The Bully of Order (34 page)

“It's him. Christ it's him.”

“He's deader'n shit.”

“The killer took his horse. That was the killer.”

“Did you see his face?”

“I barely made out the horse. What're you doin?”

“Seven years.”

“From a dead man. Don't keep the billfold. Don't keep nothin but the green.”

“Closest I ever been to him.”

“Me too.”

“We can't tell a soul, or we'll be shackled and hung in five minutes flat.”

“Let's go home. Don't take the watch.”

“Why would I not take the watch?”

“Because. I shouldn't have to explain that.”

“I'm takin it.”

“You can't keep it.”

“It would pain me to leave it.”

The gold pocketwatch ticks lovingly in his palm.

“The pain of keepin it could be worse.”

“Yer right. Yes, good-bye.”

The watch, tucked back into the coat and patted tenderly. “With all this.” Bills wag in the night. “I'm buyin one of the Dolbeer donkeys and gettin in the woods. I'll be a king.”

“Hire someone to work it and stay home.”

“Even better.”

They stand with crumpled faces and appraise the settled death.

“It's awful, I know, but I still feel that I should give him a kick.”

“You robbed him
already. Let's go. Downhill'll be faster. You'll see. Go on and run. I'll give you a head start.”

“Hell, I can pay someone to race you now.”

Another wag of the bills, a bird flies low overhead.

“Put that shit away. I'll meet you at the bottom.”

“Short-legged fucker. I'm faster than you at full tilt, and I'm steamin along at a mosey.”

Boots on the boards. The night concedes.

S
he sat up in
the dark and let the blankets slip from her shoulders. Light from the street threw ragged but familiar iodine-edged shadows across the ceiling. She knew the weeping willow by shape, sound, and even, if the winds were strong enough, smell. But it was a noise that had woken her. Something was wrong, besides the poultice on her arm, like an oddly wrapped gift, like a Chinese finger trap she'd seen in the junk shop with Duncan, a memory of connections before she'd made the connections themselves. One finger slid inside the woven sleeve, waiting for another. All her days with Duncan now seemed to be a warning.

And it was him; he was the sound. He was yelling for her, and his voice was a shock to her system, a bee sting without the pain. They'd come to an agreement. They were no longer together. She'd promised her father. She didn't know what time it was, but it was late, and all she could think was, Thank God my mother is in Seattle. Then, My father. He must be gone. He wouldn't allow this sort of thing to go on outside his front door.

Teresa lit the lamp, and Duncan finally went silent, but when she heaved open the window, he started yelling again. He stood under their yardlight in the trampled snow like a man on a stage. He had the reins of a black horse in one hand and a pistol in the other. Snow covered the porch roof below her window, and the husks of the sunflower seeds that Miss Dalgleish had tossed out were intermingled with the tracks of birds.

“Teresa, please.”

“Go away.”

“You have to come down.”

She held up her arm so he could see what he had done to her. “No, I don't. Go away.” He turned his back to her and faced the black expanse of the harbor. He kicked at the ground like he was kicking an invisible ball. He dropped the reins and swung the pistol like a bat, raging. He was talking to himself.

She closed the window, and he yelled her name again and again. The tinny repetitive sound itched in her mind like her bandaged arm itched. To herself: “Shhh, Duncan. I'm coming.”

She went downstairs, filled with apprehension, quiet as cotton in her bare feet and nightgown. If he asked to marry her, she had to say no, but she didn't want to. She didn't want any trouble. A fine way to live, without fuss. Pets do that. But she understood the facts as her father had explained them to her: She was young, and Duncan wasn't the man to stand beside her and carry her for the rest of her life. He had just been the one for when she was young. In another world he could be her husband. In this, the answer was no. Angry now, she wondered why with Duncan it always came down to getting away with something. It would be nice to be in the right for once, to be proud. Why couldn't he be someone she could be proud of?

She quietly unlocked and opened the door, and Duncan picked up the reins and carefully looped them to the fence rail and passed through the gate. He still had the pistol in his hand, and when he saw her looking at it, he slid it into his belt. She recognized the horse but it didn't make sense that he had it. He mounted the stairs and looked at her arm.

“He's not coming back.”

“Who? Who isn't coming back?”

His eyes were wild and his skin was white. He looked like a ghoul. The porch boards creaked as he came closer to take her hand. She pulled away.

“I shot him.”

Then she knew what he'd done. “Where is he?”

“In the street where I left him.” His eyes were fixed on her arm. “I'm sorry.”

“He's dead?”

“We'll be to San Francisco before anyone can catch us. We need money.”

“I'm not leaving.” She didn't want to believe him, but there was her father's horse, and there was blood on his hand, his sleeve. “My brother is awake.”

“If he wants to stand in our way, tell him to come down here. I'll kill him too.”

She pushed him in the chest, and he stumbled back off the porch onto the stairs. “I'm going to scream if you don't leave.”

“Please, Teresa.” He was crying.

She looked into the face she no longer knew or could understand and screamed; she screamed as loudly as she was able, and didn't stop until he was gone. He didn't take the horse. He ran, and when he passed under the streetlight she could see the bottom of his boots caked in mud, his coat flapping, and the glint of the pistol as he took it out of his belt. Then he rounded the corner and was gone. The neighbors came out, old Mr. Jessup and his wife, Audrey, and after Teresa told them what she believed had happened to her father, they sent for the sheriff. Oliver's door was locked, and he wouldn't open it. Even after they'd found the body, and the sheriff and two deputies were downstairs and Miss Dalgleish had made coffee and heated biscuits, he wouldn't get up. Teresa stood in his doorway, begging him. “Oliver, please. Something's happened to Father. Please open the door. Please.”

S
ome things I've learned:

—Once slowly is better than hurried through twice for carelessness.

—No errand is so trivial as to be done shoddily (if I could only live by this rule, I would be a man illimitable).

—Practice things in your mind to prepare your body, things as simple as walking in mud and on muddy planks.

—Forget dreams upon waking, they're not for the daylight page.

—Anoint thy skin to avoid chapping and chafing.

—Change your skivvies every day, and most importantly: never turn down trim, no matter how rough it may be. It all gets bejewelled in the mind.

Lacking a true scholarly streak, I make lists. Take notes as needed. Addenda adagio.

Presented: A face expertly shaved. A face patted dry and grinning. My teeth, my best feature. If only the rest of me could be my teeth.

Toiletries scattered around the washbasin. Disorder breeds disorder. Breeding is disorder, breeding breeds disorder. Nothing orderly about it except that most fundamental notch and peg of it. Gophers and gopher holes. The thought of rodent sex, then human sex. A childish smile bubbled up from my neck as I straightened out the lotions and balm and ointment for my pocked and pitted skin on one side, along with the colognes I never used but liked to smell, and the brushes and combs and razor on the other. When finished I cyclopsed my visage in the mirror and was confronted with the fact that my father dies only once, and today is the day that we bury him. Take stock and prepare: the presentation shall be grief mainly, with a fair portion of bravado. I'll have to be the man of the house, the half a man. One eye crying half a tear.

To me it seemed that my father could disallow the weather and keep the sunlight away out of spite.

Today we remember a stubborn man, a man (cough) illimitable. I am a vessel that has been filled with his knowledge, and screwed tightly down with his lonely mistrust. Separate as cream from milk. Some see independence—he did build one of the most profitable mills on the West Coast outside of San Francisco—and he owns half the town, and you, friends, owe him your dark sorry lives. Thank him. Lick his oily boots. But I have to ask, how did you see him? What was he to you? One can never tell. I used to believe that people with red hair saw the world in red, and people with black hair saw it black, and blond and so on. I saw it half black, which is gray, and that seemed my particular method. Black hair and half an eye set. Maybe he was a great man. Did you know he liked to throw knives in his study when he went on a drunk? Teresa and I would listen at the door, jump at the sound of the blade going home. I spied him once stumbling upstairs in his skivvies with a bottle. He stopped suddenly and leaned against the wall—his head unknowingly placed perfectly between two portraits, one of my great-uncle, the other of my grandfather—and scratched his ass and then smelled his fingers. He seemed to take great pleasure in it. At church he never sang but moved his mouth like he was, not a unique trait, but for a man so mighty, it seems strange now. What doesn't seem strange today? I have to find an assassin, or
the
assassin, rather. A cull for a killer, killer for a cull.

Perhaps the sun will show its face today, and we'll all look up and know that Charlie Boyerton is dead and that we, meaning me, Oliver Morris Boyerton III—there is no
we
here—is alive and, if you haven't been informed yet, has just inherited the post of Most Powerful Man in the Harbor. The Head Slint. King Buggo. I'll keep an eye on you.

Yes, it was fear I felt. And true sadness, and loneliness. I was alone now. I would project these emotions today and part of the day tomorrow, and then carve them off at the joint. I would've liked to be better prepared. Not that I could've practiced. I slithered as far out from the shadow as I dared just working in the mill, supervising the payroll. Maybe I could've learned a song to sing at the graveside, a sad, very sad song, but this coward of a murderer, assassin, ureter of death, had left me no time, no choice. But then again, if I were to shoot someone, I would shoot them in the back as well. Father, did you hear the shot? I don't fault the murderer for the angle. The murdered won't care one way or the other. Father, did you feel the bite? I wouldn't have wanted to see his face. Thinking this, a sick feeling washed over me, warm as piss.

I thought of how I preferred to cover Mabel's eyes with my hand when I was near ejaculation, only to reveal myself to her at the very zenith. Surprise! Give me a million little deaths, at ten dollars a pop. My father is rumbling around in my balls today. No, but of course he's in a casket. Of course he's dead. I'm not saying he's actually in my scrotum, standing like a man between two boulders. No, it's the essence of him, the lingering mist and rage. I'm ready for a ruckus time, a big almighty drunk. Bring cash and plenty of it. Mabel might have some toot to share.

From the dresser I gathered a stack of bills and folded them in half and crammed them into my front pocket. My watch looked up at me from the drawer; Father's was stolen. I lifted it and gasped. The time. Christ, the time. I won't be late, not so late at least. I could hear my sister banging around in the hallway. Like the goddamn harridan she is. It was her fault, anyway. That was the rumor, and like most rumors it would probably be proved true. At least it's not my fault. Father told her when she came home never to see him again. Her winky little arm.

“You're my little bird. My dove.” Father's hair was loose and flopped over his brow.

“I told him, Daddy. I told him I couldn't see him again.”

“And he did that to your arm?”

“I slipped. It wasn't him. He wouldn't hurt me.”

Then Father took her hand gently and studied the bruises spreading like ink and then of course not like ink. There was a thumbprint. I saw it. Father saw it. But no, he wouldn't hurt you. Poked out my fucking eye. And now to truly beat the horse and the band and everything else, he's shot and killed my father. What exactly is a Duncan Ellstrom, and how can it be so destructive? Someone should put him down, and they will. The hunt has already started. I won't have mercy, but I will not press because, quiet now, he's done me a favor. It pokes its ugly head from the muddy pond. Yes, in his way, he's repaid the eye.

I could see beginning to enjoy all of this, from gunshot to grave, manhunt to murder. For a murder, mind you. We murder the murderer, and it's justice. We're not animals. People delight in vengeance like cake. Suck it from their fat fingers. If I ride along with the hunters, the lawmen, people will see me once and for as long as they can bear as an implement of righteousness, a deadly blade singing a very sad song, an old song where everybody knows the words, more of a moan, really.

I absently touched the wad of cash in my pocket.

More of a moan. I could fuck a knothole, and might if the funeral took too long. I squeezed my father-filled balls until they hurt. I had to stop thinking about the dirtiness. I'd been crossing all sorts of lines as of late, filthy deviant. If Father knew, he'd kill me. Sorry, no, won't happen. Is it patricide if it's not the son that kills the father? Well, son, the father is still dead. My father. The mirror was also there, and it told me that my teeth are my best feature. It told me to quit smiling; it's a day of mourning. Stone face. I couldn't manage it, not any of it.