Dutchman and the Devil : The Lost Story (9781456612887) (16 page)

The following morning Weiser was worse. His breath was short, and he had a wracking cough that produced slimy, green mucus. Julia felt his forehead with her wrist and it was abnormally hot. Fearing pneumonia, she put on her mackintosh and ran next door to ask her neighbor’s boy Tom to fetch Doc Swanson.

Doc Swanson didn’t consider Weiser’s symptoms serious enough for a house call until the following day, but he did give Tom a prescription for salicylic acid to ease Weiser’s “discomfort.”

But Weiser’s condition really was pneumonia. It would take the next three months of chicken soup and constant care for him to even begin to recover.

Between bouts of coughing wracking his body, Weiser had plenty of time to think about his future. “There’s no denying that I owe Julia my life,” he told himself many times. “And she certainly is attentive, feeding me hot broth when I’m too feeble to lift a spoon. Would she do that if she doesn’t have feelings for me?”

But just as Weiser began to believe he could trust Julia, she began neglecting him, frequently failing to appear promptly to his summons.

Julia’s increasing slowness to respond was partly because she found it hard to hide her increasing aversion to Weiser’s wreck of a body, which bore little resemblance to the virile man he’d been before the flood. To make matters worse, he began to stink. Sometimes just being in the same room with Weiser would make her gag.

What’s more, when she did show up, Julia’s dress would be rumpled, her face flushed, and the demure coil of thick black curls on the crown of her head a tousled mess.

And to top it off, Weiser could hear the low tones of a man’s voice long after the bakery should have been empty of customers.

Seeing her aversion and suspecting her disloyalty, Weiser cast desperately for a way to regain her affection. “Perhaps I can get her to love me again,” he thought, “if I promise her a share of the gold nuggets buried beneath my hearth. An’ if that ain’t enough, I can promise to throw in a map to my mine. Only the map will have to be a sham. I can’t take a chance on anyone finding my real mine and Waltz’s body.”

The next morning, as Julia was fluffing his pillow, Weiser put his hand on her arm. Resisting the urge to pull away, Julia forced a smile to her lips and said, “It’s good to see you’re feeling better.”

Weiser tried to smile in return but, regrettably, the result was an ugly, twisted expression more like a grimace of pain.

Julia eased her arm from his grip and turned to go.

Desperate for her company, Weiser half-sat up and said, “Don’t go, my dear. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

The only thing remotely interesting about Weiser now was his gold. On the off chance this was what he was thinking about, Julia paused and looked back at him.

Encouraged, Weiser plunged ahead, “I have a box of gold out at my farm. It’s buried under my hearth.” Intoxicated by her attention, he blurted out, “I’ll give you half that gold if you’ll help me get it.”

Her interest in the old man reignited, Julia bent and gently adjusted Weiser’s pillow. “What are you talking about?” she said. “There ain’t any hearth left, mister. Your house is just a pile of mud and rubble.”

“I know that,” Weiser said peevishly, “but the chimney is still there, ain’t it?”

Julia thought a minute and remembered the chimney sticking out of the mud pile that had been his home. “Maybe it is,” she admitted.

“Well if it is, we can find my hearth, an’ that’s where the gold’s buried!” Weiser exclaimed in an “aha” tone of voice.

Julia’s eyes sparkled at the prospect of this treasure, but she also realized it wouldn’t be an easy task to retrieve it. “Slow down, Jacob,” she said quickly. “Even if we do find it, we’re going to need more help than I can give you.” She knew she could never suggest Charlie, because it would enrage Weiser’s jealousy and suspicions.

“How about that fella across the street, the one with the livery stable?” Weiser suggested. “The fella who came with you when my house melted. He seems like a man who can keep his mouth shut. An’ anyways, he don’t need to know what’s in the box.”

The prospect of going after his gold was the best tonic Weiser could have taken. Within a week, he was out of bed and, with the help of a stout cane, walking as far as Lutgerdner’s stable. “Doc Swanson thought I was a goner,” he told Lutgerdner.

“So did I,” Lutgerdner replied. “But I guess you’re too ornery to die.”

A week later, Julia arranged for Lutgerdner to drive Weiser and her back to Weiser’s farm, disguising the trip as a nostalgic visit for Weiser. They’d barely arrived when the farmer who lived next door showed up, chewing tobacco and hitching up his britches. After peering astutely at Weiser, the farmer turned his head aside and spat a brown stream of tobacco juice before saying, “I took care of them chickens you left behind, mister. Are you wanting to git them back?”

Weiser looked quickly at Julia. How could he have forgotten his precious chickens? A little shaken at what this said about his memory, he played for time, “What do you say, Julia? Do you want to give my chicks a new home?”

The last thing Julia wanted was a flock of chickens pecking around in her yard. But neither did she want to offend Weiser, at least until she had her hands on his gold. “Perhaps in a few weeks,” she temporized, “when you’re able to take care of them.”

Seeing an opportunity to make a few bucks, the farmer said, “I been looking after your chickens an’ feeding them while you was away,” he said. “An’ it don’t look like you’ll be moving’ back anytime soon. You can take your chickens with you or you can sell ’em to me, but either way, you already owe twenty bucks for their feed.”

Weiser’s jaw dropped in amazement, but the farmer’s offer suited Julia. Putting her hand on Weiser’s arm, she leaned closer to him and said softly, “Maybe you should let him have your chickens, Jacob. They’ll be better off out here.”

Weiser reluctantly agreed to let him keep the chickens, and the farmer went home with a smile.

While Weiser and the farmer negotiated, Lutgerdner took his pick, explored the area around the eroding remnant of Weiser’s chimney, and found Weiser’s pine candle box in a matter of minutes. With Weiser’s supervision, Lutgerdner excavated the box, lifted it into the wagon, and drove back to Weiser’s temporary home at Julia’s. As they bounced along, Weiser’s spirits soared at having his gold back in his possession, where he could see it and touch it anytime he wanted. Moreover, it would restore his place in Julia’s bed, or so he thought.

As the bakery door closed behind Lutgerdner, Weiser put his arm around Julia’s shoulders and tried to lead her to the stairs.

But she pulled away, “Not so fast there, mister. Have you forgot your promise to give me half this gold?”

“Of course not,” Weiser said quickly. “But do you need it right this minute?”

“Yes, I do,” Julia replied. “We had a deal. And I sure as hell held up my part of the bargain.”

“Don’t you trust me?” Weiser said, in a tone of righteous indignation stoked by his underlying suspicion that she was as greedy as he was.

“Of course I do,” Julia said. “But I’d trust you better if you would trust me with the gold you already promised me.”

Weiser tried again to lead her upstairs, but she knew better than to give in to his sexual advances in exchange for another unfulfilled promise.

Her delay was enough to push Weiser’s barely controlled jealousy over the edge. Turning away abruptly, he pushed his box of gold under his cot, lay down, and turned his face to the wall.

A week after he refused to give Julia any more gold, Weiser lay on his back staring at the rough ceiling above his cot and counting the knotholes in the beams. Or trying to. The trouble was, they were just a blur. He thought he’d been able to see them clearly the last time he looked. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, time and pneumonia had taken their toll, and he was rapidly aging.

Julia had retaliated to Weiser’s broken promise by openly taking up with Charlie Smith and reducing Weiser’s rations to stale biscuits and leftover coffee.

Weiser closed his eyes and fantasized about how his life should have been: the grand home in San Francisco, hosting dinner parties at a long mahogany table with a lace tablecloth, places set with fine china and sterling silver, and lighted by a sparkling crystal chandelier. His lips curved upward as he imagined an elegant woman with blue eyes and creamy white skin at the far end of the table, chatting graciously with their guests. Occasionally, she would meet his eyes with a look that promised boundless pleasures in bed after their guests departed.

Weiser’s smile lost its humor as he thought about this. He sighed and opened his eyes to the squalor of his actual situation. “It ain’t fair,” he thought. “It ain’t my fault I’m dependent on a kinky-haired, brown-skinned, half-breed woman who’s only taking care of me because she’s after my gold. On top of that, I’m pretty sure she’s two-timing me with that goddamn traveling salesman who also has his eyes on my gold.

“When I was younger,” he thought, “I would of got rid of that Charlie with a hatchet in his back. Or a arrow attributable to a rogue Indian.”

Immersed in self-pity, Weiser went on, “I ain’t as young as I used to be, but who is? Hell, I was doing all right for myself until that damn river flooded. Julia says that flood was a act of God, but that’s bullshit. It’s her fault I’m so sick. She should of come looking for me the minute the horse showed up at the livery stable with a empty saddle that should of had me sitting in it!”

Aggrieved by his state of affairs, Weiser turned on his side and continued to chew on his grievances. “That Julia ain’t in any hurry to pay back the gold I loaned her, either. I’m beginning to suspect she left me out there on purpose, hoping I’d drown.” The ghost of a smile crept into his pale lips. “But if that was her plan, it didn’t work, because I’m still alive — if you can call a diet of stale biscuits an’ being too weak to go anywhere ‘living’,” he murmured through clenched teeth.

He struggled to stand, hoping he would feel better if he got some fresh air, but his legs wouldn’t support him. Letting out a long breath heavy with sadness, he eased himself down onto the rough wood floor and crawled to the door four feet away. The effort left him out of breath, but it was a matter of pride, now, to reach that door and prop it open with a block of wood.

On reaching his objective, Weiser lay in the doorway without moving until the late summer sun’s rays snuck up to his outstretched hand. Now he was too hot. “It just ain’t fair,” he complained to an imaginary audience, as he dragged himself back to his cot and collapsed. Seeking solace from his pain, his fumbling fingers searched for and found his lucky nugget, worn smooth after sixty years in his pocket. As he gently stroked it, he remembered how he’d rejoiced when he found this nugget. It had been his vindication he’d been right to leave his Deutschen family to go prospecting in America. It wasn’t the most valuable ore he found, but it was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever possessed.

Two hours later, a sharp pain in his gut made him gasp. He passed it off as gas from last night’s chili and turned over, hoping to go back to sleep. But sleep eluded him. He shivered, in spite of the heat. As he lay in a tangle of twisted sheets, his fever-driven mind turned a stack of sugar sacks into the ghost of his long-dead partner. As he stared, the specter whispered, “You can’t get away with it.”

In spite of himself, Weiser shrank back. But then he pulled himself together and said, “I only did what I had to. Ain’t nothing wrong with taking my share of the gold.”

The ghostly figure laughed out loud and said scathingly, “You ain’t done a honest day’s work in your entire life! You was always a goddamn freeloader, sitting in the shade looking for a chance to get something for nothin’.”

Reliving the past, Weiser said, “That’s a damn lie. If it wasn’t for me, you never would of had the chance to leave Germany. You’d be stuck living on your daddy’s farm, with no money an’ a shack full of snot-nosed kids.”

The ghostly figure had no answer for that, but Weiser was not stopping. As he spoke, he’d inched his arm toward a walking stick propped against his bed. Caught up reliving the past, he grabbed the stick and attacked, exactly as he done twenty-five years earlier.

His mind’s eye saw his partner’s body fall backward into their mine shaft. It was a sack of sugar that fell from his attack, but what the old man saw, in his delusion, was the mine shaft and his partner’s crumpled body. “Take that, you lying bastard!” he hissed, and fell into an exhausted swoon.

An hour later a cock crowed, bringing the old man out of his stupor. Sprawled on the floor next to his cot, he watched his surroundings take shape in the growing light: neatly stacked sacks of flour and salt and sugar, boxes of cinnamon bark, jars of vanilla beans. A little sawdust had spilled onto the rough floor from wooden boxes storing ice, and the sugar sack he’d hallucinated was his partner lay beside it.

Weiser pulled himself onto his cot and closed his eyes.

A few minutes later, he heard the clatter of breakfast being prepared. The aroma of coffee brewing reminded him of the day he had met Julia. It started him wondering what would have happened if he’d said no to her first invitation to stay for coffee. “I never needed a woman before, a particular one, that is, one who was more than a quick roll in the hay. Would my life have been any different if I’d got back on my burro an’ rode away? Would I have gone on to San Francisco instead of staying in Phoenix?”

He smelled strudel baking. Awake now, his mouth watered and he could almost taste cinnamon in Julia’s crisp apple strudel. She was an excellent cook, all right. Her strudel and substantial bosom had won his heart the first time he delivered eggs and was invited into her kitchen. Weiser thought back on pleasant afternoons in Julia’s kitchen, warming his hands on a mug of freshly brewed coffee.

One of the worst parts of being out of Julia’s good graces was losing the food. These days, in place of fresh apple strudel on fine china, she served him stale biscuits on a battered tin pie plate, and yesterday’s coffee in a chipped cup. He heaved a sigh, longing for the good old days before Charlie moved in.

“Before that Charlie moved in,” Weiser thought, “I was getting stronger. And Julia adored me, or at least she pretended she did, for my gold.

“In the good old days, when someone interfered with my rightful pleasures, I knew what to do and how to do it. I would of invited him to lunch at the Commercial Hotel and pushed him off the third-floor balcony, with nobody the wiser.” Weiser grinned, imaging the gratifying splat Charlie would have made as he hit the sidewalk.

Weiser’s grin faded as he came back to his current helplessness. That kind of solution was obviously out of the question, as he could barely stand up, let alone knock anyone else down.

For his part, Charlie was not that taken with Julia, never thought of her as more than a good-time party girl, until she told him about Weiser’s candle box full of gold nuggets. They were in her bedroom, and Charlie was buttoning his pants. “Let me get this straight,” he said, “That old man promised you his gold an’ you’re just sitting here waiting for him to die?”

Julia blushed. That wasn’t a pretty way to say it, but she had to admit he had it right.

Charlie’s lips quivered with amusement as he raised his left eyebrow. “What the hell are you waiting for, woman? You’d be doing both of you a favor to put him out of his misery. All it would take is a little rat poison in his porridge.”

“I couldn’t do that!” Julia said quickly, her eyes widening. “I ain’t that kind of woman!”

Charlie laughed.

“I ain’t,” she repeated, as her cheeks flushed crimson.

“Come off it,” Charlie rejoined. “You wouldn’t be letting that old man sleep in your storeroom if you ain’t after his gold.” He paused to let that sink in, then continued, “It’s obvious he’s dying. I’m just pointing out you could speed it up a bit.”

The bedroom was silent, save for the tick tock of the grandfather clock beside the stairs.

When Julia failed to respond, Charlie shrugged and resumed buttoning his pants. “Have it your way, Ma’am,” he said. “I ain’t staying around to wait for you.”

Realizing he wasn’t kidding, Julia put her hand on his arm and said, “Hold on, Charlie. You’re right.”

The next afternoon, Weiser heard Charlie come in and go upstairs with Julia. Seizing the opportunity to forage for food, he hurried to the pantry. He was reaching for a can of tinned ham when he came across a packet of rat poison hid behind it.

Unbidden, his first thought was, “Is she going to use it on me? But that ain’t possible; Julia wouldn’t do something like that.”

Even so, she hadn’t said anything about rats in her place.

On the other hand, she hadn’t hardly spoken to him lately. Weiser’s mouth twisted in resentment. He might be a sack of potatoes, for all the attention he got since that damn salesman came to town. Even so, Weiser was still sane enough to realize jealousy was not enough reason to suspect Julia of trying to kill him.

However, his suspicions were strengthened when he woke up with a belly ache and blood on his pillow the next morning — and further bolstered when Julia refused to get old Doc Stern. She actually had the effrontery to laugh and say she wasn’t going to get a doctor for a ordinary nosebleed an’ a belly ache from eating too much chili.

Miffed at her lack of concern, and still hoping she’d show some compassion, Weiser put his hand on his belly and moaned, “Can’t you see I’m sick?”

“What I see is an old man whining about a bellyache he got from stuffing his face with food he stole from my pantry,” Julia responded. “So shut up an’ eat your biscuits.”

Pleased at what she considered her toughness, Julia went upstairs for some lovemaking and found Charlie folding his shirts and putting them back in his suitcase.

Stunned, Julia said, “I thought you was staying with me!”

“An’ I thought the old man was dying,” Charlie shot back.

“He’s getting weaker,” she protested, putting her hand on his shoulder.

He shook it off and continued folding his shirt. “Not fast enough,” he said. “Every day he’s alive gives him more chances to give his gold to someone else. An’ I ain’t sticking around to see it happen!”

“All right, Charlie,” Julia said quickly. “I’ll give him a whopping big dose tonight.”

“That’s more like it,” Charlie said, taking Julia in his arms. Two more days an’ he’d have the gold he was counting on.

Rising early the following morning, Julia opened the door to Weiser’s sweltering storeroom without bothering to knock. In her view, infatuated as she was with Charlie, Weiser was fast becoming a non-person, not worth common courtesies. She carried a tray with a cup of rancid coffee and a stale biscuit left over from last night’s supper.

She wore a simple calico dress, and its bodice clung to her breasts, tempting Weiser to reach out and try to touch them as she set the coffee and biscuit on a rough wooden crate that served as his table. But his eyes blurred as he stretched out his hand and it fell short.

Julia easily sidestepped his pitiful pass and, as she did so, she thought Charlie was right about her poisoning this old man. Like Charlie said, it wasn’t really murder; she was just speeding up the natural process of death for an old man. She was doing him a favor, really, saving him the pain of a prolonged illness.

Weiser blinked his eyes, puzzled by his failure to fondle Julia. Reluctant to give up, he tried again, squinting more intently on the blur she’d become. But again, he failed to make contact, and fell back on his cot.