Incident at Twenty-Mile Page 20

  Tiny laughed so hard he had to slap the bar until his palm stung to stop, and Jeff Calder laughed along, shaking his head and wiping his eyes with his knuckle as he forced out a string of breathy, high-pitched he-he-he's.

  When Lieder's laughter subsided, he turned to Mr. Delanny, mirth still damp in his eyes, and said, "I don't intend to take a ruler to you, Mr. Pimp, because that's a degrading thing to do to a person. If you disobey me by talking or getting up from that chair, I'll just… shoot you. You see, I have chosen you to be my Example Nigger, so the town will know what a dangerous and stupid thing it would be to cross me. You probably wonder why I have selected you for this honor. Well, fact is I'm not exactly sure. I think it's the way you talked to me. I really hate people to use a tone of voice on me."

  Mr. Delanny looked up, heavy lidded, from the solitaire he had begun defiantly to lay out, then he returned his attention to his cards. His glance had been intentionally slow and indifferent, and his hands were steady, but Frenchy was uneasy, because he failed to put the red nine on the black ten, and Delanny never missed a play.

  His amused eyes never leaving Mr. Delanny, Lieder asked Jeff Calder, "What's your boss's name?"

  "Mr. Delanny, sir."

  "Delanny, eh? I like to know a man's name. Gives you something to hang your hate on. Doesn't it bother you, Peggy, to work for a slimy pimp who talks to weary travelers in a tone of voice?"

  Jeff Calder showed his teeth in an uncertain attempt at a smile.

  "Yes, Mr. Delanny acts all refined and superior. But he won't be refined and superior for long, because sooner or later the need to piss will rise within him, as it must for all men born of woman. And that's when we'll find out what Mr. Delanny is made of. Either he will just sit there and piss his pants like a little baby, in which case he won't seem nearly so refined and superior. Or he will try to get up from that chair to relieve himself, in which case he will be dead, because I've promised to shoot him if he moves, and I'm a man of my word. It'll be interesting to see which path he chooses, don't you think?"

  As Jeff Calder swallowed, the sound of a door slamming upstairs was followed by a slurred snarl from Queeny, as she and Chinky were herded down the stairs by Bobby-My-Boy, the Chinese girl wearing only a camisole and her everyday cotton knee-length culottes, Queeny in a frayed old wrap, her orange, gray-rooted hair a tangled nest over her sleep-puffed eyes. They had been sleeping late after yesterday's work.

  "You took your own sweet time rounding these holes up!" Lieder accused. Then in a "naughty, naughty!" tone, he said, "Bobby-My-Boy? Have you been sampling the merchandise? Fess up, now!"

  Tiny laughed and slapped the bar, and Jeff Calder snickered, while Bobby-My-Boy protested petulantly that he hadn't done nothing!

  "Well, just so's you don't try to get a head start on your friends." Lieder turned to Jeff Calder. "You got any sarsaparilla back there, Peggy?"

  "No, sir. There's a couple old bottles of birch beer, but I don't know if they're still good. They been around a spell."

  "Pour me out one and we'll test 'er. You see, I don't drink anything hard, 'cause I don't need drink to get my blood churning. It's always churning."

  Calder wiped the dust off one of the bottles, snapped up its wire-clamp seal, and poured some into a glass.

  Lieder sipped cautiously, then pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes like a connoisseur. "Well now, that ain't half-bad. I'm more partial to sarsaparilla, but this'll do." Then with one of those sudden shifts of topic designed to keep the other person off balance, he said, "So tell me, old timer. Where did you leave your leg?"

  "Ah… I lost it in the Battle of the Wilderness," Jeff Calder said.

  "Ah! A veteran of the South's struggle for its constitutional right to self-de-ter-min-ation!" His voice swung from syllable to syllable in the manner of a tent revivalist. "The bankers and mill-owners of the North told the stupid Yankee cannon fodder they were fighting to free the slaves. Free the slaves, my butt! The owners of those cotton mills didn't give a shit for slaves, neither black field slaves nor white wage slaves! They just wanted to keep the South from deciding its own destiny. Free the slaves to do what? To wander the countryside hungry and out of work? To swagger drunk down the street, pushing white women into the gutter? Did they free black women so they could end up in low-class whorehouses-like Miss Slashy-face yonder-selling their ass to all comers? Free the slaves!"

  Jeff Calder saw no reason to mention that he had fought in blue, or that he had left the army informally on the eve of the great battle, slipping into an empty boxcar of a departing supply train. It was an accident in the switching yard that had cost him his leg.

  "What do they call you, bartender?"

  "Name's Jeff Calder…. Sir."

  "Well, Mr. Calder, fill those glasses to the brim! And don't forget the ladies. We want them in a generous and frolicsome mood for their night's labors. Drink up, ladies and gentlemen! Let our rejoicing be unbounded!" But when the rye bottle approached his glass, he put his hand over it and scowled, and Calder quickly refilled it with birch beer.

  For several minutes Frenchy had been concentrating on Mr. Delanny with all her might, trying to project from her mind to his the image of the over-and-under derringer he kept in his boot. She knew he couldn't take out three men with a two-shot derringer, but at least he could act like a man and-! Delanny looked up from his cards, having felt Frenchy's concentration on him. She stared at his boot and slightly lifted her chin in an effort to tell him to use it. Use it! She was sure he understood, but he pursed his lips and lowered his eyes with a ghost of a shrug, and she realized that he was going to accept his humiliation. Just as greed for a few more years of life, however empty and dull, had caused him to stay in this dead town for the sake of its clean mountain air, so he would swallow the indignity of sitting in cowed silence in his own barroom. And when he could hold it no longer, would he just sit there and piss himself? Or would he take his chance? She thought she knew. She turned and looked out the window, feeling pity for him but also, for the first time, contempt.

  With the approach of evening, Lieder decided to meander down the street "to get the lay of the land." He crossed over to the marshal's office and had a long talk with Matthew, during which he told him that if he played his cards right, he might become one of his army, maybe even his prince regent. Then Reverend Hibbard returned from preaching up at the Surprise Lode, so he walked him down to the old depot to collect the pistol he kept in his bedside table beneath his Bible.

  Kersti kicked open the hotel's kitchen door and heeled it shut behind her. As her hands were occupied with two cast-iron pots, one full of stew and the other containing beans with salt pork and onions, she had to duck under the sodden underwear the girls had hung up on lines looping around the kitchen. Annoyed at getting some drips down her neck, she banged the pots onto the stove just as Jeff Calder scuttled in, "Here's your grub," she said curtly. "Ma says there's plenty for all." The two of them began to dish up the food.

  "Never mind the high-and-mighty Mr. Delanny," Lieder said from the doorway, having returned from collecting the Reverend's gun. "He won't be dining this evening. He's far too refined and uppity to eat with us riffraff. And anyway, the poor fella appears to have lost his appetite. He just sits in his chair, pouting. You're the girl from over to the boardinghouse, ain't you? What's your name, darlin'?"

  "Kersti Bjorkvist," she said sullenly, not pausing in ladling out the stew onto tin plates.

  "Well now, just look at you, Kersti Bjorkvist! My, but you are one healthy piece of girl-meat, and that's no lie! You're no decorative bit of fluff. No, sir! You're built for long wear and rough use. Look at those shoulders, will you? And those hips! You are destined to bear children easily, girl. You'll just grunt 'em out in the morning and be back digging in the fields by afternoon. And it looks like you won't have much trouble feeding them either. But Lord love us, Kersti my darling, for all your big udders and that fine thatch of straw hair, you are the plainest thing these weary
eyes have seen in a long, long time! Were you hiding behind the door when the angels was dishing out the looks? But hey, don't you worry about it. Ugly ain't as bad as dirty, and neither one is as bad as having the clap. Matter of fact, ugly can be thought of as a gift from God, 'cause it makes it easier for a girl to maintain her virtue!"

  Tightening her jaw, but refusing to look at Lieder, Kersti told Jeff Calder that she'd want the pots back after they'd eaten. Her ma'd need them for tomorrow's noon meal. Then she left, slapping the wet laundry out of her way and banging the door behind her.

  Lieder laughed and went back into the barroom just as Professor Murphy, having slept all day, entered through the bat-winged front doors for his supper. At the sight of the strangers, he froze, still holding the doors open.

  "I'll bet a shiny new silver dollar against a kick in the ass that this is the famous Professor Murphy!" Lieder strode toward him, his hand outstretched. "Come right in, Professor! Make yourself to home! I've been informed that you eat your meals here at the hotel, and I've been looking forward to your company." He squeezed the barber's soft, hesitant hand and drew him to the bar. "But first things first. I see you ain't wearing a gun. But surely you keep a gun somewhere in your shop? For protection against mean and vicious people?" He grinned. "… Like me, for instance?"

  Murphy blinked and looked over at Mr. Delanny, who was folding his linen handkerchief to hide the smear of red he had spat into it. Frenchy was leaning against the wall, watching him from beneath half-closed eyelids; and two rough-looking strangers, one big and one little, were sitting at a table with Queeny, who was downing a glass of rye and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, while Chinky was turning her head from side to side to avoid the whiskey Bobby-My-Boy was trying to force on her. Murphy's worried eyes returned to Lieder just as Jeff Calder came in from the kitchen, carrying two steaming tin plates.

  "Set 'em right over here, Mr. Calder," Lieder said. "The professor and me'll eat at the bar. Excuse me, Professor Murphy? I didn't quite hear you. Was that 'thanks a lot' you said?"

  "Ah… thank you…"

  "You're entirely welcome, I assure you! And those guns you keep to protect yourself from us mean and vicious people? Just exactly where are they?"

  "I… ain't got but one. An old double-action Colt."

  "Now, don't you feel bad about having only one gun to offer. It's the spirit of the gift that matters. Tiny, go over to the barbershop and gather up Mr. Murphy's donation. Where'd you say it was, Professor?"

  "Ah… it's… under my pillow."

  "O-oh, now! That is a dangerous place to keep a gun! Say you was having a nightmare, and there you are, pounding at your pillow, trying to fight off some monster, and all of a sudden bang! and you got an extra eye right in the middle of your forehead. Tiny, are you going to stand there gawking like a stupid moonberry, or are you going to get that gun?"

  Tiny left through the bat-winged doors.

  "Give us that food while it's hot, Peggy. Tell me, Professor Murphy, just what are you a professor of?"

  "Oh, it's… you know. Barbers always call themselves professor… it's just…"

  "Ho-no-ra-ry," Lieder pronounced. "It's what they call a ho-no-ra-ry title. Murphy. Now, that's an Irish name, ain't it?"

  "Ah… yes?"

  "Dig in! Eat up, Professor! Down the hatch! And I suppose your folks came to this country to escape the potato famine?"

  "Ah… well…"

  "And why not, for crying out loud? All the riffraff and scum from the old world comes swooping down on America to gorge themselves on the richness produced by the sweat of my forefathers, so why shouldn't the Irish join the feast? The more the merrier, I say! Get your snouts into the trough!" As though accepting his own invitation, Lieder began to down the food on his tin plate, gripping his spoon in his fist like a child, and talking while he ate. "You've heard of the Statue of Liberty, Professor Murphy? It sits out there in New York Harbor, a beacon for the world's garbage to come gobble up this beautiful land's bounty! Well why not, eh? Why the hell not? Streets paved with gold! You can say what you want about niggers, but they ain't as bad as the immigrants. It ain't their fault they're over here, loafing and stealing and raping our women. It's our own selves that's to blame. We brought them here and we made them breed for the auction block, and now we got to pay the price of our folly. " He choked on the food he was shoveling in, but as soon as he regained his breath, he pursued, "And what does Washington D. C. do to protect native-born Americans from these European locusts? Not a goddamned thing, that's what! Come on over, they say! Just push your way up to the trough! And do you know why the government wants all them immigrants over here? You ought to know, if you're a professor, but I can see you don't have the slightest idea, so I'll tell you. It's so's the rich factory owners will have cheaper labor than they can get from real Americans. But don't you worry, Professor. The immigrants ain't going to get this country without a fight. Fate has brought me to this town, where there's silver a-plenty to buy arms for my American Freedom Militia, and we shall battle against the plague of immigrants come to infest this blessed land. Hey! Eat and drink, everybody! We are celebrating the Second American Revolution!"

  Tiny had no sooner returned with Professor Murphy's revolver than Lieder announced that he would be pleased to have that preacher Hibbard join their celebrations. "And fetch along those men down at the boardinghouse. Take Bobby-My-Boy with you."

  "But I ain't ate yet!"

  "Well shovel it down! Then go fetch our neighbors for a night of joy and ju-bil-ation. I'd a hell of a lot rather have them in here drinking and singing than out there skulking around in the dark, plotting to do me hurt!"

  While Bobby-My-Boy gulped down his meal, Tiny asked if they should bring in the Bjorkvist women, too.

  "No, let's just have a stag party. Only men and whores."

  "What about that kid? And the old fart at the Livery? And the one over to the store?"

  "Don't mess with the kid. He's all right. He's got grit. As for the old farts? No danger there. One of them ain't got guts enough to pull a trigger, and the other's nothing but an old Jew, sitting there counting his coins and having fantasies about white women."

  MR. BJORKVIST AND OSKAR stumbled in through the bat-winged bar doors under the impetus of a shove from Bobby-My-Boy. They stared around, cowed and frightened, but Lieder greeted them robustly, telling them they were in for a rare old good time with plenty of singing and drinking and all-purpose hell-raising.

  When, a short time later, Reverend Hibbard was projected into the barroom, the neck of his black alpaca coat up to his throat in result of having been hustled down the street by the back of his collar, the Bjorkvist men had already brought in the weathered loafers' bench from the hotel porch and were sitting on it sheepishly, their hands folded in their laps, one with a split left eyebrow and the other with a split right one in result of having had their faces clapped together like cymbals. Lieder beckoned Reverend Hibbard and Professor Murphy to join the Bjorkvists on his "deacons' bench."

  "Now! To loosen things up, I'm going to offer you some spirituous refreshment, and you are going to drink it right down. Peggy?"

  "Sir?" Jeff Calder stood to arthritic attention. For some reason, he had escaped inclusion among the townsfolk to be browbeaten and terrorized, and he had no intention of jeopardizing this advantageous position.

  "Bring glasses and a bottle of rye for my deacons here, and fill those glasses up to the rim! Let the spirits flow so that the spirit may rise! Mr. Delanny doesn't mind if we drink up his rye, do you, Mr. Delanny?"

  Without responding, Mr. Delanny snapped a card from the pack and placed it on top of another. Only Frenchy was close enough to see his hand tremble.

  "Down the hatch, boys! Bottoms up!"

  The four "deacons" drained their glasses of raw rye, but tears stood in Oskar Bjorkvist's eyes, and his Adam's apple worked hard to keep it down.

  "Fill 'em up again, Peggy! Can't you see that my deacons are still
thirsty?"

  The second glasses went down with difficulty for everyone except Reverend Hibbard, who had often struggled with Demon Rum at close quarters. But even he had trouble draining the third.

  "Five glasses is our target, gentlemen. Two more to go! Tell you what, let's make a game of it. Anyone who can't finish his five glasses will have to pay a penalty. Now, what would be an interesting penalty? Hey, I got it! Whoever doesn't finish his five glasses, Bobby-My-Boy gets to cornhole him while the rest of us look on. And you better believe that Bobby-My-Boy will do a first-class job of reaming you. Back in prison, he used to break in all the new young prisoners, and it was truly wonderful to hear those boys yelp and whimper, and to see the tears of gratitude standing in their eyes. " Lieder grinned. "So I guess it's bottoms up, boys!.. one way or t'other."

  Tiny and Bobby-My-Boy burst out in moist nasal plosions of laughter.

  Downing five brimful glasses of rye in quick succession left the "deacons" slack-mouthed and gray-skinned, and young Oskar could breathe only in shallow oral pants.

  "Now then, gentlemen!" Lieder announced, assuming the role of master of ceremonies. "Let us begin our evening's fellowship by raising our voices in what has always been one of my favorites, and I hope is one of yours: 'Rock of Ages.' " He raised his hands to lead the choir. "And let's put some feeling into it, shall we? Ready? And…"

  After a thin, ragged beginning, the hymn increased in volume, if not in melodic refinement, because each of the deacons wanted to be heard contributing his share under the forceful conducting of Lieder, whose florid gestures and rapt facial expression were mocking imitations of the choir leader at his parents' strict fundamentalist church, where he used to get whipped for daydreaming when he should have been devoting his attention to the words of the Redeemer. The Bjorkvists didn't know this English hymn, but they mouthed and muttered their way along. Professor Murphy only knew the words to the first verse, which he repeated with such dogged determination that the Reverend was forced to follow his lead. At the fourth verse (actually, the first verse sung for the fourth time), Tiny felt inspired to lead Queeny out onto the floor to dance to the lugubrious rhythm. He was still wrestling her around when Lieder brought the hymn to an end with a theatrical gesture and turned to bow, his arms spread wide as he harvested the applause to which everyone contributed fulsomely, except Frenchy and Delanny, who exchanged hooded glances, and Chinky, who didn't understand what was going on.