by Peter Clines
“Right behind me,” she whispered as she walked past him.
A few moments later, a tall man appeared in the hotel entrance. Even if Harry hadn’t warned Eli, the man would’ve been easy to pick out. He wore a thick, shaggy cloak that looked like it belonged in a sword-and-sorcery movie.
Frank Hawkins had a face for movies. A black-and-white, Creature Double Feature face, either ready to bring someone back from the dead, or maybe freshly back itself. It was long and thin, but not malnourished. The man’s jawline and thick eyebrows reminded Eli of Abraham Lincoln—the younger, beardless Lincoln who sometimes appeared in older photographs. If someone had introduced the man as Lincoln’s older, more intense brother, it wouldn’t have been hard to believe.
Hawkins exchanged a few familiar-sounding words with a sleepy-looking doorman and headed down the street in the opposite direction.
Eli glanced over his shoulder at Harry. She waved him into action before darting down a side street. Eli looked back and scampered after Hawkins.
Keeping track of the man turned out to be easy. He took long strides, but the crowd parted around him. Most people along the waterfront kept a cautious distance from the buffalo-cloaked figure. He also wore a bowler—a deep, earthy brown one with a wider brim than Eli’s. Years of weather had faded and aged it beyond its time.
Eli kept a casual pace and closed the distance between them in just three blocks.
He eased back, keeping a nonthreatening gap between them, and raised his voice. “Excuse me? Sir?”
Hawkins paused on his relentless march, then took three more steps.
“Sir?” Eli took another step forward, cutting the distance between them to a few yards at most.
Hawkins turned. Eli imagined it was a lot like when buffalo turned to stare down the thing they were about to trample. The man took in a breath and it steamed out through his nose.
Eli stepped back and cleared his throat. “Sorry to bother you,” he said.
“Hrrrrr.”
They stared at each other. It struck Eli that he didn’t know what to say. He’d rehearsed some openings for the bar, but not for a “random encounter” on the street.
“I was heading this way myself,” he spat out, “to meet up with my partner.”
Hawkins stared at him. “Best get moving, then. Don’t want to miss him.”
“Her,” said Eli, and then he knew why the man’s words had seemed familiar. “I…I’m sorry. I heard your voice back at the hotel. Are you from Maine, by chance?”
Hawkins blinked. “Ayuh,” he said. “You know Maine?”
“I’m from there myself.”
“Y’don’t have an accent.”
“Yeah,” said Eli. “I’m from the south.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Sanders.”
Hawkins stared at him again. “Went through there once,” he said, “just before my first trip out west.” He looked at Eli again, then gestured to the spot next to him. He pulled out a silver flask. “Have a drink for the home state?”
Eli felt a little knot loosen between his shoulder blades. “Thanks.”
“Whiskey?”
“Great.” He stuck out his hand. “Eli Teague.”
“Frank Hawkins.” He squeezed the hand and yanked it once up and down.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Hawkins.”
Hawkins grunted as they continued along the wharf. He tilted the flask back, let it drop, and his tongue darted out to clean his lips. He held out the container.
Eli huffed out some air, as if blowing out a candle, and downed his own mouthful. It was harsh stuff, higher proof than anything he’d ever done shots of while out with his friends. He puffed out the fumes before they could settle in his throat.
“Helps kill the burn,” he explained when he noticed Frank’s look.
“The burn’s why you drink it.”
“It’s an old college trick,” said Eli. “Lets you fit in a lot more drinking on the weekend.”
“Weekend?”
“Never mind,” said Eli, handing the flask back. “Not important.”
Frank grunted again. A wet black rat hauled itself up over the edge of the wharf and scurried across the cobblestones toward them. The big man slammed his foot down and the rodent fled off toward the warehouses.
Up close, Eli could see the weathering that sun and cold had performed on the man’s skin, much as it had on his hat. Hawkins wasn’t much older than Eli. Maybe even three or four years younger.
What kind of life had this guy led?
Eli gestured toward the docks. “Coming or going?”
“Eh?”
“Did you just arrive or are you getting ready to go?”
“Go. We leave for California tomorrow by way of Panama.”
“Right,” said Eli. “Through the canal.”
“Canal?”
“The Panama…never mind.” He coughed into his hand. “Look, can I ask you a question?”
Hawkins frowned at him. “You don’t talk like you’re from Maine.”
Eli shrugged. “Southern Maine.”
“Hrrrrr.”
“So. California. Hoping to find gold?”
“Found it already,” said Hawkins. “Going back to find some more.”
“What sent you out there?”
“Eh?”
“To California.”
The lean man stared at him. “Gold,” he said again, as if speaking to an idiot.
“Right,” Eli said with a cough. “Gold’s great. But I was wondering…what actually made you do it? Leave Maine and travel three thousand miles out to California. I mean…”
He stopped walking. He thought of Dover apartments and nights out with his friends. “Why risk it? Why leave? Wouldn’t it be better to just be poor with your friends and family than to move and end up…who knows where? Why risk things by leaving?”
The leather around Hawkins’s eyes softened. “You left, didn’t you? You’re here.”
“Yeah, but not on purpose. I got…I thought I was helping someone and I just made a mistake. And now I can’t go home.”
“Why not?”
“It’s…complicated.”
“Hrrrrr.”
“I just…how did you do it? Why did you do it? All I can think about is getting home, and you’re heading out for a second time.”
Something scratched and swelled in the other man’s throat. A laugh. A short, grim, Clint Eastwood–worthy laugh. “Life’s not something you tuck away and wait to use. Life runs out. Every day, every minute, whether you use it or not.”
“But…what if something happened?”
Hawkins looked up at a steamer as they passed it. The crew’s heads bobbed back and forth up on deck. He passed Eli the flask again. “I was seventeen the first time I saw a man die,” he said. “Been on the trail for a month and Munso got sick. Influenza. Tried to keep him warm. but the fever took him. Lucky it didn’t take me. Two years later, saw my second death. Chinagirl stabbed a man twice in the throat with her hair needles. He’d hired out her little sister, roughed her up. Big sister didn’t take kindly to it.”
Eli blew more whiskey fumes from his throat. “You’re not making it sound much better.”
He coughed out his short laugh again. “Can’t tell you what to do with your life. It’s yours to use or waste. Just know we’re all going to die someday. I’d rather die out there, takin’ a risk or two and doing something other than sittin’ at home doing nothing.”
Eli glanced down the wharf. A few blocks ahead, Harry leaned against a gaslight post. She made a point of not looking at them, but Hawkins followed Eli’s gaze.
“She in your stable?” he asked. His voice regained its coarse edge without accusing Eli of anything. “That what this is?”
“What? No.”
“Your wife?”
“Business partner, actually.”
“Said she wasn’t in your stable.”
“It’s a different business,” said Eli,
hearing an edge in his own voice.
Hawkins grunted. “She’s dressed like a man.”
“Yes, she is.”
“Hrrrrr.”
They approached Harry. She beamed sweetly, but made no move to join them. Hawkins kept an eye on her, glancing back as they walked past.
Eli tried to focus again on his mission. “Nothing inspired you? There wasn’t a moment you realized this was it, your chance to…”
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
“Not nonsense,” Eli tried to assure him. “I’m looking for something myself. My friend and I.” He tipped his head back over his shoulder, in Harry’s direction.
Frank stopped walking and squared his shoulders. “Look, friend, I don’t know and don’t care what you’re peddling.”
“I’m not peddling anything.”
“You’re a bad liar. Don’t try to make a living at it.”
“I just…I need to know if something drove you to California. It’s important.”
“You want to know what sent me west?”
“Yeah. I really do.”
“I went because I was too young and dumb to know any better,” Hawkins said. “I had nothing to lose, and I thought if I died out there on some great adventure, at least people’d think I did something with my life. It was dumb luck I survived and made the trip worth my while, and then I had the experience to do it again without suffering half as much.”
“You just…you just did it all through hard work.”
Hawkins grunted and flexed a callused hand. “No ‘just’ about it,” he said. “I spent three years either in the saddle or with a pickax in my hand. Earned every damned cent I have.” He poked a hard finger into Eli’s chest. “And I resent anyone who implies otherwise.”
He turned and marched away.
Eli’s shoulders dropped. He sorted through his emotions and memories, trying to figure out if his response was more dejection or relief. He felt comfortable saying it was both.
Harry caught up to him. “Well?” she asked to Hawkins’s retreating back.
Eli shook his head. “Nothing.”
She frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, pretty sure. The guy doesn’t think he was inspired, he thinks he was stupid and lucky.”
Harry looked after the man, now just a broad-shouldered mass of buffalo hide striding along the wharfs. “Maybe you misunderstood.”
“I don’t think so,” said Eli.
A quartet of dockworkers spilled out of an alley and Hawkins vanished behind them. Harry glared at the group. “I was sure,” she said. “I was so sure he was it.”
“Is it a normal thing? Do people always know when they’ve been inspired by the dream?”
She shook her head. “Very few realize the dream’s helping their choices, but they almost always pin it on something. A person, a random coincidence, a moment when they realize they could make their dreams become reality.”
Eli let his gaze wander across the wharf, the ships, the scattered men unloading crates and barrels. “Maybe he’s still the guy we’re looking for.”
“How so?”
A pair of rats dashed across the street in front of them. The two rodents leaped onto a coil of rope and scrambled up toward the attached freighter. One slipped and hung from the hemp line for a moment. It swung back and forth, and Eli almost went to go help it before it clawed its way back onto the rope and scurried up after its partner.
“Well,” he continued, “you’re saying most people find something to credit with their inspiration.”
“Not all, but most, yes.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets and tried to line up his thoughts. “Inspiration’s a weird thing. Like you were saying, it can be almost anything.”
She gestured for him to go on.
“Kind of odd that he’s so convinced nothing inspired him, isn’t it? One hundred-percent sure it didn’t happen.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I mean, I don’t deal with a lot of people at the bank. Mostly other employees with computer problems. But I’ve noticed that a good chunk of the time if you’re trying to figure out how something happened, and you ask somebody, ‘Did you do X?’ if they’re absolutely, positively, no-question sure they didn’t do it…”
“It’s because they did it,” finished Harry. “You’re not half bad at this, Eli.”
He gestured down the street. “There might be nothing to it. He might just be a surly guy. But maybe come up with a better way to ask him…he might say something.”
“Perhaps.”
“Do we want to go after him?”
“In a manner of speaking. Do you know when his ship leaves?”
“Tomorrow.”
Harry nodded. “It might take a bit of driving, but we can probably reach tomorrow morning in about two or three hours. Perhaps we can try again.”
They wandered back down the street. Eli counted seven more rats that crossed in front of them, although he saw a few more bouncing alongside warehouses to vanish through gaps in the walls. He and Harry passed the hotel and a few small shops, and then cut across into the warehouses. Dirt replaced the cobblestones, and the center of the street became a well-pounded, orangey-brown mash spotted with grass. It ripened the air.
They paused at a street corner while a team of mules dragged a huge wagon up the street. Eli glanced around at the drab buildings. “I always thought New Orleans would look more…”
“More what?”
“French, I guess? Especially back…well, now.”
She smirked. “The French Quarter’s back that way,” she said. “If you really want, once we’ve got Mr. Hawkins squared away, we can go for a quick walk-through.”
“Really?”
Harry shrugged. “I’m sure we can spare a few hours, perhaps duck into Lafitte’s. I don’t think anyone else is following this lead, and history’s not going to collapse in the next few—Pissbucket!”
“What’s wrong?” He looked for another rat somewhere in the street, although Harry hadn’t reacted to any of them yet.
“As if the day couldn’t get any worse,” she muttered.
The mule team dragged the wagon out of the way to reveal the anachronism half-hidden in the alley across the street. The automobile glared at them with four headlights. Its peaked grille reminded Eli of the Steel Bucephalus, but instead of brushed steel the car was a deep, rich red.
A wave of déjà vu hit Eli in the face. Seeing the car out of context threw him, and it took him precious seconds to reconcile the car with its surroundings. “Oh, Christ,” he muttered. “It can’t be.”
“What?” Harry glanced over at him. His expression cracked hers for a moment.
Calling the gleaming car red was technically wrong. The 1940 Cadillac Sixty Special didn’t come in red. It came in oxblood maroon.
A bulky figure with fire-red hair and a long, heavy coat climbed out of the driver’s seat and stood by the rear passenger door. She stared at Eli for a moment with the same look of mild confusion, and then swung the door open. The figure inside crawled out and stood up as straight as he could.
“Hrrruuhhh,” he said. He looked at Harry and gave a short bow that wasn’t much more than a nod. “Mrs. Pritchard,” he croaked.
Harry snorted in response.
The hunched figure of Archibald Truss turned his attention to Eli. “You work for me, don’t you? Teak, isn’t it?”
26
“Mrs. Pritchard,” said Truss. He walked to the front of his Cadillac. “I thought I might run into you here in New Orleans. Word on the road is, you’ve finally stumbled across something valuable.”
“News to me,” said Harry.
“No need for false modesty. How many of us have been searching all these years? Since the first rumors decades ago?”
“And again,” she said, “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re part of this?” Eli spat out. His head had stopped spinnin
g long enough to let him form words.
The old man raised a shaggy eyebrow. “I could ask the same thing about you, Teak.”
Harry turned to stare at Eli. “You know each other?”
“He owns the bank I work for. He’s…my boss. Sort of.”
“Your boss?!”
Truss snorted. “If I’d realized you were a man of the road, Teak, you’d’ve been doing more than minding computers in some pissant backwater New England hole. You’d probably be running most of the Northeast for me right now.”
“I…I kind of find that hard to believe,” Eli said.
Another mule cart trudged between them, and Harry used the moment to turn on Eli. “You work for him?” she growled. “That weasel is your employer?”
“I didn’t know I worked for him,” said Eli. “I mean, I knew I worked for Truss, yeah, I just didn’t know he was a searcher.”
“He’s not a searcher, he’s a weasel! A greedy, self-centered—Have you been working for him all along?”
“No!” Eli shook his head as the big cart moved on. “I took a couple of personal days when I came looking for you. And I’m pretty sure they fired me when I didn’t show up for work last week. Then. Whenever it was.”
Across the street, Truss held up a hand. “Don’t worry about that,” he called out. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“No, we won’t,” Eli said.
Harry’s glare shifted back and forth between the two men, and even settled on Svetlana. Eli could see a cruel smile spreading across Truss’s face. The grin of a little boy who’s stirred the anthills and knows what happens next.
“Let’s stop wasting time, Mrs. Pritchard,” said the old man. He raised his head and widened his smile. “After all this time, I feel like we know each other. Can I just call you Harriet?”
“No.”
The smile shrunk. “We both know what you have and what it’s worth. I’m offering to buy it.”
Harry shook her head. “It’s not for sale.”
“In my experience, ‘it’s not for sale’ is the first step in a negotiation.”
She smiled her sweet, fake smile. “I’ve heard experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”