The Bully of Order (4 page)

“He could've stayed,” I called after her.

“No sense in him driving us both to wickedness.”

In my darkest hours I believed myself to be somehow poisonous and that I should never have had children. It pains me to admit that I preferred the window and the rain and the harbor to my son. Nell understood, or seemed to, and she gave me the room I needed. She believed I would come around just as much as I did. I loved deeply the idea of my family, and I promised myself to someday make sure to deliver on that idea. The contract was signed but the goods were in transit, yet to arrive. I was watching the docks. I'd keep watching. And dinner was ready. Dinner was on its way.

T
he
Feather
rolled heavily
with the weight of the lumber filling the hold and stacked on deck. The line from the tug slacked and tightened and slapped the surface of the water and rose dripping, a meaty rope thick as a hambone. Nitz and Burheim were on the foredeck with the
Feather
's crew. Nitz was swinging from the rail of the lifeboat, kicking his feet in the air, while Burheim was angling to get the captain's boy into a corner, but a few of the deckhands had him courteously blocked.

Tartan stood crookedly by himself in the stern and watched the water easily rise up and slip away, the pain in his leg rising and falling with it. The shotgun had been loaded with rock salt. So he should count himself lucky. It was worse than a steam burn, but he was all right. He'd had worse. He'd have that slint of a doctor with the pretty wife clean him up when he got back. It'd make for a long night, waiting for the salt to sweat down. Think of something else, breathe, and think of something else. He'd worked in the now-defunct Meyer mill when he first arrived in the Harbor and the overpowering smell of the lumber on the deck brought back unhappy memories. Nights in the bunkhouse the continuous drone of the mill, of the engines and cutting blades, came through the walls and tricked him into working in his dreams. Not that he liked being out on the water either. He was no sailor. He'd just as soon stay on dry land and keep his water crossings to the bridges. The mud bothered most, but not Tartan. It was easy to catch people if they ran in the mud, and they were ready to give up as soon as they fell. The mud did half the work. Bellhouse said that if Tartan knew how to swim he wouldn't mind the water, but it wasn't the drowning that scared him; it was the swimming darkness that would slide by his legs and nip his fingertips before it swarmed on him and ate him like an apple, one bite at a time.

The tug stood funeral-calm at idle while Bellhouse and the captain were in the wheelhouse. The door was latched, and a golden, somehow nautical light filled the single window, and like the golden light Tartan felt his exclusion fill him absolutely. I should be paid, Tartan thought. I should be able to face the son of a bitch that shot me, even if he did aim low and with rock salt. But no, I'm the second man, never held command. A fox for the traps and lion for the wolves.

When Bellhouse finally opened the door and came out, Tartan expected to see the old man bloody or possibly dead but he was sitting unharmed in his chair with both hands on his desk.

“Not to the ground then?” Tartan said to Bellhouse.

“The bastard's a straight line. We'll let him run. He's sorry as hell for shooting you.”

At Bellhouse's signal a deckhand on the tug began to winch them in. When the two vessels closed, Burheim and Nitz dropped to the deck, and they all went over the rail onto the tug one after the other. Tartan went gingerly, the pain making him swoon, and once he'd boarded the tug he clung to the rail and took a moment to gather his courage. Bellhouse went into the wheelhouse, and moments later the engine was shut down. The wind and the roar of the distant breakers were the only sounds. They drifted away from the
Feather
and waited for the merchant ship to drop anchor, and then they did the same. It was well after midnight, judging by the glow of the moon behind the clouds. They'd wait until dawn to navigate the shoals.

Tartan found a place among the line and tackle and settled in to rest. He took off his pistol and his knife and shoved them behind his back. Nitz and Burheim sat on the massive cleat at the rear of the wheelhouse and pulled their knees to their chests and shared a cigarette. Sometime later one of the deckhands brought them blankets. Tartan watched the clouds and waited for the first drop of rain.

People had called him Michael and Joseph and William before, but it had been Mr. Billings at St. Mary's who bestowed the name Tartan on him, and he'd kept it, allowed it, nudged it along. At the orphanage they'd taught him the value of secondary and tertiary lives. Names were lives. The heart is a light and the body a vessel. They taught him the power of lust and violence. What makes a man willing makes a man weak. Or strong, like Bellhouse was strong, and he could be. God knew Tartan could snap bone, but for now, he was done in, weary to his blood. And Nitz and Burheim were still babbling about one or another of their runs on the Line. What makes a man loud makes a man weak. What makes a man blunt stupid makes a man weak. A hog for the mud, a mule for the traces.

“You shoulda seen it,” Nitz said. “I picked him up and spun him and right when I was about to let go and send him headfirst into the fireplace he bit me.”

“The fuckin badger boy,” Burheim said.

“I slammed him down and I had my thumb in his eye to the root, felt his brain slime go under the nail.”

“Mama.”

“Drippin like I'd had it up a cooze when I finally thwupped it free.”

“And he was dead?”

“Twitchin and pissin in his drawers but not dead, no.”

“Eyeless?”

“One-eyed in Aberdeen, worse than no-eyed in Gaza.” They laughed.

“Shut yer mouths,” Tartan said.

“Apologies, sir,” replied Burheim.

“We're stone,” said Nitz. And save for a little nervous laughter it was finally quiet. The two of them were all of seventeen, and last week Burheim had killed a man at the Alaska Bar and was to stand trial if anyone could be found to come forward as a witness, which was unlikely. Not unless Hank Bellhouse allowed for it to happen. Nitz had been upstairs with his mom and the girls when it happened. Raised by women and carried a preference for boys. Two faces of the same coin. Surely there are children born onto dairies that can't stomach milk. Tartan had been raised by the nuns and Mr. Billings. Mr. Billings had shown him how to do it with women first, and then with men. Asked him which he favored.
The women
,
Mr. Billings
. His hands in his hair, gripping his skull.
Prefer the women, sir.

The mill whistle woke him and he stood and put on his pistol and knife. He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and limped to the bow and pissed. The sky was bluing and the wingflash of birds blinked at the distant shore. He could just make out the shadow of James Rock and the hills beyond. Bellhouse was suddenly beside him, muscling in for a space at the rail.

“Get any sleep?”

“I can sleep anywhere.”

“It's a gift. How's the leg?”

“I'll survive. What'd they pay you, the
Feather
?”

Bellhouse turned his back to Tartan. “A fair amount.”

“Any left over?”

“For you and the boys, sure.”

“I'll be gone for a week or so then. Can you manage by yourself?”

Bellhouse turned and smiled at Tartan, his silver front tooth flashing dimly in the morning light. “Guess I'll just do my best. Try and get by. Where are you off to?”

“Nowhere. Just thinkin with the leg I could use a rest.”

Bellhouse didn't reply and his silence made Tartan nervous.

The glow of the sun was clear to see now, and the water had a shine on it. The
Feather
's crew was pulling anchor, and soon the tug's was doing the same. It was a sweet and victorious ride back to town, but the endless dark forests loomed before them and soon the brackish smells were replaced by the smoke and steam and resinaceous tang of the mills. The roar grew louder and louder and the whistles blew like they knew they were coming.

I
stayed for the whole
summer and never once did my brother, dull fuck squiddler that he is, let me go upstairs to his apartment if Nell was there. He'd say the child was sleeping or that Nell was sleeping or that they were out, but I could hear her moving around. In my mind I saw her naked, the dimples of her ass. Ball warmth and ball heat, the lantern of man. We spent most of our time in his office, with me being introduced to the sick and bleeding on their way to the examination table. “This is my big brother, Matius. He's here visiting from Ohio.”
Nice to meet you. Take care now.
He had an old woman, Miss Eakins, that cleaned and cared for patients before they went home or to the rooming houses. More than once I had to go outside for air, the smells so strong, the screams so loud.

Once a boy was brought to him, eight years old, who had fallen from high in a tree. His body was pulp. His mother and father were there and his older brother. He never opened his eyes and his face was unmarked. They took him home wrapped in bedsheets, and it was only because he was out of blood that he didn't bleed through. Miss Eakins about wore out her mop cleaning up after that. I could see that Jacob was on the penitent road and it was only vanity that kept him there. But he'd always been a soft fool, he'd always wanted people to like him.

With some pushing he let me look over his books. He was making a smart payday off the mills alone, never mind the feverish and the hypochondriacals. I soon planted the seed for him loaning me some money.

“I'd like to set a stake here,” I said. “Prove it up. Make a home, as you've done.”

Behind his smile he looked worried, but flattered. Middle of June and we had a fire going in his little woodstove and out the window the rain was crushing down with such force as to make people stumble and run for cover.

“I won't tell anyone about your situation as a physician, if that's what you're worried about.”

“No, it's not that. I have other plans too. I want to be more than the town doctor.”

“Well, then you should be a doctor first.”

“You can't joke about that. Nell doesn't even know the extent of it.”

“I'm sure she does. By now she does.”

“I'm as qualified as any man here.”

“You can think what you like, but you're not.”

“Four years of university count for nothing to you?”

It was more like three and he told me himself that he'd never gone to class, but I let him believe what he wanted. He had all the books for reference, assemblage and dissemblage. He probably was better than any man here. It was working for him, whatever it was, and I had to admit I admired the swagger it took to be such an open and deplorable fraud.

To teach him I poured whiskey down his throat and kept him away from home. Blabbardly he confessed his dream of buying out his neighbors, his neighbor's neighbor. I told him he could do it. Let's talk to the bank. So we did, beneath smothering hangovers, and soon closed the first of several deals. Not for any kind of bargain—the interest was wicked—but it made him feel big, and while he was high I borrowed a thousand dollars of his newly borrowed money and staked claim six miles east of the populace, near the Wynooche. Most of the good land had been grabbed up years ago but the road was cut, bridge built, going out toward who knew what else if they cut for rails. Tacoma? Seattle? The ferry had a reliable schedule and the necessary draw to manage the slough and sozzle that was the lower Chehalis.

I hired some Finns and they set to building a house and a barn. I got their price down to nothing with a promise that I'd be watching over my brother's affairs and surely there'd be some big doings with all his new properties. They went about strutting, thinking they'd got the best of me, the doltish cocks. I'd put dreams in their heads.

Before I departed I left flowers outside the apartment door for Nell—she would understand why. Jacob's office window was still broken, with boards covering the hole. Most of his patients had turned on him. There'd been whispers of a new doctor who'd come to town. I took my leave, not a moment too soon, and returned once again to Portland to stay with my son and his wife, where I was welcome. I'd got done what I wanted, irons in the fire. Maybe I'd kicked over some tombstones too. Risk makes the muscle of profit. My only regret was that I never saw Nell. I tried the door a few times, but she kept it locked. I could've broken it down, even with Jacob downstairs, but I knew that after what happened before she was most likely waiting in there with a shotgun.

On the journey south I had time to reflect. I concluded that the ones we are closest to in youth, brothers say, we see things differently as the time we spend apart increases. I can't say I know Jacob now. He has softened, and that says a lot because he's never been strong in any case, but his domestic situation and child-rearing responsibilities have left him with a bend in the wrist and joy at the corners of his eyes that honestly I can't stand. I have a boy same as him, but mine is grown. He came to me that way, finding me late, and surprised me half to death when he handed me a letter from his mother. I don't have any romantic ideas about the state of him. He's another man jack in the world, nothing more. I cared for the girl, a woman now, that bore him, but what is he but a flitch. His mother broke my heart. I'll never forgive her for that. Not for anything. With the boy, strange man that he is, staring me in the face I know the extent of her betrayal. Not a problem, honey. All I did was love you and promise you the world, and you stole my heart and all of the good years with the boy. They got names for that, and the devil thought of all of them.

I
told Jacob that soberness
builds on sobriety. I told him that we needed him.