The Clearing (17 page)

Randolph noticed that as the housekeeper served supper, she watched Lillian closely. His wife was affectionate, even flirtatious; she challenged him to play cards, and after an hour of gin, she mentioned artfully that she was tired and would go to bed early. In the morning, the smiling mill manager put tonic in his hair and wore a freshly ironed shirt for the first time in days, pulling out the chair grandly for his wife when she came to the plain kitchen table. May, standing by the stove, caught his eye and put a hand over her careful grin, causing him to redden like a schoolboy.

In the middle of breakfast, Randolph heard boots on the porch and looked up as his brother came in. Byron stopped short when he saw Lillian. He glanced quickly at Randolph, then walked over and bent to kiss her on the cheek. She held his face in her hands a moment and looked at him.

“How are you, Byron?”

He straightened up. “Not bad for a sawmill cop.”

“I’ve heard you’re married now. When can I meet her?”

“As soon as you like. She’s a nice, patient woman.” He smiled when he said this.

“She’d have to be to stay with you. Is hunting and riding horses still mostly what you care about?” She pushed away a chair from the table and motioned for him to sit in it.

“I leave the horses to Randolph nowadays.”

“Really?” She looked at her husband, who shrugged. “The last time I saw you, you were on Pretzel, that big bay of yours. Didn’t you ride a horse out west?”

Byron looked over her head and through the rear door for a moment. “I rode one from Oklahoma to Mexico, and when it died under me I walked to town and bought a used Ford.”

Lillian shifted in her chair and frowned. “Were you after a criminal?”

“Sort of. What have you been doing these past few years, duchess? I’m surprised you don’t have a brood of kids to boss around.”

“Maybe some day,” she said quickly. “Right now I’ve come down South to keep an eye on brother here.”

“How long will you be staying?”

“Oh, as long as the trees last, I imagine.” She reached across the table for Randolph’s hand, who gave it to her, forcing a smile. “And what about yourself?”

“More or less the same.”

“And then?”

He stood up and adjusted his gun belt. “That’s what we’re all wondering, isn’t it. Maybe I’ll go into vaudeville. I’m learning lots of songs.”

“You already know a lot of songs. You don’t have a piano out here in the swamps, do you?”

“No, a piano would warp shut in all this dampness. Rando has taken up accordion though.” His head jerked toward his brother. “I have to talk to you about something, outside.” He tipped his hat at Lillian, and the men walked out.

“Byron Aldridge, I’ve still got a lot to say to you,” she called after them.

He did not smile. “I’m sure I’ll hear all of it before long. It’s good to see you.”

Randolph followed into the front yard, stepping over a brimming rut into the lane. “She’s really glad to see you.”

“Rando, I know that. God, she doesn’t seem a day older than the last time, and still fiesty. She looks like she could brain a mule with her hymnal.”

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

Byron motioned to the house with his eyes. “Is she staying out here?”

Randolph laughed. “Would you?”

“Then she’s in town? At the Bellanger?”

“Yes, or she will be in a day or so.”

“Word will get around who she is, and that’s something you don’t want. Buzetti will find out.”

The mill manager opened his mouth and looked back at the house. “Good Lord. I didn’t think.”

Byron pulled a cigar from a vest pocket and struck a match, barely able to connect with the flame. His brother reached up and steadied his hand. “If she’s determined to stay, set her up in New Orleans. At least she won’t be nesting down right in the middle of them.”

“How much should I tell her?”

“Enough to make her lock her doors at night.” A shout racketed across the open yard, and Byron turned toward the barracks where two men wearing union suits stood next to a stump, pounding each other in the chest as though chipping ice.

September 7, 1923
Nimbus Mill
Poachum, Louisiana

Father,

The new planers have been installed and the siding that comes
out of them is like bu fed red granite and “most pleasing to the
eye,” as Mother used to say. After the Gulf cypress is all cut out,
no one will ever know such lumber again, unless we send a piece
to a museum. The price is up one dollar a thousand just this
week.

Byron listens to me. I sense a slow change of heart in him for
the better and hope that his war wounds are healing. Though new
men come into the camp weekly and fights erupt at the saloon with
regularity he hasn’t seriously hurt anyone.

I’ve been forced to hire again from the east Texas mills that
have cut out their tracts. These hands are generally single and
totally undomesticated, but their arms and backs are like iron.
Unfortunately, this quality extends to their heads as well. These are
poor people who are as hard as the lives they’ve lived, but, all in all,
worth the expense. I’m continuing the policy of paying them in scrip
redeemable in goods at our commissary, to keep them in camp. They
live well enough, considering that part of their pay is shelter, fuel,
water, and electricity. For anyone who cares for those things, it’s
better than living in a pasture. I must say that labor is much cheaper
and less demanding hereabouts than in our part of the world. The
larger, older mills in this region have better men, family men, and
they keep them. I could use fewer savages in camp.

I make a point of visiting with Byron every day. We keep
waiting for the gangsters to do something, which is like waiting to
be struck by lightning. He says he is sorry that you are not feeling
well. That is something, at least.

Your loving son,
Randolph

He had rented a suite at the St. Charles in New Orleans until Lillian could find a suitable house to rent. After settling her in, he took a train back to Poachum and arrived at the mill after dark, exhausted, yet still having business to see to in his office. He rode the horse up to the main building and settled in at his desk.

A hard, steady wind kicked up from the south, pushing a tide that crept into the mill yard like pooling blood. He was totaling accounts when from across the compound he heard Galleri’s high, excited voice calling out for Byron. He dropped his pencil and clattered down the steps to where the horse stood tethered to a spigot. The gelding began to walk toward a storm of voices coming from the white side of the saloon and when the pop of a small pistol punctuated the general racket, the animal fell into a trot. In the moonless clearing Randolph caught sight of his brother carrying a shotgun, and he reined the horse up hard, forcing it to stumble away from what it heard.

“By,” he called.

Byron stopped. Down at the saloon, someone was shrieking,
“Gott im Himmel.”

“What?”

“Do you need the gun?”

His brother motioned to the saloon. “Listen to them in there.” Another shot popped, followed by a fresh eruption of hollering. The kerosene light spilled through the windows, and the screams were voices in flames.

Randolph dismounted and put his hand on Byron’s shoulder. “Maybe, if you let it run its course, it’ll just work out. These events are, well, they’re natural, and you’re always interfering.”

Byron put the shotgun’s butt plate on the top of his boot and looked down, leaving Randolph no way of seeing what was in his eyes. “I don’t
know
what to do. You’re telling me to just stand here?”

“I’ve never been in a battle. I don’t know how it is. I don’t understand.” He took back his hand. “I’m just worried about you.”

“You want me to stand here.” Byron looked back at the dark house where they both knew his wife was listening. “Kind of an experiment.” Ten or twelve voices rose up in rage and a table flew out of the saloon’s dim doorway. “You want me to believe in ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Well, I do believe it. But what about those fellows?”

“Let’s go back to your porch and sit down.” He dropped the reins of the horse, which turned completely around and then stood stock still. The men walked back to Byron’s house and sat on the steps. After a minute Galleri appeared in the saloon’s doorway and began screaming like a woman. Four rapid reports from a large-caliber pistol followed, and men began flying out of the door and dropping from windows like hornets escaping a burning hive. The mill manager’s heart sank, and he suddenly felt both frightened and foolish.

The old doctor came hobbling up, his shoes and pants on, his galluses pulled over gray long johns. Since Sydney Rosen had arrived in Nimbus he’d kept his ears open for shouts and gunfire. “I can’t go down there, you know, until someone disarms those sons of bitches.”

Byron turned to his brother. “Now?” The word was barely audible.

Randolph looked away, then stood up, and the three of them walked toward the holes of light down at the end of camp, arriving in front of the saloon as two men dragged someone out onto the front porch—the German chief engineer, who’d been shot several times. He was glossy with blood and gasping out in a pleading voice what sounded like prayer.

The doctor knelt beside him and touched each bullet hole, lifted off the engineer’s short-brimmed cap, stood, and looked back to his own little house, pulling on his white beard. “Maybe ten minutes.”

“There’s nothing you can do?” Randolph asked. “Surely there’s something. My God, he’s our engineer.”

The doctor leaned against a post. “He needed a little preventive medicine,” he said, staring at Byron.

The big German’s eyes grew wide and blind, his lips moving in the old language of death, trying to say the last thing that mattered, and the mill manager got on his knees and put an ear to his lips, surprised to hear, of all things, the thinnest thread of song. A mixed-race gang of tree cutters folded their arms and watched, and a boilerman took off his hat. When the engineer stopped breathing, a tingling panic rose through the mill manager, and placing his hands down on the engineer’s chest to shake him alive, he felt only the dead, flowing movement of inert flesh. He then sat up and stared for a long time, saying at last, “Someone wake up the carpenters.”

Galleri stepped out onto the porch, his hands wrapped in his dirty apron. He gave Randolph a look of restrained reproach. “You gonna ship this one back to Germany?”

The mill manager’s mouth fell open.

Byron stepped over the corpse and entered the saloon, where the Italian who ran the card game was thumbing shells into the magazine of a Colt pistol. “What happened?”

The dealer kept feeding in the fat cartridges. “He was, what you say, nuts. He said I did the cheating on him.” Putting down the weapon, he pulled off his fedora, reshaped the crown, and then replaced it, looking at no one.

Inside the door lay a black lumber stacker, moaning, his face pressed sideways against a splash of blood, his left boot nosed into a spittoon. Shivering on the floor next to the bar was a mill hand cradling a broken arm. Byron gestured to him. “What did you see?”

“I didn’t see shit,” the man slurred, staring at his boots. “Mister Hans lost his pay is all I know.”

“Was he drunk?”

The mill hand had the lopsided face of a stroke victim. “It’s Saturday, ain’t it?” Half of the face was joking, the other as serious as a dead man’s.

Byron looked at the dealer. “Who shot first?”

He put out an upturned palm and bunched his fingers. “Hey, he pulls out a two-dollar pistol, sticks it here, sticks it there. Everybody gets the red ass. At me, at him. Next thing he sets it off. Two time. Maybe three.” The Italian lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “He sticks it in my face and that’s when I shot.” He flicked an ash toward the door. “The nigger was
accidenti
.”

“You had to shoot the German four times?”

“Hey, that’s defense of the self.” He crossed his legs and broke the seal on a new deck. “What you worried about?” He gave Byron a sliding smile. “It’s just sauerkraut. I hear you kill more of ’em than me in the war.”

Even the mill hand turned his head, sensing the mistake. “I’ve forgotten your name,” Byron said.

“Vincente. What’s it to you?”

The mill hand began groaning, trying to rise.

Byron said, “Get out of camp now. Tell Buzetti he can send another dealer.”

Vincente smiled out a cloud of smoke. “It’s no gonna work. Buzetti’s my cousin. This is my, how you say,
territoria
.”

Byron walked over to the table. “Listen,” he began, smiling too widely, but he checked himself when he glimpsed Randolph’s empty face looking in from the porch.

“What?” Vincente asked with his mocking smile.