The Bully of Order (37 page)

“I heard some.”

“Like what?”

“Boyerton's dead.”

“That's true.”

“And you killed him.”

“I'll never see the eagle's nest. Never see the heights.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Somethin I said to Macklin once, talkin redemption.”

“They're gonna hang you for this. Won't be any talk of redemption or anything else, I promise you that. They catch you—”

“If they catch me.” I pulled the boat higher onto the shore and shouldered my bag. Kozmin was already walking away by the time I'd gained solid ground. “You waited for me, and now yer leavin?”

“I'm not leavin. Yer followin.”

“What've you got to eat?”

“Filet mignon and stuffed goose.”

“My stomach doesn't take to goose.”

“Your stomach's as stupid as the rest of you. I don't have no goose.”

Kozmin smelled sharply of liquor and rotting meat, and his eyes followed mine wherever I looked.

“Yer father's waitin for us.”

I stopped. Wet boots, numb toes. Apples knocking against my insides to be let out.

“He's a mile on the other side of the hill,” Kozmin said.

“I don't want to see him.”

“C'mon. Maybe he'll show you yer eagle's nest.”

I looked at the skiff, thought: Should I push it out? I was being followed—where would I go? Funny Kozmin saying that about him showing me the nest.

“Just c'mon.”

I walked behind Kozmin, into the woods. I wanted to dry my feet is all.

T
artan had been walking
for an hour and he could still smell the river through the trees, tangy like rotting berries or the stale sweat of a whore. Bellhouse and the others were inland, making the rounds through the log camps, like they'd find the boy that way. They didn't want to leave the roads; they were afraid. Advance, through the trou de loup. Log camps aren't for anyone but slaves, and you won't find the hunted on the roads. Quarry has a sharp eye for dark shelters, but also for other quarry. They gather like shavings of metal stuck to a greasy magnet.

The Soke, a troggy village populated by the maimed and the mutinous, low-graders, the sickbrained. When you give up, you go to the Soke. Cherquel Sha had told Tartan how to find the trail but wouldn't come with him. There were rumors of leprosy.

Woodsmoke filled the trees, and Tartan held his hand up and passed through like he was walking through the doorway of a circus tent, lifting the flap, and entered the village. Small, tilting shanties were braced to the trees and to stumps to keep the walls from falling down, the roofs from caving in. Centralized among the shacks was a larger U-shaped structure, two stories tall and set on pilings. Colorful curtains covered the windows, and the doors, one red and one blue, were closed to the day. Rows of empty bottles sat neatly on the upper railing, and Tartan thought that when the sun shone on the place, it must be pleasant to see. Bills were posted on the wall, warrants and public notices. If Robin Hood lived, Tartan thought, I'd find him in there fletching an arrow and sniffing at his bags of gold coin. Skiffs and a few canoes were stowed in the trees around the building and underneath. Hand tools were scattered where someone had been digging what appeared to be a root cellar or a grave for a horse. Regardless of its purpose, it was now a pond among many, unique only in its geometry. Where the round pond is common, the square pond is king. Plank walkways went here and there, but they weren't elevated like in town; they were just thrown down, and in places you could see where the old planks had sunk and rotted and others had been thrown down on top. The ground was boggy and cut with fissures where fresh water ran among the moss and ferns.

A man in a calico shirt and tin pants came strutting out of one of the shacks with his boots untied and braces hanging. He stopped when he saw Tartan and looked behind him at the doorway, said something. A woman in a dusty black dress stepped out, and the man waved her back. She ignored him and came out and stood beside him. Tartan lifted his arm, and the man did the same.

“The hell you come from?” the man said. He had a beard and was wearing a broad-brimmed hat with a porcupine-quill band.

Tartan pointed behind him.

“You come from the cave?” the woman said.

“He didn't come from the cave,” the man said.

“Where else, then?”

“What cave?”

“He's from town,” the man said. “Look at him.”

“I followed the river. Found the trail.”

“You found the trail. Fuckin road is what it is. Trail. I'll tell you, Dar that filthy Irish son of a bitch Potter and his fuckin parties and bringin folks out here, he'll be the end of us. We want to see you, we'll fuckin invite you. Fuckin send a fuckin card.”

“Who's Potter?” Tartan asked.

“Who'n the fuckin slint're you?”

Before Tartan could answer, the woman said, “I'll feed him.”

“You'd feed the devil.”

The woman smiled. Her teeth were surprisingly white, and too big for her mouth. “Come with me.”

Tartan didn't trust her kindness. She didn't seem to be used to offering it.

More men came out of the other shacks, and a few children. The woman in the black dress caught him by the arm and dragged him away from the curious mob and into the darkness of her home.

The table had three chairs around it, and there were dried flowers in a vase against the wall. An oil lantern was burning over the stove. Some kind of meat was stewing in a cast iron pot. The woman pointed to the table, and Tartan sat down. The woman ladled water from a copper cistern next to the stove and poured it over the meat. The man with the untied boots came inside and sat down at the table.

“There's another way to get here, by boat. Why didn't you take a boat?” the man asked.

“How do you know I didn't?”

“I fuckin don't, but you didn't, did you?”

“No, I didn't. I figured the one we're after, he'd be on foot.”

“That's what yer doin, eh? What'd he do, this one yer huntin?” the man asked.

“Murdered a man.”

“Who?”

“Charlie Boyerton.”

“With the mill?”

“The same.”

“What're they payin?”

“Quite a lot.”

“Interestin figure, that.”

The woman took down a tin plate and served Tartan and gave him a fork. He took out his own knife and said thank you. The man watched him intently, like it was his dinner he was eating, and maybe it was.

“You already had yours, Salem,” the woman said.

“I didn't say nothin about wantin more.”

“You were thinkin it. I can see it in your eyes. Why don't you go do what you were doin before you stopped doin it?”

“I didn't have nothin to do. I was just goin to see if Law had started workin on my boat yet.”

“Whose boat?”

“Yours.”

“That's right.”

“Didn't even have my damn boots lashed on.”

Tartan cut off a piece of the gristly meat on his plate and looked at it for a moment before putting it in his mouth. It was bear.

“He's picky,” Salem said. “You see that, Dar? He's picky.”

“He ain't picky. He ain't sure what it is. I cooked it, and I couldn't tell you where it come from.”

“I don't mind bear,” Tartan said. “Just been a while.”

“That's right,” Salem said. “Big damn bear.”

“You know a man named Bellhouse?”

“I do.”

“I work for him.”

“He's out here?” the woman said.

“He is.”

“Might be a day to keep indoors,” Salem said.

Tartan chewed. He was hungry, but he didn't know if he was hungry enough to eat what was on his plate. He cut it into small pieces and worked at it a little at a time.

The woman slid her chair next to him and sat down, close enough to touch his leg. “You're the one they call Tartan then, aren't you? Bellhouse's big man.”

“I am.”

“Salem calls me Dar, short for Darlene.” She smiled, and her eyes went watery in the lantern light. “My husband passed recently.”

Tartan gnawed at the leathery hunk of bear steak and worried that if he didn't spit it out or swallow it, he might throw up. His teeth were coated with grease, and his tongue was sticky.

“Crushed by a widowmaker. Didn't feel a thing, they tell me. He was an angel.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I thank you.”

“He got stabbed in the neck by a three-hundred-pound whore for walkin on the bill,” Salem said.

Dar pretended to be shocked. “We all need stories to remember our loved ones by.”

“Be better to forget,” Salem said. “The man was a syphilitic turd.”

“Three months to the day,” Dar said. “Been lonely here come nightfall.” She and Salem sat and watched Tartan finish his food, and then Dar took his plate.

Salem scooted back in his chair and cleared his throat. “Can you write?”

“I can.”

“We got paper, Dar?”

“Yes, but I haven't any ink. It all dried up when I wasn't payin attention.”

“I got a pencil. Fetch the paper for me.”

Dar went into a doorway at the rear of the shack. Salem dug around in his jacket and came out with the stob of a carpenter's pencil. “You can write a letter for me, can't you? After Dar fed you and all.”

“I suppose.” Tartan wiped his knife clean on his pant leg and then sharpened the pencil.

Salem leaned forward and watched him carefully. “Yer good at that.”

“You're only as sharp as yer pencil.” Tartan smiled but didn't look up from his work. “Who's the letter for?”

“It's to my mother. She knows I don't write em. She's probably too old and blind now to read em at all. Somebody'll have to do it for her.”

Dar came back with a sheaf of paper.

Salem snatched a sheet from the top and slapped it down in front of Tartan. “Start with ‘Dear Mother.'”

Tartan did what he was told. Salem sat and pondered for a moment and then began.

“Your birthday in 1824 suggests that your life has covered the greater part of our century's history and that your illustrious ancestors were patient factors in shaping its glorious destiny, and call to mind—

“You get all that?”

Tartan ignored him until he'd finished. He had fine handwriting and enjoyed showing it off. If you get one thing from childhood you're proud of and good at, something you enjoy, you're lucky. “Go ahead,” he said. “I'm ready.”

Salem nodded and went on:

“That it?”

“Yep.”

“He don't have any children that he counts,” Dar said.

“Lucky, is what that is,” Salem said.

“You go by Salem but yer Christian name is Louis?” Tartan said.

“People known me as Salem for as long as people knew me as the other. Not like yer name is really Tartan, either.”

“No, I was born under a different flag.”

“You're probably a Billy or a Samuel,” Dar said. “Or Issac, is it Isaac?”

Tartan ignored her. “Why'd you want to lie to her in the letter?” Tartan asked.

“She's old. She don't know what I'm doin out here, and she don't need to.”

Tartan considered this. “She'd likely prefer the truth.”

Dar's friendliness evaporated all at once, and she picked at a scab on her hand and glared at him. “You been fed and you been put to work and now you finished that too. How long you plan to stay?”

Tartan had the sense he was seeing her for herself, and all the pieces fit: the dress, the big mouth and teeth, the bear meat. “I'll be goin.”

“You say you're part of a posse?”

“No. The sheriff has his own show. We're no part of it.”

“What's his name who yer huntin?”

“A boy, Duncan Ellstrom.”

“How old?”

“Sixteen or seventeen.”

“Old enough to hang?”

“Not for me to say.”

“They'll hang him though.”

“Most likely they will.”

“Aren't you gonna ask us if we've seen him?”

“I don't believe you would've asked me to write a letter if you were hidin somethin.”