‘I am embarrassed by that,’ I admitted. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’
‘But why would you do it?’
‘Sometimes, if I drink too much, and I’m feeling low, a part of me wants to die.’ I thought, Who is showing whom their bloody rag now?
‘Why were you feeling low?’
‘Why does anyone? It creeps up on you from time to time.’
‘But you were glad the one moment, then suddenly not.’
I shrugged. In the road I saw a man who was familiar to me, but I could not determine his position in my past. His carriage was heavy and dazed, his gait aimless, as though he did not have any one destination in mind. ‘I know that person,’ I said, pointing. The woman stood beside me to look but the man had moved out of sight. Straightening her dress, she asked, ‘Will you come walking with me or not?’
I ate some tooth powder and she led me down the hall by my arm. As we passed the open door to Mayfield’s parlor I saw the boss man sleeping facedown at his desk, head and arms resting amid the upset of bottles and cigar ash, the three toppled bells. There was a large whore, stark naked and flat on her back on the floor beside him. Her face was turned away and I paused to watch her dozing body, breasts and stomach rising and falling with her breath. Here was the picture of moral negligence, and I found myself startled by the sight of her genitals, the hair matted and stamped upon. I noticed my hat was hanging from the antler of a buck on the far wall and I crossed the great room to retrieve it. Achieving this, I was doubling back, dusting ash from the hat’s brim when I tripped and fell onto the floor. I had been caught up on the fur stretching rack, which I now saw was without the red pelt. This had not been untied, but quickly and indelicately cut away. I looked back at the bookkeeper standing under the jamb; her eyes were closed and she was rolling her head in slow circles and I thought, She is stuck fast under the weight of her burdens.
Chapter 31
The road had turned to mud and deep puddles, and to cross we were forced to hobble over a series of wooden planks. The woman enjoyed this and her laughter was clear and rich in the morning. Her laughter and this cold, fresh air, I thought. They are just the same welcome and cleansing thing to me. It is odd to think this struck me as an adventure, I who had had so many truly dangerous adventures already, but there I was, holding her hand and pointing the way along the rocking boards; nausea was ever looming but this only made the event that much more comical, and therefore merry. By the time we arrived on the far side of the road my boots were mud covered but hers had not a blemish upon them and for this she said the words, ‘Thank you.’ Safely installed on the dry wooden walkway, she held her grip on my arm for a half-dozen paces, then broke off to pat and refashion her hair. I do not think there was any precise need for her to have broken away, that it was done in the name of good taste and principles. I believe she enjoyed the feel of my arm and wished to grip it longer. This at any rate was my hopeful impression.
I asked, ‘How is it working for Mayfield?’
‘He pays me well enough, but he is hard to be around, always wanting to show he is the right one. He was a good man, before he hit his strike.’
‘He looks to be spending it quickly enough. Perhaps he will change back to the first man once it’s all gone.’
‘He will change, but not back to the first man. He will become a third man, and I think the third will be even less pleasant than the second.’ I remained quiet and she added, ‘Yes, there isn’t anything to say about it.’ A moment passed and she reached up to grip my arm again. I felt proud, and my legs were sure and confident beneath me. I said, ‘How is it that my door was locked this morning? Did you return later in the night to visit me?’
‘You don’t remember?’ she asked.
‘I am sorry to say I don’t.’
‘That makes me feel just wretched.’
‘Will you explain what happened?’
She considered this, and said, ‘If you really want to know, you will recall it by your own force of mind.’ Thinking of something, she laughed once more, and the sound was bright and diamond shaped.
‘Your laughter is like cool water to me,’ I said. I felt my heart sob at these words, and it would not have been hard to summon tears: Strange.
‘You are so serious all of a sudden,’ she told me.
‘I am not any one thing,’ I said.
Reaching the edge of town, we crossed another line of planks and returned in the direction of the hotel. I thought of my room, of the bed I had slept in; I imagined my shape indented over the blankets. Remembering, then, I said, ‘He is the weeping man!’
‘Who is?’ asked the woman. ‘The what, now?’
‘The person I saw from the window that I said was familiar to me? I met him in Oregon Territory some weeks ago. My brother and I were riding out of Oregon City and came across a lone man leading a horse on foot. He was in great distress but would not accept our help. His grief ran deep and made him unreasonable.’
‘Had his luck changed at all, did you notice?’
‘It did not appear to have, no.’
‘Poor soul.’
‘He makes good time for a hysterical man on foot.’
A pause, and she let go of my arm.
‘Last night you spoke of some pressing business in San Francisco,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘We are after a man called Hermann Warm who is said to be living there.’
‘What does that mean? After him?’
‘He has done something incorrect and we have been hired to bring him to justice.’
‘But you are not lawmen?’
‘We are the opposite of lawmen.’
Her face became pensive. ‘Is this Warm a very bad man?’
‘I don’t know. That is an unclear question. They say he is a thief.’
‘What did he steal?’
‘Whatever people normally steal. Money, probably.’ This lying made me feel ugly, and I searched around for something to look at and find distraction in but could not locate anything suitable. ‘Honestly, actually, he probably didn’t steal a penny.’ Her eyes dropped and I laughed a little. I said, ‘It would not surprise me in the least if he was perfectly innocent.’
‘And do you typically go after men you think are innocent?’
‘There is nothing typical about my profession.’ Suddenly I did not want to talk about it any longer. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any longer.’
Ignoring this statement, she asked, ‘Do you enjoy this work?’
‘Each job is different. Some I have seen as singular escapades. Others have been like a hell.’ I shrugged. ‘You put a wage behind something, it gives the act a sort of respectability. In a way, I suppose it feels significant to have something as large as a man’s life entrusted to me.’
‘A man’s death,’ she corrected.
I had not been certain she understood what my position consisted of. I was relieved to know she did—that I did not have to tell her precisely. ‘However you wish to phrase it,’ I said.
‘Haven’t you ever thought to stop?’
‘I have wanted to,’ I admitted.
She took up my arm again. ‘What about after you deal with this man, Warm? What will you do then?’
I told her, ‘I have a small home outside of Oregon City that I share with my brother. The land is pretty but the house is cramped and drafty. I would like to move but can’t seem to find time to search out another spot. Charlie has many unsavory acquaintances. They have no respect for the traditional hours of sleep.’ But the woman was made restless by my answer and I said, ‘What is it that you are asking me?’
‘My hope is that I will see you again.’
My chest swelled like an aching bruise and I thought, I am a perfect ass. ‘Your hope will be fulfilled,’ I promised.
‘If you leave I don’t think I will see you anymore.’
‘I will be back, I give you my word.’ The woman did not believe me, however, or she only partially believed me. Looki
ng up at my face she asked me to take off my coat, which I did, and she pulled a length of bright blue silk from her layers. She tied the sash over my shoulder, fastening it with a snug knot and afterward stepping back to look at me. She was very sad, and beautiful, her eyes damp and heavy with their powders and ancient spells. I placed my hands on the material but could think of nothing to say about it.
She told me, ‘You should always wear it just like that, and when you see it, you will remember me, and remember your promise to return here.’ Stroking the fabric, she smiled. ‘Will it make your brother very jealous?’
‘I think he will want to know all about it.’
‘Isn’t it a fine piece, though?’
‘It is very shiny.’
I buttoned my coat to cover it. She came forward and put her arms around me, resting the side of her face over my heart, listening to the organ’s mad jumping. After this she said her good-byes, then turned and disappeared into the hotel, but not before I had slipped Mayfield’s forty dollars in her petticoat pocket. I called out that I would see her on my return, but she did not respond and I stood alone, my thoughts dipping and shooting away, dipping and dying. I did not wish to be indoors, but to continue circulating in the open. I spied a row of houses off from the main road and walked in their direction.
INTERMISSION
I came upon a young girl of seven or eight years old, outfitted in the finest clothing from hat to shoe and standing stiffly before the fenced-in yard of a quaint, freshly painted house. She glared at the property with an intense dislike or malice—her brow was furrowed, her hands clenched, and she was crying, not forcefully, but calmly and without a sound. When I approached her and asked her what was the matter, she told me she had had a bad dream.
‘Just now you had a bad dream?’ I said, for the sun was high in the sky.
‘In the night I had one. But I had forgotten about it until a moment ago, when that dog reminded me.’ She pointed to a fat dog, asleep on the other side of the fence. I was startled when I spied what looked to be the dog’s leg lying independently from the body, but upon closer inspection I saw it was the femur bone of a lamb or calf, this for the dog to chew on. It still had some meat and gristle attached, which gave it a fleshy appearance. I smiled at the girl.
‘I thought it was the dog’s leg,’ I said.
The girl wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘But it is the dog’s leg.’
I shook my head and pointed. ‘The dog’s leg is tucked under him, do you see?’
‘You are wrong. Watch.’ She whistled and the dog awoke and stood, and I discovered it truly was missing the leg closest to the bone on the ground, only the skin had long since healed over. It was a years-old wound, and though I was confused, I persevered: ‘That there on the ground is the femur bone of a lamb, and not the dog’s. Don’t you see the animal suffered its loss some time ago and that he is not in pain?’
The statement angered the girl, and now she regarded me with just the same malice with which she had been regarding the house. ‘The dog is in pain,’ she insisted. ‘The dog is in no small amount of pain!’
The violence of her words and temper caught me by surprise; I found myself taking a step away from her. ‘You are a peculiar girl,’ I said.
‘It’s a peculiar lifetime on earth,’ she countered. I did not know what to say to that. At any rate it was as truthful a statement as I had come across. The girl continued, her voice now honeyed and innocent: ‘But you did not ask about my dream.’
‘You said it was about this dog.’
‘The dog was but a part of it. It was also about the fence, and the house, and you.’
‘I was in your dream?’
‘A man was in it. A man I did not know or care about.’
‘Was he a good man or a bad man?’
She spoke in a whisper: ‘He was a protected man.’
I thought at once of the gypsy-witch, of the doorway and necklace. ‘How was he protected?’ I asked. ‘Protected from what?’
But she would not answer my question. She said, ‘I was walking here to see this dog, which I hate. And as I slipped it its poison to kill it there appeared in this yard before me a fist-sized, swirling gray-and-black cloud. This grew bigger and was soon a foot across, then two feet, then ten—now it was big as the house. And I felt the wind from its spinning, a cold wind, so cold it burned my face.’ She closed her eyes and tilted her head upward, as though recalling this sensation.
‘What kind of poison did you slip the dog?’ I asked, for I noticed her right hand had a grainy black residue over the knuckles.
‘The cloud became bigger still,’ the terrible girl continued, her volume and agitation increasing, ‘soon lifting me into its center, where I hung in the air, tumbling lightly in circles. I think it might have been calming if the three-legged dog, now dead, was not also spinning within the orb beside me.’
‘That is a distressing dream, girl.’
‘The three-legged dog, now dead, spinning within the orb beside me!’ She clapped once, turned abruptly around, and left me where I stood, dumbfounded and not a little unnerved. I thought, How I long for a reliable companion. The girl had rounded the corner before I looked back at the dog, which was once more lying prone on the ground, foam issuing from his mouth, ribs no longer rising to breathe, dead as dead could be. There was a shift of the curtains in the house and I turned and left just as hastily as the girl had but in the opposite direction, and I did not at any point look back. It was time to say good-bye and good riddance to Mayfield, for now.
END INTERMISSION
Chapter 32
Passing Mayfield’s parlor I peered in and saw both he and the naked woman were gone, and the pelt stand had been righted. Farther down the hall, one of the whores was standing with her head on the door of the room next to mine. Walking toward her, I asked if she had seen Charlie. ‘He just escorted me out.’ Her skin had a greenish tint to it; she was deathly brandy-sick. Belching, she covered her mouth with a balled fist. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. I opened the door to my room and asked her to tell Charlie to hurry along. ‘I will not tell him a thing, sir. I am headed for my own bed to wait out these long hours in private.’ I watched as she walked away, her fist on the wall, unsure in her footsteps. Charlie’s door was locked and when I knocked he made a guttural sound communicating a desire for solitude. When I called to him, he came to the door in the nude and waved me in.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked.
‘I was walking with the girl from last night.’
‘What girl from last night?’
‘The pretty, thin one.’
‘Was there a pretty, thin one?’
‘You were too distracted with your guffawing to notice. Look at how red your head is.’
I could hear Mayfield’s muffled, angry voice emanating from the parlor. I told Charlie about the missing pelt and he stiffened. ‘What do you mean, missing?’ he demanded.
‘Missing. Not there. The stand was toppled and the pelt had been cut away.’
He studied this awhile, then began getting dressed. ‘I will talk to Mayfield about it,’ he said, groaning as he pulled on his pants. ‘We got along very fine last night. Surely the responsible party was one of those filthy trappers he has on the payroll.’
He left and I sat heavily in a low wicker chair. I noticed Charlie’s mattress had been pulled to the floor and shredded with a knife, its stuffing yanked out in shocks. I thought, Will his fondness for senseless carnage ever cease? He and Mayfield were having an argument but I could not understand the words. My body was burning with fatigue and I was halfway asleep when Charlie returned, his face tight, his fists clenched and white at the knuckle. ‘There is a man who knows how to raise his voice,’ he said. ‘What a blusterer.’
‘Does he think we took the pelt?’
‘He most certainly does, and do you know why? One of his trappers claims to have seen you hurrying through the hall with it tucked under your arm. I asked Mayfield to upend
our rooms and baggage but he said it was beneath him. He whispered to his whore, and she hurried away. She is searching the trappers out, I’d imagine.’ He moved to the window, gazing down at the main road. ‘It makes me angry to think of them playing such a trick on us. If I wasn’t feeling so low I’d go right after them.’ He looked over at me. ‘What about you, brother? Are you up for a fight?’
‘Hardly.’
Squinting, he asked, ‘What’s that under your coat?’
‘A gift from the girl.’
‘Is there to be a parade?’
‘It’s a simple bit of fabric to recall her by. A bomboniere, as Mother would say.’
He sucked his teeth. ‘You should not wear it,’ he said decisively.
‘It’s very expensive material, I think.’
‘The girl has played a joke on you.’
‘She is a serious person.’
‘You look like the prize goose.’
I untied and removed the cloth, folding it into a tidy square. I decided I would keep it with me but regard it only in private. ‘Now who has the red head?’ said Charlie. Turning back to the window, he tapped the pane and said, ‘Aha, here we go.’
I crossed over and saw the whore from the floor of the parlor speaking to the largest trapper. He stood listening, rolling a cigarette, and nodding; when she was through he shared with her some instruction or another, and she returned in the direction of the hotel. I watched her until she was out of sight, then looked again at the trapper, who had located us in the window and was staring from beneath his floppy-brimmed, pointed hat. ‘Where do you even get a hat like that?’ Charlie wondered. ‘They must make them themselves.’ The trapper lit his cigarette, exhaled a plume of smoke, and walked in the opposite direction of the hotel. Charlie slapped his leg and spit. ‘I hate to admit it, but we’re beat. Give me your double eagles, and I will hand mine in, also.’
‘Returning the money is just the same as an admission of guilt.’