by Blake Crouch
“Fire’s gettin low,” Billy said. “Go on, bring in some wood from the porch. This shithole’s drafty as hell.”
“Billy! That mouth! It’s Christmas mornin, and your daughter—”
“Get goin, I said!” So Bessie wrapped every available blanket around her underpinnings and stepped into Billy’s arctics. When she’d gone outside, Billy sat up in bed and raised his arms over his head. At twenty years, he was small and looked young for his age, with jittery eyes that caused most men to treat him like a boy. He was handsome until he opened his mouth. His front teeth had resembled jagged canines ever since his father had broken them when Billy was nine. He got up, the dirt floor freezing, his head pounding. He could feel the morning cold slipping through his stained and threadbare long drawers.
He staggered to the table, covered in oilcloth and a few airtights of rarities they’d saved for Christmas. Billy pried open a tin of mustard sardines, crammed a handful into his mouth. He went over to the cabin’s only window and swept back the curtains Bessie had sewn out of an old lace-edged petticoat—nothing to see of the outside world, condensation having frosted the inside of the glass.
A whiskey bottle filled with tiny seashells sat in the windowsill. He ran a finger across the glass and thought of his big brother, Arnold, missed him so much in that moment, he felt his throat close up, went short of breath, like someone had punched him in the gut.
Billy turned around, looked at his daughter.
“Merry Christmas, girl,” he said.
The six-year-old glanced up at her father, and he saw the wariness in her eyes, and it shot him full of sadness and vexation.
“Got a present for your mama,” he said, and he reached under the bed and lifted something the size of a small loaf of bread, packaged in newspaper. He walked over to the spruce sapling they’d uprooted from the hillside above their cabin. Bessie had potted it in a lard bucket, kept it watered, but the needles had begun to brown at the tips. Billy placed the package on the flour sack wrapped around the base of the Christmas tree.
“Y-y-y-you like that doll?” Billy asked, blushing as he always did when he stuttered, no matter that he was conversing with his six-year-old. He’d never had a speech problem before coming to Abandon.
“Yessir.”
“That’s good. It cost a damn sight more than we can afford.”
He lifted the lid and peered into the graniteware pot on top of the stove. The snow had finally melted, tiny bubbles rushing up from the bottom. He took his tin cup down from one of the newspaper-lined shelves above the washbasin and poured the hot water over the old Arbuckle’s grounds. “Christmas mornin, ain’t even got a decent cup a coffee to sip. This is belly wash.” The front door swung open and Bessie stumbled in with two armloads of firewood and a draft of bitter cold. She dropped them on the floor, opened the iron stove, shoved in three logs. “Guess it’s still snowin,” Billy said, noticing the streaks of white in Bessie’s yellow hair.
“Comin down like it got no mind to stop. Dust me off, will ye?”
Billy walked over, brushed the snow off her blankets.
“W-w-w-well, looky what’s under the tree,” he said.
Bessie saw the small package on the flour sack and smiled. “I didn’t think you’d got me nothin.” Bessie draped the blankets over the rocking chair beside the stove and approached the dying spruce.
She lifted the present. “Heavy.”
“C-c-c-c-come over to the bed.” Bessie sat down on the mattress. Harriet crawled over, crouched at her parents’ feet.
Bessie ripped off the old newspaper.
“Holy God, Billy.” What lay in Bessie’s lap amid the torn newspaper was inconceivable, a dream.
“I weighed it,” Billy said. “Twenty-two pounds.”
“Mama, let me see.”
Bessie hoisted the bar of solid gold, the metal freezing cold to the touch, marred with scrapes and tiny chinks, a dully gleaming bronze.
“How much?” she asked.
“Gold’s at twenty dollars and sixty-seven cents a ounce, so you’re holdin more’n seven thousand dollars right there.”
It was more money than Bessie had ever heard of. She began to cry. Billy put his arm around her.
“Where’d you get this?” Bessie asked.
Billy sipped his coffee. The grounds had been used and reused so many times, they barely even colored the water.
“Look at this place.” He waved a hand at their shanty. “We live in squalor,” he said. “Ain’t ye tired of it yet? This floor turnin to mud ever time it rains? Chinks fallin out. They’s goddamn drifts in the kitchen from snow blowin through the walls.”
“Where’d you get it?” Bessie asked again.
“I-I-I-I don’t think ye need to know. We’re rich, Bessie. Concern yourself with that. Oh, and this ain’t the only one.”
“What do you mean?”
He grinned. “That bar’s got a whole mess a brothers and sisters.”
Bessie dropped the bar on the bed and stood up. With her hands, she framed Billy’s acne-speckled face. He’d been trying for a mustache the last six months, but it looked patchy and ridiculous.
“I need to know right now what you done,” she said.
He swatted her hands away.
“What you mean, what I done? I’m providin for my fuckin family.”
“Billy, when you brought the high-grade home from the mine, I didn’t like it, but I let it go. Next thing I know, we got a half ton a ore in the root cellar. I said nothin. But that.” She pointed at the bar of gold. “You take it from the Godsend?”
“What if I told you I found it and—”
“I’d call you a black liar.” He jumped to his feet and grabbed Bessie’s arms and shoved her toward the kitchen.
She crashed into the washbasin and the shelves. A can of condensed milk fell on her head, jars of sugar, long sweetening, flour, and salt shattering on the dirt floor. When Bessie looked up, Billy stood over her, eyes twitching, face bloodred.
Harriet had disappeared under the table, but her crying filled the cabin. Billy ripped the oilcloth off the table, glared at his daughter. “Now you shut that fuckin yap, Harriet! I’m speakin to your mother, and I don’t wanna hear peep one out a you!”
The little girl buried her face in her dress to muffle her sobs.
“Your daughter, Billy!” Bessie screamed. “That’s your—”
Billy grabbed his wife by the ankles and dragged her toward the bed. He picked her up and slammed her onto the mattress, climbed on top of her, pinning her underneath his weight.
“L-l-l-l-listen, you ungrateful cunt,” he whispered, straining to hold her down. “By God, I’ll make you be still.” He slapped her twice. Bessie quit struggling. They lay pressed together, panting, Bessie trying not to gag at the fishy reek of Billy’s breath.
“It’s Oatha, ain’t it?” Bessie said. “He got you into somethin. You changed since you taken up his company.” Billy pressed his forearm into his wife’s neck and leaned into her windpipe.
“M-m-m-m-make no mistake,” he whispered. “One word, I’ll fuckin kill ye. Simple as that.”
“And your daughter, Billy?” she wheezed. “Gonna kill Harriet, too?” Bessie saw it happen. The madness spilled over in Billy’s eyes and she knew he would suffocate her. “All right, baby. All right.” She’d been digging her fingernails into his biceps, but now she let go and ran her fingers through his greasy sandy-blond hair. “Billy.” She couldn’t produce anything louder than a whisper. “Billy, I can’t breathe.”
It passed. He let up on his wife’s neck, but he still lay sprawled on top of her as she coughed and gasped for air.
“You gonna make me kill you one a these days,” Billy said.
All Bessie could do was stare into his twitching eyes. It wasn’t anger she felt toward him. Not anymore. Only fear and profound sadness, because so little about him resembled the person she’d married in West Tennessee at fourteen. That sweet and tender boy felt as dista
nt as her father, long dead from stone on the chest.
Her eyes caught on the bottle of seashells in the window. She thought of that happy summer in ’89 when they’d taken a steamboat down the Mississippi to visit Billy’s brother on the Gulf Coast. It was the first and last time she’d seen the ocean, but she’d never lost the smell of it or forgotten the cool shock of salt water running under her feet that morning she and Billy had walked the beach together collecting those shells.
Billy rolled off of her and sat up.
Bessie touched the swelling knot on top of her head.
“You never beat me in Tennessee.”
“When’d you give me cause? Now . . . this gold. We got a problem?”
“No, Billy.”
“W-w-w-w-well, all right, then.”
He sighed and got up from the bed, walked back over to the table, knelt down. Harriet still had her head buried in her gingham dress, so all he could see of her was a battery of black curls.
“Come on out a there now, girl. Me and your mama is all right. Sometimes adults have to talk things out, find a remedy for a situation.” The little girl lifted her head, eyes still brimming with tears. “Come on now, honey. Your doll’s over there on the floor all alone. She’s upset, too. What’s her name?”
“Samantha.”
“You just gonna leave Samantha over there to cry by herself? Ain’t you her mama now?” As Harriet crawled out from underneath the table, Billy said, “Well, how’s about we crack open a can a oysters. It’s Christmas after all, ain’t it?” And Billy flashed Bessie his broken-tooth smile, Bessie thinking, I don’t know if it’s this town or Oatha that done it, but you ain’t the same. This thin air’s poisoned you. Ain’t my Billy no more. I’ve lost you.
TWENTY-ONE
C
hristmas morning, Oatha Wallace slung his oilskin slicker over the coat-rack and breathed in the smell of Joss Maddox’s cigarette.
“Comin down, huh?” she called out from behind the bar.
Oatha removed his slouch hat, beat the felt brim against his leg to dislodge the snow, and replaced it on the tangle of wavy black hair that fell to his shoulders. He strode to the pine bar, where Joss had already poured two tumblers of whiskey and uncapped a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
“So,” she said. “How merry of a Christmas is it?”
He opened his coat, reached into the inner pocket. “We got there with both feet.”
When Joss saw the bar of gold, she went moist between her legs, reached out and touched Oatha’s hand. He drank both tumblers and took a long pull of beer. “Tell me, Jossy—”
“Joss.”
“Damn, you’re snorty. Who’s the woman across the street, sittin up in that bay window? She watches me ever time I pass by.”
“Molly Madsen, and you ain’t special. She watches everyone.” “What is she, a lunger, up here for the rarified air?” “No, ten years ago, her husband sent her out here to set up a home. He knew Bart somehow, was gonna assay for the mine. Well, he never came. Never wrote. Just up and quit her.” Oatha smiled.
“Bart felt awful about it, put Molly up in the hotel when she finally ran out a money. Been supportin her ever since. What I’ve heard, Molly went crazy as a sheepherder over it. Hasn’t left that room in five years. Still thinks her husband’s comin for her.”
“Had a feeling she was sent for supplies.” He pointed at the tumblers. She filled them. He drank again, then stepped quietly over to the potbellied stove, so as not to rouse Al, the deputy, who’d once again drunk himself into an unconscious stupor. Oatha warmed his hands, which were heavily calloused and perennially black with mine dust and grime. He wore thirty-year-old garments from his stint fighting for the Confederacy—gray trousers and a matching double-breasted frock coat with pewter buttons. There was a single row of braids on the left sleeve, denoting his rank as junior officer in the infantry. He’d long since ripped off all other insignia. Old wax drippings marred the shoulders of his frock coat, a telltale sign of his employment with the mine.
Lana sat at the piano, having come to the saloon at first light.
Oatha walked over, stood watching her play.
When she’d finished the song, he clapped, put his hands on her shoulders, said, “Merry Christmas, Miss Hartman. You sure do a beautiful job fillin out that corset and camisole, if you don’t mind me sayin. I was wonderin if you’d take a walk across the street to the hotel. Thought you and me could exchange presents. I’d sure fancy a trim—”
“Oath.” Joss said his name softly, but her voice cracked with rage, her black eyes smoldering. “Come here. Quit pirootin—”
“I’m talkin with Miss Hartman at the moment. I’d extend you the same opportunity, but seein as how you’re presently chained—”
“Son of a bitch. Put this plain. I’ll cut off your grapefruits.”
Lana fixed her gaze on the yellowed ivory keys, paling, trembling.
Oatha sidled back up to the bar.
“Why you so knotted up? You her fuckin madam?”
Joss smiled and made a move so deft and graceful, the next thing Oatha knew, the right side of his face had slammed against the bar, Joss cradling his head, a cold knife point digging into his left ear.
“Swear to God,” Joss whispered, wisps of her black hair tickling his mustache, “I’ll jam it straight through whatever brains you got left in there. Go on playin now, Lana. It’s all right. You won’t be bothered no more.” Oatha chuckled, though he didn’t dare move. From his tilted vantage point, he could see Al, a half grin on the lawman’s face as he shaded in oblivious repose beside the stove.
“Joss, would you accuse me of exaggeration if I said that is the most useless cocksucker I ever laid eyes on?”
“Al?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I wouldn’t contradict that statement. Now I’m gonna let you up, and you and me is gonna come off the rimrock. Behave yourself.”
Joss released him, shoved the bowie back into its leather sheath under the bar. She set up two tumblers while Oatha retrieved his hat. They raised their glasses.
“To your impending release,” Oatha whispered.
They clinked and drank. Joss glanced at the sleeping deputy, then whispered, “How’d it go last night with ol’ Bartholomew?”
“It went.”
“Smoothly? Without incident?”
“Well, by the end of the proceedings, Bart sure as shootin wished he’d never yapped to you about them bars.”
“What I mean is, you did it quick, right? There weren’t no need to drag it out, make things any harder on the man than necessary.”
“Billy fucked it up.”
“How?”
“Particulars ain’t important. It got done what needed to get done.”
“You sayin the boy was rough on him?”
“Well, Billy hadn’t never done nothin like it before. He got carried away, but—”
“That little shit.” Oatha withdrew a scrap of paper from his flap pocket, slid it across the bar. Joss unfolded it, saw where Oatha had scribbled something on a torn-out Montgomery Ward page advertising hobnailed miners’ boots. “Fuck is this?”
“Wrote it last night. Notes for what you need to do tomorrow when I come back for you.”
She lifted her suspenders and slipped the paper into the patch pocket of her plaid dress shirt. “What of the boy? You trust him?”
“Shit no, but what other choice I got? Can’t play a lone hand, haul it all up there myself, can I?”
“Oath—”
“It’ll get taken care of. You just worry about them notes I made for you. We do this right, everthing’ll work out. Now this child’s gotta haul out. This ain’t gonna be easy in a blizzard.”
“Know this. When the time comes, I’ll be the one to take care a that hobble-tongue chore boy.”
“Joss—”
“Ain’t arguin with you about it. He gave Bart a rough shake, boy gonna by God learn somethin about pain on his way to hell.�
�
Oatha headed for the coatrack. He’d just done the last button on his slicker and reached for the door when Joss called his name. He turned back. She held up the piece of paper he’d given her.
“Before I say this,” she said, “let me warn you. If I see a grin, a smirk, a eye roll, one fuckin hint a condescension—”
“Jesus Christ, chew it finer. I gotta go get Billy.”
She shook the paper. “Can’t use this.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I can’t use it, Oatha.”
“Oh.” He started back toward the bar.
“I said, not a fuckin word.”
“I just said ‘Oh.’ It ain’t a judgment. Why didn’t you tell me this when I give it to you in the first place? Think I give two shits whether you can read or not?”
2009
TWENTY-TWO
A
bigail returned to consciousness, aware of only two things—the staggering pain in her head and the echo of voices, one of them her father’s.
“Don’t say that to me again, Lawrence. You know exactly why we’re here. And now that your partner’s out of commission—”
“I swear to you, I—”
“Ain’t believing this. Motherfucker wants me to take him apart.”
“Put away the knife, Isaiah. He’s gonna talk. I can feel it.”
“That true, Larry? My man Stu know some shit I don’t?”
“This is just a huge—”
“Misunderstanding?”
“Yeah, a huge—”
“Oh no, no, no. All right, Lar. After I slice off your thumbs, we’ll continue this—”
“Okay, I’ll—”
“No, I think I better go ahead—”
“We have to go to Emerald House.”
“Big mansion up the trail?”
“Yeah.”
Abigail opened her right eye. It took five seconds for the darkness to sharpen into focus. She sat with Lawrence, Emmett, and June inside one of the ghost town’s structures, her hands bound behind her back. It all looked familiar—the archways, the collapsed staircase, the climbing rope still dangling from the second floor. Three men—she assumed they were men—dressed in night camouflage and face masks busied themselves packing an assortment of equipment into black backpacks.