Abandon

  The fire roared now, its heat thawing Abigail’s face, causing an itchy burn in her left cheek. “Lawrence,” she said, “that’s a real sad story. But there’s something you’re missing, and maybe if you figured it out, you might be on your way to changing some things.”

  “What am I missing, Abby?”

  She looked at his purple right eye, the line of dried blood cracking down his cheek like old plaster. “It’s still all about you. What you lost. What you won’t ever get to experience. It’s about you getting old, feeling empty. I was four when you left, and I didn’t hear from you again until you wrote me about this trip. Not on birthdays. Not on Christmas. Do you know I believed I’d done something to make you leave us? That it was somehow my fault?”

  “Abby, you have to know that—”

  “And that in some deep and broken part of me, I still believe that? You left us. Mom never married. Practically holed herself up in that house for years, thinking you’d come back. Maybe if I’d had a brother or a sister, it wouldn’t have been so god-awful lonely. When I got into Columbia, you know she had to come to New York with me? ’Cause I couldn’t leave her in Baltimore? ’Cause she had nothing? No one? I didn’t spend college in a dorm. I lived with my mother in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, through two suicide attempts, three commitments, every second spent studying or working so we could eat, so we’d have heat in the winter, waking up, middle of the night sometimes, hearing her talking in the dark as I stood at her door, realizing it was you she was talking to, like you were lying in bed with her. Like you loved her. Even speaking for you. Do you know what that’s like? To hear your mother re-enacting the first time you two met? Fantasizing about a man who’d left her twenty years ago? Look, Mom’s better now, and I’m a big girl, got my own life. This isn’t about me crying for the daddy I never had. But I wish you could’ve been there with me, just one of those nights, seen what you turned her into.”

  Lawrence drew back. He got up and walked over to the empty window frame. Several rocking chairs creaked out on the back porch, pushed by the wind. Lawrence looked back at his daughter. Abigail stared up at her father. She wanted to see his face streaked with firelit tears. Wanted to catch just a glimmer of self-loathing or shame in her father’s eyes, though it wouldn’t have changed much. But it might’ve been a start.

  Lawrence had gone hard. He scowled, as if deeply offended, and in the light of the flames, his face appeared faintly grotesque and very old.

  1893

  FORTY-TWO

  O

  atha Wallace walked into the saloon without bothering to shed his oilskin slicker or knock the snow from his stovepipe boots, tracking great clumps of ice and powder as he crossed the board floor. Lana Hartman sat at the piano, working quietly through the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

  The young deputy still snored in drunken bliss beside the stove, wrapped in a bearskin robe, a spittoon between his legs.

  “First rattle out a the box with some irrigation,” Oatha said.

  Joss set up a tumbler and a glass of beer as he reached the bar.

  “What are you doin here?” she whispered. “Thought you wasn’t comin back ’til tomorrow.”

  “There was a big goddamn spoke in the wheel.”

  “What?”

  “Unexpected company up at the Sawblade. We was followed by Ezekiel Curtice and that doctor.”

  “Russ Ilg?”

  “Didn’t catch the man’s name, but we had quite a scrape. Billy shot ’em both, and that makes seven dead in less than a day. We need to quit the flats right now, while the gate’s open.”

  Joss took out her makings, rolled a cigarette, pulled a punk from her prayer book—just a sulfur-tipped splinter of wood. She lifted her shirt, struck the match against the middle button of her canvas trousers, then lit the quirly, smoke ascending into the bleary light of the kerosene lamp above the bar. Oatha took up the glass and drank, chased it.

  “He’s fair sobered,” Joss whispered, motioning to the deputy. “Wasn’t gonna get him really stewed ’til tomorrow, like we discussed.”

  “You got that big bowie under the bar? One you almost shoved through my ear this mornin?”

  Joss grinned, blew a stream of smoke into his face.

  “That should get the job done.”

  “What about . . .” Joss cocked her head toward Lana.

  “You ain’t got all attached to that she stuff, have you?”

  “You ain’t touchin her, Oath. Let me just send her on home.”

  “Fine.”

  “What about Billy?”

  “What about him?”

  “He comin with us?”

  “Sure, he’s comin. Gonna try to straighten that balky bitch a his out first.”

  “And if she don’t straighten?”

  “Well, she knows, and he knows that won’t stand.”

  “You reckon that scrub’ll kill his wife? Just like that?”

  “I think you might be surprised.”

  “I’m still gonna be the one to deal with him for goin rough on ol ’Bart. You ain’t forgot that, have you?”

  “Jesus Christ, kinky, cut the boy some—”

  “You ain’t got all attached to your pard, have you?”

  “No, but Billy done all right today. Ain’t no scissorbill. Boy’s got some sand. Kilt both those men up there like it weren’t nothin, shined, and he’s payin a visit to their wives as we speak.”

  “And I give a solitary shit why?”

  “Look, we’ll need his help gettin out a town, loadin up everthin at the pass. Drivin the burros down the other side. You can ’dobe-wall him in the tall timber, ’fore we get to Silverton. Don’t you worry those pretty black eyes.”

  “Condescend to me one more time.”

  “Christ, you’re in a sod-pawin mood.”

  “And what if his wife and kid come along?”

  “Well, I guess they won’t see Silverton, neither.”

  “I want no part a killin that little girl.”

  “Then you’ll have no part of it. Pour me another’n. Oh, fuck it, just give me the bottle.” Joss pushed it forward and Oatha thumbed off the cork, swallowed two mouthfuls.

  “I gotta say,” Oatha said when he’d finished. “I’m consternated about the future a our association.”

  “And why’s that?” Joss took back the bottle and drank.

  “You know I love you, so don’t go gettin your underpinnings in a big fuckin knot when I say this.”

  “What, goddamn it?”

  “You’re a little smoky. Men tend to buck out around you.”

  Joss smiled, whiskey running down her chin.

  “What you think, I’m gonna make you come, Oath?”

  “It’s a reasonable concern, all things considered.”

  “Only thing to get you kilt by me is tryin to get me unshucked and in the willows. I see the way you look at me sometimes.”

  “Think I want up in the snatch of a mestiza?”

  “Right. Was it a hard climb up to the pass?”

  “Wasn’t no holiday.”

  “Why the fuck didn’t we do this in the summertime?”

  “ ’Cause you gonna be doin the strangulation jig down in Arizona. Go on, tell Lana to git.”

  “Lana!” Joss yelled over the piano. Lana stopped playing, stared down at her lap. “Lana, honey, I want you to go on home for the day. We gonna be closin up early. You ain’t done nothin wrong. Your playin was real pretty.”

  Lana got up from the piano bench, walked to the coatrack, and slipped into her wool-lined cape, pulling the hood over her head.

  “Lana,” Joss said. The young woman stopped in the doorway, her back to the bar, head hung low. “You take care now, okay?”

  Lana went outside. When the door closed, Joss pulled the bowie out of its sheath, set the knife on the bar.

  She and Oatha looked over at the deputy, who was still snoring quietly.

  “The key to your shackles is—”

&nb
sp; “On that big metal ring on Al’s hip.”

  Oatha tilted the bottle, took another long pull. Then he wiped his mouth, picked up the knife, scraped his thumb across the blade.

  “I keep it sharp,” Joss warned.

  Oatha sucked a whistle through his teeth and licked the blood from the shallow slice. “I’ll say.”

  “How you gonna do it?”

  “Slip it in between his slabs. Then twisty-twisty.”

  Oatha moved soundlessly across the boards. He stopped at the potbellied stove, waited for a moment, letting his fingers warm, then stepped over to the deputy’s left side, positioning himself so he’d have the best angle for a downward thrust.

  He opened the bearskin robe, exposing the man’s chest.

  Al’s eyes flittered under his lids, and Oatha wondered from what dream he was about to awaken.

  His grip tightened on the handle.

  As he plunged the blade, he heard something outside, the knife point stopping three inches above the man’s heart.

  Oatha glanced back at Joss. “The fuck is that?” he whispered.

  He set the knife on the bar, walked to the door, cracked it open.

  It was late afternoon, the sky clearing, and though the sun had already dipped below the canyon walls, he could see its long rays coppering the distant bladed rock at the pass, two miles south and two thousand feet above.

  Stephen Cole tore down Main Street, hell for leather through waist-deep snow, his horse kicking up clouds of powder, and the Bible-puncher shouting as if the apocalypse were upon them, “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

  FORTY-THREE

  G

  loria wet the nib of her pen in the inkwell. She sat in a chair built of bent aspen branches and wrote by the light of a shadowgee made from an old can of Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup, cut in half and poked full of holes. It hung from a rafter over the beautiful oak table Bart Packer had given them, the candle inside dispensing just enough light for her to write without straining her eyes.

  When she’d finished, she blew the page dry and left the diary open on the table. Gloria walked to the bedroom doorway. She and Ezekiel had been lucky to find a cabin with a plank floor, and they’d spent a weekend last September laying straw and blue denim over the boards. It wasn’t carpet, but it wasn’t dirt, and you could walk over it in socks without freezing your toes.

  Bessie and Harriet slept on the iron bedstead, and watching the mother and child hold each other under the quilt, Gloria felt a flare of envy. She looked at the mail-order rocking chair in the corner by the window, at Gus’s crib, which Ezekiel had assembled out of packing crates, some of her dead son’s clothes still laid out on the tiny mattress—a burlap sack stuffed with pine boughs.

  The front porch creaked. Zeke. Someone banged on the door.

  Gloria hurried back to the living room, grabbed the Schofield from the bookcase, where she’d left it sitting near a few dime novels.

  “Mrs. Curtice! Y-you in there?” Gloria edged to the door. “Need to speak to you straight away!”

  Her husband’s words echoed in her head: Don’t open it for nobody. Billy or Oatha or some rough-lookin feller come by, you know what to do.

  The door shook.

  Gloria put her hand on the latch, said, “What is it, Mr. McCabe?”

  “I come for Bessie and Harriet. They in there with ye?”

  Bessie emerged from the bedroom in her flour-sack underpinnings, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She mouthed “No.”

  “They aren’t here, Mr.—”

  “N-n-now I don’t know if I believe that. How about you open this door and let me take a look for my own self?”

  “Now isn’t the best time, Mr. McCabe. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Naw, Mrs. Curtice. I don’t understand. But I’ll give you ten full seconds to open this door ’fore I tear it off the hinges.”

  Bessie said, “We ain’t comin home with you, Billy.”

  “Oh, y-y-y-you ain’t, huh? Why don’t you open this door so we can have a face-to-face conversation like adult human beins?”

  Gloria said, “When Zeke gets home, we’ll all talk this out.”

  “W-w-well, we might be waitin here quite a spell.”

  Gloria lifted the latch, threw open the door. The barrel of the single-action revolver touched the end of Billy’s nose.

  “You wanna elaborate on what the hell that meant?”

  Billy smiled, his jagged teeth showing, but his eyes were skittish. His horse stamped in the snow. Even though his vaquero hat kept his face in shadow, Gloria could see that it was flecked with blood, and her heart fluttered.

  “Why don’t you go on and, and, and, and put that away. You ain’t never shot nobody. You ain’t about to.”

  “You don’t know anything about me. Get your hand away from that gun. Where’s my husband? He went up to the mine, lookin for you.”

  “I guess he didn’t find me, did he?”

  “You said, ‘We might be waitin here quite a spell.’ What’s that mean, you runt? Ain’t you man enough to stand by the words that come out of your mouth?”

  “You do like I said and p-p-p-put that revolver away.”

  Gloria thumbed back the hammer. Billy’s eyes widened.

  “I don’t know what’s happened to you,” Bessie said. “Your mind ain’t right. You and Oatha kill those people like they say?”

  “Now ain’t the time, Bess. Go on and get Harriet and come on.”

  “Said I ain’t goin with you, Billy.”

  His face went red and the corner of his mouth began to twitch. He turned as if to leave, then suddenly reached back and swiped the revolver out of Gloria’s hand, almost like an afterthought, and swung the walnut stock into her face.

  Gloria sat down in the cabin doorway, dazed, her nose burning. When she looked up, Bessie was crying in the threshold of the bedroom, blocking her husband’s path to Harriet.

  “Billy, just leave. Please. I’m scared a you and it—”

  “Your hair’s fallin out ’cause I can’t put adequate food on our table. Know what that feels like for a man? They’s risks and they’s sacrifices in life, yeah? Well, I just made a few big ones, and now we’re set like you can’t even believe. That dream we talked about before I come out west? Remember? Well, it’s here. We got it for the takin. Tired a goin to bed hungry? A not bein able to afford cake soap? A wearin fuckin flour sacks for clothes? S-s-savin all year just to buy a doll for Harriet? You want a new dress? You can have twenty of ’em. It’ll take our baby girl all day to open her presents next Christmas. We’ll go somewhere warm and buy a big house and Abandon won’t seem like nothin but a bad dream. H-h-h-hell, we’ll go back to Tennessee if you want. Get your mother, your brothers out a them shacks. Maybe I can take care a Arnold. You think they don’t deserve that?”

  Gloria struggled to her feet. She felt dizzy, her head swimming, blood and tears running down her chin, staining her white petticoat.

  “What about Oatha?” Bessie asked. “I don’t like that bunko.”

  “Fuck Oatha. We’ll get our share, leave that son of a bitch in Silverton, shove out on our own steam, just you, me, Harriet, and our life could be so good if you can find a way to forget a couple days a poor behavior. C-c-can you do that, Bess? Then it’s all yours. Everthin you ever wanted. We’ll be a well-heeled pair a bums on the plush. Straight goods.”

  Gloria had begun to back quietly toward the kitchen. There was a knife inside the small wood box—a medicine chest filled with herbs and tinctures—sitting on one of the newspaper-lined shelves.

  “Hey, Daddy,” Harriet said. The little girl had climbed out of bed and she stood behind her mother, clinging to Bessie’s legs.

  “Hey there, darlin.”

  As she reached the kitchen, a board squeaked beneath Gloria, and Billy spun, drew his big Walker. “You do me a great favor and set down by the fire, Mrs. Curtice.” Billy looked back at his wife. “You think I’m some monster, Bessie, but I ain’t
. Just willin to do more for my family than most.”

  “Billy, you say you done this for me, but look at my face. What kind a man beats on his—”

  “Won’t ever lay a hand on you again. That’s a promise.”

  “I need to know what all you done before I—”

  “And I’ll tell you. Everthin. No more secrets. But right now, ’til we get out a this town, I need you to trust me. I love you and Harriet. You’re my blue chips. That’s the only reason I done any a this. Will you trust me?” Bessie looked over at Gloria. “Don’t look at her. Look in my eyes. This is your crossroads. What do you want?”

  “To be with the boy I fell in love with in Tennessee.”

  “You’re lookin at him.”

  “Am I?”

  “For a fact. Gonna be different after we leave. So much better.”

  “I wanna believe that, Billy.”

  Gloria said, “Bessie, you didn’t see what your husband did to—”

  “Shut up!” Billy touched his wife’s face, and Gloria saw it happen—a softening in Bessie’s eyes, walls coming down.

  “Burn the breeze back to the cabin,” Billy said. “I want you to pack what food we got, enough clothes for us to get to Silverton.”

  “We’re goin now?”

  “Can’t stay in this bog hole.”

  “Bessie!” Gloria said. “What are you doing?”

  Bessie reached down and took her daughter’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But he is my husband. I ain’t got nothin else.”

  Gloria’s eyes ran over. “Where’s my husband? Where’s Zeke?”

  The McCabes walked onto the front porch.