“Nobody promised anything!” Kyle Lanier snapped.
“Shoot.” Ham scratched in and amongst the folds of his fat neck. “Must have misunderstood. Hang on,” he said loudly to the crowd gathering around them. “Deputy says I got that wrong. Maybe the sheriff isn’t going to let you have any medicine after all.”
“Big fucking surprise,” said a voice from the darkness.
“That better?” Ham asked innocently.
“Why don’t you just keep your fat mouth shut?” the deputy said.
The chatter in the crowd died away. Silence gathered around them as they walked along the dark street. The militiamen both had their hands on the butts of their pistols. “Now, then,” Ham said mildly. “There’s no call to be rude.”
It was the deputy who stopped talking. A good move. Josh bet he probably still had enemies on this side of Broadway; Ham Mather had nothing but friends. Black boys who used to go floundering with Ham joined in the procession, alongside Mexicans carrying magic candles and crucifixes. Dockworkers spilled out of the bars where they had been unwinding to see what the hell Ham was up to. Not far from the Krewe of Togetherness offices in the Rosenberg Library, a handful of his coworkers fell in, still wearing their Gas Authority overalls. By the time they reached the Library, Ham’s crowd had swollen to more than a hundred people. More than came to our trial, Josh thought, although that other crowd had been considerably better dressed.
Josh stopped in front of the Library’s main doors. “Deputy, Ham’s going to stay out here, if you don’t mind. I’ll go in and talk to the sheriff.”
“Expecting an ambush? Joshua Cane, you got to learn to trust a little bit,” the deputy said.
“Maybe tomorrow.”
Kyle shrugged and turned to Ham. “Sure you want to stay out here? There’s deals to be made. From what I seen, I’m not sure I would trust Mr. Cane here to look out for my best interest, if I was you.”
“Thanks for your concern. I like it just fine right here. Josh?” Ham said airily. “A quick word before you go inside?” Josh looked at Kyle, who nodded. Ham’s arm settled like a tractor tire around his shoulders as they walked a few paces to the side. “Sell us out and I’ll use your nuts for axle grease,” the big man murmured. “Don’t get in there and let all those Fords and Dentons go to your head now.”
Josh stared down at the Library’s marble steps. “Did you really think you had to say that?”
Josh allowed himself to believe he saw a flicker of embarrassment on Ham’s face. “Just go play your cards. But do it quick, if you can. I know a bunch of these old boys, but not everyone. And I noticed there’s more than one or two folks packing, if you know what I mean. As crazy and sick and hungry as everyone is, you don’t want to keep a crowd like this standing around with nothing to do but play with their guns.”
“Play with their constitutionally protected tools, you mean?”
“Piss off,” Ham said.
Josh rejoined Kyle Lanier and together they walked up to the Library doors. Behind them, Ham raised his voice to the crowd. “Josh is going to go talk with the sheriff now about getting some good water and medicines and the like. Let’s all be real calm and friendly. The Krewes know what’s fair. I’m sure we can all trust the Dentons to do their duty,” he said.
Josh smiled inside. “I’m sure we can trust the Dentons” was a sentence every Islander should understand pretty well.
“Ah, Mr. Cane,” the sheriff said as Kyle led Josh into the Krewe of Togetherness conference room. “Everyone is here but Randall. We’re almost ready to begin.” Though it was hours past sunset, Sheriff Denton was wearing darkly tinted glasses. Must be on some medication that made him photosensitive, Josh thought.
Delegates were seated around a long cherrywood table the shape of a Tylenol tablet. The hurricane had smashed in the window at the end of the room, and it was warmer than it should have been, despite the ceiling fan that rattled overhead. Gas lamps hissed around the periphery of the room, leaving every other chair in shadow. The sheriff stood—none too easily, his arthritis must be bothering him—and introduced Josh to the assembled representatives of the various Krewes: Horace Lemon, here for the Krewe of Togetherness, his black face deeply lined and weary. Commodore Travis Perry, Thalassar, a sun- and windburned man in his forties. “With Ellen Geary sick, Maria Gomez will speak for the Krewe of Venus,” the sheriff said. He paused to cough. The cough was deeper and wetter than it had been the last time Josh had seen him.
“Is Ms. Geary running a fever?” Josh asked Ms. Gomez.
“Yes.”
“Diarrhea or vomiting?”
Ms. Gomez looked at him. He suddenly remembered seeing her at the trial, sitting on the aisle in the third row. “Ms. Geary has a doctor,” she said coolly.
Misplay. “Of course. Forgive me. I’ve been seeing patients all day long myself. The questions become automatic.”
“Are you a doctor, then? I seem to remember you saying you were only an apothecary.”
Josh said, “I’m what the poor people have.”
“If you want to call them people,” Randall Denton said, sauntering in. “The rabble outside seems scabby but vigorous. Travis, Horace,” he said, nodding. Even at eleven o’clock at night he was immaculate in wasp-legged pants, a sand-colored shirt, and a scarf printed with colorful fish. Josh had actually thought about borrowing one of Randall’s shirts to wear to this meeting; he was thankful now that he had decided against it. They were tailored too perfectly to hang right on him, and he would have looked like a servant caught pilfering from his master’s closet. His own plain cotton shirt, speckled with drops of blood he had been unable to dab out, at least had a certain moral gravity.
Randall took the hand of the representative of the Krewe of Venus and kissed it with scrupulous insincerity. “Ms. Gomez. Always a pleasure.”
She retrieved her hand and briefly wiped it off on her dress. Josh smiled inwardly. An instructive tell, there. Any distaste for a Denton might be played to his advantage.
“By the way,” Randall Denton said, “I don’t think Jim Ford will be coming. He’s been a bit under the weather, and what with the lateness of the hour, he agreed that it might be best if he stayed home.”
Meaning that with Sloane Gardner in custody, only the Dentons were here to speak for the Krewe of Momus. With every second it was looking more and more like Josh had put the Dentons on the right hand: the sheriff was trying to step into the power vacuum left by Jane Gardner’s death.
“Shall we wait for a Harlequin?” Randall asked.
“I didn’t invite any Harlequins,” Jeremiah said. He lowered himself painfully back to his chair. “We know what they want. They bear some responsibility for what has become of us.”
The sheriff’s arthritis seemed markedly worse, his joints stiff and painful. Thinking about those dark glasses again, Joshua wondered if the sheriff was taking yarrow. He often prescribed it for colds and flus, as it helped break fevers and contained a mild anti-inflammatory, but occasionally a patient would report that it made his eyes painfully sensitive to light. The sheriff’s cough was very bad, hoarse, wet and prolonged. To judge by the spots of color high on his cheeks he was running a fever, too.
He has pneumonia.
Josh blinked at the realization. He wondered what use he could make of this unexpected card. A gust of laughter came from the street below. So far Ham’s crowd was still in a good humor.
“Kyle, take the minutes,” Jeremiah Denton said. His deputy nodded. Horace Lemon slid a pad of paper across the table, along with an ink pot and a quill pen. Sheriff Denton coughed briefly into his fist, then took a long rattling breath. Pneumonia, without a doubt. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. I called this meeting so y’all can fire me.”
Delegates blinked. “What?” Maria Gomez said.
The sheriff shrugged. “I am not a popular man right now. With Jane Gardner gone, somebody has to see about putting the Island back together. I’ve tried, but I??
?m not making many friends, especially on the other side of Broadway. The poor always suffer the most in any disaster, and the friends of Mr. Cane and Mr. Mather are particularly likely to distrust me.”
I feel that way myself, Josh thought, but he kept his mouth shut like his Daddy always taught him and tried not to give away any tells.
“Then there is the question of the minotaurs and revellers,” the sheriff said. “I want them off this Island. It’s my firm belief that if we lack the strength of will to cleanse them from Galveston, in a year or two there will be nothing left that we could recognize by that name.” The sheriff shrugged. He looked very old. “But to those too young to remember 2004, what I’m doing looks inhumane. I am not only encouraging the revellers to leave. My men have orders to shoot them in self-defense. That’s an ugly policy. I need the power to enforce it. That’s what I am asking for tonight.” He leaned forward and put his hands on the table, so the cloth of his coat rustled on its surface. “We can wait for the minotaurs to pick us off one by one, or more horrible still, wait until we become monsters ourselves. It’s a choice.” The sheriff looked around the table. “And if this council decides that we are best off as a brother to dragons and a companion of owls, then so be it. I will retire. Perhaps I will leave the Island. But if you decide that humanity is a thing worth fighting for, then let me have your backing.”
Josh stirred. “Exactly why am I here, Sheriff? I understand why you would need the authority of these other worthy folks, but…?”
Sheriff Denton coughed. “To be frank, Josh, we need everyone to work together in these dark days. I need someone to talk to the poor folk, to the refugees, to the folks that have come to the Bishop’s Palace because Sloane invited them in. I don’t want a civil war here. I want those people included.”
“Why me?” Josh said.
“You’re their doctor. Mr. Mather is their friend. And you two, let’s be candid, have a good reason to hold a grudge against my office. If you were willing to support the militia, I believe the people would see it was the right thing to do.”
“And after all,” Josh said, “the Krewe of Momus has always been in charge. And with Jim Ford not here, and Jane Gardner dead, and Sloane Gardner arrested, why, the Dentons are the Krewe of Momus, aren’t they? Which reminds me to ask, why was it, again, that you arrested Ms. Gardner?”
“My men took her home,” Jeremiah said. “Ashton Villa is where she lives, Mr. Cane. There’s no call for her to be at Randall’s house.”
“No call to be inviting every mongrel off the streets to roll around in my sheets either,” Randall added.
“How thoughtful of you,” Josh said.
Kyle Lanier looked up from his notes. “Don’t get smart, Cane.”
“But while we’re being candid,” Josh said slowly, “I do have sort of a grudge with your office, Sheriff. Something about getting the crap kicked out of me and then being convicted of a crime I didn’t commit, with the help of some faked-up evidence.”
The sheriff shrugged. “Mistakes were made. It grieves me, but it has to be admitted.”
“What if I said that wasn’t good enough?” Josh asked. “What if I decided I wanted to test Galveston’s justice? What if I said that I would be willing to support the militia, but only if the son of a bitch who faked the evidence against me and Ham was caught and sent to jail?”
A long silence built. Josh wished he could see behind the sheriff’s dark glasses. “Why, then,” the sheriff said evenly, “we would launch an investigation into your charges of battery and false evidence.” He paused. “We would make every effort to determine the guilty, and the guilty would be punished,” he said.
Kyle Lanier’s quill stopped moving across the sheet of rice paper. The deputy looked up, eyes narrow in his ugly face.
“I am a great lover of justice,” Josh said.
Randall Denton laughed.
“Would you be able to sponsor me to join the Krewe of Momus?” Josh asked. “I have to warn you, I don’t have the back fees, not just at the moment.”
“Merit means more than money in times like these,” the sheriff said.
Wrong. Merit won’t buy you insulin, Sheriff. Josh frowned. “What if I said, no? What if I said, Sheriff Denton here shot the Recluse, that very Odessa Gibbons whose legacy he is claiming to defend? What if I said, Sheriff Denton was responsible for having me framed?” Josh gave Kyle Lanier a long look. Then he turned to Randall Denton. “What if I said, this man is out of control, he has involved the Krewe of Momus in bearing false witness, in single-handedly declaring martial law, in murder? He is injuring the Denton name!”
“If such a thing is possible,” Maria Gomez muttered.
Sheriff Denton started from his chair. “Do you think you can come here in your dirty shirt and get yourself off by offering Randall my money and Kyle my job?” He caught ahold of himself. “Son, you have reached the limits of impertinence. I brought you here with an honest offer for your own good. Everyone around this table knows it. But don’t think you can play hardball with me. You don’t have the cards. Innocent or guilty, you were sentenced to exile from this Island, and I can have you arrested between one breath and the next just for having set foot on Galveston again.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Josh said.
The sheriff regarded him. “Try me.”
Maria Gomez cleared her throat. “Do you really think the magic is going to go away?” she said unexpectedly. “Now that the Recluse is gone, it’s bound to be working in folks. I’ve—” She stopped, looking at the sheriff. “I’ve heard that, anyway.”
Ha, Josh thought. I wonder what the representative of the Krewe of Venus has seen? He glanced down at his hands, still burned miraculous white where Joe Tucker’s blood had spattered them.
Maria Gomez collected her thoughts. “Once the magic does start working on a person, there’s nobody left to send her to Krewes, with Miss Odessa gone.”
Travis Perry stirred. “A boat’ll work as well as the Recluse’s magic to get someone off the Island.”
“But speaking of Miss Odessa,” Horace Lemon said, “the Krewe of Togetherness for one would like to understand a little better the details of her death, Mr. Denton.”
“Miss Gibbons was a great lady,” Sheriff Denton said. “Of late she had begun to seriously abuse her power, but we must never forget what she did to save this Island. In 2004 it was Jane Gardner and Odessa Gibbons who showed us that to live free we must fight the magic to our last breaths—” Sheriff Denton stopped, coughed, pulled a handkerchief deliberately from the breast pocket of his coat and coughed into it, harder, a train of long wracking spasms. When he could finally draw breath, he folded the handkerchief carefully and tucked it back into his pocket. “This is not about the revellers’ humanity,” he said. “It is about ours.
“Once you say a thing with the shell of a crab or the face of a snake is human, you can’t stop there. Why not marry them? Why not have their babies?” the sheriff demanded. His face behind those dark glasses was contorted with rage. “Will you let the human race vanish from the earth? Maybe Darwin is right, and we’re nothing more than a fancy kind of monkey. Is that what you want? Do you want us to abdicate our position of sovereignty over the earth, a position entrusted to us by the almighty God? ‘Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never want to do less.’—Robert E. Lee said that.” Sheriff Denton looked around the table from behind his dark glasses. “I submit we have a duty to do.”
“Yes, you’re right to quote General Lee,” Josh said slowly. “We have a civil war in Galveston. Again. And just like last time, the pure and unsullied South must protect itself from the foul, the subhuman, the manifestly inferior”—here Josh looked over into Horace Lemon’s worn black face—“monsters.”
Bodies shifted around the table. Lemon met Josh’s eyes for a long moment, then turned to stare at the sheriff.
“The revellers aren’t just a different color
,” Sheriff Denton said. “They are not human. The magic is not mindless, like sunspots or radiation. It twists people’s characters, as well as their bodies.”
“So does beer,” Josh said. “So does whiskey. So does bigotry. Vincent Tranh is lying on the second floor of Mr. Denton’s house tonight.” Josh looked over at Travis Perry, the second—or was it third?—Captain of Thalassar since Vince had gone to Krewes. “He is sick with malaria, a genuine human parasite. It seems to be doing all right in his liver. He has a long mustache like a shrimp and his skin has changed color. You could say he is eccentric, if not actually crazy, from having spent the last thirteen years trapped in the Mardi Gras. But does he seem less human to me than a patient with advanced Alzheimer’s? No, he retains more of himself than that. I could argue that physically he is no more changed than the late Grand Duchess was in the weeks before her death.” No more changed than Sam Cane, one-eyed and delirious, burning now in Randall Denton’s childhood bed. Half-digested blood spilling from his mouth, staining Randall’s expensive sheets. There was the sham of civilization for you, Josh thought, all laid bare in an instant.
For a moment he felt his face begin to dissolve into panic and exhaustion and despair. He schooled his features. No tells. Not now.
“You can’t ask us to believe the Prawn Men are as human as you or I,” Travis Perry said.
“The Devil can quote Scripture for his purpose,” Sheriff Denton said. “But tell me, boy, are you really so soft on the revellers? Are you really that eager to have the magic come? If you think it will avenge you, you are mistaken. I’ve seen it before, my boy. I am old enough to remember the Flood, and believe me when I tell you that the poor and the sick will go first and worst.”
Josh laughed. “Me, eager for the magic? Sheriff, you don’t know me very well.” Josh pushed back his chair and stood up. He walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. There was quite a crowd around the Rosenberg Library now, made up of the curious and the idle, the homeless and the sick, his patients and Ham’s friends. If the revellers dared to show themselves, they would be part of that Krewe of outcasts. His father would be, too, if he survived. Someone in the crowd below caught sight of his silhouette, and a roar went through the throng. Heads turned and hands pointed up.