by Jeffrey Lent
Another hour on he crouched in the woods among whirring, stinging skeeters, the pale orange dusk behind the canopy of big trees, the open sky dark blue where a swollen moon sifted behind the horizon clouds. Not yet dark, the slow pulse of summer dusk turning toward night. Fireflies danced their best to lead him astray, darting beacons here and then gone and spotted again. As he approached the woods an owl burst from a field-side tree and batted off along the woods-line, fluttering his heart before he turned and watched the thick body moments before it plunged into the mass of trees.
The shack was a low smudge within the big trees; if he hadn’t known it was there he’d have thought it nothing more than a heap of land.
Harlan started when a mourning dove fluttered up from the brush beside him, trilling soft notes against the glooming night. Seeking only a higher branch. He waited where he was, watching, listening. He had the distinct sense of not being alone, wondering if he was merely spooked by the memory of Wheeler, thinking then of ghosts and surely if there was a ghost of Amos Wheeler, this is where it would be. Harlan did not believe in ghosts, or at least never had.
There came a sharp flare of light reflected through the window and then that was gone, shortly replaced by the lower muted glow of a fire catching within and the sweet roil of wood smoke lofting from the stick-and-daub chimney. He settled back against the earth. The thick acoustical night air carried the snap and crackle as the kindling caught, the crunch as larger sticks were added to the fire. Sticks, not logs, and the smoke cleared and rose thin straight up through the leaf-works of the chestnut trees. He saw no match flare but of a sudden the window and he could see the open door as there bloomed the wick turned high of a coal-oil lantern, then muted by degrees to a warm soft light, turned low as it would allow and yet make a steady flame. The form of a woman moved past the window.
He stood slowly and leaned to brush the twigs and woods-trash from his trousers, then stepped easy toward the door. Half a dozen paces from it and outside the cone of light thrown from within, he stopped. He smelled coffee and in an offhand voice he said, “Alice Ann Labidee. It’s Harlan Davis standing outside here.”
She stepped out into the light from the fire, facing him. In her left hand, down at her side but close to the light so he could see it, was a five-shot Colt’s revolver. He’d seen that gun before. “Hello there, Harlan,” she said. “First you scared a owl, then you snagged your pants back in the brush and last spooked a night bird right outside. If I hadn’t guessed who it was I’d have blown a hole through you.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“What are you doing here,” she echoed. Then she said, “I guess same as you. After you come to see me at the hotel I wondered who else might come looking for me. I know for a solid fact there wasn’t many knew about this place Amos had made for himself. So I come here.”
“Malcolm Hopeton surely knows it’s here.”
“Did he send you to try and find me? I told you, there’s nothing I can do to help him. And if he’s after me so bad why send you and not his lawyer or even the sheriff?”
“I never said he sent me. Or anyone at all. Truth is, I was figuring the place would be empty.”
“So you’re on the run.”
He said nothing.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” she said. “Long as there’s no one after you. But then, if you’re on the run there likely is someone after you. That’s how it works.”
“It ain’t like that,” he said. “There’s a lawyer I’d as soon avoid. Though he just doesn’t want to hear what I keep telling him. But see, he’s got no way of knowing of this place and the only person could tell him about it, who might guess this is where I lit out to, is Malcolm Hopeton himself and even if he was asked, he wouldn’t tell that man.” Harlan had broke a sweat. Dark as it was, the air was still and hot yet.
“What is it about men? They ain’t never in charge of what they think they should be, but keep right on believing they are,” Alice Ann asked. Then said, “You might as well come on in, Harlan. Don’t you think? You’re not going anywhere else tonight and neither am I.”
She raised the gun with a smooth practiced gesture and had him clear in the sights best he could tell, then dropped it and turned and walked back into the shack but left the door ajar. A flicker of moths beat about the opening, milk-white wings in dense flutter to stay aloft, battering to and fro.
Harlan stood watching the open door and the spill of light into the growing dark. There was nowhere else to go, nowhere he could imagine the end of this long day. And was also led on by a curious tug within, down low in his belly. A child of the Lord, he knew there were no accidents and so wondered what had brought both of them here, now. And knew it was upon him to learn this. And upon all of that, he was staggered by his day, tired and hungry. And truth be told, now that he was here, not unhappy to find her.
He thought, She’s just a soul ill-used and not so different from me. He followed her into the cabin and stopped. It was not the rough place he’d thought from his glimpses of the outside. The table was of well-joined planks, and along one wall a bed was built into place with a thick mattress and blankets and pillows heaped at one end. The opposite wall from the bed had neat shelves with crockery and tins and jars of various sizes, a pie safe built into one shelf. Above the mantle stone were pegs to dry wet garments or hang hats upon, perhaps a spot for a rifle as well—though those pegs were empty. The hearth was of wide stones set well before the fire and the fireplace itself was larger than he’d expected.
Rugs covered most of the packed earthen floor and comfortable wooden armchairs were on the fireplace side of the table. He’d seen those before, also. And beside the coal-oil lantern there sat a pair of silver candlesticks with half-burned stubs, now cold. Alongside them on the table stood a rank of stoppered bottles of beer, two empty.
Alice Ann Labidee waited between the table and the hearth, backlit, glowing, her face in shadow. A wrapper and other garments were piled over the back of one of the chairs and she wore only a simple tight-fitting long-sleeved white blouse and a billowing indigo skirt he recognized from magazines as a habit for riding horseback. The Colt’s five rested against her hip as she watched him. He couldn’t see her eyes.
He said, “Where’s the horse?”
“Where there ain’t none going to find him except me.”
“How long you been here?”
“Most of ten years. Off and on a bit, you understand.”
Without a thought he said, “Ten years? How old are you?”
“Harlan,” she said. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to ask a lady’s age?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just when you said ten years—”
“I said it for a reason. I’m twenty-three years old.”
“So you was thirteen when Amos first brought you here?”
“It was March. I turned thirteen in May. The fourteenth, for what it’s worth.”
“That’s pretty young.”
She was quiet a pause but did not look away from him. Finally she said, “Yes. Young. And whatever happened then, it wasn’t nothing like I expected. At all.”
She turned and leaned to the hearth, her hips up in a fast jaunt as she reached for the handle of the coffeepot and sucked breath and reached upward for a rag to take up the hot handle of the pot and came back up and around and set the pot on the table, the rag wrapped around the handle as she took her burned hand to her mouth and sucked against the pain for a moment. Then she shook her hand and her head both and said, “You hungry? Coffee?” She cleared her outer garments from a chair back and eased into it.
“No,” he lied.
“Come and set,” she said. “You might as well be comfortable as you can, listening.” From her seat she twisted and took up the coffee and poured a tin cup, and another. She moved the second one down the table before the other chair and then crossed a foot over a knee and unlaced the high riding boot and pulled it off with a struggle, then did the othe
r. She looked up as he settled into the waiting chair.
She said, “I knew Amos Wheeler better than anyone. He was vicious as a man could be, although he never was to me, at least until the end and then I knew I weren’t any different than any other soul to him, though I long believed it.
“You see, I was the least of five and the night the house burnt I was the only one still trying to live under that roof; the rest had fled out into the gutters and alleys of Utica—” she paused and asked, “You know Utica?”
“I heard more than I care to about that place—it was a favorite of Wheeler’s. Horse races and the like?”
She inhaled a snort of ill mirth and said, “Some sleigh races in hard winter and plenty of horse races in the summer but not in March, not when Amos first found me. All right then. Let me tell you: My ma and pa kept a shop making cheap tinware; times she did as much of the work as him or more, since he liked to nip right along, though she wouldn’t turn it down oncen’t it was noon or round there. They got the lead sickness afore I even come along, although they’d set of a evening and fulminate about the lies set to put a honest body out a work. You get the idea?”
Harlan nodded, listening to what could’ve been tales from the South Seas, so strange the world he was hearing of and yet knew enough to simply be quiet.
“That night weren’t so different than most cept for how it ended. He had me set up to hawk papers morning and night at the station and in between them hours I was going to school much as I could, though I had to skim pennies from the newspaper fellers to pay for my books and all. But it was a better way to spend the days than most. Also, after I done the evening papers, I had a job at one of the taverns on Bleucher Street, a foul place there ever was one but happy to have a young girl like me carrying pitchers of beer to the tables and swatting away the gropes of hands. That, you understand, was a good part of why I was hired and the German who run that place thought it was funny how I kept em all at bay. But my papa had been kicked outta every joint on Bleucher, so it was a way for me to make a little money and also not go home so quick each night. When I was a little girl and some of my brothers and sisters were still there it weren’t so bad, but by that time it was just two old sots going at it with each other, outta their heads and me just a quick place to swat or kick. How it was.
“So there come a cold March night and I’d just got to sleep and they were going at it the next room. I’d got so I could sleep through most anything, even screams and cries of murder. Anyways I was full asleep when I woke to fire burning through the wall: One of em either kicked over a lantern or fell someway. I was up quick as quick but when I opened the door it wasn’t anything but roaring, like looking into a stove with a open flue. I mighta heard somebody screaming or it mighta been me but I turned back and picked up a big pitcher that didn’t have any water or basin to go with it either and heaved it through the window. That was a part a town where fires were common and us kids talked amongst ourselves about what to do, usually standing in the wet cinders of a house where some other kids we all known had perished. I went out that window and slipped on the shingles and landed face first on the shed roof and rolled off that and down another drop to the street. Which, being March, was a trough of mud, so I landed rough but not dead. I turned around and looked and the house was like a big pine knot burning, one big flame twisting up into the night. Some people was rushing around but I was back in the shadow of the shed and the house alongside and no one seen me. It was raining a cold rain and there weren’t the first sound of bells; there weren’t no engines rushing down to that fire. They never did bother with Bleucher, easier to let it burn itself out, knowing one sorry soul or another would throw up some cheap house soon as the embers cooled.
“The only reason I was up on Water Street the next morning was to try and cadge some pennies from the feller who I bought my news sheets from. He was worked up I’d missed the dawn trains, but when he seen me with my singed nightdress and the wallop I’d took to my eye going off the shed, he took pity and give me a nickel, then told me I was all done I failed to get the evening sheets and kicked my butt to get me away from him. So I had a nickel and was thinking about a loaf of sweet bread and coffee, treading along through the mire of Water Street, when yet one more horse sloshed by, spattering me with mud—but that horse turned and come to a stop before me. I thought to walk around it but the man atop it reached down with his crop and prodded me in the chest and said, “You got a world of trouble heaped down upon you, don’t you little sister?” And I looked up and there sat the most handsome man the whole world could produce. Like I said, I weren’t but twelve years old but I knew what I was seeing. Setting easy on that frothing horse and not taking his eyes from me, a sharp little hat tucked down on his brow and that devil-may-care hair slicked down the back of his neck. He was smiling as if the day was brand new and he owned it. And he reached down a hand and asked me if I didn’t want to get up and ride with him. I didn’t think twice because I knew I did. And so he brought me here. Time we finally lit I’d a shot anyone I thought posed the least threat to him.”
She paused then and took a sip of coffee. It had grown cold on her and she rose and tossed the dregs out the door and prized the stopper out of a bottle of beer and paused, looked at Harlan and said, “You want a bottle of beer, Harlan?”
“No thank you.”
“You never tried it, have you?”
“I tried it once.”
“Uh-huh. Some things take getting used to, then you learn to like em, time to time.” She took a drink of her bottle, then lifted another and pulled the stopper from that also. Set it on the table before Harlan and took her seat again.
“Amos Wheeler treated me like I’d never even imagined—like I was a treasure, like I was a fine lady. After Utica this was grand, and it was all mine—least it felt that way. And we wasn’t here all the time, either. Not just going back to his home place in the Outlet Gorge, which was pleasant enough also; his mother thought the sun rose and set on him, same as me, and we hit if off good enough. I believe she liked having another woman about, her surrounded by all those men. And Amos and me had our little side trips also: We’d take the steamer to Watkins and spend the day on a frolic, or Geneva to do the same. Once he took me all the way to Elmira to see a circus and there was a actual live elephant there and for a nickel you could buy toffee and let the elephant eat it out a your hand. That long trunk swinging down gentle as you please and lifting it out of your palm, then curling backward to pop it into its mouth. That delighted me and Amos paid a dollar to let me do it as many times as I wanted. And he taught me about horses—oh, Amos was a fool for a good horse. That black I got tied down in the woods was one he gave me not two years ago. ‘A horse’ll get you through times you got no money,’ he’d say, ‘better than all the money in the world, will help when you need a good horse and quick.’ I thought I knew what he was saying but I studied on it lately and wondered was he warning me about what was to come? I’ll never know now. Amos talked outta both sides of his mouth, I say he was expert at it cept it was nothing studied or practiced with him, it just come natural. One time I was down at the Wheeler camp setting and waiting, some winter night, now this was years ago, even before Hopeton went and married that fool. Anyways, I was down there setting with Missus Wheeler while the boys was off somewheres on one of their schemes and she and I got to working on cups of coffee mixed with red whiskey and I said what a sweet-tongued man Amos was and she laughed and said even as a swaddling babe he’d cry for titty one side of his mouth and chortle the other, since he was getting what he wanted. Yes sir, there was that part a Amos and I never once doubted it. When he come upon me I was ready for him and he knew it, too. And it took him ten years to figure out how to show me how wrong I was. And that right there is the key to Amos Wheeler.”
The fire had fallen to coals and the remnant ends of sticks and the lantern light wavered brighter against the dark, shadows more dense but liquid, flowing as the wick guttered and gaine
d. Her bare feet on the hearthstones were flushed pink. An oily slow flow of air pressed for entry through the open door, sucked by the hearth rise.
Her eyes upon the small hot mound, she said, “Drink your beer, Harlan.”
He was slung low in his chair, stuporous, weighty and numbed. “I never cared for it,” he said.
“You might want it. I got more to tell.”
“You told me what I already know. Amos Wheeler suckered you and stung you bad like he did every other soul he came across.”
“You don’t know as much as you think.” She paused, sipped and eyed him across the top of her bottle. “Say,” she said. “Why does a lawyer not wanting to hear what you have to say, make you hide out from him? Seems like it should be the other way around.”
Harlan looked away toward the fire, which was settling low. He got up and crossed over to hunker and add some sticks. His back to her, he said, “It ain’t his not wanting to hear what I have to say, makes me want to avoid him. He got other things wrong too.”
He pushed up and took his seat again. This time he lifted the beer and took a swallow. It surprised him, the dense taste of grains, of yeast. He swallowed again and then set the bottle back on the table. He’d seen Amos Wheeler with too much beer in him and didn’t want to get that way himself.
“What things has he got wrong?” she asked.
Harlan studied the fire, now leaping and cracking in its swift burn of the sticks. Without looking he reached back and took up the bottle of beer and drank once more. He turned to where her face was again delineated by the firelight and said, “Most everything about Bethany Hopeton.” He looked away, drank some of the beer, and said, “I don’t care to talk about it.” He looked back and said, “So Amos was telling you his plans, all along?”