Then she remembers where she found it. It was built to be waterproof, and it’s already been in the ocean. She leans forward and dumps the box in with a splash.
It floats.
Well, of course, it floats! She finds a large rock, places it on top, and watches both box and rock settle to the bottom of the trough, out of sight.
Amanda grabs a nearby wooden bucket and lifts the handle of the pump. To Wayne, it will look like she’s spent the sunny morning doing barnyard chores.
Her husband rides up, eyeing her. He remains silent for several moments, then plucks an extra-long toothpick from the corner of his mouth. She recognizes the little stick as the type they use to spear pickled hardboiled eggs from the big jar that sits on the end of Kelly’s bar. Barely past breakfast and already he’s been at it.
“And where did you go last night?”
“For a walk, Wayne. Just for a walk.”
He looks like he wants to argue the point, but thinks the better of it. “Yeah, well, why aren’t you inside now, tending to your preserves? That’s what you said you’d be doing this week.”
Amanda brushes a stray hair back from her forehead. “Because the chickens haven’t been fed and the horse trough was near empty.” She looks him in the eyes. “So I guess I’m doing my chores and some of yours too.”
He squints at her. “Quiet, woman. If I want your fool comments, I’ll ask you for ’em.”
The horse steps forward and drinks heartily. It’s probably the first time Wayne has offered the poor thing water since he left. She waits nervously until he points the horse toward the barn. Gazing down, she sees only murky water in the trough. There’s no hint of what lurks below the surface.
Chapter 12
To a Point
Still fretting, Amanda heads back into the house. She will indeed tend to her preserves.
Wayne comes out of the barn with an ornery look. Out the window, she recognizes that look while he’s still halfway across the yard. It’s his cheap whiskey face. The drinks he consumed in the bar burn his stomach. Whiskey turns him into a lout. He knows how it affects him as well as she does, but when funds are tight, he drinks the cheap stuff anyway.
Wayne’s pace quickens and she sees his determination. Amanda stands with her back to the door, calmly cutting the tops off plump strawberries, rinsing them in a bucket and throwing them in a pitted metal colander. She takes a deep breath and listens to the steady pat-pat-pat of water drops as they fall from the colander as it sits in the base of the yellowing porcelain sink.
Heavy boot steps in the back hall.
“And another thing!” he shouts, entering the kitchen, waving his finger like a bludgeon. “I do NOT like to hear that tone of voice out of you. Not ever. Do you understand?”
She remains cool. “What tone is that, Wayne?”
“You know what I’m saying! You’re my wife, damn it, and you WILL respect me, do you under—” He realizes he is talking to the back of her head so he grasps her arm, spinning her around. His fingers continue clutching hard onto her arm to emphasize his point—squeezing hard enough to bruise.
She keeps the knife level as she turns, still holding a fat strawberry in her other hand. Their eyes meet. He drops his gaze down to the shiny blade.
“What’s this?”
“What’s what, Wayne?” She’s not sure what she’s doing. She feels ill, scared. But she holds her head high and doesn’t move the hand that holds the knife.
“Are you threatening me with that?”
“I … I don’t think so, Wayne. I’m just cutting strawberries. Tending to my preserves.” She stares him down. “How about you? Are you threatening me?”
A grinding sound comes from his teeth. He grabs at the base of the knife, but his inebriated swing lands his palm right on the blade instead. His tugs and ends up sliding his hand along the sharp edge. With a curse, he paws at the wound with his other had to stem the blood flow. Red drops fall to the dark wooden floor, making a pat pat sound that joins the sound of the water drops falling from the strawberries.
“Why you little heathen! You stabbed me!”
Shaking all over, Amanda manages to stand her ground. “I did no such thing, Wayne! You grabbed!”
“Don’t give me that!” Another swing, this time at her face. She raises her hand to deflect it and ends up poking him again with the knife, dragging the blade down his wrist.
“Ow!” He steps backward. “Oh, you God damn bitch!” Fury in his eyes now, he swings both hands, flailing at her. There’s an anger rising from him that goes beyond just this argument and this day. It holds months of his built-up resentment suddenly spilling out with no cork to contain it. It’s aimed at her, at them, at the loneliness of the farm and the difference between their ages. It’s anger at her lack of respect, and the gnawing frustration that he may not be worthy of respect.
Amanda knows he hates these feelings. But even more, he hates her for making him feel them.
She fends off each blow. Some get through, slapping at her head or hitting her shoulder. A hand-size red mark appears on her cheek. But she continues to defend herself, not even consciously cutting or sticking him as he swings. She just uses her right hand in a way she knows will protect her, and sometimes the knife helps slow his blows.
He’s gone mad this time. Totally mad. She knew the anger was there, always lurking beneath the surface. But she hadn’t expected it to come out so suddenly. She slowly backs toward the kitchen door. Finally Wayne stops, hugging his arms and bleeding from a good seven or eight wounds on his arms and hands. None are life-threatening. The first cut on his palm is still the worst of the slices.
“You stabbed me! You tried to kill me!”
“Wayne! I didn’t! You know that.”
“You witch! You did! I’ll have the police on you!”
She shakes her head, spins and bolts and out the door, running full speed toward the barn. For once, Wayne’s laziness pays off. He didn’t bother to unsaddle Duncan, his quarter horse. The steed stands idly in the barn. With a single hop she jumps on a hay bale, places a leg against a support beam, and pulls herself up onto the saddle. As a city girl, she’d learned to ride horses belonging to her uncles and neighbors. Theirs was not the sort of neighborhood where she worried about riding like a proper lady. As a farm wife she’d tried to be more refined, usually riding in a proper wagon or sitting sidesaddle. But she still loved to ride her old way out in the fields. Early in their marriage Wayne used to ride with her, and he’d tease her about knowing how to ride like a man.
“I think the fact that I don’t ride like a lady is one of the reasons you like me,” she teased back.
Grabbing the reins, Amanda digs in her heels. Duncan quickly responds. She leans down and holds tight as he curves toward the barn door. They’re at a full gallop by the time she passes the house. Wayne stands on the back porch, swearing and bleeding, cradling his arms like they’re a couple of bright red newborn babies.
Hair loose and flowing behind her, she knows she must be a sight, dashing up the street at midday, horse hooves pounding. Unsure what to do, she makes her way two miles up the road to the house of Widow Ryan. She sees crisp, well-tended flower gardens and a white fence as she nears the home. The widow knows all too well what a woman like Amanda faces. She knows the old lady will help her.
But before she dismounts, Amanda thinks about what Wayne might do. If he sobers up, he might very well look for her here. The widow’s house has been used before as a refuge for women who are upset with their husbands. Mrs. Ryan is known to be an outspoken suffragette.
She sits still in the saddle pondering her next move. Duncan occupies himself by munching grass and swatting flies with his tail.
She doesn’t want to risk causing a scene at the home of this poor old woman. And she certainly doesn’t want Wayne to catch up to her. What if he brings the police? If he gets to the authorities first and lies about what happened, they’ll believe him. It does look like she stabbed him
—more than once. She’ll have no escape at all.
What about other friends? Yes, there are other places to which she could run. But word would get back to him, and it would travel quickly. She needs a clean break. She needs to go someplace where he’d never think of looking.
But where?
Chapter 13
Spoils
Glint of gold on a butterfly’s trajectory.
Flipping end over end, a thick coin sails over the heads of pub patrons, toward the lightening-quick hand of a bartender who snatches it from the air. He stares at his catch and smiles. It’s a twenty dollar Liberty Double Eagle—a rare sight in The Rose Point pub.
Across the room, Rudolph Baines, a recently wealthy diamond importer, holds up two fingers. The bartender nods and tugs at his beer tap. Baines smirks and returns to his conversation with a group of well-dressed businessmen. They all laugh about the expert flick of his fingers which sent the coin on its flight. They also whisper about how the pub owner greedily grabbed at the coin. Two or three of the group, slumming as they are this afternoon, exchange knowing glances.
Baines, who also speculates in real estate, has money to invest and each man at the table has deals to make with him. Why he brought them to this filthy pub for their negotiations is a mystery to them.
Baines looks toward a far corner of the room and sees faces prowling in the shadows. Several sets of eyes had watched the flight of the coin with quiet incredulity, and now they also see the laughter at the table. Something smolders back there, but Baines simply watches the watchers and smiles. As someone who wasn’t wealthy at all in his youth, he feels a certain pride in their lurking envy.
Rarer even than a large gold coin are people foolish enough to flash them in the open. Only a stupid man, or a man very sure of his social status and his own protection, would conduct such a public display. The people in the corners of the pub seem to be evaluating Baines, trying to decide just what kind of man he is.
One face slowly emerges from the shadows. The man does not walk directly toward the table. Instead he stops near the bar, takes a drink, talks briefly to the bartender, then moves on.
He slowly moves closer. Listening. Eventually he stands close to Baines, who is not only ordering a full round of drinks for his table, but prodding one of the other men to share a story. The story, as it begins, provides a good excuse for others in the pub to draw closer. They lean in, listening. Soon there are over a dozen people seated or standing about the table.
The interior of The Rose Point Pub tends to grow dark long before the last of the sun’s rays leave this spit of land that lies between the Charles and the Mystic Rivers. The place is known as Charlestown. The residents of Charlestown claim it’s one of the oldest settlements in Boston, and this particular pub is one of the oldest in Charlestown.
No newfangled electric lights dangle here. No lantern oil either. It’s cheap, fat-tallow candles for these tables. They spit and spark on the tables, adding a strange cooking scent to the cloud of tobacco smoke that always hovers near the ceiling.
Even when they’re clean, the small windows at the front of The Rose Point, glass dimpled and bottom-thickened with age, do little to oblige the remaining sunlight. Where sun can penetrate, eyes can follow. The Rose Point remains careful about who it invites inside. Of those who do come in, some are sailors, some are workmen, and some are owners of businesses that don’t have any official name. The manager of the pub, Johnson Aubrey, understands the needs of his customers, and makes the large room a place of subtle accommodation.
The haze and the poor lighting keep the corners dark. They are the types of corners that don’t appreciate candles. Eyes slowly adjust, but details remain hidden.
It’s just business.
There’s also a tiny loft in the pub. Anyone looking down from above can see a huge round table near the center of the main floor. It can seat ten people around its perimeter and often plays host to afternoon card games. By late afternoon it serves as a central gathering place, where people drink and talk. Stranger may sit next to stranger. Nods turn to grunts. Occasionally the grunts turn to cautious talk and calculated friendship.
Baines has brought his four business associates here early in the afternoon. After their hushed talk and final nods, they move to the large table and begin chatting with others as the table fills up. As they learn a little about each man, they prod stories out of them.
The four well-dressed men at the center table have their reasons to be there. When speculating on land located near the waterfront, it’s sometimes necessary to mix with the men who work there. It’s the best way to learn who the stakeholders are and to know when change is looming. It’s also a way to gain friends and influence through strong drinks and vague promises.
“What did you do then, Markley?” someone asks the man who has started to tell a story. It’s a tale about his time with the railroad.
Markley is a stocky man in his late fifties. He’s a pub regular, though a quiet one who mostly keeps to himself. He’d been reluctant to talk at first, but when he finally starts his story, the details come pouring out.
“Well, we shot every one of them damn buffalo that we could see. Honest to God, there must’a been six hundred of them. Took us about two hours, flanked ’em before they broke and that let us kept ’em running. Running right in a circle so as they wouldn’t get away. Dumb animals couldn’t even figure that out.” Someone offers a low whistle.
“Not sure how many I got myself,” Markley admits. “Figure it must have been over two dozen. Cleaned me right out of bullets. Others in my group got about the same, ’cept for one man who shot more than forty of ’em. We hired five skinners to come and help clean ’em up, and when they was finished, damned if those skulls weren’t piled up high as a mountain. We all climbed on top to have our picture taken.”
“That a fact?”
“Yes sir, it is. Sure as we’re sittin’ here.”
“So how long was you in Kansas?”
“For working? Only about three months. Railroad sent me to Utah after then. But I’m telling you, that Sunday, when we all had the day off and about twenty-five of us went out together with our rifles, that was the best damn day of buffalo hunting I’ve ever seen. Best anyone in this country ever will see, I reckon.”
“Weren’t ya scared? So many of them running at you?”
“Can’t say as I was. No time for it. Coming at us like a river, those damn beasts were. You should see their eyes. Anyone here ever hunt buffalo a ’for?”
A couple of the men smile and nod.
“Big, dark marbles. Like them Tronk steelies. Eyes so glassy you can’t tell if they’re looking at ya or not, ya know? They going to run at ya? Past ya? They don’t seem to focus when they run. So you raise your gun, and you just shoot.” His voice trails off for a moment as he takes another sip of beer.
“So anyways, we ate like kings for the rest of that week, I tell ya. Couldn’t even give all the meat away, so we ate what we could and gave away what we could until it started to go bad. We gave over a ton of meat to two different railroad camps. Hell, we even gave another ton to an Indian village. The bastards cursed us, but they took it.” Someone scoffs. Markley responds “Yeah, I know. But ya do what you can to keep the peace. Keep them Indians on our side if you can. That’s what the railroad said. Next day some of them redskins even brought us back corn and beans and stuff. People said they don’t like charity, so they wanted to treat the meat we gave them as trade. What the hell, fine with us. We ate the corn and gave a whole other bunch of beans and meat to a little town out there too. Don’t know what the hell it was called.”
Markley settles back in his chair with a satisfied grin. “Yes indeed. We all ate like kings that week. Goddamn hunter kings. That’s what we was!”
The group murmurs its approval and envy.
As Markley finishes his story, Baines stays in firm control of the conversation. A few of the men start to tell their own hunting tales, but Baines
cleverly steers the talk toward a pale man with a scar on his cheek and a bandage on his wrist. His rail-thin hand shakes as it grasps a glass mug. Baines orders the man another beer, prodding him to tell his own gritty tale.
“So I hear tell you were on that ship,” Baines begins. “The one that sank a couple days ago out by the Banks. That a fact?”
The pale man looks at his fresh beer as it arrives. At first he too doesn’t want to talk, but finally he takes a deep breath and looks around the circle. “Yeah. I was there, all right. Damn well wish I wasn’t, but I was out there.” He takes a long sip. “That’s all I really want to say. Don’t really like to think about it.”
Some men at the table cast glances back and forth. Many of them are sailors and it’s remarkable to them when they meet someone who’s survived a serious shipwreck so far from shore. A survivor is blessed and cursed at the same time. In the superstitions of sailors, a shipwreck survivor has luck of some sort, and there’s a feeling that it can rub off. Yet you’re never quite sure if it’s good luck or bad luck. Yes, they survived. But they experienced a good bit of the devil along the way, and their shipmates perished. He may have survived, but it wasn’t very lucky for the other sailors, was it?
Still, sailors always gather near, at least on land. They feel an obligation to analyze a survival story when it’s told, feeling the need learn its lessons.
“On the Gossamer? You were there?” one of the sailors asks.
Aubrey the barkeep lights a new candle and shoves its base down onto the soft sputtering wax of the old one. Before clearing the empty mugs, he offers Baines his change from the coin, but Baines waves it away.
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