Waltzing In Ragtime (34 page)

Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime

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“Insanity?”

“We can offer to house the brothers in an asylum for the
criminally insane — tell them it’s a delicate, family matter. They will be put away. Your sister can have a quiet recovery. Mrs. Whittaker and yourself can put it behind you.”

“But the criminals themselves — they’ll never agree.”

“I will endeavor to convince them.”

“The family has been very generous about this.”

Cal Carson smiled. “Have they, Mr. Hopkins?”

“My name is Moore.”

Cal Carson smiled, showing his canine teeth and his advantage. “Of course, sir. The grieving husband, looking for his runaway wife.”

“Disappeared. She has disappeared. Not run away.”

“Like a lost lamb. A tragedy.”

Darius Moore’s fingers itched for the feel of the prisoner’s throat. “Do you two want to hang? I can see to it!”

At last, silence. “Cal —” Ezra finally called, nervously. “We are the ones in jail. We should listen.”

Cal sat as straight as his crippled side would allow and stared Darius Moore down. “Sure. We’re good at listening. Our previous boss told us mighty good, useful stories. And maybe you want Mr. Hopkins to die, sir? In Chinatown? Maybe after he pushed that crib girl out the window? With Mr. Hopkins and his filthy little habits departed, the respectable Mr. Moore can come up out of that dead soul to find his beloved wife, yes?”

Moore exhaled. A bargain. He was good at bargains, before the heroin and that woman’s hair took over, made him stupid and careless. Made Hopkins stupid and careless, not him. He could have kept them separate, could have made Olana a good husband, even, if it weren’t for her wildness, if she hadn’t brought home Matthew Hart. Or if these two imbeciles had killed him properly in the first place, so that plan … her turning to him in her grief, would have worked. Now everything was coming apart. “What do you want?” he asked the brothers impatiently.

“The four thousand we already risked our necks for. Each,
now that we’ve lost our middleman to that woman’s damned sword. And of course, our freedom.”

Cal Carson watched Darius Moore slump back in his chair. Even he would have sworn he looked like a beaten, grieving man. Did he want the ranger’s woman still? This badly? Was it the money? Maybe he should have said two thousand. Were they all going to go down together?

“Her hair is gone,” Moore whispered.

“What, sir?”

“I have to find her. I’ll give you ten thousand if you’ll help me find her. You kill him. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But help me find her. I have to have her back.”

God almighty, she was a sickness in him. Cal Carson leaned close. “Sure, sure, we’ll find her. The nightgown, that must be what McPeal was babbling about, why the woman fought so hard for it. Just get us out of here, Mr. Moore, and we’ll help you track her with it.”

“The nightgown?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. We’ll do that. Exactly that. First, you must sign yourselves over to me as your guardian.”

“What?”

“Then, when you plead yourselves insane, I can get you out.”

“You can?”

“I’ve already convinced the family, who want to spare the old woman. I’ll bring you to the hospital myself, then Whittaker will wash his hands of you. I’ll return in a week’s time to grease you out.”

“Not with any of our ten thousand as greasing!” Ezra roared.

“You drive a hard bargain, Carson. McPeal warned me about you. All right. Not with any of your ten thousand. Help me to find them and the full amount is yours.”

The attendants of Agnews had never seen such a joyful locking up. The new inmates, dirty, ugly, and raving, had been almost
comical in the way they hung onto the finely dressed gentleman, calling him “dear guardian,” thanking him for their deliverance, asking him to write and take them on outings as if they were children being sent off to school.

Only when they were being led to their cells, the well-dressed man’s demeanor changed. He took the warden’s arm.

“They are dangerous. Murder is not beyond them. I want your staff to be very careful.”

“Of course, sir.”

“I resent this duty my family has required of me. They should be swinging from the gallows. I don’t believe in coddling.”

“We don’t coddle here, sir.”

“If anything should happen to them, because of their own violent natures, of course, during the three-year term of advance payment, I would not want any of the money refunded. I am that grateful to you for taking them in. So very grateful.”

“Ease your mind, Mr. Hopkins. And your good family’s, sir.”

Darius Moore sat back in the cab’s privacy. Done. He would never be so stupid again. What made him think he needed any of them? He could work alone. He would always work alone, now. He’d get the nightgown. He would find out why the old woman fought so hard for it.

thirty-five

On the Sunday after Lavinia’s birth they walked the path to the mission at St. Pitias to have her baptized. Olana had never been in the small mission chapel’s painted adobe walls. There were few symbols she knew of as Christian, a cross here and there punctuating the more prevalent spiral designs in deep blues, reds, turquoise. When the sad-eyed friar began, Olana gave up her child to the women who were her godmothers and to Matthew, who was Lavinia’s godfather and father both. Matthew was so solemn, smiling only when Possum nuzzled under his arm.

On the way home, his sharp eyes darted above the ocean, watching.

“Osprey,” he whispered.

The brown and white hawk gleamed slick and powerful as it dove into the water. Matthew took Olana’s hand, pulled.

“Come with me!” he said, breathless.

“Where?”

He pointed, as he always did, with his chin. “Closer to him. On the rocks above the caves.”

His mother spoke, a gentle counterbalance to his excitement. “It would be a hard climb for Olana, Matthew.”

Olana felt the burden of the cloths between her legs, still
catching the afterbirth blood. “I can carry you and the baby, ’Lana,” he offered.

She looked for her midwives’ nod of approval, then echoed it, making his light eyes lighter. Or did the sky do that? Matthew caught her up, not only in his arms, but in the exhilaration of his voice, his quick, even strides, that slowed only when his grandmother and mother, with Possum on her back, fell behind. When they reached the rocks, Matthew was drenched in a glistening sweat. He placed her on his discarded coat and took the baby from her arms. Then he took Possum from his mother’s hold and led her to the edge of the rocks. The women watched, drawing close to either side of Olana like sentinels.

The osprey flew in circles over the clear water, over the rising thermal wind currents.
“Tsi:sghwa! Du!”
Matthew summoned. The circles narrowed, spiraled closer. Matthew lifted Lavinia higher, then brought Possum’s hand up until their clasp pointed to the sky. His voice rang out across the water.

Look at my children!
They are daughters!
New!
Born in this new century!
One as beautiful as the Scarlet Tantanger!
One as beautiful as the Hummingbird!
Now! I am as beautiful as the Red Tsugv:tsala:la!
From where my feet stand, on upward, I am beautiful.
I truly am a man!

He began the chant again, then a third and forth time as the osprey’s circles came closer. Olana’s wonder mixed with fear. Her fingers ached for her cooing child, caught fast in her father’s song. What would happen now? The power that his words had over the massive bird seemed so much stronger than the water of the baptismal fount at the mission. Olana shivered there, in the bright sunlight. She felt the women link their arms behind her.

“What does he call himself?” Olana asked them.

“A rainbow,” Annie Smithers answered. “A red rainbow. He is making himself whole again, beautiful again, through his children. He is out of
gv:hnage,
the black. He is out of mourning!” she exclaimed in a voice as excited as a young girl’s. “At last. At last, Matthew.”

The bird glided above their heads, his wingspan the length of a grown man, still playing the thermals, and hardly flapping those wings. Olana could see the glint of water on his feathers, the blood on his talons. Then he caught a northwest wind and headed up the coastline.

Matthew returned. He put the baby back into Olana’s arms. Possum scrambled into the warm spot left vacant against his heart. Olana heard the women arguing behind them.

“Are you sure there’s no Cherokee in the boy, Vita?”

Vita gave out a small, ladylike snort. “You would know better than I, Mama.”

Was it the water’s spray that put more glints of silver in Matthew’s hair? What made his eyes so full of the sky, the sea, it appeared he’d stolen a slice of each?

“Come down,” Olana whispered, taking his hand, pulling him toward her earth, toward the browning blood between her legs.

“I can’t,” he said. “’Lana, I’m so happy.”

They lay together on the beach on the fading afternoon that their lives changed. Possum chased the tide. Olana watched the baby’s golden head rising and falling there against her father’s chest. Lavinia loved lying that way, his even breathing tickling her downy head and making her smile in her sleep. Olana felt her breasts swell with milk at the sight of that smile. They were a family, she realized. A small, perfect family inside Matthew’s larger one.

“I need to go in now,” she whispered. “To help Annie and Vita with supper.” He shifted. She touched the baby’s head. “Stay,” she urged. “The sun is still warm.”

He smiled. “I could stay here forever.”

“Well, don’t do that. Bring the baby in when she needs me!”

He caught her hand, kissed the finger’s joint, just above her garnet circled ring.

Olana only wanted to think of how happy the month since the birth had been for them. She was drunk with the power of her body to bring forth someone so perfect, and then be able to nourish her, help her grow to be the soaring delight of her father.

Did Matthew know he was Lavinia’s father? Olana’d been so frightened that day she’d told him otherwise, frightened that he would never love her for herself, that he would only care for her out of obligation to his child. So foolish, how could she be so foolish? Matthew loved the baby asleep against his heart with a measureless devotion. But if she told him now would this magic season disappear? His women knew, but they were waiting for her to tell him. She must tell him. He was so without guile himself. He would not doubt her word, not even if Lavinia grew into his boots and slung a rifle over her shoulder to protect her father’s sacred grove of sequoia trees. Suddenly, in her mind’s eye, Olana’s daughter did exactly that. She saw Lavinia like she sometimes saw her brother Leland, from behind. She was tall, and as golden and beautiful as Matthew. She hoisted the rifle higher, then disappeared in the shafting light between the giants, before Olana could ask her advice.

Why was she feeling cold, Olana wondered, as she stepped into a house that had never given her anything but warm acceptance. She heard a voice behind her.

“My darling prodigal.”

thirty-six

Olana closed her eyes, heard the women working as usual in the kitchen. She opened them again, hoping he would have disappeared.

“You’re looking well. Even beautiful. Not for long. You’ve been very naughty. Made people laugh at me. Still, I’ve missed you. Had only your hair. It fell apart, disintegrated I caressed it so much. And your nightgown, your favorite one, that I took from your silly aunt? It was woven from a very select herd of merino sheep, the sheep of the mission at St. Pitias. Do you know it? There’s a monk there, who, upon hearing my sad tale, was happy to tell me where I might exert my claim for my prodigal wife.”

His eyes were sparked with yellow. Matthew’s firearms were ready, but where?

“Olana? Is that you?” Vita called from the kitchen.

“Answer,” her husband directed.

She spoke in a breathless whisper. “Couldn’t we go? Now? Darius, I’ll do whatever you want of me —”

She would have. She would have left them all without a word, without a sign, if she could have prevented what the ice around her heart told her was coming. Darius Moore pressed the cold
barrel of the pistol into her spine. Olana heard Matthew’s familiar step on the porch.

“’Lana! You should see how she takes to the water!” he was saying as he came through the door. As she screamed. As Darius Moore lifted her off her feet, crushed her ribcage with one strong hand, and with the other, fired once, again.

The shots. Loud, so loud even Matthew falling, even the grind of his boots against the floorboards, were silenced in the ringing aftermath.

Vita lunged. Moore raised his weapon, shot again. Hit again, although Olana shoved his aim off. Now even the ringing in Olana’s ears silenced. She heard nothing, though Vita Hart went down on the hard floor, skidding into Matthew’s side without any grace at all.

Darius Moore dropped Olana in his fury. His hard boot smashed the side of her head, blackening the room. When it came into focus again, he was circling the Harts slowly, deliberately pointing the smoking gun at Matthew’s temple. He went to one knee beside him. Matthew was shaking except where he held Lavinia against his heart. His eyes closed as if he were one of the friars at their holy vespers, which seemed to infuriate Moore, because he was shouting. What were the words? Olana couldn’t hear. Another shot. Matthew stilled. But Darius Moore fell over, blood emptying from the side of his head.

Annie Smithers stood above them, one of the family’s old Colt Dragoons in her hand. She kicked the body aside as if it were a fallen log on the path to the beach and bent over her kin. Vita rose slowly, pressing her sleeve to her seared cheek.

Olana sensed everything now, from the acrid gunpowder, to the desperation in the women’s voices. Annie’s shot had restored her hearing as surely as the others had taken it away. She approached.

“Give us the baby, darlin’ boy,” Annie Smithers whispered.

Matthew twitched, managed only drowning, guttural sounds that his grandmother somehow understood, answered. “Your mama will be all right, won’t you, Vita?”

“Yes. Matthew, please. Give us the baby.”

He sputtered blood that streaked his mother’s sleeve. When his wild, suffering eyes found Olana, his mouth quivered into a smile. He cradled the baby closer against him.

“Please,” Vita Hart wept. “Matthew, please.”

Lavinia was still. Not minding the blood soaking her blankets. Whose blood? Hers? His? Theirs? Theirs, surely, there was so much of it. Both women continued pleading with Matthew, though he was now as still as the baby. Dying. Lavinia was dead and he was dying.

Olana touched his hair. It was moving, but only because of the breeze from the kitchen. “I’ll take her now, Matthew,” she said.

His arms released their burden.

Vita walked Olana to the sofa. She helped her open the blankets. “There’s nothing we can do for her,” she said. “I have to help Annie with Matthew now. Do you understand?” Her face was wet with tears that exposed the ugly cauterized slash beneath the powder burn on her cheek. Only Darius Moore could make this woman ugly, Olana thought.

She swayed her knees back and forth, which had elicited the baby’s first smiles, on the day she was born. Milk soaked her bodice front, as if the baby were crying to be fed and not still, so still. “Don’t take him with you,” she whispered. Not to the dead child in her lap, but the golden, grown woman, walking into the shafts of light between the sequoias.

The tube his grandmother had inserted into Matthew’s throat spurted blood, then air.

Matthew sat up. He saw what none of the others noticed, Possum huddled in the fireplace. He knew those vacant eyes. She was in shock. He stood, walked to her side. He touched her shoulder.

“Darlin’?”

“How are you here, Daddy?”

“I’m worried about you.”

She traced her hands along his side.

“Are you dead?”

He smiled. “I don’t feel dead.”

Tears. That was a good sign, he told himself. The shock was leaving her.

“But you’re over there, too.” She took his hand, pointing to where Annie and Vita were frantically huddled over someone with his boots on. The floorboards were stained with blood. His joints started to ache. There was a searing in his throat.

“I’m … confused,” he admitted to the child.

“Stay, Daddy,” she pleaded.

He caught sight of Olana, sitting apart from the women, with Lavinia across her knees, reciting words that sounded like the litanies the friars prayed on the feast of the Blessed Sacrament. He circled Possum’s knuckles with his thumb to loosen her hold on him, and to savor the soft beauty of her small hands.

“I … I’m supposed to take Lavinia for a walk on the beach.”

“You just came from there.”

“Did I?”

Olana’s litany turned into sobs. “Why’s she crying? Possum, what’s happened?”

“It’s all right, Daddy,” the little girl said. “Go on, do what you’re supposed to do. But come back. Promise you’ll come back.”

She finally let go of him. He turned and felt her strong, small hand against his back, pushing.

He leaned over Olana, touched her cheek. “How’s our hummingbird?” Lavinia was smiling her familiar, well-fed smile. And this was his favorite time to walk her. “Are you two finished? Is she all full?” he asked.

Olana didn’t answer. She didn’t even look up. But Lavinia reached her tiny hands to him. He took the baby and left the house.

Matthew walked her along the shore, a part of the shore he didn’t remember. It was beautiful, the sand white and warm under his feet. All the pain, even the searing at his throat disappeared. It stayed twilight somehow, the sun hanging red and still
over the water, without moving. It was home, and yet not home. He was walking beside a man with his own coloring, and a little younger than himself. A stranger he’d known for a hundred years.

He began hearing Olana’s voice, pulling him out of the conversation with the man. She was dressed in finery again. Black silk. She was weeping, with her eyes and her breasts both. “Matthew,” she said, “my father’s ill. I have to go home.”

He wanted to tell her that he would go too, and help care for the baby so that she could care for her father. But his voice wouldn’t work. It worked on the other side, where he still felt the man’s hand on his arm. Why wouldn’t it work with her? Why did it hurt so with her, and not on the other side? She was going to leave. She was going to leave if he didn’t talk. He made his fingers close around the silk of her sleeve. Even that hurt.

“I’ve got her, ’Lana,” he rasped out.

She screamed then, a scream so loud it sent him back to the other side with such force he almost fell over, he almost dropped the baby. The man steadied his arm.

“My throat hurts,” Matthew told him.

“It will pass. Give me the child. She’s heavy for you, isn’t she? There’s a woman here. She’s been waiting to take care of her.”

“But ’Lana’s crying, and her breasts are full of milk.”

“Give her to me, Matthew.”

The man’s eyes were as blue as his own. He seemed so utterly without guile that Matthew trusted him. He put Lavinia into his arms. The man looked into the green quilted bundle. “So beautiful.”

“Yes.”

Matthew’s mind eased a little. The man held her gently. He walked into the shadows, gave Lavinia to a woman in a rocking chair. Matthew was soothed by the red and blue spiral patterns on the hem of the woman’s dress. He even closed his eyes, rested. Contented coos, silence. The woman must be gentle, too. The man returned to him.

“If she cries —” Matthew began.

“Don’t worry. Let’s walk.”

“I can’t stay.”

“No, you can’t,” he agreed. “Let’s walk.”

They did, and Matthew noticed the cut of the man’s clothes were the same as his old ones. One of the braces of his suspenders was damaged and fixed with a small piece of rope.

The stranger stopped. “I want you to tell Annie something,” he said, looking out to the sea.

“Annie? You mean Gran?”

“Hard to think of her as anybody’s grandma.” He brought one of his long, graceful hands up to the brace, and fingered the frayed piece of rope. His accent was like Gran’s hill country friends’ back east. “Tell her it won’t be long,” he said. “Tell her I’m waiting, I’ll help her through. I won’t let her down this time.”

“You know my gran?”

“You have to go back now.”

“No. Talk to me. Did I have a brother? Are you my brother?”

“No. But we’re blood. Matthew. You can’t bring Lavinia. She belongs with us.”

The weakness was coming over him again. His throat was starting to hurt. “No. You tricked me!”

“It was the only way.”

“The baby’s crying!”

“No, that’s you.”

“Don’t send me back without her. Please.”

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can —”

Matthew swung. The man was faster. Matthew punched only air before he fell to his knees. “Damn you,” he said between his teeth, as his body betrayed him further, convulsing with fever. The man was pressing his chest now, killing him.

“Help me, he’s so stubborn,” he called behind him.

“I told you.” Matthew heard a familiar voice, his grandfather’s voice. “That’s from her side of the family, not ours.”

Now two young men, brothers, their coloring night and day with only their blue eyes matching, were pushing, pushing.

“I can’t breathe,” he told them.

“Yes you can, Matthew,” the one with his grandfather’s voice said.

Their faces turned into two friars, with brown eyes and brown robes damp with sweat.

“Dear Lord,” one said, “we’ve killed him.”

“No,” Annie Smithers said behind them. “He’s back.”