A Congregation of Jackals (23 page)

T.W. stood in front of the polished metal mirror he had inherited from his mother two decades prior and checked for the third time that he did not look like a fool. Tails dripped like a runny nose from the rear of his navy blue jacket, the shirt’s high collar poked his jaw, the double-breasted checkered vest looked like a chessboard and the frilly cravat made him feel as if he were a clown. Though he preferred the simple plaid two-piece he had worn last evening, his daughter informed him that this suit was his most—and only—fashionable attire. T.W.’s opinion on fashion was that it was a way to persuade people to wear things that were ridiculous and spend too much money in acquiring them, but this was Beatrice’s day and he would wear whatever she requested without (verbal) complaint. The tailor had adjusted the suit to accommodate the extra two inches his waist had acquired since he last wore it, and looking at his reflection, he supposed that he was not an embarrassment to the Jeffries lineage.

“The circus is in town?”

T.W. turned to face the newly arrived deputy. The Texan wore a striped black and brown two-piece suit and a silk tie as thin as a shoelace; he sipped coffee.

“Don’t fling any remarks at this in front of Beatrice,” T.W. said as he adjusted his cravat and wiped lint from his left shoulder. “She bought it for my fiftieth birthday.”

“I’m lookin’ forward to what happens at sixty.”

“She says it’s fashionable.” T.W. lifted and then dropped one of the tails.

“I don’t recall you wearin’ it. And I like to laugh.”

T.W. turned sideways, sucked in his stomach and said, “I wore it to Lester O’Connell’s funeral.”

“You couldn’t toss it in the coffin?”

“Do you intend to hurl insults at me throughout my daughter’s wedding day?”

“I’m focused on the suit right now.”

“Be polite. Today is a big day for me.”

“The biggest. You need anything?”

“Beatrice said she wasn’t hungry, so I didn’t cook, but that coffee and toast sure smell good.”

Goodstead handed the wooden mug to T.W. and then the thick, butter-soaked toast, from which not one bite had been taken.

“Brought ‘em up for you, though I had a sip of the coffee. I’ll go down and get some more.” He paused in the doorway and said, “With Beatrice leaving, I suppose I need to familiarize myself with the particulars of your kitchen. Took me a while to find the sugar.”

“I apologize for the disarray.”

“My time is valuable.”

“There’s another option, you know,” T.W. intimated.

“Does it involve my kitchen?”

“It might.”

“I’m not gonna tell you to shut your damn mouth on your daughter’s weddin’ day. I refuse to do it.”

Goodstead left the room; T.W. turned to face the mirror again. He wondered what Meredith would think of this absurd clothing.

“You look very handsome.”

T.W. turned to face his daughter. Beatrice’s blonde hair was pulled into two braids that circled her head
like a tiara; her blue wedding gown shone with iridescent splendor, whorls of lace and white silk filigree clinging to the curves of her form. Cream-colored button-up high-top boots with two-inch heels poked out from beneath the hem of her dress, spotless and delicate. She looked as stunning in that dress as her mother had on her own wedding day.

“You look beautiful, Bea. Absolutely beautiful.” He walked over to his daughter and set a kiss upon her cheek; a luminous smile burgeoned across her face like sunrise.

“If James messes up, you’ll have plenty of fellows ready to do it right,” Goodstead said, returning with another piece of toast and a steaming coffee. “Would you like something to eat or some coffee?”

“I am too nervous,” she said.

Goodstead bit into his toast and chewed. There was a knock on the door downstairs.

Beatrice and Goodstead, both surprised, looked into the hall.

T.W. grinned and said, “That is Tim Halders.”

Beatrice’s eyes widened; she looked at her father and said, “You hired on a carriage? It is only a ten-minute walk to the church.”

“I could not risk bad weather or a dust devil tarnishing such perfection.”

Beatrice threw her arms around her father (Goodstead snatched the coffee cup from his right hand) and kissed him thrice upon the cheek.

“You spoil me,” she said.

“Nothing in the whole world gives me greater pleasure.”

The driver knocked again; T.W. looked at Goodstead (who set the extra coffee atop the armoire) and said, “Please escort Beatrice down. I’ll join you in a moment.”

“Come on,” Goodstead said. “Let me put you in that carriage.”

Beatrice followed the deputy into the hall. When T.W. heard their feet impact the stairs he walked over to the table by his bedside and opened the top drawer. He withdrew a small metal case no larger than a playing card and opened it. Within lay a daguerreotype of him, thirty-one years younger, standing beside the woman he had buried the day after his daughter was born.

“She’s getting married today. In your dress.”

Lucinda’s merry eyes stared up at him from the silver image in such a lifelike manner that he found it hard to return their gaze. He kissed her face (no larger than a thumbnail in the picture), closed the frame and replaced it in the table. He took special care to shut the drawer quietly, though he did this for no reason that he fully understood.

T.W. looked in the mirror, assessed that he did not look any more ridiculous than the last three times he had surveyed himself, straightened his cravat and walked to the door. He may look silly, but it did not matter overmuch to him: this day belonged to Beatrice and James.

He thought of the carpenter who would soon be his son and then his mind turned to the titan’s friends. Their faces flashed into his mind. They made him uneasy, they were unsettled themselves and he made them uncomfortable. He paused.

T.W. looked at the open armoire atop which sat the steaming cup of coffee and within which hung several frock coats, several sets of suspenders, six shirts, four pairs of trousers and the holster with his six-shooter. He hated that he even contemplated bringing a weapon into the house of God, but T.W. had learned to trust his instincts over the years.

“You havin’ trouble with the stairs, old man?” Goodstead asked from below.

“Give me a minute. I misplaced your muzzle.”

“You can’t silence this wisdom.”

The sheriff decided to bring the revolver, yet knew that he could not wear it openly in church. He surveyed the room for some subterfuge until an idea came to him. He knelt beside his bed as if in prayer and reached his free hand into the darkness below.

T.W. exited his house, a shoe box tucked underneath his left arm. Within it was Lucinda’s shawl, an heirloom he had intended to pass along to Beatrice. Beneath the fabric was his gun and a strap with six extra rounds.

The Texan opened the carriage door for T.W.; a dagger of pain shot through the sheriff’s left hip as he climbed the step into the vehicle, but he did not verbally acknowledge the pain. Goodstead entered the vehicle behind him and shut the door. Outside, the driver snapped his reins and called out. The horses cantered forward.

Beatrice leaned her head against her father’s left shoulder.

Goodstead looked at the shoe box in T.W.’s hands and said, “You bringing pets?”

“No.”

“More shoes in case the ones you got on start to itch?”

“No.”

“A very small addition for James’s house?”

“No.”

“I’m running out of clever guesses.”

“This is something I want to give Beatrice at the banquet.”

“Stop spoilin’ her—she don’t like it. I could use some spoilin’. I’m completely ready for it.”

“Lilith Ford might like to spoil you,” Beatrice said.

Goodstead’s blank face froze for a moment; he looked over at the bride in blue.

“She noticed you at the shindy,” Beatrice added.

“My red suit got her attention?”

Beatrice did not respond to the inquiry.

Goodstead watched six houses glide past the carriage window, nodded his head and said, “She looked very comely, grazin’ on that funnel cake.”

“When you speak to her, I recommend that you refrain from making bovine comparisons.”

“But cows are pretty. Nice to pet.”

T.W. watched the houses depart from the window, replaced by farms, cattle ranges and then the Taylors’ corral.

The carriage wheels rolled from lush grass onto rougher terrain; stones impacted the wooden tires, clacking and snapping.

“Grab something,” Tim Halders said from the driver’s bench.

The carriage lurched, jostling the passengers. The revolver hidden within the shoe box slid forward; T.W. tightened his grip on the package to keep it upright and closed.

The driver slowed the horses for the rugged landscape; the church was not far off. T.W. took his daughter’s hand and squeezed it; she squeezed back.

“I hope you invited Meredith,” she said.

“She’ll be there.”

“I like her.”

“So do I.”

His heart quickened when he thought of the long,
melting embrace he and Meredith had shared on her doorstop the night before, the sound of her breath and the taste of rum upon her lips. It had been six years since he last kissed a woman.

Open plains and northern mountains were visible on T.W.’s left, presently obscured by the white facade of the church as it slid into view. The sheriff saw Oswell Danford and his brother standing before the edifice’s main entrance. The duo stood watching the carriage from beneath the shadows of brown cowboy hats; they waved.

“It appears they didn’t set their watches to Mountain Railway Time,” Goodstead remarked.

“They were supposed to arrive early. Jim wanted a book with all of the guests’ signatures, and he put Oswell in charge of it.”

T.W. doubted that James had thought of such a sentimental thing on his own, but he did not remark upon it aloud. He would not worry his daughter with his suspicions.

The carriage stopped a few yards from the church entrance; the Danfords stood against the facade like sentinels, looking into the dark interior of the carriage. T.W. wondered where Richard Sterling was.

Oswell, walking toward the carriage, said, “Good morning Miss Jeffries, Sheriff Jeffries, Deputy Goodstead.”

T.W. had not introduced Oswell to the deputy; the rancher had learned the Texan’s identity on his own.

“Good morning Oswell. Good morning Godfrey,” Beatrice said.

“Mornin’,” Goodstead said.

T.W. leaned to the window and inquired of Oswell, “Did Minister Bachs open up yet?”

“We’re the first ones here.”

“Is the door locked?”

“I didn’t try to open it.”

“Can you see if it’s open? I don’t want my daughter standing outside with this dress on.”

Oswell walked three steps to the double door of the church; T.W. descried something anomalous in the man’s stride—a slight hitch in his right leg that he had not noticed before. The rancher put his hand to the bronze knob and twisted; the cylinder did not yield. He tried the second handle with no more success.

“They’re locked.”

“I see the minister,” Beatrice said, and pointed through the opposite window of the carriage. T.W. looked through the portal and squinted: a broad man clad in black with a bare skull and a long silver beard walked toward the church, a valise in his right hand.

“That ain’t Minister Bachs,” Goodstead said.

“It isn’t,” T.W. replied. “Minister Bachs’s chin whiskers aren’t that long or that white.”

“That isn’t your usual minister?” Oswell asked.

“It’s someone else,” T.W. replied, and looked at Oswell. The rancher watched the approaching man intently. For some reason, Godfrey glanced over at the gazebo and then focused his gaze upon the approaching stranger.

“I wonder if something happened to Minister Bachs,” Beatrice said to her father.

The approaching minister raised his right hand and waved amicably at the assemblage of the church.

He shouted the word “howdy” across the plain.

T.W. looked at Goodstead and said, “We’re getting out.” To Beatrice he said, “Wait in here until we get the church door open.”

The deputy exited the carriage, turned around and helped T.W. down from the vehicle. Pain lanced through
the sheriff’s left hip when he made contact with the dirt; he grimaced.

T.W. limped over to the driver, climbed up beside him and said in a low, barely audible voice, “Tim.”

“Sheriff.”

“You see me scratch the back of my head, you lay into those horses and ride the hell out of here as fast as you can.”

“Uh . . .”

“You understand?”

“I understand.”

T.W. climbed down the steps, thudded back upon the dirt, winced and then strode beside Goodstead. Oswell and Godfrey walked around the carriage to stand abreast the lawmen.

“You look like quite a posse,” the stranger said and then cackled loudly in the way that men do when they have spent too much time alone and need to hear their own laughter to keep themselves company.

The stranger was upon them; he was a bald six-foot-tall barrel-chested man of fifty with a long silver beard, eyebrows like raven’s wings and bright blue eyes; he wore black.

The sheriff stepped forward and asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Minister Orton Bradley.” He extended his meaty hand toward T.W.; the sheriff clasped and shook it. The man’s grip had no yield whatsoever, as if the hand were made of stone.

“Pleased to meet you, Minister Bradley,” T.W. said.

“Call me Minister Orton.”

“Pleased to meet you, Minister Orton. I’m the bride’s father, Sheriff Theodore William Jeffries. That’s my deputy, Everett Goodstead.”

The minister released T.W.’s hand, shook the Texan’s and said, “Pleased to meet you, Everett.”

“That’s some beard. Any critters in there, or just some crosses that never see the sun?”

Minister Orton smiled, revealing big white teeth and two wooden replacements. The laugh that erupted from his belly sounded as if it originated in a tuba.

The Danfords took a step back to exclude themselves from the conversation, yet remained near enough to observe the goings-on.