Sweetwater

by Lisa Henry

  “Fine, sir.” The words were as clear as he could make them, but they weren’t good enough. He heard the laughing echo of the man from the night before: zurr zurr zurr, like the buzzing of an insect.

  “You been keeping out of trouble?”

  Elijah watched Sherlock’s mouth and wondered what he’d heard. “Yes, sir.”

  Sherlock nodded. “Good.”

  He’d heard nothing. That was good.

  “Listen,” Sherlock said. “Doc wouldn’t want you to mope around, you know.”

  Don’t tell me what he would have wanted.

  Sherlock squinted into the sunlight and scratched his beard. “You ought to come to the prayer meeting tomorrow. You’ve been missed.”

  Now that wasn’t true, Elijah knew. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Couldn’t think of anything to say, and he wasn’t going to promise to go. Not when it was a lie. He didn’t belong there, standing quietly while everyone sang. The only thing that had ever kept him there was Dr. Carter. Now Elijah had been cut loose by the bullet McCreedy had sunk into Dr. Carter’s brain. Now he was adrift.

  Sherlock sighed. “Well, if you change your mind . . .”

  Elijah nodded and went back into the shop.

  The shop bells jangled, but Elijah didn’t hear them.

  Dawson was breathing down his neck at once. “What’d the deputy want?”

  “Wanted to know if I’d be coming to prayers tomorrow.”

  Dawson’s bloodshot eyes searched his face. “Don’t you lie to me!”

  “I’m not lying,” he said. Another man, he might have attempted an apology: I’m sorry for saying what I said last night. I would never tell Thaddeus Sherlock about this racket you’ve got going with Crane and the cowboys. I just needed to be somewhere else. With Dawson, he didn’t bother, since it wouldn’t make a difference.

  Elijah got back to work. He wondered if Grady would come back to the cabin, and what it would mean if he did.

  It would mean nothing, he told himself. Nothing.

  But he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  At lunch, Lovell gave him some bread and dripping, and Elijah thanked him and ate out in the yard in the shade. Flies hovered around, drawn by the smell of blood. Elijah watched them and imagined that he could hear them: zurr zurr zurr. One of them crawled up his arm and got tangled in the fine hairs there. Elijah flicked it away. He leaned his head back against the wall of the shop and closed his eyes.

  Maybe it was the ether still swimming in his bloodstream, drawing him into weariness.

  Dawson found Elijah dozing there with his empty bowl and clipped him on the ear.

  “Get back to work, you lazy little shit!”

  Elijah winced at the sting but didn’t care much.

  Later, he saw Dawson stomping around in a temper, looking for his spare boning knife, and took some satisfaction there.

  Elijah had plans for that knife. Tomorrow was Sunday. He was going to ride out to Adavale and shove that missing blade in Francis McCreedy’s throat.

  Saturday night at the Empire and the place was full of men fixing to gamble and drink and fuck. Elijah made his way over to Crane’s table, watching the man watch him. He slid into a seat.

  “I’m sorry for last night, sir.” He enunciated his words carefully.

  Crane stared at him for a moment, then pushed a glass of whiskey toward him.

  Elijah took it, wondering if it had been waiting for him, wondering if Crane had. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Last night,” Crane began and then stopped.

  A query, Elijah wondered, or a pronouncement? Because wouldn’t this be Elijah’s last night? He wasn’t fool enough to think he’d walk away from killing Francis McCreedy tomorrow, not even if he did the job right. There would be consequences. Maybe even a noose waiting for his neck, but it didn’t matter. Sometimes a thing needed doing, whether the law agreed or not. Whatever happened then, this would be his last night in the Empire. His last night with Crane.

  The whiskey burned all the way down into Elijah’s gut.

  His last night. So why’d he come here at all? Maybe he oughta have gone and sat by Dr. Carter’s grave or something. Something pious and respectful, instead of this sordid transaction. Except there would be time for piety in jail, he supposed. He wasn’t scared of dying. Life was nothing but sadness anyhow, the earnest droning hymns promised it.

  Brief life is here our portion, brief sorrow, short-lived care;

  The life that knows no ending, the tearless life, is there.

  No tearless eternity waiting for Elijah, probably. His hand shook as he lifted the glass again.

  “Last night,” Crane said again, “you showed me disrespect, boy.”

  Elijah watched his lips closely.

  “For a boy who can’t even talk properly,” Crane said slowly, “you’re a mouthy little cunt, aren’t you?”

  Elijah flicked his gaze up to Crane’s dark eyes, then back to his mouth again. “Yes, sir.”

  “You come here looking to be fucked?” Crane asked him.

  Elijah’s breath caught in his throat. How clear were those words? How loud? His face burned with shame, and for once in his life, he was glad he was deaf. He didn’t want to hear what the men in the barroom were saying. Didn’t want to hear their laughter or their snide, sideways remarks. Didn’t want to hear them choke on their burning whiskey.

  He said what? Crane said what?

  He’s fucking Doc Carter’s kid.

  Elijah Carter. Simple deaf cunt.

  Elijah knew the proper words for a woman’s parts. He’d seen them in Gray’s Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical, the pride of Dr. Carter’s collection of medical books. There was no shame in looking at pictures like that. Not when it was for learning. Not when he was expected to help Dr. Carter with his work.

  Except he hadn’t just been looking for that, had he?

  Hadn’t been Latin words he thought when he looked.

  Simple deaf cunt.

  Well, cunts were for men to fuck, he guessed, whether a painted whore with tattered petticoats and a tight-laced corset, or just some dumb deaf kid who drank for free.

  “I asked you a question, boy,” Crane said. He rubbed his hand over his stubble, and Elijah imagined he could hear the rasp of it.

  Elijah held his gaze. Wasn’t this his last night on Earth? If there was a time to be unafraid, it was now. “Yes, sir. I came here to get fucked.”

  To be fucked, to be hurt, to be made to feel.

  Crane took a pouch of tobacco out of his pocket and laid it on the table. “I don’t want you tonight. Come back tomorrow and ask again.”

  Crane might as well have slapped him like he had outside the Palace.

  There was no tomorrow.

  Elijah set his glass down. “Yes, sir.”

  Crane watched him through narrow eyes but didn’t speak, and Elijah swallowed down the sudden, crazy urge to laugh.

  You think you’re punishing me.

  Only one law in the world is gonna punish me, and it sure as hell ain’t yours.

  Elijah stood, nodded at Crane, and walked away. He pushed through the doors into the night outside.

  “Watch it!” Walt growled at him.

  Fuck you. Elijah stepped down into the street.

  This was South Pass City. There were more saloons and cardrooms than a man could poke a stick at and a hundred different ways to get what Crane gave him. A thousand. Elijah had money in his pocket, and he was going to kill a man tomorrow. He was done being afraid.

  Elijah didn’t much care if he woke the redheaded kid from Cheyenne who worked at Mr. Bowman’s livery stables. But when he banged on the doors loud enough to pull him from sleep, the kid flung open the doors and glared at Elijah, clearly caring that he’d been woken. He had straw in his hair and a scowl on his face.

  “Whatcha want?”

  “Is Grady Mullins here?” He probably used Bowman’s stables when he was in town. Most people did. Bo
wman ran the most reliable livery and feed barn in South Pass City.

  “Who?”

  Elijah had drunk enough whiskey that he was having more trouble than usual with his words. “Grady Mullins.”

  “He ain’t here,” the kid said.

  “Is his horse here?”

  “You want his goddamn horse?”

  “Is he in town?” Elijah asked. The kid was slower than the Sweetwater in winter.

  “Yeah. Stays in the Liberty.”

  Elijah knew the place.

  He nodded and headed out. Heard the kid call something after him but couldn’t make out the words. Probably wanting money for his trouble. Or abusing Elijah for waking him.

  Elijah’s boots crunched over the dirt as he walked away. It was busy in town tonight. Not so much up this end but down by the Empire where the saloons and cardrooms were packed close together. Those places might be lit up clear through until dawn.

  The Liberty Hotel was new. It was clean, and it was nice, and close too. It was down by the new Exchange Bank.

  Last night on Earth, he told the twisting in his guts. Seeking out Grady, seeking out this thing, was no different than going back to the Empire once Crane had showed him what to expect there. Elijah wanted this.

  Hanging lanterns burned on either side of the front door of the Liberty Hotel. He kicked the dirt off his boots on the steps and wiped his hands on his jacket. He pushed the door open and walked inside.

  The hour was late. A small bespectacled man dozed behind the counter. The Liberty was a tiny establishment, but it was a proper hotel, with a wall of pigeonholes behind the reception desk and a neat dining room off the foyer.

  The man blinked owlishly at Elijah. “What do you want?”

  Someone. Anyone. Grady.

  Elijah wet his dry lips with his tongue and enunciated his words carefully. “I have a message for Mr. Mullins, sir.”

  A flicker of impatience, of distaste, traveled across the man’s pink-cheeked face.

  Zurr, zurr, zurr.

  The man held out his hand, and Elijah looked at it dumbly for a moment. The man shook his head impatiently. “Hurry it up, then!”

  He expected a note, Elijah realized. Last night on Earth. He wasn’t afraid, wouldn’t be intimidated by this little man. “I was told to deliver it in person, sir.”

  “At this hour?”

  Elijah nodded firmly. “Yes, sir.”

  “Room six. Up the stairs, on the left.” The man looked narrowly at Elijah as he headed toward the stairs.

  Elijah ran his fingertips along the wallpaper. Wallpaper, just like in a real big-city hotel. The night had stolen all the color from it, but in the halo of a hanging lantern at the turn of the stairs, Elijah saw that it was blue. Cornflower blue, with white vines twisting through it. It seemed a strange, sophisticated touch for a place like this, or for any place in South Pass City.

  Room six.

  Elijah traced the brass number with his finger. The bow of its spine. The way it curled back in on itself, built a wall, enclosed a hidden space. Unbreachable.

  Room six. Here between room five—a complicated digit, sharp and rounded at the same time, enclosing nothing—and room seven with its two quick strokes, across then down, like sudden cuts from a knife. He reminded himself that he wasn’t afraid and knocked at the door.

  A simple act, so fraught. Too quiet or too loud? Elijah couldn’t tell. He had no way of knowing if Grady had heard him. Perhaps Elijah had made no sound at all. Or perhaps Grady wasn’t in the room. Elijah raised his fist to knock again, but before he could, the door opened.

  Not Grady.

  The sort of man who might have looked like Grady from a distance with the sun behind him. The same build, the same stance, the same line to his jaw, but not Grady.

  The man looked him up and down. “Did Dawson send you?”

  This man must ride with Grady if he knew Elijah as the butcher’s boy.

  “Is Grady here, sir?” Elijah asked him.

  The man muttered something Elijah didn’t catch and turned back into the room. The door swung open on its hinges, and Elijah caught a glimpse of dusty boots lying on the floor and a corner of a neat bedspread.

  Then Grady filled his vision. Tall—taller than Elijah remembered. “Elijah? What are you doing here?”

  There was probably no way to ever answer a question like that. He opened his mouth and then closed it again, but his silence must have spoken for itself, because Grady’s mouth turned up in a smile. He stepped out into the hallway without a word to the other man, closing the door behind him.

  “Where we going, Elijah?”

  Was it really so simple? “Wherever you want, sir.”

  “Sir,” Grady repeated softly, his smile growing.

  Elijah’s face burned, but Grady didn’t make the same pulled-down mouth shapes of the men who’d mocked him with zurr zurr zurr like buzzing insects.

  “Ain’t nobody ever called me that before,” Grady said. His smile showed his teeth now. Laughing at himself, maybe, and not Elijah.

  It was hard to tell.

  Elijah shrugged and jammed his hands into the pockets of his coat.

  “Come on then,” Grady said.

  Elijah followed him down the steps. The man at the counter was peering at a newspaper and barely looked up as they passed.

  The night was cool, and Elijah looked up and saw stars. Then Grady was tugging him by the hand, leading him around the side of the hotel. Into the pitch black, into the shadows where they wouldn’t be seen. Grady pushed him gently against the wall and was suddenly leaning into him, all hard planes and sinew, and Elijah lifted his face to meet his demanding kiss.

  Saw stars then as well.

  He put his arms around Grady’s neck, shivering as it left his ribs exposed and Grady slid his hands up his shirt. His knee nudged at Elijah’s legs, and Elijah opened them slightly. He found himself almost straddling Grady’s thigh, moaning as he rubbed his stiffening cock against the resistance it met. Grady shifted, pulling him closer, and tilted his head to nip at Elijah’s jaw. He huffed in surprise, his eyes widening. Then Grady followed the line of his jaw to his throat, and Elijah’s eyes fluttered closed again. He could feel Grady’s warm breath against his skin. The slide and drag of his lips brought Elijah’s body out in gooseflesh.

  Crane was never like this.

  Weren’t nothing ever like this.

  Grady murmured something against him, something Elijah couldn’t hear. Could feel it though, the vibrations of the words traveling across his heated flesh. Felt Grady’s hands tugging at his belt.

  “What are you—” Elijah’s voice cracked with panic. God, he only had to turn his head to see people passing in the street. What if one of them walked into the alley for a piss?

  Grady leaned away from him, his hands still on Elijah’s belt. “I’m gonna touch you, Elijah.”

  He squirmed. “What if someone sees?”

  “I’ll be right quick so long as you are,” Grady said. He opened Elijah’s belt and tugged at the buttons on his fly. Then his hand was inside the fabric, searching for the way past Elijah’s cotton drawers.

  He was— Fuck! Elijah slammed his head back against the wall, clamping his mouth shut as Grady’s fingers curled around his cock.

  “That’s it,” Grady said in a low voice. He leaned in close again, his mouth hot against Elijah’s throat. “You’re about as hard as lead, Elijah.”

  Grady swiped his thumb over the head of Elijah’s cock, finding the moisture that collected there like a tear. Elijah jerked his hips and felt Grady’s low laughter as much as heard it.

  “That’s it,” Grady said again. He lifted his hand away for a moment, turned his head to spit on it, then shoved the hand inside his drawers again. Worked the slickness along Elijah’s shaft.

  Elijah pressed his hands against the wall, his fingers scrabbling for purchase. He was suddenly afraid to put his arms around Grady’s neck again, like he had when they’d kissed. Kis
sing was a tenderness maybe, a closeness, a moment of weakness. This was different. This was fucking himself into Grady’s callused palm. Nothing but bodies.

  “Come on now,” Grady coaxed him quietly. He took Elijah’s chin in his free hand, turned his face toward him, and shattered every one of Elijah’s cold illusions right then and there. The look on his face was nothing but tender. No amount of darkness in the world could hide it, but it wasn’t what Elijah wanted, and it wasn’t what he needed.

  Don’t. Don’t wreck it. But Elijah didn’t resist as Grady kissed him again. He whimpered like a whipped pup when Grady teased his mouth open with his tongue. Elijah levered his hands off the wall and rested them on Grady’s shoulders. Dug his fingers in when Grady jerked his cock faster.

  “So good, Elijah,” Grady murmured, his mouth leaving trails of damp heat all the way along Elijah’s jaw and back again. “Come on. Come on, kid.”

  Elijah’s breath caught in his throat. He swallowed a moan. Closed his eyes and heard nothing but the blood roaring in his skull. Just bodies, just animals, just rutting. Didn’t need Grady’s strange, unasked-for tenderness. Didn’t want it. Elijah just wanted to fuck.

  Except he turned his head and found Grady’s mouth with his own. Breath and heat and wetness, and Grady’s moan echoed back his own. Never been that close to someone. Never.

  This strange, dark place where touch made up for sound. Where it spoke louder than any words Elijah had ever heard. Where it sang.

  In the darkness, Grady’s gaze was fixed on Elijah’s. The scant light shone in them like moonlight on black water.

  “Come on, kid,” Grady urged him again.

  Elijah’s hips jerked away from the wall. His balls drew up tight, and he buried his face in Grady’s shoulder as he came in hot, wet spurts in the man’s hand. He gasped for breath.

  The cold came first, and Elijah shivered. Then burned with shame. He pulled back from Grady, shoved himself back in his trousers, and stared as Grady took a large handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his hands.