Turpentine

by Spring Warren

  The Indian pointed his knife at me and shouted back.

  Curly, who until now had obeyed me perfectly, shouted, “Pig!”

  The pig had wisely retired to the shade under the wagon when the Indians approached. He seemed to know the company would mean no good end for him, for as Curly dove under the wagon and pulled him out, he wriggled and squealed like a banshee. Curly clutched Pig in his arms, an admirable feat as the animal was now the size of Curly’s torso and seemingly made of nothing but muscle and sinew.

  Curly said, “Mmmmmm! Good!” He pinched the fat hocks and hams. “Yummy.” He pantomimed taking a bite of the succulent neck. The Indian watched him, released Phaegin, and held out his hands for the animal. Curly looked at Pig and whispered, “Sorry,” kissed his snout, and lifted him up.

  Pig twisted and squealed. Curly got an awful agonized look on his face and pulled back as if he’d changed his mind. Curly and the Indian engaged in a short tug-of-war as Pig protested; then the Indian jerked Pig out of Curly’s hands. The Indian dropped his knee onto Pig’s back and drew his knife across Pig’s throat. After a minute of gurgling struggle, the animal went still as stone. The Indian, throwing an irritated look at Curly, slung the carcass over the horse, and the three horsemen departed.

  Curly didn’t move, but Phaegin rushed to the still smoldering cigar, tamped it out furiously, collected the others from where they had been thrown in the grass, and quick as a snake returned them to her bag. I watched her curious behavior but had to deal with Curly, who had yet to move a muscle.

  “Curly?”

  He spoke with difficulty. “Yeah, Ned?”

  “You OK?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure.”

  “That was a hard thing …”

  Curly stared at the wet dirt where Pig had bled. He shuddered. “I been real hungry, that knothead Pig eatin’ like he did.” He rubbed his hair then, down his neck, and covered his mouth for a moment, speaking through his fingers. “Tonight, I’m gonna get a whole meal fer once.”

  Phaegin approached. She didn’t say anything but put her arms around Curly. His face in her bosom, she stroked his hair and kissed his forehead.

  Curly snuffled. “I’m not feelin’ bad ’bout your hair no more.”

  “OK.” Phaegin waited a minute. “I take it back about you not being brave, Curly.”

  “Wait till you see when I’m a cowboy.”

  She kissed him again. “You’ll be the best there is.”

  Later that evening, I insisted that Phaegin show me the cigars.

  She frowned. “You’ve seen ’em before.”

  “I want to see them again.”

  She took out a handful. I examined the smokes carefully. Nothing untoward about them. “Let’s see the burnt one.”

  “I think I threw it away.”

  I went to her bag and searched through it until I found the burnt cigar.

  I examined the blackened end, pinched it. Nothing but cigar.

  Phaegin crossed her arms. “Happy now?”

  I frowned at her and the cigars. “Happy that you would risk our lives for a box of cigars? I don’t think so, and I don’t believe it.” I looked at the ash end again. I scraped the black away, peeled the wrap back: a glimpse of green and a white powdery substance. I rubbed the white powder between my fingers and sniffed it; it smelled medicinal, chemical. I peeled some more and saw that the cigars were fashioned not from tobacco but from coiled ten-dollar bills dusted with what I thought must be some kind of insecticide. I felt sick. Betrayed. “You lied to me.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did, and you promised you never would.”

  “I did not lie.”

  “You said you didn’t steal from Mr. Cordassa.”

  “I didn’t.”

  I didn’t want to think of what it meant if she hadn’t stolen the money. How had she gotten so many ten-dollar bills? What was it in payment for? I thought of her, dancing at the nickel dump night after night, and felt furious. I held out the cigar. “Are they all like this?”

  “I didn’t steal the money. I earned it.”

  “Earned it doing what?”

  She slapped me. I grabbed her wrist. She tried to hit me with her other hand, and I grabbed her arm and held it behind her. Her nose was inches from mine. Her breath was warm as she panted, “Damn you, Ned Bayard, I hate you more than I can say. I wish I had never met you.”

  I could feel her chest rise against me, her hips against mine. If I were to close my eyes I could imagine we were back in New Haven, dancing.

  I closed my eyes.

  I pressed my lips against hers. She was slightly salty, soft, and sweet. I wanted to forget everything else about my life and live in Phaegin’s embrace forever. I relinquished her arm, clasped her neck. She threw her arms around me and kissed me back. I held her tight, as I had in New Haven, and wished the moment never end.

  But one cannot live in a moment. I could not stop myself from wondering: Where had the money come from? If it was hers, why was it hidden in the cigars? And had she been involved in something I didn’t want to know about? I stepped back with a groan. “Where did the money come from, Phaegin?”

  “You son of a bitch.” She turned away. I waited. She finally spoke. “I earned it rolling cigars, Ned. For every twenty I earned, I put ten away. I didn’t want my brothers or my da to drink it up, so Mr. Cordassa told me what to do. Each cigar: thirty dollars. Six years of savings, Ned. A dozen cigars is everything I got. Are you happy?”

  I imagined the kind Mr. Cordassa showing her how to hide her money; surely he’d done the same to flee his own country. Of course, it all made sense.

  “I’m sorry.” I was more than sorry, I was ashamed to have thought she’d prostituted herself. I was glad I had not actually voiced my suspicions, hoped she might let what I had intimated pass. I put out my hand but Phaegin pushed it away, dashing my hopes on that course.

  “It’s better to know what you think of me. Remember, Ned. I never lied to you. I kept my promise.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me everything right off?”

  “Why men think it’s a woman’s job to report to them, I don’t know. Do I ask you what’s in your bag? Do I demand to know what you’re worth, what good or bad things you may have done? If I had earned that money in a way you didn’t approve of, would you have taken it from me? You probably will anyway.”

  “I’m not taking your money. I was just … curious.”

  “Curious is a funny word for it.”

  I glared at her. “Don’t get too high and mighty. You put our lives on the line for that money. More than once.”

  “No. Not purposefully, anyway.”

  “Just now?”

  “They thought you were poisoning them, Ned. That’s what almost got us killed.”

  “Chicago.”

  “I didn’t think it was going to go that way.”

  “Just retrieving it in New Haven was a terrible risk.”

  “We had to have some stock.” She glared at me. “I’m done explaining myself. Soon as we can go our own ways, we will. I’ll find respectable work and start over, and you can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. In the meantime, keep your distance. A wagon train’s bound to come through. I’m just hoping it isn’t Mormons.” She smiled at me, meanly. “But if it is, even cannibals and pluralists are better than a false friend.”

  We waited a day more at Emigration Road in virtual silence, Curly looking wan and sad and Phaegin perpetually furious, which, though not pleasant, was preferable to her shattered expression of before. Two days passed. We finished off the rejected bread then ate flour mixed with water and sage leaves thickened to glop over the fire. I used another of our precious bullets and shot a rabbit that proved more fur than meat. We shared the meager meal one day and the broth we boiled the bones in on the next. Starvation threatened. We had little energy for anything but dark thoughts.

  When the sun was goi
ng down late the next afternoon, Curly showed sudden energy, leaping up and jiggering his hands like a fast-draw artist. I watched him languidly. “What’s going on?”

  He shook his head, still staring across the grass. After another minute, he shouted, “Heyho, there!” and did a little jig. “We’s a gonna eat, gonna eat!”

  I roused myself. A filmy line of dust on the horizon lifted like a mare’s tail into the pale blue sky; giving rise to that earthen smoke, a fantastical procession of white elephants. One could discern their lumbering gait, their mammoth size, could imagine trunks clutching tails, could almost believe we’d transported to the savannahs of Africa.

  Phaegin took my arm, then remembered our fight, releasing me to watch, alone, the wide backs of the tremendous beasts transmogrify into canvas straining over the keel and ribs of willow rods bent across the beds of wagons, the lumbering gait into nothing more than the pitching of the road.

  Underneath each wagon bed, a bucket swung and rang against the grasses, so that a thin song emanated from the line, along with the deep shout of the rippers snapping their whips, the bellowing of oxen, and the creaking of the wooden ships. Tailing the wagons were six or seven handcarts pushed by human beasts in what must have been a stifling flume of dust. Men on horses patrolled up and down the lines.

  Curly shaded his eyes, watching their approach, then broke into laughter. “Somebody cain’t ride worth beans! Over there! A horse jes’ walkin’ along, saddle upside down under him.”

  I was too busy counting the carts—and sizing up the men on the horses who seemed to be in charge—to pay attention.

  Phaegin said, “That is odd. A big ol’ horse with a saddle between his legs and nobody doing a thing about it.”

  I quit sizing up the men in the lead of the train and sighted where Phaegin was pointing. A huge horse, grazing, the saddle slipped underneath, girth over its back, stirrups flipped to the side like wilted leaves. I laughed, then stopped agog when the animal raised its head. “It’s Chin!”

  CHAPTER 30

  Though it had been only a year since Chin and I had parted, it seemed a hundred lifetimes ago. Any question of whether or not she would recognize me disappeared as soon as she heard me shout her name. She raced across the prairie, raising dust and divots of hard-packed earth, and stopped short in front of me, Curly and Phaegin diving for cover behind the cart.

  She whickered into my ear; I threw my arms around her enormous neck as if I embraced redemption itself. “Chin, Chin! How are you doing, girl? Aw, it’s good to see you, it’s good to see you!”

  Curly crept out, awe on his face. “You got a horse, Ned? By gor, it’s a big un!”

  “Phaegin! It’s Chin!”

  She stepped forward. “The horse from the fort?”

  I nodded and Phaegin offered her hand, stroked Chin’s nose.

  Curly whooped, climbed onto the cart, and tried to mount Chin from that platform.

  Chin neighed loudly and kicked, with Curly holding tight to her mane. The saddle shifted, the stirrups hit her in the backside, and Chin began bucking. Phaegin screamed; Curly finally let go and curled into a ball in the dirt.

  “Chin!” I yelled. Chin calmed, whickered again, and nosed me in the back, as if nothing had happened.

  Curly looked up, mournful. “Why won’ she let me ride ’er?”

  I shrugged. “She’s got opinions.”

  Phaegin helped Curly up. “You call yourself a cowboy? Hollerin’ like a catamount and throwin’ yourself at her? No wonder. You gotta get to know her.”

  By then one of the horsemen from the wagon train had arrived. He was a heavy-bodied blondin, with yellow hair and yellow beard, white eyelashes, and a veil of freckles under a peeling sunburn. He was dressed in buckskin, a large dragoon pistol on the right side of his wide leather belt, an ivory-handled Bowie on the other.

  I took off my hat, shook the man’s hand, and said, “Howdy. I’m Cal Morton, my wife Alice, and our son, Ben.”

  The horseman nodded. “You folks are taking a chance, out here alone. You know about the Indians?”

  Curly was still circling Chin but called out, “Do we? You bet.”

  I nodded. “Swing station to the south, every man and woman dead. We are not a little nervous: hoping to join up with some good people for safety.” I rolled the brim of Tilfert’s hat. “Would you be agreeable to our joining on with you folks for a while?”

  The man on horseback took his time looking us over. I glanced at Phaegin and Curly. Phaegin stared demurely at her feet.

  The man gestured to the horse. “Your horse?”

  I nodded slowly. “Left her to board in Nebraska a year past. Don’t know how she got here.”

  “We found her ganted up alongside the train line in St. Joseph. Fed her, tried to put her to use. Got a saddle on her two weeks ago.” He narrowed his eyes at Chin. “Get it off, or we’ll shoot her to save it.”

  I nodded. The man waited, apparently meaning to get it off now.

  I murmured to Chin, “Take it easy, girl. Just hold on.”

  Chin stood stalwart as a soldier as I unbuckled the straps. The saddle fell to the dirt; she stepped delicately over it. I hefted it to the horseman, who held it to one side, turning his horse to leave.

  I felt the edge of panic. “Could we join you, sir?”

  He stopped his horse, seemingly thinking about it. “I am Captain Lowe of the Latter-Day Saints. We welcome any and all, providing you are willing to abide by our beliefs.”

  Curly grinned. “We’d be willing to—”

  Phaegin shot him a look, and I filled in. “We’d be willing to abide with you good people most happily.”

  Far from my expectations, and excepting the six handcarts at the back of the procession, the Mormons were well fed and well appointed. They drove Conestoga wagons or green and red Concord coaches pulled by spans of stout oxen and mules. Though the wagons were weatherbeaten, they boasted leather cushions on the drivers’ seats and white awnings of twilled cotton or Osnaburg canvas. Drivers wore huge green goggles to protect their eyes from the sun, and the women walking sedately beside their wagons to conserve their animals had donned sunbonnets, a long veil flagging behind like a cape or shawl.

  As the procession passed, riders and hoofers alike stared as if we were the progeny of Satan. Where Curly seemed to be not at all aware, poor Phaegin was blushing through the dirt and deep freckling of her face.

  After the Conestogas and Concords passed, the handcarts brought up the rear, and they were a sorry lot. The thought that they, in fact, were likely better kempt than we was shocking. These travelers had willowed cheeks, filthy hair, their apparel ripped, patched, raveled, and scuffed.

  We took the last place in line, and the fellow ahead of us grinned, his teeth white as a minstrel in his silt-crusted face. “Nothin’ makes a body happier than no longer bein’ the last in line. Almost like movin’ up in the world. Almost. Wish’t I didn’t know better, but do.” He dropped the handles of his cart, ran over quick-like, and hurriedly shook each of our hands. “Will Smith, Will Smith, Will Smith,” he murmured, and returned to his cart, catching up to the one in front with a quick step. “If you don’t look like something the cat dragged in, I don’t know what does,” he called back to us. “Don’t worry. We’ll be stopping in another hour or so. We take care of each other here. You’ll be fed.”

  Sure enough, the captain called a halt after a few jarring miles, and with military precision the wagons relaxed into a chattering, bustling campground. Severity seemed to drop with the stilling of the wheels. A few men dropped back to make our acquaintance, and women came back to say hello to Phaegin and deliver a morsel of bacon, a cup of meal, a strip of dried beef. By the time we’d got the pot to boil, we had enough to make three stews.

  Will Smith sidled over. “Hold some back,” he cautioned. “Feast and famine, y’know. Wimmin get tight in a heartbeat.”

  Phaegin glared at him. She whispered to me, “I don’t like that man. Even if this is
the last we get, that don’t mean they’re tight. Generosity is generosity. Those women are lovely.”

  I shrugged, glad that Phaegin was at all happy. I was a little on tenterhooks myself, waiting for some kind of instruction, some ritual of union that we would be expected to go through. I’d heard plenty about the Mormons: practicing cannibals and plural marriages. Would I be expected to marry not one but three of these women? I entertained myself by picking out three I would not be averse to. Would we also be forced to take oaths, let blood, commit some trial? It seemed not. The night passed uneventfully. We woke at dawn to finish off last night’s dinner, pulled back into line, and the journey toward the Great Salt Lake commenced once more.

  Predictably, Chin would not make herself useful but followed along like a dog and I was happy with that. She was a marker to me that my life was not altogether blowing up and being remade but that some small part could indeed survive one phase to surface in another. Further, I appreciated the horse’s obvious pleasure to see me. She seldom strayed from my side, blowing air down my neck and whickering companionably in a show of affection toward a man starved for tenderness. Phaegin, though we identified ourselves as man and wife, hardly spoke to me at all.

  Will took it on himself to educate us as to what was acceptable and what was not, hanging back and allowing some space to fall between him and the cart ahead. “Don’t worry, you won’t be the final feather for too long, not if you behave. Some other poor sod will be demoted. Likely it’ll be me.” He nodded. “I’ll warn you: Don’t swear, don’t gamble, don’t even think about tobacco.”

  I eyed Phaegin meaningfully and she looked away.

  “Don’t drink ardent spirits, except for medicinal purposes. Even that is frowned on” He nodded up the line. “Dose yerself to the point of hilarity, no matter what the reason, and there’s trouble.” He gave a glance to my journal, bouncing in the bed of the cart. “Men, not books. Deeds, not words.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “One of the few rules I have no trouble with, my interlect bein’ uncorrupted by larnin’.”