s all,” she adds. Then she turns her back on the windows and smiles at Emmie Silvey. The smile comes out more than a little forced.
“Q-words like qat,” Sadie says.
“Yeah, and qintar and qoph, too.”
“Qoph? I don’t think I know that one,” Sadie admits, then glances over her right shoulder at the windows again.
“It’s the nineteenth letter in the Hebrew alphabet,” Emmie tells her, and her stepmother nods her head and turns back towards her.
“What about qiviut? Did you learn that one?”
“It’s got something to do with a musk ox,” Emmie says, and reaches for a magazine lying on the coffee table.
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
“Look it up.” Emmie shrugs, opening the magazine, and maybe she doesn’t want to play Scrabble, after all. This whole conversation about Q-words has reminded her how dull it can get sometimes, especially when Sadie’s not really thinking about the game and it’s too easy to win. “It’s got something to do with musk oxes.”
“Musk oxen,” Sadie corrects her.
“Either way, qiviut has a U, and we were talking about Q-words without Us.”
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