Honeyville (19 page)

‘You said that to Cody?’

‘Yes, Dora. I did.

‘Did he laugh at you?’

‘Laugh at me? He certainly did not. What’s the matter with you? He brewed me up some coffee in the back room there, and we are firm friends. I intend to call on him often, Dora. And there’s nothing you or Aunt Philippa or Lawrence or anyone else can do about it. So. Anyway, I have to be careful. That’s what he said …’

‘Why?’

‘He says you can never be sure who to trust in this town. So much spying and double spying and God knows what – and it’s true, isn’t it? It’s as if the whole world is gone topsy-turvy.’

‘Did Cody,’ I couldn’t help asking, ‘did he know about what went on in your cellar?’

‘Gosh – no!
No!
’She looked alarmed.

‘But he knows about you and Lawrence?’

‘Well – yes. I guess so. He knows we were friends. Of course. But it’s difficult to know … who knows what about anything sometimes, isn’t it? I get the sense Cody’s a little in awe of Lawrence. He was constantly asking me things.’

‘What things?’

‘Nothing, really … Or nothing
I
know anything about … Anyway, he says I can drop in at the store whenever I like. How about that? He says he can tell me all the gossip. So we’re quite friendly now. There’s a new issue of
The Masses
out. He says he’s going to lend it me, now that Xavier can’t – or
won’t
. I’m going to drop by at the store tomorrow. And
maybe
– he said
maybe
he might have a message for me from Lawrence.’ She looked, for just a half-second, as if she might be about to cry. But then she stopped herself. Pasted on that sparkling smile again. ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘I’m late for the library. I just wanted to drop by and tell you the news … And Xavier wanted to know if you were free for dinner this evening. By the way, I
get a feeling
,’ she added with a merry little giggle, ‘that my silly brother is developing quite an unsuitable crush on you.’

I laughed. ‘Unlikely,’ I said.

‘Yes, it’s too funny,’ she giggled. ‘Only imagine what poor Aunt Philippa would say! I should think Uncle Richard might actually send someone out to shoot you! Promise me you won’t, darling,’ she said. ‘
Promise me
you won’t encourage him. Or I shall feel absolutely terrible about having ever introduced you.’

And with that she left, still laughing.

A week or so later, at the cottage again, with Inez and me stretched out on our opposite couches, as usual, and Xavier on the rocker, and complaining about it, as usual, Inez suddenly interrupted an account of something that happened to her at the library – ‘Oh! And it’s too
awful
. I meant to tell you, Xavier. You’ll never guess what Cody told me this afternoon … You remember that fellow from the old days?’

‘Which fellow?’ Xavier said.

‘Oh, you know! He was in your class, Xavie. D’you recollect? Big, tall man. Everybody adored him. Oh bother, how can I have forgotten his name, when I was only talking about him with Cody? Dora, we were discussing him just the other day because of Aunt Philippa being so upset, and I remarked that he might not have been quite the dreary old dub we thought he was and, listen here, I tell you what, he most certainly wasn’t—’

‘William Paxton,’ I said.

‘He had the gun shop – a couple in Walsenburg, and the big one in Trinidad. And—’

‘William Paxton,’ I said again.

‘That’s right! Oh Gosh. Poor, darling Bill Paxton …Well I’m glad I didn’t marry him, poor man. It’s an awful thing that’s happened. Dreadful!’ She leaned in towards us and half whispered the words: ‘Someone found out he was helping the Union.’

‘Helping the Union?’ said Xavier.

‘He was double-dealing, Cody said. I suspected as much – didn’t I say so, Dora? On account of Lawrence knowing so much about him. I mean, I think they were friends … Well, Bill Paxton was selling arms to the general’s men and then informing the Union where and when, so then they could sneak up and snatch the stuff right back again … without paying for it. Understand? It doesn’t matter anyway. He was shot. Last week, driving out of Pueblo. Ambushed in broad daylight, and shot dead in front of his little wife … Poor man.’ She shuddered. ‘Who would’ve known it, Xavie? Dear old Bill Paxton died a hero …’

I said nothing. Of course not. I stared at my hands until my vision blurred. I don’t think the moment lasted long – but there was a silence. I spent it trying to keep my breathing even. Because: it was Bill who had been shot, and I thought of his lifeless body in a bleeding heap, with his silly wife bent over it; and I imagined him beside me in my bed; the smell of him, the feel of his warm presence; and I imagined his profile, as he lay back on my pillows, his eyes creased from thinking – from trying to say what he thought I might like to hear; and I remembered his tenderness. I thought of all those things and felt grief, pure and pure. And I remembered his promise to me when I saw him at Jamieson’s Department Store, a promise now never to be fulfilled, and I felt my dreams crashing round my feet. The tears, which blurred my vision and which I would not let flow, were of grief, sorrow, self-pity, and fear for my own future. I said nothing
.

‘Old Bob Paxton?’ muttered Xavier. I felt him looking at me. ‘That’s terrible.’ Later he admitted he couldn’t picture the man. Couldn’t remember the name at all.

It must have been around that time that Lawrence paid me another visit at Plum Street. On this occasion, to save himself $50, he waited outside the door until somebody other than Phoebe passed into the building, and he gave them a message asking me to come out.

I sent a message back, telling him I wasn’t available (though I was), and suggesting we meet at a tearoom on South Animas Street a couple of hours hence. It was the last place on earth a man like Lawrence O’Neill would want to spend his time, and I suppose that’s why I sent him there. Sure enough, when I arrived, a good half-hour late, there he was, waiting for me, sipping tea, his felt hat resting on the table beside him. He was the only man in the room and, though he had lost weight and his thick woollen waistcoat and the collar of his shirt hung loose on him, he still looked much too large on his spindly-legged tearoom chair, as if the slightest movement might crush all the dainty furniture around him, and send cups and saucers flying.

I resented being asked to meet him. I assumed he wanted to see me for news on Inez, or so that I could pass on a message to her, and I disliked the role that seemed to have befallen me, to act as their go-between. In my opinion, it was a doomed relationship. He should never have involved Inez in his business. When he asked to use her cottage as a storehouse, he had put her life at risk to a degree that I felt, as her true friend, was unforgivable. From the hangdog expression with which he greeted me, it was obvious he knew what I thought; and perhaps even thought it himself, too.

He half stood up as I came in, made the table rock, and spilled tea into his saucer.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ I said, ‘sit down.’

We sat. I ordered tea and waited. But he seemed to have nothing to say. He looked haggard. Finally he said: ‘You look tired.’

‘It’s been a long winter. What do you want, Lawrence?’

He shrugged his great big shoulders: like a miserable bear, I thought, and I tried not to smile. ‘I just wanted to … A friend of Inez’s was killed last week. Paxton. William Paxton. You know him?’

I didn’t reply. He didn’t seem bothered either way.

‘Cody told me she was cut up … That’s all. I just wanted to check she was all right.’ He looked at me. Not a grizzly bear, perhaps, but a great big miserable puppy. ‘She’s all right? Safe and sound?’

‘Safe and sound,’ I said. ‘Staying at her aunt’s. I’ll tell her you asked after her.’

‘No. Don’t. Just … I just wanted to tell her to be careful. That’s all.’

‘You might have thought of that before.’

‘I just want to be sure she’s keeping safe.’ He tapped the lacy tablecloth with an oversized hand. The table quivered. ‘I miss her. That’s all.’ And with that, he stood up. ‘Thanks for coming to see me, Dora. You’re a good girl … Take care of her, will you? Drum it in, about Paxton, won’t you? Shot in the back of the head. In front of his girl, too. She needs to understand this isn’t a game. Maybe – I think she should think about leaving town.’

Afterwards, I dropped by Xavier’s cottage to tell him about the meeting. I found him, stretched out on the floor of the parlour, ever-present glass of whiskey at his side, and around him a grand confusion of paperwork.

‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘Ignore the papers. They don’t make any sense anyway. They’d probably be improved by a few dirty footprints.’

‘What is it all?’ I asked, looking down at the chaos. There were papers with columns of figures, and others, which looked like official letters, and among them all the scattered pages of what looked like a script, or a play.

He sighed. ‘God only knows. I wish I did. I was trying to work out how I might ever get back to California. The climate here is getting me down, Dora. Not to mention the brutality. I finally remembered who that poor man, William Paxton, was.’

‘Oh, you did?’

‘I liked him, Dora. We all did. I remembered we snuck out of school a couple of times – there was quite a gang of us; we used to play stink-base down by the brewery. You know stink-base?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s an American game.’

‘Oh, it’s a great game. You all have to hide in the first place and then one of you has to chase after the …’ He sighed. ‘He was a good sport in any case … Are you busy, Dora? Shall we have a drink?’

I had come to talk to him about Lawrence, and though Xavier had never met him, he agreed at once that it would be kinder to Inez to make no mention of my tearoom encounter.

‘The sooner she forgets about him, the better,’ Xavier said. ‘And if she’s the same darling girl she always used to be, which I believe she is, then she has the memory and the soul of a gadfly, and she’ll have probably forgotten him by the end of the month. And by the way, I say that with nothing but love, and a whole heap of envy. I wish I could step so lightly through this infernal life. Don’t you?’

To my surprise, I blushed. ‘How do you know I don’t?’

He didn’t reply. He took a slurp of his bourbon and lay back on his couch, the better to examine the ceiling. ‘Give it a week or two. All right, maybe a month or two … I don’t suppose she’ll even remember the poor fellow’s name.’

‘He’ll remember hers,’ I said. ‘He looked wretched. I think he feels terrible.’

‘Serves him right.’

We were talking about California when Inez joined us. He was telling me about the orange groves, and the sunshine, and the golden beaches of Santa Monica, and the big blue ocean.

‘We should move out there,’ Inez said. ‘Don’t you think? Get away from this horrible strike, which never seems to end – and start afresh. I could write my tableaux … If there really is sun all year round, it would be impossible not to feel the inspiration. Don’t you think, Xavier? Why don’t I come back to California with you? We could live in Santa Monica. And I could catch fish …’

He looked over at me. It was my turn on the rocker. ‘What do you think, Dora?’ he said. ‘Want to come to California and catch fish?’

I smiled, because he was smiling. But I wanted to weep. What did he think? That I
wouldn’t
want to go to California and catch fish in the sunshine? I said, ‘Nothing I’d like to do more … But I have to save a little money first.’

‘You sure do,’ said Inez.

As time passed, our late afternoons and early evenings took on a pattern. They were precious hours, before my work at Plum Street began, and before Inez was expected home at her aunt’s house for dinner. I would usually arrive first, rescuing Xavier from his fruitless paper-shuffling at about 5 p.m., and Inez would appear soon afterwards; sometimes having spent the day at the library, often having stopped at Cody’s hardware store for tea along the way. She kept up with news from the strike through Cody, but – just as Xavier predicted – she mentioned Lawrence less and less, and finally, not at all.

For an hour or so each day, there we would sit, the three of us, chewing the cud at Xavier’s fireside, discussing nothing much at all, but discussing it happily, until the moment when the McCulloch car arrived to transport Inez to her home, and I would walk the ten minutes to mine.

Slowly the snows melted and the days lengthened, and the weather softened, and by the start of April, eight months into the strike, that long, cruel winter was just a memory. The wind blew gentle and warm off the long prairie wheatgrass, and in the grey scrubland, wildflowers burst into beautiful colour, and in the trees green leaves sprouted … And still the strike dragged on. And the killing continued. And the little general tightened his iron grip on our little town, and filled our jails to bursting. There was not even the faintest pretence any longer that General Chase and his ‘peacekeeping force’ were anything more than an added security arm for the rich coal company. Picket lines were beaten back by the general’s forces so that fresh workers could be brought in by train from the East; and while, just a few miles out of town, the striking miners grew hungrier, angrier, more desperate, and the Union coffers ran dry, the company’s mine operators continued to pump out coal regardless.

It seems extraordinary to me, looking back, that so much could have changed in my life in so little time. But, by the start of that April, Inez and I had only known each other nine months, and yet the world without our friendship seemed unimaginable to me: ancient history. It is contradictory, and perhaps I shouldn’t admit it, when there was so much violence in the air, and with poor William’s murdered body still fresh in its grave, but this short period – spent by the fireside with my new friends – was the closest I had come to happiness in many years. In as long as I could remember, in fact.

And then three things happened.

1) Somebody shot young Cody as he stood behind his cashier’s desk at the hardware store on Maple Street. The store’s owner arrived to find Cody slumped over the counter, his thin body in a lake of blood, and the top half of his head blown off. The cash till was unopened, and full of dollars.