A Congregation of Jackals (8 page)

T.W. said quietly, “From the looks of that animal, we’re dealing with a mean one.” The blank face opposite him nodded.

The deputy put his right palm to his revolver and pulled down the brim of his blue hat with his left, an affectation T.W. did not begrudge the young man. The sheriff threw the doors wide and entered; the doors swung outward and when they returned the deputy came with them.

T.W. looked past the mahogany bar James Lingham had built (behind which Rita stood), past the bagatelle tables that entitled the establishment to the adjective “fine” on the sign outside, past the spittoons (which seemed less fine) at which Jeremiah, Frederick and Isaac sat gestating expectorations and to the general seating area in the back that could support ninety customers, but now held only one small man in a burgundy suit and matching bowler hat. The fellow was hunched forward, drawing on a wide piece vellum with a fountain pen.

“He’s little,” Goodstead said.

“Men aren’t happy about being small. That horse can tell you.”

The lawmen strode past the oldsters (each of whom spit a salutation and nodded politely) and entered the general seating area. The little illustrator in burgundy rolled up the sheet of vellum. T.W. sniffed the air and smelled flowers and wine.

“He’s wearing perfume,” Goodstead said as they closed the remaining yards.

“Good afternoon,” T.W. opened.

The diminutive man looked up from under the rim of his burgundy bowler hat. His eyes were small pebbles; his mouth was a tiny slit beneath the big nose that dominated his face. T.W. was not sure if it was a line of ink or a mustache that paralleled the mouth slit. The sheriff guessed that the man was thirty, but could have been off by a decade either way.

“You have question,” the man asked with a thickly accented voice; the inflection made it seem more like a statement than an inquiry.

“Are you a Frenchman?” the sheriff asked.

“Oui.”

“Is that your horse outside?”

“She is mine.”

“That mare needs a bath and some food.”

“Thank you for advice.” The little Frenchman stared at T.W., scrutinizing his face. He said nothing more; he just sat there looking up, blinking far less regularly than the lawman did.

“Go take care of that now,” T.W. said. “Your mare almost bit the deputy and is mighty unpleasant to look upon. She needs some oats and a bath. And perhaps a new owner.”

“And maybe a rifle,” Goodstead added.

“Go tend to her,” the sheriff ordered.

“She was bad. I teach her lesson.”

“How long have you been teaching it to her?”

“Three years.”

T.W. wanted to slap the man, but perhaps in his culture there was no consideration for the feelings of animals.

“Go take care of that horse. Now.”

“I am busy,” the fragrant Frenchman said.

“You don’t look busy.”

“You have interrupted me.”

Goodstead looked at T.W. and said, “Is he telling us to scat?”

“Show us that drawing you rolled up when you saw us coming. I’d like to see what requires your precious time.”

“You will not appreciate.”

“We don’t appreciate your perfume, but we’re smelling it just the same.”

“Eau de Cologne.”

“Was that a threat? Did you just threaten me?” To Goodstead he said, “You heard him threaten me.”

“That is untrue,” the little man said, coolly.

“Are you saying that I’m not fluent in French?”

“I did not threaten.”

“Show us the drawing,” T.W. said, putting the palms of his hands upon the table; Goodstead set his left boot upon the chair next to the diminutive Frenchman and leaned forward like a bird of prey.

“You will not appreciate.” The little man was not at all rattled by the experience. He unrolled the paper; his little ink-stained fingers clambered across the vellum like the legs of a crab. The lawmen leaned in.

T.W. looked at the drawing, and at first he did not understand what he was looking at—the thousands
upon thousands of lines swirled with such density and fluidity that the confluence confused his eyes. Then he realized what he was looking at, snatched it from the table and handed it to Goodstead.

“Have Rita burn that.” The deputy nodded, took the vellum from him and carried it toward the bar. “Roll it up before you give it to her. She doesn’t need to see it.” Goodstead rolled up the illustration as he walked.

T.W. leaned in close to the Frenchman and said, “You ever do anything like that yourself?”

“Burn other man’s possessions?”

T.W. wanted to put his fist through the little man, but he stayed his temper.

“What is wrong with you? Why would you draw something like that?”

“I draw many things.”

T.W. swept his left leg beneath the chair the little Frenchman sat on, dumping the man to the floor. The toppled foreigner stood up and straightened his jacket.

“Don’t bother sitting. Ride out of Trailspur. If I see you again, I’ll throw you in jail for being a public nuisance and I’ll put down that pitiful horse of yours myself.”

“The door is that way,” Goodstead said, pointing his left index finger toward the exit, his right palm pressed firmly to the butt of his holstered six-shooter.

The Frenchman put his bowler hat back on his head and, without another word, left the saloon.

“I can still smell him,” Goodstead remarked. T.W. nodded.

When T.W. returned to have the late breakfast he had earlier missed, he looked at the biscuits and gravy and the pork chops but saw only the thick black lines of an
illustration that detailed a young girl buried up to her neck in the sand, scalp bereft of hair, nails driven into the top of her bald screaming head.

He did not eat.

Pickles yawned. He was usually asleep by eight o’clock (not much happened at night in Billings, Montana Territory), but tonight his errands had kept him out until ten. He scratched his bushy hair, contemplated what he was going to say before he said it (that helped him talk to white folks), raised his left hand and gently rapped upon the hotel door.

“Who’s knockin’?”

Pickles immediately forgot what he had intended to say. He looked at his old boots as though they might have the answers, but they did not. He then thought about how old these boots were (seven years—a third his own age) and how he would like some new ones with rattlesnake skin and pointy toes like the cowboys wore.

“Is that you, you dumb nigger?”

“It’s Pickles,” he said. “I ain’t dumb.”

“You get what we sent you for?”

“I got them, yes, though it took a while to find them and I got lost twice.”

Pickles heard footsteps within the apartment; the
tumblers in the lock squeaked as the key was turned within it.

“I gots to oil that,” he reminded himself as he had the last time he came to this apartment (and the time before that).

The door opened. Before the errand boy stood one of the sun-bronzed twins who tenanted this room: a tall man with oily black hair that fell to his shoulders, a prickly beard, mean eyes and a gun in his right hand more often than not.

The errand boy asked, “You the one that can talk?”

“Come in.”

Pickles walked in; the man shut the door and twisted the key in the lock. Seated on the bed was the talker’s duplicate, Arthur, a small mandolin without any strings resting in his lap.

Laid out on the three cots Pickles had brought up on Tuesday were the mule skinners who also tenanted this room; beside the youngest one laid a fat woman who had her face pressed down into a pillow and another pillow atop her head (presumably put there to muffle her snoring).

The errand boy did not like a single person that stayed in this suite, but he was polite regardless. Money from a rude man spends just as well as the stuff from nice folks. Pickles glanced furtively at the slumbering woman, hoping to glimpse something pink, but was frustrated by the dingy blanket and dingier fellow that clung to her as if beached on an island.

The talker said, “Don’t get any ideas. She ain’t goin’ with no nigger. Not for any money.”

“I was just lookin’. She just layin’ there.”

“Don’t talk back.”

“I ’pologize.”

There was a gentle knock. The twins pointed their guns at the door; they were quicker than mosquitoes when they aimed their weapons.

“Who’s out there?” the talker asked.

“Alphonse.”

To Pickles, the talker said, “Let him in,” though neither he nor his sibling lowered the barrels of the guns they had pointed at the door.

“Don’t shoot me none by accident,” Pickles admonished.

The errand boy turned to the door, twisted the key in the lock and opened it wide. The small foreigner in the burgundy suit and bowler cap was back. He walked past Pickles, a roll of papers wedged in his right armpit.

“Shut the door and lock it,” the talker said to Pickles. He obeyed. The twins holstered their guns.

To the foreigner, the talker said, “You get a good look at ’em?”

“Oui.”

“You drawed ’em all like Quinlan tol’ you? James and his fiancée and the sheriff?”

“Oui
. And deputy. And minister and church.”

“They accurate?”

“Very much,” Alphonse replied. He handed the bundle of vellum to the talker.

The man unrolled the parchment and looked at an illustration of a pretty white woman with curly blonde hair and an adorable dimple on her chin. The talker showed the illustration to his mute brother.

“James did well for himself, that big oaf,” the talker said. Arthur stared at the illustration, his face inscrutable. To Alphonse, the talker said, “She’s real beautiful.”

“Today,” the foreigner replied.

Pickles did not understand the foreigner’s answer, but the talker did and nodded.

“Why is nigger here?” Alphonse asked, pointing to—but not looking at—Pickles.

The talker said, “I was goin’ to settle him when you come up. Arthur’s concerned ’bout him and how he’s always lurkin’.”

“Oui.”
Alphonse turned and looked at Pickles.

The errand boy said nervously to the talker, “B-But I got th-them ribbons that you asked for. That’s why—that’s why I come up here.” He pulled a fistful of lavender ribbons with yellow polka dots from his bag and shook the iridescent strips like talismans. “This . . . this is w-what you asked me to fetch. They got the circles on ’em j-j-just l-like—”

The Frenchman jammed a rag into Pickle’s mouth and swept his feet out from under him. The floor rushed up, met and smacked the back of his skull; the impact dazed the errand boy. He opened his eyes and looked up. The inside of a bowler cap covered his face; private night enveloped him (one that smelled like hair oil). Cold metal dug into his neck.

The last thing Pickles heard before he bled out was, “Mule. Wrap up that nigger before it shits the floor.”

Dicky sat opposite Godfrey for the fourth and final day of their train trip across the United States. The duo had lost interest in cards a while ago and consequently spent the days drinking, watching the landscape flee.

The train was currently parked beside a water tower; engine men lathed the bellows. Dicky’s view was obscured by a blanket of steam blown east by the strong western wind. For a moment, both sides of the car were aglow with roiling bright white exhaust.

“It’s like we’re flying. Up in the clouds,” Godfrey observed.

“Enjoy the view. I’m pretty sure we don’t have angels making beds for us in heaven.”

“You like jokes.”

“That wasn’t one.”

“You know what they say about clowns.”

“Children enjoy their antics?”

The door at the front end of the cabin swung wide and in the billowing steam loomed two triangles. The exhaust dissipated and the shapes resolved into a pair of hoop dresses, one dark green, the other striped blue, each filled out by a fine-looking woman. Dicky’s stomach sank as he looked upon the face of the black-haired, blue-eyed woman on the left—it was Allison Bayers.

Godfrey, his back to the door, saw Dicky’s reaction, slid his hand under his valise where he kept his ten-shooter and said, “Are we in trouble?”

“No,” Dicky said. Upon further inspection, he realized that the woman was not Allison, just a very pretty doppelganger. “I thought I recognized . . . one of the women who just boarded. It is not her.”

“Some girl you got drunk and took advantage of?”

“I don’t need to get a woman drunk.”

Dicky watched the women sit on the opposite side of the passenger cabin; a hunched Negro with gray hair carried two valises over to them. The one who looked like Allison counted out three coins and handed them to the porter, who was so pleased with his tip that he
dropped to one knee and genuflected like an English knight and departed singing about sunshine and licorice.

The raven-haired woman set her blue coat upon the chair opposite her and yawned, covering her mouth with her gloved left hand.

“Don’t,” Godfrey said to Dicky.

The conductor called out indecipherably; the train lunged forward, glided a few yards, jerked abruptly and then chugged along the steel rails in earnest. With much steadier locomotion than the train’s, Dicky traversed the cabin to join the two seated women. The one who looked like Allison from afar looked less like her from the distance of only one yard, but still she was lovely, and the similarity was beyond passing.

“May I sit with you for a moment?”

“My husband probably wouldn’t approve of you joining us.”

“Don’t underestimate him.”

The brunette laughed, but the raven-haired focus of his attention did not.

She said simply, “We are not looking for company at this present time. Thank you.”

Rebuffed, Dicky tilted his head forward, grinned, said, “Good afternoon,” swung back around the car and landed in his seat opposite Godfrey.

The plump man said, “She must have cataracts.”

“Matrimonial.”

The plains of Iowa undulated outside their window. Little black bugs that were animals to be someday slaughtered or men to be someday buried stood at the edges of prairies, watching the locomotive roar past. The funnel belched exhaust into the blue sky and the steam domes hissed.