A Congregation of Jackals (21 page)

“Yeah,” was Jim’s response. She looked up at his face, but it was turned away from her and darkened by shadow. He took her right hand in one of his titanic carpenter hands and gently pressed his other atop it, as if he were making a sandwich with too little meat for the bread.

“I think we should leave soon,” she said. “It is fine for guests to come to our wedding tired and bedraggled, but we must be well rested. My father rented a rolling daguerreotype saloon for the banquet.” Jim
nodded. She added, “This is the last night that we will sleep apart from one another.” Beatrice pursed her lips and gave voice to none of the twining images that raced through her mind and made her chest and nexus ache.

“Let me tell my pals when to get to church with that ledger.” He leaned over and kissed her; she felt the heat of his face and tasted sweat upon his lips.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” the titan said. He stood up, squeezed her shoulder and walked into the cigar-smoke haze in which luminous butts glowed like the eyes of wary cats.

She watched Jim and the Danfords congregate in a dark corner and converse.

“You are running out of time to change your mind.”

Beatrice looked to her left and saw Deputy Goodstead, ablaze in red clothing.

“I believe I am going to stay the course with Jim.”

“Worse things have happened. The Civil War. The Alamo. Those plagues.”

“Thank you for your blessing, Deputy.”

“If I could give blessings, I’d be a minister—and then I’d accidentally marry the two of us.”

Despite herself, Beatrice grinned at Goodstead’s blunt and tireless approach.

“You will stop pestering me for my hand once I am married, I suppose?’

“I wasn’t just going for the hand.”

Beatrice was startled by the bold remark.

“Sorry,” Goodstead said. “I had some of the rum punch. Thought it was fruit punch, deceived by all the fruit floatin’ in it.”

He turned his blank gaze from her over to Jim and the Danfords.

“Did Jim say where the other one went?”

“Dicky?”

“I thought his name was Richard. The swarthy one that looks like the sort of fella no girl’s father wants to give a handshake.”

“That is Dicky. No, Jim did not remark upon his absence.”

“Funnel cake is real good,” Goodstead said, unfolding a kerchief and pulling off a piece from the rather large section he had purloined.

Beatrice had noticed Goodstead and her father monitoring Dicky and the Danfords throughout the shindy.

She asked, “Are you and my father concerned about Jim’s friends?”

The jaw housed in the basement of the blank facade masticated funnel cake, while the head itself shook twice in denial. She looked over at her husband-to-be and watched him part from the Danfords. The titan strode past weary dancers, cake eaters and producers of gray clouds.

Goodstead thrust his right hand at Jim and said, “You must be James’s father?”

“Nope. It’s me.”

“Hard to tell—old folks look so alike.”

“Forty-six is not that old,” Beatrice defended.

Jim asked Goodstead, “You tryin’ to convince Bea to call off the weddin’?”

“Certainly not. It’s nice she’s want to marry someone so advanced. It’s like a charity.”

Jim smiled at the remark. He was never threatened by Goodstead’s advances and jibes, and (like her father) he found the blank-faced Texan a great source of amusement.

The titan leaned over, scooped her up in both of his arms (she gulped the remainder of her punch so that
she would not spill it), nodded to the deputy and said, “See you at the weddin’.”

“I make japes and all, but I wish you two the best. Honest. And if she becomes a widow, don’t you worry about who’s gonna take care of her: Mayor Goodstead will provide.”

Beatrice inquired, “You intend to be the mayor of Trailspur?”

“Until they need me in Washington, D.C.”

Beatrice waved to Goodstead as her husband-to-be whisked her away.

Jim carried her past the ebullient Mayor Warren John and his frail wife, the small gray Judge Higgins (joined an hour ago by his barmaid Rita), her father’s cousin Robert (and his tall spouse), her friends Lilith Ford and Judy O’Connell (who was with her husband Izzy), Deputy Kenneth John, Wilfreda (who congratulated her with eerie cachinnations), Big Abe and his slim wife, the ribald tailor (who was staring at Tara Taylor’s backside), the three Albens in from Colorado, those marshals Smith and Smiler, the Danfords (the heavy one now holding the hand of Annie Yardley) and ultimately in front of her father who sat beside the Widow Evertson (both on wooden chairs).

“Jim is going to take me home.”

Her father had not seen her coming; the moment he heard his daughter’s voice, he hastily removed his hand from the widow’s. Beatrice thought that he looked happy and comfortable alongside the woman.

“Why are you grinning like that?” her father asked defensively.

Beatrice responded, “Perhaps you and Miss Evertson would like to stand alongside us when Minister Bachs performs the ceremony?”

“A twofer,” Jim added.

“Stop that kind of talk,” her father said, unable to look her or Jim in the eye.

The widow leaned forward and surveyed her father’s face. “You are blushing.”

“I’m not. It’s just red in here.”

“The lights are yellow.” The woman took T.W.’s hand and squeezed it. She looked up at Beatrice, suspended in Jim’s arms, and said, “Your father tells me that you have an interest in painting.”

“I do.”

“I know that you will be busy in the immediate future”—her eyes went up to Jim’s face and then returned to Beatrice’s with a grin in them—“but whenever you are so inclined, I ask that you please join me for an afternoon of painting landscapes. I have extra brushes and canvases and many, many colors from which to choose.”

“Thank you Miss Evertson. Do you prefer to be called Miss Evertson?”

“In general, I ask to be called Mrs. Evertson, but I would prefer for you and James to call me Meredith.”

“Thank you Meredith.”

“I read that article you wrote for the
Trailspur Gazette
last month and the one in the winter edition. It would be a pleasure to have an intelligent companion to paint with. Your father thinks that I spend too much time alone.” She looked at Beatrice’s father with a gaze that was both wry and earnest.

“He thoroughly understands women and their needs,” Beatrice remarked facetiously.

“I am pleased to hear that,” Meredith responded.

“You get her to bed,” T.W., discomfited and fidgety, said to Jim. “I’ll be home in a little while. Need to rest my hip a bit more before I go.”

Jim swept Beatrice forward; she delivered a kiss to her
father’s cheek and then shook Meredith’s hand. The titan carried her from the room, into the cool Montana air.

The couple climbed the lone stone step at the front of the house within which Beatrice had lived for fifteen years. They paused before the door.

“I’d like to wait inside with you—’til your pa comes home.”

“He may be a while, and we both need to get to sleep. You should head back to your home.”

Her titan hesitated and then looked up and down the dirt road at the neighboring houses that sat like bricks against a blue-black sky. There was something nagging him that he did not voice. Beatrice had first noticed this unnamed pregnancy three weeks ago and watched it burgeon when Mary was mutilated—something he still refused to discuss with her. Since the moment his friends arrived, she had never felt as if she had all of his attention.

“What is troubling you?”

“I just want to wait until T.W. gets here is all.”

She knew something was wrong, but her trust in him was absolute: if he did not wish to disclose the source of his unease, she would not pry. At some later time, he would explain it to her if there was a reason for him to do so. He did not know everything about her either—she had never once mentioned the Catholic to whom she had been secretly engaged when she was studying out East—and she would not make him uncomfortable over his discretion.

“Let’s get inside,” he said, surveying the environs and then pressing his left hand to the door. The wood swung wide into the dark house. She noticed for the first time that Jim had a gun tucked into his belt.

Beatrice walked into the darkness, took a match
from the brass box on the wall, struck it on steel and lit an oil lantern. The warm light radiated throughout the den and connecting kitchen.

Jim shut the door. He slid the bolt across as quietly as he could; Beatrice pretended not to hear it.

She asked, “Would you like some tea?”

“That would be a salve.”

Beatrice lit the tinder within the stove, put three cups of water into the kettle and added dry tea leaves. She furtively observed Jim sit, tuck his gun behind his back and recline upon the abraded throw quilt her mother had made that adorned the couch.

“I didn’t see Minister Bachs there,” Jim said as she poured steaming tea into two wooden mugs.

“I do not think he comes out for shindys. I doubt he would approve of the punch or the way people close-dance.”

“I s’pose. And a holy man at a celebration makes people feel anxiousness.”

Beatrice set the cups upon the table before the couch. He looked at her, half of his long face illumined by the lantern, half of his face in shadow.

“You looked so pretty tonight,” he said. “Still do.”

“Thank you.”

Jim picked up his wooden cup with his left hand (even though he was right-handed) and was about to drink when she said, “Blow on it first so you do not burn yourself.” He blew the steam from the small cauldron and then sipped.

“Is there enough sugar in yours?” She had given him five lumps, which was usually the correct amount.

“Just right,” he said absently, his eyes fixed on her face.

Beatrice blew upon and sipped her tea (which had no sugar in it). There was a crack upstairs, and Jim hastily
twisted around in his seat; his right hand slid behind his back, and his left knee knocked into her thigh. A tablespoon of tea sloshed over the lip of her unbalanced cup and splashed upon the top of her green dress; the hot liquid seeped into her corset and stung her skin.

“Oh,” she exclaimed.

Jim looked at her and asked, “Are you burnt?”

“I shall be fine.”

“If it’s gonna blister, you should put a tomato on it, quick.”

“I shall be fine. I was just startled.”

Jim nodded, set his tea down and said, “I’m gonna have a look upstairs.”

“There is no need—that noise was the door to my father’s armoire. The wind catches it whenever he leaves his shutters open.”

“I’ll go have a look.”

She watched Jim rise from the couch, walk across the den and ascend beyond the lantern’s amber luminance into the obscurity of the second floor. She heard his weight bend the wood above her, eliciting dry creaks. There was a pause; a heavy moment later his footsteps continued, diminishing as he went down the upstairs hallway. Beatrice’s heart thudded.

The footsteps halted; somewhere above her, a door opened and closed. She heard a dull thump. Beatrice put the cup down. The silence was oppressive.

“Jim . . .?”

“Just lookin’ round, Bea,” he said, his voice tinny and muted.

The skin beneath her corset scalded by spilt tea started to throb in time with her racing pulse. She needed to set something cool and moist upon it soon so that it would not blister. The footsteps above her head resumed an even tattoo.

She asked, “Is everything in order?”

“Nothing to worry about,” Jim said, his voice louder, closer.

Beatrice went into the kitchen and there untied her shoulder straps; the fine-stitch cotton fabric came loose. She pulled the top of the green garment down to reveal the black corset beneath. With nimble fingers, she unfastened three of the hooks on her left side, pulled the material halfway down her breast and saw a bright red mark glowing upon the skin.

“You got a mark?”

She looked over and saw Jim descend the final stair.

“A small one.”

“I’m sorry for knockin’ into you. I’m just anxious ’bout the wedding. You got a tomato to put on it?”

“No.”

“A raw steak maybe? Or pork chop?”

She shook her head. Jim took a hand towel from the wall and strode to the wash bucket. He plunged the fabric into the soapy water, drew it forth, wrung out the excess liquid (with his strength, it took him only one twist to get out what would have taken her three), and walked over to her.

She reached her hand out for the cloth, but he shook his head and said, “Let me get it.”

He placed the chill, wet towel upon her reddened skin; immediately the prickling wound cooled.

“I am capable of holding it there,” she said.

“I’m the fool that did it to you, so it’s my responsibility.”

He pressed the cloth more firmly to her skin. Two beads of moisture rolled from the fabric, down the top of her left breast, beneath her corset and converged upon the textured curve of her nipple. The water felt cold upon the sensitive skin and she felt a tingling
within her. Jim pressed the cloth more firmly to the burn; a rivulet snaked down the swell of her left breast and sluiced across her nipple, now stiff beneath her corset. Her mouth became dry.

Jim placed his mouth upon hers, his tongue warm and tasting of tea; more cool water drained from the cloth beneath her corset, down her left breast, across her ribs, down her stomach and pooled in a whirl at her belly button. He squeezed the cloth in his fist; the weal stung in a way that pleased her. Water ran down her breast and stomach and into the blonde curls of her pubic mound.

She thrust her tongue more deeply into Jim’s mouth; he released the washcloth and slid his fingertips beneath her corset and squeezed, eliciting the most exquisite ache she had ever felt in her breast. A moan that sounded like it came from a stranger emerged from her own throat.

The wall of the kitchen struck her buttocks and shoulder blades; Jim pressed himself against her front, his phallus hard and warm at an angle across her stomach. He pulled down her corset and lowered his head to her left breast; he took half of the lobe into his mouth and wrote circles with his tongue tip around her stiff nipple. She ran her fingertips through his blond hair.