‘Why would you marry someone you didn’t like?’
‘She had an enormous potbellied stove in her cabin that emanated heat like the coals of hell. And by the looks of her she held a stockpile of food that might feed the both of us through to the spring. You’re smiling, but I assure you these were my lone motivations: Warmth and nourishment. I so longed for any manner of comfort, I would have married an alligator if only it would share its bed. And I might as well have married an alligator, for all the kindness Eunice showed me. She had no grace or charm whatsoever. She had noncharm, or anticharm. A bottomless well of antagonism and hostility. And she was terrifically ugly. And she smelled like rotten leaves. A brute, to put it briefly. When the money from my horse sale ran out, and when she understood I had no plans to copulate with her, she pushed me from the bed and onto the floor, where the heat from the stove burned my topside, while the draft coming up through the boards froze my bottom. Also, my hopes for a bountiful dinner table were soon dashed. Eunice was as protective as a mama bear about her biscuits. She gave me the occasional bowl of watery stew, so let’s say she wasn’t all bad, but the good was there in such measly quantities you had to keep a sharp watch lest you miss it entirely. But as I said, it was miserably cold, and I had made the decision to dig in my heels and pass the winter in that cabin, one way or the other. After the weather broke I would rob her and run away into the sunshine—I would have my last laugh. She recognized my plan, however, and got me one better before I could see it through. I came home from the saloon and found a large and angry-looking man sitting at the dinner table. He had a plateful of biscuits before him. I understood right away. I wished them good luck and left.’
‘That was sporting.’
‘I returned an hour later and tried to set the cabin alight. The man caught me huddled over my matchbox and kicked me so hard in the backside it lifted me from the earth. Eunice saw it all from the window. That was the only time I saw her laugh. She laughed a long time, too. Anyway, I am embarrassed to say it, but after this hurtful episode I became disenchanted, and turned for a time to common thievery. I could not get my mind around my misfortune, was the thing. Only months earlier I was alone with my books, clean and sheltered and well fed, happy as could be. And now, through no fault of my own, I found myself sneaking into barns at night and burrowing under manure-matted hay so as not to freeze to death. I said to myself, Hermann, the world has raised up its fist and struck you down! I resolved to strike back.’
‘What did you steal?’
‘At the start I was after the bare necessities. A loaf of bread here, a blanket there, a pair of wool socks—small things that no man should be denied. But with every passing crime I became more stealthy and cocksure and also greedy; after a time I began to take away anything I could get my hands on, just for the malicious pleasure I derived from it. I stole items I could never conceivably use. A pair of women’s boots. A crib. At one point I found myself running from an abattoir with a severed cow’s head in my arms. What for? What functional purpose might it serve? When it became too heavy I dropped the thing into a river. It bobbed along, then caromed off a rock and sank out of sight. Stealing became like a sickness. I think I saw it as a way to extract revenge against everyone who was not shivering and famished and alone. It was around this point my drinking began to take hold of me, body and spirit. You talk about your slippery roads.’
‘My father was a drinker. And Charlie is, also.’
‘It is something that plagues me still, and perhaps will always plague me. Of course it would be best to cork the bottle forever. I have recognized the problem. I know it doesn’t agree with me. Why not stop? Why not put an end to it? No, that would make too much sense. That would be entirely too reasonable. Oh, it’s a slippery road, all right, make no mistake about that. Well, days and months passed me by and I became dirtier and more depraved all the while, inside and out. You will meet some down-on-their-luck types who take pride in their pared and scrubbed nails, men who will boast of their once-per-week baths, financial hardships be damned. They attend church services regularly and sit patiently in the pews, awaiting their change in fate without a trace of bitterness, beards combed down just so. Let me say that I was not one of these. In fact I was the far opposite. I became increasingly drawn to filth. More and more I desired to lay and grovel in it, to actually live within in. My teeth fell out, and this pleased me. My hair dropped away in patches and I was glad. I was the raving and maniacal village idiot, in short, only the village was not a humble, thatched-roof township, but the United States of America. Finally I was seized by an unshakable preoccupation, namely the belief that I was actually composed of human waste.’
‘What?’
‘A living mold of waste, was my notion. Excrement. My bones were hardened excrement. My blood—was liquid excrement. Do not ask me to elucidate. It is something I will never be able to explain. I was suffering, if I’m not mistaken, from scurvy, which added together with the drinking and mental agitation brought about this queer idea.’
‘Living waste matter.’
‘I delighted in the thought of it. My favorite pastime was to push through a crowd, touching and groping the bare arms of unescorted women. The sight of my own grime on their pale wrists and hands was just as satisfying a thing as I could think of.’
‘I don’t suppose you were very popular.’
‘I was a popular point of discussion. Socially, though? No, I was not well thought of. But then I rarely stayed in one place long enough to become more than an alleyway myth. Mania or no, I was not a fool, and I knew enough that I should strike and move on at once, before any violence came against me. I would steal a horse and head for the next town, only to start my contamination campaign all over again. My days were ordure and ugliness and the blackest kind of sin, and I was only half living, just barely hanging on, waiting and hoping, I think, for death. And then one morning I woke up and found myself in a most curious place, and would you care to guess where that was? Don’t say jail.’
‘I was going to say it.’
‘Let me just tell you then. I awoke with the king mother of all whiskey headaches on a cot in militia barracks. I was washed and my beard had been shaved clean. My hair had been cut back and I wore a soldier’s uniform. The reveille was screaming in my ears, and I thought I would die, literally, of fright and confusion. Then a bright-faced soldier came by and gripped me by the arm. “Wake up, Hermann!” he said. “You miss roll call one more time you’ll wind up in the stockade!” ’
‘What in the world had happened?’
‘That was precisely what I wanted to know. But put yourself in my position. How would you find the answer to this?’
‘I suppose I would ask someone.’
Warm affected a serious posture and voice: ‘Pardon me, my good man, but would you mind telling me how it is I came to join the militia? It is only a slight detail, but I just can’t seem to put my finger on it.’
‘It would be an awkward way to start a conversation,’ I admitted. ‘But what else was there to do? You could not simply go along with it.’
‘But that is exactly what I did do. Fell right in line, as a matter of fact. You must understand, Eli, that I was disconcerted in the extreme. As a drunkard, I was used to losing an hour or two here and there, or even an entire evening. But how much time had passed for me to join the militia and establish relationships with the other soldiers, all of whom appeared to know me well? How could I not recall so drastic a change? I decided to keep my head down and go with the crowd until I could figure things out.’
‘And did you ever?’
‘It was all the doing of the bright-faced soldier, named Jeremiah. Every once in a while, out of boredom, he liked to go into town and find the very lowest sort of alcohol-muddled scallywag. He would fill him with drink, extract personal information, and then, once the man was totally incapacitated, drag him back to the barracks, outfit him in a military uniform, and put him to bed. This is what happened to me.
’
‘Were you very angry when you understood you’d been tricked?’
‘Not particularly, because by the time I found out, I was glad to be there. Life in the militia brought about many positive changes in my life. I was forced to bathe regularly, which I did not like at the start, but I endured, and this return to the habits of cleanliness successfully killed my bedeviling excrement obsession. I was fed, and the cots were comfortable, the barracks warm enough, and there was usually at least a little something to drink at night. We played cards, sang songs. A sturdy group of men, those soldiers. A bunch of orphans, really, alone in the world, passing time together, with nothing much to do. In this manner, six or seven uneventful months rolled by, and I was beginning to wonder how I might get out of there when I had the good fortune to befriend a lieutenant colonel named Briggs. If I had not come to know him, then you and I would not presently be sitting about, waiting for the river’s riches.’
‘What happened?’
‘I will tell you. I was passing by his quarters one evening when I noticed his door, which usually was not only closed but bolted shut, was now ajar. Like many of the other soldiers, I had developed a curiosity about him, because while your typical officer was very much the taskmaster and bellower, Briggs was shy and retiring, a slight, gray-haired man with a faraway gaze, forever locked in the privacy of his room doing God only knew what. Mysteries are scarce in the militia; I found I could not help but investigate. I opened the door and peered in. Tell me then, Eli, what do you think I saw?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Take a stab.’
‘I really don’t know, Hermann.’
‘Not much for guessing, eh? All right, I’ll just say it. I saw our man Briggs, standing alone, deep in thought, and he was wearing a crisp cotton smock. On the table before him were burners and beakers and all manner of laboratory paraphernalia. Scattered around his room were numberless bulky, heady tomes.’
‘He was a chemist?’
‘A hobby chemist, and not a very keen one, I came to learn. But the sight of his effects took hold of me. Without hardly knowing what I was doing I entered fully into his quarters and stood before the equipment, staring over it as if hypnotized. By this time Briggs had noticed my gawking person; he blushed and cursed me, damning my impertinence and ordering me from the room. I begged his pardon but he would not hear me, and he pushed me out the door. That night I found I could not sleep. The nearness to the books and equipment reawakened my hunger for study and learning; it came over me like a fever, and at last I rose from my cot and wrote Briggs a letter by candlelight, explaining about my past and my father’s, and essentially demanding that he take me on as his assistant. I slid the missive under his door and he called for me the next morning. He was wary, but once he understood my seriousness and the depth of my knowledge we struck a bargain, which was that I would assist him in his experiments, and as payment for this he would allow me access to his effects and books, and I should be allowed a certain amount of time to work on my own in his room. I gladly quit my usual nights of cards and bourbon and dirty stories and set up what was, at least for militia barracks, a fairly ambitious laboratory. Guided then, by my own sense of intuition, and also by the books Briggs happened to have in his library, I was led to the realm of Light.’
Warm paused to pour himself a cup of coffee. He offered me a cup and I declined. He took a small drink and returned to his story.
‘The years that had passed me by since I last studied, how many had they been? And all that time I did little else but abuse and mistreat myself. I had had no sustenance to speak of, neither physical nor mental, and as I sat and cracked a book that very first evening I was visited by a concern that my brain might not recognize words the way it had in the past. The brain is a muscle, after all, and I would have to retrain it, wouldn’t you think? Eh? Well, I had a nice surprise then, which was that my mind, unbeknownst to me, had all the while been improving itself of its own accord, waiting for the day I might dust it off and use it again. Now that day had arrived and my brain, as though worried I might only shelf it once more, attacked every page of every book with a magnificent strength and vitality. It was all I could do to keep up, but thankfully I did, and received my reward some months later when the idea for the gold-finding formula came to me, or should I say hit me, for it was just as though I were knocked on the chest with a heavy stone—I actually fell back in my chair. Poor Briggs didn’t know what was wrong with me. At first I couldn’t speak. Then I jumped for the ink and paper and would not be moved for an hour.’
‘What did he think of the idea?’
‘That I do not know, for I never told him—and he never forgave me for not telling him. It was not that I mistrusted him personally, but that I didn’t think any man could keep this information to himself. It was simply too much weight to carry. Of course, this offended him terrifically, and he banished me back to the barracks, where I tried for a time to continue my work. When this proved impossible—the men were fond of hiding or otherwise defacing my notes—I began to plan my escape by desertion. But when one of my bunkmates beat me to it, and when he was apprehended and shot the selfsame day he struck out, then the thought of desertion lost its appeal for me. At last I was beginning to feel desperate, fearful my grand idea would vanish into thin air, and I turned to Jeremiah, the man responsible for my being there. I told him, “Jeremiah, I want to quit this place. Tell me, please, what should I do about it?” He put his hands on my shoulders and said, “If you want to leave here then you should turn and walk away. Because, Hermann, you are not actually in the militia.” I had never formally joined, it turns out, never signed my name to anything. That night they threw me a party. I left in the morning and set up a modest laboratory nearby. It took me near a year of trial and error before I had the desired results. First I managed to illuminate the gold, but only for a brief instant. When I figured out a way to sustain the glow, something in the formula turned the gold gray. At one point I accidentally burned my shack halfway to the ground. It was not easy, is what I am saying. When at last I found myself pleased with the effects, this coincided with the news of the gold strike in California and I came west on the Oregon Trail. This spit me out in Oregon City and led me to your man the Commodore. From there, I believe, you know the story.’
‘More or less.’
Warm scratched his hands and legs. Gazing upward, he spoke over his shoulder: ‘What do you think, Morris? Sky dark enough to suit you?’
Morris called back, ‘Give us another minute, Hermann. The wretch has painted himself into a corner, and I’m closing in for the kill.’
‘We will see about it,’ said Charlie.
They were playing cards in the tent.
Chapter 52
Four men all at once removing their pants beside a river in the nighttime. The fire was tall behind us and we had had three drinks of whiskey apiece, this being just the proper amount for the task at hand, we decided—enough to offset the coldness of the water, but not so much that we would not be able to focus on the work, and later on, to remember it. The lead beaver was sitting lumpily atop the dam, scrutinizing us, and scratching himself with his hind legs like a dog; the formula had wreaked its havoc upon his flesh, also. But where were his comrades? It seemed they were hiding out or otherwise resting. When my feet touched the water I began nervously to laugh but suppressed this, feeling that outright gladness was not correct, or was disrespectful; to what or whom, I cannot say, but I had the impression we were all of us holding our breath, much in the same way, and for the same vague reasons.
One of the kegs had been rolled to the shore, its top opened, ready to be poured. I caught a lungful of the formula’s scent and my chest flashed with an instant, burning heat. Morris was standing shy of the river, watching the water with a look of dread.
‘How about your legs, Morris?’ I asked.
Regarding his shins, he shook his head. ‘Not good’ was his answer.
Warm said, ‘
I put a pot of water on the fire, and laid out some scrub soap for us to wash ourselves just after. Morris and I failed to think of this last time, hence our present troubles.’ Turning to Morris, he said, ‘Can you stand another night of it?’
‘Let’s get it over with,’ Morris muttered. His legs were rashed to the thigh now, his skin rubbed raw and covered over in fat blisters, these filled with a brownish liquid and drooping slightly under their own weight. He was having trouble supporting himself upright, and as he hobbled closer to the water’s edge I wondered, Why are we putting him through this? ‘Morris,’ I said, ‘I think you should not do any work tonight.’
‘And forfeit the winnings to you all?’ he scoffed, but his tone, the weakness in his throat, betrayed any good humor. He was frightened, and Warm was quick to second my thought. ‘Eli is quite right. Why not sit back and rest, for now. You will still receive a share of whatever I pull.’
‘And from me, also,’ I added.
Warm and I looked to Charlie. His charity was slower in coming, but eventually he, too, nodded and said, ‘Me, also, Morris.’
‘There, you see?’ said Warm.
Morris hesitated. His pride had been awakened and he did not want to quit. ‘What if I were to pull only from the shallows?’
‘It’s good of you to suggest it,’ Warm said, ‘but that might disable you permanently. Best to sit back now, and let us do the work. You can make up for it next time around, eh? What do you say?’ Morris did not answer, but stood apart from us, looking morosely at the sand. Brightening, Warm said, ‘Last time, the glowing was concentrated on this side of the river where we poured the formula. But if you were to agitate the waters, with a tree branch, say, from atop the beaver dam, you would likely increase the field of illumination.’
Morris was pleased with the idea, and we found a long branch for him to work with. Warm led him by the arm and installed him at the center of the dam, shooing the beaver back into the water before continuing on his own to the farther shore, which would be his area of focus. Now he called for Charlie and me to dump the first keg into the waters, warning us not to let any of the formula rest upon our flesh. ‘You can see that it’s painful enough watered down; the raw liquid itself might burn a hole clean through you.’ He pointed out the second keg, positioned at the shoreline, twenty yards up river. ‘As soon as the first is emptied, dash up and empty the other.’